Korean Peninsula Today, 28 July 2009

Today’s highlights:

1) The North Korean foreign ministry spokesman stating that there is a “specific and reserved form of dialogue” to handle the current deadlock over its nuclear program in an apparent call on the US to initiate bilateral contact
2) North Korea increased its anti-US rhetoric on the 56th Korean War Armistice anniversary
3) A South Korean report which states China’s northeast region has emerged as North Korean cyber hub
4) The United Nations Command statement that North Korea has violated the armistice more than 425,000 times
and 5) South Korea’s National Unification Advisory Council, which released a book recently, criticizing the North Korean policies of past two administrations.

North Korea Calls for New Dialogue on its Nuclear Program (Yonhap)

SEOUL – North Korea on Monday [27 July] demanded a new form of dialogue to resolve the stalemate over its nuclear program and reiterated it won't return to the six-party talks, in an apparent call on the United States to open bilateral contact.

Washington has been unresponsive to Pyongyang's reported desire for one-on-one talks. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in a media interview on Sunday, "We still want North Korea to come back to the negotiating table" that also involves South Korea, China, Japan and Russia.

South Korea said it is "not opposed" to bilateral dialogue between North Korea and the U.S., asserting Seoul and Washington have a close alliance.

In a statement from its foreign ministry spokesman, North Korea said the six-party talks are now dead and should be replaced with a new form of dialogue.

"There is a specific and reserved form of dialogue that can address the current situation," the unidentified spokesman said.

The spokesman did not specify what the new form is, but North Korea is known to have long favored bilateral contact with the U.S., which can pull off deals in a shorter time than when dealing with all the other regional countries. After an ASEAN security forum urged Pyongyang to return to the six-party talks last week, the North Korean ambassador to the United Nations, Sin Son-ho, suggested Pyongyang wants direct talks with Washington.

"The six-party talks are gone forever," he told reporters in New York on Saturday. "(But) We are not against dialogue. We are not against any negotiation for the issues of common concern."

Clinton did not take to the proposal.

"We still want North Korea to come back to the negotiating table, to be part of an international effort that will lead to denuclearization," she said on an NBC television program, returning from the ASEAN forum.

Clinton also described North Korea as "very isolated now." Recounting one of the ASEAN sessions in Thailand, she said, "They don't have any friends left" and "Everyone else just didn't even listen" as a North Korean representative presented criticisms of Washington.

South Korea joined the U.S. call for six-party talks but noted it does not oppose a bilateral approach.

"We hope that North Korea will return to the six-way talks at an early date," Seoul's foreign ministry spokesman Moon Tae-young said at a press briefing. "We are not opposed to dialogue between North Korea and the U.S."

With the latest statement, North Korea also said the U.S. and its allies are misleading the international community about why the six-party forum came to an end.

"The six-party talks were consequently reduced to a platform for blocking even the DPRK's (North Korea) development of science and technology for peaceful purposes and curbing the normal progress of its economy," the spokesman said.

North Korea withdrew from the talks in April after the U.N. Security Council condemned its long-range rocket launch with a resolution imposing sanctions. North Korea described the U.N. action as unfair, claiming the launch was to orbit a satellite and that other nations had not been punished for the same deed. South Korea, the U.S. and Japan viewed the launch as a disguised missile test.

"This is the essence and the background of the current state of affairs, which the countries that are not parties to the six-party talks should understand," he said.

The six-party talks began in 2003 to seek ways of terminating the North's nuclear weapons program. The last round in December ended with no progress amid disputes on how to verify the North's past nuclear activities.

In a separate article, the North's party newspaper Rodong Sinmun rejected U.S. logic that North Korea's nuclear program should never be allowed as it would trigger a chain reaction in the region. The paper said the U.S. nuclear protection of South Korea and Japan is more likely to prompt a war.

"Danger of war will increase only when one of the two h ostile parties is armed with nuclear weapons or protected by a 'nuclear umbrella' while the other remains defenseless, having none of them. The DPRK's access to nukes helped keep a nuclear balance in Northeast Asia even in the least, thus making it possible to deter a war," the paper claimed.

