Category: DPRK Government

Kim Jong Un had ankle surgery

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South Korea’s spy agency said Tuesday it has solved the mystery of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s 6-week public absence.

The National Intelligence Service told legislators that a foreign doctor operated on Kim to remove a cyst from his right ankle, according to Park Byeong-seok, an aide for opposition lawmaker Shin Kyung-min. The aide said the spy agency also told lawmakers in a closed-door briefing that the cyst could recur because of Kim’s obesity, smoking and heavy public schedule.

The agency also said North Korea has expanded five of its political prisoner camps, including the Yodok camp, which was relocated to the northwest city of Kilchu, according to Lim Dae-seong, an aide to ruling party lawmaker Lee Cheol-woo, who also attended the briefing. The spy agency believes the camps hold about 100,000 prisoners, Lim said.

He said the agency also believes that North Korea recently used a firing squad to execute several people who had been close to Kim Jong Un’s uncle, Jang Song Thaek, who was considered the country’s No. 2 power before his sudden purge and execution in December 2013.

South Korea’s spy agency had correctly predicted that Jang had been dismissed from his posts before North Korea officially announced his arrest.

[Newsmax]

North Korean prison camps “without any parallel in the contemporary world”

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The gulags of North Korea exist in a strange world between secret and unsecret. No one knows for sure how many thousands or millions are locked away in the camps, which officially do not exist, and information about what goes on there can be sparse. But we can watch the camps grow and contract from satellites, where they’re so plainly and publicly visible they’re labeled on Google Maps, and we are learning more all the time from the trickle of defectors and escapees who make it out of the Hermit Kingdom.

A United Nations report called the camps a human rights abuse “without any parallel in the contemporary world.”

North Korea operates four enormous labor camps for political prisoners — sprawling, city-sized facilities in the country’s frigid and mountainous north. Most inmates are sent for life as punishment for minor slights, or because a relative committed some offense. They are subjected to backbreaking labor, routine torture and starvation, constant fear of arbitrary execution, and conditions so squalid most do not survive past age 45.

These gulags — which are separate from the country’s more conventional prison systems — are thought to house 100,000 or more people, including many women and children. Often, entire families are sent away for one member’s offense, through two or three generations. Sometimes inmates will have no idea why they’re there, or will have never met the relative for whom they are punished with a life of torture and malnutrition.

Inmates are given not quite enough food to survive, forcing them to turn against one another — or curry favor somehow with the guards — to secure enough to eat. They are assigned brutally punishing work, such as coal mining without proper equipment or ventilation. Women and girls are subject to rape and molestation by guards.

Because the generations-long sentences mean that something to akin to families often form in the camps, inmates live with the fear that they will be tortured or killed for a family member’s crime — and are often forced to betray their own family to survive.

[Vox]

North Korea officials disappear from public view

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Last year Kim Jong Un executed his uncle and other officials. And now the JoongAng Daily reports that a number of key officials within Kim’s
cabinet have not attended important events for several weeks, and rumors abound that these six minister-level officials may have been executed.

Sim Chol-ho, the telecommunication minister, is among the six
 officials currently missing from public view.

Also not seen for some time is Ma Won-chun, a prominent
 architect and construction official, who is director of the National Defense Commission Design Department
and was appointed to deputy director of the Workers’ Party in May 2012.

General Ri Pyong-chol, the commanding officer of North Korea’s air force, has not been seen at any public events since
 the end of September when he was elected to the National Defense
 Commission at the Supreme People’s Assembly.

Rumor is also growing that sports official Chang Ung, a member of
 the International Olympic Committee, has been purged due to his
 prolonged absence in state media over the past few weeks.

Ri Yong-gil, chief of the General Staff of the North Korean People’s Army, did not attend a meeting with gold medalists, an event where military leaders are expected to be present as many athletes are also
 soldiers.

Aidan Foster-Carter, an Honorary Senior Research Fellow in Sociology
and Modern Korea at Leeds University, said JoongAng Ilbo is a reputable daily paper, making reports of a purge more
 credible. He added: “At this stage I am reluctant to go further. Two months is not long
 to be absent – remember Kim Jong-un disappeared himself recently. North Korea elites do go in and out of the limelight.”

The alleged purge follows what Kim described as the removal of
 “Factionalist filth” in December when he executed his own uncle Jang 
Song Thaek and other prominent figures in the capital Pyongyang.

[Daily Mirror]

North Korean defectors describe life in prison camps

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Kim Hye-Sook, a defector from North Korea, was 13 when she was incarcerated in a prison camp together with her family. Over the years, her parents, brother, husband and children died of starvation or were involved in accidents.

