Kimy mis-rocking the world

S Korean minister meets Northern envoy

2009-08-22T16:25:00.001+10:00

By Park Chan-Kyong
August 22, 2009

(SMH) -North Korean envoys sent to attend the funeral of former South Korean leader Kim Dae-jung have called for an immediate improvement in inter-Korean ties and talks with the country's president, media pool reports say.

"The North Koreans said they were carrying a message from (North Korea's leader) Chairman Kim Jong-il," an unidentified government official was quoted as telling Yonhap news agency on Saturday.

Their wish to meet with President Lee Myung-bak was conveyed to South Korea's Unification Minister Hyun In-taek on Saturday. Hyun was talking to the president's office about the offer, the official said.

"While meeting many South Koreans here, I came to believe that inter-Korean ties must be improved at the earliest possible date," Kim Yang-gon, a North Korean official in charge of inter-Korean ties, told Hyun.

"We've had little opportunity to talk ... I hope that these first high-level official talks under the (South Korean conservative president) Lee Myung-bak administration will provide a chance to have frank talks," he said.

Kim is one of a six-member North Korean delegation making a rare visit south of the border to pay tribute to former leader Kim Dae-jung, who died on Tuesday at the age of 85.

A winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, Kim Dae-jung held the first inter-Korean summit in 2000, during his 1998-2003 presidency.

After the 90-minute talks, Hyun said the North Koreans might postpone their departure for home, sparking speculation that they will meet Lee.

The rare encounter raised hopes for a breakthrough amid tension on the Korean peninsula that rose after the North's second nuclear test three months ago.

Chung Dong-young, a former unification minister, urged the government to seize the opportunity to mend inter-Korean ties, which have soured since conservative President Lee took power in February 2008.

"Even after his death, President Kim Dae-jung is laying a bridge over troubled inter-Korean ties," Chung said. "I hope the South Korean government can use this opportunity to mend the South-North relationship."

Kim Dae-jung pioneered South Korea's "Sunshine" aid and engagement policy with the North, which improved relations but failed to curb the North's drive for nuclear weapons.

Cross-border and regional tensions rose sharply in recent months after the North made a series of threats, fired missiles and staged a second nuclear test, incurring tougher United Nations sanctions.

After they arrived in Seoul on Friday the North Koreans said they were open to dialogue.

"I will meet with everybody. Let's meet to talk," delegation leader Kim Ki-nam, a secretary of the ruling communist party, said after arriving at Gimpo airport.

The North's first dispatch of envoys to Seoul in nearly two years is the latest in a series of peace initiatives by Pyongyang.

Earlier this month former US president Bill Clinton visited Pyongyang to plead for the release of two US journalists who were sentenced to 12 years' hard labour for straying across the border from China.

The North's leader, Kim Jong-il, pardoned the two American journalists and Pyongyang later freed a detained South Korean.

N Korea to pardon journalists

2009-08-05T07:27:00.001+10:00

(news.com.au) -NORTH Korea will pardon two jailed US journalists after visiting former president Bill Clinton apologised to leader Kim Jong-Il for their behaviour, state media has reported.

"The measure taken to release the American journalists is a manifestation of the DPRK's (North Korea's) humanitarian and peace-loving policy," the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported today.

Mr Clinton yesterday had met Mr Kim for talks during his surprise mission to Pyongyang to win the release of the two female reporters. His was the highest-profile visit by an American to Pyongyang for nearly a decade.

TV reporters Laura Ling and Euna Lee were arrested in March while on assignment near the North Korean border with China.

They were reporting on the plight of refugees fleeing the impoverished North into China. A court in June sentenced them to 12 years of hard labour for illegal entry and other offences.

The harsh sentences soured relations with the United States already strained by the North's atomic test in May, its multiple missile tests and its decision to quit six-nation nuclear disarmament talks.

"Clinton expressed words of sincere apology to Kim Jong-Il for the hostile acts committed by the two American journalists against the DPRK after illegally intruding into it," KCNA reported.

"Clinton courteously conveyed to Kim Jong-Il an earnest request of the US government to leniently pardon them and send them back home from a humanitarian point of view," it said.

After Mr Kim issued a special order pardoning the pair, Mr Clinton "courteously conveyed a verbal message of US President Barack Obama expressing profound thanks for this and reflecting views on ways of improving the relations between the two countries".

KCNA said Mr Clinton's meetings with leader Mr Kim and with his official number two Kim Yong-Nam featured "candid and in-depth discussions on the pending issues between the DPRK and the US in a sincere atmosphere and reached a consensus of views on seeking a negotiated settlement of them".

It said the former president's visit "will contribute to deepening the understanding between the DPRK and the US and building the bilateral confidence".

The agency did not indicate when the women would be freed but said Mr Clinton's visit would end today.

The White House said Mr Clinton's visit was purely private and declined to comment on it.

From correspondents in Seoul
Agence France-Presse

Bush Urges Unified Action Against North Korea

2009-08-03T18:51:00.000+10:00

By VOA News

Former U.S. President George W. Bush has urged the five nations involved in nuclear disarmament talks with North Korea to send a clear message to Pyongyang to end its nuclear weapons program.

Mr. Bush spoke at an economic forum on the South Korean island of Jeju Saturday. He said the United States, South Korea, China, Japan and Russia must make it clear that North Korea will face consequences if it continues to defy United Nations resolutions.

The former U.S. president also stressed the importance of transparency and verification in the nuclear disarmament process.

The last round of six-party disarmament talks in China in December ended with an impasse over how the North's denuclearization would be verified. Since then, Pyongyang has conducted a nuclear test and a series of missile launches. Its provocative actions against South Korea have raised international concern about the region's stability.

The United Nations imposed tough new sanctions on North Korea in June.

The United States is taking steps to ensure the sanctions are implemented. It has frozen the assets of a number of business and financial institution dealing with North Korea. A spokesman for the U.S. State Department said Friday the U.S. is also considering returning the North to its list of states that sponsor terrorism.

Washington has offered the North a comprehensive package of incentives if it takes serious and irreversible steps to end its nuclear program.

Mr. Bush is in South Korea for a series of talks on the global economy. He is expected to promote measures against trade protectionism and the South Korea-U.S. free trade agreement. The agreement was signed in 2007 while he was in office, but has yet to be approved by lawmakers in both countries.

Some information for this report was provided by AP.
August 1st, 2009

N Korea Says S. Korean Boat Illegally Entered Its Waters

2009-08-03T18:47:00.001+10:00

By VOA News

North Korea said Saturday that a South Korean fishing boat it seized Thursday had entered its territorial waters illegally.

In its first official statement, Pyongyang's official Korean Central News Agency said a "relevant institution is conducting a concrete investigation" into the incident.

South Korea's Unification Ministry said Friday the fishing boat and its four man crew drifted into the North's territorial waters after it apparently experienced problems with its satellite navigation system. The boat was intercepted by a North Korean patrol boat and towed to the eastern port of Jangjon early Thursday.

Seoul is urging Pyongyang to release the boat and its crew. A spokesman for the Unification Ministry said Thursday there is a clear precedent for the boat's return, citing South Korea's return of two North Korean boats on humanitarian grounds after they crossed into Southern waters.

A spokesman for the South Korean military's Joint Chiefs of Staff, Park Sung-woo, said the fishing boat is relatively small, and made of reinforced plastic. He said that made it difficult for radar to detect the vessel before it crossed into North Korean waters.

Thursday's incident took place in waters west of the Korean peninsula - one of the tensest maritime regions in the world.

North Korea has never accepted a United Nations-mandated border there, and the two Koreas have fought two deadly naval battles in the area over the past 10 years.

North Korea is also holding two U.S. journalists and a South Korean worker at the Kaesong joint industrial plan across the border. Many in South Korea believe Pyongyang is trying to use the detainees as diplomatic leverage.

Some information for this report was provided by AFP, AP and Reuters.
August 1st, 2009

South Korean boat seized by North Korea

2009-07-30T21:45:00.001+10:00

(SMH) -North Korea has seized a stray South Korean fishing boat off the country's east coast, officials say, amid tensions over the communist state's nuclear programs.

The South's government called for the swift return of the boat and its four-member crew after the seizure early on Thursday, but there was no immediate response from the North.

The 800 Yeonan was towed by a North Korean patrol boat after it strayed into the North's waters at 6.27am local time, South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff office said.

The 29-tonne squid boat was presumed to have sailed off its intended course at dawn because it had a problem with its global positioning system, the office said.

"We immediately radioed to the North Korean navy, requesting the return of the stray South Korean fishing boat, but there was no response,'' a Joint Chiefs of Staff office spokesman said.

Seoul's unification ministry also demanded that the boat and its crew be returned "as soon as possible'' in a telephone message to the North, spokesman Chun Hae-Sung told reporters at a briefing.

South Korean officials said the seized boat was being taken towards the North's eastern port of Jangjon.

The two countries, which still remain technically at war after the 1950-1953 Korean War, have a record of returning stray fishing vessels.

Two South Korean fishing boats - one in April 2005, and the other in December 2006 - returned home soon after accidentally straying into North Korean waters, according to Yonhap news agency.

Ties between the two Koreas warmed up after their first peace summit in 2000.

But cross-border ties have sharply worsened in the past year, and the North's prolonged stand-off with the rest of the world over its nuclear and missile programs has intensified in recent months.

Pyongyang has blamed the deterioration in relations on South Korea's conservative President Lee Myung-Bak, who took office in 2008 signalling a tougher stance towards North Korea.

The North has since held a South Korean worker at a Seoul-funded joint industrial site March 30, accusing him of slandering its political system and trying to incite a local woman worker to defect.

The North quit six-nation nuclear disarmament talks after the UN Security Council censured it for a long-range rocket launch in April. In May it also staged its second nuclear test.

The Council has since imposed a series of tougher sanctions, including an expanded arms embargo and beefed up inspections of air, sea and land shipments going to and from North Korea.

The North has recently said it is open to a new form of dialogue with the United States on the nuclear issue outside the six-party format.

But Washington has called on the international community to continue to pressure North Korea to return to the six-party talks which also group South Korea, China, Japan and Russia.

AFP

North Korea Threatens to Retaliate AGainst UN Sanctions

2009-07-27T18:09:00.003+10:00

By VOA News

North Korea's defense minister is promising retaliation against tough new U.N. sanctions put in place following its missile and nuclear tests.

Chief of General Staff of North Korean army Kim Yong-Chun, AFP 26Jun'03(file)

North Korean state media reported Sunday that Kim Yong-Chun said Pyongyang would deal "unimaginably deadly blows" at the United States and South Korea if they attack the communist nation.

Kim was speaking at a public meeting held on the eve of the anniversary of the armistice that ended the Korean War on July 27, 1953.

In a separate announcement, North Korea repeated its routine denunciations of an upcoming U.S. and South Korean military exercise, saying the maneuvers "lay bare the black-hearted aim" lurking behind the "talk of dialogue."

Washington and Seoul say they are not planning to invade North Korea.

North Korea regularly issues aggressive statements and rhetoric against its neighbors and the U.S.

Some information for this report was provided by AFP, AP.

Clinton Speaks Out on North Korea, Iran

2009-07-27T18:07:00.001+10:00

By Paula Wolfson
White House

(VOA) -U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gave a strong defense of Obama administration policy on North Korea and Iran during an extended interview Sunday on American television.

Secretary of State Clinton is sending a joint message to Pyongyang and Tehran: give up your quest for nuclear weapons and return to negotiations.

Clinton - just back from talks in Asia - told NBC television's Meet the Press that North Korea is more isolated than ever before. She said the North Korean government must realize that the world is united, and there will be no reward for bad behavior.

"We still want North Korea to come back to the negotiating table, to be part of an international effort that will lead to denuclearization," said Hillary Clinton.

She pointed to strong cooperation among the countries heavily involved in the North Korean issue. She made specific mention of China - which has hosted talks in Beijing. She said the Chinese have been extremely positive and productive.

"We have been extremely gratified by their forward-leaning commitment to sanctions, and their private messages that they have conveyed to the North Koreans," she said.

The secretary of state was then asked about the outlook for a dialogue with Iran on its nuclear program.

She said she saw no conflict of interest in seeking to negotiate with Iran's leaders despite the controversy that continues to surround the recent presidential election in that country.

"You can go back in history - and not very long back - where we have negotiated with many governments who we did not believe represented the will of their people," said Hillary Clinton. "Look at all the negotiations that went on with the Soviet Union, look at the break-through in subsequent negotiations with communist China."

Last week, Clinton talked in vague terms about the creation of a nuclear umbrella to protect Mideast allies against a possible Iranian nuclear attack.

She refused to go into specifics on Meet the Press. And she stressed that she did not mean to imply that a nuclear armed Iran is inevitable.

She said Iran's leaders must understand that the United States will never let them develop nuclear weapons.

"First, we are going to do everything we can to prevent you from ever getting a nuclear weapon," she said. "But your pursuit is futile!"

At the same time, Clinton urged Israel to give U.S. policy on Iran more time to work. Israel is seen as a primary target of Iran's nuclear-weapons program, and there are fears the Israelis might launch a pre-emptive strike.

"The United States believes that Israel has a right to security," she said. "We believe, however, that this approach we are taking holds out the promise of realizing our common objectives."

Clinton noted top U.S. officials will be meeting with Israeli leaders in the coming days, and will listen to their concerns.

No pants for North Korea

2009-07-24T15:11:00.004+10:00

North Korea crackdown on pants wearers

Blogger's Note: this is a way to attack
Mrs Clinton's wardrobe -- (*^*)

(news.com.au) -NORTH Korean women face hard labour if they are caught wearing trousers rather than skirts, under the communist regime's latest crackdown on public morals, South Korean activists say.

Offenders can be punished with hours of forced labour or fines of 700 won, almost a week's salary for the average worker, human rights group Good Friends said, citing its own sources within the isolated nation.

The Stalinist leadership's campaign is angering women who see skirts as less practical than trousers, Good Friends director Lee Seung-Yong said.

"Women are told to wear skirts in public places and in the streets, sparking complaints among them as they often have to work in tough conditions," he said.

Disciplinary officials from students' bodies and women's organisations stand at street corners during the morning rush hour and lunch breaks, to keep watch for any women violating the pants ban, according to Good Friends.

Uriminzokkiri, an official North Korean website, noted on Monday that ruler Kim Jong-Il had issued a decree in 1986 urging women to wear traditional Korean attire.

"The Dear Leader has said national character shows up not only in language, etiquette and morals but in attire as well," the site says.

It quoted Kim as saying the country's traditional skirts and jackets are a "source of our (national) pride" and that women should be "actively encouraged" to wear them.

Agence France-Presse

N.Korean allies join test protest

2009-07-24T09:44:00.001+10:00

By ACHARA ASHAYAGACHAT AND THANIDA TANSUBHAPOL

China, Russia share Asean's nuke concerns

PHUKET : Russia and China have joined the US in pressuring North Korea to abandon its nuclear ambitions, following Pyongyang's recent ballistic missile tests.

See no evil: Mrs Clinton and North Korean delegate Pak Kun-gwang ignore each other at the Phuket meeting.

Normally counting themselves as Pyongyang's allies, Russia and China expressed concern about the nuclear missile tests at the Asean Regional Forum yesterday.

The North Korean nuclear issue dominated security issues at talks held to wrap up the week-long meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.

The ARF urged North Korea to return to the six-party talks to end the regional nuclear threat, but North Korea immediately rejected the call.

The meeting also urged members of the United Nations to implement the UN Security Council's resolution to impose sanctions on North Korea.

The ARF would look at what it could do to promote peace and stability on the Korean peninsula, Foreign Minister Kasit Piromya said after the meeting.

Asean diplomatic sources said even Russia and China shared international concern about the issue.

But in a compromising note, China said it hoped sanctions against Pyongyang would not affect North Korean people, and that the six-nation talks could resume, the sources said.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said North Korea faced strong international opposition over its missile testing programme.

"There is no place to go for North Korea as they have no friends left," Mrs Clinton said.

"There is a convergence of views that we are prepared to work with North Korea, but that North Korea has to change its behaviour," she said.

But Ri Hung-sik, who led the North Korean delegation at the meeting, said Pyongyang would not return to the negotiating table until the US changed its anti-North Korea attitude.

The six-party talks comprise China, North Korea, South Korea, Japan, Russia and the US.

Earlier, North Korea downgraded its representative attending the ARF from ambassador-at-large Pak Kun-gwang to Mr Ri, who is director-general of the International Organisations Department. It was the third time Pyongyang had sent a low-level representative to the ARF since 2000.

North Korea's insistence its position should be reflected in the ARF statement forced participants to delay issuing it for two hours.

The ARF members also called for joint efforts to fight terrorists and said the July 17 hotel bombings in Jakarta were a reminder terrorism was still a threat to the region.

Malaysian Foreign Minister Anifah Aman said in addressing the terrorism problem, people should avoid singling out any country, race, religion or ethnicity.

"If terrorism is associated with religion, it will create animosity," Mr Anifah said.

The meeting also pledged to promote democracy and human rights in Burma, Mr Kasit said.

Burma is under pressure to release National League for Democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi and other political prisoners to pave the way for national reconciliation before the country holds general elections next year.

N Korea has no friends - Clinton

2009-07-23T20:59:00.006+10:00

By Martin Petty and Jack Kim in Phuket, Thailand

NORTH Korea has no friends left to shield it from the international community's demands that the country scrap its nuclear activities, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Thursday.
Mrs Clinton said many nations had told a low-level North Korean delegation at regional talks in Thailand that they were concerned by Pyongyang's recent "provocative" behaviour, which has included nuclear and ballistic missile tests.

Speaking at a news conference, Mrs Clinton said North Korea's pursuit of its nuclear ambitions could provoke an arms race in North Asia, one of the world's most dynamic regions and responsible for a sixth of the global economy.

"Our partners in the region understand that a nuclear North Korea has far-reaching consequences for the security future of northeast Asia ... This would serve no nation's interests," she said on the sidelines of the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) in Phuket.

"There is no place to go for North Korea, they have no friends left that will protect them from the international community's efforts to move towards denuclearisation."

Mrs Clinton said the North Korean delegation gave no sign the country was interested in ending its nuclear program, which took centre stage at the talks.

North Korea, bristling at being described by Mrs Clinton this week as behaving like an unruly child, responded in kind today, calling her vulgar and less than clever.

The North's KCNA news agency quoted a Foreign Ministry spokesman as saying her comments "suggests she is by no means intelligent".

"Sometimes she looks like a primary schoolgirl and sometimes a pensioner going shopping," KCNA said. Reuters

news.com.au
newscomau

Sick Kim's suspected two new yachts blocked

2009-07-23T20:24:00.001+10:00

(SMH) -Italy has blocked the sale of two luxury yachts to impoverished North Korea because it suspects they were destined for reclusive leader Kim Jong-Il, the Financial Times reported today.

A contract for the sale of the yachts, worth €12.5 million ($22 million) was terminated this month after a probe by the Italian Government and anti-fraud police, the newspaper said.

The two boats were confiscated by the Ministry of Economic Development amid concerns that allowing the sale would breach international sanctions against Pyongyang, the newspaper said.

"Seeing the type of goods that were involved and the condition that the country [North Korea] is in, we were very suspicious that the yachts were for the leader [Kim], though we have no evidence of this," the ministry said.

A deposit was paid for work on the boats, although it was unclear by whom. The boats have since been returned to Azimut-Benetti, one of Italy's leading luxury yacht makers.

The United Nations imposed sanctions on North Korea for a long-range rocket launch in April. Tensions with the international community rose further after it restarted its weapons program and carried out an underground nuclear test in May.

Kim has been portrayed by visitors and North Korean defectors as a leader who enjoys fine dining, cognac and other luxuries.

The communist state, however, suffers food shortages, and relies on overseas aid to feed millions of its people.

Kim reportedly has life-threatening pancreatic cancer.

AFP

North Korea launches bizarre attack on Hillary Clinton

2009-07-23T18:45:00.004+10:00

macho macho midgets ...
very gentlemen like deflowering a rose...
if Mrs Clinton hasn't got intelligence
FM spoke person got something else...

(news.com.au) -NORTH Korea hit back at comments by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, describing her in an unusually personal attack as not intelligent and a "funny lady".

A foreign ministry spokesman quoted by the communist state's official news agency accused Clinton of making "a spate of vulgar remarks unbecoming for her position everywhere she went since she was sworn in".

"We cannot but regard Mrs Clinton as a funny lady as she likes to utter such rhetoric, unaware of the elementary etiquette in the international community," the spokesman added in a statement.

"Sometimes she looks like a primary schoolgirl and sometimes a pensioner going shopping."

The North took particular umbrage at recent comments by Mrs Clinton likening Pyongyang's recent missile launches to the behaviour of an unruly attention-seeking teenager.

"Her words suggest that she is by no means intelligent," the statement said, adding that Pyongyang is protecting itself against "the US hostile policy and nuclear threat, not to attract anyone's attention".
Moon Landing - 40 years on

Mrs Clinton could make a contribution to US foreign policy "only when she has understanding of the world". it said.

At a regional security forum in the Thai resort of Phuket, Mrs Clinton urged members to enforce the UN sanctions imposed against the North for its nuclear and missile tests.

Agence France-Presse

North Korea would not return to six party talk

2009-07-23T18:08:00.001+10:00

North Korea said Thursday that it would neither return to the six party talk nor stop its nuclear ambition unless other parties ended their bias against Pyongyang.

The communist ruled country would not accept the comprehensive package proposed by the US Sectary of State Hillary Clinton since it has nothing new from the previous administration, said North Korea's Director of International Affairs Department Ri Hung Sik.

North Korea's diplomats were in Thailand this week for a meeting with 26 countries in the Asean Regional Forum, which Clinton was also in.

Pyongyang would not take any suggestions from the Asean meeting back home and would never give up its nuclear development program, he said.

The Nation

North Korea fears forum criticism over missile tests

2009-07-22T13:51:00.002+10:00

By THANIDA TANSUBHAPOL and ACHARA ASHAYAGACHAT

PHUKET (Bangkok Post): North Korea has called on Thailand to protect its delegates from criticism during the Asean Regional Forum.

Pyongyang's ambassador at large Pak Kun-gwang yesterday raised the issue in talks with Foreign Minister Kasit Piromya ahead of tomorrow's security meeting.

Mr Pak requested an urgent meeting with the minister shortly after the five North Korean delegates arrived on the resort island yesterday.

North Korea is worried its recent missile tests would be condemned by countries participating in the forum, said Mr Kasit's secretary Chavanond Intarakomalyasut. (LOL)

As the Asean chair, Thailand will head the Asean-initiated security talks.

Mr Chavanond quoted the minister as saying "we need to make sure the meeting's peace-building objectives are met and that he would not let any ARF members use the forum to attack other members".

"I would also like North Korea to listen to what the United States has to say," he said. "The Barack Obama administration should be given a chance to speak out."

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will attend the forum, as will representatives from the European Union.

It is the first forum at which North Korea will engage with 25 other countries in such talks.

Asean foreign ministers will hold talks today with their dialogue partners from China, Japan and South Korea.

Thailand will push for closer cooperation with the three nations on finance, agriculture and health matters.

It will also urge the acceleration of the Chiang Mai Initiative during the Asean summit in Phuket in October, diplomatic sources said.

Last month, the so-called Asean+3 agreed in Bangkok to strengthen the regional financial mechanism. A regional pooling reserve would be established under the Chiang Mai Initiative with a US$20 billion (700 billion baht) start-up fund by the end of the year.

Director-general of the Asean Affairs Department Vitavas Srivihok said Asean ministers would also discuss measures to fight the A (H1N1) flu outbreak.

Asean secretary-general Surin Pitsuwan has been assigned to liaise with Southeast Asian health ministers on the issue, the official said.

UN Issues New Sanctions against North Korea

2009-07-17T15:34:00.002+10:00

By JOHN HEILPRIN / AP WRITER
The Irrawaddy News

UNITED NATIONS — The UN imposed new sanctions Thursday against five North Korean officials, four companies and a state agency, and banned imports of two weapons-making materials, in a rare unified push by the world's powers to thwart Pyongyang's nuclear ambitions.

