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Quotes of the Day:
"It is important, likewise, that the habits of thinking in a free Country should inspire caution in those entrusted with its administration, to confine themselves within their respective Constitutional spheres; avoiding in the exercise of the Powers of one department to encroach upon another. The spirit of encroachment tends to consolidate the powers of all the departments in one, and thus to create whatever the form of government, a real despotism. A just estimate of that love of power, and proneness to abuse it, which predominates in the human heart is sufficient to satisfy us of the truth of this position."
– George Washington
“Weak men cannot handle power. It will either crush them, or they will use it to crush others”
– Jocelyn Murray, The English Pirate
“for PEOPLE to rule themselves in a REPUBLIC, they must have virtue; for a TYRANT to rule in a TYRANNY, he must use FEAR.”
– William J Federer, Change to Chains-The 6,000 Year Quest for Control -Volume I-Rise of the Republic
1. Garbage, Balloons, and Korean Unification Values
2. Putin will send Russian children to North Korean 'summer camps'
3. North Korea switches TV transmission to Russia satellite from Chinese
4. Alliance-Making: The Meaning Of Putin’s Visit To North Korea – Analysis
5. The World Is Realigning: An emerging Axis of Resistance confronts the Liberal Alliance.
6. This Song Is Catchy and Going Viral. It’s Also North Korean Propaganda.
7. North Korea says it tested ballistic missile capable of carrying super-large warhead
8. Lawsuit accuses Iran, Syria and North Korea of providing support for Hamas' Oct. 7 attack on Israel
9. ＜Investigation＞Current living conditions of N. Koreans (2) How is public education corrupting
10. Body cams prevent North Korean customs agents from living off bribes
11. S. Korean military says N. Korea's claim of successful missile test-firing likely a 'lie'
12. Report on Enlarged Meeting of Tenth Plenary Meeting of Eighth Central Committee of WPK
13. Dossier offers glimpse into inter-Korean talks in 1981-87 following N. Korea's bombing attack in Burma
14. What’s Behind Vladimir Putin’s and Kim Jong-un’s Recent Deal?
15. A New Narrative for the Korean Peninsula: Unifying Korea: A New Strategy for Dealing with Kim Jong Un
1. Garbage, Balloons, and Korean Unification Values
Excellent point. Kim Jong Un actually fears the forthcoming ROK unification plan. Kim is reacting because of weakness (and I assess because of internal stress)
Excerpts:
But at the end of the day, the motivations behind the balloon campaigns from both sides offer a stark contrast. The balloons from South Korea show aspirations for a better future, while the balloons from North Korea reflect the reality and difficulties of life in a closed state.
...
Instead, the end to unification rhetoric and the launching of garbage-filled balloons is a preemptive action designed to undercut South Korea’s new forthcoming unification policy. Under Kim Yong-ho, the new unification minister, South Korea appears to be pursuing a unification discourse not framed in sovereign terms but in terms of the values of freedom and human rights. That is, the core message is not about victory over the other side (the traditional conservative view of unification) or in terms of interstate reconciliation (the traditional liberal view). The emerging unification policy appears to be about framing Korean unification in terms of universal values. As Unification Minister Kim foreshadowed, “[the] government is preparing a new discourse on unification that embodies the values of freedom and human rights and can garner support from the international community.” He explained further that the new discourse is in line with President Yoon’s vision of expanding the “universal values of freedom and human rights.”
The new unification vision does not seek to compete with the North Korean state; rather it appeals to the North Korean people, who should be entitled to this freedom and would secure these freedoms as part of unification. It appears to equate unification not with North Korea being absorbed by South Korea but with universal freedoms: freedom from fear, freedom from want, freedom from hunger, and the freedom to be educated. This is an intense and powerful message to the people of North Korea, which, if heard, would be more threatening than any U.S.-ROK military exercise or nuclear strategic bombers skirting the coastline.
Kim Jong-un wants to preempt this by cutting off all ties with South Korea and removing the notion of unification from the minds of the North Korean people. The sending of trash, moreover, is in itself an explicit acknowledgment of the bankruptcy of their ideology and ideas in South Korea. They know that sending leaflets about Kimilsungism is laughable in South Korea. This would not have been the case during the early Cold War days when the North Korean economy was doing better than South Korea and there was strong labor and radical student support for Marxist-Leninist ideals. Now, the alternative is to send trash.
However, while these balloons reflect North Korean weakness and insecurity, they should not be taken lightly. The trash-filled balloons and the damage they do is a form of soft terrorism. Just imagine if they put unidentifiable white powder in the balloons instead; it would create panic in South Korea among the public and impact the foreign capital in the country’s economy. Also, South Korean reciprocation with restarting loudspeaker broadcasts could escalate the situation, as Kim Yo-jong has threatened in the past to destroy speakers with military fire. This would amount to dangerous escalation alongside the recent GPS signal jamming, encroachments into the DMZ, and missile demonstrations.
Garbage, Balloons, and Korean Unification Values
https://www.csis.org/analysis/garbage-balloons-and-korean-unification-values
Photo: South Korean Ministry of National Defense/Korea Open Government License Type 1
Critical Questions by Andy Lim and Victor Cha
Published July 1, 2024
Since late May, North Korea has launched thousands of balloons into South Korea filled with trash, marking the return of a long-used tactic of psychological warfare between the two Koreas. Rather than a sign of impending conflict, as some posit, the campaign is a manifestation of Kim Jong-un’s new decoupling policy and a preemption of the new South Korean unification policy focused on the values of freedom and human rights.
Q1: What is the extent of North Korea’s campaign involving garbage-filled balloons?
A1: Between May 28 to June 26, North Korea sent seven waves of balloons full of trash into South Korea. Over the course of a month, South Korean citizens were peppered with balloons containing animal and human feces, batteries, cigarette butts, clothes, dark soil, plastic bottles, toilet paper, wastepaper, and vinyl falling from the sky. Some balloons had Kim family propaganda—cut into pieces—a serious crime punishable by death within North Korea. A few had denim jeans, which is notoriously designated as “anti-socialist” by North Korean authorities. One even had the word “excrement” explicitly written on it.
These balloons landed indiscriminately all over South Korean territory, hitting cars, farms, neighborhoods, restaurants, and schools. A trash-filled balloon that fell at Terminal 2 of Incheon International Airport caused a three-hour suspension of flights—the second flight suspension in June related to the balloons. Between 2,000 and 5,000 of these refuse-filled balloons have flown over the 38th parallel, with at least 1,300 of them landing successfully in South Korea. As the map shows, these balloons have been reported in 778 locations (as confirmed by South Korean authorities) and found in all but two South Korean provinces.
Remote Visualization
According to North Korea, the balloon campaign is “strictly a responsive act” to the South Korean information balloon campaign and was meant to show South Koreans “how dirty it feels” and how much trouble North Korea had to go through to “clean up spread-out rubbish.” Kim Jong-un’s sister, Kim Yo-jong, was more sarcastic, calling the balloons “gifts of sincerity” to South Koreans, who “cry for freedom of expression.”
Q2: How has South Korea reacted?
A2: South Korean authorities were quick to respond to the balloon landings. Cautious of the content inside the balloons, the South Korean military deployed explosives ordnance units and chemical and biological warfare response teams to inspect and collect the balloons. An alert was sent to warn citizens not to touch them, for fear of hazardous materials (none has been found yet). The government called the acts “base and dangerous,” and the Presidential Office eventually warned of “unendurable” countermeasures, which temporarily led to North Korea suspending its balloon campaign. The pause did not last long, as Pyongyang quickly resumed its balloon offensive less than a week later.
While there has been no report of injuries, there have been some cases of vehicle damage (in at least three instances), some property damage (an estimated $18,824 so far), and plenty of nuisance and trash—at least 15 tons—for South Koreans to clean up. The contents of these balloons have been a source of intelligence for the South Korean authorities, which have found numerous parasites—including roundworms, whipworms, and threadworms—within the human feces and soil in the balloons. The findings also suggest that the human feces were likely used as fertilizer in North Korea, alluding to unsanitary living conditions and poor health standards.
Q3: Are these balloon campaigns novel?
A3: Sending balloons across the border is not a new practice. During the Korean War, the U.S. military sent over 4 billion leaflets via balloons into North Korea in an effort to “bury the enemy in paper,” reciprocated by 300 million North Korean leaflets. Throughout the Cold War, both North and South Korea stuffed propaganda leaflets in balloons as part of cross-border psychological warfare campaigns. A June 2004 inter-Korea agreement temporarily ended this practice. But after landmines injured South Korean soldiers patrolling along the DMZ in 2015, the Park Geun-hye government restarted loudspeaker broadcasts in retaliation, prompting North Korea to once again send balloons. Those balloons typically had explosion timers, causing them to burst mid-air. Stuffed inside were propaganda leaflets critical of the South Korean government, with messages such as “Park Geun-hye and her clan are dogs that have gone crazy” or “Stop with any further hostilities or stupid actions that can threaten your security!” This practice persisted between 2016 and 2018, until the next period of inter-Korean reconciliation in April 2018.
But in the past 15 years, balloon launches have become synonymous with a handful of South Korean activist groups, often North Korean defectors, who send information balloons filled with bibles, money, leaflets, short-wave radios, and USBs and SD cards with K-pop and K-dramas—as well as essential supplies such as food and medicine—to North Korea. According to the South Korean Ministry of Unification, activists sent at least 20 million leaflets between 2008 to 2020. And so far in 2024, one South Korean activist group has already sent over 375 balloons, with another group sending 3D-printed “smart balloons” outfitted with GPS-tracking, a leaflet dispenser, and small speakers.
But at the end of the day, the motivations behind the balloon campaigns from both sides offer a stark contrast. The balloons from South Korea show aspirations for a better future, while the balloons from North Korea reflect the reality and difficulties of life in a closed state.
Q4: Why is North Korea undertaking this balloon campaign now?
A4: First, the balloons are the latest manifestation of North Korea’s new “decoupling” policy from South Korea. The Kim regime is extremely angry with both the conservative and liberal political parties in South Korea. This dates back to 2020 when North Korea blew up the inter-Korean liaison office in Kaesong during the Moon Jae-in government (the installation had been renovated by South Korea in 2018 at a cost of $8.6 million).
Fast forward to this January, Kim Jong-un announced that he will no longer seek reconciliation and reunification with South Korea, labeling the relationship as one between “belligerent” and “hostile countries.” Two weeks later, in a speech in front of the Supreme People’s Assembly, Kim asked for the constitution to be amended to refer to South Korea as a “primary foe and invariable principal enemy.” In the same speech, he called an arch dedicated to reunification built under his father, Kim Jong-Il, an “eyesore” and vowed to dismantle it. Satellite imagery a week later showed that he was true to his words. The Monument to the Three Charters for National Reunification, located on a major thruway in Pyongyang, aptly named Unification Street, was gone.
North Korea’s pique is to be expected in light of South Korea’s conservative government, but the most recent progressive government was not spared either, largely due to the failure of the 2018–19 summit diplomacy involving former U.S. president Donald Trump. At the time, advice and deal-making entreaties by the Moon Jae-in government resulted in Kim’s embarrassment in Hanoi when Trump walked out of a meeting. North Korea blamed the South Korean government at the time for the failure of the most consequential diplomatic gambit in North Korea’s history. Thus, their distaste for South Korea is not just with Yoon’s conservative policies—it is bipartisan.
Second, the balloon launches are most specifically in response to the Yoon government allowing the restart of information balloon launches by civil society groups. This was criminalized under the previous government when a 2020 law (the first of its kind) was passed that imposed fines of up to $27,000 (₩30 million) and prison sentences of up to three years for breaking the law. The same law also criminalized blasting loudspeaker broadcasts and placing billboards at the inter-Korean border, although these activities are normally a government psyop, not conducted by civilians.
But that law was nullified by South Korea’s constitutional court in September 2023, which ruled it unconstitutional in a 7–2 decision. The court deemed that the law had excessively restricted the freedom of expression after a complaint was brought to the court by North Korean defector-activists. The Yoon government further reversed the ban on June 3 when it fully suspended the Comprehensive Military Agreement (CMA), rendering the balloon ban moot. It is important to note that it was North Korea who first de facto abrogated the CMA in November 2023. Pyongyang’s action was a retaliation after South Korea had partially suspended the agreement in response to a successful North Korean satellite test.
Q5: What is the tie between balloons and unification?
A5: Some pundits have argued that Pyongyang’s actions are part and parcel to belligerent intentions with regard to South Korea. Korea-watchers Robert Carlin and Sigfried Hecker have argued that Kim Jong-un, like his grandfather, “has made a strategic decision to go to war.”
This thesis has attracted a great deal of attention but may not accurately reflect reality. First, if Kim Jong-un were really preparing for war, it is unlikely that he would be selling all of his ammunition to Russia. Second, if war were really in the cards, Kim would not be decoupling from South Korea. North Korea’s strategic deception tactics are all about misleading its adversaries. If war were imminent, North Korea would not be telegraphing future aggression—it would be duplicitously calling for inter-Korean peace initiatives, just as it did on the eve of the Korean War.
Instead, the end to unification rhetoric and the launching of garbage-filled balloons is a preemptive action designed to undercut South Korea’s new forthcoming unification policy. Under Kim Yong-ho, the new unification minister, South Korea appears to be pursuing a unification discourse not framed in sovereign terms but in terms of the values of freedom and human rights. That is, the core message is not about victory over the other side (the traditional conservative view of unification) or in terms of interstate reconciliation (the traditional liberal view). The emerging unification policy appears to be about framing Korean unification in terms of universal values. As Unification Minister Kim foreshadowed, “[the] government is preparing a new discourse on unification that embodies the values of freedom and human rights and can garner support from the international community.” He explained further that the new discourse is in line with President Yoon’s vision of expanding the “universal values of freedom and human rights.”
The new unification vision does not seek to compete with the North Korean state; rather it appeals to the North Korean people, who should be entitled to this freedom and would secure these freedoms as part of unification. It appears to equate unification not with North Korea being absorbed by South Korea but with universal freedoms: freedom from fear, freedom from want, freedom from hunger, and the freedom to be educated. This is an intense and powerful message to the people of North Korea, which, if heard, would be more threatening than any U.S.-ROK military exercise or nuclear strategic bombers skirting the coastline.
Kim Jong-un wants to preempt this by cutting off all ties with South Korea and removing the notion of unification from the minds of the North Korean people. The sending of trash, moreover, is in itself an explicit acknowledgment of the bankruptcy of their ideology and ideas in South Korea. They know that sending leaflets about Kimilsungism is laughable in South Korea. This would not have been the case during the early Cold War days when the North Korean economy was doing better than South Korea and there was strong labor and radical student support for Marxist-Leninist ideals. Now, the alternative is to send trash.
However, while these balloons reflect North Korean weakness and insecurity, they should not be taken lightly. The trash-filled balloons and the damage they do is a form of soft terrorism. Just imagine if they put unidentifiable white powder in the balloons instead; it would create panic in South Korea among the public and impact the foreign capital in the country’s economy. Also, South Korean reciprocation with restarting loudspeaker broadcasts could escalate the situation, as Kim Yo-jong has threatened in the past to destroy speakers with military fire. This would amount to dangerous escalation alongside the recent GPS signal jamming, encroachments into the DMZ, and missile demonstrations.
