Author Archives for Grant Montgomery

North Korean defector standing up for her faith

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Youngae Ma, who defected from North Korea in 2000, said a meal in the church that she found in China was a life-changing experience. In North Korea, Christianity is considered the equivalent to espionage, she said.

“That’s when I first saw the Bible, and I felt affection from this church community that I’ve never felt before,” she said. “It’s such an abundance I wouldn’t have even imagined existed.”

Ma now leads NK Refugee Mission, working to rescue North Korean defectors that have been detained in various parts of China and Southeast Asia during their journey to escape North Korea.  Currently, Ma’s mission is to rescue two women from China, whose identities she declined to reveal.

“I’m more than willing to be sacrificed while protesting for North Korea’s human rights. … They call me a tick, or a mite when I protest outside the North Korean office,” Ma said, recalling her experiences encountering Pyongyang officials outside North Korea’s Permanent Mission to the United Nations in New York City. She said she would receive phone calls from a blocked or unknown number. She would pick up, she said, and there would be silence for more than three seconds. She knew what was coming next.

“I have a hunch that it’s from the North Korean diplomats, because I can hear a heavy accent. They threatened to chop my head off with an ax, take out all my teeth with a wrench, and endlessly shout in foul [North] Korean language to tell me they’re going to take my life someday,” she said.

She said that the most recent call she had received to stop her activities as a missionary was in early May.

[NBC News]

North Korea mending fences with China

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A high level North Korean delegation turned up in Beijing unannounced this week and met with Chinese President Xi Jinping — the first time a North Korean official has met China’s leader since 2013.

The meeting between top North Korean diplomat Ri Su Yong and Xi caught North Korea watchers by surprise.

On paper, China is North Korea’s closest and most powerful ally but it’s is no secret that relations between Beijing and Pyongyang have been at a low point in recent years.

According to official media reports, the Workers’ Party of Korea delegation headed by Ri Su Yong, delivered a message from North Korea’s supreme leader Kim Jong Un. It expressed “the hope to strengthen and develop bilateral friendship and to maintain peace and stability in the region.”

Ri reaffirmed that North Korea would continue its ‘two front lines policy” of developing nuclear weaponry in tandem with reinvigorating its isolated and stagnating economy.

Xinhua, China’s official news agency gave few details, but the landmark meeting can be interpreted as a slight thawing in the frosty relations between historical and ideological friends.

Beijing is also sending a message to the U.S. and South Korea that, despite misgivings, it is not abandoning its old ally and all parties are going to have to get used to that.

[CNN]

Guam is the only US territory North Korea could hope to reach with its missiles

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[From an analysis by John Schilling, an American aerospace engineer with more than 20 years of experience, specializing in rocket and spacecraft propulsion and mission analysis.]

North Korea recently did something it has never done before: it tried to launch its Musudan  missile four times in two months, and failed every time. North Korea’s missiles usually fail the first time. In the past, the North Koreans have always done what sensible engineers do in the face of failure — stand down, figure out what went wrong, and fix it before trying again.

The Musudan missile seems to be based on a 1960s-era Soviet design with some local modifications. It appeared to be a mobile intermediate-range missile capable of delivering a nuclear warhead as far as the critical U.S. base at Guam.

Guam is the only sovereign U.S. territory North Korea could hope to reach with its current weapons.

Any North Korean test also raises the question of capability: Can they blow us up with nuclear missiles now? The answer is pretty clearly that they can’t blow up anybody but themselves with Musudan missiles. It is possible that they will retrench and give their engineers time to fix the problems, and maybe come back with a working missile in a year or two.

North Korea has also been working on a small ballistic-missile submarine, and a new solid-fuel intermediate-range missile. These have the potential to be more capable and versatile systems than the Musudan would have been, but they aren’t likely to enter service before 2020.

Today, all we have to worry about are the thousand or so short- and medium-range missiles with which North Korea could attack targets in South Korea and Japan, and the dozen or so nuclear warheads they may be able to mount on some of those missiles.

