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Quotes of the Day:
“Chinese history textbooks state that the Korean War began when "the United States assembled a United Nations army of 15 countries and defiantly marched across the border and invaded North Korea, spreading the flames of war to our Yalu river."
Malcolm Moore, “China rewrites history of Korean War”, The Telegraph, (25 Jun 2010).
“Collective fear stimulates the herd instinct, and tends to produce ferocity toward those who are not regarded as members of the herd.”
– Bertrand Russell
"Only the mob and the elite can be attracted by the momentum of totalitarianism itself. The masses have to be won by propaganda."
– Hannah Arendt
1. U.S. pressures South Korea to raise defense budget
2. Seoul, Washington launch working-level talks on 5% defense spending target
3. Trump says U.S. will 'get conflict solved' with N. Korea if there's one
4. Top U.S. diplomat's visit to S. Korea next month under discussion
5. Caught in the crossfire: What the Israel-Iran crisis means for Seoul
6. Korea’s Nuclear Landscape: Past and Present
7. The Attack on Iran’s Nuclear Program Should Be a Warning to South Korea
8. Trump’s attack on Iran pushed diplomacy with Kim Jong Un further out of reach
9. ‘No justice in North Korea’: Defectors at UN hearing testify about executions, mounting abuses by regime
10. Exclusive: China threatened S. Korean research ship near unauthorized structure in Yellow Sea
11. Iran’s Failed Deterrence: Lessons for North Korea
12. Sitting Out the NATO Summit May Be Lee Jae-myung’s Best Move
13. 6 Americans detained in South Korea for trying to send rice and Bibles to North Korea by sea
14. President Lee Jae-myung: “I will pursue practical diplomacy based on a strong ROK-US alliance”
15. Some North Korean Residents: “More Burden Than Expected” About Wonsan and Galma Tourism
16. N. Korea unveils grand beach resort as it seeks to exploit sanctions loophole
1. U.S. pressures South Korea to raise defense budget
As I understand it the NATO allies are residing in what constitutes the defense contribution to include cyber security, border security and other national security considerations.
That can show an increase that could help toward the magical (or mythical) 5% number.
The first thing Korea (and perhaps together with Japan) needs to do is conduct a comprehensive analysis of all defense spending. And it will likely argue that the SMA funding (support for US troops) should be included which will increase the GDP spending statistic by a whole percentage point at least.
U.S. pressures South Korea to raise defense budget
Posted June. 28, 2025 07:07,
Updated June. 28, 2025 07:07
https://www.donga.com/en/article/all/20250628/5691001/1
The White House said on June 26 that Asian allies, including South Korea, should increase their defense spending in line with NATO member states. The move is widely seen as a full-scale push by the Trump administration to demand higher defense contributions. In response, the administration of South Korean President Lee Jae-myung has reportedly conveyed to the White House that decisions on defense spending are a matter of national sovereignty. However, with summit talks between the two presidents ongoing, the South Korean government is reportedly considering the possibility that the United States may link increased defense spending to tariff negotiations and is preparing countermeasures.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt replied, during the briefing on the same day about NATO s agreement to increase defense budget to 5% of GDP, that the allies and friends in the Asia-Pacific region can raise the spending if the European allies, or NATO member states can do that. However, she noted that the specifics are for President Trump himself to address.
The South Korean government maintains that the defense budget should be decided independently, based on both internal and external security conditions as well as the country’s fiscal situation. A senior government official said President Lee has emphasized that defense spending is a matter of national sovereignty.
Unlike NATO, which has a formal collective defense system with the United States, South Korea has no agreement with the U.S. on defense spending. This makes it difficult to link tariff negotiations with defense spending issues. Still, reports say a variety of negotiation strategies are being prepared, especially after President Trump threatened to double tariffs on Spain for opposing increased defense spending and amid talks of reducing U.S. troops stationed in South Korea.
Kyu-Jin Shin newjin@donga.com
2. Seoul, Washington launch working-level talks on 5% defense spending target
Given the economic situation in South Korea and the election of the President to solve economic issues (just like POTUS) this is going to create political opposition in the South. And if POTROK acquiesces to US demands andathe ROK economy tanks, the US will be blamed thus creating greater alliance friction.
It might be useful for current officials to recall the history of the 1997 so-called IMF crisis (Korea's term - but it was the crisis of the Asian Tigers' financial markets). The IMF crisis in Korea spurred growing anti-American sentiment because the IMF is one of those organizations the US created post WWII to create economic stability and Korea was forced to comply with IMF's harsh terms for loans. (We should also recall Korean nationalism and pride as it was the first country to repay the IMF loans with contributions by the Korean people as they lined up at government offices to donate their personal gold and jewelry.)
But we need to ask how important is the geo-strategic location of Korea in the Asia-Indo-Pacific to US interests. Setting aside the north Korean threat and looking at the long term. Does Korea's geostrategic location and alliance provide benefits to US national security? Perhaps the long term strategy should influence how we treat Korea.
But the bottom line is we need to be ready for the economic and political turmoil our demands will create and the blowback that will likely take place if the ROK economy does not improve or gets worse.
Saturday
June 28, 2025
Seoul, Washington launch working-level talks on 5% defense spending target
https://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/news/2025-06-28/national/defense/Seoul-Washington-launch-workinglevel-talks-on-5-defense-spending-target/2340882
Published: 28 Jun. 2025, 11:31
Updated: 28 Jun. 2025, 11:47
National Security Adviser Wi Sung-lac, left, shakes hands with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio on the margins of the NATO summit in the Netherlands on June 24. [PRESIDENTIAL OFFICE]
South Korea and the United States have begun working-level talks on increasing Seoul’s defense spending, modeled after a new NATO commitment to raise military budgets to 5 percent of GDP, according to senior officials.
The talks could shape the agenda for the first summit between President Lee Jae Myung and U.S. President Donald Trump.
Related Article
Wi Sung-lac, national security adviser to President Lee, confirmed the U.S. request during a briefing with reporters on June 26 after returning from the NATO summit in the Netherlands.
“The U.S. is making similar requests to several allies, just as it did with NATO,” Wi said. “South Korea has also received such a request, and working-level discussions are underway. These issues are currently being reviewed through security consultations.”
National Security Adviser Wi Sung-lac, back row left, poses for a photo with world leaders including U.S. President Donald Trump ahead of a dinner hosted by Dutch King Willem-Alexander and Dutch Queen Maxima on the sidelines of a NATO Summit at Huis ten Bosch Palace in The Hague, Netherlands, on June 24. [REUTERS/YONHAP]
The U.S. Department of Defense publicly stated on June 19 that it expects its global allies — including those in Asia — to meet a new defense spending benchmark of 5 percent of GDP, aligning with NATO’s revised targets. South Korea’s current defense budget accounts for about 2.3 percent of GDP based on 2020 figures.
Wi’s remarks were seen as confirmation that Washington had formally conveyed the request to Seoul and that talks were already in progress.
Cost-sharing pressure
The proposed increase goes beyond South Korea’s existing cost-sharing commitments for U.S. troop deployments under the bilateral Special Measures Agreement (SMA). The SMA covers personnel, logistics, and infrastructure costs and has historically limited room for significant increases.
During Trump’s first term, Washington pressed Seoul for a fivefold increase in its SMA contribution, a demand that ultimately failed amid domestic backlash and legal constraints. Observers say the push for a NATO-style spending model is intended to broaden the scope of allied contributions beyond traditional cost-sharing.
President Lee Jae Myung and First Lady Kim Hye Kyung head to board the presidential aircraft at Calgary International Airport on June 17 after wrapping up the G7 Summit. [JOINT PRESS CORPS]
NATO member states recently agreed to increase defense budgets to a combined 5 percent of GDP — 3.5 percent for direct defense and 1.5 percent for related investments — by 2035. The formula is designed to offer flexibility to member states while signaling stronger burden-sharing.
Wi acknowledged the “3.5 + 1.5” structure, adding that South Korea has not yet committed to a specific approach. “We are still determining how to respond,” he said.
A more favorable starting point for Korea?
South Korea may be better positioned than some NATO countries to meet such targets. Its annual defense budget surpassed 60 trillion won ($44 billion) in 2023. According to the country’s midterm defense plan, spending is projected to grow by an average of 7 percent annually, reaching around 80 trillion won by 2028 — or roughly 3 percent of GDP — and surpassing 100 trillion won in the early 2030s.
Officials are considering allocating the remaining 2 percent gap under the NATO formula through indirect investments in defense-related fields such as basic science, education, and critical infrastructure.
Expanding research and development in military technologies and materials is also on the table. This aligns with South Korea’s long-term goal of becoming one of the world’s top four defense exporters.
Park Ihn-hwi, an international studies professor at Ewha Womans University, said the country should not accept the 5 percent target at face value.
“NATO members currently spend less than 2 percent of their GDP on defense, while Korea is already contributing more,” he said. “Even if the 5 percent rule is accepted, it would make more sense to focus on increasing R & D in areas related to emerging security threats such as Russia and the Middle East. That would maximize mutual benefits.”
During his trip, Wi also met with U.S. Secretary of State and National Security Adviser Marco Rubio. The two agreed on the urgency of holding a Lee-Trump summit soon.
“We are currently in discussions on trade and security matters,” Wi said. “There is shared understanding that these talks should be consolidated to prepare for a successful summit.”
His comments suggest that tariffs and defense spending are likely to be the two main agenda items and that the issues may be linked in the broader context of alliance management.
Translated from JoongAng Sunday using generative AI and edited by Korea JoongAng Daily staff.
BY YOO JI-HYE, LEE YU-JUNG [park.eunjee@joongang.co.kr]
3. Trump says U.S. will 'get conflict solved' with N. Korea if there's one
What is the US national PSYOP/information and influence activities campaign to exploit the strike in Iran to enhance US extended deterrence and correctly influence KJU in north Korea?
(LEAD) Trump says U.S. will 'get conflict solved' with N. Korea if there's one | Yonhap News Agency
en.yna.co.kr · by Song Sang-ho · June 28, 2025
(ATTN: RECASTS headline, lead; UPDATES throughout)
By Song Sang-ho
WASHINGTON, June 27 (Yonhap) -- U.S. President Donald Trump said Friday that the United States will "get the conflict solved" with North Korea if there is one, reiterating that he has had a "good" relationship with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.
Trump made the remarks during a press availability, apparently reiterating his openness to reengaging with the recalcitrant regime, as his administration has stated its commitment to the "complete denuclearization" of North Korea.
"If there is a conflict ... I get along with him very, very well, and we'll get the conflict solved with North Korea," Trump said, when asked to confirm an NK News report that he had sent a letter to Kim, which North Korean diplomats in New York refused to accept.
"I've had a good relationship with Kim Jong-un, and I've gotten along with him really great. So we'll see what happens," he added.
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a meeting with Foreign Minister Therese Kayikwamba Wagner of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Foreign Minister Olivier Nduhungirehe of Rwanda in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington on June 27, 2025 in this photo released by Reuters. (Yonhap)
It remain unclear what he meant by the "conflict with North Korea," but he was apparently referring to military tensions that have persisted on the Korean Peninsula as Pyongyang has been doubling down on its nuclear and missile programs.
His comment came during an event involving the top diplomats of Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo that signed a U.S.-brokered peace deal in Washington on the day in an effort to end decades of the deadly conflict between the two neighbors.
Trump has expressed his willingness to resume dialogue with the North Korean leader, raising cautious hopes for the restart of his personal diplomacy with the dynastic ruler, which led to three in-person summits between them during his first term.
