Category: North Korea

As I have said before I have little sympathy for people who travel to North Korea fully knowing the risks of being used as a pawn by the Kim regime.  With that said he did not deserve what happened to him and I feel very bad for Otto Warmbier’s parents to have to deal with such a traumatic death for their son:

The parents of Otto Warmbier, the U.S. student North Korea detained and who died soon after returning home in June, have described the horrific details of his condition.

Fred and Cindy Warmbier disclosed to Fox News on Tuesday what the communist state did to their son and criticized the country for claiming to be a “victim” of the United States’ push for war.

Fred described North Korea as “terrorists” and said they kidnapped and tortured Otto.

The student’s family saw him when they went aboard an air ambulance on June 13. But Otto’s mother and sister left the plane in shock at the initial sight. They said Otto had a shaved head, a feeding tube in his nose, was blind and deaf and was staring blankly.

The father said Otto also had a large scar on his right foot and a high fever.

“It looked like someone had taken pliers and rearranged his bottom teeth,” Cindy said. “We could not call it a coma and were not prepared (to see Otto in such a horrific condition).”  [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link, but unfortunately we will probably never fully know what happened to Otto Warmbier in North Korea.

Considering that in the past the North Koreans have shot down a US reconnaissance aircraft that did not have a fighter escort, I would imagine the US military would never allow their strategic bombers to fly without a fighter escort thus making the North Koreans threats pretty irrelevant.  Could you imagine their the turkey shoot US aircraft would have against antiquated North Korean MIGs?:

North Korea’s foreign minister said Monday that President Trump has declared war on the reclusive nation and that Pyongyang has the right to shoot down U.S. military aircraft.

“Since the United States declared war on our country, we have every right to take counter measures,” Ri Yong Ho told the media as he was leaving the United Nations. “Including shooting down U.S. strategic bombers, even when they are not yet inside the airspace border of our country.”  [USA Today]

You can read more at the link.

A ROK Drop favorite B.R. Myers has a lot to say about the wishful thinking of so many so called North Korea experts:

What looks like bellicose behavior to the shallow-minded is but additional code for the select few to decipher. The North’s deadly bombardment of Yeonpyeong Island in 2010 was thus a plea to be taken more seriously in peace talks (as Jimmy Carter said at the time). And the signing of the Agreed Framework of 1994, in which North Korea and the US promised to work toward normalizing relations, something that would have deprived the North of all reason to exist as a separate state? No code there, just politically suicidal good faith – on Kim Jong Il’s part at least.

These acrobatics are very much an American thing. No one does wishful thinking like we do. I don’t see South Korean progressivists pretending that the regime’s every word and deed can be boiled down to the same reassuring message. In fact, part of the reason many of them feel a sneaking admiration for the North is because it follows through on its Yankee-defying rhetoric. But that’s another topic.  [B.R. Myers]

So what does Myers think is really going on with North Korea?  It is what I have been saying for years North Korea wants to create tension in the US-ROK alliance that would lead to the ultimate withdrawal of USFK:

The next stage of inquiry is learning to discern the real from the sham, the heartfelt from the feigned. This is not an exact science, I admit, but neither is it mere guesswork. When a regime’s fundamental, unchanging interests line up with a seventy-year pattern of behavior, and an equally old ideological tradition, and now with its “outer-track” propaganda, we can be as sure of its intentions as we can be about anything in world affairs.

So I’m going to say this once again: North Korea’s immediate goal is the withdrawal of US troops. Its ultimate goal is the unification of the peninsula under the star flag. And yes, it has good reason to believe this can be done without a war.

I highly recommend reading the whole thing at the link.

It is statements like this that continue to build the case to justify military action against North Korea.  For once it would make strategic sense for them to come off as rational actors to make the world think the Kim regime will responsibly manage their nuclear weapons, but old habits die hard:

North Korea’s Foreign Minister Ri Yong-ho threatened to take “merciless pre-emptive action” against the United States in case it shows any sign of military attack, calling U.S. President Donald Trump the “gravest threat” to international peace and security during an address to the United Nations General Assembly on Saturday in New York.

Speaking two days after raising the possibility of a hydrogen bomb test in the Pacific Ocean, Ri showered derogatory language on Trump while addressing world leaders, suggesting it was “fair enough” for him to use a tone that corresponded to Trump’s earlier speech to the same global body.

“The absurd reality that someone like Trump, a mentally deranged person full of megalomania and complacency, who is chastised even by Americans as ‘Commander in Grief,’ ‘Lying King’ and ‘President Evil’ is holding the seat of the U.S. president, and the dangerous reality that the gambler who grew old using threats, fraud and all other schemes to acquire a patch of land holds the nuclear button – these constitute the gravest threat to the international peace and security today,” said Ri, according to English transcripts provided by the United Nations.

