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Tag: North Korea

  • North Korea sends 5,000 construction troops to Russia: Seoul

    North Korea sends 5,000 construction troops to Russia: Seoul

    SEOUL: North Korea has sent about 5,000 construction troops to Russia since September to help with “infrastructure reconstruction,” a South Korean lawmaker said Tuesday after a briefing by Seoul’s spy agency.

    North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has been emboldened by the war in Ukraine, securing critical support from Moscow after sending thousands of troops to fight alongside Russian forces.

    South Korean lawmaker Lee Seong-kweun told reporters that “around 5,000 North Korean construction troops have been moving to Russia in phases since September and are expected to be mobilized for infrastructure reconstruction.”

    He added that “continued signs of training and personnel selection in preparation for additional troop deployments have been detected.”

    The spy agency told lawmakers that about 10,000 North Korean troops were estimated to be currently deployed near the Russia-Ukraine border, according to Lee.

    At least 600 North Korean soldiers have died in the Ukraine war and thousands more sustained injuries, according to South Korean estimates.

    Analysts say North Korea is receiving financial aid, military technology, and food and energy supplies from Russia in return for sending troops.

    That has allowed it to sidestep tough international sanctions imposed over its nuclear and missile programs that were once a crucial bargaining chip for the United States.

    Since Kim’s 2019 summit with US President Donald Trump collapsed over the scope of denuclearization and sanctions relief, Pyongyang has repeatedly declared itself an “irreversible” nuclear state.

    Pyongyang did not respond to Trump’s offer to meet with Kim last week, and instead its Foreign Minister Choe Son Hui headed to Moscow, where she and Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed to strengthen bilateral ties.

    Lee said Seoul’s spy agency believes Kim was open to talks with Washington “and will seek contact when the conditions are in place.”

    Although the proposed meeting with Trump did not materialize, “multiple signs suggest” that Pyongyang “had been preparing behind the scenes for possible talks with the US,” said the lawmaker.

    In September, Kim appeared alongside Xi Jinping and Russia’s Vladimir Putin at an elaborate military parade in Beijing — a striking display of his new, elevated status in global politics.

    An international sanctions monitoring group, the Multilateral Sanctions Monitoring Team, said in a report last month that North Korea was planning to send “40,000 laborers to Russia, including several delegations of IT workers.”

    Under UN sanctions, North Korean workers are prohibited from earning money abroad.

  • North Korea set to ‘flaunt’ its growing arsenal at massive military parade

    North Korea set to ‘flaunt’ its growing arsenal at massive military parade

    By Park Chan-kyong

    North Korea is expected to showcase a new generation of strategic missiles and advanced weapons systems at a massive military parade this week, in what observers say is an attempt to project its growing ability to strike US and South Korean targets.

    Analysts predict that the parade will centre on a new solid-fuel intercontinental ballistic missile and a series of hypersonic weapons designed to threaten US naval forces in the region. The new ICBM, which reportedly has a high-thrust solid-fuel engine, could bring the American mainland within range of Pyongyang.

    Supreme leader Kim Jong-un said on Saturday that he had “assigned special assets” to American and South Korean military targets, accusing both of intensifying preparations for a nuclear attack.
    His remarks came as intelligence assessments pointed to extensive parade rehearsals in Pyongyang ahead of the 80th anniversary of the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea on Friday.

    South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff says the North appears to be mobilising tens of thousands of troops for an event that promises to be part military demonstration, part political theatre.

    Source :SCMP

  • North Korea and China tighten diplomatic embrace as Kim seeks global relevance

    North Korea and China tighten diplomatic embrace as Kim seeks global relevance

    North Korean Foreign Minister Choe Son Hui met with China’s top diplomat Wang Yi in Beijing on Sunday during her second visit to the Chinese capital in just one month, both countries’ official news agencies reported.

    Wang told Choe that “China is willing to strengthen coordination and cooperation with the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea in international and regional affairs,” the Chinese foreign ministry said in a statement, using the diplomatically isolated state’s full name.

