Category: DPRK Government

North Korean defectors reveal 30 times safe level of radiation exposure

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Tests on North Korean defectors in September who lived near the secretive state’s Punggye-ri region have revealed dangerously high levels of radiation exposure. Radioactivity levels exceeding 250 millisieverts (mSv). Exposure to just 100 mSv a year is considered the threshold for cancer risk.

One 48-year-old woman, reports Chosun Ilbo, showed 1,386 mSv of radiation. That’s nearly 30 times the level allowed for workers in the nuclear industry. Tests on half of the defectors also revealed significant genetic damage.

Punggye-ri is the site of three nuclear weapons tests undertaken by the Kim regime between 2006 and 2013.  Observers suspect the nuclear tests have contaminated the soil and ground water table in the area.

Kim Tae-woo, the former head of the Korea Institute for National Unification, told Chosun Ilbo: “Residents of Kilju county and other areas near the test site get their drinking water from underground springs emanating from Mt. Mantap. “I believe a lot of the exposure to radiation comes from the drinking water.”

Jeong Yong-hoon from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology added: “There is no way these levels of radiation exposure could happen under normal conditions. … The reason must be that a tunnel at the test site collapsed, so it is urgent to check how the site is being managed.”

Joo Han-gyu at Seoul National University said that “the radioactivity levels found in North Korean defectors is hundreds of times higher than normal and can only be the result of exposure to severe radiation.”

There are fears not only for the health of people still living in the region, but for South Koreans as well – water from springs in Punggye-ri eventually flows into the Sea of Japan, known in Korea as the East Sea. Korean cooking involves a good deal of fish, and a threat to fish stocks represents a significant danger to food supplies in general.

[Daily Star (UK)]

Why don’t more defect from North Korea?

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It’s said that the thousands of East Germans used to cross the border to the West in a day.  So why don’t more people defect from North Korea?

Families of defectors and those with suspicious anti-state thoughts are closely watched and controlled by the authorities. And the North Korean self-monitoring and report system has taken firm root in general society, thanks to over 70 years of brainwashing education. I’ve heard that the person in charge of neighborhood security has detailed information on who in their unit is blacklisted, the number of people per household, each person’s employment status, their personal connections, and even the number of spoons and chopsticks in each household. Considering such circumstances, how could you risk sharing your plans about defection with others, even to close friends?

I finally fled North Korea last October after a few attempts, along with my wife and son. None of my brothers or relatives were even aware of what we’d done.

Until around 10 years ago, people kept their cell phones for calling China and South Korea a secret. The phones must stay switched off, because illegal overseas calls are strictly banned and severely punished depending on the extent of the breach. Calls are made at a pre-arranged date and time, agreed upon by the caller in North Korea and the recipient in either China or South Korea.

The Ministry of State Security’s detection police, called the ‘111 Command Squad’, watches for anti-state crimes such as escape attempts and trading South Korean cell phones. They monitor 24 hours a day and even wait in the mountains with a radio locator to ambush callers. To avoid them, the call must be as brief as possible.

[However, the biggest challenge] to defecting is the so-called ‘cover fee’ (a bribe you pay to the border guards who, in return, secure your smuggling passage). The price varies depending on the crossing point but on average (based on my knowledge as of October 2018, when I defected) it ranges between 30,000 RMB -150,000 RMB (equivalent of $4200-21,000).

So defection, to a large extent, revolves around money.

[Tae-il Shim, is a pseudonym for a North Korean defector, writing in NK News.org]

North Korea and United States to resume nuclear talks Saturday

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North Korea and the United States will resume negotiations Saturday, marking the first official talks between the two sides since President Trump met Kim Jong Un in June, the North Korean government announced Tuesday.

North Korean Vice Foreign Minister Choe Son Hui said the two countries “agreed to hold a working-level discussion on October 5th, following a preliminary contact on the 4th,” according to a statement carried by North Korea’s state-run Korean Central News Agency.

Negotiations between the two countries’ diplomats have been frozen since the breakdown of a summit between Trump and Kim in Hanoi in February. Another meeting between the two leaders at the demilitarized zone between the two Koreas in June was supposed to lead to a resumption of negotiations, but the stalemate persisted until now. 

