Quotes of the Day:
Only passions, great passions, can elevate the soul to great things."
- Denis Diderot
"Some men look at constitutions with sanctimonious reverence, and deem them like the ark of the covenant, too sacred to be touched. They ascribe to the men of the preceding age a wisdom more than human, and suppose what they did to be beyond amendment. I knew that age well; I belonged to it, and labored with it. It deserved well of its country. It was very like the present, but without the experience of the present; and forty years of experience in government is worth a century of book-reading; and this they would say themselves, were they to rise from the dead. I am certainly not an advocate for frequent and untried changes in laws and constitutions. I think moderate imperfections had better be borne with; because, when once known, we accommodate ourselves to them, and find practical means of correcting their ill effects. But I know also, that laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths disclosed, and manners and opinions change with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also, and keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy, as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors."
- Thomas Jefferson
"Loyalty to a petrified opinion never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul."
- Mark Twain
1. Unification minister, WHO chief agree to cooperate for humanitarian aid to N.K.
2. How to Solve North Korea: Time to 'Replace' Kim Jong-un?
3. S.Korea, US hold deputy-level talks on N.Korea
4. Combat mentality, exercising the mind for special operations
5. Most Heavily Armed Place on Earth? That Would Be the Korean DMZ
6. China, Russia revive push to lift U.N. sanctions on North Korea
7. The "Squid Game" critique is also a love letter to a unified Korea
8. China Aids and Abets North Korea’s Abuse of Christians
9. North Korea is breeding black swans for people to eat, as the reclusive nation faces a crippling food shortage
10. Pope Francis unlikely to visit North Korea this winter because he is from 'warm country': presidential spokeswoman
11. Some N. Korean workers welcome blackouts in Chinese factories
12. Historic All-Female formation flight (in Korea)
1. Unification minister, WHO chief agree to cooperate for humanitarian aid to N.K.
Now if Kim Jong-un would be willing to accept it. But South Korea and the WHO are more concerned with the welfare of the Korean people in the north than Kim.
(2nd LD) Unification minister, WHO chief agree to cooperate for humanitarian aid to N.K. | Yonhap News Agency
(ATTN: UPDATES with foreign ministry official's comments, civic groups' letter to Blinken in last 4 paras)
By Choi Soo-hyang
SEOUL, Nov. 2 (Yonhap) -- South Korea's minister in charge of inter-Korean relations held a series of meetings with heads of international organizations in Geneva this week to discuss North Korea issues, his office said Tuesday, amid brisk talks between Seoul and Washington on providing humanitarian assistance to the reclusive state.
Unification Minister Lee In-young met with the World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on Monday (local time) and agreed to strengthen cooperation on North Korea's public health issues, according to the unification ministry.
"(The two sides) exchanged opinions on North Korea's COVID-19 situation and ways to cooperate in its public health and medical sectors," the ministry said in a press release.
The meeting took place after the minister accompanied President Moon Jae-in on his latest Vatican visit.
On the same day, Lee also met with the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) Secretary General Jagan Chapagain and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) Vice President Gilles Carbonnier and agreed to continue close communications to push for the reunions of families separated by the 1950-53 Korean War and on other humanitarian issues involving North Korea.
Lee was set to wrap up his Europe visit and return home Wednesday.
The series of meetings came as senior officials from South Korea and the United States gathered in Washington on Monday to discuss ways to restart dialogue with North Korea.
Seoul's foreign ministry said the two sides had working-level talks to implement various trust-building measures to bring Pyongyang back to the negotiating table.
The ministry did not provide further details, but Seoul and Washington are known to be at the last stage of coordinating humanitarian assistance to North Korea, such as quarantine supplies.
"South Korea and the U.S. had close communications, and reached a great deal of shared understanding and progress," a ministry official told reporters on background. "But it is hard to tell exactly when the assistance could be made as it's a matter related to various factors and external circumstances."
The North has remained unresponsive to U.S. overtures for talks after their Hanoi summit in February 2019 collapsed without a deal.
On Tuesday, the Korea NGO Council for Cooperation with North Korea sent a letter to U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, calling for coronavirus vaccine assistance to North Korea.
"The most important thing at present to improve the humanitarian situation in North Korea is to help with the response to COVID-19," the group stressed in the letter.
scaaet@yna.co.kr
(END)
2. How to Solve North Korea: Time to 'Replace' Kim Jong-un?
Operation Doppelganger? The movie "Dave?" I thought this was from the Onion, Babylon Bee, or DuffelBlog.
On a serious note, a "replacement" for Kim must come from within - internal resistance to the Kim family regime though the conditions are still a long way from being ripe for such change. One cannot be imposed externally.
How to Solve North Korea: Time to 'Replace' Kim Jong-un?
Kim Jong-un, Chairman, General Secretary, and Supreme Leader of North Korea, no longer looks the part of “Fatty Kim,” as he once was insulted on Chinese social media. Kim has dropped over 40 pounds estimates Korean intelligence.
Moreover, reported the Singapore Straits Times: “The agency said rumors the North Korean leader had been using a body double were groundless, based on their analysis that also used artificial intelligence.” That would be a tough job for the doppelganger, being expected to gain and lose weight on command.
However, the lack thereof creates a possible solution to what informally is known as the “North Korea problem.” Three Kims have ruled over the last 73 years. The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea started one very big war, launched multiple brushfires and sorties, committed terrorism and special operations, and generally drove normal policymakers to distraction. And that was before Pyongyang developed nuclear weapons. With predictions that the North could possess 200 weapons later this decade, the current Kim could become much more disruptive. Even the Chinese, who benefit geopolitically from the DPRK’s role as a buffer state, would prefer to have a more restrained and disciplined neighbor.
Although President Donald Trump helped open the North to negotiations, that door closed after the collapse of the Hanoi summit. Now South Korean President Moon Jae-in is desperately attempting to restart a diplomatic dialogue before he leaves office early next year. That means dragging a reluctant Washington along.
A more creative solution is called for. It is time to find a double for Kim.
In early 2020 when Kim disappeared from view and was rumored to be ill or dead, there was speculation that a substitute stood in for him. The New York Post wrote: “The photos have instead raised suspicion that a lookalike could have been there in his place—with web sleuths noting discrepancies in facial, hairline and dental features when compared with previous appearances.” That ended up being fake news. However, the possibility of finding a Kim fils doppelganger raises intriguing possibilities.
There is at least one Kim look-a-like, a former Chinese security guard named Jia Yongtang. A decade ago someone remarked on their shared appearance. Jia changed his haircut and put on 60 pounds, and was able to make a living as a faux Kim. Indeed, he once worried that the U.S. authorities would “think I’m really Kim Jong-un and will come here to kill me.” Thankfully, his worst fears were not fulfilled.
