A warning that Washington would shoot down North Korea's next missile test?
A restatement of past policy?
Or simply just what it seemed: a straightforward threat of annihilation from the president of the United States?
Officials and pundits across Asia struggled Wednesday to parse Donald Trump's vow Tuesday at the U.N. General Assembly to "totally destroy North Korea" if provoked.
In a region well used to Pyongyang's pursuit of nuclear weapons generating a seemingly never-ending cycle of threats and counter-threats, Trump's comments stood out.
South Korea officially played them down, while some politicians worried that Trump's words signaled a loss of influence for Seoul.
Tokyo focused on his mention of Japanese citizens abducted by the North.
Analysts across Asia expressed surprise, worry, even wry amusement, in one case, that Trump's words seemed to mirror threats normally emanating from North Korean state media.
Amid the speculation, the focus of Trump's belligerence, North Korea, remained silent in the hours after the speech.
Officials from the office of South Korean President Moon Jae-in, a liberal who has advocated dialogue with the North while being forced into a hawkish position by the North's weapons tests, called Trump's words a signal of Washington's strong resolve to deal with the North, but also essentially a repetition of the basic stance that all options will be considered when confronting Pyongyang.
Trump has previously threatened the North with "fire and fury." Pyongyang responded to those past remarks with a string of weapons tests, including its sixth and most powerful nuclear detonation and two missiles that flew over U.S. ally Japan.
Park Soo-hyun, a Moon spokesman, said that Trump's comments "reaffirmed the need to put maximum sanctions and pressure against North Korea's nuclear and missile provocations" so that Pyongyang realizes that abandoning its nuclear weapons is the only way forward.
Marcus Noland, a North Korea specialist with the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington, said in an online post that Trump's threat will feed a long-standing North Korean narrative that claims that the United States poses an existential threat.
"With those words, President Trump handed the Kim regime the soundbite of the century. It will play on a continuous loop on North Korean national television," Noland wrote.
North Korea's regular weapons tests are an attempt to create an arsenal of nuclear missiles that can threaten U.S. troops throughout Asia and the U.S. mainland. Pyongyang tested its first two intercontinental ballistic missiles in July and claims that it can now accurately reach the U.S. homeland, though outside experts say the North may still need more tests before its weapons are fully viable.
Each new test pushes the nation that much closer to that goal.
Some South Korean opposition politicians saw the comments as another sign that South Korea is losing its voice in international efforts to deal with the North's nuclear program.
Trump's U.N. speech came days after U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis created unease in South Korea by saying without elaboration that the United States has military options against North Korea that wouldn't involve the destruction of Seoul.
The South Korean capital is within easy artillery range of the huge array of North Korean weapons dug in along a border only an hour's drive from greater Seoul's 25 million people.
Kim Su-min, a lawmaker in the People's Party, expressed worry that South Korean officials heard nothing from Washington before both Mattis' and Trump's remarks.
"The government should comprehensively review its diplomatic and national security system and do its absolute best so that our stance on critical issues related to the existence of our country and the lives of our people doesn't go ignored," Kim said.
Diplomacy meant to rid the North of its nukes has been moribund for years, and Pyongyang has made huge strides over the last several years in its quest for nuclear tipped missiles that can reach anywhere in the world.
Trump has pushed Beijing, which is the North's only major ally, to do more to influence Pyongyang's behavior, so far to no avail.
A Chinese expert on North Korea was surprised by the vehemence of Trump's speech, saying "his rhetoric is full of military force."
Cheng Xiaohe of Renmin University said in an interview that he initially thought that "the U.S. had nearly declared war on North Korea." The speech signals that "if North Korea conducts another missile test, the U.S. is very likely to intercept."
Officials in Tokyo, meanwhile, welcomed a reference by Trump to North Korea's abduction of Japanese citizens in the 1970s and '80s.
"I think it means an understanding has gotten through" to the United States and other countries, Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasutoshi Nishimura said, according to Kyodo News service.
Trump said, "We know it kidnapped a sweet 13-year-old Japanese girl from a beach in her own country to enslave her as a language tutor for North Korea's spies."
The girl, Megumi Yokota, was one of at least 17 people that Japan says North Korea kidnapped.
Andrei Lankov, a North Korea expert at Kookmin University in South Korea, described Trump's threats as similar to the type of bluffing that North Korea has used for decades.
"It's a bit funny to see how the U.S. president behaves in exactly the same way, using exactly the same words his North Korean counterparts have been using for decades," Lankov said.
Rhetoric that isn't followed by action will eventually undermine the U.S. image internationally. "It makes American threats far less efficient," he said.
Lankov said he expects North Korea to respond to Trump's threats with "equally powerful ... equally comical" and "probably more ridiculous rhetoric."
The five-bedroom house in New York's Long Island suburbs — listed for nearly $1.3 million — boasts a southern exposure and proximity to a country club.
But here's what's more interesting:
The seller, a Chinese national named Sun Sidong, has been linked by American security experts to a network of Chinese companies under Treasury sanctions for helping companies and individuals who support North Korea's nuclear and ballistic missile programs.
According to Chinese corporate filings, Sun is the listed owner of Dandong Dongyuan Industrial Co., which has shared an email address with another Chinese company, Dandong Zhicheng Metallic Material Co., a coal exporter suspected of helping North Korea evade sanctions.
The coal company and "four related front companies" were targeted by a federal search warrant allowing prosecutors to secretly monitor their financial transactions at eight U.S. banks, seizing any funds stemming from illegal sanctions-busting, according to a May federal court ruling.
The ruling, by U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell of Washington, D.C., said the eight American financial institutions — Bank of America, Wells Fargo, BNY Mellon, Citibank, Deutsche Bank, HSBC, JP Morgan Chase, and Standard Chartered Bank — had already processed upwards of $700 million in prohibited transactions involving North Korea since 2009. The ruling does not allege any wrongdoing by any of the banks.
On Tuesday, the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctioned Dandong Zhicheng Metallic Material Co. and its primary shareholder in response to "attempted evasion of U.S. sanctions."
That shareholder, a Chinese businessman named Chi Yupeng, was also named in a civil complaint filed Tuesday by the Justice Department seeking a money laundering penalty against the firm, as well as the seizure of $4 million in funds allegedly laundered for North Korea's ruling party. The complaint alleges that front companies controlled by Chi Yupeng comprise one of the largest financial facilitators for North Korea.
Chi Yupeng hung up on NBC News several times when asked for comment.
The Justice Department also moved to seize nearly $7 million from a Singapore firm over similar allegations, and Treasury levied sanctions against a number of other Chinese and Russian entities — 16 in total — it accused of helping North Korea evade sanctions.
The government's investigation was supported by the Center for Advanced Defense Studies (C4ADS), a non-profit U.S. think tank, is part of a new get-tough approach to North Korean sanctions that began in the Obama administration and is accelerating under President Trump, current and former U.S. officials say.
While it's widely assumed that North Korea has for years been subjected to punishing international pressure as it defied the world and advanced toward a nuclear missile capability, the sanctions against North Korea have been full of holes, experts say — far less restrictive, for example, than the measures that brought Iran to the nuclear bargaining table.
Sun's Great Neck house is an example of how the alleged sanction-busting networks can stretch around the globe, even to the luxe suburbs of Long Island. "The fact that you have somebody who's engaged in trade that is potentially not just sanctioned, but dangerous, and that individual then invests in real estate in the United States reflects that there are holes in the system," NBC News National Security Analyst Juan Zarate said.
The North Korea sanctions targeted specific military technology, "but what you didn't see until quite recently are these kind of broader sanctions to go after the North Korean economy as a whole," said Peter Harrell, who was the deputy assistant secretary for counter threat finance and sanctions in the State Department from 2012 to 2014.
Nor was there an aggressive enforcement effort against banks and individuals doing business with Pyongyang. As a result, the North Korean economy has grown steadily over the last decade, analysts say. And while the country as a whole remains extremely poor, the elite live relatively well amid a building boom of gleaming skyscrapers in the capital.
"Until February of 2016, U.N. sanctions against North Korea were strong on paper but poorly enforced, and U.S. sanctions against North Korea were comparatively weak — weaker than our sanctions against Belarus and Zimbabwe," said Joshua Stanton, a North Korea expert and former Army officer.
Now, that is changing — though it may be too late. North Korea tested a missile that many experts say could strike the U.S. mainland, and American intelligence officials say the country may be months away from being able to mount a nuclear warhead on such a missile.
