North Korea pushing new loyalty campaign

North Korea is stepping up a new loyalty campaign as leader Kim Jong Un prepares for his second summit with President Donald Trump. The campaign began last month with the introduction of a song in praise of the nation’s flag.

A video now being aired on state-run television to promote the song — called “Our National Flag” — shows repeated images of the flag being raised at international sports competitions and being formed by a sea of people holding up colored lengths of cloth at a parade and rally on Kim Il Sung Square. Other images show recent improvements in the economy and standard of living, a reflection of a current government policy shift that focuses on development and prosperity.

The video is a departure from the tone of the propaganda that dominated just two years ago, when tensions with Washington were escalating and the focus was on North Korea’s successful missile tests. In the summer of 2017, the country’s most popular musical group, the all-female Moranbong Band, released “The Song of the Hwasong Rocket” to commemorate the successful launch of North Korea’s first intercontinental ballistic missile. They also performed at concerts with big-screen images of the ICBM behind them.

Lyrics to “Our National Flag” have been distributed widely. Large posters showing the flag and the lyrics are being displayed in factories. The song opens with the lines, “As we watch our blue-red banner flying sky high, our hearts are bursting with the blood of patriotism. We feel the breath of our nation as the flag strongly flaps in the wind. The flag as important as life carries the fate of our people. We will love the shining flag of our nation. Please fly until the end of this world.”

Coming after years of what had seemed to be deepening hostility, Kim’s outreach to Washington and his Chinese and South Korean neighbors presents a bit of a conundrum for North Korea’s propaganda chiefs. Few details of Kim’s negotiations with Trump over the future of North Korea’s nuclear arsenal have been made public in the North. The official media have instead focused on how Kim has been welcomed on the world stage and asserted that he is leading the way to defuse tensions on the Korean Peninsula.

[Associated Press]

Key challenges at Trump-Kim February summit

US President Donald Trump has said he will hold a second nuclear summit with North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-un in Vietnam on 27-28 February. The two leaders face a number of challenges as they prepare for the meeting:

1: Getting past the pageantry – Both Donald Trump and Kim Jong-Un made the most of the press extravaganza surrounding their choreographed reconciliation at the Singapore summit in June 2018. But the vaguely worded statement it produced hasn’t resulted in any concrete action towards the US goal of dismantling North Korea’s nuclear weapons, and Pyongyang is frustrated by Washington’s refusal to ease sanctions. So the pressure’s on for them to come up with something tangible.

2: Getting on the same page – At the Singapore summit, the US and North Korea agreed to the “complete denuclearization of the Korean peninsula”. But they didn’t say what that meant, which gets to the heart of whether a deal is even possible. But last week the State Department’s North Korea envoy Stephen Biegun at least acknowledged the disconnect over disarmament goals, and said coming to an agreement with the North Koreans would have to happen “over time”.

3: Getting action on denuclearization – Pyongyang has offered to destroy all its facilities for making nuclear bomb fuel, according to Mr Biegun, if the Trump administration takes “corresponding measures”. The Americans seem to be softening their demands for significant denuclearization steps upfront, apparently adopting more of the action-for-action approach advocated by Mr Kim.

4: Getting realistic? – Virtually anyone in Washington who knows anything about North Korea thinks that Kim Jong-un won’t abandon his nuclear weapons programme. It’s too important a deterrent, director of national intelligence Dan Coats told a Senate committee last week. He said the country’s leaders “ultimately view nuclear weapons as critical to regime survival”, especially against a US attempt to overthrow it. Some former Pentagon officials go so far as to argue that it would make more sense to pursue dialogue on arms control, rather than arms elimination.

[BBC]

US envoy reveals North Korea nuclear pledge

North Korea has pledged to destroy all its nuclear material enrichment facilities, according to the US special envoy for the country, Stephen Biegun. He said the promise had been made to US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo when he visited North Korea in October. Biegun added that Kim Jong-un had committed, in his talks with Mr Pompeo, to “the dismantlement and destruction” of all its plutonium and uranium facilities, which provide the material for nuclear weapons.

Pyongyang has not confirmed making any such pledge.

Mr Biegun also said that North Korea must provide a complete list of its nuclear assets before any deal can be reached.

President Donald Trump had earlier claimed “tremendous progress” in talks between the countries. Speaking in the Oval Office on Thursday, the president said he would soon announce the date and location of a planned second summit with North Korea’s Kim Jong-un.

