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Zhenhua Lu

Robert Delaney

US lawmakers have expressed frustration with the Trump administration’s handling of North Korea, with a top Republican questioning whether the administration’s “maximum pressure” policy had been exploited by Kim Jong-un, and a ranking Democrat calling President Donald Trump’s June meeting with the North Korean leader a substantial “failure”.
During a House Foreign Affairs Committee oversight hearing concerning the policy on Thursday, Representative Ed Royce, the California Republican who is the committee’s chairman, said he was “very concerned that our ‘maximum pressure’ campaign is faltering”.
“Kim appears to be using talks, as he has time and again, to probe for weaknesses and buy time,” Royce added.
Watch: US offers to lift North Korea sanctions


Representative Eliot Engel, Democrat of New York, criticised Trump directly.
“Despite the president proudly boasting success after the June summit, there’s been no progress on denuclearisation,” Engel said. “In fact, it now seems that the so-called success has turned into a failure.”
Royce, Engels and other committee members acknowledged that some sanctions instituted by the United Nations Security Council against North Korea had been effective. But they expressed concern that Kim’s government continues to take in export revenue that keeps the country’s nuclear weapons programme running.
US says envoy’s Asia trip shows progress toward revival of North Korea talks
Royce, for example, accused China of starting to buy North Korean commodities again, saying it was a consequence of conflicting messages sent out by the Trump administration on the “maximum pressure” campaign: “When our messages are confusing or contradictory, we shouldn’t be surprised when others, like Beijing, reportedly resume importing North Korean coal.”
Representative Gerald Connolly, a Virginia Democrat, also questioned Trump’s current approach of warming up to Kim.
“Why would Kim Jong-un submit to these pressures when Trump already gave the North Korean dictator everything he’s longed for – international legitimacy, an audience with an American president, and the cancellation of military exercises with our South Korean ally?” Connolly asked.

Marshall Billingslea, the US Treasury Department’s assistant secretary for terrorist financing, appearing as a witness, described one strategy he said Pyongyang had been using to evade sanctions, ship-to-ship transfers of goods.
“I’ve been active with a number of the countries that are flags of convenience nations such as Panama and others to identify specific vessels that we know are in fact owned and operated by North Korean shell companies to get them to immediately de-register, de-flag, de-list these companies,” he said.
“We also are designating specific companies and their ships. We just went after a Russian company and six of its vessels for engaging in ship-to-ship transfer behaviour, which is the primary method by which North Korea is undercutting the intent of the Security Council.”
China helps Russia on ‘North Korea sanctions dodge’
In addition, shortly before the hearings, the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control announced sanctions against web design and app development companies in China and Russia that are owned and managed by North Korean entities.
Royce asserted that those companies used “slave labour” to help further Pyongyang’s weapons programme.

The Treasury identified Yanbian Silverstar Network Technology Company of Jilin, China, also known as China Silver Star; its North Korean chief executive Jong Song Hwa; and a sister company, Volasys Silver Star of Vladivostok, Russia, as part of this scheme.
“Those workers are fed, but the money, the cheque, goes to the regime and ends up going toward their military programmes,” Royce said.
Billingslea defended the sanction programme’s effectiveness, telling Royce that “we are not faltering on the economic pressure campaign”.
Moon-Kim summit ‘perfect timing’ for end to cold war in Korea
“The pressure is on,” Billingslea added. “We continue to ramp up pressure to combat North Korea efforts to evade sanctions.”
Supporting Billingslea, Manisha Singh, assistant secretary for economic and business affairs at the State Department, told the committee that “the only time the North Koreans will see any relaxation of sanctions on their government is if we see a series of efforts to comply our demand of denuclearising”.

Kathleen Stephens, the US ambassador to South Korea from 2008 to 2011, told the South China Morning Post that as long as news reports indicate that North Korea is continuing to build its nuclear materials, “you're going to see this kind of a concern in Congress about keeping the [sanction] pressure on”.
“My concern is that a way needs to be found to get into a serious negotiation that leads to some specific actions, which will help to get us down the path of steps towards denuclearisation and towards a more permanent peace.” Stephens, now president of the Korea Economic Institute of America, said.
Toward that end, the White House confirmed this week that Trump received a “very warm, very positive” letter from Kim requesting a second summit meeting between the two leaders.
A third inter-Korean meeting is scheduled for next week in Pyongyang, with Kim and his South Korean counterpart, President Moon Jae-in, set to discuss practical steps toward achieving denuclearisation.
Additional reporting by Associated Press


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US House members show frustration with Trump administration’s handling of North Korea

Representative Ed Royce, chairman of the US House Foreign Relations Committee, said Thursday he was very concerned that the sanctions programme against North Korea ‘is faltering’. Photo: Reuters

