Category: Kim Jong Un

North Korea nuclear threat not all bluff

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Skeptics of North Korea’s nuclear threat, and there are many, have long clung to two comforting thoughts. While the North has the bomb, it doesn’t have a warhead small enough to put on a long-range rocket. And it certainly doesn’t have a re-entry vehicle to keep that warhead from burning up in the atmosphere before it could reach a target like, as it has suggested before, Manhattan.

North Korea on Tuesday suggested it will soon show the world it has mastered both technologies. That would require a huge jump in the North’s suspected nuclear capabilities, so it may be just the latest case of Pyongyang propaganda. But if it delivers, it will put to rest one other comforting thought: that it’s safe for policymakers in Washington and elsewhere to take North Korea’s claims as mainly just bluster.

Kim Jong Un supposedly ordered the commencement of preparations for a “nuclear warhead explosion test” and test-firings of “several kinds of ballistic rockets able to carry nuclear warheads” to be conducted soon. As with all such reports, it’s hard to separate Pyongyang’s wishful thinking from the current reality.

Seoul, meanwhile, was holding to its skeptical line. Its Defense Ministry said Tuesday it remains unconvinced the North has achieved re-entry vehicle technology. Spokesman Moon Sang Gyun said the assessment is based on South Korean and U.S. intelligence. He refused to elaborate.

[Read full AP article]

UN rights envoy urges prosecution of Kim Jong Un

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The United Nations human rights investigator for North Korea called Monday for leader Kim Jong Un and senior officials in the country to be prosecuted for committing crimes against humanity.

Marzuki Darusman told the U.N. Human Rights Council that North Korea is devoting huge resources to developing nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction while many of its citizens lack sufficient food and others work in “slave-like conditions”.

The delegation of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) boycotted the session. The European Union, United States and Japan supported Darusman’s call for accountability, although they did not refer to Kim by name.

Ambassador Robert King, U.S. envoy on North Korea, denounced the “egregious human rights violations committed by the DPRK” and said that the United States would work with other countries to “seek ways to advance accountability for those most responsible”.

China, Pyongyang’s ally, took a more conciliatory tone, saying human rights issues should not be politicized and calling for a comprehensive approach to dealing with North Korea.

Darusman, referring to a report he issued last month, said: “I would like to reiterate my appeal to the international community to move forward to ensure accountability of the senior leadership of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, including that of Mr. Kim Jong Un.”

This could be via the International Criminal Court (ICC) but failing consensus among major powers, North Korea’s leadership could be prosecuted in a third country, he said.

[Reuters]

The rise and fall of Jang Song-thaek, son-in-law of the North Korean theocracy – Part 1

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In late 2013, Jang Song-thaek, an uncle of Kim Jong-un was taken to the Gang Gun Military Academy in a Pyongyang suburb. Hundreds of officials were gathered there to witness the execution of Mr. Jang’s two trusted deputies in the administrative department of the ruling Workers’ Party. Jang, widely considered the second-most powerful figure in the North, fainted during the ordeal, according to a new book published in South Korea that offers a rare glimpse into the secretive Pyongyang regime.

“Son-in-Law of a Theocracy,” by Ra Jong-yil, a former deputy director of the National Intelligence Service, is a rich biography of Jang Song-thaek, the most prominent victim of the purges his young nephew has conducted since assuming power in 2011.

Mr. Jang was convicted of treason in 2013, and was executed at the same place and in the same way as his deputies, the South Korean intelligence agency said.

The book asserts that although he was a fixture of the North Korean political elite for decades, he dreamed of reforming his country. “With his execution, North Korea lost virtually the only person there who could have helped the country introduce reform and openness,” Mr. Ra said during a recent interview.   Continued

The rise and fall of Jang Song-thaek, son-in-law of the North Korean theocracy – Part 2

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Jang Song-thaek had met one of the daughters of North Korea’s founder, Kim Il-sung, while both attended Kim Il-sung University in the mid-1960s. The daughter, Kim Kyong-hee, developed a crush on Mr. Jang, who was tall and humorous — and sang and played the accordion. Her father transferred the young man to a provincial college to keep the two apart. But Ms. Kim hopped in her Soviet Volga sedan to see Mr. Jang each weekend. Once they married in 1972, Mr. Jang’s career took off under the patronage of Kim Jong-il, his brother-in-law and the designated successor of the regime. Few benefited more than Mr. Jang from the regime he loyally served. But he was never fully embraced by the Kim family because he was not blood kin.