Andy Lim is an associate fellow with the Korea Chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, D.C. Victor Cha is senior vice president for Asia and Korea Chair at CSIS.
Critical Questions is produced by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a private, tax-exempt institution focusing on international public policy issues. Its research is nonpartisan and nonproprietary. CSIS does not take specific policy positions. Accordingly, all views, positions, and conclusions expressed in this publication should be understood to be solely those of the author(s).
© 2024 by the Center for Strategic and International Studies. All rights reserved.
2. Putin will send Russian children to North Korean 'summer camps'
So is this one of the agreements made between Putin and Kim? - Putin provides children to polish regime statues (under the guise of going to summer camp)
Putin will send Russian children to North Korean 'summer camps' where they are expected to polish statues of leaders and undergo enforced exercise as part of blossoming relations with Kim Jong Un
- The camp has been described as resembling a Disney-themed water park
- But Russian parents voiced objections over sending children to North Korea
PUBLISHED: 09:44 EDT, 1 July 2024 | UPDATED: 10:11 EDT, 1 July 2024
Daily Mail · by Miriam Kuepper · July 1, 2024
Vladimir Putin will reportedly send Russian children to a summer camp in North Korea where they are expected to polish statues of leaders and undergo enforced exercise.
The plans were announced by Grigory Gurov, the head of Putin's Movement of the First Youth organisation, despite objections by Russian parents worried about sending their children to North Korea, according to the Telegraph.
But Gurov insisted: 'Conditions there are good.'
The children will reportedly visit the Songdowon camp on the country's eastern shore, which is reportedly a mix between a Disney-themed water park and a boarding house with early wake up calls.
This is the latest indication that relations between Putin and Kim Jong Un are blossoming following the Russian leaders visit to North Korea last month.
Vladimir Putin (left, pictured with Kim Jong Un) will reportedly send Russian children to a summer camp in North Korea where they are expected to polish statues of leaders and undergo enforced exercise
Children take part in a cookery lesson at Songdowon International School Children's Camp on August 22, 2018 in Wonsan, North Korea
Schoolchildren play in the water at Songdowon International Children's Camp in Wonsan City, North Korea in this undated photo released by the Korean Central News Agency
In Songdowon, which was built by Kim's grandfather in 1960, children will have to get up at 6.30am and start their day by cleaning statues of Kim's father and grandfather, North Korea's previous dictators.
'We received special attention and were given not brooms, but special pads and were allowed to wipe the statue itself,' Artem Samsonov, a former Communist party official, wrote about his visit to the camp in 2015.
Samsonov, who was imprisoned in 2022 for abusing a child, also published photographs of Russian children polishing a statue.
Read More
Would you send your child to camp in North Korea? Totalitarian country offers summer breaks for kids from all over the world
He also revealed that children have to participate in enforced exercise, other cleaning tasks as well as state-approved lessons.
While they can also go to a disco, they will likely be fed nothing but soup, rice and potatoes every day, according to Samsonov.
Sending Russian children to North Korea for a summer camp indicates that Putin is taking yet another step closer to Kim.
Last month, North Korea pledged to send military personnel to Ukraine within a few weeks to support Putin's war-weary forces as both sides struggle to make a decisive breakthrough.
Pyongyang will take an unprecedented step in sending construction and engineering forces to occupied territories of Ukraine as early as the beginning of July to assist in rebuilding work, South Korea's TV Chosun reported, citing a government official.
The rare vow of foreign support follows president Vladimir Putin's official state visit to North Korea - the first in almost a quarter of a century - which culminated in the signing of a so-called defence pact on June 19.
The treaty binds its signatories to providing 'military and other assistance with all means in its possession without delay' should either find itself 'put in a state of war by an armed invasion'.
The lobby of the dormitory at the Songdowon International Children's Camp is painted in pastel colors, Tuesday, July 29, 2014, in Wonsan, North Korea
Kim Jong Un is pictured during a previous camp visit in Songdowon
North Korean girls in similar bathing suits stand under a shower at the Songdowon International Children's Camp, Tuesday, July 29, 2014, in Wonsan, North Korea
During his visit, Putin reportedly made the promise to send children from his Movement of the First Youth organisation to North Korea.
Created in 2022 following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Putin aims to align the children closely with the Kremlin's ideology.
The members can be seen wearing red berets as well as matching neck scarves and are often given flags to carry during state functions.
But many of the children's parents have voiced concerns about sending their children to North Korea, even just for a summer camp.
One parent joked on social media that their child's only escape would be to 'walk through the jungle to South Korea'.
Another user tried to reassure her fellow parents, saying that the camp was 'good' and offered pools and water parks after she stayed there in 2017.
She even compared it with Artek, a Russian youth camp in occupied Crimea: 'Just with a different culture and completely without the internet.'
Daily Mail · by Miriam Kuepper · July 1, 2024
3. North Korea switches TV transmission to Russia satellite from Chinese
Is this a result of Putin-Kim talks and due to some agreements made as part of their new relationship?
I was asked by a journalist, is this an indication that north Korea is moving away from China? I responded this way: I would not jump to any conclusions based on this. The Kim Family regime has a long history of playing the USSR/Russia and China off against each dating back to the Korean War. The relationships among the three are transactional and they are each going to act in their own interest and Kim will exploit both of them for his own purposes. So we should not jump to any conclusions.
North Korea switches TV transmission to Russia satellite from Chinese
https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/north-korea-switches-tv-transmission-russia-satellite-chinese-2024-07-01/
By Daewoung Kim and Ju-min Park
July 1, 20245:12 AM EDTUpdated 16 hours ago
SEOUL, July 1 (Reuters) - North Korea has switched the transmission of state TV broadcasts to a Russian satellite from a Chinese one, South Korea's unification ministry said on Monday, making the monitoring of such broadcasts a challenge for the South's government agencies and media.
Signals from North Korea's Korean Central Television were carried by a Russian satellite, Express 103, from June 29 instead of the ChinaSat 12 satellite, a South Korean satellite dish service provider told Reuters.
It declined to be named due to the sensitivity of the issue.
The satellite change follows Russian President Vladimir Putin's visit to North Korea in June, during which he met North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and signed a treaty to deepen cooperation in all areas including a mutual defence pledge.
While it remains possible to watch North Korean TV online, the quality may be delayed or of low quality.
South Korean government agencies and media monitor North Korean state media as a limited source of information from inside the reclusive state, despite its highly politicised and choreographed content.
"North Korea stopped using an existing Chinese satellite and began transmitting broadcasts through a Russian satellite, and reception of satellite broadcasts is being restricted in some areas on our side," a unification ministry official said, adding the ministry was looking to resolve the technical issue.
Authorised entities in the South need access to satellite service to watch North Korean broadcasts, and the general public is banned from accessing the North's media.
Reuters has been unable to receive North Korean TV signals since Monday morning.
While Russia and North Korea have made dramatic overtures showcasing deepening ties and vowed to resist the U.S.-led West, China has avoided any trilateral arrangement that might complicate its relations with other countries.
4. Alliance-Making: The Meaning Of Putin’s Visit To North Korea – Analysis
Excerpts:
Putin’s visit to North Korea is thus important for at least two reasons. One, it is symbolic of the fact that the international community, and more specifically US policy, to isolate and sanction rival regimes is going to be challenged and defied. Two, North Korea has an open mutual defence treaty with Russia and any military action against it is simply no longer a choice. The fundamental problem here is that the western policy of isolating and sanctioning any challenger is so blindly and even lazily followed that the number of challengers have increased. The challengers are in fact so numerous that they are now trying to create an alternate space of their own. The law of diminishing returns is at play. Developments between Pyongyang and Russia clearly indicate that this policy must be revisited and revised.
Alliance-Making: The Meaning Of Putin’s Visit To North Korea – Analysis
https://www.eurasiareview.com/01072024-alliance-making-the-meaning-of-putins-visit-to-north-korea-analysis/
July 1, 2024 0 Comments
By IPCS
By Dr. Sandip Kumar Mishra
Russian President Vladimir Putin visited North Korea after a gap of 24 years, on 19 June 2024. On his last historic visit in 2000, Russia and North Korea signed a Treaty of Friendship, Good Neighbourliness and Cooperation, which was a version of their 1961 treaty but without a military clause. This recent visit is once again historic. It took place after a long gap and the two countries also signed a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership Treaty (CSPT), which includes a commitment to mutual assistance. While Putin claimed the treaty to be ‘‘a truly breakthrough document’,’ Kim Jong-un went to extent of saying that bilateral relations have now ‘‘risen to a new high level of alliance.’’
We can expect debate about whether terms such as ‘‘assistance or aid’’ and ‘‘all possible means’’ that are mentioned in the document mean sending military personnel to defend each other or if the aid will be limited to providing arms, equipment, and technical support but no boots on the ground. Whether the two countries can be called military allies is also doubtful. However, it is nevertheless a big development not only for the Russia-North Korea relationship but also for strategic equations in the region.
This meeting and the resultant CSPT mean Russia and North Korea are going to roll out cooperation in all possible areas, whether economic, military, or other domains—despite being under sanctions imposed by the UN. In their joint statement, Putin said that bilateral trade has increased nine times in 2023, and in the first five months of 2024, it has grown by another 54 per cent. Although the volume of trade is still not substantial, the treaty indicates that the two countries are committed to increasing it, and the “illegal unilateral” Western sanctions are going to be further overlooked. This defiance has already taken place in the military domain. North Korea has provided ballistic missiles, more than 11,000 containers of munitions, and troops to Russia to support its invasion of Ukraine. In return, Russia reportedly provided technical assistance to North Korea in November 2023, to successfully launch a spy satellite. Earlier in 2024, “a large number of Russian experts” had apparently gone to North Korea to assist the launch of three more satellites. North Korea seeks energy and technical know-how in space technology from Russia, and the CSPT will definitely make this easier.
For decades, the international community has sanctioned and isolated North Korea because of its pursuit of nuclear weapons, which led to even its friendly neighbours, China and Russia, to distance themselves a little. After coming to power in late 2011, Kim Jong-un was therefore not immediately able to hold summit-level meetings with either China or Russia. A few years later, over 2018 and 2019, Kim Jong-un had the opportunity of five meetings with Chinese President Xi Jinping. This included Xi’s visit to North Korea in June 2019. The pandemic period once again contributed to a pause. Since then, the Ukraine crisis has been used by both Pyongyang and Moscow to forge a mutually beneficial partnership. This is borne out by their mutual high-level visits to each other’s countries, such as Kim Jong-un’s to Russia in September 2023. During this time, President Alexander Lukashenko of Russia also suggested a three-way dialogue between Russia, North Korea, and Belarus, which shows Pyongyang’s growing links with other like-minded countries. Putin’s recent visit to North Korea is a next step in the same direction.
Putin’s visit to North Korea is thus important for at least two reasons. One, it is symbolic of the fact that the international community, and more specifically US policy, to isolate and sanction rival regimes is going to be challenged and defied. Two, North Korea has an open mutual defence treaty with Russia and any military action against it is simply no longer a choice. The fundamental problem here is that the western policy of isolating and sanctioning any challenger is so blindly and even lazily followed that the number of challengers have increased. The challengers are in fact so numerous that they are now trying to create an alternate space of their own. The law of diminishing returns is at play. Developments between Pyongyang and Russia clearly indicate that this policy must be revisited and revised.
Dr. Sandip Kumar Mishra is Professor, Centre for East Asian Studies, SIS, JNU, & Distinguished Fellow, IPCS.
5. The World Is Realigning: An emerging Axis of Resistance confronts the Liberal Alliance.
A long read but worth the time.
First I would ask please stop using the word "resistance" to describe the axis of aggressors/dictorators/authoritarians/malign actors, etc. Yes they meet the definition of resistance in that they are resisting the free world. But we should not enhance their legitimacy by letting them use resistance. We should husband the use of the word to describe those who resist tyranny. We want the people of China, Russia, Ina, and north Korea to resist their tyrannical governments.
This is actually a useful history of the national security challenges of the 21st Century.
And this is a useful description of where we are right now:
In the two current conflicts, Ukraine and Israel act not only on their own behalf but also as surrogates for the broader alliance. Neither Ukraine nor Israel can sustain its position without outside support. That support, therefore, is a primary target of the Axis, which coordinates across both fronts. Russia has ditched its previously warm relationship with Israel to embrace Iran, which supplies the Kremlin with weaponry and equipment. North Korea likewise supplies the Russian war effort, and it recently entered into a security pact with Russia; Hamas praises North Korea as “part of [our] alliance.” China, while keeping some distance from the Ukraine conflict militarily, has declared “unlimited partnership” with Russia, helps Russia defeat economic sanctions, and provides industrial and technological support for Russia’s war effort. Meanwhile, Russia props up the pro-Iran regime in Syria, and militias aligned with Iran use missiles and drones to strike Israel from Gaza and Lebanon, U.S. forces from Iraq and Syria, and Saudi Arabia from Yemen. Even the weakest and poorest of the Axis forces, the Houthi rebels in Yemen, disrupt regional shipping virtually at will.
The Axis’s principals make no secret of their designs. “We are fighting in Ukraine not against Ukrainians but against the unipolar world,” the Russian ideologue Alexander Dugin said at a conference in Moscow in February. “And our inevitable victory will be not only ours but a victory for all humanity … This is not a return to the old bipolar model but the beginning of a completely new world architecture.” According to the Middle East Media Research Institute, Hossein Salami, the commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, said in a speech in November, “The enemies of the Islamic regime were, and are, the enemies of all humanity, and today the world is rising up against them.” America, he predicted, will “lose [in] the political arena” and “will also fail economically … Be certain that the morning of victory is nigh.”
Rather than latticework I wish we would describe our security arrangements as a silk web which is much stronger than a lattice.
The latticework of cooperation, as Jake Sullivan termed it, is not notional; the world got a vivid preview in April of what it looks like. Iran and its Yemeni proxies launched more than 300 missiles and drones at Israel. All but a handful were shot down, and the remainder caused only minor damage. As significant as the interceptions was the coalition that conducted them, which included U.S., British, and French forces in the region. “Perhaps more striking,” Lawrence Haas wrote, “leading Arab nations also came to Israel’s assistance. Saudi Arabia—which, we must remember, has not yet normalized relations with the Jewish state—and the United Arab Emirates were among several Gulf states that relayed intelligence about Iran’s planned attack, while Jordan’s military reportedly shot down dozens of Iranian drones in its airspace that were headed toward Israel.” In the end, what the strike demonstrated was not Iran’s ability to attack but the Liberal Alliance’s ability to defend.
The World Is Realigning
An emerging Axis of Resistance confronts the Liberal Alliance.
