Monthly Archives: August 2017

North Korean refugees escape to Thailand via Christian underground railroad

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At a glance, Thailand seems an unlikely destination for North Koreans seeking to defect from their abusive state. For starters, the two nations are separated by about 3,000 miles. Most of that distance is consumed by China, which tends to scoop up intruding North Korean refugees and ship them back home, where they face grim retaliation in gulags.

Yet each year, hundreds and sometimes thousands of North Koreans make this grueling overland journey from their frigid homeland to the tropics of Southeast Asia. Despite its distance, Thailand is actually one of the closest reachable nations where North Koreans can reasonably expect that the government will deliver them to South Korean officials. That is the goal: defecting to South Korea, their estranged and far more prosperous sibling nation.

All of those who undertake this journey are desperate almost by definition. Many trials await them, especially during the overland route to China.

These journeys are typically managed by either rogue people smugglers, who charge several thousand dollars, or secretive Christian networks operating out of Seoul. Among Christian smugglers, this route is known as the “underground railroad”.

The clandestine leader of one of these Christian networks previously told PRI that “when [the defectors] first get out of North Korea, they look really shabby and skinny. We usually make them stay at a church member’s house [in China] for a month, just to eat.”

That’s how long it takes to put substantial meat on their bones. Painfully thin North Koreans, he said, are easily spotted by China’s surveillance network. Eventually, the refugees have to evade the eye of China’s officialdom as they travel on public trains and buses down to the border of Laos, a small communist nation in thrall to China.

Via trekking, river boats or more buses, the defectors must push through Laos to reach the Mekong River, which marks the border with Thailand. There, they can find the nearest police officer and ask to be arrested. South Korea will typically negotiate their release, fly them to Seoul, debrief and interrogate them and, finally, release the weary refugees into society.

[PRI]

North Korea releases Canadian pastor Hyeon Soo Lim

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Canadian pastor Hyeon Soo Lim, North Korea’s longest-held western prisoner in decades, was “released on sick bail” Wednesday by the country’s top court for “humanitarian” reasons after two and a half years in detention, state-run news agency KCNA said.

Lim’s son, James Lim, received word over the weekend that a plane carrying senior Canadian officials, a medical doctor, and a letter to North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un was dispatched to Pyongyang “at the last minute,” according to family spokeswoman Lisa Pak. The plane landed in the North Korean capital Monday.

Lim was serving a life sentence of hard labor after being convicted of crimes against the state in December 2015. The 62-year-old’s health has deteriorated while in North Korean custody and the pastor has experienced “dramatic” weight loss, Pak said.

His family has not been allowed to see him during his imprisonment, but have been able to send him letters and blood pressure medication via the Swedish embassy in Pyongyang, which often serves as an intermediary for prisoners from nations with no formal diplomatic ties to North Korea.

Lim detained in February 2015 while on a humanitarian mission in Rajin, North Korea, a family spokesperson said at the time. He was acting on behalf of the Light Korean Presbyterian Church, which he had led since 1986. According to his family, Lim has made more than 100 trips to North Korea since 1997, and his humanitarian efforts have included the founding by his church of a nursery, orphanage, and nursing home in the northeastern city of Rajin.

In a January 2016 interview with CNN in Pyongyang — his first conversation with foreign media — the Canadian said he was the sole prisoner in a labor camp, digging holes for eight hours a day, six days a week. At the time, he said he received regular medical care and three meals per day.

[CNN]

North Korea vs the US: Opinions on how likely conflict?

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The war of words between the US and North Korea has escalated, with Donald Trump warning any threats would be met with “fire and fury” and Pyongyang promptly announcing it was “carefully examining” a plan to attack an American military base in the western Pacific.

But despite two unpredictable nuclear-armed leaders trading barbs, most observers believe the possibility of conflict remains remote, with the North Korean leadership using its nuclear program as a bargaining chip rather than an offensive weapon.

Jean Lee, former AP Pyongyang bureau chief, says: “No one in the region, not even North Korea, wants another war. But Kim Jong-un is going to push it as far as he can to get what he wants: recognition from the United States that North Korea is a nuclear power, and legitimacy at home as a ruler who can defend his people against the big, bad US. In some ways, Trump’s threats play into the North Korean calculus: Kim Jong-un wants his people to believe that the United States continues to threaten the very existence of North Korea. That fearmongering brings the North Korean people together, and justifies the regime’s diversion of precious resources into building nuclear bombs and ballistic missiles. What I’m concerned about is a miscalculation or mishap that could force troops in the region to take military action.”

