SEOUL: A South Korean court on Saturday (Oct 22) issued arrest warrants for a former defence minister and a former coast guard chief over their alleged mishandling of the death of a state fishery ministry employee at the hands of North Korean troops two years ago.

The decision by the Seoul Central District Court, which cited risks of them fleeing or destroying evidence, came days after the prosecutors on Tuesday filed for arrest warrants and follows an investigation by the government that showed previously unpublished details about the final moments of the fisheries official Lee Dae-jin.

The latest documents from the parliamentary investigation revealed that Lee was kept in water for nearly six hours as he drifted in and out of consciousness after being found by North Koreans, while the coast guard and navy violated rules during their initial rescue efforts by failing to seek help from other vessels and authorities nearby.

The two face charges that include dereliction of duty, abuse of power, forging official documents, and covering up and distorting facts in the case.

Lee’s death has become a sensitive issue in South Korea, in part because of the fight by his brother to clear his name. The previous administration of President Moon Jae-in had portrayed his death as a failed defection attempt due to his gambling debts, mental health issues and an unhappy life.

Meanwhile, state auditor the Board of Audit and Inspection last week said it had also requested prosecutors to investigate 20 officials from five agencies, including a former national security adviser and a former national intelligence service chief of the previous government, in relation to the case.

 

 

SEOUL: North Korea fired an unidentified ballistic missile into the sea off its east coast, South Korea’s military said on Friday (Oct 14), the latest in a series of launches by the nuclear armed country.

A statement from South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) gave no further details.

The latest launch was announced shortly after the military said South Korea scrambled fighter jets when a group of about 10 North Korean military aircraft flew close to the border dividing the two countries, amid heightened tensions over repeated North Korean missiles tests.

A subsequent statement on North Korea’s official KCNA news agency quoted the North Korean military as saying it took “strong military countermeasures” after South Korean artillery fire.

The South Korean JCS statement said the aircraft incident happened late on Thursday and early Friday Korean time.

The statement said the North Korean aircraft were detected flying about 25km north of the Military Demarcation Line in the central region of the Korea border area and about 12km north of the Northern Limit Line, a de facto inter-Korean border in the Yellow Sea, between 10:30pm Thursday (1330 GMT) and 0:20 am (1530 GMT) local time Friday.

It said the aircraft were also seen near the eastern part of the inter-Korean border.

The JCS said the South Korean air force “conducted an emergency sortie with its superior air force, including the F-35A, and maintained a response posture, while carrying out a proportional response maneuver corresponding to the flight of a North Korean military aircraft”.

The US Indo-Pacific Command said it was aware of the latest missile launch and had assessed that “it does not pose an immediate threat to US personnel or territory, or to our allies”.
 
“We will continue consulting closely with our allies and partners to monitor the DPRK’s destabilising ballistic missile launches,” it said, referring to North Korea by the initials of its official name.
 
South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said the missile was launched at about 1.49am on Friday (1449 Thursday GMT) from the Sunan area near North Korea’s capital Pyongyang. It was at least the 41st ballistic missile launch by North Korea this year.

Japan’s coast guard also reported that North Korea had fired what could have been a ballistic missile and that it had already fallen.

The South Korean JCS statement said the aircraft incident happened late on Thursday and early Friday Korean time.

The statement said the North Korean aircraft were detected flying about 25km north of the Military Demarcation Line in the central region of the Korea border area and about 12km north of the Northern Limit Line, a de facto inter-Korean border in the Yellow Sea, between 10.30pm Thursday (1330 GMT) and 12.20am on Friday (1530 GMT Thursday).

The JCS said the aircraft were also seen near the eastern part of the inter-Korean border.

It said the South Korean air force “conducted an emergency sortie with its superior air force, including the F-35A, and maintained a response posture, while carrying out a proportional response maneuver corresponding to the flight of a North Korean military aircraft”.

KCNA quoted a spokesman for the General Staff of the Korean People’s Army (KPA) as saying that the South Korean army had conducted about 10 hours of artillery fire near North Korea’s forward defense area on Thursday.