The Atlantic · by Jonathan Rauch · July 1, 2024
Like a lightning strike illuminating a dim landscape, the twin invasions of Israel and Ukraine have brought a sudden recognition: What appeared to be, until now, disparate and disorganized challenges to the United States and its allies is actually something broader, more integrated, more aggressive, and more dangerous. Over the past several years, the world has hardened into two competing blocs. One is an alliance of liberal-minded, Western-oriented countries that includes NATO as well as U.S. allies in Asia and Oceania, with the general if inconsistent cooperation of some non-liberal countries such as Saudi Arabia and Vietnam: a Liberal Alliance, for short. The other bloc is led by the authoritarian dyad of Russia and Iran, but it extends to anti-American states such as North Korea, militias such as Hezbollah, terrorist organizations such as Hamas and Palestine Islamic Jihad, and paramilitaries such as the Wagner Group: an Axis of Resistance, as some of its members have accurately dubbed it.
With the adoption of the Abraham Accords normalizing Israel’s relationship with several Arab countries, and with the accession of Sweden and Finland into NATO, the Liberal Alliance has forged tighter ties. In response, the Axis of Resistance has adopted a more offensive posture. “This is an entente that is really coming together in a way that should alarm us quite a lot,” the American Enterprise Institute’s Frederick Kagan said recently in an interview with the journalist Bill Kristol. “These countries disagree about a lot of things; they don’t share a common ideology. But they do share a common enemy: us. And the thing that they agree on is that we are a major obstacle to their objectives and their plans, and therefore that it’s in each of their interest to help the others take us down.”
The Axis of Resistance does not have a unifying ideology, but it does have the shared goal of diminishing U.S. influence, especially in the Middle East and Eurasia, and rolling back liberal democracy. Instead of a NATO-like formal structure, it relies on loose coordination and opportunistic cooperation among its member states and its network of militias, proxies, and syndicates. Militarily, it cannot match the U.S. and NATO in a direct confrontation, so it instead seeks to exhaust and demoralize the U.S. and its allies by harrying them relentlessly, much as hyenas harry and exhaust a lion.
The Axis has thus developed into an acephalous networked actor, its member states operating semi-independently yet interdependently, taking cues from one another and sharing resources and dividing duties, jumping in and out of action as opportunities arise and circumstances dictate. One country will help another bust sanctions while receiving military equipment from a third. As The Atlantic’s Anne Applebaum has reported, Russia, Iran, and China have also joined forces on the propaganda front, launching waves of disinformation toward the West. Although the Axis normally takes care to keep its hostilities beneath the threshold that would trigger state-to-state military conflict, it can and will resort to direct military confrontation if it sees need or advantage.
In the two current conflicts, Ukraine and Israel act not only on their own behalf but also as surrogates for the broader alliance. Neither Ukraine nor Israel can sustain its position without outside support. That support, therefore, is a primary target of the Axis, which coordinates across both fronts. Russia has ditched its previously warm relationship with Israel to embrace Iran, which supplies the Kremlin with weaponry and equipment. North Korea likewise supplies the Russian war effort, and it recently entered into a security pact with Russia; Hamas praises North Korea as “part of [our] alliance.” China, while keeping some distance from the Ukraine conflict militarily, has declared “unlimited partnership” with Russia, helps Russia defeat economic sanctions, and provides industrial and technological support for Russia’s war effort. Meanwhile, Russia props up the pro-Iran regime in Syria, and militias aligned with Iran use missiles and drones to strike Israel from Gaza and Lebanon, U.S. forces from Iraq and Syria, and Saudi Arabia from Yemen. Even the weakest and poorest of the Axis forces, the Houthi rebels in Yemen, disrupt regional shipping virtually at will.
Arash Azizi: Iran’s proxies are out of control
The Axis’s principals make no secret of their designs. “We are fighting in Ukraine not against Ukrainians but against the unipolar world,” the Russian ideologue Alexander Dugin said at a conference in Moscow in February. “And our inevitable victory will be not only ours but a victory for all humanity … This is not a return to the old bipolar model but the beginning of a completely new world architecture.” According to the Middle East Media Research Institute, Hossein Salami, the commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, said in a speech in November, “The enemies of the Islamic regime were, and are, the enemies of all humanity, and today the world is rising up against them.” America, he predicted, will “lose [in] the political arena” and “will also fail economically … Be certain that the morning of victory is nigh.”
In the Barack Obama years, it seemed tenable to dismiss Russia as a weak and declining regional power that could slow but not block the advance of liberal democracy, and Iran as a vicious but brittle and unsustainable regime that could needle America but not challenge it. Both countries, after all, seemed beset with social, economic, and demographic problems that could hobble them in the long run. But the long run is taking its time arriving. For the moment, the Axis is playing offense and setting the tempo. Even if it cannot drive the United States completely out of Europe and the Middle East, it may well succeed in weakening NATO, dominating the Middle East, and, what is perhaps most significant, calling into question the sustainability of Western-style liberalism. As it aligns its goals and strategies across far-flung theaters, the Axis of Resistance is emerging, alongside the rise of China, as a generational challenge to the Liberal Alliance.
Americans, accustomed to gauging power by counting aircraft carriers and nuclear warheads, have until now underestimated the ambition and sophistication of the forces arrayed against us. The Axis’s strategy of harrying and exhausting us might very well work, and head-on military responses can be at best only partially effective against it. The Alliance must build a network of its own, one that can coordinate across multiple fronts to contain, deflect, and deter the Axis’s provocations. And only one of the two people running for president is capable of doing that.
In June 2021, at an annual summit in Brussels, NATO reaffirmed its commitment to the eventual membership of Ukraine, which was also in negotiations to join the European Union. Eight months later, Russian tanks were streaming toward Kyiv. NATO, the Americans and others said, could not extend its security guarantee to Ukraine during a hot war with Russia. The NATO-Ukraine deal was off, at least for the time being.
On September 22, 2023, Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, told the United Nations General Assembly that Israel and Saudi Arabia were “at the cusp” of a deal normalizing relations—a “dramatic breakthrough” and a “historic peace.” Two weeks later, Hamas, an Iran-backed terrorist organization, invaded Israel, killed 1,200 Israelis and foreigners, took at least 240 hostages, and set off a war. The Israeli-Saudi deal was off, at least for the time being.
For Russia and, likewise, for Hamas and Iran, these attacks were epic gambles, the kind of risks leaders take once in a generation. Although the gambles were made in different theaters, their cause was the same: Both actors saw time running out to stop changes they feared.
Vladimir Putin, although once more conciliatory, today describes the Liberal Alliance as Russia’s “enemy” or “adversary,” depending on the translation. He views its geopolitical goals as fundamentally incompatible with his regime’s continued authoritarian rule. In this, Putin is correct. His incorrigibly antidemocratic and corrupt government derives legitimacy from its claim of defending Russia from foreign meddling, Western humiliation, and “LGBT propaganda.” For a time, several U.S. administrations hoped to rub along with Putinism, or outlast it, or distract it with consumer goods and McDonald’s, betting that Putin and his mafia might be content to loot billions from the economy and stash the money in foreign bank accounts and mansions. But in February 2022, Putin dashed those hopes.
Why just then? Putin was not primarily concerned about NATO enlargement. NATO posed no offensive threat to Putin, and a stable and constructive working relationship was his for the asking. But Putin came to perceive any such arrangement as capitulation, and he came to see Ukraine’s independence as a historical aberration and a kind of personal insult. After the Orange Revolution turned Ukraine toward Europe in 2014, he responded by invading and seizing Crimea. That, predictably, strengthened Ukraine’s fear of Russia and its resolve to cast its lot with the West.
In 2014, when Russia’s “little green men” made fast work of Crimea, the Ukrainian state was riddled with corruption and barely democratic. But by 2022, under President Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine was tackling corruption, Westernizing, and consolidating democratic rule. Also, with the help of American military aid (the very aid that Donald Trump held up in an effort to extort political dirt from Zelensky), Ukraine was developing the capacity to defend itself. Putin could see that if he did not intervene soon, Ukraine would join the Liberal Alliance culturally through its Western ties, militarily through NATO, and economically through the European Union. Putin could foresee Russia’s sphere of influence crumbling, and with it, his own fearsome reputation. Russia feared losing a historically significant geographic buffer against invasion from the West. But much worse, Ukraine’s escape from Russia’s orbit might inspire other countries to follow. Liberal democracy, not just NATO tanks, would roll up to Russia’s border. From America’s standpoint, Putin was behaving imperialistically and militaristically. But from Putin’s standpoint, he was acting defensively against the relentless expansion of the Liberal Alliance. One way or another, Zelensky had to go.
Putin’s Russia had sometimes positioned itself as a dealmaker and even a peacemaker, cultivating relations with Israel while keeping a deniable distance from Iran—but the Ukraine invasion, and the swift and vigorous Western reaction, disambiguated the situation, firmly planting Russia in the Axis. Despite Russia’s economic and demographic decline and its stunted and sclerotic politics, its size, strength, resources, and lack of scruples transformed the Axis from a regional menace into a global one. With its successful interventions in Syria, its extraterritorial assassinations, and its aggressive propaganda and cyber operations, Russia has reached far beyond its neighborhood. Putin understands his economic and military weakness relative to the Liberal Alliance, but he is betting that he can divide the Alliance and outlast it—that he can inflict and tolerate more pain. He can look to far-right parties and leaders in America and Europe to help him. His plan is hardly fanciful. If Trump returns to office, Putin might win his bet, with America’s abandonment of its commitments to NATO.
Iran has its own plan, which also relies on harrying, dividing, exhausting, and ultimately rolling back the Alliance. Tehran has spent billions of dollars in aid, and years of military mentoring, to encircle Israel with antagonistic proxies: Hamas to the west, in Gaza; Hezbollah to the north, in Lebanon; Shiite militias to the east, in Syria and Iraq; and the Houthis to the southeast. Iran, writes Thomas Friedman of The New York Times, “is indirectly occupying four Arab capitals: Baghdad, Beirut, Damascus and Sana”—perhaps an exaggeration, but not much of one. Only along its Egyptian and Jordanian flanks does Israel enjoy any kind of security. Iran’s proxies and clients, while maintaining various degrees of nominal independence from Tehran, can harry Israel relentlessly—not just today or next year, but forever. The same proxy network can needle Saudi Arabia and America to keep them constantly jumping. “Iran has coordinated actions taken among its various proxies, including the recent attacks against U.S. bases in Iraq and Syria and the Yemen Houthis’ activities, seeking both to impose costs on the United States for supporting Israel and also to limit additional U.S. assistance,” Katherine Zimmerman of the American Enterprise Institute wrote in January. “To date, Iraq-based groups have attacked U.S. forces at least sixty-six times in Iraq and Syria since the start of this conflict, injuring over sixty troops.”
Like Russia, Iran knows that it cannot win a direct confrontation with the United States; however, also like Russia, it believes that it won’t have to. The pressure of encirclement and relentless harrying will, in its view, erode Israel’s military, divide its democracy, drive away its entrepreneurs and investors, and demoralize its population. Lacking the conditions that make a modern liberal democracy viable, Israel will collapse within 25 years, Iran’s leaders believe. Meanwhile, tied down by Iran’s unpredictable and relentless proxies and reluctant to strike directly at Tehran, the United States will become exhausted and look to exit the region, which it longs to do anyway. As Israel weakens and America withdraws, the way will be clear for Tehran’s mullahs to dominate the region, and the impotence of modern liberal democracy will be exposed.
America, Israel, and the Sunni Arab states are well aware of Iran’s strategy. Whatever the Sunni countries’ tensions with Israel and the U.S., they regard being dominated by revolutionary Iran as far worse. They have noticed that Saudi Arabia was helpless to defend itself from hundreds of drone and missile attacks by the Iranian-backed Houthis on Saudi oil facilities and cities, including a 2019 attack that knocked half the supply of the kingdom’s oil exports offline. They have noticed, too, that Saudi Arabia’s effort to flex its military muscles in neighboring Yemen was a fiasco. They accurately perceive Israel as the lesser threat, which is why Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, followed by Morocco and Sudan, took the dramatic step of normalizing their relations with Israel.
For the Liberal Alliance, though, an even greater prize seemed within reach. Threatened by Iran, Saudi Arabia wants—and needs—a formal defense commitment from the United States, beyond the informal support it enjoys already. It wants access to Israeli technology. It wants nuclear power, to hedge against a post-oil future and a nuclear-armed Iran. By October 2023, negotiations were reportedly well advanced for a deal combining those elements with formal normalization of Saudi-Israeli relations and tangible steps toward Palestinian statehood.
Michael Schuman: China may be the Ukraine war’s big winner
From Iran’s point of view—and, by extension, from Hamas’s—that deal would have been catastrophic. It would effectively have ended the 75-year Arab-Israeli conflict, which Iran has exploited to inflame the region and prevent an anti-Iranian consolidation. Worse still, Israeli-Saudi normalization would turn the tables on Iran’s encirclement strategy; now Iran and its allies would be the ones facing encirclement, in the form of a wall of U.S.- and Israel-aligned Arab states from North Africa to the Persian Gulf. In an interview with Thomas Friedman in January, Secretary of State Antony Blinken put the case straightforwardly: “If you take a regional approach, and if you pursue integration with security, with a Palestinian state, all of a sudden you have a region that’s come together in ways that answer the most profound questions that Israel has tried to answer for years, and what has heretofore been its single biggest concern in terms of security, Iran, is suddenly isolated along with its proxies, and will have to make decisions about what it wants its future to be.” Moreover, from Hamas’s point of view, the deal would add insult to injury by bolstering the Palestinian Authority, Hamas’s bitter rival in Palestinian politics.
And so, Iran and its client Hamas, like Putin, believed that they had to act before they found themselves walled in. They were willing to take incalculable risks, and suffer severe losses, by lighting their regions on fire.
If the clock were stopped right now, the military contest would probably be declared a draw. The wars being waged by Israel and Ukraine both appear likely to end in some form of stalemate. Israel’s military effort to eradicate Hamas will be imperfect and impermanent, and it is incurring unsustainable costs to Israel’s international reputation and relationships. Ukraine, for all its skill and pluck, lacks the manpower and resources to evict Russia from every inch of its territory. Even if American support were not already wavering, Ukraine could not indefinitely throw men and materiel at entrenched Russian positions; even if international support for the campaign against Hamas were not already eroding, Israel could not indefinitely throw its labor force into firefights in Gaza.
Militarily, in Ukraine, Putin can win by not losing. To be sure, he had hoped to topple Kyiv’s democratic government and establish a vassal state. But he can still intimidate Russia’s neighbors, divide the Liberal Alliance, and show that Western power cannot be counted on against determined Russian aggression. Even if he is temporarily stymied in Ukraine, he would be in a position to resume aggression there and elsewhere at a time of his choosing. Moreover, he can use the threat of aggression, plus relentless economic and political pressure, to strangle Ukraine’s economy and influence its politics.
The same is true for Hamas and Iran. Even though they have no hope of defeating Israel militarily, their show of force in Israel and across the region can intimidate the Arab states, divide the Liberal Alliance, and demonstrate the unreliability of Western power. By threatening aggression, keeping Israel on a permanent war footing, and destabilizing the region, they can strangle Israel’s economy and prevent Iran’s rivals from consolidating. On both fronts, the Axis can win by depriving its target countries of the conditions needed to sustain prosperity, democracy, and domestic solidarity.
Against this asymmetrical strategy, conventional military responses are of limited use. They will be necessary on occasion, but the U.S. would run itself ragged attempting to respond militarily to provocations across the Axis network, which is exactly as the Axis intends. The two current hot conflicts, in Ukraine and Israel, have already depleted American means and will.
