Showing posts with label South Korea. Show all posts
Showing posts with label South Korea. Show all posts

Monday, August 24, 2015

[VIDEO] S. Korea slams North over submarine, artillery deployments

Seoul (AFP) - North Korea has mobilised dozens of submarines and doubled its artillery units along the border, South Korea said Sunday, accusing Pyongyang of undermining top-level talks aimed at averting a military confrontation.
A defense ministry spokesman said 70 percent of the North's total submarine fleet -- or around 50 vessels -- had left their bases and disappeared from Seoul's military radar.
The movement of such a large number of submarines was "unprecedented," the spokesman said, adding that Seoul and Washington were beefing up their military surveillance in response.
"The number is nearly 10 times the normal level... we take the situation very seriously," he said.
The North has also doubled the number of artillery units along the heavily-fortified land border with the South, he added.
The move came as top officials from both Koreas resumed a talks aimed at easing military tensions after a marathon negotiating session the night before ended without final agreement.
"The North is adopting a two-faced stance with the talks going on," said the spokesman.
Yonhap news agency, citing military officials, said the submarine deployment was the largest since the end of the 1950-53 Korean War.
"No one knows whether the North will attack our warships or commercial vessels... we are mobilising all our surveillance resources to locate them," it quoted one military official as saying.
The North operates more than 70 submarines -- one of the world's largest fleets -- compared to about 10 in the South, according to Seoul's latest defense white paper.
The South accused Pyongyang in 2010 of using a submarine to torpedo a Seoul warship resulting in the loss of 46 lives -- a charge the North denied.
Tension flared on the Korean peninsula after Seoul accused Pyongyang of planting landmines across the border that earlier this month maimed two South Korean soldiers.
Pyongyang denied involvement but Seoul retaliated by resuming loudspeaker propaganda broadcast hated by the North along the border on August 10.
The North's leader Kim Jong-Un last week ordered his military to move to a war-footing after an exchange of artillery fire on Thursday that claimed no casualties but further escalated tension

Saturday, August 22, 2015

[VIDEO] North Korea approves ‘final attack’ on South Korea as tensions increase in region

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un declared his front-line troops were in a "quasi-state of war" Friday and ordered them to prepare for battle, a day after the most serious confrontation with South Korea in years.
A North Korean military official says a meeting of senior party and defense officials led by North Korean leader Kim Jong Un met Thursday night and "reviewed and approved the final attack operation."
He gave no details on what kind of military retaliation North Korea would see as appropriate punishment for South Korea's shelling of its territory Thursday.
It’s the latest challenge in the regional feud. South Korea warned Friday that North Korea was likely to launch "provocations" if Seoul did not meet a Saturday deadline to cease propaganda broadcasts.
Kim Yong Chol, director of the general reconnaissance bureau of the North Korean army, on Friday denied South Korean allegations that Pyongyang has been raising tensions on the peninsula.
He denied the North fired anything across the Demilitarized Zone and says South Korea has not offered conclusive evidence where the rocket was launched in the North, or where exactly it landed in the South.
He suggested human error might have been a factor on the South Korean side and says the South's decision to retaliate with its own barrage was dangerous and rash.
Kim says: "Skirmishes can lead to all-out war."
South Korean Defense Minister Han Min-koo issued a warning at a press conference as a South Korean media outlet reported that Pyongyang appeared to be preparing to test-fire short- and mid-range ballistic missiles.
The report by Yonhap News Agency cited a South Korean government source who said that North Korea seemed to be "weighing the timing of the firing under its strategic intention to increase military tension on the Korean Peninsula to the highest level." The source also said that the apparent preparations for the test had been detected by South Korea's joint radar system, which it shares with the United States.
The North has given Seoul a deadline of 5 p.m. Saturday evening (4 a.m. EDT) to remove border loudspeakers that—after an 11 year lull-- have started broadcasting anti-Pyongyang propaganda. Failure, Pyongyang says, will result in further military action. Seoul has vowed to continue the broadcasts.
Earlier Friday, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un declared his country to be in a "quasi-state of war" and fully ready for any military operations starting Friday evening, according to a report by Pyongyang's official Korean Central News Agency.
In response, South Korea raised its military readiness to its highest level. Joint Chiefs of Staff spokesman Jeon Ha-kyu told a televised news conference that South Korea is ready to repel any additional provocation.

