Quotes of the Day:
“I am by nature a dealer in words, and words are the most powerful drug known to humanity.”
– Rudyard Kipling
"If we desire to avoid insult, we must be able to repel it; if we desire to secure peace, one of the most powerful instruments of our rising prosperity, it must be known, that we are at all times ready for War."
– George Washington
"The moral reality of war is divided into two parts. War is always judged twice, first with reference to the reasons states have for fighting, secondly with reference to the means they adopt.... The two sorts of judgment are logically independent. It is perfectly possible for a just war to be fought unjustly and for an unjust war to be fought in strict accordance with the rules. But this independence, though our views of particular wars often conform to its terms, is nevertheless puzzling. It is a crime to commit aggression, but aggressive war is a rule-governed activity. It is right to resist aggression, but the resistance is subject to moral (and legal) restraint. [This] dualism ... is at the heart of all that is most problematic in the moral reality of war."
– Michael Walzer
1. Biden to visit South Korea, Japan from May 20-24: White House
2. Statement by Press Secretary Jen Psaki on the President’s Travel to the Republic of Korea and Japan
3. Flexibility Can Bring Pyongyang Back to Negotiations
4. A Korean comedy of errors
5. Why North Korea's Nuclear Weapons Build Up Is So Dangerous
6. As South Korea’s Yoon Suk-yeol reaches out to Japan, hopes are high he’ll ‘change the tenor’ of ties
7. North Koreans found 'jailbreaking' phones to access 'forbidden media'
8. North Korean hackers stealing military tech, cybersecurity experts say
9. Yoon and South Korea’s Foreign Policy: Switching between Strategic Ambiguity and Strategic Clarity
10. North Korea Strongman Tosses Around Nuclear Threats in His Most Menacing
11. Project Reveal New research into North Korea’s digital control system
12. Dr. Sue Mi Terry Announced as New Director of Asia Program
13. Yoon Promises No More Bloating of Government
14. Activist in South Korea restarts illegal leafleting of the North
15. North Korea’s ‘nascent hacker underground’ playing ‘cat and mouse’ with regime
16. S. Korea excluded from Ukraine’s thank-you list of 31 countries
17. K2: The 'Black Panther' Might Be the Best Tank on Earth
18. S. Korea may have misread certain expressions in Kim Jong Un’s personal letter
19. N. Korea is forcibly relocating families with missing relatives to rural areas
20. N. Korea regards suspected COVID-19 cases in political prison camps simply as “cases of the flu”
21. N.K. leader wearing white uniform reminiscent of grandfather
1. Biden to visit South Korea, Japan from May 20-24: White House
A menu for the agenda:
- Align assumptions about the nature, objectives, strategy of the Kim Family regime. (Kim is conducting political warfare and blackmail diplomacy for political and economic objectives while developing advanced military capabilities to dominate the peninsula).
- Determine the acceptable durable political arrangement on the Korean peninsula that will serve, protect, and advance ROK and US interests. (e.g. The only way we are going to see an end to the nuclear program and military threats as well as the human rights abuses and crimes against humanity being committed against the Korean people living in the north by the mafia-like crime family cult known as the Kim family regime is through achievement of unification and the establishment of a United Republic of Korea that is secure and stable, non-nuclear, economically vibrant, and unified under a liberal constitutional form of government based on individual liberty, rule of law, and human rights as determined by the Korean people. In short, a United Republic of Korea (UROK).
- Unification planning - ROK lead with US support
- Sustained deterrence and defense readiness - training priority - (Do not become like Russians in Ukraine) (also OPCON transition)
- Strategic influence through information advantage (a comprehensive combined and interagency information and influence activities campaign focused on 5 main target audiences: regime elite, 2d tier leaders, Korean people in the north, ROK and US publics, international community.)
- Trilateral cooperation ROK-Japan-US
- Aligned INDOPACFIC security policies and strategy
- Cyber coordination
- Mutual defense of the rules based international order
- Prepare for propaganda that will attack the ROK/US renewed alignment (expect specific attacks on President-elect for being too aligned with US)
- Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF) and economic issues, free trade agreement
- End strategic ambiguity and replace it with strategic clarity
- China - how to manage the 600 pound Gorilla in the region.
- Russia/China coordinated East Saia activities
- Support to Ukraine
- And there is plenty more to add to this list.
We will probably get 3 agenda items at most so the question is which ones would we select from this list or even a longer one?
(2nd LD) Biden to visit South Korea, Japan from May 20-24: White House | Yonhap News Agency
(ATTN: UPDATES with reports of statement from White House press secretary, additional information throughout)
By Byun Duk-kun
WASHINGTON, April 27 (Yonhap) -- U.S. President Joe Biden will visit South Korea and Japan in late May for summit talks with his counterparts, the White House announced Wednesday.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki said the president will visit South Korea and Japan from May 20-24, without providing further details of his planned trip.
An official in Seoul said the U.S. president is scheduled to visit Seoul from May 20-May 22.
"President Joseph R. Biden, Jr. will visit the Republic of Korea and Japan from May 20-May 24 to further deepen ties between our governments, economies and people," Psaki said in a statement, referring to South Korea by its official name.
"This trip will advance the Biden-Harris administration's rock-solid commitment to a free and open Indo-Pacific, and to U.S. treaty alliances with the Republic of Korea and Japan," she added.
In Seoul, Biden will hold his first in-person summit with South Korea's newly elected President Yoon Suk-yeol, who is set to take office on May 10.
Yoon sent a special delegation to Washington earlier this month to deliver a letter to the U.S. president, in which the incoming South Korean leader reportedly expressed his hope to further expand and upgrade the U.S.-South Korea alliance into a "more comprehensive and strategic" relationship.
"The leaders will discuss opportunities to deepen our vital security relationships, enhance economic ties and expand our close cooperation to deliver practical results," Psaki said of Biden's meeting with Yoon and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida.
In Tokyo, Biden will also attend a Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad) summit, along with the leaders of Australia, India and Japan, according to the White House spokesperson.
The trip will mark Biden's first visit to Asia since taking office in January 2021, which will again highlight the emphasis the Biden administration has placed on the U.S.' alliances with its two key Asian allies.
South Korea and Japan were also the destination of the first overseas trip by both Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin in March 2021.
(END)
2. Statement by Press Secretary Jen Psaki on the President’s Travel to the Republic of Korea and Japan
Statement by Press Secretary Jen Psaki on the President’s Travel to the Republic of Korea and Japan | The White House
President Joseph R. Biden, Jr. will visit the Republic of Korea and Japan from May 20-May 24 to further deepen ties between our governments, economies, and people. This trip will advance the Biden-Harris Administration’s rock-solid commitment to a free and open Indo-Pacific and to U.S. treaty alliances with the Republic of Korea and Japan. It will build on more than a year of intensive diplomacy with the Indo-Pacific, including the U.S.-ASEAN Special Summit on May 12-13 in Washington, D.C. In each country, President Biden will hold bilateral meetings with his counterparts: newly elected President Yoon Suk Yeol of the Republic of Korea and Prime Minister Kishida Fumio of Japan. The leaders will discuss opportunities to deepen our vital security relationships, enhance economic ties, and expand our close cooperation to deliver practical results. In Tokyo, President Biden will also meet with the leaders of the Quad grouping of Australia, Japan, India, and the United States. We look forward to having further details to share about this trip soon.
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3. Flexibility Can Bring Pyongyang Back to Negotiations
The danger with some of these proposals for "flexibility" is that they will be interpreted by Kim as appeasement and success for his political warfare strategy and blackmail diplomacy. Providing concessions does not provide any incentive for Kim to negotiate in good faith as a responsible member of the international community.
The major split between people who align with the authors below and those who oppose any kind of appeasement is because of the diametrically opposed assumption about the nature, objectives and strategy of the Kim family regime and where to place the blame for failure - the authors blame the US and the hardliners while others place the blame squarely on Kim Jong-un's shoulders. I would just add we have seen tremendous "flexibility" in the litany of "agreements since 1992 the denuclearization agreement and the agreement on reconciliation, non-agression, and exchanges through the Agreed Framework, the Perry Policy review, the 4 party talks, the 6 party talks, the September 2005 Agreement, the leap Day Agreement, the Panmunjom delcations, the Singapore Summit, the Pyongyang declaration and the Comprehensive Military Agreement (and I am sure I left out. afew). But all failed for one simple reason: the Kim family regime refused to implement or live up to the letter and intent of hee agreements because while we seek agreements the regime is conducting political warfare and blackmail diplomacy. The "flexibility"we need is to conduct a superior form of political warfare focused on objectives beyond denuclearization (e.g.,, the acceptable durable political arrangement that will serve, protect,and advance ROK and US interests).
Flexibility Can Bring Pyongyang Back to Negotiations
An expert's point of view on a current event.
Hard-line approaches to North Korea keep backfiring.
By David Kang, the Maria Crutcher professor of international relations at the University of Southern California, and Jessica J. Lee, a senior research fellow on East Asia at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.
People watch a television screen showing a North Korean military parade.
People watch a television screen showing a news broadcast of a military parade held in Pyongyang, North Korea, at a railway station in Seoul on April 26. Jung Yeon-Je/AFP via Getty Images
The United States has “high expectations for working with the Yoon administration on issues related to the Korean Peninsula,” the United States’ top envoy for North Korea stated while in Seoul last week. But those expectations may be misplaced, given that Washington appears unwilling to prioritize stabilization through a more flexible diplomatic strategy.
To be sure, Seoul is taking a similar line. South Korea’s incoming conservative president Yoon Suk-yeol has promised to be tough on North Korea. Pledging to “teach [North Korean leader Kim Jong Un] some manners,” the Yoon administration brings with it hopes of a more pliant North, in contrast with South Korea’s outgoing Moon Jae-in administration, which was more focused on dialogue and engagement.
For its part, the Biden administration has essentially replicated the policy of previous U.S. administrations toward the Korean Peninsula, continuing a “pressure and more pressure” approach: articulating a willingness to talk without any actual policies or practical measures designed to produce positive movement in U.S.-North Korean relations.
The United States has “high expectations for working with the Yoon administration on issues related to the Korean Peninsula,” the United States’ top envoy for North Korea stated while in Seoul last week. But those expectations may be misplaced, given that Washington appears unwilling to prioritize stabilization through a more flexible diplomatic strategy.
To be sure, Seoul is taking a similar line. South Korea’s incoming conservative president Yoon Suk-yeol has promised to be tough on North Korea. Pledging to “teach [North Korean leader Kim Jong Un] some manners,” the Yoon administration brings with it hopes of a more pliant North, in contrast with South Korea’s outgoing Moon Jae-in administration, which was more focused on dialogue and engagement.
For its part, the Biden administration has essentially replicated the policy of previous U.S. administrations toward the Korean Peninsula, continuing a “pressure and more pressure” approach: articulating a willingness to talk without any actual policies or practical measures designed to produce positive movement in U.S.-North Korean relations.
Given the absence of any flexibility on the U.S. and South Korean sides, it is unsurprising that North Korea has not responded to offers to meet. Although it was former U.S. President —not Kim—who abandoned diplomacy, the weight of the Washington establishment has since reverted to its familiar tools of sanctions, pressure, and maximal demands.
The Washington foreign-policy establishment primarily views North Korea as a security threat to the United States, not as an actor in its own right. Discussions about North Korea tend to overlook U.S. actions that contribute to Pyongyang’s siege mentality, affirming its belief that it needs nuclear weapons to guarantee its own survival.
For example, commentaries by U.S. experts about the March 24 intercontinental missile launch and the accompanying video by Pyongyang focused heavily on the technical aspects of North Korea’s missile launch and weapons development. Context for why North Korea may have broken its self-imposed moratorium on testing nuclear weapons and longer-range missiles was missing. Few analysts recognized how these tests may be partly in reaction to Washington’s reluctance to take steps to break the deadlock in talks. Yesterday’s military parade also drew attention to North Korea’s weapons capabilities.
