In and Around North Korea: 07 - 13 February 2009

• The US and North Korea are scheduled to have their first government-level meeting since President Barack Obama’s inauguration during the Northeast Asia Peace and Security Mechanism working group to be held in Moscow from 19 – 20 Feb. North Korea plans to send Jung Tae-yang, vice director general of the foreign ministry’s American bureau and the US will be represented by Deputy Assistance Secretary for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Alexander a. Arvizu.

• A group of US experts, led by John Lewis, professor emeritus at Stanford University, plans to visit North Korea in late February for talks about the country’s denuclearization process, diplomatic sources said Monday (09 Feb). Lewis’ group will be the second private-sector US delegation to visit North Korea at a time when President Obama works to formulate his administration’s foreign policy. Among the members on the trip will be Siegfried Hecker, a nuclear weapons expert and co-director of Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation. Hecker last visited North Korea in Feb 08 where he met with North Korean Foreign Ministry officials.

• A group of American experts on North Korean affairs, including former US ambassador to South Korea Stephen Bosworth, wrapped up a visit to the North that ended on Saturday (07 Feb). The group met with North Korean officials such as chief nuclear negotiator Kim Kye-gwan to exchange views on direct talks between Pyongyang and Washington and the North Korean nuclear issue. Bosworth stated that “[North Korea] said we should all wait and see,” and that “there were no threats, no indication that they were concerned.” He also stated that the group came away with the impression that the North wants to continue the nuclear disablement process. In reference to possible preparations for a missile test, Bosworth stated that North Korea “treated the missile issue as just a normal run-of-the-mill issue.”

• North Korea’s Rodong Sinmun stated in a signed commentary on Saturday (07 Feb) that the “DPRK, a member of the international community, has an option to advance into space and a legitimate right to participate in the space scientific and technological race,” and that the “DPRK’s policy of advance into space and its use for peaceful purposes is just.” It noted that Iran’s recent satellite launch (03 Feb) has not only demonstrated its national power but also shown to the world that there can be no longer any monopoly on the use and development of space.

• KCNA reported that on 11 Feb, Vice Marshal of the Korean People’s Army Kim Yong Chun was appointed as minister of the People’s Armed Forces of the National Defense Commission of the DPRK and KPA General Ri Yong Ho as chief of the KPA General Staff. The announcement comes earlier than expected, as South Korean analysts have largely forecast that North Korea may reshuffle its military after its parliamentary vote on 8 Mar and before the founding anniversary of the KPA on 25 Apr.

• North Korea’s Korean Central Broadcasting Station reported on 06 Feb that Kim Jong-il inspected the command of KPA Large Combined Unit 324. He was accompanied by leading commanding officers of the army, including KPA Generals Hyon Chol Hae and Ri Myong Su. KCNA reported on 08 Feb that Kim Jong-il provided field guidance to the Rakwon Machine Complex, stressing the need for it to boost the manufacture of various types of machines products to include excavators and oxygen plants. KCNA reported on 11 Feb that Kim Jong-il inspected Unit 681 under the KPA Artillery Command and watched a firing exercise. Kim was accompanied by Vice Marshal Kim Yong Chun, KPA General Ri Yong Ho, Kim Ki Nam, secretary of the WPK Central Committee, and Chang Song-taek.

• According to Western diplomatic source in China on 09 Feb, Director Wang Jiarui, Communist Party International Liaison Department director, during discussions with Kim Jong-il in Pyongyang on 23 Jan, reportedly was not able to find unusual signs, to include traces of a preoperative haircut or the use of a wig, indicating that Kim had received brain surgery.

• An oath-taking rally took place in the Paektusan Secret Camp, the time-honored holy land of the Sun, on Thursday (12 Feb) to celebrate the birthday (16 Feb) of leader Kim Jong Il. Present there were senior officials of the party, the army and the state, leading officials of party and armed forces organs, ministries and national institutions and working people's organizations, servicepersons of the Korean People's Army (KPA), members of the 618 Construction Shock Brigade and officials and working people of Ryanggang Province. Led by KPA Vice Marshal Kim Yong Chun, vice-chairman of the DPRK National Defence Commission and minister of the People's Armed Forces, all the participants in the rally firmly vowed to share idea, will and destiny with Kim Jong Il and remain true to the WPK's songun (military-first) leadership.

• A recent increase of post-Korean War generation hard-line military officials in the North Korean leadership may be behind escalated tensions on the peninsula, South Korean officials said yesterday The Unification Ministry on Wednesday issued a publication titled “2009 North Korea Power Elite,” analyzing 302 top North Korean officials. According to the report, 51 officials in the Workers’ Party, central government and military have been appointed since 2007. “We only analyzed confirmed personnel changes announced by the North Korean government or state media,” a Unification Ministry official said. “We did not rely on rumors or indirectly collected information. If we took into account such nonpublic information, the scope of the shake-up would have been even greater.”

• On 10 Feb, Rodong Sinmun called for the “inheritance’ of the older generations’ economic drive to build a strong nation. Analysts stated that the recurring theme of inheritance in North Korean media appeared to be aimed at mobilizing young generations for the country’s economic drive while simultaneously disseminating the notion that Kim Jong-il’s power should be handed down to one of his sons.

• Eqypt's largest telecommunications company, Orascom Telecom, commenced cell phone services at the end of last year in Pyongyang, the capital of North Korea. This is a joint venture business with a North Korean company, and reportedly garnered 5,000 subscribers in the first two weeks of operation. But the question is, “will cell phones gain widespread use under the totalitarian regime that rules North Korea?” According to Naguib Sawiris, the 54-year-old CEO of the Orascom Group, "This is the first step toward an open economy. Our business will be a success." At Orascom's headquarters building in Cairo, Sawiris spoke with conviction. "The government [of North Korea] has given the citizens permission to own cell phones. This is a major change. They are serious about opening up the economy. That is why we decided to invest [in this project]."

• Tessa Morris-Suzuki, professor of Japanese history at Australian National University, stated that about 200 North Korean defectors have settled in Japan in recent years with most of them being Korean-Japanese who moved to North Korea from Japan for more than two decades from the late 1950s. Suzuki expected more will follow suit to return to Japan amid worsening economic conditions in North Korea.

• US Defense Secretary (SECDEF) Robert M. Gates spoke with members of the press during a briefing at the Pentagon on 10 Feb (EST – 11 Feb Korea Standard Time). During the briefing, the SECDEF addressed North Korea’s possible preparations for a missile launch and stated that during the last missile launch, the North Korean missile “flew for a few minutes before crashing” and that “the range of the Taepo Dong II remains to be seen.” The SECDEF also stated, “it would be nice if North Korea would focus on getting positive messages across to…its negotiating partners about verification and moving forward with the denuclearization.” In response to the question, “The last time the North Koreans tried to shoot a Taepo Dong, the missile defense system was put on alert and the US was prepared to shoot it down if it came in the direction of American Territory. Do you intend to do the same if the North Koreans proceed with their preparations?” SECDEF Gates stated that he intends to make sure that the Secretary of State, national security adviser, President and Vice President understand what “our capabilities are, and that that's an option out there should we deem it necessary.”
  
  

  Comment: While US reporting stated that the SECDEF played down the notion that any Taepodong-2 launch would pose a danger to the US, ROK media coverage focused on the SECDEF’s comment that the US possesses the capability to intercept the North Korean missile should it become necessary. Although North Korean media have not yet responded to SECDEF Gates’ tatement, “KCNA” and “Minju Josun” released articles on 10 Feb attacking SECDEF Gates and his support of the “Reliable Replacement Warhead” (RRW).

• Yonhap reported on 11 Feb that a South Korean source stated that “vehicles carrying equipment needed for missile launches are continuing to travel to the Musudan-ri base,” and that “at the current pace, [North Korea] could inject fuel within a month.” CNN reported on 11 Feb that according to a senior U.S. official, an image by a U.S. spy satellite revealed North Korea was “assembling telemetry equipment at the site” and “that so far, there is no direct evidence of a missile being moved to the launch pad.”

• A Pakistani court freed Abdul Qadeer Khan, one of the most successful nuclear proliferators in history, from house arrest on Friday (06 Feb), lifting the restrictions imposed on him since 2004 when he publicly confessed to running an illicit nuclear network. According to a 10 Feb statement by State Department spokesman Robert Wood, Deputy Secretary Steinberg met with the Pakistani foreign minister in Munich and expressed the U.S. concern about the court decision and that the Deputy Secretary received assurances from the Pakistani Government that Mr. Khan would not continue to be a proliferation threat.

• South Korean government officials believe that the most likely provocation during North Korea’s current grandstanding could be the test-firing of short-range missiles across the Northern Limit Line (NLL). North Korea has a surface-to-surface missile base on Chodo Island, Hwanghae province, from which it test-fired missiles in Oct 08. Officials also stated that there could be inter-Korean naval skirmishes along the NLL or although highly unlikely, a possible test-fire of mid-range missiles at the open sea near Jeju Island.

• On 10 Feb, Yonhap reported that a South Korean official at the Joint Chiefs of Staff stated that it was true that no Chinese boats have been spotted since 04 Feb and that there were no unusual military movements north of the border. Thus far, USFK J2/JIOC-K OSINT observed three Chinese Internet posts that support the defense official’s statement. On 23 Jan, the Shandong Marine Fishing and Production Management Station released a warning on its website urging fishing boats to “resolutely refrain from illegal fishing operations in waters in the DPRK-ROK sea border” as “military conflicts could arise easily under the tense relations between the DRPK and the ROK.” The warning applied to both the West and East coasts. The Weihai Economic and Technological Development Zone and the General Office of Ganjingzi District Government carried similar warnings on their websites on 04 and 06 Feb respectively.

• Hyun In-taek, the ROK Unification Minister nominee, defended South Korea’s tough North Korea policy during his parliamentary hearing on Monday (09 Feb), rebutting harsh criticism with offers to change Pyongyang’s hostile stance through dialogue amid heightened inter-Korean tension. Hyun vowed to consider humanitarian aid and respect inter-Korean summit accords, but his broad commitment failed to dispel the skepticism voiced by the opposition over his suitability. Hyun, a political science professor at Korea University, was the major architect of the Denuclearization, Openness, 3000 campaign, which seeks to help North Korea raise its gross domestic income to $3,000 if it abandons its nuclear program.

• Seoul's new unification minister said Thursday (12 Feb) he will seek to resume humanitarian aid and meet with North Korean officials to mend inter-Korean relations, but retained his tough message on the North's nuclear weapons program. Hyun In-taek, a hawkish foreign policy expert, took over the post from a moderate official amid escalating tension along the inter-Korean border. "For the peace of the Korean Peninsula and the advancement of inter-Korean relations, I am willing to meet and talk with North Korea's responsible officials anytime, anywhere, on any agenda and in any form," Hyun said at his inauguration ceremony.

