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North korea postpones reunions of war-torn families, to South's regret.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/09/21/us-korea-north-idUSBRE98K00O20130921

By Jane Chung
SEOUL | Sat Sep 21, 2013 9:55am EDT

(Reuters) - North Korea on Saturday ordered the indefinite postponement of a scheduled series of reunions for families divided since the 1950-53 Korean War, dealing a setback to months of efforts to improve ties between the Korean neighbors.

Six days of meetings between family members still separated six decades after the war had been due to start on Wednesday in the Mount Kumgang resort, just north of the militarized border.

They had been seen as a step in furthering months of thaw in chilled relations compounded by the North's refusal to abandon its nuclear program, described as its "treasured sword".

South Korea said the pullout by Pyongyang "broke the hearts" of Koreans grieving for relatives they were unable to see.

Jang Choon, a South Korean who had been looking forward to meeting his surviving brother and sister from across the border and had bought them lots of presents, said his feelings at the unexpected news could not be put into words.

"I cannot describe how I feel now, what else I can do?" the 82-year-old told Reuters at his home. "But I will not give up the hope of meeting my brother and sister some day."

The North's Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of Korea accused the South of poisoning dialogue, in a statement carried by the KCNA news agency. It said it could never tolerate Seoul misusing such dialogue to heighten conflicts.

"The reunions of separated families and relatives between the North and the South will be postponed until there can be a normal atmosphere where dialogue and negotiations can be held," said a spokesman for the committee, which oversees ties with South Korea.

The reunions would have been the first in nearly three years.

North Korea also said it was putting off planned talks on resuming tours of Mount Kumgang, suspended after a North Korean guard shot dead a South Korean tourist in 2008. The talks had been set for October 2

South Korea's Unification Ministry said North Korea's change of heart was "very regrettable".

"North Korea should be criticized for its inhumane behavior that broke the hearts of all families separated by the war and of all South Koreans in general," ministry spokesman Kim Eui-do told a briefing.

NO TRAVEL OR COMMUNICATIONS

The neighbors remain technically at war, as the 1950-53 war ended in an armistice rather than a peace treaty. The conflict left millions of families divided, with travel across the border all but impossible and nearly all forms of communication barred.

The abrupt announcement upended an easing of tension in recent months.

The two sides this week reopened a jointly-run industrial complex just over the border in the North that Pyongyang authorities had shuttered during weeks of high tension in April.

Yang Moo-jin, a professor at Seoul's University of North Korean Studies, said Pyongyang authorities were trying to secure more concessions from the South, in a recurrent tactic. Concessions this time, he said, were aimed particularly at lucrative tourism to Mount Kumgang.

"This is intended to urge the South Korean government to take a clear stance on Mount Kumgang tours," said Yang. "For North Korea, the tours come first and family reunions come later. It is the opposite for South Korea."

At the height of the tension in April, North Korea issued daily threats to engulf both South Korea and its ally, the United States, in a nuclear war in response to new U.N. sanctions against Pyongyang.

The Security Council adopted the punitive measures after the North conducted its third nuclear test in February.

The North also denounced weeks of joint South Korean military exercises with the United States.

Tension has since waned, although a U.S. research institute and a U.S. official this month said satellite imagery suggested North Korea had restarted a research reactor at its Yongbyon nuclear complex.

(Additional reporting by Jack Kim; Editing by Ron Popeski and Clarence Fernandez)

WORLDNORTH KOREA

China Bans Items for Export to North Korea, Fearing Their Use in Weapons
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/25/world/asia/china-bans-certain-north-korean-exports-for-fear-of-weapons-use.html

By JANE PERLEZ
Published: September 24, 2013

BEIJING — In a sign of growing concern about North Korea’s nuclear ambitions, China published a long list on Tuesday of equipment and chemical substances to be banned from export to North Korea for fear they could be used in adding to its increasingly sophisticated nuclear weapons programs.

If put into place, the export controls would be some of the strongest steps taken by China, the North’s closest ally, to try to limit the country’s nuclear programs. The announcement indicates that China is now following through on some United Nations Security Council sanctions it approved months ago, according to a noted American arms expert.

