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Category: Terrorism (NK)

March 17, 2014

POE Part 2: Terrorist rockets that landed in Israel may have had N. Korean fuses

When the Syria collapsed into civil war in 2011, Hamas and other Sunni Palestinians broke with their sponsors in Damascus for sectarian reasons, while Hezbollah sent troops to defend the Assad regime. But in 2009, before the civil war, Assad and his own backers in Iran armed both Hamas and Hezbollah. The year 2009 was a big one for interceptions of North Korean weapons bound for Iran and its terrorist clients. The UAE found rocket propelled grenades and explosives inside...

Categories "United" Nations/Terrorism (NK)
September 25, 2013

N. Korea threatens S. Korean media over Ri Sol Ju sex tape report

As Kim Jong Un’s reign approaches its second anniversary, it’s becoming more difficult to draw the line between truth and parody. Radio Australia offers some tantalizing details about that dubious-sounding, thinly sourced report that a North Korea executed a group of entertainers for making sex tapes: Asahi said the rare execution of state performers, including a singer rumoured to be Kim’s ex-girlfriend, had been ordered to squash rumours of Ri’s decadent lifestyle while she was an entertainer. It said police had secretly recorded conversations...

Categories Kim Jong Un/Terrorism (NK)
August 14, 2013

A hero, buried in the State Department’s memory hole

In case you were wondering, no, I’m still not over that whole North Korea / state-sponsor-of-terrorism thing.  The Weekly Standard has helped me nurse this old grudge by printing my fisking of the State Department’s latest annual country reports on terrorism.  I’ll give you the first paragraph and let you read the rest on your own: Even after a year of North Korean nuclear and missile tests, this year’s State Department “Country Reports on Terrorism” makes the risible claim that North Korea is “not...

Categories Anju Links/Terrorism (NK)/U.S. Law
March 18, 2013

You’re gonna need a bigger boat.

So the news today is that North Korea–which President Bush removed from the list of state sponsors of terrorism on October 11, 2008 for agreeing to give up its nuclear weapons programs–has warned the civilian populations of Baengnyeong-do, Yeonpyeong-do, and other islands in the Yellow Sea to evacuate now. The instrument this time is the quasi-official Uriminzokkiri, which is hosted in China, a nation that embraces the sacred principle that all speech, no matter how threatening or objectionable, has a...

Categories Kim Jong Un/Korean War II/Terrorism (NK)/Unfortunate photo ops
March 15, 2013

North Korea’s cash-for-summit demands put 2010 attacks in a new light

WERE THE 2010 ATTACKS North Korea’s way of making good on extortion?  Stephan Haggard, not widely know for his hard-line views, cites an article in the Chosun Ilbo revealing that Kim Jong Il wanted a summit with Lee Myung Bak, but at a price. The sticking point was money. How much? According to the Chosun Ilbo, $500-600 million in rice and fertilizer aid, which had effectively been cut from the first of the year, and perhaps some cash too; that was...

Categories Appeasement/Cheonan Incident/North-South/Sunshine/Terrorism (NK)/Yeonpyeong Attack
November 29, 2012

Done Your Christmas Shopping Yet?

Here’s the perfect gift for that hard-to-please someone who needs to assassinate a few meddlesome dissidents, defectors, and human rights activists. Made in North Korea, and probably not available on Amazon: Background on North Korea’s poison needle attacks here and here. (But really, they just want to be loved.) North Korea was removed from the list of state sponsors of terrorism on October 11, 2008. Discuss among yourselves.

Categories Terrorism (NK)
June 5, 2012

Journo-Terrorism Gives Us a Reason to Take KCNA Seriously

On October 11, 2008, President Bush removed North Korea from the list of state sponsors of terrorism as a preemptive reward for North Korea’s agreement to give up its nuclear weapons programs. Since that date, North Korea has steadily escalated its use of words and actions that are — to quote the statutory definition of “international terrorism” — “intended … to intimidate or coerce a civilian population [or] to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion.” A...

Categories AP Watch/Terrorism (NK)
May 12, 2012

Sticks and Stones

Sure, it’s creepy when North Korea teaches children to torment effigies of your president, but that’s the kind of insult a mature society learns to ignore.  The next time the North erupts in contrived outrage about some perceived slight to its leaders, just put that into perspective.  Words are just words, unless they’re threats. When North Korea communicates threats, we need to treat those like acts of terrorism and sanction them accordingly. North Korea’s jamming of GPS used by airliners,...

Categories Propaganda/Terrorism (NK)/WTF?
April 24, 2012

So is it terrorism this time?

North Korea threatens to destroy Seoul and reduce its elected government “‘to ashes’ in three or four minutes,” apparently for “defaming” its menacing Kim Il Sung birthday parade: North Korea’s military Monday threatened “special actions” soon to turn parts of the South Korean capital to ashes, accusing Seoul’s conservative government of defaming its leadership. The North has for months been criticising the South’s President Lee Myung-Bak in extreme terms and threatening “sacred war” over perceived insults. There have been no...

