Free Republic

S.Korea deploys Israeli missile on border with North Satellite-guided Spike missiles can "destroy North Korea's underground facilities," South Korean army official says. South Korea deployed Israeli precision-guided missiles on Yellow Sea islands bordering North Korea, Yonhap News Agency reported on Sunday. "Dozens of Spike missiles and their launchers have recently been deployed on Baengnyeong and Yeonpyeong islands," a South Korean army official said. "They can destroy (North Korea's) underground facilities and can pursue and strike moving targets," he continued. The satellite-guided Spike anti-tank missile has a range of 20 kilometers and weighs 70 kilos, Yonhap cited military officials as saying....

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korea fired short-range projectiles into its own eastern waters Monday for a third straight day, Seoul officials said. The North said it was bolstering deterrence against enemy attack. North Korea regularly conducts short-range missile tests. Analysts say the recent launches appear to be weapons tests or an attempt to get U.S. and South Korean attention amid tentative signs of diplomacy after soaring tensions that followed U.N. sanctions aimed at a North Korean nuclear test in February. The two projectiles fired by North Korea on Monday had similar trajectories as four previous launches over the...

Green Day star Billie Joe Armstrong has taken aim at South Korean pop sensation Psy, calling the Gangham Style hitmaker the "herpes" of music.

Pyongyang wants withdrawal of all UN sanctions and US pledge not to engage in 'nuclear war practice' with South North Korea has issued a detailed statement on its terms for dialogue with the United States, after weeks of tensions. The demands from the North's top military body include the withdrawal of all UN sanctions imposed due to Pyongyang's nuclear and missile tests, and a US pledge not to engage in "nuclear war practice" with the South. It said denuclearisation of the peninsula should begin with the withdrawal of US weapons. Seoul was swift to dismiss the North's conditions as incomprehensible...

North Korea rejects South Korea calls for talks

Secretary of State John Kerry flew to China on Saturday and sought to elicit China’s help in dealing with an increasingly recalcitrant nuclear armed North Korea by saying that American missile defenses could be cut back if the North abandoned its nuclear program. Mr. Kerry’s trip to China, his first since taking office, is part of an intensive three-day push to try to calm tensions on the Korean Peninsula that have threatened to spiral out of control and rattled world leaders. In a news conference, Mr. Kerry suggested that the United States could remove some newly enhanced missile defenses in...

If you can mentally put yourself in Kim Jong-un's shoes, once you are aware of the constraints he faces you will understand why the South Koreans aren't getting terribly worried about how the current round of threats will end. Far from being crazy, KJU is acting rationally for someone in his position, and he's likely to get what he wants without South Korea or the world erupting into a sea of fire. The first fact of life for young Kim is that he really isn't running things. He is unable to command and be obeyed on his own because he...

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — A top South Korean official said Monday he misspoke earlier in the day when he told lawmakers there is an "indication" that North Korea is preparing for a nuclear test. But that doesn't change what Seoul has been saying for months: that Pyongyang has already prepared a tunnel for a nuclear blast and can use it whenever it wants. When a lawmaker asked whether there was an indication of increased personnel and vehicles at the North's nuclear test site, Unification Minister Ryoo Kihl-jae said "there is such an indication." He said he couldn't say more...

North Korea’s young leader Kim Jong-un is waiting for United States President Barack Obama to make a phone call to Pyongyang to discuss easing tensions on the Korean peninsula, according to Russia’s news agency Itar-Tass. The report cited United Kingdom diplomats, saying Pyongyang was demanding the U.S. president personally call Kim Jong-un as one of the conditions to relieve the current conflict at hand.

SEOUL, April 8 (Yonhap) -- South Korea's Unification Minister Ryoo Kihl-jae said Monday there are signs that North Korea may be preparing for another nuclear test. In a meeting with lawmakers, the policymaker said that Seoul is aware of indications that another test is being planned, but he failed to go into details. The remarks came after a lawmaker citing unspecified reports said that there has been an increase in the movements of vehicles and personnel near the Punggye-ri test complex in North Hamgyong Province. The site was used for the country's three previous nuclear tests. The last test occurred...

SEOUL, South Korea — The South Korean government warned on Sunday that the North might launch a missile later this week, while a top military leader postponed a scheduled trip to Washington, citing escalating tensions on the peninsula.

