Engage North Korea : April 2022

Monday, April 25, 2022

North Korea to send 30 ‘technicians’ to Guinea for agricultural cooperation | NK News

North Korea to send 30 ‘technicians’ to Guinea for agricultural cooperation | NK News

North Korea to send 30 ‘technicians’ to Guinea for agricultural cooperation
West African country agrees to deal with DPRK ambassador to help support research center named after Kim Il Sung

Ifang Bremer April 19, 2022

A North Korean tractor in a field in the countryside near Pyongyang | Image: Eric Lafforgue (May 2009)

North Korea will dispatch over two dozen “technicians” to Guinea to work in the agriculture sector, the West African country has announced, showcasing efforts to nurture bilateral ties despite international sanctions that prohibit DPRK citizens from working abroad.

Guinea’s agriculture ministry revealed the deal on social media earlier this month, posting photos of a meeting between North Korean Ambassador to Guinea Ri Chong Gyong and Agriculture Minister Mamoudou Nagnalen Barry. According to the post, the DPRK agreed to send “30 North Korean technicians” to Guinea at an unspecified date.

Pyongyang has signed several agreements for cooperation with African countries in the past few years, including one for health cooperation with Guinea just last month. But it is rare for governments to openly publish details of these agreements given the large scope of activities that U.N. Security Council (UNSC) sanctions on the DPRK prohibit.

Since Dec. 2019, UNSC sanctions have forbidden member states from hiring North Korean workers out of concerns that remuneration may end up in the hands of the Kim Jong Un regime and fund its weapons programs.

It is not clear if the agreement signed by Guinea and the DPRK includes sanctioned activities. Guinea’s agriculture ministry did not immediately reply to an NK News request for clarification.

According to the ministry’s announcement, other North Koreans are currently working in Guinea at an agricultural research center called the Agricultural Research Center Kim Il Sung in Kilissi (Centre de Recherche Agronomique Kim Il Sung de Kilissi), which was founded in 1982 and named after the former North Korean leader. The center has developed “30 varieties of rice, 20 varieties of corn and 15 varieties of peanuts,” according to the agriculture ministry.

However, the ministry writes, the research center faces many problems such as a “lack of infrastructure, lack of staff and lack of means of transportation.”

The 30 North Korean technicians, ostensibly needed to help improve these circumstances, are unlikely to come directly from the DPRK, as the country has almost completely sealed off its border to travel since Jan. 2020 in response to COVID-19.

As a result, a significant number of North Koreans remain stranded abroad and may wish to work in order to support themselves.

North Korea has a long history of cooperation with African countries, rooted in Kim Il Sung’s support for African liberation movements. This support “generated goodwill for North Korea that persists today,” Tycho van der Hoog, a researcher in the African Studies Centre at Leiden University, told NK News in 2021.

Edited by Arius Derr

North Korean Ambassador Ri Chong Gyong met the Guinea Minister of Agriculture and Livestock, Mamoudou Nagnalen Barry, on April 6, 2022 | Image: Ministère de l’Agriculture et de l’Elevage Guinée

Sunday, April 24, 2022

What Kim Il Sung shares with Hitler, Mao and Stalin - NKNews Podcast Ep. 232 | NK News - North Korea News

Before Evil: Young Lenin, Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, Mao, and Kim Paperback – April 26, 2022
by Brandon K. Gauthier (Author)

Should we humanize the world's most inhumane leaders?

Adolf Hitler. Joseph Stalin. Benito Mussolini. Mao Zedong. Kim Il Sung. Vladimir Lenin. These cruel dictators wrote their names on the pages of history in the blood of countless innocent victims. Yet they themselves were once young people searching for their place in the world, dealing with challenges many of us face—parental authority, education, romance, loss—and doing so in ways that might be uncomfortably familiar.

Historian Brandon K. Gauthier has created a fascinating work—epic yet intimate, well-researched but immensely readable, clear-eyed and empathetic—looking at the lives of these six dictators, with a focus on their youths. We watch Lenin’s older brother executed at the hands of the Tsar’s police—an event that helped radicalize this overachieving high-schooler. We observe Stalin grappling with the death of his young, beautiful wife. We see Hitler’s mother mourning the loss of three young children—and determined that her first son to survive infancy would find his place in the world.

