Tag Archives: North Koreans

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Cuba calls weapons on North Korean ship 'obsolete'

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Cuba said military equipment found buried under sacks of sugar on a North Korean ship seized as it tried to cross the Panama Canal was obsolete weaponry from the mid-20th century that it had sent to be repaired.

Panamanian authorities said it might take a week to search the ship, since so far they have only examined one of its five container sections. They have requested help from United Nations inspectors, along with Colombia and Britain, said Javier Carballo, Panama’s top narcotics prosecutor. North Korea is barred by U.N. sanctions from importing sophisticated weapons or missiles.

Panamanian President Ricardo Martinelli said Tuesday that the ship identified as the 14,000-ton Chong Chon Gang, which had departed Cuba en route to North Korea, was carrying missiles and other arms “hidden in containers underneath the cargo of sugar.”

Martinelli tweeted a photo showing a green tube that appears to be a horizontal antenna for the SNR-75 “Fan Song” radar, which is used to guide missiles fired by the SA-2 air-defense system found in former Warsaw Pact and Soviet-allied nations, said Neil Ashdown, an analyst for IHS Jane’s Intelligence.

“It is possible that this could be being sent to North Korea to update its high-altitude air-defense capabilities,” Ashdown said. Jane’s also said the equipment could be headed to North Korea to be upgraded.

North Korea has not commented on the seizure, during which 35 North Koreans were arrested after resisting police efforts to intercept the ship in Panamanian waters last week, according to Martinelli. He said the captain had a heart attack and also tried to commit suicide.

But Cuba’s Foreign Ministry released a statement late Tuesday acknowledging that the military equipment belonged to the Caribbean nation, saying it had been shipped out to be repaired and returned to the island.

“The agreements subscribed by Cuba in this field are supported by the need to maintain our defensive capacity in order to preserve national sovereignty,” the statement read.

It said the vessel was bound for North Korea mostly loaded with sugar — 10,000 tons of it — but added that the cargo also included 240 metric tons of “obsolete defensive weapons”: two Volga and Pechora anti-aircraft missile systems, nine missiles “in parts and spares,” two Mig-21 Bis and 15 engines for those airplanes.

It …read more

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NGOs in dilemma over rescuing N.Koreans in Myanmar

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South Korean NGOs face a dilemma over how to rescue 64 North Koreans held by Myanmar rebels and forced to work on a drug farm, an activist said on Saturday.

The North Koreans have been taken to a rebel camp northeast of Tachilek, a town along the border between Myanmar and Thailand, over the past nine years, Pastor Kim Hee-Tae told AFP.

The refugees were caught while attempting to travel on their own through rebel-held territory to Thailand in order to defect to South Korea after fleeing their poverty-stricken homeland.

“We’re in a great dilemma over how to rescue them”, Kim said, adding the rebels were asking for $5,000 ransom for each of the hostages.

He said NGOs were unable to launch a campaign to raise the money or to ask for Seoul to intervene as the hostage takers were extremely publicity shy.

“We need very quiet negotiations to pull it through”, he said.

About 80 percent of the North Koreans were women and were forced to work at alcohol manufacturing or drug processing plants. “Some of them are forced into prostitution”, he said.

Male captives were used to grow poppies.

A South Korean foreign ministry official said the ministry was investigating the case.

Myanmar is the world’s second largest producer of opium — the raw ingredient for heroin — after Afghanistan, accounting for 10 percent of global production, according to UN data.

Since the end of the Korean War in 1953, some 25,000 North Korean refugees have escaped and settled in the South.

Most begin their journey by crossing into China, where they face repatriation if caught.

They then try to reach a second country, with Thailand the most popular choice, from where they generally seek permission to resettle in South Korea.

Those who are caught and deported back to the North face severe punishment, including being sent to a labour camp, rights groups say.

…read more

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North Korea's War of Words

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By dkirk, Contributor Word that North Korea‘s got new missile launchers on its east coast shows the fragility of the standoff on the Korean peninsula. No, no one thinks the North Koreans are about to fire on a “live” target — whether U.S. bases in Japan or South Korea or at some more distant target. The fact is, however, the ongoing moves orchestrated by the North Korean ruling elite in the name of the young leader Kim Jong-un show the unlikelihood if not the impossibility of arriving gracefully at a conclusion to the standoff.

