Category: DPRK Government

Did North Korea execute top negotiator over failed Trump summit?

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Chosun Ilbo, South Korea’s largest newspaper, reported Friday that North Korea had executed a top negotiator involved in Kim Jong Un’s failed summit with President Trump in February, and punished a key aide.

Chosun Ilbo cited an unnamed, unspecified source as saying nuclear envoy Kim Hyok Chol was executed by firing squad in March for acting as a U.S. spy.

“Kim Jong Un is believed to have ordered the purge,” the newspaper reported, saying that the moves were intended “to contain internal unrest and mounting public dissatisfaction” after the North Korean leader failed to secure relief from economic sanctions during his second tête-à-tête with Trump in Vietnam.

Government and intelligence officials in South Korea said that they could not confirm the report. A representative of President Moon Jae-in cautioned local journalists not to jump to “rash judgments,” according to media reports. Friday’s report came from Kim Myong-song, a North Korean defector-turned-journalist who reports on South Korea’s unification ministry.

The report also said former military intelligence chief Kim Yong Chol, who hand-delivered a letter from Kim Jong Un to Trump, was sent to a labor camp near the Chinese border on similar charges, and another official who had also participated in working-level negotiations in the lead-up to the Hanoi summit alongside Kim Hyok Chol and the interpreter who translated for Kim Jong Un had been sent to political prison camps. (Kim Hyok Chol, the negotiator, was a former ambassador to Spain who only emerged as North Korea’s envoy in nuclear talks with the U.S. earlier this year.)

Yang Moo-jin, a professor at the Seoul-based University of North Korean Studies, said he was paying little heed to the reported purge.

[Los Angeles Times]

UN report says North Korean people ‘trapped in cycle of corruption’

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North Koreans face a daily struggle to make ends meet due to a “vicious cycle of deprivation, corruption and repression”, a new United Nations human rights report says.

The report also accuses Kim Jong-un’s government of economic mismanagement, leaving its people fighting to get the basics. Everyday survival is further hampered by officials demanding bribes, it adds. The report is based on interviews carried out with 214 defectors in 2017 and 2018.

It notes that the collapse of the state-run distribution system in the 1990s has forced an estimated three-quarters of the population to turn to informal markets as everyday rations are no longer enough to survive. But the markets exist in a legal grey area, which leaves people vulnerable to officials wanting bribes.

“I am concerned that the constant focus on the nuclear issue continues to divert attention from the terrible state of human rights for many millions of North Koreans,” Michelle Bachelet, the UN’s High Commissioner for Human Rights, said. “The rights to food, health, shelter, work, freedom of movement and liberty are universal and inalienable, but in North Korea they depend primarily on the ability of individuals to bribe state officials.”

North Korea responded angrily to the allegations laid out in the report. “Such reports are nothing more than fabrication…as they are always based on the so-called testimonies of ‘defectors’ who provide fabricated information to earn their living or are compelled to do so under duress or enticement,” its Geneva mission told Reuters news agency.

[BBC]

North Korea says talks won’t resume unless US changes position on disarmament

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North Korea said Friday that nuclear negotiations with the United States will never resume unless the Trump administration moves away from what Pyongyang described as unilateral demands for disarmament.

The statement by an unnamed North Korean foreign ministry spokesman published in state media was the country’s latest expression of displeasure over the stalled negotiations. It follows two separate launches of short-range missiles earlier this month that were apparently aimed at pressuring Washington and Seoul.

Talks between Washington and Pyongyang have been at a standstill since February. Kim Jong Un has since declared that the Trump administration has until the end of the year to come up with mutually acceptable terms for a deal. In a statement carried by Pyongyang’s official Korean Central News Agency, the North Korean spokesman accused the U.S. of deliberately causing the collapse of the Trump-Kim meeting with unilateral and impossible demands.

“Unless the United States puts aside the current method of calculation and comes forward with a new method of calculation, the DPRK-U.S. dialogue will never be resumed and by extension, the prospect for resolving the nuclear issue will be much gloomy,” the statement added.

[NBC]

The threat to North Korean refugees as a result of China’s surveillance technology

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A Human Rights Watch report detailed a mass surveillance app being used by Chinese police in Xinjiang to monitor the movements and activities of the territory’s Uighur Muslims, including the hundreds of thousands—if not millions—of those being held in political “re-education” facilities. In effect, the app allows the police to monitor the Chinese people’s every move.

As the data passes through the app, it screens and analyzes for so-called suspicious activity. According to the Human Rights Watch, “suspicious activity” encompasses actions as benign as leaving one’s house via the back door rather than the front–or any behavior that breaks from daily activities.

China’s embrace of oppressive surveillance technology will doubtless affect more than just its Muslim population. One especially vulnerable group is North Korean refugees.

