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A U.S.-based security organization says North Korea is making progress on what Pyongyang says is a light water reactor that has raised new international concerns about the secretive North's nuclear weapons program.
Parts of North Korea are expected to run out of food in less than two months due to a poor harvest even if foreign donors agree to provide assistance, a US relief group said Wednesday.
Samaritan's Purse, one of five US groups that visited the impoverished communist state in February, said that a harsh winter killed crops and some North Koreans were already eating grass, leaves and tree bark.
"We believe that, in many of the areas that we visited, in mid-June they're going to run out of food," said Ken Isaacs, the Christian-oriented group's vice president for programs and government relations.
The United States says nothing has been decided on U.S. food aid to North Korea.
The U.S. says factors including the North's food demand levels, fairness with other countries and food distribution transparency should first be comprehensively reviewed.
The opposition’s major victory in Wednesday’s by-elections is expected to have a significant impact on the political landscape.
The election results may also affect President Lee Myung-bak's leadership style and his ties with the ruling party and government.
North Korea wants to have an unconditional dialogue with South Korea and the United States on denuclearization or any other subjects, but will not abandon its nuclear weapons without a security guarantee, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter said Wednesday.
At least 480 prisons and detention facilities are scattered around North Korea, an NGO claimed Tuesday.
Based on testimony of about 13,000 North Korean defectors, North Korean Human Rights Archives said the regime operates 210 detention centers and 210 labor camps, 23 prisons, 5 indoctrination camps, 27 holding facilities, and 6 political prison camps including in Yodok, Pukchang and Hoeryong.
In Seoul, ex-U.S. president Carter says it's a human rights violation for US, S. Korea to withhold food aid to N. Korea - Reuters
Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter said Thursday that North Korean leader Kim Jong Il wants direct talks with South Korea's leader — an offer unlikely to be accepted until Pyongyang takes responsibility for violence that killed 50 South Koreans last year.
Carter says his opinion is N. Korean will not admit culpability for Cheonan sinking & won't apologize for Yeonpyeong attack but they will express deep regrets.
Robinson: Happy to hear today #ROK "seriously considering" resumption of food aid to #DPRK.
A delegation of prominent American experts said Thursday that the United States will refuse to carry out a Chinese plan for talks with North Korea if Pyongyang fails to make substantive progress in its potential denuclearization talks with South Korea.
Some Western aid groups believe it is too late to get food to thousands of North Koreans who are already starving in remote parts of the country. Western nations have cut off food aid, because so much earlier aid was stolen by the government (either to be sold in China, placed into military war reserves or give out as rewards for loyalty or other efforts to support the communist government.)
The North Korean government is fighting a losing battle trying to keep out news of the uprisings against Arab dictatorships. Those uprisings have made the North Korean leadership very nervous, as did the ones in 1989 that deposed the communist dictatorships of East Europe. This time around, economic conditions in North Korea are much worse. There is another major famine in the works, and still-vivid memories of the great famine of the 1990s. The security forces are more corrupt and unreliable. There are several hundred thousand North Koreans with illegal cell phones, most of them living along the Chinese border. Here is where uncensored news of the outside world quickly enters, then takes weeks to spread to every part of the country. The continued success of these Arab revolts, and growing unrest in the north, caused many North Korea officials to fear the worst.
New photos of the Chinese naval fighter, the navalized version of the J-11 (an illegal clone of the Russian Su-27), have appeared. This one is painted in Chinese Navy colors, and appears to be equipped with Chinese made electronics.
Once the J-11BH is ready, there will be several years of training pilots and carrier deck crews to handle this larger aircraft. So it won't be until the 2020s before China is ready to send a carrier to sea with a militarily significant air wing.
North Korea's proposal for another summit with South Korea is not new, a senior official here said Friday, urging Pyongyang to follow through with "concrete" action to make such a meeting possible.
- Carter goes to NKorea, NKorea makes promises
- Carter goes to SKorea, SKorea listen but says they need concrete steps
- US says no food aid due to lack of seriousness of NKorea
- NKorea stages nuclear test
- UN condemn NKorea, China abstain from voting
- Tensions remain high
- Back to stalemate...