Fortunately, whether the Axis wins its two wild gambles depends only partially on battlefield outcomes. What matters as much—indeed, more, from a U.S. point of view—is whether the U.S. and its allies can deny Russia and Iran their principal strategic aim by handing them major diplomatic setbacks. That could deter them and other powers (notably China, which is looking on and taking notes) from trying similar gambits in the future. In other words, deterrence can be established strategically as well as militarily.
In an article published in Foreign Affairs last year, just before Hamas attacked Israel, Jake Sullivan, the Biden administration’s national security adviser, touted a “self-reinforcing latticework of cooperation.” He pointed to the global coalition of countries supporting Ukraine against Russia; the expansion of NATO to include Finland and Sweden; deepened U.S.-EU cooperation; the thaw of relations between Japan and South Korea; AUKUS, a security partnership between the U.S., Australia, and Britain (an effort that Japan might informally join); the Quad cooperative framework between the U.S., Australia, India, and Japan; a new coalition with India, Israel, the U.S., and the United Arab Emirates, called I2U2; a 47-country effort to counter cybercrime and ransomware; and more.
Although talking about countering a network with a lattice sounds gimmicky, the concept is substantive and sound. The Axis is well aware that the Liberal Alliance seeks to contain its power through security agreements, sanctions, and commercial ties. The Alliance would thus establish what the Australian journalist and podcaster Josh Szeps has called “an arc of anti-Iranian and potentially anti-Chinese and anti-Russian allies stretching from South Asia through the Arab Gulf states, through North Africa, and into the European Union.” Such a grouping is far better positioned than any individual state—even if that state is as powerful as America—to outlast and outmaneuver the Axis’s strategy of harrying and exhausting the Alliance. It could operate across the Northern Hemisphere to crimp the Axis’s financial and economic resources, to blunt the Axis’s weaponization of energy and commodities, and to deflect and cushion the effects of provocations.
The most important steps that can be taken toward building out this vision are the two that Iran and Russia most fear and loathe: Saudi-Israeli normalization and Ukrainian NATO-ization. Both measures are desirable as security measures in their own right. More than that, however, they would constitute dramatic strategic defeats for the Axis. NATO membership—in tandem with European Union membership—would put Ukraine beyond Putin’s military and economic reach. Putin might wind up with a chunk of territory in eastern Ukraine, but he will have lost the subservient and illiberal satellite he sought to secure. In the Middle East, normal relations among Israel, the Saudis, and most of the region’s other Arab states, along with a U.S.-Saudi defense pact and progress toward a Palestinian state, would greatly reduce the reach, influence, and perceived success of Iran and its proxies.
Have no illusions: This is hard. Russia and Iran will try to spoil any deals by prolonging the conflicts. NATO is reluctant to provide a standard Article 5 security guarantee to Ukraine while Ukraine is in a shooting war with Russia, the Saudis are unlikely to resume negotiations on normalization while Israel is killing Palestinians, and Israel is unlikely to proceed toward a Palestinian state under its current far-right government. In both theaters, there will need to be compromises and work-arounds, as well as some stabilization of the military situations.
China also figures into the equation—albeit in a complicated way. Unlike the Axis of Resistance, China is a full-spectrum competitor of the United States, one that challenges America economically, militarily, and ideologically. But although it is adversarial, China is far more deeply integrated into, and dependent upon, the global economy than is Russia, Iran, or North Korea, and so its interests are conflicted. On the one hand, it benefits from the Axis’s strategy of keeping the Liberal Alliance off-balance and overextended, which is presumably why it sustains Russia’s war against Ukraine; on the other hand, it does not benefit from a chaotic world in which its export-dependent economy is disrupted. And so, although China’s backing increases the Axis’s resilience, China’s influence may also provide a source of restraint. For the Alliance, the trick is to separate China from the Axis and exploit their divergences.
There are domestic hurdles for the Alliance too. The U.S. Senate might balk at a defense treaty with the Saudis. Turkey and Hungary might try to block Ukraine’s entry into NATO. Although the Axis does not have many overt friends in the West, it does benefit from the support of a collection of American and European populist, isolationist, and authoritarian constituencies—MAGA World chief among them. It also benefits from anti-colonialism, anti-Zionism, anti-capitalism, and other leftist ideologies in the West that see Hamas as a liberator and the liberal project as oppressive.
Then there is the biggest potential challenge of all: Donald Trump.
Russia and Iran might well have taken their gambles no matter who was president. If Joe Biden did anything to provoke their attacks, it was the progress he made toward building a sustainable liberal coalition. Some analysts, pointing to the bungled U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, blame the Biden administration for failing to deter adventurism by Moscow and Tehran. There may be something to that charge, even though the Afghanistan withdrawal was negotiated and sealed by Trump, not Biden. A better argument, though, is that Trump’s isolationism, transactionalism, and caprice were the larger factors emboldening the Axis. It was Trump who let attacks on Saudi Arabian oil facilities go unanswered in 2019, diminishing the Saudis’ confidence in American protection and increasing the Iranians’ sense of impunity. By scrapping an agreement to freeze Iran’s nuclear program, Trump eased the way for Iran to reach the weapons threshold. By truckling to Putin in public and delaying military aid to Ukraine in private, Trump may have contributed to Putin’s overconfidence. By sowing doubt about America’s commitment to NATO, and by implying that any U.S. commitment is purely transactional, Trump undermined confidence in the Alliance.
In his 2024 campaign, Trump has gone much further than he did in the past toward repudiating America’s commitment to NATO. Although he might be able to push ahead with an Israeli-Saudi deal (his record negotiating the Abraham Accords was a bright spot), that deal will require deft handling of the Palestinian issue, in which Trump has shown no interest. Most important, however, is that Trump’s mercurial isolationism signals to the world that Americans’ will to build and maintain alliances is flagging, and it signals to the Axis that America is ready to be chased away.
Still, regardless of who sits in the Oval Office, the U.S. and the Liberal Alliance hold some strong cards. Ukraine, Saudi Arabia, and the Western-oriented counties in their regions need a new security order—and they know it. Russia’s and Hamas’s invasions have demonstrated just how vulnerable the democracies and their allies are, and how ruthless and bloody-minded their antagonists are. If Putin and Hamas did nothing else, they shattered illusions that the status quo was adequate or sustainable. No wonder the Saudis have signaled their continued desire for American protection and normal relations with Israel, that EU membership for Ukraine is on a fast track, and that NATO’s members have agreed that Ukraine will join.
Michael Young: The axis of resistance has been gathering strength
The latticework of cooperation, as Jake Sullivan termed it, is not notional; the world got a vivid preview in April of what it looks like. Iran and its Yemeni proxies launched more than 300 missiles and drones at Israel. All but a handful were shot down, and the remainder caused only minor damage. As significant as the interceptions was the coalition that conducted them, which included U.S., British, and French forces in the region. “Perhaps more striking,” Lawrence Haas wrote, “leading Arab nations also came to Israel’s assistance. Saudi Arabia—which, we must remember, has not yet normalized relations with the Jewish state—and the United Arab Emirates were among several Gulf states that relayed intelligence about Iran’s planned attack, while Jordan’s military reportedly shot down dozens of Iranian drones in its airspace that were headed toward Israel.” In the end, what the strike demonstrated was not Iran’s ability to attack but the Liberal Alliance’s ability to defend.
On balance, the crises in Europe and the Middle East, horrible though they have been, have improved the odds of an endgame in which Ukraine is a NATO democracy; in which the U.S., Israel, and the Arab world are linked together to contain Iran; and in which America and its allies together turn the tables on the Axis of Resistance. That strategic endgame, above and beyond any particular military outcome in Europe or the Middle East, is the victory that the U.S. should seek.
The Atlantic · by Jonathan Rauch · July 1, 2024
6. This Song Is Catchy and Going Viral. It’s Also North Korean Propaganda.
The Kim family regime is trying to compete with South Korean soft power (that remains much more powerful).
"Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery" or "if you can't beat them join them."
The regime knows it must adopt (or adapt) western culture for its own propaganda purposes. The regime is a learning organization.
Video and images at the link.
Excerpts:
Communist countries have long wielded music as a propaganda tool, with China and the Soviet Union blasting upbeat patriotic tunes during the Cold War. But under Kim, the third-generation leader who took power in late 2011, North Korea has become the propaganda king, with more experimental pop-inflected music. Pyongyang has adopted more electronic strings, rock riffs, and girl groups resembling the globally popular K-pop bands of South Korea.
This marks a dramatic departure from traditional propaganda anthems, as North Korea attempts to modernize its message for a new generation.
When North Korea unleashes a new propaganda song, it is broadcast on state television, and played at train stations, factories and military bases, according to Hyun-seung Lee, a 39-year-old North Korean defector who left the country in 2014. People are required to recite the ideological music.
“When you’re trained to memorize these songs against your will, you end up remembering some of the songs for the rest of your life,” Lee said. North Korean tunes have always been catchy and emotional, but the transition to peppy energetic songs is aimed at grabbing the attention of the country’s Gen Z.
...
The song is also incredibly catchy. It has rich orchestral sounding sequences, a lead female vocalist backed up by other singers and an energetic beat that evokes ABBA, said Moody.
“The only difference is the content of the song,” Moody said. “It is almost as if North Korea is appropriating the pop culture of the outside world for its own purposes.”
...
Zoe Stephens used to lead tours to North Korea, and posts videos about life inside the country. The 30-year-old British citizen found herself singing along to North Korean tunes when she visited, before the Kim regime closed its borders in 2020 because of the pandemic. Even so, she has been surprised by the popularity of “Friendly Father” outside of North Korea.
Stephens, who is studying in Taiwan, said many TikTok users probably don’t know what the song—rarely seen with subtitles—is about. “If they were more aware of the lyrics,” she said, “they would feel a little awkward dancing to it.”
This Song Is Catchy and Going Viral. It’s Also North Korean Propaganda.
Young people around the world are dancing to ‘Friendly Father,’ a Pyongyang ditty about strongman Kim Jong Un
https://www.wsj.com/lifestyle/north-korean-propaganda-tik-tok-friendly-father-339dd784?mod=Searchresults_pos1&page=1
By Dasl Yoon
Follow
July 1, 2024 9:02 pm ET
SEOUL—Jordan Daniels, a 31-year-old pianist and software engineer in California, posted a cover of a catchy new tune on TikTok.
One aspect of the ditty, “Friendly Father,” made Daniels uneasy: It is propaganda from North Korea, the communist country led by brutal strongman Kim Jong Un.
Pop-aganda
“He’s like this dictator,” Daniels said. “But man, this catchy song is actually kind of good.”
His video, now viewed more than 19,000 times, carried a disclaimer that he didn’t support the Kim regime in any way.
North Korea’s propaganda music is made to be memorable—and to keep the population in line. Now, the songs are finding a new audience. Gen Z’ers and other young people around the globe are dancing to “Friendly Father” or posting remixed versions of it. Some fans jokingly compare the tune’s popularity to Taylor Swift’s latest album.
“There is a tendency to repost and participate in viral behavior without truly realizing what you’re participating in,” noted Connor Blakley, founder of Youth Logic, a Gen Z-focused marketing agency. “Gen Z will do pretty much anything to feel important by getting more views.”
‘Trained to memorize’
Communist countries have long wielded music as a propaganda tool, with China and the Soviet Union blasting upbeat patriotic tunes during the Cold War. But under Kim, the third-generation leader who took power in late 2011, North Korea has become the propaganda king, with more experimental pop-inflected music. Pyongyang has adopted more electronic strings, rock riffs, and girl groups resembling the globally popular K-pop bands of South Korea.
This marks a dramatic departure from traditional propaganda anthems, as North Korea attempts to modernize its message for a new generation.
When North Korea unleashes a new propaganda song, it is broadcast on state television, and played at train stations, factories and military bases, according to Hyun-seung Lee, a 39-year-old North Korean defector who left the country in 2014. People are required to recite the ideological music.
“When you’re trained to memorize these songs against your will, you end up remembering some of the songs for the rest of your life,” Lee said. North Korean tunes have always been catchy and emotional, but the transition to peppy energetic songs is aimed at grabbing the attention of the country’s Gen Z.
“Friendly Father” burst onto the scene in Pyongyang at an April ceremony marking the completion of a housing project. In a music video released by North Korean state media, a military official cries in Kim’s arms while pilots, construction workers and children sing along. “The people trust and follow with all our hearts, our friendly father,” they croon of Kim.
Peter Moody, a North Korea expert at Sungkyunkwan University in Seoul, notes that while Pyongyang launched the song for domestic consumption, it incidentally became popular on TikTok.
In late May, North Korean state media said the song, which it officially calls “Dear Father,” drew “thunderous applause” for its depiction of popular sentiment for Kim.
Part of the global fascination with the music relates to North Korea’s mysterious, secluded nature. The regime heavily controls information going in and out of the country, making Pyongyang’s tunes a rare window into daily life.
The song is also incredibly catchy. It has rich orchestral sounding sequences, a lead female vocalist backed up by other singers and an energetic beat that evokes ABBA, said Moody.
“The only difference is the content of the song,” Moody said. “It is almost as if North Korea is appropriating the pop culture of the outside world for its own purposes.”
When Blue Raver Chavez, a 17-year-old living in the Philippines, first heard the song, he was reminded of a 1990s Japanese anime tune. “This song is a banger,” he wrote on TikTok, the Chinese-owned app used by 170 million Americans.
Chavez made a video featuring Kim with a pink wig and cat ears, with “Friendly Father” playing in the background. It racked up one million views in 24 hours.
Jeanne Kayaert, a 20-year-old Belgian influencer, shimmied and cavorted to the horn-heavy tune in a 15-second TikTok clip. “The only kpop I’m listening to,” the video caption read.
“I just wanted to jump on the trend,” Kayaert said, “and the algorithm worked.” Kayaert’s TikTok videos typically get a few thousands views. The clip featuring “Friendly Father” has generated 1.7 million.
Other communist countries have had recent hits. In 2021, a remix of the Chinese propaganda song “Red Sun in the Sky,” which praises Mao Zedong, became popular on YouTube and TikTok. The song, originally released in 1975, was edited to show an AI version of former President Trump, or cartoon character SpongeBob, singing the song.
Meanwhile, North Korean tunes are still considered a national security threat in neighboring South Korea. The country’s media regulator recently banned “Friendly Father” from being shown on television for idolizing Kim.
Zoe Stephens used to lead tours to North Korea, and posts videos about life inside the country. The 30-year-old British citizen found herself singing along to North Korean tunes when she visited, before the Kim regime closed its borders in 2020 because of the pandemic. Even so, she has been surprised by the popularity of “Friendly Father” outside of North Korea.
Stephens, who is studying in Taiwan, said many TikTok users probably don’t know what the song—rarely seen with subtitles—is about. “If they were more aware of the lyrics,” she said, “they would feel a little awkward dancing to it.”
Write to Dasl Yoon at dasl.yoon@wsj.com
7. North Korea says it tested ballistic missile capable of carrying super-large warhead
The big mac meal of warheads.
