Tales of North Korean Abuses: No Facts, All Fiction

June 16, 2018 (Tony Cartalucci - NEO) - Claims of North Korean human rights abuses spearheaded attempts to undermine US-North Korean negotiations in Singapore. While the talks are unlikely to change the long-laid agendas of special interests across the West who have cultivated and profit from the ongoing conflict, it is important to confront these claims and diminish the intended effect they are meant to have in buttressing the notion of American exceptionalism and justifying American interventionism. 

Tales of North Korean human rights abuses are so pervasive and persistent that even those opposed to US exceptionalism and interventionism have shied away from confronting and refuting them. 

Rumors Built Upon Rumors 

One would expect such significant accusations to be backed up by an equally significant amount of evidence. Yet - like most of what the Western media produces and spreads among the public consciousness - there is little evidence at all. 

In most cases, tales of North Korean abuses are derived from hearsay by alleged witnesses and supposed defectors who no longer reside in North Korea.

The New York Times provides a prime example of the sort of abuses unquestioningly cited and repeated by pundits, politicians, and political "experts" alike. In its recent article, "Atrocities Under Kim Jong-un: Indoctrination, Prison Gulags, Executions," the New York Times would claim:

Mr. Kim rules with extreme brutality, making his nation among the worst human rights violators in the world. 

In North Korea, these crimes “entail extermination, murder, enslavement, torture, imprisonment, rape, forced abortions and other sexual violence, persecution on political, religious, racial and gender grounds, the forcible transfer of populations, the enforced disappearance of persons and the inhumane act of knowingly causing prolonged starvation,” concluded a 2014 United Nations report that examined North Korea.

The source of the New York Times' assertions is admittedly a "2014 United Nations report that examined North Korea," officially titled the, "Report of the detailed findings of the commission of inquiry on human rights in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea" (PDF).

The 372-page report - however - admits under an introductory section titled, "Methods of work," that (emphasis added):

In the absence of access to witnesses and sites inside the DPRK, the Commission decided to obtain first-hand testimony through public hearings that observed transparency, due process and the protection of victims and witnesses. Victims and witnesses who had departed the DPRK, as well as experts, testified in a transparent procedure that was open to the media, other observers and members of the general public. More than 80 witnesses and experts testified publicly and provided information of great specificity, detail and relevance, sometimes in ways that required a significant degree of courage.   

In other words, the entirety of the UN's 372-page report - cited as "evidence" of North Korean "atrocities" by prominent media organizations like the New York Times - is based on hearsay gathered by an investigation that never stepped foot once inside North Korea. Despite a lack of actual evidence to substantiate these claimed abuses, the New York Times depicts the UN report's conclusions as fact.

Is Trump-Kim Deal Really Peace Or Is It A Set Up For War?

June 14, 2018 (Brandon Turbeville - Activist Post) - Presidents Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un are perhaps the two most unpredictable leaders in the world with everyone wondering from day to day what new provocative statement will be ushered from official channels. However, the two most unpredictable leaders appear to have found common ground, perhaps even kindred spirits, during the course of the Singapore Summit when both men came away with an apparent mutually beneficial deal that will see the de-escalation of tensions on the Korean peninsula.

While there have been no real concrete agreements as a result of the talks, the North Korean side has pledged its commitment to the denuclearization of the peninsula, while the American side has strongly suggested that it will put its military exercises on hold with South Korea.

The first step seems to be an agreement for both sides to work toward recovering the remains of Korean war dead and their immediate repatriation.

Sum of all American Fears in Korea: Peace

February 11, 2018 (Tony Cartalucci - NEO) - North Korea has been depicted by the Western media as a dangerous rogue state, plotting the nuclear holocaust of America and holding global peace and stability hostage with its irrational aggression. It is the supposed threat North Korea poses to the world that the United States uses to justify its enduring decades-long military presence on the Korean Peninsula. 

In the recently released 2018 US Department of Defense Nation Defense Strategy, it claims: 

North Korea seeks to guarantee regime survival and increased leverage by seeking a mixture of nuclear, biological, chemical, conventional, and unconventional weapons and a growing ballistic missile capability to gain coercive influence over South Korea, Japan, and the United States.