Trump and Kim met in Singapore in June 2018, Hanoi in February 2019 and the inter-Korean border village of Panmunjom in June 2019.
sshluck@yna.co.kr
(END)
en.yna.co.kr · by Song Sang-ho · June 28, 2025
4. Top U.S. diplomat's visit to S. Korea next month under discussion
Top U.S. diplomat's visit to S. Korea next month under discussion | Yonhap News Agency
en.yna.co.kr · by Lee Haye-ah · June 27, 2025
SEOUL, June 27 (Yonhap) -- South Korea and the United States are discussing a possible visit to Seoul by U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio next month, a diplomatic source said Friday.
The visit, if realized, would take place around Rubio's trip to Malaysia for a meeting involving the Association of Southeast Asian Nations on July 10, according to the source.
It would be Rubio's first visit to South Korea since the inauguration of President Lee Jae Myung early this month.
The allies will likely use the visit to discuss issues such as defense cost-sharing, tariff negotiations and planning for what would be the first summit between Lee and U.S. President Donald Trump.
An AFP file photo of U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio (Yonhap)
hague@yna.co.kr
(END)
en.yna.co.kr · by Lee Haye-ah · June 27, 2025
5. Caught in the crossfire: What the Israel-Iran crisis means for Seoul
Good analysis from Dr. Kim. I agree that the Iran strike offers opportunities for South Korea and the ROK/US alliance that we should seek and exploit.
Excerpt:
Amid mounting global uncertainty, South Korea should view the Middle East crisis as an opportunity to recalibrate its posture and reaffirm its strategic foundational interests, beginning with its alliance with the United States. Redefining national interests, the evolving contours of security threats and strategic interdependence requires any country to move beyond the previously defined narrow definition of security and partnerships. For Seoul, this means helping shape the privilege, costs and consequences of being a global player.
Caught in the crossfire: What the Israel-Iran crisis means for Seoul - The Korea Times
The Korea Times · by Soo Kim
Soo Kim
“What happens in the Middle East, stays in the Middle East.”
The Israel-Iran conflict may seem like an issue contained within the Persian Gulf — indeed, to South Korea, the situation may seem far removed from Korean interests. Seoul’s security, economic and diplomatic interests, however, are intricately intertwined with global currents. If anything, the Middle East crisis should give pause for reflection and shed light on South Korea’s delicate geopolitical situation, notably its dependence on international stability and the evolving challenges of balancing national interests with global expectations.
This is no time for Seoul to remain a passive observer.
Washington is already operating at the limits of its strategic bandwidth. The ongoing hostilities in the Middle East could pull U.S. attention further away from festering concerns in East Asia. For Seoul and its like-minded neighbors in the region, it’s less a matter of political optics than a matter of survival and deterrence. Taking its most proximate neighbor, North Korea, as the first example, Pyongyang has a well-documented history of exploiting periods of international turbulence to conduct missile tests, provoke its neighbors or squeeze concessions. It would not be unreasonable to say that for Pyongyang, a U.S. administration focused on escalation in the Persian Gulf could widen the aperture for such opportunities.
From Kim Jong-un’s vantage, there’s another, perhaps more strategically critical signal worth noting. The precision strikes by the U.S. on three key Iranian nuclear facilities in Fordo, Natanz and Isfahan could validate Kim’s longstanding belief that only a credible, fully operational nuclear arsenal can guarantee regime survival. Kim may have viewed the events from the past two weeks as an unequivocal indication to strengthen his country’s nuclear deterrent, lest he face similar consequences down the road. The result? More missile tests, strengthened military cooperation with Russia and an even greater resistance to engagement with the international community.
Notably, however, the Middle East crisis should not only underscore security concerns; the situation also sheds light on South Korea’s global diplomatic posture. Seoul, as a treaty ally of Washington, is generally expected to align and cooperate with broader U.S.-led and international responses to global threats — in the Gulf situation, supporting Israel’s right to self-defense while supporting international norms against state-sponsored violence, nuclear proliferation and violations of the laws of armed conflict.
South Korea’s historical and economic relationship with Tehran adds a delicate layer of complexity to Seoul’s geostrategic stance, however.
Seoul, like many countries, is dependent on crude oil from the Middle East and liquefied natural gas imports via the Strait of Hormuz. The events in the Gulf in the past two weeks have underscored the strategic and economic sensitivities surrounding the world’s most important oil chokepoint — which has now become even more susceptible to potential disruption. Any escalation in the region could spike energy prices and significantly impact the world’s economy, and Seoul is no exception. Consequently, we would see the ripple effects reverberate throughout South Korea’s manufacturing industry, supply chains linked to the global economy and even inflation-sensitive domestic households.
South Korea may lie thousands of kilometers away from the heat of the Israel-Iran conflict. And in some ways, this distance shields Seoul from the immediate fallout of the crisis. Recent geopolitical tides demonstrate, however, that distance does not equate to a credible buffer against instability, however small or sector-specific. As world events have shown in recent years, the intermediate- to long-run ripple effects will undoubtedly cast a shadow over Seoul’s vital interests.
The Middle East crisis also puts Seoul’s middle-power diplomacy under pressure test. South Korea is often looked to as a model middle power due to its contributions to and support for global peacekeeping, commitment to nonproliferation and proactive participation in multilateral institutions. Furthermore, security is becoming increasingly like a two-sided coin: on the one hand, it has become increasingly zero-sum; on the other hand, it is of the most convoluted “grey-zone” kind. This requires countries, including South Korea, to become increasingly adept at juggling traditional alliance commitments with their own national interests.
In effect, the room for quiet neutrality may be narrowing.
However, should South Korea respond to this moment with clarity and agility, it could solidify its credibility as a reliable regional actor and global player. For this to happen, Seoul needs to take less of a responsive posture and assume the role of an influencer, working closely with the U.S. and other like-minded countries, maintaining credible deterrence in the region and engaging in quiet diplomacy to support de-escalation in the Gulf.
If there’s one thing to consider, the Israel-Iran conflict should remind Seoul that in today’s geopolitics, the notion of distance is irrelevant and seriously misplaced. A missile strike in Isfahan can cause disruption in Seoul’s markets. The intricacies of nuclear negotiations with Iran could serve as a real-life war-game exercise for Kim Jong-un’s own strategic calculations. More broadly, an unstable international order could weaken the foundations of Seoul’s own global ambitions.
Amid mounting global uncertainty, South Korea should view the Middle East crisis as an opportunity to recalibrate its posture and reaffirm its strategic foundational interests, beginning with its alliance with the United States. Redefining national interests, the evolving contours of security threats and strategic interdependence requires any country to move beyond the previously defined narrow definition of security and partnerships. For Seoul, this means helping shape the privilege, costs and consequences of being a global player.
Soo Kim is a former CIA analyst and strategic risk consultant.
The Korea Times · by Button LabelListenText SizePrint
6. Korea’s Nuclear Landscape: Past and Present
Excerpts:
For Korean and Japanese victims of the atomic bombings, understanding and cooperation have led to increased international awareness of their shared experience. They are a living example that, unlike humans, nuclear weapons don’t discriminate or care where you were born.
One important unifying factor for Korean and Japanese atomic bomb survivors has been the successful adoption and entry into force of the TPNW, which now includes roughly half of all U.N. member states, though notably not South Korea, North Korea, Japan, or the United States.
Duró notes that the visibility of Korean atomic bomb victims and survivors has grown significantly in the last decade, especially after a 2016 speech by then-U.S. President Barack Obama while visiting Hiroshima when he referenced, “thousands of Koreans” killed by the atomic bomb. In 2023, during the G-7 Summit in Hiroshima, then-Japanese Prime Minister Kishida Fumio and South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol visited a memorial for Korean victims of the atomic bombing. Gradually, the focus has shifted from only Japanese hibakusha to include Koreans and other nationalities killed in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
“It is not the possession of nuclear weapons that should serve as a deterrent to its use against other nations,” Duró says. “It is the stories of hibakusha and the lessons humanity can learn from them that should deter their use.”
Korea’s Nuclear Landscape: Past and Present
Some in South Korea are considering the development of nuclear weapons, but Koreans have already experienced the horrors of nuclear war.
https://thediplomat.com/2025/06/koreas-nuclear-landscape-past-and-present/
By Jon Letman
June 24, 2025
Monument in Memory of the Korean Victims of the A-bomb, in the Hiroshima Peace Park.
Credit: Wikimedia Commons
The Korean Peninsula is no stranger to nuclear weapons. The quest to build a Korean bomb goes back to Kim Il Sung’s efforts in the 1950s. Beginning in 1958, the United States deployed multiple nuclear weapons systems in the South, reaching a peak of more than 900 warheads in 1967. A decade later, South Korean President Park Chung-hee was pursuing a clandestine nuclear program when U.S. President Jimmy Carter began calling for the withdrawal of U.S. tactical nuclear weapons, the last of which were removed from South Korea in 1991 under a disarmament initiative by President George H.W. Bush.
Despite the removal and a 1992 North-South joint declaration to denuclearize the peninsula, tensions have only increased, reaching multiple crisis points over the last quarter-century. Pyongyang’s 2002 admission that it had a uranium enrichment program was followed by its 2003 withdrawal from the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT).
In the years since, major advances in North Korea’s missile program and six underground explosive nuclear tests, including what it claimed was a “super-large hydrogen bomb” in 2017, continue to fuel tensions. During the first Trump administration, Kim Jong Un and Donald Trump exchanged apocalyptic threats, then so-called “love letters,” followed by two summits that proved to be duds.
The Korean Peninsula has remained one of the world’s most volatile nuclear flashpoints and an ongoing source of concern. Since 2017, South Korean public opinion surveys have shown growing support for the country to obtain its own nuclear weapon. A Chey Institute For Advanced Studies 2023 report, citing a survey commissioned from Gallup Korea, noted that more than 77 percent of respondents “agreed that [South] Korea needs to develop indigenous nuclear weapons.”
In 2023, then-President Yoon Suk-yeol explicitly stated that South Korea could deploy tactical nuclear weapons or rapidly develop its own. Others have argued that a South Korean nuclear weapon could “contain” North Korea.
A 2024 Center for Strategic International Studies report challenged those high poll numbers, presenting a significantly different perspective from what author Victor Cha described as “strategic elites” (legislators, officials, experts, etc.). People in this group were much less supportive of a South Korean nuclear weapon (66 percent opposed or uncertain). Cha said the 34 percent support rate was “a better indicator of the current attitudes of South Korea toward the nuclear option.”
Lee Young-ah, manager of the Center for Peace and Disarmament at People’s Solidarity for Participatory Democracy, a South Korean NGO, said that public support for nuclear weapons varies widely depending on factors including the possibility of prolonged economic sanctions if Seoul were to withdraw from the NPT and a bilateral agreement on “peaceful nuclear cooperation” with the United States. Lee pointed to a Seoul National University study that indicated support for nuclear armament could fall significantly if doing so would cause a major rift in the South Korea-U.S. alliance.
In contrast to a campaign to collect 10 million signatures in support of a South Korean nuclear weapon, Lee points to a member of parliament, Lee Jae-jung, who, along with other South Korean and Japanese lawmakers, launched an initiative to establish a Northeast Asia Nuclear-Weapon Free Zone.
But the geopolitical landscape has shifted significantly in recent years, with North Korea and Russia cooperation deepening, heightened inter-Korean tensions, and political instability in South Korea. In April, the U.S. designated South Korea, its own ally, a “sensitive country,” which entails additional restrictions on access to U.S. research facilities.
Alexis Dudden, a University of Connecticut history professor specializing in modern Korea and Japan, pointed out that the U.S. divided the Korean Peninsula at the 38th parallel immediately after the bombing of Nagasaki. “In so doing, the places we now call North and South Korea are the first states born of the nuclear age and so in that way of thinking, both are all-nuclear, all the time,” Dudden said.
