Google releases detailed map of North Korea

By Chico Harlan/

Until Tuesday, North Korea appeared on Google Maps as a near-total white space — no roads, no train lines, no parks and no restaurants. The only thing labeled was the capital city, Pyongyang.

This all changed when Google, on Tuesday, rolled out a detailed map of one of the world’s most secretive states. The new map labels everything from Pyongyang’s subway stops to the country’s several city-sized gulags, as well as its monuments, hotels, hospitals and department stores.

Screenshot: Washington Post

(See a before and after map comparison of North Korea.)

According to a Google blog post, the maps were created by a group of volunteer “citizen cartographers,” through an interface known as Google Map Maker. That program — much like Wikipedia — allows users to submit their own data, which is then fact-checked by other users, and sometimes altered many times over. Similar processes were used in other once-unmapped countries like Afghanistan and Burma.

In the case of North Korea, those volunteers worked from outside of the country, beginning from 2009. They used information that was already public, compiling details from existing analog maps, satellite images, or other Web-based materials. Much of the information was already available on the Internet, said Hwang Min-woo, 28, a volunteer mapmaker from Seoul who worked for two years on the project.

Screenshot: Washington Post

North Korea was the last country virtually unmapped by Google, but other — even more detailed — maps of the North existed before this. Most notable is a map created by Curtis Melvin, who runs the North Korea Economy Watch blog and spent years identifying thousands of landmarks in the North: tombs, textile factories, film studios, even rumored spy training locations. Melvin’s map is available as a downloadable Google Earth file.

Google’s map is important, though, because it is so readily accessible.  The map is unlikely to have an immediate influence in the North, where Internet use is restricted to all but a handful of elites. But it could prove beneficial for outsider analysts and scholars, providing an easy-to-access record about North Korea’s provinces, roads, landmarks, as well as hints about its many unseen horrors.

Screenshot: Washington Post

In the country’s northeast, for instance, Google has labeled what it calls the “Hwasong Gulag.” One street, called Gulag 16 Road, cuts through it. And at the end of Gulag 16 Road is a train station. Beyond that, little else around the gulag is marked.

The map’s publication comes just weeks after the visit to North Korea of Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt, who toured the country in a series of highly staged encounters that included a stop at a computer library, which Schmidt’s daughter later described in a blog post as the “e-Potemkin Village.” Schmidt’s visit was unrelated to the map roll-out, a Google spokesman said.

Google, in its blog post about the new North Korea map, acknowledged that the information is “not perfect.”

Keep reading on washingtonpost >>

North Korea says it is bolstering its war defenses

foxnews

m.cbsnews.com

North Korea vowed Monday to strengthen its defenses amid concerns the country may conduct a nuclear test as a follow-up to last month's long-range rocket launch.

Citing U.S. hostility, Pyongyang's Foreign Ministry said in a memorandum that North Korea will "continue to strengthen its deterrence against all forms of war."

The memorandum carried by state media did not say what action North Korea would take to defend itself. However, North Korea has claimed the right to build atomic weapons to protect itself from the United States, which stations more than 28,000 troops in South Korea.

North Korea sent a satellite into space on Dec. 12 aboard a long-range rocket, a launch that the U.S. and its allies have criticized as a test of banned ballistic missile technology.

In 2006 and 2009, Pyongyang conducted atomic tests after being slapped with U.N. Security Council condemnation and sanctions for similar launches of long-range rockets.

North Korea's Foreign Ministry urged the Washington to dismantle the U.S.-led U.N. Command, which oversees an armistice signed at the close of the Korean War in 1953. It accused the U.S. of trying to turn the U.N. Command into a NATO-like regional military bloc.

"Whether the U.S. immediately dismantles the U.N. Command or not will serve as the acid stone in deciding whether the U.S. will maintain or not its anti-(North Korea) hostile policy," said the memorandum, which was carried by the official Korean Central News Agency.

The Korean War armistice was never replaced with a peace treaty, leaving the Korean Peninsula in a technical state of war 60 years later.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/world/2013/01/14/north-korea-says-it-is-bolstering-its-war-defenses/?test=latestnews#ixzz2Hxr8UDKE

Google Bamboozled by North Korea?

pjmedia/ Claudia Rosett

huffingtonpost.com

As if there isn’t enough trouble in the world, the executive chairman of Google Inc., Eric Schmidt, has taken it into his head to visit North Korea. Schmidt is touring the world’s leading totalitarian state as a member of a private group led by a former U.S. congressman, cabinet secretary, United Nations ambassador and New Mexico governor rolled into one, Bill Richardson — whose previous trips to North Korea have served mainly to dignify the Pyongyang regime.

