Category: DPRK Government

North Korea mending fences with China

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A high level North Korean delegation turned up in Beijing unannounced this week and met with Chinese President Xi Jinping — the first time a North Korean official has met China’s leader since 2013.

The meeting between top North Korean diplomat Ri Su Yong and Xi caught North Korea watchers by surprise.

On paper, China is North Korea’s closest and most powerful ally but it’s is no secret that relations between Beijing and Pyongyang have been at a low point in recent years.

According to official media reports, the Workers’ Party of Korea delegation headed by Ri Su Yong, delivered a message from North Korea’s supreme leader Kim Jong Un. It expressed “the hope to strengthen and develop bilateral friendship and to maintain peace and stability in the region.”

Ri reaffirmed that North Korea would continue its ‘two front lines policy” of developing nuclear weaponry in tandem with reinvigorating its isolated and stagnating economy.

Xinhua, China’s official news agency gave few details, but the landmark meeting can be interpreted as a slight thawing in the frosty relations between historical and ideological friends.

Beijing is also sending a message to the U.S. and South Korea that, despite misgivings, it is not abandoning its old ally and all parties are going to have to get used to that.

[CNN]

Yeonmi Park: “We North Koreans can be experts at lying, even to ourselves.”

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Growing up under the repressive regime of Kim Jong-il in North Korea, Yeonmi Park was taught never to express her opinions or ask questions. The dictator, she believed, could read her mind. Her mother gave her a warning: “Even when you think you’re alone, the birds and mice can hear you whisper.”

Now 22 and living in New York, Park has found her voice. So much so, that North Korea published an 18-minute video online, featuring Park’s relatives, in an attempt to discredit her stories of her former home.

“If a dictator hates you, you’re in good shape. You’re a good activist,” Park says.

Park grew up in a small, one-storey house in Hyesan, near the border with China, during the years of the North Korean famine which claimed more than a million lives. Her book recounts the horrifying images that came to seem normal to her as a child. Bodies in rubbish heaps, frozen babies abandoned in allies, desperate people crying out for help on the streets and long queues for fresh water on freezing days.

“Maybe deep, deep inside me I knew something was wrong. But we North Koreans can be experts at lying, even to ourselves,” Park writes.

On a dark and cold night in early 2007, Park, then 13, and her mother made the dangerous journey across the border to China guided by human smugglers. Nearly two years later, Park and her mother escaped and crossed the Gobi Desert to Mongolia and then flew to South Korea.

It was Park’s emotional speech about her experiences delivered at the One Young World summit in 2014 that garnered global attention. The video of her speech has been viewed more than 2 million times on YouTube.

[Sydney Morning Herald]

North Korea documentary “Cash for Kim”

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North Korean laborers are literally being worked to death in shocking conditions with money flowing directly into the hands of the North Korean government.

A documentary by filmmakers Sebastian Weis and Manuel Freundt presents shocking evidence that goes right to the heart of the European Union with their footage revealing the harrowing conditions the laborers from North Korea work under.

The documentary, Cash for Kim, shows who is benefiting from the working conditions while giving an insight into how the North Korean workers are treated, with many kept under watch and fearful of reporting their conditions. The footage shows workers employed in several locations across Poland. Weir and Freundt question if the workers are in Poland due to a bureaucratic system error, or rather an economic policy that turns a blind eye to the issue.

More alarmingly the Cash for Kim documentary sheds light on the possibility that one Polish company is even being run by a high-ranking member of the North Korean military.

North Korean workers are employed in mining, logging, textile and construction and working in countries including China, Russia, the UAE, Cambodia and Poland.

[News.com.au]

Insights on Kim Jong Un as provided by his aunt

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Ko Yong Suk, the aunt of Kim Jong Un who has been secretly living in the US, says Kim Jong Un was born in 1984, the same year her first son was born.

“He and my son were playmates from birth. I changed both of their diapers,” Ko said.

While Kim Jong Un attended school in Switzerland, Ko helped take care of the future dictator, describing him as a “short-tempered” intolerant child.

Kim, who was shorter than his friends, was obsessed with basketball and his mother told him he would grow taller if he became a player. “He used to sleep… with his basketball,” Ko said.

