Category: DPRK Government

The Spanish aristocrat who works for North Korea

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Alejandro Cao de Benos-north-koreaAlejandro Cao de Benos, 38, is believed to be the only Westerner ever employed by the North Korean government. He’s a Spanish aristocrat, born to a family of landed gentry in northeast Spain, where he agreed to meet NPR for an interview one recent afternoon.

“I consider myself as [much] Spanish as Korean 50-50. This is my country of birth, and North Korea is my country of adoption,” says Cao de Benos, who also goes by the Korean name Cho Son Il, which means “Korea is one.”

For the past 11 years, he has held the title of special delegate for North Korea’s Committee for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries. It’s an unpaid gig. He earns money as an IT consultant, working in the past in Palo Alto, Calif., and the Spanish capital, Madrid. He pays his own way to North Korea, where he works six months a year as a minder for foreign visitors. The rest of the year he gives presentations about North Korea at universities across Europe, and tries to drum up business for the ailing regime. It’s an uphill battle, he admits.

Cao de Benos adopted North Korean ideology as a teenager, after his family fortune was squandered. His grandfather had made a series of bad investments. So his dad went from a nobleman to someone who had to find a job. The family moved to Andalusia, in southern Spain, a socialist stronghold at the time, when he was 15.

“While my friends were interested in football and things like that, I was much more interested in philosophy and politics,” he said. “Obviously first I got knowledge of Marxism and Leninism, but I heard that there was a country which had another kind of socialism another kind of experiment based on their own culture and history and that was North Korea.”

Cao de Benos speaks passionately about what draws him to Pyongyang year after year. He has an apartment there, where he sometimes even celebrates Christmas. “Society and life is completely different. In North Korea, there is no stock market, there is no gambling, there is no prostitution, and there are no drugs. Everybody leads a humble life, but with dignity,” he said. “You see the big difference? I was working in Palo Alto, Calif. and what I witnessed was yes, there are some beautiful houses and people with great cars, but there are a few people taking control over the properties and the companies, and they are the ones getting richer while the majority of the people the workers are getting poorer.”

He also acknowledges seeing a darker side of the isolated Communist country. “I’ve been in Pyongyang without electricity 24 hours [a day] without water,” Cao de Benos recalls. “I’ve been going with my comrades to pick up buckets of water that we will share among six or seven people and I have seen the situation. I have seen the starvation.”

But he blames that on natural disasters and most of all, Western sanctions. He says he believes that North Korean communism if left alone would do justice for a greater number of people than capitalism.

Read full NPR article  

Sugar to North Korea in payment for weapons repairs

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Officials fearing some sort of modern-day Cuban Missile Crisis could only have been relieved to find out that what Cuba describes as an assortment of antique Soviet weapons discovered aboard a North Korean ship are more suited to a Cold War museum than they are to being used as weapons in the 21st century.

Cuba says the weapons, which were en route to North Korea for repairs, are “obsolete.” And experts who identified early Cold War relics like the Soviet-designed SA-2 air defense system among the ship’s cargo say that’s not far from the truth.

“We are talking about really old stuff — that technology was designed in the 1940s and 50s,” said James O’Halloran, editor of Jane’s Land Based Air Defence and Jane’s Strategic Weapon Systems. “Very few countries still employ the SA-2 system as a frontline defensive weapon.”

Cuba requires repairs on old systems like the SA-2, which went out of commission decades ago, and the MiG-21 jet, which was last produced in 1985 and is now mostly kept by long-time Russian allies for spare parts, according to O’Halloran at Jane’s.

In the meantime, experts don’t expect the episode will have a lasting effect diplomatically on either country — North Korea is already “sanctioned to the hilt,” says Mike Elleman, Senior Fellow for Regional Security Cooperation at IISS, and Cuba’s relations with the U.S. are thawing after decades of tension.

The more lasting impression of the raid on ship could, in the end, be the 10,000 tons of brown sugar found on-board the ship. Experts believe the sugar could be Cuban payment to cash-strapped North Korea in exchange for the weapons repairs.

“This will be much ado about nothing, except telling the world just how bad a shape Cuba and North Korea are in today — bartering early Cold War materials for sugar, that speaks volumes,” said Ellemann.

CNN

Mystery of military equipment discovered on North Korean boat

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What was the massive military equipment hidden under hundreds of thousands of sacks of brown sugar on a North Korean boat? Where did it come from? And where was it going before investigators seized the vessel near the Panama Canal?

Hours after Panama said it would ask U.S. and British officials for help solving the puzzle, Cuba gave an answer Tuesday night.

In addition to 10,000 tons of sugar, Cuba’s Foreign Ministry said, the shipment contained “240 metric tons of obsolete defensive weapons” sent to North Korea “to be repaired and returned to Cuba.”

The equipment was manufactured in the mid-20th century and included two anti-aircraft missile systems, nine missiles in parts and spares, two MiG-21 jets and 15 motors for this type of airplane, the foreign ministry said.

