Tag: North Korea

In North Korea they have no issue with arbitrarily killing people so of course they would support Russia doing the same thing against Ukrainians:

North Korea on Saturday condemned the United States for making the crisis surrounding Ukraine a human rights issue and imposing sanctions against Russia, denouncing U.S. President Joe Biden as “an old man in his senility” and a man of a “repeated slip of tongue.”

A commentary carried by the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said the Ukraine issue has suddenly become a human rights issue, as the U.S. and western media branded the case as a war crime, with a politically motivated plot to defame Russia and to achieve the collapse of its regime.

“The latest story is the U.S. chief executive who spoke ill of the Russian president with groundless data,” the English-language article read. “Such reckless remarks can be made only by the descendants of Yankees, master hand at aggression and plot-breeding.”

The North then called Biden “an old man in his senility” with “a problem in his intellectual faculty,” and “the president known for his repeated slip of tongue,” though it stopped short of putting Biden’s name in the article.

“A big question is if he could ever have done anything right with such IQ during his florid 50-year political career,” according to the commentary.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

It appears that since the North Koreans failed in the launch of their new ICBM they decided to fire off their older ICBM and claim it was the new one:

 South Korea and the United States regard North Korea as having disguised its launch of an existing intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) last week as that of a new larger one, informed sources said Sunday.

The allies believe that the North again tested a Hwasong-15 ICBM on Thursday, the same type it fired in late 2017, according to the sources. The North has publicly claimed success in the launch of a Hwasong-17 missile.

Their intelligence analysis suggested that like the Hwasong-15, the ICBM in question had two engine nozzles, whereas the Hwasong-17 has four nozzles. The engine combustion time of the first-stage rocket was also similar to that of the Hwasong-15.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

North Korea needs a viable ICBM threat to pressure the US in any future negotiations. Is it far fetched to believe that the Biden administration could drop sanctions in return for a freeze on their ICBM program? If offered the Kim regime would probably likely take it because they get to keep their nukes and shorter and medium range missiles to target the ROK and Japan. The money from dropping sanctions can then be used to further modernize their nuclear and ballistic missile programs:

North Korea said Friday that it successfully test-fired a new intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), called the Hwasong-17, the previous day on the direct order of its leader Kim Jong-un.

Making an on-site inspection of the test, Kim stressed his country would be “fully ready for long-standing confrontation with the U.S. imperialists,” according to the North’s official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA). 

Kim was quoted as adding, “The new strategic weapon of the DPRK would make the whole world clearly aware of the power of our strategic armed forces once again.” DPRK stands for the North’s official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

It looks like President Elect Yoon is setting the prelude to withdrawing from the Inter-Korean Military Agreement since North Korea is refusing to follow it:

President-elect Yoon Suk-yeol said Tuesday that North Korea’s recent artillery firing was a violation of an inter-Korean military tension reduction agreement.

Yoon made the remark during a meeting with members of his transition team, two days after South Korea’s military said North Korea fired four shots from multiple rocket launchers into the Yellow Sea.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

You don’t need to be an analyst to predict that the Kim regime is going to test and see what they can get away with from the incoming Yoon administration. This is the standard playbook from the Kim regime:

Amid signs of North Korea abandoning its self-restraint in regards to testing long-range missiles and nuclear weapons, President-elect Yoon Suk-yeol’s pledge to take a tougher stance and bolster South Korea’s deterrence against its northern neighbor ― in close cooperation with the United States ― is likely to prolong the period of non-engagement between the two Koreas under his new administration.

Furthermore, Yoon has filled the foreign policy subcommittee of his transition team with officials from the former Lee Myung-bak government, who pursued confrontational policies that almost pushed the two Koreas to the brink of war. 

With the new conservative administration to be inaugurated in May, Pyongyang is likely to test how much bandwidth the Yoon administration will allow in dealing with its provocative actions, and diplomatic observers say how the new government responds to this initial saber-rattling will set the tone for inter-Korean interactions for the next five years.

“Relations between the two Koreas once President-elect Yoon takes office will entirely depend on Pyongyang,” said Ramon Pacheco Pardo, a professor of international relations at King’s College London.

“If North Korea goes down the test route, then I would expect the Yoon government to focus on deterrence, sanctions and denunciation of Pyongyang’s human rights abuses above all. This would strain relations,” he said.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link.