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Quotes of the Day:
"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed."
– Dwight D. Eisenhower
"I shall rejoin myself to my native country, with new attachments, and with exaggerated esteem for its advantages; for though there is less wealth there, there is more freedom, more ease, and less misery."
George Washington letter to James Warren
"The sides are being divided now. It’s very obvious. So if you’re on the other side of the fence, you’re suddenly anti-American. Its breeding fear of being on the wrong side. Democracy’s a very fragile thing. You have to take care of democracy. As soon as you stop being responsible to it and allow it to turn into scare tactics, it’s no longer democracy, is it? It’s something else. It may be an inch away from totalitarianism."
– Sam Shepard
1. N. Korea says it successfully conducted multiple warhead missile capability test
2. U.S. expert raises possibility of S. Korea's nuclearization in case of Trump's reelection
3. ‘They made us work day and night’: South Korean prisoner of war for over 50 years recalls life in the North
4. US, Japan, South Korea vow strategic cooperation to boost security, economies
5. North Korea says successfully tested multiple-warhead missile
6. North Korea 'will send military personnel to Ukraine within a month' to boost Putin's forces
7. Russia Offers China A River To The Sea In The Pacific
8. Why China accessing Sea of Japan through Russia-North Korea border river can ring alarm bells
9. Russia, North Korea and the axis of autocracies
10. Air Force Ghostrider flies the South Korean skies for joint training
11. North Korea Says It Tested Multiple-Warhead Missile Technology
12. Naval, air drills signal start of first large-scale exercise by US, South Korea, Japan
13. Bombs and balloons: North and South Korea raise the stakes on tense peninsula
14. ‘The scariest place on earth’: inside the DMZ as tensions between North and South Korea rise
15. S. Korean military dismisses N.K. claim of successful multiple-warhead missile test
16. S. Korea, U.S. wrap up 4th round of talks on defense cost sharing
17. N. Korea ramps up public executions of people distributing S. Korean movies: unification ministry
18. S. Korea slaps sanctions on N. Korea's Missile Administration, 4 Russian vessels for violating U.N. resolutions
19. S. Korea warns Russia 'not to make mistake' after Moscow's warning against potential arms supply to Ukraine
20. Fact check: North Korea has not announced plans to send troops to Ukraine — yet
1. N. Korea says it successfully conducted multiple warhead missile capability test
MIRV?
I want to see the missile expert's assessment.
Excerpts:
The North said the test was "aimed at securing the MIRV capability," referring to multiple independently targetable reentry vehicle technology, which allows a single ballistic missile to deliver multiple warheads to different targets.
The announcement contradicts South Korea's assessment that the missile exploded in the air.
(2nd LD) N. Korea says it successfully conducted multiple warhead missile capability test | Yonhap News Agency
en.yna.co.kr · by Kim Han-joo · June 27, 2024
(ATTN: UPDATES with more info in last 4 paras)
By Kim Han-joo
SEOUL, June 27 (Yonhap) -- North Korea claimed to have successfully conducted a missile test aimed at securing multiple warhead capability, state media said Thursday, contradicting South Korea's assessment that the test is believed to have ended in failure.
During the test conducted Wednesday, the North's Missile Administration "successfully conducted the separation and guidance control test of individual mobile warheads," the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said.
This photo, provided by North Korea's official Korean Central News Agency on June 27, 2024, shows the North's missile test conducted the previous day that it claims to have proven its multiple warhead capability. (For Use Only in the Republic of Korea. No Redistribution) (Yonhap)
The North said the test was "aimed at securing the MIRV capability," referring to multiple independently targetable reentry vehicle technology, which allows a single ballistic missile to deliver multiple warheads to different targets.
The announcement contradicts South Korea's assessment that the missile exploded in the air.
Officials of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said Wednesday that the missile was launched from an area in or around Pyongyang at around 5:30 a.m. but exploded over the East Sea after flying some 250 kilometers.
A military source told Yonhap News Agency that the North could have test-fired a hypersonic missile.
However, the North said the test "used the first-stage engine of an intermediate-range solid-fuel ballistic missile within a 170-200 kilometer radius."
The separated mobile warheads were guided correctly to three target coordinates, the KCNA said.
The effectiveness of a decoy separated from the missile was also verified by anti-air radar, it added.
The test was overseen by Pak Jong-chon, vice chairman of the Central Military Commission of North Korea's ruling Workers' Party of Korea (WPK), and Kim Jong-sik, first vice department director of the WPK Central Committee, the KCNA said.
The officials emphasized that enhancing "the MIRV capability is a very important defense technological task and a top priority of the WPK Central Committee," the KCNA reported, suggesting it might also be a top priority for North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.
Developing MIRV technology was included in North Korea's five-year development plan, which was unveiled during the eighth congress of the WPK in January 2021.
North Korea claimed that "the test is part of the administration's normal activities," the KCNA said.
This is the first time North Korea has publicly disclosed that it conducted a missile test to secure multiple warhead capability.
South Korea, the United States and Japan condemned North Korea's ballistic missile launch as a violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions.
This photo, provided by North Korea's official Korean Central News Agency on June 27, 2024, shows the North's missile test conducted the previous day that it claims to have proven its multiple warhead capability. (For Use Only in the Republic of Korea. No Redistribution) (Yonhap)
(END)
en.yna.co.kr · by Kim Han-joo · June 27, 2024
2. U.S. expert raises possibility of S. Korea's nuclearization in case of Trump's reelection
As expected Victor Cha's Foreign Affairs article would create some discussion in Asia and especially South Korea.
U.S. expert raises possibility of S. Korea's nuclearization in case of Trump's reelection | Yonhap News Agency
en.yna.co.kr · by Song Sang-ho · June 27, 2024
By Song Sang-ho
WASHINGTON, June 26 (Yonhap) -- The "entire" Korean Peninsula could go nuclear if former President Donald Trump returns to the White House, strikes an inadequate nuclear deal with North Korea and pulls out American troops from South Korea, a prominent U.S. expert said Wednesday.
Victor Cha, senior vice president for Asia and Korea chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), made the prediction in an article in Foreign Affairs magazine, noting the hope that "reasonable" lawmakers at the Capitol might guide Trump's policies is "misplaced."
In the piece titled, "America's Asian partners are not worried enough about Trump: How his return could destabilize the region," Cha delivered a message to Asian leaders: "The ride is likely to be bumpier and more unpredictable a second time around."
Trump, the presumptive Republican standard-bearer, is set to face off against President Joe Biden in the Nov. 5 general election. The two are set to engage in their first presidential debate Thursday, a showdown that policymakers around the world will carefully watch to hear their policy stances.
This combination file photo, released by the Associated Press, shows President Joe Biden (R) and former President Donald Trump. (Yonhap)
"Such a scenario would almost certainly result in the nuclearization of the entire Korean Peninsula," Cha said, claiming that a second Trump term could "most fundamentally" change the Korean Peninsula.
He was referring to the scenario in which Trump cuts a deal with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un that does not disarm the North of short-range ballistic missiles, hypersonic missiles, cruise missiles and tactical nuclear weapons, and then withdraws American forces from Korea.
In the case of South Korea's nuclearization, Cha said a regional chain reaction could ensue.
"Myanmar, for instance, has shown interest in uranium enrichment and in North Korea's nuclear weapons designs," he said. "Although Japan currently embraces nonnuclear norms, the country also has nearly 50 tons of fissile material at its fingertips -- enough to make 5,000 nuclear weapons. Taiwan might not want to be left out of the club."
Concerns have already persisted that if reelected, Trump could threaten to withdraw or scale back the 28,500-strong U.S. Forces Korea (USFK) in a move to pressure Seoul to jack up its share of the cost for stationing USFK.
Observers sought to assuage the concerns, pointing to congressional efforts to maintain the current USFK troop level through the National Defense Authorization Act.
But this belief is misplaced, Chan warned, saying a second Trump administration is likely to be "far more disruptive" for Asia than the first one was.
"If Trump gets a second chance at the presidency, he is even more likely than before to see allies as trade adversaries, reduce the U.S. military footprint worldwide, befriend autocratic leaders and challenge the norms that have thus far secured nuclear nonproliferation in Asia," he said.
"Washington's Asian security partners will need to become far more self-reliant for their defense as America becomes simply another transactional, self-interested player instead of the benevolent patron that has long supported the liberal order in the region."
Touching on Biden's efforts to reinvigorate alliance-based cooperation in security and other realms, Cha said, "No amount of institutionalization can really Trump-proof these advancements."
The expert also said that China's influence in Asia will "inevitably" grow if the U.S. becomes "just another transactional player" in the region.
This file photo, taken Oct. 8, 2023, shows Victor Cha, senior vice president for Asia and Korea chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, speaking during an interview with Yonhap News Agency at the CSIS headquarters in Washington. (Yonhap)
sshluck@yna.co.kr
(END)
en.yna.co.kr · by Song Sang-ho · June 27, 2024
3. ‘They made us work day and night’: South Korean prisoner of war for over 50 years recalls life in the North
82,000 remained and only 80 made it back.
We also have to think about the descendents of the 82,000. The ROK POWs were allowed to marry Korean women in the north and have children. But they were given the lowest social classification status (Songbun) and sentenced to workin the mines for the rest of their lives. What makes these even more horrific human rights atrocities is that their children held the same social classification status per north Korea society/government. Therefore the children were (and still are) sentenced to work in the mines for the rest of their lives. What the Kim family regime has effectively done is create a pool of perpetual slaves.
Excerpts:
While an armistice agreement was signed in July 1953 to end the conflict, a peace treaty never followed.
North Korea then sent around 8,000 South Korean soldiers home. It claims that all prisoners of war have been returned.
However, South Korea believes about 82,000 of its soldiers went missing in the North.
Only 80 South Korean prisoners of war have plotted their escape and returned home, with just nine still alive.
‘They made us work day and night’: South Korean prisoner of war for over 50 years recalls life in the North
channelnewsasia.com
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East Asia
Tens of thousands of South Korean soldiers remain in captivity in North Korea.
Korean War veterans wave the national flags during a ceremony to mark the 74th anniversary of the outbreak of the Korean War in Daegu, South Korea, Tuesday, June 25, 2024. Ahn Young-joon/Pool via REUTERS
Lim Yun Suk
@YunSukCNA
Calvin Yang
26 Jun 2024 01:42PM (Updated: 26 Jun 2024 02:46PM)
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SEOUL: South Korean Kang Hee Yeol was just 18 when he joined the army in March 1951, following the start of the Korean War in 1950.
But about two months later, he was captured by the North Koreans.
“I could not go anywhere because they had full control over us and made us work day and night like an ox,” said the now 94-year-old, who is among the few South Korean prisoners of war who have managed to escape and made it home.
“I spent about 50 years like that, like being in prison but without a cage,” he added.
PLOTTING HIS OWN ESCAPE FROM NORTH KOREA
For decades, he worked at coal mines and farms while waiting to return home.
In June 2000, Mr Kang and his fellow prisoners of war thought their ordeal was almost over when they heard that leaders from both sides were meeting for the first inter-Korean summit since the war.
Then-South Korean president Kim Dae-jung flew to Pyongyang for talks with the North Korean leader Kim Jong Il.
But to the war prisoners’ dismay, their plight was set aside as the two leaders sought reconciliation.
“I was so sure he was also coming to get us back home, but there was not a word mentioned about us,” said Mr Kang, who lost hope that the South Korean government would save them.
“I think it was wrong. I realised then that if I were to die, I should go back to my hometown and die.”
With that in mind, he later plotted his own escape.
It was only in 2009, after crossing the Tumen River separating North Korea and China, that Mr Kang set foot in South Korea for the first time in 58 years.