Richardson’s current roadshow, with Google’s Schmidt in tow, seems to have generated some excitement at North Korea’s state propaganda organ, the Korean Central News Agency, or KCNA. KCNA has revamped its web site, including a new gmail contact address (though the address apparently doesn’t work) and more colorful variations on the same old propaganda, including a special section on North Korea’s recent
ballistic missile test   “Successful Satellite Launch.” The site also features such classics as an account of the launch in Ecuador of the works of third-generation dictator Kim Jong Un, glorifying the revolutionary accomplishments of his late father, tyrant Kim Jong Il, and his grandfather, the Stalin-installed founder of the North Korean state, Kim Il Sung. On this same retooled KCNA web site, the private visit led by Richardson is heralded as “Delegation of Google Corp. of U.S. Arrives.”

Schmidt has been secretive about what exactly he hopes to accomplish on this trip. Richardson, who wants to meet with an American that North Korea, as part of its chronic shakedown racket, is now holding hostage in its prison system, has hinted to the press that Schmidt is tagging along to North Korea because he is “interested in some of the economic issues there, and the social media aspect.”

If anything here sounds like the beginning of some glorious new era in which North Korea is about to throw open its digital gates to the world wide web, and invite the starving inmates of Kim’s gulag to post their personal opinions on Facebook, think again. North Korea’s regime loves technology — but on its own terms, for carefully restricted use, for specially selected purposes, which boil down to keeping the Kim regime in power. North Korean officials are expert at hornswoggling American dreamers who arrive in Pyongyang hoping to promote some peace-loving bargain, from former president Jimmy Carter in 1994, to the New York Philharmonic, which, between North Korea’s 2006 and 2009  nuclear tests, serenaded the Pyongyang elite in 2008.

Keep reading >>

Detained American, Internet freedom on agenda as Google boss visits North Korea

Kim Kwang Hyon / AP

Former New Mexico governor Bill Richardson is interviewed by journalists after arriving at Pyongyang International Airport in North Korea on Monday.

By NBC News staff and wire reports

Google Executive Chairman Eric E. Schmidt and former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson arrived in North Korea on Monday to begin a controversial private mission that includes an effort to secure the release of an imprisoned American tourist.

The prisoner, Kenneth Bae, is a 44-year-old Korean-American who was detained last month. He was in a group of five tourists who visited the northeast city of Rajin, South Korea's Yonhap news agency said last month, citing a report by the Kookmin Ilbo newspaper. Bae entered North Korea on Nov. 3.

North Korea: Detained tourist 'admitted his crime'

Richardson, a former ambassador to the United Nations, has made numerous trips to North Korea. Before Monday's trip, he said: "We are going to ask about the American who's been detained -- a humanitarian private visit."

David Guttenfelder / AP

Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt, center, arrives at Pyongyang International Airport in North Korea for a controversial visit on Monday.

"We'll meet with North Korean political leaders," Richardson told The Associated Press. "We'll meet with North Korean economic leaders, military. We'll visit some universities. We don't control the visit. They will let us know what the schedule is when we get there."

The former governor also said the delegation would try to "lay the groundwork for him coming home," the AP reported. "We're going to try to inquire about the status. ... I heard from his son who lives in Washington state, who asked me to bring him back. I doubt we can do it on this trip."

US cool to Schmidt's trip to North Korea

Schmidt did not respond to requests for comment. But Richardson gave at least a hint about Schmidt's purpose for the trip to the country where the Internet, like most other things, is strictly regulated.

"This is not a Google trip, but I'm sure he's interested in some of the economic issues there, the social media aspect," Richardson told the AP. "So this is why we are teamed up on this." He did not elaborate on what he meant by the "social media aspect."

The trip comes a month after North Korea launched a rocket to put a satellite into space. The reclusive state continues work on its nuclear testing facilities, according to satellite imagery, potentially paving the way for a third nuclear bomb test.

Keep reading on NBC >>

Little Hope for Change in Pyongyang/ Hudson Institute

Hudson Institute

Wall Street Journal Asia

By John Lee

In the first public New Year's Day address by a North Korean supreme leader for 19 years, Kim Jong Eun declared that improving living standards and building the economy will be his top two priorities. He urged a "radical turn in the building of an economic giant with the same spirit and mettle as were displayed in conquering space."