While the total number of North Korean defectors currently in China are unknown, some estimate that between 100,000 to 300,000 currently remain in hiding. Nearly all refugees from the North must pass through China in order to reach ultimate freedom in South Korea. These refugees rely on underground networks—primarily made up of Christian missionaries and smugglers—to guide them along their treacherous journeys.

Escape from the brutal Kim regime depends on anonymity, invisibility, and use of the underground system. Invisibility is essential due to Beijing’s agreement with Pyongyang to repatriate all North Koreans found in China. Upon repatriation, North Koreans who accept help from missionaries or who convert to Christianity while in China face particularly harsh treatment. The Commission of Inquiry noted that refugees are usually asked whether they had contact with Christian missionaries; those who did face harsher consequences. The Commission report found that Christians are uniquely persecuted among religious groups in North Korea. Open Doors USA has identified Pyongyang as the world’s worst persecutor of Christians.

A 2014 report from the United Nations Commission of Inquiry documented systematic repression of North Koreans returned from China. Most are thrown in ordinary prison camps or political prison camps where they will most likely be subject to torture, malnourishment, and forced labor. Many pregnant North Korean women are forced to abort their children, often without anesthesia, sometimes by having a soldier stand on their pregnant stomach. Should the child survive the abortion, the mother may be forced to watch her baby be smothered to death. Conditions are brutal for all returned refugees, but they are especially grave for women.

[Forbes]

North Korea waiting for Trump to blink … or leave office?

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It used to be North Korea that was facing maximum pressure, not exerting it. More recently, Pyongyang conducted a second ballistic missile test in a week, escalating tensions with Washington.

With Pyongyang ramping up the pressure, Trump will eventually have to blink — one way or another. Either he returns to his policy of “maximum pressure,” threatening North Korea with potential military action if it continues missile and potentially even nuclear testing, or he agrees to reopen the topic of sanctions relief.

North Korea’s current hand is a strong one, even if the potential risks of overplaying it are very real. And Trump can likely not afford a rapid escalation of tensions that would be a tacit admission that his entire strategy towards Pyongyang has been a failure.

Washington’s two other levers for pulling on North Korea, its neighbors in China and South Korea, are also likely not feasible. China is not going to exert any pressure on Kim on Trump’s behalf in the middle of a trade war, and the North Korean leader has made it clear that he blames South Korea in part for the general worsening of relations, particularly Seoul’s decision to go ahead with recent joint military drills with the US.

Pyongyang has also gained a solid new backer: Russia. According to Michael Elleman, an analyst at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a UK-based think tank with ties to the defense industry, the missiles used it Pyongyang’s recent tests “look remarkably like those of a Russian-produced Iskander.” While he said it was possible North Korea had imported the missile from elsewhere or matched the Russian design, the most likely explanation is that it bought them direct from Moscow. It is surely no coincidence that Pyongyang’s tests came off the back of Kim Jong Un’s successful first summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Pyongyang may also be playing a longer game. It has shown in the past that it is perfectly willing to wait out difficult US Presidents and wait for a change in leadership that will give it a chance to restart negotiations and earn more time to shore up its military capabilities. While no US leader has ever sat down with their North Korean counterpart before Trump, now that the precedent has been made, Pyongyang will know that future Presidents will not see it as such an impossible step.

[CNN]

US and South Korean position on North Korea

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U.S. President Donald Trump and his South Korean counterpart Moon Jae-in discussed North Korea’s recent short-range missile test as well as a recent joint food security assessment from the World Food Program (WFP) and Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

A UN report published on Friday concluded that 10.1 million North Koreans remained food insecure and predicted falling crops yields, expanding food shortfalls and noted lower Public Distribution System (PDS) rations. “Overall, it is estimated that 10.1 million people (40 percent of the population) are food insecure and in urgent need of food assistance,” the report reads. “Prolonged dry spells, abnormally high temperatures and floods, coupled with limited supplies of agricultural inputs, had a severe impact on yields of the 2018 main crops harvested last September/October.”

“President Trump assessed that South Korea’s provision of food to North Korea in a humanitarian move will be very timely and a positive step and supports it,” Blue House spokesperson Ko Min-jung said. 

Countries are not prohibited from sending humanitarian aid to North Korea, though some items like farming machinery, industrial and medical equipment must first be granted a sanctions exemption from the UN, which can slow down the aid delivery process.

The two leaders also talked about how to keep diplomacy moving forward with North Korea despite recent missile tests, which was likely a new kind of short-range ballistic missile (SRBM).  “We still believe that there is an opportunity to get a negotiated outcome where we get fully verified denuclearization. Chairman Kim has repeated that,” U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told U.S. media over the weekend.

