Category Archives: North Korea

Russian diplomats leave North Korea on hand-powered rail trolley – video

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In normal times, most diplomats can expect to end a foreign posting with an official – if not always fond – farewell from their hosts and a comfortable journey back to their native country.

But for one group of Russian envoys and their families, the coronavirus pandemic meant there was only one way home: under their own steam on a hand-pushed rail trolley.

A more conventional exit from North Korea has not been possible since the country closed its land borders and banned international air travel early on in the pandemic

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Russian diplomats leave North Korea on hand-powered rail trolley

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Coronavirus pandemic meant the envoys and their families had to travel home in an unconventional way

In normal times, most diplomats can expect to end a foreign posting with an official – if not always fond – farewell from their hosts and a comfortable journey back to their native country.

But for one group of Russian envoys and their families, the coronavirus pandemic meant there was only one way home – under their own steam on a hand-pushed rail trolley.

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North Korea enslaves prisoners in producing coal for export, report says

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Rights group says pyramid-like scheme is directly linked to North’s nuclear and missile programmes

North Korea has been enslaving political prisoners, including children, in coal production to help boost exports and earn foreign currency as part of a system directly linked to its nuclear and missile programmes, a South Korea-based human rights group has said.

The Seoul-based Citizens’ Alliance for North Korean Human Rights (NKHR) released a study analysing an intricate connection between North Korea’s exploitation of its citizens, the production of goods for export, and its weapons programmes.

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North Korean defector spends six hours walking around heavily guarded border unnoticed

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Embarrassment for South Korea’s military after guards fail to heed alarms despite man being picked up by five sets of CCTV cameras

South Korea’s military is facing criticism over security lapses along the country’s heavily armed border with North Korea after a man was able to cross into the South despite being spotted multiple times by surveillance cameras.

The man, wearing a wetsuit and flippers, reportedly swam to South Korea in the early hours of 16 February, but evaded capture for more than six hours, according to the Yonhap news agency.

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‘My mother begged me not to go’: the Japanese women who married Koreans – and never saw their family again

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Mitsuko left Japan in 1960 for a new life in North Korea. Once there, she realised she – and hundreds of others like her – could never go back

It has been six decades since Mitsuko Minakawa boarded a ferry on the Sea of Japan coast, bound for a new life in North Korea. But the anguish of that sunny day in the spring of 1960 has never left her.

Two months earlier, Minakawa had married a Korean man, Choe Hwa-jae, a contemporary at Hokkaido University, where she was the only woman in a class of 100 students. Minakawa, then 21, and Choe were part of the mass repatriation of ethnic Korean residents of Japan – many of them the offspring of people who had been brought from the Korean peninsula by their Japanese colonisers to work in mines and factories.

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North Korea upgraded nuclear missile programme in 2020, says UN diplomat

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Confidential UN report reveals Pyongyang was acting in violation of international sanctions

North Korea maintained and developed its nuclear and ballistic missile programmes throughout 2020 in violation of international sanctions, said a UN diplomat with knowledge of a confidential report given to security council members on Monday.

The report by independent sanctions monitors said Pyongyang “produced fissile material, maintained nuclear facilities and upgraded its ballistic missile infrastructure”, and continued to seek technology for those programmes from abroad.

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North Korea diplomacy is only used to advance nuclear programme, says top US official

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Washington’s top intelligence officer warns that Pyongyang is not intending to ‘find a way out’ of weapons development

The top US intelligence officer for North Korea has warned the country sees diplomacy only as a means to advance its nuclear weapons development, even as the new Biden administration says it will look for ways to bring Pyongyang back to talks.

Joe Biden’s nominee for secretary of state, Antony Blinken, said on Tuesday the new administration planned a full review of the US approach to North Korea to look at ways to increase pressure on it to return to the negotiating table.

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North Korea set for collision course with US as Kim Jong-un solidifies one-man rule

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Analysis: Congress gathering ends with Kim taking symbolic post of general secretary and a warning the US needs a fresh strategy

A rare meeting of North Korea’s ruling party has ended with a symbolically important new title for the country’s leader, Kim Jong-un, speculation about the future of his influential sister, and a shot across the bow of the incoming US president.

Less than two weeks before Joe Biden’s inauguration, much of what Kim told the first congress of the ruling Workers’ party for five years had a familiar ring to it.

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Kim Jong-un calls US ‘biggest enemy’ and says nuclear submarine plans ‘complete’

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North Korea should ‘further advance nuclear technology’ and develop more flexible attack capability, leader tells party congress

North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, has called the United States his nuclear-armed nation’s “biggest enemy” and revealed that plans for a nuclear-powered submarine are complete, state media said.

