S. Korea: North Korea Engaged in 'Reign of Terror'

Seoul believes that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un is strengthening his power. BBC

SEOUL — South Korea has called the recently announced political purges at the top of North Korea's leadership a “reign of terror” that could further destabilize their already shaky relations. Meanwhile, North Korean media continue to attack the uncle of leader Kim Jong Un who was very publicly removed from power.

South Korea's President Park Geun-hye at a Tuesday Cabinet meeting said North Korea's massive purges appear aimed at consolidating leader Kim Jong Un's power.

North Korea on Monday confirmed earlier reports that Jang Song Thaek, the uncle of Kim Jong Un and assumed second in command had been abruptly removed from power over disloyal and corrupt behavior.

South Korea's spy agency broke the story last week and said two of Jang's assistants were executed in public in November. It said authorities are going after his followers.

President Park said the dismissals and executions amounted to a “reign of terror” with potentially destabilizing effects.

She says North-South Korea relations could become more unstable from now on. At a time like this, she says, it is the duty of the state, as well as the political parties that represent the people, to firmly protect the South Korean people's security and liberal democracy.

Jang was labeled as leading a self-indulgent, “capitalist” lifestyle that included drug use, womanizing, and gambling. North Korea's state media published photographs and accounts of Jang being arrested at a Korean Workers Party meeting by uniformed officers.

The official Rodong Sinmun newspaper on Tuesday quoted North Korean citizens saying Jang and his supporters should be put to death. The newspaper urged unity and loyalty under Kim Jong Un vowing to never forgive traitors.

Jung Sung-jang, a researcher at Seoul's Sejong Institute, says it is unlikely that Jang’s purging will impact North Korean policy in any dramatic way. But he says it will definitely stiffen the dynamics within the country, which could prompt Pyongyang to temporarily adopt a more stringent stance.

Jang was also accused of selling off North Korea's resources at a cheap price, an apparent reference to China which buys most of its exports. He was in charge of negotiating Chinese investment in special economic zones.

Some Western political analysts say Jang may have been removed because Pyongyang believed he became too close to Beijing.

But Professor of Korean history at Kookmin University Andrei Lankov argues Jang's role in the bilateral relationship was not so clear and ties with Beijing are not likely to be affected.

“He is not a China hand. He is not a person who has close, personal connections in China, a good understanding of how China works and so on. I would say that probably it will not change much or maybe will not change anything because Chinese will be equally eager to talk to a new face,” he said.

Beijing's state run Global Times newspaper Tuesday said China should help bring about Kim Jong-Un's visit as soon as possible for the benefit of friendly ties and long-term stability.

The 30-year-old Kim Jong Un's neglecting to visit China since coming to power two years ago, and a third nuclear test in March, were widely viewed as a snub.

The editorial noted balancing friendship with Pyongyang while opposing its nuclear weapons is a test for China's diplomacy. Beijing is trying to revive the long-stalled six-nation talks it hosts on denuclearizing North Korea.

Japan, South Korea, and the United States are refusing to negotiate until North Korea demonstrates it is serious about giving up its nuclear programs.

VOA Seoul producer Youmi Kim contributed to this report.

Video: More than 18,000 North Korean children sacrifice using their lifes to protect Kim Jong-un

18,423 children participated in Korean Red Riding Hood ceremony and praised. These children oath, decided to use both of their lives to defend leader Kim Jong-un.

International media on April 15th posted a video broadcasting on Korean Central TV, which seen a rally of thousands of young children throughout the country in Pyongyang.

Bulletin said of among the over 18 thousand Korean children are present in this particular rally, 3,475 children were rewarded.


What the Democratic People's Republic of Korea !

N. Korea conducts UAV trainng exercise

Illustrative image

North Korean hereditary dictator Kim Jong-un oversaw attack drills carried out by Pyongyang’s “superprecision drone planes,” according to state media Wednesday. Experts have a caveat to the report: North Korea has no remotely piloted drone aircraft.

Mr. Kim, the third generation of his family to lead the crumbling and hermetic communist state, “guided a drill of superprecision drone planes assaulting targets and a firing drill of self-propelled flak rockets destroying ‘enemy’ cruise missile coming in [to] attack [at] low altitude,” according to Korea Central News Agency.

“Despite what’s claimed in the KCNA story, there’s never been any evidence [North Korea] has operational drones,” tweeted Steve Herman, Voice of America’s North Asia bureau chief, a few minutes after the agency’s report.
In February last year, citing unnamed intelligence sources, South Korea’s Yonhap news agency reported that North Korea had bought U.S.-made MQM-107 Streaker target drones from a Middle Eastern country and was seeking to develop them into an unmanned attack aircraft program.

