Tag: North Korea

It looks like North Korea’s former Foreign Minister who led the diplomatic outreach between Kim Jong-un and Donald Trump may have been executed:

Former North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong-ho appears to have been executed last year, a Japanese newspaper reported Wednesday.

Ri seems to have been executed around between the summer and fall of last year, the Yomiuri Shimbun reported, citing unnamed multiple sources.

Four or five officials from North Korea’s foreign ministry appear to have been executed successively around the time of Ri’s death, according to the report.

It added that some unspecific issues related to the North Korean Embassy in Britain might have been the reasons behind their executions, saying that all of them, including Ri, worked in the diplomatic mission. (….)

Ri, who was appointed as the North’s top diplomat in 2016, played a key role in negotiations with the U.S. for the 2018 and 2019 summits between North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and then U.S. President Donald Trump. The Hanoi summit in early 2019 ended with no deal. Ri is known to have left office in 2020.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

This is actually what I think the Kim regime wants to happen to justify their long expected nuclear test:

President Yoon Suk Yeol ordered aides to consider suspending a 2018 inter-Korean military tension reduction agreement if North Korea violates the South’s territory again, an official said Wednesday.

Yoon’s remark came after five North Korean drones infiltrated South Korean airspace last week, raising serious questions about South Korea’s readiness posture.

On Wednesday, Yoon was briefed by the presidential National Security Office, the defense ministry, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Agency for Defense Development on the country’s anti-drone preparations.

“President Yoon Suk Yeol instructed the National Security Office to consider suspending the Sept. 19 military agreement in the event North Korea carries out another provocation violating our territory,” senior presidential secretary for press affairs Kim Eun-hye told reporters.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but cancelling the agreement would mean the guard posts, landmines, tank traps, propaganda speakers, etc. could all be reinstalled along the DMZ that prior President Moon had removed. The Kim regime can spend this as a South Korean provocation against peace on the peninsula that they respond with a nuclear test too.

President Yoon appears to be highly upset that the ROK military has not developed the technology to counter North Korean drones:

President Yoon Suk Yeol berated Defense Minister Lee Jong-sup over the military’s failed operation against five North Korean drones that entered South Korean airspace earlier this week, officials said Wednesday.

Yoon met with Lee on Tuesday morning and was briefed on the military’s response to the North’s violation of South Korean airspace the previous day.

The drones flew across the Military Demarcation Line separating the two Koreas, with one flying over northern parts of Seoul, but the South Korean military failed to shoot them down.

“How can there be none preparing against North Korean drone attacks? There were many similar incidents in the past, so what have you been doing until now?” Yoon said during the meeting, according to one official who relayed the exchange.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

Shooting down drones, especially high flying ones with out endangering civilian property is not easy, but it is also not impossible:

President Yoon Suk-yeol on Tuesday criticized the military’s response to North Korean drones that intruded across the inter-Korean border the previous day, saying the incident exposed some problems with South Korea’s readiness.

Speaking at a Cabinet meeting, Yoon said the military should be better prepared for such intrusions by North Korean drones and vowed to create a military unit specializing in unmanned aerial vehicles as part of efforts to strengthen South Korea’s air defense capabilities.

“We have a plan to create a military drone unit tasked with monitoring key military facilities in North Korea. But we’ll expedite the process of creating the drone unit after the incident yesterday,” he said. “We’ll also introduce state-of-the art stealth drones to strengthen our surveillance capability.”

Yoon also voiced regret over the National Assembly’s decision to cut the military budget for anti-drone operations, saying the incident once again showed how dangerous it is to rely on North Korea’s “good faith” and paper agreements for peace.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link, but it is amazing that funding for anti-drone operations was cut by the National Assembly. Drones is obviously the future of warfare. Their importance can be seen right now in the war in Ukraine. This incident should give President Yoon all the rationale he needs to pour money into the new drone command he wants to establish.

This is an easy provocation for the North Koreans to execute that disrupted flight operations at Incheon and Gimpo International Airports and had the added benefits of causing a South Korean aircraft to crash:

 Suspected North Korean drones crossed the inter-Korean border Monday without South Korea’s permission, officials here said, prompting the deployment of fighter jets, choppers and other assets to shoot them down.

The South’s military detected multiple “unidentified objects,” presumed to be unmanned aerial vehicles, in border areas of Gyeonggi Province from 10:25 a.m., according to an official at the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

The vehicles flew across the Military Demarcation Line separating the two Koreas, and were spotted flying in those areas in Gimpo, Ganghwa Island and Paju, leading to temporary suspensions of civilian flights.

The South issued warning messages, fired warning shots, and scrambled fighters, attack helicopters and other warplanes to remove them, while it remains unconfirmed whether the vehicles carry any weapons, the official said.

“We also identified them with our eyes,” the JCS official told reporters on condition of anonymity. “An operation is still ongoing against the vehicles.”

The military also deployed a KA-1 light attack aircraft, but for an unknown reason, it crashed in Hoengseong County, about 140 kilometers east of Seoul, at 11:39 a.m. Both of the pilots escaped safely.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but I have always felt Incheon International Airport is an easy provocation target. It just seems like madness to build something so important to South Korea economically that close to the DMZ. Regardless it is there and North Korea can easily put pressure on the ROK by continuing to disrupt flight operations there if they want to with these low cost drones.

The bad cop of North Korea is back at it blasting South Korea:

The sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un on Tuesday blasted South Koreans who questioned Pyongyang’s reconnaissance capabilities in response to its launch of a test satellite in a statement carried by state-controlled media on Tuesday.    
   
Kim Yo-jong, who serves as deputy director of the ruling Workers’ Party propaganda department, also warned that the regime would soon conduct a long-distance missile launch to silence critics who doubt the regime’s ability to launch a nuclear weapon that can re-enter the atmosphere without disintegrating, according to Pyongyang’s state-controlled Korean Central News Agency.  
   
In her vitriolic statement, the North Korean leader’s sister said that Sunday’s spy satellite test involved two missiles, and that the first was intended “only to send signals to the transmitter and test whether the ground control station could trace and receive them.” 

Kim also bristled at comments by South Korean defense analysts who said the low-resolution images of Seoul and Incheon taken from the North Korean test satellite demonstrated the shortcomings of North Korean reconnaissance technology.  
   
“I really want to slap these bastards who are rattling on but don’t know where to start,” the KCNA reported Kim as saying.

Joong Ang Ilbo

Here is her most interesting comment which I said earlier was the real reason for their satellite launch rhetoric:

“It seems others want to disparage our strategic weapon capabilities by saying it can’t be demonstrated through a lofted-angle launch and must be proven through a normal-angle launch,” she said, adding that the latter was “something that may happen soon.” 

The spy satellite launch claims by the Kim regime is to set conditions to test an ICBM over Japan and claim it is a space launch. This gives their defenders in Moscow and Beijing a reason to defend them after they conduct a thinly veiled ICBM test at a nominal trajectory unlike their prior tests which were all lofted trajectories. This will further inflame tensions which is what they want while further testing their ICBM technologies.