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South Korea Concerned North May be Prepping for Nuke Test, Missile Launch

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Photo Credit: Getty

S. Korea defense ministry denies claim ‘indication’ N. Korea prepping for fourth nuke test

By Associated Press. A top South Korean official said Monday he misspoke earlier in the day when he told lawmakers there is an “indication” that North Korea is preparing for a nuclear test. But that doesn’t change what Seoul has been saying for months: that Pyongyang has already prepared a tunnel for a nuclear blast and can use it whenever it wants.

When a lawmaker asked whether there was an indication of increased personnel and vehicles at the North’s nuclear test site, Unification Minister Ryoo Kihl-jae said “there is such an indication.” He said he couldn’t say more because it involved confidential intelligence.

The comments in a parliamentary session were recorded on video, but Ryoo later told lawmakers he couldn’t remember making them and didn’t mean to say them. He said he was “startled” by reports carrying his earlier comments.

A Unification Ministry official said that Ryoo had intended to say that North Korea has long been ready to conduct a nuclear test. She spoke on condition of anonymity because she wasn’t authorized to speak publicly about the matter.

After Ryoo’s initial comments, South Korean Defense Ministry spokesman Kim Min-seok said there are vehicle and personnel activities at the northeastern test site but they are seen as “usual” activities, not an “indication for a nuclear test.” Kim said North Korea can conduct a nuclear test anytime if decides to do so. Read more from this story HERE.

South Korean Official: North May be Preparing to Launch Missile This Week

By Daniel Arkin. A top South Korean government official announced Sunday that North Korea may launch a missile by Wednesday, at which time the North has said it cannot guarantee the safety of diplomats in the capital of Pyongyang.

The official’s warning came three days after South Korea’s government said that the North had moved at least one medium-range Musudan missile with “considerable range” to the nation’s eastern border, possibly to perform a test launch.

“We’re thoroughly preparing for this, leaving all possibilities open,” said Kim Jang-Soo, South Korea’s national security chief, adding that the North’s likely goal is to wrench concessions from Seoul and Washington.

A Musudan missile has an estimated range of up to 2,490 miles, which would make it capable of striking American bases in Guam.

Escalating tensions between the nuclear-armed North and U.S.-aligned South also forced South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff to announce Sunday that the body’s chairman had delayed a visit to Washington, according to The Associated Press. Read more from this story HERE.

South Korea Has Already Won

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Photo Credit: valeuf

On March 30, three days after North Korea severed a military hotline with the South and announced that South Korean President Park Geun-hye “will meet a miserable ruin,” the country declared a state of war. “The time has come to stage a do-or-die final battle,” an official statement said.

Meanwhile, many of South Korea’s youth were worried about something else. A 25-year-old pop star named Seo In-guk had appeared on a popular reality TV show the night before and, in a misstep that quickly dominated online conversations, had washed his strawberries incorrectly. Ilbe, a conservative Web forum — a place you might expect to find a nationalist screed — was preoccupied with a month-old debate on regional differences in how to eat sweet and sour pork.

Pop stars, bourgeois lifestyle commentary and funny videos often seem to interest young South Koreans more than Pyongyang’s latest provocation. North Korea may be trying to intimidate its neighbor, particularly on economic and cultural fronts that increasingly matter, South Korea has already won the fight.

Of course, young people are discussing the risk of a second Korean war. But, even if this week’s chest-thumping has them a bit jittery, they typically mock Kim Jong Un and dismiss his war declaration as hot air. It’s a distraction from more pressing matters — not a particularly high bar for a youth culture obsessed with the latest Korean pop girl group or Samsung gadget.

“Netizens and ordinary citizens alike are fairly fatigued with the recent stream of threats,” James Pearson, the Seoul-based editor of KoreaBang, a blog that covers Korean social media trends, told me. “People just laugh.”

Read more from this story HERE.

US Sends F-22 Stealth Raptors to Join B-2's as North Korea Declares a "State of War"

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Photo Credit: DVIDSHUB

The United States has sent F-22 stealth fighter jets to South Korea to join Seoul forces in military drills as North Korea warns the Korean Peninsula has entered “a state of war.”

A senior U.S. official confirms to Fox News that the F-22 Raptors were deployed to Osan Air Base in South Korea from Japan on Sunday to support ongoing U.S.-South Korean military drills.

