North Korea (Superthread)

[CougarKing]

Seems Pyongyang wants more attention again.

link

North Korea breaks stretch of relative silence as it fires three missiles into eastern waters

SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea fired three short-range guided missiles into its eastern waters on Saturday, a South Korean official said. It routinely tests such missiles, but the latest launches came during a period of tentative diplomacy aimed at easing tensions.

The North fired two missiles Saturday morning and another in the afternoon, South Korean Defence Ministry spokesman Kim Min-seok said by phone. He said the North’s intent was unclear. His ministry said it is watching North Korea carefully in case it conducts a provocation against South Korea.

In March, North Korea launched what appeared to be two KN-02 missiles off its east coast. Experts believe the country is trying to improve the range and accuracy of its arsenal.

North Korea recently withdrew two mid-range “Musudan” missiles believed to be capable of reaching Guam after moving them to its east coast earlier this year, U.S. officials said. The North is banned from testing ballistic missiles under UN Security Council resolutions.
Earlier this year, North Korea threatened nuclear strikes on Seoul and Washington because of annual U.S.-South Korean military drills and UN sanctions imposed over its third nuclear test in February. The drills ended late last month. This past month, the U.S. and South Korea ended another round of naval drills involving a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier off the east coast. North Korea calls such drills preparation to invade the North.

Analysts say the recent North Korean threats were partly an attempt to push Washington to agree to disarmament-for-aid talks.

This past week, Glyn Davies, the top U.S. envoy on North Korea, ended trips to South Korea, China and Japan. On Friday, an adviser to Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe returned from North Korea but didn’t immediately give details of his talks with officials there.

On Monday, North Korean state media showed that the country’s hard-line defense minister had been replaced by a little-known army general. Outside analysts said it was part of leader Kim Jong-un’s efforts to tighten his grip on the powerful military after his father Kim Jong-il died in December 2011.

The United States and Japan are participants in six-nation nuclear disarmament talks along with the Koreas, Russia and Japan. North Korea walked out of the talks in 2009 after the United Nations condemned it for a long-range rocket launch.

North Korea possesses an array of missiles. U.S. and South Korean officials do not believe the North’s claim that it has developed nuclear warheads small enough to place on a missile. Last week in Washington, South Korean President Park Geun-hye and President Barack Obama warned North Korea against further nuclear provocations.

Tension between the two Koreas remains high after both sides pulled out their workers from a jointly run factory complex earlier this year. The countries remain technically at war after the 1950-53 Korean War ended in a truce instead of a peace treaty.

 

[Edward Campbell]

Sui-Lee Wee, the Reuters Beijing correspondent, says that North Korea's envoy (to Beijing, I assume) has told Chinese leader Liu Yunshan* that Pyongyang is willing to take China's advice to start talks with relevant parties.

__________
* Liu is First Secretary of the Central Secretariat of the Communist Party of China, Chairman of the CPC Central Guidance Commission for Building Spiritual Civilization and President of the CPC Central Party School, which makes him, essentially, the Vice President of China.

 

[Edward Campbell]

Doug Bandow, a senior fellow at the libertarian inclined Cato Institute offers a provocative prescription for the Korean peninsula in this article which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from Cato at Liberty:

http://www.cato.org/blog/korean-deja-vu-north-koreans-back-begging-money?utm_source=buffer&utm_campaign=Buffer&utm_content=buffer5eb52&utm_medium=twitter

Korean Déjà vu: North Koreans Back Begging for Money

By DOUG BANDOW

JUNE 12, 2013

The world has moved on to the latest crisis du jour, but it wasn’t that long ago when North Korea’s Kim Jong-un was dominating global headlines threatening to nuke places like Austin, Texas.  (Why Austin?  Maybe because Cato Senior Fellow Ted Galen Carpenter now resides there, but that’s only speculation on my part!)

