Chronologies
North Korea - South Korea
Chronology from May 2017 to Aug 2017
: Yonhap says the Moon administration is seeking to ensure that North Korea participate in the upcoming Pyeongchang Winter Olympics next February, hoping this will help ease inter-Korean tensions.
: Annual Ulchi Freedom Guardian US-ROK war games, which are mainly computer- rather than field-based, begin. This year’s exercise is slightly smaller than in 2016, but US Defense Secretary Jim Mattis denies that this is a gesture to Pyongyang. Unimpressed DPRK media as usual shrilly excoriate these maneuvers as a rehearsal for invasion.
: On Liberation Day (from Japan in 1945: a holiday in both Koreas), Moon Jae-in vows to prevent a new Korean war “at all costs.” He insists: “Military action on the Korean Peninsula can only be decided by the ROK and no one may decide to take military action without the consent of the ROK.” The main opposition LKP accuses Moon of “running about in confusion,” voicing fears that South Korea “will be relegated into an observer country.”
: After Pyongyang threatens to fire missiles at Guam, ROK Vice Unification Minister Chun Hae-sung says Seoul is “considering all necessary steps to reduce tensions on the peninsula” and “will leave the door open for dialogue with the North.”
: Rodong Sinmun condemns South Korea’s “commemorations with July 27 as an occasion” (the word armistice is not mentioned) as a “disgusting burlesque” by “traitors” and “lackeys.” It warns that if provoked again, “[our] army and people will wipe out the enemies to the last one so that there would be no one left to sign a document of surrender.”
: Leif-Eric Easley of Ewha University in Seoul neatly sums up the current inter-Korean situation: “Moon assembles dream team, but North Korea unwilling to play.”
: DPRK test-fires another claimed ICBM, its second this month.
: Unseen for the past 15 days, Kim Jong Un re-emerges on what the DPRK celebrates as Victory Day to pay tribute to the fallen in Pyongyang’s Fatherland Liberation War Martyrs Cemetery.
: Dismissing Seoul’s call for better inter-Korean ties as “nonsense,” Rodong Sinmun tells South Korea to end its “submission” to the US: “Ditching confrontation and hostility is a precondition for opening the door for the two Koreas’ reconciliation and unity.”
: MOU says it called the DPRK liaison office at Panmunjom, but no one answered. Inter-Korean communication channels were cut by North Korea in February 2016 after the South closed the Kaesong Industrial Complex.
: South Korea’s Ministry of National Defense (MND) proposes inter-Korean military talks to reduce border tensions on July 21 at Tongilgak, North Korea’s main building at the Panmunjom. Separately, the ROK Red Cross suggests talks on Aug. 1 about resuming family reunions. Both dates pass with no reply from Pyongyang.
: DPRK website Uriminzokkiri features a video interview with Jon Hye Song, a young woman who defected to the ROK in 2014. Known there as Im Ji-hyun, she was a well-known figure on TV shows featuring DPRK defectors. Like previous such returnees, she now tearfully repents and begs the motherland’s forgiveness. Some in Seoul claim she must have been abducted. (Note: The Uriminzokkiri video is very slow-loading. Until recently this could also be watched on YouTube, but in an act of gratuitous censorship YouTube has recently shut down this and other DPRK accounts.)
: Yonhap, the ROK’s quasi-official news agency, quotes an unnamed senior official as saying there is no evidence that monies the DPRK received from the joint venture Kaesong Industrial Complex (KIC) went to fund its nuclear program. Such a link was alleged by the Park Geun-hye administration as one reason for closing the KIC in February 2016.
: MOU says South Korea will seek fresh inter-Korean talks once it gauges North Korea’s reaction to President Moon’s Berlin speech.
: In a major speech given at the Körber Foundation in Berlin, President Moon calls on North Korea to choose peace and cooperation. He insists that, “We do not wish for the collapse of North Korea, and we will not pursue any form of unification by absorbing the other … [or] unification by force.”
