North Korea News Podcast by NK News - North Korean ChatGPT, renaming the unification ministry and Seoul’s main enemy

Episode Date: July 22, 2025

South Korea’s National Assembly questioned the Lee administration’s nominees for key positions last week, including the ministers of unification, defense, foreign affairs and labor, and North Korea issues ended up playing a prominent role at all of the hearings. NK News Correspondent Joon Ha Park joins the podcast this week to discuss the main takeaways […]

In the intricate world of Korean affairs, tailored intelligence makes all the difference. Korea Risk Group's consulting services offer specialized, actionable intelligence designed to guide your career-related decisions. We provide bespoke consulting services that cater to your unique challenges and goals. From policy analysis to market entry strategies, we bring clarity to complexity. Transform uncertainty into opportunity and visit careerpro.com solutions today. Hello listeners and welcome to the NK News Podcast. I'm your host, Jaco Zwetsut, and this episode is recorded on Tuesday, the 22nd of July,

2025. I'm joined here in the studio by Junha Park. Junha, welcome. Thank you. Thank you for having me back. We've had a busy week, lots of confirmation hearings here in South Korea to choose new ministers. We're going to talk about at least two of them.

There may be three. I may have forgotten one. Let's start with the unification minister. Sure. So the unification... Back again in his old job from 20 years ago. That's true. Yeah.

So he was the unification minister under Roh Moo Hyun. And he was the first of the lot in quite a flurry of confirmation hearings just last week. And Jung Dong Young, the former unification minister, as I mentioned under Ohm Woo-hyun, he actually mentioned quite a number of things, including calling to rename the unification ministry under a set of names, but of course called for, again, a bipartisan debate on what the ministry should be called, or whether or not it actually should be renamed. And he referred to the example of West Germany under Chancellor Willy Brandt,

who changed the name of the Federal Ministry for All German Affairs, to the Ministry of Intra-German Relations. And he was saying that that sort of a shift reflected this sort of pragmatic acknowledgement of East Germany's existence along with West Germany and helped lay the foundation for improving relations through exchange and cooperation and eventual fall of the Berlin Wall. This may be one of the ideas that

Jong-Dong Yong picked up when he went over to Germany after he lost the 2007 election against Lee Myung-Bak. Indeed, yeah. That was quite a landslide loss for... It was a landslide loss and he went off grid for a while, did a bit of an exile in Germany. Yeah. A lot of Korean politicians for their exile go to America, but he went to Germany, I guess, for this reason, maybe to come back with some ideas about how to handle inter-Korean affairs. For sure, yeah.

He's having a second crack at the job of unification minister. Mm-hmm. How did the hearing go? Yeah, so the hearing was quite, you know, Jung Dong-yong was as normal, you know, Jung Dong-young was as normal. You know, he's a veteran politician and he's been quite a veteran journalist as well. So he was very well spoken on his part. Whether the opposition party took it in such a good way as remains to be seen.

But the sort of concept that sort of overrode the entire confirmation hearing process for each of the cabinet ministers related to national security was designating North Korea as the main enemy of South Korea. So the Jujeok. The Jujeok, the main enemy. Okay. This is a term that's been in fashion since 95. Yeah, 1995. So it was coined under the Kim Yong-sam administration just after, or a couple months after the North

Korean delegation came to inter-Korean talks and threatened to turn Seoul into a ball of fire. Or a lake of fire, or a sea of fire, any of those. When you see that coming into play, chujeok is not actually a new term. It's only been around for the past 30 or so years. And then when you see that coming up in the political rhetoric of the day, it is a politically charged question. You know, we've seen the term chujuk being dropped and reinstated multiple times by different conservative and arguably progressive governments. So when you see that coming into play, especially under the new Ijemyong administration, where the cabinet ministers are not really giving a

solidified answer on who the main enemy of ROK is or whether ROK can define North Korea as an enemy, or is it a dual-track approach where they're a partner of conversation and also an enemy if they give any military threats. So that's what Jeong Dong-young was going for. So he rejected the idea of a main enemy and designated North Korea as the Chujeok. And he instead went for the idea that it was an existential threat to the Republic of Korea. And that kind of went on with the defense minister as well. The first civilian defense minister to serve in office or if confirmed he will serve in office for the first time in 64 years and

what he was saying was that he kind of backtracked on Jung Dong-young and what he said was that North Korea is indeed the main enemy which sort of contradicted to Jung's main point and you saw this sort of theme of the sort of uncollected divide where between the foreign minister, the defense minister, the unification minister, and even the labor minister nominee who was questioned on whether North Korea was a main enemy. So this sort of politically charged question sort of dominated the PPP or the People Power Party and the former ruling power parties conversations throughout each of these confirmation hearings. Is the difference mainly symbolic? I mean, are we splitting hairs here?

