Tag: North Korea

Apparently the North Koreans are not fans of President Moon’s peaceful reunification strategy:

North Korea on Friday launched a pair of unidentified projectiles into the East Sea while deriding South Korean President Moon Jae-in’s call for inter-Korean cooperation in his Liberation Day address Thursday. 

According to South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), the rockets were fired Friday morning at 8:01 a.m. and 8:16 a.m. from an area near Tongchon, Kangwon Province. Each of the projectiles flew a distance of approximately 230 kilometers (143 miles) with a peak altitude of 30 kilometers at Mach 6.1, the JCS said.

No determination has yet been made to what kind of weapon was tested, but the speed and distance covered suggested the same type of short-range tactical ballistic missiles believed to have been tested Aug. 10.

This marked the sixth time Pyongyang conducted such tests in just under a month and the eighth time this year. The tests are ostensibly protests of joint exercises between the United States and South Korea. 

In this round, the launches were accompanied by a statement released by the Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Country (CPRC), one of the North’s agencies in charge of inter-Korean relations, that pilloried South Korea’s president without mentioning him by name. 

Calling his Thursday speech on the anniversary of Korea’s liberation from Japanese rule on “foolish” and a “citation of spiritual slogans,” the statement, attributed to a CPRC spokesperson, said Moon’s labeling of the North’s weapons tests as “worrisome acts” were “reckless remarks.”

“Even at this moment, there go on in South Korea joint military exercises against the DPRK,” the English-language statement continued, using the acronym for North Korea’s official name: the Democratic Peoples’ Republic of Korea. “Does [Moon] have any face to talk about dialogue atmosphere, peaceful economy and peace-keeping mechanism?”

The release scoffed at the central idea in Moon’s address – the building of a “peace economy” through inter-Korean cooperation – saying the notion would “make the boiled head of a cow provoke a side-splitting laughter.”

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link, but what the Kim regime is essentially saying here is that if peaceful reunification is going to happen, it is going to happen on North Korean terms, not South Korean.

This is what reunification on North Korean terms looks like, it means a peace treaty that leads to the withdrawal of USFK, North Korea does not denuclearize, and South Korea carries the burden of rebuilding North Korea’s infrastructure, modernizing their military, and funding the Kim regime’s lavish lifestyle. 

There will be no political or social openness in North Korea in return, instead the ideological indoctrination will be strengthened by the “victory” over the Americans by getting them to withdraw and the tribute the South Korean “puppets” are paying to Kim Jong-un in preparation for North Korea’s final victory over the South. 

Like I have always said, the Kim regime was just using the joint US-ROK exercise as an excuse to test their new short range ballistic missile:

U.S. President Donald Trump said Saturday that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un expressed his will to restart negotiations on its nuclear program with the United States “as soon as” the joint military exercise between Seoul and Washington is over.

The North Korean leader also pledged to stop missile launches when the combined exercise ends, according to the president.

“In a letter to me sent by Kim Jong Un, he stated, very nicely, that he would like to meet and start negotiations as soon as the joint U.S./South Korea joint exercise are over,” Trump said on Twitter. 

On Friday, the president told reporters that he had received another “very beautiful” letter from Kim the previous day, in which the leader expressed his displeasure with the allied exercises.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but it appears that talks will restart and probably center on what a “freeze deal” will look like because the Trump administration seems to have realized that Kim Jong-un will not denuclearize.

The Kim regime steals $2 billion and yet they supposedly don’t have enough money to buy food for their own people. When are the North Korea apologists going to realize that the Kim regime wants to keep a portion of their population poor and undernourished:

United Nations (United States) (AFP) – North Korea has stolen up to $2 billion from banks and cryptocurrency exchanges through cyberattacks to fund its nuclear missiles program, according to a United Nations report seen by AFP Wednesday.

The UN is investigating at least 35 reported instances of Pyongyang “attacking financial institutions, cryptocurrency exchanges and mining activity designed to earn foreign currency,” it said.

“Large-scale attacks against cryptocurrency exchanges allow the DPRK to generate income in ways that are harder to trace and subject to less government insight and regulation than the traditional banking sector,” the report added.

AFP

You can read more at the link.

Exactly. I do not understand why more people do not grasp this. https://t.co/r6tUBz2raD

— David Maxwell (@DavidMaxwell161) August 6, 2019

North Korea is still using the US-ROK joint exercise as an excuse to continue test their short range missile systems:

North Korea conducted its fourth weapons test in two weeks early Tuesday morning with a pair of unidentified projectiles launched into the East Sea, justifying the act as an “essential and powerful physical means” in a statement from its foreign ministry. 

The projectiles, which South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said appeared to be short-range ballistic missiles, were fired at 5:24 a.m. and 5:36 a.m. from an area around Kwail County in South Hwanghae Province. They each flew a distance of around 450 kilometers (280 miles) with peak altitudes of 37 kilometers at Mach 6.9, according to a JCS spokesman. 

