Category: DPRK Government

On relations between China and North Korea

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China took a step against longtime ally North Korea by voting in favor of a U.N. Security Council resolution condemning Pyongyang’s long-range rocket launch in December. Here are some questions and answers concerning China’s relationship with North Korea, as summarized in an AP article:

WHY DOES CHINA SUPPORT NORTH KOREA? – Beijing fears a collapse of the North Korean regime could send a massive flow of desperate, starving refugees into northeastern China and lead to a pro-U.S. government setting up across its border. Chinese firms could lose their leading position in North Korea, while South Korean investment in China would be diverted to help rebuild the devastated North’s economy.

WHAT ABOUT NORTH KOREA’S MISSILES AND NUCLEAR PROGRAM? – China wants a stable, peaceful Northeast Asia and doesn’t want the North to provoke retaliation from the South, Japan or the United States. China calls for denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, though Beijing’s leaders are seen as resigned to the North possessing some sort of atomic weapon.

WHAT APPROACH DOES BEIJING RECOMMEND? – China typically calls for dialogue instead of sanctions, and has hosted successive rounds of talks also involving the two Koreas, Japan, Russia, and the U.S. Pyongyang agreed at the six-nation talks to end its nuclear programs, but discussions broke down over how to verify that.

SO WHY DID CHINA VOTE FOR THE NEW U.N. RESOLUTION? – China wants to register its displeasure with Pyongyang’s missile launch and doesn’t wish to be seen as obstructing the U.N.’s work. At the same time, it has pushed for a watered-down response, agreeing to strengthen existing sanctions while opposing substantially new ones. Beijing also wants to appear cooperative with the second Obama administration.

HOW MUCH INFLUENCE DOES BEIJING HAVE WITH PYONGYANG? – Hard to say. Chinese scholars and officials say not as much as the outside world thinks, and that sanctions have little effect on Pyongyang. That’s despite China being the North’s most important political ally, as well as its biggest source of food and fuel aid to prevent total economic collapse. China’s overriding fear of the North becoming a failed state severely limits Beijing’s options.

WHAT’S THE HISTORY BETWEEN THESE TWO? – Chinese troops fought on behalf of the North Korean regime in the 1950-53 Korean War and relations between the communist neighbors were long described as being “as close as lips and teeth.”

In brief, Beijing is concerned that North Korea’s nuclear ambitions are destabilizing the region, but is willing to go only so far to punish its economically struggling neighbor.

New Concentration Camp in North Korea

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Chosun Ilbo claims North Korea has built a new compound believed to be a prison camp next to an existing one, Camp 14, in Kaechon, South Pyongan Province.

Curtis Melvin wrote on his blog North Korean Economy Watch that, based on Google Earth images, he believes the compound was built sometime between Dec. 17, 2006 and Sept. 21, 2011.

According to Melvin’s analysis, the new gulag is surrounded by a 20 km security perimeter and has two checkpoints and six guard posts. Several buildings believed to be office and housing units are also distinguishable. It sits just west of Camp 14, but it is unclear whether it is an extension of the existing camp or an entirely new camp, according to an South Korean intelligence official.

“The new facility is about one tenth the size of Camp 14,” said one informed source here. “Perhaps it is an expanded facility since Camp 14 became overcrowded.”

North Korea currently has six concentration camps where people are held for political reasons.

Thousands of North Korean cameras on Chinese border

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With more and more defectors heading south, Kim Jong-un’s North Korean regime spent $1.66 million on over 16,000 border-security cameras in the first 11 months of 2012, the South Korean newspaper Chosun Ilbo reports, as he continues to build a spy network on his own citizens. And that’s not good news for anyone under the watching eyes of the Supreme Leader who’s trying to seek refuge amidst, you know, democracy. The data, according to Chosun Ilbo, is based on Chinese customs data:

“[North Korea] imported a total of 16,420 CCTV cameras worth about US$1.66 million from China from January to November last year.

“In 2009, the first year China published statistics on bilateral trade, the North imported a whopping 40,465 surveillance cameras from China. In 2010 the figure was 22,987 and in 2011 22,118. Altogether the North has imported over 100,000 cameras worth about $10 million.”

