Category: Kim Jong Un

Nearly half of North Koreans are going hungry due to food shortages

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Nearly half of North Koreans are going hungry due to food shortages, a damning UN report has warned. More than 70 per cent of citizens in the secretive nation rely on food aid while most lack even basic healthcare provision or sanitation, the report found.

The shocking report emerged as Kim Jong-Un outlined plans to ‘accelerate’ his nuclear and ballistic missile program amid heightened tensions with the South and the US.

The report suggests diarrhea and pneumonia are the top two causes of death among children under five. More than 10 million in are undernourished in the country of 25million people while the humanitarian situation has been worsened by ‘recurrent natural hazards’ including drought and floods, the report says.

Pyongyang is said to have restricted its rations of cereal and potatoes from 380g per person per day to 300g at one point in 2016. Government targets are said to be closer to 573g, according to the report.

Sweeping sanctions imposed in a bid to curtail the country’s nuclear ambitions are said to have affected attempts to improve the humanitarian picture.

A North Korean envoy recently told Reuters his country had nothing to fear from any U.S. move to broaden sanctions aimed at cutting it off from the global financial system and will pursue ‘acceleration’ of its nuclear and missile programs.

[Daily Mail]

Navy Seals and other Special-Ops part of American-Korean military drills

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The U.S. Navy’s Special Warfare Development Group, better known as the SEAL Team 6, will arrive in South Korea for joint military drills and take part in an exercise simulating a precision North Korean incurion and “the removal of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un”, according to the South Korean Ministry of National Defense.

The U.S. Navy SEAL Team Six will join the annual Foal Eagle and Key Resolve exercises between the two allies for the first time, along with the Army’s Rangers, Delta Force and Green Berets.

The counterterrorism unit is best known for its removal of Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in May 2011, known as Operation Neptune Spear. It will be the team’s first time participating in the annual Foal Eagle and Key Resolve exercises, which will run through late April.

The Japan Times reported that the SEAL Team 6 unit boarded the USS Carl Vinson, a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier, last Friday and are currently training in South Korean waters.

As Korea JoongAng Daily adds, also set to touch down in South Korea is Delta Force, a special mission unit of the U.S. Army whose main tasks include hostage rescue and counterterrorism, said the Defense Ministry. Together with SEAL Team 6, they will practice removing Kim Jong-un and destruction of North Korea’s weapons of mass destruction.

“It will send a very strong message to North Korea, which is constantly carrying out military provocations,” a ministry official said.

F-35 stealth fighters will also fly from U.S. Navy bases in Japan this month and carry out strike simulations on key North Korean facilities.

The beefing up of U.S. special operation forces in the drills comes after North Korean leader Kim said in a New Year’s speech that the country was in the “final stage” of test-firing an intercontinental ballistic missile, the first of its kind, and pushed through two separate missile tests earlier this year, the latest on March 6. North Korea claimed through its state-run media that the most recent drill was aimed at striking “the bases of the U.S. imperialist aggressor forces in Japan.”

Washington and Seoul stress that the annual military drills are purely defensive, although Pyongyang sees them as a rehearsal for an invasion.

Time for Trump to talk with North Korea?

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North Korea’s recent missile tests will put new pressure on the Trump administration to choose a strategy for dealing with this pesky proliferator.

The standard playbook is well known to those who have worked on the problem of North Korea: pressure China to pressure North Korea, toughen sanctions, reassure allies and push them to build missile defenses.  Mr. Trump can follow this well-worn path, but he will likely get the same result: failure.

Instead, Mr. Trump, simply by virtue of being the new president, has another option. He can talk to the North Koreans and negotiate. North Korean officials have said that they are willing to turn the page and start fresh with President Trump. If he is open, they would be open. Or so they say.

Kim Jong Un previously floated the idea that he would freeze some of its weapons tests, if the U.S. called off its joint military exercises with South Korea. More recently, Pyongyang suggested that it would normalize relations, if the U.S. withdrew its troops from the South. Both offers are complete and utter non-starters.

But here’s the thing: they are offers. Negotiations start with offers, and rarely does the first offer represent the final deal.

[From Fox News Opinion by Dr. Jim Walsh, Senior Research Associate at MIT’s Security Studies Program]

UN urged to bring North Korea before International Criminal Court

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A veteran investigator urged the United Nations to appoint an international legal expert to prepare judicial proceedings against North Korea’s leadership for documented crimes against humanity.

