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Category: Terrorism (NK)

August 13, 2010

Rumor: North Korea Planning Biological Attack on the G-20 Summit

North Korea is trying to launch a biochemical attack against the South prior to the G20 Summit in Seoul in November, a conservative activist claimed Thursday citing a North Korean source. Choi Sung-yong of the group Family Assembly Abducted to North Korea said the North is preparing to send 20 different deadly biochemical weapons attached to balloons and parachutes across the border. He said the campaign is led by Gen. Kim Kyok-sik, who commands the North’s frontline fourth corps, at...
Categories NK Military/Terrorism (NK)
August 9, 2010

North Korea Celebrates Exclusion from Terrorism List by Abducting South Korean Fisherman

So North Korea has now seized a South Korean fishing boat in the Sea of Japan: Four South Korean and three Chinese fishermen were questioned for an alleged violation of the North’s exclusive economic zone, South Korea’s coast guard said in a statement. It said the fishing boat was being taken toward the North Korea’s eastern port of Songjin. A South Korean fisherman told South Korea via a satellite phone that his boat was being towed by a North Korean...
Categories Abductions/Terrorism (NK)
July 17, 2010

North Korea Hit with $378M Judgment for 1972 Lod Airport Massacre

I haven’t seen this reported in the news yet, but standing alongside the Pueblo judgment, this creates a basis for American victims of North Korean atrocities to try to collect several hundred million dollars from North Korean accounts and entities in third countries, using international agreements that allow for the reciprocal enforcement of foreign judgments. North Korea was held liable for its role in supporting the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the Japanese Red Army, which planned...
Categories Terrorism (NK)/U.S. Law
July 16, 2010

President Obama Goes Wobbly on North Korea

Just what does a psychotic despot have to do to get on the list of state sponsors of terrorism?  Since President Obama’s inauguration, Kim Jong Il has – been caught twice shipping weapons — reportedly including man-portable surface-to-air missiles — to Iran, apparently for the use of its terrorist clients; sent a hit squad to assassinate a prominent defector in South Korea; threatened civilian air traffic to and from South Korea; threatened to turn the capitals of various neighboring states...
Categories Terrorism (NK)
July 2, 2010

Hwang Hit Team Members Sentenced to Ten Years

I wonder what the State Department’s finest legal minds will have to say about this. President Bush removed North Korea from the list of state sponsors of terrorism on October 1, 2008 to reward it for its progress toward complete, verifiable, and irreversible nuclear disarmament. President Obama reaffirmed the de-listing on February 3, 2010 and on June 23, 2010, citing a lack of evidence for North Korea’s recent sponsorship of terrorism. Discuss among yourselves.
Categories Terrorism (NK)
June 25, 2010

Smart Diplomacy! Obama Commemorates Korean War Anniversary by Keeping N. Korea Off the Terror List

I believe American citizens owe the presidents they collectively elect a clean-slate judgment that begins at the moment when they assume office. Never mind what they said during the campaign; it’s the actions of a president in office by which we judge him. And on North Korea policy — without comment on his other policies — I’ve tried to be objective in judging President Obama; perhaps because of my low expectations, I’ve found much to praise in his actions since...
Categories Terrorism (NK)
June 21, 2010

These Are Not Your Father’s North Korean Terrorists

Those North Korean spies sent to assassinate Hwang Jang Yop have appeared in open court to plead guilty: They stayed tight-lipped during the 30-minute hearing but for just a couple of questions when the judge addressed them directly. They briefly replied – “Yes” or “Yes that’s true.” During the hearing, they frequently gazed at the ceiling of the courtroom and at the prosecutors sitting on the opposite side, but never turned their eyes to the judge or toward the guest...
Categories Korean Law/Terrorism (NK)
June 6, 2010

Hwang Jang Yop Assassination Team Indicted

In America, lawyers often say you can indict a ham sandwich. In the federal system, an indictment means only that probable causes exists to believe that an offense was committed and that the defendant committed it. In Korea, however, if the prosecution indicts, it means they think they have the goods on you. It means they think that your confession (however coerced) and the statements against you (most likely hearsay) and other evidence (however circumstantial) are enough to convince the...
Categories Korean Law/Terrorism (NK)
May 27, 2010

