Russia and North Korea

Looking at history to determined what Pyongyang, Moscow may want in bilateral economic relations

April 2nd, 2015

Bulychev

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The recent invigoration of Russian-North Korean ties raises interest in the history of Russia’s involvement in Korean affairs. Does the recent upsurge have a solid basis that can be counted on to ensure a long-term Russian involvement in the new era? Why would North Koreans, treating foreigners as suspect, “open up” to Russians? A book, recently published in Russia, entitled The Uneasy Neighborhood: Problems on the Korean Peninsula and Challenges for Russia contains a lot of information to answer these questions and also to understand the basics of Russia’s policy regarding Korea.

The book, authored by a team of Russian Koreanists, both mature and quite young, analyzes both the internal situation and the prospects for economic development in both Koreas, as well as the two Korean states’ relations with the great powers. The most interesting data relates to the USSR/Russia’s relations with North Korea.

The book argues that the historic truth is that the USSR liberated Korea from Japanese occupation and then exerted great assistance to restore and develop the economy of the North, reduced to rubble during the Korean War. Although the economy was modeled along the lines of Stalinist industrialization, this process made it possible for North Korea to utilize its natural resources through the use of Soviet technologies. By 1982 the plants and enterprises built with Soviet assistance and based on Soviet technology produced 63 percent of the nation’s electrical power, 33 percent of its steel, 38 percent of rolled steel, 50 percent of oil products, 25 percent of coke and 42 percent of its iron ore. By unofficial calculations of the Russian experts (based on some unpublished reports of Soviet ministries and organizations, related to foreign economic activity) the USSR assisted the DPRK in the construction of 85 infrastructure projects.

Several thousand North Korean specialists got their higher education in the USSR

By the beginning of the 1980s the USSR provided the DPRK with 2,800 technology packages in areas as varied as geology, machine-building, metallurgy, chemical industry, food and fisheries, the energy sector, agriculture, etc. Also Soviet design bureaus provided documentation for 193 capital construction projects, designs for 742 pieces of equipment, more than 1,100 units of technological documentation and 5,300 documents detailing industrial standards. Several thousand North Korean specialists got their higher education in the USSR. Academic cooperation also flourished as the DPRK Academy of Science was created with the help and along the lines of its USSR counterpart and Russian and Korean scientists undertook such major projects as the Geological Survey of North-East Korea and South of (USSR) Maritime district, to name but one.

The USSR was the biggest market for North Korean goods. Although the list was limited (about 60 major items), imports from the DPRK satisfy USSR demand for some items to a considerable extent: For example, imports from North Korea accounted for 71.2 percent of its magnesite clinker imports, 75.3 percent of cement, 75 percent of chlorinated lime, 15.8 percent of pig iron, 15.1 percent of corn starch, as well as cold-rolled stock, zinc and lead, fruits, electrical engines, etc. At the same time the USSR was the major supplier of oil, coke and coking coal, chemical products, machinery and equipment. Also, the Soviet Union had to deliver raw materials and semi-finished products for enterprises, created with Soviet assistance (they stopped functioning after the abrupt termination of economic cooperation in 1990s, which led to de facto de-industrialization of North Korea).

TRADE PRICE HAGGLING

…many Soviet commodities and much equipment were delivered to DPRK on a ‘friendly’ prices basis, while the actual world price would be much higher

The total USSR aid until the breakup of the Soviet Union, when it was terminated, amounted in current world market prices to about $40 billion by the same calculations. It should be noted that this figure reflects the real volume of aid while official statistics would tend to decrease it – simply because many Soviet commodities and much equipment were delivered to DPRK on a “friendly” prices basis, while the actual world price would be much higher. It should be noted, also, that many North Korean commodities were of no demand on markets beyond the USSR, so the prices were quite arbitrary.

