According to South Korea’s Yonhap News Agency, a 1,500-ton naval vessel with a crew of 104 sank off of the island of Baengnyeong in the Yellow Sea on March 26. Based on size and crew displacement it is likely either an Ulsan-class guided missile frigate or a Po Hang-class corvette. The incident took place between 9 and 10 a.m. local time. The cause is unknown, but the BBC has reported that a torpedo was involved. Seoul has said there was an explosion at the stern, and it is investigating whether a torpedo attack from North Korea was the cause, according to YTN TV. The contested waters between North and South Korea do see the occasional naval clashes, but the loss of a surface combatant on this scale would be extremely significant.
UPDATE 1:
March 26, 2010
A South Korean military source said March 26 that the naval vessel that sank near North Korea was probably attacked, KBS reported.UPDATE 2:
March 26, 2010
MBC television reported about half the crew of a sunken South Korean Navy vessel has been saved so far, Channel News Asia reported March 26.
Category Archives: Koreas
South Korea returns fire from North: report
SEOUL (Reuters) – South Korea has returned fire after North Korea shot several artillery rounds into waters near a disputed sea border with the South on Wednesday, Yonhap news agency reported an unnamed military source as saying.
North Korea on Tuesday declared a no-sail zone in the waters off its west coast, according to media reports in the South.
(Reporting by Jon Herskovitz and Jack Kim; Editing by Jonathan Hopfner)
Just in case anyone is uncertain about whether or not Kim’s North Korea is a state run by a complete psycho of an order the world probably hasn’t seen since Caligula, check out this video from July 2009
When the current North Korean leader’s father died, orders where given that people all had to go out in the streets and grieve publicly and intensely. Many people were arrested for insufficient displays of public grief. I hope the guy at a minute fourteen seconds got an extra 5 grams of gruel that day.
Makes one wonder. Take the E out of Korean and what do you get?
North Korea capable of miniaturizing nuclear weapons
Yonhapnews
SEOUL, Dec. 20 (Yonhap) — South Korea’s state-run defense think tank has concluded that North Korea is capable of achieving the technology needed to miniaturize its nuclear warheads, an informed military source said Sunday.
In its report on 2009 military trends in Northeast Asia scheduled to be published next month, the Korea Institute of Defense Analyses (KIDA) concluded that the North at the moment does not have the technology to fit a nuclear weapon on a missile, according to the military source who asked to be unnamed.
But KIDA has determined that it is only a matter of time before the North becomes capable of successfully producing a small nuclear warhead, considering its possession of a high-explosives test site, a large number of experts and its concentration on nuclear development.
For years, the communist country has been dragging its feet on nuclear disarmament in negotiations with South Korea, the U.S. and other regional powers. The country conducted its first nuclear test in 2006 and its second one in May of this year.
North Korea is boycotting the six-party denuclearization talks in protest against U.N. sanctions for its nuclear and missile tests earlier this year, although its leader Kim Jong-il recently expressed his willingness to return to dialogue.
The think tank also concluded that the North’s nuclear program has been overseen by at least 28 state agencies operating under the ruling Workers’ Party and the National Defense Commission, with an estimated 3,000 government employees involved in the country’s nuclear development, said the source.
KIDA said that the North test-fired a total of 22 short-range missiles after it conducted its second nuclear test on May 25.
Communism, at odds with Islam, at odds with good old fashioned African corruption
From BBC News: by way of T R O P
Senegal imams use prayers to condemn giant statue
By Caspar Leighton
BBC News West Africa correspondent
BBC News West Africa correspondent
President Wade believes visitors should be charged to see the statue
|
Imams in Senegal have begun a concerted campaign against a giant statue being built in Dakar.
They are using Friday prayers to denounce it as idolatrous and a waste of money.
The Monument to the African Renaissance is a pet project of Senegal’s President Abdoulaye Wade and will be bigger than the Statue of Liberty when complete.
The main controversy has been the cost – at $27m (£16.6m) it is a big outlay for a poor country.
It is also on questionable aesthetic ground.
The imams are tapping into a strong vein of discontent with the giant statue.
‘War of words’
Depicting a muscular man holding aloft a child and sweeping a woman along behind him, it is pure socialist realism – and not very African.
It is being built by North Korea.
Imams agreed a text for Friday sermons quoting the Koran and the Hadith (Islamic sayings), which forms a denunciation of the idolatrous nature of the giant structure.
The protests do come a bit late though, for the statue is almost finished.
The new campaign is an escalation in a long war of words between imams and President Wade.
One imam put it pithily, saying it was not on that the first thing air travellers see of Senegal when their plane descends is a near-naked man and woman.
What sticks in the throats of many Senegalese though is President Wade’s plan to charge visitors and pocket a share of the takings himself.
The president says he helped design the statue, so he should share some of the revenue.
