This still image captured from video footage of North Korea’s key propaganda website, “Uriminjokkiri,” on March 22, 2016, shows Cheong Wa Dae being placed in crosshairs before President Park Geun-hye and the presidential office are shattered like glass. (Yonhap)
Here is the latest North Korean provocation in response to the ongoing US-ROK military exercises being executed this week:
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has inspected the military’s test-fire of a new large-caliber multiple rocket launcher, the North’s state media said Tuesday, amid heightened tension on the divided peninsula.
The North’s leader has expressed his satisfaction over the “perfect accuracy” of the launch system, praising officials and technicians in the field of defense science, according to the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).
The leader said that its rocket launchers would help increase “the capability of the Korean People’s Army (KPA) to mount a precision attack on the enemies’ targets in the operational theater in the southern part of Korea,” the KCNA said. [Yonhap]
You can read more at the link, but the way I look at it is that these types of provocations are better than them torpedoing ships or blowing the legs off of ROK soldiers.
In other (good) news: Unemployment amongst North Korean defectors continues to decline. pic.twitter.com/Dm2z32aLvZ
— Sokeel Park 박석길 (@Sokeel) March 18, 2016
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un inspects a set of military landing drills, the state-run Rodong Sinmun reported on March 20, 2016. Kim ordered his forces to bury any enemies attacking the country at sea. (Photos posted in Rodong Sinmun)
According to civilian satellite imagery it appears that the Kim regime is preparing the Pungye Nuclear Test Site for future nuclear tests:
North Korea’s Punggye-ri site in Kilju County, North Hamgyong Province, is active and could be ready for new nuclear tests, according to 38 North, as Pyongyang continues to ignore United Nations resolutions and threaten further nuclear and ballistic missile tests.
The website 38 North, which specializes in North Korean affairs and is run by the U.S.-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), said Friday that satellite imagery from March 6 and March 14 show active maintenance at the Punggye-ri nuclear test site.
The activity “does not appear directed at further tunnel excavation,” it said, but rather to maintain existing tunnels as well as to clean up after the nuclear test in January.
“It is highly likely that site is capable of supporting additional tests at any time,” the website continued. [Joong Ang Ilbo]
You can read the rest at the link, but just because they are cleaning up the test site I would think does not necessarily mean there will be a test in the near term. However, I do have to wonder who in North Korea cleans up these test sites? Do they send some of their political prisoners into the tunnels to do the work?
Not that I endorse this, but if there ever was a case for regime change North Korea is making the strongest case for such to happen. How would China for instance react if a country was threatening to nuke Beijing and other cities in China? Probably not with the restraint the US is constantly told to keep:
North Korea claimed Sunday that it could wipe out Manhattan by sending a hydrogen bomb on a ballistic missile to the heart of New York City, the latest in a string of brazen threats.
Although there are many reasons to believe that Kim Jong Un’s regime is exaggerating its technical capabilities, the near-daily drumbeat of boasts and warnings from North Korea underlines its anger at efforts to thwart its ambitions.
“Our hydrogen bomb is much bigger than the one developed by the Soviet Union,” DPRK Today, a state-run outlet, reported Sunday. DPRK stands for the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, North Korea’s official name.
“If this H-bomb were to be mounted on an intercontinental ballistic missile and fall on Manhattan in New York City, all the people there would be killed immediately and the city would burn down to ashes,” the report said, citing a nuclear scientist named Cho Hyong Il. [Washington Post]
You can read more at the link.
ROK Drop favorite Andrei Lankov writes about why what happened in Libya and Ukraine is all the justification the Kim regime needs in regards to why they need nuclear weapons:
If the sanctions are enforced systematically, North Korea would suffer a major blow. Its economy, which began to recover in recent years, is likely to shrink again and its living standards will certainly go down.
It is the inevitable outcome when half the country’s export earnings evaporate overnight. This encourages supporters of sanctions who believe that these unprecedented measures will push North Korea to the negotiating table and may even lead to the end of North Korea’s nuclear programme.
Unfortunately, these expectations are unfounded. The North Korean ruling elite believe that the country needs nuclear weapons to counter foreign threats, and they remember well the sorry end of Muammar Gaddafi, the only strongman who agreed to surrender his nuclear programme.
Nor do they forget what happened to Ukraine, a country which, in 1994, was given international guarantees over its territorial integrity as a reward for its willingness not to retain Soviet-era nuclear weapons.
At the same time, short of an armed rebellion, the North Korean public had virtually no way to influence government policy – after all, this is the country which since the late 1950s claims 100 percent support for government-appointed candidates at all elections. [Al Jazeera]
I recommend reading the whole thing at the link.
I would not be surprised if this is a mock up intentionally published to get the international reaction it is getting:
North Korea on Wednesday caused a new stir by publicizing a purported mock-up of a nuclear warhead for the first time, with leader Kim Jong Un saying his country has developed miniaturized atomic bombs to be placed on missiles.
The North’s Rodong Sinmun newspaper carried photos on its front page that showed Kim and nuclear scientists standing beside what outside analysts say appears to be the model warhead — a small, silverish globe presented on a low table in a hangar with a ballistic missile or a model ballistic missile in the background.
The newspaper said Kim met his nuclear scientists for a briefing on the status of their work and declared he was greatly pleased that warheads had been standardized and miniaturized for use on ballistic missiles. [US News & World Report]
You can read more at the link.
Something I have been saying should be done for a long time is to seize ships caught violating UN sanctions and then sell them off to pay reparations to the families of people kidnapped or killed in provocations or terrorism launched by the Kim regime in the past. The cost of having to replace seized ships would definitely hurt the Kim regime’s bottom line while serving as a deterrent to third countries trying to smuggle goods into North Korea:
The Philippines will impound a suspected North Korean cargo ship docked at a port northwest of Manila and eventually deport its North Korean crewmen in compliance with tough new U.N. Security Council sanctions on Pyongyang over its latest nuclear test and rocket launch, officials said Saturday.
Presidential Communications Undersecretary Manolo Quezon III said the U.N. sanctions would be applied to the MV Jin Teng, which arrived Thursday at Subic Bay, a former U.S. naval base that’s now a key commercial port. The ship has 21 North Korean crewmen.
“Our obligation is essentially to impound the vessel and not allow it to leave port and that the crew must eventually be deported,” Quezon said in a radio interview.
The 4,355-ton vessel is among 31 ships listed as being North Korean owned and that should be held under an “assets freeze” order, Philippine Foreign Assistant Secretary Gary Domingo said. [Associated Press]
You can read more at the link.
https://twitter.com/freekorea_us/status/705922809290235904