Unseen Scars
Today as South Korean academics, politicians, and the public debate the political and economic costs of obtaining nuclear weapons, there is another group who can speak with graphic specificity on the topic. They were on the ground when the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They smelt the smoke and felt the flames on those horrific summer days in 1945. For South Korea’s wonpok piheija 원폭치해자 (atomic bomb victims) and their descendants, nuclear weapons represent a painful and enduring, multigenerational open wound.
According to Japanese government records, in late 1944, more than 81,000 Koreans were living in Hiroshima Prefecture and over 59,500 in Nagasaki Prefecture. Their presence was the result of the Korean Peninsula’s colonization by Japan, and, increasingly in the latter years of the war, the exploitation of Korean labor to support Japan’s imperial and military ambitions.
Estimates by the Association of A-bomb Victims of South Korea suggest the combined number of Korean victims (those subjected to the atomic bombs) for Hiroshima and Nagasaki range from 70,000 to 100,000 with between 40,000 to 50,000 deaths. The exact total number of all deaths in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, regardless of nationality, will never be known, but the tremendous scale of destruction, death, and suffering is indisputable.
Park Jung-soon was a 12-year-old living in Hiroshima when it was destroyed by the first war-time atomic bomb on August 6, 1945. For 80 years she has been calling for recognition, compensation, and an apology from the U.S. and Japan. Photo by Mindeulle
Park Jung-soon is a Korean who was born in Nagoya, Japan. As a 12-year-old girl, she and her parents moved to Hiroshima several months before the bombing. She was in her home, roughly 2 kilometers from the hypocenter, at 8:15 a.m. as the bomb struck. When air raid sirens blared, she thought little of it, since that was a regular occurrence. But after what she describes as a “huge, strong light,” followed by an enormous sound and very strong wind, her house collapsed on top of her entire family. Park’s mother dug her and her five sisters from the rubble with her bare hands.
Speaking at a side event near United Nations headquarters in March during the third meeting of states parties to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), Park described her injuries and the back pain she feels eight decades later. She spoke of a scene of utter chaos and horror with streets filled with dead bodies and burned and bleeding survivors falling around her. At the time, Park imagined the entire world had been destroyed.
Park, who grew up speaking only Japanese, explains that shortly after the bombing her family left Japan and returned to Korea, where their suffering compounded in a morass of medical neglect, discrimination, and stigmatization. As an atomic bomb survivor – in Japanese known as hibakusha – Park was overcome with a sense of injustice and frustration. For decades she couldn’t even speak of her mental and physical anguish, but she was filled with hatred for the U.S. and Japan, both of whom she says neglected Korean bomb survivors.
Park has a message for the United States: take responsibility, apologize, and pay reparations, not only to survivors, but to second and third generation descendants who still bear the pain of the bombings. She says it is time for the U.S., a country that speaks so much of human rights and freedom, to at long last recognize the injustice and acknowledge the truth.
Stigmatized and Silenced
For Korean atomic bomb victims, in addition to the pain and suffering caused by the bombings, they also faced discrimination in Japan and were often denied the care provided to Japanese bomb victims. In the aftermath of the bombings, Korean survivors struggled to receive assistance or any form of redress from Japan or the United States. Those Koreans who returned to Korea after the war were stigmatized and found themselves living in the shadow of a narrative that portrayed the atomic bombings as the source of liberation from Japanese colonial rule.
For those Koreans who didn’t speak Japanese, after the war their social isolation and segregation meant increased suffering. After returning to Korea, many felt they had to hide their atomic bomb-induced suffering in the face of a Korean military dictatorship and ferocious anti-communist atmosphere born out of the North-South division. Under these conditions Korean atomic bomb survivors faced a very different experience from Japanese hibakusha.
Seeking Redress
Takahashi Yuko, a native of Hiroshima prefecture and research fellow at Osaka Metropolitan University’s research center for human rights, recently published “Korean Nuclear Diaspora: Redress Movements of Korean Atomic-Bomb Victims in Japan.” She says the experiences of Korean atomic bomb victims have been significantly different from those of Japanese hibakusha in a number of ways. Notably, Koreans who were living in Japan at the time of the atomic bombings were there primarily as a result of Japan’s colonization of the Korean Peninsula.
The majority of Koreans living in Hiroshima in 1945 came from Hapcheon County in South Gyeongsang Province in the southern part of the Korean Peninsula. In the 1920s and ’30s, many Korean families migrated to Hiroshima Prefecture and city, where they established roots. By contrast, many of the Koreans who were living in Nagasaki in August 1945 were single young men who had been drafted to work in ship building and factories supporting military industrial production. After the atomic bombings and end of Japan’s colonial rule, it made sense for the better-established family units to remain in Hiroshima while single, young Korean draftees had more incentive to return to Korea.
One of those conscripted Korean laborers was Lee Kang-nyeong, who was born in Japan in 1927 and, as a teenager, was sent to work at a Mitsubishi shipyard in Nagasaki. On the morning of August 9, 1945, when the U.S. dropped “Fat Man,” an approximately 20-kiloton plutonium implosion bomb, on Nagasaki’s 240,000 residents, Lee had just returned to his dormitory after working the night shift. He wasn’t killed when the bomb exploded at 11:02 a.m., but his life was forever changed. He moved to South Korea later that year.
Most Korean victims eventually returned to Korea after the war, though some remained in Japan. Today, many of the dwindling number of atomic bomb survivors live in the southern part of South Korea, particularly in Hapcheon, where a small museum documenting and honoring the Korean bomb victims opened in 2017.
Lee Kang-nyeong’s son, Lee Tae-jae, continues the pursuit of justice as the chairman of the Descendants Association of Korean Atomic Bomb Victims. Speaking from his home in Busan, Lee told The Diplomat about efforts to pass legislation that would support survivors and their descendants. He has worked with Japanese advocates for hibakusha, and calls for nuclear justice and disarmament alongside civic and religious groups in both South Korea and Japan.
Lee Tae-jae, who spoke at multiple side events at the TPNW meetings in New York in March, wants to see more attention paid to the plight of atomic bomb survivors by the governments of South Korea, Japan, and the United States. Most important, he says, is to ensure there are no future victims of nuclear weapons, a goal he says can be best achieved by their complete abolition. He continues to build solidarity with nuclear affected communities around the world including Marshall Islanders. He also raises awareness by speaking with members of the U.S. Congress who were previously unaware of Korean atomic bomb victims.
Building Solidarity
Another advocate for Korean bomb survivors is Sung Sang-hee, who has been calling for nuclear disarmament for more than a dozen years, attending arms control and disarmament meetings. He says that many South Koreans remain unaware of the large number of Korean atomic bomb victims.
Sung is trying to build solidarity among other victims of atomic bombings and nuclear testing from Australia and New Mexico to Kazakhstan, Kiribati, and the Marshall Islands. He points out that the commemoration of the 1919 Korean independence struggle on March 1 coincides with Remembrance Day marking the 1954 Castle Bravo nuclear test in the Marshall Islands, saying it can bring people together in their anti-nuclear and anti-colonial activism. Sung argues that colonialism has been central to nuclear weapons development, testing, and use.
One of Japan’s most prominent supporters of Korean victims and survivors is Ichiba Junko, chair of the Citizens Association for Relief of Atomic Bomb Victims. She has championed their cause for decades, helping document, support, and raise awareness around the world. Ichiba says that at the end of March 2025, there were 1,612 Korean atomic bomb survivors living in Korea who had registered with the Korean Atomic Bomb Victims Association, which was founded in 1967.
She explains that the Japanese government insists the issue of compensation to Korean victims was resolved at the time of South Korea-Japan normalization in 1965 and that victims’ assistance does not apply to those living outside of Japan. As a result, more than 20 lawsuits have been filed since 1972.
Representatives of Korean atomic bomb survivors participated in civil society events during the Third Meeting of States Parties to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in March 2025. Photo by Korean Anti-Nuclear Peace Action
Invisible No More
Ágota Duró, an associate professor at Hiroshima Jogakuin University, has researched the plight of Korean bomb victims. Duró says that in the early days after the bombings, there was little knowledge of the long-term impacts of radiation, resulting in many bomb victims not understanding the cause of their ailments and, in some cases, being mistakenly thought to have Hansen’s disease (leprosy).
In the decades after the bombs, Korean survivors faced great hardship, discrimination, and isolation, but conditions gradually improved in the 1980s and ’90s after South Korea’s military dictatorship ended. Relations between Korean, Japanese, and other nuclear survivors have also evolved and become more cooperative. Complex contemporary geopolitical and regional factors continue to influence the experiences of the dwindling number of atomic bomb survivors, who are now in their 80s and 90s, as well as their children and grandchildren.
For Korean and Japanese victims of the atomic bombings, understanding and cooperation have led to increased international awareness of their shared experience. They are a living example that, unlike humans, nuclear weapons don’t discriminate or care where you were born.
One important unifying factor for Korean and Japanese atomic bomb survivors has been the successful adoption and entry into force of the TPNW, which now includes roughly half of all U.N. member states, though notably not South Korea, North Korea, Japan, or the United States.
Duró notes that the visibility of Korean atomic bomb victims and survivors has grown significantly in the last decade, especially after a 2016 speech by then-U.S. President Barack Obama while visiting Hiroshima when he referenced, “thousands of Koreans” killed by the atomic bomb. In 2023, during the G-7 Summit in Hiroshima, then-Japanese Prime Minister Kishida Fumio and South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol visited a memorial for Korean victims of the atomic bombing. Gradually, the focus has shifted from only Japanese hibakusha to include Koreans and other nationalities killed in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
“It is not the possession of nuclear weapons that should serve as a deterrent to its use against other nations,” Duró says. “It is the stories of hibakusha and the lessons humanity can learn from them that should deter their use.”
Authors
Guest Author
Jon Letman
Jon Letman is an independent freelance journalist in Hawaii.
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7. The Attack on Iran’s Nuclear Program Should Be a Warning to South Korea
An interesting analysis here. I do think the author might have missed another analogy. I think it is important to remember that north Korea's ability to strike and invade South Korea far exceeds Iran's ability to strike and invade Israel (non-existent except by proxies for invasion).
Excerpts:
Finally, the risk of escalation would be greater. North Korea’s ability to strike South Korea far exceeds Israel’s ability to strike Iran. The two Middle Eastern countries are separated by several other countries; between the two Koreas there is only a narrow demilitarized zone. Adding to this risk, just like Iranian military officials and scientists were targeted by Israeli infiltrators, South Korea must recognize the risk of North Korean “sleeper cells” filling a similar function as well.
A Bad Example
There is another, less obvious implication: Israel’s and now the United States’ targeting of Iran’s nuclear program – and the Syrian and Iraqi programs before that – have cemented such attacks as a core feature of the international counterproliferation system. Article 56 of the Geneva Conventions Additional Protocol forbids attacks on nuclear facilities but only covers attacks on nuclear power plants. Major nuclear powers, including the five nuclear weapon states recognized by the Non-Proliferation Treaty – China, France, Russia, the U.K., and the U.S. – have kept the option to attack nuclear facilities open.
What this means is that not only North Korea, but perhaps also Russia, could argue that South Korean nuclear facilities are just as legitimate as targets for preventative attacks as the Iranian facilities are for Israel. The United States’ support for Israel only serves to strengthen this argument. Russia’s attack and occupation of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine demonstrates that it has little qualms about the targeting of nuclear facilities. The transfer of Russian military technology certainly constitutes the main risk of the Russia-North Korea alliance, but Russia’s further involvement in a conflict on the Korean Peninsula in some shape or form cannot be excluded.
What South Korea Should Do
The South Korean government expressed “grave concern” over Israel’s action and is outspokenly anti-nuclear. Under Lee, Seoul is highly unlikely to sprint to the bomb or even pursue nuclear hedging.