The Koreas. Two Stratfor SITREPS
Yesterday’s move by North Korea which had all the benchmarks of a classical false flag operation may bear fruit. Here are two SITREP’s from the desk of STRATFOR:
North Korea: Naval Skirmish Charged As South Korean Provocation
November 12, 2009
North Korea charged that a recent naval skirmish was a “premeditated
provocation” by South Korea who will be forced to “pay dearly” for the
attempt to thwart the current mood for dialogue, Yonhap reported Nov.
12. North Korean newspaper Rodong Sinmun stated that the armed
provocation is a deliberate move and dangerous war action. It said South
Korean forces will be forced to pay dearly for the grave armed
provocation. The commentary stated that the Korean People’s Army
artillery is leveled at the “provokers
South Korea: KDX-II Destroyer Dispatched to Yellow Sea
November 12, 2009
The South Korean navy deployed its state-of-the-art “Choi Young” KDX-II destroyer to the Northern Limit Line in the Yellow Sea, KBS reported Nov. 12. A military official said the dispatch was made in preparation for possible additional maritime provocations by North Korea. The Defense Ministry and the Joint Chiefs of Staff plan to hold a meeting to assess the nation’s preparedness for a potential North Korean provocation. A ministry official said top military officials and commanders will discuss the inter-Korean skirmish in the Yellow Sea and to check military readiness for a potential retaliation by Pyongyang.
NCC approves monument against ‘oppression’
Big H/T to Fred for this one. oh, and TB for the video at the bottom via GOV. A rather perfect example of the idiocy of Ottawa Canada’s NCC or, National Capitol Commission.
The category? easy. Irrational leftism.
From The Ottawa Citizen:
Decision made despite confusion over what work even commemorates
By Cassandra Drudi, The Ottawa CitizenSeptember 10, 2009OTTAWA-A new monument in Ottawa to commemorate the victims of some sort of oppression was approved by the National Capital Commission’s board of directors Thursday, but the decision has left those proposing the monument confused as to what, exactly, was approved.
“We don’t really understand the decision at this point,” said Tim Egan of High Park Group, which is representing one of the groups behind the proposal. “We really do need to talk to our board to assess the implications.”
The NCC board passed a motion supporting the concept of the commemoration, “but perhaps with a different title,” after objections about the title were raised by nearly all members who spoke.
The title — “monument to the victims of totalitarian communism” — has already been changed once. In the first proposals, one by a non-profit group called Tribute to Liberty, the other by Open Book Group, it was to be called “monument to the victims of communism.”
After beginning discussions with the NCC in March 2008, the groups had back-and-forth discussions with a committee of experts who suggested that the title be changed because it could be perceived as “unduly critical of Canadians who might associate themselves with communism,” Egan said.
The group then changed the name to include the word “totalitarian.” The title still did not sit well with the board.
“I was unsettled by this name, and other members of the committee agreed with me,” said Hélène Grand-Maître, speaking in French. “We should make sure that we are politically correct in this designation.”
Board member Adel Ayad said the name was troubling for its “very tight definition” and for the presence of the word “communism” in the title, as Canada has a communist party. Continue Reading →
North Korea behind recent cyber attacks on U.S. and S. Korea
How can this not be an act of war? In what galaxy can the rest of the world let this go unanswered?
While NORK’s brinkmanship is a serious matter indeed but can be written off as the usual crisis politics for fun money oil and profit that North Korea has been engaging in for so long, actual attacks against vital systems in South Korea and the USA are not excusable as war games, defence exorcises or any other non aggressive act. Surely deliberate attacks such as these are acts of war.
S korea presidential blue house
Official: N. Korea Believed Behind Cyberattacks, From Newsmax.com
H/T jdamn and ibloga
Wednesday, July 8, 2009 6:40 AM
SEOUL, South Korea — South Korean intelligence officials believe North Korea or pro-Pyongyang forces in South Korea committed cyber attacks that paralyzed major South Korean and U.S. Web sites, a lawmaker’s aide said Wednesday.
The sites of 11 South Korean organizations including the presidential Blue House and the Defense Ministry went down or had access problems since late Tuesday, according to the state-run Korea Information Security Agency. Agency spokeswoman Ahn Jeong-eun said 11 U.S. sites suffered similar problems.
On Wednesday, the National Intelligence Service told a group of South Korean lawmakers it believes that North Korea or North Korean sympathizers in the South “were behind” the attacks, according to an aide to one of the lawmakers briefed on the information.
The aide spoke on condition of anonymity citing the sensitivity of the information. He refused to allow the name of the lawmaker he works for to be published.
The National Intelligence Service _ South Korea’s main spy agency _ said it couldn’t immediately confirm the report.
Earlier Wednesday, the agency said in a statement that 12,000 computers in South Korea and 8,000 computers overseas had been infected and used for the cyber attack. Continue Reading →