North Korea Threatens Preemptive Suicide If It Doesn't Get Its Way

Well, it's not so much what the headlines say (as in "DPRK warns of preemptive strikes as U.S.-South Korea war games kick off" or "Pyongyang threatens pre-emptive nuclear strike on US-South Korea military drill",) but more what the effect of such strikes would be on the brutal dictatorship of the current Kim-in-Power (KIP).

As the International Business Times reports here:

North Korea has yet again threatened to mount a pre-emptive nuclear strike on the US-South Korea joint military exercise, which is set to kick off on 22 August. Tens of thousands of South Korean and American troops are already in the Korean peninsula to take part in the two-week-long annual drill.

Pyongyang views the military exercise termed Ulchi Freedom Guardian as a rehearsal for an actual attack on the North. It said that a nuclear war may "break out any moment" given the volatility in the Korean peninsula.

"They should properly know that from this moment the first-strike combined units of the KPA keep themselves fully ready to mount a preemptive retaliatory strike at all enemy attack groups involved in Ulchi Freedom Guardian," Pyongyang's state-run Korean Central News Agency (KNCA) said in its latest dispatch.

It added that Washington and Seoul "should bear in mind that if they show the slightest sign of aggression on (DPRK's) inviolable land, seas and air ..., it would turn the stronghold of provocation into a heap of ashes through Korean-style preemptive nuclear strike".

Perhaps Kim is looking for more aid to feed his ever hungry population and is, once again, resorting to nuclear blackmail. Whatever his reasons, he undoubtedly knows any act on his part will spell the doom of both his country and, more to the point, of him and all his minions.

Gotta love KIP in the cockpit trying to pretend like he has any idea of what he's looking at. Sort of an analogy . . .

Drawing Red Lines: North Korea Tells Us It's at War with Us

Gotta love people who draw red lines, as in North Korea: U.S. "crossed the red line," effectively declared war

North Korea's top diplomat for U.S. affairs told The Associated Press on Thursday that Washington "crossed the red line" and effectively declared war by putting leader Kim Jong Un on its list of sanctioned individuals, and said a vicious showdown could erupt if the U.S. and South Korea hold annual war games as planned next month.
***
Han said North Korea believes the nature of the maneuvers has become openly aggressive because they reportedly now include training designed to prepare troops for the invasion of the North's capital and "decapitation strikes" aimed at killing its top leadership.

If only.

I don't see any reference to a "sea of fire," though.

Surprising, given this.

North Korea: Kim Jong-un Limps Back into the Light

Apparently a rock got kicked over in the "Democratic" Peoples "Republic" of Korea (aka DPRK Thugocracy) and the current Kim in Power KJU reappeared, a reported here:

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has resurfaced after a month-and-a-half out of the public eye that gave rise to wild speculation about his health.

The North's official Korean Central News Agency on Tuesday reported that Kim inspected a newly-built housing complex for scientists. He was leaning on a stick.

Never a healthy looking specimen, he now looks worse.

Speculation runs to gout, diabetes, heart disease and massive corruption designed to keep the DPRK ruling class in power. But in the land of big hats and awful haircuts, who knows?

Also unknown is whether his appearance means the possibility of an early winter or mass starvation for the residents of the DPRK. Well, the latter is a pretty sure thing - though it looks like KJU won't be affected much.

North Korea Wants Your Tourist Money

Well, perhaps not your tourism money, but they have an new idea - using a converted freighter as a cruise ship to move Chinese money - I mean Chinese "tourists" from a border port near China to a resort in the DPRK south near South Korea.

To a resort they once shared with the South Koreans. The South Koreans bailed after one of their tourists was killed by a North Korean soldier.

In any event, here's a somewhat entertaining video from New York Times reporter Edward Wong who took the cruise. You can hum along the theme song of the old TV show "The Love Boat" if you wish.





And the related NYT article.

North Korea: Odd Agreement for "Peace in Our Time?"

DPRK Studies has a couple of posts which may raise more questions in your mind than answers starting with Traces of Highly Enriched Uranium Found on North Korean Plutonium Documents and followed with North Korea Blows-up Nuclear Reactor Cooling Tower, to Reap Benefits of Pseudo Engagement:

Considering the reasons behind requiring a nuclear declaration from Pyongyang, what was provided is utterly insufficient and accepting it represents a complete failure of the Bush administration and the Six-Party Talks process.

Read all the links, too.

Potemkin Village arms agreements? Great.

North Korea talking "Preemptive strikes" and updates "Sea of Fire"

As set out inNorth Korea Upgrades “Sea of Fire” Threat at DPRK Studies:

Apparently someone in the KPA Threat Department didn’t realize that ashes logically follow fire when attempting to make one of the standard threats sound more menacing:

“Our military will not sit idle until warmongers launch a pre-emptive strike,” an unidentified military commentator said in a statement carried by the North’s official Korean Central News Agency. “Everything will be in ashes, not just a sea of fire, once our advanced pre-emptive strike begins.”

Read the comments, too.

North Korean food idiocy

One of the most powerful tools in the hand of the state is the power of life or death for its population. North Korea is wielding that tool again as it seeks to blackmail the world into both feeding the North Korean people and caving into North Korean nuclear ambitions. As set out in North Korean food shortages make combustible situation worse , the failed leadership of the totalitarian state always resorts to threats to get what it wants, threats that allow the failures of leadership to be blamed on the outside world:

North Korea's rising tensions with South Korea and the United States, coupled with soaring international grain prices and flood damage from last year, will probably take a heavy toll among famine-threatened people in the isolated country, relief experts said Thursday.