Andrei Lankov, professor at Kookmin University, Seoul, says: “The US president is employing both rhetoric and tactics which for decades have been used only by the North Korean side of the conflict. On the North Korean side, it is business as usual, of course: they repeat their promise to transform Seoul into the “sea of fire” every few years….Once North Korea finishes development and deployment of a nuclear force capable of hitting the continental US, they might be ready to talk about a nuclear and missile freeze. The US should accept this option.”

Robert Kelly, associate professor, Pusan National University: “There are two ways to think about what Trump said. The optimistic way – if you’re a Trump supporter – is that he’s trying to be unpredictable. What this is really intended to do is pressure the Chinese, to signal to them that strategic patience is over. The less optimistic, and probably more accurate, reading is that this is Trump shooting his mouth off. There’s rhetoric on both sides – it’s like two bullies in the playground yelling at each other. … We’re not used to unpredictability and anxiety coming from the American side of this relationship. That’s why people are so unnerved – we’re not used to Potus talking like this.
“The North Koreans are not going to offensively strike an American base or the American homeland unilaterally without any provocation – to do that would bring crushing American retaliation. The North Koreans aren’t stupid. Their nuclear weapons are intended for defense, not offence. The North Koreans are worried about what happened to Gaddafi and Saddam Hussein, they’re worried about the Americans leveraging change and they know that nuclear weapons are guaranteed to prevent that from happening. That’s what this is really all about.”

John Delury, North Korea expert, Yonsei University, Seoul: “The North Koreans love the verbal hostilities. They will do this ad nauseam. They are happy to do daily threat battles with the White House. That is actually quite wonderful for them. They like the attention and it all underlines their point that they are under siege by the Americans. … But an outbreak of military conflict is not impossible.”

Jiyoung Song, senior lecturer in Korean studies, University of Melbourne: “North Korea wants to be recognized as a legitimate nuclear state by the US and establish diplomatic relations with the US. Constantly reminding the world and especially the US of their nuclear and missile capabilities is part of their regime survival calculations. … If Trump doesn’t want Kim to further develop his nuclear ambition, he has to sit down and talk with Kim.”

[The Guardian]

Will latest sanctions impact North Korean leadership in the desired way?

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Experts express doubt over how strictly the latest attempt to slash North Korea’s earnings from coal, iron ore and seafood will be enforced.

And even if the new sanctions do cut export revenues by more than a third — as the U.S. expects — will that be enough to make Kim change course on developing nuclear missiles?  “Probably not,” said John Delury, a professor at Yonsei University in South Korea. “Because one thing [North Korea is] good at is taking pain.”

The U.N. Security Council has hit North Korea with layer after layer of sanctions since 2006, but the moves have failed to thwart the country’s nuclear ambitions. North Korea has “an impressive track record over its whole history, going back to the 1940s when it was founded, of being able to … weather virtually any kind of economic pressure,” Delury told CNN. “This is not the kind of regime that is easy to bring to its knees.”

The new U.N. resolution goes further than previous sanctions by aiming to cut deeper into the wider North Korean economy. It received the backing of China, North Korea’s main ally and economic partner, but some analysts are skeptical Beijing will fully comply in practice.

“The $1 billion number depends on China implementing the U.N. sanctions, we … have 11 years of evidence they will not do so,” tweeted Anthony Ruggiero, a former official at the U.S. State and Treasury departments.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson acknowledged the problem of enforcement on Monday, telling reporters that the U.S. would be “monitoring that carefully and certainly having conversations with any and all that we see who may not be fully embracing not just the spirit of those sanctions but the operational execution of those sanctions.”

Beijing has found itself caught between Trump’s demands to put greater pressure on Kim’s regime and its own desire to keep North Korea as a strategic buffer against U.S. influence in the region.  By supporting the latest U.N. resolution, Beijing may have dodged — for the time being — U.S. sanctions against Chinese companies that are suspected of doing business with the North Korean regime.

However, any breathing room China has gained isn’t likely to last long, according to Tong Zhao, a fellow at the Carnegie-Tsinghua Center for Global Policy in Beijing.

