China confirmed its lead this year in Asia’s biggest maritime sovereignty dispute by sending nonmilitary ships to waters normally controlled by other countries, allowing it to flex muscle without conflicts or diplomatic losses.Pushback from Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam kept Beijing from adding artificial islets or control over existing features in the resource-rich South China Sea in 2019, analysts say.Citing dynastic-era maritime records, China claims 90% of the 3.5 million-square-kilometer tropical waterway that stretches from Hong Kong to Borneo, while Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam claim waters that overlap China’s. They all value the sea for fisheries, fossil fuel reserves or both.”Compared to the previous years, there was relatively less militarization by China,” said Aaron Rabena, research fellow at Asia-Pacific Pathways to Progress Foundation, a Manila research organization. “Still we see standoffs taking place, so there are still challenges.”China was once more aggressive. Vietnam and China clashed in two deadly incidents in the 1970s and 1980s. In 2012, Chinese ships entered into a prolonged standoff with the Philippines at a shoal near Luzon Island and eventually took control of it. Two years later, Vietnamese and Chinese ships rammed each other over the location of an offshore Chinese oil rig.FILE – This aerial photo taken through a glass window of a military plane shows China’s alleged on-going reclamation of Mischief Reef in the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea, May 11, 2015.Over the past decade, China has alarmed the other claimants by using landfill to create or expand three tiny islets, in the sea’s Spratly Islands and others in the Paracel chain. Some of those islets now support hangars and radar equipment.”You had two, maybe three, cable-cutting incidents, you had over the years Chinese fishermen being rapacious with Vietnamese, boarding ships and seizing things,” said Carl Thayer, emeritus professor with the University of New South Wales in Australia, recalling a more assertive China 10 years ago. “That seems to have died down,” he said.Pressure without firefightsChinese coast guard ships, survey vessels and informal fishing boat flotillas still appear in the sea tracts claimed by other governments. China used all three this year to assert existing claims but occupied no new islets and got into no firefights.To avoid angering the other claimants, China worked with them economically, for example by financing infrastructure construction in the Philippines. That cooperation lowers odds that the other governments will grow cozier with the United States, which has the world’s strongest armed forces and resents Chinese maritime expansion, analysts have said.China, however, positioned vessels this past year in the waters within 370 kilometers of Malaysia, Vietnam and the Philippines, possibly to flex muscle. That distance normally gives coastal nations an exclusive economic zone.Around Malaysia, “they’ve sailed ever more closely to our platforms, so that particular aspect has changed,” said Shahriman Lockman, senior foreign policy and security studies analyst with the research organization the Institute of Strategic and International Studies in Kuala Lumpur. “They’ve not interrupted operations, they just sail closer, that’s all. It’s more a show of force rather than anything else.”For much of the year, China’s coast guard made its presence felt in waters claimed by Malaysia, the most active explorer of undersea natural gas in the disputed region.In January, China moved as many as 90 ships around the Manila-controlled Thitu Island to monitor construction of a beaching ramp. A Chinese fishing boat sank a Philippine vessel in June near the disputed sea’s Reed Bank, raising questions about whether the capsized boat was rammed.FILE – Filipino soldiers stand at attention near a Philippine flag at Thitu island in disputed South China Sea, April 21, 2017.Vietnam and China got into the most heated dispute of the year.It started when a Chinese energy survey ship began patrolling in July near Vanguard Bank and a seabed tract about 352 kilometers off the coast of southeastern Vietnam. The patrol circled an oil and gas block on the Vietnamese continental shelf, also within China’s claim. A standoff followed and ended in October when the survey ship left, apparently after completing a mission.Diplomatic fixesMalaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamed has asked China to clarify its intent in the sea and this month his government submitted documentation to the United Nations suggesting it extend rights over a larger part of the continental shelf. China protested. Mahathir’s government also set aside a railway project funded by China, but it resumed in late 2019.In the Philippines, legislators and military officials want President Rodrigo Duterte to step up resistance to China; however, his administration has agreed with Beijing to joint oil and gas development. The two sides started intergovernmental committee talks this year to oversee projects. They separately pledged to investigate the ship collision.Vietnam contacted numerous Western nations about the Vanguard Bank standoff, Thayer said.FILE – A U.S. fighter jet takes off from the U.S. aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan for their patrol in the international waters near the South China Sea, Aug. 6, 2019.Much of Southeast Asia still expects the United States will keep China in check, as needed, by sending naval ships into the sea, Lockman said. Washington calls the events “freedom of navigation operations” and carried out several in 2019.China and the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations, which includes four maritime claimants, often discuss the maritime disputes but made little headway this year. They are due to talk eventually about signing a code of conduct that would help avert mishaps.”I wouldn’t say there’s been reconciliation,” said Alan Chong, associate professor at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore. “It’s been a fluid situation and the jury is still out.”
