Tag: North Korea

An official points to North Korea’s northeastern county of Kilju, where the communist country conducted a nuclear test, at the Korea Meteorological Agency in Seoul on Sept. 9, 2016. The test, the fifth of its kind following its first in 2006, second in 2009, third in 2013 and fourth in January 2016, caused a 5 magnitude tremor. North Korean news media, including the Korean Central TV Station, confirmed the latest nuclear test in their reports later in the day. (Yonhap)

I would be surprised to see this happen:

The Defense Ministry said it was implementing a three-pillared system against North Korean weapons threats. On top of the already known Kill Chain to preemptively destroy North Korea missiles and the Korean Air Missile Defense system for air strikes, the ministry will add the so-called Korean Massive Punishment and Retaliation program, which would authorize joint allied forces to attack the North Korean military command if the country causes nuclear damage. The military plans to back the program with precision missiles and specially trained forces. Korean and U.S. forces are also developing new type of preemptive-strike operations.

Seoul should persuade Washington to redeploy tactical nuclear weapons on the Korean Peninsula until the North Korean nuclear threat is removed. NATO allows jet fighters of members to mount tactical nuclear weapons. The South Korean president as well as the U.S. president need to have the power to authorize the use of such weapons.   [Joong Ang Ilbo]

You can read more at the link.

I would think a lot more than targeting regime leadership and key sites would happen to North Korea if they used a nuclear weapon against the South:

South Korea vowed on Friday to counterattack North Korea’s leadership including ruler Kim Jong-un if Pyongyang uses its nuclear weapon.

“If the North harms us with nuclear arms we will directly target, punish and retaliate against the North Korean leadership, including its war command,” said Lieutenant General Lim Ho-young, strategy and planning director of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “We will operate our strike capabilities, including missiles that are capable of making precise strikes en masse simultaneously and will deploy our elite special operations forces.”

The retaliation will target the North’s command and control system, he said, as well as missile facilities and submarine bases using the South’s capabilities. He said the South has missile capabilities comparable to cruise and ballistic missiles of the North, while its air-to-ground guided bombs and missiles are superior to those of the North.  [Joong Ang Ilbo]

You can read the rest at the link, but if the North launched a nuke at Seoul you would think the US would respond in kind against South Korea.

An official checks radiation levels at a checking facility of the state-run Korea Institute of Nuclear Safety in Gangneung on South Korea’s east coast on Sept. 9, 2016, to see if the area has been contaminated by radioactive material. Earlier in the day, North Korea confirmed its fifth nuclear test, which Seoul blasted as an “intolerable provocation.” (Yonhap)

The Chinese will probably talk that they will do something in response to this nuclear test, but I doubt anything of real consequence will happen to North Korea.  At this point the only way I see China doing anything to stop the North Korean nuclear program is if South Korea and Japan get the green light to begin developing their own nukes:

North Korea confirmed its fifth nuclear test explosion early Friday, its largest yet. The provocation brought instant condemnation from the country’s neighbors and a call from President Obama for “serious consequences.”

Pyongyang also said it has made strides that could bring it closer to mounting a warhead on one of its ballistic missiles and launching a long-distance nuclear strike.

“We successfully conducted a nuclear explosion test to determine the power of [the] nuclear warhead,” a female anchor announced on North Korea’s state television. “We will continue to strengthen our nuclear capabilities to protect our sovereignty. We have now standardized and minimized nuclear warheads … We can now produce small nuclear warheads any time we desire.”

South Korea’s defense ministry said the yield of the blast is estimated to be 10 kilotons, the largest ever conducted by Pyongyang. Its first nuclear test in 2006 yielded less than one kiloton, and the country has been steadily increasing its atomic capacity ever since.  [Good Morning America]

You can read more at the link.

The most obvious question in regards to this idea is what will the bribe amount be to secure a summit?  Kim Jong-un is not going to show up to an Inter-Korean summit without a bribe.  Secondly what will they talk about?  How Kim Jong-un’s grandpa was responsible for the killing of President Park’s mother?  North Korea is not going to give up their nuclear or missile programs so it is a waste of time to talk about that.  From their perspective why would they give them up?:

Rep. Park Jie-won, the interim leader of the country’s second-largest opposition party, called on President Park Geun-hye, Wednesday, to meet North Korean leader Kim Jong-un to break the deadlock in inter-Korean relations.

He also asked President Park to push for a constitutional revision during the remainder of her term that ends in February 2018.

“The most important things that Park should do during her remaining year-and-a-half in office are to push for an inter-Korean summit and a constitutional revision at the earliest possible date,” Park of the People’s Party said in a speech at the National Assembly.  [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link, but Rep. Park may also be calling for reforming the Presidential system to change it to two four year terms like we have in the US.  It seems to me the five year term has been working well for South Korea so why the need to change it?

