North Korea Offers To Open Talks With U.S.

[Swordsmyth]

North Korean officials in Pyeongchang for the closing ceremony of the Winter Olympics said Pyongyang was open to talks with the United States, Reuters reported Feb. 25.

The North officials said U.S.-North Korean diplomacy (https://worldview.stratfor.com/themes/coping-nuclear-north-korea) should also include the South.

More at: https://worldview.stratfor.com/situation-report/south-korea-north-korea-offers-open-talks-us

[dannno]

Better do it soon before Trump is out of office and the deep state is back in charge..

[TheTexan]

Talk to North Korea? Are you joking?

That's like way worse than even talking to Russia

[Danke]

Talk to North Korea? Are you joking?That's like way worse than even talking to Russiahttps://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/unturned-bunker/images/e/e9/IT%27S_A_TRAP.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20150521023923

[acptulsa]

Better do it soon before Trump is out of office and the deep state is back in charge..

Yeah. God forbid we wait until someone like Nikki Haley is in charge of the State Department.

[shakey1]

I guess that's better than gettin' poked with a sharp stick.

[Raginfridus]

We don't negotiate with terrists.

[Swordsmyth]

South Korean President Moon Jae-in urged the United States to "lower the threshold for talks" with North Korea on Monday as his aides held rare talks with a Pyongyang general on ways to defuse tensions.

More at: https://www.yahoo.com/news/us-lower-threshold-talks-n-korea-seoul-083000138.html

[Zippyjuan]

https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/485/socialembed/https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/914497947517227008~/news/world-us-canada-41460205

https://www.vox.com/2018/2/25/17050070/north-korea-talk-sanctions-war-olympics


But two things are evident. First, Trump’s patience with North Korea is running out. “If the sanctions don’t work we’ll have to go to Phase 2,” Trump said on Friday during an afternoon press conference with Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull. “Phase 2 may be a very rough thing. May be very, very unfortunate for the world.”


High level talks with North Korea are difficult, experts tell me, because both sides remain inflexible on key policy positions, which makes it near impossible for them to agree to a meeting. For example, North Korea wants America to stop its military drills with South Korea, but those are likely to restart before April. North Korea also wants to improve its nuclear program; the US, on the other hand, wants the country to dismantle its arsenal.

Previous negotiations:


The US and other countries have been trying to come to a diplomatic, negotiated agreement with North Korea over its nuclear program since 1985, according to the Arms Control Association.

They got really close twice. In 1994, the US and North Korea signed the Agreed Framework, in which the North agreed to freeze its plutonium weapons program in exchange for two proliferation-resistant nuclear power reactors and fuel oil from the United States.

But the agreement collapsed in 2002, and by January 2003, the North had resumed its nuclear program.

Then in August 2003, the international community launched the so-called “Six Party Talks,” designed to get North Korea to halt its nuclear program through negotiations with five other countries: China, the United States, South Korea, Japan, and Russia.

Two years later, in September 2005, it looked like the talks might work — North Korea formally agreed to abandon “all nuclear weapons and existing nuclear programs” in exchange for energy assistance from the other countries.

Yet in 2009, amid disagreements over technical details related to verification, North Korea walked out on the talks. It said it would never return to the negotiations and maintains that it is no longer bound by their agreements. Pyongyang has been ramping up its nuclear and ballistic missile programs ever since.

“North Korea is smarter than we are,” Manning, of the Atlantic Council, told me on February 21. “They play a really bad hand exceptionally well.”

And that’s where we are today: a diplomatic stalemate with no end in sight. Worse, it’s more than likely this opening “could easily be derailed if the North tests something,” Mira Rapp-Hooper, a North Korea expert at Yale University, told me, “or, from Pyongyang’s perspective, probably if we resume military exercises.”

North Korea will not give up their nuclear program. It gives them power and prestige. Look at all the attention they are getting now.

[fedupinmo]

Yeah. God forbid we wait until someone like Nikki Haley is in charge of the State Department.

