Quotes of the Day:

"However [political parties] may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion."

​- George Washington, Farewell Address, September 17, 1796​

"Never forget that intelligence rules the world and ignorance carries the burden. Therefore, remove yourself as far as possible from ignorance and seek as far as possible to be intelligent."

- Marcus Garvey

"Self education is, I firmly believe, the only kind of education there is."

- Isaac Asimov

1.  N. Korea fires artillery shells into sea to protest S. Korea-U.S. drills near border

2. U.N. agency head says N. Korea's human rights situation in 'black box'

3. Korea Becomes World's 6th Largest Trading Country

4. Phony artillery war between Koreas raises tensions – and questions

5. North Korea Fires Artillery Near Border With South Korea

6. Golden jubilee for closer Korea-India ties

7. North Korea’s first daughter emerges. Could women one day run the country?

8. Opinion | Vexing Issue: Can the Korean Peninsula be De-nuclearised?

9. Crypto hacking behind N. Korea’s renewed nuclear ambition

1. N. Korea fires artillery shells into sea to protest S. Korea-U.S. drills near border

Do not give in.We must make Kim's strategy fail (it is failing though I know that seems counterintuitive to most people), Kim wants to get a rise out of the alliance (best case to make the alliance offer concessions). We must not appease the regime because of its provocative action but we must not over react as well. Our overreactions support the Propaganda and Agitation Department's work. We need to execute a superior political warfare strategy focusing on a human rights upfront approach, a sophisticated influence campaign, and the pursuit of a free and unified Korea.

(2nd LD) N. Korea fires artillery shells into sea to protest S. Korea-U.S. drills near border | Yonhap News Agency

en.yna.co.kr · by 황장진 · December 6, 2022

(ATTN: UPDATES with additional firings, JSC statement in 2nd para, last 3 paras)

By Kim Soo-yeon

SEOUL, Dec. 6 (Yonhap) -- North Korea fired a barrage of artillery shells into an inter-Korean maritime buffer zone for a second consecutive day Tuesday in response to live-fire drills between South Korea and the United States.

South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said the North fired about 90 artillery rounds from 10 a.m. through the afternoon from Kosong County in Kangwon Province toward the East Sea. About 10 more firings were detected after 6 p.m. from Kumgang County in the same province, the JSC said.

The shells splashed into the maritime buffer zone north of the Northern Limit Line, a de facto sea border, in violation of the 2018 inter-Korean military accord to reduce border tensions.

"The successive artillery firings into the eastern maritime buffer zone are a clear violation of the Sept. 19 military accord, and we strongly urge the North to immediately halt them," the JCS said.

On Monday, the North fired some 130 artillery shells into eastern and western buffer zones.

Earlier Tuesday, North Korea's military said it ordered artillery firing into the sea in response to military drills between South Korea and the U.S. near the inter-Korean border.

The North appears to be referring to live-fire drills being conducted between South Korea and the U.S. at border units in Cheorwon County, 71 kilometers northeast of Seoul.

The General Staff of the Korean People's Army (KPA) said it detected the South Korean military's firing of artillery from multiple rocket launchers and howitzers in frontline areas from around 9:15 a.m. following similar military actions on Monday, according to a statement carried by the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).

"We immediately ordered frontline artillery units to launch artillery firing into the sea to issue a strong warning," an unnamed KPA General Staff spokesperson said in the statement.

In a statement, Seoul's defense ministry defended the South Korea-U.S. military live-fire drills as "normal" ones that proceeded outside a ground buffer zone set under the 2018 inter-Korean accord.

"We can never accept the act of the North wrongfully criticizing the normal South Korea-U.S. training and repeatedly firing artillery shots into the sea in violation of the Sept. 19 military accord," the ministry said.

It warned "all responsibilities" for what would result from the "unilateral, continued" breach of the accord rest with the North.

#shorts

sooyeon@yna.co.kr

(END)

en.yna.co.kr · by 황장진 · December 6, 2022

2. U.N. agency head says N. Korea's human rights situation in 'black box'

It is good to see the second article in Yonhpa's north Korean section on human rights (following the lead article on artillery fire for the second day).

But it is time for the ROK to establish its human rights foundation.

Excerpts:

"The establishment of a human rights foundation is appropriate and urgent in the conditions of North Korea," he said, adding such a move is critical in helping improve the rights records.

The creation of a North Korean human rights foundation has been delayed for years, as the main opposition party, which holds a majority seats at the National Assembly, has not recommended its share of five candidates for a 12-member board committee.

Kirby also voiced hope that South Korea will "reverse" its failure to support a U.N. resolution on North Korea's human rights records in recent years under the former liberal Moon Jae-in government.

The conservative Yoon Suk-yeol administration has taken a proactive stance in dealing with the North's rights issues. South Korea co-sponsored a U.N. draft resolution condemning North Korea's human rights conditions this year, in a shift from a low-key approach for four years under the preceding liberal Moon government.

U.N. agency head says N. Korea's human rights situation in 'black box' | Yonhap News Agency

en.yna.co.kr · by 김수연 · December 6, 2022

SEOUL, Dec. 6 (Yonhap) -- The head of the U.N. human rights agency's office in Seoul on Tuesday voiced concerns that North Korea has become a "black box" in terms of human rights situations, as it is hard to know what's happening from the outside following its COVID-19 border controls.

Speaking at a seminar on the North's rights records, James Heenan, representative of the U.N. Human Rights Office in Seoul, called for more actions to improve the North's dismal rights situation.

"Since the COVID(-19) lockdown, the DPRK has essentially become a black box in terms of human rights. We don't know to any great extent exactly what is happening in the country," Heenan said, using the acronym of North Korea's official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. "This is incredibly concerning. In simple terms, we know that bad things happen when there's no scrutiny or transparency."

In his video message to the forum, Michael Kirby, the former chair of the U.N. Commission of Inquiry on the North's human rights, called on South Korea to establish a foundation on North Korea's human rights situation.

"The establishment of a human rights foundation is appropriate and urgent in the conditions of North Korea," he said, adding such a move is critical in helping improve the rights records.

