Korean Peninsula Today, 29 July 2009

Today’s highlights:
1) A US State Department official stated that North Korean call for dialogue fails to meet the international demand for resumption of Six-Party Talks
2) A South Korea-based North Korean defector-run media outlet reported 34 people are either dead or missing in Yangkang Province in North Korea due to the recent monsoon
3) The World Food Program documents showed that the food aid in North Korea is providing limited rations only to 1.3 million people instead of the originally targeted 6.2 million
4) China seized of 154 lbs of strategic metal shipment at the border bound for North Korea, which could be used for missile enhancement
and 5) The Korean Sharing Movement stated that it is expecting a delay for the planned visit to Pyongyang due to lack of formal invitation by the North

NKorean call for dialogue 'fails to meet' demands: US (AFP)

Washington – North Korea's call for dialogue "fails to meet" demands it return to nuclear disarmament negotiations with the United States and four other countries, a senior US official said Monday, AFP reports.

North Korea's foreign ministry said there was a "specific and reserved form of dialogue" that Pyongyang would entertain over the nuclear impasse, in what observers said was a direct overture to the United States.

But a senior State Department official told AFP the statement "fails to meet" US and international demands for North Korea to resume disarmament talks with the United States, South Korea, China, Japan and Russia.

"We have a (six-party) framework and the North Koreans need to recommit to denuclearization through that framework and implement their obligations," the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The United States has repeatedly refused to sidestep the multilateral negotiations and insisted there is no chance of direct talks.

North Korea's foreign ministry Monday again dismissed the forum.

"Any attempt to side with those who claim the resumption of the six-party talks without grasping the essence of the matter will not help ease tension," a foreign ministry spokesman said in a statement carried by state media.

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

The spokesman did not elaborate on what form such a dialogue could take.

"What Pyongyang calls for is a direct US-North Korean dialogue," said Kim Yong-Hyun, a North Korea expert and professor at Seoul's Dongguk University.

The North quit the six-party talks after the United Nations Security Council censured it for a long-range rocket launch in April. In May, it also staged its second nuclear test, further ratcheting up tension.

State Department spokesman Ian Kelly, referring to longstanding policy, told reporters the United States is "open to a bilateral dialogue, but only in the context of the six-party talks, only in a multilateral context."

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34 Dead in Yangkang Province Flooding (Daily NK)

Changchun, China – Torrential rains which recently hit Haesan, Yangang Province in North Korea apparently resulted in 34 dead or missing persons and 41 homes being swept away in the waves.

An inside source in Yangang Province told The DailyNK by phone on the 24th, "Many residential homes gave way and many casualties resulted from the downpour. The employees of factories and enterprises have been mobilized to work on recovery projects, but this will most likely take a long time."

The source said, "Due to the rainfall, Yeonbongdong, Tapsungdong and Haehwadong were flooded, and 41 single-story homes collapsed. The number of deceased or missing people has reached 34. Usually, two or three households, four or five in some cases, occupy each residence, so at least 100 families have experienced some kind of damage."

He explained the weather that caused the tragedy, "Rain started falling, but it stopped early on the morning of the 11th. But then it really began to pour between two and three in the afternoon. Thumbnail-sized hailstones started coming down, then falling in buckets."

"The victims of the downpour were mostly elderly people staying at home, children and some who were lost in the current while trying to salvage their belongings. If the rain had fallen at night instead of during the day, I do not know what kind of a tragedy might have resulted."

The flooding was mostly in Yeonbongdong, as well as Haehwadong and Haeheungdong. By comparison, Masan and its surrounding region were less seriously affected, and the areas around Hwajeonri and Kumsandong experienced hardly any damage at all.

The reason for Yeonbongdong and Haehwadong being so seriously affected seems to have been the construction of a road on top of a stream which flows in front of the Kim Jong Suk College of Education.

"The citizens in Yeongbongdong have actually been concerned about possible rainfall damage since the building of the road over the water," the source reported, claiming that the calamity was not simply a flood disaster, but a man-made one.

Currently, the roads in the Yeonbongdong area have completely been destroyed, forcing all vehicles to take a detour. Even middle school students have been mobilized to dig and carry the clay and sand to fill the roads.

The source relayed news that the North Korean authorities are allowing those households whose homes collapsed in the downpour to temporarily stay in surrounding factory buildings, and have begun recovery projects including repairs to damaged roads. Those citizens who have been mobilized for these projects have apparently been facing substantial hardships such as having to carry mud on their backs.

The source relayed the local atmosphere, commenting, "No national policy has been implemented to deal with the flood damage. Without bearing any of the responsibility as a state, North Korea has just put pressure on the citizens."