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Here is a sample of what the North Korean media said about the separate method of dialogue” (site admin):

DPRK FM Spokesman Suggests 'Separate Method of Dialogue' To Resolve Nuclear Issue ([North] Korean Central Broadcasting Station, original in Korean)

At the Ministerial Meeting of the ASEAN Regional Forum held in Thailand on 23 July, some countries expressed their views that the Six-Party Talks should be resumed.

Among the countries, a country deliberately raised its voice to apply pressure on us, whereas some other countries appealed for dialogue due to concern about the aggravation of the situation on the Korean peninsula.

Siding with the call for the resumption of the Six-Party Talks without knowing the essence of the matter can actually create an artificial obstacle to coping with the situation, rather than help to reduce tensions.

To help the understanding of those countries that truly desire peace and stability on the Korean peninsula, we would like to once again clearly explain why the Six-Party Talks have eternally come to an end. The Six-Party Talks, because of the complicated nature of the configuration of the talks, were talks that could not be held without respecting the principle of respecting sovereignty and equality.

Only our country participated in the talks as the sole nonaligned nation, whereas all other participating countries were either permanent members of the UN Security Council [UNSC] or military allies of the United States.

Because of the extreme imbalance in the configuration of the countries participating in the talks, what was vitally required more than at any other talks was precisely the principle of respecting sovereignty and equality among the participating countries.

This was precisely the reason that the spirit of mutual respect and equality was stipulated at the beginning of the joint statement that the Six-Party Talks agreed upon and adopted on 19 September 2005.

However, with our launching of a satellite for peaceful purposes on 5 April in this year, a situation developed in which this principle -- which had been the lifeblood of the Six-Party Talks -- collapsed.

As was made known, our launch of the satellite was carried out in a legitimate manner by following all the international legal procedures exactly as other countries do.

Nonetheless, none other than the countries participating in the Six-Party Talks committed a hostile act by taking the lead in dragging our launch of the satellite alone to the UNSC in a discriminatory manner and denouncing it there and putting sanctions against the Republic into action.

As we already clarified through the press statements, the Six-Party Talks have thus been reduced to a site to block even our scientific and technological development for peaceful purposes and to thereby inhibit our normal economic development itself.

After all, it became clear that the hidden intention the other participating countries were trying to realize through the Six-Party Talks was to disarm us and prevent us from doing anything, and to thereby make us in the end, barely maintain our lives with the crumbs they throw [us].

In this way, the Six-Party Talks have irrevocably degenerated and faded in color from the original goal and nature of the talks due to the consistent maneuvers that the hostile forces perpetrated to crush the Republic.

Had the United States and other countries participating in the Six-Party Talks not committed such a reckless act of abusing the UNSC and trying to rob in broad daylight, even our right to launch satellites, the situation may possibly not have reached today's state.

At present, the participating countries, which are calling for the resumption of the Six-Party Talks, obstinately remain silent about their such acts that initially broke off the talks and triggered a standoff.

If some countries, which are outside the stage of the Six-Party Talks, unconditionally side with the call for the resumption of the Six-Party Talks without knowing such a background and essence of the matter and by believing that there is no other alternative, this is wholly harmful to coping with the situation.

The fact that others try to consider us -- who regard our sovereignty and dignity as lifeblood -- to be a country that attends or does not attend the Six-Party Talks according to others' demand itself is foolish and outrageous.

We, who are directly involved in the issue, are supposed to know the way and method of resolving our issue far better than any others.

There is a separate method of dialogue that can resolve the current situation.

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N. Korea bolsters anti-U.S. propaganda on armistice anniversary (Yonhap)

SEOUL – North Korea vowed to bolster leader Kim Jong Il's military-first policy on Monday, the anniversary of the cease-fire that ended the Korean War, saying the United States continues to try to stifle the country with its hostile policy.

Marking the 56th armistice anniversary, North Korean state media bolstered anti-U.S. propaganda and urged citizens to ratchet up "combatant" efforts to build a strong nation.