Kim’s declaration on Saturday also included a call to develop smaller, more adapatable nyuclear warheads, comes less than two weeks before the inauguration of Joe Biden as US president, and after a tumultuous relationship between Kim and the outgoing Donald Trump.

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North Korea: Kim Jong-un says economic plan a near-total failure at rare political meeting

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Ruler begins second Workers’ party congress by admitting strategy fell short in ‘almost all areas’

North Korea’s ruler, Kim Jong-un, has admitted that his economic policies have largely failed, and vowed to avoid a repeat of the “painful lessons” of the past at a rare meeting of the country’s ruling party.

Kim told the congress of the Workers’ party that his five-year economic plan had failed to achieve its goals “in almost all areas to a great extent”, North Korean state media said on Wednesday.

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North Korean hackers tried to disrupt vaccine in South, says spy agency

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South Korean intelligence foiled the attempt by secretive regime to infiltrate pharmaceutical companies working on treatments

South Korea’s intelligence agency has foiled attempts by North Korean hackers to disrupt attempts to develop a Covid-19 vaccine, according to officials.

Ha Tae-keung, a conservative member of the national assembly who was briefed by intelligence officials, said attempts by the North to target South Korean drugmakers had failed, but did not identify the companies involved.

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Hackers ‘try to steal Covid vaccine secrets in intellectual property war’

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Agencies point finger at state-sponsored hackers from China, Russia, Iran and North Korea

State-sponsored hackers from China, Russia, Iran and North Korea are engaged in concerted attempts to steal coronavirus vaccine secrets in what security experts describe as “an intellectual property war”.

They accuse hostile-state hackers of trying to obtain trial results early and seize sensitive information about mass production of drugs, at a time when a range of vaccines are close to being approved for the public.

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Human rights must not be ‘trampled’ in global rush for PPE, say MPs

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Calls come after Guardian finds UK sourced PPE from factories in China where North Koreans work in modern slavery

MPs and experts in the procurement of personal protective equipment have said human rights must not be “trampled” in the rush to secure PPE for frontline workers via global supply chains.

The calls come after a Guardian investigation found evidence that the British government had sourced PPE from factories in China where hundreds of North Korean women have been secretly working in conditions of modern slavery.

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UK sourced PPE from factories secretly using North Korean slave labour

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Exclusive: Guardian investigation finds evidence that Chinese PPE factories supplying UK government are breaking UN sanctions

The British government has sourced PPE from factories in China where hundreds of North Korean women have been secretly working in conditions of modern slavery, according to evidence uncovered by the Guardian.

The Guardian’s findings indicate that hundreds of thousands of protective coveralls ordered for the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) have come from factories using North Korean labour in the Chinese city of Dandong.

The three-month investigation has also found evidence of North Korean labour being used in factories exporting PPE to the US, Italy, Germany, South Africa, Japan, South Korea, the Philippines and Myanmar.

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North Korea bans smoking in public places to safeguard ‘hygienic living’

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Measure comes despite more than 43% of the country’s male population being smokers, including leader Kim Jong-un

North Korea’s supreme people’s assembly has introduced smoking bans in some public places to provide citizens with “hygienic living environments”, state media KCNA reported.

The tobacco-prohibition law aims to protect the lives and health of North Koreans by tightening the legal and social controls on the production and sale of cigarettes, KCNA on Thursday quoted the legislature as saying.

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North Korea detainees subjected to ritual torture and sexual assault – rights group

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Prisoners considered ‘less than an animal’ by regime, according to interviews with 15 former detainees by Human Rights Watch

Suspects in North Korea are subjected to ritual torture, humiliation and sexual assault by a criminal justice system that considers them “less than an animal”, according to the first-ever report detailing the brutality of the country’s pretrial detention conditions.

The US-based Human Rights Watch [HRW] said people who are arrested and sent to pretrial detention are placed in cramped, unhygienic cells, forced to confess and denied proper food and clothing.

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Trump and Biden offer starkly different visions of US role in world

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The world is anxiously watching the election, with the candidates far apart on issues such as the climate crisis and nuclear weapons

Foreign policy barely gets a mention in this US election, but for the rest of the world the outcome on 3 November will arguably be the most consequential in history.

All US elections have a global impact, but this time there are two issues of existential importance to the planet – the climate crisis and nuclear proliferation – on which the two presidential candidates could hardly be further apart.

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BTS faces China backlash over Korean war comments

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Boyband member RM told award ceremony they would always remember sacrifices of US and South Korea in war

K-pop phenomenon BTS are facing a barrage of criticism in China after the South Korean boyband cited their country’s solidarity with the US stemming from the Korean war.

The band’s leader, RM, sparked outrage on social media in China when he cited the “history of pain” shared between South Korea and the US, who fought alongside each other in the 1950-53 conflict.

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