Category: North Korea

Second Trump-Kim summit set for Feb 27-28 in Vietnam – Nikkei Asian Review

SINGAPORE — U.S. President Donald Trump announced that he would hold a second summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Vietnam on Feb. 27-28. “Our hostages have come home, nuclear testing has stopped, and there has not been a missile launch in more than 15 months. If I had not been elected president of the United States, we would right now, in my opinion, be in a major war with North Korea,” Trump said in his State of the Union address in Washington late Tuesday. “Much work remains to be done, but my relationship with Kim Jong Un is a good one.” Vietnam, which opened up its economy under Doi Moi reforms in the 1980s, has also been touted by the U.S. as a possible model for Pyongyang to follow. The country emerged as a likely host after Secretary of State Mike Pompeo visited last July, shortly after the first Trump-Kim summit in Singapore. Pompeo lauded the “once-unimaginable prosperity and partnership” between Vietnam and the U.S., before turning to North Korea.

Shifting US policy leaves Asian allies at sea – Nikkei Asian Review

SINGAPORE — China has long bristled at the U.S. Navy’s “freedom of navigation operations” in the South China Sea, which challenge Beijing’s territorial claims in the disputed waters. So when Zhao Xiaozhuo, a senior colonel in the Chinese army, found himself with a chance to complain about them directly to U.S. Secretary of Defense James Mattis recently, he took it. The U.S. operations are a “violation of the law of the People’s Republic of China, of territorial waters,” Zhao told Mattis during a conference in Singapore on June 2. Mattis defended the naval operations by citing a 2016 international tribunal decision that dismissed China’s expansive “nine-dash line” claim to much of the sea.

North Korea’s museum outpost in Angkor – Nikkei Asian Review/RTÉ World Report

SIEM REAP — For an art production house based in North Korea, whose usual stock-in-trade is nationalist-communist propaganda, constructing a museum in Cambodia to celebrate the grandeur of the Khmer Empire might seem a surprising project. While North Korea may be on the verge of a rapprochement with the U.S. ahead of the proposed meeting between its dictator Kim Jong Un and President Donald Trump, recent sanctions imposed on the country in response to its missile tests could raise questions about the status of the Angkor Panorama Museum, which opened in late 2015 at a cost of $24 million and sits on the doorstep of the vast Angkor temple complex. When the United Nations Security Council enacted sanctions against North Korea in 2017 in response to its missile tests, it said that states “shall prohibit, by their nationals or in their territories, the opening, maintenance, and operation of all joint ventures or cooperative entities, new and existing, with DPRK entities or individuals.” That suggests Cambodia, other than requesting an opt-out from the council, would be required to close the North Korean-built museum or ensure that it is now fully locally owned. “Cambodia is required by UNSC sanctions measures to close the joint venture or request an exemption,” said William Newcomb of the U.S.-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins University.

Spotlight on security camera footage in Kim Jong Nam murder trial – RTÉ World Report

SHAH ALAM — More than a month into the murder trial in one of the most brazen, cunning and perplexing assassinations seen in a long time, defence lawyer Gooi Soon Seng was on the front foot. “When was the first time you identified them, when was the first time you saw the CCTV footage?” Seng asked Wan Azirul, a police investigator and prosecution witness. The lawyer was referring to 4 North Korean men seen on footage from Kuala Lumpur International Airport on February 13 this year. That morning, Kim Jong Nam, the estranged half brother of the North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un was poisoned with VX, a chemical weapon, while waiting at the airport to board a flight to Macau. The grainy security camera videos could be key to the case against the only two people standing trial in the case, which is being tried In a small courtroom about 20 miles from the centre of Kuala Lumpur.

After brazen poisoning of North Korean leader’s half brother, trial unfolds in Malaysian courtroom – Los Angeles Times

SHAH ALAM — The two defendants appeared in court with scarves wrapped around their heads, partially obscuring their faces. One of the young women spoke animatedly, hands awhirl as she bantered with her lawyers during a recess. Her relaxed demeanor belied the charges against them. Since Oct. 2, Siti Aisyah, a 26-year-old Indonesian, and Doan Thi Huong, a 29-year-old Vietnamese, have been on trial in a Malaysian courtroom for what prosecutors consider a brazen assassination. The court has seen the closed-circuit camera footage from Feb. 13 at the airport in Malaysia’s capital, Kuala Lumpur — aired on TV worldwide — that shows the two women sidling up to a portly, middle-aged man and appearing to rub their hands in his face. The man, who turned out to be 46-year-old Kim Jong Nam, the estranged half brother of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, died shortly afterward from what an autopsy concluded was exposure to the lethal nerve agent VX.

Asia ponders whether Trump will walk the talk – Nikkei Asian Review/FT

JAKARTA — After the most divisive election campaign in decades, tens of thousands of Americans have protested and rioted against the winner in cities across the country, prompting international concerns about an increasingly divided superpower. During his campaign, Trump called Mexicans “rapists,” appeared to mock a disabled reporter, threatened to ban Muslims from entering the U.S., and faced accusations of sexually assaulting women. Clinton was subject to an FBI investigation over her use of a private email account while working as secretary of state, while a foundation run with her husband, former President Bill Clinton, was suspected of soliciting cash from foreign governments in return for contacts in the U.S. government. China crowed over the debacle. “The innumerable scandals, rumors, conspiracy theories and obscenities make it impossible for a person to look away,” said state media outlet Xinhua News Agency. Alongside its unrivalled economic and military strength, the U.S. has relied on intangible “soft power” to influence other countries. Joseph Nye, the Harvard University scholar who coined the term, calls it “the ability to get what one wants through attraction rather than coercion or payments.” But Nye noted that American prestige in Asia has been undermined. “The lack of civility in the presidential debate and the nativist, xenophobic nature of a number of Trump’s statements have already had a negative effect on American soft power in Asia and elsewhere,” he told the Nikkei Asian Review.