The sanctions, which take immediate effect and are to be carried out by all of the UN's 192 member nations, include travel bans and a freeze on the financial assets against the officials, companies and state agency. Nations also were instructed to refrain from supplying North Korea with certain types of graphite and para-aramid fiber—two of the materials used in ballistic missile parts.

"It is of course significant that we have also put individuals on the list, as this is the first time. This shows that the sanctions are going on a higher level at this moment," said Fazli Corman, Turkey's deputy UN ambassador, who chairs the panel.

The newest sanctions were approved against:

—The General Bureau of Atomic Energy in Pyongyang, the chief agency directing the North's nuclear program. That includes the Yongbyon Nuclear Research Center and its plutonium production research reactor, as well as its fuel fabrication and reprocessing facilities.

—Three Pyongyang-based companies—Namchongang Trading Corp., Korea Hyoksin Trading Corp., and Korean Tangun Trading Corp—and one Iranian-based company, Hong Kong Electronics.

—Yun Ho-Jin, director of Namchongang Trading Corp; Ri Je-Son, director of the General Bureau of Atomic Energy; Hwang Sok-Hwa, chief of the bureau's scientific guidance; Ri Hong-Sop, former director of Yongbyon Nuclear Research Center; and Han Yu-Ro, director of Korea Ryongaksan General Trading Corp.

—Two types of goods used in ballistic missile parts by North Korea—a graphite designed or specified for use in electrical discharge machining; and a para-aramid fiber, filament and tape, which is a Kevlar-like material.

US Ambassador Susan Rice said the United States was pleased with the list, which required unanimous approval among the 15 nations that make up a sanctions panel of the UN's powerhouse Security Council. China, North Korea's biggest ally and trading partner, went along with most of the US recommendations.

The US has launched what it calls a major effort to ensure that UN Security Council Resolution 1874, which along with a previous resolution in 2006 serves to authorize the latest sanctions, is implemented effectively.

"These new designations—five individuals, five entities and two goods—strengthen the sanctions regime against North Korea and will serve to constrain North Korea from engaging in transactions or activities that could fund its WMD or proliferation activities," Rice said.

The sanctions panel, which said it plans to add still more names and entities, has been focused on three areas: sensitive dual-use goods, ballistic missile-related items and nuclear-related items.

Pak Tok-hun, deputy chief of North Korea's UN mission in New York, told South Korea's Yonhap news agency that the sanctions were "unfair" but said they will not harm his country.

Pak said North Korea "will not accept Security Council resolutions against the North and any sanctions under the resolutions," adding, "Sanctions will not resolve any problems."

A US expert on North Korean sanctions said the latest measures—putting the UN seal of approval on measures the US already has prepared to undertake—are "a modest first step" that might scare off some of North Korea's weapons-buying customers.

"We're now into a game of Whack-A-Mole," said Marcus Noland, an economist at Washington-based Peterson Institute for International Economics, referring to the game in which moles keeping popping up from their holes randomly.

"What's going to happen is that the North Koreans are going to try to reconstitute their entities and form new shell companies, new front companies, to continue these activities," he said. "If there's really going to be comprehensive efforts on this, they're going to have to go after the financial intermediaries, some of which are in China, and after the customers."

North Korea has not indicated how it might react to the sanctions panel's latest decisions.

But on June 13, North Korea's Foreign Ministry threatened to take "countermeasures" including accelerating plutonium reprocessing and starting up uranium enrichment, which would give the regime a second way to make atomic bombs.

North Korea warned that any attempted blockade of its ships would be considered "an act of war" that would draw "a decisive military response." It also has threatened a "thousand-fold" military retaliation against the US and its allies if provoked.

Security Council Resolution 1874, approved on June 12, responded to the North's underground nuclear test blast on May 25.

Seoul suspects North Korea behind cyber attacks

2009-07-13T13:30:00.001+10:00

(SMH) -Seoul's spy agency has yet to be sure that North Koreans were behind recent cyber attacks on South Korea and the United States but it still sees Pyongyang as a prime suspect, officials said.

The National Intelligence Service (NIS) said in a statement on Sunday it was still looking into "various pieces of evidence" indicating that North Koreans might have orchestrated the attacks against South Korean and US government websites, as well as private websites.

"The NIS ... has yet to reach a final conclusion that the acts have been committed by North Korea," the statement said.

It denied a report by Chosun Ilbo newspaper on Saturday that the NIS had found an internet protocol (IP) address used by a North Korean hacker surnamed Yun, who could be behind the cyber attacks.

It said the Chosun Ilbo report went "too far" and urged local media outlets to be prudent in reporting on the case.

Hackers have planted viruses in thousands of personal computers in South Korea, one of the world's most wired societies, as well as overseas.

These mounted "distributed denial of service" (DDoS) attacks designed to seek simultaneous access to selected sites and swamp them with traffic.

The Korea Communications Commission in Seoul said on Sunday more than 690 personal computers in total had been damaged in the wake of the cyber raid.

The attacks that had crippled some South Korean government websites have now come under control after virus-infected "botnet" hosting servers were isolated and "vaccine" programs were widely distributed to PC users.

The North has staged a nuclear test and numerous missile launches in recent weeks, raising regional tensions.

But a cyber attack, if confirmed, would be a new tactic.

AFP

Kim's cancer 'life-threatening'

2009-07-13T13:06:00.006+10:00

A frame grab taken from footage released by KRT on July 8, 2009 this year shows Kim Jong-il during the 15th anniversary of the death of his father and country's founder Kim Il-sung in Pyongyang. Photo: Reuters TV (SMH)

(News.com.au) - Kim Jong-il 'has pancreatic cancer'

* Health report based on foreign spy agencies
* Kim had looked unwell at memorial last week
* Cancer is life-threatening, sources say

NORTH Korean leader Kim Jong-il has pancreatic cancer and the illness is life-threatening, South Korean broadcaster YTN said.

YTN's claim was based on information gathered by Chinese and South Korean intelligence sources.

Mr Kim's health is one of the most closely guarded secrets in the reclusive communist state.

At 67, he was widely thought to have suffered a stroke last year, but there has never been official confirmation.

Mr Kim looked gaunt during a public appearance last Wednesday at a memorial for his father and state founder Kim Il-sung.

Mr Kim's health raises questions about succession in Asia's only communist dynasty and who will control its nuclear weapons programmes.

The North conducted its second nuclear test on May 25, which was met by UN sanctions aimed at cutting off the impoverished state's lucrative arms trade and one of its few sources of hard cash.

South Korean officials have said the North's recent military grandstanding, that also included missiles launches and threats to attack the South, was linked to efforts to pave the way for Mr Kim's youngest son to take over.

Mr Kim took power in 1994 when his father died at the age of 82.

He assumed the title of general secretary of the Workers' Party and chairman of the National Defence Commission, but has never taken the title of president.

From correspondents in Seoul, South Korea
Reuters

NKorean Launches Maybe Included New Scud

2009-07-06T19:35:00.000+10:00

By HYUNG-JIN KIM / AP WRITER
The Irrawaddy News

SEOUL — A barrage of ballistic missiles that North Korea test-fired over the weekend may have included a new type of Scud missile with an extended range and improved accuracy that poses a threat to Japan, a South Korean newspaper reported Monday.

Pyongyang launched seven missiles into waters off its east coast Saturday in a show of force that defied UN resolutions and drew international condemnation.

On Monday, South Korea's mass-circulation Chosun Ilbo newspaper reported the launches were believed to have included three Scud-ER missiles with a range of up to 620 miles (1,000 kilometers).

The paper said the Scud-ER has a longer range and better accuracy compared with previous Scud series so is "particularly a threat to Japan."

Tokyo is about 720 miles (1,160 kilometers) from the base on North Korea's east coast from where the missiles were fired. Some other parts of Japan are closer, well within the range of a Scud-ER.

Scuds are single stage, liquid-fueled missiles, originally developed in the former Soviet Union, and generally known for poor accuracy. Ballistic missile programs in Pakistan and Iran were built on Scud technology.

The Chosun Ilbo, citing a government source it did not name, said the other four missiles were two Scud-C missiles with a range of 310 miles (500 kilometers) and two medium-range Rodong missiles that can travel up to 810 miles (1,300 kilometers).

Five of the seven missiles flew about 260 miles (420 kilometers) from an eastern coastal launch site and landed in one area, meaning their accuracy has improved, the paper said.

South Korea's Defense Ministry spokesman Won Tae-jae said Monday that the North demonstrated improved missile accuracy in the latest tests because they all landed in the same area.

He declined to confirm details of the Chosun Ilbo report.

Another ministry official told The Associated Press on Sunday that the missiles appeared to have traveled about 250 miles (400 kilometers), meaning that key government and military facilities in South Korea were within range. The official spoke on condition of anonymity citing department policy.

North Korea has long-range missiles as well. The Taepodong-2 has a potential range of more than 4,100 miles (6,700 kilometers), putting Alaska within striking distance.

The country is believed to be developing a missile with an even longer range that could potentially put the US west coast, Hawaii, Australia and eastern Europe within striking distance.

The launches on July 4—the US Independence Day holiday—also appeared to be a poke at Washington as it moves to enforce UN as well as its own sanctions against the isolated regime for its May 25 nuclear test.

Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, warned they were "very destabilizing, potentially."

North Korean state media have not specifically mentioned the launches but boasted Sunday that the country's military could impose "merciless punishment" on those who provoke it.

"Our revolutionary forces have grown up today as the strong army that can impose merciless punishment against those who offend us," the North's main Rodong Sinmun newspaper said in a commentary carried by the official Korean Central News Agency.

The North has engaged in a series of acts this year widely seen as provocative. It fired a long-range rocket it said was a satellite in early April, and in late May it carried out its second underground nuclear test following the first in late 2006.

The UN Security Council punished Pyongyang with tough sanctions centered on clamping down on North Korea's alleged trading of banned arms and weapons-related material.

The US has been monitoring a North Korean freighter because of suspicions it may be carrying illegal weapons, possibly to Burma. The ship, however, turned around a week ago without stopping at any port and headed toward home.

Won, the Defense Ministry spokesman, said the Kang Nam 1 was expected to arrived in the North later Monday.

Separately, in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysian Foreign Minister Anifah Aman pledged to work with the US to block North Korea from using the Southeast Asian nation's banks for any weapons deals.

"If America has any information that is available to them, then I think they should give it to us so that we can act upon it," Anifah told reporters. "If they have evidence, we'll be most willing to work together to solve this problem."

The assurance came as US envoy Philip Goldberg, in charge of coordinating the implementation of sanctions against Pyongyang, met with Malaysian officials in Kuala Lumpur.

South Korean media have reported that North Korea sought payment through a bank in Malaysia for a suspected shipment of weapons to Burma.

Associated Press writers Jae-soon Chang in Seoul and Julia Zappei in Kuala Lumpur contributed to this report.

N Korea spent $880m on nuclear tests

2009-07-06T17:25:00.002+10:00

From correspondents in Seoul
(News.com.au) - Agence France-Presse

IMPOVERISHED North Korea has spent an estimated $US700 million ($880 million) this year on nuclear and missile tests, enough to solve its food shortage for at least two years, South Korean news reports say.

The figure includes the estimated $US43 million ($54 million) cost of test-firing five Scud and two Rodong missiles on Saturday, according to unidentified government officials quoted by Chosun Ilbo newspaper.

The latest tests, staged on the US Independence Day holiday, were seen as a show of defiance to Washington as it seeks tough enforcement of UN sanctions aimed at shutting down the communist state's nuclear and missile programs.

Officials quoted by Chosun estimated it cost $US300 million ($378 million) to launch a long-range Taepodong-2 missile on April 5, and another $US10 million ($12.6 million) to launch 10 short-range missiles in recent weeks.

In addition, they estimated the May 25 underground nuclear test - the country's second since 2006 - cost between $US300 million to $US400 million ($378 million to $504 million).

JoongAng Ilbo gave similar figures. Neither paper gave the methodology for the cost calculation.

Chosun quoted an unidentified official as saying the North could have bought one million tonnes of rice on the international market for $US300 million ($378 million).

"This amount of rice could have solved the North's food shortage for about a year," the official was quoted as saying.

The UN World Food Program has said that according to a study last year, nearly nine million North Koreans - more than a third of the country's 24 million people - are estimated to need food aid.

Saturday's launches were the biggest salvo of ballistic weaponry since the North fired a Taepodong-2 and six smaller missiles in 2006, also on July 4 US time.

US Vice-President Joseph Biden on Sunday dismissed the launches as "like almost attention-seeking behaviour" and said the focus was on further isolating Pyongyang.

"We have succeeded in uniting the most important and critical countries to North Korea on a common path of further isolating North Korea," he told ABC Television in the US, referring to Russia and China.

These have been traditionally resistant to tough sanctions on Pyongyang but backed the latest measures approved on June 12.

US and South Korean officials believe ailing leader Kim Jong-Il, 67, is staging a show of strength to bolster his authority as he tries to put in place a succession plan involving his youngest son Jong-Un.

North Korean weapons ship heads home

2009-07-06T13:46:00.001+10:00

By Jack Kim

(News.com.au) -A NORTH Korean ship tracked by the US Navy on suspicion of carrying a banned arms cargo is expected to return home after a voyage that tested UN sanctions aimed at punishing Pyongyang for its May nuclear test.

The ship's return may decrease tensions that were raised after North Korea fired seven ballistic missiles on Saturday in an act of defiance towards the US on its Independence Day.

The ageing cargo ship Kang Nam, which set sail in mid June, was headed back to North Korea and is expected to arrive on Monday, South Korean Defence Ministry spokesman Won Tae-jae said.

Local dailies said it was headed for the North's port of Nampo after a journey that took it close to Singapore and Myanmar.

A US envoy coordinating the enforcement of UN sanctions on the North is in Malaysia for talks with officials on possibly shutting down bank accounts used by the North for its illicit trade deals, reports in South Korean dailies said.

"The Obama administration has uncovered suspicious North Korean bank accounts in Malaysia," the Joongang Ilbo newspaper quoted a diplomatic source in Washington as saying.

A Malaysian official described the visit by US Ambassador Philip Goldberg as "routine".

Mr Goldberg last week discussed enforcing sanctions with China, the North's biggest benefactor whose participation is essential for the punishment to take effect.

The UN sanctions imposed after the North's nuclear test were aimed at halting its arms trade, which is a vital source of foreign currency for the cash-short state. They also called on states to clamp down on the North's suspected arms shipments.

Missle tests and sanctions

US Vice President Joseph Biden dismissed North Korea's recent missile launches as predictable and said in a TV interview aired on Sunday it was part of "attention-seeking" behaviour by the reclusive state.

Analysts said the missile test may be related to the UN sanctions because the North wants to show its customers, who face greater risks in purchasing missiles, that its products are reliable and accurate.

"North Korea has been making profits through arms trading and this could also have been a test to measure their force," Dongguk University professor Koh Yu-hwan said.

"They want to test their performance on how much they have developed in the past months."

North Korea appears to have launched five Scud missiles, which could hit anywhere in South Korea, and two mid-range Rodong missiles, that could strike most of Japan, in the salvo fired on Saturday, South Korean officials told reporters.

The missiles flew as far as 420 km and displayed greater precision than previously shown, one official said.

Defence Ministry spokesman Won said the North had "greatly improved" the accuracy of its missiles.

A senior South Korean official quoted by the Dong-A Ilbo daily said: "They showed the North is capable of dealing a serious blow to military command centres, airfields and major government installations throughout the South."

"The level of threat is of an entirely different scale when compared to previous launches of surface-to-ship and surface-to-air missiles."

The Scud and Rodong are ballistic missiles. Their launch would mark an escalation by the North, which has fired several non-ballistic, short-range missile since the May 25 nuclear test.

North Korea is barred by UN resolutions from firing ballistic missiles.

It has more than 600 Scud type missiles and 300 Rodong missiles which have been deployed and target US allies South Korea and Japan, defence officials have said.

Reuters

'Slow starvation on a massive scale' but beer is available

2009-07-04T16:07:00.003+10:00

IN KOREA NOW

Sister and Brother in 1 July'09

N Korea test-fires two missiles

2009-07-04T12:41:00.002+10:00

From correspondents in Seoul
(news.com.au) Agence France-Presse

NORTH Korea has test-fired two more missiles, South Korea's defence ministry says, further stoking tensions sparked by its nuclear standoff with the international community.
"North Korea launched two missiles this morning," the Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement. It follows a series of missile launches earlier this week.

The missiles were launched between 8am and 8.30am local time, 9.30am (AEST) from Kitdaeryong Base near the eastern port of Wonsan into the East Sea (Sea of Japan), it said.

"The military, on the basis of a strong joint defence alliance with the United States, is fully prepared to fend off any threats or provocations by the North," it said.

An unidentified government official quoted by Yonhap news agency said both of the missiles were believed to be Scuds with a range of 500km, which would allow the North to strike most of South Korea.

North Korea fired four short-range missiles on Thursday into the Sea of Japan but the range of those missiles was estimated to be only around 120km.

"The Scuds fired today impose greater security threat to us because of their longer ranges," the official was quoted as saying by Yonhap.

"Thursday's missile tests were apparently made as part of a military drill but today's launches, which came on the eve of the US Independence Day, are believed to be aimed at political purposes," the official said.

This week's missile launches were the first military action the hardline communist state had taken since the United Nations on June 12 imposed tougher sanctions for its May 25 nuclear test.

In the days after its atomic test - the second since 2006 - the North also fired a volley of short-range missiles.

In response to the UN resolution tightening curbs on its missile and atomic activities, it vowed to build more nuclear bombs. It also renounced the truce brokered on the Korean peninsula after a civil war in 1950 to 1953.

North Korea fires four short-range missiles

2009-07-03T16:39:00.004+10:00

By Lim Chang-Won
News.com.au - Agence France-Presse

* North Korea reportedly fires missiles
* US says they're not worried about attack
* Efforts to reign in rogue state continue

NORTH Korea has reportedly test-fired four short-range missiles, further fuelling tension sparked by its nuclear standoff with the international community, in a move the White House has called the latest in a string of "provocative" acts.

South Korean military officials said the missiles - apparently surface-to-ship ones - were fired into the East Sea (Sea of Japan) between 5.20pm (6.20pm AEST) and 9.20pm (8.20pm AEST) local time. All were launched on Thursday from a base at Sinsang-ri, near the eastern coastal city of Wonsan, a spokesman told the Yonhap news agency.

Other officials told the agency on condition of anonymity they landed about 100km off the coast, where the North has imposed a maritime ban until July 11 for what it calls a military drill.

Spokesmen from the defence ministry confirmed the first three firings but could not be reached for comment on the fourth.

It was the first military action the hardline communist state had taken since the United Nations on June 12 imposed tougher sanctions for its May 25 nuclear test.

South Korea's Joong Ang Ilbo newspaper, quoting an intelligence source, said the North was likely to fire a series of short-range missiles - including Scud-B missiles with a range of 340km - in the coming days. The North may also fire Rodongs, whose 1300km range would likely be shortened to about 400km for the current round of testing.

In the days after its atomic test - the second since 2006 - Pyongyang fired six short-range missiles and renounced the truce brokered on the Korean peninsula after a civil war in 1950 to 1953. In response to the UN resolution tightening curbs on its missile and atomic activities, it vowed to build more nuclear bombs.

World condemnation

US and South Korean officials believe ailing leader Kim Jong-Il, 67, is staging a show of strength to bolster his authority as he tries to put in place a succession plan involving his youngest son.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said that broadly-backed international sanctions imposed on North Korea were starting to take effect and raised hopes that Pyongyang will yield to the pressure.

"The North Koreans said they were going to launch these missiles. I don't think that's surprising that they've launched these missiles. I take the North Koreans at their word that they're going to continue their provocative actions."

Washington has said it is not ruling out the possibility of a long-range missile launch toward Hawaii on or around July 4, the US Independence Day, although the Pentagon has expressed doubts about such a scenario.

A spokesman for Australia's Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade said the Government is "very concerned" about the missile launches and called on North Korea to immediately desist.

Japan's Prime Minister Taro Aso also condemned yesterday's launches, saying: "We have repeatedly warned that such a provocative act is not beneficial for North Korea's national interest."

The commander of US Northern Command, General Victor Renuart, told The Washington Times he did not think Pyongyang's missiles posed any real threat to the US.

"The nation has a very, very credible ballistic-missile defence capability. Our ground-based interceptors in Alaska and California ... give me a capability that if we really are threatened by a long-range ICBM (intercontinental ballistic missile) that I've got high confidence that I could interdict that flight before it caused huge damage to any US territory," he said.

In Beijing, a US delegation met officials yesterday for talks on giving the UN sanctions more teeth.

The support of China, the North's sole major ally and largest trade partner, is seen as crucial in making the sanctions stick.

Warships tracking suspected weapons

US warships have since mid-June been tracking a North Korean ship suspected of carrying weapons. The Kang Nam 1 was reportedly headed for Burma but US officials said on Tuesday it has now turned back.

China said its top envoy on the North Korean nuclear issue, Wu Dawei, had begun a visit to Russia, the United States, Japan and South Korea.

They are members of a forum which has tried since 2003 to persuade the North to scrap its nuclear programmes in return for energy aid and diplomatic and security benefits.

The North announced it was quitting the talks after the UN censured its long-range rocket launch on April 5.

North and South Korea meanwhile held more talks about the fate of their last major joint business project, the Seoul-funded Kaesong industrial estate just north of the border.

But they failed to narrow differences or set the date for their next meeting, Seoul officials said.

Millions starving in North Korea - UN

2009-07-01T19:09:00.005+10:00

Starving ... an emaciated brother and sister lie prone at a kindergarten
in South Pyongyang. Picture: World Food Program

* Children facing "critical" food shortage
* Nuclear standoff slowing donations
* Nine million require food aid

From correspondents in Beijing, China (News.com)

NORTH Koreans, especially children, are facing a "critical" food situation as donations have dried up amid the country's nuclear standoff with the world, the UN's food aid agency said today.

Torben Due, the World Food Programme's country representative in North Korea, said Pyongyang had told the agency to scale back its operations in the impoverished country, without giving clear reasons.

"It is a very serious problem for the population in (North Korea) as they do not have enough to eat,'' Mr Due said.

He said the WFP, which launched an emergency operation in North Korea late last year amid a deteriorating food outlook, has had to pare back its goal of reaching 6.2m of the hungry, and is now targeting just 2.27m.

"For adults, it doesn't mean a lot if you live for a few months on a diet of cereals and vegetables, but for children, it is critical,'' he said.

"We see an increase in the number of children being admitted to hospitals with severe malnutrition,'' he added, while stressing that observation was based on anecdotal evidence and could not yet be quantified or verified.

Due said a study by the WFP and the Food and Agriculture Organisation last year estimated nearly nine million North Koreans - more than a third of the country's 24 million people - require food aid.

A long-running international standoff over North Korea's nuclear programmes escalated on May 25 when Pyongyang carried out its second nuclear test, followed by further missile launches, which resulted in new UN sanctions.

Obama extends sanctions on North Korea

2009-06-25T14:07:00.001+10:00

(SMH) -US President Barack Obama has extended a set of economic sanctions on North Korea for another year as tension soars with the communist state over its nuclear and missile programs.

Obama, using emergency powers, prolonged by one year restrictions on property dealings with North Korea that had been due to expire on Friday.

In a statement, Obama said he acted "because the existence and risk of the proliferation of weapons-usable fissile material on the Korean peninsula continue to pose an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States."

Former president George W. Bush a year ago rescinded the Trading with the Enemy Act for North Korea, which had banned all commerce with Pyongyang on the grounds it was a hostile state. Only Cuba remains on the list.

But Bush, using the same emergency powers as Obama, had at the same time slapped restrictions for one year on property dealings with North Korea, which would have otherwise been lifted.

Bush at the time was racing to clinch a denuclearisation deal with North Korea late in his term. He also took Pyongyang off a list of state sponsors of terrorism, to the dismay of Japan and some US conservatives.

Diplomacy with North Korea has since quickly deteriorated, with the hardline state in recent months testing a nuclear bomb, firing missiles and bolting from a six-nation agreement that set a framework for denuclearisation.

