All Things North Korea Thread

[China]

What we know about Travis King, the U.S. soldier who crossed into North Korea

 

A U.S. soldier who crossed into North Korea on Tuesday did so "willfully and without authorization," according to U.S. and international officials. He's now believed to be in custody of North Korean armed forces.

 

The man, whom a U.S. Army spokesperson identified as Travis King, was a private second class who'd been released recently from a detention center in South Korea.

 

He was scheduled to be flown home to the U.S. when he somehow returned to South Korea, joined a tour group to the Demilitarized Zone and ran across the heavily fortified border into North Korea.

 

Here's an overview of what we know.

 

Officials say Pvt. 2nd Class King has been a cavalry scout with the U.S. Army since January 2021.

 

The 23-year-old had been stationed in South Korea, but had recently served two months in a prison there on charges of assault, the Associated Press reported.

 

Several South Korean media outlets report that King had punched a South Korean national in a club last September. He had also been fined 5 million won ($3,942) for causing public damage and being uncooperative with police during his arrest.

 

According to an account from the Chosun Ilbo newspaper, citing legal sources, King yelled obscenities at South Korean police as he kicked the doors and interior of a police vehicle.

 

CBS News reports that King was released to U.S. officials at the military hub in the country about a week ago.

 

Before bolting into North Korea, King was being escorted to an airport outside of Seoul where he was expected to board a plane bound for Fort Bliss, Texas, to face military disciplinary action.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

North Korea vows to 'annihilate' U.S., says country will be terminated this century

 

North Korea's Foreign Ministry this week vowed that the country would "annihilate" the United States, adding that the U.S. would be terminated this century.

 

"Should the U.S. choose to offend our Republic, we will annihilate them by using all our military power that we have gathered so far," the North Korean diplomats said in a statement Thursday, the 70th anniversary of the Korean War armistice.

 

"The Korean War in the last century marked the beginning of the downfall of the U.S. Now, the 21st century would see the irrevocable termination of the U.S. The rulers of the U.S. are well advised to forget, on no account, the lessons of history."

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

North Korea unveils first tactical, nuclear-armed submarine

 

North Korea has launched its first operational "tactical nuclear attack submarine" and assigned it to the fleet that patrols the waters between the Korean peninsula and Japan, state media said on Friday.

 

Submarine No. 841 - named Hero Kim Kun Ok after a North Korean historical figure - will be one of the main "underwater offensive means of the naval force" of North Korea, leader Kim Jong Un said at the launch ceremony on Wednesday.

 

Analysts said the vessel appears to be a modified Soviet-era Romeo-class submarine, which North Korea acquired from China in the 1970s and began producing domestically. Its design, with 10 launch tube hatches, showed it was most likely armed with ballistic missiles and cruise missiles, analysts said.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

 

[ixcuincle]

American soldier who crossed into North Korea is back in U.S. custody https://www.cbsnews.com/news/north-korea-travis-king-us-soldier-expel-man-who-crossed-demilitarized-zone/

 

 

"The soldier had been scheduled to return to the U.S. after serving time at a South Korea detention facility for assaulting two people and kicking a police car while in the country. After parting ways from his U.S. military escort at the airport, King skipped his flight and joined the civilian tour of the border town, where he ran across into North Korea."

[China]

North Korea halts nuclear reactor, likely to extract bomb fuel, Donga Ilbo reports

 

North Korea has halted the nuclear reactor at its main atomic complex, probably to extract plutonium that could be used for weapons by reprocessing spent fuel rods, a South Korean news report said on Thursday, citing a government source.

 

The operation of the 5 megawatt nuclear reactor at the Yongbyon nuclear complex has been suspended since late September, according to intelligence assessment by U.S. and South Korean authorities, the report said.

 

"South Korea and the U.S. believe this could be a sign of reprocessing work being done to obtain weapons-grade plutonium," the Donga Ilbo newspaper quoted a government source as saying.

 

Click on the link for the full article

Edited October 5, 2023 by China

[China]

China's North Korean eateries refuse South Korean diners

 

South Koreans hoping to taste authentic North Korean cuisine abroad may be out of luck, with Pyongyang-run restaurants across northern China saying they will refuse to serve their capitalist compatriots.

 

Dotted throughout China and Southeast Asia, North Korean-run restaurants dish up culinary staples like cold noodles and kimchi pancakes to customers typically more interested in the novelty factor than the cuisine.

 

Staffed by waitresses hand-picked from the country's elite for loyalty -- and who often perform musical numbers for customers -- they are a major source of funds for Pyongyang.

 

And for South Koreans they have long offered a quirky opportunity to break bread with their longtime foe while abroad -- and enjoy some schmaltzy song and dance on the side.

 

But half a dozen branches in China, from restaurants in the capital Beijing to cities in the borderland, told AFP they would not serve South Koreans.

