The Russian photographer Aleksei Hermann is holding an exhibition of rare pictures of North Korea in the border city of Belgorod.
Taken between Sept. 21 and Oct. 5 last year, the photos on display show rare sights of the reclusive country.
The exhibition has moved on from Moscow. [Chosun Ilbo]
This deal with Iran does not mean much for North Korea because they have already gone down this road two times before with two different US presidential administrations and cheated on the deals both times.
The South’s unification minister, Hong Yong-pyo, was blunt in comments Tuesday about what to expect. “Conclusion of Iranian negotiations will not lead to solution of the nuclear problem” in North Korea he told foreign correspondents here. But as the North now represents “the only country … to exercise nuclear power to intimidate the rest of the world…the agreement will at least give some pressure on North Korea.”
It is not known whether negotiators in Vienna discussed or agreed privately to address the broader issue of Tehran’s assistance or cooperation with Pyongyang.
WILL TEHRAN STOP AIDING PYONGYANG?
Analysts like Scott Snyder of the Council on Foreign Relations say that how North Korea now responds to the new deal “ultimately will depend on whether US negotiators also have a tacit understanding with Iran to curtail questionable relationships with North Korea in these areas.” If North Korea “loses another customer,” Mr. Snyder believes, “Pyongyang may take notice.”
So far Pyongyang has kept its silence. The North Korean media has yet to report on the historic accord with Iran, much less offer any commentary.
The Iran deal does give Pyongyang something new to worry about, says Mark Fitzpatrick at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London. “I bet their gut reaction will be along the lines of, ‘We are more isolated than ever, with even Iran making peace with Washington,’” he says. [Christian Science Monitor]
You can read the rest, but if anything the Iranians took solace in the fact that the North Koreans were able to cheat on their deals for many years with the US turning a blind eye to their activities due to other pressing concerns in the world at the time. If the North Koreans feel like they can cut yet another deal and get a lot free goodies for little or nothing in return they would probably do it. However, I don’t think the Obama administration is going to be as eager to cut a deal with North Korea simply because of their history of cheating on past deals. As always time will tell.
In 1966 North Korea began a campaign to infiltrate increasing amount of communist agents into South Korea along with well trained special operations troops to launch attacks against US and South Korean military forces along the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) that separates North and Korean War. The goal of North Korean dictator Kim Il-sung was to infiltrate enough agents within South Korea to cause an insurgency against the ROK government while simultaneously sapping the US and ROK military’s morale and initiative. He planned to do by launching ambushes on the DMZ which would also test US resolve in Korea due to America’s heavy involvement in Vietnam. This period of increased conflict became known by those who fought in this shadow war as the “DMZ War“. The list of military provocations during this period against the Republic of Korea government by their rivals in North Korea is a long and extensive one. However, one provocation is clearly the most audacious and remarkable by the fact the communist agents nearly accomplished their mission, and that is the Blue House Raid.
On January 17, 1968, North Korean commandos infiltrated into North Korea with the express purpose of assassinating South Korean president Park Chung-hee. Not only were they ordered to kill Park Chung-hee but they were to chop his head off and toss it into the streets of Seoul. The belief Kim Il-sung had was that by launching a decapitation strike against the ROK regime it would cause chaos within the nation that his communist agents in place throughout the country could then take advantage of by launching a guerrilla campaign against the government in the hope of causing a final regime collapse.
The undercover guerrillas would target transportation nodes, TV stations, post offices, police, and military bases in order to cause chaos throughout the country. The conventional North Korean army could then use the guise of an internal uprising against the South Korean regime to legitimize its invasion of South Korea to reunite the peninsula under his rule. However, first Kim had to successfully assassinate Park which would be no easy task.
To do this a thirty-one man assassination team was specially selected from the infamous North Korean 124 Army Unit responsible for most of the infiltration and ambushes launched along the DMZ. These specially selected soldiers trained for two years solely for this operation. Before beginning their mission the team spent their final 15 days conducting mock raids against a full model of the Blue House set up near the North Korean city of Wonsan where their training base was located. Once their superiors were satisfied with their level of proficiency they were immediately sent to execute their mission.
The assassination team was divided into six different teams each commanded by a Captain in order to more easily infiltrate into South Korea. Each team member wore dark overalls, sneakers, a cap, and carried 66 pounds of equipment to include a sub-machine gun, a pistol, grenades, and daggers.