South Korean prisoner of war Kang Hee Yeol, who did not want his face to be shown as he fears for the safety of his family, was just 18 when he joined the army in March 1951, following the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950. But about two months later, he was captured by the North Koreans.
THOUSANDS OF SOUTH KOREAN SOLDIERS REMAIN IN CAPTIVITY
While an armistice agreement was signed in July 1953 to end the conflict, a peace treaty never followed.
North Korea then sent around 8,000 South Korean soldiers home. It claims that all prisoners of war have been returned.
However, South Korea believes about 82,000 of its soldiers went missing in the North.
Only 80 South Korean prisoners of war have plotted their escape and returned home, with just nine still alive.
More than 250 families of war prisoners have also managed to flee the North. Among them is Ms Son Myeong-hwa, chairperson of the Korean War POW Family Association.
Her father was a South Korean soldier from Gimhae, about 18km away from Busan. He was captured and forced to work in coal mines and a logging factory for decades.
Ms Son told CNA that her father, who died of cancer in 1984, had earlier asked for his remains to be buried in South Korea.
Remembering his wish, she defected in 2005.
With the help of her siblings in North Korea and a broker, she later brought her father’s remains out of the North. He was finally buried at the Daejeon National Cemetery in 2015.
“Publicising my father's story caused my three siblings in North Korea to be sent to political prison camps,” said Ms Son.
“It felt like a tragic trade-off: Bringing my father's remains here at the cost of my living family members. I wanted to raise awareness of the war prisoners' human rights and their unaddressed suffering.”
South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol, center right and his wife Kim Keon Hee wave the national flags during a ceremony to mark the 74th anniversary of the outbreak of the Korean War in Daegu, South Korea, Tuesday, June 25, 2024. Ahn Young-joon/Pool via REUTERS
FAMILIES STILL FIGHTING FOR SOLDIERS’ RECOGNITION
Ms Son still recalls her father sharing stories about his life in the South.
“He made me memorise his military number, K11, and warned me not to write it down because it could get me killed,” she said.
“So I kept it in my memory, along with the names of my grandparents and his address in his hometown, just in case I could visit if reunification happened.”
Recalling the inter-Korean summit in 2000, Ms Son said: “When South Korean president Kim Dae-jung went to North Korea, at that time, not every household had a TV.
“Our fathers, the prisoners of war, went to the houses that had TVs to watch the visit of the nation’s leader. The prisoners of war wondered if they would be mentioned, but there wasn’t a single word about them.”
She added that many families are still fighting for the prisoners of war to be recognised by the South Korean government for their service.
For now, those who never returned are marked as missing or assumed dead, and are not honoured as war heroes.
Mr Gordon Kang, senior analyst at the S Rajaratnam School of International Studies, said reunification - and allowing these South Koreans who are still in North Korea to return - is still a core national goal for South Korea.
But under current geopolitical circumstances, it is “difficult” to envision reconciliation happening in the near term, he told CNA’s East Asia Tonight on Tuesday (Jul 25).
Source: CNA/ca(lt)
4. US, Japan, South Korea vow strategic cooperation to boost security, economies
Can this trilateral cooperation be sustained?
Can successive leaders place national security and national prosperity ahead of historical issues?
US, Japan, South Korea vow strategic cooperation to boost security, economies
27 Jun 2024 09:55AM
(Updated: 27 Jun 2024 10:04AM)
channelnewsasia.com
WASHINGTON: Commerce and trade ministers from the United States, Japan and South Korea vowed on Wednesday (Jun 26) to cooperate on strategic issues including artificial intelligence (AI) safety, export controls, clean energy and semiconductor supply chains.
"We're doubling down our efforts to work together," US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said at the start of the meeting in Washington.
"As we three are leading economies in manufacturing, services, technology and innovation and we have to work together to the benefit not just for our countries but the safety and security of the world," Raimondo said.
She was joined at the inaugural trilateral meeting by Japanese Minister of Economy, Trade, and Industry Ken Saito and South Korean Trade, Industry, and Energy Minister Ahn Duk-geun. The meetings were decided by the countries' leaders at an August summit at Camp David.
The ministers said in a statement after the meeting they would "focus our joint efforts on a set of strategic areas designed to enhance the security and prosperity of our people and the Indo-Pacific region. We aim to prioritise cooperation to strengthen the resilience of supply chains in key sectors, including semiconductors and batteries," as well as artificial intelligence safety, critical minerals, cybersecurity and technical standard setting.
Saito said the three "agreed to realise a strong and reliable supply chain for strategic materials by working together with like-minded countries, including Japan, the United States, and South Korea, and designing a market where factors other than price are fairly evaluated".
Last month, President Joe Biden vowed to sharply increase tariffs on critical minerals from China as Washington vows to reduce China's dominance of critical mineral supply chains.
In March, a Commerce Department official said the United States was asking allies to stop domestic companies from servicing certain chipmaking tools for Chinese customers, a key part of United States push to hobble China's chipmaking capabilities.
"We expect the South Korea-US-Japan industry ministers' meeting to serve as an institutional basis for deepening and developing industrial cooperation among the three countries and jointly responding to global risks," Ahn said.
Source: Reuters/lh
channelnewsasia.com
5. North Korea says successfully tested multiple-warhead missile
Successful according to the north's Propaganda and Agitation Department in a statement from the Missile Administration.
I have pasted the KCNA release below.
North Korea says successfully tested multiple-warhead missile
27 Jun 2024 01:40PM
(Updated: 27 Jun 2024 02:03PM)
channelnewsasia.com
SEOUL: North Korea claimed to have successfully tested its multiple-warhead missile capability, state media said on Thursday (Jun 27), as dozens more trash-laden balloons from Pyongyang landed in the South.
Relations between the two Koreas are at one of their lowest points in years, with Pyongyang ramping up weapons testing while bombarding the South with balloons full of trash it says are in retaliation to similar missives sent northwards by activists in the South.
The balloons briefly forced Seoul's major hub Incheon Airport to close on Wednesday, and in response to the successive launches, South has fully suspended a tension-reducing military treaty and restarted propaganda loudspeaker broadcasts and live-fire drills near the border.
North Korea claimed it had "successfully conducted the separation and guidance control test of individual mobile warheads", the state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said on Thursday.
The "separated mobile warheads were guided correctly to the three coordinate targets" during the test, carried out the day before, it said.
"The test is aimed at securing the MIRV capability," KCNA added, referring to multiple independently targetable reentry vehicle technology - or the ability to fire multiple warheads on a single ballistic missile.
South Korea's military had previously said the North's test on Wednesday appeared to be of a hypersonic missile, but that the launch ended in a mid-air explosion.
More smoke than usual appeared to emanate from the missile, raising the possibility of combustion issues, the official said, adding it may have been powered by solid propellants.
According to KCNA, the test "was carried out by use of the first-stage engine of an intermediate-range solid-fuel ballistic missile within a 170km to 200km radius".
"The effectiveness of a decoy separated from the missile was also verified by anti-air radar," it said.
Acquiring multiple-warhead missile technology is an ultimate goal for nations seeking ICBM-level missiles to carry nuclear warheads, said Hong Min, a senior research fellow at the Korea Institute for National Unification.
It appears the North is "testing such technology step by step over the long haul", he told AFP.
"They appear to be making technological advancements in the early development stages of multiple-warhead missiles."
A vapour trail believed to be created by a North Korean ballistic missile is seen from Yeonpyeong island near the 'northern limit line' sea boundary with North Korea on Jun 26, 2024. (Photo: YONHAP/AFP)
BALLOON BLITZ
For three consecutive days, North Korea has floated hundreds of trash-carrying balloons southward in a tit-for-tat propaganda campaign.
Seoul's military said around 70 balloons had landed by Thursday morning, mainly in northern Gyeonggi province and the Seoul area, with the contents found to not be hazardous.
"The payload is about 10kg, so there is a risk if the balloons descend rapidly," it said, adding the military was ready to respond.
The response to the latest balloons "will be flexible depending on the strategic and operational situation. This depends on North Korea's actions", it added.
South Korea's Marine Corps resumed live-fire exercises on islands near the western inter-Korean border on Wednesday, marking the first such exercises since the 2018 tension-reducing military deal with the North was fully suspended this month.
South Korea and the United States also staged joint air drills on Wednesday involving around 30 aircraft, including Washington's advanced stealth fighter jet, F-22 Raptor.
President Yoon Suk Yeol visited a US aircraft carrier on Tuesday that arrived in South Korea at the weekend for joint military drills aimed at countering North Korean threats.
The drills, which include Japan, started on Thursday.
Pyongyang has routinely criticised such exercises as rehearsals for an invasion.
channelnewsasia.com
DPRK Missile Administration Conducts Test of New Important Technology
https://kcnawatch.org/newstream/1719482752-503973124/dprk-missile-administration-conducts-test-of-new-important-technology/
Date: 27/06/2024 | Source: Naenara (En) | Read original version at source
The Missile Administration of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea successfully conducted the separation and guided control test of individual mobile warheads on June 26, which is of great significance in attaining the goal of upgrading the missile technologies.
The test was overseen by Pak Jong Chon, vice-chairman of the Central Military Commission of the Workers’ Party of Korea and secretary of the WPK Central Committee, and Kim Jong Sik, first deputy department director of the WPK Central Committee.
The test was carried out by using the first-stage engine of an intermediate-range solid-fueled ballistic missile within a 170 to 200 km radius, which is favourable for ensuring maximum safety and measuring the flight characteristics of individual mobile warheads.
The separated mobile warheads were guided correctly to the three coordinate targets.
The effectiveness of a decoy separated from the missile was also verified by anti-air radars.
The test is aimed at securing the multiple independently targetable re-entry vehicle (MIRV) capability.
The test is part of the normal activities of the Missile Administration of the DPRK and its affiliated defence science institutes for the technical upgrading of weapon systems.
According to the administration, it is of great significance in bolstering up the DPRK’s missile forces and developing the missile technologies that such technological test has entered a full-scale stage.
The senior officials, who oversaw the test, said that to enhance the MIRV capability is a very important defence technological task and a top priority of the WPK Central Committee, stressing the need to take proper scientific and technological steps to further improve the effectiveness of the decoy.
KCNA
6. North Korea 'will send military personnel to Ukraine within a month' to boost Putin's forces
Do we believe this?
Are we going to begin a betting pool?
Should we use this month to develop a "supporting" information campaign? Of course South Korea may already have begun execution of its campaign with this report on Chosen TV.
And I would assist Ukraine with some specific targeting of nKPA forces if they are deployed to support the information campaign. Make them fodder.
North Korea 'will send military personnel to Ukraine within a month' to boost Putin's forces - as Pyongyang warns of a 'new world war' after US aircraft carrier's arrival in the South
- Moscow and Pyongyang have moved to deepen ties with so-called defence pact
By JAMES REYNOLDS
PUBLISHED: 04:35 EDT, 27 June 2024 | UPDATED: 04:57 EDT, 27 June 2024
Daily Mail · by James Reynolds · June 27, 2024
North Korea has pledged to send military personnel to Ukraine within a month to support Putin's war-weary forces as both sides struggle to make a decisive breakthrough.
Pyongyang will take an unprecedented step in sending construction and engineering forces to occupied territories of Ukraine as early as July to assist in rebuilding work, South Korea's TV Chosun reported earlier, citing a government official.
The rare vow of foreign support follows president Vladimir Putin's official state visit to North Korea earlier this month - the first in almost a quarter of a century - which culminated in the signing of a so-called defence pact on June 19.
The treaty binds its signatories to providing 'military and other assistance with all means in its possession without delay' should either find itself 'put in a state of war by an armed invasion'.
North Korea is believed to have already supplied Russia with about 1.6mn artillery shells between August and January as Moscow continues to hammer populated areas of Ukraine and tries to make decisive gains in the north.
