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Quotes of the Day:
"I hate all politics. I don't like either political party. One should not belong to them - one should be an individual, standing in the middle. Anyone that belongs to a party stops thinking."
– Ray Bradbury
"A wise man proportions his belief to the evidence."
– David Hume
"We can shoot rockets into space but we can't cure anger or discontent."
– John Steinbeck
1. Anger and Agony in South Korea After Plane Crash-Lands, Killing 179
2. Questions raised on concrete mound at airport of Jeju Air crash
3. Investigators seek arrest warrant for Yoon in first for sitting president
4. S. Korea ranks 11th in defense spending in 2023: report
5. Vice FM asks new Chinese ambassador for his part in building better ties
6. Soldier's memo suggests North Korea sent convicts to Russia
7. Probing Yoon's insurrection charges
8. U.S. agencies, Boeing to join Jeju Air probe with Korea set to inspect all 737-800s
9. North Korea building new 3,000-ton frigate possibly with guided missiles, footage suggests
10. Interest in shamanism grows as political turmoil, societal pressures affect Koreans
11. Seoul, US to hold key nuclear deterrence talks next month
12. North Koreans kill themselves to avoid capture by Ukraine: US official
13. North Korea's Kim Jong-un Announces 'Strongest-Strongest Strategy toward the US'... Expert: "Intention to Highlight Presence Targeting Trump"
14. What North Korea Gains From Its Alliance With Russia — and What It Risks
15. Why South Korea Should Go Nuclear
16. How a Trump defence pick points to focus shift from North Korea to China for US Forces Korea
17. More questions than answers in South Korean passenger jet crash that killed 179, leaving 2 survivors
18. ‘Mayday, Mayday’: The Final Six Minutes Before the Deadly South Korean Plane Crash
1. Anger and Agony in South Korea After Plane Crash-Lands, Killing 179
Video at the link.
Anger and Agony in South Korea After Plane Crash-Lands, Killing 179
A Jeju Air passenger jet carrying 181 people from Bangkok sped off the runway and burst into flames. Two crew were rescued in what was the country’s worst air disaster in decades.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/29/world/asia/south-korea-plane-crash-jeju.html
South Korea Plane Crash Kills 179 People1:26
Only two people survived when a Jeju Air plane crashed at Muan Airport in South Korea on Sunday, the country’s worst aviation disaster in decades. Officials said they were investigating the cause.CreditCredit...Chang W. Lee/The New York Times
By Choe Sang-HunJohn Yoon and Jin Yu Young
Choe Sang-Hun and Jin Yu Young reported from Seoul, and John Yoon from Muan International Airport, South Korea.
Published Dec. 29, 2024
Updated Dec. 30, 2024, 12:47 a.m. ET
The passenger plane with 181 people onboard skidded on the runway at a high speed and slammed into a wall before exploding into flames.
Two crew members were rescued alive from the tail of the burning plane, but over the ensuing hours on Sunday, grim news trickled out to anxious relatives at Muan International Airport, in southwestern South Korea.
By late Sunday, all of the remaining 179 people onboard were confirmed dead, making the crash of the plane — flown by the popular low-cost carrier Jeju Air — the worst aviation disaster involving a South Korean airline in nearly three decades and the worst ever on South Korean soil.
Sunday’s crash was the deadliest worldwide since that of Lion Air Flight 610 in 2018, when all 189 people on board died as the plane plunged into the Java Sea, according to reports from the International Civil Aviation Organization, a United Nations agency.
Officials were investigating what caused the Jeju Air flight to crash-land, including why its landing gear appeared to have malfunctioned and whether the plane had been struck by birds.
As speculation swirled about the cause of the crash, hundreds of family members of passengers endured the painful wait for news of their loved ones returning home from a trip abroad. Wails and screams filled the Muan airport on Sunday afternoon. A young woman comforted an older woman weeping about her son. Two crying women embraced each other.
By Sunday evening, only 65 of the dead could be identified through their fingerprints and other means, officials said. A dozen bodies were so badly damaged that officials could not immediately identify their gender. Those who were identified included a 23-year-old flight attendant and a 78-year-old male passenger.
Image
Family members waiting for news at Muan International Airport in South Korea.Credit...Chang W. Lee/The New York Times
Jang Gu-ho, 68, sat stoically in the arrivals hall next to his teary-eyed wife after rushing from his home in the nearby city of Mokpo. He said five of his relatives had been on the plane returning from a vacation: his wife’s sister, her daughter, son-in-law and two grandchildren.
“We’re thunderstruck,” he said.
In a closed area of the airport, officials were working to identify the bodies they recovered from the crash site. When officials posted on the walls of the arrivals hall the names of those confirmed dead, people rushed to check the lists.
The disaster left South Korea in shock at a time when the country was grappling with a political crisis unleashed by President Yoon Suk Yeol’s ill-fated and short-lived declaration of martial law and his subsequent impeachment this month. Deputy Prime Minister Choi Sang-mok, an unelected official, rushed to the scene to deal with his biggest challenge since he took office as acting president on Friday.
The plane crash was especially shocking for the country because it has had no major aviation disaster on this scale after a spate of deadly air accidents in the 1990s and earlier. In the last major aviation accident involving a South Korean airline, a Korean Air jet slammed into a hill in Guam, a U.S. territory in the western Pacific, in 1997, killing 229 of the 254 people on board. In 2013, three people died and scores were injured after an Asiana Airlines flight clipped a sea wall and caught fire on approach to San Francisco.
It also appeared to have been the first fatal one for Jeju Air, which was established in 2005 and flies to dozens of countries in Asia. Kim E-bae, the chief executive of Jeju Air, bowed as he publicly apologized for the crash. He said that the exact cause of the crash was unclear.
Image
Emergency responders were still at the scene 10 hours after the plane crashed.Credit...Chang W. Lee/The New York Times
The plane, Jeju Air Flight 7C2216, a Boeing 737-800 jet, had taken off from Bangkok with 175 passengers and six crew members. All passengers were South Koreans, except for two Thai nationals. The jet was landing at Muan, in southwestern South Korea, when it ran into trouble.
Footage of the accident showed a white-and-orange plane speeding down a runway on its belly until it rammed into a barrier at the end of the runway, exploding into a fireball. Local news media cited witnesses describing the sound of the explosion and published photographs of large plumes of black smoke over the site.
The plane had broken into so many pieces that only its tail was immediately identifiable, said Lee Jeong-hyeon, an official in charge of search and rescue operations at the scene. The two crew members who survived had been rescued from the tail section.
“We could not recognize the rest of the fuselage,” Mr. Lee said.
As the death toll climbed, details of what happened in the final moments before the crash began to emerge.
Image
An official disclosing some of the names of passengers who died in the crash, at Muan International Airport.Credit...Soo-Hyeon Kim/Reuters
As the plane was preparing to land, the airport warned the pilots about a potential bird strike, said Ju Jong-wan, a director of aviation policy at the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport. Around this time, witnesses heard loud explosion-like sounds, MBC-TV reported. The channel broadcast footage showing flames trailing briefly from one of the plane’s engines.
The plane issued a mayday alert shortly after the warning from the airport, then crash-landed, Mr. Ju said. The pilot aborted his first attempt at landing and with permission from the control tower, was landing from the opposite direction when the disaster happened, officials said. Planes were allowed to land from both directions at the airport, they said.
The muddy tidal flats near Muan and much of the west coast of the Korean Peninsula are favorite resting places for migrant birds. Photographs in local media showed flocks of birds flying near the airport on Sunday.
Evidence suggested that the aircraft encountered a flock of birds during its approach, leading to suspected bird ingestion into the engines, said Marco Chan, a senior lecturer in aviation operations at the U.K.-based Buckinghamshire New University.
The damage may have caused a hydraulic system failure, which could explain the inability to deploy the landing gear, Mr. Chan said in an analysis emailed by his university.
The plane also did not appear to have activated its wing flaps, said Keith Tonkin, the managing director of Aviation Projects, an aviation consulting company in Brisbane, Australia, who reviewed video of the crash. That meant it was traveling faster than normal landing speed when it belly flopped on the runway, he said.
Aviation experts said investigations into the causes of crashes can take years.
Image
Temporary housing being set up for the families at Muan International Airport.Credit...Chang W. Lee/The New York Times
At the Muan airport, as officials told the crowd that they had confirmed the identities of some of the people, and announced their names, some began to cry. Others grew angry and raised their voices in frustration: “Speak up!” “Print out the names!” Several hours after the crash, people expressed frustration that they had to wait so long for news about their relatives. “Let us have the list so we can at least find a hospital!” one woman shouted.
People crowded around an official to check if their relatives were on a list of those confirmed dead. Some relatives had given DNA samples to officials at the airport to help identify the bodies.
In the departures hall, temporary tents were set up on Sunday evening for families of the plane’s passengers and crew. Outside the airport, cars lined up to enter the packed parking lots. Some parked on the shoulders of the roads leading to the terminal, and people continued to stream into the airport through the evening.
Six hours after they dashed to the airport, Mr. Jang and his wife were still waiting for their relatives to be identified.
“I’m expecting it to be a long night,” he said.
Reporting was contributed by Yan Zhuang, River Akira Davis, Niraj Chokshi and Sui-Lee Wee.
Choe Sang-Hun is the lead reporter for The Times in Seoul, covering South and North Korea. More about Choe Sang-Hun
John Yoon is a Times reporter based in Seoul who covers breaking and trending news. More about John Yoon
Jin Yu Young reports on South Korea, the Asia Pacific region and global breaking news from Seoul. More about Jin Yu Young
A version of this article appears in print on Dec. 30, 2024, Section A, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: Anger And Agony Over Fiery Crash Of Korean Plane. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe
2. Questions raised on concrete mound at airport of Jeju Air crash
What were they thinking when they constructed it?
(News Focus) Questions raised on concrete mound at airport of Jeju Air crash | Yonhap News Agency
en.yna.co.kr · by Chae Yun-hwan · December 30, 2024
By Chae Yun-hwan
MUAN, South Korea, Dec. 30 (Yonhap) -- Questions have grown over the existence of a concrete mound at the airport of the Jeju Air plane crash this week and whether its absence could have prevented the accident's high number of casualties.
On Sunday, the Jeju Air plane made a belly landing at Muan International Airport in the southwestern county, 288 kilometers south of Seoul, before it overran the runway and exploded as it crashed into the mound, killing 179 of the 181 people on board.
The concrete structure in question holds a navigation system that assists in aircraft landings, known as a localizer, and is located about 250 meters from the end of the runway.
The 2-meter tall structure is covered with dirt and including the localizer, it is 4 meters high. The mound is known to have been built as the localizer was replaced last year.
Airport officials said the mound was raised to keep the localizer level with the runway to ensure it functions properly as the ground at the end of the runway is slanted.
Some experts and observers have raised questions over the mound and whether more lives could have been saved if it was not there as the aircraft skidded about 1,600 meters on the runway before colliding with the structure.
"I've seen many antennas in many airports but it's the first time I've seen such a type," a pilot who requested anonymity said, referring to the localizer. "Even if you want to make the antenna taller, there is no need to build a concrete wall."
The transport ministry has said in briefings that the localizer is installed about 251 meters off the runway and that some other airports in the country also have the equipment installed with concrete structures.
It has also pointed to other airports overseas that have used concrete for such structures.
Authorities are currently investigating the exact cause of the accident.
The remains of 141 of the 179 people killed in the crash have tentatively been identified, according to the transport ministry.
Authorities investigate the wreckage of a crashed Jeju Air plane at Muan International Airport in the southwestern county, 288 kilometers south of Seoul, on Dec. 30, 2024. (Yonhap)
yunhwanchae@yna.co.kr
(END)
en.yna.co.kr · by Chae Yun-hwan · December 30, 2024
3. Investigators seek arrest warrant for Yoon in first for sitting president
(3rd LD) Investigators seek arrest warrant for Yoon in first for sitting president | Yonhap News Agency
en.yna.co.kr · by Lee Haye-ah · December 30, 2024
(ATTN: UPDATES with response of Yoon's legal defense team)
By Lee Haye-ah
SEOUL, Dec. 30 (Yonhap) -- A joint investigation team said Monday it has sought an arrest warrant for President Yoon Suk Yeol over his short-lived imposition of martial law, making him the first sitting president to face arrest.
The team said it sought the warrant on insurrection and abuse of power charges after Yoon ignored three summonses to appear for questioning.
The request was filed with the Seoul Western District Court at midnight Sunday, according to the team comprised of the Corruption Investigation Office for High-ranking Officials (CIO), the police and the defense ministry's investigation unit.
Investigators say Yoon led an insurrection and abused his power when he declared martial law on Dec. 3 and allegedly ordered troops to the National Assembly to stop lawmakers from voting down the decree.
Yoon has denied the charges, saying his declaration of martial law was an "act of governance" to warn the opposition party against what he described as its abuse of legislative power.
Later in the day, Yoon's legal defense team submitted an opinion on the arrest warrant request to the court, claiming it should be dismissed because the CIO is not authorized to investigate insurrection charges.
Yun Gap-geun, one of Yoon's legal representatives, said it is juristically wrong to argue that just because the CIO can investigate abuse of power charges, it can also investigate insurrection charges by association.
Yun submitted a notice of attorney appointment to the court alongside lawyer Kim Hong-il.
President Yoon Suk Yeol gives a public statement at the presidential office on Dec. 12, 2024, denouncing the main opposition Democratic Party for paralyzing state affairs with its abuse of impeachments, in this file photo provided by Yoon's office. (PHOTO NOT FOR SALE) (Yonhap)
hague@yna.co.kr
(END)
en.yna.co.kr · by Lee Haye-ah · December 30, 2024
4. S. Korea ranks 11th in defense spending in 2023: report
And this is why South Korea can be a partner in the Arsenal of Democracy.
S. Korea ranks 11th in defense spending in 2023: report | Yonhap News Agency
en.yna.co.kr · by Chae Yun-hwan · December 30, 2024
SEOUL, Dec. 30 (Yonhap) -- South Korea was the 11th-largest defense spender in the world last year, a report showed Monday, as the country seeks to strengthen its defense capabilities against North Korean military threats.
