Author Archives for Grant Montgomery

US deploys additional ballistic missile defense asset in the Korean peninsula

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In response to North Korea’s 4th nuclear test and its firing of a long-range missile, the US additionally deployed ballistic missile defense assets in the Korean Peninsula.

Commander of the Eighth US Army Thomas Vandal said on February 13 that “North Korea’s ongoing development of a ballistic missile in defiance of the will of the international community requires an effective ballistic missile defense from the Korea-US alliance. The additional deployment of ballistic missile defense assets is part of our emergency deployment readiness posture.”

PAC-3 is a low-altitude defense intercept missile which can strike a North Korean short and middle-distance missile at a height of 30 to 40km. While this is not targeting the long-range missile that North Korea recently fired, it will be interpreted as a strong warning towards North Korea.

The PAC-3 unit to be deployed will be integrated into the Korea-US combined and joint ballistic missile defense system.

Korea and the US are carrying out the most advanced and largest combined training, being held from March 7 to April 30. There are going to be 5,750 troops and 1 Carrier Strike Group and 45 fighters, up significantly from the year before. And with the deployment of the US strategic asset into the Korean Peninsula, both countries will show North Korea their combined power.

[Defence Talk]

The rise and fall of Jang Song-thaek, son-in-law of the North Korean theocracy – Part 1

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In late 2013, Jang Song-thaek, an uncle of Kim Jong-un was taken to the Gang Gun Military Academy in a Pyongyang suburb. Hundreds of officials were gathered there to witness the execution of Mr. Jang’s two trusted deputies in the administrative department of the ruling Workers’ Party. Jang, widely considered the second-most powerful figure in the North, fainted during the ordeal, according to a new book published in South Korea that offers a rare glimpse into the secretive Pyongyang regime.

“Son-in-Law of a Theocracy,” by Ra Jong-yil, a former deputy director of the National Intelligence Service, is a rich biography of Jang Song-thaek, the most prominent victim of the purges his young nephew has conducted since assuming power in 2011.

Mr. Jang was convicted of treason in 2013, and was executed at the same place and in the same way as his deputies, the South Korean intelligence agency said.

The book asserts that although he was a fixture of the North Korean political elite for decades, he dreamed of reforming his country. “With his execution, North Korea lost virtually the only person there who could have helped the country introduce reform and openness,” Mr. Ra said during a recent interview.   Continued

The rise and fall of Jang Song-thaek, son-in-law of the North Korean theocracy – Part 2

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Jang Song-thaek had met one of the daughters of North Korea’s founder, Kim Il-sung, while both attended Kim Il-sung University in the mid-1960s. The daughter, Kim Kyong-hee, developed a crush on Mr. Jang, who was tall and humorous — and sang and played the accordion. Her father transferred the young man to a provincial college to keep the two apart. But Ms. Kim hopped in her Soviet Volga sedan to see Mr. Jang each weekend. Once they married in 1972, Mr. Jang’s career took off under the patronage of Kim Jong-il, his brother-in-law and the designated successor of the regime. Few benefited more than Mr. Jang from the regime he loyally served. But he was never fully embraced by the Kim family because he was not blood kin.

North Korean diplomats who have defected to South Korea also said that during his frequent trips overseas to shop for Mr. Kim, Mr. Jang would drink heavily and speak dejectedly about people dying of hunger back home. Mr. Ra said Hwang Jang-yop, a North Korean party secretary who defected to Seoul in 1997 shared a conversation he once had with Mr. Jang. When told that the North’s economy was cratering, Mr. Jang responded sarcastically: “How can an economy already at the bottom go further down?”

