The ROK government is making a good point in regards to why North Korea is allowed to remain a member of the United Nations when it does not comply with any of the UN resolutions leveled against the country? I doubt it will go any where, but it is still worth bringing up:
South Korea has officially questioned North Korea’s qualification as a member of the United Nations during a U.N. meeting this week, citing Pyongyang’s repeated violations of U.N. Security Council resolutions.
South Korea’s U.N. ambassador, Oh Joon, raised the question during a meeting Monday of the U.N. Security Council, saying the North pledged to accept and to uphold the purposes and principles of the U.N. as laid out in its charter when it joined the U.N. in 1991, together with South Korea.
“Twenty-five years ago, the DPRK solemnly pledged to comply with the obligations of the U.N. Charter as a new member, but during the past decade, the DPRK has persistently violated all Security Council resolutions on the DPRK,” Oh said, according to video footage of the meeting. He used the initials for North Korea’s official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
“This is not only a direct challenge to the authority of the Security Council, but also a contradiction to both the letter and spirit of the pledge it made. This breach of obligation by the DPRK calls into question its qualification as a member of the United Nations,” he said.
It was the first time the South has taken issue with the North’s U.N. membership. [Yonhap via One Free Korea]
You can read more at the link as well as over at One Free Korea.
That is what another expert, Nah Liang Tuang (PhD) is an Associate Research Fellow at the Institute of Defense and Strategic Studies, is recommending in this Diplomat Op-ed piece. Professor Nah also believes that quiet diplomacy could get the Chinese to restrict oil supplies into North Korea as well to further pressure the regime:
Consequently, if any new UNSC resolutions are going to be as limp wristed as the previous four, it might be advisable for the U.S. along with its regional allies, Japan and South Korea, to begin actively targeting anyinternational bank accounts identified as being linked with Pyongyang’s elites, irrespective of their links to the DPRK’s nuclear or missile establishment. As in the case of the $25 million in North Korea funds deposited in Macau’s Banco Delta Asia, which was frozen in late 2005 at the behest of the U.S. on money laundering allegations, so too could action be taken against accounts privately held by Pyongyang’s upper crust. In this manner, Washington, Tokyo and Seoul could actively ferret out the slush funds and retirement accounts of Kim Jong-un’s inner circle, and any bigwigs who walk the corridors of power.
Once identified, American, Japanese and South Korean representatives could then request that these covert nest eggs be frozen while being investigated for money laundering, failure to comply with this request resulting in the boycotting of the aforesaid bank by the U.S., Japanese and South Korean governments along with the companies of these wealthy nations. Considering that Pyongyang was and probably still is involved in the counterfeiting of U.S. currency, counterfeit cigarettes, narcotics production/smuggling and other shady businesses, it would be a fair bet that many of these accounts are part of the money laundering chain in the Kim regime’s criminal enterprises. With resultant legal action taken against the offending accounts, and the realization amongst the DPRK’s elite that their financial reserves overseas are under threat, Kim Jong-un would have a harder time maintaining his rule as the DPRK’s oligarchical system encounters difficulty securing the welfare of those at its apex.
Finally, if quiet diplomacy with Beijing can secure Chinese cooperation, Kim Jong-un might be reminded of the Kim dynasty’s vulnerability with a short interruption in the supply of Chinese oil. [The Diplomat]
The North Koreans keeping getting more and more lewd in regards to their comments about South Korean President Park Geun-hye:
North Korea responded to an unusually harsh verbal attack by South Korea’s president against the North’s leader and its recent nuclear test and rocket launch with a characteristically colorful invective of its own Saturday, calling her policy traitorous and adding that Washington’s newly enacted sanctions are “laughable.”
The North’s official reaction — including the insult “senile granny” — was expected, though it took several days for Pyongyang to announce it through its state-run media.
North Korea regularly condemns South Korean President Park Geun-hye through sexist and violent language, saying recently that she lives upon “the groin of her American boss.” [Associated Press]
This does make you wonder if for security precautions the North Koreans kept Kim Jong-un indoors somewhere or maybe he was just to lazy to show up for the picture?:
Recent photographs of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un appeared to have been doctored, prompting speculation regarding Kim’s wariness about his personal safety as tensions rise on the peninsula.
The photographs that ran on the seventh page of state newspaper Rodong Sinmun on Friday show Kim surrounded by a large group of party officials, posing before the Kumsusan Palace of the Sun, South Korean newspaper JoongAng Ilbo reported.