The commando team decided to infiltrate through the 2nd Infantry Division sector near the city of Yeoncheon because it was believed that by infiltrating through the US sector of the DMZ and then successfully assassinating Park Chung-hee that the Korean military would blame the US for the assassination. This in turn would cause tension between the two allies for North Korea’s communist agents to exploit. Each of the North Korean teams were able to successfully breach the DMZ fence and landmines without being detected.
Here is what the only commando to survive the attack had to say about the initial infiltration operation:
At 04:00 on January 18, 1968, 31 commandos crossed the border. (The border fence they cut is preserved to this day). They wore South Korean uniforms and were trained in Seoul accents – “This is the basis of guerrilla fighting!” They removed mines as they went. They halted before a South Korean observation post: Women were going in: “They were not very alert!” Covered in white sheets, the assassins crossed the frozen Imjin River. [Kim Shin-jo]
After successfully crossing the DMZ the six different teams regrouped and began their expected four day march south towards Seoul. For the first two days the commando team was able to successfully march south undetected. Their infiltration mission had gone so well that they even camped out one night just a few kilometers from the major US military installation in the western corridor, Camp Howze.
Initially the commandos had been very luck to not be detected, however their luck would change on the late afternoon of January 19th. On that day the commando team was spotted by four South Korean woodcutters, all brothers working in the mountains. This was a moment where the North Koreans made a terrible mistake.The North Korean commandos had been long taught that the oppressed masses in South Korea were just waiting to be liberated from their puppet government that was backed by the Yankee Imperialists. So instead of killing the woodcutters the commandos decided to conduct an indoctrination sessions with them and teach them the wonders of Juche and the on coming communist conquest that would unit the country and free the oppressed South Korean masses that they figured the woodcutters were part of. It never occurred to them that the South Korean masses were not oppressed and in fact loyal to the ROK government.
To add some context the masses in South Korea were oppressed by the Park Chung-hee regime, but they were no where near as oppressed as the people in North Korea. Remember many of the Koreans during this time frame had lived through the Japanese colonization of the peninsula and knew what oppression was, Park Chung-hee was nothing compared to what they saw before. Additionally Park’s economic policies had brought unprecedented economic growth to South Korea and thus causing the average ROK citizen to be quite happy to put up with some oppression if it meant the continued economic growth of the country. The fact that the commandos were indoctrinated with communist propaganda led to them making a mistake that would ultimately doom their entire operation.
After the indoctrination session the woodcutters proudly pronounced themselves converts to the communist ideology which they were then released by the commandos. Once they were released they immediately went and notified the South Korean police of what they had saw. The police notified the South Korean military and a massive counter-guerrilla operation was launched to catch the commandos. However, the South Korean authorities did not know what the mission of the group was and thus could not focus their operations into one area. The commandos were so skilled they were able to easily avoid the perimeter checkpoints by moving in two to three man teams before meeting up again on the outskirts of Seoul.
In Seoul security was much tighter and the commandos took off their civilian overalls which exposed the ROK Army uniforms they wore underneath them. The ROK Army uniforms were perfect replicas and even had the correct unit designation of the 26th ROK Infantry Division sewn on them. They were a mile from the Blue House and decided the best way to penetrate the city’s security would be to do something no one expected, march right through the city straight to the Blue House.
The North Koreans posed as a South Korean platoon returning from patrol on the city’s outskirts. They marched right through the city right by a number of military checkpoints before arriving 800 meters from the Blue House around 10:30 AM on the morning of January 21, 1968. It is here where the commandos encountered a final police checkpoint that stopped the marching soldiers to question them. The North Koreans fumbled their answers to the questions the commander of the Chongno police station Choe Kyu-sik asked them. Here is how the Chosun Ilbo newspaper described the events that happened next:
But a jeep carrying Jongno Police Station chief Choi Kyu-sik was coming up the road. Choi shouted at the North Korean commandos, “Identify yourselves! What’s inside your coats?” He was taking out a gun to stop them when two city buses came up close and stopped. Mistaking the buses for vehicles that carried police or military reinforcements, the North Korean commandos shot Choi in the chest, tossed hand grenades into the buses, and scattered in every direction. [Chosun Ilbo]
From there chaos broke out as the North Koreans entered into a massive fire fight against the South Korean security forces. A platoon of South Korean infantry had been tasked to reinforce the Blue House’s security and they immediately maneuvered to engage the North Korean infiltrators. It was during this exchange of gun fire that a school bus got caught up in the crossfire killing the women and children aboard. The ROK security forces were only able to get the North Koreans to abandon their mission to kill Park Chung-hee when ROK Army tanks began to rumble down the road towards the North Koreans. With no effective way to fight the tanks, the commandos decided to abandon the mission and fight their way back to North Korea.