How seriously should we take this pronouncement? The focus on economic growth rather than military might is certainly encouraging, and it follows on from a "Ten Year State Strategy Plan for Economic Development" announced last January.

However, it's telling that there were no details about what form reform will take. The role of the military in North Korean politics and economics has not changed significantly over the first year of Kim's rule. Until that happens, one should remain skeptical that change is coming.

It's worth recalling that North Korea was not always an economic basket case. When China began its reforms in 1978, North Koreans were better educated than their Chinese counterparts and had a similar GDP per capita to South Koreans. The country's economy was more open than China's when measured by international trade per capita.

Of course, some portion of the North's prosperity was due to subsidies from the Soviet Union. But after the death of Kim Il Sung, the turn toward even more radical autarkism in the form of the "military first" policy created calamity. Up to 3.5 million people out of a population of around 24 million people died of hunger from 1994-98.

To prevent mass starvation, Pyongyang now depends on foreign aid attained through a combination of bluster, threats and subsequent (always dishonored) promises to play by international rules. Its nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs are closely linked with this extortionist strategy.

Since 1995, North Korea has received more than $1 billion in aid from America and $4 billion from South Korea. Although Beijing is opaque about its relations with the hermit kingdom, Chinese trade statistics suggest that Pyongyang has benefited from net transfers of approximately $10 billion over the same period. To put all this in context, North Korea's GDP (measured by purchasing power parity) is around $40 billion each year.

Despite all these transfers, the tragic joke about the North Korean economy is that it remains a planned economy without a plan. At the least, the drive for production is subordinated to the requirements of the regime whose first priority is to remain in power.

As in the most brutal dictatorships, the military enjoys too central a role. This is evident in an official military budget of about $6 billion each year, with international analysts putting the figure closer to $9 billion—at least one-third of government spending. At almost 1.2 million active personnel, the People's Army is the fourth largest in the world.

But the primary role of the military in the economy itself poses the most formidable barrier to reform. The People's Army is the largest, best funded and most capable institution in North Korea. For example, it supervises and controls the country's 3,000 cooperative farms. It reserves one quarter of the country's annual agricultural output for itself, sending out trucks periodically to carry away as much of the country's produce as it deems appropriate.

The military has also earned hundreds of millions of dollars selling missiles and other weapons to Iran, Pakistan and Syria. It now manages almost all of the country's major mines, with most of the magnesite, zinc, iron and tungsten going to China. The export of minerals to China has increased to around $250 million today from $15 million in 2003.

Reform, and a general uplift in living standards, would require the military to relinquish control of the country's agricultural and mineral resources. Even returning control over these resources to a planned economy with some room for citizens to engage in profitable commercial activity could yield growth and a substantial increase in living standards.

But with an enormous and hungry army to feed before its own people, and with the country's mineral reserves worth an estimated $5.4 trillion at current prices, Kim will find it difficult to change the "military first" policy. It is also unlikely that North Korea can exploit its cheap and willing labor and pursue the East Asian export-dependent approach to development as long as the military uses lowly paid soldiers as workers and crowds out non-military enterprises. There is even emerging evidence that a designated percentage of all revenues from commercial activity goes straight to the military, possibly explaining the discrepancy between the official military budget and estimated spend by outside experts.

On balance, the military seems to have acquired even greater economic relevance since Kim Jong Eun's ascension in December 2011. So while there are glimmers of hope that the supreme leader means what he says about reform, such as activity in the special economic zones and the North-South joint venture Pyonghwa Motors, until we see signs that the economic role of the military is weakening, 2013 doesn't augur well for the North Korean people.

----------------------

John Lee is a Hudson Institute Visiting Fellow and an Adjunct Associate Professor and Michael Hintze Fellow for Energy Security at the Centre for International Security Studies, Sydney University. He is the author of Will China Fail? (CIS, 2008).

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un offers olive branch to South in rare address

By NBC News wire services

SEOUL, South Korea -- North Korean leader Kim Jong Un called for an end to confrontation between the two Koreas, technically still at war in the absence of a peace treaty to end their 1950-53 conflict, in a surprise New Year speech broadcast on state media.

