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Tag: North Korea

  • South Korea kicks off radiation tests on North Korean defectors

    South Korea kicks off radiation tests on North Korean defectors

    SEOUL : South Korea has kicked off radiation exposure tests on North Korean defectors who hailed from areas near the reclusive country’s Punggye-ri nuclear testing site, an official at Seoul’s Unification Ministry said on Tuesday.

    The radiation testing, which started on Monday, is expected to be completed by November, with its outcome likely to be made public in late December, Yonhap News Agency quoted the official as saying. The test will be conducted on 89 defectors who had lived in Kilju county and its nearby areas and escaped the North after the country’s first nuclear test in 2006.

    The North conducted all of its six nuclear tests at the Punggye-ri nuclear test site, located in Kilju in the country’s northeastern province.

    The South Korean government previously held similar tests on 40 North Korean defectors in 2017 and 2018. Among the 89 defectors to undergo the testing, nine will be those who were suspected of having been exposed to radiation during the government’s previous tests.

    In a report released in February, the Transitional Justice Working Group, an advocacy group for the North’s human rights, said hundreds of thousands of residents living in the area near the Punggye-ri site are at risk of exposure to radioactive materials being spread by underground water.

    -IANS

  • Top nuclear envoys of S Korea, US discuss N Korea threat in Seoul

    Top nuclear envoys of S Korea, US discuss N Korea threat in Seoul

    SEOUL: The top nuclear envoys of South Korea and the US have met in Seoul to discuss ways to cooperate on countering North Korea’s “evolving nuclear and military threats”, the foreign ministry said on Sunday.

    US Special Representative for North Korea Sung Kim held a meeting with his South Korean counterpart, Kim Gunn, on Tuesday on the sidelines of the Asan Plenum 2023 conference, a security forum hosted by a local think tank, Yonhap news agency reported.

    “The two sides shared their assessments of the current security situation on the Korean Peninsula and discussed joint responses to North Korea’s nuclear threats,” the ministry said in a statement.

    The envoys agreed to strengthen close coordination on Pyongyang to make it cease provocations and return to denuclearisation talks, based on the agreements from the South Korea-US summit held in Washington last week.

    It is their third consultation this month, following a bilateral session in Seoul on April 6 and phone talks on April 13.

    —IANS

  • U.S. plans rare nuclear missile submarine visit in message to N.Korea

    U.S. plans rare nuclear missile submarine visit in message to N.Korea

    SEOUL: For the first time since the 1980s a U.S. Navy nuclear-armed ballistic missile submarine (SSBN) will visit South Korea to help demonstrate Washington’s resolve to protect the country from a North Korean attack.

    The visit was announced in a joint declaration during a summit between South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol and U.S. President Joe Biden in Washington on Wednesday. Because U.S. SSBNs rely on secrecy and stealth to ensure their survival and preserve their ability to launch nuclear missiles during a war, they rarely make public stops in foreign ports.

    “That could be a huge pressure on North Korea, because usually they don’t share where those submarines are,” said Moon Keun-sik, a retired South Korean submarine captain and squadron leader. The United States has pledged to deploy more so-called “strategic assets” such as aircraft carriers, submarines, and long-range bombers to South Korea to deter North Korea, which has developed increasingly powerful missiles that can hit targets from South Korea to the mainland United States.

    The submarine visit is also seen as a way to reassure South Korea and quell talk in Seoul of developing homegrown nuclear weapons. “If a U.S. SSBN visits and docks in South Korea, that is very unusual and symbolic … the U.S. wants to show it is going for stronger deterrence in a visible way and to calm South Koreans’ concerns,” Choi Il, another retired South Korean submarine captain, told Reuters.

    Pyongyang has condemned the recent deployment of U.S. aircraft carriers and joint South Korea-U.S. military drills as proof of the allies’ hostile intent. The U.S. Navy fields 14 SSBNs, often referred to as “boomers”. Each of the Ohio-class submarines carry 20 Trident II D5 missiles, each of which can deliver up to eight nuclear warheads to targets as far as 12,000 kilometres (7,500 miles) away.

    There were regular SSBN visits to South Korea in the 1970s, during another period when South Korea was debating the strength of U.S. commitments and the need for its own nuclear arsenal, according a report by the Federation of American Scientists. “For a few years the boomers arrived at a steady rate, almost every month, sometimes 2-3 visits per month,” wrote the report’s author, Hans Kristensen. “Then, in 1981, the visits stopped and the boomers haven’t been back since.”

    No further details were provided about the South Korea visit but it the declaration said it would be evidence of the United States’ commitment to “further enhance the regular visibility of strategic assets to the Korean Peninsula”. A senior U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told reporters that the visit would be part of more frequent trips to the peninsula by strategic assets, but that there is “no vision for any regular stationing or basing of those assets and certainly not nuclear weapons” in South Korea.

