Tag Archives: North Korea

Elite North Korean defector says more diplomats waiting to defect to Seoul: Yonhap

former North Korea deputy

SEOUL (Reuters) – More high-level North Korean diplomats are waiting to defect to South Korea from their overseas posts in Europe, Pyongyang’s former deputy ambassador to London said on Tuesday, according to the Yonhap News Agency.

Thae Yong Ho defected to South Korea in August last year and since December 2016 has been speaking to local media and appearing on variety television shows to discuss his defection to Seoul and his life as a North Korean envoy.

“A significant number of North Korean diplomats came to South Korea recently,” Thae said, according to Yonhap.

“I am not the only one from Europe. There are more waiting to come,” Thae said, speaking at an event held in South Korea’s parliamentary building.

Thae, 54, has said publicly that dissatisfaction with the rule of young leader Kim Jong Un had led him to flee his post, but he also had two university-age sons living with him and his wife in London who were due to return to isolated North Korea.

He is the highest-ranking official to have fled North Korea for the South since the 1997 defection of Hwang Jang Yop, the brains behind North Korea’s governing ideology, “Juche”, which combines Marxism with extreme nationalism.

“Of all the recent high-level defectors, I am the only one to have gone public,” said Thae.

(Reporting by James Pearson; Additional reporting by Jeong Eun Lee)

South Korea says securing THAAD location could be delayed

THAAD anti missile defense system

SEOUL (Reuters) – The signing of a contract which would secure the location of a U.S. missile defense system in South Korea could be delayed, Seoul’s defense ministry said on Monday.

The Terminal High Altitude Area Defence (THAAD) system is due to be deployed on land which is now part of a golf course owned by the Lotte Group conglomerate in the Seongju region, southeast of South Korea’s capital Seoul.

“The plan to go ahead with the exchange will be signed by mid-January, but there is a possibility it will be slightly delayed,” South Korean defense ministry spokesman Moon Sang-gyun told a regular news briefing.

“Lotte needs to hold a meeting of the board of directors to approve the final assessment fee,” Moon said. “We understand that the meeting has not happened yet, but will be held soon”.

South Korea and the U.S. say the deployment of THAAD is designed to protect against North Korea’s growing nuclear and ballistic capabilities.

But Beijing objects strongly to its use in South Korea, where it says THAAD’s powerful radar could penetrate Chinese territory, leading to calls from some South Korea opposition leaders to delay or cancel its deployment.

Moon Jae-in, a former opposition leader who currently leads polls of presidential hopefuls, has said its deployment should wait until the next South Korean administration is in place.

Former United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who is expected to run for president of South Korea and is currently polling second behind Moon in surveys of potential candidates, said on Sunday it is appropriate for THAAD to be deployed in the country, however.

South Korea has been gripped by a political crisis since lawmakers voted overwhelmingly in December to impeach President Park Geun-hye over an influence-peddling scandal. The motion is now with the Constitutional Court and will trigger an early presidential election if upheld.

The deployment of THAAD in rural Seongju has been met with protests from farmers concerned that the sophisticated missile defense system’s advanced radar will damage local melon crops and make the small town a target of a North Korean attack.

(Reporting by James Pearson; Additional reporting by Yun Hwan Chae; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore)

China, Russia agree on more ‘countermeasures’ against U.S. anti-missile system: Xinhua

THAAD Missile Defense System in South Korea

SHANGHAI (Reuters) – China and Russia have agreed to take further unspecified “countermeasures” in response to a U.S. plan to deploy an anti-missile system in South Korea, state news agency Xinhua reported on Friday.

The countermeasures “will be aimed at safeguarding interests of China and Russia and the strategic balance in the region”, Xinhua said, citing a statement released after a China-Russia security meeting.

China and Russia held a joint anti-missile drill last May after Washington and Seoul began discussions over installing the U.S. Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system to counter any North Korean threats.

THAAD is now due to be deployed on a South Korean golf course, unsettling Moscow and Beijing, which worry that the system’s powerful radar will compromise their security and do nothing to lower tensions on the Korean peninsula.

China and Russia said in October they would hold a second drill this year.

“China and Russia urged the United States and South Korea to address their security concerns and stop the deployment of THAAD on the Korean Peninsula,” Xinhua quoted the statement as saying.

North Korea’s drive to develop nuclear weapons capability has angered China, Pyongyang’s sole major diplomatic and economic supporter. However, Beijing fears THAAD and its radar have a range that would extend into China.

On Thursday, South Korea’s trade minister said the South might complain to China about actions perceived to have been taken in retaliation for its decision to deploy the U.S. anti-missile system.

