Tag Archives: Rodong Sinmun

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Japan increasingly nervous about North Korea nukes

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It’s easy to write off North Korean threats to strike the United States with a nuclear-tipped missile as bluster: it has never demonstrated the capability to deploy a missile that could reach the Pacific island of Guam let alone the mainland U.S.

But what about Japan?

Though it remains a highly unlikely scenario, Japanese officials have long feared that if North Korea ever decides to play its nuclear card it has not only the means but several potential motives for launching an attack on Tokyo or major U.S. military installations on Japan‘s main island. And while a conventional missile attack is far more likely, Tokyo is taking North Korea‘s nuclear rhetoric seriously.

On Monday, amid reports North Korea is preparing a missile launch or another nuclear test, Japanese officials said they have stepped up measures to ensure the nation’s safety. Japanese media reported over the weekend that the defense minister has put destroyers with missile interception systems on alert to shoot down any missile or missile debris that appears to be headed for Japanese territory.

“We are doing all we can to protect the safety of our nation,” said chief Cabinet spokesman Yoshihide Suga, though he and defense ministry officials refused to confirm the reports about the naval alert, saying they do not want to “show their cards” to North Korea.

North Korea, meanwhile, issued a new threat against Japan.

“We once again warn Japan against blindly toeing the U.S. policy,” said an editorial Monday in the Rodong Sinmun, the official newspaper of its ruling party. “It will have to pay a dear price for its imprudent behavior.”

Following North Korea‘s third nuclear test in February, Japanese experts have increasingly voiced concerns that North Korea may already be able to hit — or at least target — U.S. bases and major population centers with nuclear warheads loaded onto its medium-range Rodong missiles.

“The threat level has jumped” following the nuclear test, said Narushige Michishita, a former Ministry of Defense official and director of the Security and International Studies Program at Tokyo‘s National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies.

Unlike North Korea‘s still-under-construction intercontinental ballistic missile, or ICBM, program, its arsenal of about 300 deployed Rodong missiles has been flight tested and is thought to have a range of about 1,300 kilometers …read more

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UN says Korean War armistice still in force

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The top U.N. spokesman says the armistice ending the Korean War is still valid and still in force, despite North Korea‘s claim that it has been nullified.

Martin Nesirky said Monday that the armistice agreement had been adopted by the U.N. General Assembly and neither North Korea nor South Korea could dissolve it unilaterally.

North Korea‘s Foreign Ministry last week said it was cancelling the 60-year-old armistice after the U.N. Security Council adopted new sanctions to punish Pyongyang for its latest nuclear test.

The country’s main newspaper, Rodong Sinmun, reported Monday that the armistice was nullified.

North Korea‘s mission to the U.N. did not respond to requests for comment.

…read more
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South Korea and US begin military drills as North Korea threatens war

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North Korean state media said Monday that Pyongyang had carried through with a threat to cancel the 60-year-old armistice that ended the Korean War, as it and South Korea staged dueling war games amid threatening rhetoric that has risen to the highest level since North Korea rained artillery shells on a South Korean island in 2010.

Enraged over the South’s joint military drills with the United States and recent U.N. sanctions, Pyongyang has piled threat on top of threat, including vows to launch a nuclear strike on the U.S. Seoul has responded with tough talk of its own and has placed its troops on high alert.

The North Korean government made no formal announcement Monday on its repeated threats to scrap the armistice, but the country’s main newspaper, Rodong Sinmun, reported that the armistice was nullified Monday as Pyongyang had earlier announced it would.

The North followed through on another promise Monday, shutting down a Red Cross hotline that the North and South used for general communication and to discuss aid shipments and separated families’ reunions.

The 11-day military drills that started Monday involve 10,000 South Korean and about 3,000 American troops. Those coincide with two months of separate U.S.-South Korean field exercises that began March 1.

The drills are held annually, and this year, according to South Korean media, the “Key Resolve” drill rehearses different scenarios for a possible conflict on the Korean peninsula using computer-simulated exercises. The U.S. and South Korean troops will be used to test the scenarios.

Also continuing are large-scale North Korean drills that Seoul says involve the army, navy and air force. The South Korean defense ministry said there have been no military activities it considers suspicious.

The North has threatened to nullify the armistice several times in times of tension with the outside world, and in 1996 the country sent hundreds of armed troops into a border village. The troops later withdrew.

Despite the heightened tension, there were signs of business as usual Monday.

The two Koreas continue to have at least two working channels of communication between their militaries and aviation authorities.

One of those hotlines was used Monday to give hundreds of South Koreans approval to enter North Korea to go to work. Their jobs are at the only remaining operational symbol of joint inter-Korean cooperation, the Kaesong industrial complex. It is operated in North Korea with South Korean money and knowhow and a mostly North Korean work force.

The North Korean rhetoric escalated as the U.N. Security Council last week approved a new round of sanctions over Pyongyang’s latest nuclear weapons test Feb. 12.

Analysts said that much of the bellicosity is meant to shore up loyalty among citizens and the military for North Korea‘s young leader, Kim Jong Un.

“This is part of their brinksmanship,” said Daniel Pinkston, a Seoul-based expert on North Korea with the International Crisis Group think tank. “It’s an effort to signal their resolve, to show they are willing to take greater risks, with the expectation that everyone else caves in and gives them what they want.”