Since then Pyongyang has gone largely silent.  But on Sunday representatives from the so-called Democratic People’s Republic of Korea met with South Korean officials and plotted expanded talks for later this week.  As Yogi Berra once observed, it’s déjà vu all over again.

The DPRK has been threatening the peace in Northeast Asia since its founding in 1948.  In the 1990s the Republic of Korea decided to try appeasement, providing roughly $10 billion in aid and investment to the North in ensuing years.  Alas, Pyongyang simply took the cash from the so-called Sunshine Policy and built more nuclear weapons.

Andrei Lankov, who as a Soviet student studied in Pyongyang and now teaches in the South, argues that the Kim family regime is unlikely to ever reform, since doing so would threaten its survival.  Any change is likely to lead to an eventual South Korean takeover.  So the DPRK regime tries to extort money out of other nations.

The ROK again is the chief target, since the upcoming talks were expected to focus on reopening the Kaesong Industrial Complex, closed by the North during its recent provocative cycle.  The KIC provides Pyongyang with $90 million annually in salary revenue alone.  Apparently the North also wants to restart tourist tours elsewhere, which would provide more hard currency.

Seoul would be foolish to agree.  As I argue on American Spectator online:

    What possible argument is there for keeping the subsidies going after Kim Jong-un’s recent fire-and-brimstone tirade?  South Koreans are putting money into the hands of the North’s barbaric elite which is
    threatening to destroy the ROK.  Every won sent north can be used to add more nuclear weapons, miniaturize nuclear bombs, and extend the range of nuclear-capable missiles.

    The argument that making North Korean officials feel warm and fuzzy will convince them to cast off their collective security coat has been disproved by experience.  Lankov still argues that in the long-term the
    subversive impact of KIC on the North Korean population makes it worth the cost.  That might be true if the money didn’t act as a direct subsidy for the regime.  Cutting the North’s financial windpipe would seem to
    be a better strategy.

Of course, the South Korean government can set its own policy.  But American taxpayers should not protect a country which is subsidizing its potential enemy.  In effect, Seoul is paying Kim & Co. to build weapons which would be used to kill the very Americans guarding the ROK.

At the last minute the Kim government pulled out of the planned talks.  The official reason was a tiff over relative rank of the negotiators.  More likely the DPRK is playing its usual game of raising positive expectations and then creating tension, with the plan to soon return to whisper sweet nothings in Seoul’s ear.

Whatever happens to the latest round of talks, as I’ve long argued it is time for Washington to disentangle itself from the Korean peninsula.  American troops should come home; America’s defense guarantee should end.  North Korea should become its neighbors’ problem.  Then maybe Seoul would spend millions more dollars directly on the South Korean military rather than indirectly on the North Korean military.

This, of course, is exactly what China wants, and, if it ever happens, Korean reunification will happen quickly, peacefully and under a democratic (South Korean) regime.

 

[CougarKing]

One of Pyongyang's clients...

Defense News link

US Blacklists Myanmar General over N. Korea Arms Deals

Jul. 2, 2013 - 04:27PM

WASHINGTON — The United States placed a Myanmar general on its sanctions blacklist Tuesday for arms deals with North Korea that violated the UN Security Council embargo on buying weapons from Pyongyang.

Weeks after a landmark visit to Washington by Myanmar President Thein Sein celebrated the thaw in bilateral relations, the US Treasury named Lt. General Thein Htay, the head of Myanmar’s Directorate of Defense Industries, for the sanctions.

The Treasury said the general was involved in buying North Korean military goods despite his government’s support of the Security Council ban.

It said he acted on behalf of the Directorate of Defense Industries, a Myanmar military agency that was placed on the US sanctions blacklist in July 2012 for arms deals with North Korea.

The Treasury stressed in a statement that the Myanmar government, which until 2010 endured years of isolation and condemnation by the international community for rights abuses, was not targeted by the sanctions.

“This action specifically targets Thein Htay, who is involved in the illicit trade of North Korean arms to Burma,” the Treasury said, using the former official name for Myanmar.