From: http://www.forbes.com/sites/donaldkirk/2013/04/22/north-koreas-war-of-words/

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North Koreans mark major national holiday amid missile launch fears

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Oblivious to international tensions over a possible North Korean missile launch, Pyongyang residents spilled into the streets Monday to celebrate a major national holiday, the birthday of their first leader, Kim Il Sung.

Girls in red and pink jackets skipped along streets festooned with celebratory banners and flags and parents pushed strollers with babies bundled up against the spring chill as residents of the isolated, impoverished nation began observing a three-day holiday.

There was no sense of panic in the North Korean capital, where very few locals have access to international broadcasts and foreign newspaper headlines speculating about an imminent missile launch and detailing the international diplomacy under way to try to rein Pyongyang in, including a swing through the region by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry to try to tamp down emotions and coordinate Washington’s response with Beijing, North Korea‘s most important ally.

Foreign governments have been struggling to assess how seriously to take North Korea‘s recent torrent of rhetoric — including warnings of possible nuclear war — as it expresses its anger over continuing U.S.-South Korea military maneuvers just across the border. Officials in South Korea, the United States and Japan say intelligence indicates that North Korean officials, fresh off an underground nuclear test in February, are ready to launch a medium-range missile.

North Korea‘s own media gave little indication Monday of how high the tensions are.

The Rodong Sinmun, the Workers’ Party newspaper, featured photos and coverage of current leader Kim Jong Un‘s overnight visit to the Kumsusan mausoleum to pay respects to his grandfather. There was only one line at the end of the article vowing to bring down the “robber-like U.S. imperalists.”

Kim Jong Un‘s renovation of the memorial palace that once served as his grandfather’s presidential offices was opened to the public on Monday, the vast cement plaza replaced by fountains, park benches, trellises and tulips. Stretches of green lawn were marked by small signs indicating which businesses — including the Foreign Trade Bank recently added to a U.S. Treasury blacklist — and government agencies donated funds to help pay for the landscaping.

Braving the cold, gray weather, people lined up in droves to lay bouquets of fake flowers at the bronze statues of Kim and his son, late leader Kim Jong Il, in downtown Pyongyang, as they do for every major holiday in the highly militarized country, where loyalty to the Kims and to the state are drummed in citizens from an early age. They queued at roadside snack stands for rations of peanuts, a holiday tradition. Cheers and screams from a soccer match filled the air.

“Although the situation is tense, people have got bright faces and are very happy,” said Han Kyong Sim, a drink stand worker.

Monday marked the official start of the new year according to North Korea‘s “juche” calendar, which begins with the day of Kim Il Sung‘s birth in 1912. But unlike last year, the centennial of his birthday, there are no big parades in store this week, and North Koreans were planning to use

From: http://feeds.foxnews.com/~r/foxnews/world/~3/DKP8XgCDmiU/

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As US talks up diplomacy, NKorea takes hard line

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The United States and Japan opened the door Sunday to new nuclear talks if North Korea lowered tensions and honored past agreements, even as the saber-rattling government rejected South Korea‘s latest offer of dialogue as a “crafty trick.”

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry told reporters in Tokyo that North Korea would find “ready partners” in the United States if it began abandoning its nuclear program.

Japan‘s foreign minister, Fumio Kishida, also demanded a resolution to a dispute concerning Japanese citizens abducted decades ago by North Korean officials.

The diplomats seemed to point the way for a possible revival of the six-nation talks that have been suspended for four years.

China long pushed has for the process to resume without conditions. But the U.S. and allies South Korea and Japan fear rewarding North Korea for its belligerence and endless repetition of a cycle of tensions and failed talks that have prolonged the crisis.

Kerry’s message of openness to diplomacy was clear, however unlikely the chances appeared that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un‘s government would meet the American’s conditions.

“I’m not going to be so stuck in the mud that an opportunity to actually get something done is flagrantly wasted because of a kind of predetermined stubbornness,” he told U.S.-based journalists.

