China, Korea news items
The title of this Newsweek article probably should say "list of undercover agents for ally leaked in intelligence breach."
List of Undercover Agents Leaked in Intelligence Breach for US Ally
A South Korean military intelligence official was arrested on suspicion of leaking personal information of the country's overseas agents said to be spying on the nuclear-armed North Korea.
The intelligence breach was first reported by South Korean media on Saturday. Yonhap News Agency reported that the Korea Defense Intelligence Command discovered about a month ago that classified information related to its agents stationed abroad had been leaked.
The Defense Counterintelligence Command investigated, and a military court issued an arrest warrant to a civilian official assigned to the Korea Defense Intelligence Command, the country's defense ministry announced on Tuesday. The suspect's identity was withheld.
The suspect behind the latest incident allegedly provided information of the country's "black agents" to a Chinese national of Korean descent, the South Korean Defense Ministry said.
The story as reported is quite odd. First of all, how does just one person gain access to a list of "1,000 agents" as some have reported? According to Kim Jong-tae, the data on the Defense Counterintelligence Command's classified network is isolated from the internet physically, so hacking seems less likely than a mole at the agency. How could one low level employee have access to such sensitive top secret data such as the identities and cover of so many covert agents in deep cover outside South Korea (referred to as "black agents)? The report says the data was on his personal laptop. The breach reportedly occurred in June, yet the suspected employee went to and from work for one month after the breach was known?
Kim Jong-tae suggests that the compromise appears to represent great damage to South Korea's intelligence collection capabilities, that will take "decades" to rebuild. Again the ruling conservative party is blaming this compromise on the democratic party, which the conservatives claim, refused to stiffen espionage laws, which apply greater penalties to leaks of classified materials to a designated enemy state, in particular, North Korea, than just a foreign national, as in this case, a Chinese national. I heard in one other report that the identities of South Korean covert agents in Mongolia and Russia may also have been included in the unlawfully released data. Kim Jong-tae alleges the political accusation against the opposition party is simply false. The effort to blame the democrats appears to be an effort to intimidate the opposition, and at the same time to justify a purge by the Yoon administration of another security agency in the executive branch in order to stuff it with Yoon loyalists. The Defense Command Counterintelligence Agency is said by Kim to have a greater footprint that the Defense Intelligence Service which provides so called "white agents" under diplomatic cover at South Korean embassies such as the three agents compromised by the Sue Mi Terry indictment in the US. That indictment had been followed by an announcement that 100 DIS personnel would be replaced.
Allegedly, the recipient of the top secret data and list was "Choseon jok" which means a Chinese national of Korean ethnicity. Ultimately, the information is estimated to be in the hands of the North Koreans. According to Kim Jong-tae, it was the Korean courts which had maintained the necessity of the "enemy state" provision to uphold an espionage charge.
This is the source on Kim Jong-tae's analysis of the event-
한국정보원 명단 북한으로 넘어갔는데 국군정보사는 이를 만천하에 떠벌렸다...
Here's some other news on the region-
South Korea offers humanitarian aid to flood hit North Korea
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — South Korea on Thursday offered to send aid supplies to North Korea to help the country recover from heavy rains and floods that submerged thousands of homes and huge swaths of farmland.
It’s unclear whether North Korea would accept South Korea’s proposal for help. Animosity between the war-divided rivals is at its highest in years over the North’s growing nuclear ambitions and the South’s expansion of combined military exercises with the United States and Japan to counter the North’s threats.
South Korea’s Unification Ministry, which handles inter-Korean affairs, said the South was willing to swiftly provide supplies to address the “humanitarian difficulties” facing North Korean residents following the recent storms. The ministry in a statement urged North Korea’s Red Cross to promptly respond to its calls for discussions to determine the types and amounts of South Korean supplies and how to deliver them.
North Korean state media said Wednesday that recent heavy rains left 4,100 houses, 7,410 acres of agricultural fields and numerous other public buildings, structures, roads and railways flooded in the northwestern city of Sinuiju and the neighboring town of Uiju.