Although North Korea’s illicit activities, such as its recent cryptocurrency heist, are serious and worthy of public debate, so too is properly acknowledging de-escalatory steps by Pyongyang. For example, Kim Jong Un’s sister and senior politician Kim Yo Jong’s recent comments that North Korea would not attack South Korea without provocation and that its government opposes war was hardly covered in the U.S. media, especially when compared to the media coverage of Pyongyang’s missile tests. While there may be an understandable reluctance to accept rhetoric as opposed to action, ignoring rhetorical signs reduces room for diplomacy and understanding. Advocates of the “no first use” pledge on nuclear weapons also have been mum about Kim Yo Jong’s statement. Yet North Korea has made this same point consistently, echoing the United States’ own message on deterrence.
Another common narrative in Washington is that when it comes to North Korea, the United States has tried everything and all past failures are North Korea’s fault. It is easy to claim that North Korea wants too much because it is taken for granted in Washington that the United States is a rational actor and North Korea isn’t. After the collapse of the February 2019 Hanoi Summit, Gary Samore, former advisor to former U.S. President Barack Obama on arms control, placed the blame for the summit’s collapse squarely on Kim, saying: “The ball is in Kim’s court to decide whether to abandon hopes of a quick and easy deal.” Samore described North Korea as having asked for a “sweetheart deal” with an “extravagantly high price in terms of extensive sanctions relief in exchange for the modest step of dismantling Yongbyon,” North Korea’s nuclear research facility.
In the same article, Samore also admits that U.S. demands were very high—perhaps unreasonably so. Yongbyon has long been the focal point of the international community’s efforts to constrain North Korea’s nuclear program as the only known source for producing additional plutonium. Why then wouldn’t the United States take the very important first step of trading a few sanctions—which are clearly not working—to dismantle the Yongbyon facility? In pursuit of a big deal, Washington lost the chance for a catalytic small one. A “pressure first, negotiation second” policy toward North Korea may have thus far deterred renewed resumption of fighting on the Korean Peninsula, but such peace is temporary at best and illusory at worst. Sustaining a fragile status quo is not progress.
The United States has also reneged on some of its own commitments to Pyongyang. For example, the light water reactors for energy generation that were promised to Pyongyang under the Clinton administration’s Agreed Framework never materialized. The Obama administration’s “Leap Day Deal” of providing food aid in exchange for a freeze on uranium enrichment also unraveled due to an interpretation gap in what constitutes long-range missile launches. Washington has also sent mixed messages that undercut its broader North Korea strategy, such as when the U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned Banco Delta Asia for hosting $25 million of the Kim regime’s funds around the same time the September 2005 six-party joint statement was signed. In other words, failures in past denuclearization and peacebuilding efforts were not exclusively due to Pyongyang’s double-dealing.
Over the past three decades, the U.S. goal of North Korea denuclearization has become increasingly distant. Yet efforts to reduce tension, build confidence, and stabilize the Korean Peninsula have been held hostage to this objective. There have been occasional actual give-and-take actions with North Korea, but such efforts were abandoned as soon as any difficulty was encountered. Most recently, during the 2018-2019 Trump-Kim summit diplomacy, Trump abandoned any pretense of diplomacy at the Hanoi Summit by abruptly attempting to pressure North Korea into an immediate abandonment of its entire nuclear and missile programs before the United States had made any concessions.
So what can be done?
First, the United States’ needs to diversify the policy debate beyond a small group of policymakers and congress members in Washington. There are members of Congress who are calling for reform, and they should be part of the policy debate even if they don’t serve in national security committees. Rep. Ilhan Omar, for instance, introduced a bill called the Congressional Oversight of Sanctions Act that would strengthen congressional control and oversight over the use of sanctions by the executive branch. There should be public hearings and discussions about the objectives of U.S. sanctions against North Korea, ensuring they do not obstruct their overarching policy goals.
To prevent instability on the Korean Peninsula, Washington should actively test the proposition of whether Pyongyang is willing to engage in a security environment that does not involve having as many nuclear weapons. Instead of focusing on unrealistic goals of complete denuclearization all at once, Washington should consider more immediate steps toward that direction, such as engaging in arms control, missile and nuclear test moratoria, or other forms of diplomatic risk-taking in a way that advances U.S. interests. Other steps could include security assurances through formally ending the Korean War as well as a step-by-step process of reducing economic sanctions and North Korea’s growing strategic and nonstrategic nuclear weapons.
Indeed, a blanket acceptance of all United Nations Security Council resolution sanctions against North Korea, as noted in Section 3234 of the Senate-passed United States Innovation and Competition Act, only hardens the political environment and makes flexible diplomacy by the executive branch less attainable. Rather than viewing economic sanctions as tools to continually ratchet up and never dial back, they should be calibrated to motivate a change in North Korea’s behavior. The playbook of demanding that Pyongyang move first while withholding reciprocal measures until the United States determines that North Korea is sufficiently sincere has not worked and will not work.
Finally, Washington and Beijing must figure out a way to work together on the North Korea issue. As a senior Chinese official told Korea experts at a meeting in Washington this month, the United States may not heed China’s advice, but it should listen to what China has to say. This comment was made in the context of the China-Russia proposal to lift certain nonmilitary U.N. Security Council sanctions against North Korea. And although the good faith of Chinese officials offering advice to Washington may be questionable, it points to the need to separate the North Korea issue from great-power competition.
Even before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Washington was unreceptive to the China-Russia proposal. Now, it will be almost impossible. Yet as North Korea’s missile tests and South Korea’s testing of submarine-launched ballistic missiles show, the status quo is fraught with risks for Washington and Beijing. Compromise must be found that involves Beijing, if not Moscow.
U.S. President Joe Biden will reportedly meet with Yoon in Seoul next month, where North Korea will likely be a top agenda item. Avoiding past mistakes and being more open to smaller deals that involve some level of verifiable dismantlement of the Yongbyon nuclear complex for easing certain sanctions will be necessary to avert this slow-moving train wreck.
David Kang is the Maria Crutcher professor of international relations at the University of Southern California and a nonresident fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.
Jessica J. Lee is a senior research fellow on East Asia at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.
4. A Korean comedy of errors
As an aside there is no national security scholar who is better at applying Shakespearean analogies to national security and foreign policy (and especially the Korean peninsula) than Professor Lee.
Excerpts:
As the elected leader of the Republic of Korea, representing the entire Korean people, President Moon should have remembered his job description. Seizing the moment, he should have told the unelected, hereditary Northern leader to tear down the walls of his inhumane gulags. At the very least, as a former human rights lawyer, Moon should have called on Kim to release all political prisoners, South Korean and foreign detainees, and allow the North Korean people some basic freedoms.
Instead, in a gesture eerily reminiscent of the final lines of Shakespeare’s “The Comedy of Errors,” when one of the Dromio twin clowns, upon finding his long-lost brother, hearteningly says, “We came into the world like brother and brother / And now let’s go hand in hand, not one before another,” President Moon, holding Kim Jong Un’s hand, walked to and fro across the militarized border affectionately side-by-side, not one before the other.
Trump must remember: Marx was wrong on many things, but he was spot on when it came to the cyclical tragi-farcical unities of history.
A Korean comedy of errors
BY SUNG-YOON LEE, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR - 04/27/18 12:30 PM ET
THE VIEWS EXPRESSED BY CONTRIBUTORS ARE THEIR OWN AND NOT THE VIEW OF THE HILL
Were Friday’s inter-Korean summit meeting between the South’s Moon Jae-In and the North’s Kim Jong Un a fictional play, it would be a commendable aesthetic fulfillment of the Aristotelian unities: The unity of “action” (single action — the meeting itself), “time” (occurring over no more than 24 hours — April 27), and “place” (unfolding in a single existing place — the border village Peace House).
But because the compressed daylong date, capped by an elaborate Korean-themed dinner, carries very much real-life nuclear and gulag consequences, the rendezvous that proved long on bonhomie and woefully short on dismantlement discussions on weapons-and-camps of mass destruction merely reaffirms a cliché: Karl Marx’s dictum that history repeats itself in tragi-farcical cycles.
{mosads}Worse still, the event may come to be remembered not just as another farcical sequel to the first inter-Korean summit in 2000 — which entailed a bribe transfer of $500 million from Seoul to Pyongyang — but also as a prequel to a yet-to-be born, ill-fated meeting to be forgotten. President Donald Trump must realize that he is walking right into an elaborate trap set by the wily North Korean leader. By lining up world leaders for meetings while making no concessions beyond verbal palliative, Kim has willed himself into Global Everyman who thinks no ill.
For decades, few outside the military establishment took North Korea seriously. Few recognized that the Kim dynasty is deft at both wielding the stick and dangling the carrot. Hard as it may be to acknowledge the ultra-weird and irresistibly mockable regime as a sophisticated adversary, the scorecard on nuclear diplomacy over the past quarter-century tells it all: Tens of billions of dollars of aid won by Team Weird, some of which must have funded the “military-first” state’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs. Team America and its allies? In approximate terms, less than nothing.
Kim is poised to preach to the world that his policy of socialist pugnacity and anti-social patience really pays. In other words, Kim’s nukes and gulags, made possible in part by the generous gifts of Kim’s engagers, are for keeps. To presume otherwise, for example, that the Korean dictator-in-perpetuity, who, after a banner ballistic year in 2017, had a sudden change of heart in 2018 and decided to be a nice guy going forward would be a rarefied form of ahistorical self-hypnosis.
Further, to believe that Kim called for talks because of Trump’s threats of “fire and fury” and “total destruction” would be to engage in an even more esoteric form of mental exercise. Trump made the former threat on Aug. 8, 2017. Just three weeks later, on Aug. 29 (known in the North and South as “National Humiliation Day,” for on this date in 1910 the Korean peninsula was colonized by Imperial Japan), Kim proved that Trump’s sound and fury signified just about all of nothing by firing an intermediate-range ballistic missile over Japan.
The Moon-Kim meeting reaffirms the truism that a summit meeting is neither a family reunion nor a blind date. Rather, a summit meeting is the acme of often protracted, contested negotiations, even between allies. It is a symbolic reaffirmation of major agreements already reached between the parties. Yet both Moon and Trump have approached their meetings with Kim as a possible political windfall, armed with little else than blind faith in their ability to tame the ruthless dictator.
For Moon to rush into a summit with Kim in spite of no perceivable change in Pyongyang’s policy was the first mistake. Just as his predecessors had done, Moon chose to ignore his Northern counterpart’s ploy of dangling the possibility of denuclearization and peaceful coexistence.
Going all out at the actual meeting on the flimsy atmospherics of inter-Korean rapprochement while failing to press Kim on substantive issues such as denuclearization and the suffering of the North Korean people was Moon’s second mistake. Moon dutifully played his self-cast supporting role to Kim-the-lead-actor’s empty theatrics. They planted a “peace tree” together, toasted each other, and Moon played host to the dystopian state’s royal family.
Moon’s third unforced error was reveling in pan-Korean ethnic identity and nationalism, with its implicit anti-U.S. bent. Such indulgences certainly boost one’s fragile ego and approval ratings. But it plays right into Kim’s hand of untying the blood-forged bond between the United States and the South while painting the United States as the intransigent aggressor that willfully impedes inter-Korean reconciliation and reunification. Accentuating ad nauseam the “blood bond” between the North and South, all the while peddling the practical virtues of making concessions to the North Korean tyrant, begs the question: On whose side stands Moon?
As the elected leader of the Republic of Korea, representing the entire Korean people, President Moon should have remembered his job description. Seizing the moment, he should have told the unelected, hereditary Northern leader to tear down the walls of his inhumane gulags. At the very least, as a former human rights lawyer, Moon should have called on Kim to release all political prisoners, South Korean and foreign detainees, and allow the North Korean people some basic freedoms.
