Category: Kim Jong Un

Kim Jong Il’s bodyguard

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Once the bodyguard of  Kim Jong Il, Lee Young Guk today is a human rights advocate for the people of North Korea.

Last week, Lee was in Geneva at the Human Rights Summit. The 54-year-old has a clear mission: to draw attention to the grave human rights violations in North Korea and get current leader Kim Jong Un in front of the International Criminal Court. He wants a conviction for the son of the man he used to protect with his life.

Lee was a high school student when he got the prestigious summons to become Kim Jong Il’s bodyguard. All candidates had to go through extensive tests of their bodies, as well their characters. “The most important factor was your family background,” Lee said. “They focused on the question of whether one of your relatives was a political prisoner or had defected to South Korea.”

Before he started, he had to go through training and was somewhat brainwashed, Lee said. “They told us again and again what a godlike being Kim Jong Il was,” Lee said. “In my mind, he was this great person.”

Lee said that impression was quickly corrected when he began working for Kim. “His language was vulgar,” Lee said. “He wasn’t the man I had expected at all.” Lee added. Kim was a very moody person.

Despite the preferential treatment the bodyguards enjoyed, they were always scared. They were afraid of making a mistake and falling out of favor.

Even small mishaps could have grave consequences for their entire families. “He was cruel and had no mercy,” Lee said. “If people talked about him behind his back or laughed at him, he had them ‘disappear’ in the dark of night. Even his close confidants.”          Continued

US general says conflict with North Korea would be akin to World War II

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The commander of American forces in South Korea, Gen. Curtis Scaparrrotti, warned the House Armed Services Committee on Wednesday that a conflict with North Korea could resemble the scale of World War II.

Describing what the confrontation might look like, Scaparrrotti said, “Given the size of the forces and the weaponry involved, this would be more akin to the Korean War and World War II — very complex, probably high casualty.”

The U.S. military suffered 405,399 fatalities in World War II and 36,574 during the Korean War of 1950-1953. Korean casualties were in the millions.

Scaparrotti also said that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un would use a weapon of mass destruction if he thought the fate of his rule was at stake. He said that tensions on the Korean Peninsula were at their highest level in more than 20 years.

The North Korean military warned the U.S. and South Korea Tuesday to expect retaliations for their annual joint military drill in March.

[CNN]

Seoul spy agency says North Korea plotting terror attack

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South Korea said Thursday North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has ordered greater preparations for terror attacks on the South, including cyberattacks.

According to an official from South Korea’s Ministry of National Defense, F-22s were brought to the country to demonstrate South Korea’s force and to warn North Korea.
The U.S. and South Korea on Wednesday intensified its pressure on North Korea by deploying stealth bombers and prohibiting civilian exchanges in response to the recent nuclear test from the regime of Kim Jong-un.

The US will send 15,000 soldiers, up from 3,700 a year ago, and South Korea will also increase its number of participants.

Seoul says the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, or THAAD, system would be meant to destroy North Korean missiles targeting the South.

The reported threat comes amid worldwide tensions over North Korea’s February 7 rocket launch. Since August 2010, Pyongyang has broadcast strong radio signals to the South three times, disrupting Global Positioning System signals in Seoul and other regions and causing mobile phones and other electronic equipment to temporarily malfunction.

[utcecho.com]

How North Korea relies on China to funnel cash into the country

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To inject life into an economy made moribund by the fall of the Iron Curtain, failed centralized policies and sanctions, Kim Jong Un needs foreign currency to pay for equipment from abroad, such as the recent purchase of Russian jets to upgrade the national airline.

For decades North Korea has built networks of front companies and foreign intermediaries to channel currency in and out, circumventing attempts to isolate it over its nuclear-weapons program. Court documents and interviews with investigators, banks and prosecutors show the cornerstone of those networks is China. “China is a very important piece in making sure that blockages work,” said William Newcomb, a former member of a panel of experts assisting the United Nations’ North Korea sanctions committee.

