Tag: North Korea

It is amazing how many people enjoy supporting the Kim regime with their money. I wonder how many of these same people would support apartheid South Africa with their money like they are the Kim regime:

Josh Thomas, a 28-year old American graphic designer, visited Pyongyang in 2013 on a beer tour. Thomas visited the Taedonggang Beer Brewery and Paradise Department Store and enjoyed the beer served at the Yanggakdo International Hotel. He said it is actually better than the beer made in South Korea.

“Going on a beer tour to North Korea, it was a longtime dream come true,” said Thomas.
The tour was organized by Young Pioneer Tours, a company founded by a group of expatriates in China that organizes tours to North Korea.

North Korea is usually in the headlines for its nuclear weapons program, missile launches, attacks on South Korea and miserable human rights record. Much less attention is paid to the growing number of foreign companies like Young Pioneer Tours with business in North Korea.

According to the U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence, 351 foreign companies launched joint ventures with North Korean companies from 2004 through 2011. Of these, 75 percent were Chinese. From the 88 companies whose investment sizes could be determined, the total invested amount was estimated at $2.32 billion.  [Joong Ang Ilbo]

You can read more about the companies doing business in North Korea at the link.

Is it a violation of UN sanctions to carry out a photoshopped missile launch?

South Korea has referred North Korea to a U.N. sanctions committee over its recent test-firing of a submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM), the foreign ministry said Tuesday.
   On May 9, North Korea claimed it successfully carried out an SLBM test underwater, renewing tensions on the Korean Peninsula. If confirmed, the test would be a violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions that ban any launch by North Korea that uses ballistic missile technology.
   South Korea has sent a letter to the U.N. Security Council’s North Korea Sanctions Committee to ask it to address the issue, according to ministry spokesman Noh Kwang-il.

   “Therefore, I understand that there will be consultations within the Security Council’s sanctions committee,” he said during a press briefing. [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link. 

These workers at the Kaesong Industrial Complex only make $70 a month with most of it going to the Kim regime. I don’t know what to call this other than near slave labor:

South Korean firms in an inter-Korean factory park in North Korea plan to pay wages to their North Korean employees this week, a government official said Monday.
The move came days after Pyongyang accepted Seoul’s tentative offer of wage payments for North Korean workers at the factory park in North Korea’s border city of Kaesong at a previously agreed level until separate consultations are held.
The deal on Friday would allow South Korean firms to pay the wage based on the US$70.35 per month that was originally set. But it called for the 124 South Korean firms to provide retroactive pay based on the outcome of separate consultations.
The official said North Korea demanded that South Korean firms in Kaesong pay March and April wages by the end of this month. The official asked not to be identified, citing policy.
The sides have yet to produce a deal over the more sensitive issue of a wage cap, which has been set at 5 percent per year.

In February, North Korea unilaterally decided to hike the minimum wage by 5.18 percent to US$74 per month for about 53,000 North Korean workers in the factory park.  [Yonhap]

It looks like the Kim regime is intent to keep tensions high along the maritime DMZ:

North Korea is building military camps for shore batteries on a tensely guarded Yellow Sea border island, the South’s military authorities said Tuesday.

“Five bunker-shaped camps have been built on the island of Gal,” a military officer said, requesting anonymity, citing the North Korean island just above the de-facto inter-Korean western sea border of the Northern Limit Line (NLL).

“The North is expected to either deploy 122-millimeter multiple rocket launchers there or to use them as guard posts,” he said, adding the military is closely monitoring the movements there.

This file photo, dated May 28, 2009, shows a Chinese fishing vessel sailing past the island of Gal just above the de-facto inter-Korean western sea border of the Northern Limit Line in the Yellow Sea. South Korea`s military officials said on May 26, 2015. (YONHAP) (END)
The island is located just 4.5 kilometers away from South Korea’s Yeonpyeong Island, where the communist country launched an artillery attack in November 2010, killing two Marines and two civilians, and wounding more than a dozen others. [Yonhap]

Just the fact that they paid money to the Kim regime to travel to North Korea shows they care little about human rights and more about promoting themselves:

A group of foreign women activists crossed the heavily fortified inter-Korean border from North Korea on Sunday, voicing hope that their move could help bring lasting peace to a divided peninsula.