"'Let us protect to our death the revolutionary leadership headed by great comrade Kim Jong Il!' This is the permanent representation of our life and struggle," the Rodong Sinmun, the newspaper of the Workers' Party, said in an editorial carried by the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).

North Korea routinely publishes anti-U.S. statements on the anniversary. On this date in 1953, North Korea and China signed a cease-fire accord with the U.S.-led United Nations Command that fought for South Korea, ending the three-year battle that left millions of soldiers and civilians dead on both sides of the border. The cease-fire has not been replaced by a truce, leaving the two Koreas technically at war.

Throngs of North Koreans visited the grand statue in Pyongyang of Kim Il Sung [Kim Il-so'ng], the North's founder who led the country's Korean People's Army during the war, to lay floral baskets before it, the KCNA said. Kim Jong Il [Kim Cho'ng-il], who succeeded his father as head of the country, also sent one, it said.

North Korea refers to the war as the "Fatherland Liberation War," describing it as a struggle by the Korean People's Army to "liberate" South Korea from U.S. aggression.

"The victory of the Fatherland Liberation War, as days go by, engraves more deeply into us the value of the gun and the just causes of our party's military-first ideology and its course. No matter how the situation changes and no matter from where the wind blows, the commitment of our party, our military and our people to songun [military-first] (military-first policy) will never waver," the party editorial said.

The editorial also linked such combatant propaganda to the country's current foremost campaign of rebuilding its frail economy to create a "strong, prosperous and powerful nation" by 2012, the birth centennial of Kim Il-sung.

"All the party members, the Korean People's Army soldiers and all the people should achieve a new revolutionary turnaround in all fronts of the construction of a strong, prosperous and powerful nation, wielding their homeland's dignity all over the world with the combatant spirit of the 1950s," it said.

Farmers should "uphold the party and the homeland with rice" like their fathers did during wartime, it said.

In a separate radio dispatch, the Korean Central Broadcasting Station said the country has the capability to strike its enemies over long distances, accusing the U.S. of an attempt to wage a second Korean War.

As well as its nuclear force, North Korea is "equipped with the long-distance strike capabilities that can track down any enemy and entirely wipe them out," a general named Ri Kyu-man was quoted by the radio as saying during an anniversary gathering.

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Here is a sample of the North Korean anti-US rhetoric (site admin):

Victory Is Always on Part of DPRK in Anti-U.S. Confrontation (KCNA)

Pyongyang – The U.S. imperialist aggressors who had boasted of being the "strongest" in the world knelt down before the Korean people on July 27, juche 42 (1953) after sustaining bitter fiasco in the Korean war.

In the three-year-long Fatherland Liberation War, the young Korean People's Army which was founded as a regular army only three years ago under the leadership of President Kim Il Sung [Kim Il-so'ng] shattered the myth of U.S. imperialists' "mightiness" which had been formed for 100-odd years and brought about the beginning of their downhill turn.

The notorious generals of the U.S. who had rendered "distinguished military services" and "ever-victorious" divisions suffered a disastrous defeat in the war.

In the post-war period, too, the Korean army and people defended the dignity of the nation and the sovereignty of the country, thoroughly frustrating the vicious and persistent war maneuvers of the U.S. imperialists at each step.

In January 1968 when the U.S. imperialists brought huge amounts of armed forces in the areas near the DPRK, threatening to make a "reprisal" with the armed spy ship "Pueblo" incident as a pretext, and openly tried to start an armed invasion, the DPRK solemnly declared that it would return retaliation for the "retaliation" of the U.S. and all-out war for all-out war.

The U.S. imperialists who had resorted to every conceivable means for nearly a year bent their knees before the Korean people again.

After then, they had persistently perpetrated such provocations as the large spy plane "EC-121" incident and "Panmunjom [P'anmunjo'm] incident" only to sustain miserable defeats.

