Category: North Korea

I would think the Chinese would not be too happy with the North Koreans trying to draw attention away from the G-20 Summit they are currently hosting, but obviously the Kim regime cares little about what the Chinese think:

North Korea on Monday fired three medium-range missiles that traveled about 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) and landed near Japan in an apparent show of force timed to coincide with the Group of 20 economic summit in China, South Korean officials said.

North Korea has staged a series of recent missile tests with increasing range, part of a program that aims to eventually build long-range nuclear missiles capable of striking the U.S. mainland.

Such tests are fairly common when international attention is turned to Northeast Asia, and this one came as world leaders gathered in eastern China for the G-20 summit of advanced and emerging economies. China is North Korea’s only major ally, but ties between the neighbors have frayed amid a string of North Korean nuclear and missile tests and what many outsiders see as other provocations in recent years.

South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said that the three ballistic missiles, all believed to be Rodongs, were launched from the western North Korean town of Hwangju and flew across the country before splashing into the sea.  [Associated Press]

You can read more at the link, but all these missile launches do is further justify South Korean President Park Geun-hye’s decision to deploy the THAAD missile defense system to the ROK against Chinese objections.

It seems to me North Korea abducting an American from Yunnan province seems pretty far fetched considering the large distance the province is from North Korea.  It would have been far easier for them to abduct someone from a Chinese province bordering China if they were looking for an American to kidnap:

A US student who supposedly died in China in 2004 has reportedly turned up alive in North Korea after being kidnapped to serve as Kim Jong Un’s personal tutor.

David Sneddon of Brigham Young University disappeared in Yunnan Province aged 24, in what Chinese police said was probably a hiking accident.

But the reality, according to Choi Sung-yong, head of South Korea’s Abductees’ Family Union, is that he was kidnapped to be an English tutor to the then-heir to North Korea Yahoo News Japan reported Wednesday.

Sneddon is now living in the North Korean capital of Pyongyang, where he teaches English to children and has a wife and two children, Choi said.

The news comes as relief – but little surprise – to Sneddon’s parents, Roy and Kathleen, who have long doubted the official story of their son’s disappearance.

‘We just knew in our heart that he was alive, so we had to keep fighting,’ said Kathleen Sneddon.

Their suspicion was based in part on the fact that Sneddon’s body was never found after he was believed to have died in Tiger Leaping Gorge, a canyon on Yunnan’s Jinsha River that is highly popular with tourists.  [Daily Mail via a reader link]

You can read more at the link, but other than a statement from a North Korean defector there is no evidence to support the claim in the article.  It seems the family is maintaining a healthy bit of skepticism as well about the claim.

Reports like this make think this could just be disinformation coming out of North Korea:

North Korea is building intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) launch pads on trains, the U.S.-based Radio Free Asia (RFA) said Wednesday.

“Technicians from the second economic committee have been building a mobile ICBM launch pad since May,” a North Korean citizen living in Gangwon Province said. “The factory makes six freight trains a month and will be used as ICBM mobile launch pads.”

The trains were customized to withstand missile launches, the source said. [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link.

In-depth @csmonitor piece on how 2013 #ChongChonGang bust helped UN, US etc unveil #NKorea's shell ops more widely: https://t.co/3QE2ezmZv9

— Aidan Foster-Carter (@fcaidan) August 29, 2016

There is probably more to this story in regards to why Kim Jong-un would order his execution that has more to do with his bad posture at meetings:

North Korea has carried out the execution of a vice premier and punished two senior officials, a Seoul official said Wednesday, as the North’s leader is seeking to further strengthen his reign of terror.

The official said North Korea executed the 63-year-old Kim Yong-jin by firing squad last month after being branded as an “anti-party and anti-revolutionary element.”

He was investigated by the North’s intelligence agency due to his sitting posture shown at a key parliamentary meeting held in late June.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, who took power in late 2011, is believed to have executed more than 100 government and military officials, including his once-powerful uncle Jang Song-thaek, as he seeks to consolidate his oppressive rule.  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link.

New documentary about NKorean defector artist, I AM SUN MU, now available on iTunes: https://t.co/HJ2H4tqo7d pic.twitter.com/SQJAhF4sOd

— Sokeel Park 박석길 (@Sokeel) August 24, 2016

Now Streaming: Intranet Protocol TV Service Arrives in #NorthKorea (Photo: KCTV) https://t.co/sdpmKJkXb3 pic.twitter.com/D1CLg2bglp

— 38 North (@38NorthNK) August 18, 2016

Another one bites the dust:

North Korea shut down its embassy in Uzbekistan early this month.

Embassy staff returned to North Korea late last month, while the building in the Uzbek capital of Tashkent was sold along with the official cars and other assets.

The Uzbek government demanded the closure as part of international sanctions against North Korea in response to the North’s latest nuclear test in January.

A diplomatic source in Uzbekistan said, “Diplomatic relations have not been severed, but North Korean diplomats were virtually evicted by the Uzbek government rather than voluntarily closing down the mission due to financial problems.”

The Tashkent embassy was the North’s sole remaining diplomatic mission in Central Asia after the embassy in Kazakhstan was shut down in 1998.   [Chosun Ilbo]

You can read more at the link, but considering how these North Korean embassies are primarily used for illicit activity to bring in foreign currency to the Kim regime who would want one of these in their backyard?

The Eugene Bell Fdn requested the US to relax NKorea sanctions to allow for Genexpert, a test for TB diagnosis https://t.co/wxWHaFm4Pu

— Elizabeth Shim (@GlobalAsianista) August 17, 2016

It would be interesting to know if the recent defection of a North Korean diplomat also included the confiscation of regime funds:

Defection by North Korean diplomats who have access to foreign currency holdings would make it harder for North Korea to bring in money from abroad which can eventually hasten the communist regime’s collapse in the event of a financial crisis, a renowned U.S. scholar said Monday.

The analysis by Stephen Haggard, professor at the University of California San Diego, reflects the speculation of growing instability in North Korea, as seen by recent defections of North Korean overseas workers who had played a part in repatriating hard currency to the cash-strapped regime.

Last week, the South Korean government confirmed that a London-based senior North Korean diplomat defected to the South with his family, which can be viewed as another sign of cracks in the North’s ability to keep its key people in check.

Seoul did not confirm whether the diplomat, Thae Yong-ho, brought foreign currency with him, but news reports said his escape may have dealt a blow to North Korea’s overseas earnings because he reportedly may have had knowledge of the foreign exchange operations of the Kim Jong-un regime in Europe.

In April, a group of 13 North Korean employees working at a North Korean state-run restaurant in China defected to South Korea en mass, spawning speculations that the sanctions-squeezed North Korean elite were feeling the pinch of United Nations’ sanctions on the communist country and opting to bolt.

“Historically, I’ve never thought of the collapse of North Korea in terms of political collapse, but I believe in the scenario … with respect to the possibility of financial crisis,” the professor said in a seminar arranged by the East Asia Foundation in Seoul.

North Korea’s thinning foreign currency income, caused by UN-imposed trade bans and the shutdown of its inter-Korean Kaesong Industrial Complex, left the country vulnerable to the possibility of a “sudden” financial crisis that can lead to a subsequent regime collapse, he said.  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link, but as Mr. Haggard points out in the article as long as China continues to not impose UN sanctions on North Korea the Kim regime will likely continue to survive.