Category: North Korea

Hopefully no ROK Heads reading this from Korea finds a bag of shit on their doorstep today:

North Korea again launched balloons likely carrying trash toward South Korea on Wednesday, the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said, marking a resumption of its trash-balloon campaign after a near monthlong halt.

The JCS said an unspecified number of balloons could travel to northern Gyeonggi Province, just north of Seoul, and advised the public not to touch fallen balloons and report them to the military or police.

Since late May, the North has launched thousands of balloons carrying trash in a tit-for-tat move against anti-Pyongyang leaflets sent by North Korean defectors and activists in South Korea. Pyongyang last launched such balloons on Aug. 10.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

This regime elites may be disillusioned, but will they actually do anything about it? It appears not really because very few have defected or spoke out against the Kim regime:

More North Korean elites are “disillusioned” with the Kim Jong-un regime, as they feel anxious on concerns that any small mishap could deprive them of their lives under his leadership, a former North Korean diplomat said Tuesday.

Ri Il-gyu, a former counselor of political affairs at the North Korean Embassy in Cuba, made the remark in a session during the Global Korea Forum (GKF), a global forum hosted by the unification ministry and designed to garner international support for South Korea’s bid for peaceful unification.

“Perception by the North’s elite group toward the regime has changed a lot,” Ri said. “They are disillusioned with Kim’s impromptu behaviors. Even with doing something wrong a little bit, North Korea shoots them to death.”

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

Former INDOPACOM Commander and Ambassador to South Korea, Admiral Harry Harris had some interesting things to say about North Korea recently:

Military readiness of the South Korea-U.S. alliance weakened “counterintuitively” during former President Donald Trump’s personal diplomacy with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, a former top U.S. envoy to Seoul said Tuesday.

Retired Adm. Harry Harris, who served as the U.S. ambassador to South Korea from 2018-2021, made the remarks, citing the suspension of major South Korea-U.S. military drills, which was aimed at facilitating diplomacy with Pyongyang during Trump’s time in office.

Harris’ remarks came amid speculation that the Republican presidential candidate might revive his leader-to-leader engagement with Kim should he return to the White House. In his recent stump speech, Trump said “getting along” with Kim is a “good thing.” (…….)

“Counterintuitively again during this time, I think our military readiness actually decreased because of the prohibition against military exercises — significant military exercises, large-scale military exercises on the peninsula,” he added.

Shortly after the first-ever summit between the U.S. and North Korea in Singapore in 2018, Trump unveiled a plan to stop “provocative” and “expensive” war games with the South, which Pyongyang has decried as an invasion rehearsal. Later, the allies suspended major combined exercises to back diplomacy to encourage North Korea’s denuclearization.

Yonhap

It only makes sense that readiness would decrease if joint exercises are canceled or downgraded. However, here is the most interesting Admiral Harris had to say:

The former ambassador also said that the North Korean leader is unlikely to renounce his regime’s nuclear weapons, while claiming that Kim has been sticking to four goals — getting sanctions relief, keeping his nuclear arsenal, splitting the Seoul-Washington alliance and “dominating” the Korean Peninsula.

“I think it’s naive to think he’s ever going to give up his nuclear weapons,” he said. “I think we have to adjust our thinking to this new reality.”

You can read more at the link, but I have been saying this for years that the Kim regime has reached a point where they will not give up their nuclear weapons. However, our government continues to stick to the fantasy that their nuclear weapons can be negotiated away.

These have to be some strong horses to haul Kim Jong-il around on:

North Korea has reportedly imported more than 20 Russian horses, known as “Kim Jong-un’s Ama.”

According to the US Radio Free Asia (RFA) on the 27th (local time), Russia’s Primorsky Krai Agricultural and Fisheries Supervisory Service sent 24 Orlov Trotter horses to North Korea on the 25th. (….)

Orlov is known to be the preferred breed of the Kim family as a handsome, obedient, and patient Junma. Kim Jong-un, chairman of the State Affairs Commission, is also called “Kim Jong-un’s Ama” because he was seen climbing Mount Baekdu on an Orlov Junma at the end of 2019.

In February last year, a white horse appeared that Chairman Kim’s daughter Joo-ae was riding at a military parade commemorating the 75th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Army.

Maeil Business Newspaper

You can read more at the link.

In a new book written by H.R. McMaster he discusses his time working in the Trump administration and the friction with the Moon administration over the North Korea nuclear issue:

In the book, titled, “At War with Ourselves: My Tour of Duty in the Trump White House,” H.R. McMaster, who served as national security advisor from 2017-2018, revealed a series of anecdotes where the administrations of former Presidents Moon Jae-in and Donald Trump diverged on North Korea and other issues. (……..)