[CNN Money]

North Korean defector ‘treated like dirt’ in South, fights to return

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Kwon Chol-nam fled North Korea for China in 2014 by wading across a river border at night and then crawling over a barbed-wire fence. After a perilous trek that included walking through a jungle in Laos, he reached Thailand, where he was allowed to fly to South Korea to start a new life.

After all that trouble and danger, Mr. Kwon now wants South Korea to allow him to return home to the North.

“You have to ride a horse to know whether it’s the right mount for you,” Mr. Kwon said in an interview in Seoul. “I have tried, and the South is not for me. I want to go home to the North to reunite with my ex-wife and 16-year-old son.”

Mr. Kwon says he has grown disillusioned with life in the capitalist South, where he says North Korean defectors like him are treated like second-class citizens. “They called me names, treating me like an idiot, and didn’t pay me as much as others doing the same work, just because I was from the North,” Mr. Kwon said, his voice rising in anger. “In the North, I may not be rich, but I would better understand people around me and wouldn’t be treated like dirt as I have been in the South,” he said.

To press his unusual demand, he has held news conferences, submitted petitions to the United Nations and demonstrated with signs in front of government buildings in Seoul.

Mr. Kwon tried to find his own way back to the North, but that effort only landed him in jail in the South for a few months. Like all defectors, he became a South Korean citizen upon arriving here, and it is illegal for any South Korean to visit the North without government permission. Now, he is openly asking the South to repatriate him, only the second defector to make such an appeal.

More than 30,000 North Koreans have fled to South Korea since a famine hit their homeland in the 1990s. Of them, 25 have mysteriously resurfaced back in the North in the past five years.

[New York Times]

Tillerson hails UN sanctions, as Chinese Minister rebukes North Korea at ASEAN meeting

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A day after the United Nations Security Council passed its toughest sanctions against North Korea, Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson met with his South Korean and Chinese counterparts in hopes of ratcheting up pressure on Pyongyang.

Mr. Tillerson hailed the United Nations vote, which could cost North Korea nearly $1 billion a year, or about one-third of its foreign earnings.

Chinese foreign minister, Wang Yi, held direct talks with his North Korean counterpart, Foreign Minister Ri Su-yong. In unusually strong terms, he urged North Korea to show restraint. “Do not violate the U.N.’s decision or provoke the international society’s good will by conducting missile launching or nuclear tests,” Mr. Wang said.

He also said, “Of course, we would like to urge other parties like the United States and South Korea to stop increasing tensions.”

The top US diplomat for the region, Susan Thornton, the acting assistant secretary for East Asian and Pacific affairs, gave credit to the Chinese for supporting Saturday’s vote in the United Nations against North Korea.

But Ms. Thornton cautioned that Beijing has often failed to follow through on its promised tough measures against Pyongyang. China accounts for more than 90 percent of North Korea’s external trade, and it has long avoided tough economic sanctions against the North for fear that a collapse of the government would lead to a flood of refugees, as well as the North’s reunification with the South, putting a close American ally directly on China’s border.

[New York Times]

US Senator Lindsay Graham on a North Korean strike

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Republican senator Lindsay Graham noted on the Today show that Kim Jong Un is nearly capable of placing a nuclear warhead on a long-range missile and hitting the United States with it, and America can’t allow such a “madman” to get to that point, at whatever cost to non-Americans.

“If there’s going to be a war to stop [Kim Jong Un], it will be over there. If thousands die, they’re going to die over there. They’re not going to die here. And [Trump’s] told me that to my face,” Graham said. “That may be provocative, but not really. When you’re president of the United States, where does your allegiance lie? To the people of the United States.”

If the U.S. military were to strike North Korea for the reasons Graham mentioned, it would be the result of a calculation that sparking a real conflict in East Asia is preferable to accepting a theoretical threat to the United States–that it’s worth risking the actual deaths of those living in and near North Korea, including American expats and troops stationed in Japan and South Korea, to avert the potential deaths of Americans at home.

When I surveyed experts this spring, they predicted that whatever form U.S. strikes against North Korea take, they could result in thousands or even millions of deaths–as the North Koreans retaliate with conventional, chemical, and perhaps nuclear weapons, and the United States and its allies respond in kind, dragging the region into a spiral of conflict. The vast range of the casualty estimates spoke to just how much unknown risk U.S. military planners would be assuming.