But the Lee administration should also work actively to curtail the ability of a future Korean government to develop a latent deterrent. One way to do this is to “black box” South Korea’s enrichment with the assistance of a foreign supplier, and commission another country to handle the reprocessing of its spent fuel, if necessary. This would strengthen the South Korean nuclear industry’s competitiveness and provide all the peaceful benefits of this sensitive technology, while still putting it out of reach of any future government with their eyes on nuclear armament.
It would also ensure that Iran’s fate does not befall South Korea.
The Attack on Iran’s Nuclear Program Should Be a Warning to South Korea
The Israeli and U.S. attacks on Iran show exactly why a South Korean nuclear program would be a dangerous pursuit.
https://thediplomat.com/2025/06/the-attack-on-irans-nuclear-program-should-be-a-warning-to-south-korea/
By Joel Petersson Ivre
June 24, 2025
Credit: Depositphotos
On June 13, Israel began an air-campaign against facilities associated with Iran’s nuclear program, and carried out targeted assassinations against leading military figures and scientists. Israel’s stated rationale was that Iran was getting perilously close to developing a nuclear weapon. On June 22, the United States joined the conflict by striking three Iranian nuclear facilities.
The implications of the unfolding crisis stretch far beyond the Middle East. On the Korean Peninsula, the Israeli and U.S. targeting of Iran’s latent nuclear capabilities is likely to strengthen North Korea’s sense of justification in pursuing its own nuclear arsenal, which is estimated to amount to around 50 warheads (about half of what Israel possesses). However, the attacks should bestow no such confidence upon those in South Korea who advocate for their own nuclear armament, or the pursuit of nuclear hedging. Israel’s attack on Iran shows exactly why a South Korean nuclear program would be a dangerous pursuit.
Nuclear Hedging in Iran and South Korea
Like Iran, South Korea has been suggested as a nuclear candidate. The two countries certainly differ in many ways: one is a dictatorship and international pariah; the other is a vibrant democracy and a key player in international trade. However, they both face rivals armed with nuclear weapons, which has driven them to pursue nuclear hedging.
Iran’s hedging efforts have progressed far further than South Korea. According to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the international nuclear watchdog, Iran has accumulated 406 kilograms of uranium enriched to 60 percent. Integration of this fissile material into a viable nuclear weapon would likely take around one year.
South Korea pursued a nuclear program in the mid-1970s and engaged in minor enrichment efforts in the early 2000s but is adhering to its non-proliferation commitments today. South Korea does have large supplies of uranium, but a bilateral 123 Agreement with the United States limits enrichment to below 20 percent, which is not weapons grade.
Unlike Iran, South Korea does not have facilities to enrich uranium, nor does it have facilities to reprocess plutonium (another path to the bomb). Recently, many in Seoul have pushed for renegotiation of the 123 Agreement to change this, so that South Korea could “sprint” to the bomb if the security environment deteriorates further. South Korean policy elites have said that a withdrawal of the U.S. security umbrella would be the most likely trigger. Maintaining the ability to sprint to the bomb would constitute a “latent deterrent” to dissuade North Korean aggression.
It is worth noting that President Lee Jae-myung and his administration oppose both nuclear latency and nuclear armament. But the underlying structural drivers of South Korean proliferation have not gone away with the departure of the Yoon administration, which was far keener to pursue it.
Cautionary Tales From the Middle East
Although few in Seoul tend to draw direct comparisons with Iran, Israel’s attack on the Iranian nuclear program should induce caution in South Korean nuclear proponents.
First, a latent deterrent is unreliable. While Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Nethanyahu’s beleaguered domestic position and the recent loss of Iranian proxies like Syria and Hezbollah certainly enabled the attack, Israel justified it by pointing to Iran’s approach to the bomb. Similarly, North Korea could justify attacks on South Korean facilities implicated in a latent deterrent.
The biggest difference is that South Korea, unlike Iran, is covered by U.S. extended deterrence. However, the sprint toward the bomb is where things would get truly dangerous. A true push by South Korea to acquire nuclear weapons would most likely be triggered precisely by the withdrawal of the U.S. extended deterrence commitment that constitutes the best insurance against North Korean preventative strikes.
To avoid a North Korean preventative attack during the sprint, some in Seoul have suggested that South Korea should pursue its weapons clandestinely. The likelihood that South Korea can do this is very low. International monitoring regimes under the IAEA Additional Protocol system are extremely strict, and the international community would likely sanction South Korea as well, making the effort even harder.
Even if South Korea was able to construct a weapon, it would not be able to test it: the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization maintains more sensors on and around the Korean Peninsula than anywhere else in the world. Without a tested capability, South Korea would not be able to prove the reliability of its deterrent, making the whole effort as futile as it is dangerous.
Some have suggested that South Korea could pursue a “bomb in the basement” approach, following the example of Israel, which has never confirmed nor denied the existence of its nuclear weapons. However, the Iranian missile counterattacks on Israel show that a basement bomb is no fool-proof deterrent either.
Finally, the risk of escalation would be greater. North Korea’s ability to strike South Korea far exceeds Israel’s ability to strike Iran. The two Middle Eastern countries are separated by several other countries; between the two Koreas there is only a narrow demilitarized zone. Adding to this risk, just like Iranian military officials and scientists were targeted by Israeli infiltrators, South Korea must recognize the risk of North Korean “sleeper cells” filling a similar function as well.
A Bad Example
There is another, less obvious implication: Israel’s and now the United States’ targeting of Iran’s nuclear program – and the Syrian and Iraqi programs before that – have cemented such attacks as a core feature of the international counterproliferation system. Article 56 of the Geneva Conventions Additional Protocol forbids attacks on nuclear facilities but only covers attacks on nuclear power plants. Major nuclear powers, including the five nuclear weapon states recognized by the Non-Proliferation Treaty – China, France, Russia, the U.K., and the U.S. – have kept the option to attack nuclear facilities open.
What this means is that not only North Korea, but perhaps also Russia, could argue that South Korean nuclear facilities are just as legitimate as targets for preventative attacks as the Iranian facilities are for Israel. The United States’ support for Israel only serves to strengthen this argument. Russia’s attack and occupation of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine demonstrates that it has little qualms about the targeting of nuclear facilities. The transfer of Russian military technology certainly constitutes the main risk of the Russia-North Korea alliance, but Russia’s further involvement in a conflict on the Korean Peninsula in some shape or form cannot be excluded.
What South Korea Should Do
The South Korean government expressed “grave concern” over Israel’s action and is outspokenly anti-nuclear. Under Lee, Seoul is highly unlikely to sprint to the bomb or even pursue nuclear hedging.
But the Lee administration should also work actively to curtail the ability of a future Korean government to develop a latent deterrent. One way to do this is to “black box” South Korea’s enrichment with the assistance of a foreign supplier, and commission another country to handle the reprocessing of its spent fuel, if necessary. This would strengthen the South Korean nuclear industry’s competitiveness and provide all the peaceful benefits of this sensitive technology, while still putting it out of reach of any future government with their eyes on nuclear armament.
It would also ensure that Iran’s fate does not befall South Korea.
Authors
Guest Author
Joel Petersson Ivre
Joel Petersson Ivre is a policy fellow at the Asia-Pacific Leadership Network in Seoul, South Korea. He researches regional views of the China-U.S. relationship, threat perceptions among states receiving extended deterrence guarantees from the United States, the domestic South Korean nuclear debate, and engagement strategies with North Korea.
8. Trump’s attack on Iran pushed diplomacy with Kim Jong Un further out of reach
Was it ever or will it ever be in "reach?"
A "freeze" and arms control negotiations with lifting of sanctions will be interpreted by KJU as a victory for his political warfare campaign.
Trump’s attack on Iran pushed diplomacy with Kim Jong Un further out of reach
Los Angeles Times · by Max Kim · June 25, 2025
SEOUL — Since beginning his second term earlier this year, President Trump has spoken optimistically about restarting denuclearization talks with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, whom he met for a series of historic summits in 2018 and 2019 that ended without a deal.
“I have a great relationship with Kim Jong Un, and we’ll see what happens, but certainly he’s a nuclear power,” he told reporters at an Oval Office meeting with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte in March.
Earlier this month, Trump attempted to send a letter to Kim via North Korean diplomats in New York, only to be rebuffed, according to Seoul-based NK News. And now, following the U.S. military’s strike on three nuclear facilities in Iran on Sunday, the chances of Pyongyang returning to the bargaining table have become even slimmer.
For North Korea, which has conducted six nuclear tests over the years in the face of severe economic sanctions and international reprobation — and consequently has a far more advanced nuclear program than Iran — many analysts say the lesson from Sunday is clear: A working nuclear deterrent is the only guarantor of security.
“More than anything, the North Korean regime is probably thinking that they did well to dig in their heels to keep developing their nuclear program,” said Kim Dong-yup, a professor at the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul.
A TV screen at the Seoul Railway Station shows the launch of a North Korean intercontinental ballistic missile on Oct. 31.
(Lee Jin-man / Associated Press)
“I think this strike means the end of any sort of denuclearization talks or diplomatic solutions that the U.S. had in mind in the past,” he said. “I don’t think it’s simply a matter of worsened circumstances; I think the possibility has now gone close to zero.”
On Monday, North Korea’s foreign ministry condemned the U.S. strike on Iran as a violation of international law as well as “the territorial integrity and security interests of a sovereign state,” according to North Korean state media.
“The present situation of the Middle East, which is shaking the very basis of international peace and security, is the inevitable product of Israel’s reckless bravado as it advances its unilateral interests through ceaseless war moves and territorial expansion, and that of the Western-style free order which has so far tolerated and encouraged Israeli acts,” an unnamed ministry spokesperson said.
Trump has threatened to attack North Korea before.
Early in Trump’s first term, when Pyongyang successfully tested an intercontinental ballistic missile that could reach the U.S. West Coast., administration officials reportedly considered launching a “bloody nose” strike — an attack on a nuclear site or military facility that is small enough to prevent escalation into full-blown war but severe enough to make a point.
“Military solutions are now fully in place, locked and loaded, should North Korea act unwisely,” Trump wrote on social media in August 2017.
While it is still uncertain how much damage U.S. stealth bombers inflicted on Iran’s nuclear sites at Natanz, Isfahan and Fordo — and whether they have kneecapped Iran’s nuclear program, as U.S. officials have claimed — experts say the feasibility of a similar attack against North Korea is much smaller.
“North Korea has been plowing through with their nuclear program for some time, so their security posture around their nuclear facilities is far more sophisticated than Iran,” Kim Dong-yup said. “Their facilities are extremely dispersed and well-disguised, which means it’s difficult to cripple their nuclear program, even if you were to successfully destroy the one or two sites that are known.”
Kim Dong-yup believes that North Korea’s enrichment facilities are much deeper than Iran’s and potentially beyond the range of the “bunker buster” bombs — officially known as the GBU-57 A/B — used Sunday. And unlike Iran, North Korea is believed to already have 40 to 50 nuclear warheads, making large-scale retaliation a very real possibility.
A preemptive strike against North Korea would also do irreparable damage to the U.S.-South Korea alliance and would likely also invite responses from China and, more significantly, Russia.
A mutual defense treaty signed by Russian President Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un last June states that the two countries “shall immediately provide military and other assistance” to the other if it “falls into a state of war due to armed invasion from an individual or multiple states.”
Yet talk of such an attack in Trump’s first term was soon replaced by what he has described as a friendship with Kim Jong Un, built over the 2018-19 summits, the first ever such meetings by a sitting U.S. president. Though the talks fell apart over disagreements on what measures North Korea would take toward disarmament and Trump’s reluctance to offer sanctions relief, the summits ended on a surprisingly hopeful note, with the two leaders walking away as pen pals.