In 2023, South Korea spent US$47.9 billion on defense, placing just outside the top 10 defense spenders, according to the report from the Korea Research Institute for Defense Technology Planning and Advancement.
The United States topped last year's list at $916 billion, followed by China at $296 billion and Russia at $109 billion.
The report also showed that the U.S. accounted for 42 percent of the global arms export market from 2019 to 2023, followed by France and Russia, tied at 11 percent, and China at 5.8 percent. South Korea ranked 10th with a 2 percent share.
The defense research institute said its estimates are based on data provided by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.
This file photo, taken Jan. 2, 2024, shows a K2 tank taking part in live-fire drills at a firing range in Pocheon, about 40 kilometers northeast of Seoul. (Yonhap)
yunhwanchae@yna.co.kr
(END)
en.yna.co.kr · by Chae Yun-hwan · December 30, 2024
5. Vice FM asks new Chinese ambassador for his part in building better ties
The ROK government continues to function despite the political turmoil.
(LEAD) Vice FM asks new Chinese ambassador for his part in building better ties | Yonhap News Agency
en.yna.co.kr · by Kim Seung-yeon · December 30, 2024
(ATTN: ADDS details on China's foreign ministry's statement, working-level talks in last 6 paras)
By Kim Seung-yeon
SEOUL, Dec. 30 (Yonhap) -- First Vice Foreign Minister Kim Hong-kyun asked Chinese Ambassador-designate to South Korea Dai Bing on Monday to make efforts to help improve bilateral relations, Seoul's foreign ministry said.
Kim made the call during his first in-person meeting with Dai, days after Dai arrived in Seoul to assume his new post that had been left vacant since his predecessor, Xing Haiming, departed in July.
Kim expressed hope that the two countries would continue exchanges and cooperation in various fields, including the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summits, which will be consecutively hosted by the two neighboring countries in the next two years.
South Korea is next year's APEC host and China will host the 2026 summit.
Kim thanked China for its condolence message from Chinese President Xi Jinping over Sunday's deadly plane crash in Muan that killed 179 people.
Dai, in turn, expressed thanks to the Seoul government for the warm welcome, vowing to closely work with Seoul to help further develop the bilateral relationship.
Dai arrived in Seoul last Friday to take on his new role. He previously served as the deputy Chinese ambassador to the United Nations.
Chinese Ambassador-designate Dai Bing enters the foreign ministry building in Seoul on Dec. 30, 2024. (Yonhap)
Speaking to reporters prior to the meeting, Dai stressed that bilateral relations should continue to move forward despite it being a "difficult time" in Korea.
"I know that it's a difficult time right now, but China will not intervene in (Korea's) state affairs," Dai said, as he entered the ministry building. "Although it's a difficult time, our relations cannot stop."
On the same day, Dai presented a copy of his credentials to a senior Seoul foreign ministry official, a diplomatic procedure required by a foreign envoy before formally presenting the credence to the host country's leader.
Once the letter of credence is received, the envoy is considered to have officially assumed office.
The credentials submitted by Dai reportedly show Prime Minister Han Duck-soo as the recipient. Han has also been impeached and suspended from duties and Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Choi Sang-mok has taken over as the acting president.
In light of Han's impeachment, China's foreign ministry on Monday expressed a willingness to actively engage with South Korea to deepen the bilateral relationship.
"We are willing to make active efforts to deepen the bilateral friendly cooperation and strategic cooperative partnership with South Korea, an important neighbor and a partner for cooperation," the ministry said.
"China upholds the principle of non-interference in internal affairs and believes that the Korean people have the wisdom and ability to adequately resolve their domestic issues," it added.
Also on Monday, working-level talks took place between Kang Young-shin, director general for Northeast and Central Asian affairs of the South Korean foreign ministry, and Liu Jinsong, director general for Asian affairs at China's foreign ministry, the Seoul ministry said in a separate release.
Discussions centered on bilateral relations and issues related to the Korean Peninsula, and ways to advance bilateral cooperation.
Kang and Liu agreed to work together on the APEC hosting and continue strategic communication on peninsula issues, the ministry said.
elly@yna.co.kr
(END)
en.yna.co.kr · by Kim Seung-yeon · December 30, 2024
6. Soldier's memo suggests North Korea sent convicts to Russia
Soldier's memo suggests North Korea sent convicts to Russia
https://www.chosun.com/english/north-korea-en/2024/12/29/T5GHHIBJDBCQRLKOTWXE55EUAI/
By Kim Myung-il,
Lee Jae-eun
Published 2024.12.29. 16:31
Updated 2024.12.30. 09:39
A footage of alleged North Korean troops deployed to Russia, released by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. /Telegram
A fragment of a note written by a North Korean soldier who died while deployed in Russia’s war against Ukraine suggests that Pyongyang may have sent convicts to support Russia.
Ukraine’s Special Operations Forces revealed a memo allegedly written by a soldier identified as Jung Kyung-hong via Telegram on Dec. 28. Jung was killed during battle in the Kursk region of Russia.
“I was blessed with the opportunity to be promoted to platoon master sergeant, but I betrayed the party and was ungrateful to the supreme commander,” he wrote in the memo. “The crime I committed cannot be forgiven, but the motherland has given me a new chance in life.”
“If I return to my homeland after winning this war, I will petition my mother’s party,” he added. The exact nature of his intended petition was not clarified.
The content suggests that some North Korean soldiers sent to Russia may be former criminals who were promised reduced sentences or a clean slate upon their return. Ukrainian military officials speculate that Jeong may have been demoted as punishment for past misconduct despite his prior promotion opportunity and sent to Russia.
Possibly driven by the hope of redemption, Jeong vowed in the memo, “In this operation, I will run to the front of the line and unconditionally follow the orders of the Supreme Commander Comrade Kim Jong-un even at the cost of my life.” He pledged to “show the world the undefeated bravery and sacrifice of Kim Jong-un’s special forces.”
The Ukrainian military also disclosed that additional notes were recovered from Jeong’s body and promised to release the translations in the coming days.
A memo written by a fallen North Korean soldier in the Kursk region of Russia. / Yonhap
North Korea
Russia
Ukraine
Kursk
North Korean soldier
7. Probing Yoon's insurrection charges
Probing Yoon's insurrection charges
donga.com
Posted December. 30, 2024 08:05,
Updated December. 30, 2024 08:05
Probing Yoon's insurrection charges. December. 30, 2024 08:05. .
As the investigation into South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol’s declaration of martial law deepens, new testimonies have emerged, alleging that Yoon had been discussing “emergency measures” for over a year to curb opposition legislative dominance and address alleged election fraud. While one of these measures catapulted him to the nation’s highest office, the other failed amid constitutional and legal challenges and lack of public support, leaving President Yoon facing impeachment proceedings and allegations of leading an insurrection.
Citizens are enduring the pain of witnessing a president, who once thrived on emergency measures, now faltering under them, as constitutional order remains unrestored for nearly a month. It is hard to see a former prosecutor general and sitting president resort to tactics such as "refusing to receive legal notices." The public is observing the stark contrast between his past actions—swiftly arresting National Intelligence Service (NIS) personnel without reporting to superiors—and his current refusal to comply with summonses from the prosecution and the Corruption Investigation Office for High-ranking Officials (CIO).
On Sunday, President Yoon once again refused the CIO's third summons. It now appears unlikely that he will voluntarily appear. Just as he once urgently investigated the NIS as a prosecutor, an emergency response to President Yoon is now imperative. The CIO must fully mobilize measures such as applying for an arrest warrant to promptly prevent evidence destruction. Furthermore, the Presidential Security Service must refrain from committing the grave mistake of obstructing the CIO's emergency measures. The public is calling for urgent action to restore constitutional order, and the Presidential Security Service’s loyalty should lie not with the president but with the people.
한국어
donga.com
8. U.S. agencies, Boeing to join Jeju Air probe with Korea set to inspect all 737-800s
U.S. agencies, Boeing to join Jeju Air probe with Korea set to inspect all 737-800s
https://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/news/2024-12-30/business/industry/US-agencies-Boeing-to-join-Jeju-Air-probe-with-Korea-set-to-inspect-all-737800s/2211960
Published: 30 Dec. 2024, 18:33
Updated: 30 Dec. 2024, 19:46
- SARAH CHEA
- chea.sarah@joongang.co.kr
Korea JoongAng Daily
U.S. agencies, Boeing to join Jeju Air probe with Korea set to inspect all 737-800s
4 min
Audio report: written by reporters, read by AI
The tail section of a Jeju Air airplane, a Boeing 737-800 aircraft, remains crashed at Muan International Airport in South Jeolla on Dec. 30, a day after a fatal incident that killed 179 passengers and crew onboard. [YONHAP]
Korea's transportation authorities will be joined by U.S. safety inspectors and Boeing personnel in the investigation into the Jeju Air disaster in Muan, South Jeolla, that killed 179 on Sunday, while the country also plans to inspect every domestically operated plane of the same model as the aircraft in the crash.
Two officials from the National Transportation Safety Board were set to lead a U.S. inspection team comprising Boeing staff scheduled to arrive in Korea Monday night, along with officials from the Federal Aviation Administration coming at an unannounced date, to determine the exact cause of the fatal accident, assisting in analyzing the black boxes collected from the airplane.
Related Article
The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport on Monday began analyzing the two recorders retrieved from the Boeing 737-800 narrow-body aircraft involved in the crash, which it said could take months to fully decode.
The two devices are the Flight Data Recorder (FDR), which records and preserves the aircraft's three-dimensional flight path and operational status, and the Cockpit Voice Recorder, which records the conversations of cockpit crew members as well as communication between the crew and air traffic control. Both play critical roles in identifying the cause of aviation accidents.
The FDR, however, suffered partial damage during the crash, which has raised concerns about the ability to extract the data.
Joo Jong-wan, director of aviation policy at the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport, speaks about the details about the airplane crash during a briefing at the Sejong Government Complex on Dec. 30. [MINISTRY OF LAND, INFRASTRUCTURE AND TRANSPORT]
The ministry also said that it will launch a full inspection of the 101 Boeings 737-800s operating locally.
The emergency examination comes as another Jeju Air jet, also a 737, that took off for Jeju had to make a return to Gimpo International Airport after experiencing a landing gear malfunction.
“We are reviewing a plan for a comprehensive safety inspection of all 737-800 jets run by local carriers, such as their inspection and maintenance records,” said Joo Jong-wan, director of aviation policy at the Transport Ministry, during a briefing at the Sejong Government Complex on Monday.
“We will also take a close look at whether local airlines’ maintenance systems comply with policies.”
The 737-800, with a length of 39.47 meters (129.5 feet) and a maximum of 189 passenger seats, is the best-selling variant of the U.S. aircraft manufacturer's 737 model. With its narrow and thin body, the plane is designed for short- or medium-haul routes.
The airplane involved in the latest crash was made in November 2009, and Jeju Air had been operating it since February 2017. The airline currently operates 41 jets, 39 of which are 737-800 aircraft.
The model is particularly popular among low-cost budget carriers. T’way Air owns 27 units while Jin Air has 19, Easter Jet has 10, Air Incheon has four and Korean Air has two, according to data from the Transport Ministry.
A screen capture from a map app's street view feature of Muan International Airport that shows concrete on top of piles of dirt, topped with a localizer, which is suspected of contributing to the severity of the the Jeju Air airplane crash on Dec. 29. [SCREEN CAPTURE]
The Korean government on Monday also vowed to conduct a thorough review of the potential relevance to the crash of a concrete barrier installed at the end of the runway.
Footage of the disaster shows the airplane descending without its landing gear deployed, skidding across the runway before crashing into a concrete embankment and exploding into flames, giving rise to suspicions that the barrier was a contributor to such a drastic fatality number of 179.
The concrete embankment elevated what in the aviation industry is known as a localizer, is a horizontal guidance device that helps aircraft land safely and is usually made of lighter material in a fence-like structure that enables airplanes to easily push them away upon contact. At Muan airport, the embankment likely worsened the shock of the impact.
“The localizer is installed about 251 meters from the end of the runway safety area at Muan International Airport, and the installation of the barrier is regulated and not arbitrary,” Joo said. “Similar concrete structures exist at airports like Yeosu and Cheongju.”
BY SARAH CHEA [chea.sarah@joongang.co.kr]
9. North Korea building new 3,000-ton frigate possibly with guided missiles, footage suggests
North Korea building new 3,000-ton frigate possibly with guided missiles, footage suggests
https://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/news/2024-12-30/national/northKorea/North-Korea-building-new-3000ton-frigate-possibly-with-guided-missiles-footage-suggests/2211798
Published: 30 Dec. 2024, 15:01
- LIM JEONG-WON
- lim.jeongwon@joongang.co.kr
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, center, attends the completion ceremony for the Sinpo Seaside Fish Farm in Sinpo on Dec. 28. [YONHAP]
North Korea released footage of a new 3,000-ton frigate under construction for the first time on Monday through its state media, with leader Kim Jong-un reportedly having visited the construction site some days before.
The ship revealed through the state-run Korean Central Television on Monday was larger than the existing 1,500-ton frigates manufactured by North Korea, and experts say it is likely Pyongyang’s first guided missile frigate equipped with a vertical launching system (VLS). North Korea may have also received related technology from Russia.
The Korean Central Television released a photo of Kim visiting the construction site of the frigate as it reported on the expanded plenary session of the ruling Workers’ Party at the end of the year.
Kim's visit to the construction site of the new ship had not been reported before.
Kim was seen on board a frigate under construction and providing on-site guidance. The new ship in the footage is notably larger than North Korea's previously disclosed Yalu-class 1,500-ton frigates.
Related Article
However, Korean Central Television did not disclose the exact time or location of Kim’s visit to the construction site. The new frigate may be under construction at Nampo Shipyard in South Pyongan Province, which Kim supervised in February this year.
“Strengthening naval power is the most important issue today,” Kim said during his February visit to Nampo Shipyard. “We need to unconditionally execute all shipbuilding projects decided by the 8th Congress of the Workers’ Party of Korea within the five-year plan period."