“Taking a serious note of this provocative action by the South Korean military in the frontline area, we took strong military countermeasures,” it said. “The KPA sends a stern warning to the South Korean military inciting military tension in the frontline area with reckless action.”

A South Korean military spokesman said he had no information regarding the artillery fire.

North Korea has called its most recent series of missile tests, which included an intermediate range ballistic missile that flew over Japan last week, a show of force against joint South Korean and US military drills.

South Korea scrambled fighter jets a week ago after North Korean warplanes staged an apparent bombing drill as allied warships held missile defense drills in response to North Korean missile tests.

Washington imposed new sanctions last week targeting a fuel procurement network supporting Pyongyang’s weapons programs.

Decades of US-led sanctions have not stemmed North Korea’s increasingly sophisticated weapons programs, and Kim Jong Un has shown no interest in returning to a failed path of diplomacy he pursued with former US President Donald Trump.

SEOUL: North Korean leader Kim Jong Un oversaw the launch of two long-range strategic cruise missiles, state media reported on Thursday (Oct 13), calling it a test to confirm the reliability and operation of nuclear-capable weapons deployed to military units.

The test firing was conducted on Wednesday, and was aimed at “enhancing the combat efficiency and might” of cruise missiles deployed to the Korean People’s Army “for the operation of tactical nukes”, state media Korea Central News Agency (KCNA) said.

Stressing that the test launch was another clear warning to its “enemies”, leader Kim Jong Un said the country “should continue to expand the operational sphere of the nuclear strategic armed forces to resolutely deter any crucial military crisis and war crisis at any time and completely take the initiative in it”, according to KCNA.

On Monday, KCNA said Kim had guided nuclear tactical exercises targeting South Korea over the past two weeks in protest of recent joint naval drills by South Korean and US forces involving an aircraft carrier.

KCNA reported that the two missiles test-fired on Wednesday flew for 10,234 seconds and “clearly hit the target 2,000km away”.

A US State Department spokesperson declined to comment on the launches, and said Washington remained focused on coordinating closely with its allies and partners to address the threats posed by North Korea.

North Korea first tested a “strategic” cruise missile in September 2021, which was seen by analysts at the time as possibly the country’s first such weapon with a nuclear capability.

Wednesday’s test confirms that nuclear role and that it is operational, although it is unclear whether North Korea can build warheads small enough for a cruise missile.

The cruise missiles are among a number of smaller weapons recently developed by North Korea to fly low and maneuver so as to better evade missile defences.

Kim said last year that developing smaller warheads was a top goal, and officials in Seoul have said that if the North resumes nuclear testing for the first time since 2017, developing smaller devices could be among its aims.

North Korea’s cruise missiles usually generate less interest than ballistic missiles because they are not explicitly banned under UN Nations Security Council resolutions.

Cruise missiles and short-range ballistic missiles that can be armed with either conventional or nuclear warheads are particularly destabilising in the event of conflict as it can be unclear which kind of warhead they are carrying, analysts said.

“North Korea’s cruise missiles, air force, and tactical nuclear devices are probably much less capable than propaganda suggests,” said Leif-Eric Easley, a professor at Ewha University in Seoul. “But it would be a mistake to dismiss North Korea’s recent weapons testing spree as bluster or saber-rattling.”

US President Joe Biden’s administration rolled out a long-delayed national security strategy on Wednesday with only a lone reference to North Korea, underscoring limited US options to contain its nuclear and missile programs.

Daniel Russel, the top US diplomat for East Asia under former President Barack Obama, said this was striking, “not only because it passes so quickly past a persistent and existential threat, but also because it frames the strategy as ‘seeking sustained diplomacy toward denuclearisation’, when North Korea has so convincingly demonstrated its utter rejection of negotiations”.

A report by the US-based Center for Strategic and International Studies said on Wednesday that a recent underwater launch of a ballistic missile from a lake probably has more political than military usefulness.

“Rather than an emerging threat, this test was most likely a propaganda and deception operation designed to focus regional and world attention on North Korea’s desired external image of a mighty and powerful nuclear-armed nation,” the report said.