Every year foreign trade officials of the two countries would sit down to agree on the prices on which the goods would be delivered. Although theoretically these prices should have been based on world market prices in U.S. dollars, converted into the so-called “clearing rubles” at a fixed official rate of about 0.6 rubles per dollar (so the “clearing rubles” were a de facto pseudonym for dollars), the reality was quite different. The sides would start by presenting their price suggestions with a reference to global statistics (someone joked that, if communism were to win at the international level, we should leave Switzerland capitalist so as to have a basis for “market prices”), but then the real “tit-for-tat” negotiations started.

Moscow has eyed development of the Russian Far East in its dealings with Korea. Wikimedia Commons

Usually parity was sought within the narrow list of the so-called “free currency commodities,” meaning the goods in demand on the global market, i.e. oil form Soviet side and non-ferrous metals and magnesite clinker from North Korean side. The result of these tedious negotiations was a list of commodity prices of bilateral trade, which was very far from real global prices. Most of it was kept secret. Based on these prices, the yearly Trade Protocol was signed that provided for equal costs of deliveries during the year as the “clearing rubles” mechanism was not supposed to result in any imbalances beyond the goods supplied on the basis of long-term credit, agreed at the government level.

The cost of “turnkey plants” supplied to North Korea was even further from reality and mostly depended of the supplier’s ability to force finance quotas from the Soviet budget authorities, as the supplies were effected on the basis of Soviet credit, which everybody understood would never be returned. For example, in the mid-1990’s, when the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization (KEDO) started to calculate the price tag for a hypothetical nuclear LWR power plant, similar to one agreed upon between the USSR and DPRK in 1985, Russian experts were amazed (probably along with North Koreans, who never disclosed it), that this price in dollar terms was several times higher than the USSR-type nuclear power plant (a Soviet credit for it was used only partially). Although the Soviet side, especially in 1970’s-80’s tried to get some payback, mostly in the form of deliveries of the production of the Soviet-built enterprises (like car batteries, wire, etc.) only a fraction of the debts were ever received. The Soviet side had to formally re-finance themselves by providing additional credit.

TRADE IMBALANCE AND BREAKDOWN

The North Korean side was in the habit of under-fulfilling their export obligations according to the bilateral yearly trade protocol, which by the middle of year, would result in a growing imbalance in USSR exports vis-à-vis DPRK exports. North Korea would usually explain it in political terms, as the need to concentrate all force on “fighting American imperialism and its South Korean puppets” and pledged to increase deliveries to make up for the loss during the remaining months, asking the Soviet side not to decrease supplies of the goods essential for the functioning of North Korean basic industries (such as oil and coking coal), on a political level as a last resort.

…by the early 1990s, when the ‘fraternal economic relations ended, the Russian side calculated (North Korea’s) debt at 3.6 billion rubles – about $6 billion

However the Soviets nevertheless tried to “regulate” their supplies not to let the imbalance (“saldo of bilateral payments”) become too big, as this required providing North Korea with unsolicited credits, which the DPRK had no resources to repay. As is widely known the result by the early 1990s, when the “fraternal economic relations” ended, the Russian side calculated the debt at 3.6 billion rubles – about $6 billion according to the above-mentioned official rate. Of course, much of this debt was related to armament supplies, which are not reviewed in this article, and North Koreans were indignant when Russia calculated this portion of debt in the same manner as the “civil” portion, claiming that the “USSR in fact paid for its own security on the Eastern flank.”

The contradictions continued to accumulate during the perestroika period while the ability and desire of the USSR, under the new pro-reform leadership, to assist the North Korean regime decreased. On November 2, 1990, even before the breakup of the USSR, North Korea had to sign an agreement on payments in free currency in bilateral trade that essentially ended the era of cooperation. Trade plummeted, credit assistance was suspended, bilateral programs frozen, Russian technicians left North Korea, raw materials and spare parts supplies from Russia virtually stopped, and this led to a halt in production of a major part of North Korean industry.

