Chronologies
North Korea - South Korea
Chronology from May 2024 to Dec 2024
: Nicely illustrating the Kim regime’s reportage dilemmas, Daily NK claims that college students in Haeju in the southwestern DPRK had to undergo self-criticism for raising questions after a lecture on anti-Yoon protests (which were widely reported in DPRK media prior to Dec. 3). The idea of approval ratings for leaders piqued their curiosity, as well it might. As one complained: “The lecturer brought up concepts we don’t understand, like the puppet state president’s approval rating. Why is it wrong to discuss what we learned?”
: Pyongyang finally comments on ructions in Seoul. Rodong Sinmun offers a surprisingly full and detailed account of “the puppet Yoon Suk Yeol’s actions and travails. (See Appendix II. As of Dec. 13 no official English translation has yet been published.)
: An article in the Seoul-based Daily NK, which has sources inside North Korea, details the DPRK reaction to Yoon’s declaration of martial law. The KPA General Staff immediately called a meeting around 11pm on Dec. 3 and put all forces on high alert until 5pm on Dec. 4. Some WPK officials senior enough to have access to outside media, who thus knew right away, allegedly feared the KPA had attacked the South without telling the Party. Others wondered if Northern agents in the South had been nabbed. Amid uncertainty on how to frame events, they went unreported for a week in DPRK media. Even the “reference newspaper,” circulated to high officials to tell them what is really going on in the world, had no mention for several days. (None of this can be confirmed.)
: NK News reports that DPRK media have suspended normal coverage of protests in Seoul against Yoon, even though the latest demonstrations are the largest yet. Rodong Sinmun, the Party daily, had covered these regularly since May 2023, including every week for the past five months—until now.
: Opposition lawmakers accuse ex-MND Kim Yong-hyun, now under arrest, of ordering the drone incursion that dropped leaflets on Pyongyang in Oct., and of pressing for military strikes against Northern trash balloon launch sites days before the martial law crisis. They claim that JCS chairman Adm. Kim Myung-soo refused the latter order as escalatory, whereupon Kim called him a “clueless fool…Get rid of him.” The JCS denies the latter story; re the drone, it repeats its position that it “has nothing to confirm.” (Adm. Kim was passed over to head the short-lived martial law command.)
: 400;">: KCNA announces that the 14th SPA will hold its 12th session on Jan. 22 (just after Donald Trump’s inauguration). The stated agenda includes “the issue of revising some provisions of the Socialist Constitution.” Nothing is said about fresh ‘elections,’ which are overdue: they should have been held in March.
: In a late night unscheduled TV broadcast Yoon Suk Yeol shocks South Koreans and the world by declaring martial law. “I declare martial law to protect the Republic of Korea from the threats of North Korean communist forces, to immediately eradicate the unscrupulous pro-Pyongyang antistate forces that pillage the freedom and happiness of our people and to protect free constitutional order.” Lawmakers rush to the National Assembly, despite police blocking entry, and the 190 present unanimously nullify martial law, which Yoon formally rescinds around 0430 on Dec. 4 (he later mendaciously claims to have done so much earlier, around 0100). Political crisis continues in Seoul at this writing, but social order is maintained. (See here for a detailed timeline of the initial events.)
: South Korea’s military says North Korea has cut Southern-built power lines which supplied electricity to the shuttered former joint venture Kaesong Industrial Complex (KIC). It expects the North will also demolish 15 pylons (of 48) which are on its territory. Although ROK then President Park Geun-hye abruptly closed the KIC in Feb. 2016, the South continued to supply power until June 2020 when the North blew up the inter-Korean liaison office in the zone.
: In something of a scoop, an NK News investigation near the DMZ identifies three hitherto unknown TV stations broadcasting South Korean content into the North. All ROK government agencies contacted offer a curt “no comment,” or fail to reply.
: ROK National Security Adviser Shin Won-sik says that in exchange for North Korea sending troops to fight Ukraine, “Russia is believed to have provided equipment and anti-air missiles to strengthen Pyongyang’s vulnerable air defense system.” Analysts say Kim Jong Un’s focus on offensive weapons systems has not been matched by attention to defense, which could risk incapacitation of critical command and control infrastructure in a conflict.
: Beyond Parallel, a DPRK-focused website run by the Korea Chair of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington DC, updates its tally and map of North Korea’s trash balloons. On 31 occasions starting May 28, the North “sent between 6,390 to 8,910 trash-filled balloons into South Korea, with over 3,117 balloons landing successfully.”
: After eight straight days of DPRK jamming of GPS signals, an unnamed ROK military official says the North has extended this to a range of regions along the DMZ. But the signals are weaker than in the May-June episode, and this time the purpose seems to be for anti-drone training rather than attacking the South.
: MOU publishes DPRK diplomatic cables from 2016-23 brought out by Ri Il-kyu, former political counsellor at North Korea’s embassy in Havana who defected last year. They show Kim Jong Un personally guiding responses to human rights criticisms. Pyongyang is sensitive to such critique from UN bodies, but cares less what NGOs say. Ri promises further revelations, in what he calls a “North Korean version of WikiLeaks.”
: MOU says that in response to Pyongyang’s deployment of troops to fight for Russia, Seoul “will proceed to implement effective, phased measures grounded in principles of composure and discipline.” It does not elaborate.
: ROK, Japan and US hold the second iteration of the trilateral multi-domain exercise Freedom Edge. PACOM reports: “Approximately 7,000 trilateral military and defense force personnel, seven ships and more than 20 fighter, maritime patrol and tanker aircraft executed Ballistic Missile Defense, Air Defense, Anti-Submarine Warfare, Maritime Interdiction, and Defensive Cyber training.”
: South Korea’s NIS says North Korean troops sent to Russia have moved to the frontline Kursk regions and are “already engaging in combat” against Ukrainian forces.