The creation of a North Korean human rights foundation has been delayed for years, as the main opposition party, which holds a majority seats at the National Assembly, has not recommended its share of five candidates for a 12-member board committee.

Kirby also voiced hope that South Korea will "reverse" its failure to support a U.N. resolution on North Korea's human rights records in recent years under the former liberal Moon Jae-in government.

The conservative Yoon Suk-yeol administration has taken a proactive stance in dealing with the North's rights issues. South Korea co-sponsored a U.N. draft resolution condemning North Korea's human rights conditions this year, in a shift from a low-key approach for four years under the preceding liberal Moon government.

sooyeon@yna.co.kr

(END)

en.yna.co.kr · by 김수연 · December 6, 2022

3. Korea Becomes World's 6th Largest Trading Country

The headline seems a little premature according to the text. However, this is a big deal (even if it is a result of the global economic conditions)

"expected to become"

Korea Becomes World's 6th Largest Trading Country

english.chosun.com

December 06, 2022 12:46

Korea is expected to become the world's sixth-largest trading country this year amid a slow global economy and sky-high inflation.

Hong Kong's decline in ranking due to coronavirus lockdowns in China and soaring energy prices contributed to Korea's rise. But Korea is suffering its biggest-ever trade deficit this year, with exports starting to shrink in October.

According to the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy on Monday, Korea's trade is expected to total US$1.4 trillion this year to rank sixth in the world, up from eighth last year. The top five are China, the U.S., Germany, the Netherlands and Japan.

Korea's exports of cars and petroleum products have risen to fresh record highs, and semiconductor shipments are expected to set a new benchmark.

Cumulative exports to the U.S., India and ASEAN already set a new record by November, while those to the EU are also likely to reach a new high by the year-end.

But a closer look shows some worrying developments. Korea's improved ranking is largely due to rising global energy prices as it imports most of the oil and gas it needs and petrochemical products are key exports.

Rising energy imports have meant a trade deficit every month since April, and now exports are also declining amid the global economic slowdown. The Korea International Trade Association estimates this year's cumulative exports at $690 billion and imports at $735 billion, resulting in a deficit of $45 billion.

The outlook for next year remains bleak. Korea is forecast to suffer a trade deficit of W13.8 billion with exports declining to $662.4 and imports to $676.2, according to the association.

Korea to End This Year in the Red as Exports Plunge

Korea's Economic Growth Slows to 0.3%

Korea's Trade Deficit Keeps Growing

Growth Forecasts Shrink as Exports Fizzle

Korea's Exports Decline for 1st Time in 2 Years

Korea Suffers Longest Run of Trade Deficits Since 1997

Korea's Trade Deficit Swells to 66-Year High

Korea Suffers Trade Deficit for 4th Month Running

Korea's July Trade Deficit Already Sky-High

Korea Suffers Biggest Trade Deficit in 66 Years

Korea to Post 1st Trade Deficit Since Financial Crisis

Korea's Trade Deficit Hits All-Time Record

Korea's Trade Deficit Keeps Mounting in May

Korea's Trade Deficit Keeps Swelling

Korea Faces Mounting Trade Deficit

Korea Posts Trade Surplus in February

Korea Faces Another Monthly Trade Deficit

Korea Posts 2nd Month of Trade Deficits

Exports Expected to Slow This Year

• Copyright © Chosunilbo & Chosun.com

english.chosun.com

4. Phony artillery war between Koreas raises tensions – and questions

The ROK and the ROK/US alliance must execute a superior form of political warfare. That is what north Korea is conducting. We must do it better.

Phony artillery war between Koreas raises tensions – and questions

In South, fears rise of escalation, but others warn against falling into North’s political trap

asiatimes.com · by Andrew Salmon · December 6, 2022

SEOUL – As both South and North Korea conduct live artillery drills on either side of the Demilitarized Zone, the nature of the situation’s actual risk remains unclear.

Are the North’s angry rhetoric, and barrages that violate mutually agreed-upon buffer zones, preludes to an upcoming artillery strike, based on a deadly 2010 modus operandi, as some fear?

Or are they merely designed to goad the South into revoking a 2018 inter-Korean agreement, painting Seoul as the villain and Pyongyang as the injured party, thereby fortifying the Kim Jong Un regime’s own posture for its home audience?

War of drills

South Korean and allied US forces are continuing a week of pre-planned and pre-announced live-fire drills in the county of Cheorwon, a rugged stretch of heavily militarized terrain south of the DMZ that is home to various ranges. The strategic area was the scene of heavy combat during the 1950-53 Korean War, and now is famed as a military-focused tourism site, noted for its eerie ruins, battlefield memorials, and DMZ lookout points.

In response to the drills, North Korea on Tuesday unleashed angry rhetoric and ordered the firing of more live projectiles of its own, according to state media. That followed barrages unleashed on Monday, when the North fired 130 rounds – believed to be from tactical multiple-launch rocket systems – into the seas off both sides of the peninsula.

Some of Monday’s projectiles splashed in a buffer zone established in 2018 as part of the mutually agreed Comprehensive Military Agreement. Seoul’s Joint Chiefs of Staff called those shoots a violation of the CMA and urged the North to desist.

Previously, in November, North Korea had fired a barrage into the zone, and a test-launched missile – possibly errant – had crossed the maritime border before crashing into South Korean waters off the east coast.

One expert warns that the North’s angry rhetoric about the current drills recall the operational model it deployed in the deadly year of 2010.

A Korean War-era ruin in the county of Cheorwon South Korea. Image: Andrew Salmon / Asia Times

A deadly benchmark

In late 2009, there had been patrol-boat clashes in the Yellow Sea. In March 2010, the South Korean corvette Cheonan sank in the Yellow Sea – according to South Korean and international investigators, because of a North Korean torpedo – with the loss of 46 sailors.

Subsequently, in November, North Korea complained when South Korea and the US conducted joint training drills. Days later, when South Korean marines conducted live-fire exercises off the island of Yeongpyeong – which is occupied by the South, but lies just 12 kilometers off the North’s coast – North Korean artillery fired on the island.

Four persons were killed, a civilian street was flattened, and experts warned that the peninsula was facing its most dangerous crisis since the armistice ending the Korean War was signed in 1953.