So what does the DPRK want from Russia now? Does it expect the revival of the Soviet-era partnership when Russia would invest in new projects in North Korea without clear guarantees on return on investments? Does it think that due to the growing confrontation with the West, that Russia can provide preferential treatment to North Korean requests? Does it expect Russia to use its remaining technological potential to restore industrial objects (especially in energy sector) once built with its help? Does it expect Russia to become “a bridge” to get financing from South Korea in the framework of trilateral projects?

All these questions become more and more relevant with the nearing of the Kim Jong Un’s possible first visit to Russia in May. We will try to speculate further on it in part two.

Featured Image: Russia_President_Putin_Korea_Visiting_01 by KOREA.NET - Official page of the Republic of Koreaon 2013-11-13 18:20:57

South Korea contracts U.S. company to upgrade missile defense

Upgrades come amid ongoing North Korean ballistic missile developments

April 2nd, 2015

Kyle Johnson

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South Korea plans to upgrade its Patriot Air and Missile Defense systems to the PAC-3 variant, American defense contractor Raytheon announced Monday.

The South Korea military awarded Raytheon a $770 million dollar contract to upgrade the country’s Patriot systems. These upgrades are intended to prepare the South for the Patriot Advanced Capability-3 (PAC-3) missile interceptor, which would serve as an improved counter against the North Korean ballistic missile threat. This purchase represents the latest move in what has developed into something of an arms race between North Korean missiles and South Korean missile interceptors.

The South Korean military currently fields the PAC-2, an older version of the Patriot featuring four missile interceptors per launcher. The PAC-3 represents a significant advance. The system featuresseveral technical upgrades, and increases the number of missile interceptors per launcher to 16. While the purchase would be a first for the ROK military, PAC-3 launchers operated by the U.S. military have been in South Korea since 2003.

The Raytheon contract does not actually provide the South with PAC-3s, but addresses several network and technical issues. Another U.S. defense contractor, Lockheed Martin, which manufactures the PAC-3, has stated that they expect to finish a deal with South Korea for the delivery of an undisclosed number of the missiles in the next few months.

North Korea has been developing indigenously produced ballistic missiles continuously since the 1980s.Recent confirmation of a submarine-launched ballistic missile program and continued uncertainty about the KN-08 intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) are but the latest developments in a drama that, along with North Korean nuclear weapons program, has had serious consequences for regional security in Northeast Asia. Even the most conservative estimates of North Korean missile capabilities show that the North could reliably hit anywhere on the Peninsula. Such missiles could theoretically be used to deliver weapons of mass destruction against civilian and military targets, so the development of a missile defense shield is a priority for the South.

The PAC-3 missiles are not the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile defense system that has been the focus of much debate and discussion recently. While Lockheed Martin manufactures both systems, they are intended to play unique but supporting roles.

The Patriot was primarily designed for defending smaller areas against enemy air attacks (including aircraft) and direct missile strikes at lower altitudes. The THAAD system is better suited to defend a wider area against incoming missiles and intercept threats further out and at higher altitudes than the Patriot. The two systems are intended to compliment one another as part of a larger air and missile defense network.

Featured image: Wikimedia Commons

In Focus: A Review of North Korea’s Nuclear Threats

In Focus: North Korea’s Nuclear Threats

What exactly is North Korea threatening to do?

David Guttenfelder/Associated Press

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, left, on Feb. 16, 2012.

North Korea has been issuing near-daily threats against the United States and South Korea, and sometimes at United States forces in the Pacific. In one of the boldest warnings, the North said it could carry out pre-emptive nuclear strikes against the United States. Many analysts are extremely doubtful that the North could hit the United States mainland with a missile, whether nuclear-tipped or not. Some of its missiles could, however, hit South Korea or Japan and American forces there, analysts said.

With each threat, there is always some mention that such attacks would be carried out if North Korea were attacked or otherwise provoked. 

Why is North Korea threatening the United States now?

