Category: Kim Jong Un

After elite defections, Kim Jong Un orders executions

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Thae Yong Ho, the senior North Korean diplomat who defected from his embassy in London, was a member of North Korea’s hallowed elite.

Thae’s father was an anti-Japanese guerrilla who fought alongside North Korea founder Kim Il Sung, according to South Korean news service Edaily.

Thae’s older brother Thae Hyong Chol is a member of the Korean Workers’ Party Central Committee and president of the country’s prestigious Kim Il Sung University, according to the report.

So Kim Jong Un has reportedly ordered the elimination — possibly by execution — of agents that fail to stop high-profile elite North Koreans from defecting. A source on North Korea told Yonhap the North Korean leader had ordered security agents to “immediately remove the causal factors for escaped and missing persons,” adding, “those not meeting their target will be promptly eliminated.”

[UPI]

Kim Jong Un: The US “operational theater in the Pacific” within North Korea’s “striking range”

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North Korean leader Kim Jong Un considers Wednesday’s test firing of a submarine-based ballistic missile the “greatest success and victory,” the country’s state-run news agency reported.

“He (Kim Jong Un) noted with pride that the results of the test-fire proved in actuality that the DPRK joined the front rank of the military powers fully equipped with nuclear attack capability,” the Korean Central News Agency said Thursday.

North Korea’s launch took place in the waters off Sinpo, South Hamgyong Province.  Amid the annual joint military exercise between the United States and South Korea, which kicked off on Monday, KNCA quoted Kim as saying the US mainland and its “operational theater in the Pacific” are now within North Korea’s “striking range.”

He warned the US and South Korea to refrain from “hurting the dignity and security of North Korea” if it wants to avoid deadly strikes.

The South Korean military said earlier that North Korea fired a missile that flew 500 kilometers before falling into the waters of Sea of Japan, also known as the East Sea. This was the first time a North Korean missile entered Japan’s air defense identification zone, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said.

[CNN]

Possible North Korean reaction to recent diplomatic defection

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On Sunday, South Korea said its neighbor North Korea could resort to assassinations and kidnappings in revenge for recent defections.

An official from South Korea’s Unification Ministry said the defection of North Korea’s deputy ambassador in London was helping put the North in “a very difficult situation”.

“Considering [North Korean leader] Kim Jong-Un’s character, it is very dangerous,” said the unidentified official.

“It is highly likely that North Korea will make various attempts to prevent further defections and unrest among its people.”

[Sky News]

North Korea calls UK-based defector ‘human scum’

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Predictably, North Korea has branded their former UK-based diplomat who defected to South Korea as “human scum”.

Without listing his name, the North’s Korean Central News Agency said the envoy had been accused of leaking secrets, embezzlement and child rape. It said the UK had been told in June and had been asked for his return but instead handed him to South Korea.

In a commentary, the KCNA said “[the fugitive] should have received legal punishment for the crimes he committed, but he discarded the fatherland that raised him and even his own parents and brothers by fleeing, thinking nothing but just saving himself, showing himself to be human scum who lacks even an elementary level of loyalty and even tiny bits of conscience and morality that are required for human beings”.

In the past, Mr Thae had argued the British were brainwashed by their ruling class into believing “shocking, terrifying” lies about North Korea under its leader Kim Jong-un.

[BBC]

North Korean diplomat defector now in South Korea

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A senior North Korean diplomat based in London has defected to South Korea, becoming one of the highest Northern officials to do so, South Korea said Wednesday.

Thae Yong Ho, minister at the North Korean Embassy in London, has arrived in South Korea with his family and is under the protection of the South Korean government, Seoul’s Unification Ministry said. Ministry spokesman Jeong Joon-Hee said Thae told South Korean officials that he decided to defect because of his disgust with the government of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, his yearning for South Korean democracy and worries about the future of his children.

