Worker Mass Exodus North Korea prepares for war

Workers recalled as North Korea prepares for war

By Shaun Walker in Moscow
Saturday, 27 November 2010

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/mu...12_419163t.jpg
Smoke rises from South Korea's Yeonpyeong island near the border against North Korea Tuesday, Nov. 23, 2010.

A mass exodus of North Korean workers from the Far East of Russia is under way, according to reports coming out of the region.

As the two Koreas edged towards the brink of war this week, it appears that the workers in Russia have been called back to aid potential military operations.

Vladnews agency, based in Vladivostok, reported that North Korean workers had left the town of Nakhodka en masse shortly after the escalation of tension on the Korean peninsula earlier this week. "Traders have left the kiosks and markets, workers have abandoned building sites, and North Korean secret service employees working in the region have joined them and left," the agency reported.

Russia's migration service said that there were over 20,000 North Koreans in Russia at the beginning of 2010, of which the vast majority worked in construction. The workers are usually chaperoned by agents from Kim Jong-il's security services and have little contact with the world around them. Defectors have suggested that the labourers work 13-hour days and that most of their pay is sent back to the government in Pyongyang. Hundreds of workers have fled the harsh conditions and live in hiding in Russia, constantly in fear of being deported back to North Korea.

"North Korea's government sends thousands of its citizens to Russia to earn money, most of which is funnelled through government accounts," says Simon Ostrovsky, a journalist who discovered secret North Korean logging camps in the northern Siberian taiga. "Workers are often sent to remote locations for years at a time to work long hours and get as little as three days off per year." Now it appears that some kind of centralised order has been given for the workers to return home.

Russia's Pacific port of Vladivostok is thousands of miles and seven time zones from Moscow, but only around 100 miles from the country's heavily controlled border with North Korea. In 1996, a diplomat from the South Korean consulate in the city was murdered with a poisoned pencil, in what was widely believed to be a hit carried out by the North's secret agents. There are even two North Korean restaurants in the city. It is not known how many of the workers in other Russian towns have been called back to their homeland this week, or whether the exodus is permanent or temporary.

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/ ... 15260.html

The Korean powderkeg could ignite a regional war

Eric S. Margolis
28 November 2010

The simmering crisis in the Korean Peninsula is causing growing concern in Washington and Beijing of the risk a wider regional conflict. Exchanges of heavy artillery by North and South Korea last week sparked worldwide alarm. A powerful US Navy battle group led by the carrier USS George Washington, which reportedly carries nuclear weapons, is now in Korean waters.

Why did North Korea’s ruler Kim Jong-il ignite this crisis soon after revealing his nation was enriching uranium that could produce nuclear weapons? The obvious answer: the old North Korean shake-down designed to get South Korea, Japan and the United States to pay Pyongyang to be good. It has worked before and will likely again. Efforts by North Korea’s “Dear Leaderâ€

The Threat of War in Korea: Philippines prepares for possible mass evacuation from S.Korea, requests Japan's aid

Global Research, November 27, 2010
Russian Information Agency Novosti

Philippine President Benigno Aquino has held talks with Japanese Ambassador Makoto Katsura in Manila on the possible immediate evacuation of some 50,000 Filipinos from South Korea to Japan, NHK television reported on Saturday.

President Aquino's concerns come after reports of a U.S. naval task force led by the George Washington nuclear-powered aircraft carrier that will join South Korean warships in naval exercises on November 28-December 1.

The drills will be held in the wake of a recent military clash between North Korea and South Korea. The South claimed it returned fire after the North opened artillery fire on Yeonpyeong Island in the Yellow Sea on Tuesday, killing at least two South Korean marines and two civilians. Sixteen others were injured, along with three civilians.

Aquino held an extraordinary meeting with government officials to inform them of the need to be prepared for the evacuation of Filipinos living and working in South Korea, adding that their evacuation to the Philippines would take much time and "the closest country to South Korea is Japan."

THK television neither reported on how such an evacuation would occur nor on Japan's actions should it need to accept 50,000 Filipino refugees.

The situation on the Korean Peninsula remains tense and South Korea has boosted its military presence on Yeonpyeong Island.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei on Friday said, citing the upcoming U.S.-South Korean naval drills in the Yellow Sea, that China strongly opposes any foreign states' military maneuvers in its exclusive economic zone.

China has always remained a close ally to North Korea.

