Quotes of the Day:

•Sam Sarkesian in Unconventional Conflicts in a New Security Era: Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam, in 1993

–Asymmetric conflicts: For the US these conflicts will be limited and not considered a threat to its survival or a matter of vital national interests; however, for the indigenous adversaries they are a matter of survival.

–Protracted Conflicts: Require a long term commitment by the US, thus testing the national will, political resolve, and staying power of the US.

–Ambiguous and Ambivalent Conflicts: Difficult to identify the adversary, or assess the progress of the conflict; i.e., it is rarely obvious who is winning and losing.

–Conflicts with Political-Social Milieu Center of Gravity: The center of gravity will not be the armed forces of adversaries as Clausewitz would argue but more in the political and social realms as Sun Tzu espouses.

After 1941 both the British and the Americans developed a respectable level of tactical political warfare operations. Organized in Britain under a Political Warfare Executive and in the United States under the (misnamed) Office of Strategic Services and the Office of War Information, with a military arm jointly staffed by British and Americans as the Psychological Warfare Division of Eisenhower's headquarters, the political warfare forces offered the Anglo-American leadership an array of capabilities for operations at all levels. They were never, despite occasional high-sounding proclamations, given a sense of strategic direction and sustained high-level political- will comparable to that provided by Lloyd George in 1917-18. The various operational units were numerous, often in conflict with one another, and staffed with quite differently motivated people in terms of radical-conservative preferences. The usual rivalries developed over personalities and power. Churchill took only a spasmodic interest in the mechanism. While a consummate propagandist personally, he professed little interest in organizations for propaganda's strategic application: "This is a war of deeds and not words," he would growl.'

- Paul Smith, On Political Warfare

"The doctrine you desire, absolute, perfect dogma that alone provides wisdom, does not exist. Nor should you long for a perfect doctrine, my friend. Rather, you should long for the perfection of yourself. The diety is within uou, not in ideas and books. Turth is lived, not taught.

- Herman Hesse, The Glass Bead Game, 1943

1. N. Korea tests 'underwater nuclear attack drone,' cruise missiles for nuclear warhead: KCNA

2. Important Weapon Test and Firing Drill Conducted in DPRK

3. Yoon vows to make N. Korea pay for reckless provocations

4. S. Korea calls on N. Korea to pay back US$80 mln loan

5. U.S. Forces Korea holds first deployment training of THAAD 'remote' launcher

6. KUSAF and KDVA Joint Message Supporting and Congratulating Exercise Freedom Shield 2023

7. South Koreans spying for North Korea pledged loyalty to Kim Jong-un: prosecutors

8. Navy amphibious warships arrive in South Korea for large-scale ‘double dragons’ exercise

9. Interview: ‘South Korea must temporarily acquire nuclear weapons’

10. North Korean hackers using Chrome extensions to steal Gmail emails

11. North Korea’s Foreign Policy: The Kim Jong-un Regime in a Hostile World

12. From Slavery in North Korea to Jeff Bezos’s Gulfstream

13. Leading activist in North Korea human rights movement shares atrocities of tyranny

14. Torture, forced abortions and insects for food: Life inside North Korean jails, says this NGO

15. Kim Jong Un May Not Conduct Nuclear Test Soon, Says Top US Defense Official: 'He Will Uncork That At A Time And Place Of His Choosing'

16. Large-scale live-fire exercise by US, South Korean armies returns after 6-year lull

1. N. Korea tests 'underwater nuclear attack drone,' cruise missiles for nuclear warhead: KCNA

I will leave it to the weapons and WMD experts to assess the effectiveness of a "radioactive tsunami."

Photos at the link: https://en.yna.co.kr/view/AEN20230324000351325?section=nk/nk

(LEAD) N. Korea tests 'underwater nuclear attack drone,' cruise missiles for nuclear warhead: KCNA | Yonhap News Agency

en.yna.co.kr · by 이원주 · March 24, 2023

(ATTN: UPDATES throughout with details; MODIFIES headline; ADDS photos, byline)

By Yi Wonju

SEOUL, March 24 (Yonhap) -- North Korea tested a new underwater nuclear weapon earlier this week capable of spawning a "radioactive tsunami" and stealthily attacking enemies, Pyongyang's state media said Friday.

Separately, the North also conducted a cruise missile drill using missiles "tipped with a test warhead simulating a nuclear warhead" as it slammed the combined military exercises between South Korea and the United States as an "actual drill" for "occupying" Pyongyang, according to the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).

The Central Military Commission of the North's ruling Worker's Party (WPK) commanded the drills from March 21 to 23 "in order to alert the enemy to an actual nuclear crisis and verify the reliability of the nuclear force for self-defense," the KCNA reported.

The "underwater nuclear attack drone" was deployed off the coast of Riwon County, South Hamgyong Province, on Tuesday and reached the target point in the waters off Hongwon Bay set as a mock enemy port with its test warhead detonating underwater Thursday afternoon, it said.

The drone cruised "along an oval and pattern-8 course at an underwater depth of 80 to 150 meters in the East Sea of Korea for 59 hours and 12 minutes," it added.

The North claimed that the drones, designed to "stealthily infiltrate into operational waters and make a super-scale radioactive tsunami" to destroy naval striker groups and major ports of its enemies, can be deployed "at any coast and port or towed by a surface ship for operation."

North Korea began developing such underground nuclear weapons in 2012 to "outpace the military and technical superiority of the imperialist aggressor forces," the KCNA said.

The "secret weapon" was named "unmanned underwater nuclear attack craft 'Haeil'" at the eighth congress of the WPK in 2021 and has undergone more than 50 shakedowns in the past two years, it added.

The test warhead of an "underwater nuclear attack drone" of North Korea detonates underwater after it was launched off the coast of Riwon County, South Hamgyong Province, on March 21, 2023, in this photo released on March 24 by the North's official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA). The KCNA said the drone reached the target point in waters near Hongwon Bay set as a mock enemy port. North Korea conducted a new underwater nuclear strategic weapon test and cruise missile exercise guided by leader Kim Jong-un from March 21-23. (For Use Only in the Republic of Korea. No Redistribution) (Yonhap)

On March 22, the North also test-fired strategic cruise missiles "tipped with a test warhead simulating a nuclear warhead," according to the KCNA.

It said two "Hwasal-1" strategic cruise missiles and two "Hwasal-2" strategic cruise missiles, launched in South Hamgyong Province, accurately hit the target set in the East Sea.

The missiles flew on their "programmed 1500km- and 1800km-long oval and pattern-8 orbits for 7,557 to 7,567 seconds and 9,118 to 9,129 seconds respectively," it added.

As he guided the "important military activities," leader Kim Jong-un "expressed his will to make the U.S. imperialists and the South Korean puppet regime plunge into despair for their choice through the high-profile demonstration of the powerful war deterrence" and to make them understand that they are bound to "lose more than they get" as they expand combined exercises in the region.

He stressed the need to take "offensive actions" to make the enemy realize the North's "unlimited nuclear war deterrence capability" and "seriously warned" the allies to stop their "reckless" war drills.

The KCNA slammed the U.S. and the "South Korean puppet regime of traitors" for staging "intentional, persistent and provocative war drills," saying that the exercises have "driven the military and political situation of the Korean peninsula to an irreversibly dangerous point."

South Korea's military earlier said it detected multiple cruise missile launches from the North's eastern city of Hamhung on Wednesday morning.

Youtube

https://youtu.be/kuCjuy3Yp5I

A strategic cruise missile of North Korea is launched in South Hamgyong Province on March 22, 2023, in this photo released on March 24 by the North's official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA). The KCNA said two "Hwasal-1" strategic cruise missiles" and two "Hwasal-2" strategic cruise missiles accurately hit a target in the East Sea. North Korea conducted a new underwater nuclear strategic weapon test and cruise missile exercise guided by leader Kim Jong-un from March 21-23. (For Use Only in the Republic of Korea. No Redistribution) (Yonhap)

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un watches a strategic cruise missile being launched in South Hamgyong Province on March 22, 2023, in this photo released on March 24 by the North's official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA). The KCNA said two "Hwasal-1" strategic cruise missiles and two "Hwasal-2" strategic cruise missiles accurately hit a target in the East Sea. North Korea conducted a new underwater nuclear strategic weapon test and cruise missile exercise guided by Kim from March 21-23. (For Use Only in the Republic of Korea. No Redistribution) (Yonhap)

julesyi@yna.co.kr

(END)

en.yna.co.kr · by 이원주 · March 24, 2023

2. Important Weapon Test and Firing Drill Conducted in DPRK

Here is the north Korean Propaganda and Agitation Department's statement on its "radioactive tsunami."

But most of this statement is fiery and over the top rhetoric criticizing the ROK/US alliance and the exercises.

U.S. imperialists and the south Korean puppet regime of traitors 

the U.S. imperialists and their stooges

He expressed his will to make the U.S. imperialists and the south Korean puppet regime plunge into despair

seriously warned once again the enemies that they should stop the reckless anti-DPRK war drills.

its more destructive might to thoroughly shatter the war maniacs' confrontational wild dream

Excerpts:

The mission of the underwater nuclear strategic weapon is to stealthily infiltrate into operational waters and make a super-scale radioactive tsunami through underwater explosion to destroy naval striker groups and major operational ports of the enemy.

This nuclear underwater attack drone can be deployed at any coast and port or towed by a surface ship for operation.

The underwater nuclear attack drone, which was deployed for a drill off the coast of Riwon County of South Hamgyong Province on Tuesday, reached the target point in the waters off Hongwon Bay set as a mock enemy port with its test warhead detonating underwater on Thursday afternoon after cruising along an oval and pattern-8 course at an underwater depth of 80 to 150 meters in the East Sea of Korea for 59 hours and 12 minutes.

Important Weapon Test and Firing Drill Conducted in DPRK

https://kcnawatch.org/newstream/1679609724-943644822/important-weapon-test-and-firing-drill-conducted-in-dprk

Date: 24/03/2023 | Source: KCNA.kp (En) | Read original version at source

Pyongyang, March 24 (KCNA) -- The intentional, persistent and provocative war drills and confrontational stance of the U.S. imperialists and the south Korean puppet regime of traitors have driven the military and political situation of the Korean peninsula to an irreversibly dangerous point.

The reckless and dangerous nature of the confrontational hysteria recently betrayed by the U.S. imperialists and the south Korean puppet regime of traitors is unprecedented in history.

The U.S. imperialists and their stooges kicked off a large-scale dangerous drill, an actual drill for "occupying" the DPRK in the light of its form and contents, in defiance of the repeated stern warnings by the DPRK government, army and people. It is expected that the U.S. imperialists and their stooges will get more frantic in their persistent military provocations to aggravate the situation as ever with a more aggressive stand of confrontation.

This grave challenging situation against the state security of the DPRK requires it to have stronger war deterrents for firmly supporting the peaceful socialist state building activities - the more developed, multi-faceted and offensive nuclear attack capability - and increase its capability in every way in order to deter war and firmly preserve peace and prosperity with its tremendous might.

The hostile forces' anti-DPRK war scenario based on the deployment of huge nuclear strategic assets, the amount of forces involved in carrying it out and the ensuing peculiar mode of war urgently require the DPRK to make its entire armed forces gird themselves for an all-out war and bolster up its nuclear force both in quality and quantity on a priority basis.