Instead, in a gesture eerily reminiscent of the final lines of Shakespeare’s “The Comedy of Errors,” when one of the Dromio twin clowns, upon finding his long-lost brother, hearteningly says, “We came into the world like brother and brother / And now let’s go hand in hand, not one before another,” President Moon, holding Kim Jong Un’s hand, walked to and fro across the militarized border affectionately side-by-side, not one before the other.
Trump must remember: Marx was wrong on many things, but he was spot on when it came to the cyclical tragi-farcical unities of history.
Sung-Yoon Lee is Kim Koo-Korea Foundation Professor in Korean Studies at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University. A former research associate of Harvard University’s Korea Institute, he has testified as an expert witness at the House Foreign Affairs Committee and advised the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Korea policy.
5. Why North Korea's Nuclear Weapons Build Up Is So Dangerous
Excerpts:
For the rest of us, on the outside, this growing reliance on nuclear weapons in North Korean doctrine is a serious problem. The North is, we believe, reaching for a wide-spectrum nuclear missile program. It currently has intercontinental ballistic missiles with nuclear warheads, with which it can strike the United States. That is Pyongyang’s core deterrence concern.
But it is also building out a wide range of adjacent platforms and technologies, including hypersonic missiles (which are fast and maneuverable), tactical nuclear weapons (of lower yield, for use on the battlefield), solid-fueled rockets (for quicker launching), short and medium-range missiles to strike all of South Korea, Japan and Guam, submarine-launched ballistic missiles to ensure its ability to retaliate even if it is hit first, and so on.
The North’s program will become the major destabilizing force in East Asia in the next few years. China has nuclear weapons too. But it does ostentatiously talk them up or recklessly threaten with them. Beijing also has a reasonably limited arsenal. The point is to prevent South Korean or Japanese counternuclearization. North Korea, by contrast, is scaring South Korean and Japanese decision-makers into a reconsideration of long-held positions, with South Korea’s incoming president Yoon Seok-Yeol suggesting preemptive strikes and Japan’s former prime minister Abe Shinzo suggesting the re-introduction of American nuclear weapons into the region.
Why North Korea's Nuclear Weapons Build Up Is So Dangerous
Bad News: Allied Defenses Against North Korean Nuclear Weapons Are Poor – North Korea just put on another military parade, asserting once again a belligerent posture on the use of its nuclear weapons. This is not surprising. North Korea’s economy is perhaps 5% the size of South Korea’s economy. It cannot begin to compete with the South in conventional military power. North Korea does not reveal measures of its gross domestic product, but it is likely that South Korea’s military budget is larger than the North’s entire economy. If one is that far behind, it makes sense to build nuclear weapons and wave them around. This is your best defense.
For the rest of us, on the outside, this growing reliance on nuclear weapons in North Korean doctrine is a serious problem. The North is, we believe, reaching for a wide-spectrum nuclear missile program. It currently has intercontinental ballistic missiles with nuclear warheads, with which it can strike the United States. That is Pyongyang’s core deterrence concern.
But it is also building out a wide range of adjacent platforms and technologies, including hypersonic missiles (which are fast and maneuverable), tactical nuclear weapons (of lower yield, for use on the battlefield), solid-fueled rockets (for quicker launching), short and medium-range missiles to strike all of South Korea, Japan and Guam, submarine-launched ballistic missiles to ensure its ability to retaliate even if it is hit first, and so on.
The North’s program will become the major destabilizing force in East Asia in the next few years. China has nuclear weapons too. But it does ostentatiously talk them up or recklessly threaten with them. Beijing also has a reasonably limited arsenal. The point is to prevent South Korean or Japanese counternuclearization. North Korea, by contrast, is scaring South Korean and Japanese decision-makers into a reconsideration of long-held positions, with South Korea’s incoming president Yoon Seok-Yeol suggesting preemptive strikes and Japan’s former prime minister Abe Shinzo suggesting the re-introduction of American nuclear weapons into the region.
Our Options are Poor
These suggestions reflect how poor other options are. Sadly, missile defense does not work very well. It is often described as ‘shooting a bullet with a bullet.’ The technology is emergent and certainly better than nothing in the case of an actual North Korean launch. But most seem to think it will be at least a decade, maybe more, before the technology catches up. It is instructive to recall that shooting down incoming missiles has a been discussed extensively since at least the 1980s with President Ronald Reagan’s hopes for a ‘star wars’ satellite defense net. In the race between missiles and missile defense, the offense has a clear advantage, and for countries like South Korea and Japan, the very short flight times from North Korea to their cities mean that missile defense has an even narrower window to work.
North Korea Ballistic Missile Test. Image Credit: North Korean State Media.
North Korean Special-Operations Forces. Image Credit: Creative Commons.
Negotiations would be the ideal constraint on the North’s program. But as North Korean statements have made clear again and again, it is quite unlikely that the North will ever give up enough of its nuclear missiles to relieve the existential threat they now pose to South Korea and Japan. We should obviously keep trying, but under former American President Donald Trump and outgoing South Korean President Moon Jae-in, the North had its best opportunity ever to reach a deal on its weapons. Trump and Moon were very dovish on the North and desperately wanted a deal with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. Yet Kim made only one, very unbalanced offer (to Trump in Hanoi in 2019) and otherwise passed up this best chance to negotiate. It is unlikely the North will cut seriously.
Extended deterrence – by which the US provides a ‘nuclear umbrella’ over South Korea and Japan – sufficed for decades regarding China’s nuclear weapons. But North Korea is far more belligerent and reckless in its language. It openly threatens to use its nukes against the United States. This would obviously make America cautious about involving itself in a war with North Korea, just as Russian President Vladimir Putin’s nuclear threats have kept NATO from deeper involvement in the Ukraine war.
South Korea and Japan will Probably Counter-Nuclearize
Yoon can see these problems as well, hence his preemption suggestion. But that, of course, is hugely dangerous. It could provoke the very nuclear war it is intended to prevent. The more obvious course is for Japan and South Korea to build their own nukes in order to establish direct deterrence with North Korea, without going through the Americans for ‘extended deterrence.’
This is unfortunate. East Asia will become even more nuclearized, and any future conflict will become that much more destructive. But the North is leaving its neighbors little choice. It is building a huge, potent, flexible arsenal. Missile defense does not work well enough to block much of it. Negotiations to cap or limit it have failed for three decades (North Korea first agreed to not build nuclear weapons in 1992). American deterrence on behalf of the South and Japan becomes questionable if it means risking nuked cities in the US homeland. Increasingly, it looks like there is no other path than allied counter-nuclearization.
Dr. Robert E. Kelly (@Robert_E_Kelly; website) is a professor of international relations in the Department of Political Science at Pusan National University. Dr. Kelly is now a 1945 Contributing Editor as well.
6. As South Korea’s Yoon Suk-yeol reaches out to Japan, hopes are high he’ll ‘change the tenor’ of ties
As Frank Sinatra sang:
'Cause he had high hopes, he had high hopes
He had high apple pie, in the sky hopes
https://genius.com/Frank-sinatra-high-hopes-lyrics
On a serious note, good news that the transition team was able to meet the Prime Minister. I just hope Yoon and Kishida can pledge to prioritize national security and national prosperity while managing the historical issues. We need bold and decisive leadership from both of them.
As South Korea’s Yoon Suk-yeol reaches out to Japan, hopes are high he’ll ‘change the tenor’ of ties
- A delegation representing Yoon, who’ll be sworn in on May 10, met Japanese PM Fumio Kishida in Tokyo on Tuesday
- Both sides want to improve ties that have deteriorated under Moon Jae-in, amid challenges including Ukraine and threats from China and North Korea
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Published: 6:15pm, 27 Apr, 2022
By Julian Ryall South China Morning Post4 min
South Korean president-elect Yoon Suk-yeol on Monday. Photo: EPA-EFE
There are high hopes that the incoming South Korean government’s swift outreach to Japan will lead to a reset in the recently testy relationship, although there is still a degree of caginess in Tokyo and a lingering sense of “once bitten, twice shy”, analysts say.
A delegation representing Yoon Suk-yeol, who will be sworn in as the new South Korean president on May 10, met Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida in Tokyo on Tuesday, with the two sides agreeing on the need to improve bilateral relations that have sunk to historic lows over the last four years.
Yoon’s representatives, headed by Chung Jin-suk, deputy speaker of the national assembly, gave the Japanese leader a personal letter from the president-elect.
“We need to resolve issues lying between Japan and South Korea,” said Kishida, adding that closer ties are more important than ever, given the challenges endangering the international order and security, including the war in Ukraine and the threats posed by North Korea and China.
“This delegation, at the initiative of the incoming South Korean administration, is an emphatic indication that Yoon wants to change the tenor of the dynamics of Japan-Korea relations,” said Stephen Nagy, an associate professor of international relations at Tokyo’s International Christian University.
“There have already been comments about South Korea perhaps joining the Quad alliance in some way, for greater engagement and improved bilateral relations, and that is all positive,” he said.
“And perhaps the most surprising thing is that Yoon has done all this even before he has formally taken power in Seoul.”
02:23
Who is South Korea’s newly elected president Yoon Suk-yeol and what are his plans?
Nagy said he believed South Koreans had grown tired of the constant confrontation with their neighbour under Moon Jae-in’s administration since it began in 2017.
“The feeling is that Moon’s government over-politicised the relationship with Japan,” he said.
“There are real issues between the two nations, but a convergence of factors now means that the Korean public is much more in favour of a more positive dynamic.”
That hope is shared by South Korean companies, which traditionally enjoyed close ties with Japanese firms until Japan imposed restrictions on exports of chemicals critical to the South’s semiconductor industry.
Tokyo has denied the restrictions were a retaliatory move, but it is widely assumed they were a reaction to Seoul unilaterally withdrawing from a 2015 treaty and agreed compensation that both sides said would draw a final line under the issue of “comfort women” forced to work in brothels for the Japanese military before and during World War II.
A recent survey of 327 domestic companies by the Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry showed that more than half of the firms questioned anticipate increased trade and investment under Yoon’s administration.
Companies in the materials, parts and equipment sectors, which were hardest hit by Tokyo’s trade restrictions, are the most optimistic.
And while just 12.9 per cent of businesses expected bilateral relations to improve six months ago, that figure has now soared to 45.3 per cent.
Hiromi Murakami, a professor of political science at the Tokyo campus of Temple University, said the Japanese government had been “waiting patiently for a conservative government to return in Korea, and I think the sense now is that things can move forward again”.
“And that is really important in all areas – trade, tourism, security, the threat posed by North Korean missiles – and there is a need to cooperate and develop the relationship”.
Despite the positive start to the new two-way relationship, Murakami warned that many obstacles remain.
“The initial approach from Yoon was very positive and I am sure has been welcomed in Tokyo, but there are still many issues that both sides have to find a way to agree on,” she said. “The South Korean side has said it wants to move on from the ‘comfort women’ issue, but that may not play well with a domestic audience.
“He has a very slim lead in parliament and he cannot simply ignore criticism on something like that,” she added. “He will need something from Japan in return for the two countries to move forward.”
Nagy agreed that Yoon must tread very carefully in his dealings with Tokyo and cannot politically afford to give away too much, too quickly.
“He has a small majority so he cannot appear to be too pro-Japan in his engagement,” he said, pointing out that North Korea has already attempted to undermine the rapprochement efforts. Its state media has described Yoon’s delegation to Japan as “samurai” with Korean masks in a transparent move to increase the new South Korean leader’s problems at home.
“So while there are very good signs and Japan will see this approach positively, I also think there is a sense in Tokyo of ‘once bitten, twice shy’ when it comes to Seoul,” he said. “Tokyo is hoping to see sustained change from the Moon administration and to see if the two governments can build a sustained and broader dialogue on the issues facing the region.
“It takes two to dance and South Korea has taken the first step; the question is whether Japan will follow that lead and reciprocate,” he added. “We will see over the next six months or so.”
