Category: Kim Jong Un

Kim Jong Un still smoking

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North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has been spotted smoking in public for the first time in around two months, despite the country being in the middle of an official anti-smoking campaign.

State media this week showed the country’s Supreme Leader with a cigarette in his right hand during a visit to a children’s camp in Pyongyang. Until now, news reports on Kim’s activities have shown him without his habitual cigarette and an ashtray on a nearby table. He’s known to be a heavy smoker, and BBC analysts say he may have just stopped smoking on official duties for the sake of the cameras.

The sight of Kim smoking comes as a surprise, as the country is in the midst of what state newspaper Rodong Sinmun calls a “brisk” anti-tobacco campaign in a country which has a large smoking population. According to the World Health Organisation, over half of North Korean men were smokers in 2012, South Korean news agency Yonhap says, one of the highest rates in Asia.

[BBC]

South Korean Defense Minister on Kim Jong Un

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Young, rash and impulsive.

A frank assessment of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un by South Korean Defense Minister Han Minkoo. Speaking exclusively to CNN on the sidelines of a defense forum in Singapore, Han says it’s a combination that concerns him greatly.

“Kim Jong Un was just 27 when he came to power with very little time to prepare. Add to that, he is very young, he lacks experience.”

Kim certainly seems to be in a rush to perfect his nuclear and missile capabilities, the intensity of testing this year alone is unusual even for North Korea. “If you look at his father, Kim Jong Il, during his 18 year reign, there were about 18 missile tests. During Kim Jong Un’s four year reign there (have been) 25 missile tests,” says Han.

[CNN]

North Korea mending fences with China

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A high level North Korean delegation turned up in Beijing unannounced this week and met with Chinese President Xi Jinping — the first time a North Korean official has met China’s leader since 2013.

The meeting between top North Korean diplomat Ri Su Yong and Xi caught North Korea watchers by surprise.

On paper, China is North Korea’s closest and most powerful ally but it’s is no secret that relations between Beijing and Pyongyang have been at a low point in recent years.

According to official media reports, the Workers’ Party of Korea delegation headed by Ri Su Yong, delivered a message from North Korea’s supreme leader Kim Jong Un. It expressed “the hope to strengthen and develop bilateral friendship and to maintain peace and stability in the region.”

Ri reaffirmed that North Korea would continue its ‘two front lines policy” of developing nuclear weaponry in tandem with reinvigorating its isolated and stagnating economy.

Xinhua, China’s official news agency gave few details, but the landmark meeting can be interpreted as a slight thawing in the frosty relations between historical and ideological friends.

Beijing is also sending a message to the U.S. and South Korea that, despite misgivings, it is not abandoning its old ally and all parties are going to have to get used to that.

[CNN]

North Korea documentary “Cash for Kim”

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North Korean laborers are literally being worked to death in shocking conditions with money flowing directly into the hands of the North Korean government.

A documentary by filmmakers Sebastian Weis and Manuel Freundt presents shocking evidence that goes right to the heart of the European Union with their footage revealing the harrowing conditions the laborers from North Korea work under.

The documentary, Cash for Kim, shows who is benefiting from the working conditions while giving an insight into how the North Korean workers are treated, with many kept under watch and fearful of reporting their conditions. The footage shows workers employed in several locations across Poland. Weir and Freundt question if the workers are in Poland due to a bureaucratic system error, or rather an economic policy that turns a blind eye to the issue.

More alarmingly the Cash for Kim documentary sheds light on the possibility that one Polish company is even being run by a high-ranking member of the North Korean military.

North Korean workers are employed in mining, logging, textile and construction and working in countries including China, Russia, the UAE, Cambodia and Poland.

[News.com.au]

The Kim family of North Korea as deities

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Many North Koreans call Kim Jong-un “The Marshal” and express towards him, as for his father and grandfather, the emotions usually reserved for a deity. For me, this worship has been a source of minor embarrassment, especially their custom to bow to the images or photos of the leaders.

This is shocking for us, but not unusual in Asia. Before 1945, the neighboring Japanese, people of great culture and refinement, worshiped their Emperor as the Supreme Deity, and even now some of them continue to venerate him as a Shinto god. The Japanese ruled over Korea for 40 years, and during that time, they implanted some ideas, notably that of a Divine Ruler.

Politically, North Korea has little to do with Marxism, or with Socialism.

In fact, it is a deeply religious society based on worship of the three Kims.

If asked, the N Koreans say their rulers have been “sent by Heaven”. They ascribe every good thing in their life to their Heaven-sent rulers. They tell of miracles they performed. A modern-looking lady in Pyongyang has told me she saw an apparition of Kim II in the sky on the night of his demise. I saw people weep when death of Kim Jong-il is mentioned – and that some five years after the event.

[The Unz Review ]

Insights on Kim Jong Un as provided by his aunt

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Ko Yong Suk, the aunt of Kim Jong Un who has been secretly living in the US, says Kim Jong Un was born in 1984, the same year her first son was born.

“He and my son were playmates from birth. I changed both of their diapers,” Ko said.

While Kim Jong Un attended school in Switzerland, Ko helped take care of the future dictator, describing him as a “short-tempered” intolerant child.