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 A stalled Rohingya refugee repatriation plan and the start of a judicial process by the West African nation Gambia for genocide charges against Myanmar marked the troubled end of the second year since more than 700,000 Rohingya Muslims fled a brutal Burmese army “clearance operation” in Myanmar’s Rakhine State, crossing over to Bangladesh. Steve Sandford has this report for VOA from Bangkok.
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A partial new U.S.-China trade agreement will be signed in the middle of next month, U.S. President Donald Trump said Tuesday, announcing that he will also then travel to China for continued talks.”I will be signing our very large and comprehensive Phase One Trade Deal with China on January 15,” Trump tweeted moments before Wall Street was due to open.”The ceremony will take place at the White House. High level representatives of China will be present.”Trump said he would then travel to Beijing to continue negotiations “at a later date.”Word of the deal, and the de-escalation of the trade conflict, has driven a Wall Street rally this month but U.S. stocks were lower at the open early Tuesday.The two sides earlier this month announced a “Phase One” deal in their nearly two-year trade confrontation, with Washington canceling and reducing some tariffs in exchange for Chinese pledges to increase purchases of US exports and adopt trade reforms.The text of the agreement has not yet been made public pending legal and translation reviews, U.S. officials say, and details remain scant.U.S. and Chinese officials said the agreement includes protections for intellectual property, food and farm goods, financial services and foreign exchange, and a provision for dispute resolution.
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China’s foreign minister has decried international “bullying practices” while meeting with his Iranian counterpart Tuesday, in the country’s latest criticism of American foreign policy under the Trump administration.Wang Yi reaffirmed the strength of bilateral relations in opening remarks at the beginning of talks with Mohammad Javad Zarif.The Iranian minister’s visit follows a trip to close ally Russia and comes just after the first-ever drills among the navies of the three countries in the northern part of the Indian Ocean.”We need to stand together against unilateralism and bullying practices,” Wang said.China was a signatory to the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran and has strongly criticized the U.S. for abandoning it in favor of a campaign of heightened diplomatic and economic pressure.Without directly mentioning the U.S., Wang said China and Iran would stand up for their national interests as well as “uphold multilateralism and norms governing international relations.”Zarif responded that the two countries were united in, “our common effort to fight unilateralism and to promote multilateralism” in 2020.FILE – Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif talks to journalists during a joint press conference in Jakarta, Indonesia Sept. 6, 2019The 2015 deal between Iran and Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the United States lifted sanctions on Iran in exchange for limits on its nuclear program. The U.S. withdrew from the accord in 2018 and imposed crippling economic sanctions that block Iran from selling crude oil abroad.Since then, Tehran has slowly inched toward ceasing its own compliance with the terms of the deal, including launching new operations at a heavy water nuclear reactor.Iran’s moves have been condemned by Western governments as unwelcome and escalating tensions in the region, while Russia and China have repeatedly blamed the U.S. China has also sharpened its rhetoric against Washington amid an ongoing trade war between the sides and U.S. criticisms of China’s human rights record and policies in Hong Kong and the traditionally Muslim northwestern region of Xinjiang.The four-day naval exercise, launched from the southeastern port city of Chahbahar in the Gulf of Oman on Friday, underscores the informal alliance among China, Iran and Russia in the face of Trump’s moves to withdraw the U.S. from international agreements.
