Ex-CIA branch chief: North Korea still a nuke threat even without Kim
North Korea will likely be a nuclear threat even if its leader, Kim Jong Un, dies from his current potential health crisis, a former CIA Korea Branch chief has told The Jerusalem Post.
Pyongyang represents one of the world’s greatest security threats since it is viewed as a rogue regime with nuclear weapons and because it has shared nuclear technology with Iran and Syria.
Bruce Klinger, who was chief and deputy chief of the CIA’s Korea Branch with 20 years overall in the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency, discussed his views of the global security implications with the Post following reports since April 12 that Kim’s health situation may be critical.
Klinger, who is also a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation’s Asian Studies Center, said: “The regime has long emphasized the centrality of nuclear weapons to its national security and its resistance to negotiating them away.”
“A successor may be more deft in reaching out to foreign countries, as Kim Jong Un was [as opposed to his predecessors],” he said. “But the underlying objectives and policies would remain constant. Even a stable North Korea will remain a threat.”
Kim, who is only 36 but has had health problems for a long time, has ruled as its unchallenged dictator since inheriting power from his father in 2011.
His death would raise deep questions about what kind of North Korea the world would be facing the day after.
Questions started swirling about Kim’s health after he skipped an April 15 ceremony for the 108th birthday of his late grandfather, North Korea’s founder, Kim Il Sung.
Kim had not missed the ceremony throughout his nineyear reign.
However, North Korea is blocked off from most of the world, so it is hard to know the truth.
Explaining why even a “Kim-less” North Korea would not represent a reduced threat, Klinger said: “It is unlikely that Pyongyang would trade away its nuclear weapons when it feels weakened by leadership transition. The next leader would have less of a power base and would be more reliant on support from senior party and military leaders who are overwhelmingly nationalist and resistant to change.”
“The next leader may well pursue a policy that is even more hard-line,” the former CIA official said. “To secure their hold on power, he or she may have to instigate a crisis in order to generate a ‘rally around the flag’ effect.”
“Propaganda would highlight the supposed need for
Costa Black, a restaurant manager from Eilat, told Ynet.
“Freedom of speech and the right to protest are basic rights in democracy and it saddens us that there are those who wish to crush them.”
In a statement, the Tel Aviv Municipality emphasized that it saw freedom of speech as a “premier value” and had approved tens of protests in recent weeks and would continue to do so.
The municipality also said it had started to prepare Rabin Square to host protests safely, given increasing demand by the business sector, including by marking spaces two meters apart on the floor.
The number of new applicants claiming unemployment benefits since the start of the coronavirus outbreak surpassed one million for the first time on Sunday, according to data published by the Israeli Employment Service.
More than 1,011,000 individuals have applied for benefits since the start of March - among them, 87.9% were employees placed on unpaid leave, and 7.25% were made redundant. The unemployment rate currently stands at 27.4%, with just 4,769 applicants reporting that they have returned to work.
Seeking to bolster the return of jobseekers to the workforce, the government announced plans on Sunday evening to allocate an additional budget of NIS 6 billion to developing a model for re-employment.
Details of the plan are expected to be published in the “coming days.” The expansion of the government’s existence financial aid package will require further approval by the Knesset.
At a Knesset committee meeting on Sunday morning, Israel Restaurants Association CEO Shai Berman told lawmakers that the restaurant industry was losing NIS 500 million per month as a result of the current restrictions – including new permissions enabling both deliveries and take-away service by restaurants and cafes.
“People in the [restaurant] industry have not seen a single shekel, as the bank traditionally does not like lending to restaurants,” said Berman, adding 80% of the sector isn’t working. “The easiest thing is to complain about the banks, but they are a business and the responsibility belongs to the state. The compensation plan is lean, stingy and without a real vision.”
Berman argued it is necessary to give business owners in the sector a financial incentive to recommence operations, rather than declaring bankruptcy.
Celebrated chef and television personality Haim Cohen told the Knesset committee that restaurants must be permitted to operate at 50% capacity in order to be profitable. The approval of take-aways does not help, he said, as the public are now in a routine of cooking at home.
“The policy of the Finance Ministry is that we are all thieves, that everyone wants loans that they will not return,” said Cohen. “The government needs to help and decide whether it wants to be a welfare state for the unemployed or a state with engines of growth. We are not thieves, we work very hard and pay lots of taxes.” • own personal equipment and disinfect it between training sessions. If people work out together, they should stay two meters apart.
The move came a day after restrictions were relaxed to allow some establishments to reopen, including hairdressers, beauty salons, restaurants and cafes for takeaway. Caregivers were allowed to return to work.
Netanyahu is scheduled to convene a meeting of top ministers on Monday to discuss the reopening of schools, which are expected to start in a limited framework next week. A preliminary meeting between top officials from the relevant ministries took place on Sunday.
The plans under consideration include resuming school on Sunday for infants through third grade or resuming school only for children in kindergarten and younger.
Either way, the class size will likely be limited to just 15 students. Remote learning will continue for children in grades 4 through 10. Teens in grades 11 and 12 will come to school for matriculation exams in small groups.
On Sunday, Israel’s death toll reached 201, with 8,501 active cases of infections, including 133 in serious condition, out of which 99 are on ventilators.
The majority of new cases are concentrated in Jerusalem, Bnei Brak, Beit Shemesh and Modi’in Illit – all cities with large haredi (ultra-Orthodox) populations, referred to as “hot spots” and “red zones.”
The Israeli-Arab city of Hura also has reported a spike in infections, with 19 patients, up from three just three days ago, representing a 533% increase.
Among the patients in serious condition is an 11-year-old girl who was staying at a coronavirus hotel in northern Israel with her family when last Friday her condition took a turn for the worse. She was transferred first to Baruch Padeh Medical Center in Poriya near Tiberias.
Over the weekend, she developed pericarditis, an inflammation of the two thin layers of a sac-like tissue that surround the heart, and was moved to the intensive-care unit for coronavirus patients at Rambam Medical Center in Haifa and is now intubated.
She is the country’s youngest patient to be in serious condition. •