North Korea has increased its threatening rhetoric in recent weeks, including vowing to launch a nuclear strike on Washington. In a statement released Sunday, U.S. military in South Korea urged North Korea to restrain itself.

“(North Korea) will achieve nothing by threats or provocations, which will only further isolate North Korea and undermine international efforts to ensure peace and stability in Northeast Asia,” the statement said.

Meanwhile, North Korea said Saturday its armed forces, “will blow up U.S. bases for aggression in its mainland and in the Pacific operational theatres including Hawaii and Guam.”

Read more from this story HERE.

North Korea Increases Tensions With South By Issuing Threat Over Factories

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Photo Credit: KCNA/EPA

The rising tension between North and South Korea escalated further on Saturday as Pyongyang threatened to shut down a vital factory complex run jointly by the two countries.

North Korea has been engaged in a massive display of sabre-rattling in recent days, declaring that it was in a “state of war” with its far wealthier and more powerful southern neighbour. It has also cut a military hotline between the two countries that was one of the few ways that senior North and South Korean officials could talk to each other, adding to a sharp sense of unease about events on the Korean peninsula.

Now North Korea has explicitly said that it may target the Kaesong industrial park – an important trade zone that is run jointly with South Korean expertise and North Korean labour. Kaesong is a vital source of foreign currency for the North and has been operating normally so far, despite the bellicose warnings dominating headlines in both Koreas.

A spokesman for the North Korean department controlling Kaesong was quoted by the country’s state news agency as warning the country would “shut down the zone without mercy” if it felt it was not being taken seriously.

Recent weeks have seen a torrent of bellicose rhetoric from Pyongyang threatening dire consequences for both South Korea and the US. North Korea is angry about the annual South Korea-US military drills, which will run until the end of April, and at the UN sanctions imposed after it carried out another nuclear test in February.

Read more from this story HERE.

North Korea Says It is in “State Of War” With South Korea

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Photo Credit: Reuters

North Korea said on Saturday it was entering a “state of war” with South Korea in a continuing escalation of tough rhetoric against Seoul and Washington after coming under international sanctions for its nuclear test.

“From this time on, the North-South relations will be entering the state of war and all issues raised between the North and the South will be handled accordingly,” a statement carried by the North’s official KCNA news agency said.

KCNA said the statement was issued jointly by the North’s government, ruling party and other organizations.

North Korea has been threatening to attack the South and U.S. military bases almost on a daily basis since the beginning of March, when U.S. and South Korean militaries started routine drills, and has ordered its armed forces on the highest alert.

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North Korea To Cut All Channels With South As “War May Break Out Any Time”

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Photo Credit: Ahn Young-Joon

Reclusive North Korea is to cut the last channel of communications with the South because war could break out at “any moment”, it said on Wednesday, days of after warning the United States and South Korea of nuclear attack.

The move is the latest in a series of bellicose threats from North Korea in response to new U.N. sanctions imposed after its third nuclear test in February and to “hostile” military drills under way joining the United States and South Korea.

The North has already stopped responding to calls on the hotline to the U.S. military that supervises the heavily armed Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) and the Red Cross line that has been used by the governments of both sides.

“Under the situation where a war may break out at any moment, there is no need to keep north-south military communications which were laid between the militaries of both sides,” the North’s KCNA news agency quoted a military spokesman as saying.

“There do not exist any dialogue channel and communications means between the DPRK and the U.S. and between the north and the south.”

Read more from this story HERE.

US Flies Nuclear-Capable B-52 Bombers Over South Korea Amid Rising Tensions With North Korea

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Photo Credit: AP

The United States is flying nuclear-capable B-52 bombers on training missions over South Korea to highlight Washington’s commitment to defend an ally amid rising tensions with North Korea, Pentagon officials said Monday.

Pentagon press secretary George Little said one B-52 flew over South Korea on March 8, and the deputy defense secretary, Ashton Carter, said during a visit to Seoul that another bomber mission is scheduled for Tuesday.

B-52 bombers are capable of launching nuclear-armed cruise missiles, but Little said those participating in the Korean exercise are not armed with nuclear weapons.

The use of Air Force warplanes as part of an annual U.S.-South Korean military exercise called Foal Eagle is not unusual. But the Pentagon used the occasion to draw attention to the role B-52 bombers play as part of an American nuclear “umbrella” over South Korea and Japan — both of which feel threatened by North Korea’s development of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles.

“We’re deeply concerned about North Korean behavior and rhetoric,” Little told reporters.