Julian Ryall never expected to still be in Japan 24 years after he first arrived, but he quickly realised its advantages over his native London. He lives in Yokohama with his wife and children and writes for publications around the world.
7. North Koreans found 'jailbreaking' phones to access 'forbidden media'
Another indicator of the potential for strategic influence through information advantage.
North Koreans found 'jailbreaking' phones to access 'forbidden media'
NORTH Korean dissidents are reportedly hacking their way around the dictatorship's media blockade.
"Jailbreaking" is the practice of altering a device's capabilities or removing restrictions.
1
Kim Jong-Un is a third-generation dictator who became the Supreme Leader of North Korea after the death of his father in 2011
Experts sat down with two North Korean defectors who shared insights about the state of internet freedom and jailbreaking in the country.
Both defectors described jailbreaking their own devices as well as devices belonging to friends - and revealed that jailbreaking is a service covertly offered to other North Koreans for varying reasons.
FreedomHouse, a non-profit that analyzes overall and digital freedom, gave North Korea a score of three out of 100 - a dismal score representing how little agency the North Korean people have in their media consumption habits.
"North Korean people are creating solutions and workarounds so that they can learn things that the North Korean government doesn't want them to learn, sharing things the government considers subversive, and ultimately so they can create a challenge to the regime," an expert told Wired.
State-approved phones are been programmed to delete any content downloaded without a cyber signature from the state.
The hackers undercut the security measures on their devices by removing the signature layer from the phone's programming.
Wired reported that the phones also take and log screenshots at random, forcing users into a constant state of paranoia.
The stakes in North Korea are extremely high - the state has executed citizens for infractions as minor as watching K-pop videos.
Few North Koreans are in tune with modern appliances.
"Then there's this other class of folks who have some amount of computer science literacy," an expert on tech in North Korea told Wired.
One of the defectors said they had attended an elite technical school and connected their phone to a computer to install jailbreaking software they had smuggled.
"They're basically mapping out exactly how the thing works in practice and finding pretty clever workarounds."
The tightly monitored North Korean internet is called Kwangmyong - which translates to "bright star" in Korean.
Vox reported that many of the elites in North Korea are above restrictions, and access the internet to stay in step with current affairs outside the authoritarian state.
8. North Korean hackers stealing military tech, cybersecurity experts say
The all purpose sword from Kim with a range of options and capabilities to help sustain the regime.
North Korean hackers stealing military tech, cybersecurity experts say
By Thomas Maresca
The hackers were able to break into servers belonging to an engineering firm in the energy and military sectors and install backdoor malware that allowed them to secretly steal data over several days, security officials said. File Photo by Andrew Wong/UPI | License Photo
SEOUL, April 27 (UPI) -- A North Korean-linked hacker group recently breached an engineering company with military ties, U.S. cybersecurity firm Symantec said Wednesday, in Pyongyang's latest cyberattack aimed at bolstering its weapons development program.
The hackers, known as Stonefly, have been in operation since at least 2009, but in recent years have narrowed their focus "solely to espionage operations against select, high-value targets," security experts with Symantec said in a blog post.
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"Virtually all of the technologies it appears to be interested in have military as well as civilian uses and some could have applications in the development of advanced weaponry," the post said.
Stonefly's most recent known attack was in February against an engineering firm working in the energy and military sectors. The hackers were able to break into one of the firm's servers and install backdoor malware that allowed them to secretly steal data over several days.
"The group's capabilities and its narrow focus on acquiring sensitive information make it one of the most potent North Korean cyber threat actors operating today," Symantec said.
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A trio of U.S. agencies warned last week that North Korea was stepping up cyberattacks on cryptocurrency and blockchain platforms as the secretive regime looks for ways to evade international sanctions.
Despite an economy that has grown even more isolated by the COVID-19 pandemic, North Korea is prioritizing its weapons program. Pyongyang has unleashed a flurry of missile launches since the beginning of the year and officials in Washington and Seoul have warned that a nuclear test may be on the horizon.
On Monday, North Korea held a military parade that displayed its latest intercontinental ballistic missiles while leader Kim Jong Un vowed to continue "developing the nuclear forces of our state at the fastest possible speed."
9. Yoon and South Korea’s Foreign Policy: Switching between Strategic Ambiguity and Strategic Clarity
A fundamental question for the Yoon administration: will it shift from strategic ambiguity to strategic clarity? It has relied on ambiguity to deal with China and even Russia, vis a vis Ukraine support. Strategic clarity will be welcomed by the US because it will likely mean Yoon will stand up and defend the rules based international order and if he rests his foreign policy and national security on this concept then he will be very much aligned with the US. But strategic clarity may make the ROK vulnerable to Chinese political and economic warfare (recall THAAD). Will the US and other democracies come to the ROK's aid when it is attacked with economic warfare? We did not acquit ourselves during the THAAD fiasco.
Yoon and South Korea’s Foreign Policy: Switching between Strategic Ambiguity and Strategic Clarity
Published
21 hours ago
on
April 27, 2022
South Korea’s new president will soon be taking charge of the Blue House, as the former president Moon Jae-in will leave office. South Korean President-elect Yoon Suk-yeol expressed that he will follow a new foreign policy that will align and work closely with the U.S. Strategist associated with Yoon’s campaign stated this shift as the policy of ‘Strategic clarity.’ The policy proposed by President-elect Yoon stands in stark contrast to his predecessor, who was following a policy of strategic ambiguity under President Moon Jae-in. With the statements of President-elect Yoon during the campaign, some scholars and experts following developments in the Korean peninsula were content with a clearer expression of interest toward the U.S. in Yoon’s Foreign Policy Stance. After the policy announcement by Yoon on closer proximity to the U.S., the PPP (People’s Power Party) candidates were seen as one that would be better for the U.S. policy in the region. The intention of the U.S. even resonated in the Indo-Pacific strategy, specifically concerning the North-East Asian region released by the White House. The two major issues stand apart among many stated in the strategy focused on the northeast Asian region. Firstly ‘build connections within and beyond the region’ to improve relations between South Korea and Japan. The second one was ‘building regional resilience to transnational threats’ through the development of a coherent policy stance towards the DPRK (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea) between South Korea, Japan, and the U.S. Both the recommendations seem to have been taken positively by the president-elect Yoon based on actions taken by the transition team. There may be some positive developments following soon. President-elect Yoon’s policy group has already visited the U.S and Japan. Yoon has even expressed his intention of improving relations with Japan. In an interview, he expressed his desire to have better relations with Japan, building on convergences that the two countries have in the face of the threat from DPRK. However, another point of contention was mentioned in the U.S Indo-Pacific report, namely the PRC (People’s Republic of China).
President-elect Yoon’s China Policy
President-elect Yoon had stated that he would follow ‘strategic clarity’, but how much of the policy shift he expressed was directed towards China was never clear from his statements. His contentious decision about deploying additional THAAD batteries near Seoul could be a big irk between China-South Korea relations. There are oppositions to the deployment from both citizens against the existing deployed system and experts who say that the THAAD missiles don’t provide any additional deterrence. As we saw in 2016, when under Park’s government, the first THAAD was deployed, the reaction from China was in the form of economic coercion where the domestic population was weaponized as a tool of the state to punish South Korean companies. The Moon administration tried to normalize relations by stating their Three-No’s policy. The issues raised till now were only bilateral as they are restricted to the Korean Peninsula. However, with the Russian Invasion of Ukraine, the world is already moving toward a more polarizing system where states are expected to express their position. South Korea, too has sided clearly on the western side by joining the sanctions regime under the Democratic Moon government, even finding resonance with the Conservative President-elect Yoon. But as stated before, Yoon’s vision of South Korea-China relations is not so clear, as we see in the case of Russia.
One apparent reason is that no state can take on Chinese might; even the U.S. realizes this. After recognizing the increasing Chinese power in the Indo-Pacific region, the U.S has worked closely with its like-minded allies and partner in the region for an open, free and inclusive Indo-Pacific in bilateral, minilateral, and multilateral formations like Quad. Quad comprises the U.S, Japan, Australia, and India. All the member countries share concerns about the rising Chinese military and economic power in the Indo-Pacific region due to respective issues between the member countries and China. The Quad vision is to uphold the rules-based order in the Indo-pacific region. The Moon administration did express its support for grouping like Quad. Even earlier, President-elect Yoon stated his intention to work with Quad (not join). By participating with Quad’s working groups on vaccines, climate change, and emerging technologies. In his recent statement, Yoon indicated to positively consider joining Quad if approached but said that he doesn’t think it is happening anytime soon. Yoon had stayed away from expressing any intention to join the Quad immediately. This seems to be going against his policy of ‘strategic clarity.’ The lack of clarity on China is in contrast to his stand on Russia, where the state’s policy is precisely aligned with the U.S.
South Korea shares very cordial and good relations with all the Quad members, except for Japan, with whom relations under the Moon administration saw some downward trajectory due to domestic developments. But the Japan factor is not big enough for Seoul to be puzzled and remain tangled. The lack of interest or, to say, a cautious stance regarding the Question of Quad by South Korea under President-elect Yoon is a curious case of study. Here I would like to address the following questions to understand the balancing act by Yoon. What does South Korea bring to the Quad? And how will the Quad member see South Korea’s application to join the Quad?
South Korea and the curious case of Quad
Firstly, South Korea is a fellow democratic-liberal state in the Indo-Pacific region that upholds the rule of law and international liberal order as a touchstone of a stable international politico-economic system. In Quad parlance, South Korea is a ‘like-minded’ state with which every Quad member shares values and a converging vision for a ‘rules-based’ Indo-Pacific region. Secondly, South Korea has deep strategic interests in an ‘open, free, and inclusive’ Indo-Pacific region as it is intertwined with its export-oriented economy and exclusively the need for a resilient supply chain. As a leading technological innovator in emerging critical sectors like ICTs, AI, and 5G, it becomes incumbent for South Korea to play a more prominent role in shaping the Indo-Pacific region’s geoeconomics and geopolitics. By emphasizing the two points mentioned above, South Korea strengthens the structural capacity of a multipolar Asian regional order instead of the dictates of one country. As a norm influencer and middle power, South Korea also influences the states in south-east asia to take a more proactive stands on issues. Even its role in capacity building in cybersecurity through CAMP and as an arms provider is vital for the region’s stability.
South Korea is an ally of the U.S, a comprehensive strategic partner of Australia, a special strategic partner of India, an important neighboring country for Japan, as expressed by Japanese PM Fumio Kishida. South Korea is perceived as a state whose contribution to the region is positive, and its participation in the global economy is vital. For all Quad member states, the U.S, Australia, India, and Japan, South Korea is critical to their interests for a stable North-East Asian region and Indo-Pacific, particularly on critical emerging technologies, supply chain, and deterring North Korean belligerence. For Australia and India, South Korea helps modernize and strengthen its military capacity in the face of rising Chinese military threats. India actively deploys South Korean K9-Vajra at LAC with China, and Australia uses South Korean made artillery weapons, radar, and supply vehicles. Even Japan, instead of strenuous relations with South Korea, shares common interests to cooperate in the face of North Korean nuclear brinkmanship and cyberspace. South Korea has already engaged with the Quad framework in Quad-plus format on the issue of addressing COVID-19 early in 2020 with other countries like Vietnam and New Zealand. Irrespective of all the positives for South Korea, its applications to the Quad are almost perfect. There remain some impediments too.
Issues still linger within Quad on the consensus of South Korea. The Japanese negative reaction to South Korea joining G7 could hint at its response if South Korea applied for the Quad membership application. Japan thinks South Korea’s weak stand against China and its fluctuating policy on North Korea with different administrations could prove a disaster for the Quad. In addition, the bilateral relations and domestic constrain between Japan and South Korea may hinder Quad’s response. We saw this happening between India and Pakistan in SAARC, which eventually led to SAARC’s irrelevance in South Asia. Even India would like to see a more consistent South Korea stand towards issues that concern its interests, particularly on the China question. India still remembers Australia backtracking on China. However, that hasn’t deterred India from developing better relations with Australia. The U.S would welcome it if South Korea joined the Quad; as the saying goes, All hands-on deck would be better. This would also help to broaden the security perspective by bringing in subjects that find consensus among all Quad members, such as the denuclearization of North Korea. Any approach that forms a broader consensus on North Korea in the region would help pressure China, giving tacit support to the regime in Pyongyang.