Yet North Korea's immediate neighbor - South Korea - felt comfortable enough with this "rogue regime" that it not only invited high level diplomats to the PyeongChang 2018 Winter Olympic Games, it had its own athletes compete side-by-side with their North Korean counterparts as a unified team. 

The opening ceremony included a unified parade, song, and chorus group. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un's sister publicly greeted South Korean President Moon Jae-in. Other senior North Korean leaders and diplomats were present and interacted with their South Korean counterparts.

ABC News would report in their article, "Kim Jong Un's sister shakes hands with South Korea's president at Olympics opening ceremony," that: 

After arriving in South Korea with a high-level delegation, the sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un publicly shook hands with the neighboring nation's president during tonight's opening ceremony of the 2018 Winter Olympics.

CNN would report that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un would go as far as inviting South Korean President Moon Jae-in to the North Korean capital, Pyongyang. 

Evident is the absurdity of Western political and media claims about the danger North Korea presents to the world, when the very nation it is allegedly still technically at war with - South Korea - invites its leadership to a sporting event their athletes compete as a team together in and whose leaders watch, sitting side-by-side. 

However, CNN's article, "Kim Jong Un invites South Korean President Moon to Pyongyang," would reveal:    

Moon responded to the invitation by suggesting the two countries "should accomplish this by creating the right conditions," adding that talks between North Korea and the United States were also needed, and requested that North Korea be more active in talking with the US, according to Kim Eui-kyeom.

In essence, the president of South Korea requires US permission to conduct what should be South Korea's own bilateral talks with its immediate neighbor to the north. And here is revealed both the root of tensions on the Korean Peninsula - America's involvement - and the sum of all American fears - peace between North and South - especially on their own terms.

Continuity of Agenda: Trump's "Fire and Fury" Brewed Under Bush, Obama

August 12, 2017 (Tony Cartalucci - NEO) - The United States has issued a provocative threat to North Korea of "fire and fury." Following it up, the Guardian would report in its article, "Trump on North Korea: maybe 'fire and fury' wasn't tough enough threat," further threats being made:

Donald Trump has issued another provocative warning to North Korea, suggesting that his threat to unleash “fire and fury” on the country was not “tough enough”. 

The US president told reporters that North Korea “better get their act together or they’re going to be in trouble like few nations ever have been in trouble in this world”.

The Guardian never explores precisely what "trouble" was being referred to or the other "few nations" the US was hinting at.

However, the threats come amidst a barrage of familiar talking points, fearmongering, and fabrications that have proceeded all of America's military aggression worldwide - most notably Iraq in which "intelligence" was intentionally fabricated to bait Americans and the world into a devastating war with that cost over 1 million lives, trillions of dollars, and the effects of which are still being felt both in Iraq and throughout the Middle East today.

The Conflict with Korea Didn't Start Under Trump 

The Guardian and others across the Western media fail to place these most recent threats by the US against North Korea into a larger context regarding US-Korean relations, which stretch back to post-World War II and the Korean War which - officially - is only observing a sometimes fragile armistice yet to be fully resolved.

The South Korean government, as noted by The Week's article, "It's time for the U.S. military to leave South Korea," takes full advantage of America's military presence, using its resources to influence Asia regionally instead of tending to its own defense against threats - real or imagined - from its northern neighbor.

More likely, this arrangement is preferred by the US who uses the client regime occupying Seoul as a vector and proxy for US influence and policy throughout Asia, much in the same way it manipulates and interferes in the Middle East through proxies like Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Israel, and Turkey.

In order to justify and perpetuate America's presence not only on the Korean Peninsula, but in Asia itself, the US and its South Korean partners have repeatedly and intentionally encircled and provoked North Korea - not only in terms of rhetoric and in the form of military drills - but through active attempts to infiltrate and overthrow the government.

Ongoing Attempts at Destabilization and Regime Change

The US State Department through fronts posing as charities and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) have attempted to flood North Korea with media aimed at undermining political stability in the country.

