Category: DPRK Government

The only way to change North Korea’s destiny is to change its leader

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The only way to change North Korea’s destiny is to change its leader, says Thae Yong Ho the most senior North Korean diplomat to defect in almost 20 years.

“As long as Kim Jong Un is in power, there’ll be no chance for the world to improve the human rights issue” or cancel “the nuclear program,” he says.

Thae’s initial hopes that Kim’s youth and overseas studies would make him a reformer were soon destroyed as he saw more and more of his fellow high-ranking officials being executed, almost, he says, on a whim.

“If Kim Jong Un decides to kill someone, if he thinks that he is a threat or he scared him, he just wants to get rid of him, that is the present reality of North Korea,” he says, adding that he knows more elites will defect.

A South Korean think-tank affiliated with the country’s intelligence agency (INSS) assesses at least 340 people have been ordered to be executed since Kim took power in December 2011.

[CNN]

North Korean abuse in prison camp system well documented

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The US State Department’s report is one of several recent institutional investigations documenting North Korea’s human rights record and prison camp system.

Last November, the Washington-based Human Rights in North Korea (HRNK) released satellite images that show the reclusive nation’s prison camp system, where detainees are subjected to forced labor, torture, starvation, rape and death, may be expanding. The images are of Camp No. 25, a camp near Chongjin, on North Korea’s northeast coast.

According to the United Nations, up to 120,000 men, women and children are imprisoned in the gulags, known as “kwanliso” in Korean. A 2014 report from the international organization estimated that “hundreds of thousands of political prisoners” have died in the North Korean gulags over the past 50 years amid “unspeakable atrocities.”

“The inmate population has been gradually eliminated through deliberate starvation, forced labor, executions, torture, rape and the denial of reproductive rights,” the report said, drawing a parallel between the camps and those of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.

“These camps constitute the cornerstone of the country’s large infrastructure dedicated to political repression and social control that enables widespread and systematic human rights abuses,” rights group Amnesty International said in a statement.

[CNN]

Defected diplomat says international criticism of North Korean human rights undermines Kim Jong Un

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Thae Yong-ho, North Korea’s former deputy ambassador in London who defected to South Korea in July, says clashing with Pyongyang over its nuclear program has strengthened Kim Jong Un’s leadership, but continued human rights criticism and increased information from the outside world will over time lead to the downfall of the authoritarian and repressive regime.

Thae says the leadership in Pyongyang is unwilling to give up its nuclear program, and  its defiance in the face of U.S.-led pressure has helped solidify internal popular support and earned the leadership a degree of international respect. “Some countries are interested in following North Korea’s path to become nuclear powers themselves. Therefore, North Korean diplomats retain their dignity despite the criticisms of the international community,” Thae said.

He says, however, international criticism about human rights abuses in North Korea undermines Kim’s standing in the world and with his own people.

Thae says North Korean diplomats have faced denunciations from allies and adversaries alike over Pyongyang’s human rights record, but the leadership is more concerned about how this kind of criticism could damage the carefully nurtured public image of Kim as a near-infallible leader.

“It is not easy for North Koreans to understand the concepts of the ICC or human rights. But they will be greatly interested if they hear that Kim Jong Un will be tried at the international court. It will be a direct sign that Kim Jong Un is a criminal and his regime has no future,” he said.

[VoA]

Defector: “North Korea won’t change its repressive ways”

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In North Korea’s “utopian society”, the very words “human rights” do not need to exist — because it’s so perfect, the regime maintains!

The concept is not even taught. I had never even heard of the term “human rights” when I was in North Korea.

It also strongly denies the existence of the political prison camp system throughout the country.

It maintains this position even though I was born in the most infamous, political prison camp in North Korea: Camp 14.

Only recently did North Korea concede that “labor detention centers” exist, but solely for the incarcerated to have their lives improved.

North Korea also denies committing human rights violations, threatens and intimidates defector activists working to raise awareness of human rights issues, and attacking and criticizing those who have testified during the United Nations Commission of Inquiry’s investigation, calling these defectors “human scum.”

The dictatorship in North Korea has never been honest or truthful for more than six decades it has been in existence.

[Excerpt of CNN article by North Korean defector Shin Dong-hyuk]

North Korean diplomat says more diplomats poised to defect

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More high-level North Korean diplomats are waiting to defect to South Korea from their overseas posts in Europe, Pyongyang’s former deputy ambassador to London said on Tuesday, according to the Yonhap News Agency.

Thae Yong Ho defected to South Korea in August last year and since December 2016 has been speaking to local media and appearing on variety television shows to discuss his defection to Seoul and his life as a North Korean envoy.

“A significant number of North Korean diplomats came to South Korea recently,” Thae said, according to Yonhap. “I am not the only one from Europe. There are more waiting to come,” Thae said, speaking at an event held in South Korea’s parliamentary building.

Thae, 54, has said publicly that dissatisfaction with the rule of young leader Kim Jong Un had led him to flee his post, but he also had two university-age sons living with him and his wife in London who were due to return to isolated North Korea.

He is the highest-ranking official to have fled North Korea for the South since the 1997 defection of Hwang Jang Yop, the brains behind North Korea’s governing ideology, “Juche”, which combines Marxism with extreme nationalism.

“Of all the recent high-level defectors, I am the only one to have gone public,” said Thae.

[Reuters]

North Korean defections could swell as political elite look south

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More North Koreans are fleeing their country for political reasons, rather than economic reasons, and an increase in defections by Pyongyang’s elite will ultimately weaken Kim Jong Un’s regime, South Korea’s unification minister said in an interview.

