North Korean officials have searched house-to-house in the city, sources claim
The assault rifle ammunition was discovered missing on March 7
North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un has put an entire city under lockdown after 653 bullets went missing during a military withdrawal, it has been claimed.
The dictator’s officials have searched house-to-house in the city of Hyesan, which has a population of around 200,000 people, for the ammunition, two sources told Radio Free Asia.
‘The city… will remain on lockdown until all 653 bullets are found,’ a resident of the northern province of Ryanggang, where Hyesan is located, anonymously told RFA’s Korean Service.
The assault rifle ammunition was discovered missing on March 7, when soldiers with the Korean People’s Army 7th Corps were pulling back from the area surrounding the city, which lies on the border with China.
They had been deployed there in 2020 to enforce the border closure at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Pictured: Kim Jong Un (file photo). North Korean authorities have searched house-to-house in the city of Hyesan for the ammunition, sources told Radio Free AsiaPictured: Hyesan (file photo). The assault rifle ammunition was discovered missing on March 7, when soldiers with the Korean People’s Army 7th Corps were pulling back from the area surrounding the cityHyesan has a population of around 200,000 people and lies on the border with China
‘They withdrew completely between February 25 and March 10, but an extensive investigation is underway because of a loss of bullets during the evacuation process,’ the Ryanggang resident said.
When it happened, the soldiers did not initially report it but tried to find the missing bullets themselves, according to the source.
‘But when the missing bullets could not be found, they notified the residents and began a rigorous search,’ he said.
The police and military launched an investigation, sealed off the whole city, and began searching house to house, the source said.
‘Those who have seen or picked up any number of bullets are required to report them as soon as possible.’
Those who fail to report any bullets they found could be punished, the source said.
‘There have been no clues even after ten days have passed since this investigation began,’ the source said.
Residents had been looking forward to the army’s withdrawal from the area, but during the investigation they will have even less freedom of movement, a Ryanggang province official, who requested anonymity to speak freely, told RFA.
‘Last week, orders were issued to factories, farms, social groups and neighbourhood watch units in the province to actively cooperate with the ammunition-related investigation,’ the official said, adding that when the bullets were not recovered after ten days, the investigating authorities resorted to lying to spread fear among the public.
‘They tried to put pressure on the residents by bluffing that the withdrawal was a manoeuvre related to the safety of the Supreme Dignity from reactionary forces,’ the official said, using an honorific to refer to the country’s leader.
Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks to China’s President Xi Jinping during the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) leaders’ summit in Samarkand on September 16, 2022. (Sergei Bobylov/SPUTNIK/AFP via Getty Images)
Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin is aimed at furthering the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) designs against the United States, according to analysts.
Xi’s March 20 to March 23 visit to Moscow is his first to the country since Putin’s February 2022 invasion and comes on the heels of Beijing’s brokering a resumption of diplomatic relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia. Weeks before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Xi and Putin declared a “no limits” partnership, and ties between the two countries have only deepened since then.
The meeting was announced on Friday, incidentally not long after the International Court of Justice issued an arrest warrant for Putin for war crimes.
The timing of the visit is critical for both Xi and Putin, experts say.
“I think that Beijing—like most of the rest of the world—is worried that the conflict might escalate to nuclear warfare that would harm their own plans as much as anyone else,” said Brandon Weichert, a U.S.-based geopolitical analyst and author of the book “Winning Space: How America Remains a Superpower.”
“At the same time, though, Beijing doesn’t mind seeing their two biggest competitors, Russia and the U.S., bleeding each other in Europe while China has free reign in the Indo-Pacific,” he told The Epoch Times.
Ukrainian servicemen fire a M777 howitzer at Russian positions near Bakhmut, eastern Ukraine, on March 17, 2023, amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine. (Aris Messinis/AFP via Getty Images)
Timing
The meeting comes as Russia slowly makes advances in its monthslong operation to capture the eastern Ukraine city of Bakhmut. The bloody battle has led to massive losses on both sides, especially the Russians.
Madhav Nalapat, a strategic affairs analyst and vice chair of the India-based Manipal Advanced Research Group said that Xi and Putin are meeting at a time when the war in Ukraine is entering a stage where it can either end conclusively or can drag out into a stalemate.
“Putin is under pressure from his commanders to unleash the full fury of Russian weapons against Ukraine rather than have the war get prolonged,” Nalapat told The Epoch Times. “Xi clearly wants to know whether Putin will go all out or continue with the present tactics.”
To Frank Lehberger, a Germany-based Sinologist, Xi and Putin’s “hasty arrangement” and secret get together” on Monday is because the Russian military is on the “brink of collapse” in Ukraine.
“Xi Jinping, who is since last week the sole autocrat of China, is anxious not to let this happen, because a military rout of Russian armies in Ukraine would be the end of Putin’s autocratic and anti-Western regime of Russia,” Lehberger told The Epoch Times in an email.
