Category: DPRK Government

Kim Jong-Un successfully manages the generation change

Posted on by

With his consolidation of power completed at the recent Party Congress, Kim Jong-Un seems to have successfully managed the generation change in North Korea, a tricky affair anywhere.

Foreign bystanders reported that the people were visibly excited to see the young Kim, and even passing by the tribunes they tried to linger and wave flowers and banners in his direction.

Kim Jong-Un appeared in a dark double-breasted jacket and an elegant light tie instead of Mao-style military wear usual for Korean officials. The jacket was to remind the North Korean people of Kim Il Sung, his venerated grandfather, who first appeared in a very similar wear in liberated Pyongyang.

BBC correspondent offers glimpse into the heart of the North Korean state

Posted on by

Excerpt from an article by Rupert Wingfield-Hayes, BBC correspondent detained in North Korea:

[After being stopped at the airport, while departing North Korea] I was told that my reporting had insulted the Korean people, and that I needed to admit my mistakes. They produced copies of three articles that had been published on the BBC website, as I reported on the visit of the Nobel laureates.

“Do you think Korean people are ugly?” the older man asked.
“No,” I answered.

“Do you think Korean people have voices like dogs?”
“No,” I answered again.

“Then why do you write these things?!” he shouted.

I was confused. What could they mean? One of the articles was presented to me, the offending passage circled in black marker pen:

“The grim-faced customs officer is wearing one of those slightly ridiculous oversized military caps that they were so fond of in the Soviet Union. It makes the slightly built North Korean in his baggy uniform comically top heavy. “Open,” he grunts, pointing at my mobile phone. I dutifully punch in the passcode. He grabs it back and goes immediately to photos. He scrolls through pictures of my children skiing, Japanese cherry blossom, the Hong Kong skyline. Apparently satisfied he turns to my suitcase. “Books?” he barks. No, no books. “Movies?” No, no movies. I am sent off to another desk where a much less gruff lady is already looking through my laptop.”

“Are they serious?” I thought. They had taken “grim-faced” to mean “ugly”, and the use of the word “barks” as an indication that I thought they sounded like dogs.

“I have studied English literature,” he said. “Do you think I do not understand what these expressions mean? … They began going through my articles word by word – finding offence in almost every one. But the words were not important; they were ammunition to throw at me, to force me to confess.

New North Korean Foreign Minister appointed

Posted on by

North Korea has named a career diplomat and ex-nuclear envoy with broad experience in negotiating with rivals South Korea and the United States as its new foreign minister. Some South Korean analysts say former Vice Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho’s appointment could be part of a bid to revive long-stalled diplomacy and improve ties with the outside world.

Critics say that North Korea turns to empty diplomatic gestures only after ratcheting up animosity in an attempt to win concessions and aid. North Korean diplomats also reportedly take a back seat to the generals and their hard-line policies in tense times.

Ri has served as the North’s top envoy to stalled six-nation disarmament talks on his country’s nuclear weapons program and participated in talks with the United States in the 1990s. He also served as North Korea’s ambassador in London.

[Note: North Korea’s ruling elite includes another person called “Ri Yong Ho” in English, though his name in Korean is slightly different from the new foreign minister’s. This other Ri Yong Ho served as the country’s army chief before his abrupt dismissal in 2012, and has not appeared in the North’s media since.]

[AP]

Kenneth Bae former prisoner in North Korea explains his “crime”

Posted on by

Kenneth Bae, a Korean-American missionary imprisoned in North Korea, recounted last Wednesday how he had engaged in a kind of spiritual tourism to a little-known city in the northwestern corner of the country. Between 2011 and 2012, Bae brought more than 300 people on tours to North Korea [as part of his vision to evangelize North Koreans].

But on his 18th trip, he said, he made what he called a “very crucial mistake” — inadvertently bringing a computer hard drive along in a briefcase he meant to leave behind in China. The hard drive had files about his missionary work. It also contained a video of emaciated North Korean children scrounging in the dirt for food — footage Mr. Bae said a friend had sent him years earlier and that he not ever fully watched.

After the banned material was discovered, he was held in seclusion in a hotel in northeastern North Korea for a month while officials grilled him. He was given little to eat, generally a few bites of rice and some wilted vegetables, and was forced to watch government propaganda every evening. But he was not beaten or overtly physically abused by authorities.

