Here is more on North Korea’s latest missile launch:
North Korea said Monday it successfully test-fired a solid-fuel intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM) carrying a hypersonic warhead the previous day as part of regular activities to develop powerful weapons systems.
The missile loaded with a hypersonic maneuverable controlled warhead was launched Sunday afternoon in a bid to verify the warhead’s gliding and maneuvering capabilities and the reliability of newly developed multi-stage high-thrust solid-fuel engines, according to the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA). It did not disclose the missile’s flight details.
North Korea must have found a more effective way to send orders to their spies in South Korea:
North Korea is pressing ahead with measures to disband its inter-Korean organizations, apparently stopping a radio station previously used to send encrypted messages to its spies in South Korea.
As of Saturday, the North appears to have stopped broadcasting the state-run Pyongyang Radio and cut off access to its website.
The latest move comes after North Korean leader Kim Jong-un ordered “readjusting and reforming” its organizations in charge of inter-Korean affairs during a key Workers’ Party meeting last month amid growing cross-border tensions.
Pyongyang Radio is known for broadcasting a series of mysterious numbers, presumed to be coded messages, giving directions to its agents operating in South Korea.
I don’t think safe is the word; more like better behaved:
Former President Donald Trump on Sunday boasted his personal ties with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un that he had built during his presidency, stressing America was “safe” then.
Trump made the remarks during a rally in Indianola, Iowa, on the eve of the first vote of the Republican Party’s nomination contest in the lead-off state. Hours earlier, Pyongyang fired a suspected intermediate-range ballistic missile into the East Sea in its first missile launch this year.
“Kim Jong-un (is) very smart, very tough, but he liked me and I got along really well with him and we were safe,” Trump said during a live-streamed speech.
Just another example of why the Kim regime cannot be trusted to keep to agreements:
North Korea breached the recently scrapped 2018 inter-Korean military accord approximately 3,600 times, South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said Monday.
The number of violations by North Korea, counted from the time the deal was reached six years ago, was announced following three consecutive days of North Korean provocations along the sea boundary.
The JCS in Seoul told the press that due to North Korea’s firing of artillery shells near South Korean border islands over the past three days, there are now no areas where military measures are halted.
“Rather than reacting to the enemy actions on a case-by-case basis, our troops will be carrying out drills according to our own plans in the northwestern islands,” it said.
Mass rally in Pyongyang A mass rally takes place at the May Day Stadium in Pyongyang on Jan. 5, 2024, to emphasize the carrying out of the decisions made at the ninth plenary meeting of the eighth Central Committee of the ruling Workers’ Party, which took place from Dec. 26 to 30, in this image captured from the North’s official Korean Central Television on Jan. 6. (Yonhap)
North Korea is denying they are providing weapons to Hamas, but the evidence is increasingly showing this to be untrue. What North Korea is probably doing is selling these weapons to Iran who then smuggles them to Hamas:
South Korea’s spy agency on Monday confirmed suspicions that North Korean-made weapons are being used by the Hamas militant group in its war with Israel despite Pyongyang’s repeated denial of its arms transactions.
Releasing a new photo of a North Korean rocket part, the National Intelligence Service (NIS) confirmed a Voice of America (VOA) report that Hamas fighters used an F-7 rocket-propelled grenade launcher manufactured in North Korea.
A photo included in the VOA report published Friday showed that the fuse of an F-7 grenade launcher, allegedly used by Hamas, had on it a combination of Korean characters and numbers, such as “비저-7류” and “시8-80-53.”
Asked about the report, the NIS said its “assessment is the same as the VOA report.”
Considering the reported weapons deal between Russia and North Korea the fact that the Russian military is using cheaply made North Korean missiles should not be a suprise:
A man photographs parts of an unidentified missile, which Ukrainian authorities believe to be made in North Korea and was used in a strike in Kharkiv earlier this week, amid Russia’s attack on Ukraine, in Kharkiv, Ukraine, Jan. 6. Reuters-Yonhap
The Kharkiv region prosecutor’s office provided further evidence on Saturday that Russia attacked Ukraine with missiles supplied by North Korea, showcasing the fragments.
A senior adviser to President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Friday that Russia hit Ukraine this week with missiles supplied by North Korea for the first time during its invasion.
Dmytro Chubenko, spokesperson for the prosecutor’s office, said the missile, one of several that hit the city of Kharkiv on Jan. 2, was visually and technically different from Russian models.
“The production method is not very modern. There are deviations from standard Iskander missiles, which we previously saw during strikes on Kharkiv. This missile is similar to one of the North Korean missiles,” Chubenko told media as he displayed the remnants.
Just another example of how the Kim regime plans to increase tensions during the U.S. Presidential election year:
The gun ports of the coastal artillery (circled in red) on a North Korean island near the Northern Limit Line, a de facto maritime border, remain open, in this photo taken from South Korea’s front-line island of Yeonpyeong on Jan. 7, 2023. (Yonhap)
North Korea fired some 90 artillery shots into waters off its western coast Sunday, South Korea’s military said, the latest in a series of drills near the tensely guarded western border.
The Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said it detected the artillery firings into the maritime buffer zone north of Northern Limit Line, the de-facto maritime border in the Yellow Sea, and South Korea’s border island of Yeonpyeong from about 4 p.m. to 5:10 p.m.
The buffer zone was set under a 2018 inter-Korean military accord designed to reduce tensions along the border.
There was no damage to the South Korean military or civilians from the latest firing, a JCS official said, adding that the South Korean military does not plan to hold drills in response.
Notice Kim Jong-un said that North Korea would abandon efforts to peacefully reunify with South Korea, this means takign over the South by force is still on the table. In other words really nothing has changed:
North Korea will scrap its efforts to reunify the Korean Peninsula due to South Korea’s “collusion with foreign forces,” the country’s state-run news agency reported Sunday.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un during the five-day, end-of-year ruling party plenary meeting in Pyongyang last week made a “decisive policy change” toward South Korea, according to a Korean Central News Agency report published Sunday.
Kim said Pyongyang will abandon its efforts to reunify the peninsula because of Seoul’s insistence on the “collapse of the [North Korean] regime” and “absorbing” the North, KCNA reported.
North Korean media frequently claim that efforts to peacefully reunite the peninsula following the 1950-53 Korean War is stymied by U.S.-South Korean military drills and economic sanctions.
“It is not suitable to … [North Korea] to discuss the issue of reunification with the strange clan, who is no more than a colonial stooge of the [United States],” the report said.
It is a Presidential election year in the U.S. which means it the beginning of silly season with everyone acting up to gain political leverage to include North Korea:
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said his military should “thoroughly annihilate” the United States and South Korea if provoked, state media reported Monday, after he vowed to boost national defense to cope with what he called an unprecedented U.S.-led confrontation.
North Korea has increased its warlike rhetoric in recent months in response to an expansion of U.S.-South Korean military drills. Experts expect Kim will continue to escalate his rhetoric and weapons tests because he likely believes he can use heightened tensions to wrest U.S. concessions if former President Donald Trump wins the U.S. presidential election in November.
In a five-day major ruling party meeting last week, Kim said he will launch three more military spy satellites, produce more nuclear materials and develop attack drones this year in what observers say is an attempt to increase his leverage in future diplomacy with the U.S.