Kim recounted to the UN the sufferings she and other prisoners suffered in the hands of their captors, including years of starvation, hard labor and torture. To indicate how bad food shortage is, Kim revealed that some women detainees had to eat babies to alleviate their hunger.

She shared that a family of 7 was allocated 7.5 kilograms of corn monthly, which when dried shrunk to 4.5 kilograms. Most of the time they ate only once a day, forcing them to eat mountain grass.

Another defector, Jung Kwang-Il, was quoted as saying, “I was starving so much so I said, ‘If you feed me well, I will confess my crime.’ As a result, I confessed and had a great meal.”

Upon hearing the harrowing experience of the North Korean detainees, Michael Kirbey, chairman of the UN Commission of Inquiry Report, which held a hearing at the UN headquarters in New York on Wednesday, recommended for the Security Council to bring the North Korean government to the International Criminal Court and face charges of crime against humanity.

He stressed, “We stand for the principles of the United Nations and we expect accountability for great crimes before justice. And that is the right of people of North Korea.”

[International Business Times]

Anti-North Korean leaflets launched from S.Korea amid concerns from locals

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South Korean activists launched balloons on Saturday to send leaflets to North Korea with messages critical of its leader, ignoring threats of military action from Pyongyang and a plea by Seoul not to jeopardize efforts to improve ties with the North.

Anti-North activists clashed with residents of the border area and leftist group members advocating engagement with North Korea. Local people tried to block the balloon launch, saying it threatened peace. A string of incidents appear to have turned many in the South against the leaflet campaign.

But a small group of mostly North Korean defectors broke away and launched balloons carrying about 20,000 leaflets from the nearby city of Gimpo after nightfall. Speaking to Reuters by telephone, the leader of the group, Pak Sang-hak, confirmed the launch.

“Things like this will trigger artillery firing at us,” said Kwon Soon-wan, 63, who said he was born and raised in Munsan, the northern-most area of Paju. “Safety is top priority because it’s our lives that are hanging in the balance,” he added.

On Saturday, the North’s official Rodong Sinmun newspaper repeated a warning that inter-Korea ties will forever collapse if the South Korean government continued to allow the leaflet campaign, which it called “an act of war.”

The propaganda printed on the leaflets infuriates Pyongyang. The messages often single out the North’s young leader Kim Jong Un, questioning his legitimacy to rule a country where people struggle with poverty while his family lives in luxury and scarce resources are channeled to arms programs.

[Reuters]

North Korean diplomats get an earful at the UN

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North Korean official Choe Yong-nam flew in to New York from Pyongyang to protest attempts by “hostile” elements, including America and Australia, to defame his country, but he was also forced to hear an earful about his country’s human rights record Wednesday.

In an extraordinary session at the United Nations, Choe and the UN ambassador from the Democratic Republic of North Korea (DPRK), Ja Song-nam, sat through a long session where the horrific human rights conditions in the repressive country were painstakingly detailed.

The most engaging speaker at the Wednesday session was Michael Kirby, a retired Australian High Court Justice who has led a UN-commissioned investigation into North Korea’s labor camps, its kidnappings and torture of dissidents and the policies that led to mass starvation in the country.

Last year Kirby was so shocked after hearing hundreds of testimonies from victims of the North Korean regime, that he proposed referring Pyongyang’s leaders, through the Security Council, to the International Criminal Court, where they could be tried for crimes against humanity.

For now, Australia, Botswana and Panama merely tabled a condemnation resolution at the Third Committee, which deals with human rights. But the Australian ambassador to the UN, Gary Quinlan [said] the Security Council path is still being considered as well.

But the most unusual feature of Wednesday’s UN session was that Pyongyang, often described as the seat of a “hermit kingdom,” decided to fully engage with the proceedings, answering criticism with verbal attacks on the critics.

Ambassador Ja gave a long formal answer to Kirby’s allegations, the North distributed a compact disc of materials to support his answers, and Ja and Choe patiently answered reporters’ questions afterward, speaking freely in fluent, plain English.

Choe said that his country has sent a letter of protest to the UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon, who happened to also be a former foreign minister of South Korea, which is still officially at war with its northern neighbor.

[Newsweek]

North Korean Ambassador says his country will keep nuclear program

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Jang Il Hun, North Korea’s deputy U.N. ambassador in New York, told VOA that his country already declared itself a nuclear-armed state in its constitution and adopted a new policy calling for expansion of nuclear weapons. In a rare interview, he stated his country’s positions on the nuclear issue, human rights, and American detainees.

