Free Republic

Western intelligence agencies have identified an unofficial group of North Korean elite who use their connections to party and military leaders to engage in counterfeiting and drug trafficking. The "Ponghwajo" or Torch Group is led by Oh Se-Wan, the son of a senior leader in North Korea's National Defense Commission, Gen. Oh Kuk-Ryol, who is a key player in the succession of North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il to his son, Kim Jong-Un. The group has operated internationally and within North Korea since at least 2005. Members are said to be similar to China's so-called "princelings" — sons and daughters of...

With Sleuthing and Satellite Images, Mr. Melvin Fills the Blanks on a Secretive Nation's Map SEOUL -- In the propaganda blitz that followed North Korea's missile launch last month, the country's state media released photos of leader Kim Jong Il visiting a hydroelectric dam and power station. Images from the report showed two large pipes descending a hillside. That was enough to allow Curtis Melvin, a doctoral candidate at George Mason University in suburban Virginia, to pinpoint the installation on his online map of North Korea.

North Korea is likely to carry out another nuclear experiment before it sits down on the next-round of multinational nuclear negotiation, a senior U.S. government official said. Gary Samore, a veteran arms control negotiator in the Clinton administration and now serving as Obama's advisor on non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, said in response to a question, posed at a forum Friday, on whether North Korea will carry out an additional nuclear test: "I think they are likely to do it," Yonhap reported Saturday. This is the first time that an incumbent U.S. official has mentioned such a possibility publicly...

Contrary to conventional wisdom, which holds the North Korean state to be an unremittingly hostile "negotiating partner," history actually demonstrates that Pyongyang can be a highly obliging interlocutor under certain very specific conditions. All that is necessary to "get to yes" with the Democratic People's Republic of Korea is to concede every important point demanded by the North Korean side while sacrificing vital interests of one's own. Monday's "breakthrough" at the six-party talks in Beijing would appear to conform precisely to this long-established pattern. The vaunted outcome -- a long-desired "consensus statement" inked by North Korea and the other five...

...The stark moral contrast between the ushering out of this past year with images of murdered school children and our high hopes for the New Year and the future of humanity is difficult to assimilate. However, these days, the two seem to be relentlessly entwined. Countries that are determined to protect their citizens and safeguard their security now understand that they can no longer remain passive in the face of evil. The threat of terrorism no longer recognizes national borders and no country remains immune. Either democratic states will bury the terrorists and their patrons, or they will bury us....

Time running out for North Korea solution-Perry By Linda Sieg TOKYO, June 3 — Washington and its allies have months, not years, to prevent North Korea from becoming a serious nuclear power and sparking an atomic arms race in East Asia, former U.S. Defense Secretary William Perry said on Tuesday. ''The worst-case scenario I see is a major nuclear arms race unfolding in the Pacific. That's not a forecast, that's a logical train of events,'' Perry -- the architect of engagement with North Korea in the Clinton administration -- told Reuters. ''We have maybe half a year; the first month...