South Korean and U.S. intelligence officials believe the rockets displayed a flight pattern similar to the short-range ballistic missiles launched on July 25, the first in a series of four tests that all involved projectiles launched into the East Sea. The North’s state media followed up each of the previous three tests – on July 25, July 31 and last Friday – with reports saying the country had tested new types of ballistic missiles and rocket artillery, all under the personal direction of its leader, Kim Jong-un. (…..)

“Despite our repeated warnings, the United States and South Korean authorities have finally started the joint military exercise targeting the DPRK,” read the English-language release, using the acronym for North Korea’s official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. “This is an undisguised denial and a flagrant violation of June 12 DPRK-U.S. Joint Statement, Panmunjom Declaration and September Pyongyang Joint Declaration, all of which are agreements to establish new DPRK-U.S. relations and build a lasting and stable peace regime on the Korean Peninsula.”

Saying the North had no reason to keep its promises while the United States and South Korea ignored theirs, the statement stressed the regime was “compelled to develop, test and deploy the powerful physical means essential for national defense.”North Korea conducted its fourth weapons test in two weeks early Tuesday morning with a pair of unidentified projectiles launched into the East Sea, justifying the act as an “essential and powerful physical means” in a statement from its foreign ministry. 

The projectiles, which South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said appeared to be short-range ballistic missiles, were fired at 5:24 a.m. and 5:36 a.m. from an area around Kwail County in South Hwanghae Province. They each flew a distance of around 450 kilometers (280 miles) with peak altitudes of 37 kilometers at Mach 6.9, according to a JCS spokesman. 

South Korean and U.S. intelligence officials believe the rockets displayed a flight pattern similar to the short-range ballistic missiles launched on July 25, the first in a series of four tests that all involved projectiles launched into the East Sea. The North’s state media followed up each of the previous three tests – on July 25, July 31 and last Friday – with reports saying the country had tested new types of ballistic missiles and rocket artillery, all under the personal direction of its leader, Kim Jong-un. (…..)

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link.

The National Interest has an interesting read about the rifle North Korea has outfitted some of its military members with:

One of the largest armies in the world has adopted one of the most unusual variants of the AK-series of assault rifles.

The North Korean People’s Army Type 88 rifle is similar to the Soviet-era AK-74 with one key difference: unusual helical magazines that carry up to five times as many rounds as conventional 30-round magazines. (…..)

The latest North Korean assault rifle is the Type 88. The Type 88 is a copy of the AK-74 assault rifle, whose primary advantage over the AK-47 was the adoption of the smaller, lighter 5.45-millimeter round. Exactly when the Type 88 was adopted is not clear, but the type designation, in this case, may indicate the year of adoption—1988. The rifle is now a staple of North Korean military parades and is frequently seen in the hands of North Korean special operations troops and leader Kim Jong Un’s bodyguards.

The National Interest

You can read more at the link.

#North Korea's State Security monitors the social media of #defectors , pressures those with families in the north to not to post anti-North Korean regime information.https://t.co/ETVWYaZBai

— Tara O (@DrTaraO) July 30, 2019

It seems besides the strategic messaging to Washington, that the Kim regime is continuing prove that their new missile can accurately fly at different trajectories:

North Korea on Wednesday launched two short-range ballistic missiles from its eastern coast, the second such test in six days. 

According to South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), the missiles were fired at 5:06 a.m. and 5:27 a.m. from an area around Kalma near Wonsan, Kangwon Province. Both projectiles flew around 250 kilometers (155 miles) at an altitude of approximately 30 kilometers before landing in the East Sea, a JCS spokesman said. 

The first missile to be fired was spotted by Korea’s Master Control and Reporting Center (MCRC) and a Navy vessel equipped with the Aegis Combat System, while the second was detected by the MCRC, the ship and early warning radar. 

While it is not yet known what kinds of rocket were launched Wednesday, they may be similar to those fired on July 25, which are believed to be domestically produced variants of the Russian-made 9K720 Iskander missile system, code named KN-23 by South Korean and U.S. intelligence. (…..)

The significant feature of Wednesday’s test was the missile’s low peak altitude of 30 kilometers. South Korean Defense Minister Jeong Kyeong-doo at a security forum Wednesday said that South Korean and U.S. intelligence saw in the North’s newest tests “different indicators” than before.

Analysts said Pyongyang may have deliberately chosen to test a variety of trajectories for its KN-23 missile system since May in order to send a message to Seoul and Washington that it possesses the capacity to evade their most sophisticated antimissile defense systems.

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link, but the article once again discusses how the KN-23 can fly lower than the engagement altitude of THAAD. The ROK military rightfully countered that they have Patriot missile batteries that can engage this threat.  

THAAD was never meant to be a magic bullet that engages all threats on the peninsula. THAAD engages targets at higher altitudes than Patriot. One of the main reasons it was deployed was because of the threat of lofted trajectory missiles that North Korea was testing that the Patriot batteries could not engage.

#MoonJaein admin to transfer $8M to #NorthKorea via WFP next week. Meanwhile, NK rejected SK rice aid, shot off more missiles, & warned SK, the day after Chinese & Russian military aircraft intruded KADIZ & a RU aircraft violated SK airspace. Priorities.https://t.co/6EN5QK1GCd

— Tara O (@DrTaraO) July 26, 2019