“You have to keep your mind open. But fundamentally, the concept is they’re going to have to show some kind of good faith here so we’re not going to around and around in the same-old, same-old,” he said.

Tensions have run high on the Korean Peninsula for months, with North Korea testing a nuclear device and its intercontinental ballistic missile technology.

The reclusive communist state hasn’t stopped there. It has issued almost daily threats that have included possible nuclear strikes against the United States. Analysts and foreign officials say that is still beyond the North Koreans‘ capability.

While many threats have been dismissed as bluster, U.S. and South Korean say they believe the North in the coming days may test a mid-range missile designed to reach as far as Guam, the U.S. territory in the Pacific where the Pentagon is deploying a land-based missile-defense system.

Japan

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Seeking calm in Koreas, US looks again to China

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As North Korea prepares a potential missile test and issues threats almost daily, the Obama administration is hoping yet again that China can force its unruly neighbor to stand down.

It’s a strategy that has produced uneven results over decades of American diplomacy, during which Pyongyang has developed and tested nuclear weapons and repeatedly imperiled peace on the Korean peninsula.

But with only the counterthreat of overwhelming force to offer the North Koreans, the U.S. has little choice but to rely on Beijing to de-escalate tensions in a peaceful manner.

The question of how Washington can persuade Beijing to exert real pressure on Korean leader Kim Jong Un‘s unpredictable regime is front and center as U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry conducts a series of meetings Saturday with Chinese leaders in Beijing.

Kerry is expected to discuss how to defuse the situation with President Xi Jinping, Premier Li Keqiang and other top members of China‘s communist leadership.

The immediate crisis: a North Korean test of a mid-range missile with a range of up to 2,500 miles that the U.S. believes could happen any day. The long-term problem: a nuclear program that may soon — or already — include the capability to deliver a warhead on a missile.

China is the only country with significant leverage over North Korea, a regime that like few in the world actually cherishes its isolation.

The Chinese have dramatically boosted trade ties with their neighbors and maintain close military relations some six decades after they fought side by side in the Korean War. They provide the North with most of its fuel and much of its food aid.

But Beijing, which values stability in its region above all else, clearly has different priorities than Washington.

China‘s greatest fear is the implosion of North Korea‘s impoverished state and the resulting chaos that could cause, including possibly millions of refugees fleeing across the border into China.

For that reason, China has in many ways looked past North Korea‘s bellicose rhetoric and activity, prioritizing the security of Kim’s regime — like his father’s and grandfather’s previously — over nuclear proliferation concerns.

From: http://feeds.foxnews.com/~r/foxnews/national/~3/4X60hv2glxc/

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Looking for logic in North Korea's threats

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To the outside world, the talk often appears to border on the lunatic, with the poor, hungry and electricity-starved nation threatening to lay waste to America’s cities in an atomic firestorm, or to overrun South Korea in a lightning attack.Enemy capitals, North Korea said, will be turned “into a sea of fire.” North Korea‘s first strikes will be “a signal flare marking the start of a holy war.” Pyongyang’s nuclear arsenal is “mounted on launch pads, aimed at the windpipe of our enemies.”

And it’s not all talk. The profoundly isolated, totalitarian nation has launched two rockets over the past year. A February nuclear test resulted in still more U.N. sanctions. Another missile test may be in the planning stages.

But there is also a logic behind North Korea‘s behavior, a logic steeped in internal politics, one family’s fear of losing control and the ways that a weak, poverty-wracked nation can extract concessions from some of the world’s most fearsome military powers.

It’s also steeped in another important fact: It works.

At various points over the past two decades, North Korea‘s cycles of threats and belligerence have pressured the international community into providing billions of dollars in aid and, for a time, helped push South Korea‘s government into improving ties.

Most importantly to Pyongyang, it has helped the Kim family remain in power decades after the fall of its patron, the Soviet Union, and long after North Korea had become an international pariah. Now the third generation of Kims, the babyfaced Kim Jong Un, is warning the world that it may soon face the wrath of Pyongyang. If the virulence of Kim Jong Un‘s threats have come as a surprise, he appears largely to be following in his father’s diplomatic footsteps.