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Questions Are Raised About Who Profits from UN Aid to North Korea (Fox News)

Is North Korea's dictatorial regime quietly profiting from U.N. emergency food supplies delivered to its starving people, even as the regime squeezes those deliveries down to a trickle?

Documents produced by the World Food Program, the U.N.'s flagship relief agency, outlining its current emergency operations in the insular communist state, raise a number of touchy questions about the financing and logistics of the effort, which was originally intended to feed some 6.2 million of North Korea's most vulnerable people, but which is currently providing limited rations only to 1.33 million.

The $500 million program was meant to run from September, 1, 2008 to November 31, 2009, to deliver nearly 630,000 tons of food aid to North Korea at a time when it is suffering from severe flood damage and fertilizer shortages that have led to local food price increases.

Currently, WFP says that only $75.4 million worth of food aid has been delivered under the emergency program, as international donors have recoiled at the Kim Jong Il regime's recent nuclear detonation and provocative missile launchings toward Japan and Hawaii.

WFP emergency relief program documents obtained by FOX News show that from the outset the food agency planned to pay extraordinarily high transportation costs for sending relief supplies to North Korea from around the world--about a dollar for every two dollar's worth of food aid shipped into the country under the program.

Moreover, enormous sums were involved: $130,334,172 for “external transport” of 629,938 tons of grain and other food relief supplies for the overall program. (The food supplies themselves are projected to cost $297,396,729.)

For comparative purposes, the “external” shipping costs planned by WFP for the aid program average about $206.90 per metric ton of food aid.

Click here to view the PDF version of WFP's planned cost for food aid and transportation to North Korea: http://www.foxnews.com/projects/pdf/WFP_NK_cost_breakdown.pdf

Those rates were described as “absolutely ridiculous” by an expert on bulk shipping consulted by FOX News, even for sending goods by international shipping carriers to the remote region that includes North Korea. Another international grain expert consulted by FOX News described them as “way out of line” with past and present international shipping rates for bulk grain and other basic food commodities.

What WFP has not revealed in its documentation until questioned by FOX News, however, is that a substantial, but unspecified, amount of that money is intended to move the emergency aid from China to its final North Korean destination via shipping firms owned by the Kim Jong Il government.

Nowhere in the WFP program documents, which appeared on WFP's public website only after Fox News began raising questions about them, is there any mention of the North Korean hipping involvement.

Click here to view the WFP’s entire North Korean Emergency Assistance program document: http://www.foxnews.com/projects/pdf/WFP_NK_plan.pdf

Even though WFP has not revealed how much of the $130-plus million in planned “external transport” money Kim Jong Il's shipping firms are in line to receive, an analysis of the current costs involved in getting such supplies to their second-last destination reveal that the amount slated to pay for the last leg of the journey to North Korea could be huge.

A WFP spokesman blamed the overall high cost on “ the remote geographical location of [North Korea] from place of procurement (normally Black Seas, South Africa and South America).”

All WFP food aid, he added, was first shipped to the northern Chinese port of Dalian, before moving on to the North Korean port of Nampo.

But the spokesman then added that high costs were also due to “the lack of competition of transporters for transshipment” between Dalian and Nampo.

In fact, shipments to and from Dalian, China, one of the major centers of China's huge export sector, are commonplace and hardly expensive by international standards. Data kept by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, for example, shows that grain shipments from Brazil to China between April and June of this year have varied from $32.50 to $42 per metric ton.

Moreover, those international shipping rates have been on a precipitous downward slide since June, 2008-three months before the WFP aid program began. Even allowing for higher rates from the Black Sea and South Africa, international shipping experts told FOX News that the rates would come nowhere near $206 per ton-especially as there is currently a surplus of international shipping capacity.

The same, however, apparently can't be said of transport between Dalian and Nampo-a distance of 210 nautical miles.

There, the WFP spokesman said, WFP relies entirely on “feeder vessels belonging to the [North Korean] government.”

Asked late last week by FOX News to provide specifics of the rates charged by North Korean vessels for carrying international food aid home, the WFP spokesman did not provide an answer before this article was published.

However much the Kim Jong Il regime charges for bringing food to its people, it is not the only money that WFP provides to Kim for humanitarian assistance.

The WFP documents show that the government was to receive an additional projected $5,039,504 as a transport fuel subsidy if the relief program gets back into full swing. The “fuel reimbursement levy” amounts to $8 per ton of aid delivered, and according to the WFP spokesman, is normally not provided to countries that receive food aid-they are expected to chip in for this cost on their own--except under a waiver that North Korea has been granted.

So far, the Kim regime's National Coordinating Committee, a subsidiary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, has received $1.16 million under this waiver since September 2008, with the promise of an additional $361,400 to come. The WFP spokesman emphasized that the money was not paid in hard currency.