   About 30 female activists from around the world, including U.S. activist Gloria Steinem and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Mairead Maguire, marched down from the North to the South across the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) to mark the International Women’s Day for Disarmament.

   The DMZ, which bisects the Korean Peninsula, is a 259-kilometer-long and 4-kilometer-wide strip of rugged no-man’s land stretching from coast to coast, serving as a legacy of the 1950-53 Korean War that ended in a truce, not a peace treaty.

   “We are feeling very positive (about) what we’ve accomplished … which is a trip for peace, for reconciliation and for human rights and a trip to which both governments agreed,” Steinem told a press conference in South Korea. “We were able to be citizens’ diplomats.”. [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link such as how the North Korean media reported how this group paid homage to Kim Il-sung which they deny. Their denials are irrelevant because by agreeing to travel to North Korea in the first place they made themselves willing propaganda pieces for the Kim regime.  

This does not surprise me at all because I doubted their launch claims from the beginning:

Photographs showing a North Korean missile launched from a submarine were manipulated by state propagandists and the country may be years away from developing such technology, analysts and a top U.S. military official said on Tuesday.
North Korea, sanctioned by the United States and United Nations for its missile and nuclear tests, said on May 9 it had successfully conducted an underwater test-fire of a submarine-launched ballistic missile which, if true, would indicate progress in its pursuit of missile-equipped submarines. (….)

But North Korea is still “many years” from developing submarine-launched ballistic missiles, U.S. Admiral James Winnefeld told an audience at the Centre for Strategic & International Studies in Washington on Tuesday.

“They have not gotten as far as their clever video editors and spinmeisters would have us believe,” said Winnefeld, who is vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Analysis seen by Reuters from German aerospace engineers Markus Schiller and Robert Schmucker of Schmucker Technologie appeared to support Winnefeld’s statement.

The Munich-based pair said photos of the launch were “strongly modified”, including reflections of the missile exhaust flame in the water which did not line up with the missile itself. [Reuters]

You can read more at the link. 

I can only imagine how many intelligence agents were following him around considering the media was able found out about his trip:

A brother of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un visited London and attended a concert by Eric Clapton, according to a Japanese news report and a source.

   Kim Jong-chol, older brother of the North’s leader and known as a big fan of Clapton, was caught on camera while attending the concert at Royal Albert Hall in London on Wednesday, Japan’s TBS television station reported.

   Dressed in a T-shirt and a leather jacket, Kim was with what appeared to be his girlfriend, it said.

   A source in London confirmed that Kim visited London and stayed at a downtown hotel. The source also said that Kim was scheduled to board a flight to Moscow on Friday.

   Rates at the hotel range from 247 British pounds (about 420,000 won) to 2,184 pounds (3.7 million) per night.  [Yonhap]<\blockquote>

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un (C) speaks during a visit to a terrapin farm, in this photo released by the North’s state-run Rodong Sinmun newspaper on May 19, 2015. The paper, published by the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea, did not report when he made the visit and said Kim reproached the farm’s officials for its poor management. (Yonhap)

According to this report there has been no signs of an impending launch yet:

South Korea sees no signs of North Korea preparing to fire a long-range rocket, the Ministry of National Defense said Tuesday, despite reports that the North plans to test-launch a rocket carrying a satellite.

Citing “sources in a number of governments,” Japan’s Kyodo News Agency reported that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un ordered its National Aerospace Development Administration earlier this year to prepare to test-launch a rocket carrying a satellite in October to mark the 70th anniversary of the founding of the nation.

The U.S., Japan and South Korea suspect the project will “effectively be a test-launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile” that the North is allegedly developing, according to the report.

“South Korean and U.S. authorities are closely monitoring the North Korean movements,” Defense Ministry vice spokesman Nah Seung-yong told a regular briefing. “But we’ve yet to confirm any specific signs or movements of its actual firing of missiles.”  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link.

Some more strategic messaging to the ROK from the North Koreans in regards to the NLL:

The blue line is the current NLL while red line is what the North Koreans believe should be the NLL.

North Korea carried out a firing drill near the tensely patrolled western maritime border with the South for a second consecutive day on Thursday, raising tension on the peninsula following its new missile test.

The North fired about 190 rounds of shells from a warship and its coastal artillery from 7:10 p.m. to 9:40 p.m. near the Northern Limit Line (NLL), but none of the artillery rounds landed on the south side of the sea border, the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said.  [Yonhap]