Informal Institute for National Security Thinkers and Practitioners

Quotes of the Day:

"Trust dies but mistrust blossoms" 
- Sophocles

"Discussion is an exchange of knowledge; argument an exchange of ignorance." 
- Robert Quillen

"The world as we have created it is a process of our thinking. It cannot be changed without changing our thinking." 
- Albert Einstein


1. N. Korea fires 2 apparent short-range ballistic missiles toward East Sea: S. Korean military
2. N.Korea Suffers Debilitating Cyber Attack
3. N.Korea Expert Tapped as U.S. Ambassador to Seoul
4. N. Korea to assume rotational presidency of U.N. disarmament conference
5. Goldberg pick, harbinger of US' hawkish North Korea policy?
6. Can Biden Avert a Crisis With North Korea?
7. Awaiting Washington's new man in Seoul
8. Seoul monitoring situation after N. Korea hit by suspected cyber attack
9. N. Korea, after harsh 2-year lockdown, slowly reopens border
10. From nukes to the Olympics, China’s mushrooming Pyongyang problem
11. North Korea's Strategic Surprise in the Yellow Sea: A Future Scenario
12. Expectations on the rise in North Korea that trade with China will increase soon
13. Sinuiju people’s committee calls on parents to “take the lead” in following the party’s childcare and education policies
14.Many 'promising things' can happen if N. Korea comes to dialogue table: Lambert




1. N. Korea fires 2 apparent short-range ballistic missiles toward East Sea: S. Korean military

This is the sixth event of the month/year. Perhaps Kim will keep firing missiles and expend his entire inventory with nothing left for warfighting. (note sarcasm).

As an aside, this is not the lead or top story on most of the (English language) Korean newspapers this morning. "north Korean missile fatigue?"

Keep in mind the correct response to these launches is not to give concessions, lift sanctions or in any way appease Kim in the hopes that he will not escalate to testing a nuclear weapon or ICBM. Any appeasement will only make things worse.

I stand by my 6 step response (and there appears to be some cyber actions taking place against north Korea):
First, do not overreact. Always call out Kim Jong-un's strategy As Sun Tzu would advise- “ …what is of supreme importance in war is to attack the enemy’s strategy; … next best is to disrupt his alliances.” Make sure the international community, the press, and the public in the ROK and the U.S. and the elite and the Korean people living in in the north know what Kim is doing.
 
Second, never ever back down in the face of north Korean increased tension, threats, and provocations.
 
Third, coordinate an alliance response. There may be times when a good cop-bad cop approach is appropriate.  Try to mitigate the internal domestic political criticisms that will inevitably occur in Seoul and DC. Do not let those criticisms negatively influence policy and actions.
 
Fourth, exploit weakness in north Korea - create internal pressure on Kim and the regime from his elite and military. Always work to drive a wedge among the party, elite, and military (which is a challenge since they are all intertwined and inextricably linked).
 
Fifth, demonstrate strength and resolve. Do not be afraid to show military strength. Never misunderstand the north's propaganda - do not give in to demands to reduce exercises or take other measures based on north Korean demands that would in any way reduce the readiness of the combined military forces. The north does not want an end to the exercises because they are a threat, they want to weaken the alliance and force U.S. troops from the peninsula which will be the logical result if they are unable to effectively train.
 
Sixth, depending on the nature of the provocation, be prepared to initiate a decisive response using the most appropriate tools, e.g., diplomatic, military, economic, information and influence activities, cyber, etc. or a combination.

North Korea’s Ballistic Missile Test: A 6 Step Strategy To Respond



(3rd LD) N. Korea fires 2 apparent short-range ballistic missiles toward East Sea: S. Korean military | Yonhap News Agency
en.yna.co.kr · by 강윤승 · January 27, 2022
(ATTN: UPDATES with military's explanation in paras 5-7)
By Song Sang-ho and Kang Yoon-seung
SEOUL, Jan. 27 (Yonhap) -- North Korea fired two apparent short-range ballistic missiles toward the East Sea on Thursday, South Korea's military said, in Pyongyang's sixth such launch this year.
The Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said it detected the launches from in and around Hamhung, a city on its east coast, at around 8 a.m. and 8:05 a.m., respectively, and they flew about 190 kilometers at a top altitude of 20 km.
"For more details, the intelligence authorities of South Korea and the United States are conducting a detailed analysis," the JCS said in a text message sent to reporters.
The South Korean military is keeping close tabs on related North Korean movements and maintaining a readiness posture, the JCS added.
As to the type of missiles fired Thursday, the military authorities are looking into "all possibilities," including them being multiple rocket launchers, a military official here said, requesting anonymity.
In the latest launch, the North is presumed to have set a target on Al Island, an uninhabited island off the North's east coast, the official said.
Apparently mindful of public security concerns, the official stressed the military can both detect and intercept the North's short-range projectiles should they be fired toward the South.
Pyongyang apparently test-fired at least two cruise missiles from an inland area Tuesday following four reported rounds of weapons tests, including hypersonic missile launches on Jan. 5 and 11.
It also tested the KN-23 missile -- modeled after Russia's Iskander ballistic missile -- on Jan. 14 and its own version of the U.S.' Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS), called the KN-24, three days later.
The recent bouts of the North's saber-rattling came as the United States has been stepping up sanctions pressure amid a protracted deadlock in its nuclear negotiations with the recalcitrant regime.
Last Friday, U.S. President Joe Biden and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida condemned the North's missile launches this month during their virtual summit, the White House has said, though U.S. officials have continued to signal openness for dialogue.
A day ahead of the summit, a defiant Pyongyang made a thinly-veiled threat to lift its yearslong moratorium on nuclear and long-range missile tests, sparking speculation it would engage in more provocative actions down the road.

sshluck@yna.co.kr
colin@yna.co.kr
(END)
en.yna.co.kr · by 강윤승 · January 27, 2022



2. N.Korea Suffers Debilitating Cyber Attack

Is this us (or one of our allies) or just someone in the north screwing up?

N.Korea Suffers Debilitating Cyber Attack
North Korea suffered a massive cyber attack on Wednesday morning, which apparently brought its entre Internet down, Reuters reported.
Junade Ali, a U.K. cybersecurity expert, told Reuters that a what appears to be a distributed denial-of-service attack on the North paralyzed all online traffic in the reclusive state for six hours.
"When someone would try to connect to an IP address in North Korea, the Internet would literally be unable to route their data into the country," Ali said. "It's common for one server to go offline for some periods of time, but these incidents have seen all web properties go offline concurrently. It isn't common to see their entire internet dropped offline."
A DDoS attack is an attempt to make an online service unavailable by overwhelming it with traffic from multiple sources.
NK News, a website that monitors North Korea, reported earlier this month that network errors occurred in the North in what appears to have been another DDoS attack, when all e-mail and websites in North Korea were inaccessible.
Nicholas Roy, another cyber security expert, told Reuters, "Someone either messed something up really bad, like Facebook did a couple weeks ago, or it could be some kind of attack." Roy added that the North's weak IT infrastructure makes it an easy target for cyber attacks.
North Korea strictly controls access to the Internet with only one percent of its 25 million population being able to use it.




3. N.Korea Expert Tapped as U.S. Ambassador to Seoul

Here is a link to Ambassador Goldberg's biography.A very well qualified and very senior career foreign service officer.


