Category: Kim Jong Un

North Korean defections could swell as political elite look south

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More North Koreans are fleeing their country for political reasons, rather than economic reasons, and an increase in defections by Pyongyang’s elite will ultimately weaken Kim Jong Un’s regime, South Korea’s unification minister said in an interview.

Hong Yong-pyo, who heads the Ministry of Unification, expects to see more defectors like Thae Yong Ho, the North Korean deputy ambassador in London, whose defection to Seoul last year was the most high-profile in nearly two decades.

A crippling famine triggered the first major wave of defectors from North Korea about 20 years ago, but many now say that they are leaving the country “not just because they are starving, but for a better life, and for freedom and for their children’s education,” Mr. Hong said.

Mr. Thae, the North’s former deputy ambassador to the U.K., defected not for economic reasons, but “for his son’s education,” Mr. Hong said. The rising number of elite defectors, including more than a dozen workers at North Korea’s overseas restaurants who arrived in South Korea last year, “shows how unsettled the Kim Jong Un system is internally,” Mr. Hong said.

[Wall Street Journal]

North Korea ‘racing ahead’ on nuclear plan, diplomat defector says

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Political uncertainty in the United States and in South Korea could give North Korean leader Kim Jong-un “an apt time” to develop nuclear weapons “at all costs by the end of 2017,” a high-profile North Korean diplomat who recently defected to South Korea said Tuesday.

“Due to domestic political procedures, North Korea calculates that South Korea and the US will not be able to take physical or military actions to deter North Korea’s nuclear development,” Thae Yong-ho, formerly No. 2 at the North Korean Embassy in London, said in a news briefing, according to the Yonhap News Agency.

Thae said Kim has no plans to give up the country’s nukes even if he is offered huge sums of money, saying the leader is “racing ahead with nuclear development after setting up a plan to develop it (nuclear weapons) at all costs by the end of 2017.”

Pyongyang will then try to open dialogue with Seoul and Washington’s new administrations as a nuclear-possessing state, Thae predicted of the North’s strategy to obtain a nuclear power status.

Until then, North Korea will continue to launch military provocations and conduct nuclear tests in a bid to frustrate Seoul and Washington’s sanctions-concentrated policy towards Pyongyang, Thae said.

Tuesday was the 55-year-old Thae’s first appearance to the media since he escaped his post in London to take refuge in South Korea along with his wife and two sons in July.

[CNN]

Kim Jong Un wants Christians to celebrate his grandmother’s birthday, not Jesus’

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North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has reportedly replaced Christmas with celebrations honoring his deceased grandmother. While Christians remain a minority in North Korea, Kim has declared Dec. 25 a holiday to pay tribute to Kim Jong Suk, who died in 1949, according to media reports Sunday.

Kim’s grandmother was born on Christmas Eve in 1919. Known as the “Sacred Mother of the Revolution,” she was the wife of former North Korean leader Kim Il Sung and a Communist activist. To honor her birthday, many North Koreans visit her tomb on Dec. 25 each year.

North Korea has previously banned Christmas trees and Kim has upheld his family’s anti-Christmas beliefs. In 2014, he threatened war against South Korea after it announced it would erect a Christmas tree along the border. 

“The DPRK ostentatiously treats anyone of faith, but especially Christians, as hostile,” wrote Doug Bandow, a Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank in Washington, D.C. “Believers place loyalty to God before that of the North Korean state. Churches allow people to act and organize outside of state entities. Christianity also has ties to a world seen as almost uniformly threatening by Pyongyang.”

Christian celebrations, including decorating Christmas trees, were banned in 1950s, but some of the nation’s estimated 70,000 Christians continue to put up holiday decorations each December, especially in upscale shops and restaurants. In recent decades, however, North Korea has sent some Christians to prisons because of their religion.

[Yahoo News]

High-level North Korean defector exposes life among elites

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When Thae Yong-ho, North Korea’s deputy ambassador to the United Kingdom, defected to South Korea in August, he and his family were immediately taken into protective custody. They were grilled by South Korea’s intelligence service not only to glean all the information they could from them about North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un, the ruling class, and the political situation there, but also to determine that he wasn’t a spy. After all, he’d fooled both Kim and the Brits into thinking he was the real deal — a dyed-in-the-wool hard-core communist — ever since 2004.

On Monday, South Korea sources announced that the months-long interrogation was complete and that, effective on this coming Friday, Thae will be free to go, to begin his new life in South Korea. He says he will spend the rest of his life “freeing the North Korean people from repression and persecution.” “I will engage in public activities even if it threatens my own safety,” he said.

