This just shows that even with all the sanctions on North Korea they still have enough money to complete large construction projects like this:
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un talks during his visit to the country’s third hydropower station near border with China in this photo released by the country’s Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) on April 23, 2016. (Yonhap)
North Korea has completed the construction of its third hydropower station near its border with China, Pyongyang’s state media reported Saturday, in its latest effort to tackle a power shortage following heavy sanctions on the reclusive state.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un accompanied senior officials to visit the hydropower station built by a river near Mount Paektu in Paekam, Yangang Province bordering China, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said. It did not provide the exact date of his visit.
Kim praised workers for finishing construction four months ahead of schedule to present it to the Congress of the Workers’ Party of Korea (WPK), slated for May, the report said.
Two other power plants were built near the border area, but cracks shown shortly after opening the facilities in early October raised criticisms of its shoddy construction.
Completing three hydropower stations in a year was to “hit hard the heads of the U.S. imperialists and their followers hell-bent on their moves to ratchet up sanctions against the DPRK and stifle it on the principle of self-reliance and self-development,” the KCNA said in an English-language report. [Yonhap]
North Korea’s missile tests may get all the headlines, but here is what is even more deadly to South Korea is the new MLRS system they have fielded:
North Korea has deployed some 300 new multiple launch rocket systems (MLRS) along its front line with South Korea, which can hit Seoul and surrounding areas, military sources said Sunday.
Local sources, citing intelligence findings, said Pyongyang has placed the 122 millimeter rocket launchers north of the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) that separates the two Koreas.
These weapons systems have an estimated range of some 40 kilometers that can place large areas in and around the capital city within striking distance.
“The North has been deploying the new rocket launchers with regimental units along the DMZ since 2014,” said an official insider, who declined to be identified.
He said that there is a pressing need to counter such threats, adding that both Seoul and Washington have made joint threat assessments on these weapons systems. [Yonhap]
This is clearly an attempt by the North Koreans to try and create a wedge in the US-ROK alliance by ending the combined military exercises. Maybe they see a chance with an exiting US President to get a deal like this done which leaves them with a nuclear deterrent and a weakened US-ROK alliance. I would be very surprised if such a deal was ever agreed to. Even if the Kim regime thinks a deal cannot be done their offer is also a way to justify their nuclear test program to an international audience:
-The foreign minister of North Korea says in an interview with The Associated Press that his country is ready to halt its nuclear tests if the United States suspends its annual military exercises with South Korea.
He also defended the country’s right to maintain a nuclear deterrent and warned that North Korea won’t be cowed by international sanctions.
Foreign Minister Ri Su Yong, in his first interview with a Western news organization, held firm Saturday to Pyongyang’s longstanding position that the U.S. drove his country to develop nuclear weapons as a deterrent. At the same time, he suggested that suspending the military exercises could open the door to reduced tensions.
“If we continue on this path of confrontation, this will lead to very catastrophic results, not only for the two countries but for the whole entire world as well,” he said. “It is really crucial for the United States government to withdraw its hostile policy against the DPRK and as an expression of this stop the military exercises, war exercises, in the Korean Peninsula. Then we will respond likewise.”
Ri, who spoke calmly and in measured words, a contrast to the often bombastic verbiage used by the North’s media, claimed the North’s proposal was “very logical.”
“Stop the nuclear war exercises in the Korean Peninsula, then we should also cease our nuclear tests,” he said, during the interview, conducted in the country’s diplomatic mission to the United Nations. He spoke beneath portraits of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jung Il, North Korea’s two previous leaders. [CBS News]
This is an interesting development in the defector restaurant worker issue. The North Koreans are willing to send the families of the defectors to Seoul. I would assume that not all of their families would go and the ones sent would be risking the death of the families members staying behind if they too defected. I would also think these family members would be under strict instructions to try and convince the defectors to come back to North Korea. The ROK authorities probably understand this and this is why they denied North Korea’s request:
North Korea has notified Seoul of its plans to send family members of the restaurant workers who defected earlier in the month to South Korea, the country’s state-run news agency said Friday.
A group of 13 North Korean people defected from the same Pyongyang-run restaurant in China and came to South Korea in early April in what has become a steady stream of people leaving the isolated country.