N.Korea Expert Tapped as U.S. Ambassador to Seoul
U.S. President Joe Biden is going to nominate Philip Goldberg, the current ambassador to Colombia, as the new ambassador to South Korea soon, according to diplomatic sources.
They said Biden began the process of nominating Goldberg late last year. The post has been vacant for over a year.
A senior Cheong Wa Dae official told reporters, "We have been notified of his nomination." But it seems that Goldberg will not arrive before President Moon Jae-in leaves office because it takes several months to get approval from the Senate.
Goldberg, who is known to be hawkish on the North, was the State Department's coordinator for implementation of UN sanctions on North Korea in 2009-2010, the early years of the Barack Obama administration.
He was tapped late last year, when criticism was arising that only the nomination of U.S. envoy to Seoul was being delayed even though envoys to Tokyo and Beijing had been nominated in spring and their nominations were approved by the Senate last October.
Goldberg is a career diplomat rather than a political appointment and has also served in Bolivia, Cuba and the Philippines.



4. N. Korea to assume rotational presidency of U.N. disarmament conference

This is all that is wrong with the UN.

N. Korea to assume rotational presidency of U.N. disarmament conference | Yonhap News Agency
en.yna.co.kr · by 최수향 · January 27, 2022
By Choi Soo-hyang
SEOUL, Jan. 27 (Yonhap) -- North Korea will lead the United Nations' Conference on Disarmament in a rotational one-month presidency later this year, the world body has said.
North Korea is among six countries -- along with China, Colombia, Cuba, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Ecuador -- that will assume this year's chairmanship for four weeks each in alphabetical order.
This first session began Monday under China's presidency, with North Korea's turn set for May 30 to June 24.
The North's presidency is expected to stir controversy, especially as it has been ramping up tensions on the Korean Peninsula with a series of weapons tests since the start of the year.
On Thursday, the North fired two apparent short-range ballistic missiles toward the East Sea, marking its sixth such launch this month.

U.N. Watch, a Geneva-based independent monitoring group, denounced the announcement, saying member countries, including the United States, should walk out of the conference during the four-week period.
"This is a country that threatens to attack other U.N. member states with missiles, and that commits atrocities against its own people," Hillel Neuer, executive director of U.N. Watch, said. "North Korea's chairmanship will only undermine the integrity of both the disarmament framework and of the United Nations, and no country should support that."
The activist group plans to hold demonstrations featuring "victims of North Korean abuses" to protest the North's chairmanship.
Comprising 65 member states, the Conference on Disarmament is "the world's single multilateral forum for disarmament negotiations," according to the U.N. website.
When the North last assumed the conference's presidency in 2011, Canada boycotted the event, saying, "North Korea is simply not a credible chair of this U.N. body" as "a major proliferator of nuclear weapons."
scaaet@yna.co.kr
(END)
en.yna.co.kr · by 최수향 · January 27, 2022



5. Goldberg pick, harbinger of US' hawkish North Korea policy?

Hawkish? Hardline? Or maybe the right person for the job?

Excerpts:

News of Goldberg's nomination have fueled speculation in South Korea that the U.S. government will adopt a hardline policy toward Pyongyang, which has refused to return to the negotiating table and continued instead to test-fire ballistic missiles in a show of force. Such speculation is based on his past career as the coordinator for the implementation of United Nations (U.N.) sanctions on North Korea under the Barack Obama administration.
...
"Considering South Korea's status in East Asian security, the U.S. has decided to send a career diplomat, who is well versed in the situation on the Korean Peninsula. However, it's going too far to say the U.S. will be hawkish on North Korea because Goldberg served as a sanctions enforcer," Shin said.


Goldberg pick, harbinger of US' hawkish North Korea policy?
The Korea Times · January 27, 2022
North Korea fires two suspected ballistic missiles

By Kang Seung-woo

U.S. President Joe Biden nominated a former sanctions enforcer to be his first ambassador to South Korea, but it is too early to predict if the United States will return to a hardline stance against North Korea, according to diplomatic observers.

Philip Goldberg / Courtesy of U.S. Department of State

According to diplomatic sources, U.S. Ambassador to Colombia Philip Goldberg has been tapped to head the U.S. Embassy in Seoul and the South Korean government is now said to be in the process of granting an agreement, which refers to a state approval of accepting a member of a diplomatic mission from a foreign country.

Since the last U.S. ambassador to South Korea, Harry Harris, resigned and left the country on Jan. 20, 2021, the post has remained unfilled, with U.S. Charge d'Affaires to Korea Christopher Del Corso currently serving as acting ambassador.

News of Goldberg's nomination have fueled speculation in South Korea that the U.S. government will adopt a hardline policy toward Pyongyang, which has refused to return to the negotiating table and continued instead to test-fire ballistic missiles in a show of force. Such speculation is based on his past career as the coordinator for the implementation of United Nations (U.N.) sanctions on North Korea under the Barack Obama administration.

"I think the Biden administration has nominated a big shot among Career Ambassadors, the State Department's highest diplomatic rank, given his past overseas assignments, but given that his one-year tenure from 2009 to 2010 as coordinator for implementation of U.N. sanctions on North Korea, I think it is hasty to jump to conclusions that the U.S. will increase sanctions pressure on the North," said Park Won-gon, a professor of North Korean studies at Ewha Womans University.

"Considering his past career, including three ambassadorial posts in Bolivia, the Philippines and Colombia, he has a good understanding of the key U.S. foreign policy principles and in this regard, he is a good fit to effectively deal with U.S. strategic competition with China, which is a greater interest to Washington, as well as North Korea's nuclear issue."

Shin Beom-chul, director of the Center for Diplomacy and Security at the Korea Research Institute for National Strategy, presented a similar view.

"Considering South Korea's status in East Asian security, the U.S. has decided to send a career diplomat, who is well versed in the situation on the Korean Peninsula. However, it's going too far to say the U.S. will be hawkish on North Korea because Goldberg served as a sanctions enforcer," Shin said.

"Usually, career diplomats tend to stick to the stance of a current administration, so we need to refrain from predicating that the new ambassador would be a hardliner on North Korea."

However, Shin added that the Biden administration may have picked him in consideration of additional sanctions on North Korea in the event of the Kim Jong-un regime ramping up the magnitude of its provocative actions.

On Thursday, North Korea staged its sixth show of force this year by firing two suspected short-range ballistic missiles toward the East Sea, according to the South Korean military.

The Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said it detected the launches from in and around Hamhung, a city in North Korea's east coast, at around 8 a.m. and 8:05 a.m., respectively, and the missiles flew about 190 kilometers at a top altitude of 20 kilometers.

The launches came one day after Goldberg's nomination came to light, raising speculation that the provocations may have to do with North Korea's dissatisfaction with Biden's pick. But experts rejected that speculation.

"The recent series of missile launches pertain to its leader's efforts to double down on its nuclear arms buildup, while the U.N. sanctions committee cannot properly operate due to the U.S.-China rivalry and the Moon Jae-in administration cannot stop it from military activities," Shin said.


The Korea Times · January 27, 2022

6.  Can Biden Avert a Crisis With North Korea?

Sigh...I think only Kim can divert a crisis. He is executing his hostile policy. We should keep in mind that concessions and appeasement will not avert a crisis and will in fact cause Kim to double down on his political warfare and blackmail diplomacy strategies.

Can Biden Avert a Crisis With North Korea?
The New York Times · by Edward Wong · January 27, 2022
NEWS Analysis
Kim Jong-un, the North Korean leader, has done six missile tests this month — equal to all of 2021 — and called on the nation to prepare for “long-term confrontation.”
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As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. Anyone can read what you share.

