In late March 2024, South Korea marked the 10th anniversary of the sinking of the ROKS Cheonan corvette near the western maritime boundary between North and South Korea. The March 26, 2010 tragedy claimed the lives of 46 out of the 104 sailors on board and was also politically significant, as it changed the course of relations between the two Koreas. After some deliberation the south Korean authorities announced that the corvette was sunk by a North Korean stealth midget submarine. This announcement triggered a further deterioration…

Contrary to the anticipation of anti-Pyongyang propaganda discussed in the previous part of this digest, there have been no direct provocations, including in the area of the disputed maritime border. Instead, the North conducted its own exercise and criticized the enemy’s. Already on the day the exercise began, March 4, a DPRK Ministry of Defense spokesman issued a press statement. “The frantic war drills by the ROK puppets and vassal forces led by the US make…

On February 10, 2024, the Lunar New Year holiday, Yoon Suk-yeol visited the Second Marine Corps Division in Gimpo, inspected the Cheonmoo multiple rocket launcher system, and urged troops to be prepared for any North Korean provocations. “If the enemy provokes, you have to sternly and overwhelmingly respond under the principle of ‘act first, report later’ to completely crush the enemy’s will.”…

It will soon be 10 years since the publication of South Korea’s review of the state of human rights in the DPRK, which, thanks to its uncritical treatment of sources, turned out to be “much ado about not very much”. 10 years later, on February 6, 2024, South Korea’s Ministry for Unification presented what it considered to be a serious report, Perceptions of the Current Socioeconomic Situation in the DPRK, based on the results of an analysis of surveys of 6,531 defectors who left the DPRK between 2013 and 2022…

In late January and early February, there was a local diplomatic escalation between the Russian Federation and the Republic of Korea, which, in the view of some experts, had the effect of cooling relations between the two countries by a couple of degrees. On January 19, 2024, Georgy Zinoviev, Russian Ambassador to the Republic of Korea told Russian journalists that as long as South Korea did not cross a “red line” and directly supply lethal weapons to Ukraine, Russia was ready to consider the Republic of Korea as a promising partner…

The author barely completed one digest, when events on the peninsula rapidly developed. The New Year vacations were not much different from work in terms of preparing materials for the New Eastern Outlook. On December 17, mere thirty minutes after launching a short-range missile towards the Sea of Japan, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) released a statement from the military department. The statement claimed that the results of the second meeting of the South Korea-US Nuclear Security Consultative Group constituted an open declaration of nuclear confrontation…

This is the second part of the digest on inter-Korean tensions, dedicated to the DPRK actions. See the previous article to learn what the United States and the Republic of Korea did during the same period. Early in the morning on September 2, 2023, “a missile launch exercise was conducted to simulate a tactical nuclear attack to warn enemies of an actual nuclear war danger.” The launch came two days after the US and the ROK completed their 11-day Ulchi Freedom Shield exercise…

We would like to bring to your attention the next digest of “moving towards red lines” on the Korean Peninsula. Since the articles should be kept concise, the author has to divide this narrative into two parts: first, with the South, then, with the North in focus. On October 5, 2023, during hearings in the US Senate, a well-known American expert on the countries of the Korean Peninsula from the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), Victor Cha, proposed to develop and adopt a new policy providing for prevention measures to neutralize the DPRK missile threat…

On 26 November, the 10th meeting of the foreign ministers of China, Japan, and the Republic of Korea was held in Busan, South Korea. From the Japanese Foreign Ministry’s summary of the event, which was written in the most general terms, it appears that each of the participants was mainly engaged in presenting his or her own vision of the issues raised during the meetings. And, it seems, even tried to understand what their colleagues were talking about. That is, it would hardly be an exaggeration to say…

Discussions that the DPRK’s attempt to launch a satellite will entail the rupture of the inter-Korean military agreement impel the author to remind the audience how the preparation process for this launch is going on. On May 31, North Korea launched its first military spy satellite, Malligyong-1, mounted on a new-type carrier rocket, Chollima-1. According to North Korean media, the rocket crashed into the Yellow Sea after the second stage engine malfunctioned. In July 2023, North Korean satellite debris was retrieved from the Yellow Sea, after which South Korean experts declared that…

The Ministry of Reunification declared on November 2, 2023 that it chose to identify family members of South Korean nationals who had been detained in North Korea for a prolonged amount of time as Pyongyang abduction victims. Four family members living in the ROK will receive benefits ranging from 15 million to 20 million won ($11,000 to $15,000) per family. “For a substantial solution to the issue of detainees, abductees and prisoners of war (in North Korea), the government will cooperate with civic groups to continue to draw attention at home and abroad…

The final article in this author’s series on the state visit by the leader of the DPRK to Russia will focus on its consequences for Russia’s relations with the Republic of Korea. After all, now we are already seeing the first political consequences of the strengthening of Moscow and Pyongyang. The DPRK’s leadership placed a high value on the visit, and as readers may remember, while he was still in Russia Kim Jong-un stated that “now the first priority for our country is our relations with the Russian Federation.” As the KNCA later reported…