“You keep playing the game as long as it works,” said Christopher Voss, a longtime FBI hostage negotiator and now the CEO of the Black Swan Group, a strategic advisory firm focusing on negotiation. “From their perspective, why should they evolve out of this? If it ain’t broke, don’t’ fix it.”

Like hostage-takers, the North Koreans find themselves backed into a corner of their own creation, surrounded by heavily armed foes and driven by beliefs that seem completely illogical to everyone else. “From the outside, it makes no sense,” said Voss. “From the inside it makes all the sense in the world.”

But the

From: http://feeds.foxnews.com/~r/foxnews/world/~3/cdDZaNyUjpo/

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Kerry heads to East Asia, seeks help on NKorea

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John Kerry had been secretary of state for little more than a week when North Korea tested a nuclear bomb.

He gathered top aides together for a morning meeting and asked for ideas, prompting a conversation about how to get China to join the United States in putting pressure on Pyongyang, according to a senior administration official who was present. The debate encapsulates America’s struggle to come up with a strategy — based on sticks, carrots or a combination of both — to convince China to police its own backyard.

As Kerry heads to East Asia for his first time as America’s top diplomat, some progress has been made in convincing Beijing, North Korea‘s biggest benefactor, to start getting tough with its neighbor. The question is whether it will make a difference.

North Korea‘s government agency said Thursday that it has “powerful striking means” on standby for a launch, amid speculation in Seoul and Washington that North Korea will test-fire a mid-range missile designed to reach the U.S. territory of Guam in the Pacific Ocean. It was the latest warning from the North, which launched a long-range rocket in December and conducted an underground nuclear test in February.

For years, Washington has been putting its hopes in Beijing to rein in the provocative behavior and combative rhetoric from North Korea. China has more leverage over the North than any other country, having massively boosted trade ties with the isolated regime in recent years and maintaining close military relations.

But the U.S. has been frustrated by the reaction from a government that in many ways has different priorities. China, analysts and officials often say, fears the implosion of North Korea‘s impoverished state and the regional instability that would cause far more immediate damage than the North’s nuclear proliferation and missile program. And China remains wary of any enhanced U.S. involvement in its backyard.

“If anyone has real leverage over the North Koreans, it is China,” U.S. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper told Congress Thursday. “And the indications that we have are that China is itself rather frustrated with the behavior and the belligerent rhetoric of … Kim Jong Un.”

China‘s role in containing North Korea is expected to be front and center when Kerry arrives in Seoul on Friday. He then travels to Beijing and Tokyo.

At a meeting Wednesday in London, Kerry

From: http://feeds.foxnews.com/~r/foxnews/national/~3/gGc3zkDlRvo/

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North Korea delivers new round of war rhetoric, claims it has 'powerful striking means'

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North Korea delivered a fresh round of rhetoric Thursday with claims it had “powerful striking means” on standby for a launch, while Seoul and Washington speculated that the country is preparing to test a medium-range missile during upcoming national celebrations.

On the streets of Pyongyang, meanwhile, North Koreans celebrated the anniversary of leader Kim Jong Un‘s appointment to the country’s top party post — one in a slew of titles collected a year ago in the months after father Kim Jong Il‘s death.

The Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Fatherland, a nonmilitary agency that deals with relations with South Korea, didn’t elaborate on its warning of a strike. The statement is the latest in a torrent of warlike threats seen outside Pyongyang as an effort to raise fears and pressure Seoul and Washington into changing their North Korea policy.

Officials in Seoul and Washington say Pyongyang appears to be preparing to test-fire a medium-range missile designed to reach the U.S. territory of Guam in the Pacific Ocean.

Such a launch would violate U.N. Security Council resolutions prohibiting North Korea from nuclear and ballistic missile activity, and mark a major escalation in Pyongyang’s standoff with neighboring nations and the U.S.

North Korea already has been punished in recent months for launching a long-range rocket in December and conducting an underground nuclear test in February.

Analysts do not believe North Korea will stage an attack similar to the one that started the Korean War in 1950. But there are concerns that the animosity could spark a skirmish that could escalate into a serious conflict.

