Category: North Korea

This report makes it sound like the US and the ROK will just wake up one day and decide to launch a preemptive attack against North Korea.  The reality is that this “4D” concept would likely happen in response to a North Korean provocation to where there is clear intent to launch missiles against the ROK and the US:

The new operational concept jointly adopted by South Korea and the United States to destroy North Korea’s nuclear and missile facilities is expected to prompt the North to launch fresh provocations, sources said Tuesday.

The allies approved the implementation guidance on the “4D Operational Concept” during the annual Security Consultative Meeting (SCM) held in Seoul, Monday, as a means to carry out preemptive strikes against the North’s missile threats, containing nuclear, chemical and biological warheads.

The guidance, which is designed to detect, disrupt, destroy and defend — the 4 “D’s” — has the major implication that the allies have revived the concept of preemptive strikes against the North’s strategic facilities. A ministry official noted on condition of anonymity that “disrupt and destroy” contains the connotation of preemptive strikes.

In an apparent response to the allies’ endorsement of the new operational concept, the North’s state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported Tuesday that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un observed a live-fire exercise for anti-aircraft artillery.

Kim was quoted as saying by the KCNA: “We should actively push for the development of a variety of advanced anti-aircraft guns that meet the requirements of modern warfare.”

Yang Moo-jin, a professor at the University of North Korean Studies, told reporters, “The report came right after South Korea and the U.S. approved the 4D Operational Concept. It seems the North had the intention to respond to the allies’ cooperation.”

Officials said Seoul and Washington have prepared the guidance since 2013 while having experienced various provocations from Pyongyang including a third nuclear test in February that year and the test-firing of a submarine-launched ballistic missile in May this year.

The preparation comes at a time when the six-party talks aimed at denuclearizing the North remain stalled since late 2008, due to the insistence by the North that it should join the talks with the status of a nuclear power and without any conditions attached.

The guidance will reportedly be reflected in a new joint wartime operational plan between the allies, dubbed Operation Plan (OPLAN) 5015, focused on preemptive strikes on strategic sites in the North. The allies signed OPLAN 5015 in June to replace the existing OPLAN 5027, which was more about how to defend the South. [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link.

Jae Jin recently reached freedom through our networks. Read his story: https://t.co/HYUsSNGwws pic.twitter.com/UP9umkQkUW

— Liberty in North Korea (@LibertyinNK) October 30, 2015

I am pretty impressed that North Korea’s Pyeongwha Motors is able to have enough demand in North Korea to support 25 different models of cars:

The United States has Ford. Germany has Volkswagen. Japan has Toyota. And North Korea has Pyeonghwa Motors.  Run by Kim Jong-un’s regime, the company produces a tiny number of vehicles at its factory in the city of Nampo, a seaport on North Korea’s west coast. At its sole dealership in the capital Pyongyang, visitors can view its lineup up close, take a test drive and even purchase spare parts. Andray Abrahamian, research director at North Korea-focused nonprofit Choson Exchange, visited the showroom last month, and provided Mashable brochures on the current selection of 25 models:  [Mashable]

You can read the rest at the link, but Pyeonghwa Motors was actually started by the South Korean Unification Church and ownership given to the Kim regime.  Their cars also average about 80 horsepower which is incredibly slow anywhere else, but like many thing good enough for North Korea.

Taken from a program aired on the North’s Korean Central TV Station on Oct. 27, 2015, the photo shows North Korean modern dancers performing during a celebration marking the 70th anniversary of the country’s ruling Workers’ Party. The broadcast carried 220 minutes of the recorded event. (Yonhap)

The photos carried by North Korea’s Rodong Sinmun on Oct. 28, 2015 shows the country’s new Sci-Tech Complex in Pyongyang. The report said North Korea’s top leader Kim Jong-un lauded the facility as showing the world the strong desire and passion of the country and its people to become well versed in science and technology. (Yonhap)

Front pages in South Korea and North Korea today. All you need to know about differing priorities on the peninsula. pic.twitter.com/SpLPwVc8iq

— Alastair Gale (@AlastairGale) October 21, 2015

The AP has an article posted about the rise of non-governmental North Korea analysts with names some ROK Heads may recognize:

 In an anonymous office building in the shadow of the Rocky Mountains, in a part of Colorado where cattle ranches fade into strip malls, a gravel-voiced man with a Brooklyn accent is moving through the streets of Pyongyang.

Joe Bermudez is staring into a computer screen at a detailed satellite image, maneuvering his cursor past guarded checkpoints and into restricted neighborhoods where the North Korean elite live behind high concrete walls. Looking down on the city from more than 250 miles up, he lingers over what he believes is the private airport of Kim Jong Un, North Korea’s young leader, pointing out a pair of VIP helicopters and a Soviet-era biplane. He moves north, jumping across the countryside and picking out hidden tunnels, walled compounds and a small flotilla of military hovercraft designed to storm South Korea’s beaches.

“Driving around,” he calls it when he follows roads in search of something new, humming absent-mindedly as his eyes flick across the screen.

