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North Korea threatens ‘nuclear strike’

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As the US and South Korea start their largest ever military exercises, Pyongyang warns of an “all-out offensive”.

South Korea said the exercises would be the largest ever following North Korea's fourth nuclear test [File: Kim Hong-Ji/Reuters]

South Korea said the exercises would be the largest ever following North Korea’s fourth nuclear test [File: Kim Hong-Ji/Reuters]

by Al Jazeera

North Korea has pledged a “sacred war of justice for reunification” including a nuclear strike against the United States, saying joint military exercises by Seoul and Washington were being carried out to prepare for an invasion.

South Korean and United States troops began large-scale military exercises on Monday in an annual test of their defences against North Korea, which called the drills “nuclear war moves” and threatened to respond with an “all-out offensive”.

South Korea said the exercises would be the largest ever following North Korea’s fourth nuclear test in January and a long-range rocket launch last month that triggered a United Nations Security Council resolution and tough new sanctions.

Isolated North Korea has rejected criticism of is nuclear and rocket programmes, even from old ally China, and last week leader Kim Jong-un ordered his country to be ready to use nuclear weapons in the face of what he sees as growing threats from enemies.

The joint US and South Korean military command said it had notified North Korea of “the non-provocative nature of this training” involving about 17,000 American troops and more than 300,000 South Koreans.

South Korea’s defence ministry said it had seen no sign of any unusual military activity by the North.

Still, it issued a statement on Monday warning the North that it “should immediately stop its reckless behaviour that would drive them to their own destruction”.

“If North Korea ignores our warning and conduct provocations, our military will relentlessly respond and we warn that North Korea will be held fully responsible for any situation leading to North Korea’s reckless provocation,” the statement said.

North Korea’s National Defence Commission said the North Korean army and people would “realise the greatest desire of the Korean nation through a sacred war of justice for reunification”, in response to any attack by US and South Korean forces.

Its response would include nuclear weapons and their use against the United States, the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said in a statement on Monday. 

“We have a military operation plan of our style to liberate South Korea and strike the US mainland,” the KCNA report said, also adding a “powerful nuclear strike means targeting the US imperialist aggressor forces bases in the Asia-Pacific region”.

The North, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), as it is officially known, routinely issues threats of military action in response to the annual exercises that it sees as preparation for war against it.

The threat on Monday was in line with the usual rhetoric it uses to denounce the drills.

The latest UN sanctions imposed on North Korea were drafted by the US and China as punishment for its nuclear test and satellite launch, which the US and others say was really a test of ballistic missile technology.

South Korea and the US militaries began talks on Friday on the deployment of an advanced anti-missile Terminal High Altitude Area Defence (THAAD) system in South Korea.

North Korea raises alarm with nuclear test announcement

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Opponents rush to condemn statement that, if confirmed, would mark fourth time Pyongyang has exploded a nuclear bomb.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un delivers a New Year address [Reuters]

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un delivers a New Year address [Reuters]

by Al Jazeera

 

North Korea said it has conducted a hydrogen bomb test in a surprise announcement that caused regional tension and drew swift condemnation from opponents.

If confirmed, the test would be the fourth time Pyongyang has exploded a nuclear device.

South Korean intelligence officials and several analysts, however, reportedly questioned whether Wednesday’s explosion was indeed a full-fledged test of a hydrogen device.

There was no radiation detected at Japanese monitoring posts.

Still, before the announcement was made on state television, South Korea’s meteorological agency said that a 5.1 magnitude earthquake was detected near a known test site in the secretive and isolated state.

South Korea’s presidential office held an emergency meeting and later said that the government would take all possible measures to respond to its neighbour and long-time foe’s actions.

“Our government strongly condemns North Korea ignoring repeated warnings from us and the international community and pushing ahead with the fourth nuclear test, which clearly violated the UN resolutions,” Cho Tae-yong, a senior security official at the South Korean presidential office said.

 

The UN Security Council called an emergency meeting for Wednesday, diplomats said, as both neighbouring countries and world powers scrambled to issue stern statements.

China’s foreign ministry said that it had no advance knowledge of any test and that it firmly opposed Pyongyang’s action.

Hua Chunying, a ministry spokeswoman, said at a daily news briefing that Beijing – one of North Korea’s only allies – would work with the international community on the denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula.

The US government said that it could not confirm a nuclear test but that it would respond appropriately to what it called North Korean “provocations” and that it would continue to protect its allies in the region.

“We have consistently made clear that we will not accept [North Korea] as a nuclear state,” a State Department statement said.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe called the announcement a threat to his nation’s safety.

Abe told reporters: “We absolutely cannot allow this, and condemn it strongly.”