The Central Military Commission of the Workers' Party of Korea (WPK) is energetically guiding the continuous military activities to bolster up its nuclear war deterrence for self-defence in order to strengthen the country's defence posture in every way and promptly counter and thoroughly control and manage any nuclear war threats and challenges by the enemy.

After organizing and guiding a combined tactical drill simulating a nuclear counterattack, the WPK Central Military Commission commanded drills from March 21 to 23, which served as a demonstration of another military attack capability, in order to alert the enemy to an actual nuclear crisis and verify the reliability of the nuclear force for self-defence.

The respected Comrade Kim Jong Un guided the important military activities.

A new underwater attack weapon system test was conducted from March 21 to 23.

Since 2012, the DPRK's defence scientific research institute has conducted the development of the underwater nuclear strategic attack weapon system based on a new operational concept, studying warfare in the new era and defining the orientation of the development of the self-defence capabilities to outpace the military and technical superiority of the imperialist aggressor forces.

The Political Bureau of the WPK Central Committee was informally reported about the underwater strategic nuclear weapon system at the Defence Development Exhibition Self-Defence-2021 held in October 2021.

This secret weapon was named "Unmanned Underwater Nuclear Attack Craft 'Haeil'" at the 8th Congress of the WPK.

It has undergone more than 50 shakedowns for the past two years since the Congress.

Kim Jong Un personally guided 29 weapon tests and its operational deployment was decided at the 6th Plenary Meeting of the 8th Central Committee of the WPK.

The mission of the underwater nuclear strategic weapon is to stealthily infiltrate into operational waters and make a super-scale radioactive tsunami through underwater explosion to destroy naval striker groups and major operational ports of the enemy.

This nuclear underwater attack drone can be deployed at any coast and port or towed by a surface ship for operation.

The underwater nuclear attack drone, which was deployed for a drill off the coast of Riwon County of South Hamgyong Province on Tuesday, reached the target point in the waters off Hongwon Bay set as a mock enemy port with its test warhead detonating underwater on Thursday afternoon after cruising along an oval and pattern-8 course at an underwater depth of 80 to 150 meters in the East Sea of Korea for 59 hours and 12 minutes.

The test correctly estimated all the tactical and technical specifications and navigational and technical indices of the underwater nuclear attack drone, verified its reliability and safety and fully confirmed its lethal strike capability.

On March 22 there took place a launching drill to let strategic cruise missile units get familiar with the procedures and processes for carrying out the tactical nuclear attack missions.

Prior to the drill, there was training to reexamine the operational normality and the systematic safety of technical and mechanical devices, including the procedures for authenticating the nuclear attack order and the launch approval system, and to let the strategic cruise missile sub-units get familiar with action methods and handling of equipment through repeated practice.

The strategic cruise missile was tipped with a test warhead simulating a nuclear warhead.

Two "Hwasal-1"-type strategic cruise missiles and two "Hwasal-2"-type strategic cruise missiles, launched in Jakdo-dong, Hungnam District, Hamhung City, South Hamgyong Province, accurately hit the target set in the East Sea of Korea after flying on their programmed 1 500km- and 1 800km-long oval and pattern-8 orbits for 7 557 to 7 567 seconds and 9 118 to 9 129 seconds respectively.

The drill also involved the cruise missiles' minimum-altitude flight test and the test for estimating their capability for ever-changing-altitude control and evasion flight.

The drill also verified once again the operational reliability of nuclear explosion control devices and detonators by applying the mid-air-explosion (600 meters above the target) strike mode to two different missiles.

The major weapon test and launching drills had no negative impact on the security of the neighboring countries.

The respected Comrade Kim Jong Un was greatly satisfied with the results of the major weapon test and the launching drill for a strategic purpose.

Underlining the need to neutralize every attempt of the enemy to invade the DPRK and creditably defend our people's peaceful life and future and the cause of socialist construction by more overwhelmingly and offensively countering to the end the reckless military provocations being escalated by the U.S. and the south Korean authorities in disregard of our patience and warning, he set forth the immediate militant tasks and permanent policies for doing so.

Bitterly criticizing the U.S. imperialists for desperately resorting to military moves imperiling the regional situation under the pretence of fulfilling their commitment to defending allies and under various pretexts of tightening alliance, encouraging the misguided imprudence and "bravery" of the south Korean puppet regime of traitors and inciting them to impudent actions, he referred to the need to take offensive actions to make the enemy inviting the danger with thoughtless and reckless acts realize the DPRK's unlimited nuclear war deterrence capability being bolstered up at a greater speed.

He expressed his will to make the U.S. imperialists and the south Korean puppet regime plunge into despair for their choice through the high-profile demonstration of the powerful war deterrence and make them understand by themselves that they are bound to lose more than they get and face a greater threat due to the strengthening of the military alliance and the expansion of war drills in the region.

He, on behalf of the Workers' Party of Korea and the DPRK government, seriously warned once again the enemies that they should stop the reckless anti-DPRK war drills.

The nuclear force of the DPRK will further enhance its responsible militant function and mission with its more destructive might to thoroughly shatter the war maniacs' confrontational wild dream and bolster up its overwhelming nuclear counteraction posture in every way, true to the expectations and desire of the Party, government and people of the DPRK for deterring war and preserving peace and stability. -0-

www.kcna.kp (Juche112.3.24.)

3. Yoon vows to make N. Korea pay for reckless provocations

(LEAD) Yoon vows to make N. Korea pay for reckless provocations | Yonhap News Agency

en.yna.co.kr · by 이해아 · March 24, 2023

(ATTN: UPDATES with roll call, more details)

By Lee Haye-ah

SEOUL, March 24 (Yonhap) -- President Yoon Suk Yeol vowed Friday to make North Korea pay for its reckless provocations as the regime claimed to have carried out additional simulations of nuclear attacks on its enemies.

Yoon issued the warning hours after North Korea said it conducted the simulations this week involving cruise missile launches and an underwater nuclear attack drone, with leader Kim Jong-un threatening to make Seoul and Washington "plunge into despair."

"North Korea is advancing its nuclear weapons by the day, and carrying out missile provocations with an unprecedented intensity," Yoon said at a memorial ceremony marking West Sea Defense Day at the national cemetery in Daejeon, 139 kilometers south of Seoul.

"I will make sure North Korea pays the price for its reckless provocations," he said.

West Sea Defense Day commemorates the 55 service members who died in action while defending the Northern Limit Line, the de facto western maritime border between South and North Korea, between 2002 and 2010.

The 55 include the 46 sailors killed aboard the corvette Cheonan in March 2010 in a torpedo attack blamed on the North.

"Our government and military will dramatically strengthen the South Korean three-axis system in the face of North Korea's nuclear and missile advancements and provocations, and further solidify security cooperation between South Korea and the United States, and between South Korea, the U.S. and Japan," Yoon said, referring to a military system involving anti-missile defense, a program to incapacitate the North Korean leadership, and a preemptive strike platform.

North Korea has intensified its weapons tests in recent weeks in protest of Seoul and Washington's expanded military exercises, which the regime views as rehearsals for an invasion.

Kim warned the allies are bound to "lose more than they get" from the exercises, according to the North's Korean Central News Agency.

Before starting his speech, Yoon fought back tears as he read out a roll call of the 55 fallen service members.

Ahead of the ceremony, Yoon also paid tribute to the fallen at their graves, with first lady Kim Keon Hee at his side.

"Your precious family members and comrades are heroes who defended our freedom in the face of North Korea's provocations," he said in his speech. "Together with our people, I will forever remember the great heroes who defended the freedom of the Republic of Korea in the name of the nation."

President Yoon Suk Yeol and first lady Kim Keon Hee arrive at the national cemetery in Daejeon, 139 kilometers south of Seoul, on March 24, 2023. (Yonhap)

hague@yna.co.kr

(END)

en.yna.co.kr · by 이해아 · March 24, 2023

4. S. Korea calls on N. Korea to pay back US$80 mln loan

S. Korea calls on N. Korea to pay back US$80 mln loan | Yonhap News Agency

en.yna.co.kr · by 김수연 · March 24, 2023

SEOUL, March 24 (Yonhap) -- South Korea's unification ministry Friday called on North Korea to repay its 2007 loan of industrial raw materials, worth US$80 million, from Seoul, saying it is coming to maturity.

Under an inter-Korean agreement at that time, meant to help improve the North's light industries, the South loaned the North raw materials needed to produce garments, shoes and soaps.

In return, Pyongyang was supposed to make a repayment in kind, such as with zinc and other minerals. But after making initial payments in 2007 and 2008, the North has not repaid any more of the debt.

The ministry in charge of inter-Korean affairs urged the North to "faithfully" repay the principal and interest, with the maturity coming due Friday.

"The North's inaction constitutes a violation of the inter-Korean agreement and also runs counter to international trade practices," Lee Hyo-jung, the ministry's deputy spokesperson, said at a press briefing.

This file photo, taken Jan. 16, 2023, shows Lee Hyo-jung, deputy spokesperson at Seoul's unification ministry, speaking at a regular press briefing. (Yonhap)

sooyeon@yna.co.kr

(END)

en.yna.co.kr · by 김수연 · March 24, 2023

5. U.S. Forces Korea holds first deployment training of THAAD 'remote' launcher

(LEAD) U.S. Forces Korea holds first deployment training of THAAD 'remote' launcher | Yonhap News Agency

en.yna.co.kr · by 송상호 · March 24, 2023

(ATTN: UPDATES with air drills in last 3 paras; RECASTS 5th para)

SEOUL, March 24 (Yonhap) -- The U.S. Forces Korea (USFK) said Friday it has conducted the first training on the deployment of a "remote" launcher of its Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile defense system in South Korea.

The U.S. military made public a set of photos of Sunday's training, hours after the North's state media reported the country had carried out drills involving an underwater nuclear attack drone and cruise missile launches earlier this week.

"The training of our THAAD forces enhanced the units' combat readiness, combined defense posture within the alliance, demonstrates the ironclad commitment to support and defend the ROK and further strengthens the security and stability on the Korean Peninsula," the USFK said in a press release. ROK stands for South Korea's official name, the Republic of Korea.

The drills took place in conjunction with the regular South Korea-U.S. Freedom Shield (FS) exercise that concluded its 11-day run Thursday.

The employment of the remote launcher came in line with the U.S. military's upgrade program designed to streamline and integrate its THAAD and Patriot missile defense systems into a single program for enhanced and more flexible security operations.

The training came as the Seoul government has been pushing for the "normalization" of the THAAD battery in Seongju, 217 kilometers southeast of Seoul, which has held the status of a "temporary" installation pending an environmental assessment.

"Normalization of Terminal High Altitude Area Defense operations and capabilities provides USFK greater readiness to ensure continued resourcing of the unit, as well as providing greater opportunity to modify the defense design by exercising remote launch options," the USFK said.

Meanwhile, the South Korean and U.S. Air Forces carried out aerial live-fire drills at a range in the Yellow Sea from Monday through Friday, in connection with the FS exercise, according to officials here.

The South deployed F-35A radar-evading fighters, F-15Ks, KF-16s, F-16s and F-4Es, while the U.S. mobilized A-10 attack aircraft.