 

"This rule came into effect this year," said one Chinese staff member at Ryugyong restaurant in Dandong -- a stone's throw from the diplomatically isolated nation.

 

"We have to comply," said the staff member, who did not give their name.

 

"There is a regulation from the North Korean embassy: None of the North Korean restaurants in Dandong are permitted to serve South Koreans."

 

Click on the link for the full article

[Bang]

Authentic cuisine.

Big plate of nothing but a picture of Dear Leader to fawn over.
and if you gaze at it for an appropriate time, an authentic North Korean waitress will come and give you a single authentic canned wax bean for dessert.

You are expected to thank Dear Leader, or she and her entire family will be killed.

Yummy.

 

~Bang

[China]

North Korea closes multiple embassies around the world

 

North Korea is poised to close as many as a dozen embassies including in Spain, Hong Kong and multiple countries in Africa, according to media reports and analysts, in a move that could see nearly 25 percent of Pyongyang’s missions close worldwide.

 

North Korea’s recent closing of its diplomatic missions is a sign that the reclusive country is struggling to make money overseas because of international sanctions, South Korea’s unification ministry said on Tuesday.

 

On Monday, North Korean state media outlet KCNA said the country’s ambassadors paid “farewell” visits to Angolan and Ugandan leaders last week, and local media in both African countries reported the shutdown of the North’s embassies there.

 

Both Angola and Uganda have forged friendly ties with North Korea since the 1970s, maintaining military cooperation and providing rare sources of foreign currency such as statue-building projects.

 

The embassy closings set the stage for what could be “one of the country’s biggest foreign policy shakeups in decades,” with implications for diplomatic engagement and humanitarian work in the isolated country, as well as the ability to generate illicit revenue, wrote Chad O’Carroll, founder of the North Korea-focused website NK Pro.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

Kim Jong Un's newest problem: Growing hair loss among North Koreans and lack of effective treatment

 

Kim Jong Un's North Korea has suffered a strange uptick in the number of people suffering from thinning hair or outright going bald, South Korean experts have reported.

 

The experts spoke with Radio Free Asia (RFA), discussing how the phenomenon appears to derive from a number of sources, including infections that caused hair loss as an after-effect and the use of soap and laundry detergent that contain "harsh" chemical ingredients. 

 

Choi Jeong Hoon, a doctor from North Korea who fled south and now serves as a senior researcher at the Public Policy Research Institute at Korea University in Seoul, explained that it is "not easy" for North Koreans to find "mild" chemical products.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

North Korea says its satellite photographed White House, Pentagon

 

North Korea claimed Tuesday its recently launched reconnaissance satellite had snapped photos of the White House, Pentagon, and key US military installations across the world — though questions remain about the technology’s capabilities.

 

Dictator Kim Jong Un has personally reviewed the images, which were captured late Monday, Pyongyang’s Korea Central News Agency propaganda service claimed.

 

“[Kim] also received in detail satellite photos of the Norfolk Naval Station, the Newport News Dockyard, and an airfield of Virginia,” KCNA reported.

 

Click on the link for the full article

 

So North Korea now has Google Earth?

 

The White House

 

The Pentagon

 

Norfol Naval Station

[ixcuincle]

Video Shows Kim Jong Un Crying Over North Korea's Lack of Babies
5 days ago — North Korea's Kim Jong Un was caught in an apparent moment of weakness this week after state media aired footage showing the supreme leader

 

https://www.newsweek.com/north-korea-kim-jong-un-cries-while-urging-mothers-have-more-children-1849871

[Bang]

Maybe turn off the monitoring devices in people's bedrooms?

 

~Bang

[justice98]

Somebody's gonna die for showing supreme leader cutting onions like that.

[CousinsCowgirl84]

6 minutes ago, justice98 said:

Somebody's gonna die for showing supreme leader cutting onions like that.

Please, those are crocodile tears…

[Destino]

Nothing primes the engines of creation like video of a crying man. I’m sure the walls were shaking in NK that night, 

[Renegade7]

4 hours ago, ixcuincle said:

Video Shows Kim Jong Un Crying Over North Korea's Lack of Babies
5 days ago — North Korea's Kim Jong Un was caught in an apparent moment of weakness this week after state media aired footage showing the supreme leader

 

https://www.newsweek.com/north-korea-kim-jong-un-cries-while-urging-mothers-have-more-children-1849871

 

We could laugh this off or ask some questions we aren't ready to answer yet.

 

In the context of countries with shrinking populations which one will reach a tipping point of potential dysfunction first before outright failure unless something drastic changes?

 

My money in on North Korea...even immigration won't be simple for them, they locked down as any state and locked between two countries who frankly have more jobs but also declining populations.

 

Word is this guy didn't want to be jus like his Dad, but when realizing he had to as part of keeping power asked his sister to do the dirty work behind the scenes for him.