I had seen one video report yesterday, that said there were perhaps as many as 1000 casualties and missing. Also, the report said 10 people had perished when a rescue helicopter crashed. This video below is from SBS (South Korea) that shows Kim Jong-eun in the flood area on a light boat with other officials including an interior minister, and Hyon Song-wol, a central committee member, who also has a cultural/propaganda position on the small boat with Kim. Hyon and Kim are rumored to be personally close. Kim is seen scolding government officials on his personal train for neglect and giving instructions on flood remediation measures. He is still smoking. His movements on the boat are interesting. I imagine the medically inclined analysts will make some observations on his physical condition. Obviously his underlings are quite concerned he would slip or fall in the water or hit his head on a tree branch. 4 min.
The flood is on and near the Yalu river near Sinuiju close to the Chinese border. Here is a relatively rare news item on the changing social conditions in China just on the other side of that border. News from this region has been scarce since the covid lockdown. The "black markets" in the border region that thrived before covid are now gone. I recommend the whole report.
On China's border, a growing presence of legal North Korean workers
Chinese companies paralyzed when North Korean workers went home
But it would be hasty to assume that these changes spell the end of the transnational network in the border region. It would be more accurate to say that the closure of the national border over the past four years has prompted the formation of a new kind of network. Whereas the transnational network used to be oriented on unofficial migration and exchange between North Korean defectors and Korean Chinese, it now seems that that network is being reoriented around official and legal migration and connections.
In that respect, we should look closely at how the regional economy has become highly reliant on workers on assignment from North Korean. There are reportedly around 100,000 North Korean workers in China today.
Most of those North Korean workers were supposed to be repatriated by December 2019 according to UN Security Council Resolution 2397, which entered force in 2017. But after national borders were closed in January 2020 because of COVID-19, the majority of those workers were unable to go home and remained in China where they continued to work.
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Comments
Thanks for the Asian news
.
Learned a Japanese term this morning:
'Komorebi'. 木漏れ日 (pronounced kō-mō-leh-bē).
It is formed from the Japanese word for “tree,” 木, the word that means “to leak,”
漏れ, and the word for “sun,”
Literally, “sunlight leaking through trees.”
Cheers!
truth is considered foreign influence, world peace is a threat to national security
Beautiful phrase QMS!
I try to learn an expression or two, or watch a short Chinese lesson each day. i ran 漏 "leak" through the translator and found a Korean translation (n) nu chul 누출 that is a word used in the Korean news every day. Mostly in relation to the unsuccessful attempts thus far to conduct a real investigation into unlawful actions by the president and his wife or others related to them.
The symbol looks to me to be an ideograph showing the water radical, an abode, and then the rain symbol inside therefore a leak from rain thru a structure. So i will remember now when I see it again, and not have to look it up repeatedly like I do with so many characters to remember them.
Hope you are feeling and doing well, QMS! 건강하세요 保持健康
語必忠信 行必正直
Hi Soryang.
I ran across an article that may or may not interest you. Thought I would pass it on:
.
An Important bookmark:
https://peoplesdispatch.org
Global Activism at-a-Glance
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Populations don’t like wars. They have to be lied into it.
That means we can be “truthed” into peace. — Julian Assange
Yes I watched this online
...last weekend. I think it was the NY livestream at the time. I watched all the speakers on Saturday and I thought the old guy was best. I check on nodutol sometimes because Tim S. and Simone Chun repost their X posts when they pick up on a news issue, that maybe others hadn't noticed yet.
I differ with some of the young people there, particularly their main guy in the media. I prefer to take a step by step approach to these issues in South Korea. Like stop with the pressure to bow to Japan, stop the propaganda balloons, stop the loudspeakers, stop the provocative military exercises, especially those right on the DMZ and in the former buffer zones, no nukes or strategic assets, No B-52s, aircraft carriers, nuclear subs, etc., in South Korea.
Reinstate the buffer zones, reopen up Geumgansan tourist area, and Kaesong joint industrial zone, (both in North Korea) if possible, negotiate with North Korea, and reestablish the 9.19 agreement limiting the military activities of both sides in the buffer zones, which the US encouraged the Yoon administration to get rid of. Drop the sanctions, on a reciprocal basis, step by step. Remove THAAD from South Korea. Return Opcon during wartime to South Korea. Go back to Singapore. Normalize relations, get the IAEA back in North Korea, limit NK nuclear weapons with a view toward a peace treaty and denuclearization.