• South Korea needs to strengthen its early warning system with regard to North Korea, the country's new spy chief said Thursday (12 Feb), calling for full preparations against security threats. "We need to beef up an early warning system to cope with any moves by North Korea," Won Sei-hoon, the head of the National Intelligence Service (NIS), told his staff. "We also have to fully prepare for any terror and international crimes." Won, a former minister of public administration and security, was appointed by President Lee Myung-bak last month to head the spy agency.

• Japanese Foreign Minister Hirofumi Nakasone visited South Korea (09 – 10 Feb) to meet with his counterpart, Yu Myung Hwan, and President Lee Myung Bak. At the conclusion of talks on 10 Feb, Japan and South Korea agreed on concrete plans for joint assistance for Afghan reconstruction and close cooperation in antipiracy operations in Somali waters. They also reaffirmed the importance of close trilateral cooperation with the US and the need for progress in the denuclearization of North Korea through the six-party talks. Both ministers shared concerns over North Korea’s recent series of harsh remarks and urged North Korea to “behave in a way that would contribute to the region’s stability.”

• South Korean brigadier general Chun In-bum told reporters that the US and South Korea are pushing to adopt a new war plan against North Korea to reflect the change in the decades-old military alliance and that the war plan will be tested during the Ulchi Freedom Guardian exercise in August this year.

• U.S. Secretary of State Clinton stated at a news conference on 10 Feb that she hopes North Korea’s recent rhetoric is not a “precursor of any action that would up the ante, or threaten the stability and peace and security” in the region. Secretary of State Clinton is scheduled to make her first visit to Asia as secretary of state next week (16-22 Feb).

• A British lawmaker just back from a visit to Pyongyang urged the new US administration on Wednesday (11 Feb) to normalize ties with North Korea as part of a broader approach to the communist state. Lord David Alton called for joint international efforts to address the North's human rights record and humanitarian issues and not just its nuclear weapons programme. "The creation of a US embassy in Pyongyang should be a top priority for the incoming (US) dministration," Alton, chairman of the All Party Parliamentary Group on North Korea, said in a written presentation to South Korea's parliament.

In and Around North Korea: 31 January - 06 February 2009

• US President Barack Obama on Tuesday (3 Feb) vowed to increase support for six-nation talks on ending North Korea's nuclear program, saying recent developments suggest the multilateral talks are the only way to denuclearize the communist nation, a spokesman for the South Korean presidential office said. The remarks came in a telephone conversation between the U.S. president and his South Korean counterpart Lee Myung-bak.

• North Korea and its five dialogue partners in ongoing denuclearization talks will convene the third meeting on the Northeast Asia peace and security mechanism from Feb. 19-20 in Moscow, officials said Monday (2 Feb). The meeting comes despite a stall in broader talks over the North's nuclear program and would mark the first high-profile gathering of the six nations since new U.S. President Barack Obama took office. Obama's policy on North Korea has not taken final shape as key appointments have yet to be made and with the two Koreas taking a wait-and-see attitude.

• North Korea vowed Monday (2 Feb) to hold onto its nuclear weapons until the United States removes "nuclear threats" against it, renewing its tough position after similar statements drew little action from the new U.S. administration. Pyongyang has continued unleashing acerbic statements to justify its nuclear drive since January, raising military tensions across the inter-Korean border. Seoul and Washington have reacted calmly.

• The North’s Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Fatherland declared that it would scrap the political and military agreements between the South and the North, along with the western sea border. North Korea’s Foreign Ministry said that Pyongyang would think about denuclearization after normalizing ties with Washington. Even then, denuclearization will be discussed not within the six-party framework but through talks among nuclear states, making it clear that it would continue to hold on to its nuclear weapons.

• On 1 Feb, Constituency No. 333, during a voters’ meeting held at the April 25 House of Culture, nominated Kim Jong-il as a candidate for deputy to the 12th Supreme People’s Assembly. Present were Jo Myong Rok, director of the General Political Bureau of the KPA, Kim Kyo'k-sik, chief of the General Staff of the KPA and others and leading officials of the Ministry of the People's Armed Forces and officers and men of the KPA.

• Kim Jong-il provided field guidance to the Ryesonggang Youth Power Station No. 1 and inspected a sub-unit of KPA Unit 131, its state media reported on Saturday (31 Jan). With regards to his inspection of the military unit, the North’s Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported that he “acquainted himself with the training of the sub-unit before watching its soldiers’ training,” and “after watching the training, he expressed satisfaction over the fact that all the service persons have grown to be stalwart fighters firmly prepared politically and ideologically and in military technique to shatter any surprise invasion of the enemy at a single blow and reliably defend the socialist homeland to set forth the tasks to be carried out to increase the sub-unit’s combat capability.

• North Korean leader Kim Jong Il told a Chinese official who recently visited Pyongyang that he is waiting to see the policies of the new U.S. administration, in what was believed to be an indication his country will not make major moves until they become clear, diplomatic sources said Wednesday (4 Feb). The comments, made to Wang Jiarui, head of the Chinese Communist Party's International Department, are the first known to have come from the leader about the U.S. administration since President Barack Obama took office in late January.

• A British parliamentary delegation arrived in Pyongyang Tuesday (3 Feb), the North's news agency said, in a visit coinciding with a rare trip by a U.S. team of former government officials and experts. KCNA made no mention of the expected arrival of the U.S. group, including former U.S. Ambassador to South Korea Stephen Bosworth, who is reportedly on a list of candidates for special envoy to Pyongyang. The visit is the first civilian exchange between the two countries since U.S. President Barack Obama took office last month. The KCNA said the British delegation, led by the House of Lords' David Alton, was greeted by Ri Jong-hyok, deputy to the North's Supreme People's Assembly, in Pyongyang's airport. It did not reveal the purpose of the trip.

• The series of events to celebrate the "Year of DPRK-China Friendship" in 2009 will help deepen the friendship between the two peoples and expand bilateral ties, the foreign minister of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) said Monday (2 Feb). The DPRK and China, the two close neighbors linked by common mountains and rivers, have enjoyed a long history of friendly cooperation, Foreign Minister Pak Ui Chun said in a written interview with Xinhua.

• Military-owned telecom firm Viettel plans to expand its network to North Korea, Cuba and Venezuela, a company official said. Tran Phuoc Minh, deputy director of the unlisted telecom service provider in Ho Chi Minh City, said the company is considering getting a foothold in these countries, which are in the early stages of telecom development. Viettel would hold negotiations with authorities there, Minh said without giving details. The country’s fastest growing telecom service provider already has a presence in Laos and Cambodia and is set to open a representative office in Myanmar.

• Koryolink, the North Korean 3G cellular network established in mid-December by Egypt's Orascom Telecom, has attracted several thousand subscribers in the first two weeks since it began accepting applications in January. "We didn't start sales until about two weeks ago," said Naguib Sawiris, chairman of Orascom Telecom in a telephone interview. "So far we have about 6,000 applications. The important point is that they are normal citizens, not the privileged or miliary generals or party higher-ups. For the first time they have been able to go to a shop and get a mobile phone." Orascom has a single shop in Pyongyang and is in the process of expanding its sales network, he said.

• North Korea's state media said Wednesday (4 Feb) that China has offered Pyongyang aid, a deal that was likely reached at a recent meeting between reclusive leader Kim Jong Il and a senior Chinese official. KCNA said in a brief dispatch that the aid will be "an encouragement" to North Koreans in their efforts to build "a great, prosperous, powerful nation." It did not say what kind or how much aid China had offered. The impoverished communist country has resorted to outside handouts to help feed its 23 million people since its centrally controlled economy collapsed in the mid-1990s due to natural disasters and mismanagement. With the public announcement, analysts say, North Korea is showing off the close relationship it has with its key socialist ally. Pyongyang is also sending a message to Seoul's Lee Myung-bak administration that it won't soften its stance on inter-Korean relations in its search for economic aid, they said. “North Korea is saying it will find a way out through China and won't be squeezed by the Lee government's hardline policy," Koh Yu-hwan, a North Korea studies professor at Dongguk University, said.

• South Korea is struggling to determine when it should send 3,000 tons of steel plates to North Korea, confronted with the communist neighbor's intensifying saber-rattling, government officials in Seoul said Wednesday (4 Feb). The South initially planned to send the shipment, equivalent to 11,000 tons of heavy fuel oil, sometime this month, as part of its promised contribution to an aid-for-denuclearization deal signed in 2007.

• North Korea's food-related trouble is likely to continue despite a relatively good harvest last year, a leading U.S. expert on the communist nation's economy said Thursday (5 Feb). "It is too early to break out the champagne," Marcus Noland, senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, said in an e-mail commentary, amid speculation here that Pyongyang's latest bellicose behavior might be spurred by confidence from an improving food situation there. “The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that North Korean grain production fell for three consecutive harvests, reaching 3.43 million metric tons in 2008-2009," he said. "The good harvests should be treated with caution. Overall grain balances in North Korea remain perilously close to the survival margin." His gloomy outlook came in spite of Washington's shipments of close to 5,000 tons of rice earlier this month to the North as part of its commitment of up to half a million tons of grain.

• According to a report entitled "Situation Report on the Rights of the Child in the DPRK (North Korea)"by the Seoul-based Citizen's Alliance for North Korean Human Rights and The Asia Center for Human Rights, North Korea forcibly mobilizes its children as cheap labor, diverts their food aid and throws minors into detention centers because their parents have run afoul of the law. The report further states that the North's failing school system has led to an increase in drop-outs and illiteracy in the impoverished state.

• The number of North Korean refugees arriving in Thailand via China has risen sharply since the Beijing Olympics, Yomiuri Shimbun reported Wednesday (4 Feb). Thailand is the main transit place for North Koreans before they move to South Korea. Thai police statistics quoted by the Japanese daily show a mere 140 North Koreans arrested there between January and August last year. But in the period from September to November after the Beijing Olympics, 250 North Koreans were arrested in 14 areas in northern and northeastern Thailand bordering Burma and Laos. The number of North Koreans arrested in December and January this year is not known yet, but the paper said a large number of North Koreans entered Thailand around the Lunar New Year's Day, on Jan. 26.

• Sankei Shimbun first reported on 03 Feb that North Korea is preparing to launch the Taepodong-2. The article stated that satellites of the US and others have spotted trucks frequenting a missile facility newly under construction in Tongch'ang-ri, North P'yo'ngan Province, and that it is highly possible that preparations will be completed in one to two months. Subsequent Yonhap reporting referenced the US and ROK intelligence agencies and that an unnamed ROK official at the Ministry of National Defense stated “The intelligence report by Japan appears grounded on facts."

• The United States Tuesday (3 Feb) warned North Korea not to test fire a ballistic missile, saying any such launch would be in violation of a United Nations Security Council resolution. "I mean, obviously, the testing of missiles by North Korea would be in violation of the United Nations Security Council resolutions," Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell said in a daily news briefing. The spokesperson was responding to reports that North Korea is preparing to test launch a long-range missile capable of reaching the mainland U.S., in an apparent effort to attract the attention of the new U.S. administration.