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Former Nissan Motor Company chief Carlos Ghosn said Tuesday he had traveled to Lebanon to escape what he called “injustice and political persecution” in Japan where he faces multiple charges of financial misconduct.”I am now in Lebanon and will no longer be held hostage by a rigged Japanese justice system where guilt is presumed, discrimination is rampant, and basic human rights are denied, in flagrant disregard of Japan’s legal obligations under international law and treaties it is bound to uphold,” he said.Ghosn has been arrested several times since first being detained in November 2018, but was free on bail. The conditions of his latest release required him to remain in Japan, and his statement Tuesday did not explain how he left.Ghosn holds French, Brazilian and Lebanese citizenship.  His lawyer Junichiro Hironaka told reporters Tuesday that his legal team was still in possession of all Ghosn’s passports, and he said he was surprised to learn of Ghosn’s departure.Ghosn has denied the charges against him.Among the allegations are accusations he conspired to understate his Nissan income by about 50 percent between 2010 and 2015, and that a Nissan subsidiary diverted $2.5 million out of $5 million from an Oman dealership to a Ghosn-owned investment company for his private use.Ghosn was credited for steering Nissan from the brink of bankruptcy to becoming one of the world top-selling automakers. He engineered a three-way alliance with one-time domestic rival Mitsubishi Motors and French-based Renault.
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This past year, Cambodia’s prime minister, Hun Sen, consolidated his power, observers say, pointing to intimidation of the opposition and a minimal improvement of human rights following the European Union’s threat to withdraw the trade agreement Everything But Arms. The deal grants free access to the EU single market for all products, with the exception of arms and armaments.“We’re seeing the real Cambodia and the real Cambodian government, which is rights abusing, corrupt and non-democratic,” said Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director for Human Rights Watch. “The situation has just not improved in any way, shape, or form over the past year.”Exiled acting opposition leader Sam Rainsy first announced earlier in 2019 that he was returning home, but then in August stated he would be back on November 9, Cambodia’s Independence Day. The government responded with a prompt crackdown on opposition activists, arresting scores on charges of “plotting against the state.”  This was one of the major indicators that the ruling party consolidated its power during 2019, Robertson said.”The biggest change is a lot more people arrested and political prisoners held in pre-trial detention and then sent to long prison terms for exercising their civil and political rights,” he said. “You’ve got Cambodia surging up to the level of almost 100 political prisoners during the course of 2019…in part because the government has tried to bend over backwards to suppress any display of support for the opposition (Cambodia National Rescue Party) CNRP.”A spokesman for Hun Sen’s Cabinet, or Council of Ministers, Phay Siphan, could not be reached for comment.FILE – Self-exiled Cambodian opposition party founder Sam Rainsy speaks during an interview with Reuters at a hotel in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Nov. 10, 2019. REUTERS/Lim Huey TengThe government deployed thousands of troops on November 9 to prevent Sam Rainsy from returning, and had previously announced that airlines were barred from bringing opposition members into the country, albeit seemingly retracting that statement later. CNRP Vice President Mu Sochua was briefly detained in Kuala Lumpur.Dozens of passports of opposition members who are abroad have been revoked.The arrests, Robertson said, seemed to continue a trend from 2017 and 2018. The two years saw opposition leader Kem Sokha arrested, his party CNRP dissolved, 118 party members banned from politics, English language newspapers The Cambodia Daily and The Phnom Penh Post closed and sold to an investor with ties to the government, respectively, and journalists arrested. During the 2018 parliamentary elections, the ruling Cambodian People’s Party won all 125 seats.Mu Sochua said her party had to learn from the failed return when planning their return for 2020.“Nine November was a point that we could look at not exactly negatively – but in the long run, does it sustain democracy?