About those bodies of US soldiers from the Korean War that Trump bragged about...

[DetlefK]

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2018/7/12/1779905/-North-Korea-snubs-United-States-on-talks-over-returning-war-dead

United States negotiators were left cooling their heels at the DMZ on Thursday, as North Korean officials failed to show up for a scheduled meeting on plans to return the bodies of soldiers missing since the Korean War. The North Korean no-show follows Kim Jong Un skipping scheduled talks with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to visit a potato farm. Overall, North Korean actions seem determined to belittle the United States and slow down the progress of any agreement.

As the Washington Post reports …

“We were ready,” the [U.S.] official said. “It just didn’t happen. They didn’t 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 didn’t appear for the meeting because it wasn’t 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]

1. Why aren't the Dems screaming about these huge failures and lies

from the highest rooftops?

[RKP5637]

3. I do wonder, would they still have all the bodies after all of these years. ... just wondering,

it was just so long ago.

[PearliePoo2]

10. Hi! Please see my post#9 for a little info on your question. nt.

[RKP5637]

13. Thanks!!! I just couldn't imagine NK keeping bodies after all of these years. And in WWII,

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]

2. Even US dead vets are politicalized by vile Trump.

[RKP5637]

4. .... yep, used as a tool by tRump. n/t

[Achilleaze]

5. The republican Draft-Dodger-in-Chief* was lying about the remains of our soldiers

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]

6. And Dems let him get away with it...

[RKP5637]

7. It sure seems like a lot of missed opportunities. I don't get it. n/t

[HipChick]

8. Me either...imagine if this was Obama

Rethugs would be on 24/7...

[PearliePoo2]

9. I recall hearing a retired General on a news show saying that in the past..

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]

11. I wonder how the families feel about this?

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]

14. My hunch is they well might be very disappointed if returned, and then after the DNA was

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]

12. Cut ties to South Korea?

What nonsense.

[Blue_Tires]

15. Trump said only 47 people were killed in Puerto Rico, too...

Dude says anything that will make him look good...

[Hekate]

16. Amazing how Kim got absolutely everything he wanted out of Trump, isn't it?

And what does America get? Nada, Zip, Nothing.

Well, nothing except a steaming plate of humiliation.

[soryang]

17. Kim didn't get "everything he wanted"

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?