 | BY CATHERINE KIM | Presented by Steuben County Industrial Development Agency | | 
People watch a television screen showing a news broadcast with file footage of a North Korean missile test at a railway station in Seoul on Jan. 24, 2024. | Jung Yeon-je/AFP via Getty Images | ANXIETY INDUCED — North Korea’s recent bump in military activity, a fairly common intimidation tactic, has often led to false alarms regarding its intentions. Its latest initiatives, however, warrant close attention. In the past two weeks, North Korea has made several alarming moves: It has warned of a possible war with South Korea, newly rejected its decades-long ideology of unification with the South and cozied up with Russia by supplying missiles for the Kremlin’s war in Ukraine. Although the so-called Hermit Kingdom has often used threatening rhetoric and aggression as a means to make demands on the world stage, veteran Korea watchers say these events feel a bit different. And to the alarm of both Washington and Seoul, Robert L. Carlin and Sigfried S. Hecker, both veteran North Korea analysts who have participated in U.S.-North Korea negotiations, published an article earlier this month titled, “Is Kim Jong Un Preparing for War ?” — a prospect that would spell disaster for crucial allies to the U.S. “The situation on the Korean Peninsula is more dangerous than it has been at any time since early June 1950,” the two authors wrote. “That may sound overly dramatic, but we believe that, like his grandfather in 1950, Kim Jong Un has made a strategic decision to go to war.” Up until now, despite its sporadic belligerence, North Korea’s policy has focused on being acknowledged as a nation worthy of respect and building diplomatic ties with other governments — especially with the U.S. — even as it has leveraged its strained relationships as justification for overwhelming military spending. North Korea’s methods for achieving such respect might have been questionable, but its leaders have always believed normalizing relationships with other democracies would help establish the nation’s place in the world, Carlin told Nightly. Kim’s stark pivot in this strategy suggests one important, and concerning, point: North Korea believes it has exhausted all means for the U.S. and its allies to treat them as economic and defense equals, and they believe the relationship is “hopeless,” Carlin said — even if Donald Trump, who claims he has a cozier relationship with Kim , comes into office. “I suspect that Kim finally decided what I worried about for many years: You cannot deal with the U.S. government. It has nothing to do with the administrations. The U.S. government [as a whole], in their view, is incapable of sustaining a policy,” Carlin said. “Moreover, the U.S., in their view, wants to see North Korea disappear from the face of the earth ... That’s what they think.” A perfect storm of events appears to have created this scenario in the last five years. First, Kim’s failed Hanoi summit with Trump in 2019 was an embarrassment to the dictator and served as the final straw in severing ties with the U.S. Then, in 2021, North Korea saw the U.S. departure from Afghanistan as a sign of America’s global retreat and emboldened Kim to escalate his “anti-imperialist” and “anti-U.S.” stance, according to Carlin. Meanwhile, North Korea saw Russia’s attack on Ukraine as a sign of Kremlin strength, which further explains its cozier relationship with Vladimir Putin. Korea watchers don’t necessarily envision an all-out war that could lead to mass destruction in the Korean peninsula — even Carlin hesitated to predict a situation beyond “significant military action” for now — because the U.S. and South Korea are better equipped with advanced weapons and technology. That difference in firepower has always served as the ultimate deterrence of a major attack from North Korea, and that status quo hasn’t changed. Still, there is a sense of unease about what North Korea’s next move could be, especially given its nuclear weapon stockpile. And even U.S. officials, who have historically been cautious of sounding the alarm, are warning of “lethal” military action against South Korea. Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out with news, tips and ideas at nightly@politico.com . Or contact tonight’s author at ckim@politico.com on X (formerly known as Twitter) at @ck_525 .
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| | A message from Steuben County Industrial Development Agency: President Biden, Buy America is not just policy, it’s real jobs in places like Hornell, part of Steuben County in upstate New York where we’re busy building America’s high-speed trains. We’re counting on your support to ensure that we retain hundreds of jobs and add new ones to build the new trainsets for Brightline West. Don’t allow a waiver to build trainsets overseas. Let’s build the trains and keep those jobs here in America. | | | | | — Trump ordered to pay $83.3M for defaming E. Jean Carroll: A jury ordered Donald Trump today to pay $83.3 million to the writer E. Jean Carroll over defamatory remarks he made about her while he was president in response to her rape accusation. U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan ruled last fall that Trump defamed Carroll by saying in 2019 that he had never met her and that her book, in which she accused him of having raped her in the dressing room of a luxury department store in the mid-1990s, “should be sold in the fiction section.” — White House offers unredacted Jan. 6 transcripts to GOP — with conditions: The Biden administration has made its next move in an extended back-and-forth with House Republicans over Jan. 6 select committee transcripts, offering to share unredacted testimony the GOP has been seeking for months — under certain conditions. Richard Sauber, a member of the White House Counsel’s Office, said the administration would permit Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-Ga.) — who has been leading a review of the Capitol attack and the previous committee’s work in investigating it — the chance to examine, but not keep, the unredacted transcripts. — Biden reins in gas exports that have raised both U.S. prestige and climate fears: The Biden administration announced a freeze today on new export permits for natural gas while it studies their impact on climate change — despite those exports’ role in bolstering the U.S. economy and Washington’s influence in Europe. The announcement, part of a review that POLITICO first reported two weeks ago, is the most sweeping step yet by President Joe Biden to clamp down on a fossil fuel industry that has prospered on his watch (despite Republican rhetoric to the contrary). It also shows the resurgence of environmental groups’ influence on the White House as Biden ramps up his political campaign ahead of November’s election.