“It does not target the government of Burma, which has continued to take positive steps in severing its military ties with North Korea.”

The Treasury noted that the Myanmar government last November “publicly announced its intention to abide by” the UN Security Council resolution prohibiting countries from buying military equipment and support from North Korea.

“The international community has repeatedly condemned North Korea’s nuclear and
(...)

 

[CougarKing]

Whatever happened to all those legendary Swedish prostitutes his Dad kept around to feed his "addiction" when he was alive? 

But seriously, if those jump suits were coloured prison orange instead of white, it wouldn't make a difference, since that whole country is a prison and Kim's family are the wardens and the North Korean People's Army/NKPA are the guards.

link

The leader of North Korea apparently has learned a lesson from Hollywood: Image is everything.

The man known to the Western world as running a country that starves its population and menaces neighboring countries with a nuclear weapons program is a rock star, a photo released by North Korea's Central News Agency would have you believe.

More Lil’ Kim than Kim Jong Un, the picture shows the leader mobbed by workers at a mushroom farm. From the looks of it, the leader is loved by his people.

Dressed in dark shirt and pants, the 29-year-old stands in the middle of a crowd of women wearing immaculate white jumpsuits, with some grabbing his arms and others who appear to be weeping. A female soldier stands beside Kim, holding his other arm protectively in a failed attempt to shield him from the adoring onslaught.

Is it staged? Reuters, which distributed the photo, notes that it is unable to “independently verify the authenticity, content, location, or date of this image.”

 

[CougarKing]

I expect Chinese knockoffs of this "premiere North Korean smartphone" from factories in China's neighbouring Liaoning and Heilongjiang provinces on the same day it's first released in the PRC...

:facepalm:

link

The Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) has released several new photos showing leader Kim Jong-un inspecting a North Korean smartphone factory, as well as taking a look at the country's first smartphone, the Arirang.

Though little is known about the Arirang -- we'd only recently been introduced to North Korea's tablet, but did not know the secretive country was working on a smartphone, too -- we do know that it runs Google's Android operating system, that it has a touchscreen and that it features at least a rear camera.

(...)

North Korea, and its new leader Kim Jong-un, have an odd and fascinating relationship with the Internet and technology. Recently, Google chairman and former CEO Eric Schmidt visited the country to lobby on behalf of Google (and perhaps that visit worked, given the operating system of the Arirang); his daughter Sophie blogged about the journey and vividly described a restricted technological landscape, and a heavily-filtered Internet. In an apparent effort to prevent citizen envy of Western devices like the iPhone, meanwhile, North Korea has ramped up production of their own hardware, debuting a $200 tablet and smartphone within a few weeks of each other.

 

[OldSolduer]

Who cuts his frickin hair?

 

[CougarKing]

Who cuts his frickin hair?

Probably someone who fears for his life if he screws up the haircut...

Kim Jong Un: "I told you to remove the sideburns....off to the gulag with you!!!!"

 

[Kat Stevens]

Who cuts his frickin hair?

That's not a haircut, that's vacuum moulding.

 

[OldSolduer]

That's not a haircut, that's vacuum moulding.

One of the mixing bowls is missing from the cupboard

 

[Inquisitor]

7 Things North Korea Is Really Good At

Hey, even a basket case is good at something.


In the spirit of Ben Smith's "11 BuzzFeed Lists That Explain the World" for the May/June 2013 issue of Foreign Policy, the FP staff decided to look at the world through BuzzFeed's eyes for a day. For more, check out 14 Hairless Cats That Look Like Vladimir Putin, 9 Disturbingly Good Jihadi Raps, 36 Mustaches That Explain Why There's No Peace in the Middle East, and 1 Pentagon Weapons System That Was on Time and Under Budget.
link here http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/04/29/7_things_north_korea_is_really_good_at?wpisrc=obinsite

 

[CougarKing]

So it was all for show?

