With a submarine-based missile launch on Wednesday, North Korea reached dangerous new territory, as the missile breached Japan’s air defense identification zone–a first, according to Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. The missile, a 9 meter long KN-11, launched from the waters off Sinpo, in North Korea’s South Hamgyong Province. U.S. Pacific Command tracked the missile as traveling 300 miles over the Sea of Japan before falling into the waters below Japanese-controlled airspace.

“If the North Korean regime continues to pursue its nuclear and missile capabilities and ignore severe economic difficulties of its people, it will bring about more severe sanctions and diplomatic isolation. It should also realize that it will hasten its self-destruction,” South Korea’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

The KN-11, a missile with a maximum reach of 4,000 kilometers, launched from a submarine at 5:30 a.m. local time, according to South Korea’s Foreign Ministry. It marks the latest in a string of missile launches from the communist country over the past few months. It was not entirely surprising, given the fact that the North said if the annual joint military exercises between South Korea and the United States occurred (they started Monday), it has a “self-defensive right and justifiable action to respond in a very hard way.”

Video: North Korea test-fired a ballistic missile from a submarine, two days after ROK-US war game pic.twitter.com/pg1ftkeAdI

— China Xinhua News (@XHNews) August 24, 2016

And given a letter North Korea sent to the U.N. Security Council on Tuesday, that seems to be what happened. “U.S.-led large-scale joint military exercise in collusion with the South Korean forces despite repeated warnings of the DPRK is a grave military provocation aimed to launch a preemptive nuclear attack on the DPRK and a challenge to regional peace and stability in every way,” said the letter, referring to the country’s official title, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

Shinzo Abe, Japan’s prime minister, called the latest missile test “a threat to Japan’s security and an unforgivable reckless act that significantly damages the peace and stability of the region.” And the three most powerful nations in the region agreed on Wednesday to meet to discuss deterring an increasingly adventurous North Korea. At a meeting following the morning launch, the foreign ministers of Japan, South Korea, and China announced a trilateral summit to take place in Japan by the end of the year.

“There are many problems existing between the three countries, but China, Japan, and South Korea are the three biggest economy entities in Asia. It’s our responsibility to promote economic development, lead regional cooperation and maintain regional peace and stability,” said Wang Yi, China’s Foreign Minister.

Alec Siegel

Alec Siegel is a staff writer at Law Street Media. When he’s not working at Law Street he’s either cooking a mediocre tofu dish or enjoying a run in the woods. His passions include: gooey chocolate chips, black coffee, mountains, the Animal Kingdom in general, and John Lennon. Baklava is his achilles heel. Contact Alec at ASiegel@LawStreetMedia.com.

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The annual joint military exercises between the United States and South Korea usually elicit ominous threats of retaliation from North Korea. But in an interview on Thursday with the Associated Press, Han Song Ryol, the North’s only diplomatic tether to the United States, effectively declared war, referencing sanctions targeting Kim Jong Un as crossing “the red line.”

In early July, after a United Nations Human Rights Commission report detailed a host of human rights abuses in the isolated nation, the U.S. imposed sanctions on Kim Jong Un and 22 other high-ranking government officials. It marked the first time sanctions targeted Un, though the West has routinely sanctioned the country as a whole.

“The Obama administration went so far to have the impudence to challenge the supreme dignity of the DPRK in order to get rid of its unfavorable position during the political and military showdown with the DPRK,” said Han, using acronym for his country’s official title–Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. In response to the sanctions, the North cut off its only line of communication with the U.S., known as the New York channel, which was essentially a diplomatic post in Manhattan. Han has held that post for nearly two decades, as the director-general of the U.S. Affairs Department for the North’s Foreign Ministry.

A senior Obama administration official told Politico a few weeks ago that the sanction against Kim Jong Un and others in his government was meant to send a message: “if you become involved in abuses like running concentration camps or hunting down defectors we will know who you are.”

Joint military exercises–the Ulchi Freedom Guardian–are conducted by the U.S. and South Korea every August, and Han warned that if this year’s display goes as planned, then the North has a “self-defensive right and justifiable action to respond in a very hard way.” The U.S., he added, “has already declared war against the DPRK.” Last year’s Ulchi, which included 50,000 South Korean soldiers and 30,000 U.S. soldiers, nearly resulted in clashes between the two Korean nations, with tensions higher than ever before.