North Korea relies on China, its biggest trading partner, for food, arms and energy. The countries describe their ties as “friendship forged by blood” during the 1950-1953 Korean War where the U.S. was a common foe. China has criticized North Korea for provocative actions but historically opposed harsh sanctions that might precipitate a regime collapse and a flood of refugees across its 870-mile (1,400 kilometer) shared border.

About 70 percent to 80 percent of North Korea’s foreign earnings have in the past come via China, said Kim Kwang Jin, who ran the Singapore branch of North Korea’s North East Asia Bank before defecting in 2003. “That huge trade volume means there are more people in China who are willing to cooperate with the regime,” Kim said by phone from Seoul.

But China is no longer turning a blind eye to illicit North Korean activities, according to Richard Nephew, a former principal deputy coordinator for sanctions policy at the State Department until last year. “In the last 10-15 years, they actually really do care about trying to prevent some of these bad acts.”

David Asher, a former George W. Bush administration official who was involved in freezing North Korean assets at Banco Delta Asia, said sanctions can only be effective when China is coerced into cooperating. “The only way to cut off North Korea’s illicit cash flow is by interdicting these intermediaries,” said Asher, now an adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security. “That requires the cooperation of China, the biggest domicile for this type of integrated, clandestine, business-to-business relationship with North Korea.”

[Bloomberg]

South Korea and the power of words

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Consider how many verbal red lines South Korea’s president stomped across Tuesday when she let fly against North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

She warned, in the bluntest possible way, of the authoritarian North’s worst nightmare–“regime collapse.” She invoked the North Korean leader’s “extreme reign of terror.” Extraordinarily, President Park Geun-hye even used Kim’s name three times in her speech to parliament, something usually avoided at her level.

These words signal a tough new stance from South Korea in an already anxious standoff that began with North Korea’s nuclear test last month.

To make the combination of jabs sting even more, Park’s comments came on the birthday of Kim’s late dictator father, Kim Jong Il, a revered national holiday in the North. Happy birthday, Kim family.

The brusque tone of Park’s comments directly challenge the powerful, ubiquitous North Korean propaganda machine’s portrayal of the dictators who have run the country since its founding in 1948 as infallible and able to stand up to the vicious enemies that surround the tiny, proud North.

Any high-level talk of regime collapse by the conservative president of rival South Korea–and by the daughter of one of the North’s most hated enemies, late South Korean dictator Park Chung-hee–amounts to fighting words.

As always, the animosity, both between the Koreas and within divided South Korea, also points to a bitter truth at the heart of the divided peninsula. Both authoritarian Pyongyang and democratic Seoul cherish the notion of eventual reunification; each, however, sees that new single Korea with its own government in charge.

[AP]

Former North Korean Army officer tells of his dramatic escape – Part 1

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Forced to witness public executions and beaten for 15 days after his first escape attempt, a former North Korean soldier speaks to Sky News about the horrors of life under Kim Jong-Un. After more than two decades serving in North Korea’s military, he escaped from the country last year.

I asked him about the TV pictures we see from Pyongyang – the vast celebrations, the resounding applause for the country’s leader. “When people are clapping,” he says, “if you don’t clap, if you nod off, you’re marked as not following Kim Jong-Un’s doctrine. …You chant ‘Long Live’ and clap because you don’t want to die.”

For all of the very public displays of ‎devotion, he says the reality is a brutal dictatorship.‎ He describes public executions, and a regime that demands total loyalty. “In our unit, when I was a lieutenant, we saw one of our own soldiers executed by gunfire. Public executions … I have seen a lot of public executions.”

Under Mr Kim, he says, people are more afraid‎. “In North Korea, if you watch South Korean dramas, then they can take you away, in extreme cases you can be executed. They watch it themselves first, and if it’s ‎fun, they keep it.”   Read more

Former North Korean Army officer tells of his dramatic escape – Part 2

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His defection last year was driven by desperation. His family was struggling for food, and the only way he could see to provide for them was to cross the border to China and earn money to send back. During his first attempt he was caught, but before it was clear he intended to cross the border. He says he was beaten for 15 days, his family rounded up and questioned, the friend he had been traveling with taken away.

