Category: DPRK Government

North Korea marks 66th anniversary of its founding

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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]

Uncommon story of a South Korean defecting to North Korea

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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

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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

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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]

North Korea’s failed propaganda ads in western newspapers

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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

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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]

A North Korean strike on the US electric grid?

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The electric grid in the United States remains largely unprotected, according to a longtime adviser to Congress on national security issues, Peter Vincent Pry.

Pry told VOA he believes North Korea is ready to attempt a strike on the U.S. electric grid using an Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP). Pry said North Korea practiced an EMP strike against the U.S. last year when it orbited a satellite at the optimal altitude and trajectory to carry out such an attack.

Pry was a member of the former Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse Attack (2001-2008). He also is executive director of the Task Force on National and Homeland Security, a congressional advisory board dedicated to achieving protection of the United States from electromagnetic pulse and other threats.

An electromagnetic pulse (or disturbance) is a short burst of electromagnetic energy that can be natural or man-made. EMP interference generated by lightning, for example, can damage electronic equipment. At very high energy levels, an EMP can damage physical objects such as trees, buildings and aircraft.

Pry said the North Korean test last year took place over the South Pole, which he called a strategic move. “We are blind from the south. We don’t have the Ballistic Missile Early Warning System or interceptors to protect us from the south,” said Pry.

The congressional analyst said this was done after North Korea’s third illegal nuclear test in February 2013 and after the country’s leader, Kim Jong Un, threatened to strike the United States and its allies with a nuclear missile.

[VoA] 

Pope calls on both Koreas to reject “suspicion and confrontation”

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Pope Francis ended his first official visit to Asia on August 18th by urging Koreans — from both the North and the South — to reject “suspicion and confrontation” and find new ways to build peace on the divided peninsula.

“Let us pray, then, for the emergence of new opportunities for dialogue, encounters and the resolution of differences, for continued generosity in providing humanitarian assistance to those in need, and for an ever greater recognition that all Koreans are brothers and sisters, members of one family, one people,” Francis said.

He delivered the message at a moving reconciliation Mass at Seoul’s main Myeong-dong Cathedral attended by South Korean President Park Geun-hye, as well as North Korean defectors.

As the pope flew across Chinese airspace on his return flight to Rome, he sent a telegram — his second during the trip — to President Xi Jinping, expressing his “divine blessings” for the powerful leader and the Chinese people.

Francis was the first pope in history to be granted permission to fly over China, and he used the opportunity in both directions to create the opportunity for new dialogue. China’s Foreign Ministry has reacted positively to the pope’s telegrams and already indicated it wants to promote dialogue with the Holy See after decades of frosty relations.

[Washington Post]

Pope Francis reaches out to China and North Korea

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Pope Francis made his strongest gesture yet to reach out to China on Sunday, saying he wants to improve relations and insisting that the Catholic Church isn’t coming in as a “conqueror” but is rather a partner in dialogue.

“I’m not talking here only about a political dialogue, but about a fraternal dialogue. These Christians aren’t coming as conquerors, they aren’t trying to take away our identity.” He said the important thing was to “walk together.”

The Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, said the pope’s remarks were “obviously a sign of goodwill for dialogue” with China as well as the other countries in Asia with which the Vatican doesn’t have diplomatic relations, amongst them North Korea.

China cut relations with the Vatican in 1951, after the Communist Party took power and set up its own church outside the pope’s authority. China persecuted the church for years until restoring a degree of religious freedom and freeing imprisoned priests in the late 1970s. The Vatican under then-Pope Benedict XVI sought to improve ties by seeking to unify the state-sanctioned church with the underground church still loyal to Rome.

The church in North Korea is under tight government control and is not recognized by the Vatican. Organizers of the papal trip had invited a delegation from the North to attend a Mass for peace and reconciliation on the Korean Peninsula, but Pyongyang authorities declined the invitation.

During a Friday mass, diverging from prepared text, the Pope led the attendees in a silent prayer for North Koreans and the reunification of the two Koreas. “You are brothers who speak the same language. … Think of your brothers in the North. They speak the same language and when, in a family, the same language is spoken, there is a human hope,” he said.

Kenneth Bae gets consular visit at North Korea labor camp

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The State Department says the Swedish Embassy in North Korea has visited detained American missionary Kenneth Bae at a labor camp.

Spokeswoman Marie Harf said Wednesday this week’s visit was the 12th by Swedish representatives since Kenneth Bae was arrested in November 2012. As a result of his missionary and humanitarian work, he is serving 15 years of hard labor for alleged “hostile acts against North Korea”.

Sweden handles consular cases for the U.S. because Washington does not have diplomatic relations with Pyongyang. He’s one of three Americans now held.

Harf gave no update on Bae’s condition but said the department spoke to Bae’s family after Monday’s visit. His family says he has diabetes, heart and liver problems.

Bae recently told a pro-North Korean newspaper his health was worsening and he felt abandoned by the U.S. government.

[Bellingham Herald]