North Korea Goes to the Dead US Soldiers' Remains Strategy

Richardson: North Korea offers to return remains of U.S. troops

By the CNN Wire Staff

December 19, 2010 --

Pyongyang, North Korea (CNN) -- A top North Korean general offered Sunday to help return the remains of several hundred U.S. troops killed during the Korean War, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson said.

Maj. Gen. Pak Rim Su told Richardson that the bodies were discovered recently in North Korea.

Richardson, who is meeting with officials in North Korea to help ease tensions in the region, described the offer as a "very positive gesture."

Any returned remains are "better than nothing," Korean War Veterans Association President Bill Mac Swain said. But he noted that there were possible pitfalls.

"I'm worried that what we'll get is a bunch of stuff that we'll never be able to figure out," he said.

Investigators are still trying to identify many of the bodies from more than 200 boxes stuffed with remains and personal items that North Korea sent back to the United States between 1990 and 1994, he said.

"The problem is the bones were scattered in boxes. There were all kinds of different things that made it very difficult for them to even determine how many people were in the boxes," Mac Swain said.

The Korean War ended at midnight on July 27, 1953, after three years of fighting that left millions dead -- including just more than 54,000 U.S. troops, according to the Department of Defense.

More than 8,000 U.S. service members remain missing from the Korean War, according to the Defense Prisoner of War/Missing Personnel Office.

For more than four decades, U.S. attempts to persuade North Korea to return additional U.S. remains were unsuccessful.

But between 1990 and 1994, North Korea exhumed and returned what it claimed were 208 sets of remains in 208 boxes.

In 2007, on the eve of preliminary peace talks, North Korea handed over four sets of remains believed to be those of American soldiers killed during the 1950-53 Korean War.

The remains, in aluminum coffins, were delivered by North Korean soldiers to United Nations honor guards during a brief rain-drenched ceremony in Panmunjom on the demilitarized zone dividing the two Koreas. They were recovered in the North's Unsan County, where about 350 Americans are thought to have been killed in fighting between U.S. and Chinese troops shortly after China entered the war on the side of North Korea.

At that time, 209 sets of remains had been returned to the United States; only seven had been identified.

Before 1996, most of the remains excavated and returned by North Korea were in too poor condition to identify. The United States asked North Korea to stop further exhumation until an agreement was made for joint recovery. That agreement gave the United States access to the reclusive communist country to look for evidence of U.S. soldiers killed during the war.

But the U.S. government temporarily suspended such trips into North Korea in 2005, according to the Defense Prison of War/Missing Personnel Office.

Mac Swain, 80, said that finding remains isn't just an issue of statistics and science.

"From my company there's two people that are missing in action. We don't really know anything about them, and this is 60 years later. ... I would like for them to be able to find these two guys," he said.

But North Korea's motives may not be altruistic, Mac Swain said.

"I'm afraid it's more political than it is humanitarian. ... They use our dead to further their gains. That's another way to look at it. ... But we need to find (the missing). We need to bring them home," he said.

North Korea is the Responsibility of China, Japan and South Korea

Let's face it, there would be no North Korean belligerence or threat of nuclear weapons without the role played by China in the region. Without Chinese economic support, Kim Jong-il would have disappeared years ago.

Without the criminal gang-related state of North Korea, there would be little reason or justification for US presence in the region. The South Koreans would have had us leave twenty years ago.

China allowed this sore to fester and at a minimum is guilty of benign neglect. North Korea is a problem for China, South Korea and Japan. Between the three of them they are holding $1.8 trillion in US debt. If they want us to solve the problem it is at least worth half of that, call it an even trillion. If they don't like the price, let them fix it themselves.

South Koreans to Turn the Other Cheek to North Korean Attack?

US sailors showing the North Koreans what they really think.

On January 23, 1968 the USS Pueblo, a US Navy intelligence ship, was boarded and captured by the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. The North Koreans held the ship and crew for almost a year.

The ship's captain, Commander Lloyd M. Bucher, Commanding Officer of the Pueblo, was tortured and put through a mock firing squad in an effort to make him confess to crimes against the North Koreans.