Kumsusan is also the mausoleum of the late Kim Il Sung, North Korea’s founder.
But something doesn’t look quite right.
On closer inspection, the main flag at the top of the building flutters in one direction, while a group of flags in the background flies in the opposite way, an unlikely phenomenon if wind was blowing at the time the photograph was taken. [Business Insider]
A ROK Drop favorite Park Sang-hak and other North Korean defectors have had security measures improved for them when the ROK National Intelligence Service (NIS) learned of specific information about North Korean terror and assassination attempts within the ROK. In the case of Park Sang-hak the North Koreans have tried to kill him before:
Following the latest intelligence assessment that North Korea is planning terrorist attacks against the South, security measures to protect high-value targets including influential defectors have been beefed up.
The National Police Agency has reinforced the security detail for former North Korean diplomat Ko Young-hwan, vice president of the Institute for National Security Strategy of the National Intelligence Service (NIS). He was put under the highest level of monitoring, as the intelligence community obtained a death threat from the North.
Ko served in the North’s Foreign Ministry from 1978 to 1991. He defected from his post as the first secretary of the North Korean Embassy in the Republic of Congo in 1991.
“I was told by the police that they had obtained specific threats,” Ko told Yonhap News Agency. “I was normally guarded by two agents, but the number has increased to eight.”
The police also improved security measures for Park Sang-hak, a North Korean defector currently leading the campaign to send anti-Pyongyang leaflets across the border using balloons.
The North has previously assassinated a high-profile defector in the South. Yi Han-yong, nephew of the late North Korean leader Kim Jong-il’s mistress Song Hye-rim, defected to the South in 1982 while studying in Switzerland. He was shot in February 1997 by two assailants suspected of being agents from North Korean special forces. He died in a hospital later that month.
The NIS informed the government and the ruling party Thursday that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un had ordered the country’s intelligence agencies to prepare for terror attacks against the South. In addition to threats on cyberattacks and attacks on public facilities, assassination and kidnapping of high-value targets were also feared. [Joong Ang lbo]
I hope no one is shocked by this news that the North Koreans sent undercover agents into the Kaesong Industrial complex to monitor workers and steal technology. I would be more surprised if they did not. It will be interesting to see how much the North Koreans have learned over the past ten years to see if they can run this industrial park by themselves:
Internal North Korean documents exclusively obtained by KBS have revealed that the communist state may have prepared for freezing assets of South Korean businesses at the inter-Korean Gaeseong Industrial Complex from the early stages of the cross-border project.
Papers from organizations of North Korea’s Workers’ Party in 2006 show directives to Pyongyang officials to learn and acquire the South’s “advanced” technologies at the Gaeseong industrial park.
While calling South Korea the “enemy,” the orders also stress that the North’s officials must be able to manage and run the factory facilities without the South’s help.
Another exclusively obtained document suggests that the North Korean regime also set up a surveillance unit to monitor workers at the factory park. Circumstantial evidence has also been revealed to suggest that North Korean soldiers could have been employed at the industrial complex as undercover agents.
Papers from North Korea’s Sixth Infantry Division also show authorities there had aimed to minimize the consumption and intake of South Korean products and “capitalist” culture. [KBS World]
South Koreans are asking their citizens to not eat at North Korean sponsored restaurants overseas to cut hard currency going to the Kim regime. Should the US government takes this mentality a step forward and ban travel to North Korea by its citizens to also cut hard currency going to the regime, not to mention stopping the constant trickle of American detainee issues that have to be dealt with:
South Koreans’ stomachs are the latest front in the standoff with North Korea.
South Koreans have been told not to eat at North Korea’s restaurants around the world, although such visits aren’t illegal, the South’s Foreign Ministry said Wednesday.
Most of the restaurants are in China, and Chinese and other nationalities frequent them more than South Koreans do, so analysts see little impact. But the move is symbolic of a tougher stance from the South since North Korea’s nuclear test last month and its recent rocket launch, which many outsiders see as a banned test of ballistic missile technology. [Associated Press]
North Korean synchronized swimmers put on a show in Pyongyang on Feb. 15, 2016, to mark the birthday a day later of the country’s former leader Kim Jong-il in this photo released by the North’s state media, the Korean Central News Agency. Kim is the son of North Korea’s founder Kim Il-sung and the father of the current leader, Kim Jong-un. (For use in S. Korea only. No redistribution) (Yonhap)
