August 1, 2024: North Korean hackers have been very active lately, or just sloppy enough to get caught. British government intelligence organization GCHQ exposed the North Korean hacking efforts. The North Korean hackers were responsible for several ransomware attacks on American hospitals as well as manufacturers of medical equipment, two air force bases and NASA. The North Korean hackers were also stealing personnel, commercial and military information stored online. North Korea also sent trained personnel to seek employment. One of these men was found out and arrested. In light of all this activity, the United States is offering up to $10 million in rewards for information on the location of North Korea hacking expert Rim Jong Hyok. This man has operated outside North Korea for years organizing hacking efforts that would benefit North Korea.

These hacking efforts are one more example of how there are two Koreas. One is a failure and the other is a success. A classic example of the impact of a socialist police state versus free market democracy is North Korea. This is one of the most corrupt nations in the world while South Korea is one the ten largest economies in the world. China has been unsuccessful in persuading North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons and engage in some needed economic reforms. China trying anyway is due more to self-interest than anything else because a nuclear North Korea has become a threat to China more than anyone else, except South Korea and Japan.

In 2023 South Korea declared it would develop and manufacture nuclear weapons. The cause of this is the growing instability of North Korea and doubts about the United States fulfilling its pledge to attack North Korea with nuclear weapons if the North attacks South Korea with nuclear weapons. South Korea currently sees North Korea as less stable and more prone to reckless actions against the south. This change in attitudes came after November 2023 when South Korea canceled a 2018 agreement with North Korea that reduced the surveillance and spying, they carried out against each other. South Korea had taken a closer look at North Korean military activities and concluded that North Korea might be tempted to emulate the October 2023 Hamas attack on Israel and back it with the threat of using nuclear weapons. This is a dangerous form of diplomacy, and it is unclear if North Korea was contemplating such a thing.

Currently North Korea is temporarily prospering by selling weapons and munitions to Russia in return for cash and much-needed food. This is good news for the North Korean government, which until last year was facing more popular unrest due to poor economic conditions and not enough food. In 2022 Russia started buying weapons and munitions from North Korea to supply their troops in Ukraine. More orders followed and soon this was visible on satellite photos of increased activity on the Trans-Siberian railroad.

It is unclear if North Korea was planning to risk its newly acquired prosperity with an attack on South Korea. Yet this is what South Korea feared and that’s why they canceled the 2018 treaty and resumed surveillance of North Korean military activities. All they could see was increased activity in weapons and munitions factories with most of that production being shipped to Russia. Since 2019, South Korea has not been able to get the North to negotiate about anything.

Not all the new weapons production is sent to Russia. North Korea is keeping its ballistic missile production going and testing more of them with launches into the waters between Korea and Japan. This frightens the Japanese, who note that most of these missiles seem to work and are not fired at their maximum ranges. While North Korea is pleased with this, Japan is also acquiring more BMD/Ballistic Missile Defense systems. Japan has recently increased its annual defense spending 26 percent. Now the Japanese are spending $52 billion a year, which is about 1.4 percent of GDP and the largest Japanese defense budget ever. It is also the sixth year that Japan increased defense spending and the goal is to eventually reach two percent of GDP. Japan and South Korea are now spending about the same amount on defense and are both in the top ten defense spenders in the world. The others are the United States, China, Russia, India, Saudi Arabia, Britain, Germany, and France. South Korea is number nine, spending a little more than Japan at number ten.

Militarily, South Korea is a superpower compared to North Korea. This is obvious when you consider annual defense spending. While the United States accounts for about 40 percent of worldwide defense spending, China, and Russia together only account for about 17 percent. The rest of the top ten are either allies of the Americans or friendly. Ukraine is, in terms of total defense spending that includes donations from NATO countries, figuratively in the top five when it comes to defense acquisitions. This is a dubious distinction for Ukraine, which is using it all to repel a Russian invasion. South Korea has profited from this because NATO member Poland, which borders Ukraine and Russia, purchased nearly $15 billion worth of South Korea weapons and munitions since about 2020. South Korea produces a lot more weapons and military equipment than the north and its weapons and munitions are top grade. One side effect is that, once Poland receives all the South Korean tanks, mobile artillery, munitions and guided and unguided rocket launchers from South Korea, they will have the most powerful army in NATO Europe. This is to discourage any Russian attacks on Poland or any other NATO nation in the area.

