Monthly Archives: August 2016

China’s crackdown on dissent described as the harshest in decades

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China is in the midst of what many overseas scholars say is its harshest crackdown on human rights and civil society in decades. Since Xi Jinping came came to power nearly four years ago, hundreds of activists, lawyers, writers, publishers and employees of nongovernmental groups have been rounded up. Internet news sites have been ordered to stop publishing reports from sources that aren’t sanctioned by the state.

“As an old timer who’s been studying China since the Mao era, I have to say it’s the worst I’ve seen since then,” said Susan L. Shirk, chair of the 21st Century China Center at UC San Diego. The current crackdown, Shirk said, represents a turnabout from what appeared to be relatively steady gains in individual freedom in China. “We didn’t anticipate what looks like a U-turn back to the bad old days of a highly repressive police state.”

For much of the outside world, grasping the extent of the campaign has not been easy, given a constant flood of headlines that seem to showcase ever-deeper diplomatic and commercial connections between China and the West.

Rebukes from overseas seem to matter little to Xi, a scholar at the Chinese University of Hong Kong Willy Lam added: “Xi likes to thumb his nose at international opinion … to underscore his status as the new Mao Tse-tung by not giving a damn about what the major Western leaders, authors or media are saying about China.”

“What Xi Jinping is doing is, he’s really stirring up a Cold War mentality…. You’re either with China or against China–and Western values, universal values, are against China,” Shirk says.

[Los Angeles Times]

What it’s like for North Korean athletes attending the Olympics

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Imagine if you were in Rio representing one of the most notoriously authoritarian regimes in the world. Would you be proud to show the wider world that your home country isn’t as bad as it’s portrayed? Or would your interaction with other nationalities and experience in another country prompt you to reevaluate your home? Might you even try to defect?

Bear these considerations in mind when considering the 31 North Korean athletes and their supporting team members in Rio for the 2016 Summer Games.

During the 2008 Summer Games in Beijing, sports reporter John Canzano tried to find out what the North Korean athletes had been doing outside of their events. He was dismayed by the response. “We’re not allowed to see places of interest,” Wang Ok Gyong, a North Korean swimmer, told him through an interpreter. “No mixing with others.”

Tight control on North Korean athletes may be an attempt to block defections. Foreign sporting events have long seen athletes from authoritarian countries run away or claim asylum–at least 45 members of the Eritrean soccer team have defected during various foreign trips over recent years. During the 2012 London Olympic Games, a variety of athletes disappeared and were later found to have defected. (There have been no known defectors from North Korea during any Olympics in which the country has competed. It’s possible this lack of defections is due to the tight control exerted by North Korean security forces and potential punishments for families left behind.)

From watching the games, North Korean athletes appear to have a real desire to make their country proud. And besides, those who win gold medals may receive considerable rewards from the state. “Successful athletes have done very well in recent years, receiving better housing in Pyongyang and other gifts from the government for their efforts,” Christopher Green, a North Korea analyst based in Seoul, says. “Sports have always been important to the government, but the resources have not always been there to develop talent; now there is more money going into sports facilities for elite athlete development, which is a reward of a sort, too.”

[Washington Post]

North Korea and the Rio Olympics

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North Korea has its first gold medal of the Rio Olympics after Rim Jong Sim won the women’s 75-kilogram weightlifting class. North Korea won four gold medals in London four years ago but started slowly in Rio, with only two silver and two bronze medals before Rim’s win.

Elsewhere on Olympic news, Samsung, notably the electronics giant from South Korea, provided each of the 11,000 athletes competing in the Rio 2016 Olympics with a special edition Galaxy S7 smartphone.

One country, guess which one, refused the gift. According to Radio Free Asia, North Korea prevented its 31 competing athletes from receiving the complimentary phone. Instead, a North Korean official reportedly went to the Samsung office and collected all of the phones that were to be provided to the country’s athletes.

North Korea, a dictatorship and arch enemy of South Korea, has strict rules for its athletes. The Washington Post reported that athletes are not allowed to visit places of interest and are discouraged from interacting with others, although no official reason was released as to why the athletes didn’t receive the phones.

Are UN sanctions against North Korea working?

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It continues to be difficult to gauge the effectiveness of the United Nations sanctions imposed on North Korea in March.

While prices for essential goods in the North remain stable, there are reports that business is stagnating at the economic development zones set up to attract foreign investment. The lack of international investment is, to some degree, the result of the U.N. sanctions that place increased financial restrictions on companies that do business with North Korea, and U.S. sanctions that authorize the seizure of assets from international organizations and individuals involved with banned North Korean industries like mining and banking.

But Adam Cathcart, an East Asia expert at Britain’s Leeds University notes that even without sanctions, international companies are reluctant to invest in North Korea’s economic development zones because they do “not provide enough infrastructure.”

There have also been reports that food and fuel prices in North Korea have not been affected by the new sanctions imposed this year. Analysts credit the growth of semi-legal private markets under leader Kim Jong Un for keeping food and fuel supplies stable despite the sanctions.

Beijing’s enforcement of international sanctions is considered crucial because 90 percent of North Korean trade flows either to or through China. North Korea analyst Andrei Lankov with Kookmin University in Seoul recently told Radio Free Asia that … “if sanctions implementation begins to threaten the survival of the Kim Jong Un regime, China will pull back.”

[VoA]

Pyongyang claims US planning surprise nuclear attack

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The US is planning to mount a surprise nuclear attack on North Korea when it stages a joint military exercise with South Korea in the coming days, Pyongyang has claimed. The drills are set to begin on 22 August.

