Author Archives for Grant Montgomery

North Korea beginning Chinese style reforms – Part 1

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[Excerpts of an opinion piece by Andrei Lankov, professor of Korean Studies at Kookmin University, Seoul]

There is big news coming from North Korea recently, though it has gone largely unnoticed. The so-called “May 30th Measures”, jointly issued early this year by the North Korean cabinet of ministers and the Central Committee of the Korean Worker’s Party, is revolutionary.

It seems that, at long last, North Korea has decided to begin Chinese-style reforms. Kim Jong-un is … attempting to transform his country into a developmental dictatorship, largely similar to present-day Vietnam or China.

This decision did not come out of the blue. Indeed, it agrees very well with what Kim Jong Un and his advisers have quietly been doing over the last three years – albeit the slow-motion transformation of the country has attracted little attention from outside world.

The first significant step was the introduction of the so-called “June 28th Measures”. These measures were introduced in 2012, allowing North Korean farmers to create their own production teams of five or six people, … a signal that individual households should register as “production teams”. Such teams were given a plot of land, the assumption being that they would toil the same area for several consecutive years. The produce would henceforth be split 70:30 between the state and the production team (ie the family). Up until then, North Korean production teams had been much larger, and all produce had to be submitted to the state in exchange for a fixed daily grain ration that was allocated to every farmer.

In essence, this reform marked a seismic shift: It marked the first step towards the reprivatisation of agriculture. The year 2013 (the first year that the reforms were fully in force) brought the best harvest that North Korea has seen in decades. The world media, predictably enough, missed the entire story, but in 2013, North Korea, for the first time since the late 1980s, produced almost enough food to feed itself.

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North Korea beginning Chinese style reforms – Part 2

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[Excerpts of an opinion piece by Andrei Lankov, professor of Korean Studies at Kookmin University, Seoul]

From 2015 according to the “May 30th Measures”, North Korean farming households (for ideological purposes still branded “production teams”) will be allocated not 30 percent but 60 percent of the total harvest. Additionally, farming households will be given large plots of land – some 3,300sq m – to act as their kitchen gardens. Until now, North Korea never tolerated private agriculture to any significant degree.

And now the North Korean leadership has set its sights on reforming the moribund and hollowed out state industrial sector. Under the new system, factory directors will have the freedom to decide how, when and where they purchase technologies, raw materials and spare parts necessary for their enterprises. They will also be allowed to decide who to sell to. They are also given the right to hire and fire workers, as well as to decide how much to pay for a particular job. Under the new system, there is a tacit assumption that directors will be able to reward themselves generously for their own work – a feature that makes them virtually indistinguishable from private entrepreneurs in market economies.

There are however serious problems that the North Korean economy will have to overcome in the future, above all, the severe shortage of foreign investment. Due to the remarkably bad track record of North Korean companies in dealing with foreign investors, international sanctions, and the country’s dubious reputation, foreign investors will be wary.

It would also be naive to expect a reforming North Korea to become either significantly more liberal or to jettison its nuclear programme. The North Korean government is only too aware that their people face a highly attractive alternative that is South Korea, right next door. The government is not enthusiastic about an East German-style revolution. Hence, they are likely to remain highly repressive in their domestic policy, and they are also likely to maintain their nuclear potential in order to ward off possibility of humanitarian intervention.

Nonetheless, there are good reasons to believe that the new system will deliver impressive results. North Korean agriculture is already doing better than ever. One should expect that industry will start to catch up once capitalist (or if you prefer, “market”) system is introduced formally into the state sector. At the end of the day, this is good news for everybody in and outside North Korea, though one should not expect an overnight transformation.

[Read full article] 

North Korea “the most dangerous place on Earth”

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Along the so-called Demilitarized Zone that divides South Korea from North Korea, only about 2,000 yards of wasteland separate hundreds of thousands of battle-ready troops backed by enough artillery to obliterate each other within a few hours.

