Tag: North Korea

Putin Plans China Visit as a Russian Leader Joins a North Korea Celebration

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As part of Russia’s ongoing efforts to strengthen ties with Asian allies, President Vladimir V. Putin will travel to a conference in China in October, while the defense minister, Sergei K. Shoigu, will join a Chinese delegation at a celebration in North Korea this week, according to Russian state news media. Mr. Putin will meet with Xi Jinping, China’s leader, to discuss bilateral trade and economic cooperation at an international forum, according to Tass, a Russian state news agency. The relationship between China and Russia has deepened during the war…

Defecting From North Korea Is Now Far Harder

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The North Korean software engineer was desperate. He had been sent to northeastern China in 2019 to earn money for the North Korean regime. After working long hours under the constant watch of his minders, he found an email address on a website and sent a harrowing message in 2021: “I am writing at the risk of losing my life,” pleaded the engineer. A young woman who had been smuggled by human traffickers from North Korea into China in 2018 contacted the owner of the same website early this year.…

G7 leaders warn China and North Korea against expanding nuclear arsenals as they await Zelenskiy

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G7 leaders have warned China and North Korea against expanding their nuclear arsenals, as they prepare for the arrival of the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy. The war in Ukraine has dominated discussions in Hiroshima, with Zelenskiy set to arrive in the city late on Saturday, a day after the White House announced it would permit allied countries to supply Ukraine with US-built F-16 fighter planes. Zelenskiy described the decision as “historic”, adding that he looked forward to “discussing the practical implementation” in Hiroshima. Russia’s war in Ukraine has raised fears…

U.S. Indicts Four Men in Scheme to Launder Cryptocurrency for North Korea

Chin@Strategy

WASHINGTON — The Justice Department said on Monday that it had indicted four men on charges of laundering virtual currency stolen by an infamous North Korean online criminal syndicate as part of a far-reaching scheme to buy goods with U.S. dollars and evade international sanctions. The charges, filed in three cases in federal court in Washington, outline a complex multiyear effort to launder cryptocurrency obtained by the Lazarus Group, an organization linked to espionage, online theft and cyberattacks, including the 2014 breach of Sony Pictures. The scheme involved a relatively…

The Observer view on North Korea: only China can put a stop to Kim Jong-un’s latest round of nuclear sabre-rattling | Observer editorial

Chin@Strategy

North Korea’s scary test launch of a newly developed, solid-fuel, nuclear-capable intercontinental ballistic missile caused a brief panic on the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido last week. It also added a note of urgency to today’s meeting of G7 foreign ministers in Japan’s hot-spring resort of Karuizawa, where the Pyongyang regime’s escalating threats will be high on the agenda. Even so, the key to the North Korea conundrum may lie hundreds of miles away, in Beijing. Two questions will dominate G7 deliberations. Why is Kim Jong-un, North Korea’s dictator, deliberately…

Nuclear nightmare: reckless leaders push the world back to the brink | Simon Tisdall

Chin@Strategy

Leaders of unstable nuclear-armed states do dangerous and foolish things when under stress. They miscalculate, provoke, overreach. Given the febrile state of bilateral relations, last week’s aerial military clash between Russia and the US over the Black Sea inevitably intensified fears of nuclear escalation. The incident dramatised how dangerous Vladimir Putin, cornered by his existential Ukraine blunder, truly is – and the risks he is increasingly prepared to run. But he’s not the only one. As often the case over the past year, Putin relied on American restraint. US forces…

Are North Korea’s Nuclear Weapons Tests as Safe as the Country Claims?

Chin@Strategy

SEOUL — North Korea has long maintained that all six of its nuclear weapons tests were conducted safely. But on Tuesday, a Seoul-based human rights group warned that radioactive contamination may have spread through groundwater from the North’s Punggye-ri nuclear test site, ​potentially jeopardizing the health of people in North Korea and neighboring countries​. The Transitional Justice Working Group said in its report that radioactive materials could have affected tens of thousands of North Koreans living near Punggye-ri and spread to China, South Korea and Japan ​through mushrooms and other…

Japan and North Korea sound warning as deadly cold snap sweeps across Asia

Chin@Strategy

Weather authorities in Japan and the Korean peninsula have issued warnings over freezing temperatures and gales that have killed at least one person, and stranded thousands. Severe cold weather has already caused fatalities, havoc and record low temperatures across the region in the last fortnight, with at least 124 people dead in Afghanistan and record lows of -53C in northeastern China. Large parts of Japan are now in the grip of the severe cold spell, with some areas expected to experience their lowest temperatures for a decade. On Wednesday chief…

The Battle at Water Gate Bridge review – gung-ho Chinese war epic takes on Uncle Sam

Chin@Strategy

War is hell and so is a certain type of war movie: bloated, self-important and glassy-eyed with solemn patriotism. Directed by action veteran Tsui Hark, The Battle at Water Gate Bridge is the giant follow-up to China’s colossal military epic and domestic box-office smash, The Battle at Lake Changjin. It revives the tale of how, during the Korean war in the unimaginably cold winter of 1950, the Chinese army took on the US forces in Changjin county in North Korea and forced Uncle Sam to retreat towards the 38th parallel,…

Japan Moves to Double Military Spending, With a Wary Eye on China

Chin@Strategy

Japan on Friday announced a new national security strategy that will double the amount earmarked for the country’s military defense, breaking with decades-long precedent on spending restraints as it seeks to strengthen its military capabilities to counter China’s rising power. The new plan, approved by the cabinet on Friday, reflects the geopolitical shifts that have swept the region since the previous version was released nearly a decade ago. In 2013, the document described China and Russia as strategic partners. Now, it deems Beijing’s rise as the “greatest strategic challenge” to…