The North’s pursuit of new types of nuclear weapons has renewed calls by some in South Korea to redeploy American tactical nuclear weapons, which were withdrawn in 1991, or for Seoul to leave the Non-Proliferation Treaty and develop its own arsenal.

After backing the idea of asking the United States to redeploy nuclear weapons during the election campaign last year, South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol has since said that option has been ruled out.

Senior members of this party, however, this week said it was time to reconsider.

SEOUL: North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has attended the opening ceremony of a new massive greenhouse farm built on a former air base where the country had test-fired missiles until last year, state media said on Tuesday (Oct 11).

The launch on Monday of the Ryonpho Greenhouse Farm, located in the eastern county of Hamju, was to mark the anniversary of the founding of the ruling Workers’ Party, a major holiday in North Korea.

Kim attended the event after guiding nuclear tactical exercises targeting South Korea over the past two weeks, which state media said were designed to counter recent joint naval drills by South Korean and US forces involving an aircraft carrier.

The North’s ruling party unveiled the project to transform the Ryonpho air base into a “highly automated farm” and a model for rural civilisation, calling it a “top priority task” to help achieve its goal of improving people’s lives set at its key policy meeting last December.

The isolated country had used the area for several launches of a short-range ballistic missiles, including the KN-25s in November 2019 and the suspected KN-23s in March 2021.

The farm has more than 850 blocks of modern greenhouses covering 280 hectares, to be harmonised with some 1,000 houses, schools and cultural and service facilities, the official KCNA news agency said.

Kim has spearheaded the farm initiative to boost vegetable supplies and praised soldiers and workers for completing the construction in just a few months, KCNA said.

The party plans to “more dynamically and confidently push forward the overall rural development of the country with the Ryonpho Greenhouse Farm as a model”, Kim was quoted as saying at the ceremony.

He called for building more large farms, increasing the variety of vegetables to be supplied and ensuring scientific, industrialised production and management at those farms.

North Korea first introduced the similar but slightly smaller Jungphyong Greenhouse Farm in the northeast county of Kyongsong in late 2019 as it pushed for self-reliance amid tightening international sanctions over its nuclear and missile programmes.

South Korean public support for indigenous nuclearisation has been steady, and growing, for more than a decade. This has opened policy space for nuclearisation advocates to make the case for nukes at the elite level.

A persistent Track II discourse among nongovernmental national security analysts will, in turn, pressure a formal, Track I response. Already in 2017, the then-leader of the main opposition party publicly suggested South Korea needed nuclear weapons.

CHINESE AND NORTH KOREAN PRESSURE FORCING MORE RADICAL CONSIDERATIONS

Polling regularly returns support for this option for the reasons one would expect – China and North Korea.

China is a large, powerful state on Seoul’s doorstep. It has increasingly tried to bully South Korea, regarding, for example, missile defence or Chinese travellers during the pandemic.

And North Korea, obviously, is an ongoing, arguably existential threat. It is an opaque nuclear weapons state that routinely threatens South Korea and rejects even the most basic arms control regarding its warheads and missiles.

It has fired a flurry of seven missile launches in just over two weeks, with one that flew over Japan in blatant disregard for Japanese sovereignty.

On Monday (Oct 10), North Korean state media said that the exercises involved ballistic missiles with mock nuclear warheads, and were meant to deliver a strong message of war deterrence.

“Even though the enemy continues to talk about dialogue and negotiations, we do not have anything to talk about nor do we feel the need to do so,” KCNA quoted North Korean President Kim Jong Un as saying.

SEOUL: North Korean leader Kim Jong Un guided recent exercises by nuclear tactical operation units in response to large-scale navy drills by South Korean and US forces, which have escalated regional tensions, KCNA state news agency said on Monday (Oct 10).

Over the past two weeks, North Korea carried out exercises involving ballistic missiles with mock nuclear warheads, KCNA reported, saying it was to deliver a strong message of war deterrence. They were conducted to target enemy airfields and key ports, it added.

“The effectiveness and practical combat capability of our nuclear combat force were fully demonstrated as it stands completely ready to hit and destroy targets at any time from any location,” KCNA said.

“Even though the enemy continues to talk about dialogue and negotiations, we do not have anything to talk about nor do we feel the need to do so,” KCNA quoted Kim as saying.