The North pledged the country would launch a “merciless retaliatory counteraction” against the US-South Korean forces. With tensions in the Korean peninsula constantly escalating, Pyongyang has yet again stepped up its rhetoric against the US, leading to a further deterioration of the situation. The North’s comments are sharply aimed at Washington’s recent decision to deploy sophisticated B-2 Spirit nuclear-capable bombers in the US territory of Guam.

Pyongyang has constantly dubbed the joint US–South Korean military exercises as a rehearsal for an actual attack on its country. But the US and South Korea have maintained they are necessary defensive measures undertaken to combat the emerging threats from the North.

[International Business Times]

More on North Korean defection in Hong Kong

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North Korean national Jong Yol Ri snuck away from the 57th International Mathematical Olympiad at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. and on July 16 found refuge at the South Korean Consulate General in Hong Kong.

It is believed it was the first time that a North Korean defector had abdicated in Hong Kong since 1996, before the United Kingdom handed the city back to China. And it’s a situation that could test Beijing’s relations with Seoul and Pyongyang.

Hong Kong resident Owen Lau Kwun-hang said the recent case of Jong Yol Ri should prompt widespread discussion among the community on how Hong Kong should be responding when defectors from North Korea surface. “At least people would know what to do … and when necessary, a well-informed society could apply pressure on relevant authorities if the status of a defector is at risk,” he said.

Largely unknown to many, the North Korean Defectors Concern (NKDC) has recently been thrust into limelight by media organizations seeking comment since the North Korean defector sought refuge in Hong Kong. Lau and three friends founded the NKDC in 2012,  a group focused on advocating for human rights and protesting Beijing’s repatriation of defectors from the secretive state.

As part of the NKDC’s advocacy and education efforts, Lau will host the annual North Korea Human Rights Film Festival at the Chinese University from August 12 to 14. The group is hoping to have a number of other North Korean defectors attend the festival for sharing sessions.

It was a chance refueling stop somewhere between the North Korean capital of Pyongyang and the border town of Sinuiju that gave four Hong Kong students a forbidden glimpse into the secretive state back in 2012. When the train stopped, Owen Lau Kwun-hang said they were confronted by a group of beggars pleading for food. “An elderly woman with her grandchildren came up to us. We gave them cakes,” Lau, now a secondary school liberal studies teacher, recalled.

[South China Morning Post]

China steps up repatriation of North Korean refugees

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China is taking a more active role in repatriating North Korean refugees, as relations between Beijing and Seoul have deteriorated in recent weeks over the deployment of THAAD. The repatriation is a break from a trend toward “looking the other way” when North Korean defectors make their way into China, a source said.

Chinese security officers now encourage local residents to report defectors, providing award money to Chinese citizens who turn in undocumented North Koreans. Chinese public security officials are offering $150 to individuals reporting a defector. For Chinese citizens who directly apprehend and turn in a defector, the award is $300. There is also a fine of $450 for anyone assisting a North Korea refugee, according to the report.

The policy has resulted in an increase of arrests and decreased chances of a successful defection, the source said.

The source also said the new measures are connected to a recent trend by the government in Beijing to come to North Korea’s defense as China has grown increasingly critical of Seoul’s decision to deploy a U.S. anti-missile defense system on the peninsula.

[UPI]

Despite international sanctions, North Korea keeps food and fuel prices stable

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The prices of food staples and fuel are reported to have remained steady in North Korea despite coming under international pressure over Kim Jong-un’s nuclear and missile programs.

A rare set of data from the country shows that so far the UN-mandated sanctions have not hurt its ordinary people as both the prices and currency have been stable. This is seen as a contrast to the economic situation under his father Kim Jong II’s leadership.

The stability is attributed to the younger Kim’s decision to introduce a booming system of jangmadang, which translates to North Korean markets that are semi-legal but regulated. The system permits wholesalers and retailers to buy and sell imported and privately-produced goods. The number of stalls in the jangmadang has reportedly grown by hundreds, according to defectors who work for Daily NK.

“Since Kim Jong-un came to power, there has been no control or crackdown on the jangmadang,” Reuters reported Kang Mi-jin, a North Korean defector as saying. “Keeping the markets open has had a positive effect on the people. He had no other option. He can’t feed the people, and he can’t completely shut the markets down.”

The prices of rice, corn, petrol and diesel largely remained steady over the last year. The market is said to be making up for the shortfall in sales made through the country’s centrally-planned rationing system, which reportedly has not recovered from the 1990s famine that struck the North. According to a recent World Food Programme report, the state has handed out only 360gms of rations per person per day, the lowest quantity in five years.

[International Business Times]

Bangladesh expels North Korean diplomat over smuggled goods

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Bangladesh has kicked out a North Korean diplomat after he was caught smuggling more than one million cigarettes as well as electronics into the country in a shipping container, Dhaka officials said on Monday.

Han Son Ik, the first secretary of the North Korean embassy in Dhaka, has been ordered to leave the country after failing to declare the goods worth nearly half a million dollars to customs.

“We have asked North Korea to take him back for violating diplomatic norms,” Bangladesh foreign secretary Shahidul Haque told AFP, declining to give details. The goods were suspected destined for the blackmarket.

A senior customs official told AFP the North Korean used his diplomatic immunity earlier this month to import

In March last year, another North Korean diplomat was forced to apologize after he was caught at Dhaka airport trying to smuggle nearly 27 kilogrammes (60 pounds) of gold, worth $1.7 million, into the country.

Last year, a North Korean restaurant in Dhaka was shut down after officials found it was selling wine and drugs such as Viagra without permission.

[AFP]

Rio Olympics give peace a chance

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Two Koreas Olympic selfie

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The power of the Olympic Games to connect and inspire is still unrivaled. And sometimes, the most impactful moments can come away from competition, like when gymnasts Hong Un-Jong of North Korea and Lee Eun-ju of South Korea (pictured on right) came together to take a selfie.