Over the decades, sporadic gun battles have taken the lives of scores of soldiers on both sides. The Communist regime still sends spies and saboteurs and now drones south, keeping the war at a low boil. Naval and air clashes regularly erupt. Just south of the DMZ, South Korea keeps finding tunnels big enough to rush thousands of Communist soldiers south in an hour.

“The most dangerous place on Earth,” President Bill Clinton once called the Korean Peninsula, and it’s probably gotten more dangerous since he said that two decades ago. Following a searing U.N. condemnation this month of its Soviet-style gulags and other human rights outrages, Pyongyang threatened a fourth nuclear weapon test.

Such grandiose brinksmanship is typical of the regime. Last year, North Korea rattled its missiles at Hawaii, Guam and Washington, D.C. (no matter that it can’t yet reach them) as well as South Korea.

Faced with such threats over the years, the U.S. has embraced its own doomsday scenario. After meeting with the U.S. commander in South Korea when he was defense secretary in 2012, Leon Panetta said he had a “powerful sense that war in that region was neither hypothetical nor remote, but ever-present and imminent,” he recalls in his memoir. If the Communists invaded en masse, he wrote, the U.S. would use “nuclear weapons, if necessary.”

All of which makes Korea a kind of Cold War theater of the absurd, frozen in amber. Outright war is unthinkable, suicidal. Yet both sides talk about a future “reunification” based on the triumph of one side over the other.

Most observers think China will never permit a North Korean collapse, in part because it would propel millions of refugees into its territory, not to mention open the gates to a U.S -South Korean advance to its doorstep. Nevertheless, officials in Seoul recently showed off its Ministry of Unification, which has an annual budget of about $180 million and 200 staffers (augmented by 600 government advisers) dreaming about the future, “so people won’t be caught off guard when it actually happens,” as a slideshow there instructed the visiting reporters. Plus, according to South Korea’s JoongAng Daily, the government has budgeted as much as $500 billion for “a possible sudden collapse of [the North Korean] government or another kind of rapid and unexpected reunification.”

[excerpted from Newsweek]

North Korea’s sea-based nuclear deterrent

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Recent reports that North Korea is developing submarines based on obsolete Golf-II class Soviet-era submarines has gained worldwide attention. However obsolete, it is reported that North Korea had invested its time in “examining and replicating” the missile-launch system of the Soviet-era subs.

Reports confirm that Pyongyang already is developing a vertical-launch system for submarine launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs). Raising further concerns about that is the fact that North Korean ballistic missiles could be armed with nuclear warheads.

Reports also have confirmed that Pyongyang does have the capability to miniaturize nuclear warheads, which could further enable them to fit nuclear-capable submarine launched ballistic missiles on those submarines. Though the submarines at present may not be able to launch missiles that could hit targets in the United States, the missiles could possibly target forward-based U.S. forces in the Asia Pacific Region.

[read full USNI News opinion] 

American Jeffrey Fowle describes his North Korean detention

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After learning about the 1990s famine and the country’s brutal persecution of Christians, Jeffrey Fowle decided to make the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) his next vacation destination. He inscribed his name and phone number in a Korean Bible, which he would “accidentally” leave behind, trusting that God would get it into the right hands.

Fowle thought the identifying information would make his plan more credible: “After all, what kind of idiot would leave a Bible with his name and phone number in it on purpose?” But somewhere along the way he changed course—a decision he still can’t explain.

Instead, Fowle hid the Bible under a waste bin, an obviously intentional act. The Bible fell into the hands of government officials who detained Fowle on the 36th floor of a high-rise hotel and kept him in an “information black-out” for six weeks. Fowle didn’t know if his family knew what had happened to him.

Fowle said he wasn’t concerned about his own safety: “I knew I was in God’s hands and that was a big comfort to me. God was in charge of the events.” His situation improved after six weeks, when the North Koreans allowed him to receive letters from his children and a pound of milk chocolate from his wife.

Fowle said his captors treated him well, letting him see a doctor and giving him ample food and water. His room had a television with three channels broadcasting government activities for four or five hours a day. After two weeks, his captors let him walk 30 to 40 minutes a day with his interpreter.