: South Korea’s defense ministry says: “More than 10,000 North Korean troops have currently gone to Russia, and we understand that a considerable number of them have moved to front-line areas, including Kursk.”
: ROK JCS say the North has built earth mounds 11 meters high, with anti-tank trenches, to completely block the inter-Korean road and rail links it severed in October. But they add that this is “just for show”: se are not militarily effective defenses.
: In his speech to the belated official opening of the National Assembly—read by Prime Minister Han Duck-soo, since (unprecedentedly in the democratic era) the president chose not to attend —Yoon avers: “The recent international security situation and the illegal military cooperation between North Korea and Russia pose a significant threat to our national security. We will thoroughly review all possible scenarios to prepare countermeasures.” He pledges to “work to expand the international community’s understanding and support for the vision of a free and unified Korea.”
: MOU says it presumes the new DPRK Institute of Enemy State Studies is a rebranding of the former National Reunification Institute under the WPK, which has long been Pyongyang’s main think-tank covering South Korea.
: Korea Internet & Security Agency (KISA), the ROK’s cybersecurity watchdog, warns that “amid the Russia-Ukraine war [and] North Korea’s dispatch of troops, cyber threats against South Korean organizations through distributed denial-of-service attacks have increased.”
: In another snappy headline—like the missiles, they are getting bigger—KCNA confirms: “Crucial Test Showing DPRK’s Definite Response Will and Overwhelming Edge of Its Strategic Attack Force. Test-fire of DPRK’s Latest ICBM Hwasongpho-19 Successfully Conducted under Guidance of Respected Comrade Kim Jong Un.” Somewhat contradictorily, after thundering that “The entity of absolute power loaded with the DPRK people’s soaring enmity and strong will to punish all evils and injustice on earth was launched toward the sky,” they go on: “The test-fire had no negative effect on the security of neighboring countries.”
: ROK and Japanese monitors report successful test of the DPRK’s biggest ICBM yet. Lofted vertically as usual, the Hwasong-19 flew almost 5,000 miles into space, landing in the East/Sea of Japan just over 1,000km east of where it launched. Flight time was a record 86 minutes.
: South Korea’s Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) tells lawmakers that North Korea has completed preparations to launch a long-range missile. Hedging its bets, the agency says this may be an ICBM to test reentry capabilities, or it could be “a space launch vehicle.”
: ROK military Cyber Operations Command tells the National Assembly’s Intelligence Committee that North Korea’s 8,400-strong hacking team—not further specified or named, so perhaps lumping together all the various different teams of DPRK threat actors—mounted some 15,000 cyber-attacks on the South’s defense sector during Jan.-Sept. this yea: up from 9,000 in 2022 and 13,000 in 2023. No major breaches occurred.
: NIS claims that Kim Jong Un’s personal security has been beefed up for fear of assassination attempts, and now includes equipment to jam communications and detect drones. Separately, the agency confirms reports that after 27 years North Korea has ditched the Juche calendar, based on the year of Kim Il Sung’s birth, which it introduced in 1997. This is seen as a move by Kim to boost his own status relative to his father and grandfather.
: North Korean propaganda leaflets, presumably carried by balloon, are found on the streets of Seoul. They attack Yoon and his wife, who is mired in scandal. In Reuters’ summary: “They included graphic messages accusing the Yoon government of failures that had left his people living in despair, and describing the first couple as immoral and mentally unstable.” This is the first of several leaflet drops. Meanwhile trash balloons keep coming too.
: In another press statement, this one weirdly petty, Kim Yo Jong chides ROK “idiots” for raising provenance and copyright issues about photos KCNA published of North Korea’s road-blocking explosions: “Their behavior makes even a cat laugh.”
: Under the headline “Roads and Railways to ROK Completely Blocked,” KCNA reports that by order no. 00122 of the WPK Central Military Commission (CMC), inter-Korean western and eastern road and rail links “have been completely blocked through blasting.” It calls this “an inevitable and legitimate measure…in keeping with the…DPRK Constitution which clearly defines the ROK as a hostile state.” The amended text of the said Constitution remains undisclosed. MOU comments: “This action is anti-unification and anti-national by betraying the hopes of the South Korean people and North Korean residents for unification, which the government strongly condemns.”
: On an inspection visit to the headquarters of the KPA Second Corps, Kim Jong Un summarizes his new line on the South. As quoted by KCNA, he “stressed that our army should keep in mind once again the stark fact that the ROK is a foreign country and an apparent hostile country. Recalling that we completely blocked the roads and railways to the territory of the ROK two days ago through blasting, he said that it means not only the physical closure but also the end of the evil relationship with Seoul which persistently lasted century after century and the complete removal of the useless awareness about fellow countrymen and unreasonable idea of reunification. And he added that it also means the last declaration that when the DPRK’s sovereignty is violated by the ROK, a hostile country, its physical forces will be used unhesitatingly, without sticking to conditions any longer. As we have already declared, if our offensive forces are used in the precondition of ‘if’, it constitutes legitimate retaliatory action against the hostile country, not the fellow countrymen.”
: As per its earlier notice, North Korea blows up roads that led to South Korea on its side of the DMZ. The explosive moment can be watched here.
: Pyongyang’s drone accusation sparks debate in Seoul and beyond. Having first denied any responsibility, the official ROK response shifts (tellingly) to neither confirm nor deny—along with counter-charges that this could be DPRK black propaganda.
: Seoul reveals that on Sept. 17 a North Korean defected by boat to the South’s Baengnyeong island, near the DPRK west coast, the third direct cross-border defection in two months.
: In what KCNA headlines as “Crucial Statement of DPRK Foreign Ministry,” North Korea claims that the ROK infiltrated drones on Oct. 3, 9, and 10, the last of which committed “such a hideous crime as scattering a huge number of anti-DPRK smear leaflets over the central part of Pyongyang.” State media publish photos of said leaflets: partly blurred, but leaving readers able to work out that they are criticizing Kim Jong Un for his luxury watch and his daughter’s expensive Dior coat while the people are starving.
