Tag: Spain

Here is the latest map that is being claimed to show Dokdo as Korean territory:

Spain has shown President Moon Jae-in an old map that describes Dokdo as part of the territory of Korea, according to Cheong Wa Dae, Wednesday (local time). 

The map showing came amid Japan’s renewed territorial claim over Dokdo, Korea’s easternmost islets, on its website for the Tokyo Olympics. 

According to presidential spokeswoman Park Kyung-mee, Moon visited the Spanish senate library after delivering a speech at the senate.

The library officials showed Moon the map, titled “Royaume de Coree” (Kingdom of Korea), which was made by French geographer and cartographer Jean Baptiste Bourguignon d’Anville (1697-1782), in 1737 when the territory was known as the Joseon Kingdom (1392-1910). 

Korea Times

You can read more at the link, but I doubt this map depicts Dokdo. Just looking at the map the islands are not even geographically where they should be and according to the article the island that is supposedly Dokdo was not even spelled right. When you think about it why would a Spanish cartographer include Dokdo on this map back then as Korean territory when they would have just been worthless rocks? The only thing that makes Dokdo valuable today is the territorial waters that it brings with it in modern times which did not exist back then.

I have no love for the Kim regime, but I am no fan of raiding their embassies like this either. This is a slippery slope I don’t think the US wants to encourage. How easy would it be for someone like Putin to create militant activist groups to raid other nation’s embassies for intelligence purposes if this type of activity is encouraged?:

Reuters has reported that U.S. authorities have arrested a former U.S. Marine who is a member of a group that allegedly raided the North Korean embassy in Madrid in February and stole electronics.

Citing sources familiar with the arrest, Reuters said that Christopher Ahn was arrested Thursday and appeared Friday in federal court in Los Angeles.

The group called Free Joseon, formerly known as Cheolima Civil Defense, is blamed for the February 22nd embassy raid.

Reuters did not say whether Ahn played a role in the raid but noted he is a member of the group.

The name Christopher Ahn has not previously been mentioned in media reports related to the embassy raid.

Reuters said the U.S. Justice Department has declined to comment on the arrest.

KBS World Radio

You can read more at the link.

I am sympathetic to the Jayu Joseon group’s goal of removing the Kim regime, but it is a slippery slope to support raiding foreign embassies:

Spain has issued two international arrest warrants in the case, one for a Mexican national residing in the U.S., Adrian Hong Chang, and the other for an American citizen. After lifting a secrecy order in the case, a Spanish investigating judge revealed the identities of seven of the alleged 10 intruders in a court document on Tuesday.
It remained unclear if the Spanish government identified the suspects in the raid through their own investigation or whether U.S. authorities had passed on the names of the alleged intruders.

The group has alleged the U.S. betrayed its trust after members approached the FBI.

“The organization shared certain information of enormous potential value with the FBI in the United States, under mutually agreed terms of confidentiality,” the group said on its website. “This information was shared voluntarily and on their request, not our own. Those terms appear to have been broken.”
Lee Wolosky, an attorney for Free Joseon and a former U.S. envoy for Guantanamo, told NBC News that “when all the facts come out regarding Madrid, it will be clear that the Spanish judge reached a number of inaccurate conclusions.”

“Certainly the decision of the Spanish judge to publicly disclose the names of those working in opposition to the Kim regime — which routinely assassinates its adversaries — was irresponsible and put these individuals in unnecessary jeopardy.”

NBC News

You can read more at the link, but if the Jayu Joseon group was not on North Korea’s hit list already, this raid has definitely made them a target for some Kim Jong-nam style retaliation.

This news makes me wonder if the intent behind the raid was to cause the Hanoi Summit to fail?:

Days before President Donald Trump was set to meet North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Vietnam, a mysterious incident in Spain threatened to derail the entire high-stakes nuclear summit.
In broad daylight, masked assailants infiltrated North Korea’s Embassy in Madrid, restrained the staff with rope, stole computers and mobile phones, and fled in two luxury vehicles.

The group behind the late February operation is known as Cheollima Civil Defense, a secretive dissident organization committed to overthrowing the Kim dynasty, people familiar with the planning and execution of the mission told The Washington Post.
The group’s alleged role in the attack has not previously been reported, and officials from the governments of North Korea, the United States, and Spain declined to comment on it.

But in recent days, rumors have swirled about the motivations behind the attack in the Spanish media, including a report in El Pais alleging that two of the masked assailants have ties to the CIA.
People familiar with the incident say the group did not act in coordination with any governments. American intelligence agencies would have been especially reluctant to do so given the mission’s sensitive timing and brazen nature. But the raid represents the most ambitious operation to date for an obscure organization that seeks to undermine the North Korean regime and encourage mass defections, they say.
“This group is the first known resistance movement against North Korea, which makes its activities very newsworthy,” said Sung-Yoon Lee, a North Korea expert at Tufts University. [Washington Post]

You can read more at the link, but I would think there is going to be a covert war against the dissidents now by North Korea and their allies.