But commentators at the time pointed out that the Streaker was 1970’s-era pre-programmable flight technology completely unlike modern, remotely piloted unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs).

“At the very best, North Korea now possesses a very unwieldy, inaccurate, subsonic cruise missile, in limited numbers, that is slightly better equipped technology-wise than a German WWII-era V-1 Buzz Bomb,” wrote Asia Security Watch analyst Craig Scanlan.

KCNA said the drones, which were not pictured in the report, “after making long-range flight as planned … headed toward ‘enemy positions’ and stormed the targets, destroying them with accuracy.”

Mr. Kim, who was pictured watching the exercise through binoculars, “said that the planes are very fast and have high target discerning ability,” KCNA reported, adding that the drones had been “assigned the flight route and time with targets in South Korea in mind.”

The drone exercise was followed by a demonstration of North Korean self-propelled anti-aircraft batteries, which successfully destroyed “a target disguised as Tomahawk cruise missile of the enemy,” according to the agency.

“An outburst of fire with roaring blast flew toward the missile, destroying it at a single shot,” the agency reported.

“When the drills turn into a battle, the enemies will be made to drink a bitter cup, unable to raise their heads,” Mr. Kim said, “stressing the need to destroy the enemies without mercy so that not a single man can survive to sign a document of surrender.”

North Korea army test-fired KN-02 surface-to-surface ballistic missile into the Sea of Japan.

Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) launched short-range missiles into the Sea of Japan on Friday, March 15, 2013, the Yonhap News Agency reported, citing military sources. According to the report, the DPRK military test-fired two short- range missiles presumed to be KN-02 surface-to-surface ballistic missile, estimated to have a range of about 120 km.


The authorities have yet to confirm the exact time of the launching. North Korea has been holding its own military exercise in the Sea of Japan and the firing of the two missiles into open waters is believed to be a part of an exercise designed to gauge their accuracy.The North Korean KN-02 short-range ballistic missile is an upgraded vesion of the Russian-made Tochka (SS-21 Scarab). This type of missile can be used for precision strikes against important targets, such as airfields, command posts, bridges, storage facilities and troops concentrations.
The DPRK's launch came after Washington and Seoul began their " Key Resolve" joint military exercises on Monday despite Pyongyang' s warning of annulment of the armistice agreement that halted the 1950-53 Korean War. At the same time, United States announced the deployment of 14 additional ground-based interceptor missiles in Alaska by 2017, a move which apparently reflects that Washington is taking North Korea's long-range missile threats more seriously.
The Pentagon also plans to set up a new radar station in Japan to beef up its capability to detect any missile fired from North Korea.

Russian-made SS-21 Scarab surface-to-surface short range ballistic missile

armyrecognition.com

N. Korea sharply increases flights of fighter jets

By Kim Eun-jung Enlarge photo

SEOUL, March 13 (Yonhap) -- North Korea's air force has sharply increased jet fighter training flights in the past few days, with the number of sorties reaching as many as 700 on the day South Korea and the United States launched a joint war game earlier this week, a military source in Seoul said Wednesday.

The North's move is seen as part of efforts to beef up combat readiness and to closely monitor joint drills in the South that began on Monday. The drill, called Key Resolve, involves about 10,000 Korean troops and 3,000 American personnel as well as military weapons and equipment, including F-22 stealth jets and B-52 bombers deployed from overseas U.S. bases.

"Flights of North Korean air force's fighter jets and helicopters reached about 700 sorties on March 11," the source said on the condition of anonymity. "It is seen as unprecedented in scale."

The recent sortie is nearly six times more than the maximum number of flights in a day during last year's summer training, the source said.

The impoverished nation is known to have restricted flying time to save hard currency as its fighter jets depend on imported fuel. North Korea is believed to have accumulated about 1.5 tons of fuel for wartime use, according to military officials.

The latest move comes as the communist nation is preparing a mass military drill along its eastern coast, and activities of submarines and warships have also increased along its east and west coasts.

After the U.N. Security Council slapped a new round of sanctions on Pyongyang over its third nuclear test last month, the North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has made a series of visits to artillery troops near the western sea border urging his soldiers to be on high alert and ready for war.

While tensions over a military conflict are rising on the Korean Peninsula, Seoul's defense ministry said on Tuesday there were no signs of an imminent attack or additional nuclear tests for the time being, but he stressed it would strike back if the North launches any provocation on the South.

About 28,500 American troops are stationed in South Korea, as the 1950-53 Korean War ended in an Armistice Agreement.

