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Interception! North Korea Caught Shipping Chemical Weapons to Syria. Again. (Videos)

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8-22-17

 

How Many Allies Does North Korea Have?

North Korea certainly is getting by with a little help from his friends.


North Korea and Syria have a lot in common: both built on an ideology fusing nationalism and socialism, both ruled by a hereditary despotism which ensures the rule of only one family.

So it should come as no surprise that the countries have a history of friendship: Kim Il Sung and Hafez Al-Assad co-operated extensively on weapons and scientific exchanges, and Assad modelled much of his personality cult on that of North Korea.

And as Syria’s increasingly brutal and divisive civil war has escalated, NK News can reveal, North Korea has strengthened its ties with Syria, with an increase in domestic media coverage on cooperation, high-profile diplomatic meetings and the signing of a series of economic agreements.

While the signed agreements are the only confirmed results of the diplomatic meetings, the historical trade in weapons and military expertise between the two countries may signal an ongoing cause for concern.

The KCNA has also highlighted ongoing direct communications between Assad and Kim Jong Un and North Korea also sent observers to monitor the Syrian national elections in June.

“I think the recent high-level meetings indicate not ‘business as usual,’ but rather ‘ramped up business as usual.’”

Source NK News


Heads up, people!

North Korea got caught shipping chemical weapons to Syria, twice in the last six months

Lebanese Army seizes large weapons cache from ISIS

Two North Korean shipments to a Syrian government agency responsible for the country’s chemical weapons program were intercepted in the past six months, according to a confidential United Nations report on North Korea sanctions violations.

The report by a panel of independent U.N. experts, which was submitted to the U.N. Security Council earlier this month and seen by Reuters on Monday, gave no details on when or where the interdictions occurred or what the shipments contained.

“The panel is investigating reported prohibited chemical, ballistic missile and conventional arms cooperation between Syria and the DPRK (North Korea),” the experts wrote in the 37-page report.

“Two member states interdicted shipments destined for Syria. Another Member state informed the panel that it had reasons to believe that the goods were part of a KOMID contract with Syria,” according to the report.

KOMID is the Korea Mining Development Trading Corporation. It was blacklisted by the Security Council in 2009 and described as Pyongyang’s key arms dealer and exporter of equipment related to ballistic missiles and conventional weapons. In March 2016 the council also blacklisted two KOMID representatives in Syria.

“The consignees were Syrian entities designated by the European Union and the United States as front companies for Syria’s Scientific Studies and Research Centre (SSRC), a Syrian entity identified by the Panel as cooperating with KOMID in previous prohibited item transfers,” the U.N. experts wrote.

SSRC has overseen the country’s chemical weapons program since the 1970s.

The U.N. experts said activities between Syria and North Korea they were investigating included cooperation on Syrian Scud missile programs and maintenance and repair of Syrian surface-to-air missiles air defense systems.

The North Korean and Syrian missions to the United Nations did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The experts said they were also investigating the use of the VX nerve agent in Malaysia to kill the estranged half-brother of North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un in February.

North Korea has been under U.N. sanctions since 2006 over its ballistic missile and nuclear programs and the Security Council has ratcheted up the measures in response to five nuclear weapons tests and four long-range missile launches.

Syria agreed to destroy its chemical weapons in 2013 under a deal brokered by Russia and the United States. However, diplomats and weapons inspectors suspect Syria may have secretly maintained or developed a new chemical weapons capability.

During the country’s more than six-year long civil war the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons has said the banned nerve agent sarin has been used at least twice, while the use of chlorine as a weapon has been widespread. The Syrian government has repeatedly denied using chemical weapons.

Source Taboola CNBC


NORTH KOREA SHIPMENTS TO SYRIA CHEMICAL ARMS AGENCY INTERCEPTED

UNITED NATIONS – Two North Korean shipments to a Syrian government agency responsible for the country’s chemical weapons program were intercepted in the past six months, according to a confidential United Nations report on North Korea sanctions violations.

The report by a panel of independent UN experts, which was submitted to the UN Security Council earlier this month and seen by Reuters on Monday, gave no details on when or where the interdictions occurred or what the shipments contained.

