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As Kim Jong Un’s Daughter Debuts, Multiple Signals Go Out To The World

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North Korea did not name the girl, who is seen in photographs holding hands with her father Kim Jong Un.

North Korea hasn’t said whether she has any siblings. Her age remains a mystery. The world doesn’t even know her name. The important thing is that she’s the “most beloved” daughter of Kim Jong Un.

The young girl, who South Korean authorities believe is named Ju Ae and about nine years old, has suddenly been featured in North Korean state media alongside her all-powerful father. She most recently accompanied Kim on a photo op to celebrate the successful launch of the country’s most powerful ballistic missile — prompting “stormy cheers of ‘Hurrah!’,” according to a Korean Central News Agency dispatch published Sunday.

Despite all the mystery, the events sent clear signals to both the North Korean public and the wider world: First, the Kim regime is here to stay. Second, the ruling family won’t be bargaining away its nuclear arsenal any time soon.

Both points were driven home when Kim brought his daughter along to observe the launch a new intercontinental ballistic missile believed capable of carrying multiple nuclear warheads anywhere on the US mainland. Photos released by state media included a shot of Kim looking down on his child with the rocket looming behind them.

The debut was remarkable on several levels. While parading heirs before the public has been a feature of hereditary monarchies the world over, the Kim family has been far more reluctant to reveal potential successors during its almost 75 years in power.

Kim Jong Un didn’t make his official debut until he was around 26. Before Ju Ae’s first appearance in state media on Nov. 19, North Korea hadn’t even acknowledged Kim had children. It’s still not known whether the regime views his “precious child” as Kim’s heir, or whether that status would belong to the older brother she’s rumored to have.

“The optics of Kim and his daughter observing the launch together seem to underscore recent messaging that the nuclear program is no longer conditional, and now involves the next generation as part of this success,” said Jenny Town, a senior fellow at the Stimson Center in Washington. In September, Kim told North Korean lawmakers he would “never give up” his nuclear weapons while pushing through a law that would allow “automatic” strikes if his leadership was threatened.

Since taking power a decade ago at 27, Kim has defied predictions that his regime would falter. Instead, he boasts an increasingly diverse stockpile of weapons designed to target the US and its allies in Japan and South Korea. The reports featuring Kim’s daughter show he also has a possible heir to bequeath them to.

“It is the truth taught by history that only when we become the strongest, not the weak, in the present world where the strength in showdown just decides victory, can we defend the present and future of the country and nation,” KCNA quoted Kim as saying Sunday.

The NIS believed Kim may have wanted to assure people that he is responsible for the “security of the future generation,” South Korean lawmaker Yoo Sang-bum told reporters last week after a closed-door briefing with the National Intelligence Service. He added that agency believes that Ju Ae is the second of three children between Kim and his wife, Ri Sol Ju.

“Under the North Korean regime, the position of Kim’s children can be compared to that of prince or princess in a dynastic system,” said Cheong Seong-Chang, director of the Center for North Korean Studies at the Sejong Institute outside of Seoul.

North Korea’s ability to deliver a nuclear strike on the US and its allies in Asia has grown under Kim Jong Un to the point where there are calls to declare Pyongyang a nuclear weapons state and revamp a decades-old US policy of never allowing that to happen, while seeking the complete, verifiable and irreversible end of its atomic arsenal.

Kim has ignored the US’s calls to return to nuclear disarmament talks now stalled for more than three years.

Ju Ae’s debut is only the latest example of Kim’s willingness to share the spotlight with prominent women. Besides frequent appearances with his wife, he has made his sister, Kim Yo Jong, the face of the regime’s response to the US and South Korea. He also recently appointed, Choe Son Hui, to be the country’s first female foreign minister.

Still, it’s too early to say whether Kim Jong Un intends to make Ju Ae his formal heir. Such a move would likely face resistance from the country’s male-dominated political elite, said Rachel Minyoung Lee, a regional issues manager at the Vienna-based Open Nuclear Network.

“While Kim himself may be ready to appoint a female successor, those around him may not be, and he cannot altogether ignore the opinions of the country’s top-ranking leadership,” said Lee, who previously worked as an open source analyst for the CIA. “North Korea is a very traditional and conservative society, and Kim may not be confident that a female successor could navigate a male-dominant party, government, and military without jeopardizing regime security.”

(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

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Xi tells Kim China wants to work with North Korea for peace: KCNA | Xi Jinping News

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Xi sends message to Kim amid an unprecedented number of missile tests by North Korea.

Chinese President Xi Jinping has told North Korea’s Kim Jong Un that Beijing is willing to work with Pyongyang for global peace and stability, according to the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).

The report on Saturday came days after North Korea fired an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) in one of its most powerful tests yet, declaring it would meet perceived nuclear threats from the United States with nuclear weapons of its own.

North Korea has conducted a record-breaking blitz of missile launches in recent weeks and fears have grown that it is building up to a seventh nuclear test, its first since 2017.

In his message to Kim, Xi said Beijing was ready to work together for “peace, stability, development and prosperity of the region and the world”, KCNA reported.

Xi said he was willing to collaborate with Pyongyang as “changes in the world, times, and history are taking place in unprecedented ways”, KCNA said, quoting from the message it said was received in response to congratulations from Kim after the Chinese Communist Party Congress last month handed Xi a third term.

Days before North Korea’s ICBM launch, Xi met on the sidelines of a G20 summit in Bali with US President Joe Biden, who voiced confidence that Beijing does not want to see a further escalation by Pyongyang.

Washington has said it wants China, Pyongyang’s most important ally and economic benefactor, to use its influence to help rein in North Korea.

The November 18 missile launch appeared to be Pyongyang’s newest ICBM with the potential range to hit the US mainland.

