Category: Kim Jong Un

Capitalist narrative integrated into North Korean society

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North Korean propaganda is built on a popular anti-capitalist narrative – Americans are evil imperialists and the great leader Kim Jong-un is celebrated for his devotion to the masses.

But since the 1990s the country has cautiously welcomed foreign business, with one unintended consequence: citizens have started to talk capitalism. Where once there were “management secretaries” and “operations”, now talk of “bosses” and “companies” has crept into day-to-day parlance. This vocabulary was once feared as the antithesis of socialist principles.

For years private ownership was banned in North Korea. Companies were non-existent and this meant there were no bosses. But despite technically still being banned, de facto private operations have become ubiquitous.

Today, most people refer to a boss as someone who works with foreigners, such as the Chinese, to earn money. In the 1990s, as many faced starvation it was these bosses who eventually found a way to bring food and opportunity to those in need. That’s why the word is now infused with a sense of respect and loyalty. It reflects the new status, jobs and skills that people aspire to.

Unlike most aspects of life in North Korea, one’s ability to shoot up through the company ranks is less contingent on background: even those with poor songbun, a caste system delineated by family background and political loyalty, can be a boss. Those who failed to get into the Workers’ Party – once the preferred method to secure favorable living conditions – have been known to gain the title. Even former prisoners of re-education camps can be bosses.

 

Kim Jong Un and wife enjoy a night out with the rogue state’s premier girl band

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North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and his wife Ri Sol-ju (4th from right), along with members of the Moranbong Band who performed at the 70th anniversary of the founding of the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea. [Click photo to enlarge]
Kim Jong-Un has continued the celebrations of his ruling Workers’ Party’s 70th anniversary with a concert by North Korea’s most popular girl band – and even posed for pictures surrounded by the young women.

Kim Jong-Un, 32, and his wife, Ri Sol-ju, believed to be in her late 20s, can be seen surrounded by members of the Moranbong Band, an all-female group reportedly the most popular in North Korea.

In another photo, the rotund ‘Dear Leader’, appears to be enjoying himself, as he laughs and enjoys a crafty cigarette while sitting next to his young wife, who wore a pale pink satin jacket and matching skirt.

 

[Daily Mail]

North Koran defector tells of the cult of fear

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Forced to witness public executions and beaten for 15 days after his first escape attempt, a former North Korean soldier who dramatically defected to the South talks exclusively to Sky News about the horrors of life under Kim Jong-Un – and how he dreams of one day being reunited with his family.

I asked this former army officer, now defected and living in Seoul, about the TV footage we see from Pyongyang – the vast celebrations last weekend, 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. … I have seen a lot of public executions.”

Under Mr Kim, he says, people are more afraid‎. “When Kim Jong-Un does something wrong, or if the people don’t live well, he points to someone else and says , ‘you have done it wrong.’ … Therefore, the people get punished, or executed.”

“In North Korea, if you watch South Korean dramas, they can take you away; in extreme cases you can be executed.”

[Sky News]

Overweight Kim Jong Un now weighs almost 290 pounds

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North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s weight gain appears to continue unabated, with the South Korean government estimating from his body shape and gait that he has put on some 30 kg (66 lbs) over the past five years, the Chosun Ilbo newspaper reported Saturday.

Since obesity is often linked to health problems such as cardiovascular disease, neighboring countries are paying close attention to changes in Kim’s waistline. The Chosun Ilbo quoted sources as attributing the weight gain to his gorging on food and drink due to stress.

When Kim officially emerged as successor to his father in September 2010, he was already considerably heavier than he appeared in the photos of him taken when he attended school in Switzerland in the 1990s.Others wondered whether he had intentionally packed on the pounds to more resemble his grandfather, the country’s founder, Kim Il Sung.

 [Japan Times]

The ‘child mother’ caring for North Korea’s parentless

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The Chollima district of Nampo City is a decidedly working class area. The blocks of flats are basic, while the roads are bumpy. Every spare patch of ground seems to have been turned into a vegetable garden. But it is clean and orderly.

At the tender age of 20, Jang Jong Hwa adopted seven orphans and cares for them as their mother. [When we visit,] Jang is at home, as are three of her children. We’re told the others are out playing as it is a Sunday. She excuses her wet hands, she’s just been doing her substantial laundry, and invites us into the living room.

The flat is quite a reasonable size. Four rooms and a bathroom. It’s basic but comfortable. There did not appear to be any electricity during the time of our visit, though there is a flat-screen TV and a DVD player. With very little furniture, we sit on the floor to talk, which is quite usual here.

