China Agrees to Sanction of North Korea Officials (Bloomberg)
China has agreed for the first time to punish senior North Korean government officials for the nation’s defiance of United Nations resolutions barring nuclear and missile tests, China’s deputy ambassador said.
Ambassador Liu Zhenmin said his government would support imposing a travel ban and asset freeze on a “large percentage” of 15 North Korean officials proposed by the U.S. and other western nations as targets for UN sanctions. No government officials have been subject to the sanctions the Security Council adopted after North Korea’s nuclear test in 2006.
Liu, in an interview, declined to identify the officials, other than to say they hold “senior” government positions and are working on nuclear and missile programs.
China’s acceptance of sanctions against North Korean officials and companies, as well as material that might contribute to development of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles, clears the way for Security Council action this week. Russia acquiesced last week, leaving the panel to await China’s decision.
Ambassador Fazli Corman of Turkey, which chairs the Security Council committee charged with implementing the sanctions, said formal agreement by its 15 member governments would come within days.
Frozen Assets
The Security Council in April agreed to freeze the foreign assets of two North Korean companies and a bank and also said the government in Pyongyang was barred from acquiring items designated by the Missile Technology Control Regime, a coalition of 34 nations to curb proliferation of missile technology. It was the first time the 2006 sanctions had been enforced.
China’s action followed adoption last month of a resolution to punish North Korea for its May 25 nuclear bomb test and missile launches. The measure seeks to curb loans and money transfers to the communist nation and step up inspection of cargoes suspected of containing material that might contribute to the development of nuclear weapons or ballistic missiles.
The text, adopted unanimously on June 12, called for a Security Council committee to designate additional entities, goods and persons to be subject to the 2006 travel ban and asset freeze. The committee was given 30 days to agree on the new targets of the sanctions.
North Korea was condemned by the Security Council after the government in Pyongyang launched several missiles earlier this month in defiance of the UN resolutions. North Korea fired four short- or medium-range missiles on July 2 and seven on July 4.
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U.N. Sanctions Committee to Blacklist N. Korean Officials (Yonhap)
SEOUL – About a dozen North Korean officials are expected to be banned from overseas travel under a U.N. Security Council resolution imposing sanctions on the communist nation for its recent nuclear test, diplomatic sources here said Tuesday [14 July].
Resolution 1874, issued on June 12, obliges the 15-member committee under the Council to draw up a list of entities, goods, and individuals to be subject to sanctions, including embargoes and travel bans, "within thirty days of adoption" of the resolution.
"The member governments should have agreed on the list by July 12 to meet the first deadline, but they decided to continue discussions for a few more days," a foreign ministry source said. "There appears to be progress in the consultations and a deal will be made as early as tomorrow."
The source said the North's traditional allies, China and Russia, have again been involved in disputes with the U.S. and Japan over the scope of sanctions.
"I think the 15 member countries will try to reach an agreement as early as possible to reduce the political burden," the source said. "If agreed, the list will include mostly technology-related officials and experts involved in North Korea's development of missile and nuclear programs. The Council will not target top-level officials like leader Kim Jong Il [Kim Cho'ng-il]."
Among about a dozen North Korean officials likely to be blacklisted, according to the source, is Ju Kyu-chang, first vice director of the Ministry of Defense Industry, who is believed to have executed the North's firing of a long-range rocket in April. Ju is known to be one of Kim's confidants.
Meanwhile, Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Wu Dawei headed back home after a three-day trip here as part of a rare regional tour that also took him to Russia, the U.S., and Japan.
Wu, chairman of the six-way talks on the North's nuclear program, met with South Korea's top nuclear envoy Wi So'ng-rak [Wi Sung-lac] and other senior government officials to discuss ways to implement the U.N. resolution.
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N. Korea Prepares For Flood Damage as Torrential Rain Hits Peninsula (Yonhap)
SEOUL – North Korea's state media said Tuesday that the country's workers were joining efforts to prevent potential flood damage from torrential rains now battering the country that Seoul's meteorologists say will be severe.
Seasonal floods are common in North Korea where decades of deforestation have left the country without a natural protection against annual rains, which can wipe out harvests and threaten the country's already unstable food production.
Railroad and transportation workers in Sariwon, North Hwanghae Province, "are putting their energy into projects to prevent damage during the torrential rainy season," state-run Radio Pyongyang said.
The workers are examining railroad drainage facilities, repairing eroded parts and setting up emergency measures, it said.
The Korea Meteorological Administration in Seoul has forecast that the current storm will be more severe in some parts of North Korea than in the South. Southern and central parts of North Korea are expected to receive 60 to 150 millimeters of rain on Tuesday, compared to Seoul and its surrounding Gyeonggi Province, which is forecast to receive some 50 to 100mm.
The peninsula's monsoon season began on June 20, with Seoul having since received 490mm of rain in the past 12 days through Monday, the most recorded since 1980.
Unseasonably mild weather last year allowed North Korea's grain harvest to expand to 4.3 million tons, compared with 4 million tons in 2007, according to South Korean government data. North Korea is expected to need an additional 1 million ton or more of outside aid this year to feed its 24 million people, according to Seoul officials.