North Korea says it tested ballistic missile capable of carrying super-large warhead
02 Jul 2024 10:56AM
(Updated: 02 Jul 2024 11:16AM)
channelnewsasia.com
SEOUL: North Korea said it successfully tested a new tactical ballistic missile on Monday (Jul 1) capable of carrying a 4.5-ton super-large warhead, state news agency KCNA reported on Tuesday.
A day earlier, South Korea reported the launch of two ballistic missiles by North Korea and said the second likely failed soon after launch, blowing up in flight over land.
The KCNA report did not make clear if two missiles were launched and referred to the projectile in a singular term.
It said the test of the new tactical ballistic missile, named Hwasongpho-11 Da-4.5, was conducted with a simulated heavy warhead to verify flight stability and accuracy.
It did not elaborate on the nature of the simulated warhead.
North Korea's report on the missile test was likely "deception" with one of the two missiles flying abnormally and appearing to show up in a field not far from Pyongyang, Seoul's Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) spokesperson Colonel Lee Sung-jun told a briefing.
"Conducting a test-fire inland is extremely rare and it is highly likely to be false to claim it has succeeded," Lee said.
South Korea's military conducted artillery drills at ranges within 5km of the Military Demarcation Line inside the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) separating the two Koreas on Tuesday morning, an Army official said during the briefing.
The resumption of such live-fire exercises near the border comes following the suspension of a military pact signed with Pyongyang after the North launched hundreds of balloons carried by wind across the border that dropped trash throughout South Korea.
The country's Missile Administration will conduct another launch of the same type of missile in July to test the "explosion power" of the super-large warhead, KCNA said in a rare disclosure of a future missile launch plan.
The Hwasongpho-11, or Hwasong-11, is a series of short-range ballistic missiles (SRBM) developed by the North that are otherwise known as KN-23 and KN-24.
South Korea's military said on Monday the first of the two missiles launched by the North appeared to be a KN-23 that flew about 600km.
The KN-23 is likely the missile that North Korea has supplied to Russia and was used in the war against Ukraine, according to Ukrainian authorities who examined debris from missiles launched by Russia since December.
North Korea and Russia deny any arms trade, but their ties have rapidly developed since their leaders met in September in Russia pledging closer military cooperation.
Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un met again in Pyongyang in June and signed a pact on a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership that included a mutual defence agreement.
South Korean officials have said North Korea's recent short-range ballistic missile launches may be intended to show its wares to potential buyers.
The second missile launched on Monday flew about 120km, the South Korean military said. Given the trajectory and the location of the launch near the west coast, the missile likely fell inland in North Korea, South Korea's military said.
North Korea has raced to develop a range of ballistic missiles in recent years, which it names with the Hwasong identifier, including its intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM). Hwasong is Korean for Mars.
On Tuesday, KCNA reported the North's ruling Workers' Party Central Committee concluded four days of policy meetings led by its leader Kim.
The report said Kim highlighted the progress made in the industrial and agricultural sectors in the first half of the year and presented goals and strategy for the second half.
In a departure from usual reporting on his fiery remarks on arms development and anti-US struggle at similar meetings, KCNA made scant mention of any discussion on defence or foreign policy, only saying Kim gave directions for its armed forces.
channelnewsasia.com
8. Lawsuit accuses Iran, Syria and North Korea of providing support for Hamas' Oct. 7 attack on Israel
I wonder if the example of the Warmbier family taking Kim Jong Un and north Korea to court (and achieving a favorable verdict) is influencing this.
Lawsuit accuses Iran, Syria and North Korea of providing support for Hamas' Oct. 7 attack on Israel
BY JENNIFER PELTZ AND JON GAMBRELL
Updated 1:35 PM EDT, July 1, 2024
AP · by JON GAMBRELL · July 1, 2024
NEW YORK (AP) — Victims of Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel sued Iran, Syria and North Korea on Monday, saying their governments supplied the militants with money, weapons and know-how needed to carry out the assault that precipitated Israel’s ongoing war in Gaza.
The lawsuit, filed in federal court in New York, seeks at least $4 billion in damages for “a coordination of extrajudicial killings, hostage takings, and related horrors for which the defendants provided material support and resources.”
Iran’s mission to the United Nations declined to comment on the allegations, while Syria and North Korea did not respond.
The United States has deemed Iran, Syria and North Korea to be state sponsors of terrorism, and Washington has designated Hamas as what’s known as a specially designated global terrorist.
Because such countries rarely abide by court rulings against them in the United States, if the lawsuit’s plaintiffs are successful, they could seek compensation from a fund created by Congress that allows American victims of terrorism to receive payouts. The money comes from seized assets, fines or other penalties leveled against those that, for example, do business with a state sponsor of terrorism.
The lawsuit draws on previous court findings, reports from U.S. and other government agencies, and statements over some years by Hamas, Iranian and Syrian officials about their ties. The complaint also points to indications that Hamas fighters used North Korean weapons in the Oct. 7 attack.
But the suit doesn’t provide specific evidence that Tehran, Damascus or Pyongyang knew in advance about the assault. It accuses the three countries of providing weapons, technology and financial support necessary for the attack to occur.
Iran has denied knowing about the Oct. 7 attack ahead of time, though officials up to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei have praised the assault.
Iran has armed Hamas as a counter to Israel, which the Islamic Republic has long viewed as its regional archenemy.
In the years since the collapse of Tehran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, Iran and Israel have been locked in a shadow war of attacks on land and at sea. Those attacks exploded into the open after an apparent Israeli attack targeting Iran’s embassy complex in Damascus, Syria, during the Israel-Hamas war, which sparked Tehran’s unprecedented drone-and-missile attack on Israel in April.
Neighboring Syria has relied on Iranian support to keep embattled Syrian President Bashar Assad in power amid a grinding civil war that began with the 2011 Arab Spring protests. Like Iran, Syria also offered public support for Hamas after the Oct. 7 attack.
North Korea denies that it arms Hamas. However, a militant video and weapons seized by Israel show Hamas fighters likely fired North Korean weapons during the Oct. 7 attack
South Korean officials, two experts on North Korean arms and an Associated Press analysis of weapons captured on the battlefield by Israel point toward Hamas using Pyongyang’s F-7 rocket-propelled grenade, a shoulder-fired weapon that fighters typically use against armored vehicles.
The lawsuit specifically cites the use of the F-7 grenade in the attack as a sign of Pyongyang’s involvement.
“Through this case, we will be able to prove what occurred, who the victims were, who the perpetrators were — and it will not just create a record in real time, but for all of history,” said one of the attorneys, James Pasch of the ADL, also called the Anti-Defamation League. The Jewish advocacy group frequently speaks out against antisemitism and extremism.
Hamas fighters killed around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducted about 250 during the Oct. 7 attack. Israel invaded Gaza in response. The war has killed more than 37,000 Palestinians, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. It doesn’t say how many were civilians or fighters.
The lawsuit was filed on behalf of over 125 plaintiffs, including the estates and relatives of people who were killed, plus people who were physically and/or emotionally injured. All are related to, or are themselves, U.S. citizens.
Under U.S. law, foreign governments can be held liable, in some circumstances, for deaths or injuries caused by acts of terrorism or by providing material support or resources for them.
The 1976 statute cited in the lawsuit, the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, is a frequent tool for American plaintiffs seeking to hold foreign governments accountable. In one example, a federal judge in Washington ordered North Korea in 2018 to pay $500 million in a wrongful death suit filed by the parents of Otto Warmbier, an American college student who died shortly after being released from that country.
People held as prisoners by Iran in the past have successfully sued Iran in U.S. federal court, seeking money earlier frozen by the U.S.
The new lawsuit joins a growing list of Israel-Hamas war-related cases in U.S. courts.
Last week, for example, Israelis who were taken hostage or lost loved ones during Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack sued the United Nations agency that aids Palestinians, claiming it has helped finance the militants by paying agency staffers in U.S. dollars and thereby funneling them to money-changers in Gaza who allegedly give a cut to Hamas.
The agency, known as UNRWA, has denied that it knowingly aids Hamas or any other militant group.
___
Gambrell reported from Dubai, United Arab Emirates. AP writers Courtney Bonnell and Eric Tucker in Washington contributed.
AP · by JON GAMBRELL · July 1, 2024
9. ＜Investigation＞Current living conditions of N. Koreans (2) How is public education corrupting
The socialist workers' paradise.
north Korea is amazingly resilient because it has not collapsed because of its own contradictions.
＜Investigation＞Current living conditions of N. Koreans (2) How is public education corrupting
asiapress.org
A textbook on "Socialist Morals" for elementary school second-graders, published in 2013. The cover features an illustration preaching loyalty to those in power.
＜Investigation＞Current living conditions of North Koreans (1) Poor infrastructure…conditions surrounding water, electricity, heating, and restrooms
From March to May this year, ASIAPRESS spoke to three North Koreans living in the northern part of North Korea to get a sense of the latest developments. In the second installment of a series that introduces the overall social situation in North Korea, from basic infrastructure to education, healthcare, and culture, we report on the state of education in North Korea. (JEON Sung-jun / KANG Ji-won)
◆ Free education is a thing of the past, and the burden of education is intensifying
Free education is the norm in North Korea, but as state spending on education has declined sharply since the 1990s due to hardship, much of the cost of maintaining education has been covered by "non-tax burdens" on students and parents. This has resulted in students having to pay for most of their own textbooks and school supplies, a situation that has not improved since the 1990s. "B," who has a child attending school in an urban area of Ryanggang Province, shared how the issue of educating children has become a huge burden.
"To raise a child now, it costs money every month, just like paying rent. For my child, we spend 70 to 100 yuan a month... Nowadays, even if we are mobilized for work (related to school), we have to pay."
* 1 yuan is about 1,850 North Korean won (189 South Korean won). As of June 2024, one kilogram of rice in North Korea is about 7,200 North Korean won (about 910 South Korean won).
* "non-tax burdens": Officially, taxes cannot exist in North Korea, which claims to be a ‘tax-free country.’ However, due to budget constraints, taxes that are said not to be taxes, or “non-tax burdens,” are prevalent in all areas of society.
B pointed out that the government budget for education is inadequate, so parents supplement costs where necessary.
"The things we need for school are not properly provided [by the state], so schools mostly try to solve budget problems through parents. We have to buy all the materials for our children's education ourselves."
◆ Emphasis on gifted education creates new inequalities
In the past, North Korean students who graduated from high school had to be recommended by their school to take the university entrance exam. Under this system, university enrollment was influenced not only by family background, but also by parental status and economic conditions. As a result, bribery was widely practiced to obtain recommendations, which led to various negative effects on society.
In 2022, the Kim Jong-un regime emphasized gifted education as part of its efforts to encourage students to go to university. Accordingly, it implemented a policy that gave all soon-to-be high school graduates the right to take the university entrance exam and allowed anyone to go to university based on their grades.
Commenting on these recent developments, the reporting partner told ASIAPRESS:
"With the emphasis on gifted education, it is now possible for everyone to go to university regardless of their background. However, the people who benefit from this are those in power who can afford to provide educational support for their children, such as tutoring and reference books (to send them to gifted classes)."
On the other hand, some families are so poor that their children often end up begging on the streets, the reporting partner said. Society has become so polarized that schools investigate attendance and punish parents who don't send their children to school.
"There are cases where schools investigate and report up the line whether students are attending school properly, and parents who neglect their children are sentenced to time in forced labor camps. No matter how severe the crackdown is, the situation becomes difficult [for parents], so there are more children on the streets."
Forced labor camps: Short-term forced labor sentences are handed down to those deemed to have disrupted social order, disobeyed authorities, or committed minor crimes. They are detained without trial and sentenced to forced labor for up to one year. Sentences are carried out in "forced labor camps" in cities and counties throughout the country, administered by the Ministry of Social Security (police).
On the streets are signs touting Kim Jong Un's 12-year compulsory education system. One slogan reads, "Let's further develop our education efforts!” Taken in a northern North Korean city in August 2013 (ASIAPRESS)
◆ Limited use of computers and the intranet…just 3 to 5 computers per school
B said that there is some use of computers and the country's intranet in schools.
"I understand that there are usually three to five working computers per rural high school."
The reporting partner added that schools across the country have received two computers as a gift (from Kim Jong-un), but she is not sure if they are working or repaired, and added that the intranet is also used for school administration.
"I think the curriculum is uploaded on the intranet for teachers to access. The kids are just learning how to use the computers, so I don't think they can access [the intranet]. My child told me that there is a key (password), so the students can't access it."
When asked about educational infrastructure and teacher supply in rural areas, the reporting partner had a more encouraging response.
"The schools (even in rural areas) are well staffed, and education is something the Workers' Party of Korea continues to emphasize. There are teachers for English, science and computers. I haven't heard of a shortage of teachers (in rural areas)."
Education is one of the most important investments a country can make in its future. In the past, North Korea has invested heavily in education, but given the country's deteriorating economy, it seems unlikely that North Korea's education system will get back on track anytime soon. What's more, improving the country's education system will not come from empty slogans or policies, but from investment in educational infrastructure.
In the next part of this series, we will look at the state of health care in North Korea.
(To be continued in the next installment)
※ ASIAPRESS communicates with its reporting partners through Chinese cell phones smuggled into North Korea.
＜Investigation＞Current living conditions of North Koreans (1) Poor infrastructure…conditions surrounding water, electricity, heating, and restrooms
asiapress.org
10. Body cams prevent North Korean customs agents from living off bribes
More potential indicators of future internal instability.
And again, we can see the contradictions of the regime and the system it has developed.
Body cams prevent North Korean customs agents from living off bribes
Border officials who took out huge loans to survive the pandemic now cannot repay them.
https://www.rfa.org/english/news/korea/customs-officials-in-north-korea-bribe-crackdown-body-cams-07012024175508.html
By Moon Sung Hui for RFA Korean
2024.07.01
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un (C) inspects an artillery fire competition,March 20, 2020, on the western front in North Korea.
KCNA VIA KNS / AFP
To cut down on rampant bribery, North Korean customs agents checking truck shipments coming across the border from China are now required to wear body cameras, a customs official and a truck driver told Radio Free Asia.
That’s cut off a lucrative source of income for the customs agents, suddenly making it difficult for them to repay high-interest loans they took out to weather the COVID-19 pandemic, which shut down trade with China, the customs agent said.
“They borrowed at 100% annual interest, so their debt doubles every year,” a customs official, from the border city of Hyesan in Ryanggang province, told RFA Korean on condition of anonymity for security reasons.
“The reason they cannot receive bribes is because of the tiny cameras attached to their bodies,” he said.
A North Korean soldier holds a camera as he looks at the South, April 17, 2017, at the truce village of Panmunjom in the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) on the border between North and South Korea. (Jung Yeon-Je/AFP)
Prior to the pandemic, customs officials were able to pad their paltry government salaries with bribes from smugglers who either imported banned items or lied about the volume of imports to hide profits from the government.
But when COVID hit, North Korea closed its borders to trade and the customs officials lost their livelihoods.
To survive, many borrowed money from donju – North Korea’s wealthy class – promising to pay them back once trade with China resumed, the customs agent said.
Many border officials took out high interest loans of 30,000 yuan (US$4,100), and some borrowed as much as 150,000 yuan ($20,500).
They were used to living the high life and did very little to reduce their spending during the time that the border was closed, thinking it would be relatively easy for them to repay, the official said.