The Obama administration has said it would welcome new talks with North Korea but also has negotiated at the United Nations to tighten international sanctions on the impoverished state.

N Korea warns of nuclear 'fire shower'

2009-06-25T13:57:00.001+10:00

(SMH) -North Korea condemned a recent US pledge to provide nuclear defence of South Korea, saying on Thursday that the move boosts its justification to hold onto atomic bombs and invites a potential "fire shower of nuclear retaliation".

The salvo in Pyongyang's main Rodong Sinmun newspaper was the North's latest reaction to last week's summit between President Barack Obama and South Korean President Lee Myung-bak.

The allies issued a joint statement committing the US to defend the South with nuclear weapons.

It also came as an American destroyer trailed a North Korean ship suspected of shipping weapons in violation of a UN resolution punishing Pyongyang's May 25 nuclear test, and as anticipation mounted that the North might test-fire short- or mid-range missiles.

The North's newspaper claimed in a lengthy commentary that the US "nuclear umbrella" commitment made it more likely for the US to mount a nuclear attack on the communist North, and only "provides us with a stronger justification to have nuclear deterrent."

It also amounts to "asking for the calamitous situation of having a fire shower of nuclear retaliation all over South Korea" in case of a conflict, the paper said.

"It is as clear as daylight that South Korea cannot survive under that nuclear umbrella."

North Korea has long claimed that the US is plotting to invade it and has used the claim to justify its development of nuclear weapons.

On Wednesday, Pyongyang accused Washington of seeking to "provoke a second Korean War," saying it will "wipe out the aggressors on the globe once and for all".

The US has repeatedly said it has no intention of attacking the North.

The UN resolution seeks to clamp down on North Korea's trading of banned arms and weapons-related material by requiring UN member states to request inspections of ships carrying suspected cargo.

The US has been seeking to get key nations to enforce the sanctions aggressively.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton called the foreign ministers of Russia and China to discuss efforts to enforce UN punishments of North Korea for its nuclear test, State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said.

Kim Jong Il makes son head of spy agency: report

2009-06-24T15:26:00.001+10:00

(SMH) -North Korean leader Kim Jong Il has put his youngest son in charge of the country's spy agency in a move aimed at handing the communist regime over to him, a news report said.

Kim visited the headquarters of the State Security Department in March, along with his 26-year-old third son, Kim Jong Un, and told agency leaders to "uphold" the son as head of the department, the Dong-a Ilbo newspaper reported on Tuesday, citing an unnamed source.

Kim also told department leaders to "safeguard comrade Kim Jong Un with (your) lives as you did for me in the past," and gave them five foreign-made cars, each worth some $US80,000 ($A100,743), as gifts, the mass-market daily said.

It said Kim visited a college that educates spy agents last month and made similar remarks there.

Pyongyang's State Security Department is the backbone of Kim's harsh rule over the totalitarian nation. It keeps a close watch over government agencies, the military and ordinary people for any signs of dissent. It also engages in spy missions abroad.

The move to put Jong Un in charge of the agency illustrates Kim's concern about any possible backlash that the father-to-son succession could prompt, the Dong-a said.

The paper also said Jong Un oversaw the handling of two American journalists detained in March while on a reporting trip to the China-North Korea border. The reporters were sentenced to 12 years of hard labour earlier this month for illegal border crossing and hostile acts.

South Korea's main spy agency, the National Intelligence Service, said it could not confirm the Dong-a report.

North Koreans Won't Give Up the Ship Without a Fight

2009-06-22T20:55:00.003+10:00

Anyone who thinks the North Koreans will sit back passively and allow their ships at sea to be stopped and searched for nuclear weapons or missile components should reflect on a little-known sea battle that took place off the southern coast of Kyushu.

The December 22, 2001, running firefight pitted the Japanese Coast Guard and the North Korean "spy ship" (Japan's phrase) Changyu 3705. Eventually the Korean vessel scuttled itself, taking its 10-man crew to the bottom. Three Japanese Coast Guardsmen were wounded.

President Barack Obama and Japan's Prime Minister Taro Aso have both pledged to carry out the latest United Nations resolution allowing member nations to stop and search North Korean vessels suspected of carrying illicit weapons material or missile components. (On Monday it was reported that a US Navy destroyer was already trailing one North Korean cargo ship in international waters.)

The resolution came in the wake of the North's provocative multistage missile tests in April and its setting off of its second nuclear device in May. It calls on UN members to inspect all cargo to and from the North in their territorial waters if they have "information that provides reasonable grounds" that the cargo includes nuclear and missile related items.

The 2001 shootout began in the late afternoon when a coast guard cutter and several patrol aircraft were dispatched to investigate a suspicious vessel operating inside Japan's economic exclusion zone. Ignoring orders to halt, the suspicious vessel attempted to escape. The cutter fired warning shots across the bow, into the sea and eventually directly into the bow of the ship.

The Northern vessel fired back, spraying the coast guard cutter with bullets from automatic rifles and rocket-propelled grenades. It was later determined that the vessel was armed with a Russian-made 14.5 mm ZPU-2 anti-aircraft gun, concealed in a cabin behind the wheelhouse although it was not fired at the coast guard vessel.

At around 10 p.m. the Changyu scuttled itself and sank about 390 km west of the Japanese island of Amani Oshima. None of its 10-member crew survived, although the coast guard did recover several bodies floating in the water.

The Japanese government was curious enough about this ship and what it was up to that it took the trouble, and the considerable expense (about US$50 million), to raise it and associated debris from 90 meters of water to examine it more carefully.

The ship is now on public display in a barn-like building that makes up the Japan Coast Guard Museum on the Yokohama waterfront, a trophy vaguely reminiscent of another spy ship, the USS Pueblo, which was captured by North Korea in 1968 and put on display in Wonson harbor.

The 33-meter ship is rusted and brown from its burial at sea, the bullet holes from the coast guard's 20 mm machine gun are clearly visible at the bow. Aside from associated debris, there are no other displays in the room. The museum is open to anyone free of charge.

The Changyu was clearly designed to look like a fishing boat of undetermined nationality (it has fake name plates in Chinese characters), but a close look reveals anomalies. Where the hold forward of the wheelhouse would normally store the catch was a Russian-made high speed engine capable of pushing the ship to 33 knots, considerably more powerful than a common fishing boat.

At the stern, two doors open to permit a smaller ship to exit from the mother ship. The smaller boat was designed to look like a squid fishing boat but one with an unusually powerful power assembly. Near the stern doors were explosives designed to scuttle the ship if necessary.

On display are other intriguing items that were scattered on the sea bottom. Among them were assorted AK-47 automatic rifles, hand grenades, rocket launchers, the ZPU anti-aircraft machine gun and a curious underwater scooter shaped like a torpedo, plus uniforms and a button with the face of Kim Il-sung.

It is clear that the museum serves a political purpose. As its brochure states, it was opened "to allow citizens to understand the current situation of the waters around Japan and the importance of marine patrols." The "situation' could mean anything but most likely points to Japan's obsession with North Korea's abduction of some of its citizens in the 1970s and 1980s.

One can easily imagine the smaller ship sneaking into a Japanese harbor (maps of Kagoshima were recovered from the sunken vessel) or along the coast to land secret agents or pick up kidnap victims, such as then 13-year-old Megumi Yokota, who was abducted along the Sea of Japan coast in 1977 and taken to the North

In this instance, it seems more likely that the ship was engaged in routine drug smuggling. The incident was videotaped, and one segment shows somebody on board throwing some items over the side. Recovered from the floor was a water-logged Japanese mobile phone, but investigators were able to use phone company records to trace calls to gangsters on Kyushu. Several prosecutions resulted.

Since the sea battle, the coast guard has boosted the size and range of armaments aboard its newer patrol ships, allowing them to fire effectively at a more distant range, presumably out of range of handheld automatic weapons and RPGs.

Indeed, Tokyo has been expanding the coast guard, which currently boasts 89 armed vessels, and enlarging its mission in recent years. The Coast Guard Annual Report for 2009 includes for the first time a section devoted to protecting Japanese territorial waters from intrusions by neighboring states.

This includes the waters off the Senkaku islands in the East China Sea, claimed by China, Japan and Taiwan. The coast guard has taken the lead in policing these waters, and in December caused an international incident when a cutter collided with a Taiwanese sports fishing boat.

The Japanese government has submitted a bill to the Diet that would allow Japan's maritime services to inspect North Korean cargo on the high seas in accordance with the new UN mandate. Interestingly, Aso designated the coast guard as the agency to do the searches, not the Maritime Self-Defense force (navy).

Apparently the government felt that using the coast guard rather than the navy would prevent these close encounters on the high seas from turning violent, although the "spy ship" incident would suggest that the North Koreans don't necessarily differentiate much between the two sea services and they won't give up the ship without a fight.

Koreas negotiate as nuclear tensions grow

2009-06-20T20:33:00.002+10:00

By Peter Foster in Beijing

(SMH) - NORTH and South Korea have resumed talks on the fate of their last remaining reconciliation project as the US moved to defend itself in the event of a North Korean missile strike on Hawaii.

The future of the Kaesong joint industrial estate just north of the border has become increasingly uncertain as North-South relations have worsened and the nuclear stand-off has intensified.

Pyongyang is demanding extra payments worth hundreds of millions of dollars for Seoul's use of the estate and refuses to grant access to a South Korean employee it detained at Kaesong.

Seoul officials were outwardly optimistic before the resumption of talks yesterday.

"The weather is good today, so wouldn't the talks go well?" a Unification Ministry official, Kim Young-tak, said to the Yonhap news agency before crossing the heavily fortified border at the head of a 14-member delegation.

Meanwhile, Washington is considering using five-way talks with China, Russia, Japan and South Korea to press North Korea to change tack on its nuclear and missile programs, a US official said. The five had been involved in negotiations with North Korea on the nuclear issue.

The idea was raised when the US President, Barack Obama, hosted talks at the White House on Tuesday with the South Korean President, Lee Myung-bak, a senior State Department official told reporters on Thursday.

The US military has moved additional defences to Hawaii in case North Korea fires a missile towards the Pacific island chain.

The decision to deploy missile defence weaponry to Hawaii came as the US military tracked a North Korean ship that it said might be carrying cargo banned under tougher United Nations sanctions imposed on Pyongyang last week.

The US Defence Secretary, Robert Gates, said Washington was watching North Korea for missile activity.

"We do have some concerns if they were to launch a missile to the west in the direction of Hawaii," Mr Gates said. "Without telegraphing what we will do, I would just say … we are in a good position, should it become necessary, to protect Americans and American territory."

He said he had approved the deployment of missile defence weaponry to Hawaii and a radar system nearby "to provide support" in case of an attack.

Reports of Pyongyang's missile preparations came as Russia and China took the rare step of jointly urging North Korea to stop its provocative actions of recent months and return to the stalled six-party talks on nuclear disarmament.

Following talks in Moscow, China's President, Hu Jintao, joined his Russian counterpart, Dmitry Medvedev, in calling for the "swiftest renewal" of talks.

"Russia and China are ready to foster the lowering of tension in North-East Asia and call for the continuation of efforts by all sides to resolve disagreements through peaceful means, through dialogue and consultations," they said.

The possibility has been raised that North Korea might use chemical weapons.

Daniel Pinkston of the International Crisis Group said: "If there is an escalation of conflict and if military hostilities break out, there is a risk that [chemical weapons] could be used. In conventional terms, North Korea is weak and they feel they might have to resort to using those."

Agence France-Presse;Telegraph, London

Kim Jong-Un meets China President Hu Jintao

2009-06-16T14:38:00.003+10:00

THE youngest son of North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il secretly visited China last week and his hosts were told he had been appointed heir to the ruling family dynasty.

Japan's Asahi newspaper cited unidentified sources close to North Korea, said Kim Jong-Un met Chinese President Hu Jintao and other leaders of the ruling Communist Party when he flew to Beijing around June 10.

Analysts have said North Korea's nuclear test on May 25 and other belligerent acts may be aimed at a domestic audience, with the elder Kim trying to bolster his position at home to secure the succession of his youngest son.

The 67-year-old leader is believed to have suffered a stroke last year.

An aide to Jong-Un told Chinese officials the younger Kim had been appointed heir and that he held an important post in the ruling Korean Workers' Party, the mass circulation Asahi said.

China's Foreign Ministry declined immediate comment on the report of the visit.

Jong-Un is the Swiss-educated third son of Kim Jong-Il and was born in 1983 or 1984.

Earlier this month South Korean media, quoting informed sources, said Pyongyang had asked the country's main bodies and overseas missions to pledge loyalty to Jong-un.

China is the closest thing North Korea has to an ally and in theory Beijing wields more influence over Pyongyang than any other power, but experts say the relationship is brittle and China actually has limited room for manoeuvre.

Hu apparently asked North Korea not to go ahead with another nuclear test or test-fire an intercontinental ballistic missile, the Asahi reported.

Jong-Un was believed to have asked China for emergency energy and food aid, the newspaper said, underscoring the grim economic situation in the impoverished state.

Jong-Un also visited factories in China's export hub of Guangdong province, it added.

The succession has been one of the most closely guarded secrets in North Korea and very little is known about Jong-Un, whose youth could be problem in a society that attaches importance to seniority.

(News.com.au) From correspondents in Tokyo - Reuters

We'll keep making weapons

2009-06-14T09:38:00.001+10:00

Park Chan-Kyong
Seoul (SMH)

NORTH Korea vowed yesterday to build more nuclear bombs and start enriching uranium for atomic weapons after the United Nations Security Council imposed sanctions for its nuclear test last month.

The Foreign Ministry, describing the sanctions resolution as a "vile product" of a US-inspired campaign, said North Korea would never abandon nuclear weapons and would treat any attempt to blockade it as an act of war.

The 15-member Security Council voted unanimously on Friday to toughen sanctions to cripple North Korea's nuclear and missile programs. The US hailed Friday's measure but warned that Pyongyang might respond with "further provocation".

The hardline communist state's Foreign Ministry said that "all plutonium to be extracted will be weaponised". A third of used fuel rods from the Yongbyon reactor had been reprocessed into weapons-grade plutonium, it said.

"Secondly, we will start uranium enrichment," the Foreign Ministry said. It said the country had developed the necessary technology.

In 2002 North Korea denied US claims that it was operating a secret uranium enrichment program in addition to its plutonium-based operation it had admitted to having.

The plutonium-producing plants were shut under a six-nation disarmament deal in 2007. But North Korea vowed to restart them after the Security Council in April condemned its long-range rocket launch.

"It has become an absolutely impossible option for the DPRK [North Korea] to even think about giving up its nuclear weapons," the Foreign Ministry said.

It said North Korea would consider any blockade as an act of war and would retaliate militarily.

It said the sanctions aimed to "disarm us and suffocate us economically" to dismantle the ideology and system chosen by the people.

The Foreign Ministry said North Korea never wanted nuclear weapons "but it was an inevitable course of action forced upon us by the US hostile policy and nuclear threats".

"No matter how hard the US-led hostile forces may try all sorts of isolation and blockade, the DPRK, a proud nuclear power, will not flinch from them."

Resolution 1874, passed on Friday, does not authorise the use of force. It calls on UN member states to expand sanctions imposed on the North after its first nuclear test in October 2006.

It calls for tougher inspections of cargo suspected of containing banned missile- and nuclear-related items, a tighter arms embargo (with the exception of light weapons), and new targeted financial restrictions to choke off revenue for Pyongyang's nuclear and missile programs.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said the resolution sent a "clear and strong message" to Pyongyang.

Cost-benefit analysis of nuclear ambition puts N Korea in front

2009-06-13T18:06:00.003+10:00

A North Korean counterfeit, top, of the $US100 bill, below. Photo: AP

By Blaine Harden in Tokyo

(SMH) -AS THE United Nations moves to enact a sanction on North Korea for its second nuclear test, strong evidence of the failure of a previous international squeeze has emerged.

In recent decades North Korea has earned hundreds of millions of dollars from peddling fake drugs, circulating counterfeit currency and moving missiles and missile parts to countries in East Asia and the Middle East, the Centre for Nonproliferation Studies in California has found.

Because of booming business with China, overseas trade has grown substantially since the sanctions were imposed in 2006 after the government of Kim Jong-il exploded its first nuclear device.

Trade volume rose last year to its highest level since 1990, when a less isolated North Korea was heavily subsidised by the former Soviet Union, an analysis by the Korea Trade and Investment Promotion Agency in Seoul found.

North Korean exports surged 23 per cent last year, on the previous year, and imports rose 33 per cent, the agency said. It found that China's share of overseas trade had risen from 33 per cent in 2003 to 73 per cent last year.

UN Security Council sanctions have had "no perceptible effect" on North Korea's trade with its largest partners, another study, by Marcus Noland, a North Korea expert at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington, found.

"In retrospect, North Korea may have calculated quite correctly that direct penalties for establishing itself as a nuclear power would be modest," he wrote in a paper published at the end of last year. "If sanctions are to deter behaviour in the future, they will have to be much more enthusiastically implemented."

A draft resolution agreed on Wednesday by the United States, China and other major powers would tighten the military, financial and trade sanctions approved in 2006. It could be adopted by Friday.

Noland said the plan was clever. "The North Koreans will be down to whatever China gives them and whatever they can get from their subterranean customers in the Middle East."

The Washington Post

UN widens sanctions on North Korea, China joins in

2009-06-13T17:53:00.001+10:00

By Louis Charbonneau and Claudia Parsons

(News.com) -The UN Security Council unanimously approved wider sanctions against North Korea overnight over its May 25 nuclear test, a move close ally China said showed firm opposition to Pyongyang's atomic ambitions.

The sanctions resolution banned all weapons exports from North Korea and most arms imports into the reclusive communist state. It authorized UN member states to inspect North Korean sea, air and land cargo, requiring them to seize and destroy any goods transported in violation of the sanctions.

Both China and Russia, which had been reluctant to approve punitive measures against North Korea in the past, backed the US-drafted resolution, which is binding under international law.

China's UN ambassador, Zhang Yesui, said the resolution showed the "firm opposition" of the international community to North Korea's nuclear ambitions, but he urged countries to exercise caution when inspecting North Korean cargo.

"Under no circumstances should there be use or threat of the use of force," Mr Zhang said.

US Ambassador Susan Rice said Washington would press for full implementation of the sanctions and would not get into a "tit-for-tat reaction" to every provocation from Pyongyang.

"It would not be a surprise if North Korea reacted to this very tough sanctions regime in a fashion that would be further provocation and further destabilizing," she said.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's press office issued a statement welcoming the 15-nation council's move.

"Acting unanimously and agreeing on credible measures, the members of the Security Council have sent today a clear and strong message to (North Korea)," the statement said, adding the South Korean UN chief would "spare no effort in facilitating the implementation of the resolution."

Two senior diplomats involved in the negotiations on the resolution said on condition of anonymity the Chinese had never really clarified whether they intended to implement the new sanctions resolution in contrast to earlier sanctions against North Korea that they ignored.

"The effectiveness of this resolution will depend on its enforcement," one of the diplomats said.

Reuters

Japan vows total ban on N Korea exports

2009-06-13T17:51:00.000+10:00

(News.com) -JAPAN plans to impose a total ban on exports to North Korea as part of its new economic sanctions against Pyongyang following last month's nuclear test, news reports said.

The move comes after the United Nations Security Council voted unanimously Friday to slap tougher sanctions on North Korea to cripple its nuclear and ballistic missile programs.

Japan has already imposed a ban on its shipments of luxury goods and weapons-related equipment to North Korea following the communist state's missile launches and its first nuclear test.

Prime Minister Taro Aso's cabinet is expected to announce the additional sanctions as early as Tuesday, the Nikkei reported.

In a statement released today, Mr Aso urged North Korea to "take seriously" the latest UN resolution to punish Pyongyang for last month's nuclear test.

"The international community must work together in executing measures based on the resolution," Mr Aso said. "Our country will quickly move into action in order to secure the effectiveness of the resolution."

All 15 members of the UN Security Council endorsed the compromise resolution sponsored by Britain, France, Japan, South Korea and the US.

The text, which does not authorise the use of force, calls on UN member states to impose expanded sanctions on North Korea in response to its May 25 underground nuclear test and subsequent missile firings.

Agence France-Presse

Tunnels, Guns and Kimchi: Part I and II

2009-06-12T13:43:00.001+10:00

Tunnels, Guns and Kimchi: North Korea’s Quest for Dollars – Part I

Tunnels, Guns And Kimchi North Koreas Quest For Dollars – Part Ii

View more Microsoft Word documents from Jeg .

A Bertil Lintner Research
Rights: © Copyright 2009 The Yale Center for the Study of Globalization

N. Korea Sentences 2 U.S. Journalists to 12 Years of Hard Labor

2009-06-08T15:39:00.003+10:00

By CHOE SANG-HUN

SEOUL, South Korea (NYT)— North Korea on Monday sentenced two American journalists to 12 years of hard labor in a case widely seen as a test of how far the isolated Communist state was willing to take its confrontational stance toward the United States.

The Central Court, the highest court of North Korea, held the trial of the two Americans, Laura Ling and Euna Lee, from Thursday to Monday and convicted them of “committing hostilities against the Korean nation and illegal entry,” the North’s official news agency, KCNA, said in a report monitored in Seoul.

Ms. Ling and Ms. Lee have been held since they were detained by North Korean soldiers patrolling the border between China and North Korea on March 17.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has called the charges “baseless.”

The United States government had demanded that the North forgo the legal proceedings and release the two women.

The sentencing came amid rising tensions between Washington and Pyongyang. Earlier Monday, North Korea threatened to retaliate with “extreme” measures if the United Nations punished it for its nuclear test last month, and Washington warned that it might try to put the North back on its list of states that sponsor terrorism, a designation that could subject the impoverished state to more financial sanctions.

“Our response would be to consider sanctions against us as a declaration of war and answer it with extreme hard-line measures,” the North Korea’s state-run newspaper, Rodong Sinmun, said in a commentary.

Ms. Ling and Ms. Lee were on a reporting assignment from Current TV, a San Francisco-based media company co-founded by Al Gore, the former vice president, when they were detained by the soldiers. The reporters were working on a report about North Korean refugees — women and children — who had fled their homeland in hopes of finding food in China.

The circumstances surrounding their capture remain unclear.

Analysts said they were a pawn in a rapidly deteriorating confrontation between the United States and North Korea — a potential bargaining chip for the Pyongyang regime and a handicap for Washington in its efforts to pressure the government over its recent missile and nuclear tests.

The sentence to North Korea’s infamous prison camps came despite repeated appeals for clemency from the journalists’ families.

Defying not only its traditional foes — the United States, Japan and South Korea — but also its longtime ideological allies, China and Russia, North Korea launched an intermediate-range rocket on April 5 and conducted an underground nuclear test on May 25.

US Weighs Intercepting North Korean Shipments

2009-06-07T15:44:00.005+10:00

By DAVID E. SANGER

WASHINGTON (NYT)— The Obama administration signaled Sunday that it was seeking a way to interdict, possibly with China’s help, North Korean sea and air shipments suspected of carrying weapons or nuclear technology.

The administration also said it was examining whether there was a legal basis to reverse former President George W. Bush’s decision last year to remove the North from a list of states that sponsor terrorism.

The reference to interdictions — preferably at ports or airfields in countries like China, but possibly involving riskier confrontations on the high seas — was made by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. She was the highest-ranking official to talk publicly about such a potentially provocative step as a response to North Korea’s second nuclear test, conducted two weeks ago.

While Mrs. Clinton did not specifically mention assistance from China, other administration officials have been pressing Beijing to take such action under Chinese law.

Speaking on ABC’s “This Week,” Mrs. Clinton said the United States feared that if the test and other recent actions by North Korea did not lead to “strong action,” there was a risk of “an arms race in Northeast Asia” — an oblique reference to the concern that Japan would reverse its long-held ban against developing nuclear weapons.

So far it is not clear how far the Chinese are willing to go to aid the United States in stopping North Korea’s profitable trade in arms, the isolated country’s most profitable export. But the American focus on interdiction demonstrates a new and potentially far tougher approach to North Korea than both President Clinton and Mr. Bush, in his second term, took as they tried unsuccessfully to reach deals that would ultimately lead North Korea to dismantle its nuclear arsenal.