W7VOA Steve Herman
N. Korea has threatened "merciless fire" if the launches of balloons, which contain pamphlets ridiculing Kim Jong Il & family, didn't stop.
2 hours ago
Steve Herman
W7VOA Steve Herman
Yonhap: Activists today released 10 propaganda balloons towards #DPRK despite Pyongyang's stronger threat of military retaliation.
2 hours ago
North Korea has yet to show "sincerity" toward South Korea, Seoul's foreign minister said Friday, one day after former U.S. President Jimmy Carter said the communist state is offering to hold an inter-Korean summit.
The United Nations World Food Programme is to start an emergency food programme to help 3.5 million people in North Korea, the Rome-based organisation said on Friday.
The United States Friday called on North Korea to improve ties with South Korea, cease provocations and take irreversible denuclearization steps before any resumption of the six-party nuclear talks.
Austrian aircraft manufacturer Shiebel has sold two of its S-100 helicopter UAVs to South Korea. The S-100 weighs 200 kg (440 pounds), can stay aloft six hours per sortie and operates at a max altitude of 5,500 meters (18,000 feet). Max speed is 220 kilometers an hour.
South Korea wants to use the S-100s off its west coast, along the maritime border with North Korea.
The United Nations World Food Programme is to start an emergency food programme to help 3.5 million people in North Korea, the Rome-based organisation said on Friday.
South Korea will stage live-fire artillery exercises in the coming week on two frontline islands including one hit by a deadly North Korean shelling last November, a news report said Saturday.
But Dong-A Ilbo daily said marine troops will fire K-9 self-propelled howitzers, Vulcan cannons and 81mm mortars deployed on Baengnyeong and Yeonpyeong islands, both located near the tense Yellow Sea border.
South Korea on Tuesday condemned North Korea for a cyber attack that paralyzed the computer network of a South Korean bank last month, as Seoul's prosecutors said Pyongyang's intelligence organization was responsible for the attack.
Amnesty International has published satellite imagery and new testimony that shed light on the horrific conditions in North Korea’s network of political prison camps, which hold an estimated 200,000 people.
According to former detainees at the political prison camp at Yodok, prisoners are forced to work in conditions approaching slavery and are frequently subjected to torture and other cruel, inhumane, and degrading treatment. All the detainees at Yodok have witnessed public executions.
Cohen said that significant progress was made in terms of applying financial pressure on the North and Iran thanks to U.N. Security Council resolutions and cooperation from private organizations.
Geopolitical and military tensions have heightened sharply over the past four weeks in the South China Sea. China, Taiwan, and the Philippines have each escalated their rhetoric regarding the contested oil-rich Spratly Islands and deployed troops and military equipment to the region.
The Spratly Islands are claimed in whole or in part by Brunei, China, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam. Two-fifths of global sea traffic travels through the South China Sea. Control of the region is of vital strategic interest to both the United States and China.
The Philippines has purchased US naval equipment, including a Hamilton class cutter, for the express purpose of patrolling the Spratly Islands.
The Taiwanese Ministry of National Defense approved the transfer of M41A3 Walker Bulldog light tanks, 40mm automatic guns and 120 mortars to the Taiwanese coast guard permanently stationed in the northern section of the Spratly Islands claimed by Taiwan.
On May 2, China announced that it would be adding 1,000 personnel and 36 vessels to its Marine Surveillance Forces. These forces are directly responsible for patrolling the disputed waters.
South Korea warned Wednesday that inaction by North Korea over its provocative behavior against Seoul last year would "negatively" influence the prospect for the resumption of six-party nuclear negotiations that Pyongyang has been pushing for.
Since South Korea found North Korea responsible for the sinking of one of its warships and North Korea bombarded a South Korean island last year, Seoul has been demanding Pyongyang apologize before the South can agree to reopen the stalled six-party talks.
The U.S. Air Force is planning to move much of its UAV force from Iraq and Afghanistan to East Asia over the next four years.
The CIA and army use their UAVs differently than the air force, which sees these aircraft as strategic reconnaissance tools, which can also carry missiles to promptly destroy newly found targets.
So the air force plans to move many, if not most, of its Reapers and Predators to watch China and North Korea.
