Category: Kim Jong Un

Uncharacteristic apology after building collapse in Pyongyang

Posted on by
2

In an uncharacteristic step by the North Korean government, officials have made a public apology after a building collapse in Pyongyang reportedly led to the death of hundreds of people.

Officials including the country’s Minister of People’s Security offered “profound consolation and apology” to the family members of those that died in the 24-storey building collapse on Tuesday.

The Minister of People’s Security, Choe Pu-il, said that his poor supervision had led to the “unimaginable accident” and that he had “repented” after the accident. He added that “he failed to find out factors that can put at risk the lives and properties of the people and to take thorough-going measures.”

Reports also say that the leader of the secretive Communist state, Kim Jong-un, had been deeply affected by the accident and that he had “sat up all night, feeling painful” when he had heard about the accident.

North Korean authorities rarely give coverage to incidents that might lead to negative public perceptions, however in this case, not only did KCNA, North Korea’s state news channel, show images of the collapse, they also showed footage of the rescue effort and statements of apology from government officials.

[The Independent]

US Envoy on low prospects of restarting North Korean nuclear talks

Posted on by

Glyn Davies, the Obama administration’s special envoy for North Korea policy, suggested Washington could accept “reversible steps” from North Korea on denuclearization in order to jump-start frozen negotiations, which also involve China, Japan, Russia and South Korea.

He emphasized, however, that Pyongyang could only return to the long-paralyzed six-party process if it accepted the “fundamental premise” that the negotiations were focused on the permanent shuttering of its nuclear weapons program.

“Davies’ answer suggests that if the six-party talks were to begin, the first actions the U.S. and its partners would demand would be aimed at limits that curb the D.P.R.K.’s nuclear and missile potential,” said Daryl Kimball, Arms Control Association executive director, in an email.

A stillborn U.S-North Korea agreement reached on Leap Day 2012 involved such a promise of a testing moratorium; Pyongyang was seen to quickly break faith with Washington when it weeks later unsuccessfully attempted to send a rocket into space.

The six-party talks format focuses on rewarding North Korea for its phased denuclearization with timed infusions of economic assistance and security agreements; the last round of negotiations took place in late 2008. Since that time, Pyongyang has detonated multiple atomic devices, carried out a number of apparent long-range ballistic missile tests, revealed a uranium enrichment capacity and restarted a mothballed plutonium-production reactor. Most recently, the world has been waiting to see if the North will make good on its repeated threats of conducting a fourth nuclear test.

Davies painted an overall dim picture of the current state of the nuclear impasse with the North: “The fact that they’re not interested in resolving the cases of Americans who have been imprisoned in North Korea tells you something about their current interest in going back to multilateral diplomacy.”

“This new leader has done us a favor, in a back-handed fashion, of making it quite clear that he has no intention of meaningfully denuclearizing, and that presents a problem. But it also is a clarifying moment,” said Davies, who formerly served as U.S. ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency.

[National Journal]

North Korea is no joke

Posted on by

In the past weeks, North Korean state media have called the female President of South Korea a “dirty political harlot” and an “old prostitute”; the gay chairman of the U.N. Commission of Inquiry on North Korea “a disgusting old lecher with 40-odd-year-long career of homosexuality”; and, in a loathsome screed, referred to U.S. President Barack Obama as a “monkeyish human monstrosity.”

Still, North Korea’s exceptionally vile words pale in comparison to its criminal actions. … In North Korea, racism isn’t just talk. That U.N. Commission of Inquiry’s report summarizes testimony from North Korean refugee women and former border guards who say that the regime forcibly aborts or murders the babies of refugee women sent back to North Korea by China, on the presumption that the babies’ fathers were Chinese, to maintain the myth of state-mandated “racial purity.”

We should stop infantilizing North Korea and dismissing it as ridiculous. The temptation is understandable. The North Korean regime’s very weirdness causes much of the world to dismiss its invective as the rant of a regime that is merely isolated, eccentric, and misunderstood.

But North Korea is not just a bizarre abstraction … it is a murderous regime that is approaching nuclear breakout, and whose human rights violations, according to the U.N. Commission of Inquiry, “have no parallel anywhere in the world.” North Korea’s words reflect the character of its political system.

