By M D Nalapat
Increasingly,
funding is coming from individuals in Middle East, many of whom are
connected to North Korean cash supply chains through individuals linked
to GHQ Rawalpindi.
The
capital of Nepal is among the locations on the globe where a North
Korean embassy is located, and it is, together with Phuket and Abu
Dhabi, the preferred location for secret meetings between
representatives of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) and
GHQ Rawalpindi, with whom Pyongyang has long had numerous “under and
over the radar” contacts. Those familiar with the leadership style of
North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un, say that he is a “thoughtful
and brilliant individual, very similar in attitude and objectives to his
grandfather”, Kim Il Sung. They say that the young leader “spends hours
each day studying reports from across the world, especially from the
United States, China, Japan and South Korea”, so as to ensure that his
“master plan for Korean unification gets fulfilled before his 50th
year”. Kim Jong Un was born in 1984 and assumed charge of the DPRK in
2011. The previous South Korean administration led by Park Geun-hye had
framed its policies on the assumption that Kim was unpopular and could
be toppled, either through assassination or a coup organised by the
military and security forces of the North. Those familiar with the
working style of the Supreme Leader say that such views are unrealistic,
and that Kim Jong Un enjoys wide support within the DPRK, “much more
than his father Kim Jong Il”, who was regarded as being “too much
trusting (of the promises of South Korean politicians), especially of
President Roh Tae-woo”. A source with knowledge of the inner workings
within the Kim regime claims that Kim Jong Il, even while his father Kim
Il Sung was still alive, “leaned in favour of working out an agreement
with South Korean President Roh that would potentially involve the
eventual shutting down of the nuclear weapons program”. However,
“pressure from the Bill Clinton administration”, which was opposed to
the Sunshine Policy as carried out by the peacenik President, ensured
the disgrace of Roh, and “the withdrawal by his successor Kim Young Sam
of most of the concessions offered by Roh”, thereby killing the chances
for a nuclear deal between the Republic of Korea (RoK) and the DPRK. By
the time Kim Jong Il took over full power in 1994, Kim Young Sam was
President of South Korea and “the (Clinton-inspired) withdrawal from the
hand of peace offered by Roh Tae-woo was in full swing”, thereby
causing Kim Jong Il to change his stance from supporting a deal to
waiting for better terms than were offered by Kim Young Sam, “who was
entirely in the hands of the US administration, so far as policies
towards the DPRK were concerned”.
Perhaps as a consequence of the earlier history of harsh
conditionalities sought by the US “under the inspiration of Japan”, Kim
Jong Un has, from the start of his assumption of office (in 2011), the
same mistrust of the US that his grandfather Kim Il Sung had, believing
that Washington wants to ensure that “Tokyo becomes the overlord of the
noble and mighty Korean race, because they know that the Japanese will
always do the bidding of the US, while we Koreans have a will of their
own”.
GHQ ENSURES MIDEAST CASH
According to those familiar with the Supreme Leader’s style of
functioning and his approach towards issues, by 2013 the grandson of the
DPRK founder was in full charge of the state. Over the preceding two
years, Kim Jong Un had removed (sometimes by execution) those he
suspected of looking askance at his declared efforts at charting a
course different from that of his father. Since that time, “our
brilliant and courageous Supreme Leader (their description) has worked
at multiplying alternative sources of financing and supply for the
missile and nuclear programs”. According to analysts tracking the
clandestine financial operations of the Pakistan army, while part of the
funding for both has come from dedicated Information Technology
warriors able to penetrate financial systems across the globe to
pecuniary advantage, a new source of money has opened up, thanks to
elements linked to GHQ. The IT operations focus on “zones less sensitive
to US radar, such as Africa and parts of Asia, rather than most of
Europe, “although Ukraine is an exception”. However, increasingly,
funding for the program has come from High Net Worth individuals in the
Middle East, many of whom have been connected to DPRK cash supply chains
through individuals linked to GHQ Rawalpindi. “Patriotic (Middle
Eastern) individuals wish to revenge themselves on the US for its
domination of Arab countries, and regard the development of our (the
DPRK’s) nuclear defensive program as being a means of ensuring such
revenge,” say Korean sources. The calculation of those active in
providing clandestine funding for Pyongyang’s strategic strike force is
that a fully developed nuclear offensive capability (by the DPRK against
the US) will at the least pull away attention by Washington from the
Middle East to East Asia, thereby “giving an opportunity for local
patriotic forces (within the GCC) to take control of regimes from those
controlled by the US warmongers”. GHQ Rawalpindi, with its network of
hawala operators, is an effective conduit for the channelling of
substantial amounts of cash to North Korea, presumably after its
officers and associates keep a part of the proceeds for themselves and
for funding GHQ operations in Afghanistan and India.
Especially after 2013, the Pakistan army has reduced its clandestine
operations with its US counterparts, even while it has significantly
ramped up such linkages with the Peoples Liberation Army, “which has a
different perception regarding the DPRK than that held by the US
security establishment”. Indeed, it is clear that Russia and China do
not realistically need to fear an attack even by a fully nuclearised
North Korea, lines of communication between both and Pyongyang having
remained substantial since the 1950s. Both Russia and China are vital to
the survival of the ecosystem maintaining the Pyongyang regime, and it
would be unimaginable for either to be a military target of the DPRK.
