S Korea, Russia To Push for 5-Way Nuclear Meeting Without N Korea (Yonhap)
MOSCOW -- South Korea and Russia agreed Wednesday to seek concrete steps toward an envisioned five-way meeting with the United States, China and Japan as part of efforts to press North Korea to rejoin long-stalled disarmament talks.
"The two nations reached a common view to support any format (of consultations), including the five-party one for North Korea's return to the six-way talks (on its nuclear program)," Seoul's top nuclear envoy Wi So'ng-rak told reporters after meeting here with his Russian counterpart Alexei Borodavkin.
The five-way event under consideration would be a temporary tool to show unity among the regional powers and help give momentum to troubled efforts to persuade the defiant North to reengage in the Beijing-based negotiations. In protest of the U.N. Security Council's condemnation of its April 5 long-range rocket launch, Pyongyang said it would never rejoin the six-party talks. It even conducted a second nuclear test, provoking harsher U.N. sanctions.
As chances are slim that the North will come back to the talks in the near future, the South Korean president proposed in his summit with U.S. President Barack Obama last week that the five parties hold their own gathering.
Borodavkin reiterated Moscow's regret over Pyongyang's decision to shun the bargaining table.
"Such a decision should be reconsidered," he said. "Diplomacy should be employed to resolve the problem, and there can be no other way than dialogue. Close cooperation among relevant parties is necessary."
He added Russia is not opposed to the five-way consultations as long as they are aimed at resuming broader nuclear talks with the North.
The feasibility of the event appears to depend on China, host of the six-party forum and the North's closest traditional ally.
China has neither agreed nor disagreed publicly to the move.
"The Chinese government believes the six-party talks are the best way to realize the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang said in a press briefing Tuesday when asked about Beijing's position.
China is willing to keep maintain communication and coordination with the involved parties, Qin added, maintaining diplomatic ambiguity.
South Korean officials said China remains cautious and has been informed of a rough concept of a five-way meeting.
"If related countries present a more concrete plan, including agenda items, China is expected to take a clearer stance on the issue," a foreign ministry official said, requesting anonymity.
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NK Leader Gives Son Control of Secret Police (Dong-A Ilbo)
The heir apparent to North Korean leader Kim Jong Il has received control of the Stalinist country’s secret police in the first step of his succession process, a well-informed source on the North said yesterday.
Kim Jong Un and his father are known to have visited the head office of the National Security Agency around March at the foot of Mount Ami in Pyongyang. The source said Kim Jong Il told key agency officials to consider Kim Jong Un their boss and defend him with their lives.
The source said Kim Jong Il made similar comments early last month while visiting National Security Agency University in Pyongyang, a school which trains the agency’s elite agents. He is said to have given to agency officials in March five imported luxury cars worth around 80,000 U.S. dollars each as gifts.
The security body monitors the ideological trends of the North Korean people, looks for dissidents, and conducts overseas spy operations. It has branches in provinces and dispatches captain-level agents to each battalion-level military unit to keep watch over military organizations.
Since 1987, Kim Jong Il has been the agency’s official leader but the organization’s chief deputy director has represented it officially. The current chief deputy director is U Tong Chuk, who is also a member of the powerful National Defense Commission.
The source said Kim Jong Il probably handed over his power as the agency’s chief to his heir apparent, rather than appointing his son chief deputy director. Agency cadres are known to take orders from an authority higher than the chief deputy director, such as those from Kim Jong Un.
Signs also suggest that the security agency has grown more powerful. The source said the North’s estimated 100,000-man border guard unit will be placed under the agency’s control next month at the latest. The unit had belonged to the agency until 1992, when it was moved to the People’s Armed Forces Ministry.
Officers of the unit are said to be pleased over the planned transfer to the agency on the expectation of better treatment.
In addition, the security agency in April also took over control of the border immigration office from the military.
As the heir apparent, Kim Jong Un is also known to be involved in personnel appointments at the organizational department of the North’s ruling Workers’ Party.
The source said the junior Kim will follow in his father’s footsteps in becoming the party’s organizational secretary, second only to the general secretary, to take control of the party. The next step will be inheriting the post of supreme commander of the North Korean military.
According to the source, a review of the ideology of party members is under preparation so that they can confess all of their previous misdeeds and get off to a fresh start.
Taking over the security agency first among his father’s powerful posts could suggest that Kim Jong Il is most fearful of possible resistance within the inner power circle in the succession process. That is why attention is being drawn to how he will eliminate those standing in the way of his plan.
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N Korea warning hints short- to medium-range launch (Associated Press)
WASHINGTON -- An impending missile test threatened by North Korea is expected to launch short- to medium-range missiles rather than a long-range missile similar to one tested in April, according to U.S. intelligence reports.
North Korea issued a warning over the weekend to mariners of upcoming live-fire missile exercises. The exclusion zone cited in the notice covers a stretch in the Sea of Japan, 450km by 110km off the coast of Wonsan, North Korea. The warning lasts from June 25 to July 10, from approximately 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. local time, a U.S. counter proliferation official said.
The official and another U.S. official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive intelligence.