As polarisation hardens, Pyongyang officials criticised the United States on Monday for its expanding military assistance to Ukraine and dispatch of an aircraft carrier to South Korea, warning it could provoke a 'new world war', according to state media.
A Russian tank fires at Ukrainian troops from a position near the border with Ukraine in Belgorod in a photo shared by the Russian Defence Ministry on March 19
Rescuers clear the rubble of a destroyed residential building following a missile attack in Lugansk, Russian-controlled Ukraine, on June 7
Just days after Russian President Vladimir Putin's visit to Pyongyang, Pak Jong Chon, one of North Korea's top military officials, said Moscow the 'right to opt for any kind of retaliatory strike' if Washington kept pushing Ukraine to a 'proxy war' against Russia.
It could provoke a stronger response from Moscow, and a 'new world war', Pak said, according to KCNA.
Read More
The Pentagon move that shows Biden is open to sending Americans into Ukraine
He referred to comments by the Pentagon last week that Ukrainian forces can use U.S.-supplied weapons to strike Russian forces anywhere across the border into Russia.
North Korea's vice minister of defence, Kim Kang Il, said the arrival of an American aircraft carrier in South Korean waters was a 'very dangerous' show of force, leaving doors open for North Korea's 'overwhelming, new demonstration of deterrence,' state media KCNA reported.
The Theodore Roosevelt aircraft carrier - a colossal vessel measuring 1,092ft - arrived in the South Korean port city of Busan on Saturday to take part in joint military exercises later this month with the host nation and Japan, US naval officials said.
Washington and Seoul have been increasingly alarmed by deepening military cooperation between Russia and the North, and have accused them of violating international laws by trading in arms for Russia to use against Ukraine. Moscow and Pyongyang have denied any arms transfer.
The pact signed by Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un during the Russian president's visit to Pyongyang last week commits each side to provide immediate military assistance to the other in the event of armed aggression against either one of them.
Putin thanked Kim for his hospitality during the trip which brought ties to an unprecedented level, the Kremlin said on Monday.
Analysts say the pact would lay the framework for arms trade between the two countries and facilitate their anti-U.S. and anti-West coalition.
Senior officials of South Korea, the U.S. and Japan condemned 'in the strongest possible terms' deepening military cooperation between North Korea and Russia in a joint statement released by Seoul's foreign ministry on Monday.
South Korea now expects the North to dispatch a large-scale engineering force to occupied Donetsk Oblast as early as next month to help rebuild infrastructure in Donetsk City.
The North reportedly operated 10 engineering brigades, according to the ISW.
Putin has tried to downplay the possibility of North Korean troops serving alongside Russia's in Ukraine, however.
The Russian president also visited Vietnam this month in an apparent bid to shore up ties with its ally, a significant buyer of Russian arms.
Analysts believe Moscow is now trying to establish a bloc of friendly states with links to the former USSR as Ukraine finds backing in NATO and Western allies.
Russia also made waves signing a memorandum regarding the supply of Russian gas into Iran - a boon for Moscow amid sanctions and reported disagreements between Russian and China over the Russian supply of gas.
Kim Jong Un (R) and Russia's President Vladimir Putin (L) shaking hands after a signing ceremony following their bilateral talks on June 19
A Ukrainian tank of the 17th tank brigade fires at the Russian positions in Chasiv Yar, Feb 29
Russia may have received about 1.6 million artillery shells from North Korea from August to January, the Washington Post reported on Saturday, analysing data from U.S. security nonprofit C4ADS that shows 74,000 metric tons of explosives moved from Russia's far east ports to other sites mainly along the borders near Ukraine.
North Korea plans to send construction and engineering forces to Russia-occupied territories of Ukraine as early as next month for rebuilding work, South Korean cable TV network TV Chosun reported earlier, citing a South Korean government official.
Those forces, working overseas under the disguise of construction workers to earn hard currency for the regime, would be moved from China to those Russia-held regions, the network said.
Asked about the TV Chosun reports, South Korea's foreign ministry said it was continuing monitoring the situation.
Daily Mail · by James Reynolds · June 27, 2024
7. Russia Offers China A River To The Sea In The Pacific
"A river to the sea?" Is the Forbes headline editor employing clickbait? I wonder if the management has some second thoughts about using that headline.
On a more important note we need to understand the importance of this part of Northeast Asia. Some of the largest untapped natural resources are in this tri-border area (Korea, China, and Russia - UN Tumen RIver Area Development Project from decades ago). The Korean port of Najin could become a global economic hub for Korea, China,and Russia.
All we need to both counter China and Russia and to exploit this economic potential is to have a free and unified Korea.
Russia Offers China A River To The Sea In The Pacific
Forbes · by Melik Kaylan · June 26, 2024
Panic seized the community of international geo-strategy observers recently when it seemed Chinese ships would start sailing a remote strip of water near the Sea of Japan. The Moscow Times reported impending deals between Russia-China-North Korea to allow that to happen - as proposed by the Kremlin. Here's a map showing the region and the focus is on the Tumen river. The reader will note that the river meanders northwards as a border between China and North Korea takes a right turn and just before it reaches the sea, China drops out and the Tumen becomes a border between Russia and North Korea. There's a point at which Russia-China-North Korea borders meet and then the Tumen becomes a Russia-NK river some ten miles before the Pacific coast. In other words, China has no access to the sea in that region, and now it might, if Putin can be believed. What does it mean and why all the geostrategic excitement?
First, you should know that your intrepid columnist, in 2009, visited the Tumen river itself and the exact spot where Russia-China-North Korea meet, and wrote two columns. It was a desolate, searingly cold, largely abandoned zone, 18 below zero at the time of visiting. Here is one of the columns - about the region's commerce, history, ethnic make-up and strategic import. Not mentioned until a later column, until after I had left the area, is the experience of crossing the frozen river on foot alone into North Korea. I did so in the footsteps of two Korean-American journalists working for Current TV (then associated with Al Gore) who got arrested, taken to the capital Pyongyang and were later freed by a visit from Bill Clinton. That incident was the area's only claim to fame from WW2 - until now.
By all accounts, some things have changed since my visit - the Russian side is still largely neglected but for a border post village, the China side is full of activity and commerce, and the North Korea side has developed in areas where the Chinese do business. That is especially true on the coast, in North Korean territory, where the port of Rasin or Rachin largely built and run by the Chinese, offers China an outlet to ship its trade out to the world. In DPRK territory, subject to Kim Jong On's whims. All the Chinese goods cross the Tumen by bridge and travel by road to the Rasin port. So the idea of allowing China to sail directly out to the Pacific coast via the Tumen river would make that port superflous. The DPRK would lose a lot of revenue thereby. Plus, making the Tumen navigable by big ships would require massive dredging and widening. Putin's purported idea of restoring Chinese access seems like a fantasy, an implausible one.
Why then has he floated the idea? That stretch of coastal access was ceded to Russia by the Ching dynasty in the 19th century and the PRC has wanted it back for decades. Putin is running out of incentives to offer Beijing for supporting his Ukraine war. Making such an offer plays well with the Chinese public - but causes fury in Moscow among the Putin regime's supporters seething with Great Russia fanaticism. From the latter's perspective, first you let the ships sail and soon the Chinese will claim it outright. But Putin is making a particular point - if Beijing gets direct access to the Sea of Japan, the strategic equation will change radically. At the moment, the Chinese navy has to sail all the way around the Korean peninsula to that area. Suddenly Beijing will be able to threaten Japan (and various disputed islands) directly. The burden will spike on US and allies to stretch naval projection, protection, readiness and resources.
This is part of Putin's game of global geostrategic pressure on the West and its allies - if they continue to defy him on Ukraine. Cuba, Europe, the Middle East (via Iran) and now the Far East are all pressure points he is exploring. Moscow would like to reconstitute the old anti-Nato communist bloc world-wide. By dangling the Tumen river coastal access to China, he might get the PRC to sign on. Thus far, China doesn't think it's worth risking Western sanctions. Beijing sees no reason to divide the world and limit the range of its exports only to Russia's allies, which are not in the best of health economically. Furthermore, using a DPRK port like Rasin allows China to dodge existing sanctions when it wants by relabelling its goods as Korean before they go out to the world. Having its own access to the sea via Tumen river would preclude that. So, no, nobody is buying Putin's gesture - for now.
Forbes · by Melik Kaylan · June 26, 2024
8. Why China accessing Sea of Japan through Russia-North Korea border river can ring alarm bells
The way to counter (and exploit) this? A free and unified Korea.
Why China accessing Sea of Japan through Russia-North Korea border river can ring alarm bells
Beijing's relentless pressure on allies to allow it to navigate Tumen & access Rajin port seems to have finally worked. But, river deal comes with its share of geopolitical tension.
PRAVEEN SWAMI
26 June, 2024 12:35 pm IST
theprint.in · by Praveen Swami · June 26, 2024
Fangchuan National Scenic Area, a strange mix of Disney World, forest and border viewpoints, today marks the scene of that massive conflict. There’s a little tower you can climb over and look over the Tumen River, which borders China, Russia and North Korea, the tri-junction where they meet. There was even once a plan for a three-country golf course, but it doesn’t seem to have materialised.
Hi, I’m Praveen Swamy. Welcome to this week’s episode of ThePrint Explorer. This week, Kim Jong-un, North Korea’s Supreme Leader and Russian President Vladimir Putin have met for a summit aimed at reconfiguring the balance of power in Asia.
Among other things, North Korea and Russia have signed a mutual defence treaty and are going to be deepening their military cooperation. Kim’s defence industry is said to have supplied millions of artillery rounds to help Russia’s war in Ukraine in return for assistance with its own satellite and missile programmes.
And that’s the less important news. For decades, China has been seeking the right to navigate through the Tumen River, which would give its landlocked North East direct access to the port of Rajin on the Pacific.
Map from piece in NikkeiAsia to show area in question—being able to navigate the Tumen river to the Sea of Japan would be a major strategic gain for China. Highlights too Japan’s strategic vulnerability, how close to the geopolitical front line it sits. pic.twitter.com/PquAf7RbE1
— Robert Ward (@RobertAlanWard) June 20, 2024
The region was once a hub for heavy industry, particularly mining and automotive manufacturing, but it was left behind by history. There’s already a high-speed railway linking Changchun in Jilin province with Hunchun on the North Korea border, and Rajin is just another 15 or 20 km further away.
For decades, there’s been talk of Rajin eventually becoming a kind of Rotterdam on the Eastern Pacific. And while this might be a bit hyperbolic, there’s some truth to the description.
The reasons why the project hasn’t gone forward are much more interesting. North Korea is an ally of China, but it’s also feared its superpower neighbour. China wants regional hegemony, but it also wants stability and peace in East Asia, so it can sustain trade with countries like South Korea and Japan.
Kim’s nuclear weapons are a source of concern to China too, because they might destabilise the whole region. For its part, Russia has worried for decades about Chinese influence in its eastern regions. Vladivostok is a full day’s train ride from the village of Fangchuan, and there aren’t a whole load of Russians living along that track.
That’s why Imperial Japan once hoped it could push north into the area after all. The friendship bridge across the Tumen river at Fangchuan seems to have been deliberately designed not to allow large Chinese vessels access down the river, and North Korea has long been dragging its feet on proposals to redevelop the waterway and the port it leads to.
Finally, Vladimir Putin seems to have succeeded in persuading Kim to change his mind. As an axis against the West forms, the battlefield of Khalkhin Gol has emerged as one of the most important parts of the jigsaw puzzle.
Failed dreams
Land-hungry peasants from Korea first began settling the vast marshes along the Tumen river sometime in the 19th century, planting barley, millets and fast-growing rice. The Treaty of Peking, signed in 1860 after the occupation of Beijing by French and British troops, saw China forced to cede Outer Manchuria to Imperial Russia.
