Author Archives for Grant Montgomery

Kim Jong-nam assassination a warning to potential defectors

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The brazen assassination of Kim Jong-nam in Malaysia is a warning to North Korean elites thinking of defecting from the country via Malaysia, claims academic Go Myong-hyun, a research fellow from the Seoul-based Asan Institute for policy studies.

Go added that the assassination could have been carried out in Malaysia because it carried the least political risk compared to either Macau, China or Singapore – places where Kim Jong-nam is often seen. And as quoted in the Washington Post, Kim Jong Nam told Japanese journalist Yoji Gomi the Chinese government protected him in China and gave him a bodyguard, but did not do so elsewhere in Asia.

Go said that Macau was out of the question as it is a part of China and if North Korean supreme leader Kim Jong-un was indeed behind the murder, he wouldn’t want to create unnecessary conflict with China.

Go added that North Korea would not want to jeopardize their relationship with Singapore as it is an important regional hub for their overseas economic network. “Malaysia, in a way, is the least risky place to carry out the operation,” he said.

Kim Jong-nam, the half-brother of leader Kim Jong-un, died shortly after an unidentified liquid was sprayed in his face on February 13 while at the airport in the Malaysian capital.

[The Star – Malaysia]

The non-relationship between brothers Kim Jong Un and Kim Jong Nam

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When North Korean leader Kim Jong Un was born, his elder half-brother Kim Jong Nam was studying overseas. Kim Jong Un was brought up by a mother who saw her husband’s first family as rivals to her own sons. Brought up separately, Kim Jong Un was never going to be close to his eldest brother.

Indeed, according to Japanese journalist Yoji Gomi, the two brothers never even met.

This did not stop Kim Jong Nam openly criticizing his sibling years later, saying that the new North Korean leader Kim Jong Un was too weak to maintain control over the country and was a puppet for regime elders. Such criticism is unlikely to have gone down well in Pyongyang, which often reacts angrily to any perceived slight, particularly from overseas.

Kim Jong Nam told Gomi that North Korea would collapse without necessary reform, his half-brother Kim Jong-un would not last long as a leader and hereditary succession was a “joke to the outside world”.

Speaking to reporters last week, Gomi said Kim Jong Nam’s comments were known within the country. “A defector told me there was a rumor the oldest son of Kim Jong Il had said critical words about North Korea and could be a cause of [reform],” he said. “That person mentioned the rumor gave him hope.”

Gomi first encountered Kim Jong Nam during a chance meeting at Beijing airport in 2004, leading to an exchange of 150 emails and then two interviews in 2011.

South Korean lawmaker Lee Cheol-woo, citing a National Intelligence Service briefing, said that Pyongyang had been attempting to assassinate Kim Jong Nam for five years. A North Korean man jailed for spying in South Korean in 2012 reportedly said he had been ordered to kill Kim.

Another lawmaker, Kim Byung-kee, said that Kim Jong Nam had written to his brother in 2012, asking him to spare his life and those of his family. According to the South China Morning Post, friends of Kim Jong Nam in Macau said he told them he felt he was living on “borrowed time.”

[CNN / The Telegraph]

Sense of betrayal in China after assassination of Kim Jong Nam

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Behind the scenes there is a sense of shock and dismay in Beijing: if indeed Kim Jong Nam was assassinated on the orders of North Korea, it would be seen as an affront to the country that has afforded him protection for many years.

Kim Jong Nam has lived for over a decade in Beijing and Macao, apparently with wives and children in both places. Chinese experts said he had received 24-hour protection–and monitoring–from China’s security services, as well as financial assistance when he needed it.

Said Wang Weimin, a professor at the School of International Relations and Public Affairs at Fudan University in Shanghai, “Kim Jong Nam’s assassination makes China more aware of how unpredictable and cruel the current North Korean regime is, as well as Kim Jong Un’s willingness to abandon China and sell it for his own benefit at any second.”