Bermudez is a watcher, one of the largely anonymous tribe of researchers who study North Korea, one of the world’s most isolated nations. There’s Michael Madden, a largely self-taught analyst with an encyclopedic knowledge of the government elite, and Curtis Melvin, whose research ranges from monetary policy to electricity grids and who shambles through the buttoned-down Washington think tank where he works in jeans and a frayed T-shirt. There’s Adam Cathcart at Britain’s University of Leeds and Cheong Seong-Chang at the Sejong Institute outside Seoul. There’s the longtime U.S. intelligence officer, a man quietly revered by many in these circles, who now writes Pyongyang crime novels under the pseudonym James Church.

They are university professors, think tank analysts and writers for a string of North Korea-centric websites. They are collaborators and competitors. They are the Kremlinologists of Pyongyang.

And they insist North Korea is nowhere near as mysterious as you think it is. At least not always.

“North Korea is a very secretive place. But it’s not as secretive as many people believe,” says Andrei Lankov, a Russian-born professor at Kookmin University in Seoul. “It’s much, much easier now to get information.”  [Associated Press]

You can read the rest at the link.

The popular military site, We Are the Mighty has published a list of the 10 worst armies in the world and on it they claim the North Koreans are the third worst:

On the outside, the North Korean Army looks like its the priority for the Kim regime. In many ways, it is. The border towns of Panmunjom and Kaesong, as well as Nampo (where a series of critical infrastructure dams make a concerted military effort necessary) and DPRK newsreel footage boast tall, strong-looking North Korean troops with new equipment, weapons, jeeps, and full meals. Deeper inside the Hermit Kingdom, however, the Army starts to look a bit thin. Literally. On a 2012 trip to North Korea, the author found most Korean People’s Army (KPA) troops to be weak and used mainly for conscripted labor. It would have been a real surprise if they all had shoes or could walk in a real formation. Most units appeared lightly armed, if armed at all.  [We Are the Mighty]

Just because the North Koreans have mandatory conscription which allows the regime to use the military as free labor does not mean the whole military is horrible.  The North Koreans have a very large special operations force of 180,000 troops which is larger than most militaries in the world.  Just keeping those personnel trained and equipped is enough to meet their defense needs while using the rest of the conscripts for work projects and border security.

It looks like since the rocket test got squashed for whatever reason the North Koreans are going back to their other popular provocation in their playbook which is a nuclear test:

South Korea’s spy service believes North Korea is preparing for a fourth nuclear test but not in the immediate future, according to South Korean lawmakers who attended a closed-door meeting with agency officials Tuesday.

The office of lawmaker Lee Cheol Woo said the National Intelligence Service made the assessment after monitoring activities at North Korea’s main Nyongbyon nuclear complex.

Lee and another lawmaker, Shin Kyung-min, said the spy agency didn’t say how it obtained the information. Shin said it also didn’t elaborate on what test preparations meant. The spy agency’s public affairs office said it could not confirm the reported assessment.  [Associated Press]

You can read more at the link.

Very interesting read in the Joong Ang Ilbo about Hwang Jang-yop and his aide Kim Dok-hong who are the highest level Kim regime officials to ever defect to the South.  What was most interesting was that after defecting they promised to assist the ROK with democratizing North Korea, but during the Sunshine Policy years the so called democracy advocates of the Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun administrations had so effectively isolated Hwang that he feared for his life and considered defecting to the US:

Hwang Jang-yop, the architect of North Korea’s Juche ideology who defected to the South in 1997, considered seeking asylum from the U.S. government because he feared for his life in Seoul, according to his former aide Kim Dok-hong.

In an exclusive interview with the JoongAng Ilbo on Saturday, the 67-year-old Kim, who left Pyongyang along with Hwang, the highest North Korean to defect to the South to date, spoke up for the first time about the defection process.

Kim recalled that Hwang, a former secretary of the Workers’ Party, claimed that he was behind the Juche, or self-reliance, ideology rather than North Korea founder Kim Il Sung or his son Kim Jong-il, and that this “slip of the tongue” led him to seek asylum.

On his way back from a trip to Japan to give a special lecture on Juche, Hwang went to the South Korean Embassy in Beijing on Feb. 12, 1997, to seek political asylum.

At the time, Hwang was the Worker’s Party secretary in charge of international affairs, and he defected with his aide, Kim, a businessman with connection to China and an official with the Workers’ party that managed resources.

At the time of the defection in February 1997, Kim described that then President Kim Young-sam in a personal letter promised to treat Hwang with the respect due a minister-level official and Kim as a vice-minister-level official, and pledged to help support activities to democratize North Korea.

“But that promise was not kept by the Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun administrations,” he recalled.

“Former Secretary Hwang was deemed an ‘enemy’ by the Kim Dae-jung government’s National Intelligence Service,” said Kim. “And feeling threatened that the NIS may kill him, he even requested asylum from the U.S. government.”  [Joong Ang Ilbo]

You can read much more at the link.