: Cho Myoung-gyon formally starts work as the 39th minister of unification. He succeeds Park Geun-hye’s appointee Hong Yong-pyo, who had served since February 2015.
: Report published by the Korea Development Institute (KDI), an ROK state think-tank, notes that the only sphere of North-South socio-cultural exchanges still ongoing is sports. It suggests using this as an icebreaker for wider inter-Korean relations, given Kim Jong Un’s personal interest in this field.
: ROK National Assembly approves Cho Myoung-gyon as unification minister. The conservative main opposition Liberty Korea Party (LKP), keen to block Moon’s Cabinet nominees – the new foreign minister, Kang Kyung-wha, failed to get parliamentary approval, which is not mandatory – concedes that Cho has no “major ethical lapses.”
: With President Moon watching, the ROK successfully test-fires a Hyunmoo-2 missile, whose 500 mile range – the maximum currently allowed under an accord with the US – means it can strike anywhere in the DPRK.
: ROK’s official National Unification Advisory Council (NUAC) publishes a survey it conducted on June 9-11. 77 percent of South Koreans polled support a resumption of North-South dialogue; 22 percent disagree. NUAC finds a similar divide (74 vs 23) on whether Seoul should allow private business inter-Korean contacts. 48 percent expect North-South relations to improve.
: On the 17th anniversary of the first North-South summit, MOU calls for peace and reconciliation. For its part, North Korea blames the South for the absence of any joint celebrations this year, and accuses Seoul of “reading the face of the US.”
: President Moon nominates Cho Myoung-gyon as Minister of Unification. A career official with 28 years’ service in the MOU, Cho had key roles at KEDO and the Kaesong Industrial Complex (KIC) in 2004-06, before serving the late President Roh Moo-hyun as secretary for unification, diplomacy and security in the Blue House during 2006-08.
: South Korean preparatory group says there will be no joint celebrations of the anniversary of the first inter-Korean summit meeting on June 15, 2000. North Korea has yet to invite them to Pyongyang, but the group also said, “it is regrettable that the [Southern] government has not presented a clear stance over its approval.”
: MOU approves four more applications by Southern NGOs to contact North Korea, bringing the total of such approvals to 15 in less than a month since Moon Jae-in took office. Park Geun-hye, by contrast, had ended up banning all civilian contacts. The same day two of these organizations say the North refuse to let them visit, in protest of Seoul’s support for the latest UN sanctions against the DPRK.
: Reacting to a string of DPRK ballistic missile tests this year, the UN Security Council (UNSC) unanimously passes another resolution criticizing North Korea, its seventh since 2006. UNSCR 2356 censures such activity and further tightens economic sanctions.
: South Korea returns six Northern fishermen whose boats drifted into ROK waters on May 27. The North refuses two different phone calls at Panmunjom – one direct, the other via the UN Military Armistice Commission – so the South has to communicate its plan via loudspeaker across the DMZ. A DPRK guide vessel duly receives the six men and one boat (the other was damaged beyond repair) at the east coast marine border, whose demarcation unlike that on the west coast is agreed and not disputed.
: Yonhap quotes an unnamed official source as saying the Moon government plans additional financial support for not only Southern firms impacted by closure of the KIC, but also those harmed by suspension of tourism to Mount Kumgang since 2008 and by Lee Myung-bak’s 2010 ban on non-KIC trade with and investment in North Korea.
: South Korea’s Unification Ministry (MOU) calls for restoration of the inter-Korean hotline at Panmunjom. Set up in 1971 and periodically suspended since, this has been inactive – meaning the North refuses to answer the South’s daily calls – since February 2016.
: DPRK Central Public Prosecutors Office says it will demand the extradition of those behind the alleged “bid to commit state-sponsored terrorism against its supreme leadership.” It names three ROK NIS operatives, including the agency’s outgoing director.
: DPRK Central Public Prosecutors Office says it will demand the extradition of those behind the alleged “bid to commit state-sponsored terrorism against its supreme leadership.” It names three ROK NIS operatives, including its outgoing director.
