Category: North Korea

It looks like North Korea’s former Foreign Minister who led the diplomatic outreach between Kim Jong-un and Donald Trump may have been executed:

Former North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong-ho appears to have been executed last year, a Japanese newspaper reported Wednesday.

Ri seems to have been executed around between the summer and fall of last year, the Yomiuri Shimbun reported, citing unnamed multiple sources.

Four or five officials from North Korea’s foreign ministry appear to have been executed successively around the time of Ri’s death, according to the report.

It added that some unspecific issues related to the North Korean Embassy in Britain might have been the reasons behind their executions, saying that all of them, including Ri, worked in the diplomatic mission. (….)

Ri, who was appointed as the North’s top diplomat in 2016, played a key role in negotiations with the U.S. for the 2018 and 2019 summits between North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and then U.S. President Donald Trump. The Hanoi summit in early 2019 ended with no deal. Ri is known to have left office in 2020.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

The bad cop of North Korea is back at it blasting South Korea:

The sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un on Tuesday blasted South Koreans who questioned Pyongyang’s reconnaissance capabilities in response to its launch of a test satellite in a statement carried by state-controlled media on Tuesday.    
   
Kim Yo-jong, who serves as deputy director of the ruling Workers’ Party propaganda department, also warned that the regime would soon conduct a long-distance missile launch to silence critics who doubt the regime’s ability to launch a nuclear weapon that can re-enter the atmosphere without disintegrating, according to Pyongyang’s state-controlled Korean Central News Agency.  
   
In her vitriolic statement, the North Korean leader’s sister said that Sunday’s spy satellite test involved two missiles, and that the first was intended “only to send signals to the transmitter and test whether the ground control station could trace and receive them.” 

Kim also bristled at comments by South Korean defense analysts who said the low-resolution images of Seoul and Incheon taken from the North Korean test satellite demonstrated the shortcomings of North Korean reconnaissance technology.  
   
“I really want to slap these bastards who are rattling on but don’t know where to start,” the KCNA reported Kim as saying.

Joong Ang Ilbo

Here is her most interesting comment which I said earlier was the real reason for their satellite launch rhetoric:

“It seems others want to disparage our strategic weapon capabilities by saying it can’t be demonstrated through a lofted-angle launch and must be proven through a normal-angle launch,” she said, adding that the latter was “something that may happen soon.” 

The spy satellite launch claims by the Kim regime is to set conditions to test an ICBM over Japan and claim it is a space launch. This gives their defenders in Moscow and Beijing a reason to defend them after they conduct a thinly veiled ICBM test at a nominal trajectory unlike their prior tests which were all lofted trajectories. This will further inflame tensions which is what they want while further testing their ICBM technologies.

This announcement may be an attempt by the Kim regime to set conditions to test an ICBM over Japan and claim it is a space launch. This gives their defenders in Moscow and Beijing a reason to defend them after they conduct a thinly veiled ICBM test at a nominal trajectory unlike their prior tests which were all lofted trajectories:

North Korea has conducted an “important final-stage” test at its rocket launching facility on putting a military reconnaissance satellite into orbit, with a plan to complete preparations for the project by April next year, according to its state media Monday.

The test was conducted at the Sohae Satellite Launching Ground on Sunday mainly to “evaluate the capabilities of satellite photography and data transmission system and ground control system,” according to the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).

The country fired a vehicle carrying a “test-piece satellite” at a lofted angle to an altitude of 500 kilometers, an unnamed spokesperson at the National Aerospace Development Administration said in a statement carried by the KCNA.

North Korea will “finish the preparations for the first military reconnaissance satellite by April, 2023,” the official said, adding the results of the test were immediately reported to the central military committee of the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

It looks like Kim Jong-un decided to remember his deceased father the best way he knows how, firing missiles:

North Korea fired two ballistic missiles on Sunday morning, South Korea’s military said, days after the regime said it successfully tested a solid-fuel engine for a new weapons system.  
   
Seoul’s Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) told reporters it detected the launch of two medium-range ballistic missiles (MRBM) from Tongchang-ri, North Pyongan Province at 11.13 a.m. and 12.05 p.m., and that the missiles landed in the East Sea.  
   
According to the Japanese Defense Ministry, which also detected the launches, the missiles peaked at an altitude of 550 kilometers (342 miles) and flew approximately 250 kilometers before splashing down outside of Japan’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ).  (…….)

The test came a day after regime leader Kim Jong-un attended a ceremony marking the anniversary of the death of his father and previous leader Kim Jong-il at the Kumsusan Palace of the Sun in Pyongyang, according to the North’s state-controlled Korean Central News Agency (KCNA). 

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link.

The North Koreans are still trying to get the ROK to cancel the Inter-Korean military agreement signed under the previous Moon administration with their provocations:

North Korea fired some 130 artillery shells into eastern and western maritime “buffer zones” Monday, in what Seoul called a violation of a 2018 bilateral military agreement, amid the South Korea-U.S. live-fire drills in a border region.

The Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said that it detected the artillery firings, thought to involve multiple rocket launchers, from Kumgang County in Kangwon Province and Jangsan Cape in South Hwanghae Province, from 2:59 p.m.

The shells splashed into the maritime buffer zones north of the Northern Limit Line (NLL), a de facto sea border, which were set under an inter-Korean military accord signed on Sept. 19, 2018, to reduce border tensions.

The JCS communicated warnings to the North multiple times, pointing out the violation of the military accord and calling for the immediate cessation of the provocation, the JCS said in a text message sent to reporters.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but if the ROK was to cancel the agreement the Kim regime could claim this as a “hostile act” as part of a justification for their long anticipated nuclear test.