South Korea Foreign Policy approach under President-elect Yoon remains a work in progress as he still hasn’t shifted to the Blue House. Yoon’s foreign policy stance of Strategic Clarity has found resonance on the subject of the west’s action toward Russia. However, it is yet to be seen whether his approach would replicate itself in the case of China. President-elect Yoon’s intentions, as expressed on working closely with the U.S., may not result in some kind of reaction as we have seen in the case of Russia. Yoon’s policy towards China will not be similar to Russia’s as many factors overshadow this relationship. These factors include geographical proximity, economic interdependence, North Korea, and strategic stability in the North-East Asian region. A policy similar to President Moon may not be an accurate way to proceed again. Still, one that changes dramatically may also present way more challenges to South Korea than it could handle in the current uncertain global economic scenario. Therefore, the way to proceed should be to strengthen relations with like-minded countries in the Indo-Pacific region, particularly the Quad members. At the same time, it is vital to engage with the working groups of the Quad to support non-conventional security issues, like Climate Change, Vaccines, and tech. The new administration’s focus should be to ensure strategic stability of the Indo-Pacific region in a manner that maneuvers tactical obstacles presented by China and South Korean interlinkages.
Related
Abhishek Sharma is a Doctoral Student in Korean Studies under the Department of East Asian Studies at University of Delhi. He is a postgraduate in International Relations from South Asian University. He is interested in evolving Geopolitics of East Asia and the Indo-Pacific Region, focusing on India-South Korea relations and Indian Foreign Policy. His research interests also include the intersection of Gender and International Politics, particularly in Environmental Peacebuilding, Nuclear Disarmament, and Feminist Foreign Policy
10. North Korea Strongman Tosses Around Nuclear Threats in His Most Menacing
Excerpts:
Although the threat of war seemingly is not imminent, Kim Jong-un made clear he did not view the North’s nuclear arsenal as merely a deterrent.
“The fundamental mission of our nuclear forces is to deter a war,” he said, “but our nukes can never be confined to the single mission of war deterrent even at a time when a situation we are not desirous of at all is created on this land.”
If the North’s “fundamental interests” were violated, he promised, “our nuclear forces will have to decisively accomplish its unexpected second mission.” Thus, he added, “the nuclear forces of our Republic should be fully prepared to fulfill their responsible mission and put their unique deterrent in motion at any time.”
Just how prepared is Mr. Kim to make good on such threats is far from clear, but North Korea is believed to have about 60 warheads. Most of them are presumably in the North’s main nuclear facility at Yongbyon, about 60 miles north of Pyongyang, and other warheads may well be stored in caves and tunnels around the country.
North Korea Strongman Tosses Around Nuclear Threats in His Most Menacing Tirade
The North Korean leader’s remarks were clearly a warning to both America and South Korea that he has every intention of challenging the South’s incoming conservative president.
The North Korean leader, Kim Jong Un, center, at the Kim Il Sung Square April 25, 2022. Independent journalists were not given access to cover the event depicted in this image distributed by the North Korean government. Korean Central News Agency/Korea News Service via AP
Tuesday, April 26, 2022
01:43:40 pm
WASHINGTON – North Korea’s leader brandished the threat of nuclear war Monday in a fire-eating speech marking the 90th anniversary of the founding of the Korean People’s Revolutionary Army, which includes all the North’s armed forces.
In his most menacing tirade to date, Kim Jong-un called on his “nuclear forces” to be “strengthened in terms of both quality and scale so they can perform nuclear combat capabilities in any situations of warfare.”
Talking at night in the dramatic setting of Kim Il Sung Square in central Pyongyang following a military parade featuring strutting soldiers and the North’s latest-model missiles, the strongman raised the stakes against enemies near and far. “The prevailing situation demands more proactive measures,” he said, vowing increased emphasis on “developing the nuclear forces of our state at the fastest possible speed.”
The North Korean leader’s remarks were clearly a warning to both America and South Korea that he has every intention of challenging the South’s incoming conservative president, Yoon Suk-yeol, from the moment he’s inaugurated on May 10. Pyongyang’s Korean Central News Agency carried the entire text of the speech in English translation, and Korean Central TV live-streamed the parade for an international audience.
Mr. Kim’s speech strongly indicated he would be ordering the North’s seventh nuclear test — its last was conducted September 2017 — in an atmosphere of rising hostility between North and South Korea and also between the North and America and Japan.
Mr. Kim and the South’s outgoing president, Moon Jae-in, exchanged cordial letters last week harking back to their three summits in 2018, and Mr. Moon on Tuesday called for renewed North-South dialog. North Korea has not responded to such pleas, even while demanding an end to sanctions imposed by Washington and the United Nations.
Although the threat of war seemingly is not imminent, Kim Jong-un made clear he did not view the North’s nuclear arsenal as merely a deterrent.
“The fundamental mission of our nuclear forces is to deter a war,” he said, “but our nukes can never be confined to the single mission of war deterrent even at a time when a situation we are not desirous of at all is created on this land.”
If the North’s “fundamental interests” were violated, he promised, “our nuclear forces will have to decisively accomplish its unexpected second mission.” Thus, he added, “the nuclear forces of our Republic should be fully prepared to fulfill their responsible mission and put their unique deterrent in motion at any time.”
Just how prepared is Mr. Kim to make good on such threats is far from clear, but North Korea is believed to have about 60 warheads. Most of them are presumably in the North’s main nuclear facility at Yongbyon, about 60 miles north of Pyongyang, and other warheads may well be stored in caves and tunnels around the country.
North Korea’s KCTV showed crowds cheering and waving North Korean flags as the North’s latest missiles trundled by, strapped onto huge multi-wheeled vehicles. The Hwasong 17, widely regarded as the North’s newest, most fearsome missile, was in evidence, but some analysts believed a new solid-fuel missile was also on display.
“North Korea rolled out what appeared to be a new type of solid-fuel missile alongside the country’s largest-known intercontinental ballistic missile,” a website in Seoul that tracks North Korea, NK News, said. NK News quoted Ankit Panda at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington as saying the new missile looked like “a variation of North Korea’s Pukguksong solid-fueled missile series.”
Mr. Pandit added, however, that it was “a little curious why the North Koreans have these three large diameter solid fuel missiles that they have not yet flight-tested.”
North Korea also showed off what looked like a version of a submarine-launched ballistic missile capable of being fired from under water quite close to the shores of its target country. “The small SLBM appeared to have a sharper warhead tip,” an independent website, navalnews.com, said. “This variation of SLBMs with different ranges seems to indicate that they will be deployed in a very short time.”
The new SLBM, navalnews.com said, “has a larger warhead and length than the Pukguksung-5” and a much longer range.” It’s “capable of carrying MIRVs (multiple independent reentry vehicles) that can destroy multiple cities at once….”
North Korea has claimed an ICBM that it test-fired last month was a Hwasong-17, but Korean and American analysts believe it was an earlier-model Hwasong-15. Either model, of course, is capable of hitting targets anywhere in the U.S.
Equally important, the North has recently test-fired short-range missiles that could hit anywhere in South Korea, placing within easy range America’s single largest overseas base, Camp Humphreys, 40 miles south of Seoul.
South Korea is responding by building up its own inventory of short- to medium-range missiles. The South on Tuesday announced it’s ordering missile interceptors from Raytheon Technologies Corporation, with a range of more than 300 miles, according to Seoul’s Yonhap news.
That’s in addition to the South’s plan for mass-producing surface-to-surface missiles capable of mounting on transport vehicles, Yonhap said.
These missiles, however, won’t be operational until 2034 ,while the Korean peninsula remains in a perpetual state of crisis or near-crisis with no amicable resolution in sight.
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11. Project Reveal New research into North Korea’s digital control system
This is another must read report for all PSYOP professionals and those who deal with strategic influence.
The table of contents and executive summary are below.
Project Reveal New research into North Korea’s digital control system
Martyn Williams and Niklaus Schiess
Project Reveal New research into North Korea’s digital control system Martyn Williams and Niklaus Schiess CONTENTS Executive Summary..................................................................................................... 3
About the authors....................................................................................................... 6
Mobile Phone Control in North Korea .................................................................... 8
The Digital Signature System.................................................................................................... 8
Trace Viewer ................................................................................................................................... 10
Recent Changes In The Technical Landscape...................................................... 11
Mirae Wi-Fi Network.................................................................................................................... 11
Getting Around State Controls................................................................................ 17
Signature Signing Software...................................................................................................... 17
Smartphone Hacking In North Korea ................................................................................. 20
Smartphone Purchase and Sale ............................................................................. 23
Pyongyang 2425 Smartphone profile .................................................................. 26
Phone Profile.................................................................................................................................. 27
Apps .................................................................................................................................................. 28
Developments To Watch in North Korean Communications .......................... 31
Mobile payments.......................................................................................................................... 31
New laws.......................................................................................................................................... 33
Network Upgrades...................................................................................................................... 36
Ministry of Information Industry ........................................................................................... 38
Conclusion ................................................................................................................. 39
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The availability of the Internet and smartphones has transformed societies around
the world. Citizens now can access knowledge from around the globe, seek out
independent news coverage and voice their opinion with little filter. While state
controls exist to varying degrees in some countries, nowhere is the control as
complete and restrictive as North Korea.
While the smartphones available in Pyongyang are little different to those available
in other countries, the installation of custom software, a closed communications
network and constant monitoring, mean the device in North Korea is useful to
consumers for little more than consumption of state-approved propaganda.
However, for the state, smartphones constitute a potentially potent vector for
remote surveillance at scale. To date, there is no evidence that metadata is being
exploited at a large scale for surveillance purposes, but this is an area that must be
monitored.
Much of North Korea’s information control system is based on the same technologies
that underpin the Internet and smartphones globally but rather than expanding
access to knowledge, North Korean engineers have removed or modified features
to block it.
In our research, we examined two current North Korean devices to determine
recent changes in the information control landscape.
• WI-FI
One of the most interesting changes has been the reintroduction of Wi-Fi to North
Korean devices. It had been disabled for years but the Taeyang 8321 tablet includes
an app for Mirae, a new Wi-Fi network in central Pyongyang.
Analysis of the app reveals subscribers are required to use a username, password,
SIM Card and be using an approved device to gain access to the network. The use
of a SIM Card is unusual, but the engineers chose an international standard for the
authentication. The Wi-Fi network settings are hard coded into the app and cannot
be changed by the user. The Wi-Fi portion of the settings app has been disabled
removing the ability to search for other networks.
As a result, the tablet can be used to connect to the Mirae network but no others.
This allows North Korean authorities the ability to provide wifi-based intranet
connectivity while preserving a level of network access control consistent with
mobile provider-based intranet data access. This demonstrates that North Korean
engineers continue to take existing technology
and modify it to their needs, typically by removing or restricting features. Certain
technological features generally appear to be reintroduced only when the level of
control and security is sufficient.
• HACKING
In the course of our research, we interviewed two North Korean escapees who
revealed the existence of a small hacking culture inside North Korea. It had previously
been assumed that North Koreans, lacking access to the Internet, would find it
difficult to gain the knowledge to hack Android smartphones but that is not the
case. However, the nature of the “hacks” are notable as they must be conducted
locally on the device, leveraging at most a second linked device, rather than more
traditional hacks which leverage network connectivity to exploit vulnerabilities. In
other words, the techniques they developed, were extremely specific to the nature
of North Korean devices and software in their purpose and execution.