: Moon Jae-in is sworn in as the ROK’s 19th president. In his inaugural speech he expresses willingness to go anywhere for peace, including Pyongyang.
: Without delay, Moon Jae-in is sworn in as the ROK’s 19th president. In his inaugural speech he expresses willingness to go anywhere for peace, including Pyongyang.
: Two of Moon’s first appointments highlight North Korea. New National Intelligence Service (NIS) Director Suh Hoon lived there for two years and helped organize inter-Korean summits. Im Jong-seok, Moon’s Blue House chief of staff – one of two, it later transpires – was jailed in his youth for organising an illegal visit to Pyongyang by a fellow-student.
: Two of Moon’s first appointments highlight North Korea. New NIS director Suh Hoon lived there for two years, working for the former KEDO (Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization) consortium; he later helped arrange the two inter-Korean summits. Im Jong-seok, Moon’s Blue House chief of staff – one of two, it later transpires – was jailed in his youth for organizing an illegal visit to Pyongyang by a fellow-student.
: South Korea holds its 19th presidential election, seven months ahead of the normal schedule because of Park Geun-hye’s impeachment. The main opposition candidate, Moon Jae-in of the Minjoo Party (Democrats), wins overwhelmingly.
: South Korea holds its 19th presidential election, seven months ahead of the normal schedule owing to Park Geun-hye’s impeachment. The main opposition candidate, Moon Jae-in of the Minjoo Party (Democrats), wins overwhelmingly.
: On the eve of the ROK election, Rodong Sinmun advises South Koreans to “judge the puppet group of conservatives, accomplices with Park … as they punished Park.”
: Pyongyang media report Kim Jong Un’s conducting a field inspection of the KPA’s Southwestern Front Command on Changjae and Mu Islets, close to South Korea’s Yeonpyeong Island which Northern artillery shelled in November 2010, killing four. Calling that “the most delightful battle after the [sc 1953] ceasefire,” Kim examines “the plan for fire strike” and commands his troops “to break the backbone of the enemy once ordered.”
: — North Korea’s Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Country (CPRC) condemns the South’s “puppet Ministry of Unification” for planning a “south-north human rights dialogue.” Choice insults include: “The ‘idiots of the ministry’, who are reduced into living corpses and being treated like a mange-affected dog” – and much more.
May 9, 2017: On the eve of the ROK election, Rodong Sinmun, daily newspaper of the DPRK’s ruling Workers’ Party of Korea (WPK), urges South Korean voters to “judge the puppet group of conservatives, accomplices with Park … as they punished Park.”
May 9, 2017: On the eve of the ROK election, Rodong Sinmun, daily newspaper of the DPRK’s ruling Workers’ Party of Korea (WPK), urges South Korean voters to “judge the puppet group of conservatives, accomplices with Park … as they punished Park.”
: In a long statement, shrill even for Pyongyang and carried in full by the BBC, DPRK Ministry of State Security accuses US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and South Korea’s ‘Intelligence Service’ – presumably the National Intelligence Service (NIS) – of a plot to kill its supreme leadership using a “biochemical substance.”
: Pyongyang media report Kim Jong Un’s conducting a field inspection of the Korean People’s Army (KPA)’s Southwestern Front Command on Changjae and Mu Islets, close to South Korea’s Yeonpyeong Island which Northern artillery shelled in November 2010, killing four. Calling that “the most delightful battle after the [sc 1953] ceasefire”, Kim examines “the plan for fire strike” and commands his troops “to break the backbone of the enemy once ordered.”
: North Korea’s Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Country (CPRC) condemns the South’s “puppet Ministry of Unification” for planning a “‘south-north human rights dialogue.’” Choice insults include: “The ‘idiots of the ministry’ who are reduced into living corpses and being treated like a mange-affected dog” – and much more.
: In a long statement, shrill even for Pyongyang and carried in full by the BBC, the DPRK Ministry of State Security accuses the US CIA and South Korea’s ‘Intelligence Service’ of a dastardly plot to kill its supreme leadership using a “biochemical substance”.