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Biden’s North Korea Failure Comes Into Full Focus

Posted on Saturday, June 15, 2024
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by Ben Solis
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Russian President Vladimir Putin will reportedly visit North Korea soon following months of increasing provocations from Kim Jong Un, further highlighting the failure of President Joe Biden’s policy toward the Hermit Kingdom. Although Biden heavily criticized Donald Trump’s approach to dealing with North Korea during the 2020 campaign, the former president’s strategy now appears increasingly wise and effective.

Pyongyang has looked to forge closer ties with Moscow amid Western sanctions as a result of the Ukraine war, a relationship that Putin has appeared eager to foster. Kim visited Moscow last September for a meeting with Putin directly, and Western intelligence reports have found that North Korea is supplying artillery shells and other conventional weapons to Russia for its war effort.

At the same time, negotiations between the North and South, which reached a high point during the Trump years, have now broken down entirely. South Korea recently announced the suspension of the Comprehensive Military Agreement, a pact signed in 2018 that approved the removal of guard posts and weapons from the Joint Security Area, also known as the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ).

One of the major causes of tension is the North’s grotesque new practice of sending trash-laden balloons to bombard South Korean cities with animal feces and other waste. As a result, South Korea has restored three miles of no-fly zones along its border, which it says will last “until trust is restored.” Military training has also resumed along the DMZ.

North Korea also ramped up its weapons testing in 2023, firing an estimated 189 cruise and ballistic missiles. A congressional report additionally highlighted the North’s efforts to restore tunnels for nuclear weapons tests and develop submarine-launched ballistic missiles, along with enhancing missile interceptor technology.

In January, North Korea launched the intermediate hypersonic missile Hwasong-12, which uses solid fuel and can threaten the U.S. and allied targets as far as Guam. This missile has reportedly been referred to as the “Guam killer” by some North Korean officials.

Between February and May, North Korea’s army conducted testing of a “super-large warhead” on a cruise missile, the Hwasong-16B intermediate-range ballistic missile, and a new solid-fuel engine for hypersonic missiles, further indicating a rapid military build-up. 

Additionally, the North Korean space program has recently taken several steps forward, aided by Russian technicians. Pyongyang has been on a mad dash to put satellites in orbit to guide its nuclear missile arsenal. The regime recently successfully positioned its Malligyong-1 military reconnaissance satellite, a move confirmed by Japan.

Meanwhile, North Korean sympathizers have even found a foothold in the United States among the increasingly radical anti-Israel movement – a movement enabled by Biden and his Democrat allies.

During a recent anti-Israel rally in Detroit dubbed the “People’s Conference for Palestine,” Ju-Hyun Park, a representative of Nodutol for Korean Community Development, a political group that pursues a political agenda aligned with Kim Jong-un’s priorities, referred to Israel as a “Zionist tumor” and pointed out that the North Korean regime has “never once recognized” the Jewish state.

Ju-Hyun also compared the Korean War, which rescued half of the peninsula from communist hell, to Hamas’s terror campaign against Israel. “Throughout its history, the solidarity between the Korean and the Palestinian people has not only been moral but material,” he said.

Dr. Gijs de Vroom, a former Dutch intelligence analyst specializing in political warfare, told me that it looked like Pyongyang “inspired” Ju-Hyun’s remarks “at a minimum.”

“The North is interested not only in fueling these protests but encouraging empathy for its regime,” Dr. de Vroom continued, adding that it seemed to be “a soft foreign influence” action. Notably, Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib was in attendance at the event.

All of these developments point to the utter failure of Biden’s North Korea policy, which he termed “practical diplomacy” shortly into his tenure. His approach was supposedly intended to pressure the North into giving up its nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles, but has had precisely the opposite effect.

A former senior Japanese diplomat, who spoke to me on the condition of anonymity because he still advises leaders in Tokyo, described the approach of pre-Trump America towards Pyongyang as “dancing on the ceiling.” He explained that the U.S. made demands but lacked a clear execution strategy. “Ultimately, it was a saga of failures since Pyongyang determined when and how to negotiate, an upside-down logic…  Trump rightly halted it.”

He also said that the region was initially interested in Biden’s new strategy, but it soon turned out to be worse than his predecessors. “The threat for us has quadrupled,” he warned.

Professor Massimo Giosuè Gagliardi, an advisor on foreign policy to former Italian Prime Minister Amintore Fanfani, told me that Biden’s “practical diplomacy did not steer Pyongyang in the right direction.” Instead, he said, it “reinforced the dictator’s inherent viciousness and anger and pushed him further into the ring of tyrants.”

North Korea’s ties with Russia and now solidarity with Hamas are two prime examples of this. Along with sending weapons to Moscow, South Korea’s National Intelligence service also recently published pictures showing Hamas using weapons produced in North Korea.

All of this is a direct reversal of the progress seen under Trump. One former South Korean government official told me that after the Trump-Kim summit in Seoul, trust increased immensely, and there were rumors that Pyongyang was contemplating a summit in Wonsan, a North Korean city that in the 20th century was the site of a Christian revival seeded by Methodist missionaries from New Jersey.

Many observers previously believed such a development to be impossible, but Trump’s meetings with Kim caused a radical shift in what progress seemed attainable.