    North Korea’s Kim Jong Un is seeking a return to the world stage, analysts say. The reclusive leader travelled with Choe to Beijing in early September to attend a massive military parade that offered an unprecedented opportunity to stand beside Chinese leader Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin, and gain implicit support for his banned nuclear weapons.

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    Choe delivered a message from Kim Jong Un that the bilateral relationship between two countries is unchanging and should develop to meet the demands of the times, North Korea’s official news agency KCNA reported.

    Choe said China’s Xi and North Korea’s Kim, at their latest summit on the sidelines of the parade, set up a basic direction and principle for the bilateral relationship that meets the needs of changing international affairs, according to KCNA.

    Wang told Choe that the two Communist Party-led countries should step up exchanges on governance, and briefed her on the world’s second-largest economy’s domestic situation, the readout from Wang’s ministry said.

    While in Beijing, Kim told Xi that Pyongyang would keep supporting China in protecting its ally’s sovereignty, according to KCNA.

    The meeting between the two foreign ministers came as Xi is expected to visit South Korea to attend the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit scheduled for October 31-November 1 in Gyeongju.

    South Korea also believes US President Donald Trump is likely to visit the country for the APEC event, although Washington has not officially confirmed his attendance.

  • Seoul estimates North Korea has up to 2 tonnes of highly enriched uranium

    Seoul estimates North Korea has up to 2 tonnes of highly enriched uranium

    North Korea is believed to possess up to two tonnes of highly enriched uranium, South Korea’s unification minister said Thursday.

    “Intelligence agencies estimate Pyongyang’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium – more than 90 per cent pure – at up to 2,000 kilogrammes,” South Korea’s unification minister Chung Dong-young told reporters.

    “Even at this very hour, North Korea’s uranium centrifuges are operating at four sites,” he added.

  • North Korea threatens ‘unfavourable consequences’ over US-led drills

    North Korea threatens ‘unfavourable consequences’ over US-led drills

    By Park Chan-kyong

    North Korea has threatened military retaliation in response to joint drills by South Korea, the United States and Japan, with the powerful sister of ruler Kim Jong-un and a top military official issuing parallel statements.

    Both denounced the ongoing drills and signalled that Pyongyang was prepared to answer with its own show of force.

    “Reckless muscle-flexing by the US, Japan and South Korea in the wrong location, in the surrounding areas next to the DPRK, will definitely bring unfavourable consequences,” Kim Yo-jong said on Sunday, using the abbreviation form of the country’s official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

    Meanwhile, Pak Jong-chon, the North’s top-ranking military figure, accused the allies of staging a “nuclear war rehearsal” and warned that “serious counteractions” would follow. Neither official elaborated on what form North Korea’s response might take.

    The warnings coincided with the launch of two major military exercises in South Korea on Monday.

    Freedom Edge, a trilateral, multi-domain exercise involving outdoor operations across land, sea, air and cyberspace, marks the first time the three countries have conducted such manoeuvres since South Korean President Lee Jae-myung took office in June, and US President Donald Trump returned to the White House in January.

    Source : SCMP

  • What does North Korea’s Kim want from rare China trip?

    What does North Korea’s Kim want from rare China trip?

    North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is in China for a high-profile visit, a rare step beyond his country’s borders for prospective meetings with President Xi Jinping and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin.

    The trip could be Kim’s bid to “formalise” ties with Pyongyang’s two main allies — and potentially play a more prominent role on the international stage, experts say.

    We take a look at what we know:

    What is going on?

    Beijing is hosting a massive military parade tomorrow (3 September) to mark the 80th anniversary of Japan’s surrender in World War II.

    Kim and Putin are among more than 25 world leaders slated to attend, marking the first time the two men have appeared alongside Xi at the same event.

    Their presence “formalises the China-Russia-North Korea trilateral [relationship] to the public”, Soo Kim, a geopolitical risk consultant and former CIA analyst, told AFP.

    “What better way to send a visual message to the rest of the world, notably the US, Japan and South Korea, that this is indeed the trilateral they are up against?” she said.