The purpose isn’t to excuse or simply explain these horrible men, but rather to treat them with the empathy they themselves too often lacked. We may prefer to hold such lives at arm’s length so as to demonize them at will, but this book reminds us that these monstrous rulers were also human beings—and perhaps more relatable than we’d like.

Print length
454 pages

Editorial Reviews

Review

“Brandon Gauthier is that rare academic whose writing is both incisive and clear; even more than that, it is entertaining. Here he has chosen a subject that, on the face of it, isolates an alarming contradiction, one rarely confronted, that history’s worst butchers (he chooses Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, Lenin, Mao, and Kim Il Sung, but they stand for the full rogues gallery) were once cuddly infants, playful schoolchildren, and sexed up teenagers. The result is a book that is as enlightening as it is disturbing, in part because we get a fresh view of history’s criminals, more so because in them, we can also see ourselves.”

— Todd Brewster, New York Times best-selling author of The Century (with Peter Jennings) and Lincoln's Gamble

"Before Evil isn’t your average history. Written in a colloquial language. Like listening to an old friend, not a stuffy intellectual. It tells the story of some of history's most reviled men. Dictators and despots. As though they were the dorky teens we all once were. Brandon Gauthier has done a first rate job in dispelling the myth that these tyrants were anything other than human. Same as you and I."

— Steve Anwyll, author of Welfare (Tyrant Books)

“We mustn't forget the terrifying dictators who were behind the policies foreign and domestic that made much of the 20th century such a bloody hell for so many. But Brandon Gauthier in this meticulously researched, compellingly written, highly accessible volume shows why we need to remember them less as monstrous aberrations, more as human beings who ended up demonstrating the capability of our species for evil.”

— Bradley K. Martin, author of Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader: North Korea and the Kim Dynasty

“Before Evil opens a compelling window into the humanity of some of the most tyrannical despots of the modern era. At times poignant, powerful, erudite, and even humorous, it reminds us that those we consider truly evil are still truly human, and that the lines between good and evil are not as simple as we might like to believe.”

— Mitchell Lerner, Professor of History and Director of the East Asian Studies Center at The Ohio State University

“Brandon Gauthier has written a powerful investigation into the myriad influences that created six of the most evil men in modern history. Before Evil deftly explains in stunning detail how Lenin, Hilter, Stalin Mao, Mussolini and Kim slowly turned from unremarkable children into authoritarian adults whose choices affected the course of the entire world. By asking readers to grapple with the humanity of men who are widely abhorred, Gauthier provides a fresh way to understand why these six leaders were able to wield power—and how dictators could use those same tactics to rise again.”

— Beth Knobel, Associate Professor of Communication and Media Studies, Fordham University

“For the past 30 years I have worked as a psychological expert witness in murder cases and visited with children and youth in war zones around the world. I have struggled, as has Brandon Gauthier, to find a 'human' explanation for the psychological realities of violence and evil that I have encountered first-hand in prisons and refugee camps. His book is a significant contribution in that morally and emotionally challenging but necessary task. A fascinating book!”

— James Garbarino, Professor of Humanistic Psychology, Loyola University Chicago, author of Lost Boys: Why Our Sons Turn Violent and How We Can Save Them

“A lively yet rigorously researched inquiry into how and why some innocent little children grow up to become mass-murdering monsters.”