Jang Jong Hwa is herself an orphan. She was born into troubled times, at the height of the great famine that raged through North Korea in the 1990s — years of bad harvests, coupled with economic catastrophe following the collapse of the socialist block elsewhere in the world, led to famine throughout the land. It’s estimated hundreds of thousands died. Among them Jong Hwa’s birth parents.

She was lucky enough to be adopted and still lives with her adoptive mother. When she was visiting her mother’s workplace a few years ago she came across the three children, all siblings, and now in the room with us. Their parents had both worked at the Nampo Iron and Steel Works but had both died of unspecified illnesses. They were being cared for by different workers in turn. Jong Hwa felt she had to give them a home.

Every morning she gets up to cook breakfast and get them ready for school, before heading off to her own full-time job at the local catering service, before rushing back to prepare lunch. With evening meals to prepare, clothes to wash, homework to supervise, she reckons she’s getting by on only five hours sleep a night.

She gets help from her own mother, and friends and neighbors. Everyone pitches in, she tells us. The state provides free housing, as it does to all its citizens, as well as free schooling and free school uniforms all hanging neatly on the wall of the room where the children sleep and do their homework.

Jong Hwa’s selfless spirit has not gone unnoticed. She was even awarded the title of “model youth” at the National Congress of Good Virtues held in Pyongyang in May this year. The group photo hangs on the wall in their living room and she points herself out, standing just a few places away from DPRK’s supreme leader, Kim Jong Un. He shook her hand and called her “child mother,” she proudly tells us.

“Our country is one huge family,” she says. “We are a socialist collectivist society. We all try to help each other.”

[CNN]

North Korea defector claims Kim Jong-un’s reign will be ‘shortest ever’

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A North Korean defector has claimed the brutal dictatorship “will collapse within ten years”.

The man, who is not being identified to protect his safety and that of his family still inside the Hermit Kingdom, worked among North Korea’s elite until his escape just a year ago.

“It is Kim Jong-un’s regime that is the most unstable,” he claimed. The defector told CNN he believed Mr Kim’s reign would be “the shortest”.

Both his father and grandfather, Kim Jong-Il and Kim Il-sung, ruled North Korea for more than two decades, maintaining their control through brutal national and local party purges.

But the 2013 purge may have cost the 32-year-old dictator, according to the defector. The purge and allegedly public execution of his uncle, Jang Song Thaek, meant the population had lost trust in their leader “by witnessing him being willing to kill his own uncle.”

“I can tell you for sure, the North Korean regime will collapse within 10 years,” he claimed.

Between 2008 and 2013, between 2,400 and 2,900 people defected annually from North Korea. In 2014 the number dropped significantly (to 1,396) as results of a slightly improved economy and increased propaganda, analysts believe.

[CNN]

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un meets his first foreign leader

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North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and Cuban First Vice President Miguel Diaz-Canel Bermudez watch a performance in Pyongyang.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un held talks with Cuban First Vice President Miguel Diaz-Canel, marking Kim’s first meeting with a senior foreign leader in more than the two years. He has yet to travel overseas since taking power in late 2011.

Kim said the visit by a Cuban delegation headed by Diaz-Canel is of “weighty significance in instilling the history and tradition of the friendship” between the two countries “into the rising generation,” during the meeting in Pyongyang on Monday, according to the North’s official Korean Central News Agency.

Diaz-Canel is the highest ranked official from overseas that Kim has held talks with since he met with Chinese Vice President Li Yuanchao in July 2013 in Pyongyang.

This year marks the 55th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between North Korea and Cuba. The latest meeting shows North Korea’s continued close ties with Cuba, which restored full diplomatic relations with the United States in July after being severed for more than five decades.

Kim and his wife, Ri Sol-ju, also hosted for the delegation a concert by the Moranbong Band, a North Korean all-female music group, and the State Merited Chorus, according to KCNA.

[South China Morning Post]

North Korea’s stay-at-home leader Kim Jong Un

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When China celebrates its World War II “victory day” in a spectacular parade of military might Thursday, President Xi Jinping’s “true friends” will be there.

That includes Xi’s closest Korean friend. Not Kim Jong Un, the leader of North Korea, a country once described as being “as close as lips and teeth” with China.

No, it’s South Korean President Park Geun-hye who will be in attendance as 10,000 Chinese troops march through Tiananmen Square and fighter jets roar overhead, celebrating the Allies’ victory on the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II.