State Department Fights N. Korea Terror Re-Listing With Half-Truths

[T]he Obama team is clearly signaling that it does not intend to do what many lawmakers want: put North Korea back on the State Department’s list of state sponsors of terrorism. The calculation is that the listing, which administration officials see as having been overly politicized during the George W. Bush years, is more trouble than it’s worth. [WaPo, The Cable] Not worth the trouble? Are you joshing me? This, from the same crowd that went all the way to...
Categories Cheonan Incident/Terrorism (NK)
May 17, 2010

North Korea Calls Israeli Foreign Minister an “Imbecile”

North Korea has reacted, and predictably, to the allegations of the Israeli Foreign Minister that it’s arming terrorists: A spokesman for Pyongyang’s Foreign Ministry described Lieberman as an “ultra-rightist” and “an imbecile in diplomacy.” The spokesman, quoted by the North’s official news agency, said Israel was itself being criticized for its nuclear program and the expansion of settlements in the West Bank. He also said it would never pardon Israel for “daring slander the dignified (North) by faking up sheer...
Categories Axis of Evil/Diplomacy/Proliferation/Terrorism (NK)/WMD
May 13, 2010

Cheonan conclusions will mean tougher N. Korea policies … for a while, anyway

It certainly looks like every government official outside Beijing who has seen the evidence now believes that North Korea sank the Cheonan and killed 46 members of its crew. Among those who have drawn their conclusions are the South Korean government, the Obama Administration, and the Republicans in Congress. The multinational investigation is now sufficiently advanced that the official Yonhap News Agency says that the findings could be released as early as next week. One interesting leak references a stray...
Categories Cheonan Incident/North-South/Sanctions/Terrorism (NK)/U.S. Politics/Washington Views
May 12, 2010

North Korea Arms Terrorists, State Department Dozes

The Foreign Minister of Israel has become the first government official to openly accuse North Korea of arming terrorists since the U.S. government removed North Korea from the list of state sponsors of terrorism in 2008: The Israeli foreign minister said on Wednesday that North Korean weapons seized in Thailand last year were headed for Islamist groups Hamas and Hezbollah. [….] “With huge numbers of different weapons … (it had the) intention to smuggling these weapons to Hamas and to...
Categories Axis of Evil/Proliferation/Sanctions/Terrorism (NK)/WMD
May 6, 2010

North Korea Denies Hwang Jang Yop Assassination Attempt

North Korea denies trying to assassinate Hwang Jang Yop (also, the Korean War and the existence of concentration camps). The North Korean web site Uriminzokkiri, the very same one that just two weeks before had said, in reference to Hwang, and I quote, “Traitors have always been slaughtered with knives,” now calls the reports of the assassination plot “a ridiculous fabrication.” I look forward to John Feffer’s explanation for why North Korea’s involvement is improbable. President Bush removed North Korea...
Categories Terrorism (NK)
April 21, 2010

If North Korea’s Attempt to Kill Hwang Jang Yop Isn’t the State Sponsorship of Terrorism, I Don’t Know What Is

Two North Korean agents sent to South Korea to assassinate Hwang Jang-yop, the highest-ranking official ever to defect from Pyongyang, have been arrested, intelligence and law enforcement authorities announced yesterday. According to the National Intelligence Service and prosecutors, Kim Yong-ho, 36, and Dong Myong-gwan, 36, have been arrested. Both men were majors of the North Korean Army’s reconnaissance bureau, the authorities said. The two agents were ordered in November by the bureau’s chief, Colonel General Kim Yong-chol, to assassinate Hwang,...
Categories Defectors/Terrorism (NK)
March 26, 2010

North Korea Threatens “Unprecedented Nuclear Strikes,”

I wonder whether, if Jimmy Carter read KCNA more often, he’d be less woebegone about North Korea’s lack of avenues to dispel misunderstandings, seek out common ground, and show us all its softer side: North Korea’s military warned South Korea and the United States on Friday of “unprecedented nuclear strikes” as it expressed anger over a report the two countries plan to prepare for possible instability in the totalitarian country, a scenario it dismissed as a “pipe dream.” The North...
Categories Terrorism (NK)
March 10, 2010

Yet Another Lawsuit Against North Korea in a U.S. Court

Thirty American victims of Hezbollah terror attacks have filed civil action in the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., against the government of North Korea. The plaintiffs, injured by Hezbollah rockets fired into northern Israel during the Second Lebanon War in 2006, allege that North Korea aided the militant group by training senior Hezbollah leaders and by providing networks of underground storage bunkers meant to house Katyusha rocket launchers. [Ha’aretz] This would be the third recent civil suit against North...
Categories Terrorism (NK)