The same apparently applies to $4,409,566 intended by WFP to enhance a “capacity building strategy of government counterparts” envisaged in the relief plan. According to the WFP spokesman, this means management training and information systems upgrades for the Kim government to handle the new food aid. WFP is also paying for warehouses and equipment to handle the aid. So far, the regime has only $103,200 of the projected total, with another $155,000 committed.

Amid all the fuzzy math of the WFP relief program, there is a final quirk: the inexplicably high transportation costs work to the benefit not only of the Kim regime, but also to the benefit of WFP.

As a matter of standard practice, WFP charges a standard 7% management fee against “direct operational costs” of such relief efforts to support its worldwide operations, over and above the costs it incurs in the specific relief exercise. These, in WFP-speak, are known as the organization's “indirect support costs.”

Based on direct operational costs in North Korea of $445,033,971-including the $133.3 million in “external transport” costs-- WFP expected to reap $32,948,811 as its 7% share of “indirect support costs.”

Its 7% “indirect support” levy on the extraordinary $130.3 million transport bill would amount to about $9.1 million.

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China seizes smuggled metal bound for North Korea (Reuters)

BEIJING – Chinese border police have seized 70 kg (154 lb) of the strategic metal vanadium bound for North Korea, a local newspaper said on Tuesday, foiling an attempt to smuggle a material used to make missile parts.

The U.N. Security Council has tightened restrictions on North Korea in response to its May 25 nuclear test. The sanctions are meant to cut off the North's arms trade.

Although the seizure is in line with China's own export controls, Chinese analysts had predicted Beijing would step up inspections on road and rail traffic into North Korea to help enforce the tightened sanctions.

Altogether 68 bottles totaling 70 kg of vanadium worth 200,000 yuan ($29,280) were seized at the Dandong border with North Korea, the Dandong News said.

"Customs agents at the Dandong border crossing inspect six boxes of the rare metal vanadium found hidden under boxes of fruit in a truck stopped during border checks," the newspaper said in a front-page caption of a photo dated July 24.

Vanadium is a metal that strengthens steel and protects against rust. It is alloyed with steel to make missile casings, as well as high speed tools, superconducting magnets and jet engines.

China restricts the export of vanadium and other minor metals as part of a domestic policy meant to preserve strategic metals, encourage investment in processing industries and control international price fluctuations.

On Monday the chief executive of a Japan-based trading company pleaded guilty in a Japanese court to illegally exporting to North Korea two tanker trucks that could be used as missile launch pads, the Kyodo news agency said.

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Aid group's Pyongyang visit likely to be postponed (Yonhap)

SEOUL – A South Korean lawmaker and a group of civic aid officials' planned visit to Pyongyang for talks on humanitarian aid will likely be postponed due to an apparent breakdown of communications over protocol regarding cross-border entry, officials said Tuesday [28 July]

Rep. Chung Eui-hwa of the ruling Grand National Party, who also serves as joint head of the Korea Sharing Movement (KSM), a civic aid group, has requested government permission to make a four-day visit to Pyongyang starting Wednesday to meet with officials of the North's Korean Council for Reconciliation and Cooperation (KCRC) to discuss medical and other humanitarian support projects.

The scheduled trip, which the government was largely expected to approve, however, will likely be canceled or postponed as the KCRC has not sent an official invitation to Chung and the civic group officials. The two sides have initially agreed to conduct the meetings, according to officials.

"We're not exactly sure why the North hasn't sent us the invitation. Normally invitations for these kind of talks are delivered a day or two before the set date," one of Chung's aides said.

Kang Young-sik, secretary general of the KSM, also expected a postponement of the visit.

"We've requested the invitation for the visit, which was discussed beforehand. We've received no reply and are not sure of the reason," Kang told Yonhap News Agency.

The government has tentatively decided to authorize the visit by Chung and seven officials at the organization if the delegation is given an official invitation. It would likely mark Seoul's first approval of a visit by a non-government group to North Korea since Pyongyang carried out its second nuclear test on May 25.

Earlier requests by the KSM were rejected due to the state of inter-Korean relations, which have frayed in recent months following the North's nuclear and missile tests.

Korean Peninsula Today, 21 July 2009

US Official Says DPRK Shows No Signs of Returning to Talks on Nuclear Program (AFP)

North Korea shows no signs yet of willingness to return to talks on its nuclear programme, a senior US envoy said Monday as he pushed a two-track strategy of tougher sanctions and offers of dialogue.

"Nothing right now," said Kurt Campbell, assistant secretary of state for East Asia and Pacific affairs, when asked by AFP if the North has shown any signs it is open to negotiation.

Campbell, making his first trip to South Korea since taking over the post last month, was speaking after a meeting with Seoul's nuclear negotiator Wi Sung-Lac.