— Daniel Kalder, author of The Infernal Library: On Dictators, the Books They Wrote, and Other Catastrophes of Literacy
About the Author
Brandon K. Gauthier completed his doctorate in Modern History at Fordham University in New York City in 2016. He is the Director of Global Education at The Derryfield School and an Adjunct Professor of History for Fordham University. He speaks passionately, and loudly. He frequently asks his students to yell “WHO CARES?” and then tell him why he’s wrong about everything. When not teaching and writing, he listens to music at loud volumes and walks long distances. Historical conundrums keep him up at night. He lives with his wife and two daughters in Concord, New Hampshire. Before Evil is his first book.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Tortoise Books (April 26, 2022)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 454 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1948954613

What Kim Il Sung shares with Hitler, Mao and Stalin - NKNews Podcast Ep. 232 | NK News - North Korea News

Young Kim Il Sung in a propaganda fresco | Image: Eric Lafforgue (April 26, 2010)

What Kim Il Sung shares with Hitler, Mao and Stalin - NKNews Podcast Ep. 232

Brandon Gauthier discusses how youth experiences shaped ordinary people into the 20th century’s cruelest dictators

00:00

19 Apr 2022 Last updated at 13:49

Why North Korea’s markets will survive state crackdowns on private commerce | NK News

Why North Korea’s markets will survive state crackdowns on private commerce | NK News

Why North Korea’s markets will survive state crackdowns on private commerce
Marketplaces have persisted in DPRK despite extreme suspicion from the state, which tolerates them as a necessary evil
Andrei Lankov April 20, 2022

SHAR
A market in the countryside of North Hwanghae province | Image: Eric Lafforgue

In recent years, the role of markets in North Korea’s economy has been in flux, as the state rolls back tepid economic reforms and seeks to reassert control over the food distribution system.

Yet while it’s possible that crackdowns will result in markets becoming somewhat less prominent, historical precedent strongly suggests that they are not going to disappear.

Back in late 1984, when I was an exchange student in Pyongyang, I came across a Japanese media report about how North Korean authorities would finally allow markets to open in the capital. The article explained that this was an important change since markets had been absent for decades.

This was a strange thing to read as someone who had a habit of dropping by smaller city markets on long walks every weekend. I knew perfectly well that markets had been part of Pyongyang life for decades, even though their size and numbers did increase in the 80s.

It was not the first inaccurate media report about North Korean authorities’ decision to open marketplaces, based on the widespread assumption that markets were banned in the socialist state.

In fact, markets have always existed in the DPRK, even though authorities viewed them with great hostility and suspicion until around 1990. And markets are likely to continue to remain an important part of North Koreans’ lives, notwithstanding changes currently underway.

A market building in central Pyongyang | Image: Eric Lafforgue (May 2, 2010)

TOLERATING PRIVATE COMMERCE

When the North Korean state was established, all retail was private, and most Koreans did their shopping at large, booming markets or private shops.

The DPRK nationalized all of these private shops in 1957-58, and the markets subsequently shrank. But they remained a place where local farmers could sell their produce.

In Dec. 1957, the authorities herded all farmers into state-run agricultural cooperatives and made private sale of grain illegal. The state nationalized nearly all agriculture: Farmers worked for rations and salaries producing food, especially grain, which was then distributed to city dwellers at token prices under a ration system.

North Korea’s founding leader Kim Il Sung saw this Public Distribution System as a fair way to take care of people’s basic needs, objecting in April 1978 to those who called for the free sale of rice instead.

“I told [them] that the rice rationing system, which is implemented in our country, is a good system since it ensures that all people live well, without worrying about food, so we should not even think about abolishing it,” according to the collected works of Kim Il Sung.

But even anti-market leaders like Kim Il Sung and his ex-guerrilla friends understood that state-run distribution networks could not meet all demands of the populace. So despite ingrained suspicion toward private commerce, DPRK authorities decided by the early 1960s that they could not completely abolish the markets.

The Workers’ Party of Korea (WPK) held special discussions about the “market question” in Nov. 1965 and confirmed that markets were a necessary evil to be tolerated for the time being, but also controlled.

Kim Il Sung issued instructions on how marketplaces should operate in 1969. Under this system, markets could open only once every ten days for a day at a time. From 1969-1982, the markets normally opened on the first, 11th and 21st of each month — that is, on the holidays for agricultural cooperatives.

Every county was allowed to maintain only one market, and urban areas were prohibited from having marketplaces, though this ban was soon ditched. Still, until the mid-1980s, markets were usually located on the outskirts of North Korean towns, just outside the formal city limits.

