Category: North Korea

Another play straight out of the North Korean provocation playbook:

South Korea’s military on Thursday confirmed it had completed an operation to evict a North Korean merchant ship from its waters some 17 hours after the vessel crossed to the southern side of the Northern Limit Line (NLL) the previous day. 

However, it took South Korean military authorities nearly six hours to realize the vessel was a North Korean merchant ship sailing on the southern side of the NLL, the de facto maritime border between the two Koreas in the Yellow Sea.  

The Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said Wednesday that the 500-ton merchant ship crossed the NLL, northwest of Baengnyeong Island, at around 6:40 a.m. Wednesday. 

At one point, the South Korean Navy fired warning shots after the vessel did not respond to multiple warnings it had issued to immediately leave the NLL, in accordance with protocol.

On Thursday, the JCS confirmed that the South Korean Navy guided the merchant ship out of South Korean waters and completed the operation around 11:30 p.m. that night. 

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link.

Another typical North Korean playbook play here with conducting a test firing that corresponds with a U.S. holiday:

North Korea fired two projectiles from what is presumed to be a super-large multiple rocket launcher on Thursday, South Korea’s military said, in the latest in a series of military moves amid stalled denuclearization talks with the United States.

The projectiles were fired from Yeonpo in the country’s eastern South Hamgyong Province into the waters off the east coast at around 4:59 p.m., the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said in a release. 

Both flew around 380 km, reaching a maximum altitude of around 97 km, and were fired within a 30-second interval, the JCS added.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but this is all just more of the pressure campaign that the Kim regime is putting on the Trump administration to get them to give in to their demands to drop sanctions.

It is pretty clear that Kim Jong-un is using this as further pressure on the ROK to either get the U.S. to cut a deal or violate sanctions on their own accord by the end of the year:

South Korea’s Ministry of National Defense on Monday accused the North of “violating” an inter-Korean military agreement by recently conducting an artillery firing drill on an islet just north of the countries’ maritime border in the Yellow Sea, saying it felt “regretful” about Pyongyang’s breach.

The ministry explained that the regime shouldn’t have carried out the drill on Changrin Islet in accordance to the Comprehensive Military Agreement signed between the two Koreas on Sept. 19, 2018, because the area is part of a larger buffer zone in which both countries agreed not to hold any artillery fire drills or field training exercises. 

It is not precisely known when the North held its firing drill, as neither South Korea nor the North released any information about dates.

The North did, however, in a news report released earlier on Monday through its state-run media, reveal that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un personally “gave an order to fire” during a visit to Changrin Islet. North Korean media usually reports on its leader’s activities a day after they are carried out, which possibly means that Kim visited the islet on Sunday.

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link.

This is all part of North Korea’s pressure campaign to get the Trump administration to fold on sanctions. They have made a big deal about the end of the year deadline to get a deal done and are now ratcheting up the pressure. From the Kim regime perspective they are probably calculating that with next year’s U.S. presidential election that the Trump administration will be eager for a foreign policy success and will eventually give in on sanctions:

 North Korea is no longer interested in holding another summit with the United States that will “bring nothing,” a former chief nuclear envoy of the communist nation said Monday, urging Washington to drop its “hostile policy” against Pyongyang.

Kim Kye-gwan, currently an adviser to the North Korean foreign ministry, made the remarks in a statement carried by the North’s official Korean Central News Agency, saying that he understood U.S. President Donald Trump’s recent tweet on leader Kim Jong-un to be a suggestion for another summit. 

On Sunday, Trump urged the North’s leader to “act quickly” and reach a deal with him on dismantling the regime’s nuclear weapons program, adding, “See you soon!” at the end of his tweet.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

Joe Biden for whatever reason has drawn the ire of North Korea:

“Anyone who dare slanders the dignity of the supreme leadership of the D.P.R.K, can never spare the D.P.R.K’s merciless punishment whoever and wherever,” said the North Korean statement, referring to the country by its formal name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

“Rabid dogs like Baiden can hurt lots of people if they are allowed to run about. They must be beaten to death with a stick, before it is too late,” it said.

It wasn’t immediately clear which of Biden’s comments provoked North Korea’s anger. The Democrat has accused Trump of cozying up to “dictators and tyrants” and has been highly critical of his summitry with Kim, calling the meetings “three made-for-TV summits.”

Associated Press

You can read more at the link.