The 2010 Yeongpyeong attack may be the modus operandi North Korea is resurrecting in 2022.

“The live-fire we are doing is just normal training for us – I am 100% sure that it does not infringe on the border buffer zones,” said Chun In-bum, a retired South Korean general. “The North Koreans have done this before, in 2010, when they started to make claims about our legitimate training and fired into South Korea. This is very concerning – it is the exact model.”

Asia Times understands that the 2010 situation was contained after South Korean forces were restrained by their US allies from engaging a more florid – and high-risk – response. But Chun fears that any attack this time would meet with a disproportionate response from the South.

“I hope they are not building justification for doing something stupid as our reaction is going to be very firm and could escalate into something that even Kim Jong Un is not prepared for,” Chun said. “I hope he is not trying to test the resolve of the South Koreans or make the Yoon [Suk-yeol] government look foolish.”

A less kinetic, more crafty ploy

However, the North Korean actions could, instead have a political aim – the nullification of the 2018 CMA, which had both substantive and symbolic provisions. The fruit of an inter-Korean summit the same year, the CMA was designed to remove potential flashpoints where skirmishes could occur.

Under it, both Koreas established “buffer zones” on both sides of the border on land, sea and in the air. Within those zones, any live-fire drills within 5 kilometers of the Military Demarcation Line – the actual border that runs through the center of the DMZ – were prohibited. Limited no-fly zones were also designated on both sides of the DMZ.

The agreement’s more symbolic provisions – which played out in front of media cameras – included the destruction of a handful of guard posts inside the DMZ, and the removal of firearms from the iconic Joint Security Area in the border village of Panmunjom.

A former deputy commander of the UN Command – the US-led multinational force based in the south that oversees the armistice that ended the Korean War – praised the CMA to Asia Times. But some hawks in the South and the US have decried the agreement, saying that prohibitions on flying favor the North, which lacks up-to-date unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and aircraft.

Prosperous, high-tech, US-allied South Korea has access to far superior ISR (intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance) assets than the impoverished North. That means the increased reaction time a no-fly zone grants is more valuable to Pyongyang than to Seoul.

Why, then, would Pyongyang seek its dissolution? An expert suggests the reason is not military, but political.

“I don’t think the North Koreans want to start something,” said Daniel Pinkston, a Seoul-based international-relations expert at Troy University, speaking of an actual clash of arms.

However, there are domestic reasons why the North might like to see the South nullify the CMA. If Seoul took that step, it would justify Pyongyang’s “posture and orientation that ‘the world is a menacing place, and Yoon and the Japanese and the Americans are out to get us,’” Pinkston said.

North Korea’s economy and society are widely believed to have been badly impacted by the country’s tight border closures implemented as an anti-Covid-19 measure. This impact could, feasibly, provide a motivation for Pyongyang to seek to aim public displeasure at overseas targets.

One such exists in Seoul. South Korea’s conservative president, Yoon Suk-yeol, is notably more hardline than his progressive predecessor, Moon Jae-in.

Moon, who oversaw the signing of the CMA, favored engaging North Korea and distancing from Japan. Yoon has taken the opposite approach, with the result that Japanese-South Korean-US trilateral exercises – anathema to Moon – have expanded.

From the northern side, 2022 has been a record year for the number of missile tests – of all classes and sizes – conducted by Pyongyang.

“If you sit back in Pyongyang and do nothing, you run the risk of being perceived as weak,” said Pinkston. And in a dictatorship, “you never want to be perceived as weak.”

To his domestic populace, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un benefits from looking tough and creating external threats. Image: Facebook

However, multiple expectations from pundits in both Seoul and Washington that North Korea would this year conduct a nuclear test – its seventh – have so far proved inaccurate.

That has not silenced those voices in the South that speak out against the CMA.

“There are people in the South talking about nullifying the CMA as a retaliatory measure, but I would say that is dumb,” Pinkston warned. “As soon as you go down that path, it validates what North Korea has done.”

There are precedents for conservative presidents in the South killing off inter-Korean projects set in place by their pro-engagement, progressive predecessors.

The Kaesong Industrial Complex – established in 2004 near the city of Keasong, just north of the DMZ – married North Korean labor with South Korean capital and management. It was nullified by the right-wing Park Geun-hye administration in 2016 amid military tensions.

Prior to that, the Mount Kumgang project – a tourism resort established by Hyundai in 1998 that enabled South Korean tourists to visit the scenic North Korean site – had been closed under another conservative leader.

The Lee Myung-bak administration ordered South Korea’s exit from the resort after a South Korean tourist was shot dead, apparently in a case of mistaken identity, by a North Korean soldier. The North refused a joint investigation into the killing.

Follow this writer on Twitter @ASalmonSeoul.

asiatimes.com · by Andrew Salmon · December 6, 2022

5. North Korea Fires Artillery Near Border With South Korea

The regime may want the ROK to terminate the Comprehensive Military Agreement and then blame the ROK for terminating it. Political warfare.

North Korea Fires Artillery Near Border With South Korea

North Korea’s military said the firings were a warning against ongoing South Korean artillery exercises.

thediplomat.com · by Kim Tong-Hyung · December 6, 2022

Advertisement

North Korea fired about 130 artillery rounds on Monday into the water near its western and eastern sea borders with South Korea, the latest military action contributing to worsening relations between the neighbors.

North Korea’s military said the firings were a warning against ongoing South Korean artillery exercises near the inland border town of Cheorwon and blamed the South for worsening tensions.

South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said the North Korean weapons, fired Monday afternoon from North Korea’s western and eastern coastal areas, fell within the northern side of buffer zones created under a 2018 inter-Korean agreement to reduce military tensions. There were no immediate reports of shells falling inside South Korean territorial waters.

South Korea’s military said it communicated a verbal warning to North Korea over the firings and urged it to abide by the agreement. The South Korean and U.S. militaries were closely monitoring North Korea’s military activities while strengthening their readiness to respond to any “potential contingency,” the Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement.

The South Korean army is conducting live-fire exercises involving multiple rocket launching systems and howitzers from Monday to Wednesday in two separate testing grounds in the Cherowon region.