[From CNN Opinion article by Joshua Stanton and Sung-Yoon Lee]

Shadowy organization in control of North Korea

Posted on by

Who controls the Hermit Kingdom of North Korea? According to a North Korean defector, it is not the 31-year-old dictator Kim Jong Un.

“When Kim Jung Il died and Kim Jong Un succeeded him, people saw the transfer of power from father to son,” Jang Jin-Sung told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour in London. “What they did not see also was what happened to the apparatus of the totalitarian system that supported the rule of Kim Jung Il.”

That apparatus, Jang said, is the Organization and Guidance Department, or OGD, an “old-boy’s network” made into a massive surveillance organization. Kim Jong Un has had to rely on his father’s “old-boys network” to get anything done.

“After the execution of [Kim Jong Un’s uncle] Jang Song Thaek, [Kim Jong-un] has become an orphan – not just in terms of family connections, but in terms of politics.”

Because that group does not respect the younger Kim, who was educated in Switzerland, the way it did his father, Kim Jong Un has become nothing more than the symbolic head of North Korea.

[CNN] 

New top military officer as North Korean purge continues

Posted on by

In a report published on the country’s May Day celebrations, the North Korean government mouthpiece KCNA news agency named Hwang Pyong-so, one of Kim Jong Un’s closest confidantes, as director of the General Political Bureau of the Korean People’s Army.

The role is the top military position after Kim, who is supreme commander of the armed forces.

Previously, Vice Marshal Choe Ryong-hae held the position. While in the job, Choe was widely regarded by North Korea watchers as second only to Kim in terms of political clout. However, speculation about his position has been rife following reports that he may have been arrested, some months ago.

In the same piece that effectively coronated Hwang, Choe was referred to as a party secretary in charge of labor groups — a relatively minor position.

A Unification Ministry source told the New York Times that it is unlikely that Choe has been purged.

Seasoned North Korea watchers echo the line. An editorial on the independent specialist site NK News said that “it appears … Choe is not being purged so much as being gradually phased out of power,” while 38 North said that the news showed “so far no indication that it represents another broad purge such as occurred with Jang Song Thaek last December.”

[CNN]

American intelligence admits it has no idea what Kim Jong-un is doing

Posted on by

Almost all of the conventional wisdom from American intelligence agencies about North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has been wrong, Peter Sanger of The New York Times reports.

When Kim became supreme leader two years ago, U.S. intel thought his China-allied uncle would guide his transition to power. In December, Kim had his uncle and some of his allies executed.

The U.S. thought Kim would focus on an economic overhaul of the meager economy instead of further development of military programs. Instead, Kim has chosen to continue testing ballistic missiles, working toward an intercontinental missile that could threaten the U.S., in addition to promoting the North’s nuclear program, special operations forces, and long-range artillery.

As former State Department North Korea specialist Evans J. R. Revere told The Times: “We have failed. For two decades our policy has been to keep the North Koreans from developing nuclear weapons. It’s now clear there is no way they will give them up, no matter what sanctions we impose, no matter what we offer. So now what?”

Basically, the Hermit Kingdom has defied American expectations, and now the U.S. doesn’t know what to do about it.

Further, American spies are in the dark. The Washington Post, citing the leaked “black budget” of the U.S. intelligence community, reported last year that “there are five ‘critical’ gaps in U.S. intelligence about Pyongyang’s nuclear and missile programs, and analysts know virtually nothing about the intentions of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.”

[Stamford Advocate]

8 ways Kim Jong-Un has blindsided the US

Posted on by

When Kim Jong-un took power in December 2011, many experts saw his ascent as an opportunity for the West to transform the last bastion of hard-line communism, believing that the untested leader would shy away from confrontation with the U.S. and even South Korea.