The United Nations Security Council convened an open meeting over the launch, with the US, the United Kingdom, France and India among 14 nations to “strongly condemn” Pyongyang’s actions.

But a Western diplomat told the AFP news agency that China and Russia had chosen not to put their names to Monday’s statement.

Earlier this month, the US had accused Beijing and Moscow of protecting Pyongyang from further punishment.

In May, China and Russia vetoed a US-led effort to tighten sanctions on North Korea in response to earlier launches.

Pyongyang is already under multiple sets of international sanctions over its nuclear and ballistic missile programmes, and China accounts for more than 90 percent of the impoverished country’s bilateral trade.

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South Korea’s booming arms industry rolls out the big guns in bid for global reach

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Changwon, South Korea
CNN
 — 

With a blinding yellow flash and a concussion that shakes bones, K9 self-propelled howitzers launch artillery shells onto a hill that’s just been hit by rockets fired from helicopters. Then K2 tanks roar in, speeding up roads and firing as they go.

This is part of DX Korea, a four-day South Korean defense expo held in September at a firing range in Pocheon, about 30 kilometers (18.6 miles) from the North Korean border.

The display – presented to a crowd of 2,000 people including military officials from more than two dozen countries – is one way South Korea sells weapons.

And President Yoon Suk Yeol wants to sell more of them – enough for Seoul to jump four places up the ranks to become the world’s fourth-biggest arms exporter.

“By entering the world’s top four defense exporters after the United States, Russia and France, the (South Korean) defense industry will become a strategic industrialization and a defense powerhouse,” Yoon said.

To do that, South Korea will have to outsell – in ascending order – the United Kingdom, Italy, Germany and finally China, which held 4.6% of the export market in the 2017-2021 period, according to the authoritative Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).

That’s no easy task, yet Seoul is already well on its way. From 2012 to 2016, it had just 1% of the global market. It more than doubled that in the following five-year period, capturing 2.8% – by far the largest increase among any of the world’s top 25 arms exporters.

In 2021, it sold $7 billion worth of weapons overseas, according to the Export-Import Bank of Korea.

And the South Korean defense industry believes it has the arsenal to grab an even bigger slice of the pie.

South Korea’s weapons exports have ballooned in recent years, but the country has been building its arms industry for decades, spurred on by its troubled relationship with its northern neighbor.

As of 2020, military expenditures represented 2.8% of South Korea’s gross domestic product, according to SIPRI, well above the 2% threshold considered a minimum by many US allies.

“The North Korean threat has given us a good reason, a motivation to make sure that our weapons are very good,” says Chun In-bum, a former lieutenant general in the South Korean Army.

Technically, the Korean War never ended, because the document that stopped the combat in 1953 was an armistice, not a peace treaty.

In the first decades after the fighting ended, South Korea’s defense was heavily dependent on American troops and weaponry.

Things began to change in the 1970s, when the US was distracted by the war in Vietnam and the Cold War with the Soviet Union.

South Korea began to take more responsibility for its own defense and invested $42 million in US military aid in factories to produce M-16 rifles, according to the Korea Development Institute (KDI).

By the end of the decade, Korean researchers under the direction of the country’s National Defense Science Institute had succeeded in making all basic weaponry, according to a 2014 KDI report.

With the ever-present threats from the North, Seoul initiated a National Defense Tax to pay for the development of a modern military, including the armored systems and other military equipment that Korean defense companies are marketing today.

Back on the hillside after the live-fire demonstration, prospective customers listened intently to the pitches of the South Korean representatives.

Delegations had arrived from as far afield as Mexico, Thailand, Nigeria and the Philippines. An Indian general asked for the ranges of a weapon on display. Qatari officers inspected a K2 up close.

Conspicuously, none of the potential customers were from Ukraine.

But that doesn’t mean South Korea’s arms industry isn’t seeing a role in Ukraine’s war with Russia.

A US defense official told CNN this month that Washington intends to buy 100,000 rounds of artillery ammunition from South Korean arms manufacturers to provide to Ukraine.

The rounds will be transferred to Ukraine via the US, allowing Seoul to stick to its public pledge that it would not send lethal aid to the war-torn country.

In a statement issued after the planned purchase was first revealed in The Wall Street Journal, the South Korean Defense Ministry said it had not changed its position on shipping weapons to Ukraine, and that it believed the “end user” of the ammunition was the US.

Russian President Vladimir Putin had said late last month that South Korea had decided to send “arms and ammunition” to Kyiv, which would “ruin our relations” with them – a claim denied a day later by President Yoon.

A South Korean presidential decree that enforces the country’s Foreign Trade Act says its exports can only be used for “peaceful purposes” and “shall not affect international peace, safety maintenance, and national security.”

South Korea is also a signatory to the United Nations’ Arms Trade Treaty, ratified in 2014 with the intention of keeping close control on who gets weapons and under what conditions they can be used. Ukraine is a signatory but hasn’t ratified it.

But the planned US ammunition transfer isn’t the only way the influence of South Korea’s arms industry will be felt in Ukraine.

In September, South Korea signed a deal with Poland for its biggest arms sale ever, in which it will supply Warsaw with almost 1,000 of Hyundai Rotem’s K2 tanks, more than 600 of Hanwha’s K9s, and dozens of fighter jets from Korean Aerospace Industries.

The deal will enable Poland to replace many of the weapons that Warsaw has sent to Kyiv.

“Poland needed weapons to defend themselves, and that’s exactly what we’re providing,” Chun says. “We Koreans understand that without weapons to defend yourself, the end result is a tragedy.”

The constant threat of a North Korean attack is one reason military production lines were established in the southern port city of Changwon, the cradle of South Korea’s modern arms industry.

