Oops. He tweeted again. Surprising absolutely nobody, President Trump once again took to Twitter to threaten nuclear war. And, as is tradition, his target was Kim Jong-un, the fratricidal leader of North Korea. The president essentially got trolled and, in a blindingly child-like manner, felt that he personally had to respond. But in doing so, he stepped on what could have been a much more intriguing news story related to Kim’s initial message.

On Monday, in his New Year’s Day address, Kim Jong-un opened up the idea of bilateral talks with South Korea. That would be a big deal, since they have not had contact since December of 2015. The New York Times jumped on this and immediately suggested that it was a deliberate attempt to drive a wedge between South Korea and the United States, highlighting the fact that there is no small amount of friction between the newly elected (liberal) leader of South Korea and the current White House.

Getty Images

On Tuesday, the South responded, albeit tepidly, regarding non-military issues like the Olympics. Not exactly an alliance-breaker, despite the hype given to the initial overture by the Times Monday. Interestingly, the Times' thesis was undercut within hours by a different Trump tweet in which he wrote of the overture and the South Korean response.

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Sanctions and “other” pressures are beginning to have a big impact on North Korea. Soldiers are dangerously fleeing to South Korea. Rocket man now wants to talk to South Korea for first time. Perhaps that is good news, perhaps not - we will see! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 2, 2018

Does this speak to the quality of that Times coverage, or was Trump just trolling them back? Either way, the paper's thesis that Kim was trying to drive a wedge between the US and South Korea was something of which they did not want to let go, even as it disintegrated. This is particularly curious because there's another, more promising explanation—one that does not involve the United States at all. As William of Occam : "Other things being equal, simpler explanations are generally better than more complex ones."

A few paragraphs from the bottom of the story, the Times buried the notion that North Korea is getting desperate because, in the past 60 days, the South has been showing signs of putting real teeth in the sanctions imposed by the UN. In October, South Korea had evidence that third-nation ships were transferring oil to North Korean ships at sea, ship-to-ship. This is in violation of the sanctions. But that transfer took place in late October, and the South Koreans, generally speaking, like to be very deliberate. So when the ship (a Chinese-owned vessel) made another port call in South Korea in mid-November, they questioned the crew.

US Department of the Treasury

At nearly the same time, the US government went public with a largely unnoticed bit of data. They published satellite photos of another ship making an at-sea transfer to a North Korean ship. This got almost no press at the time, but it was a huge development courtesy of the US Department of the Treasury, which as far as I know has no satellite at all, or high-tech surveillance aircraft, operating in the vicinity of the Korean Peninsula.

South Korea got real on the issue when they decided to formally seize the Chinese ship, the Lighthouse Winmere. At almost the same time, they refused to allow a Panamanian-flagged vessel, the Koti, which they believed had done the same thing, to depart a South Korean harbor. Sometime after that, they seized the Koti as well. In other words, they have started truly enforcing the sanctions—not by going after the North Koreans directly, but by making it tough for other nations to flout them. Perhaps using their own intel, or using American intel, or using the cover of "American intel" to conceal their own, the South Koreans are for the first time putting a significant economic bite into North Korea. We've discussed such a "quarantine" previously.

It looks like South Korea is doing that to a degree, closer to home than we would, and in a way we could not. The real motive behind Kim's overture might be to relieve that pressure. Not everything has to be about us Americans, right?

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