Author Archives for Grant Montgomery

North Korea marks 66th anniversary of its founding

Posted on by

Crowds of people went to pay their respects at the giant statues of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il on top of Pyongyang’s Mansu Hill in celebrations that mark 66 years since the founding of the country.

Citizens of North Korea are expected to pay their respects to their country’s former leaders on every major state anniversary. This year’s anniversary is not a big round number, so there are no large-scale commemorative events planned.

North Korea has said that it is preparing for another huge event in October 2015, which will mark the 70th anniversary of the founding of the ruling Workers’ Party.

[The Telegraph]

North Koreans social misfits within South Korean society?

Posted on by

North Korean defectors now living in South Korea on average work longer, have more physically-challenging employment and are paid less than South Koreans.

Regardless, nearly 75% of 2,355 respondents said they are either moderately or very satisfied with their new lives.

Topping the list of reasons behind positive responses were: (1) income proportionate to workload, (2) a career of one’s own choosing, and (3) increased wealth compared to the life inside North Korea.

The outlook for quality of life was on average upbeat, with 70% saying they see an improvement coming their way.

There are however very real disparities, in that:

  • The average South Korean income of 3 million won was more than double that of a North Korean refugee.
  • A North Korea-born worker works an average 47.9 hours a week, compared with a native South Korean’s 40 hours.
  • The unemployment rate for the refugees was 9.7% last year, over three times the overall South Korean rate.

[WSJ]

American Matthew Miller to be tried in North Korean court Sept 14

Posted on by

Detained American Matthew Miller will be tried next Sunday, North Korean state media said, less than a week after the detainee made a rare foreign media appearance to plead for help.

Pyongyang’s official Korean Central News Agency said in a brief dispatch Sunday that the Supreme Court decided to “judge” Miller on Sept. 14. It did not elaborate on specific charges against him, although past reports have accused him of hostile acts.

Miller, 24, was detained after entering the country April 10, when he tore up his tourist visa at the airport and shouted that he wanted to seek asylum, Pyongyang’s official Korean Central News Agency has reported.

In a brief interview with The Associated Press in Pyongyang last week, Miller and two other Americans held by North Korea, Jeffrey Fowle and Kenneth Bae, called for Washington to send a high-ranking U.S. representative to make a direct appeal for their freedom.

Miller said he has met with the Swedish ambassador and been allowed to make phone calls to his relatives.

[AP]

Uncommon story of a South Korean defecting to North Korea

Posted on by

In an apparent conciliatory gesture, North Korea said Friday it will send back a South Korean man who entered the North illegally.

The North’s official Korean Central News Agency said Kim Sang-geun entered North Korea through a third country after having unspecified difficulties living in the South. It said Kim asked to live in North Korea and bring his family members from the South but the country decided to repatriate him next Thursday.

South Korea’s Unification Ministry said in a statement it has informed North Korea that it will take custody of Kim.

Kim’s repatriation suggests that impoverished North Korea is still interested in improving ties with South Korea, said Chang Yong Seok, a senior researcher at Seoul National University’s Institute for Peace and Unification Studies.

In recent months North Korea has proposed a set of measures it says would reduce tension, but South Korea has rebuffed the overture, arguing that North Korea must first take steps toward nuclear disarmament. Outside analysts say the North is pushing for better ties with South Korea to help attract foreign investment and aid to revive its economy.

[The Republic]

No new insights from former U.S. special representative for North Korea policy

Posted on by

Americans Kenneth Bae, Matthew Miller and Jeffrey Fowle are all imprisoned in North Korea on different charges. It’s unclear what it will take to secure their release. Visits from high-level officials have worked in such situations in the past. David Greene of NPR spoke with Stephen Bosworth, who served as U.S. special representative for North Korea policy during President Obama’s first term. Some excerpts from their conversation:

NPR: So what is your take on the tactics being employed by North Korea? They presented the Americans to the media in carefully staged interviews. What are they up to?

