Tag: North Korea

From what we have learned so far from this weekend’s missile test the North Koreans do appear to have made a significant technological leap with their missile technology:

North Korea’s successful missile test-launch signals major advances in developing an intercontinental ballistic missile, such as mastery of re-entry technology and better engine performance key to targeting the United States, experts say.

The isolated country has been developing a long-range missile capable of striking the mainland United States mounted with a nuclear warhead. That would require a flight of 8,000 km (4,800 miles) or more and technology to ensure a warhead’s stable re-entry into the atmosphere.

The North’s official KCNA news agency said the new strategic ballistic missile named Hwasong-12, fired on Sunday at the highest angle to avoid affecting neighboring countries’ security, flew 787 km (489 miles) on a trajectory reaching an altitude of 2,111.5 km (1,312 miles).

The details reported by KCNA were largely consistent with South Korean and Japanese assessments that it flew further and higher than an intermediate-range missile (IRBM) tested in February from the same region, northwest of Pyongyang.

Such an altitude meant it was launched at a high trajectory, which would limit the lateral distance traveled. But if it was fired at a standard trajectory, it would have a range of at least 4,000 km (2,500 miles), experts said.

The test “represents a level of performance never before seen from a North Korean missile”, John Schilling, an aerospace expert, said in an analysis on the U.S.-based 38 North website.

“It appears to have not only demonstrated an intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM) that might enable them to reliably strike the U.S. base at Guam, but more importantly, may represent a substantial advance to developing an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM).”

KCNA said the test launch verified the homing feature of the warhead that allowed it to survive “under the worst re-entry situation” and accurately detonate.

The claim, if true, could mark an advancement in the North’s ICBM program exceeding most expectations, said Kim Dong-yub, a professor at Kyungnam University’s Institute of Far Eastern Studies in Seoul.

Kim, a former South Korean navy officer, added the trajectory showed the North was clearly testing the re-entry technology under flight environments consistent for a ICBM.

The North has successfully launched long-range rockets twice to put objects into space. But many had believed it was some years away from mastering re-entry expertise for perfecting an ICBM, which uses similar engineering in early flight stages.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un celebrates with soldiers and officials after a new type of ground-to-ground intermediate range ballistic missile, called the Hwasong-12, is launched on May 14, 2017, in this combined photo released by the Rodong Sinmun, the North’s ruling party organ, on May 15, 2017. North Korea said it has successfully test-fired the missile, claiming that the U.S. mainland is within its striking range. (Yonhap)

Remember this the next time you buy clothes “Made in China”, you may be unknowingly supporting the Kim Jong-un regime:

As the end of the fashion season approached, and the suits and dresses arrived in her company’s warehouses here in the Chinese border town of Dandong, the accountant crammed about $100,000 into a backpack, then boarded a rickety train with several co-workers.

She asked to be identified only by her surname, Lang, given the sensitivity of their destination: North Korea.

After a six-hour journey, she recalled, they arrived at a factory where hundreds of women using high-end European machines sewed clothes with “Made in China” labels. Her boss handed the money to the North Korean manager, all of it in American bills as required.

Despite seven rounds of United Nations sanctions over the past 11 years, including a ban on “bulk cash” transfers, large avenues of trade remain open to North Korea, allowing it to earn foreign currency to sustain its economy and finance its program to build a nuclear weapon that can strike the United States.

Fraudulent labeling helps support its garment industry, which generated more than $500 million for the isolated nation last year, according to Chinese trade data.  (………..)

For those with quick deadlines or detailed specifications, she turns to Chinese factories in Dandong, where quality control is better. Yet even these factories employ North Korean laborers, she said.

For decades, North Korea has been accused of sending workers abroad and confiscating most of their wages, an arrangement that activists liken to slave labor. Researchers say the practice has expanded since Mr. Kim took power, with more than 50,000 workers now toiling in up to 40 countries.

In Dandong, the local government boasts that 10,000 North Koreans are employed in its apparel factories, working 12- to 14-hour shifts, with just two to four days off each month and a monthly wage of no more than $260.

 [NY Times]

You can read much more about how North Korea gets around sanctions aided by the Chinese at the link.

The Kim regime has welcomed the new ROK president the way they typically do by conducting a provocation:

North Korea launched a ballistic missile Sunday morning from a site north of Pyongyang, South Korea’s military said, as President Moon Jae-in immediately convened an emergency meeting of the National Security Council (NSC) to discuss the issue.