The operation to track down and kill the North Korean infiltrators would end up being even bloodier then the initial fire fight. Both US and ROK military units were mobilized to patrol the South Korean country side to find the infiltrators. More often then not the infiltrators when located would go down in a blaze of gun fire that would claim the lives of even more people. A few of the operatives committed suicide to avoid being captured. The most bizarre death was when one North Korean operatives was captured alive and brought into to be questioned by the Korean National Police Director Chae Won-shik. Unfortunately the police had not bothered to properly disarm the operative who proceeded to pull a pin from a grenade and kill himself and injure the Police Director. Here is how the January 24th, 1968 edition of the Stars & Stripes reported the incident:
Overall, the operation to track down the commandos lasted for nine days where 29 of the infiltrators were killed, one unaccounted for, and only one captured.
Corpses of the dead North Korean commandos pictured on Jan. 25, 1968.
The casualties the South Koreans received was steep with 68 South Koreans killed and 66 more wounded. Most of these casualties came during the operation to hunt down the commandos. Of these casualties most were military and policemen, but two dozen of them were South Korean civilians. American forces experienced three soldiers killed and three more wounded in the operation to track down the North Korean operatives. This article from the New York Times suggests that these US soldiers were not killed by the commandos themselves but by other North Korean operatives on the DMZ while the search was going on. The January 25th, 1968 edition of the Stars and Stripes likewise published an article about US soldiers combating infiltrators along the DMZ during the time the Blue House Raid operatives were trying to get back to North Korea:
It was later learned that the one unaccounted for commando had in fact successfully made his way back to North Korea and would later become an Army general. The lone captured commando was a young man by the name of Kim Shin-jo who was on just his second covert mission into South Korea. Much of the details of the Blue House Raid have come from the testimony of Kim Shin-jo. Kim’s statement upon capture was, “I came down to cut Park Chung Hee’s throat!” became a well known footnote of the aborted raid.
Today Kim is far less aggressive and in fact became a Protestant pastor in 1997. Kim received a Presidential pardon for the raid and was released from jail when a forensic investigation determined he never fired a bullet from his weapon. Besides being a pastor Kim is also a hard line anti-Communist:
“What has really changed while the South has been pouring out so much money on the North?” he said. “North Koreans are only becoming hungrier and hungrier while the unilateral support from the South is extending the North Korean government’s life.” Kim said he wants to live “as long as possible” so he can serve as living evidence of North Korea’s spy program against the South. Otherwise, “North Korea will just say they are not responsible for the Jan. 21 incident once I’m gone, like many other incidents North Korea has caused,” he said. [Joong Ang Ilbo]
Interestingly enough there is evidence that Seoul may have captured more than just Kim Shin-jo alive. The below Joong Ang Ilbo article claims that there was in fact 33 commandos sent to kill President Park, but ROK intelligence was able to convert two of them into double agents to spy on North Korea:
North Korea sent two more spies to assassinate South Korean President Park Chung Hee on Jan. 21, 1968, than previously disclosed, a North Korean defector claimed in an interview with the JoongAng Sunday published yesterday.
They were captured alive and sent back to the North as double agents, said the 57-year-old defector, who trained in the 1970s at the same North Korean special military unit as the commandos dispatched to the South. He goes by the alias Hong Eun-taek.
Publicly, the government says 31 North Korean commandos attempted to raid the Blue House in what was one of the boldest North Korean attempts to assassinate a South Korean leader, and all were killed during the raid, except for one, Kim Shin-jo.
“The record left at the unit where I served said that 33 people were sent to the South and two of them escaped [to the North],” Hong said.
Hong served in the eighth battalion of North Korea’s 711 unit in the 1970s, which was the successor of the 124 unit that sent the commandos on the Blue House raid.
He identified the two North Korean commandos who returned to the North as Lim Tae-yong and Wu Myong-hun. Hong said Lim was the chief of the eighth battalion when he was serving there.