When Kim Jong-il banished Mr. Jang three times for overstepping his authority, his wife intervened on his behalf. After Kim Jong-il suffered a stroke in 2008 and died in 2011, Mr. Jang helped his young nephew, Kim Jong-un, establish himself as successor. At the same time, he vastly expanded his own influence — and ambition.  Continued

The rise and fall of Jang Song-thaek, son-in-law of the North Korean theocracy – Part 3

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Jang Song-thaek wrested the lucrative right of exporting coal to China from the military and gave it to his administrative department. He purged his rivals. Mr. Jang’s campaign for more influence was apparently aimed at pushing for the kind of economic overhaul that China has introduced, Mr. Ra wrote. But he underestimated how unpalatable the idea was to Kim Jong-un, whose totalitarian rule would be undermined by such reform.

In 2013, Kim Jong-un, after hearing complaints about Mr. Jang’s expansion of power, ordered his department to relinquish the management of a fishing farm and a condensed milk factory. But officials loyal Jang, blocked those who arrived to carry out Kim’s orders from entering their premises. It was probably the last straw for Kim, still unsure about himself and extremely sensitive about any challenge to his supposedly monolithic leadership. Meanwhile, Mr. Jang’s enemies in the secret police were eager to go after him.

When announcing his execution, North Korea said Mr. Jang, “human scum worse than a dog,” had betrayed the Kim family by plotting to overthrow the younger Mr. Kim, using economic collapse as a pretext, and to rule the country himself as premier and “reformer.”

Jang Song-thaek’s name was then expurgated from all official records in North Korea.

[New York Times]

Life in North Korea 100 times worse than China

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After defecting from North Korea, Hyeonseo Lee spent 10 difficult years in China, but those years also revealed she had been lied to her entire life in North Korea.

“For someone who was brainwashed so severely, …I was mesmerized by seeing development, cities.” It took a while to accept that the economic situation in North Korea was 100 times worse than in China. … Lee gradually learned to accept the shocking truth: “Life in North Korea is the worst life”.

Lee also began to appreciate the basic human rights and freedoms that had been denied to her. Being able to move around China without having to get a travel certificate was a revelation. “I could go wherever I wanted if I had money to pay for the ticket, that’s huge,” she said.

Gradually she realized what freedom really meant: “I don’t have to hide to watch China TV, I don’t have to cover the window, I can have the sound loud, I can listen to music loudly. I realized I had lived in a virtual prison [in North Korea].”

Eighteen years later, she thinks more North Koreans understand that they are not living in paradise and that there are problems with the economy, even if the conditions are not as bad as the days of the big famine in the 1990s.

“At least they know they are not the best country, they are not the happiest human beings, they are not living in paradise and they know there are economic problems, nearly 50 per cent know that,” she said.

“But the Kim dynasty’s power is too big, they can’t say that or they will be sent to a political prison camp. Who can risk that?” They also risk the lives of three generations of their family. “They are fully aware that they are not only killing themselves.”

[News.com.au]

Russia and China attempt to rein in North Korea

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Russia and China have urged North Korea to halt ballistic-missile tests and return to talks on its nuclear program. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi issued the appeal following talks in Moscow on March 11.

The two met a day after North Korea defied the United Nations by firing two short-range ballistic missiles into the sea.

Just prior to the joint Russian-Chinese statement, North Korean official media said leader Kim Jong Un had watched a ballistic-missile test launch and ordered the country to improve its nuclear attack capability by conducting more tests.

[AP]

Report of ‘decapitation strike’ training rattles North Korea

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Massive joint U.S.-South Korea military exercises are a spring ritual on the Korean Peninsula guaranteed to draw a lot of threat-laced venom from Pyongyang. This time, not only are the war games the biggest ever, but the troops now massed south of the Demilitarized Zone have reportedly incorporated a new hypothetical into their training: a “beheading mission” against Kim Jong Un himself.

Pyongyang, already feeling the squeeze of new sanctions over its recent nuclear test and rocket launch, is taking a plethora of “beheading mission” reports from the South Korean media very seriously. That goes a long way toward explaining why its own rhetoric has ratcheted up a decibel – even by its own standards of bellicosity.

