A New Korean War Would Be Devastating

Panama seizes N. Korean ship hiding weapons in sugar
Panama President Ricardo Martinelli said the ship's captain attempted to commit suicide after the vessel was stopped.
1 hr ago | By Lomi Kriel of Reuters

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A photo tweeted by Panama's President Ricardo Martinelli shows what he says are 'undeclared weapons' hidden under the sugar cargo of a N. Korean container ship in Colon, Panama.


PANAMA CITY — Panama detained a North Korean-flagged ship from Cuba as it headed to the Panama Canal and said it was hiding weapons in brown sugar containers, sparking a standoff in which the ship's captain attempted to commit suicide.

President Ricardo Martinelli said the undeclared weapons were detected inside the containers when Panamanian authorities stopped the ship, suspecting it was carrying drugs. "We're going to keep unloading the ship and figure out exactly what was inside," he told Panamanian television late on Monday. "You cannot go around shipping undeclared weapons of war through the Panama Canal."

It was unclear what the weapons were, but a photo posted on Martinelli's official Twitter page showed a long missile-shaped object with a tapering, conical end inside the ship.

IHS Jane's said it had identified the equipment shown in the images as an RSN-75 "Fan Song" fire control radar for the SA-2 family of surface-to-air missiles.

Martinelli said the captain of the vessel tried to commit suicide after the ship was stopped near the port of Manzanillo on the Atlantic side of the canal.

The president said the crew resisted efforts by Panamanian authorities to redirect the ship, named Chong Chon Gang, to Manzanillo. Thirty-five crew members were detained.


Panama seizes N. Korea ship hiding weapons in sugar: A photo tweeted by Panama's President Ricardo Martinelli shows what he says are "undeclared weapons" hidden under the sugar cargo of a N. Korean container ship.Reuters Photo: Ricardo Martinelli, Twitter

A photo tweeted by Panama's President Ricardo Martinelli shows what he says are 'undeclared weapons' hidden under the sugar cargo of a N. Korean container ship in Colon, Panama.

Javier Caraballo, Panama's top anti-drugs prosecutor, told local television the ship was en route to North Korea.

North Korea, a reclusive and impoverished Asian nation, is under tough sanctions enacted by the United Nations, the United States and the European Union, including a U.N. ban on all arms exports due to its controversial nuclear weapons program.

Related: Tension in North Korea: Why you should care

Previous violations of sanctions included North Korean shipments of arms-related material to Syria in November 2010 and rocket fuses for Iran in 2008, according to a U.N. report in May.

Sanctions were toughened after the country's February nuclear test and its vow to continue developing nuclear weapons, saying it fears an attack by the United States.

Shipping data obtained by IHS Maritime research group showed that the Chong Chon Gang arrived at the southern end of the Panama Canal May 31. It passed through the canal June 1, with a stated destination of Havana, Cuba.

After that it disappeared from the tracking system and reappeared in Manzanillo, Panama, July 11. IHS said there were indications it had changed cargo in the interim.

http://news.msn.com/world/panama-sei...apons-in-sugar

North Korea blames US threat for aborting envoy's trip
North Korea rescinded its invitation for senior U.S. envoy Bob King to travel to Pyongyang to seek the release of detained American Kenneth Bae.
16 hr ago | Hyung-Jim Kim of Associated Press

SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea said it rescinded its invitation for a U.S. envoy to visit the country to seek the freedom of an American detainee because Washington perpetrated a "grave provocation" by allegedly mobilizing nuclear-capable bombers during recent military drills with Seoul.

Bob King, the U.S. special envoy for North Korean human rights, had been scheduled to travel to Pyongyang on Friday for talks on Kenneth Bae, who has been detained since November for committing "hostile acts." Bae, a 45-year-old tour operator and Christian missionary, was sentenced in April to 15 years of hard labor.

An unidentified North Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman said in remarks carried by state media late Saturday that his country intended to allow King's visit even though the U.S. and South Korea were conducting annual military drills.

Kenneth Bae, pictured here in 2011, has been sentenced to 15 years of hard labor accused of subversion.

But he said the U.S. "beclouded the hard-won atmosphere of humanitarian dialogue in a moment" by allegedly infiltrating B-52H strategic bombers into the sky above the peninsula during the exercises. He called it "the most blatant nuclear blackmail against us."

