It seems like we have been talking about North Korea conducting a possible nuclear test for the past two years and for whatever reason they haven’t done one yet. I am not convinced that a food crisis is what is going to cause them to conduct a new nuclear test:
Defense Minister Shin Won-sik speaks during a visit to the command center of the Army’s 1st Infantry Division in Paju, 37 kilometers north of Seoul, on Oct. 9, 2023, in this photo provided by his office. (Yonhap)
North Korea may stage various provocations, including a nuclear test, to divert its public’s attention from the country’s ongoing food crisis, South Korea’s defense ministry said Tuesday.
The ministry made the assessment in a policy report for a parliamentary audit amid growing tensions after North Korea revised its constitution late last month to stipulate the policy of strengthening its nuclear force.
“In order to pass on internal complaints of food woes and failures in economic policy to the outside world, there is a possibility of (the North) conducting various strategic and tactical provocations, including a seventh nuclear test,” the ministry said in the report.
The isolated regime, which has faced chronic food shortages, last conducted a nuclear test in September 2017.
I forgot these people were still being held in North Korea because it has been so long. It seems unlikely the ROK will be able to get them back considering how much the Kim regime hates Christian missionaries:
This file photo, provided by Yonhap News TV, shows Kim Jung-wook, a South Korean pastor who has been detained in North Korea since 2013. (Yonhap)
The unification ministry on Sunday urged North Korea to immediately send a South Korean pastor and five other nationals back home, condemning their yearslong detention as “illegal and inhumane.”
The ministry made the appeal in a statement marking 10 years after South Korean pastor Kim Jung-wook was arrested in Pyongyang in 2013 and then sentenced to hard labor for life on charges of spying for South Korea’s spy agency.
In 2014, two other South Korean missionaries, Kim Kuk-gi and Choe Chun-gil, were also detained in the North on charges of committing what the North’s regime called anti-North Korea crimes. Three former North Korean defectors, who had obtained South Korean citizenship, were detained in 2016.
“The government condemns North Korea’s illegal and inhumane measure and strongly calls on North Korea, a signatory to the International Covenants on Human Rights, to immediately send them back to their beloved family members,” Koo Byoung-sam, spokesperson at the ministry, said in the statement.
President Yoon is speaking some truth here because for too long the Unification Ministry was basically a left wing North Korean advocacy group:
President Yoon Suk Yeol said Sunday the unification ministry should no longer act like a support agency for North Korea, days after he nominated a conservative scholar to head the ministry.
“So far, the unification ministry has operated as if it were a support department for North Korea, and that shouldn’t be the case anymore,” Yoon told his staff, according to senior presidential press secretary Kim Eun-hye. “Now, it’s time for the unification ministry to change.”
Kim said Yoon made his remarks in a meeting with his staff over the recent nomination of Kim Yung-ho, a professor known for a hard-line stance toward Pyongyang, as the new unification minister.
“From now on, the unification ministry must carry out its proper responsibilities, in accordance with the constitutional principles that unification must be based on liberal democratic order,” Yoon was also quoted as saying. “The unification that we pursue must be one in which all the people from the South and the North enjoy better lives and are treated better as human beings.”
Good luck trying to get any reimbursement from North Korea with this lawsuit:
South Korea’s unification ministry said Wednesday it lodged a damages suit against North Korea over Pyongyang’s 2020 demolition of an inter-Korean liaison office in the North’s border city of Kaesong.
The government filed the lawsuit with the Seoul Central District Court against the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea over 44.7 billion won (US$35 million) in damage incurred on the South’s state properties, according to the ministry.
On June 16, 2020, the North blew up the joint liaison office in Kaesong in anger over Seoul’s failure to stop North Korean defectors from sending anti-Pyongyang leaflets across the border.
It marked the first time that the South Korean government has sued North Korea.
The legal action came as the statute of limitations for damages to property related to the case is set to expire Friday. Under the civil law, the statute of limitations for the right to claim compensations for damages runs out three years after damage occurs.
This is interesting because is the first time I have seen North Korea issue such a warning to a civilian ship in the East Sea. It makes me think they may have thought it was being used for intelligence collection purposes:
A North Korean boat warned a South Korean cargo ship sailing in the international waters of the East Sea to “move out to the open sea” earlier this month, a source said Tuesday, raising maritime safety concerns amid heightened cross-border tensions.
People aboard the North Korean boat gesticulated toward the 30,000-ton cargo ship and sent a message demanding it move farther out into the high seas through an international maritime communication network on May 8, according to the source.
The cargo ship was reportedly carrying 21 crewmembers, including two South Koreans.
It remains unclear whether the North Koreans are civilians or military personnel.
Following the message from the North, the South Korean ship informed its headquarters and the Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries of what happened and took a detour to reach the waters south of the Northern Limit Line, a de facto inter-Korean sea border.
This is why it is important to continue to undermine the Kim regime by providing access to outside information into North Korea:
North Korean brothers who brought their family members out of the country earlier this month are late millennials, part of the tech-savvy younger generation of North Korea who have increased access to external information.
Sources with knowledge of the latest defections told The Korea Herald on Sunday that it was the two brothers in their early 30s who had made the decision to leave North Korea with their family.
The sources said that the brothers told Seoul officials here in a screening interview that they had yearned for a life in South Korea after secretly watching South Korean TV. In particular, they cited the talk show “Now on My Way to Meet You,” featuring North Korean defectors, as having had a major influence.
Analyses say North Korean millennials are the main consumers of foreign media content, mostly from South Korea, in the totalitarian country where such acts are severely punished.
According to a South Korean government report on the human rights situation in North Korea released in March, North Korea has publicly executed citizens including teens for watching South Korean media.
As I posted after Yoon's DC state visit, and now after two summits with Kishida, Yoon should quietly, secretly, meet with Kim Jong Un in the DMZ, if only to reduce the chances of miscalculation. He should also get to know Kim, who will be there in NK well after Yoon steps down.
Besides firing shots at the North Korean vessel maybe the ROK Coast Guard needs to start firing shots at these illegal Chinese fishing vessels as well:
A South Korean Navy vessel fired warning shots to drive out a North Korean patrol boat that crossed the western de facto maritime border last week, the South’s military said Sunday.
The North Korean boat crossed the Northern Limit Line (NLL) in waters northeast of South Korea’s Baengnyeong Island in the Yellow Sea on Saturday at 11 a.m., prompting the South Korean Navy to dispatch its Chamsuri-class patrol boat, according to the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS).
After the North’s boat remained unresponsive to South Korea’s warning broadcasts and communication attempts, the South Korean vessel fired 10 warning shots with its autocannon and made the North Korean boat retreat.
The North Korean boat made the incursion as it was chasing a Chinese fishing boat, according to an informed source.
The JCS said there was contact between the South Korean vessel and the Chinese boat during the operation, and three of the South Korean sailors were sent to a hospital for injuries. One of them is known to have undergone surgery due to a fracture.
You can read more at the link, but this illegal Chinese fishing boat rams a South Korean Coast Guard ship, injures sailors, and it is allowed to get away?