Graham is advocating “preventive strikes,” which differ from “preemptive strikes” in that they would not be a response to imminent attack by North Korea. … He’s suggesting that the U.S. military neutralize the North Korean nuclear threat so Kim never has the ability to nuke California.

When members of the Trump administration publicly discuss military options against North Korea, they typically describe them in preventive terms. It’s not surprising that a hawk like Lindsey Graham would characterize the president’s views that way. But you don’t have to take his word for it. H.R. McMaster, the president’s national-security adviser, has staked out a similar position. In April, he said it would be unacceptable for the North Korean government to obtain nuclear weapons that can reach the United States, even if that entails taking military action that would produce “human catastrophe” in South Korea. In July, Joseph Dunford, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, engaged in the same grim calculus.

The Trump administration may simply be talking tough to spook North Korea and its ally, China, into making concessions. …But what happens if North Korea calls America’s bluff?

[The Atlantic]

More on North Korea’s Office 39

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Kim Jong Un’s perceived flare for the dramatic is something he shares with his late father, Kim Jong Il. The elder Kim was a noted cinephile and James Bond fan, and analysts say his fondness for spy thrillers appeared to influence his leadership — South Korea says he tried to assassinate enemies with a pen, and kidnapped movie stars in order to boost the country’s own film industry.

And Kim Jong Il also created of what’s known as “Office 39.”

The US Treasury Department says Office 39 is the bureau that “provides critical support to North Korean leadership in part through engaging in illicit economic activities and managing slush funds.”

The money basically hides in plain sight, according to Harvard-based North Korea specialist John Park. “North Korean overseas networks have been extremely adaptive to the combined pressures of international sanctions, in large part due to their ability to nest and disguise their illicit business within the licit trade,” according to Park.

US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said the United States will try to further stymie North Korean operations by punishing third parties that help Pyongyang skirt sanctions. Though Tillerson did not specify how those third-country sanctions would work, part of the strategy involves asking countries around the globe to scale back their diplomatic relationships with Pyongyang. Experts say China cracking down on its unruly neighbor may be the key to stopping Pyongyang’s illicit activities.

[CNN]

US Secretary of State to meet North Korean Foreign Minister

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Pyongyang and Washington’s top diplomats will soon sit down in the same room for the first time.

On Sunday, Ri Yong Ho and Rex Tillerson will both be in the Philippines for the annual Association of Southeastern Asian Nations’ (ASEAN) Regional Forum, a dialogue to discuss security issues which includes 27 countries.

It’s the highest-level annual encounter between North Korea and the United States, says Mike Fuchs, a former deputy assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, and the first during the Trump administration.

“It will be a very important opportunity again for the United States and North Korea to send messages — unvarnished, with no middle-men — to one another about their policies,” Fuchs said. “The interesting dynamic is the signals sent from one to the other when they’re in the room together.”

Tillerson will have the tough task of trying to reassure allies in the room like Japan and South Korea while also trying to make clear to North Korea what the United States can and cannot accept from Pyongyang’s rapidly progressing weapons program, Fuchs, now a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, told CNN.

It remains unclear if the two sides will have lower-level meetings. “There’s not going to be a huge sitdown. There may be third party intermediaries to try to relay messages back,” said Rodger Baker, the vice president of strategic analysis at Stratfor.

[CNN]

Increased rate of defectors who have fled North Korea arriving in Thailand

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The number of North Koreans entering Thailand illegally has surged in recent months as increasing tensions on the Korean peninsula inspire people to escape the hermit state.

In all of 2016, 535 North Korean defectors arrived in Thailand. But in just the first six months of this year saw 385 arrivals, according to data from the country’s immigration bureau.

One immigration official said: “An average of 20 to 30 North Koreans arrive each week now in northern Thailand alone.”

Roongroj Tannawut, a district official of Chiang Khong district in northern Thailand, said:  “The North Koreans come to Thailand to get arrested so they will get an asylum to South Korea.”

After being arrested, most North Koreans are sent to an immigration detention center in Bangkok before being deported, usually to South Korea.

Phil Robertson, deputy director of Human Rights Watch’s Asia Division, said: “Since the South Korean constitution recognizes all Koreans as its citizens, it is possible for Thailand to recognize South Korea as a legitimate destination to deport North Koreans.”

[Express]