Tag: North Korea

Orwell would be impressed by how North Korea is using their version of the “Ministry of Truth” to scrub their state media to create a new reality for their citizens:

North Korea has removed articles with unification references from the website of its state-run media outlet, after leader Kim Jong-un called South Korea the North’s “primary foe” and vowed not to seek unification with the South.

As of Monday, a majority of the articles containing references to unification, such as “peaceful reunification,” “great national unity” and “northern half,” appear to have been deleted from the website of the North’s Korean Central News Agency.

The move came as Kim has defined inter-Korean ties as relations between “two states hostile to each other” during a year-end party meeting.

Korea Herald

You can read more at the link.

The Korea Times recently interviewed three Korean foreign policy experts about what they thought how a second Trump presidency would impact South Korea. What I found most interesting was not the Trump talk, but how these experts believe negotations with North Korea should continue to be centered around trying to get them to denuclearize:

Q: North Korea’s threat has become sophisticated. And the North had continued to build up its nuclear capabilities to solidify its status as a nuclear power. Given this, do you believe denuclearizing North Korea is achievable? Will there be a need to discard denuclearization negotiations and adopt a new format of disarmament talks? 

Kim: Denuclearization is and should continue to be an end goal to achieve. This is a daunting task unprecedented in the history of nuclear arms control and disarmament, but it cannot be given up. If we give up denuclearization, North Korea will be recognized as a de facto nuclear state. And this likely means the beginning of the collapse of the NPT. This is a nightmare for all. If North Korea becomes a nuclear weapon state, this would agitate South Koreans, and public opinion would evolve even stronger in favor of South Korea’s nuclear armament. If South Korea arms itself with nuclear weapons, other countries in the region, such as Japan and even Taiwan, will also feel the need to follow suit. If this happens, not only the U.S. but also China will face unmanageable proliferation risks. 

A nuclear-weapon-free North Korea may sound unfeasible at the moment, but we need to keep trying to make it happen. For that, we need to prevail on North Korea to come back to negotiation on the basis that everything should be on the table. This means both of our and their concerns must not be precluded from any negotiation. 

Ahn: The importance of the NPT cannot be overstated. When the treaty was proposed by the U.S. in 1960’s, the former Soviet Union was fully supportive because there was a shared belief that the international community needed such a scheme to prevent proliferation. The first survey that asked South Koreans about their opinions about South Korea’s possession of nuclear weapons was released in 2022 and at that time, 76 percent of South Koreans were in favor. The U.S. officials and think tank experts whom I met were stunned whenever they heard about the survey results. Eventually, South Koreans’ overwhelming support for nuclear armament became a type of leverage and convinced the U.S. to team up with South Korea to create the Nuclear Consultation Group (NCG). The NCG is a very useful institution for South Korea and we need to make the most of it to deter North Korea’s threat.

Korea Times

You can read much more at the link, but I just don’t see how you negotiate to achieve something that is not going to happen. Kim Jong-un is not going to give up his nuclear weapons, it is his ultimate regime survival trump card. Plus his nuclear weapons program to continues to make his regime relevant internationally. He has already turned down a deal for denuclearization in return for dropping of sanctions and nothing has changed in the intervening years that would change his mind.

It looks like Japan is the one democratic nation that the North Koreans are looking to play nice with:

The influential sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un offered a rare opening for Japan, saying she saw a positive tone in comments from Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, who is seeking a summit. Kim Yo Jong indicated a meeting of leaders would be possible if Japan “does not lay such a stumbling block as the already settled abduction issue,” she said in a press statement issued Thursday on state media.

“It is my opinion that if Japan makes a political decision to open up a new way of mending the relations through its courteous behavior and trustworthy action on the basis of courageously breaking with anachronistic hostility and unattainable desire and recognizing each other, the two countries can open up a new future together,” the statement carried on the Korean Central News Agency said.

The tone is a marked change from comments she issued nearly two years ago when she lumped Japan in with a bunch of “sinister” nations she accused of raising rabble at the United Nations to criticize Pyongyang for the test of an intercontinental ballistic missile.

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link, but what I suspect is that the Kim regime sees the growing relationship between Japan and South Korea. Because of this they probably want to play nice with Japan in order to try and separate them from South Korea.

If North Korea quit making threats and provocations there wouldn’t be a need to conduct aerial surveillance of their country:

North Korea on Saturday accused South Korea and the United States of heightening tensions on the Korean Peninsula with aerial reconnaissance activities.

In a commentary carried by the Korean Central News Agency, the North said that Seoul and Washington have been stepping up their “spying activities” this month, calling such a move a “stern provocation” against the country.

The North claimed the countries attempted to secure information on the North’s inner regions by conducting surveillance activities with the U.S. RC-135 Combat Sent and RC-135W Rivet Joint and South Korea’s advanced high-altitude unmanned aircraft Global Hawk and E-737 Peace Eye early warning aircraft.

The North said it is closely monitoring such military activities and threatened that it is ready to destroy its enemies anytime.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

I don’t think the North Koreans would undertake an attributal terrorist attack against South Korea if it wanted to raise tensions. An operation similar to what they did with the Cheonan makes more sense. In that operation they sunk a ROK naval vessel and then blamed the South Koreans for sinking it themselves. The left wing useful idiots in South Korea then accused the former President Lee for sinking the Cheonan to blame North Korea. There are still useful idiots to this day in South Korea that believe this nonsense:

This photo, provided by the Korea Institute for National Unification on Feb. 14, 2024, shows the state-run think tank holding a forum on inter-Korean relations in Seoul.

North Korea may attempt to mobilize its spies or sympathizers in South Korea to stage a terrorist attack on the South in a manner similar to attacks by Islamic Jihad, an expert said Wednesday.

Cho Han-bum, a senior research fellow at the state-run Korea Institute for National Unification (KINU) said North Korea is expected to raise military tensions as its leader Kim Jong-un defined inter-Korean ties as relations “between two states hostile to each other” at a year-end party meeting.

“With Kim’s announcement, North Korean spies and sympathizers in South Korea could work as ‘wartime’ agents to engage in activities commensurate with a state of war,” Cho told a forum on the two Koreas’ relations.

He raised the possibility of North Korean espionage agents staging a terrorist attack in South Korea on orders from North Korea, or of South Koreans with pro-North Korean stances staging a “lone-wolf” terrorist attack.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

What they don’t know is how many of these phones are smartphones? It seems in a country with only a regime controlled intranet, a smartphone is not as useful as in other countries:

An estimated six million North Koreans have cellular phones as of 2021, a recently published report by a state-run think-tank said, indicating a wave of change among the people living under the oppressive regime.

The Korea Institute for National Unification conducted a study on how distribution of mobile phones is affecting North Koreans’ quality of life, in which they presumed that a little over 23 percent of some 25.7 million North Koreans own smartphones. The consensus was based on estimations by various research institutes and organizations.

The study said that cell phone use in the hermit kingdom rapidly has increased since 2009, which is around the time when network distribution for mobile phones started spreading among the public. According to the researchers, the number of phones using a landline is expected to be around 1.18 million, unchanged since 2008. At the same time, cellphones in North Korea outnumbered landline phones in 2011 and kept growing.

It is yet unclear how much of the mobile phones distributed in North Korea are smartphones, due to lack of related statistics. But researchers speculated that smartphones will eventually outlast any other type of mobile phone in the country, based on anecdotal evidence.

Korea Herald

You can read more at the link.