    What might it mean?

    Nuclear-armed North Korea and Russia are traditional allies that have grown closer since Putin launched the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, with Kim sending weapons and thousands of troops to help Moscow.

    “This not only earned Kim a sweet spot with Putin — effectively, it also helped him strengthen his global positioning,” Soo Kim said.

    By deepening military cooperation with Russia, the North Korean leader was able to “emerge” from global isolation following years of heavy UN-led sanctions over his banned weapons programmes, she said.

    China is Pyongyang’s other major backer, and has also never denounced the Ukraine war — drawing criticism from Western nations that it is tacitly supporting Russia.

    The parade is “political theatre of the highest order… the primary message is the political solidarity of this new axis”, Seong-Hyon Lee, a visiting scholar and associate at the Harvard University Asia Center, told AFP.

    For Xi, the grand spectacle “cements his role as the undisputed leader of the anti-Western coalition,” Lee said, adding that it also “shatters the narrative of [Putin’s] diplomatic isolation.”

    What does it mean for Kim?

    Kim enjoyed a brief bout of high-profile international diplomacy from around 2018, meeting US President Donald Trump and then South Korean President Moon Jae-in multiple times.

    But he withdrew from the global scene after the collapse of a summit with Trump in Hanoi, Vietnam, in 2019.

    Kim stayed in North Korea throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, but met Putin in Russia’s far east in 2023.

    Although Kim’s grandfather, North Korea’s founding leader Kim Il Sung, actively pursued global diplomacy, his father and predecessor Kim Jong Il was significantly more reclusive, said Cheong Seong-chang at Seoul’s Sejong Institute.

    Kim Jong Un’s trip to Beijing could signal that, “like his grandfather… he will now become more active in foreign diplomacy,” Cheong said.

    Xi is also set to visit South Korea later this year for a major summit, and Kim’s trip could signal an effort to hedge against the Chinese leader improving ties with Seoul’s new president, Lee Jae Myung.

    His China trip shows that Kim “feels more comfortable and confident as Russia-North Korea ties grow,” Andrew Yeo, professor of politics at the Catholic University of America in Washington, told AFP.

    What about Trump?

    The Chinese parade comes as Trump steps up efforts to broker peace between Russia and Ukraine.

    Trump — who met Kim three times and once even said they had fallen “in love” — has voiced hope of meeting him again.

    Since their failed 2019 summit, Pyongyang has declared itself an “irreversible” nuclear state and recently rejected any suggestion of improving ties with Seoul’s Lee.

    Putin may even “serve as a useful go-between [for] Kim and Trump,” Vladimir Tikhonov, Korean Studies professor at the University of Oslo, told AFP.

    “Putin has been indicted for war-related crimes, but he is also perhaps the only contemporary power holder whom both Trump and Kim trust,” he said.

    What will come afterwards?

    If Kim’s Beijing trip is a success, it could help him score future diplomatic wins, Lim Eul-chul, a professor at the Institute for Far Eastern Studies at South Korea’s Kyungnam University, said.

    It opens up the possibility of a “reciprocal visit” by Xi to Pyongyang for a key anniversary in October, Lim told AFP.

    Now that Putin and Xi are backing Kim, Trump’s “calculus changes completely,” said Harvard’s Lee.

    “The security guarantees provided by this new trilateral relationship effectively make North Korea’s nuclear arsenal non-negotiable,” he said.

    “Kim is no longer just a recipient of aid. He has successfully leveraged his nuisance value into strategic relevance.”

  • Kim Jong-un weeps for North Korea’s Ukraine war dead in display of calculated grief

    Kim Jong-un weeps for North Korea’s Ukraine war dead in display of calculated grief

    By Park Chan-kyong

    For the first time since its founding in 1948, North Korea has openly acknowledged the deaths of its soldiers fighting on foreign soil with a carefully staged ceremony that analysts say betrays supreme leader Kim Jong-un’s deepening domestic anxieties.