The list of banned items was released amid a flurry of reports suggesting that North Korea is accelerating its two nuclear weapons programs. Two weeks ago, new satellite photographs showed that North Korea might be resuming production of plutonium at its newly reconstructed nuclear reactor at Yongbyon. And this week, two American arms experts reported that North Korea appeared to have learned to produce its own crucial components for uranium enrichment.

The move also comes less than a week after China made an unsuccessful attempt to revive talks aimed at persuading the North to give up its nuclear capabilities. The United States continues to resist restarting the talks, which North Korea has used in the past to extract concessions without making long-term changes to its nuclear program.

“The release of the new export control list is a signal China is concerned about the speeding up of weaponization” of North Korea’s nuclear capabilities, said Zhu Feng, the deputy director of the Center for International and Strategic Studies at Beijing University, who called the move “very important.” In particular, he said, the Chinese are concerned about resumption of plutonium production at the Yongbyon complex, the centerpiece of North Korea’s nuclear program.

Another Chinese expert on North Korea, who declined to be identified because of his position in the government, said the publication of the list “says that China is increasingly unsatisfied with North Korea’s actions.”

“This is one of the practical actions to show it,” he said.

Both plutonium and highly enriched uranium can be used in nuclear bombs, but analysts say the North’s plutonium program is much further along. At least two of the three bombs the country has tested used plutonium.

China has long resisted punishing North Korea for its nuclear programs, but has appeared increasingly frustrated as the North’s young leader, Kim Jong-un, has appeared to ignore Chinese pleas for moderation. China agreed to the United Nations sanctions after the North conducted a nuclear test this year over Chinese objections.

The North responded to the sanctions with months of nuclear threats against South Korea and the United States, which, analysts say, ended only after China exerted strong pressure, apparently fearful of instability that could harm its economic progress.

David Albright, the American expert who said China was now implementing the United Nations sanctions passed in March, added that the Chinese ban “will help, since North Korea procures so much from China.” Mr. Albright, the president of the Institute for Science and International Security, added that China could take additional measures to “dramatically increase the inspection of goods into North Korea by road and rail.”

China has moved before to stop the export of other technologies that could be used in nuclear programs, including missile technology, though it did not single out any countries when it did so.

The items on the list China released Tuesday were called “dual-use technologies” because they can be used for either civilian or military purposes, and they included items that could be used to build more chemical weapons and to make biological weapons.

Banned items include Ebola, a virus that can be used for medical research as well as a biological weapon; nickel powder; radium; flash X-ray generators; and microwave antennas designed to accelerate ions. China’s Commerce Ministry, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the General Administration of Customs, and the Atomic Energy Authority jointly published the list.

In a statement, the Ministry of Commerce said the items in the 236-page document were prohibited from being sent to North Korea because “the dual-use products and technologies delineated in this list have uses in weapons of mass destruction.”

China’s foreign minister, Wang Yi, who hosted the conference in Beijing last week on nuclear talks, said the time had come to resume the negotiations. And the first vice foreign minister of North Korea, Kim Kye-gwan, who attended the gathering, said North Korea was ready to talk without conditions, a standard phrase from the North Koreans for some time now.

But the Obama administration has said it sees no sign that the North Korean government is serious about reducing its nuclear program. Instead, the United States says, North Korea appears to be increasing its nuclear activities.

On those grounds, the administration said it was not interested in participating in renewed talks unless North Korea first took concrete steps to dismantle its facilities. Washington declined to send a senior official to the conference here last week, instead sending a diplomat from the United States Embassy.

In remarks at the conference, a former senior State Department official and an expert on North Korea, Evans J. R. Revere, whose presence was approved by the administration, said North Korea was “further away than ever from the goal of denuclearization.”

Mr. Revere said North Korea had “declared itself a nuclear power, revealed to the world that it has not just one but two programs to produce fissile material, confirmed that it is developing strategic rocket forces for the delivery of nuclear weapons, and sworn that it will never give up its nuclear weapons ‘even in a dream.’ ”

Bree Feng contributed research.
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: September 24, 2013

An earlier version of this article misstated the year that six-party negotiations aimed at getting North Korea to give up its nuclear program began. The talks started in 2003, not 1999.

Defectors agonizingly close to freedom sent back to North Korean nightmare
By Paula Hancocks, CNN
updated 7:57 AM EDT, Wed October 2, 2013

http://www.cnn.com/2013/09/30/world/asia/north-korea-laos-defectors-hancocks/index.html

Seoul (CNN) -- "Pack your bags you're going to South Korea." These are the words nine young North Korean defectors had waited years to hear having traveled thousands of miles.

