Category: North Korea

He sent Kim Yong-nam to mourn the other parts of the body. https://t.co/MxKkxPzytB

— Joshua Stanton (@freekorea_us) January 23, 2017

This is the same thing I have been saying for years that the North Koreans want a peace treaty in order to separate the US from the ROK.  As long as the US-ROK alliance is solid Kim knows he has no chance of reunification with the ROK on his terms:

“What does Kim Jong-un want?” Cha said repeating the question. “I think he wants to … he wants a peace treaty with the United States as a nuclear weapons state. I think that’s what he wants.”

“I would add to that, that the North Koreans clearly would like to loosen, if not fracture, US alliances with Seoul and Tokyo, beginning with Seoul, certainly,” said Ambassador Robert Gallucci, the lead negotiator with North Korea in the 1990s in the Agreed Framework process.

“And they will do a lot to achieve that, and including, perhaps, enter negotiations,” Gallucci noted.  [Business Insider]

You can read more at the link.

Who will put up the first statue in front of the Chinese Embassy in Seoul? https://t.co/pmLilogPB9

— Joshua Stanton (@freekorea_us) January 21, 2017

I think the Kim regime is taking a wait and see approach with the incoming Trump administration because of the high possibility of a left wing government being elected in the ROK.  As many long time readers know a left wing ROK government means a lot of free cash going North with little to nothing in return.  Causing trouble now could cause ROK voters to rally around an anti-North Korean candidate.  Plus I think the Kim regime is betting on that President Trump’s demands for more funding for US forces in South Korea will lead to increased tensions between the ROK and US governments that they can later capitalize on:

North Korea’s state media issued a short report on the inauguration of U.S. President Trump on Sunday but refrained from making significant comments.

“Donald Trump of the Republican Party was inaugurated as the 45th president of the United States on Jan. 20,” reported the Rodong Sinmun, a daily of the North’s ruling Workers’ Party. “The inauguration ceremony took place in Washington.”

The newspaper, however, did not deliver a separate commentary or statements on Trump. North Korean media outlets have not been making significant statements on the new administration in Washington since Trump’s victory in the election last year.

Political pundits said Pyongyang is apparently taking a wait-and-see stance until the new administration comes up with details on its polices against North Korea.  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link.

Foreign Policy has a good article published that tries to give perspective to the hysteria created by Kim Jong-un’s New Year’s speech which caused so many people in the US to get in a panic about an upcoming ICBM test:

Of course, it is an obvious inference that North Korea might test an ICBM in 2017. We should probably expect an ICBM test to come sooner or later. But Kim didn’t commit to an ICBM test in 2017. He indicated that one was possible. And he also restated North Korea’s long-standing demands for reducing tensions. You don’t have to think Kim’s offer is an appealing one or that he is sincere. Frankly, I have my doubts on both accounts. But he did make an offer.

That isn’t what got reported of course. “North Korea Will Test Intercontinental Ballistic Missile, Kim Says,” blared the New York Times. The headline was a heck of a lot less careful than the story, by Choe Sang-Hun. Eventually, the editors toned down the headline, but too late. By that time, the damage was done. Kim’s speech wound its way through the news and social media, cut up and condensed into 140-character snippets like a modern-day game of telephone. In the end, his bland speech had been transformed into a “grim promise” to test “a missile to reach U.S.”  [Foreign Policy]

This is nothing new in regards to the media sensationalizing everything coming out of North Korea.  The Foreign Policy article goes on to explain how in response to these news articles various US government officials have inflamed tensions with North Korea further.  To calm things back down this is the recommendation given:

North Korea’s demand that the United States cancel all its exercises is a nonstarter, but Washington could offer further transparency and agree to some limits on their scale. There are lots of good reasons to do this, not least because the bomber appearances are losing their shock value. They have become a poor substitute for a strategy. We might as well get something for taking a break from them.

We don’t have to work out all the details in advance. But the basic framework for a potential compromise is clear: scaling back the exercises in 2017 that Kim complained about in his speech for his agreement to refrain from nuclear and missile testing during the same period. It is a timeout to reduce tensions while Trump and Kim figure each other out.

I recommend reading the whole article at the link, but I think the idea isn’t too bad depending on what scaling down of the military exercises means?  The North Koreans want to take every opportunity to drive a wedge between the US and the ROK and the annual military exercises are a major component of readiness and team building between the two country’s militaries.  They should not be canceled, but it may be worth determining what could be scaled back and see if there is any interest from the North Koreans in freezing their testing in return.