Western Media Cashes in on Death of US Citizen After Release from North Korea

June 21, 2017 (Tony Cartalucci - LD) - Otto Warmbier was arrested last year on charges of theft as he attempted to leave North Korea after traveling there with a tour group. His recent release from North Korea after 15 months of detainment was followed by his death in the US.

A firestorm of accusations, condemnation, and angry threats have resonated across the Western media, with op-eds ranging from the Independent's, "America needs to do something about Otto Warmbier’s death – but military force against North Korea isn’t an option," which calls on US foreign policy to follow that of Imperial Rome's, including swift and severe retribution, to the Australian's, "What did North Korea do to Otto Warmbier?," which incoherently leaps from commenting on Warmbier's "beautiful name" to claiming, "he was a pawn, a victim of the maniacal brutality of Kim Jong-un," to Foreign Policy's piece in which the title, "North Korea Would Not Hesitate to Kill You," says it all.

Nowhere amongst this familiar Western propaganda used worldwide to dehumanize nations and prime the public for unending hostilities can any actual evidence be found that the North Korean government killed Otto Warmbier. In every article it is noted that he was returned to the US, and that it was in the US where he died. His death, however, is being blamed on his alleged mistreatment while in North Korea.

No Autopsy, No Evidence, No Honest Conclusions  

Conveniently for the Western media, no autopsy will be performed, as the BBC would note in their article, "Otto Warmbier: No autopsy for US student held by North Korea," which stated:

The family of a US student who died shortly after being freed from North Korea have declined a post-mortem examination, according to a US coroner.

Otto Warmbier died on Monday near his family home in Ohio after more than 15 months in North Korean captivity.

The Hamilton County coroner said only an external exam was performed on the 22-year-old.

The BBC article even admits that the coroner's office itself stated:

No conclusions about the cause and manner of Mr Warmbier's death have been drawn at this time.

Due to the lack of any conclusive evidence regarding Warmbier's death, and the fact that no autopsy will be performed, the Western media's collective propaganda is able to stand alone in the court of biased Western public opinion. That propaganda - unsurprisingly - calls for North Korea to be "punished."

However, without an autopsy, whatever the perception is surrounding North Korea - no conclusions can honestly be drawn one way or the other regarding Warmbier's death.

One conclusion that can be drawn without doubt, however - is the shameless, merciless, and inhumane manner in which the Western media has exploited the death of Otto Warmbier.

Without evidence and no prospect of ever obtaining any, the Western media has rushed to create as much anger, hysteria, and resentment as possible in the minds of the Western public before the next news cycle hits. Embedded in the minds of many across the West will be the notion that North Korea "killed" Otto Warmbier. The minds of many will be primed ahead of further escalations by Washington on the Korean Peninsula where it seeks to maintain its power and influence as part of a wider strategy to maintain its unwarranted and uninvited "primacy" across Asia.

While the Western media poses as appalled over North Korea's inhumanity, it is the Western media that has helped set the stage for yet another bloody chapter of US-Asia relations and all of the inhumanity that unfolds because of it. 

US Presence in Korea Drives Instability

March 25, 2017 (Ulson Gunnar - NEO) - US and European interests continue to portray the government and nation of North Korea as a perpetual security threat to both Asia and the world. Allegations regarding the nation's nuclear weapon and ballistic missile programs are continuously used as justification for not only a continuous US military presence on the Korean Peninsula, but as justification for a wider continued presence across all of Asia-Pacific. 

In reality, what is portrayed as an irrational and provocative posture by the North Korean government, is in fact driven by a very overt, and genuinely provocative posture by the United States and its allies within the South Korean government.

During this year's Foal Eagle joint US-South Korean military exercises, US-European and South Korean media sources intentionally made mention of  preparations for a "decapitation" strike on North Korea. Such an operation would be intended to quickly eliminate North Korean military and civilian leadership to utterly paralyze the state and any possible response to what would most certainly be the subsequent invasion, occupation and subjugation of North Korea.

The Business Insider in an article titled, "SEAL Team 6 is reportedly training for a decapitation strike against North Korea's Kim regime," would report:

The annual Foal Eagle military drills between the US and South Korea will include some heavy hitters this year — the Navy SEAL team that took out Osama bin Laden, Army Special Forces, and F-35s — South Korea's Joon Gang Daily reports. 