[CNN]

Yeonmi Park: “We North Koreans can be experts at lying, even to ourselves.”

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Growing up under the repressive regime of Kim Jong-il in North Korea, Yeonmi Park was taught never to express her opinions or ask questions. The dictator, she believed, could read her mind. Her mother gave her a warning: “Even when you think you’re alone, the birds and mice can hear you whisper.”

Now 22 and living in New York, Park has found her voice. So much so, that North Korea published an 18-minute video online, featuring Park’s relatives, in an attempt to discredit her stories of her former home.

“If a dictator hates you, you’re in good shape. You’re a good activist,” Park says.

Park grew up in a small, one-storey house in Hyesan, near the border with China, during the years of the North Korean famine which claimed more than a million lives. Her book recounts the horrifying images that came to seem normal to her as a child. Bodies in rubbish heaps, frozen babies abandoned in allies, desperate people crying out for help on the streets and long queues for fresh water on freezing days.

“Maybe deep, deep inside me I knew something was wrong. But we North Koreans can be experts at lying, even to ourselves,” Park writes.

On a dark and cold night in early 2007, Park, then 13, and her mother made the dangerous journey across the border to China guided by human smugglers. Nearly two years later, Park and her mother escaped and crossed the Gobi Desert to Mongolia and then flew to South Korea.

It was Park’s emotional speech about her experiences delivered at the One Young World summit in 2014 that garnered global attention. The video of her speech has been viewed more than 2 million times on YouTube.

[Sydney Morning Herald]

North Korea documentary “Cash for Kim”

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North Korean laborers are literally being worked to death in shocking conditions with money flowing directly into the hands of the North Korean government.

A documentary by filmmakers Sebastian Weis and Manuel Freundt presents shocking evidence that goes right to the heart of the European Union with their footage revealing the harrowing conditions the laborers from North Korea work under.

The documentary, Cash for Kim, shows who is benefiting from the working conditions while giving an insight into how the North Korean workers are treated, with many kept under watch and fearful of reporting their conditions. The footage shows workers employed in several locations across Poland. Weir and Freundt question if the workers are in Poland due to a bureaucratic system error, or rather an economic policy that turns a blind eye to the issue.

More alarmingly the Cash for Kim documentary sheds light on the possibility that one Polish company is even being run by a high-ranking member of the North Korean military.

North Korean workers are employed in mining, logging, textile and construction and working in countries including China, Russia, the UAE, Cambodia and Poland.

[News.com.au]

The Kim family of North Korea as deities

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Many North Koreans call Kim Jong-un “The Marshal” and express towards him, as for his father and grandfather, the emotions usually reserved for a deity. For me, this worship has been a source of minor embarrassment, especially their custom to bow to the images or photos of the leaders.

This is shocking for us, but not unusual in Asia. Before 1945, the neighboring Japanese, people of great culture and refinement, worshiped their Emperor as the Supreme Deity, and even now some of them continue to venerate him as a Shinto god. The Japanese ruled over Korea for 40 years, and during that time, they implanted some ideas, notably that of a Divine Ruler.

Politically, North Korea has little to do with Marxism, or with Socialism.

In fact, it is a deeply religious society based on worship of the three Kims.

If asked, the N Koreans say their rulers have been “sent by Heaven”. They ascribe every good thing in their life to their Heaven-sent rulers. They tell of miracles they performed. A modern-looking lady in Pyongyang has told me she saw an apparition of Kim II in the sky on the night of his demise. I saw people weep when death of Kim Jong-il is mentioned – and that some five years after the event.

[The Unz Review ]

Insights on Kim Jong Un as provided by his aunt

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Ko Yong Suk, the aunt of Kim Jong Un who has been secretly living in the US, says Kim Jong Un was born in 1984, the same year her first son was born.

“He and my son were playmates from birth. I changed both of their diapers,” Ko said.

While Kim Jong Un attended school in Switzerland, Ko helped take care of the future dictator, describing him as a “short-tempered” intolerant child.

