Category: DPRK Government

Brutal work abroad better than life in North Korea

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One North Korean who worked abroad says that as a waitress in China, she was forced to put up with male customers who groped her and tried to get her drunk. Two others recall the frozen bodies of their countrymen stored in Russian logging camps. Another says he toiled for up to 16 hours a day at a Kuwaiti construction site surrounded by wire fences.

As difficult as those lives were, the four workers told The Associated Press, it beat staying in North Korea. The jobs actually conveyed status back home, and were so coveted that people used bribes and family connections to get them.

Defectors who had worked overseas from the 1990s until the early 2000s said they had to submit much of their salaries to Pyongyang authorities and never received some of their promised wages. But they said the money they did receive, sometimes earned through moonlighting, still greatly exceeded what they had earned at home. (The average monthly wage for ordinary North Korean workers is less than $1, according to defectors, though many North Korean families now make money via businesses in unauthorized markets.)

Their monthly average income while abroad is estimated at $120 to $150, according to the Seoul-based Asan Institute for Policy Studies. They said they were also fed relatively well, placed under less strict surveillance and given a rare chance to see the world and learn truths about their homeland.

“From our viewpoint, it’s labor exploitation. But for them, going abroad is a special benefit. They view it as a chance to get away from abysmal lives at home,” said Go Myong-Hyun of the Asan Institute, co-author of a 2014 research paper on North Korean workers. Read more

North Koreans vie and bribe for a job abroad

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North Korea has sent tens of thousands of workers abroad with a mission to bring in foreign currency. Human-rights organizations have called those workers modern-day slaves, while also decrying human-rights abuses North Koreans face back home. To the workers themselves, there is little debate about which plight is more favorable.

“People’s views of jobs in North Korea are totally different from [South Korea],” said Lee Soung Hee, 42, who worked at a North Korean-run restaurant in the northeastern Chinese city of Dalian in the early 2000s. “Women in North Korea have a fantasy about an overseas waitress job.”

The North usually sends relatively affluent, loyal citizens who it believes can be less affected by foreign cultures. The vast majority are married men whose families must stay home, discouraging would-be defectors, analysts and activists specializing in North Korea said.

“I had seen people who had returned home after foreign service smoking good cigarettes and going out for a beer,” said Lim Il, who worked at a Kuwait City construction site in the late 1990s. “For ordinary people, things like those were ‘rice cake in a picture,'” a Korean expression equivalent to “pie in the sky.”

[ABC News]

Further mass North Korean defections to follow – Part 1

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Individual defections from the North Korea are common. Mass defections, however, are not.

13 North Koreans—one male and 12 females—recently defected en masse. The arrival of so many North Koreans in Seoul is stunning. First, they had all worked at the same location, and this fact indicates a breakdown in Pyongyang’s overlapping system of controls on its workers. Moreover, the defections hint at the effectiveness of the U.N. sanctions imposed at the beginning of last month. And, most strikingly, Beijing did not stop the North Koreans from escaping.

The defectors had all worked in one of the 100 or so restaurants Pyongyang operates in China, this one in the eastern port city of Ningbo, just south of Shanghai. The North has opened about 130 eateries in China and a couple dozen other countries. The establishments are money spinners for the regime, producing about $10 million annually in cash according to a recent estimate.

The South Korean government hinted, in Yonhap’s words, that “defectors were fearful that they would be punished if they were unable to send back money to North Korea.” The concern is real. “The latest defections are probably related to this kind of pressure felt by the workers,” a source told the Chosun Ilbo, South Korea’s most popular news source.

The new UN sanctions look like they already have had some effect. Some restaurants have been forced to close due to a recent drop in business, and there are indications that now about half of them are not breaking even. Another reason: the South Korean government has been urging its citizens, a main source of revenue, to stay away.     
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More on further mass North Korean defections to follow – Part 2

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And what has to be of special concern to Chairman Kim, however, is that Beijing did not stop the defections. The workers did not smuggle themselves out of China, as many had done in the past. On the contrary, they openly left the People’s Republic with their passports, traveling to Thailand before arriving in South Korea.