This secured Russia’s long-standing goal of denying China access to the Sea of Japan. Korean settlement of the lands, though, continued, and even grew, especially after the invasion of their homeland by Japan in 1910. As Imperial Japan developed the industrial base of occupied Manchuria, it developed Rajin into a major seaport from where iron and coal could be shipped back to Tokyo.
The city boomed, growing from a population of just some 6,000 people in 1930 to 38,000 in 1940. For its part, the Soviet Union also developed its port at Vladivostok, housing a significant part of its naval power in the Pacific. Though Vladivostok did not have the same economic potential as Rajin, it was of obvious significance as a military seaport.
Then after Japan lost the Second World War, Korea dissolved into civil war, with China backing the North and the United States the South. The entire region plunged into the Cold War deadlock soon after, as the relationship between the Soviet Union and China became increasingly hostile.
Whatever little cross-border trade there was came to a grinding halt, and things stayed that way until 1999, when the Soviet Union collapsed and had long ceased to exist, and China moved down the road to economic liberalisation. In 1990, though, scholars and former government officials from China, the US, Japan, Russia, Mongolia, North Korea and South Korea met to consider economic revival in the emerging post-socialist regional order.
The Chinese expert Ding Shih-cheng presented a paper proposing the development of the Tumen River Triangle. The paper got the backing of the United Nations Development Program, and eventually led to the foundation of a body called the Tumen River Area Development Program (TRDAP).
Even though there was a lot of excitement around the TRDAP, the project went nowhere. For one, North Korea and Russia were perfectly happy to set up special economic zones which were part of the project, but weren’t all that excited about giving access China through the river to Rajin. From their point of view, this made complete sense. The river corridor would, after all, have obliterated any chance their own SEZs ever had of becoming competitive.
To make things worse, Japan pulled out of the project less than convinced of its economic viability and suspicious of North Korea’s behaviour. South Korea also bailed out as a consequence of its mounting tensions with the North. And North Korea itself kept dragging its feet, worried that economic liberalisation would be followed within the country by demands for political reform.
Events in Russia also led the country to rethink its involvement in TRDAP. In 2001, Gennadii Nazdratenko, the governor of the fast eastern region of Primorsky Krai, rebelled against Moscow’s authority. The rebellion was driven by complex local politics, but also underscored by Primorsky Krai’s deep links with China’s economy.
To President Putin, it began to seem that China’s economic power could be a political threat. From anecdotal accounts, it’s clear cross-border trade could have significantly improved livelihoods in the region for ordinary people. The South Korean economist Hyun-Gwi Park tells the lovely story of a Mrs. Lee, who bartered Chinese-made goods for seaweed and dried fish in North Korea.
Lee claimed to be making profits of over 100% in this business before her sister shut it down, saying that the travel was tanning her skin and would make it impossible for her to find a husband.
The New Cold War
From 2005, China again began pushing the idea, now rebranding it the Greater Two Men Initiative. Even though Russia and North Korea were very slow off the mark, events gave the project a new logic. First, North Korea and its nuclear program had undermined the regime’s hopes of closer economic ties with the South. Kim Il-sung, the father of the current Kim, who died in 1994, had been an enthusiastic proponent of deeper ties with the South.
The nuclear tests of 2006 and a series of military confrontations precipitated by North Korea, opposed to the North-South rapprochement. This was true of Russia too, of course. Instead of being integrated more deeply into Europe as it had hoped, Moscow found its peripheries being encroached on by NATO. To make things even worse, a new generation of anti-ballistic missile technologies threatened to degrade Russia’s nuclear deterrent.
The Economist Park makes a very perceptive point on how the experience of North Korea and Russia of the post-Soviet era shaped their behaviour. Following the disintegration of the Soviet Union, Park notes, both Russia and North Korea went through horrific periods of hardship, characterised by joblessness, social dislocation, and in North Korea’s case, large-scale famine.
The two countries, moreover, never really bought into the post-socialist consensus and saw the Western push on human rights and democracy as a tool to dismantle their regimes. Faced with growing economic sanctions after 2016 and failing to reach an agreement with President Donald Trump at their summit three years later, Kim sought to build up an autarkic industrial economy in preparation for his struggle ahead.
The North Korean ruler, Bradley Babson writes, ordered his administrators to focus on metallurgical and chemical industries, electricity, coal, mining, and machine building to support various industrial sectors. Kim also reintroduced the concept of national defence economic work, a term very rarely used even in his father’s military-first era, the expert Rachel Min-Young Lee observes. He repeatedly called on industries to support national defence production rather than the civilian economy.
Furthermore, North Korea has consistently used war preparations formulations since early 2023, in line with its hardline US and South Korea policies, and in recent years, reigned in early market-oriented initiatives.
A switch to conservative economic policies in North Korea has generally reflected the state’s preference for a defence industrial base over the market economy. Like Kim, Putin was also preparing to sanction-proof his economy. Long before war broke out in Ukraine, Kayleigh Glenn writes, Russia pursued a three-pronged strategy implementing the Russification of key sectors against potential sanctions; second, seeking new economic and political partnerships outside the Western umbrella; and third, attempting to de-dollarize his economy.
The problem was both Russia and North Korea needed capital, and to get it, they turned ever closer to China. China had, as you know, benefited the most from globalisation, but President Xi Jinping’s overweening ambition led him to push aggressively for dominance in Asia and beyond. That in turn led him into growing confrontation, not just with neighbours like Japan and South Korea, but also the United States. To compensate, Xi deepened his relationship with North Korea and Russia, leading his nation to become the principal anti-American pole in a new Cold War.
The threat ahead
Kim Jong-il, the current ruler’s father, was fundamentally in show business, the scholar Andrew Scobell once memorably observed, writing scripts, directing casts, building sets and playing leading roles himself in major cinematic and theatrical productions.
All of this was done in order to project an image and a storyline, a version of reality that is believable, credible and appealing to the audience, whether foreign or domestic. Kim appeared to be the producer, director and leading man in his own feature film.
This kind of behaviour is without parallel in terms of scope, expense and sustained effort. After all, making a film is hard work. Kim sometimes carried all of this film stuff to ridiculous levels. The dictator famously arranged the kidnapping of the renowned South Korean movie director Shin Sang-ok and his ex-wife and actress Choi Eun-hee in 1978, in pursuit of his dream to create a movie industry. Every cult though comes to a point where it needs hard power to survive. And in a predatory world, that’s exactly what Kim Jong-un seems to have realised.
The current Kim we know likes fancy watches and Bentleys and Rolls Royces, his country’s elite shop in supermarkets where they can get knock-off French couture and the latest K-pop merch. Okay, unlicensed K-pop merch, but K-pop merch.
Andrei Lankov, among the most brilliant scholars of North Korea, notes that the party itself is fundamentally a distributor and producer of merch. But merch doesn’t keep regimes in power. To ensure his own survival, Kim turned to Russia. What started out as a small arms sale by North Korea to the Wagner mercenary group in November 22, expert Victor Cha writes, soon turned into a deep military relationship.
Russia’s President Vladimir Putin and North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un ride an Aurus car in Pyongyang, North Korea | Sputnik/Gavriil Grigorov/Pool via REUTERS
Even if Russia ran its defence production industries at full capacity, you see, its output of artillery, for example, falls short by some 50,000 shells a month. North Korea can easily fill that gap. Kim in return wants advanced telemetry, nuclear submarine technology, military satellite technology and advanced intercontinental ballistic missile technology. ICBMs with modern countermeasures, overhead reconnaissance capacity and nuclear submarines would allow Kim to target the entirety of the continental US with his 50 odd weapon nuclear force.
Washington would have real difficulty taking out all these weapons in a preemptive first strike. The North Korea-Russia alliance isn’t necessarily good news for China. At least that’s what some in the US have been arguing.
David Pearson and Chui Sang-hoon argue that it will inevitably draw in more Western military presence on China’s periphery. For years, China has tried to deny that it’s part of a new Cold War project. And the North Korea-Russia alliance that’s now been signed undermines this position. For its own good, the argument goes, China needs to keep its options open. But those options are being closed by its closest allies.
The journalist Laura Bicker observes that there are signs Xi disapproves of the burgeoning alliance between two of his closest friends. Some suggest Beijing even urged President Putin not to visit Pyongyang straight after meeting President Xi back in May. It seems Chinese officials did not like the optics of North Korea being included in that visit.
Xi is already under considerable pressure from the US and Europe to cut support for Moscow and to stop selling it components that are fueling the war in Ukraine. And he simply cannot ignore these warnings. Just as the world needs Chinese production, Beijing also needs global markets and investments to fight off sluggish growth and retain its spot as the world’s second largest economy.
Thus, you see China now offering visa-free travel to visitors from parts of Europe as well as from Thailand and Australia. And yeah, Chinese pandas are once again being sent to zoos around the world.
The older Kim, the scholar Samuel Ramani reminds us, spent much of his life vacillating in his relationships between his Soviet counterparts Nikita Khrushchev and Chinese leader Mao Zedong. This thwarted the formation of a trilateral axis. In the late 1950s, the Sino-Soviet split prevented these three powers from strategic cooperation on Northeast Asian security. No one after all puts an alliance before their self-interest, not even ideologically driven dictators.
Yet, there is an important flip side to this argument. The North Korea-Russia alliance might be an embarrassment to China, but it also gives it a powerful tool. It can now assert that it and it alone is in a position to influence and restrain two nuclear-armed states. This will ensure the West has to placate China to avoid regional conflagrations and tone down its efforts to isolate Beijing. There’s nothing like having a violent friend or two after all if you’re looking for respect and influence in a bad neighbourhood. And China seems to be playing that game.
And this is why the debate over the course of the Tumen River is worth watching closely. From the village of Hunchun just across the river, residents can smell the sea but cannot see its waves, journalist Harold Thibault reported after a visit last month. To every Chinese, that’s a reminder of the unequal border treaty forced on the country during the colonial era.
Even though it’s made alliances with Russia, that treaty has never been rolled back. Like Xiaoyu, who runs a small shop selling alcohol, food products and knickknacks, China knows Russia now needs its help. Before Russians came to Hunchun to buy clothes from head to toe, they didn’t even negotiate prices. Now they have less money, she told the journalist.
Letting Chinese ships move down that last 15 km of the Tumen River and letting it control the port at Rajin will signal that Beijing is indeed the preeminent partner in the new axis, which is reshaping Asia to its will. Brought to his knees by the crisis in Ukraine, Putin might have no choice but to make that concession and to pull his friend Kim along.
From the story of the Khalkhin Gol battle, we should take away some important lessons. The Second World War didn’t begin on 1 September, 1939 when Nazi troops struck in Poland, or for that matter in May 1940, when they invaded France.
It also began when Japan invaded China in 1931 and occupied Manchuria. And it also began in 1938 when the Soviet Union asserted itself on Zauzernaya Hill, that little hill above the Tumen River.
That’s the whole point with crisis. Nation states drift into them almost by accident, one step leading on to the next until it’s too late. The first ships to navigate down the Tumen will be carrying us along with them to a very different world. We should be watching them with the utmost care. I’m Praveen Swamy and I’m a contributing editor to ThePrint. Thank you for watching this episode of ThePrint Explorer.
(Edited by Tony Rai)
theprint.in · by Praveen Swami · June 26, 2024
9. Russia, North Korea and the axis of autocracies
Or perhaps we like to think it makes China uneasy. Do we really know? Or are all three (and four if you include Iran) simply playing us?
Russia, North Korea and the axis of autocracies
Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un’s dangerous pact makes even China uneasy.
