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Category: Terrorism (NK)

April 3, 2015

With Sony in mind, Obama signs new cyberwar E.O., but will he enforce it?

On Wednesday, the President signed a new executive order authorizing sanctions against anyone the State and Treasury Departments decide has engaged in conduct we’d colloquially call cyberespionage, cyberwarfare, or cyberterrorism. The new categories of sanctionable conduct include — (A) harming, or otherwise significantly compromising the provision of services by, a computer or network of computers that support one or more entities in a critical infrastructure sector; (B) significantly compromising the provision of services by one or more entities in a critical...

Categories Cyberwar/Sanctions/Terrorism (NK)
March 26, 2015

Kim Jong Un’s censorship knows no limits or borders. To submit to it is to forfeit freedom.

If Kim Jong Un is weighing whether to answer leaflets from South Korea with artillery, it won’t discourage him that many on South Korea’s illiberal left have already begun to excuse him for it. Within this confused, transpatriated constituency, there is much “anxiety” lately about “inter-Korean tensions.” Those tensions have risen since North Korea has begun threatening to shell the North Korean defectors who send leaflets critical of Kim’s misrule across the DMZ. But then, any rational mind can see...

Categories Appeasement/Censorship/Democracy/Propaganda/Subversion/Terrorism (NK)
March 23, 2015

How Barack Obama let Kim Jong Un get away with censoring and terrorizing America (updated)

Last December, after the FBI and the National Security Agency concluded that North Korea’s Unit 121 had hacked Sony Pictures and threatened the Americans who wanted to see “The Interview,” President Obama publicly accused North Korea of the cyberattack and threat, and promised a “proportional response” to it. On January 2nd, the President signed a new executive order whose potential was sweeping, but whose actual effect was “symbolic at best.” In practice, the designations under the new executive order amounted...

Categories Censorship/Cyberwar/Democracy/Terrorism (NK)
March 20, 2015

Investigators: N. Korean hackers tried to cause reactor malfunction

Earlier this week, I posted on South Korean investigators’ conclusion that North Korea was behind the hacking of several South Korean nuclear power plants, but that the attacks caused no operational impact. Evidently, that wasn’t for lack of effort: The team of South Koreans investigating the incident says the hackers tried to cause a malfunction at the reactors, which supply around 30% of the country’s electricity, but failed to break through the control systems. [Sky News] See also this report from...

Categories Cyberwar/Terrorism (NK)
March 17, 2015

South Korea blames North Korea for hacking nuke plants

Let the conspiracy theories commence at Naver, Minjok Tongshin, and MissyUSA, in 3, 2, 1 …. South Korean prosecutors on Tuesday blamed North Korea for cyber attacks against the country’s nuclear reactor operator last December, based upon its investigation into Internet addresses used in the hacking. The conclusion comes less than a week after a hacker believed to be behind the cyber attacks on Korea Hydro and Nuclear Power Co Ltd released more files on Twitter that are believed to...

Categories Cyberwar/Terrorism (NK)
March 14, 2015

N. Korea calls for S. Koreans to join “patriotic struggle to check and foil the U.S. imperialists.”

Following North Korea’s post-hoc support for the slashing of U.S. Ambassador Mark Lippert, my two main questions where (1) whether the North had a role in inciting the attack (for which I’ve seen no direct evidence thus far); and (2) whether the North is calling for more violent anti-American attacks. KCNA’s latest helps us answer the latter question in the affirmative. It isn’t specific about its favored methods of “patriotic struggle,” although its recent approval of the slashing of diplomats should give you...

Categories Anti-Americanism/Terrorism (NK)
March 11, 2015

Roh Moo Hyun’s ex-campaign manager just hates it when politicians exploit tragic isolated incidents

The good news is that Ambassador Mark Lippert has been released from the hospital, and is recovering well. [Joongang Ilbo] Give the South Koreans credit for making lemonade from lemons — the news coverage here has been filled with images of well-wishers greeting Lippert, or expressing regret for the attack on him. The greetings look both staged and sincere,* but because of that reaction, most Americans will see Kim Ki-Jong as one small turd in a vast, sweet, fizzy bowl of gachi gapshida....

Categories An Alliance?/Anti-Americanism/Korean Politics/Terrorism (NK)/The Fifth Column/U.S. & Korea
March 5, 2015

N. Korea’s support for slashing of U.S. Amb’r might be state sponsorship of terrorism

Yonhap and The Washington Post are reporting that North Korea’s official “news” agency, the Korean Central News Agency or KCNA, has expressed its support for an extremist’s slashing of U.S. Ambassador Mark Lippert yesterday, calling it “a just punishment.” You won’t find those words in the English version of KCNA’s report, whose headline is a dry, “U.S. Ambassador Attacked by S. Korean,” although you will see that KCNA spelled the Ambassador’s name “Report.” The Korean-language headline of the same article, however, translates to something like, “Act of...

Categories Anti-Americanism/Terrorism (NK)/The Fifth Column
February 18, 2015

Once again, North Korea threatens free speech here in the United States

On December 19, 2014, in response to the FBI’s conclusion that North Korea was behind the threats against audiences for “The Interview,” President Obama said, “We cannot have a society in which some dictator someplace can start imposing censorship here in the United States.” After all, the President reasoned, “if somebody is able to intimidate folks out of releasing a satirical movie, imagine what they start doing when they see a documentary that they don’t like or news reports that they don’t...