"We have to closely work together on how to implement the Security Council resolution and on the other hand... we have to think about resumption of dialogue as well," Wi told the US envoy before their closed-door talks.

Campbell, on arrival from Japan Saturday, had outlined what he called a two-track strategy involving tougher sanctions but also negotiations if the North is willing to give up its nuclear ambitions.

The international standoff over the North's nuclear and missile programmes has intensified in recent months.

After the United Nations Security Council censured its April 5 long-range rocket launch, the North announced it was quitting six-party nuclear disarmament talks with the United States, South Korea, China, Russia, and Japan.

It staged its second nuclear test on May 25, prompting the Council to adopt a resolution imposing tougher sanctions.

Last Thursday it imposed a travel ban on five North Korean officials and asset freezes on five more entities involved in the banned weapons programmes.

Campbell Saturday had urged the impoverished North to return to six-party talks, warning it would otherwise face more isolation and economic hardship.

"Truth of the matter is, down this path North Korea has chosen lie greater tensions, greater hardships for its people, more isolation and lack of engagement in the international economy," he told journalists.

"I think it's unsustainable, and we believe that over time, North Korea will ultimately choose to re-engage."

After a scheduled meeting with Foreign Minister Yu Myung-Hwan Monday afternoon, Campbell was to leave for Thailand for the ASEAN Regional Forum on security issues. North Korea is expected to be high on the agenda.

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N. Korea, U.S. unlikely to have bilateral meeting at ASEAN forum (Yonhap)

SEOUL – North Korea and the United States are unlikely to hold a bilateral meeting at the upcoming ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), which Pyongyang's chief diplomat is not expected to attend, Seoul's foreign minister said Monday.

North Korea has notified host Thailand that it will send a vice foreign minister-level official, not its Foreign Minister Pak Ui-chun, to the forum set for Thursday in the Thai resort island of Phuket. The decision came as Pyongyang is locked in a tense standoff with the outside world over its missile and nuclear programs.

"It (bilateral contact) won't be easy, unless Foreign Minister Pak Ui-chun of the North is coming," Seoul's Foreign Minister Yu Myung-hwan told reporters before leaving for Thailand.

Yu said the Thai government and other sources have confirmed to Seoul that the North is sending Park Keun-gwang, a vice foreign minister-level ambassador, to ARF on behalf of the foreign minister.

North Korea has often dispatched its foreign minister to the annual event, which groups 10 ASEAN member countries and 17 other nations. The participants include the U.S., China, Russia, Japan, and the two Koreas who make up the six-way talks on denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula.

The U.S. has said its delegation, led by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, will attend the ARF.

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N. Korea silent over possible flood damage (Yonhap)

SEOUL – Heavy rains hit Pyongyang and North Korea's northern region over the weekend, raising concerns of recurring casualties and damage to farms, but it is difficult for outsiders to assess the losses yet, Seoul officials said Monday.

The North's state media said Pyongyang had 233 millimeters of rain over the span of 18 hours. Yodok in South Hamgyong Province, a northern mountainous county infamous for a political prisoners' camp there, had 287mm, it said. There was no mention of flood damage.

"As of now, there have been reports on the amounts of rainfall, but none about any damage caused as a result. It is difficult to find out if there is any flood damage in the North" in the absence of North Korean media reports, Unification Minister Chun Hae-sung said in a briefing.

Officials in Seoul forecast that this year's damage so far may not be as severe as that which followed heavy rains in the country in 2006 or 2007. Since this year's monsoon season began on the peninsula on June 20, the rain has fallen intermittently and at irregular locations in North Korea, possibly lessening its impact, they said. Rainfall started in the South and moved northward.

"In 2007, the rain fell for over 10 days, and it came constantly, with precipitation of up to 700 millimeters. It's different now," a ministry official said, asking to remain anonymous.

According to the Korea Meteorological Administration in Seoul, Pyongyang had 453mm of rain over the past three weeks, while the Pyonggang county in southern Kangwon Province had 643.5mm, and Kaesong, just north of the inter-Korean border, 358.7mm. Northern towns of Huichon in Jagang Province and Hamghung in South Hamgyong Province had 399.1mm and 219.3mm, respectively.

Kwon Tae-jin, an analyst with the state-run Korea Rural Economic Institute in Seoul, said the downpours in Pyongyang over the weekend "must have been difficult to handle," but there would have been far greater damage had the rain hit the country's central region, where the headwaters of the Taedong River and the Imjin River that flow westward originate.

"Heavy rains there (in the headwaters) directly affect the western region where 70 percent of North Korean farmlands are located. Rains in Pyongyang may affect households and facilities, but not much farmland," he said.

Kwon also said North Korea "won't try to hide its flood damage when it occurs at a time when international aid has already dwindled."

Seasonal floods are common in North Korea where decades of deforestation have left the country without a natural protection of tree cover.