He provided some insights into the personal life of Kim’s ruling class, including their highly insecure tenure in office. He said it was “perfectly normal” for their homes to be bugged and monitored for any hint of disloyalty to the regime. For instance, when North Korea’s defense minister Hyon Yong-Choi was executed in 2015, the international media said it might have been because he made the gross mistake of falling asleep during one of Kim’s long and endlessly boring speeches. Not so, said Thae: It was “because he said the wrong things at home.”

He noted that life among the elites is far from luxurious. Most high-level members are paid so little that they are “encouraged” to make some extra money “on the side,” referring to a black market that exists in North Korea despite sanctions against any form of “capitalism.”

[New American]

5 ways North Korea has changed in 5 years under Kim Jong Un

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It’s been five years since North Korean leader Kim Jong Un took power following the death of his father, Kim Jong Il. Here’s a look at five ways the country has changed:

  1. Kim Jong Un is in some ways a lot more like his charismatic and gregarious, albeit brutal and megalomaniacal, grandfather than Kim Jong Il. He has gone out of his way to milk that resemblance, right down to adopting his trademark haircut from a seemingly bygone era. While his father almost never spoke in public, Kim Jong Un has done so on any number of occasions. On the flip side, one of his most important moves to consolidate power — the execution of his powerful uncle and the purges that ensued — demonstrated both his personal independence and his willingness to employ the same kind of oppressive tools that were the hallmarks of both his father and grandfather. And, despite a short-lived friendship with former NBA bad boy Dennis Rodman, he has yet to travel abroad or meet a foreign head of state.
  2. Turning North Korea into a nuclear power wasn’t Kim Jong Un’s idea but it’s defined his first five years. Of the five nuclear tests North Korea has conducted, three have been under his watch and two, including its most powerful to date and its first of what Pyongyang claims was an H-bomb, were this year.
  3. North Korea’s main motto under Kim Jong Il was “Military First.” Under Kim Jong Un, the focus is now on building more and better nukes and bolstering the national economy, in large part through developing science and technology.
  4. Probably more out of pragmatic necessity than anything else, Kim Jong Un has allowed capitalist-style markets and entrepreneurialism to expand, invigorating the domestic economy and creating new revenue streams for the government, which profits by either taking a cut or by directly supporting such enterprises. Changes in farming policy that let individuals personally benefit from bigger harvests have boosted agricultural output. But the rise of the “cash masters,” an empowered middle class more open to capitalist ideals, or just more determined to acquire material wealth, could prove to be a problem for Kim down the road.
  5. Kim Jong Un has on several occasions vowed to make North Korea a “more civilized” nation.

[AP]

How China will work with Trump

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Here’s the scenario: Washington suddenly makes an unusual move in Asia that China doesn’t like. Beijing’s public response is measured, but it works behind the scenes to undermine US-led diplomacy. After a few months, Beijing cools off and resumes its cooperation.

As a senior UN diplomat described it, his Chinese colleagues have been warming up to the idea of toughening Security Council sanctions on North Korea. After bouncing ideas around with their American counterparts, they suddenly clammed up. Any attempt to work on a sanctions resolution was met with cold silence. “The deployment of THAAD changed the equation for China,” the diplomat explained.

Yet last week, bingo: The UN Security Council unanimously — China included — agreed on what victorious US diplomats described as “the toughest sanctions resolution in history.” (OK, they always say that — but still . . . )

Why the Chinese zigzag? One reason Beijing props up the North Korean regime is fear: If Kim Jong Un’s oppressive regime collapses and the peninsula unites under Seoul’s rule, China will be surrounded by strong pro-American democracies.

True, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan don’t only undermine China’s authoritarian regime by their mere existence. But, in Beijing’s view, they may one day threaten China militarily. American THAADs near China’s borders, though defensive, are a scary step in that direction. Which explains why its diplomats refused, for months after the THAAD announcement, to even contemplate a UN sanctions resolution against North Korea.

On the other hand, Pyongyang’s crazed antics are beyond the pale even for Beijing’s leaders, as anti-American as they may be. So China’s UN hands returned to the negotiation table and, together with American diplomats, forged a sanctions resolution meant to put the fear of god in godless Kim.

[Excerpt of Opinion page in New York Post]

Sex lives of North Koreans

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North Korea watcher Dr. Andrei Lankov explained that the nation inherited its traditional values from the former USSR under the reign of its former supreme leader Kim Il Sung who died in 1994. ‘Innocence’ among North Korean girls is still “seen as the natural and desirable state of mind” – with sex before marriage still frowned upon.

