Tag: North Korea

I feel bad for the families effected by this, but once again these people only have themselves to blame for being detained and governments should not feel compelled to get them released when their own stupidity by traveling to North Korea in first place is the cause for what happened:

Canada’s government has confirmed that a Canadian pastor has been detained in North Korea, the man’s family said Thursday.

Canadian officials told the family that North Korea’s government confirmed the detention of Reverend Hyeon Soo Lim, said Lisa Pak, a spokeswoman for the family and the Light Korean Presbyterian Church in Toronto. Pak said Lim is facing charges but could not say what they are.

Pak said Lim was supposed to return from a humanitarian trip to North Korea more than a month ago. He has not been heard from since he travelled to North Korea on Jan. 31 as part of a regular humanitarian mission where he supports a nursing home, a nursery and an orphanage, she said.  [Associated Press]

You can read more at the link.

Like I said before when this plan was first hatched if the North Koreans allow this to happen there is some kind of propaganda value for them effectively making these people useful idiots for the Kim regime:

Gloria Steinem and 30 other women including two Nobel peace laureates have announced plans for a rare walk across the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea to call for reunification.

The DMZ is the world’s most fortified border, with the two countries still technically at war. Hundreds of thousands of soldiers face off across the heavily mined zone.

Organizers of the effort called WomenCrossDMZ.org said on Wednesday they hope for 30 women to cross from North Korea to South Korea on May 24, which is International Women’s Day for Disarmament.

The walk also marks the 70th anniversary of the division of the Korean Peninsula.

The women say they are still seeking approval from both countries and the United Nations. [The Guardian]

You can read more at the link, but why is there an International Women’s Day for Disarmament?

North Korea’s slave labor network has been operating for decades, but South Korea has no right to complain about it considering the near slave labor they are using at the Kaesong Industrial Complex:

North Korea’s massive network of slave laborers is kept under strict surveillance and in case of injury or death are cheated of their compensation by the North Korean state, a South Korean NGO said Tuesday.

The report, based on interviews with 20 North Korean defectors in South Korea, highlighted severe human rights violations and wage exploitation that occurred at work sites in a total of 40 different Asian and African countries, The Korea Times reported.

Poland was the sole European nation that allowed North Koreans to work within its borders. Seoul’s foreign ministry estimates 50,000 North Korean nationals work at state-sanctioned sites.

One North Korean defector testified how the North Korean state cheated a family of its benefits after a construction worker fell to his death from a building in Kuwait. Of the $160,400 in compensation, the family of the victim received only $2,000.

Defectors who worked at sites in Russia said for every $100 earned, $90 would go to the state.

These workers were forced to work 15 hours a day. Even as temperatures reached below freezing, one defector said they were only given “one thin uniform” The Korea Times reported. [UPI]

You can read more at the link.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un (C) tours a nursing home for seniors in Pyongyang. North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency reported it on March 6, 2015, without elaborating on the timing of the visit. Circled is Yo-jong, Kim’s younger sister. (KCNA-Yonhap)

I can understand the ROK government’s viewpoint on this, but if the activists do not get media attention for their activities then they will have a hard time receiving support to sustain their operations:

South Korea expressed concern Tuesday over civic groups’ plans to publicly send leaflets to North Korea, indicating that it will try to block them.

Days ago, a group of civic groups announced their plan to send anti-Pyongyang leaflets to North Korea on March 26, the fifth anniversary of the North’s torpedoing of a South Korean Navy ship in March 2010.

Civic groups involved in the leaflet campaign have often pre-announced their campaigns so their activities could draw media and social attention. Such campaigns intended to spread dissenting messages, however, often lead to wild indignation and military reaction from Pyongyang.

“Believing that spreading leaflets publicly is not right, the government has been urging prudent and wise decisions (from civic groups),” a unification ministry official told reporters on condition of anonymity. “I think there needs to be expression of such a government stance through whatever means, including person-to-person contact.”

Still, scattering leaflets basically falls in the sphere of a constitutionally given right to free expression, which the government cannot regulate with force, the official said.  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link.

Interesting article in the Diplomat which discusses what should be the trigger for the ROK to launch a preemptive strike on North Korea’s nuclear program?:

As North Korea continues to develop both nuclear weapons and the missile technology to carry them, pressure on South Korea to take preemptive military action will gradually rise. At some point, North Korea may have so many missiles and warheads that South Korea considers that capability to be an existential threat to its security. This is the greatest long-term risk to security and stability in Korea, arguably more destabilizing than a North Korean collapse. If North Korea does not arrest its nuclear and missile programs at a reasonably small, defensively-minded deterrent, then Southern elites will increasingly see those weapons as threats to Southern survival, not just tools of defense or gangsterish blackmail.  [The Diplomat]

You can read the whole thing at the link, but the author makes an argument that at some point the ROK cannot allow the North Koreans to manufacture a huge stockpile of nuclear arms. Right now they have it is believed 5-10 nukes which is good enough for regime survival purposes, however what happens if they begin developing over 100 nukes?  This would change the military balance of power on the peninsula towards North Korea because the ROK does not have the missile defenses to survive an attack from that many nuclear weapons not to mention the conventional artillery strikes they would launch.

I think the wild card in this is if the Chinese want that many nuclear weapons right on their doorstep or the threat of a war caused by a preemptive strike to stop their nuclear program.

Via a reader, this story just makes you wonder who the North Koreans are smuggling gold for or is gold some how being used to get around financial sanctions?  That is the biggest questions that need to be looked at with this story:

Bangladeshi customs officers caught a North Korean diplomat trying to smuggle an estimated $1.4 million worth of gold into the country, a senior official said on Friday.