Categories Anju Links/Terrorism (NK)
April 5, 2012

Bad assassin! Bad, bad, bad!

The man at the center of a Cold War-style plot to kill a prominent defector with a poisoned needle was jailed for four years by a South Korean court today. The man, a defector named Ahn, was found guilty of plotting to murder a second defector, Park Sang Hak, in September last year. Park, who heads Fighters for Free North Korea, is one of the leading lights in the floating of anti-Kim regime leaflets across the DMZ by balloon. “Severe...

Categories Terrorism (NK)
February 16, 2012

Anju, February 16, 2012

AP Watch: Today would have been Kim Jong Il’s birthday, and Jean H. Lee marks that occasion with another report from Pyongyang that is significant only for its complete lack of skepticism about the regime’s propaganda. Why is it that “engagement” with North Korea never changes North Korea, and always corrupts the institution that engages North Korea? Or perhaps the engagement is just an indication that those institutions were already corrupt. ________________________________ Say, mister, that’s one creepy picture you’ve got...

Categories Anju Links/Terrorism (NK)
November 30, 2011

N. Korea Threatens to Destroy S. Korean President’s House

So, if I’d been asleep for the last six months, would I awake to find that the whole world had changed? Or would I roll over to see that the whole world was still snoring right there beside me? Via the AP: North Korea has threatened to turn South Korea’s presidential palace into a “sea of fire” in response to any provocation, a day after Seoul’s military held a big exercise near the border. The land, sea and air drill...

Categories Anju Links/Terrorism (NK)
September 18, 2011

North Korea’s New Terror Wave

You probably heard somewhere that President Bush removed North Korea from the list of state sponsors of terrorism on October 11, 2008, to reward it for promising to completely, verifiably, and irreversibly give up its nuclear weapons. You probably also know that I did not favor this decision, to put it mildly. First, North Korea never acknowledged or apologized for its past and continuing acts of state-directed terrorism, such as the abduction and murder of Rev. Kim Dong Shik, its...

Categories Terrorism (NK)
June 20, 2011

Chosun Ilbo: Laura Ling and Euna Lee Were Lured into N. Korea

Let’s start with the claim, that North Korean spymaster Ryu Kyong recruited the mysterious guide who led Laura Ling and Euna Lee to that remote place along the Tumen River, then across to North Korea where guards were waiting. Subsequent reports fill in the rest — that Ling and Lee heard a commotion, ran back across the river into Chinese territory, and that the North Koreans pursued them across the river and dragged them back across and into captivity in...

Categories Ling/Lee Incident/Refugees/Terrorism (NK)
February 21, 2011

Opens Sources: North Korea Threatens “Nuclear Catastrophe”

North Korea, which was removed from the list of state sponsors of terrorism on October 11, 2008, has written to our Secretary of Defense to threaten a “nuclear catastrophe” if we don’t negotiate with them: North Korea’s defense minister warned of a “nuclear catastrophe” in a letter sent to U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates last month and demanded direct talks with Washington, a senior South Korean official was quoted as saying Monday. Kim Yong-chun, the minister of the North’s People’s...

Categories Anju Links/Terrorism (NK)
January 15, 2011

Open Sources

You’re kidding me. Even the New York Times has written a perfectly sensible editorial about North Korea? When President Obama and President Hu Jintao of China meet next week in Washington, this must be one of the top items on their agenda. Mr. Obama will have to forcefully argue the case that an erratic neighbor armed with nuclear weapons is anything but a recipe for the stability Beijing so prizes, or for an American military drawdown in the region. The...

Categories Anju Links/Terrorism (NK)
October 4, 2010

L.A. Times on Litigation Against North Korea

At the L.A. Times, John M. Glionna discusses litigation against North Korea and the efforts of the plaintiffs’ attorneys to find, fix, and seize North Korean assets. Here’s a teaser: “Nobody pays attention unless these nations are held accountable,” said Han Kim, the son of the Chicago minister abducted by North Korea. Meanwhile, plaintiffs’ lawyers continue their hunt for North Korean assets. “I don’t know whether we’ll ever be successful. That’s the sad part,” said Streeter. He said he charged...

Categories Terrorism (NK)/U.S. Law
August 13, 2010

Rumor: North Korea Planning Biological Attack on the G-20 Summit

North Korea is trying to launch a biochemical attack against the South prior to the G20 Summit in Seoul in November, a conservative activist claimed Thursday citing a North Korean source. Choi Sung-yong of the group Family Assembly Abducted to North Korea said the North is preparing to send 20 different deadly biochemical weapons attached to balloons and parachutes across the border. He said the campaign is led by Gen. Kim Kyok-sik, who commands the North’s frontline fourth corps, at...

Categories NK Military/Terrorism (NK)