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China Doesn’t Have Contingency Plan on NK (Korea Times)
BEIJING -- China doesn't have a contingency plan to enter North Korea in case there is sudden turmoil, because the superpower will continue to provide aid to the impoverished country and keep it from imploding, making the need for such a plan unwarranted from the beginning, a South Korean scholar has claimed.
“There are many pending issues that define the North Korea-China relationship. But the key question that ultimately reveals China's strategy for North Korea is its contingency plan. If you are clear about it, other questions are all just commentaries,” said Han Suk-hee, a Yonsei University expert on the China-North Korea relationship.
China has on numerous occasions brushed aside the outside suspicion that it has a contingency plan of sending troops into North Korea in case the latter collapses because of a malfunctioning economy or internal turmoil caused by a power struggle in the aftermath of Kim Jong-il's death.
Here, the common view states that Beijing would want to have a contingency plan because it fears the collapse of its neighbor that would result in a deluge of North Korean refugees fleeing the starving nation to China's northeast ― which borders North Korea ― destabilizing the region.
Beijing also worries that the reunified Korea that will form after the collapse of North Korea may become more nationalistic and reclaim the northeastern Yanbian Korean Autonomous region where there are 2 million ethnic Koreans with Chinese citizenship.
Understandably, when a contingency happens in North Korea, the country that suffers the most is North Korea, followed by China.
“So, these two countries share a strong degree of common ground to prevent the contingency from materializing,” said Han.
One way China has been helping North Korea in this regard is economic assistance. Han said China's economic support for North Korea has recently undergone some change.
“In the past, they were providing free economic aid. But these days, China is keener to have Chinese firms invest in North Korea” On the North Korean side, he said, it reportedly abolished residence restrictions for Chinese businessmen. All this indicates that China and North Korea are preparing for a “long-term” future.
Meanwhile, analysts believe the single most important factor that would require any contingency operation in North Korea is the death of Kim Jong-il. Given that North Korea is run like a monarchy, some predict that there will be bloodshed among the three princes in their jockeying for the crown when the king is no longer present.
Han dismisses this view. He believes that North Korea has been preparing for this obvious contingency well in advance, and China, which has been carefully monitoring the internal situation in North Korea, also feels confident that there will be ``orderly regime maintenance" even after Kim's death.
“Furthermore, Kim's death is not an overnight event, but is something that the rest of the world, including China, has been closely monitoring and following up. And when the outside world talks about contingency, and that has been for more than 10 years, it's commonsense to expect that there is movement inside to prevent such a contingency from happening,” he said.
Like other analysts, Han believes that China's posture on North Korea is complex and contradictory. ``As China is integrating into international society and projecting the image of a responsible state holder, it knows that supporting a regime like North Korea doesn't make sense in many ways. It doesn't go well with the positive image that China wants to show to the world. So, it didn't have a choice but to support the U.N. resolution to punish North Korea. But then, it doesn't want to see North Korea collapse either. So, it has two conflicting attitudes on North Korea."
Although China gestured by joining the United Nations to sanction North Korea, and there have even been news reports that China was ``enraged" by Pyongyang's second nuclear test, says Han, China ultimately cannot afford to let go of North Korea.
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S Korean police: Hackers extracted data in attacks (Associated Press)
SEOUL – Hackers extracted lists of files from computers that they contaminated with the virus that triggered cyber attacks last week in the United States and South Korea, police in Seoul said Tuesday.
The attacks, in which floods of computers tried to connect to a single Web site at the same time to overwhelm the server, caused outages on prominent government-run sites in both countries.
The finding means that hackers not only used affected computers for Web attacks, but also attempted to steal information from them. That adds to concern that contaminated computers were ordered to damage their own hard disks or files after the Web assaults.
Still, the new finding does not mean information was stolen from attacked Web sites, such as those of the White House and South Korea's presidential Blue House, police said. It also does not address suspicions about North Korea's involvement, they said.
Police reached those conclusions after studying a malicious computer code in an analysis of about two dozen computers - a sample of the tens of thousands of computers that were infected with the virus that triggered the attacks, said An Chan-soo, a senior police officer investigating the cyber attacks. The officer said that only lists of files were extracted, not files themselves.
"It's like hackers taking a look inside the computers," An said. "We're trying to figure out why they did this."
Extracted file lists were sent to 416 computers in 59 countries, 15 of them in South Korea. Police have found some file lists in 12 receiver computers and are trying to determine whether hackers broke into those systems and stole the lists, An said.
Investigators have yet to identify the hackers or determine for sure where they operated from. Dozens of high-profile U.S. and South Korean Web sites were targeted.
There have been no new Web attacks since the last wave launched Thursday evening.
South Korea's spy agency, the National Intelligence Service, lowered the country's cyberattack alert Monday as affected Web sites returned to normal.
North Korea is suspected of involvement. The spy agency told lawmakers last week that a North Korean military research institute had been ordered to destroy the South's communications networks, local media reported.
The agency said in a statement Saturday that it has "various evidence" of North Korean involvement, but cautioned it has yet to reach a final conclusion.
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