Tag: North Korea

The final group of Americans willing to pay Kim Jong-un foreign currency to help support his missile and nuclear programs has traveled to North Korea:

A group of American travelers ― probably the last before the U.S. government bans its citizens from visiting the reclusive state from Sept. 1 ― landed in North Korea on Saturday.

The eight travelers ― include CNN correspondent Will Ripley on his 14th trip ― were undeterred by possible arrest, imprisonment or nuclear war.

Details about the other tourists, including their itinerary, are unknown. Beijing-based Koryo Tours organized the visit, which general manager Simon Cockerell is leading on his 165th trip to the North.

“It [the ban] is a pity for anyone curious who wants to go, but especially for North Koreans who might want to know what American visitors are really like,” Cockerell told CNN.  [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link, but this travel ban should have been in place a long time ago.

I guess if you discount political executions, mass malnourishment of its people, gulags, military attacks on neighbors, state sponsored criminal activity, and being an international pariah than I guess yes you could make a comparison between Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un:

Not to be outdone, North Korea’s military revealed a detailed plan to strike the U.S. island territory of Guam, which hosts key Air Force and Navy bases. After further brinkmanship between the two leaders, North Korea’s state-run media showed footage of Kim himself reviewing the plans. But the leader said he would not attack unless the U.S. struck first, effectively ending an imminent missile scare.

While a number of Western media outlets portrayed this as a retreat on Kim’s part, North Korea expert Michael Madden says it actually boosted Kim’s credibility on the international stage.

“This allowed Kim Jong Un to portray himself as the more experienced leader,” Madden, a visiting scholar at the U.S.-Korea Institute, tells Newsweek, adding that Kim also appeared more likely to defer to his advisers than Trump.

“Who would have thought that when we said ‘let cooler heads prevail,’ it would be the 33-year-old leader of the DPRK?” said Madden, referring to North Korea’s official title: the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

Trump hailed Kim’s “very wise and well-reasoned decision” in a tweet Wednesday, but Town and Madden agree that Kim has come out stronger from the latest crisis. While Trump fired off a number of statements that were widely challenged at home—including the claim that he had improved the country’s nuclear arsenal and that U.S. missiles were “locked and loaded”—Kim remained largely silent and delegated his words to lower-level outlets of his government’s propaganda, allowing ample room for de-escalation. Even his strategic missile force’s Guam attack plan included language that offered North Korea a way out from actually going through with it.

“Kim has been very careful with his words as not to back himself into a corner by shooting from the hip, like the Trump administration,” Town says.  [Newsweek]

You can read the rest at the link.

The below article makes me wonder why PACOM issued a statement about the missile launches being failures before letting a full analysis be completed?:

North Korea fired three short-range missiles on Saturday — all successful — despite earlier reports suggesting failure, according to the U.S. military.

Seoul’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said the projectiles fired from the North’s eastern coast flew about 155 miles. It said South Korea and U.S. militaries were analyzing the launch and didn’t immediately provide more details.

According to earlier reports, U.S. Pacific Command spokesman and Cmdr. David Benham suggested two North Korean missiles “failed in flight” while the third one had “blown up almost immediately.”

The U.S. Pacific Command has since revised its evaluation of the missile launch, now reporting no missile failures — in line with the South Korean military assessment.  [Fox News]

You can read more at the link, but this is what PACOM originally put out:

The U.S. Pacific Command (PACOM) also said, “Initial assessment indicates three short-range ballistic missile launches.”

“The first and third missiles at 11:49 a.m. (Hawaii time) and 12:19 p.m. failed in flight,” the PACOM’s spokesman Cdr. David Benham said in an emailed statement. “The second missile launch at 12:07 p.m. appears to have blown up almost immediately.”  [Yonhap]

Fortunately it seems like no one is over reacting to this launch.  North Korea conducts test launches during almost every Key Resolve and Ulchi Freedom Guardian military exercise.  If anything this test launch is far less provocative than what they have launched in the past considering it is being reported they are either long range rockets or short range missiles:

The office said that the projectiles are believed to be artillery rockets from a multiple-rocket launcher, while the U.S. military reaffirmed its assessment characterizing those as short-range ballistic missiles.

“As of now, the unidentified projectiles fired by the North today are presumed to be improved 300-mm artillery rockets from a multiple-rocket launcher,” Yoon Young-chan, senior presidential secretary for public relations, said in a statement issued after the NSC session.

However, the U.S. Pacific Command said the projectiles were apparently ballistic missiles.  [Korea Times]

Whatever they were rockets or missiles it really doesn’t matter because the strategic messaging the Kim regime is sending is that they can attack a South Korean island with missiles or rockets and follow it up with an amphibious invasion:

In a simulated attack on the South Korean border islands of Baengnyeong and Yeonpyeong, North Korean planes hit targets as its multiple-missile launchers and self-propelled gun howitzers fired in salvo and shells hit unidentified North Korean islands.

Some of the North Korean special forces also parachuted into the islands and others landed by surprise using rubber boats. The simulated South Korean targets were later enveloped in flames, according to North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency.  [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link, but this is all situation normal on the Korean peninsula.

