Thread: Trump says 'no rush' on North Korea nuclear negotiations

North Korea Hasn't Started Returning American War Dead Despite Promise

US President Donald Trump (R) shakes hands with North Korea's leader Kim Jong Un (L) as they sit down for their historic US-North Korea summit, at the Capella Hotel on Sentosa island in Singapore on June 12, 2018.
SAUL LOEB—AFP/Getty Images

By ROBERT BURNS / AP Updated: July 19, 2018 1:02 AM ET | Originally published: July 18, 2018


(WASHINGTON) — More than a month after North Korea pledged to immediately return some American war dead, the promise is unfulfilled.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who traveled to Pyongyang this month to press the North Koreans further, said Wednesday the return could begin “in the next couple of weeks.” But it could take months or years to positively identify the bones as those of specific American servicemen.

In a joint statement at their Singapore summit, President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un committed to recovering the remains of prisoners of war and those missing in action decades after the Korean War — “including the immediate repatriation of those already identified.”

That was more than a month ago, on June 12. Although Trump said eight days later that the repatriation had happened, it had not. It still has not. So, it was not “immediate,” though the Stars and Stripes newspaper reported from South Korea on Tuesday that the North has agreed to transfer as many as 55 sets of remains next week. The Pentagon and the State Department declined to comment on any specifics promised by the North.

“We’re making progress along the border to get the return of remains, a very important issue for those families,” Pompeo said Wednesday at the White House. “I think in the next couple of weeks we’ll have the first remains returned, that’s the commitment, so progress certainly being made there.”

Likely also to prove untrue is the part of the Trump-Kim statement that said the North had war remains “already identified.” It apparently has bones and perhaps associated personal effects, but history shows that any remains handed over by the North are likely to be difficult to identify. In recent days the State Department has changed that phrase to “already collected,” suggesting it realized the remains have not been identified.

“There are no missing Americans who have been ‘already identified’ by the DPRK (North Korea) to be repatriated,” says Paul Cole, who has researched POW-MIA issues from the Korean War for decades and served for four years as a scientific fellow at the Pentagon’s Central Identification Laboratory in Hawaii. He said this element of the Singapore statement “reflects a near total ignorance of the role of science” in accounting for war dead.

There is even some doubt that any remains turned over would be of Americans. Trump admitted as much in a CBS News interview July 14.

“You know, remains are complicated,” he said. “Some of the remains, they don’t even know if they are remains.” That’s a big step back from his false assertion June 20 in Duluth, Minnesota: “We got back our great fallen heroes, the remains sent back today, already 200 got sent back.” Richard Downes, whose father, Air Force Lt. Hal Downes, is among the Korean War missing, says hopes may have been raised too quickly.

“Yes, the Singapore statement over promised,” he said, “exacerbated by our hope that it was accurate.”

Hope has long sustained Downes and thousands of other Americans who seek closure after decades of uncertainty about a relative missing from the war. The Pentagon says 7,699 U.S. servicemen are missing from Korea, including about 5,300 believed to be in the North. Downes, 70, was 3½ when his father’s B-26 Invader went down on Jan. 13, 1952, northeast of Pyongyang, the North Korean capital. His family was left to wonder about his fate. Downes is now executive director of the Coalition of Families of Korean and Cold War POW/MIAs, which advocates for remains recovery.

The Singapore statement may yet prove to be an important breakthrough. Bringing its promise to fruition, however, is proving harder than Trump made it seem.

As Mark Fitzpatrick of the International Institute for Strategic Studies put it in a web essay last week, “What was supposed to be the easiest item on the United States-North Korea negotiations agenda — the return of Korean War soldiers’ remains — is proving to be yet another sticking point.”

Beyond the promised initial return of remains that the North may have been holding in storage for years, the State Department said Sunday the two sides have agreed to restart searches for burial locations of U.S. war remains in North Korea. That effort was suspended by the U.S. in 2005. This raises another delicate issue to be negotiated: how much the U.S. would pay the North for this access. In the past it has paid millions, saying the money was “fair and reasonable compensation” for the North’s help, not payment for bones or information.

In Fitzpatrick’s view, the North has dangled the promise of war remains as bait to attain political objectives such as progress toward a peace treaty to replace the armistice agreement that ended the fighting on the Korean Peninsula in July 1953. The North sees this political objective as an essential element of ending what it calls Washington’s hostile policy toward the North, which in turn is linked to its willingness to give up its nuclear weapons.

The Singapore summit was mainly about Trump’s push to rid North Korea of its nuclear weapons. He said afterward there was no longer a nuclear threat from the North, though Kim agreed only to “work toward complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula,” and no detailed plan has been worked out. On Tuesday, Trump seemed to reveal his own doubts about timing. He told reporters, “We have no rush for speed,” adding, “We’re just going through the process.”

http://time.com/5342317/north-korea-trump-war-dead/

So what? Did you think the remains of our dead soldiers were something that North Korea coveted and cherished, carefully arranged in little caskets ready to be shipped to the US? They're probably in an enemies bone heap and have to be sorted and arranged properly for transfer to our military.

Originally Posted by Judy

So what? Did you think the remains of our dead soldiers were something that North Korea coveted and cherished, carefully arranged in little caskets ready to be shipped to the US? They're probably in an enemies bone heap and have to be sorted and arranged properly for transfer to our military.

Perhaps you should ask Trump that question.

Why did he lie about this?

You ask him, I don't care. I'm sure as relations continue, the North Koreans will organize and prepare to the extent they can and the US military is quite capable of handling this matter the same as they've done all over the world for generations.

Originally Posted by Judy

You ask him, I don't care. I'm sure as relations continue, the North Koreans will organize and prepare to the extent they can and the US military is quite capable of handling this matter the same as they've done all over the world for generations.

You do not care that he lies to the world?

If he lies about this, something that he knows can be easily refuted, what else is he lying about?

Originally Posted by stoptheinvaders

You do not care that he lies to the world?

If he lies about this, something that he knows can be easily refuted, what else is he lying about?

The border wall immediately comes to mind. Of course none of us have forgotten his broken promise on DACA.

Originally Posted by Judy

So what? Did you think the remains of our dead soldiers were something that North Korea coveted and cherished, carefully arranged in little caskets ready to be shipped to the US? They're probably in an enemies bone heap and have to be sorted and arranged properly for transfer to our military.

The point of my post was that he lied to us ...... again.

Originally Posted by stoptheinvaders

You do not care that he lies to the world?

If he lies about this, something that he knows can be easily refuted, what else is he lying about?

Someone told Trump that, so either they lied to him or were wrong or he misunderstood what they were saying or North Koreans couldn't get them ready when they said they could, who knows and like I said who cares? I don't care. I just hope relations continue and all our Americans who died in North Korea can come home.

Originally Posted by Judy

Someone told Trump that, so either they lied to him or were wrong or he misunderstood what they were saying or North Koreans couldn't get them ready when they said they could, who knows and like I said who cares? I don't care. I just hope relations continue and all our Americans who died in North Korea can come home.

.... or he was just trying to deceive the American people. Wouldn't be the first time.

You obviously care because if you didn't we wouldn't still be having this conversation.

Originally Posted by MW

The point of my post was that he lied to us ...... again.

Obviously someone lied to him. The US military handles this, not the White House.