At the time, the outline of the new frigate was not disclosed, but the footage and report Monday show evidence that considerable progress has been made in the ship's construction. Judging from Kim's thick leather jacket in the released footage, his visit appears to have occurred around October or November.
“The new frigate looks similar to the Russian Admiral Grigorovich-class (3,600-tons) frigate in terms of appearance,” said Hong Min, a senior researcher at the Korea Institute for National Unification (KINU). “It could be an attempt by North Korea to significantly strengthen its conventional power, including its inferior naval power as well as nuclear and missile capabilities, through cooperation with Russia.”
A new 3,000-ton frigate being built by the North Korean Navy is seen in this image released by the state-run Korean Central Television on Sunday. [SCREEN CAPTURE]
Previously, Kim revealed his plan to modernize his naval arsenal in a speech at the launching ceremony of the Sinpo C-class Kim Gun-ok ship on Sept. 6 last year, with observers saying the North Korean leader may have had technological cooperation with Russia in mind, including submarines and surface ships.
In particular, Russia’s Admiral Grigorovich-class frigates are stealthy warships equipped with a VLS for antiaircraft and antiship missiles, strengthening their air defense capabilities.
Russian military bloggers say that based on the released footage, it appears that North Korea "is trying to install vertical launchers such as Russia's UKSK 3S-14 or the U.S. Mark 41" on the frigates and that the ship "could be the first frigate in the North Korean fleet to be equipped with guided missiles.”
Kim has spurred the construction of the next generation of submarines and surface ships, with strengthening naval power included in the five major national defense tasks presented at the 8th Congress of the Workers’ Party of Korea in January 2021.
Recently, South Korean military authorities have detected the construction of a new submarine at Sinpo Shipyard on the East Sea.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un visits the construction site of a new 3,000-ton frigate, in this undated image released by the state-run Korean Central Television on Sunday. [SCREEN CAPTURE]
Furthermore, Kim has continued his year-end activities to highlight his image as a leader who cares for the people.
According to the ruling party newspaper Rodong Sinmun on Sunday, Kim gave a speech at the completion ceremony of the newly built Sinpo Seaside Fish Farm in Pungeo-dong in Sinpo, South Hamgyong Province, the previous day.
“What was once a pine forest and white sand beach just five months ago has now become a fish farm,” Kim said in his speech, according to the Rodong Sinmum report. “This is a historic feat of local revitalization.”
The construction of the Sinpo Seaside Fish Farm is part of the "20×10 regional development policy" that Kim touts as a recent achievement. This was Kim’s first visit to the farm in five months since July.
Some say the visit may also be part of efforts to idolize Kim, as the exterior of the Sinpo Seaside Fish Farm building bears slogans such as, “Long live the great Comrade Kim Jong-un’s revolutionary ideology.”
At the same time, given that Sinpo has a submarine base, it is also possible that Kim made an unofficial visit to the base on a multipurpose trip.
Meanwhile, Pak Tae-song, Kim’s closest aide and new premier of the North Korean Cabinet, appointed at the expanded plenary session of the Central Committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea held from Dec. 23 to 27, has also begun his official activities.
According to the state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) on Monday, Pak began itinerary items such as sending a condolence message for the death of former Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.
BY LEE YOO-JUNG, LIM JEONG-WON [lim.jeongwon@joongang.co.kr]
10. Interest in shamanism grows as political turmoil, societal pressures affect Koreans
Interest in shamanism grows as political turmoil, societal pressures affect Koreans
https://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/news/2024-12-30/national/socialAffairs/Interest-in-shamanism-grows-as-political-turmoil-societal-pressures-affect-Koreans/2211895
Published: 30 Dec. 2024, 19:46
A fortune-telling shop in Ansan, Gyeonggi, is known to have been run by former Defense Intelligence Command chief Noh Sang-won, who is alleged to be behind President Yoon Suk Yeol’s botched martial law imposition on Dec. 3. [NEWS1]
Social turmoil in the country has led more Korean people to lean on shamanism, with an marked increase in interest.
The number of businesses registered for fortune-telling and similar services has been on the rise and major political figures, including former President Yoon Suk Yeol, have drawn controversy for their links to shamanism.
Yoon faced public scrutiny during the 2021 presidential debate when a Chinese character meaning "king" was spotted drawn on his palm as speculations surfaced it was something based on his shamanic beliefs.
The accusations surrounding former Defense Intelligence Command chief Noh Sang-won — allegedly behind Yoon's botched martial law imposition on Dec. 3 — go a step further, as he was also revealed to have run his own fortune-telling business.
Related Article
According to data by Statistics Korea from April 2022, the number of registered business offering divination and similar services reached 9,391, with 10,194 people working in the industry — up five percent from 2020, when there were 8,942 businesses and 9,692 workers.
The actual number of shamanic practitioners, however, is believed to be much higher.
Kyungcheonshinmyeonghoe, the country’s largest shamanic organization, said that 30,000 shamans are registered as its members, with many more working independently.
These shamans are not hiding anymore, as they are expanding their reach through platforms like YouTube. Some videos by fortune tellers sharing their views on state affairs and the future of the nation are garnering more views than the videos uploaded by political analysts or experts on the same topic.
Numerous fortune-telling YouTubers have 300,000 to 500,000 followers, such as YouTuber GoldPepper.
A YouTube video titled “Korean Peninsula will reconcile in 2025, but...” uploaded by shamanic YouTuber Spirituality and Wisdom, with 18,400 subscribers, in September garnered over 1.16 million views and 1,200 comments as of Monday.
Similarly, a short video summarizing predictions by the legendary Bulgarian fortune teller Baba Vanga, released in December last year, surpassed 10 million views, with over 170,000 likes and over 6,240 comments.
Dried fish used during shamanistic practices are found at the fortune-telling shop run by former Defense Intelligence Command chief Noh Sang-won. [NEWS1]
The recent surge in interest in shamanism can be attributed to social unrest amid rapid societal changes brought on by the digital transformation, artificial intelligence and heated competition among individuals, experts say.
Cultural psychologist Dr. Han Min says that a shaman's ability to provide predictions that no one else can draws interest from people.
“Everyone must be curious about the future, but those who lack a support system are especially drawn to fortune-telling that is based on the 'Four Pillars of Life’ principles,” said Dr. Han. “People find it compelling because shamans offer unconventional solutions to national challenges, such as the low birthrate, unification and the climate crisis, which even media and academia fail to address effectively.”
Experts say shamans serve as alternative psychological counselors as societal trust erodes and attachment relationship weaken amid escalating gender conflicts and a rise in single-person households in the country.
“The younger generation, facing challenges in employment and marriage, wants to hear words of hope," said Lee Eun-hee, professor of the Department of Consumer and Child Studies at Inha University. “For many, shamanism serve as a form of counseling."
Prof. Uriya Shavit from Tel Aviv University, who has extensively studied Korean shamanism, said, "Turning to an exorcist is less about believing in God and more about seeking someone trustworthy to confide in."
A notice along with goods used during shamanistic practices are seen at the fortune-telling shop run by former Defense Intelligence Command chief Noh Sang-won. [NEWS1]
Another key factor driving the growing interest in shamanism is Korea’s distinct religious landscape.
According to a census conducted by Ipsos, 53 percent of Koreans identified as having no religion, the highest percentage among the 26 major countries surveyed. Moreover, only 33 percent of Koreans said they believe in the existence of God, a figure second only to Japan. Such lack of religious affiliation has created fertile ground for the rise of shamanism.
The increasing emphasis on emotional well-being over doctrinal faith has also paved the way for shamanism.
For those who do practice religion, the most common reason has changed to the pursuit of "peace of mind" across Korea’s three major religions — Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam — surpassing the traditional reasons, such as reincarnation, salvation or eternal life, according to a 2023 survey by the research firm, numbers.
A total of 42 percent cited "peace of mind" as their primary reason for adhering to religion, while 36 percent prioritized salvation and eternal life. This latest tendency ultimately opened more people up to finding emotional peace through shamanism.
Moreover, while social contradictions and unrest are intensifying, the political establishment, which is supposed to lead the way in resolving such unrest, has instead exacerbated the conflict, as evidenced by the botched martial law imposition.
The winner-take-all, two-party political system that has been in place since 1987 is largely to blame for this, which fostered polarized factionalism and amplified animosity.
Rational political debate becomes impossible, and ineligible voices dominate public discourse, while conspiracy theories — like voter fraud claims — flourish. This ethical and philosophical vacuum contribute to the resurgence of shamanism.
Political sociologists say that in Korean society — where individual’s religious freedom is respected — finding solace through shamanism should not be criticized, but becomes problematic only when it begins to influence public leadership.
“It's not that politics based on deviations hasn't existed in the past,” said Lee Jae-mook, a professor of political science and diplomacy at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, “it's just more visible now that society has become more transparent. People have become more politically aware. So, how can we understand someone who is mentally and physically weak enough to rely on divination to exercise authority?”
“The suspicion that policy decisions are influenced by deviations itself is a tragedy,” said Koo Jeong-woo, a professor of sociology at Sungkyunkwan University, emphasizing that “social reflection is urgent to steer the country toward a space where rational debates can take place."
BY KANG HYE-RAN, HONG JI-YOO, WOO JI-WON [woo.jiwon@joongang.co.kr]
11. Seoul, US to hold key nuclear deterrence talks next month
Seoul, US to hold key nuclear deterrence talks next month
The Korea Times · December 29, 2024
Korea's First Vice Foreign Minister Kim Hong-kyun, left, Deputy Defense Minister for Policy Cho Chang-rae, right, Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Bonnie Jenkins, second from left, and acting Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Cara Abercrombie participate in a press conference at the State Department in Washington, D.C., in this Sept. 4, file photo. Yonhap
Korea and the United States plan to hold key nuclear deterrence talks next month, officials said Sunday, as the allies agreed to fully resume bilateral diplomatic and security schedules postponed in the aftermath of President Yoon Suk Yeol's botched martial law bid.
Seoul and Washington had planned to hold the fourth session of the Nuclear Consultative Group (NCG) in the U.S. capital earlier this month, but it was postponed after Yoon's short-lived imposition of martial law on Dec. 3.
The fourth session of the NCG will be held in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 10, the defense ministry said.
The NCG was launched last year as part of the Washington Declaration that Yoon and U.S. President Joe Biden issued during their White House summit in April to strengthen the credibility of America's extended deterrence commitment to using the full range of its military capabilities, including nuclear arms, to defend its ally. (Yonhap)
The Korea Times · December 29, 2024
12. North Koreans kill themselves to avoid capture by Ukraine: US official
The nKPA actually has tactics for various ways to commit sucide rather than risk capture. We saw those in the Sango sub infiltration of 1996.
North Koreans kill themselves to avoid capture by Ukraine: US official
The U.S. said Russian and North Korean military leaders are treating the troops as ‘consumables.’
By Taejun Kang for RFA
https://www.rfa.org/english/korea/2024/12/30/north-korea-casualties-ukraine-russia/
2024.12.29
U.S. national security spokesperson John Kirby speaks during a press briefing at the White House in Washington, U.S., March 25, 2024. (Elizabeth Frantz/Reuters)
TAIPEI, Taiwan – Some North Korean soldiers are taking their own lives rather than surrender to Ukrainian forces in fighting in Russia’s Kursk region, said a senior U.S. official, while Ukraine reported instances of the North Korean military “executing” its own troops to prevent their capture.
The North Korean military has mounted a massive but “hopeless” attack on Ukrainian forces in Kursk on the orders of the Russian and North Korean military leadership, said White House National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby.
“These North Korean soldiers appear to be highly indoctrinated, pushing attacks even when it is clear that those attacks are futile,” Kirby told a briefing on Friday.
“We also have reports of North Korean soldiers taking their own lives rather than surrendering to Ukrainian forces, likely out of fear of reprisal against their families in North Korea in the event that they’re captured.”
Kirby said North Korean human wave tactics “haven’t really been all that effective.”
“In fact, we assess that they’ve resulted in heavy casualties for these North Korean forces. Our estimate is that, to date, they have suffered more than 1,000 killed or wounded in this particular fighting in just the past week,” he added.
Neither Russia nor North Korea have acknowledged that North Korean soldiers are even involved in the fighting in Kursk, let alone made any comment about casualties.
Radio Free Asia was not able to independently verify accounts of the fighting and casualty estimates.
Up to 12,000 North Korean soldiers are in Russia to support its war efforts against Ukraine in Kursk, Ukraine and the U.S. say, and Ukraine has reported more than 3,000 casualties among them. South Korea estimates at least 1,100 North Koreans have been killed or wounded.
“It is clear that Russia and North Korean military leaders are treating the troops as consumables and ordering a hopeless attack on Ukraine,” Kirby said.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy also reported massive losses among North Korean soldiers in Kursk, saying that both Russia and North Korea had “no interest” in saving North Korean soldiers.
“They have many losses. A great deal. And we can see that the Russian military and the North Korean enforcers have no interest in the survival of these Koreans at all,” said Zelenskyy on Friday.
“Everything is arranged in a way that makes it impossible for us to capture the Koreans as prisoners – their own people are executing them, there are such cases.”
The Ukrainian leader urged China to influence North Korea, emphasizing Beijing’s responsibility to ensure the war in Ukraine does not escalate.
“The Korean nation should not lose its people in the battles in Europe. And this can be influenced, particularly by Korea’s neighbors, especially China,” said Zelenskyy.
“If China is sincere in its statements that the war should not escalate, it must exert appropriate pressure on Pyongyang,” he added.
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China has not commented on North Korea’s deployment except to say the development of relations between Russia and North Korea was solely for them to decide.
But Kurt Campbell, the U.S. deputy secretary of state, said in November that China was increasingly uncomfortable about North Korea’s engagement with Russia and found their growing cooperation unnerving.
“The topic that is becoming increasingly uncomfortable for Chinese interlocutors is the DPRK engagement with Russia,” said Cambell during a seminar at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington thinktank, referring to North Korea by its official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
“In some of the discussions we have had it seems we are informing them of things that they were unaware of with regard to DPRK pursuits, and they are concerned that Russian encouragement might lead the DPRK to contemplate either actions or military actions that might not be in China’s interests.
