This photo, released by the North’s Korean Central TV Broadcasting Station on Feb. 7, 2016, shows North Korea’s “Kwangmyongsong-4” satellite being fired from the Dongchang-ri launch site in Cholsan, North Pyongan Province. The North launched the rocket in a move widely viewed as a disguised ballistic missile test in defiance of United Nations Security Council resolutions. (Yonhap)
North Korea said Monday it will launch more satellites as any sovereign country has the right to develop a space program amid speculation that it is preparing more provocative acts.
North Korea will place into space more satellites, including a stationary one, in accordance with its five-year space development program as it seeks to improve its economy and people’s livelihood, according to the Rodong Sinmun, the main newspaper.
“Some countries have manipulated U.N. sanctions resolutions against us and hindered the sovereign country’s space development. It is not a tolerable act,” the newspaper said. “It is a global trend that a country seeks the economic growth with the space program.” [Yonhap]
You can read more at the link, but the last time North Korea did a space launch they announced it and invited foreign journalists to the launch site. It will be interesting to see if they try and take this same approach to fire their next rocket.
Here is the latest criticism from Senator Corker against President Trump:
This AP file photo shows Sen. Bob Corker. (Yonhap)
A U.S. Republican senator called out President Donald Trump again on Sunday, saying the commander-in-chief is hampering diplomatic efforts to resolve the nuclear crisis with North Korea.
Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN), who has recently been involved in a personal feud with Trump, reiterated his argument as the president prepares for his first official visit to Asia later this week.
“When our secretary of state is sitting down with a partner that matters most — China — trying to negotiate something that would resolve and keep us from going into military conflict with North Korea, which brings in South Korea, Japan, China, and Russia, and he’s knee-capped by the president, it hurts our nation. It hurts our efforts,” the senator told CBS.
“It leads us more fully towards the conflict that most of us would like to see resolved in another way. The tweets that are sent out mocking a leader of another country raises tensions in the region,” he added, referring to Trump’s references to North Korean leader Kim Jong-un as “Little Rocket Man.” [Yonhap]
You can read more at the link, but I think President Trump is just trying to change the dynamic that has been missing from past diplomatic efforts that the threat of a military strike this time is very real. Does anyone think the robust UN sanctions and so far China’s efforts to implement them would have happened if there wasn’t a real concern that President Trump was serious about a military strike?
Chinese police arrested several North Koreans dispatched to Beijing on suspicion of plotting to murder Kim Jong Un’s 22-year-old nephew, South Korea’s JoongAng Ilbo newspaper reported.
Two of seven North Korean agents were arrested over the alleged plot to kill Kim Han Sol, whose father Kim Jong Nam was assassinated in Malaysia earlier this year, the newspaper said, citing an unidentified person familiar with North Korean issues.
Some agents are being interrogated in special facilities on the outskirts of Beijing, the paper said, without elaborating on whether the other five were arrested. China’s foreign ministry didn’t immediately respond to a faxed request for comment. [Bloomberg]
You can read more at the link, but if this plot was broken up in China it leads me to believe that Kim Han-sol must be in hiding in China under Chinese protection.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un inspects Pyongyang Cosmetics Factory in this photo released by the North’s state-run Korean Central News Agency on Oct. 29, 2017. (Yonhap)
Considering all the recent earthquakes and landslides at Punggye-ri these Chinese scientists are probably correct:
Researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Geology and Geophysics briefed a North Korean delegation in Beijing late last month on the threat of an implosion at the mountainous Punggye-ri nuclear facility, about 80km from China’s border.
A day after North Korea said it detonated a hydrogen bomb at the Punggye-ri facility on September 3, a senior Chinese nuclear scientist warned that future tests at the facility could blow the top off the mountain, causing a massive collapse. The scientist said radioactive waste could bleed from cracks or holes at the site and be blown across the border.
Two days after the briefing in Beijing, North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong-ho announced suddenly at the United Nations in New York that Pyongyang might consider detonating a “most powerful” hydrogen bomb over the Pacific Ocean. (………)
A researcher studying the radioactive risk from the North Korean nuclear programme at Peking University said China could no longer tolerate another land-based explosion.