But as Kim grew older, he was groomed into a successor for his father. At his eighth birthday party, attended by North Korea’s top brass, Kim reportedly received a general’s uniform adorned with stars and real generals bowed to him.

“It was impossible for him to grow up as a normal person when the people around him were treating him like that,” Ko said.

 [Washington Post]

North Korean slave laborers in the heart of the European Union

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North Korean forced laborers, in the heart of the European Union? It sounds impossible to believe.

But a VICE investigation has found extensive evidence of North Koreans working in conditions of forced labor in Poland, with their wages funding the DPRK regime. VICE gained access to confidential documents such as service contracts, payment records, registers of persons, passport copies, and excerpts from a population register smuggled out of North Korea, the latter indicating a Polish company may be being run by a high-ranking member of the North Korean military.

The investigation was sparked by the death of a North Korean working as a welder at a major shipyard in the Gdansk region. He suffered 95 percent burns in an accident that was only possible because of inadequate working equipment and unsafe practices, the yard’s responsible work inspector Tomasz Rutkowski told us.

A document seen by VICE revealed that Polish National Labor Inspectorate (PIP) found 14 different Polish companies using North Korean workers between 2010 and 2016. The investigation focused on Rungrado and three Polish companies, two of which we discovered supply North Korean workers to two major shipyards which build and repair ships for clients across the European Union (EU).

PIP’s documents show that North Koreans were also found working in industries such as surface construction, furniture production, agriculture, metalworking, medicine, and finance.

A company known as the Korea Rungrado General Trading Corporation, which is directly owned by Kim’s Workers’ Party and has been implicated in the illicit shipment of Scud missile parts to Egypt, was also named in the document.

Read more

Firsthand account of working conditions of North Koreans in Poland

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Conversations [that VICE investigators] managed to have with North Korean shipyard workers in Poland revealed they frequently work 11 to 12 hours a day, five days a week, with shorter seven hour shifts on Saturdays. [They] also observed workers being brought to a construction site in Warsaw on a bus at 5.52am and picked up after 7pm, then taken to living quarters inside a heavily guarded compound in an isolated rural area.

“We don’t receive the money personally in our hands,” said one. He was unable to tell us how much he earned per hour or per month. “We let the company look after it. When I return to [North] Korea I’ll get the money. If we carried cash, there’s a chance that we could lose it. Anyway we don’t need any money on the way to and from work. We leave it to the company, that’s safest.”

At their living quarters, four to five workers share a room with one bed each, another North Korean told us. As they are also required to work night shifts, there are usually two to three persons sleeping in the room at any time, he said.

We asked another if he was able to talk to Polish co-workers. “We simply don’t have time. We go to work and then we go back home. That’s all we do,” he said.

When asked if it was true that workers were not allowed to keep wages, and their employer kept a large proportion, he said: “Unfortunately I cannot answer that question.”

According to the European Alliance for Human Rights in North Korea, workers abroad are deprived of the majority of their wages, which are paid in foreign currency direct to the DPRK, serving as a method of bypassing UN sanctions. “Laborers are rarely allowed to leave work sites or to come into contact with locals throughout their periods of forced labor.

Access to media is denied, communication with family members in North Korea is limited, and ideological indoctrination lessons are more pervasive than those conducted in the DPRK,” it said in a report published last September which was based on interviews with defectors.              Read more

50 thousand North Koreans work abroad earning foreign currency for Kim regime

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The UN estimated in a report last year there are about 50,000 North Koreans abroad, earning the Kim regime $1.2billion to $2.3bn per year. The workers are paid very little, with their employers paying “significantly higher amounts” directly to the North Korean government, said special UN rapporteur Marzuki Darusman.

Remco Breuker, a professor of Korean Studies at Holland’s Leiden University who chairs a working group of experts to research North Korean forced laborers in the EU, puts the situation bluntly: “In my view, North Korea is the world’s largest illegal job agency. They send people where they’re needed to whoever wants to pay.”

Breuker is clear the North Koreans are working under duress. “It’s definitely forced labor as far as I can tell. Whether these people can be considered slaves, that’s a difficult question to answer — I would probably say they come very close to being slaves,” he said. “You can’t really speak of voluntary labor.”