Zhang Jun, Permanent Representative of China, speaks during the U.N. Security Council meeting discussing the Russian and Ukraine conflict at the United Nations Headquarters on March 11, 2022 in New York City. (Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)
The Russian army has lost nearly 200,000 soldiers in the war, according to Western officials, and at least 500,000 Russians have fled the country since the war started. Lehberger said that Russian elites and nationalist hardliners are angry with Putin and hold him responsible for the situation, wanting an end to Putin’s dream to recreate a Russian empire in Europe.
“Putin desperately needs Xi to come now and pledge his help, or it will be too late for Putin and his dreams of an autocratic empire,” said Lehberger.
“Xi knows all this, and he also desperately needs Russia to fight on ….not only against Ukrainians but by association against the entire democratic West or NATO, which are the CCP’s existential enemies.”
Nalapat said that Russia losing a war to Ukraine would weaken China’s position significantly in the international order and the timing of the meeting is mindful of that.
Russian President Vladimir Putin chairs a meeting with members of the Security Council via video link in Moscow, Russia, on March 17, 2023. (Mikhail Metzel/Sputnik/Kremlin via Reuters)
Lethal Arms for Russia
There has been rising apprehension about China supplying military assistance to Russia. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said last month that China is already providing “non-lethal” weapons to Russia during the war and is considering supplying lethal ones. Beijing denies these claims.
While much has been made of Xi’s purported role as peacemaker in the conflict, experts said that this is just a smokescreen, pointing to Beijing’s supply of “dual-use” equipment to Moscow that aids its military efforts.
Weichert said that China has long been providing “vital support and supplies” to Russia.
“The Biden administration knows full well that there are Chinese ‘technicians’ working alongside Wagner Group units in Bakhmut, helping them to maintain the drone fleets that Chinese drone makers have sold to the Russians,” he said, referring to the private mercenary group.
The Wagner Group purchased more than 2,500 Chinese drones in a deal between the mercenary group and Russian and Chinese intelligence, British media outlet Daily Mirror reported, citing a UK intelligence report.
Nalapat said that misleading the enemy is a “standard operating procedure” for the CCP, noting that the regime is supplying arms to Russia through discrete channels.
“Do you believe that the flood of weapons, many sophisticated, coming to Russia from North Korea and Iran have all been made in those two countries?” he said.
According to a recent Politico report citing customs data, Chinese firms have exported 1,000 assault rifles and other equipment to Moscow that could be used in the conflict.
In June 2022, for example, Russian firm Tekhkrim imported rifles from China North Industries Group Corporation Limited, a large state-owned defense contractor. The data also showed that Russian companies received 12 shipments of drone parts and over 12 tons of body armor from China via Turkey in late 2022.
In response to this report, White House National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby told The Epoch Times that the administration couldn’t confirm that China has in fact provided lethal aid to Russia.
Lehberger said that “All these activities are in contravention of current international sanctions,” adding that the reported efforts are only the tip of the iceberg.
In addition to Iran and North Korea, China is also sending arms to Russia through other countries like Myanmar, Serbia, Turkey, and Russia’s staunch ally in Europe, Belarus, according to Lehberger.
After his summit with Putin, Xi will talk via satellite link to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy for the first time since the invasion. Lehberger termed this as Xi’s “make-believe peace mission.”
According to the expert, Xi will aim at a temporary cease-fire to earn recovery time for Putin’s depleted army and Russia will “at a later time” attack Ukraine more fiercely.
Lehberger said that the CCP will continue to supply arms to Russia for at least another two years, because he believes that Xi has plans to take over Taiwan in 2025 and would thus wish to use prolonged Ukraine-Russian conflict to stun or weaken the United States and other Western powers.
China’s Economic Stake
Experts said that China has long-term economic agendas vis-a-vis the Russia-Ukraine war and its economic goals over the next decades are linked with Beijing’s subjugation of the Russian economy.
“Russia is squarely in the camp of China’s new empire; the vast Russian wilderness will become protein for which the dragon can feed on as it rises over the next decade, and Putin will become a powerful vassal prince under Xi Jinping,” said Weichert, adding that fusing the Chinese and Russian economies would be a major victory for Xi and for that, it would need Russia to be ensnared in a protracted conflict with Ukraine.
Nalapat said that Russia has become China’s most important supplier of industrial raw materials at discounted prices. The two countries want to work together to topple the U.S. dollar as the global reserve currency.
“A weakened U.S. dollar would in their view boost their own currencies, especially the RMB [Chinese yuan]. For some time, much of U.S. deficit funding has come from increases in overseas purchases of USD as a reserve currency, and a dollar reset would significantly crimp the ability to spend of the U.S. government,” he said.