“The panel is investigating reported prohibited chemical, ballistic missile and conventional arms cooperation between Syria and the DPRK (North Korea),” the experts wrote in the 37-page report.

“Two member states interdicted shipments destined for Syria. Another Member state informed the panel that it had reasons to believe that the goods were part of a KOMID contract with Syria,” according to the report.

KOMID is the Korea Mining Development Trading Corporation. It was blacklisted by the Security Council in 2009 and described as Pyongyang’s key arms dealer and exporter of equipment related to ballistic missiles and conventional weapons. In March 2016 the council also blacklisted two KOMID representatives in Syria.

“The consignees were Syrian entities designated by the European Union and the United States as front companies for Syria’s Scientific Studies and Research Centre (SSRC), a Syrian entity identified by the Panel as cooperating with KOMID in previous prohibited item transfers,” the UN experts wrote.

SSRC has overseen the country’s chemical weapons program since the 1970s.

The UN experts said activities between Syria and North Korea they were investigating included cooperation on Syrian Scud missile programs and maintenance and repair of Syrian surface-to-air missiles air defense systems.

The North Korean and Syrian missions to the United Nations did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The experts said they were also investigating the use of the VX nerve agent in Malaysia to kill the estranged half-brother of North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un in February.

North Korea has been under UN sanctions since 2006 over its ballistic missile and nuclear programs and the Security Council has ratcheted up the measures in response to five nuclear weapons tests and four long-range missile launches.

Syria agreed to destroy its chemical weapons in 2013 under a deal brokered by Russia and the United States. However, diplomats and weapons inspectors suspect Syria may have secretly maintained or developed a new chemical weapons capability.

During the country’s more than six-year long civil war the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons has said the banned nerve agent sarin has been used at least twice, while the use of cholorine as a weapon has been widespread. The Syrian government has repeatedly denied using chemical weapons.

Source Jerusalem Post/Reuters

Syria’s other key ally: North Korea

Aside from Russia (Syria’s most powerful ally) and Iran (its neighbor and the regime’s Shiite brother-in-arms), President Bashar al-Assad has quietly relied on a distant backer: North Korea.

Syria and North Korea have been “cooperating on a number of fronts,” including possible chemical weapons exchanges, Pentagon spokesman George Little told reporters on Thursday.

The announcement came a week after the Sankei Shimbun, a Japanese newspaper known for its North Korea coverage, reported that in April, Turkey had seized a shipment of arms, ammunition and gas masks en route from North Korea.

The Turkish government has not commented on the alleged confiscation. If true, the discovery suggests the military may have foreseen using chemical weapons, and sought protective gear for its own troops.

The Obama administration contends that an Aug. 21 sarin nerve gas attack killed more than 1,400 civilians in the Damascus suburbs, including at least 400 children.

Such a shipment of equipment from North Korea to Syria would be the latest example of close military cooperation between two of the four nations with known chemical weapons stockpiles (the others being Russia and the US, both of which are in the process of destroying their arsenals).

For five decades, Damascus and Pyongyang have maintained close ties. North Korea has sided with Syria because of their mutual enemy: the United States. Additionally, as Leonid Petrov, a North Korea researcher at the Australian National University points out, “Both states are the hereditary dynasties of dictators.”

American spy agencies say the two nations also ran a joint nuclear program in the mid-2000s, and others believe they continued with apparent exchanges since then.

Fears over the Syria-North Korea relationship peaked in 2007 when Israel launched an air strike in eastern Syria called Operation Orchard. The Israeli air force destroyed a facility that the International Atomic Energy Agency later indicated appeared to have been an undeclared nuclear reactor.

American and Israeli intelligence officials insisted it was built by North Korea and funded by Iran, while the Japanese broadcaster NHK reported that 10 North Korean technicians were killed in the attack.

American intelligence officials were initially tight-lipped, but eventually brought forward evidence of the connection. For one, the Syrian reactor bore resemblance to North Korea’s own facility in Yongbyon, which was capable of making the plutonium used in nuclear weapons.