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| | JOIN 1/31 FOR A TALK ON THE RACE TO SOLVE ALZHEIMER’S: Breakthrough drugs and treatments are giving new hope for slowing neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s disease and ALS. But if that progress slows, the societal and economic cost to the U.S. could be high. Join POLITICO, alongside lawmakers, official and experts, on Jan. 31 to discuss a path forward for better collaboration among health systems, industry and government. REGISTER HERE . | | | | | | | NEXT STOP, MICHIGAN — President Joe Biden’s campaign manager traveled to Michigan today to help shore up support among minority groups within the state seething over the administration’s Middle East policy, three people familiar with the situation tell POLITICO. Julie Chávez Rodríguez was scheduled to meet with a range of local elected officials and leaders from Michigan’s Arab and Palestinian-American, Hispanic, and Black communities in the Detroit area, including Dearborn, which has a substantial Arab American population. ‘OATH-BREAKER’ — Voters challenging former President Donald Trump’s eligibility to return to the White House told the Supreme Court today that Trump is attempting to sidestep the evidence that he stoked the attack on the Capitol three years ago. “The thrust of Trump’s position is less legal than it is political. He not-so-subtly threatens ‘bedlam’ if he is not on the ballot,” attorneys for the Colorado voters wrote in a 70-page filing submitted today. “But we already saw the ‘bedlam’ Trump unleashed when he was on the ballot and lost.” MOVING TO DC — The Biden campaign is opening another office closer to the White House , the Washington Post reports. The Democratic National Committee funded office will shorten the trip for many campaign staff who have been traveling from the campaign’s headquarters in Delaware to the White House, three sources tell the Post staff. Mike Donilon and Jen O’Malley Dillon, who are both leaving the White House to serve in campaign positions, will be based out of this office.
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| | A message from Steuben County Industrial Development Agency: In 2015 there were 250 train manufacturing jobs at Alstom’s plant in Hornell, NY. Today, thanks to strong Buy America provisions there are nearly 700 men and women building high-speed trains. Today the Biden-Harris administration has a decision – keep supporting Buy America and creating more jobs in upstate New York and small towns across the country, or allow trains for Brightline West to be made in Germany. The choice should be clear. Buy America works for places like Steuben County but only when it is upheld consistently. Steuben County workers stand ready to build high-quality high-speed trains for Brightline West and deliver them in an ambitious timeframe to meet the goals of Brightline West and the nation. Let’s build America’s high-speed trains in America, not overseas. | | | | | | 
South African Foreign Minister Naledi Pandor speaks to the media today following a ruling by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on a request from South Africa for emergency measures for Gaza. | Remko de Waal/ANP/AFP via Getty Images | SPLIT DECISION — Judges at the International Court of Justice stopped short of ordering Israel to suspend its military campaign in Gaza , but they issued a series of provisional measures instructing Israel to prevent the incitement of genocide and to ease the humanitarian plight of Gazans, reports POLITICO EU. The judges at the ICJ in the Hague, also known as the World Court, did not accede to South Africa’s request for an emergency order requiring Israel to cease all military operations while it considers South Africa’s case accusing Israel of state-led genocide in the Gaza Strip. The 17-judge panel noted “at least some of the acts and omissions committed by Israel in Gaza appear to be capable of falling within the provisions of the genocide convention.” But the judges said Israel must take all steps to prevent any genocidal actions. Speaking minutes after the ruling was announced, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the court ruling upheld Israel’s right to defend itself. “Israel’s commitment to international law is unwavering. Equally unwavering is our sacred commitment to continue to defend our country and defend our people,” Netanyahu said. “Like every country, Israel has an inherent right to defend itself. The vile attempt to deny Israel this fundamental right is blatant discrimination against the Jewish state, and it was justly rejected.” Israeli officials told POLITICO that while they took exception to some of the ICJ’s statements, they considered it a win for Israel that the court did not try to curtail its right to self-defense. “Many of the steps the court is asking for, we are already doing,” an Israeli official said.
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| | | SANDED DOWN — Across the world there are teams of people — often tacitly supported by local governments or police forces — digging up and transporting sand. Sand mining or sand trafficking, illegal in most countries, has become the world’s largest extraction industry because of sand’s use in concrete. According to the United Nations Environment Program, the world uses about 50 billion tons of sand a year. But who are the people actually doing this often shady mining, which can destroy ecosystems even as it helps build infrastructure? David A. Taylor reports on the crime rings that concern themselves with sand for Scientific American.
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On this date in 1992: Native Americans and supporters protest outside the Metrodome in Minneapolis before the start of the Super Bowl XXVI between Washington and Buffalo. Native Americans groups opposed Washington's team name, a pejorative slang term. The name was changed in 2020. | Mark Duncan/AP | Did someone forward this email to you? Sign up here . | |
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