Because it is supposedly pursuing nuclear weapons, North Korea is banned by the United Nations from importing and exporting most weapons.

Panamanian investigators are asking the United States and the United Kingdom to send teams to help them identify the weapons, and will invite a special commission from the United Nations to determine whether the shipment violates the organization’s North Korea weapons ban.

Investigators spotted the boat going through the Panama Canal to Havana and then back toward the canal, according to two senior U.S. officials who said the United States had been tracking the ship along with the Panamanians for some time.

CNN

An Orphan in North Korea

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Hyuk Kim lost his mother when he was 6, then his father when he was 11. After his father died, he lived with a group of six other orphan boys in North Hamgyong province, located at the northern most tip of North Korea.

“We started a fire together, but we still couldn’t sleep because it was so cold,” he said. “We just warmed ourselves with the fire at night and we mainly slept during the day when the sun was shining.

In the punishing winters, Hyuk and other orphans would break into sheds containing electric transformers near factories and markets to find a warm place to sleep.  “Many children accidentally end up touching the transformers while sleeping and die,” said Hyuk, who asked that his real name not be used for the safety of family members still in North Korea. As Hyuk dozed off each night curled next to a transformer, he would try to stay as still as possible — willing himself not to move in his sleep. “During the night, we needed to find food to eat. We sometimes stole food from others and gathered food from here and there.”

When something went missing in the neighborhood, the blame automatically fell on Hyuk and his friends, even when they had not been involved. The children would be taken to the police station and tied to chairs, he said. “The police would then automatically accuse us of stealing because they assume we would have stolen since we don’t have parents. They hit us, tie us up, and torture us. There was no one to defend us.”

Hyuk Kim fled North Korea in 2011, nearly a decade after becoming an orphan. Hyuk, now 21, attends Hangyeore Middle-High School in South Korea, where he sleeps in a bed inside a heated dormitory. The school serves three warm, buffet-style meals a day, and students can pile as much food as they’d like on their metal trays. The school, set up by the South Korean government, does not charge tuition.

Most North Koreans escape by crossing the river on the northern border to China. Some street children who flee to China become easy prey to traffickers, according to human rights activists. The girls are sold into the sex trade, or as wives for rural Chinese men. China sends back those escapees they catch, so defectors live in hiding — fearing they’ll be imprisoned and tortured back home.

 CNN

North Korea seeks talks without preconditions to ease tensions

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North Korea’s top diplomat said Tuesday that the U.S. must accept its offer for dialogue without preconditions if it wants to ease tensions on the divided Korean Peninsula. He drew a quick rebuttal from his South Korean counterpart, who said the international community has made clear that Pyongyang must give up its nuclear ambitions if it wants better relations.

The Koreas were among 27 nations at the Association of Southeast Asian Nations Regional Forum in Brunei, where the North’s nuclear weapons program was a key topic, along with other hot-button regional issues.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said Monday that the U.S., South Korea, Japan and China – North Korea’s chief ally – were “absolutely united” in their insistence on a denuclearized North Korea. Washington says Pyongyang must move in that direction before it will agree to talks, but North Korean Foreign Minister Pak Ui Chun said during the conference Tuesday that it is America that must act.

“The U.S. must positively respond to our sincere and courageous decision (to offer talks) without preconditions if it is truly interested in ending the vicious circle of intensifying tension on the Korean Peninsula and safeguarding peace and stability,” Pak said, according to North Korean delegation official Choe Myong Nam.

Pak said that “a touch-and-go situation in which a war can break out anytime is fostered” on the Korean Peninsula, and that U.S. hostility against the North was primarily responsible for that.

Shortly after Choe spoke, South Korean Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se told reporters that most diplomats at the forum expressed a “very strong message” to the North Korean delegation that Pyongyang must scrap its nuclear program and refrain from launching another provocation. “So they must have listened to this message very, very seriously,” he said.

On Tuesday, senior North Korean nuclear strategist and First Vice Foreign Minister Kim Kye Gwan left for Russia. Russia’s Interfax news agency quoted Deputy Foreign Minister Igor Morgulov as saying he’ll meet with Kim in Moscow on Thursday to discuss the possibility of resuming the six-party talks.

The nuclear disarmament talks – which involve the two Koreas, the U.S., China, Japan and Russia – have been stalled since North Korea quit the negotiations in 2009 to protest international condemnation over a rocket launch.

AP

Major government and media websites shut down in South and North Korea

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Major government and media websites in South and North Korea were shut down for hours Tuesday on the 63rd anniversary of the start of the Korean War.

Seoul said experts were investigating attacks on the websites of the South Korean presidential Blue House and prime minister’s office, as well as some media servers.

The North Korean websites that shut down Tuesday included those belonging to the national airline, Air Koryo, the Rodong Sinmun newspaper, the North’s official Uriminzokkiri site and Naenara, the country’s state-run Internet portal. All but Air Koryo were operational a few hours later.

It wasn’t immediately clear who was responsible. North and South Korea have traded accusations of cyberattacks in recent years.