What if North Korea and Iran are working together? The idea being that North Korea attacks the South, while at the same time, Iran attacks Israel in the Middle East. The United States would not be able to defend both at the same time. If this were a coordinated attack between Iran and North Korea.. it could cause big problems. Without us, South Korea could fall. Israel needs to be on serious guard right now!! More than ever!

S.Korea to buy bunker busting missiles from Europe (Reuters) - South Korea is to buy Taurus bunker-busting air-to-ground long range missiles for its F-15K strike fighters in a move to boost its strike power amid rising tensions with North Korea, its defence minister told a parliamentary committee on Thursday. The decision to pick a European supplier is due to Washington's unwillingness to supply Seoul's first choice missile, the U.S. made JASSM, a person familiar with the plans later told Reuters and is a rare decision for a military that primarily picks U.S.-made equipment. The decision comes as South Korea is...

This isn't merely a failure of nerve, it's a failure of intelligence and a failure to keep operational secrets. The White House had a "playbook," agreed to by O, Hagel, and John Kerry, on how to rattle its saber at North Korea during the next crisis without rattling it so much that NK would get spooked and do something rash. E.g., first comes some B-52 flights over South Korea, then the B-2s make a cameo, then the F-22s, and so forth. Problem one: Kim's gone further in his bellicosity than U.S. analysts expected and now they’re unsure if they know...

Chosun TV is reporting that South Korean military have lost contact with two North Korean submarines that left their naval base in Hwanghae Province a few days ago. There has obviously been a lot of changes between last week and now and South Korean military officials suggested that while maneuvers in February were nothing meaningful, now it is provocation. The two 'torpedo' subs are small 130-ton, 30-meter, 10-man machines that can stay submerged for three-to-four days.

North Korea seen moving mid-range missile to east coast: reports SEOUL | Wed Apr 3, 2013 9:13pm EDT (Reuters) - North Korea has moved what appears to be a mid-range Musudan missile to its east coast, South Korea's Yonhap news agency said on Thursday, quoting multiple government sources privy to intelligence from U.S. and South Korean authorities. It was not clear if the missile was mounted with a warhead or whether the North was planning to fire it or was just putting it on display as a show of force, one South Korean government source was quoted as saying.

China continued moving tanks and armored vehicles and flying flights near North Korea this week as part of a military buildup in the northeastern part of the country that U.S. officials say is related to the crisis with North Korea. The Obama administration, meanwhile, sought to play down the Chinese military buildup along the border with Beijing’s fraternal communist ally despite the growing danger of conflict following unprecedented threats by Pyongyang to attack the United States and South Korea with nuclear weapons. Officials said one key military unit involved in the mobilization is the 190th Mechanized Infantry Brigade based in...

The U.S. military has moved a Navy ship capable of intercepting missiles to waters off the coast of the Korean Peninsula, as threats from North Korea's Kim Jong Un escalate and the White House signals it wants to head off any potential conflict by flexing America's military might. A U.S. defense official confirmed to Fox News that the Navy had moved the U.S. destroyer to a location near South Korea. The ship, the USS Fitzgerald, is equipped with the Aegis defense system and is capable of shooting down missiles. The defense official said the decision is not part of the...

US reportedly sends F-22 jets to join South Korea drills Published March 31, 2013 | FoxNews.com The United States has reportedly sent F-22 stealth fighter jets to South Korea to join Seoul forces in military drills as North Korea warns the Korean Peninsula has entered "a state of war." The F-22 Raptors were deployed to Osan Air Base in South Korea from Japan on Sunday to support ongoing U.S.-South Korean military drills, Reuters reports. North Korea has increased its threatening rhetoric in recent weeks, including vowing to launch a nuclear strike on Washington. In a statement released Sunday, U.S. military...

Nuclear War to Be Conducted on Korean Peninsula Pyongyang, March 29 (KCNA) -- A nuclear war has turned out to be an established one on the Korean Peninsula. Despite the repeated warnings of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, the United States, for the first time, made B-2A fly from Whiteman air force base in Missouri State over south Korea on March 28 to launch an exercise of striking ground targets aimed at the DPRK. Earlier, a formation of U.S. B-52 based in Anderson air-force base on Guam flew to the sky above south Korea and staged nuclear war exercises...