Ahead of the joint drills, Pyongyang threatened to cancel the Armistice Agreement and to cut the hotline between the two countries, but Seoul said the mutual agreement cannot be unilaterally canceled.

The North shut down a Red Cross hotline on Monday morning.

SKorea, US Begin Drills as NKorea Threatens War

By HYUNG-JIN KIM and FOSTER KLUG Associated Press
SEOUL, South Korea March 11, 2013 (AP)

North and South Korea staged dueling war games Monday as threatening rhetoric from the rivals rose 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. and to scrap the nearly 60-year-old armistice that ended the Korean War. Seoul has responded with tough talk of its own and has placed its troops on high alert.

North Korea's main newspaper, Rodong Sinmun, reported that the armistice was nullified Monday as Pyongyang had earlier announced. 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.

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 what North Korea wants is a formal peace treaty to end the Korean War, instead of the armistice that leaves the peninsula still technically in a state of war. It also wants security guarantees and other concessions, direct talks with Washington, recognition as a nuclear weapons state and the removal of 28,500 U.S. troops stationed in South Korea.

Pinkston said there is little chance of fighting breaking out while war games are being conducted, but he added that he expects North Korea to follow through with a somewhat mysterious promise to respond at a time and place of its own choosing.

North Korea was responsible for an artillery attack that killed four South Koreans in 2010. A South Korean-led international investigation found that North Korea torpedoed a South Korean warship that same year, killing 46 sailors. Pyongyang denies sinking the ship.

Among other threats in the past week, North Korea has warned Seoul of a nuclear war on the divided peninsula and said it was cancelling nonaggression pacts.

South Korean and U.S. officials have been closely monitoring Pyongyang's actions and parsing its recent rhetoric, which has been more warlike than usual.

One analyst said Kaesong's continued operations show that North Korea's cutting of the Red Cross communication channel was symbolic. More than 840 South Koreans were set to cross the border Monday to Kaesong, which provides a badly-needed flow of hard currency to a country where many face food shortages, according to Seoul's Unification Ministry.

"If South Koreans don't go to work at Kaesong, North Korea will suffer" financially, said analyst Hong Hyun-ik at the private Sejong Institute in South Korea. "If North Korea really intends to start a war with South Korea, it could have taken South Koreans at Kaesong hostage."

Under newly inaugurated President Park Geun-hye, South Korea's Defense Ministry, which often brushes off North Korean threats, has looked to send a message of strength in response to the latest comments from Pyongyang.

The ministry has warned that the North's government would "evaporate from the face of the Earth" if it ever used a nuclear weapon. The White House also said the U.S. is fully capable of defending itself against a North Korean ballistic attack.

On Monday, Park told a Cabinet Council meeting that South Korea should strongly respond to any provocation by North Korea. But she also said Seoul should move ahead with her campaign promise to build up trust with the North.

North Korea has said the U.S. mainland is within the range of its long-range missiles, and an army general told a Pyongyang rally last week that the military is ready to fire a long-range nuclear-armed missile to turn Washington into a "sea of fire."

While outside scientists are still trying to determine specifics, the North's rocket test in December and third atomic bomb test last month may have pushed the country a step closer to acquiring the ability to hit the U.S. with weapons of mass destruction. Analysts, however, say Pyongyang is still years away from acquiring the smaller, lighter nuclear warheads needed for a credible nuclear missile program.

But there are still worries about a smaller conflict, and analysts have said that more missile and nuclear tests are possible reactions from North Korea.

North Korea has a variety of missiles and other weapons capable of striking South Korea. Both the warship sinking and island shelling in 2010 occurred near a western sea boundary between the Koreas that North Korea fiercely disputes. It has been a recurring flashpoint between the rivals that has seen three other bloody naval skirmishes since 1999.

Last week, Kim Jong Un visited two islands just north of the sea boundary and ordered troops there to open fire immediately if a single enemy shell is fired on North Korean waters.

Kim was also quoted as saying his military is fully ready to fight an "all-out war" and that he will order a "just, great advance for national unification" if the enemy makes even a slight provocation, according to the North's official Korean Central News Agency.

UN Imposes New Sanctions on North Korea

The United Nations Security Council has unanimously passed a new resolution imposing new sanctions on North Korea.

As CRI's Washington correspondent Lv Xiaohong reports, while China has thrown its support behind the new sanctions, it's also calling for a diplomatic solution.



The UN Security Council has adopted the new sanctions on North Korea for its prohibited nuclear test last month.

The United States UN Ambassador Susan Rice says the new sanctions are going to have a strong impact.