He underwent repeated interrogations, during which his captors required him to wear his best clothes—a pair of blue trousers and a striped, button down shirt. He came to call it his “Sunday-go-to-interrogation wardrobe.”

They also encouraged Foyle to “write letters to get media attention,” so he wrote to family, friends, and government officials, including President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry. When his letters failed to convey enough distress, the officials made him rewrite them: “They thought if I sounded desperate people would rally to my cause and protest.”

After nearly six months—and without explanation—his captivity ended, and Fowle found himself on a plane headed home.

About three weeks after his release, the North Koreans released two other American detainees, Kenneth Bae and Matthew Miller. Fowle wonders whether his situation somehow helped them: “Things did not unfold like I had planned. But maybe this was God’s way to get Bae and Miller out as well. I’ll let God be the judge of whether this was a good or a bad idea.”

[Excerpts of a WORLD article, by Julie Borg]

Aunt of North Korean leader, and wife to Jang Song Thaek, had fatal stroke after her husband was executed

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When Kim Jong Il ruled North Korea, his sister Kim Kyung Hee took a powerful role as a personal assistant with high-ranking military and party jobs. She was not seen after her husband, Jang Song Thaek, once regarded as the No.2 leader in Pyongyang, was purged and executed late last year.

According to a North Korean defector, the aunt of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un suffered a fatal stroke while she was on the phone with him, arguing about her husband’s execution.

Her husband, Jang Song Thaek, was executed in December, shocking many observers around the world. Jang, the younger leader’s uncle by marriage, was considered instrumental in his rise to power. Before his execution, he was described as the second-most powerful figure in North Korea.

But the young leader turned his back on Jang in spectacular fashion late last year, having him executed on charges that he tried to overthrow the government. “In the seething period of the effort for building a thriving country last year, we took the resolute measure of removing the factionalists,” the North Korean leader said in a New Year’s address shortly after the execution.

Days after the execution, Jang’s wife suffered her third stroke, according to Kang Myung-do, a defector who was son-in-law to North Korea’s ex-Prime Minister, Kang Sun San.

The death was not announced because she died a few days after her husband and the government did not want people to link her death to his, according to the defector.

Korean media reported that she committed suicide five days after her husband’s execution.

[CNN/Business Insider]

Meet Kim Yo Jong North Korean ‘princess’ moving closer to the center of power

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Kim Yo Jong North KoreaIn her slim-fitting trouser suits and black-heeled shoes, Kim Yo Jong (see circled in photo) cuts a contrasting figure to her pudgy older brother, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

On Thursday, state media said the younger Kim, 27, had taken a senior position in the ruling Workers’ Party, confirming speculation she had moved closer to the center of power in the secretive state. It named her as a vice director alongside the head of the Propaganda and Agitation Department, which handles ideological messaging through the media, arts and culture.

Kim Yo Jong’s power has been likened to that of a prime minister, an unnamed South Korean intelligence source told the Seoul-based JoongAng Ilbo newspaper in April. “All roads lead to Comrade Yo Jong,” the source said.

Kim Yo Jong first appeared in state propaganda in 2012, as state TV showed Kim Jong Un arriving at the opening of an amusement park in Pyongyang. Kim Yo Jong ran from one position to another between ranks of applauding party cadres and generals as if she was orchestrating the event for the new North Korean dictator.

Since then, the smartly-dressed Kim, her hair usually pulled back in a ponytail, has made several appearances with her brother, giggling at state concerts, presenting awards to fighter pilots or riding a white horse.

For Kim Yo Jong, it is her family name and proximity to Kim Jong Un that supersedes any cultural norms. “People who are nominally her superiors most likely defer to her,” said Michael Madden, an expert on the North Korean leadership.

Writing in his 2003 memoir about his 13 years as Kim Jong Il’s sushi chef, Kenji Fujimoto said the late Kim Jong Il had a trusting relationship with his fourth partner (Ko Yong Hui), with whom he had three children: Kim Jong Un, Kim Yo Jong, and their elder brother Kim Jong Chol.

