NORTH
KOREA
1787'S PROMISE TO YOU
1787 will NEVER SELL AMERICA OUT to foreign adversaries. 1787 will NEVER excuse and enable murderous dictators.
1787 WILL ACTUALLY PUT AMERICA FIRST.
The “summit” (read: photo op) between Kim Jong-un and Donald Trump on June 12, 2018 was a national embarrassment. This is not Monday morning quarterbacking. Most of us knew from the minute we heard about the meeting (as did almost everyone else on the planet) that this was going to be a major foreign policy disaster. The entire spectacle of an American president meeting with a brutal dictator was cringe-worthy enough, but Donald Trump made it so much worse by relentlessly praising this tyrant – the same tyrant whose treatment of his people is reprehensible and in direct violation of every single human rights law on earth, who regularly attacks our ally South Korea, who constantly threatens our nation with cyber warfare and nuclear war, and who is directly responsible for the death of Otto Warmbier, an American college student who was thrown in a North Korean prison for “subversion” after going to North Korea with a guided tour group. Seventeen months later, Otto was released back to the United States in a comatose state and died soon after. No, let’s just forget all of that. Because on June 12, 2018, Kim Jong-un was just another “very, very talented leader” who “wants to do the right thing” while being “very open, very honorable,” and very, very
"worthy," whatever that means. Donald even complimented the “respect” Little Rocket Man receives from his people: “His country does love him. His people, you see the fervor.” You better believe they show fervor. You don’t show fervor in North Korea you get your head chopped off. What is it with this man’s fascination with brutal dictators?
This is stellar foreign policy! Let’s see...a negotiation with a newly legitimized (thanks to Donald Trump) North Korea that doesn’t revolve around South Korea...check! Create confusion between the U.S. and our allies South Korea and Japan...check! Make the threat, multiple times, that U.S. troops will soon leave Asia...check! No more U.S.-South Korea “provocative” (Donald’s words) military exercises...check!
So, the summit in a nutshell: China got a windfall, the United States got humiliated, and Kim Jong-un got a zillion pictures of himself shaking hands with the leader of the free world. Great. Just great. We don’t suppose Trump got the memo that the summit was a joke because on his trip home he tweeted: “There is no longer a Nuclear Threat from North Korea.” Which was a completely delusional statement.
The very day of the June 2018 summit, a report from The Institute for Science and International Security confirmed that “major gaps exist in the knowledge of North Korea’s centrifuge program. In particular, estimates of the amount of enriched uranium produced by this program are highly uncertain. Summarized Institute estimates are that through 2017, North Korea made between about 250 and 1000 kilograms of weapon-grade uranium and an undetermined amount of enriched uranium at enrichment levels below weapon-grade, namely less than 90 percent enriched.”
One month later, the United Nation’s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reported, “The continuation and further development of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea's (DPRK) nuclear program and related statements by the DPRK are a cause for grave concern. The DPRK’s nuclear activities, including those in relation to the Yongbyon Experimental Nuclear Power Plant reactor, the use of the building which houses the reported centrifuge enrichment facility and the construction at the LWR, as well as the DPRK’s sixth nuclear test, are clear violations of relevant UN Security Council resolutions and are deeply regrettable.”
“The Director General continues to call upon the DPRK to comply fully with its obligations under relevant UN Security Council resolutions, to cooperate promptly with the Agency in the full and effective implementation of its NPT Safeguards Agreement and to resolve all outstanding issues, including those that have arisen during the absence of Agency inspectors from the DPRK. The Agency is enhancing its readiness to play an essential role in verifying the DPRK’s nuclear program.”
In July 2019, a full year after the initial summit, The Wall Street Journal reported that:
Shipping containers, trucks and crowds of people moving materials and instruments at North Korea’s key weapons facilities like the Yongbyon Nuclear Scientific Research Center and the Sanum-dong missile production site, suggest North Korea has continued producing fissile material and intercontinental ballistic missiles, according to analysts Jenny Town, a fellow at the Stimson Center, a think tank specialized on security issues, and Jeffrey Lewis, a researcher at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, a research center analyzing the spread of weapons of mass destruction. Siegfried Hecker, a Stanford University nuclear scientist who has visited North Korea’s nuclear facilities, has estimated that North Korea might be capable of producing six or seven nuclear bombs a year. In total, Pyongyang could currently possess between 20 and 60 nuclear bombs, according to estimates by various security analysts.
Unsurprisingly, North Korea’s nuclear weapons program is more of a threat to world peace than ever before.
After the June 2018 debacle, a second summit in February 2019 ended early with no deal and, that June, Donald Trump swung by North Korea on his way home from the Group of 20 summit in Japan and stepped across the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea, becoming the first sitting U.S. president to step foot in North Korea.
Oh! And did we mention that North Korea has repeatedly fired short-range ballistic missiles and rockets, conducted two ground tests at one of its nuclear test sites, and has increased production of long-range missiles and the fissile material used in nuclear weapons? Yep, that’s all happened too.
In May 2020, Kim Jong-un made it clear to his top military officials that he was evoking “new policies for further increasing” North Korea’s nuclear capabilities. North Korea’s official Central News Agency reported that the meeting “set forth new policies for further increasing the nuclear war deterrence of the country and putting the strategic armed forces on a high alert operation…Taken at the meeting were crucial measures for considerably increasing the firepower strike ability of the artillery pieces of the Korean People’s Army.”
The following month, Kim Jong-un literally blew up (like, with explosives) the inter-Korean joint liaison office, an effort spearheaded by President Moon Jae-in to help thaw tensions and increase diplomacy between the North and South Koreans. By October 2020, Kim Jong-un was presiding over a huge military parade, thrown to celebrate his party’s 75th anniversary and to introduce North Korea’s new humongous intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM). A missile that military experts say, if truly operational, is one of the largest road-mobile ICBMs in the entire world.
Fast-forward to January 2021, when Kim Jong-un again declared that he was advancing North Korea’s capabilities, including land- and submarine-launched intercontinental ballistic missiles. He also made it clear where North Korea stands with the United States: “Our external political activities must focus on controlling and subjugating the United States, our archenemy and the biggest stumbling block to the development of our revolution.” In early January 2022, North Korea launched yet another ballistic missile, this time off its east coast. Great. Just great.