“China has not weighed in directly to criticise Russia but we do believe that the increasing coordination between Pyongyang and Moscow is unnerving them.”
Edited by RFA Staff.
13. North Korea's Kim Jong-un Announces 'Strongest-Strongest Strategy toward the US'... Expert: "Intention to Highlight Presence Targeting Trump"
Analysis by experts in South Korea.
This is a Google translation of a VOA report.
North Korea's Kim Jong-un Announces 'Strongest-Strongest Strategy toward the US'... Expert: "Intention to Highlight Presence Targeting Trump"
2024.12.30
https://www.voakorea.com/a/7918263.html
North Korean State Affairs Commission Chairman Kim Jong-un announced a strategy to respond to the United States at the Workers' Party plenary session at the end of the year, but did not reveal specific details. It is analyzed that this reflects a will to not be overwhelmed by the momentum ahead of the inauguration of the new Donald Trump administration, as well as caution. We will connect with reporter Kim Hwan-yong in Seoul to find out more.
Anchor) North Korea held an expanded plenary session of the Workers' Party last week.
Reporter) Yes.
North Korea's official foreign affairs agency, the Korean Central News Agency, and the Workers' Party's organ, the Rodong Sinmun, reported on the 29th that the expanded meeting of the 11th Plenary Session of the 8th Central Committee of the Workers' Party of Korea was held from the 23rd to the 27th with Chairman Kim Jong-un in attendance.
According to North Korean media, Chairman Kim criticized the United States in his speech at the meeting, saying, “The United States is the most reactionary state entity that has adopted anti-communism as its unchanging state policy,” and “South Korea has been reduced to a thoroughgoing ‘anti-communist outpost’ for the United States.”
Chairman Kim continued, “This reality clearly shows us in which direction we should move and what we should do and how we should do it,” and declared “the strongest strategy to respond to the U.S. that we will strongly implement to ensure the future national interests and security of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.”
However, North Korean media did not disclose the specific details of the 'strongest strategy to respond to the United States.'
The expanded meeting of the 11th plenary session of the 8th Central Committee of the Workers' Party of Korea held in Pyongyang, North Korea on the 29th.
Chairman Kim also highly praised the achievements in strengthening national defense capabilities this year and raised the need to further develop national defense capabilities next year to respond to “military provocations by the United States and its followers.”
North Korean media reported that Chairman Kim praised the “huge performance of the defense science and military industry sectors” this year and presented “strategic and tactical policies and tasks” to strengthen “self-defense war deterrence” next year, but did not disclose specific details.
Host) What analysis is there on the level and content of Chairman Kim’s recent remarks to the U.S.?
Reporter) Dr. Jang Yong-seok of the Institute for Peace and Unification Studies at Seoul National University said that there is no need to attach great significance to the expression “strongest strategy toward the US” itself, interpreting it as a statement with a strategic nature of negotiations aimed at highlighting the US’s presence ahead of the inauguration of the Donald Trump administration in the US.
[Recording: Dr. Jang Yong-seok] “Trump has not even taken office yet, and I think that talking about talks too much may not be very helpful in terms of negotiation strategy. In that sense, I think that a very principled and hard-line stance could be very meaningful in terms of emphasizing that their position is not so weak that it can be easily compromised, if only to further enhance their negotiating position.”
Dr. Jang analyzed that Chairman Kim attempted to increase the effectiveness of his message of pressure on the United States by revealing in this speech that the international situation, including the war in Ukraine that Russia is helping, is not unfavorable to them.
In his speech, Chairman Kim commented on the current international situation, saying, “The independent power sphere is growing and advancing remarkably, while the position of the hegemonic power sphere is rapidly weakening and declining,” and “This year, we have firmly secured our international position as a representative and powerful independent force that is vigorously driving the construction of a just multipolar world.”
Professor Im Eul-chul of Kyungnam University's Institute of Far Eastern Studies said that North Korea's "strongest strategy" toward the United States appears to be another expression of its existing "strong response" strategy of responding to the deployment of U.S. strategic assets on the Korean Peninsula and the strengthening of U.S.-ROK joint military exercises by strengthening national defense capabilities, including nuclear weapons.
Host) Was there no separate policy direction or message from Chairman Kim toward South Korea?
Reporter) There was no mention of Korea, which was unusual.
Experts are particularly paying attention to the fact that North Korea has not shown any significant reaction to President Yoon Seok-yeol's declaration of martial law and to South Korea's impeachment process.
South Korean President Yoon Seok-yeol is announcing a statement on the 14th. Photo = Provided by the Office of the President of the Republic of Korea.
Dr. Cho Han-beom of the Korea Institute for National Unification, a government-affiliated think tank, said that although President Yoon claimed that the reason for declaring martial law was to eradicate pro-North Korean forces, North Korea's response was to only report on some facts and act as if it did not know.
[Recording: Dr. Cho Han-beom] “I think they are also concerned about the possibility of an armed conflict, because 11,000 People’s Army soldiers went to Kursk, but more importantly, a large amount of ammunition and weapons were transferred to Russia. It is difficult to see North Korea recovering from this in a short period of time. So, it can be seen that they are intentionally ignoring news from the South.”
There is speculation that North Korea may not feel the need to intervene in a situation where the Yoon Seok-yeol government, which it has been more hostile to, could be accused of sedition and fall, and that it may be watching the situation in silence, fearing that its intervention could backfire.
Host) So, should we see that North Korea showed a relatively cautious attitude with regard to its external message at this plenary meeting of the party?
Reporter) South Korea's Ministry of Unification evaluated the results of North Korea's plenary meeting through analysis data, saying, "It focused on solidifying the internal system and minimized external messages."
Ministry of Unification of Korea
The Ministry of Unification said, “Without announcing any new domestic or foreign policies, we will focus on publicizing this year’s achievements and reorganizing the system in preparation for the 80th anniversary of the party’s founding in October next year and the 9th Party Congress in January 2026.”
In particular, he mentioned the United States as “the most reactionary country” and declared “the strongest strategy to respond to the United States,” but he pointed out that he did not mention specific tasks related to the advancement of nuclear weapons.
The Ministry of Unification analyzed that this was likely done in consideration of the uncertain domestic and international situation, including the inauguration of the new administration in the United States, the war between Russia and Ukraine, the dispatch of North Korean troops, and the political situation in South Korea, as well as the upcoming conclusion of the 8th Party Congress next year.
Professor Im Eul-chul predicted that although Chairman Kim may present more specific messages or policies toward the United States and South Korea in his policy speech at the Supreme People's Assembly scheduled for January 22 next year, North Korea is likely to be cautious for the time being, as the United States will have to go through a period of regime change and South Korea will have to go through a leadership vacuum for the time being.
On the 22nd, US President-elect Donald Trump gave a speech at the 2024 AmericaFest held in Phoenix, Arizona.
[Recording: Professor Im Eul-chul] “Even after the Trump administration is launched, it will likely take time for the specific outlines of the North Korea policy to be revealed, and it will also likely take time for the situation in South Korea to be resolved and for a new entity that North Korea will have to respond to to to emerge. Therefore, I think we should assess that this plenary session will likely maintain the existing strong-arm tone while responding flexibly to changing situations.”
Host) North Korea's relationship with Russia has changed dramatically this year with the signing of a new military alliance-level treaty and its participation in the war in Ukraine. Was there no evaluation of this at this plenary session?
Reporter) I could not find any part in the North Korean media reports that directly evaluated the strengthening of relations with Russia.
It was limited to indirectly justifying cooperation with Russia by mentioning things like building a “just multipolar world.”
Park Won-gon, a professor of North Korean studies at Ewha Womans University, said that North Korea did not highlight the signing of a new treaty with Russia, which it has been touting as Chairman Kim's achievements, at this plenary session, and that this may be because it was conscious of the war situation, such as President-elect Trump's dissatisfaction with North Korea's participation in the Russian-Russian War and North Korean casualties starting to appear.
Park Won-gon, Professor of North Korean Studies at Ewha Womans University
[Recording: Professor Park Won-gon] “The discomfort with North Korea over the Russian-Russian war was fully revealed in Trump’s two press conferences with Newsweek and others, and there is relatively little reason to emphasize it in this situation. There are things that he did not bring up in the future in terms of laying the groundwork for various negotiations with Trump, and North Korea’s domestic political concerns can also be read. It may be burdensome to talk about the Russian-Russian war now that casualties have started to appear.”
Moderator) Were there any notable points regarding high-level personnel matters in this plenary session?
Reporter) The Ministry of Unification analyzed that in this personnel change, the status of the diplomatic and military sectors was strengthened, and that the status of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Chief of the General Staff were raised in accordance with North Korea-Russia relations, and that Choi Son-hui and Ri Yong-gil were promoted to members of the Politburo.
In the economic sector, the position of Prime Minister, who oversees economic policy, was replaced from Kim Dok-hoon to Park Tae-sung, the party's science and education secretary.
Kim Deok-hun moved from the cabinet to the party, being appointed party secretary and economic affairs minister.
Dr. Hong Min of the Institute for Unification Studies analyzed, “Park Tae-sung attended the 2023 North Korea-Russia summit and served as the party’s science education secretary and chairman of the State Space Science and Technology Committee, leading North Korea-Russia science and space exchanges.” He added, “It is possible that he was placed at the forefront to promote future cooperation with Russia in various areas, including the economy, resources, space, and military.”
Meanwhile, the Ministry of Unification stated that while North Korea maintained the tone of having the results of its year-end plenary session replace its New Year's address, this time it was reported earlier than usual, and that the timing of the meeting and the format of the announcement were unusual in that they proceeded with the meeting for five days without reporting on the plenary session itself, followed by a comprehensive report.
This is Hwan-yong Kim from VOA News in Seoul.
14. What North Korea Gains From Its Alliance With Russia — and What It Risks
Some important insights from Dr. Bruce Bechtol to reinforce what Kim is gaining from Putin. There is not enough reporting on this. This is in reference to an article I sent out yesterday. This is a very significant judgment from Dr. Bechtol that Kim is receiving more from Putin than any other source. Note that I was a reviewer for his forthcoming book on north Korea and Iran (co-authored with Anthony Celso who is an Iran expert) and it will make a significant contribution to understanding the collaboration and collusion between north Korea and Iran.
...referencing the piece you have below titled, "North Korea Got Over $6 Billion in Payment For Weapons and Troops From Russia: It's Alarmingly Cheap | Defense Express," here are my thoughts...
This means there is now evidence that North Korea is making more money from its proliferation to Russia than any other endeavor. Far more than proliferation to the MIddle East, and yes at least double what it is making from cyber theft. Thus, this has now become - easily - North Korea's most profitable illicit activity - for as long as it lasts. The boys in Office 39 must be very happy.
Dave the only thing wrong with the article is that if one reads it, one thinks the 170mm Koksan guns and the 240mm MRL's are the same system. Obviously they are not - one is rockets, the other is an artillery tube. The North Koreans sent both to Russia (with crews). But I didn't want to confuse anybody. But you know. The press never gets it EXACTLY right. But it was still a very informative piece.
Obviously, the North Koreans sold the Bulsae-4 to the Russians - several of them. Of note, the North Koreans have also sold the Bulsae system (not mounted on a vehicle) to Hamas, Hezbollah, and Syria. The Bulsae-4 system is the one mounted on the vehicle you see in the pictures. This is all documented in my upcoming book. Please click on the link below...
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/ukrainian-troops-neutralize-rare-north-korean-weapon-being-used-by-russia/ss-BB1r0e8N?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=U531&cvid=17b124198613428b8a28fe842ca3c270&ei=14#image=2
What North Korea Gains From Its Alliance With Russia — and What It Risks
Sending troops to fight against Ukraine has gotten North Korea much-needed cash and diplomatic leverage. But there may be hidden costs, too.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/17/world/asia/north-korea-russia-military-deal.html
In a photograph provided by North Korean state media, Kim Jong-un, the leader of North Korea, and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia shake hands after bilateral talks in June.Credit...Korean Central News Agency, via Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
By Choe Sang-Hun
Reporting from Seoul
Dec. 17, 2024
Leer en español
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Kim Jong-un, the leader of North Korea, has taken his boldest diplomatic gamble by supplying an estimated 11,000 troops and stockpiles of weapons to Russia to support its war against Ukraine.
The deployment provides timely foreign aid for Russia’s war efforts, with North Korean troops fighting alongside Russian forces in the Kursk region to help them retake territories lost to Ukraine. On Monday, Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder, the Pentagon spokesman, said the Pentagon had seen “indications” that an unspecified number of North Korean soldiers had been killed and wounded there.
Sending the troops brings a range of benefits for North Korea, including much-needed cash and diplomatic leverage. Mr. Kim is receiving billions of dollars’ worth of food, oil, cash and advanced weapons systems from Russia that will help his regime endure international sanctions and upgrade its conventional armed forces, analysts say.
Mr. Kim had been in desperate need of such a breakthrough.
A triple whammy of incidents has rocked his dynastic regime over the past decade. First, American-led U.N. sanctions devastated North Korea’s economy by banning all its major exports, including coal, seafood, textiles and workers, as well as sharply curtailing its oil imports. Mr. Kim sought to lift the sanctions through direct diplomacy with former President Donald J. Trump. But the negotiations collapsed without an agreement in 2019, tarnishing Mr. Kim’s domestic image as an infallible leader. Then, the pandemic further crippled the North’s economy.
Pyongyang provides troops, missiles and howitzers.
North Korea looked more isolated than ever when it saw opportunities opening up as President Vladimir V. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine dragged on. Russia was using up troops and ammunition, and North Korea had plenty of both to offer. Its military is one of the world’s largest conventional armed forces, with 1.3 million members. And it kept huge stockpiles of artillery shells, rockets and other conventional weapons — many of them outdated — as well as new ballistic missiles it developed under Mr. Kim’s ambitious arms-buildup program.
The courtship started when North Korea invited Russia’s then-defense minister, Sergei Shoigu, to a massive weapons parade in Pyongyang in July last year. North Korean weapons began flowing into Russia soon afterward. When Mr. Putin invited Mr. Kim to a summit meeting in the Russian Far East in September last year, Russia showed off what it could offer North Korea in return, taking Mr. Kim on tours of a space launch facility, an aircraft factory and a naval port.