Unfortunately it was a lie.

The tragic story of this group of youngsters aged between 15 and 23 takes us back a few years when one by one they managed to cross the heavily-guarded border from North Korea into China to search for food. Most of them were orphans, while others had a parent unable or unwilling to look after them.

A South Korean missionary living in China, known only as M.J. to protect his identity, tried to help the youngsters and has broken his silence to CNN.

"This one child used to live with his father," he explained. "One day his father went into a North Korean military base trying to find food but was caught and beaten to death on the spot. The child witnessed this ... his mother then told him not to come home and threw rocks at him to keep him away."

The youngsters survived by foraging for scraps in trashcans. Fish bones and discarded rice were mixed to make a porridge, while rodents were considered a luxury. When M.J. first met some of them in December 2009, they had frostbite on their hands and toes from living in an old abandoned building where temperatures plummeted to as low as minus 30 degrees Celsius. Some of them had injuries from beatings by security guards and merchants when they were caught stealing food.

One of the nine, a 20-year-old man, told M.J. he wanted to live in China as "even beggars in China do not go hungry."

"These kids were suffering from malnutrition and disease," recalled M.J. "They had been living in quarters with bad sanitation ... also they all seemed to have suffered in one form or another from tuberculosis. Because they were suffering from malnutrition, their growth was stunted."

M.J. and his wife offered to help the youngsters leave China for Laos -- a landlocked country in South-East Asia -- and then onto a third country, perhaps South Korea or the United States to claim asylum. It is a route that is well traveled by defectors, and the missionary couple had already helped other North Koreans escape to a better life that way.

Living in fear

The nine lived with the couple and several other North Korean defectors in China for almost two years in constant fear of being discovered by the authorities. They could never leave the house during this time. China doesn't treat North Koreans in its territory as refugees and usually sends them back across the border.

"The children had been fugitives for a long time so they were used to this situation," he said. "We had a bed which was buttressed with quite a few books on the bottom as legs. The kids would go under the bed and kick out the books, so the bed would sit low and it would not look like anyone was hiding under it."

The couple tried to organize adoptive parents for the youngsters in the United States but without success. And so the long trip to the Laos border began.

The youngsters experienced some firsts along the way: One defector celebrated his birthday for the very first time; they visited an amusement park, which was a new experience; and they played barefoot on a beach for the first time. Finally, they were able to enjoy simple pleasures many children across the world take for granted.

Reunited after 40 years

"As we lived with these children, I saw them change," M.J.'s wife, who also asked not to be identified, said. "They started having hopes, they started dreaming and I know they were happier. I was overjoyed to have done something worthwhile."

The escape

After successfully getting six other defectors out of the country to safety via other routes, the missionary couple paid a broker to transport the remaining nine across the China-Laos border because they had no papers or passports. On about May 10 this year, they embarked on a journey that would take them through the jungle in the dead of night to avoid detection. This journey would ordinarily take 40 minutes, according to the missionaries, but this time it took four hours due to heavier than usual border security that day.

But crossing the border proved to be the easy part. On a bus en route to the capital, an unexpected police search changed the course of events. The youngsters were detained and then investigated for more than two weeks by Laotian immigration officials because of their lack of paperwork. M.J. admitted the police search surprised him as it had never happened with previous refugees he had helped pass through the country.

If we don't pay attention, if we don't keep asking where these children are, then these children will be lost forever and we will never know what happened to them.

M.J.'s wife said they repeatedly called the South Korean Embassy in Laos for help. "We pled our case with the embassy because this was not just about one life but nine lives of young people ... for the embassy it was extra work and a burden to them and why should they care about these children from North Korea?"

M.J. said embassy officials told them to wait and do nothing to jeopardize things as Laos authorities were working to process the youngsters. He said no-one from the embassy visited them in eighteen days.

Bitter truth

On May 27, the Laos authorities told the youngsters to pack as they were being sent to South Korea. M.J. said they were so happy they all shouted for joy. Years in hiding seemed to finally be over. But the bitter truth of the situation soon became clear.

