Tag: north korea

Russian Official Confirms North Koreans Operating Along Ukraine Border

Alexander Khinshtein, governor of Russia’s Kursk region, said in a televised interview on Tuesday that North Korean troops are assisting with mine-clearing efforts along the border with Ukraine.

“Representatives of the Korean People’s Army have played a vital role in clearing the border area. Today, they are deeply engaged in demining efforts, which are crucial for the future reconstruction and security of the region,” Khinshtein stated.

The governor said the “camaraderie between the Russian and Korean peoples compels us to forge a unique partnership with North Korea.” To that end, he said a plan is under development to designate the city of Kaesong in North Korea as a “sister city” to Kursk.

Kursk was counter-invaded by Ukrainian forces in August 2024, 18 months after Russia invaded Ukraine. The Russians were taken completely by surprise, allowing Ukrainian forces to take and hold positions deep inside Kursk province.

In desperation, the Russians turned to North Korea for cannon fodder. Pyongyang sent about 12,000 troops to help the Russians recapture Kursk, a deployment both Russia and North Korea denied for months until finally providing official confirmation in April 2025. The Russian government announced Kursk had been recaptured from Ukrainian forces in the same month.

According to North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un, his forces were sent to “annihilate and wipe out the Ukrainian neo-Nazi occupiers and liberate the Kursk area in cooperation with the Russian armed forces.”

Kim declared the North Korean soldiers, who seemed baffled by modern drone warfare and took heavy losses in Kursk, to be “heroes of the motherland.” The North Korean regime held a ceremony to honor them in August 2025.

Khinshtein, who was appointed acting governor of Kursk by President Vladimir Putin in December, said on Tuesday that the border between Kursk and Ukraine remains “contaminated with land mines, unexploded ordnance, aerial bombs, and shells,” necessitating an extensive de-mining operation.

Khinshtein’s predecessor as governor, Alexey Smirnov, resigned due to public anger over his handling of the Ukrainian counter-invasion, particularly his failure to evacuate civilians from the occupied territory.

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Deterring The Next Quasi-World War: China–Russia–North Korea Versus US

Russian planes recently flew into Polish and Romanian airspace to test NATO’s resolve while the world veers toward a conflict in Asia—one that could be far worse than the situation in Ukraine—where true deterrence and resolve remain largely absent.

Let’s backtrack a little.

On Sept. 3, Beijing staged a military extravaganza to parade a full suite of fearsome weapons. Many journalists were awed, and some defeatist experts advocated Chamberlainian appeasement. Others, mostly China observers, tried decoding the seating plan of senior Chinese Communist Party (CCP) officials atop Tiananmen Square for clues about the power struggles in Zhongnanhai.

However, what is often overlooked in the discussion about the event is that it represents the financing and support mechanisms behind a new type of quasi-world war. The ongoing Russia–Ukraine war is one example, and the potential invasion of Taiwan by the Chinese regime is another. Let’s explore this further.

The Xinhua images of the Sept. 3 event, featuring Chinese leader Xi Jinping, Russian President Vladimir Putin, and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un consorting in solidarity, should be interpreted as a calculated response to the new tripartite model the West has devised for militarily supporting Ukraine. That model conveys that Kyiv identifies its military hardware needs, European allies provide the financing, and the United States produces and delivers the hardware.

The Beijing event showcased a parallel model: Moscow requests war materiel, including troops, China and North Korea supply them in exchange for cheap Russian energy, with India and a few other countries dipping in. Thus, even though the war’s actual fighting is confined within Ukraine and Russia, its financing involves a much wider array of adversarial states. The coalitional symmetry in this financing mechanism can prolong the bloody conflict indefinitely, which Russia and Ukraine, if left to their own devices, cannot achieve.

A way to stop the war is to break that symmetry, which seems to be the goal of U.S. President Donald Trump’s “secondary tariffs.” On Aug. 6, he doubled the headline tariff on India to 50 percent for buying cheap Russian oil. It is showing results. India reportedly bought much less Russian oil in August. Notably, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who attended the Shanghai Cooperation Organization meeting in Tianjin from Aug. 31 to Sept. 1, quietly skipped the Sept. 3 military parade.

Now, Trump is pressuring Europe to immediately end its remaining reliance on Russian energy and join him in a similar effort against Beijing, and has called for imposing up to 100 percent additional tariffs on China for buying Russian crude oil. The EU leadership is not yet entirely on board, but has proposed to advance its target of ending all energy imports from Russia from 2027 to 2026 or even sooner.

