Last 11 years of North Korea’s nuclear tests
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Monthly Archives: September 2017
US sanctions resolution on North Korea watered down before UN vote
North Korea has said it will inflict “the greatest pain and suffering” on the US if it continues to call for fresh sanctions in response to the regime’s sixth nuclear test last week.
As the UN security council prepared to meet later on Monday, the US reportedly watered down its sanctions resolution in the hope of winning support from China and Russia, which have voiced doubts over tougher measures.
The US had initially called for a halt to oil exports to North Korea and a freeze on the assets of its leader, Kim Jong-un.
On Monday, diplomats said the assets freeze had been dropped from the revised draft resolution, and the oil embargo replaced with a proposal to gradually reduce oil exports.
[The Guardian]
Merkel offers German role in Iran-style nuclear talks with North Korea
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Chancellor Angela Merkel has offered German participation in any future nuclear talks with North Korea and suggested that the 2015 agreement with Iran could serve as a model for negotiations.
The chancellor’s intervention reflects growing alarm in Europe that Donald Trump is worsening one nuclear crisis by repeated threats to use military force against North Korea, and seeking to trigger a second one by torpedoing the Iran deal to which Germany, France and the UK are among the signatories.
“If our participation in talks is desired, I will immediately say yes,” Merkel told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung in an interview published on Sunday.
She pointed to the example of the agreement sealed in Vienna in July 2015 by Iran, the five permanent members of the UN security council and Germany, describing it as “a long but important time of diplomacy” that ultimately had a good end.
“I could imagine such a format being used to end the North Korea conflict. Europe and especially Germany should be prepared to play a very active part in that,” Merkel said.
In exchange for sanctions relief under the Vienna deal, Iran accepted strict limits on its nuclear programme as a reassurance to the international community that it could never build a bomb. North Korea, on the other hand, is believed to already have a nuclear arsenal which it insists is not up for negotiation.
[The Guardian]
Kim Jong Un’s power is growing say North Korea defectors
More and more North Korean defectors in the South think Kim Jong Un is strengthening his grip on power, and more than a quarter of those surveyed think Kim’s rule will continue for at least 30 years.
According to the Institute for Peace and Unification Studies at Seoul National University, a recent survey indicates more defectors are less confident the Kim regime is weakening, South Korean newspaper Munhwa Ilbo reported.
At the same time, nearly 70 percent of those surveyed said they think Kim is doing his job poorly, an indication the North Korean ruler has been able to consolidate his position without necessarily gaining the approval of the people.
But Suh Bo-hyuk, the South Korean researcher who oversaw the survey, said Kim had proved himself by growing the economy despite his pursuit of nuclear weapons.
The survey also shows more defectors are less confident about prospects for unification. More than half of the respondents, or 55.7 percent, said they “believed unification to be impossible” when they lived in the North. Only 26 percent said they think unification is possible “within 10 years,” significantly down from 45 percent in 2016, according to the research.
[UPI]
North Korean prisoners ‘walking skeletons’ in Kim Jong Un’s labor camps
The leaders of North Korea’s horrific prison camps encourage guards to beat prisoners to death and induce starvation, a U.S. State Department fact sheet revealed.
The report highlighted details gathered from six prison camps, some of which housed as many as 50,000 prisoners, mostly detained for political offenses. The United Nations Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights prepared the information published Friday detailing a prisoners’ daily struggle to even obtain a decent meal at the camps.
“Induced starvation is common among prisoners, who are driven to catch and eat rodents, frogs and snakes,” the report said.
A former camp guard, identified as Ahn Myong-chol, said inmates appeared like “walking skeletons, ‘dwarfs,’ and ‘cripples’ in rags,” and about 1,500 to 2,000 of them would die of malnutrition yearly.
[Fox News]
Trump’s plan to starve North Korea of oil
The U.S. wants the U.N. Security Council to approve a range of new sanctions, including a full ban on exports of oil to North Korea. Experts say an oil embargo would be a major shift in international efforts to squeeze Kim’s regime.
“Something like this has not been tried before,” said Kent Boydston, a research analyst at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. “It would be a different kind of sanction that would have broader impact on the economy.”
A prolonged halt in oil supplies could eventually bring the North Korean economy to its knees. But it would need the support of China, North Korea’s main trading partner, and Russia — both of which can veto the measure at the U.N.
The escalating crisis over North Korea is a thorny problem for Chinese President Xi Jinping, who is trying to project strength and stability ahead of a key meeting of the Communist Party next month. That makes experts skeptical that he will take drastic measures at this point against Kim Jong Un.
Global Times, a Chinese state-run tabloid that often expresses nationalistic views, suggested in April that Beijing might cut off North Korea’s oil supply if it carried out another nuclear test. But after Pyongyang went ahead with the test, the newspaper poured cold water on the idea of an oil ban.