The very last step would be asking US armed forces to entirely vacate S. Korea. I don't think "US pack your shit and get out" is a pragmatic approach. For example the reconnaissance assets of the US are an asset to S.Korea that can't be replaced imo. The "tripwire" is necessary for deterrence until the war with N.Korea is resolved and relations are normalized. That isn't going to happen all at once. The DMZ needs to managed by UNC until a peace treaty with the North. I view US presence in South Korea as a deterrent, even without large numbers of troops, and until recently, also as a restraint or check on Japan.
Finally, the environmental mess the US had made around virtually all of its military bases whether in Korea, Okinawa or Japan needs to be cleaned up. I personally think, the trilateral alliance with Japan is a bad idea. The next administration in South Korea, if democratic, will downgrade relations with Japan or try to minimize them, in military terms and try to accomplish some of the steps I have outlined above in an effort to recover some semblance of sovereignty, resolve the division on the peninsula and lower military tension.
The Yoon administration and the US have gone way too far with this trilateral relationship thing. Yoon and his reactionary clique in the Defense Ministry and national security community have gone way too far with military and other provocations to the north, with the US encouraging them along the way, big mistake. The trend right now is to dictatorship in the South. South Korea is probably being damaged more than other countries economically by the US "decoupling" from China. Return to negotiations with the North, drop the blame game.
Many of the goals they advocate for I support in a general way but I would not for instance conflate the Korean nationalist movement or "independence movement" as it is called with the Palestine issue, it just unnecessarily complicates matters. The independence movement in South Korea has enough of its own wood to saw. Likewise, South Korea shouldn't be in NATO or getting involved in Taiwan issues. I'm sympathetic but the independence movement in South Korea needs to focus. I think hermit hwarang is the handle of the main man over there. Sometimes Rhonda Khalek has him on. I know someone has to be the cheerleader but I actually prefer Christine Ahn, and KJ Noh. I'm just more technically oriented. I'm an analyst not a street activist. I don't object to street activism, but I need to focus on my efforts. I think a few people do monitor my blog, because when tension rises with North Korea, the hits on my blog go way up, particularly in Singapore. Go figure.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LuIx434G9Hs
I care about what happens to the people of Korea. But I'm not going to quote Kim Il Sung or support the DPRK. That is Hwarang's Achille's heel. Hwarang "aligns with the North's vision." I believe understanding the perspective of the DPRK and the history of negotiations with them is important to successful negotiations and ensuring peace in the future. However understanding their perspective and endorsing their policies are different matters. One of South Korea's top experts on the North, South Korean elder statesman. Jeong Se-hyon did an interview with Kim Eo-jun recently stating that the "maximum pressure" campaign promoted by the US and the South Korean far right isn't going to work and North Korea isn't going to collapse. Some other experts at 38 North (the Stimson Center) agree. There is no practical alternative to negotiations with the North. I promote my opinion on what is happening there and how negotiations need to be conducted no matter how wrong the established poobahs think I may be.
The Fallacy of North Korean Collapse
Thanks for bringing up Nodutol Pluto's Republic.
語必忠信 行必正直
Thanks for the further analysis, Soryang.
I very much agree with your more careful and mindful approach, especially in such matters as a 'trilateral alliance with Japan.' That feels unnecessary and inappropriate. Korea needs time to look inward and find its center, leading up to normalization and reunification. Foreigners should be seen, but not heard.
All of your conditions seem like an excellent framework to me, within the varying degrees that I fully understand them.
Populations don’t like wars. They have to be lied into it.
That means we can be “truthed” into peace. — Julian Assange
North Korea isn't going to collapse
.
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Especially now that CHI & RUS are involved. The western steamroller may hit a bump
in that road. The idea of ending a 70 year 'detente' unfavorable to western interests is
obviously not part of total global dominance. This may be the spark that the hegemon
has to face if their dreams of Asian control comes to pass.
truth is considered foreign influence, world peace is a threat to national security