Just days after being elected, South Korean President Moon Jae-in faced his first North Korean provocation, putting an early test to his stated policy to pursue peaceful dialogue with his defiant nuclear neighbor.

The South Korean leader expressed solidarity with the United States and Japan by condemning North Korea for conducting what is believed to be the successful test of a new two-stage liquid fueled rocket on Sunday capable of flying up to 4,500 kilometers. The North Korean state news agency KCNA on Monday said the test was to verify the capability to carry a “large scale heavy nuclear warhead,” and the missile flew 787 kilometers, reaching an altitude of 2,111 kilometers. 

President Moon warned Pyongyang that provocations will be met with “stern responses.” He also called for the development of the Korean Air and Missile Defense system to be used in addition to, or in lieu of, the controversial U.S. THAAD missile shield that China objects to as a threatening increase of American military capabilities in the region. 

Conditional dialogue 

As a candidate Moon promised to pursue negotiations and engagement with Pyongyang. But as the new commander in chief of the military, he stressed that “dialogue is possible only when North Korea changes its behavior.” 

Moon’s clarified position on conditional talks seems fundamentally the same as that of U.S. President Donald Trump, and essentially the same as past American and South Korean administrations.

“Seoul and Washington remain on the same page that the ultimate goal, that cannot be compromised, is the dismantlement of North Korea’s WMD (weapons of mass destruction) capability and facilities,” said political analyst Bong Young-shik with the Yonsei University Institute for North Korean Studies in Seoul.

North Korea, in defiance of international sanctions, has openly declared itself a de facto nuclear state. The Kim Jong Un government considers its continued efforts to develop a nuclear intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) capable of reaching the U.S. mainland as essential to its survival.

Unless Pyongyang agrees to discuss its eventual disarmament for economic aid and security guarantees, Bong said, Moon will not make any progress to restart talks or reopen cooperative projects like the Kaesong industrial project which had employed 54,000 North Korean workers and provided about $100 million a year to the local economy and the government, before it was closed in 2016. 

“The Moon Jae-in government is very well aware of how difficult it is for Seoul to start engaging Pyongyang, because any improvements to inter-Korean economic cooperation has to overcome the obstacle, or the international suspicion, that economic cooperation with North Korea may provide Pyongyang with the financial capacity to further develop WMDs,” Bong said. 

Chinese pressure 

The Trump administration has made stopping the development of a North Korean ICBM a top priority and stressed the U.S. would consider military action to take out launching sites and nuclear facilities, if needed. To back up the threat of force, the U.S. Pacific Command recently sent increased military assets to the region, including the USS Carl Vinson nuclear-powered aircraft carrier strike force. 

More recently, Washington has emphasized increased cooperation from Beijing to more strictly implement U.N. sanctions against North Korea. But after enforcing a strict ban on North Korean coal and other measures in early April, there are indications China has eased some pressure on its economically dependent ally.  There are reports the price of gasoline in North Korea returned to normal after the fear of a Chinese oil embargo dissipated.  And the suspension of Air China flights to Pyongyang in April lasted only three weeks.

This week North Korea sent a delegation to the Belt and Road initiative in Beijing. The United States and South Korea also sent representatives to this international economic forum.

The U.S. embassy in Beijing reportedly complained to China’s foreign ministry, saying that inviting North Korea sent the wrong message at a time when the world is trying to pressure Pyongyang to halt its nuclear and missile programs.

“The fact that China did not discriminate and invited North Korea to stand on the diplomatic stage shows North Korea’s hardline strategy is diplomatically working. I think we have to consider what kind of (additional) sanctions will make North Korea give up its nuclear weapons,” said North Korea analyst and defector Ahn Chan-il, with the World Institute for North Korean Studies.

South Korea diplomacy

South Korea said Monday it will send special envoys to the United States, China, Japan, Russia and Germany to discuss how to deal with the growing North Korean nuclear and missile threat.

Former Prime Minister Lee Hae-chan will head to China. Lee also served in the past as a special envoy to Beijing for former liberal President Roh Moo-hyun, who supported the Sunshine policy of unconditional inter-Korean aid and trade programs that was eventually halted due to the North’s continued nuclear development efforts and other provocations.

Youmi Kim contributed to this report.
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Historic rivals China and Vietnam are working on substantive agreements that could cover trade, investment and maritime resource sharing despite a bitter sovereignty dispute that had snarled relations less than a year ago.

The Communist neighbors are inching toward new trade and investment ties that analysts say would help shore up overall relations. Some believe the two might later approach stickier topics such as joint use of disputed waters or humane treatment of each other’s fishermen. The two countries still contest sovereignty over tracts of the vast, resource-rich South China Sea east of Vietnam and southwest of Hong Kong.