In the past, Pyongyang could count on Beijing to do almost anything to capture defectors and hand them over to North Korean border guards. This time, however, Chinese customs officials just waved the fleeing workers across the Thai border, a clear indication China was sending an unfriendly message to the Kim regime.

And there is another wrinkle. Offshore restaurant workers generally come from the higher classes and are chosen for their loyalty, so the mass defection from the Ningbo restaurant must now be having a psychological impact on regime elements back home.

Perhaps more escapes are on the way. Seoul expects additional mass defections from the 50,000 to 100,000 North Koreans working outside the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

North Korea appears very far from regime collapse at the moment, but the defection of a senior colonel, a diplomat, and the Restaurant 13 are tremors that could foreshadow quakes to come.

[Read full article at The Daily Beast]

Should we expect more large-scale North Korean defections?

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In the wake of last week’s mass defection of 13 North Koreans, additional exoduses may come about among North Koreans working overseas as the impact of U.N. resolutions and unilateral sanctions takes shape, top Seoul officials said Sunday.

A male restaurant manager in his 30s and 12 female employees in their early 20s who had served at a North Korean restaurant arrived in Seoul on Thursday, the Unification Ministry announced late Friday. South Korean media reported that the restaurant is located in the eastern Chinese city of Ningbo. and they travelled  via a Southeast Asian nation.

Contrary to earlier news reports, the 13 were “a sizable portion” of the restaurant’s staff, but “not everyone,” a senior ministry official said, indicating that some others left there may be hoping to follow suit — or already be on their way to Seoul.

According to the ministry, one female server said during questioning, “I’ve come to escape to Seoul where there is hope, as sanctions intensified recently and I lost hope for the North Korean system.” Another defector also said, “I’d developed a desire to live as a South Korean after gaining knowledge about South Korea’s democracy while watching TV shows and dramas overseas.”

About half of the approximately 130 North Korean restaurants, which would collectively deposit around $10 million a year in state coffers, are believed to be struggling to meet their quota, some resorting to illicit sex services and supplementary food sales to court more customers and boost revenues, the ministry official noted.

The official also said, “We have made our position clear to relevant countries that the defectors must come to South Korea according to their free will, and not be repatriated to the North against their will. But there is a need for stronger cooperation with those countries, as we can’t rule out the possibility for further group defections as the sanctions and pressure drive kicks into high gear.”

[The Korea Herald]

Senior North Korea military officer defects

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A colonel from North Korea’s military spy agency fled to South Korea last year in an unusual case of a senior-level defection, Seoul officials said Monday.

Defections are a bitter source of contention between the rival Koreas, and Seoul doesn’t always make the high-profile cases public. The colonel who defected worked for the North Korean military’s General Reconnaissance Bureau before fleeing to South Korea, according to Seoul’s Defense and Unification ministries. Both ministries refused to provide further details, including a motive for the defection.

The Unification Ministry said that a North Korean diplomat based in Africa separately defected to South Korea last year. It didn’t elaborate.

There have been occasional reports of lower-level North Korean soldiers defecting, but it is unusual for a colonel to flee to South Korea. Some South Korean media outlets said the colonel was the highest-ranking North Korean military officer to ever defect to the South.

The highest-level North Korean to take asylum in South Korea is Hwang Jang-yop, a senior ruling Workers’ Party official who once tutored Kim’s late dictator father, Kim Jong Il. Hwang’s 1997 defection was hailed by many South Koreans as an intelligence bonanza and a clear sign that the North’s political system was inferior to the South’s. Hwang died in 2010.

More than 29,000 North Koreans have defected to South Korea since the end of the 1950-53 Korean War, according to South Korean government records.

[AP]

North Korea sanctions pose human rights dilemma

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Human rights organizations are supporting the new international sanctions imposed on North Korea to restrict its nuclear program, even though the economic measures could make life more difficult for many people in the country who already live on the margins of poverty.

The United States and China collaborated on developing the international sanctions, and Beijing most likely opposed any focus on human rights violations, given its own record of, according to critics, unlawful harassment, imprisonment and torture.

Workers in the mining industry will likely suffer from the U.N. ban on the export of North Korean minerals. The U.S. unilateral sanctions could also target anyone connected to the North Korean labor export program that earns billions of dollars, most of which goes to the state.