Because the United States led the successful push for sanctions at the United Nations to punish North Korea for its nuclear test in February, its third. The North also often ratchets up its political speech during joint United States-South Korea military exercises, which it portrays as a threat. One of those exercises is continuing.

What might North Korea be trying to accomplish with its threats?

In the past, United States administrations and South Korean governments managed to tamp down periodic heightened tensions with North Korea by offering concessions, including much-needed aid, in return for the North's promising to end its nuclear weapons programs. Pyongyang has reneged on those promises after receiving aid. Many analysts believe that North Korea is again seeking aid and other concessions, while some suggest that it merely wants to be recognized as a nuclear state, like Pakistan. Still others suggest that the North genuinely fears an attack by the United States or South Korea and views the warnings as deterrence. Highlighting a perceived threat from abroad is also a favorite tool the North Korean government uses to ensure internal cohesion in an impoverished country that has experienced enormous privation, including devastating famine and continuing pervasive hunger.

What kind of nuclear weapons and missile technology does North Korea possess?

North Korea has conducted three nuclear tests since 2006. It is widely believed to be capable of at least making crude nuclear devices. North Korea has a sizable arsenal of short- and medium-range missiles, and is developing longer-range missiles. A recent assessment by the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency has concluded with “moderate confidence” that the North now knows how to make a nuclear device small enough to be delivered by a ballistic missile.

How might the United States, South Korea, Japan and China respond to a missile test or an attack?

If a missile attack went into the water, even if it passed over Japan, the two countries could ignore it. But if it headed for land, the United States would probably use its missile interception technology, including on Aegis-equipped ships off the Korean coast. If there were to be a more direct attack, like the torpedo that sank a South Korean warship, the Cheonan, three years ago, it is likely that both the United States and South Korea would respond. China would be unlikely to take action.

What nuclear tests has North Korea conducted so far?

North Korea conducted underground nuclear tests in 2006, in 2009 and in February. The most recent was the largest, though it was estimated to be less powerful than the first bomb the United States dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, in 1945.

North Korea’s third nuclear test came two months after the country launched a rocket that put its first satellite into orbit. The United States and its allies said that the rocket launching was a cover for North Korea to develop intercontinental ballistic missiles that could reach North America. The United Nations Security Council condemned the launching as a violation of resolutions that barred the North from testing technology used for ballistic missiles, and adopted tightened sanctions against the country. 

What was the global response to previous North Korean rocket launchings?

As the North’s missile technology has become more sophisticated, the launching of longer-range missiles has evoked more international concern. In 1998, when the North launched a Taepodong that flew over Japan, Japan temporarily cut off its contribution toward a North Korean energy project. But in July 2006, when the North launched another long-range missile, various countries began imposing sanctions, while the United Nations Security Council began adding to economic sanctions. In April 2009, when the North’s efforts to launch a three-stage Unha-2 rocket failed, the Security Council said it would strengthen punitive measures. It did so after the North conducted a nuclear test the next month. In April 2012, the United States canceled planned food aid when the North tried to launch a more advanced missile, the Unha-3. That launching failed, but another in December succeeded in lifting a small satellite into orbit. The Security Council tightened sanctions yet again. After the North’s nuclear test in February, China, the North’s longtime protector, participated in writing painful new sanctions aimed at North Korean banking, trade and travel.

What is the Obama administration’s policy on North Korea?

The Obama administration adopted a policy of “strategic patience” in 2009, under which direct negotiations or offers of aid to Pyongyang are withheld unless the North Korea leadership shows “positive, constructive behavior” and willingness to negotiate over the dismantling of its nuclear weapons program.

The policy is a response to the American belief that the United States had unwisely offered aid, often in the wake of Pyongyang’s provocations, or struck agreements with the North on which the North later reneged. Strategic patience, in the words of Robert M. Gates, the former defense secretary, grew out of a desire not “to buy the same horse twice.”

Critics say that while the policy has allowed the United States to weather multiple rounds of belligerence by Kim Jong-il and his son, Kim Jong-un, without making concessions, it has done little to curb the development of North Korea’s nuclear weapons program.

