Category: Kim Jong Un

Kim Jong-un vows to meet South Korea’s leader frequently in 2019

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North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, has vowed in a rare letter to meet the South’s president, Moon Jae-in, “frequently” next year to discuss denuclearization of the Korean peninsula, Moon’s office said on Sunday.

The leader of the isolated North met Moon three times this year, as a reconciliatory push gathered pace. During Moon’s visit to Pyongyang in September, Kim promised to pay a return visit to Seoul “at an earliest date”.

The North’s leader “expressed a strong determination to visit Seoul while watching [the] future situation”, Moon’s spokesman Kim Eui-kyeom told reporters.

Kim Jong-un also “expressed an intention to meet with Moon frequently in 2019” to pursue peace and “solve the issue of denuclearizing the peninsula together”, the spokesman said.

Moon welcomed the latest message, saying the North’s leader had also expressed “active intention to carry out agreements” made in his previous summits with the US and the South, without elaborating further.

[The Guardian]

Returned North Korean defectors lecture on miseries of capitalism they saw in China

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North Koreans who defected but later changed their minds and returned to the North are giving lectures in towns and cities on the Chinese border extolling the pleasures of life under Kim Jong-un and the misery of being on the run in China and struggling to survive in a capitalist state. 

The lectures are part of the North Korean government’s efforts to halt the steady flow of its citizens over the border into China, from where they attempt to reach a third country and seek asylum and the assistance of Seoul to settle in South Korea. The use of double-defectors is designed to reinforce the regime’s message that many who flee the North regret their decision. 

A North Korean who attended a recent lecture in the city of Hoeryong, which is on the Tumen River that marks the border with China, said a double-defector in her 40s said she had not been able to earn any money after she had crossed the border and that she could not even go to a hospital when she was taken ill. The woman said she had been discriminated against the entire time she had been outside the North, adding that she was “treated as less than human” and that she became a perpetual “social outcast”. 

The double-defectors’ lectures have hammered home the message that it is difficult to earn enough money to survive in China and that there is a high likelihood of women being sexually exploited. People-smugglers are known to sell young women to Chinese farmers looking for a bride or into the sex industry. 

The woman added in her lecture that she had been surprised after returning to the North at “how fast our country is developing”. 

Similar lectures were delivered to women working in farms and factories across Onsong County and at the Musan mine, the Seoul-based Daily NK news site reported. 

[The Telegraph]

North Korea rejects denuclearization unless U.S. ‘nuclear threat’ is eliminated

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North Korea will not give up its nuclear arms unless the “U.S. nuclear threat to Korea” is eliminated, North Korean state media said Thursday. The statement carried by North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency was a particularly blunt indication that the two countries are still far apart on their ideas of what “denuclearization” means on the Korean Peninsula.

The North Korean statement said “the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula” includes elimination of not only the North’s nuclear arms but also “the United States’ nuclear weapons and other invading forces in South Korea.”

“If we lay down our nuclear weapons first, that is not denuclearization, but putting ourselves in a defenseless state,” continued the commentary. “This will apparently shatter the balance of strategy of nuclear forces, as well as bring about a nuclear war.”

The United States withdrew its tactical nuclear weapons from South Korea in 1991, but continues to operate nuclear-armed bombers and submarines that can reach Korea from elsewhere, constituting a so-called “nuclear umbrella.”

[Washington Post]

North Korean persecution of Christians and Buddhists

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According to the Christian Open Doors organization, North Korea is the leader among countries who persecute Christians. Christian Solidarity Worldwide say there are numerous reports of people being sent to prison camps and subjected to torture and inhuman treatment because of their faith. It is estimated that 50,000–70,000 Christians are held in North Korean prison camps.

There are reports of public executions of Christians. For example, Ri Hyon-ok was publicly executed in Ryongchon … for giving out Bibles, while her husband and children were deported to the Hoeryong political prison camp.

If authorities discover that North Korean refugees deported from China have converted to Christianity, they suffer harsher ill-treatment, torture, and prolonged imprisonment. The government considers religious activities political crimes, because they could challenge the personality cult and semi-deification of the [ruling] Kim family.

Only 60 out of 400 Buddhist temples have survived the religious persecution of the 1950s, when 1,600 monks were killed, disappeared in prison camps or were forced to recant their faith. The remaining temples are now preserved as national cultural heritage. North Korean defectors reported that government-employed “monks” are serving as caretakers and tourist guides, but they did not see genuine worship. As reported, most Buddhists are afraid to openly practice their religion in the temple areas and practice their religion only in secret. However, on special occasions, ceremonies were permitted by the authorities.

