Category: Inter-Korean Issues

It seems like North Korea has been ready to do a nuclear test for a few months. However, it appears they are waiting for the right moment to justify them conducting the nuclear test to mitigate international condemnation. The fact that the ROK has not unilaterally cancelled the Inter-Korean military agreement despite all the provocations in recent months has denied them one of their justifications for the nuclear test:

 Prime Minister Han Duck-soo has said North Korea is ready to conduct a nuclear bomb test, but South Korea and its allies have always been prepared for the North’s major provocation.

“We gather that they are ready,” Han told Britain’s Sky News in an interview, “although we do not know exactly when” a nuclear test would happen.

North Korea has launched a flurry of short- to long-range missile tests so far this year and has widely been expected to carry out what would be its seventh nuclear test.

Han said South Korea and its allies have been on alert over the possibility of North Korea’s nuclear test.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, the Kim regime will eventually find something to justify their test. The real question is what does the U.S. and the ROK do in response?

I mean really what is South Korea going to do in response to a nuclear test that hasn’t already been done in the past? The only thing I see getting the Kim regime’s attention and more importantly President Emperor Xi’s attention, is if the ROK develops their own nuclear capability, which I doubt the U.S. will support. That leaves the ROK with its usual response options of show of forces which has not deterred the North Koreans:

President Yoon Suk-yeol said any new nuclear test by North Korea will be met with an international response “not seen in the past” and called on China to play a greater role to deter the North’s provocations.

Yoon made the remarks in an interview with Reuters, released Tuesday, amid growing concerns the North could conduct its seventh nuclear test after a series of recent missile launches.

Should the North forge ahead with a test, Yoon vowed a response “not seen in the past” by South Korea and its partners.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

The real story here is why would a major underwear company want to work with the Kim regime to smuggle money into North Korea? What did they get in return? Was anyone in the Gyeongi-do government in on this? Are other so called NGOs doing the same thing to circumvent sanctions? That’s what I want to know:

Prosecution took into custody a man suspected of colluding with Ssangbangwool Group to smuggle huge sums of foreign currency into North Korea about three years ago, according to judicial sources.

The Suwon District Prosecutors Office apprehended the chief of the Asia Pacific Exchange Association, a Seoul-based nongovernmental organization, at an unidentified place in Seoul where he was hiding out, on charges of violating the Foreign Exchange Transactions Act.

Prosecutors have been investigating allegations that Ssangbangwool, South Korea’s leading underwear company, secretly sent millions of US dollars to China in 2019 and that the money was sent to North Korea.

They allege that dozens of Ssangbangwool executives and employees took part in the alleged currency smuggling by hiding dollars inside books on their trips to China to deliver them to North Korea.

Prosecutors suspect the man, only identified by his surname An, played a role in the crime.

Ssangbangwool and the NGO are suspected of handing $1.5 million and US$500,000, respectively, to the North.

Prosecutors are also looking into possibility that support funds the NGO received from Gyeonggi Province were part of the money sent to the North.

The province surrounding Seoul provided about 2 billion won ($1.46 million) to the NGO on two occasions between 2018-19 for an event where North Korean officials attended, and delivered flour and saplings to the North.

Korea Herald

You can read more at the link.

In a Taiwan crisis I would be very surprised if the North Koreans did not launch provocations in support of their Chinese allies just to divert U.S. troops and attention to the peninsula:

Seoul “should be fully prepared” for North Korean provocations in the event of a crisis between China and Taiwan, South Korea’s chief diplomat said this week.

Foreign Minister Park Jin, speaking to lawmakers Monday at a briefing for the Foreign and Unification Committee, said North Korea may engage in provocative behavior and exacerbate a potential crisis in the Taiwan Strait.

“Peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait is very important for the peace and stability of our Korean Peninsula,” Park said. “Therefore, we would like to continue to work together with the U.S. while firmly maintaining the [South Korea]-U.S. alliance.”

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link.

Once again this all an attempt by North Korea to create tension and justify provocations in an attempt to get Seoul to respond in a way that justifies their upcoming nuclear test:

The issue of propaganda loudspeakers along the border may re-emerge as an area of disagreement between South and North Korea, in the wake of Pyongyang’s claim that Seoul has resumed the use of loudspeaker broadcasts. 

Diplomatic observers say the loudspeaker issue could ratchet up tensions further on the Korean Peninsula.

On Monday, while accusing a South Korean naval ship of intruding in its waters, North Korea claimed that the South Korean military has been staging provocations recently, including loudspeaker broadcasts along the border. 

However, the Ministry of National Defense said it is no longer operating loudspeakers along the border. Later it added that the South Korean military had recently used a similar broadcasting device ― installed at guard posts ― to notify helicopters for mobilization in operations to put out wildfires or transport emergency patients, a defense official here said.

The loudspeaker issue has been a hot-button issue between South and North Korea, leading to many disputes over the decades. Both sides have deployed speakers to direct propaganda at one another, and the North Korean regime has on many occasions responded sensitively to the matter. 

Korea Times

You can read more at the link.

This is yet another attempt by the North Koreans to try and bait the ROK into canceling the Inter-Korean military agreement. They are going to continue these provocations until they get the reaction they want to justify conducting their long awaited nuclear test:

South and North Korea exchanged warning shots, Monday, accusing each other of border violations in the West Sea, in what is already a period of heightened tension. 

