Category: Kim Jong Un

Seoul’s policy on North Korea about to get a major overhaul

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Liberal reformer Moon Jae-in was sworn in today after winning a snap election to replace impeached President Park Geun-hye. Moon has advocated dialogue with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, in stark contrast to Park’s approach of tough sanctions and aggressive rhetoric.

Speaking at his swearing in ceremony, Moon promised to “resolve the security crisis as soon as possible. Under the right conditions, I will … go to Pyongyang. For peace on the Korean Peninsula, I will do everything that I can do.”

A former special forces soldier and human rights lawyer, Moon came in for criticism during the campaign from hardline conservatives who saw him as weak on North Korea. He has called for a combination of negotiations and economic cooperation alongside military and security measures.

His stance has been compared to the so-called “Sunshine Policy” of the liberal governments of 1998 to 2008. By no coincidence, he was a key adviser to those administrations. During the Sunshine Policy, Seoul actively engaged Pyongyang, which led to closer relations on both sides of the border and saw two South Korean Presidents visit the North Korean capital. However, the approach ultimately failed to halt North Korea’s nuclear weapons program.

Moon, who took office today, is unlikely to get a long honeymoon when it comes to North Korea. Experts have been predicting an imminent nuclear test, North Korea’s sixth, for weeks now, as the country ramps up missile testing and saber rattling. On Sunday, Pyongyang announced it had detained a US citizen on suspicion of “hostile acts” against the regime, days after it accused Seoul and Washington of plotting to assassinate North Korean leader Kim Jong Un using “biochemical weapons.”

[CNN]

How Kim Jong Un has tightened his grip on power

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Since succeeding his father in 2011, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has impressed and confounded with his rise from political novice to adept operator.

He has done a remarkable job of consolidating his power and remodeling the country in his own image, says Choi Jong-kun, associate professor at Yonsei University’s Department of Political Science and International Studies in South Korea. “He has reformed the economy far greater than his father, and hugely advanced the country’s nuclear and missile capabilities,” Choi tells CNN

Nick Bisley, executive director at La Trobe University in Melbourne, says security in the form of the nuclear program is a prerequisite to any serious attempt at North Korean economic reform. “Only when they feel confident that they have their nuclear weapons and the security they have with that will we see economic reform,” he says. “The most optimistic (outcome) is that it follows the China model — once secure it follows a China-style economic reform but (even in that case) we won’t see any political reform.”

Consolidating his power has been key to Kim’s rise, and much of this has been done in a brutal, bloody manner. One report from South Korean think tank, the Institute for National Security Strategy, claims he has ordered the executions of at least 340 people since he came to power in 2011 — 140 of whom were senior officers in the country’s government, military and ruling Korean Worker’s Party.

Of all the killings, few have the notoriety of his execution of his uncle by marriage, Jang Song Thaek in 2013. His abrupt removal was a sign Kim was removing the last vestiges of the old guard. With state media declaring Jang a “traitor for all ages,” Kim made sure there was no dissent to the decision.

The reported execution of five deputy minister-level officials in February of this year, who were working under disgraced state security chief Kim Won Hong, suggests that the purges may be still ongoing.

[CNN]

How defectors see change coming to North Korea

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Cha Ri-hyuk, who defected from North Korea in 2013, still remembers what it was like after his country’s supreme leader, Kim Jong-il, died in 2011: Trains stopped running, customers were kicked out of hotels and the price of a kilogram of rice soared from 5,000 North Korean Won to more than 30,000 Won, said Cha, a former North Korea artillery corps officer.

After managing to buy and cook a kilogram of rice for the women and children in his friend’s family, Cha and his friend survived for three days on nothing but 10 litres – more than four gallons – of potent North Korean alcohol.

“There were many people like us who were drunk during the period and they were covering their faces with newspapers with the news of Kim Jong-il’s death, pretending they were mourning,” Cha told listeners at a forum about regime change sponsored by the Defense Forum Foundation. “If they were found to be drunk during the period, they would be sent to the political prison.”

Cha joined 11 other defectors at the forum to discuss weakening the North Korean regime through informing ordinary North Koreans of its realities. He and others pointed out that the difference in mood among North Koreans could eventually be a key to dealing with the current North Korean regime, led by Kim Jong-il’s youngest son, Kim Jong-un.

Hope for change resides with possible future resistance from North Korean citizens and the military, rather than military threats from the President Donald Trump’s administration, Cha said. Read more

North Korea: What liars fear the most is the truth

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Change has been happening in North Korea, North Korean defectors say, speaking from their personal experiences and what they have since learned from their North Korean relatives.

Marketplaces have sprung up and have survived in cities and villages despite official disapproval after the collapse of the Public Distribution System in the mid-1990s. Academics and defectors alike say North Koreans are now able to exchange information about the realities of the outside world in those markets. “People sit around and whisper,” Cha Ri-hyuk, who defected from North Korea in 2013, explains in an interview.

