Important Takeaways:
- Without giving any further details, South Korea’s spy agency the National Intelligence Service confirmed an earlier report by the Chosun Ilbo newspaper, which said that a counsellor responsible for political affairs at the North Korean embassy in Cuba had defected.
- Among Ri Il-kyu’s jobs at the embassy was to block North Korea’s rival South Korea and old ally Cuba from forging diplomatic ties
- Details on North Koreans defections often take months to come to light, with defectors needing to be cleared by authorities and going through a course of education about South Korean society and systems.
- “Every North Korean thinks at least once about living in South Korea. Disillusionment with the North Korean regime and a bleak future led me to consider defection,” he told the paper.
- “In fact, North Koreans yearn for reunification even more than South Koreans. Everyone believes that reunification is the only way for their children to have a better future. Today, the Kim Jong-un regime has brutally extinguished even the slightest hope left among the people.”
- He said he flew out of Cuba with his family but he did not elaborate further on how he pulled off the high-risk escape.
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Important Takeaways:
- North Korea might have launched a hypersonic missile, South Korea has said, as intelligence agencies investigated a ballistic missile test that failed early on Wednesday
- The latest missile test came days after North Korea signed a comprehensive strategic cooperation treaty with Russia and as the US aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt arrived in Busan to take part in joint military drills with South Korea and Japan.
- Such missiles are seen as harder to detect because they can travel at speeds in excess of five times the speed of sound and are designed to be maneuverable, posing a challenge to regional missile defense systems.
- Tensions in the region have risen as Kim has accelerated North Korean testing of missiles and other weapons.
- The United States and South Korea have responded by expanding their combined training and trilateral drills involving Japan, and sharpening their deterrence strategies.
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Important Takeaways:
- His comments come after Seoul said it was considering such a possibility, in response to Russia and North Korea’s new pact to help each other in the event of “aggression” against either country.
- Moscow “will… [make] decisions which are unlikely to please the current leadership of South Korea” if Seoul decides to supply arms to Kyiv
- Mr. Putin also warned that Moscow is willing to arm Pyongyang if the US and its allies continue supplying Ukraine with weapons.
- Following Mr. Putin’s remarks, South Korea’s presidential office said on Friday it would consider “various options” in supplying arms to Ukraine and its stance will “depend on how Russia approaches this issue.”
- The two Koreas are still technically at war and maintain a heavily guarded border, where tensions have worsened in recent weeks.
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Important Takeaways:
- North Korean leader Kim Jong Un led a tactical drill on Monday to simulate a nuclear counterattack, the country’s state media said on Tuesday, a day after neighboring militaries reported the launch of multiple ballistic missiles off the Korean Peninsula’s eastern waters.
- The official Korean Central News Agency said Kim’s regime tested for the first time a nuclear force command and control mechanism known as “Haekbangashoe”—literally “nuclear trigger”—a combined management system it described as Pyongyang’s “greatest nuclear crisis alarm.”
- KCNA blamed sky-high tensions on the peninsula on the “extreme war fever” of the United States and its ally South Korea, which are in the middle of their own combined air drill.
- Images published by KCNA showed four missile launches for what it said were 600-millimeter “super-large multiple rocket units,” which the agency said would “play an important role” in any potential future nuclear counterstrike ordered through the Haekbangashoe system.
- The projectiles accurately hit a ground target at a range of 352 kilometers, roughly 218 miles, the report said.
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Important Takeaways:
- North Korea Says Tests Underwater Nuclear Drone, Criticizes US-Led Joint Drills
- North Korea has conducted a test of its underwater nuclear weapons system in a protest against this week’s joint military drills by South Korea, the United States and Japan, state media KCNA said on Friday.
- The test of the “Haeil-5-23” system, a name North Korea has given to its nuclear-capable underwater attack drones, was carried out by the defense ministry’s think tank in the waters off its east coast, the report said, without specifying a date.