Unexpected twist
In May, trade resumed, but the border officials never foresaw that authorities would require them to wear body cams – making it nearly impossible to collect bribes.
“The reason why cameras were installed on custom officials and security agents’ bodies was because there were many cases of illegal Chinese mobile phones and SIM cards being smuggled into the country through customs trade channels,” the customs official said.
These Chinese cell phones allow people living near the border to access Chinese networks and call outside the country, potentially letting people pass along information North Korean authorities want to keep control of.
“This is fundamentally to block the path of internal secrets from being leaked outside the country through illegal mobile phones,” the official said.
Meanwhile, the loan sharks are pressing the officials to pay up.
“Hyesan customs officials and security agents are unable to go home at night,” he said. “This is because the donju come to the homes of customs officials and security agents and abusively demand repayment.”
A truck driver who used to drive through the border at Hyesan told RFA that it was easy for customs officials to spot smugglers and their smuggled goods.
“Customs truck drivers smuggled televisions from Chinese truck drivers until 2019,” he said.
He said that since the border reopened, all imported goods come on the backs of Chinese trucks, which are then unloaded into North Korean warehouses on the border.
North Korean workers who load and unload Chinese trucks used to be friendly with the Chinese drivers, sharing cigarettes and having casual conversations with them, but now they are told not to even make any verbal contact.
“If they say a single word with them, they will be immediately taken to the State Security Department for an investigation and be kicked out of their work group,” the driver said.
A solider films military officers following a mass dance performance, May 10, 2016, in the capital's main ceremonial square in Pyongyang, North Korea. (Damir Sagolj/Reuters)
In the more unusual cases where North Korean trucks export goods to China, they are allowed to go only 400 meters (yards) into Chinese territory, and once empty back out – and are followed by security guards, he said.
With body cams now a requirement, some of the customs officials are doing whatever they can to transfer to other departments where the bribes might be a little smaller but at more easily accepted, he said.
“Security agents who monitor trade cargo do not hide the fact that they have small cameras attached to their bodies,” the driver said. “They advise cargo loading and unloading workers not to create any problems, as the whole day’s work is being recorded.”
Translated by Claire S. Lee. Edited by Eugene Whong and Malcolm Foster.
11. S. Korean military says N. Korea's claim of successful missile test-firing likely a 'lie'
(LEAD) S. Korean military says N. Korea's claim of successful missile test-firing likely a 'lie' | Yonhap News Agency
en.yna.co.kr · by Chae Yun-hwan · July 2, 2024
(ATTN: ADDS more details in paras 2, 9-11)
SEOUL, July 2 (Yonhap) -- North Korea's claim of a successful test-fire of a new missile is likely a "lie," South Korea's military said Tuesday, in the latest dismissal of the North's weapons test assertions.
Earlier in the day, the North said it test-fired the new Hwasong-11Da-4.5 tactical ballistic missile capable of carrying a super-large warhead Monday to verify its flight stability and hit accuracy at the maximum range of 500 kilometers and the minimum range of 90 km.
South Korea's military earlier said it had detected two ballistic missile launches, with one of them flying some 600 km before landing in waters off the North's eastern coast, and the other traveling only about 120 km, raising the possibility of a failure.
"(We) are conducting an analysis, while putting weight on the possibility that North Korea's public report is a (form of) deception," Col. Lee Sung-jun, spokesperson of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), told a regular briefing.
A ballistic missile is launched toward the East Sea from the Jangyon area in South Hwanghae Province on March 14, 2023, in this file photo released by North Korea's official Korean Central News Agency the following day. (For Use Only in the Republic of Korea. No Redistribution) (Yonhap)
Lee said the second missile flew abnormally and appeared to have fallen in a field in an uninhabited area close to Pyongyang.
"It is extremely rare to conduct a test-launch inland and there is a high possibility that its claim of a success is a lie," he said.
North Korea has typically staged missile launches into waters off its eastern and western coasts.
Lee said that both missiles would have fallen inland if they flew the distances as reported by the North, based on the flight direction detected by the JCS.
North Korea has test-fired the Hwasong-11 series of short-range ballistic missiles over the years. The new Hwasong-11Da-4.5 missile is capable of carrying a 4.5 ton-class warhead, according to the North's state media.
When asked whether the military assessed the latest launches to actually involve the new missile, Lee said an analysis is under way on various possibilities.
He said the military has assessed the North's Hwasong-11 series to be able to carry a warhead of up to 2.5 tons, but noted that a 4.5-ton warhead is theoretically possible.
The remarks marked the South's latest dismissal of the North's claim of conducting a successful weapons test.
Last week, Pyongyang claimed it had successfully conducted a multiple warhead missile test, but the JCS dismissed it as "deception," saying the launch ended in failure as the missile exploded in midair.
The JCS later released video footage of the missile exploding into fragments in the air captured with military thermal observation devices.
yunhwanchae@yna.co.kr
(END)
en.yna.co.kr · by Chae Yun-hwan · July 2, 2024
12. Report on Enlarged Meeting of Tenth Plenary Meeting of Eighth Central Committee of WPK
We will spend the next couple of days unpacking this. But on first scan, what is lacking in this is any focus on the military or the external threats. In short, the focus is on "enhancing Korean style socialism."
north Korea remains a revolutionary power by its own description.
The eternal vitality of Korean-style socialism, the precious appellation "heroic people," the prosperity of the country and the happiness of posterity are defended and guaranteed only under the banner of the ever-victorious WPK. This iron faith and will is firmly cherished by the Korean people as an unshakable cornerstone in the course of their grandiose struggle unprecedented in history for ushering in a new heyday of overall efflorescence by upholding single-mindedly the far-reaching plan of the Party Central Committee.
...
The report presented to the plenary meeting the result of studying of the draft ways of supplementing and perfecting the judicial system in an innovative way so that it can defend the political stability of our state and the rights and interests of the masses and firmly guarantee the comprehensive rejuvenation of socialism by law in line with the requirements of the Korean revolution that has entered a new period of development.
...
In order to successfully follow the orientation of state affairs and carry out all the tasks decided at the Ninth Plenary Meeting of the Eighth Central Committee of the WPK, the plenary meeting reviewed the work in the first half of the year, set the main orientation of the work and policies of struggle for the second half of the year and discussed and decided on the important issues of practical significance in preserving the original features and people-oriented character of Korean-style socialism.
What is lacking in this is any focus on the military or the external threats. In short, the focus is on "enhancing Korean style socialism."
Report on Enlarged Meeting of Tenth Plenary Meeting of Eighth Central Committee of WPK
https://kcnawatch.org/newstream/1719914723-874889902/report-on-enlarged-meeting-of-tenth-plenary-meeting-of-eighth-central-committee-of-wpk/
Date: 02/07/2024 | Source: Ministry of Foreign Affairs (EN) | Read original version at source
The mature and seasoned leadership of the great Central Committee of the Workers' Party of Korea, which dynamically guides the sacred revolutionary cause of Juche to victory and glory, is putting the honour and dignity of an independent power on the highest stage of century and expanding the phase of national development and rejuvenation to a wide scope, and such a soaring spirit of advance and upturn constitutes the mainstream of the times that can neither be checked nor be reversed.
The eternal vitality of Korean-style socialism, the precious appellation "heroic people," the prosperity of the country and the happiness of posterity are defended and guaranteed only under the banner of the ever-victorious WPK. This iron faith and will is firmly cherished by the Korean people as an unshakable cornerstone in the course of their grandiose struggle unprecedented in history for ushering in a new heyday of overall efflorescence by upholding single-mindedly the far-reaching plan of the Party Central Committee.
The revolutionary enthusiasm of the entire Party and all the people is surging remarkably to translate into brilliant reality and eye-opening changes the action programmes, adopted and set forth at the Eighth Congress and plenary meetings of the WPK Central Committee, by steadily displaying the inexhaustible strength of loyalty and patriotism and the invincible might of the single-hearted unity peculiar to the Korean revolution. In this situation, another plenary meeting was convened to coordinate and broaden in scope the short-, intermediate- and long-range plans for national rejuvenation and to promote their perfect implementation in a far-sighted way.
An enlarged meeting of the Tenth Plenary Meeting of the Eighth Central Committee of the WPK was held from June 28 to July 1, Juche 113 (2024), to inject great vitality into the all-people advance for confirming the victory in attaining the goals set forth at the Party Congress by further raising the offensive spirit on all the fronts of socialist construction.
In order to successfully follow the orientation of state affairs and carry out all the tasks decided at the Ninth Plenary Meeting of the Eighth Central Committee of the WPK, the plenary meeting reviewed the work in the first half of the year, set the main orientation of the work and policies of struggle for the second half of the year and discussed and decided on the important issues of practical significance in preserving the original features and people-oriented character of Korean-style socialism.
The meeting was attended by members of the Presidium of the Political Bureau of the WPK Central Committee, members and alternate members of the Political Bureau of the WPK Central Committee and members and alternate members of the WPK Central Committee.
Present as observers were officials of relevant departments of the WPK Central Committee, leading officials of ministries, national agencies and provincial-level leadership bodies, chief secretaries of city and county committees of the WPK and leading Party and administrative officials of major industrial establishments.
Kim Jong Un , general secretary of the Workers' Party of Korea, was present at the plenary meeting.
When the General Secretary took the platform, all the participants broke into cheers of "Hurrah!" looking up to the respected Comrade Kim Jong Un , the supreme leader of the Party, state and people, who is bringing about a new turning point of gigantic creation and changes for the building of a powerful socialist country with his outstanding ideas and leadership abilities, firmly taking the helm of the Juche revolution.
A presidium composed of members of the Political Bureau of the Party Central Committee was elected.
The presidium of the plenum authorized Kim Jong Un to preside over the meeting.
Saying that the present work system, whereby a plenary meeting is convened in June as an interim review meeting for implementing the decisions adopted at a previous plenary meeting held at the end of every year, is beneficial to our work, he stressed that the current plenary meeting should also make a correct appraisal of the successes made and shortcomings revealed in the work in the first half of the year and their causes and pay attention to scrupulously planning and organizing the work for the second half of the year.
After referring to the agenda items to be dealt with at the plenary meeting, including the issue of improving the work style and leadership abilities of leading officials and the issue of supplementing and perfecting the judicial system of the country, he declared the plenary meeting open, hoping that it would serve as another important occasion in developing the revolution.
The following agenda items were brought up at the meeting:
1. On the interim review of the implementation of the major Party and state policies for 2024 and measures
2. On improving the officials' method and style of work
3. On enforcing strict work discipline in the key sectors
4. On some tasks for the consolidation and development of the judicial system
5. Organizational matter
The plenary meeting unanimously approved the presented agenda items.
The participants heard a report on the first agenda item.
The report referred to the remarkable successes made by the WPK and the Korean people in the first half of the year by waging a courageous struggle for translating into brilliant reality the major policy-oriented tasks of the Party and the state despite the extremely acute internal and external environment of the country.
It informed the participants, based on data, of some shortcomings and mistaken practices revealed in the course of implementing the Party and state economic policies in the first half of the year.
It was followed by speeches made by Kim Jae Ryong, secretary of the WPK Central Committee, Pak Jong Gun, vice-premier of the Cabinet and chairman of the State Planning Commission, Ri Chol Man, vice-premier of the Cabinet and chairman of the Agricultural Commission, Jo Chun Ryong, secretary of the WPK Central Committee, Pak Thae Song, secretary of the WPK Central Committee, Kim Song Nam, department director of the WPK Central Committee, Kim Myong Hun, vice-premier of the Cabinet, Pak Chang Ho, chief secretary of the North Hwanghae Provincial Committee of the WPK, An Kyong Gun, minister of Machine-building Industry, and Ri Thae Sop, minister of Public Security.
The leading officials analyzed the successes and deviations made in the course of implementing the decisions of the previous plenary meeting in their fields and brought before the current plenary meeting the issues that await an immediate solution.
Kim Jong Un made a concluding speech on the first agenda item "On the interim review of the implementation of the major Party and state policies for 2024 and measures".
In the concluding speech, he referred to the successes achieved in the course of attaining the struggle goals decided on at the Ninth Plenary Meeting of the Eighth Central Committee of the WPK and their factors and significance, adding:
Four and a half years have already passed since we started the struggle for implementing the fighting programme set at the Eighth Party Congress.
What I am clearly convinced of in the course of our struggle that has been carried on while overcoming many challenges and obstacles is the fact that the whole motive and accelerating force of the advance towards the comprehensive development of socialist construction is further increasing and growing.
The review of the work of the Party and the state in the first half of this year enables us to come to such a conclusion.
Early this year, our Party approved the great plan for regional development that is unprecedented since the founding of the country and entered a stage of its full-scale implementation.
There still exist formidable subjective and objective factors obstructing our advance, and the tasks facing this year as part of the five-year plan are daunting. Despite these conditions, we have launched another huge construction project for removing the centuries-old regional backwardness. This testifies to the weight and value of the historic decision of the Party for improving the living standard of all the people across the country and proves that our own strength and political and economic potentials are rapidly growing stronger enough to develop all parts of the country at once to meet the requirements of the new era.
At present, the frameworks of regional-industry factories, whose construction started in different parts of the country this year, have been completed and the manufacture of the equipment for them is being pushed forward. And the end of the year will witness the completion of new modern production bases in 20 cities and counties.
Last year, the discipline in implementing the national economic plans as a whole was loose from the outset, so urgent measures had to be taken at a plenary meeting of the Party Central Committee. But this year, metal, chemical, power and other major industrial sectors related to the 12 major goals have carried out their monthly and quarterly plans without big deviations in the first half of the year.
It can be said that the farming situation throughout the country up to now is also fairly good.
The huge irrigation project for this year has been completed in time on a nationwide scale, fertilizers, agricultural chemicals, fuel and other farming materials have been supplied, and wheat and barley yields have increased compared to last year and transplanting of rice seedlings was completed in the right season thanks to the soaring enthusiasm of the agricultural workers throughout the country.
If we direct our efforts to minimizing the effects of abnormal weather conditions and to manuring and cultivating crops in a scientific and technical way, we will be able to bring about results as satisfactory as last year's.
Nowadays, remarkable successes are being made in the construction field one after another across the country and significant new projects are underway. This boosts the people’s hope for, self-confidence in and enthusiasm for a new life and new happiness.
A remarkable improvement has also been made in implementing the socialist policy for the students, the top priority task for the Party and the government, evoking a positive response from students and their parents.
This is a clear change and a proud result.
Land administration, urban management, education, public health, sports and several other fields have pushed ahead with their policy-oriented tasks, opening up definite prospects, and the role of law-enforcement organs to ensure the implementation of the Party’s decisions and social stability has also been enhanced markedly.
Saying that the economic field is achieving a positive trend and growth speed, clearly distinguishable from the past ones, and different sectors of the country are striving for their revitalization in the face of quite a few obstacles and difficulties in the state work and social life as a whole.
Kim Jong Un affirmed that this proves that the potentials of the country for tiding over any difficulties and its unique capability of developing in its own way are increasing more rapidly in a many-sided and multiple manner.
