Tag: North Korea

Chinese President Emperor Xi appears uninterested in helping South Korea reign in North Korea’s provocations which shows China has probably green lighted them to do them:

President Yoon Suk-yeol and Chinese President Xi Jinping on Tuesday showed subtle differences in their perceptions toward North Korea’s nuclear and missile threats. 

During the first Seoul-Beijing summit held in nearly three years, President Yoon called for China to play an “active and constructive role” in reining in North Korea to stop its provocations amid its continued launches of various missiles, despite international condemnation. 

In response, the Chinese leader urged South Korea to find its role and do as much as it can in order to get inter-Korean relations back on the right track.

According to South Korea’s presidential office, Yoon and Xi sat down for talks for 25 minutes on the sidelines of the G-20 Summit in Bali, Indonesia. The meeting was first of its kind since Dec. 23, 2019, when Yoon’s predecessor Moon Jae-in and Xi met on the sidelines of a trilateral summit between South Korea, China and Japan in Beijing.

During the summit, Yoon voiced worries that North Korea is waging unprecedented provocations with its missile launches and being set for another nuclear test, and asked China, as a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council and a neighboring country, to play an “active and constructive role.”

In response, Xi said that both South Korea and China have “common interests on the issues of the Korean Peninsula” and he hopes South Korea will do its part to improve inter-Korean relations actively.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link.

The real story here is why would a major underwear company want to work with the Kim regime to smuggle money into North Korea? What did they get in return? Was anyone in the Gyeongi-do government in on this? Are other so called NGOs doing the same thing to circumvent sanctions? That’s what I want to know:

Prosecution took into custody a man suspected of colluding with Ssangbangwool Group to smuggle huge sums of foreign currency into North Korea about three years ago, according to judicial sources.

The Suwon District Prosecutors Office apprehended the chief of the Asia Pacific Exchange Association, a Seoul-based nongovernmental organization, at an unidentified place in Seoul where he was hiding out, on charges of violating the Foreign Exchange Transactions Act.

Prosecutors have been investigating allegations that Ssangbangwool, South Korea’s leading underwear company, secretly sent millions of US dollars to China in 2019 and that the money was sent to North Korea.

They allege that dozens of Ssangbangwool executives and employees took part in the alleged currency smuggling by hiding dollars inside books on their trips to China to deliver them to North Korea.

Prosecutors suspect the man, only identified by his surname An, played a role in the crime.

Ssangbangwool and the NGO are suspected of handing $1.5 million and US$500,000, respectively, to the North.

Prosecutors are also looking into possibility that support funds the NGO received from Gyeonggi Province were part of the money sent to the North.

The province surrounding Seoul provided about 2 billion won ($1.46 million) to the NGO on two occasions between 2018-19 for an event where North Korean officials attended, and delivered flour and saplings to the North.

Korea Herald

You can read more at the link.

If the North Koreans really wanted to send the U.S. a message on a election day they could have launched an ICBM. The fact they launched a lone short range missile is a pretty small reaction to the U.S. election:

North Korea launched one short-range ballistic missile (SRBM) toward the East Sea on Wednesday, South Korea’s military said.

The Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said it detected the launch from an area in or around Sukchon, South Pyongan Province, at around 3:31 p.m.

The North’s latest provocation came as ballots are being counted in the U.S. mid-term elections. The South’s military has been staging computer-simulated Taegeuk drills since Monday.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

North Korea’s ICBM test has been called a failure, but in my view the test is only a failure if it causes them to stop testing, which they are clearly not going to do. North Korea’s scientists can learn a lot from failed launches to improve the design of their ICBM. They will continue to improve their designs the more they test and it appears another test could happen later this month:

This combined photo, released by North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency, Monday, shows the North Korean military firing missiles into the East Sea and the West Sea from Nov. 2 to Nov. 5 corresponding to a South Korea-U.S. joint air exercise. Yonhap

Undeterred by the failed test of what is suspected to have been a Hwasong-17 intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) last week, North Korea is expected to push ahead with another launch of its largest and most powerful missile ahead of a holiday marking its successful nuclear-capable missile test, according to diplomatic observers, Monday.

North Korea designated Nov. 29 as “Rocket Industry Day” commemorating the anniversary of test-firing a Hwasong-15 nuclear-capable ICBM on Nov. 29, 2017. The missile is believed to be theoretically capable of hitting targets anywhere in the U.S. mainland. Afterwards, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un declared the completion of “the state nuclear force.”