He said the two double agents were promoted to two-star or three-star generals after their return to the North.
But they were executed in 1998 when their spying for the South was disclosed.
Hong said there was a widespread rumor in the North Korean military of them being double agents right before their executions.
Hong claimed that another commando was also caught alive, of higher rank than Lim and Wu. The South tried to persuade the three to return to the North as double agents, and they resisted.
The higher ranking commando was beheaded with a farming implement in front of Lim and Wu, and terrified, they signed onto the plan and pledged allegiance to the South, Hong said.
They were returned to the North and told to advance as high as possible in the military, Hong said.
One of the North Korean commandos killed during the raid was indeed found with his head missing. Kim Shin-jo, believed to have been the only survivor, was forced to identify the bodies of his colleagues after the raid.
A Jan. 26, 1968 JoongAng Ilbo article reporting on the incident quoted Kim as saying, “I don’t know [who he is].”
Kim Shin-jo became a South Korean citizen in 1970 and became a Christian pastor in 1997.
The defector who uses the alias Hong Eun-taek defected to the South in 2001. [Joong Ang Ilbo]
The Blue House Raid is quite possibly the most unbelievable provocation between North and South Korea ever since the division of the peninsula. The plan was so bold that it seemed certain to fail, yet these commandos came only 800 yards from completing their mission despite fully alerted authorities looking for them. The Blue House Raid may have been foiled, but the ability of the commandos to so easily infiltrate the DMZ and allude detection demonstrated lacking weaknesses in the security plan and training of both the US and Korean troops.
As bad as these weaknesses were, not all the aftermath of the Blue House Raid was bad. The commandos’ mission was foiled by loyal citizens reporting their movements and one alert policemen who paid with his life for uncovering the commandos. This proved to Park that more then just the military was loyal to his rule, but that South Korean citizens were as well. This incident clearly showed that a true South Korean identity separate from the North Koreans had been formed during Park’s rule in the 1960’s. However, before US and ROK military leaders could even contemplate the negatives and the positives of the Blue House Raid, another crisis would break out two days later; the capture of the USS Pueblo.
For more DMZ Flashpoints articles please click the below link:
Kim Jong Un Gives Field Guidance to Rangnang Sanitary Goods Factory | @KCNAWatch http://t.co/pPD1WBLpxF pic.twitter.com/8wSCmKOGvo
— NK NEWS (@nknewsorg) July 14, 2015
This is actually pretty tame rhetoric compared to the racist and sexists remarks they have made before:
North Korea has challenged the entire US Congress to come and inspect a bio-tech institute in Pyongyang that US experts have suggested is a facility for mass-producing anthrax for the military.
A spokesman for the powerful National Defence Commission angrily stressed that the facility in Pyongyang was solely dedicated to the manufacture of pesticides, after a report published last week on the website of the US-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins University suggested otherwise.
“A thousand pairs of ears cannot match a pair of eyes,” the spokesman said, accusing the US government of spreading wild rumours about the North’s biological weapons programme.
“Come here right now, with all the 535 members of the House of Representatives and the Senate as well as the imbecile secretaries and deputy secretaries of the government who have made their voices hoarse screaming for new sanctions,” the spokesman said.
“Then they can behold the awe-inspiring sight of the Pyongyang Bio-technical Institute,” he added. [AFP]
You can read the rest at the link.
I guess we will see if this inter-Korean project will end up just like all the other ones, as a negotiating chip to increase the wealth of the Kim regime while doing little to nothing for average North Koreans:
South Korea’s unification minister expressed hope on Sunday that the reconnection of the railway linking Seoul and the North Korean city of Wonsan will be a “starting point” for inter-Korean cooperation down the road.
The 223.7-km-long railway was built in 1914 and served as a major supply route from Seoul to Wonsan before it was severed during the 1950-53 Korean War.
The Seoul government earlier said that it will start construction of the 11.7-km-long section of the railway running through Gangwon Province next month in commemoration of the 70th anniversary of its independence from Japan.
“I want to see the railways between the two Koreas be reconnected as quickly as possible,” Unification Minister Hong was quoted as saying during his visit to the area. “I want it to be a major starting point.”
“Railways are actual linking channels for the two Koreas and I wish to discuss many other issues and cooperative projects based on this railway reconnection business,” he said. [Yonhap]
You can read the rest at the link.