Yet despite the occasional flare-up, little is truly known about this secretive relationship, Petrov told GlobalPost.

Today, Syria is the only Mediterranean nation to maintain diplomatic relations with North Korea without formally recognizing the South.

Source PRI Jay Park


US hits Russian, Chinese entities with sanctions over aid to North Korea

The move follows a war of words between Washington and Pyongyang over North Korean missile tests

The United States hit several mainly Chinese and Russian companies and individuals with sanctions on Tuesday, claiming they had violated US sanctions and UN resolutions aimed at curtailing North Korea’s nuclear program.

The ten firms have been reprimanded largely for trading with North Korean-owned energy and labor companies that have previously been designated by the US, although two Chinese-based and one Russian entity were designated for dealing with companies known to be involved in the North’s pursuit of weapons of mass destruction (WMDs).

“Treasury will continue to increase pressure on North Korea by targeting those who support the advancement of nuclear and ballistic missile programs, and isolating them from the American financial system,” said Treasury Secretary Steven T. Mnuchin in a statement release by the department.

“It is unacceptable for individuals and companies in China, Russia, and elsewhere to enable North Korea to generate income used to develop weapons of mass destruction and destabilize the region. We are taking actions consistent with UN sanctions to show that there are consequences for defying sanctions and providing support to North Korea, and to deter this activity in the future.”

The imposition of sanctions mean that US citizens are prohibited from dealing with the named companies, and any property or interests they have in the US will be blocked, the statement said.

The move follows a war of words between Washington and Pyongyang over North Korean missile tests that show it is capable of reaching the US mainland.

US President Donald Trump has also threatened “fire and fury” if the North continues to “make … more threats to the United States”, and the regime of Kim Jung-Un has fired back with similarly fiery rhetoric.

China’s Dandong Rich Earth Trading Co., Russian-owned Gefest-M LLC and Mingzheng International Trading were all designated for alleged complicity in North Korea’s WMD program.

Dandong was designated for purchasing of vanadium ore from a front company for the country’s atomic energy agency, with Treasury noting that a UN Security Council Resolution “requires member states like China to prohibit the procurement of vanadium ore from North Korea”

Gefest was said by the US to have been engaged in procuring metals for a front company of the Second Academy of Natural Sciences, purportedly a key player in the regime’s development of nuclear weapons.

Three Russian individuals and two Singaporean companies and were rapped for selling oil to Jong-Un’s government.

Three Chinese entities and one individual were also rapped for buying coal from North Korean companies, which the US says is a chief source of income that allows the government to fund their weapons programs.

Source i24 News

Alex Jones Recaps Trump North Korea/Syria Situation

Source NeatoBurrito

Syria and North Korea Connection

Source Dahboo7

Who Are North Korea’s Allies?

Even North Korea, the world’s most isolated nation, gets by with a little help from its friends. So how many allies does North Korea have?

Source NowThis

NORTH KOREA HAS BEEN TRYING TO HELP SYRIA’S ASSAD BUILD HIS CHEMICAL WEAPONS PROGRAM

The U.S. and its allies have said they have no doubt the Assad regime was responsible for the attack, which precipitated retaliatory cruise missile strikes by the United States against Syrian military targets.

The shipments were exported by Pyongyang’s Korea Mining Development Trading Corporation (KMOID), which was blacklisted by the U.N. Security Council in 2009. It has been described as Pyongyang’s key arms dealer, exporting both ballistic missiles and conventional weapons. In March 2016 the council also blacklisted two KOMID representatives in Syria.

The consignments were destined for Syrian shell companies designated by the U.S. as fronts for Syria’s Scientific Studies and Research Centre (SSRC), which has overseen Syria’s expansive chemical weapons program since the 1970s.

North Korea has been under UN sanctions since 2006 over its ballistic missile and nuclear program. Sanctions have been increased following  five nuclear weapons testsand four long-range missile launches.

Syria had agreed to destroy its chemical weapons in 2013 under a deal brokered by Russia and the United States but reports have claimed that the Assad regime is in violation of the U.N. backed deal, continuing to manufacture chemical weapons at a site near the Syrian capital Damascus and in regime-held Hama province.