It will be interesting to see if whoever was responsible for this is caught by Spanish authorities:

The Spanish Ministry of the Interior is currently investigating an incident alleged to have occurred at the DPRK embassy in Madrid, an official confirmed to NK News on Wednesday. 
Spanish outlet El Confidencial first reported that the DPRK embassy had been the subject of an attack and break-in last Friday, with diplomatic staff said to have been tied up and gagged while computer equipment was stolen.
“We can confirm that this is under investigation, but that is the only thing we can say,” an official from the communications department of the Ministry of the Interior said. 
When pressed to confirm a robbery had in fact taken place, the official reiterated that they had nothing more to add.

NK News

You can read more at the link.

I don’t know why any country would want a North Korea ambassador in the first place considering the rampant criminal enterprises conducted out of North Korean embassies:

On Monday, Spain asked the North Korean ambassador in Madrid to leave the country by the end of September, the first European country to expel a North Korean diplomatic envoy.

The move follows similar steps by Mexico, Peru and Kuwait earlier this month. It also comes as the international community steps up its efforts to heighten sanctions against the nuclear-weapons seeking state.

The United Nations Security Council unanimously adopted Resolution 2375 last week, which put a cap on the country’s crude oil imports and a ban on its textile exports.

The United States has called on other countries to cut diplomatic and trade ties with the North in a bid to further isolate the Kim Jong-un regime.

“Today, the North Korean ambassador was summoned and was told of the decision to consider him persona non grata, therefore he must stop working and leave the country before Sept. 30,” the Spanish foreign ministry said in a statement, according to Reuters.  [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link.

Via a reader tip to the archive for the US Naval War College Review, I ended up reading an interesting article about how the failed Toyotomi Hideyoshi invasion of Korea from 1592-1598 may have stopped his plans of conquering the Philippines.  According to the article the Spanish rulers of the Philippines had problems with Japanese pirates known as “wako” and soon stories of the wealth in the Philippines from these pirates got back to Hideyoshi who had recently unified Japan under his rule:

The earliest written mention of fears of a Japanese invasion in the broadest sense of the word appears in a Memorial to the Council of 1586, in which there is specu- lation within Manila that the Japanese wakō might have greater ambitions beyond mere plunder: they “make a descent almost every year, and, it is said, with the intent of colonizing Luçon [Luzon].”3 That never happened, but in 1591 the first proper invasion scare began when the Philippines entered the consciousness of Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1536–98). By means of a series of brilliant military cam- paigns, Hideyoshi had reunified Japan after the chaos of a century of civil war, and he now set his mind on overseas expeditions. The addition of the Philippines to his megalomaniac aims was credited to a certain “Farandaquiemon [Faranda Quiemon]—a Japanese of low extraction,” who induced Hideyoshi “to write in a barbarous and arrogant manner to the governor, demanding submission and tribute, and threatening to come with a fleet and troops to lay waste the country.”  [US Naval War College Review]

According to the article the Japanese soldiers were not interested in attacking Korea because it was a poor country compared to the wealth they believed the Philippines had:

Via a reader tip comes this article about a guy that clearly has some mental issues if he thinks Pyongyang is country worth emulating:

North Korea may be isolated in the international community but it now has a modest ally on the Spanish coast — the Pyongyang Cafe, a small bar founded to support Kim Jong-Un’s strongman rule.

Located in the Mediterranean city of Tarragona where Roman ruins vie for attention, the establishment sports a huge North Korean flag behind the bar, where tea typical from the country and Asian beers are served.

Socialist propaganda posters brought all the way from Pyongyang adorn the walls of the modern bar, and in a corner stands a bookshelf full of works by leaders of the Kim dynasty that has ruled North Korea since 1948, translated into Spanish.

“North Korea is the world’s big unknown,” says Alejandro Cao de Benos, founder of the bar that opened mid-July and also president of the Korean Friendship Association, which has delegates in more than 30 countries and is officially recognised by Pyongyang.

While North Korean restaurants complete with traditional food and dancing have popped up across Asia, the 41-year-old says this is the only such Western establishment.

A restaurant opened in Amsterdam in 2012, but closed several months later.

“We want to break with all the myths, manipulation. And as not many people can go to Korea, because it’s complicated and far, they can come to our cafe,” says Cao de Benos.  [AFP]

You can read more at the link, but Benos claims to be a communist; you would think he would have realized by now that North Korea is not a communist regime.  It is an authoritarian dictatorship that rules with a personality cult.