Category: Kim Jong Un

S. Korean spy agency claims Kim Jong Un ordered 15 executions this year

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North Korean leader Kim Jong Un ordered the execution of 15 senior officials this year as punishment for challenging his authority, South Korea’s spy agency told a closed-door parliament meeting on Wednesday.

A vice minister for forestry was one of the officials executed for complaining about a state policy, a member of parliament’s intelligence committee, Shin Kyung-min, quoted an unnamed National Intelligence Service official as saying.

“Excuses or reasoning doesn’t work for Kim Jong Un, and his style of rule is to push through everything, and if there’s any objection, he takes that as a challenge to authority and comes back with execution as a showcase,” Shin said. “In four months this year, fifteen senior officials are said to have been executed,” Shin cited the intelligence official as saying.

In 2013, Kim purged and executed his uncle, Jang Song Thaek, once considered the second most powerful man in Pyongyang’s leadership circle, for corruption and committing crimes damaging to the economy, along with a group of officials close to him.

Kim has also reshuffled close aides and senior officials repeatedly since taking office.

 [Reuters]

North Korean defectors say US should do more

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A group of North Korean defectors converged Monday to call on the Obama administration to do more to help them topple dictator Kim Jong-un’s oppressive regime.

Scholte introduced some two dozen defectors at a National Press Club event to kick off the 12th annual North Korea Freedom Week. Their efforts to get information in and out of North Korea—through radio broadcasts, balloon drops, and other means—have led the country into the information age, ignited capitalism that is curbing starvation, and helped some 26,000 persons escape, Scholte said.

The defectors include a variety of organization leaders, prison camp survivors, and eyewitnesses to human trafficking, drug smuggling, propaganda dissemination, and illegal weapons trading. They will participate in various events throughout the week, including providing testimony to Congress on Wednesday, and at the United Nations in New York on Thursday. Twice this week the defectors will gather for events outside the Chinese Embassy in Washington, which has refused to treat North Koreans as refugees.

Scholte said defectors have proven highly effective at influencing the regime’s activities, but they don’t have the resources they need to do their jobs. The State Department has ended North Korea programs or severely cut funding over the last five years.

Despite that, he said, defectors refuse to quit: “The North Korean regime continues to threaten the people in this room, but they will not be intimidated.”

[WNG.org]

Addressing North Korean clichés and half-truths: The Omniscient Criminal State

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Excerpts from “North Korea: Markets and Military Rule” by Hazel Smith, as printed in The Guardian:

North Korea is, allegedly, a criminal state for three reasons: firstly, because state representatives are alleged to systematically abuse diplomatic immunity to smuggle counterfeit currency, narcotics, counterfeit cigarettes, endangered species and other illicit goods across borders. Secondly, because state-owned companies manufacture counterfeit currency, cigarettes and narcotics for sale abroad.

Thirdly, this activity is apparently directed by the North Korean leadership for personal gain. These criminal acts, it is argued, should be understood as state-sponsored, and are managed by a shadowy party organization called Bureau 39. But the caricature of an omniscient state guided by a leader sitting in central Pyongyang planning day-to-day how to maneuver 24 million people to commit criminal activity for his sole benefit misses the point.

The US government and international media reports derive from a small number of US government publications that are in turn largely founded on allegations from defectors and unnamed US officials.

Such reports acknowledge the tentative nature of the evidence: “Data should be considered a ‘far cry’ from anything that might be remotely considered as evidence in a US court of law”, an official US report said on the DPRK’s alleged drug trafficking.

Perhaps surprisingly, given the vehemence in the west’s belief of North Korean state criminality, there have been only a few international court cases where North Korean nationals have been charged and found guilty of producing counterfeit goods or smuggling.

The cartoon picture of the country obscures important changes in North Korean society, and handicaps our understanding of their political consequences.

Creating the perfect North Korean leader

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Recent rumors about North Korea make us muse on just how weird North Korea is.

When it comes to lionized feats of North Korean leaders, there are two kinds of tales. The first are the “real’ legends, i.e. those actually propagated by North Korea, usually quite incredible, but not unbelievable. We’re told that the dynasty’s founder, Kim Il Sung, wrote patriotic slogans in beautiful calligraphy at age three and founded a proto-political party at age 13. Kim Jong Il was born on the sacred slopes of Mt Baekdu and as a middle school student repaired trucks while also organizing ideological study sessions. These kinds of stories are primarily meant for the domestic audience to convince them of the merits of their uniquely qualified leaders. Education on Kim Jong Un’s exploits will certainly be growing.

