Free Republic

North Korea is keen to have sanctions eased, as the country faces a dire food shortage, a former U.K. ambassador to North Korea said. [photo caption] Children wave from a window at a kindergarten in Samchon, North Korea, in this photo taken by a World Food Program official in October 2015. An estimated 11 million North Koreans, more than 43 percent of the country’s population, are undernourished, according to a U.N. report issued Wednesday. [photo credit: Korea Times file] After a summit between U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in Hanoi last month failed to produce...

Satellite images of a facility near Pyongyang suggest that North Korea may be preparing to launch a missile or a satellite. The increase in activity is around a site known as Sanumdong, where North Korea assembled most of its ballistic missiles and rockets. It comes after reports earlier this week that North Korea's main rocket launch site at Sohae had been rebuilt. Work to dismantle Sohae began last year but stopped as US talks stalled. On Friday US President Donald Trump said he would be disappointed if North Korea was to resume weapons testing. "I would be surprised in a...

For all the tumult, travail and transformation that Donald Trump has wreaked on American politics in the last 25 months, his presidency and his legacy may be defined by the momentous week ahead. In the remaining days of February, Mr. Trump’s outreach with nuclear-armed North Korea and his economic combat with China could be resolved, even as the fate of his border wall and the Russia investigation – the latter holding the possibility of the fourth effort in American history to remove a president – hang in the balance. This crowded hour in history has far more than 22 minutes,...

Reports of a recent briefing by South Korea’s National Intelligence Service (NIS) to the National Assembly’s intelligence committee noted that North Korea has started restoring structures on the rocket launch pad at its Sohae Satellite Launching Station (Tongchang-ri). The North had previously started to dismantle the rail-mounted transfer building on the launch pad along with the engine test stand last year at the beginning of US-DPRK negotiations. While progress was quick at first, both the launch pad and engine test stand had remained in about the same condition since August 2018. However, based on commercial satellite imagery, efforts to...

Last year's harvest was just 4.95 million tonnes, the United Nations said in its Needs and Priorities assessment for 2019, down by 500,000 tonnes....It was "the lowest production in more than a decade", the UN's Resident Coordinator in the North Tapan Mishra said in a statement...."This has resulted in a significant food gap."..As a result 10.9 million people in the North needed humanitarian assistance -- 600,000 more than last year -- with a potential for increased malnutrition and illness. It is equivalent to 43 percent of the population. The impoverished North has been frequently condemned by the international community for...

For the Democrats to interview in open hearings a convicted liar & fraudster, at the same time as the very important Nuclear Summit with North Korea, is perhaps a new low in American politics and may have contributed to the “walk.” Never done when a president is overseas. Shame!

Video of man claiming to be Kim Jong Nam's son emerges Posted 08 Mar 2017 08:42 Updated 08 Mar 2017 09:11 KUALA LUMPUR: A YouTube video has emerged in which a man claims to be Kim Han Sol, son of the murdered North Korean believed to be Kim Jong Nam. The video titled KHS Video was uploaded on the YouTube page of a group called Cheollima Civil Defense on Tuesday (Mar 7) which contacted Channel NewsAsia after posting it. "My name is Kim Han Sol, from North Korea, part of the Kim family," the man says in the video. "My...

Japan Times Obama weighed pre-emptive strike against North Korea after fifth nuclear blast and missile tests near Japan in 2016, Woodward book claims Herald of South Korea Obama mulled preemptive attack on N. Korea: book Washington Post It’s certainly unconventional. But is it working? Trump’s North Korea strategy wins over some experts. This article from the Washington Post shows how far up their rear ends the reporters (and editors) are for this paper. Little CNN (or CNN Cr@p) Trump claims (without evidence) Obama nearly launched war with North Korea The above from CNN proves what HORSE MANURE CNN reporting is......

Vice President Mike Pence said in a wide-ranging speech Friday that President Donald Trump and the United States will continue dialog with North Korea to pressure the country towards denuclearization, after a recent summit between the two countries was cut short due to disagreements in negotiations. "Last night, Trump returned from a second historic summit with North Korea in Vietnam,'" Pence said at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Maryland, after the US-North Korea summit in Hanoi, Vietnam, broke up earlier than expected without a deal. "The President said it was productive two days and discussions among teams will continue....

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — South Korean President Moon Jae-in said Friday his government plans to discuss with the United States the possibility of restarting joint inter-Korean economic projects to induce nuclear disarmament from North Korea. Moon's comments during a nationally televised speech came a day after a high-stakes nuclear summit between President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un collapsed over what the Americans saw as excessive North Korean demands for sanctions relief in exchange for limited disarmament steps...(snip) ..."I vow to help usher in an era of a peace-driven economy on the Korean Peninsula," said Moon,...

