Tag: North Korea

It looks like China is trying to get business back to usual with North Korea despite their continuing COVID protocols:

Cargo train operation between North Korea and China is likely to continue, a South Korean government official said Tuesday, citing Beijing’s confirmation of its resumption following a five-month suspension.

On Monday, a freight train from the Chinese border city of Dandong was seen crossing a railway bridge over the Amnok River toward North Korea for the first time since late April.

Speaking at a press briefing later in the day, the Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson, Wang Wenbin, confirmed the resumption of the train service linking Dandong and the North’s border city of Sinuiju.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

North Korea just could not help itself and desperately had to make a headline since Vice President Harris will be in Seoul later this week:

North Korea fired a short-range ballistic missile into the East Sea on Sunday, South Korea’s military said, two days after a nuclear-powered U.S. aircraft carrier arrived here for allied drills.

The Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said it detected the launch from an area in or around Taechon, North Pyongan Province, at 6:53 a.m., and that it flew some 600 kilometers at an apogee of around 60 km at a top speed of Mach 5.

The intelligence authorities of the South and the United States are conducting a detailed analysis for other details, the JCS said.

The launch came as U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris plans to visit Seoul later this week and the allies are set to hold a joint maritime exercise in the East Sea, involving the USS Ronald Reagan carrier strike group.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

This might end up being an interesting documentary to check out:

The upcoming documentary film “The 2nd Repatriation,” directed by Kim Dong-won, focuses on the voices of the 46 people who have demanded the Seoul government let them return to their communist homeland for more than 20 years.

The film is a follow-up to the director’s 2004 documentary “Repatriation” about the 63 “unconverted” North Koreans who went back home in 2000.

“The 2nd Repatriation” revolves around Kim Young-shik, one of the remaining North Korean communists living in South Korea. He was sent to the South in 1962, arrested soon afterward and served 27 years in prison. The 90-year-old claimed he was physically and psychologically tortured to convert his ideology and subsequently excluded from the 2000 repatriation. 

It took nearly 20 years to complete the film, as Seoul-Pyongyang relations have experienced ups and downs over the cited period, while Kim Young-shik and other former North Korean spies have still not been permitted to go back home. 

“After I made the 2004 film, I thought the second repatriation would come soon. So I started filming their stories,” the director said Tuesday in a press conference after a media screening of the 156-minute film. “But their return has been delayed for about 20 years, and I’ve been working on it for the longer-than-expected period.”

Out of the 46 people still seeking to be repatriated, nine people remain alive, and they are 91 years old on average. So far, only one of them was sent to the North after dying of an illness in Seoul in 2005.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

If this communication was about re-starting talks about denuclearization the Kim regime has made it pretty clear they have no interest in such talks:

The United States made yet another dialogue offer to North Korea this summer through a communication channel in New York, but the North has not responded, Washington’s top nuclear envoy said Tuesday.

U.S. Special Representative for North Korea Sung Kim said that the overture was made through the so-called New York channel, involving the North’s diplomatic mission at the U.N., in July, as he highlighted the Joe Biden administration’s continued commitment to reengage with Pyongyang.

“I believe our last communication with the DPRK was during the summer. We sent the message reiterating our interest in re-engagement and also re-offering our assistance in COVID-related items,” Kim said in a meeting with reporters in Seoul, referring to the North’s official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. “But I say ‘no interest’ (from the North) in the sense that they have not responded to any of our messages.”

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

Just another sign that North Korea does not plan to give up its nuclear weapons and is in fact expanding their program:

The chief of the U.N. nuclear watchdog said Monday there are signs that North Korea is operating the Yongbyon nuclear complex’s uranium enrichment facility while carrying out construction work there.

Rafael Grossi, Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), made the remarks amid speculation that North Korea appears to be preparing for what would be its first nuclear test since 2017.

“We have observed indications that the reported centrifuge enrichment facility at Yongbyon continues to operate and is now externally complete, expanding the building’s available floor space by approximately one-third,” Grossi said in a statement to the board of governors.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

I don’t know how many ways the North Koreans are going to keep telling the international community that they are not going to bargain away their nuclear weapons before someone believes them:

President Yoon Suk-yeol’s recently introduced “audacious initiative,” aimed at enticing North Korea to scrap its nuclear weapons, seems to have already hit a snag as Pyongyang has guaranteed the right to use preemptive nuclear strikes in its new law.

Experts believe that North Korea’s legislation has to do with its efforts to win international recognition as a “nuclear state” while South Korea’s current denuclearization-based overture may require a change in tempo.

The North’s official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported on Friday that the Supreme People’s Assembly, the regime’s rubber-stamp parliament, passed a new law that will enable Pyongyang to automatically launch a nuclear strike if attacked. This replaced a 2013 law which first outlined the North’s nuclear status. 

“The status of our country as a nuclear weapons state has become irreversible,” KCNA quoted North Korean leader Kim Jong-un as saying. “(We will) never give up nuclear weapons and there is absolutely no denuclearization, and no negotiation and no bargaining chip to trade in the process.”

Korea Times

You can read more at the link.

I highly recommend watching the entire news clip below of Russian propagandists trying to explain the defeat of their forces in Northeast Ukraine. In the clip the propagandists also make the case that North Korea should join Russia in an anti-Imperialist coalition against the west in Ukraine. I mentioned this before that it appears that the Russian propaganda apparatus is trying to will aid from North Korea into existence.

The Kim regime may be a lot of things, but they are not stupid. They will probably happily sell munitions to the Russians, but I don’t see them sending personnel and equipment in what is increasingly looking like a lost cause. The final statement from the show doesn’t exactly inspire confidence either, “Stalin called for ones who panic to be shot”.