The second kind of myth exists almost exclusively in international media and often consist of truly unbelievable tales. The best example is, of course, the “Kim Jong Il got 18 holes-in-one the first time he golfed” story. Or Kim Jong Il scoring a perfect 300 the first time he bowled is another such tale. North Koreans have never, ever heard of these stories, unless they’ve been told them by a foreigner. They exist purely in a fantasy version of North Korea we too often indulge in. We let this version take hold for several reasons.

First, the bar is exceptionally low for journalism on North Korea. It is a difficult place to cover, no doubt, but to all too many journalists this seems to mean a free pass. There is no punishment for getting it wrong.

Second, South Korean journalism on North Korea is problematic — we should remember the two countries are locked in a 70-year propaganda war. South Korean journalistic culture allows for stories to be built around a single anonymous source. Meanwhile, many Western news outlets are quite happy to quote South Korean articles as authoritative.

Finally, they do have customs and rhetoric that are often extreme or do not conform to our standards. Kids in the DPRK do sing songs for “their father Kim Jong Un,” for example.

More broadly, there are over 24 million people in the DPRK. There are trusting people, cynical people, simple people and smart people. In what way they interact with the information environment they face very much depends on who they are as individuals. Generally, however, it is fair to say most people accept the stories of their leaders’ heroics as truth. But we should remember that the stories they hear are usually not as weird as the ones we hear.

[Read full Reuters blog post]

10 months of North Korean torture and then transferred to prison camp

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Jung Gwang Il is sitting in a comfortable hotel room in Seoul, South Korea, recalling the hell he endured when he still lived in North Korea.

He describes something that resembles waterboarding and being shocked repeatedly with live wires. Worse, he says, was “pigeon torture,” where his hands were bound behind his back and fastened to a wall at a height that made squatting or standing impossible. He was forced to lean forward, twisting in agony for days, his chest puffed like a pigeon’s breast. “It was so awful because they could just leave me there for a week, and I’d be tortured without them having to do anything,” he says. “That’s how evil they are.”

Jung ended 10 months of torture by confessing to spying — a crime he hadn’t committed — and was sent to a prison camp where he slept in barracks with 600 other men. The slave labor and lack of food took a toll: He arrived weighing 167 pounds and left three years later at 79 pounds, his teeth bashed into stubs.

Now a defector living in South Korea — with a new set of teeth — Jung, 51, is determined to inflict maximum damage on the regime of supreme leader Kim Jong Un to the north. His primary weapon is not military arms but rather the Western media he smuggles into his former country, designed to embarrass the regime and expose the lies told by its propagandists and believed by its subjects. Educational material and entertainment both are popular within North Korea’s black market, but the latter is more effective because it is more difficult to demonize as propaganda.

[Hollywood Reporter]

North Korean propaganda chief makes way for Kim Jong Un sister?

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An octogenarian dinosaur in the North Korean regime seems to have finally retired and made way for leader Kim Jong-un’s sister.

Footage shows Kim Ki-nam (86), the one-time secretary of North Korea’s Workers Party, sitting in the third pew alongside vice-ministerial officials rather than on the leaders’ platform during the third session of the Supreme People’s Assembly in Pyongyang on April 9.

Kim Ki-nam was also not seen on the leaders platform at a rally marking the 103rd birthday of regime founder Kim Il-sung last Tuesday.

This suggests he has retired from his job and assumed an honorary post.

It is highly likely that Kim Jong-un’s sister Yeo-jong has replaced him.

“Kim Jong-un probably appointed his sister, whom he can trust, as party secretary for propaganda,” a source speculated. “Kim Ki-nam’s old age was a consideration for a post that is in charge of idolizing the young leader.”

[Chosun Ilbo]

North Korea’s first lady Ri Sol-Ju appears in public for first time this year

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North Korea’s first lady has appeared in public for the first time this year as part of celebrations marking the birthday of the country’s founding leader Kim Il-Sung. Ri has been out of the spotlight since December for unknown reasons.

A grinning Ri Sol-Ju, wearing what appeared to be a wedding ring on her left hand, was pictured clapping next to her smiling husband Kim Jong-Un during a men’s football match at Kim Il Sung Stadium on Monday, the North’s Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said.

The images of the couple at a podium flanked by top party officials were published in state media.

The match was being held as part of a lavish series of events celebrating the 103rd birthday of Kim Il-Sung, the young leader’s grandfather, which fell on Wednesday. North Korea designated the “Day of the Sun” as a rare two-day national holiday, with art performances, exhibitions and sporting events, and pilgrimages to the late leader’s birthplace in Pyongyang.

