North Korea’s low cost provocation continues:
North Korea sent more trash balloons toward South Korea on Sunday, the South’s military said, in what marked the fifth straight day of such launches.
The Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said the North resumed its balloon campaign at around 9 a.m., just hours after it floated some 200 balloons late Saturday.
“Considering the safety of our people as the top priority, the military will resolutely and calmly respond in accordance with the manual,” the JCS said.
In response to the balloon launches, the South’s military has been blasting daily anti-North Korean propaganda broadcasts through loudspeakers on the border since July 21. It has refrained from directly shooting down the balloons, citing safety concerns.
Around 50 trash bundles landed in the capital and Gyeonggi Province from Saturday’s launch, but no hazardous materials have been found, the JCS said. They largely contained scrap paper, pieces of plastic and plastic bottles.
You can read more at the link.
Executions like this is why many of the ruling elite in South Korea are supposedly becoming disillusioned with the Kim regime:
South Korea’s spy agency said Wednesday it is closely monitoring signs of North Korea executing multiple officials to hold them accountable over heavy flood damage earlier this year.
At an emergency party politburo meeting in late July, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un said he will punish officials for the damage from heavy rains that flooded areas in the northern provinces of Jagang and North Phyongan and displaced thousands.
The National Intelligence Service said it is closely monitoring the situation after detecting signs of the executions.
Kang Pong-hun, the former chief secretary of the Jagang Provincial Committee of the North’s ruling party, is believed to be possibly among the executed officials.
You can read more at the link.
Hopefully no ROK Heads reading this from Korea finds a bag of shit on their doorstep today:
North Korea again launched balloons likely carrying trash toward South Korea on Wednesday, the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said, marking a resumption of its trash-balloon campaign after a near monthlong halt.
The JCS said an unspecified number of balloons could travel to northern Gyeonggi Province, just north of Seoul, and advised the public not to touch fallen balloons and report them to the military or police.
Since late May, the North has launched thousands of balloons carrying trash in a tit-for-tat move against anti-Pyongyang leaflets sent by North Korean defectors and activists in South Korea. Pyongyang last launched such balloons on Aug. 10.
You can read more at the link.
This regime elites may be disillusioned, but will they actually do anything about it? It appears not really because very few have defected or spoke out against the Kim regime:
More North Korean elites are “disillusioned” with the Kim Jong-un regime, as they feel anxious on concerns that any small mishap could deprive them of their lives under his leadership, a former North Korean diplomat said Tuesday.
Ri Il-gyu, a former counselor of political affairs at the North Korean Embassy in Cuba, made the remark in a session during the Global Korea Forum (GKF), a global forum hosted by the unification ministry and designed to garner international support for South Korea’s bid for peaceful unification.
“Perception by the North’s elite group toward the regime has changed a lot,” Ri said. “They are disillusioned with Kim’s impromptu behaviors. Even with doing something wrong a little bit, North Korea shoots them to death.”
You can read more at the link.
Former INDOPACOM Commander and Ambassador to South Korea, Admiral Harry Harris had some interesting things to say about North Korea recently:
Military readiness of the South Korea-U.S. alliance weakened “counterintuitively” during former President Donald Trump’s personal diplomacy with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, a former top U.S. envoy to Seoul said Tuesday.
Retired Adm. Harry Harris, who served as the U.S. ambassador to South Korea from 2018-2021, made the remarks, citing the suspension of major South Korea-U.S. military drills, which was aimed at facilitating diplomacy with Pyongyang during Trump’s time in office.
Harris’ remarks came amid speculation that the Republican presidential candidate might revive his leader-to-leader engagement with Kim should he return to the White House. In his recent stump speech, Trump said “getting along” with Kim is a “good thing.” (…….)
“Counterintuitively again during this time, I think our military readiness actually decreased because of the prohibition against military exercises — significant military exercises, large-scale military exercises on the peninsula,” he added.
Shortly after the first-ever summit between the U.S. and North Korea in Singapore in 2018, Trump unveiled a plan to stop “provocative” and “expensive” war games with the South, which Pyongyang has decried as an invasion rehearsal. Later, the allies suspended major combined exercises to back diplomacy to encourage North Korea’s denuclearization.
It only makes sense that readiness would decrease if joint exercises are canceled or downgraded. However, here is the most interesting Admiral Harris had to say:
The former ambassador also said that the North Korean leader is unlikely to renounce his regime’s nuclear weapons, while claiming that Kim has been sticking to four goals — getting sanctions relief, keeping his nuclear arsenal, splitting the Seoul-Washington alliance and “dominating” the Korean Peninsula.
“I think it’s naive to think he’s ever going to give up his nuclear weapons,” he said. “I think we have to adjust our thinking to this new reality.”
You can read more at the link, but I have been saying this for years that the Kim regime has reached a point where they will not give up their nuclear weapons. However, our government continues to stick to the fantasy that their nuclear weapons can be negotiated away.