An undated photo provided on Sept. 13 by the North Korean government shows its leader, Kim Jong Un, center, visiting what the country says is a facility for nuclear materials in an undisclosed location in North Korea.
(Associated Press)
In recent months, administration officials have said that the president’s goal remains the same: completely denuclearizing North Korea.
But the attack on Iran has made those old sticking points — such as the U.S. negotiating team’s demand that North Korea submit a full list of its nuclear sites — even more onerous, said Lee Byong-chul, a nonproliferation expert who has served under two South Korean administrations.
“Kim Jong Un will only give up his nuclear weapons when, as the English expression goes, hell freezes over,” Lee said. “And that alone shuts the door on any possible deal.”
Still, Lee believes that North Korea may be willing to come back to the negotiating table for a freeze — though not a rollback — of its nuclear program.
“But from Trump’s perspective, that’s a retreat from the terms he presented at the [2019] Hanoi summit,” he said. “He would look like a fool to come back to sign a reduced deal.”
While some, like Kim Dong-yup, the professor, argue that North Korea has already proven itself capable of withstanding economic sanctions and will not overextend itself to have them removed, others point out that this is still the United States’ primary source of leverage — and that if Trump wants a deal, he will need to put it on the table.
“Real sanctions relief is still valuable,” Stephen Costello, a non-resident fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, a Washington-based think tank.
While he agrees that immediate denuclearization may be unrealistic, Costello has argued that even halting production of new fissile material, nuclear weapons and long-range missiles are “well worth ending nonmilitary sanctions,” such as those on energy imports or the export of textiles and seafood.
“Regardless of U.S. actions in the Middle East, the North Koreans would likely gauge any U.S. interest by how serious they are about early, immediate sanctions relief,” he said.
The attack on Iran will have other ramifications beyond Trump’s dealmaking with Kim Jong Un.
Military cooperation between North Korea and Iran, dating back to the 1980s and including arms transfers from North Korea to Iran, will likely accelerate.
Lee, the nonproliferation expert, said that the attack on Iran, which was the first real-world use of the United States’ bunker-buster bombs, may have been a boon to North Korea.
“It’s going to be a tremendous lesson for them,” he said. “Depending on what the total damage sustained is, North Korea will undoubtedly use that information to better conceal their own nuclear facilities.”
More to Read
Los Angeles Times · by Max Kim · June 25, 2025
9. ‘No justice in North Korea’: Defectors at UN hearing testify about executions, mounting abuses by regime
We must never forget: The root of all problems in Korea is the existence of the most evil mafia- like crime family cult known as the Kim family regime that has the objective of dominating the Korean Peninsula under the rule of the Guerrilla Dynasty and Gulag State.
Friday
June 27, 2025
dictionary + A - A
‘No justice in North Korea’: Defectors at UN hearing testify about executions, mounting abuses by regime
https://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/news/2025-06-27/national/northKorea/No-justice-in-North-Korea-Defectors-at-UN-hearing-testify-about-executions-mounting-abuses-by-regime/2339796
Published: 27 Jun. 2025, 07:00
Korea JoongAng Daily
'No justice in North Korea': Defectors at UN hearing testify about executions, mounting abuses by regime
8 min
Audio report: written by reporters, read by AI
Defector Maeng Hyo-shim speaks about her experience living and escaping North Korea during a public hearing hosted by the United Nations Human Rights Office in Seoul on Wednesday. [PARK SANG-MOON]
As a teenager growing up in the foothills of Mount Paektu, defector Maeng Hyo-shim believed without question that she lived in “the best country in the world.”
Born to small-time shopkeepers in the years following the devastating famine of the late 1990s — known as the Arduous March — Maeng was raised in a society where survival often depended more on market savvy than government rations. Still, she complied with the demands of the regime.
“I thought it was my duty to obey,” she said, recalling how she and her classmates were forced to forage for wild grains to meet government-imposed quotas.
Her loyalty went further than most. As deputy secretary of her high school’s youth league, Maeng rose at 5 a.m. to clean the statues of the country’s late leaders, Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong-il. “I was one of the regime’s most steadfast followers,” she said.
Related Article
That allegiance came to an abrupt end in 2018, after a violent assault on her mother — and the North Korean justice system’s failure to hold the perpetrator accountable — shattered her trust in the regime.
“She was beaten with an iron rod by a customer after she asked him when he would settle his unpaid bill,” Maeng said. “My parents reported him to the police, but he paid the officers off with a bribe. The courts wouldn’t take our side, either. That’s when we realized there was no justice in North Korea, and that we had to flee to the South.”
Maeng was among several North Korean escapees who testified this week at a public hearing in Seoul hosted by the United Nations Human Rights Office. Over two days, they described a society increasingly defined by fear, repression and corruption — particularly under the rule of Kim Jong-un and the heightened restrictions of the pandemic years.
The hearings, attended by diplomats, rights groups and members of the press, are part of the UN’s effort to update its landmark 2014 Commission of Inquiry (COI) report on human rights in North Korea. A revised report is expected to be presented at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva in September 2025.
War on ‘reactionary thought’
For some defectors, disillusionment with the regime came earlier. Kim Il-hyuk, who fled the North with his family by boat under the cover of rain and darkness in May 2023, said he never subscribed to Pyongyang’s propaganda that its people had “nothing to envy.”
“My father always told us not to marry in North Korea because having a family would make it that much harder to escape,” he testified. “He urged us over and over to make our way to the South.”
Defector Kim Il-hyuk, who escaped the North by boat in 2023, speaks during a public hearing hosted by the United Nations Human Rights Office in Seoul on Wednesday. [PARK SANG-MOON]
Kim and his family were not alone in harboring thoughts of escape.
“By watching South Korean series before falling asleep, I could believe, if only for a short moment, that I, too, lived in the South,” said one woman, who testified anonymously. “Even people who have downloaded a whole show watch just one episode a day, if only to make sure they have another to look forward to.”
But such activities became increasingly dangerous after 2020, when the regime enacted the Act to Eliminate Reactionary Thought and Culture, which North Korean authorities have used to execute people for distributing or consuming South Korean media.
“A 22-year-old I knew was publicly executed for distributing three South Korean dramas and about 70 K-pop songs,” Kim said. “Public executions occurred roughly every six weeks. Sometimes, as many as a dozen people would be killed at once.”
Another defector described a climate of pervasive surveillance, in which phones were inspected not only for videos but for language or symbols suggesting outside influence.
“If you wrote oppa — a South Korean term of affection — after a man’s name on your phone’s contact list, authorities would demand you change it to ‘comrade,’” she said. “Even using heart emojis could draw attention. I loved South Korean dramas, too, but I lived in fear that I might one day be executed for it.”
Pandemic as pretext for control
Defectors also described how the government used the Covid-19 pandemic to expand its grip over daily life. Domestic travel was suspended, medicine vanished from pharmacies, and the state promoted unscientific remedies in place of healthcare.
“People were told to drink water boiled with willow bark,” Kim said. “Many got ill from following this advice. Even more died from hunger, but the government continued to lie shamelessly.”
A video made by North Korean state media to criticize people who attempt to assert their legal rights is shown at a public hearing hosted by the United Nations Human Rights Office in Seoul on Wednesday. [PARK SANG-MOON]
Witnesses spoke of a breakdown in the country’s social fabric during the Covid years. One woman said that kotjebi — orphaned children who had become a rare sight after the famine passed — appeared in greater numbers in the aftermath of the pandemic.
“As the struggles of daily life mounted, women became afraid of childbirth and having more mouths to feed,” she said. “A trend of not having children spread, and more women began to seek divorces from husbands unable to support their families. In response, the regime introduced a law in 2023 imposing a one-year prison sentence for divorce or [unauthorized] abortion.”
Reproductive violence and ethnic ‘purity’
While abortion is ostensibly banned in North Korea for family planning, it is reportedly used as a punitive tool by the regime against women caught fleeing the country.
Kim Jeong-ah, a defector and advocate for North Korean women’s rights, testified about a woman who was five months pregnant when she was imprisoned in a labor camp upon her repatriation from China.
“She was forced to carry out manual labor even when she was close to delivering,” Kim said. “After she gave birth, the prison camp officers buried the child alive because they weren’t sure if the woman conceived the baby with a Chinese or North Korean man.”
Such stories, Kim said, reflect the regime’s obsession with maintaining the “purity” of its population.
UN officials have also noted that China’s practice of forcibly returning defectors to North Korea violates the international principle of non-refoulement, which prohibits states from returning individuals to countries where they face a credible risk of torture or abuse.
Caste, disability and disposability
Maeng, whose mother was left disabled after contracting polio as a child, noted that discrimination against disabled people is not just rife, but also institutionalized under the regime.
Defector Maeng Hyo-shim speaks about her experience living and escaping North Korea during a public hearing hosted by the United Nations Human Rights Office in Seoul on Wednesday. [PARK SANG-MOON]
“Because she was unable to work at all, my mother had to pay a fine every year to the women’s workers’ union,” Maeng said. “Having a disability in North Korea is like a wall that blocks you at every turn in life. You’re not entitled to any benefits, and you have to pay the authorities just to be allowed to make ends meet in another way.”
Discrimination in the North, she and others said, is systemic — and heavily influenced by songbun, the regime’s opaque caste system. Farmers and their children, considered the lowest stratum, are barred from pursuing different professions. Attempts to change one’s social status are often met with stiff penalties.
“Farming is a hereditary occupation,” said one man in a prerecorded testimony. “A person cannot find other work if they reveal they are from the farming class, as their employer would be punished.”
Others, such as descendants of South Korean prisoners of war, endure a similar fate. According to the UN, tens of thousands of South Korean POWs were never returned after the Korean War and forced by the regime to toil in mines far from the border. Only a fraction have escaped since.
Son Myung-hwa, whose organization supports families of unrepatriated POWs, criticized successive administrations in Seoul for failing to raise their plight in talks with Pyongyang.
“Surviving POWs in the North have now seen three South Korean presidents meet North Korea’s leaders and say nothing. They must think that their country has abandoned them.”
Seeking justice, one testimony at a time
James Heenan, head of the UN Human Rights Office in Seoul, speaks at the opening of the public hearing hosted by his agency on Wednesday. [PARK SANG-MOON]
James Heenan, head of the UN Human Rights Office in Seoul, said the hearings constitute a rare and important opportunity for victims to share their experiences publicly.
“Confidential interviews with victims and witnesses are key to understanding the human rights situation in the DPRK,” Heenan said, referring to the North by the acronym of its official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. “But it is equally important to promote victims’ voices, including giving them the opportunity to testify publicly.”
The Seoul office has interviewed around 400 defectors.
Their testimonies, combined with evidence from advocacy groups and governments, will be compiled into a repository to support the UN’s follow-up to the 2014 COI report, which concluded that North Korea’s abuses may amount to crimes against humanity and called for referral to the International Criminal Court.
BY MICHAEL LEE [lee.junhyuk@joongang.co.kr]
10. Exclusive: China threatened S. Korean research ship near unauthorized structure in Yellow Sea
Chinese "unrestricted warfare?" (a rhetorical question)
Maps, graphics, and charts at thelink.
https://www.chosun.com/english/national-en/2025/06/27/X4OXOQCUFFACTETL2Z5IK32NZE/
Exclusive: China threatened S. Korean research ship near unauthorized structure in Yellow Sea
70% of Chinese buoys clustered near Yellow Sea entry, raising concerns over U.S.-ROK naval access
By Roh Suk-Jo,
Kim Mi-geon
Published 2025.06.27. 14:49
Updated 2025.06.27. 14:56
The China Coast Guard vessel No. 6402, which was dispatched on Feb. 26 when the South Korean maritime research ship Onnuri approached a Chinese steel structure. /Courtesy of Rep. Yu Yong-weon’s office.
