“Four in ten North Koreans are chronically short of food and further cuts to already minimal rations are expected after the worst harvest in a decade,” Reuters reports.
“Official rations are down to 300 grammes – under 11 ounces – per person per day, the lowest ever for this time of year, the U.N. said following a food security assessment it carried out at Pyongyang’s request from March 29 to April 12.”
“Joseph Yun, the former State Department Special Representative for North Korea, confirmed Monday that he signed an agreement to pay North Korea $2 million for the release of American student Otto Warmbier in 2017,” CNN reports.
Said Yun: “As soon as North Korea side told me that this bill for $2 million would have to be paid … I contacted my boss then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. He got back to me very quickly thereafter to say yes, go ahead and sign.”
Trump has flatly denied any money was paid for the release of Warmbier.
President Trump said the United States did not pay any money to North Korea as it sought the release of Otto Warmbier, a day after a report said Trump had approved a $2 million bill from Pyongyang for the American student’s care, Reuters reports.
Said Trump: “No money was paid to North Korea for Otto Warmbier, not two Million Dollars, not anything else.”
“North Korea issued a $2 million bill for the hospital care of comatose American Otto Warmbier, insisting that a U.S. official sign a pledge to pay it before being allowed to fly the University of Virginia student from Pyongyang in 2017,” the Washington Post reports.
“The presentation of the invoice — not previously disclosed by U.S. or North Korean officials — was extraordinarily brazen even for a regime known for its aggressive tactics… But the main U.S. envoy sent to retrieve Warmbier signed an agreement to pay the medical bill on instructions passed down from President Trump.”
North Korea tested a new type of tactical guided weapon, CNBC reports.
“The test of ‘a powerful warhead’ was overseen by North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and marks the first public weapons test from the rogue regime since President Trump’s historic meeting with Kim in Singapore last year.”
Washington Post: “It was not immediately clear what type of weapon was fired, but the move would mark the first weapons test since President Trump’s summit with Kim in Hanoi in February and a sign of public defiance by Kim following a stalemate in the high-stakes denuclearization talks.”
“North Korean authorities staged a public trial and shot two female fortune tellers to death last month, forcing tens of thousands of people to watch, in what appeared to be a resumption of public executions,” Radio Free Asia reports.
“The executions of the two women took place in March in North Hamgyong’s Chongjin city, and were aimed at forcing officials to stop patronizing fortune tellers and engaging in other ‘superstitious’ behavior.”
When President Trump was surveying hurricane damage in Puerto Rico in 2017, he “was distracted by other matters — including his then-devolving war of words with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un,” CNN reports.
At one point, Trump pointed to the “nuclear football” — a briefcase always in the President’s vicinity that can be used to authorize a nuclear attack — and claimed he could use it on Kim whenever he felt.
Said Trump: “This is what I have for Kim.”
“President Trump last week intended to reverse sanctions imposed on two Chinese shipping companies accused of violating North Korea trade prohibitions — until officials in his administration persuaded him to back off and then devised a misleading explanation of his vague tweet announcing the move,” Bloomberg reports.
Donald Trump tweeted that he has ordered the reversal of sanctions against North Korea that were announced just today by his own Treasury Department.
New York Times: “Addressing diplomats and foreign correspondents at a news conference in Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, Vice Foreign Minister Choe Son-hui said that personal relations between Mr. Kim and Mr. Trump were ‘still good and the chemistry is mysteriously wonderful.’”
“But she said Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and John Bolton, Mr. Trump’s national security adviser, had created an ‘atmosphere of hostility and mistrust’ that thwarted the top leaders’ negotiations in Hanoi last month.”
“The U.S. is ‘watching in real time’ developments at a long-range rocket site that North Korea is believed to have rebuilt,” NBC News reports.
“The Sohae facility has been used in the past for satellite launches which employ similar technology to what is required to fire intercontinental ballistic missiles. It is now back to “normal operating status,” according to new commercial images and analysis from two teams of researchers.”