On Thursday, the totalitarian state test-fired a Hwasong-17, but it failed while in flight, according to the South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS). 

“Ahead of conducting a nuclear test, North Korea needs to vindicate that it has mastered nuclear-strike capability by being able to deliver a nuclear warhead anywhere in the continental United States, so it is highly expected to launch an ICBM like it did in 2017,” said Shin Jong-woo, a senior researcher at the Korea Defense and Security Forum.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link.

This is just all the more reason why countries should not be giving aid to North Korea, clearly the Kim regime believes firing missiles is more important than buying food:

North Korea launched at least 23 missiles on Wednesday and six more on Thursday, adding to its already record-breaking pace of weapons tests this year. Many were nuclear-capable ballistic missiles designed to destroy South Korean and U.S. targets.

They likely include a developmental Hwasong-17 intercontinental ballistic missile, surface-to-air missiles and a variety of short-range ballistic missiles. North Korea has a reputation for frequent missile tests, but it has never launched that many missiles in a single day.

Soo Kim, a security analyst at the California-based RAND Corporation, said the cost of a North Korean missile test could range between several million dollars to $10 million, which would be lower than similar tests in other countries, partly because North Korean labor is cheap.

Bruce Bennet, another expert at the RAND Corporation, told Radio Free Asia that the short-range missiles Wednesday cost between $2 million to $3 million each and the total cost for the day was somewhere between $50 million and $75 million. RFA said the maximum estimate is about the amount of money that North Korea spent to import rice from China in 2019 to cover grain shortages that year.

Stars & Stripes

You can read much more at the link.

North Korea’s war on fish continued this weekend:

North Korea fired four short-range ballistic missiles (SRBM) toward the Yellow Sea Saturday, the South Korean military said.

The Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said it detected the launches from Tongrim County in North Pyongyan Province between around 11:32 a.m. and 11:59 a.m.

The missiles flew about 130 kilometers at an apogee of 20 km with a top speed of Mach 5, it added. 

The North’s latest provocation came on the last day of the extended large-scale combined air drills of the South and the United States.

On Saturday two B-1B strategic bombers joined the Vigilant Storm exercise alongside four South Korean F-35A stealth fighter jets and 4 U.S. F-16 fighters, the JCS said.

It marked the first time the B-1B Lancer has been deployed to the Korean Peninsula since 2017, in a demonstration of Washington’s firm commitment to extended deterrence for South Korea and the allies’ combined defense posture, JCS added.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

According to the article this failed ICBM launch was intended to fly over Japan. This is one of my concerns that a failed missile launch ends up impacting in Japan, what could the response to such an incident lead to?:

North Korea continued its saber-rattling for the second day straight, Thursday, by firing at least six missiles, but its military show of force ended up being compromised after the launch of the country’s largest and most powerful intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) failed while in flight.

The unsuccessful ICBM launch may cause further delays to the possible next nuclear test by the North, which is believed to have been fully prepared for it since May, as it is still short of putting the United States on high alert or gaining its attention, according to diplomatic observers. 

According to the South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), North Korea launched what was presumed to be an ICBM from the Sunan area of Pyongyang at 7:40 a.m., then two short-range ballistic missiles (SRBMs) from Kaechon in South Pyongan Province at 8:39 a.m. The JCS also said that it detected three SRBMs between 9:35 p.m. and 9:49 p.m. traveling toward the East Sea from Koksan County in North Hwanghae Province. 

As for the ICBM, the JCS did not specify what type of missile North Korea had prepared, but it was presumed to be the Hwasong-17, which analysts say may be capable of carrying multiple warheads and traveling up to 15,000 kilometers, far enough to strike anywhere in the U.S. The missile was first unveiled in October 2020.

The ICBM flew about 760 kilometers at an apogee of around 1,920 kilometers and a top speed of Mach 15, but something seemed to have gone wrong following second-stage separation, the JCS added.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link, but the failure means that the North Koreans will likely have to do another ICBM launch in the near term.

The U.S. has made it clear once again it will not recognize North Korea as nuclear weapons state:

The United States does not and will not recognize North Korea as a nuclear weapons state as it seeks to completely denuclearize the Korean Peninsula, a state department spokesperson said Monday.

“That is not our policy. I do not foresee that ever becoming a policy,” Ned Price told a press briefing when asked about the possibility of the U.S. ever recognizing North Korea as a nuclear state.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.