Still, aided by new sanctions imposed in the past year, the Trump administration is moving to increase economic pressure on North Korea, by targeting the Chinese companies that have for years helped the North fund its military activities.
"Justice is stepping it up by going after the Chinese banks," said Anthony Ruggiero, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, who served as the nonproliferation advisor to the U.S. delegation to the 2005 Six-Party Talks on North Korea.
In June, the U.S. Treasury Department designated China's Bank of Dandong — based in a city on the North Korean border that serves as a center of trade between the two countries — to be a "primary money laundering concern." It said the small bank "acts as a conduit for illicit North Korean financial activity." Two Chinese individuals were also targeted in the government's action.
Last September, the Justice Department charged Dandong-based businesswoman Ma Xiaohong with evading sanctions and laundering millions of dollars for North Korea. Ma has not made a court appearance and her whereabouts are unclear.
Sen. Cory Gardner, R-Colo., recently introduced a bill that would cut off entities that do business in North Korea, including the top ten Chinese importers of North Korean goods, from using the American financial system.
In August, the U.N. Security Council unanimously passed new sanctions meant to pressure Pyongyang's export revenue. They crack down on North Korea's primary exports — including iron, iron ore, coal, lead, lead ore and seafood — and target banks and joint ventures with foreign companies.
C4ADS, which focuses on international security, uses sophisticated software and business records to map links between companies involved with North Korea.
In June, the group published a report — titled "Risky Business" — naming Sun, who owns the Great Neck house, as part of a network that may be exporting technology that could be used in North Korea's missile program.
Chinese business records cited by C4ADS show Sun owns 97 percent of Dandong Dongyuan Industrial Co. Ltd., a general-purpose trading firm whose businesses include the sale of automobiles, machinery, natural resources, and general household products, the report says. NBC News confirmed that the records show Sun as primary shareholder.
Customs records indicate the firm has exported to three countries: North Korea, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and the United States. From 2013 to 2016, the company sent $28 million worth of material to North Korea, the records show.
For example, Dandong Dongyuan Industrial Co. sent North Korea a shipment of radio navigational aid apparatus valued at nearly $800,000 in June 2016, the C4ADS report said. Experts at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies concluded that "this category might contain guidance devices for ballistic missiles."
NBC News reviewed shipment data from Panjiva, which tracks global trade. It shows more than 60 shipments of items by Sun's company to North Korea that fall into the category of "nuclear reactors, boilers, machinery and mechanical appliances; parts thereof." This broad category is set by the country of origin, in this case the Chinese government. Experts say dual-use items like these help the Kim regime evade sanctions that are explicitly designed to prevent its nuclear capability.
"The danger with the export of dual-use items is that they appear to be legitimate. These are things that could be used for normal purposes," Zarate said. "You have parties that are willing to export what are really dangerous items to a regime that has been sanctioned, and trying to use the cloak of legitimate commerce in order to do that."
C4ADS also links Sun to a ship carrying arms from North Korea to an unknown destination. In August 2016, a cargo vessel flying a Cambodian flag was intercepted by Egyptian authorities entering the Suez Canal with parts for 30,000 rocket-propelled grenades aboard. The grenade parts were hidden under 2,300 tons of iron ore, which is one of the newly banned mineral exports targeted by the U.N.'s recent sanctions program.
According to shipping records reviewed by NBC News, one of Sun Sidong's companies owned the vessel from April 2012 until August 2014, when ownership was transferred to a company controlled by Sun Sihong, who according to C4ADS is Sun's sister.
In 2015, Sun registered a New York-based company called Dongyuan Enterprise USA. On March 2, it received a shipment of "used furniture" from Dandong Dongyuan Industrial Co., Sun's Chinese company. Originally shipped from Dandong, the cargo traveled to the U.S. from Busan, South Korea, according to its bill of lading.
The real estate agent who brokered the sale of the Great Neck home to Sun recalled that the family was expecting furniture to arrive from China.
Sun, whose U.S. company operates out of a New York City address he does not own, bought the Great Neck property near the country club for $1.1 million in December 2016.
The house is already on the market again. Sun's U.S. real estate broker told NBC News that's because Sun "doesn't want to do business here."
One lesson of Sun's activities is that targeting a small number of key actors could put a severe dent in North Korean's effort to evade sanctions, according to David Johnson, the executive director of C4ADS.
"The networks that perpetrate sanctions evasion for North Korea are limited, centralized, and vulnerable," Johnson said. "That is, we can touch them, there are very few pressure points, and we can make a major impact."
NORTH KOREA LOSES AMERICAN TOURISTS (US TRAVEL BAN FINALLY ENFORCED):
OTTO WARMBIER'S MURDER RE-AWAKENED WORLD TO KIM JONG UN'S BRUTAL REGIME (STARVING CHILDREN & PRISON CAMPS).
"YOUNG PIONEERS TOURS" NO LONGER BE ABLE TO RECRUIT ADVENTOUROUS AMERICANS TO VISIT N. KOREA.
Sources: AFP, Fox News, The Guardian, Youtube
**** US to ban citizens from travel to North Korea, tour operators say
Two agencies including Young Pioneer Tours, which took Otto Warmbier to North Korea, say ban will be announced on 27 July.
Two travel companies that operate tours to North Korea have said the US government will soon ban its citizens from travelling to the North.
It follows the death of Otto Warmbier, a US student who was arrested and sentenced to 15 years of hard labour while visiting North Korea. He was released in June in a coma and died in hospital in Cincinnati days after being medically evacuated.
Koryo Tours said on Friday the ban would be announced on 27 July and would go into effect 30 days later. It did not say how long the ban would last.
Another tour operator, Young Pioneer Tours, said in a tweet that it had also been informed of the ban, citing the same date.
Young Pioneer Tours was the agency that took Warmbier to North Korea.
His parents, Fred and Cindy Warmbier, said his death was a result of “the awful torturous mistreatment our son received at the hands of the North Koreans”.
Warmbier was arrested at Pyongyang airport in January 2016 for allegedly taking a propaganda poster from his hotel room, where he had been staying as part of an organised tour.
The University of Virginia student wept at his sentencing, saying: “I have made the worst mistake of my life.” The trial reportedly lasted less than an hour.
NORTH KOREAN CHILDREN ARE TRAINED TO HATE USA ("AMERICAN BASTARDS"):
NORTH KOREAN GOVT STARVES ITS CHILDREN AND TEACHES HATRED OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION.
THIS EXPLAINS KIM JONG UN'S GREAT DISDAIN FOR AMERICA.
REGIME CHANGE STARTS WITH THE YOUTH.
THE UNITED STATES MUST HELP TO LIBERATE NORTH KOREA'S CHILDREN (PRAY).
Sources: Newsweek, CNN, ATI, NTDTV, Youtube
*** HOW NORTH KOREAN CHILDREN ARE TAUGHT TO HATE AMERICANS
Most North Korean children have never seen an American in person. But they get an eyeful of them at a massive museum in the town of Sinchon that is devoted to educating them on U.S.-North Korean history.
It’s not baseball and apple pie here. At the ominously named Sinchon Museum of American War Atrocities, Americans are a sinister lot: scheming missionaries, marauding soldiers, and masters of torture.
This is a museum in a farming town south of Pyongyang that has been rebuilt as a mecca to anti-Americanism. All spring and summer, North Korean schoolchildren will be making field trips here to cement what is an integral part of their education: hatred of the United States military and a mission to seek revenge.
For North Koreans, the 1950–53 Korean War that pitted the North Koreans and Chinese against U.S.-led United Nations troops — known in Pyongyang as the Fatherland Liberation War — remains in full tilt. The two sides may have signed a ceasefire in 1953, but the war still looms large in the North Korean psyche.
We in the United States often call the Korean conflict the “Forgotten War.” My high school history textbook in Minnesota devoted barely a paragraph to it, and, growing up as the child of Korean immigrants, I knew almost nothing about a war my own parents survived as children. But the war is very much alive and present in North Korea, and the standoff with the United States figures prominently in their propaganda, identity, and policy.
Understanding how North Korea sees the United States is integral to divining how to change the tenor of the tense U.S.–North Korea relationship, which persistently threatens to erupt again into military conflict.