U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin talks to Financial Action Task Force President Marshall Billingslea as they pose for the official photo at the G20 Meeting of Finance Ministers in Buenos Aires, Argentina, July 21, 2018. REUTERS/Marcos Brindicci

TOPSHOT - A man walks past a giant banner showing a picture of the summit handshake between South Korean President Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, at Seoul City Hall on September 13, 2018. - South Korean President Moon Jae-in will fly to North Korea's capital on September 18, for a third summit with the North's leader Kim Jong Un as US efforts to dismantle Pyongyang's nuclear arsenal have stalled. (Photo by Jung Yeon-je / AFP)

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The new US special representative for North Korea Stephen Biegun is in the middle of a trip to South Korea, China and Japan in a bid to help restart denuclearisation talks. Photo: EPA-EFE

Harry's View for September 11, 2018. Image: Harry Harrison

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo listens to President Donald Trump speak during a Cabinet meeting in the Cabinet Room of the White House on Wednesday, July 18, 2018 in Washington, D.C. On Friday Trump acknowledged that North Korea has not begu to denclearize, and told Pompeo to cancel his trip to Pyongyang. (Olivier Douliery/Abaca Press/TNS)

North Korea’s ravaged forests and the South Koreans ready to replant them

The Korean peninsula was left denuded by decades of colonial rule, war and hardship, but today forest cover in South Korea is double the global average, and it aims to export its green expertise across the 38th Parallel

--ONE TIME USE ONLY, RE-USE WILL BE CHARGED AT POST MAGAZINE RATES- Inside the DMZ, or Korea's demilitarized zone, signs hang along the forest path a stark warning of the thousands of land mines buried in the soundings forests and mountains, along the DMZ, in Seoul, South Korea on June 11, 2018. 11JUN18 [05AUGUST2018 FEATURE POST MAGAZINE] CREDIT: Jonas Gratzer

Autumn in South Korea’s Naejangsan National Park. Picture: Alamy

--ONE TIME USE ONLY, RE-USE WILL BE CHARGED AT POST MAGAZINE RATES- German Erika Jenniches ( to the left ) and her friends retreat to the greenery at Mount Namsan, when they need a escape from the bustling city life and the air pollutions in Seoul, South Korea on June 04, 2018. 04JUN18 [05AUGUST2018 FEATURE POST MAGAZINE] CREDIT: Jonas Gratzer

--ONE TIME USE ONLY, RE-USE WILL BE CHARGED AT POST MAGAZINE RATES- Retired diplomat Chung Il (R) and his colleague discuss the fauna of the new planted forest that grows in South Korea's part of the DMZ, on June11, 2018. 11JUN18 [05AUGUST2018 FEATURE POST MAGAZINE] CREDIT: Jonas Gratzer

--ONE TIME USE ONLY, RE-USE WILL BE CHARGED AT POST MAGAZINE RATES- Chinese tourist Andrew Zheng and his family enjoying the clean Cheonggyecheon River in Seoul, South Korea on June 07, 2018. 07JUN18 [05AUGUST2018 FEATURE POST MAGAZINE] CREDIT: Jonas Gratzer

BXMTFJ clearing cut bunkers 2 men of the 1st Squadron, 2nd Platoon, Company B, 187th RCT, 2nd U.S. Infantry Division clear out bunker [05AUGUST2018 FEATURE POST MAGAZINE] CREDIT: ALAMY

A Korea Forest Service researcher tends plants at the National DMZ Botanical Garden in South Korea. Pictures: Jonas Gratzer

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South Korean officials visit Panmunjom on Friday. The third Inter-Korean summit will take place from September 18 to 20 in Pyongyang. Photo: EPA

Donald Trump reportedly frightened Pentagon with an almost-sent tweet on North Korea

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FILE - In this June 12, 2018, file photo, U.S. President Donald Trump answers questions about the summit with North Korea leader Kim Jong Un during a press conference at the Capella resort on Sentosa Island in Singapore. To South Koreans, Bob Woodward's new book about the Trump presidency paints a bizarre but familiar picture of an unconventional U.S. leader who thinks little of a decades-long alliance that South Koreans describe as a "bond of blood." (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File)

The journalist Bob Woodward. left, and US President Donald Trump. Woodward, author of a new book on Trump, said in an interview on Sunday that Trump had drafted a tweet that North Korea would have read as a sign of an imminent US attack. Photo: AFP

UN Command chief talks to North Koreans about troop remains

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Republican foreign affairs committee chairman worries that ‘maximum pressure’ campaign is faltering; Democrat calls Trump-Kim summit a ‘failure’


Republican foreign affairs committee chairman worries that ‘maximum pressure’ campaign is faltering; Democrat calls Trump-Kim summit a ‘failure’.