He eventually confessed that one of the documents on his hard drive was a plan for what he described as “Operation Jericho” — an effort to bring tourists into North Korea to pray and spread the love of God. They would not have openly evangelized, but he had hoped that the “walls” isolating North Koreans from the rest of the world would come crumbling down, just as the walls of Jericho fell in the Bible story.

The book outlines how North Korean officials did not understand the plan’s metaphorical nature, and how Mr. Bae struggled to explain that he wasn’t trying to actually overthrow the government. The government sentenced him to 15 years in prison.

“I had to make a choice,” he said, adding that he began praying deeply as he pondered whether to fight his incarceration or somehow embrace it. He finally determined that it was “God’s will” that had put him there. “After that moment,” he said, “my perspective of life in prison changed because I was no longer there as a prisoner, but I was there as God’s ambassador — somebody who was sent from God to do God’s work.”

It was that belief that ultimately brought him through the ordeal, Mr. Bae said, adding that it has since made him realize that he had a new mission: to remind the world not to forget the ordinary people who are suffering in North Korea.

“We need to differentiate between the government and the people. The people are suffering without knowing what is coming next for them,” Mr. Bae said. “We as people outside need to continue to stand up for them and reach out to them and remember them through prayer support and any other blessing we can give.”

[Washington Times]

North Korean Congress does little to win over a frustrated China

Posted on by

Beijing played along with North Korea’s political theater: Chinese President Xi Jinping sent a letter to Kim Jong-un, congratulating him on adding another title to his name – chairman of the Workers’ Party of Korea. A Chinese foreign ministry spokesman said China hopes to enhance its ties with the North.

However, in an editorial Wednesday, the state-run China Daily opined that North Korea’s economic and nuclear goals conflict with each other, and that Kim Jong-un doesn’t seem to care.

“He appears unaware that his nuclear ambitions are poison for his country’s economy,” stated the strongly worded editorial.  “They will not only exhaust his country’s very limited resources, but will further isolate his country from the rest of the world, politically and economically.”

Fearful that economic collapse in North Korea could dangerously destabilize its own border regions, China is wary of squeezing the errant Kim too hard. Shi Yinghong, a professor of international relations at Beijing’s Renmin University, says that China’s leaders have no choice now but to recognize Kim as North Korea’s unchallenged leader.

China’s reasons for opposing North Korea’s nuclear program have only partly to do with fears of an accident or rogue attack. China worries that North Korea’s nuclear weapons give the United States an excuse to bolster its military presence on the Korean peninsula, part of a larger policy of “containment.”

Since Kim came to power in 2011, Beijing and Pyongyang have barely been on speaking terms. Neither Kim nor China’s Xi have paid state visits to each other’s country. China last week did not send a delegation to the congress, as it did in 1980, apparently because it was not invited.

[Christian Science Monitor]

North Korea expels 3 BBC journalists

Posted on by

North Korea on Monday expelled three BBC journalists it had detained days earlier for allegedly “insulting the dignity” of the authoritarian country, sending them off on a flight to Beijing. Correspondent Rupert Wingfield-Hayes and his team had accompanied a group of Nobel laureates, and were stopped at the Pyongyang airport, detained and questioned.

O Ryong Il, secretary-general of the North’s National Peace Committee, said Wingfield-Hayes’ news coverage distorted facts and “spoke ill of the system and the leadership of the country.” He said Wingfield-Hayes wrote an apology, was being expelled Monday and would never be admitted into the country again.

North Korea did not reveal which of the team’s reports it was upset with, but in one of the segments, North Korean officials are seen arguing with Wingfield-Hayes over video shot in front of a statue of national founder Kim Il Sung.

“They clearly felt that we said stuff that was not respectful to the great leader,” Wingfield-Hayes said in the segment. He said they were ordered to delete the footage or they would not be allowed to leave the university campus where they were filming.

Another segment included a tour of a modern-looking hospital that Wingfield-Hayes expressed doubts about. “The children we’re shown look remarkably well, and there isn’t a doctor in sight. … Everything we see looks like a setup,” he said.

[AP]

No major reforms in Kim Jong Un’s five-year plan

Posted on by

In a three-hour speech broadcast on North Korean TV Sunday, Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un set a five-year plan to revive his country’s struggling economy. But the speech included no major policy changes or economic reforms.