It was belatedly revealed on June 27 that China deployed five vessels—including two China Coast Guard ships and three rubber boats—to obstruct the South Korean maritime research ship Onnuri when it approached a Chinese offshore structure in the Yellow Sea on Feb. 26. Earlier reports indicated that four individuals stationed on the Chinese structure had split into two rubber boats and threatened the Onnuri crew with bladed weapons. However, newly obtained information confirms that a larger and more organized response involving multiple vessels had been mobilized.
According to materials obtained by The Chosunilbo from the office of Rep. Yu Yong-weon of the People Power Party (PPP), the Onnuri research ship had set out on Feb. 26 to conduct a survey in waters near a large steel structure that China had installed without authorization in the South Korea–China Provisional Measures Zone (PMZ) in the Yellow Sea. The PMZ prohibits any activity other than fishing, including resource development or the installation of permanent facilities.
Graphics by Yang In-sung
Upon the Onnuri research ship’s approach to the structure, China reportedly dispatched two coast guard ships and three rubber boats, with some personnel carrying weapons, to disrupt the vessel’s movements in a coordinated manner.
South Korea, by contrast, sent only one patrol ship in response to the incident, placing the country at a numerical disadvantage in the standoff. Despite the threat, the Onnuri research ship managed to photograph the two Chinese vessels before withdrawing from the area. According to images exclusively obtained by this newspaper, the Chinese ships are believed to be 110 meters in length and displace approximately 3,450 tons.
The China Coast Guard vessel No. 6402, which was dispatched on Feb. 26 when the South Korean maritime research ship Onnuri approached a Chinese steel structure. /Courtesy of Rep. Yu Yong-weon’s office.
“Our Onnuri was unable to carry out a lawful maritime survey due to China’s overwhelming response,” said Rep. Yu. “We must respond proportionately to such blatant and repeated provocations.”
Graphics by Yang In-sung
Meanwhile, it was also confirmed on the same day that China has been intensively deploying large steel buoys at the gateway to the Yellow Sea, along the route leading in from the South China Sea.
Typically, buoys are distributed across various sea areas at fixed intervals to collect oceanographic data such as seawater temperature and current patterns. However, Chinese buoys have been densely concentrated in specific zones, prompting concerns that they may be used more for route control than scientific research. The buoys, described as lighthouse-type structures, range in height from 5 to 13 meters and in diameter from 5 to 10 meters.
A photo taken on Feb. 26 by the Onnuri, a maritime research ship operated by the Korea Institute of Ocean Science and Technology, shows a seabed-mounted structure that China claims is a “fish farm management support facility” installed in the Korea–China Provisional Measures Zone (PMZ) of the Yellow Sea (left). The image on the right is a recent satellite photo of another fixed structure China installed at the western edge of the PMZ in October 2022. /Courtesy of the Korea Institute of Ocean Science and Technology, Rep. Eom Tae-young of the People Power Party, and U.S. satellite company SkyFi
Documents from the Republic of Korea Navy, Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries, and Korea Coast Guard, obtained by Rep. Yu’s office, show that nine of the 13 Chinese buoys installed in the Yellow Sea—roughly 70 percent—are concentrated in its southwestern section, near the 123° to 124° east longitude range just before entering the PMZ from the South China Sea.
By contrast, South Korea has installed 12 buoys in the Yellow Sea, distributed both inside and outside the PMZ. During a National Assembly Foreign Affairs and Unification Committee hearing that day, Rep. Yu said, “South Korean maritime buoys are evenly deployed across the Yellow Sea to collect scientific data such as water temperature, salinity, wind direction, and wind speed. China, on the other hand, has intentionally clustered its buoys in the southwestern waters. This is abnormal.”
Rep. Yu Yong-weon of the People Power Party questions First Vice Foreign Minister Park Yun-ju about China's "Yellow Sea expansion" and related issues during a National Assembly Foreign Affairs and Unification Committee session on June 27. /National Assembly on June 27. /National Assembly
He added, “If their purpose were purely scientific, the buoys should be spread evenly throughout the area. The current deployment pattern suggests a focus on ‘control’ rather than ‘observation,’ and appears to be part of China’s broader maritime expansion strategy in the Yellow Sea.”
11. Iran’s Failed Deterrence: Lessons for North Korea
Clearly north Korea is already a harder target than Iran.
Note the importance of assumptions - for all of us. And if the assumptions are wrong it can lead to strategic miscalculation.
Excerpts:
The setbacks experienced by Iran raise important questions about North Korea’s core security assumptions on the credibility of deterrence, the reliability of alliances, and the extent of intelligence infiltration.
Pyongyang operates under the belief that its missile, artillery, and nuclear capabilities are sufficiently credible to deter any potential attack by Washington or its regional allies. However, Iran’s experience demonstrates that such deterrence can be fragile. If the credibility of nuclear deterrence is called into question, North Korea must consider whether its own deterrent would withstand similar challenges.
That said, North Korea is much farther along in developing its nuclear weapons program than Iran. Thus Iran’s recent confrontation with Israel and the United States is likely to reinforce Pyongyang’s perception that its pursuit of nuclear weapons has been the right choice, although it has been costly. Therefore Iran’s fate will harden Kim Jong Un’s belief that he should never dismantle the nuclear program voluntarily. The question is whether he is ready to deploy the ultimate weapon in the moment of truth.
North Korea’s strategic security also hinges on the assumption that its alliances – particularly with China and Russia – are as steadfast as initially believed. Iran’s reliance on support from these powers did not fully prevent targeted actions or vulnerabilities. North Korea must ask: will Beijing and Moscow genuinely deter or withstand external pressures or military actions against North Korea’s key military sites? They certainly did not in the case of Iran, where support was limited to diplomatic statements. Pyongyang must ask itself the hard question: does North Korea constitute, in any meaningful way, a strategic asset to its allies – one that is so vital that they would feel a genuine sense of loss if it were to collapse? Only then would North Korea’s allies be prompted to protect Pyongyang with their own militaries.
Finally, Pyongyang assumes that its military and scientific installations are secure from foreign intelligence operations. Iran’s experience suggests otherwise; despite efforts to conceal sensitive sites, Israeli and other intelligence agencies penetrated deeply into Iran’s networks. North Korea should recognize that foreign intelligence services likely have access to information and assets it believes are hidden, and must adapt its security and concealment strategies accordingly.
Iran’s Failed Deterrence: Lessons for North Korea
The strikes on Iran offer crucial lessons for North Korea regarding deterrence, intelligence penetration, and the potential consequences of asymmetric warfare and proxy dynamics.
https://thediplomat.com/2025/06/irans-failed-deterrence-lessons-for-north-korea/
By Alon Levkowitz and Pyung Hwa Park
June 27, 2025
Credit: Depositphotos
On June 13, 2025, Israel launched a military operation, called “Rising Lion,” against Iran, targeting its nuclear facilities, missile factories, air defense systems, and nuclear scientists. Another nuclear aspirant – and Iran’s key strategic partner – North Korea will have been watching the conflict between Iran and Israel – and gaining lessons from some of the key factors that contributed to Iran’s failure to deter such an Israeli attack. Moving forward, Pyongyang will not only seek to increase its own deterrence, but could assist Tehran in addressing current and future challenges related to its nuclear program.
The extensive Israeli military operations against Iran highlighted Iran’s failure to deter Israeli aggression. For years, Israel had refrained from direct attacks on Iran, partly due to Iran’s deterrent capabilities and its network of proxies in Lebanon (Hezbollah), Syria, Yemen, and Iraq. Additionally, concerns over potential regional escalation and the likelihood that Washington would not authorize Israeli military actions further constrained direct Israeli interventions.
However, the October 7, 2023 attacks on southern Israel marked a turning point, leading to regional shifts. In the ensuing conflict, many of Iran’s proxy forces, such as Hezbollah and Syrian militias, were significantly diminished or eliminated by Israel and other regional actors, altering the balance of power and deterrence dynamics.
The recent Israeli strikes on Iran – which targeted nuclear sites, missile launchers, missile storage facilities, radars, air defense systems, and missile defense infrastructure, along with the elimination of nuclear scientists and military leaders – reveal the extent to which Israel has penetrated Iran’s military and intelligence networks. The Israeli military appears capable of locating and eliminating key personnel within Iran’s military, nuclear, and political spheres. Moreover, Israel has demonstrated the capacity to intercept and strike targets within Iran, indicating a sophisticated level of operational surprise and intelligence.
The last notable deterrence failure was the U.S. attack on Iranian nuclear sites on June 22. Concerns about regional stability and potential wider conflict influenced previous administrations’ hesitance; however, President Donald Trump authorized this strike. The joint Israeli and U.S. operations not only underscored Iran’s inability to deter these adversaries but also exposed the limitations of Iran’s allies – namely China and Russia – in providing effective military or political deterrence. Both Beijing and Moscow refrained from deploying military threats to defend Tehran or to dissuade Israel and Washington from their actions.
This series of events underscores the fragility of Iran’s deterrent posture – and offers crucial lessons for North Korea regarding the importance of strategic resilience, intelligence penetration, and the potential consequences of asymmetric warfare and proxy dynamics.
Rethinking North Korean Deterrence
The setbacks experienced by Iran raise important questions about North Korea’s core security assumptions on the credibility of deterrence, the reliability of alliances, and the extent of intelligence infiltration.
Pyongyang operates under the belief that its missile, artillery, and nuclear capabilities are sufficiently credible to deter any potential attack by Washington or its regional allies. However, Iran’s experience demonstrates that such deterrence can be fragile. If the credibility of nuclear deterrence is called into question, North Korea must consider whether its own deterrent would withstand similar challenges.
That said, North Korea is much farther along in developing its nuclear weapons program than Iran. Thus Iran’s recent confrontation with Israel and the United States is likely to reinforce Pyongyang’s perception that its pursuit of nuclear weapons has been the right choice, although it has been costly. Therefore Iran’s fate will harden Kim Jong Un’s belief that he should never dismantle the nuclear program voluntarily. The question is whether he is ready to deploy the ultimate weapon in the moment of truth.
North Korea’s strategic security also hinges on the assumption that its alliances – particularly with China and Russia – are as steadfast as initially believed. Iran’s reliance on support from these powers did not fully prevent targeted actions or vulnerabilities. North Korea must ask: will Beijing and Moscow genuinely deter or withstand external pressures or military actions against North Korea’s key military sites? They certainly did not in the case of Iran, where support was limited to diplomatic statements. Pyongyang must ask itself the hard question: does North Korea constitute, in any meaningful way, a strategic asset to its allies – one that is so vital that they would feel a genuine sense of loss if it were to collapse? Only then would North Korea’s allies be prompted to protect Pyongyang with their own militaries.
Finally, Pyongyang assumes that its military and scientific installations are secure from foreign intelligence operations. Iran’s experience suggests otherwise; despite efforts to conceal sensitive sites, Israeli and other intelligence agencies penetrated deeply into Iran’s networks. North Korea should recognize that foreign intelligence services likely have access to information and assets it believes are hidden, and must adapt its security and concealment strategies accordingly.
What Will, or Can, North Korea Do for Iran?
Finally, it is important to consider the question of how North Korea is likely to respond to the potential prospect of Iran’s collapse. North Korea has already lost its longtime partner in the Middle East, Assad’s Syria, with whom Pyongyang stood against the United States and cooperated to develop strategic weapons, including nuclear arms. North Korea is now facing the serious prospect of losing yet another ally in just six months. Losing Iran would be painful to North Korea, and therefore it may look for ways to help its strategic and ideological partner during the war or after the war.