'A big hoax': Experts say North Korea showing off missiles that can't fly

A photo montage from a July 26, 2013, military parade in the North Korean capital of Pyongyang shows a purported Hwasong-13 intercontinental ballistic missile, with the area where retro rockets should be mounted highlighted, along with close-ups showing that forward nozzles on the rocket bodies of two individual missiles were placed in different positions.

PYONGYANG, North Korea -- Missiles paraded through the streets of Pyongyang in recent displays of North Korean military might -- said to be capable of hitting targets throughout Asia and even in the U.S. -- are incapable of flight and are almost certainly nothing more than fakes, according to U.S. government experts and independent analysts.

"My opinion is that it's a big hoax," Markus Schiller, an aerospace engineer in Munich and former RAND Corp. military analyst, said of the intercontinental and medium-range missiles displayed in the North Korean capital in April 2012 and again two weeks ago.

U.S. government experts, having reviewed unclassified images from the most recent parade on July 27, including high-resolution photos provided by NBC News, agreed. “Our assessment is that what we are looking at is most likely simulators used for training purposes,” according to a statement to NBC News.

Pictures and more at...

[ur=http://investigations.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/08/15/20010707-a-big-hoax-experts-say-north-korea-showing-off-missiles-that-cant-fly?lite]NBC news link[/url]

This is in contrast to:

Defense News link

Think Tank Sees Signs North Korea Is Expanding Its Nuclear Weapons Work

While Washington is focused on Edward Snowden, Vladimir Putin, Egypt’s political unrest and Iran’s new president, what is North Korea up to? One Washington-based think tank believes the outlaw regime in Pyongyang is increasing its ability to enrich uranium, the key to its nuclear weapons program.

“Recent satellite imagery of the Yongbyon nuclear complex in North Korea indicates that it has apparently expanded a building in the fuel fabrication complex that houses a gas centrifuge plant for uranium enrichment,” the Institute for Science and International Security said in a report released this week. “The area is now covered by an extended roof that is roughly twice the size of the previous one.”

North Korean officials have claimed the facility is used to produce low enriched uranium that fuels an experimental light-water reactor. But ISIS says some of those materials “could have been further enriched at a secret centrifuge site to produce weapon-grade uranium.”

ISIS describes itself as “a non-profit, non-partisan institution dedicated to informing the public about science and policy issues affecting international security.” The organization’s top priority is “stopping the spread of nuclear weapons and related technology to other nations and terrorists, bringing about greater transparency of nuclear activities worldwide, strengthening the international non-proliferation regime, and achieving deep cuts in nuclear arsenals.”

ISIS analysts, after examining its own satellite imagery and Google Earth images, that “construction of the centrifuge building extension appears to have begun sometime in March 2013.”

North Korean officials claim those projects were aimed at “readjusting and restarting all the nuclear facilities in Yongbyon including uranium enrichment plant and 5MW graphite moderated reactor.”

The think tank also has concluded the imagery shows “a doubling of available floor space … could allow a doubling of the number of centrifuges installed.”

“ North Korea stated in 2010 that the plant contained about 2,000 centrifuges with an enrichment output of 8,000 separative work units (swu) per year,” states the ISIS report. “Thus, North Korea could in theory install 2,000 more centrifuges for a total of 4,000 centrifuges with a total declared capacity of 16,000 swu per year in this expanded building.” The think tank also says imagery shows construction at other parts of the facility.

(...)

 

[CougarKing]

Someone just can't take rejection...  :

Fox News link

Kim Jong-un's ex-girlfriend reportedly executed by firing squad

The ex-girlfriend of North Korean leader Kim-Jong-un was one of a dozen people reportedly executed by a firing squad last week.

The South Korean newspaper Chosun Ilbo reports that singer Hyon Song-wol and 11 others had been arrested on August 17 for violating North Korea's laws against pornography and was executed three days later.

The paper reported that the condemned, all members of the performing groups Unhasu Orchestra and Wangjaesan Light Music Band, were accused of making videos of themselves having sex and selling the videos, which the paper reported were available in China.