For the most part, though, his talents, if standing around looking like Kim Jong-un deserves to be described as such, were wasted. Given the difficulty in getting the real back Kim into a diplomatic dialogue, a more productive role for Jia beckons. Standing in for Kim unbidden and redirect the DPRK’s future.
Lest the scenario seems far-fetched, one need merely consult Hollywood. The 1993 movie “Dave” featured a liberal double hired to act as president after the real chief executive is felled by a stroke. Even more relevant may be the 1998 movie The Man in the Iron Mask, in which a hardy band replaces the king with his imprisoned twin.
Assuming Jia is tired of judging second-rate beauty pageants and attending student events, he could be recruited to star in a much greater production. To start he probably would have to lose some weight and learn Korean, as well as pick up Kim’s mannerisms.
The chief challenge then would be to prepare the exchange of Kims. The Supreme Leader has an oceanfront palace near Wonsan, on North Korea’s east coast. Breaching the luxury compound wouldn’t be easy, though Kim’s security team probably wouldn’t be prepared for a silent submarine arrival. In better times President Joe Biden could offer a White House summit, but even that might not be enough today to get Kim to cross national borders. Perhaps Moon could indicate that he’s won a major concession from Washington—some significant sanctions relief that Kim has long demanded—and suggest a summit at Panmunjom, with a little private meeting arranged on the grounds. With just enough time to make the swap.
Of course, such a switch would merely be the start of the toughest work. After returning to Pyongyang in triumph, U.S. “concession” in hand, the new Kim would have to inaugurate a new regime. He should start by retiring, reassigning, disappearing, and otherwise disposing of the regime’s national security heavies, especially geriatric bemedaled marshals who see nuclear weapons as personal vindication for decades of loyal service. Vital would be securing his hold over any forces bearing arms, which could defenestrate him.
Also necessary would be dealing with those who know him too well and might expose him. He could follow his father’s example. Kim Jong-il essentially exiled a younger half-brother in Europe as the North’s ambassador to several nations. Kim Pyong-il outlived the elder Kim but was not a factor in the power transition after the latter’s death. The toughest challenge for the new Kim would be dealing with Kim Jong-un’s sister, Kim Yo-jong. Given her high international profile, she could be anointed as a special plenipotentiary and sent off to sell the new and improved North Korea to Asia, Europe, and Africa. The first foreign trip should last a couple of months, at least, enough time for him to consolidate his position.
Image credit KCNA.
The new Kim would also have to worry about his presumed older brother, Kim Jong-chul. The latter appears to have little interest in politics, but that would not prevent him from being a dangerous frontman for a hostile faction. Given Kim Jong-chul’s attraction to rock music, a convenient solution might be to give him a briefcase full of concert tickets and make him a roving cultural ambassador overseas. Presumably, the new Kim could similarly deal with other family members.
As for policies, the new Kim should use a U.S. offer of sanctions relief and end of military exercises on the peninsula to justify a freeze on nuclear and missile activity. Washington could lift the ban on travel to and from the DPRK, allowing him to reciprocate by making visas easily available to Americans and South Koreans, as well as other Asian states (though Japan might be a bit of a stretch, given historic animosities). Citing the fact that China and Russia are closer and thus more dangerous, the new Kim might keep their access to the North more restricted.
He also should move cautiously but steadily to liberalize the North at home. He would have to move carefully, wary of resistance by hardliners, especially in the security forces, which might attempt to oust him. Changes—such as relaxing restrictions on contact with the outside world, especially South Korea—could be presented with traditional justifications, such as fidelity to Juche. After all, the rest of the world deserves the opportunity to learn about the North’s superior system.
The new Kim should return economic reform to the political agenda. If U.S. and United Nations sanctions came off, he could ease restrictions on foreign investment and trade. Equally important would be a gradual political loosening: rather like in some of today’s Gulf monarchies, people might be freed to criticize government functionaries and officials, even if the royals, most importantly himself, remained off-limits in the short-term. Accountability for apparatchiks could be introduced by encouraging independent journalists and lawyers, who would be allowed to challenge regime failures. Labor camps would be downsized though perhaps not entirely emptied—diehards defending North Korea’s Ancien Regime would have to go somewhere! He could end the war on religion, inviting foreigners of faith to come and help rebuild the country.
The most important challenge would be guiding the new Kim once the reform process began. There is no blueprint for transforming a communist monarchy into a liberal democracy. Mikhail Gorbachev discovered the mess that can result once coercion and ideology are removed from a system with little else to support it. Moreover, after Jia Yongtang was accepted as North Korea’s famed Sun King, the onetime Chinese rent-a-cop might grow to like his position. Actually, Washington shouldn’t worry if he decided that he wanted to preserve the Supreme Leader gig so long as he abandoned the North’s nukes, ending that threat to America, and pulled back Pyongyang’s conventional forces, so South Koreans no longer lived under the gun.
President Trump Meets with Chairman Kim Jong-un.
However, the Republic of Korea could guarantee the new Kim a large payoff if he engineered peaceful reunification. That would be particularly important since China likely would push in the opposite direction, attempting to preserve a compliant buffer state. He could enjoy some honorific position in the new unity government plus a generous nest egg for when he decided to formally “retire.” Then he could play global statesman and celebrity, the communist dictator who saw the light, guided his people into the 21st century, and delivered peace and stability to Northeast Asia, heretofore one of the most volatile regions on earth. With a bit of lobbying from allied states, a Nobel Peace Prize might even be in his future.
Of course, there would be the little matter of the “old” Kim. A regimen of drugs, intensive reprogramming, and sophisticated cosmetic surgery should establish a new identity for him. He could be discretely placed in a diaspora community. The top three diaspora locations, the U.S., China, and Japan, might be unduly risky given their concentrations of ethnic Koreans, who in turn are too closely connected with both North and South.
A better option might be Uzbekistan, which has a modest number of ethnic Koreans, or Canada, which has slightly more. In neither case would it be easy for him to make his way back to the DPRK and even if he did, he would be greeted as a slightly addled and confused royal wannabe claiming to be of the sacred Baekdu bloodline. Indeed, those around him might urge him to take up life as a Kim impersonator, especially with his very convincing accent. It would be a fitting end of his career!
Operation Doppelganger wouldn’t be easy to pull off. But consider the alternatives. A major war with the possibility of North Korean nuclear attacks throughout the Asia-Pacific and even on the American homeland. A really bad idea. Continued sanctions, without much chance of success: the DPRK has withstood nearly two years of almost total economic isolation. And diplomacy, seemingly dependent on which side of the bed the real Kim arose that morning.
Today North Korea appears headed toward becoming a middling nuclear power, comparable to Great Britain and India. Which means Kim and his successors will be able to turn any country on earth into a long-threatened “lake of fire.” Does anyone have a better idea?
A 1945 Contributing Editor, Doug Bandow is a Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute. A former Special Assistant to President Ronald Reagan, he is author of several books, including Tripwire: Korea and U.S. Foreign Policy in a Changed World and co-author of The Korean Conundrum: America’s Troubled Relations with North and South Korea.