Kim, who was shorter than his friends, was obsessed with basketball and his mother told him he would grow taller if he became a player. “He used to sleep… with his basketball,” Ko said.

But as Kim grew older, he was groomed into a successor for his father. At his eighth birthday party, attended by North Korea’s top brass, Kim reportedly received a general’s uniform adorned with stars and real generals bowed to him.

“It was impossible for him to grow up as a normal person when the people around him were treating him like that,” Ko said.

 [Washington Post]

Aunt of Kim Jong Un living a secret life in the US

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The aunt of Kim Jong Un, who has been living a secret life in the U.S. after defecting from the regime 18 years ago, is speaking out for the first time.

Ko Yong Suk, and her husband Ri Gang, fled North Korea in 1998, fearing they would lose their privileged status, when Ko’s sister –the mother of Kim Jong Un – became sick with terminal breast cancer.

“My friends here tell me I’m so lucky, that I have everything,” Ko Yong Suk, as she was known in North Korea, told The Washington Post. “My kids went to great schools and they’re successful, and I have my husband, who can fix anything. There’s nothing we can envy.” Her husband Ri Gang adds, “I think we have achieved the American Dream.”

The couple’s new names and home state were kept hidden to protect their three children. The Post reported the couple lived several hours away from New York City.

The 60-year-old, who runs a dry-cleaning business with her husband also acts as an informant on North Korea to the CIA, the newspaper adds. The couple claimed CIA operatives sometimes would arrive in their town to show them photos of North Koreans and ask who they were. The CIA declined to comment.

Ri Gang now says he wants to visit Pyongyang again to help ease the tensions between the U.S. and North Korea. “My ultimate goal is to go back to North Korea. I understand America and I understand North Korea, so I think I can be a negotiator between the two,” he said.

“If Kim Jong Un is how I remembered he used to be, I would be able to meet him and talk to him.”

Activist use drones to deliver information into North Korea

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Stealthy drones have been delivering SD cards and flash drives to North Korean residents hungry for entertainment and information from the outside, a North Korean defector and activist says.

Jung Gwang-il, founder of the group No Chain, said the drones have been delivering the contraband since early 2015. The SD cards and USB flash drives contain Western and South Korean films, TV shows, music and internet-free access to Wikipedia — media that will help get outside information to North Koreans, who are kept behind an invisible wall that cuts them off from outside influence.

It’s the first time a North Korean activist group acknowledged that it had been secretly using them to make deliveries to North Korea. Holding up a USB flash drive, Jung said, “I believe this has power to bring freedom to my country.”

No Chain and the Human Rights Foundation have quietly delivered more than 1,000 SD cards and flash drives to the communist country via hexacopter drones, they said.

The groups chose to send media because of its power to show outside life to North Koreans, said Human Rights Foundation President Thor Halvorssen. “The regime is trying to stop soap operas, Hollywood films, and things like K-pop. … They’re certainly quite fearful of something as simple as cartoons and TV programs. This challenges their iron grip of the North Korean people,” he said.      Read more

Drones gaining ground as choice delivery system into North Korea

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For decades, efforts to bring outside information or entertainment into North Korea have been decidedly low tech.

Radio programs made for North Koreans can get their frequencies jammed. Balloons carrying pamphlets, SD cards and USB flash drives have been released in hopes that the wind would carry them over into North Korea. Sometimes, the balloons drift off course into the sea or back into South Korea. Traders and activists have hired smugglers to carry goods such as Chinese cell phones, media and other goods over the North Korean border. But relying on a network of people in the secretive state is risky and dangerous to the individuals involved.

However, drones can follow a specified route and drop off their payloads in a specific area. Human Rights Foundation President Thor Halvorssen said his organization is able to load several pounds of SD cards and flash drives on one drone.

After months of testing in secrecy, Jung Gwang-il, founder of the group No Chain, and Halvorssen decided to make their activities public in order to “encourage other civil society organizations to take advantage of new technologies. … With more and more other actors, it could have a big impact in increasing quantity of info getting in,” Halvorssen said.

[CNN]