https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Central_News_Agency
KCNA is a news agency owned by DPRK, North Korea. kcna.kp is the domain. It is hosted in Pyongyang. The .kp domain is controlled by the DPRK state.
Every month or so I check the website because they have photos of DPRK celebrations, agitprop posters, stuff like that. Today I see this article posted and it seems quite odd.
On the website of the DPRKs embassy in Poland this same article has been published in Polish.
It’s quite the article…
I imagine it’s because of this: Nuclear-capable US B-52 strategic bomber touches down in S. Korea for first time
The article I linked above is from south Korea’s main center-left liberal paper. It comments this:
An American B-52 strategic bomber capable of carrying nuclear weapons was scheduled to land at a South Korean air base on Tuesday. This marks the first time a B-52 has ever landed at a South Korean air base, and is seen as a warning directed at North Korea in response to its growing nuclear and missile capabilities.
Considering that the B-52 is capable of dropping nuclear bombs while in flight, there’s little military utility in landing at an air base in South Korea. However, the strategic bomber does have considerable significance on a symbolic level, underlining the US’ commitment to extended deterrence against North Korea’s nuclear threat.
Considering that North Korea has warned about the potential outbreak of nuclear war each time US nuclear-powered aircraft carriers or strategic bombers are dispatched to the Korean Peninsula, it is likely to have an even more dramatic reaction to a US strategic bomber landing in South Korea for the first time.
Notable also is that under south Korea’s current conservative Yoon administration, the new appointee (since June) to Minister of Unification is a north Korea hawk who wants nukes for south Korea:
Notably, as Kim Young-ho is a hard-liner on North Korea who has argued for the overthrow of the Kim Jong-un regime and has stressed that South Korea should arm itself with its own nuclear weapons time and time again, critics point out that his appointment dulls the value and meaning of the unification ministry, which should carry out unification policies aimed at North Korea.
Yang Moo-jin, a professor at the University of North Korea Studies, commented that Thursday’s personnel appointments “signal the launch of a ‘ministry of confrontation’ or a ‘ministry of North Korean absorption’ that aims to unify [Korea] through absorption via antagonism and confrontation rather than a unification ministry seeking peaceful unification through dialogue and cooperation.”
The atmosphere within the ministry as it welcomes outside figures for its two chief positions is uneasy. One official told Yonhap News that “it seems like the unification ministry is being demanded to completely change its organizational identity, such as what it does, its approach, and the mindset of its members.”
As things fell through under the previous president, Moon, who was a liberal but who made some peaceful cooperation efforts with DPRK, and Trump, who made talks with DPRK but then threatened them, and piled on sanctions without lifting them when DPRK made efforts toward appeasement, and now Yoon came in who is a conservative and USA stan and major anti-communist who is promoting a NATO-like alliance in Asia and having war exercises and military parades etc., DPRK basically has stepped back from appeasement efforts at this time, strengthening ties with its other neighbors, and instead not shying away from making criticism when threatened with “decapitation drills” from the US and conservative Yoon regime (whom large numbers of south Koreans have been protesting and calling to resign due to his warmongering, among other things).
Are there any other sources of information on DPRK in general you could provide? Most of what i can find seems to boil down to “north korea bad”.
Thanks a lot. Randomly clicked a link to anti-imperialism.org which redirected to historic cornwall :) PS they moved to https://antiimperialism.wordpress.com apparently
Bruce Cummings book called North Korea: Another Country for a much more level headed picture than you’re likely to get from any other western sources.
For a point of view from a DPRK author, this book: Modern Korea: The Socialist North, Revolutionary Perspectives in the South, and Unification.
For a ML point of view: ProleWiki page on DPRK. There are also pages on south Korea, Korea, and the Korean War.
For a Korean diaspora and activist perspective, of people who travelled to DPRK multiple times on delegation trips: KEEP: Stories from North Korea episode on The East is a Podcast. Also Nodutdol’s zine, Sanctions of Empire (there is a link to PDF on that page if you click the zine cover image).
For a south Korean leftist/left-leaning/peace point of view (try machine translation if you don’t know Korean, my apologies for not knowing an English one for this): “Understanding North Korea” article series by Tongil Times, especially their 북현대사 (“North Modern History”) series, and “North Korea through the constitution” series by Sovereignty Research Institute.
It doesn’t seem all that odd to me. The US has been pushing further and further with its nuclear provocations recently, with the placement of nuclear capable submarines and bombers in occupied Korea for the first time ever. It seems logical that in an existential fight like the one the Korean people are facing against the American empire that steps will be taken to demonstrate that they are capable of defending themselves even against the nuclear annihilation that the US is threatening
Oh god 3rd front and its going to kill us all