Source Newsweek Joseph Eid


North Korea Responds to U.S. Strikes on Syria

REUTERS North Korea said on Saturday U.S. missile strikes against a Syrian airfield on Friday were “an unforgivable act of aggression” that showed its decision to develop nuclear weapons was “the right choice a million times over.” The response by the North’s foreign ministry, carried by the official KCNA news agency, was the first since U.S. warships in the Mediterranean Sea launched dozens of missiles at a Syrian air base which the Pentagon says was involved in a chemical weapons attack earlier in the week. Diplomatically isolated North Korea considers Syria a key ally. 

Source Wochit

North Korea is now using Trump’s missile attack on Syria as justification for their nuclear weapons program.

Courtesy of the Daily Beast 

North Korea says the U.S. airstrikes in Syria prove that its nuclear weapons program is justified, calling the strikes “absolutely unpardonable.” The remarks were made by an unnamed official from the country’s foreign ministry, according to state-run Korean Central News Agency. “We will bolster up in every way our capability for self-defense to cope with the U.S. evermore reckless moves for a war and defend ourselves with our own force,” the North Korean official said. 

The North Koreans have long used “US aggression” as the justification for their nuclear weapons program, and this Syria attack just provided more credibility in that arena.

As it turns out North Korea’s benevolent overlords, China, were ultimately unimpressed with Trump’s first outing as commander-in-chief as well.


BEHIND THE LINES: ASSAD’S NORTH KOREAN CONNECTION

Asharq Al-Awsat detailed the presence of between 11 and 15 North Korean officers in the city. Rami Abdul Rahman of the organization said the men were artillery officers.

They were not, he said, taking part directly in the fighting. Rather, the men were engaged in providing “logistical support in addition to the development plans of military operations.”

These sightings are the latest confirmation of the long, close and cooperative relationship maintained between Pyongyang and the regime of the Assads.

The connection precedes the current Syrian war. It forms part of North Korea’s broader network of relationships in the Middle East.

Most famously, of course, the plutonium reactor under construction at the al-Kibar facility near Deir ez-Zor, destroyed by Israel in September 2007, was built under North Korean supervision.

North Korean participation in the reactor’s construction was confirmed by a high-level Iranian defector, Ali Reza Asghari. According to Der Spiegel, North Korean scientists were present at the site at the time of the bombing.

But Assad’s fledgling nuclear program was not the only project in which Damascus was aided by Pyongyang. Cooperation also took place both in the field of conventional weapons and in that of nonnuclear weapons of mass destruction.

In an October 3 interview with Radio Free Asia, former Defense Intelligence Agency analyst Bruce Bechtol noted that North Korea has been supplying weaponry, including chemical weapons, to Syria since the early 1990s.

According to Bechtol, North Korea provides the Syrians with the ability to “marry up” chemical weapons with missile systems. He noted that the North Koreans constructed two chemical weapons facilities for the Syrians, which remain in operation today.

In terms of conventional weapons, North Korea has played a vital part in Syria’s missile program.

The North Koreans are acknowledged experts in weapons smuggling process. They have continued to transport spare parts for Assad’s missiles into the country throughout the war, by air and by sea, coolly dismissive of the supposed international arms embargo. According to a 2012 report prepared for the UN Security Council, South Korea intercepted one shipment in May 2012, which was carrying graphite cylinders en route to Syria for Assad’s missiles.

The Iraqi authorities also claim to have diverted a plane carrying North Korean material to Syria, last September.

Bechtol, the former DIA man, noted that “in the past few months, there’s been an uptick in the number of North Korean advisers and logistics personnel on the ground that are helping Syrians resupply themselves,” and in the maintenance of weapons systems earlier supplied by Pyongyang. Such maintenance and resupply, of course, is vital for a country engaged in a long war, in which systems are in daily use.

Why are the North Koreans doing this? The answer does not lie in the realm of ideology.

Rather, the North Koreans are isolated and subject to sanctions. They need money, and will sell to whoever pays them.

So who is paying them? In the case of Syria, the answer is – almost certainly – the Iranians.

