Free Republic

Caveats:1) The streaming video, located on THIS Japanese news web page, may only be up for a half day or so. The link could go dead, or could link to another, new story.2) Not all computer systems might be able to play the video. You might need Microsoft Silverlight installed, but probably most can see the short stream.3) Go to the link and hit the photo with the white triangle and stream. Now for the explanation of this important video taken today of photos of the cargo of an aircraft seized in Bangkok which was heading from North Korea...

President Obama has written a personal letter to North Korean leader Kim Jong Il that was delivered by the administration's special envoy for North Korea during a visit to Pyongyang last week. The existence of the letter has been closely held, with the administration insisting to its partners in disarmament talks with North Korea that it not be publicly discussed. State Department and White House officials confirmed this week that envoy Stephen W. Bosworth delivered a letter from Obama for Kim, but they declined to describe its contents. "We do not comment on private diplomatic correspondence," said White House National...

BANGKOK (Reuters) - Weapons seized in Thailand from an impounded plane traveling from North Korea were likely destined for Iran, said a high-ranking Thai government official on a team investigating the arms. "Some experts believe the weapons may be going to Iran, which has bought arms from North Korea in the past," said the official, quoting Thai government military experts who also took part in an investigation of the weapons. Speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to talk to the media, he said the Thai investigating team considered Iran a likely destination because of the type...

God Bless those enterprising, digging Japanese journalists and their film crews.A hot one in North Korean black weapons smuggling case was captured for all of Japan to see last night at the 11 p.m. TV news on NNN Network.The pushy and curious Japanese journalists and cameramen with their long lenses (and fluent Farsi and Korean speaking investing staff in Tokyo), discovered some VERY interesting things about the North Korean aircraft stopped this week in Thailand with Ukranian crew flying weapons in violation of US sanctions. The flight crew has been very tight lipped, but the Japanese journalists nevertheless caught some...

President Obama has written a personal letter to North Korean leader Kim Jong Il that was delivered by the administration's special envoy for North Korea during a visit to Pyongyang last week. The existence of the letter has been closely held, with the administration insisting to its partners in disarmament talks with North Korea that it not be publicly discussed. State Department and White House officials confirmed this week that envoy Stephen W. Bosworth delivered a letter from Obama for Kim, but they declined to describe its contents. "We do not comment on private diplomatic correspondence," said White House National...

The weapons laden plane seized in Bangkok en route from North Korea at the weekend has been linked to two renowned East European arms traffickers by a respected Swedish think-tank in the latest twist in the mysterious saga. The Ilyushin-76 aircraft, which was found to be carrying 35 tons of weapons including rockets and grenades, was most recently registered under a company called Beibars, linked to Serbian arms dealer Tomislav Dmanjanovic. It had previously been registered with three companies identified by the US Department of the Treasury as firms controlled by the notorious Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout, according to...

Iran's military has postponed a test firing of a new intermediate-range ballistic missile after a shipment of parts from North Korea was delayed, Japan's Kyodo news service reported Dec. 6. The report quoted a western diplomatic source in South Korea familiar with North Korean issues as saying that Tehran told Pyongyang that it needs electronic components for improving the missile's accuracy that were ordered from North Korea. The delay in delivering the parts is a source of friction between the two countries, the source said. According to the report, North Korea has said it shipped the components in 10 containers...

Five foreigners were detained and their foreign-registered aircraft impounded after it landed in the Thai capital Saturday with tons of war weaponry on board that originated in North Korea, Thai officials said. Air Force spokesman Capt. Montol Suchookorn said the chartered cargo plane originated in North Korea's capital Pyongyang and requested to land at Bangkok's Don Muang airport to refuel. Government spokesman Panithan Wattanayakorn confirmed the seizure and the arrests, saying the weapons included "missiles, explosives and tubes." He told The Associated Press that the material was being transferred to a Thai military facility but provided no further details.

Another year has passed in the world's standoff with Iran and North Korea over nuclear weapons, and the situation has only gotten worse.