One of the escapees worked in China as a software engineer for a state enterprise
and smuggled Chinese hacking software back into the country upon his return.
Another was part of the group of computer science students at the prestigious
Kim Il Sung University that swapped tools and tips amongst themselves.
The motivation for hacking wasn’t always related to breaking the state’s control
on unrestricted consumption of illicit media. Sometimes, handsets were hacked
to clear the memory of files so the phones could reach a higher price on the
secondhand market.
Both escapees interviewed said that the number of people actively able to hack
phones was small, but it is notable that it existed.
• TECHNICAL RESPONSE
Among the state’s technical responses to hacking appears to be the disabling of
USB file transfer functions on smartphones. Technical analysis of a Pyongyang 2425
handset, released in 2019, was severely hampered by the inability to access the
phone memory over USB. In previous North Korean handsets, the USB interface
had always provided access but the same wasn’t possible in the latest handset.
The escapees we interviewed said that they disabled the state control software
by installing software via the USB interface, so it is possible that state engineers
responded by disabling this route into the phone.
This was the case with Wi-Fi. When it was discovered that it was being used to
access the open Internet, the state disabled it in all phones. It was only reintroduced
recently, as previously mentioned, once controls had been designed to ensure it
could only be used for approved purposed.
•NEW LAWS
Another measure of the degree to which hacking is becoming an issue came in the
Reactionary Ideology and Culture Rejection Law that was enacted in 2020.
The law seeks to punish those found in possession of foreign culture with anywhere
from years in labor reform to death. Included in the law is specific prohibition
against “Illegally installing a phone manipulation program.” While it is difficult to
estimate the number of North Koreans modifying their phones and interviewees
did not seem to think the practice was widespread, the existence of this specific
wording would imply it is happening at a scale where authorities are aware and
potentially concerned.
The law also takes issue with a number of associated issues related to foreign
media access and consumption and offers other clues as to current issues inside
the country.
One article imposes a fine if people are found with a smartphone that doesn’t
contain the state software for blocking “impure publications and propaganda.”
And companies are also threatened with fines for “not correctly controlling Internet
or computer network management,” which hints that there might have been issues
regarding people using company Internet connections for other than approved
use.
• OFFICIAL SOFTWARE
Given the extreme rigidity of the North Korean digital control system, it is likely that
authorities needed to design some means by which to allow for limited exceptions
to the controls for approved purposes. They appear to have done so by way of
officially produced apps. The apps allow for content such as audio files and images
to be tagged with the individual digital signature of a particular phone and loaded
onto that phone and their compatibility with phones several years apart indicates
the system continues to serve its purpose.
By analyzing two similar software applications of the variety used for loading
content onto North Korean smartphones, we find that the basic functionality of the
digital signature system used to control content access has remained unchanged.
12. Dr. Sue Mi Terry Announced as New Director of Asia Program
Congratualtions to Dr. Terry!
Dr. Sue Mi Terry Announced as New Director of Asia Program
Article
April 27, 2022
Asia Program
Hyundai Motor-Korea Foundation Center for Korean History and Public Policy
WASHINGTON–The Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars is pleased to announce the appointment of Dr. Sue Mi Terry as the new Director of its Asia Program. Dr. Terry will also continue to serve as Director of the Hyundai Motor-Korea Foundation Center for Korean History and Public Policy.
Dr. Terry has already established herself as a leading American voice on matters pertaining to Asia and the Korean peninsula, with a distinguished career in intelligence, policymaking, and academia. Prior to joining the Wilson Center in October 2021 as Director of the Korea Center, she was a Senior Fellow with the Korea Chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (2017–2021), Managing Director for Korea at Bower Group Asia (2015–2017), and Senior Research Scholar at the Columbia University Weatherhead East Asian Institute (2011–2015). In the U.S. government, she served as Deputy National Intelligence Officer for East Asia at the National Intelligence Council (2009–2010), Director of Korea, Japan, and Oceanic Affairs at the National Security Council (2009–2009), and a Senior Analyst at the CIA (2001–2008). Dr. Terry holds a Ph.D. (2001) and an M.A. in Law and Diplomacy (1998) from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University, and a B.A. in Political Science from New York University (1993). She was born in Seoul and raised in Hawaii and Northern Virginia.
“We are thrilled to announce Dr. Terry as the new Director of the Asia Program,” said Ambassador Mark Green, President and CEO of the Wilson Center. “Dr. Terry’s exceptional background epitomizes the combination of deep scholarship and policy relevance we pursue here at the Wilson Center. She has established a great track record at the Korea Center. Now she will enhance the Asia Program’s reputation as a critical resource for the Washington policymaking community and beyond.”
“I am thrilled to take on this expanded role at the Wilson Center as the Director of the Asia Program,” said Dr. Terry. “The Wilson Center is one of the most prestigious think tanks in the world, with a well-established reputation for in-depth, objective, and nonpartisan analysis on the most pressing foreign policy issues. It’s a privilege to work with such a dynamic team. As Asia’s importance to the United States continue to grow, I expect our Asia Program will be a timely and relevant voice for the policymakers on many pressing issues. I look forward to the Asia Program contributing to deeper understanding of and shaping the public debate on critical issues in Asia.”
Dr. Terry has authored numerous book chapters, articles, and Op Eds in various prominent publications including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times, and Foreign Affairs. Her latest book chapter, “The Strength of Weakness: North Korea’s Strategy for Survival” for the new edition of Makers of Modern Strategy, a revival of a classic book, is forthcoming from Princeton University Press in May 2023. Her latest article is “North Korea’s Nuclear Optimism: Why Kim Jong Un Chose to Exploit the Ukraine Crisis,” for Foreign Affairs. She has testified multiple times before the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, as well as the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission. She is also a regular guest on television, radio, and podcasts, including CNN, MSNBC, ABC, PBS, BBC, and National Public Radio. Her analyses and expert commentary have appeared in media outlet around the world, including Chosun Ilbo, Joongang Ilbo, Korea Times, Japan Times, Asahi and Sankei Shinbun, South China Morning Post, and others.
Tagged
Contributor
Sue Mi Terry
Director of the Hyundai Motor-Korea Foundation Center for Korean History and Public Policy
Asia Program
The Asia Program promotes policy debate and intellectual discussions on U.S. interests in the Asia-Pacific as well as political, economic, security, and social issues relating to the world’s most populous and economically dynamic region. Read more
Hyundai Motor-Korea Foundation Center for Korean History and Public Policy
The Center for Korean History and Public Policy was established in 2015 with the generous support of the Hyundai Motor Company and the Korea Foundation to provide a coherent, long-term platform for improving historical understanding of Korea and informing the public policy debate on the Korean peninsula in the United States and beyond. Read more
13. Yoon Promises No More Bloating of Government
Most politicians make these promises. However, I think President-elect Yoon is not like most politicians. He may just be able to prevent the bloat.
Yoon Promises No More Bloating of Government
April 28, 2022 11:53
President-elect Yoon Seok-youl's transition team on Wednesday promised not to increase the number of civil servants, ending years of massive government bloat.
During the five years of the Moon Jae-in administration, the number of civil servants swelled by an unprecedented 129,000 in order to massage job figures, which Yoon has criticized as inefficiency and a waste of taxpayers' money.
Park Soon-ae of the transition team told reporters, "We will guide each government agency how to make the best use of existing workers."
The number of civil servants stands at 1.16 million. It increased by 90,000 during the Roh Moon-hyun administration, 12,000 during the Lee Myung-bak administration and 42,000 during the Park Geun-hye government.
"Yoon has stressed repeatedly the need to deal with government inefficiencies, the surging payroll and pension burden," a source on the team said.
Park said the new policy will gradually bring down the civil service to more manageable numbers. "Every year, around 23,000 civil servants will retire, while the existing new quota of around 6,000 will continue," she said.
- Copyright © Chosunilbo & Chosun.com
14. Activist in South Korea restarts illegal leafleting of the North
An important step forward. The incoming Yoon administration must work with the National Assembly to get the anti-leaflet law repealed or hope that the courts will overturn it as unconstitutional (I think there is a case pending).
For those who think leaflets or balloon launches are anachronistic and obsolete I would call your attention to the important report just written by George Hutchinson and published by HRNK which describes the importance of leaflets, especially in the frontline areas.
"Army of the Indoctrinated: The Suryong, the Soldier, and Information in the KPA"
George Hutchinson
Apr 26, 2022
Excerpts:Pages 79-80:
Several interviewees also stressed the importance of distributing leaflets to !ont-line
areas along the DMZ. It is notable that both interviewees who are quoted below are relatively
recent escapees.
Leaflets [would be most effective]. I spent a few months interacting with soldiers who served in these #ont-line
areas and escaped North Korea across the DMZ. These soldiers had an extremely weak commitment to revolutionary
ideology. Because of leaflets, they had an admiration for South Korea instead. These leaflets are extremely powerful.
(Served until 2012)
Paper leaflets are very important. 70% to 80% of the KPA is forward deployed along the 38th parallel. In the
event of a war, it is these soldiers who would lead the attack. A soldier who has seen even one leaflet may not
completely trust its contents, but they will begin to question, ever so slightly, what they know. This is critical. Then,
once they see first-hand the realities of South Korea, their thoughts will be transformed. Because soldiers are
subjected only to ideology about Kim Jong-un in the military, these leaflets have a meaningful impact.
(Served until 2019)
One interviewee agreed about the importance of leaflets but added that the leaflet balloons
could also address more immediate material needs.
Paper leaflets are, of course, important with respect to soldiers in the #ont-line areas. However, many of the
soldiers who are currently serving in the military were born during the Arduous March. It may be more effective to
send over snacks and food items than paper leaflets.
(Interview 7)
Activist in South Korea restarts illegal leafleting of the North
The Washington Post · by Min Joo KimToday at 5:01 a.m. EDTBy Min Joo KimToday at 5:01 a.m. EDT · April 28, 2022
SEOUL — An activist group in South Korea said on Thursday it had launched a million propaganda leaflets into North Korea by balloons this week, defying a law criminalizing such acts.
Fighters for a Free North Korea, a defector-run group, said it released 20 balloons carrying anti-Pyongyang leaflets across the border earlier this week, breaking the contentious ban that the group calls “an unjust law that violates freedom of expression.”
The outgoing liberal government in South Korea passed the law in 2020, despite criticisms that it prioritized improving ties with the North over standing up for human rights.
The law makes it a crime punishable by up to three years in prison to send promotional pamphlets and storage devices such as flash drives, money and other items of value to the North without the Seoul government’s permission.
The group’s leader Park Sang-hak became the first person to be charged under the law for his past leafleting activities and is currently on trial. Park said he will challenge the law in the Constitutional Court.
After a year-long pause amid police investigations and trials, Park resumed the leaflet campaign on Monday, saying that he will “happily accept prison terms” for his “righteous acts.” He escaped North Korea in 2000 to settle in the democratic South and has led leaflet campaigns since 2004.
The leaflets released this week criticize North Korea’s nuclear and missile developments as a “threat to humanity,” which Pyongyang promoted in a high-profile military parade on Wednesday. A photo of South Korea’s president-elect Yoon Suk-yeol has been included in the leaflets to promote democracy and denounce North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s dynastic dictatorship, the group said.
The crackdown on leaflets is likely to be contested in Yoon’s incoming conservative government. Kwon Young-se, nominated as Seoul’s unification minister to lead inter-Korean affairs, said it is “constitutionally problematic” to outlaw such leaflet campaigns in a democratic country.
Officials of the outgoing government said the law prevents unnecessary North Korean provocations and protects South Korean residents in the border area. The front-line residents have long complained about the propaganda efforts by activists, citing North Korean threats of “targeted shooting” at the origin of leaflets.
Seoul’s Unification Ministry said on Thursday that it is working with authorities to confirm whether the group had in fact launched the leaflets, and said it will properly enforce the law to protect the safety of residents along the border.