3. S.Korea, US hold deputy-level talks on N.Korea
Good to see this sustained high level engagement. As an aside, I am meeting with Director General Rim later this morning.
S.Korea, US hold deputy-level talks on N.Korea
11/2/2021
Senior officials from South Korea and the US held talks on ways to restart dialogue with North Korea, the State Department said.
US Deputy Special Representative for North Korea Jung Pak hosted a "deputy-level consultation meeting" with her South Korean counterpart, Rim Kap-soo, according to the Department.
"The two sides discussed the current situation on the Korean Peninsula; prospects for humanitarian cooperation; and the potential for dialogue with the DPRK," Yonhap News Agency quoted the Department as saying.
DPRK stands for the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, the North's official name.
The meeting comes after Kim said the countries will continue to discuss ways to bring North Korea back to the dialogue table, including an end of war declaration proposed by Seoul.
Kim made the remarks after a Seoul meeting with his South Korean counterpart, Noh Kyu-duk, on October 24.
South Korea believes that declaring a formal end to the 1950-53 Korean War could work as a catalyst to resume dialogue with Pyongyang.
North Korea currently remains unresponsive to .S overtures for dialogue. It has also stayed away from denuclearization negotiations since 2019.
This meeting further demonstrated the shared commitment between the US and the Republic of Korea to advance our common goal of achieving complete denuclearization and permanent peace on the Korean Peninsula," said the press release, referring to South Korea by its official name.
Monday's meeting was also attended by officials from South Korea's Ministry of Unification and the presidential office Cheong Wa Dae, as well as officials from the US National Security Council and the Treasury and Defense Departments, it added.
Source: IANS
4. Combat mentality, exercising the mind for special operations
Good to see this from one of the units I served longest in and have been associated with for more than 30 years. (going back to when it was SOC-K and located in a building that was once a Japanese military bathhouse next to the old 8th Army HQ and located in an old Japanese military morgue and bio weapons testing facility on Camp Kim!). SOCKOR has come a long way.
Combat mentality, exercising the mind for special operations
Photo By Cpl. Dae Hyeon Choi | U.S. Special Operations Command-Korea psychologist, Dr. Richard Sohn, is focused on brain advancement training through a program called Brain Headquarters (Brain HQ). This program enhances participants’ brain functions and accuracy in regard to decision-making skills. The Brain HQ program is designed for special operators to increase their battlefield skills in uniquely training the mind. Through repeated computer-based training scenarios, the end goal is for participants to act faster, increase short-and long-term memory and increase accuracy in decision-making. | View Image Page
PYEONGTAEK, 41, SOUTH KOREA
11.02.2021
Special operations is known for its physicality – operators are able to adapt and overcome scenario-based challenges in any environment. But how does the mind play into that?
U.S. Special Operations Command– Korea is exploring the importance of exercising the brain as much as operators train their physical health through a program called Brain Headquarters. This program is intended for special operations forces to improve their psychological, cognitive, and emotional behaviors to fight more tactically and strategically on the battlefield.
Brain HQ is the part of the Preservation of the Force and Family program at SOCKOR. The overall program provides support uniquely designed for special operators and SOF employees.
Service members are provided with battlefield practice scenarios through computer-based training. Participants are given options to choose sessions based on what they want to focus on. There are options of exercises focusing on brain speed, attention, and memory categories.
“Brain HQ’s main objective is to provide the participants opportunities to enhance and measure their level of response when it comes to speed of attention or concentration as well as monitoring the ability to sustain cognitive effort,” said, Dr. Richard Sohn, SOCKOR psychologist. “There’s also opportunities to enhance short-and long-term memory, visual and spatial reasoning or navigation, and decision-making speed and accuracy.”
One of the exercises involves the participants being given a scene of constantly moving targets to increase the ability to identify targets faster. Brain HQ’s model foundationally is that cognitive skills are learnable skills, and this natural ‘plasticity’ allows service members in SOF to re-wire the brain for better functioning.
“Brain HQ training is specific to cognitive and emotion skills,” said Sohn. “The training is based on repetition as similar scenarios are provided over and over. Participants are able to see their scores over time as they become familiar with given scenarios like combat situations.”
These brain skills are just as essential as the physical skills. Strong mental focus provides opportunities for service members to perform better and accomplish the missions.
NEWS INFO
Date Taken: 11.02.2021 Date Posted: 11.02.2021 04:05 Story ID: 408493 Location: PYEONGTAEK, 41, KR Web Views: 23 Downloads: 0
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5. Most Heavily Armed Place on Earth? That Would Be the Korean DMZ
In case anyone needs a reminder.
Most Heavily Armed Place on Earth? That Would Be the Korean DMZ
The current demarcation line between North and South Korea was settled by the Korean Armistice Agreement of July 1953. The two sides agreed on a demilitarized zone approximately 2.5 miles wide approximately 160 miles long, bisecting the peninsula. Technically there is no “border,” as neither Korea really considers the other Korea separate country, and so the DMZ has become the de facto border. Although the DMZ is commonly referred as following the thirty-eighth parallel line, it actually falls beneath the thirty-eighth parallel in the west and goes above it in the east.
North of the DMZ, the Korean People’s Army is responsible for the DMZ. (Although a Border Security Bureau exists, it protects only the borders with China and Russia.) North Korea has erected a series of fortifications and defensive structures designed to prevent South Korean forces from crossing the border. An electrified fence runs the length of the DMZ, along with minefields strewn with antipersonnel mines. The KPA has also built a number of towers designed to watch for South Korean incursions.
North Korea’s armed forces number 1.2 million armed men and women in uniform, and the armed forces maintain a decidedly offensive stance. Approximately 70 percent of ground forces and 50 percent of air and naval forces are within sixty miles of the DMZ. North Korea built several underground tunnels that crossed the DMZ, with at least four having been detected—and sealed—by the Republic of Korea Army between 1974 and 2000. Starting in the early 2000s, Pyongyang reportedly began building a network of at least eight hundred bunkers near the border, each capable of sheltering 1,500 to 2,000 KPA light infantry troops to act as protective marshaling points before the troops spearhead a cross-border assault.
In the event of war, North Korea’s plan is to use overwhelming firepower and speed of action to conduct a “One Blow Non-Stop Attack.” In 1992, Kim Jong-il, the father of current leader Kim Jong-un, concluded that only a lightning assault across the border, known as “Occupying South Korea, All the Way to Pusan, in Three Days” could succeed in light of the overwhelming firepower that U.S. forces could bring to blunt any of Pyongyang’s moves.
