This is laughable if the Unification Ministry has any expectation that the Kim regime will ever pay back these loans. Giving money to North Korea is like giving money to a methhead, you know what they are going to use the money for and should not expect to get it back:
The unification ministry said Monday it is reviewing measures to reclaim loans granted to North Korea for building inter-Korean roads and train tracks after the North blew them up in October.
The unification ministry unveiled the tentative measures as part of its policy plan for the second half of President Yoon Suk Yeol’s administration, which is now at the midpoint of his five-year term.
On Oct. 15, North Korea demolished parts of the roads and train tracks connected to South Korea — the Gyeongui Line in the western border region and the Donghae Line along the east coast — in its latest display of escalating hostility toward the South.
The unification ministry said a review is under way, in collaboration with other related ministries, to seek the collection of loans to North Korea amid concerns the country may refuse to repay them following its detonation of inter-Korean roads and train tracks.
From 2002-2008, South Korea provided in-kind loans worth US$132.9 million to North Korea to construct roads and train tracks along the two inter-Korean lines.
You can read more at the link.
More tit-for-tat between North Korea and the ROK:
North Korea’s jamming of GPS signals across the border with South Korea continued Sunday for the 10th consecutive day, the military said.
GPS jamming was detected in the northern part of Gangwon Province early Sunday morning, according to the military.
The latest jamming attacks began near the northwestern islands before they began spreading to the northern parts of Gyeonggi and Gangwon provinces last Thursday.
The military has said the jamming has involved weaker signals than in May and June and lasted for shorter periods over various directions.
The jamming appears to be a North Korean military exercise in responding to the possible appearance of drones, according to the military.
You can read more at the link.
The tit-for-tat between the ROK and North Korea continues:
The powerful sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un said Sunday that South Korea will have to pay a “dear price” for sending propaganda leaflets across the border the previous day.
Kim Yo-jong, vice department director of the central committee of the North’s ruling Workers’ Party, said “various kinds of political agitation leaflets and dirty things” were dropped by the South near the border and further inland.
“We strongly denounce the shameful and dirty acts of the ROK scum who committed the provocation of scattering anti-DPRK political and conspiratorial agitation things once again in disregard of our repeated warnings,” she said in a statement carried by the North’s Korean Central News Agency, referring to South and North Korea by their formal names, the Republic of Korea and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
“There will be no house owner who hardly gets enraged at such dirty rubbish scattered in the clean yard, which even a mutt dislikes to touch,” she said.
You can read more at the link.
As has been predicted here by myself and other ROK Heads, North Korean troops are being used to push Ukrainian troops out of Russia’s Kursk region:
The United States confirmed Tuesday that North Korean troops, who have been deployed to Russia’s western front-line Kursk region, have begun engaging in combat operations against Ukrainian forces.
Vedant Patel, principal deputy spokesperson for the State Department, made the remarks amid growing concerns that the North’s troop deployment could expand Moscow’s protracted war in Ukraine with security implications for both Europe and the Indo-Pacific region. (…..)
“Today, I can confirm that over 10,000 DPRK soldiers have been sent to eastern Russia, and most of them have moved to far western Kursk Oblast, where they have begun engaging in combat operations with Russian forces,” he added.
You can read more at the link, but using the North Koreans to fight in Kursk makes sense because Russia would then not need to redeploy their own troops continuing their long grinding offensive in Ukraine.
The propaganda balloon wars between South and North Korea could now spread to Ukraine and Russia:
A group of North Korean defectors delivered propaganda leaflets to Ukraine on Monday, encouraging North Korean soldiers deployed in Russia to defect, as thousands of North Korean troops have been sent to support Russia’s war against Ukraine.
The “Defectors’ Propaganda Corps,” comprising North Korean soldiers-turned-defectors and defectors whose sons served in the North Korean military, delivered the propaganda leaflets to the Embassy of Ukraine in Seoul for the distribution to North Korean soldiers in Russia, the group said.
The leaflets carry messages encouraging North Korean troops to defect, along with instructions on how to defect. Audio files with similar messages were also delivered to the embassy.
You can read more at the link, but if Ukraine sends propaganda balloons towards North Korean troops in Russia, I wonder if Kim Jong-un will have his troops send garbage balloons into Ukraine in response?
Oh how nice, North Korea had a celebratory rocket show in honor of the U.S. election:
North Korea fired multiple short-range ballistic missiles into the East Sea on Tuesday, South Korea’s military said, in the latest saber-rattling just hours ahead of the U.S. presidential election.
The Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said it detected the launches at about 7:30 a.m. from the Sariwon area in the western province of North Hwanghae, and they flew about 400 kilometers before splashing into the sea.
A JCS official told reporters that the latest launches apparently involved the North’s KN-25 super-large 600-millimeter multiple rocket launchers. The weapon system is believed to be capable of striking anywhere in South Korea when fired from Sariwon.
You can read more at the link.