Jeong said Thae was the second-highest official in North Korea’s embassy, and is the most senior North Korean diplomat to defect to South Korea. (In 1997, the North Korean ambassador to Egypt fled but resettled in the United States.) The highest-level North Korean to seek asylum in South Korea is Hwang Jang-yop, a senior ruling Workers’ Party official who once tutored Kim Jong Un’s late father, dictator Kim Jong Il. Hwang died in 2010.

Ramon Pacheco Pardo, senior lecturer in international relations at King’s College London, said this diplomatic defection “could prove very valuable to South Korea, the U.S. and other countries. … Most North Korean defectors have limited access to the inner workings of the North Korean regime,” he said. “The defection of a diplomat would allow intelligence services and military forces in other countries to learn more about the level of support that Kim Jong Un enjoys, recent developments in North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs or the extent to which real economic reforms are being implemented.”

Thae, 55, is a veteran diplomat who is experienced in dealing with countries in Western Europe. He led a North Korean delegation that held talks with European Union representatives over the North’s human rights situation in Brussels in 2001, according to South Korea’s Yonhap news agency. He had worked at the North Korean Embassy in London for about 10 years.

[Associated Press]

Kim Jong Un seeking to strengthen ties with Russia

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North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has sent Russian President Vladimir Putin a friendly message expressing his desire for greater relations between the two countries.

Historically, Moscow was a strong backer of the North Korean regime during Soviet times and, after a drop in ties since the Soviet collapse, Putin has moved Russia to stronger dialogue with the North Korean leadership. Russia invited Kim to a May parade in Moscow in 2015, although he did not attend.

Kim, however, appears keen to upgrade relations with the Kremlin, sending Putin a message with “friendly greetings” for North Korea’s anniversary of the allied defeat of Japan in Korea during the closing months of World War II, Pyonyang’s state news agency KCNA reported Monday.

“I express belief that the relations of friendship and cooperation between the DPRK (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea) and Russia forged in the hard struggle against the common enemy would invariably develop in line with the aspiration and desire of the peoples of the two countries,” Kim wrote, using Pyonyang’s official name for North Korea.

Although the Kremlin has not confirmed the exchange, KCNA also posted an apparent response from Putin to Kim, wishing the Korean leader good health, success and expressing the hope of mutual prosperity.

[Newsweek]

Despite international sanctions, North Korea keeps food and fuel prices stable

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The prices of food staples and fuel are reported to have remained steady in North Korea despite coming under international pressure over Kim Jong-un’s nuclear and missile programs.

A rare set of data from the country shows that so far the UN-mandated sanctions have not hurt its ordinary people as both the prices and currency have been stable. This is seen as a contrast to the economic situation under his father Kim Jong II’s leadership.

The stability is attributed to the younger Kim’s decision to introduce a booming system of jangmadang, which translates to North Korean markets that are semi-legal but regulated. The system permits wholesalers and retailers to buy and sell imported and privately-produced goods. The number of stalls in the jangmadang has reportedly grown by hundreds, according to defectors who work for Daily NK.

“Since Kim Jong-un came to power, there has been no control or crackdown on the jangmadang,” Reuters reported Kang Mi-jin, a North Korean defector as saying. “Keeping the markets open has had a positive effect on the people. He had no other option. He can’t feed the people, and he can’t completely shut the markets down.”

The prices of rice, corn, petrol and diesel largely remained steady over the last year. The market is said to be making up for the shortfall in sales made through the country’s centrally-planned rationing system, which reportedly has not recovered from the 1990s famine that struck the North. According to a recent World Food Programme report, the state has handed out only 360gms of rations per person per day, the lowest quantity in five years.

[International Business Times]

The US “strengthens regional security and stability in the Indo-Asia-Pacific region” with more bombers

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The US Air Force will be sending a force of supersonic cruise-missile capable strike bombers to their bases off the coast of North Korea.

Last week Kim Jong Un declared his secretive nation was now in all our war with America after the world’s leading superpower “crossed the red line” over military buildup near their borders.