North Korea said on Saturday that it was entering a "state of war" with South Korea, following a call to arms by the country's young leader Kim Jong Un and days of increasingly belligerent rhetoric from the isolated state. The North's official news agency KCNA published the joint statement issued by the government, political parties and other organizations. "From this time on, the North-South relations will be entering a state of war and all issues raised between the North and the South will be handled accordingly," it said. The statement also warned that if the U.S. and South Korea carried...

SEOUL, March 29 (Yonhap) -- North Korea announced Saturday that it has entered a state of war against South Korea. In a special statement, the North said it will deal with every inter-Korean issue in a wartime manner.

Seoul faces tough choice in fighter procurement Lockheed Martin hints at less than $125m price tag for Korea, confident of F-35’s delivery time FORT WORTH, Texas ― A decade ago, Lockheed Martin’s F-35 was the world’s most sought-after warplane in the making for its all-aspect stealth and next-generation capabilities. But that confidence has been eroded by the discovery of defects, surging costs and delays in its development. Skepticism has grown in the U.S. over the $60 billion acquisition program, with some deriding it as a money-guzzling project kept alive partly due to the more than 130,000 U.S. manufacturing jobs that...

Reclusive North Korea is to cut the last channel of communications with the South because war could break out at "any moment", it said on Wednesday, days of after warning the United States and South Korea of nuclear attack. The move is the latest in a series of bellicose threats from North Korea in response to new U.N. sanctions imposed after its third nuclear test in February and to "hostile" military drills under way joining the United States and South Korea.

A massive computer shutdown of two South Korean banks and media companies occurred Wednesday via an Internet malware attack. The malware wiped out the master boot records on the hard drives of the infected computers, overwriting the MBR with either one of these strings: PRINCPESPR!NCPESHASTATI. Figure 1: Snapshot of MBR after infection.The attack also overwrote random parts of the file system with the same strings, rendering several files unrecoverable. So even if the MBR is recovered, the files on disk will be compromised too.After that, the system is forced to reboot via the following command: shutdown -r -t 0 That...

The cyber attack that rocked South Korean TV stations and banks yesterday apparently wiped out the hard drives of the affected computers, according to an analysis of the incident by McAfee. The involved malware infections destroyed the master boot record of the hard drives of the machines attacked. The MBR on a hard drive contains crucial information on how file systems on the drive are organized. The malware involved overwrote data in the MBR with the following string of characters: “PRINCPES, PR!NCPES, HASTATI.” It also overwrote random parts of the file system with the same characters.After that the system was...

(CNN) -- A new joint military exercise between South Korea and the United States began Monday amid heightened tensions across the region. In a sign of crumbling relations, North Korea refused to answer its hotline with Seoul, South Korea's unification ministry said Monday, according to the Yonhap news agency.

North Korea is cancelling a hotline and a non-aggression pact with South Korea and reiterating past threats in anger over a UN Security Council vote to impose more sanctions on the North for its third nuclear test.

Brief excerpt; The paper said the general made clear at a speech given at a rally in Pyongyang that intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) and other rockets capable of attacking pre-set targets have been armed with various types of atomic warheads.

This comes as no surprise to Hot Air readers, who learned about the value of the Obama administration’s $150 million subsidy investment of LG Chem last fall. After furloughing its workers at their Grand Rapids plant without having a single one of their batteries installed in a consumer vehicle, the local NBC affiliate produced this report on the way taxpayer money got spent:

In a Rare Move, S. Korean Military Releases Video Footage of Cruise Missiles to Public Cruise missiles are launched from warships and submarines in the video clip released by the Defense Ministry, hitting targets on land. Although Defense Ministry officials refrained from releasing specific details on the missiles' range, they did say it has the capacity to strike any target in North Korea, no matter where in the South the missile is fired from, which means it probably has a range of more than 1-thousand kilometers. This is not the first time the Defense Ministry has confirmed the deployment of...

SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea conducted a nuclear test on Tuesday, South Korea's defence ministry said, after seismic activity measuring 4.9 magnitude was registered by the U.S. Geological Survey. The epicentre of the seismic activity, which was only one km below the Earth's surface, was close to the North's known nuclear test site. "We've been informed by the South Koreans that there's been a (North Korean) nuclear test," a U.N. Security Council diplomat told Reuters on condition of anonymity. An international nuclear test monitoring agency said the location of the seismic event was "roughly congruent with" 2006 and 2008 tests...