North Korea’s nuclear program has been maligned by the rest of the world and historically, the main target of U.S. and U.N. sanctions. But Han insisted it is indeed the U.S. who is irresponsible with nuclear weapons and other advanced military tools, saying:

It is not us, it is the United States that first developed nuclear weapons, who first deployed them and who first used them against humankind. And on the issue of missiles and rockets, which are to deliver nuclear warheads and conventional weapons warheads, it is none other than the United States who first developed it and who first used it.

Whether or not the U.S. “red line” crossing will indeed lead to war with North Korea is foggy, but with its citizenry impoverished and its global reputation sinking, anything is possible.

Alec Siegel

Alec Siegel is a staff writer at Law Street Media. When he’s not working at Law Street he’s either cooking a mediocre tofu dish or enjoying a run in the woods. His passions include: gooey chocolate chips, black coffee, mountains, the Animal Kingdom in general, and John Lennon. Baklava is his achilles heel. Contact Alec at ASiegel@LawStreetMedia.com.

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First it was Dennis Rodman who won North Korea’s admiration and now it’s a U.S. presidential candidate. Republican candidate (and presumptive nominee) Donald Trump has a strange list of endorsements, from a KKK leader, to Russian President Vladimir Putin, and now a North Korean state-run media outlet.

A DPRK Today editorial published Tuesday complimented the businessman, calling him a “wise politician” and a “far-sighted candidate” who will be instrumental in reuniting the Korean Peninsula.

Trump, “the Dennis Rodman of American politics,” gets a critical North Korean endorsement. Should I laugh or cry? https://t.co/6d1RzNI4gR

— Sean Watson (@seanwatson24) June 1, 2016

The editorial referenced foreign policy proposals Trump discussed during a speech regarding U.S. troops in South Korea. Trump floated the idea of withdrawing troops from Japan and South Korea if those nations do not provide more compensation to pay for the costs of housing and feeding U.S. troops.

The North Korean editorial welcomed this idea. “Yes do it, now … Who knew that the slogan ‘Yankee Go Home’ would come true like this?” said Han Yong Mook, who described himself as a Chinese North Korean scholar, in the editorial. “The day when the ‘Yankee Go Home’ slogan becomes real would be the day of Korean Unification.”

#Trump2016 endorsements growing!
• GOP Base
• KKK & white supremacist orgs
• Putin
• N. Korean dictatorhttps://t.co/9yvvz7yDtG

— TheAverageBlackMan (@TheAvgBlackMan) June 1, 2016

The editorial also urged Americans not to vote for Hillary Clinton. Han discussed the idea of Seoul cutting off payments to the U.S. in order to urge troops to move out of the country. “The president that U.S. citizens must vote for is not that dull Hillary–who claimed to adapt the Iranian model to resolve nuclear issues on the Korean Peninsula–but Trump, who spoke of holding direct conversation with North Korea,” Han said.

Some have seen the back and forth between the two as propaganda, and just a stunt to help Trump gain more traction.

“He’s the Dennis Rodman of American politics — quirky, flamboyant, risk-taking. At the moment he’s also an outsider,” John Feffer, director of Foreign Policy In Focus, told NK News. “But Pyongyang is hoping that either he’ll be elected (and follows through on his pledges) or that his pronouncements will change the political game in the United States and influence how the Democratic party and mainstream Republicans view Korean issues.”

In an interview with Reuters in May, Trump suggested that if elected president, he would be willing to negotiate directly with the North Korean dictator. However, the North Korean leader declined the invitation.

“It’s for utilization of the presidential election, that’s all. A kind of a propaganda or advertisement,”So Se Pyong, North Korea’s ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva, told Reuters. “This is useless, just a gesture for the presidential election.”

It is time we all start accepting the real possibility of Dennis Rodman as Trump’s Sec. of State https://t.co/ixpJGbkY5R

— Josh McDaniel (@jmcdanielnews) June 1, 2016

Maybe next we will be hearing from Bashar al-Assad or Fidel Castro for a Trump endorsement, because it really feels like anything can happen at this point.

Julia Bryant

Julia Bryant is an Editorial Senior Fellow at Law Street from Howard County, Maryland. She is a junior at the University of Maryland, College Park, pursuing a Bachelor’s degree in Journalism and Economics. You can contact Julia at JBryant@LawStreetMedia.com.