Since 1988, four church buildings have been erected in Pyongyang with foreign donations: one Catholic, two Protestant and one Russian Orthodox. However, they are only open to foreigners,and North Korean citizens cannot attend the services. The services are used to bring in foreign currency from foreign visitors, including South Koreans. It is therefore clear that the churches are there solely for propaganda purposes.

The North Korean constitution nominally protects religious freedom, as long as it is not used to harm the state or the social order. However, in practice, there is no genuine religious freedom, and the government severely restricts religious activity except if it is supervised by government organizations.

[Wikipedia]

How close we came to nuclear war with North Korea

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“Most people are not aware of how close we came to nuclear war and how plausible it actually was throughout 2017 and early 2018.”

That’s North Korea expert Van Jackson’s stunning conclusion. In his new book On the Brink: Trump, Kim, and the Threat of Nuclear War, Jackson retraces the Washington-Pyongyang standoff during President Donald Trump’s first two years in office.

He identified at least “seven or eight moments” when he believed war between the US and North Korea was possible. And while much of the tensions had to do with North Korea’s aggression before Trump took office, the president found ways to make it much, much worse.

“Trump talks shit everywhere about everybody, but only as it relates to North Korea did we come close to nuclear war because of it,” Jackson, a former Obama administration official now at Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand, told me. “So I blame Trump, but I don’t blame him entirely.”

What’s scarier is that Jackson doesn’t see the relationship improving anytime soon. The current diplomatic opening is solely because of Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s relationship, he notes, but tensions could escalate if Trump changes his mind or leaves office.

“This is not a stable situation. We’re forced to rely on the whims of a dictator and a wannabe dictator,” he says.

Read transcript of interview with North Korea expert Van Jackson

Secret workforce funds North Korea—and defies sanctions

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Inside one of Uganda’s main air bases lurks a resource the nation pledged two years ago to jettison—North Korean soldiers. The commandos, from North Korea’s special-operations division, are covertly training Uganda’s elite troops in skills from martial arts to helicopter-gunnery operations, say senior Ugandan military officers.

The instructors are among the North Korean soldiers, companies, contractors and arms dealers operating around the world in violation of United Nations sanctions, helping Pyongyang skirt a Washington-led “maximum pressure” campaign, say military officers and foreign diplomats.

The pattern traces across a swath of smaller nations, such as Tanzania, Sudan, Zambia and Mozambique, that have pledged to sever relations nurtured over decades as part of a U.N. campaign to pressure North Korea to drop its nuclear-weapons programs. North Korean operatives or Pyongyang-controlled companies in those countries and Uganda generate foreign exchange for Pyongyang.

Malaysia Korea Partners, or MKP, a company that U.N. monitors say is part of a joint venture of North Korean entities directed by the intelligence agency responsible for clandestine operations has earned tens of millions of dollars for the Kim regime on projects in Uganda, Angola and Zambia over the past decade, the Journal reported last year, citing analysts who evaluated MKP.

Two military officers say they viewed documents confirming North Korean weapons deliveries as recently as August that included antitank systems, rocket-propelled grenades and small arms. The weapons, for Uganda’s special forces, were shipped through a Kenyan port and driven across Uganda’s border at night, they say.

“We never ended our ties,” said an Ugandan officer who described how North Korean commanders recently trained him in close combat. “They just moved underground.”

A Ugandan Defense Ministry spokesman said in a statement: “These are despicable allegations.” Uganda’s defense force, he said, “has totally complied with the UN Security Council resolutions on the subject and the Uganda government as required of it, has made numerous reports to the UN in that regard.” Asked directly whether there were North Koreans training in the country, he didn’t respond.

The American Embassy in Uganda and the Pentagon’s U.S. Africa Command didn’t respond to requests for comment. U.S. officials say many in the Trump administration have been instructed to remain quiet on North Korean defiance over concern speaking out could undercut the image of an effective sanctions regime or weigh on negotiations between Washington and Pyongyang.

[Wall Street Journal]

US sanctions three North Korean officials for rights abuses

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The United States on Monday imposed sanctions on three North Korea officials, including a top aide to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, citing “ongoing and serious human rights abuses and censorship,” the U.S. Treasury Department said.

The sanctions “shine a spotlight on North Korea’s reprehensible treatment of those in North Korea, and serve as a reminder of North Korea’s brutal treatment of U.S. citizen Otto Warmbier,” the department said in a statement. Warmbier was an American student who died in June 2017 after 17 months of detention in North Korea, which contributed to already tense exchanges between Pyongyang and Washington, primarily over North Korea’s nuclear development program.

The sanctions freeze any assets the officials may have under U.S. jurisdiction and generally prohibits them from engaging in any transactions with anyone in the United States.

Ryong Hae Choe, an aide close to Kim who, according to the U.S. Treasury, heads the Workers’ Party of Korea Organization and Guidance Department, was sanctioned, as were State Security Minister Kyong Thaek Jong and the director of North Korea’s Propaganda and Agitation Department, Kwang Ho Pak.