[AFP]

North Korean military, even Special Forces, suffering hunger

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On March 10, 2015, The Washington Free Beacon reported that a defecting career officer from the North Korean People’s Army divulged that not only are the people starving, but the nation’s armed forces, including the elite Storm Corps Special Forces, also face food shortages that have been described as “severe.”

With his identity kept secret, the defector was described only as a career military officer in his 40s. According to the defector, “Kim Jong-un repeatedly states that he will improve the livelihood of ordinary people but nothing has really changed. There have been no concrete actions to improve the livelihood of the people, so people no longer trust Kim Jong-un’s words and statements.”

Reportedly an officer in the much feared Storm Corps, the defector did state that officers in the military are usually much better off nutrition-wise than the general civilian population, as well as the lower ranks. The junior enlisted troops are reportedly “limited to meals of ‘corn rice’—ground corn fashioned into kernels of rice. … So some soldiers try to escape the military. Some steal food just to live.”

Painting an even bleaker picture, the officer added, “The food shortages are so severe soldiers cannot live on the rations provided by the military and must go outside of bases and steal food to survive.”

The lack of availability of food for the common people of the North is to such a degree that, according to South Korea’s JoongAng Daily, the growth of children in the North is stunted by decades worth of starvation. The Pyongyang government recently lowered the height requirement to be conscripted into the army to 4′ 7″ (142 centimeters). That’s the same height as the average American child at the age of 10 years, 3 months old, the average 4th Grader. Most North Korean teenage boys are less than 5 feet tall and weigh less than 100 pounds. In contrast, the average 17-year-old South Korean boy is 5-feet-8, only slightly shorter than an American boy of the same age.

[Examiner]

Kim Jong-un endorses International Women’s Day — sort of!

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Kim Jong-un has put himself forward as an unlikely new leader in the movement for gender equality – marking International Women’s Day with a series of public events and speeches in North Korea.

The North Korean dictator referenced the 8 March celebration observed around the world – but not before he had hailed it as the 20th anniversary of his predecessor Kim Jong-il’s “scientific theory” on the role of women in “pushing ahead with the revolution and construction”.

It was the first in a series of incongruities surrounding the recognition of a day for women’s rights in a country where, according to a panel of female defectors in Seoul on Tuesday, women do not receive sex education, are subjected to forced abortions and in the military are required to perform sexual favors on their higher-ranking men.

The secretive state’s official KCNA news agency reported that a string of the regime’s most senior figures –all male – met with “exemplary women and women officials and members of the women’s union” at a cultural center in Pyongyang.

At a visit to an airbase, Kim Jong-un did not actually meet any women in person but asked commanding officers to pass on gifts of food and cosmetics, according to a state newspaper.

The report in the Rodong Sinmun paper came as one of a series putting forward North Korea’s feminist credentials while criticizing the “discrimination against women workers protested in South Korea”, who KCNA said were unable “to live as human beings”.

KCNA’s main report on the anniversary of “Kim Jong-il’s work and International Women’s Day” said the country had “demonstrated its might as an example of the progressive women’s movement of the world under the wise guidance of peerlessly great men”.

[The Independent]

North Korea denounces UN criticism of its human rights record

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North Korea’s foreign minister on Tuesday denounced criticism of Pyongyang’s human rights record, dismissing a U.N. report that concluded crimes against humanity were committed there and telling the top U.N. rights body that the United States is engaged in a “human rights racket.”

Last year’s report by a panel of U.N. experts detailed abuses including mass starvation and forced abortions. The panel, which interviewed hundreds of defectors, recommended that North Korea’s human rights situation be referred to the International Criminal Court.

The panel also sent a letter to leader Kim Jong Un warning he could be held accountable.

Foreign Minister Ri Su Yong told the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva that “hostile forces are only interested to hear from such scum of mankind as the so-called defectors.”

“The act of cooking up the report of the commission of inquiry based on lies of a few such criminals is itself a misdeed which is completely against the aspiration of the U.N. for civilization and rule of law,” Ri said.

Pursuing human rights issues “is the stereotyped method of the U.S. … to smear the countries disobedient to it,” Ri asserted, adding that Washington has “started to desperately cling to the anti-(North Korea) human rights racket, particularly since the last year.”

Earlier Tuesday, Ri told the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva that annual U.S.-South Korean military drills launched this week “are unprecedentedly provocative in nature and have especially high possibility of sparking off a war.” The allies say the drills are purely defensive.

[AP]