Tag: North Korea

This is interesting because is the first time I have seen North Korea issue such a warning to a civilian ship in the East Sea. It makes me think they may have thought it was being used for intelligence collection purposes:

A North Korean boat warned a South Korean cargo ship sailing in the international waters of the East Sea to “move out to the open sea” earlier this month, a source said Tuesday, raising maritime safety concerns amid heightened cross-border tensions.

People aboard the North Korean boat gesticulated toward the 30,000-ton cargo ship and sent a message demanding it move farther out into the high seas through an international maritime communication network on May 8, according to the source.

The cargo ship was reportedly carrying 21 crewmembers, including two South Koreans.

It remains unclear whether the North Koreans are civilians or military personnel.

Following the message from the North, the South Korean ship informed its headquarters and the Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries of what happened and took a detour to reach the waters south of the Northern Limit Line, a de facto inter-Korean sea border.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

Just think that for housing this is about as good as it gets for most people in North Korea:

North Korea has held a ceremony to mark the completion of building another housing district in Pyongyang as part of the country’s project to construct 50,000 units of new homes in the capital by 2025, state media reported Monday.

The North held the ceremony to celebrate the completion of the construction of new residential areas in the Taephyong district in Pyongyang on Sunday, according to the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).

The Taephyong district in western Pyongyang is located near Mangyongdae, the birthplace of North Korea’s late founder Kim Il-sung, also the grandfather of the current leader Kim Jong-un.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

This is why it is important to continue to undermine the Kim regime by providing access to outside information into North Korea:

North Korean brothers who brought their family members out of the country earlier this month are late millennials, part of the tech-savvy younger generation of North Korea who have increased access to external information.

Sources with knowledge of the latest defections told The Korea Herald on Sunday that it was the two brothers in their early 30s who had made the decision to leave North Korea with their family.

The sources said that the brothers told Seoul officials here in a screening interview that they had yearned for a life in South Korea after secretly watching South Korean TV. In particular, they cited the talk show “Now on My Way to Meet You,” featuring North Korean defectors, as having had a major influence.

Analyses say North Korean millennials are the main consumers of foreign media content, mostly from South Korea, in the totalitarian country where such acts are severely punished.

According to a South Korean government report on the human rights situation in North Korea released in March, North Korea has publicly executed citizens including teens for watching South Korean media.

Korea Herald

You can read more at the link.

It looks like Kim Jong-un is making sure we are building up to another “crisis” on the peninsula with his expected space launch:

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un inspected the country’s first military reconnaissance satellite and gave the green light for its next action plan, Pyongyang’s state media said Wednesday, adding that the satellite is “ready for loading” on a rocket. 

Kim made the on-site inspection to the Non-permanent Satellite Launch Preparatory Committee a day earlier to check the overall status of the spy satellite and approved of its “future action plan,” the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said, in a move that signals the launch could be imminent.

“After acquainting himself in detail with the work of the committee, he inspected the military reconnaissance satellite No. 1 which is ready for loading after undergoing the final general assembly check and space environment test,” it said in an English-language dispatch.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

Considering North Korea’s stated commitment to expanding its nuclear arsenal this news should not be surprising:

Recent commercial satellite imagery indicates North Korea continues to expand and refurbish its Yongbyon nuclear complex, reinforcing concerns the country is acting on leader Kim Jong-un’s recent call for an “exponential” increase in its nuclear arsenal, 38 North, a U.S. think tank, said Friday.

The report based on satellite imagery taken April 20 said significant construction and improvement activities have been detected throughout the Yongbyon Nuclear Scientific Research Center, particularly around the Experimental Light Water Reactor (ELWR), the 5 MWe Reactor and within the uranium conversion area.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link.

North Korea has officially responded to the US-ROK summit last week where President Biden said the regime would be destroyed if they used nuclear weapons. None of these insults and threats coming from Kim Yo-jong should be surprising in response considering North Korea’s past history of insulting US and ROK presidents:

In her comments published on state media, Kim Yo Jong said the U.S.-South Korean agreement reflected the allies’ “most hostile and aggressive will of action” against the North and will push regional peace and security into “more serious danger.”

Kim, who is one of her brother’s top foreign policy officials, said the summit further strengthened the North’s conviction to enhance its nuclear arms capabilities. She said it would be especially important for the North to perfect the “second mission of the nuclear war deterrent,” in an apparent reference to the country’s escalatory nuclear doctrine that calls for preemptive nuclear strikes over a broad range of scenarios where it may perceive its leadership as under threat.

She lashed out at Biden over his blunt warning that North Korean nuclear aggression would result in the end of its regime, calling him senile and “too miscalculating and irresponsibly brave.” However, she said the North wouldn’t simply dismiss his words as a “nonsensical remark from the person in his dotage.”

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link.

Here is the latest person to call for the redeployment of tactical nuclear weapons to South Korea:

The United States should redeploy its tactical nuclear weapons on the Korean Peninsula to make US extended deterrence credible against escalating threats from North Korea, said John Bolton, former White House national security adviser, on Tuesday. This strategy would also enable South Korea to buy time to weigh up the gains and losses of nuclear armament, he added.

“I’ve refused to give up on the possibility of stopping North Korea from getting deliverable nuclear weapons in the first place. That should remain (at) the center of our attention. This is not over yet,” Bolton said at the Asan Plenum 2023 hosted by the Asan Institute for Policy Studies in Seoul.

Korea Herald

You can read more at the link, but the redeployment of nuclear weapons Bolton says is also a way to hold China accountable for allowing North Korea’s nuclear weapons program in the first place.

The reality has set in with South Korea’s youth that North Korea has become such a different country that unification is not likely:

This file photo, taken March 13, 2023, shows the Kaesong Industrial Complex, a joint industrial park in the North’s border city of Kaesong. (Yonhap)

About 60 percent of South Koreans in their 20s and 30s said unification with North Korea is not necessary, a survey showed Sunday, amid a prolonged impasse in inter-Korean relations and denuclearization talks. 

The survey, commissioned by a civic media group called Barun Media Citizen Action, found that 61 percent of people in their 20s and 30s say Korean reunification is “not absolutely necessary.” 

In comparison, 24 percent of them say unification with North Korea is “absolutely necessary.”

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but the good news from this survey is that 67% percent of Korean youths had a positive opinion of the U.S. For Japan the number was 63% had a positive view which shows that all the politically demagoguery towards Japan has not caused the majority of Korean youths to despise the country.