[Reuters]

North Koreans more afraid of China than the United States?

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North Korea expert Barbara Demick’s now legendary book, Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea, chronicles the lives of six defectors over 15 years. Demick explains that the famine of the mid-1990s in North Korea was profoundly traumatic for the country, leading to greater repression.

“For a while during the famine, when things were really bad during 1994, ’95, ’96, [the authorities] didn’t stop people from wandering around,” said Demick, now the Los Angeles Times’ bureau chief in New York. “But people started wandering to look for food, and kids who crossed the border into China looking for food weren’t stopped that much. But then when the food situation got a little better, they had unleashed this spirit of self-enterprise, and [North Korean authorities] had to crack down very harshly.”

The famine also broke popular faith in the Kim dynasty as government corruption became widespread, though the need to believe in something remained. “It’s interesting that most North Korean defectors become Christian,” Demick said.

She thinks it’s inevitable that the two Koreas will grow closer. But the gulf between them is vast, greater than the pre-unification division between East and West Germany, said Demick, who was based in Berlin during the 1990s. “There was some communication between East and West Germany. But you still can’t send a letter from North to South Korea, can’t make a phone call, not to speak of an e-mail or a WhatsApp message. The degree of separation is like nothing else in the world,” she said.

Demick suggested the Singapore summit between Trump and North Korea’s Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un last June was “a good thing. I don’t think it will lead to denuclearization, but it certainly eased tension,” she said.

After five years in Seoul … Demick served as Los Angeles Times’ bureau chief in Beijing. She does not buy the argument that China is a benign force for stability in the East Asia.

“The North Koreans will never say this, but they’re more afraid of China than the United States. They’ll say that China is their friend and the US is the great enemy. But I think they fear China’s undue influence on Korea. …Much of the motivation behind the nuclear program is to take control of their own national security. They don’t want to be dependent on China the way they were during the Korean War.”

The North Korean view is also governed by one of the most enduring principles of geopolitics, Demick added: “The US is far away.”

[Asia Times]

UN Security Council meeting on North Korea human rights scrapped

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The United States has dropped a bid to hold a UN Security Council meeting on North Korea’s human rights record after failing to garner enough support for the talks, diplomats said Friday.

The meeting has been held every year since 2014, as the US has always garnered the nine votes needed at the council to hold the meeting, despite opposition from China.

North Korea had written to council members last month to urge them to block the US request for the meeting that shines a spotlight on Pyongyang’s dismal record. North Korean Ambassador Kim Song last month told council members that criticism of Pyongyang’s human rights record would “swim against the current trend” of rapprochement and “stoke confrontation.”

China had failed to derail the meeting until this year, when non-permanent member Ivory Coast refused to bow to pressure to lend its backing to the US. China, which has strong expanding ties in Africa, has argued that the Security Council is not the venue to discuss human rights as a threat to international peace and security.

A landmark 2014 report by a UN Commission of Inquiry documented human rights abuses on an appalling scale in North Korea, describing a vast network of prison camps where detainees are subjected to torture, starvation and summary executions. The report accused leader Kim Jong Un of atrocities and concluded that he could be prosecuted for crimes against humanity. North Korea has rejected the report as a fabrication, based on testimony from dissidents living in exile.

[Times of India]

North Korea is expanding missile base with eye toward U.S., experts warn

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North Korea is expanding an important missile base that would be one of the most likely sites for deploying intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of reaching the United States, two experts on the North’s missile programs said Thursday, citing new research based on satellite imagery.

The activities at the Yeongjeo-dong missile base near North Korea’s border with China and the expansion of a new suspected missile facility seven miles away are the latest indications that North Korea is continuing to improve its missile capabilities, said Jeffrey Lewis and David Schmerler of the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey in California.

“The base is located in the interior of North Korea, backed up against the Chinese border,” they said. “It is this location that leads us to believe that the general area is a strong candidate for the deployment of future missiles that can strike the United States.” Military planners in Seoul and Washington have long suspected that North Korea would deploy its intercontinental ballistic missiles as close to China as possible to reduce the likelihood of pre-emptive strikes from the United States.

Using satellite imagery, they located tunnels in Yeongjeo-dong that might be used for storing missiles and the construction of a new headquarters, as well as a pair of drive-through shelters in Hoejung-ni suitable for large ballistic missiles and “an extremely large underground facility” under construction further up a narrow valley.

A series of United Nations resolutions require North Korea to give up its ballistic missile program. But the country has never signed any agreement to curtail or disclose its missile capabilities. Following his June summit meeting in Singapore with Kim Jong-un, the North Korean leader, Mr. Trump claimed that there was “no longer a nuclear threat from North Korea.”

[New York Times]