In theory, markets were supposed to be places where farmers could sell what they produced in their tiny kitchen gardens — vegetables, chili peppers, eggs, chicken and occasionally pork. The main problem was these gardens could be no more than 100 square meters, enough to grow some vegetables and perhaps an apple tree but not much more. This limited supply and kept the markets small and marginal.

The emphasis on small-scale food production was reflected in the fact that they were officially called farmers’ markets until 2003. The state presumed that official distribution networks would normally satisfy the toiling masses, who would go to markets when they needed something special. Kim Il Sung himself said in 1977 that there is “nothing bad” if a worker buys a chicken at a market to celebrate his son or daughter’s wedding or to treat a special guest.

A North Korean woman sells ice cream on a street in Wonsan | Image: Eric Lafforgue (Sept. 14, 2011)

MARKET GROWTH

Changes began in the early 1980s, as the slowly deteriorating economic situation led markets to play a more significant role in ordinary people’s lives.

In 1984, the central government reformed the 1969 system, implementing the changes that foreign media misreported as a decision to allow markets for the first time. The reforms allowed permanent markets and marketplaces in urban areas, and soon afterward, authorities discarded limits on the number of markets as well.

Early on, markets usually were just a square lot of unpaved land, surrounded by a makeshift wall or fence. After 1984, markets began to look different: They had stalls protected with a roof, gates that closed at night, permanent staff and began to charge vendors a small fee to hawk their goods. By the late 1980s, every Pyongyang district had such a market, with the largest in the easternmost part of the city.

In theory, markets were not supposed to sell cereals, alcohol or consumer goods, but these bans were largely ignored by the mid-1980s. Consumer goods, nearly all of Chinese origin, actually dominated the markets after 1982-83 when Pyongyang and Beijing permitted mutual visits between families with relatives on opposite sides of the border.

Officially, home-based production of liquor has always been illegal in the North, and authorities succeeded in rooting out such production in the 1960s. But homemade alcohol reemerged around 1980 and was widely sold at the markets by the middle of the decade, although not openly. Even so, it was easy to identify booze being sold by looking for small groups of tense-looking males.

Around the same time, vendors began to reappear outside marketplaces. The state justified their presence through the introduction of the August 3 Consumer Goods Movement by Kim Jong Il, which had the initial goal of producing consumer goods from industrial waste.

Teams of what the state considered to be low-quality laborers, like housewives, the elderly and people with disabilities, were supposed to produce the goods for sale at “direct sales shops,” but in practice merchandise was sold at markets or right on the street to generate greater profits.

In Pyongyang, elderly women selling simple homemade products like wooden combs were a common sight near bus stops or subway stations. Prices were not supposed to exceed 150% of regular state prices, but as this rule was poorly enforced, prices followed the logic of supply and demand.

This was just the beginning. The real hurricane of marketization hit North Korea a decade later, in the early 1990s. But these markets did not emerge from nothing: Few regimes in world history were as suspicious of private commerce as North Korea under Kim Il Sung, but even in such a hostile environment, the state could not fully exterminate markets and private trade

Sunday, April 17, 2022

미 7함대, 동해 핵항모 파견에 "대북 적대 의도 없어" | 연합뉴스

Tae-Hwan Kwak

1nSsil51A6tg 04p1u02270a u7:9r

지금 벌리고 있는 동해에 미일 해군합동훈련이 "대북 적대의도 없다" 라고 미 7함대 사령부의 입장이다.  과연 그러한가? 미일 해군 훈련을 왜 이 시점에서 동해 앞바다에서 실시하는가? 대북 경고차원에서 한다고 한다. 이 군사적 시위는(북한은 도발규정) 북한의 안보위협이 아니라고 말할 수 있는가?  이러한 미국의 무력시위가 북한이 주장하는 대북 적대시 정책이다.  역지사지로 생각해 볼 필요가 있다 . 
미국은 링컨호 항모강습단과 함께 한미일 3국 연합훈련을 희망했으나 문 정부가 난색을 보였고, 오는 18-28일 예정인 한미 연합지휘소훈련 기간에도 미 항모와 한국 해군 연합훈련 가능성이 거론됐지만 문 정부가 하지 않기로 결론 난 것으로 알려졌다. 다행이다. 문 정부가 참여하지 않는 현명한 결정에 감사한다.
아래 기사를 공유합니다.