The annual Ulchi Freedom Guardian drills, which ended Friday, were computer-simulated war games that U.S. and South Korea say are defensive in nature, but which North Korea calls a rehearsal for an invasion. The U.S. military command in Seoul did not immediately comment on the North Korean statement.

Earlier this year, the U.S. took the unusual step of sending nuclear-capable B-52 and B-2 bombers to participate in springtime military drills with South Korea as tension was running high after a string of warlike rhetoric from North Korea, including vows to launch nuclear war. The flights drew a furious response from Pyongyang. Animosities have since eased, with Pyongyang moderating its rhetoric and seeking diplomacy with Seoul and Washington.

State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf said Friday the U.S. was "surprised and disappointed by North Korea's decision" and remains gravely concerned about Bae's health. Bae's family expressed disappointment but said they were holding on to faith that North Korean and U.S. diplomats would resume talks soon. Bae suffers from multiple health problems.

Related: N. Korea quietly disses S. Korea-US military drills

Bae is at least the sixth American detained in North Korea since 2009. The others were eventually allowed to leave without serving their terms, with some releases coming after prominent Americans, including former Presidents Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter, visited North Korea.

Analysts say North Korea has previously used detained Americans as bargaining chips in its standoff with the U.S. over its nuclear and missile programs. International disarmament talks on ending North Korea's nuclear ambitions remain stalled since 2009.

http://news.msn.com/world/north-kore...ocid=ansnews11

See also http://www.bigbigforums.com/news-inf...xecutions.html

North Korea puts army on alert, warns U.S. of 'horrible disaster'
North's military warned the United States of 'disastrous consequences' for moving a group of ships,
including an aircraft carrier, into a South Korean port.
REUTERS - Tuesday, October 8, 2013, 7:35 AM

North Korea said on Tuesday its military would be put on high alert and be ready to launch operations, stepping up tension after weeks of rhetoric against the United States and South Korea, whom it accuses of instigating hostility.

Reclusive North Korea has often issued threats to attack the South and the United States but has rarely turned them into action. Such hostile rhetoric is widely seen as a way to push its domestic and international political agenda.

A spokesman for the North's military warned the United States of "disastrous consequences" for moving a group of ships, including an aircraft carrier, into a South Korean port.

"In this connection, the units of all services and army corps level of the KPA received an emergency order from its supreme command to re-examine the operation plans already ratified by it and keep themselves fully ready to promptly launch operations anytime," the spokesman said, referring to the Korean People's Army (KPA).

"The U.S. will be wholly accountable for the unexpected horrible disaster to be met by its imperialist aggression forces' nuclear strike means," the spokesman said in a statement carried by the official KCNA news agency.

South Korea's Defense Minister Kim Kwan-jin said later on Tuesday there was no indication of unusual activity by the North's military.



Washington brushed off the North's warning.

"We've seen this type of rhetoric from North Korea before," State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said. "Such comments from North Korea will do nothing to end (its) isolation or reduce the costs (it) pays for defying the international community."

In March, the North declared it was no longer bound by the armistice that ended fighting in the 1950-53 Korean War signed with the United States and China, and threatened to use nuclear weapons to attack U.S. and South Korean territories.

South Korea's defense ministry said the U.S. ships were taking part in a joint routine maritime search and rescue exercise with the South's navy and said any criticism by North Korea was "wrong".

The North has defied international warnings not to build nuclear and long-range missiles and is believed to have enough fissile material to build up to 10 nuclear bombs.

Most intelligence analysis says it has yet to master the technology to deploy such weapons.

The United States, which has 28,500 troops stationed in the South, regularly engages in drills with its ally, and has said the aircraft carrier USS George Washington was leading a group of ships to visit South Korea in a routine port call.

The impoverished North's large but ageing conventional military is considered unfit to fight an extended modern battle but it staged surprise attacks against the South in 2010 that killed 50 people in aggression unprecedented since the war.

An attempt at dialogue in August led to the reopening of a jointly run factory park that had been shut amid high tension in April. However, talks have since hit a stalemate.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has ordered his country's military to be on standby for combat, the head of the South's National Intelligence Service said in a report to parliament, according to Yonhap news agency.

The North also appears to have restarted its ageing nuclear reactor and conducted an engine test as part of its long-range missile program, spy chief Nam Jae-joon was quoted as saying, confirming recent private intelligence analysis.


Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/worl...#ixzz2hAvEHIjL

Shortly after Obama inked the deal with Iran, the North Koreans began to ramp up their nuclear enrichment program by restarting the Yongbyon nuclear reactor and reinforcing their missile launch sites. The cause and effect relationship couldn’t be clearer.

The North Koreans saw first-hand that the Commander in Chief is weak-willed and does not have the backbone to carry out his threats. Now, all the North Koreans need to do is continue building a bomb. The Obama administration has proven that it is more than willing to compromise and back down when facing nuclear regimes, so of course our enemies will continue to defy us!

Obama’s Weakness Emboldens a Nuclear North Korea

Posted on December 3 2013 by Conservative Daily

http://www.conservative-daily.com/20...r-north-korea/

N. Korea prison camp expands, guards use rape and torture
AFP - 13 hours ago

Seoul (AFP) - Satellite images of one of North Korea's largest political prison camps suggests its inmate population is expanding, Amnesty International said Thursday in a report detailing rape and torture in the North's notorious gulag. The report by the London-based rights watchdog included rare testimony from a former camp guard, as well as from former inmates about the brutality prevalent in the prison system.

"For Amnesty International, which has been investigating human rights violations for the last 50 years, we find North Korea to be in a category of its own," said Amnesty's East Asia researcher Rajiv Narayan.

North Korea denies the existence of the political prison camps which, according to independent estimates, form a network holding between 100,000 and 200,000 people. The images analysed in the Amnesty report were taken over a two-year period from 2011 to 2013, and were of Camp 15 in the south of the country and Camp 16 in the north.

Amnesty estimated the size of Camp 16 is 560 square kilometres (216 square miles) -- three times the size of Washington, DC -- with around 20,000 prisoners. Analysis indicated a slight increase in the remote camp's population, with new housing blocks clearly visible and signs of "significant" economic activity such as mining and logging, the report said.

A former security guard based at the camp from the 1980s until the mid-1990s, named only as Lee in the report, told Amnesty of the methods used to execute prisoners. He revealed detainees were forced to dig their own graves and were then killed with hammer blows to their necks. The former guard said he also witnessed prison officers strangling detainees and then beating them to death with wooden sticks.

Prison officials frequently raped women inmates who were then killed, he said. "After a night of 'servicing' the officials, the women had to die because the secret could not get out. This happens at most of the political prison camps," he told Amnesty.

Former Camp 15 inmates said detainees were subject to forced labour -- usually for between 10 to 12 hours a day on near-starvation rations with a strict production target. "Often we did not meet our targets because we were always hungry and weak," one former Camp 15 prisoner told Amnesty. "We were punished with beatings and also reductions in our food quota," said the prisoner, whose name was withheld.

Camp 15 covers an area of 370 square kilometres (140 square miles). In 2011, an estimated 50,000 people were imprisoned within the camp.

The recent images of Camp 15 -- also known as Yodok -– show that 39 housing blocks have been demolished since Amnesty International last assessed satellite pictures of the camp two years ago. The testimony echoed that provided recently by camp survivors to a landmark UN commission investigating human rights abuses in North Korea.

Amnesty called on North Korea to close the camps immediately, and urged countries like China to stop repatriating North Koreans who flee the country on the grounds that they would likely be sent to the gulag.

http://news.yahoo.com/north-korea-pr...040710235.html

South Korea said North Korea has fired four suspected short-range missiles into its eastern waters.

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SEOUL, South Korea (AP) - South Korea said North Korea has fired four suspected short-range missiles into its eastern waters.

A Defense Ministry official said North Korea fired four projectiles believed to be short-range missiles with a range of about 125 miles into the waters off its east coast. The official spoke anonymously citing department rules.

North Korea routinely conducts short-range missile tests but Thursday's launch came three days after South Korea and the U.S. began their annual military drills which Pyongyang calls a rehearsal for invasion.

North Korea has recently eased tension by taking a series of conciliatory gestures toward South Korea..

http://www.wafb.com/story/24838018/s...ampaign=buffer

North Korea: We've detained another American
Friday, June 6, 2014 - 12:48pm
By K.J. Kwon and Jethro Mullen

SEOUL, South Korea (CNN) -- North Korea announced Friday that it has detained a U.S. citizen who it says entered the secretive country as a tourist in April and broke the law.

The news brings the number of Americans believed to be held in the communist nation to three.

The North's state-run Korean Central News Agency reported that authorities are investigating a man who it said violated the law by acting "contrary to the purpose of tourism."