The address by Kim, who took over power in the state after his father, Kim Jong Il, died in 2011, appeared to take the place of the policy-setting New Year editorial published in leading state newspapers.

But North Korea has offered olive branches before and Kim's speech does not necessarily signify a change in tack from a country that vilifies the United States and U.S. ally South Korea at every chance it gets.

North Korea raised tensions in the region by launching a long-range rocket in December that it said was aimed at putting a scientific satellite in orbit, drawing international condemnation.

North Korea, which considers North and South as one country, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, is banned from testing missile or nuclear technology under U.N. sanctions imposed after its 2006 and 2009 nuclear weapons tests.

Keep reading on NBC >>

Along the Chinese border, defectors say North Korean province is quietly liberalizing

Max Fisher

 A North Korean soldier stands guard along the Chinese border. (GOH CHAI HIN/AFP/Getty Images)

On the northeastern fringe of North Korea, a place so remote that Korea’s medieval monarchy once exiled out-of-favor officials there, a province now known as North Hamgyung may be experiencing a degree of relative wealth and freedom unknown in the rest of the country.

To be clear, the operative word here is “relative”; the accounts make clear that North Hamgyung is still primarily defined by North Korea’s poverty and totalitarian rule. But, based on defector accounts gathered by North Korea-focused news site New Focus International, the province appears to be experiencing an upsurge in wealth and personal freedoms. “North Hamgyung province seems a much better place for life than the city of Pyongyang,” one defector said, a surprising statement given that the government has long cultivated capital city Pyongyang as the height of wealth and development.

New Focus International says that one defector was “shocked” on seeing the relative wealth and prosperity in North Hamgyung. Another said that “as long as you have the trust of relevant authorities, you can lead a decent life,” relatively unfettered, whereas life in Pyongyang requires constant vigilance from watchful state security.

Residents in North Hamgyung are said to have regular access to rice. This might seem like a small thing, but it’s difficult to overstate the cultural value of rice in Korea, its importance to families, and the pain many North Koreans feel at being deprived of this cherished staple. In Pyongyang, a rice allowance is seen as a reward for status and loyalty, as well as a sign of the city’s stature. That North Hamgyung residents would have rice, and acquire it by means other than as a reward from the government, would be a big deal to North Koreans. Residents can even buy bread imported from nearby China. It’s no wonder that, according to New Focus International, some North Koreans talk about “defecting” from their home province to North Hamgyung.

The Onsong market in North Hamgyong/ english.chosun.com

Assuming that these defector accounts are true, the changes would seem to be a result of North Korea’s increasingly porous border with China. North Korea began allowing freer cross-border travel several years ago because it needed the black market to bring in food and keep the economy from collapsing. China still regularly imprisons and deports any defectors it finds, but the border is left conspicuously more open than North Korea’s other borders, allowing some North Koreans to travel back and forth. This trade has brought with it, among other things, bootleg video CD movies that allow North Koreans a glimpse into the outside world, which it turns out is not as terrible as their government tells them.

Is North Hamgyung’s improved status just a temporary blip until Pyongyang reverses the changes, a possible model for North Korea’s future, or a unique system that can only work here? The region is an unusual mix of internal exiles (people who said or did the wrong thing and were sent away to this remote province) and loyal political elites, according to Barbara Demick’s excellent book, Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives of North Koreans.

Keep reading on washingtonpost >>

Obama's indifference to North Korea = nuclear danger

Fox/ By Amb. John Bolton 

North Korea’s successful missile launch, purportedly to orbit a weather satellite, highlights President Obama’s sustained indifference to this repressive regime. While Pyongyang’s rocket tests have had decidedly mixed results, its nuclear weapons program has proceeded apace during four years of U.S. inattention, increasing the risks in northeast Asia and globally. 

Mr. Obama’s quiescence on North Korea is unfortunately symptomatic of his inability or unwillingness to acknowledge, let alone confront, threats to America’s interests, and those of its friends and allies.

In 2009, the Obama administration’s approach to Pyongyang appeared unexpectedly realistic. The White House initially seemed to abandon the Clinton-Bush obsession with making deals involving tangible economic and political concessions to North Korea in exchange for yet more promises to terminate its nuclear weapons program. Mr. Obama rightly believed that avidly pursuing such negotiations, offering one “compromise” after another, simply reinforced the North’s craving for attention without producing results.

Mr. Obama’s quiescence on North Korea is unfortunately symptomatic of his inability or unwillingness to acknowledge, let alone confront, threats to America’s interests, and those of its friends and allies.