…We have to be honest with ourselves about where Nine November could improve,” she told VOA in a phone interview. “We realize that this culture of waiting for the leader is not quite productive for democracy as a whole if we want to make democracy sustainable.”Political analyst Markus Karbaum said that the CNRP had lost its influence when it was dissolved in 2017.“The CNRP has become a zombie party, neither dead nor alive. While Sam Rainsy will continue to operate as a nuisance from abroad, he won’t be able to return to Cambodia as a free man as long as Hun Sen is in politics,”Karbaum said, adding that party leader Kem Sokha could exercise influence by reaching an agreement with the government. “The CNRP will never ever return as it has been before its dissolution,” he said.Astrid Norén-Nilsson, associate senior lecturer at the Center for East and South-East Asian Studies at Lund University in Sweden, echoed this assessment. “Everything looks headed for either a situation in which, at best for some among the opposition, a faction headed by Kem Sokha can operate, or, at worst, status quo is maintained and a lengthy trial against Kem Sokha will follow,” she said.But Mu Sochua rejected those scenarios and said November 9 had shown that the CNRP still had strong grassroots support in the country – and that the opposition leaders would return to the country in 2020.“You don’t wait for democracy to come to you crawling and knocking at your door, you have to knock at the door of democracy. Any measure that you can take, even the smallest sound you can make, you make,” she said.Citing human rights concerns, the European Union formally launched the withdrawal procedure of its Everything But Arms Agreement in February.Yet, although facing a threat of EBA withdrawal, the Hun-Sen-led government had only granted minimal concessions, like releasing some political prisoners, Robertson said.“They’ve certainly consolidated power… It’s all about trying to keep the opposition marginalized and out of the country and keeping them away from the people of Cambodia,” he said. “I would say would be really hard pressed to see where the EBA is actually contributed to positive outcomes. What we’ve seen from Hun Sen and his government is open defiance.”Despite the court releasing 74 of the about 100 opposition activists on bail following a speech by Prime Minister Hun Sen, the sentences still hung above their heads, he said.FILE – Leader of the Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) Kem Sokha shakes hands with French Ambassador to Cambodia Eva Nguyen Binhin at his home in Phnom Penh, Nov. 11, 2019.On November 10, a day after Sam Rainsy’s announced return and a few days before the European Commission was due to submit its report on the situation in Cambodia to the Cambodian government, the court issued an order to release Kem Sokha from house arrest. He remains barred from any political activities and from going abroad.Katrin Travouillon, researcher at the Australian National University who focuses on Cambodia in her work, said that while some EU demands had been met, such as the release of some political prisoners, long-term improvements were unlikely to occur.“I am much more skeptical when it comes to the long-term effects of this process or its ability to effectively counter the ongoing decline in political freedoms,” she told VOA in an email. “For example, if you look at the government’s use of arbitrary arrests at the occasion of Kem Ley’s commemoration, or the recent crackdown on the opposition after Rainsy’s return announcement, it certainly didn’t appear as if the potential loss of the EBA was the first thing on the authorities’ mind.”FILE – Tens of thousands of people attend a funeral procession to carry the body of Kem Ley, an anti-government figure and the head of a grassroots advocacy group, “Khmer for Khmer” who was shot dead on July 10, to his hometown, in Phnom Penh.Travouillon was referring to Kem Ley, one of Cambodia’s most prominent political commentators, who was assassinated in July of 2016. Kem Ley was gunned down just days after making comments about a critical report by London-based Global Witness about corruption linkages of Prime Minister Hun Sen’s ruling family. A suspect has been arrested and sentenced to life imprisonment.With Kem Sokha’s trial scheduled for January 15 and the European Union’s decision expected in February, major decisions are expected at the beginning of the new year.Although Everything But Arms had only shown marginal effect so far, Robertson said, this could change if it were withdrawn.“And I think that ultimately, what’s going to happen is that only when you know the blood is on the floor – because of the partial or complete suspension of EBA benefits –  will the Cambodian government and Hun Sen realize that actually, they really do need to compromise if they want these things,” Robertson said.