NewStatesman · by Katie Stallard · June 26, 2024
Photo by Vladimir Smirnov / Pool / Afp
Kim Jong Un could barely contain his glee. With a smiling Vladimir Putin in the driver’s seat, the two leaders set off at speed – seatbelts be damned – in the Russian armoured limousine Kim had just been given during their Pyongyang summit on 19 June. To the presumed horror of their bodyguards, the Russian president then pulled over and swapped places with his North Korean counterpart. Later, Kim fed carrots to a horse while Putin patted its head, and the younger dictator gave Putin a pair of Pungsan hunting dogs and a bust of the Russian leader. But they saved their biggest gift to each other for last, taking their places behind white and gold desks to sign a security treaty that resurrects a Cold War alliance and cements what Kim called their “fiery friendship”.
The pact reinstates the mutual defence provisions from the defunct 1961 treaty between North Korea and the Soviet Union. In its updated form, according to Pyongyang’s version of the text, Article 4 compels the two powers to provide immediate military assistance “with all means in its possession” to the other if it is attacked, echoing the Nato Article 5 commitment to collective defence. There is room for manoeuvre in the wording, presumably so that neither side would automatically be dragged into the other’s wars and their adversaries do not know what would trigger a response.
What is clear is their mutual desire to burn down the existing international order, with the treaty vowing to build a “new, fair and equal” system in its place – language that is calibrated to appeal to the low- and middle-income countries beyond the West, or what Putin calls the “world majority”. In the black-is-white parallel reality conjured by Putin and Kim, they are not international pariahs who threaten the stability of their neighbouring states. They are the vanguard leaders of long-oppressed emerging economies, fighting against the “imperialist hegemonic policies of the US and its satellites”, as Putin characterised their struggle – just as their Cold War predecessors once styled themselves.
The immediate effects will be felt in Ukraine, where Putin’s war will now be sustained by a functionally limitless arsenal of North Korean artillery shells and ballistic missiles. US officials said that Pyongyang has sent Russia 11,000 containers of munitions in the past year, alongside the lethal drones allegedly supplied by Iran, and the microelectronics and economic lifeline provided by China. Gone is any illusion that the consequences of this war can be confined to a single continent. Following the summit, South Korea said it would consider supplying weapons to Ukraine, with Putin threatening to arm North Korea in response.
“These theatres are totally connected now,” said Victor Cha, senior vice-president for Asia and Korea chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank in Washington and a member of the Pentagon’s advisory board. “We are in a situation where North Koreans are effectively now killing Europeans, and that hasn’t happened since the Korean War.”
Despite the appearance of unanimity, the Soviet leadership was wary of the Kim regime’s nuclear ambitions for much of the Cold War. The Kremlin repeatedly pressed Pyongyang to sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) before agreeing to build a small nuclear power plant there in December 1985. (North Korea signed the NPT in 1985 but announced in 2003 that it could “no longer remain bound” by the treaty.) Russia continued that approach after the Soviet Union’s collapse, voting in favour of UN sanctions to constrain Pyongyang’s nuclear and missile programmes (as did China) as recently as 2017. But no more.
At a minimum, the new Putin-Kim pact signals the end of any serious prospect that Russia will help to dismantle North Korea’s nuclear programme. The limousine Putin presented to Kim appears to have been in breach of UN sanctions Moscow once supported that barred the transfer of luxury goods to Pyongyang. Russia used its Security Council veto in March to halt UN monitoring of international compliance with the sanctions regime. This doesn’t mean that Putin will immediately hand over the technological secrets Kim most covets, but it begins a dangerous game that could rapidly advance Pyongyang’s capabilities and trigger a nuclear arms race across an already volatile region.
“North Korea has about 50 nuclear weapons today, but I believe their goal within five to ten years is to have a nuclear arsenal the size of Britain or France,” Cha told me. “They want intercontinental ballistic missiles that can evade US missile defences, and quiet submarines that are roaming the Pacific and can even come close to the shores of California or Hawaii.” These are not new ambitions, he said, but for the first time Kim has real leverage in the relationship, because he controls the ammunition stockpiles Putin needs. “If Kim drives a hard bargain then this formal relationship, which explicitly talks about military-technical assistance, could be the way that North Korea can get there.”
This puts China’s leader, Xi Jinping, in an uncomfortable position, having apparently been outmanoeuvred by his putative junior partners. Xi values Russia and North Korea as bulwarks against the West, but he does not want their belligerence to drive South Korea and Japan, both US allies, to develop their own nuclear weapons, or to prompt the rise of an Asian Nato. Nor does he want an emboldened Kim – believing himself safe beneath the Russian nuclear umbrella and no longer wholly dependent on Beijing – to provoke a new war on the Korean Peninsula, which would have disastrous consequences for China.
These fears are not unfounded. South Korean soldiers have fired warning shots three times in June after North Korean troops crossed the border, and there are rumours Pyongyang is plotting an “October surprise” to provoke a major crisis on the peninsula ahead of the US election. It must also have been galling for Xi to watch Putin – whose war in Ukraine has caused political blowback for China in Europe – travel on from Pyongyang to Vietnam, a rival claimant in the South China Sea, to discuss the region’s “security architecture” and what sounded like potential weapons sales.
This is hardly a new dynamic. Relations between the supposedly brotherly socialist nations of the Cold War were often fraught in reality, as was the case for the Axis powers during the Second World War. “Past groupings of adversaries often did not share common objectives or some common master plan,” said former US diplomat Philip Zelikow, who is now at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. “They not only distrusted each other; they often really disliked each other.”
These groupings were held together by a common enemy. “They all had and have in common a sense that they are oppressed and confined by a system they see as imperialist – ‘hegemonist’ is the currently fashionable term,” Zelikow said. “They all believed and believe that this system is anchored by the United States – and by Britain in the earlier periods – and that it is a system of cultural, social, national, as well as military and economic oppression, one which cloaks its power in pieties they scorn.” For all the theatrics of Putin’s visit to Pyongyang, a shared assessment of a greater threat is what binds these powers together. This emerging axis of autocracies will be complicated and riven with mutual suspicion, but that doesn’t mean it cannot also endure.
[See also: The end of the pariah state]
Topics in this article : Kim Jong Un , North Korea , Russia , Vladimir Putin
This article appears in the 26 Jun 2024 issue of the New Statesman, The Lammy Doctrine
NewStatesman · by Katie Stallard · June 26, 2024
10. Air Force Ghostrider flies the South Korean skies for joint training
I wonder if the AC-130 community uses the song Ghost Riders in the Sky as its theme song.
Lyric excerpt:
...
As the riders loped on by him
He heard one call his name
'If you wanna save your soul
From hell a-riding on our range
Then, cowboy, change your ways today
Or with us you will ride
Trying to catch the devil's herd
Across these endless skies
Yippie-yi-o
Yippie-yi-yay
Ghost riders in the sky
As a side note I wonder if we are still providing copies of Stars and Stripes to the north Korean duty officer at Panmunjom as we used to do through the 1990s.
Air Force Ghostrider flies the South Korean skies for joint training
Stars and Stripes · by David Choi · June 26, 2024
ByDavid Choi
Stars and Stripes •
A U.S. Air Force AC-130J Ghostrider parked on the runway at Osan Air Base, South Korea, on June 24, 2024. (David Choi/Stars and Stripes)
A U.S. Air Force AC-130J Ghostrider made an appearance this month at Osan Air Base, South Korea.
The gunship, assigned to the 4th Special Operations Squadron out of Hurlburt Field, Fla., flew to South Korea for two-week joint aerial drills with Seoul’s air force and gunnery training starting June 12.
The routine training is meant “to ensure a safe and peaceful peninsula,” Army Brig. Gen. Derek Lipson, commander of U.S. Special Operations Command Korea, said during a news conference on the runway at Osan on Monday.
A U.S. Air Force AC-130J Ghostrider parked on the runway at Osan Air Base, South Korea, on June 24, 2024. (David Choi/Stars and Stripes)
David Choi
David Choi
David Choi is based in South Korea and reports on the U.S. military and foreign policy. He served in the U.S. Army and California Army National Guard. He graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles.
Stars and Stripes · by David Choi · June 26, 2024
11. North Korea Says It Tested Multiple-Warhead Missile Technology
North Korea Says It Tested Multiple-Warhead Missile Technology
The New York Times · by Choe Sang-Hun · June 27, 2024
The announcement, coming days after Vladimir V. Putin’s visit to Pyongyang, suggests an ambitious attempt to upgrade the North’s nuclear arsenal.
Listen to this article · 4:55 min Learn more
North Korean state media said this image depicted a “separation and guidance control test of individual mobile warheads” conducted on Wednesday.
By
Reporting from Seoul
Published June 26, 2024Updated June 27, 2024, 2:32 a.m. ET
North Korea said for the first time on Thursday that it had tested technology for launching several nuclear warheads with a single missile, days after President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia visited the North and raised the prospect of expanded military and technical cooperation.
The test on Wednesday was “aimed at securing the MIRV capability,” the North’s state-run Korean Central News Agency reported. MIRV stands for “multiple independently targetable re-entry vehicle,” a missile payload containing several warheads, each of which can be sent to a different target. The report said the test had involved part of a MIRV system, not a full-fledged multiple-warhead missile.
Since North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, hosted Mr. Putin for talks last week, officials and analysts have expressed concern that their deepening ties would encourage Mr. Kim to embark on an ambitious upgrade to his nuclear arsenal.
MIRV capability would be a drastic increase in the threat the North poses to the United States and its allies, because a high-speed ballistic missile splitting into several nuclear warheads, as well as decoys, is harder for missile defense systems to intercept. But experts believe the North is far from mastering the technology.
Col. Lee Sung-jun, a spokesman for the South Korean military, said on Thursday that there was “deception and exaggeration” in the North’s announcement. He did not elaborate, but he said photos of the test carried by state media may have been altered. South Korean officials dismissed the Wednesday test as a failure soon after it occurred, saying a missile had exploded over waters east of North Korea after flying 150 miles. They said the test appeared to have involved a hypersonic ballistic missile.
Under multiple United Nations Security Council resolutions, North Korea is forbidden to develop or test nuclear or ballistic missile technologies. But Mr. Kim has doubled down on expanding those capabilities since 2019, when his direct diplomacy with then-President Donald J. Trump collapsed.
Mr. Kim has found a new ally in Mr. Putin since the Russian leader ordered his full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Washington and its allies have accused the North of shipping vast amounts of artillery shells and other munitions to help Russia fight its war of attrition.
During Mr. Putin’s visit to Pyongyang last week, he and Mr. Kim signed a “comprehensive strategic partnership treaty,” which includes a joint commitment to “provide military and other assistance with all means in its possession without delay” when either country comes under attack.
The treaty also calls for “joint measures with the aim of strengthening the defense capabilities,” which has raised concern among Washington and its allies that Russia might help North Korea develop its missiles. Mr. Putin said in Pyongyang that Russia “does not exclude the development of military-technical cooperation” with the North.
A multi-warhead nuclear missile has long been on Mr. Kim’s wish list. But while the North has carried out several successful nuclear tests, it has yet to show that it can design even a single warhead that could survive a ballistic missile’s re-entry into the atmosphere and pose a threat to a distant adversary like the United States, experts say.
The North’s nuclear force is especially dependent on missiles as delivery vehicles because it lacks advanced warplanes or submarines from which to launch them. The North has been making solid-fuel missiles that are easier to move and to hide from adversaries, and it has been testing hypersonic missile technology, although South Korean officials say it is years away from true success in that area.
In its test on Wednesday, North Korea’s Missile Administration “successfully conducted the separation and guidance control test of individual mobile warheads,” according to the state media report. It said engineers had used the first-stage engine of an intermediate-range solid-fuel ballistic missile to conduct the test within a relatively modest radius, to ensure safety and to better gauge the flight characteristics of individual warheads.
