North Korea

The price of fuel in North Korea has plummeted over the past month thanks to Russian oil imports, according to reports that suggest Russia is ignoring international efforts to isolate the rogue North Korean regime.

Journalists with the website Asia Press International, which is based in Osaka, Japan, and publishes in English, Japanese and Korean, reportedly said that fuel prices began to fall in November. The reports claimed that the price of diesel had fallen by 60 percent since early November, and the price of gasoline fell by around 25 percent.

The alleged decline in price comes despite U.S. pressure and United Nations Security Council resolutions aimed specifically at cutting off fuel to Kim Jong Un’s regime.

The lines of argument employed by the Bush Administration in 2003 and the Trump Administration in 2017 both rely on the same basic elements:

1.The adversary’s actions are increasingly threatening;

2. It would be irresponsible to continue the policy trajectory of prior administrations;

3.The adversary leadership cannot be considered rational;

4. Their intent is not merely regime survival but attacks on the U.S. and allies;

5. International cooperation is inadequate to the threat; and

6.Retaliation after a first strike from the enemy is insufficient—either to deter or to punish.

The administration’s statements strongly prejudice policy toward military action: They have not only drawn a red line, they’ve attached a countdown clock to it. President Trump will either fight a preventive war to disarm North Korea, or will be forced in humiliation fashion to dismantle a scaffold of his own construction, calling into question American security guarantees.

The Trump White House talking about North Korea sounds eerily and increasingly like the George W. Bush administration in the run-up to the Iraq War.

BEIJING — A Chinese county along the border with North Korea is constructing refugee camps intended to house thousands of migrants fleeing a possible crisis on the Korean Peninsula, according to an internal document that appears to have been leaked from China’s main state-owned telecommunications company.

The United States is ready to begin talks on North Korea's nuclear disarmament without prior conditions, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Tuesday.

"We're ready to have the first meeting without preconditions," Tillerson told a meeting on the crisis at the Atlantic Council policy forum in Washington.

"Let's just meet and let's talk about the weather if you want and talk about whether it's going to be a square table or a round table if that's what you're excited about."

This appeared to represent a softening in the US position, seeing as officials had previously demanded that Kim Jong-Un's regime demonstrate a willingness to consider giving up their arsenal.

But elsewhere in his remarks, Tillerson insisted the US-led pressure campaign of economic and diplomatic sanctions would continue until "the first bomb drops."

He stressed that Washington "simply cannot accept a nuclear armed North Korea" and that President Donald Trump "intends to ensure that they do not have deliverable nuclear weapons to (reach) the shores of the United States." (AFP)

TOKYO — A group of 58 retired American military leaders is making a rare public plea to President Trump, urging him not to take military action against North Korea and instead to pursue a diplomatic resolution to the current standoff.

WASHINGTON — Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson let slip last week a few tantalizing details about one of the nation’s most secret military contingency plans: how the United States would try to race inside North Korea to seize its nuclear weapons if it ever saw evidence that Kim Jong-un’s government was collapsing.

For years, American diplomats have been trying to engage their Chinese counterparts in a discussion of this scenario, hoping to avoid a conflict between arriving American Special Forces — who have been practicing this operation for years — and the Chinese military, which would almost certainly pour over the border in a parallel effort.

And for years the Chinese have resisted the conversation, according to several former American officials who tried to engage them in joint planning. The Chinese feared that if news of a conversation leaked, Beijing would be seen as conspiring with the United States over plans for an eventual North Korean collapse, eroding any leverage that Beijing still held over Mr. Kim.

So it was surprising to Mr. Tillerson’s colleagues in the White House and the Pentagon when, in a talk to the Atlantic Council last week, he revealed that the Trump administration had already provided assurances to China’s leadership that if American forces landed in North Korea to search for and deactivate nuclear weapons, the troops would do their work and then retreat.

A South Korean defense ministry official said up to 20 warning shots were fired at North Korean troops who approached too closely to the “military demarcation line”, apparently in search of the missing soldier.

Thursday’s defection came about five weeks after another North Korean soldier suffered critical gunshot wounds during a defection dash across the border on Nov. 13.

Two North Korean civilians who were found in a fishing boat on Wednesday had also sought to defect, officials in the South said.

After months of resolutely declaring the US cannot and will not tolerate a nuclear-armed North Korea, the US is reportedly planning a "bloody nose" attack to send Pyongyang a message.

The Daily Telegraph cited "well-placed" sources within President Donald Trump's administration as saying they had "dramatically" stepped up preparations for a military solution to North Korea.

Those possible solutions include destroying a launch site before North Korea tests a missile or targeting a stockpile of weapons, according to the Daily Telegraph.

"The Pentagon is trying to find options that would allow them to punch the North Koreans in the nose, get their attention and show that we're serious," a former US security official briefed on policy told the Telegraph.

Reportedly, the Trump administration has the April 7 strike on a Syrian airfield in mind as a blueprint for the move against North Korea.