Once war begins the KPA’s three forward infantry corps, the I, II and IV Corps, supported by independent light infantry brigades and the 620th and Kangdong Artillery Corps, would launch a lightning attack across the DMZ. Also in support would be KPA Air Force fighters, helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft flying commandos, paratroopers and saboteurs south of the border, and amphibious assaults on tactically significant South Korean islands and coastal areas. KPA submarines would fan out to deploy naval commandos and intercept ROK Navy and U.S. Navy forces, particularly amphibious forces poised for a counterattack.
The vigorous attacks by the three KPA corps—almost certainly supported by generous amounts of chemical weapons—would ideally generate at least one breakthrough on the west and east coasts, with the west more important due to the presence of the South Korean capital of Seoul. On the west coast, the KPA 815th Mechanized Corps and 820th Tank Corps, each with hundreds of tanks and infantry fighting vehicles stand ready to exploit any breakthrough, while the 108th and 806th Mechanized Corps stand ready to do the same on the east coast.
North Korean heavy-artillery units such as the 620th and Kangdong Corps would fire from protective positions known as Hardened Artillery Sites, or HARTS. Dug into mountainsides and frequently protected with concrete casements, HARTS are designed to provide an elevated perch from which heavy artillery can fire their guns south in support of an invasion—or to conduct terror attacks on Seoul. The sites allow North Korean artillery to launch their deadly artillery strikes and then retreat into the bowels of a mountain, hillside, or rough terrain to hide from U.S. and South Korean aircraft, artillery and missiles. Many HARTS sites have already been identified, but undoubtedly some will remain undetected. Their ability to target civilians makes them a number-one priority in wartime.
Meanwhile, south of the DMZ, South Korea too has extensive defenses designed to stop an army from crossing the border. Republic of Korea Army troops regularly patrol the border, inspecting it for signs of infiltration, with heavy machine guns and other support weapons overlooking key areas. (ROK soldiers patrolling in the DMZ are considered “armed police” and not “military,” a distinction without a difference but within the letter of the armistice agreement.) In 2010, the SGR-1 armed border sentry robot began patrolling the DMZ, reflecting the high manpower costs associated with covering the entirety of the 160-mile-long zone.
There are also heavier, more obtrusive defenses for keeping armored and mechanized forces out. Many roads and highways between Seoul and the DMZ are designed to be easily blocked in case of invasion. Roadways running north-south are channeled through narrow passes that are easily blocked to the heaviest and most powerful tanks, including cylinders of concrete suspended by cables and pillars that are easily toppled. These so-called countermobility obstacles are not designed to permanently stop advancing KPA forces, but just to slow them down long enough so that the defenders can mount an effective defense.
In the event the North stages a cross-border attack, Southern troops would attempt to stop KPA forces as close to the border if possible. Seoul is a mere half hour’s drive from the DMZ, and urban sprawl means even a minor penetration would reach the outskirts of the city. ROK forces at the border would be outmanned but perhaps not outgunned, as KPA military technology lags far behind the south. Southern forces would throw everything they had at the enemy crossing the DMZ, and the amount of firepower traded north/south in some sectors could easily equal the fighting on the Somme or D-Day.
In any cross-border attack, the longer it takes for the KPA to win, the more likely it is the United States and South Korea will prevail. An extended offensive means more time for the ROK military to call up reserves and, perhaps more importantly, more time for American air, ground and naval units to arrive and through their weight into the fight. In response, part of the KPA’s battle plan is to attack airfields, ports, and other points of entry into the peninsula, sealing it off from reinforcements and giving time for the frontline combat units to win the war.
The Korean DMZ is almost certainly the most heavily armed place on Earth. In the event the unthinkable happens, the presence of three large armies on the Korean Peninsula and their associated firepower would make the otherwise peaceful 2.5-mile-by-160-mile strip (which doubles as a wildlife refuge) one of the deadliest battlegrounds ever conceived.
Kyle Mizokami is a defense and national-security writer based in San Francisco who has appeared in the Diplomat, Foreign Policy, War is Boring and the Daily Beast. In 2009, he cofounded the defense and security blog Japan Security Watch.
6. China, Russia revive push to lift U.N. sanctions on North Korea
Hopefully the UK and France will oppose this so the US does not have to be the only "bad guy." China and Russia are working to set up the US as the rad black to negotiations and peace. This is political warfare.
China, Russia revive push to lift U.N. sanctions on North Korea
Reuters
Michelle Nichols
Publishing date:
Nov 01, 2021 • 12 hours ago • 3 minute read •
UNITED NATIONS — China and Russia are pushing the U.N. Security Council to ease sanctions on North Korea by reviving a 2019 attempt to remove a ban on Pyongyang’s exports of statues, seafood and textiles and expanding it to include lifting a refined petroleum imports cap.
In a reworked draft resolution, seen by Reuters on Monday, China and Russia want the 15-member council to remove those sanctions “with the intent of enhancing the livelihood of the civilian population” in the isolated Asian state.
China, Russia revive push to lift U.N. sanctions on North Korea Back to video
North Korea has been subject to U.N. sanctions since 2006 over its nuclear and ballistic missile programs.
The draft resolution also includes other measures first proposed by Russia and China nearly two years ago, including lifting a ban on North Koreans working abroad and exempting inter-Korean rail and road cooperation projects from sanctions.
Several U.N. diplomats, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the refreshed draft resolution would find little support. In 2019 Russia and China held two informal rounds of talks on the draft resolution, but never formally tabled it for a vote.
Diplomats said on Monday that China and Russia have not yet scheduled any talks on their new draft resolution. A resolution needs nine votes in favor and no vetoes by the United States, France, Britain, Russia or China to pass.
The U.N. missions of Russia and China did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the new text, which diplomats said was circulated to council members on Friday.
“It has been always China’s will that we should also address the humanitarian dimension caused by the sanctions imposed by the Security Council,” China’s U.N. Ambassador Zhang Jun told reporters last month, adding again that the 2019 draft resolution “remains on the table.”
‘DIFFICULT SITUATION’
A spokesperson for the U.S. mission to the United Nations declined to comment on private council discussions, but added that all U.N. members should be focused on addressing those who are violating the sanctions already in place.
“The Security Council has repeatedly affirmed that it is prepared to modify, suspend, or lift the measures as may be needed in light of the DPRK’s compliance,” the spokesperson said. “Yet the DPRK has taken no steps to comply with the Security Council’s demands regarding its prohibited nuclear and ballistic missile programs."
North Korea is formally known as the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
The U.N. Security Council does already allow for humanitarian exemptions. A U.N. rights investigator last month called for sanctions to be eased as North Korea’s most vulnerable risk starvation after it slipped deeper into isolation during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The sanctions on industries that Russia and China have proposed lifting previously earned North Korea hundreds of millions of dollars. They were put in place in 2016 and 2017 to try to cut off funding for Pyongyang’s nuclear and missile programs.
North Korea continued developing its nuclear and ballistic missile programs during the first half of 2021 in violation of U.N. sanctions and despite the country’s worsening economic situation, U.N. sanctions monitors reported in August.