Unusually 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.

Unprecedentedly heavy rainfall in July 2007 left about 500 people dead or missing and about 900,000 victims of the flood, according to North Korean and U.N. reports. Flood damage forced North Korea to postpone the second leaders' summit with South Korea to October from August that year.

After downpours in July 2006, 844 people were reported dead or missing, and 28,000 households were affected. No flood casualties were reported last year.

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U.S., DPRK Negotiate Over Detained Journalists (Chosun Ilbo)

The U.S. and North Korea have started delicate negotiations over two American journalists who were detained and sentenced to hard labor in North Korea, an influential source in Washington said Sunday. The next three or four weeks will be crucial in deciding whether the two women can walk free.

The U.S. House of Representatives intended last week to adopt a resolution urging the North to release reporters Euna Lee and Laura Ling, and the Senate intended to follow suit, but their plans have been postponed at the State Department's request, the source said. The State Department made the request to Congress because it fears that a resolution could anger the North at a time when the two countries have entered sensitive negotiations, the source added.

Earlier, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on July 10 asked the North to grant the two an amnesty and allow them to return home to their families.

John Kerry, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee who was the Democratic presidential candidate in 2004 and former U.S. vice president Al Gore, the founder of the TV station the two reporters work for are being mentioned as possible special envoys to Pyongyang, other sources said.

The U.S. government treats the release of the journalists is a separate issue from the North's nuclear provocations, but their release could lead to fresh nuclear talks.

Gary Samore, a non-proliferation expert and WMD coordinator at the White House, said, "All the sort of straws in the wind vindicate that North Koreans are probably looking for a way to get back to the bargaining table."

Korean Peninsula Today, 17 July 2009

UN sets new North Korea sanctions: A United Nations committee has added a number of North Korean individuals and firms to a sanctions blacklist. (BBC)

Five individuals, five firms and two weapons-related items are subject to the new sanctions regime.

A UN resolution in June toughened sanctions against North Korea after it conducted nuclear and missile tests.

The last time the UN imposed sanctions on Pyongyang, it responded by carrying out a nuclear test, says the BBC's Laura Trevelyan in New York.

According to the UN Security Council sanctions committee, nations are now banned from doing business with five firms involved in North Korea's nuclear programme, and five individuals are to have their financial assets frozen and face a travel ban.

They include:

· three North Korean trading corporations - Namchongang, Korea Hykosin and Korea Tangun, as well as North Korea's bureau of atomic energy

· an Iranian-based company, Hong Kong Electronics, is also sanctioned, accused of moving millions of dollars used for North Korea's nuclear programme

· Yun Ho-jin, Ri Je-son, Hwang Sok-hwa, Ri Hong-sop and Han Yu-ro now face sanctions because of their involvement in the development of North Korea's banned activities

· countries cannot sell North Korea certain types of graphite or para-aramid fiber because they could be used to make parts for ballistic missiles

· The UN resolution in June called for inspections of ships to or from North Korea believed to be carrying goods connected to weapons of mass destruction.

It also broadened the arms embargo and further cut the North's access to the international financial system, but did not authorise the use of force.

Ties between North Korea and the outside world have grown extremely tense since it walked away from six-nation talks aimed at ending its nuclear programme.

It subsequently said it would "weaponise" its plutonium stocks and start enriching uranium, prompting fears that it is working to produce nuclear warheads small enough to put on missiles - though analysts say it could take a long time to do so.

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US welcomes international 'consensus' on N Korea sanctions (AFP)

WASHINGTON – The United States has welcomed the international "consensus" on the implementation of UN sanctions on North Korea, even if the targeted entities have still not been identified.

"We had intensive discussions with all of the countries in the region and had firm statements and very good cooperation from all countries, making clear, both publicly and privately, that they intended to fully implement (UN Security Council resolution) 1874," a senior administration official said Wednesday.

"We are in the final stages right now of completing the discussions around designating persons and entities" under the resolution, which was adopted nearly two months ago, the official added, speaking on condition of anonymity.
China namely considers a strict application of the UN sanctions as the only solution to bring Pyongyang back to the table and have it abandon its nuclear program, another US official said.

"There's a broad consensus, including by China, frankly, that this is the right way to go," the official said. "I don't think the Chinese would take this step lightly, or if they believe that it wasn't important in terms of securing (the) North Koreans' compliance."

The resolution, designed to punish Pyongyang over its May 25 underground nuclear test and subsequent missile firings, calls for beefed up inspections of air, sea and land shipments going to and from North Korea, and an expanded arms embargo.

It also includes new targeted financial restrictions to choke off an important source of revenue for Pyongyang's nuclear and missile sectors, and the United Nations must now publish a list of North Korean entities, goods and individuals to be subjected to an assets freeze and travel ban.

