Category: DPRK Government

North Korean spies at home and abroad

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To consolidate power within North Korea, Kim Jong-Un and his family run a ruthless network of spies. A former spy told CNN that North Korea’s also got legions of operatives inside the U.S. and South Korea.

To keep his spies from defecting, Kim’s regime is said to use what they call ‘anchor children.’

“Certainly an agent would be operating by him or herself in South Korea would have their family left behind, and North Korea would use that as leverage,” said Bruce Klingner of The Heritage Foundation.

Another former North Korean spy told CNN that his entire family was executed back in North Korea to punish him for not fulfilling his mission.

Agents who’ve defected have consistently said if they’re caught they’re under orders to commit suicide rather than fall into enemy hands.

[CNN]

Defector says DMZ activists don’t understand plight of women in North Korea

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I do not know Christine Ahn, the woman who organized the “peace march” across the DMZ or her fellow travelers. Nor do I know much about Ahn’s activities, if she claims to be a true feminist, or how much she knows about the situation of women in North Korea.

But speaking as a North Korean woman myself, I do not see how Ahn’s crossing of the DMZ will improve the lives of the women of North Korea or bring peace to a country that is governed by a leadership who despise women.

Along with 200 of my former countrymen and countrywomen, I spoke as a witness to the United Nations Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in North Korea. Ahn would do well to read my testimony and those of the women whom she claims to be helping. In our testimonies, we spoke of unspeakable sexual violence, forced abortions and endemic rape. These facts about North Korea ― for that is what they are ― are available for the world to read. I truly hope that Ahn listens to the words of North Korean women before she enters our homeland.

I do not know Christine Ahn. They all tell us that they are feminists and seek peace on the Korean peninsula. Yet not one of these women, who have told us that they are good-intentioned, has any understanding of the plight of women in North Korea.

They say they are doing this for peace and that they will not be used. As they cross the DMZ into a propaganda festival for the North Korean government, I hope that my words cross their minds. I and many North Korean women campaign every single day for the rights of North Korean women ― and we do so without Ahn’s fanfare.

It is us, the North Korean women, who have suffered and we urge the world to listen to our voices.

[CNN Opinion by Jihyun Park, North Korean defector] 

Activists’ walk across Koreas’ DMZ becomes bus ride

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Female activists including Gloria Steinem and two Nobel Peace laureates were denied an attempt to walk across the Demilitarized Zone dividing North and South Korea on Sunday, but were allowed to cross by bus and complete what one of them called a landmark event.

The group of 30 women from 15 countries made a final appeal to authorities on both sides to allow them to walk across the demarcation line, but were turned down. The North allowed a South Korean bus to cross the demarcation line to pick them up on the North side of the DMZ and transport them over the border to South Korea.

United Nations Command officials met the group inside the DMZ after they crossed the demarcation line, and allowed them to march again after the final checkpoint on the southern side.

Organizer Christine Ahn, a Korean-American peace activist, said the group initially wanted to walk through the symbolic truce village of Panmunjom, where the armistice was signed. Still, she said the crossing itself was a success and a “historic event” despite “governments setting boundaries.”

[Associated Press]

Introducing Kim Sol-Song, the shadowy older sister of Kim Jong-Un

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Kim Jong Un’s younger sister, Kim Yo-Jong, may be on the political rise but were you aware of Kim’s shadowy older sister, Kim Sol-Song?

According to Ken Gause, a North Korea leadership expert at CAN Corporation, Kim Sol-Song is the “purest of the pure,” because she’s the only one among Kim and his siblings ever officially recognized by their grandfather, North Korea’s founder Kim Il Sung.

“She is a person who has her finger on the pulse of the regime. And she is probably helping Kim Jong Un and Kim Yo Jong in mentoring them in the relationship building that needs to be done for Kim Jong Un to be able to consolidate his power,” Gause said.

Another sibling, Kim Jong Chul, an older brother of Kim Jong-Un, recently appeared singing along at an Eric Clapton concert at London’s Royal Albert Hall. Kim Jong Chul has gone to Clapton concerts all over the world. He has plenty of time and money on his hands, analysts say, since he was passed over for the leadership position in favor of his younger brother.

“Kim Jong-Chul was not seen as being capable of dealing with the blood sport which is North Korean politics, especially as you move from succession period to consolidation period. And unlike his brother Kim Jong Un he was seen as being potentially too weak,” said Gause.

Now, analysts say Kim Jong Chul is in a network of children of the elites who allegedly bring in money for the regime from black market deals.

And there is another brother who was also passed over. The oldest, Kim Jong Nam, embarrassed the family in 2001 when he was caught trying to get to Tokyo’s Disneyland on a fake Dominican passport. He’s said to spend his days traveling and gambling.

But the sibling with real influence might just be Kim’s older sister, Kim Sol-Song?

