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North Korea threatens imminent strikes against South, warns US

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downloadNorth Korea on Saturday threatened South Korea with “indiscriminate” military strikes unless it halts cross-border propaganda broadcasts, and issued fresh nuclear weapons warnings against the United States.

The threats came amid escalating military tensions on the Korean peninsula following a landmine attack South Korea blamed on the North and ahead of a major South Korea-US joint military exercise condemned by Pyongyang.

They also coincided with celebrations in both Koreas to mark the 70th anniversary of the Korean peninsula’s 1945 liberation from Japanese colonial rule.

Initially there were hopes the anniversary might be an opportunity for some sort of inter-Korean rapprochement, but instead ties have spiralled downwards to the familiar accompaniment of angry rhetoric and mutual recrimination.

After three landmine blasts maimed two South Korean soldiers on border patrol, Seoul this week resumed high-decibel propaganda broadcasts across the heavily-militarised frontier, using batteries of loudspeakers that had lain silent for more than a decade. (Read more from “North Korea Threatens Imminent Strikes Against South, Warns US” HERE)

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North Korea’s Missile Launch Photos Are Fakes, US Says

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Photo Credit: Reuters Photos showing a North Korean missile launched from a submarine were manipulated by state propagandists, and the isolated country may still be years away from developing the technology, a top US military official said Tuesday.

North Korea, heavily sanctioned by the United States and United Nations for its missile and nuclear tests, said May 9 it had successfully conducted an underwater test-fire of a submarine-launched ballistic missile, which, if true, would indicate progress in its pursuit of building missile-equipped submarines.

On Wednesday, the North warned Washington not to challenge its sovereign right to boost military deterrence and boasted of its ability to miniaturize nuclear warheads, a claim it has made before and which has been widely questioned by experts and never verified.

But Pyongyang is still “many years” from developing submarine-launched ballistic missiles, US Admiral James Winnefeld told an audience at the Centre for Strategic & International Studies in Washington on Tuesday.

“They have not gotten as far as their clever video editors and spinmeisters would have us believe,” said Winnefeld, who is vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. (Read more from “North Korea’s Missile Launch Photos Are Fakes, US Says” HERE)

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North Korea Warns Will Act to Get Back Ship Held by Mexico

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Photo Credit: Yahoo

Photo Credit: Yahoo

North Korea accused Mexico on Wednesday of illegally detaining one of its ships with some 50 crew and warned it would take “necessary measures” to release the vessel, which United Nations sanctions monitors say belongs to a blacklisted shipping firm.

The 6,700-tonne freighter Mu Du Bong, which had come from Cuba, ran aground in July on a reef 8 miles (13 km) northeast of Tuxpan in Mexico’s Veracruz state. Mexico said the ship remains in the port of Tuxpan.

North Korea’s Deputy UN Ambassador An Myong Hun told a small news conference on Wednesday that the Mu Du Bong was not linked to the blacklisted firm, Ocean Maritime Management Company, and therefore not subject to U.N. sanctions.

He said North Korea, officially known as the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), had paid an undisclosed sum to Mexico for damages to the reef where the ship had run aground and now the ship and its crew should be released.

“This ship is totally a peaceful and legitimate commercial ship which sails under the direction of the Ministry of Land and Sea Transportation,” An said. “The detention of Mu Du Bong is a rampant violation of the dignified sovereignty of the DPRK.” (Read more from “North Korea Warns Will Act to Get Back Ship Held by Mexico” HERE)

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Report Says Iran May Be Keeping Elements of Nuclear Program in Syria, North Korea

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AlgeAs world powers race to close a nuclear deal with Iran, recent reports have indicated that not all elements of Iran’s nuclear program may be domestic, but that some of it may be located in Syria and as far away as North Korea. In light of the secrecy surrounding the talks going on in Lausanne, Switzerland these reports are receiving some attention, according to The Israel Project, a Washington DC-based advocacy group.

If true, the implications of the reports are far reaching. The Israel Project said that the debate in these reports “involves how Iran has dispersed its nuclear assets to Syria and North Korea, which means that any envisioned deal would only slow a part of the Iranian nuclear program, while flooding the Iranians with cash to bolster what’s left over.”