The Koreans threatened to execute Bucher's crew in front of him. Bucher decided to confess, however the Koreans did not know enough English to write the confession, so they had Bucher write it.

The Koreans verified the meaning of his words using a dictionary, but failed to catch the pun and nuance when Bucher wrote, "We paean the DPRK. We paean the Korean people. We paean their great leader Kim Il Sung". (The word "paean" sounds identical to the term pee on. It is rarely used and means to praise. It is hard to imagine that level of literacy today!).

The Koreans also took and published a photo of the ship's crewmen. It was published worldwide. The Koreans did not notice the crew members in the front row giving them the finger.

Today the Telegraph reports this:

______________
South Korean ship sunk by crack squad of 'human torpedoes'

A South Korean warship was destroyed by an elite North Korean suicide squad of 'human torpedoes' on the express orders of the regime's leader, Kim Jong-il, according to military intelligence reports.

Julian Ryall in Tokyo Telegraph
Published: 7:12PM BST 22 Apr 2010

The attack on the 1,220-ton Cheonan, which sank on March 26 with the loss of 46 of its 104 crew, was carried out in retaliation for a skirmish between warships of the two nations' navies in November of last year, South Korea claims.

The South Korean government has refused to comment officially on the reports but Defence Minister Kim Tae Young told a parliamentary session that the military believed that the sinking was a deliberate act by North Korea.

Officials in military intelligence say they warned the government earlier this year that North Korea was preparing a suicide-squad submarine attack on a South Korean ship.

"Military intelligence made the report to the Blue House [the presidential office] and to the Defence Ministry immediately after the sinking of the Cheonan that it was clearly the work of North Korea's military," a military source said.

"North Korean submarines are all armed with heavy torpedoes with 200kg warheads," the source said.
Experts who examined the ship, which sank in the Yellow Sea, say that the blast happened outside the vessel's hull, ruling out the possibility of an accident.

North Korean officials who have defected to South Korea but still have contact with North Korean military sources say they have been told that the attack was carried out on the orders of Mr Kim and involved a unit of 13 specially trained commandos and modified midget submarines.

The submarines were manoeuvred close to their target before being detonated, probably along with their crews. Alternatively, the attackers may have used timed charges.

If North Korea was behind the attack, it would be the bloodiest single incident since an uneasy truce brought the Korean War to an end in 1953.

It also leaves Lee Myung Bak, the South Korean president, with a decision to make on retaliation or ignoring the provocation according to analysts.

"This puts Lee in a very difficult situation, but I do not think that an Israeli-style, targeted response is likely," said Aidan Foster-Carter, an expert on Korean affairs at Leeds University. "That is because the United States won't have it and there is the danger that any retaliation will descend into a horrible war."

Describing the attack as "calibrated and deniable," South Korea has little choice but to take its complaint to the United Nations, he said, although that is unlikely to have any impact on the North Korean regime and will not assuage public anger in the South.

The reports come a day after two North Korean agents posing as defectors were arrested for plotting to assassinate Hwang Jang-yop, the highest-ranking member of the North Korean Workers' Party to defect to the South.

Commenting on the sinking of the Cheonan, Mr Hwang said: "It's obvious that Kim Jong-il did it. We know that he has been preparing for this kind of incident."

The North has denied involvement in the sinking, saying the government in Seoul is using the incident to whip up support ahead of elections in June.

However, following the skirmish with South Korea in November, in which a North Korean ship was set on fire and three sailors killed, The National Defence Commission, North Korea's most powerful military body, threatened a "holy retaliatory war".

Obama to pay off N. Korea and bestow legitimacy to Iran.

The Obama Administration has decided to fulfill a campaign promise and will enter into direct talks with Iran and North Korea. On a regional basis North Korea should be a greater concern to China, South Korea and Japan than the United States but as a source of supply for nuclear contraband, North Korea is an American problem.

The talks will boil down to terms of the payoff. We will try and convince them to start using hundred dollar bills printed in the USA instead of them printing their own.

