Tag Archives: Kim Jong Un

Britain, China, Government, North Korea, United Nations

Britain hints it could hit North Korea with cyber war

NORTH KOREA

THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT has refused to rule out using cyber warfare to target North Korea dictator Kim Jong-un in the wake of his latest missile launch.

Theresa May has pledged to stand “shoulder to shoulder” with Japan whose territory was targeted.

The prime minister, who had arrived in the Japanese city of Kyoto 36 hours after Pyongyang sent a missile over the north of the country, said she was keeping the door open to launching a retaliatory cyber strike. Mrs May also provoked a row with China after heaping pressure on Beijing to rein in the rogue state.

At the commencement of her three-day trip to Japan, she said: “We are very clear that the actions of North Korea are illegal. I think they are significant actions of provocations.

“I think that is outrageous, that is why we will be working with our international partners and re-doubling our efforts to put pressure on North Korea, to stop these illegal activities.” Mrs May refused three times to say if Britain could use its cyber capabilities to take on North Korea, as she repeatedly avoided questions about the prospect of future military action.

Britain has doubled its investment in defensive and offensive cyber warfare to £1.9billion and set up a National Cyber Security Centre, which is part of GCHQ.

National Cyber Centre

The new National Cyber Security Centre is the authoritative voice on information security in the UK. It is part of GCHQ and an integral part of the intelligence community.

Last month, the Prime Minister said she had told China’s President Xi that she believes his country has a “key role in putting pressure on North Korea to stop the actions they are taking”.

She said: “We want to ensure that North Korea desists in this action. We see that the best way of doing that is for China to be bringing pressure to bear on North Korea.”

But this week the Chinese foreign ministry criticised those claiming China should step up the pressure on North Korea. A statement released, said: “They only pay attention to sanctions and pressure, and ignore peace talks. When we promote peace talks, they ignore this. You will reap what you sow… The parties directly concerned should take responsibility.”

Mrs May attended Japan’s national security council and announced the deployment of HMS Argyll to the region in December 2018.

Matthew Rycroft, British ambassador to the UN, said Britain wants new sanctions against North Korea which would target workers who are sent to countries such as Russia and China, and whose wages are a source of revenue for Pyongyang.

Meanwhile, a former GCHQ expert has warned that Britain’s enemies would use cyber-attacks to create panic and disrupt key services such as banks, power plants and the NHS if a Third World War erupts.

Brian Lord, who was deputy director for intelligence and cyber operations at GCHQ, said countries are engaged in a cyber arms race and “unpredictable” North Korea is one of those developing capabilities to penetrate global computer systems.

BRITAIN’S relationship with China has suffered a setback after Beijing accused Theresa May of being a “weak” leader.

After the Prime Minister called for the Chinese to do more to rein in North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un, a state-linked newspaper taunted her over her disappointing general election performance.

The Global Times attacked Mrs May in an article headlined, “Beijing does not need London to teach it how to deal with North Korea”.

“May’s Conservative Party lost many seats, turning her into a vulnerable Prime Minister,” the newspaper wrote in an editorial column. It also accused her of copying Donald Trump’s stance.

“Weak people often look for opportunities to show their strength”, it said. “Perhaps Prime Minister May doesn’t know much about the Korean Peninsula. Her comments sounded just like a rehashing of Washington’s rhetoric.

“If the British Government genuinely wants to protect its businesses and investment interests in the region, it should speak and act cautiously… rather than pointing fingers and making irrelevant remarks.”

But an undeterred Mrs May doubled down on her demands, calling for “actions as well as words” as Britain, America and Japan all urged China to sign up to oil sanctions against the rogue state.

Confronted by the criticism from Beijing, Mrs May said she was not deterred, adding: “We need to ensure it’s not just words of condemnation, but that action is taken. China does have a leverage in the region and we should be encouraging China to exercise that leverage.”

The Prime Minister and her Japanese counterpart Shinzo Abe both agreed to an increase in sanctions to bring North Korea to heel. A Government source said these could include implementing current sanctions more quickly, as well as looking at new areas to target.

It is understood China is resisting increasing sanctions to North Korean oil, on the back of a coal export slapped on the international pariah two weeks ago.

Following the North Korean missile test over Japan earlier this week, Mr Abe said: “The threat is felt not only by our country or Asia alone, it has become a global threat including Europe.

“North Korea will launch an intercontinental ballistic missile and the range would include almost the entire region of Europe.” Mrs May added: “We are very clear that the actions of North Korea are illegal.”

Defence Secretary Sir Michael Fallon has said the UK and its NATO allies must compete on the “cyber battlefield”.

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Asia, China, Government, History, Japan, North Korea, Politics, United Nations, United States

Essay: North Korea’s revenge for Japan’s forced occupation of Korea (pre-1945)

ASIA

THE North Korean regime of Kim Jong-un very deliberately chose Japan for its greatest act of provocation to date.

Crucially, it wanted to demonstrate the vulnerability of America’s key ally in East Asia – though Kim was playing on North Koreans’ savagely bitter memories of Imperial Japan’s 35-year occupation of Korea until 1945.

Japanese was imposed as the only permitted language in schools, but few Koreans were able to master it well enough to get good jobs.

Any new businesses were owned and run by the Japanese. Only a handful of Koreans were allowed to go on to higher education.

The Thirties were the height of Emperor Hirohito’s Great East Asia Co-Prosperity sphere, an initiative that purported to benefit all of East Asia but which, in reality, had the Japanese installed as the master race and ultimate beneficiaries.

Koreans were dragooned for forced labour and to be cannon fodder in Hirohito’s armies, while some 200,000 women were turned into sex slaves.