While the state maintains tight control over official media, North Koreans get information through alternative means, including calling relatives in South Korea using smuggled South Korean phones, said Lim, another defector.

Some of the defectors at the forum work with Free North Korea Radio, one of three private radio stations in South Korea aiming to inform North Koreans across the border. Others said they had distributed fliers in North Korea using balloons, or smuggled computer flash drives into the country containing information about the outside world.

“What liars fear the most is the truth,” said Park Sang-Hak, an outspoken defector who is called “fireball” in the defector community. “And Kim Jong-un is the biggest liar of all.”

[U.S. News & World Report]

A North Korean war and the 30 million person problem

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A thermonuclear war with North Korea would be a humanitarian and ecological disaster for the entire region South Korea, China, Russia and Japan. Even if conventional weapons are used and the Kim regime collapses (a more likely scenario), we may face an alternative nightmare:

The first consequence would be that the Kims and all those connected with the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea would have to flee compatriots angry at years of human rights violations and public executions.

“Secret police and party officials would seek refuge in neighboring China or Russia,” Australian National University researcher Leonid Petrov told news.com.au. “Some South American countries might be willing to give refuge to people — Bolivia, Venezuela, Guatemala … countries that are anti-American might be supportive.”

So what will Kim Jong-un’s people do without their supreme leader? With a lack of money, food and shelter if the regime collapses, they too may seek refuge in China, Russia and South Korea, but those countries will not necessarily be open to an influx of North Korean refugees.

China is already home to an estimated 100,000 North Korean defectors, and is unlikely to want the pressure of more. The Chinese have been concerned about such a scenario for some time, and might reinforce the border with troops, Rand Corporation scientist Andrew Scobell told Foxtrot Alpha.

Others may try to travel from city to city in search of refuge, while others could try to cross into South Korea, although if fighting persists in the DMZ, that would be almost impossible.

The most likely conclusion would be the reunification of Korea, according to Dr Petrov, but this may mean deep economic and social problems. Read more

North Korea: With information comes education and a popular uprising?

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What makes North Korea feel so oppressive? If you ask its highest-ranking defector in decades, the answer is censorship. Thae Yong Ho, who was until last summer a Pyongyang envoy in London, argues that increasing the flow of information into the North is what can sow the seeds of popular discord to bring down the Kim Jong Un regime.

[After Thae defected his diplomatic post along with his family] his 19- and 26-year-old sons’ first concern was whether they could freely browse the Internet. “You can go to the Internet, you can do Internet games whenever you like, you can read any books, watch any films,” Thae said he told them.

That’s not the way of life in North Korea, where fewer than 1 percent of the population has Internet access. Foreign books, films and information are banned — and TV only broadcasts propaganda.

Breaking down the censorship and surveillance state from within, Thae believes, is the only way to bring down North Korea’s nuclear weapons-obsessed leader. With information comes education, Thae says — and that can lead to a popular uprising.

“Once they are educated to that level, I am sure they will stand up,” Thae told reporters.

A shortwave radio station called Free North Korea Radio has been delivering information from outside the country since 2005, broadcasting from the second floor of a multipurpose building just outside Seoul.

“The leaflets, USBs with films [stored on them] can be introduced to North Korea. So the ways of educating North Korean people for people’s uprising is also evolving,” Thae said.

This kind of tactic is far more effective than any military action, Thae, the defector, said. Any surgical or preemptive strike on the North in an attempt to eliminate its nuclear facilities would only turn South Korea — a longtime U.S. ally where 28,000 American troops are based — “into ashes,” he told reporters.

[NPR]

Some North Korean defectors have become celebrities in South Korea

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Joo Chanyang once sold cigarettes and socks to raise enough money to escape oppressive North Korea. She then trekked 2,000 miles through China, risking imprisonment and execution, to reach the safety of South Korea.

But now Joo is mobbed by fans on the streets of Seoul, mingles with celebrities and has thousands of social media hits as she is appears with other North Korean defectors on a kitsch reality TV show, ‘Now On My Way To Meet You’.

Featuring 15 defectors from Kim Jong-un’s brutal regime, they discuss their former lives: from the horrors of public executions and famine to beauty products and North Korea’s drinking culture. Panelists like Joo became overnight stars in South Korea … by singing, dancing and mocking feared dictator Jong-un.

Despite her new found fame, Joo insists she is just an ordinary person. “The young generation still think North Korea is a foreign country. … With more exposure, people will get to know North Koreans better. … The government is bad, not the people… Not everyone worships Kim Jong-un.

Show producer Mr Park claims the show … connects North and South Koreans. “Many of those who have defected from the North have had trouble settling in South Korea. Appearing on the TV shows has helped them be accepted. There is still a deep suspicion of those who have made their home in the South.”

[Read full Daily Mail article]

“Tremendous enthusiasm” for defection from North Korea

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After being discharged from the North Korean navy as a lieutenant-colonel, North Korean defector Kim Hwa (not her real name) was given a visa that enabled travel to and from China.