The arrival of a new president, a Republican, in Washington after eight years of a Democrat in the White House means that there is an opening for change. How best to take advantage of that opening, however, is a tricky question when 25 years of U.S. bids to negotiate with North Korea have not stopped Pyongyang from building nuclear weapons.
The North Koreans have been waiting and watching to see what the Trump administration comes up with. But Pyongyang’s patience will be limited.
In November 2008, as the Associated Press news agency’s Seoul bureau chief, I made my first trip to North Korea just weeks after Barack Obama won the U.S. presidential election. Knowing that I was a journalist, and no doubt instructed to pump me for information about the president-elect, our North Korean tour guide latched onto me and grilled me: What did Obama think about North Korea? Would he be open to meeting the leader of North Korea?
During his presidential campaign, Obama had suggested he would be open to engaging North Korea if the situation were right, an interpretation that I relayed to the North Korean guide. But just months into Obama’s presidency, North Korea launched a banned long-range rocket and followed that up by testing a nuclear device, making it difficult for the U.S. administration to do anything but lead the chorus of international condemnation of Pyongyang for its defiance of UN Security Council resolutions explicitly barring such activity.
Washington tends to look at North Korea’s behavior solely from the view of the message Pyongyang is trying to tell America. But at the time, in April 2009, Pyongyang had reason at home for staging such theatrical provocations: then-leader Kim Jong Il had emerged from a coma and had just made his first public appearance after months of speculation about his health and North Korea’s stability.
The regime needed something big to reassure the people that the republic was intact, and still feisty, and that Kim was able to defend them against the United States.
North Korea systematically uses the fear of an outside threat to spur and inspire national pride and unity. And often, that need to rally the people in order to ensure stability outweighs any advances that North Korea’s diplomats have made in repairing relations with the United States.
In December 2011, I reported exclusively that North Korea and the United States were negotiating a groundbreaking dealthat promised food and aid in exchange for a freeze of Pyongyang’s nuclear program. The news hit the wire as Kim Jong Il lay dead from a heart attack, unbeknownst to me and the rest of the world.
Kim Jong Il’s death was announced the next day as I was en route to North Korea to open the AP’s new Pyongyang bureau, a project I was told that Kim had personally approved. Some read North Korea’s willingness to allow the U.S.-based news agency into Pyongyang as a sign of new openness toward Washington.
His death, and the rise of his young son, Kim Jong Un as leader, seemed to offer another chance at changing the tone of the relationship. Two months later, on February 29, 2012, envoys from Pyongyang and Washington signed a pact on restrictions on North Korea’s missile development programs that became known as the Leap Day Deal.
But it was only a matter of weeks when, as part of celebrations marking the centenary of the birth of his late grandfather, President Kim Il Sung, North Korea launched a long-range rocket in bold defiance of the United States and their Leap Day Deal — not to mention the UN and the Security Council’s ban on rocket activity considered to be a test of missile technology.
The Obama administration eventually adopted a policy of “strategic patience” on North Korea, refusing to get riled up by Pyongyang’s rhetoric and avoiding overtures that would appear to reward bad behavior. The aim was to discourage North Korea from using provocations as a bartering chip.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Treasury Department turned the screws on the North Koreans with a series of increasingly specific sanctions aimed at thwarting its ability to build bombs and missiles and putting a financial pinch on members of the party elite.
But bomb-making materials continued to slip through China’s porous border into the country, and the missile test-launches and nuclear tests continued — at a much faster pace with Kim Jong Un in power than ever before.
During his 2016 presidential campaign, Trump suggested that he would take a very different approach on North Korea. “I would speak to him,” he told Reuters that May.
That certainly got the apparatchiks’ attention in Pyongyang.
In 1994, Kim Il Sung met with former U.S. President Jimmy Carter at the height of a nuclear crisis. And Kim Jong Il managed to sit down with Bill Clinton in 2009 when the former U.S. president flew to Pyongyang to negotiate the release of two American journalists.
However, no sitting U.S. president has held a summit with a North Korean leader, and the optics of an American head of state shaking hands with Kim Jong Un would be propaganda gold for the North Koreans. That would be the antithesis of strategic patience, and the North Koreans relished the notion. For four months, there were no missile or nuclear tests in North Korea.
Meanwhile, Trump’s campaign comments worried South Koreans, who do not want to be left out of decisions relating to the North. After all, they have the most to lose if the “thermonuclear” war that the North Koreans threaten breaks out.
Many South Koreans also bristled at Trump’s campaign characterizations of their country as a rich nation that is freeloading off the United States in trade and military support. But South Koreans were also preoccupied by political upheaval at home: a corruption investigation reaching the presidential Blue House and top corporations; months of protests in downtown Seoul; the impeachment of President Park Geun-hye; and campaigning in advance of a snap election set for early May.
Since taking office, President Trump has reaffirmed the longstanding U.S.–South Korean alliance. He has taken a tougher approach on North Korea, with his secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, saying, “All options are on the table” — including military strikes.
On April 7, Trump ordered an airstrike on a Syrian airfield, which Tillerson said was meant to send a strong message to America’s adversaries, including North Korea. That shift in attitude has won over conservatives in South Korea. However, with progressive Moon Jae-in winning the May 9 elections in a landslide, South Korea now has a leader who advocates engagement with the North.
Having a liberal government in the Blue House after nearly 10 years of a conservative administration will prompt a shift in alliances and policy across the region.
Those of us who watch North Korea knew there was a narrow window of opportunity — and that this young man who rules the nation is not a paragon of patience. When Kim vowed on New Year’s Day to perfect a ballistic missile designed to strike the mainland United States, Trump blasted back with a tweet: “Won’t happen!”
Three weeks later, the North Koreans fired off a warning salvo — a test-launch of a new intermediate-range ballistic missile — just as Trump was sitting down with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. A series of missile tests has followed, and satellite imagery suggests North Korea may be poised to detonate another nuclear device underground.
Kim Jong Un clearly is enjoying having these big guns at his disposal — and is basking in the show of strength the missiles and nuclear weapons provide. Garnering global attention is part of the strategy.
Is he truly willing to get rid of the one “treasured sword,” as state media calls the nuclear program, that has been so useful in pulling the country together? Without nuclear weapons and the pretext of defense, North Korea would have to rely on its own economy to keep the country intact.
Instead of setting the stage for improved relations, North Korea imprisoned two Americans on espionage and anti-state charges. Kim has also poured resources into amping up the propaganda against the Americans, suggesting that hatred of the United States would become an even bigger part of North Korean education and policy.
North Korea needs an enemy. The regime needs a villain for its people to hate. There is no indication that the regime will let go of that hatred anytime soon.
The museum in Sinchon is a prime example. Tucked down a street in south Hwanghae Province, the original museum was created to serve as a repository of alleged American atrocities. Plain and unassuming, the old building housing the relics was flanked by massive mosaics that hinted at the anger contained within: a grandmother in traditional dress, hair askew, shaking her fist at the “wily Americans” and calling on fellow North Koreans to seek “a thousandfold revenge.”
Inside, room after room catalogued the alleged war crimes committed by Americans, from the Presbyterian missionaries accused of seeking to brainwash Koreans with religion to the “Hitlerite” American soldiers they claim systematically tried to exterminate the townspeople in the early months of the Korean War.
Display cases offered what they called proof: some 3,000 artifacts dug up from the soil, including skulls, bones, ID cards, simple woven shoes. A 2009 book on the museum published by Pyongyang’s Foreign Languages Publishing House says that more than 35,000 people, a quarter of the county’s population, were killed during a 52-day rampage.
After a 2014 visit to Sinchon, Kim Jong Un called for an upgrade. The simple building on a grassy knoll was replaced by a palatial museum that is a veritable house of horrors, with room after room graphically bringing to life the gruesome atrocities attributed to the Americans.
The renovated museum opened in late July 2016, in time for the anniversary of the Korean War ceasefire (which the North Koreans call “Victory Day,” even though the fighting ended in a truce).
A visit there is like walking through the set of a horror movie; visitors can walk right up to the tableaus and can practically smell the blood and hear the screams.
In one tableau shown in photos published by Pyongyang’s official Korean Central News Agency in July 2016, a life-sized American soldier yanks the hair of a young Korean woman tied to a tree as another American sinks a knife into her heart. In another room, suffused in red light as though drenched with blood, American soldiers drive nails into a Korean woman’s head. Rabid glee distorts their faces.
