Pence says NK must give up nukes before talks

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe meets with Moon on Friday.

“We’re traveling to the Olympics to make sure that North Korea doesn’t use the powerful symbolism and the backdrop of the Winter Olympics to paper over the truth about their regime”, Pence said according to CNN.

“Whatever happens while the Vice President is there, we’ll just have to see”.

South Korea also received billions in aid from the US, partly in exchange for sending more than 300,000 troops to the Vietnam War.

But others were making the most of the rare event.

The North’s conciliatory moves related to the Olympics have generally been welcomed in the South.

Pence has lambasted the North, announcing in Tokyo yesterday that the USA would impose its toughest sanctions to date on the regime. He made a surprise trip to Afghanistan shortly before Christmas to visit USA troops.

“It’s all about pressure, it’s all about military might”.

US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said in a tweet that the sanctions would be unveiled “in the coming weeks” and urged all countries to fully implement existing United Nations sanctions and to back the US pressure campaign by expelling North Korean “financial facilitators and trade reps”.

But South Korea, the other longtime USA partner, favors dialogue.

The visits are being hailed as a way to “reduce tensions” in Korea, though that’s unlikely given that the Kim regime has made it abundantly clear that it will never abandon its pursuit of nuclear weapons and the missiles to deliver them. She’s about 30 years old. And that will have consequences, he says.

Fleeing North Korea is a risky and sometimes deadly task. So we need everybody working together. “The challenge he faces is the one that most senior US officials face: People know that no matter what he says, Trump still does what he wants, so there are structural limits to how much reassurance he can provide”.

Although they’re only three letters apart, Pyeongchang and Pyongyang are two very different cities – Pyeongchang, the site of the 2018 Winter Olympics, is in South Korea, while Pyongyang is the capital of North Korea. After the Korean War ended in 1953, South Korea was one of the poorest countries in the world.

Nakano says this kind of tension among US allies accrues to Pyongyang’s benefit. That indicates North Korea doesn’t always show off all of the missile technologies it’s working on during its annual parades. The United States added Kim to its North Korea sanctions list in January 2017, citing the long list of egregious human rights abuses attributable to Pyongyang.

Vice President Pence and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe review an honor guard before their meeting at Abe’ sofficial residence in Tokyo on February 7, 2018. But in practice, there’s distance.

Pyongyang has held the upper hand in its dialogue with South Korea since the beginning of the year.

The 229 women, dressed in expensive fur, smiled for media and onlookers as they crossed the border enroute to the Pyeongchang Olympic village. In particular, a Canadian citizen who is now in Pyongyang tweeted photos of military hardware.

When the Games end, North and South Korean players will be separated, probably for good.

It would mark the first time in 13 years that DPRK cheerleaders root for both South Korean and DPRK athletes in an global sports event hosted by South Korea. So keeping the peace after the Olympics will require careful coordination.