Category: DPRK Government

The North Korean nuclear question

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North Korea says it may still go ahead and test a new kind of nuclear device following U.S. President Barack Obama’s visit to Seoul, but is keeping analysts guessing as to when that test might take place.

It is notoriously difficult to divine the intentions of North Korea’s isolated regime, particularly on nuclear tests when most crucial activity happens underground. Commercial satellite imagery is relatively infrequent and provides only a snapshot of what’s happening.

According to the newest images that have been released to the public, activity continues near tunnel entrances at the northeastern mountain testing site of Punggye-ri, where North Korea has conducted three nuclear tests since 2006, the latest in February 2013.

Experts believe the country has developed a handful of crude nuclear devices and is working toward building a warhead small enough to mount on a long-range missile, although most experts say that goal may take years to achieve.

Regarding what Pyongyang might mean by “a new kind of test”, Lim Eul Chul, a North Korea expert at South Korea’s Kyungnam University, said it could simultaneously conduct two nuclear blasts in two underground tunnels to show off its capability.

Another possibility: North Korea might try to detonate miniaturized forms of either plutonium- or uranium-based bombs, said nuclear expert Whang Joo-ho of Kyung Hee University in South Korea.

Lim at Kyungnam University said North Korea won’t likely face tougher U.N. sanctions even if it conducts a fourth nuclear test because of strained ties between the U.S. and Russia, both veto-wielding members of the U.N. Security Council, over the Ukraine issue. He added that China, also embroiled in disputes with the U.S. over Japan, won’t support tougher sanctions on North Korea, though it might agree on some form of punishment.

[AP]

American intelligence admits it has no idea what Kim Jong-un is doing

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Almost all of the conventional wisdom from American intelligence agencies about North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has been wrong, Peter Sanger of The New York Times reports.

When Kim became supreme leader two years ago, U.S. intel thought his China-allied uncle would guide his transition to power. In December, Kim had his uncle and some of his allies executed.

The U.S. thought Kim would focus on an economic overhaul of the meager economy instead of further development of military programs. Instead, Kim has chosen to continue testing ballistic missiles, working toward an intercontinental missile that could threaten the U.S., in addition to promoting the North’s nuclear program, special operations forces, and long-range artillery.

As former State Department North Korea specialist Evans J. R. Revere told The Times: “We have failed. For two decades our policy has been to keep the North Koreans from developing nuclear weapons. It’s now clear there is no way they will give them up, no matter what sanctions we impose, no matter what we offer. So now what?”

Basically, the Hermit Kingdom has defied American expectations, and now the U.S. doesn’t know what to do about it.

Further, American spies are in the dark. The Washington Post, citing the leaked “black budget” of the U.S. intelligence community, reported last year that “there are five ‘critical’ gaps in U.S. intelligence about Pyongyang’s nuclear and missile programs, and analysts know virtually nothing about the intentions of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.”

[Stamford Advocate]

8 ways Kim Jong-Un has blindsided the US

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When Kim Jong-un took power in December 2011, many experts saw his ascent as an opportunity for the West to transform the last bastion of hard-line communism, believing that the untested leader would shy away from confrontation with the U.S. and even South Korea.

Instead, North Korea’s leader has “proved to be more ruthless, aggressive and tactically skilled than anyone expected,” Peter Sanger of The New York Times reports. Here are a few things North Korea’s supreme leader has done in the past 18 months to surprise and unnerve the U.S.:
1. The U.S. expected Kim to ease up on obtaining a nuke, but North Korea conducted a third nuclear test in February 2013. Kim is expanding the production of highly enriched uranium to get a more plentiful supply of nuclear fuel, and recently threatened to conduct “a new form of nuclear test.”
2. When the world thought that any North Korean rocket launch would be a farce, the North launched a rocket 1,600 miles in December 2012. The event is suspected of being a test for long-range ballistic missiles.
3. In April 2013, the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency said it believed the North had learned how to make a “low-reliability” nuclear weapon small enough to be delivered by a ballistic missile.
4. “Defense officials say they now have less warning time on missile launches than they had two or three years ago because Mr. Kim has put his resources into mobile launchers that are regularly moved from tunnel to tunnel, making them harder for American satellites to track.” – New York Times
5. President Obama had been told that Kim’s uncle Jang Song-thaek would keep Kim in check, but Kim executed Jang, who was seen as an experienced diplomat with close ties to China.
6. While many waited for the North’s economy to collapse under sanctions, Kim has developed an underground illicit economy.
7. China, the world’s second-largest economy, has Kim’s back: Beijing recently rejected a damning report about horrific human-rights abuses by Kim’s regime, provides it with military hardware, and reportedly holds a trust fund for the young leader in Chinese banks.
8. Despite bans on military hardware, North Korea probably has drones to spy on South Korea, and the technology will get only better.

