I saw this article in The Telegraph as well as posted on other sites and thought to myself it could not possibly be true:
A picture of the supposed corporate jet that mistakenly landed in Pyongyang.
A delegation of corporate sponsors of next year’s winter Olympics in the South Korean city of PyeongChang was flown to the North Korean capital Pyongyang by mistake, it has emerged.
According to the Around the Rings website the pilot of the corporate jet made a mistake when he entered the flight plan into the aircraft’s navigation system.
It steered the aircraft 250 miles further north than its intended destination.
The plane was carrying eight passengers from Beijing who were on a reconnaissance trip.
Bemused flight control staff at the North Korean capital allowed the Gulfstream and its passengers to land before the plane was ushered to a remote part of the airport.
“We stopped on the tarmac. The pilot announced the error. We were petrified about what might happen,” one of the delegation said later.
“He told us to stay seated, stay calm. A cabin steward popped the door open and we could see armed men in uniform facing the plane.”
With the aid of a translator, the pilot apologised profusely. The passengers were told to disembark while their luggage was inspected.
After inspecting the collection of Olympic badges, which were intended to be delivered to PyeongChang, the North Koreans were satisfied that the landing was completely inadvertent and the plane was allowed to carry on to South Korea. [The Telegraph]
This story just sounded to unbelievable to me so I checked out the source posting from the Around the Rings website. The article is from an anonymous source and posted on April 1st, which is April’s Fools Day. This leads me to believe this is a hoax posting.
What gets me about this is that major news outlets were passing this around because of the sensational headline and did not even bother to confirm its authenticity. This is the world of fake news journalism we now live in.
North Korea has jumped above Iran on America’s enemies list according to Secretary of Defense James Mattis:
Defense Secretary James Mattis, when he led the U.S. Central Command that oversees operations in the Middle East, repeatedly said that the three gravest threats to the United States were “Iran, Iran, Iran.”
But at a press conference in London on Friday, the retired Marine general suggested that North Korea, with its ballistic missile and nuclear programs, now holds the top spot.
Asked about his previous focus on Iran as the most serious threat, Mattis called Iran “the primary state sponsor of terrorism” but pivoted quickly to the secretive Stalinist regime in Pyongyang.
“In the larger scheme of things, obviously, in a global situation that’s dynamic, you’ve highlighted appropriately I think the North Korean threat,” Mattis said (the reporter had not mentioned North Korea). [Yahoo News]
Here is a good interview that NBC News’ Lester Holt did with prominent North Korean defector Thae Yong-ho who has to be number on Kim Jong-un’s kill list:
Lester Holt walks the streets of Seoul with Thae Yong-ho
A senior North Korean defector has told NBC News that the country’s “desperate” dictator is prepared to use nuclear weapons to strike the United States and its allies.
Thae Yong Ho is the most high profile North Korean defector in two decades, meaning he is able to give a rare insight into the secretive, authoritarian regime.
According to Thae, North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un is “desperate in maintaining his rule by relying on his [development of] nuclear weapons and ICBM.” He was using an acronym for intercontinental ballistic missiles — a long range rocket that in theory would be capable of hitting the U.S.
“Once he sees that there is any kind of sign of a tank or an imminent threat from America, then he would use his nuclear weapons with ICBM,” he added in an exclusive interview on Sunday.
Thae was living in London and serving as North Korea’s deputy ambassador to the United Kingdom when he and his family defected to South Korea and were announced to the world in August. [NBC News]
You can read more at the link as well as video from NBC News.
In the rest of the interview Thae confirms what many have suspected that Kim Jong-un is moving rapidly forward with his nuclear and missile programs because of what he saw happen with Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi. Thae also confirms my long held view that Kim Jong-un is not crazy, but instead what he is doing is rational from his perspective. Thae describes Kim as someone who will do whatever it takes to hold on to power to include purges and killing of family members.
Thae also advocates for fighting the information war within North Korea which is something I have been advocating for years. He believes that the more educated people within North Korea become the more likely it is that at some point they may rise up against the regime.