"First, resolution 2094 imposes tough, new financial sanctions, when North Korea tries to move money, to pay its nuclear and ballistic missile programs, countries must now block those transfers, even if the money is being carried in suitcases full of bulk cash. "

In addition to tightening sanctions on North Korea's banking and trade sectors, the existing travel restrictions have also been extended.

Stringent checks are also going to continue on North Korean cargo ships.

And for the first time, Pyongyang's diplomats are also included on the checklist, with the resolution calling for countries to expel any North Korean agent if he or she is found involved in Pyongyang's nuclear or ballistic missile programs.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon says he welcomes the adoption of the new sanctions, saying the international community has sent "an unequivocal message" to North Korea that it will not tolerate its pursuit of nuclear weapons.

The Chinese side is also voicing its support of the new UN resolution.

Chinese Ambassador to the UN, Li Baodong, says China supports a balanced and proportionate approach towards this issue.

"China is a country of principle. We're firmly committed to safeguarding peace, stability on the Korean Peninsula. We're committed firmly to safeguarding the international nuclear no-proliferation regime, promoting the denuclearization of Korean Peninsula. And also we're committed to peaceful settlement of relevant issues through negotiations and dialogue."

Just hours before the Security Council's vote on the new sanctions, North Korea re-issued its threat to launch a preemptive nuclear strike against the United States.
....
Chinese Ambassador Li Baodong is calling on everyone to cool down and look for a diplomatic solution.

"The top priority now is to defuse the tension, bring down the heat, focus on diplomatic track and bring the situation back on the track of diplomacy, of negotiations and consultations."

Li Baodong admits a nuclear-free Korean peninsula is going to be hard to achieve, but says it can be possible if the six-party talks can resume.

Pyongyang has said it no longer wants any part of the six-party talks.

For CRI, this is Xiaohong in Washington.

CRI

N. Korea says "It Will Be Nuclear War" - "Armistice Ended"

North Korea threatened the United States on Thursday with a preemptive nuclear strike, raising the level of rhetoric while the U.N. Security Council considers new sanctions against the reclusive country.

North Korea has accused the United States of using military drills in South Korea as a launch pad for a nuclear war and has scrapped the armistice with Washington that ended hostilities in the 1950-53 Korean War.

North Korea, which has one major ally, neighboring China, threatens the United States and its "puppet", South Korea, on an almost daily basis.

In clip above published on March 7th, 2013: North Korea (Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea) has announced it will end the armistice and there will be war, as America asks Europe and Russia to cut off food, luxury yachts and expensive automobiles from being imported into the country. "America, meantime, cannot even stem the flow of drugs into its' own country, so is hardly in a position to tell other countries what to do".

"Since the United States is about to ignite a nuclear war, we will be exercising our right to preemptive nuclear attack against the headquarters of the aggressor in order to protect our supreme interest," the North's foreign ministry spokesman said in a statement carried by the official KCNA news agency.

North Korea conducted a third nuclear test on February 12, in defiance of U.N. resolutions, and declared it had achieved progress in securing a functioning atomic arsenal. It is widely believed the North does not have the capacity to deliver a nuclear strike on the mainland United States.

The North's unnamed foreign ministry spokesman also said it would be entitled to take military action as of March 11 when U.S.-South Korea military drills move into a full-scale phase as it had declared the truce invalid.

It is the latest in an escalation of tough words from both sides of the armed Korean border this week as the U.N. Security Council deliberates a resolution to tighten financial sanctions and a naval blockade against the North.

North Korea, which held a mass military rally in Pyongyang on Thursday in support of its recent threats, has protested against the U.N. censures of its rocket launches. It says they are part of a peaceful space program and that the criticism is an exercise of double standards by the United States.

But North Korea's shrill rhetoric rarely goes beyond just that. Its latest armed aggression against the South in 2010 came unannounced, bombing a South Korean island killing two civilians. It is widely accused of sinking a South Korean navy ship earlier in the year, killing 46 sailors.

North Korea was conducting a series of military drills and getting ready for state-wide war practice of an unusual scale, South Korea's defense ministry said earlier on Thursday.

South Korea and the United States, which are conducting annual military drills until the end of April, are watching the North's activities for signs they turn from an exercise to an actual attack, a South Korean official said.

"It hasn't been frequent that the North conducted military exercise at the state level," South Korea's defense ministry spokesman, Kim Min-seok, said. "The North is currently conducting various drills on land, at sea and aerially.

"We are watching the North's activities and stepping up readiness under the assumption that these drills can lead to provocation at any time."

Kim declined to confirm news reports that the North has imposed no-fly zones off its coasts in a possible move to fire missiles, but he said any flight ban limited to near the coast would not be for weapons with meaningful ranges.

