A historic day: North and South Korea pledge to sign formal peace treaty

[Markhor]

It's finally happened. An extraordinary sight of Kim Jong Un crossing the DMZ to shake hands with his counterpart and both leaders with a joint statement outside Peace House.

South Korea's left leaning President Moon Jae-in, a former student activist who opposed the military dictatorship and former human rights lawyer, has worked on Korean reunification and the peace process his entire life. Hopefully he'll get the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts whilst Kim Jong Un also deserves credit for making a huge symbolic statement here. Hopefully the start of a new beginning for these two countries.

However, while the countries have committed to "denuclearisation" of the peninsula - there is no clarity as to the definition of it. North Korea have repeatedly stated they do not want to become another Iraq or Libya.

Something more realistic would be to sign a formal peace treaty which has been pledged by the two leaders to occur by the end of the year. Technically, the two countries are still at war having only signed an armistice in 1953.

Other positive steps include setting up a joint liaison office, addressing the issue of divided families and Moon will visit Pyongyang later this year.

 

[Markhor]

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Here's a transcript of what they said when they met for the first time:

https://edition.cnn.com/2018/04/27/...at-they-said-intl/index.html?no-st=1524822523

Kim: I'm glad to meet you. I'm so glad.

Moon: Was there any difficulty coming here?

Kim: Not at all.

Moon: It's a pleasure to meet you.

Kim: Indeed, I'm so filled with excitement because of the meeting at this historic site. And I was truly moved that you have come all the way to receive me at the Military Demarcation Line at Panmunjom.

Moon: It was your bold and courageous decision that has allowed us to come this far.

Kim: No, no, not at all.

Moon: We have made a historic moment.

Kim: I am pleased to meet you.

Moon: Would you please stand on this side.

Moon: You have come to the south side, when will I be able to come to the North?

Kim: Maybe this is the right time for you to enter the North Korean territory.

 

[Loralai]

This is a positive sign and we should welcome this. It will be great once we get more detail as to what they actually wish to achieve by 'denuclearisation' and how it should be carried out.

 

[MenInG]

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Here's a transcript of what they said when they met for the first time:

https://edition.cnn.com/2018/04/27/...at-they-said-intl/index.html?no-st=1524822523

feel like crying....

If only Pakistan and India could do this....

 

[mankuTimma]

Good for Koreans but bit sad that we are going to miss fun times provided by Kim

 

[Varun]

feel like crying....

If only Pakistan and India could do this....

Let's not count our chickens before they hatch.

We can take a call at how this has panned out 2 years from now.

 

[mankuTimma]

feel like crying....

If only Pakistan and India could do this....

We have tried this before..,Lahore bus tour by Vajapayee...Kargil hallowed next...

Until unless Pakistan ruled by only one entity peace is not possible,best option to stay away as neutrals.

 

[mankuTimma]

Let's not count our chickens before they hatch.

We can take a call at how this has panned out 2 years from now.

One of the Kim’s promise about not using tests sites for nuclear tests is turned out that site itself is no longer usable due to damage

 

[KingKhanWC]

This is a positive sign and we should welcome this. It will be great once we get more detail as to what they actually wish to achieve by 'denuclearisation' and how it should be carried out.

Why should NK denuclearise?

This is a good step by the North Korean leader who studied in Switzlerland. He dropped a missiles in the to the sea, a few over Japan to give him some leverage in peace talks.

Trump is taking credit for this but it has little to do with him. If he's expecting NK to end its nuclear programme he is a bigger fool than what we think already.

 

[Saeed]

Good for them. They saved their countries from unnecessary war, at least that’s what it seems like for now. Their relationship should further improve unless Trump makes the nukes an issue of ego. Trump is like Beghani shadi mein abdullah dewana.

 

[carbon11]

I personally believe nk will disarm as well

I think you will eventually see it go the Burma route towards democracy and eventually reunite with s Korea

I think s Korea will have to play a big role to persuade Kim Jong un

 

[DeadBall]

South Koreas passport is ranked #2 in the world after Singapore. A united Korea will benefit NK immensely. Maybe Kim is coming to his senses.

 

[GenericBrand]

Didn't the NKs blow up their nuclear facilities by accident or something.

 

[msb314]

South Koreas passport is ranked #2 in the world after Singapore. A united Korea will benefit NK immensely. Maybe Kim is coming to his senses.

I believe the Japanese passport is 2nd. Currently accepted in 180 countries whom offer visa on arrival for Japanese citizens.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henley_&_Partners_Passport_Index

 

[Kroll]

Unexpected but great news. As not long ago, there was much rhetoric about nuclear obliteration and whatnot.