The city is in a natural basin, surrounded by mountains on all sides, making it easier to defend. The city’s main road, Changwon-daero, has a 14.9-kilometer (9.25-mile) stretch that can double as a runway in times of national emergency.

At its southern end is the Changwon National Industrial Complex, established in the 1970s and home to the Hanwha Defense and Hyundai Rotem factories, where artillery pieces and tanks trundle off the assembly lines.

Overseas orders are rolling in this year, notably the landmark deal with Poland which the Korea Defense Industry Association estimates to be worth $15.3 billion.

Hanwha puts its share of that agreement at $2.4 billion, its largest contract for the K9.

Poland is one of nine countries – alongside South Korea, Turkey, Finland, India, Norway, Estonia, Australia and Egypt – to buy the howitzer from Hanwha.

Lee Boo-hwan, an executive vice president of Hanwha Defense’s overseas business division, says the company wants to be a long-term partner to countries that buy its weapons. To that end, it is setting up new manufacturing facilities in Australia, Egypt and Poland.

“My workers are very happy to share our technology,” Lee says. “It is our main strategic focus to enter (new) markets.”

It’s also about continuously updating and improving the product, he says, and that’s happening inside South Korea.

The company has already prototyped the K9A2 tank, which situates the crew outside the turret to make them less vulnerable to attack, and is developing “a more futuristic, next generation version,” Lee says.

“It is fully automated operation, unmanned platform,” with artificial intelligence to let it learn on the battlefield, he says.

At a sprawling, modern complex in Changwon, Hanwha’s robots churn out the artillery pieces for K9s at the rate of one unit every three to five days.

A combination of robots and humans combine on a seven-station assembly line to put together what will eventually be 47 metric tons of steel, machinery and electronics.

One robot, more than two stories high, welds the turrets, the brightness of the white-hot procedure lighting up the cavernous assembly building.

Further down the line, another robot bores holes in the green-painted steel, switching bits automatically as it goes about its work with an accuracy of 1/100th of a millimeter, thinner than a human hair, according to a Hanwha Defense official.

Once the robots are done, it is the turn of Hanwha’s workers. Each hull as it goes along the line bears the pictures of 11 of them.

“We provide excellence by name,” says Lee, the Hanwha executive vice president.

At each assembly station, there’s a “tollgate,” with green, yellow and red lights. Any worker can stop the line with a red light and summon engineers if they spot a problem.

At the final stop is the bore sighting, where the accuracy of the K9’s gun is tested on a target at the far end of the workspace.

The completed units then go outside for performance testing, causing the ground to vibrate as they roar along a paved road near their top speed of 67 kilometers per hour (42 mph).

Test drivers spin the tracked howitzer one way then the other, the rubber pads on the tracks leaving donuts on the concrete.

As the drivers put the units through their paces, Lee explains how Hanwha customizes K9s for its overseas customers: those bound for northern climates like Norway get extra heat sources for the crew; those made for hotter places like India or Egypt get more air conditioning. Some of the factory’s K9s are headed for Poland this year.

Jack Watling, senior research fellow for land warfare at the Royal United Services Institute in London, says South Korea is the perfect testing ground.

Its seasons range from deep-freeze winters to monsoons and summer heat of 30 degrees Celsius or higher – and it has both flat and mountainous terrain.

“That is a pretty unique set of complex variables in terms of having a vehicle that’s reliable across climatic conditions,” Watling says.

And that’s attracted foreign buyers, he says.

Just a few miles from where the K9 artillery pieces are being tested, the K2 tanks at the Hyundai Rotem factory are being put through their paces.

Again, the latest customer is Poland.

“This is our first time directly exporting our (K2),” says Kim, the Hyundai Rotem VP.

Orders from South Korea’s military keep the K2 assembly line busy enough – but the Polish order means Hyundai Rotem can add capacity.

This is essentially like buying a new car off the lot. In the tank world, you can’t quite drive your new K2 home that day, but you get the idea.

“The most important thing is that it is currently being produced,” Kim says.

Hanwha Defense has its eyes on one market in particular – the United States, the world’s largest defense market.

“We want to enter the US market with support from a US local company and also, we want to contribute to the US Army and the US local defense industry,” says Lee, the Hanwha VP.

In 2021, US military spending was $801 billion. But South Korean weapons and ammunition exports to the US accounted for only $95 million, according to the US Commerce Department.

Overall, US military spending was more than the next nine countries combined, according to SIPRI. South Korea ranked 10th.

But the South Korean defense industry should be seen as a partner that complements its American counterpart, rather than competes with it, Chun says.

That massive US military budget includes huge expenditure on top-shelf items. That’s not what Seoul is selling, he points out.

“There are portions of a spectrum of weapons that the United States does not make, because they feel they don’t need to. It doesn’t make a profit for their industry. That’s what we’re targeting. The systems that we have sold to Poland are exactly those kind of systems,” he says.

“I’m hoping that the United States understands that this is a partnership,” Chun adds.

“The United States makes the greatest and best weapons in the world,” he says, “but they don’t make all of them.”

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North Korea: Kim Jong Un took his daughter to a missile launch and no one is quite sure why

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Seoul, South Korea
CNN
 — 

Father and daughter walking hand in hand near a towering weapon of mass destruction.

That was the scene North Korea showed the world on Saturday as state media released the first pictures of Kim Jong Un with a child believed to be his daughter, Ju Ae, inspecting what experts say is an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM).

North Korea said the missile launched Friday from Pyongyang International Airfield was a Hwasong-17, a huge rocket that could theoretically deliver a nuclear warhead to the mainland United States.

But even after Kim warned that his nuclear forces are prepared to engage in “actual war” with Washington and its allies South Korea and Japan, it was the girl, not the missile, who grabbed the world’s attention.