Marzuki Darusman, a former Indonesian attorney-general who served on the U.N. commission of inquiry on North Korea, said the U.N. Human Rights Council must pursue North Korean accountability during its current session. His call came amid an international furore over the murder of Kim Jong Nam, the estranged half-brother of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

A U.N. commission of inquiry, in a 2014 report issued after it conducted interviews and public hearings with defectors, recommended North Korea be brought before the International Criminal Court (ICC).The landmark 2014 report, rejected by Pyongyang, said North Korean leader Kim Jong Un might be personally responsible for crimes against humanity.

“If North Korea is able to do this to the older brother of Kim, to the uncle of Kim (Jang Song Thaek executed in 2013), and all the elite purging left and right, can you imagine what life might be like if you are a prisoner in a North Korean prison camp, with over 100,000 of them?” Lee Jung-Hoon, South Korean ambassador for North Korean human rights, said.

Evidence recorded over the past decade or more by U.N. investigators should be given to a new U.N. mechanism for prosecution, Darusman said, adding: “Let us prevail in the end-game.”

[Reuters]

Diplomat defector compares North Korea’s Kim Jong Un to Roman emperor Nero

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The senior North Korea diplomat who defected to the South from Pyongyang’s embassy in London described Kim Jong Un as a “21st century Nero” in a recent interview.

In an interview with South Korean newspaper Kukmin Ilbo, Thae Yong-ho said Kim Jong Un is a despot who cannot tolerate those who disagree with him.

Thae then provided an anecdote about Pyongyang Folklore Park, which he ordered destroyed after assassinating his uncle Jang Sung Taek, who managed the park.

“After [Kim Jong Un] killed Jang Song Taek, he said he kept seeing Jang’s face each time he passed the areas surrounding the folklore park and recruited military units to have the park destroyed.”

Thae compared Kim Jong Un to the Roman emperor Nero, who according to historical records began a fire in Rome to make room for a new palatial complex.

Thae said Kim Jong Un lacks trust in others and his existence was completely unknown to most North Koreans until 2009. The former diplomat also said Kim is not well rooted in North Korean society because he grew up in Switzerland, a background that amplifies his distrust of people in the regime, according to the report.

[UPI]

Malaysia expels North Korean ambassador over Kim Jong-nam killing

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Malaysia says it has expelled the North Korean ambassador over the death of Kim Jong-nam, the half-brother of the North Korea’s leader. Kang Chol must leave Malaysia within 48 hours, the foreign ministry says.

The move comes after the envoy said his country “could not trust” Malaysia’s handling of the investigation. Mr Kang, who has become a fierce critic of his host country, said the probe into the killing had become “politicised” and was being interfered with.

Malaysia has not directly blamed North Korea for the attack, but there is suspicion Pyongyang was responsible.

The Malaysian Foreign Minister, Anifah Aman, declared the ambassador “persona non grata”, and said his country had demanded an apology for the comments, but none was forthcoming. “Malaysia will react strongly against any insults made against it or any attempt to tarnish its reputation,” Mr Anifah said in a statement.

The decision also follows reports suggesting that North Korean intelligence agencies used shell companies in Malaysia to cover an illicit arms sales operation.

Malaysia was one of very few countries that had relatively friendly relations with North Korea. It had already recalled its ambassador in Pyongyang as it investigated the case.

[BBC]

South Korean Intelligence concludes North Korean government killed Kim Jong Nam

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South Korean intelligence officials announced that officials from North Korea’s secret police and Foreign Ministry were involved in the killing of the estranged half brother of the country’s leader.

Speaking in a closed-door parliamentary hearing, Lee Byung-ho, the director of the National Intelligence Service, said that four of the eight North Koreans identified as suspects by the Malaysian authorities were agents from North Korea’s Ministry of State Security, the country’s secret police.

Mr. Lee said that two other suspects worked for the North Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and another was affiliated with Air Koryo, the North’s state-run airline company.

Mr. Lee, the South Korean intelligence chief, was quoted by the lawmakers as saying that the eight North Koreans, working as two four-member teams, converged in Kuala Lumpur to carry out the Feb. 13 assassination. Malaysian authorities have said that the North Koreans had hired and trained two women, one from Indonesia, the other from Vietnam, to attack Kim Jong Nam at Kuala Lumpur International Airport.