But whatever happens to the war in Ukraine, the world would not be okay even when Putin agrees to call it quits, because Xi has all the intentions to do a sequel. Xi’s primary interest in supporting Russia lies in an expected reciprocation from Moscow if China invades Taiwan. What would a China–Taiwan war look like?

The Russia–Ukraine war is already a quasi-world war. Despite the combat space being narrowly confined, it nevertheless involves the participation of approximately 50 countries on four continents in various capacities.

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Navy SEALs Reportedly Killed North Korean Fishermen and Mutilated Their Bodies To Hide a Failed Mission

You are a fisherman in one of the poorest, most repressed countries in the world. About 20 years ago, your country was suffering from a famine that is still forbidden to discuss frankly. The streets are filled with living reminders of starvation, people whose bodies are marked by childhood malnutrition. Food is precious to you.

So today, as other days, you woke up before dawn with your companions to go diving in the freezing cold ocean, in hopes of putting some mussels on your family’s table. But suddenly, you die. A man you have never met and whose presence you did not know about has shot you with his rifle. His companions stab your lungs so that your body will sink to the bottom of the sea. Your family will likely never know what happened to you.

That is what happened to a group of unnamed North Korean fishermen who accidentally stumbled upon a detachment of U.S. Navy SEALs in 2019, according to a Friday report by The New York Times. The commandos had set out to install a surveillance device to wiretap government communications in North Korea. When they stumbled upon an unexpected group of divers on a boat, the SEALs killed everyone on board and retreated.

The U.S. government concluded that the victims were “civilians diving for shellfish,” sources told the Times. Officials didn’t even know how many, telling the Times that it was “two or three people,” even though the SEALs had searched the boat and disposed of the bodies. The mission wasn’t just an intelligence failure. It was a failure that killed real people through no fault of their own.

The mission was carried out during the first Trump administration. The U.S. government wanted insight into North Korean leader Kim Jong Un during his high-stakes nuclear negotiations with President Donald Trump. Matthew Cole, one of the reporters who broke the story, wrote on his Substack that he first caught wind of the story in 2023 from a source who wanted him to know “how the SEALs involved in the mission had avoided any accountability because of how secret the mission was.”

The broader point of the story, according to the Times, was that the U.S. government “often” hides the failures of special operations from policymakers. Seth Harp, author of The Fort Bragg Cartel, roughly estimates that Joint Special Operations Command killed 100,000 people during the Iraq War “surge” from 2007 to 2009. The secrecy around America’s spying-and-assassination complex makes it impossible to know how many of those people were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.

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NYT: Seal Team 6 Killed Civilians During Mission In North Korea

Today the New York Times revealed U.S. Navy SEALs killed North Korean civilians during a failed covert operation in 2019.

In 2019, U.S. Navy SEALs embarked on a clandestine mission to install a listening device inside North Korea, at a time when then-President Trump was engaged in landmark discussions with Kim Jong Un. 

The operation was reportedly green-lit by Trump.

The mission went awry when the SEALs encountered civilians fishing or diving for shellfish at night. The Americans opened fire, resulting in the deaths of all aboard the fishing vessel.

A subsequent classified Pentagon review deemed the killings justified under the established rules of engagement.  

The disclosure is significant as many have wondered how President Trump got the reclusive and belligerent North Korean leader to be so docile in the public face of the peace negotiations at the time.

There has also been rumors that Trump threatened Kim with assassination via SEAL Team 6.

The origin of those rumors now seems more clear.

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The Case for an Interim Agreement With North Korea

Striking a nuclear deal with North Korea is the most courageous foreign policy project left unfinished from President Donald Trump’s first term. The arc from war scare and “fire and fury” to détente and “love letters” stretched over three years until its engagement phase was derailed by the failed Hanoi summit and the onset of Covid-19. Six years on, statements by the White House and the Kim regime indicate a willingness to return to talks. That is welcome, because progress toward establishing a stable U.S.–DPRK relationship remains in the interests of both sides, even accounting for the dramatic improvement in the North’s international position since 2021. 

The South Korean president Lee Jae Myung’s visit to Washington last week would have been a good opportunity for the White House to begin to adopt a new approach. Frontloading heavy demands on denuclearization foreclosed progress on other worthy issues in 2018–2019. To make headway in 2025, the U.S. must shift from “denuclearization first” to “regular engagement first,” and accept that complete denuclearization is a long-run aspiration. Trump should pitch the North on an interim deal that couples three public unilateral U.S. concessions with a private offer of sanctions relief calibrated to verifiable limits on the North’s fissile material production.