The warnings followed a report Thursday that the totalitarian regime has suspended food rations for six months in Pyongyang, home to the country's most well-off and loyal citizens, in an apparent move to save food as the hard-line regime braced for a prolonged standoff with Washington and Seoul over the North's nuclear program.

Although the state ration system has not functioned well in recent years, the suspension of rations will force Pyongyang citizens to buy food with their own money or use any private stockpiles.
***
Experts said a combination of factors makes this year especially harsh for North Koreans, whose isolationist government asked for outside aid in the 1990s only after a famine killed more than one million people, of an estimated population of 23 million.

Floods reduced the North's autumn harvest last year by 11 to 13 percent, according to international relief officials. Higher global food prices have undercut Pyongyang's ability to import grain. China, the biggest exporter to North Korea, has been desperate to keep its own runaway food prices under control, imposing high tariffs on any food going out. And amid the rising political tensions, South Korea has not shipped its annual food assistance to the North this year.

"All of these different events are likely to have an effect on the overall food security situation in North Korea," Risley said. "This will of course present challenges for our own specific program, which is now feeding over one million people in North Korea."
***
"It appears that North Korea is negotiating with the outside world holding its own people hostage," said Dong Yong Seung, a North Korea expert at Samsung Economic Research Institute, in a commentary circulated by the Seoul relief agency Peace Foundation. "It holds on until the very end before asking for international help. It's the people who suffer the most."

Isn't it always so in such states?

UPDATE: Bags of rice once headed to the DPRK: Photo from here with this caption:

9 months ago: Bags of rice bound for North Korea sit on trucks before being loaded on to a Vietnamese ship at Gunsan port in Gunsan, south of Seoul, South Korea, Friday, June 29, 2007. South Korea said Tuesday it will start sending promised rice aid to North Korea this weekend after the North moved to follow through on its nuclear disarmament pledges. The first shipment of 3,000 tons of rice will depart Gunsan port for North Korea's Nampo port on Saturday. The Korean reads " Rice and Republic of Korea."

Get the Pueblo back?

An "expert" says there might be a chance to have USS Pueblo returned from North Korea...here:

"The political ground has changed considerably in the past two years," McKinney said by telephone Friday. "Right now, the North Koreans have said they are willing to reveal their entire nuclear program, which would take us nearly back to our diplomatic relationship in 2002. Also, the U.S. has held high-level, bilateral talks with North Korea this year. This would be a good time to put the return of the USS Pueblo back on the agenda."

The Pueblo was a Navy intelligence ship, operated by the National Security Agency, that was eavesdropping on North Korean communications offshore in January 1968. Attacked by North Korean patrol boats, the Pueblo was seized and its 82-man crew held in captivity and tortured for 11 months. One crewman, Duane Hodges, was killed in the seizure.

North Korea has held the ship as a war trophy and propaganda tool ever since. Colorado lawmakers have introduced a series of resolutions over the years, demanding the return of the ship, which is still commissioned by the Navy.

The Koreas: Northern Limit Line issues

As set out here:

The Northern Limit Line is a demarcation line on the West Sea between South and North Korean waters which was established in August 1953, by the U.N. Army Commander as the U.N. and North Korea failed to produce an agreement on a maritime border, due to differences (U.N. claimed 3 nautical mile while North Korea claimed 12 nautical miles) in the armistice negotiations.

Though officially Pyongyang ignored the NLL, declaring "12-nautical mile territorial waters" in March 1955, and then establishing "50-nautical mile military zone," it tacitly recognized the NLL.

But when Pyongyang needed to raise tension, the North Korea army violated the NLL deliberately. Especially, after declaring its disapproval of the DMZ in April 1996, their intrusion over the NLL took place more frequently.

Recently North Korean navy vessels have broken into the NLL in persuit of on North Korean and Chinese boats fishing south of the NLL.

The South Korean government has taken immediate and appropriate action against Pyongyang's violation of the NLL.

Now, a couple of South Korean dissident voices are expressing concern over the possibility of scrapping the NLL, as set out here:

Amid the government’s move to put the adjustment of the Northern Limit Line (NLL) on agenda at the second inter-Korea summit slated for early October, two former reserve officers who held an important position in the department handling intelligence on North Korea for the Roh Moo-hyun and Kim Dae-jung administration said, “The NLL is a maritime trip wire.”

North Korea has been tenacious in demanding the scraping of the NLL. The tension over the NLL issue is escalating in South Korea after Unification Minister Lee Jae-jung remarked in the National Assembly on August 10, “The NLL is not a territorial matter but a security matter.”

Key officials of the Unification Ministry came out supporting Minister Lee’s statement on the government’s internet newspaper site on August 22, but Cheong Wa Dae refuses to clarify its position on raising the NLL issue at the summit while just maintaining that the NLL is a virtual maritime border.

In an interview with Dong-A Ilbo yesterday, reserve officials Park Seung-chun (60) and Han Chul-yong (60), criticized the government’s ambiguous attitude, saying, “North Korea is seeking to break up the South’s security crossbar by incapacitating the NLL.”

The two said, “The NLL has preserved the peace and has been a maritime trip wire that prevented conflicts between the two Koreas for more than a half-century,” and warned that yielding the NLL would translate into removing a security shield for the Incheon and metropolitan area.

The two added, “The real intention behind the North’s move to abolish the NLL is to neutralize the South’s navy forces around the West Sea that would obstruct its attack against the South in case of a war,” and pointed out, “The claim that yielding the NLL will bring peace on the West Sea is just a fantasy that ignores the North’s military strategy against the South.

BBC map of NLL from here.