Enjoying this article? Click here to subscribe for full access. Just $5 a month.

The North Korean firings also came days after Washington, Seoul, and Tokyo announced largely symbolic sanctions on some North Korean people and institutions accused of illicit activities to finance the country’s nuclear weapons and missile programs.

In a statement released through state media, an unidentified spokesperson of the North Korean People’s Army’s General Staff said North Korea instructed its western and eastern coastal units to fire artillery as a warning after it detected dozens of South Korean projectiles flying southeast from the Cheorwon region.

“We severely warn the enemy side to be prudent, not kindling the flame of escalation of tension unnecessary in the area around the front,” the spokesperson said.

Advertisement

It was the first time North Korea has fired weapons into the maritime buffer zones since November 3, when around 80 artillery shells landed within North Korea’s side of the zone off its eastern coast.

North Korea has fired dozens of missiles as it increased its weapons demonstrations to a record pace this year, including multiple tests of an intercontinental ballistic missile system potentially capable of reaching deep into the U.S. mainland, and an intermediate-range missile launched over Japan.

North Korea has also conducted a series of short-range launches it described as simulated nuclear attacks on South Korean and U.S. targets in an angry reaction to an expansion of joint South Korea-U.S. military exercises, which North Korea views as rehearsals for a potential invasion.

Experts say North Korea hopes to negotiate economic and security concessions from a position of strength and force the United States to accept it as a nuclear power. South Korean officials have said North Korea might up the ante soon by conducting its first nuclear test since 2017.

North Korean state media said last week that leader Kim Jong Un has called for a major political conference before the end of the year at which he is expected to address increasingly tense relations with Washington and Seoul over the expansion of North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs.

The inter-Korean military agreement that established the buffer zones is one of the few tangible remnants of the countries’ short-lived diplomacy of 2018. Former South Korean President Moon Jae-in met North Korean leader Kim Jong Un three times that year while also helping to set up Kim’s first summit with former U.S. President Donald Trump.

But the inter-Korean negotiations never recovered from the collapse of the second Kim-Trump meeting in February 2019, when the Americans rejected North Korean demands for a major easing of U.S.-led sanctions in exchange for a partial surrender of the North’s nuclear capabilities.

Kim Tong-Hyung

Kim Tong-Hyung reported for the Associated Press from Seoul, South Korea. 

VIEW PROFILE

thediplomat.com · by Kim Tong-Hyung · December 6, 2022

6. Golden jubilee for closer Korea-India ties

​India and Korea have a very interesting relationship.

Golden jubilee for closer Korea-India ties

The Korea Times · December 6, 2022

By Song Kyung-jin

Next year marks the golden jubilee of Korea-India diplomatic ties. The golden jubilee could be translated into an opportune moment for bilateral relations to be upgraded to the next level with a set of concrete cooperation projects that are more ambitious and action-oriented in regard to cooperation. Korea and India, two thriving democracies in the Indo-Pacific region, are natural partners for many reasons.

India's geopolitical and geoeconomic importance is increasing ever more rapidly. India, currently the world's fifth-largest economy, is forecast to be the third-largest by 2050 after China and the United States. South Korea, will be the ninth-largest. Their bilateral trade in the first half of 2022 reached $14.2 billion, the largest volume in the first half ever. It, however, is far below the potential of the two Asian economies.

On Nov. 11, President Yoon announced, at the ASEAN Summit in Phnom Penh, the vision of Korea's Indo-Pacific strategy for "a free, peaceful, and prosperous Indo-Pacific." Korea is slated to present its Indo-Pacific strategy to the world in totality by year-end. Changing geopolitical and geoeconomic circumstances constantly provide new impetus for adjusting and fine-tuning such a strategy.

The geographical boundaries of Korea's Indo-Pacific strategy expand farther to Africa's Indian Ocean and Europe. Consequently, the importance of increasing cooperation with India, a key country in the Indo-Pacific region, will be emphasized. Korea would also benefit from India's established strong influence, reach and networks in the countries bordering the African Indian Ocean region.

On Dec. 1, India assumed the G-20 presidency, with the next summit scheduled for Sept. 9-10, 2023. For the next year, the world expects a growing role for India as the new G-20 chair, looking to solve the critical challenges confronting the world and the region.

India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi expressed his wish on the day India commenced its G20 presidency to present India's experiences, learnings and models as possible templates for the developing world, in particular. He also stated that India has leveraged technology to create digital public goods that are open, inclusive and interoperable.

In both areas, Korea has unique and successful experiences that it can share with the developing world jointly with India. Korea was instrumental in integrating the concept of development into the G-20 agenda during its G-20 presidency in 2010. Korea and India can further deliberate on and recalibrate the G-20 action plan for development, with particular emphasis on infrastructure collaboration. Such infrastructure partnership should not be confined to bilateral cooperation but expand into trilateral, minilateral and/or plurilateral projects in the Indo-Pacific region where there is a huge infrastructure deficit.

With an urbanization rate of 35.9 percent as of 2022, India invites greater infrastructure cooperation. It is raising its profile in development assistance to finance many infrastructure projects ― housing, transportation, solar, power, bridges, ports, digital, etc. ― in South Asia and the African Indian Ocean region. These are the areas where Korea, too, has a big stake in trade and security. The Korea-India infrastructure partnership could also drum up existing regional minilateral infrastructure partnerships to become more vibrant. Both countries should leverage their position in the Indo-Pacific region.

It is imperative for the two countries to mobilize public-private partnerships for better functioning and effective collaboration in infrastructure and other critical areas such as global supply chain resilience and digital transformation. To this end, setting up a regular business forum between Korea and India is essential.

Areas in need of bilateral cooperation encompass technology, semiconductors, defense, biopharmaceuticals, climate and renewable energy. For example, Korea's semiconductor exports to India jumped 95 percent in the first half of 2022, laying the groundwork for more mutually beneficial cooperation.

Given the growing significance of reliable and resilient technology cooperation, Korea should engage more actively on various levels in the BIMSTEC (Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation) process that is gaining more traction in the sub-region and the Indo-Pacific.

