North Korean hackers have stolen hundreds of classified military documents from South Korea, including detailed wartime operational plans involving its US ally, a report said yesterday.
Rhee Cheol-hee, a lawmaker for the ruling South Korean Democratic Party, said the hackers broke into the South’s military network in September last year and gained access to 235 gigabytes of sensitive data, the Chosun Ilbo daily reported.
Among the leaked documents was Operational Plans 5015 for use in case of war with the North, which includes procedures for “decapitation” attacks on North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, the paper quoted Rhee as saying.
Citing the South Korean Ministry of National Defense, Rhee said that 80 percent of the leaked documents had yet to be identified.
However, the contingency plan for the South’s special forces was stolen, as well as details about annual joint military drills with the US and information on key military facilities and power plants, he said.
A ministry spokesman declined to confirm the report, citing intelligence matters.
The Chosun Ilbo story was the second report yesterday of cyberattacks related to the military in the Asia-Pacific.
The Australian government said separately that an unidentified defense contractor had been hacked and a “significant amount of data” stolen.
There were 47,000 cyberincidents in the past 12 months, a 15 percent increase from the previous year, Australian lawmaker Dan Tehan, who is also the minister assisting the prime minister for cybersecurity, said in Canberra as he launched a report by the Australian Cyber Security Centre.
The defense contractor was exploited via an Internet-facing server, with the cybercriminals using remote administrative access to remain in its network, the report said.
Meanwhile, former US president Jimmy Carter has reportedly said he is willing to meet Kim in a bid to defuse tensions over Pyongyang’s nuclear and missile programs and bring “permanent peace” to the Korean Peninsula.
“Should former president Carter be able to visit North Korea, he would like to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and discuss a peace treaty between the United States and the North, and a complete denuclearization of North Korea,” University of Georgia professor of international affairs Park Han-shik told South Korea’s JoongAng Ilbo newspaper.
Park said Carter told him during a meeting at his home in Georgia at the end of last month that he wanted to “contribute toward establishing a permanent peace regime on the Korean Peninsula.”
“He wants to employ his experience visiting North Korea to prevent a second Korean war,” he added.
Carter’s comments on North Korea have angered the White House, which last month reportedly asked him not to speak publicly about the crisis amid fears he was undermining US President Donald Trump, who refuses to entertain any form of rapprochement with the regime.
Carter’s brand of gentle diplomacy has won concessions from the North Koreans before.
In 1994, when then-US president Bill Clinton was in office, Carter persuaded Kim Il-sung to freeze his country’s nuclear program in a deal that might have averted conflict with the US.
In August 2010, he secured the release of Aijalon Gomes, an American who had been sentenced to eight years in prison for entering North Korea illegally.
Even an unofficial delegation led by Carter would need to be approved by the US government following the recent introduction of a ban on US citizens traveling to North Korea.
Additional reporting by The Guardian
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in