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
03 August 2009
Bush Urges Unified Action Against North Korea
23 July 2009
N Korea has no friends - Clinton
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
(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
macho macho midgets ...
very gentlemen like deflowering a rose...
if Mrs Clinton hasn't got intelligence
FM spoke person got something else...
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
Continue read North Korea launches bizarre attack on Hillary Clinton...
North Korea would not return to six party talk
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
17 July 2009
UN Issues New Sanctions against North Korea
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.
06 July 2009
North Korean weapons ship heads home
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
04 July 2009
N Korea test-fires two missiles
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.
03 July 2009
North Korea fires four short-range missiles
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.
01 July 2009
Millions starving in North Korea - UN
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.
Continue read Millions starving in North Korea - UN...
25 June 2009
Obama extends sanctions on North Korea
(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'
(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.
22 June 2009
North Koreans Won't Give Up the Ship Without a Fight
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.
14 June 2009
We'll keep making weapons
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.
13 June 2009
Cost-benefit analysis of nuclear ambition puts N Korea in front
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
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
(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
08 June 2009
N. Korea Sentences 2 U.S. Journalists to 12 Years of Hard Labor
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.
07 June 2009
US Weighs Intercepting North Korean Shipments
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.
06 June 2009
US considers sanctions on NKorea in UN talks: Clinton
(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.