 

[Abdullah719]

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">BREAKING: Kim Jong-Un has agreed to meet President Trump at the demilitarized zone separating the two Koreas.</p>— Ryan Fournier (@RyanAFournier) <a href="https://twitter.com/RyanAFournier/status/991409544680132608?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 1, 2018</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

 

[FearlessRoar]

South Korea imposed sanctions on eight North Koreans linked to nuclear and missile development through arms trade, cyberattacks and other illicit activities, Seoul's foreign ministry said on Wednesday.

The sanctions came days after North Korea fired a new intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), which South Korea and the United States strongly condemned as a grave violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions.

The newly blacklisted people include Ri Chang Ho, head of the Reconnaissance General Bureau involved in overseas hacking operations, and Yun Chol, who helped supply nuclear materials while working at the North Korean Embassy in China, the ministry said.

"The eight were involved in generating profits for the North Korean regime and financing nuclear weapons and missiles development by earning foreign currency through illegal cyber activities or stealing technology and trading sanctioned goods including weapons," it said in a statement.

Amid a prolonged stalemate at the U.N., Seoul has slapped sanctions against Pyongyang independently or together with Washington and Tokyo, seeking to squeeze its funding sources.

South Korea has blacklisted 83 individuals and 53 entities related to North Korea's weapons programmes since October 2022.

Source: Reuters

https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/south-korea-sanctions-8-north-koreans-over-arms-trade-cyberattacks-2023-12-27/?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=Social

 

[FearlessRoar]

North Korea Fires Artillery Near Border With South Korea​

North Korea fired 200 rounds of artillery into waters near its disputed western sea border with South Korea on Friday, a move that prompted the South’s military to ask residents on two nearby islands to take shelter.

The shells fell north of the disputed border, known as the Northern Limit Line, between 9 and 11 a.m., and caused no damage, South Korean officials said.

The South’s military accused the North of “threatening peace and raising tensions” and vowed to take “corresponding measures.” Hours after, it said that it responded to the North’s provocation by firing its own artillery shells into waters south of the disputed border.

As the South Korean military prepared to conduct its firing exercise, it asked people on the islands of Yeonpyeong and Baengnyeong to seek shelter beginning at noon, island officials said. Ferries that were scheduled to leave from Incheon, a port west of Seoul, the South Korean capital, to the islands on Friday afternoon were also canceled.

“The military here asked us to help evacuate people in case the North might fire back when it started its own drill,” said Ji Young-hyeon, a government official on Yeonpyeong. “So we are sending out a broadcast every 30 minutes asking people to take shelter.”

People living on the island are wary of North Korean provocations, especially after the North launched an artillery and rocket barrage on the island in 2010 that killed two South Korean civilians and two marines there. In retaliation, the South pounded the North Korean shore across the water with artillery.

Residents on the islands have grown accustomed to orders to leave their homes and evacuate to underground shelters. The islands are dotted with underground and concrete shelters, and such orders are often issued during military drills or when North Korea has launched its rockets to the south.

The North’s artillery firing came a day after the South Korean and United States militaries finished a weeklong joint live-fire military drill in Pocheon, north of Seoul, on Thursday that involved artillery, tanks, armored vehicles and A-10 Warthog planes. North Korea had vowed retaliation on Thursday, calling its enemies “mad dogs” who “will only suffer the most painful moments.”

Source: New York Times

North Korea Fires Artillery Near Border With South Korea

The South asked nearby islanders to seek shelter before it launched a military exercise in the disputed waters and chided the North for “threatening peace.”

www.nytimes.com

 

[FearlessRoar]

South Korea vows 'unendurable' response to North's trash balloons​

South Korea said on Sunday it would take "unendurable" measures against North Korea for sending trash balloons over the border, which could include blaring propaganda from loudspeakers back at the North.

The announcement from President Yoon Suk Yeol's office followed a meeting by his National Security Council on a response to what Seoul said were more than 700 balloons carrying trash that Pyongyang sent over the heavily fortified border to rile its rival neighbour.

The council condemned the balloons and GPS jamming as an "irrational act of provocation".

Seoul did not rule out resuming the loudspeaker blasts, which it stopped in 2018 after a rare summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, a senior official at Yoon's office told reporters.

The democratic South and the communist North technically remain at war since the 1950-1953 Korean War ended in an armistice rather than a peace treaty. Seoul is a firm US ally whose sophisticated military regularly holds drills with the US, while Pyongyang is developing missile and nuclear technology that Seoul and Washington say violates UN resolutions.

North Korea has said its balloons were in retaliation for a propaganda campaign by North Korean defectors and activists in South Korea, who regularly send inflatables containing anti-Pyongyang leaflets, food, medicine, money and USB sticks loaded with K-pop music videos and dramas across the border.