- The ministry’s unnamed spokesman accused the United States, South Korea and Japan of “getting frantic” with military exercises, warning of “catastrophic consequences.”
- Later on Friday, South Korea’s defense ministry issued a warning against the North’s recent series of weapons tests, calling for an immediate halt.
- “Our military is thoroughly prepared for North Korea’s provocations under a solid joint defense posture with the United States,” it said in a statement, vowing “overwhelming” responses if North Korea stages a direct provocation.
- Dubbed “Haeil”, which means tsunami, the new drone system was first reportedly tested in March 2023, and state media said it was intended to make sneak attacks in enemy waters and destroy naval strike groups and major operational ports by creating a large radioactive wave through an underwater explosion.
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Important Takeaways:
- The North’s military suggested their simulated strikes included the explosions of dummy nuclear warheads
- The simulated attack also included a rehearsed occupation of its rival’s territory.
- Atomic weapons, such as those used during World War II over Japan are typically detonated above the Earth, rather than hitting it directly, to increase their devastating potential.
- This could suggest North Korea intends to conduct nuclear and EMP (electromagnetic pulse) attacks at the early stage of a potential war, according to an expert.
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Important Takeaways:
- North Korea says latest spy satellite launch failed, but will try again
- The launch prompted an emergency warning in Japan just before 4 a.m. local time (1900 GMT) over the J-alert broadcasting system, telling residents of the southernmost prefecture of Okinawa to take cover.
- North Korea space agency says will try again in October
- South Korea’s National Security Council condemned the launch as a provocation and violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions banning the North’s use of ballistic missile technology.
- North Korea has made multiple attempts to launch “earth observation” satellites, two of which appeared to have been successfully placed in orbit, including in 2016.
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Important Takeaways:
- The Biden administration believes that a seismic but fragile realignment is underway in East Asia: a deeper relationship between two close U.S. allies with a long history of mutual acrimony and distrust.
- The change would accelerate Washington’s effort to counter China’s influence in the region and help it defend Taiwan.
- While the summit is unlikely to produce a formal security arrangement that commits the nations to each other’s’ defense, they will agree to a mutual understanding about regional responsibilities.
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Important Takeaways:
- The country’s state newspaper Rodong Sinmun reported that Kim presided over the Central Military Commission meeting personally, ousting his chief of general staff, General Pak Su-il and replacing him with a deputy, Vice Marshal Ri Yong-gil. Pak was purged among several other “leading commanding officers,” which Rodong Sinmun did not name.
- Kim’s command to prepare for war follows a year of rapidly escalating tensions between North and South Korea that began with Kim demanding an “exponential increase” in the number of nuclear weapons North Korea possesses and has led to South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol threatening to “end” Kim’s regime while onboard an American nuclear submarine in July.
- Yoon, a conservative, took office in May and has since prioritized undoing leftist predecessor Moon Jae-in’s concessions to the communist North, including limiting military cooperation with the United States and preventing South Koreans from sending humanitarian aid balloons across the border.
- According to Rodong Sinmun, Kim Jong-un is seeking for his officers to prepare for full-scale war. The Central Military Commission meeting, it claimed, had as its “major agenda item the issues of making full war preparations to neutralize at a blow the enemy attack with overwhelming strategic deterrence and launch simultaneous offensive military actions in contingency.”
- The dictator demanded that the army “more thoroughly gird for a war given the grave political and military situation prevailing in the Korean peninsula.”
- Kim also did not reportedly specifically mention which enemies North Korea should prepare for war against, but images published in Rodong Sinmun showed Kim pointing at a map, apparently highlighting Seoul.
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Important Takeaways:
- A man rammed a car into pedestrians before stabbing several people, injuring at least 13, just south of the South Korean capital, Seoul, authorities said Thursday
- Five people were hit by the vehicle, and nine others were stabbed, according to police. Three were in critical condition as of early Friday local time.
- “Unlike traditional crimes driven by personal resentment,” he said, the apparent attack was “in effect, an act of terrorism in that anyone can become a victim.”
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