The Army chief yesterday reiterated the precondition set out by the army and government that Cambodia withdraw all of its troops from the 4.6 sq km disputed border area before Indonesian observers can be deployed.
"If they [Cambodia] do not agree, the battle will have to continue. We can keep fighting each other or we can end the battle with dialogue," army commander in chief Gen Prayuth Chan-ocha said.
Kyodo: #DPRK officially confirms detaining 2 Japanese citizens.
A year ago, despite the unanticipated purchases, South Korea continued to reorganize its armed forces for a future that might, or might not, include North Korea. This effort had already been going on for five years. It include shrinking the size of the armed forces. Three years earlier, the plan was to reduce troop strength 26 percent (from 680,000 to 500,000) by 2020. Now, the plan is to do it by 2012.
A falling birth rate is producing fewer young men to conscript, but the booming economy is producing more money, and technology, for more effective weapons and equipment that can replace soldiers.
Politicians are responding to this by shrinking conscript service time 25 percent, to 18 months, and assigning more conscripts to jobs in the police or social welfare organizations.
Despite the increased North Korean threat, there's not a lot of popular support for increasing military manpower.
Moreover, it's pretty obvious that, despite increased bellicosity from North Korea, economic decline up there has reduced the combat capability of the North Korean armed forces. Added to that, you have the South Koreans following the example of the U.S., and replacing a lot of troops with technology.
So money is being diverted to projects that will make the military more effective in dealing what whatever new nastiness the North Koreans might come up with. That means new sensors for detecting submarines, and more anti-missile systems. There is more training for civil defense workers and those assigned the task of dealing with North Korean commandos landing far south of the North Korean border.
North Korea says it has handed over the remains of a British pilot shot down during the Korean War.
A United Nations agency responsible for information and communication technologies could urge North Korea to stop its run of cyber attacks on South Korea, a U.S. report said Thursday.
North Korea's 1,000 or so hackers are as good as their CIA counterparts, experts believe. Due to difficulties in expanding its conventional weapons arsenal following the economic hardships during the 1990s, North Korea apparently bolstered electronic warfare capabilities.
The regime opened Mirim University, now renamed Pyongyang Automation University, in the mid-1980s to train hackers in electronic warfare tactics. A defector who graduated from Mirim University said classes were taught by 25 Russian professors from the Frunze Military Academy. They trained 100-110 hackers every year.
North Korea's General Bureau of Reconnaissance, which oversees all espionage operations against South Korea, also specializes in electronic warfare. A source said overall conditions for North Korea's electronic warfare units' hacking operation have improved because of the expanding Internet infrastructure in China. "In the past, they had to operate in faraway locations like Canada or Australia, but now they can operate effectively in areas close to the Chinese border." They apparently operate from Dandong and Dalian.
China is ready to strengthen cooperation with Japan in disaster relief and reconstruction, said Vice President Xi Jinping here on Wednesday.
A Taiwanese defence official says Beijing is pressuring South Korea to stop a military student exchange program with the self-ruled island.
Wednesday's remarks from Defence Ministry Spokesman Lo Shao-ho appear to undermine President Ma Ying-jeou's claims that Taiwan's improving relations with Beijing can provide Taipei more space for international manoeuvring.
The Pakistan government and its military have yesterday warned India that any repeat of the US raid of Abbottabad would be a “misadventure” and would be reacted to “very strongly” leading to a “terrible catastrophe”.
The Voice of America reported on Saturday that a former official of the International Atomic Energy Agency has said that nuclear substances found in Libya in 2004 were from North Korea.
Olli Heinonen was the deputy director general of the IAEA for five years. He told the VOA that uranium hexafluoride (UF6) used in uranium enrichment in Libya was very likely to have been made by North Korea. Heinonen based his allegations on the machinery being used at the time, North Koreas’ purchases of parts to develop nuclear capabilities, and information provided by Pakistan.
North Korea's exports of mineral resources jumped 17-fold in a decade with its outbound shipment of coals and iron ores leading the growth, a U.S. report showed on Saturday.
According to Radio Free Asia (RFA), the communist state's exports of mineral resources reached US$860 million last year, compared with some $50 million in 2002.