• The top U.S. military officer has expressed concern about recent threats out of Pyongyang against South Korea timed with the launch of the Barack Obama administration in Washington. Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, acknowledged in a speech Monday (2 Feb) at a college in Grove City, Pennsylvania the "possibility of pretty severe instability" with North Korea's weapons. He said that listening to the rhetoric out of Pyongyang is a cause for "big concern," adding, "it's not going away real quick." Mullen was discussing Pyongyang's threats to cut ties with Seoul and its announcement that it was adopting "an all-out confrontational posture" against the South. U.S. and South Korean intelligence officials believe the North is preparing to test-launch a ballistic missile capable of reaching western parts of the mainland U.S.

• The top U.S. commander in South Korea urged North Korea on Wednesday (4 Feb) to stop raising tension on the divided peninsula, amid intelligence reports the communist state is gearing up to test-fire its most advanced missile. Seoul officials said earlier this week that U.S. and South Korean intelligence agencies have spotted a North Korean train carrying what is believed to be a ballistic missile capable of hitting U.S. territory, adding a launch could come after a month or two of preparation.

• South Korean defense officials said Wednesday (4 Feb) they last spotted what they believe to be North Korea's most advanced missile on the isolated state's east coast, dampening speculation a launch may take place at a brand-new site on the opposite side of the country. A train carrying the object in question "was last seen stationed at the Musudan-ri site" in the northeastern region, an official at the Ministry of National Defense said. North Korea has test-fired two of its longest-range missiles there since 1998. South Korean intelligence had briefly lost track of the train after it pulled out of a military factory site south of Pyongyang, a senior ministry official said late Tuesday, declining to be identified because the information was classified.

• Despite North Korea’s statement of an “all-out confrontational posture” towards South Korea made on the 17th of January, North Korea appears not to be preparing to spark a military conflict, since there has not been any change of military movements detected by intelligence. North Korea has been creating tension by declaring the abolition of the Northern Limit Line (NLL), threatening to wipe out the South Korean government, and denunciating all agreements made between the two Koreas to date. However, spokesperson from the Ministry of National Defense Won Tae Jae explained yesterday, “In the sea near the Military Demarcation Line (MDL), the North Korean Army has not threatened South Korea. No strange acts have been noted.” Military experts presume that the possibility of provoking a war in the short term is low because no movements required for a war, like increasing communications or supply movements, have been intercepted near the frontier.

• Hyundai Asan Corp, the South Korean company operating businesses in North Korea, said Wednesday (4 Feb) it will make major efforts to resume tours to the North's scenic mountain in April, despite worsening inter-Korean ties. The chance of resuming the tours to the North's Mount Kumgang, which have been suspended since July last year when a South Korean tourist was fatally shot by a North Korean soldier, appears remote however, as Pyongyang recently took a series of actions to potentially inflame tensions on the Korean Peninsula.

• South Korea's main opposition party on Wednesday (4 Feb) urged its government to earmark at least 5 percent of its annual budget for aid to North Korea and take other reconciliatory measures to improve inter-Korean relations. In a parliamentary address, Rep. Won Hye-young, floor leader of the Democratic Party, said that closer cross-border economic cooperation is the only path to revitalizing the South Korean economy.
• The South Korean government decided not to approve a project by a Seoul journalist organization to exchange news with North Korea, concerned that Pyongyang may use the medium for its own propaganda, officials were quoted as saying by Yonhap on Wednesday (4 Feb). The decision appeared to be in line with the conservative Lee Myung-bak government's hardline policy amid deeply frozen inter-Korean relations. The journalist association said it may take the case to court.

• South Korea warned rights activists Wednesday (4 Feb) they will face a criminal investigation if they break new restrictions on the launch of propaganda leaflets into North Korea. The activists, who have staged several previous launches, plan to attach North Korean banknotes to some leaflets in future to encourage people on the other side of the heavily fortified border to pick them up. The Seoul government has urged groups to halt the launch of the giant gas-filled balloons carrying hundreds of thousands of flyers, saying they are further straining ties with the communist North. Seoul says it has no laws to ban the launches but attaching North Korean won would be illegal because government approval is required to bring the currency into the South.

• In his New Year’s press conference on 2 Feb, Democratic Party Chairman Chung Sye-kyun urged President Lee Myung-bak to send an envoy to North Korea to seek a breakthrough in the dire state of inter-Korean relations, linking heightened tensions on the Korean Peninsula to the stability of the nation’s economy. “Peace on the Korean Peninsula is not an issue of ideology, but one of economy,” Chung said, adding that tensions have reached a new peak after the North’s recent announcement that it will scrap all inter-Korean agreements. “The current confrontational situation is too serious to be regarded as a bluff [by the North],” Chung said. “If there is a military conflict, our economy will suffer a serious blow.”

• North Korean officials have expressed their willingness to normalize relations between their country and the United States, a U.S. scholar who last month met them in North Korea said Wednesday (4 Feb). Selig Harrison, Asia Program director at the Washington-based Center for International Policy, made the revelation in a speech about his visit to the reclusive nation. He quoted the North Korean officials, including Foreign Minister Pak Ui Chun and Ri Gun, director general of the Foreign Ministry's American Affairs Bureau, as saying that North Korea and the United States can become close friends once Washington alters its policy toward Pyongyang. They were also quoted as saying that when North Korea abandons its nuclear weapons capabilities depends on when the country can rest assured that it is no longer under U.S. nuclear threat.

• The U.S. State Department in the Federal Resister on Monday (2 Feb) confirmed sanctions banning three North Korean entities from trade with the U.S. for two years. The three are Korea Mining and Development Corp., Mokong Trading Corp. and Sino-Ki. The new U.S. administration has decided to maintain sanctions against the three firms, which the Bush administration accused of missile technology proliferation activities. The decision came nearly simultaneously with reports that North Korea is preparing to test-fire medium-range missiles, suggesting that the Obama administration still sees Pyongyang as a "rogue state" despite its removal from the list of states sponsoring terrorism.

• The top foreign policy secretary to South Korean President Lee Myung-bak will likely visit Washington next week for discussions on a possible summit between Lee and his new U.S. counterpart and other issues that will determine the shape of the alliance under the new U.S. administration, sources said Monday (2 Feb). Kim Sung-hwan, if he takes the trip, will be the highest-ranking South Korean official to visit the United States since new U.S. President Barack Obama was inaugurated last month. "The date has not been fixed, but it will likely be around the 12th" of February, a source said.

• A U.S expert on Korea Wednesday (4 Feb) urged the Obama administration to move quickly to engage North Korea and push ahead with denuclearization talks so the communist state does not feel abandoned. Scott Snyder, director of the center for U.S.-Korea policy at the Asia Foundation, said, "I think there is a need to communicate with the DPRK, to give some message to let them know they have not been forgotten. Otherwise we may miss another opportunity." Snyder took former U.S. President Bill Clinton as an example, saying "If the whole process had begun earlier then, maybe he might have gone (to Pyongyang)."

• U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will visit Japan, February 16 through 18; Indonesia, February 18 through 19; the Republic of Korea, February 19 through 20; and China, February 20 through 22. In all capitals, the Secretary will be discussing common approaches to the challenges facing the international community, including the financial markets’ turmoil, humanitarian issues, security, and climate change. According to Chosun Ilbo, Christopher Hill will reportedly accompany the Secretary of State on her East Asia tour.

Two Birds with One Stone: Attention from the US; Conciliation from the ROK

On 30 Jan, the North Korean Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of Fatherland (CPRF) issued a statement that is will “nullify” 1) “all the agreed points concerning the issue of putting an end to the political and military confrontation between the north and the south”; and 2) the Agreement on Reconciliation, Non-aggression, Cooperation and Exchange between the North and the South and the points on the military boundary line – the Northern Limit Line (NLL) – in the West Sea (Yellow Sea) stipulated in its appendix.” In the statement, North Korea blasted the Republic of Korea (ROK) government and said the hard-line policies of Lee Myung-bak forced it to nullify the accords. The CPRF, a body handling inter-Korean affairs in North Korea, said in the statement that "the group of traitors has already reduced all the agreements reached between the north and the south in the past to dead documents. … Under such situation it is self-evident that there is no need for the DPRK to remain bound to those north-south agreements.” This statement shapely raised tensions between the two Koreas and raised the possibility of a naval clash in the West Sea. The ROK government expressed “deep regret” about the statement and encouraged North Korea to agree to a dialogue with the South, which the North has rejected.

The 30 Jan statement is the second threatening statement North Korea has made this year that mentioned the NLL.

On 17 Jan, a spokesman of the North Korean People's Army (KPA) General Staff issued a statement announcing that because the Lee Myung-bak government of South Korea has continued to insist on a hostile policy toward North Korea and it will conduct "all-out confrontation" against the South.

Though the North Korean Naval Command routinely protests movements by the ROK vessels close to the NLL in the West Sea (Yellow Sea), it does not complain as frequently about the ROK vessels’ movement across the North’s claimed demarcation line – which is well south of the NLL.

Indeed, a North Korean military provocation against the South near the NLL (or other actions that could be perceived as provocative) in the future cannot be ruled out; however, it is more likely that these pronouncements are intended to pressure the South to adapt more conciliatory policies toward the North while garnering attention from the new US administration.

Recent Developments Surrounding North Korea Leading up to the 30 Jan CPRF Statement:

• Weeks prior to the US inauguration, North Korea offered to send a top diplomat to the inauguration, which the US rejected on 12 Jan.

• On 13 Jan, a spokesman for the North Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a statement that the US should first normalize relations with North Korea as a precondition for its denuclearization and that it will hold onto its nuclear weapons as long as the US backs the ROK with its own atomic arsenal. The statement also demanded that if “the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula is the issue to be settled only when the DPRK shows nuclear weapons,” then North Korea must be able to also verify the presence of nuclear weapons in the ROK as well and that the same rule should be applied to US troops stationed in the ROK.

• On 15 Jan, the ROK government rejected the North’s demand as “distorted.”

• On 16 Jan, North Korea issued another strong statement directed at the US about retaining nuclear weapons. The North stated that it will boost its nuclear deterrent and maintain its nuclear weapons as longs as it remains under a nuclear threat from the US.

• On 17 Jan, North Korea escalated its saber rattling against the ROK with a threatening statement from the KPA General Staff.

• On 19 Jan, the ROK’s unification minister-designate, Hyun In-taek, said he will work more closely with the US in dealing with North Korea, as he prepared to take over the post amid the worst inter-Korean relations in a decade. Hyun, a university professor named as the ROK’s top policymaker on North Korea, sounded tough in line with the ROK President Lee Myung-bak's hard-line stance toward the North, a departure from his moderate predecessor who focused on persuading North Korea to engage in talks. Unlike other major North Korea experts, Hyun prioritizes the ROK's alliance with the US over reconciliation with North Korea and advocates international consensus as the starting point in dealing with the North.