The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said in a February report that the North Korean people are already suffering a significant food shortage. Human rights advocates support providing aid and assistance to innocent people in North Korea caught in the middle of this international standoff.

But the tighter sanctions are enforced, the more likely it is that ordinary North Koreans will experience greater economic pain than will Kim Jong Un or the well-to-do elites in Pyongyang. But that is a risk that even some human rights advocates are willing to take to end repression in North Korea and to make its leaders accountable.

[VoA]

North Korea’s largest recent defector group arrives in South Korea

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In one of the largest known group defections of North Koreans in recent years, 13 restaurant workers have arrived together in South Korea. The group of one male manager and 12 female employees were based at a restaurant in an undisclosed country outside North Korea and reached South Korea on Thursday, a spokesman for South Korea’s Unification Ministry said.

The defection is unusual because of the size of the group and because North Koreans who are allowed to work abroad are regarded among the most loyal to the Pyongyang regime. Group defections by North Koreans are also usually by families or those with very close ties because of a culture of individuals informing on each other to the authorities.

International efforts to crack down on North Korea’s sources of funding for its nuclear weapons program may have increased demands on restaurant workers to send remittances. North Korea operates some 130 restaurants in 12 countries, a source of around $10 million annually for Pyongyang, according to the ministry.

The South Korean government spokesman also cited the defectors’ exposure to TV shows, movies and the Internet as a likely contributing factor for their decision to come to South Korea. Access to foreign information and media is highly restricted inside North Korea.

The official said it was the first group defection from a North Korean restaurant. The largest single group of North Koreans to seek South Korean residency in recent years was a group of nine people in 2011, according to the official.

The overall number of annual defectors from North Korea has fallen sharply since Kim Jong Un took power at the end of 2011 and tightened the nation’s borders. Last year, 1,276 North Koreans defected to South Korea, down from a recent peak of almost 3,000 in 2009.

[Wall Street Journal]

Apparent Kim Jong Un assassination suspects arrested

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At least two suspects who attempted to assassinate North Korean leader Kim Jong Un were arrested, according to unconfirmed reports in the country.

The suspects had been reportedly arrested at the China border near the Tumen River as they were preparing a hit on Kim in the city of Hoeryong in North Hamgyong Province, Radio Free Asia reported Thursday.

A source in the North who spoke to Japanese news service Asia Press on the condition of anonymity said he had heard the “terrorists” had not yet crossed the Tumen, which separates North Korea from China, when North Korean border guards crossed the border to arrest them. The source went on to say the suspects were transferred to the State Security Department, and that the border guards were given rewards – including a chance to become members of the Korean Workers’ Party.

One of the suspects is allegedly a North Korean defector from the South, but the other one or more were Chinese nationals.

Japanese journalist Jiro Ishimaru, founder of Asia Press, said it is likely a rumor that was manufactured by the state to bolster support for the party ahead of its Seventh Congress in Maya congress that is to be held for the first time in more than three decades.

[UPI]

Kim Jong Un’s North Korean nuclear capabilities and economy

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Back in 2013, Kim Jong Un publicly outlined his policy of byungjin — which roughly translates to “simultaneous” — as in developing nuclear capabilities and the economy at the same time. But this creates a contradiction for a poor country of 25 million with a small economy: Developing nuclear weaponry undermines economic development.

North Korea needs foreign investment and knows it. Its nuclear test and missile launches have brought a new round of United Nations sanctions and reinforced its status as a pariah state. China, which has protected North Korea in the past, supported the sanctions. Who’s going to do deals with the North now?

“It might have looked plausible to [Kim] that he could have it both ways, as he watched the China-North Korea relationship deepen at the end of his father’s era,” Haggard says. “… Even as trade was falling off with the rest of the world, he still had Kaesong and he still had the Chinese. But that’s why this sanctions move is different.”

While survival may be the top priority, the North Korean leadership seems concerned at some level with the outside world. “The North Korean side knows it suffers from a very serious credibility deficit in its public engagements with the world, and is changing to meet the information management challenges of the current era,” says Christopher Green, a regional researcher at Leiden University in the Netherlands.

[NPR]