On Monday, North Korea blamed the stalling of the dialogue on Washington and Seoul, accusing them of failing to keep their promises. North Korean Ambassador Kim Song told the U.N. General Assembly that it was up to the United States whether negotiations “will become a window of opportunity or an occasion that will hasten the crisis.” The ambassador added, “The situation on the Korean Peninsula has not come out of the vicious cycle of increased tension, which is entirely attributable to the political and military provocations perpetrated by the U.S.”

North Korea has also insisted that talks will succeed only if the United States takes a different approach from the one it took in Hanoi, but it has been careful not to criticize Trump directly. Indeed, the North Korean Foreign Ministry also said last week that Trump is “different from his predecessors in political sense and decision” and that it hoped he would make a wise and bold decision. 

“Next year, the United States will have its presidential election, and South Korea will have a legislative election. [Kim Jong Un’s] strategy could be to have his third meeting with President Trump before next year to get the best result ahead of the elections race,” said Yang Moo-jin, a professor at the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul. 

Leif-Eric Easley, a professor at Ewha University in Seoul, said the removal of John Bolton as White House national security adviser last month might have encouraged North Korea to think it could win sanctions relief by making a deal with Trump. Bolton had consistently held a hard line on North Korea. In return, Easley said, Pyongyang might offer concessions, such as an unverifiable freeze on nuclear weapons production, that Trump could present as a symbolic victory.

[Washington Post]

How a sanctions-busting smartphone business thrives in North Korea

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In 2017, official customs data show North Korea imported $82 million worth of mobile phones from China, the third biggest import item after soybean oil and fabrics. That number dropped to zero in 2018 as sanctions bit. But while sanctions eliminated official imports, informal trade along the China-North Korea border appears to be ongoing, experts and defectors say.

The availability of North Korean mobile phones are a big asset in North Korea’s flourishing grey market economy. One young North Korean woman surnamed Choi recalled selling two pigs and smuggling herbs from China to raise the 1,300 Chinese yuan ($183) her family needed to buy a mobile phone in 2013. She used the phone to help successfully run a retail business selling Chinese clothes and shampoos, arranging deliveries from wholesalers.

“It turned out we could make a way more money than our official salaries,” said Choi, who has since defected to South Korea, declining to give her full name for fear of retribution against relatives still in North Korea.

In a survey this year of 126 North Korean defectors who had used mobile phones, more than 90% said cellphones improved their daily lives and about half said they used them for market activities. “Millions of people are using mobile phones and need them to make a living or show off their wealth,” said Shin Mi-nyeo, executive director of the Organization for One Korea, a South Korean support group for defectors that conducted the poll.

Sin adds: “Then their phone bills create huge income for the government.” Kim Bong-sik, a researcher at South Korea’s Korea Information Society Development Institute, said estimating revenues was difficult, but it was likely to be one of the state’s biggest earners given the scale of the business.

North Korean phones can only be used to call domestic numbers and have some unique security features. Downloading or transferring files is severely restricted. Reuters found a warning pop-up when installing an “unidentified program” on the Pyongyang 2418 smartphone stating: “If you install illegal programs, your phone can malfunction or data will get destroyed.”

“North Korea puts algorithms and software in its mobile phones to keep data from being copied or transferred,” said Lee Young-hwan, a South Korean software expert studying North Korean smartphones. The regime has also developed a home-grown surveillance tool on mobile phones, according the U.K.-based cybersecurity company Hacker House. When a user accesses illegal or non-state approved media, an alert is generated and stored inside the phone. A modified version of Android also conducts surveillance and tracks users, Hacker House said.

[Reuters]

Why a senior defector believes North Korea’s days are numbered

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Thae Yong-ho, a former North Korean diplomat who held posts in Denmark, Sweden and the U.K. said that while the regime’s elusive leader, Kim Jong Un, may have no intention of undertaking reforms or giving up his nuclear weapons, change is inevitable. Thae, who lives under the protection of the South Korean government, and travels with an entourage of body guards, recently sat for an interview with TIME, amid news that U.S. President Donald Trump and Kim have been expressing interest in another summit.

Q: President Trump has pursued a strategy of cozying up to hostile leaders, including Kim Jong Un, in the hopes that it will pay off at the negotiating table. What do you think has been the effect of this?
A: I think President Trump is playing a very dangerous game with North Korea. President Trump met three times with Kim Jong-Un, [but] … has not taken any significant measures to stop the nuclearization of North Korea. Meanwhile Kim Jong Un has achieved quite a lot. First, he avoided a so-called military option, which President Trump had emphasized quite often in 2017. Second, he stopped President Trump from adding additional sanctions. Third, thanks to these meetings, Kim Jong Un actually strengthened his legitimacy and absolute rule over North Korea.

