Month: December 2014

The Kim regime must be feeling pretty of themselves right now after there successful Sony hack because they continue to gloat and make threats:

While steadfastly denying involvement in the hack, North Korea accused U.S. President Barack Obama of calling for “symmetric counteraction.”

“The DPRK has already launched the toughest counteraction. Nothing is more serious miscalculation than guessing that just a single movie production company is the target of this counteraction. Our target is all the citadels of the U.S. imperialists who earned the bitterest grudge of all Koreans,” a report on state-run KCNA read.

“Our toughest counteraction will be boldly taken against the White House, the Pentagon and the whole U.S. mainland, the cesspool of terrorism,” the report said, adding that “fighters for justice” including the “Guardians of Peace” — a group that claimed responsibility for the Sony attack — “are sharpening bayonets not only in the U.S. mainland but in all other parts of the world.” (CNN)

You can read more at the link.

A ROK Drop favorite Park Sang-hak and his activist allies plan on dropping copies of the now cancelled Hollywood movie “The Interview” over North Korea if they can get a copy of the film:

Human Rights Foundation founder Thor Halvorssen says the group plans on buying copies of “The Interview” — which depicts the assassination of North Korea’s leader — and including them in upcoming balloon drops over North Korea. The group is waiting to hear whether Sony will release the movie in an alternate format since it canceled plans to release the film in theaters. (On Wednesday, Sony said it had no further plans for release.)

For the last two years, the Human Rights Foundation has been working with groups in South Korea to drop balloons into the North that are filled with banned items.

HRF has teamed up with Park Sang Hak, who worked for the North Korean government before defecting to South Korea. He is now the chairman of an activist group, Fighters for a Free North Korea, and has successfully led multiple balloon launches into North Korea.

Park told CNNMoney it’s a wider effort to help North Koreans gain access to different perspectives. And that perspective may soon include the controversial film that North Korea has condemned.  [CNN]

You can read more at the link, but this is another possible response to the Sony hack which would be to help fund defector groups to get subversive media into North Korea.

Please leave anything you want to discuss in the comments section.

Mad about free speech and North Korea? Hack back, says group: http://t.co/uAh5v6XE5K

— NK NEWS (@nknewsorg) December 19, 2014

Shown is the military headquarters of the Korean exiled government in the western Chinese city of Chongqing during the Japanese colonial rule of Korea in the early part of the 20th century. The Chinese government said on Dec. 19, 2014, it had decided to preserve the building as a historic site. (Yonhap)

North Korea looks like they want to take a page out of the playbook they used for the sinking of the Cheonan where everyone knew they did it, but by continuing to deny it it allows their allies like Russia and China to help cover for them to prevent any real consequences for the attack:

North Korea said U.S. accusations that it was involved in a cyberattack on Sony Pictures were “groundless slander” and that it was wanted a joint investigation into the incident with the United States.

An unnamed spokesman of the North’s foreign ministry said there would be “grave consequences” if Washington refused to agree to the joint probe and continued to accuse Pyongyang, the official KCNA news agency reported on Saturday.

On Friday, President Barack Obama blamed North Korea for the devastating cyberattack, which led to the Hollywood studio cancelling “The Interview”, a comedy on the fictional assassination of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

In its first substantive response to the accusation, the isolated North Korea said it could prove it had nothing to do with the massive hacking attack.

“We propose to conduct a joint investigation with the U.S. in response to groundless slander being perpetrated by the U.S. by mobilizing public opinion,” the North Korean spokesman said.