U.S. defense and counter proliferation officials say intelligence suggests that North Korea is likely to fire short- and medium-range missiles, based on the splashdown zone referenced in the notice and other activities that are consistent with such launches.
They have not seen preparations for the launch of a long-range Taepodong-2 missile similar to that launched on April 5.
It took North Korea about 12 days to stack and fuel that missile, which it claimed was a space-launch vehicle intended to put a satellite into orbit. It failed sometime in its second or third stages, splashing down into the ocean after traveling about 2,000 miles.
If the Taeopodong-2 works as designed, it could travel as far as 4,000 miles, placing parts of the Western continental coast of the United States within range, U.S. officials have said. North Korea's last three missile tests have failed to achieve that distance.
Experts say North Korea has not yet built a ballistic missile that can reach Hawaii, which is about 4,500 miles from North Korea. And U.S. defense officials told Congress earlier this month they think North Korea is still three to five years away from being able to hit the West coast of the United States with a missile.
Despite North Korea's slow progress. Defense Secretary Robert Gates recently ordered the deployment of a ground-based mobile missile intercept system and a radar system to Hawaii. The anti-missile system is designed to shoot down an incoming missile in midair.
Pyongyang has also not mastered mounting a nuclear bomb on a long-range missile despite recently conducting its second underground nuclear test. The yield was estimated by U.S. intelligence as a "few" kilotons.
The communist regime has vowed to bolster its nuclear arsenal and threatened war to protest U.N. sanctions in the wake of its second nuclear test. It conducted its first nuclear test in October 2006, and there are suspicions it is preparing for a third.
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U.S. Urges N. Korea to Free Two American Journalists (Yonhap)
WASHINGTON – The United States Tuesday urged North Korea to release two American journalists sentenced to 12 years in a labor camp early this month for illegal entry and an unspecified grave crime.
"We urge North Korea to grant the immediate release of the two journalists on humanitarian grounds," State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said in a daily news briefing.
Kelly said that the Swedish ambassador in Pyongyang, Mats Foyer, met with Laura Ling and Euna Lee, reporters for the San Fransisco-based Internet outlet Current TV, earlier in the day in Pyongyang in the fourth such meeting since their detention in March.
The Swedish envoy was denied access to their trial earlier this month, although he represents U.S. interests in North Korea, which does not have diplomatic relations with Washington.
They were detained by North Korean soldiers along the Chinese border on March 17 while working on a story about North Korean refugees.
In early June, the two reporters were sentenced by a North Korean court to 12 years in a labor camp for an unspecified "grave crime" and "illegal border crossing."
"The Swedish ambassador, as you know, has met several times with the journalists, and he met today with the journalists," Kelly said. "I don't have any more details, except I know it happened in Pyongyang. We haven't gotten a full report on it from the Swedish ambassador. But I want to just lay out the caveat that even if we did have full details, I wouldn't be able to share them with you because of privacy concerns."
The spokesman said that the Swedish ambassador has been "in constant contact with the North Korean foreign ministry, is constantly pressing them for more information about these two young women."
Kelly noted the remarks by U.S. Secretary of States Hillary Clinton that the U.S. was pursuing many different avenues to get their release.
"This is a very important issue for us. Whenever U.S. citizens are in distress, it is a top priority," he said. "But I also know that it's a very sensitive issue and, you know, beyond calling for their immediate release, I don't want to really characterize what other avenues we're pursuing."
Clinton said early this month the government was working "in every way open to us to persuade the North Korean government to release the two journalists on a humanitarian basis. We're going to continue to pursue every possible avenue."
She also said that she had sent a letter to North Korea to seek the release of the reporters and apologize for their illegal border crossing.
Reports said that the U.S. has already proposed sending former U.S. Vice President Al Gore, chairman of Current TV, or New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson to North Korea to negotiate the release of the journalists.
Richardson visited Pyongyang in 1994 and 1996 while serving in Congress to successfully negotiate the release of two Americans held in the North.
Clinton has warned the North not to link the journalists to the recent crisis created by North Korea's second nuclear test last month, saying the issue "should be viewed as a humanitarian matter."
"There are other concerns that we and the international community have with North Korea, but those are separate and apart from what's happening to the two journalists," she said.
The U.N. Security Council has adopted a resolution to punish North Korea's nuclear test, calling for an overall arms embargo and financial sanctions on North Korea and banning the North from conducting further nuclear and ballistic missile tests.
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Are the Fake US Bonds found in Italy made in North Korea? (YTN, Original in Korean)
The Italian daily Il Messaggero reported on its internet site on 22 Jun (23 Jun KST) that suspicion is being raised by the investigators that North Korean agents may be involved in the 134 billion USD worth of counterfeit US Treasury bonds seized at the border of Italy and Switzerland on 4 Jun (3 Jun KST).
Il Messaggero reported that questions surrounding the two Asian men are intensifying and suggested three possibilities why the men attempted to smuggle fake bonds out of Italy.
First, the men are terrorists who were attempting to purchase WMD; second, the men are Japanese currency smugglers attempting to smuggle out US currency; and third, North Korean agents attempting to secure funds for the regime.
Il Messaggero also stated the fake bonds were not of high quality counterfeit. It appears the bonds were photo copies of the original, it added.
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