Search Results for: KTU

PEACE IN OUR TIME, Part 1: South Korea says that the North is ready for another nuke test any old time, and reveals that at the height of Sunshine and Agreed Framework II, the North was building missile silos: Several South Korean government sources confirmed yesterday that the North has numerous underground missile launch facilities around 2,000 meters (2,190 yards) south of Mount Paektu. The silos, they said, were constructed in the mid-2000s and were determined to have been completed...

SO FAR, NO NUKE TEST, and China is trying to take credit for that: “China is unhappy … and urged North Korea not to conduct a nuclear test near Changbai Mountain,” said the source, who declined to be identified because of the sensitivity of the matter. Assuming this isn’t all disinformation — after all, China has openly encouraged North Korea to conduct nuclear tests until now — there’s also the question of what “near Changbai Mountain” means (Changbai Mountain, also...

TEAR DOWN THIS WALL: It’s too bad almost no one reported it at the time he said it: “The day all Koreans yearn for will not come easily or without great sacrifice, but make no mistake, it will come,” Obama said. “And when it does, when it does, change will unfold that once seemed impossible. And checkpoints will open, and watchtowers will stand empty, and families long separated will finally be reunited, and the Korean people at long last will...

Guess which responsible rising power is enabling Kim Jong Il again? China has told U.N. Security Council members it plans to block publication of a U.N. special report that accuses North Korea of violating sanctions on its nuclear program, Western diplomats said. [….] Diplomats told Reuters that China informed council members it would block the publication and transfer of the report to the full council. They said China’s move was odd since one of the experts who prepared the report,...

My God, how I would love to attend one of these: Around 150 people gathered at a park at Imjingak near the border to release ten giant balloons carrying some 100,000 leaflets, 300 DVDs and 1,000 one-US-dollar notes. An activist shouting ‘Down with Kim Jong Il’ ripped up a North Korean flag with a knife. Another wore a traditional Korean funeral hat with the message ‘Congratulations, Kim Jong Il’s death’. The leaflets and DVDs criticised Pyongyang’s human rights record and...

AFP is reporting that two Chinese traders, suspected of espionage, were beaten to death in North Korea. According to South Korea’s Yonhap new agency, which quoted unnamed sources in Beijing, the two traders from the northeastern province of Jilin were allegedly killed during a trip to the North’s border city of Manpo. “We have noted the report. We are seeking to confirm it,” Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Qin Gang told reporters without further comment. The report said North Korea was...