North Korea fired off two cruise missiles on Tuesday in a fifth weapons test this year.

By
Jan. 27, 2022, 5:00 a.m. ET
WASHINGTON — After North Korea ushered in the new year with four sets of ballistic missile tests this month, the Biden administration turned to a well-thumbed page in the Washington playbook: It called for more United Nations sanctions.
China and Russia blocked the proposal last week in the U.N. Security Council. And Kim Jong-un, the leader of North Korea, appears unfazed by the threat of more U.N. and Treasury Department sanctions — he fired off two cruise missiles on Tuesday and two more ballistic missiles on Thursday, for a total of six weapons tests this month, equal to the number for all of last year.
“This is a deeply isolated, autarkic economy,” said John Delury, a professor of history at Yonsei University in Seoul. “No amount of sanctions could create the pressures that Covid created in the last two years. Yet, do we see North Korea begging and saying, ‘Take our weapons and give us some aid?’ The North Koreans will eat grass.”
Heavy sanctions imposed by President Biden’s two immediate predecessors have not pushed Mr. Kim any closer to giving up his nuclear weapons program, and a critical element usually coupled with sanctions — diplomacy — has so far been missing from Mr. Biden’s approach, analysts say.
Efforts in Washington to get North Korea to halt its nuclear weapons program fell into a lull after Mr. Kim and President Donald J. Trump met in Hanoi, Vietnam, in 2019. The next year, North Korea closed itself off to the world after the coronavirus pandemic began. The nation conducted relatively few weapons tests during that period, and Mr. Kim disappeared from public view for a month before emerging in June looking much thinner.
Mr. Biden appeared content to keep North Korea on the back burner, even though President Barack Obama told Mr. Trump in November 2016 that North Korea should be Washington’s top national security priority. Mr. Biden has yet to name a candidate to be ambassador to South Korea. The special envoy for North Korea, Sung Kim, is a veteran diplomat who has dealt with these issues before, but he is doing the job part-time — he is also ambassador to Indonesia.
The administration’s foreign policy bandwidth has been occupied by other crises — Afghanistan, Ukraine, Iran — but it appears Mr. Kim now wants in on the action.
“We’re at the start of something, and we just need to cross our fingers,” said Robert Carlin, a former U.S. intelligence analyst on North Korea.
North Korean scientists have obviously been working on the weapons program, which is central to Pyongyang’s propaganda and Mr. Kim’s main leverage in negotiations with the United States and other nations. The more weapons Mr. Kim has and the more powerful they are, the greater his stature both inside and outside North Korea.
In the first two tests this month, Pyongyang launched short-range ballistic missiles with what it called “hypersonic” gliding vehicles, detachable warheads that are harder to intercept because they can change course in mid-flight.
Siegfried Hecker, a nuclear scientist at Stanford University who has visited North Korea, estimated the country very likely has enough nuclear material for about 45 warheads, an increase of about 20 since the end of the Obama administration. He also gave an upper-end number of 60.
After a Jan. 19 Politburo meeting of the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea, the North Korean news agency reported Mr. Kim had ordered officials to “promptly examine the issue of restarting all activities that had been temporarily suspended,” a reference to possibly ending a moratorium on the testing of nuclear devices and intercontinental ballistic missiles that Mr. Kim had imposed since his historic summits with Mr. Trump.
Moon Chung-in, chairman of the Sejong Institute in Seoul and a former adviser to President Moon Jae-in (no relation) of South Korea, said that if the Biden administration takes the standard sanctions-as-deterrence route, “such cautious, reactive and inertia-driven moves will not be able to prevent Pyongyang’s assertive behavior, and the Korean Peninsula will be swept into the vortex of provocation, countermeasures and escalation.”
Mr. Moon said Mr. Biden needed to announce that he was personally ready to engage with North Korea, as Mr. Trump did, and be willing to put everything on the negotiation table, including relaxation of sanctions and a suspension of military exercises between the United States and South Korea. The South Korean government has also pushed the United States to try “vaccine diplomacy.”
The Biden administration concluded a policy review of North Korea last year. It has rejected the overt pro-engagement actions favored by Seoul and that Mr. Trump eventually embraced, while avoiding Mr. Trump’s early threats of “fire and fury.”
Ned Price, the State Department spokesman, said Tuesday that “dialogue and diplomacy is the most effective means to help us reach that overarching goal, and that’s the complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.” He has also said the United States is ready to talk to North Korea “without preconditions.”
The department said in a statement that it would “consult closely with the Republic of Korea, Japan, and other allies and partners about how to best engage” with North Korea.
But the leaders of those two East Asian nations are divided in their approach and remain embroiled in bitter disputes over separate issues of history and war. Japanese officials are critical of Mr. Moon’s North Korea policy. In November, Wendy Sherman, the deputy secretary of state and an experienced negotiator on North Korea and Iran, hosted a meeting with her South Korean and Japanese counterparts in Washington, but long-running hostilities resulted in an awkward news conference.
The Significance of North Korea’s Missile Tests
Card 1 of 5
An increase in activity. In recent months, North Korea has conducted several missile tests, hinting at an increasingly defiant attitude toward countries that oppose its growing military arsenal. Here’s what to know:
U.N. resolutions. Tensions on the Korean Peninsula started rising in 2017, when North Korea tested three intercontinental ballistic missiles and conducted a nuclear test. The United Nations imposed sanctions, and Pyongyang stopped testing nuclear and long-range missiles for a time.
Failed diplomacy. Former President Donald Trump met with Kim Jong-un, the North Korean leader, three times between 2018 and 2019, hoping to reach a deal on North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs. After the talks broke down, North Korea resumed missile testing.
An escalation. North Korea started a new round of testing in September​ after a six-month hiatus. It has since completed several missile tests, including the firing of two ballistic missiles on Jan. 14, that violated the 2017 U.N. resolutions.
The U.S. response. Washington is proposing new U.N. sanctions on North Korea. The country, which insists it is exercising its right to self-defense, issued a statement shortly before the tests on Jan. 14 denouncing the proposal.
Some analysts say Ms. Sherman might be the best American official to lead diplomacy on North Korea. Besides her experience, her position as the second-ranking State Department official gives her stature. In the Trump years, they say, North Korean officials wanted a negotiating partner who was more senior than Stephen E. Biegun, the special envoy. Ms. Sherman could potentially establish a channel with Choe Son-hui, a top North Korean diplomat close to Mr. Kim.
Other American officials have gotten burned on North Korea. The top Asia official in the Biden White House, Kurt Campbell, was assistant secretary of state for East Asia in 2012 when the Obama administration reached the so-called Leap Day Deal with North Korea, which disintegrated within weeks.
One of the biggest dilemmas is how to work with China to curb North Korea’s weapons program. The Chinese leader, Xi Jinping, and his colleagues are balancing various goals: They want to end the disruption caused by Mr. Kim’s weapons while also seeking to avoid a failed state on their border or Pyongyang growing close to Washington or Seoul. A congressional report released on Monday said, “Any Sino-U.S. cooperation on North Korea’s denuclearization will remain constrained by Beijing’s unwillingness to rupture its relationship with Pyongyang completely and lose leverage over North Korea’s foreign policy decisions.”
China is by far North Korea’s biggest trading partner. Although it has approved of U.N. sanctions on occasion, it and Russia began asking in 2019 for partial relief of the Obama- and Trump-era sanctions. For a period, it was enforcing those sanctions, but then it began helping North Korea circumvent them as Beijing-Washington relations deteriorated.
For most of the pandemic, North Korea has kept China at arm’s length, closing the border and rejecting offers of Chinese vaccines. But this month, the two countries reopened their shared border to freight trains. North Korean trains have been carrying cargo from the Chinese border city of Dandong.
And if Mr. Xi is concerned about Mr. Kim testing his missiles just weeks before the Winter Olympics in Beijing, he has not publicly voiced those anxieties.
“The strategic effort in the Biden administration should be to get China on board with an approach to North Korea,” said Jean H. Lee, a senior fellow on Korea at the Wilson Center.
“Having dealt with the North Koreans and spent so much time on the ground, they’ll play this game of divide and conquer,” she added. “But there have been times in the past when North Korea has gone too far for China, and China has come on board with U.N. resolutions on North Korea.”
Mr. Kim’s provocations could accelerate as presidential elections in South Korea approach in May, and as he prepares the nation for the April 15 birthday celebrations of his grandfather and the first leader of North Korea, Kim Il-sung. Officials are carrying out campaigns to burnish the family legacy and to emphasize the country’s antagonistic relations with the United States. The official news summary of the Politburo meeting this month said North Korea had to “make more thorough preparation for a long-term confrontation with the U.S. imperialists.”
The New York Times · by Edward Wong · January 27, 2022


