Official North Korean Thread

North Korea Rejects Negotiations with USA

North Korea has said it will not be returning to the negotiating table with the United States, media reports said Wednesday.

Pyongyang said while it was not opposed to a dialogue, it will not sit down at a "humiliating negotiating table with the party brandishing a nuclear stick," according to a statement by North Korea's Foreign Ministry.

The insistence by the US that the North demonstrate its "will for denuclearization" before any negotiation was "a very impudent hostile act," said the statement carried by the Korean Central News Agency Tuesday.

US Secretary of State John Kerry urged North Korea last week to take "meaningful steps" toward denuclearization and allow the resumption of six-party talks involving the Koreas, Japan, the US, Russia and China.

The talks, aimed at ending North Korea's nuclear programme, stalled in 2009.


Source : Sapa-dpa /gm
Date : 17 Apr 2013 06:36
 
North Korean Exiles Scoff at Talk of War

By TIM SULLIVAN

Associated Press

Asked if there might be war, the 40ish woman with the spangly purple shirt laughed out loud. She waved her hands back and forth, as if whisking away a pesky insect.

She fled North Korea late last summer, pushing her way at night through the chest-deep waters of the Amnok River, following a guide into China and, eventually, to South Korea. The journey cost her $5,000, a fortune back home.

She comes from a part of rural North Korea where electricity is a rarity, and the punishing winters seem to last forever. She came to a city of two-story-tall TV screens that light up the night, a city stalked by armies of financial analysts in well-tailored suits.

Now, amid international fears that North Korea may be preparing for another missile test, and repeated warnings from Pyongyang that it will destroy its enemies, she simply scoffs. The exiles have seen life in both Koreas, and are unimpressed with what they left behind.

"It's not even possible for North Korea to have a war," said the woman, who spent years arranging black market deals for bronze smuggled to China. She asked that her name and other identifying details not be used, to protect relatives still living in the North.

"They don't have fuel. They don't have electricity," she said. "Even if they yell to the world that they'll go to war, it's all just talk."

Foreign analysts have long said that North Korea's desperate shortages are, in part, because Pyongyang channels so much of its resources to the military and into weapons development. But in a country where many soldiers have to spend months every year working on farms or construction projects, and where bicycles remain a status symbol for most people, the exiles say North Korea is so poor and undeveloped that it knows it would lose any fight.

North Korea's most recent round of threats, including warnings of pre-emptive nuclear attacks on the United States, come in the wake of U.N. sanctions approved after Pyongyang's February nuclear test. They also come during annual U.S.-South Korea military maneuvers, which Pyongyang has long seen as a provocation.

For weeks, foreign governments and analysts have been debating Pyongyang's threats: Is war looming? Are the threats nothing but theater; a search for attention and foreign aid? Is North Korea's new young leader, Kim Jong Un, more dangerous than his father?

South Korea's small community of North Korean exiles, a group that totals about 24,000, think they know.

"It's all nonsense," said Nam-su Han, who fled North Korea when he was 20 years old and now runs a Seoul-based activist group that teaches young South Koreans about life in the North.

"I'm not worried at all" about war, said a former North Korean miner, a friendly man with a mop of uncombed hair who now runs a small Seoul store. "We all know if war breaks out, North Korea will collapse."

Mixed with that disdain, though, is something you may not expect from people who risked their lives, and often left their families, to reach South Korea: a lingering attachment to the nation they abandoned.

"My heart is always with North Korea" said the former smuggler. "Even today."

In part, that is nostalgia for their homeland. But it also reflects the difficulty of life in South Korea for most refugees, who are commonly known here as "defectors."

The exiles come from a place where the government assigns people to schools, to jobs and to apartments. Its security services keep watch over everything and its propaganda dominates television, radio and newspapers. The children of the elite often move swiftly into elite jobs, while the children of farmers and miners normally follow their fathers' footsteps.