Kim Jong Un also didn’t attend the equivalent celebrations in May in Russia, North Korea’s other main ally, prompting speculation that the scion of a personality cult didn’t want to share the spotlight with other world leaders for his first overseas foray.

That same logic could apply in the case of China’s commemorations. Or, it could be the latest sign of the political chill between the neighbors.

The bonds between the countries weakened over the decades as China opened up and North Korea resolutely did not. But the cracks turned into chasms at the last change of leadership, with Kim succeeding his father at the end of 2011 and Xi becoming the leader of China about a year later.

“In the past, North Korea was like a dog that we raised. China could just feed it some meat and it would behave and listen to us,” said a taxi driver here in Yanji who gave only his family name, Cui. “But now the dog has turned into a wolf and it bites. It doesn’t listen to China anymore. Meat won’t keep it under control.”

[Washington Post]

Kim Jong Un’s hypersensitivity to criticism

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Luckily for Pyongyang, all now seems quiet on its southern front. The biggest takeaway from this crisis is the vulnerability of the regime, under the 32- or 33-year-old Kim Jong Un, to attacks on its legitimacy. The fiery rhetoric, belligerence, and unpredictability of Kim, who took power after the death of his father in Dec. 2011, belies an apparent hypersensitivity to criticism about his qualifications to run the country. North Korea wanted only one thing–to stop the loudspeaker broadcasts criticizing the regime. And it was willing to give something it has not given since 1976 – a (near) apology.

The broadcasts are the key reason that Pyongyang made a deal. Before the crisis abated, the North issued an unusual ultimatum directly to South Korean national security advisor Kim Kwan-jin, threatening to attack not in response to U.S.-ROK military exercises, but if the speakers were not silenced. Propaganda broadcasting had been a staple of the two Koreas’ psychological warfare during the Cold War. But the new broadcasts, which Seoul restarted after an 11-year hiatus in response to the landmine blasts against its soldiers, were different from the knee-jerk anti-North Korean government propaganda of the Cold War. The recent broadcasts featured young females, who identified themselves as defectors, criticizing the Kim regime for its poor governance, human rights abuses, and isolation.

A recent broadcast segment featured a well-known North Korean journalist-turned-defector, Ju Seong-ha, who mocked photos of the rotund Kim’s getting off planes like an exalted state guest. Sweet voices carrying powerful messages from eleven locations along the DMZ penetrated the minds of young, undernourished and overworked North Korean soldiers. With better technology than the Cold War days, these broadcasts went deeper than before, blasting messages–and sometimes K-Pop–more than a dozen miles into the country. This certainly rattled Pyongyang.

This is not the first time North Korea has demonstrated such sensitivities. The U.N. Commission of Inquiry’s Feb. 2014 recommendation to refer North Korea’s leadership to the International Criminal Court (ICC) for crimes against humanity freaked out North Korea, forcing them to do things they don’t normally do. The regime sent its foreign minister Ri Su Yong to Russia for the first time in four years, and dispatched seasoned diplomat Kang Sok Ju to a tour of European capitals to lobby against the resolution. And finally, there was Pyongyang’s apoplectic late 2014 rage in response to the movie The Interview which ridiculed the leadership, and led to the North’s cyber attack on Sony Pictures.

These responses reflect weakness, not strength. The regime has proven hypersensitive to questions about Kim’s legitimacy, suggesting difficulties in the leadership transition. Four years into his rule, Kim has purged and executed around 70 of his top lieutenants, including his influential uncle Jang Song Thaek, and his defense minister Hyon Yong Chol–reportedly for sleeping during military events. And these are Kim’s people–not those of his father and predecessor Kim Jong Il.

[Foreign Policy]

North Korean troops on “fully armed state of war”

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North Korean leader Kim Jong Un ordered his troops onto a war footing after a Friday afternoon deadline passed. He is demanding Seoul halt anti-North propaganda broadcasts or face military action.

On Thursday, Kim Jong Un had convened an emergency meeting as the two Koreas exchanged fire. Then today North Korea’s state-run television KRT released still photographs of Kim and North Korean high ranking military officials at an emergency meeting of Central Military Commission of the Workers’ Party of Korea (WPK).

During the emergency meeting, Kim put his troops on a “fully armed state of war” starting from 5 p.m. (0830GMT) on Friday and had declared a “quasi-state of war” in frontline areas, KRT added.

Such language is often used by North Korea in times of tension with the South.

[Reuters]