North Korean radar and anti-aircraft batteries along the DMZ would probably locate and take out a number of the drones. I think such an idea would actually work better if executed by activist groups in China if they are able to not get cracked down on by the Chinese authorities:
A researcher has called on the United States to consider using drones to send USB sticks with information that can effectively win the hearts of North Koreans and provide them with information about the outside world.
Senior Researcher Kim Yon-ho at the U.S.-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies made the call in his recent contribution to Foreign Policy on Saturday.
Kim said that there are limitations to the conventional methods of smuggling high-tech data into North Korea, claiming that delivering USBs with drones is a high-tech alternative to traditional smuggling tactics.
The researcher said that due to the flourishing black market and technological developments, the means of access to outside media has advanced beyond televisions, radios, and DVDs into more interactive forms such as PCs, tablets and USB drives.
Kim said that USB drives are considered effective means of accessing information about the outside world, as they are smuggled through balloons and easily made available on the black market. [KBS World Radio]
You can read the whole Foreign Policy article at this link. The article pretty much makes the case that I have been making for year to execute a coordinated information warfare strategy within North Korea which should be part of a larger strategy to undermine the legitimacy of the Kim regime.
Who knows if this is true or not, but I would not be surprised at all if China is claiming one thing to the international media about enforcing sanctions and then in reality continuing to let banned items into North Korea to sustain the Kim regime’s military:
Although inspections at border customs offices have officially intensified as China takes measures to abide by international sanctions targeting North Korea (UNSCR 2270), it is being been reported that Chinese companies and their North Korean counterparts have been disguising military supplies as everyday merchandise in order to smuggle them through customs checkpoints.
“There is a lot of talk about how the new sanctions are harsher than those adopted in years past, but illegal smuggling through border customs is continuing relatively unimpeded,” a source in North Hamgyong Province told Daily NK on April 1.
This is because the North Korean Ministry of People’s Armed Forces operates a number of entities acting under the pretense of ordinary trading companies, trading entities and mobilization offices that are tasked with bringing banned items into North Korea.
“In particular, the Kumunsan Trade Company and a munitions branch called ‘Sung Kang Office,’ are using bribery and illicit methods to smuggle supplies despite the sanctions. These items include tires, stainless steel, machine components, acetone, industrial lubricant, and raw materials needed for gunpowder production. The items are labeled as normal goods in order to get them past the customs guards,” the source added. [The Daily NK]
Is anyone shocked that yet another business venture in South Korea is facing financial difficulties?:
The founder of a unique university in North Korea is under scrutiny after the university suffered a series of financial difficulties, according to a source in the country.
Kim Chin-kyung, a U.S. citizen, founded Pyongyang University of Science and Technology with the cooperation of North and South Korean institutions, South Korean news service CBS No Cut News reported.
But the North Korean government is looking to replace Kim.
The source said dwindling funds from South Korea and the United States have contributed to the financial shortfall at the university.
PUST used to operate on a $100,000 monthly budget but that number was down to $50,000, the source said.
A loan Kim secured to build facilities on campus in late 2000 has yet to be paid, and an agreement to replace a 60,000-volt transformer at the school by Oct. 10, 2015, the anniversary to commemorate the founding of the Workers’ Party of Korea, was never fulfilled, according to the source. [UPI]
It appears to me that the Kim regime is using this likely manufactured story as a way to take shots at both the ROK and China as nations that cannot be trusted:
A source in North Korea told Japan press that North Korean soldiers crossed the border with China at Tumen to arrest two suspects planning to assassinate Kim Jong Un. Pictured: A bulldozer and truck cross a bridge into Namyang, North Korea, from Tumen, China. File photo by Stephen Shaver/UPI | License Photo
At least two suspects who attempted to assassinate North Korean leader Kim Jong Un were arrested, according to unconfirmed reports in the country.
The suspects had been reportedly arrested at the China border near the Tumen River as they were preparing a hit on Kim in the city of Hoeryong in North Hamgyong Province, Radio Free Asia reported Thursday.
A source in the North who spoke to Japanese news service Asia Press on the condition of anonymity said he had heard the “terrorists” had not yet crossed the Tumen, which separates North Korea from China, when North Korean border guards crossed the border to arrest them.
