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Category: Terrorism (NK)

January 4, 2016

North Korea and Sony, one year later: An op-ed in the Wall Street Journal

Just over a year ago, President Obama publicly blamed North Korea for a cyberattack on Sony, and for cyberterrorist threats against American moviegoers. Last January 2nd, he signed an executive order authorizing new sanctions against North Korea, part of a promised “proportional response.” A year later, we’re still waiting to see what President Obama will do to defend freedom of expression here in America. Professor Lee and I have an op-ed in today’s Wall Street Journal, making the case for a stronger response.
Categories Cyberwar/Terrorism (NK)
December 7, 2015

Defectors: PUST is training North Korean hackers

Not for the first time, the Pyongyang University of Science and Technology, a showpiece for academic engagement between North Korea and the Outer Earth, stands accused of teaching its elite students to work as hackers in Kim Jong-Un’s notorious cyberwarfare units.  North Korea is reportedly recruiting graduates from Pyongyang University of Science and Technology for cyber warfare. North Korean defector Jang Se-yul, who worked in the North’s electronic warfare command, and another defector Yi Chol claimed on Wednesday in a news conference...
Categories Cyberwar/Engagement
November 11, 2015

House Subcommittee Chair calls for re-listing North Korea as a terror sponsor

Last month, I posted video of a hearing before the House Subcommittee on Terrorism, Non-proliferation and Trade, where Chairman Ted Poe of Texas and Ranking Member Brad Sherman of California grilled a hapless State Department official about North Korea’s sponsorship of terrorism, and why North Korea wasn’t listed. State’s performance at the hearing wasn’t just bad, but exceptionally so. Poe and Sherman were both visibly exasperated with State’s stonewalling, and seemed convinced that State was ignoring the law. Now, Poe has put his...
Categories Cyberwar/Terrorism (NK)/U.S. Law
October 22, 2015

Congress wants answers on N. Korea and terrorism. The State Dep’t doesn’t have any.

As you may have heard somewhere, President Bush removed North Korea from the list of state sponsors of terrorism on October 11, 2008. Despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, the Obama Administration’s official view is that North Korea is “not known to have sponsored any terrorist acts since the bombing of a Korean Airlines flight in 1987.” Since I collected and published that overwhelming evidence last year, I was looking forward to the day when the State Department would be called to Congress to confront it. Today was...
Categories Sanctions/Terrorism (NK)/U.S. Politics
October 18, 2015

Congress to hold hearings on N. Korea & terrorism, human rights, nukes this week

The first hearing, entitled, “The Persistent North Korea Denuclearization and Human Rights Challenge,” will be held Tuesday at 10 a.m., before the full Senate Foreign Relations Committee. The witnesses will be Sung Kim, the State Department’s Special Representative For North Korea Policy And Deputy Assistant Secretary For Korea and Japan, and Robert King, State’s Special Envoy For North Korean Human Rights Issues. The second hearing will be before the House Foreign Affairs Committee’s Subcommittee on Terrorism, Nonproliferation, and Trade, on...
Categories Anju Links/Human Rights/Terrorism (NK)/U.S. Law/WMD
October 5, 2015

Arsenal of Terror, 2d Edition: N. Korea accused of hacking into Seoul subway control center

North Korea is suspected of hacking into a Seoul subway operator last year for at least five months, a ruling party lawmaker said Monday citing a report submitted by the country’s intelligence agency. After hacking into two operating servers of Seoul Metro, which runs Subway Lines 1 through 4, the hackers allegedly broke into more than 210 employee computers and infected 58 with malicious codes, Rep. Ha Tae-kyung of the ruling Saenuri Party said, quoting a report by the National...
Categories Cyberwar/Terrorism (NK)
September 21, 2015

Arsenal of Terror, 2d Ed.: China arrests N. Korean kidnap squad

To count as terrorism, an act must be (1) violent, (2) unlawful in the place where it’s committed, (3) carried out by clandestine agents or subnational groups, and (4) with the intent to coerce a government or a civilian population. To be international terrorism, an act of terrorism must also (5) involve the citizens or territory of more than one country. If this report is confirmed, it would appear to meet the definition: Several North Korean agents were caught by Chinese police in March...
Categories Terrorism (NK)
September 11, 2015

60 Minutes on the Sony Cyberattack: There is no defense, only deterrence

CBS has published video of a Sixty Minutes segment on North Korea’s 2014 cyberattack on Sony, hosted by correspondent Steve Kroft. View More: Newsmakers News|60 Minutes News|Live News|More News Videos The conspiracy theories of a few pro-Pyongyang gasbags and assorted cranks notwithstanding, the President, the Directors of the FBI and the NSA, and our country’s best technical experts agree that Pyongyang did it. I’m certainly no technical expert myself, but I don’t have to look back from the moon to believe that...
Categories Cyberwar/Terrorism (NK)
July 20, 2015

The courage of Hyeonseo Lee: “I am human also. I am scared.”

Last Wednesday, Bruce Klingner of the Heritage Foundation hosted and moderated an event called “Confronting the Human Rights Challenge in North Korea.” Hyeonseo Lee, author of “The Girl With Seven Names,” was the keynote speaker. Lee spoke in accented, but clear English of the indoctrination she received as a child, of the revelations that broke the hold of the state’s propaganda over her, of her flight from North Korea, and of her resettlement in South Korea. (Later, we learn that Lee also speaks fluent Chinese;...
Categories Deprogramming/Refugees/Terrorism (NK)
July 8, 2015

Four federal court opinions* say N. Korea sponsors terrorism, yet the State Dep’t still denies it.