Think of it as a stimulus bill. Certainly The NORKS are at least as deserving as ACORN. The payoff will work for awhile.

________

I have no idea why we are talking to Iran. Iran is being protected from further meaningful sanctions by Venezuela, China, Russia and some NATO members. Iran's nuclear program is nothing more than a mullah protection program. There is nothing positive to offer them that they will accept.

For old time's sake we may as well appoint Jimmy Carter as special envoy.

The only reason for Iran to talk is to buy more time to develop their nuclear program and get Washington to try and restrain Israel.

If the US is serious about the threat of nuclear proliferation and wants to actually do something about it , it needs to continue developing and deploying missile defense systems.

Doing so will have the added benefit of giving some pause to the duopoly of nuclear enablers, China and Russia. Talking with the present regime in Iran is pointless and naive.

_______________


September 12, 2009
U.S. to Accept Iran’s Proposal to Hold Face-to-Face Talks

By MARK LANDLER and DAVID E. SANGER

NY Times

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration said Friday that the United States would accept Iran’s offer to meet, fulfilling President Obama’s pledge to hold unconditional talks despite the Iranian government’s insistence that it would not negotiate over the future of its nuclear program.

The decision to engage directly with Iran would put a senior representative of the Obama administration at the bargaining table, along with emissaries from five other nations, for the first time since Mr. Obama took office.

The decision is bound to raise protests from conservatives who contend that unconditional talks are naïve, and from human rights groups that say the United States should not legitimize an Iranian government that appears to have manipulated its presidential election in June and crushed protests after the vote.

In advance of Friday’s announcement, senior administration officials said that their offer to negotiate directly with the Iranians, for what could turn into the first substantive talks since the Iranian Revolution in 1979, was, as a senior official had earlier put it, a “bona fide offer.”

But at the same time, officials said their expectations were extremely low. They also said their willingness to proceed was based in part on a recognition that some form of talks had to take place before the United States could make a case for imposing far stronger sanctions on Iran.

“We’ll be looking to see if they are willing to engage seriously on these issues,” said a State Department spokesman, Philip J. Crowley. “If we have talks, we will plan to bring up the nuclear issue.”

The talks would also include Britain, France, Russia, China and Germany, which in the past have negotiated with Iran without the presence of an American representative, except for one meeting at the end of the administration of President George W. Bush.

During his first term, talks with unfriendly countries like North Korea and Iran were usually rejected out of hand in the hope of speeding their collapse. That loosened in Mr. Bush’s second term, but even then agreements to talk were usually under highly restricted conditions.

The result was a stalemate — one that Mr. Obama argued during last year’s presidential campaign was a huge mistake, in part because Iran was producing nuclear material while the standoff dragged on.

The United Nations Security Council has issued several rounds of sanctions against Iran for failing to comply with resolutions demanding it stop enriching uranium. It has called on Tehran to answer questions from international arms inspectors about documents that suggest that the country worked in the past on a nuclear weapons design.

Iran’s government insists that its efforts are aimed at the peaceful generation of electricity, and has charged that the documents were Western forgeries.

Iran made its offer to meet in a five-page letter delivered to several nations on Wednesday. Titled “Cooperation, Peace and Justice,” it touched on political, social and economic themes, called for reform of the United Nations and a Middle East peace settlement, and for universal nuclear disarmament.

But the letter said nothing about Iran’s nuclear program, and as recently as this week President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad vowed never to halt the fuel production, saying Iran would not relinquish its fundamental rights.

Administration officials were dismissive of the letter, saying that it rehashed past statements and offers. But they said they would consider the offer to meet, and they spent less than 48 hours studying its contents before deciding to tell Iran that the United States would join its negotiating partners in talks.

It is unclear where the discussions will take place, but the most likely American representative is William J. Burns, the under secretary of state for political affairs, who is leading the diplomatic effort.

The first announcement of the decision was made Friday in Brussels by Javier Solana, the foreign policy chief of the European Union, who acts as an intermediary for the six countries.