Apparently Yahoo! Korea (the South Korean Yahoo!) ceased to exist as of 12/31/'12. Does anyone know what happened? Was there some trouble with the South Korean government? Or did Korea just decide to switch to Google? I know, it's not important in the big scheme of things, but I need a diversion!

South Korea for the first time has successfully sent a satellite into space from its own soil, joining an exclusive club that only 12 other nations in history have entered. South Korea failed previously to achieve a flawless launch, allowing impoverished North Korea to beat its rival into space. During South Korean launches in 2009 and 2010, the protective barrier around the payload failed to separate properly from the rocket. This time all appeared to go according to plan after the KSLV-1, with a Russian first stage, lifted off from the Naro Space Center, 480 kilometers south of Seoul. Its...

Both countries claim drones will be used for surveillance, but experts warn of future skirmishes in region's airspace. Drones have taken centre stage in an escalating arms race between China and Japan as they struggle to assert their dominance over disputed islands in the East China Sea. China is rapidly expanding its nascent drone programme, while Japan has begun preparations to purchase an advanced model from the US. Both sides claim the drones will be used for surveillance, but experts warn the possibility of future drone skirmishes in the region's airspace is "very high". Andrei Chang, editor-in-chief of the Canadian-based...

The North Korean Committee for Peaceful Reunification called South Korean President Lee Myung Bak and ministry officials “a group of rats” and said South Korea will only experience security when the rats are “completely eradicated.” … The North Korean statement also called the Lee government officials “confrontation maniacs,” who are in direct opposition to the North Korean “desire for peace and unification.” …

Germany offers cruise missiles at half price By Lee Tae-hoon A German-based defense company will offer to sell its cutting-edge air-to-ground stand alone cruise missiles to Seoul at almost half its 2009 initial offering price of 3.6 billion won ($3.4 million), multiple sources said Sunday. An industry source said TAURUS Systems GmbH (TSG) has decided to lower the price of a TAURUS missile to 2.2 billion won to overcome challenges that non-U.S. companies face in entering Korea’s growing defense market. “We acknowledge barriers in entering the Korean market as the United States, which has roughly 28.500 troops here, continues to...

Republic of Korea: For the record. Pak Ku'n-hye (Park Geun-hye) of the New Frontier Party won South Korea's presidential election on 19 December, media reported. She is the daughter of Park Chung-hee and the first woman elected to be president of the Republic of Korea. That should confound the North! North Korea-Iran: According to a Japanese news service, an Iranian lawmaker told the service that North Korea informed Iran in October of its plan to launch a satellite. The head of an Iranian parliamentary delegation to North Korea, Hamid Reza Taraghi, revealed talks took place mid-October with the North's delegates...

South Korea Elects First Female President: Park Geun-hye. Park Geun-hye is headed back to the Blue House. On Wednesday, South Koreans chose the daughter of South Korea’s Cold War strongman Park Chung-hee as the country’s next President. Park, the 60-year-old leader of the conservative Saenuri Party, defeated 59-year-old liberal challenger Moon Jae-in — once jailed for opposing her father’s rule — by a margin of about 3.5%. She will now move back to the presidential residence where she lived as a child and where she served as de facto First Lady after her mother’s death. Park has spent much of...

President Barack Obama has been pictured shaking hands with a South Korean rapper who sang about wanting to kill American soldiers. PSY, born Park Jae-sang, performed at a White House charity event on Sunday, despite a deeply controversial performance in 2004 that has shocked and outraged American fans. The rapper showed off his signature dance moves while performing 'Gangnam Style,' which has the most watched YouTube video in history. Scroll down for video

South Korean rapper Psy --- you may have heard of him --- spent time during the last decade attending anti-American protests in his country. He even rapped the following about the Americans: Kill those Yankees who have been torturing Iraqi captives/Kill those Yankees who ordered them to torture/Kill their daughters, mothers, daughters-in-law, and fathers/Kill them slowly and painfully Psy is meeting President Obama Sunday and will be in a Christmas TV special with him that airs on December 21. Those old lyrics about killing Americans "slowly and painfully" are suddenly a problem for him.So here comes the “sorry I...

Adam Victor, president of TransGas Development in New York, was in town to network and find business opportunities. Someone introduced him to Kelley, and the two spoke in a VIP section of the convention hall. Victor said Kelley described herself as a close friend to Petraeus, which impressed him. In fact, he said, Kelley told him she might help him with a coal gasification project in South Korea. She said she could gain him access to the highest levels of the South Korean government, Victor said. Kelley told him she was an honorary consul for South Korea, and Victor said...

