~   1   ~ TWO BY SEA: “Two North Korean men swam across the Yellow Sea border to defect to South Korea, a rare way of fleeing the hunger-stricken communist nation, government sources here said Thursday. South Korean marines on guard duty spotted them reaching Gyodong Island, just south of the Northern Limit Line (NLL), at around 4 a.m. Thursday, according to the sources. The island is about 2.5 kilometers away from the North’s closest western coast.” I can’t...

~   1   ~ NORTH KOREA, WHICH WAS REMOVED from the list of state sponsors of terrorism on October 11, 2008 for promising to give up its nuclear weapons program, is quietly expanding its uranium enrichment capabilities, and not-so-quietly threatening to test more missiles and a nuclear weapon. ~   2   ~ HACK NORTH KOREA has chosen a winning technology for breaking down North Korea’s information blockade: The winning team, which featured a pair of teenage siblings who flew in from...

~   1   ~ NORTH KOREA FIRES four more of those 300-millimeter rockets, about which I’ll have more to say one day, if I ever finish a rather long post I’m working on. The point of that post will be that those rockets could be a game-changer because (1) South Korea has no practical defense against them, and (2) they can probably hit the U.S. installations at Osan and Camp Humphreys. ~   2   ~ HORRIBLE: On May 24th, 50...

~ 1 ~ NK NEWS has an extensive report about H.R. 1771, the North Korea Sanctions Enforcement Act. Your correspondent is interviewed at length, as is Christine Hong, to provide an opposing view. I have to say, I’m rather pleased with that choice myself, because it gives me an opening to present a short list of the neocons who’ve co-sponsored H.R. 1771: Elliot Engel, Loretta Sanchez, Karen Bass, Linda Sanchez, Chaka Fattah, Gerry Connolly, Jim McDermott, Jim Moran, Tulsi Gabbard,...

~ 1 ~ THAT’LL SHOW ‘EM: The State Department is sending the International Civil Aviation Organization a strongly worded complaint about North Korea’s rocket launches. Oh, and the U.N. Security Council issued a press release of disapproval: [You can change the puppets, but the strings still move the same way.] Somewhere in Pyongyang, Kim Jong Un is asking his generals how many divisions the ICAO has, and Park Geun-Hye is asking her Foreign Minister whether she should send him to...

New Focus International is reporting that North Korea has distributed cell phones to its secret police, and that the secret police are using them to hunt down potential refugees: The distributions of cell-phones are being made as part of efforts to aid agents of the Ministry of State Security and Ministry of People’s Security in preventing people escaping the country. As part of the process of organising an escape, North Koreans intending to flee the country often make contact through...

~   1   ~ NORTH KOREA FIRED A MASSIVE BARRAGE OF ROCKETS over the weekend, this time in the Sea of Japan,* near the disputed inter-Korean maritime border. “North Korea fired off about 100 artillery shells in a northeast direction into the East Sea for about 30 minutes from 11:43 a.m. from a place hundreds of meters away from the demilitarized zone (DMZ) in Goseong, Gangwon Province,” JCS spokesman Um Hyo-sik said. “They landed in the sea, some 1 to 8...

~   1   ~ I SUSPECT THAT SOMEONE LIKE KURT CAMPBELL would have been a better man for the job, but I wish John Kerry the best of luck in his discussions with the Chinese: “China shares the same strategic goal, and we discussed the importance of enforcing U.N. Security Council resolutions that impose sanctions on North Korea’s weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missile program,” Kerry said. However, Kerry said China needs to do more in reining in its...

~   1   ~ NORTH KOREA LAUNCHES MORE SCUDS into the Sea of Japan. I reckon that somewhere in Washington, someone who worked at the State Department in the 1990s is thinking that by launching missiles on July 2nd and July 9th (but not the 4th), North Korea was really being conciliatory. ~   2   ~ PARK GEUN HYE CALLS for the “international community,” which is an oxymoron, to pay more attention to the rights of North Korean...

~   1   ~ AP’S JEAN LEE WANTS YOU TO BELIEVE that she became a target for lifting the curtain on North Korea, but Jean Lee really became a target for trying to tell us that the curtain was North Korea. Also, I can’t believe she keeps saying things like this: “People often assume that our work is censored, but the North Koreans know that that’s a red line, that the AP would never tolerate censorship. So none of our material is...

~   1   ~ A REMARKABLE COINCIDENCE: Say, do you suppose there could possibly be any link between the decision of the Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Fatou Bensouda of the Gambia, to close her investigations of the Cheonan and Yeonpyong incidents four years ago, and the visit by North Korea’s Foreign Minister to Gambia earlier this month, at which time the two governments discussed “boosting the bilateral relations of friendship and cooperation and on matters of...

~   1   ~ NORTH KOREA, WHICH PRESIDENT BUSH REMOVED from the list of state sponsors of terrorism on October 11, 2008, has threatened to “resolutely punish” Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop for “dar[ing]” to “slander the dignity of its supreme leadership.” Discuss among yourselves. Also, I think that should be “punish resolutely.” ~   2   ~ HMMM: Shops are springing up in Chinese cities bordering North Korea which specialize in cheap cell phones that operate on the...

~   1   ~ SUZANNE SCHOLTE’S CAMPAIGN ON SOCIAL MEDIA: If you feel strongly about human rights in North Korea, don’t you want there to be at least one member of Congress who feels as strongly about it as you do? If so, please support Suzanne Scholte by liking her on Facebook and following her on Twitter. ~   2   ~ AMBASSADOR-NOMINEE MARK LIPPERT gives some hints about his policy views at his confirmation hearing: “The first is...