The missionary couple was prevented from following the children and instead locked in a room at the immigration offices for two hours. The United Nations' refugee agency, UNHCR, said the group had been sent back to North Korea via China.

Defector lives with quarter of a century of guilt

Human rights groups were shocked. The missionaries were devastated.

"In these children's minds, they were going to South Korea," said M.J.'s wife. "They never imagined after crossing the border to Laos they would be sent back to North Korea."

The children have since been used for propaganda purposes in Pyongyang, appearing on state-run television in June claiming they had been tricked into leaving North Korea and expressing thanks to leader Kim Jong Un for saving them and bringing them back.

"What I am concerned about is what is going to happen after the propaganda is gone and the rhetoric is over," said M.J. "If we don't pay attention, if we don't keep asking where these children are, then these children will be lost forever and we will never know what happened to them."

Laos was widely criticized for its actions by the U.N. and human rights groups but insists the youngsters were in their country illegally and that the missionaries were effectively human traffickers.

South Korea's foreign ministry told CNN it prioritizes the life and safety of North Korean defectors and is "inspecting the problems revealed from this incident and has improved and strengthened the overall support system."

But M.J. and his wife fear for the nine youngsters, who dreamed of a life without hunger and fear.

North Korea Human Rights Watch Report 2013

Kim Jong-Un’s succession as North Korea’s supreme leader after the death of his father, Kim Jong-Il, in December 2011 had little impact on the country’s dire human rights record.

The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea) systematically violates the rights of its population. The government has ratified four key international human rights treaties and includes rights protections in its constitution, but does not allow organized political opposition, free media, functioning civil society, or religious freedom. Arbitrary arrest, detention, lack of due process, and torture and ill-treatment of detainees remain serious and pervasive problems. North Korea also practices collective punishment for various anti-state offenses, for which it enslaves hundreds of thousands of citizens in prison camps, including children. The government periodically publicly executes citizens for stealing state property, hoarding food, and other “anti-socialist” crimes, and maintains policies that have continually subjected North Koreans to food shortages and famine.

In April, the International Coalition to Stop Crimes against Humanity in North Korea (ICNK), which includes Human Rights Watch, filed a comprehensive submission on political prison camps to 11 United Nations special procedures operating under the mandate of the UN Human Rights Council (HRC), and called for the creation of a UN commission of inquiry to investigate crimes against humanity in North Korea.

On November 2, the UN special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the DPRK recommended that the UN General Assembly and the international community should consider setting up a “more detailed mechanism of inquiry” into the egregious human rights abuses in the country.

Food Shortages and Famine

North Korea continues to face serious food insecurity in 2012, following a major famine in 2011. In November 2012, the World Food Program (WFP) and Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimated that 2.8 million vulnerable people, equal to slightly more than 10 percent of all North Koreans, face under-nutrition and a lack of vital protein and fat in their daily diet. The troubling food situation is the result of several factors, including a dry spell that heavily impacted soybean production in the first half of 2012; economic mismanagement; and the government’s blatantly discriminatory food policies that favor the military and government officials.

Torture and Inhumane Treatment

Testimony from North Korean refugees that Human Rights Watch gathered in 2012 indicates that individuals arrested on criminal or political charges often face torture by officials aiming to elicit confessions, extract bribes and information, and enforce obedience. Common forms of torture include sleep deprivation, beatings with iron rods or sticks, kicking and slapping, and enforced sitting or standing for hours. Detainees are subject to so-called “pigeon torture,” in which they are forced to cross their arms behind their back, are handcuffed, hung in the air tied to a pole, and beaten with a club. Guards also rape female detainees.

Executions

North Korea’s criminal code stipulates that the death penalty can be applied only for a small set of crimes, but these include vaguely defined offenses such as “crimes against the state” and “crimes against the people” that can be, and are, applied broadly. A December 2007 amendment to the penal code extended the death penalty to many more crimes, including non-violent offenses such as fraud and smuggling. Testimony that Human Rights Watch collected in 2012 revealed that authorities executed persons for “crimes” that included stealing metal wire from a factory, taking plate glass from a hanging photo of Kim Jong-Il, and guiding people to the North Korea-China border with intent to flee the country.

Political Prisoner Camps

Information provided by escapees who have fled North Korea in the past two years has again shown that persons accused of political offenses are usually sent to brutal forced labor camps, known as gwalliso, operated by the National Security Agency.