— Housewife, Tokyo

What sanctions are currently in place?

David Guttenfelder/Associated Press

An apartment building in central Pyongyang, North Korea.

The United Nations Security Council has passed four resolutions since 2006 aimed at penalizing North Korea for its nuclear weapons program. In addition, the United States, which remains in a technical state of war with North Korea, has imposed its own regimen of strict economic sanctions. The combined effects have severely squeezed but not crippled North Korea’s economy.

Under Resolutions 1718 (2006), 1874 (2009), 2087 (2013) and 2094 (2013), the United Nations has prohibited the North from conducting nuclear tests or launching ballistic missiles, requested that it abandon all future efforts to pursue nuclear weapons and urged it to return to negotiations with China, Japan, Russia, South Korea and the United States, the so-called six-party talks. The resolutions have also imposed embargoes on large-scale arms, weapons-related research and development materials, and luxury goods; banned many types of financial transactions including transfers of cash; placed new restrictions on diplomats; and created monitoring mechanisms for enforcement.

The American sanctions freeze all North Korean property interests in the United States, ban most imports of goods and services from the North, and prohibit American dealings with any names on a blacklist of North Korean businesses and individuals suspected of illicit activities including money laundering, counterfeiting, currency smuggling and narcotics trafficking.

Nothing in the American sanctions prohibits American travel to North Korea or the export of food and other types of humanitarian aid, although there are some restrictions.
The sanctions leave room for considerable trade in many types of goods and services. China, which supplies much of North Korea’s basic needs, is not in any violation of the United Nations resolutions. 

“

— Student, Incheon, South Korea

What is the human rights situation in North Korea?

David Guttenfelder/Associated Press

Men stood next to a field damaged by flooding in August in North Korea's Songchon County, about 50 miles northeast of Pyongyang, the capital.

In January 2013, Navi Pillay, the chief human rights official at the United Nations, expressed concern that international preoccupation with North Korea’s missile and nuclear weapons programs had diverted attention from human rights abuses that have “no parallel anywhere in the world.” North Korea, Ms. Pillay said, operates an “elaborate network of political prison camps” that hold more than 200,000 prisoners, according to human rights organizations. The camps not only punish people for peaceful activities, but also employ “torture and other forms of cruel and inhumane treatment, summary executions, rape, slave labor and forms of collective punishment that may amount to crimes against humanity.”


Even outside the camps, North Koreans endure “extreme forms of repression and human rights violations,” according to Amnesty International. They may be subject to arbitrary arrest, and lack recourse to legal rights and protections, an independent news media or independent civic organizations. There are no known opposition political parties, and those who criticize the government are severely punished. Government policies have contributed to food shortages and famine. Food insecurity and chronic malnutrition remain widespread, and millions are still dependent on food aid, according to the United Nations. In March, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reported that more than a fourth of all North Korean children are stunted from chronic malnutrition, and that two-thirds of the country’s 24 million people struggle to find food from day to day.

How is the South Korean government responding to the North's threats?

The current president, Park Geun-hye, who was sworn in at the end of February, has taken a strong stand against the North in recent weeks, parrying its threats with warnings of her own. She has told her top generals to respond immediatelyto any provocative acts.

“I consider the current North Korean threats very serious,” Ms. Park told the South’s generals on April 1. “If the North attempts any provocation against our people and country, you must respond strongly at the first contact with them without any political consideration.”

And her government has said that if the North followed through on its threats to mount a nuclear attack, its government would be “erased from the earth.”

At the same time, she believes in building trust with the North, and has continued to offer it aid.

Ms. Park’s father, who ran the country as a dictator during the cold war, also held a firm line on North Korea, but the South began taking a much more conciliatory stance in the 1990s.