British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond said  any nuclear test would be a “provocation which I condemn without reservation” and a “grave breach” of UN Security Council resolutions.

The United States Geological Survey (USGS) also detected the quake that South Korea said was 49km (30 miles) from the Punggye-ri site where the North has conducted nuclear tests in the past.

While the USGS put the depth of the earthquake at 10km, the South Korean agency said it was near the surface. The earthquake was detected just after 10am Seoul time (1am GMT).

Al Jazeera’s Adrian Brown, reporting from Beijing, said that North Korea was moving one step nearer to creating a nuclear warhead.

“There will be a good deal of tension once more on the Korean Peninsula today. The big question of course is why North Korea has done this now,” he said.

Brown added the test could partly be seen as a defensive response to US-South Korean military exercises, as well as a reaction to UN sanctions the country is under as a result of for its nuclear and missile programmes.

“When North Korea last tested a nuclear device in 2013, that was as a direct consequence of the sanctions that had been imposed by the United Nations,” Brown said.

North Korea has so far conducted three nuclear tests – in 2006, 2009 and 2013 – all at Punggye-ri.

The 2013 test registered at 5.1 on the USGS scale.

It is not yet known if Pyongyang has successfully made a nuclear device small enough to be used as a warhead on a ballistic missile, but the likelihood of the isolated country successfully doing so increases with each test.

 

North Korea leader orders army to be ready for war

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Kim Jong-un quoted as ordering army units to “enter wartime state” after exchange of artillery shells with South Korea.

S Korea's president held an emergency meeting of her National Security Council and ordered a "stern response" [Reuters]

S Korea’s president held an emergency meeting of her National Security Council and ordered a “stern response” [Reuters]

by Al Jazeera

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has ordered his frontline troops to be ready for war, against a backdrop of rising military tensions between his country and South Korea.

The announcement follows an exchange of artillery shells across the two countries’ heavily fortified border.

The Demilitarised Zone (DMZ) is a legacy of the 1950-53 Korean War, which ended with an armistice, not a peace treaty, leaving the Korean Peninsula still technically in a state of war.

The North’s official KCNA news agency said the move came during an emergency meeting late on Thursday of the powerful Central Military Commission of which Kim is the chairman.

During the meeting, Kim ordered frontline, combined units of the Korean People’s Army (KPA) to “enter a wartime state” from Friday 5pm local time (08:00 GMT).

The troops should be “fully battle ready to launch surprise operations” while the entire frontline should be placed in a “semi-war state,” KCNA quoted him as saying.

The CMC meeting came hours after the two Koreas traded artillery fire on Thursday, leaving no apparent casualties but pushing already elevated cross-border tensions to dangerously high levels.

The KPA followed up with an ultimatum sent via military hotline that gave the South 48 hours to dismantle loudspeakers blasting propaganda messages across the border or face further military action.

The ultimatum expires on Saturday at 5pm.

The 1950-53 Korean War, which ended with an armistice, left the Korean Peninsula technically in a state of war [AP]

The South’s defence ministry dismissed the threat and said the broadcasts would continue.

The CMC backed the army’s ultimatum and also ratified plans for “a retaliatory strike and counterattack on the whole length of the front”, KCNA said.

There was no immediate response from South Korea, but the unification ministry announced it was restricting access to the North-South’s joint industrial zone at Kaesong.

Only South Koreans with direct business interests in Kaesong – which lies 10km over the border inside North Korea – would be allowed to travel there, a ministry spokesman said.

The Kaesong industrial estate hosts about 120 South Korean firms employing up to 53,000 North Korean workers and is a vital source of hard currency for the North.

Restricting access will probably be seen as a thinly veiled threat by South Korea to shut the complex down completely if the situation at the border escalates further.

Thursday’s artillery exchange in a western quarter of the border came amid heightened tensions following mine blasts that maimed two members of a South Korean border patrol earlier this month and the launch this week of a major South Korea-US military exercise that angered North Korea.

South Korea said the mines were placed by the North and responded by resuming propaganda broadcasts across the border, using loudspeakers that had remained silent for more than a decade.

The South Korean military said the North side fired first on Thursday and that it retaliated with dozens of 155mm howitzer gun rounds.

South Korean troops were placed on maximum alert, while President Park Geun-hye chaired an emergency meeting of her National Security Council and ordered a “stern response” to any further provocations.

The CMC meeting in Pyongyang insisted that the situation would only de-escalate if South Korea turned off the propaganda loudspeakers.

The US and UN both said they were following the situation on the Korean peninsula with deep concern.