[NK News]

North Korea planted GPS tracking device in child’s toy to locate her parents

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Agents of North Korea reportedly planted a GPS tracking device in the toy frog of a young girl they knew was about to defect to her parents who had already fled and were now living in South Korea.

Testimony delivered on Thursday, provided by the Caleb Mission, an organization which supports defectors and refugees,  revealed that North Korea used a GPS device implanted in a child’s toy. The parents of the girl had successfully defected to the South, and were attempting to orchestrate her escape.

Before the girl left North Korea for China, a man gave the nine-year-old girl a stuffed frog and said: “This is a gift for you. Give it to your mom,” The Chosun Ilbo reported.

After she arrived at the Chinese safe house, the trafficker inspected the frog and discovered the GPS tracking device inside of it. Alarmed, he left the device undisturbed, fearing he might trigger a raid of the house if he removed it.

According to The Chosun Ilbo, from testimony delivered by defectors it was revealed that North Korea is also using GPS devices to capture traffickers who help people escape the regime.

[Newsweek]

North Korea’s “Red Dawn” campaign to target defectors

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In December last year, the personal information of nearly 1,000 defectors from North Korea was stolen by hackers working for Kim Jong Un’s regime.

The data was taken from a database belonging to South Korea’s resettlement agency via a computer infected with malicious software at the Hana center in the southern city of Gumi, Reuters reported. The Hana center is one of 25 institutes that help some 32,000 North Korean defectors adapt to a new life in the South, offering jobs, medical aid, and more.

Months before news of the hack emerged, cybersecurity company McAfee warned that North Korean hackers, known as “Sun Team,” were actively using malware on mobile phones to spy on Android devices used by defectors.

The malware is spread through social media networks, including Facebook, and used to steal personal information such as photos, contact lists, text messages, and more. Around 100 victims were targeted via the Google Play store.

Some of that information was then used to create fake social media accounts by stealing the victims’ identities. The campaign was dubbed “Red Dawn” by McAfee. It was the second Sun Team operation targeting defectors that McAfee had uncovered in 2018.

[Newsweek]

North Korea test-launches more missiles as U.S. Envoy visits Seoul

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North Korea fired two short-range missiles Thursday, an act of defiance that marks the country’s second test launch of weapons in less than a week.

North Korea launched a short-range missile from the country’s northwest Kusong region at 4:29 p.m. and then another short-range missile at 4:49 p.m., South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement. Both missiles flew east over the Korean Peninsula, with the first one traveling 420 kilometers (260 miles) and falling into the sea, the joint chiefs said. The second flew 270 kilometers and also fell into the water.

The tests follow increasingly impatient demands for sanctions concessions from North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in the wake of his failed February nuclear summit with U.S. President Donald Trump. Adding to the diplomatic pressure was the presence of the U.S.’s top nuclear envoy, Stephen Biegun, who was in Seoul meeting with South Korean officials Thursday.

The launches come six days after Kim supervised a military exercise in which he fired off several projectiles, including what non-proliferation experts believed was a short-range ballistic missile. While South Korean officials had played down the earlier tests, saying they were not a provocation, President Moon Jae-in was more critical to Thursday’s launches.

The return to missile testing after a lull of 17 months challenges Trump’s decision to continue talks with Kim, since the U.S. president has often cited the lack of such provocations as evidence his approach was working. North Korea, which has often complained about U.S. and South Korean joint military drills, called Saturday’s test a “reasonable strike drill” for its combat readiness.

“Since the U.S. response [has been] low-key, North Korea appears to think that this level of test would not cause problems and it can continue the tests,” said Jina Kim, a research fellow at Korea Institute for Defense Analyses.

[Bloomberg]

North Korea’s newest missile appears similar to advanced Russian design

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North Korea’s newest missile has a striking resemblance to an advanced Russian design, according to experts analyzing images from a test of the weapon on Saturday morning.

The missile, which North Korea describes as a “tactical guided weapon,” appears superficially to be nearly identical to Russia’s Iskander missile — a highly accurate short-range weapon capable of striking targets more than 150 miles away.

Such a system has the potential to challenge missile defenses in South Korea and further escalate tensions in the region. If it is an Iskander-like missile, this new weapon will fly at altitudes that will make it hard to intercept, according to Michael Elleman, a physicist and senior fellow for missile defense at the International Institute for Strategic Studies. The Iskander flies at an altitude of roughly 30 miles, Elleman says, too high for U.S. Patriot surface-to-air missile interceptors, but too low for THAAD, a system capable of intercepting longer-range missiles.

North Korea tested the weapon on May 4 as part of a “strike drill” that included the use of other weapons such as rocket artillery. It was the first publicized test of a missile since North Korea declared a voluntary moratorium on long-range intercontinental missile tests in April 2018. The new missile appears to be short-range, meaning it doesn’t violate the moratorium.

[NPR]