History clearly indicates that such a scenario is not implausible. North Korea dispatched pilots, tank crews, missile engineers, and operators to Egypt and Syria during the 1973 Yom Kippur War against Israel. It is not clear how much Pyongyang’s assistance added to the war effort of the two armies, but what is notable is that the North Koreans stepped up when their Cold War superpower patrons completely remained on the sidelines – a remarkably similar feature to the current war in Iran. In fact, Kim Il Sung sent a group of North Korean pilots to take the place of the Soviet pilots and advisers expelled by the Egyptian government just months before the war, due to the Soviets’ opposition to Egypt’s war effort. After the war, Kim Il Sung boasted of his participation in the Yom Kippur War to resist, in his view, an “imperialist” Israel and apparently chastised the communist superpowers for their inaction.
North Korea is likely to weigh different ways of assisting Iran and wait for the right opportunities to act. Will North Korea conduct a nuclear test for the Islamic Republic of Iran? Will it help Iran race toward the bomb in the aftermath of the war? Will it transport some of its enriched uranium to Tehran? It is not clear which path North Korea will take, but the available options are nothing short of alarming.
Authors
Guest Author
Alon Levkowitz
Dr. Alon Levkowitz is the chair of the Asian Studies Department at Bar-Ilan University and senior fellow at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies. His research focuses on the foreign and security relations between South and North Korea and the Middle East.
Guest Author
Pyung Hwa Park
Pyung Hwa Park is a Ph.D. candidate at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His research deals with contests of narratives in international politics and North Korea-Middle East relations.
12. Sitting Out the NATO Summit May Be Lee Jae-myung’s Best Move
I understand the author's analysis. But I still think it may have been a missed opportunity.
Then again, I think the rationale for both Japan and Korea was to avoid being put on the spot for 5% like the NATO allies agreed to.
Sitting Out the NATO Summit May Be Lee Jae-myung’s Best Move
In an era of volatile allies and summit performance art, strategic patience might just be South Korea’s best weapon.
https://thediplomat.com/2025/06/sitting-out-the-nato-summit-may-be-lee-jae-myungs-best-move/
By Schoni Song
June 24, 2025
South Korea’s President Lee Jae-myung waves as he and his wife depart Seoul Air Base to attend the summit of the Group of Seven in Kananaskis, Canada, June 16, 2025.
Credit: ROK Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism/ Lee jeong woo
South Korean President Lee Jae-myung, barely weeks into his presidency following his June 3 election victory, is already facing heat at home and abroad. First, his highly anticipated meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump at the G-7 Summit in Canada fell through when Trump left early to focus on the Iran-Israel crisis. Now, reports confirm Lee will skip the NATO Summit in The Hague, scheduled for June 24-25.
Predictably, critics have pounced. Opposition lawmakers and some conservative analysts argue that missing a high-level summit at the onset of Lee’s presidency, especially an opportunity to meet Trump, risks marginalizing Seoul on the global stage. Some warn it could even send the “wrong signal” to adversaries like China and Russia.
But is this really a misstep? Or could Lee’s conspicuous absence actually be a case of strategic patience, a well-timed no-show that keeps South Korea out of geopolitical quicksand, buys valuable time, and avoids diplomatic ambushes?
The Middle East is on fire. The Israel-Iran conflict has escalated into a regional powder keg, pulling in proxies, straining supply chains, and spiking global oil prices. Trump’s abrupt exit from the G-7 to deal with the crisis reflected the severity of the situation. Since then, the United States has joined the fray by striking Iranian nuclear sites.
For Lee, entering a high-profile NATO summit while this geopolitical storm brews is fraught with risk. The agenda, already dominated by Ukraine, could quickly pivot to Iran. And in this environment, meetings can become traps.
Trump, with his history of transactional diplomacy, could pressure South Korea into premature commitments – rhetorical or real – toward a U.S.-led effort that Seoul has no stake in. Without clarity on Washington’s game plan or even on how long this crisis will last, walking into a bilateral summit with Trump now is like jumping into a poker game without knowing the stakes.
History is replete with cautionary tales. Australia’s post-9/11 alignment with the American missions in Iraq and Afghanistan drew the country into protracted conflicts that proved politically unpopular and financially draining. Spain’s involvement in Iraq under Prime Minister Aznar was so deeply criticized domestically that it became a decisive factor in his party’s electoral loss.
Lee is far from alone in deciding it’s better to sit out the NATO Summit rather than risk being roped into a conflict in the Middle East. Japan’s Ishiba Shigeru and Australia’s Anthony Albanese — along with Lee, the leaders of three of the “Indo-Pacific Four” — have also decided not to attend.
In geopolitics, sometimes showing up unprepared is worse than not showing up at all.
Much of the criticism for Lee’s decision focuses on the missed opportunity for his first face-to-face meeting with Trump. Yes, an inaugural South Korea-U.S. summit is important. But it needs the right choreography to build trust, ensure alignment on issues, and lock in deliverables.
Rushing into a bilateral for the sake of optics is risky business, especially with a leader like Trump, who has a penchant for turning every meeting into performance art. Think of his summits in Singapore and Hanoi with Kim Jong Un — big headlines, little follow-through.
And there are plenty of issues that could take a hastily convened summit off the rails. Trade tensions are back on the table. Korean car exports are down 20 percent year-on-year. Trump, ever the tariff enthusiast, is reportedly considering reimposing reciprocal tariffs unless key trade partners renegotiate. South Korea needs a well-prepared negotiating team, not a hastily arranged handshake photo-op that could end up being a Trojan horse for one-sided demands.
There’s also the perennial burden-sharing issue. With Trump’s administration pressuring allies across the board to up their defense spending, a premature summit could corner South Korea into footing a higher bill for United States Forces Korea.
Lee’s state affairs council is still shaping the blueprint for his five-year national policy tasks. Most of his ministers are still undergoing confirmation hearings. Engaging Trump at this juncture would be like sending in the understudies before the play’s even cast.
Love him or loathe him, Trump is a geopolitical variable of his own. His foreign policy style is impulsive, transactional, and often devoid of institutional continuity. Meeting Trump on the sidelines of NATO could have been a diplomatic minefield for a newly inaugurated Korean president. Consider how Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s first summit with Trump turned into a public dressing-down. Optics matter. The wrong summit, at the wrong time, could diminish Lee’s authority both domestically and abroad.
There is also a longer-term political calculus. With Trump back in the White House, Seoul needs a multiyear strategy to manage his volatility. Burning bridges or giving away too much too soon would weaken South Korea’s hand in future talks. A little distance, for now, is not such a bad idea.
Lee campaigned on practical reform, domestic revitalization, and a “people-first” philosophy. Skipping a NATO summit to stay home and finalize his Cabinet appointments actually reinforces that brand. It signals a president focused on substance over ceremony.
It also buys time. Lee needs to consolidate domestic consensus before embarking on international engagements. Particularly with the National Assembly now controlled by his party, this is a window to pass meaningful reforms and set legislative tone – something no Korean president can afford to delay.
Moreover, skipping NATO defangs early criticism that Lee is too quick to align with Western strategic agendas. This is a delicate tightrope in a region where Beijing, Washington, and an increasingly assertive Moscow all expect deference.
Let’s not forget: not sending a president to attend a summit doesn’t mean being disengaged. South Korea can still send top envoys. Lee can hold bilateral calls. His team can quietly advance trade negotiations and security consultations. These can lay the groundwork for a stronger summit later – one that’s scripted, strategic, and deliverable-heavy.
Lee’s decision to skip The Hague might seem timid to some, but in diplomacy, timing is everything. When the geopolitical weather is unpredictable and the foreign policy establishment is still under construction, staying home isn’t retreat – it’s reconnaissance. When Lee eventually meets Trump or even steps onto the NATO stage at a future summit, there’s a better chance it will be on South Korea’s terms: with a confirmed government, a well-oiled policy machine, and a crystal-clear strategy.
The optics of Lee attending the NATO summit with a half-formed government, unclear policy directives, and domestic policy still on uncertain ground would have undercut his global credibility. This is a time to build strength at home, not chase headlines abroad. Because real power isn’t in showing up. It’s in knowing when to.
Authors
Guest Author
Schoni Song
Schoni Song is junior partner and global business lead at Macoll Consulting Group, South Korea’s premier public and government affairs consultancy. The opinions expressed here are his own.
13. 6 Americans detained in South Korea for trying to send rice and Bibles to North Korea by sea
I am still wondering who the Americans are as we know some who might be part of this.
I think this is shameful on the part of South Korea. These launches are not a threat to the koran people in the South. It is not liek the balloons that could be shot at (but NEVER have). This is clearly appeasement. The eitenitenial threat ot he regime is information and the ROKG is preventing infomation from going into the north through one method.
6 Americans detained in South Korea for trying to send rice and Bibles to North Korea by sea
Police have detained six Americans in South Korea for allegedly trying to send 1,600 plastic bottles filled with rice, U.S. dollars bills and Bibles toward North Korea by sea
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2025/06/27/north-korea-americans-plastic-bottles-rice-balloons/f821bad4-530c-11f0-baaa-ba1025f321a8_story.html
June 27, 2025 at 10:10 a.m. EDTYesterday at 10:10 a.m. EDT
0
FILE - A North Korean military guard post, left, and loudspeaker are seen from Paju, South Korea, near the border with North Korea, June 12, 2025. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon, File)
By Hyung-Jin Kim | AP
SEOUL, South Korea — Six Americans were detained Friday in South Korea for trying to send 1,600 plastic bottles filled with rice, miniature Bibles, $1 bills and USB sticks toward North Korea by sea, police said.
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The Americans were apprehended on front-line Gwanghwa Island before throwing the bottles into the sea so they could float toward North Korean shores on the tides, two Gwanghwa police officers said. They said the Americans are being investigated on allegations they violated the law on the management of safety and disasters.
The officers, who requested anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak to media on the issue, refused to provide personal details of the Americans in line with privacy rules.
Gwanghwa police said they haven’t found what is on the USB sticks.
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The U.S. Embassy in South Korea had no immediate public comment.
For years, activists have sought to float plastic bottles or fly balloons across the border carrying anti-North Korea propaganda leaflets and USB thumb drives carrying South Korean dramas and K-pop songs, a practice that was banned from 2021-2023 over concerns it could inflame tensions with the North.
North Korea has responded to previous balloon campaigns with fiery rhetoric and other shows of anger, and last year the country launched its own balloons across the border, dumping rubbish on various South Korean sites including the presidential compound.
In 2023, South Korea’s Constitutional Court struck down a controversial law that criminalized the sending of leaflets and other items to North Korea, calling it an excessive restriction on free speech.
But since taking office in early June, the new liberal government of President Lee Jae Myung is pushing to crack down on such civilian campaigns with other safety-related laws to avoid a flare-up tensions with North Korea and promote the safety of frontline South Korean residents.
On June 14, police detained an activist for allegedly flying balloons toward North Korea from Gwanghwa Island.
Lee took office with a promise to restart long-dormant talks with North Korea and establish peace on the Korean Peninsula. Lee’s government halted frontline anti-Pyongyang propaganda loudspeaker broadcasts to try to ease military tensions. North Korean broadcasts have not been heard in South Korean front-line towns since then.
But it’s unclear if North Korea will respond to Lee’s conciliatory gesture after vowing last year to sever relations with South Korea and abandon the goal of peaceful Korean reunification. Official talks between the Koreas have been stalled since 2019, when U.S.-led diplomacy on North Korean denuclearization derailed.
14. President Lee Jae-myung: “I will pursue practical diplomacy based on a strong ROK-US alliance”
The right words. Let's make them work for both our nations.
This is a Google trasnaltion of an RFA reprot.