South Korea fears that their more numerous and effective weapons and munitions are not having the desired effect on North Korea. Since the 1990s South Korea has become an economic powerhouse and one of the top ten economies in the world. Because of that South Korea has more friends and trading partners in East Asia than Russia does. South Korea has the wealth and technical skill to build nuclear weapons and reliable ones at that. Russia believes that offending South Korea is a bad idea while disappointing North Korea creates no new problems.

Then there are the earlier South Korea efforts to keep nuclear weapons out of the Korean peninsula. The Americans have already taken the lead in this. In 1991 the United States withdrew all its nuclear warheads from South Korea and managed to get the two Koreas to agree not to develop and deploy nuclear weapons. This included both Koreas signing the NPT/Non-Proliferation Treaty. North Korea went ahead and developed nuclear weapons anyway, even though it was obvious that South Korea could do the same and produce more reliable nuclear warheads and more effective submarines to launch them from. When North Korea violated the agreement, South Korea went ahead and produced SLBMs/Submarine Launched Ballistic Missiles with conventional warheads launched from South Korean designed and built submarines.

Since 2014 South Korea has been building nine 3,300-ton KSS-III submarines, each able to carry six or ten locally developed SLBM ballistic missiles with a range of up to 500 kilometers. These missiles can carry nuclear warheads instead of the high-explosive ones they currently have. Two of these subs are in service with another two entering service in 2024 and 2026. North Korea realizes they could not develop and build anything similar. South Korea has a growing fleet of locally built submarines that can carry ballistic or cruise missiles. Most South Koreans now approve of building nuclear warheads, just in case North Korea foolishly makes a serious threat to use such missiles against South Korea or any other country. This made North Korea realize that the economically more powerful and technically more accomplished south not only can outproduce the north when it comes to any type of weapon, but has actually done so many times and is now a major producer and exporter of modern weapons. South Korea is not impressed with North Korean threats to attack them with devastating effect. The north can attack, but the south can retaliate with far greater destructive force. That is why the north continues to issue threats that South Korea ignores.

The south was not always the major military power, and the current situation is a relatively recent development. There is another complication, much of this traced back to the Korean War that began in 1950 when the overconfident north invaded. The fighting went on until 1953 when both sides agreed to an armistice, not a peace treaty. The combat forces remained in place to avoid a revival of fighting. This created the 250 kilometers long DMZ, a four kilometers wide demilitarized zone, which became the border between North and South Korea.

Since 1953 South Korea has become democratic, industrialized and it now has a GDP that is in the worldwide top ten. South Korea also became a major manufacturer and exporter of modern weapons. That included over fifteen billion dollars’ worth of weapons to NATO countries that border Russia or Ukraine. North Korea held onto its socialist ways and was misruled by the Kim dynasty. On a per capita basis, South Koreans are twenty times wealthier than the average North Korean. North Korea does have some nuclear weapons, but the Kim’s have not yet found a way to turn that into an improved standard of living for the average North Korean.

South Korea has been expanding its arms production since the 1990s and now, because of demand from NATO nations that sent a lot of weapons to Ukraine, South Korea is poised to enter the Top Five.

Big Brother China has been openly losing patience with its unruly North Korean neighbor. China is, literally, North Korea’s economic lifeline. China is the primary or only source for essentials like petroleum, food, and all sorts of smuggled goods, past a long list of international sanctions. China will tolerate a lot of bad behavior in return for obedience and maintaining order along the Chinese border. North Korea failed in both categories.

Everyone looks to China because Korea has traditionally been a Chinese responsibility and, most of the time, a difficult one. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has obediently gone to China several times since 2018 to receive advice. Kim also met with the leaders of South Korea and the United States. So far lots of the right words but little action. China and everyone else fears that North Korea is going to try and scam its way out of another tight situation and risk the very real wrath of China while doing it. Inside North Korea the official word is that the nuclear weapons are essential and not negotiable. Unofficially, more North Koreans want a change of government or a way to get out. Meanwhile South Korea continues to visibly prosper, with GDP per capita that is more than 20 times larger than North Korea. Being caught viewing videos of life in South Korea or South Korean video entertainment, is now a capital (death penalty) offense in North Korea.

