Category: DPRK Government

North Korean spy agency official defected to S. Korea last year

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A senior official at North Korea’s spy agency defected to South Korea last year, a source said Wednesday.

The unidentified official who worked for the Ministry of State Security escaped to the South in an unusual defection by a North Korean in charge of gathering intelligence and cracking down on ordinary people.

The source said that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un is believed to have been upset by the growing number of elite members defecting.

[Yonhap]

South Korean President urges preparations for mass North Korean defections

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South Korean President Park Geun-Hye on Tuesday told her government to prepare for large-scale defections from North Korea, just days after direct appealing to its citizens to flee their country.

In an address to mark Armed Forced Day earlier this month, Park had vowed to “keep the road open” for future escapees and urged North Koreans to “come to the bosom of freedom in the South.”

Pyongyang’s response was to call Park a “bare-faced and impudent bitch” in a commentary carried by the ruling party newspaper, Rodong Sinmun.

Speaking at a cabinet meeting on Tuesday, Park reiterated her defection appeal, and stressed the importance of preparing the ground for any new arrivals. “Defectors are like unification that has arrived early, and a test bed for unification,” Park said. “I hope we can swiftly secure sufficient system and capacity to accommodate North Korean citizens who come seeking freedom,” she added.

The government currently runs two resettlement centers for defectors with a combined capacity of around 1,100 people. South Korea’s Chosun Ilbo reported Saturday that the government was planning a two trillion won (US$1.8 billion) project for building a defector camp that would hold up to 100,000 people. Citing an unnamed government official, the report said closed-down schools and new buildings would be used to accommodate an influx of North Korean refugees that could be triggered by any sudden shift in the dynamics of the North-South border.

[AFP]

Mixed support from defector groups to plan for a North Korean government-in-exile

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Seo Jae-pyong, executive secretary of Association of the North Korean Defectors, criticized the opaque nature of the process, saying an unknown person had been in contact this spring asking for participation in establishing a government-in-exile. But they left neither a name, details about the organization, or a phone number.

“How can they proceed in secret without introducing themselves [to defectors]?” Seo told NK News.

Jung Gwang-il, head of North Korean human rights organization No Chain, said he had been aware of the project since early this year, but disagreed with the plans.

“I can’t accept the idea of establishing a government-in-exile because it’s nonsense. Do we live in the 1930s (Japanese colonial period)?” Jung, who was imprisoned in a North Korean political prisoner camp, told NK News. “It’s ridiculous that someone who hasn’t put any effort into improving the North Korean human rights situations at international organizations like the UN claims [representation]. This is illogical.”

Henry Song, a North Korea human rights activist based in Washington and the North America Director for No Chain, said the so-called “elite” defectors should cooperate with existing organizations.

“While I welcome this particular defector’s desire to help his homeland by establishing this ‘exile government,’ I seriously doubt how much of an effect this new organization will have,” Song told NK News. “It would be very symbolic, but without much weight or relevance in the overall scheme of things.”

[NK News]

North Korean defectors to create US-based government in exile

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A group of high-profile defectors are planning to establish a North Korean government in exile in the U.S. early next year, a South Korean newspaper reported Friday, citing one the of the group’s leaders.

The defectors — some of whom are based in South Korea — aim to play a key role in the democratization of North Korea, the DongA Ilbo newspaper said. The move comes amid an increase of high-profile defections and an apparent rise in the number of elite officials in the isolated nation turning against leader Kim Jong Un, the newspaper reported.

According to the report, the government-in-exile would seek to install a democratic political system with a Chinese model for the economy that would attract support from Beijing.

It would be based in the U.S. because South Korea’s constitution includes the North in its territory.

[Bloomberg]

Japan at the center of North Korean defection drama in Beijing?

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Tokyo denied reports that two high-ranking North Korean officials in Beijing have defected and are seeking political asylum in Japan.

One of the defectors is described as a senior representative whose work included procuring medical supplies for North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and his immediate circle.

JoongAng Ilbo newspaper identified the man only as “A,” saying he headed the North Korean Representative Office in Beijing and was an employee of a department of the Ministry of Public Health. “A,” his wife and their daughter disappeared on Sept. 28 from a residence used by North Korean diplomats in Beijing. Apparently they then contacted Japanese officials to ask for protection. The newspaper added the man has a relative living in Japan.

It identified the second would-be defector as official “B,” also from the Representative Office. He went into hiding with his family around the same time and supposedly also applied for asylum in Japan.

Yonhap said South Korea’s government is working to bring the defectors there, but the nation’s Unification Ministry had little to say on Wednesday.

[Japan Times]

North Korea responds to worst natural disaster in its history

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North Korea has suffered the worst natural disaster in its history but it is blowing its trumpet of revolutionary socialism and trying to turn catastrophe into triumph.