: KCNA et al report that the 11th Session of the 14th SPA was held as scheduled on Oct. 7-8. The stated agenda includes amending the Constitution; but with no detail given, it is unclear whether this refers to Kim Jong Un’s new line on South Korea. The SPA appoints a new Minister of National Defence, No Kwang Chol. Or rather an old one, since No—a four-star general— held the same post in 2018-19, when it was called Minister of the People’s Armed Forces (MPAF). In that role he saluted Donald Trump in Singapore, who saluted back.
: KPA General Staff announces that, starting today, it will “completely cut off roads and railways connected to the ROK and fortify the relevant areas of our side with strong defence structures,” so as to “permanently shut off and block the southern border with the ROK, the primary hostile state and invariable principal enemy.” It adds that “the US forces side” (presumably the UN Command) was notified by telephone, “to prevent any misjudgment and accidental conflict.” This follows months of KPA clearing and other activities in the DMZ, including accidental crossings of the MDL, which were not so notified.
: Skipping the SPA, Kim Jong Un instead visits what is now his eponym: Kim Jong Un University of National Defense. Almost half his speech rants against South Korea, including this: “To be honest, we have no intention of attacking the Republic of Korea. Thinking of it is abominable, and we hate dealing with those in it. Formerly, we often spoke about liberating the south and reunification by force of arms, but now we are not interested in it. And since our statement about two separate states, we have been all the more unwilling to be conscious of the state in the south. However, the point is that the latter provokes us now and then.” His second sentence was actually: “Even thinking about them gives me the creeps and I don’t even want to get near those people.” KCNA’s translators evidently deemed that undignified. (In Korean: 의식하는것조차도 소름이 끼치고 그 인간들과는 마주서고싶지도 않습니다.)
: Visiting a “training base of KPA special operation units in the western area,” Kim Jong Un launches his strongest attack for two years on “the puppet Yoon Suk Yeol, who had never been rid of his anti-DPRK intent” a propos Yoon’s Oct. 1 speech. Chiding him for “bragg[ing] about overwhelming counteraction of military muscle at the doorstep of the state possessed of nuclear weapons,” which he called “a great irony that caused the suspicion of being an abnormal man,” Kim warns that “to pray for a good luck of survival in a military conflict with the nuclear weapons state would be a foolish thing…if such situation comes, the permanent existence of Seoul and the Republic of Korea would be impossible.”
: 400;">: In the first of a plethora of anti-ROK press statements in Oct.—too numerous and repetitious to itemize here—Kim Jong Un’s sister Kim Yo Jong mocks South Korea’s military parade. She derides Seoul’s newly revealed Hyonmoo-5 ballistic missile as “a weapon of worthless large bulk.” In a rhetorical flourish which KCNA uses in its headline, she concludes: “Is the event marking the ROK ‘army day’ a ‘boast of strength’ by the group of curs or a funeral procession of colonial mercenary army?”
: In a speech on Armed Forces Day, which (unusually for this Korea) features a military parade, President Yoon warns: “If North Korea attempts to use nuclear weapons…that day will be the end of the North Korean regime.”
: Yoon slams the idea of jettisoning Korean reunification as “unconstitutional” and “incomprehensible,” adding: “Is the two nations theory really possible?”
: JCS state: “While there may be inconveniences and difficulties caused by North Korea’s trash balloons, our fundamental measure to eradicate them is to show that ‘there is nothing to gain for the enemy.’” But they promise “stern military measures” should citizens’ safety be endangered, “or if the North is assessed to have crossed the line.” They add that shooting the balloons down would increase risk. This follows the North sending some balloons with timers for releasing their load, which could be a fire hazard.
: Rejecting Moon’s call for a Nordpolitik rethink, President Yoon’s office brands his predecessor’s approach unrealistic: “Didn’t they lobby the US and the world that ‘the war is over, and peace has arrived?’ It is a matter of how to build peace.”
: Exactly 4,000 days after North Korea sentenced Kim Jung-wook, a Southern missionary, to hard labor for life on espionage charges, unification minister Kim Yung-ho calls on Pyongyang to “immediately and unconditionally” return him and five other South Koreans detained in the North. Yonhap calls this “a rare statement.” In fact the Yoon administration has strongly prioritized these cases, as discussed in previous issues.
: For the second time, a DPRK trash balloon lands inside the government complex in Seoul. The first one, in May, landed on the roof. Another was found inside the presidential office compound in July. This latest reportedly carries mostly household garbage, including a green piece of plastic with an address in Pyongyang.
: Visiting Prague to support South Korea’s bid to build a new nuclear power plant in Czechia, President Yoon denies that Seoul seeks its own nuclear weapons, and says it is focused on strengthening joint deterrence with the US.
: In a speech in Gwangju marling the sixth anniversary of his joint Pyongyang Declaration with Kim Jong Un after their third summit, former President Moon urges Seoul to “completely review the existing discourse about peace and unification…now that North Korea has defined inter-Korean ties as ones between two hostile nations…We are at a very dangerous moment where just one small wrong step could turn into a military clash.” His ex-chief of staff Im Jong-seok—long a controversial figure—goes further, blasphemously suggesting that reunification as a goal be abandoned altogether: “I think it would be good for South and North Korea to live just as they are while respecting each other.”
: Seoul media report that North Korea too has activated border loudspeakers. These emit not propaganda but weird deafening high-pitched noises, making life a misery for South Koreans living within range. Opinions differ on whether this is anti-ROK psy-war, or rather a crude form of jamming to prevent North Koreans hearing the South’s broadcasts.