Now, however, the world is a more dangerous place under Biden’s leadership.

Ben Solis is the pen name of an international affairs journalist, historian, and researcher.

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Bacon Nivison
Bacon Nivison
3 months ago

The demonicrat party was founded to fight against freedom, beginning with the Civil War to protect slavery, from that to attempting to ban Black and female American voting, and a constant stream of atrocity every since bringing us to the absolutely absurd situation we face in America today. Weaponization of the Justice department, the FBI, IRS. The willful destruction of American energy independence, the most absurd border crisis in American history, a completely corrupt and dishonest “news” media (propagandia); internet search engines guiding your searches to the results the globalist powers want you to see (try “2020 election rigged” and see what you get). The worst enemy America has ever faced is the demonicrat party and the evidence of this surrounds us!

John
John
3 months ago

All of it really doesn’t matter anymore. If “We the People” of the thinking and patriotic variety of Americans don’t reelect Trump in 2024 and restore the republic.We are rapidly heading towards WWW3 that will resolve all of America’s and the world problems.

Dave
Dave
3 months ago

They mocked Trump when he talked to Kim while the peace was in the Peninsula and throughout the region. The mainstream media compete by reminding Americans of concentration camps and torture chambers in the North, only to portray Trump as sitting with the tyrant. Biden emboldened the tyrant, and now Japan and South Korea have hardly a whole week quiet without Kim’s salvos or missile launches. Somehow, the press lost interest in one of the major failures, which resulted in an increased threat from that tyrant to America. Such is the effect of Biden’s policies toward NK.

MM
MM
3 months ago

Patty cake patty cake Biden bakerman; you’ve baked this cake of disgust as fast as you can. You’ve rolled it and patted it to destroy all of us….. But u will escape to Davos to hide in their basement…. King of Nothing

Granny26
Granny26
3 months ago

That last sentence says it all. Although Biden sure is ‘no leader’. He doesn’t even know where he’s at most the time. We are in so much trouble!!!!!!

Morbious
Morbious
3 months ago

Kim is a hedonist who wishes to continue living. Trump scared him the same way Reagan scared the mullahs in 1980. I realize its cliche to say this, but such types only understand and respect the credible threat of force. The modern dem party is not credible in this regard.

Jerry
Jerry
3 months ago

Looks like Brandon screws up everything he touches.

uncleferd
uncleferd
3 months ago

I’m sure “President” Biden came to North Korea’s attention very quickly… as a useless, diplomatic doormat who was made to walk on.

uncleferd
uncleferd
3 months ago

This article comes as no surprise, given “President” Biden’s performance in office. The only thing a loud mouth in an empty suit can do is hail a cab.

Nick
Nick
3 months ago

Once again once again proving beyond any doubt, that everything is a Democrats do turns into a dumpster fire. They should not be in charge of anything. Whatever they do it is wrong. The Democrat party needs to be classified as a domestic terrorist organization. I can’t believe can I believe that there are actually people in this country the nonsense at the Democrats promote

Robert Zuccaro
Robert Zuccaro
3 months ago

Trump has actually been to the DMZ while Biden thinks “DMZ” used to be a rapper with someone named “Run”.

tim
tim
3 months ago

if you vote for biden, you probably gave your car keys to your teenager immediately after they wrapped your car around a tree and said, “Gee whiz, kiddo! never seen that kind of death and destruction before! can’t even tell it’s a car. here are the keys to the new car i just bought for you.Have fun! see you tonight, or whenever,right!”

John Shipway
John Shipway
3 months ago

Sooo…….the Korean War rescued half of Korea from a “Communist Hell”? Please Ben, do a bit of research and take a look at what the “rescued” Koreans in the south lived under. Most have forgotten or missed the minor coverage the media allowed, but South Korea lived under the boot of a VERY fascistic military state up to and through most of the 1980s. Was the financial system communist? Nope, just good ole Western Fasciscm.
One might look a bit askance at the derogatory term “Hermit Kingdom” when referring to North Korea. NO ONE forces Hermit Crabs to withdraw into the ir shell but the good ole USA planted such severe sanctions on the North that it kinda got “hermited” by good ole Uncle Sam.
As for the North working on its missile program, well what else would a sovereign nation do when there are regular Naval and Air Force drills being held by the dying empire, America and its sock puppets in South Korea? If faced by force is North Korea supposed to just lay down or should it protect itself? I do think the North may be fearful of a paper tiger where the US Navy is concerned, after all a Yemeni “Navy” without a single ship has been kicking the asses of both the “awesome” US Navy but the ass of the long dead and laughable Royal Navy of the UK.
One has to wonder why getting at a minimum fought to a draw in the Korean War, the United States seems so intent on getting yet another smack down by the North Koreans. One has to wonder how long it will be before some totally insane US general insists on Nuking China for some reason. There is precedence for such madness, one has only to look at “Coupon Code Massacre” McArthur. Thank God there was a President smart enough and not bought by the military industrial complex back then and the mad pipe smoker got the boot.
I sure hope I live to see the day when the rapidly dying United States can for once mind its own business. I mean, isn’t colluding in the slaughter of tens of thousands of Palestinian women and children enough? Whats next? Pulling the legs off kittens?

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