As with Russia, Syria does not get free arms handouts from its sponsors outside of the region. It instead gets free cash handouts from its regional patron, Iran, for which the survival of the Assad regime is most vital.

This money is then used to pay for Pyongyang’s and Moscow’s hardware and expertise.

Of course, Iran is North Korea’s main customer in the Middle East.

So Pyongyang’s evident involvement in the Syrian war is also a matter of longstanding alliances, as well as monetary gain.

Most intriguing in the latest development is the involvement of North Korean pilots. It is not clear if these men are actually engaged in combat on behalf of Assad, or in other tasks.

But their presence appears to suggest that the dictator’s problems with manpower also extend to his air force. The lack of trustworthy fighters has been the main problem facing the regime since the outbreak of the war.

Iran has sought to solve it through the insertion of large numbers of Hezbollah fighters, Iraqi Shi’ite volunteers and Iranian Revolutionary Guards into the fighting lines.

If Pyongyang is now supplying pilots to the regime, then appears it can no longer rely even on its own airmen.

This is quite plausible.

On the one hand, the Assad regime is, among other things, an “air force” regime. Hafez Assad was himself a pilot and a commander of the Syrian Air Force.

But as with other parts of the armed forces, the most loyal men in the air force are to be found in the most politically sensitive positions, not the most dangerous ones.

So while the very powerful Syrian Air Force Intelligence (Idarat al- Mukhabarat al-Quwwa al-Jawiya) is largely officered by Syrian Alawites, the majority of the pilots are Sunnis.

As such, it is perfectly possible that the same problems of trust apply to Assad’s aircrews as those which afflict his ground forces.

The evidence suggesting the presence of North Korean soldiers and aviators in Syria ultimately furthers testimony to the determined, effective and continuing effort by Assad’s allies, from the very start of the war, to keep him in place.

It may also be assumed that the North Koreans have noted and enjoyed the rudderless, wavering US policy toward the same issue over the same period. Source Jerusalem Post Jonathan Spyer


#northKorea #syria #weapons #wmd 

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    Total 6 comments
    • Boo

      Nationalism in Syria. Not one Arab is a nationalist. They may be a Muslim but a nationalist? Americans are so dumbed down. Arabs care about family, their religion and their groups. Nationalism is a western word for western country’s.

      Try to stay on the same planet when writing what amounts to propaganda pieces trying to blindside your readership.

    • truck driver

      North Korea probably shipped nukes to Assad in Syria

    • wiseoldlady

      Nationalism…NO…sovereignty….YES….to remain free of the NWO. The entire NWO war is about Israeli expansion in stealing Syrian land, a pipeline, and taking away their sovereignty. To make them puppets of the deep state under banker control. No nationalism about it. Nationalism is merely a patriotism of sovereignty, a national togetherness….like it should be here in America and every other country around the world. For Syria to remain free and sovereign is the most important issue. There are now only-around three countries remaining on earth not under luciferian NWO deep state control and Syria is one of them. The deep state-Vatican-City of London-DC–Israel-Zionist-Jesuit-Illuminati-blue bloods-control all the rest of the planet. All countries need to rebel against the deep state and return to sovereignty by kicking the central banks out of their countries. Burn the poppy fields across the world and the deep state-CIA goes down. Assad would NEVER use sarin gas on his people but rebel terrorists or Israel or the CIA certainly would. Typical of progressives to blame the innocent for what they are guilty of….just like the BS occurring now right here with the puppet paid idiots and their stupid rants about the beautiful confederate statues. It is propaganda and the ignorant indoctrinated dummies believe the MSM spewed lies. Surprising no one has tried to use sarin inside the UN or those un-elected in Brussels. As for N Korea…so what if they are allies with Syria. The deep state and CIA are the most demonic evil doers on earth and would do anything then blame someone else.

      • Takealook

        You really are the wise one.

      • dennis48309

        The good guys just need to sneak a couple nukes into Jerusalem and Tel Avid, detonate them, and call it a day.

    • Jerry

      Sorry, but I suspect this idea of N. Korea shipping weapons to Syria is just more propaganda to get support for another war

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