Important Takeaways:
- Russia has been on a roll: the 2008 invasion of Georgia, the seizure of Crimea in 2014 and the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Ukraine surprised an overconfident Vladimir Putin, yet the war continues, with Russian casualties exceeding 500,000.
- From the time Russia invaded Ukraine, Mr. Putin has threatened to use tactical nuclear weapons. He recently announced a new nuclear doctrine: Aggression against Russia by any non-nuclear state, but with the participation or support of a nuclear one, should be considered a joint attack.
- [meanwhile] China is building more missile silos: 120 in Gansu province and about 110 in Xinjiang province. China’s Rocket Force, established by President Xi Jinping, receives significant resources for the nuclear modernization program. China is not a member of New START and continues to refuse to discuss its nuclear program with the U.S.
- China continues to encircle and threaten Taiwan and claim sovereignty over the South China Sea despite a 2016 U.N. Permanent Court of Arbitration ruling in favor of the Philippines that said China’s actions were unlawful. China continues to ignore the ruling.
- North Korea has about 50 nuclear weapons and enough fissile material to produce seven nuclear weapons per year. It also has a chemical and biological program, and in 2002, it was the only country that withdrew from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
- Since the failure of the February 2019 Hanoi Summit, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has been in a race to build more nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles to launch them as far as the U.S. with the Hwasong-17, a road-mobile intercontinental ballistic missile capable of carrying multiple reentry vehicles, with a range of 15,000 kilometers (over 9,320 miles), capable of reaching the entire U.S.
- Iran is in a category by itself.
- Iran enriches uranium to 60%, enabling it to produce weapons-grade uranium in a few weeks. The International Atomic Energy Agency monitors Iran’s nuclear-related activities and has expressed concern about not getting the access its monitors require to certify that Iran is in compliance with IAEA safeguards.
- Moreover, Iran’s ballistic missile program is impressive — 12 types of medium-range and short-range ballistic missiles. It is only a matter of time before Iran has ICBMs capable of targeting Europe and the U.S. This is in addition to its support of its proxies Hamas in the Gaza Strip, Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen. Iran’s goal: to annihilate Israel.
- This is the axis of authoritarian states. The nations’ goal is to change the world order.
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Important Takeaways:
- North Korea has sent about 10,000 troops to Russia to train and fight in Ukraine within “the next several weeks,” the Pentagon said Monday, in a move that Western leaders say will intensify the almost three-year war and jolt relations in the Indo-Pacific region.
- Some of the North Korean soldiers have already moved closer to Ukraine, Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh said, and were believed to be heading for the Kursk border region, where Russia has been struggling to push back a Ukrainian incursion.
- Earlier Monday, NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte NATO confirmed recent Ukrainian intelligence reports that some North Korean military units were already in the Kursk region.
- Adding thousands of North Korean soldiers to Europe’s biggest conflict since World War II will pile more pressure on Ukraine’s weary and overstretched army. It will also stoke geopolitical tensions in the Korean Peninsula and the wider Indo-Pacific region, including Japan and Australia, Western officials say.
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Important Takeaways:
- South Korea warned Tuesday it could consider supplying weapons to Ukraine in response to North Korea allegedly dispatching troops to Russia, as both North Korea and Russia denied the movements. NATO’s secretary general said that would mark a “significant escalation.”
- South Korean officials worry that Russia may reward North Korea by giving it sophisticated weapons technologies that can boost the North’s nuclear and missile programs that target South Korea.
- The officials agreed to take phased countermeasures, linking the level of their responses to progress in Russian-North Korean military cooperation, according to the statement.
- Possible steps include diplomatic, economic and military options, and South Korea could consider sending both defensive and offensive weapons to Ukraine, a senior South Korean presidential official told reporters on condition of anonymity in a background briefing.
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Important Takeaways:
- South Korea’s foreign ministry called the Russian ambassador to the carpet Monday over North Korea’s alleged deployments of troops to join the Russian military in its war against Ukraine.
- The use of North Korean troops in the Ukraine conflict is a violation of the U.N. charter and General Assembly resolutions and threatens South Korea’s security, the ministry said in a statement.
- “We condemn North Korea’s illegal military cooperation, including its dispatch of troops to Russia, in the strongest terms,” Vice Foreign Minister Kim Hong-kyun told Ambassador Georgy Zinoviev, the ministry said. “We will respond jointly with the international community by mobilizing all available means against acts that threaten our core security interests.”
- South Korea’s intelligence service said on Friday that North Korea had shipped 1,500 special forces to train at Russian military bases in the Far East. The troops would likely be deployed to fight in Ukraine, the spy agency said.
- Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has also accused North Korea of sending 10,000 troops to Russia.
- Zinoviev countered that Russian cooperation with North Korea was in line with international law, and was not directed against South Korea, according to a Facebook post from the Russian embassy.
- Reports that Russia will deploy North Korean troops in its war with Ukraine are unconfirmed. The Kremlin earlier denied them.
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Important Takeaways:
- North Korea blew up parts of two major roads connected to the southern part of the peninsula on Tuesday, South Korean authorities said, after Pyongyang warned it would take steps to completely cut off its territory from the South.
- Parts of the Gyeongui line on the West coast and Donghae line on the East coast, two major road and railway links connecting the North and South, were destroyed by explosives at around 12 p.m. Korean local time, according to Seoul’s Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS).
- In practical terms, the destruction of the travel routes makes little difference – the two Koreas remain divided by one of the world’s most heavily fortified borders and the roads were not in use for years. But its symbolism comes at a time of particularly fiery rhetoric between the two Korean leaders.