 

I don't advise we laugh this, they could desperate first

Edited December 11, 2023 by Renegade7

[China]

Kim Jong Un bans Christmas but US activists send Bibles and food to North Korean shores

 

The Grinch may have stolen Christmas, but Kim Jong Un has outright banned it.

 

The North Korean dictator’s brutal restrictions on religion, however, haven’t stopped some activists from trying to spread the holiday spirit — by tossing presents into the Yellow Sea hoping they will wash up on the hermit kingdom’s shores.

 

Activists with the human rights group North Korea Freedom Coalition recently threw bottles filled with rice, a $1 US bill and a flash drive with Bible verses each, hoping to bring Christmas cheer to Pyongyang’s impoverished citizens.

 

“We should be doing everything we can to get information into North Korea by land, by sea, and by air,” Suzanne Scholte, who helms the organization told Fox News.

 

Click on the link for the ful article

[China]

Kim Jong Un tells army to ‘annihilate’ South Korea, US if provoked

 

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has ordered his military to “thoroughly annihilate” South Korea and the United States if they initiate a military confrontation in another round of bellicose rhetoric targeting Seoul and Washington.

 

The two allies ramped up military and political cooperation in 2023 as North Korea conducted a record number of weapons tests, including of a new solid-fuelled intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), and put its first spy satellite into orbit.

 

Click on the link for the full article 

[Renegade7]

That dude seems lost on what to donor even why he's doing it.

 

Can we jus write him a check and give him diplomatic immunity to get him out of there and start unification?

 

If he really cares about his people much as he claims he does, this may be the only way.

[Barry.Randolphe]

Send in Dennis Rodman....we can let him retire to the Alps in Switzerland where he can play basketball with Rodman

[China]

North Korea halts radio broadcasts, curbs exchanges with South -Yonhap

 

North Korea stopped operating a radio station used to send coded messages to its agents in South Korea, the Yonhap news agency said on Saturday, the latest sign the isolated country is shaking up the way it handles relations with Seoul.

 

North Korea has been stepping up pressure on Seoul in recent weeks, declaring it the "principal enemy", saying the North will never reunite with the South and vowing to enhance its ability to deliver a nuclear strike on the U.S. and America's allies in the Pacific.

 

Radio Pyongyang, known as a numbers station, in the past broadcast mysterious coded numbers presumed to be targeted at Pyongyang's spies operating in South Korea. Its website was also down on Saturday.

 

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, addressing a year-end meeting of his ruling party, ordered a "decisive policy change" in relations with the South, instructing the military to be prepared to pacify and occupy the South in the event of a crisis.

 

Early on Saturday, North Korea announced plans to dissolve organisations in charge of civilian exchanges with South Korea. State media KCNA reported a decision "to readjust all relevant organizations... including the North Side Committee for Implementing June 15 Joint Declaration, the North Headquarters of the Pan-national Alliance for Korea's Reunification".

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

North Korea launches a suspected intermediate-range ballistic missile that can reach distant US bases

 

North Korea fired a suspected intermediate-range ballistic missile into the sea on Sunday, South Korea’s military said, two months after the North claimed to have tested engines for a new harder-to-detect missile capable of striking distant U.S. targets in the region.

 

The launch was the North’s first this year. Experts say North Korea could ramp up its provocative missile tests as a way to influence the results of South Korea’s parliamentary elections in April and the U.S. presidential election in November.

 

South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement that it detected the launch of a ballistic missile of an intermediate-range class from the North’s capital region on Sunday afternoon. It said the missile flew about 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) before landing in the waters between the Korean Peninsula and Japan.

 

The Joint Chiefs of Staff called the launch a provocation that poses a serious threat to peace on the Korean Peninsula. It said South Korea’s military will maintain its readiness to overwhelmingly respond to any provocations by North Korea.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

North Korea says it tested underwater nuclear attack drone in response to rivals' naval drills

 

North Korea said Friday it had tested a purported underwater nuclear attack drone in response to a combined naval exercise between South Korea and the United States and Japan this week, as it continues to blame its rivals for raising tensions in the region.

The alleged drone test came days after North Korean leader Kim Jong-un declared he would scrap his country's long-standing goal of a peaceful unification with South Korea and that his country would rewrite its constitution to define South Korea as its most hostile foreign adversary.

 

Tensions on the Korean Peninsula are at their highest point in years with Kim accelerating weapons demonstrations and threatening nuclear conflict and the U.S. and its Asian allies responding by strengthening their combined military exercises.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

Bleak images show snapshots of daily life in the closed world of North Korea

 

An AFP photographer captured rare images showing daily life in North Korea.

 

To get the photos, Pedro Pardo accessed a remote part of North Korea's border with China in the latter's Jilin province.

 

The images Pardo took between February 26 and March 1 offer a bleak yet fascinating look at life in a country shrouded in secrecy.

 

 

 

Click on the link for more