Hyon Kwang-song, a senior diplomat at the North Korean Embassy in Kuala Lumpur, and three other North Koreans worked as a support team, Mr. Lee told the lawmakers. Mr. Hyon and the Air Koryo employee, Kim Uk-il, remain at the embassy in Malaysia.

[New York Times]

North Korea defectors fear for their lives after Kim Jong Nam assassination

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North Korea defectors who now live in South Korea are being warned against traveling overseas after the assassination of Kim Jong Nam, the older half-brother of ruler Kim Jong Un.

Kim Jong Nam may have been killed on the orders of the North Korean leadership, and many defectors believe they could be next.

That’s according to Ahn Chan-il, a North Korea defector and president of the World Institute for North Korea Studies, who fled the regime in 1979 – and became the first North Korea refugee to earn a doctorate in the South.

Kang Chol-hwan, another prominent defector-activist who grew up in a North Korea prison camp and later wrote a memoir of his experiences, was originally scheduled to speak at a conference in the Philippines. But in the wake of the deadly chemical attack against Kim Jong Nam in nearby Malaysia, The Aquariums of Pyongyang author was advised to stay in Seoul, Ahn said.

[UPI]

Background on Trump administration nixing informal talks with North Korea

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Back-channel talks between a North Korean delegation and a team of former US officials were to be held in New York. US experts and a six-member team of North Koreans led by Choe Son-hui, the director of the American affairs bureau of the country’s foreign ministry, were scheduled to meet in early March.

Donald Zagoria, the head of the National Committee on American Foreign Policy, an advocacy group that was organizing the talks, emailed participants last Friday morning to say next week’s meeting would proceed as scheduled after receiving assurances that the visas would be granted, the two participants said.

But hours later, Zagoria sent a follow-up email to the group saying the visas were not approved and the talks were off.

The last-minute withdrawal of the approval of the visas came hours after the Malaysian government announced that VX nerve agent was used to assassinate Kim Jong-nam, the estranged brother of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. The extremely toxic chemical is classified as a weapon of mass destruction by the United Nations.

In canceling the talks, top Trump administration officials seem to have overruled State Department officials, who supported the talks, one of the people who planned to attend said.

Kim’s death came on the heels of North Korea’s ballistic missile test on February 11, which coincided with Japanese Prime Shinzo Abe’s visit with President Donald Trump. Abe was dining with the President at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, when the launch took place.

Informal “track 2” talks allow policymakers and experts to exchange views outside the more constrained atmosphere of formal negotiations. North Korean and US experts have met in such settings in recent years in Berlin and Malaysia.

The last meeting in the US was in 2012, when a delegation from Pyongyang attended a closed-door conference in New York. The leader of the North Korean delegation, Ri Yong Ho, who at the time was the country’s representative to the “six-party talks”, is now North Korea’s foreign minister.

“It would have signaled a new start and suggest the Trump administration was more open to discussion,” one of the participants said. “In that sense there could have been a little movement.

Additionally, had the informal talks gone forward, North Korea might have tempered its usually bellicose reaction to the annual joint military drills between the US and South Korea set to begin next month, the sources said.

[CNN]

Trump administration meeting with North Korean diplomat canceled

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Plans for the first contact between North Korea and the United States after President Donald Trump took office were canceled after the US State Department denied a visa for the top envoy from Pyongyang, The Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday.

The talks, between senior North Korean foreign ministry envoy Choe Son Hui and former US officials, were scheduled to take place on 1 and 2 March in New York but were called off.

It was not clear what led the State Department to deny the visa but North Korea’s test-firing of a ballistic missile on 12 February and the murder of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s half brother in Malaysia may have played a role, the report said. South Korean and US  officials have said they believe North Korean agents assassinated Kim Jong-nam, the estranged half brother of Kim Jong-un, on 13 February.

The meeting in New York would have been the first time a senior North Korean envoy would visit the United States since 2011 and the first contact between US and North Korean representatives since Trump took office.

Choe, director general for North American affairs at the North’s foreign ministry, has previously met former US officials and academics, the last time in November in Geneva for informal discussions.

[The Independent]