7. Awaiting Washington's new man in Seoul
Don Kirk weighs in on the possible new US Ambassador and the ROK presidential elections.

Consider this excerpt. Concessions will not succeed with the north and we should not make assumptions about how either candidate will act toward north Korea and the ROK/US alliance.

This view has a few flaws. One is that Yoon's election might precipitate a North-South Korean showdown, replete with mounting threats and unpredictable incidents. Another is that Yoon, if elected, might backtrack and adopt a softer stance just to head off a potential crisis. For that matter, Lee, if elected, might not want to undermine or ruin the alliance with the U.S. by making concessions to the North without guarantees of anything substantive in return.

Awaiting Washington's new man in Seoul
The Korea Times · January 27, 2022
By Donald Kirk

One odd question hangs over U.S. relations with Korea, both South and North, in this pivotal election year in which South Koreans decide a few weeks from now on their next president. That is, who is directing American policy and how is Washington navigating between conflicting views in the South and rising threats from the North?

What's strange is that the U.S. for more than a year has had no ambassador to South Korea. Now it's reported that Philip Goldberg, a Latin American expert who's been ambassador to Colombia and Bolivia and worked on U.N. sanctions on North Korea more than 10 years ago, is the ambassador-designate.

What's taken so long to advance his name and when is he coming to Seoul? Are President Joe Biden and his team so consumed by Ukraine that they have not had time to ask, 'What are we going to do about conveying our confused thoughts to outgoing President Moon Jae-in, barred as he is by Korea's Democracy Constitution from running for a second five-year term?' And how worried should we be about whoever's next in the Blue House, the left-leaning Lee Jae-myung or the hawkish conservative Yoon Suk-yeol?

Even with Goldberg designated as ambassador, getting him to Korea won't be easy. Ted Cruz, the obstructionist right-wing senator from Texas, has been blocking the approval of dozens of ambassadorial appointments while calling on Biden to act decisively against Russia's dream of shipping natural gas through a new pipeline to Germany. As long as Cruz stands fast, the appointments don't get out of the Senate foreign relations committee and onto the floor of the Senate, where far more often than not, they're approved by overwhelming bipartisan vote.

Just because Cruz is gumming up the process, however, is no excuse for Biden not to have someone ready to take off for Seoul. OK, you don't really need an ambassador to fulfill most embassy functions. The charge d'affaires, an experienced diplomat with years of experience, can pretty well take charge day by day. The problem, however, is that real diplomacy, day to day, isn't always routine when you consider the difficulties between the U.S. and South Korea.

Right now, Washington and Seoul disagree on how to deal with North Korea. No, the Americans are too diplomatic to denounce this end-of-war declaration that Moon is demanding as nonsense. Instead, they say how close their historic relationship is, the unshakeable, unbreakable bond between the U.S. and the Republic of Korea. At every opportunity they echo Moon's calls for dialog with the North. And then they say what neither President Moon nor candidate Lee wants to hear, that North Korea has to get rid of its nukes before any deal is possible.

Nor is anyone saying the rift between the U.S. and Republic of Korea on how much to concede by way of appeasing North Korea is one reason for Biden to have been slow to name an ambassador. You won't hear anyone officially making that point, on or off the record, but the unspoken word lurking in Seoul is that Biden would have moved faster if Washington and Seoul were on the same page.

Yet another suspicion is that the Americans were waiting to see the outcome of the presidential election. It would be easy to conclude that Washington supports Yoon since he's calling for rebuilding great ties with the U.S. and, unlike Moon and Lee, demanding North Korea give up its nukes as a prerequisite to anything. Lee has shown how simpatico he is with North Korea by calling on Yoon to retract that statement, and North Korea is saying Yoon should retract his whole candidacy ― that is, not run at all. Wouldn't it be great, some Americans and Koreans are saying, if Yoon were to restore the U.S.-ROK alliance to the good old days?

This view has a few flaws. One is that Yoon's election might precipitate a North-South Korean showdown, replete with mounting threats and unpredictable incidents. Another is that Yoon, if elected, might backtrack and adopt a softer stance just to head off a potential crisis. For that matter, Lee, if elected, might not want to undermine or ruin the alliance with the U.S. by making concessions to the North without guarantees of anything substantive in return.

No one can be sure what's really going to happen between North and South Korea until, well, until it happens. That uncertainty is another reason for Washington to pursue a policy of watchful waiting, awaiting the outcome of the election. Goldberg, assuming he's finally approved as ambassador, should be arriving in time to see which way the winds are blowing from both Seoul and Pyongyang with a new man in the Blue House.


Donald Kirk (www.donaldkirk.com) writes from Seoul as well as Washington.

The Korea Times · January 27, 2022


8. Seoul monitoring situation after N. Korea hit by suspected cyber attack
I would be happy to learn that this cyber attack was Seoul's handiwork but I do not think it is.

Seoul monitoring situation after N. Korea hit by suspected cyber attack
koreaherald.com · by Yonhap · January 27, 2022
Published : Jan 27, 2022 - 10:43 Updated : Jan 27, 2022 - 10:43
(123rf)
The Seoul government is keeping tabs on North Korea following reports it was hit by a suspected cyber attack the previous day, an official said Thursday.

On Wednesday, Reuters said the North's internet appears to have suffered a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack, citing cybersecurity researchers.

Major North Korean websites, such as its foreign ministry and the Rodong Sinmun sites, appeared to be experiencing partial failure in connections but were operating normally as of Thursday morning.

"We are monitoring the situation under coordination with relevant government agencies," a Seoul official said, without elaborating further.

The apparent attack came amid heightening tensions on the Korean Peninsula, with the North firing a series of missiles since the start of the year.

On Thursday, North Korea fired two apparent short-range ballistic missiles toward the East Sea in its sixth such launch this year. (Yonhap)

9. N. Korea, after harsh 2-year lockdown, slowly reopens border
Obviously we will be observing for indicators of how reopening trade will affect the regime and the population. Will goods get to markets and will markets return to being the safety valve for the Korean people in the north?