: Opening Cyber Summit Korea, a global event hosted by the NIS, Yoon says that South Korea’s continuously developing its cyber defense capabilities to deal with hostile forces like North Korea has made it “a cyber drill hub in the Indo-Pacific region.” On Sept. 1 the National Security Council (NSC) unveils a National Cybersecurity Basic Plan, involving 14 different government agencies.
: In a third successive night of DPRK rubbish balloons, the ROK JCS say 260 were launched, 140 trash bundles landed in Seoul and surrounding Gyeonggi province. These mainly comprise paper and plastic bottles; no hazardous substances are found. In response, South Korea continues to blast the North daily with propaganda from loudspeakers.
: PUAC head and former DPRK diplomat Tae Yong-ho suggests that one reason Pyongyang has not reacted to Yoon’s new unification vision is that it has not yet institutionalized Kim Jong Un’s new line of two hostile states: “I believe North Korea has not yet fully established the theoretical framework to justify the policy internally.”
: NIS says it has detected signs that North Korea might have executed some officials after the recent flood damage. Victims may include Kang Pong Hun, the dismissed party secretary of Jagang province.
: A report from the Institute for National Security Strategy (INSS), the NIS’s think-tank, reckons that during 2017-23 North Korea earned $6.29 billion from illicit or banned activities, despite sanctions. The biggest item was coal exports ($2.15 billion), followed by income from workers in China and Russia ($1.75bn) and cybercrime ($1.35bn). Arms sales to Russia are a new revenue stream, earning $540 million last year.
: For the first time since last November, MOU permits nine South Korean NGOs to try to contact North Korea and offer aid for flood damage relief. It is unclear whether anything comes of this.
: MOU says it is seeking to verify a report from an NGO that 15 North Korean would-be defectors (13 women and two children) were ambushed and arrested on Aug. 21 in Kunming in southern China. They were about to board a boast to southeast Asia, but have now been sent to Jilin for likely repatriation to the tender mercies of the DPRK.
: As UFS continues, separate joint coastal maneuvers begin. During the 13-day Ssangyong (meaning Double Dragon) exercise, over 40 US and ROK aircraft, 40 ships and 40 amphibious assault vehicles practice landings on South Korean east coast beachheads.
: NIS doubts if North Korea has sufficient missiles to equip the hundreds of new launchers that Kim Jong Un ceremonially sent to the front line on Aug. 5, given that it is also supplying Russia. It also suggests that Kim visited flooded areas in North Pyongan rather than harder-hit Jagang province, to avoid exposing the latter’s military installations to scrutiny. Major arms factories are located in Jagang.
: MOU suggests that Kim Jong Un is seeking to shift the blame for destruction caused by recent floods to lower-level officials: “This could mean that North Korea’s flood damage is very significant and people’s discontent remains high.”
: Ulchi Freedom Shield (UFS) begins. This 11-day exercise includes 48 field training events such as amphibious landings and live-fire drills, 10 more than last year; and 17 brigade-level exercises, up from four in 2023. As UFS kicks off, Yoon warns: “We must strengthen our readiness to respond to North Korea’s gray-zone provocations, such as the spread of false information, fake news and cyberattacks.” He adds, ominously: “Anti-state forces that threaten the free democracy are operating covertly in various places.”
: Pyongyang criticizes imminent Ulchi Freedom Shield, the major ROK-US annual summer combined military exercise. The DPRK Foreign Ministry’s Institute for American Studies says this “fully betrays its dangerous colors as the biggest military training in the Asia-Pacific region and offensive multinational muscle-flexing involving even NATO member states.”
: MOU Kim Yung-ho calls on Pyongyang to accept Yoon’s offer. Opining that the North “will carefully review” Seoul’s proposal and not reject it out of hand, he denies that it is tantamount to unification by absorption: “We seek a gradual and peaceful unification.”
: Kim Yong-hyun, the ROK Presidential Security Service chief (and old school friend of President Yoon) nominated to be Minister of National Defense, says “all means and methods are open” for South Korea to counter the North’s nuclear threat. Kim has in the past called for Seoul to acquire its own nuclear deterrent. On Sept. 2, at his parliamentary confirmation hearing, Kim is explicit: going nuclear “is included among all possible options.”
: President Yoon proclaims what is touted as a new vision of reunification. On Liberation Day (from Japan in 1945: a holiday in both Koreas), he says: “Complete liberation remains an unfinished task…The freedom we enjoy must be extended to the frozen kingdom of the North, where people are deprived of freedom and suffer from poverty and starvation. Only when a unified free and democratic nation rightfully owned by the people is established across the entire Korean Peninsula will we finally have complete liberation.” Somewhat contradictorily, he also proposes an official dialogue channel with Pyongyang which can “take up any issue.” (The full text is here, among other places.)
: MOU suggests that Kim Jong Un’s lashing out at South Korean media reports of massive casualties from flood damage in the North is a diversionary tactic “to minimize the deterioration of public sentiment by shifting the subject of criticism to the outside.”
: In a speech to flood victims, Kim Jong Un attacks South Korea—the “dirty, rubbish country”—at some length. “The rubbish ROK’s media are desperately slandering all the socialist benefits and measures taken by our Party and government for the flood victims.” He is especially riled by the claim of 1,000+ casualties, but offers no alternative figure.
: ROK JCS say no signs have yet been detected of the new tactical missile launchers ceremoniously transferred on Aug. 4 arriving at front-line units, adding that it will take “considerable” time for the North to manufacture enough missiles for them (they carry four each). Also Pyongyang lacks fissile material for so many warheads.
: In a policy report to the National Assembly, the ROK MND says that despite recent downpours the DPRK continues to lay landmines and build walls within the DMZ. It also tallies the North’s launches so far this year: 37 ballistic missiles on eight occasions, plus 11 cruise missiles in six instances. Seoul has responded with 10 large-scale combined drills with the US in the first half of this year: twice as many as during the same period last year.