The F-35A jets fired AIM-9X and AIM-120 air-to-air missiles and GBU-31 air-to-ground bombs, while the A-10 aircraft lobbed AGM-65 air-to-ground missiles and GBU-31 and GBU-38 bombs.

This undated file photo shows a U.S. THAAD battery in Seongju, 217 kilometers southeast of Seoul. (Yonhap)

sshluck@yna.co.kr

(END)

en.yna.co.kr · by 송상호 · March 24, 2023

6. KUSAF and KDVA Joint Message Supporting and Congratulating Exercise Freedom Shield 2023

Freedom Shield has reached ENDEX.

But everyone should understand training continues in multiple forms.

KUSAF and KDVA Joint Message Supporting and Congratulating Exercise Freedom Shield 2023

kdva.vet · March 23, 2023

2023 자유의 방패 연합연습을 지지하며 성공적 연습을 축하하는 한미동맹재단과 주한미군전우회의 공동메시지

KUSAF and KDVA Joint Message Supporting and Congratulating Exercise Freedom Shield 2023

대한민국 방위는 한미 양국 국민 모두에게 중요합니다. 한미연합사는 대한민국 방위를 책임지는 사령부로서 훈련을 통해 북한의 실질적인 위협에 대비할 수 있어야 합니다.

The defense of the Republic of Korea is of vital importance to the Korean and American people. As the command responsible for the defense of Korea, the ROK-U.S. Combined Forces Command (CFC) must train to be ready against a real threat from North Korea.

한미동맹재단과 주한미군전우회는 한미연합사의 자유의 방패 연합연습과 전사의 방패 연합 야외 기동훈련을 전폭적으로 지지합니다. 군사 훈련은 군이 임무를 수행하기 위한 정상적이고 필수적이며 대체불가한 요소입니다. 이번 자유의 방패 지휘소 연습은 한국군, 주한미군, 연합사 및 예하 구성군사, 유엔사를 포함하여 다양하게 편성된 부대들의 작전 수행 능력과 협조 절차를 통합했습니다.

The Korea Defense Veterans Association and the Korea-US Alliance Foundation fully support CFC’s Exercise Freedom Shield and Warrior Shield Field Training Exercise (FTX). Military training is a normal, essential, and irreplaceable part of any military’s ability to carry out its mission. This Freedom Shield command post exercise integrated the operational practices and coordination of a diverse and unified group that included the ROK Military, U.S. Forces Korea (USFK), CFC and its subordinate component commands, and United Nations Command (UNC).

전사의 방패 훈련은 “공중, 지상, 해상, 우주, 사이버, 특수 작전을 통해 한미 양국군의 협력을 강화하고 전술, 전기 및 절차를 숙달시키는” 야외기동 훈련으로써, 자유의 방패 연습을 보완했습니다. (출처 연합사 언론보도)

The Warrior Shield FTX complemented the Freedom Shield exercise with field training to “further enhance the ROK and U.S. militaries’ cooperation through air, land, sea, space, cyber and special operations, and improve upon tactics, techniques and procedures” (from CFC’s press statement at http://www.usfk.mil/Media/Press-Products/Press-Releases/Article/3317645/freedom-shield-23-set-to- begin/).

재단과 전우회 회원들은 한미 연합연습 경험을 통해, 한국에서 실시되는 높은 훈련 수준과 장비를 잘 이해합니다. 전우회 회원들을 포함하여 수백만 명의 미국인과 한국인들은 1950-1953 년 한국전쟁이 일어났던 지역에서 훈련했던 소중한 경험을 갖고 있습니다. 전우회 회원들은 DMZ 전역에서 실제 위협에 대비한 실전적인 훈련 경험담을 회상했습니다. 우리는 이 소중한 이야기를 주한미군전우회 디지털 도서관(https://kdva.vet/digital-library/)에 올려 놓았습니다.

Since many members of KUSAF and KDVA have participated in exercises in Korea, we understand the very high level of equipment and training that occurs in Korea. Millions of Americans and Koreans – many of whom are KDVA members – reflect fondly of their experiences in Korea training on the same ground that the Korean War was fought in 1950-1953. KDVA members have recounted their personal stories about the realistic training against a real threat across the DMZ – they are available in the KDVA Digital Library (https://kdva.vet/digital-library/).

한미동맹재단과 주한미군전우회는 북한의 침략을 억제하고 세계 10 위 경제 대국인 대한민국의 안보를 지키기 위해 헌신하는 한미 양국군 장병들에게 경의를 표합니다.

KDVA and KUSAF thank the women and men serving in Korea for deterring North Korean aggression and maintaining a secure environment for the 10th largest economy in the world, the Republic of Korea.

함께해요 한미동맹!

“Together for the ROK-U.S. Alliance”

커티스 스카파로티

예비역 육군 대장

주한미군전우회 회장

Curtis M. Scaparrotti General, U.S. Army (Retired) President, KDVA

정승조

예비역 육군 대장

한미동맹재단 회장

Jung, Seung Jo

General, ROK Army (Retired) President, KUSAF

Download Statement: KUSAF and KDVA Joint Message for Freedom Shield Exercises 2023

kdva.vet · March 23, 2023

7. South Koreans spying for North Korea pledged loyalty to Kim Jong-un: prosecutors

north Korea is actively conducting subversion against South Korea.

Subversion

•The undermining of the power and authority of an established system or institution.

–As in: "the ruthless subversion of democracy"

•Ideological War – a choice between:

–Shared ROK/US Values

•Freedom and individual liberty, liberal democracy, rule of law, free market economy, and human rights

–Kim family regime (KFR) “values”

•Juche/Kimilsungism, Socialist Workers Paradise, Songun, Songbun, Byungjin, rule BY law, and denial of human rights to sustain KFR power

•nK engages in active subversion of the ROK as well as the ROK/US Alliance

Excerpts:

In a different investigation into alleged spies for North Korea, prosecutors on Thursday filed a request for a warrant to arrest four officials of South Korea’s umbrella labor union organization, the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions.

The KCTU officials met with North Korean authorities overseas and communicated with them over several years, prosecutors said.

Prosecutors also claim North Korea influenced the umbrella union's protests against the South Korea-US joint military exercises, allegedly orchestrating the protests and sending specific protest slogans.

South Koreans spying for North Korea pledged loyalty to Kim Jong-un: prosecutors

koreaherald.com · by Kim Arin · March 24, 2023

South Koreans charged with spying for North Korea met secretly with North Korean agents in Cambodia and other Southeast Asian countries, according to Seoul prosecutors.

The Seoul Central District Prosecutors’ Office wrote in an indictment released late Thursday that the head of the alleged spy ring, a 60-year-old identified only by his surname of Hwang, made overseas trips to communicate with North Korean agents in person.

In March 2016, in one of the earliest of such encounters, Hwang stayed at a resort in Cambodia where he and two North Korean agents met up and exchanged intelligence, prosecutors said.

Prosecutors said Hwang eventually made other members of the spy ring, named the People’s Unification Front, travel to countries like Cambodia and Vietnam to meet North Korean agents there.

Hwang gave the spy ring members specific instructions on how and where to find the North Korean agents, and cautioned them about being followed or watched.

One of them, a 44-year-old woman surnamed Jung, gave the North Korean agents her personal details such as her hometown and the identities of her children to gain their trust, prosecutors said. She even submitted a written pledge of loyalty to North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.

At one point Jung received about $7,000 from North Korea for her part in aiding their spying operations, prosecutors found.

In a different investigation into alleged spies for North Korea, prosecutors on Thursday filed a request for a warrant to arrest four officials of South Korea’s umbrella labor union organization, the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions.

The KCTU officials met with North Korean authorities overseas and communicated with them over several years, prosecutors said.

Prosecutors also claim North Korea influenced the umbrella union's protests against the South Korea-US joint military exercises, allegedly orchestrating the protests and sending specific protest slogans.

By Kim Arin (arin@heraldcorp.com)

koreaherald.com · by Kim Arin · March 24, 2023

8. Navy amphibious warships arrive in South Korea for large-scale ‘double dragons’ exercise

We have brought a lot of important capabilities to the Korean Theater of Operations during Freedom Shield.

Navy amphibious warships arrive in South Korea for large-scale ‘double dragons’ exercise

Stars and Stripes · by David Choi · March 23, 2023

A U.S. Marine walks alongside the amphibious assault ship USS Makin Island in Busan, South Korea, Thursday, March 23, 2023. (David Choi/Stars and Stripes)

Buy Photo

BUSAN, South Korea — A U.S. Navy amphibious ready group — 5,500 sailors and Marines and three warships — arrived at South Korea’s largest port Wednesday for the largest naval exercise by the two allies in five years.

The amphibious assault ship USS Makin Island and its accompanying amphibious transport docks USS Anchorage and USS John P. Murtha steamed into Busan for Ssangyong, an exercise that began Monday across South Korea.

The exercise will “continue to build trust between our two countries” and is the “linchpin for peace and security on the Korean Peninsula,” Navy Capt. Tony Chavez, the Makin Island’s commander, said at a press conference aboard the ship.

Chavez described Ssangyong as a defensive exercise.

“It does not matter where that threat is coming from, we are ensuring that we are able to amass forces to maintain maritime and air superiority and defend northeast Asia or all of the Indo-Pacific region,” he said.

Joint light tactical and amphibious assault vehicles wait inside the well deck of the USS Makin Island in Busan, South Korea, Thursday, March 23, 2023. (David Choi/Stars and Stripes)

Buy Photo

Ssangyong translates to “double dragons” and refers to the U.S. and South Korean military alliance, a South Korean Ministry of National Defense spokesman told Stars and Stripes by phone Thursday. It’s customary in South Korea for some government officials to speak to the media without providing their names.

The two-week exercise is scheduled to include more than 30 ships and 70 aircraft from both countries, including South Korean F-35A and Marine Corps F-35B Lightning II stealth fighters, according to the ministry spokesman.

More than 50 South Korean amphibious assault vessels are expected to take part in a landing drill in nearby Pohang City.

“This year, the Ssangyong training will be conducted in a large-scale to strengthen our alliance’s combat readiness and to improve interoperability,” Capt. Lee Hee Jung of the South Korean Fleet Command said at the press conference. The military uses “interoperability” to describe the ability of a country’s armed forces to use another country’s training methods and military equipment.

The Makin Island Amphibious Ready Group’s arrival comes nearly six months after the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan returned to Busan for maritime drills with South Korea’s navy for the first time since 2017.

Marine Corps F-35B Lightning II stealth fighters park on the flight deck of the amphibious assault ship USS Makin Island in Busan, South Korea, Thursday, March 23, 2023. (David Choi/Stars and Stripes)

Buy Photo

Earlier this month, the San Diego-based group took part in Cobra Gold, an annual exercise in Thailand, where it worked alongside the South Korean, Thai, Japanese, Indonesian, Singaporean and Malaysian navies.

Military exercises like Ssangyong have been taking place throughout South Korea in recent days.

On Thursday, around 800 U.S. and 400 South Korean soldiers wrapped up a four-day live-fire drill as part of a separate exercise in Pocheon city, about 16 miles from the border with North Korea.