Read more from this story HERE.

U.S. Missile Defense Plans Will Raise Korea Tensions, Warns China

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Photo Credit: Ahn Young-joon

President Obama’s decision to deploy additional missile interceptors at Alaska’s Fort Greely reverses a decision he made in 2009 to scale back the number of active silos approved by President George W. Bush to blunt long-range nukes.

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel on Friday announced that the U.S. will deploy 14 additional ground-based missile interceptors at Fort Greely to address threats of a “pre-emptive” nuclear strike from North Korea.

The number of interceptors on the West Coast will increase from 30 to 44 by 2017, as proposed by the Bush administration.

Rep. Howard P. “Buck” McKeon, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said the increase will cost an extra $200 million to reopen mothballed silos, citing a Pentagon estimate.

“Four years ago, the administration determined that the missile threat from countries like North Korea had changed, and, parting with established policy, decided to eliminate missiles from the proposed inventory and mothball the missile field built to house them,” Mr. McKeon, California Republican, said Friday. “At the time, House Republicans disputed the change in the threat and pressed the administration not to … close down vital infrastructure.”

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‘I’m Ready To Rain Bullets On The Enemy’: Boy-Leader Kim Jong Un Gets ‘Hard Man’ Makeover As He Poses With Tanks and Threatens US

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Photo Credit: Getty Images

North Korea has issued yet another set of apocalyptic threats as the rogue state refuses to back down in the face of war games between the U.S. and South Korea. An official newspaper has quoted a war veteran vowing to ‘rain bullets on the enemy’ while leader Kim Jong Un urged his troops to ‘cut their windpipes’. The 20-something leader has been seen looking increasingly warlike in recent pictures posing next to tanks and guns, prompting speculation he is trying to project a ‘hard man’ image to shore up his authority ahead of a possible new offensive.

North Korea’s army this week officially cancelled an armistice it signed with the South at the end of Korean War. The move makes it more likely that recent tensions, prompted by new UN sanctions as well as the joint military exercises which started yesterday, could bubble over into all-out warfare.

Rodong Sinmun, the official newspaper of Kim’s Workers’ Party, quoted an 80-year-old veteran of the Korean War supposedly expressed the national mood.

‘I am still keeping a bullet that I failed to fire at a trench in the 1950s because the U.S. imperialists and their stooges signed an armistice agreement,’ he apparently said. ‘Send me to the trench. Give me a rifle. I want to rain bullets on the enemy to my heart’s content.’

Kim himself issued a direct threat to the U.S. and South Korea over their long-scheduled drills on the Korean Peninsula. ‘As the saying goes, a guy who is fond of playing with fire is bound to perish in flames,’ he told troops. ‘All the enemies quite often playing with fire in the sensitive hotspot should be thrown into a cauldron once I issue an order.

‘Once an order is issued you should break the waists of the crazy enemies, totally cut their windpipes and thus clearly show them what a real war is like.’

The leader’s martial attitude in recent photographs is in stark contrast to the laid-back image he attempted to project during the recent visit of former basketball star Dennis Rodman to the pariah nation.

Read more from this story HERE.

U.S. Funded Idle Time at Battery Factory

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Photo Credit: Wall Street JournalThe Obama administration’s electric car efforts took another hit on Wednesday after a federal inspection found a South Korean advanced battery maker never scaled up U.S. production despite receiving $142 million in federal grants.

A Holland, Mich., factory owned by LG Chem Ltd., part of LG Corp., was half-funded by a government grant and estimated to add some 440 jobs building battery cells for General Motors Co.’s Chevrolet Volt and other vehicles.

When demand for the plant’s batteries didn’t meet expectations, the company filled orders with cells made at a factory in South Korea, leaving the Michigan plant largely idle, according to the report by the Department of Energy’s Inspector General, Gregory Friedman.

LG Chem said in a statement that production delays at the Michigan facility were “market-driven,” adding that it is “developing specific plans for the start of production.” The company said it regretted that it applied for reimbursement for “employment costs that were not allowed” under its U.S. grant.

The inspector general said that to avoid layoffs at the factory LG Chem paid idle workers $1.6 million in the third quarter of last year, about half of which was covered by its U.S. grant, even though there was nothing for them to do. The workers played board games, watched movies, and volunteered at local animal shelters during regular work hours, Mr. Friedman said. LG Chem has since paid back the government’s share of those charges.

Read more from this story HERE.