In June, Mr. Kim and Mr. Putin signed a treaty of mutual defense and cooperation in Pyongyang. North Korea began sending troops to Russia afterward.
North Korea has also provided Russia with 20,000 shipping containers’ worth of weapons, including millions of artillery shells, newly developed ballistic missiles, multiple-launch rocket systems and long-range howitzers, South Korean officials have said.
Image
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, in a photograph provided by North Korean state media, visiting an artillery exercise at an undisclosed site in North Korea in October. Credit...Korean Central News Agency, via Associated Press
Mr. Kim met with Russia’s new defense minister, Andrei R. Belousov, in Pyongyang on Nov. 29, vowing to continue support for Russia and “vigorously expand” ties.
That meeting heralded more troops and weapons supplies from North Korea, said Yang Moo-jin, president of the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul.
Brisk weapons exports to Russia are bringing life to North Korea’s munitions industry. Mr. Kim has called for increased production when he visited weapons factories in recent months and for mass manufacturing of attack drones. North Korea is also expanding a missile-manufacturing factory in an apparent effort to produce more KN-23 missiles, which it has supplied to Russia to use against Ukraine, according to researchers at a U.S.-based think tank.
Russia pays with oil, food and weapon upgrades.
The North has earned up to $5.5 billion through arms deals with Russia, according to Olena Guseinova, a researcher at the Hankuk University of Foreign Studies in Seoul. In a report published in October, she also estimated that North Korea could bring in up to $572 million annually through deploying troops — a huge sum by the North’s standards. The country’s official exports amounted to $330 million only last year.
Neither Russia nor North Korea has revealed how Moscow was paying North Korea.
But North Korean oil tankers have been bringing in far more oil from Russia than is allowed under U.N. sanctions, according to an analysis of satellite imagery published last month by the UK-based Open Source Center and the BBC.
On the ground, North Korea’s military is also gaining valuable battlefield insights for the first time in decades, including innovations in drone use that are changing modern warfare. The war against Ukraine is providing North Korea with its first opportunity to test its newer KN-23 and KN-24 ballistic missiles against Western air defense systems in live combat. Its technicians traveled with the missiles to identify the deficiencies and collect data to take home, according to officials in South Korea.
Image
People watching a TV screen at a train station in Seoul in October. A news broadcast shows soldiers believed to be from North Korea standing in line to receive supplies from Russia, Credit...Ahn Young-Joon/Associated Press
One fear in Seoul is that in the future Mr. Kim may be able to bargain for Russian help to master technologies needed for nuclear missiles that could hit targets across the Pacific.
“I don’t think they have yet reached the stage where Russia would provide sensitive nuclear and missile technologies and components,” said Jang Seho, an analyst at the Seoul-based Institute for National Security Strategy.
The new stream of revenues and weapons technologies from Russia will cushion North Korea from U.N. sanctions and embolden Mr. Kim’s postures toward Washington and its allies. It remains to be seen if President-elect Trump seeks to resume his personal diplomacy with Mr. Kim.
What are the risks for Mr. Kim?
But the deployment also carries several risks for Mr. Kim.
The North Korean special forces have been fighting alongside Russian paratroopers and marines to help Russia retake territories lost to Ukraine in its Kursk region, South Korean intelligence officials said. They were trained to infiltrate by sea and river and across Korea’s hilly terrain. It was unclear how well they were prepared for a war of attrition fought in trenches and on flatlands with artillery and drones, military experts said.
South Korean officials are closely monitoring how the North’s weapons and troops fare in the war — with the potential for battlefield desertions — to glean insights into its military’s preparedness. Many of the North Korean artillery rounds were decades old and have proven to be duds.
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A photograph provided by North Korean state media showing Mr. Kim attending an opening ceremony for a military equipment exhibition in Pyongyang, in November.Credit...Korean Central News Agency, Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
The drain on its supplies may weaken North Korea at home.
North Korea has already sent so many conventional weapons and ammunition to Russia “it cannot fight a war in Korea right now even if it wanted to,” said Doo Jin-ho, a senior analyst at the Korea Institute for Defense Analyses in Seoul. “That may be Kim Jong-un’s biggest vulnerability now.”
Some South Korean analysts doubt that collaboration between Pyongyang and Moscow will endure. The two economies have so little to offer each other that Russia would account for less than 2 percent of North Korea’s international trade other than arms deals, while China accounts for more than 90 percent, according to a report by researchers at the Korea Institute for International Economic Policy.
But even bilateral trade between North Korea and China slowed to $1.5 billion in the first nine months of the year, down from $1.6 billion during the same period a year ago.
That may reflect another gamble by Mr. Kim. North Korea has long sought to play Beijing against Moscow, but some analysts say that North Korea’s deepening military ties with Russia could damage its relations with China.
Choe Sang-Hun is the lead reporter for The Times in Seoul, covering South and North Korea. More about Choe Sang-Hun
A version of this article appears in print on Dec. 18, 2024, Section A, Page 8 of the New York edition with the headline: What North Korea Gains, and Risks, From Ties With Russia. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe
15. Why South Korea Should Go Nuclear
Quite a provocative essay and conclusion. This discussion needs to happen in such a way that does not support Kim Jong Un's political warfare strategy. He wants this discussion and even wants South Korea to obtain nuclear weapons in the hopes that it will break the ROK/US alliance and create the conditions for him to successfully dominate the peninsula by subversion or by force. So it is imperative to have this discussion while recognizing that this is what Kim wants. But a fundamental question must be asked and answered. Will South Korea's possession of nuclear weapons be an effective deterrence? Will Kim be deterred?
Conclusion:
Washington’s moves have failed to resolve the core security problems that a South Korean program can redress: North Korea’s relentless march toward ever more powerful weapons of mass destruction and the United States’ unreliability in (and likely after) the Trump era. The United States itself would never tolerate the nuclear vulnerability South Korea now experiences. Rather than insisting that its ally remain imperiled, Washington should drop its barriers to Seoul’s finding its own way to security.
Why South Korea Should Go Nuclear
Foreign Affairs · by More by Robert E. Kelly · December 30, 2024
The Bomb Is the Best Way to Contain the Threat From the North
Robert E. Kelly and Min-hyung Kim
January/February 2025 Published on December 30, 2024
Lily Qian
Robert E. Kelly is a professor in the Department of Political Science at Pusan National University.
Min-hyung Kim is a professor in the Department of Political Science at Kyung Hee University.
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South Korea has long relied on the United States to keep the North Korean nuclear threat at bay. Pyongyang began taking fitful steps toward a nuclear weapon during the Cold War, tested its first bomb in 2006, and today regularly issues nuclear threats against its southern neighbor. Seoul, meanwhile, shelters under the American nuclear umbrella that came with the defense alliance it signed with Washington in 1953, just after an armistice effectively ended the Korean War. For decades, this arrangement provided South Korea sufficient security assurance. But today, that assurance appears increasingly fragile.
South Korea’s problem is twofold. First, North Korea’s capabilities are growing. Pyongyang has developed an intercontinental ballistic missile, which raises doubts about whether the United States would honor its alliance commitment and fight for South Korea, because North Korea can now strike American cities with a nuclear weapon. Second, Donald Trump, who has harshly criticized the U.S.–South Korean alliance in the past, is set to begin his second term as U.S. president. Under Trump, the likelihood that Washington would intervene in a conflict on the Korean Peninsula will drop further still.
In such a conflict, Pyongyang would almost certainly threaten nuclear attacks on American targets to deter U.S. participation. U.S. bases in the Asia-Pacific, Guam, or Hawaii would be threatened first, and then the U.S. mainland. This raises the potential cost of American assistance to South Korea far higher than it has ever been. And it is likely enough to make the United States hesitate before getting involved. Consider the war in Ukraine, where Russian nuclear threats have successfully limited U.S. support for Kyiv. If Moscow’s threats worked against the alliance-friendly President Joe Biden, then Pyongyang’s will very likely restrain the nationalist, transactional Trump. South Korea would then be left to fend for itself. To close this glaring gap in its security, Seoul is now considering a step that, until recently, was discussed only on the country’s political fringe: building its own nuclear weapons.
In South Korea, this proposal has gone mainstream. According to a Chicago Council on Global Affairs poll conducted in 2021, 71 percent of South Koreans support nuclearization, an increase from the 56 percent support the Seoul-based Asan Institute for Policy Studies found in a survey in 2010. Other polls by South Korean think tanks have found similarly decisive levels of public support. Political elites remain divided but are more sympathetic to the idea now than at any point in South Korean history.
Today, the biggest obstacle to South Korean nuclearization is not a domestic constituency but a foreign one: the United States. There is a deep, decades-old bipartisan opposition in Washington to nuclear proliferation, even among U.S. allies. In recent years, the Biden administration has tried to keep Seoul satisfied with statements reaffirming U.S. security commitments. American pressure is likely the primary reason South Korea still participates in the international Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), which forbids its nuclearization.
The United States has learned to live with nuclear partners before, however. The United Kingdom and France were both U.S. allies when they conducted their first nuclear tests, in 1952 and 1960, respectively, and Washington retained close ties with Israel after it developed a nuclear program in the 1960s, despite U.S. entreaties. South Korea’s anxiety over the dependability of the U.S. nuclear umbrella is also nothing new; U.S. allies had similar worries during the Cold War, when the Soviet Union threatened nuclear strikes against the U.S. mainland. But Washington’s refusal to let Seoul act on its concerns now sets the allies up for an unnecessary confrontation.
American opponents of South Korean nuclearization exaggerate the policy’s downsides, underappreciate its benefits, and ignore the United States’ own liberal values that call for Washington to tolerate a democratic partner’s national security choices, even when it dislikes them. If Seoul took this step, it would not trigger the breakdown of the international nonproliferation regime, as critics fear. North Korea’s nuclear capabilities undermine U.S. deterrence, but a South Korean nuclear arsenal can help fill the gap. A nuclear South Korea would be more self-sufficient, reducing the potential harm if Trump draws back from U.S. alliances and calming Seoul’s obsessive anxiety about the U.S. nuclear commitment.
With South Korea better able to handle the North Korean problem on its own, the United States could devote more attention to its top priority in East Asia—competition with China. But first, Washington needs to stop getting in its ally’s way and start letting Seoul make its own decisions. A South Korean decision to nuclearize could, on balance, be good not just for South Korea but also for the United States.
SAN FRANCISCO FOR SEOUL?
North Korea’s nuclear and missile capabilities have rapidly expanded since Kim Jong Un assumed leadership, in 2011. Four of the six nuclear tests Pyongyang has conducted have taken place under his leadership. Since 2017, North Korea has test-fired multiple intercontinental ballistic missiles that can hit the U.S. mainland, as well as many short- and medium-range missiles that could blanket South Korea. Pyongyang is pursuing further advances, too. It seeks to make its missiles hypersonic and its nuclear bombs smaller, perhaps with technological assistance from Russia to accelerate its progress. To improve the survivability of its nuclear forces, Pyongyang has announced its intention to put them on submarines. And it is integrating small nuclear weapons into its army, including frontline units.
North Korean strategy reflects these capability improvements. Pyongyang now routinely, almost casually, threatens to nuke South Korea and the United States. In September 2022, it promulgated a law permitting the preemptive use of nuclear weapons in the early stages of a crisis. In a speech announcing the law, Kim stated that North Korea’s nuclear status is “irreversible” and that its nuclear weapons are not a “bargaining chip” it would trade away in negotiations.
The current disparity between the North’s and the South’s nuclear capabilities destabilizes the Korean Peninsula. It encourages North Korea to bully South Korea into making concessions when crises between the two inevitably erupt.The uncertainty it generates in Seoul as to whether Washington would come to its defense in a conflict—and, in turn, Washington’s refusal to tighten its commitment to Seoul—paralyzes the alliance and opens the door to miscalculation. Inter-Korean nuclear parity would end this dangerous impasse, as Seoul would be able to deter Pyongyang without relying on questionable American guarantees.
Watching a news report on a North Korean missile test from Seoul, November 2024 Kim Hong-Ji / Reuters
South Korea’s arsenal would not have to be large: North Korea may be dangerous, but it is no China or Russia in terms of military strength. Seoul likely needs no more than 100 warheads to achieve local deterrence, given North Korea’s small size and small arsenal. (By comparison, Israel is estimated to have around 90 nuclear weapons.) Even now, South Korea has fighter jets capable of delivering warheads and hardened shelters to protect them. Eventually, Seoul would place its warheads undersea to improve their survivability; it already has the necessary missiles and submarines. But South Korea’s requirements end here. It does not need the heavy bombers, long-range missiles, high-yield warheads, and huge stockpiles of great powers such as the United States or Russia.
What makes South Korea’s need for a domestic deterrent so urgent is that North Korea’s nuclear and missile buildup has elevated the classic dilemma of extended nuclear deterrence: Would the United States risk its own cities to protect foreign ones? In 1961, French President Charles de Gaulle famously asked U.S. President John F. Kennedy if he would “trade New York for Paris.” Kennedy ducked the question. Today, South Korean journalists, scholars, and think tankers, as well as several members of the ruling party, publicly ask the same thing. A U.S. president, even one willing to risk San Francisco for Seoul, would face tremendous pressure from Congress and the American public not to endanger millions of U.S. civilians to aid a distant ally. South Koreans are well aware of this. A 2024 poll conducted by the Asan Institute for Policy Studies found that only 47 percent of South Koreans believe Washington would risk nuclear strikes on the U.S. homeland on South Korea’s behalf.
North Korea is not merely theoretically capable of striking U.S. targets—it almost certainly would do so if the United States joined a war to defend South Korea. Otherwise, U.S. military involvement in a second Korean war would mean the total defeat of North Korea, the unification of the peninsula, and the annihilation of Pyongyang’s ruling elite. North Korea’s army is large but technologically obsolete. Its nuclear forces are highly vulnerable to South Korean and U.S. airpower. The country is geographically small, leaving little space to retreat after losing a conventional battle at the inter-Korean border. Its population is also small and malnourished. North Korea’s economy can hardly feed its people, much less sustain a war. And the state barely functions outside the capital. After a single major conventional defeat, the North Korean regime would likely start to unravel as allied forces advanced north.