Prospects of some kind of agreement came into focus during Vietnamese President Tran Dai Quang’s visit to China, which ends Monday. He suggested the two sides work on complementing each other’s trade and investment advantages with a view toward improving overall relations, state media from Hanoi said.

“President Quang is in China, and China promised a lot,” said Yun Sun, senior associate with the East Asia Program under Washington-based think tank the Stimson Center. “From an economic point of view, it is certainly practical and beneficial for Vietnam to have some sort of deal, but then again I think this still relatively early to tell.”

In a meeting with Quang Thursday, Chinese President Xi Jinping called for more cross-border economic cooperation zones and joint infrastructure building, according to  China’s official Xinhua News Agency reported. China pledged to “mitigate” its trade deficit with Vietnam and increase direct investment, Sun said.

“Talking probably does help lower tensions and improve the odds of things happening,” said Alaistair Chan, an economist covering China for Moody’s Analytics.

The Vietnamese president suggested China finalize rules on opening the Chinese market for farm products, dairy and seafood, media outlet vietnamnet.vn said. He also called on China to make more “preferential loans” and urged a working group to develop renewable energy investment projects that play on China’s strengths and demand in Vietnam, the Vietnamese news report said.

On Friday companies from both countries signed agreements on milk distribution, tourism and rice processing.

China is the largest trade partner of Vietnam, with imports and exports worth about $72 billion last year. Vietnam also calls China one of the top 10 investors in the country.

But both countries are likely to hedge on letting outsiders invest in infrastructure, a possible source of direct investment, Chan said. “If they can get there purely on trade and stay away from investment, a touchy subject in both countries, I think that’s probably where they can get their quickest gain,” he said.

China and Vietnam stepped up dialogue after July 2016, when a world arbitration court ruled that Beijing lacked a legal basis to claim more than 90 percent of the sea, a boon to rival claimants in Southeast Asia: Vietnam, Brunei, Malaysia and the Philippines. China responded to the ruling by seeking one-on-one dialogue with each country. Vietnam was one of the most hostile toward China before the court ruling.

Beijing and Hanoi dispute sovereignty over much of the 3.5 million-square-kilometer sea, including two chains of tiny islets. Beijing’s go-ahead for a Chinese oil rig in contested waters set off a clash in 2014. The two countries also still face distrust fanned by centuries of political rivalry as well as a border war in 1979.

Both countries stake their fast-growing economies on export manufacturing. Vietnamese companies resent China for using their larger production scales to sell goods in bulk at relatively low prices.

Relations got a lift in September when the Chinese premier and Vietnamese prime minister agreed to manage maritime differences. Vietnamese Communist Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong the two countries get along with a visit to China in January.

Another boost came as China emerged last year as the top single-country source of tourism for Vietnam. About 2.2 million Chinese visited Vietnam from January to October. Chinese tourists have reshaped the economies of Hong Kong and Taiwan over the past decade.

Agreements on managing disputed tracts of the South China Sea may come later if the two sides keep getting along, experts say.

Vietnam and China have agreed to an “informal” median line in the tract of sea where their claims overlap, said Carl Thayer, Southeast Asia-specialized emeritus professor of politics at The University of New South Wales in Australia. They might eventually work on expanding joint exploration for oil under the seabed and a way to ensure “humane” treatment of fishermen, he said.

“It’s to stop the ramming, boarding, seizing fish catches and radio equipment and in the old days taking them hostages for money,” Thayer said. Under a human treatment agreement, he said, “If you find them, you report them to the other side and return them rather than bash them up and take everything.”
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Malaysian authorities said Monday that they have seized 330 exotic tortoises from Madagascar worth 1.2 million ringgit ($276,721), in the latest heist of illegal wildlife and animal parts being smuggled into the country.

Deputy customs director Abdull Wahid Sulong said that 325 Indian Star tortoises and five Ploughshare tortoises were packed into five boxes and labeled as stones. He said the live tortoises, usually kept as pets, arrived via Etihad Airways from Antanaviro Airport in Madagascar on Sunday.

Customs officials found the boxes at the Kuala Lumpur airport cargo warehouse on the same day based on a tip, Abdull Wahid said.

The import of exotic tortoises requires a special permit from Malaysia’s Wildlife Department. No arrests were made and the case is still under investigation, Abdull Wahid said.

Two weeks ago, airport customs officials seized African pangolin scales worth $2.1 million at the airport cargo warehouse. Last month, they confiscated 18 rhino horns worth $3.1 million believed to have been flown in from Mozambique and declared as art objects.
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Prison officers in Papua New Guinea shot and killed 17 inmates involved in a mass prison break, local media reported on Monday, sparking calls for an investigation into overcrowded jails in the South Pacific nation where Australia detains asylum seekers.

Fifty escapees were still on the run from the Buimo prison in the city of Lae on Papua New Guinea’s north coast, police said on their official Facebook page, warning the public that an increase in carjackings and armed robberies was likely.

