North Korean Supreme Leaders have extolled humiliating concessions from Democrat Presidents, but not anymore from republican President Donald Trump.

North Korea became a threat to the western world since the Soviet Union declared war on Imperial Japan on August 8, 1945, two days after Hiroshima was destroyed by a nuclear bomb. The Soviet Union played the worker of the eleventh-hour in the Pacific War.

The Soviet Army occupied the northern part of Korea. Fearing that it intended to seize the entire Peninsula, the U.S. moved its own troops into Southern Korea on September 8, 1945. The two super powers agreed to divide Korea temporarily along the 38th parallel, a latitudinal line that bisected the country.

Joseph Stalin instructed Laventriy Beria, the sinister boss of NKVD, to recommend a communist leader for the soviet-occupied territory. Beria proposed Kim Il-sung, a Korean communist who had joined an anti-Japanese guerrilla group in Manchuria. Some sources labeled him as an impostor. The legend said that Kim Il-sung was an almighty god who created the world in seven days. Just like Jesus, he came to earth as a human being in 1912. No less!

Despite United Nations plans to conduct elections in the entire Peninsula, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea was proclaimed with Kim Il-sung as its leader on September 9, 1948. As the cult of personality was promoted, people began calling him the “great leader.” Another communist leader was nicknamed the “great helmsman” at the same time.

The invasion of South Korea was instigated by Kim Il-sun

His ambition matched his godly stature. He wanted to invade South Korea, topple its capitalist puppet regime, and become the undisputed leader of the reunited Korean peninsula.

The Soviet Union gave him the green light after its intelligence service obtained information on the limitations of US atomic bomb stockpiles as well as defense program cuts. This information led Stalin to believe that Truman would not intervene in Korea.

The People Republic’s of China was reluctant to enter the fray. It only provided logistic at the beginning of the invasion on June 25, 1950. The great helmsman Mao Zedong changed his mind when UN troops, mostly American forces, reached the Yalu River. On October 25, 1950, Chinese troops crossed that river, and retook Pyongyang in December 1950 and Seoul in January 1951.

After a successful counterattack led by charismatic General Matthew Ridgway, the front line became a trench war on the 38th parallel. Kim Il-sung resented that his army played a minor role to the coastal flanks whereas the Chinese army was at the center. The armistice saved his power despite fierce opposition from Syngman Rhee who was the leader of the capitalist puppet regime in South Korea in the parlance of communists. Rhee did not relent that his country remained divided, but General Douglas McArthur had the last word.

The North Korean nuclear program is a textbook of deceit

After licking his wounds –estimated casualties were 1,550,000 for his country alone after his disastrous war – Kim Il-sung nurtured his revenge through to what he called all-fortressization.

In 1962, he asked separately Moscow and Beijing to help him in developing nuclear weapons. Both countries flatly refused, but the Soviet Union agreed to help him to develop a peaceful nuclear energy program. After Soviet experts took part in the construction of the Yongbyon Nuclear Scientific Research Center, the first reactor became operational in 1965.

After fifteen years of workaround, North Korean experts began to enrich uranium, and, at the same time, its regime ratified the treaty on the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons.  However, its double-dealing did not remain unnoticed for long. On December 12, 1985, the International Atomic Energy Agency notified to the rogue state that it did not complete a safeguards agreement. Under article III of the NPT, North Korea had 18 months to conclude such an arrangement.

Not only did Kim Il-sung not comply with NPT but he gambled with the first elect South Korean president Kim Dae-jung. The nascent and naïve democracy, which hosted the 1988 Summer Olympic Games, believed that it could negotiate with the old tyrant. On December 31, 1991, the two Koreas signed the South-North joint declaration on the de-nuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. Under that declaration, both countries agreed, “not to test, manufacture, receive, possess, store, deploy or use nuclear weapons.” They also agreed to mutual inspections for verification. The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

More than six years after signing the NPT, North Korea concluded a safeguards agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency.(IAEA) Because the U.S imposed sanctions for its missile proliferation activities, North Korea rushed to ratify the safeguards agreement with the IAEA on April 9, 1992.

Because North Korea had ratified the NPT, the IAEA conducted inspections to verify the authenticity of its claims. North Korea had declared that it had seven nuclear sites, and only 90 grams of plutonium that were the result of reprocessing defective fuel rods. However, inspectors discovered “discrepancies” (diplomatic language) in North Korea’s initial report. On February 9, 1993, the IAEA asked to visit two sites on strong evidence that North Korea had been deceiving on its commitments under the NPT. On March 12, 1993, North Korea announced its intention to withdraw from the NPT in three months, citing article X provisions that allow withdrawal from supreme national security considerations.

President Bill Clinton followed the Appeasement policy that was enacted by British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain with German chancellor Adolph Hitler at the Munich conference in 1938. Following talks with the US in New York, North Korea suspended its decision to pull out of the NPT, just before the withdrawal would have been effective on June 11, 1993.

Not only did Kim Il-sung not comply with NPT, but he also played masterly cat and mouse play with the IAEA. A year later, inspectors arrived in North Korea, but they were told that they could not visit a plutonium reprocessing plant in Yongbyon.

In the wake of its rebuttal against the resolution of the IAEA Board of Governors calling to “immediately allow requested inspections and to comply fully with its safeguards agreement,” North Korea announced its withdrawal from IAEA, but not from NPT, on June 13, 1994. However, this distinction is baseless because IAEA inspections and NPT go hand in hand.