Russian President Vladimir Putin is also opposed to an oil embargo, telling South Korean President Moon Jae-in that he’s concerned it may harm civilians, according to a spokesman for Moon.
[CNN]
Vladimir Putin warns world faces ‘global catastrophe’ over North Korea
Russian President Vladimir Putin warned that the escalating crisis over North Korea’s weapons program risks developing into a “global catastrophe” with mass casualties. Putin, speaking in China on Tuesday at the closure of the BRICs summit, cautioned against “military hysteria” and said that the only way to resolve the crisis was through diplomacy.
He warned that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has calculated that the survival of his regime depends on its development of nuclear weapons. Kim had seen how western intervention in Iraq had ended in the overthrow of Saddam Hussein after which the country was ravaged by war, Putin warned, and Kim was determined not to suffer the same fate.
“Saddam Hussein rejected the production of weapons of mass destruction, but even under that pretense, he was destroyed and members of his family were killed,” Putin said. “The country was demolished and Saddam Hussein was hanged. Everyone knows that and everyone in North Korea knows that.”
Putin said that while Russia condemned North Korea’s latest actions, imposing any kind of sanctions would be “useless and ineffective.” Kim would rather starve his people than see his regime overthrown, he said. “They will eat grass but they will not turn away from the path that will provide for their security,” he said.
[CNN]
What North Koreans miss out on
Chloe, a North Korean defector now living in Seoul, wants to be an advertising manager and needs to learn English for that to happen. While most South Koreans already learn or are engaged in advanced English studies, it is rare for North Koreans to understand English. They are told what they will learn at university, or what career they will undertake. Chloe said while school was free in her homeland, many people bribed teachers for extra tutoring or to learn what they needed. She said her memories of North Korea were mostly happy but her mother’s decision to escape was based on wanting a better life for them.
For Jenna, another defector, the one thing she misses most is the grandmother who raised her, following the death of her father and the defection of her mother. She knows she is unlikely to ever see her grandmother again. “I really miss my grandmother,” Jenna said, admitting she found aspects of life on the south side of the 38th parallel hard. “South Korea has many academies and people study all the time.”
Many North Koreans faced discrimination and once in South Korea are stuck in poverty unable to get better qualifications or a job due to the highly competitive education and job markets. English was just one of the minimum requirements needed to succeed.
Associate Professor Bronwen Dalton, from the University of Technology, Sydney, says defectors learn some South Koreans view their northern neighbors as a burden. “They are not seen as working as hard or they are not as refined or can’t be trusted,” she said.
Life on the other side for North Korean defectors
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While life in Seoul sounds like heaven compared to life under a brutal dictator in Pyongyang, North Korean defectors know firsthand, life isn’t all sweet and rosy on the other side.
“When I first moved to South Korea, I had spare time, I didn’t know what to do with it” James said. We never had that in North Korea.”
“I found it difficult to identify,” he said. “In North Korea most communication is face-to-face, in South Korea it’s done over the internet.”
James is one of five students studying English in Sydney as part of a scholarship program at the University of Technology Sydney, specifically aimed at former North Koreans. He is the first to admit he doesn’t miss the day to day life in North Korea, but he does long to see friends and family he left behind.
The group explained that they not only found discrimination in the competitive South Korean world, but also faced the challenge of having to catch up on years of education. James said most students not only study during the day, but also take up extra tutorial in the evenings just to get ahead.
Enormous difficulties adjusting to their lives in the south including how to use the internet and things like using the train service or topping up a travel card. These simple life skills are all learned during a three-month stay at the Hana Foundation, a defector mentoring program.
[news.com.au]
Kim Jong Un’s third child born February 2017
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has a third child, South Korea’s National Intelligence Service (NIS) has learned.
Kim Jong Un’s wife, Ri Sol Ju, is believed to have given birth in February. “The gender of their new child is unknown,” a South Korean lawmaker said.
Little is known about the North Korean first family, but opposition lawmaker Yi Wan-yong confirmed “Kim’s first child is a son [born in 2010] and the second child is a daughter [born in 2013],” noting he learned this information from non-NIS sources.
In 2013, former NBA star Dennis Rodman revealed the name and gender of one of Kim and Ri’s children, a daughter called Ju Ae. “I held their baby Ju Ae and spoke with Ms. Ri as well,” he said, describing Kim as “a good dad.”
There was speculation that Ri was pregnant late last year, when she disappeared from public view for several months, a time frame that would seem to line up with a February birth.
Little is known about Ri, Kim Jong Un’s wife, who accompanied him to his father’s funeral in late 2011, sparking widespread speculation about the couple. It wasn’t until the following year that South Korean intelligence confirmed they had been married since 2009.
Ri was partially educated in China and visited South Korea in 2005 for the Asian Athletic Championships “as a member of North Korea’s cheering squad,” a South Korean lawmaker told CNN in 2012. She is believed to be around 30 years old.
[CNN]