That’s a lot of surveillance equipment for such a small country: North Korea’s addition of 100,000 closed-circuit TV cameras over three years is a gain of about one for every 244 citizens, compared to the approximately 1.85 million in all of Britain — or one for every 33 of its population. London, which has upwards of a third of those British spycams, is of course more densely packed than Pyonyang.

But Kim Jong-un isn’t focusing on the cities — he’s looking for runaways. As analysts tell Chosun Ilbo from South Korea, “cameras are being positioned at key points along the long border the two nations share in order to detect and capture would-be defectors from the North.” As The Telegraph‘s Julian Ryall explains, it’s part of a larger push to keep North Korean citizens from crossing the border:

“Kim Jong-un has carried out a crackdown on people hoping to escape their repressive homeland, as well as anyone using a mobile phone to communicate across the border and smugglers bringing in banned newspapers, books and recordings of television programmes that show the lives of people in prosperous South Korea.”

And the North Korean regime’s efforts seem to be working, with the number of defectors coming out of the country dropping sharply over the past three years, just as the camera trade has ramped up. “Just over 1,500 North Koreans arrived in the South in 2012 compared to more than 2,700 the previous year, according to the South’s Unification Ministry,” reported the BBC, which notes that the figure is a seven-year low. “Most North Korean refugees escape across the border with China and then make their way to South Korea via third countries.”

[Repost from The Atlantic]

 

 

Technology a dictator’s dilemma

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In his New Year’s greeting earlier this month, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un extolled the benefits of technology, saying: “The industrial revolution in the new century is, in essence, a scientific and technological revolution, and breaking through the cutting edge is a shortcut to the building of an economic giant.”

Even Kim must realize that it’s pretty hard to be “cutting edge” if you have no access to the Internet. And yet, that is the case for nearly all of the 24 million people in his country. While it is hard to get accurate figures on most everything related to North Korea, Martyn Williams, who runs Northkoreatech.org, estimates that the number of North Koreas with Internet access is probably in the “low thousands.” Such access tends to be limited to people in elite or scientific circles.

North Korean leaders have long viewed technological prowess as a source of government legitimacy. The recent satellite launch, for example, can be pointed to as a symbol of regime “accomplishment.”

North Korea is facing an extreme version of the dictator’s dilemma. On the one hand, its leaders are attracted to the knowledge, economic growth, and global connectivity that are facilitated by the Internet. At the same time, they know that the Internet would threaten their grip on power.

Most regimes facing this quandary have chosen to embrace technology, even with the corresponding loss of control. North Korea is likely to do the same. The difference is that it might not survive the consequences.

UN called upon to examine human rights in North Korea

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Human Rights Watch (HRW) called Friday for a UN commission to examine human rights abuses in North Korea. The rights group stated that little has changed within the totalitarian government since Kim Jong-un succeeded his father Kim Jong-il in leading the country one year ago.

HRW stated the situation may be getting worse, noting a drop in the number of individuals escaping into China and reports by successful escapees of increasing crackdowns on escape attempts. The rights group also noted a recent UN report citing widespread malnutrition and hunger in the country.

HRW called on the UN to create a commission of inquiry to investigate human rights abuses in the country: “For more than 60 years, successive regimes have killed or starved millions, and the world has done little in response. No one should labor under the misperception that the regime can be influenced by negotiation, and reformed in some traditional sense. Only coordinated outside pressure has a chance to make an impact. Recording, exposing, condemning and calling for accountability for serious abuses may lead some in the regime to realize that there are potential costs to their behavior.”

HRW said a UN resolution will only pass with the support of the nations of the European Union, as well as South Korea, Japan and the US. The rights group called on those nations to voice support for a UN investigation of human rights in North Korea.

In November the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) Marzuki Darusman expressed concern over the lack of development in human rights in the nation, despite having called on new leader Kim Jong-un last January to improve the situation. In June the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea (HRNK) reported that North Korea’s caste system leads to abuses and human rights violations in the country.

North Korea trip by Richardson and Schmidt set for next week

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Former New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson and Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt will lead a private humanitarian mission to North Korea next week, Richardson’s office confirmed in a statement Saturday.

The trip comes despite public criticism from the U.S. State Department, which has said the visit was ill-timed in light of tensions stemming from North Korea’s recent rocket launch.

The delegation will also include Jared Cohen, the director of a Google initiative known as Google Ideas and Schmidt’s co-author on an upcoming book about how the Internet is changing the world.