“China cannot sit and wait until the site implodes. Our instruments can detect nuclear fallout when it arrives, but it will be too late by then. There will be public panic and anger at the government for not taking action,” the researcher said.
“Maybe the North Koreans themselves have realised that the site cannot take another blow. If they still want to do it, they have to do it somewhere else.” [South China Morning Post]
The gulag system in North Korea has two purposes, fear of going to one of these camps helps to keep the population in line and they provide slave labor for the state. So you have a regime that has implemented modern day slavery and yet the North Koreans are welcomed in international events such as the Olympics. Why aren’t the North Koreans completely shunned from international events like South Africa was during the Apartheid era for its human rights abuses?:
No. 12 camp of Jongo-Ri in North Korea.
The brutal treatment meted out to North Korea’s political prisoners has been well-
documented, but a new report coming out Thursday, based on satellite images, portrays the extensive network of “reeducation” camps for less severe violations of Pyongyang’s penal code.
These camps are situated throughout the country, both on the outskirts of cities and in huge compounds in the mountains. Conditions are severe but come with the possibility of release.
The camps are run not by the secret police, who operate a separate system for political prisoners, but by the Ministry of Public Security. They are an important pillar of the regime of Kim Jong Un, a means by which the North Korean population is kept permanently cowed.
The world is transfixed with the nuclear threat from Kim’s regime, but it is ordinary North Koreans who suffer every day, said Greg Scarlatoiu, executive director of the Washington-based Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, which compiled the report. [Washington Post]
You can read more at the link, but this is why I have a hard time taking the ROK’s criticisms of forced labor in Imperial Japan over 70 years ago seriously when it will not condemn the forced labor of Koreans happening today. North Korean human rights should not be an issue that is forgotten for political expediency.
Furthering the discussion of North Korea's probable UDMH production, 38 North analysts suggest three additional facilities where this is likely taking place. https://t.co/LGhR8WXyWE
I don’t get what the supposed smart people in the diplomatic community are getting excited about after these comments from a North Korean official. Basically the official said that if the US backs off and gives the Kim regime everything they want then there may be an exit from the current nuclear crisis. Does anyone think President Trump is willing to settle this current crisis by signing some agreement that leaves Pyongyang with nuclear tipped ICBMs pointed at the United States?:
The head of the North Korean Foreign Ministry’s North American bureau, Choe Son-hui, speaks at the 2017 Moscow Nonproliferation Conference on Oct. 20. “[North Korea] will not be returning to the Six Party Talks until issues with the US have been resolved,” she said. (ITAR-TASS/Yonhap News)Choe Son-hui, the North Korean Foreign Ministry’s North American affairs bureau chief, recently said there “may be an exit” from the North Korean nuclear crisis if the US “makes the right choice to abandon its hostile policies and co-exist with North Korea as a nuclear state,” it was reported on Oct. 24.
The message is being interpreted as suggesting Pyongyang is leaving the possibility of dialogue open. Choe’s remarks were made during a closed-door session on “Detente on the Korean Peninsula” at the Moscow Nonproliferation Conference on Oct. 21, a South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs official reported.
When asked what was specifically meant by the US “abandoning its hostile policies,” Choe reportedly replied, “For a diplomatic and peaceful resolution to happen, the right atmosphere must be formed, but North Korea cannot sit down at the negotiating table when there are threatening tweets from President [Donald] Trump every day.”“North Korea will not move an inch if the US’s policies of pressure with military and nuclear threats and economic sanctions continue,” she was also quoted as saying.“We will not be bound by the Sept. 19 Joint Statement [of 2005] stipulating denuclearization, nor will we return to the Six-Party [Talks] framework.”
Choe’s remarks differ little from Pyongyang’s other recent statements of principle on the international stage. But her use of the terms “exit” and “right atmosphere” are drawing notice, as they could be seen as a signal that Pyongyang may pursue negotiations.“Choe’s remarks could be taken a signal that [North Korea] is starting to negotiate,” said University of North Korean Studies (UNKS) professor Koo Kap-woo. [Hankyoreh]