“Former President Jimmy Carter — who once brokered a nuclear agreement with Kim Jong Un’s grandfather in the 1990s — is offering to travel to North Korea to try and break President Trump’s deadlock with the North Korean dictator,” Politico reports.
“The prospect that Trump would align himself with his Democratic predecessor seems remote. The normally reserved ex-president has challenged Trump, sayingthat he would ‘change all of the policies’ Trump has instituted if he could, and describing his presidency as a ‘disaster.’ And while Trump has not made Carter a target while in office, he has previously chided Carter for ostensibly being a pushover.”
New York Times: “But Mr. Trump’s offer was essentially the same deal that the United States has pushed — and the North has rejected — for a quarter century. Intelligence agencies had warned him, publicly, Mr. Kim would not be willing to give up the arsenal completely. North Korea itself had said repeatedly that it would only move gradually.”
“Several of Mr. Trump’s own aides, led by national security adviser John R. Bolton and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, thought the chances of a grand bargain for total nuclear disarmament were virtually zero. Some questioned whether the summit meeting should go forward.”
“Mr. Trump disagreed. He had taken to showing what he called Mr. Kim’s ‘beautiful letters’ to visitors to the Oval Office, as evidence he had built a rapport with one of the world’s most brutal dictators. While some in the White House worried Mr. Trump was being played, the president seemed entranced — even declaring ‘we fell in love.'”
President Trump “attempted to clarify his comments that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un was not responsible for the death of Otto Warmbier after a bipartisan backlash and a blistering statement from Warmbier’s parents,” NBC News reports.
Said Trump: “I never like being misinterpreted, but especially when it comes to Otto Warmbier and his great family. Remember, I got Otto out along with three others. The previous Administration did nothing, and he was taken on their watch. Of course I hold North Korea responsible for Otto’s mistreatment and death.”
Richard Haass: “Things never should have reached this point. Summits at most are expected to negotiate the last 10% of a deal. The Hanoi summit appeared to have it backwards, requiring that the leaders negotiate 90% on the spot. The Hanoi summit showed the dangers of a president who over-personalizes diplomacy. Foreign policy is mostly about the details, not the chemistry.”
“By overplaying his hand, Kim may have saved the president from himself. If reports were right, the U.S. was prepared to agree to offer a degree of sanctions relief in exchange for North Korea dismantling one of its enrichment facilities. But North Korea could have done this, and still maintained or even expanded its ability to enrich uranium and produce bombs and missiles.”
“Although disappointed with the summit outcome and concerned about what comes next, U.S. allies in the region (above all, South Korea and Japan) will be relieved.”
President Trump called Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) last night from Hanoi to talk about the Michael Cohen’s testimony before the House Oversight Committee and the threats, since rescinded, that Gaetz made about Cohen, The Atlantic reports.
Gaetz was heard telling Trump: “I was happy to do it for you. You just keep killing it.”
“President Trump shook hands with Kim Jong-un on Wednesday night in Hanoi, Vietnam, to kick off their second summit gathering. The two leaders are sitting down to a formal dinner with some of their top aides,” the New York Times reports.
“Amid meetings with Vietnamese officials on Wednesday, American politics were clearly on the president’s mind. He attacked his former lawyer and a Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) on Twitter just hours before he was expected to meet Mr. Kim for dinner.”
Washington Post: “Trump’s Twitter attacks on Blumenthal and Cohen raised questions about how rigorously he was preparing for the meetings with Kim.”
Alex Ward: “A tentative deal between President Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to be finalized over the next two days at their summit in Vietnam has emerged — and while it may still change, the current agreement looks like a huge win for Kim. For the US? Not so much.”
“Under the current iteration of the agreement, described to me by three people familiar with the negotiations who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomatic issues, the US would agree to lift some sanctions on North Korea and improve ties between the two countries in exchange for a commitment from Kim Jong Un to close down a key nuclear facility.”
Taegan Goddard
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire -- which for more than two decades has been one of the nation's most influential political news sites.
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