Q: President Trump has made it clear he wants the Nobel Prize for making peace with North Korea. What does Kim Jong Un want from these talks?
A: First, he wants nuclear status in this region. …Like what India and Pakistan did. Second, is that through this dialogue process with President Trump, Kim Jong Un, a man in his thirties, all of a sudden raised his rank to the same level as other important players in this region. And domestically, he proved to North Korean people that he is very capable, even though he is young.

Q: You’ve said that North Korean people, both regular citizens and the elite, don’t believe in the system. What gives you this impression?
A: The current regime can be termed a socialist skeleton. The bones have a socialist structure, but the flesh has already turned capitalist. The number of black markets and free markets are increasing every year. If you read Rodong Sinmun, North Korean media, they said North Korea will not collapse because of a military strike by imperialists, but it is possible if the young generations are not educated properly.

Q: What do they mean by ‘educated properly’? What’s different about the younger generation?
A: If you look at the millennial generation of North Korea, they are the only ones who have grown up with computers. When computers were introduced in late 1990s, all of a sudden there was a boom of English learning. If you want to use a computer, you have to know English, right? And they are not interested in watching communist or socialist cultural content. They are only interested in American or South Korean movies or dramas. I think that the young generations’ eyes are not on ideological things, but on material things. And even though the North Korean regime wants to stop it, they can’t stop this future.

[Excerpted from TIME interview]

North Korea names conditions for getting rid of its nuclear weapons

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North Korea has laid out its conditions for discussing denuclearization ahead of the next round of planned talks with the United States, striking a positive tone for North Korean supreme leader Kim Jong Un and President Donald Trump’s historic peace process.

In a statement published Monday by the official Korean Central News Agency, the director-general of the North Korean Foreign Ministry’s Department of U.S. Affairs said it was “fortunate that the U.S. has repeatedly expressed its stand to tackle an issue through dialogue and negotiations.” The statement noted that Washington’s approach could either “improve the relations” between it and Pyongyang or “add to the hostility towards each other, arguing there were “two options — crisis and chance” and it was “entirely up to the U.S.” to choose between the two.

“Clear and invariable is the DPRK’s stand,” the official was cited as saying. “The discussion of denuclearization may be possible when threats and hurdles endangering our system security and obstructing our development are clearly removed beyond all doubt.”

The exact meaning of that last phrase has at times proved an obstacle for the ongoing negotiations, with the U.S. pushing for a “complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearization” without preconditions and North Korea first seeking sanctions relief and security guarantees. The two sides have yet to reach any agreement.

North Korea has long been the target of international sanctions due to its development of nuclear weapons, assets the ruling Kim dynasty has argued was necessary to deter a potential U.S. invasion. Washington and Pyongyang have never normalized ties since clashing during the 1950s Korean War in which the U.S. backed South Korea and China and the Soviet Union supported North Korea.

Still, both administrations have continued to express confidence in the other’s willingness to talk and South Korean newspaper Joongang Ilbo cited diplomatic sources Sunday as saying that Kim invited Trump to a fourth summit, possibly in Pyongyang, in his latest letter last month. Also on Monday, South Korea’s Yonhap News Agency cited a State Department spokesperson as that the U.S. would “welcome the North Korean commitment to resume negotiations in late September” and was “prepared to have those discussions at a time and place to be agreed.”

[Newsweek]

Kim Jong-un invitation to Donald Trump to visit Pyongyang

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North Korean leader Kim Jong-un invited US president Donald Trump to visit Pyongyang in a letter sent in August, a South Korean newspaper reported on Monday, citing diplomatic sources.

The letter pre-dates North Korea’s latest launch of short-range projectiles a week ago, and is the second letter Trump received from Kim last month amid stalled denuclearization talks between the two countries. In the second letter, which was passed to Trump in the third week of August, Kim spoke of his willingness to meet Trump for another summit, one source reportedly told the Joongang Ilbo newspaper.

The White House, the US State Department and the North Korean mission to the United Nations did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Trump and Kim have met three times since June last year to discuss ways to resolve a crisis over North Korea’s missile and nuclear programmes, but substantive progress has not been made.

Last week’s round of short-range North Korean missiles came just hours after vice foreign minister Choe Son Hui said North Korea was willing to have “comprehensive discussions” late this month. Trump subsequently said he would be willing to meet Kim at some point later this year.