“We recovered the gold both in the form of bars and ornaments from Son Young Nam, the First Secretary of the North Korean Embassy in Dhaka,” said Moinul Khan, Director General of the Custom Intelligence department, adding the gold weighed about 27 kg (60 pounds) in total.

The diplomat was released after his confessional statement, but Bangladesh is seeking to press charges.

“What he did is beyond diplomatic norms,” Khan told Reuters, adding that a visitor can legally bring up to $1,282 worth of gold into Bangladesh.

Khan said the diplomat had passed through the green channel at Dhaka international airport on a late arriving Singapore Airlines flight from Singapore. Customs officials then asked to scan his hand luggage.

“He told our officials there was nothing to scan,” said Najibur Rahman, chairman of the National Board of Revenue.

“Later we informed our foreign ministry and he was released on Friday under the Vienna Convention,” Najibur told Reuters.

A case has been filed against him with the customs department, Khan said. “We have also initiated the process to file a criminal case against him.”  [Huffington Post]

You can read more at the link.

<blockquote class=”twitter-tweet” lang=”en”><p>North Korea to send soldiers to military athletics competition in South: <a href=”http://t.co/4uaZzzPbSO”>http://t.co/4uaZzzPbSO</a></p>&mdash; NK NEWS (@nknewsorg) <a href=”https://twitter.com/nknewsorg/status/574283543037136897″>March 7, 2015</a></blockquote>
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Best wishes to US Ambassador Mark Lippert as he recovers from the cowardly knife attack by a Korean leftist:

A knife attack Thursday that injured the U.S. ambassador to South Korea is the latest act of political violence in a deeply divided country where some protesters portray their causes as matters of life and death.

The slashing of Ambassador Mark Lippert’s face and arm, which left deep gashes and damaged tendons and nerves, was an extreme example, but America infuriates some leftist South Koreans because of its role in Korea’s turbulent modern history.

Washington, which backed the South during the 1950-53 Korean War against the communist North, still stations nearly 30,000 troops here and holds annual military drills with Seoul. That’s something anti-U.S. activists view as a major obstacle to their goal of an eventual reunification of the rival Koreas.

Purported U.S. interference in Korean affairs appeared to be the main grievance of the man police named as the assailant, Kim Ki-jong, 55, who has a long history of anti-U.S. protests.

“South and North Korea should be reunified,” Kim shouted as he slashed Lippert with a 25-centimeter (10-inch) knife, police and witnesses said.

The attack left a gash on Lippert’s face that started under his cheekbone and extended diagonally across his cheek toward his jawbone. He received 80 stiches to close the 11-centimeter (4-inch) wound, Chung Nam-sik of Severance Hospital told reporters. Lippert, 42, also had surgery on his arm to repair damage to tendons and nerves and was in stable condition at the hospital.  [Associated Press]

The leftist Kim Ki-jong who was involved in the attack has a long history of violence to include attacking the Japanese ambassador to Korea with a concrete block.  He says he attacked Lippert because of the ongoing US-ROK Key Resolve military exercise:

Kim is well-known among police and activists as one of a hard-core group of protesters willing to use violence to highlight their causes. Such protesters often speak of their actions in terms of a war, of a struggle to the death.

Kim told police that he attacked Lippert to protest U.S.-South Korean military drills that started Monday — exercises that the North has long maintained are preparations for an invasion. Kim said the drills, which Seoul and Washington say are purely defensive, ruined efforts for reconciliation between the two Koreas, officials at Seoul’s Jongno police station said in a televised briefing.

Here is what North Korea had to say about the attack:

North Korea’s state-controlled media later crowed that Kim’s “knife slashes of justice” were “a deserved punishment on war maniac U.S.” and reflected the South Korean people’s protests against the U.S. for driving the Korean Peninsula to the brink of war because of the joint military drills.

The real question is if any of the North Korean spies within South Korea sent Kim to conduct this attack or not?  Another question is what was the security like around the Ambassador to allow this leftist loon to get access to the Ambassador?  You would think they would have increased security for him during the Key Resolve exercise?

Also keep in mind this is the not the first political knife slashing to happen in recent years.  In 2006 current President Park Geun-hye was slashed across the face by a knife wielding man:

Image via the BBC.

Park needed 60 stitches to seal the cut.  Ambassador Lippert’s wound looks much worse.  Anyway the person convicted of slashing President Park received 11 years in jail.  I think Kim Ki-jong’s days of protesting the US are over because he will likely receive a very long sentence to send a message to these leftist loons.  South Korea also needs to take a stronger stance when people commit violent acts against the Japanese embassy in South Korea as well.  As this attack shows these loons get emboldened when they are not properly punished after committing violent acts against the Japanese embassy.

For the people of South Korea who have to live with the yellow dust storms and the pollutants from China that it brings with it; anything that can lessen the pollution from China is a good thing:

China has rejected imports of some North Korean anthracite coal because the coal failed to meet domestic standards for mercury emissions, a local newspaper reported Wednesday, in what appeared to be China’s first rejection of North Korean minerals over environmental concerns.

The shipment was returned to North Korea on Feb. 27 from the Rizhao port of China’s northern coastal province of Shandong, the National Business Daily newspaper reported, citing an unnamed port official.

The report did not elaborate further, or include the volume of the rejected North Korean coal.

After three decades of rapid industrialization, China regularly sees hazardous air pollution with levels of particulate matter rising to nearly 40 times the limits set by the World Health Organization during the winter months.

In September, China announced strict regulations against the sale and import of coal with high toxic pollutants, including mercury and sulfur, to improve the country’s air and water quality.  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link.