The US State Department urged North Korea to avoid provoking any further escalation and said it remained “steadfast” in its commitment to defending ally South Korea.

Dozens of people on the South Korean side of the border were evacuated to underground bunkers when the North’s shell fell [AP]

North Korea: U.S 'stirring up bad blood' with sanctions

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Foreign ministry reiterates Pyongyang was not involved in Sony hacks

KCNA/Reuters

KCNA/Reuters

by Nadia Prupis, Common Dreams

North Korea denounced the U.S. on Sunday for imposing new sanctions on the country in retaliation for recent hacks into Sony Pictures’ systems.

The financial embargo would not weaken North Korea’s military, but would serve to antagonize the country, North Korea’s foreign ministry said on Sunday, according to the state-run news agency KCNA.

“The policy persistently pursued by the U.S. to stifle the DPRK [Democratic People’s Republic of Korea], groundlessly stirring up bad blood towards it, will only harden its will and resolution to defend the sovereignty of the country,” an unnamed spokesperson told KCNA.

That includes a call for an increase in arms, such as nuclear weapons, as a “deterrent” against the sanctions.

The identity of the hackers is still unknown. Officials in Pyongyang—and cybersecurity experts in the U.S—continue to deny that North Korea orchestrated the attacks. However, the FBI continued to point the finger at the nation, while the White House promised on Friday that the sanctions were only the first step in its retaliation campaign.

In addition to imposing financial restrictions on 10 officials and three agencies, President Barack Obama said the U.S. was also considering adding North Korea back on to its list of state sponsors of terrorism. The White House did not elaborate how those restrictions would prevent any potential cyber attacks in the future. Moreover, analysts have noted that the sanctions will likely have limited effect, as North Korea has already been under strict sanctions in the U.S. and worldwide for several decades.

“The persistent and unilateral action taken by the White House to slap ‘sanctions’ against the DPRK patently proves that it is still not away from inveterate repugnancy and hostility towards the DPRK,” the foreign ministry said Sunday.

US sanctions North Korea over Sony hacking

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Korean government officials among those blacklisted for cyber attack on Sony Pictures firm blamed on Pyongyang.

Hackers began to issue threats against Sony over the release of the comedy film 'The Interview' [EPA]

Hackers began to issue threats against Sony over the release of the comedy film ‘The Interview’ [EPA]

by Al Jazeera

The United States has imposed fresh sanctions on North Korea in retribution for a cyber attack on Hollywood studio Sony Pictures blamed on Pyongyang.

In an executive order on Friday, US President Barack Obama authorised the US Treasury to place on its blacklist three top North Korean intelligence and arms operations, as well as 10 government officials, most of them involved in Pyongyang’s arms exports.

Obama said he ordered the sanctions because of “the provocative, destabilising, and repressive actions and policies of the government of North Korea, including its destructive, coercive cyber-related actions during November and December 2014”.

The activities “constitute a continuing threat to the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States,” he added, in a letter to inform congressional leaders.

“The order is not targeted at the people of North Korea, but rather is aimed at the government of North Korea and its activities that threaten the United States and others,” Obama added.

The sanctions came after hackers penetrated Sony’s computers in late November, stealing and releasing over the internet employee information, unreleased films and an embarrassing trove of emails between top company executives.

The hackers, a group calling itself Guardians of Peace, then began to issue threats against the company over the looming Christmas release of the comedy film “The Interview”, which depicts a fictional CIA plot to kill North Korea’s leader.

The threats led first to worried movie theater owners dropping the film and then Sony cancelling the public debut altogether, beforereleasing it online.

After the hackers invoked the 9/11 attacks in their threats, the White House branded it a national security threat, and an investigation by the FBI said North Korea was behind the Sony intrusion.

Pyongyang repeatedly denied involvement, but has applauded the actions of the shadowy Guardians of Peace group.

‘Proportional’ response

The White House stressed Friday that its response will be “proportional”, but also that the sanction actions were only “the first aspect of our response”.

“We take seriously North Korea’s attack that aimed to create destructive financial effects on a US company and to threaten artists and other individuals with the goal of restricting their right to free expression,” said White House press secretary Josh Earnest.

In parallel with the White House announcement, the US Treasury named the first targets of sanctions in the Sony case.

They included the Reconnaissance General Bureau, the government’s main intelligence organisation, and two top North Korean arms exporters: Korea Mining Development Trading Corporation (KOMID) and Korea Tangun Trading Corporation.

The individuals named included agents of KOMID in Namibia, Russia, Iran and Syria, and other representatives of the government and the sanctioned organisations.

An administration official, briefing reporters, said that they remain “very confident” in their assessment that Pyongyang is behind the attack on Sony, amid doubts raised by security experts.