“North Korea fired an unidentified missile at around 5:27 a.m. today from an area in the vicinity of Kusong, North Pyongan Province,” the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said in a statement

The projectile flew some 700 kilometers, it said, adding it’s analyzing more details.

The flight distance suggests a success of the missile test, the North’s first military provocation since the inauguration of Moon last week.  [Yonhap]

The type of ballistic missile has not been disclosed yet, but PACOM has already said that it was not an ICBM.  However, the Japanese are calling this the highest fired missile they have seen yet from North Korea:

Japan’s Defense Ministry said the missile flew for about 30 minutes, reaching an altitude of more than 2,000 kilometers and was believed to have traveled some 800 kilometers before falling about 400 kilometers outside of Japan’s exclusive economic zone, according to the Japan Times.

Japanese Defense Minister Tomomi Inada was quoted as saying that the launch, which was likely conducted at a steep or “lofted” trajectory, could be of a “new type of ballistic missile.” It hit the highest-ever altitude recorded by Japan’s defense authority for a North Korean missile.  [Joong Ang Ilbo]

At least one scientist thinks this is a new type of missile that has been tested:

“I don’t believe the missile test Sunday involved existing models, such Pukguksong-2 or Scud-ER, considering its flight distance was about 700 kilometers,” said Kim Dong-yup, a professor at the Institute for Far East Studies of Kyungnam University. “The test appears to be aimed at developing a new type of missile with an improved performance.”

David Wright, co-director of the Global Security Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, told the Associated Press that Sunday’s launch may have been of a new mobile, two-stage liquid-fueled missile that North Korea displayed during an April 15 military parade to mark that 105th anniversary of the birth of its founder Kim Il-sung

Wright estimated that the missile had a range of 4,500 kilometers if it travelled on a standard, instead of lofted, trajectory.  [Korea Times]

If the range of this missile is 4,500 kilometers that means it is not designed to strike South Korea or Japan which it already has SCUD and Nodong missiles to hit these two countries with.  Instead the only reason to develop a missile with this range would be to strike Guam which would be within its 4,500 kilometer maximum range since it is roughly 3,300 kilometers from North Korea:

This test may be a response to the fact that the USS Carl Vinson carrier strike group is supposed to be in the Sea of Japan (East Sea) conducting exercises.

In response to the provocation the Chinese are urging all parties to show the typical “restraint” they always seem to put out after a North Korean provocation.  The United States is trying to play the Russians against the North Koreans after this test since the missile landed close to Russia:

Fox News reported that the White House said North Korea has been a “flagrant menace for far too long” and that Trump “cannot imagine that Russia is pleased” with the latest missile test because the missile landed closer to Russia than to Japan. U.S. National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster also condemned the launch in a 25-minute phone call with his South Korean counterpart Kim Kwan-jin and agreed to combine forces towards denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula.   [Joong Ang Ilbo]

I doubt Putin really cares, and then in South Korea new President Moon Jae-in wants North Korea to change its attitude if it wants negotiations:

During his first NSC meeting at Cheong Wa Dae, President Moon strongly condemned the launch, saying, “It was an apparent violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions and also a serious challenge to peace and security on the Korean Peninsula as well as the international community.”

Moon said he found North Korea’s provocation regretful, citing that it came despite his speech to make full-pledged efforts to bring peace to the peninsula during his May 10 inauguration ceremony.

“I’m strongly warning North Korea, and at the same time, I find its reckless provocation deeply regretful.”

The president said he is open to resuming dialogue with North Korea, but added his government would deal sternly with the North’s provocations to ensure that the reclusive state does “not make a misjudgment.”

“We must show the North that dialogue will be possible only when it changes its attitude,” he said.  [Korea Times]

Good luck with that since people have been waiting decades for North Korea to change its attitude.  As this test proves, a new ROK President promising Sunshine Policy 2.0 is not going to change the nature of the Kim regime.

Choi seems to be trying to suppress laughter when asked about the new Moon administration. "We'll take a look," she says.

