Monthly Archives: December 2016

9 of 10 North Korea defectors say life worsened under Kim Jong Un

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Nearly 90 percent of North Korean defectors who participated in a recent South Korean survey said living conditions have deteriorated under Kim Jong Un.

The South Korea-based defector organization North Korea Intellectuals Solidarity presented its findings Monday. According to the survey, 89 percent of defectors said the situation “has not improved” under Kim, who fully assumed power in 2012.

Conversely, 11 percent said living standards have “improved” under Kim, while 2.8 percent of that group said the improvements were “significant.”

The defectors also confirmed an earlier study that showed the Kim regime is increasingly the target of common complaints in the country. According to the poll, 32 percent of defectors said they strongly agree that most ordinary North Koreans privately criticize Kim, while another 41 percent said they somewhat agree with the statement. Only 2.8 percent of those surveyed disagreed with the statement.

A previous study conducted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C., found 35 of 36 North Koreans interviewed in the country complain or make jokes about the government in private although criticism of the state is a serious crime, punishable by imprisonment or even death in North Korea.

Nearly 80 percent of those surveyed said the defection of state officials could lead to collapse, and within that group 31 percent said the defection of senior people in government would have a “very large impact.”

[UPI]

US warns China it will target firms for illicit North Korea business

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The United States has warned China it will blacklist Chinese companies and banks that do illicit business with North Korea if Beijing fails to enforce U.N. sanctions against Pyongyang, according to senior State Department officials.

In response to the U.S. warning, Chinese officials said they believe pressure alone on North Korea will not work, and that they oppose any U.S. action that would hurt Chinese companies, officials said.

U.S. sanctions on Chinese businesses and banks would likely exacerbate tense relations between the two major powers, who disagree over China’s claims in the South China Sea and the U.S. deployment of an anti-missile battery to South Korea.

With President Barack Obama’s administration in its final weeks, officials said any major steps would likely be left to Donald Trump’s administration, which takes over in January.

Though a frequent critic of China, it is unclear whether Trump will pursue the sanctions.

[Reuters]

UN renews effort to locate abductees in North Korea

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The United Nations has renewed pressure on North Korea to reveal details about hundreds of people abducted decades ago. Argentine lawyer Tomás Ojea Quintana, the special rapporteur on North Korea, made the comment in Tokyo Saturday, after completing a 10-day mission to South Korea and Japan. He also met with defectors and families of individuals abducted by North Korean agents. A final report is due to be released in March.

Ojea Quintana told lawmakers in Japan that he was committed to advancing the return of Japanese taken by North Korean agents in the 1970s and 1980s. Japan has officially listed 17 nationals as abductees, but it suspects Pyongyang’s involvement in many more.

The 2014 report issued by the U.N. Commission of Inquiry into the Human Rights of North Korea found that North Korea had “engaged in the systematic abduction, denial of repatriation, and subsequent enforced disappearance of persons from other countries.” While most abductees were taken from Japan and South Korea, others were taken from countries including Thailand, Romania, Lebanon, Malaysia, Singapore, France, Italy, the Netherlands and China.

Anocha Panjoy, a Thai woman, went missing in Macao in 1978 while working as a masseuse.

North Korean defector Kim Dong Nam said his son was abducted from China by North Korean agents almost a decade ago (2007). The boy had planned to travel to the United States, but agents learned of those plans through colleagues who’d been captured earlier. “They weren’t able to withstand the torture,” Kim said, noting the colleagues had been “sent back to North Korea and tortured and forced to work for hours – tremendous hours” in a camp.

[VoA]

Bounties for North Korean defectors instituted

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Approximately 30 North Korean defectors have been arrested by Chinese public security officials in the city of Shenyang and are facing repatriation. Three groups of defectors totaling approximately 30 individuals, including children under the age of five, were arrested while in transit from Shenyang (China) to Vietnam. They have been transported to the border city of Dandong, and are likely to be repatriated to North Korea soon, a source close to North Korean affairs in China reported to Daily NK.

“North Korea’s State Security Department [SSD] is exchanging gold produced at state-run mines in the border area to the Chinese authorities in return for the repatriation of defectors. … Leaflets and placards have been posted in Chinese cities advertising rewards for reporting defectors to the police. This has made it more difficult for defectors to hide,” the source added.

In addition, the North Korean authorities have recently announced a domestic ‘reward system’ in order to prevent defection attempts before they occur. Security agents have informed residents in North Hamgyong Province that the reward for reporting a planned defection is 5 million KPW (approximately 600 USD).

Due to this new policy, the number of residents attempting defection in North Korea has reportedly plummeted. “With the severe crackdowns, no one is bold enough to attempt defection. The brokers that normally aid defectors are saying, “It is hard to make a living because no one wants to defect anymore,” the source concluded.

[DailyNK]

North Korea continues to expand prison camps

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On Tuesday, Washington-based Human Rights in North Korea (HRNK) released images of Camp No. 25, a camp near Chongjin, on North Korea’s northeast coast. According to HRNK, the camp underwent an expansion before 2010, when it almost doubled in scale, and has continued to operate at its larger size.

“Our satellite imagery analysis of Camp No. 25 and other such unlawful detention facilities appears to confirm the sustained, if not increased importance of the use of forced labor under Kim Jong-un,” HRNK executive director Greg Scarlatoiu said in a statement.

HRNK‘s report comes after separate analysis by Amnesty International this month concluded that Pyongyang “is continuing to maintain, and even invest, in these repressive facilities. … These camps constitute the cornerstone of the country’s large infrastructure dedicated to political repression and social control that enables widespread and systematic human rights abuses.”

The UN’s 2014 report estimated that “hundreds of thousands of political prisoners” have died in the North Korean gulags over the past 50 years amid “unspeakable atrocities.”

[CNN]

North Korea pledges ‘tough’ response to UN sanctions

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North Korea warned of “tougher countermeasures for self-defense” after the UN Security Council unanimously imposed its strongest-ever sanctions on Pyongyang.

The country’s foreign ministry issued a statement on Thursday calling the UNSC’s move “another excess of authority and violation of the DPRK’s sovereignty”, referring to its official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. “Many countries – including all the permanent member states of the UNSC – have so far conducted thousands of nuclear tests and rocket launches, but the UNSC has never prevented them from doing so,” said the ministry’s statement carried on state-run Korean Central News Agency.

“[US President Barack] Obama and his lackeys are sadly mistaken if they calculate that they can force the DPRK to abandon its line of nuclear weaponization and undermine its status as a nuclear power through base sanctions to pressurize it,” it said.

North Korea insists its nuclear weapons are a deterrent to US “aggression” and has brushed aside earlier sanctions, which have notably targeted its weapons exports and access to financial markets.

The resolution demands that North Korea “abandon all nuclear weapons and existing nuclear programmes” and takes aim at the state’s exports of coal – its top external revenue source.

Under the resolution, North Korea will be restricted from exporting beyond 7.5 million tonnes of coal in 2017, a reduction of 62 percent from 2015.

Samantha Power, the US ambassador to the UN, said the resolution would strip the regime of more than $700m in hard currency, dramatically reducing the money it can spend on nuclear and ballistic weapons.

[Al Jazeera]