“North Korea has been, with its bellicose rhetoric, with its actions … skating very close to a dangerous line,” U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said in Washington on Wednesday. “Their actions and their words have not helped defuse a combustible situation.”

The missile that officials believe Pyongyang is readying has been dubbed the “Musudan” by foreign experts after the northeastern village where North Korea has a launch pad. The missile has a range of 3,500 kilometers (2,180 miles) and is designed to reach U.S. military installments in Guam and Japan, experts say.

Bracing for a launch, officials said could take place at any time, Seoul deployed three naval destroyers, an early warning surveillance aircraft and a land-based radar system, a Defense Ministry official said in Seoul, speaking on condition of anonymity in line with department rules. Japan deployed PAC-3 missile interceptors around Tokyo.

But officials in Seoul played down security fears, noting that no foreign government has evacuated its citizens from either Korean capital.

“North Korea has continuously issued provocative threats and made efforts to raise tension on the Korean peninsula … but the current situation is being managed safely and our and foreign governments have been calmly responding,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Cho Tai-young told reporters Thursday.

The war talk is seen as a way for North Korea to draw attention to the precariousness of the security situation on the Korean Peninsula and to boost the military credentials of young leader Kim Jong Un.

The Korean War ended in

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North Korea urges foreigners to vacate South Korea

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Scores of North Koreans of all ages planted trees as part of a forestation campaign — armed with shovels, not guns. In the evening, women in traditional dress danced in the plazas to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the late leader Kim Jong Il‘s appointment to a key defense post.

Despite another round of warnings from their leaders of impending nuclear war, there was no sense of panic in the capital on Tuesday.

Chu Kang Jin, a Pyongyang resident, said everything is calm in the city.

“Everyone, including me, is determined to turn out as one to fight for national reunification … if the enemies spark a war,” he added, using nationalist rhetoric common among many North Koreans when speaking to the media.

The North’s latest warning, issued by its Asia-Pacific Peace Committee, urged foreign companies and tourists to leave South Korea.

“The situation on the Korean Peninsula is inching close to a thermonuclear war due to the evermore undisguised hostile actions of the United States and the South Korean puppet warmongers and their moves for a war against” North Korea, the committee said in a statement carried by state media on Tuesday.

There was no sign of an exodus of foreign companies or tourists from South Korea.

White House spokesman Jay Carney called the statement “more unhelpful rhetoric.”

“It is unhelpful, it is concerning, it is provocative,” he said.

The warning appeared to be an attempt to scare foreigners into pressing their governments to pressure Washington and Seoul to act to avert a conflict.

Analysts see a direct attack on Seoul as extremely unlikely, and there are no overt signs that North Korea‘s army is readying for war, let alone a nuclear one.

North Korea has been girding for a showdown with the U.S. and South Korea, its wartime foes, for months. The Korean War ended in 1953 with an armistice, not a peace treaty, leaving the peninsula still technically at war.

In December, North Korea launched a satellite into space on a rocket that Washington and others called a cover for …read more

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US missile defense shield to counter NKorea threat

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The Pentagon said Wednesday it was deploying a missile defense shield to Guam to protect the U.S. and its allies in the region in response to increasingly hostile rhetoric from North Korea. The North renewed its threat to launch a nuclear attack on the United States.

The threat issued by the General Staff of the Korean People’s Army capped a week of psychological warfare and military muscle moves by both sides that have rattled the region.

On Wednesday, the Pentagon announced it will deploy a land-based, high-altitude missile defense system to Guam to strengthen the Asia-Pacific region’s protections against a possible attack.

Pyongyang, for its part, said that America’s ever-escalating hostile policy toward North Korea “will be smashed” by the North’s nuclear strike and the “merciless operation” of its armed forces.

“The U.S. had better ponder over the prevailing grave situation,” said the translated statement, which was issued before the Pentagon announced plans to send a missile defense shield to Guam.

The Pentagon had no immediate reaction to the latest statement, but earlier Wednesday Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel labeled North Korea‘s rhetoric as a real, clear danger and threat to the U.S. and its Asia-Pacific allies. And he said the U.S. is doing all it can to defuse the situation, echoing comments a day earlier by Secretary of State John Kerry.