Relations between Beijing and Pyongyang have deteriorated significantly in recent years, with Chinese President Xi Jinping and Kim Jong Un never having met and believed to share mutual disdain, experts say.

[Washington Post]

Senior North Korean representatives to visit the United States for talks?

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China will suspend all imports of coal from North Korea, effectively slicing the country’s exports by about half. The move, announced by China’s commerce ministry on Saturday, is believed to form part of the country’s efforts to implement United Nations sanctions against North Korea. The Ministry of Commerce said the ban would start February 19 and be effective until December 31.

The ban coincides with a report in The Washington Post that preparations are underway for senior North Korean representatives to visit the United States for talks with former American officials, a sign that Pyongyang may see a potential opening with the Trump administration.

China’s move to ban the imports effectively slices North Korea’s exports in half and came with a message for the US and its allies: it’s time to do a deal. Chinese officials say pushing North Korea into a corner won’t work as Kim Jong-un’s regime will keep developing its nuclear capability until it feels safe.

According to Shi Yongming, an associate research fellow at the Foreign Ministry-run China Institute of International Studies: “Beijing still wants to bring [Kim Jong Un] to a negotiation table – and that’s where the US role lies – because the collapse of the regime is right now outside China’s realistic capacity to handle.”

China has backed the Kim dynasty since it took charge after the Korean War, in part to prevent having a US ally on its border. With the international community enforcing sanctions on North Korea after a series of nuclear tests, China now accounts for more than 90 per cent of its total trade. Coal sales accounted for more than 50 per cent of North Korea’s exports to China last year, and about a fifth of its total trade, according to Yang Moo-jin, a professor at the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul.

[The Sydney Morning Herald]

What can Trump actually do about North Korea?

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Since becoming President, Donald Trump has, at times, looked like a wrecking ball to the international order. But when it comes to North Korea, he may be forced to operate within the narrow constraints of his predecessors.

Some members of the President’s Republican Party have previously argued for a more forceful response to North Korean aggression. Others have advocated the drawing of a red line, telling North Korea explicitly that any intercontinental ballistic missile would be blown up on the launch pad. Trump’s Twitter activity, prior to his inauguration, suggested that he was in agreement with this line of thinking.

But while taking such steps would be vigorous and decisive, it could possibly lead to a wider war.  Escalation can happen very quickly on the peninsula — as was the case in the summer of 1950, when a series of border clashes on the 38th parallel turned into an all-out invasion of South Korea. This context is important to remember when trying to understand the limits facing Trump in constraining North Korea.

The Obama administration pushed very hard for the inclusion of human rights and even International Criminal Court prosecution as a pressure point against North Korea, much to the anger of the regime.  The lack of criticism of North Korea’s many documented human rights violations from the State Department and new Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is surely music to Pyongyang’s ears.

For all its reputation of being a crazed and irrational state, North Korea appears to be taking a rational approach to Trump and waiting to see what happens in Washington. North Korean state media is at present keeping its powder dry: it has not yet attacked Donald Trump by name or criticized him for anything.

It is doubtful that Trump will be able to change things. Short of sending Tillerson or traveling to North Korea himself, it seems unlikely that he will make a significant breakthrough.

[CNN]

The psychological trauma of defecting from North Korea

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In an apartment in Seoul, South Korea, Lee So-yeon wakes in the night, thankful that everything she’s just seen is in the distant past.

She dreams of her former life in North Korea, of swimming the icy waters of the Tumen River, of being captured by traffickers in northern China and subjected to a new set of horrors. She dreams of a failed suicide attempt, of being bound and thrown back into the river unconscious, of the North Korean soldiers who dragged her body from the Tumen, keeping her alive but condemning her to 13 days of starvation and physical brutalization in one of the country’s prisons. She dreams of being stripped naked there and forced to lie on a bed with four other women as a guard examined her bodily cavities, keeping the same unsterilized gloves on to search all five women. She dreams of the darkness of her cell, punctuated by smells of her own excrement and compares it to the black of being kicked unconscious by guards.