From 1998 to 2008, they pursued a “sunshine policy” of reconciliation and economic cooperation that sent billions of dollars in business investments, goods and humanitarian aid to the North. Ms. Park’s immediate predecessor, Lee Myung-bak, said the North would need to give up its nuclear weapons to receive any more aid. But he was criticized for what many saw as a weak response after the North shelled a South Korean island in 2010, killing four people.

On April 11, Ms. Park’s government softened its tone on the North, issuing a call for dialogue to resolve the tensions.

— Sachiko, Saitama, Japan

Why hasn’t China stopped North Korea from its campaign of threats? Is there any other country that has enough influence on North Korea to stop it?

China, the North's patron, has long feared that a collapse of the North Korean government could lead to a unified Korea allied with the United States. China helped write and did vote for the most recent round of United Nations sanctions, but has been loath to push the North too hard.

Why are relations so bad between North and South Korea?

After the United States and the Soviet Union divided the Korean Peninsula at the end of the World War II in 1945, they helped install rival governments in Seoul and Pyongyang. Each asserted claims to the whole of Korea. The two fought the 1950-53 Korean War, which ended not in a peace treaty but a truce. Mutual mistrust runs deep, although there have been intermittent attempts at political reconciliation and economic cooperation.

When was the last armed confrontation between North and South?

In November 2010, North Korea carried out an artillery attack on a South Korean border island that killed two Marines and two civilians. South Korea countered with an artillery barrage on the North Korean gun positions. The number of North Korean casualties is still unknown.

What happened to the nuclear talks between North Korea and China, Japan, South Korea, the United States and Russia?

The six-party talks started in 2003 after earlier bilateral negotiations between the United States and North Korea failed to stop the North's nuclear weapons program, and North Korea announced its withdrawal from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The aim of the talks was to persuade North Korea to dismantle its nuclear weapons facilities. The six nations signed an agreement in 2005 in which North Korea agreed in principle to dismantle all its nuclear weapons facilities in return for economic aid and security guarantees. In 2007, they reached a follow-up deal.

Despite such strides, the talks were marred by differences over how to implement those agreements and by deep-seated mistrust between Washington and Pyongyang. There was progress: the North blew up a cooling tower for a five-megawatt nuclear reactor at Yongbyon, whose spent fuel could be reprocessed into plutonium, and the North was removed from State Department list of state sponsors of terrorism in 2008.

But the talks collapsed the next year because of differences over the nuclear inspections. A critical stumbling block was the North's refusal to come clean on American suspicions that it was running a clandestine uranium enrichment program for alternative nuclear fuel. In 2010, North Korea unveiled a uranium enrichment plant.

Are foreign governments taking North Korea’s threats more seriously than those in the past? Why?

David Guttenfelder/Associated Press

North Korean performers flipped colored cards to form a giant picture of a handgun during a performance in Pyongyang, North Korea, last year.

North Korea’s latest bellicose behavior has rattled nerves more than previous episodes because of the youth and inexperience of the North’s new leader, Kim Jong-un. While South Korea and the United States have said the provocation appears to be following a familiar script – one that will stop short of a wider war – Mr. Kim’s motives are largely a mystery.

For that reason, the United States has mounted an unusually muscular display of deterrence, sending a guided-missile destroyer and B-2 stealth bombers to the Korean Peninsula – all to send a message that it will defend the United States and its allies in the region. South Korea’s new president, Park Geun-hye, has also pledged a robust response to any attack.

China, which has long frustrated the West with its unwillingness to curb the North, may be growing impatient with Mr. Kim. President Xi Jinping said recently, “No one should be allowed to throw a region and even the whole world into chaos for selfish gains.”

How did the North get nuclear weapons?