: Under the snappy headline “Commissioning Ceremony of Absolute Weaponry Demonstrating Sure Victory of Cause of Building Powerful Army Ceremony for Celebrating Transfer of New-Type Tactical Ballistic Missile Weapon System Takes Place with Splendor,” KCNA reports that on Aug. 4 Kim Jong Un, with daughter Ju Ae, presides at the handover—held at night, with fireworks, at the Mirim military parade training complex in Pyongyang—of 250 nuclear-capable “new-type tactical ballistic missile launchers,” said to be “personally designed by Kim Jong Un and impeccably completed under his energetic guidance,” to front-line units. (Days earlier, monsoon rains severely flooded the northwestern DPRK where major arms factories are located). A female-led band, clad in tee-shirts bearing the DPRK flag, plays the national anthem in heavy-rock style; some attendees are visibly baffled.
: South Korea’s Korea Cybersecurity Intelligence Community—an inter-agency body comprising the NIS, prosecution, police, and military—warns of a sharp increase n North Korean hackers trying to steal data on construction and machinery. It attributes this to Kim Jong Un’s plans to boost economic projects in the provinces.
: MOU concurs that the North must have suffered “considerable casualties” from flooding, although material damage appears less than in 2010, 2016 and 2020. Soon after, the ministry says “it is willing to urgently support North Korean flood victims with the necessary supplies from a humanitarian and fraternal perspective through the Korean Red Cross.”
: KCNA confirms that “Many public buildings, facilities, roads and railways, including more than 4,100…houses and nearly 3 000 hectares of farmlands, were flooded in Sinuiju City and Uiju County.” It is silent on casualties. Kim Jong Un visits affected areas. An emergency enlarged Politburo meeting, held in Sinuiju on July 29-30 on Kim’s personal train, sacks the Minister of Public Security and the Party secretaries in the two provinces worst hit, Jagang and North Pyongan. Kim proposes “to strictly punish those who severely neglected their responsible duties assigned by the Party and the state and thus caused even the casualty that can not be allowed.”
: ROK defense ministry reveals that a military court has issued an arrest warrant for an unnamed civilian employee of the Korea Defense Intelligence Command, who allegedly devastated South Korea’s spy network by passing the names of “black” (covert) agents to a Chinese ethnic Korean national suspected of working for Pyongyang.
: NK News reports that South Korea will spend $530,000 this year on overseas conferences spotlighting North Korean human rights: more than MOU spends on counseling centers and trauma recovery programs for escapees from the North.
: ROK Presidential Security Service (PSS) says a North Korean trash balloon landed in the presidential compound today. Nothing dangerous is found.
: MOU Kim Yung-ho tells an ROK-sponsored forum in Washington on DPRK human rights that over half the 196 Northern defectors last year were young, or high-ranking officials. This “attest[s] to the influence of South Korean culture, which is causing cracks in the rigid wall of juche…“many North Koreans are consuming juche culture by day and South Korean culture by night.” Hence “the importance of cultural approaches is increasing alongside political and military approaches to strongly deter North Korea’s military threats.”
: MOU says 105 defectors reached South Korea in the first half of 2024, more than the 99 who arrived in Jan.-June last year: 43 came in the first quarter, 62 in the second.
: Tae Yong-ho, appointed a week earlier by President Yoon as head of the Peaceful Unification Advisory Council, says his appointment sends a message to Pyongyang that Seoul seeks peaceful reunifications A former DPRK deputy ambassador in London who escaped to Seoul in 2016, Tae is the first defector to head the PUAC.
: With DPRK balloon launches continuing, after four days of limited broadcasts South Korea turns on all its border loudspeakers. Yonhap notes that programs “typically comprise news, a message urging North Korean soldiers near the border to escape to South Korea, as well as K-pop songs including…BTS’ megahit singles ‘Dynamite’ and ‘Butter.’
: After a further wave of North Korean trash balloons, South Korea resumes propaganda broadcasts into the North from areas where the balloons landed. The loudspeakers blare for 10 hours starting at 1800 local time (i.e., throughout most of the night).
: After Kim Yo Jong’s threats, ROK Defense Minister Shin Won-sik calls for firm readiness against DPRK provocations. The JCS urge vigilance lest recent heavy rains wash Northern mines into the South. A spokesman says: “North Korea tends to randomly place them without relevant safety measures…Whether it occurs intentionally or naturally due to heavy rains, there is a higher possibility of the land mines flowing down.”
: Kim Yo Jong weighs in again, in surprising detail. 29 large balloons “sent by the scum of the Republic of Korea” landed in six different counties. “In case the scum of the ROK continues to conduct crude and dirty acts, the change in our countermeasure will be inevitable…I warn seriously again. They should be ready for gruesome and horrible cost.”
: Kim Yo Jong, noting that “dirty leaflets and things of the ROK scum have been found again in the border area,” warns that “the ROK clans…must be ready for paying a very high price for their dirty play.” Pyongyang duly sends further waves of trash balloons, while defector activists in the South continue to launch further leaflet-bearing balloons.
: South Korea’s defense ministry (MND) says it will rename and reorganize its North Korea policy division. Henceforth to be dubbed the North Korea strategy division, this will concentrate on sanctions and their enforcement, while scaling down its focus on inter-Korean military talks and agreements (those now being a dead letter).
: South Korea’s Ministry of Environment says the North seems to have released water from its Hwanggang dam on the Imjin river without notice, but the volume is small enough to pose no downstream threat. It is over a decade (2013) since Pyongyang last deigned to give Seoul the advanced warning it agreed to, after an earlier huge unannounced discharge killed six South Korean campers in 2009. Another small discharge is detected on July 18.