Mr. Obama, aides say, has decided that he will not offer North Korea new incentives to dismantle the nuclear complex at Yongbyon that the North previously promised to abandon.

“I’m tired of buying the same horse twice,” Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates said last week while touring an antimissile site in Alaska that the Bush administration built to demonstrate its preparedness to destroy North Korean missiles headed toward the United States. (So far, the North Koreans have not successfully tested a missile of sufficient range to reach the United States, though there is evidence that they may be preparing for another test of their long-range Taepodong-2 missile.)

In France on Saturday, Mr. Obama referred to the same string of broken deals, telling reporters, “I don’t think there should be an assumption that we will simply continue down a path in which North Korea is constantly destabilizing the region and we just react in the same ways.” He added, “We are not intending to continue a policy of rewarding provocation.”

While Mr. Obama was in the Middle East and Europe last week, several senior officials said the president’s national security team had all but set aside the central assumption that guided American policy toward North Korea over the past 16 years and two presidencies: that the North would be willing to ultimately abandon its small arsenal of nuclear weapons in return for some combination of oil, nuclear power plants, money, food and guarantees that the United States would not topple its government, the world’s last Stalinesque regime.

Now, after examining the still-inconclusive evidence about the results of North Korea’s second nuclear test, the administration has come to different conclusions: that Pyonyang’s top priority is to be recognized as a nuclear state, that it is unwilling to bargain away its weapons and that it sees tests as a way to help sell its nuclear technology.

“This entirely changes the dynamic of how you deal with them,” a senior national security aide said.

While Mr. Obama is willing to reopen the six-party talks that Mr. Bush began — the other participants are Japan, South Korea, Russia and China — he has no intention, aides say, of offering new incentives to get the North to fulfill agreements from 1994, 2005 and 2008; all were recently renounced.

“Clinton bought it once, Bush bought it again, and we’re not going to buy it a third time,” one of Mr. Obama’s chief strategists said last week, referring to the Yongbyon plant, where the North reprocesses spent nuclear fuel into bomb-grade plutonium.

While some officials privately acknowledged that they would still like to roll back what one called North Korea’s “rudimentary” nuclear capacity, a more realistic goal is to stop the country from devising a small weapon deliverable on a short-, medium- or long-range missile.

In conducting any interdictions, the United States could risk open confrontation with North Korea. That prospect — and the likelihood of escalating conflict if the North resisted an inspection — is why China has balked at American proposals for a resolution by the United Nations Security Council that would explicitly allow interceptions at sea. A previous Security Council resolution, passed after the North’s first nuclear test, in 2006, allowed interdictions “consistent with international law.” But that term was never defined, and few of the provisions were enforced.

North Korea has repeatedly said it would regard any interdiction as an act of war, and officials in Washington have been trying to find ways to stop the shipments without a conflict. Late last week, James B. Steinberg, the deputy secretary of state, visited Beijing with a delegation of American officials, seeking ideas from China about sanctions, including financial pressure, that might force North Korea to change direction.

“The Chinese face a dilemma that they have always faced,” a senior administration official said. “They don’t want North Korea to become a full nuclear weapons state. But they don’t want to cause the state to collapse.” They have been walking a fine line, the official said, taking a tough position against the North of late, but unwilling to publicly embrace steps that would put China in America’s camp.

To counter the Chinese concern, Mr. Steinberg and his delegation argued to the Chinese that failing to crack down on North Korea would prompt reactions that Beijing would find deeply unsettling, including a greater American military presence in the region and more calls in Japan for that country to develop its own weapons.

Mrs. Clinton seemed to reflect this concern in the interview on Sunday. “We will do everything we can to both interdict it and prevent it and shut off their flow of money,” she said. “If we do not take significant and effective action against the North Koreans now, we’ll spark an arms race in Northeast Asia. I don’t think anybody wants to see that.”

While Mrs. Clinton also said the State Department was examining whether North Korea should be placed back on the list of state sponsors of terrorism, she acknowledged that there was a legal process for it. “Obviously we would want to see recent evidence of their support for international terrorism,” she said.

That evidence may be hard to come by. While North Korea has engaged in missile sales, it has not been linked to terrorism activity for many years. And North Korea’s restoration to the list would be largely symbolic, because it already faces numerous economic sanctions.

Obama warns Iran and North Korea over nuclear threat

2009-06-07T12:40:00.001+10:00

(SMH) -US President Barack Obama said on Saturday that North Korea's nuclear weapon test had been "extraordinarily provocative" and that it would be "profoundly dangerous" for Iran to get a nuclear bomb.

Iran's nuclear program featured strongly in talks between Obama and French President Nicolas Sarkozy who condemned what he called "senseless" new remarks by Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad casting doubt on the Holocaust.

Obama was asked about general nuclear proliferation threats at a brief press conference afterwards.

"North Korea's actions over the last several months have been extraordinarily provocative," he said.

"They have made no bones about the fact that they are testing nuclear weapons."

Obama said the UN Security Council was working towards a new resolution on North Korea and he insisted that the international community would take a "very hard look" at how to deal with the isolated Stalinist state.

Obama added that letting Iran develop a nuclear bomb would be "profoundly dangerous" and would lead other Middle East states to say "we have to go for it as well".

Sarkozy, who met Iran's foreign minister on Wednesday, said, "I told him first of all that they have to take President Obama's outstretched hand.

"Iran has the right to civilian nuclear power but not a military nuclear capability. And they must understand that.

"If their aims are peaceful they should accept international inspections, but we can't accept the Iranian leader making senseless declarations.

"The United States and France are entirely together on this question. Iran is a great country, a great civilisation. We want peace, we want dialogue, we want to help them develop, but we do not want nuclear proliferation. We are united on this."

Ahmadinejad, who is seeking a second term in office in an election this month, on Wednesday reaffirmed his bitter anti-Israel stance and called the Holocaust a "big deception".

He also accused the world's liberal democracies of degrading "human values" with their pro-Israel policies.

Sarkozy told Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki on Wednesday that such comments were "unacceptable and profoundly shocking," his office said.

SKorea president says no compromise against NKorea

2009-06-06T19:16:00.001+10:00

By: Bangkok Post-AFP

President Lee Myung-Bak said South Korea would not make any compromises in the face of North Korea's nuclear threats and called for Pyongyang to return to six-party disarmament talks.

"I hereby make it clear again that there won't be any compromise in issues threatening the lives of the people and national security," Lee said at a speech marking Memorial Day to honour the Korean War dead.

North Korea was not only threatening the South but the world's peace and stability by carrying out nuclear tests and launching missiles, he said.

"Even at this very moment, the North is ratcheting up the level of threats as we are also stepping up our defence posture, resulting in a trigger-wire confrontation," Lee said.

The UN Security Council is considering new sanctions against North Korea after Pyongyang carried out its second nuclear test last month.

The North also fired a rocket in April, ostensibly to put a satellite into orbit, but other countries saw it as a disguised long-range missile test.

After the UN Security Council censured its April 5 rocket launch, the North announced it was quitting the six-party talks and restarting a programme to make weapons-grade plutonium.

It also has defied international criticism of its second nuclear test by firing a volley of short-range missiles and threatening to attack the capitalist South.

The North is now said to be preparing to test-launch an intercontinental ballistic missile as well as several medium-range missiles.

"North Korea must keep its promise to denuclearise the Korean Peninsula and come back to the six-party and inter-Korean talks," Lee said.

The six-party talks, which include the two Koreas, host China, Japan, the US and Russia, are aimed at scrapping North Korea's nuclear programme in exchange for economic and diplomatic gains.

The negotiations deadlocked late last year over a dispute with North Korea over how to verify its disarmament.

US considers sanctions on NKorea in UN talks: Clinton

2009-06-06T19:10:00.002+10:00

(Bangkok Post-AFP) -The United States is weighing a variety of sanctions on North Korea for its recent nuclear test as diplomats craft a UN resolution against Pyongyang, according to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Clinton was asked whether financial sanctions on North Korea and its banks were being considered after a meeting with Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu.

"We've made considerable progress in devising the kinds of actions that would represent consequences imposed upon the North Koreans by the international community," said Clinton. "We want to come up with the strongest possible resolution."

For the North Koreans, "it's never over till it's over, that if there are effective sanctions that we believe can be imposed, an arms embargo and other steps to be taken, we need to see real results," she said.

"I am quite heartened by the progress that we're seeing in the United Nations Security Council. And when we believe we've gotten the strongest possible resolution we can get, we will table it and then proceed."

Clinton earlier met at the State Department with Korean Foreign Minister Yu Myung-Hwan. She described it as "a very productive meeting" in a brief encounter with reporters.

An agreement on broader UN sanctions against North Korea however is being held up by differences among key powers over tougher cargo inspections, a tighter arms embargo, a possible freeze on North Korean assets abroad and denial of access to the international banking and financial services, according to diplomats at the United Nations.

In 2005 the US Treasury Department blacklisted Macau's Banco Delta Asia on suspicion of money-laundering and handling North Korea's counterfeit notes, freezing Pyongyang's access to some 25 million dollars in its BDA accounts.

After the blacklisting several other banks in Asia were persuaded to stop handling Pyongyang's business, making even legitimate transactions difficult.

The North Korean funds were later freed for collection as a result of a 2007 agreement on denuclearization.

The UN Security Council's five permanent members -- Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States -- plus their counterparts from Japan and South Korea have been haggling over an expanded set of sanctions since North Korea's May 25 underground nuclear test.

Fission for a reason

2009-06-06T14:07:00.003+10:00

By Richard Glover

(SMH) -AS IS well known, Napoleon only waged war because he was short and Hitler was forced to destroy Europe because of his unrelieved diet of vegetarian food. Why can't we recognise that Kim Jong-il is behaving badly because he can't do a thing with his hair?

Every morning the North Korean dictator stands in front of the mirror, prodding and teasing his hair upwards. With every touch, he just makes it look worse. The combination of a bouffant style and male pattern baldness is not a happy one. There are birds with neater nests.

After half an hour of pure agony, the pint-sized despot throws down the comb, stomps his tiny feet and starts planning Armageddon. Who among us has not stared at the mirror one miserable Monday and formulated just such a plan to destroy all humanity? "If I look this bad, why should the rest of the world be allowed to exist?": this is Kim Jong-il's view exactly.

Note also the way Kim Jong-il's hairdo increasingly resembles a nuclear mushroom cloud. In Freudian terms, he's trying to tell us something. It's not so much a hairdo, as a blackmail note written in over-teased locks: help me, or you'll be seeing exactly this shape on a horizon near you.

Here's the chance for Australia to step in and save the planet. Julia Gillard, our Deputy Prime Minister, is shacked up with a bloke who distributes hair-care products. Not every country has this now-crucial advantage. Tim Mathieson must be dispatched instantly to Pyongyang with a suitcase of his finest product lines. No expense should be spared. The Prime Minister's own jet must be provided. Give Tim Mathieson half an hour in Dear Leader's boudoir with a packet of Rogaine and some volumising shampoo and things will be a lot less tense north of the 38th parallel.

Of course, bad hair is not Kim Jong-il's only problem. He's also trying desperately to get the world's attention. His method so far has been to yell and scream and then to let off a nuclear bomb right underneath himself. If Obama doesn't agree to a meeting, he'll let off two bombs underneath himself.

So far, the only effect of the bomb has been to add another three centimetres to the height of his hair. Another three devices and he'll look like Jimi Hendrix on the cover of Axis: Bold As Love.

Kim Jong-il isn't the only person to be motivated by a desire to make up for his own inadequacies. Most human behaviour can be explained in this way. Note the way Stalin and Hitler both had stupid moustaches, while Julius Caesar struggled for years with comb-over issues. (That's no laurel wreath atop his head in all the statues; it's all he had left of his hair.)

Even our own Prime Minister's endless vaulting ambition is surely the result of being named Kevin - not so much a name as a spur to action. As it happens, Rudd was this week named a "psycho chicken" by Barnaby Joyce - a man whose own first name must derive from the same Boy Named Sue theory of child-raising. Presumably Barnaby's mum and Kevin's mum knew each other, up there in Queensland and were involved in some sort of competition. "I'm saddling mine with the name Kevin, just to give him something to overcome in life," said Mrs Rudd, only to be left gasping in admiration when Mrs Joyce leaned over the fence to reveal the turbo-charged bully-attractor that is "Barnaby".

Of course, it may be just a Queensland thing. The Treasurer, I note, was christened Wayne, and yet there is no evidence of Queensland's version of DOCS being notified at the time.

But back to the "psycho chicken". Barnaby was busy attacking the PM over allegations that he reduced an RAAF flight attendant to tears. Apparently she was unable to offer him a vegetarian food option during an official flight. As Barnaby put it: "The guy's a psycho chook. Who in their right mind gets onto a plane and because he doesn't get the right colour birdseed has a spack attack?"

I may be the only person on the PM's side. I have personal experience of the deep anguish that comes over one on the Qantas flight to Brisbane when they've run out of the apricot chicken and try to palm you off with the overcooked fish.

I'm also a little concerned by the news that members of Australia's defence force can be reduced to blubbering wrecks by a few harsh words from an unhappy passenger. Will we find ourselves, in a decade or two, locked in battle with Indonesia or China, only to find them throwing harsh epithets over the trenches? "Oh, you Australians, you can't even get the entrees right during cabin service." Exit left the Army First Division in a flood of tears.

And will they now have to hand over cabin service on the PM's jet to battle-hardened members of the SAS? Only after three years in the desert in Afghanistan, fighting the Taliban, are people tough enough to endure the withering gaze of a Kevin denied his vegetarian option.

Which brings us back to Kim Jong-il. With our defence forces thus weakened, we need to act fast to ensure world peace. Tim Mathieson to the rescue. Grab that can of Vo5. Lock and load, Tim, lock and load.

Even our own PM's endless vaulting ambition is surely the result of being named Kevin.

North Korea set to try US journalists for 'hostile acts'

2009-06-05T13:26:00.001+10:00

Seoul (The Age)- TWO US women journalists were to go on trial in North Korea yesterday on charges that could send them to a labour camp, as supporters and a media freedom group campaigned on their behalf.

The hearing comes amid growing international tensions sparked by the communist state's nuclear test and its apparent plans to launch another long-range missile.

Euna Lee and Laura Ling were detained by North Korean border guards on March 17 while researching a story about refugees fleeing the hardline communist state.

The Pyongyang Government has said they will face trial for "hostile acts" and illegally entering the country, with the hearing to be held "on the basis of the confirmed crimes committed by them".

South Korean analysts say "hostile acts" are punishable by a minimum five years' detention and hard labour.

"We appeal to the North Korean judicial authorities to show the utmost clemency and we hope the trial will result in the acquittal and release of the two American journalists," Reporters Without Borders said in a statement.

"We urge the judges trying the case to follow the example set by their Iranian counterparts, who released US journalist Roxana Saberi last month."

The press freedom group said that even if the two TV reporters made a mistake by getting too close to the North Korean border, "they did so solely for journalistic purposes and not for political reasons or for the purposes of espionage".

Friends, family and colleagues of Ms Lee and Ms Ling held candlelight vigils in Washington and seven other US cities yesterday.

"I wish this were all a bad dream," Ms Ling's sister, Lisa Ling, said in a letter read out at the rally in Washington's Freedom Plaza.

"We have a golden opportunity for a fresh start between our two countries," she said.

"Instead of trying to get reacquainted with one another through missile launches, nuclear tests and terse rhetoric, why not get to know each other over these two amazing girls who just wanted to tell a story?"

The families of the pair broke their long silence this week to appeal for clemency and to urge the two governments not to link the case to the nuclear stand-off.

The reporters, who work for California-based Current TV, co-founded by former US vice-president Al Gore, were allowed to phone their families in the US a week ago.

"We had not heard their voices in over 2½ months," said Lisa Ling. "They are very scared — they're very, very scared."

Both detainees are married and Ms Lee has a four-year-old daughter.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has said the charges against them are "baseless".

US Journalists Face Trial in North Korea

2009-06-04T20:40:00.003+10:00

By VOA News - Two American journalists are facing trial in North Korea on charges of illegally entering the country and hostile acts.

Their families back home pleaded for leniency, but the trial could send them to a labor camp for 10 years.

North Korea's Korean Central News Agency said Thursday that the trial would start at 3 p.m. (0600 GMT) local time.

These undated photo show American journalists Laura Ling, right, and Euna Lee (File)

The journalists, Euna Lee and Laura Ling, of U.S. media outlet Current TV, were arrested while working on a story near the border between North Korea and China. Their trial is being held at one of the North's top courts.

The two were detained by North Korean border guards on March 17 while researching a story about refugees fleeing the North to China.

The families have pleaded for clemency. Speaking at a vigil Wednesday night in California, Laura Ling's sister Lisa Ling (also a TV personality) urged the North Korean government to show leniency and apologized if the women had broken the North's laws.

Some information for this report was provided by AFP, AP and Reuters.

North Korea warns US, South Korea of possible military acts

2009-06-03T20:01:00.001+10:00

(Jakarta Post-AP) -North Korea warned South Korea and the United States on Wednesday that Seoul's participation in a U.S.-led program to intercept ships suspected of carrying weapons of mass destruction is equal to a declaration of war.

South Korea announced its participation in the U.S.-led program on Tuesday, one day after North Korea defiantly conducted a nuclear test, drawing international criticism.

The North's military said in a statement that it will respond with "immediate, strong military measures" against any attempt to stop and search North Korean ships under the Proliferation Security Initiative.

The statement, carried by the North's official Korean Central News Agency, also said the regime no longer considers itself bound by the armistice that ended the Korean War. It accused the U.S., a signatory of the armistice, of "dragging" the South into the program under its "hostile policy" against the North.

It also said it cannot guarantee safety for South Korean and U.S. navy ships sailing near the disputed western Korean sea border.

Earlier Wednesday, news reports and South Korean officials said the North has restarted a weapons-grade nuclear plant and fired five short-range missiles in two days, deepening the standoff with world powers following its nuclear test.

South Korea's mass-circulation Chosun Ilbo newspaper reported that U.S. spy satellites have detected steam coming from a nuclear facility at North Korea's main Yongbyon plant, indicating the North is reprocessing spent nuclear fuel rods to harvest weapons-grade plutonium.

Its report quoted an unnamed official. South Korea's Defense Ministry and the National Intelligence Service - the country's main spy agency - said they cannot confirm the report.

The North had said it would begin reprocessing in protest over international criticism of its April 5 rocket launch.

North Korea is believed to have enough plutonium for at least half a dozen atomic bombs. The North also has about 8,000 spent fuel rods which, if reprocessed, could allow the country to harvest 6-8 kilograms (13-18 pounds) of plutonium - enough to make at least one nuclear bomb, experts said.

Yonhap news agency carried a similar report later Wednesday, saying the gate of a facility storing the spent fuel rods was spotted open several times since mid-April. The report, also citing an unnamed South Korean official, said chemical-carrying vehicles were spotted at Yongbyon.

North Korea test-fired three additional short-range missiles Tuesday, including one late at night, from the east coast city of Hamhung, according to South Korean Defense Ministry spokesman Won Tae-jae.

He said the North already test-launched two short-range missiles from another eastern coast launch pad on Monday, not the three reported by many South Korean media outlets.

Pawns in two show trials

2009-06-03T16:40:00.001+10:00

(Bangkok Post) -In opposite corners of Asia this week, harsh and undemocratic regimes will be conducting show trials. The Burmese generals are close to wrapping up their case that charges Aung San Suu Kyi with responsibility for the failure of her jailers to guard her. North Korea is putting two US citizens in the dock on June 4, charged with committing "hostile acts", meaning they were photographing North Korean smugglers and refugees at the Chinese frontier. The two women apparently actually crossed the border, giving the North Koreans a reason to arrest and hold them in jail for the last three months.

The Burmese regime has again increased the physical and psychological pressure on Mrs Suu Kyi. She is held almost incommunicado in the notorious Insein prison on the outskirts of Rangoon. Her lawyers have not been allowed the normal access to the prisoner. As they prepared their closing arguments yesterday, they were denied access once again.

The prisoner is a frail, 63-year-old woman who won the Nobel Prize for Peace. Yet she has frightened members of a military junta so much that they seldom let her even see her defenders, except in a tightly guarded courtroom where the regime is likely to end the show trial on Friday.

The Burmese deputy defence minister showed the sort of contempt for rule of law one has come to expect from the junta. On an official trip to Singapore, Maj Gen Aye Myint told the media there was "no doubt" Mrs Suu Kyi was guilty as charged - of a cover-up, by failing to report a foreigner had got into her compound. This statement during an ongoing trial by a top junta official, demonstrated that the actual courtroom and judges are just a show in Burma.

It leaves the world to wonder why Maj Gen Aye Myint is not on trial for dereliction of duty. His soldiers were ordered to guard Mrs Suu Kyi from all intruders and failed.

Of course, there has been no media coverage allowed of Mrs Suu Kyi's court ordeal. The same will be true in Pyongyang tomorrow, when an equally pre-ordained trial is to get under way with, ironically, journalists in the dock - US citizens of Korean heritage, Laura Ling and Euna Lee.

The two women work for Current TV, a cable television station run by former US vice president Al Gore. They were arrested on March 17 by North Korean border guards while reporting on Korean women and children who had fled the Pyongyang regime to China.

The trial and verdict will be whatever the regime wants, but just what that might be is not yet clear. For about the same time as it has held the journalists, North Korea has taken a dangerous and belligerent course. It has fired long-range and medium-range missiles and tested the nuclear weapon designed to fit atop the rockets.

It is widely presumed that North Korea will use the journalists as pawns to put maximum pressure on US President Barack Obama. That, at least, is the latest advice from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. She also told the American public they should "get busy on the internet and let the North Koreans know that we find that absolutely unacceptable".

In both Burma and North Korea, the regimes will use their women prisoners as propaganda tools. They will hold harsh sentences over the heads of their prisoners.

Both countries deserve the harshest censure for such treatment of their helpless captives. Certainly, if either country wants international respect, they must stop such despicable show trials.

North Korea 'preparing long-range missile launch'

2009-06-03T16:13:00.001+10:00

By Jack Kim in Seoul

(News.com) -NORTH Korea is assembling a missile that could hit US soil and may test-launch it as early as this month, a newspaper reported, as a US envoy urged Pyongyang to cease provocations and return to disarmament talks.

The hermit state's nuclear test last week, putting it closer to having a working atomic weapon, has already prompted the US and South Korean forces to raise their military alert for the divided peninsula.

North Korea, which began ratcheting up regional tensions when it fired a long-ranged rocket over Japan in April, also test-fired a barrage of short-range missiles last week and threatened to attack the South.

"The ICBM (intercontinental ballistic missile) is covered up so it's tough to be absolutely clear but it looks similar to the Taepodong-2 fired in April but longer," the JoongAng Ilbo newspaper quoted a South Korean government source as saying.

The April launch triggered tightened UN Security Council sanctions that Pyongyang called unacceptable, threatening to launch an ICBM unless the world body apologised.

The newspaper said the missile has been moved to a hangar for assembly at the North's newly built west coast Tongchang-ri missile range for a launch that could come as early as mid-June. The launch area is about 90 km west of Yongbyon, the North's main nuclear complex. However, weapons experts say the impoverished state does not yet have the technology to turn its nuclear material into a warhead to put onto a missile.

It also looks ready to test launch three to four mid-range missiles with ranges that can hit all of South Korea and most of Japan, South Korean lawmakers said on Tuesday after a defence briefing.

"Now is the time for North Korea, rather than continuing to take more dangerous and provocative actions, to recognise that the better course is to re-engage and to get back on the path of negotiations towards denuclearisation," US Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg said after meeting foreign ministry officials in Seoul.

Amateur spies put North Korea on the map

2009-06-02T21:29:00.002+10:00

Living large ... one of North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il's
palatial mansions with expansive gardens.

By Asher Moses

(SMH) -A group of amateur spies has used Google Earth to provide a rare glimpse inside North Korea, one of the world's most secretive countries.

By default the Google Earth map of North Korea is completely bare, with no roads or landmarks labelled.