North Korean leaders therefore have no reason to hold back if a conflict were to break out. Pyongyang would issue nuclear threats against U.S. bases in East Asia and against Guam, Hawaii, and even the U.S. mainland in a desperate attempt to keep the United States out of the war—and then, if Washington joined anyway, Pyongyang would follow through on those threats. In other words, because North Korea is badly outclassed in conventional military terms, and because any serious conflict raises existential stakes for regime elites, it is far more likely than any other nuclear weapons state to actually use its weapons. It poses a unique nuclear threat.
Washington needs to stop getting in its ally’s way.
These circumstances differentiate North Korea from the Soviet Union during the Cold War and from nuclear autocracies such as China and Russia today. Those states may also be threatening, but they are much stronger than North Korea. Defeat in Ukraine or Taiwan would likely not mean the collapse of Russia or China. Thus, Moscow and Beijing’s willingness to risk the huge uncertainties of nuclear use is much lower than Pyongyang’s, as is evident in the war in Ukraine, where, despite Russian President Vladimir Putin’s threats to use nuclear weapons, it is highly improbable that he actually would.
North Korea’s reliance on its nuclear capabilities heightens doubts in South Korea about the United States’ extended deterrence. U.S. officials know this crisis of confidence exists. The Washington Declaration, a joint statement issued in 2023, sought to alleviate South Korean concerns by establishing a U.S.–South Korean Nuclear Consultative Group to bring Seoul into U.S. nuclear planning for East Asia. The United States also agreed to rotate air and sea forces more frequently through South Korea. These steps are welcome. But because they do not address the core question of whether Washington would risk nuclear retaliation to protect its ally, they offer insufficient assurance for the South Korean public and political elites.
The coming of a second Trump presidency exacerbates South Korea’s anxiety. Trump has denigrated U.S.–South Korean relations like no American president before him. During his first term, he seemed to prefer North Korea’s dictator to South Korea’s elected leader, and according to reporting by Washington Post journalists Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker, Trump said privately in 2021 that he would “blow up” the alliance if reelected. He frequently talks about U.S. alliances as if they were pay-for-service protection schemes. In his 2024 presidential campaign, he said he would “absolutely not” defend any European country that did not meet NATO defense spending targets if it were invaded by Russia. Given all this, it is hard to imagine that Trump would risk San Francisco for Seoul.
Hoping for a calm four years while waiting out Trump’s term is not a viable option for South Korea, either. Trump has remade the GOP such that the next leader of the party would likely share his “America first” ideology, including its rejection of binding alliance commitments. The only way South Korea can hedge against the United States’ periodic swings toward isolationism, unilateralism, and transactionalism is to acquire its own nuclear defenses, thereby reducing its inordinate dependence on the United States for its security.
FALSE ALARM
Nuclearization is hotly debated in South Korea, but the think tanks, national security experts, and major media outlets that make up the country’s foreign policy community support the idea more than at any time since it was first considered in the 1970s. Indeed, advocating an independent nuclear deterrent has entered the mainstream during the administration of President Yoon Suk-yeol. Seoul’s official position is still to rely on the U.S. nuclear umbrella for South Korea’s security. But the main reason for the lack of change in its policy is the fear of U.S. retaliation, which could involve sanctions against South Korea and a weakening of the bilateral alliance.
Nonproliferation is deeply woven into U.S. foreign policy. In the past few years, the U.S. government has attempted to persuade and, if necessary, pressure South Korea not to seek nuclear weapons. In return for the United States’ agreement to ramp up bilateral security cooperation in the 2023 Washington Declaration, Seoul reaffirmed its commitment to the NPT. Outside government, too, a network of U.S. scholars, think tank researchers, activists, and former officials that support nonproliferation have engaged in parallel Track II dialogues with South Korean elites in an attempt to dissuade them from nuclearization.
The U.S. government has long maintained that the spread of nuclear weapons should be aggressively resisted. And Seoul, understandably, is wary of provoking a major breach with Washington. If South Korea is to both make progress toward a nuclear program and avoid fracturing its relationship with the United States, Washington will need to loosen its rigid opposition to allied nuclearization. This may become easier under Trump, who showed in his first term that he is inclined to throw out the script when it comes to U.S. alliances.
Military drills in Pocheon, South Korea, October 2024 Kim Hong-Ji / Reuters
Most American concerns reflect general opposition to nuclear proliferation rather than specific misgivings about South Korea’s acquisition. Nonproliferation advocates hold that nuclear weapons should not spread anywhere, and in many cases argue that all countries that possess these weapons should denuclearize. This ideal of “global zero” is admirable but probably unattainable unless nuclear weapons states act first—an unlikely prospect. It is hardly fair for them to retain their weapons while demanding that all other countries remain nonnuclear, no matter their security concerns. Critics of the NPT have long suggested that the treaty amounts to nuclear discrimination because it locks in the nuclear status of early adopters while preventing other countries from building these weapons later on.
Another common concern is that South Korean nuclearization would cause the NPT to collapse. But this is purely speculative. One country has already withdrawn from the NPT—North Korea in 2003—and the treaty did not fall apart. Another departure should not destroy it, especially when the country withdrawing is one such as South Korea, a middle-sized power that has long complied with the NPT (and refrained from any rash response to North Korea’s noncompliance) but now has an obvious, justifiable reason to seek nuclear capabilities.
Seoul’s pursuit of a nuclear program would be an in-kind response to decades of North Korean misbehavior, not a rogue sprint to build a destabilizing weapon. Since 1992, when Seoul and Pyongyang issued an inter-Korean declaration to denuclearize the peninsula, Seoul has pursued that goal in good faith. Pyongyang has not. It has been sanctioned by the UN Security Council nine times for its nuclear activities and routinely makes outlandish threats about annihilating South Korea and its allies. Any international observer should be able to understand Seoul’s reasoning for pursuing a nuclear option.
Pyongyang has no reason to hold back if a conflict were to break out.
Some observers worry that, even if South Korean nuclearization did not damage the NPT, it might induce other countries in East Asia to nuclearize. This is possible but unlikely. That only nine countries have nuclearized since 1945 is strong evidence against an uncontrollable domino effect. And in South Korea’s case, its autocratic neighbors in northeast Asia—China, North Korea, and Russia—already have nukes. The only possible nearby candidates to join a nuclear cascade are Japan and Taiwan, and there is no obvious reason why South Korea’s nuclearization would encourage these fellow democracies and U.S. partners to nuclearize in response.
Taiwan’s foreign policy is structured by its relationships with China and the United States, making it unlikely to be overly concerned about this new development in South Korea. Were China to make overt nuclear threats against Taiwan, then Taipei, too, might consider going nuclear, but China, unlike North Korea, wisely avoids such extreme language. Japanese-Korean historical tensions make Tokyo and Seoul’s relationship more fraught, but if North Korean nuclearization has not pushed Japan to nuclearize for the last 18 years, it seems improbable that South Korean nuclearization would do so today. Antinuclear sentiment has also remained very high in Japan since the United States dropped two atomic bombs on the country during World War II. Ultimately, the basic condition driving South Korea’s current interest in nuclearization does not hold in either Japan or Taiwan. The debate in Seoul is driven by an acute nuclear challenge from North Korea. Neither Tokyo nor Taipei faces a comparable nuclear threat today.
Another proliferation concern is safety. With any new nuclear weapons state, there is a risk that it might store or maintain its weapons improperly or share them with other actors, intentionally or unintentionally. These general worries are legitimate, but in the South Korean case, they are not convincing. The South Korean parliament’s unanimous rejection of the president’s surprise declaration of martial law in December, as well as the swift public backlash to the measure, showed that the country’s democratic system of checks and balances is working well. South Korea’s command and control of its nuclear arsenal would be robust, and its military is under civilian authority. The country has properly managed a civilian nuclear power industry for decades, which should quell concerns about its ability to safely handle nuclear materials.
Some South Korean progressives also contend that if South Korea went nuclear, North Korea would expand its nuclear and missile programs and any possibility of a peace deal on the Korean Peninsula would disappear. This argument may have been persuasive at one time, but no longer. North Korean nuclear decisions clearly have little to do with South Korean choices; for decades, Pyongyang brazenly exploited Seoul’s nuclear restraint to build its own weapons. Kim has made clear that North Korea will never give up its nukes. At this point, South Korean threats to nuclearize are more likely than continued South Korean restraint to prompt North Korea to negotiate.
WORTH THE RISK
South Korean nuclearization is not risk-free. If Seoul began taking steps toward a nuclear program, Pyongyang might intervene to try to prevent it. The most plausible means at its disposal is major missile strikes on South Korean nuclear facilities, which would likely provoke the very conflict that North Korea acquired nuclear weapons to avoid. South Korea would ensure that its nuclear weapons program would be well defended and dispersed across the country, so only a large surprise attack by North Korea would have any hope of success. It might even have to use small nuclear weapons, because its conventional weapons might not be capable of destroying the relevant targets.
But this scenario is highly unlikely. North Korea’s goal is to forestall a conflict it would probably lose. When it threatens nuclear use, the uncertainty it creates for South Korea and the United States deters them both and wedges the allies apart. But a preemptive strike would be different. The world would turn against North Korea immediately, and any qualms about escalation would be superseded by its offensive use of nuclear weapons. There would be no way to predict how China, Russia, or the United States would respond. North Korea does not want South Korea to nuclearize, but provoking a nuclear war to stop it would entail far more risk than Pyongyang is willing to take on.
The more credible risks for South Korea are Chinese and Russian countermeasures. But Beijing and Moscow have been bad-faith partners in Korean security for decades. Both had years to try to check North Korea’s nuclear buildup and chose not to. Worse, Russia has become closer to North Korea in the last year. Moscow could seek to slow South Korean nuclearization with cyberattacks or threats to lend even more support to North Korea. But its economic leverage over South Korea is low, even more so since Seoul joined other democracies in sanctioning Russia after the latter’s invasion of Ukraine, and its international credibility is in tatters. Indeed, if Russia is assisting North Korea’s missile program, then it is contributing to the very problem driving South Korea toward nuclearization—undermining any diplomatic case Moscow may make against it.
China is less blatantly belligerent toward South Korea. But as the country with the most leverage over North Korea, its refusal to seriously punish Pyongyang for its nuclear buildup is also part of the problem that brought Seoul to this point. If Beijing were to impose sanctions on Seoul in response to nuclearization, it could inflict real pain—almost 20 percent of South Korea’s exports in 2023 were to China. South Korea’s steps to distance itself from the Chinese economy could soften the blow, however. In the first quarter of 2024, the United States narrowly overtook China as South Korea’s largest export market in 2024, in part a result of the Yoon administration’s encouragement of South Korean firms to move their operations out of China. South Korean investment in China has also dropped substantially in recent years. In 2023, China fell out of South Korea’s top five destinations for outbound investment for the first time since 1992. In short, both China and Russia are losing whatever influence they might have had to bully South Korea out of nuclearization. If they really want to prevent that outcome, they would be better off using their leverage over North Korea to reduce the threats pushing South Korea to acquire nuclear weapons.
MATURE RELATIONSHIPS
South Korean nuclearization is not only less dangerous than the United States fears but also offers strategic benefits for Washington and a salve to a strained alliance. Most obviously, a local South Korean deterrent gets the United States off the hook for direct, immediate involvement in a conflict with North Korea that could go nuclear and could draw in China. If South Korea cannot have its own nuclear weapons, then it has no option but to look to the United States for coverage. Washington’s alliance commitment thus exposes the U.S. homeland to nuclear retaliation. It is in the United States’ interest, of course, to reduce that risk.
This does not mean that the United States should abandon South Korea if it nuclearizes. The alliance between Washington and Seoul serves as a linchpin of peace and stability in the region and more broadly contributes to upholding the rules-based international order. Nuclearization is no reason to throw it away. A nuclear South Korea could play a role akin to that of France or the United Kingdom—both of which possess nuclear weapons and provide supplemental, regional deterrence within the U.S. alliance network. Paris and London can act more independently and carry more of their own risk than Washington’s nonnuclear allies. They could, for example, form the core of an independent nuclear European deterrent and help lead a European response to Russian aggression in Ukraine should Trump pull back from NATO in his second term. For now, South Korea, which has no security backstop without the United States, lacks the equivalent capacity to deal with East Asia’s nuclear powers as a peer.
U.S. leaders have long demanded that the country’s allies do more for their own defense and stop free-riding on American security guarantees—Trump most emphatically. By building its own nuclear weapons and lessening its dependence on U.S. nuclear protection, South Korea would be doing precisely that. Yet the United States has so far blocked this path to strategic maturity and responsibility.
Marking Armed Forces Day in Seongnam, South Korea, October 2024 Kim Hong-Ji / Reuters
Therein lies the core problem of Washington’s insistence that its allies adhere to nonproliferation. If U.S. partners are not allowed to make strategic choices without U.S. permission, then they will likely free-ride. It is unreasonable to expect U.S. allies to have large defense budgets and capable militaries but deny them independent strategic thinking. Strategically infantilized allies, such as Germany, are also likely to have militaries with poor capability. Berlin could afford a vastly more capable military, but it has not prioritized such spending, as was evident in its slow military response to the war in Ukraine; it has little incentive to do so, having consented to U.S. domination of NATO. Conversely, capable partners that can project power independently, such as France or India, will likely develop their own strategies, too. The United States wants the impossible: capable, big-spending allies that will do Washington’s bidding.
Allowing allies to develop and implement their own strategies is in the United States’ interest, as Washington could thus reduce its involvement in its partners’ conflicts and security problems. This leeway also reflects American values. If it wants to maintain credibility as a liberal hegemon, the United States cannot use its dominance to bully its weaker partners, as the Soviet Union did during the Cold War and China tries to do today. Washington must instead accept limits on its behavior and give its partners the freedom to make their own decisions, particularly when those partners are liberal democratic allies.
South Korea falls into that category. Public and elite support for nuclear armament will only grow as North Korea’s arsenal expands and the United States becomes an unreliable backer under Trump. If Seoul persists in seeking nuclear weapons despite U.S. efforts to dissuade it, then Washington should accept its choice.
