Tag: North Korea

Here is how the North Koreans were able to get access to OPLAN 5015:

A South Korea lawmaker recently disclosed that hackers suspected to be North Korean gained access to Seoul’s highly secured military intranet in September 2016 and made off with the US and South Korea’s secret war plans.

“It’s a ridiculous mistake,” the lawmaker, Rhee Cheol-hee, told The Wall Street Journal.

North Korean personnel reportedly attacked a South Korean cybersecurity firm and embedded themselves in the software. South Korea’s military used the software on its military computers, but the North Koreans still shouldn’t have been able to get in because Seoul keeps its internet, or outwardly connected network, separate from its intranet, or private network.

But it took only one computer plugged into both the internet and the intranet for the North Koreans to break in, The Journal reported.

“They should have removed the connector jack immediately after maintenance work,” Rhee said.

As a result, North Korea reportedly got ahold of Operation Plan 5015, the US and South Korea’s secret war plan to kill the North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.  [Business Insider]

Maybe someone with IT experience can tell me why an unclassified networked computers needs to be plugged into a classified network for maintenance reasons?

Here is the latest development in regards to drying up foreign currency to the Kim regime:

The United Arab Emirates said Thursday it would stop issuing new visas to North Korean workers, becoming the latest Gulf country to limit Pyongyang’s ability to evade sanctions and raise money abroad amid tensions with the U.S.

A statement by the UAE Foreign Ministry did not address the hundreds of North Korean laborers already working in the Emirates. A call to the UAE’s Embassy in Washington was not immediately returned.

The statement said the UAE would pull its non-resident ambassador to North Korea as well as stop North Koreans from opening new businesses in the Emirates, a federation of seven sheikhdoms on the Arabian Peninsula that is a staunch U.S. ally.  [Associated Press]

You can read more at the link, but it just makes you wonder why the US government did not put this type of pressure on these governments before to cut ties?

Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop (R) and Defense Minister Marise Payne answer reporters’ questions during a visit to the inter-Korean truce village of Panmunjom on Oct. 12, 2017. (Yonhap)

‘In the event of a nuclear attack’: U-Hawaii’s curious email to students and staff https://t.co/2s1KHfSjOs via @washingtonpost pic.twitter.com/7ij2m8qkKG

— Anna Fifield (@annafifield) October 11, 2017

This photo, released by the Chosun Sinbo, a pro-Pyongyang newspaper in Tokyo on Oct. 12, 2017, shows food packing materials produced at a resin factory in Pyongyang. (Yonhap)

Hyon Song-wol, the leader of North Korea’s Moranbong singing troupe and reportedly a former girlfriend of leader Kim Jong-un’s, was elected to the Workers Party’s Central Committee on Saturday.  [Chosun Ilbo]

Here is the latest speculation from experts on what North Korea plans to do next:

Two key officials in charge of North Korea’s missile development were absent at recent major events, a mass rally in Pyongyang on Saturday and the Workers Party anniversary on Tuesday.

Neither Ri Man-gon, who oversees the party’s department in charge of nuclear weapons and missile development, nor Kim Rak-gyom, the head of the Strategic Rocket Forces who is in charge of ballistic missile launches, showed up.

That has given rise to speculation that they are busy somewhere else preparing for a fresh missile launch.  [Chosun Ilbo]

You can read more at the link.

The drum beat continues for the Trump administration to sign a “freeze deal” with North Korea.  The latest academic to push this is non-proliferation expert Jeffrey Lewis:

If Washington wants to depart from this cycle, it is time to talk to the North Koreans—not about denuclearisation, but about other ways to calm fears and improve relations. The two antagonists, along with South Korea and Japan, need to find a way to reduce tension on the Korean Peninsula. This may include a freeze on the testing of both nuclear and conventional missiles in exchange for limits on US and South Korean military exercises. They also need to think about crisis communications, such as hotlines, and transparency measures related to military activities. And ultimately, they need to think about replacing the armistice, under which the US and North Korea remain at war, with a peace treaty. If all this sounds like a victory of North Korea’s campaign to develop thermonuclear weapons that can strike America, well, it is. China’s first nuclear test was in October 1964. By February 1972, Richard Nixon had famously gone to China. By 1979, the US had diplomatic relations with China and Deng Xiaoping had made a state visit to America. Nuclear weapons confer power and status, whether we like it or not.

If hosting Kim Jong-un, the dictator of a starving nation, for a sumptuous state dinner seems hard to accept, that is the triumphalism of 1991 clouding judgment. In the insecurity of 2017, Americans have to accept that they do not have the power to simply topple dictators who abuse human rights or threaten their neighbours. If one looks closely, it becomes clear that it was the illusion of omnipotence, born in a moment of triumph and sustained by desperate efforts to extend it, that brought us a nuclear-armed North Korea. Powell could not see the threats of the future because he was looking in the wrong place. The villains that beset America and the demons that led Washington astray, were never to be found in Cuba or North Korea. They were to be found at home, within America itself.  [Prospect Magazine]

You can read more at the link, but signing a peace treaty would mean the end of the US-ROK alliance because if there is “peace” then why does the US need troops in Korea?  This would play into the North Koreans strategy of separating the US from South Korea to set the stage for coopting South Korea with their nuclear weapons:

A lot is now being said here, in other words, which indicates the North has reason to fancy its prospects of decoupling the alliance and subjugating the rival state. But I can hardly fault Keck or any other American observer for not knowing things the foreign press corps in Seoul prefers not to write about.  (…….)