South Korean news outlets report that the SEALs, who will join the exercise for the first time, will simulate a "decapitation attack," or a strike to remove North Korea's leadership.

To introduce an element of plausible deniability to South Korean reports, the article would continue by stating:

Pentagon spokesman Cmdr. Gary Ross later told Business Insider that the US military "does not train for decapitation missions" of any kind. 

Yet this is a categorically false statement. Throughout the entirety of the Cold War, US policymakers, military planners and operational preparations focused almost solely on devising methods of "decapitating" the Soviet Union's political and military leadership.

In more recent years, policy papers and the wars inspired by them have lead to documented instances of attempted "decapitation" operations, including the 2011 US-NATO assault on Libya in which the government of Muammar Qaddafi was targeted by airstrikes aimed at crippling the Libyan state and assassinating both members of the Qaddafi family as well as members of the then ruling government.

Similar operations were aimed at Iraq earlier during the 2003 invasion and occupation by US-led forces.

Regarding North Korea more specifically, entire policy papers have been produced by prominent US policy think tanks including the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) devising plans to decimate North Korea's military and civilian leadership, invade and occupy the nation and confound North Korea's capacity to resist what would inevitably be its integration with its southern neighbor.

North Korean Paranoia is Well-Founded

February 15, 2017 (Ulson Gunnar - NEO) - North Korea is depicted across US and European media as a backward nation run by a despotic, delusional leader encircled by advisers suffering from irrational, militant paranoia. The nation is also depicted as a prominent security threat in Asia-Pacific despite North Korea waging no wars in the region since an armistice in 1953 effectively ended the Korean War.

A despotic, delusional leadership, however, most likely would not possess nuclear weapons, ballistic missiles and a large conventional army and yet restrain its use regardless of decades of provocations engineered along its borders by the United States and its allies within the South Korean government. Likewise, a nation governed by the entirely irrational would be incapable of maintaining, even expanding ties with neighboring states like China.

Yet in reality, North Korea has done all of this.

Much of the US and Europe's accusations are predicated on the continued development of North Korea's defense programs including advances in nuclear warheads and ballistic missiles. Strategically omitted from US and European rhetoric are the provocations the West itself is guilty of, spurring along North Korea's expanding militarization.

What if, then, North Korea's allegedly irrational paranoia was well-founded?

As former North Korean leader Kim Jong-il's health deteriorated, the United States and its regional allies began planning quite openly for an opportunity to overturn the North Korean state.  US-based think tank, the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), would publish a 2009, 60-page report titled, "Preparing for Sudden Change in North Korea," in which scenarios for the full-scale invasion, occupation and subjugation of North Korea were laid out.

The report included recommendations for an invasion and occupation force it called a "stabilization force," of up to 460,000 US and allied troops.

Considering that, by 2009, the United States had already successfully invaded, occupied and destroyed the nations of Iraq and Afghanistan, it would not be "irrational" at all for North Korean paranoia to reach new heights.

The missing ingredients Iraq and Afghanistan had in facing US invasion were substantial defense programs that could deter US aggression. North Korea's possession of increasingly sophisticated nuclear warheads and ballistic missiles means that the price, each year, rises for any attempted implementation of the plans included in the CFR's 2009 report.

Who is Driving Tensions on the Korean Peninsula?

October 5, 2016 (Joseph Thomas - NEO) - With North Korea's recent nuclear weapon test, it appears the East Asian state is transitioning from possessing a demonstration capability toward hosting a functional nuclear arsenal. While analysts believe North Korea has yet to miniaturise its nuclear weapons to fit in rocket-launched warheads, the frequency and size of the nation's nuclear tests indicate expanding capabilities in both research and development as well as in fabrication and deployment.

BBC's article, "North Korea's nuclear programme: How advanced is it?," would claim:

North Korea has conducted several tests with nuclear bombs.

However, in order to launch a nuclear attack on its neighbours, it needs to be able to make a nuclear warhead small enough to fit on to a missile.

North Korea claims it has successfully "miniaturised" nuclear warheads - but this has never been independently verified, and some experts have cast doubt on the claims.

