Category: Inter-Korean Issues

I think the Musudan tests had more to do with being able to show the US they can target Guam and build Kim Jong-un profile domestically than any concerns about THAAD:

North Korea’s recent firing of an intermediate-range ballistic missile at a high angle appears to be intended to push South Korea to accept the deployment of an advanced U.S. anti-missile system here and cause a rift in Seoul’s relations with Beijing, a North Korean expert said Tuesday.

Hong Woo-taek, a research fellow at the state-run Korea Institute for National Unification (KINU), said, “Pyongyang might have sought to exploit the tension between South Korea and China over the Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system issue to strengthen its hitherto weakened ties with Beijing.”

“But China is not foolish enough to alienate itself from South Korea to take sides with North Korea. Pyongyang won’t be able to achieve what it intended by firing the Musudan missile at a high angle last month,” Hong said in his recent report, titled “North Korea’s Intentions and THAAD.”

On June 22, the North fired two Musudan missiles, with one flying some 400 kilometers and reaching an altitude exceeding 1,000 km. Although the Musudan did not fly very far, some experts said the great height it achieved may mean the missile is capable of ranges up to about 3,000 km and could theoretically strike key military bases in the U.S. territory of Guam. The high angle at which the missile flew after takeoff also means it could be used to attack South Korea.  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link.

It doesn’t appear to be an asymmetric attack like the North Koreans have done before, but instead just a response to the heavy rains that have hit the peninsula:

North Korea discharged water from a dam near the border with South Korea Wednesday, prompting the South to evacuate border-area residents for fears of flooding.

“It seems that North Korea discharged water from Hwanggang Dam at around 6 a.m.,” a South Korean military official said. “North Korea opened the floodgates of the dam bit by bit from early morning.”

The North did not notify the South of the dam water discharge in advance despite their previous agreement to do so, the official said.

Still, Seoul ruled out the possibility that the sudden water release has anything to do with flooding attacks, he added.

The water level at the North Korean dam had been detected to have risen to full capacity with the area having massive rainfalls in recent weeks.

Six South Koreans were killed in September 2009 after North Korea released a massive amount of water from the border dam without prior warning.  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link.

The Joong Ang Ilbo has an extensive profile on the life of Hwang In-cheol who is the son of a 32-year old MBC producer that was kidnapped by North Korea on a hijacked plane.  You can read about this story at my prior DMZ Flashpoints posting.  This hijacking is just one of the many terrorist incidents the Kim regime has never been held accountable for and to this day some how remains off of the US’s state sponsors of terrorism list:

When Hwang In-cheol was 2 years old, his father disappeared.

“Maybe he’ll come back on Christmas Day,” Hwang’s mother said.

Hwang counted down the days, imagining his father coming through the door laden down with presents.

It didn’t happen.

“Maybe next Christmas,” his mother said.

It wasn’t until Hwang was in the third grade that his father’s brother decided he should know the truth.

Hwang Won was a 32-year-old producer for Munhwa Broadcasting Corporation (MBC) based in Gangwon. On Dec. 11, 1969, he boarded a Korean Air flight from Gangneung, Gangwon, for Gimpo International Airport in Seoul to attend an MBC internal meeting. A senior colleague who was supposed to attend was busy. He ordered Hwang to fill in for him.

Ten minutes after takeoff, a North Korean spy hijacked the YS-11 aircraft and the 50 other people on it, all South Koreans, to Wonsan, some 207 kilometers (128.6 miles) east of Pyongyang, the North’s capital.

The producer left behind his wife, a 3-month-old daughter and 2-year-old Hwang In-cheol.

It was the second – and last – instance of a South Korean aircraft being hijacked by the North. On Feb. 16, 1958, a Korean Air flight from Busan to Seoul was abducted midway with 34 people on board, including a few foreigners.  [Joong Ang Ilbo]

You can read much more at the link.

I would not be surprised at all if hundreds of North Korean spies are active in South Korea, heck some of them operate right out in the open:

South Korea’s military counterintelligence agency arrested eight civilians suspected of passing military secrets to North Korea.

The suspects were under investigation, according to South Korean lawmaker Lee Wan-young, who attended a closed-door parliamentary briefing on Friday, Newsis reported.

The first four defendants were arrested more than a year ago in May 2015 on charges of espionage and sharing South Korean military intelligence with contacts in the North.

The suspects were found guilty of spying and are “all civilians who made contact with South Korean military personnel for the purposes of extracting army secrets, and to deliver them to North Korea,” Lee said.

Another four suspects arrested in 2016 are under separate investigations on similar charges, local news service News 1 reported.

The most recent round of arrests also involved suspects who attempted to win the trust of military officers to procure classified information, Lee said.

The information that was passed to the North include details on military facilities and “other data,” according to the South Korean lawmaker.

Cases of espionage among South Koreans are rare, but according to a former spy and defector in 2015, North Korean spies are operating in the “hundreds.”

Pyongyang has previously used spies to infiltrate the South and instruct them to commit suicide if caught.  [UPI]

You can read more at the link.