Last November, as an earlier deadline for the talks approached, the issue came up regarding Iran moving its nuclear program’s assets to Syria, but now the debate is including North Korea. And according to the Israel project, “Even if everything goes right in slowing Iran’s nuclear work on Iranian soil…the deal wouldn’t touch all of the places and ways the Iranians are going nuclear.”

The reports indicate that Germany’s Der Spiegel revealed the existence of an undisclosed nuclear facility in Syria where as much as 50 tons of enriched uranium may have been taken, so that while it remained in Syrian territory, it was nonetheless under Iranian control. The facility is located deep in the Qalamoun region, near the town of Qusayr, territory controlled by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps-Quds Force and Iran’s terror proxy Hezbollah. (Read more from “Report Says Iran May Be Keeping Elements of Nuclear Program in Syria, North Korea” HERE)

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“Tear to Pieces the Stars and Stripes”: North Korean Leader Tells Army to Prepare for War

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North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un has urged his army to prepare for war with the United States and its allies, state media said Saturday, as Pyongyang ramps up the rhetoric ahead of US-South Korea military drills.

Kim’s comments came after South Korea and the United States Friday conducted a joint naval drill involving 10 South Korean warships and a US Aegis destroyer, ahead of the launch of large-scale military exercises that have enraged the North.

“The prevailing situation where a great war for national reunification is at hand requires all the KPA (Korean People’s Army) units to become (elite) Guard Units fully prepared for war politically and ideologically, in military technique and materially”, he was quoted by the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) as saying.

North Korea regularly ratchets up hostile rhetoric at times of joint US-South Korea military exercises that spark a sharp surge in tensions on the divided peninsula.

Kim called on the military to train hard in order “to tear to pieces the Stars and Stripes”, in comments made while opening a new hall at the Victorious Fatherland Liberation War Museum in Pyongyang, KCNA said. (Read more about the North Korean leader telling his army to prepare for war HERE)

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Insane Case for Attacking North Korea

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[Editor’s Note: Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry argues in an opinion piece in The Week entitled “The Case for Invading North Korea” that the US should attack North Korea now. Daniel Larison argues in response that this would be “insane.” His comments follow].

Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry outdoes himself with this blithe argument in favor of attacking North Korea:

U.S. forces should be able to destroy all of North Korea’s artillery in one strike. After all, if there’s one thing that the U.S. military is very good at, it’s launching enormous amounts of rockets and bombs with great precision. With satellite, any significant artillery positions are known. Given the U.S.’s overwhelming technological advantage and total dominance of the sky, and the effect of surprise, it should not be impossible to pull off . . .

If any part of Gobry’s “plan” were to go less than perfectly, Seoul would be reduced to a ruin in a matter of hours and it is more than likely that millions of people would be killed in the ensuing war. In order for this so-called “plan” to “work,” the regime would have to collapse almost instantly, but that is the least likely thing to happen in a country that has known no other government for more than half a century. And no matter how widely hated the regime is, the first instinct of people everywhere when they come under attack is to rally against the foreign attacker. If the regime did collapse in fairly short order, that would produce an unparalleled humanitarian disaster for which no neighboring country could possibly be prepared. (Read more about the case for attacking North Korea HERE)

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North Korea Offers Nuclear Test Moratorium if US Scraps Training with South Korea

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Photo Credit: Washington TimesNorth Korea has told the United States that it is willing to impose a temporary moratorium on its nuclear tests if Washington scraps planned military drills with South Korea this year, the North’s official news agency said Saturday.

Washington called the linking of the military drills with a possible nuclear test “an implicit threat,” but said it was open to dialogue with North Korea.

The U.S. has previously refused to cancel military drills with South Korea, even at times of high tensions, and has said the North must first demonstrate how sincere it is about nuclear disarmament before serious talks can resume.

The North’s reported proposal comes at a time of animosity between North Korea and the U.S. over a Sony movie depicting the assassination of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. The U.S. blames the North for crippling hacking attacks on Sony Entertainment and subsequently imposed new sanctions on the country, inviting an angry response from Pyongyang, which has denied responsibility for the cyberattacks.