The government practices collective punishment, sending to forced labor camps not only the offender but also their parents, spouse, children, and even grandchildren. These camps are notorious for horrific living conditions and abuse, including severe food shortages, little or no medical care, lack of proper housing and clothes, continuous mistreatment and torture by guards, and executions. Forced labor at the gwalliso often involves difficult physical labor such as mining, logging, and agricultural work, all done with rudimentary tools in dangerous and harsh conditions. Death rates in these camps are reportedly extremely high.

North Korea has never acknowledged that these camps exist, but United States and South Korean officials estimate some 200,000 people may be imprisoned in them, including in camp No. 14 in Kaechun, No. 15 in Yodok, No. 16 in Hwasung, No. 22 in Hoeryung, and No. 25 in Chungjin.

Refugees and Asylum Seekers

North Korea criminalizes leaving the country without state permission. Following the death of leader Kim Jong-Il, the new government decreed a shoot-on-sight order to border guards to stop illegal crossing at the northern border into China. Increased border security in both North Korea and China significantly reduced the numbers of North Koreas reaching Thailand, and ultimately, South Korea.

Those who leave face harsh punishment upon repatriation. Interrogation, torture, and punishments depend on North Korean authorities’ assessments of what the returnee did while in China. Those suspected of simple commerce or other money-making schemes are usually sent to work in forced labor brigades (known as ro-dong-dan-ryeon-dae, literally labor training centers) or jip-kyul-so (collection centers), low-level criminal penitentiaries where forced labor is required.

Others suspected of religious or political activities, especially including contact with South Koreans, are given lengthier terms in horrendous detention facilities known as kyo-hwa-so (correctional, reeducation centers) where forced labor is combined with chronic food and medicine shortages, harsh working conditions, and mistreatment by guards.

Beijing categorically labels North Koreans in China “illegal” economic migrants and routinely repatriates them, despite its obligation to offer protection to refugees under customary international law and the Refugee Convention of 1951 and its 1967 protocol, to which China is a state party. Former North Korean security officials who have defected told Human Rights Watch that North Koreans handed back by China face interrogation, torture, and referral to political prisoner or forced labor camps. In a high profile case, China forced back at least 30 North Koreans in February and March 2012, defying a formal request from South Korean President Lee Myung-Bak to desist from doing so, and despite protests in front of the Chinese Embassy in Seoul.

North Korean women fleeing their country are frequently trafficked in forced de facto marriages with Chinese men. Even if they have lived there for years, these women are not entitled to legal residence and face possible arrest and repatriation. Many children of such unrecognized marriages lack legal identity or access to elementary education because their parents fear that by attempting to register such the child, the Chinese authorities will identify the mother as an undocumented North Korean migrant, and arrest and forcibly repatriate her.

Government-Controlled Judiciary

North Korea’s judiciary is neither transparent nor independent. The government appoints and tightly controls judges, prosecutors, lawyers, court clerks, and even jury members. In some cases designated as political crimes, suspects are not even sent through a nominal judicial process; after interrogation they are either executed or sent to a forced labor camp, often with their entire families.

Labor Rights

North Korea is one of the few nations in the world that is not a member of the International Labour Organization (ILO). The ruling Korean Workers’ Party firmly controls the only authorized trade union organization, the General Federation of Trade Unions of Korea. South Korean companies employ over 50,000 North Korean workers in the Kaesong Industrial Complex (KIC), close to the border between North and South Korea, where the law governing working conditions falls far short of international standards on freedom of association, the right to collective bargaining, and protection from gender discrimination and sexual harassment.

Freedom of Association, Information, and Movement

The government uses fear—generated mainly by threats of forced labor and public executions—to prevent dissent, and imposes harsh restrictions on freedom of information, association, assembly, and travel.

North Korea operates a vast network of informants who monitor and report to the authorities fellow citizens they suspect of criminal or subversive behavior. All media and publications are state controlled, and unauthorized access to non-state radio or TV broadcasts is severely punished. North Koreans found with unauthorized TV programs, such as South Korean drama and entertainment shows, are punished. The government periodically investigates the “political background” of its citizens to assess their loyalty to the ruling party, and forces Pyongyang residents who fail such assessments to leave the capital.

