Category: China

North Korean defector now a London graduate student

Posted on by

sungju-lee-north-korean-defectorSungju Lee is a graduate student in London today. During his childhood, his father was in North Korea’s military and they lived in Pyongyang …where Lee enjoyed a rather lush life: excellent Taekwondo classes, good schools, and plenty of food on the table.

One day, “my father came to the house and then just told me that we’re going to the northern part of North Korea for vacation,” Lee said. He realized something was amiss because they had to change trains at one point. “The condition of the second train was really bad,” he told VOA’s Asia Weekly podcast. “It was smelly. He said, “There weren’t even any proper chairs on the train. It was packed with people.”

Life in Gyeong-seong was rough and his family struggled. After a year, his father left, making his way to China, later followed by his mother. Without any way to provide for himself, he found himself on the streets, forming a gang with other kids in order to pickpocket, steal food, or earn money by taking men to see “night flowers,” a euphemism for prostitutes. Lee knew stealing wasn’t right, but remembered, “The first time stealing was really, really difficult. The second time got easier. The third time was much easier. And then after fourth time, fifth time …it became my job.”

He was on the streets for four years, moving from town to town, because staying too long in one place would mean merchants would recognize them and stop them from looting. He returned to Gyeong-seong in February 2001 and went to the train station, looking for a mark to steal from when an elderly man approached him. The man said he knew Lee and wanted to take him home. Unbeknownst to him, Lee was plotting to rob him of everything of value he had.

“[When] I entered his house, … my eyes went to the wall. There was my mother’s wedding picture. [The man] was my real grandfather.”

In October 2002, a man came to his grandfather’s house, sent by his father. The man helped Lee defect to South Korea and ultimately reunite with his father.

Sungju Lee’s complete story can be read in the new book Every Falling Star.

[VoA]

Why China refuses to block North Korea’s nuclear ambitions

Posted on by

China’s latest diplomatic crisis began with an earthquake in a region not known for seismic activity [caused by North Korea’s nuclear test.]. And China analysts don’t expect Beijing to do much. Concerned about the implications of a North Korean collapse, China shows little appetite for confrontation.

“The reason North Korea dared to conduct this nuclear test is because it knew the Chinese are very much handcuffed,” said Tong Zhao, an associate at Carnegie-Tsinghua Center for Global Policy in Beijing.

China is the only lifeline for leader Kim Jong Un. The bigger neighbor accounts for 90% of North Korea’s trade, much of it along the Yalu River, which serves as a border between the two countries.

Leaders worry that economic upheaval in the totalitarian nation could flood northeastern China with millions of refugees, Zhao said. But they fear much more the loss of a buffer between China and U.S.-backed South Korea, with its nearly 30,000 American troops.

China already is incensed at a July agreement between Seoul and the U.S. to deploy a missile defense system, known as Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, to protect the South from any Pyongyang attacks. Beijing sees the equipment as a threat to its own national security.

The tensions threaten efforts at any unified strategy toward North Korea. And they likely handed the unpredictable, 32-year-old Kim a greater opportunity to flout international sanctions. Many doubt China will approve stronger sanctions.

“For China, North Korea is a necessary evil,” said Zhang Baohui, the director of the Center for Asian Pacific Studies at Lingnan University in Hong Kong. “China has to maintain the survival of the North Korean regime. That’s its fundamental quagmire.”

“From China’s point of view, North Korea’s real weapon of destruction is chaos,” said Euan Graham, former charge d’affairs at the British embassy in Pyongyang and current international security program director at the Lowy Institute for International Policy in Australia. “The fear of chaos runs so deep in the Chinese psyche that it’s this overriding fear [that dominates] rather than one of a freelancing and uncontrollable ally.”

So far, Beijing has agreed only to push for multi-country talks that stalled seven years ago.

Beijing now kicks the ball to the U.S. and South Korea. States Zhang, the Hong Kong professor, “China has accepted the reality of a nuclear North Korea.”

[LA Times]

Few expect China to punish North Korea for latest nuclear test

Posted on by

North Korea’s biggest nuclear test, conducted last week less than 50 miles from the Chinese border, sent tremors through homes and schools in China’s northeast. But hours later, there was no mention of the test on China’s state-run evening television news, watched by hundreds of millions of viewers.

Although North Korea remains nearly 100 percent dependent on China for oil and food, Chinese analysts say that Beijing will not modify its allegiance to North Korea or pressure the country to curtail its drive for a full-fledged nuclear arsenal, as the United States keeps requesting.

China sees living with a Communist-ruled nuclear-armed state on its border as preferable to the chaos of its collapse, says Shi Yinhong, a professor of international relations at Renmin University in Beijing. The Chinese leadership is confident that North Korea would not turn its weapons on China, and that China would be able to control its neighbor by providing enough oil to keep its economy afloat.