“If the U.S. refuses to accept our proposal for a joint investigation and continues to talk about some kind of response by dragging us into the case, it must remember there will be grave consequences,” the spokesman said.  [Reuters]

You can read more at the link, but North Korea is back making threats against the US again.  It will be interesting to see what the US response will be, but I do not see this as an act of war as some people are claiming.  Why should poor network security by a company be a reason to draw the US into a war?  This is a crime not an act of war.  Pushing for further members of the Kim regime to be tried at the International Criminal Court would be one way to respond.  It is highly symbolic, but it would be highly embarrassing for the Kim regime just like the past referral of North Korea for human rights violations was.  Putting North Korea back on the State Sponsors of Terrorism List, a list they never should have been taken off of in the first place, would be another way to respond.  Finally as One Free Korea points out taking financial action against the regime could be the most effective way to really get the attention of the Kim regime to act as a deterrent against such a cyberattack in the future.

This has been a long time coming, but the

The U.S. government has approved the sale of four RQ-4 Global Hawk surveillance drones to South Korea.

The foreign military sale is included in a list of contracts announced on the Defense Department’s website Monday.

Northrop Grumman Systems Corp.“has been awarded a $657,400,000 hybrid contract … for aircraft for the Republic of Korea,” the announcement stated.

The contract includes four RQ-4B Block 30 Global Hawk aircraft, two spare engines and ground control equipment. The first Global Hawk is to be delivered in 2018, the San Diego, Calif.-based company said in a statement. Each aircraft will contain an “Enhanced Integrated Sensor Suite,” the DOD announcement said.  [Stars & Stripes]

You can read more at the link, but this sale has been in the works for many years because of the delays caused by concerns that technology and information would be leaked to North Korea.  Now with the US wanting the ROK to take on more of their defense responsibilities enough confidence in the South Koreans to protect this technology must have been built up to approve this sale.

Via the Marmot’s Hole comes this Wall Street Journal article from a Korean lawyer that gives you all the information you need to know in regards to South Korea’s highly criticized defamation laws:

A separate category of criminal defamation is criminal insult. This provides punishment up to one year in prison or 2 million won in fines. Unlike criminal defamation, criminal insult involves no statement of fact, but simply generalized epithets. To establish criminal insult, the insult needs to be: (1) made publicly (i.e. the same “publicity” requirement as criminal defamation); (2) directed to a specific individual, and; (3) objectively damaging to the social reputation of the insulted individual.

Further, even an insult that would in fact damage the reputation does not rise to a criminal level if, in the context of overall situation in which the insult was made, the statement is not outside of the bounds of social norms. For example, the Supreme Court in 2008 held that a golf caddy who complained about her boss on the Internet by calling him “pitiable” and “pathetic,” was not guilty of criminal insult. Among other reasons, the ruling was given because the level of her insult was quite light and it was made in the context of complaining about workplace conditions—both of which were within the social norms.

All in all, the full contour of Korea’s criminal defamation laws shows that it to be less outrageous than one may think. The law is hardly a license to punish every nick and cut caused by everyday speech. Although horror stories on the Internet regale in claiming that “truth is not a defense” in Korean criminal defamation, the truth had better be actually defamatory before any punishment is meted out.

One can easily think of many circumstances in which even a true fact about a person can lower social esteem, in a way that does not impinge on the public interest. If, for example, Person A has an embarrassing venereal disease, what would justify the actions of Person B who, intending to harm Person A’s reputation, widely publicizes that true fact?

Because the standards for criminal defamation are fairly strict, Korea’s prosecutors frequently decline to indict after receiving the criminal complaint. Even if the prosecutors do indict and the case moves forward, more than 90% of  cases are dismissed or result in the prosecution’s defeat. (The author’s opinion is that the Korean government’s case against the Sankei’s Mr. Kato will fail as well because of the “public purpose” defense.)  [Wall Street Journal]

I highly recommend reading the rest at the link, for those interested in this topic.

(LEAD) U.S. formally accuses N. Korea of involvement in Sony hack http://t.co/sLktpv8L8s

— Yonhap News Agency (@YonhapNews) December 19, 2014

Cheerleaders perform at a basketball game in Ulsan City, South Gyeongsang Province, on Dec. 15, 2014. (Yonhap)