The country has long suffered from food insecurity, with observers saying that mismanagement of the economy is exacerbated by sanctions and now the COVID-19 pandemic, which prompted unprecedented border lockdowns there.
The new draft resolution would have the council acknowledge “the difficult situation of economy and livelihood of the DPRK in recent years, underscoring the necessity to respect the legitimate security concerns of the DPRK, and ensure the welfare, inherent dignity, and rights of people in the DPRK.”
(Reporting by Michelle Nichols; Editing by Peter Cooney and Richard Pullin)
7. The "Squid Game" critique is also a love letter to a unified Korea
Hmmm.... note the subtitle and thesis of this article.
The "Squid Game" critique is also a love letter to a unified Korea
What the west doesn't understand about Netflix's hit show is that much of it is a critique of the US influence
PUBLISHED NOVEMBER 1, 2021 7:42PM (EDT)
"Squid Game" first came to my attention via Korean friends astonished at seeing their childhood games (if horrifically perverted) onscreen as a central plot point in a blockbuster Netflix series that seemed it could be as big a Korean crossover as last year's Oscar-winning "Parasite." It would go on to be Netflix's most successful original series ever, reaching 111 million viewers around the world only a month into its debut.
But chatter online from non-Koreans made it seem like the series' main draw was a combination of absurdity and gratuitous onscreen violence. As Variety opined, "Murder is fetishized as a way to raise the stakes in a hazily political conversation," giving viewers a voyeuristic look into the brutality of a highly unequal Korean society where death and cruelty to a putatively unemotional people is a mere cinematic style: "It's impressive that the series found a way to be even more affectedly direct and unbothered about showing ways the human body can come apart."
This variety of critique (as opposed to an approvingly auteur-gore-splattered Tarantino film that ironically takes if not steals much from Asian films) contains pungent whiffs of the racist "Life is cheap in the Orient" trope; i.e., the words of General Westmorland famously broadcast to the public to normalize American slaughter of women and children in the Korean and Vietnam wars. "The philosophy of the Orient expresses it: Life is not important."
I tend to not tolerate onscreen violence well, making a point to avoid it if it is gratuitous or leans into rape culture (e.g., "Game of Thrones"), and thus came close to almost missing "Squid Game." Its shocking originality and deeply Korean style of cinematography, the dialogue that's a mix of pathos/bathos/humor only made me feel prouder to be Korean. It also underlined how if there is a villain, it's seated in the root wound of the Korean people: the partitioning of the peninsula by the U.S.
Most non-Koreans seem to accept there is and always has been, somehow, a North Korea and a South Korea. Koreans, however, know the peninsula as a unified nation, intact despite constant invasions including in the 20th century, its violent colonization by Japan. Historians I know even subscribe to the shocking misapprehension that it was the Korean War the split the peninsula in two, and don't realize that after Japan surrendered during World War II, an unwanted U.S. military occupation, as the late Professor Chong-sik Lee, has written, took a Korea that "has been an integral unit, politically, culturally and economically" but in the post war rush of divvying up the spoils and ongoing anxieties over the possible spread of communism in Asia, made Korea a pawn in the burgeoning Cold War.
Two young officers, Dean Rusk and Charles Bonesteel were given 30 minutes' deliberation – without even a map – to split the country at a place that would keep Seoul in the south but leave enough land to appease the Soviets, who were threatening to invade, anyway. As professor Lee has described it in Journal of International Affairs, the rushed officers ultimately chose an "arbitrary line of partition at the 38th Parallel," a line that literally amputated families, with "the Korean people playing no part in the decision." Years later, Rusk, himself admitted, "Division along the parallel made no sense . . . as far as Korea was concerned."
So even though George W. Bush famously labeled North Korea part of the "Axis of Evil," he omits the fact that this state the U.S. so vigorously condemns was originally created by the U.S. itself.
The U.S.' 75-year presence lurks everywhere in "Squid Game." Sometimes quietly, as in the opening scenes featuring the boy-man protagonist Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae), a divorced father with a gambling addiction, eking out a living with his elderly mother who makes pennies selling vegetables on the street. When not on one of his minor moneymaking gigs, he lollygags in their gloomy half-basement room. The same kind sunken moldy habitation is a shared motif in "Squid Game" and "Parasite": the half-basement dwellings, called banjiha, prominent in Seoul, are actually not intended as dwellings but were mandatorily build in the '70s as bunkers in case of North Korean attack, but now with the widening gulf of inequality, have been retroactively legalized to house the poor.
The U.S.' post-World War II division of Korea into north and south has consequences of which were negligible for most Americans, especially the elites, but for Koreans meant life and death, families and a country in a constant state of rupture and grieving, embodied in the tragic North Korean migrant character Sae-byeok (Jung Ho-yeon). We first meet her sitting on the floor of Seoul's version of Off Track Betting, an urchin wandering the streets not unlike the scores of orphans crying in the gutters of Seoul after their families were killed in American bombings during the Korean war. Sae-byeok picks Gi-Hun's pocket, directly resulting in him being tortured by loan sharks (the violence of his "real" life shown to be as hellish or even more than that of Squid Game life). But later we learn Sae-byeok and her brother are marooned in Seoul as a kind of marginal class mostly invisible in society, in debt if not swindled by the gangsters who helped them out (their elder brother already dead of plague, their father shot and killed by border guards, their mother caught and repatriated back to the DPRK) and needing even more money in order, as she promises her little brother as he waits in an orphanage, to reunite what's left of their family. The suspended Squid Game piggy bank filled with billions of won is her moon-shot.
Lee Yoo-mi as Ji-yeong and Jung Ho-yeon as Kang Sae-byeok in "Squid Game" (YOUNGKYU PARK/Netflix)
Sae-byeok is young, a teen girl, but shows herself to be as tough and resourceful as the physically strongest (and cruelest) gangster. Her alliance with Ji-young (Lee Yoo-min), another teen, is one of the most poignant in the series. Most of the players are in their 40s; the girls' gender and age makes them unfavorable to be picked for the various games, and so they seek each other out. The sinister outsized candy-colored play structures emphasize the losses for those two, barely out of childhood themselves: Sae-byeok, being North Korean, has never played any of these classic games, and one wonders from her closed, unsmiling face if she has ever played childhood games at all. Ji-young, the child of a horrific domestic abuse situation, has never had a childhood, either. The two of them have an easy trusting rapport starkly set against the brutality not just of the games but of the partition. Sae-byeok's name "Dawn," makes a mockery of her impossible, lightless situation, not unlike how in the giddy days following Japan's Koreans celebrated the "Day of Return of the Light," which they thought meant their country being returned to Koreans. This illusion lasted however many months before both U.S. and Russian military forced their way onto the peninsula.