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Three foreigners have recently been sentenced to years of imprisonment and hard labor in North Korea. An American businessman for 10 years for stealing state secrets on behalf of South Korea. A Canadian pastor, reading off a script, confessed to trying to “set up a base for a religious state” on behalf of South Korea. He was dealt a life sentence. And an American college student said he was offered a used car from a friend in America in exchange for a North Korean propaganda poster, which he stole from the 5th floor of the hotel he was staying at in Pyongyang. He was handed a sentence of 15 years.

The latest in a string of sentences by the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) came last week when Kim Dong Chul–the businessman–was found guilty of “espionage” and “subversion.” Barring an early release, Kim will spend the next 10 years of his life working as a hard laborer for Kim Jung Un’s communist government. With the sentencing, he joins Otto Warmbier, the 21 year old American college student who was sentenced to 15 years of hard labor in March, and Hyeon Soo Lim, the Canadian priest who was sentenced to life of hard labor in December, as the only three westerners still detained by the notoriously insular and secretive nation.

During an interview with CNN in Pyongyang–North Korea’s capital–in January, Kim admitted to two year’s of spying for “South Korean conservative elements.” Kim, a naturalized American citizen who had been living in the Chinese border town of Yanji since 2001, gave CNN’s Will Ripley a rather detailed narrative of his activities as a spy, including mention of a former North Korean soldier who acted as a source and an explanation of how the North Koreans tracked his activities.

“I was tasked with taking photos of military secrets and ‘scandalous’ scenes,” Kim, 62, said. “[South Korea] asked me to help destroy the [North Korean] system and spread propaganda against the government.”

Though Kim’s account is unusually detailed, his claims are impossible to corroborate, and the North Korean justice system does not adhere to due process. The 68-year-old state is cited by Human Rights Watch as being among the “most repressive in the world.”

Kim’s case is the most recent in a spate of detentions under Kim Jung Un, who took power after his father died of a heart attack in 2011. And while sentencing foreigners as a means of gaining leverage over the West is hardly a novel tactic used by Kim Jung Un, the process by which the detentions have been doled out–in court, under the guise of law–is unusual.

“It seems that they are trying to emphasize and justify their holding of these individuals under grounds that [the accused] violated DPRK laws,” Scott Snyder, Director of U.S.-Korea policy at the Council on Foreign Relations, said in a phone interview with Law Street. “It also has to do with their desire to uphold the validity of their own system somehow in the eyes of their own citizens.”

Traditionally, foreigners detained by the DPRK remained in limbo until a diplomat from their home country reached out to make amends and bring the detainee home, Snyder said. Kim Jung Un has altered things by bringing cases to court, delivering a concrete judgment, and waiting months, sometimes years, before negotiating a return with government officials from the detainee’s home country. Under Kim Jung Un’s rule, four Americans have been sentenced and later released prior to their official release date.

According to Snyder, it’s common for the DPRK court to sentence a defendant based solely on a confession. He said that as early as the 1960s, foreigners accused of “sins against the state” would be required to write self-evaluations, often under intense pressure from communist party officials. Those evaluations, coupled with a show of contrition, or remorse for actions deemed unlawful, would be enough evidence for a conviction.

“It’s pretty clear in this socialist system, once [a detainee] gets to a hearing a sentence has already been determined,” Snyder said. “It’s a puppet court, and there’s no pretense of an actual evaluation of right and wrong.”

And while diplomatic relations between the United States and North Korea are effectively nonexistent, communication at the moment is especially frosty, given recent military posturing by the DPRK that breached international law. The Swedish Embassy acts as the U.S. point of contact in North Korea, passing along messages from both sides, and acting as “proxy eyes and ears,” according to Snyder.

However, there’s only so much that foreign diplomats can do in the hermit kingdom; where international law is routinely flouted and the supreme leader–Kim Jung Un–has unequivocal power.

And though Snyder recognizes the unjust consequences for crimes committed in North Korea, he thinks those traveling there must be conscious that they’re heading to a place where the rule of law is just another prop in the country’s facade.

“Obey the North Korean rule or you’re putting yourself at risk,” he said. “North Korea has its own laws.”

Alec Siegel

Alec Siegel is a staff writer at Law Street Media. When he’s not working at Law Street he’s either cooking a mediocre tofu dish or enjoying a run in the woods. His passions include: gooey chocolate chips, black coffee, mountains, the Animal Kingdom in general, and John Lennon. Baklava is his achilles heel. Contact Alec at ASiegel@LawStreetMedia.com.

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