Just happened to come across this video. Governors Ball. President Trump's remarks. Speaks a lot about China and North Korea.

From the main street, the Euljiro neighbourhood doesn’t look like much: some shabby retail stores, cold-noodle restaurants, a Starbucks. Enter one of the small alleys, however, and you’ll find yourself in a kind of manufacturing anthill: thousands upon thousands of shops, each crammed to the rafters with bolts, circuit boards, iron castings, gauges, wires, lights, switches, tools and innumerable tiny objects that defy description. This incredible warren of machinists is the manufacturing heart of Seoul. There are 10,000 shops here, with 50,000 tradespeople, many of whom have been working here since the 1950s and were integral to South Korea’s postwar...

How many times have we heard a politician, opinion blatherskite, news reader or random friend say that “so and so leaving” means that there is no longer an adult in the room with President Donald J. Trump. In the last week or so, that has been blown out of the water. We, those of us with common sense, knew it was never true. Dems have proven now that Trump “IS” the adult in the room. Nancy Pelosi was proud of how her charges behaved. And, the left says that Nancy is the adult in the room: Nancy Pelosi Nope. Just...

President Trump expressed optimism he’d reach a denuclearization deal with North Korea and said he’d announce the date of a second summit with Kim Jong-un likely by Tuesday’s State of the Union address. “I think North Korea wants to make a deal,” Trump told CBS’ “Face the Nation” in an interview that aired Sunday. Trump’s intelligence chiefs testified before lawmakers last week that it would be very unlikely that North Korea would give up its nuclear program. Trump, however, said that Kim Jong-un is “tired” and there’s a “good chance” of cementing a deal that could boost the North Korean...

His name is Touraj Esmaeeli, and you haven’t heard it before. And yet, he’s a big story. He worked as a top advisor to the Iranian intelligence service, as an expert on that country’s cyberwar against the United States and other Western countries. Several of his colleagues have been arrested since last spring, accused of spying, but the spybust hasn’t been widely covered. Esmaeeli scooted off to Istanbul, where he first checked in to a hotel and then barely escaped a combination of Iranian and Turkish agents who had come to arrest him. He has taken refuge in a Western...

They think pulling out of Syria and Afghanistan would be a debacle. They think North Korea cannot be trusted. They think the Islamic State is still a threat to America. They think Russia is bad and NATO is good. The trouble is their president does not agree. More than two years into his administration, the disconnect between President Trump and the Republican establishment on foreign policy has rarely been as stark.

On Jan. 17, President Trump tweeted: “No ‘Cave’ on the issue of Border and National Security.” Eight days later, he caved, agreeing to reopen the government for three weeks without getting a penny for his border wall. His right-wing allies are spluttering in rage, but they shouldn’t be surprised. This debacle confirms that Trump is not the “ultimate negotiator” he purports to be. He is, in fact, a lousy negotiator. Now he may be on the verge of concluding the worst deals of the century by pulling U.S. troops out of South Korea and Afghanistan in return for empty promises...

President Moon Jae-in’s government is seeking ways to circumvent international sanctions against North Korea to reopen an inter-Korean industrial park. The Kaesong industrial complex north of the Demilitarized Zone separating the two Koreas was shut down in February 2016 after Pyongyang conducted its fourth nuclear test. The ensuing moves by Seoul officials suggest the Moon administration is seeking to resume the inter-Korean projects, particularly the joint industrial park, as a catalyst for the North’s denuclearization rather than a step to be taken after a significant progress is made. But it would prove practically impossible to bypass sanctions imposed by a...

A high-profile Moscow economist has reportedly said the Russian government is looking to invest in Bitcoin next month. Australian crypto news website micky.com claims to have spoken with Vladislav Ginko, a lecturer at the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration in Moscow. “US sanctions may be mitigated only through Bitcoin use,” the site quoted Ginko as saying. “I believe that the Russia [government] will start diversifying its reserves with Bitcoin in February this year when US Congress will introduce… new sanctions against Russia,” he reportedly said. Ginko estimated that the first wave of Russian investment in crypto...

Shortlisted venues for a second summit between United States President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un are likely to include Singapore and Vietnam, South Korean media reported on Friday (Jan 11). “(The venues you should pay attention to) are those mentioned by media including Vietnam, Singapore and Hawaii,” a South Korean foreign affairs ministry official told the Korean Herald, speaking on condition of anonymity. “But Hawaii is said to be an unrealistic location as it doesn’t have a North Korean embassy there,” the report quoted another official as saying. Although the South Korean government hoped the truce...