[CNN]

International female peace activists to walk DMZ

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A group of female activists, including Gloria Steinem and two Nobel Peace Prize laureates, said they will walk across the Demilitarized Zone separating the two Koreas this Sunday, despite criticism they are being used as propaganda tools by North Korea’s government.

The group of 30 women from 15 countries will not go through the symbolic truce village of Panmunjom, where the Korean War armistice was signed in 1953, because officials in South Korea and the United Nations Command responsible for security in the area said they could not guarantee the group’s safety. Instead, the women will take a route that links the two Koreas to the Kaesong industrial complex, a joint North-South business venture near the border.

The plan to walk across the DMZ, which organizers say is intended to start a dialogue and bring international attention to the need for a formal end to the Korean War and the peninsula’s division, has been controversial. The DMZ is one of the most heavily fortified in the world. There is little direct contact between the two Koreas and, with few exceptions, it is considered a crime for citizens of either country to cross the DMZ.

Organizer Christine Ahn, a Korean-American peace activist, said in Pyongyang, “We spoke about the impact of militarism around the world, including in Liberia, Colombia, Japan, northern Ireland as well as the United States.”

Members of the group said they feel the crossing in itself is a breakthrough. Leymah Gbowee, a Nobel laureate from Liberia, said, “Not only have we received the blessing for our historic crossing, we’ve gotten both Korean governments to communicate. That is a success.”

“We have accomplished what we set out to do — to walk across the DMZ on behalf of both North and South Korean women. They cannot walk, so we must,” said Steinem, 81, an iconic figure in the United States for her role in the women’s rights movement. “Over 60 years of silence has not worked. Why not try human contact?”

[AP]

More on Human Rights conditions of North Korean overseas laborers

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The Database Center for North Korean Human Rights (NKDB) has released a new report entitled Human Rights and North Korea’s Overseas Laborers: Dilemmas and Policy Challenges, by Yoon Yeosang and Lee Seung-ju This report provides the most comprehensive picture to date on the scope and conditions under which North Koreans are contracted for overseas labor assignments.

NKDB estimates that the DPRK has sent about 50-60,000 laborers overseas to 40 countries to earn an estimated $1.2-2.3 billion on behalf of the state, although Marcus Noland of the Peterson Institute for International Economics suggested that this estimate foreign exchange earnings may be too high. Most North Koreans are employed in the mining, logging, and construction sectors, and candidates are selected through a state-administered process.

The Kaesong Industrial Complex, which marries South Korean investment and infrastructure with North Korean provision of labor primarily for processing-on-commission work, involves transfer of worker’s wages to the DPRK rather than to individual accounts. Thus, it is not surprising that North Korea might be tempted use the same model to contract workers overseas. Perhaps more surprising is that North Koreans naively compete to be selected for these overseas jobs, presumably because they anticipate an improvement of conditions for labor that exist inside North Korea.

The most disturbing elements of the report involve descriptions of substandard living conditions for North Korean laborers in almost complete isolation from the local populations, virtual slave-labor conditions at the workplace, absence of safety standards or injury treatment or compensation, forced contributions from labor salaries for their own upkeep, and virtually no holidays or time to rest.

[From CFR blog] 

North Korea gains foreign currency through human trafficking

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Scott Snyder, senior fellow for Korea studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, said increased trafficking of its citizens is one of North Korea’s ways of earning foreign exchange.

North Korea, frequently ranked as the world’s worst human rights abuser, has lured between 50,000 and 60,000 of its citizens to work in industries around the globe with the promise they would keep their wages, according to a paper from the Database Center for North Korean Human Rights presented on Tuesday. Instead, the wages are sent to the North Korean government, generating as much as $2.3 billion per year.

Industries employing the laborers range from logging and mining to restaurants, and workers who complain or escape risk reprisal against themselves and their families who remain in North Korea, said Robert King, special envoy for North Korea Human Rights Issues at the State Department, at the House hearing.

Workers have been sent through bilateral contracts to around 40 countries, primarily Russia, China, Mongolia and nations in Africa, central Europe and the Middle East, according to a State Department Trafficking in Persons Report from March.

One defector, Lim Il, told the Lantos commission that he had been a state employee in North Korea but went to Kuwait to work at a construction company, where he was required to put in 14-hour days under strict surveillance, with two days off per month. “I think we were slave laborers,” Il said.

After escaping to the South Korean embassy, he learned that his salary had all gone to the Office of the Worker’s Party that manages foreign currency. “The money obtained through the export of laborers overseas [is] used as a personal fund for Kim Jong-un,” the Database Center for North Korean Human Rights paper said.

[MarketWatch]

Kim Jong-un’s vulnerability on display

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Two recent events have shed some light on Kim Jong-un’s leadership: first he cancelled a planned trip to Moscow and now he appears to have removed the country’s formidable defense chief. (South Korea is now saying the once-powerful general, Hyon Yong-chol, has been “purged” but “not necessarily killed”.) But both occurrences point to vulnerabilities at the very top of the DPRK.