The Military Demarcation Line splitting the "truce village" of Panmunjom doesn't legally demarcate the political boundary between North Korea and South Korea. Instead, it splits a demilitarized zone (DMZ) separating two warring armies who have observed a tenuous ceasefire since 1953. No, the Korean War is not over, at least not officially. The next president, whether President Barack Obama in his second term or Gov. Mitt Romney in his first, will be a Korean War president, and, unless the ceasefire totally craters, one of them will oversee the 60th anniversary of that ceasefire and the 63rd anniversary of the beginning...

A Violent 'Super Typhoon' Is Due To Hit Japan And South Korea This Weekend Joshua BerlingerSep. 14, 2012, 3:35 PMA violent super typhoon in the North Indian Ocean, named "Sanba" has begun to pick up steam and could start to affect residents of Japan and South Korea as early as Saturday morning. Winds have climbed up to 178 mph, which would make it the equivalent of powerful category 5 Hurricane, according to the Joint Typhoon Warning Center. One resident said gusts were nearing 222 mph. Sanba is currently being tracked traveling north, and if it continues onwards, it could be...

The Japanese government can’t say it enough: Takeshima is ours. Senkaku is ours. And the Northern Territories are ours too! The territorial claims–which challenge those of South Korea, China and Russia, respectively–have been repeated like a broken record on nearly a daily basis. Domestic news organizations have devoted considerable ink and airtime to them as the tensions have brewed with neighbors. But in case you’ve been living under a rock during the last month, Japan has launched a blitz of media ads this week to drive the message home. About 70 domestic newspapers will carry ads this week reasserting Japan’s...

Too often, we see East Asia only from an economic perspective, marveling at the undeniable success of China, Japan, Taiwan, Vietnam, and South Korea. Yet these nations have another story to tell, one that owes less to current economic performance than to much older instincts: nationalism and ethnic resentment, the forces that kindled World War I in Sarajevo. Today, those forces underlie disputes in places that we ignore or know nothing about, such as the Senkaku Islands, the Dokdo Islands, and the Spratly archipelago. And those disputes may spark military conflicts between rival Asian countries. Such thinking goes against...

LONDON (Reuters) - South Korea will face North Korea in the first round of the Olympics 2012 men's table tennis team event after a draw on Wednesday that pitted fierce rivals against each other. South Korea are the second most successful nation in Olympic table tennis behind only powerhouse China, while North Korea rank as the fifth most successful thanks to past triumphs in the women's event. Europe's top men's team Germany were disappointed with a tough draw that will see them meet Sweden in the first round and possibly China in the semi-finals -- ruling out a rematch of...

Lies, false accusations hamper fighter jet program By Lee Tae-hoon The country’s fighter jet procurement project is facing a major stumbling block as groundless rumors and false accusations spread fast enough to convince politicians of both the ruling and opposition parties to believe “something is fishy.” The upsetting truth is that few pay attention to the rationale behind the need to introduce advanced new jets and what is behind an intensifying negative campaign mounted by anti-American, anti-Lee Myung-bak administration figures and anonymous sources. As soon as the state-run Defense Acquisition Program Administration (DAPA) announced a plan to reopen the bid...

Philippines to buy TA-50 light attack aircraft from Korea: report HANOI (Yonhap) -- The Philippine air force will purchase 12 TA-50 light attack aircraft from South Korea in a deal worth 25 billion pesos (about US$591.3 million), a local news report said Wednesday. Each aircraft costs 1.25 billion pesos with the dozen fighter jets expected to be delivered by 2013, ABS-CBN news of the Philippines reported on its Web site, citing officials at the Philippine air force. South Korea rolled out the armed version of its T-50 supersonic trainer jet early last year and has deployed the TA-50 in stages...

In the never-ending war between evolutionists and creationists, the latter have just scored big time, though not in the U.S. which is their main fighting ground, but in Asia. In South Korea, a petition has been accepted to remove certain evolutionist elements and references from high school text books. This is probably the first time in two centuries this has happened in a country with a scientific/western culture. That is, ever since evolutionist doctrine started prevailing, often for anti-religious purposes. The campaign was headed by the Society for Textbooks Revise (STR) whose task it is to remove evolutionist “errors” froim...