The USS George Washington, which carries 75 combat aircraft and a crew of over 6,000, has left its naval base in Yokosuka, Japan, and will arrive in the Yellow Sea on Sunday to begin military maneuvers with South Korea, which many see as irritating the already tense situation between the North and South.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php? ... &aid=22126

Skirmish between North and South Korea: South Korea Fired the First Shot

Global Research, November 23, 2010
Washington's Blog

While North Korean leader Kim Jong Il is a madman, and while North Korea was the first to kill anyone in today's skirmish, it was actually the South Koreans who fired first.

As AP notes: http://tinyurl.com/35txf5a

The skirmish began when Pyongyang [i.e. North Korea] warned the South to halt military drills in the area, according to South Korean officials. When Seoul [i.e. South Korea] refused and began firing artillery into disputed waters, albeit away from the North Korean shore, the North retaliated by bombarding the small island of Yeonpyeong, which houses South Korean military installations....
And see this.

In addition, the two South Koreans killed were marines, not civilians, stationed in a military town. http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTOE6AM05P20101123

Obviously, firing artillery into the water and actually killing people are very different, and I am in no way defending North Korea or its crazy leader. I am simply trying to point out that the headlines can't be taken in a vacuum.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php? ... &aid=22066

Pyongyang sees US role in Cheonan sinking http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php? ... &aid=22134
- by Dr. Kim Myong Chol - 2010-11-27

Reviewing the Evidence of DPRK Culpability for the Cheonan Warship Incident http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php? ... &aid=22133
- by Mark E. Caprio - 2010-11-27

North Korea: Who Sank the Cheonan? Who Sank the US Atomic Submarine? The sinking of the US submarine was not reported http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php? ... &aid=22132
- by Tanaka Sakai - 2010-11-27

Pentagon flexes muscles in Korea: US Threatens China and North Korea

by Konstantin Garibov
Global Research, November 26, 2010

In July, the Pentagon was forced to cancel planned exercises in the Yellow Sea due to its proximity to the Chinese shore. It now appears to be flexing its muscles against both North Korea and China. Immediately after the Yeonpyeong shelling, Washington stepped up pressure on Beijing to exert influence on Pyongyang.

Pyongyang has threatened Seoul with a tough response if an inch of its sovereignty is violated. The threat came ahead of the impending arrival in South Korean waters of the US aircraft carrier George Washington escorted by four warships and at least one submarine from a U.S. naval base in Japan.

The move has prompted an emotional outcry in Tokyo. The ministers were ordered not to leave the capital and be ready to turn up within an hour if they are urgently summoned. Japan fears North Korea’s reaction to the upcoming US-South Korean naval exercises may be unpredictable. Seoul is also very nervous and has evacuated civilians from the Yeonpyeong Island where the above drill is due to begin on Sunday just 11 km from the heavily fortified North Korean coast. On Tuesday, the island came under massive artillery shelling by North Korea. The South was a bit too slow to return fire, which cost Defense Minister Kim Tae-young his post. His successor, Lee Hee-won, has promised to react faster.

Meanwhile, Seoul has been reluctant to admit that its retaliatory fire from Yeonpyeong failed to destroy the North Korean artillery protected by unapproachable cliffs.

In a tough reaction to the planned US-South Korean war games, Pyongyang called them a crazy military provocation and warned that its response would be confrontation for confrontation and war for war.

Washington will surely stand up for its allies - South Korea and Japan - but judging from statements in Seoul and Tokyo, the appearance of a US aircraft carrier and its combat escorts in the potential confrontation zone left them worrying about their security.

In July, the Pentagon was forced to cancel planned exercises in the Yellow Sea due to its proximity to the Chinese shore. It now appears to be flexing its muscles against both North Korea and China. Immediately after the Yeonpyeong shelling, Washington stepped up pressure on Beijing to exert influence on Pyongyang. But China’s reaction was pretty much restrained. It seems that the role of being an arbiter between the two Koreas doesn’t at all appeal to Beijing. Pavel Leshakov, head of the Center for Korean Studies in Moscow, gives his view.

North Korea has always accentuated its independence as an antipode of the South, which in the minds of North Koreans have always been associated with a puppet regime. In Soviet times, North Korea was trying to balance its way through problems between Moscow and Beijing, following a largely independent policy and even reaping some dividends.

China has the strongest influence on North Korea but doesn’t like to show it off for fear of hurting its ally’s sovereignty. At the same time, Beijing is throwing all its weight to prevent a unification of the two Koreas under the aegis of Seoul and Washington. On Friday, news agencies quoted a Chinese official, whose name was not disclosed, who said: “North Korea is our Eastern Germany. Do you remember what happened when Eastern Germany fell? The Soviet Union collapsedâ€