The alternative is a strategic nightmare for Beijing: a collapsed North Korean regime, millions of refugees piling into China, and a unified Korean Peninsula under an American defense treaty.

The Obama administration’s decision to deploy an advanced missile defense system THAAD in South Korea also gives President Xi Jinping of China less incentive to cooperate with Washington on a North Korea strategy that could aim, for example, to freeze the North’s nuclear capacity, the analysts said. THAAD has effectively killed any chance of China cooperating with the United States, they said. Beijing interprets the THAAD deployment as another American effort to contain China.

“China is strongly opposed to North Korea’s nuclear weapons but at the same time opposes the defense system in South Korea,” said Cheng Xiaohe, an assistant professor of international relations at Renmin University. It was not clear which situation the Chinese leadership was most agitated about, he said.

The longstanding fear that punitive economic action would destabilize North Korea makes it unlikely that Beijing would cooperate with the United States on more stringent sanctions at the United Nations, according to Chinese analysts.

So despite what Chinese analysts describe as the government’s distaste for Kim Jong Un and his unpredictable behavior, China’s basic calculus on North Korea remains firm. Mr. Xi would continue to ensure that North Korea remained stable.

[New York Times]

What does North Korea want?

Posted on by

Friday’s nuclear test has erased any doubt that North Korea is serious about its nuclear program. But aside from fear-mongering and posturing — just what does North Korea hope to achieve?

Rather than a bargaining chip used to gain more foreign aid or access to the world stage, it appears that the country’s nuclear weapons program boils down to a matter of dignity and national pride.

First off, the latest nuclear test was timed to coincide with North Korea’s National Day on September 9. In the statement from North Korea’s Nuclear Weapons Institute announcing the operation, it said it would continue to develop its weapons for “safeguarding its dignity and right to existence and genuine peace.”

It blamed the “racket of threat and sanctions against the DPRK kicked up by the US-led hostile forces… to find fault with the sovereign state’s exercise of the right to self-defense.”

Melissa Hanham, a senior research associate at the East Asia Nonproliferation Program (EANP) stated: “For years, we have mocked their nuclear and missile capabilities and 2016 seems to really be about demonstrating what they have and what they can do.”

“Clearly [North Korea doesn’t] care about what we think,” Christopher Hill, the former US ambassador to South Korea told CNN. “They don’t care about our admonitions. They don’t care about joining the international community… they certainly don’t care about the UN Security Council resolutions.”

Hill says there needs to be something more to bring about any change with Kim’s regime. “I think we need to sit down with the Chinese… and say, ‘Together we need to solve this,'” he said.

[CNN]

Is China impotent when it comes to North Korea’s actions?

Posted on by

North Korea’s latest nuclear test will pile the pressure on China — the country’s economic benefactor and only real ally — to rein in Kim Jong Un’s regime.

But, even if it were willing, Beijing increasingly appears unable to influence its unruly neighbor.

“It won’t cut off economic ties completely; that would make China vulnerable to North Korea threats… and a potential collapse,” says Tong Zhao, an associate at the Carnegie Tsinghua Center for Global Policy in Beijing.

Relations between Pyongyang and Beijing have been frosty since Kim Jong Un succeeded his late father as dictator, promptly purging several key government figures — such as his uncle Jang Song Thaek — with strong ties to China.

Kim has never visited China as leader, nor has he met President Xi Jinping, despite reportedly lobbying to do so for several years.

Concerning the North Korean nuclear test back in January, Mike Chinoy, former CNN international correspondent and the author of “Meltdown: The inside story of the North Korean nuclear crisis,” had called it a “real slap in the face” for China.

In March, China joined the international community in placing the toughest ever sanctions on the country. Speaking on Friday, Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying declined to say if China would support new, tougher sanctions.

[CNN]

North Korea carries out biggest ever nuclear test

Posted on by

The United States condemns North Korea’s Friday nuclear test “in the strongest possible terms as a grave threat to regional security and to international peace and stability,” President Barack Obama said in a statement.

North Korea said it has hit the button on its fifth and potentially most powerful nuclear test Friday morning, claiming to have successfully detonated a nuclear warhead that could be mounted on ballistic rockets. State media said the test would enable North Korea to produce “a variety of smaller, lighter and diversified nuclear warheads of higher strike power.”

A blast detected in North Korea around 9 a.m. local time (8:30 p.m. ET) is estimated to have had the explosive power of 10 kilotons, almost twice as large as its most recent test in January, said Kim Nam-wook of South Korea’s Meteorological Administration. (By comparison, the nuclear bomb that the United States dropped on Hiroshima in World War II yielded about 15 kilotons.)

South Korea, Japan and China condemned the test, saying it was a clear violation of UN Security Council resolutions. The Security Council plans to hold an emergency meeting on the issue Friday, a senior US official and a UN official said.