At the time, North Korea was always low on medicine, so for medical purposes everyone had to buy illegal drugs in village markets. Prescription drugs and opium as well as marijuana were readily available on the black market, smuggled from China.

“There is nobody who works in trade with China that doesn’t trade drugs,” Kim says. It is so commonplace that she did not even consider the risks, and she and a friend began doing it.

One evening, she received a call from the son of her friend saying his mom had been caught. “I thought I would get caught [too], so that night I thought I had to escape to China.”

She took her savings from dealing drugs, $US3000, bribed the North Korean border guard with $US30 to cross and was walked through minefields and into China. She estimates that only two in 10 people successfully make a border crossing. Those who don’t are either killed where they stand or captured and simply disappear. She was lucky. (Since Kim Hwa defected, Kim Jong-un has increased border security on northern and southern borders, planting millions of landmines that make escapes much less possible.)

In late 2009, Kim Hwa’s partner along with other drug dealers were lined up and executed by shotgun. Kim could never return to her homeland. She traveled through Laos and Cambodia before seeking asylum at the South Korean embassy in Thailand, arriving in Seoul in December 2011. She was safe from the regime, at the cost of leaving her mother and two younger brothers behind.

“When I first got to South Korea I cried all day. I missed my mother. I joined the army when I was 16 years old, so I hardly spent any time with her.”

As a former high-ranking military officer, Hwa faced a lot of suspicion from South Korean authorities before she was allowed into the country. Defectors typically face a week-long investigation but she was questioned for three months, and was locked up throughout the process. [Finally] she was cleared and flown into Incheon airport.

Just last week, Kim Hwa attended a North Korean defectors meeting in the South and heard that about 100 defectors are arriving each month. It’s only a third of what it used to be a few years ago, but she finds it staggering considering the strengthening of border defense, increased land mines, higher broker fees for smugglers and heightened dangers associated with defection.

For her the message is clear – enthusiasm for defection is tremendous.

[AFR Weekend]

A North Korean defector on Kim Jong Un launching nuclear war

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Hyeonseo Lee, a North Korean defector who witnessed her first public execution at age seven, is convinced despot Kim Jong-Un would launch nuclear weapons against its enemies as a “last stand”. Hyeonseo says the despotic leader would certainly launch his deadly arsenal if he faced defeat at the hands of the US.

“Kim Jong Un would launch missiles at South Korea, Japan and America. He’s a dictator who’d have nowhere to go and there would be no way to stop him. …There’s a slogan in North Korea which goes: ‘America dies, we die, we all die together’.”

Hyeonseo, now 37, went on to reveal how most North Koreans are ‘brainwashed’ into believing the regime’s propaganda and how the thousands who are forced to attend military parades “pee their pants” because they are forbidden from leaving. This past weekend Kim Jong-un paraded new ballistic rockets, tanks and his never before seen Special Forces units through the streets of Pyongyang in a show of strength against President Trump, who has refused to rule out a preemptive strike should Kim reach for the nuclear button.

Hyeonseo says her former compatriots believe Kim commands the most powerful military force on earth. “Most people in the country didn’t – and might still not – know about how powerful the United States is. They think North Korean weapons are the best in the world and they’re very proud of them. They believe they can protect the country from anyone.”

At the same time, she revealed how the thousands who lined the streets and frantically waved flags at the annual Day Of The Sun parade are secretly “sick and tired” of being forced to attend such events. “The people in the crowd are sick of [taking part in the parade]. They are still proud of the army but they don’t want to take part in these events.”

[Daily Mail]

North Korean defector warns Kim Jong-un plans to kidnap Americans if US attacks

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North Korea has been secretly training special forces to kidnap Westerners in South Korea and hold them hostage in the event of a US attack, a defector has claimed.

Ung-gil Lee, who defected to South Korea in 2006, said Kim Jong-un had highly armed snatch squads designed to grab foreign diplomats and tourists from across the South Korean border. Mr Lee, who defected to South Korea after serving for six years in one of these clandestine units, said: “The best case [for his old unit] would be to round them up and take them north, but if not they will take the foreigners hostage in South Korea. But they will all be killed, come what may – this goes hand-in-hand with assassination.”

The 37-year-old, who now works as a financial adviser in Seoul, said Kim Jong Un’s rule was worse than all the prominent dictators in the Middle East and Africa combined, and warned that Mr Trump should only carry out an attack if he thinks he can remove Kim from power.

“[Kim Jong Un] is going to fight back and use all retaliatory measures. Unless Trump thinks he can get rid of him, he must not carry out an attack,” Mr Lee said.

Mr Lee was recruited to join North Korea’s infamous special forces and spent five years training as a communications officer. He said he was part of a 100-strong land and air group selected for raids on the South to destroy infrastructure, disrupt roads and ports, and kidnap foreigners. His group was also taught to memorize details about mobile phone systems, and were armed with nerve agents, with which they were in some cases required to carry out “suicide missions”.

[The Independent]