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US President Donald Trump in a meeting with key personnel on Aug. 24. Pictured from the left are Andrew Kim, head of the CIA‘s Korea Mission Center; Steve Biegun, Special Representative for North Korea Policy; Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, US Ambassador to the Philippines Sung Kim, and Vice President Mike Pence. (Twitter account of White House Director of Social Media Dan Scavino)
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Editorial piece describes US forces in Japan and the Philippines as “war machinations”
Uriminzokkiri (“Among Our Nation” in Korean), a propaganda website for North Korea’s Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Fatherland (CPRF), wrote on Aug. 31 that “dialogue and war machinations are absolutely incompatible.” While the remarks were consistent with Pyongyang’s past position, they are drawing attention for appearing diredctly after US Secretary of Defense James Mattis stirred up controversy with hints that South Korea-US joint military exercises might be resumed. In a commentary piece credited to an individual contributor that day, Uriminzokkiri wrote that the US “is perpetrating grave acts of military antagonism against us behind the screen of North Korea-US dialogue.” “This is borne out by the US special forces who have recently been crawling into Japan, the Philippines, and South Korea’s Jinhae Naval Base to carry out secret exercises targeting our republic,” the piece said, citing an Aug. 17 report by a South Korean news outlet claiming that US Navy special forces stationed in Japan had traveled to the island of Luzon in the Philippines for infiltration training, which “could serve as long-distance training to infiltrate near Pyongyang with a change in direction.” The report also noted evidence of the USS Michigan nuclear submarine transporting special forces stationed in Japan to Jinhae Naval Base around late July and early August. “As part of the US’s indiscriminate war machinations, this is an exceedingly provocative and dangerous military action that vitiates the hard-won climate of peace and dialogue on the Korean Peninsula and throws cold water on implementation of the North Korea-US Joint Statement in Singapore,” the piece said. “We [North Korea] have shown a sincere attitude and good faith toward dialogue, adopting a string of groundbreaking measures beyond imagination for the sake of results from dialogue and the building of trust with the other side,” it continued. Says US resumes “gangster-like demands” despite NK’s “sincere attitude and good faith” “But despite all the noise it makes about ‘dialogue,’ the US not only has not made the slightest, most rudimentary effort to build trust, but is brazen enough to simply insist on the same unfair and gangster-like demands for ‘prior denuclearization,’” it said. The piece accused Washington of refusing to adopt an end-of-war declaration as a “rudimentary measure to build trust” even after North Korea commenced dismantlement of the missile engine testing facility at its West Sea satellite launch site last month and returned the remains of 55 US POWs and MIAs on Aug. 27. A US newspaper recently reported that US President Donald Trump promised to adopt an end-of-war declaration while meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un for their summit, with his failure to follow through drawing an outcry from Pyongyang. In the piece, the website warned, “If North Korea-US relations deteriorate again and the Korean Peninsula faces a dire threat of war as it did last year, responsibility for that will fall entirely on the ones banding together this military conspiracy.” “Instead of devoting its energies to military provocations that can only do harm, [the US] needs to be properly fulfilling its role for implementation of the historic North Korea-US joint statement,” the piece insisted. Meanwhile North Korea has yet to respond officially to US pressure tactics mentioning the possible resumption of joint military exercises in the wake of its recent abrupt cancellation of a scheduled fourth North Korea visit by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. By Kim Ji-eun, staff reporter Please direct comments or questions to [english@hani.co.kr]