Xi wants the United States to not only be weakened but also be deprived of reliable and functioning allies within Europe, according to Lehberger who sees the Ukraine war as vital to Beijing’s economic game plan against Washington.
“A weak E.U. will then be earmarked to become an economic dependency of China,” Lehberger said.
Detective John McClane was the first to warn us about the dangers of the Glock 7. “That punk pulled a Glock 7 on me. You know what that is? It’s a porcelain gun made in Germany. It doesn’t show up on your airport X-ray machines here and it costs more than what you make in a month,” Detective McClane said in Die Hard 2.
Thank God the White House was listening.
As part of his latest sweeping and unconstitutional Executive Order issued Tuesday, Joe Biden announced he is strengthening, modernizing and making permanent the Undetectable Firearms Act, which will save us all from the perils of porcelain pistols, even though they don’t yet exist.
A White House “Fact” Sheet issued in conjunction with the EO states that Biden will “advance congressional efforts to prevent the proliferation of firearms undetectable by metal detectors.”
“In recent years, we’ve seen the rise of technology that allows guns to be made with polymers and other materials that are increasingly capable of avoiding detection by metal detectors,” the Fact Sheet states. “President Biden is directing the Attorney General to help Congress modernize and make permanent the Undetectable Firearms Act of 1988, which is currently set to expire in December 2023.”
To be clear, no modern firearm or ammunition can make it through a metal detector undetected, but the Glock 7 “crackdown” is just part – the silly part – of another one of Biden’s overreaching assaults on guns, gun makers, gun dealers and gun owners.
Nowhere in the actual EO or the “Fact” sheet does Biden mention how he intends to hold criminals accountable. Instead, he’s holding the gun industry accountable, as if gun makers and gun dealers are responsible for the surging crime plaguing Democrat-run cities, which is giving Biden’s pollsters fits as 2024 approaches.
Biden wants the Federal Trade Commission to investigate “how gun manufacturers market firearms to minors,” which is ludicrous. The only firearm I can recall ever marketed toward minors was the Daisy Red Ryder BB-gun. Besides, advertising is constitutionally protected speech, so I guess Team Biden doesn’t mind infringing upon the First Amendment as long as it leads to infringements upon the Second.
The EO shows Biden plans to use his sycophants in the legacy media to gaslight the public “with more information regarding federally licensed firearms dealers who are violating the law.” They aren’t, although scores of law-abiding gun dealers are being put out of business every day by Biden’s weaponized bullyboys in the ATF, who are revoking FFLs like it’s cool for the most minor of clerical errors, not for any serious reasons, like failing to run a background check, which only Biden believes leads to crime.
Joe actually proposed the creation of a new federal team that would swoop in whenever and wherever there’s a mass shooting to exploit the tragedy, which Biden and his cronies would never dream of letting go to waste. Maybe they’ll have “Federal Blood-dancing Bureau,” or FBB stenciled on the backs of their blue windbreakers, because that’s exactly what they’ll be doing.
To be clear, criminals have nothing to fear from Biden’s latest imperial decree. There’s nothing they need worry about. For the law-abiding, this is just the latest in a long line of infringements that we’ll have to endure until there’s a new occupant at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, who views us as citizens, not subjects.
This story is presented by the Second Amendment Foundation’s Investigative Journalism Project and wouldn’t be possible without you. Please click here to make a tax-deductible donation to support more pro-gun stories like this.
About Lee Williams
Lee Williams, who is also known as “The Gun Writer,” is the chief editor of the Second Amendment Foundation’s Investigative Journalism Project. Until recently, he was also an editor for a daily newspaper in Florida. Before becoming an editor, Lee was an investigative reporter at newspapers in three states and a U.S. Territory. Before becoming a journalist, he worked as a police officer. Before becoming a cop, Lee served in the Army. He’s earned more than a dozen national journalism awards as a reporter, and three medals of valor as a cop. Lee is an avid tactical shooter.
Over the past decade, the NYPD and other city agencies have replaced their reliance on data with feelings when developing anti-crime strategies — and even progressive Mayor Eric Adams cannot seem to stop them.
Last month, at the City University of New York, I lectured about how evolutions in data-led policing strategies helped New York City reduce annual murder numbers from 2,245 in 1990 to just 292 in 2017 — and from 93 annual fatal police shootings in 1971 to just six a half-century later.
At the same time, city jail and New York State prison populations have also seen their numbers more than halved.
My presentation was layered with both data and descriptions of the tensions inherent in researching neighborhood crime dynamics.
Following my talk, I invited students to discuss these notable statistical shifts.
What I heard from those bold enough to actually speak floored me: They told me it was racist to use data to discuss policing.
All the more so, because I’m a white woman.