For years, defectors and activist groups have sent printed materials and flash drives containing South Korean news, movies and drama to North Korea in hopes that ordinary residents there will pick them up and learn about the oppression imposed by the totalitarian regime and relative poverty in their country. The materials dispatched across the border often include aid such as rice, medicine and dollar bills.
North Korea’s totalitarian regime is extremely sensitive about the propaganda efforts by outside activists to erode the country’s information blockade. It blew up an inter-Korean liaison office on its territory in 2020 after Kim Yo Jong, powerful sister of the North Korean leader, lashed out at the leafleteers and threatened retaliation.
The Washington Post · by Min Joo KimToday at 5:01 a.m. EDTBy Min Joo KimToday at 5:01 a.m. EDT · April 28, 2022
15. North Korea’s ‘nascent hacker underground’ playing ‘cat and mouse’ with regime
Again, the Lumen report is at this link:
Project Reveal New research into North Korea’s digital control system
Martyn Williams and Niklaus Schiess
North Korea’s ‘nascent hacker underground’ playing ‘cat and mouse’ with regime
North Koreans seeking greater access to information are engaged in a digital “game of cat and mouse” with Kim Jong Un’s totalitarian regime, according to a new analysis of the country’s telecommunications devices.
The study, conducted by researchers on behalf of US-based non-profit organisation Lumen and seen by the Financial Times, shines a light on North Korea’s “nascent hacker underground”, in which a small number of tech-savvy citizens are trying to circumvent software and monitoring systems installed by the regime on their smartphones.
The North Korean hackers do so at the risk of hard labour, a lengthy spell in a political prison camp or even a death sentence.
“The North Korean government is investing more legal, social, penal and technological resources to keep North Koreans in an information vacuum,” said Jieun Baek, founder of Lumen and a fellow at Harvard University’s Belfer Center.
“Its Achilles heel is for its citizens to learn about the reality that exists outside their borders, and realise that much of what they have been taught by their government are falsehoods.”
But while a tiny number of North Korean citizens have access to the internet through select state institutions, the vast majority can only use a national “intranet” contained within the country’s borders.
Many North Koreans have relatively sophisticated Chinese-manufactured, mid-market smartphones that run on Google’s Android operating system.
But the country’s authorities deploy a variety of techniques to control, censor and monitor the information accessible on these devices. They range from a digital certificate system that denies access to unauthorised programs and content to a “Trace Viewer” app that captures and reports random screenshots of citizens’ online activities.
“It’s very interesting why a country like North Korea allows its citizens to have smartphones in the first place,” said Martyn Williams, a fellow at the Stimson Center think-tank in Washington and co-author of the Lumen study.
“The answer is that it can see the value of technology in terms of education and commerce, but every time a new technology is introduced, it gets used in a way the government didn’t intend. It’s a double-edged sword.”
North Korea has a bifurcated telecommunications network: while foreigners can make international calls and access the internet, local citizens can only make domestic calls and access the country’s intranet.
The authors of the study interviewed two North Korean escapees who independently described how groups of friends or associates helped each other to get around state controls on smartphones.
“Smartphones would be connected to a laptop computer via a USB cable to transfer an application on to the phone,” said the report. “If the phone was tricked in the correct way, the application could be transferred and launched without being detected and deleted by the phone’s security software.”
“The motivation for doing this was to bypass phone security and be able to install different applications, photo filters and media files that would otherwise not be permitted,” the report added.
Williams stressed that only a few technically literate North Koreans were capable of deploying such techniques: one of the interviewed escapees had been a programmer for the government, while another was a university student who had access to computers for more than 10 years.
But he said that the activities described by the interviewees illustrated a shift from “circumvention” of state controls to “more aggressive pushback”, even if motivations for unlocking phones ranged from a desire to access information from the outside world to a more prosaic need to achieve greater resale value for their smartphones.
In a sign that the regime is worried about these activities, a 2020 “Reactionary Ideology and Culture Rejection Law”, enacted to punish those found in possession of foreign culture, contained a specific prohibition against “illegally installing a phone manipulation programme”.
“This is a nascent hacker underground playing cat and mouse with the authorities,” said Williams. “It’s still probably very small, but it’s there — and it’s the first time we’ve seen that.”
16. S. Korea excluded from Ukraine’s thank-you list of 31 countries
I do hope the incoming Yoon administration will step up and provide lethal support to Ukraine. Yes I recognize that South Korea has a large amount of investments and business in Russia. But as noted it is time to end strategic ambiguity for strategic clarity and defend the rules based international order which is in South Korean interests to contribute to protecting. Not a perfect analogy but Ukraine is facing a similiar threat as Korea did in 1950.
S. Korea excluded from Ukraine’s thank-you list of 31 countries
Lack of weaponry support leaves Seoul, Tokyo off list
Published : Apr 27, 2022 - 14:48 Updated : Apr 27, 2022 - 17:53
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy gives a virtual speech to the National Assembly in Seoul on April 11. (Joint Press Corps)
South Korea was excluded from the list of countries that Ukraine thanked for support in its ongoing defense against Russia’s invasion, drawing mixed response from the public after the East Asian country publicly provided humanitarian aid, but declined to supply arms.
A video posted by the Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ official Twitter account on Monday showed a list of 31 countries it declared as Ukraine’s “partners,” with Valerii Zaluzhnyi, commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, thanking them for their “assistance and unwavering support in these hard times.”
Australia, Azerbaijan, Albania, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Great Britain, Canada, Denmark, Germany, Greece, Estonia, Egypt, France, Finland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Netherlands, North Macedonia, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Sweden, Spain, Turkey and the United States made up in the list.
The list comprises those countries that have provided lethal weaponry support to Ukraine since the Russian’s invasion on Feb. 24. South Korea and Japan are believed to have been excluded from the list because they did not providehe same level of support to Ukraine during its ongoing military conflict.
South Korea has so far provided 1 billion won ($798,000) of nonlethal military and medical supplies to Ukraine in response to the country’s calls for support to repel Russia’s invasion. Seoul plans to provide additional nonlethal aid worth 2 billion won this month, according to reports.
President-elect Yoon Suk-yeol is also considering expanding humanitarian aid to Ukraine upon the start of his term.
But South Korea has stayed firm in rejecting Ukraine’s repeated requests for lethal arms support, saying the country has a unique security situation and that providing lethal arms support could potentially impact the Korean military’s readiness posture.
The country is speculated to have rejected requests for lethal weaponry support due to its unique conflict of diplomatic and economic interests, which most likely restricted the country to providing only humanitarian aid to Ukraine.
Yet South Korea has also been widely criticized for its half-heartedness toward Ukraine, especially when hosting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy for a virtual address to the National Assembly earlier this month.
Zelenskyy spoke to a largely empty room inside the National Assembly in Yeouido, western Seoul, as only 60 out of 300 legislators came to hear him speak. Some attendees were seen leaving the room during the event, and no standing ovation was given after Zelenskyy concluded his speech, contrasting from scenes in other global legislatures.
Artyom Lukin, an international relations professor at the Far Eastern Federal University based in Russia, criticized South Korea and its politicians for being careless regarding Zelenskyy’s speech and failing to supply weapons to Ukraine.
“For the average South Korean, access to sea delicacies has absolute priority over a war in eastern Europe,” Lukin said in a tweet on April 10.
The public was divided in learning that South Korea’s name was excluded from the list of 31 countries, with some accusing Ukraine of downplaying Seoul’s aid for not being lethal weaponry. But others said they can understand the exclusion, as being added to the list would have complicated South Korea’s relationship with Russia moving forward.
17. K2: The 'Black Panther' Might Be the Best Tank on Earth
I bet the Ukrainains would like this tank.
K2: The 'Black Panther' Might Be the Best Tank on Earth
Sure, the K2 Black Panther is not a well-known tank outside of defense and land forces circles around the world. And yet, this tank is always mentioned as being one of the very best on Earth. And it would need to be, as it would be facing thousands of North Korean armored vechciles if the Korean War ever resumed: During the Korean War, the first tanks deployed by the United Nations forces were the American M24 Chaffee light tanks. Not unexpectedly the M24s fared poorly against North Korea’s Soviet-built T-35-85s. Following the war, the South Korean military bolstered its armored fleet with a variety of U.S.-made tanks but attempts made to obtain the M60A1 Patton main battle tanks (MBTs) in the 1970s ended in failure.
Always fearing that its neighbor to the north would launch an attack across the DMZ, South Korea took matters into its own hands and developed a domestically produced tank – the K1, which was based on the early designs of the American XM1 program that led to the development of the M1 Abrams. The new South Korean-made tank entered service in the late-1980s and has been steadily improved, with the K1A2 entering service in 2013.
However, Seoul has moved forward with an entirely new design: the K2 Black Panther, a next-generation MBT developed by the South Korean Agency for Defense Development and manufactured by Hyundai Rotem. The K2 was meant to complement – rather than replace – the K1 series that are currently fielded by the South Korean military.
The K2 was developed utilizing indigenous technology only, and the first prototype was unveiled in 2007, while production commenced for the first 100 K2 tanks in 2014. It is considered one of the most advanced MBTs in the world, outclassing any tanks in service with North Korea or even China.
It relies on both an undisclosed modular composite armor and Explosive Reactive Armor (ERA) blocks, and according to reports can withstand direct hits to the front from a 120mm tank round. In addition, the K2 also is equipped with an active protection system as well as countermeasure systems that include NBC (nuclear-biological-chemical) protection.
Heavy Hitter
The K2 Black Panther MBT has a crew of three members including a commander, gunner, and driver. The MBT’s main armament is a Rheinmetall 120mm L/55 smoothbore gun, produced under license in South Korea and equipped with a domestically-designed automatic loader – which can ensure the loading of projectiles on the move including when on uneven surfaces. The 120mm gun can reportedly fire approximately 10 to 15 rounds per minute. It can be used with a variety of munitions and is compatible with all standard NATO tank rounds. The 120mm L/55 gun is also capable of firing the new KSTAM (Korean Smart Top-Attack Munition) rounds – smart target-activated fire-and-forget projectiles.
The secondary armament of the Black Panther includes a 12.7mm heavy machine gun and a 7.62mm machine gun.
South Korea’s next-generation tank is equipped with domestically-developed auto-target detection and tracking system, which incorporates a hunter-killer function. The tank also features an electric gun and turret driving system (28-260VDC) provided by Doosan Corporation Mottrol. In addition, the gunner’s primary sight (GPS) and commander’s panoramic sight (CPS) are stabilized in two axes and include a thermal imager and laser rangefinder enabling day/night observation.
Suspension System
While not as speedy as its namesake, the Black Panther can still hunt down its slower-moving prey thanks to its license-built MTU MB 883 Ka501 diesel engine, which produces 1,500 horsepower. It can reach a top speed of 43 mph on the road, and 31 mph cross country. There is also an auxiliary gas-turbine power unit, offering 400 horsepower.
The tank also is equipped with a unique suspension system, which can be contorted into a variety of positions. For cross-country performance, the suspension is raised, providing the K2 greater ground clearance, while on roads, the suspension is lowered, hugging the ground for better speed. In addition, the K2 can “lean,” “sit” or “kneel” to provide the main gun better maneuverability in hull-down positions.
When leaning backward, the K2 can raise its main gun to target low-flying aircraft, or to better target more highly elevated targets on Korean Peninsula’s hilly terrain. The K2 even has the ability to lean to the left or the right, which improves maneuverability when driving along slopes.
Exporting the Black Panther
Even as Seoul is currently adopting the tank for its domestic use, the tank has caught the eye of foreign buyers including the Norwegian Defence Materiel Agency (NDMA), which announced that it would put the K2 up against the German-made Leopard 2A7 in tests to determine Norway’s next MBT.