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So transparent was its mendacity, par for its history of diplomacy with America since the Korean War, that even former secretary of state Condoleezza Rice’s chief negotiator came to admit it. Christopher Hill said in January of 2011 that there was “absolutely no value” in resuming the failed six-party talks because of sustained North Korean duplicity. Better late than never.

But Mr. Obama’s reluctance to engage the North, simply abandoning the misguided Clinton-Bush diplomacy, is nothing to write home about. Not making unforced concessions that have the political or economic effect of propping up the regime, which repeatedly promises to give up its nuclear program but never does, avoids one erroneous path but follows another. In fact, administration passivity simply permitted the North to proceed essentially unimpeded.

United Nations Security Council sanctions after Pyongyang’s second nuclear test in 2009 only marginally tightened those imposed in 2006 after the first detonation and repeated missile tests; unfortunately, none of the sanctions have been stringently enforced. Before long, the Obama administration reverted to its predecessors’ approach, failing as they did. (On Wednesday, the Security Council condemned the latest missile launch, saying it will urgently consider “an appropriate response.”)

Just because North Korea’s nuclear weapons program hasn’t been on the front pages or at the center of political debate doesn’t mean the uranium-enrichment centrifuges haven’t been spinning. In fact, the North brazenly revealed an extensive new centrifuge facility in 2010, asserting that its enrichment program had begun only two years before. Nor can we conclude that the North’s extensive network of underground facilities hasn’t been manufacturing new nuclear weapons, improving warhead designs by reducing their size and weight, or expanding its nuclear infrastructure. Lack of news about the North isn’t good news; it’s simply bad news we haven’t yet heard.

North Korea thus provides a paradigm of the dangers of a hands-off approach to international threats. Unfortunately, for four years, national security matters have generally sunk into obscurity, except where incidents such as the murder of the U.S. ambassador to Libya has slapped America back into awareness. Mr. Obama’s lack of interest because of his near-total concentration on domestic priorities has been a major factor: When a president abjures his bully pulpit, no one else can comparably focus the national attention. But Republicans are also complicit; reticence in critiquing the administration’s policy errors and offering workable options has significantly contributed to the national blindness to foreign threats.

Shortly after Kim Jong-un assumed leadership of the world’s only hereditary communist dictatorship, the North’s failed April missile launch provided an opportune moment to weaken the regime and hasten its ultimate collapse. Indeed, Kim Jong-il’s death and the ensuing succession process was an opening to destabilize the North Korean police state, and work toward reunifying the Korean Peninsula, America’s declared objective since 1945.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2012/12/13/obama-indifference-means-nuclear-danger/#ixzz2FKYephH4

Kim Jong Un's year as 'Dear Leader'

Read >>

Reports: American tourist detained in North Korea

Photos of orphans may be the reason behind one man’s detention

By NBC News staff and wire reports

SEOUL -- An American tourist who visited North Korea last month for what was to have been a five-day trip has been detained by police there, associates of his family and activists in Seoul said.

Kenneth Bae, 44, was in a group of five tourists who visited the northeast city of Rajin, South Korea's Yonhap news agency said, citing a report by the Kookmin Ilbo newspaper. Bae, who is Korean-American, entered North Korea on Nov. 3.

"What we know is that he is a person who wants to help poor children, kotjebis (homeless children), and he took pictures of them to support them later," said Do Hee-youn, a North Korean human rights activist and head of the Citizens' Coalition for Human Rights of Abductees and North Korean Refugees.

'Fluttering swallows'There are said to be thousands of homeless, starving children in the North after a famine in the 1990s. Kotjebis translates into English as "fluttering swallows."

It was impossible for NBC News to confirm Bae's arrest in one of the world's most secretive states and there has been no formal announcement on North Korean media. More on NBC >>
Read more at http://goodmenproject.com/good-feed-blog/american-citizen-held-captive-in-north-korea/#weE48ElhSBFYMqk2.99 

North Korea releases photos of rocket launch

This Just In

North Korea's state news agency has put out some photos of the rocket launch earlier this week that is believed to have put a satellite into orbit.

This image from KCNA shows North Korean leader Kim Jong Un celebrating with troops.

And here's a shot of the launch.

