Tag: North Korea

It looks like Kim Jong-un is increasing his threatening rhetoric likely in an effort to improve negotating position if talks of dropping sanctions ever starts again:

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un inspects the launch of a Hwasong-18 solid-fuel intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) on Dec. 18, 2023, in this photo released by the North’s official Korean Central News Agency the following day. (Yonhap)

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has said his country will launch a nuclear attack without hesitation in event of nuclear provocations from the enemy, state media said Thursday.

Kim made the remarks in an event held Wednesday to praise a missile unit for the successful launch of a solid-fuel Hwasong-18 intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) earlier this week.

Kim said the launch “clearly” showed enemies the North’s “offensive countermeasure” to “launch a nuclear attack without hesitation” in the event of any enemy’s nuclear provocations, according to the North’s Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).

Kim stressed that a country’s sovereign rights can only be guaranteed through powerful strength, saying true defensive capabilities come from the actual capacity to strike any enemy in a pre-emptive manner, KCNA said.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

Kim Jong-il was the OG rocketman, so it is only fitting that his son would have a missile fired on his anniversary:

North Korea fired one short-range ballistic missile toward the East Sea on Sunday, the 12th anniversary of the death of late leader Kim Jong-il, according to South Korea’s military.

The launch briefly raised speculation that it could be an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) because South Korea’s First Deputy National Security Adviser Kim Tae-hyo said a few days earlier the North could fire an ICBM within this month.

The Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said, however, that the North fired a short-range missile from in or around Pyongyang at about 10:38 p.m. and it flew about 570 kilometers before splashing in the East Sea.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

This is a lesson from dictatorship 101, you have to control the flow of information to the people to maintain regime control; the balloon flights challenge this control:

Park Sang-hak, a North Korean defector-turned-activist and founder of the advocacy group Fighters for a Free North Korea, holds up propaganda material condemning North Korean leader Kim Jong-un for developing nuclear weapons and missiles without feeding the country’s hungry residents in this April 2021 photo. Courtesy of Fighters for a Free North Korea

Pyongyang has belatedly reacted furiously to South Korean Constitutional Court’s decision in September to strike down the ban on sending propaganda leaflets over the border into North Korea.

In a statement released in November, North Korea’s Central News Agency (KCNA) said the court’s decision signals a de facto war against the North as information warfare is part of an operation preceding a ground war.

Calling North Korean defectors who flew the leaflets across the border “garbage,” the KCNA said that North Korea’s firing of anti-aircraft rounds across the border in 2014 and its destroying of the inter-Korean liason office used for talks between the two countries in 2020 are two chilling reminders of what South Korea could face. 

In 2014, North Korea used anti-aircraft guns to shoot down balloons carrying anti-Pyongyang leaflets flown by South Korean activists near the border town of Yeoncheon. 

North Korea’s furious reaction to the court’s lifting of the ban on sending propaganda leaflets into the North reflects the regime fears its people being exposed to outside information.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link.

It is not a double standard because the ROK does not have UN sanctions against developing ballistic missiles. Plus it was a commercial Falcon 9 rocket from SpaceX that put the ROK’s spy satellite into orbit. If North Korea would stop being a global pariah and become a responsible nation maybe they would have sanctions dropped to allow them to have their own peaceful space program:

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying South Korea’s first indigenous spy satellite lifts off from U.S. Vandenberg Space Force Base in California on Dec. 1, 2023 (local time), in this photo provided by SpaceX. (Yonhap)

North Korea on Monday denounced the United States for having a “double standard” over space programs, saying Washington helped South Korea with launching a military spy satellite, while condemning Pyongyang’s similar move.

South Korea successfully launched its first indigenous military spy satellite atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from a U.S. military base in California on Friday, after North Korea put its spy satellite Malligyong-1 into orbit on Nov. 21.

An unnamed spokesperson at North Korea’s National Aerospace Technology Administration said the U.S. has a “double standard” over South Korea’s spy satellite, as it “brazenly” helped Seoul’s launch, while condemning Pyongyang’s exercise of its sovereign right.

“Coercing the brigandish standard of the U.S. even in the space realm, a treasure common to mankind, should never be permitted,” the official said in a statement carried by the Korean Central News Agency.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

This would be a provocative action by the U.S. Space Force if they did try and disable North Korea’s supposed spy satellite because it would set a precedent for other countries to take action on U.S. satellites as well:

North Korea lashed out at the United States on Saturday after a U.S. space official hinted at possible disabling of the North’s military spy satellite launched last week, saying that it will take it as “a declaration of war” against the regime.

A spokesperson of the North’s defense ministry issued the statement after Sheryll Klinkel, a strategic communicator at the U.S. Space Command, told a media program in reference to the North’s spy satellite that “a variety of reversible and irreversible means” can be employed to “deny” an adversary’s space and counterspace capabilities. 

Appearing on the Radio Free Asia earlier this week, Klinkel also said that joint force space operations can reduce the effectiveness and lethality of adversary forces across all domains. 

“The U.S. Space Force’s deplorable hostility toward the DPRK’s reconnaissance satellite can never be overlooked as it is just a challenge to the sovereignty of the DPRK, and more exactly, a declaration war against it,” read the English-language statement carried by the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.