Eyewitnesses said they were told people watching South Korean movies will be “sentenced to the maximum penalty – death” as they watched the two teens being killed
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Despicable, this just shows what North Korea is and has become.
Human Rights don’t exist in North Korea, only the Rights of North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un.
But, it won’t belong before FIFA award them with the next World Cup event, as this is what FIFA see as a good country.
North Korea didn’t carry out any missile or nuclear tests in 2018 — an apparent vindication of President Donald Trump’s unconventional foreign policy approach.
But that may not be the victory the president claims.
The drumbeat reached a peak in 2017, when Kim Jong Un’s regime launched its first intercontinental ballistic missiles — theoretically capable of striking the United States mainland. It also tested its most powerful nuclear weapon to date, which it claimed was a miniaturized hydrogen bomb.
Verbal sparring between Trump and Kim escalated and appeared to elevate the threat of a devastating war.
“The missiles and rockets are no longer flying in every direction, nuclear testing has stopped,” Trump told the United Nations General Assembly in September.
The president has pointed to this as evidence that his strategy to defang Kim’s government is working.
However, many experts point out that although the eye-catching weapons display may have ceased, other more subtle parts of North Korea’s weapons program continue apace. Tests are only part of the story.
“Kim has not changed his policy … but claims that he’s now moved from research-and-development and onto mass production,” said Cristina Varriale, a research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, a London-based think tank.
This transition from testing to production should come as no surprise — it’s exactly what Kim told the world he would do at the beginning of the year.
In his New Year’s Day address, Kim claimed that his scientists and engineers had completed all the trial runs they needed. Now, he said bluntly, “the nuclear weapons research sector and the rocket industry should mass-produce nuclear warheads and ballistic missiles.”
At the current rate of production, North Korea could have around 100 warheads by 2020 — almost half the size of the U.K.’s stockpile, according to Robert S. Litwak, senior vice president of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, a Washington think tank.
Aside from the pause in testing, Trump also takes credit for North Korea’s claim that it destroyed its nuclear testing site at Punggye-ri.
However, this demolition is unconfirmed, reversible and even irrelevant in terms of producing more warheads, experts warn.
Source: Kim Jong Un stopped launching missiles this year. Here’s why. | Euronews
North Korean officials commit sexual violence with little concern for the consequences, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. The government fails to investigate and prosecute complaints, or to provide protection and services to victims, and even asserts that the country is implausibly free of sexism or sexual violence.
The 86-page report, “‘You Cry at Night, but Don’t Know Why’: Sexual Violence against Women in North Korea,” documents unwanted sexual contact and violence that is so common in North Korea it has come to be accepted as part of ordinary life. Many North Koreans told Human Rights Watch that when an official in a position of power “picks” a woman she has no choice but to comply with any demands he makes, whether for sex, money, or other favors. Women interviewed said that the sexual predators include high-ranking party officials, prison and detention facility guards and interrogators, police and secret police officials, prosecutors, and soldiers. Fearful of social disgrace and retaliation, and with few, if any, avenues for redress, North Korean women rarely report abuse.
“Sexual violence in North Korea is an open, unaddressed, and widely tolerated secret,” said Kenneth Roth, Human Rights Watch’s executive director. “North Korean woman would probably say ‘Me Too’ if they thought there was any way to obtain justice, but their voices are silenced in Kim Jong Un’s dictatorship.”
Source: North Korea: Sexual Violence Against Women by Officials | Human Rights Watch
Instead, she says, she just wanted to return home.
“It was like I met someone I don’t know at all,” said Jung, who was among 89 South Korean families who joined in reunions last week of relatives separated by the Korean War, fought from 1950 to 1953.
“I wish my nephew resembled my brother, but he did not. They were like strangers,” she told Reuters, days after the event held in North Korea’s tourist resort of Mount Kumgang.
“I don’t want to meet them again. I don’t know how other separated families felt, or maybe I am just cold-hearted.”
The disconnect shows how far apart the neighbours have grown in the decades since they ended hostilities in a truce rather than a peace treaty, leaving them technically in a state of war.
Source: Hello, stranger: South Koreans recount awkward reunions with families in North | Reuters
A useful way to test the deal Donald Trump has reached with Kim Jong-un is to imagine what Trump himself would have said had it been Barack Obama rather than him who shook hands with the North Korean dictator. Trump and his echo chamber on Fox News and elsewhere would have poured buckets of derision on Obama for the piece of paper he signed with Kim, for the fawning praise he lavished on a brutal tyrant, and for the paltry non-concessions he got in return. He would have branded the agreement a “horrible deal” and condemned Obama as a sucker for signing it.
Look first at what Kim got from the encounter. Once ostracised as a pariah, Kim was treated as a world statesman on a par with the president of the United States, the two meeting on equal terms, right down to the equal numbers of flags behind them as they shook hands. The tyrant now has a showreel of images – including his walkabout in Singapore, where he was mobbed by what the BBC called “fans” seeking selfies – which will feature in propaganda videos for months, if not years.
