Category: DPRK Government

Successful North Korean rocket launch

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North Korea fired a long-range rocket Wednesday morning and declared the launch a success. A similar launch in April broke apart shortly after liftoff.

North Korea says the purpose of the rocket launch was to put a weather satellite in orbit but critics say it is aimed at nurturing the kind of technology needed to mount a nuclear warhead on a long-range missile. North Korea added that it chose a safe flight path so debris wouldn’t endanger neighboring countries.

The launch had been timed to coincide with the first anniversary of the death of former leader Kim Jong-il. This year is also the centennial of the birth of national founder Kim Il Sung, the grandfather of Kim Jong Un.

North Korea is banned from testing missile or nuclear technology under U.N. sanctions imposed after its 2006 and 2009 nuclear weapons tests.

The curious timing of North Korea’s rocket launch

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The curious timing of North Korea’s Unha-3 rocket launch, outside of its usual spring-summer launch window, raises questions about the political motivations behind Pyongyang’s attention-grabbing move.

On Wednesday morning, just before 10 a.m. local time, South Korean news agency Yonhap and the Japanese government reported that the rocket had been launched. It came just days after North Korea extended the launch window due to technical issues.

Taking heed of launch and the usual caveats about reading North Korean government behavior, we can discern three motives underlying Pyongyang’s latest move: international bargaining, domestic legitimacy and strategic leverage.

With Barack Obama’s re-election in Washington and Xi Jinping named as the new Chinese President, the region awaits the outcomes of the Japanese election on December 16 and the South Korean presidential poll on December 19. Proliferation-related negotiating activity is on hold, leaving a diplomatic vacuum until the new governments are settled.

External aid fills gaps in the domestic economy and satisfies vital needs such as food and energy that the regime cannot provide for indigenously. The gambit fails if there are no negotiations. While North Korea appears to have no intention of relinquishing its nuclear or missile capabilities, its habitual tactic of engineering crises to leverage aid from the international community in exchange for de-escalation or proliferation freeze agreements is predicated on negotiations actually taking place.

A December rocket launch sends a strong signal from Pyongyang to its regional interlocutors to ensure that North Korea does not get overlooked amid the bureaucratic maelstrom that usually follows changes in government.

CNN

North Koreans ready for liberalization and change?

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The North Korean people appear ready for change.  Certainly ever fewer believe DPRK mythology that they live in a world of plenty compared to an impoverished South Korea.

Refugees who have experienced life in China and regime elites spread information about the outside world.  DVDs of Chinese and South Korean television programs circulate; some observers describe a “mania” for South Korean culture.  A million North Koreans own cell phones.  Famine forced many people into the black market to survive.

The regime is aware of the risks of liberalization and has embarked upon what author Scott Thomas Bruce called “the ‘mosquito net’ strategy, meaning that Pyongyang will allow foreign investment … while blocking potentially harmful news and culture from the outside world.”  This strategy is risky, since the multi-headed genie cannot easily be put back into the bottle.

Indeed, the regime has tightened border enforcement along the Yalu and enhanced punishment of would-be refugees, targeting their families as well.

Nevertheless, Kim Jong Un’s rhetoric may raise expectations without yielding results, setting the stage for further unrest.

Forbes

 

South Korea one of the world’s great success stories

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Sixty years ago, South Korea was an economic wasteland. Today, it is not only the world’s 11th largest economy, but also a vibrant democracy and an emerging cultural force.

Daniel Tudor, the Korea correspondent for the Economist, suggests “South Koreans have written the most unlikely and impressive story of nation-building of the last century.”

Korea has one of the lowest levels of welfare spending in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. This is due to Korea having been a developmental, high-growth country where things were sacrificed to barrel ahead. It was a matter of growth above all else.

If you go back to the 1950s and the early 1960s, Korea was really one of the poorest places in the world. People didn’t expect it to survive, and many people expected North Korea to take it over eventually. An adviser to former South Korean dictator Park Chung-hee said, “We were the poorest, most impossible country on the planet.”