In a brief English-language article, KCNA gave the American's name as Jeffrey Edward Fowle, saying he arrived as a tourist on April 29. It didn't give any other details.

Citing unidentified diplomatic sources, the Japanese news agency Kyodo reported that Fowle was part of a tour group and that he was detained in mid-May after allegedly leaving a Bible in a hotel where he had been staying.

The U.S. State Department said it was "aware of reports that a third U.S. citizen was detained in North Korea." But it declined to provide any further information, saying it couldn't share details about specific cases without written consent from an individual.

"There is no greater priority for us than the welfare and safety of U.S. citizens abroad," a State Department official said.

Other Americans held

North Korea said in late April it was holding a different American man, who it claimed came the country seeking asylum.

He tore his tourist visa and shouted that "he would seek asylum" and "came to the DPRK (North Korea) after choosing it as a shelter," KCNA said.

KCNA identified that man as Miller Matthew Todd, who it says was taken into custody on April 10.

The U.S. State Department said at the time that it was aware of the report and had been in touch with Sweden, which represents American interests in North Korea, about the matter. It declined to disclose any further information.

North Korea is also holding Kenneth Bae, a Korean-American missionary who was sentenced to 15 years hard labor in 2013 by a court that said he had carried out acts aimed at bringing down the regime of leader Kim Jong Un.

Although North Korea contains a number of state-controlled churches, the totalitarian regime forbids independent religious activities, viewing them as potential threats to its authority.

Other Americans detained in the North have later been released.

Last year, Pyongyang freed Merrill Newman, an 85-year-old veteran of the Korean War who was on an organized private tour in the country, after holding him for several weeks.

http://www.nbc33tv.com/news/north-korea-weve-detained

Where Is Kim Jong Un?
The Atlantic - Adam Cathcart - 1 day ago

One of the perils of doing things differently than your predecessor is that people quickly forget how things used to be. North Korea’s late leader, Kim Jong Il, was a fairly reclusive man, one who seemed more drawn to the tunnels under Pyongyang than the bright lights above. His son and successor Kim Jong Un, by contrast, has been omnipresent in North Korean media since his first ebullient on-site inspection in January 2012. He assesses the output of women’s hosiery and shoes, urges faster mushroom production, gesticulates at goat farms, measures the length of offshore artillery fire, embraces the troops, hugs small children, and welcomes tall, pierced men from abroad. He directs painters and architects, launches missiles, watches lubricant ooze, and enjoys North Korean girl bands with his wife. Clearly, his goal is not just to look at things, but to be looked at.

That’s why it’s so remarkable that the 31-year-old marshal hasn’t been seen in public since cameras captured him smoking cigarettes at a performance of the Moranbong Band on September 3. Speculation about his whereabouts only increased in late September after Reuters’ James Pearson reported that a North Korean propaganda film had shown a hefty Kim Jong Un limping and indicated that he was suffering from “discomfort.” The narrator of the film relayed the news with fulsome gratitude and even seemed to guilt-trip viewers for forcing such an obviously busy man to work so hard. South Korean news outlets have raised the possibility that Kim is recovering from ankle surgery.

Kim’s prolonged absence, along with reports of what appear to be rather standard restrictions on entering and exiting the North Korean capital of Pyongyang, have fueled rumors of a coup . (One of the most-quoted sources for a variant of this theory, the North Korean poet and defector Jang Jin Sung, argues that the coup actually took place back in December.) There is no evidence so far of an attack on the Kim family, which has done an extremely thorough job over the past seven decades of eliminating even the hint of internal opposition.

Kim Jong Un hasn’t been wholly incommunicado over the past month. He’s been credited in North Korean media with several pieces of writing: A missive to Bashar al-Assad and a long letter to Youth League workers in Pyongyang emerged in early September, and letters to various communist leaders abroad (including the Chinese) followed. Over the weekend, three top North Korean envoys visited Incheon, South Korea for the closing ceremony of the Asian Games, in the highest-level meeting with South Korean officials in several years. The delegation members refuted rumors that Kim was sick, as has North Korea’s representative in Geneva.

