Category: North Korea

This is a good idea that hopefully will lead to more ship seizures:

The U.S. State Department has pledged up to five million dollars for informants on North Korea’s violations of sanctions, including its illegal transshipment of coal and oil. 

According to Radio Free Asia on Tuesday, the State Department announced to offer rewards for information that leads to the disruption of financial mechanisms of persons engaged in certain activities that support North Korea, including money laundering, sanctions evasion, cyber-crime, and WMD proliferation on the Rewards for Justice (RFJ) website run by the department. 

The State Department has run the RFJ program since 1984 to obtain information about international terrorists. The newly announced reward prioritizes information about maritime illicit transshipment by North Korea for its export of coal and import of crude oil. In particular, a wanted poster with a caption to urge people, especially Chinese maritime workers, to stop North Korea’s illegal maritime activities was produced in both English and Chinese. The detection of maritime illicit transshipment is a challenging task as it requires a large scale oversight and North Korea has adopted ever more elaborate schemes to avoid sanctions. 

Those who provide a critical piece of information to identify hackers who have stolen data or spread malicious codes under the orders of North Korea will be rewarded as well.

Donga Ilbo

You can read more at the link.

Which begs a fundamental question: if true that no amount of sanctions can convince NK to make the strategic decision to denuclearize, then why do we think unbridled concessions would? If we asked Kim what it would take for him to willingly go to zero, he wouldn’t have an answer. https://t.co/7n5QSpxLGp

— 🇰🇷Edward Oh🇺🇸 (@EdwardHBOh) June 5, 2019

It appears that the North Korean uranium enrichment facility has never slowed down operations during the recent peace initiative:

North Korea’s main nuclear complex shows continued activity around its uranium enrichment facility, indicating ongoing operations at the plant, a U.S. monitor said Wednesday.
38 North, a project run by the Stimson Center think tank, said recent commercial satellite imagery shows the movement of vehicles, equipment and personnel near the uranium facility at Yongbyon.
“Our observation, that periodic material transport (e.g., possibly to deliver liquid nitrogen) has continued at the Uranium Enrichment Complex over time, provides a new indicator that the complex is operational, and therefore that it is also most likely producing enriched uranium,” 38 North said on its website, citing satellite imagery from past months up to May 28.
“However, we do not have any definitive means to determine either the actual levels of enrichment or the total production throughput of the ~4000 centrifuges at this time,” it added.
North Korea has built nuclear weapons from both plutonium and uranium, with some estimating that the regime now holds an arsenal of 20 to 30 nuclear weapons.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but the original 38 North article can be read at this link.

I can still remember the days when the North Korean apologists were all saying that former President Bush was lying about North Korea having a uranium program. Now many of these same people are still giving advice about North Korea.

As I have long said when the Kim regime decides to return to launching long range missiles they will conduct a space launch first and claim they have the right to a peaceful space program:

A North Korean newspaper Wednesday published an analysis of satellite programs in China, Russia and Europe, prompting suspicions that Pyongyang is considering an intercontinental ballistic missile launch ahead of the U.S. president’s visit to South Korea this month. 

The Rodong Sinmun, an official newspaper of the ruling Workers’ Party, ran a report entitled, “Fierce Competition to Operate own Navigation Satellite System” that discussed satellite development programs in China, Russia and European nations. The report was similar to an analysis published on May 6 discussing China’s successful launch of its 44th satellite. 

Analysts wondered if Pyongyang was sending a message to Washington before U.S. President Donald Trump’s trip to South Korea later this month. He will visit Korea as a part of an Asian tour to attend a Group of 20 Summit in Osaka, Japan, on June 28 and 29. 

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link, but after they conduct the space launch they will then use the U.S. response, whatever that may be, as an excuse to launch longer range missile systems if a deal isn’t reached.

Kim Jong-un had previously said he was giving negotiations with the U.S. until the end of the year to reach a deal. I always figured this timeline was related to the U.S. presidential election cycle to where the regime may think President Trump does not want a provocation cycle to occur during his reelection campaign.

If Kim starts a provocation cycle before then, I think it may mean he is under tremendous pressure domestically to force the U.S. to reach a deal and the regime may think a space launch is way to pressure the U.S. to comply with their “pretend denuclearization” demands.

If Kim Jong-un’s sister, Kim Yo-jong was supposedly disciplined, it sure didn’t last very long because she is back in the spotlight:

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s powerful younger sister has appeared in public for the first time in 53 days, contradicting rumors that she was disciplined in the wake of the leader’s embarrassing no-deal summit with U.S. President Donald Trump.

Kim Yo-jong attended North Korea’s propaganda group gymnastics and artist performance called “The Land of the People” held in Pyongyang’s May Day Stadium on Monday, along with leader Kim, according to the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).

It marked the first time that Kim Yo-jong has appeared in public since she was last seen in North Korean media during the Supreme People’s Assembly in April. Until then, she played the role of a personal secretary for the leader, and was seen holding an ashtray when he was having a cigarette break at a Chinese train station on his way to Vietnam for the summit with Trump.

The report came after rumors of a purge spiked following a news report that leader Kim had carried out a massive punishment of officials responsible for the breakdown of the Trump summit and that Kim Yo-jong was disciplined.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link.