The North Korean balloons carrying garbage such as cigarette butts, cloth, paper waste and plastic were found across the capital Seoul from 8 p.m. on Saturday to 1 p.m. on Sunday (1100 GMT on Saturday to 0400 GMT on Sunday), South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff said.

It said the military was monitoring the starting point and conducting aerial reconnaissance to track down and collect the balloons, which have large bags of trash suspended beneath them.

South Korean officers with rifles were picking up and bagging what appeared to be trash from the balloons in cordoned-off areas, local media footage showed.

North Korea on Wednesday sent hundreds of balloons carrying trash and what was labelled as manure across the border as what it called "gifts of sincerity". Seoul responded angrily, calling the move base and dangerous.

North Korea has not commented on the weekend balloons.

South Korean Defence Minister Shin Won-sik told US Defense Secretary Austin Lloyd at a conference in Singapore on Sunday that the balloons violated the armistice agreement, according to South Korea's military.

The two reaffirmed a coordinated response to any North Korean threats and provocations based on the South Korea-US alliance's combined defence posture, it said.

Emergency alerts were issued in North Gyeongsang and Gangwon provinces and some parts of Seoul on Sunday, urging people not to come into contact with the balloons and to alert police.

Reuters

 

[BouncerGuy]

South Korea fired warning shots after North Korea border crossing

South Korea's military fired warning shots after around 20 North Korean soldiers briefly crossed the border at the weekend, Seoul officials said, amid a recent rise in tension over Pyongyang's launch of balloons carrying trash into the South.

The breach occurred at around 12:30 p.m. (0330 GMT) on Sunday when the North Korean troops in the Demilitarised Zone (DMZ) separating the two Koreas crossed the military demarcation line, Seoul's Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said on Tuesday.

JCS spokesman Colonel Lee Sung-jun said the military did not consider the breach to be intentional as the area was densely forested, obscuring border markings or any roads.

"They headed north immediately after our military's warning broadcasts and warning shots, and there were no unusual movements," he told a briefing.

Yonhap news agency, citing an unnamed JCS official, reported the troops were mostly carrying pick axes and other tools, and appeared to have become lost.

The incident came as the North has sent thousands of balloons containing trash in recent days to the South, including some 600 over the weekend, calling it a "gift" for North Korean defectors and South Korean campaigners who have flown balloons carrying anti-Pyongyang leaflets and aid parcels in the other direction over the border.

Seoul suspended a 2018 inter-Korean military pact and resumed military activities around the border, including reinstalling loudspeaker broadcasts, calling Pyongyang's action "base and dangerous."

The South Korean military has previously fired warning shots at North Korean soldiers crossing the border, but most such incidents took place around the maritime border which Pyongyang has disputed.

The two Koreas are still technically at war after their 1950-53 conflict ended in an armistice, not a peace treaty.

REUTERS

 

[BouncerGuy]

South Korea makes N Korean defector vice minister

Former North Korean diplomat Tae Yong-ho has been named the new leader of South Korea's presidential advisory council on unification.

This makes him the highest-ranking defector among the thousands who have resettled in the South - and the first to be given a vice-ministerial job.

Tae, 62, was Pyongyang's deputy ambassador to the United Kingdom before he fled to South Korea in 2016.

Pyongyang has denounced him as "human scum" and accused him of embezzling state funds and other crimes.

Mr Tae became the first former North Korean to win a seat in South Korea's 2020 National Assembly.

He failed to secure a second term in parliamentary elections in April, but in his new role, he will be be advising South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol's office on peaceful Korean unification.

"He is the right person to help establish a peaceful unification policy based on liberal democracy and garner support from home and abroad," the presidential office said on Thursday.

Born in Pyongyang in 1962, Mr Tae entered the foreign service at the age of 27 and spent almost 30 years working under three generations of the ruling Kim dynasty.

He said in earlier statements that he left North Korea because he did not want his children to have "miserable lives". He also cited disgust with Kim Jong Un's regime and expressed admiration for South Korea's democracy.

In a memoir published this year, Mr Tae wrote about the excesses of the North Korean elite and the depths of the personality cult built around the Kims.

Since his defection, he has advocated for the use of "soft power" to weaken the Kim regime and called for prisoner swaps between the North and the South.

Tensions between the Koreas have risen over the past few months, with Seoul resuming propaganda broadcasts towards the North on Friday, in response to Pyongyang floating thousands of trash-carrying balloons into the South.

Reports based on satellite imagery also suggest that North Korea may be strengthening its military presence and building walls along its border with the South.

As of December last year, some 34,000 individuals have defected from the North to the South, according to estimates from Seoul's Unification Ministry.

Many do so by crossing into China and then to South Korea. In South Korea, they automatically receive citizenship and are given some resettlement money.