That Hwang Pyong So, a senior military official, led Saturday’s delegation to Incheon has been interpreted by some as confirmation of his great clout in North Korean high politics. Only a year ago, Hwang was but one lonely face in a sea of black-clothed Party memberswhen Kim Jong Un’s uncle, Jang Song Thaek, was brutally purged from the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea. But he has since risen meteorically. Jang Jin Sung, the North Korean poet-defector, prominently maintains that Hwang is running the show in North Korea via his Organization and Guidance Department (OGD). Jang’s assertions, amplified by news outlets such as CNN and Vice, are extremely dramatic and certainly deserve further investigation. The OGD appears to be a rather mundane apparatus that many communist parties share, though Jang and others with extensive experience inside the regime maintain that in North Korea it is particularly malevolent. But his role with the OGD should not blind us to the fact that Hwang’s other job titles are also quite powerful: vice chair of the National Defense Commission (ostensibly the most powerful institution in the government) and the director of the General Political Bureau of the Korean People’s Army. But holding various positions within the North Korean government is far from unprecedented, and chair-swapping among elites is common, much like in the Chinese Communist Party. At least thus far, North Korean media has not personally lauded Hwang for his role in the Incheon trip; not a single image of the journey has been shown on North Korean television or in the Party newspaper.

As the object of a totalitariancult of personality, Kim Jong Un’s main public function has been to serve as the face of the regime. He is now unable to fulfill that role, for whatever reason, and the system is insufficiently evolved for an appearance by his wife, or his sister, to do anything except further stoke speculation. All the rumors over the last month may ultimately reveal very little about the North Korea system, which is already known for its secretive and unpredictable modes of operation.But it also shows that we share with the North Korean people a tendency to excessively focus on the Kims to the detriment of knowing more about their immediate subordinates, let alone the roles they play in running the country. If North Korea’s young leader doesn’t make a public appearance for the October 10 “Party Foundation Day,” it would send a message: We may soon learn much more about the old officials we rarely notice as we pore over images of Kim Jong Un looking at things, and look right back at him.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/magazi...-un/ar-BB84xn6

North Korean leader tells army: 'prepare for war'
AFP - 3 days ago

North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un has urged his army to prepare for war with the United States and its allies, state media said Saturday, as Pyongyang ramps up the rhetoric ahead of US-South Korea military drills.

Kim's comments came after South Korea and the United States Friday conducted a joint naval drill involving 10 South Korean warships and a US Aegis destroyer, ahead of the launch of large-scale military exercises that have enraged the North.

"The prevailing situation where a great war for national reunification is at hand requires all the KPA (Korean People's Army) units to become (elite) Guard Units fully prepared for war politically and ideologically, in military technique and materially", he was quoted by the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) as saying.

North Korea regularly ratchets up hostile rhetoric at times of joint US-South Korea military exercises that spark a sharp surge in tensions on the divided peninsula.

Kim called on the military to train hard in order "to tear to pieces the Stars and Stripes", in comments made while opening a new hall at the Victorious Fatherland Liberation War Museum in Pyongyang, KCNA said.

The drill Friday was a prelude to an eight-week exercise, Foal Eagle, involving air, ground and naval field training, with around 200,000 Korean and 3,700 US troops that begins on Monday.

A week-long, largely computer-simulated joint drill, Key Resolve, will also get under way.

Seoul and Washington insist the exercises are defence-based in nature, but they are condemned by Pyongyang as provocative rehearsals for invasion.

North Korea had offered a moratorium on carrying out nuclear tests if this year's joint drills were cancelled -- a proposal rejected by Washington as an "implicit threat" to carry out a fourth atomic drill.

North Korea claims it won the 1950-53 Korean War, which ended in an armistice instead of a peace treaty, leaving the two Koreas still technically at war.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/...d=ansnewsafp11

North Korean Officials : knife attack on US ambassador was 'expression of resistance'
The Guardian - Justin McCurry in Tokyo - 6 hrs ago

North Korea has described a knife attack that left the US ambassador in Seoul with a 11cm-long facial wound as “just punishment” for joint US-South Korea military drills.

A political extremist with a history of violence, named by police as Kim Ki-jong, attacked Mark Lippert during an event in Seoul on Thursday morning.

Lippert received 80 stitches during two and a half hours of surgery and will remain under observation in hospital for at least three days, his doctors said.

The US and South Korea condemned the attack, but North Korea’s official KCNA news agency described it as a valid “expression of resistance”. A brief statement referred to the weapon used to slash Lippert as the “knife of justice”.

Lippert, 42, tweeted after the surgery: “Doing well and in great spirits! Robyn, Sejun, Grigsby [his wife, son and dog] and I – deeply moved by the support! Will be back ASAP to advance US-ROK [Republic of Korea] alliance!”

