North Korean leader Kim Jong-un inspects the construction site of a deep-sea fishing base on the east coast in an undated photo published by the North’s Korean Central News Agency on March 14, 2015. (KCNA-Yonhap)
It is too bad these idiots won’t face punishment in South Korea for this. The Korean government says they are not going to request extradition because property crimes don’t warrant it. Regardless what a disgrace:
On Feb. 2, four Australians in baseball caps and hoodies appeared around Wangsimni Station, eastern Seoul, at three in the morning. They carefully scoped out the area and then stopped in front of a ventilation window behind a bus stop. They cut the bars of the window and swung down to a temporary garage where a car for the Line No. 5 subway was idle.
Using spraypaint, they covered the car with graffiti art and then moved on.
Two days later, they penetrated Anam Station, northeastern Seoul, and left graffiti that read “FEDUP” in giant letters on a subway train. The following day, the four men did the same thing at the Sinnonhyeon Station on Feb. 5, leaving the declaration “ERROR” on a Line No. 9 train.
It was only after they flew back to their home country on Feb. 7 that the police identified the four Australians with security camera footage. They matched their faces on security footage from the airport and then checked immigration records.
The four men were found to have spent 10 days in Korea – dedicating at least three of those nights to spraypainting Seoul subway cars.
“We don’t understand how foreigners who never traveled to Korea before knew so expertly the subway stations’ structures,” said Shim Mun-sik, chief of a crime investigation department of the Seongdong Police Precinct. [Joong Ang Ilbo]
Considering that this analysis is coming from David Albright this should be taken with some skepticism:
North Korea is estimated to have up to nine nuclear weapons built with highly enriched uranium, and uranium bombs could account for up to 60 percent of the North’s nuclear arsenal feared to grow to up to 100 weapons in five years, an American expert said.
David Albright, a top nuclear expert who heads the Institute for Science and International Security think tank, spoke about the forecast in an interview with Yonhap News Agency, saying highly enriched uranium is easier to make than weapons-grade plutonium.
Last month, Albright and Joel Wit, a security expert who runs the website 38 North, rang the alarm about the North’s growing nuclear capabilities with a surprising assessment that Pyongyang could expand its nuclear stockpile from 10-16 nuclear weapons to up to 100 weapons by 2020.
In that case, “40 percent of the arsenal would contain plutonium and 60 percent would contain weapons-grade uranium,” Albright said in the interview at his office in Washington. “The weapons-grade uranium cannot be forgotten by any means.”
Some experts have questioned the 100 weapons, including Olli Heinonen, a former International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) official. Albright said in response to such skepticism: “North Korea is not a country just starting to make nuclear weapons. North Korea has been making nuclear weapons for up to two decades.”
The worst case scenario is based on an assumption that the North has two centrifuges, not only the one at the country’s main nuclear complex, but also a secret facility whose existence has been widely suspected but has not been confirmed, he said.
“I went from deeply skeptical to believing that it’s possible … that they have another major centrifuge plant. We have to do more work … to see if that’s true. But I take the U.S. assessment intelligence that there is this earlier centrifuge plant much more seriously now than I did maybe five, six years ago,” he said. [Yonhap]
It is ironic that China is complaining so much about a defensive weapon system such as THAAD being deployed to Korea, but yet is in the process of developing a 2nd aircraft carrier to threaten its neighbors with:
The leaks and so-called misstatements have included information that construction began in 2014 in Dalian port, where the Liaoning was refurbished. They also included information that the new ship will have a modern catapult for launching aircraft and generally will be more advanced than the Liaoning. In addition, construction is scheduled to be completed in 2020. Readers should consider all of the leaks to be calculated and deliberate.
A retired Admiral and former political commissar for the Navy; an active duty naval commissar and a Communist Party official from Liaoning Province have been prominent in the steady stream of information about the new, modern Chinese aircraft carrier. Each has contributed bits of new information about the new carrier.
The cover story of excited, but inadvertent leaks is part of a propaganda strategy that aims to keep regional neighbors informed, but not alarmed. The fact is that China can build and is building a US-style aircraft carrier and sea control ship. Some sources reported the goal is to build six, [NightWatch]
Here is the latest on the whole deploying the THAAD missile defense system to South Korea that has the Chinese worked up:
The United States has included its advanced missile-defense system as part of the support it would provide South Korea in emergency situations on the Korean Peninsula, a South Korean military source said Sunday.