Yeah, I would say that it's mainly symbolic. The idea of a whole main enemy, as you mentioned, only came up in 1995 after those comments were adopted into a defense white paper under the South Korean administration at the time. And it was dropped again in 2004 after the sunshine policy came into play and was also dropped again after Moon, after Im Young-bak reinstated it under, after Yeon Pyeong and the sinking of the Cheonan. Thank you.

And you know, it's not something that's under the constitution as well. So it's nothing that's legally binding. So I would say it's definitely symbolic. Why do you think the PPP and its forerunners put so much energy into making a big deal out of this? Well, especially when you take the example of the Labor Minister's confirmation hearing.

So he was a former head of the KCETU, an umbrella labor union, one of the largest labor unions in the country. With the headquarters around the corner from here that was raided by the NIS a couple years ago? Yes. So that's the one generally seen as being a bit pro-North Korean, that labor union. So the labor union is currently indicted and has been prosecuted for alleged crimes against

the state where there was sort of espionage for North Korea going on within the KCETU ranks. And illegal contacts with North Korea. Illegal contacts, yes. And I think the PPP sort of used this as a pretext and also the Labor Minister nominee's sort of request, a legal request, mind you, with the Unification Ministry in 2011 to visit or pay respects to the former North Korean leader Kim Jong-il at his funeral. And probably not really good optics. No.

And this is only just less than two years after the sinking of the China and the shelling of the Yeonpyeongdo. Indeed. And that was what the PPP lawmakers were taking issue with as to sort of why this labor union leader was seeking to go to the funeral of essentially what was at the time designated as Rock's main enemy and under the defense white paper. And when you see that into play, the labor minister nominee, as I mentioned earlier, was also asked on what Rock's main enemy is currently as of now.

He couldn't offer a standardized comment saying that he did not have enough expertise and he was just going to the, or he requested a visit to Kim Jong-il's funeral just because he thought it would be good for Korean Peninsula affairs. Is that how he looks back on it now? I don't normally make political statements here, but that seems like a bit of a lapse of judgment on my part, sorry, on his part, from my perspective, is what I mean to say. But I will say this, though, that Free Jae Myung, it's pretty bold naming this man as Labor Minister. Yeah, so, you know, he was the KCETU, he's the, I mean, he's already been confirmed as of this morning by the president, and he will start his term in office immediately afterwards. So he'll be the first ever KCETU head or KCETU member to become South Korea's first labor minister.

And also... To interrupt, correct me if I'm wrong. 30 years ago when I first came to Korea, the KCETU was in a legal union, wasn't it? Yeah. So it's since become legalized and now the former head of that is now becoming a labor ... What a turnaround in Korean politics. Yeah, it's changing times, but at the same time, it's quite intriguing to see the labor minister nominee or the current labor minister to be... Just when he was accepting the nomination,

he was a train rider for the co-rail service. Right, that made big headlines when he was sort of on the train and you got the message. Yeah, exactly. But yeah, I think that his sort of ministerial hearing was clouded by his visit to North or his attempted visit to North Korea, his past visits to North Korea, and his relations with North Korea. Well, and more recently, let's also bring in there that former President Yoon accused him, Kim Jong-un, of trying to politicize the Itaewon

crowd crash tragedy on behalf of and in the interest of North Korea. So it wasn't directly to Kim Jong-un, but it was directly to sort of he was referring to he was citing these sort of KCET allegations or prosecutions that were going on at the time and directing them to the opposition party, the Democratic Party at the time, and saying that they were trying to instigate sort of political unrest, social unrest related to the Itaewon crowd crush incident, which was quite an explosive remark at the time and has not been concluded with any substantial evidence. Well, that's right.

And I note that President Lee Ji-hye's government has announced a new investigation, a new inquiry to look into what happened. Yeah, the Itaewon incident, yes. Right. Let's move on from, away from ministerial confirmations and on to a very interesting story, which again, Jong-jong is actually mentioned in, that he claims that North Korea now has three semiconductor plants, which I can't build a semiconductor plant just in my apartment.

I mean, these things are hard to build. You need these very clean, sterile rooms, no static, no dust. Tell us about this. Yeah. So these plants, as you mentioned, they're not available to be built by a civilian. So these plants produce chips for domestically made mobile phones. They support the regime's sort of technological self-reliance doctrine. And what Jung Dong-young was saying during his confirmation hearing was that North

Korea is now running three semiconductor factories in Pyongyang, Pyongsong and Wonsan. I remember Pyongsong is a big science city for North Korea. They do a lot of special science schools there. Yeah. So what the report was saying was that Pyongyang's main semiconductor plant, the one in Pyongyang, the one that was readily known, dates back to the 1980s, which was originally built with UN support and Indian sort of Indian government linked assistance to Pyongyang.