Should push come to shove, texts and tweets would be more likely to drive Seoulites to peace or pro-confederation demonstrations than to the flag-waving rallies of the security-minded. Hasn’t President Moon himself called on candlelighters to help prevent a war on the peninsula? Not to prevent or deter a North Korean attack, mind you, but to prevent a war, an exchange of fire.  [B.R. Myers]

Myers’ point above is the weakness of Mr. Lewis’ argument for North Korea’s nuclear weapons program.  Lewis focuses solely on North Korea pursuing nuclear weapons for regime survival when the regime has survived just fine with the threat of a massive artillery strike on Seoul.  The ultimate goal of the North’s nuclear weapons program is to co-opt the ROK into a confederation on North Korean terms.  A freeze deal followed by a peace treaty plays right into the Kim regime’s hands.

Here is why UN sanctions do little to stop North Korea from receiving foreign currency to sustain the regime and their weapons programs:

The North’s ability to finance itself, despite growing international sanctions, can be credited to a broad range of illicit activity that spans the world, according to experts. For example, schemes employed by the regime to garner profits include currency and cigarette counterfeiting, insurance fraud, illicit drug production and trafficking, weapon sales and even wildlife and human trafficking, according to U.N. and Congressional reports.

A 2008 Congressional Research Service report estimated that North Korean criminal activity could rake in anywhere from $500 million to $1 billion per year.

But these activities represent just a fraction of the North’s profits, according to experts. Its most lucrative gains, they say, come from a complex web of illicit networks set up largely within China that allow it to maintain access to international markets.

“When you’re talking about these Chinese networks, you’re talking in the hundreds of millions or billions of dollars,” said David Thompson, a senior analyst at the Center for Advanced Defense Studies, a nonprofit research firm based in Washington. “The more small-scale illicit activity is definitely going to help fund their overseas presence, but I don’t think it’s anywhere close to the scale of these China-based networks.”

The proceeds from these networks are far-reaching: some help Pyongyang procure goods from abroad, while others help it maintain a stable economy.

Much of the rest is believed to finance weapons and missiles. As the Obama administration concluded in 2016, North Korea’s “state-controlled financial institutions and front companies” are used “to conduct international financial transactions that support the proliferation and development of WMD and ballistic missiles.”

To access the global financial system, North Korea has been known to establish business relationships with Chinese companies, which effectively act as middlemen for the regime and allow Pyongyang to mask illicit dealing under the cover of more legitimate trade activity. These companies sell North Korean exports, but rather than send that money back to North Korea — which is almost entirely cut off from international markets — the money is transferred to overseas bank accounts set up within established front companies.

When North Korea needs certain products — from raw materials for its nuclear weapons program to goods ranging from sugar to cell phones — these China-based companies can then buy the goods via the front companies.

“Almost all trade and finance, legitimate or illegitimate out of North Korea, flows through China on its way into or out of North Korea,” said Andrea Berger, a senior research associate at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies. “And that’s not just for the nuclear program — that’s for legitimate goods, that’s for sanctioned commodities, that’s for dual use goods, that’s for finance. And that pattern applies quite widely.”  [PBS Frontline]

You can read more at the link, but it seems the Trump administration is going to have to sanction individual Chinese banks that get caught doing business with these Chinese front companies linked to North Korea.  If the Chinese banks fear being cut off from the international banking system they will be more vigilant to ensure no transactions involving North Korea are flowing through their banks.

Right now it seems like there is very little incentive for these banks to crackdown on these front companies.  Of course sanctioning these Chinese banks will lead to likely retaliation of some kind from the Chinese government.  However in the past sanctioning a Chinese bank has actually changed regime behavior.  Long time readers may remember the reaction from North Korea during the Banco Delta Asia lockdown of their funds by the Bush administration.  There was a noticeable change in North Korean behavior over the short-term before the found other businesses and banks to move their money.

I think people get to fixated on these holidays because in the past there have been plenty of provocations that were not tied to any North Korean holiday:

North Korea celebrated the founding anniversary of its ruling Workers’ Party of Korea, Tuesday, without carrying out any military provocations.

But the South Korean military said it is continuously monitoring and tracking any developments in the North as the regime there could commit a large-scale provocation at any time.

“We are maintaining a thorough readiness posture in preparation for North Korea’s possible provocations,” said Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) spokesman Army Col. Roh Jae-cheon, refusing to elaborate further.

An official from Cheong Wa Dae also told reporters the North was capable of firing a missile at any time, but currently there were no signs of an imminent launch, such as fueling activities.  [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link.