Key International Actors

The North Korean government continues to refuse to recognize the mandate of the UN special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the DPRK, or cooperate with him.

In March, the HRC adopted a resolution against North Korea for the fifth year in a row condemning Pyongyang for its abysmal, systematic human rights violations. For the first time the resolution passed by consensus, marking a breakthrough in international recognition of the gravity of North Korea’s human rights abuses. This followed condemnation by the UN General Assembly for the seventh straight year in a December 19, 2011 resolution that demanded North Korea halt its “systematic, widespread and grave violations of human rights” and reiterated UN member states’ concerns about the country’s “all-pervasive and severe restrictions on the freedoms of thought, conscience, religion, opinion and expression, peaceful assembly and association.”

Both resolutions condemned North Korea’s failure to state whether it accepted any of the 167 recommendations that it took under advisement from a HRC’s Universal Periodic Review (UPR) session of its record in December 2009.

The six-party talks on denuclearizing the Korean peninsula—involving North and South Korea, China, Japan, Russia, and the US—remained moribund during the year. A potential breakthrough deal between the US and North Korea in February to provide substantial US food assistance in exchange for an end to uranium enrichment and missile testing by North Korea, and a return of International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors, fell apart when North Korea insisted on attempting to launch a rocket carrying a satellite to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the birth of North Korean founder Kim Il-Sung.

Japan continued to demand the return of 17 Japanese citizens that North Korea abducted in the 1970s and 1980s for, among other things, training North Korean spies. It returned five to Japan, but claimed eight had died and that the other four had never entered North Korea. Some Japanese civil society groups insist the number of abductees is much higher. South Korea’s government continued to increase its attention and efforts to demand return of hundreds of its citizens it claimed were abducted by North Korean government agents.

Images Show North Korea Reactor Capable of Weaponized Plutonium
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2013-10-02/evidence-grows-that-north-korea-has-restarted-plutonium-reactor

North Korea’s 5-megawatt reactor at Yongbyon is releasing hot water, a sign operations have resumed at the facility capable of producing enough plutonium to make one nuclear bomb a year, according to a U.S. research group.

Satellite imagery taken Sept. 19 shows water being released into the Kuryong River from the reactor facility at North Korea’s main nuclear complex, according to the 38 North website, which is run by the U.S.-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies in Washington.

“This release of hot water indicates that the reactor is in operation and the turbine powered electrical generators are producing power,” said Nick Hansen, who wrote the report that was published yesterday.

If correct, the reactor will enable North Korea to expand its nuclear weapons capabilities in defiance of world powers and the United Nations. Last month, the International Atomic Energy Agency called on North Korea to halt its nuclear activities, including weapons tests and the restarting of the reactor.

Previously, Hansen had reported that satellite imagery taken Aug. 31 seemed to indicate reactor activity because it showed white steam rising from a building containing turbines and generators powered by the reactor. That was the first sign that a startup process appeared to be under way, since there is no independent confirmation from Kim Jong Un’s regime.

‘Unlit Chimney’

“We can’t be certain” that the reactor has been restarted, “but would there be smoke from an unlit chimney?” said South Korean Defense Ministry spokesman Kim Min Seok.

North Korea said on April 2 it would restart all facilities at Yongbyon, including the reactor mothballed under a six-nation disarmament deal in 2007, for producing energy and “bolstering up the nuclear armed force both in quality and quantity.”

Signs of activity at the site north of the capital Pyongyang add urgency to efforts to stop North Korea from advancing its nuclear weapons programs. In February, North Korea conducted its third nuclear test, prompting the UN to tighten sanctions against the country.

The U.S. and South Korea agreed on a strategy aimed at thwarting the North’s nuclear threat as the two allies reassess their plan for South Korea to take back wartime command of its forces from the U.S.

Strategy Review

“We know that North Korea has increased its threats, clearly, against South Korea, against the United States,” Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said at a press conference in Seoul yesterday. “It has increased its capabilities, its missile capabilities, its three nuclear tests. So that is constantly forcing a review of our strategies.”

The U.S. and South Korea have worked up a “tailored” response to the North Korean nuclear threat that has become “real” since the North tested its third device, South Korean Defense Minister Kim Kwan Jin said at the briefing with Hagel after annual security talks.