“The U.S. plans to deploy a Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) in case of an emergency on the Korean Peninsula,” a military source told Yonhap News Agency. “My understanding is that THAAD is easily transportable with a U.S. military aircraft.”
Washington has recently hinted at the deployment of a battery on Korean soil to better deter the North’s growing nuclear and missile threats. The U.S. stations about 28,500 troops in South Korea, a legacy of the 1950-53 Korean War, which is technically ongoing since no peace treaty has been signed to end it.
The issue of whether or not South Korea should host the American missile defense system has caused a bipartisan divide in local politics. While conservatives support the system, the liberal side has not been so welcoming since it believes the U.S. presence here undermines South Korean sovereignty. The U.S., meanwhile, claims the battery is defensive in nature. [Yonhap]
You can read more at the link, but it seems to me the ROK government is doing a good job of using this deployment as a way to pressure the Chinese to keep the North Koreans in line. If the North Koreans do something provocative the ROK can then tell the US to deploy THAAD to South Korea which is something the Chinese do not want. This keeps the pressure on the Chinese while simultaneously maintaining South Korea’s strategic goal of balancing its relationship with both China and the US.
Via One Free Korea comes this news that the BBC may begin radio broadcasting into North Korea:
This is just asking for a caption contest!
The BBC is planning a new North Korea service to give the totalitarian state’s 25 million people an alternative to Kim Jong-un’s propaganda.
In a move that could plunge the corporation into confrontation with the North Korean dictator, the World Serviceis examining how to set up a special news channel that will get around Pyongyang’s ban on foreign media broadcasts.
The plan has echoes of Western broadcasts into the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact countries during the Cold War, when the BBC, Radio Free Europe and Voice of America all broadcasted to listeners behind the Iron Curtain.
However, it is likely to spark fury from Pyongyang’s volatile leadership, and could lead to the British embassy in Pyongyang being targeted for protests or being shut down altogether.
It could also put Britain in the firing line for North Korean-led cyberattacks, such as the one that targeted Sony Pictures last year over its film “The Interview”, which lampooned Kim Jong-un. [BBC]
You can read the rest at the link, but I have been a supporter of radio broadcasts into North Korea for years. Hopefully the BBC follows through with this, but according to One Free Korea they may be having second thoughts. So is the BBC being scared off by cyberattack threats?
With stories like this I can understand special legislation to deal with these situations on a case by case basis, but it does not require mass amnesty for illegal immigrants sweeping across the border to address this:
The pending deportation of Adam Thomas Crapser, an undocumented Korean American adoptee and survivor of severe child abuse, has sparked a dialogue on a major loophole in immigration law, according to NBC News.
When Adam first arrived in the U.S. in 1979 as a Korean adoptee, his childhood quickly turned into a nightmare. He and his biological sister were adopted by the Wright family in Michigan, where he suffered physical, emotional and sexual abuse. In 1986, the Wrights relinquished their parental rights to Child Services without completing Adam’s naturalization paperwork. As wards of the state, Adam and his sister became separated from each other. After living in a group home for a year, Adam was formally adopted by Thomas and Dolly-Jean Crapser in Oregon.
The Crapsers, along with their biological sons, subjected Adam and seven other foster children to years of heinous abuse and torture. In an interview with Gazillion Strong, Adam revealed that he would get choked, beaten or burnt on a daily basis during the five years he lived with his abusive adoptive family. In 1991, the Crapsers were arrested and convicted of multiple counts of child abuse, child sexual abuse and child rape.
Adam, now a husband and father of three children, faces possible deportation because both sets of adoptive parents failed to complete his naturalization process and refused to provide him with his adoption papers, according to the blog Reappropriate. As an undocumented American, Adam has struggled to attend school or find work for most of his adult life. If deported, he will be sent to a country where he does not even speak the language. [KoreAm Journal]
You can read more at the link, but hopefully this gets worked out for Adam Crapser, especially since the US government is to blame for his situation considering they allowed him to be adopted without naturalization paperwork and then not once, but twice put him in abusive homes.
