U.S. Special Representative Sung Kim met his South Korean and Japanese counterparts, Kim Gunn and Funakoshi Takehiro, after a U.S. assessment that the North was preparing its Punggye-ri test site for what would be its seventh nuclear test.

“We are preparing for all contingencies in close coordination with our Japanese and ROK allies,” Kim said at the beginning of the meeting, referring to South Korea by the initials of its official name, the Republic of Korea.

This year, North Korea has tested several ballistic missiles, including one thought to be its largest intercontinental ballistic missile, in violation of U.N. sanctions. read more

“We want to make clear to the DPRK that its unlawful and destabilizing activities have consequences and that the international community will not accept these actions as normal,” the U.S. envoy said, referring to North Korea.

South Korea’s newly appointed nuclear envoy, Kim Gunn, said North Korea’s “relentless pursuit of nuclear weapons will only end up strengthening our deterrence”.

“The course that Pyongyang is currently embarking on has only one inevitable destination: reduce security for North Korea itself,” the South Korean diplomat said.

Last week, the United States called for more U.N. sanctions on North Korea over its ballistic missile launches, but China and Russia vetoed the suggestion, publicly splitting the U.N. Security Council on North Korea for the first time since it started punishing it in 2006, when it conducted its first nuclear test. read more

Japan’s Funakoshi stressed the need for coordination, vowing to “enhance regional deterrence, including trilateral security cooperation”.

The officials said the door for dialogue was open and expressed concern over the COVID-19 situation in North Korea.

Earlier, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman said the United States would not link humanitarian aid for North Korea as it battles COVID to denuclearization.

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Reporting by Soo-hyang Choi, Dogyun Kim and Daewoung Kim; Editing by Robert Birsel

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Source: https://www.reuters.com/world/us-south-korea-japan-envoys-meet-north-korea-nuclear-tension-2022-06-03/

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Angela Merkel had a third and probably final audience with outgoing Emperor Akihito of Japan in Tokyo on Tuesday, ahead of a planned meeting with Akihito’s successor, Crown Prince Naruhito, later in the day.

The details of their discussions during the audience, considered a rare honor for politicians visiting the country, were not made public.

Merkel left Tokyo’s Imperial Palace bound for an event with students at the city’s Keio University. As in her meeting with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Monday, the German chancellor paid particular attention to global free trade.

On WTO reforms and free trade

Merkel told students that Japan planned to focus heavily on reforms of the World Trade Organization during its time as the holder of the G20 presidency.

“And in this, there is a lot of common ground between Germany and Japan,” she said. The government in Berlin was closely following the current trade disputes between the US and China, two “very big players” in world trade, Merkel said, adding that Germany and Japan would swiftly feel the fallout of a collapse in consumption in China as a result of the trade tensions.

She cited Germany’s auto industry and Japanese suppliers of Chinese technology giant Huawei in particular, saying this explained why Germany and Japan would push for a new multilateral approach to global trade.

On North Korea’s disarmament

Merkel warned against naivete when the conversation turned to Japan’s uneasy neighbor North Korea.

Without mentioning Donald Trump or US policy explicitly, Merkel said it was important not to simply listen to promises from Pyongyang on the issue of nuclear disarmament. With a view on Japan in particular, she advised against “striking deals there now at the expense of third parties.”

Japan has not been part of talks on Korean disarmament and rapprochement between the North, the South and the US.

“We will always advocate, along with Japan, for sustainable and successful denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula,” Merkel said. She also noted that Germany taking its stint as president of the UN Security Council meant that Berlin now chaired the UN’s sanctions committee.

Merkel fielded questions on a range of topics from the macho nature of politics in Germany through to advancements in AI

On China’s growing role, the world’s expectations, and Huawei

The Christian Democrat chancellor also called on China to do more on the world stage as its global clout intensifies.

“China will have to grow into its responsibility for a peaceful world order,” she told the Keio University attendees, which has a lot of international students. This would likely include participating in UN missions.

“The more dominant and the more economically developed China becomes, the more requests will be made of China in areas like these,” Merkel said.

On artificial intelligence and humanity

Merkel encouraged students to think carefully about ethical and moral questions when working on advancements in fields like artificial intelligence. Flawed humans should be sure to retain the upper hand in such relationships, she said.

“What we do should serve the people,” she said. “It will surely one day be possible to read our thoughts.” This, she said, could be a great help for people who can’t speak; but what if it became possible for all? “Do we want that? What would that mean for everyday society?”

She raised similar questions on topics like prosthetics, organ transplants, and maybe more in future.

“If I were to get a chip installed in my brain, so that I could think more quickly or better, would I then be the same person?” Merkel asked the chamber. “At what point does my humanity end?”

Merkel returns from her two-day trip to Japan on Tuesday

On coal power and cows’ diets

One tough question from the floor touched on environmental policy, and Germany’s contentious expansion of its coal power sector — the combined upshot of bids to limit Germany’s existing energy dependence on Russia, and Merkel’s decision to shut down nuclear German power plants in the immediate aftermath of the Fukushima nuclear meltdown in 2011.

Merkel repeated a recent pledge that Germany would aim to cease all coal mining by 2038, saying “unfortunately we still have too much brown coal [lignite].”

But the challenges in environmental policy, the chancellor noted jokingly, are many and varied around the world.

“Then what’s left over is the agricultural sector,” Merkel said. “There, we need to teach cows to eat properly and emit less CO2. That will be a very big challenge.”

msh/nm (AFP, dpa, Reuters)

Source: https://www.dw.com/en/in-japan-angela-merkel-warns-against-treating-north-korea-naively/a-47360231

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But Kim, in the note posted by Trump on Twitter, made no mention of any work by North Korea toward denuclearization at a time when there has been no sign of concrete action by Pyongyang since the two leaders held a landmark summit in Singapore on June 12.