“If America continues to press us on the human rights issue, we have no option but to review our policy toward America completely,” warned Jang. He did not elaborate on what a review of policy meant specifically.

Recently, the country signaled renewed interest in resuming the stalled nuclear talks. However, Jang raised doubts about the prospect of resuming the talks. “I do not see the point of having the six-party talks at this point,” he said.

He accused the U.S. of masterminding international criticism of his country’s human rights records to launch a smear campaign against the country’s political system.

Asked whether the North will allow a visit by an investigator from outside to probe the human rights situation inside the country, the North Korean envoy replied: “It is a subject for discussion as long as the matter is handled in a positive manner.”

On the possibility of negotiating the release of the three Americans being detained in North Korea, Jang said it would be difficult, saying “it is a matter of enforcing law.”

[VoA]

Exchange of fire between North and South Korean troops inside DMZ

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North and South Korean troops briefly exchanged fire Sunday inside the Demilitarised Zone (DMZ) in the latest in a series of minor border skirmishes that have raised military tensions on the divided peninsula. There were no reported casualties.

Despite its name, the DMZ is probably the world’s most heavily militarized border, bristling with watchtowers and landmines.

[AFP]

North Korean defector disrupts Korean peace talks with balloons

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Lee Min-bok lives in a small hut near the Korean Demilitarized Zone and regularly sends satchels with thousands of anti-Kim Jong-un flyers to North Korea via cylindrical 7-metre-tall hot-air balloons.

balloons to north koreaSometimes the satchels contain more than just anti-North Korea leaflets, such as instant noodle packs, $1 bills and USB sticks containing South Korean soap operas.

To time his deliveries perfectly, he studies satellite weather data on his laptop. The 57-year-old defector has been launching roughly 50 million leaflets a year for the past decade and believes that his propaganda is the best way of achieving peace between the two nations, rather than official negotiations.

“My balloons are the way to achieve peace and unification and tell North Koreans the truth – not to hate the United States and South Korea,” he said.

The leaflet drops have long angered Pyongyang, which has frequently threatened to attack the continued deliveries. Yet it was only until last Friday that North Korea responded, firing machine guns at one of Lee’s balloons that had crossed the border. Some of the bullets landed in the South, forcing retaliatory fire.

On October 4, three senior officials from North Korea made a surprise visit to the South, with a follow-up round of talks set to take place in late October or early November. However, North Korea’s state KCNA news agency said such negotiations were being stymied by Lee’s propaganda, which it called “a premeditated and deliberate politically-motivated provocation perpetrated under the backstage wire-pulling of the U.S. and the South Korean authorities”.

A slightly more open North Korea?

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Just like that, Kim Jong-un was back. Despite his disappearances, this latest incident does reveal that the present leader is relatively more open than his father, Kim Jong-il, and grandfather, “Eternal President” Kim Il-sung. Neither ever publicly acknowledged so much as having a wife, let alone any other human frailties. The first Kim was always carefully photographed to avoid showing the huge goiter on his neck, while the second suffered a series of maladies – including an apparent stroke in 2008 – that were never mentioned in the North Korean press.

But in last Tuesday’s reports, there was 31-year-old Kim Jong-un propped up on a cane at the apartment complex, holding the cane as he rode around on an electric cart, leaning on it as he sat on a couch.

“There is a pattern here of being more forthcoming, a little less cryptic,” said John Delury, a North Korea watcher at Yonsei University in Seoul. “His father was always restrained, keeping his distance, but Kim Jong-un is shown shaking hands, with his arms around people, slapping their backs. He’s more like a Bill Clinton or Tony Blair.”

Of course, none of this is to suggest that North Korea has suddenly become an open, liberal democracy. But it is part of a pattern of marginally greater transparency that began when Kim succeeded his father at the end of 2011.

When a satellite intended to celebrate the centenary of the founding president Kim’s birth failed to reach orbit in 2012, Pyongyang immediately conceded that the launch had been a failure – something that would have been unthinkable in the second Kim’s “military first” era.

Last year, state media reported in vivid detail that Kim’s uncle, Jang Song-taek, had been purged and later executed. This year, the official mouthpieces said that an apartment building, part of a great construction boom under Kim, had collapsed.

More recently, North Korea has admitted to running “reform through labor” camps, although its description was a far cry from the brutal gulags described by defectors. It is even engaging with the United Nations on human rights, albeit in the very limited way.

[South China Morning Post]