CIA Director Michael Hayden recently provided an extended discussion of the timeline leading up to the identification and destruction of the probable Syrian reactor at Al Kibar: Thanks to some outstanding intelligence work, we were able last year to spoil…
Yonhap has two excellent articles on the new missile and space launch facility near Tongchang-ri that was first publicly identified by Joseph Brmudez and Tim Brown: Kim Kwi-ku’n: “What Is the Missile Base in North Korea’s Tongch’ang-ri for? — ‘Likelihood…
Yonhap reports that the NIS told South Korean lawmakers that Kim Jong Il did suffer a stroke, but is recovering after surgery. “Kim suffered either a stroke or a cerebral hemorrhage, but is recovering, the [South Korean] intelligence agency said.…
Chris Nelson — in the irreplaceable, one-of-a-kind Nelson Report — has the best summary of the thin, but intriguing, evidence that Kim Jong Il may have joined the choir invisible: N. KOREA…first, let’s be clear that whatever may be the…
Did Kim Jong Il stroke out? Maybe. APNewsAlert 10 minutes ago WASHINGTON (AP) — US intelligence official says North Korean leader Kim Jong Il may have suffered a stroke. Choe Sang-hun in the New York Times reports that he hasn’t…
There is a lot of hullaballo about North Korea reversing the disablement procedures at Yongbyon. I take the measures seriously as a signal by Pyongyang, but it is important to keep in mind that the substance of the reversal is…
CNN has more video of the Yongbyon Cooling Tower being destroyed — although most of it comes with annoying adverts. I observe that Sung Kim, Director of the Office of Korean Affairs at the Depatment of State, and Kevin Veal,…
The Japanese press is in a fit about a Japanese-made vacuum pump that turned up in North Korea. Apparently, the IAEA found the pump at Yongbyon, leading to police raids on two companies in Japan, according to the Daily Yomiuri,…
I’ve been writing the same blog post for four days. Time to just publish it. Thanks to McClatchey’s Warren Strobel and a trio of articles by the New York Times’ Helene Cooper (1, 2 and 3), we now know that…
With the rumors that Hill will leave any day now swirling, the WaPo’s Glenn Kessler has a long, front-page profile of Assistant Secretary Chris Hill (“Mid-Level Official Steered U.S. Shift On North Korea,” May 26, 2008). Maybe Hill is finally…