At that time Japan’s armies occupied a vast swathe of territory from Korea to New Guinea, and the troops needed company on garrison duty.

So-called ‘comfort women’ were provided by their caring imperial government – Korean women who were shipped around Hirohito’s Pacific Empire as well as into occupied China. They were not only degraded into forced prostitution, but faced the risk of being bombed by the Allies when they attacked Japanese bases.

After World War II, the ‘comfort women’ were deplorably treated by their own people.

They were regarded as collaborators and shunned. In North Korea – Korea was divided into North and South in the aftermath of the war – a charge of collaboration with the Japanese could mean death.

Imperial Japan neither apologised nor paid compensation. In South Korea today, the legacy of this exploitation is still seen as a humiliation for which Japan has not made amends.

Stoking more than a century of Korean-Japanese antagonism is part of Kim’s plan to split America’s allies. At the same time, he is bolstering his dynasty and ramping up national feeling by reminding North Koreans of the potent myth of his grandfather, Kim Il-sung, as a resistance hero, defying the Japanese.

In response to the North Korean threat, Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is trying to push through changes to his country’s post-war ‘pacifist’ constitution which renounces war and ‘the threat or use of force as a means of settling international disputes.’ And while other players in the regions such as South Korea, China and the Philippines don’t like Kim’s aggression either, they have lurking fears of Japanese rearmament.

What is most alarming for Abe is North Korea’s ability to overfly Japan. Japan’s Patriot missile defence didn’t intercept Kim’s rocket – but it was not because Tokyo chose restraint.

It couldn’t have stopped the missile if it wanted to, because it was launched from a new site in North Korea, most likely from a mobile launcher, and in a very unexpected direction.

This brought the issue of Japan acquiring a nuclear deterrent to the fore.

For millions of Japanese, the legacy of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, destroyed by atomic bombs in 1945, is the only argument needed against going nuclear. The Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster in 2011 has made even civil nuclear power controversial.

But North Korea’s apparent impunity and America’s dithering have brought out Japanese hawks who say their country must go nuclear. Washington is against such a move, but after events earlier this week Japan can legitimately ask if it can really rely on its ally to deter an attack.

 

JAPAN’S role in the world economy is huge and its forces – for the purposes of self-defence under that post-war constitution – are impressive. Since 1945, it has built up a large army and air force, and one of the biggest navies in the world (although the U.S. has made sure Japan lacks aircraft carriers capable of offensive action).

Given Japan’s mix of high-tech industry and nuclear power stations, it could make a nuclear bomb quickly. But there is another player in the region – China’s reaction to such a development would be off the scale.

In Europe, in the seven decades since the end of World War II, the idea of a war between the old enemies seems incredible. But in East Asia, while American power has kept the peace between Japan and her old foes, the deep-rooted enmity between the Chinese, Koreans and Japanese is never far from the surface. Disputes over sea borders, for instance, are just one symptom of the distrust between these nations.

So, while there is method and history attached to Kim’s madness, it does leave the Japanese government facing a huge dilemma. Whether the U.S. will still be able to bear influence over the direction that Japan’s military will take – in being able to properly defend itself –  is likely to be an issue that will gain increasing traction in the weeks and months ahead.

  • Appendage
Koreas Timeline

Koreas: Historical timeline

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Government, North Korea, Politics, United Nations, United States

A world dangerously close to the brink

NORTH KOREA

North-Korea-missile-663759

North Korea launched a ballistic missile in the Sea of Japan. This may have been from a submarine or from a new land based launch site.

THE world has looked on in horror this week as North Korea fired a missile over Japan. That has spread panic among the 6million population of Hokkaido island and is cranking-up tension to snapping-point.

Not since the Cuban missile crisis has the world seemed as close to the brink of a genocidal nuclear exchange.

The difference is that in that terrifying stand-off of 1962, both John F Kennedy and Russia’s Nikita Khrushchev remained open to reason. For all their bluster, they saw full-scale war as unthinkable, and each was prepared to compromise.

But how confidently can the same be said of the arch protagonists in the Korean crisis?

We should all hope and believe that Donald Trump, though hugely unpredictable, is less reckless than he likes to appear. As leader of the world’s greatest democracy, he is also restrained by the US Constitution and independent-minded advisers.

But this is hardly true of the North Korean dictator, Kim Jong-un. Surrounded by sycophants too terrified or brainwashed to rein him in, he seems as deranged as he is ruthless.

Indeed, his countless victims include his half-brother, poisoned at Kuala Lumpur airport, and an uncle he blew to shreds with heavy artillery at point-blank range. The fear is that anyone capable of such barbarity may be capable of anything.

But are threats of ‘exterminating’ his regime, and demonstrations of military might, the best way to deal with a madman who seems only to fear losing face?

Or will South Korea’s menaces and bombing exercises, and President Trump’s muscle-flexing, merely heighten Kim’s paranoia and sense of isolation, spurring him to ever wilder acts of lunacy?

One thing seems sure. If the North Korean dictator will listen to anyone, it will be to his neighbours the Chinese, who have everything to fear from war in Korea. The West should be using all its energy and efforts by encouraging Beijing to bring him to reason.

Certainly, Mr Trump should leave him in no doubt that the US will support South Korea to the hilt. But if he wants to be remembered as a statesman, he will tone down the language – and, like Kennedy, work tirelessly to broker peace behind the scenes.

Goading this tyrant with threats of ‘fire and fury’ is surely not the answer. Such language is adding fuel to a fire that could become dangerously out of control. It could even provoke the unthinkable: nuclear war.

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