The first US official said North Korea would not be rewarded only for returning to six-party talks -- involving the two Koreas, the United States, Russia, China and Japan.

"It is clear by all the parties... that there's a consensus that given what's happened up till now, that we're not really interested in halfway measures," the official said.

"What we need to see from North Korea is complete denuclearization and for them to take irreversible steps towards that goal."

Asked about two US journalists detained in Pyongyang, the official said Washington had still not received a response to its calls for the two women to be released.

"We haven't had any specific information from them or specific response from the North Koreans," the official said.

A North Korean court on June 8 sentenced Laura Ling, 32, and Euna Lee, 36, to 12 years of "reform through labor" for an illegal border crossing and an unspecified "grave crime."

The pair were on reporting assignment for San Francisco-based Current TV, a company co-founded by former vice president Al Gore, when they were detained by North Korean border guards on March 17 along the frozen Tumen River while researching a story on refugees fleeing the hardline communist state.

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North Korea says no dialogue without respect for sovereignty (Reuters)

SHARM EL-SHEIKH – North Korea's nominal number two leader said on Wednesday dialogue with foreign powers was impossible without respect for the sovereignty of the communist state.

China has sought to defuse international confrontation over North Korea by hosting six-party talks since August 2003.

The irregular negotiations bring together North and South Korea, China, the United States, Japan and Russia, seeking to end the North's nuclear weapons ambitions in return for aid.

"For us there can be no dialogue, nor any negotiations where the principles of respect for sovereign rights and equality are denied," Kim Yong-nam told delegates at the Non-Aligned Movement summit in the Egyptian resort town of Sharm el-Sheikh.

Kim, the president of North Korea's People's Assembly, said the talks ended because most of the involved parties had abandoned these principles.

"In light of the prevailing situation, the government of the DPR Korea had no other way but to take decisive measures to further strengthen its nuclear deterrence," he said.

Washington has for years being trying to press Pyongyang to end its atomic ambitions and reign in missiles that threaten U.S. allies South Korea and Japan.

North Korea launched a number of missiles earlier this month, an act of defiance to the United States on its independence day that further stoked regional tensions.

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Next IAEA Chief Hopes 6-party Nuclear Talks To Be Resumed Soon (Kyodo)

Tokyo – A Japanese diplomat set to become the next International Atomic Energy Agency chief expressed hope Thursday that the six-party talks will resume ''as soon as possible'' and inspectors from the U.N. nuclear watchdog will be back in North Korea to engage in monitoring activities.

Returning to Japan for the first time after being elected for the top IAEA post, Yukiya Amano said he is paying ''high attention'' to U.S. President Barack Obama's proposal to convene the first global nuclear security summit in Washington next March and that the IAEA is starting to study how to get involved in the event.

The 62-year-old Japanese ambassador to the Permanent Mission to the International Organizations in Vienna was elected July 2, making him the first IAEA director general from an Asian country. The voting was held by the 35-member IAEA Board of Governors.

Noting that IAEA inspectors had been involved in monitoring North Korea's main nuclear complex until recently, Amano said, ''We hope that the six-party talks will resume as soon as possible...and an agreement is reached that the IAEA should assume an important role for verification (of Pyongyang's nuclear activities) and that we will engage in such activities.'' The six-party talks aimed to denuclearize North Korea, involving the two Koreas, China, Japan, the United States and Russia, have been stalled since December over ways to verify Pyongyang's nuclear activities.

North Korea said it will quit the talks in protest over a U.N. Security Council statement condemning its rocket launch in April, which was widely seen as a disguised missile test. It also conducted its second nuclear test in May.

Asked how he will exercise his leadership, Amano said he would like to place importance on ''dialogue'' with IAEA member countries and others as part of his efforts to overcome what he calls ''various confrontations'' recently seen in the Vienna-based organization.

On Iran's uranium-enrichment activities, Amano said the problem is that Iran is ''lacking the trust of international society'' on the issue and called for further cooperation from the country.

Amano will officially assume the post in December for a four-year term, replacing Mohamed ElBaradei, who will leave office after 12 years as the IAEA head.

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Spokesman calls for all parties to continue six-party talks (Xinhua)

BEIJING – Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang said Thursday that all parties to the six-party talks on the Korean Peninsula nuclear issue should meet their commitments by adopting practical measures to advance the process.

"We hope all parties will properly resolve issues through dialogue and coordination," Qin told a regular press conference here.

Qin urged all parties to avoid intensifying the tense situation, and to jointly safeguard peace and stability in northeast Asia.

Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Wu Dawei had just concluded a tour of Russia, the United States, Japan and the Republic of Korea(ROK).