And despite Western commentators and their counterparts in South Korea and Japan's claims that North Korea's nuclear weapons programme is a proactive, provocative policy, closer scrutiny reveals that Pyongyang's defence policy may be instead predicated on legitimate fears reflecting and reacting to American and South Korean foreign policy.

US Propaganda Op in Korea Exposes American TV as Social Engineering Tool

If American TV is used to brainwash North Koreans, wouldn't that suggest it was used to brainwash Americans too? 

March 20, 2015 (Tony Cartalucci - NEO) - When Wired published its article, "The Plot to Free North Korea with Smuggled Episodes of 'Friends,'" it probably hoped that its impressionable, politically ignorant audience would not pick up on the underlying facts and their implications, and simply see a "cute" anecdote poking fun at the besieged East Asian country while inflating their own sense of unwarranted cultural superiority.

What they missed, of course, is the fact that the program peddled by Wired as the work of "the North Korea Strategy Center and its 46-year-old founder, Kang Chol-hwan," is in fact funded and organized instead by the US State Department.

Indeed, the North Korea Strategy Center is partnered directly with the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor of the US Department of State, the US State Department's Radio Free Asia propaganda network, and the US State Department's National Endowment for Democracy (NED), a defacto "department of regime change" backed by Wall Street's Fortune 500, solely for the interests of Wall Street's Fortune 500.

Readers of Wired's latest, long-winded spin on US-backed sedition abroad also most likely missed the fact that if TV shows from America are considered a tool for social engineering in North Korea, they are most likely being used as a tool of social engineering in the United States as well. The degradation of American culture, the family, and weakening of local communities, versus the growing centralized dominance of corporate-financier monopolies and their increasingly draconian police and surveillance state is a direct result of this.

Key to Peace in Korea - Remove US Presence

April 14, 2013 (AltThaiNews-Tony Cartalucci) - On March 26, 2010, the ROKS Cheonan is hit by what appears to be a German-made torpedo, sinks while claiming the lives of 46 South Korean sailors. The world, America at the lead, was quick to point its finger at North Korea before South Korea itself ruled them out as a suspect. North Korea adamantly insisted it was not behind the attack, and despite their paranoid and isolated posture, little beyond insanity could serve as a motive.

Despite evidence adding up otherwise, to no one's surprise a joint "international" investigation by the US, UK, South Korea, Australia, Canada, and Sweden would later conclude that a North Korean submarine was the culprit, leaving even most South Koreans skeptical.

During this period of time, America's position in Asia Pacific was already waning. Endless war in Central Asia and the Middle East, along with a deepening economic crisis in the West allowed other actors to begin eying the seemingly inevitable void soon to be left. Japan under then Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama, began reasserting itself over unpopular US military installations scattered throughout the nation. China was continuing to expand its economic and diplomatic influence in the region, luring in even America's traditional allies like Australia and Thailand.

The sinking of the ROKS Cheonan then "serendipitously" served as a reminder as to why America claims their troops and influence are needed in the region for "peace and security." The Korean Won tumbled as the US Dollar was temporarily bolstered and Japanese PM Hatoyama not only conceded to US demands regarding US installations, but would also resign over the matter. Literally citing the mysterious, still unsolved sinking of the Cheonan, Washington insisted its need to reassert itself in Asia to counter North Korea, if not for any other reason.

North Korea, either out of shadowy complicity or because of its paranoid predictable nature, became America's greatest ally in many ways.

November 2010, a similar scenario played out after an artillery exchange between North and South Korea which claimed several lives. America was again bolstered in its highly tenuous position not only in Asia as a whole, but on the Korean Peninsula itself, having been rebuffed on the US-Korean FTA and facing the possibility of US banking interests meeting with Tobin taxes in Korean markets.

South Korean leadership now admits they were conducting joint US-Korean live fire exercises close to highly contested waters in the Yellow Sea before the exchange took place. North Korea maintains this incident was intentionally provoked, as was the sinking of the Cheonan, as contrived incidents of opportunity for the waning American empire to reassert itself.

And like the sinking of the Cheonan, America once again renewed the rhetorical lease on its presence in Asia Pacific.