In contrast, Japan and the US would be the most likely targets for
offensive actions by the DPRK. However, the contacts spoken to repeat
that Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un would order an attack “only if it is
clear that Japan and the US are about to attack” (the DPRK). They say
that Kim is no warmonger, but a leader “devoted to the peaceful
re-unification of the Korean people and the global rise of the mighty
Korean people”. The expectation is that the window for such
re-unification would open, “once the US and Japan desist from
interfering in a matter involving only the Korean race”, presumably
because of worry that in retaliation for such intervention, North Korean
nukes would land on US cities. Although verification of such claims is
difficult, those contacted say that already, “missiles that can reach
California and Alaska” have been perfected, together with “tested”
warheads, and that “this knowledge was made available last month to
Tokyo and Washington through intentional dissemination of technical
details”.
Although there are credible reports of outside assistance to the
North Korean missile and nuclear program, this is denied by those spoken
to. They say that it is “an insult to Korean brains” to say that the
DPRK needs help from “other races” in order to move ahead with the
development of intercontinental ballistic missiles and thermonuclear
warheads, “which technology is six decades old”. They claim that
although the Russian and Chinese governments are ”regrettably sincere”
about imposing UN sanctions, “ordinary Russians and Chinese who are
opposed to US hegemony ignore such rules and ensure help to us”. Such
informal channels have created “multiple small supply lines”, the way
that Ho Chi Minh created a capillary system for ferrying materiel and
fighters to South Vietnam in the 1970s, despite the merciless bombing of
highways, rivers and much else by the US, acting under the direction of
Nobel Peace Prize awardee, Henry Kissinger. The contacted persons claim
that the Middle East is a location that has influential individuals who
are “very sympathetic to the mission of the Supreme Leader” and admit
that “some of our friends in Pakistan have been helpful in connecting
such (Mideast HNI) elements to us”. They, however, deny any link between
such individuals and the Pakistan military, saying that the military in
that country “will not stray from what Washington and Beijing want them
to do, which is assist in sanctions”. Despite such denials, however,
there is clearly another A.Q. Khan network operating within Pakistan,
this time supplying the North Koreans not so much technology and
components, as access to Middle Eastern cash, although it is likely that
there exists clandestine to and fro flows of such items as well between
the DPRK and Pakistan.
NO TRUST IN U.S. PROMISES
One fact seems clear from the discussion held with elements
considered privy to the thinking of the DPRK leadership. This is that
(1) any residual trust in US assurances of safe conduct following the
election of Trump has now dwindled to zero, and that (2) Pyongyang will
therefore press ahead with the nuclear and missile program without
pause, irrespective of international diplomacy. (3) That Middle Eastern
individuals opposed to the US and its allies are involved in ensuring
that sufficient cash get funnelled towards DPRK entities (including
those not registered or regarded as such), so as to ensure a supply of
brainpower and materiel that would improve DPRK delivery systems and
thermonuclear warheads within the term in office of President Donald J.
Trump. (4) That the George W. Bush administration missed an opportunity
to take out through force the DPRK’s strategic capability (as it did in
the case of Iran), the way Israel has occasionally acted in the case of
its neighbours and may do so again. The successor Barack Obama
administration remained focused less on significant practical
concessions other than the provision of verbal guarantees of safe
conduct that were already shown to have been worthless in Iraq, Libya
and Syria. In other words, “they offer just promises but expect in
return not just words but action from us”. The North Koreans believe,
for example, that NATO pressure on Bashar Assad and his followers to (in
effect) commit mass suicide rose substantially after his stock of
chemical weapons was destroyed “with a part (according to these sources)
kept apart to use occasionally so as to blame Assad for their use by
(NATO) proxies”. (5) Supreme Leader Kim believes that only a capacity
for Mutual Assured Destruction between the US and the DPRK will protect
the country from a US-Japan attack. As for South Korea, the calculation
is that “the Korean people would revolt against the South Korean
government, were the Seoul regime to join Japan and the US in attacking
the brave Korean nation”, although this may be an incorrect assessment,
given the willingness of the South Korean military to take on the North.
(6) Kim Jong Un is fixated on the same objective sought by his
grandfather, which was to unify the peninsula under his leadership, and
believes that nuclear capability would help ensure this without a war
with the South.
NEARLY IMMUNE FROM U.S. ATTACK
As time (and the Pyongyang nuclear program) moves ahead, the window
for success at an affordable price in US, Japanese and South Korean
lives in a military operation designed to destroy the North Korean
nuclear and missile program seems to be closing at speed. Supreme Leader
Kim believes the Trump administration’s fiery rhetoric to be a bluff,
and thus far, events are bearing out such a view. Focusing exclusively
on UN sanctions on the formal economy of the DPRK, the US seems largely
unaware of the way in which a vast and secretive sanctions-proof
capillary network has been set up by the Pyongyang leadership to ensure
that the nuclear and missile plans meet the objective of reducing large
parts of cities on both US coasts to radioactive rubble. In other words,
Kim Jong Un is dismayingly close to reaching a stage that would ensure
immunity from attack from the US and Japan. This would leave Pyongyang
free to administer jabs and pinpricks at both, the way a nuclearised
Pakistan has been doing with India since the 1980s, beginning with the
fomenting of the Khalistan insurgency and the revival of the Kashmir
troubles.
Russia and China would watch from the sidelines as Japan and the US
experience the effects of asymmetrical warfare from a regime that makes
itself immune through possession of deadly retaliatory force.
No comments:
Post a Comment