Canadian judge bars Chinese PhD student from entering, citing espionage concerns
January 8, 2024 5 Comments
IN AN UNPRECEDENTED AND potentially highly consequential decision, a judge has barred a Chinese PhD student from entering Canada over concerns he might be pressured to spy by the government of China. The case could have “ripple effects” on universities across Canada and possibly even all of North America, according to legal experts.
The central figure in the case is Yuekang Li, a citizen of China, who was accepted into the Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering PhD program of the University of Waterloo. Li stated in his application that his goal was to return to his home country after receiving his PhD and work to “improve its public health system”. However, when Li applied for a graduate student visa, his application was denied by an officer of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC), the government department that oversees applications for entry visas into the country.
In deeming Li inadmissible to Canada, the IRCC officer in charge of his case reportedly cited the student’s strong interest in microfluidics, a niche branch of nanotechnology with a wide range of applications in the biopharmaceutical industry. The IRCC officer also noted growing concerns in the West about the use of students and researchers as “non-traditional collectors of information” by the government in Beijing. In a number of such cases, Chinese students and researchers have been given permission by the Chinese state to work abroad with the understanding that they will deliberately collect information that will benefit China’s military-industrial complex.
Li promptly challenged the IRCC’s decision, which ended up being heard in Federal Court. Li’s legal representatives argued that the rejection of his application for a student visa relied on “an overly broad definition of espionage” and engaged in “speculation”, rather than factual evidence. But on December 22, Federal Court Chief Justice Paul Crampton sided with the IRCC.
In his decision, which was made available late last week, the judge agrees with the IRCC’s view that the graduate research Li proposed to carry out at the University of Waterloo would fall under the definition of “non-traditional espionage”. He referred to China as a “hostile actor” and cautioned that such actors “increasingly make use of non-traditional methods to obtain sensitive information in Canada or abroad, contrary to Canada’s interests”. Given that new reality, Canada’s legal understanding of what constitutes “espionage” must evolve”, Judge Crampton argues in his decision.
► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 08 January 2024 | Permalink
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intelNews.org 
North Korean radio station known for sending coded messages to spies goes silent
January 15, 2024 2 Comments
Throughout the Cold War, Radio Pyongyang aired hundreds of hours of news and cultural content every week. The broadcasts were in various languages and were exclusively aimed at international listeners. However, most of the station’s output was targeted at South Koreans. In 2002, the station was renamed Voice of Korea. Around that time, possibly owing to a temporary rapprochement between North and South Korea, the station curtailed much of its political programming. However, broadcasts featuring political content were resumed in 2016, as relations between the two warring sides began to deteriorate once again.
For much of its existence, the Voice of Korea has also been known to operate as a so-called numbers station. The term denotes shortwave radio stations, usually sponsored by a government entity, that regularly air broadcasts consisting of formatted number sequences. These sequences are widely believed to be encrypted communications addressed to intelligence officers operating abroad. They contain operational instructions and other directives that are typically undecipherable without the use of an encryption protocol. These stations also broadcast certain types of music, which function as codewords and are believed to signal specific directives to spies.
But the Voice of Korea unexpectedly fell silent last week. Its website, which features content in several languages, also appears to have been taken down. The sudden changes occurred days after North Korea’s Supreme Leader, Kim Jong-un, delivered a key address during the year-end plenum of the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea (WPK) in Pyongyang, on December 31. In his speech, which became public on January 6, the North Korean leader declared that the reunification of Korea under communist principles —a longstanding goal of the WPK—had been rendered “impossible” due to widening differences in approach between the two Koreas.
The North Korean strongman also called for “a fundamental change” in the WPK’s policy on inter-Korean affairs. Finally, he discussed a series of steps for the “reorganization of entities” that govern North Korea’s relations with South Korea. Several North Korean government websites focusing on the reunification of Korea, including the Voice of Korea website, have since been taken down. North Korea observers suggest that the daily radio broadcasts of the Voice of Korea appear to be part of the reorganization declared by Kim Jong-UN on December 31.
► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 15 January 2024 | Permalink
Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with News, North Korea, numbers stations, South Korea, Voice of Korea