One meticulous detail lost to English speakers, but that has also gone unremarked upon by Korean speaking critics is how Sae-byeok is a distinctly North Korean name, in that it is a pure Korean word, not a combination of Sino-Korean syllables. Pre-partition and in South Korea, still, Koreans use a complex generational system of yoked Chinese characters (for example my name, Myung-Ok, means clear + jade; my sister's is Chung-Ok is righteous + jade, connecting us as siblings but also within a 12-year generation). Sae-byeok literally is the word for dawn, her younger brother's name is Cheol, iron, and indeed a character comments on what a "strong" and manly name he has, whereas for traditional names, it's often unclear what they mean without seeing the underlying Chinese characters, which are printed on a second line on business cards.
North Korean language tried to purge itself of Sino-Korean words altogether, something I learned as an official visitor to North Korea in 2008, where my guides explained North Korea has been purposefully keeping its language "clean." Foreign import words, which abound in South Korea, not just English phrases and words like "beer," "elevator" and "thank you," but the German word "Arbeit" has come to mean "part time job." In North Korea they no longer use the Sino-Korean word for Korea, hanguk, means People of the Han, so North Koreans call themselves People of the Joseon (after a Korean dynasty); even the North Korean word for "Korean language," hanguk-mal, is an arch neologism: Joseon-mal, referring to the basically the same language that, when speaking with other Koreans, is casually and habitually just called woori nara mal, "our country's language."
Ji-young's name thus provides the South Korean contrast. Not only classically made (wise + flower), but for artistic purposes also has a generic ring to it. It was the most popular name in Korea in 1970, and thus is a kind of demographic signifier, a Korean "Jennifer" for young women who came of age during the '90s IMF financial crisis, exemplified by popular novel "Kim Jiyoung Born 1982" – about a young woman who can't catch a break, no matter how hard she works (and could easily be a "Squid Game" contestant herself).
Outside of Asia, the financial crisis in Korea barely registers. I happened to be living in Seoul as a Fulbright Fellow, and the IMF and Bill Clinton "intern" scandal dominated the Korean news for months, often thrown together, like Sae-byeok and Jiyoung. Too long to go into here, the financial crisis was a consequence of geopolitical manipulations, a "dawn" of global neoliberalism, a closed market pried open, with the U.S. and other Western countries flooding Korean financial markets with speculative capital, then, for political leverage, abruptly withdrawing it, upending the Korean economy, cutting off other lending sources, forcing South Korea to accept IMF loans with strict conditions that, of course, would be advantageous to the west. This included moving to a more western-style (versus a paternalistic company that is expected to care of the worker for life in exchange for loyalty) corporate climate that led to the gutting many worker protections and benefits, which in turn led to strikes, like the one Gi-hun was in (a fictional reference to several real auto company strikes), his first step on his downward spiral from worker to desperate, loan-laden gig worker after the strike is violently suppressed. But in contrast to how the American 2008 financial crisis was experienced as American homeowners individually at fault for taking bad loans (while the actual lenders who came up with the idea of sub-prime loans, and their investment banks, got the bailouts), that year in Korea there were heartbreaking stories on the news of scores mothers giving up their babies' dol-panjis, traditional gold rings commemorating a child's first birthday, in hopes that this collective action could help the country's economy, not unlike how some "Squid Game" participants abandon their self-interest for possibly futile collective action.
Wi Ha-jun in "Squid Game" (Noh Juhan/Netflix)
The largest ghost presiding over the series is the cost of the partition turning brother against brother. The western elite wear gilded masks and amuse themselves watching the Squid Game participants battle – and kill – each other, orchestrated at a remove. VIP No. 4 is so bored by the spectacle of lethal hand-to-hand combat, he takes what he thinks is a waiter, Jun-ho (Wi Ha-joon), the police detective who has infiltrated the group to search for his missing brother, away to rape him, only for Jun-Ho to pull out his gun and turn the tables on him.
But this kind of resistance against the powers of the west can only go so far. The U.S. left Korea the way it entered; arbitrarily and weary of a drawn-out war that was seemingly unprofitable, unwinnable. Again, not thinking of Koreans, U.S. military left behind not peace but a shaky, hastily created ceasefire agreement, leaving the country cleaved in two and the South Korean president so frustrated that he wasn't even invited to the signing for fear he wouldn't sign the document. Appropriately, the U.S. military signed it for him. There was no official declaration of war going in, and now the U.S., after bombing more than 90% of both North and South Korea's infrastructure, left the two Koreas still fighting war that it hadn't started.
The filmmaker spares no subtlety in the climactic scene when the Squid Game's fixer, the English-speaking Korean "Front Man" (and previous winner of the games) pursues the police detective. In a standoff at a cliff with guns drawn, both unmask we see it's two loving brothers facing off. The same way Sae-byeok accepts it is unlikely she will 1) win the money, and 2) reunite her family, in the two brothers, there is sorrow and recognition – and resignation – in both their eyes. In real life, given the constant conscription via kidnapping of both sides during the war it was not uncommon for brothers to find themselves inadvertently facing off as mortal enemies.
In "Squid Game," even the lulls, like when the contestants are lining up for their meal, can turn into a bloodbath in the blink of an eye; similarly, in this civil war not of Koreans' own making, there is no "everything will be all right" to strive for: in order for one brother to live, the other will have to die. And then the one who lives sees himself and his brother as a literal ghost in his mirror. As viewers we see Jun-ho shot and falling over a cliff that seems to mean certain death, but we don't see him die; the filmmaker also leaves the story open, just like the armistice could continue to bring peace . . . or more war. This constant anxiety for Koreans, especially since Seoul is within shelling distance of the DPRK, is immaterial to the world, as the U.S. has moved on. Indeed, the Forbes critic called this fratricide scene "a totally pointless subplot that achieves nothing and only serves to confuse us in the end."
But no matter: one of the things that struck me about "Squid Game" is its audacious attitude that it doesn't need the world's (especially the west's) approval to exist. This a bold move, even if not consciously digested by western audiences, to reclaim Korean history as written by Koreans.
My parents came to the U.S. in 1953, as kind of refugees from the Korean war. My late father refused to talk about his experiences during the war, only to repeat the Korean proverb, "When the whales fight, the shrimp gets hurt." I think he'd agree, then, that "Squid Games"' sickening and over-the-top violence is seated less in individual Koreans and springs more from its history of outside forces using this small but strategically placed country for its own ends.
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8. China Aids and Abets North Korea’s Abuse of Christians
China is complicit in north Korean human rights abuses in addition to its own.
China Aids and Abets North Korea’s Abuse of Christians
The North Korean regime’s goal is to make it impossible to be a Christian in North Korea.
“If you tell them that you went to a church and believed in Jesus, they would not stop at just beating you.” These are the words of North Korean defector Lee Kang In, quoted in a report released last week by UK-based human rights group Korea Future. The report adds substantial evidence to what the world already knows—North Korea is not just a national security threat; it is the world’s worst violator of human rights.