Ssangyong was put on hold after 2018 when then-South Korean President Moon Jae-in and then-President Donald Trump agreed to scale back large-scale exercises. At the time, Trump and Moon attempted to negotiate with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un for the denuclearization of his country.

Despite summits between the leaders in Singapore, Vietnam and the Demilitarized Zone separating North and South Korea, those talks fell short due to differences in sanctions relief for Pyongyang and denuclearization goals for Seoul and Washington.

South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol, who was inaugurated in May, vowed to restart the drills and pledged to meet North Korea’s provocations with military strength.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and South Korean Defense Minister Lee Jong-sup in a joint statement Jan. 1 said the two countries will “continue to deploy U.S. strategic assets in a timely and coordinated manner in the future” in response to Pyongyang’s threats.

North Korea has fired nine ballistic missiles so far this year. In its state-run media, the communist regime likens the ongoing drills in the South to a declaration of war.

Stars and Stripes · by David Choi · March 23, 2023

9. Interview: ‘South Korea must temporarily acquire nuclear weapons’

I do not think there is anything temporary about possessing nuclear weapons.

Interview: ‘South Korea must temporarily acquire nuclear weapons’

Defector-turned-lawmaker Thae Yong Ho believes Seoul can force the North to engage if it builds a nuclear arsenal.

By Do-hyung Han for RFA Korean

2023.03.23

rfa.org

South Korean lawmaker Thae Yong-ho was once a high-ranking North Korean diplomat. In 2016, while he was Pyongyang’s deputy ambassador to the United Kingdom, he defected with his family to the South. Less than four years after his family arrived in Seoul, Thae won a local election and became a member of the National Assembly representing the city’s wealthy Gangnam district.

As a member of the assembly, Thae has served on the Foreign Affairs and Unification committee, drawing on his unique expertise on North Korea to help form South Korean policy. On Mar. 8, South Korea’s ruling People Power Party elected Thae to its supreme council, making him the first defector to enter into a South Korean political party’s leadership.

RFA’s Korean Service interviewed Thae on March 16 to discuss struggles faced by North Korean escapees who have resettled in South Korea, North Korean security, North Korea’s leadership, and other issues. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

RFA: You’re the first North Korean defector to become a member of the South Korean National Assembly, and you have continued to blaze the trail by becoming the first defector to rise into a major political party’s senior leadership. What does your success mean in terms of South Korean society’s views on North Korean escapees?

Thae: I feel that the window of prejudice and discrimination against North Korean escapees in South Korean society has been broken again. I think this is an opportunity to show that South Korea is a truly diverse and inclusive society. In countries like North Korea and China, being a member of the Standing Committee means that you have risen to be the best of the best. But the fact that I went in as an elected official is truly great for anyone who knows this structure. I hope it will be an opportunity for new hope for the North Korean escapees who have fallen into a sense of defeat and pessimism.

Former North Korean diplomat Thae Yong-ho gestures after securing a win in South Korea's parliamentary elections, at his campaign headquarters in the Gangnam district of Seoul on April 16, 2020. Credit: AFP

RFA: What do you imagine that Kim Jong Un might be thinking to see a former member of his regime being elected as a supreme council member of a South Korean political party?

Thae: Kim Jong Un receives daily reports from the United Front Department on the political and economic situation in South Korea. [He] probably thinks that if this news reaches North Korea, it will be a big deal. He could also worry that there will be more breakaways from the elite. [Most North Koreans] probably won't know about it right away, but this is the Internet era and many North Koreans abroad are using cell phones or the Internet. It will become a well-known fact sooner or later.

RFA: North Korea continues to promote nuclear and missile advancement. What do you think Kim Jong Un's true intentions are? And how do you think South Korea and its allies should respond to this?

Thae: One goal is to develop nuclear weapons to completely subdue South Korea with nuclear weapons. The other is so that the United States comes to nuclear negotiations with North Korea and responds to nuclear disarmament negotiations on North Korea’s terms.

First, we are currently holding a large ROK-US joint military exercise right now called Freedom Shield, and it is based on extended deterrence. If Kim Jong Un flinches though, the end of the North Korean regime will come swiftly under the might of a huge conventional force.

Next, South Korea must temporarily acquire nuclear weapons. North Korea has nuclear weapons, South Korea does not. The United States has nuclear weapons, so North Korea is trying to negotiate nuclear disarmament between countries with nuclear weapons.

So, if [the South has] nuclear weapons, we have a justification to confidently engage in nuclear disarmament negotiations.

This picture taken on March 9, 2023 and released by North Korea's official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) on March 10 shows a missile launch by the North Korean military. Credit: KCNA via KNS/AFP

RFA: In your book, “Password of the Third Floor Secretary Room,” you said past negotiations with North Korea were deceptions meant to waste time. If South Korea temporarily possesses nuclear weapons and enters into nuclear negotiations with North Korea, how should Seoul’s approach differ from previous negotiations?

Thae: Telling [North Korea] to get rid of [missiles] all at once won’t work. We have to go step by step. Let's get rid of ICBMs by mutual verification. For the next step, let's get rid of missiles (SLBMs) from submarines. We must open the way to denuclearization by building trust through nuclear disarmament step by step, like the way Russia [or its predecessor state, the Soviet Union] and the United States have done.

RFA: There is a lot of criticism about this proposal. Some say that if South Korea acquired nuclear weapons, international sanctions could be imposed, and the ROK-US alliance could be weakened. What is your opinion on this?

Thae: We are a country that has a military alliance with the United States. So, we can’t play alone, or unilaterally. We must go through endless debates and negotiations with the United States. In the future, if the nuclear military alliance between North Korea, China, and Russia deepens further, the U.S. will eventually come to a stage where it is carefully examining whether it is possible for them to fight two wars at the same time on the Korean Peninsula and in Taiwan, in front of China.

Anticipating these steps, we must constantly negotiate and discuss with the United States. We should never give up on our own without setting these goals and negotiating with the United States.

RFA: Does this mean that we can expect that the issue of international sanctions will be resolved naturally if there is dialogue with the United States?

Thae: Right, as long as the United States agrees. We have to convince the U.S. that it is ultimately beneficial for us to arm ourselves and achieve a nuclear balance with North Korea.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and his daughter Kim Ju Ae watch a missile drill at an undisclosed location in this image released by North Korea's Central News Agency (KCNA) on March 20, 2023. Credit: KCNA via Reuters

RFA: The North Korean regime has passed its leadership from father to son for three generations now. Do you think the Kim Dynasty can continue to the fourth generation? Will Kim Jong Un’s daughter Kim Ju Ae one day rule North Korea?

Thae: I think the North Korean regime will never make it to the fourth generation with Kim Ju Ae. Since Kim Jong Un came to power, the North Korean regime has gone too far in a very unstable and abnormal direction over the past decade.

I wonder if Kim Jong Un is truly so nervous that he is making such a fuss to have his 10-year-old daughter succeed him. Another problem is that the military and government leadership cannot remain stable from year to year. They are constantly changing players. This means there is no consensus or solidarity between Kim Jong Un and the leaders surrounding him. So, distrust is building. I think that’s why they are constantly changing personnel.

Next, young people who are growing up in North Korea have no loyalty to the North Korean system. They only value reality, and dream of a more open and prosperous country. When they grow up and become the backbone of North Korea in their 40s and 50s, I believe that Kim Jong Un’s system will inevitably collapse.

RFA: Experts have raised the possibility that Kim Ju Ae may be the successor to Kim Jong Un, though. Isn’t it at least possible?

Thae: I wonder if Kim Jong Un would really hand over the power to his daughter, not to a son. I think right now he is building this image that the next succession will go to four generations because he has children.

Also, if Kim Jong Un is insecure about his health right now, let's say he got sick today, then [his sister] Kim Yo-jong has no choice but to emerge as a replacement. To some extent, Kim Yo-jong would rule.

I think it may be part of a power struggle to imprint in advance that Kim Yo-jong cannot rule indefinitely, but that she would have to hand power over to Kim Jong Un’s children when they become adults.

North Korean defector O Hye-son holds her Korean-language memoir “The Pyongyang Lady Who Came from London” on how she and her husband, Thae Yong-ho, defected in 2016. Credit: AFP file photo

RFA: According to the recently published book “The Pyongyang Lady Who Came from London,” penned by your wife O Hye-son, it seems you worked really hard while you were in North Korea. In your book, “Password of the Third Floor Secretary Room,” you said that the moment you defected from North Korea in the U.K., “tears flowed endlessly.” Can you explain more about how you felt at that time?

Thae: Two emotions crossed my mind. One was thinking about defecting from North Korea at my age, and I thought that I had lived such a wasted life for so long. The other thing was that I thought about what kind of life I would live from then on. I was leaving North Korea and coming to South Korea. I committed to myself that I would devote the rest of my life, to the very end, for freedom and democracy and the reunification of the Korean Peninsula.

RFA: People in North Korea are listening to Radio Free Asia Broadcasting. Is there anything you would like to say to them directly?

Thae: Only because you were born in North Korea, you are living a difficult life right now. I think you must overthrow the Kim Jong Un regime if you want to live a free life like those in South Korea and be treated like a human like people in other countries are. When the Kim Jong Un regime collapses, that will be the day you will find a life worthy of human dignity.

Translated by Claire Shinyoung Oh Lee. Edited by Eugene Whong.

rfa.org

10. North Korean hackers using Chrome extensions to steal Gmail emails

I may have to shift to protonmail. I have not been getting responses to many of my emails in recent weeks. I wonder if some of my emails are being stolen.

North Korean hackers using Chrome extensions to steal Gmail emails

BleepingComputer · by Bill Toulas · March 22, 2023

A joint cybersecurity advisory from the German Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) and the National Intelligence Service of the Republic of Korea (NIS) warn about Kimsuky's use of Chrome extensions to steal target's Gmail emails.

Kimsuky (aka Thallium, Velvet Chollima) is a North Korean threat group that uses spear phishing to conduct cyber-espionage against diplomats, journalists, government agencies, university professors, and politicians. Initially focused on targets in South Korea, the threat actors expanded operations over time to target entities in the USA and Europe.

The joint security advisory was released to warn of two attack methods used by the hacking group — a malicious Chrome extension and Android applications.

While the current campaign targets people in South Korea, the techniques used by Kimsuky can be applied globally, so raising awareness is vital.

Stealing Gmail emails

The attack begins with a spear-phishing email urging the victim to install a malicious Chrome extension, which will also install in Chromium-based browsers, such as Microsoft Edge or Brave.

The extension is named 'AF' and can only be seen in the extensions list if the user enters "(chrome|edge| brave)://extensions" in the browser's address bar.

Once the victim visits Gmail through the infected browser, the extension automatically activates to intercept and steal the victim's email content.

The extension abuses the Devtools API (developer tools API) on the browser to send the stolen data to the attacker's relay server, stealthily stealing their emails without breaking or bypassing account security protections.

This is not the first time Kimsuky has used malicious Chrome extensions to steal emails from breached systems.

In July 2022, Volexity reported about a similar campaign using an extension named "SHARPEXT." In December 2018, Netscout reported that Kimsuky was following the same tactic against academia targets.

