“We believe they have accomplished miniaturization of a nuclear warhead to mount it on a Rodong missile”, said the South Korean official, who has knowledge of South Korea’s assessment of the North’s nuclear program.
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The South Korean government estimates that Pyongyang rakes in around $10 million every year from some 130 restaurants it operates – with mostly North Korean staff – in 12 countries, including neighbouring China.
Even though South Korea is known to have welcomed almost 30,000 North Korean defectors since the 1990s, Jeong made a point of stating that the group of 13 had been accepted on “humanitarian grounds”.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un supervised a successful test of a new engine for an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), its state media said on Saturday in the latest claim of making advances in its arms programme that has brought United Nations sanctions. The work requires language and often musical skills, and offers much better money than workers could earn at home.
More such restaurants have recently faced business hardships, with some shutting down, they said, as Seoul has asked its nationals, who make up a large part of the customer base, to not use North Korean restaurants in China and other nations in an effort to further cut down the source of income for Pyongyang. They have threatened the USA, as reported by TRUNEWS.
Most North Koreans working at overseas restaurants come from middle-class families and are vetted for their loyalty before being sent abroad, he said. They live in dorms under the watchful supervision of a minder from the state security services, and are not allowed to go out except in groups – so they can keep an eye on one another – and on specific days.
In March, North Korea sharply increased its military ante against Seoul and Washington in protest against the allies’ joint military exercises that run through April.
Military tensions on the divided Korean Peninsula have been rising since the North conducted its fourth nuclear test in January, and a long-range rocket launch a month later that was seen as a disguised ballistic missile test.
On Tuesday, China placed an embargo on imports of North Korean coal and iron ore. “Restaurants are the most hard place to defect from”, one North Korea rights activist was quoted as saying by the NK News website.
Still, according to Reuters the Chinese sanctions against North Korea have a loophole.
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But enemy policy did not affect the outcome of the 1956 congress, during which North Korea founder Kim Il Sung devised a five-year plan for socialist reconstruction, according to the Rodong.