Over two years, US doctoral student Curtis Melvin and other volunteers pored over news reports, images, accounts, books and maps painstakingly identifying and locating thousands of buildings, monuments, missile-storage facilities, mass graves, secret labour camps, palaces, restaurants, tourist sites, main roads and even the entrance to the country's subterranean nuclear test base.

The result, North Korea Uncovered, is one of the most detailed maps of North Korea available to the public today. The small file, which can be installed on top of Google Earth, has been downloaded more than 47,000 times since an updated version was released last month.

"We have portrayed things about which they are most proud and ashamed," Melvin said in an email interview.

Among the most notable findings is the site of mass graves created in the 1990s following a famine that the UN estimates killed about 2 million people.

"Graves cover entire mountains," Melvin said.

Also visible is the stark contrast between the living conditions of North Korea's elite and the general population.

The palaces housing dictator Kim Jong Il and his inner circle, clearly shown on the maps, contain Olympic-size swimming pools with giant waterslides and golf courses.

Conversely, much of North Korea's population is reliant on foreign food aid, ironic given the authoritarian regime is built around the ideology of self-reliance.

Analysing the satellite maps allowed Melvin to plot the country's transport and electricity network, revealing that many towns have no power supply at all.

Melvin and his team also believe they have discovered the Vinalon complex that has been connected with chemical warfare experiments.

The project highlights the collaborative power of the internet, which allows disparate groups of amateur sleuths to work together to uncover state secrets and shine new light on previously hidden countries.

North Korea is of particular interest to diplomats, analysts and the public of late because the communist regime has ramped up its nuclear tests, launched a series of short-range missiles and threatened possible attacks on South Korea.

Melvin said he notified two North Korean embassies of his project but received no response.

"This project is a terrific record of their 'revolution' so I would love to have more of their input for historical purposes," he said

Melvin, who began the project as a way of mapping places in North Korea that he had visited, said he pored over books, maps, pictures and news reports to identify locations on the Google satellite map. But he received significant help from collaborators, some of whom have studied North Korea professionally.

For instance, The Wall Street Journal reported that Joshua Stanton, a Washington attorney who has served in the US military in South Korea, identified one of the country's most notorious prisons, Camp 16, by combing the map for structures identified in sketches created by defectors.

A US senator then used Stanton's information to criticise North Korea's human rights record, saying "Google has made a witness of all of us ... we can no longer deny these things exist".

North Korea's own publicity of the movements of Kim Jong Il have also been invaluable to Melvin. Media reports from the country allowed him to identify locations the dictator has visited, such as a hydroelectric dam and power station he toured in April.

North Korea's Next Kim: Dad's Favorite, Kim Jong Un

2009-06-02T20:04:00.002+10:00

By Bill Powell

(Time.com) -In his memoir recounting the days he spent as Kim Jong Il's personal chef in Pyongyang, Kenji Fujimoto calls Kim Jong Un, the third son of the North Korea dictator, the "Prince." "When Jong Un shook hands with me," Fujimoto writes, "he stared at me with a vicious look. I cannot forget the look in the Prince's eyes: it's as if he was thinking, 'This guy is a despicable Japanese.'" Jong Un, Fujimoto also writes, is "a chip off the old block, a spitting image of his father in terms of face, body shape and personality."

For all those reasons, presumably, Kim Jong Un, thought to be 26 years old now, has apparently been designated, by his father and the upper echelons of Pyongyang's secretive Workers Party, as the one who will continue the dynastic regime in the North. He is indeed the Prince, destined to be the ruler of the country founded by his grandfather, Kim Il Sung. (Read about Kim Jong Il's secret family.)

Since last autumn, when Kim Jong Il suffered a stroke, the question of succession in North Korea has become paramount. Though Kim, according to intelligence reports, has resumed most of his duties, his own obvious frailty led even him, analysts believe, to begin preparing for the inevitable. Since becoming ill, as TIME revealed last month, Pyongyang has effectively been run by Kim Jong Il's brother-in-law, Chang Sung Taek, who is married to the dictator's younger sister, the sibling Kim is reportedly closest to. (The fluid, unpredictable nature of politics around the ruler can never be underestimated: in 2003, Kim, suspicious that Chang was building up a power base of his own, had him placed under house arrest for a year, relenting only after Kim's sister pleaded her husband's case.) (See a story about the five important women in Kim Jong Il's life.)

Now, according to North Korea watchers in Seoul, Chang has effectively taken the youngest Kim under his wing, acting as a sort of regent to the Prince. "He is the bridge from Kim Jong Il to Kim Jong Un," says Baek Seung Joo, who watches North Korea at the Korea Institute for Defense Analysis.

Little speaks more to what a freakishly closed society North Korea is than the scarcity of information about Jong Un, even among foreign intelligence agencies. Almost nothing was known about him until Fujimoto's book was published in 2003. Fujimoto is also the source for the only known photograph of Jong Un to circulate outside the North, a snapshot the chef took when the boy was about 11. He is the son of Kim Jong Il's third wife — reportedly his favorite — Ko Young Hee, a former dancer who died in 2004 from breast cancer. Ko was born in Japan but moved back to North Korea with her father in the 1960s.

In the 1990s Jong Un studied, as did one of his older brothers, at the International School of Berne, in Switzerland, using a pseudonym to hide his identity as a member of North Korea's ruling family. But several North Korea watchers in Seoul dispute that, and believe Jong Un has never been outside North Korea. From 2002 to 2007 he attended the Kim Il Sung military academy in Pyongyang. He's said to be about 5 ft. 9 in. (175 cm) tall, is overweight (nearly 200 lb., or 90 kg) and may suffer from diabetes, according to South Korean press reports.

Jong Un, according to Fujimoto's book, is his father's favorite in part because, more so than the two other male Kim offspring, he has a take-charge personality. Kim regards Jong Chul, Jong Un's older brother, as being "girlish." And their older half brother, Kim Jong Nam, appears to be a flake, having been detained and deported in Japan in 2001 after traveling on a phony passport and claiming he wanted to visit Disneyland. Jong Un, Fujimoto writes, is different. He and his brother Jong Chul enjoyed playing basketball — but after the games, Jong Chul would just say goodbye to their friends and leave. Jong Un would then gather up his teammates and, like a coach, analyze the game they just played: "You should have passed the ball to this guy, you should have shot it then." According to various, usually unsourced South Korean press reports since Fujimoto's book came out, Jong Un is said to be "ambitious" and a "take-no-prisoners" type — again, in contrast to his older brothers.

That he is also now North Korea's Kim-in-waiting has become apparent in the past month, analysts believe. In late April, he was named to the country's all-powerful National Defense Commission, a sign to North Korea analysts that he indeed is being groomed as his father's successor. There has been widespread speculation that uncertainty about a possible transition in the North is part of the reason for Pyongyang's recent, dramatic acts of defiance: a long-range rocket launch in early April, and last week's underground nuclear test and multiple missile launches. North Korea's politically powerful military is thought to have no interest in ever bargaining away the country's nuclear deterrent — the ultimate guarantee of the regime's security — and Jong Un's new posting on the Defense Commission may be a way for him to be educated on this issue, one East Asian intelligence analyst says.

The analyst adds that "that's just speculation, of course." As is pretty much everything when it comes to Kim Jong Il's favorite son, the "chip off the old block" apparently destined to pay the price of inheritance if he becomes leader of one of the world's most impoverished, insular and repressive regimes.

— With reporting by Stephen Kim / Seoul

Kim Jong-Il names next Dear Leader -Kim Jong-Un

2009-06-02T13:59:00.002+10:00

(News.com-Reuters)-NORTH Korean leader Kim Jong-Il has asked his country's overseas missions to pledge loyalty to his youngest son, signalling he has been anointed as next leader of the communist dynasty.

Kim, 67, is thought to have suffered a stroke in August.

Analysts have said the North's recent military actions, including a nuclear test last week, may be aimed at helping him solidify power so that he can name a successor.

"It has been confirmed through various channels that North Korea sent emails to legations overseas, asking them to pledge their loyalty to (youngest son) Kim Jong-Un," the South Korean daily Dong-A Ilbo reported an "informed source" as saying.

Analysts have said succession is one of the most closely guarded secrets in the highly secretive North, with Kim's plans only known to his small inner circle.

The paper quoted another informed source as saying: "North Korean leadership is educating senior officials at major security authorities with an emphasis on the justification of father-to-son succession over three generations."

The sources concluded these signs pointed to Jong-Un being officially anointed.

Kim Jong-Il, groomed for decades to take over the country from his father and state founder Kim Il-sung, has three sons but they are unknown to most North Koreans.

Jong-Un, born either in 1983 or early 1984, was educated in Switzerland and intelligence sources have said he appears to be the most capable of the three.

Even by North Korea's opaque standards, very little is known about the son, whose youth is also a potential problem in a society that adheres closely to the importance of seniority.

South Korea fortifies Yellow Sea

2009-06-02T13:55:00.001+10:00

(News.com-AAP) -SOUTH Korea has bolstered its defence of a disputed naval border with an increasingly belligerent North Korea, deploying a guided-missile naval vessel to Yellow Sea waters off the west coast.

North Korea last week threatened to attack the South and said it would not guarantee the safety of its vessels in waters near a border that has been the site of two deadly clashes between the rival states in the past 10 years.

South Korea typically does not announce specific deployments related to defence against the North, with which it is still technically at war because their 1950-53 conflict ended with a ceasefire and not a peace treaty.

But in a signal it will stand firm over the disputed sea border, South Korea sent the 440-tonne vessel named Yun Yeong Ha, equipped with anti-ship missiles and heavy guns, to reinforce its fleet of high-speed naval vessels there, the navy said.

North Korea has stepped up its military training, stockpiled ammunition and imposed a no-sail order off its west coast waters to prepare for a possible fight with the South, the South's biggest newspaper Chosun Ilbo reported a South Korean military source as saying.

North Korea has stoked tension in the past days with a nuclear test on May 25 and firing a barrage of short-range missiles off its east coast.

Despot dynamics: the dirty secret to survival

2009-06-02T11:02:00.001+10:00

By Peter Hartcher

(SMH) -How will we know when the world is finally serious about disciplining Kim Jong-il's regime? Nobody wants a war, but there are three specific non-military steps that the big powers of North Asia could take to sever the regime's most important lifelines and bring it to its knees.

And the dirty secret of the North Korea debate is that nobody in officialdom's polite circles will discuss them openly. We certainly know the ritual signs that nothing serious is going to happen to hold North Korea accountable for its nuclear belligerence - we are seeing them now.

The United Nations Security Council wrings its hands over Kim's latest outrage. Special envoys fly about from one city to another. And experts debate whether to negotiate with Pyongyang or to apply sanctions.

Since 1994 the world has offered Pyongyang carrots and sticks in a giddying alternation of incentives and sanctions. And Kim pushes on relentlessly with his nuclear program regardless.

We'll know when the world has truly had enough of Kim's nuclear brinkmanship. The three steps to seriously disciplining North Korea? One is for Japan to take, another is for South Korea, and third is for China.

Japan would shut down the flow of hard currency that it allows its residents to send to North Korea.

Every year, the 100,000 or so members of Japan's North Korean community, organised through a group called Chosen Soren, send remittance money home.

How much is impossible to know, but in 1994 Japanese police estimated that it was about $US600 million ($739 million) annually. For perspective, a sum of $US600 million would make up a third of North Korea's declared annual shortfall of foreign exchange. The regime makes up the rest by smuggling out drugs, counterfeit US dollars, fake Viagra, weapons and other contraband.

Tokyo has taken a sterner approach to Pyongyang in recent years and has clamped down on bank transfers, but large volumes of cash still cross the Sea of Japan (also known as the East Sea) in the 1000 or so vessels that ply the route in any year.

Second, South Korea would shut down its trade with North Korea.

For Seoul, the $US1.8 billion annual two-way trade with its badly behaved northern neighbour is a trifling amount. North Korea makes up a lousy 0.2 per cent of South Korea's trade and there is nothing that Seoul buys from Pyongyang that it couldn't buy elsewhere.

But for Kim Jong-il, this would represent a third of his country's total trade. It would be a serious loss for the country and a body blow to the regime.

Third, China would cut off its trade with North Korea. This is the big one. Beijing is by far the biggest trading partner and biggest source of foreign exchange to Pyongyang.

And because much of China's export to its communist ally is provided on concessionary terms, this would be tantamount to shutting off its aid to Pyongyang as well. Among other things, China supplies some 90 per cent of North Korea's oil, most at friendship prices.

But rather than reduce its trade and aid to North Korea, China in recent months has actually increased it.

Why? Because the US and South Korea have been cutting aid to the recalcitrant country. China stepped in and more than offset the loss. As long as Kim Jong-il has China, he can probably survive the punishments that the rest of the world might attempt to mete out. So for any discipline to work, it's not enough for Japan or South Korea to act. China must act, too. And the world would need to support it with equivalent sanctions.

Keep in mind that North Korea is already on the economic equivalent of life support. Kim gets much criticism for starving his people to feed his army. And it's true that his people are starving - a third of the population is so desperately short of food that it is suffering from malnutrition, according to the UN World Food Program.

But visitors to the hermit kingdom in the last couple of years report that there isn't even enough to money to supply basics to the army. Close inspection of soldiers around Pyongyang shows that some have no socks and carry painted wooden guns. The country's total economy is estimated to produce between $US20 billion and $US30 billion a year, about the same as Tasmania's but for a country of 22 million.

Concerted action by its big three neighbours could reduce Kim to powerlessness. So why don't they act? For Japan it would be administratively and politically messy. For South Korea it would be politically tough - most South Koreans favour a conciliatory approach to their kinfolk across the demilitarised zone.

For China, keeping Kim's regime alive is a strategic priority. Worse than having Kim Jong-il next door would be not having Kim Jong-il next door.

If Kim's regime were to collapse, China would expect to be mobbed by millions of starving North Koreans. Even more troubling for Beijing is the likelihood Seoul would quickly assume control of Pyongyang. China would lose the buffer state that sits between it and a US treaty ally. That's why the world is not about to get serious about making Kim behave.

Presuming he succeeds in making deliverable nukes, Kim is not mad enough to attack anyone with them. And the world is not going to effectively deter him from trying.

Perhaps the best approach is to recall the wisdom of the Peter Sellers Cold War movie classic, Dr Strangelove Or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb.

Peter Hartcher is the Herald's international editor.

ASEAN nuclear ambitions alarm the West

2009-06-01T22:21:00.001+10:00

(Jakarta Post) -Lilian Budianto

As North Korea's recent nuclear test raises tensions in Asia, ASEAN members' nuclear programs are ringing alarm bells in the Western world already irritated by Myanmar's military junta.

Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia and the Philippines have already notified the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) of their intention to operate nuclear power plants in the near future as an alternative to non-renewable energy resources.

Indonesia relies on coal, oil and gas to generate electricity for its population of 240 million. Along with the rise in industrial production, the government has sought to develop four nuclear plants that could support 2 percent of its electricity demands by 2017.

Similarly, Thailand, Malaysia and Vietnam all aim to either build or operate nuclear power plants by 2020, while the Philippines has plans to revive its closed Bataan nuclear power plant.

Myanmar’s notorious junta, which has been subject to Western economic sanctions because of its poor human rights record, has attracted the most criticism over its plan to develop nuclear reactors. In 2002 it was reported that the Russian government had agreed to help the military junta build a nuclear research facility that would be used to develop reactors for medical and electricity resources.

The US has shunned Myanmar's nuclear plans, saying Yangon has neither the legal framework nor the provisions that would safeguard its nuclear program from posing a security threat.

“Nuclear power and nuclear arms are different sides of the same coin. Every nuclear-power-wielding state can turn into a nuclear-armed nation,” said Tessa de Ryck, an anti- nuclear campaigner from Greenpeace Southeast Asia.

“North Korea is an example. Once a country possesses a nuclear power plant, it is hard for the international community to restrict ambitions to develop nuclear weapons.”

The global community has failed to persuade North Korea from nuclear testing, and big powers like China have ensured economic support for Pyongyang. China has also provided economic support for Myanmar undermining economic sanctions imposed by the West.

Ten ASEAN members signed the 1995 Bangkok Treaty that outlined a nuclear-free zone and an agreement not to abuse nuclear technology. However, precedents have shown the bloc has no leverage in meddling in the domestic affairs of member countries in case of any standoffs.

Myanmar has become the center of attention recently over the fresh trial of opposition leader and Nobel Peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, who has been under house arrest for 13 out of the 19 years since her party won a landslide victory in 1990. ASEAN leaders have come under fire for their leniency toward Myanmar at a time when the West has been considering imposing yet more sanctions on Myanmar.

“No one can ask Myanmar to adhere to the human rights commitment they have made under the ASEAN Charter that entered into force last year,” said Bantarto Bandoro, the chairman of the Indonesian Institution for Strategic Studies. “If Myanmar later abuses the nuclear plant to produce arms, there would be no one that could ask them to stop.”

Indonesia, Vietnam, the Philippines, Thailand and Malaysia have signed the United Nations’ Non-Proliferation Treaty, but so far, only Jakarta has ratified it.

Greenpeace has predicted that nuclear power plants in the ASEAN region would be able to produce up to 200 nuclear bombs a year, considering it takes only 5 kilograms of plutonium to make a nuclear warhead.

PM joins condemnation of North Korea

2009-06-01T20:11:00.002+10:00

(Bangkok Post) -South Korea and Thailand have criticised North Korea, saying the country's latest nuclear test threatens world peace and stability and harms efforts to prevent atomic proliferation.

The two nations' leaders yesterday discussed Pyongyang's nuclear blast on the sidelines of a summit between South Korea and Southeast Asian countries being held amid heavy security.

The summit was planned months ago, but North Korea's underground nuclear test and a series of short-range missile launches last week threaten to steal the limelight from economic matters, the main focus of the agenda.

South Korean President Lee Myungbak and Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva agreed the test went against international efforts to prevent nuclear proliferation and "undermines peace and stability not only in East Asia but also in the whole world", said Lee Dong-kwan, the South Korean president's chief spokesman.

They also agreed to exert diplomatic pressure to ensure North Korea complies with UN Security Council resolutions and "promptly returns to six-party talks" aimed at ridding it of nuclear weapons.

The summit venue of Seogwipo, on the island of Jeju off the southern coast, is the South Korean city farthest away from the North. Still, the nervous South Korean government is taking no chances, positioning a surface-to-air missile outside the venue aimed towards the North.

About 5,000 police officers, including 200 commandos and special vehicles that can analyse sarin gas and other chemicals, have been deployed nearby, security authorities said. Marines, special forces and air patrols also kept watch on the island.

Leaders of the 10 members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations began arriving for the two-day summit, which officially begins today and commemorates 20 years of relations between South Korea and the bloc. South Korea's president planned to use yesterday for individual meetings with Asean leaders.

But concerns about North Korea's most recent bout of sabre-rattling loomed. South Korean officials said spy satellites had spotted signs the North might be preparing to transport a longrange missile to a launch site.

The North has attacked South Korean targets before, bombing a Korea Air jet in 1987 and trying to kill then-president Chun Doo-hwan in Burma in 1983.

The UN Security Council is still weighing up how to react to the North's belligerent moves that have earned Pyongyang criticism from the US, Europe, Russia and even the North's closest ally, China.

US Defence Secretary Robert Gates said North Korea's progress on nuclear weapons and long-range missiles was "a harbinger of a dark future" and had created an urgent need for more pressure on the reclusive communist government to change its ways.

Mr Gates, speaking at an annual meeting of defence and security officials in Singapore, said Pyongyang's efforts pose the potential for an arms race in Asia that could spread beyond the region.

Asean-Korea summit to highlight Seoul's soft power

2009-06-01T20:07:00.002+10:00

By: THITINAN PONGSUDHIRAK

(Bangkok Post) -The summit between Asean and the Republic of Korea on Jeju Island today and tomorrow is a major national event for South Koreans as much as it is a muted affair for their Thai counterparts.

While Thais hardly know about this summit, South Koreans have been exposed to widespread media coverage. Asean members' flags have been raised all over the island. Jeju's international conference centre has frequently been featured on television news coverage. Academics and diplomats have promoted Track Two policy-related conferences ahead of the top-level powwow.

At issue will be South Korea's growing role as a middle power and the decade-long efforts to construct an East Asia Community. For Thailand, the summit will be the first Asean plus meeting since the aborted summits in Pattaya in April.

To be sure, domestic politics will loom large. Thailand's political turmoil has effectively forced the 16 members of the East Asia Summit - Asean plus China, Japan and South Korea, along with India, Australia and New Zealand - to skip a year for their fourth summit. Previous EAS meetings took place in Kuala Lumpur in December 2005, Cebu in January 2007 and Singapore in November 2007. But the Thailand-hosted fourth EAS, which was postponed from December 2008 to February 2009 in Pattaya has now been rescheduled for Phuket in October. This means that the annual EAS will now take two years to stage its fourth gathering.

Apart from Thailand's domestic political setbacks to the EAS meeting, Burma's latest crisis over the likely extension of Aung San Suu Kyi's confinement will complicate Asean's intramural dealings and its relationship with the broader Plus Three and other EAS members. The Asean-RoK summit will be the first opportunity for Asean to address the problems posed by Burma's military junta on the grouping's standing in the regional neighbourhood and the world at large.

In addition to Thailand and Burma, Malaysia's internal political game also has raised new concerns about the constraining effects of domestic politics on regional cooperation and integration. Burma's ongoing retardation of democratic rule, Thailand's and Malaysia's apparent and potential democratic setbacks, and the lack of democratisation elsewhere in Asean have cast dark clouds over the 10-member regional organisation in view of its much-advertised pro-democracy charter.

South Korea does not suffer the same constraints. Its democratic consolidation is so pronounced as to have claimed the life from apparent suicide of a former leader who was linked to a corruption scandal. Adept at influence-peddling and outright graft, politicians and leaders in Asean have routinely avoided accountability and jail time. Taking their own lives out of shame and guilt has been unthinkable. Such is the testimony of how far South Korea's democratic rule has progressed from years of military authoritarianism.

Increasingly confident of its democratic credentials and strong economy, Seoul as one of two Asian members in the developed-world Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) club, is charting a new course to befit its new-found status at the forefront of East Asia. The Asean-RoK summit that commemorates 20 years of bilateral relations will showcase a brand new Asean-Korea Centre based in Seoul to promote South Korea's trade and investment ties with Asean countries and to highlight the Asean-Korea free trade agreement.

Moreover, South Korea will announce a considerable increase in its official development assistance for developing Asean countries in line with its developed-country status. The development assistance has long been a cornerstone of Japan's soft power in the region. But South Korea is now poised to flex some soft power projection of its own to the benefit of poorer Asian countries and to help reduce the income gaps among Asean members in particular.

As it views itself as a benign and benevolent middle power, South Korea's "green" strategy warrants attention. It transcends immediate security concerns on the Korean peninsula with a forward-looking role for Seoul on the international stage. Its efforts to tackle global warming and other ecological concerns as a national strategy on a long-term basis are unrivalled in the region.

Yet a broader backdrop at the Asean-RoK summit will be the East Asian Community building. The EAC's impetus is rooted among the Asean Plus Three (APT) countries in the aftermath of the Asian economic crisis during 1997-98. The Chiang Mai Initiative that built on bilateral swap agreements has now been expanded to the tune of US$120 billion (4.2 trillion baht) to promote exchange rate stability in the region, with equal contributions from China and Japan. This is East Asia's most tangible financial cooperation to date, and could have the makings of an Asian monetary fund that was earlier denied by the US and IMF.

But the EAC is challenged by the rapid rise of the EAS with its wider geographical scope. If East Asia is to coalesce and integrate, the EAS is a less promising vehicle than the APT. On this dilemma, Seoul has not made up its mind.

Asean, too, is divided over whether to prioritise the APT over the EAS or the other way around. Security concerns in the region favour the EAS whereas trade and investment trends reinforce the APT. Whichever vehicle gains more weight will determine community-building efforts in East Asia.

While Asean and South Korea are the pivots of East Asia, Seoul is in a much stronger position to nudge the region forward. Asean and its current chair should beware other emerging region-building schemes that are not Asean-centred, such as Australia's Asia-Pacific Community. For Asean, failure to put its house in order will risk it being bypassed and loss of its self-entitled "driver's seat".