The grisly scenes are meant to be lifelike. But are they accurate? Many in South Korea and the United States question the veracity of the claims that such killings were carried out by American troops. While the bones and personal artifacts appear genuine, on my own visits to the museum I did not see any items that directly proved or implicated American involvement.
With few, if any, formal challenges to the claims, North Korea has forged ahead in attributing the deaths to the “American imperialists.” In a 2010 North Korean book called The Sinful American Aggressors’ Imperialism of Korea , a grainy, black-and-white photo is characterized as showing one American soldier scrawling the phrase “I can’t sleep without killing” in a notebook. “The Americans are slaughterers who brutally massacred our people,” the book informs the reader over 308 pages of unattributed allegations.
“American bastards”
Throughout my visits to the Sinchon Museum, our North Korean guide repeatedly referred to Americans as miguk nom, or “American bastards.” He knew I was American, but did not even blink in using this epithet to my face in nearly every sentence he spoke.
Because I am an ethnic Korean and did not look anything like the blond scarecrows depicted on the walls of the museum, I did not appear “American” to him, and the slur was never meant to offend me. The phrase is simply so fixed in his mind that the two words are inextricable.
However, the North Koreans I met in the street loved meeting Americans. Whenever they spotted my non-Korean colleagues, the children called out, “Hello, how are you? Hello, how are you?” They were always excited to practice their English, and usually more curious than scared of the foreigners in their presence. Like children everywhere, they loved America’s cultural exports, Winnie the Pooh and Snoopy, in particular.
In my years traveling to North Korea, almost never did I hear a North Korean refer to an “American” without automatically attaching the word “bastard” to it. It was a constant reminder of the psychologically rooted hatred of the United States that remains so deeply entrenched in the North Koreans’ education, culture, and ideology — even if what they crave is a chance to sit at the table with the Americans.
KIM JONG UN IS USING FOOD DISTRIBUTION MONEY TO DEVELOP MORE NUCLEAR WEAPONS.
CHINA KNOWS THIS BUT DOESN'T CARE.
Sources: Asia Press, Fox News, CNN, The Guardian, BBC News, Newsweek, Youtube
**** Unicef warns of severe child malnourishment in North Korea
About 25,000 children in North Korea require immediate treatment for malnutrition after a drought cut food production by a fifth and the government reduced rations, Unicef has warned.
The UN’s children’s fund is asking for £12.6m ($18m) in donations for its North Korea work as part of a global £1.9bn humanitarian appeal for children.
It said the money needed for its work had doubled in three years, driven by global conflicts and extreme weather that were forcing growing numbers of children from their homes and exposing millions more to food shortages, violence, disease and abuse.
For the first time, it said a quarter of the worldwide appeal would go towards educating children in emergencies, focusing on 5 million children affected by the Syrian civil war, which is now in its fifth year.
In North Korea, Unicef said severe drought during 2015 in four agricultural provinces led to a 20% reduction in crop production compared with 2014.
“The impact of this will continue into 2016. Cereal rations were reduced, impacting the nutritional and health status of women and children,” it said in a statement.
International aid appeals for North Korea are often severely underfunded as foreign governments try to pressure Pyongyang to curtail its nuclear ambitions.
Aid workers warn that whenever North Korea conducts nuclear weapon trials – such as the hydrogen bomb test this month – foreign funds dry up. During 2015, Unicef received only 38% of the £15.5m North Korea appeal.
The hermit nation suffered a famine in the 1990s that killed as many as a million people, and the country still relies heavily on foreign aid.
“The severe drought last year reduced food production and children’s access to safe, clean water,” Unicef’s representative in North Korea, Timothy Schaffter, told the Guardian.
“Without safe water, children are at greater risk of diarrhoea, which is a leading cause of malnutrition and death. We have reports of a 72% increase in diarrhoea among children under five in the most severely drought-affected provinces.
“If we are unable to secure additional funding, our supplies of essential medicines will start running out in March, nutrition supplies will be depleted by mid-year, and our highly successful immunisation programme will run out of basic vaccines before the year’s end.”
In its global 2016 appeal, the bulk of the funds sought would provide life-saving aid needed for Syria and the resultant refugee crisis in Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey, Unicef said.
It called for £126m for children in Yemen, where 10 million children are in urgent need of humanitarian aid, and said it needed £17.9m to help children in Burundi, one of the poorest countries in the world, and where a political crisis has led to street fighting and mass displacement.
About one in nine children worldwide are living in conflict zones, said Unicef which warned of donor fatigue: protracted crises in Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Sudan were all less than 40% funded in 2015.
“In the past few months I have seen with my own eyes children pushed beyond the boundaries of human suffering in Burundi, north-east Nigeria and along the migrant and refugee route in Europe,” said Afshan Khan, Unicef’s director of emergency programmes.
Extreme weather posed a further risk to children. “Climate change, deforestation and the worsening El Niño weather system are pointing to more frequent and intense disasters in 2016, impacting a larger number of children in east Asia and the Pacific,” Unicef regional emergency adviser Carmen van Heese said.
The impact of El Niño in the Pacific islands had caused typhoons and floods, Unicef said. Drought warnings are in force for Fiji, Tonga, Samoa, Vanuatu and Palau.
“Children and families are struggling to cope with one of the worst El Niño cycles ever recorded, with more frequent and intense cyclones expected in 2016,” Unicef said, warning of further malnutrition and crop failures.
NORTH KOREA & CHINA'S BRUTAL COMMUNISM CAN NO LONGER BE IGNORED:
CHINA SUPPORTS NORTH KOREA'S COLD, BLOOD-THIRSTY REGIME.
USA LEADERS & US MILITARY MUST ENGAGE NOT IGNORE.
Sources: FoxNews, Youtube
***** North Korea is a threat to the US and so is China
President Trump on Friday declared that the “era of strategic patience with the North Korean regime has failed,” thankfully turning the page on the Obama Administration's disastrous policies towards Pyongyang.
But America’s woes in Asia don’t stop with North Korea. In fact, the challenge Washington faces in that vital part of the world are much bigger. The good news is that the Trump Administration does have a narrow window to do something about it—before it's too late.
Now is the time for Washington to end the era of “strategic patience” with another rogue regime, one that is not only aiding North Korea’s military rise but is also on a crash course to dominate the Asia-Pacific.
That country is none other than the People’s Republic of China.
To be fair, the challenge China has posed to U.S. national security always seems to be get placed on the backburner, to be dealt with another day—something both Democrat and Republican administrations are guilty of.
The reasons are obvious. Years of combat in Iraq and Afghanistan, a great recession like no other, a Syrian civil war that seems never ending, tensions with Russia and now an epic struggle to ensure ISIS is simply no more have all ensured Beijing gets a pass for its actions -- time and time again.
President Trump on Friday declared that the “era of strategic patience with the North Korean regime has failed,” thankfully turning the page on the Obama Administration's disastrous policies towards Pyongyang.
But America’s woes in Asia don’t stop with North Korea. In fact, the challenge Washington faces in that vital part of the world are much bigger. The good news is that the Trump Administration does have a narrow window to do something about it—before it's too late.
Now is the time for Washington to end the era of “strategic patience” with another rogue regime, one that is not only aiding North Korea’s military rise but is also on a crash course to dominate the Asia-Pacific.
That country is none other than the People’s Republic of China.
To be fair, the challenge China has posed to U.S. national security always seems to be get placed on the backburner, to be dealt with another day—something both Democrat and Republican administrations are guilty of.
The reasons are obvious. Years of combat in Iraq and Afghanistan, a great recession like no other, a Syrian civil war that seems never ending, tensions with Russia and now an epic struggle to ensure ISIS is simply no more have all ensured Beijing gets a pass for its actions -- time and time again.
Continue Reading Below
As Washington cast its focus everywhere else, China has decided to shed the notion of a so-called “peaceful rise," and instead pursue a dangerous course of action that is only leading to rising tensions with America, and if successful, will turn Asia into Beijing’s own private sphere of influence.
How China has worked to achieve its goals is clear, and in fact, is very much out in the open.
First, Beijing has done all it can to create an arc of instability, from the East China Sea all the way to the very ends of the South China Sea to advance its agenda. China prods and pushes its claims of “indisputable sovereignty” in all directions along this track, using civilian ships like fishing vessels, a dangerous maritime militia, and coast guard vessels that are many times nothing more than redesigned Chinese naval vessels, to ensure its mastery of the seas around them. Its goal is to turn such vital waterways into extensions of its territory, or what it calls “blue national soil."