• On 21 Jan, the White House stated that the new Barack Obama administration will get rid of North Korea's nuclear weapons programs "through tough and direct diplomacy." According to a foreign policy agenda posted on the White House Web site, the administration plans to "use tough diplomacy – backed by real incentives and real pressures – to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons and to eliminate fully and verifiably North Korea's nuclear weapons program." The Web posting came one day after President Obama said in his inauguration ceremony on 20 Jan that "with old friends and former foes, we will work tirelessly to lessen the nuclear threat."

• On 23 Jan, Xinhua News Agency reported that Kim Jong-il said he wanted a nuclear free Korean peninsula, declaring his willingness to work with China to push forward the six-party process. Kim stated, “The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is committed to the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula, and hopes to live in peace with all other sides. … We don’t want to see tension emerge in the situation on the peninsula, and we are willing to strengthen coordination and cooperation with China and push forward the six-party process without interruption.” The US and the ROK welcomed Kim Jong-il’s reported commitment.

• On 26 Jan, former US President Jimmy Carter said he believes North Korea would be willing to give up its nuclear weapons for US diplomatic recognition, a peace deal with the ROK and the US, and if it got new atomic power reactors and free fuel oil. Former President Carter said in an interview with the Associated Press that "It could be worked out, in my opinion, in half a day."

• On 27 Jan, the US Secretary of State Clinton said that six-party talks are "essential" to ending North Korea's nuclear weapons ambitions and that North Korea's nuclear proliferation should be resolved quickly through direct diplomacy of the US if necessary.

• On 30 Jan, North Korea’s CPRF stated that the North is scrapping all political and military agreements with the ROK and declared the NLL void. The ROK responded to the North’s threat with a warning of its own, stating that any attempt by North Korea to violate the NLL will face firm counteraction.

North Korean Rhetoric about the NLL from Jan 99 – Jan 09: For the past 10 years, North Korea has issued over 200 statements (rhetoric and threats) regarding the NLL through diplomatic channels, KPA delegation stationed at the Joint Security Area (JSA), as well as its state and affiliated media outlets. (See Graph 1) All of the statements issued from 1999 – 2008 (202 statements) have been in response to specific past or upcoming events rather than precursors of North Korean contrived events. Almost all of the statements were in response to major ROK-US combined military exercises; naval clashes between the North and South Korean navies; and disputes between the North and South Korean fishing boats during the blue crab fishing seasons. Only North Korean statements related to NLL that were not in response to specific events were issued in 2009 (five reports – the 17 Jan KPA General Staff pronouncement and four reports that referred to the pronouncement). The 30 Jan CPRF statement seems to be a response to the ROK’s and the US’ lack of appropriate action to the 17 Jan statement. (See Graph 2)

Significance of 17 Jan Pronouncement: The KPA General Staff pronouncements have been used to announce increased states of military readiness in the past, and only two have been observed in the past 10 years. Both of the KPA pronouncements were issued in response to a specific event. In Dec 98, a KPA General Staff spokesman’s statement responded to “third country” media reports about Operation Plan 5027 – what Pyongyang describes as US-ROK preparations for “northward aggression” – saying although we do not want a war, we also will not avoid a war.” In Sep 99, KPA General Staff special communiqué delineated the North’s West Sea military demarcation line (MDL) in response to a deadly Jun 99 North-South naval clash.

The North has often adopted “postures” to raise tension, but it is unusual to place the KPA on an “all-out confrontation posture”. The reference to this heightened “posture” presumably correlates with a higher-state of readiness and it should be noted that this higher-state of readiness coincides with North Korea’s annual Winter Training Cycle (WTC) for its armed forces.
The announcement’s warning that “strong military countermeasures … will follow” is more categorical than typical North Korean military warnings. Of significance is that there is no language indicating the North intends to start a war. The statement did not threaten the ROK islands immediately south of the NLL, nor did it have the usual blood and guts tone of the bellicose statements designed to increase tension across the Peninsula – it focused primarily on the disputed area off the west coast. This is not a new threat although it is more pointed and explicit.

Overall, the North made no commitment to do anything within any time frame throughout the statement. It also did not lay out any specific requirements on the part of the ROK to take action, or a set of actions, in order to defuse the threat.

It seems North Korea issued the 17 Jan pronouncement fully anticipating that the ROK government will continue its hard-line North Korean policies and largely ignore the North’s bluster while putting its military on a higher alert status, which will then allow the North to claim that “the ROK government has failed to respond to Pyongyang’s warnings.”

Another significant aspect of the 17 Jan statement is that it explicitly said it was aimed at both the internal and external audiences. This year’s New Year’s Joint Editorial hinted that North Korea is concerned about discipline issues in the KPA. I may be that the North Korean leadership sees tension with the ROK as a way to help focus its armed forces and instill discipline.

30 Jan CPRF Statement –
For the US: Weeks prior to the US inauguration, North Korea offered to send a top diplomat to the inauguration, which the US rejected on 12 Jan. Four days after the rejection (16 Jan), North Korea issued a strong statement directed at the US about retaining nuclear weapons. The next day (17 Jan), it escalated its saber rattling with a threatening statement against the Republic of Korea (ROK). The sequence of these statements suggests they may be reactions to the diplomatic snub. The quick publications of the statements against the US and the ROK – which the North sees as the proxy of the US – may also signify North Korea had these in preparation in the event of rejection (which implies it had a separate set of statements ready had the US accepted what the North considered a gesture of conciliation).

Between 21 and 27 Jan, the US stated, via multiple channels, that it is willing to work within the Six-Party framework, as well as through direct diplomacy with North Korea, to verify and eliminate fully North Korea’s nuclear weapons program.

On 23 Jan, Kim Jong-il stated, “The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is committed to the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula, and hopes to live in peace with all other sides. … We don’t want to see tension emerge in the situation on the peninsula, and we are willing to strengthen coordination and cooperation with China and push forward the six-party process without interruption.”

Given that North Korea has been attempting to maintain itself at the top of the new US administration’s international agenda for some time, the 30 Jan CPRF statement appears to be in part political positioning designed to convey to the new US administration, in strongest terms, that while North Korea will conduct negotiations with the US, it still is a force to be reckoned with.

For the ROK: Since the election and inauguration of the Lee Myung-bak administration in the South, North Korea’s rhetoric and threat against the ROK have increased significantly when compared to the previous two ROK administrations. The inter-Korean relation is at its coolest in over ten years. The North claims the Lee government is the root cause of this chilled relationship.

For the past two ROK administrations, North Korea has enjoyed a conciliatory relationship with the ROK under the Sunshine Policy of Kim Dae-jung, and later the Peace and Prosperity Policy of Roh Moo-hyun, The ROK government under the Kim and Roh administrations was sensitive to the North’s threats and demands, and reacted appropriately – in North’s view – to much of its demands.

With the launching of the Lee administration, the relationship between the two Koreas became frosty quickly. Unlike the previous two ROK administrations, the Lee administration has chosen to take a tough stance against the North, insisting the relationship between the two Koreas must be based on “reciprocity and North Korea’s willingness to disarm its nuclear arsenal.”

In response, North Korea has been consistently releasing rhetoric and threats against the ROK government through diplomatic channels, KPA delegation stationed at the Joint Security Area (JSA), as well as its state and affiliated media outlets. The frequency and belligerent tone of the North Korean rhetoric and threats have increased throughout 2008, culminating with the 24 Nov 08 announcement of five “punitive” measures (which was implemented on 01 Dec 08) as a retaliation to the ROK’s “anti-republic” and “anti-unification” policies.

In the face of the North’s increasingly belligerent and frequent rhetoric and threats, the ROK government has not wavered and adheres to its hard-line policy. As expected, the ROK government largely ignored the 17 Jan KPA pronouncement as just another series of provocative sound-bites.

The 30 Jan CPRF statement appears to be, among other purposes, a response to the lack of ROK reaction to the 17 Jan KPA statement, designed to elevate the pressure on the ROK to induce a change in the South’s North Korea policy.

Conclusion: The use of a highly authoritative statement on 17 Jan and the issuance of the highly provocative statement on 30 Jan certainly are intended to underscore the gravity with which North Korea views the current inter-Korean and international political situation.

Recent series of rhetoric and threats surrounding the NLL seems to be a set of political maneuvering on the part of North Korea. A continuing leitmotif of North Korean regional foreign policy is its aim to establish diplomatic relations with the US while isolating the ROK from the regional diplomatic and security forums. The statements from 17 and 30 Jan served as a vehicle to maintain the US’ focus in the region and engagement with the North to bring to fruition Kim Jong-il’s deep seated desire to normalize diplomatic relations with the US. Through the same two statements, the North has conveyed the ROK administration its mounting displeasure about the current ROK policy on North Korea.

Politically, North Korea has more to lose than gain if there is a military clash between the North and the South (along the NLL or anywhere else on the Korean Peninsula); however, the possibility of provocation (real or perceived) and/or miscalculation induced clash certainly does exist if the current trend of elevated tensions between the two Koreas continues.

If North Korea truly believes provocation is the right path to take in order to gain the attentions of the US and the ROK (of course it will gain the attention of the international community as well), it is more likely the North would conduct a ballistic missile test rather than contrive a tactical military skirmish.

In and Around North Korea: 24 - 30 January 2009

• Xinhua news agency reported that Kim Jong-il said, on 23 Jan, he wanted a nuclear free Korean peninsula, declaring his willingness to work with China to push forward the six-party process. Kim stated, “the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is committed to the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula, and hopes to live in peace with all other sides. … We don’t want to see tension emerge in the situation on the peninsula, and we are willing to strengthen coordination and cooperation with China and push forward the six-party process without interruption.” The United States welcomed the remarks. The US State Department spokesman Robert Woods said, “That’s a good thing. I mean, if you go back to September 2005, the North Koreans to take a number of steps toward denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. So we hope to see the North adhere to what it agreed to.” South Korea also welcomed Kim Jong-il’s reported commitment.

• Former President Jimmy Carter said Monday (26 Jan) he believes North Korea would be willing to give up its nuclear weapons for US diplomatic recognition, a peace deal with South Korea and America, and if it got new atomic power reactors and free fuel oil. "It could be worked out, in my opinion, in half a day," Carter said in an interview Monday (26 Jan) with The Associated Press.

• The US Secretary of State Clinton said Tuesday (27 Jan) that six-party talks are "essential" to ending North Korea's nuclear weapons ambitions and that North Korea's nuclear proliferation should be resolved quickly through direct diplomacy of the US if necessary. Secretary Clinton said in her first news briefing since taking office on 22 Jan that "With respect to North Korea, the six-party talks are essential," adding the multilateral talks have been "a useful forum for participants to deal with the challenge of North Korea's nuclear program, and the other issues that are part of the North Korean agenda."

• Top South Korean and Japanese nuclear negotiators on Thursday (29 Jan) discussed how to advance the stalled six-way talks on the North Korean nuclear program, officials here said. Seoul's envoy Kim Sook and his counterpart Akitaka Saiki had a luncheon meeting in Seoul. "They had wide-ranging exchange of opinions on the six-way talks," foreign ministry spokesman Moon Tae-young said. He refused to elaborate, saying related officials will later provide a separate press briefing on the talks.