But she also dreams of release—getting out of prison, swimming the Tumen again, and taking a boat to Seoul, beginning the resettlement process in 2008, two years after her first escape attempt. She dreams of the day when, for the first time, a doctor told her that the nightmares and flashbacks were symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, a condition many defectors face, and the hopelessness and despondency that hung over her waking life were symptoms of depression. Unlike what she was taught growing up, other North Koreans experienced these conditions too, and in Seoul, she could talk about them without fear of being sent to an institution few ever leave.

For resettlement and medical professionals working with North Korean migrants like Lee, a major step in providing effective mental health interventions is convincing defectors that the issues they face are diagnosable and treatable. While defectors are generally aware that mental health exists, they know little to nothing about specific conditions, the prevalence of mental health issues, and treatment strategies.

Defectors show high rates of psychological trauma. It can be caused by everything ranging from starvation or abuse to fearing capture after resettlement or retribution taken out on loved ones left behind. Despite the suffering, research shows that North Korean migrants are frequently averse to even basic mental health help.

[PBS]

Kim Jong Un “MacBeth with nukes”

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Malaysian authorities arrested the second of two women in connection with the death Monday of Kim Jong Nam, the elder half-brother of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, who died on his way to a hospital after an unidentified woman covered his face with a cloth containing an agent of some sort.

North Korean diplomats unsuccessfully tried to prevent an autopsy and obtain the return of Kim Jong Nam’s body.

Jong Nam in recent years lived under Chinese protection. Beijing apparently wanted a Kim in reserve to possibly serve as a China-friendly leader of a successor regime in Pyongyang. Jong Nam, often called a playboy, appeared to harbor no desire to do so and exhibited little aptitude for such a demanding role. In reality, Jong Nam posed virtually no threat to his half-brother’s rule, but that did not mean Jong Un did not try to kill him. (There was also an assassination attempt in 2012.)

Ordering a hit on a Kim, in a society where family members were once considered divine and where regime legitimacy rests on bloodline, is an especially heinous act. It is also a desperate one. The execution of a family member can intimidate others in the short term, but it erodes support and undermines regime credibility. The murder could even be interpreted as a last resort.

The killing of his Nam Jong is not the only sign of instability in Pyongyang this month. Two weeks ago, for instance, the world learned of the demotion of the minister of state security, General Kim Won Hong. On Sunday, the chief of North Korea’s strategic missile forces did not witness the launch of the Pukguksong-2 intermediate-range missile, indicating instability at the top of the Korean People’s Army.

Whether Kim Jong Un is deeply insecure or suffering from a “delusional disorder”—the diagnosis of South Korea’s National Intelligence Service—the international community faces a North Korean supremo who now exhibits a low threshold for risk, largely because he feels he has so little to lose.

Kim has long-range missiles—three that can reach the western U.S.—and a stockpile of enough plutonium and uranium to fashion about 16 to 20 warheads. His technicians have almost certainly learned how to mate a nuclear warhead to his intermediate-range missiles and within, say, four years will have mastered the ability to strap on nukes to his intercontinental-range missiles as well. So call his murderous family drama “Macbeth with Nukes.”

[The Daily Beast]

North Korea’s long history of assassinations

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If two North Korean female agents are responsible for the murder of Kim Jong-Nam, it would be the latest in a long history of planned assassinations and attacks by the secretive state.

Kim Jong-Un, the younger brother of Kim Jong-Nam, has overseen a purge of various “traitors” perceived to be a threat to his regime since he came to power in December 2011. If it was an ordered hit by the younger sibling on his elder brother, it would not be the first time North Korean operatives have targeted defectors, South Korean leaders or members of the Kim clan.