For South Korea to have gone from this sort of messed-up, disorderly, broke country into a wealthy democracy — it would have been impossible to imagine. But the Korean people have done it.

Thanks in part to its neighbors though, South Korea is all too often overlooked. Korea probably gets overshadowed by China, Japan and North Korea. China is a massive growth story. Japan is famous as a cultural powerhouse. North Korea is just famous for being a pretty extreme dictatorship. By comparison, South Korea struggles to stand out.

And to South Koreans who are 20 years old, they don’t know much about North Korea, they don’t know anybody from North Korea, and they can’t go there, so it is simply not a reference point for them.

 

Satellite photo of North Korea at night

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In this image from Sept. 24, 2012 provided by NASA, the Korean Peninsula is seen at night from a composite assembled from data acquired by the Suomi NPP satellite.

City lights at night are a fairly reliable indicator of where people live. But this isn’t always the case, and the Korean Peninsula shows why.

As of July 2012, South Korea’s population was estimated at roughly 49 million people, and North Korea’s population was estimated at about half that number. But where South Korea is gleaming with city lights, North Korea has hardly any lights at all, just a faint glimmer around Pyongyang.

The wide-area image shows the Korean Peninsula, parts of China and Japan, the Yellow Sea, and the Sea of Japan.

Photo: NASA / AP

Latest high-profile appointment by Kim Jong Un

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North Korea has replaced its defense minister with a hardline military commander believed responsible for deadly attacks on South Korea in 2010, diplomats in Pyongyang said Thursday. It is the latest in a series of high-profile appointments leader Kim Jong Un has made since he took power nearly a year ago.

Diplomats in Pyongyang told the Associated Press that they were informed that Kim Jong Gak had been replaced as armed forces minister by Kim Kyok Sik, commander of the battalions linked to two deadly attacks in 2010 blamed on North Korea. South Korean officials said they also received similar information about the North Korean personnel changes.

The move comes amid speculation that North Korea may be preparing a long-range rocket launch. North Korea says its launches are meant to put a satellite into orbit.

The appointment of a hawkish general could mean North Korea wants to show a tough face to Washington and Seoul, said analyst Hong Hyun-ik at the private Sejong Institute in South Korea.

Baek Seung-joo, an analyst at the state-run Korea Institute for Defence Analyses in Seoul, said Kim Jong Un is trying to put his stamp on the military by building loyalty with troops and also by creating tension among generals through personnel changes.

In July, Kim dismissed military chief Ri Yong Ho, who was seen as one of his key mentors, and named little-known vice marshal Hyon Yong Chol as his new General Staff chief.

In April, Kim also reshuffled top Workers’ Party posts by taking on top party posts held by his father and giving other high-level posts to close associates.

In recent months, North Korea has also reshuffled top Cabinet members such as the ministers of sports, electronics industry and agriculture, according to Pyongyang’s official Korean Central News Agency.

North Korea denounces UN human rights resolution

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Xinhua reports on North Korea denouncing a human rights resolution adopted by the Third Committee of the 67th UN General Assembly:

“The DPRK flatly rejects and vehemently denounces the anti-DPRK  ‘human rights resolution’ which the hostile forces adopted to bring down the Korean-style socialist system centered on the popular masses by abusing the noble idea of human rights, prompted by their sinister political purposes,” a foreign ministry spokesman was quoted as saying.

From their perspective, the Western forces are blindly following the United States’ hostile policy toward the DPRK “out of inveterate repugnance” toward its socialist system, the spokesman said, adding that the “absurd political chicanery” is aimed at playing down the increasing international prestige of North Korea.

Will North Korean society revolt?

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The one attempted military coup in North Korea’s 60-year history took place during the mid-1990s famine. It was likely that the severity of the famine drove the military to mutiny.