Indeed, Beijing’s actions in the hotly disputed South China Sea deserve special attention. The beating heart of Asia’s economic miracle, China has literally drawn borders around this critical part of the global ocean commons. Called the nine-dash-line, China has done what no other nation has dared to do in centuries: place outlandish claims over vast waterways, that if enforced, would destroy the notion that oceans and seas can be claimed by no one. Beijing has even gone so far as to build island military bases out of small rocks and reefs in the area, tipping the strategic balance in its favor.
Next, to ensure the region takes China’s claims seriously, Beijing’s military might has advanced by leaps and bounds. Experts inside the Pentagon have privately told me that they fear America may now lack the ability to protect its interests and allies against China if conflict did break out—unless Washington was willing to accept casualties not seen since the Vietnam War, or worse.
Beijing’s strategy to dominate Washington in a conflict is also quite clear. Knowing that it still can’t match America ship for ship or plane for plane, Beijing has developed countless classes of deadly missiles. In the event of a conflict over Taiwan, the South or East China Seas or in Korea, China would shower U.S. bases, warships or allies with potentially thousands of missiles. And worst of all, thanks to treaty commitments agreed to with the now defunct Soviet Union, Washington is unable to legally build land-based missiles in the ranges needed to respond in kind.
But for Beijing this is simply not enough. China has even decided that it must begin to match America in as many possible areas of traditional military might as possible. Through cyber espionage, it has stolen classified data involving some of America’s most advanced military platforms. Such theft has included data on the F-22 and F-35 stealth fighters, the THAAD missile defense system and many others. Take a look at China’s latest stealth fighter, the J-20. See a resemblance to America’s stealth weapons? The reason is obvious.
For Washington and its allies, the accumulation of Chinese economic, military and diplomatic muscle means the international community can no longer ignore this threat.
Considering all of this, now is the time for America to push back against Chinese acts of aggression—and not through failed foreign policy slogans like a “pivot” or “rebalance”—but through actual deeds.
The Trump administration must develop a comprehensive strategy to ensure that Beijing does not dominate the Asia-Pacific, bully our allies or partners in region, or is able to defeat Washington in a military conflict.
Let there be no doubt, the growing threat of a nuclear North Korea compounded with the rise of China and its aggressive acts to ensure it dominates Asia are the two biggest foreign policy challenge America faces today. There can be only one response: when it comes to Trump’s foreign policy strategy, “America First” must mean Asia is the top priority above all else.
It's well past time that Washington make ‘Asia First’ a slogan it will put steal behind. There simply is no other choice.
NORTH KOREA'S STARVING PEOPLE ARE EATING THEIR CHILDREN (COMMUNISM):
NORTH KOREAN CHILDREN DYING FROM MALNUTRITION & BEING EATEN BY STARVING ADULTS.
AMERICA REMAINS FREE YET SILENT.
OTTO WARMBIER'S MURDER EXPOSED NORTH KOREA'S COLD HEART.
WHERE IS AMERICA'S HUMANITARIAN RELIEF??
PLEASE PRAY FOR THE PEOPLE OF NORTH KOREA.
Sources: Washington Post
***** The Cannibals of North Korea
There were times and places in North Korea in the mid-1990s, as a great famine wiped out perhaps 10 percent of the population, that children feared to sleep in the open. Some of them had wandered in from the countryside to places like Chongjin, an industrial town on the coast, where they lived on streets and in railroad stations. It wasn't unusual for people to disappear; they were dying by the thousands, maybe millions. But dark rumors were spreading, too horrifying to believe, too persistent to ignore.
"Don't buy any meat if you don't know where it comes from," one Chongjin woman whispered to a friend, who later defected and recounted the conversation to the reporter Barbara Demick for her book, "Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea." Fear of cannibalism, like the famine supposedly driving it, spread. People avoided the meat in streetside soup vendors and warned children not to be alone at night. At least one person in Chongjin was arrested and executed for eating human flesh.
The panic, Demick concludes, may have exceeded the actual threat. "It does not seem," she writes, "that the practice was widespread." But it does appear to have happened.
One defected military officer, who fled with his family into China, repeated the horror story that had long followed mass famines. "People are going insane with hunger. They even kill and eat their own infants. This kind of thing is happening in many places," he said, according to the North Korea-focused postscript to Jasper Becker's history of the famine that wracked China 30 years earlier, in which reports of cannibalism were widespread.
North Korea's famine is over, but the stories of desperate men and women, driven so insane by starvation that they consume their own children, have resurfaced. Last week, Asia Press published a report alleging that thousands recently died of starvation in a North Korean province, a trend that is sometimes called a micro-famine. The story was sourced to Rimjingang, a collection of underground North Korean journalists whose work is generally considered reputable. According to Rimjingang's sources, the famine, like others before it, had led to cannibalism. One man, they said, had been arrested and executed for killing and eating his children.
The story of that man has swept through the Western media, a harrowing tale of the horrors still unfolding behind North Korea's largely closed borders. But is it true? Could something so awful still be happening?
The simple answer is that we don't, and can't, know for sure. North Korea-watchers seem skeptical about this one, sensational report, but they often point out that stories of micro-famine and cannibalism are coming at a worryingly regular pace. Joshua Stanton, who runs the site One Free Korea, wrote in May, the last time that stories of cannibalism leaked out of North Korea, "My first reaction to these reports years ago was skepticism, but if you hear enough people say the same thing (see here and here), you start to think they can’t all be lying."
And yet micro-famines are still possible, or at least plausible, in North Korea. The government can't bring itself to surrender control over food. Though agricultural trade has more flexibility now than it did 15 or 20 years ago, it is still one of the world's most rigidly controlled. With a weak secondary market and virtually no social safety net, it's not difficult to imagine local North Korean communities facing the sort of brief but deadly famines that the rest of the world has largely learned to avoid. Unlike in places such as East Africa, where thousands died of hunger last year, the primary causes are not environmental but human.
The regime needs the secondary food trade to prevent mass starvation, but it appears to fear these markets as threats to its power. There is likely an ongoing cat-and-mouse game, with the state working to keep farmers sufficiently weak, and the secondary markets sufficiently spare, that everyone still relies on the regime to feed themselves. It's about power and control, and it places North Korean families at real risk.
Recently, members of China's sympathetic state-run media were allowed to visit a special "economic zone" across the border, a commune of thousands of North Koreans who grew their own food. During the tour, the North Korean minders let slip that all 13,000 residents would be forcibly relocated and replaced by new workers, a disturbing policy that seems meant to secure state control over food at the risk of its continued production.
State-run "collectivist" food distribution systems have always failed, leading to some of the greatest humanitarian catastrophesof the last century. North Korea's failed catastrophically in the 1990s, and though the system has changed significantly since then, it's difficult to know the degree to which informal markets and private plots are tolerated.
In an arbitrary and closed system, the state's approach might vary from place to place and time to time. Kim Jong Eun has worked aggressively to consolidate his power since taking over a year ago, a campaign that might well extend to the agricultural sector.
Maybe the stories of cannibalism are nothing more than that; rumors, stories from two decades prior that devolved into folklore. But cannibalism, for all the voyeuristic horror it inspires, is a symptom of something much worse: starvation and social breakdown, the conditions for which remain in North Korea. Perhaps most telling is that North Koreans themselves still seem to consider it possible, the defectors and underground reports still whispering of starvation and worse, a medieval horror in the 21st century.
TRUMP WANTS TO HELP SAVE NORTH KOREAN CITIZENS FROM KIM'S BRUTAL REGIME.
WILL CONGRESS STEP UP AND HELP NORTH KOREA'S SUFFERING PEOPLE??
Sources: The Guardian
***** Donald Trump declares ‘patience is over’ with North Korea
President Donald Trump declared that the US had run out of patience with North Korea over its nuclear drive as he welcomed South Korea’s new leader Moon Jae-In to talks at the White House.
While Moon has been arguing for greater engagement with Pyongyang as the best way to put the brakes on its nuclear and ballistic missile programs, Trump made clear that he was in no mood to pursue diplomacy with a regime he accused of having no respect for human life.
And while Moon announced that Trump had accepted an offer to visit Seoul later this year, the leaders failed to map out any kind of joint strategy on how best to deal with the threat posed by the North Korean leadership.
