Tag: North Korea

It looks like the Kim regime received their talking points straight from Beijing:

North Korea on Monday denounced a United States decision to help build nuclear-powered submarines for Australia as an “extremely undesirable and dangerous” move that can trigger off a nuclear arms race.

The North will also take “corresponding counteraction in case it has even a little adverse impact on the security” of the country, the foreign news section chief of the North’s foreign ministry told the official Korean Central News Agency.

The United States on Wednesday announced the launch of a new trilateral security partnership with Australia and Britain, and said the countries will also work to equip Australia with “conventionally armed” nuclear submarines.

“These are extremely undesirable and dangerous acts which will upset the strategic balance in the Asia-Pacific region and trigger off a chain of nuclear arms race,” he was quoted as saying in the KCNA.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but these Australian submarines are not even expected to come into service until 2040.

This sounds like childish jealousy from the North Koreans:

North Korea on Monday questioned whether South Korea’s newly unveiled submarine-launched ballistic missile is a real SLBM, claiming even if it is, the “clumsy product” is just in the elementary development stage and cannot serve as an effective means of attack.

The chief of the North’s Academy of National Defense made the claim in an article carried by the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), days after South Korea unveiled its first homegrown SLBM by announcing the successful test-launch from the 3,000-ton-class Dosan Ahn Chang-ho submarine.

“The disclosed pictures show that the weapon has the structure and shape of a typical ground-to-ground tactical ballistic missile. Though the photos could have deliberately been retouched for secrecy, the missile in the picture looked somewhat like a poor weapon without all its shape and far from an underwater weapon,” agency chief Jang Chang-ha said. “What was shown in the pictures was clearly not SLBM.”

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but what this does mean is that what little resources the DPRK does have they will likely now pour into SLBM development, not because they really need it, but to keep up with the ROK.

Another capability to disguise and quickly launch ballistic missiles has been confirmed by North Korea. This will just make it more challenging for intelligence analysts to track North Korea’s ballistic missiles:

North Korea said Thursday that a railway-borne missile regiment held a firing drill a day earlier, confirming the launches, apparently from a train, of two short-range ballistic missiles into the East Sea.

“The railway-borne missile regiment took part in the drill with a mission to strike the target area 800 kilometers away from its location after moving to the central mountainous area at dawn on September 15,” the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said.

The KCNA said the North accurately struck the target in the East Sea.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

The fish in the waters around Korea were under extra attack yesterday from both North and South Korean missile launches:

The Korean Peninsula was the site of dueling launches on Wednesday as North Korea fired two tactical ballistic missiles around mid-day, followed by South Korea testing a new submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) later in the afternoon.  
   
The North fired first on Wednesday, sending two ballistic missiles into the waters east of the Korean Peninsula around 12:38 p.m. and 12:43 p.m., according to the South’s Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS).  
   
The JCS said the missiles flew a distance of approximately 800 kilometers (500 miles) while reaching an altitude of 60 kilometers (37 miles).  
   
Less than three hours later, in the afternoon, South Korea followed with a scheduled submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) test, according to the Defense Ministry.  
   
In addition to the SLBM, the South tested two different types of missiles on Wednesday: a long-range air-to-surface missile and a supersonic anti-ship missile, according to military authorities. 

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link, but I think it is likely the North Koreans are just making a statement that if the ROK’s are allowed to fire ballistic missiles then we are going to as well. Additionally the Kim regime is probably trying to take away headlines from the ROK for successfully testing their SLBM which is a feat the North Koreans have not been able to master yet.

This is another useful system the North Koreans have now added to their arsenal:

North Korea has successfully test-fired a new type of long-range cruise missile over the weekend, state media reported Monday, a low-level provocation amid stalled talks with the United States.

The test-firings, which took place Saturday and Sunday without leader Kim Jong-un in attendance, came right after the North held a scaled-down military parade, and appeared to be intent on demonstrating its military power in a low-level provocation without violating U.N. sanctions.

The North is banned from using ballistic technology under multiple U.N. Security Council resolutions. Cruise missiles, however, are not subject to the sanctions as they are considered less of a threat than ballistic missiles.

The missiles “traveled for 7,580 seconds along an oval and pattern-8 flight orbits in the air above the territorial land and waters” in North Korea and “hit targets 1,500 km away,” the North’s official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

This is a fairly simple malware attack launched by the North Koreans:

A hacker group believed to be linked to North Korea has attempted to steal data from South Korean experts working as members of an advisory panel for the defense ministry, a cybersecurity firm said Sunday.

Emails were sent to some members of the advisory panel earlier this month from hackers who disguised themselves as a North Korea-related department of the defense ministry, notifying them of an upcoming seminar on the occasion of the anniversary of a 2018 inter-Korean military agreement, according to ESTsecurity.

A few days later, another email was sent, asking the panel members to open attached papers written for the event. It had some disguised images on the attachments that appeared to be official government documents, according to ESTsecurity.

ESTsecurity said it suspects North Korea-linked hacking organization Thallium to be behind the attempted attacks.

The hackers attached malicious files disguised as government documents to emails that can install malware on users’ computers, allowing them to steal information.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link.

By North Korea standards this was a pretty low key military parade which could signal that the Kim regime still thinks some kind of future deal could be reached:

North Korea held a midnight military parade to mark the 73rd anniversary of its founding, but leader Kim Jong-un did not deliver an address and no new strategic weapons were displayed, according to state media and South Korean officials.

The parade, which began at midnight Thursday, was watched closely by South Korea and others because the North could show off state-of-the-art weapons systems or leader Kim could make a speech about inter-Korean relations or nuclear talks with the United States.

But the parade at Pyongyang’s Kim Il-sung Square featured artillery-carrying tractors and military search dogs rather than intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) and other strategic weapons. Also seen were fire engines looking like the same model produced by German carmaker Mercedes Benz.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

Here is a surprising topic North Korea has decided to weigh in on:

North Korea on Friday denounced the expiration of a pandemic-related U.S. government ban on residential evictions, saying Washington should address its own human rights issues before “poking its nose” into other countries’ affairs.

A U.S. government ban on evictions for residents that have failed to pay rent during the COVID-pandemic expired at the end of last month in most parts of the country, putting millions of vulnerable residents at risk of losing their homes.

“Before talking impudently about the ‘human rights issues’ of other countries, the U.S. should address the human rights problems of its own society, which are daily getting worse, owing to its anti-popular policies,” the North’s foreign ministry said on its website.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but with all the helped wanted signs across the country my sympathy meter for people facing eviction has definitely lowered significantly since the beginning of the pandemic.