Part of …read more
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North Korea to allow foreigners to use mobile internet

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North Korea will soon allow foreigners to tweet, Skype and surf the Internet from their cellphones, iPads and other mobile devices in its second relaxation of controls on communications in recent weeks. However, North Korean citizens will not have access to the mobile Internet service to be offered by provider Koryolink within the next week.

Koryolink, a joint venture between Korea Post & Telecommunications Corporation and Egypt’s Orascom Telecom Media and Technology Holding SAE, informed foreign residents in Pyongyang on Friday that it will launch a third generation, or 3G, mobile Internet service no later than March 1.

The announcement comes just weeks after North Korea began allowing foreigners to bring their own cellphones into the country to use with Koryolink SIM cards, reversing a longstanding rule requiring most visitors to relinquish their phones at customs and leaving many without easy means of communication with the outside world.

The two changes in policy mean foreigners in North Korea will have unprecedented connectivity while living, working or traveling in a country long regarded as one of the most isolated nations in the world.

However, wireless Internet will not yet be offered to North Koreans, who are governed by a separate set of telecommunication rules from foreigners. North Koreans will be allowed to access certain 3G services, including SMS and MMS messaging, video calls and subscriptions to the state-run Rodong Sinmun newspaper — but not the global Internet.

The lack of Internet access in North Korea has put the country at the bottom of Internet freedom surveys. Though North Korea is equipped for broadband Internet, only a small, approved segment of the population has access to the World Wide Web.

During a visit to Pyongyang early last month, Google’s executive chairman pressed the North Koreans to expand access to the Internet. Eric Schmidt noted that it would be “very easy” for North Korea to offer Internet on Koryolink’s fast-expanding 3G cellphone network.

“As the world becomes increasingly connected, the North Korean decision to be virtually isolated is very much going to affect their physical world and their economic growth,” he wrote in a Jan. 20 blog post after returning to the United States. “It will make it harder for them to catch up economically. It is their choice now, and in my view, it’s time for them to start, or they will remain behind.”

Soon after Schmidt’s visit, Google unveiled maps of North Korea with more details based on contributions from foreigners using satellite images and publicly available information to map the country. Before, North Korea was left mostly blank in Google Maps but with the update, Pyongyang and major North Korean cities are shown with street names, parks, roads, train stops and monuments.

Cellphone use has multiplied in North Korea since Orascom built a 3G network more than four years ago. More than a million people are now using mobile phones in North Korea, where the network now covers most major cities, according to Orascom.

Chinese-made Huawei cellphones sold by Koryolink are not cheap, with the most basic model costing about …read more
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News, Politics, Government

North Korea eases some restrictions on foreign cellphones

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North Korea is loosening some restrictions on foreign cellphones by allowing visitors to bring their own phones into the country. However, security regulations still prohibit mobile phone calls between foreigners and locals.

For years, North Korea required visitors to relinquish foreign cellphones at the border until their departure, leaving many tourists without an easy way to communicate with the outside world.

The ritual of handing over phones was part of an exhaustive security check that most visitors face at immigration in North Korea. Many foreigners — including Eric Schmidt, the executive chairman of Google, who traveled to North Korea earlier this month — choose to leave their phones behind in Beijing before flying to Pyongyang.

Now, foreigners can bring wideband, WCDMA-compatible mobile phones into the country or rent a local handset at the airport, and purchase a local SIM card for use in North Korea. The SIM card allows them to call most foreign countries, foreign embassies in Pyongyang and international hotels in the North Korean capital, according to Ryom Kum Dan of 3G cellphone service provider Koryolink.

Cellphones rent for about $3.50 per day and SIM cards cost about $67, she said Monday. Satellite phones are prohibited, she said.

However, foreigners will not be able to communicate by mobile phone with local North Koreans, whose cellphones operate on a separate network, and they will not have access to the Internet using locally provided SIM cards. They can phone Japan and the United States, but not South Korea.

Cellphone use has multiplied in North Korea since Egyptian telecommunications firm Orascom built a 3G network in North Korea four years ago. More than a million people are using cellphones in the country, according to Orascom Telecom Media and Technology, which runs Koryolink as part of a joint venture with North Korea‘s telecommunications ministry called CHEO Technology JV Co.

The 3G network also provides North Koreans with access to the state-run Rodong Sinmun newspaper for a fee, but not to the global Internet.

On Friday, Koryolink saleswomen were setting up cellphone rental booths at Pyongyang’s Sunan airport. One poster depicting a woman in a traditional Korean dress with a cellphone pressed to her ear read, “Here You Can Buy Koryolink Visitor Line.”

During his recent four-day trip to North Korea, Schmidt urged North Korea to provide its people with better access to the global Internet. The Google executive chairman noted that it would be “very easy” for North Korea to offer Internet on the 3G cellphone network.

“As the world becomes increasingly connected, the North Korean decision to be virtually isolated is very much going to affect their physical world and their economic growth. It will make it harder for them to catch up economically,” he wrote in a Google blog entry posted Sunday.

“It is their choice now, and in my view, it’s time for them to start, or they will remain behind.”

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