Kim delivered the speech during the 7th Congress of the Workers Party of Korea, the highest-level political gathering in the isolated, one-party state. More than 3,400 party members are in Pyongyang for the congress that began Friday and continued through the weekend.

Kim’s economic plan, the first of its kind in decades, was short on specifics. Kim repeatedly referenced North Korea’s “Juche” ideology of self-reliance, but also spoke of a desire to increase foreign trade. He pledged North Korea would not use its nuclear weapons “unless its sovereignty is encroached upon by any aggressive hostile forces with nukes.”

In the highly secretive country, where the government controls information even among its own officials, foreign journalists and their government minders had a confusing and frustrating day on Sunday. After being told to dress formally, more than 100 journalists were driven to the People’s Palace of Culture in Pyongyang. Reporters were told to bring their passports and equipment inside for a security check. But after members of the media waited in the lobby for around an hour, an official from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced “the program has changed” and the journalists were driven back to their hotel, where they stayed for the remainder of the day.

[CNN NewSource]

It’s Party time in North Korea

Posted on by
1

North Korea will hold a congress of its ruling Workers’ Party starting this Friday–the seventh time in the country’s history such an event has been held, but the first time since 1980.

There are two key institutions in North Korea: the military and the Workers’ Party, the communist structure which controls the state. Its symbols are the usual hammer and sickle, but North Korea has added a brush to symbolize learning.

Kim Il Sung, the founding father of North Korea (and its “eternal president” today, 22 years after his death) was very much a Party man, emphasizing the party and North Korea’s special flavor of communism–called “juche,” or self-reliance–above all else. His son and the second in the dynasty, Kim Jong Il, was more of an army man, putting in place the “songun” or “military first” policy. Kim Jong Un has been modeling himself after his grandfather, elevating the party.  So the congress takes place in this context.

What is a congress anyway? In the communist system, a congress is technically the highest ruling body of the Workers’ Party (although in reality, in North Korea, the highest ruling body is Kim Jong Un’s.) It is a forum to trumpet the importance of the party and sometimes to unveil major new policies. In 1982, Deng Xiaoping used the 12th congress of the Chinese Communist Party to put forward the idea of developing “socialism with Chinese characteristics,” while in 1986, Mikhail Gorbachev used the 27th congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union to announce his reform and opening policies, perestroika and glasnost.

Whether Kim Jong Un offers more rhetoric or real reforms, well, you’ll just have to wait for Friday for that.

[Washington Post]

Details of North Korean party congress still secret

Posted on by

What exactly is in store during North Korea’s ruling party congress, which opens Friday and will be presided over by leader Kim Jong Un, remains a well-kept secret. But North Korea’s advances toward becoming a truly credible nuclear power are sure to be touted along with claims of economic advances in the face of the toughest global sanctions it has been hit with in decades.

Also not in doubt: Pyongyang wants the event to grab headlines around the world. The normally well-sealed country has invited a horde of journalists from around the world to give the congress an international spotlight.

Meanwhile, The Rodong Sinmun, mouthpiece of the ruling Workers Party of Korea, said in an editorial Saturday that since the last congress in 1980, North Korea “proudly joined the ranks of advanced nuclear and space powers.”

So while the congress promises to be a big moment in front of foreign cameras for Kim, who has yet to venture abroad or meet with any world leaders, its larger significance may be domestic. The North Koran government has worked hard over the past several months to keep the event foremost in the minds of the nation.

Having said this, details about the congress, the seventh in North Korean history, are frustratingly few. The last congress in 1980 lasted four days. More than 3,000 delegates attended. Representatives from friendly parties abroad were also invited.

[Yahoo News]

Kim Jong-Un to officially cement North Korean Supreme Leader role

Posted on by
1

North Korea is set to hold a landmark ruling party congress this week that will cement Kim Jong-Un’s status as the country’s Supreme Leader. This comes after four years of reorganising, reshuffling and executions.

The party congress to be held this week will be the first in 40 years, and will officially make Kim Jong-Un the leader of the country. The congress will start on Friday and it follows a 70-day loyalty drive, in which all workers were asked to work harder to express their loyalty to the leader and the Worker’s Party of Korea.

According to reports, North Korean expert at Yonsei University in Seoul, John Delury said, “This congress means everything for Kim Jong-Un. It is the most public, historic setting in which he can demonstrate that he is fully in charge, and that everyone follows his orders. Nominally, it’s for the party, but really this congress is for Kim.”

[Big News Network]