My rule of thumb is if the Kim regime hates you, you must be doing something right:

North Korea sharply criticized U.S. National Security Advisor John Bolton on Monday, calling him a “war maniac” and a “security destruction advisor” that should be gone as early as possible.
A spokesperson for the North’s foreign ministry unleashed the vituperation, bristling at Bolton’s denunciation of the communist nation’s recent missile launches as a violation of U.N. Security Council (UNSC) resolutions.
“When it comes to UNSC resolutions, as we have declared repeatedly before, they are an outrageous total denial of our right to survival and development. Never once have we acknowledged them or been confined by them,” the spokesperson was quoted as saying by the North’s official Korean Central News Agency.
On Saturday, Bolton said during a press conference in Tokyo that there is “no doubt” that the North violated U.N. Security Council resolutions when it launched short-range missiles earlier this month. Bolton also characterized the missiles as ballistic missiles.
“Our military exercises did not aim at anybody, nor did it put anybody in danger, but Bolton surely has a different mindset from ordinary people in insisting that they are a violation of the resolutions,” the spokesperson said.
The North also said Bolton has long been known as a “war maniac” and that it would be right to call him a “security destruction advisor” working to destroy peace and security, rather than a security advisor trying to guarantee security.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

I found the report of Kim Yong-chol being purged hard to believe considering he is the Butcher of the Cheonan which has been one of North Korea’s most successful operations in recent years:

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un watched an art troupe’s performance, along with his top aides, including Kim Yong-chol, who was rumored to have been purged after the no-deal summit in Hanoi, Pyongyang’s media reported Monday.

The leader attended the show “given by amateur art groups of the wives of officers of units of the Korean People’s Army (KPA) selected in the seventh round of the second-term contest of art groups of KPA officers’ wives,” the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported.

He appeared with his wife Ri Sol-ju and other top officials, including Kim Yong-chol, the North’s counterpart to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in denuclearization negotiations with the U.S., the KCNA revealed.

Rumors have circulated that Kim Yong-chol might have been punished in the leader’s move to purge officials responsible for the no-deal summit with President Trump after the Chosun Ilbo, a major conservative newspaper, reported that Kim Yong-chol was punished with hard labor and another negotiator Kim Hyok-chol, a former North Korean envoy to the U.S. was executed citing anonymous sources last week.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link.

The fact that the North Koreans are so strongly protesting the seizure of their ship at the UN demonstrates this is an area they are vulnerable:

North Korea’s top envoy to the United Nations (UN) warned that the U.S. seizure of a cargo ship earlier this month could endanger future denuclearization negotiations in a rare news conference in New York on Tuesday. 

“The United States should deliberate and think of the consequences that its outrageous act might have on future developments,” Kim Song, the North Korean ambassador to the UN, said at a press conference at the UN headquarters Tuesday. “And also, the United States must return our cargo ship without delay.” 

The U.S. Justice Department on May 9 announced it had impounded the 17,061-ton Wise Honest bulk carrier and accused it of exporting North Korean coal in violation of U.S. and UN Security Council sanctions. Along with coal shipments, it was also used to import heavy machinery from Yantai Port in China’s Shandong Province to Nampo Port in North Korea, the Justice Department said. 

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link, but seizing ships involved in illicit shipments from North Korea is something I have long advocated. After being seized the cargo and the ship itself I believe should be auctioned with the proceeds going to families who have lost loved ones due to North Korea’s terrorism acts over the years.

I would love to know who is the person in North Korea that comes up with these statements?:

North Korea’s official news agency has bristled angrily at former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden’s criticism of leader Kim Jong-un as a dictator and tyrant, lashing out at the Democratic presidential hopeful as a “fool of low IQ.”
Biden made the remark during a campaign speech over the weekend, claiming that the United States shouldn’t be embracing “dictators and tyrants” like Russian President Vladimir Putin and the North’s Kim, as President Donald Trump does.
“The presidential candidate from the Democratic Party during his recent election campaigning reeled off rhetoric slandering the supreme leadership of the DPRK,” the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said in a commentary, using the acronym of the North’s official name. “What he uttered is just sophism of an imbecile bereft of elementary quality as a human being, let alone a politician,” it added.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

The North Koreans unsurprisingly are unhappy about the seizure of one of their ships by the United States:

North Korea’s top envoy to the United Nations (UN) has sent a letter to UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres to criticize the United States’ recent seizure of its cargo ship suspected of violating international sanctions, Pyongyang’s state media said Saturday.

In the letter sent Friday, Kim Song called the seizure an “unlawful, outrageous and sovereignty-infringing” act, which, he said, indicated the United States is “indeed a gangster country,” according to the North’s official Korean Central News Agency.

The U.S. Justice Department said on May 9 that it has seized the 17,061-ton Wise Honest suspected of transferring coal and machinery in violation of the sanctions regime, in the first such direct seizure by U.S. authorities.

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link, but something I have been saying for a long time is these sanctions busting ships should be seized and then auctioned off with the money going to the victims of their terrorism attacks over the years. It is time to catch more ships to further put pressure on the Kim regime.