Earlier this week, Seoul's spy agency cofirmed another high-profile defection of a former diplomat most recently stationed in Cuba.

Local reports identified the man as 52-year-old Ri Il Kyu and quoted him as saying that he fled because of "disillusionment with the North Korean regime and a bleak future".

"Every North Korean thinks at least once about living in South Korea," the Chosun Ilbo newspaper quoted him as saying.

Last Sunday, South Korea marked its very first North Korean Defectors' Day, during which Mr Yoon Suk Yeol promised better financial support for defectors and tax incentives for companies that hire them.

BBC

 

[BouncerGuy]

Trash balloons land near S Korea president's office

Balloons carrying rubbish sent by North Korea have landed in South Korea's presidential compound in the capital city of Seoul, say officials.

It is the first time the South Korean leader's office, which is a designated no-fly zone, has been hit by balloons launched by Pyongyang.

A chemical, biological and radiological warfare response team was sent to collect the balloons, the presidential security service said.

They were found to pose no contamination or safety risk.

According to a news report by local news site Yonhap, the military did not shoot down the balloons as they feared it would cause their contents to spread further.

The balloons also landed in other parts of Seoul, with officials telling residents to avoid touching the balloons and to "report them to the nearest military unit or police station".

South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff told Reuters that with wind blowing from the west, balloons aimed at the South were likely to land in the northern Gyeonggi province, the country's most populous province, where the capital city is located.

The latest incident comes days after South Korea's military reacted to the escalating launches by restarting propaganda broadcasts from loudspeakers along the border.

North and South Korea have both used balloons in their propaganda campaigns since the Korean War in the 1950s.

The launches have escalated this year, with thousands of balloons being sent by the North across the border since May.

Wednesday's balloons marked the North's tenth launch this year, in what it claims is retaliation for balloons sent by South Korean activists.

These allegedly contained anti-Pyongyang leaflets, alongside food, medicine, money and USB sticks loaded with K-pop videos and dramas.

BBC

 

[FearlessRoar]

North Korean resident crosses South Korean sea border to defect: Yonhap​

A North Korean has defected to the South across a de facto maritime border in the Yellow Sea, South Korea’s Yonhap news agency reported Thursday.

Tens of thousands of North Koreans have fled to South Korea since the peninsula was divided by war in the 1950s.

The latest defection comes as relations between the two Koreas are at one of their lowest points in years, with the North ramping up weapons testing and bombarding the South with trash-carrying balloons.

“1 N. Korean defects across maritime border in Yellow Sea: military,” the agency said in a one-line report.

Other South Korean local media reported Thursday that two North Koreans attempted to defect to the South through the border island of Gyodong, less than five kilometers (3.1 miles) from North Korea.

The South Korean military has only secured one of them, the reports said.

Most defectors go overland to neighboring China first, then enter a third country such as Thailand before finally making it to the South.

The number of successful escapes dropped significantly from 2020 after the North sealed its borders -- purportedly with shoot-on-sight orders along the land frontier with China -- to prevent the spread of COVID-19.

But the number of defectors making it to the South almost tripled last year to 196, Seoul said in January, with more elite diplomats and students seeking to escape, up from 67 in 2022.

‘Unhappy with the North’s system’

The North Korean crossed the “neutral zone of the Han River estuary located west of the inter-Korean land border” and then arrived at South Korea’s Gyodong island, Yonhap reported Thursday, citing unnamed military sources.

South Korean Defense Minister Shin Won-sik told a parliamentary committee that an investigation was “underway by the relevant authorities,” according to the Yonhap report.

The incident is the first time in 15 months since a North Korean defected to South Korea through the Yellow Sea.

In May 2023, a family of nine escaped the North using a wooden boat.

Experts say defectors have likely been impacted by harsh living conditions, including food shortages and inadequate responses to natural disasters, while living in the isolated North.

“North Korea has suffered severe flood damage recently and has caused a lot of damage in other areas as well, including parts of the city,” Cheong Seong-chang, director of the Korean peninsula strategy at Sejong Institute, told AFP.

“It is possible that the people who were unhappy with the North Korean system may have used this internal instability and confusion to defect.”

Heavy rainfall hit the North’s northern regions in late July, with South Korean media reporting a possible death toll of up to 1,500 people.

Pyongyang treats defections as a serious crime and is believed to hand harsh punishments to transgressors, their families and even people tangentially linked to the incident.

South Korea has responded to the North’s increased weapons testing and trash-carrying ballon bombardments this year by resuming propaganda broadcasts along the border, suspending a tension-reducing military deal and restarting live-fire drills near the border.

https://english.alarabiya.net/News/world/2024/08/08/north-korean-resident-crosses-south-korean-sea-border-to-defect-yonhap-