South Korea, by contrast, has fostered one of the world's most deeply competitive cultures. It is a nation awash in American-style consumerism that went from an economic backwater to a high-tech and industrial powerhouse in just a couple decades.

In this world, former North Koreans find themselves stumbling to compete for jobs, and to keep jobs they find. Many have immense difficulties fitting in socially. In a culture where height is a measure of attractiveness - but where North Koreans are noticeably shorter because of widespread malnutrition - many have trouble finding spouses.

In a hyper-modern nation, they are often disparaged as ill-kempt uneducated bumpkins.

"It's really difficult to live in South Korea," said a 24-year-old defector, who also spoke on condition he not be identified. He left home at 16 to earn money in China, working on a farm in the mountains, but eventually decided he'd make a new life in the South. While the South Korean government takes care of defectors for a few months, feeding and housing them and trying to ease their transitions, many refugees have left behind all their family and friends.

"It's like being newly born in the world," said the young man, now a business student at a Seoul university. "I have no roots."

Compared to many exiles, he's done well. While he had to go back to high school at age 20, he is now in a business program at the university. He dresses stylishly - with zip-up plaid shoes, a black T-shirt and a felt blazer - and has largely lost the North Korean accent that once set him apart.

Still, he feels the stigma of his homeland.

"The worst thing about being here is that South Koreans look down on North Koreans, because they come from a poor society," he said, sitting in an outdoor plaza on the edges of Seoul, in between a Burger King and a Coffee Bean coffee shop.

After six years in the city, only a few people know about his past. He's seen the way people look at him when he tells the truth. So he tells most people he's from Seoul. If anyone questions his accent, he says he was raised in the South Korean countryside.

And when he hears talk about tension flaring between his new country and his old?

"It's always heartbreaking," he said.


Source : Sapa-AP /gm
Date : 18 Apr 2013 06:16
 
Young N. Koreans Trained to 'Seek Revenge on US'

North Korea's newest batch of future soldiers - scrawny 11-year-olds with freshly shaved heads - punch the air as they practice taekwondo on the grounds of the Mangyongdae Revolutionary School. Students and teachers here say they're studying harder these days to prepare for a fight.

Across the country, banners, slogans and artwork have been redrawn to focus on fighting "the imperialist Americans and their traitorous followers," a reference to South Korea. Slogans on improving North Korea's economy had dominated since 2009, but anti-American propaganda has re-emerged over the past year, particularly following U.S.-led censure of North Korea's decision to launch a long-range rocket and test a nuclear bomb.

At the military school, where students work on desktop computers without Internet access and practice their English with chants such as "The respected Marshal Kim Jong Un is our father," classwork is infused with conflict.

"Because of the present situation, I am trying to study harder, because I really think that's how I can get my revenge on the American imperialists: by getting top marks in class," one student, Jo Chung Hyok, told The Associated Press.

"It's my revolutionary duty," Jo said. "I'm working extra hard to get top marks in military subjects like tactics and shooting."

The uptick in anti-American sentiment comes on the heels of international condemnation and U.N. sanctions for North Korea's long-range rocket launch in December and its underground nuclear test in February, which Pyongyang accuses Washington and Seoul of instigating. Joint U.S.-South Korean military drills south of the border also have incensed Pyongyang.

The anti-American campaign also comes as North Korea gears up to mark the 60th anniversary in July of the close of the Korean War. The three-year conflict pitting North Korea and China against U.S.-led U.N. troops ended in a truce, not a peace treaty. The continued division of the Korean Peninsula, and the presence of 28,500 American troops in South Korea, has rankled North Korea's leadership.

For weeks, North Korea has threatened to attack the U.S. and South Korea for holding joint military drills and for supporting U.N. sanctions. Washington and Seoul say they've seen no evidence that Pyongyang is actually preparing for a major conflict, though South Korean defense officials say the North appears prepared to test-fire a medium-range missile capable of reaching the American territory of Guam.

Both sides have said that in order for dialogue, the other side needs to act.