According to the South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), a North Korean merchant ship invaded the Northern Limit Line (NLL) at 3:42 a.m. and the South Korean Navy responded with 20 warning messages and as many warning shots to repel the vessel.

However, nearly one hour after the North Korean ship retreated, the North’s military fired 10 artillery shells into the West Sea, claiming that a South Korean naval ship intruded into North Korean waters ― 2.5 kilometers to five kilometers ― with the excuse that South Korean authorities were cracking down on an unidentified ship when they made the alleged intrusion. (…..)

According to the South Korean JCS, it detected the North’s launch of 10 artillery shells, which started at around 5:14 a.m., in violation of the inter-Korean military agreement, signed in September 2018 to reduce border tensions. The JCS called it a provocation harming peace and stability not only on the peninsula but also in the international community.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link.

It is pretty clear that the Kim regime is daring President Yoon to cancel the Inter-Korean military agreement. If it gets cancelled the Kim regime could use this as an excuse to justify their long awaited nuclear test:

North Korea fired artillery rounds into a buffer zone with South Korea that is designed to reduce tension on the Korean Peninsula, the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said Wednesday.

The North fired some 100 artillery rounds into the Yellow Sea from around 10 p.m. Tuesday and another 150 rounds into the East Sea from 11 p.m., according to the JCS.

The artillery shells fell into eastern and western buffer zones north of the Northern Limit Line, which were established under a 2018 inter-Korean agreement on reducing military tension.

“Firing artillery shells into the eastern and western buffer zones is a clear violation of the September 19 military agreement, and we strongly urge North Korea to immediately halt its actions as North Korea’s continued provocations are actions that undermine peace and stability of the Korean Peninsula and the international community,” it said in a released statement.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

Why not abolish this pact when the ROK is the only one following it:

North Korea’s recent missile launches are widely viewed as a prelude to a seventh nuclear test and South Korea is exploring various response measures to deal with additional provocations. One of the measures being mentioned is scrapping the 2018 inter-Korean comprehensive military agreement which calls on the two Koreas to cease “hostile activities” against each other, including military exercises near the inter-Korean border.

Conservatives are urging Seoul to consider pulling out of the agreement, which they claim restrains South Korea’s defense capabilities by limiting military exercises and reconnaissance activities. 

“We should declare the scrapping of the military agreement if North Korea carries out a seventh nuclear weapon test,” Ruling People Power Party (PPP) interim leader Rep. Chung Jin-suk wrote on Facebook on Friday, a day after the North deployed 12 military aircraft for an air strike drill.

“If we destroy the pact, our military’s flight boundaries and firing exercise zones in the East and West seas will expand, bolstering our capabilities in surveilling North Korea and deterrence firepower,” Chung added. 

Korea Times

You can read more at the link.

Park Sang-hak is taking advantage of the change in government in South Korea to ramp up his balloon launch activities again after being largely silenced by the previous Moon administration:

An activist said he has again flown huge balloons carrying COVID-19 relief items and an anti-North Korea placard across the tense inter-Korean border, despite the North’s recent warning of a deadly attack over his activities.

Park Sang-hak, a North Korean defector-turned-activist, said the 20 balloons launched from a South Korean border town on Sunday carried 20,000 masks and tens of thousands of Tylenol and Vitamin C tablets.

He said one of the balloons carried a placard with a message that reads “Let’s eradicate Kim Jong Un and (his sister) Kim Yo Jong,” along with their photos. He said no other propaganda statements were carried by the balloons.

For years, Park has floated helium-filled balloons with numerous, small anti-Pyongyang leaflets with harsh criticism of the Kim family’s authoritarian rule in North Korea. But he’s recently changed his cargo to masks and other health products amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link.

The findings from this poll are easy to believe because from my experience as well, many South Koreans have just become numb to the North Korean threat:

Almost thirty years, more than a hundred missile launches and six nuclear weapons tests later, Pyongyang’s state media still issues apocalyptic threats to “completely annihilate” Seoul — but South Koreans appear to tune them out, while South Korean military officials respond to every North Korean provocation with the now predictable refrain: “Our military maintains a constant state of readiness.”  
   
So are South Koreans genuinely not concerned about North Korea — and are they confident they will be protected should the unthinkable happen?  
   
   
Do South Koreans even think about North Korea?   
   
On the surface, South Koreans appear less concerned about what goes on north of the DMZ and more preoccupied with domestic issues, like those surrounding real estate policy and the economy.  
   
Despite a flurry of North Korean missile tests in the lead-up to the March presidential election, two out of three South Koreans surveyed in a Feb. 3-4 poll of 1,006 adults by the Korea Society Opinion Institute (KSOI) and the Kukmin Ilbo newspaper said the North Korean missile launches over the previous month would not influence their choice for the country’s next president.  
   
“Who has time to worry about North Korea? I think we’re all just busy trying to make ends meet,” said Lee Young-sun, a 50-year-old restaurant chef, when asked about how often she thinks about North Korea.  
   
Lee, who described herself as politically apathetic, said, “If I have to pick one issue that I thought about during the election, it would be unemployment and real estate prices.”  
   
Kim Dong-min, a 28-year-old IT worker, described a similar set of priorities. “I was worried mostly about economic policy during the lead-up to the presidential elections,” he said, adding that “things have been tough for millennials.” 

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link.