It took a long time, a lot of work — and repeated decisions by several American presidents, of both parties, to kick the North Korea problem down the road because the risks of confronting the North were too high. The project started under Kim Il-sung, the country's founder and the grandfather of the current leader, Kim Jong-un. Kim Il-sung knew that Gen. Douglas MacArthur wanted Washington to allow the use of nuclear weapons against Chinese and North Korean troops during the Korean War. By the 1980s, American intelligence satellites were watching the nuclear complex at Yongbyon come together. Relations between the United States and the North grew especially tense over the issue in 1994, and some in the White House feared a war could break out. A pact was eventually hammered out that year, the Agreed Framework, but it fell apart in 2002, during the George W. Bush administration, partly over allegations the North was cheating on its agreements and developing another path to a bomb.

In 2006, the North conducted its first nuclear test, a partial fizzle. But the subsequent tests, including one this year, were more successful. Now the country has an estimated 6 to 10 weapons, or the fuel for them, and a pathway to many more.

— Hanna, New York

Would the North ever give up its nuclear weapons?

The North committed to doing so eventually in 1992, and again under an agreement in 2005. But many now doubt the North has any incentive to give up its weapons. After all, the country saw Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi give up Libya's nuclear weapons development project -- only to be ousted from power, with American help. After its third nuclear test in February, North Korea declared that it would never join talks on giving up its nuclear weapons until the entire world became weapons-free.

— Takashi J. Ozaki, Data scientist, Tokyo

Have foreigners started evacuating South Korea, as North Korea urged?

So far, they have largely dismissed the warning as a bluster aimed at increasing a sense of crisis in what appears to be an attempt to force the United States and South Korea to engage. The State Department has not issued any warnings of imminent danger for its citizens in the region. The North is also seen as trying to rattle the South's economy, and its government, by scaring away foreign investors.

The isolated North is profoundly impoverished. With little access to hard currency, it embraced the creation of the Kaesong industrial project as a good source of money. The South believed that the economic cooperation would gradually chip away at political mistrust and pave the way for eventual reunification of the divided peninsula. The factory park paired cheap North Korean labor with South Korean manufacturing savvy. The North has now blocked access to the South, robbing North Korean workers of wages paid by the South, but has not announced an absolute closure.

What exactly is the demilitarized zone?

The demilitarized zone, or DMZ, is a buffer zone that has divided North and South Korea since a 1953 armistice agreement ended the Korean War. Defended on both sides with minefields, barbed-wire fences and armed soldiers, the 148-mile truce line extends across the Korean Peninsula, near the 38th Parallel. This contentious land border, which is about 2.5 miles wide, is off limits to large troop concentrations and to heavy weaponry like tanks and artillery. The North and South Korean troops that patrol the mostly mountainous no man’s land are permitted to carry only pistols and rifles. Military outposts, some of which double as tourist attractions, are spread throughout the area.

The DMZ is a time-honored stop for American presidents, including President Obama, whogreeted some of the 28,500 American troops stationed in South Korea during his visit there in March 2012. An unintended consequence of the off-limits nature of this zone: parts of the DMZ have turned into a wildlife sanctuary, with rare cranes and even endangered leopards finding refuge.

Barbara Walton/European Pressphoto Agency

A bridge in the demilitarized zone at the joint security area.

Zhou Yongkang Charged

China ex-security chief Zhou Yongkang charged

• 3 April 2015
 
• From the sectionChina

Mr Zhou was head of China's vast internal security machine until 2012

China's former security chief Zhou Yongkang has been charged with bribery, abuse of power and the intentional disclosure of state secrets, state media report.

Mr Zhou was, until his retirement in 2012, one of China's most powerful men.

He headed the Ministry of Public Security and was a member of China's top decision-making body.

Once Xi Jinping took over as president in 2013, however, he was put under investigation.

A formal probe was announced in July 2014, after months of rumours, and he has since been expelled from the Communist Party.

Many of Zhou Yongkang's allies - including former high-flier Bo Xilai - have been investigated or prosecuted

Network targeted

Mr Zhou's case had been sent to a court in Tianjin, a northern port city, Xinhua news agency reported.

The head of China's top court said last month he would have an "open trial", though no date has been announced.

In a brief statement, China's top prosecution body said that the allegations against Mr Zhou were "extraordinarily severe".