The more I listen to Thae the more I keep thinking that maybe he should become the leader of a North Korean government in exile to further challenge the legitimacy of the Kim regime.
A North Korean TV announcer reports on the arrest of former South Korean President Park Geun-hye on March 31, 2017. Most of the North’s state-run media outlets reported the news about 13 hours after Park’s arrest, calling it a stern punishment by history and popular sentiment. (KCNA-Yonhap)
Unfortunately there are plenty of people in South Korea that actually believe this nonsense, fortunately they are a small, but vocal minority:
South Korean and U.S. warships, including the U.S. nuclear-powered aircraft carrier Carl Vinson (C), sail in waters off the South’s east coast during joint drills against North Korean provocations on March 22, 2017. (Yonhap)
North Korea on Friday urged South Korean political parties, organizations and people from all walks of life to rally against the U.S. and war via its nominal political party’s letter of plea sent to them in an apparent bid to defend its stance on tensions on the Korean Peninsula.
“All the parties and people from all walks of life in South Korea should rise up in the anti-U.S., anti-war struggle for peace, clearly seeing through the nature of the U.S., the chieftain of aggression and disturber of peace,” the letter, sent by the Central Committee of the Korean Social Democratic Party, said.
Inter-Korean relations remain so tense due to the ongoing South Korea-U.S. “rehearsals for a “nuclear war” which have gone beyond the critical phase, said the letter, carried by the North’s Korean Central News Agency. The rehearsals refer to Foal Eagle and Key Resolve against North Korean provocations that began on March 1 for a two-month run in the South. [Yonhap]
After reading this article about the slave labor conditions these North Korean workers in Russia are facing; I couldn’t help, but think that this sounded like the conditions many juicy girls used to face not too long ago in South Korea:
A North Korean slave laborer died building a soccer stadium in Saint Petersburg, Russia, for the 2018 World Cup, Norwegian football magazine Josimar reported Thursday. He was one of at least 110 North Korean slave laborers that toil at the building site.
Josimar and Western human rights groups are demanding that FIFA, the international football governing body, delve into abuses of the North Korean workers there.
Josimar found out about them when it was covering the construction of the Krestovsky Stadium, which was completed last month in time for the FIFA Confederations Cup in June.
The North Koreans lived in containers set up in a waste ground 200-300 m from the stadium. They worked at the site from 7 a.m. till midnight every day without a day off, Josimar said.
Their passports had been confiscated and they were under surveillance around the clock, banned from contacting workers from other countries. The site was surrounded by iron fence and barbed wire. A Russian supervisor at the site said the workers were “like robots” and looked deeply unhappy. [Chosun Ilbo]
This still photo broadcast by the North’s Korean Central TV on March 28, 2017, shows the country’s top leader Kim Jong-un affectionately greeting Hwang Sun-hui, an anti-Japanese revolutionary fighter, during his visit to the remodeled Korean Revolution Museum. Hwang, curator of the museum, was a comrade of Kim Il-sung, the grandfather of the current leader and the founder of North Korea. (For Use Only in the Republic of Korea. No Redistribution) (Yonhap)
It seems the drums of a preemptive strike on North Korea are growing louder. Here is the latest expert to weigh in:
The United States should be prepared to launch preemptive strikes on North Korea, including a nuclear attack if necessary, before the communist nation uses its nuclear bombs that could “kill 90 percent of Americans,” a former CIA chief said Wednesday.
James Woolsey, who served as CIA director from 1993-95, made the case in an op-ed piece in the Hill newspaper, arguing that the U.S. is erroneously underestimating Pyongyang’s capabilities to deliver nuclear weapons by missile, freighter and even satellite.
“Why do the press and public officials ignore or under-report these facts? Perhaps no administration wants to acknowledge that North Korea is an existential threat on their watch,” Woolsey said in the article, titled “How North Korea could kill 90 percent of Americans.”
“Whatever the motives for obfuscating the North Korean nuclear threat, the need to protect the American people is immediate and urgent. The U.S. must be prepared to preempt North Korea by any means necessary, including nuclear weapons,” he said. [Yonhap]