N. Korea, after harsh 2-year lockdown, slowly reopens border
AP · by KIM TONG-HYUNG · January 27, 2022
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — After spending two years in a strict lockdown because of the COVID-19 pandemic, North Korea may finally be opening up — slowly. The reason could reflect a growing sense of recognition by the leadership that the nation badly needs to win outside economic relief.
The North’s tentative reopening is seen in the apparent resumption of North Korean freight train traffic into neighboring China. But it comes even as Pyongyang has staged several weapons tests, the latest being two suspected ballistic missiles on Thursday, and issued a veiled threat about resuming tests of nuclear explosives and long-range missiles targeting the American homeland.
The apparently divided message — opening the border, slightly, on one hand, while also militarily pressuring Washington over a prolonged freeze in nuclear negotiations — likely signals a realization that the pandemic has worsened an economy already damaged by decades of mismanagement and crippling U.S.-led sanctions over North Korean nuclear weapons and missiles.
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According to South Korean estimates, North Korea’s crucial trade with its ally China shrank by about 80% in 2020 before plunging again by two-thirds in the first nine months of 2021 as it sealed its borders.
The partial reopening of the border also raises questions about how North Korea plans to receive and administer vaccines following a yearlong delay in its immunization campaign.
“North Korea could end up being the planet’s last battlefield in the war against COVID-19. Even the poorest countries in Africa have received outside aid and vaccines or acquired immunity through infection, but North Korea is the only country in the world without a real plan,” said analyst Lim Soo-ho at Seoul’s Institute of National Security Strategy, a think tank run by South Korea’s main spy agency.
Commercial satellite images indicate that the first North Korean freight train that crossed the Yalu River last week then returned from China and unloaded cargo at an airfield in the border town of Uiju, according to the North Korea-focused 38 North website. The airfield is believed to have been converted to disinfect imported supplies, which may include food and medicine.
China’s Foreign Ministry has said trade between the border towns will be maintained while pandemic controls stay in place. But South Korean officials say it isn’t immediately clear whether the North is fully reopening land trade with China, which is a major economic lifeline.
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Some South Korean media have speculated North Korea may have temporarily reopened the railroad between Sinuiju and China’s Dandong just to receive food and essential goods meant as gifts for its people during important holidays, including the 80th birth anniversary of leader Kim Jong Un’s father next month, and the 110th birth anniversary in April of his grandfather who founded North Korea.
Many experts, however, say it’s more likely that the pandemic’s economic strain is forcing North Korea to explore a phased reopening of its borders that it could quickly close if greater risks emerge.
Following two years of extreme isolation and economic decay, Pyongyang’s leadership is looking for more sustainable ways to deal with a pandemic that could last years.
While North Korea has so far claimed zero virus infections, it also calls its antivirus campaign a matter of “national existence.” It has severely restricted cross-border traffic and trade, banned tourists and kicked out diplomats, and is even believed to have ordered troops to shoot-on-sight any trespassers.
Pyongyang’s leadership knows that a major COVID-19 outbreak would be devastating because of North Korea’s poor health care system and may even fan social unrest when combined with its chronic food shortage, experts say.
South Korean officials have said that North Korea established disinfection zones in recent months at border towns and seaports. The World Health Organization said in October that the North had started receiving shipments of medical supplies transported by sea from China through its port of Nampo.
The pandemic is another difficulty for Kim, who gained little from his nuclear disarmament-for-aid diplomacy with former U.S. President Donald Trump. Those talks imploded in 2019.
Kim in 2020 acknowledged that his previous economic plans weren’t working and opened 2021 by issuing a new development plan for the next five years.
But North Korea’s review of its 2021 economy during a December ruling party meeting indicated that the first year of the plan was disappointing, Lim said. A rare piece of tangible progress was a modest increase in food production, which rebounded from a 2020 marked by crop-killing storms and floods.
North Korea’s resumed trade with China will be driven by imports. Most of North Korea’s major export activities are blocked under international sanctions tightened since 2016 after Kim accelerated nuclear and missile development.
The North may focus on importing fertilizer to boost food production. It also needs construction materials for development projects important to Kim. Factory goods and machinery are crucial to revive industrial production, which has been decimated by two years of halted trade.
Experts, however, still expect North Korea’s trade with China to be significantly smaller than pre-pandemic levels.
North Korea can’t immediately purchase a huge amount of goods because the multiyear toll of sanctions and pandemic-related difficulties has thinned out foreign currency reserves.
“Still, it’s clear that North Korea isn’t a country that can survive without imports for two or three years, so it’s certain they will attempt to slowly increase imports within a limited scope,” said Go Myong-hyun, an analyst at Seoul’s Asan Institute for Policy Studies.
North Korea has so far shunned millions of vaccine shots offered by the U.N.-backed COVAX distribution program, possibly reflecting an unease toward accepting international monitors. But the country may still seek help from China and Russia to inoculate workers, officials and troops in border areas as it proceeds with a phased resumption of trade, said Hong Min, an analyst at Seoul’s Korea Institute for National Unification.
North Korea may also be forced to adopt a scaled-back vaccination program by tightly restricting access to border areas and providing regular testing and vaccination for border workers.
“It could take nearly 100 million shots to fully vaccinate the North Korean population of more than 25 million, and the country will never get anything close to that,” Lim said.
AP · by KIM TONG-HYUNG · January 27, 2022


10. From nukes to the Olympics, China’s mushrooming Pyongyang problem

north Korea can be a spoiler in strategic competition and not just for the US. But it is going to take some very radical actions and conditions for China to dump Kim.

Conclusion:

If Kim is determined to push ahead with his nuclear ambitions, he may also be pushing his country’s old friends in Beijing into facing the ultimate choice of whether to give up on Pyongyang.


From nukes to the Olympics, China’s mushrooming Pyongyang problem
The timing of two announcements from North Korea could not have been worse for its old Cold War ally, underlining a deepening dilemma for Beijing

If North Korean nuclear testing resumes during the Winter Games it will be a slap in the face for China and reveal its limited influence over an unruly neighbour