The official said the three organisations had “no direct involvement” with the hacking. “They are being designated to put pressure on the North Korean government,” the official said.

It was the first time US sanctions had been invoked due to a threat to a private company, the official acknowledged.

The sanctions forbid US individuals and companies from doing business with those blacklist, and freezes any assets those blacklisted might have on US territory.

A particular aim of such sanctions is to limit their access to international financial services by locking them out of the US financial system.

All three of the organisations blacklisted in the Sony case are already under US sanctions for the country’s persistence with its nuclear weapons program, its alleged provocations on the Korean peninsula, and other “continued actions that threaten the United States and others,” as Obama said in his letter.

North Korea 'back online' after internet outage

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US denies involvement after reported online-access disruption amid tensions over cyberattack on Sony Pictures.

North Korea is embroiled in a confrontation with US over the hacking of emails from Sony executives [EPA]

North Korea is embroiled in a confrontation with US over the hacking of emails from Sony executives [EPA]

by Al Jazeera

North Korea, at the centre of a confrontation with the US over the hacking of Sony Pictures, experienced a complete internet outage for hours before links were restored, according to a US company that monitors internet infrastructure.

Dyn, the New Hampshire-based internet monitor, said on Tuesday the reason for the outage was not known but could range from technological glitches to a hacking attack.

Several US officials close to the investigations of the attack on Sony Pictures said the US government was not involved in any cyber action against North Korea.

US President Barack Obama had pledged on Friday to respond to the major cyberattack, which he blamed on North Korea, “in a place and time and manner that we choose”.

Dyn said North Korea’s internet links were unstable on Monday and the country later went completely offline.

“We’re yet to see how stable the new connection is,” Jim Cowie, chief scientist for the company, said in a telephone call to Reuters news agency after the services were restored.

“The question for the next few hours is whether it will return to the unstable fluctuations we saw before the outage.”

North Korea is one of the most isolated nations in the world, and the effects of the internet outage there were not fully clear.

Internet dependence

Very few of North Korea’s 24 million people have access to the internet.

However, major websites, including those of the KCNA state news agency, the main Rodong Sinmun newspaper and the main external public-relations company went down for hours.

Almost all of the country’s internet links and traffic pass through China, except, possibly, for some satellite links.

“North Korea has significantly less internet to lose, compared to other countries with similar populations: Yemen [47 networks], Afghanistan [370 networks], or Taiwan [5,030 networks],” Dyn Research said in a report.

“And unlike these countries, North Korea maintains dependence on a single international provider, China Unicom.”

Meanwhile South Korea, which remains technically at war with the North, said it could not rule out the involvement of its neighbour in a cyberattack on its nuclear power plant operator.

It said only non-critical data was stolen and operations were not at risk, but had asked for US help in investigating.

Park Geun-hye, South Korean president, said on Tuesday the leak of data from the nuclear operator was a “grave situation” that was unacceptable as a matter of national security, but she did not mention any involvement of North Korea.

The Interview, Hollywood and the politics of ridicule

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Is it ever okay to depict the assassination of living person? KCNA/Reuters

Is it ever okay to depict the assassination of living person? KCNA/Reuters

by Patricia Phalen, The Conversation

Sony’s decision to cancel the Christmas Day release of its film The Interview is drawing harsh criticism from Hollywood’s elite. George Clooney is asking everyone to stand up against the cancellation. Judd Apatow is defending comedy’s history of attacking people who are “bad to other people.” Rob Lowe, Steve Carell, Jimmy Kimmel and many, many more celebrities have added their voices to the mix.

The Interview, which features Randall Park in the role of North Korean leader Kim Jung Un, follows an absurd (and supposedly comical) assassination plot that ends with Mr. Kim’s violent death (evidently, his head explodes). The filmmakers might argue this is “all in good fun,” but the people ridiculed in the film are clearly not amused.

The North Korea-linked cyber-terrorists who hacked into Sony’s computer network last month threatened violence against theaters that screened the film and any moviegoers who dared to attend. When theater owners began backing out of their commitments to show the film, Sony pulled The Interview from distribution. The situation was, effectively, a bomb scare called in to every theater in the U.S.

So far, public discussion has centered on the hackers’ success at using threats of violence to derail an American film. Particularly galling is the notion that cyber-terrorists can dictate the business decisions of an American company. Because the entertainment industry is involved, most see this as a direct attack on freedom of expression. The loudest and most pervasive analysis of this situation is that Sony negotiated with terrorists, Sony caved, and the terrorists won.

On one level, this argument is a fair characterization.