Five Eastern European men were detained and their plane was impounded and grounded at Don Muang Airport on Saturday after it was found loaded with tons of war weapons. Government Spokesman Panithan Wattanayakorn declined to reveal where the plane was from and its its destination, saying Thai authorities are investigating the five men reportedly from Belarus and Kazakhstan. A TV footage showed military trucks believed to be loaded with the confiscated weapons left Don Muang Airport. The footage also showed the grounded plane. Thai TV reported that the weapons were transferred in the military trucks to a depot in Nakhon...

Swine flu strikes isolated North Korea By HYUNGJIN KIM, Associated Press Writer - 1 hour 58 minutes ago SEOUL, South Korea – Swine flu has struck isolated North Korea, the regime acknowledged Wednesday, although it was unclear whether there were any fatalities from the virus that has been circling the globe for months. North Korea made its first acknowledgment of an H1N1 outbreak with a short dispatch in state media citing nine confirmed cases in northwestern Sinuiju on the Chinese border and in Pyongyang, the capital. The official Korean Central News Agency reported that a quarantine system to prevent the...

BEIJING – The special U.S. envoy to North Korea said Saturday that no plans have been made for more direct talks with the reclusive communist nation, and that all parties in the effort to end the standoff over its nuclear program should exercise "strategic patience" for now. Stephen Bosworth was in Beijing to brief Chinese officials on his three days of meetings with North Korean officials this past week, which he called "very businesslike, very candid, forward-looking." But he said how and when stalled six-nation negotiations on the North's nuclear disarmament would resume is yet to be resolved. "This may...

North Korea's recent revaluation of its currency (100 old won get you one new won) was done to deal with rampant inflation, and to destroy the rising power of people who have made lots of money in the legalized markets. This is what caused the inflation, as not enough new goods were allowed into the country to absorb all that new wealth. Thus there was inflation, as more money chased fewer goods. This drove up the price of food. In a market economy, farmers could have increased output in response to higher prices. But the government controls farming, and continues...

SEOUL, South Korea – North Korea said Friday that it understands the need to resume the stalled international talks on ending its nuclear programs, and that it agrees to work with the United States to narrow unspecified "remaining differences." The statement from North Korea's Foreign Ministry was the first reaction from the communist nation to three days of high-level talks with President Barack Obama's special envoy. Upon returning from North Korea on Thursday, envoy Stephen Bosworth made similar remarks in Seoul that the two sides reached common understandings on the need to restart the nuclear talks. Though the North stopped...

A visit to North Korea by U.S. envoy Stephen Bosworth ended in failure Thursday to convince the North to return to multilateral nuclear disarmament talks. "We identified some common understandings on the need for and the role of the six-party talks and the importance of the implementation of the 2005 Joint Statement," Bosworth told reporters. "It remains to be seen when and how [North Korea] will return to the six-party talks." He added, "This is something that requires further consultations among all six of us." But Bosworth claimed he had "very useful" meetings with senior North Korean officials. Further bilateral...

North Korean Money Shift Sparks Violence By EVAN RAMSTAD SEOUL -- New reports emerged Tuesday of protests and deadly violence in North Korea as the country's authoritarian regime over the past week seized most of its citizens' money and savings via a new-currency issue. Open Radio for North Korea, a Seoul-based shortwave radio station that broadcasts news to the North, said police killed two men in Pyongsong, a market center outside of Pyongyang, on Friday after they divided their savings among a large group of people and urged them to exchange the money for them, attempting to get around the...

If you look at satellite photographs of the Far East by night, you’ll see a large splotch curiously lacking in light. This area of darkness is the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. Next to this black hole, South Korea, Japan and now China gleam. Even from hundreds of miles above, the billboards, headlights, streetlights and neon of the fast-food chains appear as tiny white dots signifying people going about their business as 21st-century energy consumers. Then in the middle of it all, a blackness nearly as large as England. It is baffling how a nation of 23 million can appear...