What did her presence at the launch mean? Could she be a possible successor to Kim? What does an approximately 9-year-old girl have to do with nuclear arms?

Leif-Eric Easley, associate professor of international studies at Ewha Womans University in Seoul, said the girl’s presence should be seen through a domestic lens.

“Outside North Korea, it may appear deranged to pose for the cameras hand in hand with a child in front of a long-range missile designed to deliver a nuclear weapon to a distant city,” Easley said.

“But inside North Korea, a purportedly successful launch of the world’s largest road-mobile ICBM is cause for national celebration.”

Yang Moo-jin, president of the University of North Korean Studies in the South, also noted the domestic tilt in the images of Kim’s daughter.

“By showing some quality time with his daughter, it looked like he (Kim) wanted to show his family as a good and stable one, and to show himself as a leader for normal people,” Yang told Canadian broadcaster Global News.

The images also presented the girl as a key member of the Kim bloodline, Yang said.

North Korea has been ruled as a hereditary dictatorship since its founding in 1948 by Kim Il Sung. His son, Kim Jong Il, took over after his father’s death in 1994. And Kim Jong Un took power 17 years later when Kim Jong Il died.

But any near-term change in the North Korean leadership is highly unlikely.

Kim Jong Un is only 38 years old. And even if some unexpected problem were to take his life, Ju Ae is likely at least a decade or more away from being able to replace her father atop the North Korean state.

“I’m genuinely unsure about the succession implications of his daughter being introduced,” said Ankit Panda, senior fellow in the nuclear policy program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

“On the one hand, publicly revealing (a) child can’t be taken lightly by any North Korean leader, but she’s underage and her role at the test wasn’t particularly punched up by state media,” he said.

Panda noted that video released by North Korea of Friday’s ICBM launch may prove much more valuable to Western intelligence than anything gleaned from Kim’s daughter’s presence.

“The US has sophisticated sources and methods that’ll give it tremendous insight into North Korea’s missiles, but the video may be helpful for building a more complete model of the missile’s performance,” he said.

“In the past, analysts have used videos to derive the acceleration of the missile at launch, which can help us identify its overall performance.”

It was only the third time Pyongyang has released a video of a missile launch since 2017, according to Panda.

“The North Koreans used to be considerably more transparent prior to 2017, when their primary concern was the credibility of their nuclear deterrent,” he said.

While Friday’s test did show Pyongyang can launch a large ICBM and keep it aloft for more than an hour, North Korea still hasn’t demonstrated the ability to place a warhead atop a long-range ballistic missile – projectiles that are fired into space – that’s able to survive the fiery reentry into Earth’s atmosphere before plunging to their target.

But analysts say with their repeated tests, the North Koreans are refining their processes. A missile believed to be a Hwasong-17 ICBM tested earlier this month failed in the early stages of its flight.

“The fact that (Friday’s test) didn’t blow up indicates they have made progress in fixing the technical issues that marked previous tests,” said Hans Kristensen, director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists.

What comes next from North Korea is anybody’s guess.

For much of this year, Western analysts and intelligence sources have been predicting North Korea will test a nuclear weapon, with satellite imagery showing activity at the nuclear test site. Such a test would be Pyongyang’s first in five years.

But Yang, the University of North Korean Studies president, told Global News that Friday’s test may have dampened any urgency for a nuclear test, at least for the time being.

“The possibility of North Korea’s seventh nuclear test to be conducted in November seems a little low now,” he said.

But another ICBM test could be Pyongyang’s response if the US continues to bolster its military presence in the region and expands exercises with South Korea and Japan, he said.

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Daughter of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s is revealed to the world in first public appearance

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Seoul, South Korea
CNN
 — 

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un oversaw the launch of “a new type” of intercontinental ballistic missile Friday, alongside his young daughter, whose existence had not previously been confirmed.

Striking photographs released by the state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) appear to show Kim hand in hand with the girl, as the ICBM sits on its mobile launch platform nearby.

KCNA claimed that the “new” missile being viewed by the pair was a Hwasong-17, and said that it launched from Pyongyang International Airfield, flying a distance of 999.2 kilometers (621 miles).

Japan warned after the launch on Friday that the new missile appeared to have the potential range to reach the United States mainland.

Kim said the test was intended to “clearly demonstrate” his country’s ability to respond to what he termed the “hysteric aggression war drills by the enemies seeking to destroy peace and stability in the Korean peninsula,” according to the KCNA report.

“Kim Jong Un solemnly declared that if the enemies continue to pose threats to the DPRK, frequently introducing nuclear strike means, our Party and government will resolutely react to nukes with nuclear weapons and to total confrontation with all-out confrontation,” KCNA said.

Friday’s launch, which landed about 210 kilometers (130 miles) west of the Japanese island of Oshima Oshima, according to the Japanese officials, was not the first time North Korea has fired an ICBM that experts and officials have assessed could theoretically reach the US.

Friday’s missile was shorter in altitude and distance compared to Pyongyang’s missile test on March 24, which recorded the highest altitude and longest duration of any North Korean missile ever tested, according to a report from the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) at the time. That missile reached an altitude of 6,248.5 kilometers (3,905 miles) and flew a distance of 1,090 kilometers (681 miles), KCNA reported.

And in 2017, then-US Defense Secretary James Mattis, said a missile launched by North Korea in that year demonstrated the ability to hit “everything in the world.”

Despite the missile’s theoretical range, Pyongyang’s ability to put a nuclear warhead atop it and deliver it on target remains unproven.

Ballistic missiles are fired into space before plunging back down to Earth. Experts have yet to see conclusive proof that North Korea can get a warhead to successfully the fiery reentry to Earth’s atmosphere.

Kim’s threats to the US and South Korea were also nothing new.