North Korean diplomats who have defected to South Korea also said that during his frequent trips overseas to shop for Mr. Kim, Mr. Jang would drink heavily and speak dejectedly about people dying of hunger back home. Mr. Ra said Hwang Jang-yop, a North Korean party secretary who defected to Seoul in 1997 shared a conversation he once had with Mr. Jang. When told that the North’s economy was cratering, Mr. Jang responded sarcastically: “How can an economy already at the bottom go further down?”

When Kim Jong-il banished Mr. Jang three times for overstepping his authority, his wife intervened on his behalf. After Kim Jong-il suffered a stroke in 2008 and died in 2011, Mr. Jang helped his young nephew, Kim Jong-un, establish himself as successor. At the same time, he vastly expanded his own influence — and ambition.  Continued

The rise and fall of Jang Song-thaek, son-in-law of the North Korean theocracy – Part 3

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Jang Song-thaek wrested the lucrative right of exporting coal to China from the military and gave it to his administrative department. He purged his rivals. Mr. Jang’s campaign for more influence was apparently aimed at pushing for the kind of economic overhaul that China has introduced, Mr. Ra wrote. But he underestimated how unpalatable the idea was to Kim Jong-un, whose totalitarian rule would be undermined by such reform.

In 2013, Kim Jong-un, after hearing complaints about Mr. Jang’s expansion of power, ordered his department to relinquish the management of a fishing farm and a condensed milk factory. But officials loyal Jang, blocked those who arrived to carry out Kim’s orders from entering their premises. It was probably the last straw for Kim, still unsure about himself and extremely sensitive about any challenge to his supposedly monolithic leadership. Meanwhile, Mr. Jang’s enemies in the secret police were eager to go after him.

When announcing his execution, North Korea said Mr. Jang, “human scum worse than a dog,” had betrayed the Kim family by plotting to overthrow the younger Mr. Kim, using economic collapse as a pretext, and to rule the country himself as premier and “reformer.”

Jang Song-thaek’s name was then expurgated from all official records in North Korea.

[New York Times]

Life in North Korea 100 times worse than China

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After defecting from North Korea, Hyeonseo Lee spent 10 difficult years in China, but those years also revealed she had been lied to her entire life in North Korea.

“For someone who was brainwashed so severely, …I was mesmerized by seeing development, cities.” It took a while to accept that the economic situation in North Korea was 100 times worse than in China. … Lee gradually learned to accept the shocking truth: “Life in North Korea is the worst life”.

Lee also began to appreciate the basic human rights and freedoms that had been denied to her. Being able to move around China without having to get a travel certificate was a revelation. “I could go wherever I wanted if I had money to pay for the ticket, that’s huge,” she said.

Gradually she realized what freedom really meant: “I don’t have to hide to watch China TV, I don’t have to cover the window, I can have the sound loud, I can listen to music loudly. I realized I had lived in a virtual prison [in North Korea].”

Eighteen years later, she thinks more North Koreans understand that they are not living in paradise and that there are problems with the economy, even if the conditions are not as bad as the days of the big famine in the 1990s.

“At least they know they are not the best country, they are not the happiest human beings, they are not living in paradise and they know there are economic problems, nearly 50 per cent know that,” she said.

“But the Kim dynasty’s power is too big, they can’t say that or they will be sent to a political prison camp. Who can risk that?” They also risk the lives of three generations of their family. “They are fully aware that they are not only killing themselves.”

[News.com.au]

Report of ‘decapitation strike’ training rattles North Korea

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Massive joint U.S.-South Korea military exercises are a spring ritual on the Korean Peninsula guaranteed to draw a lot of threat-laced venom from Pyongyang. This time, not only are the war games the biggest ever, but the troops now massed south of the Demilitarized Zone have reportedly incorporated a new hypothetical into their training: a “beheading mission” against Kim Jong Un himself.

Pyongyang, already feeling the squeeze of new sanctions over its recent nuclear test and rocket launch, is taking a plethora of “beheading mission” reports from the South Korean media very seriously. That goes a long way toward explaining why its own rhetoric has ratcheted up a decibel – even by its own standards of bellicosity.

“Decapitation strikes” are targeted attacks to eliminate an adversary’s leader, or leaders, in an attempt to disrupt or destroy its command chain as soon as a crisis breaks out or appears imminent. They are seen as particularly effective against enemies with a highly centralized command focused on a small group, or one leader.

According to South Korea’s Yonhap news agency, the Key Resolve-Foal Eagle exercises will include training and simulations of surgical, pre-emptive strikes on nuclear and missile sites, along with training for a “beheading operation” aimed at removing Kim Jong Un and toppling his government in the event of a war.

The U.S. has used such strikes, often employing drones, to take out key figures in terrorist groups.