Rather than be scared off by this, the United States is doubling down. B-1B Lancer bombers will move into the US Pacific Command’s Andersen Air Force Base on the island of Guam to replace the fleet of ageing B-52 Stratofortresses currently based there.This will be the first time the Lancers have been on the island in ten years.

Around 300 US airmen will also join the squadron, but the US Air Force has not confirmed the number of bombers being dispatched.

The US Air Force said in a statement: “The B-1 units …provide a significant rapid global strike capability that enables our readiness and commitment to deterrence, offers assurance to our allies, and strengthens regional security and stability in the Indo-Asia-Pacific region.”

[Daily Star]

How big of a threat is North Korea?

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Under the leadership of 33-year-old Kim Jong Un, who came to power upon his father’s death in 2011, the pace of North Korean nuclear and missile tests has accelerated dramatically. His tyrannical regime now has an estimated 20 nuclear warheads — and is adding a new weapon to that stockpile every six weeks or so, experts believe.

North Korea has already successfully mounted a small nuclear warhead on a 1,500 km–range Rodong missile that can reach South Korea and Japan — and is on course to develop 13,000 km–range intercontinental ballistic missiles targeting the continental U.S. by early next decade, according to observers at Johns Hopkins University. The U.S. ignores North Korea’s growing nuclear arsenal — and the instability of its erratic leader — at its peril, says Mark Fitzpatrick of the International Institute for Strategic Studies. “Just because Pyongyang wants us to pay attention,” Fitzpatrick told The Economist, “that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t.”

The U.N. Security Council has just passed the toughest sanctions in two decades. However, the success of the sanctions will depend almost entirely on China — Pyongyang’s most influential ally, and the nation with which it does 90 percent of its trade. If the North Korean regime collapses, experts agree, there will be absolute chaos. There would be widespread looting by the country’s starving citizens, and violence in the gulags holding the country’s 120,000 political prisoners. Millions of people would rush the border into China, and South Korean and U.S. troops would be forced to occupy a devastated and dysfunctional country.

In his final days, Kim might choose to pass the nuclear weapons under his control to terrorists — or even launch them himself, as a final act of suicidal revenge. The regime’s collapse would probably spark a brutal civil war with very high stakes, says North Korea expert Andrei Lankov — like “Syria with nukes.”

[The Week]

5 points of tension between North Korea and US

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Five points of tensions between North Korea and the U.S. as shared by Pyongyang’s top diplomat for U.S. affairs, in an AP interview on Thursday:

  • Kim Jong Un on a list of sanctioned individuals – Han Song Ryol, director-general of the U.S. affairs department at North Korea’s Foreign Ministry, emphasized the authoritarian country’s anger over Washington’s July 6 announcement putting leader Kim Jong Un on a list of sanctioned individuals in connection with alleged human rights abuses documented by the United Nations Human Rights Commission. Pyongyang denies the allegations. “The United States has crossed the red line in our showdown,” he said. “We regard this thrice-cursed crime as a declaration of war.”
  • War Games – Han warned against planned U.S.-South Korean war games next month. “By doing these kinds of vicious and hostile acts toward the DPRK, the U.S. has already declared war against the DPRK. So it is our self-defensive right and justifiable action to respond in a very hard way,” he said.
  • US Diplomat’s flight – Han castigated Mark Lippert, the U.S. ambassador to South Korea, for a July 12 flight on a U.S. Air Force F-16 based in South Korea. He called it an action “unfit for a diplomat.”
  • Differences in stance on nuclear weapons – North Korea has been hit with several rounds of international sanctions over its continued development of nuclear weapons and missiles, but Han contended the U.S. is to blame. “It is the United States that first developed nuclear weapons, who first deployed them and who first used them against humankind,” he said.
  • North Korea won’t give up nukes – As North Korea has many times before, Han dismissed calls for Pyongyang to defuse tensions by agreeing to abandon its nuclear program. “We … are very proud of the fact, that we have very strong nuclear deterrent forces not only to cope with the United States’ nuclear blackmail but also to neutralize the nuclear blackmail of the United States,” Han said.

[Associated Press]