Hong Yong-pyo, who heads the Ministry of Unification, expects to see more defectors like Thae Yong Ho, the North Korean deputy ambassador in London, whose defection to Seoul last year was the most high-profile in nearly two decades.

A crippling famine triggered the first major wave of defectors from North Korea about 20 years ago, but many now say that they are leaving the country “not just because they are starving, but for a better life, and for freedom and for their children’s education,” Mr. Hong said.

Mr. Thae, the North’s former deputy ambassador to the U.K., defected not for economic reasons, but “for his son’s education,” Mr. Hong said. The rising number of elite defectors, including more than a dozen workers at North Korea’s overseas restaurants who arrived in South Korea last year, “shows how unsettled the Kim Jong Un system is internally,” Mr. Hong said.

[Wall Street Journal]

North Korea: A problem without a solution

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Since the end of the Cold War, paradox has characterized the United States’ perception of North Korea. Pyongyang is at once a constant threat and a continual joke, its leaders a source of as much fear for the American public as derision. North Korea’s missile and nuclear program is presented simultaneously as a dangerous example of the failure of nonproliferation regimes and as a duct-tape-and-bailing-wire operation, notwithstanding the flurry of missile tests and accomplishments that Pyongyang has touted recently.

Yet the dual view of North Korea as fearsome and farcical — as a present danger and a recalcitrant remnant of a bygone era — endures. More and more, this contradictory assessment seems to reflect the lack of viable options that Washington has for dealing with Pyongyang. Despite the power disparity between the United States and North Korea, Washington has little ability to alter Pyongyang’s behavior without accepting significant political or military repercussions in return.

And because of this disparity, North Korea does not feel that it can abandon its nuclear and missile program and still be secure from the United States’ whims. Each side has its own viewpoint and its own legitimate concerns, making compromise difficult if not impossible. Herein lies one of the dirty secrets of international relations: Rarely do countries achieve all their imperatives, and when interests clash, the solution is often managing the reality, not resolving the conflict.  Read full Forbes article

Diplomat defector confirms North Korean Army Chief executed after wiretap

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A high-profile North Korean defector has offered support for theories that a former North Korean military chief, missing since 2012, was executed after being wiretapped.

Vice Marshal Ri Yong-ho was chief of the general staff of the North Korean army from 2009 to July 2012, when he was suddenly stripped of his North Korean Worker’s Party duties, ostensibly due to an unspecified “illness.” South Korean and Western media later reported that Ri was likely under house arrest; then that he had been executed.

Thae Yong-ho, a former North Korean diplomat, has told the Yonhap news agency that Ri was executed in 2012 — though there has been no official announcement.

The former army chief Vice Marshal Ri Yong-ho was caught on tape complaining about North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, in particular criticizing Kim’s promises to reform and liberalize the country. Kim’s father, Kim Jong-il, also knew reforms would help the country, but wasn’t able to implement them; the younger Kim was foolish to think he could, Ri is thought to have said, Thae reported.

There appears to be a pattern of executing army chiefs under Kim Jong-un. Though none have been confirmed, the past three army chiefs have been sacked and killed: Ri in 2012; his successor, Hyon Yong-chol, in 2015; and Hyon’s successor, Ri Yong-gil, in February 2016.

None of the executions have been confirmed by the North, however.

[Sputnik]

North Korea ‘racing ahead’ on nuclear plan, diplomat defector says

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Political uncertainty in the United States and in South Korea could give North Korean leader Kim Jong-un “an apt time” to develop nuclear weapons “at all costs by the end of 2017,” a high-profile North Korean diplomat who recently defected to South Korea said Tuesday.

“Due to domestic political procedures, North Korea calculates that South Korea and the US will not be able to take physical or military actions to deter North Korea’s nuclear development,” Thae Yong-ho, formerly No. 2 at the North Korean Embassy in London, said in a news briefing, according to the Yonhap News Agency.

Thae said Kim has no plans to give up the country’s nukes even if he is offered huge sums of money, saying the leader is “racing ahead with nuclear development after setting up a plan to develop it (nuclear weapons) at all costs by the end of 2017.”

Pyongyang will then try to open dialogue with Seoul and Washington’s new administrations as a nuclear-possessing state, Thae predicted of the North’s strategy to obtain a nuclear power status.

Until then, North Korea will continue to launch military provocations and conduct nuclear tests in a bid to frustrate Seoul and Washington’s sanctions-concentrated policy towards Pyongyang, Thae said.

Tuesday was the 55-year-old Thae’s first appearance to the media since he escaped his post in London to take refuge in South Korea along with his wife and two sons in July.

[CNN]

North Korea accuses the South of luring its diplomats to defect

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North Korea’s Foreign Ministry on Thursday accused South Korea of committing “political terror” by stepping up efforts to encourage defections by North Koreans overseas, especially diplomats.

Ju Wang Hwan, a ministry official working in its Institute for Disarmament and Peace, said North Korean diplomats around the world have received emails with attachments containing articles that look like they are from North Korean state media. He said the articles have been changed to confuse and influence their intended readers by “viciously slandering our supreme leader and our socialist system.”

“This is clearly political terror, trying to cause social chaos and bloodshed inside a sovereign state,” Ju said in an interview in Pyongyang.

In a long statement released by North Korea’s state news agency Thursday, the North’s Foreign Ministry also accused South Korean agents of calling and following its diplomats in attempts to encourage them to defect.

Several high-profile North Korean defections have occurred this year. A group of North Korean women working at a restaurant in China defected in April, but Pyongyang authorities insisted they were abducted against their will.

[Seattle Post-Intelligencer]