A horrible mass shooting has allegedly occurred at a North Korean town along the Chinese border:

A young North Korean man conscripted to guard a customs post on his country’s border with China in under arrest for shooting dead seven platoon members who had angered him with bullying treatment, RFA’s Korean Service has learned.

After the shootings at dawn on Jan. 7 at Hyesan, a city in North Korea’s northern Yanggang province, the young conscript was arrested and taken to Pyongyang, sources familiar with the shooting told RFA.

“The suspect and one platoon member who survived the shooting were transported to State Security headquarters in Pyongyang. There is no way to find out the exact cause of this incident, since the Yanggang authorities are trying to keep everyone’s mouth shut,” one source said on Jan. 14.

A second source, however, said the shooter apparently snapped after suffering bullying from his colleagues.  [Radio Free Asia]

You can read more at the link.

North Koreans who escape their country are not just refugees. They are powerful agents of change.
Watch: https://t.co/BMXLOUmk7p

— Liberty in NK (@LibertyinNK) January 19, 2017

The Kim regime has some parting words for the outgoing President:

North Korea told outgoing President Barack Obama to get “packing” as it denounced a recent U.S. crackdown against human-rights abuses in the isolated communist state.

The United States blacklisted seven senior North Koreans, including leader Kim Jong Un’s sister, and two agencies last week, citing links to such abuses.

The State Department also released a report saying North Korea’s rights record is among the worst in the world.

The North’s state-run Korean Central News Agency called the moves “desperate efforts” by the Obama administration “to keep afloat their hostile policy” toward Pyongyang before leaving the White House.

Donald Trump is to be sworn in as U.S. president on Friday.

“Obama would be well advised not to waste time taking issue with [others’] ‘human rights issue’ but make good arrangements for packing in the White House,” KCNA said in a commentary posted Monday.

“He had better repent of the pain and misfortune he has brought to so many Americans and other people of the world by creating the worst human rights situation in the U.S. during his tenure of office,” it added.  [Stars & Stripes]

You can read more at the link, but on a positive not at least the North Koreans did not use any racial slurs when referring to the President.

Yonhap is reporting that the North may have two ICBMs ready to launch in the coming days or weeks:

North Korea has probably built two missiles presumed to be intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) and placed them on mobile launchers for test-firing in the near future, military officials said Thursday.

The two missiles are estimated to not exceed 15 meters in length, making them shorter than the North’s existing ICBMs, the 19-20 meter-long KN-08 and the 17-18 meter-long KN-14, the officials familiar with the matter told Yonhap News Agency.

The North appears to have intentionally leaked the new missiles to send a “strategic message” to the incoming government of Donald Trump who takes office on Friday, they said.

The officials didn’t provide the exact date for when the missiles were picked up by intelligence, although it is estimated that the U.S. detected them on Monday when the U.S. Navy hurriedly moved its sea-based X-band radar system to the western part of the Pacific Ocean from seas off Hawaii.

Experts say the North is likely to fire off a new ballistic missile that flies some 2,500 kilometers and claim that it has succeeded in launching an ICBM. An ICBM usually has a range exceeding 5,500 kilometers.

“It will take at least two to three years for Pyongyang to master ICBM capabilities and five more years before they can be deployed operationally,” said Kim Dong-yeob, a professor at Kyungnam University’s North Korean studies school.

The North is widely expected to test-fire a missile when the Trump government outlines its policies toward the communist state or around the time of the annual Seoul-Washington joint military drill kickoff in March.  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link, but considering their trouble getting the Musudan missile to reliably work it seems the chances of a road mobile ICBM working is pretty low.

North Korea is doubling down on its viewpoint that it has the right just like any other sovereign country to test an ICBM.  Of note though is that they are saying the ICBM test is part of its space program:

 

North Korean criticized the international community on Tuesday for its double standard toward the country’s development of intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM).

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un said in his New Year’s Day address that the country has entered the final stage of preparations to test fire an ICBM, an apparent warning that the reclusive country is perfecting the capability to hit the continental United States with nukes.

“Acting by the double-dealing standard unilaterally set by the U.S. in its interests, the UN brands the legitimate exercise of the sovereignty by an independent country as ‘illegal’ and its measure for self-defense provocation,” the North’s Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said in an English-language report monitored in Seoul.

Pyongyang’s state-run media further said the North’s test firing is the country’s “exercise of the right to launch satellites for peaceful purposes, justified by international law.”  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link, but the way I look at it is if the Kim regime wants to be treated like a normal country, then act like a normal country.