Kim Jong Un’s reciprocation is never guaranteed, but it is in America’s interests to broaden his horizons beyond fighting Russia’s war against Ukraine, international cybercrime, and untrammeled development of nuclear missiles that can strike the United States.

The 2019 Hanoi summit, the last substantive high-level U.S.–DPRK meeting, was meant to implement the four aspirations of the 2018 Singapore Joint Statement: establishing a new U.S.–DPRK relationship, building a peace regime on the Korean Peninsula, working toward the complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, and repatriating the remains of American soldiers who died in the Korean War. Pending a leader-level accord on denuclearization, both sides were reportedly ready to make unprecedented progress on the other three goals by signing agreements declaring a symbolic end to the Korean War, establishing liaison offices in each other’s capitals, facilitating economic investment, and repatriating remains of more U.S. soldiers.

But talks on denuclearization quickly collapsed. Trump walked away from a DPRK offer to dismantle at least part of its Yongbyon plutonium and enriched uranium facility and formally halt nuclear and missile testing in exchange for the lifting of all post-2016 UN sanctions on its civilian economy. The U.S. position began with a demand for the North to freeze and dismantle all its nuclear production facilities—not only Yongbyon—in a definite period in exchange for relief from the UN sanctions. At some point the U.S. side reportedly increased its demand to include total relinquishment of North Korea’s nuclear program, including all facilities and all weapons. This “Libya model” offer bore the imprint of John Bolton, Trump’s then-National Security Advisor, and was probably designed to sabotage the talks, since Kim certainly knew of Muammar Gaddafi’s grisly death less than a decade after he relinquished his nuclear program.

Trump and Kim both gambled that the magic of a leader-level summit would allow them to achieve sweeping goals. Each devalued pre-summit talks that could have produced a more incremental, more achievable deal. Kim refused to even authorize his working level diplomats to discuss denuclearization. And the White House went ahead with the summit knowing a viable deal was not on the table. 

What is unclear from the public record is the extent to which either side, facing maximalist requests, toned down their own position to try bridge the gap. That incremental approach, which tends to de-emphasize the goal of complete denuclearization, is the best path forward.

North Korea’s willingness and capacity to harm U.S. interests is now greater than ever. Its arsenal of warheads has reportedly grown from 15 to 50 since 2016 and it is estimated to have sufficient fissile material for 40 more. It continues to test and refine ICBM designs that can strike the continental U.S., including solid-fueled models that can be dispersed and launched at short notice. North Korea’s geopolitical ambit has also spread to Europe. It has sold Russia billions of dollars’ worth of ammunition to support its war effort in Ukraine. In June 2024 Russia and North Korea signed a mutual defense treaty, and 15,000 North Korean soldiers were sent to fight in Russia’s Kursk region. In return, Russia has granted the country access to advanced missile and reconnaissance technologies. At the same time, Russia and China have relaxed their enforcement of the post-2016 UN sanctions, reducing pressure on the North’s civilian economy.

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North Korean IT workers infiltrated Fortune 500 companies in massive fraud scheme

Federal authorities have unraveled several schemes by the Democratic People’s Republic of North Korea (DPRK) that were used to fund its regime through remote information technology (IT) work for U.S. companies, resulting in two indictments, tech and financial seizures and an arrest.

The Department of Justice (DOJ) said Monday that North Korean actors were helped by individuals in the U.S., China, the United Arab Emirates and Taiwan to obtain employment with over 100 U.S. companies, including Fortune 500 companies.

In one scheme, U.S.-based individuals created front companies and fraudulent websites to promote the legitimacy of remote workers, while hosting laptop farms where remote North Korean IT workers could remotely access company-provided laptop computers.

In another scheme, IT workers in North Korea used false identities to gain employment with a blockchain research and development company in Atlanta, Georgia, and steal virtual currency worth over $900,000.

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Officials Erased from Existing Photos After North Korea’s National Humiliation

Welcome to North Korea, where making a very public mistake can potentially cost you your life.

That’s at least the worry for two senior officials involved with the sinking of a destroyer during its botched loss last month. According to multiple reports, the two men have been erased from state photos — and many fear they’ve been killed.

The ship was the second of a new class of destroyer to be launched by the hermit state from the shipyard in Chongjin — only things didn’t go as planned, as indicated by the fact they tried to cover it up with tarps.

And heads weren’t going to roll figuratively, but literally. The state-run Korea Central News Agency described the damage as “not serious” (going to disagree there) but “an unpardonable criminal act” (which, in North Korea, it definitely is).