“Some of the actions they’ve taken over the last few weeks present a real and clear danger and threat to the interests, certainly of our allies, starting with South Korea and Japan and also the threats that the North Koreans have leveled directly at the United States regarding our base in Guam, threatened Hawaii, threatened the West Coast of the United States,” Hagel said.

He said he believes that the U.S. has had a “measured, responsible, serious responses to those threats.”

Deployment of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense System is the latest step the U.S. has taken to bolster forces in the region in a far-reaching show of force aimed at countering the North Korean threat.

In recent months, North Korea has taken a series of actions Washington deemed provocative, including an underground nuclear test in February and a rocket launch in December that put a satellite into space and demonstrated mastery of some of the technologies needed to produce a …read more
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Hagel calls N. Korea 'real and clear danger,' as US plans defense system in Guam

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Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said Wednesday that North Korea‘s rising threats pose a “real and clear danger,” as the Pentagon continued to take precautions with a plan to deploy a missile-defense system to Guam.

A senior U.S. official confirmed to Fox News that the military will deploy an Army system shown as a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense battery to Guam. The system is capable of shooting down short-, medium- and intermediate-range ballistic missiles.

This follows the positioning of two U.S. destroyer ships in the region, along with plans to have two sea-based radar systems in the western Pacific.

Hagel, speaking Wednesday at the National Defense University, said the cascade of threats out of North Korea must be taken “seriously,” given the country’s nuclear and missile-delivery capacity — though analysts say the country still could not fire a nuclear-tipped missile all the way to the continental United States.

“As they have ratcheted up (their) bellicose, dangerous rhetoric — and some of the actions they’ve taken over the last few weeks present a real and clear danger and threat to the interests, certainly of our allies, starting with South Korea and Japan,” Hagel said. He also cited the “threats that the North Koreans have leveled directly at the United States regarding our base in Guam, threatened Hawaii, threatened to the West Coast of the United States.”

The Kim Jong Un regime has toggled in recent weeks between threatening the U.S. and threatening South Korea.

The latest development was North Korea reportedly announcing it had “ratified” a strike plan against the United States. Also Wednesday, it decided to bar South Korean managers and trucks delivering supplies from crossing the border to enter a jointly run factory park called Kaesong.

The Kaesong industrial park started producing goods in 2004 and has been an unusual point of cooperation in an otherwise hostile relationship between the Koreas, whose three-year war ended in 1953 with an armistice, not a peace treaty.

The Kaesong move came a day after the North said it would restart its long-shuttered plutonium reactor and a uranium enrichment plant. Both could produce fuel for nuclear weapons that North Korea is developing and has threatened to hurl at the U.S., something experts don’t think it will be able to accomplish for years.

The North’s rising rhetoric has been met by a display of U.S. military strength, including flights of nuclear-capable bombers and stealth jets at annual South Korean-U.S. military drills that the allies call routine and North Korea says are invasion preparations.

In a telephone call Tuesday evening to Chinese Defense Minister Chang Wanquan, Hagel cited North Korea‘s pursuit of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles and said Washington and Beijing should continue to cooperate on those problems.

“The secretary emphasized the growing threat to the U.S. and our allies posed by North Korea‘s aggressive pursuit of nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs and expressed to General Chang the importance of sustained U.S.-China dialogue and cooperation on these issues,” Pentagon spokesman George Little said in a statement describing the phone call.

Little also disclosed that Gen. …read more
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NKorean propaganda mill serves up soft side of Kim

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The outside world focuses on the messages of doom and gloom from North Korea: bombastic threats of nuclear war, fantasy videos of U.S. cities in flames, digitally altered photos of leader Kim Jong Un guiding military drills. But back home, North Koreans get a decidedly softer dose of propaganda: Kim portrayed as a young, energetic leader, a people person and family man.

Mixed in with the images showing Kim aboard a speeding boat on a tour of front-line islands, or handing out commemorative rifles to smartly saluting soldiers, are those of Kim and his wife clapping at a dolphin show or linking arms with weeping North Korean children.

The pictures can look odd or obviously staged to outsiders. But they’re carefully crafted propaganda meant to give North Koreans an image of a country governed by a leader who is as comfortable overseeing a powerful military as he is mingling with the people.