By Shi Jiangtao South China Morning Post3 min

North Korea has blamed “hostile forces” and the pandemic for its decision not to take part in the Beijing Winter Olympics. Photo: Reuters
The first few weeks of the year saw several important developments in China’s relations with North Korea, underlining Beijing’s deepening dilemma over its unruly communist neighbour.
Last week, amid food shortages and economic hardship, Pyongyang resumed railway imports from China for the first time since early 2020. And, at the United Nations, Beijing again helped to block a US-led effort to impose further sanctions on North Korea, despite Pyongyang’s repeated missile tests.
China’s generosity was met first with Pyongyang’s decision to skip the Beijing Winter Olympics, and then with a bombshell threat from leader Kim Jong-un that the North Korean regime may resume nuclear tests.
The timing could not have been worse for China, North Korea’s top diplomatic backer and economic lifeline.
For years, Beijing’s much-touted ability to keep Pyongyang in check has been seen as its most important diplomatic leverage in its dealings with the US. The deterioration in US-China ties have made that leverage particularly critical, with North Korea’s denuclearisation one of the few issues of shared common interest.
The North Korean Olympics no-show announcement followed a series of diplomatic boycotts of the Games – which open in Beijing on February 4 – from the US, Britain, Australia and Canada over China’s alleged human rights atrocities in Xinjiang.
Pyongyang conveniently blamed “hostile forces” and the pandemic for its decision not to take part in the Games and, as usual, Beijing publicly defended its Cold War ally – although most Chinese social media commenters found the excuses unconvincing.
Then came Kim’s warning that he was reconsidering Pyongyang’s self-imposed moratorium on nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles testing – in place since late 2017 – which apparently took most onlookers, especially in Beijing, by surprise.
It was not the first time Kim has used nuclear threats to pile pressure on the US over their deadlocked negotiations, but the timing of the latest announcement indicated it could also be aimed at China.
If North Korea chooses to renew its nuclear provocations in the coming weeks, during the Beijing Games, it would be a slap in the face to the Chinese government, which has strongly opposed Pyongyang’s six previous nuclear tests.
Resumed nuclear testing would kill the last hope for denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula, shatter the little love and trust remaining between the communist neighbours, and reveal how limited China’s influence over North Korea has become.
While Beijing increasingly considers the Kim regime a liability and is reluctant to accept another nuclear-armed state on its border, its biggest fear is that North Korea may enter into an anti-Chinese alignment with Washington.
02:13
North Korea claims to have conducted hypersonic missile test attended by leader Kim Jong-un
Kim clearly knows how to pit major powers like China, the US and its allies against each other and understands that China cannot afford to cut North Korea loose, at least for now, with Beijing-Washington rivalry at its height.
But with regional stability and Beijing’s own security at stake over Pyongyang’s nuclear brinkmanship, the diplomatic cost for China’s support for North Korea may have become unbearably high.
If Kim is determined to push ahead with his nuclear ambitions, he may also be pushing his country’s old friends in Beijing into facing the ultimate choice of whether to give up on Pyongyang.

11. North Korea's Strategic Surprise in the Yellow Sea: A Future Scenario


Or the West Sea from a Korean perspective.


What I am always curious about is what military and political conditions and effects does north Korea seek to achieve when it conducts operations in the West Sea? Simply flexing its military muscles?



North Korea's Strategic Surprise in the Yellow Sea: A Future Scenario
cna.org · by CNA
By Markus Garlauskas
January 26, 2022

Earlier this month, at a Center for Strategic and International Studies event, the White House's Indo-Pacific coordinator, Kurt Campbell, told the online audience that the Pacific may be the most likely venue for a "strategic surprise" — from China. During the event, there was a different kind of surprise: breaking news that North Korea had just test-fired a missile, which was only one of a number of different missiles North Korea has launched this month.
The following is a “future history” account of a hypothetical strategic surprise in the Pacific, but not the type Campbell had in mind. Though it is a work of fiction, it is grounded in analysis of historical patterns and current trends outlined in the CNA Occasional Paper North Korea's Arena of Asymmetric Advantage: Why We Should Prepare for a Crisis in the Yellow Sea. It is a stark warning of the potential consequences if the United States and South Korea are unprepared for the military and political implications of North Korea's continued weapons development alongside the rising assertiveness of the People's Republic of China (PRC).
[Excerpts from “Chapter 15: A Mortal Wound,” The History of the United States-South Korea Alliance, US Naval Institute Press, 2037.]
The alliance was caught unprepared for the Yellow Sea Crisis, not because intelligence analysts did not see the warning signs, but because Seoul and Washington had not grasped how much had changed since the last confrontation with North Korea. Perhaps they were desensitized by the familiar narrative—threats and claims of grievances from North Korea amid rumors about contentious palace politics in Pyongyang. Perhaps they were so fixated on the potential for a U.S.-China war in the Taiwan Strait that a confrontation in the Yellow Sea seemed trivial by comparison…
The crisis first made headlines when Kim Yo-jong, the sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, warned of dire consequences for South Korean “violations” of an obscure agreement governing disputed waters in the Yellow Sea near South Korea's Paengyong Island. These waters had been a perennial flashpoint, the site of numerous miliary clashes between North and South Korea, as well as a politically sensitive area where North Korean, South Korean and Chinese fishing vessels all operated in close proximity.
Seoul and Washington, moving in the practiced, coordinated manner of a mature and “ironclad” alliance, quickly agreed on increases in alert levels and other carefully calibrated measures to prepare for North Korea's next moves. The allies agreed about the need to show restraint—particularly after Beijing warned “all sides” not to escalate. South Korea's president, confident in his military advantage and U.S. backing, stood firm while offering talks to resolve the dispute.
Pyongyang rejected Seoul's offer as insincere, and soon escalated to violence. Some observers at the time blamed Kim's temper, but thanks to newly declassified documents, we now know the premediated attack was a calculated risk. Pyongyang gambled that it had chosen the right time and place to surprise its more powerful adversaries with new weapons. Pyongyang also bet big that a conflict in the Yellow Sea could be contained, particularly because China's interests would lead it to intercede if the situation started to spiral out of control.
The clashes at sea between North and South Korean patrol boats began the day after Pyongyang rejected talks, but we now know that North Korea never expected to win them. They were merely prelude and a pretext for what came next…
Less than an hour before dawn, dozens of North Korean missiles of various types began raining down on the South Korean defenses of Paengyong Island, most of them striking bunkers, radars, barracks, and weapons positions with reasonable accuracy. Each of these missiles were new types that had been repeatedly tested by North Korea in the months and years after Kim Jong-un's summits with President Trump. Dismissed as mere “short range” missiles, the tests did not attract the international attention and additional sanctions that intercontinental ballistic missiles or nuclear weapons had—so North Korea's refinement of these weapons had gone largely unchecked…
To their credit, the island's defenders began returning fire within minutes, and the South Korean military rapidly moved to come to the beleaguered island's aid. However, despite South Korea's more advanced military equipment, along with its superior command, control and intelligence capabilities, geography stacked the odds in North Korea's favor.
North Korea's missiles were being fired from mobile launchers based on its massive, mountainous and well-defended Hwanghae Peninsula, located adjacent to the isolated South Korean island. The risks posed by North Korean antiship missiles, coastal artillery, submarines, and sea mines in these constricted waters made it difficult and dangerous for the Republic of Korea (ROK) Navy to even approach the Hwanghae Peninsula, while North Korea's numerous land-based surface-to-air missiles also kept the ROK Air Force operating at a distance. To neutralize these air and coastal defenses would require time that the island's defenders did not have and a level of massive escalation that Seoul was hesitant to authorize. South Korea did its best to hit back against the attackers as quickly as it could, unleashing its own land- and sea-based missiles from safely out of range of these defenses, using targeting data provided by advanced space-, air-, sea- and land-based sensors.
A U.S. liaison officer present for the planning of these counterattacks described the South Koreans as “playing whack-a-mole,” while the North Koreans were “shooting fish in a barrel.” South Korean forces were trying to find, identify and quickly strike North Korean targets—many of them mobile—in more than 8,000 square kilometers of mountains riddled with untold numbers of underground tunnels and bunkers. In comparison, the defenders of Paengyong were confined to a limited number of battle positions on a 45-square-kilometer island. Within hours, the chairman of the ROK joint chiefs of staff told his president and his U.S. counterpart that this was a losing proposition, and so a much stronger response, including direct U.S. military involvement, was called for. The “ironclad alliance” had already swung into motion…
While the allies were calibrating their next military actions to strike a decisive counterblow that would not trigger nuclear retaliation from North Korea, Beijing moved to intervene. PRC officials once again asserted China's “vital security interests” in the Yellow Sea, and its unwillingness to tolerate “chaos or war” on its doorstep. This time, however, it was more than rhetoric—it was backed by overwhelming military force. By the next day, hundreds of Chinese combat aircraft and dozens of warships were operating less than 20 miles west of Paengyong Island, backed by an umbrella of advanced air defense systems and sensors operating on the nearby Shandong Peninsula, a little more than 100 miles away. Beijing demanded an immediate cease-fire, with a “no-fly, no-sail” zone to separate the combatants.
This was a strategic shock to Seoul and Washington. Beijing held the initiative for the rest of the crisis…
With the announcement of the joint statement resulting from the negotiations that Beijing had forced on North and South Korea, the brief conflict came to an end, almost as abruptly as it began. The crisis had mercifully ended before the situation escalated to open warfare between the U.S. and China or to a North Korean nuclear strike. However, it had also ended before the military power of South Korea and the United States could be decisively brought to bear, before Washington and Seoul were able to demonstrate solidarity to counter coercion from Beijing and before North Korea could be held accountable for its aggression.
Early speculation by some American pundits that the attacks would lead to the end of the Kim regime were definitively proven wrong. Once again, this would not be “the last straw” for Beijing or Pyongyang's elites. Xi's initial ire at Kim's recklessness dissipated when it became clear that this unwanted crisis had elevated China's position vis-à-vis the U.S. Meanwhile, this signal victory vindicated Kim's choice to prioritize weapons and security over trade and prosperity—which cleared the way for domestic and international acquiescence to Kim family rule over a nuclear-armed North Korea for generations to come.
Beyond the hundreds of lives lost, it is clear to us today that the outcome of the crisis—highlighting the alliance's inability to counter North Korea's advancing missile capabilities and China's rising power—proved to be a mortal wound for the alliance itself. The depth of the loss of South Korean confidence in the U.S. was not obvious at the time, but in retrospect, the seemingly inconclusive Yellow Sea Crisis and the minor “battle of Paengyong Island” was a watershed moment in the decline of the ROK-U.S. military alliance and Beijing's rise to regional dominance.
It would take years, but the alliance's defeat in the Yellow Sea Crisis set in motion the chain of events that led later to the withdrawal of U.S. Forces Korea, then still later to the infamous Seoul Statement proclaiming the division of China and Korea as both “internal matters” to be resolved without foreign military interference. These events, in turn, set the political conditions leading to Beijing's decision to resolve the “Taiwan question” through force and the later collapse of the U.S. alliance system. If only Seoul and Washington had been better prepared and more resolute, the Yellow Sea Crisis could have instead cemented the strength of U.S. alliances and extended deterrence in the Western Pacific for decades to come…
For detailed analysis on the risk of a Yellow Sea Crisis like the scenario described above, and how to prepare for one, see the CNA occasional paper “North Korea's Arena of Asymmetric Advantage: Why We Should Prepare for a Crisis in the Yellow Sea.”
Markus Garlauskas is a part-time senior advisor for CNA's Countering Threats and Challenges program. He is a senior fellow (nonresident) with the Atlantic Council and an adjunct professor for Georgetown University's Security Studies Program. He served in the U.S. government for nearly 20 years, including as the National Intelligence Officer for North Korea, after assignments in U.S. Forces Korea as its Director of Strategy and its Chief of Intelligence Estimates.
cna.org · by CNA