Qin said Wu had in-depth talks with officials from the four nations on the Korean Peninsula nuclear issue and the six-party talks, and all parties agreed to continue efforts to resolve issues through dialogue and to promote the resumption of the talks.

"We would like to keep in contact with all concerned parties by all means," Qin noted.

It was in accordance with all parties' interests to peacefully realize denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula through dialogue, and to safeguard the peace and stability of the northeast Asia, he said.

The six-party talks, which involve China, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), the United States, the ROK, Russia and Japan, have been stalled since December last year.

The DPRK announced its withdrawal from the talks after the UN Security Council adopted a presidential statement which said the DPRK's April 5 rocket launch was "in contravention of Security Council resolution 1718" and urged the early resumption of the six-party talks.

On June 12, the United Nations adopted UN Security Council Resolution 1874 imposing tougher sanctions on the DPRK over its May 25 nuclear test.

The DPRK rejected the resolution and announced it had quit the talks and the ceasefire agreement of the Korean War.

The DPRK tested seven missiles off its east coast on July 4. The launches came two days after the DPRK test-fired four short-range missiles off its eastern coast.

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Clinton Calls For Patience in N. Korean Denuclearization (Yonhap)

WASHINGTON – U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton Wednesday called for patience in pursuing North Korea's denuclearization amid escalating tensions on the Korean Peninsula after the North's nuclear and missile tests.

Speaking to a forum (Council on Foreign Relations Address by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton) ahead of her trip to Thailand and India next week, Clinton emphasized the need to develop "a tougher joint effort toward the complete and verifiable denuclearization of the Korean peninsula."

"Cultivating these partnerships and their full range takes time and patience; it also takes persistence," she said.

Clinton's remarks came hours after North Korea's ceremonial head of state, Kim Yong-nam, president of the Presidium of the Supreme People's Assembly, told the Non-Aligned Movement summit in Sharim El-Sheik, Egypt, that the six-party talks on ending Pyongyang's nuclear ambitions "came to a permanent end because the U.S. and the majority of the obedient parties to the talks abandoned this principle" of "respect for sovereign rights and equality."

North Korea has been boycotting the multilateral nuclear talks, involving the two Koreas, the U.S., China, Japan and Russia, in protest of the U.N. Security Council resolution that bans any further nuclear and missile tests by North Korea and imposes financial sanctions, an overall arms embargo and cargo inspections on the high seas.

"We have invested a significant amount of diplomatic resources to achieve Security Council consensus in response to North Korea's provocative actions," Clinton said.

She praised the resolutions as having "real teeth and consequences for North Korea" and also lauded the "follow-on active involvement of China, Russia and India with us in persuading others to comply with the resolutions."

Clinton will attend the annual ASEAN Regional Forum in Phuket, Thailand, next week to discuss North Korea's recent provocations and other regional and global issues.

"I imagine that North Korea will be a topic at the ASEAN meeting," spokesman Ian Kelly said Tuesday.

Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Scot Marciel, meanwhile, said that Clinton has no plans to meet with North Korean officials in Phuket, although bilateral meetings are expected among other members of the six-party talks.

Marciel said he does not expect a five-way meeting that excludes Pyongyang on the margins of the security forum because China, host of the multilateral talks, is lukewarm to the idea, preferring not to provoke Pyongyang.

Reports said North Korean Foreign Minister Pak Ui-chun will not attend the forum in Thailand on July 22-23, but will send an ambassador-at-large.

Kurt Campbell, U.S. assistant secretary of state for East Asia and the Pacific, is visiting Seoul and Tokyo ahead of the forum to meet with officials on ways to persuade North Korea to return to the six-party talks.

Campbell will also likely follow up on discussions on implementing financial sanctions and an arms embargo on North Korea.

Philip Goldberg, U.S. interagency coordinator for implementation of the sanctions, recently met with officials in Asian capitals to discuss U.N. Security Council Resolution 1874, adopted after North Korea's nuclear test May 25.

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U.S. has no plan to meet with DPRK officials at ASEAN meetings (Xinhua)

WASHINGTON – The United States has no plan to meet with officials of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) at the meetings of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in Thailand next week, a senior U.S. official said here on Wednesday.

Ruling out the possibility of a U.S.-DPRK meeting, U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Scot Marciel also told reporters that there will probably not be a meeting of the five nations pushing the DPRK to abandon its nuclear weapons programs on the sidelines of the ASEAN meeting.

The five countries are the United States, the Republic of Korea, China, Japan and Russia. Bilateral meetings among officials of the countries are possible, according to Marciel.

The U.S. official made the remarks when Kim Yong Nam, president of the Presidium of the DPRK's Supreme People's Assembly, said at the 15th summit of the Non-Aligned Movement in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt that the DPRK is not ready to resume disarmament talks over its nuclear program because the United States and its allies do not respect the nation's sovereignty.