North Korea called the agreement “a nuclear attack plan,” according to a report by the official Korean Central News Agency. “It is only natural that we hold and strengthen our nuclear power to protect our dignity and our people’s safety amid the U.S.’s unprecedented nuclear threats,” the report said.

Naval Drills

The U.S. and South Korea will hold joint naval drills with Japan next week around the Korean Peninsula, said a U.S. official who asked not to be identified, citing government policy. The USS George Washington Strike Group will participate with naval vessels from the two Asian countries.

The U.S. is careful to avoid laying out in advance the circumstances under which nuclear weapons would be used, Ralph Cossa, president of the Hawaii-based Pacific Forum CSIS, said in an e-mail. “It sounds like we are talking about various nuclear scenarios and indicating that various levels of intensity would call for varying levels of response, up to and including, as last resort, a nuclear response,” Cossa said.

U.S. and South Korea Set Defense Strategy for North Korean Threat
By JENNIFER STEINHAUER
Published: October 2, 2013

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/03/world/asia/chuck-hagel-asia-trip.html

SEOUL — Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said Wednesday that the United States had devised a strategy with South Korea to deter the growing threat of North Korea’s nuclear and chemical weapons programs.

In his annual security meeting with South Korea’s minister of national defense, Kim Kwan Jin, Mr. Hagel said that the new agreement — which does not outline any specific new weapons programs but rather a new method for coordinating those efforts — was needed, “not only because of our mutual defense treaty, but also because of our firm view that North Korea’s policies and provocations pose a serious threat to regional stability and global security.”

The two defense ministers also said they would review the prickly issue of when South Korea will obtain wartime control of their combined forces here; the scheduled transfer, developed under the Bush administration, is set to take place in 2015. South Korea has sought to delay that transfer as it increases its capabilities to deal with potential conflicts.

“The Republic of Korea military has grown stronger, more professional and more capable especially over the past decade,” Mr. Hagel said. “This is a trend we want to see continue.”

Negotiators will try to figure out when control will actually be assumed by South Korea, an issue of intense interest on the peninsula.

According to a joint statement, the new defense strategy would focus on tailoring deterrence against the North Korean nuclear threat and better integrating each nation’s weapons and forces to work together more effectively to deter and address those threats. The two countries will also continue to develop plans to defend against North Korean missiles, and the two nations agreed to include cyberspace as part of their overall defense strategy.

Last winter, North Korea conducted its third nuclear test and launched a satellite into space in what Western officials said was a test of its long-range missile capabilities, acts that enraged the international community and drew stricter United Nations sanctions that were supported by Pyongyang’s longtime ally, China.

The security meeting came at the end of Mr. Hagel’s four-day stay in South Korea this week to mark the 60th anniversary of the nation’s mutual defense treaty with the United States. His trip included a series of ceremonial events and meetings with South Korea’s president, Park Geun-hye, and other officials, along with visits to see American troops. He also toured the demilitarized zone between the two Koreas, where he noted, “there is no margin for error” in guarding against a North Korean attack.

His visit was set against the backdrop of a government shutdown caused by a fiscal fight in Congress that Mr. Hagel said deterred his efforts to assure allies of the United States’ ability to fulfill its defense missions abroad.

He was departing Wednesday afternoon for Japan, where he will attend meetings with Secretary of State John F. Kerry and the Japanese foreign and defense ministers.

The Region's Founder's page: Most Recent Government Activity: 27 days ago

If Antifa should raid this region or whatever, I'll just say this:

Regardless of one's political views, one should not ignore the fatal mistakes of various regimes and the political ideals they may represent. One may be a Communist, or a Socialist, or even a Fascist, but one should acknowledge the people who died under such regimes if only as a pragmatic assessment for one's own political ambitions. But, if one has an ounce of compassion, a pound of morality, then one would remember those lives lost because the death of innocents is never something to be celebrated. Say what you will about the execution of tyrants or death of soldiers in battle, the fact that many Communist regimes allowed millions to starve is a fact that must always be remembered.

May the Victims of Communism Memorial as an eternal vigil! May we never forget those who perished under those regimes!

Yorkshire and humberside

Communism is good
Communism is cool!

Yorkshire and humberside

Communism is fun!
Communism is great!

Right on. I take it you're here because you heard I was giving away one-way tickets to toilet paper-free Venezuela. Paradise awaits, comrade.

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