: Kim Yo Jong denounces South Korea’s resumption of live-fire drills near the inter-Korean border, as well as the recent tripartite Freedom Edge military exercises as “suicidal hysteria” and an “inexcusable and explicit provocation.” (She seems to forget a rash of DPRK artillery drills near the border in late 2022, violating the inter-Korean military agreement which has since been suspended.)
: MOU says that during Aug.-Oct it will spend 815 million won ($592,000) on a survey of separated families. Hitherto quinquennial, future surveys will be done every three years. This cohort’s number has fallen to 38,295 as of end-May: two-thirds are over 80.
: JCS disses another KPA missile launch (see June 28). Hours after Pyongyang boasts that it successfully tested a new tactical ballistic missile on July 1, Seoul suggests that that is a “lie.” North Korea claims its Hwasong-11Da-4.5, with a 4.5 ton ‘super-heavy’ warhead, “hit accuracy (sic) at the maximum range of 500 kilometers and the minimum range of 90 km”. South Korea’s military say they detected two BM launches, which travelled 600 km and 120 km. They reckon the latter was a failure: it flew abnormally, and came down on land rather than at sea. State media published no photographs of this test.
: South Korea holds its first live-fire on-land artillery drills near the DMZ in six years. These were banned under the now-suspended 2018 inter-Korean military pact.
: MOU publishes a 1,693-page dossier of newly declassified documents on inter-Korean contacts during 1981-87, when military dictator Chun Doo-hwan was ROK president. These run the gamut: from the North’s bid to kill Chun in Rangoon in 1983 (17 other South Koreans died), to its sending flood aid to the South just two years later in 1985, among much else. This is the fifth such cache of documents to be published since May 2022.
: MOU says that since June 20 North Korea’s Korean Central Television has, for reasons unknown, switched the carrier of its TV broadcasts from China’s ChinaSat 12 to Russia’s Express 103 satellite. This makes them harder to access in South Korea: verboten for ordinary citizens, but government, researchers, and media are permitted to do so.
: In a longish statement, robust but not histrionic, the DPRK foreign ministry condemns “Freedom Edge, the first tripartite multi-domain joint military exercises in the waters near the DPRK from June 27 to 29…Lurking behind this is the US strategic scenario to use the US-Japan-ROK tripartite military bloc as a three-horse carriage for carrying out its strategy for hegemony in not only Northeast Asia but also the rest of the world.”
: A day after North Korea claimed it had successfully test-launched a multiple-warhead missile, South Korea’s JCS release a video showing that in fact the rocket exploded in mid-air after travelling only 250 km.
: South Korea sanctions eight named North Koreans, four Russian vessels, and five entities of various types for illicit trade in weapons and fuel in violation of UN sanctions. The entities sanctioned include the DPRK Missile Administration. As ever these measures are largely notional, as none of those sanctioned would have dealings with South Korea anyway.
: 400;">June 27, 2024: MOU releases its second annual report on North Korean human rights. Based on testimony from 141 defectors who reached Seoul in 2023, this includes claims of public executions for watching ROK media. A law against reactionary ideology also criminalizes white wedding dresses, a groom carrying the bride on his back, and wearing sunglasses.
: ROK Marine Corps holds its first live-fire drills for seven years on Yeonpyeong and Baengnyeong islands in the West/Yellow Sea, which are close to the DPRK.
: In a threat to directly arm Ukraine, speaking on KBS TV, ROK NSA Chang Ho-jin says: “It all depends on what Russia will do. Will there be any line remaining for us if Russia gives precision weapons to North Korea?”
: ROK JCS say that KPA troops working in the DMZ briefly crossed the Military Demarcation Line (MDL, the actual border within the DMZ) around 1100 local time. They returned after the South broadcast warnings and fired warning shots. This is the third such incident by work parties of 20-30 Northern soldiers in the central area of the front, following incursions on June 9 and 18. Seoul judges all to be accidental. Since April the North has deployed thousands of troops in 10 different locations in the DMZ for a range of activities: reinforcing roads, planting mines (with “multiple casualties,” according to the JCS) and erecting presumed anti-tank barriers.
: South Korea expresses “grave concern” at the Russia-DPRK comprehensive strategic partnership signed in Pyongyang on June 19 by Kim Jong Un and Vladimir Putin. This includes a mutual pledge to provide immediate military assistance if one is attacked. In the light of this, National Security Advisor Chang Ho-jin says: “We plan to reconsider the issue of arms support to Ukraine.” Seoul has not hitherto supplied weapons directly to Kyiv.
: FFNK’s Park Sang-hak says his group has sent 20 balloons carrying 300,000 leaflets, US dollars, and USB sticks containing a hit K-drama and songs across the DMZ from the border city of Paju. Next day Kim Yo Jong warns that the North will retaliate in kind.
: “Sources” tell Yonhap that the ROK seized a cargo ship in the Korea Strait, which it suspects of breaching UN sanctions against the DPRK. The 2,900-ton vessel—its name and flag are not revealed—is carrying coal and iron ore. It is now at anchorage in Busan. Seoul effected a similar seizure of another small cargo vessel in March.
: South Korea’s NIS says it has detected signs that North Korea is demolishing part of the Donghae inter-Korean railway line. In 2006 Seoul built and paid for 27 km of new track linking the two Koreas’ railway systems along the east coast, but after a test run in 2007 this was never used again.
: In response to North Korea’s trash balloon campaign, South Korea’s National Security Council decides to fully suspend 2018’s inter-Korean tension reduction pact—which Pyongyang already repudiated, after Seoul partially suspended it in November. The Cabinet and President Yoon Suk Yeol endorse this on June 4, whereupon the Ministry of National Defense says it will resume military activities near the DMZ which the accord had banned.
: ROK National Security Adviser Chang Ho-jin threatens the DPRK with “unendurable” consequences, saying its “flying of trash balloons and GPS jamming are such despicable provocations that could not have been imagined by a normal country.” He adds that Seoul’s riposte may include resuming loudspeaker broadcasts across the DMZ.
