Category: North Korea

Trump may want to engage with North Korea, but as long as they are allied with Putin they have no reason to engage back:

U.S. President Donald Trump (R) walks with Chinese President Xi Jinping after visiting Zhongnanhai Garden in Beijing on May 15, 2026, in this photo released by AFP. (Pool photo) (Yonhap)

U.S. President Donald Trump said Friday he discussed North Korea with Chinese President Xi Jinping during their summit in Beijing this week, as he has expressed his desire to reengage with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.

Trump made the remarks in a meeting with reporters aboard Air Force One en route to Washington after a three-day visit to Beijing.

“I did,” he said, responding to a question about whether he talked about North Korea during his meeting with Xi.

“You know, I have a very good relationship with Kim Jong-un. He’s been pretty quiet,” he added.

Asked if he has had any communications with Kim, Trump said, “Yes.”

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

Trump may want to engage with North Korea, but as long as they are allied with Putin they have no reason to engage back:

U.S. President Donald Trump (R) walks with Chinese President Xi Jinping after visiting Zhongnanhai Garden in Beijing on May 15, 2026, in this photo released by AFP. (Pool photo) (Yonhap)

U.S. President Donald Trump said Friday he discussed North Korea with Chinese President Xi Jinping during their summit in Beijing this week, as he has expressed his desire to reengage with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.

Trump made the remarks in a meeting with reporters aboard Air Force One en route to Washington after a three-day visit to Beijing.

“I did,” he said, responding to a question about whether he talked about North Korea during his meeting with Xi.

“You know, I have a very good relationship with Kim Jong-un. He’s been pretty quiet,” he added.

Asked if he has had any communications with Kim, Trump said, “Yes.”

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

What if Kim gets assassinated internally? Will North Korea nuke themselves?

North Korea has updated its constitution to require a retaliatory nuclear strike if leader Kim Jong Un is assassinated, according to a report.

The Telegraph reported the change comes amid heightened global tensions following the killing of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khameneiand other officials during a recent conflict.

Khamenei was killed in an Israeli strike in Tehran as part of a coordinated U.S.-Israeli military operation earlier this year, Fox News Digital previously reported.

Fox News

You can read more at the link.

This is pretty significant for the North Korean military to be invited to march in this parade:

North Korean troops marched in Russia’s Victory Day military parade held in Moscow on Saturday, according to footage released by Russia’s Tass news agency, in a show of the growing military ties between the two nations. 

In footage posted on Tass’ social media accounts, North Korean soldiers were seen marching in formation through Moscow’s Red Square while carrying the North Korean national flag and a banner marking Russia’s Victory Day, which commemorates the Soviet victory over Germany in World War II.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

Hegseth is not wrong about his overall point in regards to North Korea developing nuclear weapons. What he is wrong about is why no prior president struck the Kim regime to stop their nuclear program. It was not because of ballistic missiles, it was because of the country’s massive artillery capacity located along the DMZ that effectively held the millions of people who live in the Seoul area hostage. No U.S. President was willing to strike the Kim regime’s nuclear program and put that many lives at risk from retaliation:

U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Wednesday described North Korea’s menacing nuclear program as “the lesson” to learn, as he defended the U.S. military operation against Iran, which a Pentagon official said has cost an estimated $25 billion.

Hegseth made the remarks during a House Armed Services Committee hearing, stressing that Iran’s strategy to build nuclear weapons mirrors that of North Korea, as he pointed out that like Pyongyang, Tehran had been building a “conventional shield” of missiles to double down on its nuclear program.

“North Korea is the lesson. Everybody thought North Korea shouldn’t have a weapon,” he said.

“Under the Clinton administration, they gathered so many ballistic missiles that their ballistic missile shield allowed them to blackmail the region and the world (and) to say, ‘We’re going to get a nuke and you can’t do anything about it,'” he said.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link.

I always caveat information like this coming from activist groups because it is so hard to know with certainty what is going on in North Korea:

 Executions rose sharply in North Korea for offenses including watching South Korean cultural content during the COVID-19 pandemic, a report showed Tuesday.

The report, released by the Transitional Justice Working Group (TJWG), a Seoul-based NGO, examines executions and death sentences over the 13 years of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s rule from 2011 to 2024.

