Category: DPRK Government

North Korean government purge continues

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North Korea has sacked its commerce minister, according to state-run media, as its young leader Kim Jong-Un apparently seeks to sideline supporters of his once-powerful uncle who was executed last year.

North Korea’s radio broadcaster Pyongyang Broadcasting Station said that new Commerce Minister Kim Kyong-Nam took part in a food festival marking the birth anniversary of the country’s founder Kim Il-Sung. It was the first time that North Korean media introduced him as commerce minister, but it was likely that his predecessor Ri Song-Ho was replaced last month.

It remains unclear why Ri was replaced but his ouster comes as Pyongyang has reportedly been purging officials linked to Jang Song-Thaek, once the North’s unofficial number two and Kim’s political mentor. Ri is the latest North Korean cabinet member to be sacked since Jang’s execution. North Korea reportedly replaced its mining minister and metal industry minister in January.

Jang was executed in December on an array of charges including treason and corruption, marking the biggest political upheaval since the young ruler took power after the death of his father and the former leader, Kim Jong-il, in 2011.

[MSN]

North Korea tells world to ‘wait and see’ on new nuclear test

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North Korea said on Friday that the world would have to “wait and see” when asked for details of “a new form” of nuclear test it threatened to carry out.

On March 26, North Korea fired two medium-range Rodong ballistic missiles into the sea. Its first firing in four years of mid-range missiles that can hit Japan followed a series of short-range rocket launches over the past two months.

“[North Korea] made it very clear, we will carry out a new form of nuclear test. But I recommend you to wait and see what it is,” North Korea’s Deputy U.N. Ambassador Ri Tong Il said on Friday during the normally reclusive state’s third U.N. news conference this year.

Ri accused the United States of being “hell bent on regime change” in North Korea by blaming its leaders for human rights violations. He also said Washington was blocking a bid for the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula by ignoring North Korean proposals, so it can maintain military presence in the region.

Nuclear expert Jeffrey Lewis, director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program at the Monterey Institute of International Studies in the United States, said North Korea’s reference to a new form of nuclear test could mean simultaneous detonation of two or more devices as part of a program of more intense testing expected over the next few years. Lewis said he thought it unlikely North Korean leader Kim Jong Un would move for the moment from underground to atmospheric testing – something he might do to demonstrate an ability to deploy nuclear armed missiles or artillery – for fear of inflaming Chinese public opinion.

“He’s only likely to do that … if he no longer cares what Beijing thinks,” Lewis said. “Still, it is useful to remember that Kim Jong Un has a number of other unpleasant provocations from which he might choose.”

[Reuters]

More on the father of Choe Ryong-Hae having done what Kim Il-sung claimed

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According to sources quoted in South Korea’s Chosun Ilbo, one of the most powerful figures in Pyongyang is expected to fall victim to Kim Jong-un’s purges, as the North Korean leader trains his sights on a rival who could expose a lie about a key moment in the communist regime’s history.

Evidence suggests that it was the father of 64-year-old Choe Ryong-Hae, the joint chairman of the all-powerful Politburo Presidium who led an attack against the Japanese later claimed by Kim’s grandfather to legitimize the ruling dynasty.  Whereas North Korea’s version of the struggle against the Japanese occupation of the Korean peninsula claims that Kim Il-sung, revered as the founder of the nation, led the June 1937 assault.

Ken Kato, a researcher and human rights activist, said that the stories undermined Kim Il-sung’s reputation as the heroic father of the nation.

North Korean history about to change –again?

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New evidence from the 1930s indicate that it might have been someone else other than the grandfather of Kim Jong-Un who led a famous attack against the Japanese, an attack that has been claimed by Kim’s grandfather Kim Il-Sung that he led, so they could be the ruling family of North Korea.

If accurate, it would mean that someone else  — not the son of Jong-il — would be the rightful heir to the communist North Korean state.

A report in the Asahi Shimbun dated June 7, 1937 says it was Choe Hyon, the father of Choe Ryong-Hae current joint chairman of the powerful Politburo Presidium and political director of the North Korea People’s Army, who actually led the attack. The report reads in part: ‘A little more than 100 men lead by Communist bandit Choe Hyon attacked Pochonbo. ….”

The grandfather of Kim Jong-Un, Kim Il-Sung, is documented in North Korea’s official history as the leader of this 1937 attack on the Japanese base defending the town of Ponchonbo, which helped him gain a foothold of legitimacy in the claim of leadership of the country.

So Choe Ryong-Hae has been singled out because of these newly-revealed records, amidst rumors that Kim Jong-Un is planning another purge to rid North Korea of some of its most powerful figures.

North Korea regularly changes its own country’s history, with children in the North being taught that the Korean War was started in 1950 by an invasion by the South, and that Kim Jong-il was born in a cabin on the slopes of Mount Paektu, when historians claim that the late leader was actually born in a refugee camp in the Soviet Union.

Earthquake off North Korea prompts nuclear test fears

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An earthquake off the coast of North Korea today sparked fears Kim Jong-Un may have carried out his threat to conduct more nuclear tests.

The magnitude-five tremor was detected 80 miles from the Korean Peninsula at around 3.48am local time, according to the United States Geological Survey.

It comes just two days after the sabre-rattling state threatened to launch a ‘new form’ of nuclear power tests – and hours after the North and South exchanged artillery fire near a disputed sea boundary in a heightening of tensions on the peninsula.

The force of today’s earthquake was similar to the 5.1-magnitude tremor registered in a North Korean mountain range from a previous nuclear test in December 2012. But its location at a depth of nearly 10 miles in the sea did not immediately suggest nuclear testing was the cause this time, it was reported by the Daily Telegraph.