Kim Yo Jong has featured in state propaganda since her brother took over the nuclear-capable country upon the death of their father, in late 2011.

Not much is known about the elder brother, Kim Jong Chol, who was once photographed at the Swiss boarding school all three children reportedly attended.

[Business Insider] 

Kim Jong Un sister named to senior government role

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The sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has been named as a senior government official by state media.

Kim Jong Un’s younger sister, Kim Yo Jung, was mentioned in an article posted by KCNA on Thursday, referring to her as a vice department director of the Central Committee of the governing Worker’s Party of Korea.

Kim Yo Jung, who is believed to be 27, is the only other member of the ruling Kim family known to have an official job within the North Korean government.

[CNN]

Highlights of UN action on North Korean human rights atrocities

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Under a UN mandate, former Australian High Court Justice Michael Kirby chaired a year-long inquiry into human rights abuses in the North Korean dictatorship, which has been repressing its people brutally and systematically under all three generations of the Kim family dynasty. (Believe it or not, this was the first time the UN has taken the problem seriously enough to order an official inquiry.)

Pyongyang refused to co-operate so the former High Court judge and his two fellow commissioners, one from Indonesia and the other from Serbia, traveled to various countries and took evidence from about 80 North Korean escapees and expert witnesses.

Their findings were published in February in a massive, 400-page report detailing North Korean atrocities. “The commission finds that the body of testimony and other information it received establishes that crimes against humanity have been committed” in North Korea, said the report.

“These crimes against humanity entail extermination, murder, enslavement, torture, imprisonment, rape, forced abortions and other sexual violence, persecution on political, religious, racial and gender grounds, the forcible transfer of populations, the enforced disappearance of persons and the inhumane act of knowingly causing prolonged starvation.”

They specifically named as a “main perpetrator” the supreme leader himself, Kim Jong Un. Kim, aged approximately 30, has done everything possible to stop Kirby’s report and to avoid its consequences.

When the UN committee for human rights decided to put the Kirby report to a vote so it could go to the UN General Assembly, and then to the UN Security Council for possible referral to the International Criminal Court, North Korea launched into the next phase. It went on a charm offensive. In an effort to head off the vote, the Kim regime freed three American citizens it had had been holding in jail. It signaled that it was open to discussing its nuclear program with the US.

But last week the UN human rights committee cast a strong vote to refer the Kirby report to the UN general assembly, by 111 votes to 19 with 55 abstentions.

This sent Pyongyang into its fury phase. It said the vote compelled it to conduct another nuclear weapons test, which would be its fourth, and threatened nuclear attack on the US and its allies.

[Sydney Morning Herald]

North Korea goes nuclear after UN presses for criminal court

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How has North Korea reacted to a historic United Nations vote to begin the process to refer its leadership to the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity?

By threatening nuclear strikes on the US, Japan, South Korea and all US “followers”. In other words, by offering to commit further crimes against humanity.

“It would be funny if it were not so serious,” says the man who gathered the evidence for the case, Australia’s Michael Kirby. “You should always take seriously threats by someone in charge of a nation state, especially if they have possession of a reported 20 nuclear weapons.”

But, tellingly, North Korea seems more frightened by Kirby’s report and the consequences than any of its target countries are by its threat of “unimaginable and catastrophic consequences.”

Pyongyang had furiously denounced the report itself as a “fraud” and a tactic of “the frantic human rights racket” and labelled the witnesses who had come forth as “human scum.” But all the testimony, given in public, is now on the public record, on the UN website, for all to see.

Why is Pyongyang so afraid? Even if the report goes to the UN Security Council, even if North Korea’s traditional protectors China and Russia decide not to exercise their veto, even if it is referred to the International Criminal Court, the chance of ever getting Kim into the dock at the Hague must be a very small one. The country already labors under a raft of international sanctions.

“I think the regime is genuinely shocked,” says Kirby. “North Korea is not used to being the issue, and sailing under the radar. Those days are over. The international community has had enough.”

As the matter goes to the full General Assembly and then the Security Council in the days ahead, we will find out whether that it true.

[Sydney Morning Herald]