North Korean satellite ’tumbling out of control,’ US officials say

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

By Jim Miklaszewski and Alan Boyle, NBC News

The object that North Korea sent into space on Wednesday appears to be “tumbling out of control” as it orbits the earth, U.S. officials told NBC News.

<br>

The officials said that it is indeed some kind of space vehicle, but they still haven’t been able to determine exactly what the satellite is supposed to do.

In a statement, the White House said the rocket launch was a highly provocative act that threatens regional security and violates U.N. resolutions.

The United Nations Security Council on Wednesday condemned the launch, calling it a "clear violation" of U.N. resolutions. A spokesman for U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said he "deplores" the launch.

North Korea is banned from conducting missile and nuclear tests, under the terms of U.N. sanctions imposed after a series of nuclear weapons tests in 2006 and 2009.

Missile warning systems detected the launch at 7:49 p.m. ET Tuesday. North American Aerospace Defense Command officials said in a statement that the initial indications were that the first stage fell into the Yellow Sea and the second stage fell into the Philippine Sea.

North Korea said the launch was an attempt to place a satellite into a pole-to-pole orbit. Pyongyang's official KCNA news agency said that the rocket was fired from the Sohae Satellite Launch Center on the secretive country's west coast, and that the Kwangmyongsong weather satellite went into orbit as planned. More >>

Why did North Korea launch a rocket?

Security Clearance

December 11th, 2012/10:06 PM ET

By Jamie Crawford

Whatever the reasons were behind North Korea's decision to launch a second rocket this year – a feat unprecedented to this point – the intended audience is likely more domestic than international.

Coming on the heels of a failed launch last April, and just before the one year anniversary of his father's death, analysts say North Korea's young new leader is more interested in sending a message to his impoverished nation than he is with any potential international consequences that could follow.

"I think this is very important to Kim Jong-un to build political legitimacy and bolster the spirits of his people," James Schoff, a North Korea specialist with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told CNN. "He is doing this despite the fact that he knows he is going to come into a lot of criticism in the region for it."

Wednesday's launch took many by surprise, considering an extension announced earlier this week to address apparent complications with the rocket could have pushed back an attempt to send it up until the end of the month.

The United States and other governments fear the tests serve as an undercover guise to enhance North Korea's ballistic missile program.

A U.S. official said the American military and intelligence picked up the launch immediately and were analyzing the data.

The United Nations Security Council has issued multiple sanctions against the North Korean government in an effort to get it to cease work on the program.

The United States, this week, called on North Korea to refrain from a launch, which it said would violate its international obligations.

Longtime North Korea watchers said the leadership succession process is now complete with Kim Jong-un viewed as the formalized leader of North Korea.

But the launch came during the more crucial power consolidation process where the new leader has purged senior military officers favored by his father's regime in an effort to re-balance the leadership toward the governing Workers Party.

This launch was viewed by some analysts as providing an opportunity that could help Kim Jong-un in his push for that consolidation of power.

"If Kim Jong-un pulls off a successful long range missile test, its a very important signal saying that yes I, Kim Jong-un have replaced the powerful generals," John Park, a Stanton Junior Faculty Fellow at MIT told CNN. "It shows that I have found the right balance and I am now in charge."

More importantly for Kim, a successful launch would further cement his leadership status in the eyes of the North Korean elite. Keep reading >>

North Korea launches controversial rocket

By Alan Boyle Science editor

NBC News

North Korea launched a long-range rocket on Wednesday in defiance of its critics abroad, and debris from the rocket fell into the sea minutes after liftoff, Japanese government officials reported.

Initial word of the launch came from media outlets in Seoul and Tokyo. A spokesman at South Korea's defense ministry confirmed to NBC News that the launch had taken place but declined to provide further details.
Reuters reported that South Korean President Lee Myung-Bak called an emergency security meeting in response to the North Korean launch, which took place at the Sohae Satellite Launch Station on the secretive country's west coast.
Japan's chief cabinet secretary, Osamu Fujimura, said North Korea's Unha rocket flew over Okinawa at 10:01 a.m. local time. He could not confirm whether any debris fell on Japanese territory. "The Japanese government regards this launch as an act compromising the peace and stability of the region, including Japan," Fujimura said. He said the Japanese government would lodge a strong protest.
Japan's NHK television network reported that the rocket's second stage crashed into the sea off the coast of the Philippines as planned, minutes after passing over Okinawa. It was not immediately clear whether the third stage made it into outer space.
North Korea says the rocket launch is aimed purely at putting its Kwangmyongsong weather satellite into a pole-to-pole orbit. But critics fear that the mission's true purpose is to test technologies for sending a nuclear warhead to targets as far away as the U.S. West Coast.
This month, U.S. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said "a North Korean 'satellite' launch would be a highly provocative act that threatens peace and security in the region." Nuland said such a launch would violate U.N. Security Council resolutions.
North Korea is banned from conducting missile and nuclear tests, under the terms of U.N. sanctions imposed after a series of nuclear weapons tests in 2006 and 2009.
Wednesday's launch follows up on an attempt in April that ended in failure just minutes after liftoff.
This report includes information from Reuters.