 

Two days later, President Bill Clinton demeaned himself by allowing former president Jimmy Carter to conduct with John Podesta a bilateral diplomatic mission to North Korea that circumvented the IAEA Board of Governors. In that second Munich style conference, an “agreed statement” was signed that established a three-stage process for the elimination of North Korea’s nuclear weapons program. In that fooled agreement, Bill Clinton promised to Kim Jong-il, who succeeded his father, that he would provide assistance for the construction of light water reactors to replace old graphite reactors. Clean energy was the trademark of Vice-president Al Gore.

Kim Jong-il thanked President Bill Clinton for his great favor when an OH-58 Kiowa helicopter, doing an espionage mission over North Korea, was shot down on December 17, 1994. The co-pilot had died in the crash but the survivor pilot was held hostage.

The New York Times heralded properly his release (1), which had been negotiated by Assistant Secretary of State Thomas Hubbard. On behalf of the US government, he said, “I just had two rather difficult days in Pyongyang. I am pleased to see that in the final analysis the North Korean government considered our humanitarian concerns, and agreed to return Bobby Hall to us.” To secure his release, the US government agreed to express its “sincere regret,” and to discuss with North Korea how to prevent a recurrence.

I related the same humiliating apology when General Woodward, on behalf of Johnson government, won in return the release of 86 crew-members of the Pueblo, a spy boat, on December 23, 1968. (2) Democrat presidents are addicted to Appeasement policy that always leads to dishonor and war.

In a televised address, President Bill Clinton said, “Chief Warrant Officer Hall was held for too long after his helicopter strayed off course on a routine training mission.”

A couple of weeks in jail for a pilot doing a risky espionage mission was “too long” for President Bill Clinton. How about the seventeen months that an American student spent in North Korean’ jail before dying shortly after he was returned to his family? Twenty-two-year-old Otto Warmbier was lured by China-based tour operator, Young Pioneer Tours, which advertised a New Year’s Eve travel to North Korea with the slogan, “This is the trip that your parents don’t want you to take!” After a binge in a hotel in Pyongyang, Warmbier unhooked a propaganda poster, which depicted lyrically the Supreme Leader in hailing the patriotism of his subjects.

Warmbier’s parents divulged, on Fox News, on September 27, 2017, that their son had been tortured. NBC denied any wrongdoing by North Korean jailers (3) but Professor Kathy Dettwyler (a black woman) did contradict them while saying that Otto “got exactly what he deserved. These are the same kids who cry about their grades because they didn’t think they’d really have to read and study the material to get a good grade…His parents ultimately are to blame for his growing up thinking he could get away with whatever he wanted. Maybe in the US, where young, white, rich, clueless white males routinely get away with raping women. Not so much in North Korea.” (4)

Otto Warmbier was tried and convicted by a kangaroo court to 15 years of hard labor. In the Gulag of former Soviet Union that dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn had experienced, a 15 year-long sentence equated to a death penalty. In May 2017, Fred Warmbier, Otto’s father, divulged that the Obama administration had encouraged them to keep a low profile about their son’s situation. (5)  Otto Warmbier’s torture and subsequent death was the prize paid by a young and naïve student for his involuntary act of defamation.

In the New Yorker magazine (6), journalist Evan Osnos lectured President Donald Trump on his rant at the United Nations General Assembly, and on his tweet mocking the Supreme Leader. “No laughing matter: why Trump’s words on North Korea matter.”

Koreans are proud people, and saving face is of paramount importance to their culture. President Donald Trump used the derisive nickname of little rocket man, which is the name of a popular video game. In an unprecedented appearance on Korean national television, the Supreme Leader retaliated, “I will surely and definitely tame the deranged U.S. dotard with fire.” “By personally responding to President’s taunting threats, Kim Jong-un has staked his name and his stature on his refusal to back down,” wrote Evan Osnos.

Mainstream media considers that President Donald Trump is responsible for the brinkmanship that could eventually trigger a nuclear war. Unlike former Democrat presidents Johnson, Carter, Clinton, and Obama, who  indulged in Appeasement policy that led to a vast nuclear arsenal, Donald Trump is not afraid in dealing with the Supreme Leader. He has divulged all the options at the UN, including a total destruction of North Korea if necessary.

Trump has kept his promise made during his campaign speech of leading a bold and unpredictable foreign policy. (7) Such a policy is  the nightmare for any diplomat trying to anticipate the move of the adversary in a chess game.  President Vladimir Putin would have preferred that Hillary Clinton was elected because she is so predictable. Therefore, the supposed Russian interference in favor of Donald Trump in the US campaign is utterly grotesque. Joseph Goebbels said, “The bigger the lie, the more people believe it.”

Trump added fuel to the fire last week-end, “I told Rex Tillerson, our wonderful Secretary of State, that he is wasting his time trying to negotiate with Little Rocket Man,” Trump tweeted. “Save your energy Rex, we’ll do what has to be done!”

After decades of deceit, kidnapping, blackmail, extortion of billions of dollars to the taxpayer, humiliation to the nation, terrorism,  and endless missiles shot over Japan, terror has switched camp with an unpredictable President. Understand if you will the annoyance of appeasers.

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