[AP]

Why do tourists continue to travel to North Korea?

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Otto Frederick Warmbier, a 21-year-old student from the University of Virginia, has been detained in North Korea for the past two months … for trying to steal a propaganda banner from a Pyongyang hotel. Since March 2009, 12 Americans have been detained in North Korea, accused of crimes ranging from illegally crossing Chinese borders to leaving a Bible in a bin at a health club. That raises the question: why do tourists continue to travel there?

I spent 10 days in North Korea, or the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), last year. It was purely out of curiosity that I chose to visit. Our world is a small place. Every sea has been crossed, every mountain has been climbed and every jungle explored. Even the closed-off, secretive North Korea has been filmed, photographed and written about–but I don’t believe everything I watch, read or hear, and as a travel writer I couldn’t ignore this anomalous pocket in the heart of east Asia existing with such shocking defiance. I wanted to witness firsthand what North Korea was like.

Since the 1980s, North Korea has been admitting foreign tourists through organized, supervised tour groups. I booked myself on a chartered train tour along with 15 other tourists, including two Americans. We never felt unsafe. Not once. Not one of us ever questioned our security, largely because we abided by the rules which are few and simple: don’t deface photos of the Kims; don’t fold a magazine in half if Kim Jong-un’s face is on the front; include the whole body when photographing the Kims; wear a tie to the mausoleum; don’t take photos of the public without asking; and don’t leave Bibles behind in the country. This last rule exists as the regime believes that Kim Il-sung is still the supreme leader, and leaving behind a Bible is considered an attempt to influence the people’s beliefs.

[As for the North Koreans themselves:] After an initial blank stare, people smile and wave, whether it’s from fear, nervousness or simply a case of being unsure of tourists’ intentions. But it’s wrong to project a prescribed image on to an entire country.

Having traveled at the same time as the celebrations of the 70th anniversary of the Workers’ party, we were invited to join in dance rehearsals in the town square, holding hands and partnering with students who welcomed us without question. We shared earphones with our guides, showed photos of our families and had short, but sweet, exchanges with shop girls, museum guides and bellboys.

At the end of our trip one of the North Korean guides said quietly: “We are 20 million people. We are not to blame. We would like to be a member of world society. We are not perfect, but then no country is. Don’t make us suffer for what is not our fault.”

[The Guardian]

North Korea leader orders military to be ready to use nuclear weapons at any time

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North Korean leader Kim Jong Un ordered his country to be ready to use its nuclear weapons at any time and to turn its military posture to “pre-emptive attack” mode in the face of growing threats from its enemies, north Korea’s official KCNA news agency said on Friday.

The comments come after the U.N. Security Council imposed harsh new sanctions against the isolated state for its nuclear program.

North Korea has previously threatened pre-emptive attacks on its enemies including South Korea, Japan and the United States. Military experts doubt it has developed the capability to fire a long-range missile with a miniaturized warhead to deliver a nuclear weapon as far as the United States yet.

[Reuters]

UN Security Council approves new sanctions on North Korea

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The U.N. Security Council unanimously approved new sanctions on North Korea on Wednesday, in response to a recent nuclear test and rocket launch that violated U.N. resolutions on the country’s military activities. The new sanctions require, among other things, inspection of all cargo heading in and out of North Korea, a ban on the sale of valuable minerals by North Korea and a blockade on the sale or supply of jet fuel to the isolated nation.

The newly announced sanctions are tougher than previous resolutions targeting North Korea — part of a trend, NPR’s Elise Hu reports from Seoul, of incrementally tougher penalties placed on North Korea.

In an interview on All Things Considered last week, U.N. Ambassador Samantha Powers called the package of sanctions “nearly unprecedented in many respects” and “the toughest sanctions resolution that has been put forward in more than two decades.”

But as Elise told Morning Edition, the sanctions announced Wednesday aren’t expected to have a large impact on the lives of everyday North Koreans, thanks to the intervention of North Korea’s biggest ally. “China has been stern about saying that any new sanctions shouldn’t trigger a humanitarian disaster. So this set of sanctions is designed not to disrupt the general North Korean economy, which is based primarily on China and North Korea and their economic cooperation,” Elise says.

“The sanctions also don’t target one of North Korea’s big sources of hard currency, and that’s North Koreans who work overseas. So in general these are intended to weaken Pyongyang’s weapons systems and the elite members of the regime.”

China’s cooperation was pivotal to approving Wednesday’s new sanctions: disagreement between Beijing and Washington had prevented the Security Council from announcing new restrictions on North Korea back in January. Now, Elise says, “even China seems to be sort of running out of patience with North Korea and its young leader.”

[NPR]