However, we could use this incident as a springboard for a different – and more complicated – discussion, one that goes beyond the “they won, we lost” binary and introduces important questions: does the American entertainment industry have an ethical responsibility when it comes to representing real people? If so, what are the parameters of this responsibility?

The 2006 British film Death of a President portrayed the fictional assassination of George W. Bush. Many commentators couldn’t quite articulate the problem with showing the violent death of a living person, but there was a shock factor in this film that went beyond simple bad taste.

2006’s Death of a President depicted a fictional assassination of President George W. Bush. imdb.com

The Interview’s filmmakers probably thought Kim Jung Un was a safe target, given the overwhelmingly (and justifiably) negative public opinion of his regime. If the hackers hadn’t been able to make credible threats, the film might have gone virtually unnoticed by many Americans. Nonetheless, a fictional assassination of a real political figure is ethically problematic.

While Hollywood’s claim to the right of “creative expression” rings true, perhaps this freedom isn’t (or should not be) absolute. I am not suggesting any kind of externally imposed rules limiting the content of films; only from within the ranks of filmmakers can any kind of normative guidelines evolve.

In the end, Sony will most likely find a way to distribute The Interview – and the controversy is sure to enhance its profitability as an “on demand” option or even a theatrical release.

But the question of ethics in the entertainment world will – and should – persist.

Patricia Phalen is an Associate Professor of Media and Public Affairs at George Washington University.

The Conversation

Leaked emails: Obama exerted influence over “The Interview”

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the interview

by Robert Barsocchini

Antiwar.com’s Dan Sanchez has just reported on leaked emails that reveal that the Obama regime exerted influence over the movieThe Interview “to encourage assassination and regime change in North Korea”.

Regarding the threats of bombings of theaters if the film was shown, Obama has been personally encouraging people to “go the movies” anyway, while hardliners like Mitt Romney have specifically encouraged people to go see The Interview.

This is not the first time strongman Obama has been closely involved with promoting or influencing Hollywood movies spouting negative propaganda about countries Obama and the US want to invade and conquer. Michelle Obama personally presented the Academy award for “best picture” for the filmArgo.

Argo whitewashed the history of US aggression and genocide against Iran. Since 1953, the US has been an accomplice in the torture and killing of over a million Iranian citizens, thousands with chemical weapons.

The Interview almost certainly whitewashes the history of US genocide against Korea, and apparently depicts US forces causing the North Korean leader’s head to explode.

In its aggressive attacks against North Korea in the early 1950s, the US intentionally targeted civilians and flattened entire villages and cities, including Pyongyang. The attacks killed up to 4 million people, mostly civilians, most of whom were killed by the US, many through direct and intentional targeting, such as the machine-gunning of women and children by US soldiers at No Gun Ri.

Scholar Chalmers Johnson finds the North Korea of today a proud, struggling nation that, unlike the US public, is very aware of what was done to it by the US, and sees the aggressive, threatening stance the US has since maintained towards that country.

Johnson also notes that the worst act committed against Koreans by a “Korean” government was the bayoneting of thousands of students by the US-backed South Korean dictatorship in the late ’80s.

The Interview would almost certainly be another exercise in genocide denial for the US, a country that has gotten away with all of the crimes, including multiple genocides, it has thus far committed.

However, though we may be happy when Holocaust deniers and the like decide to hold their tongues, it is extremely unfortunate that Sony’s decision not to release such a film was brought about not by free will but threats of violence from unknown sources, which are to be condemned as threats against speech itself.

According to the leaked emails, Sony was hesitant about depicting the assassination of the North Korean leader, but was “encouraged” by the Obama regime to go forward with it.

It may be useful to imagine how we would feel about the reverse: a slapstick buddy comedy about the infiltration of the country considered the most dangerous in the world – the USA, not North Korea – and the “comedic” assassination of Obama by having his head catch on fire and explode.

It is also relevant to note that North Korea’s official complaint about the film, that it incites terrorism against North Korea (which is what the Obama regime apparently intended), is the same reason the US government has given countless times over the course of its existence to justify brutally crushing free speech and protest – facts all but fully ignored or suppressed in dominant US discourse.

And, as Antiwar.com and Wired report, “North Korea almost certainly did not hack Sony”.

Robert Barsocchini focuses on global force dynamics and writes professionally for the film industry. He is a regular contributor to Washington’s Blog, and is published in Counter Currents, Global Research, State of Globe, Blacklisted News, LewRockwell.com, DanSanchez.me, Information Clearing House, Press TV, and other outlets. Also see: Hillary Clinton’s Record of Support for War and other Depravities. Follow Robert and UK-based colleague, Dean Robinson, on Twitter.

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