The shutdowns came on a war anniversary that both countries were marking with commemorations. North and South Korea are also gearing up for the 60th anniversary of the end of the fighting July 27.

 

Anonymous takes on North Korea

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Operators of several Twitter accounts who purported to be part of a global hackers’ collective known as Anonymous claimed that they attacked North Korean websites today.

Some days back, Chosun Ilbo reported that Anonymous was poised for a massive cyberattack on North Korea. In April, the “hacktivists” had threatened to attack 46 North Korean websites including the official KCNA news agency at 12 noon on Tuesday.

In a recent video clip on YouTube, they also claimed to have extracted missile blueprints from the intranet of the North Korean military and other information. Anonymous vowed to reveal the information on the internet.

Last Friday, KCNA denounced the hackers as a “ragtag band” under the control of U.S. and South Korean intelligence agencies. It claimed the intranet which Anonymous claim to have infiltrated “does not even exist.”

Last February, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un expressed confidence in his regime’s cyber warfare capabilities against South Korea.

A South Korean official indicated the North has reason to be confident in its 12,000 highly skilled hackers. It is believed that North Korean children talented in the sciences get intensive computer training at Kumsong Middle School in Pyongyang, and are then raised as “cyber warriors” for three to five years at either Mirim College under the General Staff Department or Moranbong College under the Reconnaissance Bureau.

Time for China to discipline their wayward child North Korea?

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In 2011, China accounted for an estimated 67.2% of North Korea’s exports and 61.6% of imports, according to the CIA World Factbook. So LA Times’ Beijing Bureau Chief Barbara Demick suggests, “There’s a lot more China could do that it has chosen not to.”

So why is China not using its economic leverage to rein in the nuclear threat and proliferator next door?  In a word — fear.

There’s fear of a North Korean collapse that would lead to instability and a refugee crisis along its 1,400 kilometer (880 mile) border with North Korea. And then there’s the far greater fear of an all-out conflict that would redraw the geopolitical map.

And there’s something else holding Beijing back — the historic and symbolic relationship with Pyongyang that is hard to give up.

“The Chinese Communist Party thinks of North Korea as this small state that is in its own image,” says Demick. “The structure of the North Korean government is very similar to the Chinese government and, in a way, it’s the pure Communist state. It’s just really hard psychologically to dump North Korea.”

“They treat North Korea a bit like a wayward child,” adds Stephanie Kleine-Ahlbrandt, the North Asian head of the International Crisis Group. ” You want to be the one to punish your child, but you’re not going to turn them over to police.”

But for many people in China, enough is enough.

“Their rhetoric is increasing the number of Chinese who feel very, very disgusted by their behavior, their psyche and their regime,” says Zhu Feng, professor of International Relations at Peking University. “China’s government is seriously under fire because I think the majority of Chinese really, really feel that North Korea’s bad behavior will inevitably endanger China.”

CNN

China’s tougher stance on North Korea

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US President Barack Obama said that China is taking a tougher line against North Korea’s nuclear program as he credited new President Xi Jinping with taking more responsibility in the world.

“We’ve seen the Chinese take more seriously the problem of constant provocation and statements from the North Koreans — rejecting the nuclearisation,” Obama said on “The Charlie Rose Show.”

China is the main economic and diplomatic supporter of Kim Jong-Un’s isolated regime, which brazenly defied Beijing’s warnings by carrying out its third nuclear weapons test in February.

China took the rare step of cracking down on North Korean bank accounts as part of new UN-led sanctions, although many experts doubt Beijing would go so far as to risk a collapse of the impoverished state separating it from US ally South Korea.

Obama held two days of informal talks with Xi on June 7-8 at a California desert resort. “My impression of President Xi is that he has consolidated his position fairly rapidly inside of China, that he is younger and more forceful and more robust and more confident, perhaps, than some leaders in the past,” Obama said.

AFP

Dear Leader Dreams of Sushi

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GQ magazine sent Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Adam Johnson to interview Japanese sushi chef Kenji Fujimoto, who for eleven years was Kim Jong-il’s personal chef, court jester, and sidekick in North Korea.

Fujimoto had seen the palaces, ridden the white stallions, smoked the Cuban cigars, and watched as, one by one, the people around him disappeared. It was part of Fujimoto’s job to fly North Korean jets around the world to procure dinner-party ingredients—to Iran for caviar, Tokyo for fish, or Denmark for beer. It was Fujimoto who flew to France to supply the Dear Leader’s yearly $700,000 cognac habit. And when the Dear Leader craved McDonald’s, it was Fujimoto who was dispatched to Beijing for an order of Big Macs to go.

When he finally left North Korea, Fujimoto became, according to a high-level cable released by WikiLeaks, the Japanese intelligence community’s single greatest asset on the Kim family, rulers of a nation about which stubbornly little is known.

Among other things, Kenji Fujimoto reveals present leader, Kim Jong-un’s, birth date. (January 8, 1983.)

Read the interesting 9-page article

Watch CBS interview re: Kenji Fujimoto