Last July, Cohen organized a conference outside Los Angeles that featured nearly a dozen North Korean defectors, who gave harrowing accounts of privation and coerced criminal activity including drug sales.

Schmidt spoke at the conference and met with the group, according to panel moderator and North Korea expert Sheena Chestnut Greitens, now a graduate student at Harvard University.

Richardson, a former ambassador to the United Nations, has made numerous trips to North Korea. Many observers expect Richardson to seek the release of Kenneth Bae, a Korean-American tour guide who was detained last year.

North Korea suspicious of US policy in Asia

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State-run North Korean newspaper Rodong Sinmun published an article Friday that said the United States was trying to start a war on the Korean Peninsula. Titled “The fight for Asian and global peace,” the article says the United States’ so-called pivot to Asia is a threat to regional stability.

Meanwhile, the U.S. State Department has questioned the timing of a planned North Korea visit by Google Chairman Eric Schmidt and former ambassador Bill Richardson.

In her media briefing, State Department spokesman Victoria Nuland said the two will be making the trip as private citizens. “They are traveling in an unofficial capacity,” Nuland said. “They are not going to be accompanied by any U.S. officials. They are not carrying any messages from us. Frankly, we don’t think the timing of this is particularly helpful, but they are private citizens and they are making their own decisions.”

When asked if the trip might be tied to winning the release of a U.S. national being held in North Korea, Nuland said: “Again, they are not going on our behalf. No American official is going with them. They are not carrying any messages from us.”

Google executive and Governor Bill Richardson to visit North Korea

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Google’s executive chairman, Eric Schmidt, will be traveling to North Korea on a private, humanitarian mission led by former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson that could take place as early as this month, sources told The Associated Press.

The trip would be the first by a top executive from U.S.-based Google, the world’s largest Internet search provider, to a country considered to have the most restrictive Internet policies on the planet. To add to the mystery, last year a group of North Koreans paid a visit to Google headquarters in Mountain View, California.

North Korea is in the midst of what leader Kim Jong Un called a modern-day “industrial revolution” in a New Year’s Day speech to the nation. Kim Jong Un is pushing science and technology as a path to economic development for the impoverished country, aiming for computers in every school and digitized machinery in every factory.

However, giving citizens open access to the Internet has not been part of the regime’s strategy. While some North Koreans can access a domestic Intranet service, very few have clearance to freely surf the World Wide Web.

It was not immediately clear who Schmidt and Richardson expect to meet in North Korea.

The visit also follows North Korea’s announcement that an American citizen of Korean descent has been jailed in Pyongyang on suspicion of committing “hostile” acts against the state. Kenneth Bae, identified in North Korean state media by his Korean name, Pae Jun Ho, is the fifth American detained in North Korea in the past four years. The exact circumstances of his arrest were not clear.

Richardson, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations who often serves as an envoy to countries that do not have diplomatic relations with the United States, will try to meet with North Korean officials, and possibly Bae, to discuss the case, the sources said.

Rare New Years address by Kim Jong-un

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North Korean leader Kim Jong-un called for an end to confrontation between the two Koreas, in a surprise New Year’s broadcast on state media.

“An important issue in putting an end to the division of the country and achieving its reunification is to remove confrontation between the north and the south,” Kim said in an address that appeared to be pre-recorded. “Past records of inter-Korean relations show that confrontation between fellow countrymen leads to nothing but war,” he said, speaking from an undisclosed location.

The New Year’s address was the first in 19 years by a North Korean leader, and appeared to take the place of the policy-setting New Year’s editorial published annually in the past in leading state newspapers. Additionally, his father, Kim Jong-il, rarely spoke in public.

Conspicuously absent from Kim’s speech though was any mention of North Korea’s nuclear arms program.

Kim’s statement “apparently contains a message that he has an intention to dispel the current face-off (between the two Koreas), which could eventually be linked with the North’s call for aid” from the South, said Kim Tae-woo, a North Korea expert at the state-funded Korea Institute for National Unification. “But such a move does not necessarily mean any substantive change in the North Korean regime’s policy towards the South.”

North Korea has offered olive branches before and Kim’s speech does not necessarily signify a change in tack from a country which vilifies the United States and U.S. ally South Korea at every chance.