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September 5, 2009

Photos of North Korean Soldiers Smuggling Across the Yalu River

The Daily NK caught them in flagrante delicto in the broad daylight, acting very much like they have nothing to fear: See the rest of the photos here. If Kim Jong Il is as rational as I suspect he is, he knows that the danger of an invasion from his southern border is remote, while the danger of a more subversive kind of invasion across his northern border is both mortal and immediate. Wouldn’t that suggest that if Kim Jong...

Categories NK Military
September 2, 2009

The North Korean Army: Like an American Prison, Without the Conjugal Visits

Open Radio has a piece posted about North Korea’s prohibition of marriages by its soldiers. I wrote about this topic several years ago, at this post. Why? I can only speculate that the regime doesn’t want soldiers to think of their families, or any other ties that might conflict with the imperative to sacrifice for the state. Interesting as the story is, there must be more to it. The combination of horny soldiers with paychecks and women without the means...

Categories Inside NK/NK Military
July 20, 2009

Gates’s Advice to Kim Jong Il: “Don’t Do Anything Stupid.”

On a visit to lovely Fort Drum, New York, last week, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates discounted the threat of a conventional North Korean attack: “Frankly, this is an army that’s starving. The average North Korea, at this point, is seven inches shorter than his South Korean counterpart. This is a country where the famine of the mid-1990s has affected the physical and even intellectual development of those that are now coming into the zone who would be eligible for...

Categories NK Military/U.S. Military
July 11, 2009

ROK Intel Blames N. Korea for DDOS Attacks, But You Already Knew That

This, from the now-familiar ROK Intel Leak Ticker — unnamed members or staffers from the intelligence committee of the South Korean National Assembly, quoting unnamed members of the National Intelligence Service: A North Korean army lab of hackers was ordered to “destroy” South Korean communications networks — evidence the isolated regime was behind cyberattacks that paralyzed South Korean and American Web sites — news reports said Saturday, citing an intelligence briefing. Members of the parliamentary intelligence committee have said in...

Categories Korean Politics/NK Military/Technology
July 8, 2009

High-Level Defector Describes Regime’s Illicit Income

I’d previously mentioned that I recently had the opportunity to meet Kim Kwang Jin, a high-level North Korean defector with detailed knowledge of North Korea’s illicit financing and money laundering.  Now, Kim adds much to our understanding of how North Korea pays for all those Mercedes-Benzes and missiles.  Having guessed that most of the cash came from flipping houses and the inventing some of the novel kitchen applicances I’d seen Billy Mays selling on my TV, this was a cruel...

Categories Deprogramming/Money Laundering/NK Military/North Korea/Refugees/Regime Change/Religion/Uncategorized
July 8, 2009

North Korea Suspected in Cyber Attacks (Update: White House Also Targeted)

If the South Korean leak ticker is right about this, ballistic missile tests weren’t the only mischief Kim Jong Il had in mind for us on the Fourth of July: The sites of 11 South Korean organizations, including the presidential Blue House and the Defense Ministry, went down or had access problems since late Tuesday, according to the state-run Korea Information Security Agency. [AP, Hyung-Jin Kim] To be precise about it, South Korean intelligence reports leaked by staffers of National...

Categories NK Military/The Fifth Column
July 6, 2009

The Nukings Will Continue Until Morale Improves

It must not be easy being the tyrannical overlord of a country you’ve single-handed transformed into a famished, backward prison yard while trying to persuade your subjects that they’re still the envy of the world. There’s always soul-crushing brainwashing, smothering isolation human civilization, extra meat rations for people who rat their your neighbors, the timeless dark arts of racism and xenophobia, and the fear of public execution or a prolonged death in the gulags. Did I mention isolation and brainwashing?...

Categories NK Military/WMD
June 29, 2009

WaPo on China’s Trade with North Korea, and Its Rulers’ Darkest Fears

China, which the unmitigated chutzpah we’ve come to expect of it, reassures us that it is “deeply committed” to the enforcement of UNSCR 1874.  Today, Blaine Harden of the Washington Post reports the facts that shatter that mendacious claim.  In a new report, he provides fresh evidence of China’s economic colonization of North Korea, which fits neatly with its agenda of undermining U.N. sanctions against the North.  It’s a must-read, but here’s a money quote: As U.N. sanctions mount and...

