Tag: North Korea

It just makes you wonder why action wasn’t taken against companies doing business with North Korea a long time ago?:

The option to impose a secondary boycott, which penalizes foreign companies trading with a target country, will be a very effective tool if it is imposed on North Korea for its latest nuclear test, a senior foreign ministry official said Friday.

“There’s a so-called secondary boycott which has not been mobilized yet,” Vice Foreign Minister Cho Tae-yul said during his televised interview with Yonhap News TV, the broadcasting affiliate of Yonhap News Agency.

He was discussing what punitive actions remain available to use against North Korea, as the international community is working toward adopting another round of sanctions in response to the country’s fifth nuclear test on Sept. 9.

The secondary boycott, if adopted, would target any foreign companies that transact with North Korea, pushing the communist country further into isolation from the international economy.

If used, the approach would have the biggest influence on companies in China, by far Pyongyang’s No. 1 trading partner.

“If this is applied, it would have very significant impact … the U.S. may consider applying a secondary boycott if they judge North Korea’s nuclear program cannot be stopped without using it,” Cho noted.  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link.

I wonder how many people in the Kim regime even use this limited Internet service?  I also wonder what memes they post on their social network service?

Someone in North Korea is in a lot of trouble.

The secretive state somehow accidentally opened access to all the websites hosted on its servers, revealing that it only has 28 registered domains.

On Monday at around 10 p.m. Pacific time, North Korea’s nameserver – that contains information about all of the “.kp” websites – was misconfigured, allowing it to be accessed. This meant Matthew Bryant, a researcher, was able to access the domain names and some of the file data about the site.

Bryant dumped all of this on Github – a site that hosts computer code. It’s the first real look into the secret online world of the hermit state North Korea.

Some of the websites take a long time to load and some are inaccessible. Among the 28 sites listed is one called Air Koryo, a flight booking site, and one named Friend, presumably some sort of social network.

One website that has always been accessible outside of North Korea is the Korean Central News Agency – the state-run propaganda site.

A Reddit page lists all of the websites discovered and below are some examples of the sites.  [CNBC]

https://twitter.com/pearswick/status/776249653352214528

This photo, released by North Korea’s ruling party organ Rodong Sinmun on Sept. 20, 2016, shows a ground test of a new high-power rocket engine being carried out at the country’s Sohae satellite launch site. The (North) Korean Central News Agency reported leader Kim Jong-un supervised the successful test, which provides sufficient carrier capability to launch various kinds of satellites. (For Use Only in the Republic of Korea. No Redistribution) (Yonhap)

This photo, released by North Korea’s state-run Internet propaganda site Meari on Sept. 19, 2016, shows a poster bearing an image of a mother holding a baby with the phrase “For the future, let’s stop smoking flat.” (For Use Only in the Republic of Korea. No Redistribution) (Yonhap)

North Korea bans sarcasm. Really. https://t.co/pAv2bhx55T

— Jieun Baek (@JieunBaek1) September 16, 2016

In triumph for Trudeau, China frees Canadian missionary detained near North Korean border for two years https://t.co/IyHsylEMxK

— James Pearson (@pearswick) September 18, 2016

What concerns is not North Korea’s statement, but where their foreign minister is making the statement from.  This would be a huge provocation against the US if they ever sold any of their increasingly capable missiles to Venezuela that could be pointed at the US.  Considering the current economic crisis in Venezuela this obviously is not a near term concern:

North Korea is ready to launch new attacks, the country’s foreign minister has said, suggesting the communist regime may take further provocative action following North Korea’s recent nuclear test.

“North Korea is ready to launch another attack in defiance of the provocations by the United States,” North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong-ho said.

He made the remarks during a summit of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) in Venezuela on Thursday (local time).

Last week North Korea conducted its fifth and most powerful nuclear test, eight months after its fourth nuclear test.  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link.

This just goes to show that even North Koreans can have a sense of humor:

This is satirical political comedy, Pyongyang style.

A recent episode of the snappily named “The stage of optimism that Songun presented — Volume 11,” which airs on state-controlled Korea Central Television (KCTV), lampooned the US leader and “oppressed” South Koreans ahead of the North’s nuclear warhead test this month.  [CNN]

Here is what former US President Bill Clinton thinks in regards to what to do about North Korea:

Former U.S. President Bill Clinton said North Korea is a “funny country” that is good at making bombs and missiles, but unable to feed its people, and its leader Kim Jong-un appears to be “more militant than his father and grandfather.”

Clinton made the remark in an interview with PBS’s Charlie Rose Tuesday night, saying he “worked very hard” with former Defense Secretary and North Korea policy coordinator William Perry and then Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff John Shalikashvili to prevent a nuclear-armed North Korea.

“I worked very hard to avert this when I was president. And my former defense secretary, Bill Perry, and General John Shalikashvili … They went there and said, you know, this can’t happen, and so we worked very hard to avoid it with some success,” Clinton said.

The former president declined to discuss what the North Korea policy of his wife Hillary Clinton would look like, saying he wants her to speak for herself. But he added that the Democratic presidential nominee has suggested that the U.S. should toughen the sanctions and try to get the support of Russia and China.

“North Korea is, it’s a funny country. That is, they’re good at making missiles and bombs, and they can’t bring in a rice crop,” Clinton said. “They believe that you, and the news media, and those of us who are in the political world, all over the world, that all of us, we never think about them unless they misbehave.”  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link.