Officials of South Korea’s peacekeeping troops and South Sudan take a photo on a downtown street in the city of Bor, South Sudan, on Nov. 24, 2017, after the installation of street lamps. Thirty solar-powered light-emitting diode lamps were erected along the street that marks the two countries’ friendship, according to South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, which provided this photo. South Korea’s Hanbit unit has been engaged in U.N. peacekeeping operations in the African nation since 2013. (Yonhap)
It seems selling weapons to various countries in Africa is a major money maker for the Kim regime,
North Korean ceremonial head of state Kim Yong-nam arrives in Uganda.
North Korean weapons barred by U.N. sanctions ended up in the hands of U.N. peacekeepers in Africa, a confidential report says. That incident and others in more than a half-dozen African nations show how North Korea, despite facing its toughest sanctions in decades, continues to avoid them on the world’s most impoverished continent with few repercussions.
The annual report by a U.N. panel of experts on North Korea, obtained by The Associated Press, illustrates how Pyongyang evades sanctions imposed for its nuclear and ballistic missile programs to cooperate “on a large scale,” including military training and construction, in countries from Angola to Uganda.
Among the findings was the “largest seizure of ammunition in the history of sanctions” against North Korea, with 30,000 rocket-propelled grenades found hidden under iron ore that was destined for Egypt in a cargo vessel heading toward the Suez Canal. The intended destination of the North Korean-made grenades, seized in August, was not clear.
A month before that, the report says, a U.N. member state seized an air shipment destined for a company in Eritrea containing military radio communications items. It was the second time military-related items had been caught being exported from North Korea to Eritrea “and confirms ongoing arms-related cooperation between the two countries.” Eritrea is also under U.N. sanctions for supporting armed groups in the Horn of Africa.
Discovering such evasions is challenging because Africa has the world’s lowest rate of reporting on monitoring U.N. sanctions on North Korea. Just 11 of its 54 countries turned in reports to the panel of experts last year, the U.N. report says.
“African enforcement tends to be lax,” Marcus Noland, an expert on North Korea at the Petersen Institute for International Economics, wrote last month, adding that “North Korea may deliberately target African countries as a circumvention strategy.” He said North Korea’s long military involvement in Africa, and its growing interest in trade there to reduce its deep dependence on China, “bring the continent’s relationship with North Korea into increasing conflict with tightening U.N. sanctions.” [Associated Press]
You can read the rest at the link, but it may be time to start actively targeting these countries doing arms deals with North Korea with financial sanctions as well.
A South Korean health care worker in Ebola-hit Sierra Leone left for Germany over a possible contraction of the highly contagious virus, South Korean officials said Saturday.
The evacuation by Phoenix Air, a U.S. air ambulance company, came after the worker was determined to be at risk of exposure to the virus while collecting blood from an Ebola patient, according to South Korean officials.
The health care worker’s left index finger “touched” a needle through a partly ripped glove. The worker did not sustain any external injuries and has not shown symptoms of infection such as fever or vomiting, they said.
Still, the health care worker will be closely monitored in an isolated unit at the unspecified hospital for up to 21 days, the maximum incubation period for the virus, they said.
The health care worker is one of the 10-strong medical team members sent by South Korea to an Ebola clinic built by Britain in Goderich, near Sierra Leone’s capital Freetown.
South Korea has reached preliminary deals with Europe and the United States to evacuate its health care workers from West Africa to Europe for treatment if they contract the virus.
Despite the evacuation, South Korea plans to send 20 other medical workers in coming months to the West African country. [Yonhap]
It will be interesting to see if these medical teams will actually treat Ebola victims or just do training like the US military medical teams:
South Korea’s foreign ministry and related government agencies were to hold a meeting Monday to discuss details about the dispatch of medical workers to Ebola-hit West African countries, officials said.
Last week, South Korean President Park Geun-hye said that Seoul plans to send a group of medical workers to West African countries in a bid to lend support to the global efforts to contain the spread of the deadly Ebola virus.
Cho Tae-yul, Seoul’s second vice minister of foreign affairs, plans to preside over a meeting later in the day with officials from the health ministry and other related agencies to exchange views about plans to send medical personnel to the affected African countries, according to the foreign ministry. (Yonhap)
It will be interesting to see who is going to get deployed to do this mission, but this shows the US government must be very concerned that the ebola outbreak could get much worse to deploy this many personnel to try and stop its spread:
Amid criticism that the U.S. has not done enough to block the spread of the Ebola virus across West Africa, President Barack Obama will announce a “significantly ramped up” campaign Tuesday that relies heavily on the U.S. military, senior administration officials said.
The Defense Department will work with local governments to plan and build 17 new Ebola treatment units, for a total of 1,700 new beds, while military medical staff will begin training a target of 500 health care providers per week in care and prevention of the lethal virus, an official said.
The scaled-up effort, along with current programs, will be run through a U.S. joint command center to be set up in Monrovia, Liberia, the country facing the most troubling transmission rate, officials said.
Pentagon officials expected the command center to eventually oversee about 3,000 military personnel on the ground handling logistics, engineering, distribution of supplies, and coordination with other government agencies and international organizations, one official said. [Stars & Stripes]
I just caught a bit of President Bush’s G8 speech. Lauding trade, not aid, as the solution to Africa’s woes, he noted that just 30 years ago, South Korea was as poor as many Sub-Saharan African nations, but that after pursuing an export-driven economy, South Korea is now as rich as many European countries.
To an extent poorer countries can model themselves after Korea, but Korea did have a few advantages to help their economy become what it is today. First and foremost is that Korea has a homogeneous society that does not have the tribal/ethnic/religous turmoil you see in many poor African countries. Korea does have some internal rivalries such as between Gyeongsam and Cholla provinces but nothing that would even come close to the open warfare that is prevalent in many African countries.
Another advantage Korea had was that US troops stationed in Korea provided a nice economic boost initially by providing jobs and a market for Korean goods. Plus the US troops provided a security guarantee to international investors looking at investing in Korea and taking advantage of its cheap labor. Do you think that anyone would have invested in Korea initially if US troops were not stationed here? If US troops were stationed in an African country I bet international investors would be more willing to invest in that African country knowing that the US military is providing a security guarantee of their investment. Do you think anyone would be willing to invest currently in Iraq if US troops were to pull out tomorrow?
Also Korea was given open access to the US market for their exports and received many contracts from the US government during the Vietnam War that really jumped started the Korean Economy in the late 60’s. Would African countries be given the same access to the US market to sell their goods? Plus Korea has two other huge exports markets right next door, Japan and China to sell their goods to.
It was in America’s interest to have Korea succeed during the Cold War. So Korea was given preferential treatment by the US. This added with Korea’s homogeneous society, cheap labor, a extremely hard working work ethic, plus leadership, despite his faults, from then dictator Park Chung Hee set the conditions that allowed Korea to become the nation they are today.
African countries will find it extremely difficult to match Korea’s success by trying to use the same formula Korea used to build their economy. Lessons can definitely be learned from Korea’s economic success but it is not the 100% solution to solving poverty in Africa.
I think ending the AIDS epidemic should be of the up most priority in Africa before economic development. No country will ever have a strong economy if their youth are dieing off and leaving the next generation as orphans. Would Korea have ever created their economic development if 15% of their population was dieing from AIDS 50 years ago? That along with internal tribal/religious/ethnic turmoil are the problems that many African countries are facing.