(Reporting by Brenda Goh; Editing by Paul Tait)

U.S. deploys high-tech radar amid heightened North Korea rhetoric: official

radar to spy on North Korea

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A high-tech sea-based U.S. military radar has left Hawaii to monitor for potential North Korean intercontinental ballistic missile test launches, a U.S. defense official said on Wednesday.

Earlier this month, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said that the isolated, nuclear-capable country was close to test-launching an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM).

The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the radar, known as the Sea-based X-band radar (SBX), left on Monday and would reach its destination, about 2,000 miles (3,218 km) northwest of Hawaii, towards the end of January.

The radar is able to track ICBMs and differentiate between hostile missiles and those that are not a threat.

On Tuesday, U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter said the U.S. military might monitor a North Korean intercontinental ballistic missile test and gather intelligence rather than destroy it, as long as the launch did not pose a threat.

“If the missile is threatening, it will be intercepted. If it’s not threatening, we won’t necessarily do so,” Carter said,

“Because it may be more to our advantage to, first of all, save our interceptor inventory, and, second, to gather intelligence from the flight, rather than do that (intercept the ICBM) when it’s not threatening.”

Carter’s remarks came just over a week after U.S. President-elect Donald Trump vowed that North Korea would never fulfill its threat to test an ICBM. Trump said in a Jan. 2 tweet: “It won’t happen!”

“The SBX’s current deployment is not based on any credible threat; however, we cannot discuss specifics for this particular mission while it is underway,” Commander Gary Ross, a Pentagon spokesman, said.

(Reporting by Idrees Ali and Phil Stewart; Editing by James Dalgleish)

U.S. blacklists North Korean officials over rights abuses

Kim Jong Un leader of North Korea leading a meeting

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Treasury Department has added seven senior North Korean officials, including leader Kim Jong Un’s sister, to its sanctions list because of human rights abuses and censorship by the communist nation.

The department said in a statement on Wednesday that its Office of Foreign Assets Control added six men and one woman, all officials of the government of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea or the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea, along with the Ministry of Labor and the State Planning Commission, to the Specially Designated Nationals List.

“The North Korean regime not only engages in severe human rights abuses, but it also implements rigid censorship policies and conceals its inhumane and oppressive behavior,” acting OFAC Director John Smith said in the statement, adding that the move aimed to expose the individuals responsible for the abuses.

The U.S. State Department said in a separate statement that the action coincided with the release of its second report on North Korean human rights abuses and censorship, which it called among the worst in the world.

Pyongyang “continues to commit extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearances, arbitrary arrest and detention, forced labor, and torture. Many of these abuses are committed in the political prison camps, where an estimated 80,000 to 120,000 individuals are detained, including children and family members of those subject to persecution and censorship,” the State Department statement said.

Among seven individuals on the Treasury Department blacklist is Kim Yo Jong, 27, who it said is the younger sister of leader Kim Jong Un, as well as the vice director of the Workers’ Party of Korea Propaganda and Agitation Department.

Also on the list is Minister of State Security Kim Won Hong, whose agency the department said “engages in torture and inhumane treatment of detainees during interrogation and in the country’s network of political prison camps.”

(Reporting by Tim Ahmann; Writing by Eric Walsh; Editing by Tom Brown and Steve Orlofsky)

Chinese bomber flies round contested Spratlys in show of force: U.S. official

Chinese vessels in South China Sea

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A Chinese H-6 strategic bomber flew around the Spratly Islands at the weekend in a new show of force in the contested South China Sea, a U.S. official said on Tuesday.

It was the second such flight by a Chinese bomber in the South China Sea this year. The first was on Jan. 1, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The flight could be seen as a show of “strategic force” by the Chinese, the official said.

It comes after U.S. President-elect Donald Trump has signaled a tougher approach to China when he takes office on Jan. 20, with tweets criticizing Beijing for its trade practices and accusing it of failing to help rein in nuclear-armed North Korea.

Commander Gary Ross, a Pentagon spokesman, said he had no specific comment on China’s recent bomber activities, but added: “we continue to observe a range of ongoing Chinese military activity in the region‎.”

In December, China flew an H-6 bomber along the “nine-dash line” it uses to map its claim to nearly all of the South China Sea, a strategic global trade route. That flight also went around Taiwan, which China views as a renegade province.

In August, China conducted “combat patrols” near contested islands in the South China Sea.

Trump has enraged Beijing by breaking with decades of U.S. policy and speaking to the Taiwanese president by telephone.