Hours earlier, the United States ambassador to the United Nations, Susan E. Rice, appeared to take a softer line on Iran, saying the administration would not impose “artificial deadlines” on Iran.

It was difficult to judge Mr. Obama’s outreach to Iran because, she said, “the elections and their aftermath have added a layer of complexity to assessing the overtures and offers of diplomatic engagement.”

Some administration officials argued that Mr. Obama’s overtures, which included a videotaped New Year’s greeting and at least one letter to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamanei, had thrown the Iranian leadership off balance. They thought that for the first time in recent history, the United States had Iran on the defensive, rather than the other way around.

Russia and China have expressed deep reservations about imposing additional sanctions on Iran. On Thursday, the Russian foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, expressed opposition to additional sanctions.

On Friday, Mr. Crowley also said the United States would be willing to hold direct talks with North Korea over its nuclear program, within the context of existing six-party negotiations.

“We are prepared to meet with North Korea,” he said. “When it’ll happen, where it’ll happen, we’ll have to wait and see.”

I wonder what Hans Blix thinks about the Nuclear Norks?

Why? I have a suspicion that what Blix thinks is close to what the international community leader Obama thinks and will say so in a much less guarded manner.

___________________________

U.S., Japan, S Korea reaffirm position on DPRK's nuclear issue
www.chinaview.cn 2009-05-30

SINGAPORE, May 30 (Xinhua) --

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates reaffirmed here on Saturday that the United States, Japan and South Korea, along with some other countries, will strengthen cooperation to try to resolve the Korean peninsula nuclear issue.

Speaking at a joint press briefing on the sidelines of the 8th Asia Security Summit, Gates said that the United States' policy has not changed. Washington's goal is complete and verifiable denuclearization of the Korean peninsula, and will not accept the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) as a nuclear weapon state.

Gates said that the DPRK's programs and actions constitute a threat to regional peace and security.

"We unequivocally reaffirm our commitment to the defense of our allies in the region. The transfer of nuclear weapons or material by the DPRK to states or non-state entities would be considered a grave threat to the United States and our allies. And we would hold the DPRK fully accountable for the consequences of such action," Gates said.

On the same occasion, Japan's Defense Minister Yasukazu Hamada and South Korea's Minister of National Defense Lee Sang Hee stressed the significance of the trilateral meeting, saying that the three parties will further exchange views and enhance cooperation to solve the problem.

The annual Asia Security Summit, organized by the London International Institute for Strategic Studies, is being held in Singapore from May 29 to 31.

The forum brings together about 22 ministerial-level guests, along with parliamentarians, military leaders and security experts from more than 27 countries and regions for discussions on regional security issues and defense cooperation.

What does North Korea want? Wrong Question. What does China want?

Obama and and his party apparatchiks are busy trying not to waste the crisis/opportunity in North Korea. First we get the blather about the "international community."

The "international community" if it really were a community, would call in the police. I assume that they would be the"international police" but we all should know that is absurd. The last time that happened, American pilots were bombing hapless civilians in Belgrade and we aced the Chinese Embassy. So we can forget precision targeting of the Norks. There is no international community that will approve that and there are no international cops. I suppose we could form a posse of the willing, but why bother?

The question that needs to be asked is not what North Korea wants, but what does China want? The Norks have already exchanged missile technology for nuclear technology with our good friends the Pakis. I have no doubt that was not the full extent of their trading. The criminal family business of North Korea Inc. exists because the Chinese tolerate it. North Korea collapses without Chinese tolerance.

China wants a new world order, here is their chance.

____________

Diplomats have lost the plot over North Korea
Posted By: Con Coughlin at May 26, 2009 Telegraph

Am I missing something, or has a mood of complacency settled on the international diplomatic community regarding North Korea's latest nuclear test?

Despite the fact the latest nuclear device tested by the highly secretive regime in Pyongyang is said to be equivalent in size to the atom bomb the Americans dropped on Nagasaki at the end of the Second World War, the general message emanating from international diplomats is that there is no need to worry because North Korea has no intention of using the device, and that the North Koreans are too isolated to constitute a threat to the outside world.