“Together, we are facing the threat of the reckless and brutal regime in North Korea. The nuclear and ballistic missile programs of that regime require a determined response,” said Trump.
“The North Korean dictatorship has no regard for the safety and security of its people, for its neighbors and has no respect for human life.”
The Trump administration has been growing increasingly exasperated with North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un’s regime which has staged a barrage of missile tests in recent months.
There was also deep anger in the United States after Otto Warmbier, an American student who was detained in North Korea on a tourist trip around 18 months ago, was returned home in a coma earlier this month. He died several days later.
Trump had been pinning his hopes on China – North Korea’s main diplomatic ally – to bring pressure to bear on Pyongyang but declared their efforts had failed.
“The era of strategic patience with the North Korean regime has failed, many years it has failed. Frankly, that patience is over,” Trump said at a press briefing in the Rose Garden.
And while he avoided criticising his guest’s approach, Trump made clear he was in no mood to enter dialogue with North Korea but rather saw sanctions as the best way to proceed.
“The United States calls on other regional powers and all responsible nations to join us in implementing sanctions and demanding that the North Korean regime choose a better path and do it quickly and a different future for its long suffering people,” he said.
Washington, South Korea’s security guarantor, has more than 28,000 troops in the country to defend it from its communist neighbor, which has been intensifying missile tests – including five since Moon’s inauguration.
Moon said there was no dispute between his government and Trump over the nature of the threat posed by North Korea.
“The gravest challenge confronting our two nations is the nuclear and missile threat posed by North Korea,” he said. “President Trump and I decided to place a top priority on addressing this issue, and coordinate closely on relevant policies.
“To this end, we will employ both sanctions and dialogue in a phased and comprehensive approach... to seek a fundamental resolution of the North Korean nuclear problem.”
Moon has used his first foreign trip to lobby the Trump administration and congressional leaders to back his policy of engagement with the North.
Before his arrival, Moon argued that Seoul and Washington must offer concessions to Pyongyang if it complies with demands for a nuclear freeze – as a gateway to dialogue, and to eventual dismantlement of its nuclear program.
But the Trump administration’s hardening stance was illustrated on Thursday when it placed sanctions on a Chinese bank linked to North Korea – drawing an angry response from Beijing.
The two leaders also spoke about bilateral trade, with Trump saying the current $17 billion dollar trade deficit with Seoul was unacceptable, highlighting the number of Korean-made cars on American roads.
“I’m encouraged by President Moon’s assurances that he will work to create a level playing field so that American workers and businesses and especially automakers can have a fair shake at dealing with South Korea,” he said.
SO WHY ARE NORTH KOREAN CITIZENS DYING FROM HUNGER??
APPEARANCES OF INCLUSIVE WEALTH ARE STAGED.
Sources:
**** North Korea sitting on $7 trillion worth of minerals
The value of North Korea's untapped minerals would be enough to pay every one of Earth's seven billion people more than $1000.
Scratching the surface of the secluded nation reveals vast deposits of more than 200 minerals including magnesite, zinc, copper, limestone, molybdenum, iron and gold worth more than $7 trillion, Quartzreports.
Despite the vast swathes of riches buried beneath the nation's bedrock, taking advantage of them has become difficult.
A lack of mining equipment and machinery has made it almost impossible for North Korea to extract some of the rarer minerals and sanctions have made it illegal for some private enterprises to establish drilling sites in the country.
Despite the limitation, it has not stopped the country from extracting some of its vast supply of minerals with mining reportedly making up 14 percent of the economy.
Once the minerals are out of the ground North Korea still has to offload them to potential buyers which are another hurdle.
The UN began imposing sanctions on North Korea after its first nuclear test in 2006 which has been tightened over the years.
In March 2016 North Korea was banned from exporting gold, vanadium, titanium and in November that year, the ban was extended to cover nickel, copper, zinc, and silver while also capping its coal exports.
On August 11, 2016, a North Korean ship was intercepted by Egyptian authorities bound for the Suez Canal. On-board they who found 30,000 rocket grenades buried beneath more than two million kilograms of iron ore.
JOHN MCCAIN SAYS OTTO WARMBIER WAS MURDERED BY NORTH KOREA GOV'T:
DID OTTO DIE IN VAIN?
WHEN WILL USA STOP KIM JONG UN'S REIGN OF INHUMANE TERROR??
Sources: Business Insider, ABC News, CNN, YouTube
***** John McCain: Otto Warmbier was 'murdered by the Kim Jong-Un regime'
Sen. John McCain of Arizona delivered a decisive statement after the death of Otto Warmbier, the American student who was imprisoned in North Korea for over a year, and said that the US "cannot and should not tolerate the murder of its citizens by hostile powers."
"Let us state the facts plainly: Otto Warmbier, an American citizen, was murdered by the Kim Jong-un regime," read a statement from McCain released Monday. "In the final year of his life, he lived the nightmare in which the North Korean people have been trapped for 70 years: forced labor, mass starvation, systematic cruelty, torture, and murder."
"North Korea is threatening its neighbors, destabilizing the Asia-Pacific region, and rapidly developing the technology to strike the American homeland with nuclear weapons," continued McCain. "Now it has escalated to brutalizing Americans, including three other citizens currently imprisoned in North Korea."
Warmbier, who was detained and eventually convicted for the "hostile" act of stealing a propaganda poster at a hotel in 2016, returned home on June 13 after reportedly being in a coma for a year. During his last days, he was said to have been in a state of "unresponsive wakefulness," and died less than a week later.
"It would be easy at a moment like this to focus on all that we lost - future time that won't be spent with a warm, engaging, brilliant young man whose curiosity and enthusiasm for life knew no bounds," read a Monday statement from the Warmbier family. "But we choose to focus on the time we were given to be with this remarkable person."
McCain, who chairs the Senate Armed Service Committee, has long been a vocal critic of the North Korean regime and has called for increased pressure on its leader, Kim Jong Un.
OTTO WARMBIER'S MURDER SHOULD NOT CREATE WAR AS KIM JONG UN WANTS:
COOLER HEADS MUST PREVAIL WITH MORE SANCTIONS AND BAN N. KOREA.
OTTO'S PARENTS DON'T WANT AUTOPSY.
JONG UN USED OTTO TO LURE AMERICA INTO A WORLD WAR THREE TRAP.
Source: CBS News, The Guardian, The Economist, Fox News, YouTube
**** Otto Warmbier's family declines autopsy as Trump calls death a 'total disgrace'
Ohio coroner performs external examination instead of full autopsy on body of the student, who died after being sent home from North Korea in a coma.
An Ohio coroner, abiding by family wishes, has performed an external examination instead of a full autopsy on the body of the US student who was held prisoner in North Korea for 17 months and sent home in a coma.
The Hamilton County coroner’s office was conferring with doctors at a Cincinnati hospital who treated Otto Warmbier, 22, before reaching any conclusions about his death a day earlier, investigator Daryl Zornes said.
Investigators were reviewing radiological images and awaiting additional medical records requested by the coroner, Zornes said.
He declined to estimate how long it would take for the coroner’s office to complete its inquiry. Preliminary autopsy findings had been expected on Tuesday or Wednesday.
There was no immediate word from the family about why relatives declined an autopsy, which may have shed more light on the cause of the neurological injuries that left him in a coma.
Warmbier died days after he was released by the North Korean government and returned to the United States suffering from what US doctors described as extensive brain damage.
Warmbier, an Ohio native and student at the University of Virginia, was arrested in North Korea in January 2016 while visiting as a tourist. He was sentenced two months later to 15 years of hard labor for trying to steal an item bearing a propaganda slogan from his hotel in North Korea’s capital, Pyongyang, the nation’s state media said.
The circumstances of his detention and what medical treatment he received in North Korea remain unknown. Washington has demanded North Korea release three other US citizens it holds in detention: Kim Dong Chul, a missionary, and two academics, Tony Kim and Kim Hak Song.
Warmbier’s death has heightened US-North Korean tensions aggravated by dozens of North Korean missile launches and two nuclear bomb tests since last year in defiance of UN security council resolutions. The North Korean government has vowed to develop a nuclear-tipped intercontinental missile capable of hitting the US mainland.