12. Expectations on the rise in North Korea that trade with China will increase soon

What will happen if the regime does not reopen trade or halts it before it restarts or shuts it down again later? Or do these rising expectations mean the regime cannot keep the border closed?

Expectations on the rise in North Korea that trade with China will increase soon
A growing number of people are buying up foreign currency and preparing to take part in trade, even if the restart of China-North Korea freight train service proves temporary
By Seulkee Jang - 2022.01.26 3:57pm
Exchange rates in North Korea have been skyrocketing since the recent restart of China-North Korea freight train service. Even though North Korean authorities have not issued any specific orders regarding the restart of broader trade, traders and donju (wealthy entrepreneurs) are expecting imports to expand and are buying up foreign currency.
According to Daily NK’s regular survey of market prices in North Korea, the yuan was trading at KPW 860 in Pyongyang, KPW 870 in Sinuiju, and KPW 890 in Hyesan on Monday.
In the case of Sinuiju, the yuan had shot up KPW 170 in just four days from Jan. 20, just after the restart of China-North Korea freight train service, when it was trading at KPW 700.
The yuan has spiked 45% compared to Jan. 11, several days before a North Korean freight train pulled into the Chinese city of Dandong, when it was trading at KPW 590 in Pyongyang, KWP 600 in Sinuiju, and KPW 620 in Hyesan.
The dollar has similarly strengthened against the North Korean won. The dollar was trading at KPW 6,750 in Pyongyang, KPW 6,730 in Sinuiju, and KPW 6,675 in Hyesan on Monday. This was 43% higher than on Jan. 11.  
This increase in exchange rates appears due to expectations that China-North Korean trade will begin again.
Traders in North Korea speculate that with freight trains in operation, the border might be gradually reopening, even if small trading bases and private traders may not be able to take part in trade as freely as they did prior to January 2020. 
Moreover, North Korean tradeexpect the authorities to continue issuing temporary trade permits at least through Apr. 25 as they have designated the period between late North Korean leader Kim Jong Il’s 80th birthday on Feb. 16 to the 130th anniversary of the founding of the Korean People’s Army on Apr. 25 as the “greatest celebratory period of the nation.” 
Statues of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il inside the Kumsusan Palace of the Sun. / Image: Rodong Sinmun
The “greatest celebratory period of the nation” also includes Kim Jong Un’s appointment as first party secretary on Apr. 11, the anniversary of his appointment as first chairperson of the Central Military Commission on Apr. 13, and late national founder Kim Il Sung’s 110th birthday on Apr. 15.
North Korean authorities will apparently focus on supplying gifts to cadres and ordinary citizens and stabilizing prices to highlight the accomplishments of Kim’s predecessors and emphasize his leadership based on “love for the people.”
To do this, they must move to expand imports of foodstuffs, daily necessities, industrial goods, and other items.
As a result, a growing number of people are reportedly buying up foreign currency and preparing to take part in trade, even if the restart of China-North Korea freight train service proves temporary. 
Meanwhile, the price of gasoline and diesel oil has also spiked in the country. As of Monday, gasoline cost KPW 9,700 a kilogram in Pyongyang, KPW 10,100 in Sinuiju, and KPW 10,680 in Hyesan.
This was about 45% more than it cost on Jan. 11, when it was KPW 6,680 in Pyongyang, KPW 6,970 in Sinuiju, and KPW 7,440 in Hyesan.
Diesel prices have likewise skyrocketed. As of Monday, a kilogram of diesel cost KPW 6,440 in Pyongyang, KPW 6,620 in Sinuiju, and KPW 7,000 in Hyesan, an increase of 41-45% compared to Jan. 11.
However, the spike in North Korean oil prices appears due to rising exchange rates rather than reductions in imports.
A source in North Korea said that a lot of transportation fuel is needed to carry the goods currently stored at the Uiju quarantine facility across the country, but that is not why oil prices are climbing. According to him, the price of oil was naturally climbing as the dollar strengthened against the North Korean won, and that oil entered the country from China just a few days ago.
Seulkee Jang is one of Daily NK’s full-time journalists. Please direct any questions about her articles to dailynkenglish@uni-media.net.