Analysts say the images also hint at something that often gets lost amid the threatening rhetoric: North Korea‘s supreme commander isn’t an all-powerful, isolated monarch who can govern without considering his people’s approval. Kim is still busy building his reputation at home.

“Even dictatorships respond to public opinion and public pressure,” said John Delury, a North Korea analyst at Seoul’s Yonsei University. “He’s expected to pay attention to and make improvements in the common people’s standard of living. They’ve put that promise out in their domestic propaganda.”

It’s a tall order. Living standards in Pyongyang, the capital, are relatively high, with new shops and restaurants catering to a growing middle class. But U.N. officials’ reports detail harsh conditions elsewhere in North Korea: up to 200,000 people estimated to be languishing in political prison camps, and two-thirds of the country’s 24 million people facing regular food shortages.

When it comes to North Korean propaganda, much of the world focuses on the series of outlandish videos uploaded to the country’s YouTube channel and government website, largely for foreign consumption. In one fantasy, missiles rain down on a burning American city while an instrumental version of “We Are the World” plays in the background. In another, President Barack Obama and U.S. troops burn.

But what most North Koreans see on state TV is a different propaganda message: Kim Jong Un bending down to receive flowers from children, Kim visiting families living in rustic homes on front-line islands, Kim mobbed by gushing female soldiers.

…read more
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NKorea orders rocket prep after US B-2 drill

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North Korea‘s leader responded Friday to America’s use of nuclear-capable B-2 bombers in joint South Korean military drills with more angry rhetoric, saying his rocket forces are ready “to settle accounts with the U.S.”

The threats, while not an indication of imminent war, are most likely aimed at coercing South Korea into softening its policies, to win direct talks and aid from Washington, and to strengthen young leader Kim Jong Un‘s credentials at home.

Kim “convened an urgent operation meeting” with his senior generals early Friday, signed a rocket preparation plan and ordered his forces on standby to strike the U.S. mainland, South Korea, Guam and Hawaii, state media reported.

It is the latest in the litany of apparently empty threats that North Korea has issued, including highly improbable ones to nuke the United States. Experts believe the country is years away from developing nuclear-tipped missiles that could strike the United States.

Many analysts say they’ve also seen no evidence that Pyongyang’s missiles can hit the U.S. mainland.

Still, North Korea remains unpredictable, and its threats do raise tensions given the kind of arsenal it has: short- and mid-range missiles that can hit South Korea. Also, Seoul is only a short drive from the heavily armed border separating the Koreas.

There are fears of a localized conflict, such as a naval skirmish in disputed Yellow Sea waters. Such naval clashes have happened three times since 1999.

Kim said “the time has come to settle accounts with the U.S. imperialists in view of the prevailing situation,” according to a report by the North’s official Korean Central News Agency. The stealth bombers’ flight indicates that U.S. hostility against North Korea has “entered a reckless phase, going beyond the phase of threat and blackmail,” Kim was quoted as saying.

Tens of thousands of North Koreans turned out for a 90-minute mass rally at the main square in Pyongyang in support of Kim’s call to arms. Chanting “Death to the U.S. imperialists” and “Sweep away the U.S. aggressors,” soldiers and students marched through Kim Il Sung Square in downtown Pyongyang.

U.S. Forces Korea said that the B-2 stealth bombers flew from a U.S. air base in Missouri and dropped dummy munitions on an uninhabited South Korean island range on Thursday before returning home. The Pentagon said this …read more
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Articles of Interest

North Korea Rally: Mass Demonstration Supports Kim Jong Un’s Call To Arms Against U.S.

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By The Huffington Post News Editors

PYONGYANG, North Korea — Thousands of North Koreans have turned out for a mass rally at the main square in Pyongyang in support of their leader’s call to arms.

Chanting “Death to the U.S. imperialists” and “Sweep away the U.S. aggressors,” soldiers and students marched through Kim Il Sung Square in downtown Pyongyang on Friday during a 90-minute rally.