A top North Korean general said on Tuesday said Pyongyang was scrapping the armistice. But the two sides remain technically at war as the civil war did not end with a treaty.

South Korea's military said in a rare warning on Wednesday that it would strike back at the North and target its leadership if Pyongyang launched an attack.

Editing by Nick Macfie- Reuters/ YouTube

Why China is afraid of North Korea

To the outside world, there are things about North Korea even more confusing than Dennis Rodman's sudden renaissance as a diplomat. One is why China bothers to care so much about North Korea, to be its patron and protector, its representative to the outside world.

Max Fisher of The Washington Post has a pithy summary: "No war, no instability, no nukes." Six words, three reasons, each worth unpacking a little.

Obviously, China does not want North Korea to go to war with South Korea, or with any other country in the region. The reasons are as self-evident as they would be if Canada were to declare war on Mexico. On a more subtle level, though, China's status as a world power diminishes significantly if North Korea becomes an independent belligerent. There is also an inverse correlation between North Korean belligerency and Japanese nationalism, another malignant force for China.

No instability: On the one hand, this means that a war or other catastrophe in North Korea would result in a flood of refugees into China, inter-group conflict, significant dislocation and serve as a catalyst for destabilizing social movements in China. China thus supplies North Korea with food and oil. The oil goes to the North Korean military, which is the largest employer in the country.

No nukes: China is most critical of North Korea's nuclear ambitions. Since China does not control North Korea, having an uncontrolled nuclear-armed neighbor is tantamount to a declaration of independence. Keeping North Korea non-nuclear keeps North Korea in a position of subservience. It must rely on China to broker relations with the rest of the world. If North Korea successfully becomes a nuclear power — meaning that it can reliably produce weapons and weapons systems — then the United States, counter-intuitively, could become the broker of North Korea's relations with the outside world.

This is not inconceivable.

China wants to protect North Korea so that the United States cannot easily or readily help re-unify the two Koreas, which would give the United States a much larger geopolitical footprint in the China's sphere of influence. The seven-member politburo in China really does consider this a possibility, even though it sounds bizarre: North Korea rejected direct negotiations with the U.S. that would have started at the ministerial level. Kim Jong Un believes he ought to deal with President Obama directly, as Ambassador Rodman noted.

One question remains: How much influence does China actually have in North Korea? A puppetmaster Beijing is not. North Korea regularly ignores China's requests, hassles Chinese commercial ventures, hides its activities from Beijing, and shows no sign of following the prescription that Beijing has written for its neighbor, which mainly calls for more butter, and less guns. As a matter of policy, China seems to be patient because it has no other choice, and because it knows from its own normalization that change takes decades and often results from external shocks that are out of the control of any government.

What does North Korea want? Time. Independence. Respect. Better relations with South Korea. These China cannot give it.

The Week

North Korea Vows More Nuclear Tests Targeting U.S.

BEIJING Jan. 24, 2013- In a bellicose statement singling out the United States as the "sworn enemy" of the Korean people, North Korea today announced plans for a third nuclear test and continued rocket launches.

The move is seen as a disappointment to those who hoped the country's new leader, Kim Jong-Un, might take a less aggressive path than his predecessor and father, Kim Jong-il.

It is also seen as a direct challenge to President Obama and South Korea's newly elected president, Park Geun-hye, who takes office next month.

The statement from North Korea's National Defense Commission read:

"Settling accounts with the U.S. needs to be done with force, not with words as it regards jungle law as the rule of its survival."

The renewed threats come in response to the U.S. backed resolution tightening sanctions against North Korea after its December rocket launch.

At that time, North Korea repeatedly insisted that the launch was simply part of its peaceful space program. The recent statement made no mention of that.

It read: "We are not disguising the fact that the various satellites and long-range rockets that we will fire and the high-level nuclear test we will carry out are targeted at the United States."

South Korean officials analyzed debris from the December launch that, they say, indicates North Korea built and tested crucial components for a missile that can fly further than 6,200 miles.

Analysts say that preparations at the Pungyee test site in northeastern North Korea are underway and that a new underground test could take place on short notice.

Within the international monitoring community it is not believed that North Korea currently has the capability to launch a long-range rocket with the capacity to reach the United States or the technology to mount a nuclear warhead on a long-range missile. But the U.S. is not pleased with North Korea's plans. Glyn Davies, the top U.S. envoy to the region, said in Seoul, "We hope they don't do it. We call on them not to do it."

China, North Korea's main ally in the region, is also urging restraint. China backed the U.S. resolution at the United Nations and today the Foreign Ministry cautioned North Korea not to take further steps to increase tension.


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