Category: North Korea

The North Koreans recently test for the first time their Musudan missile which has the potential range of targeting the US island of Guam:

North Korea conducted its first test-launch of the medium-range ballistic missile Musudan early Friday from its east coast, but the launch ended in failure, officials said.

“North Korea seems to have tried a missile launch from the East Sea area in the early morning today, but it is presumed to have failed,” the Joint Chiefs of Staff said.

Sources said the launched missile was the Musudan intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM), also known as the BM-25.

The missile lifted off at 5:30 a.m. but deviated from a “normal” trajectory, a JCS official told reporters.

After their joint assessment, South Korea and the United States concluded the launch as a failure, he added without elaborating further.

One military official said the IRBM disappeared from the South Korean side’s surveillance radar shortly after liftoff.

“It is highly likely that it may have exploded in the air. A further analysis is under way,” according to the official.

It was North Korea’s first test-launch of a Musudan missile, which the North is believed to have deployed against South Korea and other countries since 2007. The North has reportedly deployed some 30 Musudan missiles.  [Yonhap]

Reuters is reporting that it blew up on the launch pad which seems to contradict the ROK military saying that it fell off of their radar screens shortly after launch:

A U.S. government source told Reuters on Friday the missile never got off the launch pad, instead bursting into flames on the ground. It was not yet clear what caused the failure but further tests are expected, said the source, who asked not to be named.  [Reuters]

Whatever the failure was, this does not mean the North Koreans did not receive valuable data from this launch.  So hopefully people are not too quick to dismiss the North’s Musudan missile threat because of this one test.  It took them multiple launches to perfect their Taepodong-2 rocket technology which has had two straight successful launches putting objects into space.  If they continue to test the Musudan which I would think they will likely do, they are bound to figure out the errors that occurred in this test and perfect the technology.

This Yonhap report claims that the North Koreans currently have two Musudans deployed near Wonsan in preparation for a possible test fire this week.  This would be a significant test since the Musudan has never been tested before and is believed to have enough range to target Guam.  What would be even more provocative is if they fire this missile over Japan:

North Korea has deployed one or two Musudan mid-range ballistic missiles to near the eastern port city of Wonsan for a possible launch to mark its founding father’s birthday this week, government sources said Thursday.

“North Korea has been detected to have deployed a Musudan missile(s) in the vicinity of Wonsan’s Hodo Peninsula,” one source told Yonhap News Agency.

“After deploying them some 20 days ago, the North has not withdrawn them,” the source said. “Given the fact, North Korea is likely to venture a launch on the occasion of Kim Il-sung’s birthday.”

On Friday, North Korea marks the 104th birthday of the late North Korean founder and leader Kim Il-sun.

The North has celebrated the “Day of the Sun” with elaborate military events in the past, with experts predicting that the event for this year will be marked with a ballistic missile launch.

Other military sources said the missile or the missiles were loaded onto a transporter-erector-launcher or TEL, a mobile missile launcher.

If the launch takes place, it will be North Korea’s first test-launch of the intermediate-range ballistic missile also known as BM-25.

With a range of up to 4,000 kilometers, the missile could fly over South Korea and Japan to reach as far as Guam, where United States military forces are stationed.  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link.

Could North Korea be showing off its nuclear and ICBM weapon tests to simply make people think they have more capability than they really have?  That is what some researchers think:

 

Ahead of a rare ruling party Congress next month, secretive North Korea is revealing details of its weapons development program for the first time, showcasing its push to develop long-range nuclear missiles despite international sanctions.

Until recently, information on the North’s weapons program was hard to come by, with foreign governments and experts relying on satellite imagery, tiny samples of atomic particles collected after nuclear tests and mangled parts and materials recovered from long-range rocket launches.

No longer. In just over a month, the North has published articles with technicolor photographic detail on a range of tests and other activities that point to fast-paced efforts to build a nuclear-armed intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM).

The reason for the revelations, many analysts say, is that Pyongyang believes convincing the world, and its own people, of its nuclear prowess is as important as the prowess itself. Nevertheless, isolated North Korea’s true capabilities and intentions remain unknown.

“Close-up pictures of ground test activities are almost unprecedented from the DPRK,” John Schilling, an aerospace engineer specializing in satellite and launch vehicle propulsion systems, told Reuters.

DPRK stands for Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, the North’s official name. The reclusive state has conducted four nuclear tests in the past 10 years, the last in January.

“The openness suggests that the underlying strategy is as much diplomatic as military: it is important to Pyongyang not only that they have these capabilities, but that we believe they have these capabilities,” Schilling said.  [Reuters]

You can read more at the link.

Rising discontent as control reinforced to prepare the 7th Workers Party Conference in May…Forced labor to the … pic.twitter.com/YGkXNVBZWh

— RimjingangNK (@RimjingangNK) April 11, 2016

Considering that this defection did happen a year ago it does seem like a legitimate question to ask if this had any political motivations:

A North Korean military intelligence officer has defected to South Korea, the South’s Unification Ministry announced on Monday. While declining to give details, ministry spokesman Jeong Joon-hee confirmed the man is a colonel and called the defection “meaningful.” He is believed to be one of the highest-ranking North Koreans to defect to the South.

Jeong said the defection could be read as a sign of fissure at the top levels of North Korea’s regime.

The announcement comes just days after South Korea said that 13 North Koreans who worked at a state-run restaurant defected en masse last week. Chinese officials confirmed Monday that the North Koreans were working in China, that they left China April 6 and that they were North Korean passport holders.