The U.S. says Pyongyang must bring down tensions and honor previous disarmament agreements before talks can begin.

North Korea laid out a long list of preconditions for resuming talks Thursday, including the lifting of U.N. sanctions, the end of U.S.-South Korea military drills, the withdrawal of U.S. nuclear weapons assets from the region a halt to criticism of North Korea. On Friday, it reiterated a warning to South Korea to apologize for offending its leadership before any talk of dialogue to defuse tensions.

South Korea's Foreign Ministry called North Korea's demands illogical, but in Washington, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry put a more positive spin on Pyongyang's response.

"It's the first word of negotiation or thought of that we have heard from them since all of this has begun," he said Thursday before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. "I'm prepared to look at that as at least a beginning, not acceptable obviously, and we have to go further."

The U.S. remains open to "authentic and credible negotiations," White House spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters aboard Air Force One. But he said the U.S. has not seen any commitment from North Koreans that they are willing to end their nuclear program.

Inside the sprawling compound of the Mangyongdae Revolutionary School, students are made aware of their government's latest invectives against its foes, in addition to usual subjects of study: biology, history, foreign languages.

"At the moment, the situation on the Korean Peninsula is tense, and America is being bad to us," said Lt. Col. Kim Hak Bin, an administrator at the military academy. "But you can see that the students here look just as bright as usual, and life and classes are carrying on the same as before.

"Our students are ready to go to the front lines whenever a war breaks out, and they are now studying harder than usual," he said Thursday.

The school, located near the birthplace of North Korea's first leader, Kim Il Sung, was created in 1947 to house, feed and educate the sons and daughters of soldiers killed while fighting the Japanese who occupied Korea from 1910 to 1945.

Today, the girls are housed in a separate academy named after Kim Il Sung's mother, the Kang Pan Sok Revolutionary School in the western port city of Nampho.

Late leader Kim Jong Il attended the academy for eight months during the Korean War, school records show. His son, current leader Kim Jong Un, did not. His military education came from studying at the Kim Il Sung Military University next door.

During his 17-year rule, Kim Jong Il elevated the importance of the army and poured much of the nation's meager resources into defense. Military life became an integral part of the North Korean identity.

The students here are being groomed to serve as the "core" of the Korean People's Army, said biology teacher Ri Kyong Hui.

A visit to the military academy offered a peek into how young North Koreans learn to march and chant with such startling precision as displayed in parades held on major anniversaries.

A group of students, dressed in uniform, struggled to get their march just right as an instructor adjusted their arms. One boy grimaced in frustration. Inside, other students rehearsed for a performance, using fake rifles as props.

But boys will be boys, and the 11-year-olds who just joined the academy at the start of the month were hardly examples of discipline.

Suited up in light green and blue tracksuits, they squirmed, giggled and made faces as they practiced taekwondo.

---

Associated Press Television News in Pyongyang, and AP writers Hyung-jin Kim in Seoul, South Korea, and Matthew Pennington and Jim Kuhnhenn in Washington contributed to this report. Follow AP's Korea bureau chief in Pyongyang at www.twitter.com/newsjean.


Source : Sapa-AP /pk
Date : 19 Apr 2013 09:43
 
a-10-thunderbolt-ii.jpg


vs.

907757de2906740d2f0f6a706700063b.jpg


Good luck, kids.
 
North Korea Demands Recognition as a Nuclear State

North Korea renewed its demand Tuesday for recognition as a nuclear power, saying it was a pre-requisite for the start of any dialogue with the United States.

A commentary in the official Rodong Sinmun newspaper rejected as "totally unacceptable" a US demand that North Korea commit to abandoning its nuclear weapons and missile programme before any talks can begin.

Any meeting at the negotiating table must be "between nuclear weapons states", it said.

The United States has made it clear that it will never formally accept the North, which carried out its third nuclear test in February, as a nuclear power.