Ethiopia is not a name you hear much of when it comes to the Korean War, but 122 Ethiopian soldiers died in the defense of Korea:
Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se says the sacrifices made by Ethiopian war veterans contributed greatly to the democratization and economic advancement of South Korea.
Minister Yun, who is in Addis Ababa to attend the 3rd International Conference on Financing for Development, made the remark while visiting the Korean War veterans memorial park at the Ethiopian capital.
In front of Korean War veterans on Monday, Yun expressed thanks for the deployment of elite troops to the conflict such as members of the Imperial Guard at the time.
The minister also participated in the burning of incense and a moment of silence for 122 fallen soldiers of the war. [KBS World Radio]
The South Korean National Intelligence Service (NIS) definitely has the best intelligence within North Korea because they confirmed this two months ago:
Kim Jong Un is an impatient autocrat who single-handedly decided to execute North Korean Defense Minister Hyon Yong Chol, according to Seoul’s spy agency on Tuesday.
South Korean lawmakers said National Intelligence chief Lee Byung-ho made the statements at a briefing before the National Assembly’s Intelligence Committee, Yonhap reported.
Kim also was the executive decision maker behind the undeleted footage of Hyon in the weeks that followed after his disappearance.
According to Seoul’s spy chief, North Korean television continued to run past footage of Hyon under Kim’s orders.
Kim, Lee said, believed the international community could use conspicuous deletions against Pyongyang because the erasure would serve as evidence of Hyon’s execution.
South Korean newspaper Donga Ilbo reported Hyon was executed at the artillery range at Pyongyang’s Kang Kon Military Academy.
Hundreds watched the execution, according to the NIS, and Kim forced top-ranking military officers to attend.
Kim may have executed other military personnel if they were loyal to Hyon or held grievances against Kim, Lee said, according to South Korean lawmaker Shin Kyung-min.
Shin said Kim had labeled Hyon as “anti-Workers’ Party, and a counter-revolutionary.” [UPI]
You can read the rest at the link, but according to the article Kim Jong-un is trying to weaken the power of the military in North Korea.
Here is what I think it going on. I have said this before that I do not believe that Kim Jong-un has the absolute power that many people believe him to have. I believe that his grandfather Kim Il-sung had absolute power, but when his son Kim Jong-il took over that the absolute power was diluted between the ruling Kim inner circle, the Worker’s Party, and the North Korean military. These three sectors competed for power with the military ultimately becoming the most powerful bureaucracy in North Korea under Kim Jong-il. These sectors of power in North Korea though likely ruled by consensus and when consensus could not be reached Kim Jong-il was likely the deciding vote which was heavily influenced by his backing of the North Korean military.
After Kim Jong-il’s death these sectors of North Korean power likely competed for influence again after Kim Jong-un took over. Kim Jong-un’s uncle Jang Song-taek appeared to be trying to challenge the status quo by increasing the power of the Worker’s Party. With the power of the Worker’s Party increasing, the military may have felt like their power was decreasing too much and took action to get rid of Jang to put the status quo back to where it was. However, the status quo likely meant Kim Jong-un has less power than his father did after the execution of Jang and the following purge of Party officials loyal to him.
His recent purge of military officials shows that Kim Jong-un understands this and is trying to re-establish absolute power for himself like his grandfather had. His grandfather had to rely on a number of purges to gain the power he had. Kim Jong-un first focused on purging the Worker’s Party of people that he perceived as a possible challenge to his authority. Now he is focusing on the North Korean military. After the military is purged that leaves Kim and his family inner circle as the biggest power brokers in North Korea. It is a dangerous game he is playing, but we will see over the years how well it works.
https://twitter.com/freekorea_us/status/619644495597043712
This photo, dated July 8, 2015, and released by North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), shows North Korean Army Gen. Pak Yong-sik visiting Kumsusan Palace of the Sun in Pyongyang to pay tribute to Kim Il-sung, the founder of the North Korean government. KCNA said on July 11, 2015, that Pak attended a meeting on that day with a Lao military delegation as the head of the Ministry of the People’s Armed Forces, equivalent to South Korea’s defense minister. It is the first time the North has confirmed the replacement of the defense minister since South Korea’s spy agency, the National Intelligence Service, said in May that the previous minister, Hyon Yong-chol, was executed in April on charges of treason. (Yonhap)