“[But] the democratic so-called democratic landscape in Cambodia is not going to change until there’s a new election in 2023.”
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U.S. President Donald Trump regularly says his relationship with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un remains positive. But Trump may soon have little choice but to change his approach toward Kim, who within days may unveil a new, hardline policy toward the United States. Kim, who has given the U.S. an end-of-year deadline for nuclear talks, is set to deliver a New Year’s Day speech that may give major clues about North Korea’s direction in 2020. Kim is also presiding over a symbolically important meeting of the country’s ruling party this week.While no one is sure what Kim will announce – there is always a possibility of a last-minute breakthrough in talks – North Korea has strongly hinted it will raise pressure on Trump in the new year, and Kim has vowed to take his country a “new way” if talks with the United States don’t advance.Over the past several months, North Korea has threatened to resume intercontinental ballistic missile tests or other major provocations, even warning of an unspecified “Christmas gift” to the U.S. that so far remains undelivered. Trump has shown an unusual tolerance for North Korean provocations, at least by the standards of other recent U.S. presidents. But as evidence mounts that Trump’s personal outreach to Kim is not leading to progress in nuclear talks, many Trump critics and allies are calling for him to change course.
 
“From no angle – policy or political – does it make sense for Trump to keep things as they are,” said Rebecca Heinrichs, who focuses on nuclear deterrence and missile defense at the conservative Hudson Institute. This undated picture released by North Korea’s Central News Agency on Oct. 31, 2019, purportedly shows the launch of projectiles that landed in the sea between the Korean Peninsula and Japan.Change how?The question is whether Trump should become more or less conciliatory.Heinrichs, who has defended aspects of Trump’s unorthodox outreach to Kim, says the United States should expand sanctions on North Korea and reinstate U.S.-South Korea military exercises, which were scaled back to preserve the talks.”In the course of giving Kim diplomatic space, sanctions enforcement and readiness with regional allies have slipped while Kim’s nuclear program and image have improved,” she says.”The whole approach is on the thinnest ice.”Another ideological camp prefers a less aggressive approach. They say there’s no evidence sanctions will convince Kim to give up his nuclear program, but will only further raise tensions.Instead, Trump should work toward an interim deal, in which the United States offers limited sanctions relief, a formal suspension of military exercises, or both, possibly in exchange for a permanent moratorium on North Korean ICBM and nuclear tests, said Joshua Pollack, a North Korea researcher at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies.”We’ve repeatedly suspended combined military exercises in South Korea, so why not finally put them on the table?” asks Pollack. “Then the two sides could take their time in talks.”It’s not clear North Korea would accept an interim agreement. The country’s ambassador to the United Nations earlier this month declared that denuclearization is off the negotiating table and that talks with the United States are no longer needed. FILE – South Korean amphibious assault vehicles participate in a 2015 U.S.-South Korea joint military exercise.Trump downplays threatsThere’s also not much evidence Trump is committed to drastic change in either direction.Trump has rarely discussed North Korea in recent months, and when he has, it’s mainly been to stress his good relationship with Kim.Asked about North Korea’s threat to deliver a “Christmas gift” to the U.S., Trump responded: “Maybe it’s a present where he sends me a beautiful vase as opposed to a missile test.”Trump refused to criticize North Korea as it conducted 13 rounds of short-range missile tests in 2019, though the launches violated U.N. Security Council resolutions and threatened U.S. troops and allies in the region.For Trump, North Korean provocations are potentially embarrassing, in part because he has already claimed to have