“The separated mobile warheads were guided correctly to the three coordinate targets,” the report said. But it added that the engineers needed to “further improve the effectiveness of decoys,” that is, fake warheads that are meant to confuse defense systems.
The United States and South Korea have been expanding their joint defense posture, together with Japan, citing rising threats from the North as well as from China. Over the weekend, a nuclear-powered U.S. aircraft carrier group arrived in South Korea for a three-way joint exercise involving Japan. On Wednesday, South Korea conducted live-fire artillery and rocket exercises on islands near its western sea border with North Korea.
Choe Sang-Hun is the lead reporter for The Times in Seoul, covering South and North Korea. More about Choe Sang-Hun
See more on: Kim Jong-un
The New York Times · by Choe Sang-Hun · June 27, 2024
12. Naval, air drills signal start of first large-scale exercise by US, South Korea, Japan
Freedom Shield + Keen Edge = Freedom Edge
I know a number of action officers and DASD's and DASS' (across administrations of both parties) who must be feeling pretty good after their decades of efforts to try to develop this level of trilateral cooperation.
Naval, air drills signal start of first large-scale exercise by US, South Korea, Japan
Stars and Stripes · by David Choi · June 27, 2024
The aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt arrives in Busan, South Korea, June 22, 2024. (Aaron Haro Gonzalez/ U.S. Navy)
CAMP HUMPHREYS, South Korea — The United States, South Korea and Japan kicked off their first large-scale exercise Thursday with naval and air drills in undisclosed locations in waters near Seoul and Tokyo, according to the South’s military the same day.
Freedom Edge, the first large-scale, multidomain exercise between the three countries, began Thursday with three days of naval drills, the South’s Ministry of National Defense said in a news release.
The drills come one day after North Korea fired an intermediate-range ballistic missile from near Pyongyang toward the Sea of Japan. The country’s state-run Korean Central News Agency reported Thursday that the launch successfully tested a missile capable of carrying several independently targetable warheads.
South Korea’s military on Wednesday said the missile failed and exploded in mid-air.
Warheads from North Korea’s missile test Wednesday flew to three targets, KCNA reported. A decoy was reportedly also deployed from the missile.
The maritime portion of Freedom Edge will include the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt, and destroyers USS Halsey and USS Daniel Inouye, the release said. The three U.S. warships arrived Saturday in Busan for a port call.
Two South Korean and two Japanese destroyers, as well as several maritime patrol aircraft from the two countries, will also participate, according to the South’s military.
The three navies will practice ballistic missile defense, anti-submarine warfare, search-and-rescue, maritime interception and cyber defense scenarios, according to the release.
Speaking aboard the Theodore Roosevelt on Tuesday, South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol said Freedom Edge “symbolizes the U.S.’s ironclad defense commitment” to Seoul and that the inclusion of Japanese forces “will be another powerful deterrent” against North Korea, according to a news release from the South’s presidential office.
The U.S., South Korea and Japan have conducted shorter trilateral maritime and aerial drills.
The Theodore Roosevelt accompanied South Korean and Japanese destroyers for a two-day anti-submarine and maritime interception drill in waters south of Jeju Island in April; aircraft from the three countries also escorted a U.S. Air Force B-1B Lancer bomber on a bomber task force exercise in December.
Freedom Edge is expected to be on a larger scale than those previous drills. President Joe Biden, Yoon and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida agreed to conduct the multidomain exercise following a summit at Camp David, Md., in August.
Freedom Edge will reaffirm their “shared security goals” amid North Korea’s threats and violations of U.N. Security Council resolutions, the U.S. Embassy in Seoul said in a June 2 news release.
North Korea fired over a dozen ballistic missiles in seven separate days of testing so far this year.
The communist regime has also launched four satellites in the last 13 months, most recently on May 27. The U.S., South Korea and Japan allege Pyongyang’s satellite launches are conducted using prohibited ballistic missile technology.
David Choi
David Choi
David Choi is based in South Korea and reports on the U.S. military and foreign policy. He served in the U.S. Army and California Army National Guard. He graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles.
Stars and Stripes · by David Choi · June 27, 2024
13. Bombs and balloons: North and South Korea raise the stakes on tense peninsula
Sometimes I feel like Kevin Bacon's character in Animal House famously saying “Remain calm...all is well.”
We need to understand the nature, objectives, and strategy of the Kim family regime. (political warfare, blackmail diplomacy, and pursuit of advance weapons to use force to achieve unification under the rule of the Guerrilla Dynasty and Gulag State - when it achieves the right conditions to do so, e.g., after success of its political warfare strategy to break the ROK/US alliance)
We need to understand the weakness of the regime and the current stress on it. We must understand that it both fears and envies the ROK/US alliance.
We just understand that it is "acting out" in order to develop the perception of the threat from the alliance in order to justify the suffering and sacrifice of the Korean people in the north.
Let's not overreact. This means we must not give up the high ground (that includes the moral high) from which we are operating. Focus on ensuring readiness and interoperability to support defense and deterrence, use information wisely and effectively, conduct an aggressive human rights upfront approach and base a new strategy on the pursuit of a free and unified Korea. Achieve a United Republic of Corea (U-ROC)
Bombs and balloons: North and South Korea raise the stakes on tense peninsula
Seoul says latest Pyongyang's latest missile trial exploded over ocean Wednesday
washingtontimes.com · by Andrew Salmon
Premium
By - The Washington Times - Wednesday, June 26, 2024
SEOUL, South Korea — A missile exploded in mid-flight, live artillery was fired off two flashpoint islands in the Yellow Sea and balloons crossed the heavily armed border once again as North Korea and South Korea ramped up their escalating war of nerves Wednesday.
Both Koreas are fully engaged in heated bilateral competition: Russian President Vladimir Putin’s high-profile visit to North Korea last week poured further fuel on the fire, and South Korea responded by saying it might send arms to Ukraine if Moscow steps up its military support of Pyongyang.
South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said that a North Korean missile, possibly a solid-fueled hypersonic missile, exploded in mid-air over the Sea of Japan after it was launched from a location in the east of the capital Pyongyang early Wednesday morning. Heavy smoke trails suggested possible engine issues, the South Korean reports stated, but the missile’s characteristics suggest that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un remains determined to upgrade his arsenal despite warnings from the U.S. and its allies in the region.
Solid-fuel missiles are more difficult for adversaries to strike preemptively, as they don’t need to be erected and fueled before launch. Hypersonic missiles also pose a problem for air defense systems due to both their high speeds and their unpredictable flight paths.
Pyongyang’s launch followed angry accounts in the North Korean state media criticizing the arrival of the U.S. aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt in the port of Busan, South Korea as “provocative.” South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol visited the vessel on Tuesday. The carrier is set to take part in a newly inaugurated set of trilateral drills with Japan and South Korea, dubbed “Freedom Edge” that were agreed upon in trilateral consultations in early June.
For its part, South Korea for the first time in seven years on Wednesday resumed live-fire artillery drills off the islands of Baengnyeong-do and Yeonpyeong-do. Marines on the islands fired howitzer shells, multiple launch rocket systems and even anti-tank missiles off the coast.
The two Yellow Sea islands are closer to North Korea’s coast than South Korea’s and lie over lucrative crab fishing grounds. In years past, they were the site of the deadliest hostilities between the two states over the years.
In yet another escalation, North Korea on Tuesday released its latest barrage of trash-carrying balloons — the sixth — across the border into South Korea. While no damage was reported from the balloons, air traffic was suspended at the country’s major airport, Incheon International, for three hours in the early hours of Wednesday morning.
The latest wave of balloons is carrying trash, but prior waves included manure, which, according to South Korean disclosures, contained parasites.
North Korea initiated its southward balloon offensive in retaliation against a smaller number of balloons, loaded with anti-regime propaganda materials, launched northward by activist groups from the South.
Reactions by state media make clear that Pyongyang, which has erected a formidable information wall around its citizenry, is infuriated by the southern balloons.
In response to the “filth balloons,” South Korea, last weekend, briefly restarted the broadcast of programs — news, weather reports and K-pop songs — into North Korea. The broadcasts, delivered by mobile units of camouflaged, military trucks equipped with high-volume speakers, were the first such transmissions in six years. South Korea’s top military officials say they are mulling resuming a wider information offensive, depending on North Korea’s actions.
But the ongoing incidents, particularly the balloon intrusions, showcase the vulnerability of South Korea’s capital area, which lies in the northwestern part of the country just 30 miles south of the DMZ. Incheon International is approximately 25 miles southwest of the frontier, and Gimpo International, in northern Seoul, is just 15 miles from the North’s guns across the border.
Pyongyang, by contrast, is about 100 miles north of the tense and heavily armed border and a much harder target to hit.
“We have no strategic depth,” said Moon Chung-in, who teaches at Seoul’s Yonsei University and once advised the liberal administrations that engaged and negotiated with North Korea.
• Andrew Salmon can be reached at asalmon@washingtontimes.com.
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14. ‘The scariest place on earth’: inside the DMZ as tensions between North and South Korea rise
"Remain calm....all is well."
‘The scariest place on earth’: inside the DMZ as tensions between North and South Korea rise
Balloon wars and troop incursions have led to a rise in uncertainty along the militarised buffer and left international observers nervous
The Guardian · by Justin McCurry · June 27, 2024
Just a stone’s throw from North Korea, farmer Park Se-un tends to his crops under the watchful eye of the South Korean military. In the distance, past the bushes and fields strewn with landmines, he can see North Korean soldiers on patrol.
Park’s village of Daeseong-dong is the only inhabited area in the south of Korea’s demilitarised zone (DMZ), located just 365 metres from North Korea at its closest point. Born and raised inside this zone, Park is used to the political tensions that shape his everyday life.
Described as “the scariest place on earth” by Bill Clinton when he visited as president in 1993, the DMZ has served as a buffer between the two Koreas since their three-year conflict ended in 1953 with an armistice but not a peace treaty – meaning that the neighbours are still technically at war.
It has since become one of the most reliable indicators of the state of inter-Korean affairs and in recent weeks, events along the border suggest the region has entered a new period of tension and uncertainty.
Park Se-un, a farmer living in the DMZ Photograph: The Guardian
The North has sent thousands of balloons over that scattered their contents – manure, cigarette butts, used batteries, cloth scraps and wastepaper – on South Korean streets. Defector groups in the South have reciprocated with balloons whose cargo, including leaflets and USB sticks loaded with K-pop and K-dramas, are designed to undermine the legitimacy of the North’s leader, Kim Jong-un.
Perhaps most worrying are three reported “incursions” this month by 20 to 30 North Korean soldiers into the southern side of the demarcation line, the border running through the centre of the 2.5-mile wide, 155-mile-long DMZ.
The incidents, which ended with the soldiers retreating immediately after their counterparts in the South fired warning shots, have been described by media as “accidental”. One explanation is that foliage in the area is so thick that the North Korean soldiers were unable to see the thin line dividing their country from enemy territory. Another is that North Korea is using soldiers who are unfamiliar with the DMZ and more prone to crossing the Military Demarcation Line inadvertently.
But with tensions across the increasingly militarised DMZ rising, residents like Park now find themselves hoping this fragile peace can continue. “This all makes us nervous. What if something happens? It’s always on our minds,” he says.
Tasked with monitoring these events is the Neutral Nations Supervisory Commission (NNSC), which has actively monitored the DMZ since the Korean war’s armistice in 1953 and is currently composed of just five Swiss and five Swedish soldiers.
A photo released by the South Korean Defence Ministry in 2023 shows North Korean soldiers rebuilding a guard post on the north side of the Demilitarised zone. Photograph: South Korean Defence Ministry/AFP/Getty Images
Living in a hut metres from the Korean border, Maj Gen Ivo Burgener, head of the Swiss NNSC Delegation, is used to life in the DMZ, but he explains that in recent months the situation has changed.