And other previously known plants include the Hamheung Semiconductor Materials Factory, another semiconductor plant in Haeju, and another plant in Tanchun Yangye region. And what Jung Dong-young was saying that these facilities are likely limited to producing sort of basic printed circuit boards and low-end chips. So I'm sorry, Jung Dong-young wasn't saying that, but what the report was saying for these facilities can also be used for AI ambitions. So AI enabled drones, the cyber warfare tools that North Korea has been trying to build up for the past couple of years. And North Korea would need sort of advanced node semiconductors. It may not be yet capable of producing if it actually wants to achieve that goal.

And also the semiconductor factories can be also used for the cyber attacks on South Korean semiconductor firms, which suggests that DPRK is trying to steal designs to either sort of boost domestic production or like fund a regime to sort of boost its semiconductor plan. There's not a lot of countries in the world with an economy that's in as much trouble as North Korea that runs not one but three semiconductor plants. That's pretty rare, but it is a country where a large section of the population lives hand to mouth and struggles to get by.

And you wonder, is this the best use of North Korea's resources? But then away from that, Jong Dong-ong Yong, talking about wishful thinking there, basically said, wow, wouldn't it be great if the two Koreas could do some AI cooperation? Yeah. I didn't see that coming. Wishful thinking on his part, but. He brings that into confirmation hearing.

I mean, I can imagine the PPP would have used that as political fodder. Well, I don't know if it's just only the PPP. I don't know how the general public will take it. Well, I don't see it happening anytime soon. Yeah. I mean, his claims were, or his sort of suggestion of this sort of AI cooperation between the two Koreas was based on the basic sort of claim that

the DPRK may be of developing its own version of CHEP GPT, building on sort of AI research, including CHEP GPT based machine translation showcased as early as 2021 in state media, if I'm not mistaken. So AI is seen as quite a strategic priority for Pyongyang, it's top brass and it's tied to its cyber operations and autonomous weapons. breasts and it's tied to its cyber operations and autonomous weapons. So the whole suggestion of Jung Dong-young looking for a proposal of inter-Korean cooperation on this AI and sort of digital communications front, he was sort of out advocating for using this benevolent AI, healthcare, disaster response, agriculture as a basis for non-military inter-Korean cooperation.

And he suggested creating a task force under the unification ministry to explore the sort of AI collaboration. Whether that will come into fruition, it's still something. I wonder how long it'll be before North Koreans have chat juche on their Red Star mobile phones and then ask it, you know, today I got up out of bed a little bit late. Which one of the 10 great principles for establishing a monolithic leadership ideology did I break? That's a little joke there for me. Let's finish up with, I want to come back actually to the defense minister nomination

because we didn't talk about OPKON, operational control transfer, which is a long-standing issue in Korea, about 20 years. Yeah, so An Gye-baek, as I mentioned, the first civilian defense minister nominee without prior military command experience, he announced a very ambitious goal to make sure that OPKON transfer happens under the IjeomyeonM administration under that five year

term. Of course, the presidential office rebutted on statement just hours later after his remarks, saying that it was only his personal opinion and that no concrete timeline had been decided for the OPCON transfer. And OPCON transfer as we know, it consists of three conditions. When we look at the 2014 agreement that was done under President Park Geun-hye and involved South Korea's ability to lead combined operations, readiness to counter North Korean threats, and the sort of stable

security environment condition. And under that agreement, South Korea has passed the initial operational capability stage in 2019. It's also conducted a full operational capability testing in 2022. And the final full mission capability certification for the first condition remains pending, which means that South Korea still has quite a bit of leg room to make sure that it actually fits those conditions for the opconkorn transfer from the United States, which was handed over from South Korea by President Syngman Rhee in 1950 to Douglas McArthur

right during the Korean War and has stayed ever since. Okay, so that's that issue is back in plague and we should also point out that An Gubek did not hesitate to name North Korea as the main enemy. Yeah. Unlike his other fellows. Yeah. So his other fellows were quite hesitant in actually naming North Korea as the main enemy. But of course, you saw An Gubek trying to define himself as the leader of South Korea's main armed forces cohort, saying that the armies and the armed forces view of North Korea should be obsolete and it's sort of a reputation building, an image building saying that North Korea is the main enemy. All right well that is where we will leave it today.

Thank you very much Junha for talking about these stories with us. Thank you. Looking to stay informed about South Korea's fast-evolving political, business and cultural landscape? Join us on Korea Pro, the go-to resource for in-depth analysis, expertly curated by top-tier professionals. And now you can pick the membership level that best suits your needs, thanks to our new subscription packages.

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