This time, the hashes of the malicious files Kimsuky uses in its latest attacks are:

• 012D5FFE697E33D81B9E7447F4AA338B (manifest.json)
• 582A033DA897C967FAADE386AC30F604 (bg.js)
• 51527624E7921A8157F820EB0CA78E29 (dev.js)

Chrome extension infection chain (BfV)

Android malware

The Android malware used by Kimsuky is named "FastViewer," "Fastfire," or "Fastspy DEX," and it has been known since October 2022, when it was seen masquerading as a security plugin or document viewer.

However, Korean cybersecurity firm AhnLab, reports that the threat actors updated FastViewer in December 2022, so they continued using the malware after its hashes were publicly reported.

The attack unfolds with Kimsuky logging in to the victim's Google account, which they previously stole through phishing emails or other means.

Next, the hackers abuse the web-to-phone synchronization feature of Google Play, which allows users to install apps on their linked devices from their computer (Play Store website) to install the malware.

The malicious app the attackers request Google Play to install on the victim's device is submitted on the Google Play console developer site for "internal testing only," and the victim's device is supposedly added as a testing target.

This technique wouldn't work for large-scale infections, but it is exceptional and quite stealthy when it comes to narrow targeting operations like those run by Kimsuky.

The Android malware is a RAT (remote access trojan) tool enabling the hackers to drop, create, delete, or steal files, get contact lists, perform calls, monitor or send SMS, activate the camera, perform keylogging, and view the desktop.

Android malware infection chain (BfV)

As Kimsuky continues to evolve its tactics and develop more sophisticated methods to compromise Gmail accounts, individuals and organizations must remain vigilant and implement robust security measures.

This includes keeping software up-to-date, being cautious of unexpected emails or links, and regularly monitoring accounts for suspicious activity.

BleepingComputer · by Bill Toulas · March 22, 2023

11. North Korea’s Foreign Policy: The Kim Jong-un Regime in a Hostile World

Professors should check out this book for their Korean and East Asia classes.

North Korea’s Foreign Policy: The Kim Jong-un Regime in a Hostile World

In North Korea’s Foreign Policy: The Kim Jong-un Regime in a Hostile World, CFR’s Scott A. Snyder and University of British Columbia’s Kyung-Ae Park offer a robust examination of North Korean foreign policy under Kim Jong-un, including its domestic drivers, summitry diplomacy, and nuclear program.

Article by Scott A. Snyder, Editor and Kyung-Ae Park, Editor

March 21, 2023 1:13 pm (EST)

cfr.org · by Scott A. Snyder

Summary

Since Kim Jong-un’s assumption of power in December 2011, North Korea has undergone expanded nuclear development, political isolation, and economic stagnation. Kim’s early prioritization of simultaneous economic and military development, known as the byungjin policy, highlighted his goal of transforming North Korea’s domestic economic circumstances and strengthening its position in the world as a nuclear state. The central dilemma shaping Kim Jong-un’s foreign policy throughout his first decade in power revolves around ensuring North Korea’s prosperity and security while sustaining the political isolation and control necessary for regime survival.

To evaluate North Korea’s foreign policy under Kim, North Korea’s Foreign Policy: The Kim Jong-un Regime in a Hostile World examines the impact of domestic factors that have influenced the formation and implementation of Kim’s foreign policy, Kim’s distinctive use of summitry and effectiveness of such meetings as an instrument by which to attain foreign policy goals, and the impact of international responses to North Korea’s pursuit of nuclear capabilities on North Korea’s foreign policy.

This book is suitable for the following disciplines in undergraduate and graduate courses:

The World This Week

A weekly digest of the latest from CFR on the biggest foreign policy stories of the week, featuring briefs, opinions, and explainers. Every Friday.

View all newsletters >

Daily News Brief

A summary of global news developments with CFR analysis delivered to your inbox each morning. Most weekdays.

Think Global Health

A curation of original analyses, data visualizations, and commentaries, examining the debates and efforts to improve health worldwide. Weekly.

By entering your email and clicking subscribe, you're agreeing to receive announcements from CFR about our products and services, as well as invitations to CFR events. You are also agreeing to our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.

View all newsletters >

• International Relations
• East Asian Studies and History
• Contemporary East Asian Foreign Relations
• Asian Security

Discussion and Essay Questions

Courses on International Relations

1. What is the impact of North Korea’s development of nuclear weapons on its global stature and image?
2. How do states use summitry as a tool of diplomacy?
3. How have international sanctions influenced the goals and methods of North Korea’s foreign policy?
4. What are some lessons that can be drawn from UN responses to North Korean nuclear and missile development?

Courses on East Asian Studies and History

1. How does the byungjin policy fit into the history of North Korean politics?
2. How has North Korean engagement with other states both in East Asia and with the international community evolved throughout the past decades?
3. Historically, what have been factors shaping North Korea’s bilateral relations with China and Russia?
4. What are the predominant patterns that have characterized North Korea’s foreign policy?

Courses on Contemporary East Asian Foreign Relations

1. What lessons can be drawn from North Korea’s recent summit diplomacy with South Korea, the United States, China, and Russia?
2. Given North Korea’s nuclear and economic strategies, what can we project about diplomacy and deterrence in East Asia?
3. What are some lessons that the leaders of East Asian countries and the United States can learn by studying North Korea’s history of nuclear development and diplomacy?
4. What are the implications of the intensifying U.S.-China strategic competition on regional dynamics in East Asia and North Korea’s foreign relations?

Courses on Asian Security

1. How do North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs exacerbate the security dilemma facing U.S. allies in the region?
2. What is the future of the U.S. nuclear umbrella and extended deterrence in East Asia given North Korea’s advancing capabilities?
3. What role do North Korean cyber activities play in regional security dynamics and response options by the United States and UN?
4. What can be expected of the alliance dynamics in East Asia in light of advancements in North Korean nuclear and missile capabilities and trilateral U.S.-South Korea-Japan responses?

Further Projects

Op-Ed

1. Write a 700-word opinion piece on how the United States should reshape its North Korea policy based on lessons learned from the 2018–19 summitry period.
2. Write a 700-word opinion piece on how South Korea, the United States, and the United Nations should address the human rights violations in North Korea or North Korea’s nuclear weapons program.

Analytical Essay

1. How did Kim Jong-un consolidate his power between 2012 and2017? Compared to his predecessors, what are the different economic and military approaches Kim adopted and why?
2. What led Kim to initiate summits with different leaders in 2018 and 2019? What was his objective, and what lessons were learned from the summitry?
3. What are some of the tools and channels North Korea has used to engage with the international community? Which have generated the greatest benefits for North Korea?

Speechwriting

1. You are the personal speechwriter for Chairman Kim Jong-un in North Korea. As the new year approaches, he plans to deliver a speech for the general public on live television. Kim would like to touch on issues such as economic reform, military strength, and its relations with neighboring countries and the United States. Based on what you have learned from the book, draft a speech for Chairman Kim. Considering recent regional developments surrounding North Korea, how would you frame and discuss each topic? What would you prioritize, and what messages would you convey in the speech?

Policy Memo

1. You are the U.S. Ambassador to South Korea. You receive a memo through back channels that North Korea has indicated its desire to re-engage with the United States through a presidential summit. Kim Jong-un has requested a bilateral summit with President Biden in one month. Write a policy memo for President Biden assessing North Korea’s negotiation style, tactics, and strategies. Make a careful analysis of the recent summits and give President Biden your policy recommendations on how to approach the negotiation with North Korea.

Negotiation

1. Divide the students into four teams: the United States, South Korea, North Korea, and China. Ask the teams to negotiate the following topics: sanctions, nuclear weapons, ballistic missiles, cyber theft, and human rights violations.

Press Briefing

1. You are invited to Pyongyang as a journalist to attend an exclusive press briefing with Kim Jong-un. You will be interviewing Kim for sixty minutes, covering topics ranging from the domestic human rights situation to North Korea’s foreign policy. Prepare opening remarks and several questions for the interview.

Supplementary Materials

Bechtol, Burce. Red Rogue: The Persistent Challenge of North Korea. Dulles, VA: Potomac Books, 2007.

Becker, Jasper. Rogue Regime: Kim Jong Il and the Looming Threat of North Korea. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.

Cha, Victor and Kang, David C. Nuclear North Korea: A Debate on Engagement Strategies. New York: Columbia University Press, 2018.

Cumings, Bruce. Koreas Place in the Sun: A Modern History. W.W. Norton & Company, 2005.

Eberstadt, Nicholas. The North Korean Economy: Between Crisis and Catastrophe. Edison, N.J.: Transaction Books, 2007.

Fahy, Sandra. Dying for Rights: Putting North Korea’s Human Rights Abuses on the Record. New York: Columbia University Press, 2007.

Fifield, Anna. The Great Successor: The Divinely Perfect Destiny of Brilliant Comrade Kim Jong Un. New York: PublicAffaris, 2019

Grzelczyk, Virginie. North Korea’s New Diplomacy: Challenging Political Isolation in the 21st Century. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018.

Haggard, Stephan and Noland, Marcus. Famine in North Korea: Markets, Aids, and Reform. New York: Columbia University Press, 2007.

Kim, Byung-Yeon. Unveiling the North Korean Economy: Collapse and Transition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017.

Kim, Sung-Chull and Cohen, Michael D. North Korea and Nuclear Weapons: Entering the New Era of Deterrence. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 2017.

King, Robert R and Shin, Gi-Wook. The North Korean Conundrum: Balancing Human Rights and Nuclear Security. Stanford: Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, 2022.

Lankov, Andrei. North of the DMZ: Essays on Daily Life in North Korea. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland and Co., 2007.

Mallory, King. North Korean Sanctions Evasion Techniques. Rand Corporation, 2021.

Martin, Bradley K. Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader: North Korea and the Kim Dynasty. New York: Thomas Dune Books, 2006.

Natsios, Andrew S. The Great North Korean Famine: Famine, Politics, and Foreign Policy. Washington, D.C.: The United States Institute of Peace Press, 2001.

Pak, Jung H. Becoming Kim Jong Un: A Former CIA Officer’s Insights into North Korea’s Enigmatic Young Dictator. New York: Ballantine Books, 2020.

Snyder, Scott. Negotiating on the Edge: North Korean Negotiating Behavior. Washington D.C.: United States Institute of Peace Press, 1999.

Suh, Dae-Sook. Kim Il Sung: The North Korean Leader. New York: Columbia University Press, 1988.

White, Geoff. The Lazarus Heist: From Hollywood to High Finance: Inside North Korea’s Global Cyber Warfare. London: Penguin UK, 2022.

Download the Teaching Notes (PDF)

Visit the Book Page

cfr.org · by Scott A. Snyder

12. From Slavery in North Korea to Jeff Bezos’s Gulfstream

Escapees from north Korea and China are being co-opted for the culture war.

From Slavery in North Korea to Jeff Bezos’s Gulfstream

I came to the U.S. prizing its freedoms. But I found that this nation’s most powerful people value something else entirely.

By Yeonmi Park

March 22, 2023

thefp.com · by Yeonmi Park · March 22, 2023

Nothing I have ever read about the slave state of North Korea has affected me more than Yeonmi Park’s bestselling book, “In Order to Live: A North Korean Girl’s Journey to Freedom.” Her account makes it clear that that phrase—slave state—is not hyperbole.