A state-run Chinese newspaper warned Donald Trump on Sunday that China would “take revenge” if he reneged on the U.S. one-China policy, only hours after Taiwan’s president made a controversial stopover in Houston.

Last week China said that a group of Chinese warships led by its sole aircraft carrier was testing weapons and equipment in exercises this week in the South China Sea, where territory is claimed by several regional states.

U.S. warships conducted what they call “freedom of navigation” patrols through the South China Sea over the past year amid growing concern about Chinese construction of air strips and docks on disputed reefs and islands.

(Reporting by Idrees Ali and David Brunnstrom; Editing by James Dalgleish)

North Korea says can test-launch ICBM at any time: official news agency

File photo of ballistic missile

SEOUL (Reuters) – North Korea declared on Sunday it could test-launch an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) at any time from any location set by leader Kim Jong Un, saying a hostile U.S. policy was to blame for its arms development.

Kim said on Jan. 1 that his nuclear-capable country was close to test-launching an ICBM.

“The ICBM will be launched anytime and anywhere determined by the supreme headquarters of the DPRK,” an unnamed Foreign Ministry spokesman was quoted as saying by the official KCNA news agency, using the acronym for the country’s name.

The North is formally known as the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

U.S. Defence Secretary Ash Carter said on Sunday that North Korea’s nuclear weapons capabilities and ballistic missile defence programs constituted a “serious threat” to the United States and that it was prepared to shoot down a North Korean missile launch or test.

“We only would shoot them down … if it was threatening, that is if it were coming toward our territory or the territory of our friends and allies,” Carter said during an appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press” program.

The United States said on Jan. 5 that North Korea had demonstrated a “qualitative” improvement in its nuclear and missile capabilities after an unprecedented level of tests last year.

North Korea has been testing rocket engines and heat-shields for an ICBM while developing the technology to guide a missile after re-entry into the atmosphere following a liftoff, experts have said.

While Pyongyang is close to a test, it is likely to take some years to perfect the weapon, according to the experts.

Once fully developed, a North Korean ICBM could threaten the continental United States, which is around 9,000 km (5,500 miles) from the North. ICBMs have a minimum range of about 5,500 km (3,400 miles), but some are designed to travel 10,000 km (6,200 miles) or farther.

On Monday, South Korean defence ministry spokesman Moon Sang-gyun called North Korea’s statement a “provocative announcement” and told a regular news briefing that Pyongyang would face stronger sanctions if it were to launch an ICBM. Unification Ministry spokesman Jeong Joon-hee said there were no signs of any launch preparations.

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump responded to Kim’s comments on an ICBM test by declaring in a tweet last week: “It won’t happen!”

Asked for comment on Sunday, the White House referred to Jan. 3 comments by White House press secretary Josh Earnest in which he said the U.S. military believed it could protect against the threat emanating from North Korea.

In that briefing, Earnest also touted the defensive measures the United States had taken to guard against the threat, such as anti-ballistic missile facilities that had been installed around the Pacific region and diplomatic pressure to discourage North Korea from pursuing its nuclear program.

A U.S. State Department spokesman said last week that the United States did not believe that North Korea was capable of mounting a nuclear warhead on a ballistic missile.

North Korea has been under U.N. sanctions since 2006 over its nuclear and ballistic missile tests. The sanctions were tightened last month after Pyongyang conducted its fifth and largest nuclear test on Sept. 9.

“The U.S. is wholly to blame for pushing the DPRK to have developed ICBM as it has desperately resorted to anachronistic policy hostile toward the DPRK for decades to encroach upon its sovereignty and vital rights,” KCNA quoted the spokesman as saying.

“Anyone who wants to deal with the DPRK would be well advised to secure a new way of thinking after having clear understanding of it,” the spokesman said, according to KCNA.

Here is an interactive guide to North Korea’s nuclear and ballistic missile programmes produced by the Reuters graphics team.(http://tmsnrt.rs/2inl1WO)

(Reporting by Jack Kim and Ju-min Park; Additional reporting by Julia Harte in Washington; Editing by Angus MacSwan and Peter Cooney)

South Korea minister says China indirectly retaliating against THAAD

THAAD

SEJONG, South Korea (Reuters) – China is suspected to be taking indirect action against South Korea’s decision last year to deploy a U.S. anti-missile system, South Korea’s finance minister said.

China worries that the U.S. Terminal High Altitude Area Defence (THAAD) system’s powerful radar can penetrate its territory and it has objected to the deployment.

South Korea and the United States say the missile system is aimed solely at countering any threat from North Korea. It is due to be deployed this year.