Quote:

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Doing well&in great spirits! Robyn, Sejun, Grigsby & I - deeply moved by the support
Will be back ASAP to advance US-ROK alliance! 같이 갑시다!

— Mark Lippert (@mwlippert) March 5, 2015

---

Chung Nam-sik, a doctor at Yonsei University’s Severance hospital, said the surgery had been “very successful”. He said Lippert had also sustained a cut to his left arm, damaging nerves connected to his little finger and tendons connected to his thumb, and might experience sensory problems in the hand for several months.

The attacker was wrestled to the ground after lunging at Lippert with a fruit knife at a forum at the Sejong Cultural Institute, across the road from the US embassy. He loudly demanded the reunification of the Korean peninsula and condemned joint military exercises currently being held between the US and South Korea. “I carried out an act of terror,” he shouted as he was pinned to the floor.


South Korean media said Kim, 55, was an anti-US and Japan activist. In 1985 he was part of a group that slashed and burned the US flag on the embassy grounds. He has also held one-man protests against Japanese claims to the Takeshima islands, known in Korea as Dokdo, which are administered by Seoul.

In 2010, he received a three-year suspended prison sentence after throwing a piece of concrete at the Japanese ambassador to Seoul. In 2007, Kim reportedly tried to set himself on fire with petrol while protesting in front of the presidential Blue House, demanding a government investigation into an alleged 1988 rape in Kim’s office, according to news reports.

After his arrest on Thursday, Kim reportedly told police he had been planning the attack for 10 days. “I made the sacrifice to stop Key Resolve,” he said, referring to the name given to this year’s US-South Korea military drills.

Police are considering whether to charge him for attempted homicide, an official involved in the case said.

In a blogpost, Kim said the annual military drills would ruin any attempts to bring about reconciliation between the two Koreas, more than six decades after the Korean peninsula was divided at the end of the 1950-53 Korean war.

Unification ministry sources said Kim had visited North Korea at least six times in 2006-07, and had tried to erect a memorial to the late North Korean leader Kim Jong-il but was blocked by police and rightwing activists.

South Korea’s president, Park Geun-hye – herself the target of a knife attack in 2006 – condemned the incident as “intolerable” during a visit to the United Arab Emirates, calling it “not only a physical attack on the US ambassador in South Korea but also an attack on the South Korea-US alliance”.

The Korean Council for Reconciliation and Co-operation, a pro-unification group that hosted Thursday’s event, condemned the attack and apologised to the governments of both countries.

In Washington, the US state department spokeswoman Marie Harf said: “We strongly condemn this act of violence.”

The White House’s National Security Council spokeswoman, Bernadette Meehan, said Barack Obama had spoken with Lippert after the attack. “The president called to tell him that he and his wife Robyn are in his thoughts and prayers, and to wish him the very best for a speedy recovery,” Meehan said.

Witnesses described how the attack unfolded too quickly to prevent Kim from reaching Lippert, who was seated at a table. “The guy comes in wearing traditional Korean brown and tan dress. He yells something, goes up to the ambassador and slashes him in the face,” said Michael Lammbrau, who works at the Arirang Institute thinktank in Seoul.

“People wrestled the guy to the ground, the ambassador was still in his chair. The ambassador fought him from his seat. He was escorted out afterwards,” Lammbrau added. “There was a trail of blood behind him. He had about a seven inch-long gash on the right side of his face.”

A stunned-looking Lippert was able to walk to his car to be taken to hospital. He was seen holding a handkerchief to a cut on his right cheek, and the wrist on his other arm appeared to be bleeding heavily.

Lippert has proved a popular ambassador during his time in Seoul and is a regular poster on social media. His wife gave birth in the city and the couple gave their son a Korean middle name.

South and North Korea have remained effectively at war since 1953, when the Korean war ended in a ceasefire but not a peace treaty. The two countries have remained divided by the demilitarised zone – the world’s most heavily armed border – ever since.

The annual military drills, the latest of which began last week and will continue until April, have been blamed for raising tensions on the peninsula. North Korea routinely condemns the exercises as provocative, claiming they are practice for an invasion of the North. Seoul and Washington insist the drills are purely defensive.

During drills in 2013 the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, threatened nuclear strikes on Washington and Seoul. On Monday, the North marked the first day of this year’s exercises by test-firing short-range missiles.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/...=ansguardian11