  • Japan Gets Ready To Shoot Down North Korea’s Spy Satellite Debris

    Japan Gets Ready To Shoot Down North Korea’s Spy Satellite Debris

    Japan’s defense chief on Saturday ordered troops to activate missile interceptors and get ready to shoot down fragments from a North Korean satellite that may fall on the Japanese territory.

    North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un said earlier this week that its first military spy satellite that will be launched at an unspecified date.

    North Korea has test-fired about 100 missiles since early last year, saying it was responding to joint U.S.-South Korean military drills that it calls an invasion rehearsal. Several of the missiles flew over Japan or landed off the northern Japanese coast.

    Last week, North Korea test-launched a solid-fueled intercontinental ballistic missile for the first time.

    Defense Minister Yasukazu Hamada on Saturday instructed troops to ready PAC-3 surface-to-air missiles in southwestern Japan, including Okinawa and nearby islands, in an area believed to be under a flight path of a North Korean rocket that will carry the satellite.

    He also ordered the deployment of destroyers equipped with SM-3 ship-to-air missiles to coastal waters, according to a ministry statement.

    “We are making the necessary preparation because of a possibility of issuing an order to destroy ballistic missiles and other objects,” the ministry said.

    An order to fire missiles has to be approved by the prime minister.

    North Korea is expected to carry out more weapons tests as the United States and South Korea continue their joint air exercise into next week.

  • North Korean Citizens Resent Kim Jong Un’s Daughter Kim Ju Ae; Here’s Why

    North Korean Citizens Resent Kim Jong Un’s Daughter Kim Ju Ae; Here’s Why

    North Koreans “secretly hate” authoritarian leader Kim Jong Un’s 10-year-old daughter Kim Ju Ae who made her first appearance during the launch of “a new type” of an intercontinental ballistic missile in November, last year. Growing resentment for Kim’s daughter is because of her “plump” appearance and “round and rosy cheeks”. Children in North Korea are often skinny, and the animosity towards the North Korean dictator’s daughter may have a lot to do with her appearance, but majorly due to the string of crises that hang on the citizens as they struggle with poverty, chronic food shortages and other challenges in post-pandemic communist and isolated DPRK, according to Radio Free Asia.

    Just last month, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un appeared alongside his rather cheerful daughter who enjoyed watching a sports event which was also attended by high-level DPRK officials. It was the first time the girl made a presence at a non-military event. As many times she is seen with her father, Kim Jong Un’s daughter is described as a “beloved child” or “respected child” by the North Korean state media. She was first identified by an ex-American basketball player Dennis Rodman, who claimed to have spent time with Kim’s family in 2013. It is reported that the father-daughter duo’s spree at the events might have upset the North Koreans.

    Speaking about the resentment faced by the 10-year-old child, a resident from the northwestern province of North Pyongan told Radio Free Asia’s Korean Service that the hatred is a lot about the authoritarian leader’s daughter’s lifestyle. “It makes me angry that my situation is so hard to bear, and Kim Ju Ae, who we all know is eating and living well, is showing up on TV in her fancy clothes so often,” the resident was quoted as saying. While the North Koreans reel under the food crisis, Kim’s daughter is reported to be living a life of luxury and comfort, while her father showcases that he is in charge of the country’s arsenal of powerful missiles, South Korean National Intelligence Services told state press. Ju-ae reportedly spends her time swimming, skiing, and horse riding and is known to have never attended a formal educational institution. This has tagged her as a privileged child from North Korea’s ruling elite circle.

  • North Korea warns against US-South Korea war drills with missile launch

    North Korea warns against US-South Korea war drills with missile launch

    Seoul. Strategic forces of North Korea (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea) have conducted an intercontinental ballistic missile launch drill as a sign of warning against the ongoing US-South Korea war drills, state media reported on Friday. Went. DPRK’s official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported- Hwasongpho-17 was launched from Pyongyang International Airport on Thursday, reaches a maximum altitude of 6,045 km and precisely over a predetermined area in the open water off the east coast. Covers a distance of about 1,000 km before landing.

    DPRK’s top leader Kim Jong Un, who presided over the launching event, praised the reliability of the operating system of the country’s nuclear strategic forces, KCNA reported. Kim took the occasion to reiterate the DPRK’s firm will to respond with nuclear for nuclear and all-out confrontation, and urged the strategic forces to resolutely maintain rapid response capability in the event of any armed conflict and war. asked for.

    The country’s main newspaper Rodong Sinmun published a statement on Friday to coincide with the latest missile launch, underlining that the Hwasongpho-17, which was launched the day before, should be taken as clear proof that the DPRK nuclear force Not for advertising.

    Citing the DPRK Law on Nuclear-Armed Forces Policy, the article said the country would retaliate strongly to anyone trying to encroach on its sovereignty and security. The United States should immediately stop reckless military provocations and war exercises against the DPRK, the statement said.

    South Korea and the United States on Monday began Freedom Shield exercises, an annual large-scale joint military exercise, which will run until March 23.

    –IANS