~   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,...