Recently the United States fabricated a "presidential statement" and "resolution on sanctions" of UNSC, taking issue with the launch of a peaceful artificial satellite and the second nuclear test of the DPRK. This time, too, the revolutionary armed force of the DPRK warned that it would mount an unpredictable and unavoidable annihilating blow to the provokers.

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China's Northeast Region in the Spotlight as North [Korea]'s 'Cyber Hub (Yonhap, original in Korean)

As the National Intelligence Service points the finger of blame to North Korea for the recent DDos (distributed denial-of-service) attacks on major state organizations in the ROK and the United States, China's northeast region is receiving renewed spotlight as home to many highly-trained North Korean IT [information technology] operatives.

North Korean IT personnel began swarming into China's northeast region along the border with North Korea, including Dandong, Shenyang, and Dalian, around 2004, and the region emerged as North Korea's cyber operational hub where they received technology training and set up joint ventures and other outfits to earn foreign exchange.

Even now, North Korean IT operatives running joint ventures and working at Chinese companies are estimated to number 400.

One place that stands out the most is Ch'ilbosan Hotel in Shenyang. This hotel, run by a North Korean insurance company after a 22-million-yuan purchase in the mid-1990s, has North Korea's consul general in Shenyang as a sitting president, and North Korea experts believe that it is serving as a base for North Korea's Internet server operations.

North Korea is using a leased line of China Telecom of China routed through Dandong instead of using the country domain (.KP) assigned by Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) and administered by a German national. That is why no record of North Korean Internet Protocol (IP) addresses is left after North Korea's possible cyber hacking attempts.

Ch'lbosan Hotel is considered the best place for a cyber operational hub in China because the entire property is owned by North Korea and it is easy to maintain security with no risk of being exposed to the outside world.

Xinghai Hotel in Dandong is another major North Korean cyber base suspected by North Korea experts.

Located along the Amnok River and little known to even Dandong residents, it is a small four-story hotel looking more like a motel and mainly patronized by North Koreans. Some 10-memer IT staff sent by North Korea sometime around 2004 is believed to be using the place as a cyber base with optical cables installed.

"Dongfang Tsegong," established in Dandong five or six years ago as a joint venture between North Korea's Academy of Social Sciences and a Chinese company, was also in the spotlight when high-quality North Korean IT personnel sent there for six-month-to-one-year stints developed software programs and earned foreign exchange, but they are now believed to have pulled out.

North Korea set up dozens of other small IT outfits in Shenyang, Dandong, and Dalian as joint ventures with Chinese and ROK companies, but many of them shut down operations in the wake of last year's global financial crisis after struggling to adapt to the "capitalist market mindset."

The remaining ones are operating as subcontractors of Chinese and ROK companies instead of developing their own software programs, and former employees at North Korean businesses moved to other companies in China to work on software development and animation production.

They are highly talented brains educated in leading North Korean universities such as Kim Ch'aek University of Technology and having master's and doctoral degrees under their belt. They are paid monthly wages between 4,000 (750,000 won) and 5,000 (940,000 won) yuan, roughly half of what their Chinese counterparts with similar qualifications get, according to Chinese IT industry sources.

The Chinese IT industry has differing views on them.

The head of one Chinese IT company developing software programs with six North Korean employees said: "Their strengths are solid basic knowledge, the ability to concentrate, and diligent work ethics. They are weak in applications, but, with two-to-three years of experience, they are on a par with ROK and other developed country standards in terms of program development skills."

However, a Korean-Chinese animation producer said, "When it comes to animatio n, which requires creativity and rich imagination, it is almost impossible to work with them. The biggest problem is that they are so rigid in their thinking without global perspectives and the ability to see the broad picture."

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N.K. has violated Armistice 425,000 times (Korea Herald)

North Korea has ceaselessly made attempts to violate the Korean War ceasefire agreement signed 56 years ago. The North violated the Armistice Agreement in more than 425,000 cases between July 27, 1953, and April 1994, according to the United Nations Command.

Most of the violations, 99.9 percent out of 425,271 cases, took place on land. The number of violations by naval and air forces amounted to 104 and 111 cases, respectively.