Saturday, August 8, 2015

North Korea to turn clocks back by 30 minutes to establish own time zone

It is a problem for small states everywhere overshadowed by mighty neighbours. How to stick out? And perhaps assert national pride at the same time?
On Friday North Korea came up with its own typically idiosyncratic answer, announcing that from next week it will use its own unique time zone. Pyongyang said that it will pull back its current standard time by 30 minutes, making it GMT +8.30, rather than GMT +9.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un

The move is a diplomatic salvo aimed squarely at Japan, the country’s former colonial overlord. Local time in North and South Korea and Japan has been the same since Japan’s rule over what was a single Korea between 1910 and 1945.
The North’s official Korean Central News Agency said that the establishment of a sovereign “Pyongyang time” was aimed at what it called rooting out the legacy of the Japanese colonial period.
The new time zone will take effect on 15 August – the 70th anniversary of Korea’s liberation from Japanese rule at the end of the second world war.
“The wicked Japanese imperialists committed such unpardonable crimes as depriving Korea of even its standard time while mercilessly trampling down its land with 5,000-year-long history and culture and pursuing the unheard-of policy of obliterating the Korean nation,” the KCNA dispatch said, in classically accusing tones.
North Korea now joins a select club of small, proud nations that have anomalous time zones. It includes the mountain kingdom of Nepal, which at GMT +5.45 is 15 minutes ahead of Delhi, its vast neighbour. Kathmandu adopted Nepal Standard Time in 1956. It has stuck with it, ostensibly in order to balance its sprawling eastern and western halves.

Tuesday, May 19, 2015

Kerry: Internet 'Needs Rules to Be Able to Flourish and Work Properly'

In a speech today in South Korea, Secretary of State John Kerry said that the Internet "needs rules to be able to flourish and work properly." This, according to Kerry, is necessary even for "a technology founded on freedom."
Speaking on behalf of the Obama administration, Kerry said that Internet policy is "a key component of our foreign policy."
Kerry made his remarks in the context of talking about how international law is applicable to the Internet. "As I’ve mentioned, the basic rules of international law apply in cyberspace. Acts of aggression are not permissible. And countries that are hurt by an attack have a right to respond in ways that are appropriate, proportional, and that minimize harm to innocent parties. We also support a set of additional principles that, if observed, can contribute substantially to conflict prevention and stability in time of peace. We view these as universal concepts that should be appealing to all responsible states, and they are already gaining traction," said Kerry.
"First, no country should conduct or knowingly support online activity that intentionally damages or impedes the use of another country’s critical infrastructure. Second, no country should seek either to prevent emergency teams from responding to a cybersecurity incident, or allow its own teams to cause harm. Third, no country should conduct or support cyber-enabled theft of intellectual property, trade secrets, or other confidential business information for commercial gain. Fourth, every country should mitigate malicious cyber activity emanating from its soil, and they should do so in a transparent, accountable and cooperative way. And fifth, every country should do what it can to help states that are victimized by a cyberattack.
"I guarantee you if those five principles were genuinely and fully adopted and implemented by countries, we would be living in a far safer and far more confident cyberworld.

Thursday, March 20, 2014

A New Obama Doctrine? With his presidency in a tailspin, Carter radically changed course. Will Obama do the same?

By the beginning of 1980, Jimmy Carter was in big trouble. Almost everything he had said or done in foreign policy over the prior three years had failed — and he was running for reelection.