[Business Insider]

North Korea announces it has American in custody

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On the day that U.S. President Barack Obama visited South Korea — a trip that North Korea’s foreign ministry condemned as being “aimed to escalate confrontation and bring dark clouds of a nuclear arms race” — the reclusive country announced it is holding an American man who it claims arrived in the country this month to seek asylum.

KCNA identified the man as 24-year-old Miller Matthew Todd, who it says was taken into custody on April 10.

The man, according to KCNA, entered the country on a tourist visa. He tore his tourist visa and shouted that “he would seek asylum” and “came to the DPRK (North Korea) after choosing it as a shelter,” KCNA said.

The United States is aware of the report and has been in touch with Sweden — which represents American interests in North Korea — about it, State Department press secretary Jen Psaki said Friday.

[CNN]

Obama hints at new sanctions for North Korea

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In a display of unity against North Korea’s provocations, President Barack Obama and South Korean President Park Geun-hye warned Pyongyang on Friday that it could face tougher sanctions if it follows through with threats to launch a fourth nuclear test.

Striking an even harsher tone than Obama, Park also suggested any test would trigger an undesirable nuclear arms race in the region and render further nuclear negotiations pointless.

North Korea will get “nothing except further isolation” if it proceeds with its test, Obama said at a joint news conference in Seoul. But he also acknowledged there are limits to what effects additional penalties can have on the country.

“North Korea already is the most isolated country in the world, by far,” Obama said. “Its people suffer terribly because of the decisions its leaders have made. And we are not going to find a magic bullet that solves this problem overnight.”

Still, he said, it’s important to look at new ways to pressure North Korea, including applying sanctions that have “even more bite.”

In 2009, North Korea walked away from six-party talks with the U.S., South Korea, Japan, Russia and China that offered financial incentives in exchange for denuclearization.

The White House said it was keeping close tabs on activity at North Korea’s nuclear test site. The website 38 North, which closely monitors North Korea, said commercial satellite imagery from Wednesday showed increased movement of vehicles and materials near what are believed to be entrances to two completed tunnels at the Punggye-ri nuclear test site in what could be advanced preparations for an underground atomic explosion. But predicting such tests is notoriously difficult; the most crucial activity happens underground, out of aerial view.

[AP]

Powerful aunt of Kim Jong-un disappears from official footage

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The aunt of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has mysteriously disappeared from a re-run of a propaganda film, leading to speculation that she has been purged – or even executed.

Kim Kyong Hui

Chosun Ilbo newspaper reported that while the original screening featuring Ms Kim (as shown circled above), a re-run shown on Tuesday depicts a scene in which only Kim Jong-un, his wife, and male military officials are visible.

Kim Kyong-hui, 67, is the widow of Jang Song-taek who was recently executed. It was believed she would always remain ‘safe’ under her nephew’s brutal regime, leading analysts to say that her disappearance from the documentary is ominous. Ms Kim’s safety from purging or execution had always been assumed because she is the daughter of North Korean founder Kim Il-sun and the sister of the late leader, Kim Jong-il. Despite all this, Ms Kim is still associated with a husband who was publicly denounced as a traitor and executed in December.

Until January this year, Ms Kim was frequently seen at the side of her nephew and his wife at public events. In the footage in question, which aired in January, she was seen walking with the leader and his wife towards the Kumsusan Palace of the Sun in the capital, Pyongyang, to pay tribute to the embalmed bodies of former leaders Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il.

The apparent ‘disappearance’ of Kim Kyong-hui has led to speculation that her place in high positions in the Workers’ Party has been taken by Kim Jong-un’s younger sister, Yo-jong.

Call for North Korean sanctions

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Former High Court justice Michael Kirby, the head of a special UN inquiry into North Korea, told an informal meeting of the UN Security Council convened by Australia, France and the US that should slap targeted sanctions on North Korean officials responsible for grave human rights abuses.