Everywhere you look across dozens of miles of the country’s remote northeast, red flags flutter in the stiff breeze and work gangs toil to fix broken river banks, digging away mud that was piled deep by raging waters in recent floods.

Soldiers and citizens have been given three weeks by their leader Kim Jong Un to rebuild the town of Yonsa and house the 27,000 people who lost their dwellings, before the winter sets in at the end of the month.

It’s no easy task. Where 700 homes once stood, only five remain. To the rousing accompaniment of a military band, they are racing against time to build three-story apartment blocks to house the families.

Helping them are two children — a 13-year-old girl and a 14-year-old boy — whose parents died in floods. They said their “Dear Leader” would be their father now and, while they had lost their parents, they hadn’t lost hope in a better future.

Kim Yong Sil, a mother in her late 30s, described how flood waters had hit their riverside home at two in the morning and swept away her husband who, she claimed, was trying to rescue “portraits of their great leaders” from the collapsing house. If her story sounded scripted, her tears were not.  Read more

[NBC]

North Korean floods a serious challenge for Kim Jong Un

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Battling to rebuild homes damaged by the flooding, North Korean work gangs are filling sacks with rocks — 20 bags every hour, from dawn to dusk. It’s back-breaking labor.

It is a mark of how serious this disaster is that Kim Jong Un has appealed to the world for help and for money to rebuild. South Korea has already refused. North Korea isn’t asking everyone. “I’m not going to reach out my hand to the United States,” said one official, Ri Song Chol. “Not after 70 years of their aggression.”

Many people are putting their trust in their all-powerful commander-in-chief.

“Our Dear Leader Kim Jong Un promised us he would provide new house for us before winter,” said homeless mother Taw Kyung Wha. “So we believe him.”

For Kim, who rules some of the poorest people on earth, it is risky.

He can’t afford to lose popular support as his father did in the early 1990s when a flood was followed by a terrible famine that left hundreds of thousands dead.

[NBC]

North Korea official who supplies medicine to Kim Jong-un defects

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A ranking North Korean embassy official in Beijing has defected, South Korea’s Yonhap news agency has said, while a separate report suggested two embassy staff had sought asylum with the Japanese mission in the Chinese capital.

If confirmed, it would mark the latest in a recent series of high-profile North Korean defections that some observers see as a sign of growing instability within the leadership in Pyongyang.

Yonhap, quoting an anonymous source “familiar with Pyongyang affairs”, said the official – stationed in the Beijing embassy but attached to the North Korean health ministry – had disappeared with his family in late September. The source said the official was responsible for sourcing medical supplies for a clinic in Pyongyang that caters to North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un and his family.

In a separate report, the South Korean daily, JoongAng Ilbo, said two senior staffers at the North Korean embassy in Beijing had asked for asylum in Japan.

[The Guardian]

North Korea devastation in flood-hit area

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One month after devastating floods caused by a typhoon hit a remote area of North Korea, Red Cross officials said Sunday that more help is needed for thousands of displaced people before harsh winter conditions set in.

In a video provided by The Red Cross, people of North Hamgyong are seen living in temporary shelters amid rubble and mud-caked areas of destruction left in the wake of the flooding. North Korean authorities have launched a major reconstruction effort, but have asked international humanitarian organizations for help.

The Red Cross has sent supplies to construct temporary shelters and provide daily necessities for people who lost everything in the flooding.

Winter is coming soon, meaning snow and plummeting temperatures will make life more difficult for thousands of displaced people still living in very basic conditions. Red Cross official, Chris Staines, who was among the first international humanitarian workers to reach the area in early September, said in this part of the country, the peak of winter can see temperatures reach as low as -30 degrees Celsius.

[AP]

North Korean unpredictability and provocation

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On paper, the US military is formidable, huge, with carrier battle groups, advanced technology, remarkable submarines, satellites, and so on. What does this translate to in North Korea?

Military power does not exist independently, but only in relation to specific circumstances.

While America is vastly superior militarily to North Korea in every category of arms, the North has nuclear bombs. It can’t deliver them to the US mainland, but can to Seoul. Even without nuclear weapons, North Korea has a large army and large numbers of artillery tubes within range of Seoul.

So an American attack by air on North Korea, the only attack possible short of a preemptive nuclear strike, would offer a high probability of a peninsular war, devastation of Seoul, paralysis of an important trading partner –think Samsung– and an uncertain final outcome. The United States hasn’t the means of getting troops to Korea rapidly in any numbers, and the domestic political results of lots of GIs killed by a serious enemy would be politically grave.

The probable cost far exceeds any possible benefit. And Pyongyang knows it.

As Gordon Liddy said, if your responses to provocation are wildly out of proportion to those provocations, and unpredictable, nobody will provoke you.