Author Archives for Grant Montgomery

US calls proposed sanctions on North Korea a major upgrade

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The United States on Thursday introduced a draft U.N. Security Council resolution that it said will significantly increase pressure on North Korea in response to its latest nuclear test and rocket launch.

US Ambassador Samantha Power said the draft, which for the first time would subject cargo ships leaving and entering North Korea to mandatory inspections, goes farther than previous sanctions and is meant to ensure North Korea will be held accountable for its actions.

The draft is the result of an agreement between the United States and China, North Korea’s main ally and Beijing’s involvement signals a policy shift with regard to its often erratic neighbor. The council is expected to vote on it over the weekend.

China’s Ambassador Liu Jieyi said China was working very closely with other members of the Security Council and that he hoped the resolution “would achieve the objective of denuclearization” and result in “peace and stability.”

Ambassador Power said the sanctions would also prohibit the sale of small arms and other conventional weapons to North Korea, closing a loophole in earlier resolutions. Sanctions would also limit and in some cases ban exports of coal, iron gold titanium and rare earth minerals from North Korea and would prohibit countries from supplying aviation fuel, including rocket fuel to the country. In addition, the resolution imposes financial sanctions targeting North Korean banks and assets and bans all dual use nuclear and missile related items. Items such as luxury watches, snowmobiles, recreational water vehicles and lead crystal were also added to a long list of luxury goods that North Korea is not allowed to import.

Jeong Joon-Hee, a spokesman of Seoul’s Unification Ministry, said the measures included in the draft would significantly hurt the North’s foreign currency income because it’s estimated that minerals account for nearly 40 percent the country’s exports. South Korea and Japan have also announced new measures against Pyongyang.

[AP]

Draft agreement by US and China on UN Resolution on North Korea

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The U.S. and China reached an agreement over a new United Nations Security Council resolution that would punish North Korea for its recent rocket launch and nuclear test, according to diplomats from two Security Council member countries.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry met in Washington and said they were making “significant” progress on new sanctions, without giving details.

China’s participation is essential as it is North Korea’s biggest trading partner, providing most of the isolated country’s energy and food. Any draft resolution would have to be voted on in the Security Council, where the U.S., Russia, China, France and the U.K. wield veto power.

That vote could be taken this week, according to one of the diplomats, who asked not to be identified because he isn’t authorized to discuss the issue publicly.

Reuters cited unnamed diplomats as saying the U.S. is seeking Chinese support to curb North Korea’s access to international ports, and to tighten restrictions on North Korean bank routes to the international financial system.

[Bloomberg]

As tensions grow on North Korean border, US to fund defector groups

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UPI is reporting that a number of representatives of North Korean defector groups operating out of South Korea believe they will soon receive financial support from the State Department.

While UPI does not identify the individual organizations, it claims that representatives of these groups met with State Department officials in January and were told the White House was willing to “commit significant funds to defector organizations that can work toward internal regime change in the North.”

Among the programs that may be funded are airdrop operations using balloons, which provide information on the outside world to North Korea, as well as groups within the country that try to identify potential dissident leaders.

Pro-democracy groups have been working near the North Korean border for years, attempting to break the information wall set up by the Kim regime to block out the reality of the outside world.

[Read full article at Breitbart]

US general says conflict with North Korea would be akin to World War II

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The commander of American forces in South Korea, Gen. Curtis Scaparrrotti, warned the House Armed Services Committee on Wednesday that a conflict with North Korea could resemble the scale of World War II.

Describing what the confrontation might look like, Scaparrrotti said, “Given the size of the forces and the weaponry involved, this would be more akin to the Korean War and World War II — very complex, probably high casualty.”

The U.S. military suffered 405,399 fatalities in World War II and 36,574 during the Korean War of 1950-1953. Korean casualties were in the millions.

Scaparrotti also said that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un would use a weapon of mass destruction if he thought the fate of his rule was at stake. He said that tensions on the Korean Peninsula were at their highest level in more than 20 years.