“These are dangerous individuals,” Lae Metropolitan Police Command said. “Police anticipate an increase in serious crimes in the city.”

Local media reported than more than 70 prisoners attempted to escape from the Buimo prison, nearly 320 kilometers north of the capital Port Moresby, on Friday. The Post Courier and The National newspapers reported that 17 prisoners were shot dead, three captured, and 57 were still at large.

It was the third mass breakout from Buimo in three years. International human rights groups have repeatedly called for an inquiry into PNG jails, citing concerns about overcrowding, limited access to medical treatment and delays in court proceedings.

“Unfortunately these incidents, tragic as they are, happen all too frequently in Papua New Guinea as there is poor accountability with police and security officers,” Kate Schuetze, Amnesty International’s Pacific Researcher, told Reuters by telephone.

In February last year, 11 prisoners were killed in an attempted breakout at Buimo after 30 prisoners attacked guards.

Fifty-five men escaped from the prison in a breakout in 2015 and two years earlier one detainee was shot dead when 44 fled the same facility in another mass escape.

Australia maintains an asylum-seeker detention center on PNG’s Manus Island, in accordance with its policy of not allowing people who attempt to reach Australia by boat to settle in the country.

The Manus camp, one of two South Pacific island asylum seeker detention centers funded by Australia, has been criticized by human right groups and the United Nations for cramp conditions, inadequate medical facilities and violence.

The PNG Supreme Court ruled in 2016 that the camp was illegal and should close, forcing Australia to confirm it would shut down the camp by the end of 2017.

Australia struck a deal with former U.S. President Barack Obama to take some detainees who were deemed refugees, an agreement criticized by President Donald Trump as a “dumb deal” when he took office earlier this year.
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Asian lawmakers say their region is pivotal to any global efforts at limiting climate change and they are committed to finding solutions.

At a just concluded meeting of the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) in Vietnam, lawmakers from countries across the region gathered to share their fears stemming from hotter global temperatures – as well as what to do about it – from incorporating the input of indigenous peoples, to carving out underground reservoirs for times of flooding.

“Climate change has no passport,” IPU Secretary-General Martin Chungong said at the three-day meeting in Ho Chi Minh City, which ended Saturday. “It’s cross-national.”

The host city also exemplified why the Asia-Pacific region is at the center of environmental concerns worldwide. The region has one billion urban dwellers, more than the rest of the globe combined, according to the U.N. Development Program. And urbanites have an outsized impact on their ecosystems.

Ho Chi Minh City, a massive metropolis of 10 million people, generates waste and consumes water at a volume equal to 17 times the average across Vietnam, said the city’s Communist Party chief, Nguyen Thien Nhan.

He later led the parliamentarians down to the Mekong Delta to plant mangrove trees and witness the coastal erosion of what Vietnam says is among the world’s top three deltas threatened by climate change.

Thai officials told VOA they would be planting mangroves after they returned from the Vietnam trip, too.

“The most imminent threat to Thailand in terms of climate change is first, of course, deforestation and the reduction of green [areas] in Thailand,” Chaiyuth Promsookt, chair of the Thai National Assembly’s committee on natural resources and environment, said on the sidelines of the conference.

He said the government set a goal of maintaining at least 40-percent forest cover over the next two decades. The mangroves are meant to help reach that target, as well as guard the coasts from erosion.

Another measure is to shift ethnic minorities toward cherry and apple farming to discourage illegal logging. Chaiyuth said this would effect a “fair distribution of income and distribution of the outcomes of development.”

“His majesty the late king believed that this would be more inclusive in terms of development, in terms of joining the people, especially the underprivileged people in the rural areas,” he said.

That’s also in keeping with a suggestion from Anna Schreyoegg, climate change policy and mitigation adviser at GIZ Vietnam, a German-based development agency. She recommended officials craft environmental policy that incorporates scientific evidence, as well as input from indigenous groups and women.

Deforestation is cause for concern in Laos, too. The small country may seem immune to climate change because it is landlocked, unlike the island constellations of Indonesia and the Philippines, and the long coastlines of Vietnam and Myanmar. But the lost trees are raising temperatures in Laos, according to Sanya Praseuth, vice chair of the Laos National Assembly’s economic, technology and environment committee.

“Our country [is] getting hotter comparing with the previous” years, he told VOA. “And the typhoons are not coming as we’re expecting, as in each season. And that is a change that we cannot predict, and that is a main problem.”

Laos is trying to curb the problem by suspending logging permits.

But Indonesian parliamentarian Siti Hediati Soeharto suggested developing nations could only do so much. She said rich economies have a greater responsibility to stem greenhouse gas emissions, as well as provide aid for climate change efforts in the developing world.

“Indonesia is of the view that developed countries should continue taking the lead,” she said.
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