In case you missed it on my Twitter feed yesterday: Americans are rightfully concerned about ISIS’s rampage across the Middle East. But one thing that even ISIS has not yet accomplished is what the president, the director of the FBI, and the director of the NSA all insist Kim Jong-un’s hackers did last year — suppress the release of a major motion picture by threatening terrorist attacks on movie theaters across America. And yet, incomprehensibly—and two months overdue—the State Department’s...
Categories Terrorism (NK)
June 20, 2015

Friday news dump! State Dep’t releases terrorism report, and it’s the same old crap (updated)

The threats against “The Interview,” the sundry assassination and kidnapping plots against defectors and activists, the weapons shipments to Hezbollah, the U.S. and South Korean court decisions finding North Korea responsible for acts of terrorism, all go unmentioned once again. There’s not even a suggestion that North Korea is being considered for re-listing. Overview: The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) is not known to have sponsored any terrorist acts since the bombing of a Korean Airlines flight in 1987. In October 2008,...
Categories Terrorism (NK)
May 22, 2015

“Arsenal of Terror,” 2d ed.: N. Korea paid dope dealers $40K to kill Hwang Jang Yop

South Korean prosecutors have indicted three South Korean nationals, identified only by the surnames “Bang,” “Kim,” and “Hwang,” for “bringing in methamphetamine from North Korea and attempting to assassinate” Hwang Jang-Yop, North Korea’s highest-ranking defector until his death in 2010. Let’s unpack these two criminal conspiracies one at a time, starting with the meth: The 69-year-old, identified only by his family name Bang, and two others have been detained for producing 70 kilograms of methamphetamine at a North Korean factory...
Categories Drugs & N Korea/Terrorism (NK)
May 19, 2015

2016 Defense Authorization Act would define N. Korea as state sponsor of terrorism

On Sunday, I spotted this interesting Yonhap headline: “U.S. defense bill calls N. Korea terror sponsor.” Given my own recent work on this subject, I was curious about the effect of this provision, so I pulled up the text of the bill, H.R. 1735, the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2016. The versions on Thomas and Congress.gov don’t yet reflect the amendment, but clues from the Yonhap piece led me to the amendment in question, offered by Rep....
Categories Foreigners in N. Korea/Terrorism (NK)
May 5, 2015

Contradiction isn’t argument: A response to Doug Bandow on N. Korea and terrorism

In the years after my return from four years with the Army in Korea, I found much to agree with in Doug Bandow’s writing — up to a point. Bandow is best known — at least in the context of Korea — for arguing that South Korea can and should pay for its own defense, and that U.S. Forces Korea should withdraw. A supporter of the isolationist and semi-retired cult figure, Ron Paul, Bandow favors the withdrawal of all 28,500 U.S. military personnel from South Korea. But...
Categories Terrorism (NK)
May 2, 2015

N. Korea denounces my report on its sponsorship of terrorism: a “sinister,” “plot-breeding,” “unpardonable … provocation.”

For days, since the launch of the report I wrote for the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, laying out the case for re-listing North Korea as a state sponsor of terrorism, I’d been watching KCNA, hoping I wouldn’t be snubbed. That’s why this 884-word May Day denunciation is a very special, emotional moment for me — the pinnacle of years of sinister plot-breeding, of careful research and delicately crafted Madonna analogies. I will go so far as to say that the...
Categories Terrorism (NK)
April 27, 2015

Why North Korea should be re-listed as a state sponsor of terrorism

Read the full report, here. ~   ~   ~ Many, many thanks to Greg Scarlatoiu, Suzanne Scholte, Nick Eberstadt, and Marcus Noland for their kind comments at yesterday’s launch event, and to everyone who showed up at 6:00 on a Monday night. Special thanks to the HRNK interns who made it all possible — especially to Rosa and to Raymond, who meticulously checked every last cite and footnote. ~   ~   ~ Update, 1 May 2015: Here’s video of...
Categories Terrorism (NK)
April 20, 2015

RFA: North Korea tells overseas workers to attack journalists

Ever since the U.N. Commission of Inquiry issued its report last year, North Korea has been particularly sensitive to accusations of human rights violations. It shouldn’t surprise us that this sensitivity is especially keen when the scrutiny threatens to cut off a growing source of hard currency — its export of what amounts to slave labor to places like Russia, Malaysia, and Qatar. Press reports on the working conditions of these workers, and the regime’s spotty history of paying their (paltry) wages, have embarrassed the regime, embarrassed companies...
Categories Human Trafficking/Terrorism (NK)
April 14, 2015

60 Minutes on the Sony attacks

Gone were the inside-job theories, except that one expert, when asked, allows the bare possibility that an insider might have made the North Koreans’ work easier. Like the heads of the FBI and the NSA, all the experts 60 Minutes interviewed are convinced that North Korea was behind the attack. Worse, the attack itself was not all that sophisticated, when compared to what the U.S. and other governments are capable of today. An equally unsophisticated attack would have taken out 80%...
Categories Cyberwar