    Kim embraced weeping children, affixed medals to portraits of the dead and even appeared to wipe away tears as he honoured more than 100 North Korean troops killed in Russia’s war at the event on Friday.

    Though 101 portraits were visible in the footage, state media did not confirm how many soldiers had been killed.

    Calling the fallen “great heroes and patriots”, Kim singled out soldiers who had taken their own lives rather than risk capture, praising them for their “morality”. His remarks echoed the testimony of former North Korean prisoners of war, who have described being indoctrinated to view capture as treason.

    State television devoted a full day of programming to the sacrifices of troops deployed to the conflict, including graphic battlefield footage that was broadcast late into the night. The images showed soldiers writhing in pain and trading fire with Ukrainian drones, as the narration recounted several cases of troops detonating their own grenades to avoid capture.

    Source : SCMP

  • North Korea’s Kim decorates soldiers from Russia, consoles children with hugs

    North Korea’s Kim decorates soldiers from Russia, consoles children with hugs

    SEOUL: North Korean leader Kim Jong Un lauded his country’s “heroic” troops who fought for Russia in the war against Ukraine, in a ceremony where he decorated returning soldiers and consoled children of the bereaved with hugs, state media said on Friday.

    Kim said in a speech quoted by KCNA: “The combat activities of overseas operational forces… proved without regret the power of the heroic (North Korean) army,” and the “liberation of Kursk” proved the “fighting spirit of the heroes.”

    In front of a memorial wall listing the dead, Kim was seen hugging tearful children of fallen soldiers, with one wrapping his arms around the North Korean leader.

    Along with army generals, Kim attended a concert for soldiers who had returned from Russia as well as a banquet that included bereaved family members, KCNA said.

    The events were the latest public honorings of North Korean troops who fought in Russia.

    Kim praised their overseas mission as “the victorious conclusion,” KCNA reported, though it was not clear whether that indicated the withdrawal of its troops from Russia.

    About 600 North Korean troops have been killed fighting for Russia against Ukraine out of a total deployment of 15,000, South Korean lawmakers said in April, citing the country’s intelligence agency.

    North Korea is believed to be planning another such deployment, according to a South Korean intelligence assessment.

    State TV aired footage on Friday that it said was of North Korean soldiers fighting for Russia in the Kursk region, which borders northeastern Ukraine. The undated video then listed the names and ages of soldiers and said how they had died.

  • North Korea’s Kim calls for rapid nuclear buildup

    North Korea’s Kim calls for rapid nuclear buildup

    North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said his country needed to rapidly expand its nuclear armament and called US-South Korea military exercises an “obvious expression of their will to provoke war,” state media KCNA reported on Tuesday.

    South Korea and its ally the United States kicked off joint military drills this week, including testing an upgraded response to heightened North Korean nuclear threats.

    Pyongyang regularly criticises such drills as rehearsals for invasion and sometimes responds with weapons tests, but Seoul and Washington say they are purely defensive.

    The 11-day annual exercises, called Ulchi Freedom Shield, will be on a similar scale to 2024 but adjusted by rescheduling 20 out of 40 field training events to September, South Korea’s military said earlier. Those delays come as South Korean President Lee Jae Myung says he wants to ease tensions with North Korea, though analysts are sceptical about Pyongyang’s response.

    The exercises were a “clear expression of … their intention to remain most hostile and confrontational” to North Korea, Kim said during his visit to a navy destroyer on Monday, according to KCNA’s English translation of his remarks.

    He said the security environment required the North to “rapidly expand” its nuclear armament, noting that recent US-South Korea exercises involved a “nuclear element”.

    Efforts by the United States and its allies to tackle North Korea’s development of nuclear weapons are expected to be discussed at an upcoming meeting between US President Donald Trump and South Korean President Lee Jae Myung in Washington.

    “Through this move, North Korea is demonstrating its refusal to accept denuclearisation and the will to irreversibly upgrade nuclear weapons,” said Hong Min, North Korea analyst at the Korea Institute for National Unification.