Despite that, Trump hailed the July 6 letter as a “very nice note,” saying “Great progress being made.”

Kim praised Trump for “energetic and extraordinary efforts made by Your Excellency Mr. President for the improvement of relations between the two countries and the faithful implementation of the joint statement.”

He was referring the summit statement signed by the two leaders – the first-ever U.S.-North Korean summit – in which Kim agreed in broad terms to “work toward denuclearization” of the Korean Peninsula.

Trump later said North Korea was no longer a nuclear threat, even though no details were announced, and critics suggested the president had failed to secure any new commitments from Pyongyang toward the dismantling of its nuclear missile program.

The date of the letter suggests it may have been sent before Secretary of State Michael Pompeo’s visit to Pyongyang last week, in which the United States and North Korea struggled to make headway on the denuclearization issue.

North Korea accused the United States on Saturday of making “gangster-like” demands in the talks in North Korea, contradicting Pompeo who said the old enemies had made progress.

But Kim’s note, which Trump included in his Twitter post with an image of the letter in Korean and an English-language translation of it, took a different tone.

“I firmly believe that the strong will, sincere efforts and unique approach of myself and Your Excellency Mr. President aimed at opening up a new future between the DPRK and the U.S. will surely come to fruition,” Kim wrote, referring to North Korea by its acronym.

Kim said he hoped the process between the two sides would lead to “practical actions” in the future – though he offered no specifics – and that there would be a second meeting between the two leaders.

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The big picture: Kim Jong-un has kept China updated on developments in his talks with the United States, visiting Beijing three times in the past few months to meet President Xi Jinping. And China’s influence with North Korea is crucial leverage against Washington amid an escalating trade war.

Yes, but: North Korea’s pivot was predicted by dozens of experts who said to watch for Kim to dial back vague promises of denuclearization after his summit in Singapore with President Trump.

Graham’s full quote:

“I see China’s hands all over this. We are in a fight with China. We buy $500 billion worth of goods from the Chinese; they buy $100 billion from us. They cheat, and President Trump wants to change the economic relationship with China, so if I were President Trump, I would not let China use North Korea to back me off of the trade dispute. We’ve got more bullets than they do when it comes to trade. We sell them $100 billion; they sell us $500 billion. We can hurt them more than they’ll hurt us, and all we’re looking for is for them to stop cheating when it comes to trade. There is no doubt in my mind that it’s the Chinese pulling the North Koreans back.”

Source: https://www.axios.com/lindsey-graham-north-korea-regrettable-trump-trade-war-china-30cf2384-5526-44d8-a956-f01b6d2bb79a.html

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Foreign Minister Taro Kono (Mainichi)

Foreign Minister Taro Kono will tell International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief Yukiya Amano at a planned July 4 meeting in Vienna that Japan is ready to allow the use of a 350 million yen nonproliferation fund Tokyo has contributed to the nuclear watchdog for inspections related to the denuclearization of North Korea, the Mainichi Shimbun has learned.

• 【Related】N. Korea increased production of nuclear weapons materials in recent months: report
• 【Related】Suspicions emerge N. Korea trying to delay denuclearization talks
• 【Related】N. Korea scored big win in summit with US in Singapore: Ex-British ambassador

Foreign Minister Kono also intends to convey Japan’s readiness to provide experts such as engineers for the denuclearization process. U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un agreed on the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula in their summit in Singapore on June 12.

Through these offers, Tokyo intends to emphasize its intention to play an important role in a complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearization of the North, which some experts say has up to 80 warheads.

The IAEA, headquartered in Vienna, monitors and inspects nuclear facilities of non-nuclear weapons states around the world to curb the proliferation of nuclear technology and materials that can be used for the production of atomic bombs.

Kono’s scheduled move comes on the heels of the announcement by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe that Japan would provide the IAEA with financial support for inspecting North Korean nuclear facilities. The 350 million yen will be for the initial phase of inspections.

Japan has nuclear experts with know-how regarding the decommissioning of the Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant, which suffered a triple-meltdown in 2011 and released a large amount of radioactive materials into the surrounding environment. The Japanese government has judged that this knowledge and experience can be utilized in surveying radioactive contamination in North Korea.

“Japan has accumulated expert knowledge in this area. We are going to commit North Korea’s denuclearization through both material support and encouragement,” Abe stated.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is scheduled to visit North Korea on July 6 to begin discussions on how to proceed with denuclearization. If the two sides reach an agreement, North Korea will declare its nuclear weapons and relevant facilities to the IAEA, which will then dispatch inspectors to check nuclear plants for plutonium production and uranium enrichment facilities. Both plutonium and uranium are fissile materials used in the cores of atomic bombs. The inspectors will install monitoring cameras to check whether nuclear materials are taken in or out of certain locations.

This process, however, can be very murky. No one other than North Koreans knows the complete picture of the reclusive country’s nuclear program, and the cost and duration of necessary inspections are as yet unknown. The Japanese government is considering asking other countries including North Korean neighbors such as South Korea, China and Russia to share the financial burden.

The IAEA is expected to work together with the United States in dismantling North Korean nuclear weapons. Under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), only five nuclear-armed powers — the U.S., Russia, China, Britain and France — are allowed to carry out this task.

(Japanese original by Yusuke Tanabe and Muneyoshi Mitsuda, Political News Department)

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Source: https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20180701/p2a/00m/0na/007000c

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