Stephen Biegun has been Washington’s top envoy to North Korea for five months but he gave a detailed public accounting of his approach for the first time in a speech at Stanford University in California.

Mr Biegun said President Trump was “ready to end this war”.

“We’re not going to invade North Korea. We are not seeking to topple the regime,” he said.

But Biegun reiterated that the US would not lift sanctions until denuclearisation was complete, demanding “a complete understanding of the full extent of the North Korean WMD [weapons of mass destruction] and missile programmes through a comprehensive declaration”.

He also admitted that North Korea and the US did not have a shared definition of what denuclearisation actually meant.

[BBC]

Kim Jong Un has played Donald Trump ‘like a fiddle,’ Ex-CIA Chief says

Former CIA Director John Brennan has blasted President Donald Trump’s criticism of his own intelligence community, claiming it has allowed foreign leaders like North Korea’s Kim Jong Un to play him “like a fiddle.”

The assessment from Brennan, who has been a fierce critic of the president, came on a day in which the president launched an extraordinary attack on United States intelligence chiefs. Responding to the attack, Brennan said the president’s actions posed a danger to the U.S.

“Your refusal to accept the unanimous assessment of U.S. Intelligence on Iran, North Korea, ISIS, Russia, & so much more shows the extent of your intellectual bankruptcy,” Brennan wrote on Twitter. “All Americans, especially members of Congress, need to understand the danger you pose to our national security.” Trump, Brennan said, “should be ashamed of himself” over the comments, “but I know he knows no shame.”

Brennan later appeared on MSNBC’s Hardball and was asked for specific ways that Trump’s ignoring of intelligence concerned him. “I don’t think he understands the complexities of the problems associated with North Korea’s nuclear program,” he told host Chris Matthews. “We have not gotten anything from the North Koreans.

“Kim Jong Un has demonstrated just how easy it is to play Donald Trump like a fiddle, which is what he has done, and there’s going to be another summit, and I think he has been duped by Kim Jong Un,” Brennan added.

North Korea has not conducted any missile tests since Trump became the first sitting U.S. president to sit down with a North Korean leader last June. However, experts have noted that Trump emerged from the historic summit with no firm commitment for North Korean denuclearization. Trump and Kim are set to sit down for a second summit next month.

[Newsweek]

Trump disputes US intelligence on North Korea

President Trump continues to plan a second summit meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un – date and location to be determined – and expresses confidence that Kim is committed to junking his nuclear weapons programs.

The U.S. intelligence community does not share that optimism.

During her Senate testimony, CIA Director Gina Haspel said the evidence shows that North Korea “is committed to developing a long-range nuclear-armed missile that would pose a direct threat to the United States.”

Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats said that, while Kim is expressing “openness” to the idea of eliminating weapons of mass destruction, “we currently assess that North Korea will seek to retain its WMD capabilities, and is unlikely to completely give up its nuclear weapons and production capabilities.”

In tweets, Trump said the U.S. relationship with North Korea is “the best it has ever been.” He said they have stopped nuclear testing, and claimed a “decent chance of Denuclearization.”

Saying “I look forward to seeing Kim Jong Un shortly,” Trump claimed “progress (is) being made-big difference!” 

[USA Today]

North Korea reminds citizens they will be killed for watching South Korean TV

North Korea has been trumpeting its thawing relations with South Korea, with images of Kim Jong Un meeting his counterpart Moon Jae-in shown in state-controlled media. But that doesn’t mean its punishments will be any less harsh for citizens who dare to watch TV programs from across the border. People who commit that crime can still face prison, labor camp, or death, as police officials have been reminding residents during lectures in the South Hwanghae province this month.

Radio Free Asia recently reported on the lectures, in which officials demanded that residents “abstain from watching decadent video materials of capitalism … that have found their way in from the South,” according to one source.

Those materials can reach North Koreans in a variety of ways, including via black markets and even the skies above. South Korean activists have long used balloons to carry leaflets deriding North Korea’s government and USB flash drives loaded with South Korean soap operas. Such shows can reveal to North Koreans how much better off their southern counterparts are.

North Koreans close to the border with South Korea can also receive broadcast signals from the south by manipulating frequencies on their TVs.

The police, in their lectures, have reminded people that anyone, regardless of their status, will be punished. In 2014, 10 officials of the ruling party were reportedly executed for watching South Korean soap operas.

[Quartz]