 

[Edward Campbell]

Unconfirmed, but interesting video from the Globe and Mail.

A further report on the rumoured execution of Hyon Song-wol is also reported in The Telegraph.

 

[Jarnhamar]

The think tank also has concluded the imagery shows “a doubling of available floor space … could allow a doubling of the number of centrifuges installed.”

These guys sound really smart.  I wonder if they will next conclude that rockets shot up in the air will probably come down somewhere.

 

[OldSolduer]

Someone just can't take rejection...  :

Fox News link

She probably was the one that cut his hair.....

 

[The Bread Guy]

She probably was the one that cut his hair.....

If that was the case, the hairdresser rated execution LONG ago....

 

[CougarKing]

Not a surprise considering that illegal narcotics are among this country's few exports...

North Korea in grip of drugs epidemic, report claims

Hong Kong (CNN) -- North Korea's sanction-hit regime has long been accused of drug trafficking as a source of hard currency, but a new report claims drug producers are finding a ready market closer to home and that as many as two-thirds of North Koreans have used methamphetamines.

According to a report in the Spring 2013 edition of the journal North Korean Review, stricter China border controls have forced methamphetamine producers in the north to seek a local market for "ice" (known locally as "bingdu").

(edit)

Some informants are saying almost every adult in North Korea around the China-North Korea border are using methamphetamine," she said, adding that the drug was often used as a palliative in place of hard-to-obtain prescription medicine.

"Actually, the hospital medical system (has) stopped for such a long time, so they need something to cure their pain ... physical pain," she said. "But once they get addicted to methamphetamine, there's no way for them to get out of it."

More at...

CNN link

 

[Jarnhamar]

If that was the case, the hairdresser rated execution LONG ago....

I'm pretty sure the general on the right is from the trade federation

.

 

[CougarKing]

The latest round of North Korean purges at the top...

From the Telegraph via the National Post

Kim Jong-un’s North Korean purge continues as father’s favoured army chief disappears
The Telegraph


Kim Jong-un is apparently keeping up his purge within the upper echelons of North Korean society with the reported sacking of his hawkish army chief.

Kim Kyok-sik, who is believed to have been behind the sinking of the South Korean corvette Cheonan and the bombardment of Yeonpyeong Island in late 2010, has disappeared from the list of senior regime officials attending public events in recent weeks. “We are closely watching developments in the North, believing that Kim Kyok-sik has been replaced by Ri Yong-gil, the chief of operations for the Army General Staff,” a source in the South Korean government told the Chosun Ilbo newspaper.

North Korean media have also pictured Ri with new four-star insignia.

Analysts believe that Kim Kyok-sik has been replaced as Kim Jong-un attempts to stamp his own influence on the military and replace those who were loyal to his father’s regime with his own hand-picked acolytes.

The purge follows the execution of 12 female singers and musicians — including Hyon Song-wol, Kim’s former girlfriend — for reportedly making and selling pornographic videos.

“They were executed with machine guns while the key members of the Unhasu Orchestra, Wangjaesan Light Band and Moranbong Band as well as the families of the victims looked on,” a Chinese source said in the report.

Hyon’s popularity reached its zenith (in North Korea) with the 2005 single A Girl In The Saddle Of A Steed , also known as Excellent Horse-Like Lady.

The band’s other patriotic hits include Footsteps of Soldiers, I Love Pyongyang, She is a Discharged Soldier and We are Troops of the Party.

Hyon was believed to have then married a North Korean army officer.

Kim’s wife, Ri Sol-ju, is a former member of the Unhasu Orchestra and there is speculation she objected to the high-profile of her husband’s former lover.

South Korean intelligence officers were quoted in the country’s newspapers that Hyon and Kim had an affair after her marriage.

Meanwhile, North Korea has cancelled a planned trip for a U.S. envoy to travel to Pyongyang to seek the release of Kenneth Bae, an imprisoned missionary.