After a missile test in October, the North Korean leader warned adversaries his nuclear forces are fully prepared for “actual war.”

“Our nuclear combat forces … proved again their full preparedness for actual war to bring the enemies under their control,” Kim said in a KCNA report.

Very little is known about the private life of Kim Jong Un or his family.

Saturday’s news report did not name Kim’s daughter, who was appearing for the first time in state media. But in 2013, former basketball star Dennis Rodman told Britain’s the Guardian newspaper that Kim had a “baby” called “Ju Ae.”

Rodman said he spent time with the family, describing Kim as a “a good dad” and that he spoke to Kim’s wife, Ri Sol Ju.

“I held their baby Ju Ae and spoke with Ms. Ri as well,” he told the newspaper.

Speculation sprang up in 2012 that Ri might be pregnant after a photo carried by state media showed her wearing a long coat that could have been hiding a bump. But North Korean authorities kept quiet about the matter.

State media did not announce Kim and Ri’s marriage until July 2012, some three years after South Korean intelligence believe the wedding took place.

But that changed in 2018, when she was afforded the new title of “respected First Lady” by North Korean state media, a step up from the previously used “comrade” and a sign, according to analysts, that she was gaining her own personality cult.

Kim and Ri have three children together, according to South Korea’s National Intelligence Service (NIS).

North Korea has been ruled as a hereditary dictatorship since its founding in 1948 by Kim Il Sung. His son, Kim Jong Il, took over after his father’s death in 1994. And Kim Jong Un took power 17 years later when Kim Jong Il died.

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Daughter of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s is revealed to the world in first public appearance

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Seoul, South Korea
CNN
 — 

The daughter of North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong Un, was revealed to the world in a first confirmed public appearance on Friday, state media KCNA reported.

Pictures shared by the state agency show his daughter standing next to the leader in a white puffer jacket, holding Kim’s hand, as they look at military hardware.

State media did not name the girl, who appeared to accompany Kim as he oversaw a test firing of a missile on Friday, said KCNA.

The agency claimed that North Korea fired a “new kind” of intercontinental ballistic missile on Friday from Pyongyang International Airfield, flying a distance of 999.2 kilometers (621 miles).

Very little is known about the private life of Kim Jong Un. But in 2013, former basketball star Dennis Rodman told the British daily the Guardian that Kim had a “baby” called “Ju Ae.” He said he spent time with the family, describing Kim as a “a good dad” and that he spoke to Kim’s wife, Ri Sol Ju.

“I held their baby Ju Ae and spoke with Ms. Ri as well,” he told the newspaper.

Speculation sprang up in 2012 that Ri might be pregnant after a photo carried by state media showed her wearing a long coat that could have been hiding a bump. But North Korean authorities kept quiet about the matter.

State media did not announce Kim and Ri’s marriage until July 2012, some three years after South Korean intelligence believes the wedding took place.

But that changed in 2018, when she was afforded the new title of “respected First Lady” by North Korean state media, a step up from the previously used “comrade” and a sign, according to analysts, that she was gaining her own personality cult.

Kim and Ri have three children together, according to South Korea’s National Intelligence Service (NIS).

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North Korea fires ICBM into sea off Japan in ‘brazen violation’ of UN resolutions

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Seoul, South Korea
CNN
 — 

North Korea launched an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) on Friday, the second missile test by the Kim Jong Un regime in two days, condemned as a “brazen violation” of UN resolutions by the US and its allies.

The ICBM was launched around 10:15 a.m. local time from the Sunan area of the North Korean capital Pyongyang, and flew about 1,000 kilometers (621 miles) east, South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said.

Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said it likely fell in Japan’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ), about 210 kilometers (130 miles) west of the Japanese island of Oshima Oshima, according to the Japan Coast Guard. It did not fly over Japan.

“North Korea is continuing to carry out provocative actions at frequency never seen before,” Kishida told reporters Friday at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) meeting in Bangkok, Thailand.

“I want to restate that we cannot accept such actions,” he said.

The Japanese government will continue to collect and analyze information and provide prompt updates to the public, he said. So far, there have been no reports of damage to vessels at sea, Kishida added.

The ICBM reached an altitude of about 6,100 kilometers (3,790 miles) at Mach 22, or 22 times the speed of sound, according to the JCS, which said details were being analyzed by intelligence authorities in South Korea and the US.

On Friday morning US Vice President Kamala Harris gathered on the sidelines of the APEC summit with leaders from Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada to condemn the launch, in a previously unscheduled media briefing.

“I have asked this group of allies and partners to come together to join us in condemning North Korea’s long range ballistic missile launch,” she said. “I’ve also asked them to join in so that we as allies and partners can consult on next steps. This conduct by North Korea most recently is a brazen violation of the multiple UN Security resolutions. It destabilizes security in the region and unnecessarily raises tensions.”

South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol on Friday also ordered the “active execution” of strengthened extended deterrence measures against North Korea.

The President said Seoul will strengthen its alliance with Washington, and bolster its defense posture and cooperation over security with the US and Japan.

“The government will not tolerate North Korea’s provocations,” his office said in a statement. “The government has overwhelming response capability and willingness to immediately react to any North Korean provocations, so North Korea should not misjudge this.”

It added that North Korea cannot gain anything through continuous provocations, while warning that sanctions against the North will only be strengthened, resulting in Pyongyang’s further international isolation.

Friday’s missile was about 100 kilometers short in altitude and distance compared to Pyongyang’s missile test on March 24, which recorded the highest altitude and longest duration of any North Korean missile ever tested, according to a report from the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) at the time. That missile reached an altitude of 6,248.5 kilometers (3,905 miles) and flew a distance of 1,090 kilometers (681 miles), KCNA reported.

