Category: Inter-Korean Issues

If these POWs do in fact defect to South Korea their families back in North Korea will likely face punishment by being sent to labor camps:

The government said Seoul has not changed its position regarding accepting to the nation, North Korean soldiers held captive by the Ukrainian military in the Russia-Ukraine war should they wish to defect to South Korea.

An official at Seoul’s foreign ministry said on Tuesday that the North Korean captives are considered prisoners of war, regardless of Pyongyang’s acknowledgement of their deployment.

The official added that in accordance with the 1949 Geneva Conventions, they must not be repatriated against their will to their home country, where they could face persecution.

KBS Global

You can read more at the link.

Appeasement of North Korea is what one analyst expects and the Korean left’s track record on this issue shows this will likely come true:

Sung-Yoon Lee, a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C., said Yoon’s removal “virtually enthrones” Democratic Party leader Lee Jae-myung as the likely next president. Lee, who has not formally announced a run for the presidency, faced Yoon in the 2022 election.

In December, he famously scaled a wall at the National Assembly to block Yoon’s martial law decree. Yoon defended his decision, accusing the Democrats of obstructing legislation and conducting politically motivated investigations of government appointees. “If Lee Jae-myung or another [Democratic Party] politician takes power, we can anticipate big changes — mostly for the worse for South Korea’s national security and its alliance with the U.S., based on the ignoble record on North Korea policy …,” Sung-Yoon Lee told Stars and Stripes by email Friday. (…..)

“Politicians are prone to switching colors on various issues,” Sung-Yoon Lee said. “But Lee Jae-myung and his fellow lawmakers are united and unswerving when it comes to appeasing Kim …”

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link.

When these drones were flown over Pyongyang it was clear this was in response to the North Korean trash balloons that the Yoon administration was struggling to find a response to. If Yoon wanted to provoke a military confrontation with North Korea there would have been better ways of doing so such as sinking a North Korean patrol ship that crossed the NLL this past October:

South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff denied allegations that the military scattered anti-communist propaganda leaflets in North Korea to prompt a reaction from Pyongyang, according to a spokesman Thursday. It was “not true” that the South Korean military carried out activities “to induce provocations from the enemy” that were intended to warrant a counter response from Seoul, South Korean army Col. Lee Sung-jun, a Joint Chiefs spokesman, said Thursday at a press conference in Seoul.

South Korean lawmakers from the opposition Democratic Party have accused former President Yoon Suk Yeol of attempting to justify his abrupt martial law declaration last month by directing the military and intelligence agencies to provoke North Korea. North Korea alleged the South sent military drones north of the border to distribute propaganda leaflets in October. One of these drones crashed and was recovered Oct. 13 in Pyongyang, North Korea’s state-run Korean Central News Agency reported six days later.

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link.

It has been 14 years since the brazen attack on Yeonpyeong Island by North Korea:

South Korea’s Marine Corps chief vowed Saturday to never forget the sacrifices of two Marines killed in a 2010 North Korean artillery attack on a western border island.

Lt. Gen. Kim Kye-hwan, who doubles as the command’s head, made the remarks during an annual ceremony marking the 14th anniversary of the attack on Yeonpyeong Island near the western inter-Korean sea border, which killed two Marines and two civilians.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link, but the November 23, 2010 attack was the first artillery attack on ROK soil since the Korean War.

This is laughable if the Unification Ministry has any expectation that the Kim regime will ever pay back these loans. Giving money to North Korea is like giving money to a methhead, you know what they are going to use the money for and should not expect to get it back:

The unification ministry said Monday it is reviewing measures to reclaim loans granted to North Korea for building inter-Korean roads and train tracks after the North blew them up in October.

The unification ministry unveiled the tentative measures as part of its policy plan for the second half of President Yoon Suk Yeol’s administration, which is now at the midpoint of his five-year term.

On Oct. 15, North Korea demolished parts of the roads and train tracks connected to South Korea — the Gyeongui Line in the western border region and the Donghae Line along the east coast — in its latest display of escalating hostility toward the South.

The unification ministry said a review is under way, in collaboration with other related ministries, to seek the collection of loans to North Korea amid concerns the country may refuse to repay them following its detonation of inter-Korean roads and train tracks.

From 2002-2008, South Korea provided in-kind loans worth US$132.9 million to North Korea to construct roads and train tracks along the two inter-Korean lines.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

The tit-for-tat between the ROK and North Korea continues:

The powerful sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un said Sunday that South Korea will have to pay a “dear price” for sending propaganda leaflets across the border the previous day.

Kim Yo-jong, vice department director of the central committee of the North’s ruling Workers’ Party, said “various kinds of political agitation leaflets and dirty things” were dropped by the South near the border and further inland.

“We strongly denounce the shameful and dirty acts of the ROK scum who committed the provocation of scattering anti-DPRK political and conspiratorial agitation things once again in disregard of our repeated warnings,” she said in a statement carried by the North’s Korean Central News Agency, referring to South and North Korea by their formal names, the Republic of Korea and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

“There will be no house owner who hardly gets enraged at such dirty rubbish scattered in the clean yard, which even a mutt dislikes to touch,” she said.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

This would be the next logical step in escalation from North Korea. With that said they have already flown drones multiple times over South Korea in the past showing how hypocritical their claims against the ROK now are:

Inter-Korean tensions are escalating over propaganda leaflets, as North Korea threatened, Monday, to deploy unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to drop leaflets over Seoul. The North also reiterated its claim that the South Korean military recently sent leaflet-distributing drones into its territory.

“It would be interesting to see how they will bark if a drone appears in Seoul and scatters leaflets,” Kim Yo-jong, the powerful sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, said in a statement via the North’s mouthpiece Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).

Noting a hypothetical situation, she said, “An unidentified drone appears over Seoul and scatters leaflets denouncing ‘the puppet Yoon,’” apparently referring to President Yoon Suk Yeol. “Our military, individual organizations, or any individual have not flown any drones, cannot confirm such actions, and do not consider it worth responding to.”

Her remarks appear to sarcastically criticize the South Korean military’s response to North Korea’s claims that the South sent a drone carrying anti-regime leaflets over Pyongyang earlier this month and that they found debris from a UAV of the same type operated by the South Korea’s military. In response to these claims, the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said, “We cannot verify (the claim), and the claim is not worth replying.”

Korea Times

You can read more at the link.

One of the drones that flew over Pyongyang earlier this month carrying propaganda leaflets crashed and the North Koreans were able to extract information from it to determine it came from South Korea:

North Korea said Monday that its analysis of the flight log of a drone that crashed in Pyongyang earlier this month showed it took off from a South Korean border island in the Yellow Sea, insisting that the South Korean military is behind what it claimed were South Korea’s drone incursions.

South Korea’s military called the North’s latest claim “unilateral,” saying it is “unworthy” of verifying or responding to.

North Korea earlier claimed that South Korean drones carrying anti-North Korea propaganda leaflets were detected in the night skies over Pyongyang three times this month and threatened to respond with force if such flights occur again.

Announcing the final results of its probe into the drone incursions, North Korea’s defense ministry said it has analyzed the flight control program from the remains of a drone that crashed after intruding into the North on Oct. 8, according to the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).

The North said the drone took off from South Korea’s border island of Baengnyeong in the Yellow Sea at 11:25:30 p.m. on Oct. 8 and intruded into the territorial air of North Korea.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.