Thitinan Pongsudhirak is director of the Institute of Security and International Studies, Faculty of Political Science, Chulalongkorn University.

Korea calls for close ties with Asean

2009-06-01T20:02:00.001+10:00

Seogwipo (Bangkok Post)- South Korea imposed heavy security on Sunday for a summit with Asean leaders following North Korean nuclear and missile tests that frayed nerves across the region.

South Korean President Lee Myung-bak called on Sunday for closer business and cultural ties with Southeast Asia to create a common economic community that is a leader in green growth.

Lee, who invited leaders from the Association of Southeast Asian nations to commemorate 20 years of relations between the Seoul and the bloc, hailed the expansion of their economic ties.

Total trade has grown 11 times over the past two decades to $90.2 billion last year, he said, and is expected to increase to $150 billion by 2015.

"We must strengthen our economic partnership, expand cultural exchange and become partners in our common goal of taking the lead in the new era of green growth," Lee told business executives ahead of a summit on Monday and Tuesday. "We have the vast potential for future growth."

The two sides have concluded free trade agreements in goods and services and plan to sign an investment accord at the summit.

The summit was planned months ago, but North Korea’s underground nuclear test and a series of short-range missile launches last week threatens to steal the limelight from economic and diplomatic matters.

The summit venue of Seogwipo - on the island of Jeju off the southern coast - is the city farthest away from the North. Still, the nervous South Korean government is taking no chances, positioning a surface-to-air missile outside the venue aimed toward the north, amid signs Pyongyang was preparing to stage a new long-range missile exercise.

Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva was among the leaders of the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) attending the two-day summit, which begins Monday and commemorates 20 years of relations between South Korea and the bloc.

Some 5,000 police officers, including approximately 200 commandos, and special vehicles that can analyse sarin gas and other chemicals have been deployed near the venue of the Seogwipo summit.

Marines, special forces and air patrols also kept watch on the island.

South Korean officials said Saturday that spy satellites had spotted signs that the North may be preparing to transport a long-range missile to a launch site.

The North has attacked South Korean targets before, bombing a Korea Air jet in 1987 and trying to kill then-President Chun Doo-hwan in Burma in 1983.

On Saturday in Singapore, US Defence Secretary Robert Gates warned at an annual meeting of defense and security officials that the United States would not accept a nuclear-armed North Korea, while China called for calm.

Gates said North Korea’s defiant acts could spark an arms race with serious consequences for Asia.

“Our goal is complete and verifiable denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula, and we will not accept North Korea as a nuclear state,” Gates said.

N Korean missile arrives for launch

2009-06-01T16:14:00.002+10:00

(Press Ass) -North Korea has moved its most advanced long-range missile to a new launch site and has banned ships from the waters off its west coast until the end of July, it is reported.

The missile, which arrived at the Dongchang-ni launch site on the north-west coast, is believed to be a version of the Taepodong-2 rocket that the North fired on April 5.

On that occasion it claimed it had been a satellite launch.

The North could fire the missile as early as June 16 when South Korean president Lee Myung-bak and US president Barack Obama hold a summit in Washington, the South Korean Dong-a Ilbo newspaper said.

The North has also designated a large area off its west coast as a "no-sail" zone to the end of next month, an indication Pyongyang could stage armed provocations around the disputed sea border.

Seoul's defence ministry said it did not comment on intelligence matters. But late last week South Korean officials said US satellites had detected apparent preparations to transport a missile for a test launch.

A new missile launch would significantly increase the tensions running high after the North's April rocket launch and its second-ever nuclear test last week. World powers have been discussing at the United Nations how to punish Pyongyang for the atomic blast.

The North's Taepodong-2 rocket flew about 2,000 miles on April 5. The missile being readied for a new launch is believed to be an intercontinental ballistic missile or ICBM with a range of up to 4,000 miles. That would put Alaska within striking range.

North Korea has been building the new launch site at Dongchang-ni for years. Last year, Seoul's defence minister Lee Sang-hee told parliament that its construction was about 80% complete.

The North's missile and nuclear programmes have been considered a top security concern for the region, though the regime is not yet believed to have mastered the technology to make a nuclear warhead small enough to mount on a missile.

N Korea says its army will 'stand up' to UN sanctions

2009-05-31T11:38:00.000+10:00

By Daniel Rook Seoul

(SMH) -NORTH KOREA has fired another short-range missile and threatened fresh steps if world powers impose sanctions for its nuclear test, amid signs it may be preparing to launch a long-range missile.

The US said it was sending its North Korea envoy to the jittery region, where Chinese fishing boats were fleeing a sensitive part of the Yellow Sea in fear of naval clashes.

Communist North Korea, which has warned it could launch an attack on South Korea, vowed to respond to any fresh sanctions imposed by the United Nations Security Council, saying "self-defence measures will be inevitable".

"The world will soon witness how our army and people stand up against oppression and despotism by the UNSC and uphold their dignity and independence," North Korea's Foreign Ministry said.

Tension has run high since Kim Jong-il's regime said it tested a nuclear bomb on Monday for the second time and renounced the armistice that ended the Korean War in 1953.

North Korea test-fired another missile off its east coast on Friday, the sixth in a week, South Korea's Yonhap news agency said.

Two US defence officials said satellite photos suggested North Korea might be preparing to launch a long-range ballistic missile.

Vehicle movements at two missile sites resembled work done before North Korea fired a long-range rocket last month, said the officials, who did not want to be named.

With US and South Korean troops on high alert, US Defence Secretary Robert Gates was due to consult his counterparts from South Korea and Japan yesterday at a regional conference in Singapore.

Stephen Bosworth, the US special envoy on North Korea, and Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg will head to Tokyo and later visit China, South Korea and Russia, the State Department said.

The countries were part of six-nation talks that agreed in 2007 to provide aid and security guarantees to North Korea in return for it closing its nuclear weapons program.

It quit the accord last month in protest after the UN Security Council unanimously condemned its long-range missile launch.

The Security Council has been discussing a potential resolution to condemn the nuclear test.

Mr Gates, en route to Singapore, accused the North of "very provocative, aggressive" actions. But he also tried to calm nerves, stressing that the US was not planning any military action.

Mr Gates said he was unaware of any unusual troop movements in North Korea, which has about 1.1 million soldiers, compared with 680,000 South Korean and 28,500 US troops south of the border.

"I don't think there is a need for us to reinforce our military presence in the South," he said. "Should the North Koreans do something extremely provocative militarily, then we have the forces to deal with it."

Professor Yang Moo-jin, of the University of North Korean Studies, Seoul, said: "The North may put its military on a war footing, test-fire a long-range missile and restart the plutonium reprocessing facilities at Yongbyon."

North Korea clears sea for missile tests

2009-05-26T13:10:00.000+10:00

(News.com) -NORTH Korea is preparing to test-fire short-range missiles in the Yellow Sea, one day after it staged a nuclear test, South Korea's Yonhap news agency said.

"North Korea has declared an off-limits area for vessels in the Yellow Sea off Jungsan county in South Pyongan province,'' it quoted a Seoul government source as saying.

"The North is likely to fire short-range missiles today or tomorrow.''

Jungsan is about 40km west of Pyongyang.

The Joint Chiefs of Staff said it could not comment on intelligence matters.

The North yesterday staged its second underground nuclear test, with an explosive force much larger than the first in October 2006.

It also fired three short-range ground-to-air missiles from locations near its east coast, Seoul's military said.

Several times in recent years, the North has test-fired ground-to-ship or ship-to-ship missiles in either the Yellow Sea or the Sea of Japan.

The launches are often staged to coincide with periods of regional tension.

Yonhap said the North was preparing to launch ground-to-ship missiles with a range of 160km, which use technology based on China's Silkworm missiles.

The South summoned an emergency meeting of top military commanders to review its defence posture, a Joint Chiefs of Staff spokesman said.

The meeting would stress the need to heighten vigilance against the North's "militarily provocative acts'', the spokesman said.

N Korea nuke 'comparable to Hiroshima'

2009-05-26T13:09:00.000+10:00

(News.com) -WASHINGTON is seeking "a strong resolution with strong measures" by the United Nations against North Korea for the nuclear test it conducted yesterday, US ambassador to the UN Susan Rice said.

The hardline communist state, which stunned the world with its first atomic bomb test in October 2006, made good on its threat to stage another test after the Security Council censured it for an April rocket launch.

The North "successfully conducted one more underground nuclear test on May 25 as part of the measures to bolster up its nuclear deterrent for self-defence in every way,'' the official Korean Central News Agency said.

"The current nuclear test was safely conducted on a new higher level in terms of its explosive power and technology.''

Meeting in emergency session, the UN Security Council unanimously condemned the test, while council president Vitaly Churkin of Russia said members would immediately begin working on a resolution to address Pyongyang's latest move.

"The US thinks this is a grave violation of international law, and a threat to regional and international peace and security,'' Ms Rice said about the test.

"And therefore, the United States will seek a strong resolution with strong measures.''

The force of yesterday's blast was between 10 and 20 kilotons, according to Russia's defence ministry, vastly more than the estimated one-kiloton blast three years ago.

Japan's Meteorological Agency said that based on recorded seismic activity, the energy level of the test was four times bigger than the last one.

Baek Seung-Joo of the Korea Institute for Defence Analyses told AFP that if rough estimates by some private analysts were right, "the power of the second blast is comparable to the bombs which hit Hiroshima and Nagasaki".

ASEM Foreign Ministers Derailed by Burma, North Korean Nuclear Test

2009-05-26T13:06:00.001+10:00

By Matt Steinglass

(VOA) -The foreign ministers of 45 Asian and European countries met in Hanoi Monday for talks on the global economy but found themselves wrapped up with the issues of Burma and North Korea.

The foreign ministers had expected to take up the question of how Europe and Asia could cooperate to pull the world's economy out of the downturn it has fallen into since the global financial crisis began. But the highest-profile session of the so-called ASEM group (Asia Europe Meeting), took place between representatives of the European Union and Burma.

The European Union called for the Burmese government to release opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi. She is on trial for violating the terms of the house arrest under which the government has held her for 14 of the past 20 years.

Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt said releasing Suu Kyi was crucial to pave the way for planned elections in Burma next year.

"What is necessary for those elections is to have an inclusive dialogue with all political forces in the country. That is the necessary precondition for the stability that I think everyone is seeking for the country to be able to move forward," Mr. Bildt said. "And for that to be possible, there must of course be freedom for the different political forces."

By the time Bildt and Czech Foreign Minister Jan Kohout finished meeting with the Burmese, North Korea announced it had tested a second nuclear bomb. Bildt had to respond to that issue, too.
General view of the opening ceremony of the 9th Asia-Europe ministerial meeting (ASEM) in Hanoi, 25 May 2009
Opening ceremony of the 9th Asia-Europe ministerial meeting (ASEM) in Hanoi, 25 May 2009

"It is alarming, it is a condemnation of the provocative regime in Pyongyang. I think it further isolates the country, I think it further aggravates the long-term situation of the country," Mr. Bildt said.

The North Korean move prompted the strongest response from the Japanese delegation. Japanese Foreign Ministry spokesman Kazuo Kodama said Japan would press for the ASEM meeting to issue a joint statement condemning the nuclear test, apart from the conference's normal closing statement.

"This nuclear testing poses a grave threat, a challenge to the NEPT regime and also poses a grave threat to the peace and security, stability, not only in the Northeast Asian region, but also the whole global community," Kodama said.

The Chinese, South Korean and North Korean delegations were reported to have met on the sidelines of the ASEM meeting, but no results of that meeting were made public.

North Korea conducts 'successful' nuclear test

2009-05-25T13:13:00.000+10:00

Deterrent ... the Government of Kim Jong-il has carried out a nuclear test in North Korea / Reuters

(News.com) -NORTH Korea staged a "successful" underground nuclear test today, the communist state's official media said.

The North "successfully conducted another underground nuclear test on May 25 as part of its measures aimed at strengthening its self-defence nuclear deterrent in every way," the Korean Central News Agency said.

The test will "contribute to safeguarding our sovereignty and socialism and guaranteeing peace and safety on the Korean peninsula and the surrounding region," it said.

The four-paragraph story gave no details of the location.

"The current nuclear test was safely conducted on a new higher level in terms of its explosive power and technology of its control and the results of the test helped satisfactorily settle the scientific and technological problems arising in further increasing the power of nuclear weapons and steadily developing nuclear technology," it said.

"The successful nuclear test is greatly inspiring the army and people of the DPRK all out in the 150-day campaign, intensifying the drive for effecting a new revolutionary surge to open the gate to a thriving nation."

South Korean officials said a tremor was detected around the northeastern town of Kilju, near where the first test was conducted in October 2006.

YTN Television quoted the South Korean weather agency as saying it detected a tremor indicating a test at 12.54 GMT (10.58am AEST).

South Korean President Lee Myung-bak had called an emergency meeting of cabinet ministers over the test, Yonhap said.

North Korea had recently said it would again test a nuclear device - its first was in October 2006 - in reaction to tightened international sanctions after it fired a long-range rocket in April.

News of the test hit South Korean financial markets, sending the main KOSPI share index down 4per cent in late morning trade, while the won dropped more than 1 per cent against the dollar.

Japan's Government has set up a taskforce in the office of Prime Minister Taro Aso after the test.

North Korea detonates nuclear bomb

2009-05-25T13:12:00.000+10:00

Nuclear test: This black and white satellite image shows the site.
Explosion: A satellite image showing the site of a previous North Korean weapons test (AFP)

By North Asia correspondent Mark Willacy and wires

(ABC Australia) -North Korea's state media has confirmed the communist state has conducted a nuclear weapons test.

It is believed the blast was much stronger than Pyongyang's first test in 2006.

South Korea says weather agency officials detected what they called an artificial earthquake in the communist North this morning.

The government in Seoul immediately accused North Korea of conducting a nuclear weapons test.

Two hours later the secretive communist regime confirmed via its state media that it had detonated a nuclear device, saying the underground test was successful and was part of the country's nuclear deterrent policy.

In response, South Korean President Lee Myung-Bak called an emergency national security council meeting, while Japan's government said it had set up a crisis task force.

The Stalinist North last staged a nuclear test in October 2006 but it is believed this blast was much bigger.

Location unknown

The brief report by Pyongyang's official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) gave no details of the location of the test.

However, South Korean officials said a tremor was detected around the north-eastern town of Kilju, near where the first test was conducted in October 2006.

"The Democratic People's Republic of Korea successfully conducted one more underground nuclear test on May 25 as part of the measures to bolster up its nuclear deterrent for self-defence in every way as requested by its scientists and technicians," the KCNA report said.

A spokesman for Japan's foreign ministry said it would respond to North Korea's nuclear test "in a responsible fashion" at the United Nations.

Meanwhile, a US State Department spokesman said the Obama administration was not able to confirm "at this time" that a nuclear test had been carried out.

Second test threat

The North had threatened a second test in protest at the UN Security Council's decision to censure its April 5 long-range rocket launch.

It announced it was quitting six-nation nuclear disarmament talks and would restart its plutonium-making program.

The communist state said the test had greatly inspired the army and people.

"The successful nuclear test is greatly inspiring the army and people of the DPRK all out in the 150-day campaign, intensifying the drive for effecting a new revolutionary surge to open the gate to a thriving nation," the KCNA report said.

"The test will contribute to defending the sovereignty of the country and the nation and socialism and ensuring peace and security on the Korean Peninsula and the region around it with the might of [the military first policy] Songun."

Tremor

The US Geological Survey said it detected what it called a 4.7-magnitude earthquake in North Korea.

The tremor struck at 9:54am (local time), 375 kilometres north-east of Pyongyang at a depth of just 10 kilometres, it said.

"Both South Korean and US intelligence authorities are analysing and closely monitoring the situation," a presidential spokesman in Seoul said.

The test was staged while South Korea was in mourning for former President Roh Moo-Hyun, who died Saturday after being questioned in a corruption probe.

North Korea carried out what it called a rocket launch on April 5, but the United States, South Korea and Japan said it staged a disguised ballistic missile test.

After the UN Security Council condemned the launch and tightened sanctions, the North vowed to conduct a second nuclear test as well as ballistic missile tests unless the UN apologised.

The United States has been involved in negotiations with the two Koreas, China, Japan and Russia aimed at scrapping North Korea's nuclear programme in exchange for energy aid under a landmark six-party agreement signed in 2007.

The negotiations deadlocked over a dispute with North Korea over how to verify disarmament, before taking a sharp turn for the worse with the long-range rocket launch.

Asia, EU Talks Focus on N Korea Nuclear Test, Burma

2009-05-25T13:11:00.000+10:00

By BEN STOCKING / AP WRITER
The Irrawaddy News

HANOI — North Korea's announcement of a second nuclear test and Burma's trial of pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi seized the attention of foreign ministers from Asia and Europe meeting Monday in Hanoi.

The government ministers and other high-ranking officials said the nuclear test, as well as North Korea's test of a ground-to-air missile, posed a threat to regional and global security.

Burma's Foreign Minister Nyan Win is followed by journalists as he leaves an EU "Troika" meeting held on the fringe of the Asia-Europe Meeting (Asem) Foreign Ministers' meeting in Hanoi on May 25. (Photo: Reuters)

"The Japanese government cannot condone another nuclear test by North Korea," said Kazuo Kodama, a spokesman for Japan's foreign ministry. "The test is a flagrant violation of existing United Nations Security Council resolutions, and the government of Japan strongly protests."

Kodama spoke shortly before the start of the Asia-Europe Meeting (Aseam), which has drawn representatives of 45 nations—including at least 30 foreign ministers from the European Union, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, China, Japan, and South Korea.

The ministers were slated to seek solutions to the economic slowdown and ways to enhance economic cooperation. Also on the agenda were climate change and communicable diseases such as swine flu.

But events were likely to overtake the agenda.

North Korea announced Monday that it successfully carried out a second underground nuclear test, following one in 2006, a move that will deepen international concern over the reclusive regime's weapons programs.

It came less than two months after Pyongyang launched a rocket widely believed to be a test of its long-range missile technology.

Ministers in Hanoi are also expected to broach the controversy over Burma's treatment of Suu Kyi, whose trial in Rangoon resumed Monday.

The ruling military junta has accused her of violating the conditions of her house arrest by allowing an American intruder to stay at her home without official permission. She faces up to five years in prison.

Critics have accused the junta of seeking to use the incident as a pretext to keep Suu Kyi in detention through elections scheduled for next year, the culmination of the junta's "roadmap to democracy," which has been criticized as a fig leaf for continued military rule.

In Brussels last week, EU foreign ministers discussed increasing sanctions against Burma's junta to pressure it to restore democracy in the Southeast Asian country, but failed to agree on new measures. Instead they signaled they would urge countries with close ties to Burma such as China, India and Thailand to exert influence over it to change its ways.

European and Asian governments have rarely seen eye-to-eye on how to deal with Burma's junta, which refused to accept a 1990 election victory by Suu Kyi's party.

"We are deeply disturbed by the arrest and trial of Aung San Suu Kyi," said Bill Rammel, Britain's minister of state for foreign and commonwealth affairs. "I think it indicates that the Burmese regime is looking for any pretext to further her detention."

Rammel made his comments to reporters Monday morning, shortly before the Asem was scheduled to formally open.

"We are calling very firmly for Aung San Suu Kyi's release, and indeed the release of all political prisoners."

Burmese Foreign Minister Nyan Win is due to attend the Hanoi meeting and is scheduled to hold talks with EU External Relations Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner.

Asean members generally refrain from criticizing each other's domestic policies, but last week Asean issued a statement expressing concern about Suu Kyi's trial.

Suu Kyi's current term of house arrest was to have ended May 27. The Nobel Peace Prize laureate has been in detention without trial for more than 13 of the past 19 years.

Kim Jong Il 'names favourite son Jong Un as successor' in North Korea

2009-05-02T20:36:00.000+10:00

January 16, 2009

Leo Lewis, in Tokyo
Times Online

North Korea’s enigmatic and ailing dictator, Kim Jong Il, is thought to have made a surprise selection to succeed him as leader of the nuclear-armed, Stalinist autocracy.

Intelligence sources in Seoul said yesterday that — very much against the expectations of South Korean analysis — Mr Kim, 66, had chosen his youngest and favourite son, Jong Un, to take over the all-pervasive family personality cult that controls the country when he is gone.

The potential heir, who is thought to be no more than 24, was educated in Switzerland and is the offspring of of Mr Kim’s third marriage and his supposedly favourite wife — a woman who died five years ago. The reclusive leader is believed to have three children.

In the regular and heated speculation among North Korea watchers Jong Un has been routinely dismissed as a likely successor because of his youth.

Little about his upbringing is thought to make him suited to the task of following in his father and grandfather’s footsteps. If Jong Un does assume control, he will inherit a persistently moribund economy, relations across the Korean peninsula that have plumbed new lows and an agricultural crisis that annually pushes the country dangerously close to outright famine.

Analysts at the Korea Institute for National Unification said that the critical date to watch was the March 8 parliamentary election: one KINU official said that if Jong Un is suddenly given a seat on the powerful National Defence Commission, it will be a sign that he has begun the process to succeed his father. Experts in North Korean propaganda said that the selection of a notably young successor for Mr Kim was a logical step for the regime: the cult surrounding the “Dear Leader” has consistently presented him as vigorous and hearty. If, as many suspect, Mr Kim has suffered a stroke and is rather frail, the only way to present that reality to ordinary North Koreans, said one government source in Seoul, is with his young, vigorous son at his side.

Rumours of the anointment were greeted with scepticism in some quarters, as were suggestions that the political and military hierarchies had been asked to pass the heir apparent’s name down through their ranks to prepare for a handover. In a nation defined by its opaqueness, the succession issue is perhaps the most closely guarded secret and many observers believe that South Korean intelligence scoops on the subject are liable to be flawed.

Others said that the selection of a successor was a natural move for Mr Kim, whose health and grip on power have been matters of intensifying speculation in recent months.

International man of mystery

— Jong Un was born to Kim’s third wife, Ko Yong Hi, a former star of Pyongyang’s premier song-and-dance troupe

— Jong Un was reportedly educated at the International School of Berne, which he attended under a pseudonym

— Since his return to Pyongyang in his late teens, North Korea has kept him shrouded in secrecy. No picture has ever been published or released

Source: Times database

The Women In Kim's Life

2009-05-02T20:23:00.000+10:00

Kim Jong Il's cloistered home life has revolved around five women—from his war-hero mother to the official wife his father forced him to marry. To those who know him best, Kim can be a loving—and terrifyingly volatile—man

COURTESY OF SUNG HAE RANG FROM THE "THE WISTERIA HOUSE"
Movie star Sung Hae Rim, pictured here in Moscow, lived secretly with Kim for over two decades

Posted Monday, June 23, 2003

A HERO OF HER TIME
Kim Jong Sook

The peasant turned revolutionary fighter is venerated in North Korea as one of the country's "three generals," the others being Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il. Born in 1917, she joined Kim Il Sung's guerrilla band at age 18, later marrying him and giving birth to Kim Jong Il in Khabarovsk, Soviet Union. She died at 32, when Kim junior was just seven years old, leaving him alone in the shadow of his all-powerful father

THE FIRST LADY
Kim Kyung Hee

Kim's younger sister is one of the country's most powerful figures. A senior member of the ruling Korean Workers' Party, she is often referred to as the "First Lady"—a distinction that Kim Jong Il has denied to his wives. She is married to Chang Song Taek, a member of the Dear Leader's inner circle

HIS SECRET LOVE
Sung Hae Rim

A North Korean movie star who lived with Kim for two decades, Sung Hae Rim was the mother of his eldest son. Yet Kim was terrified of revealing his secret relationship with her to his father. She died in exile in Moscow last year and is buried there

THE CHOSEN ONE
Kim Young Sook

The daughter of a high-ranking military official, Kim Young Sook was handpicked by Kim Il Sung in the early 1970s to marry his son. She is the mother of Kim Jong Il's only daughter, and is considered his "official" wife

DANCING GIRL
Ko Young Hee

Ko caught Kim Jong Il's eye when he saw her act in a state dance troupe. The mother of his likely heir apparent, 22-year-old Kim Jong Chul, she is said to accompany the Dear Leader on military inspections. An official campaign is now under way to glorify her as a "respected mother" and "loyal subject," so that she can one day join Kim Jong Il's mother in the nation's pantheon of heroes. That would help pave the way for Kim Jong Chul to eventually take over from his father as North Korea's leader.