solved the problem.After their first meeting in Singapore, Trump said he knew “for a fact” that Kim would return home and start a process that would “make a lot of people very happy and very safe.””There is no longer a Nuclear Threat from North Korea,” Trump tweeted while returning from the summit.U.S. officials, including Trump, have also repeatedly insisted that Kim agreed in Singapore to give up his nuclear weapons, though in reality the joint statement referenced the “complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula” – a much vaguer description that indicates unspecified concessions from each side.By one estimate, North Korea has produced material for about 10 more nuclear bombs since Singapore, meaning it now has enough for around 40 total bombs.A view of what researchers of Beyond Parallel, a CSIS project, describe as specialized rail cars at the Yongbyon Nuclear Research Center in North Pyongan Province, North Korea, in this commercial satellite image taken April 12, 2019.Would Trump admit defeat?But Heinrichs insists it’s not too late for Trump to modify his North Korea policy, and that doing so doesn’t have to be a great political embarrassment.”I don’t think he needs to or will say the approach failed,” Heinrichs says. “It’s more likely he’ll blame Kim and the previous (U.S.) administrations for passing along the compounding problem.”Whereas Trump’s comments about Kim have been widely mocked in Washington for being contradictory or inaccurate, Heinrichs sees it differently. Such comments, she says, are an attempt to flatter Kim – essentially to soften him up for a big agreement. And Trump’s approach, she says, could easily be reversed. “Any other president would have a hard time going from ‘fire and fury’ to nice letters to a return to max pressure…I don’t think it would be as much of a challenge for Trump,” Heinrichs said. “He seems to be immune to the pressure of convention. Sometimes that creates rare openings for good things and sometimes it results in enormous headaches,” she added. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un reads a letter from U.S. President Donald Trump, in Pyongyang, North Korea, in this picture released by North Korea’s Korean Central News Agency, June 22, 2019.A bullet-point win? Others say Trump, a former reality television star and self-styled master negotiator, appears to be looking for a legacy-defining win on North Korea and won’t easily change course. “Absolutely he can’t admit failure,” said Pollack. “But he can spin it away.” According to Gwenda Blair, a Trump family biographer who has followed Trump’s real estate and other deals for decades, Trump has often prematurely declared victory or attempted deals even when victory is impossible.”He wants to be able to do something that’s like a moonshot,” said Blair.For Blair, Trump’s desire to reach a nuclear deal with North Korea – which has eluded U.S. diplomats for decades – is much like Trump’s recently declared wish to buy Greenland.”This would be adding the biggest thing since Alaska,” she says. “But no one was interested in selling.”So what will Trump do if Kim never agrees to denuclearize? Trump himself foreshadowed such a scenario in his post-summit press conference in Singapore.”Honestly, I think he’s going to do these things. I may be wrong. I mean, I may stand before you in six months and say, ‘Hey, I was wrong,'” Trump said, before adding: “I don’t know that I’ll ever admit that, but I’ll find some kind of excuse.”
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Three researchers involved in the births of genetically edited babies have been sentenced for practicing medicine illegally, Chinese state media said Monday.The report by Xinhua news agency said lead researcher He Jiankui was sentenced to three years and fined 3 million yuan ($430,000).Two other people received lesser sentences and fines. Zhang Renli was sentenced to two years in prison and fined 1 million yuan. Qin Jinzhou received an 18-month sentence, but with a two-year reprieve, and a 500,000 yuan fine.He, the lead researcher, said 13 months ago that he had helped make the world’s first genetically edited babies, twin girls born in November 2018. The announcement sparked a global debate over the ethics of gene editing.He also was involved in the birth of a third gene-edited baby.