They couldn't afford to deal with Hillary.

[acptulsa]

They couldn't afford to deal with Hillary.

Yeah, she don't bribe cheap.

[TheTexan]

We'll do what has to be done :cool:

[AZJoe]

https://scontent.fsnc1-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/27752334_2082937315273206_4156280696562143162_n.jp g?oh=8e162058055be726b790e8fef7ea8d41&oe=5B02B5D2

[Aratus]

Yeah, she don't bribe cheap.

:) :) :) :) :)

[Swordsmyth]

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un met senior South Korean government officials for the first time and said it is his "firm will to vigorously advance" inter-Korean ties and pursue reunification, the North's official news agency said on Tuesday.A 10-member South Korean delegation led by National Security Office head Chung Eui-yong traveled to the North Korean capital, Pyongyang, on Monday in hopes of encouraging North Korea and the United States to talk to one another.
Washington and Pyongyang have been at loggerheads for months over the North's nuclear and missile programs, with U.S. President Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un trading insults and threatening war.
Tensions between the two Koreas eased during the recent Winter Olympics in South Korea, where President Moon Jae-In hosted a high-level North Korean delegation. Kim Jong Un invited Moon to North Korea for a summit, which Moon said the two sides should work towards.
"Hearing the intention of President Moon Jae In for a summit from the special envoy of the south side, (Kim Jong Un) exchanged views and made a satisfactory agreement," the North's Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said of the meeting.
The agency did not provide details on what that agreement was but an official from the presidential Blue House in Seoul said it partially addressed the summit offer made by the North.

More at: https://www.yahoo.com/news/north-korea-leader-wants-advance-korea-ties-makes-010426081.html

[Swordsmyth]

President Trump (https://www.yahoo.com/news/topics/president-trump) on Tuesday warily welcomed word of a possible diplomatic breakthrough with North Korea, cautioning that it “may be false hope” but praising international efforts to get the Stalinist regime to abandon its nuclear and ballistic missile programs.“Possible progress being made in talks with North Korea. For the first time in many years, a serious effort is being made by all parties concerned,” Trump said on Twitter (https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/971025582061424640). “The World is watching and waiting! May be false hope, but the U.S. is ready to go hard in either direction!”


Later Tuesday, in the Oval Office with visiting Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Löfven, Trump sounded slightly more optimistic.
“We have come certainly a long way,” the president said, adding that successful talks would be “a great thing for the world.”

Trump declined to label the announcement a breakthrough, or to say whether he had any preconditions for starting negotiations.

Moon’s office also said that the two Koreas would hold a summit in April on neutral ground, in the Peace House at Panmunjom, on their shared border, and that the two leaders would establish a hotline. The statement also said North Korea aimed to “normalize” relations with the U.S.

More at: https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-hails-progress-north-korea-warns-false-hope-151459348.html

[Swordsmyth]

Barely 12 hours after a "breakthrough" (https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-03-06/north-korea-ready-denuclearize-if-regime-safety-assured) report that North Korean leaders might be willing to shut down their nuclear program and surrender their existing nukes in exchange for assurances that the regime's safety would be guaranteed, the State Department announced that it would impose yet another round of economic sanctions on the North - its second batch of sanctions within the span of two weeks, per Reuters.



MORE: State Department says it imposes additional sanctions on North Korea over assassination pic.twitter.com/mMiHuIJyk8 (https://t.co/mMiHuIJyk8)
— Reuters Top News (@Reuters) March 7, 2018 (https://twitter.com/Reuters/status/971176598186741760?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw)
The sanctions are being levied because the US has obtained solid evidence that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un ordered the assassination of his older half-brother, Kim Jong Nam, who was murdered in 2017 at an airport in Kuala Lampur when two young female assassins exposed him to a nerve agent, the US has determined.

More at: https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-03-06/us-imposes-more-sanctions-north-korea-over-kim-jong-nam-killing