President Trump is prepared to offer North Korea full diplomatic relations in return for full denuclearization, Jonathan Swan and Mike Allen reported at the website axios.com. The US president “is willing to consider establishing official relations with North Korea and even eventually putting an embassy in Pyongyang,” the news site quoted US government sources, in return for denuclearization.
The trade-off of North Korea’s nuclear weapons in return for international legitimacy for the Pyongyang regime is an approach that previous US Administrations considered and rejected. But it is the only diplomatic strategy that has a chance of working. Pyongyang might accept Complete, Verifiable and Irreversible Dismantlement, or CVID, of its nuclear weapons stockpile in return for one thing and one thing only, and that is survivability of its regime.
Source: Can Trump persuade Kim Jong-un to give up nuclear weapons? | Asia Times
This is playing with fire and what could occur.
The West have interfered in Arabic situations for a number of years being Iraq, Syria, Lybia and others, when the Government of the day that the West did not wish to be there, all hell was let loose as the West does not understand Arabic politics, interference can create worse situations.
Then interfering with economics, the Dollar maybe powerful, but if it is used for political purposes, there could well be qa move to a more convenient currency to replace the Dollar for economic trade.
In any of these instances and there may be others, what could be the outcomes and the results may not be beneficial for America.
Is the current Korean situation the result of Trump or is Kim Jong-un playing a long game, and is using Trump for their own ends.
Trump is a naive novice in politics and believes bluster will achieve all he wishes, but political situations are not similar to Boardroom conflicts, although it may appear to be.
We will have to wait and see in all these aspects, but if it all turns out as disasters it may be not only the end for Trump, but the World as we know it, from which there may be no return and life will not be the same, that is, if there is still life.
President Trump’s administration appears set to wage economic war against Iran in order to bring about “regime change.”
The pattern would be the economic war the U.S. government has waged against Venezuela, which has crashed that country’s economy and created desperate poverty.
Top members of the Trump administration have long been committed to overthrowing the Iranian government. But they’re not going to get the American public and Congress to support war with Iran.
What’s left is covert warfare, subsidizing dissidents and rebels in Iran, and economic warfare, using U.S. financial power to punish businesses that do business with Iran.
Because most international trade is done in U.S. dollars, and because most transactions in dollars go through U.S. banks, the U.S. government is in a position to do great damage to businesses and business owners that displease it.
This comes at a price, though. Each time the U.S. government forces…
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This is the Doomsday Clock set up by the Organisation of Atomic Scientists, to show graphically how close the world is to nuclear omnicide. It used to be five minutes to midnight, and I remember the New Cold War of the 1980s, when Thatcher and Reagan nearly started a nuclear conflict. As did a computer malfunction over on the Soviet side. The only way we served that is because of an heroic Red Army officer, who insisted on visual confirmation because he correctly didn’t trust machines. The man was reduced to a nervous wreck afterwards, but he’s a hero. He saved the world.
Now we’ve moved closer to full-scale nuclear war. The scientists blame Trump, his stupid remarks on Twitter, and his sparring and provocation of Kim Jong-Un.
The man’s a menace. For the safety of all humanity, and our beautiful planet, he has to go. Now.
n a cold, clear night in September 2014, a man I’ll call Ahn walked up to the edge of the Tumen River on the Chinese side of the heavily guarded border between China and North Korea. At its narrowest points, the Tumen measures a little over 150 feet wide, and Ahn could easily see the North Korean side from where he stood. In two bags, he was carrying 100 USB drives filled with films, television shows, music, and e-books from around the world.
Almost anywhere else, such material would be considered completely innocuous. At this border, however, it constitutes highly illicit, dangerous contraband. In the totalitarian state of North Korea, citizens are allowed to see and hear only those media products created or sanctioned by the government. Pyongyang considers foreign information of any kind a threat and expends great effort keeping it out. The regime’s primary fear is that exposure to words, images, and sounds from the outside world could make North Koreans disillusioned with the state of affairs in their own country, which could lead them to desire—or even demand—change.
Ahn is a defector who escaped from North Korea in 2004 and now lives in the South Korean capital, Seoul, where he runs a nongovernmental organization that sends information into North Korea. He is one of the dozens of defectors from North Korea whom I have interviewed in the past ten years. Defectors’ testimony is not always reliable, nor is it enough to piece together an accurate portrait of life inside the opaque and secretive country. But when combined with other information, defectors’ stories offer invaluable insights.
At the edge of the river that night, Ahn knew precisely what to do; he had made this kind of trip to the border many times before. With his senses on high alert, he scanned the area for guards. Once he felt certain that he wasn’t being watched, h
Timbo01
No change of view in our house Tony. The Iraq war removed a controlling dictator for no reason, and allowed the defeated generals and soldiers to fester away building up their resentment, leading to the formation of ISIS. There were no WMD’s and if Sadam had been left in place the world would have been a much safer place. The UK and the USA would also have trillions less in National Debt.
On top of this North Korea would not have felt under so much threat, along with Iran, and the Arab spring might never have happened, leaving Europe in tact as is was in 80’s.
So thanks for nothing Tony Blair.
*TrueBeLeaver*
I can sense that public opinion is shifting towards a more measured analysis – and now almost everybody is sure that this piece of filth should be sitting in jail, not giving his warped and…
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