The “war on data” made its biggest inroads during the administration of former NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio, who prioritized feelings and emotions over cold, hard facts during debates about his landmark prison reform initiatives.Natan Dvir for NY PostThe resulting policies saw New York develop a prison system-overhaul plan that — surprise! — was far too modest to house all of the city’s inmates.AP
I shouldn’t have been surprised.
From outraged Gen-Zers to hardened politicians, deploying data — rather than relying on one’s own “lived experiences” — is now verboten when engaging with “triggering” topics such as race or human behavior.
Blame it on former Mayor Bill de Blasio for popularizing such feelings-based tactics.
Over the course of his second term, he sufficiently flouted data and numbers to commit New York to replacing its beleaguered jail system with a new one far too modest to house all inmates.
Later, in his showpiece 2021 NYC Police Reform and Reinvention Collaborative Plan, he heavily based NYPD policy and priority shifts on the personal experiences collected from 85 group feedback sessions rather than relying on facts or figures.
In one such session, I observed a 20-something advocate instruct NYPD First Deputy Commissioner Benjamin Tucker that “young people” should lead policy, while an anthropology professor suggested anthropology was key to reimagining law enforcement.
Bafflingly, such proposals were treated as expert analysis.
Nowhere has the lack of data been more pronounced than in the impact of 2017’s new “Raise the Age” legislation, which overhauled how young people are prosecuted in New York, while almost ending any form of data collection around their crimes.Shutterstock
This feelings-first/facts-second mentality is not just limited to our former mayor.
It has also helped bolster weak criminal justice policies, one-dimensional media reporting and a generation of youth incapable of interpreting reality through rigorous examination.
It also represents an alarming reversal to the city’s decades-long approach to criminal-justice policy.
Federal mandates in the 1960s required police departments to begin collecting crime stats.
Over the next 20 years, the NYPD tallied key data points such as the number of officer firearm discharges and response times to crime-in-progress calls.
And in the 1990s, CompStat — which tracks crime and holds precinct commanders accountable for their numbers — pushed police to identify more nuanced patterns in this data, such as when shootings coincided with illegal dice games.
These insights enabled cops to disrupt lower-level offenses, while preventing more serious crimes.
The arrival of the “COMPSTAT” system in NYP police precincts a few decades back was a major improvement in system-wide data-collection strategies. If only those in charge would put all that data to good use.
Indeed, it was by digging doggedly into the stories behind those numbers that the city achieved its most remarkable declines in crime, police aggression and incarceration.
But today, even relative progressives like Mayor Adams are having little luck with data.
Last month Adams requested data-driven legislative changes that would help keep the 327 shoplifting recidivists responsible for 30% of the city’s retail theft from causing more mayhem.
But his proposal was dismissed—a pattern that will likely persist unless our data-hostile climate changes.
Data is also becoming more difficult to come by following a suppression in record-keeping as a result of the 2017 Raise the Age legislation.
The law obscures case outcomes for approximately 83% of felonies and 75% of violent crimes committed by 16 and 17-year-olds.
This makes it virtually impossible not only for crime victims and prosecutors to know case outcomes, but for policy analysts to use hard evidence to measure the legislation’s impact.
COMPSTAT’s arrival followed two decades of beefed up data collection that helped lead New York to some of the lowest criminal and incarceration rates in the decades that followed.Christopher Sadowski
This erosion of deep insight by relinquishing the demand for detailed data has also crossed over into how criminal justice-policy is reported.
The New York Times ran an op-ed last month sloppily claiming “2022 had the most police killings on record with Black people disproportionately more likely to be killed by police than white people.”
But this echo-chamber claim, also trumpeted by The Guardian and Bloomberg, is based on a record-keeping that only began in 2013.
Were police killings significantly higher in prior years? Definitely. Has evidence to date conclusively established racial bias as the reason for racial disparities among victims of police officers lethal force? Nope.
So collectively uncomfortable have we become demanding real investigation that policymakers can safely claim just about anything.
Since New York state bail reform, the reoffending rate has only been 1% or 2%, say our Senate majority leader and city comptroller.
Buthow are they basing this measurement? On the small population of persistent reoffenders whom the legislation impacted? No.
Are they counting each incident if an individual reoffends multiple times? No.
Instead, they are counting whether or not a person reoffends — as opposed to the number of times he reoffends in total.
Although he may be relatively progressive, Mayor Adams has seen “woke activists” quash his attempts to position data before “lived experiences” when dealing with criminal recidivism.Paul Martinka
This city used to care about intelligent, informed policymaking – because we cared about actual New Yorkers’ outcomes.
Now we only care about whose version of reality sounds (or feels) the least racist—and go with whatever policy they insist on.
The city achieved truly meteoric declines in violence, imprisonment and use of police force by letting the data tell us nuanced — sometimes unintuitive — stories.
If we keep muffling that data, we will never see those wins again.