In his 22-minute speech, given in Korean, Ri mentioned “U.S.” 28 times and “Trump” five times, mostly to chastise Trump’s earlier threat to “totally destroy” North Korea and to rally support from other countries in contending that Pyongyang’s nuclear drive is a “righteous self-defensive measure” against Washington.  [Joong Ang Ilbo]

You can read the rest at the link.

This doctored photo, released by the North Korean propaganda website, DPRK Today, on Sept. 24, 2017, shows a U.S. strategic bomber B-1B being struck by North Korea’s Pukguksong missile. (Yonhap)

Cartoon flyers mocking Trump found in Incheon https://t.co/wptZgSW5R5 pic.twitter.com/9X97DTKrVq

— NorthKoreaRealTime (@BuckTurgidson79) September 21, 2017

I wonder if this earthquake was caused by a collapsing tunnel at the nuclear test site which hopefully isn’t leaking out radiation now:

A 3.2 magnitude earthquake detected near North Korea’s nuclear test site Saturday was judged to be a natural quake, South Korea’s weather agency said.

The tremor occurred at 5:29 p.m. , 20 kilometers southeast of the country’s Punggye-ri nuclear test site in the northeastern province where the North conducted its sixth nuclear test Sept. 3, according to the Korea Meteorological Administration.

The agency upgraded the scale of quake from its earlier assessment of the 3.0 magnitude.

“The quake has been analyzed to have occurred naturally,” an agency official said. “A sound wave, which is usually generated in the event of an artificial earthquake, was not detected.”

The Preparatory Commission for the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO) said that it detected two seismic events in North Korea, but they were “unlikely (to have been) man-made.”  [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link.

As with many of these defector accounts it is impossible to know how true the claims really are:

A North Korean defector has told of Kim Jong Un’s teen sex slaves, lavish caviar lunches and gory public executions. Hee Yeon Lim, 26, is the daughter of a high-ranking soldier from Pyongyang and a member of the regime’s inner circle.

But when her father, Col. Wui Yeon Lim, 51, passed away, she and her family decided to flee the country in 2015. Now in South Korea, Hee Yeon has spoken of what life was like inside the secretive rogue state.

She told the Mirror she saw “terrible things” in her home city of Pyongyang despite her family’s relative privilege. She said officials came to her school to pick out teen schoolgirls to work at the chubby dictator’s homes. The escapee said they would only choose the prettiest girls, who were taught to feed him caviar and massage him.

If they refused, they would “disappear,” she said.

Hee Yeon — who has met the despot — also told how he would dine out on imported delicacies like caviar and Chinese “bird’s nest soup,” which can cost $2,700 a kilo (2.2 pounds).

And she described one occasion when she was forced to watch as a group of 11 musicians accused of making a pornographic video were slaughtered. Hee Yeon told how she and her classmates were ordered out of their classrooms in the middle of the day by soldiers who took them to a stadium at the city’s Military Academy.

She said the hooded and gagged victims were brought out and tied to the end of anti-aircraft guns in front of some 10,000 spectators. The escapee then recalled how the guns were fired one by one, saying: “The musicians just disappeared each time the guns were fired into them.  [New York Post]

You can read more at the link.

Would such a test be pretext to launch a bombing strike, especially since they would have to fire over Japan to do this nuclear test?:

Hours later, Kim’s foreign minister told reporters in New York that Pyongyang could launch a nuclear missile test in response. “This could probably mean the strongest hydrogen bomb test over the Pacific Ocean. Regarding which measures to take, I don’t really know since it is what Kim Jong Un does,” said Ri.  [CNN]

You can read more at the link.

Here is Kim Jong-un’s reaction to President Trump’s speech to the UN General Assembly:

Famous for using bombastic, derogatory and often-awkward English slams against enemies, North Korean state media sent people scrambling for dictionaries Friday with a dispatch that quotes leader Kim Jong Un calling President Donald Trump “the mentally deranged U.S. dotard.”

The what?

Dotard means a person in a feeble or childish state due to old age. It’s a translation of a Korean word, “neukdari,” which is a derogatory reference to an old person.

It was used in an unusual direct statement from Kim that the Korean Central News Agency transmitted verbatim in response to Trump’s speech at the U.N. this week, in which he mocked Kim as a “Rocket Man” on a “suicide mission,” and said that if the U.S. is “forced to defend itself or its allies, we will have no choice but to totally destroy North Korea.”  [Associated Press]

You can read more at the link.  Here is what President Trump had to say via Twitter in response:

Kim Jong Un of North Korea, who is obviously a madman who doesn't mind starving or killing his people, will be tested like never before!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 22, 2017

Wouldn’t it be great if Kim Jong-un got his own Twitter account and him and President Trump could just have a Twitter war instead of going back in forth in the media like this?