• A new round of six-party working group talks on the establishment of a peace regime on the Korean Peninsula is expected to be held next month in Moscow, a foreign ministry official said Wednesday (28 Jan). The expectation comes with reports that Russia's chief nuclear negotiator, Alexander Losyukov, is visiting Pyongyang. The peace regime working group is one of the five working groups which the United States, the two Koreas, China, Japan and Russia agreed to create in 2007 to resolve the deadlock over the North's nuclearization issue.

• North Korea said on Friday (30 Jan) that it is scrapping all political and military agreements with South Korea and declared a western sea border void, sharply raising tensions and the possibility of a naval clash. The move revived tensions of the Cold War era, trampling a landmark accord that the Koreas reached in 1991 to prevent military clashes and boost reconciliatory efforts. Seoul expressed "deep regret" and urged Pyongyang to agree to dialogue. North Korea blasted the South Korean government and said the hard-line policies of Lee Myung-bak forced it to scrap the accords. "The group of traitors has already reduced all the agreements reached between the north and the south in the past to dead documents," the North's Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of Korea, a body handling inter-Korean affairs, said in a statement carried by the state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA). "Under such situation it is self-evident that there is no need for the DPRK to remain bound to those north-south agreements," it said.

• North Korean leader Kim Jong-il enjoyed a performance given by the North's state merited chorus on the occasion of the lunar New Year, which fell on Monday (26 Jan), its state media reported on Tuesday (27 Jan). According to the North's KCNA, the performance “truthfully represented the unshakable faith and will of the army and people to accomplish the revolutionary cause of Juche (self-reliance)" under the leadership of Kim Jong-il. After the performance was over, Kim reportedly expressed the expectation and conviction that all of them would conduct dynamic revolutionary art activities and thus fully display the might of buglers in the Songun (military first) era.

• Kim Jong-nam (38), the eldest son of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, last Saturday (24 Jan) said his father alone determines who succeeds him. Kim Jong-nam made the remark in Beijing. It was his first comment on the sensitive issue of who will succeed the ailing leader, from whom he is said to have been estranged.

• Kim Yong Il, prime minister of North Korea, said 22 Jan that North Korea is willing to further strengthen economic and trade cooperation with China. Kim Yong Il made his statement during his meeting with Wang Jiarui, head of the International Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China.

• Yonhap news agency reported on 23 Jan the United Nations will soon resume development projects in North Korea, nearly two years after it suspended work in the communist state over suspicions that funds were being misappropriated. The executive board of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) made the decision after North Korea agreed to guarantee independent auditing and to alter the methods for payment and selection of North Korean staff, the source said on customary condition of anonymity. "We expect the UNDP will resume its projects during the first half of the year with a UNDP office reopening (in Pyongyang) in March," the source said, expressing hope the office would coordinate projects involving the World Food Program, UNICEF and other U.N. organizations in North Korea.

• A United Nations committee questioned North Korean officials on 23 Jan about the communist country's policy on protecting the human rights of children in the country, the first such session since 2004. The one-day session on North Korea conducted by the U.N. Committee on the Rights of the Child in Geneva is the third of its kind after similar sessions in 1998 and 2004 looking into malnutrition, infant mortality and budget cuts related to children's welfare. The committee's review is expected to become a guideline for a possible resolution on North Korea's human rights if it is put to a vote at the U.N. General Assembly later this year.

• The United Nations envoy on human rights in North Korea said Tuesday (27 Jan) that the entire United Nations should work together to improve the "grim" situation in the hard-line communist nation. "I ask the total U.N. system to act, on the basis of graduated pressures, graduated influences," Vitit Muntarbhorn said in Tokyo.

• KCNA reported on 23 Jan that “A special investigation committee for nuclear weapons management and examination of the U.S. Department of Defense recently made public a report designating the DPRK as a nuclear weapons state. The report said that the DPRK has not only several nuclear weapons but a missile system capable of delivering them. Commenting on this, foreign press reports said that the report put the DPRK in the same category as that of India and Pakistan recognized as unofficial nuclear weapons states.”

• North Korea is preparing to send a satellite into space in the coming months from its brand new rocket launch facility on the west coast, posing yet another serious challenge to global security, an American expert in Seoul said Thursday (29 January). If conducted, it would be provocative because such a long-range rocket is a dual-use technology that can be used for inter-continental ballistic missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads, according to Daniel Pinkston, senior analyst at the Brussels-based security think tank International Crisis Group. He said North Korea has almost completed the construction of the cutting-edge facility in its northwestern hinterland. He cited satellite photos and testimonies by several experts on missile and space program. "It is much more extensive than the former launch facility in Musudan-ri on the east coast," he told Yonhap news agency in an interview. "I understand North Korea could launch a rocket from the facility as early as this spring if the Paektusan-2, more commonly known as the Taepodong-2, is ready for testing."

• South Korean President Lee Myung-bak Friday (23 Jan) called on the military to be fully prepared to counter any provocation from North Korea while adding the nation's top priority is securing peace and reconciliation between the divided Koreas. The call comes less than a week after the North's Korean People's Army (KPA) said it would now take an "all-out confrontation posture" against the South.

• The South Korean government announced on Wednesday (28 Jan) it will not allow local activists to bring in North Korean currency for the purpose of resending it to the North along with anti-communist leaflets. "The government's position is that it should not permit bringing in North Korean bills, due to concern that it may damage the order of inter-Korean exchanges," Kim Ho-nyoun, spokesman for the Unification Ministry handling North Korea affairs, told reporters.

• South Korea’s Unification Ministry is drawing up an extensive list of South Koreans believed to have been kidnapped by North Korea. Families of abductees have long demanded that the government make more of an effort to have their loved ones returned. Their fates, however, have remained largely unknown for decades. According to unnamed government officials, the Unification Ministry formed a special two-man task force to create a database on the abductees. They said the move is aimed at being “better prepared for possible negotiations on the abductees with the North.”

• North Korean citizens observed the Lunar New Year holiday on Monday (26 Jan), exchanging well-wishing remarks and playing folk games, as the nation continued traditional celebrations despite deep economic woes. State-run media portrayed citizens greeting the holiday as "vivacious" and "optimistic," reporting on various festive sights in Pyongyang including a bustling souvenir shop, a children's folk games contest and neon signs sparkling downtown.

• The new US administration is reportedly considering New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson and former U.S. ambassador to Seoul Stephen Bosworth for the post of special envoy to North Korea.

• North Korea issued on 21 Jan a relatively positive report on President Obama's inauguration, apparently signaling its willingness to engage the new US Administration. Suggesting trouble ahead for the Six-Party Talks and inter-Korean relations, however, the message came in the wake of two authoritative North Korean pronouncements that appear designed to solidify its negotiating positions with the United States and South Korea.

• South Korea will deploy remote-controlled mines along its heavily fortified border with North Korea by 2013, a defense ministry spokesman said Tuesday (27 Jan). Bids have been invited for the development of the new mines called "spider bombs," the spokesman told AFP. The border is often described as the world's last Cold War frontier. Some 660,000 South Korean troops and 28,000 US troops are deployed in the South to counter the potential threat from the North's 1.1 million-strong military. South Korea plans to reduce the number of troops to 500,000 by 2020.

• The United States must step up work with Asian allies and regional powers to be ready to cope with sudden change in nuclear-armed North Korea, the Council on Foreign Relations warned on Tuesday (27 Jan). The Council on Foreign Relations said that although North Korea defied predictions in the 1990s that it would collapse after the death of its founder, economic meltdown and a deadly famine, the state remains weak and vulnerable.

In and Around North Korea: 17 - 23 January 2009

• South Korea's deputy chief nuclear envoy, Hwang Joon-kook, said Tuesday (20 Jan) that North Korea maintains its hard-line position on denuclearization as he returned from a rare trip to Pyongyang. He stated his discussions with North Korean officials in Pyongyang were confined to technical aspects and that he was limited in whom he could meet. Hwang added that he also visited the North's main nuclear site in Yongbyon for discussions on discarding unused fuel rods stored at the facilities. Hwang led a team of South Korean officials and civilian nuclear experts on a fact-finding mission to decide whether to buy the fresh rods. His team arrived in Pyongyang last Thursday (15 Jan) and returned to Seoul on Tuesday (20 Jan).

• Selig Harrison, a scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars, a policy institute in Washington D.C., said a senior North Korean officials had told him this week (week of 11 – 17 Jan) that 30.8 kg (68 pounds) of plutonium their government had listed as part of a preliminary disarmament agreement had been "weaponised" -- incorporated into warheads or other arms. The North Korean claims could not be verified, Harrison said, but they underscored a hardening of the state's position even as it made offers of cooperation to Obama. Harrison also stated that Pyongyang officials were vague about what weaponisation meant, but it appeared most likely the plutonium would be fitted in missile warheads.

• North Korea said Saturday (17 Jan) its priority is to build up its "nuclear deterrent force" to protect itself and not to normalize diplomatic ties with the United States. The cryptic statement was the first to lay out the communist nation's nuclear stance since the last round of international disarmament talks stalled in Dec 08. North Korea "can live without normalizing the relations with the U.S., but not without nuclear deterrent," a foreign ministry statement carried by the state-run Korean Central News Agency said. It added that the North plans to "boost the nuclear deterrent in every way to more firmly defend the security of our nation." On Tuesday (20 Jan), however, the Japan-based Choson Sinbo – considered a mouthpiece of Pyongyang – said in a story posted on its Web site hours before President Obama's inauguration that North Korea is willing to give up its nuclear weapons if President Barack Obama agrees to conditions imposed by the communist regime, including establishing formal diplomatic relations between the two countries. Choson Sinbo also noted that the North was waiting to see what position the new president would take on the nuclear standoff.

• Russia does not acknowledge North Korea as a nuclear power and will continue working with regional countries to persuade Pyongyang to give up its nuclear drive, Moscow's envoy said Wednesday (21 Jan). Glev Ivashendsov, Russian ambassador to South Korea, said regional stability is "crucial to Russia's economic development," as Moscow is pushing for natural resources development in Siberia and the Far East.

• Russia will complete later in January its fuel shipments to North Korea under international agreements, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Friday. Russia is to supply a total of 200,000 metric tons of fuel to North Korea as part of a denuclearization deal. Moscow hopes that in exchange for heating oil deliveries Pyongyang will complete the phasing out of its Yongbyon nuclear complex.

• The new Barack Obama administration will get rid of North Korea's nuclear weapons programs "through tough and direct diplomacy," the White House said Wednesday (21 Jan). The administration plans to "use tough diplomacy – backed by real incentives and real pressures – to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons and to eliminate fully and verifiably North Korea's nuclear weapons program," according to a foreign policy agenda posted on the White House Web site. The Web posting comes one day after Obama said in his swearing-in ceremony Tuesday that "with old friends and former foes, we will work tirelessly to lessen the nuclear threat."