KCNA said North Korea’s ruling Workers’ Party decided to conduct the drills as an unavoidable response to a large-scale mobilisation of US and South Korean naval forces, including an aircraft carrier and a nuclear-powered submarine.

SEOUL: South Korea says North Korea has fired a ballistic missile toward its eastern waters, the latest in a barrage of weapons tests in recent days.

South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff says the launch was made early on Sunday (Oct 9) but gave no further details like how far the weapon flew.

The Japanese government also says North Korea has fired a possible ballistic missile.

The launch, the North’s sixth round of weapons tests in two weeks, came hours after the United States and South Korea wrapped a new round of naval drills off the Korean Peninsula’s east coast. The drills involved an US aircraft carrier.

North Korea’s military warned Saturday that the US redeployment of the aircraft carrier near the Korean Peninsula is causing a “considerably huge negative splash” in regional security.

SEOUL: North Korea fired two ballistic missiles into the sea on Sunday (Oct 9), the South’s military said, the latest in a blitz of launches amid tensions over US-led military exercises in the region, Yonhap reported.

The South Korean military’s joint chiefs of staff announced the launches from the southeast of the country — the seventh and eighth in two weeks – without giving further details.

“While strengthening our monitoring and vigilance, our military is maintaining a full readiness posture in close cooperation with the United States,” the joint chiefs of staff said, Yonhap reported.

North Korea on Saturday had defended its recent flurry of missile tests as a legitimate counter to US military threats, following days of joint military exercises between the South, Japan and the United States.

The Japanese prime minister’s office also confirmed at least one of Sunday’s launches on Twitter.

“North Korea has launched a suspected ballistic missile. More updates to follow,” the office said.

The missiles, fired toward the East Sea, also known as the Sea of Japan, seem to have fallen outside Japan’s exclusive economic zone, the Japanese government said, according to Kyodo news agency. The coast guard said it had so far not received any reports of damage to Japanese ships, national broadcaster NHK reported.

Sunday’s launches were the latest in a flurry that included an intermediate-range ballistic missile fired Tuesday over Japan, prompting an alert for people in affected areas underneath to take cover.

And on Thursday, North Korea fired two ballistic missiles, the same day Seoul, Tokyo and Washington carried out fresh exercises involving a US navy destroyer from the USS Ronald Reagan aircraft carrier’s strike group.

The United States redeployed the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier to waters east of South Korea as part of a broad-ranging military response to Pyongyang’s Tuesday test, which also included joint bombing and missile drills.

The carrier’s redeployment prompted an angry response from the North, with the foreign ministry saying it posed “a serious threat to the stability of the situation on the Korean peninsula”.

Exercises between South Korea and the United States concluded Saturday, according to Yonhap.

Seoul’s military said it had scrambled 30 fighter jets Thursday after 12 North Korean warplanes staged a rare “formation flight north of the inter-Korean air boundary [and] conducted air-to-surface firing drills.”

SEOUL: North Korea said on Saturday (Oct 8) that its missile tests are for self-defence against direct US military threats and they have not harmed the safety of neighbouring countries and regions.

North Korea carried out six missile launches in 12 days as of this week, including launching an intermediate-range missile over Japan on Tuesday.

“Our missile tests are a normal, planned self-defence measure to protect our country’s security and regional peace from direct US military threats,” said state media KCNA, citing an aviation administration spokesperson.

The missile tests “did not pose any threat or harm to the safety of civil aviation as well as the safety of neighbouring countries and regions, by a full consideration of civil aviation safety in advance”.

The message was in response to the International Civil Aviation Organization Council condemning North Korea’s missile launches for posing a serious safety risk to international civil aviation, KCNA said.

North Korea’s defence ministry was “taking a stern look at the development of the current situation, which is very worrisome”, regarding US-South Korean drills involving the nuclear-powered US aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan, KCNA said in a separate statement.

The United States and South Korea held joint maritime exercises on Friday, a day after Seoul scrambled fighter jets in reaction to an apparent North Korean bombing drill.

The United States also announced new sanctions on Friday in response to North Korea’s latest missile launches.