From my anecdotal conversations with South Koreans they were more worried about what President Trump starting a war than what Kim Jong-un.  However, as recent events have shown it appears that President Trump like past presidents has come to the conclusion like many South Koreans that war with North Korea would be too deadly for all involved for anyone to start one:

Sirens wailed across Seoul and other South Korean cities on Wednesday, signaling the start of a nationwide civil-defense drill to prepare for a possible threat from the North.

But Lee Buny, a 42-year-old broadcast writer, was more interested in getting to work than finding a bomb shelter. Like many South Koreans, she’s used to threatening rhetoric from the North but doesn’t believe the communist state will ever follow through on threats to conduct an attack on the divided peninsula.

“I’m not worried because it’s the same story I’ve heard since I was born. North Korea keeps saying the same thing over and over again,” she said. “I don’t think North Korea will do anything.”

South Korea regularly holds civil-defense drills to make sure its citizens know what to do in case of an emergency such as a national disaster or an attack from the North, which is believed to have tens of thousands of soldiers and a massive artillery force poised near the heavily fortified border that sits just 35 miles from Seoul.  [Stars & Stripes]

You can read more at the link.

I think someone is definitely helping the North Koreans with their missile technology, but blaming Ukraine sounds like a Russian information operation:

Ukraine’s top diplomat in Seoul on Thursday denied allegations that North Korea might have obtained rocket engines used in its recently tested long-range missiles from Ukraine.

Charge d’Affaires Taras Fedunkiv, the acting Ukrainian ambassador to Seoul, still suspected that North Korea could not have been able to advance its missile technology “without outside help,” calling for an international probe to find “who was responsible.”

“The production lines for building these types of rockets in Ukraine were decommissioned in 1992. The expertise cannot be carried in the heads of rogue scientists. The instructions are included in complex manuals locked in top-security facilities guarded by our security forces,” he said in a written interview with Yonhap News Agency, citing Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin’s recent op-ed in The New York Times.

“Not only would it be virtually impossible for criminals to access these manuals, but also any effort could not go unnoticed by our government,” he added.

Citing a study by Michael Elleman, a missile expert at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, the New York Times reported on Aug. 14 that North Korea could have got its hands on technology needed for the success of the recent missile launches through black market purchases of rocket engines from Ukraine.  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link, but I would not be surprised if it was the Russians helping the North Koreans master their long range rocket technology.

South Korean civil defense: in nuclear attack, get down but keep your tummy off the ground (because the shaking will hurt your organs) pic.twitter.com/Ibv938ij1m

— Anna Fifield (@annafifield) August 23, 2017

North Korean state firms turn to drug sales to deal with sanctions https://t.co/tXoipRdLtb

— Joshua Stanton (@freekorea_us) August 23, 2017

Guards carrying a portrait and the remains of the deceased secret commandos trained to infiltrate North Korea during the Cold War era leave a funeral hall in Goyang, north of Seoul, after their joint funeral on Aug. 23, 2017. Unit 684, better known as the Silmido unit, named after the island off the west coast where it was secretly based, was established in 1968 by the government following North Korea’s failed attempt to attack the presidential office in Seoul earlier that year, but their existence became useless amid the reconciliation between the two Koreas. The existence of the anti-communist unit had been thoroughly denied by the government, and a group of 24 surviving commandos blew themselves up while trying to enter Seoul on a stolen bus. In 2010, the court ordered the state to compensate the bereaved families of the commandos. (Yonhap)

It looks like there is once again a path towards deescalation with North Korea:

North Korea has made no provocations since its July 28 test-firing of what it claimed was an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), though it has more recently threatened to fire missiles toward Guam.

President Trump said Tuesday that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has begun to “respect” Washington, suggesting his administration is taking a positive view on a possible thaw in U.S.-North Korea relations.

“I respect the fact that I believe he (Kim) is starting to respect us,” Trump said at a rally in Phoenix, Arizona, according to Bloomberg. “Maybe, probably not, something positive will come out of it.”

Earlier in the day, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said dialogue between the United States and North Korea could be possible in the “near future,” welcoming what he called the “restraint” the Kim regime had shown recently with its nuclear and missile programs.

“I think it is worth noting, we have had no missile launches or provocative acts on the part of, or provocative actions, on the part of North Korea since the U.N. Security Council (UNSC) resolution,” Tillerson said at the State Department.

“I am pleased to see that the regime in Pyongyang has demonstrated restraint. We hope this is the signal we have been looking for, that they are ready to restrain provocative acts. And perhaps we are seeing a pathway in the near future to having some dialogue.”  [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link, but I would be some what surprised if they don’t fire at least a short range test missile into the Sea of Japan in response to the ongoing UFG military exercise.

Just another example of the lucrative weapons trade the North Koreans continue to have Syria:

North Korea has twice been caught attempting to ship material to Syria’s chemical weapons agency in the past six months, according to a confidential UN report prepared by a panel of experts.  (……)

The shipments were sent by KOMID, the Korea Mining Development Trading Corporation – an organisation blacklisted by the UN security council in 2009, and described as Pyongyang’s key arms dealer and exporter of equipment related to ballistic missiles and conventional weapons. (…….)

“Two member states interdicted shipments destined for Syria.

“Another Member state informed the panel that it had reasons to believe that the goods were part of a KOMID contract with Syria.”

 The UN experts said activities between Syria and North Korea they were investigating included cooperation on Syrian Scud missile programmes and maintenance and repair of Syrian surface-to-air missiles air defence systems.  [The Telegraph]