U.S. envoy Bosworth arrives in Pyongyang: N. Korean media SEOUL, Dec. 8 (Yonhap) -- A U.S. envoy on North Korea arrived in Pyongyang on Tuesday, the North's media said, in the highest-level visit to the communist nation since the Barack Obama administration took power in Washington early this year. Stephen Bosworth and his entourage "arrived in Sunan Airport" just outside the capital, the Korean Central News Agency said. Bosworth departed from the U.S. Osan air base in South Korea at around 2 p.m. on a three-day mission to bring the North back to a multilateral forum on its nuclear program

/begin my translation N. Korea: Two Executed by Firing Squad for Using Others to Swap Old Bills for New 2009.12.08 09:24 There is a report that two businessmen were executed by firing squad, which was carried out off the public view. They tried to get around (strict) rules for currency swapping. Quoting its source inside N. Korea, Open Radio for N. Korea, which broadcasts into N. Korea, reported on Dec. 7 that two businessmen in the city of Pyongsung, who had old bills totaling 11 million Won(N. Korean currency unit) from their sales, tried to convert them into new bills...

Department store cancels sale of Swedish jeans made in N.Korea Jeans confiscated because of 'working conditions in North Korea'. -AFP Sun, Dec 06, 2009 AFP STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN - A Swedish department store on Saturday cancelled what was to be the sale of the "first ever" brand of jeans made in North Korea, the Swedish company behind the communist-made dark denims said. "Apparently PUB has censored our exhibition/store by shutting it down and 'confiscating' the jeans because of the 'working conditions in North Korea'," Jakob Ohlsson of company Noko Jeans told AFP in an email. "At first i thought it was...

N. Korea's Currency Reform Could End in Chaos The North Korean military is on alert for a possible civil uprising following last week's sudden currency reform, according to a Russian business newspaper citing foreign diplomats in the communist country. The currency reform involved the exchange of only limited amounts of old bills at a rate of 100:1, with the state confiscating the remainder. People who are afraid of exposing the size of their wealth have no choice but to hide their old bills. It is difficult to ascertain the actual circumstances, but it is apparent the North Korean regime is...

The North Korean military has seized charge of the economy, elbowing out other ministries and the Workers' Party, the Washington Post said Tuesday. According to the daily, North Korea's military has "grabbed nearly complete command of the nation's state-run economy and staked out a lucrative new trade in mineral sales to China to make money for its supreme commander, Kim Jong-il." "The army has earned hundreds of millions of dollars selling missiles and weapons to Iran, Pakistan, Syria and other nations." But its two nuclear tests in October 2006 and in May 2009 "have triggered UN sanctions that are now...

OK, this is confusing: but this is the LINK to the original Japanese language article from the conservative/trustworthy South Korean "Chonsun Ilbo" daily newspaper website in Korean which reported from a Russian news agency just a little while ago.The headline is 北�鮮デノミ：「�民騒乱を懸念���戦闘準備� ("North Korean Currency Devaluation: Worries Over Uprising By North Korean People; North Korean Army Goes on Sub-War Status")

Why Bosworth Should Not Go to Pyongyang By Chris Green [2009-12-04 16:48 ] Author of, among other things, “Nuclear Showdown: North Korea Takes on the World,” Gordon Chang has today called for Stephen Bosworth, the U.S. chief nuclear negotiator, not to make the trip to Pyongyang for bilateral talks that he is scheduled to make on December 8th. Writing for Forbes, Chang asserts that for Bosworth to go to Pyongyang at this time is both playing into North Korean hands and completely undermining the policy which Washington had appeared to be adhering to since Barack Obama came to office, namely...

This is a short video clip of the top news from the major Japanese JNN Network today. The link is to a Japanese news page on Yahoo!Japan; one just needs to click the arrow to stream the report.Before streaming, please note:-Not all PC/Mac systems can stream the video but most can.-The video may be up for only a few more hours. Then (usually) the links go down. Please see while you can.-You may need to have Microsoft Silverlight installed on your machine.The horrid news report about North Korea, in Japanese, is HERE.And HERE is a clip of what the...

