Tag: North Korea

I am not sure threatening President Trump is a good course of action for the North Koreans. He doesn’t seem to respond well to threats:

North Korea said Tuesday that a year-end deadline is drawing near for the United States to come up with a new proposal in their nuclear negotiations, warning it is entirely up to Washington what “Christmas gift” it wants to get.

North Korean Vice Foreign Minister Ri Thae-song issued the warning, saying Pyongyang has tried hard “not to backtrack from the important steps it has taken,” referring to a moratorium on nuclear and long-range missile tests and other measures it has taken to demonstrate its commitment to denuclearization. 

The warning apparently means that unless the U.S. comes up with a new negotiating proposal acceptable to Pyongyang, the communist regime could restart testing of nuclear weapons and intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs).

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

It will be interesting to see how this turns out, will the U.S. government give him a slap on the hand or send him to prison?:

Virgil Griffith, who has lately been working at the Ethereum Foundation, has been arrested for allegedly going to a conference in North Korea and sharing his expertise in using cryptocurrency.

The United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York announced Friday that Griffith was arrested at Los Angeles International Airport on Thanksgiving Day.

“Despite receiving warnings not to go, Griffith allegedly traveled to one of the United States’ foremost adversaries, North Korea, where he taught his audience how to use blockchain technology to evade sanctions,” John Demers, an assistant attorney general for national security, said in a statement.

Yahoo

You can read more at the link.

Testing an ICBM I think will only happen after Kim Jong-un’s January 1st deadline to have a deal in place to drop sanctions. It makes no sense for him to do the test before then. Plus I only think he goes through with an ICBM test if he is confident that the Trump administration will not respond militarily:

Frequent movements of trucks have been recently detected at a rocket launch site in North Korea, a sign that Pyongyang may be preparing another long-range missile test. 

“North Korea appeared to have renovated its missile-related facilities in Dongchang-ri [in Cholsan County of North Pyongan Province] earlier in the year,” a high-ranking official in the South Korean government told the JoongAng Ilbo on Friday. “And recently, we detected an increase in the movement of vehicles in the area.”

At least four vehicles including buses and trucks were spotted in a parking lot near a facility that tests engine combustion in a satellite image of the site on Nov. 1 provided by Google Earth.

“There is a facility used for testing engine combustion in the area, and we detected small buses and trucks coming and going there,” the official said. “The North may not be ready to test a missile immediately, but we see these as signs that it is getting ready for one.”

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link.

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.

I guess the Malaysians are not very considered about a state actor using biological weapons inside their international airport:

He stressed that Malaysia is “very suitable for interacting with Korea,” given his country’s English-speaking human resources and stable politics.

Reflecting Malaysia’s diplomatic pragmatism, the prime minister also said the country is reaching out to North Korea as well. 

The Southeast Asian country is preparing to reopen its embassy in Pyongyang, partially closed since the assassination of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s estranged half-brother at Kuala Lumpur International Airport in February 2017.

“We want to be friendly with all countries in the world … Even North Korea can provide some trade for us. We don’t like confrontation,” he said. 

He described the talk of the North Korean government being behind the assassination as “suspicion” and said it has not affected Malaysia’s security.

“So, now it is time to resume the normal relations between Malaysia and North Korea,” he said in the interview held at his Busan hotel room.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but I find it interesting that the Prime Minister calls it “suspicion” when his own government had Interpol trying to track down the four North Koreans responsible for organizing the murder.

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.