Kirby also wanted the reclusive regime hauled before the International Criminal Court for prosecution. ”More monitoring and engagement alone cannot suffice in the face of crimes that shock the conscience of humanity,” he said. ”Perpetrators must be held accountable.”

North Korea did not send a representative and the meeting was snubbed by China and Russia.

[The Age]

The lack of a North Korean sense of humor

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London barber poster Kim Jong Un haircutThe row between a London hairdresser and the state of North Korea looked set to escalate after the UK Foreign Office confirmed it had been contacted by embassy officials. Diplomats from North Korea had already complained to police and to the shop’s manager about what they describe as a “disrespectful” poster showing leader Kim Jong-un with the words “bad hair day?”.

The Foreign Office said today that it had received a letter from the embassy on Monday, as the promotional poster looked set to spark the unlikeliest of diplomatic rows. Mo Nabbach’s M&M Hair Academy in South Ealing was paid an unexpected visit by two men from the North Korean embassy who started taking pictures and making notes. Mr Nabbach said the men came back later and asked to speak to the manager before ordering him to take the poster down.

Enfield Southgate Conservative MP David Burrowes, who also sits on the all-party parliamentary group on North Korea, criticized the embassy’s stance. “On the one hand their response is laughable,” he said. “But underlying is a more sinister undertone which is played out in North Korea with people being locked up, killed and denied freedoms.”

Mr Nabbach said the two men from the embassy had been “wearing suits and they were very serious”. “It was very threatening,” he added.

Barber Karim Nabbach, 26, yesterday said that staff at the salon did not realize the North Korean embassy was a 10-minute walk away when they put the poster up. He added, “We always put up little offers in the window, it’s harmless. We were just making light of a bad situation in North Korea.”

[The Independent]

Reining in North Korea a ‘mission impossible’ for China?

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Washington has been leaning on Beijing to take a larger role in reining in the reclusive regime of North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un.

Beijing’s ambassador Cui Tiankai said the United States is giving China a ”mission impossible” by insisting it exert pressure on neighboring North Korea to halt its nuclear program or face US consequences.

“There is one thing that worries me a little bit, and even more than a little bit, is that we’re very often told that China has such an influence over DPRK and we should force the DPRK to do this or that,” Cui Tiankai told a Washington think-tank. “Otherwise the United States would have to do something that would hurt China’s security interests. You see you are giving us a mission impossible.”

Tiankai, who has been China’s envoy to Washington since April 2013, said he did not “think this was very fair, I don’t think this is a constructive way of working with each other.”

Cui told an audience at the United States Institute of Peace that Beijing was very worried by the threat of nuclear arms on the Korean peninsula and the risk of another war, armed conflict or chaos. Tensions have been rising on the peninsula following a series of threats by Pyongyang in protest at ongoing Seoul-Washington military drills. North Korea has staged a series of rocket and short-range missile tests since last month, as well as its first mid-range missile launch since 2009. The two Koreas traded fire across their tense Yellow Sea border last week, with the shells landing in the sea.

“The peninsula is just at our doorstep, any chaos, any armed conflict there will certainly have cross-border effects on China,” Cui said. “But this problem cannot be solved by China alone. We need cooperation among the relevant parties.”

[South China Morning Post]

U.S. envoy calls for break in North Korean information control

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Robert King, the special U.S. envoy on North Korean human rights, has called for more efforts to bring the people of North Korea in contact with the wider world by weakening the regime’s information blockade.

In a lecture at Ewha Womans University in Seoul, King said, “We must work to break down North Korea’s government monopoly on the control of information and work together to increase North Koreans’ exposure to ideas, conditions and reality of the world beyond the borders of North Korea.”

Only some 15,000 people are allowed access to the Internet and need to obtain permission to visit different websites.

King cited a survey among North Korean defectors in South Korea and abroad, which revealed that 34 percent of people in North Korea regularly listen to foreign radio broadcasts.

He said he heard that a busy and rowdy restaurant in Pyongyang suddenly went silent when news of the execution of Jang Song-thaek came. With so much fear instilled in their minds, North Koreans are very “cautious about rising up and doing something” about their human right situations, he added.

[Chosun Ilbo]