He said that the comprehensive upsurge in socialist construction in the first half of this year is an upward trend brought about by the strong fighting spirit and inexhaustible strength of all the Party members and other people, firmly united around the Party Central Committee with patriotism, which is developing into the Chollima spirit in the new era. He called for fully demonstrating the country's inexhaustible development capability and spirit of advance by successfully attaining the planned goals through a dynamic struggle in the second half of this year to provide a reliable practical guarantee for implementing the decisions of the Eighth Party Congress with stronger confidence in our cause and the prospects of our struggle.
In the speech, he made a serious review and analysis of the deviations and shortcomings revealed in different sectors of the national economy and specified the tasks to be fulfilled to effectively and steadily push forward with the work of reaching the level of economic development envisaged in the five-year plan and place the overall economy on a track of stable and sustainable development.
On the basis of a scientific and detailed analysis of the present economic work，the concluding speech indicated the clear practical ways for the Cabinet to organize and direct the economy as a whole in a responsible manner and conduct the work of developing the country‘s economy in a long-term, foresighted and methodological way.
The Cabinet should first design a clear-cut roadmap for increasing the executive ability to proactively improve economic management，work out a step-by-step plan, and then push ahead with the ensuing undertakings with proper method. Meanwhile, it should give priority to the opinions of the field officials and working people directly in charge of production and construction, and on this basis, find out ways to manage the economy in conformity with the actual conditions and improve economic management in a feasible and progressive way, and take other effective and practical economic measures.
It should promote the improvement of economic management prudently and step up the implementation of the economic tasks for the second half of the year dynamically so as to make this year a year of new changes, filled with significant successes greater and more notable than those of last year.
It should also direct its main efforts to establishing strict discipline in implementing the national economic plan, while giving priority to strengthening its unified guidance over the national economy as a whole, and overcome the shortcomings and difficulties latent in the economic work in time and effectively, and actively propel the production growth and technological development.
In order to secure a clear practical guarantee for carrying out the five-year plan this year, it is important for the state to powerfully push ahead with the major projects including the building of an energy-saving oxygen heat blast furnace at the Hwanghae Iron and Steel Complex and the establishment of C1 chemical industry so as to complete the planned tasks without fail.
In the second half of the year, key industrial sectors should play a leading role in high spirits in achieving significant innovative successes in 2024.
The power industry sector should finish the first-stage construction of the Tanchon Power Station within the year, speed up the construction of new power stations, put in efforts to raise the efficiency of existing power stations and ensure a rational supply of electricity. And the whole society should strive to economize on electricity so as to make effective use of the produced electricity.
The machine-building industry sector should press on with the modernization of the Ryongsong Machine Complex, which is already underway, so as to properly accumulate experience in boosting the machine-building industry as a whole, and actively research and introduce innovative technologies.
The railway sector should take positive measures necessary for increasing the safety of train operation and maintaining and reinforcing the serviceable life of railways and structures, and improve the quality of the overhaul of locomotives, manufacture of rolling stock and repair of railways.
The construction sector should direct main efforts to strengthening the construction forces both in quality and quantity at all construction units and more actively conduct the work for building up the designing forces in the fields of furniture and greening design and in local areas and for developing and producing a variety of quality building materials.
The concluding speech presented the immediate tasks facing the sectors of land and environment protection, urban management and disaster prevention including the protection of the marine ecology of the country, preservation of the landscape of the capital and establishment of a well-regulated system for materials storage and supply necessary for disaster recovery.
It specified the most important and key issues in this year's farming and the ways to ensure the stability of agricultural production.
It pointed to the need to make preparations for building a large-scale greenhouse farm in the Thaegam area next year in a far-sighted way and push ahead with the work of additionally building modern chicken farms in Pyongyang and every province in a long-term and planned way.
It stressed the need for the Cabinet, the Agricultural Commission and the Vehicle-building Industry Bureau to achieve without fail their yearly targets according to the plan for the development of farm machines by 2030 and radically increase the rate of farm work done by machines by transforming the farm machine-building industry.
Stressing the need to direct the Party's and state's efforts to dynamically organizing and conducting the work for developing the regional economy, Kim Jong Un called on the Organizational Leadership Department of the Party Central Committee, the Cabinet, the non-permanent committees for promoting the Regional Development 20×10 Policy and the relevant provinces, cities and counties to take thorough measures for supplying equipment in keeping with dynamic progress in the construction projects for regional-industry factories and to get ready raw and other materials in a responsible manner in order to give full play to the vitality of the Party's policy on regional development from the first year of production.
He clarified detailed and scientific practical measures to be taken in selecting cities and counties to be involved in the construction next year, making thorough preparations and vitalizing regional economy.
He also stressed the need to carry out a project for laying a foundation for developing national light industry according to a well thought-out plan, for the Cabinet and Pyongyang Municipality to unconditionally implement the projects for improving the living standard of the citizens of the capital city this year and for provinces, cities and counties to keep hold on solving difficulties in living of inhabitants as an important policy task.
He advanced giving priority to enlisting and increasing scientific and technological abilities as a primary task for successfully attaining the goals planned for this year, including the 12 major targets for developing the national economy and leading the ongoing key projects of national importance to a successful conclusion.
The sci-tech field should make efforts to resolve the issues arising in the economic work as immediate bottlenecks, issues calling for urgent solution in current production and practicable issues directly related to the stabilization and improvement of the people's living standards. The principle to be adhered to in resolving these issues is to intensify and perfect researches in the direction of minimizing cost and improving quality by optimizing all processes in production and construction, he said.
Ministries, national agencies, industrial establishments and organizations should play the role of a motive force in sci-tech development, actively develop and effectively mobilize their own technical forces, talented personnel, and create an atmosphere of competition for mass technological innovation with them as the core and axis, so as to resolve the sci-tech problems arising in this year's production and construction and in implementing the year's plan for readjustment and reinforcement and modernization projects, he said.
Kim Jong Un referred to the detailed tasks to be carried out by the field of culture including education, public health, literature and arts, the media and sports and principled issues for their implementation.
He stressed that the functions and role of law should be further enhanced to establish a revolutionary work system and discipline throughout all fields of state administration and social life and create a favourable environment for development.
The Standing Committee of the Supreme People's Assembly should actively conduct on its own initiative the work of enacting, amending or supplementing sectior-specific laws related to different issues arising in the revolution and construction, including the work of revising the Socialist Constitution and providing a legal guarantee for further enhancing the prestige of the state, promoting regional economic development and encouraging scientific and technological innovations and their successful implementation in a way of making them have enough executive abilities and binding force, he said.
Judicial and prosecution organs should properly conduct legal supervision and control with correct methodology to satisfactorily solve the important problems arising in stabilizing and improving the country's economic work and people's living standards, including the issue of establishing strict discipline in the planning, financial and monetary sectors at all levels and the issue of legally guaranteeing the implementation of the Party's childcare and regional development policies.
The concluding speech stressed the importance of organizing and conducting the work of the working people's organizations more purposefully and vigorously so that the traditional spirit and mettle of patriotism of the youth and other members of the working people's organizations, which are now prevailing in the whole of society, are given uninterrupted play till the end of the year.
In the concluding speech, Kim Jong Un clarified the orientation of the military and political activities of all the armed forces of the DPRK, including the KPA.
Stressing once again that success in this year's work entirely depends on the activities of the Party organizations and officials at all levels, he called upon all the members of the leadership body of the Party Central Committee to fulfill the heavy responsibility they have assumed before the country and people and thus bring about substantial improvements in the country's economic development and the people's living standards.
And he went on:
As mentioned above, our cause of vigorously advancing towards a sacred goal to achieve the prosperity and development of the Republic and the well-being of the people has further developed in all aspects of the course of this year's advance, but it faces important tasks to be carried out without fail and serious shortcomings that require proper correction and overcoming.
As you all remember vividly, the December Plenary Meeting of the Party Central Committee in 2023 accepted the solemn pledge of the participants to unconditionally carry out the tasks set forth in the meeting's decisions whatever the conditions and circumstances, and members of the leadership body of the Party Central Committee declare to the people and the world the pledge they made before the flag of the glorious Party, greeting the new year.
We now have half a year in our struggle to fulfill our firm pledge to hasten the pace with a steady and active pioneering spirit and make 2024 a year of redoubled efforts for our great state and people.
In order to bring substantial changes and results, which our people who firmly believe in the true intentions of their Party and government as their own and painstakingly follow all their policies and plans whatever the difficulties and hardships, can feel with pride and pleasure this year, too, the entire Party should wholeheartedly make redoubled efforts to spur the struggle for the second half of the year and make a vigorous advance.
Always mindful of the weight of the revolutionary tasks we have determined to carry out unconditionally before the people and with the unrivalled driving power of vigorously opening up the comprehensive development phase and confidence in the prospect of revolution getting ever brighter, let us all strive harder to successfully conclude this year with proud and innovative achievements.
When Kim Jong Un finished the concluding speech, loud applause broke out.
All the participants expressed full support to his concluding speech which clearly indicates the most correct path for dynamically advancing toward the successful conclusion of the year 2024 and the struggle strategy for bringing about uninterrupted innovations and successive leaps forward on the upward track in socialist construction.
The concluding speech serves as a precious action programme and a powerful militant banner as it clarifies the clear guidelines and scientific ways for strengthening the leadership abilities and fighting efficiency of the Party in every way and for accelerating the advance of the revolution with the extraordinary consciousness and perseverance of all Party members and other people in conformity with the requirements of the times, when a crucial turning point has been brought about in the sacred course of development of the DPRK.
The plenary meeting discussed the second agenda item "On improving the officials' method and style of work."
The report, advancing the issue of improving the officials' method and style of work as an urgent task facing the overall work of the Party and the state at present and an important one directly related to the prospect of the revolution and the development of the Party, made a critical review and analysis of the seriousness and consequences of some officials' improper work style devoid of the revolutionary mass viewpoint, such as mechanical and stereotyped work attitude, formalism, whitewashing work results, subjectivism, arbitrariness, abuse of power, and bureaucratism that run counter to the attitude, traits and people-oriented method and style of work appropriate to the hard core of the Party, who have to work to achieve the ennobling ideals the Party set forth at its founding.
The reporter presented to the plenary meeting concrete ways of ensuring that all officials acquire the qualifications and traits of a genuine communist by further revving up the atmosphere of the ideological campaign for fundamentally transforming the method and style of work within the Party and intensifying ceaseless education and dynamic struggle.
The plenary meeting discussed the third agenda item "On enforcing strict work discipline in the key sectors."
The report, by referring to the facts, made an analysis of a series of deviations revealed owing to the irrationality of the working system in the key sectors, which should orient the economy, science and technology towards prospective and practical development, and presented relevant measures.
The plenary meeting discussed the fourth agenda item "On some tasks for the consolidation and development of the judicial system".
The report presented to the plenary meeting the result of studying of the draft ways of supplementing and perfecting the judicial system in an innovative way so that it can defend the political stability of our state and the rights and interests of the masses and firmly guarantee the comprehensive rejuvenation of socialism by law in line with the requirements of the Korean revolution that has entered a new period of development.
The plenary meeting discussed the organizational matter as the fifth agenda item.
It recalled and by-elected members and alternate members of the Central Committee of the Workers' Party of Korea.
Kim Chung Song, Sung Jong Gyu and Kim Jong Sun were by-elected as members of the WPK Central Committee from alternate members, and Ri Yong Sik was by-elected directly as a member of the WPK Central Committee.
Twelve alternate members of the WPK Central Committee were recalled and Jong Myong Su, Ri Myong Guk, Jon Hyang Sun, Jo Sok Ho, Choe Hyok Chol, O Myong Chol, Kim Song Chol, Ju Hyon Ung, Kim Chol, Choe Yong Il, Ri Yong Hyop and Ri Song Bong were by-elected as alternate members of the WPK Central Committee.
It dismissed and appointed a department director of the WPK Central Committee.
Ri Tu Song was dismissed and Kim Jong Sun was appointed as department director of the Central Committee of the WPK.
Cadres of government organs and at a key post were dismissed and new ones appointed.
Jong Myong Su was appointed as vice-premier of the Cabinet, Ri Myong Guk as minister of Finance and Jon Hyang Sun as chairwoman of the Central Committee of the Socialist Women's Union of Korea.
The plenary meeting organized sector-specific consultative meetings to draw up the proactive and detailed measures for thoroughly carrying out the tasks for the second half of 2024 and comprehensively deliberate on the issues that arose in the discussion related to the agenda items.
Members of the Political Bureau of the WPK Central Committee guided the consultative meetings.
At the consultative meetings, constructive opinions based on a serious and dynamic study of the draft decisions were fully proposed, and they were strictly examined in the light of scientific accuracy, objectivity and feasibility.
The 21 st Meeting of the Political Bureau of the Eighth WPK Central Committee was convened on July 1.
The Political Bureau reviewed the opinions raised at the sector-specific consultative meetings and decided to submit the finally confirmed draft decisions to the plenary meeting.
The plenary meeting adopted three decisions with unanimous approval.
All the participants renewed their firm determination to powerfully lead and propel the successful implementation of the decisions of the Party plenary meeting by displaying their utmost redoubled efforts and devotion in the vanguard of carrying out the great revolutionary cause, reliably shouldering the heavy responsibility entrusted to them by the Party and the revolution.
Convinced that the high struggle goals facing us this year will be successfully attained by dint of the unity and unyielding patriotic struggle of the whole Party and all the people closely rallied around Kim Jong Un , the enlarged meeting of the plenary meeting, which seriously discussed and decided the policy-oriented tasks and practical ways of great significance in pushing forward our revolution without a moment's stagnation, concluded its work.
The enlarged meeting of the Tenth Plenary Meeting of the Eighth WPK Central Committee will be recorded in history as a significant occasion of further displaying the revolutionary features and militant spirit of the WPK, which is carrying forward the history of the development of the Republic with eternal dignity, glory and prosperity by dint of absolute prestige of the respected Comrade Kim Jong Un and the invincible might of his great revolutionary ideas and is building an ideal society of the people where socialist civilization is in full bloom.
13. Dossier offers glimpse into inter-Korean talks in 1981-87 following N. Korea's bombing attack in Burma
(LEAD) Dossier offers glimpse into inter-Korean talks in 1981-87 following N. Korea's bombing attack in Burma | Yonhap News Agency
en.yna.co.kr · by Kim Soo-yeon · July 2, 2024
(ATTN: UPDATES with more details throughout)
By Kim Soo-yeon
SEOUL, July 2 (Yonhap) -- The unification ministry on Tuesday unveiled newly declassified documents shedding light on inter-Korean talks on sports and humanitarian cooperation from 1981-87, following North Korea's deadly bombing attack in then Burma in 1983.
The dossier includes minutes of inter-Korean talks in the 1980s, ranging from the issue of fielding a unified team for the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles and the delivery of North Korean aid for flooding in the South to Red Cross talks over the first-ever reunions by families separated by the 1950-53 Korean War and art troupes' reciprocal performances in Seoul and Pyongyang.
In January 1982, then South Korean President Chun Doo-hwan proposed a unification initiative calling for the two Koreas to unify based on national self-determination, democratic procedures and peaceful means. But Pyongyang condemned it as an unrealistic vision.