Research indicates workers are mostly from Pyongyang, and must be loyal to the regime, and married — allowing the threat of consequences for family members to act as leverage to ensure good behavior. They are allowed a 40-day vacation back home after two years work, after which they work abroad for another three years. One worker VICE spoke to said he had been in Poland for five years.

A spokesperson from Poland’s immigration authority told VICE that asylum was granted to a North Korean who fled while working in Poland in 2015, but provided no further details.

Kim Seung-cheol escaped during a work assignment in Russia in 1999, though sources who spoke to VICE upon condition of anonymity claimed no more than 50 out of every 50,000 North Koreans who work abroad successfully flee. According to Kim, the secret police visit the families of disobedient workers and he told VICE that his son and mother were deported and then died shortly after he fled his employment. “My whole family was destroyed,” he said.

[Read full VICE News article] 

Political correctness North Korean style – Part 1

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For foreigners who visit North Korea, minders are a constant presence. Besides translating, they tell journalists and tourists where they can and can’t go, and impart the official line on everything from relations with the U.S. to the proper way to refer to the regime’s leaders. And they have a few pet peeves:

What to Call the Country. North Korea is not North Korea. Rather, it is the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, DPR Korea or DPRK. Completely out of bounds is “the hermit kingdom”; minders say the term is deeply insulting to them. South Korea, with whom a war in the 1950s culminated in an uneasy truce, is known in print as “south Korea,” with the south in lower case.

How to Address Leaders. North Korea has a government, but there are only three people who really matter–and two of them are dead. Kim Il Sung, who founded the country and died in 1994, is often “eternal president,” or “great general.” His son Kim Jong Il is “chairman” or “dear leader.” Kim Jong Un, who took power after his father passed away in late 2011, may be called “supreme leader” or “dear respected”.

Those Kim Pins. All North Koreans wear a pin over their left breast featuring the face of Kim Il Sung or Kim Jong Il–or both. The most common one is a shining red flag with the two men’s portraits. But don’t call them pins. That word undermines their significance. As one minder said after consulting translation software on his phone, they are “badges.”   continued

Political correctness North Korean style – Part 2

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The United States. Mentioning the U.S. can result in a long lecture. There is no such thing as U.S. relations, only “hostile U.S. policy.” Any hardship faced by North Korea is the fault of the U.S. and its “puppet” South Korea.

North Korea’s Nukes. Asked his thoughts on ties, Om Myong Chin, a 57-year-old who works at a battery factory, said: “If the U.S. government stops its hostile policy against our country, with time relations might improve.” The minders were quick to agree.

Difficult Questions. A minder’s frequent answer to a question is: “That is a difficult question.” Difficult questions include: “Why am I not allowed to go out of the hotel by myself?” Answer: “People’s bad emotions about the U.S. are running high and I might not be able to protect you.” Questions that might suggest criticism of the leaders are often not translated or acknowledged.

When a Minder is Not a Minder. “The minder’s job is to hide the embarrassing inner side of North Korean society from the eyes of outsiders,” said Ahn Chan Il, a North Korean defector.  Minders don’t want to be called minders. “I am not minding you,” said one. “We are guiding you. Please call me your guide.”

[Bloomberg]

Activist says ordinary North Koreans have little respect for Kim Jong Un

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Kim Jong Un has yet to earn the grudging respect of ordinary North Koreans, according to North Korean defector and activist Jeong Kwang-il. Jeong says most North Koreans who do not curry favor with the regime do not refer to him as the “General” or the “Supreme Leader.”

In the past, North Korean leaders were addressed with honorifics, Jeong said. “But nowadays when I speak to North Koreans on the phone, they just call him ‘Jong Un,’ the way one would refer to a friend,” Jeong said.

That trend could be frustrating to the young Kim, who recently was declared “Chairman” during North Korea’s Seventh Party Congress. But the lack of reforms and improvement to people’s lives could be having a greater effect on perceptions of Kim in the country.

Jeong also said that defector activism, including the delivery of South Korean videos such as films of resettled defectors in the South, flash drives of western movies and memory cards for mobile phones, are making an impact on North Korean understanding of the outside world.

Disillusioned with the regime after viewing the media, some North Koreans have started to call the leader “that guy Jong Un” or sometimes “that kid,” according to Jeong.

There’s evidence North Koreans are no longer afraid to breach rules of conduct, the activist said.

[UPI]