The impact of COVID-19 is still around. India wants to include ― in next year's G-20 discussions ― the role of multilateral development banks in regional and global efforts concerning the pandemic response and preparedness. In tandem with this, closer and more resilient vaccine and biopharmaceutical partnerships need to be forged bilaterally.

As part of their development assistance, the two countries can forge a trilateral or minilateral vaccine partnership with African Indian Ocean countries. It makes not just health sense but also business sense. The Economist Intelligence Unit predicts that healthcare spending per head, for instance, will rise by 4.7 percent globally in 2023 and pharmaceutical sales will increase by 5.1 percent. Asia will be one of the fastest-growing pharmaceutical markets.

Nevertheless, without a deeper understanding of each other, the two countries will end up making only a small step forward at best. More people-to-people exchange programs are urgently needed among universities, think tanks, journalists, businesses, women and youth and others.

Dr. Song Kyung-jin (kj_song@hotmail.com) led the Institute for Global Economics (IGE), based in Seoul and served as special adviser to the chairman of the Presidential Committee for the Seoul G20 Summit in the Office of the President. Now, she is executive director of the Innovative Economy Forum.

The Korea Times · December 6, 2022

7. North Korea’s first daughter emerges. Could women one day run the country?

I think Kim Yo Jong would like to weigh in on this.

North Korea’s first daughter emerges. Could women one day run the country?

The Washington Post · by Michelle Ye Hee Lee · December 5, 2022

SEOUL — Shortly after Kim Jeong-ah graduated from military college in North Korea, a senior told her she should embody a woman’s sensibilities and characteristic attention to detail. Female enlistments were a new reality, and she thought his remark signaled a newfound appreciation for women in the workplace.

Yet North Korea was a heavily chauvinistic society. Violence and discrimination ran rampant. A quarter-century later, that’s mostly still the case.

“The patriarchy will never change,” said Kim, who defected to the South in 2009. “At the end of the day, men are the heaven and women are the earth.”

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has fueled widespread speculation about his succession planning after recently showing off his daughter for the first time. But the question of whether a woman could run North Korea is a complex one, female defectors and researchers say.

Certainly, more women hold powerful positions in the government than ever before. The regime has three women in first-tier positions, an unprecedented feat for female representation: Kim’s sister and top aide, Kim Yo Jong; Foreign Minister Choe Son Hui; and Hyon Song Wol, who directs security and logistics for the leader’s public events.

The number of female members in the central committee of the country’s main political party doubled from 2016 to 2019, and women have long been represented in higher numbers in local organizations, according to research by Michael Madden, who runs North Korea Leadership Watch.

This progress suggests that the ranks of women with substantive political standing will continue to increase, Madden said: “This might be accurate over the next 10 to 20 years, particularly as the next generation of North Korean officials begin to inhabit more influential or prominent positions in the regime.”

Women also play an important role in the North Korean economy and are often the main breadwinners of their homes. They run the private markets, or jangmadang, selling and bartering goods imported from China to earn money. Men are required to work jobs that support the regime and so have capped wages, which limits how much money they can bring home.

Even so, North Korea remains a deeply male-dominated society, where women are routinely subject to sexual violence, trafficking and discrimination, especially as they work and travel to trade goods.

The country’s three most powerful women — Choe, Hyon and Kim Yo Jong — are “from special families and are different from ordinary women,” said Kim Seok-Hyang, North Korean studies professor at Ewha Woman’s University in Seoul. “They are women, but occupy a place in society that is like other elite men.”

During the pandemic, North Korea has tightly closed its borders. Trade with China plummeted, and its leader limited cross-border travel throughout the country, which constricted the local market economy. He also has cracked down on smuggled entertainment and media in recent years, cutting a key source of unfiltered access to information about the outside world for much of the population.

The restrictions on movement risk the safety and potential of ordinary North Korean women who run the markets, said Lina Yoon, senior Korea researcher at Human Rights Watch.

“Every single element that empowered women … he’s actually taken away,” Yoon said. “If this is really going to be the trend going forward, women are actually in a worse-off situation in terms of empowerment than ever before.”

Their role as moneymakers has meant they could exert some domestic power and limit household spending, researchers and defectors say. But when they did not bring enough money home or were not particularly good at business, they often became victims of domestic violence. Yoon fears lockdowns and covid restrictions may have exacerbated such violence.

The country’s most educated and privileged women are in the capital, Pyongyang, where women work a range of jobs, such as interpreters, tour guides, restaurant servers, bus drivers and employees at state-owned enterprises. Many have studied in other countries.

Lindsey Miller, who lived in the city from 2017 to 2019 with her husband, a British diplomat, recalled the conversations she had with elite Pyongyang women about dealing with expectations of marriage and motherhood. She said several confided that they wanted to delay both as long as they could so they could move up in their careers or travel abroad — struggles reminiscent of women’s experiences in other countries, including the United States.

Today’s attitudes about marriage have roots in the 1990s, when North Korea experienced a devastating famine. Many women recognized that they couldn’t rely only on the state to provide food and realized that having a child meant adding another mouth to feed, making tough times even harder, Kim Jeong-ah, the former military officer, said.

She now runs Rights for Female North Korean Defectors, an organization based in greater Seoul for those who were separated from their children when they left the country. Many of the women she helps, promised money they could send back to their families, became victims of human trafficking. Those who tried to return home were treated as pariahs.

“These women essentially sold themselves to save their families. … Rather than being supported, they were ostracized,” she said.

It is impossible to know who might follow Kim Jong Un in leading North Korea. His daughter, whom South Korean officials have identified as Ju Ae, is believed to be about 9 or 10 years old.

Still, there’s plenty of buzz and speculation about her, according to reporting by Asia Press in Japan and Daily NK in South Korea, news outlets that run informant networks inside the country.

“It’s nonsensical for her to become Supreme Leader, a position that has been handed down in the Kim family for generations. Moreover, it doesn’t make sense because she’s a girl, not a boy. The state controls its people and teaches them that,” a female reporting partner told Asia Press.

