Tag: North Korea

I read reports like this and it just makes me wonder if this a North Korean operation to convince our intelligence operatives that they have more advanced capability then they really have.  Firing missiles from a submarine is highly complex technology that I would be surprised to see the North Koreans being able to do unless someone helps them do it:

North Korea appears to be trying to equip a submarine to make it capable of firing missiles, a U.S think tank said Thursday, warning such hard-to-detect, missile-capable submarines would pose significant threats to South Korea.

The website 38 North, run by the U.S.-Korea Institute at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, said it reached the assessment based on commercial satellite imagery taken of the Sinpo South Shipyard on the east coast between July and December.

Imagery from Dec. 18 shows a rectangular opening, about 4.25 meters long and 2.25 meters wide, on top of the conning tower of a submarine, and the opening is believed to be designed to house one to two small vertical missile launch tubes, the website said, citing analysis by Joseph Bermudez, an expert on satellite imagery.

The imagery also showed workers moving around the area, equipment stored on the deck and a heavy-lift construction crane, the website said, adding that the only reasonable explanation for the crane’s presence is “continuing to work on fitting out the submarine.”  [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link.

Hopefully USAID continues to not give the Kim regime free money to feed their people with why they buy luxury goods and advance their nuclear and ballistic missile programs:

The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) announced that it has no plans to provide assistance to the North, Radio Free America (RFA) reported Friday.

USAID is a public agency that orchestrated government aid to the reclusive nation in cooperation with the World Food Program (WFP) and civic groups.

USAID provided $1.5 million to Pyongyang in 2010 and 2011 to assist its recovery from floods.

But it stopped giving funds to the isolated nation in 2011.

“This is because there has been no large-scale natural disaster there that has needed external help since then,” the RFA quoted USAID spokesperson Raphael Cook as saying.

The U.S., the largest donor to the WFP’s North Korea aid program, has not contributed to it since 2009. Also, the WFP’s fundraising efforts have been hampered since the United Nations raised awareness of the North’s human rights violations last year.

A North Korea expert said the halting of aid may be a result of negative views of the North Korean leader’s spending on luxury goods each year instead of importing food for people there.  [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link.

As with anything that comes from defectors treat this with some skepticism:

North Korea has a new war plan to complete a Southern invasion within a week using asymmetric capabilities including nuclear weapons, a high-profile defector and South Korean government officials told the JoongAng Ilbo.

The war plan was created less than a year after Kim Jong-un assumed power, a South Korean official told the JoongAng Ilbo quoting a defector who used to serve in a senior position in the North Korean military.

According to the official, Kim Jong-un hosted a top military-party meeting in Wonsan on Aug. 25, 2012, and approved the new war plan. The young ruler became the supreme commander of the North’s Korean People’s Army on Dec. 30, 2011, shortly after the death of his father, Kim Jong-il.  [Joong Ang Ilbo]

You can read more at the link, but any war that North Korea launches would need to be quick because their lack of logistics means they have to win any war against the ROK quickly.

North Korean firms seem to just change names after being hit with sanctions, as per Treasury document http://t.co/CJwWR1zMQS

— Adam Cathcart (@adamcathcart) January 3, 2015

It appears that some in the Korean government want to pull a Sony and give in to North Korean threats at the expense of free speech for their citizens:

A South Korean parliamentary committee adopted a resolution Thursday calling on the government to take necessary steps to protect its citizens from any harm caused by civic activists’ flying of anti-Pyongyang leaflets across the inter-Korean border.

The resolution, adopted by the National Assembly’s foreign affairs and unification committee, also urges the two Koreas to abide by their earlier agreements to stop all slander against each other, noting it is key to building trust.

“(We) urge the government to take necessary steps so as to ensure the spread of anti-North Korea leaflets does not damage the improvement of South-North ties and jeopardize the safety of our citizens,” the resolution said.

The leaflet campaign, often led by North Korean defectors in the South, has long been a source of tension between the two Koreas as it aims to stir up dissent against the regime of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.

Seoul has long dismissed Pyongyang’s demands to ban the campaign, citing freedom of speech.

Speaking during the committee meeting, Unification Minister Ryoo Kihl-jae stressed that the government’s position remains unchanged. The government also believes it should take steps if they are needed for the people’s safety, he said.

The minister, however, ruled out a direct link between the leaflet scattering and any improvement in bilateral ties.

The government’s stance has been closely watched after the district court in Uijeongbu, just north of Seoul, ruled Tuesday that it is legal for authorities to restrain the campaign if it puts the lives of South Koreans at risk.  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link.