After a month of escalating military tensions on the Korean peninsula, Seoul, Washington and Pyongyang have begun skirting around the possibility of dialogue.

For the moment, however, most energy is being expended on rejecting each other's pre-conditions.

During a trip to Seoul, Beijing and Tokyo earlier this month, US Secretary of State John Kerry said Pyongyang must first prove it was serious about reining in its nuclear programme.

North Korea responded by demanding the withdrawal of UN sanctions and an end to all future South Korea-US joint military exercises.


Source : Sapa-AFP /pk
Date : 23 Apr 2013 09:58
 
I, Humberto Fortunino Pomfred, have engineered the below anti-satellite missile:

missilej.jpg


I will sell this missile to the highest bidder. If the world does not want this technology to land in the hands of North Korea, my price is $ 10,000,000.
 
A Look at North Korea's Military Capabilities

North Korea's military, founded 81 years ago Thursday, is older than the country itself. It began as an anti-Japanese militia and is now the heart of the nation's "military first" policy.

Late leader Kim Jong Il elevated the military's role during his 17-year rule, boosting troop levels to an estimated 1.2 million soldiers, according to the South Korean government. The military's new supreme commander, Kim Jong Un, gave the Korean People's Army a sharpened focus this year by instructing troops to build a "nuclear arms force."

The secretive army divulges few details about its operations, but here is an assessment from foreign experts of its strengths and weaknesses:

---

ARTILLERY

North Korea provided a chilling reminder of what its artillery is capable of when it showered a front-line South Korean island with shells, killing four people in November 2010 and underscoring the threat that its artillery troops pose at the disputed sea border.

South Korea says North Korea has more than 13,000 artillery guns, and its long-range batteries are capable of hitting the capital Seoul, a city of more than 10 million people just 30 miles (50 kilometers) from the border.

"North Korea's greatest advantage is that its artillery could initially deliver a heavy bombardment on the South Korean capital," Mark Fitzpatrick, a former U.S. State Department official now with the International Institute for Strategic Studies, said in an email.

South Korea's defense minister estimates that 70 percent of North Korean artillery batteries along the border could be "neutralized" in five days if war broke out. But Sohn Yong-woo, a professor at the Graduate School of National Defense Strategy of Hannam University in South Korea, said that would be too late to prevent millions of civilian casualties and avert a disastrous blow to Asia's fourth-largest economy.

---

SPECIAL FORCES

Experts believe guerrilla warfare would be the North's most viable strategy in the event of conflict, since its conventional army suffers from aging equipment and a shortage of firepower.

Seoul estimates North Korea has about 200,000 special forces, and Pyongyang has used them before.

In 1968, 31 North Korean commandos stormed Seoul's presidential Blue House in a failed assassination attempt against then-President Park Chung-hee. That same year, more than 120 North Korean commandos sneaked into eastern South Korea and killed some 20 South Korean civilians, soldiers and police officers.

In 1996, 26 North Korean agents infiltrated South Korea's northeastern mountains after their submarine broke down, sparking a manhunt that left all but two of them dead, along with 13 South Korean soldiers and civilians.

"The special forces' goal is to discourage both the United States and South Korea from fighting with North Korea at the earliest stage of war by putting major infrastructure, such as nuclear plants, and their citizens at risk," said Kim Yeon-su, a professor at Korea National Defense University in Seoul. "The North's special forces are a key component of its asymmetric capabilities along with nuclear bombs, missiles and artillery. Their job is to create as many battlefronts as possible to put their enemies in disarray."

---

ON LAND, BY SEA AND IN THE AIR

In March 2010, 46 South Korean sailors died in a Yellow Sea attack on their warship that Seoul blamed on a North Korean submarine. Pyongyang denies involvement. Separately, since 1999, North and South Korean navies have fought three bloody skirmishes near their disputed western maritime border. Experts say those battles show while the South has an edge in naval firepower and technology, the North relies on the element of surprise.

