‘Tricked’: High-level defector warns Trump on Kim, nukes

Raising tensions

North Korea has raised tensions in the region by asserting that the Trump administration is running out of time to salvage stalled nuclear talks. Officials in Pyongyang say the U.S. must be the one to choose its “Christmas gift.”

National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien warned Sunday that it would be a “big mistake” if Mr. Kim moves to test another nuclear bomb. The North Korean leader has refrained from doing so since his precedent-shattering June 2018 summit with Mr. Trump in Singapore.

The high-level defector argues that Mr. Kim has no intention of abandoning his nuclear weapons because they are vital to his regime’s goal of absorbing South Korea into the “extreme socialist system” and to the survival of the “fanatical, pseudo-religious” society under the North Korean dictator.

Following the example set by his father and grandfather, Mr. Kim also “firmly believes that nuclear weapons are the last means to protect himself from the enemy’s preemptive strike and to maintain rule for another 50 years,” the defector said.

The defector urges Mr. Trump to authorize a multipronged “psychological warfare campaign” urging North Korea’s elites to rise up against Mr. Kim while appealing to ordinary North Koreans who “are anxious to be liberated from the yoke of oppression.”

The letter urges the dispatch of a U.S. delegation to offer the prospect of economic relations if the North denuclearizes and an intensive popular information campaign to inform ordinary North Koreans about the dangers of clinging to the country’s nuclear arsenal.

“If the psychological warfare information [is] poured into the areas where North Korea’s capital, Pyongyang, major cities and military headquarters are located, it will deal a death blow to the nuclear-obsessed leader … leading to the birth of a new political system,” the defector predicts.

The letter asserts that Washington should be pressuring China and other world powers to impose and enforce wider sanctions against the Kim government.

“At this very moment, Kim Jong-un is avoiding sanctions against North Korea while securing governing funds through tourism and [cyber]hacking,” the defector wrote.

He said the diplomatic stalemate is increasing the risk that the regime’s nuclear and ballistic missile capabilities will proliferate, particularly toward clients in the Middle East, including Iran.

If Mr. Kim “makes another nuclear and missile provocation,” the letter said, “you must always retain the option to be able to strike the nuclear facilities and the dictator’s office where the nuclear command and control resides to end the vicious circle.

“If the U.S. launches a preemptive strike, in order to prevent counterattacks from the North Korean military, inform the North Korean generals and elites of the strong power of the U.S. military and undermine their faith in and morale in their leaders by dropping information pamphlets and through all electronic media,” the letter states. “Only by launch[ing] an effective psychological warfare campaign now can you influence the generals to make the right decision not to obey an order to attack during crisis.”

‘Tricking’ Trump

The defector said Mr. Kim was disingenuous in his 2018 meeting with Mr. Trump in Singapore, issuing only vague promises of eventual denuclearization while seeking immediate U.S. economic and security concessions. South Korean President Moon Jae-in, a liberal who has long backed rapprochement on the divided Korean Peninsula, participated in Mr. Kim’s deception, the letter says.

“Kim Jong-un signed on the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, not the denuclearization of North Korea, at the Singapore summit,” the letter to the White House states. “Both Moon Jae-in and Kim Jong-un tricked the U.S. president. As we know, Kim Jong-un has promised to denuclearize but has not given up a single nuclear weapon in a year and five months.”

The allegation is not likely to sit well with the Moon government, although it is well known that many North Korean defectors sharply disagree with the South Korean president’s conciliatory approach to North Korea.

Analysts say there are grounds to be wary of claims by North Korean defectors. They say many exaggerate their status to enhance their legitimacy and influence upon fleeing the Kim regime. There are also concerns that even the most highly vetted defectors may be involved in some form of subterfuge designed to benefit the Kim regime in the long term.

But the letter-writing defector insisted in an interview that the goal of the letter was to give Mr. Trump “insight into why Kim Jong-un is not giving up nuclear weapons and then how to solve this problem.”

“President Trump always mentions that past U.S. administrations have been deceived by North Korea,” the defector told The Times. “I’m trying to tell Mr. Trump that he too is also now being deceived by North Korea, so that perhaps he can correct his mistake by taking my advice.”

Source: EXCLUSIVE: ‘Tricked’: High-level defector warns Trump on Kim, nukes