The North Korean military warned the U.S. and South Korea Tuesday to expect retaliations for their annual joint military drill in March.

[CNN]

Seoul spy agency says North Korea plotting terror attack

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South Korea said Thursday North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has ordered greater preparations for terror attacks on the South, including cyberattacks.

According to an official from South Korea’s Ministry of National Defense, F-22s were brought to the country to demonstrate South Korea’s force and to warn North Korea.
The U.S. and South Korea on Wednesday intensified its pressure on North Korea by deploying stealth bombers and prohibiting civilian exchanges in response to the recent nuclear test from the regime of Kim Jong-un.

The US will send 15,000 soldiers, up from 3,700 a year ago, and South Korea will also increase its number of participants.

Seoul says the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, or THAAD, system would be meant to destroy North Korean missiles targeting the South.

The reported threat comes amid worldwide tensions over North Korea’s February 7 rocket launch. Since August 2010, Pyongyang has broadcast strong radio signals to the South three times, disrupting Global Positioning System signals in Seoul and other regions and causing mobile phones and other electronic equipment to temporarily malfunction.

[utcecho.com]

North Korea offered — then rebuffed — talks with US

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North Korea quietly reached out to U.S. officials through the United Nations in New York last fall to propose formal peace talks on ending the Korean War, a response to President Barack Obama’s comments that the U.S. was willing to engage Pyongyang as it has with other rogue regimes, senior U.S. officials told CNN.

That effort fell short, the officials said, with the North Koreans refusing to include their nuclear program in any negotiations as the U.S. required and soon after testing a nuclear weapon.

But it represented a new step from the Obama administration as it tried to lure the hermetic country out of its isolation and extend its track record of successful negotiations with nations long at odds with the United States, such as Iran and Cuba.

The U.S. told North Korea it was willing to discuss a formal peace to replace the 63-year-old armistice that ended hostilities after the Korean War, but only if efforts to curb Pyongyang’s nuclear program were part of the discussions.In doing so, the administration dropped a longstanding demand that North Korea take steps toward “denuclearization” before talks on a formal peace treaty began. Still, the North Koreans refused to allow the nuclear issue to be part of any talks.

[CNN]    

Chinese banks freeze North Korean accounts

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Chinese banks including a branch of China’s biggest bank Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) have frozen accounts belonging to North Koreans, a South Korean newspaper reported on Monday.

Citing phone conversations with an unnamed employee of ICBC’s office in the northeastern Chinese border city of Dandong, the Dong-A Ilbo reported that since late December it had suspended all deposits and transfers of foreign currencies in and out of accounts with North Korean names. “[The bank] had never told me why it was taking such measures, but it seems that they are related with the strained relations between North Korea and China,” the ICBC employee told the Dong-A Ilbo.

Washington and Seoul are seeking support from Beijing, Pyongyang’s main ally, for tougher sanctions against North Korea for its Feb. 7 rocket launch and January nuclear test.

After the rocket launch, another bank in northeast China, had also blocked transactions to North Koreans’ accounts, according to the Dong-A Ilbo report, which cited a Chinese businessman who has invested in North Korean mines.

Dandong is home to many ethnic Korean Chinese traders who deal with both North and South Korean businessmen. It is also home to South Korean and western Christian missionaries trying to operate in North Korea.

[Reuters]

How North Korea relies on China to funnel cash into the country

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To inject life into an economy made moribund by the fall of the Iron Curtain, failed centralized policies and sanctions, Kim Jong Un needs foreign currency to pay for equipment from abroad, such as the recent purchase of Russian jets to upgrade the national airline.

For decades North Korea has built networks of front companies and foreign intermediaries to channel currency in and out, circumventing attempts to isolate it over its nuclear-weapons program. Court documents and interviews with investigators, banks and prosecutors show the cornerstone of those networks is China. “China is a very important piece in making sure that blockages work,” said William Newcomb, a former member of a panel of experts assisting the United Nations’ North Korea sanctions committee.