Ongoing purges suggest that some of the elite have forgotten the volatility of the young Kim, displaying a lack of respect for the institutions that sustain him and unwillingness to indulge his need to be the focal point of all adulation.

After two years of prefatory propaganda and three years of rule, it is revealing that analysts believe his authority is in question. “Internally, there does not seem to be any respect for Kim Jong-un within the core and middle levels of the North Korean leadership,” said Michael Madden, an expert at the 38 North thinktank.

If the reports are true, why should it be necessary for Kim to send such a piercing signal by removing a man who sat not just on the expanded politburo but also the all-powerful National Defense Commission? Surely the events of December 2013, when Kim Jong-un approved the purge and execution of his own uncle, should still be fresh in minds of North Korean elites.

In such a system, it is nearly impossible for figures other than Kim to accumulate public charisma or prestige. Lacking in any actual administrative expertise, Kim has traded fully upon his bloodline as his primary credential. The young leader’s celebrated “climb” to the summit of Mount Paektu this past month is a case in point: this was an occurrence which not just the whole of the armed forces but the entire nation was expected to celebrate.

There may be reasons for Hyon’s removal other than simple disrespect – he may have said or done something to embarrass the regime in Moscow, for instance, or have made inadequate preparations for Kim’s safety on the young leader’s presumptive first foreign trip.

But given what we know about how Kim operates and how he wishes to be perceived, it is more than possible that Hyon’s basic lack of interest in the personality cult is what led to his downfall.

[The Guardian]

Brutal killing Of N. Korean Military Chief reflects Kim Jong-Un’s insecurity

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From an opinion piece by Donald Kirk, writing in Forbes:

The execution of North Korea’s military chief reflects Kim Jong Un’s deep insecurity about his grip over a recalcitrant elite of senior and mid-level officers and cadres.

Exactly what Hyon Yong-Chol, 66-year-old minister of the People’s Armed Forces, i.e., defense minister, did to incur Kim Jong-Un’s wrath is not clear, but the inference was that he had not only shown contempt for the young leader but also may have disagreed with him on crucial points.

North Korea has not announced the execution, but South Korea’s National Intelligence Service (NIS), drawing upon a wide range of contacts, is seen as credible when it reveals such information. The question is why Kim Jong-Un would order Hyon’s extermination considering that Hyon had just returned from an international security conference in Moscow at which he was photographed displaying rows of ribbons on his chest.

The answer, in the view of Choi Jin-Wook, president of the Korea Institute of National Unification, is that Kim is feeling increasingly insecure in an amosphere of discontent in Pyongyang among many who grew to power under his father, Kim Jong-Il. Hyon’s execution, latest in an ongoing purge of top and mid-level cadres, “is a sign of the weakness of the regime,” Choi told me. “If they are strong enough, they have no reason to kill him.”

Kim Jong-un reportedly flies into rages at any sign of disagreement, much less disobedience. He has ordered at least 15 executions in recent  months and at least 75 in the past two years. according to the NIS.

Yonhap, the South Korean news agency, quoted an unnamed official who agreed there were “growing doubts about Kim’s leadership among North Korean ranking officials.” As a result, the official was quoted as saying, “Kim has deepened a reign of terror by purging them in negligence of proper procedure.”

North Korean defense chief executed on treason charges

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North Korean defense minister Hyon Yong-Chol has been executed by anti-aircraft fire for disloyalty and showing disrespect to leader Kim Jong-un, South Korea’s intelligence agency says. Hundreds of officials watched Hyon’s execution at a military academy in northern Pyongyang on April 30, Han Ki-Beom, the deputy director of the South’s National Intelligence Agency, told a parliamentary committee.

Hyon, who was appointed to the post of Minister of the People’s Armed Forces less than a year ago, was apparently caught dozing off during formal military events and also talked back to Kim on several occasions.

Han told the committee that Hyon was executed with anti-aircraft fire – a method cited in various unconfirmed reports as being reserved for senior officials whom the leadership wishes to make examples of.

If confirmed, it marks another demonstration of Kim’s ruthlessness in dealing with even the most senior officials suspected of disloyalty, following the execution of his uncle and one-time political mentor Jang Song-Thaek in 2013.

It also points to possible power struggles within the top leadership, following Kim’s decision to cancel a scheduled visit to Moscow last week in order to deal with “internal issues”.

Kim has unleashed a series of purges to tighten his grip on power in the reclusive nation after his father Kim Jong-il died in December 2011. Late last month, the South’s National Intelligence Agency reported that Kim had ordered the execution of 15 senior officials so far this year, including two vice ministers, for questioning his authority.

[Sydney Morning Herald]