Kim Jong Un’s motivation in releasing his daughter’s picture was not to depict her as a potential future leader but to portray himself as a fatherly figure for political purposes, said Kim Seok-Hyang of Ewha Woman’s University. Breaking the ultimate glass ceiling is not yet politically viable given the country’s male-dominated hierarchy, she added.

But when it comes to North Korea, among the most closed-off places in the world, anything is possible.

“It’s certainly interesting … not even just if a woman could do that job and would be accepted, but how other women might think about that,” Miller said. “If there are women already thinking about the fact that they don’t want to have children or they want to prioritize their careers or they want to travel … how might that affect their aspirations?”

The Washington Post · by Michelle Ye Hee Lee · December 5, 2022

8. Opinion | Vexing Issue: Can the Korean Peninsula be De-nuclearised?

We have been approaching this all wrong - denuclearization then unification. But in fact it must be unification and then denuclearization.

Opinion | Vexing Issue: Can the Korean Peninsula be De-nuclearised?

By: Vishnu Prakash

Last Updated: DECEMBER 05, 2022, 13:52 IST

New Delhi, India

news18.com · December 5, 2022

It is simply not possible to formally allow Pyongyang to retain its nuclear option, as it would destroy the very foundation of non-proliferation edifice painstakingly constructed over the decades

The Korean Peninsula has been a flashpoint for over seven decades. Tensions have ebbed and flowed but a solution has been elusive. Meanwhile, resource-rich North Korea has become an international pariah. Economically impoverished and an absolute dictatorship, it has been keeping its citizens in near servitude, accumulating weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and threatening peace and stability in the region and beyond. South Korea, on the other hand, has blossomed into a vibrant democracy, a tech giant and the world’s 10th largest economy.

After a period of relative calm, North Korea is back rattling the cage and conducting missile tests of all kinds including an intercontinental ballistic missile (that landed less than 60 km off South Korea’s coast. (Reuters). It was the first time that a ballistic missile had landed so close to South’s waters since the peninsula was divided in 1945. According to CNN, North Korea has carried out missile tests on 34 days this year, sometimes firing multiple missiles in a single day.

Analysts believe that the next nuclear test (its 7th) is imminent. It would be recalled that the North conducted its first nuclear test in 2006 during the regime of Kim Jong Il, the father of the present incumbent. Kim Jong-un who came to power in 2011 has already overseen four nuclear tests, the last in 2017 when tensions again were at a high. Dramatic developments followed in 2018, kindling the prospects of a solution, consequent to the first ever meeting between the North Korean and American presidents. Regrettably, the initiative faltered yet again.

There are several reasons for Pyongyang’s belligerence. The immediate provocation is the resumption of joint US ROK military exercises which are seen as a rehearsal for invasion by the North. The annual exercises were abruptly stopped by President Trump as a goodwill gesture, much to the dismay of Seoul, after his meeting with Kim Jong-un in Singapore in June 2018. The Covid-19 pandemic followed, resulting in a four-year break. South Korea is under the security umbrella of the US. The joint drills are meant to foster interoperability, serve as a deterrent and undoubtedly rehearse an offensive should there be a need for one.

Every year the exercises trigger shrill rhetoric and muscle flexing by North Korea. Neither side can be faulted. With thousands of missiles targeting Seoul and positioned merely 60 kilometres away, along the DMZ, the de facto inter-Korean border, the South naturally feels vulnerable. The North on the other hand feels threatened and has been demanding a permanent end.

“The situation in the Korean Peninsula and its vicinity has entered the serious confrontation phase of power, again due to the ceaseless and reckless military moves of the US and South Korea,” North Korea’s foreign ministry said in a statement carried on the country’s official KCNA news agency.

Exercises are steadily growing in scale and sophistication. The allies mounted operation “Vigilant Storm” one of their largest combined military air drills, with about 240 warplanes that undertook some 1,600 sorties staging round the clock mock attacks, for almost a week. Hoguk 22 field exercises followed, mimicking amphibious landings and river crossings over 12 days. Surely it gave sleepless nights to many in Pyongyang.

The tensions have also gotten exacerbated since the Conservative President Yoon Suk-yeol assumed office in May 2022, replacing Moon Jae-in of the Liberal Party. The conservatives traditionally take a hard-line approach towards North Korea, demanding reciprocity — humanitarian and economic assistance — in return for time-bound progressive denuclearisation. One of the poorest nations in the world, DPRK is heavily dependent on international assistance to meet even its basic needs. However, that avenue has dried up due debilitating Western sanctions, which have also placed severe limitations on its exports and imports.

Consequently, the regime’s dependence on China has become critical. Allegedly it continues to use all means, fair and foul, including cyber heists, proliferation of WMD, drug trafficking, money laundering and slave labour, to earn foreign exchange. “Proliferation linkages between North-East Asia and South Asia is a matter of concern to India — (we are) also a stakeholder in the peace process.” Prime Minister Narendra Modi had told President Moon in July 2018. There is ample evidence of two-way proliferation between Pakistan and North Korea in the 1990s.

For Kim Jong-un, the 3rd generation strongman of North Korea, the regime’s survival (in fact his clan’s) takes precedence over anything else. Pyongyang considers WMD as insurance and deterrence against Western invasion, terming them the “sacred sword of justice”. Fearing pre-emptive strikes, it has dispersed its arsenal widely, asserting that the warheads would be automatically unleashed targeting South Korea, Japan and possibly the US mainland if attacked.

North’s brinkmanship is meant to attract attention and to serve as a warning. Yet it must be said that the regime, a keen observer of geopolitics, is not suicidal and knows when to pull back. They are acutely conscious of the reality that the western response would be overwhelming if they were to cross its red lines.

And that is the nub of the problem. North Korea will not give up its nuclear weapons and the West will not accept it as a nuclear weapon state (NWS). No incentives or blandishments are likely to persuade Kim to denuclearise completely and irreversibly. He trusts no one and least of all the US and its western allies.

The US has been calling on North Korea to return to talks while maintaining that its policy of seeking the complete denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula remains unchanged. That is a non-starter for the latter.