"The defendant Zhou Yongkang... took advantage of his posts to seek gains for others and illegally took huge property and assets from others, abused his power, causing huge losses to public property and the interests of the state and the people," it said.

Analysis, John Sudworth, Shanghai

Anyone who finds themselves formally indicted with a criminal offence in China knows the likely outcome.

But Zhou Yongkang will know better than anyone. He once ran the country's domestic security apparatus, with his power stretching into the court system, the police and the intelligence services.

He will eventually be found guilty, of course. But we should hesitate before swallowing too readily the claim by the Chinese authorities that the downfall of so senior a figure proves the effectiveness of the anti-corruption campaign.

The real question to ask is this: given that so many other senior Communist Party figures, past and present, have used their positions to enrich themselves and their families, why him?

The answer must surely be that there is no good reason, other than a political one. Zhou Yongkang may well have been hugely corrupt, but he will be tried by the same opaque, pliable model of Communist Party justice that he himself did much to strengthen and perfect.

Profile: Zhou Yongkang

Xi cages big tiger in anti-corruption drive

The former security tsar, who is in his 70s, is the most senior official to be targeted in decades.

He was previously one of nine members of China's highest organ, the Politburo Standing Committee. It has since shrunk to seven members.

But Mr Zhou has not been seen in public since late 2013, when rumours of a probe first emerged.

A number of his former associates from his time both in the oil industry and as Communist Party chief in Sichuan province are already being investigated or prosecuted as part of Mr Xi's corruption crackdown.

His former protege, former Chongqing Communist Party chief and high-flyer Bo Xilai, is currently in prison on charges linked to his wife's murder of a UK businessman.

Analysts say the investigation into Mr Zhou allows Xi Jinping - who took office as president in March 2013 - to consolidate his power base, remove people opposed to his reforms and improve the image of the Communist Party.

Timeline: Zhou Yongkang

1942: Born in Wu Xi city in eastern Jiangsu province

1964: Joins the Communist Party and spends the next 32 years in the oil sector

1998: Becomes party secretary of China National Petroleum Corporation

1999: Appointed party secretary of Sichuan

2002: Appointed member of the Politburo at the 16th Party Congress; becomes minister of public security later that year

2007: Further promoted to member of the Standing Committee of the Politburo - China's highest state organ

2012: His lieutenants begin to get sacked and investigated; he appears with Bo Xilai at Chinese National People's Congress session

December 2013: His son Zhou Bin is arrested on corruption charges

December 2014: Arrested, expelled from party

North Korea 'test-fires missiles'

• 3 April 2015
 
• From the sectionAsia

North Korea frequently tests missiles at times of heightened tensions with South Korea

North Korea has test-fired four short-range missiles into the sea off its west coast, say South Korean military officials.

In a statement, the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said the missiles had a range of about 140km (87 miles).

They were fired from Dongchang-ri in the north of the country on Friday afternoon local time, it said.

The North often conducts missile tests in protest at US-South Korean military drills, one of which is ongoing.

The US and South Korea say the annual exercises are for defence training purposes, but Pyongyang calls them a rehearsal for invasion. They are always a trigger for a surge in tensions between the two Koreas.

When a drill began in March, the North fired two short-range ballistic missiles, and on 13 March it fired seven ground-to-air missiles into the sea to coincide with the end of one part of the drill, Operation Key Resolve.

The current drill, Foal Eagle, is continuing.

A JCS spokesman said Friday's test "appeared to have been supervised by Kim Jong-Un", the AFP news agency reports.

The two Koreas are technically still at war as the 1950-53 conflict ended with a ceasefire, not a peace treaty.

Xi extends condolences

Xi

extends condolences to Russia over fishing trawler sinking

Chinese President Xi Jinping on Friday sent a message of condolences to Russian President Vladimir Putin over the sinking of a trawler off Russia's Kamchatka peninsula, which has led to the deaths of at least 56 people.