Category: DPRK Government

The rise and fall of Jang Song-thaek, son-in-law of the North Korean theocracy – Part 1

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In late 2013, Jang Song-thaek, an uncle of Kim Jong-un was taken to the Gang Gun Military Academy in a Pyongyang suburb. Hundreds of officials were gathered there to witness the execution of Mr. Jang’s two trusted deputies in the administrative department of the ruling Workers’ Party. Jang, widely considered the second-most powerful figure in the North, fainted during the ordeal, according to a new book published in South Korea that offers a rare glimpse into the secretive Pyongyang regime.

“Son-in-Law of a Theocracy,” by Ra Jong-yil, a former deputy director of the National Intelligence Service, is a rich biography of Jang Song-thaek, the most prominent victim of the purges his young nephew has conducted since assuming power in 2011.

Mr. Jang was convicted of treason in 2013, and was executed at the same place and in the same way as his deputies, the South Korean intelligence agency said.

The book asserts that although he was a fixture of the North Korean political elite for decades, he dreamed of reforming his country. “With his execution, North Korea lost virtually the only person there who could have helped the country introduce reform and openness,” Mr. Ra said during a recent interview.   Continued

The rise and fall of Jang Song-thaek, son-in-law of the North Korean theocracy – Part 2

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Jang Song-thaek had met one of the daughters of North Korea’s founder, Kim Il-sung, while both attended Kim Il-sung University in the mid-1960s. The daughter, Kim Kyong-hee, developed a crush on Mr. Jang, who was tall and humorous — and sang and played the accordion. Her father transferred the young man to a provincial college to keep the two apart. But Ms. Kim hopped in her Soviet Volga sedan to see Mr. Jang each weekend. Once they married in 1972, Mr. Jang’s career took off under the patronage of Kim Jong-il, his brother-in-law and the designated successor of the regime. Few benefited more than Mr. Jang from the regime he loyally served. But he was never fully embraced by the Kim family because he was not blood kin.

North Korean diplomats who have defected to South Korea also said that during his frequent trips overseas to shop for Mr. Kim, Mr. Jang would drink heavily and speak dejectedly about people dying of hunger back home. Mr. Ra said Hwang Jang-yop, a North Korean party secretary who defected to Seoul in 1997 shared a conversation he once had with Mr. Jang. When told that the North’s economy was cratering, Mr. Jang responded sarcastically: “How can an economy already at the bottom go further down?”

When Kim Jong-il banished Mr. Jang three times for overstepping his authority, his wife intervened on his behalf. After Kim Jong-il suffered a stroke in 2008 and died in 2011, Mr. Jang helped his young nephew, Kim Jong-un, establish himself as successor. At the same time, he vastly expanded his own influence — and ambition.  Continued

The rise and fall of Jang Song-thaek, son-in-law of the North Korean theocracy – Part 3

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Jang Song-thaek wrested the lucrative right of exporting coal to China from the military and gave it to his administrative department. He purged his rivals. Mr. Jang’s campaign for more influence was apparently aimed at pushing for the kind of economic overhaul that China has introduced, Mr. Ra wrote. But he underestimated how unpalatable the idea was to Kim Jong-un, whose totalitarian rule would be undermined by such reform.

In 2013, Kim Jong-un, after hearing complaints about Mr. Jang’s expansion of power, ordered his department to relinquish the management of a fishing farm and a condensed milk factory. But officials loyal Jang, blocked those who arrived to carry out Kim’s orders from entering their premises. It was probably the last straw for Kim, still unsure about himself and extremely sensitive about any challenge to his supposedly monolithic leadership. Meanwhile, Mr. Jang’s enemies in the secret police were eager to go after him.

When announcing his execution, North Korea said Mr. Jang, “human scum worse than a dog,” had betrayed the Kim family by plotting to overthrow the younger Mr. Kim, using economic collapse as a pretext, and to rule the country himself as premier and “reformer.”

Jang Song-thaek’s name was then expurgated from all official records in North Korea.

[New York Times]

Russia and China attempt to rein in North Korea

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Russia and China have urged North Korea to halt ballistic-missile tests and return to talks on its nuclear program. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi issued the appeal following talks in Moscow on March 11.