Nobody—including Sung Hae Rang—knows for sure if Kim Jong Il and Sung Hae Rim held a clandestine wedding ceremony or if Kim opted to avoid the stamp of officialdom so that their secret life together would be easier to conceal. What is clear is that Kim could not afford to suffer his all-powerful father's disapproval by going public about his new family. Kim's mother had died when he was only seven and his father had remarried. As heir presumptive, he had to maneuver against an ambitious stepmother who wanted her own son, Kim's half-brother, to be her husband's political successor. Kim's fate, perhaps even his life, depended on not giving his enemies the means to diminish his standing with his father, whom he both feared and revered. He was, Sung says, "afraid of disappointing his father, and his behavior reflected that." Obsessively so. Kim Il Sung, who died in 1994, would never find out about the peculiar household his eldest son had set up with Sung Hae Rim in 1970.

Fear of his father couldn't keep Kim Jong Il from Sung Hae Rim. He was completely besotted with her. He was a film buff, passionate about the movies, and she was a beautiful and famous star of North Korean cinema. The two had become "pals," says Sung, through this mutual interest. Meanwhile, the actress saw the match partly as a way to lift political pressure from her own family. Her father was a wealthy South Korean landowner who sympathized with the Communists and moved north. In spite of that sacrifice, he was persecuted in his adopted country as a member of an enemy class. But politics was just one part of the actress's calculations, says Sung. Her sister was genuinely fond of Kim Jong Il and felt sorry for him because he grew up without his own mother. If it weren't for his father's potential disapproval, Sung Hae Rang believes, the match might have proved much happier. "If circumstances had been different," she wrote in her memoir, "they could've made a great couple." Instead, no one outside a tiny circle knew they were partners until after his father died and was succeeded by Kim.

Life with Kim was luxurious. He stashed the family away in secluded villas and seaside pavilions, and occasionally granted permission for them to make overseas shopping trips. Their affluence was a marked contrast to the poverty of the huge majority of North Korean citizens. Sung says she was often baffled by Kim's indifference to the fate of his subjects. "He wastes money holding lavish festivals, forcing people to participate in these spectacles, while so many go hungry," she says. "My heart hurts when I think of the starvation. These are my people, and there's nothing I can do."

Sung's own existence, though hardly spartan, had its privations, too. Kim was obsessed with the family's movements and whereabouts. Though the members were allowed to travel, they could do so only with his approval. "We were hidden away, trapped," says Sung. There was the constant danger of discovery. Sung recalls when Jong Nam, Kim Jong Il's son, then four years old, was ill and had to be taken to the hospital. At the same time, Kim's stepmother and half-brother decided to take an official tour of that very hospital and were headed for the children's ward. Sung's own mother, sitting at Jong Nam's bedside, lifted the sick child onto her back and crept out of a window, taking refuge in a strand of poplar trees beside the hospital. "She took each step carefully, so the crunching of the leaves wouldn't be too loud," says Sung. After that, she recalls, "we couldn't even go to the hospital." Later, when the hospital became a convenient spot to avoid prying eyes, "that became the only place we were allowed to go."

As the years went by, Kim's ardor for his actress wife cooled. He was unfaithful. He started up at least two other families—and what little latitude Sung Hae Rang and her sister enjoyed shrank further still, as he plotted their schedules so that they would never run into the other women in his life. Sung Hae Rim never grew accustomed to such buffeting. She tried to cope with the fact that Kim Jong Il had to marry Kim Young Sook, a woman his father had picked out for him but whom he never really cared for. More devastating was his relationship with Ko Young Hee, a Japanese-born ethnic Korean and a dancer, who would displace Sung Hae Rim in his favor. Ko eventually became one of Kim's wives, although—as with Sung Hae Rim—it's not known whether or not he felt it necessary to officially marry her. For years, Kim Jong Il would never appear in public with any of his three consorts, denying them the secure status of "First Lady." That role was filled instead by Kim's politically powerful younger sister, Kim Kyung Hee.

Sung Hae Rang insists that her brother-in-law can be very affable and has an engaging curiosity about people: "He'll ask you about yourself, about your thoughts and opinions. He has a talent for making people feel at ease when he wants to." His curiosity also expressed itself in his obsession with the arts. He has an enormous personal library of movies, music and books—10,000 to 20,000 books, according to Sung, most collected by her mother, the former newspaper editor. Kim's love of food is also legendary: Sung says he enjoys cooking two Japanese specialties—sukiyaki and teppanyaki. A tennis fanatic when he was younger, his increasing corpulence later became a preoccupation, she says, so he exercised daily by swimming laps.

As for Kim the family man, Sung is anxious to give him credit for adoring his young son. When Jong Nam was an infant, Kim would patiently coo the child to sleep while carrying him on his back. As the boy grew older, Sung says Kim became increasingly convinced that Jong Nam was suffering from being cooped up in secluded villas. "We moved back and forth between the houses at east Pyongyang and Chungsangdong," she says. The boy "needed a change of scenery. He was going stir-crazy, not being allowed to go out." Kim granted a bit of leeway, allowing the sisters to travel with his son to residences in Geneva and Moscow.

But Kim's tenderheartedness could seem bizarre, even frightening. Sung Hae Rang remembers seeing her brother-in-law arrive home from a hunting trip in a state of agitation. After storming into the house, he immediately placed a call to a local hospital and asked, in a stricken tone, if "mother and baby" were alright. Everyone stared in bewilderment at the distraught Kim until he explained. While hunting, he had mistakenly shot a pregnant deer. In a fit of conscience, he had rushed doe and unborn fawn to the hospital, where the baby deer was put in an incubator in the maternity ward.

To those around him, Kim's ferocious mood swings represented a constant, and very real, menace. "I know of people who died because he abandoned them," Sung wrote in her memoirs. "Losing ... favor meant the end of one's career and sometimes life." Being a family member afforded little protection. When Kim caught his son with an unapproved girlfriend, he cut off food shipments to the house where Jong Nam lived with his mother and aunt, and threatened to send him to the country's brutal coal mines. Sung remembers begging on her knees with the rest of the family to spare the teen. Kim eventually relented and he forgot about the incident. Completely. Two months later, he scolded the family for not ordering their regular food shipments, apparently failing to recall that he had canceled the order himself.

Kim was at his most dangerous when he believed himself betrayed or deceived. "He hates—positively hates—liars," Sung says. "This is the thing that angers him like nothing else." In 1980 she went on a shopping trip to Helsinki without Kim's consent. Other North Koreans have been arrested for less serious infractions. Returning to Pyongyang, Sung packed her bags, expecting her banishment to a labor camp was imminent. Kim asked her where she had gone and why, although he already knew the answers. Sung, feeling she had nothing to lose, told her brother-in-law the truth—and it mollified him. She was allowed to stay.

Life for Sung's sister was even more perilous. Sung Hae Rim became terrified that Kim Jong Il would throw her into the streets in a fit of rage. Falling increasingly out of favor with her husband, she would take refuge in a house that he kept in Moscow. There, she would soothe her nerves for long periods to recover from his tantrums. She died last summer in her mid-60s in the Russian capital, where she was seeking treatment for stress-related disorders. Sung Hae Rang laments, "She died because of having to live like that for years with Kim Jong Il. That life killed her."

For Sung Hae Rang, there was another way out. In 1982, her own son, then 21, defected to South Korea. Her daughter escaped the North 10 years later, at the age of 26. During a 1996 visit to Kim's Geneva villa, Sung herself slipped away into the city streets and went into hiding in the European countryside. "I was really afraid for my life those first few years," she says. "I hid in a loft. I wandered the streets with a Japanese woman I knew, pretending to be Japanese also. The danger was all I could think about." Her fear was well founded. "The main reason I left [North Korea] was to be near my children," she says. But the year after she defected, her son was shot to death on the streets of Seoul by unidentified assailants.

Today, she says, "my biggest regret was leaving my sister Hae Rim behind." But there is another, more surprising source of sadness in Sung's life. She says she misses Kim's son as if he were her own child. She believes Jong Nam did not have a "normal" upbringing because of the isolation enforced by his father. Even now, she regularly scans newspapers looking for scraps of information about her nephew—and she was particularly distressed to see his photograph in the papers when he sneaked into Japan in May 2001 in an attempt to visit Tokyo Disneyland. The incident—and Jong Nam's subsequent expulsion from Japan—deeply embarrassed Kim Jong Il. Now 32, Jong Nam may no longer be the Dear Leader's heir apparent, displaced by a younger half-brother believed to be the son of Kim's third wife Ko. "I don't know what's become of him," Sung says of her former charge, "or what he's like these days. When I defected, I felt like I left him behind, like I betrayed him."

Her voice shakes and trails off. She takes off her glasses and dabs at her eyes. Unable to go on talking about her nephew, the dictator's son, she holds up her hands and brings her story to an end.

Source: Times.com

Kim's Secret Family

2009-05-02T20:14:00.000+10:00

Secret Lives
Posted Monday, June 23, 2003

For two decades, Sung Hae Rang lived behind closed doors with the despot said to be the world's most dangerous madman.

The diminutive woman nervously spills some sugar as she spoons it into her coffee. It has been several years since she defected from the inner court of one of the world's most secretive dictatorships, and until now she has not had the courage to give an interview to the Western press. Today, Sung Hae Rang lives far away from totalitarian North Korea, in an austere, white walled, one-bedroom apartment in a European location she insists not be identified in print. Now in her late 60s, she tries to speak well of the man she fears, whom some say is the greatest threat to global peace. "Everyone wants to know about Kim Jong Il—who he is, what he's capable of," she says of North Korea's ruler. "But you can't base his entire personality on your opinion of his leadership. I knew him as a person, as family."

COURTESY OF SUNG HAE RANG FROM THE "THE WISTERIA HOUSE"
Kim's sister-in-law Sung Hae Rang with his teenage son Jong Nam at a rare family outing at the beach in North Korea

Indeed, Sung lived in Kim's household. Her sister, a North Korean movie star, was one of his three wives. Sung helped raise Kim's son, and her own children—a son and a daughter—were part of the despot's extended family. Sung shared a difficult period in Kim's life as he survived the byzantine court of his father Kim Il Sung, founder of the Stalinist country, to become leader of North Korea himself. She insists there is more to him than the tyrant with the nuclear-cloud pompadour parodied around the world. Many regard Kim as a deluded and dangerous madman—he has stuffed his pockets with vast profits from drug trafficking while his people starve, and just last week he warned of "limitless" retaliation against the U.S. and Japan if they attempt a blockade of the North's illicit overseas trade. But "if you simply write him off as an evil, one-dimensional cartoon character," Sung says, "you are missing half the picture."

Sung remembers sitting with Kim and watching North Korean propaganda on television sometime after he succeeded his autocratic father. "Ridiculous images of well-dressed young children, artificially smiling and posing, flashed on the screen," she recalls. She remembers turning to Kim and saying, "It's so obviously fake. Can't you do something about it?" Kim, looking very tired, replied, "I know. But if I tell them to tone down the artificiality, they will go completely in the opposite direction and find the most dirty, wretched children they can, dressed in horrible rags."

Sung often feels sorry for the man North Koreans call their Dear Leader. "He's on a speeding train. Any move to stop it or get off, it will crash," she says, smacking her hands together. Still, she would rather not let her infamous in-law know her whereabouts. I had gained Sung's confidence only through the mediation of mutual relatives, who arranged for me to spend some 12 hours interviewing her. She agreed to provide a rare inside look at the intimate side of Kim Jong Il, but she speaks of certain subjects with trepidation. Only with prodding does she describe Kim's terrifying volatility. "When he is happy, he can treat you really, really well. But when he's angry," Sung shudders, "he can make every window in the house shake. He has a personality of extremes, all colliding within the same mind."

Sung first met Kim Jong Il in the early hours of May 10, 1971. Awakened by the honking of a car, she jumped out of bed so quickly that she nearly tore the linen dress she wore, hurrying down to meet a man she had until then seen only in pictures. Kim, then 29, asked her to climb inside the large, black car. She knew already that he had secretly taken her sister, Sung Hae Rim, to live with him as his wife and did not want his father to find out. But the situation had become more complicated, as Kim explained in the car. He and her sister had produced a child, named Kim Jong Nam. That revelation made Sung Hae Rang a guardian of what she says was at the time "the biggest secret in North Korea." And it would ultimately turn her life upside down. In 1976, at Kim's insistence, she was press-ganged into the household to help raise Kim Jong Nam because the boy, then five years old, couldn't be allowed to attend school lest the truth about his parentage get out. Sung, whose husband had been killed in an accident, brought her own son and daughter to her new home to provide Kim's boy with companionship. She was also joined by her mother, who had been a respected editor at the Rodong Daily News, North Korea's official press organ.

Sung and her family would spend the next two decades as part of North Korea's "First Family." In The Wisteria House, her Korean-language memoir that she is currently translating into English, Sung describes the experience as living in a "luxury prison," a shadow household built on a foundation of conspiracy and concealment. For puritanical reasons, Kim Il Sung would have vehemently disapproved of his son's nesting with Sung Hae Rim. The younger Kim's new love was six years his senior. And she was already married. That marriage ended, however, because Kim Jong Il forced her husband to give her up.

Nobody—including Sung Hae Rang—knows for sure if Kim Jong Il and Sung Hae Rim held a clandestine wedding ceremony or if Kim opted to avoid the stamp of officialdom so that their secret life together would be easier to conceal. What is clear is that Kim could not afford to suffer his all-powerful father's disapproval by going public about his new family. Kim's mother had died when he was only seven and his father had remarried. As heir presumptive, he had to maneuver against an ambitious stepmother who wanted her own son, Kim's half-brother, to be her husband's political successor. Kim's fate, perhaps even his life, depended on not giving his enemies the means to diminish his standing with his father, whom he both feared and revered. He was, Sung says, "afraid of disappointing his father, and his behavior reflected that." Obsessively so. Kim Il Sung, who died in 1994, would never find out about the peculiar household his eldest son had set up with Sung Hae Rim in 1970.

Fear of his father couldn't keep Kim Jong Il from Sung Hae Rim. He was completely besotted with her. He was a film buff, passionate about the movies, and she was a beautiful and famous star of North Korean cinema. The two had become "pals," says Sung, through this mutual interest. Meanwhile, the actress saw the match partly as a way to lift political pressure from her own family. Her father was a wealthy South Korean landowner who sympathized with the Communists and moved north. In spite of that sacrifice, he was persecuted in his adopted country as a member of an enemy class. But politics was just one part of the actress's calculations, says Sung. Her sister was genuinely fond of Kim Jong Il and felt sorry for him because he grew up without his own mother. If it weren't for his father's potential disapproval, Sung Hae Rang believes, the match might have proved much happier. "If circumstances had been different," she wrote in her memoir, "they could've made a great couple." Instead, no one outside a tiny circle knew they were partners until after his father died and was succeeded by Kim.

Life with Kim was luxurious. He stashed the family away in secluded villas and seaside pavilions, and occasionally granted permission for them to make overseas shopping trips. Their affluence was a marked contrast to the poverty of the huge majority of North Korean citizens. Sung says she was often baffled by Kim's indifference to the fate of his subjects. "He wastes money holding lavish festivals, forcing people to participate in these spectacles, while so many go hungry," she says. "My heart hurts when I think of the starvation. These are my people, and there's nothing I can do."

Sung's own existence, though hardly spartan, had its privations, too. Kim was obsessed with the family's movements and whereabouts. Though the members were allowed to travel, they could do so only with his approval. "We were hidden away, trapped," says Sung. There was the constant danger of discovery. Sung recalls when Jong Nam, Kim Jong Il's son, then four years old, was ill and had to be taken to the hospital. At the same time, Kim's stepmother and half-brother decided to take an official tour of that very hospital and were headed for the children's ward. Sung's own mother, sitting at Jong Nam's bedside, lifted the sick child onto her back and crept out of a window, taking refuge in a strand of poplar trees beside the hospital. "She took each step carefully, so the crunching of the leaves wouldn't be too loud," says Sung. After that, she recalls, "we couldn't even go to the hospital." Later, when the hospital became a convenient spot to avoid prying eyes, "that became the only place we were allowed to go."

As the years went by, Kim's ardor for his actress wife cooled. He was unfaithful. He started up at least two other families—and what little latitude Sung Hae Rang and her sister enjoyed shrank further still, as he plotted their schedules so that they would never run into the other women in his life. Sung Hae Rim never grew accustomed to such buffeting. She tried to cope with the fact that Kim Jong Il had to marry Kim Young Sook, a woman his father had picked out for him but whom he never really cared for. More devastating was his relationship with Ko Young Hee, a Japanese-born ethnic Korean and a dancer, who would displace Sung Hae Rim in his favor. Ko eventually became one of Kim's wives, although—as with Sung Hae Rim—it's not known whether or not he felt it necessary to officially marry her. For years, Kim Jong Il would never appear in public with any of his three consorts, denying them the secure status of "First Lady." That role was filled instead by Kim's politically powerful younger sister, Kim Kyung Hee.

Sung Hae Rang insists that her brother-in-law can be very affable and has an engaging curiosity about people: "He'll ask you about yourself, about your thoughts and opinions. He has a talent for making people feel at ease when he wants to." His curiosity also expressed itself in his obsession with the arts. He has an enormous personal library of movies, music and books—10,000 to 20,000 books, according to Sung, most collected by her mother, the former newspaper editor. Kim's love of food is also legendary: Sung says he enjoys cooking two Japanese specialties—sukiyaki and teppanyaki. A tennis fanatic when he was younger, his increasing corpulence later became a preoccupation, she says, so he exercised daily by swimming laps.

As for Kim the family man, Sung is anxious to give him credit for adoring his young son. When Jong Nam was an infant, Kim would patiently coo the child to sleep while carrying him on his back. As the boy grew older, Sung says Kim became increasingly convinced that Jong Nam was suffering from being cooped up in secluded villas. "We moved back and forth between the houses at east Pyongyang and Chungsangdong," she says. The boy "needed a change of scenery. He was going stir-crazy, not being allowed to go out." Kim granted a bit of leeway, allowing the sisters to travel with his son to residences in Geneva and Moscow.

But Kim's tenderheartedness could seem bizarre, even frightening. Sung Hae Rang remembers seeing her brother-in-law arrive home from a hunting trip in a state of agitation. After storming into the house, he immediately placed a call to a local hospital and asked, in a stricken tone, if "mother and baby" were alright. Everyone stared in bewilderment at the distraught Kim until he explained. While hunting, he had mistakenly shot a pregnant deer. In a fit of conscience, he had rushed doe and unborn fawn to the hospital, where the baby deer was put in an incubator in the maternity ward.

To those around him, Kim's ferocious mood swings represented a constant, and very real, menace. "I know of people who died because he abandoned them," Sung wrote in her memoirs. "Losing ... favor meant the end of one's career and sometimes life." Being a family member afforded little protection. When Kim caught his son with an unapproved girlfriend, he cut off food shipments to the house where Jong Nam lived with his mother and aunt, and threatened to send him to the country's brutal coal mines. Sung remembers begging on her knees with the rest of the family to spare the teen. Kim eventually relented and he forgot about the incident. Completely. Two months later, he scolded the family for not ordering their regular food shipments, apparently failing to recall that he had canceled the order himself.

Kim was at his most dangerous when he believed himself betrayed or deceived. "He hates—positively hates—liars," Sung says. "This is the thing that angers him like nothing else." In 1980 she went on a shopping trip to Helsinki without Kim's consent. Other North Koreans have been arrested for less serious infractions. Returning to Pyongyang, Sung packed her bags, expecting her banishment to a labor camp was imminent. Kim asked her where she had gone and why, although he already knew the answers. Sung, feeling she had nothing to lose, told her brother-in-law the truth—and it mollified him. She was allowed to stay.

Life for Sung's sister was even more perilous. Sung Hae Rim became terrified that Kim Jong Il would throw her into the streets in a fit of rage. Falling increasingly out of favor with her husband, she would take refuge in a house that he kept in Moscow. There, she would soothe her nerves for long periods to recover from his tantrums. She died last summer in her mid-60s in the Russian capital, where she was seeking treatment for stress-related disorders. Sung Hae Rang laments, "She died because of having to live like that for years with Kim Jong Il. That life killed her."

For Sung Hae Rang, there was another way out. In 1982, her own son, then 21, defected to South Korea. Her daughter escaped the North 10 years later, at the age of 26. During a 1996 visit to Kim's Geneva villa, Sung herself slipped away into the city streets and went into hiding in the European countryside. "I was really afraid for my life those first few years," she says. "I hid in a loft. I wandered the streets with a Japanese woman I knew, pretending to be Japanese also. The danger was all I could think about." Her fear was well founded. "The main reason I left [North Korea] was to be near my children," she says. But the year after she defected, her son was shot to death on the streets of Seoul by unidentified assailants.

Today, she says, "my biggest regret was leaving my sister Hae Rim behind." But there is another, more surprising source of sadness in Sung's life. She says she misses Kim's son as if he were her own child. She believes Jong Nam did not have a "normal" upbringing because of the isolation enforced by his father. Even now, she regularly scans newspapers looking for scraps of information about her nephew—and she was particularly distressed to see his photograph in the papers when he sneaked into Japan in May 2001 in an attempt to visit Tokyo Disneyland. The incident—and Jong Nam's subsequent expulsion from Japan—deeply embarrassed Kim Jong Il. Now 32, Jong Nam may no longer be the Dear Leader's heir apparent, displaced by a younger half-brother believed to be the son of Kim's third wife Ko. "I don't know what's become of him," Sung says of her former charge, "or what he's like these days. When I defected, I felt like I left him behind, like I betrayed him."

Her voice shakes and trails off. She takes off her glasses and dabs at her eyes. Unable to go on talking about her nephew, the dictator's son, she holds up her hands and brings her story to an end.

Source: Time's Asia

North Korea

2009-05-02T14:36:00.000+10:00

Democratic People's Republic of Korea

In this satellite photograph taken at night above the Korean peninsula, you can make out several white splotches. Those are cities... as in streetlights... as in electricity. All of them are below the border in South Korea. And what about that dark area above the dividing line? Let's just say that North Koreans save a fuckload of money on their utility bills.

* Kim Jong Il
* Kim Il Sung
* U.S.S. Pueblo Incident
* North Korea is an atomic power.
* They possess about 5,000 tons of biological and chemical weapons.
* In a State of the Union speech, President George W Bush lumped North Korea in with Iran and Iraq in the "Axis of Evil."
* Famines. Cannibalism.
* "Unification" with the South.
* Maintains the fifth-largest standing army (1,000,000 people). A little more than 30% of the national GDP is spent on the military.

* kidnappings

Since the cease-fire of the Korean War in 1953, North Korea has kidnapped about 3,750 Korean citizens in more than 470 cases. Most of them were crew members of fishing boats. Most fishermen returned home after undergoing intensive brain-washing in North Korea, but 442 of them are still held in North Korea.

North Korea kidnapped a total of 3,662 fishermen along with their fishing boats. The last victim was Dongjin-ho (skipper: Kim Soon-kun) and its 20 crew members. The boat was abducted near Paeknyon Island in January 1987, and all the crew members are still detained in North Korea.

* heroin smuggling
* counterfeiting

Then there is the counterfeiting of U.S. $100 bills. The North Koreans have stolen both the printing presses (from Switzerland) and the formula for the pulp and paper of the U.S. currency. Their quality is reputed to be so good that one South Korean Military intelligence official told WorldNetDaily, "The North Koreans must actually lower their counterfeiting standards -- their fake bills are better made than those in the U.S."

Gulags
The Ministry of National Political Security oversees a collection of death camps where 200,000 political and religious criminals are worked to death.

* Chungbong Mine
* Haengyong
* Hoeryong
* Huaong

Official Website

Timeline

Jan 1968 U.S.S. Pueblo Incident.

