North Korea has claimed to be the latest victim of US state sponsored terrorism, after it arrested two American university instructors, who they claim were planning to execute a CIA-backed plot to assassinate Kim Jong.
The assertion comes when the US is considering putting the North back on its list of terror sponsors.
Few days after North Korea arrested an instructor of the Pyongyang University of Science and Technology named Kim Sang Dok, a US citizen, the state-run media announced Sunday that another instructor from same university, also a Korean man having US citizenship, identified as Kim Hak Song, was “intercepted” two days ago by authorities for unspecified hostile acts against the country.
PUST is North Korea’s only privately funded university and has a large number of foreign teachers, including Americans.
Till now four known U.S. citizens are in custody in the North.
According to state media reports Kim, a Pyongyang resident — his full name has not been provided — was converted into a “terrorist full of repugnance and revenge against the supreme leadership” of North Korea and was “ideologically corrupted and bribed” by the CIA and South Korea’s National Intelligence Service while working in the timber industry in Siberia in 2014.
They allege Kim was in frequent contact through satellite communications with the “murderous demons” of the NIS and CIA, who instructed him to use a biochemical substance that is the “know-how of the CIA” and that the hardware, supplies and funds would be borne by the South Korean side.
The initial reports of the plot concluded with a vow by the Ministry of State Security to “ferret out to the last one” the organizers, conspirators and followers of the plot, which it called “state-sponsored terrorism.”
The North Korean reports also said a “Korean-style anti-terrorist attack” would begin immediately.
It’s anyone’s guess what a “Korean-style” attack might entail.
Tensions between North Korea and its chief adversaries — the US and South Korea — have been rising over Pyongyang’s nuclear and missile programs, as well as joint U.S.-South Korean military exercises that include training for a possible “decapitation strike” to kill the North’s senior leaders.
Bennett noted that such training has been included and expanded upon in annual wargames hosted by South Korea, which were bigger than ever this year.
The North’s claims of a plot to kill Kim Jong Un with a biochemical agent also have an eerie similarity to the assassination of his estranged half-brother, Kim Jong Nam, at an airport lobby in Malaysia in February.
But the current rhetoric from Pyongyang has a somewhat familiar ring to it. Case in point: the movie “The Interview” in 2014.
In June that year, the North denounced the Seth Rogen comedy, which portrays the assassination of Kim Jong Un for the CIA by two American journalists, as “a most wanton act of terror and act of war.” A few months later, hackers broke into Sony Pictures Entertainment computers and released thousands of emails, documents, Social Security numbers and other personal information in an attempt to derail the movie’s release.
The US government blamed North Korea for the attack. Pyongyang denies involvement, but has praised the hackers.
(AP News Inputs)