The US often asks China to rein-in North Korea. It is true that China is the lifeline of the Kim regime and does have some influence. In better times China did try to lean on its neighbour periodically. However, Pyongyang has demonstrated its capacity to defy Beijing if required. It leverages the fact that it shares a 1,416 km long mostly riverine border with the sensitive north-eastern provinces of China and that the latter just cannot afford to see Western boots on the ground there. Therefore, it is as much in Beijing’s interest to keep the Kim regime afloat.

Swiss-educated Kim Jong-un craves respect, massive developmental assistance, and a peace accord with South Korea (North and South are still technically at war) which can only happen with Washington’s blessings. In return, he may be amenable to freezing his WMD programme but is unlikely to give it up. Numerous initiatives and negotiations, over the last forty years, in a variety of formats have floundered due to this logjam.

It is simply not possible to formally allow Pyongyang to retain its nuclear option, as it would destroy the very foundation of non-proliferation edifice painstakingly constructed over the decades. It would also set-off a global race for acquisition of WMD with devastating consequences. As such every effort needs to be made, to avoid provocations and prevent a flare up especially due to an accident or miscommunication. It is imperative for the sides to stay engaged and keep channels of communication open. Hopefully, human ingenuity or circumstances would throw up a solution sooner than later.

The author is Former Envoy to South Korea and Canada and Official Spokesperson to the Ministry of External Affairs. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not represent the stand of this publication.

Read all the Latest Opinions here

news18.com · December 5, 2022

9. Crypto hacking behind N. Korea’s renewed nuclear ambition

The importance of the all purpose sword. If we want to attack the nuclear program we need to attack north Korea's cyber capabilities.

Note this is the first installment of a 3 part series.

Crypto hacking behind N. Korea’s renewed nuclear ambition

Reclusive regime cashes in on anonymous, decentralized nature of virtual assets to cover astronomical costs of missile tests

koreaherald.com · by Ji Da-gyum · December 6, 2022

Crypto hacking behind N. Korea’s renewed nuclear ambition (The Korea Herald)

Borders were closed and trade was cut off while international sanctions continued throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, further isolating North Korea, one of the world’s most impoverished nations. But its regime has discovered new ways of raking in funds to continuously pursue its missile ambitions and divert sanctions and regulations at the same time -- via hacking cryptocurrencies.

The online theft of cryptocurrency has allowed Pyongyang free access to the new but less regulated financial system operated on blockchain technology, believed to be unhackable, through manipulation techniques that exploit human error to trick people into giving up confidential information or to download malware-ridden files.

Through such highly engineered methods, North Korean hackers have been channeling billions of dollars into the secluded regime’s pockets, according to experts from the US and South Korea.

It has become an efficient means to cover the astronomical costs of missile launches and nuclear tests for North Korea, with a gross national income that stands at 36.3 trillion won ($27.7 billion) -- about 1.7 percent that of South Korea.

The pandemic has pushed the North Korean regime to further rely on cybertheft, allowing Kim Jong-un to expand his nuclear program without having to engage with the outside world.

“North Korea has engaged in a string of illicit moneymaking schemes over the decades, from manufacturing methamphetamine to counterfeiting $100 bills, and crypto theft is the latest,” said Jean Lee, a fellow at the Wilson Center in Washington and co-host of the “Lazarus Heist” podcast from the BBC World Service.

“Cryptocurrency is incredibly appealing for North Korean hackers because it promises the potential for huge gains -- and remains largely unregulated.”

North Korea’s cryptocurrency theft -- which began in 2017 -- has begun to take center stage this year as it has fired a record-breaking number of missiles at unprecedented speed and geared up for another nuclear test despite its still-sluggish economic conditions.

This year alone, North Korea has so far fired around 90 missiles, including eight intercontinental ballistic missiles.

While leaving its people on the verge of starvation, cash-strapped North Korea devoted around $400 million to $650 million to launch 31 ballistic missiles in the first half of this year, South Korea’s chief nuclear envoy Kim Gunn said in November at the first US-South Korea joint symposium on countering North Korean cyberthreats to cryptocurrency exchanges.

US Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said in October that Pyongyang has “largely funded its weapons of mass destruction programs through cyber heists of cryptocurrencies and hard currencies totaling more than $1 billion” in the last two years alone.

North Korean-linked hacks by total value stolen/ Cost of missile launches in comparison with crypto theft and export volume (The Korea Herald)

Manipulation

North Korean hackers have commonly used traditional espionage tactics such as social engineering and phishing to gain access to networks of the targeted cryptocurrency exchanges and decentralized finance protocols.

They have advertised and distributed a modified, Trojanized version of a cryptocurrency trading application by establishing a legitimate-looking company. The US government previously identified the campaign as “AppleJeus.”

The Lazarus Group, an elite North Korean hacking group, created a new homepage with the domain name called BloxHolder by cloning the legitimate website HaasOnline. It then distributed a fake, malware-ridden cryptocurrency trading application, according to a Washington-based cybersecurity firm Volexity.

From January to July this year, North Korean hackers stole around $1 billion worth of cryptocurrency just from decentralized finance, or DeFi, protocols, according to the New York-headquartered Chainalysis.

They launched at least seven attacks on cryptocurrency platforms and stole nearly $400 million worth of cryptocurrency in 2021, up 40 percent compared to the prior year, Chainalysis said in its 2022 Crypto Crime Report.

For the isolated country, cryptocurrency itself has been attractive for its cross-border, anonymous and decentralized nature.

“Cybercriminals -- including North Korean-linked hackers -- use cryptocurrencies for the same reasons people use it for legitimate purposes: it’s crossborder, liquid, and instantaneous. This is particularly advantageous for countries that are cut off from the global economy,” said Erin Plante, vice president of investigations at New York-headquartered Chainalysis.

A lower level of cybersecurity in cryptocurrency markets compared to traditional financial institutions, including commercial banks, is another key factor triggering cryptocurrency theft.

“Blockchain gives people assurance of the underlying technology platform. However, the cyber security maturity of cryptocurrency exchanges is generally far lower than banks. Crypto is an advanced technology but it is generally poorly defended,” said Robert Potter, co-founder and co-CEO of Australian-US cybersecurity company Internet 2.0.