• A spokesman of the North Korean People's Army General Staff issued a statement on Saturday (17 Jan) announcing that because the Lee Myung-bak government of South Korea has continued to carry out a hostile policy toward North Korea, North Korea will conduct "all-out confrontation" against the South. Subsequent to North Korea’s announcement of five measures on 01 Dec 08 regarding North-South relations, including stopping tourism in Kaesong, the two countries' relations met with another "cold weather" at the beginning of the New Year. The situation on the Korean Peninsula has drawn the widespread attention of global public opinion.

• In the wake of a 17 Jan North Korean People's Army General Staff spokesman's statement on inter-Korean relations, the North Korean media have given extensive coverage to domestic reaction. While the North Korean media typically follow up major pronouncements or events by carrying domestic reaction, the reaction to the latest statement is worth noting due to the aggressive and graphic language not often observed in the North Korean media.

• Korean Central Broadcasting Station (KCBS) reported on 17 Jan that Kim Jong Il gave on-the-spot guidance to Mt Yongak Recreation Ground which has wonderfully been built as a recreation and resting place for the people. Accompanying him were Comrade Chang So'ng-t'aek, department director of the WPK Central Committee, and Comrades Chu Kyu-ch'ang and Ri Chae-il, first vice department directors of the WPK Central Committee, and KPA Generals Comrades Hyo'n Ch'o'l-hae and Ri Myo'ng-su.

• KCBS reported on 17 Jan that Kim Jong Il inspected a subunit under KPA Unit 2752 honored with the title of O Chung-hu'p Seventh Regiment. He acquainted himself with the unit's performance of its duty and then watched the soldiers in training. He was accompanied by KPA Generals Comrades Hyo'n Ch'o'l-hae and Ri Myo'ng-su and commanding personnel of the army.

• Wang Jiarui, head of the CPC International Liaison Department is visiting North Korea in a trip coinciding with the inauguration of the new US administration. Wang met with Kim Jong-il on 23 Jan, the North Korean Cabinet Premier Kim Yong Il met on 22 Jan, and with Choe Thae Bok, alternate member of the Political Bureau and secretary of the central committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea on 21 Jan. Wang meeting with Kim was Kim’s first reported appearance before foreign media since he reportedly suffered a stroke in Aug 08.

• A Japanese NGO involved in human rights issues concerning North Korea revealed that since last fall some senior North Korean officials have begun calling Kim Cho'ng-nam, 37, the eldest son of North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, 66, "Morning Star General." If the honorific "General" is being used, it is directly connected to the succession issue. On the other hand, a South Korean news agency reported on 15 January that Kim Jong Il's third son, Kim Cho'ng-un, 25, had been named the successor. Some view this as evidence that an information war between the parties backing the respective sons is heating up. Triggered by Kim Jong Il's health problems, are maneuverings about the North Korean succession problem really picking up?

• North Korea's trade with China has shown steady growth in recent years, surpassing US$2 billion last year, while its deficit has grown in tandem, customs officials in Beijing said Monday (19 Jan). Cumulative trade volume from 2003-2007 reached $7.6 billion, with North Korean exports valued at $2.5 billion, resulting in a trade deficit of $2.6 billion on the North Korean side. Bilateral trade continued to grow from $1.6 billion in 2005 to $2.1 billion in the January-October period in 2008, with data on the final two months yet to be collected.

• More North Koreans are using a cellular phone service provided by an Egyptian company starting Dec 08, according to the Radio Free Asia (RFA) Tuesday (20 Jan). As people in Pyongyang and the provinces begin to use the phones, North Korean authorities are strengthening controls over the service in a bid to prevent information leakage, the station reported.

• Sources revealed to Yomiuri Shimbun on 20 Jan that North Korea is planning to make Wihwa Island on the Yalu River on the PRC-NK border a free trade zone, where Chinese people can travel to visa free. Wihwa Island is in vicinity of Sinuiju. The plan seems to reflect North Korea’s intention to enhance border trade with China to bring in foodstuffs and other goods. Also, moves such as this to beef up the PRC-NK trade relations are seen as North Korea’s attempt to put the brakes on the ROK's Lee Myung-bak administration, which advocates a review of the nation's conciliatory policy toward North Korea.

• The most recent US National Intelligence Council report (titled Strategic Implications of Global Health, dated December 2008) stated chronic food shortages will considerably reduce North Korea's pool of military recruits in the coming years, with nearly a quarter of young adults unfit for service due to malnutrition-related mental disabilities. The famine of the 1990s has caused severe cognitive deficiencies among young North Koreans. According to the report, the rate of disqualification will peak in the 2009-2013 period, during which an estimated 17-29 percent of potential North Korean recruits born during the 1990s famine will reach military age.

• The U.S. Treasury Department on Friday (16 Jan) sanctioned a married couple in Taiwan, Alex H.T. Tsai and his wife, Lu-Chi Tsai Su, and two firms they run, Global Interface Company Inc and Trans Merits Co. Ltd., for illicit sales to a North Korean firm, Korea Mining Development Trading Corporation, accused of proliferating weapons of mass destruction to Syria and Iran in 2008. A Treasury spokesman declined to identify what materials and equipment the firms sold to North Korea.

• South Korea's unification minister-designate, Hyun In-taek, said Monday (19 Jan) he will work more closely with the United States in dealing with North Korea, as he prepares to take over amid the worst inter-Korean relations in a decade. Hyun, a university professor named as Seoul's top policymaker on Pyongyang, sounded tough in line with President Lee Myung-bak's hard-line stance toward the communist state, a departure from his moderate predecessor who focused on persuading North Korea to engage in talks. Unlike major North Korea experts, Hyun prioritizes South Korea's alliance with the U.S. over reconciliation with North Korea and advocates international consensus as the starting point in dealing with Pyongyang. Critics say his approach neglects the unique nature of the communist state that they believe is a key to drawing Pyongyang's compromises.

• Kim Ki-mun, head of the Korea Federation of Small and Medium Business, said Sunday (18 Jan) that the global economic slowdown has forced local companies to cut jobs for North Korean workers at the Kaesong Industrial Complex. Kim stated that companies operating in the complex have been hit hard by falling orders from large conglomerates and tightened border controls that went into effect Dec. 1 and that South Korean companies have started asking workers to take un-paid leave in an effort to save costs.The carrot-and-stick approach is an old tactic to induce good behavior by offering a combination of rewards and punishment. Jeju Special Self-Governing Province, known as a tangerine-producing area, chose the fruit over a stick in a bid to help warm icy inter-Korean relations. This month, it sent 300 metric tons of tangerines and 1,000 tons of carrots to the famine-hit communist state.

• According to an interview filed by Democratic Voice of Burma correspondent Naw Say Phaw, the State Peace and Development Council is building an armament factory with the assistance of North Korean technicians.

• South Korean and Japanese foreign ministers will hold talks here next month to follow up on the latest summit agreement by their leaders, a Seoul government official said Friday (16 Jan). "Japanese Foreign Minister Hirofumi Nakasone suggested a two-day trip to South Korea around Feb. 11 for a meeting with Foreign Minister Yu Myung-hwan," a foreign ministry official said, asking not to be named. "The two sides are in consultations to set a date." The foreign ministers will discuss ways to implement the summit agreement reached earlier between President Lee Myung-bak and his Japanese counterpart Taro Aso.

• South Korea's Cabinet on Tuesday (20 Jan) approved a government plan to send a naval ship and forces to waters off Somalia to protect international commercial vessels from pirates operating off the coast of the East African nation, government officials said. Following the Cabinet approval, the Lee administration will present a motion to a special parliamentary session scheduled for February to allow the naval operation until the end of this year, they noted.

• As millions gathered around Capitol Hill to celebrate the inauguration of the US President Barack Obama, North Korea chose to exercise peace in the sea frontier it had days earlier threatened to shatter. Its troops stayed low-key, South Korean soldiers on an elevated vigil said, and the waters that separate the two Koreas in the west remained calm despite earlier threats by the North to defeat any opposition to its claim over a disputed West Sea (Yellow Sea) border.

• Don Oberdorfer, a leading expert on North and South Korea, says there are no clear signs yet that North Korean leader Kim Jong-il is too ill to run the country. "We would know if he were in such a state that he could not function and he couldn't give any instructions," Oberdorfer said. "Things like that trickle out of the North. That's not been the case." He said he believes the Obama administration will step up diplomacy on North Korea but doubts there will be major initiatives in the short term. "The administration has got lots of things on its plate" and this "is not an issue where you can get any early returns. I remain skeptical it's going to be a major item."

In and Around North Korea: 10 - 16 January 2009

• A spokesman for the NK Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a statement on 13 Jan that the “Wrong views and assertions were floated in the United States recently to create the impression that the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula is the issue to be settled only when the DPRK shows nuclear weapons.” The spokesman stated that the US should first normalize relations with Pyongyang as a precondition for its denuclearization and that it will hold onto its nuclear weapons as long as the US backs the ROK with its own atomic arsenal.

• Particles of highly enriched uranium have been detected from a high-strength aluminum pipe North Korea submitted to the U.S. government as a sample, senior U.S. officials and other sources said Wednesday (14 Jan). U.S. intelligence authorities are paying attention as it might prove to be evidence of North Korea's nuclear development, which Pyongyang admitted to in 2002, but later denied. The aluminum pipe is a component the U.S. government believes North Korea imported from Russia as part of a centrifuge separator to concentrate uranium in Pyongyang's nuclear weapons development program. North Korea invited U.S. government officials to its military facilities in 2007, when Pyongyang submitted a section of aluminum pipe, explaining to a U.S. delegate that the device was used for conventional weaponry. However, Paula Desutter, U.S. assistant secretary of state for verification, compliance and implementation, said in an interview with the Yomiuri Shimbun that an unexpectedly large amount of uranium particles was found attached to the pipe.

• South Korea rejected Thursday (15 Jan) a North Korean demand to adopt a mutually verifiable deal to confirm the possession or presence of nuclear weapons in each other's territory. North Korea, under increasing pressure from regional powers to agree to a verification regime on its nuclear declaration, insisted Tuesday (13 Jan) that the same rule should be applied to U.S. troops stationed in South Korea. South Korea rejected the North's demand as "distorted."

• A South Korean team visited North Korea on 15 Jan to discuss buying unused fuel rods from its plutonium-producing reactor as part of a nuclear disarmament process. Deputy chief nuclear envoy Hwang Joon-Kook will lead a delegation of officials and nuclear technocrats as South Korea has expressed interest in buying the rods for its nuclear power plants. The delegation will check “technical and economic” aspects of possibly buying the rods. North Korea said that it has some 14,000 unused fuel rods, each one measuring about 60 cm long at the Yongbyon nuclear complex. The total amount is reportedly equivalent to 100 tons of uranium.

• Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso and South Korean President Lee Myung-bak confirmed in their meeting on 12 Jan that their countries will closely cooperate in pursuing denuclearization of North Korea. Aso told Lee that close cooperation of Japan, South Korea, and the United States is important as North Korea may view the inauguration of President-elect Barack Obama as a good opportunity to maneuver to split the unity of the three nations.

• Korean Central Broadcasting Station reported on 14 Jan that “according to South Korea's Yonhap News on 13 January, the US Seventh Air Force occupying South Korea proclaimed that it will wage a military exercise testing combat capabilities in preparation for somebody's invasion. The majority of the 8,500 or so members of US Air Force units occupying South Korea, including the Osan and Kunsan US military bases, will reportedly participate in this war exercise; the US Army's Patriot missile unit will reportedly be mobilized as well. The warmongers disclosed that, through various war exercises, they will check the US Air Force's wartime combat mission performance capabilities, including ground target attack [capabilities]. In the meantime, the 35th Air Defense Artillery Brigade of the US forces occupying South Korea is also planning to conduct a simulated missile firing exercise. What is grave is that these war exercises are preliminary exercises for Key Resolve, a South Korea-US joint military exercise, which will be staged this Spring. The fact that an official of the US Air Force occupying South Korea publicly clamored that their primary mission is to make sure they are ready to beat back a North Korean attack vividly lays bare the belligerent nature of these war exercises. Right now, the US imperialist aggressors are driving the Korean peninsula's situation to a crisis from the outset of the year by being crazed with war exercises hypothesizing northward aggression, in parallel with large-scale arms buildups of US forces occupying South Korea.”

• KCNA reported on 12 Jan that “the U.S. Defense Department started deploying three squadrons of the latest type F-22 called prototype fighter in the 21st century in the Asia-Pacific and Global Hawk in the U.S. Air Force base on Guam. The report further states that the U.S. unprecedented moves to hold air supremacy of its strategic forces indicate its full-fledged adventurous military actions to retain an unchallenged upperhand of strength in the Asia-Pacific.” This is the first mention by DPRK media of the actual deployment of the F-22 prototype fighter and Global Hawk at a U.S. Air Force base on Guam.

• North Korean leader Kim Jong-il has recently designated his third son, Kim Jong-un, as his successor and delivered a directive on the nomination to the Workers' Party leadership, sources well-informed on North Korea said Thursday (15 Jan). The decision by the elder Kim comes earlier than expected and was likely driven by his poor health condition after suffering a stroke last August, multiple intelligence sources said. Kim's 68th birthday is next month. If actualized, the junior Kim's succession would be the second father-to-son power transfer in the communist country, unprecedented in modern history. "(Kim) delivered a directive around Jan. 8 that he has named Jong-un as his successor to the leadership of the Workers' Party," one of the sources told Yonhap News Agency on condition of anonymity.

• There is little possibility of a regime collapse in North Korea despite doubts over leader Kim Jong-il's long-term viability and growing social distress, a Seoul think tank said. "Protracted economic woes have weakened social discipline and stirred discontent among North Korea's citizens, but the predominant view is that it is an overreaction to read these as signs pointing to North Korea's collapse," the Korea Institute for National Unification said in a report.

• North Korea's recent announcement of impending legislative elections suggests the first session of a new term of the country's legislature, the Supreme People's Assembly (SPA), will officially open sometime in April with Kim Jong Il in attendance. While North Korea's announcement of the planned 8 March 12th SPA elections omitted any mention of when the new term would start – as is standard practice – if past precedent holds, North Korea should open the first session of the 12th SPA in early April.

• According to an unnamed US Intelligence source on 14 Jan, North Korea appears be working to build collective leadership, with the eldest son Kim Cho’ng-nam as the national leader as a mere formality, to prepare for a contingency involving Kim Jong-il. The system centers three persons from the Kim family, the Workers Party of Korea (WPK), and the Korean People’s Army. The report also states that Chang So’ng-t’ae’k, who is the director of the WPK Administrative Department, is a central figure in building collective leadership and that it is highly likely that the system to succeed Kim Jong-il will practically become the “Chang” regime.

• North Korean leader Kim Jong Il has visited a silk yarn and gum factory in Pyongyang to urge workers to enhance production and quality, the North's state-run media reported Thursday (15 Jan). The Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said Kim visited the silk yarn factory and after praising workers called for redoubled effort to raise production to world-class levels. He also said more should be done to modernize production facilities and research on silkworms to increase output. The report added that the reclusive leader visited a gum factory in the capital city and talked to workers there along with high ranking officials from the Worker's Party of Korea.

• KCNA reported on 14 Jan that Kim Jong-il inspected machinery plants as part of his stepped-up economic drive. Kim gave field guidance to the Taean Heavy Machine Complex and the Kum Song Tractor Plant. Accompanying him were Pak Nam-ki, department director of the WPK Central Committee, and Ju Kyu Chang and Ri Jae Il, fist vice department directors of the WPRK Central Committee.

• On 11 Jan, Yonhap reported that North Korea recently opened a consulate branch office in Dandong, a major Chinese city bordering North Korea. According to an unnamed source, the move signals the North’s intention to increase its product procurement from China through brisker border trade and strengthen its consular affairs amid a growing North Korean population in the Chinese border city.

• North Korea began preparing for its parliamentary elections next month by forming an election watchdog. The Supreme People’s Assembly set up an election committee and named Yang Hyong-sop, vice president of the Supreme People’s Assembly Presidium, as the committee chair, KCNA said in a two-sentence statement on 12 Jan.

• According to a statement by Good Friends, a South Korean aid group, on 14 Jan, North Korea has postponed for six months a planned clampdown on market trading for fear of provoking widespread public resistance. North Korea, in late November 2008, announced plans to ban general markets that sell consumer goods from early 2009. The plan decreed that farmers’ markets known as “jangmadang” would be allowed to operate just three times a month and could sell only vegetables and certain other farm products, while staples such as rice and corn were to be sold only at state distribution centers.

• The United States delivered its latest batch of food aid to North Korea, according to a Voice of America report on 10 Jan. The 21,000-ton shipment, pledged under the six-nation denuclearization deal, had been scheduled to reach North Korea earlier, but was delayed until 8 Jan due to bad weather. The latest food aid will be distributed to 25 regions in North Korea under the monitor of a group of civic organizations.

• Australia granted $3.75 million in humanitarian aid to North Korea. Australian Foreign Affairs Minister Stephen Smith stated the funds comprised $2 million for the World Food Program for emergency food for North Korea, $1 million for UNICEF for emergency water and water sanitation supplies and $750,000 for the Red Cross.

• In the middle of hearsay circulating in North Korea that food production for 2008 was the highest since the arduous march in the late 1990s, a high-level party official in Yanggang Province has announced to the citizens that food provisions will be normalized shortly. A source from Yanggang Province said in a phone conversation with The Daily NK on 13 January: "In our chuch'e Agricultural Method lecture, which was given nationwide for three days starting 26 December, a Yanggang Province party official emphasized that the state will shortly normalize public provisions."

• The U.S. State Department said on 12 Jan that Pakistan has provided nuclear technology to North Korea to help the communist state build a uranium-based nuclear program. The department said Pakistan’s A. Q. Khan and his associates provided centrifuge designs, equipment and technology to North Korea.

• Exports of North Korean missiles and other weapons rose in value to about 100 million dollars, or more than 10 percent of total exports, last year mainly due to tensions in the Middle East. According to a South Korean news report, an unidentified Seoul government official stated that progress in the six-party nuclear disarmament talks helped North Korea sell more weapons as purchasers felt less political burden in buying such weapons as the talks had made some headway. The Middle East, Africa, Southeast Asia and Latin America were said to be export destinations.

• A North Korean weapons specialist, who is working in a secret nuclear project being implemented in Central Burma by North Korea and the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) military government, passed away in Meiktila. He died on 9 January. The authorities sent the North Korean national to Meiktila Military Hospital because he was suffering from severe migraines but he died on the way, according to a hospital staff who does not wish to be identified. The name of the deceased is still unknown but he was cremated at 0703 on 11 January at the Myindawgan Cemetery with the assistance of Yan Aungmyin Free Funeral Service Society in Meiktila, according to a resident of Meiktila.

• Former South Korean President Kim Dae-jung on Thursday (15 Jan) echoed calls by North Korea on the Seoul government to honor and abide by previous bilateral agreements. "It is the obligation of an incumbent president to carry out and respect official international agreements signed by his or her predecessors," Kim said in a meeting with foreign news correspondents in Seoul. Kim urged current South Korean President Lee Myung-bak to honor an agreement reached at the first-ever inter-Korean summit between himself and North Korean leader Kim Jong-il in 2000. He also demanded Lee acknowledge another deal signed in 2007 between the North Korean leader and Lee's predecessor, Roh Moo-hyun. The former president, however, also called on the communist North to halt its criticism of the South Korean head of state. "They have to understand that the South Korean people do not condone such reckless criticism ... Their behavior is counterproductive and has gone too far," he said.

• A group of South Korean information technology experts and businessmen will visit North Korea next month on a rare trip to the communist country amid frozen cross-border exchanges, organizers said Thursday (15 Jan). The 80-member group is scheduled to tour North Korea's major IT centers and hold a joint software exhibition during its Feb. 7-11 visit, said the non-governmental South-North Cooperation for IT Exchange. They also plan to donate 5,000 IT books and journals to the North.

• South Korea’s police beefed up security for North Korean defectors sending anti-Pyongyang leaflets to the North amid warnings from the communist state and increasing personal threats. The defectors said they are receiving a growing number of threatening phone calls and that South Korea’s National Intelligence Service and the police have recently increase the number of security guards for them.

• The provincial government of Jeju Island will go ahead with its annual shipment of tangerines and carrots to North Korea despite the central government’s refusal to pay part of the cost. The Jeju government decided to send a smaller shipment of aid this year – 300 tons of tangerines and 1,000 tons of carrots worth about US $441,176 – to North Korea starting on 16 Jan. Jeju Island has sent more than 10,000 tons of tangerines and carrots to North Korea every winter since 1998, with the central government paying for about half the cost.

• North Korea has called on the United States to sign a peace treaty that would formally put an end to the Korean War of 1950-1953 and replace a truce agreement that is still in effect. "If the United States does not intend to attack our country it should have no reasons to refuse from concluding a peace treaty," the Rodong Sinmun, the organ of the Central Committee of Korean Workers' Party, stressed on Thursday (15 Jan). In the past Pyongyang had repeatedly made similar proposals to the United States, however the Bush administration turned them down as "premature," stressing that it will not consent to the conclusion of a peace treaty on the Korean Peninsula before North Korea's denuclearization. The present call of the North has been made 5 days ahead of the inauguration of US President-elect Barack Obama.