North Korea has 70 submarines while South Korea has 10, according to Seoul's Defense Ministry. The most menacing threats from the North's navy are small submarines that would deposit commando raiders along the South Korean coast, said John Pike, head of the Globalsecurity.org think tank.

North Korea also has 820 warplanes, more than South Korea, though Seoul is backed up by American air power. The South says most of the North's aircraft are obsolete. North Korea also suffers chronic fuel shortages that have forced its air force to cut sorties, experts say.

"North Korea would not be able to prosecute a full-fledged war for very long," Fitzpatrick said. "Its biggest problem is that North Korea would quickly lose control of the skies because of the vastly superior (South Korean) and U.S. air forces. The reported number of North Korean aircraft is meaningless, because many of them cannot fly, and North Korean pilots have little training in the air."

The U.S. stations 28,500 U.S. troops in South Korea and has recently flown nuclear-capable stealth B-2 bombers and F-22 fighter jets during joint drills in a show of force aimed at deterring North Korea.

Logistics and supplies are another issue. Heavy equipment deployed by naval and air forces requires extensive repairs, especially on rugged terrain like the Korean Peninsula. South Korea's Defense Ministry estimates North Korea's wartime resources, mostly stored underground, would last only two to three months.

"North Korea's only chance of winning any war depends on how quickly it can end one," Sohn said.

North Korea could try to compensate for its lack of effective equipment with sheer manpower. North Korea, a country of about 25 million, has an estimated 7.7 million reserves.

---

MISSILES AND NUCLEAR WEAPONS

North Korea says it needs to develop nuclear weapons as a deterrent against U.S. aggression. It has conducted three underground nuclear tests since 2006, the most recent in February.

Pyongyang is believed to have enough weaponized plutonium for four to eight nuclear bombs, according to Siegfried Hecker, a nuclear expert with Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation.

But he doubts Pyongyang has mastered the technology to tip a missile with a nuclear warhead. "I don't believe North Korea has the capacity to attack the United States with nuclear weapons mounted on missiles and won't for many years," he said on the website of Stanford University's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies this month.

Bruce Bennett, a Rand Corp. expert, said earlier this month that it's very unlikely the North has a nuclear missile capable of hitting the U.S. but said there is a "reasonable chance" that Pyongyang has short-range nuclear missile capability.

---

CHEMICAL AND BIOLOGICAL WEAPONS

North Korea denies it runs any chemical and biological weapons programs. South Korea claims that Pyongyang has up to 5,000 tons of chemical weapons.

The IISS says that although the figures are "highly speculative," the North probably does possess chemical and biological arms programs.

"Whatever the actual status of North Korea's chemical and biological capabilities, the perception that it has, or likely has, chemical and biological weapons contributes to Pyongyang's interest in creating uncertainties in Washington, Seoul and Tokyo and raises the stakes to deter or intimidate potential enemies," it said on its website. North Korea is not a signatory to the Chemical Weapons Convention, but it has acceded to the non-binding Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention.

---

Follow Sam Kim on Twitter: www.twitter.com/samkim-ap


Source : Sapa-AP /pk
Date : 25 Apr 2013 10:47
 
North Korea Says to put US Citizen on Trial

North Korea said Saturday that it would put a US citizen on trial for trying to overthrow the communist regime, in the face of soaring tensions between Pyongyang and the West.

The North's official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said US citizen Pae Jun-Ho had admitted to the charges and would soon face "judgment".

Pae was arrested in November as he entered the northeastern port city of Rason, which lies inside a special economic zone near North Korea's border with Russia and China.

The announcement follows a months-long standoff on the Korean peninsula stoked by the North's nuclear test in February, which prompted the UN Security Council to impose fresh sanctions on the isolated nation.

KCNA said a "preliminary inquiry" had been completed for Pae.

"He admitted that he committed crimes aimed to topple the DPRK (Democratic People's Republic of Korea) with hostility toward it. His crimes were proved by evidence.