The alternative to accommodation is for the United States to coerce South Korea into giving up on nuclearization by threatening economic sanctions and exclusion from the market for nuclear materials. Washington has run this play before with nuclear-curious allies, most notably when it headed off West Germany’s Cold War effort to build a bomb. But American threats, including suggestions that it could abandon Europe altogether, generated deep resentment in Bonn and violated the liberal principle that democracies do not coerce each other. To use the threat of sanctions to strong-arm South Korea today would similarly undermine the values that Washington’s claims distinguish democracy from autocracy—giving China more ammunition to attack the United States for hypocrisy.
PENINSULAR PARITY
An independent South Korean nuclear program is the best way to deter North Korea, but several intermediate options are on the table, too. For example, the United States might station its own tactical nuclear weapons in South Korea. This step could signal an intensified U.S. commitment to South Korean security, and it might cool public interest in full nuclearization. But the problems of U.S. extended deterrence and the fear of U.S. abandonment would remain, as the United States would retain command over these weapons, could decline to use them in a conflict, and could remove them at any time. The 2021 Chicago Council on Global Affairs survey showed only nine percent of South Korean respondents—perhaps recognizing the insufficiency of this step—supported a U.S. deployment of nuclear weapons. (Of the remaining respondents, 67 percent favored a domestic nuclear program, and 24 percent did not want nuclear weapons in South Korea at all.)
Another option is a “nuclear sharing” arrangement, which would allow the South Korean military to access U.S. warheads positioned on South Korean territory under clearly defined wartime circumstances. The idea would be to give South Korea a deterrent but limit the United States’ exposure in a conflict. North Korea and China might not accept that fine distinction, however; they might consider South Korean use of American nuclear weapons to be the same as American nuclear use. And they would likely argue as much in an effort to derail this option. Ultimately, nuclear sharing is only slightly better than redeploying U.S. tactical nukes to South Korea and keeping them under U.S. control.
The next step up the ladder is “nuclear latency,” a compromise position that is growing in popularity among pronuclear South Korean politicians such as Han Dong-hoon and Yoo Yong-won of South Korea’s ruling People Power Party. In this scenario, South Korea would develop the capability to quickly build nuclear weapons but would not actually do so. Reducing Seoul’s “breakout time” would not violate the NPT. But this solution has its own difficulties. If South Korea’s breakout time is too long, then its latent nuclear capabilities cannot provide the desired deterrent effect. But if its breakout time is sufficiently short, then latency is nuclearization in all but name, and South Korea would face the international backlash without capturing the full security benefits.
South Korean nuclearization need not cause a rupture with the United States.
The best option is still for South Korea to build enough survivable nuclear weapons to achieve local deterrence and restore inter-Korean nuclear parity. Assembling even a limited arsenal would give South Korea greater strategic independence and reduce its constant anxiety over the shifts in U.S. foreign policy. It would relieve the United States from its commitment to immediately join a conflict when its very participation would worsen nuclear escalation pressures. And it would block North Korea from trying to use its nuclear advantage to score gains from South Korea during crises. Washington and Seoul’s relationship would be more balanced and mature. The United States, which worries about free-riding allies and overextending itself, could reduce its responsibility for South Korean security.
The very outcome that ought to benefit Washington may also be what it fears most. It is possible that an unwillingness to cede paramount authority in South Korea is driving U.S. opposition to Seoul’s nuclearization even more than are dubious concerns about proliferation. Nuclearized partners, such as France, India, and Israel, are more difficult for the United States to dominate. Yet in the case of South Korea, the strategic benefits to Washington should outweigh its fear of losing control.
South Korean nuclearization need not cause a rupture with the United States unless Washington chooses to create one. As South Korea’s primary security partner and longtime political patron—and running neck and neck with China to be South Korea’s biggest export market—the United States wields an informal veto. It has already tried to dissuade Seoul, reassure it, and vaguely threaten it. None of this has worked. Trump’s return will only deepen Seoul’s nuclear interest; just two days after his reelection, South Korea’s largest daily newspaper ran an editorial suggesting that the country might need its own nuclear weapons.
Washington’s moves have failed to resolve the core security problems that a South Korean program can redress: North Korea’s relentless march toward ever more powerful weapons of mass destruction and the United States’ unreliability in (and likely after) the Trump era. The United States itself would never tolerate the nuclear vulnerability South Korea now experiences. Rather than insisting that its ally remain imperiled, Washington should drop its barriers to Seoul’s finding its own way to security.
Robert E. Kelly is a professor in the Department of Political Science at Pusan National University.
Min-hyung Kim is a professor in the Department of Political Science at Kyung Hee University.
Foreign Affairs · by More by Robert E. Kelly · December 30, 2024
16. How a Trump defence pick points to focus shift from North Korea to China for US Forces Korea
Troubling.
First we cannot treat China, Taiwan, north Korea, South Korea, and Japan in separate categories. The threat to Taiwan and the threat to South Korea are inextricably linked. To be a "one trick pony" with a sole focus on Taiwan/PRC is the path to strategic failure for the US. What happens in Taiwan will affect the Korean peninsula and vice versa. You cannot consider them separately.
Second, I hope the experts will be able to educate Bridge on USFK, its capabilities and responsibilities. There is very little capability in USFK that can be effectively shifted to support a contingency in Taiwan that will benefit US operations in a Taiwan contingency.. This is typical of strategists who only look at numbers and make uninformed statements such as we need 28,500 troops to focus on Taiwan. Since Bridge is not a military man with no military experience I would not expect him to understand military operations and how military forces train, maintain readiness, and are employed. But I do expect him to listen to the experts who will tell him the forces in Korea have very little utility for a taiwan contingency since they are organized for support to CFC with intelligence, communications, and logistics. Yes, 7th AF can play a role in a contingency but if we are down to using 7th AF in aTaiwan contingency we are in deep trouble. The single BCT and Fires Bridge have almost zero value in a Taiwan contingency since we are unlikely to deploy US ground forces to the island (and if we do then we are also in deep trouble).
What Bridge should be focused on is how to develop alliance capabilities and execute multiple contingencies and especially on how to use the multiple bases throughout the region to include in Korea to support alliance operations whenever and wherever necessary. Lastly, job one for the ROK/US alliance must remain to deter any kind of attack, conventional or nuclear, by north Korea, especially if there is a Taiwan contingency. But this takes a deep understanding of the nature, objectives, and strategy of the Kim family regime. And right now Bridge's stated desires coutneritutiively support Kim Jong Un's political warfare strategy and lead to the single most important condition that Kim Jong Un desires, a weakening or end of the ROK/US alliance that will give him an advantage when he chooses to use force to complete his revolution (as just recently stated) and dominate the Korean peninsula under his rule to ensure the survival of the Kim family regime.
How a Trump defence pick points to focus shift from North Korea to China for US Forces Korea
Elbridge Colby says US forces on the Korean peninsula ‘should not be held hostage to dealing with the North Korean problem’
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Seong Hyeon Choi
Published: 12:06pm, 30 Dec 2024Updated: 5:32pm, 30 Dec 2024
US president-elect Donald Trump’s pick for senior defence official may signal his incoming administration’s move to adjust the role of US troops in South Korea to focus more on containing China, according to analysts.
On December 22, Elbridge Colby, who was the deputy assistant secretary of defence for strategy and force development during Trump’s first term, was announced as the next under secretary of defence for policy, No 3 in the Pentagon responsible for the formation of national security and defence policy.
On his Truth Social account, Trump wrote that Colby would work closely with the secretary of defence nominee Pete Hegseth to “restore” Washington’s military power and achieve a policy of “peace through strength”.
At least 100 North Korean soldiers killed in Ukraine war, says Seoul lawmaker
Colby has been calling for US military resources to be concentrated on a denial strategy against China’s rise in the Indo-Pacific, instead of dispersing US defence resources to other regions such as Europe, aligning with Trump’s campaign pledge to end the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East.
A major contrast between traditional US strategies in the Indo-Pacific region and Colby’s overall policy agenda appears in the roles played by the US Forces Korea (USFK) stationed in South Korea, a contingent that focuses on responding to North Korean threats.
Traditional defence officials in Trump’s previous administration advocated for the USFK’s role in responding to North Korean threats with a more hawkish stance against its nuclear and missile development.
However, Colby is sceptical that Pyongyang will give up its nuclear weapons and believes that US troops in South Korea must instead be used to contain China’s military threat, leaving Seoul to defend itself against North Korea.
South Korea hosts 28,500 US troops in its territory – mostly army and air force personnel. Trump repeatedly said during his presidential campaign that South Korea must defend itself and should pay up to US$10 billion for stationing US troops in the country – nine times greater than the US$1.14 billion expected to be paid in 2026.
In his 2021 book The Strategy of Denial: American Defence in an Age of Great Power Conflict, Colby argued that South Korea was likely to “grow increasingly challenging to defend from a determined Chinese assault” because of its proximity to China, but that including South Korea in the US defence perimeter against Beijing would be “worth the challenges”.
“[South] Korea is important to the effective defence of Japan; if China were able to use South Korea as a base of operations, it would greatly complicate the defence of Japan,” Colby wrote.
“Particularly given that the conventional military threat from North Korea has substantially receded in recent decades, if that from China grows, then South Korea and the United States can increasingly redirect their defence preparations toward defending against a potential assault by China.”
Colby’s repeated his position in an interview with the South Korean news agency Yonhap in May, when he said US forces on the Korean peninsula “should not be held hostage to dealing with the North Korean problem” as it was not the primary issue for Washington and that the US should be “focused on China and the defence of South Korea from China over time”.
“South Korea is going to have to take primary, essentially overwhelming, responsibility for its own self-defence against North Korea because we don’t have a military that can fight North Korea and then be ready to fight China,” Colby said.
“The fundamental fact is that North Korea is not a primary threat to the US. It would not be rational to lose multiple American cities to just deal with North Korea. That’s a different calculation for South Korea … We need to realistically evaluate an approach.”
He also said “all options” should be on the table to ensure South Korea’s security, including its nuclear armament in the face of a nuclear build-up in North Korea and China.
Patrick Cronin, chair for Asia-Pacific Security at Hudson Institute, said the second Trump administration expected allies to “shoulder more burdens to maintain a favourable balance of power”, such as including South Korea in US-led regional contingency plans.
“It is reasonable to expect Elbridge Colby, if confirmed as under secretary of defence, to elevate those efforts,” Cronin said. “There are myriad ways, both direct and indirect, that South Korea could help contribute to security on and off the peninsula.”
Kim Heung-kyu, director of the US-China Policy Institute at Ajou University in Suwon, South Korea, said that with the nomination of Colby, the role of American troops in South Korea was expected to be “more focused on checking China than on the existing mission of suppressing North Korea”.
“The importance of the USFK will be emphasised as it is the closest US military located to China.”
He said it was inevitable, however, that the US military presence in South Korea would be reorganised and dispersed because of restructuring “according to the strategy vis-a-vis China”.
He said Trump would try to “enhance his prestige and secure strategic flexibility by managing his relationship with North Korea” through negotiations, which could lead to discussions about South Korea’s nuclear armament.
“China will naturally oppose South Korea’s nuclear armament, but considering the stability of the Korean peninsula and its relationship with South Korea, it cannot unconditionally oppose South Korea’s nuclear armament. Instead, [Beijing’s] efforts should be made to establish an alternative military cooperation system that can stabilise this region or the Korean peninsula,” Kim said.
South Korean acting president impeached, 2 weeks after President Yoon Suk-yeol’s impeachment
Yoon Suk-joon, a senior fellow at the Korea Institute for Military Affairs in Seoul and a specialist in the Chinese military, said the role of the USFK was now “beyond the Korean peninsula”, meaning that Washington sought to expand the scope of the alliance with Seoul to bring South Korea’s military into its Indo-Pacific strategy.
Yoon said the US Department of Defence and other institutions “think it would be more appropriate for an operational commander to go to the Indo-Pacific and North Pacific who can take care of North Korea, Russia and China together. That means that the role of the US military commander in South Korea is now aimed not only at North Korea, but also at Russia and China.”
Kang Jun-young, a professor of Chinese studies at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies in Seoul, said that in the South Korea-US-Japan trilateral security cooperation, South Korea’s priority was North Korea’s nuclear weapons, while the US and Japan’s priority was to contain China. A problem may arise in “how to fill this gap”.
“Perspectives from the Trump administration, especially from the defence sector, [are] that China and the US could eventually go to war and – even if it is not a direct war between them – problems could arise in the Taiwan Strait or other places,” said Kang. “So the role of US forces in Korea should be adjusted in preparation for that.”
Timothy Heath, a senior international defence researcher at US-based think tank Rand Corporation, said that prioritising China as a responsibility “may make sense from Colby’s perspective”.
However, it raised the question of why Seoul should host US troops if they were not defending South Korea from the North Korean threat, he added.
“It is unclear if US forces would remain in Korea if USFK prioritises China over the DPRK,” Heath said, referring to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, or North Korea.
“If an agreement could be made where US forces could participate in missions related to China as well as the DPRK, the main contribution in a Taiwan war would probably be the USFK’s aviation forces and facilities.”
Heath noted that “naval-based air forces could assist as well, though the long distance might limit how much they could participate”.
Seong Hyeon Choi
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Seong Hyeon joined the SCMP in 2022. He is from South Korea and graduated with a bachelor of journalism and master of international and public affairs from the University of Hong Kong. He worked as a research intern for Korea Chair at US foreign policy think tank Center for
17. More questions than answers in South Korean passenger jet crash that killed 179, leaving 2 survivors
More questions than answers in South Korean passenger jet crash that killed 179, leaving 2 survivors
Three more landing gear issues worldwide but nonfatal
washingtontimes.com · by Andrew Salmon
By - The Washington Times - Updated: 9:08 a.m. on Monday, December 30, 2024
SEOUL, South Korea – An unhappy year-end looms over South Korea’s winter of discontent as a politically polarized nation ponders the carnage caused by the crash of Jeju Air Flight 2216 Sunday morning.