Categories Censorship/Terrorism (NK)
January 29, 2015

Does the State Department think there’s a six-month statute of limitations for terror sponsorship? (Updated)

If the Congressional Research Service had its own store at the mall, you’d often find me there at 3 a.m., sleeping in my lawn chair the night before the next release, possibly in some sort of costume. The researchers are smart and genial people, and most of their work has been terrific. There also appears to be some mutuality of readership between us, because as it turns out, the latest CRS report on North Korea’s sponsorship of terrorism cites no less than three of...

Categories Terrorism (NK)
January 23, 2015

Three Cheers for Obama’s Sony attribution, a golf clap for his “proportional” response.

In The Washington Post, Ellen Nakashima describes how Sony’s decision to cancel the premiere of The Interview catalyzed the Obama Administration’s decision to blame North Korea publicly: The next day, alarmed by the surrender, President Barack Obama convened his top officials in the White House Situation Room and, based on their unanimous recommendation, decided to take an action the United States had never dared before in response to a cyberattack by another nation: name the government responsible and punish it....

Categories Anju Links/Cyberwar/Russia/Sanctions
January 8, 2015

N. Korea threatens U.S. with “a hail of bullets and shells on its own territory.”

Via our friends at the Korean Central News Service, North Korea’s official journo-terrorism service. In 2011, the Associated Press signed two memoranda of agreement with KCNA in which AP and KCNA agreed to cooperate in the reporting of “news” about North Korea. The AP refuses to disclose the contents of those memoranda. President Bush removed North Korea from the list of state sponsors of terrorism on October 11, 2008. The Obama Administration’s official view is that North Korea is “not known to...

Categories Terrorism (NK)
January 8, 2015

FBI Director: Yes, I’m sure North Korea did it. (Update: So is NSA’s Director)

The other day, a reporter asked me whether the “considerable doubt” about Pyongyang’s responsibility for the Sony hacks and terror threats undermined the legitimacy of the President’s response. I suppose the answer depends on your perspective. I’m not privy to the FBI’s evidence against North Korea, but my greater doubt is whether the President’s response, so far, is meaningful. A week ago, however, I decided that the FBI was losing the battle for public opinion. I recalled the CIA’s video...

Categories Cyberwar/Terrorism (NK)
January 6, 2015

Ros-Lehtinen bill to call for N. Korea’s listing as a terrorism sponsor

WASHINGTON, Jan. 5 (Yonhap) — A U.S. congresswoman said Monday she will introduce a bill calling for re-listing North Korea as a state sponsor of terrorism in response to the communist nation’s alleged cyber-attack on Sony Pictures. “North Korea should have never been taken off the state sponsor of terrorism list and should be reinstated immediately,” Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) said in comments emailed to Yonhap News Agency. “I will soon be reintroducing legislation to redesignate North Korea as a...

Categories Anju Links/Cyberwar/Terrorism (NK)
January 3, 2015

North Korea and terrorism, a response to Micah Zenko

Zenko, who is a made member of the Council on Foreign Relations, has written an article for Foreign Policy with the headline, “Sorry, But North Korea Isn’t a State Sponsor of Terrorism.” I tried to post a comment, but because FP‘s user-unfriendly website prevents that, I’ll just post that comment here. I wish Mr. Zenko knew enough about his subject matter to question the State Department’s assertion that North Korea hasn’t sponsored any acts of terrorism since 1987. In fact, it has...

Categories Terrorism (NK)
December 31, 2014

Suspected regime thugs try to kill N. Korean refugee in Denmark

For those in the State Department, including its addlebrained spokeswoman, who say that putting North Korea back on the list of state sponsors of terrorism would be merely “symbolic,” here’s some food for thought: Suspected North Korean government agents have assaulted a North Korean living in a refugee center in Denmark and warned him that they will cut his head off if he does not return home, according to a rights group. “We are currently trembling in extreme fear and...

Categories Terrorism (NK)
December 23, 2014

China to Obama: Drop dead

The best news I’ve heard today is that Sony Pictures has either grown a pair or decided that it would rather wilt under domestic political pressure than wilt under foreign terrorist pressure. That means that some theaters will be showing The Interview on Christmas after all. I won’t stand in line to see it, but when it comes to my neighborhood, I’m taking my son (my daughter might not be old enough). Fortunately, this sounds like exactly the kind of...

Categories Anju Links/Censorship/China/Cyberwar/Terrorism (NK)
December 23, 2014

White House considers sanctions, psyops, and cyber responses to N. Korea

Because I’ve begun to develop a certain sense of when interesting events are about to get much more interesting, yesterday morning, I decided to check the web site of KCNA, North Korea’s official “news” service. The site did not load, but it has always been slow to load. Then, news sites began to report that North Korea’s internet access had gone down, and that the White House wasn’t denying that it had a hand in this. This morning, kcna.kp loaded...

Categories Cyberwar/Propaganda/Sanctions/Subversion