South Korea is seeking to set up a hotline with China that would link the two nations' defense ministers at bilateral defense talks envisioned for later this year, officials said Friday.
The island's officials will be sending the message that Beijing should avoid doing anything to hurt Ma's chances of being re-elected.
"We hope they will be benevolent," Sun Yang-Ming, vice president of the Cross-Strait Interflow Prospect Foundation, a government-linked think tank, says in an interview with BBC News.
"We don't need outsiders' help to win votes, but we hope they will avoid such actions as making threats or conducting military manoeuvres, including test-firing missiles."
Mr Ma, on the other hand, will be campaigning on a platform of increasing economic integration with mainland China.
In order to win, he must prove to Taiwan's voters that his policy of opening up to China is bringing economic benefits to ordinary people.
Originally posted by Portugoal
...The beginning of WW3. Assasination of some Austrian guy, invasion of lowly Poland, and now bombing some houses. All tiny things that do little to change the international order, yet will go down in history as causing the most brutal wars.
This doesn't look good. S.Korea would be stupid for taking this and allowing N.Korea to get away with it(assuming it was actually their's).edit on 23-11-2010 by Portugoal because: (no reason given)
JoongAng: PRC snubbed Kim Jong-il's request for 30 fighter-bomber jets equipped with anti-ship missiles. #DPRK
Yonhap: 5 #ROK civic groups approved to deliver additional $769,000 worth of bread, soy milk, med supplies & anti-malaria aid to #DPRK.
NKorea building amusement park near border with China with water park, tennis, wrestling, volleyball courts, garden, promenades: KCNA
North Korea said Monday it has nothing to report to South Korea regarding their follow-up talks to discuss a joint study on potential volcanic activity on a North Korean mountain, casting doubt over whether the two sides will meet anytime soon.
A senior South Korean official says that sanctions placed on North Korea following the torpedoing of the South's naval vessel "Cheonan" have had serious financial implications on the communist nation.
During a seminar with reporters hosted by the Institute of Foreign Affairs and National Security, the official said the sanctions blocked the North from earning 300 million dollars of annual income through exports to the South. He said time is not on North Korea's side and its survival will become more difficult.
Taiwan has deployed a new supersonic missile on its warships in the latest response to China's rapid naval expansion, a lawmaker said Sunday.
Military authorities are also mulling deploying the Hsiung Feng III -- the first locally developed supersonic anti-ship missile -- on mobile launchers, Lin Yu-fang, of the Kuomintang party, said in a statement quoting Vice Admiral Lee Hao.
Analysts say Hsiung Feng III, designed to cruise at a maximum speed of mach 2.0, or twice the speed of sound, with a range of up to 130 kilometres (80 miles), are difficult to defend against.
The United States and China approach high-level talks in Washington this week on a more even footing reflecting the Asian giant's rising economic power, but a bumpy road lies ahead.
At the annual US-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue meeting, senior officials are expected to discuss the way forward as well as stumbling blocks, like human rights, trade imbalances and China's undervalued currency.
But on Friday in Beijing, Chinese officials made clear that while they were willing to talk about currency policy, they would not be pushed on the pace of appreciation.
The third annual dialogue will be led on the US side by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner.
South Korea is spending millions of dollars to fortify shelters on five frontline islands near its tense sea border with North Korea in case of any future attacks, an official said Monday.
"Construction will cost about 5 to 10 billion won ($9.2 million) and will be completed by the end of June,"
South Korean President Lee Myung-bak plans to make an "advanced proposal" on North Korea's nuclear programs at a joint news conference Monday with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin, a presidential official said.
President Lee Myung-bak says a nuclear presence on the Korean Peninsula is an obstacle delaying Korean unification.
Southeast Asian leaders sought to help Thailand and Cambodia end deadly clashes along their disputed border, saying peace and stability were a prerequisite to larger goals of regional economic integration.
The two sides agreed to hold talks Sunday — mediated by Indonesia’s president — as part of efforts to hammer out a lasting cease-fire.
South Korean President Lee Myung-bak said on Monday he was ready to invite North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-il to a security summit if he agreed to renounce nuclear weapons and apologised for clashes last year.