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A boat suspected of being from North Korea with several bodies was found on a small island in northern Japan, the Japanese Coast Guard said Sunday.The wrecked boat that had the decomposing bodies was found on Sado Island in Niigata prefecture on Friday, and the bodies were found Saturday, a coast guard official in Sado said on customary condition of anonymity.Found on the boats were three bodies with heads, two heads without bodies and two bodies without heads. It’s officially counted as seven bodies because it is unclear whether the bodies and heads came from the same people, the official said. The five bodies for which gender could be confirmed were all male, he said.Other details were not immediately available, but Japanese media reports said an investigation had started on whether the boat was from North Korea, as Korean language items were found on the boat.The area where the boat was found faces North Korea and is the region where such boats, dubbed “ghost ships” by the Japanese media, have been found in recent years, numbering about a hundred each year.North Korean shipping boats, which are usually poorly equipped, are believed to be under pressure to catch more fish for the nation’s food supply and are wandering farther out to sea. Sometimes North Koreans are found alive on such boats and have been deported.Japan and North Korea have no diplomatic ties. Japan has stepped up patrols in coastal areas to guard against poaching. 
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North Korea began a closely watched ruling party meeting led by Kim Jong Un, state media reported Sunday, amid signs Pyongyang is set to announce a firmer stance toward the United States. 
 
Kim is widely expected in the next week to announce the details of his “new way” for North Korea, following the expiration of its self-imposed end-of-year deadline for the U.S. to offer a better proposal in stalled nuclear talks. 
 
State media coverage of the Workers’ Party of Korea meeting offered few hints about the country’s direction. 
 
The Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) mentioned an “anti-imperialist” stance and the building up of national defense but gave no other details. 
 
“The plenary meeting goes on,” KCNA said, apparently indicating a multiday meeting. 
 Talks boycottedNorth Korea has boycotted nuclear talks for months and recently threatened to resume long-range missile and nuclear tests. An official said earlier this month that denuclearization was off the negotiating table. 
 
Those threats — mostly made by lower-level officials — were widely seen as an attempt to increase pressure on the U.S. ahead of North Korea’s deadline. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un speaks during the 5th Plenary Meeting of the 7th Central Committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea in this undated photo released Dec. 28, 2019, by the Korean Central News Agency.Kim’s annual New Year’s speech is expected to offer much firmer evidence of the country’s direction in 2020. In his speech last year, he warned of a “new way” if the talks didn’t progress. 
 
North Korea also threatened to deliver a “Christmas gift” to the U.S., leading many analysts to predict a North Korean holiday missile test. But Christmas passed with no signs of what that “gift” might be. 
 
There are multiple possible explanations for why North Korea has refrained from a major provocation, including last-minute progress between Kim and U.S. President Donald Trump or a warning from China, which typically frowns on North Korean missile and nuclear tests. No ‘cold feet’
 
“But Kim, nevertheless, probably did not get cold feet,” said Duyeon Kim, a senior adviser for Northeast Asia and nuclear policy at the International Crisis Group. 
 
“North Korea’s course of action after the year-end deadline will be far more significant than a gift timed to coincide with what it sees as an American holiday. After all, anything can happen in the remaining six days of 2019 after Christmas. And presents can be delivered any time the giver feels so compelled,” Kim said. Even without a North Korean launch or other provocation, tensions have been high, especially after Japan’s public broadcaster NHK erroneously reported Friday that North Korea had launched a missile that landed in the waters east of Japan. The broadcaster later apologized for the false report, saying it was a media training alert. FILE – Soldiers from the 2nd Infantry Division of the U.S. participate in a drill at Camp Casey in Dongducheon, north of Seoul, South Korea, March 3, 2011.A tense moment also occurred late Thursday when Camp Casey, a U.S. Army base in South Korea, accidentally blasted an emergency siren instead of taps, a bugle call typically played at military bases at the end of the day. 
 
The false alarms are even more notable considering the relative silence from North Korea during the last couple of weeks, after having ramped up threats in early December. ‘Deafening’ silence
 
“It has been the uneasy calm before the storm,” said Robert Carlin, a former U.S. intelligence official with decades of experience researching North Korea. 
 
“The air was certainly heavy with Pyongyang’s warnings earlier. But then, beginning on December 15, these abruptly stopped and the North became extremely quiet, preternaturally quiet,” Carlin said in a post on 38 North, a website specializing in North Korea.”The silence, in fact, has been deafening,” he said. 