: ROK National Police Agency reports that as of 1600 local time it has received 581 reports of North Korean balloon sightings, mostly in western Seoul but also further afield. The JCS say they have detected 720 incoming balloons since 2000 the previous evening. This latest wave carries trash such as cigarette butts, paper and plastic bags, but not feces as in the first batch. Incheon International Airport has been briefly disrupted several times, and a car windscreen was broken.
: DPRK vice-defense minister Kim Kang Il says: “From the night of May 28 to the dawn of June 2, we scattered 15 tons of wastepaper, favorite toy of the human scum, over the border areas of the ROK and its capital region with more than 3,500 balloons of various sorts. We made the ROK clans (sic) get enough experience of how much unpleasant they feel and how much effort is needed to remove the scattered wastepaper. We are going to halt wastepaper scattering over the border temporarily as our action was a countermeasure from A to Z. But, if the ROK clans resume anti-DPRK leaflet scattering, we will correspond (sic) to it by intensively scattering wastepaper and rubbish hundred times the amount of scattered leaflets and the number of cases, as we have already warned.” This suspension lasts less than a week.
: North Korea’s GPS jamming continues for a fourth day.
: MOU says that North-South trade fell to zero last year, for the first time since inter-Korean commerce began in 1989. There were also no personnel exchanges for a third straight year. Southern NGOs’ humanitarian aid totaled 900 million won ($653,000) last year: down from 2.6 billion won in 2022, and the lowest figure since records began in 1995.
: MOU says that North Koreans are no longer permitted to name their children Hana, Tongil, or Hankook (respectively meaning one, unification, and South Korea), in line with Kim Jong Un’s new diktat to erase any idea of, or reference to, Korea being a single country. Similarly, the geography section of the DPRK foreign ministry website, which had characterized Korea as a maritime nation with seas on three sides, has been removed.
: South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) say that since late on May 28 North Korea has sent some 260 balloons carrying assorted rubbish, including fecal matter, into the South. A few reach over 200km south of the DMZ, the largest balloon incursion from the North. The JCS tells Pyongyang to cease such “inhumane and vulgar” actions. In a mocking statement, Kim Jong Un’s sister Kim Yo Jong calls the balloons “‘sincere presents’ to the goblins of liberal democracy.” She warns there will be more—as indeed there are: North’s campaign remains ongoing. (NB this Chronology does not record every single launch. For a timeline and analysis as of late August, see here; and as of Nov. 29, see here.)
: On three consecutive days South Korean military officials detect Northern attempts to jam GPS signals around northerly ROK-controlled islands in the West/Yellow sea. Some ferries and fishing boats experience glitches in their navigational systems, but military communications are unaffected. Additionally, on May 30 North Korea fires 18 rounds from multiple rocket launchers toward the East Sea near the inter-Korean border.
: Another North Korean satellite launch fails: its third in two years, as against a single success in November. Promptly admitting the mishap, the DPRK’s National Aerospace Technology Administration (NATA) says: “The launch failed due to the air blast of the new-type satellite carrier rocket during the first-stage flight.” A day later, Kim Jong Un adds that “a destruct system [was] activated due to malfunctioning of the first-stage engine”
: Complaining of Southern provocations, including balloon launches and alleged incursions, DPRK vice-defense minister Kim Kang Il warns that “Mounds of wastepaper and filth will soon be scattered over the border areas and the interior of the ROK, and it will directly experience how much effort is required to remove them.” He means it.
: Seoul sanctions seven named North Koreans and two Russian vessels, said to be involved in illicit trading of arms and fuel between Pyongyang and Moscow.
: Monuments hoping for the return of five South Koreans, abducted as teenagers by North Korean agents in 1977-78, are unveiled on Seonyu and Hong islands, off the west coast, whence they were kidnapped. Relatives attend, as do MOU Kim Yung-ho and Julie Turner, US special envoy for North Korean human rights.
: ROK Ministry of National Defense (MND) says a joint military-police probe is under way into the hacking of defense officials’ emails. DPRK involvement is suspected. No details are given, save to clarify that the breach involved their personal email accounts rather than military servers.
: “A military source” tells Yonhap that North Korea has been installing mines and reinforcing barbed-wire fences in four or five different locations within the DMZ.
: Pyongyang criticizes a visit to Beijing by Seoul’s Foreign Minister Cho Tae-yul, who asked China to play a “constructive” role on the peninsula. Pak Myong Ho, vice minister for Chinese affairs at the North’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA), said “No matter how earnestly the diplomats of the ROK order someone a constructive role through soliciting and begging diplomacy…we will never give up our sovereign rights crucial to our lives.”
: Park Sang-hak, who heads the activist NGO Fighters for a Free North Korea (FFNK), says that on May 10 his group sent 20 balloons into North Korea. Launched from Ganghwa island in the northwestern ROK, the balloons are said to carry 300,000 anti-DPRK flyers and 2,000 USB sticks loaded with K-pop content. They trail banners which read: “Kim Jong Un, he is nothing but an irreversible traitor and an enemy of our people.”
: A joint probe by South Korea’s police, prosecution, and National Intelligence Service (NIS) finds that over a two year period in 2021-23, the DPRK hacking group known as Lazarus stole 1,014 gigabytes (GB) of data and documents from an (unnamed) ROK court computer network. The report did not say how the breach was effected.
: Kim Jong Un inspects what the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) describes as “major defense industrial enterprises under the Second Economic Commission.” (The 2EC runs North Korea’s military economy.) With rare detail, KCNA itemizes these as “a complex producing ultramodern precision munitions,” “an enterprise producing major small arms”—where Kim “show[s]his deep care for a newly-developed sniper’s rifle”—and a facility producing “updated 240mm multiple rockets launchers to be equipped by KPA [Korean People’s Army] artillery units newly formed this year.” Kim gives one of the latter a test run. His rather lengthy comments focus on production issues, quality control, and the like; there is no mention of South Korea or other enemies.