Park grew up believing that Kim Jong-il was so powerful that he could read her mind. (“Even when you think you’re alone,” her mother warned her, “the birds and mice can hear you whisper.”) She survived a famine that killed nearly three million people. (She ate dragonflies to survive). At nine years old, Park witnessed the public execution of her friend’s mother. (The woman was put to death for the crime of watching a Hollywood movie.)

Almost no one escapes the Hermit Kingdom. Yeonmi Park did.

At 13, she fled to China with her mother. The two endured unspeakable things—rape by human traffickers; sexual servitude. Ultimately, they broke free again, crossing the freezing Gobi Desert at night to Mongolia, then onto South Korea and, finally, to America.

Last year, as she wrote in The Free Press, Park became a U.S. citizen.

Now, she has published a new book, “While Time Remains: A North Korean Defector's Search for Freedom in America.” In the excerpt we are publishing below Park writes about her experience among America’s most celebrated, wealthy elites—and the moral corruption she found at their conferences and on their Gulfstreams.

In October of 2014, I was at the Oslo Freedom Forum when I received an invitation from some guy named Jeff Bezos from a company called Amazon. I had never heard of either, so I replied that I was going to be busy (even though I wasn’t!)

I was also invited to speak at several conferences, including Women in the World hosted by Tina Brown, the founding editor-in-chief of The Daily Beast. At Women in the World, I was scheduled to speak right before Hillary Rodham Clinton—a name I was familiar with from news coverage in South Korea when she was secretary of state. Other speakers there included Jon Stewart of The Daily Show, the actress Meryl Streep, and other political figures like Samantha Power, then America’s ambassador to the United Nations.

This conference was a watershed moment for me and my understanding of the world. Until that point, I thought that the international community had neglected to do anything for the North Korean people because they didn’t know what was going on there. After all, only about two hundred North Korean defectors have made it to America legally in the past seventy-plus years, and no one inside North Korea can communicate with the outside world.

After accepting the invitation to speak at the conference, I resolved to share with the esteemed audience what was actually going on in North Korea, so that Americans and Europeans with real money, power, and influence would feel inspired and empowered to do something. At the very least, I was sure that they would help spread the word about the modern-day holocaust taking place in North Korea, about the fact that it is being aided and abetted by the Chinese Communist Party, and that tens and even hundreds of thousands of mostly female North Korean defectors are being sold, raped, and otherwise harmed in China.

In a word, that isn’t what happened. It turned out that the purpose of a conference like Women in the World was not to mobilize financial capital and political power among people who are fortunate enough to possess it in order to help people suffering in places like China and North Korea; it was—if there was any point at all—to passionately discuss the suffering of women in America.

The word oppression here was defined to mean things like making ninety cents on the dollar compared with men, or being only the vice president of a Fortune 500 company rather than the CEO, or how male-dominated office culture doesn’t make it safe for women to cry. As much as I tried to have compassion, I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.

Hillary Clinton watched my speech from the greenroom backstage, since she was the next speaker after me. It was October of 2015 and she was running for president at the time. When I came down from the stage in tears after my speech, Clinton came up to me, looked me in the eye, and told me that she would never forget what I said that day. She promised that she would do everything in her power to help the women of North Korea.

Perhaps she might have if she’d been elected president; she elected instead to spend the next several years—as far as I could tell—complaining about not being president.

As it was for so many other Americans, the election of 2016 was another milestone in my understanding of the world. From the time I arrived in New York, I’d tried to consume as much American news coverage as possible, both because it helped improve my English abilities and because I thought it would keep me informed about my new country and the wider world.

Being a recent Manhattanite, I decided to read The New York Times and the Washington Post every day in Columbia’s Butler Library and listen to National Public Radio in my dorm. As recently as the previous year, I had no opinion of any of the Republican or Democratic candidates for president, nor did I think one way or the other about the parties in general. Americans seemed to think that the GOP and Democrats were like Mars and Venus, but to me they seemed, if not necessarily identical, then at least more similar to each other than either of them were to anything I knew from Korea or China.

But by Election Day of 2016, I was, in my own naive way, radicalized. I was convinced that Donald Trump was a fascist, a would-be dictator, and a rapist. I told my fiancé at the time that if he had any reasons for liking Trump, I didn’t want to hear them, and that if he even considered voting for Trump, I wouldn’t marry him. Some of my girlfriends in Brooklyn and Manhattan would go to weeknight meetings to organize efforts for how to resist Trump and how we could bring him down. When they told me about their plans to move to Canada if Clinton lost, I believed them. Looking back on it, I didn’t know a single American at the time who supported Trump, or even anybody who just felt neutral about the election. My peers were all very smart people, had much higher levels of educational attainment than I did, and had spent far more of their lives in the United States than I had.

Everything I absorbed from them was mutually reinforced by everything I read in the newspapers and everything I heard on the radio. When I saw Trump’s face or heard his voice and felt viscerally angry, there was simply no reason to think twice about where on earth these feelings were coming from. I still remember the moment when my fiancé called and told me that Trump had won. I was in my bed and felt afraid. I started to sob. I called my friends to see how they were doing, and they checked in on me. I watched cable news all day, read through the major national newspapers, and listened to radio and podcasts.

It was clear that Trump had colluded with the Russians to steal the election from Clinton, and also that he would soon be impeached and removed from office, if not assassinated. If not, then the dark night of fascism would soon fall on America, the place I’d immigrated to in search of freedom. It was just my luck that I’d finally arrived here only in time to watch it disintegrate into the kind of dictatorship from which I’d escaped. This was now the world I inhabited: one in which a single election victory by one of America’s two political parties spelled the end of the Republic, the death of peace and freedom, the end of the line. This was the world of The New York Times, the Washington Post, NPR, and Columbia—the world of the elite.

It took a long time for me to start thinking for myself, rather than within the boundaries set for me. For the first fourteen years of my life, which is when we learn how to think, there was no thinking for me to do. What kind of haircut should I get? That was a decision made only by the regime. What kind of music should I listen to? The regime decided for us. What kinds of books and movies? The regime, again. There was no opportunity to develop critical human faculties like judgment, imagination, or taste, which of course is the objective of every dictatorial regime.

North Korea is so successful in this respect that once I was finally free in South Korea, I was crippled by the expectation and even the thought that I had to make decisions and think for myself. Which jeans should I wear? I wished someone else would pick for me. Where should I eat dinner? Can’t someone else decide? In the first several months I lived in Seoul, I felt overwhelmed even by small, meaningless decisions like these—so much so that at one point, I remember thinking that if I could be guaranteed a supply of frozen potatoes and an exemption from execution for having defected, I’d like to go back to North Korea.

It was not the education I received at Columbia, or following the American press, that helped me finally break out of this habit. It was reading old books. Michael Young’s The Rise of the Meritocracy was one; George Orwell’s collected writings were another. I started to believe, as I still do now, that the only way to think for yourself is to ignore the mainstream media, and largely forget the daily news cycle, and connect instead with the great minds of the past, who know all of our problems better than we do ourselves.

There is a reason why the great books of Western civilization are all banned in dictatorships. Before my father’s arrest, when I was seven or eight years old, I remember that one night in our home, he was sitting with a small glass bottle with cooking oil and a cotton thread inside, which he ignited with a lighter to turn it into a reading lamp. My father was holding a bundle of bound pages with no front or back cover. When I asked him what it was, he said it was part of a book about North Korean soldiers that were captured by the South during the Korean War. I remember him telling me then that the benefit of reading books, if you could find them, was that you could learn common sense, which you don’t get taught in classrooms, because they are filled with propaganda.

Yeonmi around eight years old in Pyongyang. (Courtesy of the author)

In March of 2016, I’d received another speaking invitation, this time to something called “Campfire.” Once a year or so, Jeff Bezos (who by this time I knew was the founder and CEO of Amazon, and that this was a large company indeed!) brings together a small group of famous and successful writers, artists, musicians, and filmmakers for an exclusive, off-the-record weekend of relaxation, socializing, and storytelling by fascinating people who have lived extraordinary lives. Previous guests included (in no particular order) Neil Armstrong, Bette Midler, Walter Mosley, Neil Gaiman, Robert Sapolsky, Tom Hanks, Ron Howard, and Billie Jean King. The event that year would be held that year at the Biltmore Hotel in Santa Barbara, California.

Guests were asked to prepare 25-minute speeches to be delivered to an audience of 150 other notable guests. I was taking classes while continuing my human rights advocacy work at the time, and I took the week off to attend Campfire. Bezos sent a Gulfstream private jet to New York to pick up several attendees, including me. I boarded the plane with famous actors and writers whose names I don’t recall, but I do remember one guest, who introduced himself as Harvey Weinstein. I had no clue who he was, but my fiancé told me that he was a very famous film producer. It was, naturally enough, my first time on a private jet, and I’d never seen such a beautiful plane in my life. At the private airport we departed from, there was no security or baggage check. It was a sunny but chilly day, and I came straight from a morning class at Columbia.

By this time I’d learned more about Bezos, who was evidently not just the CEO of Amazon but one of the wealthiest and most powerful people on the face of the earth. I boarded his plane with the same hope I harbored taking the stage at the Women in the World conference: I was confident that with his help, I was going to find a way to improve the lot of North Koreans—if not the ones trapped in the country itself then at least some of the 300,000 defectors in China, where I’d heard Bezos did a lot of his business. In my view, it wouldn’t take much; the mere acknowledgment of what was happening to my people in China by someone like Bezos might have a ripple effect, convincing other American investors to put pressure on Beijing to reduce its support for Pyongyang.

This was, of course, before I’d learned that the power dynamic goes the other way around: that American investors and businesspeople are far more dependent on the Chinese market than the Chinese government is on them. Even Jeff Bezos, the world’s wealthiest man, made his billions by building a company that—whatever its other merits and considerable achievements—essentially serves as a storefront for Chinese sellers and products. Bezos, it turned out, also owned the Washington Post. Go figure.

It was with high hopes that I embarked on the Gulfstream.

This post is for paying subscribers only

Already have an account?

thefp.com · by Yeonmi Park · March 22, 2023

13. Leading activist in North Korea human rights movement shares atrocities of tyranny

Dr. Scholte is also one of the leading activities who support escapees sending information back into north Korea.

Video at the link as well.

Leading activist in North Korea human rights movement shares atrocities of tyranny

https://www.liberty.edu/news/2023/03/22/leading-activist-in-north-korea-human-rights-movement-shares-atrocities-of-tyranny/?utm_source=pocket_saves

March 22, 2023 : By Christian Shields - Office of Communications & Public Engagement

Dr. Suzanne Scholte is one of the world’s leading activists for the human rights of North Koreans. (Photo by Jessie Jordan)

Liberty University welcomed North Korea human rights activist Dr. Suzanne Scholte to Convocation on Wednesday to speak on modern-day persecution in North Korea.

Scholte serves as the chairman for the North Korea Freedom Coalition, which works to provide freedom and aid to North Koreans suffering under the Kim Jong-Un regime. She is also the president of the Defense Forum Foundation and the vice-chairman of the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea. Because of her work to help North Koreans, she received the Seoul Peace Prize in 2008.