However some attitudes to sex are changing under the rule of their latest leader Kim Jong-un.

Writing in NKNews.org Lankov claimed: “In the days of Kim Il Sung’s ‘national Stalinism’, the elite did womanize (like a great many powerful males have done since time immemorial), but discretion was expected.

“Now elite males are quite willing to showcase their young mistresses, and among the top business elite a man is almost required to keep a mistress. Foreign diplomats in Pyongyang have noticed recently that some officials have begun to appear in public places with young beauties.”

Dr. Lankov also explained that divorce is still stigmatized in North Korea. Several women are known to have fled across the border rather than divorce their husband.

A 2014 study revealed 29.8% of all refugee women had participated in extramarital sex while in North Korea – a level which might be even higher than in the United States, Dr Lankov explained.

[The Mirror]

Deserved praise for Kim Jong Un regime’s reconstruction efforts?

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Months after heavy flooding destroyed parts of North Korea’s northeastern region in late August and early September, Kim Jong Un’s regime has termed the disaster recovery after mass mobilization a “miraculous victory” for the East Asian country.

The heavy rains in North Korea’s northeastern region triggered by typhoon Lionrock in late August and early September reportedly destroyed over 11,600 buildings, almost 180 sections of roads and more than 60 bridges, leaving hundreds of people dead and tens of thousands others stranded.

A mass mobilization movement, referred to as the “200-day battle” has been credited for the “victory” on the “reconstruction front” in North Hamgyong Province, state-controlled news agency KCNA reported Wednesday.

KCNA reported that 11,900 new homes have been built for residents who lost their shelters because of the floods, in addition to over 100 facilities —from nurseries to medical clinics — having been built to assist those in need. Pyongyang also said another 15,000 homes have been repaired.

However, some people in the country are not as happy with the efforts as Pyongyang is attempting to show. A source in North Hamgyong Province told South Korean news service Daily NK that the newly-built homes are “being turned down by a lot of residents, and now it appears about 10 percent of the homes are vacant.”

The fast pace of redevelopment efforts — which could take up to take three years in a developing country according to a shelter adviser with the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies — has raised questions over the sustainability of the construction quality.

[IBT Media]

Kim Jong-un’s wife reappears in public after nine month absence

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Ri Sol-ju, wife of Kim Jong-un has reappeared in public after seeming to vanish for nine months – prompting speculation she may have given birth to a male heir.

Ri Sol-ju reappeared – in the full gaze of the public alongside her husband – during an air combat training competition. Local media reported that she appeared comfortable to be at Kim Jong-un’s side as they watched the display by the Korean People’s Air Force and Defense (KPAF).

But there was no comment by the state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) as to the reasons behind her extended absence – or an exact date of when the photo was taken.

According to the South Korean news agency Yonhap News, Ri Sol-ju was last seen on a tour of a new commercial district and health complex in Pyongyang on March 28 of this year.

In May Kim Jong-un hosted the country’s first party congress in 36 years – and his wife was nowhere to be seen.

And over the past 9 months Kim Jong-un has been continuously spotted out and about touring the length and breadth of the country, never with his First Lady.

Ri Sol-ju had curiously also not been mentioned in any state reports over the last nine months.

 [The Mirror]

9 of 10 North Korea defectors say life worsened under Kim Jong Un

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Nearly 90 percent of North Korean defectors who participated in a recent South Korean survey said living conditions have deteriorated under Kim Jong Un.

The South Korea-based defector organization North Korea Intellectuals Solidarity presented its findings Monday. According to the survey, 89 percent of defectors said the situation “has not improved” under Kim, who fully assumed power in 2012.

Conversely, 11 percent said living standards have “improved” under Kim, while 2.8 percent of that group said the improvements were “significant.”

The defectors also confirmed an earlier study that showed the Kim regime is increasingly the target of common complaints in the country. According to the poll, 32 percent of defectors said they strongly agree that most ordinary North Koreans privately criticize Kim, while another 41 percent said they somewhat agree with the statement. Only 2.8 percent of those surveyed disagreed with the statement.

A previous study conducted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C., found 35 of 36 North Koreans interviewed in the country complain or make jokes about the government in private although criticism of the state is a serious crime, punishable by imprisonment or even death in North Korea.

Nearly 80 percent of those surveyed said the defection of state officials could lead to collapse, and within that group 31 percent said the defection of senior people in government would have a “very large impact.”

[UPI]