: MOU says the DPRK has demolished a fire station, built and paid for by the ROK government, at the former Mount Kumgang tourist resort on the east coast.
: “Sources” tell Yonhap the ROK military may deploy special forces inside the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ, the de facto inter-Korean border), to strengthen security while it rebuilds guardposts demolished under the now repudiated 2018 inter-Korean military accord.
: Gimm-Young Publishers in Seoul announce that they will publish former President Moon Jae-in’s memoir on May 20. Titled From the Periphery to the Center, and written in question-and-answer format, this will include “behind-the-scenes stories about key diplomatic events”. The book “candidly document[s] not only diplomatic and security achievements, but also regrets, limitations, successes and failures of [Moon’s] policies.”
: ROK stages “defensive” annual combined maneuvers on border islands in the Yellow Sea, close to the DPRK. The Marine Corps is joined by army, navy, and air force units. Among other assets, this mobilizes UH-60 and CH-47 helicopters, F-15K and KF-16 fighter jets, destroyers, frigates, landing ships and amphibious assault ships. Drills include artillery firing, counterterrorism operations and maritime live exercises.
: 400;">May 3, 2024: “Sources familiar with the issue,” doubtless military, tell Yonhap that in March (date unspecified) the ROK Marine Corps shot down an unidentified 2-meter balloon, which crossed the Northern Limit Line (NLL) near Baengnyeong, a front-line South Korean island in the West/Yellow Sea. A KA-1 light attack aircraft shot down the intruder; salvage efforts failed. It is assumed to have been North Korean, though it could also have been Chinese.
: Two NGOs tell NK News that in April China forcibly returned some 260 North Koreans. Jang Se-yul, head of the North Korean People’s Liberation Front, says that on April 26 about 200 were repatriated from Changbai Korean Autonomous County in Jilin province. The same day, according to Lee Young-hwan, executive director of the Transitional Justice Working Group (TJWG), a further 61 were sent back from Tumen, Hunchun, and Dandong. MOU vice-spokesperson Kim In-nae comments: “The [ROK] government maintains the position that under no circumstances should North Korean defectors residing abroad be forcibly transported against their will.”
: MOU Kim Yung-ho meets Carsten Schneider, Germany’s minister of state for East Germany and equivalent living conditions, after the annual session of the Korea-Germany Unification Advisory Committee, founded in 2011. Kim asks for Berlin’s support for the ROK’s “unwavering commitment to pursuing a peaceful unification of the two Koreas based on liberal democracy.”
May 11, 2024: A joint probe by South Korea’s police, prosecution and National Intelligence Service (NIS) finds that over a two-year period in 2021-23, the North Korean hacking group Lazarus stole a total of 1,014 gigabytes (GB) of data and documents from an ROK court computer network. The report did not name this, nor say how the breach was effected.
: “Sources familiar with the issue,” doubtless military, tell South Korea’s quasi-official news agency Yonhap that in March (date unspecified) the ROK Marine Corps destroyed an unidentified 2-meter balloon which crossed the Northern Limit Line (NLL, the de facto inter-Korean maritime border) near Baengnyeong, a front-line South Korean island in the West/Yellow Sea. A KA-1 light attack aircraft shot down the intruder; salvage efforts were unsuccessful. It is assumed to have been North Korean, though China is also possible.
: Two NGOs tell NK News (leading English-language resource on the DPRK) that in April China forcibly returned some 260 North Koreans. Jang Se-yul, head of the North Korean People’s Liberation Front, says that on April 26 about 200 were repatriated from Changbai Korean Autonomous County in Jilin province. The same day, according to Lee Young-hwan, executive director of the Transitional Justice Working Group (TJWG), a 61 more were sent back from Tumen, Hunchun and Dandong. MOU vice-spokesperson Kim In-nae comments: “The [ROK] government maintains the position that under no circumstances should North Korean defectors residing abroad be forcibly transported against their will.”
: ROK Unification Minister Kim Yung-ho meets Carsten Schneider, Germany’s minister of state for East Germany and equivalent living conditions (sic), after the annual session of the Korea-Germany Unification Advisory Committee. Kim asks for Berlin’s support for the ROK’s “unwavering commitment to pursuing a peaceful unification of the two Koreas based on liberal democracy.” Schneider tells his hosts to be ready for the unexpected: “We did not know in the spring of 1989 that the Berlin Wall would collapse in November that year. If South Korea wants to catch such a chance, it should not lose the goal of unification while keeping close tabs on North Korean people’s situations.”
: South Korea raises the alert status at its embassies in Cambodia, Vietnam, and Laos, and its consulates in Shenyang and Vladivostok, all places where North Korea has a strong presence. Seoul claims to have intelligence suggesting a “high possibility of a terrorist attack.” In 1996 an ROK diplomat in Vladivostok, who monitored DPRK activities there, was bludgeoned to death; no conclusive link to Pyongyang was proven.
: MOU says that North Korea appears to have dismantled a South Korean building near the former Kaesong Industrial Complex (KIC). Never used, the facility was built by an ROK company “for investment purposes.” No further details are provided.
: South Korea raises the alert status at its embassies in Cambodia, Vietnam, and Laos, and consulates in Shenyang and Vladivostok, all places where North Korea has a strong presence. Seoul claims to have intelligence suggesting a “high possibility of a terrorist attack.” In 1996 an ROK diplomat in Vladivostok, who monitored DPRK activities there, was bludgeoned to death; no conclusive link to Pyongyang was proven.
: ROK Ministry of Unification (MOU) says that North Korea appears to have dismantled a South Korean building near the former Kaesong Industrial Complex (KIC). Never used, the facility was built by an ROK company “for investment purposes.” No further details are provided.