It is looking like the Kim regime is getting closer to being able to miniaturize their nuclear weapons capability to be able to fit on to a delivery system:

South Korea’s defence ministry said Tuesday that North Korea appeared to have achieved a “significant” level of technology to miniaturise a nuclear device to be fitted on the tip of a missile.

The ministry made the warning in a white paper due to be released later Tuesday, although defence officials said the nuclear-armed North has yet to demonstrate its miniaturisation capacity.

“North Korea’s capabilities of miniaturising nuclear weapons appear to have reached a significant level,” the ministry said in a statement.

Pyongyang has conducted three nuclear tests, most recently in February 2013.

The defence ministry said the North had probably secured some 40 kilos (88 pounds) of weapons-grade plutonium by reprocessing spent nuclear fuel rods, and that it is working on a highly enriched uranium programme.

Pyongyang mothballed the five-megawatt reactor at its main Yongbyon nuclear complex in 2007 under an aid-for-disarmament accord, but began renovating it in mid-2013. The facility is the country’s main source of weapons grade plutonium.  [AFP]

You can read more at the link, but I would have to think they would first be focusing on miniaturizing the nuclear weapon to fit on a warhead that can be delivered via artillery to threaten South Korea with. Developing nuclear warheads for an intercontinental ballistic missile to threaten the US with is a far more complicated endeavor.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un (C) tours an orphanage in Pyongyang on Jan. 1, 2015. (KCNA-Yonhap)

Good @Michael_NKLW summary of Kim Yong-chol, who heads North Korea's Reconnaissance General Bureau https://t.co/qmAJRNWWQ0

— Adam Cathcart (@adamcathcart) January 3, 2015

Via One Free Korea comes this Foreign Policy article where the author Micah Zenko doesn’t believe North Korea is a state sponsor of terrorism:

On Friday, Dec. 19, the FBI declared that it “has enough information to conclude that the North Korean government is responsible” for the purported hack of Sony Pictures Entertainment. Soon after, President Barack Obama warned, “We will respond proportionally, and we’ll respond in a place and time and manner that we choose.” Given the relatively meager leverage that the United States — at least unilaterally — has over North Korea, there are precious few practical response options that would deter future comparable malicious actions. According to a senior administration officials, one option under consideration is placing North Korea back on the State Sponsors of Terrorism list, from where it was removed in 2008. Those included on the list are, “Countries determined by the Secretary of State to have repeatedly provided support for acts of international terrorism.”

A small problem with such a designation is that North Korea simply is not a state-sponsor of terrorism. As the latest State Department Country Reports on Terrorism explicitly stated: “The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) is not known to have sponsored any terrorist acts since the bombing of a Korean Airlines flight in 1987.” The North Korean sinking of the South Korean warship Cheonan in March 2010 was deemed a violation of the 1953 armistice agreement, but was also declared by a State Department spokesperson to have been “a provocative action but one taken by the military or the state against the military of another state. That, in our view, does not constitute an act of international terrorism.” Thus, by putting it back on the terrorism list, North Korea would be proportionally responded to by reclassifying its government for undertaking a behavior that the United States acknowledges it does not actually do. [Foreign Policy]

You can read the rest at the link, but it is amazing how much this guy leaves out to support his position.  As One Free Korea writes there has been a number of kidnap and assassination attempts and arming of terrorist groups carried out by the Kim regime.  Also using this guy’s logic in regards to the sinking of the Cheonan, was the marine barracks bombing in Lebanon not terrorism as well then?  Or how about Khobar towers or the attack on the USS Cole?  These were all attacks against non-hostile military targets just like what happened with the Cheonan.  Zenko also leaves out the fact that North Korea shelled an island killing civilians.  What does Zenko define that as?  Most importantly North Korea has never come clean on the 1987 Korean Air bombing.  When Libya came off of the terrorism list they had to make huge concessions in regards to their responsibility for downing Pan Am Flight 103.  Why hasn’t North Korea been forced to make these same concessions to get off the list in the first place?

It appears that Kim Jong-un is having some eyebrow challenges:

Forget Sony Pictures: Now it’s Kim Jong Un’s eyebrows that have been hacked.

In a piece titled “Brow you see them,” the South China Morning Post noted North Korea’s Supreme Leader appeared at a New Year’s Day speech sans what scientists call supercilium.

“In what appeared to be a case of severe over-plucking, Kim’s brows appeared to be significantly shorter than on earlier occasions, sitting above his eyes like little dashes,” the paper wrote. [Washington Post via a reader tip]

You can read the rest at the link.