Category: China

Bureau 121 hackers operating in China says defector

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In the northeastern Chinese city of Shenyang, you’ll find businesses owned and operated by the North Korean government.

You’ll also find a secret network of North Korean hackers, known as Bureau 121, according to defector Kim Heung-Kwang.

“It’s easy for them to work secretly. It also has great Internet infrastructure,” says Kim Heung-kwang, a former Pyongyang computer science professor who escaped North Korea in 2004. Kim says some of his own students became cyber warriors for the hacker network. “By day, they worked regular jobs. But the rest of the time, they were acting on orders from Pyongyang,” he says.

Kim claims North Korean hackers operated secretly in Shenyang for years, moving from location to location to conceal their whereabouts and activities. “Bureau 121 began its large-scale operation in China in 2005. It was established in the late 90s,” Kim says.

“Team members entered China separately — in smaller groups — 20 members at a time,” he says. “When they entered China, they came under different titles. For example an office worker, an official with a trade company or even as a diplomatic staffer.”

Long before North Korea had its own Internet, it dialed in to servers in Shenyang, in Liaoning Province, in the country’s north. Today, nearly all of North Korea’s Internet traffic is still routed through China.

Kim says the operation in China scaled back considerably a few years ago, when North Korea expanded its high speed Internet access. But he believes hackers are still operating in Shenyang.

“North Korea does have illicit activities in China,” says Steve Sin, a terrorism expert at the University of Maryland and former U.S. military intelligence analyst. Sin wrote a report naming Shenyang as a North Korean hacker hub. “It has the location, security, as well as infrastructure,” Sin says.

“Right now, the best information available to us is that they are still conducting such an operation and they can still conduct such an operation from that location.”

[CNN]

Chinese annoyance with North Korea bubbles to the surface

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When a retired Chinese general with impeccable Communist Party credentials recently wrote a scathing account of North Korea, as a recalcitrant ally headed for collapse and unworthy of support, he exposed a roiling debate in China about how to deal with the country’s young leader, Kim Jong-un.

For decades China has stood by North Korea, and though at times the relationship has soured, it has rarely reached such a low point, Chinese analysts say. The fact that the commentary by Lt. Gen. Wang Hongguang, a former deputy commander of an important military region, was published in a state-run newspaper and then posted on an official People’s Liberation Army website attested to how much the relationship had deteriorated, the analysts say.

“China has cleaned up the D.P.R.K.’s mess too many times,” General Wang wrote in The Global Times. Of the government in North Korea, he said: “If an administration isn’t supported by the people, ‘collapse’ is just a matter of time.” Moreover, North Korea had violated the spirit of the mutual defense treaty with China, he said, by failing to consult China on its nuclear weapons program, which has created instability in Northeast Asia.

A Chinese official who is closely involved in China’s diplomacy with North Korea said that General Wang’s disparaging attitude was more prevalent in the Chinese military today than in any previous period. “General Wang’s views really reflect the views of many Chinese—and within the military views are varied,” said the official, who declined to be named because of the sensitivity of the matter.

[NY Times]

The cold relationship between China and North Korea

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The last time a Chinese leader visited North Korea was in July 2013 when Vice President Li Yuanchao tried to patch up relations, and pressed North Korea, after its third nuclear test in February 2013, to slow down its nuclear weapons program. Mr. Li failed in that quest.

After the vice president’s visit, relations plummeted further, entering the icebox in December 2013 when China’s main conduit within the North Korean government, Jang Song-thaek, a senior official and the uncle of Kim Jong-un, was executed in a purge.

In July, President Xi Jinping snubbed North Korea, visiting South Korea instead. Mr. Xi has yet to visit North Korea, and is said to have been infuriated by a third nuclear test by North Korea in February 2013, soon after Kim Jong-un came to power.

A heightened debate in China is spurred in part by fears that North Korea could collapse even though economic conditions in the agriculture sector seemed ready to improve, several Chinese analysts said. Indeed, one of the tricky balancing acts for China is how much to curtail fuel supplies and other financial support without provoking a collapse that could send refugees into China’s northeastern provinces, and result in a unified Korean Peninsula loyal to the United States.

“If China presses D.P.R.K. too hard it could collapse,” Zheng Jiyong, director of the Center for Korean Studies at Fudan University, said. “But if it doesn’t press hard enough it will become uncontrolled and do more things like nuclear tests.”

[NY Times]

North Korean defector: Hunger is humiliation and hopelessness

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As a boy, Joseph Kim could only watch helplessly, he says, as he watched his father “wither and die” in the isolated country’s devastating famine in the 1990s, which led to the tragic disintegration of his once loving family.

Kim was 12 when his father died, and his mother and sister left for China to try to find food.

When his mom returned she was alone, having sold his sister to a man in the belief that she may have a better life, according to Kim’s account.

Kim, who now studies in New York, after himself escaping to China in 2006, urged his audience not to judge his mom harshly — as he still tries to track down his sister. “So many North Korean mothers are forced to make these kind of heartbreaking decisions.”