"He will soon be taken to the Supreme Court of the DPRK to face judgment," according to the report, which did not say what the charges were based on.

South Korean media in December identified the detainee as a 44-year-old Korean-American tour operator.

He was travelling with five other tourists and was detained when a computer hard disk was found among the group's belongings, according to the South Korean newspaper Kookmin Ilbo.

Several Americans have been held in North Korea in recent years.

In 2011, a US delegation led by Robert King, the US special envoy for human rights and humanitarian issues, secured the release of Eddie Jun Yong-Su, a California-based businessman, who had been detained for apparent missionary activities.

In 2010, former US president Jimmy Carter won plaudits when he negotiated the release of American national Aijalon Mahli Gomes, sentenced to eight years of hard labour for illegally crossing into the North from China.

On another mercy mission a year earlier in 2009, former president Bill Clinton won the release of US television journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee, jailed after wandering across the North Korean border with China.

Relations between the two Koreas have worsened markedly in recent months, with Seoul announcing on Friday a complete withdrawal from a jointly run industrial park in the North.

The move plunged into doubt the future of the Kaesong complex -- once a rare symbol of cooperation across the world's most heavily militarised border, and a crucial source of hard currency for Kim Jong-Un's isolated regime.

South Korea said Friday that it had decided to pull its remaining 175 workers from the site after Pyongyang rejected its ultimatum to join formal negotiations on restarting the stalled operations.

A spokeswoman for the Unification Ministry said 127 workers were expected to cross back over the border in two convoys of vehicles on Saturday afternoon.

The remaining 48 people -- mostly government employees who manage the complex as well as telecom and electrical engineers -- would be pulled out on Monday, she said.

But a businessman with interests in Kaesong said many of the 123 South Korean companies who usually operate there were resisting the move.

"Some say we should comply with the government request to pull out but many others do not want to leave for fear of losing their investment," he told AFP, asking not to be named.

Established in 2004, the complex lies 10 kilometres (six miles) inside the North, which remains technically at war with the South after the 1950-53 Korean War was concluded with a ceasefire rather than a peace treaty.


Source : Sapa-AFP /mm
Date : 27 Apr 2013 06:25
 
US Lawmakers Introduce Tough New Sanctions Bill against N Korea

Republican and Democratic lawmakers are proposing to step up sanctions against North Korea by punishing companies, banks and governments that do prohibited business with it.

The bill crafted by leaders of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and introduced Friday is modeled on sanctions in force against Iran.

Congressional staffers say it's intended to improve enforcement of existing sanctions, but also expand them.

The measure reflects growing concern over North Korea's nuclear weapon and missile development, and frustration over the failure of U.S. policy to stop it.

The bill was introduced by Republican Rep. Ed Royce and Democratic Rep. Eliot Engel. Its prospects for becoming law are uncertain.

The draft bill does not name any particular entities, but potentially could impact companies and banks in China through which the North conducts most of its business.

The draft gives the president authority to sanction governments for illicit dealings with North Korea, but also authority to waive the bill's provisions on a case-by-case basis on national security grounds.

The legislation could irk Beijing at a time when the Obama administration seeks greater Chinese cooperation in pressuring Pyongyang to end war threats and honor past commitments on denuclearization.

Beijing signed up for the toughest U.N. sanctions yet on North Korea in response to a February nuclear test.

But Royce has called for tougher unilateral steps, as the U.S. government did in 2005 against a Macau-based bank because it held about $25 million in North Korean funds. That measure had a significant impact, but proved complicated to undo when nuclear negotiations with North Korea finally got back on track.


Source : Sapa-AP /aw
Date : 26 Apr 2013 22:40
 
$25 million is phhht. Would not buy the starter motor for a rocket. Targeting the financial backers of the suppliers is the only way to throttle this regime, just as targeting the suppliers of narcotics is the only way to reduce the trade.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top
Sign up to the MyBroadband newsletter
X