He resolved to ‎try again, but this time he knew it would be his last chance. He told his family to deny all knowledge and blame everything on him.

He set out in the dead of night, inching his way down a 150-metre cliff and wading a‎cross a river in the dark. “The waters were this high,” he said, gesturing above his head. “Where the water was deep, the surveillance wasn’t so strong.”

He’s now working long shifts in Seoul and saving up to try to get his family out. He knows they are alive, and has managed to get some money to them, but he ‎misses them terribly, and constantly re-lives how he said goodbye.

[Sky News – Read full article]

UN to notify North Korea’s Kim of probe for crimes against humanity?

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A UN expert on human rights in North Korea has asked the United Nations to officially notify North Korean leader Kim Jong Un that he may be investigated for crimes against humanity.

A landmark 2014 report on North Korean human rights, co-authored by Marzuki Darusman, concluded that North Korean security chiefs and possibly Kim himself should face justice for overseeing a system of Nazi-style atrocities.

In a report to the U.N. Human Rights Council, Darusman recommended that the Council arrange an official communication, sent directly to Kim and signed by Darusman or U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein.

His report, dated Jan. 19 but published on Monday, also said three experts should be appointed to find the best legal path to hold North Korea to account and find “creative and practical” ways to establish the truth and ensure justice for victims. Darusman stressed the importance of using the International Criminal Court but said it was “able to handle only the uppermost leadership”.

Only the U.N. Security Council can involve the court, but North Korea’s sole ally, China, a veto-wielding member of the top U.N. body, has repeatedly rejected calls for the Security Council to tackle human rights in North Korea. However, China said on Friday it would back a U.N. resolution to make North Korea “pay the necessary price” for recent North Korean rocket launches, with the aim of bringing Pyongyang back to the negotiating table.

[Reuters]

North Korean markets thrive

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Private markets began taking hold in North Korea following a devastating famine in the 1990s, when the state distribution system broke down.

Since 2004, the size of spaces used as markets has significantly expanded, as have bus depots supporting the delivery network, says Curtis Melvin, a researcher who studies publicly available satellite imagery of the country at the Johns Hopkins School for Advanced International Studies in Washington.

“This didn’t start under Kim Jong Un, but there’s been a lot of growth under him,” said Melvin, referring to North Korea’s young leader, who took power following the death in 2011 of his father, Kim Jong Il.

Using servi-cha, a rice vendor who needs to replenish supplies when none are locally available can phone a wholesaler in another city and place an order. The wholesaler delivers rice to the local depot, where a bus ships it to the buyer’s town.

To pay for the rice, the buyer visits a small money transfer business, which takes the payment and calls a partner business in the seller’s town – one in 10 North Koreans has a cellphone – who confirms the deal and hands cash to the seller.

By reliably accepting cash in advance, servi-cha have helped foster the concept of trust in business in North Korea, said another defector who stays in touch with family in the North and asked to be anonymous for the safety of her relatives still living there.

“Logistics with buses are like vessels which keep pumping blood around the country and stop people from starving to death,” says a defector. “This is something that the planned economy can’t do.”

[Reuters]

North Korean army chief of staff Ri Yong-gil executed?

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North Korean Gen Ri (left) with Kim Jong Un

According to unconfirmed South Korean media reports, North Korea has executed its army chief of staff Ri Yong-gil.

Senior officials in North Korea have previously been absent from view for long periods only to reappear. If true, however, Gen Ri would be the latest of several high-ranking officials to be purged under leader Kim Jong-un.

South Korean media reported that Gen Ri had been executed earlier this month for corruption and “factional conspiracy”.

North Korean leadership expert Mike Madden told the BBC rumors that Gen Ri had fallen from favor first surfaced late last year. However, “when previous chiefs of staff have been removed, they have re-appeared in other positions or been demoted,” Mr Madden said. “That being said, much of the information that South Korean intelligence sources have been giving to the media in the past year or so has turned out to be true,” he added.

[BBC]