“Moon said that, just like Saddam Hussein and Muammar Khadafi, Kim believed that he needed nuclear weapons for defense,” McMaster wrote.

“Pence asked Moon, ‘Why does Kim Jong-un need nukes when he has conventional artillery in range of Seoul? We have to consider the possibility that Kim wants the weapons for offensive purposes,'” he added.

Yonhap

Why can’t it be both? Clearly Kim saw what happened to Khadafi and Saddam and does not want that to happen to him. His conventional artillery is enough to deter the ROK and the U.S. as long as USFK is in South Korea. However, if USFK is ever withdrawn that then gives the U.S. more flexibility to strike North Korea without fear of instant retaliation against U.S. troops.

Nucelar weapons combined with their missile program are clearly aimed to deter the U.S. by threatening to launch nuclear weapons against bases in Japan, Guam, and eventually the U.S. mainland if they develop a reliable ICBM. This is why the Kim regime has been wanting to sign a peace agreement with the U.S. during the Moon administration. If there is peace why is USFK still needed? North Korea strategy is to get USFK out and then deter the U.S. with nuclear weapons.

If North Korea feels the U.S. is deterred then tactical nukes could then be used during any offensive operation into South Korea. However, I believe this would actually be a last option for the Kim regime. During the Moon administration the Kim regime was trying to push a confederation policy with South Korea that ultimately failed, but would not be surprised if it came up again in the future.

I would not be surprised if Kim Jong-un is developing and showcasing his suicide drones in hopes of selling them to Russia:

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has overseen a performance test of various drones, calling for the development and production of more suicide drones to enhance war preparedness, state media reported Monday.

Kim supervised the test organized by the Drone Institute of the Academy of Defence Sciences on Saturday, according to the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).

In the test, the drones flew along various preset courses and correctly identified and destroyed the designated targets, as they have missions to attack enemy targets on the ground and in the sea, the report said.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

I have long been a supporter of flooding North Korea with as much outside information as possible to challenge the propaganda the regime indoctrinates its people with. However, the number of defections though up this year are still too small to say the regime is crumbling:

A North Korean soldier defected to South Korea, Tuesday, by walking across the Military Demarcation Line (MDL) on the heavily fortified inter-Korean border. The defection occurred about two weeks after a North Korean resident crossed the maritime border in the Han River estuary on the west coast.

In recent years, North Korea’s elite, including high-level diplomats stationed abroad, have also defected to the South. The latest defector, Ri Il-gyu, fled from Cuba to South Korea in November of last year.

North Korea watchers and defectors residing in South Korea say these defections might indicate increasing economic hardship in the North and a growing desire for freedom among its residents, driven by access to information about the outside world. (…..)

Kim Seung-chul, president of North Korea Reform Radio who defected from the North in 1993, said President Yoon Suk Yeol’s policy of embracing defectors has stirred up complex feelings in the minds of North Koreans.

“South Korea celebrated its first North Korean Defectors’ Day on July 14, and President Yoon’s outreach to 26 million North Korean citizens in his speech is affecting the minds of North Koreans. The loudspeaker campaign and anti-Pyongyang leaflets have also been effective in bringing about change,” Kim said.

Socio-economic factors, such as economic hardship and political oppression, continue to drive North Koreans to flee their country. In the first half of the year, the number of North Korean defectors arriving in South Korea reached 105, a slight increase from 99 in the previous year.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link, but there has never been a coordinated and sustained effort to flood North Korea with outside information. This is probably the lowest cost way to pressure the Kim regime. Just their reactions to the propaganda balloon launches by the defector group Fighters for a Free North Korea demonstrates that what they are doing is having an impact within North Korea.

I am sure Ms. Stephens feels like she is doing something positive, but in my opinion she is just enabling the Kim regime to receive tourism dollars that ultimately goes to funding their nuclear and missile programs that threatens regional peace:

When British traveler Zoe Stephens, 30, decided to tour North Korea for the first time in 2017, she didn’t think she would be doing it for a living.

“I went to North Korea as a tourist first, pretty much the same way as everyone else. I realized it’s nothing like what the media says,” she told The Korea Herald. She said “the real North Korea” took her by surprise and charmed her.

“So I decided that I wanted to start doing tours to show everyone what the media wasn’t showing — the human side to North Korea.”

Since then she has visited North Korea more than two dozen times, staying as long as a month at a time until the pandemic shut down the borders. She eventually began working as a tour guide for a Beijing-based company Koryo Tours, which mainly offers travel programs to North Korea.

Korea Herald

You can read more at the link, but Ms. Stephens claims she has free access to go around the country and take pictures. However, I doubt they are taking her to the labor camps and firing squads. Keep that in mind every time someone tells you how great North Korea is to visit.