The establishment of diplomatic relations between Armenia and the DPRK started in 1992 upon Armenia's independence from the USSR, but never progressed due to Armenia's protest of North Korea's numerous human right's violations, nuclear weapons program, and its harsh treatment of the North Korean populace. Sep 29, 2016. North Korea's most wanted defector to speak in at Sac City College, UC Davis. In 2011, another North Korean defector was arrested in Seoul for plotting to assassinate Park with a poisoned pen, said South Korea's Deputy Consul. “But it continues to develop nuclear weapons and all kinds of missiles.”.

Read more Following a UN resolution last year, the EU ruled the house should be listed and imposed sanctions for generating revenue which could be used to fund the building of weapons of mass destruction. “KNIC, a state-owned and controlled company, is generating substantial foreign exchange revenue which could contribute to the DPRK’s [Democratic People’s Republic of Korea] nuclear-related, ballistic missile-related or other weapons of mass destruction-related programmes,” the ruling said. It added that the KNIC has links to Office 39, already punished with sanctions by the US for allegedly raising funds through illicit activities, such as opium and heroin production directed to China and South Korea.

According to the US Treasury Department, which has banned any form of business with the company, Office 39 provides “critical support to North Korean leadership in part through engaging in illicit economic activities and managing the leadership’s slush funds.” Among the allegations is the company attempting to buy two Italian yachts worth millions of dollars for former North Korean leader Kim Jong-il. The following year, a report by the US Army War College’s Strategic Studies Institute said, “the crimes organized by Office 39 are committed beyond the borders of North Korea by the regime itself, not solely for the personal enrichment of the leadership, but to prop up its armed forces and to fund its military programs.” The company, registered to a detached property on Kidbrooke Park Road, appears on Companies House to have been closed since October 6 2016, and to have had assets totaling up to £113 million (US$145 million). Read more “We cannot comment on individual cases. However, the UK has fully complied and implemented the UN sanctions regime in relation to North Korea and North Korean companies,” a spokesman for HM Treasury said, according to the Guardian. Under EU regulation, the UK imposes restrictions on North Korea’s import and export products. It also imposes travel bans and freezes assets for those who it suspects to be contributing to Pyongyang’s plans for weapons of mass destruction. The news comes amid an ongoing standoff between the US and North Korea over their deployment of nuclear arms.

“The era of strategic patience is over,” US Vice President Mike Pence, said last week. In January, a North Korean defector reportedly told a South Korean news agency that the regime pockets tens of millions of dollars each year through insurance fraud. “In North Korea, there is only one state-owned insurance company, so that even if it fabricates an accident, there is no way to verify its claims,” Thae Yong-ho told Yonhap.

“After purchasing international insurance or reinsurance for state infrastructure, documents are forged [on alleged accidents], which earns the state tens of millions of dollars a year.” The Sunday Times, the first to reveal the UK’s asset freezing of the insurance company, reported that the main director of the insurance company in the UK, Ko Su-gil, had left Britain in September. The North Korean embassy in London did not respond to calls on Sunday, but a spokesman told the Sunday Times that there is no evidence on which to make the allegations.

SEOUL — Lee Juk-jul remembers climbing aboard a truck packed with neighbors and friends during the Korean War after hearing a rumor that Chinese soldiers might come to kidnap Korean girls. As she left her family in North Korea, Lee had no idea that truck ride to the South would separate her from her family, including her only sister, for 59 years. Now, through a recently reinstated bilateral program to reduce the emotional toll of hostilities between North and South Korea, the sisters have reunited. They and other family members hugged and wept before catching up on family events at a special gathering for several families last weekend at Mt. Kumgang, on North Korea's east coast. 'You cannot imagine how many years I have been waiting for this moment,' said the frail, half-blind Lee, who is 79. During the war, Lee's sister, Lee Geum-pa, now 80, boarded a smuggling vessel to go to the South.

But when the ship was about to depart, her terrified husband asked her to abandon their crying daughter to avoid being detected by North Korean authorities. Rather than leave the child behind, she let her husband go alone. The sisters, like hundreds of thousands of relatives living apart in the Korean peninsula, were not permitted to communicate after the armistice in 1953. Though the family program has allowed some relatives to see one another in recent years, the last reunion had been in 2007, and prospects for more appeared uncertain after the election of conservative South Korean President Lee Myung-bak, who took office last year. This summer, after months of tension over North Korea's nuclear program, the two sides agreed to restart the reunions. The recent gatherings, which involved fewer than 200 families meeting over several days, ending Thursday, included two abducted South Korean fishermen and a South Korean, a former prisoner of war, living in North Korea. Lee Kwae-seok, 79, the former POW, turned tearful when his 78-year-old brother Lee Jung-ho told him about their mother's death.

The History Of Art As A Humanistic Discipline Pdf Files on this page. 'I have never once forgotten about my mother,' Lee Kwae-seok said, according to local news reports. Until June, his family assumed that the South Korean soldier had died in the war. Some critics say that the reunion program works too slowly and involves too few families. Many elderly people on both sides die before they can reconnect with loved ones, critics say. On Monday, a 75-year-old man, who apparently had been frustrated by not being granted a reunion opportunity, killed himself by jumping into the path of a train in suburban Seoul, news reports said. 'A grand political compromise between the two Koreas on separated families should be made instead of sporadic events,' said Yoon Yeo-sang, a visiting scholar at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. On the last day of a recent three-day reunion, relatives saying goodbye were heard offering such encouragement as 'stay healthy' and 'keep alive,' or sadly saying, 'I am leaving you again.'

Dozens of South Koreans waved to their North Korean kin as the Southerners boarded a bus home. Lee Juk-jul said she considered the reunion the first and last of her life.

Though she knew that she was luckier than those who did not get to see loved ones, she said she could not feel happy because she and her sister had to part again. 'It is another tragedy to me.' -- Park is in The Times' Seoul Bureau. Cab Softwares For Xperia X1 Download.