North Korea has consistently claimed South Korea abducted the workers and demanded that they be returned to their loved ones at once. Pyongyang also threatened to take strong action against the South if its demands are not met.
“The families of the abductees are eagerly asking for face-to-face contact with their daughters as they were forced to part from their beloved daughters,” said the notification sent to South Korea by Ri Chung-bok, chairman of North Korea’s Red Cross.
The notification was carried by the North’s Korean Central News Agency.
“At their earnest requests, our side again seriously notifies your side of our decision to send them to Seoul via Panmunjom (a truce village),” it showed.
South Korea should not conceal the unethical crime under the pretext of “international practice,” but should take “immediate technical measures” for the families to reunite with the defectors, the letter said.
South Korea’s Unification Ministry refused the demand, however, saying in a press release after the report that “The latest group defection by the workers at a overseas North Korean restaurant was completely of their own free will.”
A ministry official also said the South Korean government has not received any official notification letter from North Korea on the matter of sending the family members of the defectors to Seoul. [Yonhap]
In an effort to probably save face after their failed Musudan test the North Koreans have now launched an submarine launched ballistic missile that may have failed as well. Unlike the Musudan test though that may have blown up at the launch site this test did at least go 30 kilometers before possibly failing, so they did get some data from the launch to continue to improve the missile. An SLBM is particularly dangerous because a submarine can appear anywhere and launch which makes missile defense especially challenging:
North Korea launched what appeared to be a ballistic missile from a submarine in the East Sea Saturday, the South Korean military said.
The Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said North Korea fired a projectile that it believes was a submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) around 6:30 p.m. The JCS said it is keeping close tabs on the North Korean military while maintaining its readiness posture.
The JCS added that the missile flew for only about 30 kilometers, well short of the minimum SLBM range of 300 km.
Separately, a South Korean government source said the SLBM’s engine ignited after it was ejected from a 2,000-ton Sinpo-class submarine but it only traveled a short distance.
“This projectile, which is believed to be an SLBM, was airborne for a couple of minutes,” the source added.
Last month, a U.S. news report claimed that North Korea had conducted a ground test of an SLBM, the KN-11. The Washington Free Beacon said the test on March 16 involved an ejection test of the KN-11 from a canister at Sinpo shipyard on the North’s eastern coast. [Yonhap]
This makes the missile test failure even worse for the North Koreans if true:
North Korea’s failed launch of its Musudan intermediate-range ballistic missile last week sparked a huge fireball that damaged the launcher and could have also injured or killed missile technicians on the ground, a news report said Wednesday.
The missile blew up about 300 feet above the ground, shortly after Friday’s launch, and U.S. strategic defense surveillance systems, both airborne and space-based, videotaped the explosion, the Washington Free Beacon reported, citing U.S. defense officials.
Two road-mobile Musudan launchers were set up for the test, but the second was not fired after the explosion, the report said. It also cited a diplomatic source as saying that the likely cause of the explosion was a faulty fuel system or turbo pump failure.
The Musudan intermediate-range ballistic missile is an indigenous variant of the Russian SS-N-6 submarine-launched ballistic missile, known by Moscow as the R-27, which the North obtained covertly from Russia sometime in the 1990s, the report said. [Yonhap]
The Kim regime must be pretty embarrassed by the recent mass defection of 13 overseas restaurant workers because they are continuing to make the claim that they were all kidnapped:
In the video, the North Koreans are seen demanding the immediate repatriation of the defectors.
The defections are being labeled as an operation of the “treasonous clique of [South Korean President] Park Geun-hye,” and the two videos feature various North Koreans: restaurant workers, a student and a party cadre.
One interviewee condemned the South Korean puppets for “kidnapping our people 10 at a time,” adding “the [South Korean] presidential Blue House, the devil’s lair, should be destroyed and our people delivered as soon as possible.”
On April 7, North Koreans – a man and 12 women – had arrived in the South after they sought asylum at Seoul’s embassy in Bangkok.
North Korea has slammed Seoul, claiming South Korea “dragged” the North Koreans to a “Southeast Asian country.” [UPI]