13. Sinuiju people’s committee calls on parents to “take the lead” in following the party’s childcare and education policies

Even language is controlled by the party/regime. 


Sinuiju people’s committee calls on parents to “take the lead” in following the party’s childcare and education policies
The committee told parents to use the standard dialect of Pyongyang rather than regional dialects at home
By Jong So Yong - 2022.01.27 2:48pm
A recent meeting of the people’s committee of Sinuiju, North Pyongan Province, called on parents to better adhere to the party’s childcare and education policies by conducting home-based education in parallel with school-based education.
A source in North Pyongan Province told Daily NK on Wednesday that the people’s committee gathered the city’s dong (local district) chiefs on the morning of Jan. 17. At the meeting, the committee said that taking the lead in the party’s childcare and education policies — as stressed once again during the Fourth Plenary Meeting of the Eighth Central Committee — begins with parents following those policies at home.
According to the source, the people’s committee criticized the failure to properly carry out the party’s childcare and educational policies, and called on families to “educate the growing next generation well” by bringing together school education with home learning.
In particular, the people’s committee took issue with the recent phenomenon of parents failing to properly send their children to school, engaging them in business or errands rather than focusing on their education. It condemned this for causing “great damage” to the state’s childcare and educational policies.
The committee said that even after the meeting, inminban (people’s units) should wage a “struggle” against people sending their children to school only in the morning, using the afternoon and weekends to have them collect wild greens, engage in commerce, or go on errands to buy things.
An elementary school in North Korea. / Image: DPRK Today
The people’s committee said parents should stop thinking that classroom learning is enough, emphatically calling on them to teach their children Korean and arithmetic at home from the age of three — before they are of school age — to develop their intellectual skills, and to get in line with party ideology to turn the entire populace into a human resource by mastering subjects ahead of time “for their children’s future, too.”
The committee also called on parents to use the standard North Korean dialect of Pyongyang rather than regional dialects at home given how “the family is the cell of society,” and said dong offices and inminban chiefs should cooperate to help “problematic families.”
The source said the meeting recalled that Sinuiju is the proud home of Paeksa Primary School, which produced the “little poet” Kim Il Sin and was cited as a model of education during the days of late North Korean founder Kim Il Sung. He said it called on parents to keep this legacy going by cultivating even more “Kim Il Sins” and raising their children “as children of the proud party and children loyal to Kim Jong Un.”
After the meeting, the dong chiefs returned to their districts and called in their local inminban heads at 4 PM to relay the ideas emphasized during the people’s committee meeting. The inminban heads then called in inminban members at 8 PM to discuss the implementation of the party’s childcare and education policies.
However, the source said most of the locals who took part in the inminban meetings openly complained that they could not leisurely sit with their children and make them study as people starve to death with the border closure and when they must focus simply on putting food on the table.
Jong So Yong is one of Daily NK’s freelance reporters. Questions about her articles can be directed to dailynkenglish@uni-media.net.
14. Many 'promising things' can happen if N. Korea comes to dialogue table: Lambert

But I think it should be clear to north Korea that it will get nothing without negotiating and that the US will not make concessions and appease it in the face of increased tensions, threats, and provocations.


Many 'promising things' can happen if N. Korea comes to dialogue table: Lambert | Yonhap News Agency
en.yna.co.kr · by 변덕근 · January 27, 2022
By Byun Duk-kun
WASHINGTON, Jan. 26 (Yonhap) -- Many promising things can happen for North Korea if Pyongyang returns to the dialogue table with the U.S., Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Japan and Korea Mark Lambert said Wednesday.
The U.S. diplomat also stressed that the U.S. has "no reservations" regarding dialogue with North Korea.
"We have made it very clear to Pyongyang. We will go anywhere. We will talk about anything. There are no reservations we have," he said in a webinar hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington-based think tank.
"We have to have a serious discussion about the denuclearization of North Korea, and if North Korea is willing to do that, all sorts of promising things can happen," he added.

The remarks come amid North Korea's boycott of denuclearization talks with the U.S. since late 2019. Pyongyang is also ignoring all U.S. overtures since President Joe Biden took office a year ago on Jan. 20.
Lambert argued the COVID-19 pandemic may have prevented Pyongyang from returning to the dialogue table.
"I do think that COVID is playing a huge factor here," he said.
"The inability of the North Koreans to actually engage in any meaningful way with anyone, including their traditional friends in Moscow and Beijing, is affecting their ability to engage with us or with the South Koreans."
North Korea has maintained a strict border closure since the start early 2020, only to partially reopen its border with China earlier this month for cargo trains to and from China's border city of Dandong, according to earlier reports.
Lambert, who previously served as U.S. special envoy for North Korea, said he did not know what North Korean leader Kim Jong-un was thinking, but that he is a "rational player" and that he is in fact a top decision maker in North Korea.
"I do not know what is motivating Kim Jong-un or those around him. I am confident he is the decision maker. I think he's a rational player," he said.
His remarks come after North Korea staged five rounds of missile launches since the beginning of the year.
The U.S. diplomat stressed the importance of trilateral cooperation between the U.S., South Korea and Japan, as well as cooperation between the two U.S. allies to deal with North Korea, but also with many other issues such as supply chain resiliency.
"Our two closest allies in Asia Pacific are Korea and Japan. Our country is less secure when Korea and Japan are not cooperating," said Lambert.
"I would also argue that there is a recognition in both Seoul and in Tokyo that many of these challenges that we've talked about -- supply chain resilience ... need to have access to rare earths and the reliable flow of semiconductors and next generation batteries and other things -- would be best accomplished if Korea and Japan could work together," he added.
Seoul-Tokyo relations have been at their lowest ebb since mid-2019 when Japan began taking a series of economic steps, including the removal of South Korea from its list of trusted trade partners.
Many believe the Japanese measures were largely aimed at retaliating against Seoul court decisions that ordered Japanese firms to pay compensation to South Korean workers forced into labor during Japan's 1910-45 colonial rule of Korea.
Lambert expressed hope for improved relations between the two countries.
"I think I think this will be resolved to everyone's satisfaction. The question is when," he said, adding many people in both Seoul and Tokyo were already looking for an "off ramp."
bdk@yna.co.kr
(END)
en.yna.co.kr · by 변덕근 · January 27, 2022

15.











V/R
David Maxwell
Senior Fellow
Foundation for Defense of Democracies
Phone: 202-573-8647
Personal Email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com
Web Site: www.fdd.org
Twitter: @davidmaxwell161
Subscribe to FDD’s new podcast, Foreign Podicy
FDD is a Washington-based nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.

V/R
David Maxwell
Senior Fellow
Foundation for Defense of Democracies
Phone: 202-573-8647
Personal Email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com
Web Site: www.fdd.org
Twitter: @davidmaxwell161
Subscribe to FDD’s new podcastForeign Podicy
FDD is a Washington-based nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.

If you do not read anything else in the 2017 National Security Strategy read this on page 14:

"A democracy is only as resilient as its people. An informed and engaged citizenry is the fundamental requirement for a free and resilient nation. For generations, our society has protected free press, free speech, and free thought. Today, actors such as Russia are using information tools in an attempt to undermine the legitimacy of democracies. Adversaries target media, political processes, financial networks, and personal data. The American public and private sectors must recognize this and work together to defend our way of life. No external threat can be allowed to shake our shared commitment to our values, undermine our system of government, or divide our Nation."
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