If Kim Jong-Un Praises You ...

 ... you're doing something wrong:

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has thanked South Korea's outgoing president for trying to improve relations, a rare gesture of goodwill but one that analysts said may not be enough to head off growing tension between the two Koreas.

The warm words from North Korea to President Moon Jae-in came in an exchange of letters less than three weeks before Moon leaves office to be replaced by a conservative leader who has already signalled a tougher line on North Korea

Analysts were sceptical that North Korea's message heralded a broader improvement in relations, and warned that the praise for Moon could be a bid to portray his successor, Yoon Suk-yeol, as responsible for any further deterioration in ties.

 

(Sidebar: so, people want Yoon to fail.)

 

To wit:

Moon has a long association with Minbyun, the hard-left lawyers’ group that is acting as Pyongyang’s law firm in South Korea by using the courts to wage lawfare against refugees, in violation of their human rights. He was chairman of the campaign of Roh Moo-hyun, the “anti-American” and “a little crazy” president who rode to power on the shoulders of a violent mob that attacked, spat on, stabbed, and threw firebombs at American soldiers. As Roh’s Chief of Staff, Moon decided to seek Pyongyang’s input before abstaining from a U.N. resolution denouncing severe human rights abuses against its people, and then lied about it.

The most alarming development of all may be Moon’s choice of Im Jeong-seok as his Chief of Staff. Im was jailed for three-and-a-half years for accompanying organizing the illegal 1989 visit to Pyongyang that made Lim Soo-kyung a North Korean propaganda star. (Lim is now a lawmaker in Moon’s party. I previously discussed her drunken 2012 tirade against North Korean defectors and human rights activists. A previous version of this post, since corrected, said that Im had gone to Pyongyang with Lim.)

 

Birds of a feather, as they say.

 

Also - to remind one:

Dandong Huayang denied using North Korean labor, but there is plenty of evidence that it does. Our friend, Remco Breuker, even found an interview in which a Dandong Huayang manager boasts about all the money his company made by using it to make goods to export to the United States. According to Panjiva documents I found online, different Dandong Huayang subsidiaries source more than 80 percent or more than 90 percent of their shipments from North Korea (see also). Dandong Huayang mainly exports to the United States and Canada, and ships some of its wares through Busan, South Korea. This was not the last scandal for one of Dandong Huayang’s buyers, either. In November 2021, the Canadian retailer Reitmans pulled consignments of women’s clothing from its shelves and severed its relations with Dandong Huayang after a CBC report found that it had purchased more than 100 shipments from Dandong Huayang that may have been made with North Korean forced labor.