What nonsense. Irrespective of what the North Koreans intend to do with their nuclear arsenal once they have mastered the technology, the very fact that an unstable regime like Pyongyang has access to weapons of mass destruction constitutes a major threat to world peace.

North Korea is one of the world's key proliferators. It attempted to provide Syria - another rogue regime - with nuclear technology, and works closely with Tehran to develop ballistic missile systems capable of carrying nuclear warheads.

To my mind, the more progress North Korea makes on its nuclear programme, the more afraid the world should be. So my message to the diplomatic corps is: snap out of it. There are many reasons to be worried by the latest developments in North Korea, and rather than taking the sanguine attitude that it doesn't really matter, let's see some robust action that will bring the North Koreans to their senses.

North Korea, Cuba and Venezuela

Shortages.

Electricity in Korea
With the announcement of an agreement in which it appears the sociopath dictator once again gets his way (50K tons of fuel oil now and another 950k tons later) it is being pointed out on the BBC that North Korea, when seen from space at night, is a vast area of darkness between South Korea and China.

---

Cigarettes in Cuba

In Cuba, a shortage of cigarettes has driven the per pack price in Santiago from the equivalent of 33 cents to 95 cents.

It seems a government retail company in Santiago owes about $430,000 to the government's regional cigarette wholesaler, which in turn owes $95,000 to the government cigarette manufacturer.

The manufacturer stopped shipping cigarettes to the wholesaler after the debt extended past 30 days.

Juventud Rebelde said that officials were working to solve the payment problems and had begun to ease the shortage by bringing in cigarettes from other areas.

---

Meat and Sugar in socialist Latin America.

Just to the south of Cuba, in the nascent socialist paradise of Venezuela, the news via the AP from CARACAS, is about a shortage of meat and sugar:

Meat cuts vanished from Venezuelan supermarkets this week, leaving only unsavory bits like chicken feet, while costly artificial sweeteners have increasingly replaced sugar, and many staples sell far above government-fixed prices. Shortages have sporadically appeared with items from milk to coffee since early 2003, when Chavez began regulating prices for 400 basic products as a way to counter inflation and protect the poor.

Yet inflation has soared to an accumulated 78 percent in the last four years in an economy awash in petrodollars, and food prices have increased particularly swiftly, creating a widening discrepancy between official prices and the true cost of getting goods to market in Venezuela.

"Shortages have increased significantly as well as violations of price controls," Central Bank director Domingo Maza Zavala told the Venezuelan broadcaster Union Radio on Thursday. "The difference between real market prices and controlled prices is very high."

President Hugo Chavez's administration blames the food supply problems on unscrupulous speculators, but industry officials say government price controls that strangle profits are responsible. Authorities on Wednesday raided a warehouse in Caracas and seized seven tons of sugar hoarded by vendors unwilling to market the inventory at the official price.

Major private supermarkets suspended sales of beef earlier this week after one chain was shut down for 48 hours for pricing meat above government-set levels, but an agreement reached with the government on Wednesday night promises to return meat to empty refrigerator shelves.

---

Common Sense in the West
The world has gone mad and there seems to be a severe shortage of common sense in the politically correct, multi-culti, environmentally panicked west. It refuses to believe the bellicose threats of Ahmadinejad or the lying Kim il Jong but it also refuses to believe the constant reassures of Tony Snow that the US is not preparing for war with Iran. The world discounts or ignores the threat posed by the Wahhabists and their banished cousins, al-Qaeda but it sees the United States as the greatest threat to world peace. Crying "overpopulation will be the death of us" the west has gone into a demographic death spiral and is not replenishing its population while the third world which evidently didn't get the message, exports its children at alarming rates. Communism has collapsed, Fidel Castro is not long for this world, socialist Europe is living on borrowed time, Hugo Chavez is screwing South America and Democrats in the United States still want socialized medicine. Sometimes I feel as though I am in an alternate reality.