Of the 144 confirmed executions during the period, 65 occurred after the North closed its borders at the start of the pandemic. The findings are based on testimonies from 265 North Korean defectors and reporting from five media organizations covering North Korea through in-country contacts. SEOUL, April 28 (Yonhap) — Executions rose sharply in North Korea for offenses including watching South Korean cultural content during the COVID-19 pandemic, a report showed Tuesday.

The report, released by the Transitional Justice Working Group (TJWG), a Seoul-based NGO, examines executions and death sentences over the 13 years of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s rule from 2011 to 2024.

Of the 144 confirmed executions during the period, 65 occurred after the North closed its borders at the start of the pandemic. The findings are based on testimonies from 265 North Korean defectors and reporting from five media organizations covering North Korea through in-country contacts.

Executions had declined from 2015 to 2019 amid heightened international scrutiny following the United Nations Commission of Inquiry on human rights in North Korea, according to the report.

But they surged again after the COVID-19 border closure in 2020. Over the five years that followed, executions and death sentences rose by 116.7 percent and the number of individuals affected also rose by 247.7 percent. Notably, executions linked to South Korean cultural content, including K-dramas, films and K-pop, as well as religious practices, surged by 250 percent after the border closure, the report said.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

When you think about it, it is kind of embarrassing for Moscow to have relied on North Korea to recapture Russian territory. It would be like the U.S. relying on Canada to recapture part of Arizona if Mexico ever attacked the U.S.:

North Korea and Russia are dramatically expanding high-level exchanges, with three Russian ministers visiting the North at the same time, as they mark the first anniversary of the recapture of the Kursk region next week amid Moscow’s war with Ukraine, according to Pyongyang’s state media Thursday.

Sectoral working-level meetings to boost North Korea-Russia cooperation and exchanges were held at a hotel in the Wonsan-Kalma eastern seaside resort region the previous day, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said.

The meetings brought together Russian Natural Resources Minister Alexander Kozlov, who serves as the Russian chair of the bilateral committee on trade and economic cooperation; North Korea’s External Economic Relations Minister Yun Jong-ho; Russia’s Health Minister Mikhail Murashko; North Korea’s Public Health Minister Kim Tu-won and others.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

It appears that North Korea is signaling that they have cluster munitions just like Iran has used against Israel:

North Korea has tested cluster bombs in its latest launch of surface-to-surface ballistic missiles, supervised by leader Kim Jong-un, state media reported Monday.

The Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) published the report of the launch of the Hwasong-11 Ra tactical ballistic missile a day after South Korea’s military detected multiple short-range ballistic missiles launched toward the East Sea at around 6:10 a.m. from North Korea’s Sinpho area.

The KCNA said the purpose of the test-launch was to evaluate the power of the “cluster bomb warhead and fragmentation mine warhead” fitted to the weapon system.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

Since Iran has been using cluster bomb munitions it looks like North Korea wanted to show the world they have them too:

North Korea said Thursday that it has test-fired a tactical ballistic missile tipped with a cluster bomb warhead, claiming it can “reduce to ashes” any targeted areas with the highest-density power.

North Korea fired the surface-to-surface missile Hwasong-11Ka tipped with a cluster bomb warhead as part of its tests of “important” weapons systems that were conducted from Monday to Wednesday, according to the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).

The test confirmed that the missile “can reduce to ashes any target covering an area of 6.5-7 hectares with the highest-density power,” the KCNA said.

Korea Times

You can read more at that link.

Here is an interesting bit of history which China clearly saw as empty threats from North Korea:

This photo, taken Nov. 14, 1995, shows then Chinese President Jiang Zemin (L) holding summit talks with South Korean President Kim Young-sam during his visit to Seoul. (Yonhap)

North Korea sharply reacted to growing relations between South Korea and China in the mid-1990s, even threatening to establish formal diplomatic relations with Taiwan in retaliation, declassified dossiers showed Tuesday. 

Pyongyang’s objection came as China was arranging its then leader Jiang Zemin’s visit to Seoul for November 1995, three years after Beijing and Seoul established diplomatic ties in the post–Cold War era, a move that had angered the North, its traditional ally. 

Diplomatic documents from 1995, released by the foreign ministry, revealed that the North had lashed out at China for drawing closer to the South in a June 1995 meeting of state think tank experts. 

When the Chinese side voiced concerns over Pyongyang’s approach to Taiwan at the time, North Korean experts reacted sharply by asking, “Why shouldn’t North Korea develop relations with Taiwan when China and South Korea were engaging in high-level exchanges?” according to the dossiers.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.