미 7함대, 동해 핵항모 파견에 "대북 적대 의도 없어" | 연합뉴스

미 7함대, 동해 핵항모 파견에 "대북 적대 의도 없어"
2022/04/14

김지헌 기자기자 페이지

미 핵항모 링컨호, 동해서 日자위대와 연합훈련…대북 경고차원

(서울=연합뉴스) 미국의 핵 추진 항공모함 에이브러햄 링컨호(10만t급)가 동해 공해상에서 일본 해상자위대와 연합훈련을 했다 2022.4.13 [미 7함대 제공. 재판매 및 DB 금지] photo@yna.co.kr

(서울=연합뉴스) 김지헌 기자 = 미국 7함대사령부는 동해 공해상에 핵 추진 항공모함 에이브러햄 링컨호(10만t급)를 파견한 것과 관련, 대북 적대 의도는 없다고 밝혔다.

미 7함대 측은 14일 링컨호의 동해 진입이 대북 경고 차원이냐는 미국의소리(VOA) 방송 질의에 "앞서 미 국방부가 밝혔듯이 미국은 북한을 향한 적대적 의도를 품고 있지 않다"며 "우리는 남북한 대화와 관여를 지지한다"고 답했다.

7함대는 "링컨호는 일본 해상자위대와 일본해(동해)에서 양자 작전을 수행하고 있다"며 "이런 정기적인 양자 훈련은 우리 동맹국과 파트너 국가에 자유롭고 개방된 인도·태평양 유지를 위한 미국의 약속을 재확인하는 것"이라고 강조했다.

그러면서 "우리의 훈련은 양국 파트너십의 힘을 보여줌으로써 재래식 억지력의 신뢰성을 높인다"고 설명했다.

7함대는 "우리는 인도·태평양에서 동맹국 및 파트너 국가들과 정기적으로 훈련한다"며 "미 해군은 해양 안보 유지를 위해 규칙에 기반을 둔 국제법을 지키는 데 전념하고 있음을 모든 국가가 이해하기를 바란다"고 덧붙였다.

특히 7함대는 이번 훈련에 한국 해군이 동참하지 않은 데 대해 "한국 해군에 문의하라"며 "미 해군은 정기적으로 이 지역의 모든 동맹국과 파트너 국가와 함께 훈련할 기회를 찾고 있다"고 밝혔다.

오는 18∼28일 예정인 한미 연합지휘소훈련 중 미 항모와 한국 해군이 연합훈련을 할 가능성에 대해서도 "한국 해군에 질문하라"며 말을 아꼈다.

미국은 링컨호 항모강습단과 함께 한미일 3국 연합훈련을 희망했으나 한국이 난색을 보였고, 연합지휘소훈련 기간에도 미 항모와 한국 해군 연합훈련 가능성이 거론됐지만 하지 않기로 결론 난 것으로 전해졌다.

미 항모의 동해 진입은 북한이 대륙간탄도미사일(ICBM) 화성-15형을 발사했던 2017년 11월 이후 4년 5개월 만이다. 북한의 핵실험 가능성 등에 대한 경고 차원에서 한반도 근해로 출동했다는 관측도 나온다.

미 핵항모 링컨호, 동해서 日자위대와 연합훈련…대북 경고차원

(서울=연합뉴스) 미국의 핵 추진 항공모함 에이브러햄 링컨호(10만t급)가 동해 공해상에서 일본 해상자위대와 연합훈련을 했다. 2022.4.13 [미 7함대 제공. 재판매 및 DB 금지] photo@yna.co.kr

Thursday, April 14, 2022

Yoon names lawmaker who opposed abolishing unification ministry to lead it | NK News

Yoon names lawmaker who opposed abolishing unification ministry to lead it

President-elect lauds Kwon Young-se as ‘centrist’ and ‘pragmatist,’ while tapping lawmaker Park Jin for foreign minister

Jeongmin Kim April 13, 2022

Yoon names lawmaker who opposed abolishing unification ministry to lead it

Kwon Young-se (left), tapped as unification minister, and South Korean president-elect Yoon Suk-yeol (right) | Image: NK News (April 13, 2022)

South Korean president-elect Yoon Suk-yeol has nominated a four-term lawmaker who opposed proposals from his party to abolish the unification ministry to serve as its next leader and oversee inter-Korean affairs.