[The Guardian]

Lawyers determine North Korean waitresses abducted to South Korea, not defected

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A group of North Korean waitresses who “defected” to Seoul in 2016 were actually abducted by South Korea, a fact-finding team of international lawyers has concluded after a visit to Pyongyang.

The case has long been controversial, with Pyongyang saying the 12 women were kidnapped from a North Korean state-run restaurant in China, while Seoul insists they defected of their own free will.

During their six-day stay in the North Korean capital, which ended September 5, the lawyers said they spoke to seven former waitresses who claimed they managed to escape, while their colleagues were tricked into coming to Seoul.

The seven North Korean women said they escaped – and eventually return to the North – after their team leader overheard a conversation between the restaurant’s manager and a representative of the South Korean intelligence service.

While the seven escaped, 12 other waitresses had already left without knowing they were being taken to South Korea, the joint fact-finding committee of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers said in a statement.

The 12 women were “taken away by deception … against their will, separated from their families and country”, it said after taking evidence from their seven colleagues. “This constitutes the criminal offense of abduction.”

In a bombshell revelation last year, the manager of the restaurant where the waitresses worked said he had lied to them about their final destination and blackmailed them into following him to the South. Heo Gang-il told the South’s JTBC television that he had been recruited by Seoul’s National Intelligence Service (NIS) in China in 2014.

At a briefing in Pyongyang, one of the lawyers, Niloufer Bhagwat, vice president of the Confederation of Lawyers of Asia and the Pacific, slammed the Seoul government for its handling of the case.

The team of lawyers said they had received “full cooperation” from the North but were not allowed to meet the 12 North Korean women who are currently in the South. “The young women … are still being monitored by the South Korean intelligence service and the national police agency,” she said.

[AFP]

North Korea tells UN to cut international aid staff in Pyongyang

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North Korea has told the United Nations to cut the number of international staff it deploys to Pyongyang, saying the organization’s programs have failed “due to the politicization of UN assistance by hostile forces,” according to a letter seen by Reuters on Wednesday.

North Korea wants the number of international staff with the UN Development Programme cut from six to one or two, the World Health Organization from six to four and the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) to cut its 13 staff by one or two.

In the letter dated August 21, Kim Chang Min, secretary-general for North Korea’s National Coordinating Committee for the United Nations, gave a deadline of the end of the year for the agencies to make the cuts.

Kim said the number of international staff with the World Food Programme should also be reduced “according to the amount of food aid to be provided”, once the agency and North Korean agree how to implement a plan for 2019 to 2021.

The UN estimates 10.3 million people – almost half the country’s population – are in need and some 41 percent of North Koreans are undernourished, while Pyongyang said in February it was facing a food shortfall this year and had to halve rations, blaming drought, floods and sanctions.

“Historically there’s been a critical lack of international expertise and oversight and capacity to monitor the use of the assistance that is provided,” said a UN diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity. “We’re deeply surprised by this turn of events in part because this is when the needs have grown and the UN has been trying to mobilize support to scale up assistance in country.”

The move comes amid stalled talks between the US and North Korea aimed at dismantling Pyongyang’s nuclear and missile programs. The UN Security Council has tightened sanctions on North Korea since 2006 in a bid to choke funding for those programs.

[Reuters]

North Korea denies expert UN report linking it to $2 billion hacking campaign

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Allegations that the North Korean government is responsible for getting over $2 billion in a long-running hacking campaign, including attacks on crypto-exchanges, are a “sheer lie,” says a North Korean government spokesperson.

The statement, which was published by KCNA, North Korea’s state news agency, denies allegations that North Korea “illegally forced the transfer of two billion US dollars needed for the development of WMD programs by involving cyber actors”.

“Such a fabrication by the hostile forces is nothing but a sort of a nasty game aimed at tarnishing the image of our Republic and finding justification for sanctions and pressure campaign against the DPRK,” reads the statement.

A UN report, leaked to the AP and Reuters, reveals that North Korea hit South Korean exchanges hard, stealing cryptocurrencies from exchanges and using victims’ computing power to mine bitcoin for the development of mass destruction programs. 

The cybercrime group Lazarus, alleged to be sponsored by North Korea, is said to be responsible for $571 of the $882 million–or 65%– of the total crypto stolen from exchanges between the second quarter of 2017 and early 2018, according to a report released by cybercrime watchdog Group-IB last October. 

[Yahoo News]