Warmbier’s family has not specified how he slipped from a comatose state to death, but said in a statement on Monday that the “awful torturous mistreatment” he endured while in captivity meant “no other outcome was possible.“
Relatives have said they were told by US envoys that North Korean officials claimed Warmbier contracted botulism after his trial and lapsed into a coma after taking a sleeping pill. Fred Warmbier, the student’s father, has said he disbelieves this account.
North Korea’s government said it released Warmbier last week on “humanitarian grounds”.
Donald Trump said on Tuesday he had spoken with Warmbier’s family and praised them as “incredible”.
“It’s a total disgrace what happened to Otto,” Trump told reporters in the White House, where he was meeting with the Ukrainian president, Petro Poroshenko. “And frankly, if he were brought home sooner, I think the results would have been a lot different”.
The White House press secretary, Sean Spicer, said the administration would “continue to apply economic and political pressure” on North Korea, in conjunction with US allies and China, “to change this behaviour and this regime”.
Trump said on Twitter on Tuesday he appreciated efforts by the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, to “help with North Korea”, adding: “It has not worked out. At least I know China tried!”
The government of China, North Korea’s main ally, said Warmbier’s death was a tragedy.
OTTO WARMBIER'S MYSTERIOUS MURDER WARNS AMERICA TO STAY OUT OF N. KOREA:
WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED TO OTTO IN NORTH KOREAN CUSTODY??
Post Sources: Daily Mail, WCPO, YouTube
**** Hell on earth: Otto Warmbier's death from mystery brain damage brings fresh scrutiny to the horrors of North Korea's brutal torture camps
Focus on brutality of North Korean labor camps renewed by death of US student
Otto Warmbier, 22, died Monday following 17 months as North Korean prisoner
Was released after suffering mysterious brain damage while in regime's custody
North Korea believed to have as many as 120,000 imprisoned in brutal camps
Reports abound of torture, rape and public executions in political prison camps
Warmbier's death brings new scrutiny to regime's longstanding brutalities
Yet other American prisoners speak of their gentle treatment as foreigners.
Beatings, rape, starvation and sick public executions are a daily reality for thousands of North Koreans, according to years of witness testimony.
Now, the death of a US student following mysterious brain damage suffered while a prisoner in the isolated state has brought fresh scrutiny to the regime's brutal torture camps under leader Kim Jong-Un.
Otto Warmbier died on Monday at age 22, just days after his release from North Korea in a vegetative state following 17 months in custody.
Warmbier's doctors in Cincinnati said that the student had suffered 'extensive loss of brain tissue in all regions of his brain' consistent with oxygen deprivation for a prolonged period.
The isolated North Korean regime is believed to have as many 120,000 political prisoners in its harsh labor camps, where grotesque stories of torture offer among the few clues to Warmbier's fate.
In a 2014 report, the United Nations Human Rights Commission called North Korea 'a state that does not have any parallel in the contemporary world' due to the country's 'systematic, widespread and gross human rights violations'.
Beatings are widespread in the camps, in which guards are given near-absolute authority to abuse and kill prisoners, according to survivors who have survived to speak out.
Escapees have said that the sounds of beatings were so extreme each night that it was impossible to sleep.
Yet Warmbier's doctors have said that extensive scans have revealed no evidence of broken or fractured bones, including to his skull. They also found no damage to his neck tissue that could indicate strangulation.
One woman interviewed for the UN report, who had been imprisoned for practicing Christianity, told of a torture room with a water tank in which suspects could be immersed to simulate drowning.
'She indicated that she was fully immersed in cold water for hours,' the report said. 'Only when she stood on her tip-toes would her nose be barely above the water level. She could hardly breathe. She was gripped by panic, fearing that she might drown.'
Could drowning explain the oxygen deprivation event that damaged Warmbier's brain so severely? Possibly, but doctors have not said they've found any evidence indicating that's the case.
Other baroque torture methods of the North Korean regime have come to light as well.
One Ministry of People’s Security official who defected revealed that the agency made use of small metal cages in the Pyongyang offices of its pre-trial investigative bureau.
'Victims would be crammed into the cage for several hours so that the circulation of blood to extremities becomes interrupted and other parts of the body swell up,' according to the UN report.
The victim turns into a rusty brown color. After removal from the cage, the victim is abruptly “unfolded” causing further excruciating pain,' the report said.
The same witness recalled receiving formal training on torture techniques, including 'how to cut off a suspect’s blood circulation using straps, while simultaneously placing the suspect in physical stress positions in order to inflict the maximum level of pain.'
Notably, most foreign prisoners of the North Korean regime report significantly more gentle treatment, presumably because they are considered geopolitical bargaining chips.
Matthew Todd Miller, a California man who was sentenced to six years in a North Korean labor camp in 2014, was released six months later and said that he was treated relatively well.
'I was prepared for the torture. But instead of that, I was killed with kindness,' he said in an interview with NK News.
Miller's case is unique though, in that he entered North Korea with the intention to defect, and he was detained after he was asked to leave the country and refused.
In 2013, Merrill E. Newman, an 85-year-old former US Army officer who served in the Korean War, was accused of war crimes and held by North Korea for 42 days.
Most of that time he spent confined in a hotel in Pyongyang, were Swedish consular officials who had access to him said he was well cared for and had even received needed medical attention for a heart condition.
In Warmbier's case, the official story from Pyongyang is that the student contracted botulism shortly after he was sentenced last spring in a show trial for allegedly stealing a propaganda poster from his hotel.
The North Koreans claim a sleeping pill put Warmbier into a coma from which he never awoke.
The astonishing claim is almost certainly false - doctors found no evidence of botulism, and a sleeping pill would not be indicated in the case of that rare illness, which is treatable with an antitoxin.
The true cause of Warmbier's tragic death may never be known, but the brutality of the regime responsible for his death remains grimly clear.
DENNIS RODMAN CONTROVERSY SPURS OBAMA ADMIN TO HELP FREE U.S. PRISONERS IN OTHER COUNTRIES
Were it not for the Controversy surrounding his recent Sports Venture Trip to NORTH KOREA, the OBAMA Admin would still be doing absolutely NOTHING to help Free U.S. Prisoners held Captive in other Countries.
For ex:
KENNETH BAE.
Pursuant to RODMAN'S on-air debate Monday with CHRIS CUOMO, the OBAMA Admin is now taking ACTION to help Free U.S. Prisoners in other Countries.
Dennis Rodman apologized Thursday for comments about captive American missionary Kenneth Bae in an interview with CNN.
A day after the former basketball star sang “Happy Birthday” to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and led a squad of former NBA players in a friendly game, Rodman issued the apology through publicist Jules Feiler in an email message to The Associated Press.
“I want to apologize,” Rodman said. “I take full responsibility for my actions. It had been a very stressful day. Some of my teammates were leaving because of pressure from their families and business associates. My dreams of basketball diplomacy was quickly falling apart. I had been drinking. It’s not an excuse but by the time the interview happened I was upset. I was overwhelmed. It’s not an excuse, it’s just the truth.
“I want to first apologize to Kenneth Bae’s family. I want to apologize to my teammates and my management team. I also want to apologize to Chris Cuomo. I embarrassed a lot of people. I’m very sorry. At this point I should know better than to make political statements. I’m truly sorry.”
Rodman has been slammed for not using his influence with Kim to help free Bae, the missionary in poor health who is being confined in the North for “anti-state” crimes. On CNN on Tuesday, Rodman implied Bae was at fault.
Bae’s sister, Terri Chung, said his family couldn’t believe what Rodman said.
“Here’s somebody who is in a position to do some good for Kenneth and refuses to do so,” Chung told KOMO Radio in Seattle on Wednesday. “And then after the fact, instead, he decides to hurl these unqualified accusations against Kenneth. It’s clear he has no idea what he’s talking about. I’m not sure who he’s talking to, where he’s getting his information, but he’s certainly no authority on Kenneth Bae.”
The U.S. State Department distanced itself from Rodman and said it did not want to “dignify” his activities or comments in Pyongyang by commenting on them. But spokeswoman Jen Psaki said the department was open to speaking with Rodman on his return.
“We have not reached out to him. We’ve said before, if he wants to reach out to us, we’re happy to hear from him and what he has to say,” she told reporters.
Rodman dedicated the game to his “best friend” Kim, who along with his wife and other senior officials and their wives watched from a special seating area. The capacity crowd of about 14,000 at the Pyongyang Indoor Stadium clapped loudly as Rodman sang a verse from the birthday song.