North Korea relies on China, its biggest trading partner, for food, arms and energy. The countries describe their ties as “friendship forged by blood” during the 1950-1953 Korean War where the U.S. was a common foe. China has criticized North Korea for provocative actions but historically opposed harsh sanctions that might precipitate a regime collapse and a flood of refugees across its 870-mile (1,400 kilometer) shared border.

About 70 percent to 80 percent of North Korea’s foreign earnings have in the past come via China, said Kim Kwang Jin, who ran the Singapore branch of North Korea’s North East Asia Bank before defecting in 2003. “That huge trade volume means there are more people in China who are willing to cooperate with the regime,” Kim said by phone from Seoul.

But China is no longer turning a blind eye to illicit North Korean activities, according to Richard Nephew, a former principal deputy coordinator for sanctions policy at the State Department until last year. “In the last 10-15 years, they actually really do care about trying to prevent some of these bad acts.”

David Asher, a former George W. Bush administration official who was involved in freezing North Korean assets at Banco Delta Asia, said sanctions can only be effective when China is coerced into cooperating. “The only way to cut off North Korea’s illicit cash flow is by interdicting these intermediaries,” said Asher, now an adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security. “That requires the cooperation of China, the biggest domicile for this type of integrated, clandestine, business-to-business relationship with North Korea.”

[Bloomberg]

South Korea and the power of words

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Consider how many verbal red lines South Korea’s president stomped across Tuesday when she let fly against North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

She warned, in the bluntest possible way, of the authoritarian North’s worst nightmare–“regime collapse.” She invoked the North Korean leader’s “extreme reign of terror.” Extraordinarily, President Park Geun-hye even used Kim’s name three times in her speech to parliament, something usually avoided at her level.

These words signal a tough new stance from South Korea in an already anxious standoff that began with North Korea’s nuclear test last month.

To make the combination of jabs sting even more, Park’s comments came on the birthday of Kim’s late dictator father, Kim Jong Il, a revered national holiday in the North. Happy birthday, Kim family.

The brusque tone of Park’s comments directly challenge the powerful, ubiquitous North Korean propaganda machine’s portrayal of the dictators who have run the country since its founding in 1948 as infallible and able to stand up to the vicious enemies that surround the tiny, proud North.

Any high-level talk of regime collapse by the conservative president of rival South Korea–and by the daughter of one of the North’s most hated enemies, late South Korean dictator Park Chung-hee–amounts to fighting words.

As always, the animosity, both between the Koreas and within divided South Korea, also points to a bitter truth at the heart of the divided peninsula. Both authoritarian Pyongyang and democratic Seoul cherish the notion of eventual reunification; each, however, sees that new single Korea with its own government in charge.

[AP]

Former North Korean Army officer tells of his dramatic escape – Part 1

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Forced to witness public executions and beaten for 15 days after his first escape attempt, a former North Korean soldier speaks to Sky News about the horrors of life under Kim Jong-Un. After more than two decades serving in North Korea’s military, he escaped from the country last year.

I asked him about the TV pictures we see from Pyongyang – the vast celebrations, the resounding applause for the country’s leader. “When people are clapping,” he says, “if you don’t clap, if you nod off, you’re marked as not following Kim Jong-Un’s doctrine. …You chant ‘Long Live’ and clap because you don’t want to die.”

For all of the very public displays of ‎devotion, he says the reality is a brutal dictatorship.‎ He describes public executions, and a regime that demands total loyalty. “In our unit, when I was a lieutenant, we saw one of our own soldiers executed by gunfire. Public executions … I have seen a lot of public executions.”

Under Mr Kim, he says, people are more afraid‎. “In North Korea, if you watch South Korean dramas, then they can take you away, in extreme cases you can be executed. They watch it themselves first, and if it’s ‎fun, they keep it.”   Read more