Here is an article that provides a reminder of how difficult the life for many North Korean defectors has been before finding refuge:

Back in my home country, I was charged with trying to escape North Korea and sent to a jail where a dozen male and female, young and old prisoners were squeezed into a room no bigger than a metre square. There was only one toilet in the corner of the room and no privacy.
Like other inmates, I was treated as an enemy of the state and forced to do hard labour, clearing the hills of trees so that crops could be planted. I became so malnourished that my skin turned black and my body was skeletal. I lost big clumps of hair and felt utter despair. But the greatest pain was in my heart. I couldn’t bear being separated from my child. On days I thought about death, the thought of seeing my son again was all that kept me going.We were not allowed to wear shoes in the prison, in case we tried to run away. Slowly the skin on my feet became broken and calloused from the rough stones on the ground. My wounds became infected until finally gangrene set in. It was desperately painful, but what I didn’t realise was this would be my passport to freedom. The prison doctor told me that the United Nations had intervened to condemn the conditions in North Korea’s prisons, and he persuaded the guards that I needed rest.

Thanks to him, I was sent to a prison for children where I was to stay until I was well enough to return to finish my two-year sentence. But after two months, when I was able to walk with a limp, I begged the guards to let me leave. My father had passed away just after I left for China, and I told them I wanted to visit his grave. In a rare moment of generosity, they agreed to let me go and, the minute I was out, I headed for the Chinese border again. I had no money, and I knew the only hope of seeing my son again was to approach another trafficker on the North Korean side and tell him I wanted to be sold again into marriage. Once inside China, I managed to escape.  [Yahoo News]

You can read much more at the link, but this North Korean defector went through a lot before getting to England.  This article is also a reminder of the modern day comfort woman trade that the Chinese government indirectly sponsors with North Korean refuge women in China.

I would think the Chinese would not be too happy with the North Koreans trying to draw attention away from the G-20 Summit they are currently hosting, but obviously the Kim regime cares little about what the Chinese think:

North Korea on Monday fired three medium-range missiles that traveled about 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) and landed near Japan in an apparent show of force timed to coincide with the Group of 20 economic summit in China, South Korean officials said.

North Korea has staged a series of recent missile tests with increasing range, part of a program that aims to eventually build long-range nuclear missiles capable of striking the U.S. mainland.

Such tests are fairly common when international attention is turned to Northeast Asia, and this one came as world leaders gathered in eastern China for the G-20 summit of advanced and emerging economies. China is North Korea’s only major ally, but ties between the neighbors have frayed amid a string of North Korean nuclear and missile tests and what many outsiders see as other provocations in recent years.

South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said that the three ballistic missiles, all believed to be Rodongs, were launched from the western North Korean town of Hwangju and flew across the country before splashing into the sea.  [Associated Press]

You can read more at the link, but all these missile launches do is further justify South Korean President Park Geun-hye’s decision to deploy the THAAD missile defense system to the ROK against Chinese objections.

As North Korea continues to develop its Submarine Launched Ballistic Missile (SLBM) capability South Korea is definitely going to need to acquire this technology in response:

The South Korean military may buy four cutting-edge antisubmarine patrol aircraft in the wake of the successful test-firing of a submarine launched ballistic missile (SLBM) by North Korea last week, a senior government official told the JoongAng Ilbo Tuesday.

The advanced maritime surveillance aircraft being considered by the military is a Boeing P-8 Poseidon, which costs between 250 billion and 300 billion won ($223 – 268 million) per jet. The U.S. Navy has such aircraft, as do the Indian and Australian navies.

“North Korea is preparing a number of strategic ways to attack the South using its submarine fleet on top of the SLBM development,” said the official, “We are discussing whether to purchase the latest maritime patrol aircraft to detect North Korean submarines to prevent surprise attacks from under water.”  [Joong Ang Ilbo]

You can read more at the link.

It seems to me North Korea abducting an American from Yunnan province seems pretty far fetched considering the large distance the province is from North Korea.  It would have been far easier for them to abduct someone from a Chinese province bordering China if they were looking for an American to kidnap:

A US student who supposedly died in China in 2004 has reportedly turned up alive in North Korea after being kidnapped to serve as Kim Jong Un’s personal tutor.

David Sneddon of Brigham Young University disappeared in Yunnan Province aged 24, in what Chinese police said was probably a hiking accident.

But the reality, according to Choi Sung-yong, head of South Korea’s Abductees’ Family Union, is that he was kidnapped to be an English tutor to the then-heir to North Korea Yahoo News Japan reported Wednesday.

Sneddon is now living in the North Korean capital of Pyongyang, where he teaches English to children and has a wife and two children, Choi said.

The news comes as relief – but little surprise – to Sneddon’s parents, Roy and Kathleen, who have long doubted the official story of their son’s disappearance.

‘We just knew in our heart that he was alive, so we had to keep fighting,’ said Kathleen Sneddon.

Their suspicion was based in part on the fact that Sneddon’s body was never found after he was believed to have died in Tiger Leaping Gorge, a canyon on Yunnan’s Jinsha River that is highly popular with tourists.  [Daily Mail via a reader link]

You can read more at the link, but other than a statement from a North Korean defector there is no evidence to support the claim in the article.  It seems the family is maintaining a healthy bit of skepticism as well about the claim.