The two met a day after North Korea defied the United Nations by firing two short-range ballistic missiles into the sea.

Just prior to the joint Russian-Chinese statement, North Korean official media said leader Kim Jong Un had watched a ballistic-missile test launch and ordered the country to improve its nuclear attack capability by conducting more tests.

[AP]

Report of ‘decapitation strike’ training rattles North Korea

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Massive joint U.S.-South Korea military exercises are a spring ritual on the Korean Peninsula guaranteed to draw a lot of threat-laced venom from Pyongyang. This time, not only are the war games the biggest ever, but the troops now massed south of the Demilitarized Zone have reportedly incorporated a new hypothetical into their training: a “beheading mission” against Kim Jong Un himself.

Pyongyang, already feeling the squeeze of new sanctions over its recent nuclear test and rocket launch, is taking a plethora of “beheading mission” reports from the South Korean media very seriously. That goes a long way toward explaining why its own rhetoric has ratcheted up a decibel – even by its own standards of bellicosity.

“Decapitation strikes” are targeted attacks to eliminate an adversary’s leader, or leaders, in an attempt to disrupt or destroy its command chain as soon as a crisis breaks out or appears imminent. They are seen as particularly effective against enemies with a highly centralized command focused on a small group, or one leader.

According to South Korea’s Yonhap news agency, the Key Resolve-Foal Eagle exercises will include training and simulations of surgical, pre-emptive strikes on nuclear and missile sites, along with training for a “beheading operation” aimed at removing Kim Jong Un and toppling his government in the event of a war.

The U.S. has used such strikes, often employing drones, to take out key figures in terrorist groups.

[AP]

South Korea’s own sanctions against North Koreans

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South Korea said it will announce its own punitive steps against North Korea this week over its latest nuclear and missile tests, lending support to the latest United Nations Security Council (UNSC) sanctions.

The South Korean government is expected today to unveil a list of North Korean officials and institutions that will be barred from trading with South Korean companies and banks, sources say. South Korea will also freeze their assets here if there are any.

The North Korean figures and institutions subject to the South’s own sanctions are separate from the 16 individuals and 12 entities blacklisted by the U.N Security Council in the latest resolution.

South Korea will also ban the entry of ships from other nations if the vessels have visited North Korea, or if the vessels are suspected of originating from the repressive state but are flying other countries’ flags.

Meanwhile, speculation is growing that South Korea will scrap the so-called “Rajin-Hassan Project,” a logistics project involving North Korea and Russia. The project is aimed at importing Siberia-produced coal by transporting it by train between Russia’s border town of Rajin and North Korea’s port in Hassan and then loading the coal on to ships.

[The Korea Times]

North Koreans have “nothing to envy”?!

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As a 17-year-old, Hyeonseo Lee’s childhood home in North Korea overlooked the border with China. Each night as North Korea plunged into darkness because of electricity shortages, she could see the twinkling lights across the border, a consistent puzzle without an answer.

“I think that because of the environment I grew up in … it raised a lot of questions, especially living on the border with China,” she told news.com.au. While Lee had been raised to believe that North Korea was the best country on the planet and even grew up singing the song Nothing to Envy, she gradually she started to think, “their life (in China) looks superior”.

“In the daytime I saw people die on the street, there were a lot of beggars on the street in my hometown,” she said. Lee saw her first execution at just seven years of age, and was shocked when she learned that people around her were dying of starvation.

Because her hometown was so close to the border, Lee’s home was able to receive Chinese television signals and this also raised questions. “It was illegal to watch … but I did my best to watch, it completely transformed my thought at the time.”

Lee decided to see for herself what life in China was like and made the dangerous journey across the frozen Yalu River, which separated the two countries. She also had the help of a border guard. At the time she innocently thought she would just make a quick visit and then return.

“But the moment I crossed the border, everything changed, after that moment, I couldn’t go back,” she said. Complications with the North Korean security police meant she was forced to live with relatives in China as an illegal immigrant.