At a press conference on Wednesday, Yoon praised lawmaker Kwon Young-se of the People Power Party (PPP) as a “centrist and pragmatist” with in-depth knowledge of DPRK denuclearization and unification issues. Yoon also announced Park Jin, a four-term lawmaker who led the president-elect’s delegation to the U.S. last week, as his pick to be foreign minister.

“The situation regarding inter-Korean relations is grave indeed. There were various efforts in the past few years, but there was no progress,” Kwon said in answer to an NK News question about his views on the Moon administration’s North Korea policy. “The external situation is very unfavorable — with the DPRK nuclear weapons issue, recently continuing missile provocations and suspended dialogue.”

Kwon, a prosecutor-turned-politician like Yoon, previously served as ambassador to China under President Park Geun-hye and a security expert who headed the National Assembly’s intelligence committee in 2010. He has criticized both progressive and conservative policies toward North Korea, likely an asset as Yoon looks to win support for his unification minister pick in the opposition-controlled legislature.

Kwon is known for being cautious and diplomatic. Asked on Wednesday about his views on the 2018 inter-Korean military agreement, he declined to go into details, saying the administration and ministry should decide on a future direction “as a team” based on both “reasonable principles” and a “pragmatic” approach.

“‘Principle’ and ‘pragmatism’ could be contradictory, but the unification ministry’s task right now is exactly that — solving such difficult contradictions in inter-Korean relations,” Kwon said.

Yoon portrayed Kwon as someone who led internal reforms and mediated conflicts within the conservative PPP, while highlighting his experience as ambassador.

“I think that he will play a big role in resolving the DPRK nuclear weapons issue in the future and manage the situation on the Korean Peninsula stably,” Yoon said Wednesday.

South Korea’s president-elect Yoon Suk-yeol nominated his foreign, unification, environment, fisheries and ocean, SME, education and law ministers as well as the president’s head secretary | Image: Yoon’s spokesperson office (April 13, 2022)

PROFILE OF A “CENTRIST”

A four-term lawmaker, Kwon played a leading role in crafting election strategies for Yoon as well as impeached former President Park Geun-hye back in 2012. Earlier this week, he accompanied Yoon for a visit to see Park at her home in Daegu.

As head of the National Assembly’s intelligence committee when North Korea shelled Yeonpyeong Island in 2010, he famously criticized both former President Roh Moo-hyun’s pro-engagement Sunshine Policy and Lee Myung-bak’s DPRK policy, saying it was a “comprehensive” failure.

While Kwon unsuccessfully attempted to visit North Korea to discuss inter-Korean economic cooperation in 2008, he later came out against sending an envoy to Pyongyang or holding a summit without a clear goal, saying it plays into the DPRK’s strategy. But he has voiced support for providing humanitarian assistance, criticizing former president Lee for not doing more to address food insecurity in North Korea.

Kwon was also one of the few conservative lawmakers to criticize the PPP leader’s proposal to shut down the unification ministry last year, arguing that tasking the foreign ministry with inter-Korean relations would cause problems since the South Korean constitution does not recognize the North as a separate country.

“We ultimately aim at unification, but our unification ministry’s task today is not to achieve it right away but to handle inter-Korean exchange and cooperation, in the process of overcoming the division,” he said in July 2021.

Kwon also opposed a controversial law aimed at restricting anti-DPRK leafleting activities, warning during debates on the law that it risked “limiting people’s freedom and human rights” by interpreting the scope of criminalized activities too widely.