In addition, open source development of blockchain technology makes cryptocurrency markets more vulnerable for hacking.

“Targeting of cryptocurrencies is enabled by the fact that blockchain technology is open source and non-proprietary, affording anyone the opportunity to get up to speed,” said Joe Dobson, a senior principal analyst at Mandiant, based in Virginia.

“Further, these technologies generally prioritize functionality over security, so security issues are worked out much farther down the line and they are susceptible to being targeted in the meantime. At some point, if easier or more profitable schemes are developed, we expect North Korean operators to move to those instead.”

Low risk, high return

North Korean hackers have taken advantage of almost no risk of retaliation or punishment for their cyber-enabled crimes. North Korea’s poor cyber infrastructure and its limited exposure to cyberattacks have allowed the country to conduct cyberwarfare with an asymmetrical advantage.

But the decentralized, unregulated nature of cryptocurrency markets allows leeway for Pyongyang to more easily procure foreign currency to overcome multifaceted economic challenges, including increasing isolation from the global economy, which have been compounded by self-imposed border closures.

“For a financially isolated country looking for alternative, nontraditional sources of revenue, the decentralized and opaque cryptocurrency landscape is nothing but attractive. In the absence of meaningful international or jurisdictional regulation, North Korea can -- and has on multiple counts -- hack virtual assets to generate revenue while evading sanctions,” said Millie Kim, a researcher with the North Korea Cyber Working Group, an initiative of the Korea Project at Harvard University’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.

“These cyber operations targeting cryptocurrency feed into the state’s overarching strategy of investing in asymmetric capabilities to achieve strategic objectives and, ultimately, ensure regime survival.”

The theft of cryptocurrency is an efficient way to generate high returns for the Kim Jong-un regime with lower risk and lower costs compared to other means to rake in money bypassing UN economic sanctions, such as exporting coal or selling counterfeit cigarettes.

“If you compare this to earnings they could make from things like coal or cigarettes or whatever, the revenue is so much greater. In a mere five days, basically, they could make $500 million with a team of 10 people,” said Nick Carlsen, a blockchain analyst at TRM Labs and a former FBI analyst.

“That’s an incomparable profit rate to anything else North Korea can do. So it’s a perfect source of revenue.”

Evidence shows that North Korean hackers’ attempt to siphon funds out of one cryptocurrency robbery alone was sufficient to cover the cost of launching more than 30 missiles.

Carlsen pointed out the lack of “offensive options” against cryptocurrency theft serves as a “key advantage” for North Korean hackers. For instance, Mun Chol-myong is the only North Korean who has been extradited to the US for financial crimes. He was arrested in 2019 while in Malaysia, which in 2021 sent him off to US authorities.

“They can make so much money from this, and there’s no real consequence that the world can impose on them, aside from maybe trying to intercept some of the money that they’ve stolen or make it harder for them to steal,” Carlsen said. “So for them, it’s a no-brainer.”

Who is Lazarus Group? (The Korea Herald)

Who is Lazarus Group? The world’s most sophisticated cybercrime unit

North Korea has several groups of world-class hackers trained at its elite institutions despite its poor internet infrastructure and severely restricted and state-controlled internet access.

The state-run Lazarus Group, accused of committing high-profile cryptocurrency thefts, including the $625 million Ronin bridge heist in March 2020 and the $275 million hack from KuCoin in 2020, is one of them.

Since 2009, the Lazarus Group, which appears to have been named after a man raised from the dead by Jesus in the Bible, has been behind nefarious cyber activities. The list includes the destructive WannaCry 2.0 ransomware attack, which affected 300,000 computers in over 150 countries and caused billions of dollars of damage; the 2016 Bangladesh bank heist; and the 2014 cyberattack on Sony Pictures Entertainment.

“The North Koreans manage to fly under the radar because we underestimate the capability of hackers from a country where most of the population remains disconnected from the internet,” Lee from the Wilson Center said.

“But these North Korean hacking units have the backing of the North Korean state and are on a very important mission on behalf of their country,” Lee said.

“They are given the best training and they are given orders to devote their lives to this mission. As a result, they’ve been very clever at learning the technology behind cryptocurrency and have even managed to stay one step ahead of the technology, exploiting vulnerabilities to their advantage,” she added.

The Lazarus Group, already sanctioned by the US, is being controlled by North Korea’s principal intelligence agency, the Reconnaissance General Bureau, which oversees foreign business including weapon sales. The RGB, under the umbrella of the General Staff Department of the Korean People’s Army, is sanctioned by the United Nations and the US.

Lazarus is one of North Korea’s core hacking groups along with BlueNoroff and Andariel, which are all subordinate to the RGB’s Cyber Warfare Guidance Unit -- better known as Bureau 121 -- according to a 2020 report by the US Department of the Army called “North Korean Tactics.”

Over 6,000 members were estimated to belong to Bureau 121, but many of them operate from third countries including Belarus, China, India, Malaysia and Russia.

“North Korean hackers are enabled by the fact they can operate from China and other countries who are willing to host them. There, these individuals can leverage infrastructure and services not available to them in North Korea,” Dobson from Mandiant said.

The RGB has been tied to numerous “foreign kidnappings, assassinations, state-sponsored terror attacks, cyberoperations, and infiltration operations,” the US Defense Agency Intelligence said in 2021 in a special report on North Korea. The bureau also recruits and co-opts foreign nationals to gather intelligence and execute operations in foreign countries.

The Lazarus Group, therefore, appears to be not just a group of hackers.

Anne Neuberger, deputy national security adviser for cyber and emerging technologies at the White House, said in July that North Korean hackers are a “criminal syndicate in terms of pursuing revenue in the guise of a country,” citing multiple hacks of cryptocurrency exchanges as an example.

_____________

This is the first installment of a three-part series shedding light on North Korea’s cryptocurrency thefts and their links to the hermit regime’s nuclear ambitions. -- Ed.

By Ji Da-gyum (dagyumji@heraldcorp.com)

koreaherald.com · by Ji Da-gyum · December 6, 2022

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Senior Fellow, Foundation for Defense of Democracies

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Senior Advisor, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

Phone: 202-573-8647

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com