Last December, Cairo also announced that it was in negotiations with South Korea to co-produce a version of the Black Panther for use by the Egyptian Army. Trade between Egypt and South Korea has increased in recent years and reached nearly $2 billion in 2020 in engineering and electrical goods, furniture, clothes, chemical products, fertilizers, and medical industries. Seoul has also invested some $570 million into 181 projects in Egypt, including construction, information technology, tourism, and agriculture. Now Cairo is looking to Seoul for military hardware and that will likely include the K2 Black Panther.
Now a Senior Editor for 1945, Peter Suciu is a Michigan-based writer who has contributed to more than four dozen magazines, newspapers and websites. He regularly writes about military hardware, and is the author of several books on military headgear including A Gallery of Military Headdress, which is available on Amazon.com. Peter is also a Contributing Writer for Forbes.
18. S. Korea may have misread certain expressions in Kim Jong Un’s personal letter
Information and the "spread of needless rumors" is a threat to the regime. Not how the north's propaganda always places the South in a subordinate position.
S. Korea may have misread certain expressions in Kim Jong Un’s personal letter
North Korea’s decision not to reveal the inter-Korean letter exchange in the popularly read Rodong Sinmun was aimed at preventing the spread of “needless rumors"
By Seulkee Jang - 2022.04.28 2:23pm
South Korean President Moon Jae In and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un shake hands at the third 2018 inter-Korean summit. (Image: Pyongyang Press Corps Pool)
Leaders of North and South Korea recently exchanged personal letters ahead of South Korean President Moon Jae In’s departure from office, but some North Korean cadres have scoffed at the South Koreans’ failure to detect how North Korean leader Kim Jong Un used expressions that put Moon in a subordinate position.
According to a high-ranking Daily NK source in North Korea on Wednesday, cadres who learned of the letter exchange through an internal newspaper for Central Committee cadres smirked when they saw that South Korea failed to pick up on how the North used the term “assesses,” or pyeongga handa, an expression used by a superior to a subordinate. Instead, the South simply thanked Kim for responding.
According to them, someone in a superior position can “assess” or “appraise” someone in a lower position, but no one can use the expression “assess” or “appraise” toward someone of equal or higher status.
In a briefing about the letter exchange on Apr. 22, South Korea’s Presidential Spokeswoman Park Kyung Mee quoted Kim as writing, “We highly value and respect President Moon’s agony, hard work and passion for the cause of the people until the end of his term. We will never forget President Moon and will unwaveringly respect him after he leaves office.”
North Korea’s KCNA wrote the same day, “Recollecting that the top leaders of the north and the south made public the historic joint declarations giving hope for the future to the entire nation, Kim Jong Un appreciated the pains and effort taken by Moon Jae In for the great cause of the nation until the last days of his term of office.”
In both the original Korean versions of the South Korean statement and North Korean KCNA report, the word pyeongga was used for “value” and “appreciate.”
South Korea’s presidential office did not reveal the text of Kim’s return letter to Moon, but it clearly used the expression “highly assessed.”
However, the KCNA report made no mention of Kim’s expressed “respect” for Moon, or how he would “unwaveringly respect him after he leaves office” that the presidential spokeswoman mentioned. The newspaper for Central Committee cadres did not mention these things, either.
Regarding Kim’s reported use of the expression, “We did produce historic declarations and agreements to serve as milestones in inter-Korean relations,” the cadres said this expression placed the South in a subordinate position as well, as it means that “the North set the milestones” while the South “simply agreed to and followed them.”
Through KCNA, North Korean authorities said “the exchange of the personal letters between the top leaders of the north and the south is an expression of their deep trust.” However, in North Korea, officials continued to slander the South over its claimed misreading of Kim’s personal letter.
The United Front Department is reportedly behind efforts to promote the slander of the South by party cadres. Cadres believe that department is behind the slander because it edited Kim’s letter for release after selecting which parts to run in the KCNA and cadre newspaper.
Meanwhile, North Korea’s decision not to reveal the inter-Korean letter exchange in the popularly read Rodong Sinmun was aimed at preventing the spread of “needless rumors.”
In fact, after North Korea revealed the content of a speech South Korean President Moon made before Pyongyangites during a visit in 2018, rumors about Moon spread among the locals, some of whom reportedly had a favorable impression of the South Korean leader.
A 40-something male resident of the Kyonghung-dong neighborhood of Pyongyang’s Potonggang District – who was mobilized at the time to welcome Moon – was reportedly dragged off to a political prison camp after the Central Committee heard he had said, “The South Korean president bowed to the people, even though he appeared older, and this demonstrated his humanity, in stark contrast to Kim Jong Un.”
“There probably didn’t seem any need to generate appraisals or rumors regarding Kim by revealing the exchange of letters,” the source said.
Translated by David Black. Edited by Robert Lauler.
Seulkee Jang is one of Daily NK’s full-time journalists. Please direct any questions about her articles to [email protected].
19. N. Korea is forcibly relocating families with missing relatives to rural areas
This is why I call north Korea a Guerrilla Dynasty and Gulag State. The regime's legitimacy rests on the myth of anti-Japanese partisan warfare and Kim Il-sung as the great guerrilla leader who liberated Korea and the entire Korean population in the north live as slaves completely under the jackboot of the Kim family regime.
N. Korea is forcibly relocating families with missing relatives to rural areas
The government’s desperate need for additional labor in rural areas appears to be one reason why forced relocations are occurring
A photo of Hoeryong taken in 2013 (Raymond Cunningham, Flickr, Creative Commons)
North Korean authorities have recently been identifying households with two or more missing family members and forcibly relocating them to rural areas, Daily NK has learned.
A North Hamgyong Province-based source told Daily NK on Wednesday that families in Hoeryong with two or more missing members are being banished to agricultural areas. “The investigation of missing people, which began at the start of this year, is still underway and families [with missing people] are concerned,” she said.
According to the source, the families most worried about the investigation are those with relatives who defected to other countries. These families have no way of knowing if or when they could be forcibly relocated.
In Hoeryong, the authorities have conducted four rounds of forcible relocations of households with any number of relatives confirmed to be living in South Korea or China. This process has led to the relocation of families who the authorities believe have relatives who defected to foreign nations.
Moreover, the authorities have a policy to expel families with two or more missing members, even if the exact whereabouts of these relatives remain unknown, the source said.
According to the source, four families from the Nammun neighborhood in Hoeryong were forcible relocated on Apr. 10. One of the families had two daughters who went missing eight years ago. The family was relocated even though the authorities confirmed through an investigation that they had never received money or even had contact with their daughters all these years.
This example suggests that the authorities are not making any exceptions to its policy of forced relocations. In fact, local Ministry of Social Security branches have received strict orders to “never turn a blind eye” toward cases of missing people, the source said.
The forced relocation policy appears to be deeply connected to the North Korean government’s push to eradicate “anti-socialist and non-socialist elements” from the society. In short, the authorities believe that the families of defectors are the main culprits behind the inflow of foreign information and culture into the country.
Moreover, the government’s desperate need for additional labor in rural areas appears to be another reason why forced relocations continue to occur. Although the authorities have used “petitions” to try and recruit volunteers to work in rural areas, these efforts have not been entirely successful. As such, officials may have moved to supplement the country’s dwindling rural workforce by forcibly relocating the country’s perceived “reactionary elements.”
People in positions of power who face investigations or forced relocation due to missing relatives, however, have reportedly found ways to avoid getting kicked out of their homes.
“Many cadres in the party, Ministry of State Security, Ministry of Social Security, and prosecutors’ offices have missing relatives,” the source said. “But they have already declared their relatives deceased, so they are being excluded from the forced relocations to rural areas.”
Translated by Gabriela Bernal. Edited by Robert Lauler.
Lee Chae Un is one of Daily NK’s full-time journalists. She can be reached at [email protected].
20. N. Korea regards suspected COVID-19 cases in political prison camps simply as “cases of the flu”
We have seen a lot of inaccurate reporting about COVID in the north so we must take this with a grain of salt. But the treatment of prisoners is likely accurate and is another illustration of the evil nature of the Kim family regime.
N. Korea regards suspected COVID-19 cases in political prison camps simply as “cases of the flu”
As non-citizens, the state is not required to extend any special medical services to these inmates
By Mun Dong Hui - 2022.04.28 5:00pm
A satellite photo of the No. 16 prisoner camp in Hwasong, North Hamgyong Province (Google Earth)
North Korea is applying its unique brand of “zero COVID” policies to its political prison camps. Even if prisoners display symptoms of COVID-19, they receive neither proper treatment nor even a diagnosis. Instead, they are simply regarded as flu patients.
In a telephone conversation with Daily NK on Wednesday, a source in North Korea said people in the country cannot even use the expression “confirmed case of COVID-19.”
He said this was the case in the society at large and that in the even more “abnormal” world of the prison camps COVID-19 patients “officially cannot exist.”
Within North Korea, people ordinarily use terms like “COVID isolation facility” or “COVID quarantine,” but they cannot get a diagnosis confirming they are COVID-19 positive, he added.
Naturally, then, it would be impossible for prisoners in political prison camps to test positive for COVID-19.
North Korea has been adhering to a high-intensity quarantine policy since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. The country has long claimed to be coronavirus-free, with not even a single confirmed case or death from the disease.
Meanwhile, the medical systems within the political prison camps are still terrible, the source said.
He said suspected COVID-19 patients are treated as if they have the flu or paratyphus. They are given no treatment nor are any hygiene-related measures taken.
According to the source, the authorities will not treat prisoners because they believe inmates should simply be grateful that they were sent to the camps instead of being executed. He also said treating or providing medicines to prisoners violates party policy and runs counter to camp regulations.
North Korea strips inmates in these camps of their civil rights. As non-citizens, the state is not required to extend medical services to them. In short, the authorities completely ignore the basic rights of camp inmates.
The source said the authorities do not really care if prisoners live or die. He said to avoid dying, prisoners sometimes treat themselves with salt for external wounds and a mixture of weeds for internal disorders.
Meanwhile, the country’s political prison camps have seen a major upsurge in inmates between the fourth quarter of last year and the first quarter of this year.
The source said nationwide crackdowns have led to the arrests of hundreds of people, including cadres and families for alleged negligence in implementing North Korea’s recent law on youth indoctrination, along with people who made “reactionary” statements.
He said the authorities have also arrested dozens of members of an alleged gang that pilfered supplies from the construction sites of quarantine and inspection stations. The number of people sent to political prison camps has climbed greatly since last year, he added.
In fact, a Daily NK investigation has found that the number of inmates at political prison camps in Pyongsan, Pukchang, Hwasong and Kaechon climbed by about 18,400 people between the fourth quarter of last year to the first quarter of this year.
Translated by David Black. Edited by Robert Lauler.
Mun Dong Hui is one of Daily NK’s full-time journalists. Please direct any questions about his articles to [email protected].
21. N.K. leader wearing white uniform reminiscent of grandfather
A picture is worth a thousand words. Photo at the link if it does not come through in this message.
N.K. leader wearing white uniform reminiscent of grandfather | Yonhap News Agency
N.K. leader wearing white uniform reminiscent of grandfather
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un (L), wearing the white uniform of a marshal, appears at a military parade at Kim Il-sung Square in Pyongyang on April 25, 2022, to mark the 90th anniversary of the founding of the Korean People's Revolutionary Army, in this photo released the next day by the North's official Korean Central News Agency. His appearance in a white uniform is reminiscent of his grandfather, the North's founder Kim Il-sung (R), who held a victory parade in Pyongyang right after the July 1953 armistice agreement that ended the 1950-53 Korean War. Kim Il-sung appeared wearing a white uniform, which is recognized by the country's residents as a clear indication of his position as supreme commander. The identical attire worn by the two is interpreted as the North's apparent attempt to step up idolization of Kim Jong-un and consolidate his power. (For Use Only in the Republic of Korea. No Redistribution) (Yonhap)
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V/R
David Maxwell
Senior Fellow
Foundation for Defense of Democracies
Phone: 202-573-8647
Twitter: @davidmaxwell161
FDD is a Washington-based nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.