During the Guardian’s interview with him, the sound of an explosion ripples through the forest that covers much of the DMZ, interrupting the conversation.
“In the last four to five weeks it’s been getting more intense,” Burgener says. “The explosions seem to be nearer, and louder.”
Since the scrapping of the comprehensive military agreement, a deal struck in 2018 that sought to lower the risk of an accidental conflict in the DMZ, both North and South have increasingly militarised the border.
In the seven months since the agreement was ended, previously unarmed DMZ soldiers have begun to carry firearms and guard posts are being rebuilt.
“There are more personnel, there are more weapons, and they are coming closer together,” says Lieutenant Colonel Livio Räber, an operations officer for the Swiss NNSC.
Burgener suspects the nearby explosions stem from North Korea’s increased laying of mines along the DMZ, even after mine explosions reportedly killed or wounded an unspecified number of its soldiers. But he says the lack of dialogue between both sides makes it hard for the NNSC to verify.
Soldiers stand guard at the demarcation line separating North and South Korea. Photograph: Anthony Wallace/AFP/Getty Images
In the DMZ’s Daeseong-dong village, residents receive phone alerts warning them about incoming North Korean balloons on an almost daily basis. The clear rise in tensions leave Park concerned that conflict could break out.
“I do worry about possible war,” Park says. “It’s natural to think about it since tensions are growing.”
Despite the “balloon wars” and warning shots, a descent into hostilities is unlikely. The DMZ will however continue to be at the centre of the latest round of tit-for-tat reprisals from both sides. Satellite images suggest that North Korea is building what appear to be anti-tank barriers and reinforcing roads.
Some experts believe the fortifications are intended to deter defections among North Korean soldiers. But defections across the DMZ are rare.
Park says that while his ancestors have lived in the village for generations, his grandfather’s tomb is actually on the North Korean side of the border, and is inaccessible to members of his family.
“My personal hope is to become unified, to live in peace where I am free to go wherever I wish,” he says.
Additional reporting by Park Seo Jeong
The Guardian · by Justin McCurry · June 27, 2024
15. S. Korean military dismisses N.K. claim of successful multiple-warhead missile test
S. Korean military dismisses N.K. claim of successful multiple-warhead missile test | Yonhap News Agency
en.yna.co.kr · by Chae Yun-hwan · June 27, 2024
SEOUL, June 27 (Yonhap) -- South Korea's military on Thursday dismissed North Korea's claim of successfully conducting a multiple-warhead missile test earlier this week as a form of "deception," reaffirming its assessment the missile exploded in the air.
Earlier in the day, the North said it conducted a successful missile test Wednesday aimed at securing multiple independently targetable reentry vehicle (MIRV) capabilities, contradicting South Korea's earlier assessment the launch ended in failure.
"North Korea's missile launched yesterday exploded in an early stage of the flight," Col. Lee Sung-jun, spokesperson of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), told reporters in a briefing. "North Korea made a different announcement this morning but (we) believe that this is merely a method of deception and exaggeration."
Lee said photos released by the North this morning of the missile launch appeared to be similar to its launch of the Hwasong-17 liquid-fuel intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) launched in March 2023.
"North Korea failed in its last space rocket launch and failed again yesterday, and (we) believe that there is a motive to cover these up," he said, noting that both South Korea and the United States assessed Wednesday's launch as a failure.
In its announcement, the North said the test used the "first-stage engine of an intermediate-range solid-fuel ballistic missile within a 170-200 kilometers radius" and the separated warheads were guided correctly to three targets.
South Korea's military earlier said the North launched a ballistic missile toward the East Sea but the missile exploded in midair after traveling some 250 kilometers, with fragments scattering over the sea.
MIRV technology allows a ballistic missile to deliver multiple warheads to different targets. It is largely associated with ICBMs due to its strategic use.
A contrail of what appears to be a North Korean missile launch is seen from South Korea's northwestern border island of Yeonpyeong in the Yellow Sea on June 26, 2024. (Yonhap)
yunhwanchae@yna.co.kr
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en.yna.co.kr · by Chae Yun-hwan · June 27, 2024
16. S. Korea, U.S. wrap up 4th round of talks on defense cost sharing
Get it done.
S. Korea, U.S. wrap up 4th round of talks on defense cost sharing | Yonhap News Agency
en.yna.co.kr · by Kim Seung-yeon · June 27, 2024
By Kim Seung-yeon
SEOUL, June 27 (Yonhap) -- South Korea and the United States ended Thursday their fourth round of negotiations on determining how much Seoul should shoulder for stationing American troops here, officials said.
Wrapping up the three-day talks in Seoul, both sides said they had "productive" discussions as they will continue to work toward reaching a deal that would benefit them both and their staunch alliance.
"Both sides engaged in productive discussions to broaden mutual understanding and expand common ground on key issues of interest," a foreign ministry official in Seoul said on condition of anonymity.
Linda Specht, U.S. lead negotiator for security agreements from the Department of State, reiterated the goal of reaching a "mutually acceptable" agreement.
"Delegations from the United States and the Republic of Korea continued productive and substantive discussions, as we work toward our common objective of a mutually acceptable agreement that supports our shared security," Specht said in a statement released by the U.S. Embassy in Seoul, referring to South Korea by its official name.
A U.S. delegation for defense cost sharing talks with South Korea arrives at the Korea Institute for Defense Analyses in Seoul to hold a three-day fourth round of negotiations on June 25, 2024. (Yonhap)
Seoul and Washington launched the negotiations in April to renew the cost-sharing deal, known as the Special Measures Agreement (SMA), amid the view that South Korea is seeking an early deal to avoid tough bargaining in case former U.S. President Donald Trump returns to the White House.
Under Trump's presidency, Washington had demanded more than a fivefold increase in Seoul's payment to US$5 billion.
The current six-year SMA, due to expire at the end of next year, committed South Korea to paying $1.03 billion for 2021, a 13.9 percent increase from 2019, and increasing the payment every year for the subsequent four years in line with the rise in Seoul's defense spending.
South Korea has said it seeks to have negotiations based on the position that its share should come at a "reasonable level," to create an environment for the stable stationing of the U.S. Forces Korea (USFK) and to strengthen the allies' combined defense posture.
Since 1991, Seoul has partially shared the cost for Korean USFK workers; the construction of military installations, such as barracks, as well as training, educational, operational and communications facilities; and other logistical support.
elly@yna.co.kr
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en.yna.co.kr · by Kim Seung-yeon · June 27, 2024
17. N. Korea ramps up public executions of people distributing S. Korean movies: unification ministry
Information is an existential threat to the Kim family regime.
(LEAD) N. Korea ramps up public executions of people distributing S. Korean movies: unification ministry | Yonhap News Agency
en.yna.co.kr · by Kim Soo-yeon · June 27, 2024
(ATTN: REWRITES headline; UPDATES with more details throughout; ADDS photo)
By Kim Soo-yeon and Kim Han-joo
SEOUL, June 27 (Yonhap) -- North Korea has ramped up public executions of its people who watched or distributed South Korean movies and music, South Korea's unification ministry said Thursday, underscoring Pyongyang's attempt to block the inflow of outside culture that it views as a threat.
North Korea has been stepping up surveillance and punishment of its people, in particular, youths, by implementing three so-called evil laws to prevent North Koreans from accessing outside information, the ministry said in a report on the North's human rights situation.
The ministry made public a report on the North's human rights situation for the second straight year in 2024, with this year's documents mainly based on additional testimonies from 141 North Korean defectors in 2023.
For the first time, the report included an example of a public execution for violating the law adopted in 2020 on the rejection of "the reactionary ideology and culture."
This undated image provided by Yonhap News TV shows human rights violations facing North Korean women who have escaped their home country. (PHOTO NOT FOR SALE) (Yonhap)
The law calls for a sentence of up to 10 years of hard labor for people who bring and spread outside culture and information. Punishment is known to be tougher in the case of those watching and disseminating South Korean dramas, movies and music. The North views such behaviors as anti-socialist acts that could threaten the very existence of the regime.
A defector who fled North Korea last year said he witnessed the public execution of a 22-year-old in South Hwanghae Province in 2022 for listening to 70 South Korean songs, watching three South Korean movies, and distributing them to seven people.
"Since the law took effect, a person could be sent to a prison camp just because of watching (South Korean movies). The person who initially brought them in will face the most severe punishment -- being shot by a firing squad," the defector was quoted as saying in the report.
The two other repressive laws aimed at strengthening internal control are the act adopted in 2021 on education of young people and that enacted in 2023 on the protection of Pyongyang dialect and culture.
North Korea has frequently inspected mobile phones of its people in a bid to crack down on whether there are any South Korean expressions in text messages or address books. In 2021-2023, North Korea ramped up house searches to hunt down those accessing outside culture and information.
Wearing a white wedding dress as a bride, a groom carrying the bride on his back, and wearing sunglasses are also stated as examples of violating the anti-reactionary ideology law, it said.
A North Korean defector in her 20s, who came to South Korea on a wooden boat with her family last year, said three of her acquaintances were publicly executed in 2023 because they watched South Korean dramas.
"The Kim Jong-un regime has in earnest executed those who were caught after watching South Korean dramas, calling them traitors," she told reporters.
"There have been so many cases of executions in North Korea due to drug-related incidents and the issue of South Korean dramas. It has become quite common," she added.
The report also shed light on the harsh lives of North Korean workers dispatched abroad, describing them as living under "slave"-like conditions.
North Korea sent its workers abroad, including Russia, Mongolia and Africa, to earn hard currency in violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions against Pyongyang's nuclear and missile programs.
North Korean workers had to toil for long hours without being allowed proper rest. Despite long hours of labor, they received little wages and even had to repatriate the bulk of their money back to the North Korean regime.
A North Korean defector who was sent to Russia in 2019 said he worked for 16-17 hours daily, with only two days of holidays permitted per year, the report said. Around 40 workers dispatched to Russia in 2019 lived in containers at a construction site, barely washing their faces once a month and not bathing for six months.
This computerized image depicts North Korean workers dispatched abroad to earn foreign currency. (Yonhap)
The report said North Koreans' right to life was infringed on during the COVID-19 pandemic, as the authorities took a firmer grip on people, citing the need for quarantine measures. In early 2020, North Korea shut down its border with China due to the pandemic before partially reopening it last year.
Electricity ran on barbed wires along the border, and patrol guards at border areas were provided with 60 rounds of live ammunition and ordered to immediately kill anyone if there was an attempt to enter the pandemic-induced sealed areas.
In 2021, two party officials were publicly shot to death in a summary execution in violation of the emergency quarantine law, as they permitted people detained in a quarantine facility to bathe.
Meanwhile, North Korea is believed to have 10 political prison camps across the nation so far, with four currently under operation, the report said. The ministry said the North appears to have shut down the Yodok concentration camp, known for its notorious brutality.
North Korea has long bristled at the international community's criticism of its human rights abuses, calling it a U.S.-led attempt to topple its regime.
The North's human rights issue has gained renewed attention as this year marked the 10th anniversary of the release of a landmark U.N. Commission of Inquiry report that accused North Korean officials of "systematic, widespread and gross" human rights violations.
"The ministry published the report on North Korea's human rights in its commitment to raising awareness about the North's serious rights abuses at home and abroad," said Kim Soun-jin, director general at the Center for North Korean Human Rights Records.