Utilizing interviews with North Korean defectors who fled their country over the past two decades, the report studied 167 incidences of persecution against ninety-one Christians taking place between 1997 and 2018. Offenses include arbitrary deprivation of liberty; refoulement; and torture or cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment.
The report also studied 227 cases of persecution against 151 individuals who practiced Shamanism. While shamans (fortune tellers) suffer abuses, including criminal sentences, most are released within a few years. Meanwhile, most of the detained Christians documented in the report are in political prison camps and unlikely to ever be released.
The North Korean regime’s goal is to make it impossible to be a Christian in North Korea. The Ministry of State Security searches out perceived domestic threats to its power. Since the regime considers Christianity to be a domestic threat, holding Christian beliefs is a political crime, and agents seek out and arrest anyone suspected of having such beliefs. Korea Future found that suspects are held in a web of holding centers, detention centers, internment camps, and political prison camps.
Yet, one of the primary ways that North Korean agents identify Christians might be with the help of the Chinese government. The report documented twenty-five cases in which Christian North Korean defectors were caught and repatriated from China. In these cases, Chinese authorities interrogated the defectors about possible Christian affiliation and documented their answers before handing the defectors over to the North Korean agents. If a defector had engaged in Christian activities while in China, the Chinese authorities placed a certain stamp on their files to inform the North Korean agents that they had. The report notes that the presence of these stamps increased the likelihood that these individuals would face brutal punishments.
This is especially concerning, given that most Christians in North Korea today converted to Christianity after being exposed to Christian missionaries or being helped by Christian churches in China. The Chinese government knows exactly what type of treatment Christians will receive upon their repatriation. Yet, Chinese authorities send believers back with the contemporary equivalent of the Nazis’ yellow stars, marking them to receive the harshest treatment.
The brutal torture endured in North Korean detention is difficult to imagine. One former detainee told the report’s researchers that after another detainee was caught praying, they were beaten every morning for twenty days in a row. Other witnesses recounted beatings with fists, steel rods, or even logs and being made to endure positional torture by holding a painful physical position for hours a day.
In several cases, victims were detained over their possession of a Bible, sometimes with their entire family. In one documented instance, the detained family included a two-year-old. Korea Future’s report highlighted one particularly disturbing incident:
Ko Sun Hee, who was detained at Onsong County Ministry of State Security Detention Centre, observed how correctional officers would make detainees suspected of studying the Bible stick their heads between the steel bars of a cell door. The officers would then strike the detainees’ heads until “blood spurted upwards.”
Mounting evidence of egregious human rights abuses is not something the free world should brush aside as it tries to manage the tense security situation caused by North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un. As it stands now, the Biden administration has yet to even announce its formal policy regarding North Korea. But Kim’s recent underwater missile test launched from a submarine is just one of many signs that he has no inclination to play nice on the world stage.
Thus far, President Joe Biden has not prioritized North Korea during his presidency. But Kim might not always let that be an option. When the Biden administration decides to get serious about North Korea, human rights need to be front and center in any negotiations. China must also face global condemnation for its part in repatriating defectors and directly enabling abuses perpetrated against repatriated defectors. Subjected to life in a totalitarian regime, the North Korean people are not in a position to speak for themselves. The free world can and must speak up for them.
Arielle Del Turco is Assistant Director of the Center for Religious Liberty at Family Research Council.
Image: South Korean Christian faithful attend a service at the top of the Aegibong Peak Observatory just south of the demilitarised zone (DMZ) separating the two Koreas in Gimpo, west of Seoul December 22, 2012. Reuters.
9. North Korea is breeding black swans for people to eat, as the reclusive nation faces a crippling food shortage
I wonder how they test but I am not curious enough to try to find out. I wonder if we ever have US delegations return to north Korea if they will be "treated" to black swans."
North Korea is breeding black swans for people to eat, as the reclusive nation faces a crippling food shortage
Black swans and a cygnet seen in Christchurch, New Zealand, on October 01, 2021.
Sanka Vidanagama/NurPhoto via Getty Images
- North Korean leader Kim Jong Un declared a food shortage in June and asked people for solutions.
- State media said Monday that the country is now breading black swans to slaughter for their meat.
- A United Nations expert said in early October that the country's food shortage was perilous.
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North Korea has started breeding black swans to slaughter for their meat as the country battles to solve a crippling food shortage.
On Monday, state media said that a new plan to breed swans would help alleviate the crisis.
According to the newspaper, Ri Jong Nam, the chief party secretary for South Hamgyong province, opened a black swan breeding center on October 24 on the country's east coast.
"The solution is meant to address both the failure of large-scale farming to provide adequate food supplies to the whole country and more recent government COVID-19-related restrictions that have largely blocked food and other imports since early 2020," Colin Zwirko, senior analytic correspondent at NK News, wrote of the swan project.
In June, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un declared a "tense" food crisis and, in September, urged North Koreans to come up with solutions to the "food problem," NK News said.
The price of some goods across North Korea has reportedly shot up as a result of the crisis. In June, a kilogram of bananas cost the equivalent of $45, NK News said.
In early October, a United Nations expert said that the food shortage was precarious, Reuters reported.
Contemporary records suggest that swan meat was an acceptable ingredient in France in the 1300s, England in the Victorian era, and North America during the 18th century.
10. Pope Francis unlikely to visit North Korea this winter because he is from 'warm country': presidential spokeswoman
Preparatory damage control for when the Pope is a no show in north Korea? Managing expectations.
Pope Francis unlikely to visit North Korea this winter because he is from 'warm country': presidential spokeswoman
Pope Francis waves during the weekly Angelus prayer in The Vatican, Oct. 31. AFP-YonhapPope Francis is unlikely to visit North Korea in the winter, although it is difficult to predict when the trip will happen, the Cheong Wa Dae spokesperson said Tuesday.
President Moon Jae-in asked the pope during their meeting at the Vatican last week to visit North Korea to help foster peace on the Korean Peninsula. The pope responded that he would do so if he received an invitation from the North.
"Various efforts are under way, but it's difficult to predict the timing," Cheong Wa Dae spokeswoman Park Kyung-mee told KBS radio by phone from Europe where she was accompanying Moon. "The pope is from Argentina, which is a warm country, so my understanding is that it's difficult for him to travel in the winter."
Cheong Wa Dae spokeswoman Park Kyung-mee / Yonhap
Moon made the request to the pope at a time when he is also seeking international support for a declaration that will formally end the 1950-53 Korean War, which ended in an armistice, not a peace treaty.
The Moon administration hopes to use such a declaration to revive stalled peace talks with the North.
"A visit to North Korea by the pope, who is constantly praying for peace on the Korean Peninsula, is not a (publicity) event but a noble action in its own right," Park said.
