Tag: North Korea

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.

The headline of this article is how 14 North Korean airman died during the unsuccessful 2009 rocket launch:

North Korea revealed Tuesday it lost 14 airmen while launching a long-range rocket in 2009, in a report on an inspection by the country’s leader, Kim Jong-un, of a related military unit Monday.

Kim looked around a monument to honor the “stalwart fighters, who displayed the suicidal-attack spirit” at Unit 447 of the Air and Anti-Air Force, reported the North’s official Korean Central News Agency.

The monument commemorates the “heroic feats performed by the 14 fighter pilots in the operation to ensure the successful launch of satellite Kwangmyongsong-2,” said the KCNA. It did not specify how they died.

In April 2009, Kim observed the launch of the rocket, which Pyongyang claims was aimed at sending a satellite into orbit, along with his father and then-leader Kim Jong-il. The launch was unsuccessful.

Kim praised Unit 447 as the “high pride” of the country.  [Korea Herald]

I can only guess how this many people died during a rocket launch.  Did the launch go off unexpectedly early and workers were still near the pad?  Who knows.  However what I found of the most interest is how Kim Jong-un is emphasizing tree planting:

He said the unit also needs to play a role in leading in his campaign for forest restoration, according to the KCNA.

He planted ginkgo and other types of trees himself during his so-called field guidance at the unit on Monday, which the KCNA called a significant tree-planting day.

This is actually something I would not mind the international community helping the North Koreans with.  Sending tree huggers international workers to help plant trees in North Korea would have huge environmental payoffs and over time would be one less thing the South Korean government would have to worry about when unification comes.  This seems like better engagement with North Korea than giving free food to their military or free money to the regime to buy luxury items.

North Korea’s war on fish continues in the East Sea:

North Korea fired two short-range ballistic missiles into the sea and vowed “merciless” retaliation Monday as the US and South Korea kicked off joint military drills denounced by Pyongyang as recklessly confrontational.

The annual exercises always trigger a surge in military tensions and warlike rhetoric on the divided peninsula, and analysts saw the North’s missile tests as a prelude to a concerted campaign of sabre-rattling.

“If there is a particularly sharp escalation, we could see the North orchestrating some kind of clash on the maritime border,” said Jeung Young-Tae, an analyst at the Korea Institute for National Unification in Seoul.  [AFP]

You can read more at the link, but the Yellow Sea has been quiet for a while now so it would not be too shocking if they try something over there next.

This is an example of why I have always believed that when these ships are caught smuggling prohibited goods they should not be returned to North Korea because they are masters at building front companies to do their dirty business with.  If the ships were auctioned off after seizure there would at least be a steep financial cost on the regime for violating sanctions:

A North Korean shipping company that famously tried to hide fighter jets under a cargo of sugar later sought to evade U.N. sanctions by renaming most of its vessels, a new report says.

The effort by Pyongyang-headquartered Ocean Maritime Management Company, Ltd. is detailed in the report by a panel of experts that monitors sanctions on North Korea. The report, obtained by The Associated Press, makes clear the challenge of keeping banned arms and luxury goods from a nuclear-armed country with a history of using front companies to duck detection.

The U.N. Security Council holds consultations Thursday on the report, which also says North Korea’s government persists with its nuclear and missile programs in defiance of council resolutions.

North Korea’s mission to the U.N. did not respond to a request for comment.

The council last year imposed sanctions on OMM after Panama in 2013 seized a ship it operated that carried undeclared military equipment from Cuba. Panamanian authorities found two Cuban fighter jets, missiles and live munitions beneath the Chong Chon Gang’s cargo of sugar.

The council’s sanctions committee said that violated a U.N. arms embargo imposed in response to North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs. At the time, U.S. Ambassador Samantha Power said that imposing a global asset freeze on OMM meant that the company would no longer be able to operate internationally.

But the new report says that in the months after the sanctions were imposed, 13 of the 14 ships controlled by OMM changed their owners and managers, “effectively erasing” the company from a database kept by the International Maritime Organization. Twelve of the ships “reportedly stayed, visited or were sighted near ports in foreign countries,” and none were frozen by member states as the panel of experts recommends.

The new report explores the shipping company’s global reach, using people and entities operating in at least 10 countries: Brazil, China, Egypt, Greece, Japan, Malaysia, Peru, Russia, Singapore and Thailand. The report recommends updating the sanctions list with 34 OMM entities and says all 14 vessels should be subject to sanctions.

No interdictions of the kind that Panama made in 2013 were reported in the period between Feb. 8 of last year and Feb. 5 of this year. But the new report warns that the panel of experts sees no evidence that North Korea “intends to cease prohibited activities.”  [Associated Press]

You can read more at the link.

It wasn’t so much the trip, but the gifts Rodman gave to Kim Jong-un that violated UN sanctions:

US negotiators are talking tough with North Korea which is better than appeasement, but still there has been nothing that has changed significantly that in my opinion would cause the North Koreans to change course on their nuclear and missile programs:

North Korea is trying to follow Pakistan’s example in the hope of winning recognition as a nuclear state, but such a situation will never happen, U.S. Under Secretary of State Wendy Sherman said Friday.

Speaking at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a Washington think tank, Sherman also said that the communist nation cannot obtain the security, prosperity or respect it wants “without negotiating an end to its provocative nuclear and missile program.”

“They see in Pakistan, a country whose nuclear program was first protested, then accepted, and hope to follow that example, which also isn’t going to happen,” Sherman said.

North Korea has conducted three nuclear tests, in 2006, 2009 and 2013. Earlier this week, the U.S. raised an alarm with a projection that the North’s nuclear arsenal could expand from 10 to 16 nuclear weapons now to up to 100 in five years.

Sherman said diplomatic pressure on Pyongyang keeps mounting, including U.S. President Barack Obama’s executive order authorizing fresh sanctions on the regime early this year, China’s firm opposition to the North’s nuclear program, and the U.N. Security Council’s first-ever review of the North’s human rights record.

“They are apparently under the illusion that the best way to conceal a weak hand is with a clenched fist,” Sherman said. “Despite its bluster, the North’s strategy has failed utterly. Instead of gaining acceptance, the country is increasingly isolated.”  [Yonhap]

You can read the rest at the link.

North Korea steps up threats over drills; US Congress advances sanctions bill http://t.co/yRNMZWzJ7c

— South Korea Daily (@SouthKoreaDaily) February 27, 2015