Thailand is due to host the 42nd ASEAN Ministerial Meeting (AMM), Post Ministerial Conferences (PMC) and 16th ASEAN Regional Forum(ARF) in the southern province of Phuket from July 17 to 23.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has confirmed her participation in the forthcoming ASEAN meetings in Thailand.

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N.Korea Sanctions To Be Discussed at ASEAN Meet (Chosun Ilbo)

Sanctions against North Korea will be a discussed at the ASEAN Regional Forum in Phuket, Thailand on July 22-23, the U.S. State Department says.

In the press briefing on Monday, State Department spokesman Ian Kelley said, "I imagine that North Korea will be a topic at the ASEAN meeting."

The ARF session will be attended by delegates from 10 ASEAN member states, participating nations in six-party talks on the North Korean nuclear issue, and EU member nations.

The U.S. is apparently going to ask participating nations to implement UN Security Council Resolution 1874 passed after the North's recent nuclear test. Clinton suffered an elbow fracture last month and was unable to accompany President Barack Obama on his trips to Russia, Italy and Ghana but has said she is determined to attend the ARF session herself. She visits India beginning July 17 before flying to Phuket.

North Korea will reportedly send an ambassador-at-large to the ARF session instead of Foreign Minister Pak Ui-chun. A diplomatic source in Washington said, "If the situation was in its favor, North Korea has usually send its foreign minister to the ARF sessions, but if not it sent lower-ranking officials."

Earlier on, a senior State Department official told reporters that ASEAN member states as a whole or individually have pledged to implement the resolution.

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Comments from “Site Admin”: Although the following article’s title suggests North Korea suffered flood damage from this year’s monsoon rains, but nowhere in the article does it report there was actual flood damage in North Korea this year. It merely goes through and reports the rainfall amount and what North Korean authorities would do in case of flood. The article implies North Korea should have suffered flood damage from the recent rainfall simply based on what has happened in the South due to most recent rainfall.

North Korea Suffers Flood Damage (Daily NK)

The annual Korean rainy season has taken its toll on South Korea, with a recent storm taking one life and injuring a further 200.

North Korea's Chosun Central TV reported on the 14th that 172mm had fallen in the Pyongkang region of Kangwon Province, the highest one-day rainfall figure in the country. The rains were caused by an atmospheric effect coming in off the West Sea, according to the report.

The report listed recent rainfall by region, noting that in addition to Pyongkang at 172mm; Gosan received 166mm; Icheon 149mm; Anbyun 148mm; and Pangyo suffered 146mm. The heaviest rains were reserved for the Kangwon Province region, though other regions did not escape completely.

In South Korea, when there is heavy rainfall, flooded areas are immediately identified and military units are dispatched, generally resulting in a prompt recovery effort. Of course, in recent days the South has suffered flooding too. President Lee Myung Bak, immediately after returning from his visit to Europe on the 14th, headed for the Central Disaster Safety Countermeasure Headquarters and ordered appropriate measures after inspecting flood damage.

So how does North Korea respond in the case of a flood?

A defector talked to Daily NK about the floods in Shinuiju in 1994. Kim Jong Il had appeared on the scene after Kim Il Sung's death in July of the same year, and the defector explained how the new leader utilized the recovery effort primarily to spread awareness of his power.

According to the source, some Shinuiju citizens were trapped by flooding, so an army unit was sent, allegedly as a result of a special instruction from Kim Jong Il himself. The unit carried people to safety on tanks. As a result, it is said, there were no deaths.

Afterwards, Kim Jong Il mobilized actors and ordered that the situation be made into a play for use as a propaganda tool to strengthen public devotion.

The defector Daily NK spoke to reminisced about aid, including clothing and other daily necessities, which flowed in from abroad. He recalled fondly that South Korean goods were found among them.

In reality, whenever a natural disaster takes place in North Korea, citizens are ordered by the Party to take care of clean-ups and reconstruction, without direct practical state support.

Indeed, according to an investigative report on North Korean children's rights called "Child Is King of the Country," published by the Citizens' Alliance for North Korean Human Rights in May, the North Korean authorities even exploit children in teenage elementary and middle school classes during reconstruction periods, forcing them to work from early morning until late at night under the pretext that academic studies and labor go hand in hand.

North Korea often mobilizes young children to repair railways and repave roads as well, according to the report.

As such, North Korea uses the floods for ideological education, and even young children are seen as tools to overcome the serious limitations of the North Korean authorities.

Rain can be particularly damaging in a place like North Korea, where fields and irrigation facilities are not properly maintained, and hills and mountainsides have been largely deforested in order to allow for the destructive cultivation of private fields on the slopes, even small amounts of rain can cause landslides and floods which, due to inadequate, overflowing drainage routes, cause significant damage.