• The incoming Barack Obama administration should be ready for early challenges from North Korea as it tries to test Obama and sunder the six-party talks over the North's nuclear ambitions, President George W. Bush's top Asia adviser said on Wednesday (14 Jan). Dennis Wilder, senior adviser for Asia on the National Security Council, also said doubts remained about the health of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, despite recent efforts to show that he had recovered from a suspected stroke last August. "The North's best act is to try to create the conditions of crisis in order to renegotiate with the United States and the new team will have to be ready for that," he told reporters and scholars at a Washington think tank. "Part of the North's goal will be to see if they can split this five-party consortium that has been created," said Wilder of talks in which China, Japan, Russia, South Korea and the United States have tried to convince North Korea to give up its nuclear ambitions in exchange for aid and diplomatic benefits. Any renewed North Korean brinkmanship would also be designed to "see just what the new leader of the United States is made of," he added.

• The United States turned down an offer by North Korea to dispatch its nuclear envoy to Washington following the inauguration of President-elect Barack Obama on 20 Jan. North Korea delivered a message in Dec 2008 through its United Nations mission office in New Yokr that it could send Vice Foreign Minister Kim Kye-gwan as a representative to the inauguration ceremony. One unnamed source stated that North Korea appeared to offer the proposal to test the political waters in the new U.S. administration.

In and Around North Korea: 01 - 09 January 2009

• Yonhap reported that Kurt Campbell, former U.S. deputy assistant secretary of defense, has been named to replace Christopher Hill as the assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs under the incoming Obama administration. State Department deputy spokesman, Gordon K. Duguid, said he could not officially confirm if Campbell has been named, just saying personnel affairs involving officials below the level of undersecretary will be made a bit clearer next week. Jeffrey Bader, a senior researcher at the Brookings Institution, will likely serve as senior director for Asian affairs at the National Security Council. Frank Januzzi, a key foreign policy adviser for the Obama's campaign, will either be Campbell's deputy or work for the office of Vice President-elect Joseph Biden, the sources said.

• During NHK’s regularly scheduled “Ohayo Nippon” program, aired on 05 Jan, there was a report on the Six-Party Talks and North Korea’s nuclear program that stated that there were grounds for Japan to be concerned about whether it can closely coordinate with the US on the stance towards North Korea. The reporter explained that Japan, South Korea, and the US compiled a secret document in Dec 08 on rules on verifying North Korea’s nuclear program. The reporter stated that that it has become clear that Assistant Secretary Hill showed the secret document to North Korea, and that Hill and Kim Kye-Kwan of North Korea has developed a very close relationship. The reporter said, “Hill’s behavior has made the Japanese side very distrustful.” That being the case, she said, the Japanese government is closely monitoring who the new US administration will pick to deal with the North Korean issue.

• U.S. Ambassador to Japan Thomas Schieffer indicated on 8 Jan that the U.S. will continue to address North Korea’s past abductions of Japanese nationals after the launch of the new administration under President-elect Barack Obama.

• KCNA reported that a Pyongyang mass rally took place at the Kim Il Sung Square Monday to respond to the letter of the employees of the Chollima Steel Complex and carry through the militant tasks laid down in the joint New Year editorial. Attending the rally were Kim Yong, Choe Thae Bok, Yang Hyong Sop, Kim Jung Rin, leading officials of ministries, national institutions and working people's organizations and others including over 100,000 citizens.

• KCNA referenced a signed article in the Rodong Sinmun on 8 Jan stating that all Korean at home and abroad should dynamically wage the nationwide struggle to frustrate the reckless moves stepped up by the bellicose forces at home and abroad to threaten the peace of the country and push the military tension on the Korean Peninsula to an extreme phase, obsessed with the wild ambition to invade the north. The article further states the Korean nation can achieve neither durable peace of the Korean Peninsula nor the independent reunification, peace and prosperity of the country unless an end is put to the U.S. military presence in south Korea.

• KCNA reported that Kim Jong Il inspected Unit 1489 under the Artillery Command of the KPA and watched the firing training of its artillery pieces. He was greeted on the spot by Col. General Ri Jong Bu, artillery commander of the KPA, and other general officers and commanding officers of the unit. He was accompanied by KPA General Kim Jong Gak, first vice-director of the General Political Department of the KPA, KPA Generals Hyon Chol Hae and Kim Myong Guk and other commanding officers of the KPA and leading officials of the society including those of the C.C., the WPK.

• Chosun Ilbo reported that North Korea has reshuffled two cabinet ministers and appointed a new man to a key post in the Workers' Party. North Korean state media reported that Kim Tae-bong was appointed new metal industry minister and Hur Tack new power industry minister. They replace Kim Sung-hyun and Pak Nam-chil. Kim Kyong-ok as newly-named first deputy director of the ruling party's Organization Guidance Department that controls the party, Army and administration and is headed by leader Kim Jong-il. According to the report, it is rare for reshuffles to be announced separately. The new economic appointments may be related to the emphasis on "economic recovery" in a New Year's statement released in the state media last week that is the closest the North has to an annual message from Kim Jong-il, a government official here speculated. Little is known about the newly appointed ministers.

• According to a KCNA report on 7 Jan, North Korea will hold parliamentary elections in March, a move that follows an economy-centered Cabinet shakeup and is likely to affect the military. The Presidium of Supreme People’s Assembly announced its decision on 6 Jan to hold the 12 representatives election on 8 Mar. North Korea was expected to hold the elections in 2008, when the assembly members’ five-year term expired; however, they did not take place as rumors circulated on Kim Jong-il’s health. According to a report by the Institute for National Security Strategy, a South Korean state-run think tank, economic pragmatism may emerge to lay the groundwork for the post-Kim Jong-il era and replace the military-first policy, and that North Korea may promote young economic elites in the coming election.

• n 7 Jan, DPRK central radio referred to Pak Yong-p’al as the “chairman of Kaesong Municipal People’s Committee,” suggesting that he has been promoted from his former position as the “chairman of So’hu’ng County People’s Committee.” Pak appears to have replaced Kim Il-Ku’n who held this position since June 2003. According to OSC, this appears to be North Korean media’s first mention of Pak in such a capacity.

• Yonhap reported that the recent launch of North Korean mobile service by Egypt's Orascom Telecom -- the biggest foreign investor yet in the communist state -- came under the baton of Ri Chol, the North Korean ambassador to Switzerland, a source said Tuesday. Ri, who is also known as the manager of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il's secret funds abroad, played the middleman in Orascom's deal with Pyongyang in December to invest US$400 million over the next three years, the source well-versed in North Korean affairs said on condition of anonymity.

• According to the U.S. Department of State, the next shipment of food aid (totaling 21,000 metric tons) is expected to arrive in North Korea by the end of this week, with its delayed arrive due to recent rough seas. The shipment will be distributed by U.S. NGOs.
• A group of South Korean farmers will send 175 tons of rice to North Korean on 7 Jan amid damaged inter-Korean relations. The Korea Peasants League said they had arranged to have a ship collect rice from across the country at ports along the west coast and that the ship will likely arrive at the North Korean port of Nampo on 8 Jan.

• The ROK Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade [MOFAT] unified the variant versions of the terms used thus far for North Korean escapees to mean “refugee” in English, as in “North Korean Refugee.” MOFAT concluded that the term “refugee” was more appropriate than “defector” – a person who leaves for political reasons – or the more general, “asylum seeker,” as the term contains the inherent meaning that these people require protection from having left North Korea for political or economic reasons.

• A total of 2,809 North Koreans arrived in South Korea during the past year, bringing the cumulative number of North Korean defectors here to over 15,000 and reflecting a slowdown that was partly caused by tightened border controls in China, the Unification Ministry said 5 Jan. The 2008 figure is up 10 percent from a year earlier. The increase was 26 percent and 46 percent in 2007 and 2006, respectively, according to ministry data. A total of 15,057 North Korean defectors have arrived in the South since the end of the 1950-53 Korean War, a large number of which came starting in the late 1990s, according to ministry data.

• Noh Su-min, the biographer of the last surviving bomber of Korean Air flight 858, dismissed recently resurfaced claims that the incident was in fact a plot by South Korean agencies. Noh said Kim Hyun-hee was “definitely” a North Korean agent. It was the first comment on the matter by Noh, who had been avoiding the press since the issue made fresh headlines amid allegations that the previous administration encouraged a revisionist conspiracy theory of the 1987 incident.

• The ROK Unification Ministry urged Pyongyang on 5 Dec to stop making hostile and inflammatory comments against the South after North Korean authorities and their state-controlled media issued New Year’s commentaries that strongly rebuked the Lee Myung-bak administration. Unification Ministry Spokesman Kim Ho-nyun said that these inflammatory commentaries violate inter-Korean accords that call on governments not to interfere in each other’s internal matters.

• ROK President Lee Myung-bak requested through a telephone conversation on 3 Jan with U.N Secretary General Ban Ki-moon for the U.N to contribute its efforts to improve South-North ties.

• ROK activist groups will attach N. Korean currency to anti-Pyongyang leaflets sent into North Korea, replacing US$1 bills following rumors that citizens found with the notes are arrested.
• Over 300 South Korean leaders, ranging from the defense minister to Army, Air Force, and Navy brigadier generals, assembled at Gyeryongdae, about 150 km south of Seoul, and shared their views on ways to coordinate their combat specialties against North Korea. The discussion, the largest ever in scale, is a follow-up to a 2009 policy report presented by Defense Minister Lee Sang-hee to President Lee Myung-bak in Dec 2008 that called for improved operational readiness against North Korea and closer ties with the U.S.

• The Sentaku, a Japanese monthly journal covering political, economic, and foreign affairs, reported that according a military attaché source at the Chinese Embassy in Tokyo, “The Hu Jintao administration’s budget includes spending to construct bridges at five locations on the Yalu River.” China has already built a bridge over the Yalu River which connects Dandong City, Liaoning Province, and Sinuiju in response to North Korea’s project to build a large-scale distribution park in a special economic zone in Sinuiju. However, China is reportedly trying to build “military bridges” at five locations under the screen of the distribution park construction project amid Kim Jong-il’s health concerns. The report states that in the event a succession race intensifies and develops into a civil war, there is a possibility of refugees suddenly fleeing toward China and that the five bridges would facilitate an operation to get the Chinese military to rush into North Korea should such an event occur.

• Bush's national security adviser, Stephen Hadley, said the long-running, often acrimonious and currently stalled nuclear disarmament talks among the Koreas, the United States, Japan, China and Russia have allowed envoys to pressure the North to follow through on its 2007 agreement to give up its nuclear program in return for aid and concessions. But "North Korea will test the new administration by once again trying to split the six parties and renegotiate the deal, he said in a speech at the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank. “When its efforts to do so fail, North Korea will need to accept a verification agreement so we can verify the disablement and then dismantlement of that country's nuclear capabilities.”

• President Lee Myung-bak will hold a summit with Japan’s Prime Minister Taro Aso on 12 Jan to exchange views on a wide range of issues, such as ways to maintain and develop Korea-Japan relations and boost substantial cooperation in the economic sector. Other issues include the continued dispute over North Korea’s nuclear ambition and increasing the countries’ cooperation on international issues.