General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsAbout those bodies of US soldiers from the Korean War that Trump bragged about...
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2018/7/12/1779905/-North-Korea-snubs-United-States-on-talks-over-returning-war-deadAs the Washington Post reports
We were ready, the [U.S.] official said. It just didnt happen. They didnt show.
According to the South Korean news agency Yonhap, after North Korea missed the appointment, the United States passed a message through the United Nations Military Armistice Commission, which put in a phone call to North Korea. North Korean officials then claimed that they didnt appear for the meeting because it wasnt at the right level, and if America wanted talks to resume, they should send in military generals to talk to their North Korean counterparts.
...
Trump told a crowd of supporters a week later that the remains of 200 Americans have been sent back. Military officials later denied that, but told reporters that they expected the remains to arrive within days and had made prearrangements for their arrival, such as storing caskets at the DMZ.
Kim Jong Un is milking it. Trump has no deal for denuclearization, no recovered bodies, nothing. And in return Kim got Trump to cut ties with SK and got major legitimization out of it.
HipChick
(25,485 posts)from the highest rooftops?
RKP5637
(67,112 posts)it was just so long ago.
PearliePoo2
(7,768 posts)RKP5637
(67,112 posts)for example, millions were killed. I imagine many solders from then that were not recovered were completely lost, burned, etc. in trenches. I just can't imagine NK saying now we will embalm and save these bodies for the US. I just don't know, but to me it seems a stretch.
riversedge
(70,299 posts)RKP5637
(67,112 posts)Achilleaze
(15,543 posts)He has no respect. He should stick to insulting our POWs and Gold Star families. He is really good at that. And republicans applaud him for doing it. Disgraceful.
* aka Dirty Donny (R)
HipChick
(25,485 posts)RKP5637
(67,112 posts)HipChick
(25,485 posts)Rethugs would be on 24/7...
PearliePoo2
(7,768 posts)when N.K. turned over remains that upon examination they were determined to be mixed animal bones and other unidentifiable objects.
BLOTUS is an idiot, he doesn't know "squat" about anything. He's being played like the fucking fool he is.
gratuitous
(82,849 posts)Is there any way the popular media could possibly remember who they talked to in the first flush of celebration after Trump bragged that he'd gotten all these remains back from the North Koreans? I recall seeing two sisters interviewed who were thrilled that their brother's remains would be repatriated at long last, based on statements Trump made.
Well, there's probably no way anyone could find these women again to follow up on the hollowness of Trump's self-serving and premature crowing.
RKP5637
(67,112 posts)checked/matched. Trump could care less about the vets and families, he uses them as tools. I wish people would quit falling for this huckster.
soryang
(3,299 posts)What nonsense.
Blue_Tires
(55,445 posts)Dude says anything that will make him look good...
Hekate
(90,793 posts)And what does America get? Nada, Zip, Nothing.
Well, nothing except a steaming plate of humiliation.
soryang
(3,299 posts)When Kim Yong Chol was at the White House in early June, Trump told him that the US would consider an announcement to end the Korean conflict. This falls in the category of CVIG which is the term Pompeo came up with, complete verifiable irreversible guarantee (of North Korean security). This negotiating concept represented an acceptance of a reciprocity principle. Reciprocity was demonstrated, at least on a temporary basis, when the joint military exercises were suspended. When Pompeo was meeting with Chol in Pyongyang, in reaction to the tsunami of criticism of the summit in the US, about the summit and the exercise suspension, he blew off the proposal of an announcement to end the state of war and went strictly with his allegedly new formula FFVD. The latter is a superficial name change that failed to disguise the return to a unilateral ultimatum to denuclearize. This is the same hardline approach that almost derailed the summit before it happened. There won't be any denuclearization without dealing with the security guarantee issues for North Korea. Currently, the press and all other interested parties are to the right of Pompeo and Trump on this, so Pompeo retreated to the hardliner position which predictably failed.
The game being "played" in the current vernacular is not over. The sanctions are still in effect, and are having a crushing effect on the North's despotic government. The patronage system of the dictatorship has been impaired for some time now by the economic impact of the UN sanctions and the poor harvest last year, expected again this year. Soldiers in North Korea are literally starving. The propaganda and diplomacy of North Korea has been geared toward promises of economic improvement that need to be delivered, soon. Recent changes in North Korean military and civil leadership also suggest the need to consolidate control of the armed forces and the need to shift from the military leg to the economic leg of the "byung jin" policy.
The US can deal with Kim and continue on with this process or deal with some unknown generals in bunkers. Kim desperately needs the economic advances possible with denuclearization to achieve the economic improvements needed to bolster his current rule. It isn't like the military pressure is off North Korea either. The decapitation teams and the targeting and command and control resources necessary for a theater nuclear war are standing by in South Korea and Japan and ready to go on an order from Washington.
It's still the same dispute about how the negotiations will go forward. It's too early to call these negotiations a failure, but if they do fail, what's the alternative to negotiations?