It looks like the North Koreans could be up to no good again in the western islands:

South Korea’s military is on high alert for possible North Korean military provocations after the communist country increased the amount of weapons and troops on its western islands, government sources said Wednesday.

“North Korea has deployed weapons, surveillance assets and troops to its islands, Galdo and Arido, north of the Northern Limit Line (NLL) in the Yellow Sea,” one government source said, asking not to be named. “Our (South Korean) military is mindful of the possibility of sudden provocations by the North in the region.”

The NLL is a de facto maritime border between the Koreas.

Possible provocations could include shelling attacks on South Korean warships or seizing South Korean fishing boats in the tense border areas, other sources indicated.

In response, the South Korean military has placed its troops on alert and increased its sea border surveillance using unmanned aerial vehicles, including Israel-made Heron drones, the sources said.

They said the North has recently installed military bunkers on the previously uninhabited Galdo and deployed about 60 military forces and six 122-millimeter multiple-launch rocket systems there.

A squad of 20 soldiers has been deployed on Arido, also formerly uninhabited, along with surveillance radar and a camera, according to the sources.  [Yonhap]

This is just more evidence that the Kim regime is using the Chinese fishing boats as an asymmetric warfare tactic against South Korea:

South Korea urged North Korea on Monday to immediately stop making military threats such as shelling the South’s Yeonpyeong Island.

North Korea’s Korean Central News Agency called on South Korea to stop “reckless military provocations” by continuing its crackdowns on illegal Chinese fishing boats in the neutral waters of the Hangang River estuary near the western sea border. The state-run news agency said that such actions could spark a retaliation from the North similar to the attack on Yeonpyeong Island in November of 2010 which resulted in four people dead and 18 injured.

South Korea’s unification ministry responded by saying such rhetoric is not appropriate and do not help improve inter-Korean ties .  [Arirang News]

You can read more at the link.

This announcement by North Korea makes it pretty clear that they are deliberately organizing the Chinese fishing boats to intrude into South Korea as a form of asymmetric warfare against the South:

North Korea on Monday slammed South Korea for its operation with the United Nations Command (UNC) to repel Chinese fishing boats operating illegally in neutral waters between the two Koreas, calling the move a “military provocation.”

This marks the North’s first official reaction to South Korea and the UNC’s joint crackdown on Chinese fishing vessels operating in the neutral waters of the Han River estuary.

Fishing vessels that are officially registered with either South or North Korea are allowed into the neutral waters. Each side could send military police officers into the no man’s land to enforce rules under the armistice agreement.

South Korea’s move is aimed at “escalating the intrusion into the hotspot waters in the West Sea of Korea into the inland to secure a chance for military provocation,” the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said in an English dispatch.  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link, but I continue to believe if the ROK seizes the illegal Chinese fishing boats and then auctions them off and gives jail time to the crew members that would end the incentive for these people to illegally fish in South Korean waters.

Here is the latest of the North Korea restaurant worker defector case:

A Seoul court held a hearing Tuesday after a group of lawyers challenged the legitimacy of the South Korean government holding a group of North Korean restaurant workers who defected in April in a state protection facility.

Last month, the Lawyers for a Democratic Society, also referred to as Minbyun, filed a petition with the Seoul Central District Court questioning whether the defectors came to the South out of their own free will, after the country’s top spy agency denied an interview with the defectors.

The defectors themselves did not attend the first hearing at the Seoul Central District Court on Tuesday afternoon, but their legal representatives did. On the same day, the National Intelligence Service (NIS) decided that the 13 North Korean restaurant workers would not be sent to a defector resettlement facility but rather be kept in a protection facility that it operates.

The group of 12 female workers and their male manager who worked at Ryugyong in Ningbo, Zhejiang Province, one of Pyongyang’s many overseas restaurants in China, defected to the South in early April.  [Joong Ang Ilbo]

You can read the rest at the link, but I am still suspicious of these progressive lawyers who seem like they are more about representing North Korean interests than the best interests of these defectors.

Via a reader tip comes the below article about how a progressive legal team is trying to gain access to the 13 North Korean restaurant workers that defected to South Korea:

A progressive South Korean legal organization has been denied access to the 13 North Korean defectors who fled a state-run restaurant in China.

Lawyers for a Democratic Society had requested interviews with the North Korean waitresses and their manager, but after being rejected at the defector custody center is planning to take legal action, Yonhap reported.

During a press conference Monday, the lawyers said they were told by an intelligence official that access was not allowed because the “North Korean workers had entered South Korea out of their own free will.”

“If that is correct, the government must grant them their right to counsel,” the lawyers told reporters.  [UPI]

You can read the rest at the link, but it is likely that the ROK intelligence officers are concerned that the lawyers like some other progressive groups in South Korea are influenced by North Korean handlers.   The Kim regime has been launching a vigorous propaganda campaign against the defectors and I would not put it past them to use these lawyers to pass messages about how their family members are being threatened back in North Korea by their defection and to come back.

For NKorean defectors, the USB is mightier than the nuke. https://t.co/XOAqZnMj9g w/ @AlastairGale pic.twitter.com/35HNoh4OsK

— Sokeel Park 박석길 (@Sokeel) April 14, 2016