North Korea claims discovery of 'unicorn lair'

 

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Read >>

N. Korea out to prove reach of its rockets

A Nov. 23 satellite image from Digital Globe shows the launch complex at North Korea's Sohae Satellite Launch Station. North Korea says it's preparing to launch a satellite from the facility later this month. 

By James Oberg NBC News space analyst

HOUSTON — North Korea has two things to prove to the world when it tries once again to put a satellite into orbit, as announced over the weekend. First, engineers have to prove that they've solved the technical problems that led to an embarrassing launch failure in April. Second, officials have to prove that their intentions are as peaceful as they say they are.

As hard as the first challenge is, the second one may be harder.
Some observers have referred to this month's scheduled launch as a test for a long-range missile capable of hitting the United States, but this weekend's statement from Pyongyang was explicit: The North Koreans say they are simply trying again to put a satellite into orbit.
The mission has been portrayed as a do-over for April's launch of the Unha rocket and Kwangmyongsong satellite. The launch will once again take place at the Sohae Satellite Launch Station, where our NBC News team and other foreign journalists were given a pre-launch tour. Once again, the rocket is due to fly almost due south, putting the satellite in a polar orbit, according to warnings posted for fliers and mariners in the projected impact zone.
This time, however, the North Koreans are hoping to avoid premature impact. In April, the first stage of the three-stage Unha rocket disintegrated near the end of its two-minute thrusting phase, with the debris plunging into shallow waters west of the South Korean coastline.
Good news, bad news From the North Koreans' perspective, the good news is that the first stage worked properly on at least two earlier launches, where upper stages then failed. So the design is probably fixable.
But clues as to the nature of the failure have been scanty. Any debris that was recovered is probably in South Korean (and perhaps U.S.) hands. The available telemetry about the rocket's operating parameters probably was not extensive. More >> 

’Grave provocation’: North Korea vows to test long-range rocket

journalstar.com

By Reuters

SEOUL, South Korea -- North Korea is to carry out its second rocket launch of 2012 as its youthful leader Kim Jong Un flexes his muscles a year after his father's death, in a move that will likely heighten diplomatic tensions and draw criticism from Washington.

North Korea's state news agency announced the decision to launch another space satellite on Saturday, just a day after Kim met a senior delegation from China's Communist Party in the North Korean capital of Pyongyang.

China, under new leadership, is North Korea's only major political backer and has continually urged peace on the Korean peninsula, where the North and South remain technically at war after an armistice, rather than a peace treaty, ended the 1950-53 conflict.

No comment on the planned launch was immediately available from Beijing's foreign ministry.

Seoul's foreign ministry said in a statement that the move was a "grave provocation". Japan's Kyodo news agency said Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda had ordered ministries to be on alert for the launch. More >>

Satellite image shows activity at North Korea launch site

Security Clearance

November 26th, 2012

07:59 PM ET

By Adam Levine

A new satellite image shows increased activity at a North Korean launch site, suggesting a new launch could be possible in the next few weeks, according to the satellite imagery company DigitalGlobe.

The United States has seen activity on the launch pad but does not believe a launch is imminent, U.S. military sources tell CNN's Barbara Starr.

The image at North Korea's Sohae satellite launch station was taken on November 23 and shows similar preparations as was witnessed ahead of the failed April 13 attempt to launch a satellite on top of a long-range missile, the DigitalGlobe analysis concludes.

"Given the observed level of activity noted of a new tent, trucks, people and numerous portable fuel/oxidizer tanks, should North Korea desire - it could possibly conduct its fifth satellite launch event during the next three weeks," according to the analysis provided to CNN.

No rocket is visible on the launch pad.

