The world last week: Political retaliations

The "death knell"

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s frustrations, which had been building since his return from his second summit with President Trump in 2019, exploded by blowing up a joint liaison office with South Korea. The collapse of a rare symbol of the two countries’ cooperation destroyed two years of de-escalation on the Korean peninsula, which had been hoped would lead to the denuclearization of North Korea or the signing of a peace treaty formally ending the Korean War. Kim Jong-un acted on his repeated warnings that he would take inter-Korean relations to a new stage, treating South Korea not as a reconciliation partner, but as an “enemy.”

North Korea blew up the joint liaison office with South Korea on June 16. Photo: KCNA

The Korean Central News Agency stressed that the demolition of the building was an act of revenge by “angry people”. Meanwhile, South Korea said that North Korea had “betrayed the hope of peace on the peninsula”, and that Pyongyang would be held responsible for its actions, warning that if Pyongyang continued to aggravate the situation, Seoul would take appropriate measures to respond. Lee Byong-chul, a North Korea expert at Kyungnam University’s Institute for Far Eastern Studies in Seoul, said: “The mutual retaliation between Pyongyang and Seoul signals that the terrible spiral in inter-Korean relations is beyond saving. North Korea has officially declared the death knell for the relationship of the Moon Jae-in administration”.

The destruction of the joint North-South Korean liaison office is also seen as a message to Washington.

The liaison office explosion not only destroyed one of the most tangible legacies of South Korean President Moon Jae-in’s peaceful engagement with North Korea, but also highlighted the most dramatic aspect of the Kim-Moon-Trump relationship triangle! The Trump-Kim relationship soured when the two left empty-handed after their second summit in Vietnam in 2019. After that failure, North Korea took out its frustration on mediator Moon Jae-in. Behind North Korea’s deep contempt for South Korea is its frustration with the Trump administration. Analysts say the destruction of the liaison office was also seen as a message to Washington.

South Korean soldiers patrol along a South Korean-controlled military fence near the border with North Korea on June 16. Photo: Getty

“If the South Korean government now has the ability and courage to do what it has not done in the past two years, why is North-South relations still deadlocked?” - quoting Kim Yo-jong, Kim Jong-un’s sister, The Washington Post commented, her attitude shows North Korea’s frustration with not being able to get economic support packages from South Korea to cope with international sanctions. Foreign trade is tightly controlled, North Korea has not been able to develop its economy, while South Korea has not made new progress in joint cooperation projects between the two countries.

Leif-Eric Easley, a professor of international studies at Ewha University in Seoul, said North Korea is exerting strategic pressure on South Korea to secure concessions on sanctions. “It’s hard to say how this will help the Kim Jong-un regime get what it wants from the world, but it will clearly feed into domestic propaganda. So Seoul needs to be tough and demonstrate to Pyongyang that threats against it are counterproductive.”

Political turmoil

Excerpts from the memoir “The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir” by former national security adviser John Bolton, published by major US newspapers, revealed information about behind-the-scenes discussions between President Trump and President Xi Jinping about the US election. According to Bolton, President Trump tried to persuade President Xi Jinping to import agricultural products because it would help him gain more votes from farmers in the election race.

Former national security adviser John Bolton's memoir is considered an obsession of the Trump administration. Photo: Straits Times

Defending the White House boss, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said that the upcoming memoir of former national security adviser Bolton was fabricated and called him a “traitor”. However, according to excerpts revealed by many major newspapers, Bolton wrote that Pompeo was one of the rare aides who clashed publicly with Trump, and “talked badly about the president behind his back”. According to the New York Times, Bolton wrote in his memoir that he received a letter from Pompeo during the first historic meeting between President Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in Singapore in June 2018, in which the US Secretary of State wrote that what Trump said was “complete nonsense”.

The more President Trump banned and criticized the memoir, the more famous it became and more people were curious and wanted to own it.

The Trump administration has sought an emergency injunction to block the book’s publication. White House lawyers have claimed that Bolton’s book “contains a significant amount of classified information.” President Trump has also insisted that the book “should not be released before the November election.” The administration has even asked a judge in Washington to issue a preliminary injunction to block sales of the book, saying the details in the book would harm national security.

The Trump administration cannot stop the memoir from being published, but it has at least delayed its release. In early March, the White House extended the review period. In May, the release date was pushed back to June 23 as the review dragged on. Legal experts say the Trump administration is unlikely to convince a judge to stop the memoir from being published, but it could prevent Bolton from profiting from book sales.

President Donald Trump and former national security adviser John Bolton at a meeting at the White House in 2016. Photo: AP

Although it was only scheduled to be released on June 23, the book quickly took the top spot on Amazon's bestseller list. The White House asked Mr. Bolton to stop all publishing activities, but Mr. Bolton said he did not have enough authority. Simon & Schuster, the publisher of the memoir, said: "The White House's lawsuit is an attempt to cause trouble and push back the publication date of a book that they consider unfavorable to the president." This incident will certainly have the opposite effect: the more President Trump blocks and criticizes the memoir, the more famous it becomes, and more people are curious and want to own it.