Kim Jong-un, who was in attendance and watching when the sinking happened, said that the act “severely damaged the [country’s] dignity and pride” and resulted from “absolute carelessness, irresponsibility and unscientific empiricism.”

Now, according to the New York Post, two of the high-ranking officials involved have been retconned out of existence in old photos — a clear sign that wherever they are, things ain’t good.

Admr. Kim Myong Sil and Hong Kil Ho — who are responsible for operating the shipyard in Chongjin — have been “expunged from the North Korean photographic record on orders of Kim — who blames them for the hermit kingdom’s inability to launch,” the Post reported on June 18.

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Is This Stunning Censorship A Glimpse Into Our Own Future?

The BBC has reported on smartphones smuggled out of North Korea that are setup to spy on citizens and prevent them from using language that is not authorised by the Communist state.

Instead of simply not allowing North Korean people to have such devices, the regime there has decided to manufacture and distribute phones as a tool for further controlling the population amid fears that freedom, in the form of South Korean culture, is encroaching.

The BBC reporter demonstrates how the phone edits words and phrases that are are not acceptable to the North Korean government, and replaces them with language they have sanctioned.

In one example, the reporter types in a South Korean slang word for “boyfriend” and the phone changes it to “comrade.”

A second example shows the reporter typing in ‘South Korea’ and the phone automatically changing it to “Puppet State.”

The phone also covertly takes a screenshot every five minutes, stores the images in a secret folder which the user cannot access, but North Korean authorities can scour through should they wish to do so.

The report also notes that the North Korean Communists have deployed “youth crackdown squads” to patrol the streets listening out for people using South Korean slang or styles of language.

Wild stuff.

“Smartphones are now part and parcel of the way North Korea tries to indoctrinate people,” Martyn Williams, a senior fellow at the Washington DC-based Stimson Center, and an expert in North Korean technology and information, told the BBC.

Williams further noted that North Korea is now “starting to gain the upper hand” in the information war.

Some online pointed out that its ironic that the state funded BBC filed this report, given that people in the UK are being imprisoned over social media posts.

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North Korea-linked gang ‘stole’ billions from Americans through romance scams, online schemes

A Cambodia-based gang with ties to North Korea has “stolen” billions of dollars from Americans through romance scams and other cyber-heists since August 2021, federal officials said Thursday in announcing a crackdown on the malign network.

For years, the online marketplace Huione Group has helped North Korea and other transnational criminal gangs rip people off by sending texts or direct messages on social media platforms and sites to bilk them for fake investments or “pig butchering.”

The cons, which also take place on dating or professional networking sites, have gotten US retirees and others to invest in crypto or other virtual currencies — before eventually defrauding them.

Between August 2021 and January 2025, Huione raked in at least $4 billion in proceeds from the romance and investment racket, with affiliates helping facilitate payments (Huione Pay PLC), provide fiat currencies (Huione Crypto), and furnish an online marketplace with illicit goods and services (Haowang Guarantee).

The US Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) shared the findings of its investigation into the Huione’s scam network exclusively with The Post, tallying up $37 million that went toward North Korean cyber heists and another $336 million in the romance and investments grift.

Now, the Treasury is taking action by proposing a federal rule to sever the Cambodian firm’s access to the US financial system.

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North Korea continues to pursue covert biological weapons program: US report

North Korea continues to maintain a covert biological weapons program in violation of international treaties, according to a newly released U.S. government report.

Biological weapons use pathogens such as bacteria or viruses to sicken or kill. Their invisible nature and devastating potential make them one of the most insidious forms of weaponry.

“The United States assesses that the DPRK has a dedicated, national-level offensive [biological weapons] program,” the State Department said in its 2025 report on global compliance with arms control and disarmament agreements.

The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, or DPRK – North Korea’s official name – has long drawn suspicion for its clandestine research including nuclear weapons.

According to the report, the regime possesses “the technical capability to produce bacteria, viruses, and toxins that could be used as BW [biological weapons] agents” and is also capable of genetically engineering biological materials.

Even more concerning, it said, is Pyongyang’s potential capacity to deploy these weapons using unconventional and covert delivery systems.

“Pyongyang probably is capable of weaponizing BW agents with unconventional systems such as sprayers and poison pen injection devices, which have been deployed by the DPRK for delivery of chemical weapons and could be used to covertly deliver BW agents,” the report said.

Despite being a State Party to the Biological Weapons Convention, or BWC, since 1987 – a treaty that bans the development, production, and stockpiling of such weapons – North Korea has shown little intention of abiding by its commitments.

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