Categories China/NK Economics/NK Military/Proliferation/WMD
June 13, 2009

Everybody Panic

If North Korea does attack, how far would its armies really get?  Not very, says Stuart Koehl, which is why it probably won’t, and from the looks of things, it isn’t building up its forces for such a move. Koehl writes about North Korea’s much-feared artillery as the most important factor in saving as many South Korean civilian lives as possible, specifically, the silencing of North Korea’s “Y-sites.”  Koehl explains that the advent of J-DAMs has greatly enhanced our capacity...

Categories NK Military
June 5, 2009

Missile Test Update

North Korea’s launch pad on its west coast is ready for a first launch: Photographic images show the launch tower and what appears to be construction materials on the launch pad, Tim Brown, a senior fellow with GlobalSecurity.org, said Thursday. He speculated that the debris may be there to make the pad appear as though it is still under construction. “The launch pad appears to be operational,” Brown said.  [AP, Pamela Hess] Compare my photo from Google Earth to the...

Categories Missiles/NK Military
June 2, 2009

Korean War 2, Week 2 Begins!

SEC DEF GATES VISITS A MISSILE INTERCEPTOR SITE in Alaska: “If there were a launch from a rogue state such as North Korea, I have good confidence we would be able to deal with it,” Mr. Gates said. Despite its backing for the missile defense system, the Obama administration has proposed scaling back the number of interceptors to be placed in Alaska from 40 to 26, arguing the lower number would be sufficient to match near-term North Korean missile capabilities....

Categories NK Military/Proliferation/WMD
April 23, 2009

North Korean Military Service Loses Its Luster

In Hoeryong, a group of North Korean children has been sentenced to a life of laboring on collective farms for refusing to join the army: As a result of a first-of-its-kind refusal to sign an army enrollment petition, students soon to graduate from a middle school in Hoiryeong, North Hamkyung Province have been ordered by the Party to work on collective farms for life. Furthermore, during this process the parents of some of the students protested after the children of...

Categories NK Military
March 26, 2009

Erection Day!

North Korea is lifting its Taepodong II missile peaceful satellite launch vehicle onto the launching pad. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton warned that such a “provocative act” could jeopardize the stalled talks on supplying North Korea with aid and other concessions in exchange for dismantling its nuclear program. “We have made it very clear that the North Koreans pursue this pathway at a cost and with consequences to the six-party talks, which we would like to see revived,” Clinton...

Categories "United" Nations/Missiles/NK Military
March 18, 2009

Missiles, Sanctions, and Surprise Attacks

As North Korea continues to prepare for an April missile test, Great Britain warns North Korea of new sanctions, Japan warns of a “harsh response,” and both Japan and South Korea are drawing up target lists for new sanctions. It would be interesting to see how South Korea joining in sanctions instead of undermining them with change things. It would be just as interesting to see whether the new sanctions will be as tough as the old ones that no...

Categories "United" Nations/NK Military/Proliferation/WMD
February 13, 2009

Missile Extortion Goes On, Gates Hints at Taepodong Shootdown, Worthlessness of U.N. Again on Display

Chinese fishing vessels have vanished from the region of the Yellow Sea near the Northern Limit Line, which means that the North may be preparing to test a few short-range missiles. The North’s preparations to test a long-range Taepodong II also continue. The likely launch site now looks to be Musudan-ri on the East coast, not the new West coast site I published images of here. According to the Chosun Ilbo, the missile has now arrived at the launch site....

Categories NK Military/Proliferation
February 9, 2009

Extortion, Pure and Simple

Why do the North Koreans threaten other nations? The Washington Post’s Blaine Harden gets some surprisingly direct answers from them: Last year, the new South Korean president, Lee Myung-bak, ended his predecessors’ “sunshine policy” toward the isolated North. For nearly a decade, that policy had soothed nerves on the Korean Peninsula by giving the truculent but poor government of Kim Jong Il large amounts of food, fertilizer and trade concessions, all without conditions and without asking questions about nuclear weapons,...

Categories NK Military/Terrorism (NK)
February 2, 2009

North Korea Said to Be Preparing Long-Range Missile Launch

Happy Groundhog day. I don’t know if His Porcine Majesty emerged from his palace and saw his shadow today, but it certainly looks like we’re in for four more years of extortion: North Korea appears to be preparing to test-launch its longest range ballistic missile, media reported on Tuesday, just days after Pyongyang warned that the Korean peninsula was on the brink of war. North Korea, which typically launches missiles in periods of political tension, last week said it was...

Categories NK Military/Proliferation