A Boeing 737-800, en route from Bangkok and flown by the country’s leading low-cost airline, crash landed at Muan, in Korea’s southwest, killing 179 of 181 persons aboard.
As bodies are identified and information is released, grieving relatives are camping out Monday at Muan International Airport in government-supplied tents erected in the terminal.
Altars are being established nationwide, and flags are flying at half mast as Korea enters a week of mourning. Acting President Choi Sang-mok finds himself overseeing a national disaster investigation just days after taking office.
The country is in the grip of a political crisis that has seen both the president and his successor impeached this month. No end is in sight, with the presidency disempowered and the National Assembly at daggers drawn.
Prior deadly disasters, notably the 2014 sinking of the ferry Sewol, and a crowd crush on Halloween in Seoul in 2022, have adversely impacted presidential administrations. The crash investigation, however, is a technical matter.
SEE ALSO: Nearly 200 people dead in fiery airliner crash in South Korea
The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration and experts from Boeing have joined Korea’s National Transportation Safety Board to probe the disaster, Yonhap News Agency reported.
Three critical factors have been identified so far: A bird strike on the plane’s starboard engine; a decontrolled crash landing without undercarriage lowered; and collision with a solid concrete structure just behind the runway.
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Raising further questions for investigators is the fact that three more landing gear/hydraulic incidents impacted aircraft worldwide in the wake of the Muan crash — though none were deadly.
Six minutes to tragedy
Briefings by authorities and analysis of footage shows that events accelerated from airside crisis to landing pad disaster to incendiary tragedy in approximately six minutes.
In clear conditions, Muan Control Tower warned the pilot of Flight 2216 of a flock of birds in the air space at 8:57 a.m.
Muan International is surrounded by three migratory bird sites, and 10 bird-related incidents were reported between 2019 and August 2024, Korean media reported.
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One minute later, the pilot declared Mayday, citing a bird strike. He attempted to land from the takeoff end of the runway, with the tower’s permission.
In smartphone powerhouse South Korea, the doom of Flight 2216 was captured in footage shot by persons in or around the airport and shared across social media.
One clip shows an apparent bird impact, to the aircraft’s starboard jet intake, causing a “compressor stall” — disruption of airflow in the engine unit. There is neither explosion nor an apparent engine fire.
Another clip shows the plane lined up to land without landing gear deployed. It does not touch down until well along the length of the runway.
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Subsequent clips show the aircraft skidding along on its belly with smoke, but not flame, streaming from its starboard engine.
Then at high speed, the aircraft careens of the end of the runway directly into a concrete antennae base, explodes and disintegrates. It was 9:03 a.m.
Concrete structure was the killer
Korean media are already questioning whether communications between the aircraft and the tower were flawed, notably whether it was essential to crash land so quickly.
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Usual procedure is for a plane to go into a holding pattern, while communicating with on-ground experts, so flight crew can go through checklists to resolve onboard problems.
The mass solidity of an earth-and-concrete base for airport navigation aids, known as localizer antennae, reportedly built last year, is being widely criticized.
“I don’t know who designed that,” Denis Davydov, a pilot and former 737-800 captain, stated on YouTube’s Pilot Blog. He added that had the plane crashed into Muan’s perimeter wall, bricks would have displaced and the impact would been less catastrophic.
Calling it “a huge obstacle right off the end of the runway,” the berm was “a large contributor to the fact that there were only two survivors,” said Juan Browne, an air crash assessor on YouTube’s Blancolirio.
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At most airports localizer antennae have “… a frangible, or breakable connection with the ground where, if struck, the antennae will easily break away,” Mr. Browne said.
Barrier impact at high speed was the killing event. The contributing factor was nondeployment of landing gear and related decontrol on the runway.
What is happening to landing gear?
Damage to one engine of a 737-800 should not prevent it from flying on its second jet. Nor should it impact hydraulics or landing gear.
“A bird strike has nothing to do with hydraulics or landing gear, there is so much built-in redundancy,” noted Mr. Browne. Citing 737 blueprints, he showed three, independent hydraulic systems: Two are driven by the jet engines and electric motors, the third by an electric motor.
If all fail, there is a manual fail-safe.
Mr. Davydov showed stock footage of a Boeing 737-800’s manually operated cable mechanism, used by pilots in the cockpit to lower the undercarriage in event of hydraulic failure.
That had not been done on Flight 2216, Mr. Davydov said: Crash footage showed latches on the underside were not released.
Mr. Browne suggested that the crew had not had time to go through the necessary safety protocols.
The Muan disaster was just the first in a series of four landing gear-related incidents worldwide in less than 24 hours.
A De Havilland DHC-8-402 Air Canada Express suffered “a suspected landing gear issue” while landing at Halifax Stanfield International Airport in Nova Scotia. The event took place around 9:30 p.m. on Dec. 29, Canada-time — i.e. after the Sunday morning Korea-time disaster in Muan
Footage shot from the cabin showed flames flaring on the plane’s port side, but there were no casualties.
Also late on Dec. 29, Norway-time, a Dutch commercial Boeing 737-800 veered off the right side of a runway after landing at Oslo Torp Sandefjord Airport. The flight had diverted there to land shortly after takeoff from Oslo Airport, citing hydraulic failure.
No injuries were reported.
On Monday morning, another Boeing 737-800, again operated by Jeju Air left Seoul’s Gimpo International Airport at 6:47 a.m., returned soon after takeoff, after onboard systems detected a landing gear issue.
It landed safely at 7:25 a.m.
Whether the four incidents are coincidence, or whether an issue with engineering components and/or hydraulic fluid is impacting different models of aircraft, operated by multiple airlines, on different continents, is unknown.
Correction: In a previous version of the story, Muan was misspelled in a few references to the airport.
• Andrew Salmon can be reached at asalmon@washingtontimes.com.
Copyright © 2024 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.
washingtontimes.com · by Andrew Salmon
18. ‘Mayday, Mayday’: The Final Six Minutes Before the Deadly South Korean Plane Crash
‘Mayday, Mayday’: The Final Six Minutes Before the Deadly South Korean Plane Crash
A bird-strike warning came from an airport control tower just before one of the worst aviation disasters in years
https://www.wsj.com/world/asia/south-korea-plane-crash-final-six-minutes-105fdaf3?mod=latest_headlines
By Timothy W. Martin
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, Dasl Yoon
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, Soobin Kim and Benjamin Katz
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Dec. 30, 2024 10:08 am ET
Firefighters search the wreckage of the Jeju Air plane at Muan International Airport southwest of Seoul. Photo: han myung-gu/Shutterstock
SEOUL—At 8:57 a.m. on Sunday, the control tower at South Korea’s Muan International Airport issued an alert to a Jeju Air flight approaching: “Caution: Bird Activity.”
The alert wasn’t unusual at the airport, which is surrounded by several bird habitats that are home to various types of ducks and geese. But two minutes later, a call for help came from the cockpit: “Mayday, mayday, mayday, bird strike, bird strike, going around,” one of the pilots said, according to South Korea’s Transport Ministry.
About six minutes after the tower’s warning, the plane crashed down without its landing gear deployed and smashed into a barrier at the end of the airport’s only runway, bursting into flames. Of the 181 passengers and crew on board, just two survived. Both were flight attendants seated at the back of the Boeing 737-800 jet.
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A South Korean passenger jet skidded off the runway and smashed into a barrier killing nearly all of the 181 people on board. Aviation expert Geoffrey Thomas explains what may have caused one of the deadliest airline disasters in years. Photo: Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
The Jeju Air flight’s final chaotic moments now sit at the heart of a South Korean investigation into one of the deadliest aviation disasters in years. The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board, Boeing and the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration will assist in the probe—which could take months, if not longer—to determine the cause. Investigators retrieved the aircraft’s black boxes but, with one partially damaged, the decoding process could take months, South Korea’s Transport Ministry said.
On Monday, South Korea’s acting President Choi Sang-mok ordered an emergency safety inspection of the country’s entire airline operation system. All 101 of the Boeing 737-800 jets operated by South Korean airlines will have the maintenance histories of the engine and landing gear inspected by the end of the week.
The generation of Boeing aircraft that includes the one used by Jeju Air is a predecessor of the 737 MAX. It also has one of the best safety records in the industry over its 27 years in operation. It had recorded just 10 fatal accidents that have damaged the aircraft beyond repair, according to a Boeing report covering accident statistics across the industry between 1959 through 2023. That equates to a rate of 0.08 per million departures—or about one-seventh of the average seen across all commercial aircraft types.
The Jeju Air flight issued a mayday and attempted to land from north to south
Path of Jeju Air flight 2216
Muan Intl. Airport
Seoul
S. Korea
Muan County
Flying at 500 feet at
8:58am local time
CHINA
Runway
Approx.
area of
collision
South China Sea
VIETNAM
THAILAND
Bangkok
250 miles
Flight left at 2:29 a.m.
local time
250 km
Sources: Flightradar24 (route); Google Earth (sat. image)
Roque Ruiz/WSJ
After Sunday’s disaster, tens of thousands of passengers canceled Jeju Air flights. The company’s stock declined by roughly 8.6%. Boeing’s shares were down nearly 4% premarket Monday.
Many of the people aboard the Jeju Air flight had traded South Korea’s frigid winter for balmier Bangkok. They included a group of government workers on vacation together. There were two Thai nationals, including a 22-year-old university student preparing to become a flight attendant. The victims’ ages spanned from 78 years old to as young as 3 years old—a boy making his first overseas trip with his parents.
“The first stamp on his first passport!” the boy’s father wrote Saturday in an Instagram post, now full of condolence comments.
The passengers were due to land at an airport in Muan County on Sunday morning, after departing from Bangkok about an hour later than scheduled. They filed into a 15-year-old Boeing aircraft, where the economy-class seats were arranged three to a side on the narrow-body jet.
Things appeared to go smoothly for about five hours. The pilots had received the authorization to land the plane at Muan’s single runway that stretches just over 1.5 miles—about two-tenths of a mile longer than the ones at New York’s LaGuardia Airport. Incoming planes can land in either direction of the north-south strip, though often fly in from the south.
But within minutes at 8:57 a.m., the alert from the Muan control tower warned of a potential bird strike, just as the Jeju Air plane attempted its planned descent, according to South Korea’s Transport Ministry.
The pilots appeared to perform a low-pass maneuver over the airport on the aircraft’s initial approach, a technique used when crews are experiencing issues with a plane’s landing gear, according to analysis of the flight’s positional data by Flightradar24, an aviation tracking specialist. A low pass typically allows air-traffic controllers on the ground to get visual confirmation for the pilots of the landing gear’s position.
Shortly before landing, the control tower warned of a possible bird strike and one of the Jeju Air pilots issued a mayday. Photo: jung yeon-je/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
The mayday call from the cockpit came after that at 8:59 a.m. The plane made a 180-degree loop to make an approach from the other way. Passengers were able to send text messages to family members at that time. One wrote to a family member at 9 a.m. saying a bird had got lodged on the wing of the plane. “Should I write a will?” one of the messages read.
At 9:01 a.m., the Muan control tower gave the clearance for a second landing, this time from the north. The plane touched the ground about halfway down the runway, without its landing gear deployed. The jet’s flaps and slats on the front and back of its wings, which are used to control speed during landing, appeared to have also still been stowed, Flightradar24 said.
The potential effect any bird strike may have had on the Jeju Air jet’s engines will likely be a key focus of accident investigators, along with any faults with the electrical or hydraulics systems. Even if power had been lost, the pilots could have manually lowered the plane’s landing gear, aviation safety experts said.
The aircraft involved in the crash at Muan International Airport was a Boeing 737-800. Photo: han myung-gu/Shutterstock
Lee Geun-young, who runs a restaurant next to the airport, heard loud bangs that he said sounded like a motorcycle engine back firing and rushed to the rooftop of the business. From there, he captured roughly 54 seconds of cellphone video of the crash that has since aired around the world.
The video shows the plane hurtling down the runway on its belly, before smashing into a barrier. By 9:03 a.m., the aircraft had erupted into a fireball.
“The heat on my face was like the steam rising from a sauna,” Lee said.
The roughly 7-feet-high barrier the plane crashed into is part of a landing-assistance system for pilots called a “localizer,” which is used to guide landings when flight visibility is reduced by inclement weather. The positioning of the localizer at the end of the runway was typical. But it needed to be perched atop a hill, or earth mound, because the localizer needed to maintain the same height as the runway to work.
This mound made Muan’s setup both unusual and dangerous, said Simon Hatfield, a consultant based in Australia who works with airports on safety and design. If not for the barrier, the plane would have likely come to a rest, said Hatfield, who has reviewed visuals of the Jeju Air crash. He expects the aircraft would have plowed through the localizer had it sat on flatter terrain, as is often the case at airports. This would have greatly reduced the odds of the plane catching fire.
Dozens of stunned relatives congregated at the Muan airport awaiting news as the death toll rose throughout Sunday. One family member shared with local media the final text he had sent his daughter.
“Did you arrive yet, princess?” the message read.
Relatives of passengers on the Jeju Air flight gathered at the Muan airport, South Korea, waiting for news. Photo: soo-hyeon kim/Reuters
As of Monday evening local time, more than 145 of the bodies had been identified. That left authorities still working to identify two dozen people through DNA and fingerprint analyses. Government agencies and airport officials have set up a support center for family members of the victims.
One of the two survivors, a 33-year-old flight attendant, was rushed to the intensive-care unit of a Seoul hospital by Sunday evening, an official said. He had several fractures on the left side of his body and other injuries, though no burns.
The flight attendant, whose surname is Lee, can communicate enough to discuss his treatment, the hospital official said. Lee had remembered buckling in for the landing before blacking out. The hospital official recalled some of Lee’s initial words.
“When I regained consciousness,” Lee said, “I’d been rescued.”
Write to Timothy W. Martin at Timothy.Martin@wsj.com, Dasl Yoon at dasl.yoon@wsj.com and Benjamin Katz at ben.katz@wsj.com
De Oppresso Liber,
David Maxwell
Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy
Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation
Editor, Small Wars Journal
Twitter: @davidmaxwell161
Phone: 202-573-8647
email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com
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