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Police fought with protesters who marched through a Hong Kong shopping mall Saturday demanding mainland Chinese traders leave the territory in a fresh weekend of anti-government tension.The protest in Sheung Shui, near Hong Kong’s boundary with the mainland, was part of efforts to pressure the government by disrupting economic activity.About 100 protesters marched through the mall shouting, “Liberate Hong Kong!” and “Return to the mainland!”Police in civilian clothes with clubs tackled and handcuffed some protesters. One officer fired pepper spray at protesters and reporters. Government broadcaster RTHK reported 14 people were detained.Some shoppers argued with police in olive fatigues and helmets who blocked walkways in the mall.Protests that began in June over a proposed extradition law have spread to include demands for more democracy and other grievances.The proposed law was withdrawn but protesters want the resignation of the territory’s leader, Carrie Lam, and other changes.Protesters complain Beijing and Lam’s government are eroding the autonomy and Western-style civil liberties promised to Hong Kong when the former British colony returned to China in 1997.On Saturday, some merchants in the Sheung Shui mall wrapped orange tape around kiosks or partially closed security doors in shops but most business went ahead normally.Hong Kong, which has no sales tax and a reputation for genuine products, is popular with Chinese traders who buy merchandise to resell on the mainland.Sheung Shui was the site of clashes between police and demonstrators in June.Earlier this week, protesters smashed windows in shopping areas over the Christmas holiday. Some fought with police.A total of 336 people, some as young as 12, were arrested from Monday to Thursday, according to police. That brought the total number of people arrested over six months of protests to nearly 7,000.Protesters have damaged subway stations, banks and other public facilities.Earlier this month, opposition candidates won a majority of posts in elections for district representatives, the lowest level of government.
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A U.S. military base in South Korea accidentally blared an alert siren instead of a bugle call, causing a brief scare as the U.S. and its allies are monitoring for signs of provocation from North Korea, which has warned it could send a “Christmas gift” over deadlocked nuclear negotiations.The siren at Camp Casey, which is near the border with North Korea, went off by “human error” around 10 p.m. Thursday, said Lt. Col. Martyn Crighton, a public affairs officer for the 2nd Infantry Division. The operator immediately identified the mistake and alerted all units at the base of the false alarm, which did not interfere with any operations, Crighton said in an email Saturday. False alarm in JapanThe incident came a day before Japanese broadcaster NHK caused panic by mistakenly sending a news alert saying North Korea fired a missile over Japan that landed in the sea off the country’s northeastern island of Hokkaido early Friday. The broadcaster apologized, saying the alert was for media training purposes.North Korea has been dialing up pressure on Washington ahead of an end-of-year deadline issued by leader Kim Jong Un for the Trump administration to offer mutually acceptable terms for a nuclear deal. There are concerns that Pyongyang could do something provocative if Washington doesn’t back down and relieve sanctions imposed on the North’s broken economy.The North fired two missiles over Japan during a provocative run in weapons tests in 2017, which also included three flight tests of developmental intercontinental ballistic missiles that demonstrated potential capabilities to reach the U.S. mainland. Tensions eased brieflyTensions eased after Kim initiated diplomacy with Washington and Seoul in 2018 while looking to leverage his nukes for economic and security benefits. But negotiations have faltered since a February summit between Kim and President Donald Trump broke down after the U.S. side rejected North Korean demands for broad sanctions relief in exchange for a partial surrender of its nuclear capabilities.In a statement issued earlier this month, North Korean senior diplomat Ri Thae Song asserted that the Trump administration was running out of time to salvage faltering nuclear negotiations, and said it’s entirely up to the United States to choose what “Christmas gift” it gets from the North.The North also in recent weeks said it conducted two “crucial” tests at a long-range rocket facility it said would strengthen its nuclear deterrent, prompting speculation that it’s developing a new ICBM or preparing a satellite launch.
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