“Decapitation strikes” are targeted attacks to eliminate an adversary’s leader, or leaders, in an attempt to disrupt or destroy its command chain as soon as a crisis breaks out or appears imminent. They are seen as particularly effective against enemies with a highly centralized command focused on a small group, or one leader.

According to South Korea’s Yonhap news agency, the Key Resolve-Foal Eagle exercises will include training and simulations of surgical, pre-emptive strikes on nuclear and missile sites, along with training for a “beheading operation” aimed at removing Kim Jong Un and toppling his government in the event of a war.

The U.S. has used such strikes, often employing drones, to take out key figures in terrorist groups.

[AP]

For North Korean refugees, Russia is the purgatory to North Korea’s hell

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In 2008, Ryu En Nam, a North Korean defector, was extradited from Russia and executed. He was tied to the train going back to North Korea.

“It was horrible. The train started moving and for as long as he could, Ryu En Nam ran with it,” human rights lawyer Lubov Tataretz said, a few years after she tried and failed to prevent Ryu En Nam’s extradition.

Under a recently-signed treaty, the few asylum seekers who manage to escape the hermit kingdom and make it to Russia will be forcibly repatriated, to a country where prison inmates have to burn bodies of those who starve to death and use the remains as fertilizer.

Many of the North Koreans who defect to Russia do so after being exported by their motherland to work as construction workers or lumberjacks in Russia’s far east.

Russia’s Federal Migration Service’s past treatment of North Korea refugees is not encouraging: Over the past decade, 200 North Koreans applied for Russian refugee status. Only two were successful.

[Gawker.com]

North Korean defector appeals to Russia for refugee status for 4th time

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Currently, Russia’s Federal Migration Service (or FMS) is reviewing a North Korean defector’s application for refugee status for the fourth and final time. The media calls him “Kim,” and he has lived in Russia since 2013.

Kim first crossed the river from North Korea to China when he was 17. It was 1997, there was a famine going on, and his boarding school had just closed down because it couldn’t feed its students. He lived illegally for eight years in China, until Chinese officials caught him trying to travel to Russia and quickly deported him back to North Korea. North Korean defectors don’t have a shot at asylum in China, where they are regarded as no more than economic migrants.

As punishment for crossing the border without authorization, Kim was sent to a prison camp “for re-education.” At these camps, fifty prisoners sleep in one room on a floor without bedding. Kim told Civic Assistance he worked 20 hours a day. (It could have been much worse at a camp for political prisoners.)

One day, when sent to work outside the camp, he and 30 others took a chance and ran away. Three men, Kim included, successfully hid in the home of an acquaintance. The rest were caught and shot. Again, Kim crossed over the river into China. Again, he lived day-to-day in hiding, this time only for five years. He managed to cross the frozen Amur River into the Russian border city of Blagoveshchensk. He ran into some Russian border guards and told them he wanted to request refugee status. They responded by arresting him.

[Gawker.com]

South Korea’s own sanctions against North Koreans

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South Korea said it will announce its own punitive steps against North Korea this week over its latest nuclear and missile tests, lending support to the latest United Nations Security Council (UNSC) sanctions.

The South Korean government is expected today to unveil a list of North Korean officials and institutions that will be barred from trading with South Korean companies and banks, sources say. South Korea will also freeze their assets here if there are any.

The North Korean figures and institutions subject to the South’s own sanctions are separate from the 16 individuals and 12 entities blacklisted by the U.N Security Council in the latest resolution.

South Korea will also ban the entry of ships from other nations if the vessels have visited North Korea, or if the vessels are suspected of originating from the repressive state but are flying other countries’ flags.

Meanwhile, speculation is growing that South Korea will scrap the so-called “Rajin-Hassan Project,” a logistics project involving North Korea and Russia. The project is aimed at importing Siberia-produced coal by transporting it by train between Russia’s border town of Rajin and North Korea’s port in Hassan and then loading the coal on to ships.

[The Korea Times]