Calling the launch a “significant provocation and a serious act of threat,” the JCS warned the North of violating the UN Security Council’s resolution and urged it to stop immediately.

The Misawa Air Base issued a shelter in place alert after the firing of the missile, according to US Air Force Col. Greg Hignite, director of public affairs for US Forces Japan. It has now been lifted and the US military is still analyzing the flight path, he said.

US President Joe Biden has been briefed on the missile launch and his national security team will “continue close consultations with Allies and partners,” National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson said in statement Friday.

“The door has not closed on diplomacy, but Pyongyang must immediately cease its destabilizing actions and instead choose diplomatic engagement,” Watson said. “The United States will take all necessary measures to ensure the security of the American homeland and Republic of Korea and Japanese allies.”

Friday’s launch comes one day after Pyongyang fired a short-range ballistic missile into the waters off the east coast of the Korean Peninsula, and issued a stern warning to the United States of a “fiercer military counteraction” to its tighter defense ties with South Korea and Japan.

It’s the second suspected test launch of an ICBM this month – an earlier missile fired on November 3 appeared to have failed, a South Korean government source told CNN at the time.

The aggressive acceleration in weapons testing and rhetoric has sparked alarm in the region, with the US, South Korea and Japan responding with missile launches and joint military exercises.

Leif-Eric Easley, associate professor of International Studies at Ewha Womans University in Seoul, said North Korea is “trying to disrupt international cooperation against it by escalating military tensions and suggesting it has the capability of holding American cities at risk of nuclear attack.”

North Korea has carried out missile tests on 34 days this year, sometimes firing multiple missiles in a single day, according to a CNN count. The tally includes both cruise and ballistic missiles, with the latter making up the majority of North Korean test this year.

There are substantial differences between these two types of missiles.

A ballistic missile is launched with a rocket and travels outside Earth’s atmosphere, gliding in space before it re-enters the atmosphere and descends, powered only by gravity to its target.

A cruise missile is powered by a jet engine, stays inside Earth’s atmosphere during its flight and is maneuverable with control surfaces similar to an airplane’s.

Ankit Panda, senior fellow in the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said that while he wouldn’t see Friday’s presumed ICBM launch “as a message, per se,” it can be viewed as part of North Korea’s “process of developing capabilities Kim has identified as essential for the modernization of their nuclear forces.”

The US and international observers have been warning for months that North Korea appears to be preparing for an underground nuclear test, with satellite imagery showing activity at the nuclear test site. Such a test would be the hermit nation’s first in five years.

Jeffrey Lewis, director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program at Center for Non-proliferation Studies, said the ICBM test was designed to validate parts of North Korea’s missile program, something that Kim Jong Un has vowed to do this year.

The recent short-range tests “are exercises for frontline artillery units practicing preemptive nuclear strikes,” Lewis said.

He dismissed any political or negotiating message from the tests.

“I wouldn’t think about these tests as primarily signaling. North Korea isn’t interested talking right now,” Lewis said.

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North Korea: US moves aircraft carrier strike group near Korea after North’s missile launches, South Korea says

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Seoul, South Korea
CNN
 — 

United States, South Korean and Japanese warships performed a missile defense exercise in the Sea of Japan on Thursday, two days after North Korean sent a ballistic missile over Japan, the US-Indo Pacific Command said in a statement.

The two US warships, the guided-missile cruiser USS Chancellorsville and the guided-missile destroyer USS Benfold, both part of the USS Ronald Reagan aircraft carrier strike group, participated in the exercise along with two Japanese and one South Korean destroyer, the US statement said.

Thursday’s exercise also came just hours after North Korea fired two short-range ballistic missiles, the latest in a spate of missile launches by Pyongyang in the past two weeks.

“This exercise enhances the interoperability of our collective forces and demonstrates the strength of the trilateral relationship with our Japan and Republic of Korea (ROK) allies, which is forward-leaning, reflective of our shared values, and resolute against those who challenge regional stability,” the US Pacific Command statement said.

Earlier, South Korean security officials said a US Navy aircraft carrier strike group was moving into waters off the Korean Peninsula.

South Korea’s National Security Council (NSC) held an emergency meeting on Thursday after the short-range ballistic missiles launches, the sixth such launch in 12 days, the country’s Presidential Office said in a statement.

The NSC warned that North Korea’s provocation will face a stronger response following Pyongyang’s launch on Tuesday of the intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM) that flew over Japan.

South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff also said on Wednesday that the US carrier strike group would be redeployed to the waterway, in what it characterized as a “very unusual” move meant “to demonstrate the resolute will of the SK-US alliance to respond decisively to any provocation or threat from North Korea.”

Asked about the South Korean statement on the Reagan’s movements, a US 7th Fleet spokesperson told CNN, “The Ronald Reagan Carrier Strike Group is currently operating in the Sea of Japan.”

The South Korean statement on the US Navy strike group’s movements drew a harsh response from Pyongyang.

“The DPRK is watching the US posing a serious threat to the stability of the situation on the Korean peninsula and in its vicinity by redeploying the carrier task force in the waters off the Korean peninsula,” read a statement from the North Korean Foreign Ministry posted on the state-run Korean Central News Agency.

Later Thursday, a formation of 12 North Korean warplanes – eight fighters and four bombers – flew south of the special surveillance line in what appeared to be an air-to-surface firing exercise, according to South Korea’s JCS.

About 30 South Korean military aircraft were launched in response in a show of South Korean power, JCS said.

The special surveillance line is a virtual line set by the South Korean military; it is not considered South Korean airspace.

Pyongyang’s missile launches Thursday are the 24th such tests this year, including both ballistic and cruise missiles – the highest annual tally since Kim Jong Un took power in 2012.