Liberty School of Law Dean Morse Tan, an expert on bioethics and human rights in North Korea, introduced Scholte to the Convocation stage. He said she is widely known as the “mother of North Korean refugees and defectors.” Before coming to Liberty last year, Tan served as ambassador at large for the U.S. State Department’s Office of Global Criminal Justice.

Beginning her speech with a brief history of Korea, Scholte described how Christianity originally played a significant role in the country in the early 20th century and even played a part in its independence from Japan in 1919.

Following the Second World War, however, Korea was split into two countries with Kim Il-Sung taking control as a dictator in North Korea. Once in power, Scholte said he manipulated the Christian faith to assert himself as God, replacing both the Apostles’ Creed and the 10 Commandments with statutes and creeds of his own. He then used deceit and cruelty to persecute Christians and send them to prisoner camps.

Scholte argued that while South Korea provides enormous avenues for the Gospel, the current North Korean government, headed by the grandson of Kim Il-Sung, continues the persecution started decades ago.

“Having twisted the Holy Trinity into a perversion of worship, this regime is an affront to what God created,” she said, noting that North Koreans face the constant threat of government surveillance and are not allowed any independent thought. “It is an affront to our God who creates, loves, forgives and redeems because it is a regime that destroys, hates, starves, and enslaves. This is why Christians are drawn to this fight. Standing up for the freedom and human rights of North Koreans is like storming the gates of hell because it is going against one of the most evil regimes in modern history — a God-hating, Christ-rejecting tyranny. This is why there is so much death and destruction in that country. It is a hell on earth.”

Scholte welcomed fellow guests Grace Jo and Seohyun Lee, two women who had themselves fled North Korea, to share about their suffering under the tyrannical government.

Jo, who was born in 1991, described how she and how her family faced horrible famine when she was a child. She said that she remembered going days without anything to eat and solely drinking cold water for sustenance. When her father attempted to alleviate their sufferings by smuggling in rice from China, he was captured and taken by the government in 1997.

Jo recalled one instance in which her family was overjoyed to find six newborn mice and cooked them into a stew because it was the only food that they could find. The stew helped heal her of malnutrition at the time and helped her recover her ability to walk.

Losing two brothers to hunger and an older sister who disappeared and was believed to be captured and sold in China for human trafficking, Jo faced an enormous amount of loss from an early age because of the corruption in her country.

In contrast to the poverty of Jo’s family, Lee was born into a prominent Korean family and had more privileges because of her status. Despite these benefits, she also suffered increased danger and surveillance as a member of a high-ranking family.

“From an early age I learned to restrain my curiosity, my creativity, and my thoughts for the sake of my family members’ safety, but I did everything without complaining,” Lee said. “I took everything for granted.”

Lee did not even question the propaganda and education she had received until a major life event opened her eyes to the lies and deceit. While studying abroad in China, she witnessed her best friend being captured and sent to a prisoner camp because of her father’s relationship with an opponent of the current leader of North Korea. Lee defected from the government along with her family in 2014.

Grace Jo (left) and Seohyun Lee (right) shared their stories in Convocation of growing up in North Korea. (Photo by Natalie Olson)

“It was not an easy decision (to defect), but my journey and goal were motivated by a simple reason – I just wanted to protect the people and place I love from the opposing forces, hatred and evil, and I wanted to bring a sense of justice to their loved ones,” Lee said.

After sharing their stories, Jo and Lee answered questions from Scholte.

They described how Christianity was not taught in schools and how some North Koreans, including Jo’s mother, had been brainwashed into believing that Christians were the enemy. They also emphasized that the situation continues to grow worse and has further deteriorated since Kim Jong-Un came to power in 2011. Currently, some Koreans do not even have shoes for the winter because of the extreme poverty.

Jo and Lee concluded by addressing how Liberty students can get involved and help North Koreans through spreading the truth about the dangers of communism as well as fighting for legislation that enables North Koreans to flee to the United States. Jo also noted that she works with both the North Korean Freedom Coalition and the Dissident Project to share the stories of North Korean refugees.

In closing, Dr. Tim Chang, a global studies professor at Liberty and a native of South Korea, invited students to join a Unify Korea Fast and Pray event at 4 p.m. on Thursday on the Montview Student Union steps.

14. Torture, forced abortions and insects for food: Life inside North Korean jails, says this NGO

Video at the link: https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/23/asia/north-korea-torture-prison-report-intl-hnk-dst/

Torture, forced abortions and insects for food: Life inside North Korean jails, says this NGO | CNN

CNN · by Yoonjung Seo,Andrew Raine,Gawon Bae · March 23, 2023

Seoul, South Korea CNN —

Extrajudicial executions, rape, forced abortions, jail without trial, torture, starvation rations that leave prisoners so hungry some turn to eating insects.

These are just some of the abuses commonplace in North Korean prisons and other detention facilities, according to former detainees whose testimony forms the basis of a new report released by a human rights watchdog this week.

Using interviews with hundreds of survivors, witnesses and perpetrators of abuse who have fled the country, along with official documents, satellite images, architectural analysis and digital modeling of penal facilities, the non-profit NGO Korea Future has built up what it says is the most detailed picture yet of life inside the secretive country’s penal system.

“The purpose of our report is basically to reveal the human rights violations that have taken place within North Korea’s penal systems. (It) finds that even 10 years after the UN established a Commission of Inquiry there still is systematic and widespread human rights violations,” said Kim Jiwon, an investigator with Korea Future, which has offices in London, Seoul and The Hague and focuses on human rights issues in North Korea.

Alongside constructing 3D models of some of the detention sites, the group has documented what it believes are more than 1,000 instances of torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, hundreds of instances of rape and other forms of sexual violence and more than 100 cases of denial of the right to life.

“Comparable to the Soviet Gulag, (North Korea’s) penal system is not to detain and rehabilitate persons sentenced by courts in safe and humane facilities. Nor is its purpose to decrease recidivism and increase public safety,” the report says.

“It is to isolate persons from society whose behaviour conflicts with upholding the singular authority of the Supreme Leader, Kim Jong Un.”

The report states it has identified hundreds of active participants it alleges have participated in the violence and is calling for investigations and prosecutions for the abuses. Korea Future used witness testimony and satellite imagery to map 206 detention facilities, across every North Korean province, alleging that abuses are personally carried out by officials as high-ranking as major generals.

A 3D model of one of the detention centers, recreated by CNN with information from Korea Future.

The report makes for grim reading. Among the cases it highlights are those of three people jailed after trying to cross the border – a punishable crime in this country. The group alleges one was forced to have an abortion when seven or eight months pregnant; another was fed as little as 80 grams (less than 3 ounces) of corn a day, a starvation diet that saw his weight drop from 60 kilograms (132 pounds) to 37 kilograms (82 pounds) within a month and forced him to supplement his diet with cockroaches and rodents; a third was forced to hold stress positions for up to 17 hours a day for 30 days. Other survivors, who spoke to CNN, recounted surviving on animal feed and becoming skeletally thin, witnessing rapes and being subject to severe beatings.

Korea Future is hoping other countries will consider pursuing domestic court cases against North Korean agents and that some of its findings can be used as evidence. And, it hopes western countries will apply targeted sanctions against some of the accused in the report.

Due to North Korea’s self-imposed isolation, which has become even stricter since the country closed its borders in 2020 in response to Covid-19, CNN cannot independently verify the accounts.

However, the conditions outlined in the report are in line with the findings of recent investigations by the United Nations, including a report to the UN Human Rights council this week by Special Rapporteur Elizabeth Salmón, who said women detained in political prison camps were “subjected to torture and ill-treatment, forced labor and gender-based violence, including sexual violence by state officials.”

A reconstruction by Korea Future of detainees (in blue) carrying out forced labour in a North Korean field. The prison guard is in orange.

The hermit country is known as one of the most closed and repressive nations in the world. CNN has sought comment from North Korea’s Permanent Mission to the United Nations in New York for comment, but it has not responded.

North Korea frequently denies allegations of human rights abuses – in its prisons or elsewhere – often claiming they are part of a US-orchestrated campaign against it. This week, soon after a UN meeting on the human rights situation in the country, North Korea released a statement saying it “resolutely denounces and rejects” what it characterized as a “US-waged human rights pressure campaign.”

“That such a country takes issue with the ‘human rights’ situation of other countries is indeed a mockery of and an insult to human rights itself,” reads the statement.

Referring to a joint military exercise between the US and South Korea, it claimed the US was using its “human rights maneuver as a mechanism for invading” North Korea.

‘I didn’t feel like I was a human being’

Investigators from both Korea Future and the UN say many inmates become so dehumanized by the abuse that they begin to feel they somehow deserve it. Many, too, simply have no concept of human rights with which to frame their experience.

One former inmate, who says she was detained for little over a year from 2015 after complaining to authorities over her housing situation, likened her treatment to that of an animal.

“When we raise rabbits, we keep them in dens with fences and give them food. (In jail), it was like we were the rabbits, kept in a cell and given food from behind bars … we were not treated as humans, but as some kind of animal,” said the survivor, whose name CNN has agreed to protect as in North Korea the families of defectors can face retribution.

The location of North Hamgyong provincial holding center, according to co-ordinates supplied by Korea Future to CNN.

At one point her cell was around two square meters (21.5 square feet), “and I know this because we were sleeping zig-zag stye and someone’s feet were touching my shoulders.”

“We should not move in the cell and we had to sit with our hands on our sides and as we were not supposed to look up we had to look down. We were not supposed to talk, so all you hear is people’s breathing sound.”

She described being fed only corn mixed with rice bran – more commonly used as animal feed.

“How can it be enough? When you eat breakfast, from the moment you put down your spoon, you’re hungry. It’s all grass and no nutrition so you get hungry as you don’t even feel the food inside your stomach.

“All your nutrition in your body is gone so you end up looking like a skeleton by the time you leave, just right before dying.” She was released after a little more than a year inside.

“I didn’t feel like I was a human being. I thought it would’ve been better to be dead if I had to live like that.”

Political prisoners

North Korea has long faced claims of torture and abuse in its political prison camps, known as “kwalliso”.

A landmark UN investigation in 2014 found that Pyongyang was using this type of camp to keep a lid on dissent – and the ruling Kim dynasty in power – and that up to 120,000 people were held in them. It also estimated that over the past few decades hundreds of thousands of political prisoners had died in kwalliso amid “unspeakable atrocities.”

Among Korea Future’s key contentions is that similar methods of abuse are being used “systematically” in ordinary prisons, known as “kyohwaso,” and other penal institutes such as holding centers and prosecution offices.

Not only that, but it says the abuse in these centers is “greater in scale … than in better-known political prison camps” and that while some of the people held in kyohwaso are accused of standard crimes, such as theft, many are being held essentially as political prisoners.

The report places responsibility on North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un.

“The purpose of (North Korea’s) penal system is to isolate persons from society whose behaviour conflicts with upholding the singular authority of the Supreme Leader, Kim Jong Un,” states the report.

“Detainees are re-educated through forced labour, ideological instruction, and punitive brutality with the purpose of compelling unquestioning obedience and loyalty to the Supreme Leader.”

Kim Jiwon, an investigator for the human rights group Korea Future, speaks to CNN in Seoul in March 2023.

Charles Miller/CNN

‘They just didn’t have the concept of torture’

Kim Jiwon, the Korea Future investigator who interviewed many of the survivors, praised their courage in speaking up, adding that he had found it was “really, really difficult to hear their stories.”