JoongAng: PRC snubbed Kim Jong-il's request for 30 fighter-bomber jets equipped with anti-ship missiles. #DPRK
I still think NK is China's dog.
Taiwan said Monday it would protest to the World Health Organization after the body allegedly told its officials to refer to the island as a province of China, highlighting a decades-old sovereignty dispute.
India kicked off war games involving thousands of troops Monday along its border with arch-rival Pakistan, which is still smarting from the US operation that killed Osama bin Laden.
Poland is hoping that the May 27-28 visit of US President Barack Obama will pave the way for the stationing of US F-16 fighter jets on Polish soil for the first time, Poland's defence minister said Monday.
The U.N. says hunger is driving some North Koreans to eat more wild grass, and humanitarians are pressuring the U.S. and South Korea to send food. But South Koreans who study the North say the crisis has been overstated.
South Korea’s intelligence agency estimates that the North’s food production may actually have increased last year to 5.11 million metric tons (5.6 million tons), about 100,000 tons more than 2009. The agency head reportedly released the figures to a closed parliamentary committee.
If the South Korean intelligence figures are correct, the difference between the North’s supply and demand is not large. Kwon, the expert on North Korean agriculture, said the North’s total need might be about 5.3 million metric tons (5.8 million tons) — some of which could come from imports.
“They won’t have a famine,” Kwon said.
Many collective farms in the North underreport their food production to the central government so they can sell extra food to raise money for fertilizer and farm equipment, Daily NK said in a report posted online.
There also are suspicions Pyongyang is exaggerating shortages and seeking food donations in part so it can devote more resources to its campaign to build a prosperous society during the 2012 centennial of the birth of North Korea founder Kim Il Sung.
Fox News says North Korea has boosted its production of opium and heroin in a bid to secure foreign currency.
The report said that after seeing satellite photos of the camp released last week by Amnesty International, analysts noted the that poppy fields around the Yodok camp had expanded by 130-thousand square meters since 2001.
North Korea's defence ministry on Tuesday denied it carried out a cyber-attack on one of South Korea's largest banks, calling allegations that was behind last month's hacking "absurd" and a "farce".
North Korea and China will start work on developing a river island on their border this month, a report said Tuesday, amid an international drive to coax Pyongyang back to nuclear disarmament talks.
President Lee Myung-bak said Tuesday South Korea should be financially prepared for unification with North Korea, saying unification will bring about greater benefits to the country, according to an official.
Sorties by Japanese warplanes, to intercept foreign aircraft coming very close, to Japanese air space, were up 29 percent last year, to 386. This is the largest number since 1991 (when there were 488 sorties).
These intrusions have been increasing sharply over the last three years. Early on, the Japanese launched many aircraft for each intrusion. For example, in 2008, a Russian Tu-95 entered Japanese airspace, near an uninhabited island about 600 kilometers south of Tokyo. Although the Russian aircraft was in Japanese airspace for only about three minutes, the Japanese launched 22 aircraft to intercept. This force included two AWACs aircraft and twenty fighters.
A similar situation is developing (with China) over the Senkaku Islands near Okinawa. China and Japan both claim these uninhabited islets, which are 167 kilometers northeast of Taiwan and 426 kilometers southeast of Japan's Okinawa and have a total area of 6.3 square kilometers. Taiwan also claims the Senkakus, which were discovered by Chinese fishermen in the 16th century, and taken over by Japan in 1879. They are valuable now because of the 380 kilometer economic zone nations can claim in their coastal waters. This includes fishing and possible underwater oil and gas fields.
Talks between Russia and France on the purchase of Mistral class helicopter carriers have come to a dead end over Russia's demands on the transfer and licensed production of sensitive electronics, a Russian defense industry source said on Friday.
The United States is already deploying its missile defense system in Europe without waiting for an agreement with Russia, Russia's envoy to NATO Dmitry Rogozin said.
Originally posted by arthur2012
I think, koreans dont start war in near future. Because norths and chinese are alies, and south korea not a suicide country xD
The next generation stealth fighter under development by the Chinese military could rival America's best fighters in terms of speed, stealth and lethality, according to a report.