    A report by the Federation of American Scientists last year concluded that while North Korea may have produced enough fissile material to build up to 90 nuclear warheads, it had likely assembled closer to 50.

    North Korea plans to build a third 5,000-tonne Choe Hyon-class destroyer by October next year and is testing cruise and anti-air missiles for those warships.

  • Kim’s sister says North Korea will never see the South as a diplomatic partner

    Kim’s sister says North Korea will never see the South as a diplomatic partner

    By KIM TONG-HYUNG

    SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korean leader Kim Jong Un ’s powerful sister yet again taunted South Korean efforts to improve ties, state media reported Wednesday, saying that her country will never accept Seoul as a diplomatic partner.

    Kim Yo Jong’s remarks fit a longstanding pattern of aggressive language during ongoing South Korea-U.S. military drills, which the North has long denounced as invasion rehearsals, but also reflect a shift in Pyongyang’s approach to its rival.

    Her brother has shifted his focus to Moscow, and last year declared that North Korea was abandoning long-standing goals of a peaceful unification with South Korea. He ordered the constitution rewritten to declare the South a permanent enemy.

    Kim Yo Jong spurns feelers from new South Korean government
    Since the collapse of a 2019 summit with U.S. President Donald Trump during his first term, Kim Jong Un doubled down on his nuclear ambitions while embracing the idea of a “new Cold War.”

    In Seoul, former President Yoon Suk Yeol, after taking office in 2022, responded by expanding military drills with Washington and Tokyo and seeking stronger assurances of U.S. nuclear deterrence.

    But South Korea’s new liberal President Lee Jae Myung, who replaced Yoon after he was removed from office in disgrace, has pushed to revive dialogue between the Koreas since taking office in June. He’s extended olive branches like ending cross-border propaganda broadcasts that irritate Pyongyang.

    Lee said in a speech Friday that said his government respects North Korea’s current system and “will not pursue any form of unification by absorption and has no intention of engaging in hostile acts.”

    But Kim Yo Jong claimed Seoul’s peace gestures conceal a “sinister intention” to blame Pyongyang for strained relations. She said the “reckless” South Korea-U.S. military drills as a proof of Seoul’s hostility, state media said Wednesday.

    Kim told Foreign Ministry officials during a Tuesday meeting that reconciliation with the South would never happen, and urged them to pursue “proper countermeasures” against Seoul, which she labeled the “most hostile state” and a “faithful dog” of the U.S.

    Once regarded by the North as a useful go-between for extracting concessions from Washington, South Korea is now viewed in Pyongyang as a regional obstacle to its attempts to carve out a larger role in world affairs.

    In response to Kim Yo Jong’s latest comments, South Korea’s Unification Ministry, which handles inter-Korean affairs, said Lee’s government will continue to take “proactive steps for peace” and called for mutual respect between the countries.

    Kim Dong-yub, a professor at South Korea’s University of North Korean Studies, said Kim Yo Jong’s latest remarks were a response to Lee’s speech, “essentially bolting the door shut.”

    On Monday, Kim Jong Un also criticized the South Korean-U.S. military drills and vowed a rapid expansion of his nuclear forces as he inspected his most advanced warship being fitted with nuclear-capable systems.

    Pyongyang sees opportunity

    Russia’s invasion of Ukraine created an opportunity to draw closer to Moscow, which he has supplied with thousands of troops and large supplies of military equipment.

    With its alignment with Russia deepening, North Korea has also become more vocal in international affairs beyond the Korean Peninsula, issuing statements on conflicts in the Middle East and issues related to the Taiwan Strait.

    During Tuesday’s foreign policy meeting, Kim Yo Jong implied that Pyongyang seeks to compete with Seoul diplomatically, claiming the South “will not even have a subordinate role in the regional diplomatic arena,” which she insisted will be centered on the North.

    KIM TONG-HYUNG
    Kim has been covering the Koreas for the AP since 2014. He has published widely read stories on North Korea’s nuclear ambitions, the dark side of South Korea’s economic rise and international adoptions of Korean children.