She lived in fear that she would be discovered and sent back to North Korea, where torture for defectors was normal. At one point Lee was interrogated by police but they released her because her Chinese speaking skills convinced them that she was not North Korean.

[News.com.au]

North Korea leader orders military to be ready to use nuclear weapons at any time

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North Korean leader Kim Jong Un ordered his country to be ready to use its nuclear weapons at any time and to turn its military posture to “pre-emptive attack” mode in the face of growing threats from its enemies, north Korea’s official KCNA news agency said on Friday.

The comments come after the U.N. Security Council imposed harsh new sanctions against the isolated state for its nuclear program.

North Korea has previously threatened pre-emptive attacks on its enemies including South Korea, Japan and the United States. Military experts doubt it has developed the capability to fire a long-range missile with a miniaturized warhead to deliver a nuclear weapon as far as the United States yet.

[Reuters]

UN Security Council approves new sanctions on North Korea

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The U.N. Security Council unanimously approved new sanctions on North Korea on Wednesday, in response to a recent nuclear test and rocket launch that violated U.N. resolutions on the country’s military activities. The new sanctions require, among other things, inspection of all cargo heading in and out of North Korea, a ban on the sale of valuable minerals by North Korea and a blockade on the sale or supply of jet fuel to the isolated nation.

The newly announced sanctions are tougher than previous resolutions targeting North Korea — part of a trend, NPR’s Elise Hu reports from Seoul, of incrementally tougher penalties placed on North Korea.

In an interview on All Things Considered last week, U.N. Ambassador Samantha Powers called the package of sanctions “nearly unprecedented in many respects” and “the toughest sanctions resolution that has been put forward in more than two decades.”

But as Elise told Morning Edition, the sanctions announced Wednesday aren’t expected to have a large impact on the lives of everyday North Koreans, thanks to the intervention of North Korea’s biggest ally. “China has been stern about saying that any new sanctions shouldn’t trigger a humanitarian disaster. So this set of sanctions is designed not to disrupt the general North Korean economy, which is based primarily on China and North Korea and their economic cooperation,” Elise says.

“The sanctions also don’t target one of North Korea’s big sources of hard currency, and that’s North Koreans who work overseas. So in general these are intended to weaken Pyongyang’s weapons systems and the elite members of the regime.”

China’s cooperation was pivotal to approving Wednesday’s new sanctions: disagreement between Beijing and Washington had prevented the Security Council from announcing new restrictions on North Korea back in January. Now, Elise says, “even China seems to be sort of running out of patience with North Korea and its young leader.”

[NPR]

North Korea’s recipe for bargaining: Detainee, script, TV cameras

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The Westerners who find themselves detained in North Korea–and there have been a fair few of them in recent years–invariably end up in front of television cameras making full-throated confessions, Otto Warmbier being the latest.

North Korea has a history of using American detainees as bargaining chips with the United States, its avowed enemy. These are some of the previous cases of strange confessions by detained Americans–which have been explained after their release.

“Put some emotion into it.” Jeffrey Fowle of Ohio spent almost six months in detention in North Korea in 2014 after leaving a Bible in a bathroom stall at a seaman’s club in Chongjin, a city on the northeast coast. Before his first appearance, in front of North Korean journalists from Associated Press Television News, Fowle’s minder told him to “put some emotion into it.” He suggested that it might be good if Fowle cried.

“The words were not mine.” Merrill Newman, an 85-year-old Californian man held in 2013 after mentioning to his tour guide that he fought in the Korean War. He later said, ‘Anyone who has read the text of it or who has seen the video of me reading it knows that the words were not mine and were not delivered voluntarily. “

“Long and grueling investigation.” John Short, an Australian, was arrested in North Korea in 2014 and held for almost a month after he left pamphlets about Christianity at a Buddhist temple. After his release, Short told the Australian Associated Press that he underwent a “long and grueling investigation.” “There were two-hour sessions each morning, which were repeated again in the afternoons,” he said.

“Regrettable.” Lim Hyeon-soo, a 60-year-old Korean-Canadian pastor who confessed last year to attempting to overthrow North Korea, was forced to make the claim, his friends say.

[Washington Post]