Just think that for housing this is about as good as it gets for most people in North Korea:
North Korea has held a ceremony to mark the completion of building another housing district in Pyongyang as part of the country’s project to construct 50,000 units of new homes in the capital by 2025, state media reported Monday.
The North held the ceremony to celebrate the completion of the construction of new residential areas in the Taephyong district in Pyongyang on Sunday, according to the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).
The Taephyong district in western Pyongyang is located near Mangyongdae, the birthplace of North Korea’s late founder Kim Il-sung, also the grandfather of the current leader Kim Jong-un.
It looks like Kim Jong-un is making sure we are building up to another “crisis” on the peninsula with his expected space launch:
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un inspected the country’s first military reconnaissance satellite and gave the green light for its next action plan, Pyongyang’s state media said Wednesday, adding that the satellite is “ready for loading” on a rocket.
Kim made the on-site inspection to the Non-permanent Satellite Launch Preparatory Committee a day earlier to check the overall status of the spy satellite and approved of its “future action plan,” the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said, in a move that signals the launch could be imminent.
“After acquainting himself in detail with the work of the committee, he inspected the military reconnaissance satellite No. 1 which is ready for loading after undergoing the final general assembly check and space environment test,” it said in an English-language dispatch.
Considering North Korea’s stated commitment to expanding its nuclear arsenal this news should not be surprising:
Recent commercial satellite imagery indicates North Korea continues to expand and refurbish its Yongbyon nuclear complex, reinforcing concerns the country is acting on leader Kim Jong-un’s recent call for an “exponential” increase in its nuclear arsenal, 38 North, a U.S. think tank, said Friday.
The report based on satellite imagery taken April 20 said significant construction and improvement activities have been detected throughout the Yongbyon Nuclear Scientific Research Center, particularly around the Experimental Light Water Reactor (ELWR), the 5 MWe Reactor and within the uranium conversion area.
North Korea has officially responded to the US-ROK summit last week where President Biden said the regime would be destroyed if they used nuclear weapons. None of these insults and threats coming from Kim Yo-jong should be surprising in response considering North Korea’s past history of insulting US and ROK presidents:
In her comments published on state media, Kim Yo Jong said the U.S.-South Korean agreement reflected the allies’ “most hostile and aggressive will of action” against the North and will push regional peace and security into “more serious danger.”
Kim, who is one of her brother’s top foreign policy officials, said the summit further strengthened the North’s conviction to enhance its nuclear arms capabilities. She said it would be especially important for the North to perfect the “second mission of the nuclear war deterrent,” in an apparent reference to the country’s escalatory nuclear doctrine that calls for preemptive nuclear strikes over a broad range of scenarios where it may perceive its leadership as under threat.
She lashed out at Biden over his blunt warning that North Korean nuclear aggression would result in the end of its regime, calling him senile and “too miscalculating and irresponsibly brave.” However, she said the North wouldn’t simply dismiss his words as a “nonsensical remark from the person in his dotage.”
Here is the latest person to call for the redeployment of tactical nuclear weapons to South Korea:
The United States should redeploy its tactical nuclear weapons on the Korean Peninsula to make US extended deterrence credible against escalating threats from North Korea, said John Bolton, former White House national security adviser, on Tuesday. This strategy would also enable South Korea to buy time to weigh up the gains and losses of nuclear armament, he added.
“I’ve refused to give up on the possibility of stopping North Korea from getting deliverable nuclear weapons in the first place. That should remain (at) the center of our attention. This is not over yet,” Bolton said at the Asan Plenum 2023 hosted by the Asan Institute for Policy Studies in Seoul.
You can read more at the link, but the redeployment of nuclear weapons Bolton says is also a way to hold China accountable for allowing North Korea’s nuclear weapons program in the first place.
The G7 can say what it wants, but clearly the Kim regime is never going to willingly give up their nuclear weapons. At some point governments are going to have to recognize that reality:
This undated image, provided by Yonhap New TV, shows North Korean Foreign Minister Choe Son-hui. (Yonhap)
North Korea’s foreign minister said Friday that the United States and the West have no right to argue about its status as a nuclear weapons power, slamming a recent joint statement by the Group of Seven (G-7) diplomats as interference in internal affairs.
In a statement, Foreign Minister Choe Son-hui took issue with the G-7 Foreign Ministers that condemned the North’s unlawful ballistic missile launches and said Pyongyang “cannot and will never” have the status of a nuclear weapons state under the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
“G7 has neither authority nor qualification to say this or that about the DPRK’s exercise of its sovereignty and its national status,” she said in the statement carried by the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).
Well it looks like we know what North Korea’s next provocation is going to be:
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un (R) and his daughter, known as Ju-ae, visit the North’s space development agency on April 18, 2023, in this photo released by the North’s official Korean Central News Agency the next day. (For Use Only in the Republic of Korea. No Redistribution) (Yonhap)
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un said Pyongyang has completed building its first military spy satellite and ordered final preparations to launch the satellite as planned, the North’s state media reported Wednesday, in a move that is expected to further heighten tensions on the Korean Peninsula.
Kim made the remarks during an on-site inspection to the North’s space development agency a day earlier, as Pyongyang has vowed to complete preparations of the launch of a military spy satellite by the end of this month, according to the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).