The source went on to say the suspects were transferred to the State Security Department, and that the border guards were given rewards – including a chance to become members of the Korean Workers’ Party.
One of the suspects is allegedly a North Korean defector from the South, but the other one or more were Chinese nationals.
Japanese journalist Jiro Ishimaru, founder of Asia Press, said it is likely a rumor that was manufactured by the state to bolster support for the party ahead of its Seventh Congress in May. [UPI via reader tip]
This is actually pretty amazing that an entire restaurant staff would defect because the selection process for the job is relatively stringent so it isn’t like the workers are coming from desperately poor families in North Korea. It is also pretty impressive that the entire staff was able to coordinate with each other to do this without fear of one of them informing on them back to regime minders:
Thirteen North Koreans working in a state-run restaurant outside the country have defected to South Korea, a government official in Seoul said Friday.
The South Korean government estimates that Pyongyang rakes in around $10 million every year from some 130 restaurants it operates — with mostly North Korean staff — in 12 countries, including neighbouring China.
Last month, while unveiling a series of unilateral sanctions on Pyongyang over its January nuclear test, Seoul had urged South Korean citizens overseas to boycott any such establishments, saying their profits funded the North’s nuclear weapons programme.
The defectors, one male manager and a dozen women, arrived in the South on Thursday, Unification Ministry spokesman Jeong Joon-Hee told reporters.
He declined to identify the country where the restaurant they had been working in was located.
There have been defections by individual restaurant workers in the past, but this is the first time so many staff from one restaurant have defected en masse.
Jeong quoted one of the defectors as saying that everyone had been “on the same page” about escaping to South Korea. [AFP]
A group of North Korean defectors prepares to release balloons containing leaflets critical of the North Korean regime in Paju, near the inter-Korean border, on April 6, 2016. The balloons were released despite a recent Supreme Court ruling that the government can keep activists from sending anti-Pyongyang leaflets across the border, citing the safety of residents there. (Yonhap)
The ROK really cannot complain about this considering how private organizations continue to send propaganda leaflets and CDs via balloon into North Korea. The nuisance of dealing with the litter caused by this propaganda war is worth it in my opinion because of the effect the propaganda has within North Korea:
North Korea has sent leaflets and compact discs criticizing President Park Geun-hye and the ruling Saenuri Party to South Korea, police said Wednesday, the latest move in its propaganda campaign.
Police retrieved some 20,000 leaflets and 40 CDs from Goyang, Gyeonggi Province, just northwest of Seoul, at around 5 a.m.
Earlier in the day, dozens of leaflets criticizing South Korea’s military and its joint exercise with the United States were found in central Seoul at around midnight, according to police.
Later on Wednesday, a group of defectors in South Korea sent 300,000 leaflets with messages criticizing the communist regime and 4,000 sheets of local newspapers over the border from Paju, Gyeonggi Province.
The same group had sent another 300,000 leaflets to the North last month. [Yonhap]
This incident makes me wonder if there was some poor translation done by somebody within the South Korean governmental bureaucracy that makes these decisions because I don’t see how the blog North Korea Tech violates the country’s National Security Law?:
A British journalist who runs a website that documents North Korean technology issues said Tuesday that he’ll appeal a decision by South Korean authorities to block his site for allegedly violating the country’s National Security Law.
Martyn Williams, whose North Korea Tech website has been blocked for almost two weeks, said the site does not violate the security law, which bans praising, sympathizing or cooperating with North Korea. The website “doesn’t seek to glorify or support North Korea,” he said in an email.
Williams, who is based in San Francisco, has written about issues ranging from cellphone usage in North Korea and its satellite technology, to a little-known computer operating system developed by North Koreans. He said much of the content on his website is based on announcements made by the North and South Korean governments and reports in the media.
The South’s Korea Communications Standards Commission confirmed Tuesday that it decided on March 24 to block the site because it allegedly violated the security law. The censorship body blocks websites deemed illegal or harmful to society, such as pornography, gambling and North Korea’s official outlets. [Associated Press via reader tip]