It closely followed the highly provocative launch by the isolated country on Tuesday, when North Korea fired a ballistic missile without warning over Japan – the first in five years – prompting Tokyo to urge residents in the north to take shelter.

The United States and South Korea responded with missile launches and exercises around the Korean Peninsula on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Speaking Wednesday during a trip to South America, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned that if North Korea continues “down this road” of provocation, “it will only increase the condemnation, increase the isolation and increase the steps that are taken in response to their actions.”

Last month, the US, Japanese and South Korean navies conducted joint anti-submarine exercises in international waters off the east coast of the Korean Peninsula to improve response capability against North Korean submarine threats.

The Reagan carrier strike group and destroyers from South Korea and Japan were involved in that joint exercise, according to the South Korean Navy.

Explained: How much damage can North Korea’s weapons do?

The latest North Korean launch came hours after a Security Council briefing at the United Nations headquarters in New York about Pyongyang’s weapons program.

Speaking at the council, US Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield accused Russia and China, without naming them, of enabling North Korea.

North Korea has “enjoyed blanket protection from two members of this council. These two members have gone out of their way to justify the DPRK’s repeated provocations and block every attempt to update the sanctions regime,” she said.

Referring to Russia and China, Thomas-Greenfield said, “Two permanent members of the Security Council have enabled (North Korean leader) Kim Jong Un” to continue these “provocations.”

But China countered that it was Washington ratcheting up tensions.

“The US has recently been bolstering its military alliances in the Asia Pacific region and intensifying the risk of military confrontation on the nuclear issue,” Chinese Deputy Ambassador to the UN Geng Shuang said during the Security Council meeting.

The US is “poisoning the regional security environment,” he added.

Russia, too, blamed Washington.

“It is obvious that missile launches by Pyongyang were a response to the short-sighted confrontational military activities of the US,” said Anna Evstigneeva, Russia’s deputy permanent representative to the UN.

Tanks, Apaches, and drones. See South Korea’s state-of-the-art weapons

Andrei Lankov, professor at Kookmin University in Seoul, said military displays from the US and its allies have no effect on the North Korean weapons program.

“Yes, American strategic assets are deployed, but does it make any difference?” Lankov asked.

“It doesn’t make any difference where an American aircraft carrier is … They’re just testing their missiles,” he said of the North Koreans.

Experts have warned that North Korea’s recent tests suggest an even greater escalation in weapons testing could be on the horizon.

“North Korea is going to keep conducting missile tests until the current round of modernization is done,” Jeffrey Lewis, director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program at the Center for Nonproliferation Studies, told CNN earlier this week.

Carl Schuster, a former director of operations at the US Pacific Command’s Joint Intelligence Center in Hawaii, said North Korean leader Kim has both domestic and regional audiences in mind with the testing.

Kim is telling his own people, “We can deal with whatever the threat the West, the US and South Korea can come up with,” Schuster said.

“He’s also telling the South Koreans that if they go too far, he can rain destruction on them. He’s also signaling to Japan, ‘I can reach you and I’m not afraid to do so.’”

Schuster also said that Kim can be expected to up the ante soon by testing a nuclear weapon.

Lewis agreed, saying a nuclear test could come “anytime.”

South Korean and US officials have been warning since May that North Korea may be preparing for a nuclear test, with satellite imagery showing activity at its underground nuclear test site.

If North Korea conducts a test, it would be the country’s seventh underground nuclear test and the first in nearly five years.

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US and South Korea test-fire missiles in continued response after North Korea launch

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Seoul, South Korea
CNN
 — 

The United States and South Korea launched four missiles off the east coast of the Korean Peninsula on Wednesday morning local time, according to South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff.

The test was the allies’ second exercise in under 24 hours, following a provocative test-launch Tuesday morning by neighboring North Korea, which fired a ballistic missile without warning over Japan in a significant escalation of its weapons testing program.

The US and South Korea initially responded to the provocation with a precision bombing exercise on Tuesday, which involved a South Korean F-15K fighter jet firing two air-to-surface munitions at a virtual target in a firing range west of the Korean Peninsula, per the South Korean Joint Chiefs.

The allies typically respond to missile tests by North Korea with military exercises.

Wednesday’s launch included four ATACMS missiles, the statement by the South Korean Joint Chiefs said. Also known as Army Tactical Missile Systems, such weapons are surface-to-surface missiles that can fly around 200 miles (320 kilometers).

According to John Kirby, the National Security Council coordinator for strategic communications, the launch was designed to demonstrate that the US and its allies have “the military capabilities at the ready to respond to provocations by the North.”

“This is not the first time we’ve done this in response to provocations by the North to make sure that we can demonstrate our own capabilities,” Kirby told CNN’s Pamela Brown on the “The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer.”

“We want to see the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, (North Korean leader Kim Jong Un) hasn’t shown an inclination to move in that direction, quite frankly he’s moving in the opposite direction by continuing to conduct these missile tests which are violations of security council resolutions,” he added.

On Tuesday, the US and Japan also conducted a joint response to the North Korean launch, with US Marine Corps and Japan Air Self-Defense Force fighter jets flying over the Sea of Japan, also known as the East Sea.

Following a 25-minute phone call with US President Joe Biden, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said North Korea’s latest launch posed “a grave challenge to peace and the stability of Japan, the region and the international community” and that Biden shared this view completely.

Analysts say there’s little the US and its allies can do to stop Kim’s relentless weapons buildup.

“The North Koreans are in no mood to talk. They’re in the mood of testing and blowing things off,” said Jeffrey Lewis, director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Project at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies.

Failed US-North Korea summits during the Trump administration have led Kim to believe he can gain nothing from talks, Lewis said.