1969 EC-121 incident.

Dec 1969 North Korean operatives hijack a South Korean passenger airliner, YS-11, on its way from Kangnung to Seoul. 51 people aboard the craft are taken captive in North Korea, and only 39 are ever released.

18 Aug 1976 Poplar Tree incident.

9 Oct 1983 A North Korean assassin attempts to kill the president of South Korea during a visit to Rangoon. He only survives by being tardy when a time bomb goes off at a memorial. 17 South Korean diplomats and 4 Burmese are killed in the blast.

Nov 1987 114 are killed when Korean Airlines flight 858 blows up over the Indian Ocean. After this incident, the United States officially lists North Korea as a terrorist state.

Jun 1994 South Korea somehow persuades President Bill Clinton not to launch an air strike against North Korean nuclear sites.

Sep 1996 A North Korean spy submarine breaks down near Kangnung, prompting the 26-member crew to swim ashore. During the subsequent manhunt, 13 South Koreans are killed and 24 of the North Koreans are killed. 11 of the spies blew their own brains out on a mountain to avoid capture. One North Korean is captured alive, and is coerced into talking by force-feeding him soju. The last one somehow manages to escape. North Korea finally apologizes for the incident in December.

Apr 1997 North Korea finally admits that they have been suffering a deadly famine for almost a year.

29 Jan 2002 During his State of the Union speech, President George W Bush denounces North Korea as being part of an "Axis of Evil" along with the nations of Iran and Iraq.

Source: Rotten Library

Kim Jong Il

2009-05-02T14:20:00.000+10:00

Say what you like about Kim Jong Il's appearance -- at least it's distinctive.

Absolutely no one in North Korea ever has to ask "Who's that squat little man in the glasses and khaki windbreaker?" Also, there's his signature hairstyle.

The dictator artfully conceals his diminutive stature by wearing platform shoes and whipping his hair into stiff peaks. So what if the autocrat feels a little self-conscious about his height? That's understandable -- he's only 5'2". Napoleon was four inches taller than that, for Christ's sake.

Granted, the man dresses like a retard. But that doesn't mean he actually is one. In fact, Kim does a surprisingly fine job of running North Korea. Some people regard nepotism as an invariably bad thing, especially when it comes to governance. They argue that you really don't want incompetent retards manning important government posts, because they tend to fuck up spectacularly.

But this is not the case in North Korea, whose ruthless dictator happened to inherit the job from his father, the equally ruthless Kim Il Sung. Kim Jong Il happens to be brilliant at his primary responsibility... that, of course, being: remaining in power.

Admittedly, he sucks at all the other ones. Kim's disastrous agricultural and economic policies have caused his people to suffer under one of the world's longest, deadliest famines. But that's just what you get when daddy's little boy grows up to take over the family business.

Anyway, that doesn't matter to the average man in Pyongyang. The North Koreans adore Kim. They swoon in his presence. He is, to them, something of a deity. A god-king. Don't believe us? Check out this article from the official government news agency in September 1997:

The Korean people regard it as their most worthwhile life to uphold Secretary Kim Jong Il and live and work in perfect harmony with him, said Rodong Sinmun in a signed article August 31. The author of the article said: The Korean people absolutely worship, trust and follow the General as god. These noble ideological feelings are ascribable to the fact that they have keenly felt the greatness of the General from the bottom of their hearts.

He is the great teacher who teaches them what the true life is, a father who provides them with the noblest political integrity and a tender-hearted benefactor who brings their worthwhile life into full bloom. The life of the Korean people who form a harmonious whole with the General is a revolutionary life to glorify their noblest political integrity. This is why they have unbendingly advanced the revolution with an unshakable faith, not wavering under any obstacles and trials. The General is the mental pillar and the eternal sun to the Korean people. As they are in harmonious whole with him, they are enjoying a true life based on pure conscience and obligation. They are upholding him as their great father and teacher, united around him in ideology, morality and obligation. So, their life is a true, fruitful and precious life without an equal in history.

Kim has 22 million toiling away for him, and the country's aggregate revenue is about $22 billion per annum. That works out to an average of $1,000 per person, which rates their productivity somewhere between Tuvalu and the West Bank. But just as in any business, no matter how poorly the company does, the upper management is always well-compensated for their labors.

And no one is paid better than the CEO. Which is fortunate for Kim Jong Il -- whose net worth approaches $4 billion -- because he has always had expensive tastes. He likes fast cars, gourmet foods, and fine liquors. Suffice it to say, none of these things is produced in North Korea and FedEx doesn't deliver there. As expensive as those luxuries are in the West, they cost even more to procure north of the 38th Parallel. But procure them they must. Evidently, the man loves to throw banquets and has a penchant for fine cognac (his favorite is Hennessy V.S.O.P).

Kim's obsession for fine dining comes off sounding kind of selfish when you consider that millions of his countrymen have been killed by lack of food. A series of droughts, coupled with Kim's irrational farming and draconian economic policies, have given no relief to a decade of famine. As a direct result, at least ten percent of the man's population has died. In 1999, South Korean intelligence services claimed that somewhere between 2.5 and 3 million North Koreans succumbed to starvation over the four previous years. This puts him third behind Mao and Josef Stalin for most people starved to death.

He has other rarefied tastes as well. Kim is a world-class cineaste; by the 1970s his collection had grown to more than 15,000 films (on reels -- this was before videocassettes and DVDs). He especially loves Hollywood movies. His favorites include Rambo, Friday the 13th, the James Bond series, and Hong Kong action films. His favorite stars are Elizabeth Taylor and Sean Connery.

Kim also adores children's cartoons, especially Daffy Duck. (Evidently, the Dear Leader has amassed the world's largest collection of Daffy cartoons.) And he's a giant Michael Jackson fan.

He also loves pornography. In addition, according to rumor, Kim also keeps a harem of beautiful women for the purpose of fucking. The dictator is regularly serviced by a nubile "Pleasure Squad," a stable of babes composed primarily of young Asians and Europeans.

In his free time Kim wrote six operas, over a span of only two years. This he could accomplish because he's a goddamned genius. As one North Korean diplomat expressed his nation's gratitude during Kim's 61st birthday celebration: "We're able to face the U.S. superpower and the hostile U.S. policies because of our brilliant commander, Chairman Kim Jong Il. He is a thinker on a par with Marx and Lenin."

But of course, none of this is why he gets paid the big bucks. His job security is based on convincing the world that his regime is extremely dangerous and unpredictable. In playing chicken with the global superpowers, Kim's primary objectives are twofold:

1. Make North Korea a credible nuclear power.

Most analysts believe the DPRK is pretty close to having nuclear-tipped ICBMs, unless they already do. The fact is, nobody knows for sure. They've intentionally kept things under wraps to keep us guessing. Are they working on their fifth warhead? Their fiftieth? Their first? Fuck if we know.

2. Pretend to be completely, utterly, bugfuck crazy.

Nuclear weapons are useless as a deterrent unless your enemy believes you're crazy enough to actually use them. And if you're a small country, you can make up for a small stockpile by pretending to have a hair trigger.

Unfortunately, despite Kim's best efforts, nobody really believes he's nuts these days. He screwed his carefully-cultivated image by inviting Secretary of State Madeline Albright to Pyongyang in October 2000. Afterwards, she said:

I don't think he's delusional... we had very peculiar information about Kim Jong Il -- that he was a recluse. I think "delusional" actually was a word that was used. But [South Korean President] Kim Dae Jung had reported that it was possible to have perfectly decent, rational conversations with him... he's not delusional, and he's not someone who only is interested in watching bad movies.

Of course, even if he does everything right, nothing lasts forever. It will eventually end for Kim Jong Il, just as it ended for his father before him. Kim Il Sung died in July 1994. Incidentally, rumor has it that he suffered a massive heart attack during an animated argument with his son.

Kim is probably doomed to the same eventual fate as billionaire Howard Hughes, ultimately succumbing to crippling paranoid delusions. But for the time being, he's only about halfway there -- utterly obsessed with secrecy and his physical security, but not afraid to touch doorknobs yet. In planning for this eventuality, Kim is grooming one of his sons, Kim Jong Chul, to take over the family business. He will have quite a legacy to live up to.

But this plan may all go to shit. For some reason, Kim Jong Il believes he will be replaced by a triplet, and none of his children were triplets. So, like King Herod before him, Kim is covering his bets. He has ordered all triplets born in North Korea be rounded up and raised in state orphanages, where the government can keep an especially close eye on them. We are not making this up. According to a March 2003 story in the Herald Sun:

All triplets in North Korea are being forcibly removed from parents after their birth and dumped in bleak orphanages. The policy is carried out on the orders of Stalinist dictator Kim Jong-il, who has an irrational belief that a triplet could one day topple his regime.

Yeah, yeah. It sounds crazy, but the man is just being prudent. You'd probably do the same thing if you were in his platform shoes.

Timeline

16 Feb 1941 Kim Jong Il is born in Khabarovsk, Siberia.

1978 South Korean film director Shin Sang-ok and his film star wife, Choe Eun-hui, are kidnapped and brought to North Korea at the direction of Kim Jong Il. There the couple are forced to make propaganda films for the regime, until they finally escape in 1986.

24 Dec 1991 Kim Il Sung announces that his son Kim Jong Il will succeed him.

13 Apr 1992 Kim Jong Il takes control of North Korea's armed forces, and becomes the country's de facto dictator.

8 Jul 1994 Kim Il Sung dies. Kim Jong Il formally assumes power.

1996 Kim Jong Il announces his Red Banner initiative. It is explained as a "revolutionary, profound philosophy which clarifies the fundamental principle of the revolution based on Juche."

27 Sep 1997 North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il decrees that anyone caught outside their home town without a travel permit be thrown into detention facilities known as "927 camps."

Jun 2000 North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il tells South Korean reporters: "Some Europeans say that I'm reclusive, that this the first time I've appeared in public. In fact, I've been to China and Indonesia. I've made many secret visits abroad. How can people claim I'm reclusive?"

1 May 2001 Kim Jong Nam, son of North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il, is detained at passport control in Narita international airport for attempting to enter Japan with fraudulent identity papers. The 30-year-old arrived from Singapore with two women and a 4-year-old boy, as well as a set of forged passports from the Dominican Republic. Kim Jong Nam claims that he just wants to check out Tokyo Disneyland.

14 Aug 2001 Juche Tower unveiled.

29 Jan 2002 During his State of the Union speech, President George W Bush denounces North Korea as being part of an "Axis of Evil" along with the nations of Iran and Iraq.

Aug 2002 During an interview with journalist-author Bob Woodard, President George W Bush declares: "I loathe Kim Jong Il. I've got a visceral reaction to this guy, because he is starving his people. And I have seen intelligence of these prison camps -- they're huge -- that he uses to break up families and to torture people. It appalls me."

Source: The Rotten Library

Kim Jong Il

2009-05-02T14:04:00.000+10:00

AKA Yuri Irsenowich Kim

Born: 16-Feb-1941
Birthplace: Khabarovsk, Siberia, Russia

Gender: Male
Race or Ethnicity: Asian
Sexual orientation: Straight
Occupation: Head of State

Nationality: North Korea
Executive summary: Dictator of North Korea

As a young man, Kim Jong-Il lived a playboy lifestyle, and many Koreans assumed that he would never be disciplined enough to lead his nation. But Kim studied political science at the university named for his father and rose rapidly through Communist Party ranks. He was designated his father's official successor in 1974, and took power upon the elder Kim's death in 1994. His early reign was marred by a three-year famine which killed perhaps 2 million citizens. He had about 80 high-ranking officials, including several relatives and his own brother-in-law, rounded up and purged in 2004. Long under international pressure to end its nuclear program, North Korea astonished the world by testing a nuclear bomb in 2006. Its point made, six-party talks resumed, leading to a modicum of detente by 2007.

Kim Jong-Il is often said to be stark raving bonkers, but this is a misconception. He is eccentric, certainly, and his government is extremely secretive and brutal to dissidents, but experts say Kim is bright, clear-headed, politically astute, and as sane as any leader with unchecked power. He drives trendy Mazdas, and prefers Hennessey cognac. He wears elevator shoes to hide his short stature (without the shoes, he stands about 5'2"). He is a big movie buff, and owns videos of at least 20,000 films. Kim is a moviemaker himself, the credited producer of Pulgasari, a 1985 Godzilla-esque story based on a 14th-century Korean legend about a monster who helps peasants overthrow their dictatorial king. Kim abducted South Korean director Shin Sang-Ok and actress Choe Un-Hee, and forced them to make the movie. They escaped several years later, when Kim allowed them to attend a film festival in Vienna.

Father:
Kim Il Sung (dictator, d. 8-Jul-1994)

Mother:
Kim Chong-suk (d. 1949, childbirth)

Brother:
Shura Kim (d. 1947, drowning)

Brother:
Kim Pyong-il

Wife:
Kim Yong Suk (div.)

Son:
Kim Jong-Nam (b. 1971, by Sung Hae-Rim)

Daughter:
Kim Sul-song (b. 1974)

Son:
Kim Jong-Chol (b. c. 1981, by Ko Young-hee)

Mistress:
Sung Hae-Rim

Mistress:
Ko Young-hee

Son:
Kim Jong-Woon

High School: Namsan Senior High School, Pyongyang, North Korea (1960)
University: BA Political Science, Kim Il-Sung University (1964)

President of North Korea 8-Jul-1994
Birthday Is Holiday
Korean Ancestry

Rotten Library Page:
Kim Jong Il

Appears on the cover of:
The Economist, 3-May-2003, DETAILS: Hell-bent
The Economist, 4-Jan-2003, DETAILS: The explosive Mr Kim (as if Saddam were not enough) [Kim's head in the midst of a nuclear explosion]
Time, 13-Jan-2003, DETAILS: The Bigger Threat? North Korea's dictator is a nuclear menace. Why he may be more dangerous than Saddam (shown pictured among warheads)

Source: NNDB Tracking the Entire World

North Korea missile: punishment up to US

2009-04-06T16:19:00.000+10:00

American Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice (c.) and Japanese Ambassador to the United Nations Yukio Takasu spoke to reporters regarding North Korea's launch of a test missile Sunday, April 5, 2009 at U.N. headquarters.
Mary Altaffer/AP

Security Council's struggle to respond to Sunday's rocket launch also portends challenges for Obama's nonproliferation goals with Iran.

Washington - The UN Security Council's inability to take harsh action against North Korea in an emergency session Sunday – the first such gathering of the Obama presidency – leaves the challenge posed by Pyongyang's launch of a long-range missile in Washington's lap.

That is just where North Korea's attention-starved leader, Kim Jong Il, wants it.

"North Korea was way down on the list of priorities for Obama, but with this one test firing, they have put themselves at the top of his list of things to do," says Chaibong Hahm, a Northeast Asia expert at RAND Corp., in Santa Monica, Calif.

By launching the long-range Taepodong-2 rocket despite warnings from world leaders such as President Obama, Pyongyang is daring the international community and, in particular, Washington to ignore its progress in missiles and weapons delivery at their peril.

Pyongyang claimed the launch boosted a communications satellite into orbit, but US and other officials countered that the test launch was mostly a fizzle. They said the rocket, while demonstrating some progress over a failed launch in 2006, did not attain orbiting altitude before crashing into the Pacific Ocean.

It was no coincidence, some analysts say, that North Korea fired its missile and grabbed headlines around the world as Mr. Obama was in the spotlight on his first overseas trip as president.

But the Security Council could not immediately agree on a response to the rocket launch. China urged restraint, warning against any move that could increase tensions or destabilize the rogue nation, even as America's ambassador to the UN, Susan Rice, insisted that North Korea's action "merits a clear and strong response." Security Council consultations will continue over "the coming days," she said late Sunday, with an aim of producing a unified approach.

The council's lack of action points to the two-fold difficulties Obama faces in keeping North Korea from backsliding on its commitment to give up its nuclear weapons and materials and, too, in pursuing his broader goal of curtailing global nuclear proliferation.

"This puts Obama in a pretty tough situation," says Mr. Hahm. "He has said the words of the world's leaders have to mean something, so he will want to see something pretty strong come out of the Security Council."

"On the other hand, he has said he is ready to negotiate, so how does he do that without looking to allies like Japan and South Korea [like] he is siding with China and rewarding North Korea for its bad behavior?" Hahm adds.

Noting that the launch presents "the first foreign-policy test of President Obama's rhetoric," Bruce Klingner, senior research fellow for Northeast Asia at the Heritage Foundation in Washington says that UN credibility will depend on enforcement of existing resolutions and passage of "stronger punitive measures."

Obama underscored his long-term goal of eliminating nuclear weapons in a speech Sunday in a historic square in Prague, the capital of the Czech Republic. He called for eventual elimination of all nuclear weapons – which he labeled "the most dangerous legacy of the cold war" – and committed to hosting a summit within a year to focus on reducing and then eliminating nuclear weapons.

The president took specific note of both North Korea and Iran, saying Iran has "a clear choice": either become a contributing member of the international community by abandoning its uranium-enrichment program or continue down the road of international isolation.

Of North Korea, Obama said, "[it] must know that the path to security and respect will never come through threats and illegal weapons."

Iran is expected to pay as much attention to how North Korea fares in its standoff with the US and other international powers as it does to warnings from the Obama administration. Pyongyang has cited a spat with the US over verification of dismantling its nuclear facilities in refusing to return to six-party talks. Iran is in its own standoff with the international community over its refusal to abandon a program that could lead to development of a nuclear weapon.

The Bush administration relied on the six-party talks to arrive at an accord with Pyongyang last year, in which North Korea would dismantle its nuclear weapons and facilities in exchange for economic aid and a path to diplomatic normalization.

Like North Korea, Iran is subject to various UN resolutions and sanctions over its nuclear pursuits and its defiance of the international community. And like Pyongyang, Tehran is thought to be hoping to use its nuclear program – and the destabilizing threat it poses to a strategically crucial region – to extract some kind of "grand security bargain" from the US.

Still, the consensus among analysts is that Pyongyang is pursuing missile development for reasons of both prestige and economic survival. Sunday's rocket launch came just ahead of this week's opening of North Korea's parliamentary session. The parliament is nothing more than a rubber stamp of the Kim regime, but nonetheless the missile launch will allow Kim to dampen doubts about his power and health.

At the same time, the launch, despite its contested success, allows the North to demonstrate some progress to its international clients. Missile sales to Iran, Pakistan, Egypt, Syria, and Yemen have been among the few income-earners for the impoverished country in recent years.

Both Pyongyang and Tehran may have benefited from even a failed launch, says RAND's Hahm, noting the particularly close relationship North Korea maintains with Iran in the area of missile development.

"They say you learn as much from failure as you do from your successes," he says. "So this still may have been beneficial to both of them."

The Rise of Kim Jong-Un

2009-04-02T20:42:00.000+11:00

By Ken E. Gause
Foreign Policy
Posted April 2009

What we don't know about the Dear Leader's possible successor.

Figuring out just who will rule North Korea when Kim Jong Il exits the scene has become something of a global parlor game.

In January 2009, the South Korean news agency, Yonhap, reported that Kim Jong Il's third and youngest son, Kim Jong-un, had been nominated to succeed his father "around" Jan. 8, the younger Kim's birthday. Although there was no corroborating information from the North Korean media (and there still is none), Yonhap's articles cited sources with close ties to the North Korean leadership. Then in April, Yonhap reported that Kim Jong-un had been appointed to the National Defense Commission (NDC) in an unnamed capacity. Whether any of this is true is debatable, but for those of us who read the tea leaves in Pyongyang for a living, the growing focus on the third son as the successor appears to be reaching a critical mass.

The South Korean and Japanese media began reporting on Kim Jong-un in 2003 and have done so sporadically ever since. Focused on the succession issue, their reports tend to be highly speculative and often contradictory.

According to Kim Jong Il's former personal chef, Kim Jong-un was born in 1983 or 1984 to Kim's third wife, Ko Hyong-hui, and is allegedly his father's favorite son. Unlike his brother Kim Jong-chol, Kim Jong-un has a more forthright character and, some sources say, has exhibited leadership skills. He is rumored to have studied at the International School of Berne in Guemligen, Switzerland. Upon returning to North Korea sometime after 2000, his studies continued, most likely at Kim Il Sung Military University. There are varying reports that he speaks German, French, and English.

Kim Jong-un's career background has been just as opaque. In 2004, reports began to surface that he and brother Kim Jong-chol were accompanying their father on inspections of military installations. In 2007, a flurry of reports emerged placing the third son in either the Korean Workers' Party's (KWP's) powerful Organization Guidance Department, where Kim Jong Il began his career in 1964, or the Korean People's Army's influential General Political Bureau. Both of these bodies are charged with surveillance and monitoring of the regime's powerful party, military, and security bodies.

There are also reports that Kim Jong-un may share some of the ailments of his father, such as diabetes, and might have been in a car accident last year. Therefore, his health is in question.

In the months after Kim Jong Il's apparent stroke in August 2008, the South Korean media began to speculate on succession. According to their articles, Kim Jong-un had the support of his father's current wife, Kim Ok, and the first vice director of the Organization Guidance Department, Yi Je-kang. Kim Jong Il's brother-in-law, Jang Song-taek (who is married to Kim's sister, Kim Kyong-hui), was rumored to be the key backer of Kim's oldest son, Kim Jong-nam, who has spent most of his time outside North Korea since he was caught in 2001 by Japanese officials while to trying sneak into Japan on a false passport.

In February 2009, Yonhap reported that Jang (director of the KWP's Administrative Department, which oversees much of North Korea's security apparatus) had shifted his support to Kim Jong-un in light of Kim Jong Il's "special affection" for his third son and out of consideration for his own future political power. According to senior North Korean defectors in South Korea, Jang reached a deal with Kim Jong Il. Worried about being purged, as he was in 2004 for becoming too powerful within the regime, Jang agreed to throw his support behind Kim Jong-un. In return, Kim Jong Il has allowed Jang to engineer the succession by placing his allies in key posts throughout the regime. Many of the recent key appointments allegedly have Jang's backing. The new chief of the general staff, Yi Yong-ho, is allegedly close to Jang, as is the new minister of the People's Armed Forces.

The development of a collective leadership centered on Jang appears to have emerged out of the recent meeting of the Supreme People's Assembly. Some analysts point to the NDC, of which Kim Jong-un is now reportedly a member, as the platform through which the succession will be carried out, much as the KWP was Kim Jong Il's platform. In addition to Jang, the NDC is now populated with powerful military and security officials with ties to Jang, including vice chairmen Kim Yong-jun and O Kuk-yol and members Chu Sang-song (minister of public security) and U Tong-juk (deputy director of the State Security Department). Many think this collective leadership, which probably extends beyond the NDC to the party as well, will provide the support network for a dynastic succession. In this scenario, Kim Jong-un would be the public face of North Korea, while Jang led behind the scenes.

When the succession will be made public is a critical question. Some Pyongyang watchers speculate that it will be attached to an auspicious date in North Korean history. Many point to April 2012, which would mark the 100th anniversary of Kim Il Sung's birth. Of course, the health of Kim Jong Il, which has appeared to worsen in recent months, will probably drive the timing of this announcement.

What would the post-Kim Jong Il era mean for the stability of North Korea? Although few experts foresee a collapse of the regime, many wonder whether the senior leadership will hold together or fall prey to factionalism. Jang's agreement to support Kim Jong-un apparently unifies the key individuals within the regime. For this reason, many Pyongyang watchers think the succession is already a done deal.

Whether this governing structure will last is a big question. North Korea, after all, does not have a history of collective leadership. If the reports to date are accurate, it makes sense that Kim Jong Il has tried to build the collective leadership around someone within his family. But, forecasting on what will happen after Kim Jong Il is highly speculative. Whether Jang will continue to support Kim Jong-un, shift his allegiance back to Kim Jong-nam, or move to take the leadership mantle for himself, which could lead to an outright power struggle, is anyone's guess. Rest assured, we'll be watching closely.

Ken E. Gause is senior analyst at CNA, a nonprofit think tank in Alexandria, Va., and director of its Foreign Leadership Studies Program. He has studied the North Korean regime for two decades.