Carter had come into office in 1977 promising a new American stance abroad predicated on human rights. He bragged of an end to our supposedly inordinate fear of Soviet-inspired Communism. He entertained the hope of not losing a single American soldier in combat during his tenure. And he rejected the realpolitik of the Nixon-Kissinger years.

The State Department would end the excessive influence of the bellicose National Security Council. Secretary of State Cyrus Vance would put a kinder, gentler face on American diplomacy. We championed Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe over more moderate black reformers. We broke with the Shah of Iran, who fled his country in January 1979. We for a while praised the Ayatollah Khomeini and sought ways to reach out to him. Carter’s U.N. ambassador, Andrew Young, called Khomeini “some kind of saint.” Young met secretly with PLO representatives in Kuwait. In an interview, he falsely alleged of his own country that “We still have hundreds of people that I would categorize as political prisoners in our prisons.”

The same formula was used in Nicaragua, as we welcomed the end of the despised Somoza regime and looked to Marxist rebels to provide long-delayed social justice for the region. Carter spurned South Korea, as if North Korean threats were not all that serious, or perhaps were even understandable, given U.S. Cold War machinations. Carter wanted to pull U.S. troops out of South Korea as a way of easing tensions on the 38th Parallel. He was clearly uncomfortable with Israel. He often distanced himself from Europe.

For a while, there was calm. Stunned potential aggressors only eyed one another to see who might be the first to test this strange new break with nearly four decades of bipartisan American foreign policy. But then, in late 1979, things started going downhill fast — as if the gamblers thought it was time to cash in their chips for fear that Carter might not win another four years in office.

Tuesday, October 29, 2013

Oregonians Fight Illegal Alien License Law

Oregon taxpayers are successfully fighting back against a law—passed by the state legislature and signed by the governor months ago—to give illegal immigrants driver’s licenses by the start of 2014.

The measure, Senate Bill 833, directs the Department of Transportation to issue special driver cards to applicants who don’t provide proof of legal presence in the United States. The illegal aliens must still pass a driving test and provide “acceptable documents that prove their identity, date of birth, and residency in Oregon for more than a year.” Here’s another interesting line in the actual law: “A Social Security number will also be required if one has been assigned.”
The campaign started around the middle of last year when Oregon Governor John Kitzhaber ordered state police to begin accepting the Mexican Matricula Consular identification cards as valid ID. Shortly afterwards he vowed to pass a measure that would allow illegal aliens to obtain Oregon driver’s licenses, asserting that the undocumented would come “out of the shadows” and “contribute to our economic recovery.” The state legislature overwhelmingly approved the bill in May and the governor quickly signed it.

Under the measure state Department of Motor Vehicle offices can accept foreign identification cards issued by the consulates of Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Guatemala, Mexico and South Korea. The card must be “valid” and not expired, according to the new Oregon law, which advises illegal immigrants to “contact your consulate office if you need to renew it.”

This outraged an Oregon group that favors immigration control. At the very least, citizens should be able to vote on the matter. So the group, Oregonians for Immigration Reform, got busy and collected the necessary 58,142 signatures to put a referendum blocking the law onto the November 2014 ballot. This already delays the law’s implementation by almost a year because it was supposed to kick in on January 2014.

The new law granting driver privilege cards to illegal aliens will now be sidelined until after the November 2014 election, the group says on its website. If voters choose to overturn the measure, it will be dropped. If voters approve it, the law will go into effect 30 days after the election. The group cites a recent Rasmussen poll that reveals 68% of U.S. voters oppose giving illegal immigrants driver’s licenses. The survey found that just 22% favor allowing illegal aliens to get licenses in their home state.

A dozen states—not including Oregon—have laws that allow illegal aliens to obtain a driver’s license or special driving privilege card, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Among those that recently passed measures are California and Illinois. States—such as Arizona and Nebraska—that refuse to give illegal aliens licenses have been dragged into costly legal battles to preserve their laws.

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