Since 2019 negotiations with former US President Donald Trump were cut short with no agreement, the North Korean leader has laid out a program to develop missiles with nuclear capability – and he’s following that timetable, Lewis added.

“North Korea is going to keep conducting missile tests until the current round of modernization is done. I don’t think a nuclear (test) explosion is far behind,” Lewis said.

Kirby, the National Security Council spokesperson, said North Korea is making progress.

Every time the Kim regime launches a weapon, “They learn, they get better, they get more capable,” he said in an interview with Fox News on Tuesday.

Ankit Panda, senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said North Korea appeared set on a course to develop nuclear weapons.

“Denuclearization is now I think in the dustbin of history as a failed policy,” he said.

“There is simply no practical plan at this point, especially in the short term, to bring North Korea to the negotiating table and to pursue denuclearization.”

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What you need to know about North Korea’s missile test over Japan

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Seoul, South Korea
CNN
 — 

North Korea fired a ballistic missile without warning over Japan on Tuesday for the first time in five years, a highly provocative and reckless act that marks a significant escalation in its weapons testing program.

The missile traveled over northern Japan early in the morning, and is believed to have landed in the Pacific Ocean. The last time North Korea fired a ballistic missile over Japan was in 2017.

This marks North Korea’s 23rd missile launch this year, including the most ballistic missiles fired in a single year since leader Kim Jong Un took power in 2012. By comparison, Pyongyang conducted four tests in 2020 and eight in 2021.

Here’s what you need to know about North Korea’s missile tests.

Tuesday’s missile flew a distance of about 4,600 kilometers (2,858 miles), with an altitude of some 1,000 kilometers (621 miles) and a top speed reaching Mach 17 – meaning 17 times the speed of sound, according to Japanese officials.

By way of comparison, the US island territory of Guam is just 3,380 kilometers (2,100 miles) from North Korea.

Two experts told CNN these flight details suggest the missile fired was likely a Hwasong-12 – an intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM) last tested in January.

“This is a missile that North Korea started testing in 2017 … So it’s not really a new missile,” said Jeffrey Lewis, director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program at CNS.

But, he added, its launch is significant because of the distance it can travel.

“North Korea has a bunch of missiles that are shorter range, and that wouldn’t go over Japan – but they have a small number of missiles that could make that journey,” he said.

North Korea usually fires its missiles into waters off the coast of the Korean Peninsula – making this flight over Japan considerably more provocative, for both practical and symbolic reasons.

This kind of unannounced launch could pose risks to aircraft and ships as the missile travels down to its target, since they would have no prior warning to avoid the area.

And if the test had failed, causing the missile to fall short, it could have endangered major population areas. The missile flew over Japan’s Tohoku region, according to Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirokazu Matsuno, which is home to more than 8 million people.

In the past, US planes have been grounded as a ‘precaution’ following North Korean missile launches. And in late November 2017, several commercial jet pilots were reported to have seen what appeared to be the re-entry of a North Korean missile as it approached the Sea of Japan.

However, Lewis emphasized, such risks are statistically low, especially that far out in the Pacific and that high above Japan as it flew overhead. Mostly, it’s an escalation simply because “it’s provocative to fire a missile over your neighbor.”

“For the Japanese especially, it feels like a violation of their sovereignty,” Lewis said. “If Russia fired a missile over Florida, we would have a fit.”

And, experts say, it’s a sign of Kim’s ambitions for North Korea’s weapons development – and of what’s yet to come.

There are differing opinions on what may have driven North Korea to fire Tuesday’s missile.

Robert Ward, senior fellow for Japanese Security Studies at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, pointed to the multiple security threats faced by Japan, from an aggressive Russia to its north and China to its south.

“North Korea may be trying to exploit the unstable international situation, which it will see as a tailwind,” he said.

Lewis disagreed, saying that although North Korea sometimes responds or retaliates to specific actions by Western players or groups, for the large part “they have their own schedule … and I don’t think that we have a lot of impact on the timing.”

There are also practical reasons; North Korea often takes breaks in testing during the summer when weather is bad, and pick up again once the fall and early winter arrive – meaning now could just be the right conditions for a test, he added.

Joseph Dempsey, research associate for defense and military analysis at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, added that Tuesday’s flight path could just make for a better test.

These types of missiles are meant for long-range targets – so flying it over Japan could help North Korea gauge its accuracy over a longer distance, its ability to withstand different forces exerted on the missile, and other factors, compared to its usual “lofted” tests – which travel higher in altitude and splash down west of Japan.

Explained: How much damage can North Korea’s weapons do?

Kim had vowed earlier this year to develop North Korea’s nuclear arms at the “highest possible” speed – and experts say Tuesday’s launch is part of that push for weapons advancement.

“North Korea is going to keep conducting missile tests until the current round of modernization is done,” Lewis said, adding that a nuclear test could come “anytime.”

South Korean and US officials have been warning since May that North Korea may be preparing for a nuclear test, with satellite imagery showing activity at its underground nuclear test site.

If North Korea conducts a test, it would be the country’s seventh underground nuclear test and the first in nearly five years.

There are also other missile tests to watch. Apart from the Hwasong-12, North Korea also has three intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) capable of flying over Japan, though these have not been tested “to their full range yet,” said Lewis.

“This is probably an appetizer for the main course, which is yet to come,” he added. “I would expect that when North Korea has more confidence in one of their ICBMs, they might fly one of those to full range over Japan.”

Leif-Eric Easley, associate professor of international studies at Ewha Womans University in Seoul, added that North Korea could be waiting until after China holds its Communist Party Congress in mid-October to “conduct an even more significant test.”

“The Kim regime is developing weapons such as tactical nuclear warheads and submarine-launched ballistic missiles as part of a long-term strategy to outrun South Korea in an arms race and drive wedges among US allies,” Easley said.

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