The North’s official Korean Central News Agency said the government proposed to the U.S. what it calls a “crucial step” to ease animosities and remove the danger of war, prompted by desires to pave the way for a reunification with South Korea this year, which marks the 70th anniversary of the rivals’ division. (Read more about the nuclear test moratorium HERE)

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Obama Doubles Down: More Sanctions On North Korea After Sony Hack

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Photo Credit: APBy David E. Sanger and Michael S. Schmidt. The Obama administration doubled down on Friday on its allegation that North Korea’s leadership was behind the hacking of Sony Pictures, announcing new, if largely symbolic, economic sanctions against 10 senior North Korean officials and the intelligence agency it said was the source of “many of North Korea’s major cyberoperations.”

The actions were based on an executive order President Obama signed on vacation in Hawaii, as part of what he had promised would be a “proportional response” against the country. But in briefings for reporters, officials said they could not establish that any of the 10 officials had been directly involved in the destruction of much of the studio’s computing infrastructure.

In fact, most seemed linked to the North’s missile and weapons sales. Two are senior North Korean representatives in Iran, a major buyer of North Korean military technology, and five others are representatives in Syria, Russia, China and Namibia. (Read about more sanctions on North Korea HERE)

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Krauthammer: North Korea Already ‘Sanctioned Up the Wazoo’

By Fox News. Syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer said Friday on “Special Report with Bret Baier” that President Obama’s sanctioning of North Korea is “a farce from beginning to end.

“Now I’m not criticizing the administration, because there are no choices,” he said. “North Korea doesn’t have anything, doesn’t do anything, it doesn’t export anything except illegal stuff which is obviously sanctioned. It’s been sanctioned up the wazoo.” (Read more from this story HERE)

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North Korea: Attack on Obama Wasn’t Racist Because not all Monkeys are Black

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Photo Credit: Getty

Photo Credit: Getty

By Frances Martel. “Obama always goes reckless in words and deeds like a monkey in a tropical forest,” a state article written for the Korean Central News Agency– the government’s main propaganda outfit, remarked. In the same article, it described the United States’ efforts to distribute internet access as “without shame” and compared them to “children playing tag.”

Speaking to Argentine radio station Rock&Pop, Kim Jong Un’s man in Latin America clarified that calling America’s first black president a “monkey” is not racist.

“It is absolutely not a racist comment,” noted Alejandro Cao de Benós. “Not every monkey is black.”

He added wishes that Sony “lose much money” on The Interview and attempted to draw a parallel to American government, claiming that anyone making a similar film about President Obama would be arrested:

Independent of its comedic character, what you cannot do is simulate the assassination of a president. This is a question of respect towards a leader elected by his population. I invite you to make a movie attempting to assassinate President Obama. You would be arrested surely… you would be condemned and sent to Guantánamo.

(Read more about the attack on Obama HERE)

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Activist Will Launch ‘The Interview’ Into North Korea via Balloon Drop

By Kate Scanlon. An activist has decided to bring “The Interview” to the people of North Korea.

Park Sang-hak, a North Korean defector and an activist against its regime, will launch into North Korea balloons carrying DVDs and USBs containing the controversial film, according to the Associated Press.

“The Interview” depicts the death of the country’s dictator, Kim Jong Un.

“North Korea’s absolute leadership will crumble if the idolization of leader Kim breaks down,” Park told the AP.

Park said he plans to send 100,000 DVDs and USBs with the movie into North Korea next month. (Read more from this story HERE)

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Six Hackers Identified in Sony Hack, One a Former Employee

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hackersNorse, the cybersecurity firm that first identified a potential insider in the massive November hack of Sony Pictures, believes it’s uncovered evidence on six individuals primarily involved in the attack, including one former Sony employee with ”extensive knowledge of the company’s network and operations.”

Senior vice president at Norse Kurt Stammberger told the Security Ledger late Sunday the company has identified six people “with direct involvement in the hack,” two of whom are based in the U.S. along with one in Canada, Singapore and Thailand.

The list also includes a former decade-long Sony veteran who “worked in a technical role” and was laid off in May. Norse previously identified the ex-employee as “Lena,” and said she claimed to have connection to the “Guardians of Peace” hacker group that took credit for the attack against Sony, which has so far resulted in leaked employee information, executives’ emails, unreleased films and the limiting of “The Interview” theatrical release in response to a terrorist threat.

The FBI has attributed all of the above to North Korea due to the film’s plot, which centers around an attempt to assassinate North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un. (Read more about the hackers identified HERE)