North Korea claimed that the South has committed 835,563 violations in the same period, a record widely regarded as fabricated for propaganda purposes.

The Korean War Armistice was signed 56 years ago between the commander-in-chief of the U.N. Command and the supreme commander of the Korean People's Army and the commander of the Chinese People's volunteers.

The ceasefire agreement stipulates that "the commanders of the opposing sides enforce a complete cessation of all hostilities in Korea by armed forces, including all units and personnel of the ground, naval and air forces."

Until 1991, the U.N. Command and North Korea had traded their statistics on violation of the Armistice at Panmunjeom each month after the ceasefire.

North Korea unilaterally stopped the exchange of statistics in 1991 after a South Korean general was appointed as the chief representative of the U.N. Command Military Armistice Commission. The North claimed the appointment of a South Korean made the commission nominal.

Thus, the U.N. Command stopped drawing its own official figures on armistice violations.

On land, North Korea mostly fired gunshots in the Demilitarized Zone, crossed the Military Demarcation Line or brought in firearms into the DMZ.

Major cases of violations include the arrival of 26 armed guerillas on the eastern coastal town of Gangneug in September 1996. Twenty-four of the North Korean guerillas, who came using a submarine, were shot to death by the South Korean navy or killed themselves. One was captured alive and the other escaped.

In August 1976, a U.S. soldier pruning around the Joint Security Area in Panmunjeom was killed by dozens of North Korean soldiers.

In August 1975, two North Korean soldiers kidnapped a South Korean farmer, threatening him with guns.

Four underground tunnels dug by North Koreans to intrude the South were found between 1974 and 1990.

North Korea fired gunshots towards the South and crossed the MDL dozens of times.

In the waters, North Korea mostly crossed the Northern Limit Line, fired gunshots at vessels, and seized fishing boats and fishermen.

The deadly naval clashes in 1999 and 2002 are examples.

In the air, North Korea hijacked or bombed aircraft, and intruded the South's territorial sky.

North Korea's bombing of a Korean Air passenger flight in November 1987 killed all 115 civilians on board.

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Presidential council blasts past administrations' N.K. policies (Yonhap)

SEOUL – A presidential council on North Korean policies recently released a book sharply criticizing the past two liberal administrations' North Korean policies, Yonhap News learned Monday [27 July].

The National Unification Advisory Council (NUAC) released and distributed the booklet to its members early this month, describing the joint declaration from the inaugural inter-Korean summit in 2000 as a product of "some 500 million dollar's worth of off-the-books deals," and labeling it as lacking in any "procedural justification."

The first summit in 2000 between then President Kim Tae-chung and North Korean leader Kim Jong Il paved the way for a flurry of diplomatic, economic and cultural exchanges between the two countries that technically remain at war. South Korea bolstered its economic assistance pledges in the second summit in 2007 between then President No Mu-hyo'n and North Korea's Kim, promising to build roads and factories and modernize North Korea's dilapidated industrial infrastructure.

It was, however, later discovered that Kim Tae-chung's government helped Hyundai pay North Korea US$500 million just before the historic summit nine years ago. Hyundai claimed that the money was the payment for its exclusive business rights in the North, but it included $100 million that came out of government coffers.

The NUAC also described the joint communique from the second inter-Korean summit held in 2007 as an "irresponsible agreement" by the then administration which handed over a heavy fiscal burden to the next government.

"It was an irresponsible agreement which laid a heavy burden on the people for joint economic projects that cost at least 14 trillion won," the council said.

The council also argued that most of the food provided to North Korea from humanitarian aid ended up as military rations and that much of the cash provided to Pyongyang was channeled into its missile and nuclear weapons program.

Chun Hae-sung, spokesman of Seoul's Unification Ministry, said that the publication of the booklet was not discussed with officials beforehand and that the government upholds and supports the spirit of the previous inter-Korean agreements.

Taking a tougher stance on the communist neighbor, President Lee Myung-bak has said he supports the summit accords but emphasized that the two sides should first review whether they are economically viable.