Kim, who was shorter than his friends, was obsessed with basketball and his mother told him he would grow taller if he became a player. “He used to sleep… with his basketball,” Ko said.

But as Kim grew older, he was groomed into a successor for his father. At his eighth birthday party, attended by North Korea’s top brass, Kim reportedly received a general’s uniform adorned with stars and real generals bowed to him.

“It was impossible for him to grow up as a normal person when the people around him were treating him like that,” Ko said.

 [Washington Post]

Aunt of Kim Jong Un living a secret life in the US

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The aunt of Kim Jong Un, who has been living a secret life in the U.S. after defecting from the regime 18 years ago, is speaking out for the first time.

Ko Yong Suk, and her husband Ri Gang, fled North Korea in 1998, fearing they would lose their privileged status, when Ko’s sister –the mother of Kim Jong Un – became sick with terminal breast cancer.

“My friends here tell me I’m so lucky, that I have everything,” Ko Yong Suk, as she was known in North Korea, told The Washington Post. “My kids went to great schools and they’re successful, and I have my husband, who can fix anything. There’s nothing we can envy.” Her husband Ri Gang adds, “I think we have achieved the American Dream.”

The couple’s new names and home state were kept hidden to protect their three children. The Post reported the couple lived several hours away from New York City.

The 60-year-old, who runs a dry-cleaning business with her husband also acts as an informant on North Korea to the CIA, the newspaper adds. The couple claimed CIA operatives sometimes would arrive in their town to show them photos of North Koreans and ask who they were. The CIA declined to comment.

Ri Gang now says he wants to visit Pyongyang again to help ease the tensions between the U.S. and North Korea. “My ultimate goal is to go back to North Korea. I understand America and I understand North Korea, so I think I can be a negotiator between the two,” he said.

“If Kim Jong Un is how I remembered he used to be, I would be able to meet him and talk to him.”

Activist says ordinary North Koreans have little respect for Kim Jong Un

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Kim Jong Un has yet to earn the grudging respect of ordinary North Koreans, according to North Korean defector and activist Jeong Kwang-il. Jeong says most North Koreans who do not curry favor with the regime do not refer to him as the “General” or the “Supreme Leader.”

In the past, North Korean leaders were addressed with honorifics, Jeong said. “But nowadays when I speak to North Koreans on the phone, they just call him ‘Jong Un,’ the way one would refer to a friend,” Jeong said.

That trend could be frustrating to the young Kim, who recently was declared “Chairman” during North Korea’s Seventh Party Congress. But the lack of reforms and improvement to people’s lives could be having a greater effect on perceptions of Kim in the country.

Jeong also said that defector activism, including the delivery of South Korean videos such as films of resettled defectors in the South, flash drives of western movies and memory cards for mobile phones, are making an impact on North Korean understanding of the outside world.

Disillusioned with the regime after viewing the media, some North Koreans have started to call the leader “that guy Jong Un” or sometimes “that kid,” according to Jeong.

There’s evidence North Koreans are no longer afraid to breach rules of conduct, the activist said.

[UPI]

Kim Jong-Un successfully manages the generation change

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With his consolidation of power completed at the recent Party Congress, Kim Jong-Un seems to have successfully managed the generation change in North Korea, a tricky affair anywhere.

Foreign bystanders reported that the people were visibly excited to see the young Kim, and even passing by the tribunes they tried to linger and wave flowers and banners in his direction.

Kim Jong-Un appeared in a dark double-breasted jacket and an elegant light tie instead of Mao-style military wear usual for Korean officials. The jacket was to remind the North Korean people of Kim Il Sung, his venerated grandfather, who first appeared in a very similar wear in liberated Pyongyang.

North Korean Congress does little to win over a frustrated China

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Beijing played along with North Korea’s political theater: Chinese President Xi Jinping sent a letter to Kim Jong-un, congratulating him on adding another title to his name – chairman of the Workers’ Party of Korea. A Chinese foreign ministry spokesman said China hopes to enhance its ties with the North.

However, in an editorial Wednesday, the state-run China Daily opined that North Korea’s economic and nuclear goals conflict with each other, and that Kim Jong-un doesn’t seem to care.

“He appears unaware that his nuclear ambitions are poison for his country’s economy,” stated the strongly worded editorial.  “They will not only exhaust his country’s very limited resources, but will further isolate his country from the rest of the world, politically and economically.”

Fearful that economic collapse in North Korea could dangerously destabilize its own border regions, China is wary of squeezing the errant Kim too hard. Shi Yinghong, a professor of international relations at Beijing’s Renmin University, says that China’s leaders have no choice now but to recognize Kim as North Korea’s unchallenged leader.

China’s reasons for opposing North Korea’s nuclear program have only partly to do with fears of an accident or rogue attack. China worries that North Korea’s nuclear weapons give the United States an excuse to bolster its military presence on the Korean peninsula, part of a larger policy of “containment.”

Since Kim came to power in 2011, Beijing and Pyongyang have barely been on speaking terms. Neither Kim nor China’s Xi have paid state visits to each other’s country. China last week did not send a delegation to the congress, as it did in 1980, apparently because it was not invited.

[Christian Science Monitor]