Kwon, 63, graduated from Seoul National University law school, where he was two years Yoon’s senior. The two have a more than 40-year friendship outside politics.

Yoon (left) and his foreign minister nominee Park Jin (right) during the election campaign | Image: Yoon Suk-yeol election committee (March 8, 2022)

FOREIGN MINISTER PICK

Yoon’s foreign minister pick Park Jin did not attend Wednesday’s press conference after testing positive for COVID-19, but he said in a written statement that “there is only national interest” when it comes to diplomatic priorities, while noting the “grave” situation due to North Korean provocations and U.S.-China competition.

Yoon emphasized his nominee’s expertise in foreign and security policy and diplomatic experience, noting he met then-Senator Joe Biden one-on-one in 2008 as leader of an association of South Korean and American lawmakers.

READ MORE: Park Jin’s profile

“Going forward, I think that he will immensely contribute to normalizing the ROK’s diplomacy stuck in deadlock and make South Korea become a global pivotal state that fulfills its responsibility and solidarity in the international community,” Yoon said.

Park returned from a weeklong visit to Washington on Sunday after meeting with top U.S. officials at the White House, State Department and Pentagon. In D.C., he stressed the need to strengthen the U.S.-ROK alliance and discussed the deployment of strategic assets to South Korea.

Park is a fluent English speaker and four-term PPP lawmaker, and he also headed Yoon’s election camp team that drafted his foreign and security policies.

Edited by Bryan Betts

Wednesday, April 6, 2022

US ‘prepared’ for more North Korean nuclear, missile tests: State Department | NK News

US ‘prepared’ for more North Korean nuclear, missile tests: State Department

Sung Kim hopes DPRK focuses on ‘serious engagement’ after leader’s sister threatens to wipe out South Korean army

Chaewon Chung April 7, 2022

US ‘prepared’ for more North Korean nuclear, missile tests: State Department

Sung Kim in a meeting with DPRK officials in Singapore on June 10, 2018 | Image: U.S. State Department

The U.S.’ top North Korea policy official slammed recent statements from Pyongyang as “provocative” and said Washington will be “prepared” for nuclear and missile tests as North Korea readies celebrations for one of its biggest holidays next week.

The remarks came after North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s high-ranking sister Kim Yo Jong threatened the “extermination” of South Korean armed forces after Seoul’s defense minister described capabilities to hit North Korean missile launch points.

“We obviously hope that instead of making such provocative statements, that they would focus instead on some serious engagement,” said Sung Kim, special representative for the DPRK, during a State Department press briefing on Wednesday.

Kim also expressed concerns over “the threat posed by the DPRK” against the world’s security as well as further “proactive actions” that may come as North Korea prepares to celebrate the 110th birthday of late leader Kim Il Sung on April 15.

While stressing that diplomacy is “the only viable path forward” for stability on the Korean Peninsula, Kim assured that the U.S. will be “prepared” if North Korea conducts another missile or a nuclear test.

“We have had closest possible communication and coordination with both governments, Tokyo and Seoul, and that will continue, especially as we anticipate that there may be further provocative actions by the DPRK,” Kim said, adding that one of the possible measures include strengthening the alliance’s “deterrent capability.”

Kim also suggested that the Biden administration’s push for more sanctions at the U.N. Security Council after North Korea’s long-range missile test late last month has been unsuccessful amid Chinese and Russian opposition.

“We have had discussions with the PRC and Russia,” said Kim, who met with Beijing’s Korea policy pointman Liu Xiaoming this week. “Unfortunately, I cannot report that we have had productive discussions with them thus far, but I would defer to my very capable colleagues in New York to continue that effort,” he said.

Meanwhile, Liu has met with dozens of officials and diplomats from different countries since North Korea’s intercontinental ballistic missile launch on March 24, promoting dialogue as “the only right way to resolve the Korean Peninsula issue.”

Edited by Arius Derr

About the Author

Chaewon Chung

Chaewon Chung is a Seoul correspondent at NK News. Before joining NK News, she covered disinformation and technology with a focus on the Korean Peninsula at Coda Story.