NORTH KOREA'S MOST CONTROVERSIAL STANDUP COMIC PERFORMS ATTHE PEOPLE'S SHACKOF LAFFS. BY BRIAN AGLER AND LUKE BURNS - - - - Hey everyone, it's great to be here in Pyongyang! This really is a beautiful city. No one does concrete like you guys. Clap if you like poured concrete. Swell. Are there any marine biologists in the audience tonight? Any marine biologists? No, because marine biology does not serve the greater interests of the socialist state! Well, I just flew in from the DMZ and boy, are my arms tired ... from digging tunnels underneath South Korean fortifications! Let me...

It’s not enough that there is no freedom, no commerce, no electricity, and that millions in North Korea are slowly starving to death. No, to add to all that, Kim Jong Il and the gang of thugs who run the North Korean “government” have just frozen all cash transactions as its currency is de-valued at a ratio of 1 to 100... Eric Blair was nearly spot on in his presecient depiction, but was wrong in one small detail; it’s not Big Brother in North Korea, it’s “Dear Leader.” Dear God, what a travesty! Dear Leader is allowing his subjects to...

Japan has successfully launched another optical (picture taking) spy satellite. This one joins two other optical birds and one radar satellite. This most recent satellite launch cost $109 million. The satellite cost quite a bit more. In early 2007, Japan lost the use of one of its two radar satellites. The "No. 1 radar satellite", which went into orbit in March 2003, was supposed to last for five years. But the bird has been having electrical problems, and had to be written off. Nearly three years ago, Japan launched its fourth spy satellite into orbit, using a Japanese made rocket....

Wednesday, December 2, 2009 TOKYO -- Chaos reportedly erupted in North Korea on Tuesday after the government of Kim Jong Il revalued the country's currency, sharply restricting the amount of old bills that could be traded for new and wiping out personal savings. The revaluation and exchange limits triggered panic and anger, particularly among market traders with substantial hoards of old North Korean won -- much of which has apparently become worthless, according to news agency reports from South Korea and China and from groups with contacts in North Korea. The currency move appeared to be part of a continuing...

The day that I was waiting for has finally come. North Korea has finally designed the perfect set of jeans and is selling them-- unfortunately we can't get them in the United States. However, if you'd like, you can run over to Sweden and pick me up a pair. Just look for the "Noko" label. "There is a political gap, there is a mental gap, and there is an economic gap," said Jacob Astrom, one of three Swedish advertising executives behind the project. "All contacts with the country are difficult and remain so to this day."

A UN investigation has concluded that North Korea is continuing to export weapons, and using the hard currency obtained to import luxury items for the ruling elite of the communist police state. The UN report detailed North Korean use of false documents and the switching of cargo containers to different ships to throw off investigators. The North Koreans have also had to come up with a large array of subterfuges to get around growing restrictions on their use of the international banking system. The North Koreans are still getting the weapons out, and the money back. But they are increasingly...

A South Korean navy ship has rescued a North Korean soldier whose boat drifted into southern waters across the Yellow Sea border, officials said Monday. Security authorities have been questioning the soldier since he was rescued Sunday, a defence ministry spokesman told AFP. The outcome of the investigation would be disclosed later. The soldier said his boat went adrift while he was fishing and asked investigators to send him back to North Korea, Yonhap news agency reported. He will be returned later this week through the truce village of Panmunjom in the Demilitarised Zone which bisects the peninsula, it said....

Growing military ties between China and Pakistan are a serious concern to India, Defense Minister A.K. Antony said on Friday, in the latest display of a prickly rivalry between New Delhi and its neighbors.

On November 10th there was a brief clash between North and South Korean gunboats off the west coast. The result was a humiliating defeat for the north. The main reason for this was the quality of the weapons on each side. The South Korea ship was a 150 ton patrol boat, armed 40mm and 20mm autocannon, and a computerized fire control system. The North Korean vessel was a 131 ton patrol boat with 37mm and 25mm cannon, and no computers. The South Korean ship was able to quickly put accurate fire on the North Korea ship, even though there were...