"We would like it to be viewed on its own, rather than in connection with an end-of-war declaration or the Beijing Olympics," she added, referring to speculation that the government hopes to use a papal visit to draw the North to the negotiation table and set the stage for another inter-Korean summit on the sidelines of the Winter Olympics in February.
This was the second time Moon asked Pope Francis to visit North Korea.
No pontiff has ever visited the country before. (Yonhap)
11. Some N. Korean workers welcome blackouts in Chinese factories
Some N. Korean workers welcome blackouts in Chinese factories - Daily NK
With China experiencing acute power shortages, factories employing North Korean workers are also suffering blackouts. Laborers are unable to work when this happens, but a source says some workers welcome the situation.
In a phone conversation with Daily NK on Friday, a source in China said that there was a blackout early this month at a factory in Jilin Province, where there are thousands of North Korean workers. “They couldn’t work because there was no power for about two days,” he said.
China has recently contended with serious power shortages due to insufficient coal supplies to its power stations. This is leading to blackouts and factory stoppages, with companies taking major hits.
In particular, China’s Three Northeastern Provinces — Liaoning, Jilin and Heilongjiang — are suffering significant losses.
If factories shut down due to blackouts, workers receive no wages as they cannot work. Nevertheless, North Korean laborers reportedly welcome the shutdowns.
The source said North Korean laborers take home just RMB 50 (about USD 8) after a month’s work, so some believe not working is better.
A factory in the Chinese city of Hunchun, Jilin Province, that reportedly employees North Korean workers. / Image: Daily NK
According to the source, one North Korean worker said he used to work hard through the night, but now he could rest comfortably due to the blackouts. “I hope the blackouts continue and I work just one week a month,” the worker reportedly said.
Relatedly, Daily NK has reported that North Korean authorities extort about 98% of the monthly wages of North Korean workers in China as “loyalty funds.”
However, the laborers have been suffering shifts of over 16 hours a day, as well as murderously intensive work.
Because of this, North Korean workers — who have been working practically for free — welcome the rest due to the blackouts.
The source said most factories in the area have experienced blackouts, and it remains uncertain whether operations have restarted.
UN Security Council Resolution 2397, adopted in December 2017, called for the repatriation of all North Korean workers abroad by December 2019.
However, North Korean authorities have not been repatriating workers since closing the nation’s borders in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Nor has China been actively seeking to repatriate North Korean workers in the country. North Korean workers receive short-term and student visas rather than work visas. Accordingly, Chinese authorities reportedly claim they are not subject to repatriation.
Please direct any comments or questions about this article to dailynkenglish@uni-media.net.
12. Historic All-Female formation flight (in Korea)
Historic All-Female formation flight
OSAN AIR BASE, Republic of Korea --
On a clear and sunny afternoon, eight A-10 Thunderbolt II’s and two F-16 Fighting Falcons were cleared for takeoff to conduct close air support (CAS) training. During the training sortie, the team deciphered the tactical difficulty of having multiple formations in the Area of Operation (AO) by integrating multiple airframes to strike targets passed by a Joint Terminal Attack Controller (JTAC).
This kind of training isn’t unique to the 25th or 36th Fighter Squadron but today each of these aircraft was piloted by a woman.
It’s rare for a squadron to launch a formation of pilots who all happen to be female. Not only were there women flying the A-10s and F-16s, but an all-female weather team briefed the pilots prior to stepping to the aircraft. Female Airmen planned and executed the entire process from radio communication inside the air traffic control tower to the crew chief marshaling the aircraft on the ground. The team effort showcased the ability that women have to lead in every facet from planning to mission execution.
On April 28, 1993, when former U.S. Secretary of Defense Les Aspin ordered military services to allow women to fly in combat, there was no timetable of how soon the world would see the percentages of female fighter pilots increase.
Today, almost 30 years later, there are only 103 female fighter pilots across the U.S. Air Force 11F career field. Ten percent of those fighter pilots flew jointly in a momentous all-female formation sortie at the 51st Fighter Wing.
“In my 15 years of flying the F-16, I’ve been a part of 10 different fighter squadrons, and I’ve had a total of six other women pilots in all those squadrons,” said Lt. Col. Katie “Taboo” Gaetke, 7th Air Force, Chief of Plans and Policy. “I have never been in a squadron with more than one other woman pilot. To have eight women in one fighter squadron is unreal!”
Gaetke continued, “When you are the only woman (or any minority), or one of just two or three, there is an implicit burden you carry – to represent all women. Whether you realize it or not, people remember your actions and tend to generalize what you do or say as representative of all people who look like you. When there are eight women in a single fighter squadron, there are suddenly too many to have just one represent the group. Each person is freer to be themselves, to contribute their unique perspective, to take risks and innovate and make mistakes without worrying that they are fulfilling other people’s negative stereotypes about them. This is when we as an Air Force can truly gain from diverse perspectives: when diversity isn’t just an anomaly, but instead there is a critical mass.”
History tells us that female aviators have been capable pilots since the days of WWII and the WASPs, however within the last decade the numbers have swelled to a now noticeable contingent. Someday there will be no novelty in a larger aircrew of female pilots. This sortie is another step in achieving that eventuality.
“When I was in grade school I met a female F-22 Raptor pilot who was stationed in my home town of Anchorage, Alaska,” said Grace “Slap” Herrman, A-10 Thunderbolt II pilot. “She told me she went to the Air Force Academy where she flew gliders and was eventually picked up to be a USAF pilot. At that exact moment I realized that being a fighter pilot was entirely possible for a girl, and I was going to be a fighter pilot. I know this interaction was probably something that seemed so small for Elizabeth, but it was absolutely life changing for me.”
The aircrew included a wide range of experiences from a Lieutenant on her first sortie in the Operations Squadron to Lieutenant Colonels with years of invaluable operational experiences. The launch showcased how much women operating in aviation have increased in the past few years.
With just 10 women, the team spanned qualifications from one of the most qualified pilots in the A-10 Thunderbolt II and F-16 Fighting Falcon squadrons to one of the newest.
Upon landing, leaders from 7th Air Force, 51st Fighter Wing, family, teammates and Girl Scouts troops joined a final flight celebration for Capt. Erin Fullam, F-16 Fighting Falcon pilot. Her devotion to aviation and excellence has been instrumental in the development of mission success at Team Osan.
The Girls Scout troops in attendance scanned the flight line full of aircrew in amazement as the pilots hugged their families and recapped the memorable details of the mission. The moment, both significant in U.S. Air Force aviation history was noticeably striking to the young girls.
“The significance of today’s flight is not for us, the pilots,” said Capt. Grace “Slap” Herman. “It is for the young girl who has never seen a female fighter pilot, let alone 10 of them. We fly for her so she knows nothing is out of her reach and she need only believe to one day be a future fighter pilot.”
V/R
David Maxwell
Senior Fellow
Foundation for Defense of Democracies
Phone: 202-573-8647
Twitter: @davidmaxwell161
FDD is a Washington-based nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.