Bosworth: Well, first I think we don’t know very much about what they’re really up to – we have suspicions. But dealing with this government in North Korea is not easy. It’s very complicated, and we frankly don’t know much about their decision-making process under the current leader Kim Jong Un. We understood his father a little bit, but with him we’ve had much less experience.

NPR: So they appear to be using these Americans as bargaining chips.

Bosworth: That’s right. I think this is a way for them to try to get our attention. They’ve clearly been trying to get the attention of the Obama administration to reengage in some form of dialogue over the last several months. And so far the administration has not been willing to do that. They’ve been insisting that North Korea has to, in advance, demonstrate that it’s serious about its commitment to denuclearization.

NPR: And is there any reason to believe it’s possible to negotiate with the current leadership there? You have some experience dealing with them on these issues.

Bosworth: Yeah, I think it’s always possible to negotiate. It depends on what your objective is and what their objective is. As I said, in this case I think they want to get our attention. I feel very sorry for these people who have been detained in North Korea. It’s not a pleasant place to be if you’re a prisoner, but it’s not clear to me that the North Koreans are at this point prepared to negotiate seriously on this. And I don’t know who they would find acceptable to go there. In the past, that sort of high-level visit has worked, but it’s probably some political risk.

NPR: Given all that, what’s your sense of the U.S. strategy to secure the release of its citizens at this point?

Bosworth: Well, I think we’ve tried to send Bob King, the special representative for human rights in North Korea. He was ready to get on a plane in Tokyo and go there and presumably bring them back when, for reasons that are not clear to me at least, the North Koreans cancelled his trip. This was four, five months ago.

What North Korea wants in return for 3 American hostages

Posted on by
1

North Korean officials whisked a CNN team away in a van, and hours later, they were presented with three Americans held captive in the reclusive country.

Like virtually everything in Pyongyang, the interviews were carefully managed by the regime. Each man had exactly five minutes to speak. Some of their statements seemed eerily similar.

Kenneth Bae - Matthew Miller - Jeffrey FowleSo what was the government’s motive in letting Kenneth Bae, Matthew Todd Miller and Jeffrey Edward Fowle address the world?

“First of all, their motivation always behind these interviews has been to gather U.S. attention and then try to pave a way for high-level dialogue with Washington,” said Ellen Kim of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

“Their negotiating ploy with the U.S. is to try to get us to agree to nuclear arms control, to sort of accept them as a nuclear weapons state — which we can’t do,” said Michael Green of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Another possibility: That North Korea wants sanctions against the regime lifted.

Victor Cha, the North Korea adviser to former President George W. Bush, said the presentation of all three Americans at once could be telling. “My guess is the fact that all three of them were put on tape for an American audience on Labor Day as a signal from the North Koreans that they’re looking for some sort of package deal to try to get them all out,” Cha said. “Whether they’re trying to connect this to the long-style nuclear negotiations is anybody’s guess.”

It’s apparent the three men are now being used by North Korea as “bargaining chips,” said Bill Richardson, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations who has traveled to the isolated country. “They’re sending a signal, saying, ‘We’re ready to bargain for the three hostages.'”

[CNN]

Americans held in North Korea interviewed by CNN

Posted on by
2

North Korea allowed three American prisoners to speak briefly with Western reporters Monday. Kenneth Bae, Matthew Miller and Jeffrey Edward Fowle described their time in captivity and appealed in interviews with CNN and the Associated Press. The three said they did not know they were going to be interviewed until immediately beforehand. All said they believe the only solution to their situation is for a U.S. representative to come to North Korea to make a direct appeal.

Who are the three men being held by North Korean authorities?