Rodman said he was honored to be able to play the game in the North Korean capital and called the event “historic.” Some members of the U.S. Congress, the NBA and human rights groups, however, say he has become a public relations tool for North Korea’s government.
The government’s poor human rights record and its threats to use nuclear weapons against rival South Korea and the United States have kept it a pariah state. Kim shocked the world in December by having his uncle, once considered his mentor, executed after being accused of a litany of crimes including corruption, womanizing, drug abuse and attempting to seize power.
The 52-year-old Rodman has refused to address those concerns while continuing to forge a relationship with Kim, whose age has never been officially disclosed. The government did not say how old he turned Wednesday but he is believed to be in his early 30s.
At the start of the game, Rodman sang “Happy Birthday” to Kim, who was seated above in the stands at the stadium, and then bowed deeply as North Korean players clapped.
To keep it friendly, the Americans played against the North Koreans in the first half, but split up and merged teams for the second half.
The North Korean team scored 47 points to 39 for the Americans before the teams were mixed. Rodman played only in the first half and then sat next to Kim during the second half.
“A lot of people have expressed different views about me and your leader, your marshal, and I take that as a compliment,” Rodman told the crowd. “Yes, he is a great leader, he provides for his people here in this country and thank God the people here love the marshal.”
Rodman is the highest-profile American to meet Kim. He has carefully avoided getting involved in overtly political activities, saying that he is not a statesman and instead is seeking only to build cultural connections with the North through basketball that may help improve relations between Pyongyang and Washington.
The game is a new milestone in Rodman’s unusual relationship with Kim, who inherited power after the death of his father in late 2011 and rarely meets with foreigners. He remains a mystery to much of the outside world and until recently, his birthday was also not widely known, though it was quietly observed elsewhere around the capital Wednesday.
Along with Rodman, the former NBA players included ex-all-stars Kenny Anderson, Cliff Robinson and Vin Baker. Also on the roster were Craig Hodges, Doug Christie, Charles D. Smith and four non-NBA players.
Smith said he and the other players did not join Rodman in singing the birthday song.
“We always tell Dennis that he can’t sing. He is tone deaf,” Smith said. “He did it alone.”
It is NOT DENNIS RODMAN'S Job to help Free KENNETH BAE.
It's Pres OBAMA'S Job!
CHRIS CUOMO vs DENNIS RODMAN: GOV'T MEDIA PROPAGANDA
It's quite obvious CHRIS CUOMO'S recent Attack on RODMAN was Planned.
DENNIS RODMAN took CHRIS CUOMO'S bait, but CNN knew he would behave in such a manner because it's well documented RODMAN has a short fuse.
FYI: Yes, CHRIS CUOMO is the Brother of NY Gov ANDREW CUOMO.
ANDREW CUOMO is a good friend of Pres OBAMA'S.
Rumor has it ANDREW CUOMO may run for U.S. President in 2016.
Can anyone please explain what does DENNIS RODMAN'S Sports-related trip to NORTH KOREA have to do with the Imprisonment of KENNETH BAE?
DENNIS RODMAN has NO business involving himself, Nor his Basketball teammates in POLITICS to help free KENNETH BAE.
DENNIS RODMAN is NOT a POLITICIAN.
Nor is DENNIS RODMAN a Statesman.
He is a former Star ATHLETE.
It is the U.S. State Dept's Job to help free KENNETH BAE.
Not DENNIS RODMAN'S!
CHRIS CUOMO knows this.
DENNIS & His Basketball Teammates were visiting NORTH KOREA on a PAID Sports-related mission PERIOD!
NOT a POLITICAL or CIA Assignment!
However since the OBAMA Admin has FAILED to help free U.S. Prisoners held captive in other countries, Pres OBAMA will do anything to Divert attention away from what his Administration has NOT done to help free U.S Prisoners.
Even it means directing the MEDIA to attack a former Star Athlete with a Short fuse......i.e., DENNIS RODMAN.
And if you don't believe Pres OBAMA'S Administration Controls the MEDIA, you are living in a Fantasy world because he DOES.
It's called GOVERNMENT PROPAGANDA!
In fact EVERY legally elected U.S. President Controls the MEDIA via GOVERNMENT PROPAGANDA.
I repeat.
DENNIS RODMAN is NOT a POLITICIAN.
Nor is DENNIS RODMAN a Statesman.
He is a former Star ATHLETE.
It is the U.S. State Dept's Job to help free KENNETH BAE.
Not DENNIS RODMAN'S!
CHRIS CUOMO knows this.
It is NOT DENNIS RODMAN'S Job to help Free KENNETH BAE.
This week, we've been treated to the increasingly familiar sight of former NBA star and provocateur Dennis Rodman attending events in Pyongyang, North Korea. It's his fourth trip in less than 12 months.
On Tuesday, an angry Rodman defended his visit in a CNN interview straight from Pyongyang, at one point saying to "New Day" anchor Chris Cuomo, "I don't give a rat's ass what the hell you think ..." in response to question about Kenneth Bae, an American detained in North Korea.
When will we tire of this circus?
In case you don't watch cable news, you might miss that the media really loves this kind of thing. No story about North Korea is too weird to go unreported, even if there is no real information to disseminate. Recall the recent rumor that Kim Jong Un's uncle was executed by being fed to hungry dogs, which most likely was started as satire on Chinese social media but was at first reported widely in the media (CNN was unable to confirm and did not report the story).
In media discourse, North Korea is the classic enemy. The regime's injustices, quirks and dysfunctions are reassuring to Americans that their own country is just the opposite: Normal, well-functioning, a land of peace and liberty.
But add in Rodman to the North Korea story, and it's bound to produce eye-popping headlines:
"The Weird American Athlete Goes to Weird Country story is just too easy not to cover."
Rodman himself seems to be thriving on finding a strange smidgen of relevance through his visits to North Korea (and perhaps a Paddy Power paycheck). Though often described as quite shy, he has always enjoyed challenging the values of Middle America. North Korea is providing him a new avenue to be in the spotlight.
The most passive player in this tragicomedy is Rodman's home country, the United States. The U.S. State Department has deployed the rhetorical equivalent of an embarrassed teenager whose dad has shown up to dance at his prom. Something along the lines of "this has nothing to do with us" is what the State Department has said with every one of Rodman's trip. Last winter,the State Department criticized Rodman's timing as it followed a nuclear test and rocket launch. This time, it has merely said a private individual can do what he wishes.
This is an understandably cautious position. After all, Rodman has professed his love and undying affection for Kim, and he is probably not a canny enough operator to spearhead any form of political outreach along the lines of the "Ping-Pong diplomacy."
On this trip, Rodman addressed the unavoidably political nature of a relationship with North Korea, saying his visits could "open the doors" to "talk about certain things." In the CNN interview, he argued that it's a "great idea for the world."
Rodman's celebrity status and sporting prowess has given him access to Kim. At some point, when both the U.S. and North Korean governments are feeling a little brave, perhaps they can try to thaw the ice with more professional diplomats tagging along on cultural or sporting exchanges.
There are precedents. For example, the U.S.-China Ping-Pong diplomacy of the 1970s had its genesis in table tennis player by the name of Glen Cowan. Once he broke the ice, the governments began talking.
The kind of engagement that Rodman is pushing cannot always be seen as merely rewards for a naughty regime, as much as we appear locked into a carrot-and-stick way of thinking about relations with North Korea. It can be mutually beneficial. We have the potential to gain as much as they do. Breakthroughs might be sudden and surprising, but they are usually underpinned by creative thinking, dialogue and the mutual acceptance that no one can get exactly what they want.
Unfortunately, this particular trip does feel somewhat like a gift, coming as it does on Kim's birthday and less than a month after the violent and very public purge of his uncle and second-in-charge, Jang Song Thaek.
Had Rodman pulled out or delayed, the channel for opening may well have closed. If he really is in it for the long haul, he probably couldn't afford to slight the leader on his birthday.
Domestically, it is great PR for Kim. He gets to appear gregarious and inclusive in front of his people. Notwithstanding Jang's execution, this is the image he has been assiduously cultivating. He's eager to promote his friendly, approachable image while at the same time enjoying watching some former stars play his favorite sport.
For now, little will come out of Rodman's visits other than extraneous news. But as Pyongyang continues to devote resources and energy to sports development, its appetite for athletic exchanges will increase.
Let's warily hope, to use Rodman's phrase, that this can "open the doors" to other things.
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