Seismic activity was detected Friday morning near Punggye-ri — the same location as four other tests. The US Geological Survey reported a 5.3-magnitude earthquake but later termed it an explosion.

Though North Korea has continued to improve its nuclear and missile capabilities, it has yet to pair the two successfully. But concern has been growing that the country is testing weapons at an unprecedented pace this year, CNN international correspondent Paula Hancocks said.

The test is another slap in the face to the North’s chief ally China which has been under pressure to rein in its behavior, and diminishes any chance of a resumption of six-country talks on North Korea’s nuclear program.

[CNN/AFP]

China has a new detention center for North Korean refugees

Posted on by

China appears to have built a new detention center near the North Korea border, according to an exclusive South Korea press report on Tuesday.

The camp, according to a China-based source who spoke to Newsis on the condition of anonymity, was built to keep arrested North Korean refugees in China. North Korean defectors are apparently kept at the facility until they are repatriated to the North, according to the source.

Photographs of the camp, located near the Chinese city of Tumen, Jilin Province, show a blue building with an arched roof. Facilities include the blue building, a management office and a watchtower next to the detention center.

The status of North Korean refugees in China remains uncertain. Beijing does not recognize the defectors as refugees, and have previously cooperated with Pyongyang in repatriating North Koreans who have fled their country.

[UPI]

North Korean ballistic missile launch during G20 meeting in China

Posted on by

North Korea fired three ballistic missiles Monday morning, according to South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, towards the Sea of Japan. Sources at Japan’s Defence ministry said the missiles likely landed in the sea 200 to 250 km (120-160 miles) west of Hokkaido, Japan’s northern-most main island.

This comes just under two weeks after Pyongyang test-fired a submarine-launched ballistic missile which entered Japan’s air defense identification zone, the first time that had happened.

It also comes at a potentially embarrassing time for North Korea’s only real ally, China, which is currently hosting the Group of Nations summit in Hangzhou.

At the G20, Chinese President Xi Jinping told his South Korean counterpart on Monday that Beijing opposes the deployment of the United States’ THAAD missile defense system to South Korea, according to China’s official Xinhua News Agency. The stated purpose of the THAAD system is to defend South Korea from missile attack from North Korea.

[CNN/Reuters]

North Korean women in China ‘sold without their knowledge’

Posted on by

See-Yeon Kim defected to China and was repatriated back to North Korea.  She escaped again in 2008 and settled in South Korea. She shares the following insight:

Human trafficking smugglers [have existed] ever since traders along the China-North Korean border area requested North Korean women in return for money.

Women who [defected] were able to settle down if they met good people amongst the many Korean-Chinese living along the frontier. However, there were also a lot of North Korean smugglers living near the frontier who knew the situation of these women very well.

Many times, women defectors were [enticed for meals, drugged and] sold without their knowledge [to] ignorant, old men whom these women had no interest in. These unmarried old men would buy North Korean women and force them to bear children.  At first, women denied and complained but they had no idea how to escape and nowhere to run to. They didn’t even know how to speak Chinese so they had no choice but to stay.

There are still North Koreans out there who either defected or were sold, living in this condition. These North Koreans who are still living in Chinese households do not know anything about the outside world. They don’t know how the country is run, and they don’t know how to get out of their situation right now or where to go. They are unsure if their lives will be any better. They have no choice but to live their lives like this.

Many of these people are still indicated as ‘missing’ or ‘dead’ back home in North Korea. However, the families still have hopes that they are alive.

[Radio Free Asia]

North Korean math whiz defector now in South Korea

Posted on by

The North Korean defector who sought refuge in Hong Kong last month left the city for South Korea about a week ago. A source told the South China Morning Post that the youth, identified as Jong Yol-ri, was accompanied by staff from the South Korean consulate and the Hong Kong government to the city’s airport where he boarded a flight for Seoul about a week ago. “It was a night flight,” the source said.

According to YTN, 18-year-old Jong – who defected while in Hong Kong to attend a math competition – intends to further his studies outside South Korea. The Post was told the student was likely to settle in the United States after a couple of months.

Jong, a two-time silver medalist who had just picked up a third at this year’s math contest, was staying at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, where the annual Olympiad was held, before he left his five teammates and fled.

The South Korean consulate, where Jong sought refuge after sneaking away from the 57th International Mathematical Olympiad on July 16, did not respond to the Post’s inquiries.

Jong is the first known North Korean to defect in Hong Kong since the city’s handover to China in 1997. Security around the South Korean Consulate was visibly stepped up after he sought refuge there. It was understood that uniformed and plainclothes officers from the counter-terrorism unit were deployed there.

Steve Chung Lok-wai, an ­expert in Korean affairs at Chinese University, said the defector’s departure was likely to have been ­endorsed by the Beijing ­government.

[South China Morning Post]