  • Jeffrey Edward Fowle, 56, arrived in North Korea on April 29. He is accused of leaving a Bible in a nightclub in the northern port city of Chongjin. Fowle is from Miamisburg, Ohio, and works in a municipal street department. His wife, Tatyana, is from Russia, and they have three children ages 9, 10 and 12.
  • Matthew Miller, 24, of Bakersfield, Calif., was detained as he tried to enter the country April 10, according to Korean Central News Agency, North Korea’s state news agency. The agency said that Miller had a tourist visa for North Korea and tore it up and said he was seeking asylum.
  • Kenneth Bae, 46, a Korean-American Christian missionary, has been held since being detained in the North Korean city of Rason, on the border with China, in late 2012. He was sentenced to 15 years hard labor on charges of state subversion by trying to establish a proselytizing network inside the country. Bae was born in South Korea and came to the United States as a teenager. He lived for a time in Snohomish County, Wash., where a sister lives. Bae has acknowledged being a missionary and said he conducted services in North Korea, according to an audio sermon and note posted on the website of a Korean Presbyterian church in St. Louis, Reuters reported.

CNN interview with Kenneth Bae

North Korea’s failed propaganda ads in western newspapers

Posted on by

From 1969 to 1997, the North Korean leadership purchased expensive full-page ad space in the most prominent western newspapers, Benjamin R. Young reports for NK News.

The ads, which cost anywhere from $3,000 to $10,000, were placed in high-profile publications like The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Guardian.

North Korea began buying the ads in Western newspapers in the late 1960s in an effort to promote Kim Il Sung and Juche, the state-promoted political philosophy in the North that emphasizes self-reliance and a strong military.

Young notes: “Even supporters of North Korea criticized their international propaganda campaign. Sean Garland of the Irish Republican Army visited North Korea in 1983 and told his Korean comrades that putting full-page ads expressing Kim Il Sung’s ideas into the Irish Times of ‘was a waste of money because nobody f—ing read them.’ “

In many cases, the failure of the North Korean propaganda came from Pyongyang’s apparent ignorance of the papers’ readerships. One ad, placed in a Middle Eastern newspaper, bore the headline “Kim Il Sung Is A Divine Man.” The ad was not well received by the newspaper’s Muslim readership.

The ads were more likely propaganda for the North Korean population than for western readers. North Korean media would report on the ads, claiming that they were articles and editorials written by westerners in praise of the north. The model was developed to convince the average North Korean that the Kims were treated as major international statesmen — and not as pariahs they actually were.

By the late 1990s, this project of placing propaganda in western media was abandoned.

[SF Gate] 

Senior North Korean official defects to Russia

Posted on by

A South Korean newspaper reports that a high-ranking North Korean official who managed leader Kim Jong Un’s personal finances has defected to Russia.

The newspaper Joong Ang Ilbo on August 29 quoted an unidentified source as saying that Yun Tae Hyong, a senior representative of North Korea’s Daesong Bank, disappeared last week in Nakhodka, a Russian port near the North Korean border, with $5 million.

The newspaper quoted the source as saying that Yun was “allegedly requesting asylum”, and that Pyongyang had asked Russian authorities for cooperation in his capture and repatriation.

[Reuters]

The process of getting defectors’ remittances to North Korea

Posted on by

The number of North Korean refugees now in South Korea who remit money to their families still in the North is rising.

“Some 15,000 North Korean refugees have settled in the country, and over 6,000 of them are remitting money to North Korea,” a government official said. “We understand the size of the remittances is also growing.” An official with a refugee organization said there must be more than 10,000 who remit money to their families in the North.

Remittance routes are clandestine. Money is remitted to a Chinese broker, who contacts another in North Korea, who pays the recipient with his own money and settles the account with the Chinese broker later, leaving no documentary trail.

Currencies are usually American dollars and Chinese yuan. Commissions range between 15 and 20 percent, according to sources. “Remittances through brokers designated by North Koreans generally reach the recipient without a hitch, but Chinese brokers contacted in China are liable to steal the money,” a refugee said. The brokers handle tens of millions of dollars and are linked to organized gangs.

In the past, remittances required enormous bribes. First a man had to be sent to North Korea to bribe guards, with commissions exceeding 40 percent. But with the emergence of remittance brokers and the establishment of an organized system, the amount of money that reaches North Korean families has increased substantially.

The North Korean won is practically worthless in international exchange. $1000 would be the equivalent of 100 years’ worth of earnings and buys two apartments in places like Chongjin, North Hamgyeong Province, or Hamhung, South Hamgyeong Province.

[Chosun Ilbo]