This photo, provided by the Ministry of Unification on June 27, 2024, shows copies of a report on North Korea's human rights situation published by the ministry. (PHOTO NOT FOR SALE) (Yonhap)
sooyeon@yna.co.kr
khj@yna.co.kr
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en.yna.co.kr · by Kim Soo-yeon · June 27, 2024
18. S. Korea slaps sanctions on N. Korea's Missile Administration, 4 Russian vessels for violating U.N. resolutions
S. Korea slaps sanctions on N. Korea's Missile Administration, 4 Russian vessels for violating U.N. resolutions | Yonhap News Agency
en.yna.co.kr · by Kim Han-joo · June 27, 2024
By Kim Han-joo
SEOUL, June 27 (Yonhap) -- South Korea has imposed independent sanctions on four Russian vessels and eight North Koreans for engaging in illicit weapons and fuel trade and other activities in violation of U.N. Security Council (UNSC) resolutions, Seoul's foreign ministry said Thursday.
The sanctions also include five entities, including North Korea's Missile Administration, which is responsible for the latest missile launch on Wednesday that Seoul claims was a failed test, the ministry said in a press release.
The ministry noted that the latest move is in response to a military pact signed between North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and Russian President Vladimir Putin during their summit in Pyongyang on June 19. This pact calls for the provision of military and other assistance from one side to the other "with all means" at their disposal and "without delay" if either of the two countries is invaded or enters a state of war.
The four Russian vessels were involved in supplying refined oil to North Korea through ship-to-ship transfers, a critical resource for North Korea's development of nuclear and missile armaments.
Such activity violates UNSC sanctions, specifically Resolution 2397 adopted in December 2017, which bans the supply, sale and transfer of luxury items to North Korea.
The sanctioned vessels will require special approval from South Korean port authorities if they wish to enter a South Korean port.
Other entities include Russia-based M Leasing LLC, responsible for weapons trading between Moscow and Pyongyang, and Euromarket, located in Georgia, which has been selling Russian oil to North Korea.
The sanctions also target eight North Koreans, all of whom are involved in developing and managing missiles within North Korea's Missile Administration, according to the ministry.
Han Kum-bok and Kim Chang-rok are involved in missile development within the agency, while Choi Chol-ung and Ma Chol-wan have been engaged in missile operations. Notably, Choi accompanied North Korean leader Kim Jong-un to Russia last September.
Ryu Sang-hun, an official spearheading a program to develop a spy satellite, was also responsible for the country's successful launch of a military spy satellite in November 2023.
The other three North Koreans are involved in the development of ballistic missiles, the ministry said.
Financial and foreign exchange transactions with the sanctioned entities and individuals will require prior approval.
khj@yna.co.kr
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en.yna.co.kr · by Kim Han-joo · June 27, 2024
19. S. Korea warns Russia 'not to make mistake' after Moscow's warning against potential arms supply to Ukraine
Standing up to the bully (ies)
South Korea must and will act in its own interests. Support to a fellow democracy and protecting freedom is a Korean interest.
S. Korea warns Russia 'not to make mistake' after Moscow's warning against potential arms supply to Ukraine | Yonhap News Agency
en.yna.co.kr · by Kim Seung-yeon · June 27, 2024
By Kim Seung-yeon
SEOUL, June 27 (Yonhap) -- Russia should not make a mistake that could hurt its relations with South Korea in an "irreversible" way, a Seoul official warned Thursday, in a tit-for-tat exchange of words after Moscow warned against Seoul hinting at potential arms support to Ukraine.
The comment from Seoul's foreign ministry came a day after Maria Zakharova, spokeswoman at the Russian foreign ministry, warned South Korea not to take rash steps that could bring about an irreversible outcome for the bilateral relations.
Zakharova's comments came in response to the remarks by South Korea's National Security Adviser Chang Ho-jin that South Korea could consider supplying weapons to Kyiv, depending on Moscow's actions in the follow up to the treaty it signed with North Korea on pledging mutual defense.
"We warn that Russia should not make a mistake that could lead to irreversible consequences in South Korea-Russia relations," ministry spokesperson Lim Soo-suk said in a regular press briefing.
"Additionally, we hope that the Russian side will move away from relying on North Korea and act appropriately as a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council," Lim said.
Foreign ministry spokesperson Lim Soo-suk speaks during a press briefing in Seoul on June 20, 2024. (Yonhap)
Tensions have heightened after Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un declared an upgrade of their countries' relationship after talks in Pyongyang last week. The new treaty commits them to providing mutual military assistance in case either of them is put under armed attack.
South Korea has expressed grave concerns over the growing military cooperation between Russia and North Korea in violation of U.N. resolutions, urging Moscow to act responsibly and cut off such military ties with Pyongyang.
Seoul's foreign ministry said South Korean Ambassador to Russia Lee Do-hoon had a meeting with Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Andrey Rudenko in Moscow on Wednesday (local time) and heard Moscow's position on the new partnership treaty with North Korea.
In the meeting, Lee stressed that any cooperation that would help the North's arms buildup poses serious threats to security in the region, and called for Russia's clear explanation of its actions.
Russia voiced regrets over South Korea's reaction to Putin's visit to Pyongyang, reiterating that its cooperation with the North is not directed at Seoul and the treaty is defensive in nature, according to Seoul's foreign ministry.
elly@yna.co.kr
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en.yna.co.kr · by Kim Seung-yeon · June 27, 2024
20. N. Korea condemns Ukraine's attack on Crimea with U.S.-supplied weapons
Wait until Ukraine receives South Korean weapons.
N. Korea condemns Ukraine's attack on Crimea with U.S.-supplied weapons | Yonhap News Agency
en.yna.co.kr · by Kim Han-joo · June 27, 2024
By Kim Han-joo
SEOUL, June 27 (Yonhap) -- North Korea on Thursday condemned Ukraine's recent attack on Crimea using weapons provided by the United States, calling it an "inexcusable, hideous crime against humanity," in a series of statements supporting Russia.
On Sunday, Ukraine launched a strike on the Russian-annexed Crimean Peninsula using the U.S.-provided Army Tactical Missile System, resulting in the death of at least four people and injuring 153 others, including children.
"I vehemently denounce the recent case as a direct military attack on Russian territory and an inexcusable, hideous crime against humanity," North Korean Defense Minister Kang Sun-nam said in a statement carried by the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).
Russia has alleged that the U.S. provided Ukraine with intelligence support and targeting data for the strike. In contrast, the U.S. maintains that Ukraine independently decides which targets to strike.
"The gravity of the issue is that, as claimed by Russian officials, the missiles fired by the Zelenskyy administration at civilians were U.S.-made, and the input of their coordinates was carried out by U.S. military experts," Kang said.
Labeling Washington as the "worst sponsor of terrorism," Kang added, "It has been fully proved that the weapons supplied by the U.S. to Ukraine have been used to massacre peaceful citizens of Russia."
Since North Korean leader Kim Jong-un's summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Pyongyang on June 27, North Korea has issued a series of statements supporting Russia's prolonged war with Ukraine, describing it as a "legitimate act of self-defense."
"We will always stand with the Russian army and people in their just war for defending national sovereignty and security," Kang said.
In a separate dispatch, the KCNA said that "perpetrators of crimes against humanity are bound to face severe punishment by history."
"The recent atrocity, carried out with bombs banned by international law and long-range weapons supplied by the U.S., was an intentional 'contract murder' premeditated by the U.S. This clearly demonstrates the extremes of their anti-Russian hysteria," it said.
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu (R) shakes hands with North Korean Defense Minister Kang Sun-nam after arriving in Pyongyang on July 25, 2023, in this photo released by the North's Korean Central News Agency. (Yonhap)
khj@yna.co.kr
(END)
en.yna.co.kr · by Kim Han-joo · June 27, 2024
20. Fact check: North Korea has not announced plans to send troops to Ukraine — yet
Bottomline: wait and see.
Fact check: North Korea has not announced plans to send troops to Ukraine — yet
https://www.nknews.org/2024/06/fact-check-north-korea-has-not-announced-plans-to-send-troops-to-ukraine-yet/
While Russia and DPRK are boosting military ties, reports that Pyongyang said it will send troops within month are false
Shreyas Reddy June 27, 2024
North Korean troops marching in a military parade in Pyongyang on April 25, 2022 | Image: KCNA (April 26, 2022)
North Korea has not announced that it will dispatch troops to support Russia’s war against Ukraine within a month, despite multiple news reports that have made this claim this week.
Picking up on comments made during a U.S. government briefing, the British tabloid Daily Express, Ukrainian website Kyiv Post and other outlets have reported as fact that Pyongyang stated it would send engineers to Russian-occupied Donetsk to rebuild the war-torn city.
The reports come after Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un signed a mutual defense treaty last week and as North Korea has allegedly been sending artillery and ballistic missiles to Russia in support of its invasion.
While this possibility cannot be ruled out completely, neither North Korea nor Russia has made any such announcements so far.
The unconfirmed rumors of deployment instead spread through a combination of anonymized single-source reports and multiple levels of misinterpretation as those reports spread globally, a familiar pattern for DPRK-related misinformation.
HOW THE RUMORS EVOLVED
Speculation about North Korea’s alleged move to directly enter the Ukraine conflict originated in a report by South Korean broadcaster TV Chosun last Friday, which cited an anonymous ROK government official’s claim that Pyongyang plans to dispatch military engineers to aid construction efforts in the Russian-controlled Donetsk region.
The official reportedly claimed that North Korea will deploy an elite Korean People’s Army engineering corps as early as next month, citing its past efforts to raise foreign currency under the guise of construction firms such as the U.S.-sanctioned “Namgang Construction.”
Reuters subsequently mentioned the TV Chosun claims as background information in a report about a statement by a DPRK military official condemning Washington for allowing Ukraine to use U.S.-made weapons to carry out counterstrikes against Russia-based targets.
In the statement released through the official Korean Central News Agency on Monday, Central Military Commission Vice-Chairperson Pak Jong Chon affirmed North Korea’s support for Russian efforts against what he described as a U.S.-backed “proxy war” in Ukraine, but did not say Pyongyang would dispatch troops.
However, during a press briefing on Tuesday, a reporter asked Pentagon spokesperson Maj. Gen. Pat Ruder a question that linked the rumored deployment of engineers to Pak’s statement, framing it as a confirmed announcement rather than unverified speculation.
“North Korea’s Central Military Commission announced that North Korea would join forces with the Russian military. And as part of the North Korea and Russia military alliance, the North Korean Army engineer unit would be dispatched to Donetsk, Ukraine, which remains occupied by Russia,” the journalist said when asking for the Pentagon’s take on the matter.
Ryder appeared unaware of such speculation, but replied that it would be worth keeping an eye on such developments, stating that any North Korean troops deployed to Ukraine would simply serve as “cannon fodder in an illegal war.”
The same journalist repeated the question during a State Department press briefing on Wednesday, but spokesperson Matthew Miller said he had not seen any such reports and added that the U.S. remains opposed to potential Russia-DPRK military cooperation in “occupied Ukrainian territory.”
However, by this time, the British tabloid Daily Express and some influential social media accounts had already picked up Ryder’s “cannon fodder” comments the previous day and repeated the incorrect description of the deployment claims as an official North Korean announcement.
While some news outlets cited the TV Chosun claims as the story gathered steam, some others such as Ukraine’s Kyiv Post and Kyiv Independent soon ran stories referencing the Daily Express article without verifying the source of the rumors.
However, for now, that is all these reports are — rumors.
As Russia and North Korea ramp up military cooperation, the possibility of DPRK troops joining the war cannot be ruled out. Back in 2022, the two sides even discussed the possibility of North Korea sending workers to Russia-controlled areas of eastern Ukraine to help rebuild after the war.
But so far, North Korea has not officially announced plans to dispatch engineers or other military personnel to support Moscow’s war efforts.
Edited by Bryan Betts
De Oppresso Liber,
David Maxwell
Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy
Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation
Editor, Small Wars Journal
Twitter: @davidmaxwell161
Phone: 202-573-8647
email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com
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