This photo, provided by the Ministry of Unification on July 2, 2024, shows South Korean Bishop Ji Hak-soon (R) meeting with his younger sister in a family reunion event held in Pyongyang in 1985. (PHOTO NOT FOR SALE) (Yonhap)
Since then, South Korea offered to hold talks with North Korea, all of which were rejected by Pyongyang. But the situation took a dramatic turn after North Korea staged a bombing attack in Burma, now called Myanmar, in October 1983.
Seventeen high-ranking South Korean officials were killed in the attack, blamed on North Korea, during Chun's visit to the Southeast Asian country. North Korea claimed it was an attack fabricated by South Korea, but a relevant investigation revealed North Korea was behind it, prompting Burma to sever its ties with the North.
Against such a backdrop, North Korea abruptly proposed three-way talks to South Korea and the U.S. in January 1984 in a bid to improve its tarnished image and address its diplomatic isolation.
The North proposal included the issue of signing a peace treaty between North Korea and the U.S. and of adopting a non-aggression declaration between the Koreas. South Korea suggested the two Koreas first meet to resume dialogue, but the North rejected it.
In March of that year, South Korea's sports committee proposed talks to North Korea over the forming of a unified team between the Koreas for the 1984 Los Angeles Olympic Games. South and North Korea held three rounds of sports talks, but they fell through.
In September 1984, South Korea accepted North Korea's proposal to send rice, cement and medicine to help victims of flooding. The dossier showed Seoul initially intended to reject the North's offer but eventually accepted it. To prepare for the delivery of donated goods, the Koreas agreed to restore a hotline for the first time in four years.
This photo, provided by the Ministry of Unification on July 2, 2024, shows the arrival in 1985 of North Korean donated goods designed to help South Korean victims of flooding at a port in Incheon, west of Seoul. (PHOTO NOT FOR SALE) (Yonhap)
In May 1985, the Red Cross of South and North Korea held talks to discuss the first-ever reciprocal visits to hometowns by separated families and art troupes' performances in each other's capital. South Korea focused on the reunion events, but the North prioritized the art troupes' trip, highlighting a "festive" mood.
After a few rounds of talks, both sides agreed to form 50 members each for a group of separated families and art troupes.
In September of that year, separated families crossed the border to visit their hometowns for the first time in about 40 years since Korea was divided. Art performances were also held in Seoul and Pyongyang.
"(Facing the diplomatic isolation following the bombing in Burma), North Korea, being in a defensive posture, tried to turn the tide by proposing talks to the South," Kim Woong-hee, former chief of the Office of the Inter-Korean Dialogue, told reporters.
Since first disclosing the declassified documents in May 2022, the unification ministry has made public such dossiers on five occasions, including the latest one.
The dossier consists of 1,693 pages of documents from December 1981 to May 1987, declassified under the ministry's rules on disclosing documents that date back more than 30 years on past inter-Korean talks.
sooyeon@yna.co.kr
(END)
en.yna.co.kr · by Kim Soo-yeon · July 2, 2024
14. What’s Behind Vladimir Putin’s and Kim Jong-un’s Recent Deal?
From my two good friends and colleagues from north Korea. When Ri Jong Ho and Hyun Seung Lee talk about north Korea, I listen.
National Interest
July 1, 2024
What’s Behind Vladimir Putin’s and Kim Jong-un’s Recent Deal?
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/korea-watch/what%E2%80%99s-behind-vladimir-putin%E2%80%99s-and-kim-jong-un%E2%80%99s-recent-deal-211680
What should the international community do about Putin and Kim Jong-un, who are committing mass murder in Ukraine and endangering global peace? If these dictators, who see war as a means of maintaining power, start another one, what measures could stop them?
by Ri Jong Ho Hyun Seung Lee
In a chilling convergence of ambition and authoritarianism, two of the world’s most brutal dictators have clasped hands in the shadows. On June 19, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and Russian president Vladimir Putin signed a “Comprehensive Strategic Partnership Agreement” at the Kumsusan Guesthouse in Pyongyang. This pact signals a profound shift in global alliances.
According to Putin, “The comprehensive partnership agreement signed today provides, among other things, for mutual assistance in the event of aggression against one of the parties to this agreement.” This alliance forms a cornerstone of Putin’s grand strategy to establish North Korea as Russia’s eastern outpost and ammunition depot to supply Russian forces in the Ukraine War.
Putin’s bitter experiences in the conflict have underscored the strategic importance of North Korea’s geopolitical position and military capabilities. Specifically, he wishes to make North Korea a buffer zone in Northeast Asia to counterbalance the United States. He criticized U.S. policy as the root cause of tensions in the Korean Peninsula, affirming North Korea’s right to protect its sovereignty. Moreover, he stated that “Russia does not rule out military-technical cooperation with North Korea,” a brazen endorsement of North Korea’s illegal and inhumane nuclear missile program.
Putin’s comments reveal his readiness to cooperate with Kim Jong-un on advanced technological support for North Korean military capabilities, including hypersonic missiles, reconnaissance satellites, nuclear-powered submarines, SLBMs, and miniaturized nuclear warheads. He may also be willing to assist in modernizing and expanding North Korea’s defense industry, encompassing the production of jet fighters, drones, tanks, and military vehicles. This collaboration is facilitated by the near-identical nature of North Korea and Russia’s Soviet-era weapons systems.
Through his Ukraine war experience, Putin has realized the necessity of a secure depot that ensures a steady supply of weapons and ammunition during crises. North Korea, with its shared border with Russia, presents an optimal choice for this role. Recent reports indicate that Kim Jong-un has ordered expanded production in weapons factories. But the story doesn’t end there. The mutual support treaty between Russia and North Korea enables both sides to discuss “feasible practical measures to ensure mutual assistance for removing the prevailing threat,” creating the possibility for direct North Korean involvement in the Ukraine War.
If North Korean troops join the war or if nuclear weapons are used, the specter of a wider conflict looms large. Furthermore, with Russian support confirmed, Pyongyang has more room to threaten Seoul. Kim Jong-un has already been unabashedly threatening war with the South. He believes that unless he subjugates South Korea under his nuclear arsenal, the economic gap between the North and South will continue to widen to the point that maintaining his regime through fear and isolation will no longer be viable.
Additionally, secret talks between Putin and Kim likely covered crucial economic issues, such as the supply of diesel and gasoline, food aid, and support for constructing nuclear power plants. Since July 2014, Kim Jong-un has been working to reduce North Korea’s economic dependence on China by increasing strategic economic and military cooperation with Russia.
Furthermore, the two countries announced an agreement to build a road bridge over the Tumen River. Currently, a railway bridge facilitates rail transport at the North Korea-Russia border. The new bridge aims to expand trade between the two countries. Still, considering the minimal practical economic cooperation points, it is more likely to be used as a transportation route for military supplies between Russia and North Korea in times of crisis.
At the Pyongyang summit, Putin praised North Korea’s consistent support for Russian policies, including the war in Ukraine, and emphasized Russia’s long-standing resistance to the hegemonic and imperialistic policies of the United States and its satellites. This highlights the anti-American alliance front that Russia and North Korea are forming together. This direction was evident when Kim Jong-un stated, “We will further strengthen strategic communication with Russia.” This summit signifies the most critical geopolitical crisis on the Korean Peninsula since the Korean War, as the two desperate dictators of North Korea and Russia rally under the banner of war.
So, what should the international community do about Putin and Kim Jong-un, who are committing mass murder in Ukraine and endangering global peace? If these dictators, who see war as a means of maintaining power, start another one, what measures could stop them? Is calling for the removal of these dictators an act of interference or a necessary move to prevent further sacrifices and safeguard peace? One thing is clear: without action by the international community to defeat the strategy of these dictators, peace will never come.
About the Authors:
Ri Jong Ho is a former senior North Korean economic official who served under all three leaders of the Kim family regime. His most recent role was based in Dalian, China, where he headed the Korea Daehung Trading Corporation, overseen by the clandestine Office 39 under the direct control of the ruling Kim family. Before his assignment in Dalian, Jong Ho held pivotal positions, including President of the Daehung Shipping Company and Executive Director of the Daehung General Bureau of the North Korean Workers’ Party, a role equivalent to Vice-Minister rank in the North Korean party state. Subsequently, he was appointed Chairman of the Korea Kumgang Economic Development Group (KKG) under the North Korean Defense Committee by Kim Jong-il. Jong Ho is a recipient of the Hero of Labor Award, the highest civilian honor in North Korea. Following a series of brutal purges by Kim Jong-un, he defected with his family to South Korea in late 2014. Currently, Jong Ho resides in the greater Washington, DC area.
Hyun Seung Lee is a North Korean escapee and human rights advocate. With an extensive background in international business and military affairs in North Korea, he has contributed to the U.S. government and policy community as a consultant. Hyun Seung has held numerous positions, including a fellow at the Global Peace Foundation and an advisory role at the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea (HRNK). His career prior to defecting in 2014 involved significant roles in the North Korean shipping and mining sectors, facilitating trade between North Korea and China, and serving as a sergeant in the DPRK Army Special Force. He was granted membership in the Korean Workers’ Party and served as Chairman of the Kim Il-sung Socialist Youth League in Dalian, China. Severe governmental purges compelled his defection. Hyun Seung is a frequent contributor to media platforms like Voice of America, Radio Free Asia, and NK News. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in International Trade and Economics from Dongbei University in China and a Master’s in Public Administration from Columbia University.
Image Credits: Shutterstock.
15. A New Narrative for the Korean Peninsula: Unifying Korea: A New Strategy for Dealing with Kim Jong Un
My latest essay.
I believe we need a new narrative for Korea (or we need a new Corea).
National Interest
July 1, 2024
Unifying Korea: A New Strategy for Dealing with Kim Jong Un
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/korea-watch/unifying-korea-new-strategy-dealing-kim-jong-un-211677
Since the possibility of war cannot be eliminated, the priority of the ROK-U.S. alliance is to deter war. The additional threat is instability and regime collapse in North Korea.
by David Maxwell
The U.S. and its allies must stop worrying about what North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is doing or will do. Instead, make the North Korean regime worry. Focus on human rights, information, cyber, sanctions, military readiness, and the pursuit of a free and unified Korea. Present Kim with a broad effort to bring peace, prosperity, and stability to the Korean peninsula by showing the Korean people in the North that their sacrifice and suffering is the result of Kim Jong Un's failed policies, promises, and strategy. Create conditions that will cause Kim to change his behavior or be faced with change from within.
Kim’s promise has failed. The regime’s nuclear weapons have not brought North Koreans peace and prosperity.
Kim has taken away the hope of his people by removing the strategic objective of peaceful unification. North Koreans believe that peaceful unification is the only path to a better life. Kim has taken away that possibility.
Kim Jong Un does not fear the ROK or U.S. militaries as much as he fears his own people. Information, human rights, and the example set by South Korea are existential threats to the regime. The Republic of Korea commands the moral high ground by seeking peaceful unification.
Seoul and Washington must deal with North Korea and Kim Jong Un as they really exist, and not as we wish them to be.
War, Internal Threats, and the Possibility of Regime Collapse
Since the possibility of war cannot be eliminated, the priority of the ROK-U.S. alliance is to deter war. The additional threat is instability and regime collapse in North Korea.
Kim’s recent activities, including his regime’s strengthened ties with Russia and its pursuit of advanced military capabilities, are reactions to the internal stresses he faces. Those stresses in turn result from his failed promises, and from the removal of hope for a better future for the people. The regime will collapse under two conditions. The first condition is that the Korean Workers Party can no longer govern all the territory in the north from Pyongyang. The second is a loss of coherence and support in the military and security services.
However, there is extreme danger that these conditions could drive Kim to decide he will carry out his plan to unify the peninsula by force – he will do it to ensure his survival.
Nature, Objectives, and Strategy of the Kim Family Regime
The Kim family regime conducts political warfare and blackmail diplomacy. It develops advanced military capabilities.
Political warfare focuses on subverting the South Korean government and society and driving a wedge in the ROK-U.S. alliance to create favorable conditions for unification on regime terms. Blackmail diplomacy is the use of increased tension, threats, and provocations to extort political and economic concessions from South Korea, the U.S., and the international community. The regime creates tension, makes threats, and conducts provocations that are designed to create the perception of an external threat to the North. This allows the regime to justify the suffering and sacrifices of North Koreans. It is a false perception, because South Korea and the U.S. have no intention of attacking the North except in self-defense.
The development of North Korea’s advanced military capabilities is not for defense, but to support the use of force once the proper conditions are established. The regime intends to use force to unify the Korean peninsula under the domination of the Guerrilla Dynasty and the Gulag State. It intends to do this to ensure the single strategic goal that is its vital national interest: The everlasting survival of the Kim family regime.
Let Us Understand This
The only end to North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs and its military threats, as well as its human rights abuses and crimes against humanity, comes through unification. This is the establishment of a free and unified Korea that is secure and stable, non-nuclear, economically vibrant, and unified under a liberal constitutional form of government based on freedom, individual liberty, rule of law, and human rights, as determined by the Korean people. A free and unified Korea or in short, a United Republic of Corea (U-ROC).
The path forward consists of seven points:
There must be recognition of decades of failed diplomacy to achieve denuclearization and to bring peace, prosperity, and stability to the entire Korean peninsula.
Policymakers, strategists, and civil society activists must begin with a realistic understanding of the nature, objectives, and strategy of the Kim family regime.
Koreans themselves must solve the Korea question (Paragraph 60 of the Armistice - the unnatural division of the peninsula). No other country can lead the effort. However, the U.S. and the international community can and must support the Korean people.
Koreans must seek self-determination of government as the solution to the Korea question, in accordance with Article 21 of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Change cannot occur until there is an internal transformation in the north. Kim Jong Un must either change his behavior, or the Korean people in the North must change Kim Jong Un.
Internal transformation will result from a human-rights-up-front approach and an information campaign to support action by North Koreans.
Internal transformation in the North is the only peaceful path to a free and unified Korea. A free and unified Korea will be a new Korea returning to its historical foundation with modern characteristics.
In Conclusion
We need a new narrative to describe the security challenges on the Korean peninsula and how to address them. Rather than simply denuclearization as the goal, the ROK, and the ROK/US alliance, must continue to deter war, take a human rights upfront approach and execute a compressive information campaign to help the Korea people to achieve a free and unified Korea. “De Oppresso Liber” – to help the oppressed free themselves.
The only way to achieve peace and prosperity on the Korean peninsula is for the Korean people to establish a secure, stable, peaceful, economically vibrant, non-nuclear peninsula, reunified under a liberal constitutional democratic form of government determined by the Korean people.” Again, a United Republic of Corea (U-ROC or “You Rock”).
About the Author: David Maxwell
David Maxwell is a retired U.S. Army Special Forces Colonel who has spent over thirty years in Asia, specializing in Northeast Asian security affairs and irregular, unconventional, and political warfare. He is the Vice President of the Center for Asia Pacific Strategy and a Senior Fellow at the Global Peace Foundation (where he focuses on a free and unified Korea). He is a member of the board of directors of the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea and the editor of Small Wars Journal.
De Oppresso Liber,
David Maxwell
Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy
Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation
Editor, Small Wars Journal
Twitter: @davidmaxwell161
Phone: 202-573-8647
email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com
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