 

North Korea fires on South Korea

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A day after raising the possibility of further nuclear tests, North Korea has engaged in provocative live-fire exercises near the South Korean maritime border, leading to an exchange of fire between the neighbors.

South Korean news agency Yonhap reported Monday that the North had begun the drill just after noon. The South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff confirmed that some North Korean ordnance landed in South Korean waters and that the South responded with fire.

Yonhap reported that the North fired “several” artillery shells, to which the South Korean military responded with self-propelled artillery fire. The South Korean K9 howitzers have a 24-mile (40-kilometer) range.

 

South Korean proposal to North Korea to bolster humanitarian aid and bilateral exchanges

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Uncertainty lingers as to whether South Korean President Park Geun-hye’s proposals to bolster humanitarian aid to North Korea and bilateral exchanges will lead to a turnaround in the strained ties, given high military tensions and mutual distrust.

Aimed at laying the groundwork for reunification, Park’s proposals for “humanity, co-prosperity and integration” included extending aid to mothers and their babies; building infrastructure in the North in return for rights to develop underground resources; and increasing bilateral exchanges in various sectors.

“At this point in time, Park’s proposals are likely to be perceived by Pyongyang as a ‘poisonous apple’ ― a package that ultimately seeks to achieve reunification by absorbing the North,” said Cheong Seong-jang, a senior research fellow at the think tank Sejong Institute.

Pyongyang maintains its bellicose stance toward Seoul. On Sunday it threatened to conduct a “new type” of nuclear test and continued its verbal criticism of President Park.

Amid annual South Korea-U.S. military drills, the North has fired off dozens of ballistic missiles and short-range rockets in violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions.

[The Korea Herald]

Religious Persecution in North Korea

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The Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), the report issued by the United Nations Human Rights Council, has a section dealing with “Religious Persecution” that also gives the history of Christianity in the isolated Communist country, where churches had thrived before the events of 1950-1953 civil war that left it a divided land.

As of 1950, Christian Solidarity Worldwide quoted an estimate of more than 28 percent of Korea’s population that had a religious belief. The 1950 Yearbook of the Workers’ Party of Korea placed the figure at almost 24 per cent.

The Korean War and pre-Kim Il Sung-ism movement periods have been described as the most vicious in the persecution of religious believers. “Religious people were killed, exiled and imprisoned. Christians were said to have been targeted the most as the movement of Christianity was much more organized than the other religions and because of its supposed connection with the USA.”

[Ecumenical News]

North Korea sees Christians as ‘serious threat’

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The recent 372-page U.N. Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea that shows North Korean leaders considers the spread of Christianity a particularly “serious threat.”

This is because “it ideologically challenges the official personality cult and provides a platform for social and political organization and interaction outside the State realm,” says the report.

“Children are taught to revere and idolize Kim Il-sung, Kim Jong-il, and now Kim Jong-un. Plaques with slogans, posters and drawings expressing gratitude to the Supreme Leader are found in kindergartens irrespective of the children’s ability to fully comprehend these messages.

It said, “Christians are prohibited from practicing their religion and are persecuted. People caught practicing Christianity are subject to severe punishments in violation of the right to freedom of religion and the prohibition of religious discrimination.”

The report said one estimate suggests there are between 200,000 and 400,000 Christians still professing their religion secretly in North Korea despite the high risks.

U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay  welcomed the report and said “its findings need to be treated with the greatest urgency, as they suggest that crimes against humanity of an unimaginable scale continue to be committed in the DPRK.”

[Ecumenical News]

North Korea’s irreconcilable relationship with Christianity

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It is not widely known, but a significant part of the first generation of Korean communist leaders – people born between 1900 and 1920 – came from devote Christian families.

Kim Il Sung himself (grandfather of present leader Kim Jong Un) was no exception: Both his parents came from families of early converts to Christianity.

Until the Korean War, Pyongyang was a major stronghold of Korean Christianity. In the colonial days, it was not known as the “Jerusalem of the East” for nothing: in the 1930s Christians constituted some 30 percent of the population of the city (at the same time, only 1 percent of all Koreans were Christians).

However, communist ideologues were very hostile to religion, which they saw as the “opium of the masses.” In the Soviet Union under Stalin, the church was not officially outlawed, but it was subjected to systematic harassment. In the late 1940s the North Korean government co-opted the small number of church ministers willing to collaborate – these people were called “progressive churchmen.” Kang Ryang Uk, a Protestant missionary and distant relative of Kim Il Sung, was the most prominent of these collaborators. The vast majority of believers, however, were subjected to discrimination. The result was a massive exodus of Christians to South Korea.

From around 1956-57, North Korean authorities began to close down all the few surviving churches and religious associations in the country. From then on, the North Korean media claimed that North Korea was the only country free of “religious superstition.”

Christianity became the object of near constant and virulent attacks in the North Korean media. While all communist states sponsored anti-religious activities and propaganda, in few countries of the Communist Bloc was this propaganda as vicious as in North Korea.

In propaganda publications churchmen were not merely reactionary, but national traitors. As every reader of North Korean magazines and books knew well, churches were all controlled by foreign missionaries, who were mercenary spies of the foreign imperialists, or sometimes sadistic killers who fantasized about butchering the Korean nation. One recurrent topic of North Korean propaganda was missionary involvement in “organ snatching.” Missionary doctors were alleged to steal kidneys, eyes and bone marrow (among other things) from those innocent Koreans who were stupid enough to come to a missionary hospital. Alternatively, naive Korean patients were subject to diabolical experiments, conducted by the same missionary doctors.

[NKNews.org]         Read more