- North and South Korea have been separated since the Korean War ended in 1953 with an armistice agreement. The two sides are still technically at war, but both governments had long sought the goal of one day reunifying.
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Important Takeaways:
- The purpose for the balloons’ GPS capabilities isn’t clear, but none of the possibilities are good news for South Korea.
- Among the balloons being sent across the border from North Korea to the South are examples carrying GPS transmitters, according to the Republic of Korea military. Waves of excrement and trash-filled balloons have been sent over South Korea since the summer, but the latest development suggests that the North is also using them for limited intelligence-gathering, perhaps in preparation for future contingencies, or to develop more balloon-based military capabilities. The announcement comes only days after Pyongyang accused the South of sending multiple waves of drones over the North Korean capital to drop propaganda leaflets, as you can read about here.
- South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff says that GPS transmitters were found in some of the North Korean balloons. Although it’s unclear when exactly these balloons were sent, there have been no previous reports of them carrying such devices, since the current campaign began.
- A balloon of this kind cannot have its course altered based on returned GPS data, but the equipment could have other implications of varying degrees of impact.
- Tracking balloon movements over time would show North Korea the kinds of routes they are taking, how far they can travel, and at what speeds.
- By their nature, the balloons are very likely to be intact once they come down — provided they are not shot down — meaning that the signal can still be transmitted, at least until it descends below the receiving station’s horizon. Local cellular networks could also be leveraged for sporadic communication.
- However, if the balloons are brought down by South Korean air defenses, resulting in a sudden loss of connectivity, it’s the resulting data could also help to highlight potential strong and weak spots in the country’s defensive coverage.
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Important Takeaways:
- The General Staff of the Korean People’s Army said the move was a “response to the grave situation in which the imminent danger of war is escalating day by day along the southern border”
- North Korea said it would fortify its side of the de facto border with “strong defense structures,” without elaborating.
- A “telephone message” communicating its intentions was sent to U.S. forces “to prevent any misjudgment and accidental conflict over the fortification project,” the army said.
- This week, the North Korean leader twice threatened to use nuclear weapons on the South if provoked.
- The South Korean defense ministry said the latest announcement likely was a continuation of the North’s efforts to severe inter-Korean connections—physical and symbolic—since April.
- The North Korean notification was sent via an existing channel to the U.S.-led United Nations Command, South Korea’s Yonhap news agency said on Wednesday, citing military sources. Pyongyang said its DMZ fortification project would involve a large number of personnel, heavy equipment and “explosive work,” the report said.
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Important Takeaways:
- China is communist North Korea’s closest ally, but has refrained from major displays of support towards the Kim regime in the past year, particularly after Pyongyang published an excoriating screed against Beijing in May for backing a statement vaguely supporting the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula. North Korean diplomacy has since trended towards Russia, signing a mutual defense treaty with Moscow in July during strongman Vladimir Putin’s first visit to North Korea in decades.
- China and North Korea nonetheless rely on each other significantly for ideological and economic support. Xi’s message hoping to “strengthen communication” with Kim arrives as North Korea escalates belligerent behavior against South Korea, flooding the country with a wave of trash-filled balloons over the weekend. China, in turn, faces growing economic challenges and resistance to its geopolitical agenda from the West.
- The South Korean news agency Yonhap described Beijing and Pyongyang as “relatively estranged” in the context of the founding anniversary message and the upcoming anniversary of diplomatic ties between the two countries. South Korean sources have reportedly not seen any indication that the two countries will plan any “grand celebrations” together to mark the occasion.
- While still close allies, North Korea and China have kept a diplomatic distance this year compared to those prior, which appeared to expand following China participating in a summit in Seoul alongside the governments of that country and Japan in May. The trilateral summit, the ninth of its kind in modern history, united the conservative governments of South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol and Japanese Prime Minister Kishida Fumio with the Communist Party and resulted in a joint statement that outraged North Korea.
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Important Takeaways:
- North Korean leader Kim Jong-un oversaw suicide drone tests over the weekend, an emerging vector of arms development for the fortress state, state media reported Monday.
- Drones represent a near-perfect weapons solution for North Korea in its war of nerves against the South, experts say. They are an economical means of destroying expensive manned fighting platforms, have proven ability to penetrate air-defense nets and take advantage of Seoul’s innate geographical vulnerability.
- Given that one of the drones shown resembles Russia’s Lancet, the new Unmanned Aerial Vehicles may be the fruits of a defense agreement the isolated state signed with Russia in June – an agreement that Seoul, Tokyo and Washington have lambasted, but have been unable to impact.
- “It is necessary to develop and produce more suicide drones of various types to be used in tactical infantry and special operation units, as well as strategic reconnaissance and multi-purpose attack drones,” Mr. Kim was quoted as saying during Saturday’s tests by the state-run Korean Central News Agency.
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Important Takeaways:
- North Korean hackers have conducted a global cyber espionage campaign in efforts to steal classified military secrets to support Pyongyang’s banned nuclear weapons program, the United States, Britain and South Korea said in a joint advisory on Thursday.
- The hackers, dubbed Anadriel or APT45 by cybersecurity researchers, are believed to be part of North Korea’s intelligence agency known as the Reconnaissance General Bureau, an entity sanctioned by the U.S. in 2015.
- The cyber unit has targeted or breached computer systems at a broad variety of defense or engineering firms, including manufacturers of tanks, submarines, naval vessels, fighter aircraft, and missile and radar systems, the advisory said.
- Victims in the U.S. have also included the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), Randolph Air Force Base in Texas and Robins Air Force Base in Georgia, FBI and U.S. Justice Department officials said on Thursday.
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