President Lee Jae-myung: “I will pursue practical diplomacy based on a strong ROK-US alliance”
Seoul-Hong Seung-wook hongs@rfa.org
2025.06.26
https://www.rfa.org/korean/in-focus/2025/06/26/president-lee-strong-alliance-us/
Anchor: South Korean President Lee Jae-myung said he will pursue pragmatic diplomacy centered on national interests, and that the strong South Korea-U.S. alliance will be the foundation. U.S. Senator Andy Kim and Representative Young Kim also emphasized the importance of the alliance. Hong Seung-wook reports from Seoul.
The '2025 Korean Peninsula Symposium' was held jointly by Yonhap News Agency, the Ministry of Unification, the Institute for National Security Strategy, and Yonhap News Agency's Northeast Asia Center in Seoul on the 26th.
South Korean President Lee Jae-myung said in a written address that now is “a time when a strategic approach to responding to global uncertainty and external risks is urgently needed.”
President Lee, who assessed that “the world has entered an unprecedented period of global-level economic and security environment transformation,” announced that he would turn this complex crisis into an opportunity to maximize national interests through pragmatic diplomacy centered on national interests.
In particular, he said, “We will strengthen cooperation between Korea, Japan, and Korea, China based on the strong Korea-U.S. alliance,” and “We will also approach relations with neighboring countries from a national interest and pragmatic perspective.”
Andy Kim, the first Korean-American to be elected to the U.S. Senate, said in a video address that day that South Korea and the U.S. are facing growing threats and challenges, and in particular, he pointed out that the war in Ukraine has brought about many changes in North Korea's attitude and capabilities, and that it has recently become more bold in cooperating with Russia.
He went on to emphasize that now is a time when the need for both South Korea and the United States to commit to their alliance is greater than ever.
[US Senator Andy Kim] Now more than ever, it is time for the US-ROK leadership to reaffirm our strategic alliance and partnership. This will demonstrate what we can achieve when we work together as a pivot point in the Indo-Pacific region.
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Rep. Kim said that while it is true that both Korea and the United States are facing difficulties, this is an opportunity to build a practical, so-called “win-win” relationship.
He also said that he would work to strengthen and solidify the bond between the two countries by serving as a bridge between Korea and the United States.
Young Kim: “When seeking ‘peace through strength’ with North Korea, Russia, etc.”
Young Kim, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee's Subcommittee on East Asia and the Pacific, also sent a video message at the same location, defining North Korea, China, and Russia as enemies and asserting that "now is the time to promote 'peace through strength.'"
U.S. House of Representatives member Young Kim delivers a video message at the 2025 Korean Peninsula Symposium held at the Dynasty Hall of the Shilla Hotel in Jung-gu, Seoul on June 26, 2025.
U.S. House of Representatives member Young Kim delivers a video message at the 2025 Korean Peninsula Symposium held at the Dynasty Hall of the Shilla Hotel in Jung-gu, Seoul on the 26th. 2025.6.26 (Yonhap)
[Rep. Young Kim] We know that the 'appeasement strategy' toward North Korea has failed, and it is now time to pursue 'peace through strength'. We must promote and strengthen security, economic, and people-to-people relations through bilateral and multilateral cooperation in the Indo-Pacific region.
“Our enemies are becoming bolder and more shameless,” Kim said. “North Korea is strengthening its military relationship with Russia, and China is supporting Russia’s war in Ukraine and strengthening military training around Taiwan.”
He continued, “We live in unprecedented times, where a dangerous alliance between North Korea, China, and Russia threatens the democratic, free, and open Indo-Pacific region,” emphasizing the importance of the ROK-U.S. alliance.
Rep. Kim said, “According to the U.S. Department of Defense, the Indo-Pacific is a priority region,” and he agreed with that view.
He also suggested that measures be taken to ensure that any administration can further strengthen the historic progress made in trilateral cooperation among South Korea, the United States and Japan over the past several years.
This is Hong Seung-wook of RFA's Free Asia Broadcasting in Seoul.
Editor Yang Seong-won
15. Some North Korean Residents: “More Burden Than Expected” About Wonsan and Galma Tourism
The regime does nothing for the korean people in the north other than to make thensuffer and sacrfice for KJU.
This is a Google translation of an RFA reprot.
Some North Korean Residents: “More Burden Than Expected” About Wonsan and Galma Tourism
Seoul-Kim Ji-eun xallsl@rfa.org
2025.06.27
https://www.rfa.org/korean/in-focus/2025/06/27/north-korea-tourism-expectations/
Anchor: North Korea's General Secretary Kim Jong-un recently attended the completion ceremony of the Wonsan-Kalma Coastal Tourist Zone with his family ahead of its opening on the 1st of next month. However, some local residents are responding that they feel more burdened than excited about the opening of the tourist zone. Reporter Kim Ji-eun reports from inside North Korea.
A source from North Pyongan Province (requesting anonymity for safety reasons) told Radio Free Asia on the 25th, “Yesterday (the 24th) a completion ceremony for the Wonsan-Kalma coastal tourist area was held,” but “residents are giving it a negative evaluation, saying it is a foreign currency-earning project that is far removed from the people’s lives.”
The source explained, “The construction of the Wonsan-Galma coastal tourist area was not initially done by the party, but was completed by a large foreign currency-earning company under the military and local residents.” He added, “The construction costs were covered by trading companies, and the military and local residents from each province got involved in the construction.”
He also added, “Since the Wonsan-Galma coastal tourist area was built with funds from military-affiliated trading companies rather than from the national treasury, the construction cost is to be recovered through tourism revenue over a three-year period.” He added, “During that time, jurisdiction will be exercised by the relevant trading agency, not the Tourism Bureau.”
He continued, “However, despite these circumstances, as soon as the Wonsan-Galma coastal tourist area was completed, a completion ceremony was held with the attendance of the top leader,” and pointed out, “If you don’t know the details, you could mistakenly think that the party guaranteed all construction costs for the tourist area and completed it through a construction company.”
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North Korea, Wonsan Galma Tourist Zone Completed
The Wonsan Galma Coastal Tourist Area in Gangwon Province, a large-scale beach resort complex in North Korea, has been completed. (Yonhap)
In relation to this, another source from North Pyongan Province (who requested anonymity for personal safety reasons) told Radio Free Asia on the 24th, “Today, the Wonsan-Kalma Coastal Tourist Zone was completed and a completion ceremony was held,” but “for local residents, the completion ceremony may be a pain rather than a celebration.”
What happens to residents when electricity is concentrated in tourist areas?
The source said, “The party is doing a lot of propaganda about the Wonsan-Galma coastal tourist site, but the people don’t have high expectations,” and added, “It has been reported that all of Gangwon-do’s electricity will be diverted (to the tourist site complex) in order to revitalize the Wonsan-Galma coastal tourist site, but the residents’ lives will become more difficult than they are now.”
He also claimed, “Some residents are reacting cynically, asking what benefit the Wonsan Galma coastal area tourism project will bring to us when electricity is not even available,” and “They are opposing the party’s foreign currency-earning policy that does not take the residents’ lives into consideration.”
The source continued, “Although the Wonsan-Kalma coastal tourist area has been completed, it is expected that tourism will be difficult to revitalize,” and “It will mainly be Russian tourists who will come to see the sights, but if they learn of the poor conditions inside (North Korea), they will stop coming.”
Meanwhile, on the 26th, North Korean authorities released images of Kim Jong-un and his family attending the completion ceremony for the Wonsan-Kalma coastal tourist area on the 24th through state-run media.
This is Ji-eun Kim of RFA's Radio Free Asia in Seoul.
Editor Yang Seong-won
16. N. Korea unveils grand beach resort as it seeks to exploit sanctions loophole
The photo at the link looks pretty good, though it looks AI generated.
N. Korea unveils grand beach resort as it seeks to exploit sanctions loophole
https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/foreignaffairs/northkorea/20250627/n-korea-unveils-grand-beach-resort-as-it-seeks-to-exploit-sanctions-loophole
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North Korea has completed construction of its large-scale beach resort complex in Wonsan, Kangwon Province. The North's official Korean Central News Agency reported Thursday that a grand opening ceremony for the Wonsan-Kalma Coastal Tourist Area was held on Tuesday, with leader Kim Jong-un in attendance. Yonhap
By Kim Hyun-bin
- Published Jun 27, 2025 3:10 pm KST
- Updated Jun 27, 2025 9:17 pm KST
North Korea has officially opened its long-delayed Wonsan-Kalma coastal tourist zone, signaling a renewed push to generate foreign currency through tourism — one of the few sectors not explicitly banned under United Nations sanctions.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un presided over the ribbon-cutting ceremony, Tuesday, joined by his wife, Ri Sol-ju, and daughter, Kim Ju-ae. The event marked the culmination of more than a decade of planning for what Pyongyang has billed as a “world-class coastal resort” aimed at attracting both domestic and foreign tourists.
The complex, located on the east coast near the military port city of Wonsan, includes high-rise hotels, beaches, swimming pools, shopping centers and recreational facilities designed to accommodate up to 20,000 visitors. According to the North’s state-run Korean Central News Agency, the site will open to North Korean citizens on Tuesday, with foreign tourist access to be phased in later.
The move to open the Wonsan-Kalma resort comes as North Korea’s economy remains under severe strain from international sanctions targeting its nuclear and missile programs. U.N. resolutions have choked off the country’s access to vital revenue from key exports like coal, textiles and seafood, as well as its ability to engage in international financial transactions. This leaves Pyongyang with few avenues for earning hard currency.
Tourism remains a notable loophole, one of the few sectors not directly prohibited by these sweeping sanctions. The resort’s opening signals a pragmatic pivot by a regime that is determined to defy international pressure, demonstrating its readiness to leverage tourism to prop up its isolated economy, even if it means initially relying on visitors from aligned nations like Russia.
“From the U.S. perspective, tourism is not a violation of sanctions,” said Yang Moo-jin, president of the University of North Korean Studies. “For Pyongyang, it’s a strategic tool for earning hard currency and a possible channel for regime survival.”
Yang noted that the idea of developing Wonsan-Kalma has previously surfaced during North Korea-U.S. diplomacy, including meetings between Kim and U.S. President Donald Trump during his first term.
“Tourism was seen as a possible area for cooperation during denuclearization talks,” he said, adding that the site may now be leveraged as a confidence-building measure in future negotiations.
Despite Pyongyang’s ambitions, experts remain skeptical about the project’s potential without a diplomatic breakthrough. Infrastructure challenges such as particularly outdated airports and poor connectivity could limit foreign interest. Yang added that even if the site becomes fully operational, the primary visitors would likely come from China and Russia, due to North Korea’s ongoing diplomatic isolation from Japan and South Korea.
“Attracting one million visitors a year, as the North claims, is unrealistic under the current circumstances,” Yang said. “Even if 200,000 come from China and Russia and 200,000 from inside the country, there remains a gap. Without normalized ties with Seoul and Tokyo, it’s hard to imagine who would fill the rest.”
The resort’s opening also attracted diplomatic attention.
Russia’s ambassador to Pyongyang, Aleksandr Matsegora, was among the prominent guests at the ceremony — a gesture analysts say underscores deepening ties between Moscow and Pyongyang amid expanding military and economic cooperation.
Since 2023, North Korea has introduced several tourism-related laws and unveiled a national tourism development strategy targeting 2030. The Wonsan-Kalma zone is widely viewed as a flagship project within that plan.
“Tourism is among the easiest ways to earn foreign currency,” Yang said. “But unless diplomatic channels reopen, especially with Seoul, Washington and Tokyo, the project’s full potential will remain out of reach.”
De Oppresso Liber,
David Maxwell
Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy
Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation
Editor, Small Wars Journal
Twitter: @davidmaxwell161
Phone: 202-573-8647
email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com
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