Tag: North Korea

Remember when everyone in the media was highlighting Kim Jong-un’s offer of high level talks as some great thing?  Like I said then he was just playing the media to frame the US and the ROK as the bad guys when the North Koreans like they always do make demands to stop US-ROK military exercises:

North Korea called on South Korea Sunday to stop all military exercises, including joint drills with the United States, if it really wants to improve inter-Korean ties.

“If the South is truly determined to improve inter-Korean relations through dialogue and negotiations … it should stop all kinds of war schemes, including reckless military exercises carried out jointly with foreign forces,” Minju Joson, North Korea’s cabinet newspaper, said. “War rehearsals and dialogues cannot coexist.”

The North Korean newspaper also warned that if Seoul sticks to the joint war rehearsals against the North, inter-Korean relations will get much worse and the South Korean government will have to take all the responsibility for it.

The Sunday warning is the latest in the North’s recent desperate efforts to stop rounds of military exercises conducted annually between South Korea and the U.S.  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link.

The Korean-American woman who went on a speaking tour in South Korea praising North Korea has now been deported:

A Korean-American woman was expelled from South Korea Saturday for making a series of pro-North Korean remarks during her on-stage talks shows in South Korea, Justice Ministry officials said.

Shin Eun-mi was put on Korean Air Flight KE011 leaving Seoul at 7:50 p.m. for Los Angeles after undergoing two hours of questioning by immigration officials. The expulsion bars her from entering South Korea for the next five years.

On Thursday, the 54-year-old was suspended of indictment after being accused of making comments sympathetic to the North Korean regime at talk shows she hosted in Seoul and other provincial cities in the past several months in violation of South Korea’s National Security Law.

The law bans any activities meant to praise, promote or propagandize North Korean ideals in the country.

“I feel like I was betrayed by my lover. It’s just like an one-sided love,” she told reporters right after receiving the expulsion order. “I leave here today, but the government cannot drive my heart loving the country out of my fatherland. I will continue to wish for peace and reunification of Korea.”

Since being sued by local conservative civic groups for alleged pro-North Korean remarks, she has said she is not a North Korean follower and her comments were all for the peaceful coexistence of the two Koreas.  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link, but this case has drawn criticism that the National Security Law is being used to stop free speech in South Korea.  In regards to this case I disagree because foreign citizens by law are not supposed to be involved in political activity in South Korea.  So the next time she visits she should leave her politics back in California where it belongs.

It just makes you wonder despite the sanctions how North Korea keeps getting money to try and buy big ticket items like this:

North Korea made an attempt to purchase advanced fighter jets from Russia by sending a special envoy, a senior South Korean military official told the JoongAng Ilbo on Thursday.

“Choe Ryong-hae, who visited Moscow as a special envoy of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in November last year, asked Russian President Vladimir Putin to provide Sukhoi Su-35 fighter jets,” the military source said.

Little has been disclosed about the discussions between Choe and Putin. Choe, a member of the Presidium of the Political Bureau and secretary of the Central Committee of the Workers’ Party of North Korea, met with Putin on Nov. 18 and delivered a letter from Kim, the Russian presidential office has said, without providing further details. The Kremlin said the meeting was not open to the press, and no press conference was arranged afterward.

“The North produces many weapons systems domestically, but it appears to have sought Russia’s help because building fighter jets requires more complex technologies,” said the official. “But because of international sanctions imposed on the North, Russia won’t likely sell it readily.” [Joong Ang Ilbo]

You can read more at the link.

This isn’t the first or will be the last of the assassination threats that North Korea has made against balloon activist Park Sang-hak:

North Korea issued a death threat against a defector-turned-activist after he announced a plan to send copies of a satirical Hollywood film about a plot to kill Kim Jong-un into North Korea.

The South Korean government said Thursday it will take necessary measures to protect its citizens.

Last week, Park Sang-hak, who heads the Fighters for a Free North Korea, said he planned to send 100,000 DVDs and USB memory sticks containing the movie “The Interview” via balloons across the border into North Korea to destroy the personality cult build around Kim Jong-un.

He said the Sony Pictures’ movie will have Korean subtitles and he will start sending the balloons as early as late January.

According to the Ministry of Unification, the North aired an ultimatum against Park on Wednesday. Using extremely cruel language, the North’s Pyongyang Broadcasting Station said Park must “go to hell.”

It promised to “bleed him out and gut his intestines.”

“In order to end this tragic reality of national division forced upon our people and homeland by outside forces, we must ruthlessly eliminate those maniacs who encourage inter-Korean confrontations,” the broadcast said. “And the Korean people select Park as the first target.”  [Joong Ang Ilbo]

You can read more at the link, but hopefully Park Sang-hak has taken the appropriate security measures to protect himself from North Korean assassins.  Back in 2011 a North Korean assassin was arrested before he could carry out his plot to kill Park with poison needles.

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.