An analysis conducted by the Jamestown Foundation, the conservative Washington DC based defense policy think tank, shows that China's J-20 will be a high performance stealth aircraft, arguably capable of competing in most cardinal performance parameters with the United States F-22A Raptor.
It will be superior in most if not all cardinal performance parameters against the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter , according to the analysis.
China on Tuesday urged the European Union (EU) to lift its arms embargo on China and recognize China's market economy status at an early date to pave the way for the further development of bilateral ties.
"A new batch of WikiLeaks cables has revealed that China tried to set up a surveillance radar base in East Timor."
According to US embassy cables leaked to WikiLeaks, China approached East Timor in December 2007, hoping to establish a surveillance radar facility on the country's north coast.
The Wetar Strait, separating East Timor's north-east coast from Indonesia's Pulau Wetar Island, is reportedly used by US navy vessels moving between the Pacific and Indian oceans."
The latest version of the Chinese H-6 bomber, the H-6K, has entered service. It's been in development for several years. This model has more efficient Russian engines (D-30KP2) that give it a range of over 3,000 kilometers. Electronics are state-of-the-art and include a more powerful radar.
The H-6K can carry six, two ton, CJ-10A land-attack cruise missiles. The CJ-10A is sometimes described as a high-speed (2,500 kilometers an hour), solid fuel missile. But these are short range (about 300 kilometers) systems. The CJ-10A appears more of a copy of the American Tomahawk (using a much slower jet engine).
It does not appear that China is building a lot of H-6Ks, perhaps no more than twenty.
Taiwan is postponing purchases of US-made Black Hawk helicopters and Patriot air defense systems that are part of a $6.4 billion US weapons package that has been strongly opposed by China, officials said Tuesday.
A lawmaker said the delay was caused by budgetary shortfalls, while the Defense Ministry blamed it on manufacturing delays. Lin Yu-fang, a ruling Nationalist Party lawmaker on the legislature's defense committee, said the government is either delaying purchases of new items or postponing payments for existing programs because of the funding shortfall.
The procurement of six Patriot missile systems has been pushed back from 2014 to 2017 and 60 Black Hawk helicopters from 2016 to 2019 or 2020, he said.
South Korean and U.S. marines will stage their first joint drill on islands near the Yellow Sea border with North Korea this year, in a show of force to the North that its provocations won't be tolerated, officials said Thursday.
A pro-North Korean newspaper published in Japan has reiterated that the two Koreas should hold bilateral talks without preconditions.
North Korea has blasted South Korean President Lee Myung-bak’s invitation for the North's leader Kim Jong-il to attend an international nuclear summit in Seoul next year, calling it a “provocative remark.”
He claimed that Lee’s offer to invite the North Korean leader was a sinister scheme for confrontation, calling him a traitor.
The spokesman also denounced the South’s demand for an apology for the sinking of the Cheonan naval vessel and artillery attacks on Yeonpyeong Island. He claimed that the South’s demand for the North’s denuclearization was a plot to disarm and invade North Korea jointly with the United States.
Libyan state television reported on Thursday that the North Korean embassy in Tripoli had been damaged in a NATO air strike.
The news, which was flashed up in a caption on al-Jamahiriya TV, said the embassy suffered major damage in NATO strikes on military and civilian sites in the Libyan capital.
Indian intelligence agencies now have credible evidence of their own that several hundred of the Chinese working in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir are People's Liberation Army engineers. They are in the process of verifying if these Chinese military engineers are engaged in some sort of military construction like bunkers.
The Chinese are involved in hydel projects, realignment of Karakoram highway etc in PoK. Presence of Chinese military engineers in civilian construction activities undertaken by China in foreign countries is "unusual", a source said. "They couldn't be there just for civilian work," he pointed out.
Army leadership is believed to have pointed out the significant gap in the military capabilities of India and China, especially along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) between the two countries. The stark differences in the logistical capabilities such as roads and air links along the border between the two armies were pointed out to the leadership. But most importantly, Army told the political leadership that the Chinese were capable of deploying some three dozen divisions, against India's less than a dozen divisions, along the LAC in case of hostilities.
The Army leadership is believed to have pointed out the massive air force and ground force capabilities Chinese possess in the regions along the Indian border, while urging the government to step up its own efforts to pull up development of infrastructure.