“China is officially denying it, but we feel their actions are linked and that there have been indirect responses taken,” Finance Minister Yoo Il-ho told a news conference on Thursday at the ministry’s headquarters in Sejong City, south of Seoul.

“It’s hard to ask them what they’re up to when they have been denying it officially.”

Yoo did not elaborate on what he meant by “indirect action” but China recently rejected applications by South Korean carriers to add charter flights between the two countries.

Yoo said on Sunday the government was looking into whether China’s decision to deny the airlines’ applications, which came ahead of a traditional surge in Lunar New Year travel, was related to the deployment of the anti-missile system.

Chinese authorities have not responded to requests for comment on the rejection of the flight applications.

Yoo also said South Korea planned to make efforts to reduce its trade surplus with the United States in response to an assertion by President-elect Donald Trump that the United States had been hurt by what he considers an unfair trade agreement with South Korea.

Another finance ministry official told Reuters separately the government could look into importing more U.S. raw materials and machinery parts as part of the effort to reduce the surplus.

(Reporting by Shin-hyung Lee; Writing by Christine Kim; Editing by Robert Birsel)

Nuclear, missile tests show ‘qualitative’ improvement in North Korea capabilities: U.S.

North Korea leader Kim Jong Un watching missile test

By David Brunnstrom and Lesley Wroughton

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The United States said on Thursday North Korea had demonstrated a “qualitative” improvement in its nuclear and missile capabilities after an unprecedented level of tests last year, showing the needed to sustain pressure on Pyongyang to bring it back to disarmament negotiations.

U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken told a joint news conference after a meeting with his Japanese and South Korean counterparts that North Korea had conducted 24 missile tests in the past year, as well as two nuclear tests, and learned from each one.

“Even a so-called failure is progress because … they apply what they have learned to their technology and to the next test. And in our assessment, we have a qualitative improvement in their capabilities in the past year as a result of this unprecedented level of activity,” he said.

“With every passing day the threat does get more acute,” Blinken said, and referred to comments by North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong Un, on Sunday that his country was close to test-launching an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) of a kind that could someday hit the United States.

Blinken said it was vital for the United States, Japan, South Korea and other countries to boost cooperation to defend against the threat.

“At the same time, it’s absolutely vitally important that we exercise sustained, comprehensive pressure on North Korea to get it to stop these programs, to come back to the negotiating table, and to engage in good faith on denuclearization,” Blinken said, referring to international sanctions.

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump responded on Monday to Kim’s comments on an ICBM test by declaring in a tweet that “It won’t happen!”

Experts say preventing such a test is far easier said than done, and Trump gave no indication what new steps he might take to roll back North Korea’s weapons programs after he takes office on Jan. 20, something successive U.S. administrations, both Democratic and Republican, have failed to do.

Former U.S. officials and other experts say the United States essentially had two options when it came to trying to curb North Korea’s fast-expanding nuclear and missile programs – negotiate or take military action.

Neither path offers certain success and the military option is fraught with huge dangers, especially for Japan and South Korea, given their close proximity to North Korea.

Japanese Vice Foreign Minister Shinsuke Sugiyama said Tokyo was watching closely to see what kind of Asia policy Trump would follow, but did not expect major changes.

“Will it be exactly the same as we have it now? I doubt it. But basically, I don’t see the direction as changing in a significant way,” he told the news conference, adding that the U.S. security treaties with Tokyo and Seoul were an important pillar of U.S. policy.

Blinken said an effective sanctions campaign required “determination” and “patience.” “I believe that as long as we sustain it and build on it, it will have an effect,” he said.

In another tweet on Monday, Trump said North Korea’s neighbor and only ally, China, was not helping to contain Pyongyang – despite Beijing’s support for successive rounds of U.N. sanctions.

Blinken said Washington had seen positive signs from China in recent weeks in implementing new restrictions on coal imports from North Korea, but added: “That needs to be sustained … to be carried forward.”

(Reporting by David Brunnstrom and Lesely Wroughton; Editing by James Dalgleish and Lisa Shumaker)

Pentagon says it can protect U.S., allies from North Korean missile threats

U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter addresses a news conference at the Pentagon in Washington,

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Defense Department, reacting to North Korea’s statement that it plans to test an intercontinental ballistic missile, said on Tuesday it was confident in its ability to protect U.S. allies and the U.S. homeland from threats from Pyongyang.

“We have a ballistic missile defense … umbrella that we’re confident in for the region and to protect the United States homeland,” Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook told a news briefing two days after North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said his country was close to testing an ICBM.

(Reporting by Idrees Ali; Writing by David Alexander)