Read More…
More on North Korea

…read more
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Mass rally in Pyongyang in support of Kim Jong Un

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Thousands of North Koreans have turned out for a mass rally at the main square in Pyongyang in support of their leader’s call to arms.

Chanting “Death to the U.S. imperialists” and “Sweep away the U.S. aggressors,” soldiers and students marched through Kim Il Sung Square in downtown Pyongyang on Friday during a 90-minute rally.

State media reported early Friday that leader Kim Jong Un called an emergency military meeting to order the army’s rocket unit to prepare to strike the U.S. and South Korea in case of a “reckless provocation” by Washington or Seoul.

A full-blown North Korean attack is unlikely, though there are fears of a more localized conflict. Pyongyang has railed against the U.S. decision to send B-2 bombers for military drills with South Korea.

…read more
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Hagel: B-2s not intended to provoke North Korea

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America’s unprecedented decision to send nuclear-capable B-2 stealth bombers to drop dummy munitions during military drills with South Korea this week was part of normal exercises and not intended to provoke a reaction from North Korea, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said Thursday.

Hagel acknowledged, however, that North Korea‘s belligerent tones and actions in recent weeks have ratcheted up the danger in the region, “and we have to understand that reality.”

Speaking to Pentagon reporters, both Hagel and Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the B-2 bombers were a message intended more for allies than Pyongyang.

“The North Koreans have to understand that what they’re doing is very dangerous,” Hagel said. “I don’t think we’re doing anything extraordinary or provocative or out of the … orbit of what nations do to protect their own interests.” The U.S., he added, must make it clear to South Korea, Japan and other allies in the region that “these provocations by the North are taken by us very seriously and we’ll respond to that.”

U.S. Forces Korea announced in a statement Thursday that two B-2 stealth bombers flew from an air base in Missouri and dropped dummy munitions on a South Korean island range before returning home. While B-2 bombers have been used in past military exercises, including one in 2000 that included flights over South Korea, this is the first time that dummy munitions were dropped, according to the Pentagon.

The joint drills are likely to heighten the already escalating tensions between the U.S. and North Korea that have played out in recent weeks, including Pyongyang’s threat to carry out nuclear strikes on Washington and Seoul. North Korea has ramped up its rhetoric in response to the recent U.S. military exercises and also the U.N. sanctions over North Korea‘s nuclear test last month.

Use of the stealthy B-2 bombers added something of an exclamation point to the training mission, which had already included older but also nuclear-capable B-52 bombers.

“They’re telling the North Koreans, we can attack you in ways in which you can see us coming, and we can also attack you potentially in ways in which you cannot see us coming,” said retired Air Force Col. Cedric Leighton, a North Korean intelligence expert who served on the Joint Staff and the National Security Council. “So it’s a message to the North Koreans that they have to be very careful how they proceed next with their military …read more
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UN: More than 1/4 of NKorean children malnourished

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The United Nations says that more than a fourth of all North Korean children are stunted from chronic malnutrition and fully two-thirds of the country’s 24 million people don’t know where their next meal is coming from.

The U.N. said Friday that its Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs found that 2.8 million North Koreans “are in need of regular food assistance amidst worrying levels of chronic malnutrition and food insecurity.”

The OCHA report read out by U.N. spokesman Eduardo del Buey did not directly mention North Korea‘s recent threat to attack South Korea and America with a pre-emptive nuclear strike, and its claim to have abolished the Korean War armistice.

But the report said food aid should be neutral and impartial and not based on political developments.

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North Korea accuses US, South Korea of causing Internet outage in cyber attack

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North Korea says South Korea and the U.S. are behind a temporary Internet shut down this week. But an expert says it’s too early to determine what happened.

The official Korean Central News Agency provided few details in its claim Friday of an attack.

Foreigners in Pyongyang reported no Internet access Wednesday and Thursday. The Bangkok-based company that operates North Korea‘s Internet confirms a cyberattack but says networks are normal Friday.

South Korea denies the allegation. The U.S. military declined to comment. A security expert says cyberattack investigations can take months, and that individual hackers are more likely to blame than governments in this case.

Only a small number of approved North Koreans can surf the World Wide Web.

Pyongyang also criticizes U.S.-South Korean military drills and new UN sanctions.

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