“I can’t even fathom how they felt, and what they had to go through,” he said.

While difficult, asking the survivors to relive their experiences and cross checking their accounts against each other had been vital in corroborating and building up a picture of what had occurred, Kim said.

Among the things that had struck him during the interviews was that, so dehumanizing had their treatment been, that many “just didn’t have the concept of torture.”

“They were always told by the penal facility, the correctional officers, that they had done something bad. So they just simply thought that they were bad people and for that reason, they were being punished. This was very ingrained in their mindset,” Kim said.

“They didn’t even realize that they were being subjected to torture.”

A 3D model of one of the detention centers, recreated by CNN with data from Korea Future.

‘I thought I couldn’t live like this’

A male survivor whose testimony was used in the Korea Future report told CNN he had been detained multiple times for defection, including in 2000 and 2017, after making his way across the border with China to seek work.

While he described seeing prison guards raping women detainees, being beaten up and forced to walk around with his body bowed at a right angle during one spell in jail, he said the conditions were an improvement on his first experience.

“In the past, we had to crawl with both hands and knees when we were moving, but in 2017, we could stand up and walk. All you needed was to bend your back forward 90 degrees when moving,” he said.

He said as many as five people would be held in a single 6.6 square meter room (71 square feet) that had no heating, but that at least in 2017 they were given blankets to help them cope with the cold – winter temperatures in North Korea can fall as low as minus 10 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 23 degrees Celsius) – unlike when he was imprisoned in 2000, when they were given nothing.

He even went as far as to describe some periods of his detention as “no stress,” at one point moving to a center where there were no beatings or torture and thinking “wow, Korea has been changed.”

But he painted a bleaker picture of one holding center. “I noticed the center guards were raping female detainees at night. They’d ask some women to wash their clothes at night and when the women came out they raped (them)… I thought some things haven’t changed after all these years.”

A survivor from a North Korean detention center speaks to CNN.

He said he told an inspector what he had seen and that initially he was thanked for bringing the matter up, but soon afterward two men beat him up “so hard.”

Soon afterward, “I thought I couldn’t live like this so I broke the window in the room and grabbed a piece of glass,” he said. “The police guard came into my room and in front of them I stabbed my tummy.”

Despite all this, he said it was better to focus on those aspects that had improved – likening it to encouraging a child, saying that focusing purely on bad behavior would not encourage them to change for the better. He said in 2017 he received three meals a day and the same food as the police were eating, unlike in 2000 when his rations were only vegetable soup.

“We were used to being called like sons of bitches back in 2000,” he said. “But in 2017, we were called comrades.”

‘A crime against humanity’

James Heenan, representative of the UN Human Rights Office in Seoul, said many escapees simply didn’t have a concept of human rights; one of the first steps in helping them was to educate them so they could recognize that what had happened to them was abuse.

“Generally they tell us the raw, unadulterated version of what happened to them and sometimes they see it as a bad thing. Sometimes I think that’s just the way the system works. (They think,) ‘I was beaten because I deserved it.’ So the issue of knowledge of human rights is a key one.”

Heenan said the abuse fit into four main categories.

Firstly, people were being detained arbitrarily and either not given a trial or given a show trial, without a lawyer, that might be as short as 10 minutes, he said. Secondly, people were being tortured and subject to other forms of ill treatment related to health, food and sanitation that could be “tantamount to torture if it’s done in a certain way,” he said.

James Heenan, of the UN Human Rights Office, speaks to CNN.

Thirdly, “We also see the issue of extrajudicial executions in prison, people who are just executed from prison without trial are subjected to the death penalty,” he said. “And the final thing that we see (is) forced labor. People in prisons, in detention, are forced to work in inhumane conditions for no pay for the profit of the state. And this is one of the most widespread violations we see.”

After the outbreak of Covid-19 prompted North Korea to shut down its few remaining connections with the outside world, it became harder to know what was happening in the detention centers, Heenan added. While prior to that, some escapees like the one who spoke to CNN, had suggested “limited improvements” with perhaps fewer cases of torture and extrajudicial killings, he cautioned against drawing too many conclusions from this saying there were too many “blind spots.”

“(For instance), many people are sent to political prison camps on lists, and not many people leave – they’re there for life until they die. So firsthand experience of most of these centers has always been difficult to come by,” he said.

But rights groups could be confident that such abuses were still occurring, he said, and that the situation was “still very dire,” because the testimonies of survivors were cross-checked for consistency, or “triangulated,” not only against other survivors but against medical evidence of their injuries and in some cases satellite evidence.

“These individuals are telling consistent stories … you also have the sheer weight of testimony, he said.

“In these cases, the weight of evidence, the weight of testimony is very, very strong.”

The situation in detention facilities was “one of the most egregious examples of the (human rights) violations we see (in North Korea),” Heenan added.

“And this is what the UN Commission (and most others) have concluded, that the things like torture and ill treatment and so forth that are going on in those facilities reaches the level of a crime against humanity.”

Additional reporting by Paula Hancocks.

CNN · by Yoonjung Seo,Andrew Raine,Gawon Bae · March 23, 2023

15. Kim Jong Un May Not Conduct Nuclear Test Soon, Says Top US Defense Official: 'He Will Uncork That At A Time And Place Of His Choosing'

Kim Jong Un May Not Conduct Nuclear Test Soon, Says Top US Defense Official: 'He Will Uncork That At A Time And Place Of His Choosing'

benzinga.com · by Navdeep Yadav

A top U.S. official said it doesn't look like Kim Jong Un intends to conduct a nuclear test as Washington carries out its biggest military drill with South Korea.

What Happened: The director of the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency said on Wednesday that Washington is staying vigilant, although it doesn't expect North Korea to carry out a nuclear test anytime soon, reported Reuters.

The U.S. and South Korea have repeatedly warned for nearly a year that Pyongyang has completed its preparation and may resume nuclear testing for the first time since 2017.

“I have been waiting for that as well,” Lieutenant General Scott Berrier told media at DIA headquarters.

“There are a bunch of different factors that play into (Kim’s) decision calculus on that. And there are a bunch of things that we watch in terms of indications and warnings. Those two haven’t aligned.”

According to Berrier, if Kim wanted, he could have opted to time a nuclear test to coincide with the ongoing U.S. and South Korean military drills that North Korea has sharply criticized. “It doesn’t look like he’s going to do that,” Berrier said.

“But he will uncork that at a time and place of his choosing, which is something we’ll be watching for very, very carefully.”

Meanwhile, China and Russia defended Kim’s missile launches at a Monday United Nations Security Council meeting and blamed the U.S. and South Korea for provoking Pyongyang.

benzinga.com · by Navdeep Yadav​​

16. Large-scale live-fire exercise by US, South Korean armies returns after 6-year lull

Restoring readiness. But we must remember that one time training events do not sustain readiness. Training must be multi echelon and continuous, all year round and 

Large-scale live-fire exercise by US, South Korean armies returns after 6-year lull

Stars and Stripes · by David Choi · March 23, 2023

U.S. soldiers from 1st Battalion, 17th Infantry Regiment, 2nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team prepare for the Warrior Shield exercise at Rodriguez Live Fire Complex in Pocheon, South Korea, Wednesday, March 22, 2023. (Christopher Green/Stars and Stripes)

Buy Photo

POCHEON, South Korea — Troops of the U.S. 2nd Infantry Division and South Korean army wrapped up their largest joint field exercise in six years Thursday with live-fire training near the border with North Korea.

Roughly 800 U.S. and 400 South Korean soldiers conducted the four-day training that ended Thursday at the Rodriguez Live Fire Complex in Pocheon, about 16 miles from the Demilitarized Zone dividing the Korean Peninsula.

Warrior Shield, the largest-ever for the 2nd ID, headquartered at Camp Humphreys, was spread across six training sites, said Army Col. Brandon Anderson, the division’s deputy commanding officer for maneuver.

“When [North Korea] is firing ballistic missiles, it provides an incredible focus to this training,” he told reporters Wednesday. “And that’s what you have right now — motivated soldiers conducting focused training.”

Col. Brandon Anderson, the 2nd Infantry Division's deputy commanding officer for maneuver, speaks to reporters during the Warrior Shield exercise at Rodriguez Live Fire Complex in Pocheon, South Korea, Wednesday, March 22, 2023. (Christopher Green/Stars and Stripes)

Buy Photo

The drill, designed to hone defensive tactics is “as realistic as we can make it,” Anderson said.

“Part of our purpose in times of conflict is to defeat the enemy and secure weapons of mass destruction from further proliferation,” he said. “We’ve incorporated that into the scenario.”

Lt. Col. Kim Sun Kyu, commander of South Korea’s 81st Tank Battalion, told reporters the exercise strengthens “our firepower-operating abilities to strike the enemy with mobility.”

Roughly seven hours before South Korea’s K1A2 main battle tanks started firing rounds at the range on Wednesday, North Korea fired an unspecified number of cruise missiles toward the East Sea, or Sea of Japan.

North Korea has fired nine ballistic missiles so far this year. It most recently fired one short-range ballistic missile on Sunday, which the Joint Chiefs described in a message to reporters as “a serious provocation that harms peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula as well as the international community.”

North Korea’s launches “motivates us to train harder,” Anderson said.

A South Korean K1A2 main battle tank fires a round during the Warrior Shield exercise at Rodriguez Live Fire Complex in Pocheon, South Korea, Wednesday, March 22, 2023. (Christopher Green/Stars and Stripes)

Buy Photo

U.S. and South Korean army vehicles carry out live-fire training during the Warrior Shield exercise at Rodriguez Live Fire Complex in Pocheon, South Korea, Wednesday, March 22, 2023. (Christopher Green/Stars and Stripes)

Buy Photo

Warrior Shield aims to enhance “tactics, techniques and procedures” with operations across many domains, including air, land, sea, space, cyber and special operations, according to a U.S. Forces Korea news release on March 2.

The exercise runs concurrently with Freedom Shield, a separate, 11-day exercise that focuses on simulations and includes personnel from U.N. Command and the Combined Forces Command.

Warrior Shield this year brings together a wider array of military assets, such as U.S. M777 and South Korean K-9A1 howitzers, AH-64E Apache attack helicopters and A-10 Thunderbolt II Warthogs, to “provide more than one dilemma to our adversary,” Anderson said.

The 2nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team out of Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Wash., also took part in the exercise. The unit is the first Stryker team in South Korea after the 2nd ID replaced armored brigade combat teams rotating into the country starting in October.

The Strykers “performed magnificently,” Anderson said.

“It is everything we’ve expected it to do and better,” he said. “Its efficiency, its ability to maneuver, ability to get closer to the adversary … has exceeded what we’ve expected for it to do.”

U.S. soldiers from 1st Battalion, 17th Infantry Regiment, 2nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team direct a Stryker vehicle during the Warrior Shield exercise at Rodriguez Live Fire Complex in Pocheon, South Korea, Wednesday, Mach 22, 2023. (Christopher Green/Stars and Stripes)

Buy Photo

Stars and Stripes · by David Choi · March 23, 2023

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Foundation for Defense of Democracies

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

Phone: 202-573-8647

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com