“This isn’t just my story, but the story of millions of North Korean people,” said 24-year-old Kim. Once orphaned, he said, he would wander the streets rummaging through trash cans. “Hunger is humiliation, hunger is hopelessness,” said Kim.

[AFP]

Defector speaks of North Korea horrors

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When Yeon-Mi Park was 9 years old, she and everyone in her North Korean village were forced to watch in horror the execution of a woman for the crime of watching illegal DVDs, she says. The victim was the mother of one of her friends.

Park was born in Hyesan, the daughter of a government official, whose job provided the family with relative stability and protection. Then came the famine, and to survive her father set up a small illegal trading business smuggling goods into China, says Park.

“In 2004 my whole world came crashing down. My father, my hero, got arrested for his illegal trading business.” He was sent to a hard-labor camp, and the family was marked. “We had no real future anymore.”

So, Park said, she and her mother decided to sneak over the border into China, where a trader spotted them. In exchange for not giving them away, he demanded sex with Park, then just 13. “My mom offered to be raped in order to protect me,” she said simply.

Later, after her father had rejoined them in China but died of lung cancer, Park and her mother met up with a group heading to Mongolia.

“We walked and crawled across the Gobi desert, evading Chinese police, kidnappers and wild animals. We followed the compass, but it broke, so we followed the stars to freedom . . . we wanted to live as human beings,” she said.

[AFP]

North Korean defector: I could not trust anyone

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A North Korean defector has spoken out about how he escaped from the world’s most secretive state with his infant son strapped to his back and a cyanide pill in his mouth. Choi Joong-Ha left North Korea with his wife Yun-Ah-Jung and one-year-old son Joon Choi in 2004. He had been conditioned into such a state of paranoia that he did not tell his wife about the escape.

Joong-Ha told his wife they were going to visit his brother who lived near the Chinese border. When they reached the Tumen River that separates the two countries he revealed the real reason they had come. “My wife was not pleased and she didn’t want to go. If the authority catches you trying to escape, you will be shot or sent to a camp.”

For 12 years Joong-Ha had been in the North Korean army and would, therefore, have been subjected to the most severe punishment if he had been caught trying to leave. Because of this he waded across the river with his son strapped to his back and a cyanide pill in his mouth. “I would have been arrested, tortured and put in a camp or shot there and then. If the authorities saw us trying to cross it would be better to die in the river.”

The trip across the river took a day and when Joong-Ha and his family got into China they had to strip off their clothes and dispose of anything that might identify them as North Korean. He said: “Just because we had got to China it didn’t mean we were safe. Every day we were fearful of being caught and being deported.

“We were lucky that my wife had family near the border and she and my son could stay with them. They helped us a lot.”

After four years working as a labourer, Joong-Ha managed to save enough money to pay a broker to take him and his family to the UK.

[Full story]

China-North Korea relations still strained a year after Jang Song-thaek’s death

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It wasn’t welcome news for China last year, when it heard North Korea’s young leader Kim Jong-un purged his uncle, Jang Song-thaek.

Jang was well known for supporting closer ties with China, especially for Beijing-backed economic reforms.

A year has passed, but China and North Korea relations are still feeling the strain from Jang’s execution. The number of political exchanges between the two countries has fallen sharply. In July, the Chinese president visited South Korea first, skipping a traditional stopover in Pyongyang.

As for their economic ties, the two countries were looking to develop North Korea’s Rason and Hwanggumpyong special economic zones. However, these projects also hit a major speed bump after Jang’s death.

In numbers, China’s trade with North Korea still accounts for most of North Korea’s foreign trade.

As for North Korea’s nuclear test threats, Beijing was unusually bold in its criticism. It agreed to tighten UN Security Council sanctions on the regime.

But while North Korea may be losing China, it’s making friends with Russia.

[Arirang News]

UN Security Council members push to put North Korea rights on agenda

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A U.N. Commission of Inquiry report in February detailed abuses in North Korea that it said were comparable to Nazi-era atrocities, and a U.N. committee last month urged the Security Council to consider referring North Korea to the International Criminal Court (ICC) alleging crimes against humanity.

China, likely supported by Russia, would probably veto any referral to the international court based in The Hague, diplomats say, but it cannot block having the rights situation added to the council agenda.

Ten of the Security Council’s 15 members – Australia, Chile, France, Jordan, Lithuania, Luxembourg, South Korea, Rwanda, Britain and the United States – signed a letter drafted by Australia asking for the council to be briefed by U.N. officials on the human rights situation in North Korea.

“We are particularly concerned by the scale and gravity of human rights violations detailed in the comprehensive report” by the Commission of Inquiry, said the letter, a copy of which was obtained by Reuters.

Majority support is needed to add a new item to the U.N. Security Council agenda and such a move cannot be blocked by any of the five veto-wielding powers – the United States, Russia, France, Britain and China, diplomats said.

Once an issue is on the agenda of the U.N. Security Council it can be discussed by the body at any time.

[Reuters]

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.

[continued]

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]