— Noon in Korea (@NoonInKorea) May 13, 2017

TIME Magazine this week has a long profile and interview with the new ROK President Moon Jae-in that is worth reading for those unfamiliar with his background.  Here is an excerpt about his views on North Korea:

Moon has seen these kinds of negotiations in action before and believes they can work again. As chief of staff to Roh, he helped engineer the South Korean President’s historic summit with Kim’s father Kim Jong Il in 2007, and the six-party denuclearization talks between North and South Korea, the U.S., China, Russia and Japan, which ran from 2003 to 2009. A satellite launch by Pyongyang ended the talks, and critics say the $4.5 billion of aid funneled to the regime during the “sunshine policy” of engagement actually accelerated the weapons program. Moon, however, points to the Sept. 19, 2005, Joint Declaration — encompassing full dismantlement of North Korean nuclear weapons, a peace treaty and even normalized relations with the U.S. — as evidence the sunshine policy was better than the following decade of isolation and censure. “The North even blew up the cooling tower of its nuclear reactor,” he says. “The same step-by-step approach is still workable.”

Given Trump’s stated disdain for the nuclear deal the U.S. helped fashion with Iran, it’s hard to imagine he would be eager to pursue a similar agreement with the Kim regime, which has a track record of noncompliance. But Moon says he and Trump already agree that the Obama Administration’s approach of “strategic patience” with North Korea was a failure. Surely the U.S. President could be persuaded to take a different tack, he says. “I recall him once saying that he can talk with Kim Jong Un over a hamburger.” Trump, he adds, is above all a pragmatist. “In that sense, I believe we will be able to share more ideas, talk better and reach agreements without difficulty.” Indeed, on May 1, Trump told Bloomberg that he “would be honored” to meet Kim.  [TIME]

You can read more at the link, but the destruction of the cooling tower was only in response to the Bush administration freezing millions of dollars of North Korean money in a Macau bank.  Kim Jong-il would have never agreed to the deal without the pressure from the asset freezing.  They will never agree to a deal today without similar pressure which it appears the Trump administration is trying to do.

At the time I called the 2007 deal a charade because there were no measures in place to ensure verifiable denuclearization and history has proven me right.  I guess we will see in the coming months if history repeats itself and the Kim regime signs another deal to receive free aid without verifiably dismantling their nuclear weapons.

Another example of the urgency the Trump administration has put on stopping North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs:

The Central Intelligence Agency has created a special team dealing exclusively with North Korea in an unusual move underscoring the seriousness the United States attaches to the nuclear and missile threats from the communist nation.

The Korea Mission Center was established to “harness the full resources, capabilities, and authorities of the Agency in addressing the nuclear and ballistic missile threat posed by North Korea,” CIA said in a statement. “The new mission center draws on experienced officers from across the agency and integrates them in one entity to bring their expertise and creativity to bear against the North Korea target.”

A veteran CIA operations officer has been selected as the new assistant director for Korea and presides over the mission center, the statement said without identifying the officer, adding that the team will work closely with the intelligence community and the entire U.S. national security community.

“Creating the Korea Mission Center allows us to more purposefully integrate and direct CIA efforts against the serious threats to the United States and its allies emanating from North Korea,” CIA Director Mike Pompeo said. “It also reflects the dynamism and agility that CIA brings to evolving national security challenges.”  [Yonhap]

"No valid basis" to expect a DPRK nuclear test to trigger a volcanic eruption at Mt. Paektu, says Frank Pabian https://t.co/VM3WQ9x6Kb pic.twitter.com/trhhpjMy9p

— 38 North (@38NorthNK) May 9, 2017

This photo, released by the (North) Korean Central TV Station on May 10, 2017, is a composite of satellite images which the North claims show a golf course in South Korea’s southeastern county of Seongju where an advanced U.S. missile defense system, dubbed the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, has been deployed. (Yonhap)

Here is the latest North Korea scare story:

North Korea could be planning an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) strike on the US with two satellites already orbiting above the Earth, an expert has claimed.

Dr Peter Vincent Pry claims that Pyongyang may be secretly developing the ability to detonate a high-altitude nuclear weapon in space which would set off the pulse, wiping out electrical systems below.

The secretive kingdom is believed to have started a satellite programme during the 1980s and successfully launched two observation satellites in 2012 and 2016, which take an estimated 94 minutes to complete an orbit of the earth.

Dr Pry, executive director of the Task Force on National and Homeland Security who sits a US Congress committee on EMPs, claimed North Korea is practising a “cyberage version” of battleship diplomacy so they can always have “one of [their satellites] very close to being over the United States”.

He said the North Koreans may use this as a bargaining chip if the US threatens to carry out military sanctions against the regime.  [The Independent]

You can read more at the link, but North Korea in the recent months has actually claimed to have conducted a test run of using an electro magnetic pulse attack against US satellites.