[Today, as another major famine looms, the recent purge of North Korean military officers] has created a class of officials angry at the new leadership for their loss of power and its perquisites. When Mao and Stalin purged officials, they executed or exiled them to the prison camps for a slow death. These officials are simply being retired. North Korea also sends 40 percent of its young men between the ages of 18 and 25 into the military, [all this a] recipe for political uprising and revolution.

And in a country with nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction, political uprisings can be dangerous to the world order, particularly if the regime loses control of the weapons as it collapses.

North Korea was able to keep control of the country in the last famine because its propaganda machine convinced the isolated and easily manipulated population that the Chinese and South Koreans were facing mass starvation more severe than what they were suffering. [Today though, more North Koreans are aware this is untrue.]

Another aspect of the North Korean regime’s control over the population: For 40 years the regime successfully used the food system—under which each non-farm family would get a twice monthly ration of food through the public distribution system—but it collapsed during the last famine. Repeated attempts by Pyongyang to resuscitate it have failed.

People are now getting their food through the farmers’ markets which have grown more powerful and more extensive as the sclerotic old order has slowly died. The new economic order taking its place will ensure the people are no longer dependent on the state for their survival which will make them less servile and more prone to dissent.

We saw remarkable evidence of this dissent in January 2010 when popular opposition to a currency manipulation scheme announced by Pyongyang led to public demonstrations, the burning of a police station, and a graffiti campaign by the public attacking the policies which the regime was forced to rescind.

Excerpts from an article by Andrew S. Natsios, an executive professor at Texas A&M University, and former USAID administrator and Special Envoy to Sudan

North Korean decision-maker Jang Song-Taek

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After only the second power transition in North Korea’s history, the government, essentially a Kim family criminal enterprise, appears to be stable.  However, the regime’s foundation is weak.

Last December “Dear Leader” Kim Jong-il died, and his son, Kim Jong-un, tagged the “Great Successor,” was left nominally in charge.  However, it remains unclear if Kim also is the Great Decision-maker. Kim is surrounded by party officials and military officers who have long awaited their turn to rule.  Who is most accomplished at brutal intrigue?  Probably not the spoiled brat who spent his time in Swiss boarding school playing computer games and American basketball.

Greater power likely lies with Jang Song-Taek  (Kim Jong-un’s uncle), Kim Kyong-hui  (Kim Jong-un’s aunt) and other regime elders. Indeed, Jang’s experience with Kim family governance—he was purged and rehabilitated by both his father-in-law and brother-in-law—suggests that he might not desire to elevate the third generation to supreme power.

In any case, Jang promoted his ally Choe Ryong-hae to oversee the military. And the State Security Ministry, long overseen to some degree by Jang, also has gained in status.

What influence will China’s new leader exert on North Korea?

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Chosun Ilbo projects that China’s new leader Xi Jinping is unlikely to change the country’s relationship with North Korea drastically, but experts predict Xi could push for specific reform plans and greater market opening. “They will ask North Korea for more specific and tangible reforms and market-opening measures than in the Hu Jintao era,” said Choo Jae-woo at Kyunghee University.

“Beijing believes it is important to stabilize North Korea and halt its nuclear ambitions to benefit China’s economic growth,” said Park Byung-kwang at the Institute for National Security Strategy. “China thinks it is possible to stabilize North Korea and resolve the nuclear dilemma over the long-term by strengthening economic cooperation.”

North Korea is finding it increasingly difficult to ignore China’s demands. The North’s dependence on China for trade rose from 52 percent in 2005 to 84 percent last year. And 90 percent of the crude oil North Korea uses comes from China.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un is expected to visit China and meet Xi as soon as possible. Some forecast a visit to China by Kim as early as January. He will also be looking for handouts from China ahead of the birthdays of former leader Kim Jong-il (Feb. 16) and nation founder Kim Il-sung (April 15).

Chinese experts have said that Beijing’s influence on the stubborn North Korean military is limited. If on the other hand China’s relationship with the U.S. worsens, North Korea’s strategic value increases. “China-North Korea relations will be closely related to China-U.S. relations, inter-Korean relations and China-South Korea relations,” said a diplomatic source.