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]

 How North Korean math-whizz defector escaped through Hong Kong

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For Jong Yol-ri, the International Mathematical Olympiad in Hong Kong last year was his last chance for freedom. If the then 18-year-old, two-time silver medalist in the ­competition waited another year, he would be too old to take part, losing his chance to travel and ­escape North Korea.

Once in Hong Kong, Jong and other North Korean contestants were placed under strict surveillance. They could not use smartphones, had to relinquish their passports and were closely monitored by a team leader.

On July 17 last year, a day after the competition, Jong sneaked out of the dormitory at the Hong Kong University of ­Science and Technology, where the event had been held, and took a taxi to the airport. The student had planned his defection well before he left North Korea for Hong Kong.

Once at the Hong Kong International Airport, he approached staff working for a South Korean airline and told a manager that he wanted to go to South Korea. The manager then called the South Korean consulate and Jong was told that he had to take a taxi there by himself – protocol prevents diplomats from helping citizens from any country go into a foreign embassy or consulate.

Jong spent the next two months at the consulate, living in a small room, playing computer games and using a treadmill to exercise. “After staying in the consulate for a month, Jong became a bit uneasy, having no idea how long would he need to stay there until Beijing allowed him to leave for Seoul,” a source said.

In late September, Jong flew to Seoul with a new passport and a valid Hong Kong tourist visa. In Seoul, Jong took classes in South Korean language, culture, society and international relations. Next month he will start university.

[South China Morning Post]

North Korea boosts efforts to hack defectors’ computers

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North Korea has drastically stepped up its efforts to hack into the computers of defectors since last August when an outspoken, senior diplomat defected to the country’s mortal enemy South Korea, a Korean computer expert with knowledge of the situation said.

There were hardly any hacking incidents of the computers of North Korean defectors last June and July, but after the defection Thae Yong Ho, North Korea’s deputy ambassador to the United Kingdom, there were 15 hackings in August, said Choi Sang-myong, head of the Computer Emergency Response Team Coordination Center (CERTCC) at the privately owned South Korean internet security company HAURI Inc.

North Korean agents sent emails to defectors with file attachments called “Thae Yong Ho interview,” “North Korea democratization,” and “Balloons sent to North Korea,” Choi said. When the recipients opened the attachments, their computers became infected.

“It is believed that Free NK, an online news outlet run by a North Korean defector in the United Kingdom, was hacked because it has links to Thae Yong Ho,” Choi said.

North Korea has been known to have trained professional computer hackers since the early 1990s. Experts now assume that the country’s hackers number about 6,000 to 7,000.

Choi predicts that North Korea may try to hack and manipulate South Korea’s computer network for traffic and communication in order to divert attention away from the controversy surrounding the assassination of Kim Jong Un’s estranged half-brother Kim Jong Nam in Malaysia in February.

[Radio Free Asia]

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]

Diplomatic activity concerning North Korea

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China’s top diplomat Yang Jiechi met U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday in the highest-level contact between the world’s two biggest economies since the election as concerns over North Korea’s nuclear program overshadow campaign tensions over trade. Yang relayed greetings from President Xi Jinping in the meeting with Trump, Vice President Mike Pence and senior adviser Jared Kushner at the White House, the official Xinhua News Agency reported.

Tensions between the U.S. and China on how to handle North Korea have escalated since Trump accused Beijing of not doing enough to curb Kim’s nuclear ambitions. North Korea has accelerated its development of nuclear bombs and ballistic missiles since 2009, when it walked away from six-party talks involving China, Japan, Russia, South Korea and the U.S.

The U.S. is considering branding North Korea as state sponsor of terrorism, Yonhap News reported Tuesday, citing a high-level South Korean government official. Representatives of the U.S., Japan and South Korea met in Washington to discuss the situation Monday.

Beijing’s leaders have called for a new round of talks on North Korea as they seek to rein in Kim Jong Un and halt American plans to deploy a missile-defense system known as Thaad in South Korea, in part on concerns that it will undermine China’s own security. North Korea hit out at China last week after it banned coal imports, saying it was “dancing to the tune of the U.S.”

Meanwhile, North Korean Vice Foreign Minister Ri Kil Song arrived in Beijing on Tuesday for possible talks with Chinese officials, Japan’s Kyodo News reported, citing one of its journalists. It marks the first known visit to China by a high-ranking North Korean official since around June last year.

[Bloomberg]

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]

North Korea signaling its chemical and biological weapons to the world?

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The Malaysian police have declared that Kim Jong-nam was assassinated with VX nerve agent, when two women rubbed his face with the nerve agent at Kuala Lumpur International Airport.

If North Korean citizens were behind the killing, as Malaysian officials suggest, the use of VX raises several questions: Was the North Korean government using the attack to signal to the world its fearsome arsenal of such dangerous weapons? Or was the toxin simply an attempt to avoid detection in carrying out a brazen killing at one of the world’s busiest airports?

One drop of VX, or about 10 milligrams, can be fatal. But the attackers could have used a safety-enhancing battlefield form of the agent. Known as VX2, it is divided into two compounds that are harmless individually but become lethal when mixed together.

If Mr. Kim’s two assassins had each applied one component of VX, this would explain why two people were needed, and how they survived the attack. The woman who applied the second compound would have risked exposing herself to the first component, which could explain why one of the women became ill and began vomiting after the attack.

And as to why it took 15 minutes or more for Mr. Kim to die: Each component could have been made in slow-release form, as is done with many drugs.

Vipin Narang, an associate professor of political science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who has two degrees in chemical engineering, said it was clear that North Korea wanted the West to know what it is capable of. “They wanted everyone, especially the U.S., to know it was VX and that they can make it or have it,” he said. “Doing it publicly but not killing anyone else is a pretty good way to reveal that capability and deterrent.”

[The New York Times]

North Korean defectors defy Pyongyang through writing

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About 30 North Korean defectors are working to shed light on the communist state’s human rights situation through literature, seeking to prove that the pen can indeed be mightier than the sword.

According to a report by South Korean news agency Yonhap, the group is known as the North Korean Writers in Exile PEN Center. It has been part of PEN International, an association of writers promoting literature and freedom of expression since 2012.

The center is led by North Korean defector Lee Gie Myung, who wrote plays in the republic for 20 years before escaping to South Korea in 2004. He began writing for the group in 2008, working with other “defector-writers” to tell the world about the difficulties faced by North Koreans under the three-generation rule of the Kim family.

Following calls for the UN Security Council to refer North Korea’s “crimes against humanity” to the International Criminal Court (ICC), the defector-writers tried to assist by compiling testimonies of 20 individuals who had defected over Pyongyang’s abuse of rights. They also backed the request for ICC to look into the crimes of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

“It is meaningful that defector-writers have begun to gain recognition,” Gie Myung told Yonhap. “They are the ones who can speak up against North Korea’s abject human rights situation in their own voices. … North Koreans will awaken and rise up if they get access to outside information.”

[Free Malaysia Today]