The United States has yet to see a missile on the launch pad, said one of the sources, speaking on the condition no name was used because the source was not authorized to speak to the media about U.S. intelligence on North Korea.

The source added that if there was a launch, it would likely be a long-range missile like the Taepodong-2 because the Sohae site is a long-range missile launch pad.

North Korea's railroad to freedom

Shadow Government

By James K. Glassman, Amanda Schnetzer 

Next July marks the 60th anniversary of the armistice that ended the Korean War. That conflict began in 1950, when the North Korean army crossed the 38^th parallel to invade South Korea and entered Seoul, the capital, three days later. With more than one million losing their lives in the war, including 41,000 Americans killed or missing in action, it's important that the record reflect the truth about the North's attack.

Yet the North Korean government's propaganda machine imposes an alternate version of reality. As Melanie Kirkpatrick confirms in her new book, Escape from North Korea: The Untold Story of Asia's Underground Railroad, North Korean schoolbooks teach that the war began in 1950 "with an invasion of the North by American and South Korean forces." We know this through the first-hand accounts of individuals like Kim Seong-min, a former propaganda officer in the North Korean People's Army who jumped off a moving train and defected to South Korea in 1999.

As Kirkpatrick writes, "[Kim's] decision to leave North Korea was heavily influenced by what he had learned from illegally listening to Voice of America and the Korean Broadcasting System. He came to realize that much of what his government was telling him was a lie." The experience of hearing other defectors tell their stories in these broadcasts "gave Kim Seong-min the courage to dream about going to South Korea. It also taught him about the power of information to change minds."

Today, Kim Seong-min heads Free North Korea Radio, a Seoul-based station that is "dedicated to the democratization of North Korea." Just this week, he gained international attention for launching border-crossing balloons containing money and messages against the regime in Pyongyang. Such launches are a low-tech but effective nonviolent tactic in the struggle to get information and support to the North Korean people, as this Wall Street Journal blog explains.

Refugee Joseph Kim fled as a teenager on February 16, 2005, the birthday of the late dictator Kim Jong Il, in order to escape the extreme privations of life under a corrupt authoritarian regime. "He wanted to tell someone...but there was no one he trusted with such a secret. Everyone in his family had died or disappeared, and the information was too dangerous to share with a friend, no matter how close," Kirkpatrick writes.

And so, with pangs of hunger wrenching his belly, Joseph Kim walked along a road adjacent to the Tumen River and finally "veered off the path, scrambled down the bank...and started running." When he made it to the other side without capture and entered China, he wandered into a small village, where an old woman told him to look for a church. Joseph Kim didn't know what a church was, but he finally found one.

Thus begins the journey of a growing number of North Koreans, who connect with the "Chinese Christian network" that typically leads them to a third country before they arrive in South Korea, the United States, or elsewhere. In Joseph's case, the network helped him reach an American consulate in China, where he sought political asylum. Kirkpatrick shares data from South Korea's Ministry of Unification on the number of North Koreans arriving there each year: 71 in 1998, 148 in 1999, 1,140 in 2002, and nearly 3,000 annually by the end of the decade. "The numbers showcase the growing success of the underground railroad," she says.

While there are brokers who help for money, the Christian "conductors" on this 21^st century underground railroad are deeply moved by the suffering of North Koreans. "If you see someone who is drowning in the river, wouldn't you reach out and help that person? That was what was in my heart," says Pastor John Yoon, who is featured in the book and who began helping individuals escape in the 1990s, when millions of North Koreans died of starvation.

It's tempting to hope that North Korea's new leader, Kim Jong Un, as a Western-educated member of Generation Y, might make a difference. But as Victor Cha wrote for Foreign Policy earlier this year: "Let me be blunt: The North Korean regime will not change because Little Kim studied in Switzerland, likes Mickey Mouse, and has a hot wife."

The only evidence of change policymakers should deem credible is whether the Kim regime is respecting the basic human rights of North Koreans. But as long as they continue to flee through China and make their way to freedom along the new underground railroad, we can tell that the new Kim regime is like the Kim regimes that went before it. The North Korean people need our help. 

_________________________

James K. Glassman is founding executive director of the George W. Bush Institute in Dallas and served as UnderSecretary of State for Public Diplomacy in Bush Administration. Amanda Schnetzer is the Bush Institute's Director of Human Freedom. The Bush Institute's Freedom Collection features two North Koreans who have escaped to freedom, along with the stories of other freedom advocates around the world.

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