Chinese and North Korean defence chiefs have pledged to strengthen their military alliance -- dating back to the Korean War -- during talks in Pyongyang, state media said Monday. The move came after Chinese Defence Minister Liang Guanglie arrived in North Korea for talks Sunday, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said. Liang told a reception by Pyongyang's defence chief Kim Yong-Chun that the bilateral relationship was "sealed in blood" when he and other Chinese troops fought the 1950-1953 Korean War on the North Koreans' side. "No force on earth can break the unity of the armies and peoples of...

Pyongyang, November 23 (KCNA) -- In order to put an end to confrontation and conflict in the Korean Peninsula and ensure its lasting peace and stability it is indispensable to terminate the state of ceasefire between the DPRK and the U.S. and establish a peacekeeping mechanism. Rodong Sinmun Monday says this in a signed commentary. Recalling that recently a group of warships of the south Korean forces perpetrated such unpardonable criminal act as opening fire on a patrol boat of the Navy of the Korean People's Army on routine guard duty in the waters of the north side in the...

STOCKHOLM (Reuters) – Swedish police have arrested two North Korean diplomats on suspicion of smuggling 230,000 cigarettes into the Nordic country, the Swedish Customs Office said Friday. The pair, a man and a woman who have diplomatic status in Russia, were stopped by Swedish customs officers Wednesday morning as they drove off a ferry from Helsinki, the Finnish capital. Customs officials discovered Russian cigarettes in the car driven by the couple, Swedish Customs spokeswoman Monica Magnusson told Reuters. The two North Koreans claimed diplomatic immunity. "They were accredited as diplomats in Russia, but had no accreditation in Sweden," she said....

Nuclear Terror: After years of blindness, the International Atomic Energy Agency warns that Syria is concealing nuclear activity and Iran is hiding atomic facilities. Has the "watchdog" just been polishing its Nobel? The diplomats just love Mohamed ElBaradei, who is about to step down as director general of the United Nations' IAEA. He's the recipient of Georgetown's prestigious Raymond "Jit" Trainor Award for Distinction in the Conduct of Diplomacy. Also on his crammed mantelpiece can be found the Delta Air Lines Prize for Global Understanding, the Golden Dove of Peace award from the president of Italy, the Gandhi Prize for...

THE CASE FOR SPACE-BASED DEFENSE The growing interest in nuclear technology by countries such as Iran presages the possibility that one or more nations may attempt to harness such a capability in the form of an electro-magnetic pulse (EMP) attack against the United States, a prominent political scientist has warned. Such a scenario, writes Brian Kennedy of the Claremont Institute in the November 24th edition of the Wall Street Journal, is not far-fetched. "It would require the Iranians to be able to produce a warhead as sophisticated as we expect the Russians or the Chinese to possess. But that is...

The face that launched a thousand N.Korean tirades Wed Nov 18, 2009 12:42am EST By Jon Herskovitz and Christine Kim SEOUL, Nov 18 (Reuters) - The one certainty in unpredictable North Korea is that if the state detonates a nuclear device or leader Kim Jong-il visits a duck farm, Ri Chun-hee will be on TV boasting about the amazing accomplishment. Ri is the forceful grandmother speaking with the authority of the state as the main newscaster for North Korea's only TV channel. Her face is one of the few broadcast abroad and her stentorian reports thunder across airwaves from the...

A chemical tanker with a crew of 28 North Koreans has been hijacked by pirates near Somalia, the European Union's naval force says. The MV Theresa VIII, a Singaporean-operated tanker, was taken on Monday in the south Somali Basin, 180 nautical miles north west of the Seychelles. The vessel had been heading for the Kenyan port city of Mombasa, but was diverted north, the naval force said. The EU naval force (Navfor) operates in the region to protect shipping. Somali pirates, using "mother ships" to launch their small-boat attacks on vessels, have extended their range to an area off the...