:: In December 2013, the North Korean leader’s uncle was branded a “traitor” and executed by machine gun for “attempting to overthrow the state by all sorts of intrigues and despicable methods”.

:: Yi Han-Yong, a nephew of Kim Jong-Nam’s mother was shot dead in February 1997 outside his home in Bundang, Seongnam. The two assailants were never caught.

:: South Korean diplomat Choi Duk-Keun was bludgeoned to death in Vladivostok, a port city in Russia, in October 1996. South Korean media reports said he was killed to avenge the deaths of 25 North Korean commandos who died when their vessel ran aground in the South.

:: Korean Air flight 858 was flying from Baghdad to Seoul on 29 November 1987 when it exploded over the Andaman Sea, killing all 115 people on board. One of the two bombers … confessed the bombing had aimed to hamper the 1988 Seoul Olympics.

:: North Korean undercover agents killed 21 people including four South Korean cabinet ministers in a bomb attack in Rangoon, Myanmar, in October 1983, which was intended to kill then South Korean president Chun Doo-Hwan.

:: In January 1968 a team of 31 North Korean commandos attempted to assassinate then South Korean president Park Chung-Hee, but were stopped some 100 metres from the presidential Blue House. … There was a further failed attempt to kill Mr Park in 1974.

[Sky News]

North Korea purged and executed thousands after Jang Song Thaek was killed?

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North Korea may have ordered a sweeping massacre of about 1,000 people after the execution of Jang Song Thaek, claims a defector activist in South Korea.

Kang Chol-hwan, president of the North Korea Strategy Center, said in addition to the mass slaughter a total of 20,000 people were purged under Kim Jong Un, South Korean newspaper Segye Ilbo reported.

“In connection to the case of Jang Song Thaek, 415 cadres in the Korean Workers’ Party, more than 300 people in affiliated organizations, and 200 officers in the state security department were shot to death,” Kang said.

There have been previous reports in South Korea media that Jang’s death sentence in 2013 triggered the executions of other senior officials. But Kang’s assertions on Friday mark the first time an analyst has said the state executed 1,000 people in the case of Jang, who was Kim Jong Un’s uncle-in-law. Relatives were reportedly purged or sent to prison camps because of Jang, the activist said.

Kang said his information was drawn from the testimonies of six North Koreans who recently escaped the country, including statements from former diplomat Thae Yong-ho.

The North Korea Strategy Center, a non-profit organization that seeks to aid defectors with development programs and international support networks, is planning to bring the Jang Song Thaek case before the International Criminal Court in The Hague, South Korean news service Newsis reported.

[UPI]

North Korean leader’s brother Kim Jong-nam killed at Malaysia airport

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The half-brother of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, Kim Jong-nam, has been killed in an attack in the Malaysian capital, Kuala Lumpur. Malaysian police say he was waiting at the airport for a flight to Macau on Monday when a woman covered his face with a cloth which burnt his eyes.

Malaysian police official Fadzil Ahmat confirmed that the victim was indeed Kim Jong-nam, as well as adding these details: “While waiting for the flight, a woman came from behind and covered his face with a cloth laced with a liquid. Following this, the man was seen struggling for help and managed to obtain the assistance of a KLIA [Kuala Lumpur International Airport] receptionist as his eyes suffered burns as a result of the liquid. Moments later, he was sent to the Putrajaya Hospital where he was confirmed dead.”

“So far there are no suspects, but we have started investigations and are looking at a few possibilities to get leads,” Fadzil Ahmat told Reuters news agency separately.

The late Kim Jong-il’s eldest son is thought to have fled North Korea after being passed over for the leadership. Kim Jong-nam became one of the North Korean regime’s highest profile critics, openly questioning the Stalinist policies and dynastic succession his grandfather Kim Il-sung began crafting in 1948. Following his father’s death, Kim‘s comments about his younger brother … singled him out as Kim Jong-un most vocal, and high profile, critic.

The results of an autopsy on his body have not yet been released.

[BBC]