In 2023 North Korea tried and failed once more to launch a photo-reconnaissance satellite. South Korea was successful in its attempt to launch a similar satellite. North Korean efforts to build and launch satellites are prohibited according to the economic and military sanctions imposed on North Korea because of its aggression towards South Korea. What North Korea needs more than a space program is more food. It is becoming clear that food is a priority if the Kim dynasty seeks to remain in power. North Korea sees the situation differently. In 2019 North Korea admitted the obvious; it never had any intention of surrendering its nuclear weapons. The reality was that North Korea was attempting its traditional negotiating tactic of offering to behave but wanted some economic aid first as a show of good faith. That tactic no longer works and now North Korea is back to making threats. Despite the 2022 strategy, nukes and military threats remain.

North Korea continues falling apart economically and politically and that has led North Koreans to do the unthinkable, which includes openly criticizing the government, putting anti-government graffiti in public places, and even attacking corrupt government officials including police. North Korea is bankrupt, and the situation is not improving. Covid19 made matters much worse because North Korea was totally unprepared to handle it and responded by shutting its borders in 2020 and restricting movement within North Korea. This crippled an already weak economy and efforts to deal with the threat of another fatal famine. Even the security forces were getting less food, and the emergency military food reserve was used up.

In a cost saving measure, in late 2023 North Korea announced it was closing about a quarter of its foreign embassies. Most of the embassy’s closing are in Africa but others, like Spain and Hong Kong are not. The foreign embassies used to be a source of considerable income from illegal activities that were protected by diplomatic immunity. The countries where these illegal practices were conducted by embassy personnel found ways to disrupt or block these activities. Sometimes this meant shutting the North Korean embassy down. North Korea remains subject to numerous economic sanctions and one of the reasons for that was abusing diplomatic immunity in their foreign embassies to protect illegal activities.

North Korea is converting 400 of its 1950’s era MiG-17 and MiG-19 fighters into cruise missiles. North Korea is the last nation to still have many of these aircraft in service, mainly because North Korea cannot obtain any additional modern aircraft. The North Korea Air Force consists of about 1,300 Cold War era Russian and Chinese aircraft, about half of them combat planes. The Chinese aircraft are knockoffs of older Russian designs, and most of the North Korean fleet consists of aircraft designs that were getting old in the 1970s.

North Korean Air Force training exercises with the MiG-17s and 19s are rare because these elderly aircraft are difficult to keep flying. That means pilots get very little time in the air and only have basic flying skills. This is common throughout the North Korean air force and explains why the North Korean Air Force can barely fly and hardly fight. The Russian MiG-19 (over 2,200 built) is an 8.8 ton, single engine, single seat aircraft with a max speed of 1,500 kilometers an hour. It only carries a half ton of bombs and was designed over 70 years ago. The MiG-19 is an improved (supersonic) version of the MiG-17, which entered service in 1952 and weighed six tons. Three years later the MiG-19 appeared.

Currently, North Korea is the only country still using MiG-17s and MiG-19s but has a difficult time keeping them flyable. North Korea obtained 40 used MiG-29s in the 1980s and considers them their best jet fighters. The MiG-29s have more experienced pilots and fly more often. Turning 400 older MiGs into cruise missiles will mean more resources for the MiG-29s.

South Korea considers the North Korean air force more of a nuisance than a threat and plans to destroy most North Korean aircraft in the air or on the ground, including the caves where many are kept, in the early stages of any future war. North Korea seeks to avoid this by using most of these aircraft first in a surprise attack and holding back some of them, safe inside tunnels. South Korea has plans to deal with all that but will not, for obvious reasons, discuss details.

North Korean Air Force training exercises often feature the loss of a MiG-17 or MiG-19. The most modern aircraft the North Koreans have are 40 MiG-29s they got in the 1980s, when they were still getting gifts from the Soviet Union. The rest of their combat aircraft are poorly maintained and infrequently used antiques because of fuel and spare parts shortages.