N. Korea unwilling to give up nuclear ambition: former U.S. diplomat By Tony Chang SEOUL, Nov. 16 (Yonhap) -- North Korea does not have any intention of abandoning its nuclear ambitions in the near future, a former senior U.S. diplomat said Monday, forecasting that an upcoming meeting between Washington and Pyongyang will do little to resolve stalled multilateral denuclearization talks. David Straub, associate director of the Korean Studies Program at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center at Stanford University, said at a seminar in Seoul that the U.S. representative for North Korea policy will basically "convey a short and...

TOKYO - President Barack Obama is emphasizing cooperation on his first major trip to Asia, opening with a warning to North Korea that there will be tough, unified action by the U.S. and its Asian partners if the Koreans fail to abandon their nuclear weapons programs. The hard line on North Korea was to be a prominent theme of a Friday night speech that also was intended to more broadly showcase a United States that, under Obama's leadership, seeks deeper and more equal engagement in Asia. It was to be the fifth major foreign address of Obama's 10-month presidency, this...

In the last few years, many secrets have been revealed in the north, and this has been a disaster for the ruling class. Many North Koreans now know of the separate economy that has been established for the few hundred thousand people at the top of North Korean society. They have separate, gated, compounds to live in. They have separate stores, which carry Western and Chinese goods. They have many servants (who gossip much more than in the past), and special organizations that attend to their security and comfort. An extreme example of this is the organization that operates North...

/begin my excerpts [Weekly Chosun] Sino-N. Korean 'Intel War' /snip In October, 2006, when N. Korea did their first nuclear test, there were spies who sneaked in from Chinese fishing boat off the shore of Hwa-dae(near the test site.) They wanted to install GPS system in Hwa-dae and tried to obtain samples from N. Korea's nuclear test, but N. Korean State Security got them. N. Korea made no announcement to the outside about this incident. They nabbed the entire team and executed them without trial. According to a N. Korean defector, he was told by a security agent, "We found...

SEOUL, South Korea – A badly damaged North Korean patrol ship retreated in flames Tuesday after a skirmish with a South Korean naval vessel along their disputed western coast, South Korean officials said. The first naval clash between the two sides in seven years broke out just a week before President Barack Obama is due to visit Seoul, raising suspicions the North's communist regime is trying to ratchet up tensions to gain a negotiating advantage. There were no South Korean casualties, the country's Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement. South Korea's YTN television reported that one North Korean...

North and South Korean warships have been involved in an exchange of fire along a disputed sea border area off the west coast of the Korean Peninsular, according to South Korean military officials. The clash comes at time when relations between the divided nations appeared to be thawing following several months of increased tensions caused by North Korea's decision to test a second nuclear device earlier this year. Initial reports said that there were no casualties from the exchange, which took place after a South Korean warship fired shots across the bow of a North Korean naval vessel that had...

Firefight Between North and South Korean Navy This Morning: Causualty Unknown Happened on the morning of Nov. 10 at NLL. N. Korean patrol boats went over NLL to the south. Warning shots fired, but ignored. S. Korean navy fired at N. Korean ship. N. Koreans returned fire.

South Korea recently uncovered a North Korean plot to obtain South Korean electronic warfare equipment. North Korean agents, operating in China, sought to connect with South Korean business and government officials travelling in China, in order to see who could be bribed to help obtain the desired equipment. As a result of this, South Korea again warned their citizens, especially those working for the government or defense firms, to be careful who they deal with in China. To emphasize the danger, the government also announced the arrest of a former army officer, only identified as Mr. Lee, who had been...

November 4, 2009: South Korea has confirmed suspicions that Internet based attacks earlier this year came from "the norks" (North Korea). The South Korean NIS (National Intelligence Service) has completed its investigation of the route the July attacks took, and has traced the origin back to the North Korean Ministry of Post and Telecommunications facilities. While there was no apparent damage from the July attacks (which hit government sites in South Korea and the United States), similar attacks have made away with secret data. For example, the South Korean military recently reported that someone hacked into a classified network, and...