It is unclear when the high-ranking military official defected to the South. Defectors are often questioned and debriefed for months before news of their defections is publicly announced. In this case, South Korean news wire Yonhap reports the official defected sometime last year, which immediately sparked criticism that the government’s announcement is politically motivated: South Koreans go to the polls in parliamentary elections this week, and previous governments have similarly been accused of trying to influence elections with conveniently-timed announcements.  [NPR]

You can read more at the link.

North Korea calls defection of 13 North Koreans from China an "unprecedented kidnapping incident" https://t.co/ShDR2iPJuc

— Elizabeth Shim (@GlobalAsianista) April 12, 2016

Much like the Kaesong Industrial Complex workers it is a pretty sad state of affairs when being a quasi-slave abroad is better than be a worker in North Korea:

One North Korean who worked abroad says that as a waitress in China, she was forced to put up with male customers who groped her and tried to get her drunk. Two others recall the frozen bodies of their countrymen stored in Russian logging camps. Another says he toiled for up to 16 hours a day at a Kuwaiti construction site surrounded by wire fences.

As difficult as those lives were, the four workers told The Associated Press, it beat staying in the North. The jobs actually conveyed status back home, and were so coveted that people used bribes and family connections to get them.

“I beat the odds of 1 in 12 to become a waitress … People’s views of jobs in North Korea are totally different from here,” said Lee Soung Hee, 42, who worked at a North Korean-run restaurant in the northeastern Chinese city of Dalian in the early 2000s and now lives in South Korea. “Women in North Korea have a fantasy about an overseas waitress job.”

The stories of Lee and the other three workers, all of whom have also defected to rival South Korea, speak volumes about how different life appears when viewed through a North Korean lens.

The country has sent tens of thousands of workers abroad with a mission to bring in foreign currency. Human-rights organizations have called those workers modern-day slaves, while also decrying human-rights abuses North Koreans face back home. To the workers themselves, there is little debate about which plight is more favorable.

The defectors, who worked overseas from the 1990s until the early 2000s, said they had to submit much of their salaries to Pyongyang authorities and never received some of their promised wages. But they said the money they did receive, sometimes earned through moonlighting, still greatly exceeded what they had earned at home.

They said they were also fed relatively well, placed under less strict surveillance and given a rare chance to see the world and learn truths about their homeland.  [Associated Press]

You can read more at the link.

The North Koreans continue to find different ways to mock President Obama.  At least this time they did not resort to racism:

North Korea has tried warnings of nuclear attack and racist diatribes to criticize U.S. President Barack Obama. Now it’s turning to Abraham Lincoln.

North Korea’s state media have constructed an imaginary letter from the 16th U.S. president that attacks Obama’s “deception” over Pyongyang’s pursuit of nuclear weapons. It is the latest response from the North to rising animosity with Washington following Pyongyang’s nuclear test and long-range rocket launch earlier this year.

The letter, posted only in Korean on the DPRK Today website, is likely aimed at a domestic audience. DPRK Today is a relatively little known outlet compared with the North’s main Korean Central News Agency and the Rodong Sinmun newspaper, which outsiders regularly check to find news from the authoritarian country.

The letter is titled “Advice from Lincoln to Obama.”

“Hey, Obama,” it begins. “I know you have a lot on your mind these days … I’ve decided to give you a little advice after seeing you lost in thought before my portrait during a recent Easter Prayer Breakfast.”

In the letter, Lincoln derides Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize-winning push to build a nuclear-free world by questioning why the United States has not taken the initiative to scale back its nuclear arsenal first, even as it asks countries such as North Korea to scrap their atomic programs.

“If the United States, a country with the world’s largest nuclear weapons stockpile, only pays lip service, like a parrot, and doesn’t do anything actively, it will be a mockery to the entire world,” the letter has Lincoln say.  [Seattle Times]

You can read the rest at the link.

Close-up photo of ICBM “new type high power engine” carried by #DPRK media. pic.twitter.com/D69TLONBfM

— Steve Herman (@W7VOA) April 9, 2016

I guess we will see if the mass defection of 13 overseas workers from a North Korean restaurant will become a trend or not.  I would think the regime after this defection would really tighten the controls on their overseas workers by threatening their families back in North Korea:

Future mass defection by North Koreans working abroad cannot be ruled out following the recent escape of 13 people, South Korea’s unification ministry said Sunday.

Speaking to reporters, a ministry official explained that considerable pressure to send back hard currency to Pyongyang in the face of tough United Nations sanctions played a part in the restaurant workers’ defection.

The government hinted earlier that the defectors were fearful that they would be punished if they were unable to send back money to North Korea. Many restaurants have been forced to close due to a drop in patrons, with estimates placing roughly half of them unable to send money back to the North.

The official who spoke on condition of anonymity, said one restaurant serving staff testified that with tough sanctions taking hold, people felt there was no hope for the North Korean regime.

He said a second worker confirmed she watched South Korean TV dramas and knew about life in the South, while another said she realized what happiness was really like while living abroad, and did not want to go back to the North.

“They expressed a desire to live their lives as South Koreans and believed the joint action was their last chance to get away from the North,” the official said. He added the defectors had Internet connection to the outside world, which is not possible inside their isolationist homeland.

“Such information (about the world at large) caused them to crave freedom,” the official claimed.  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link.