Instead, North Korea’s leader has “proved to be more ruthless, aggressive and tactically skilled than anyone expected,” Peter Sanger of The New York Times reports. Here are a few things North Korea’s supreme leader has done in the past 18 months to surprise and unnerve the U.S.:
1. The U.S. expected Kim to ease up on obtaining a nuke, but North Korea conducted a third nuclear test in February 2013. Kim is expanding the production of highly enriched uranium to get a more plentiful supply of nuclear fuel, and recently threatened to conduct “a new form of nuclear test.”
2. When the world thought that any North Korean rocket launch would be a farce, the North launched a rocket 1,600 miles in December 2012. The event is suspected of being a test for long-range ballistic missiles.
3. In April 2013, the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency said it believed the North had learned how to make a “low-reliability” nuclear weapon small enough to be delivered by a ballistic missile.
4. “Defense officials say they now have less warning time on missile launches than they had two or three years ago because Mr. Kim has put his resources into mobile launchers that are regularly moved from tunnel to tunnel, making them harder for American satellites to track.” – New York Times
5. President Obama had been told that Kim’s uncle Jang Song-thaek would keep Kim in check, but Kim executed Jang, who was seen as an experienced diplomat with close ties to China.
6. While many waited for the North’s economy to collapse under sanctions, Kim has developed an underground illicit economy.
7. China, the world’s second-largest economy, has Kim’s back: Beijing recently rejected a damning report about horrific human-rights abuses by Kim’s regime, provides it with military hardware, and reportedly holds a trust fund for the young leader in Chinese banks.
8. Despite bans on military hardware, North Korea probably has drones to spy on South Korea, and the technology will get only better.

[Business Insider]

Childhood pictures of Kim Jong-un emerge amidst rumors of North Korean nuclear test

Posted on by
1

Rare new photographs of Kim Jong-un as a young boy have emerged during a concert for the North Korean air force.

kim-jong-un as a boy

Pictures showing the 31-year-old North Korean leader as a chubby toddler, saluting while in uniform, were shown on KCTV, the country’s state broadcaster.

Young kim-jong un airplane cockpitOther photographs showed him as a teenager, at the controls of an airplane.

Until now, only a handful of pictures of Kim as a young boy have been seen.

kim-jong un teenOnly one photograph is known to exist from his days as a student, which shows him on what appears to be a school trip with fellow pupils at the International School of Berne, in Switzerland.

Meanwhile, South Korea warned that the North could be planning a fourth nuclear test to ramp up tensions during President Obama’s upcoming visit to Seoul. A spokesman for the Defense ministry said North Korea is now able to conduct a nuclear test “at any moment”.

However, a respected US think tank says chances of North Korea testing a nuclear warhead during President Barack Obama’s visit are slim. Satellite imagery analyzed by 38North, which is part of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, said that while there had been a pickup in activity, there were few signs of an imminent test.

 [The Telegraph; The South China Morning Post] 

Powerful aunt of Kim Jong-un disappears from official footage

Posted on by
1

The aunt of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has mysteriously disappeared from a re-run of a propaganda film, leading to speculation that she has been purged – or even executed.

Kim Kyong Hui

Chosun Ilbo newspaper reported that while the original screening featuring Ms Kim (as shown circled above), a re-run shown on Tuesday depicts a scene in which only Kim Jong-un, his wife, and male military officials are visible.

Kim Kyong-hui, 67, is the widow of Jang Song-taek who was recently executed. It was believed she would always remain ‘safe’ under her nephew’s brutal regime, leading analysts to say that her disappearance from the documentary is ominous. Ms Kim’s safety from purging or execution had always been assumed because she is the daughter of North Korean founder Kim Il-sun and the sister of the late leader, Kim Jong-il. Despite all this, Ms Kim is still associated with a husband who was publicly denounced as a traitor and executed in December.

Until January this year, Ms Kim was frequently seen at the side of her nephew and his wife at public events. In the footage in question, which aired in January, she was seen walking with the leader and his wife towards the Kumsusan Palace of the Sun in the capital, Pyongyang, to pay tribute to the embalmed bodies of former leaders Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il.

The apparent ‘disappearance’ of Kim Kyong-hui has led to speculation that her place in high positions in the Workers’ Party has been taken by Kim Jong-un’s younger sister, Yo-jong.

Call for North Korean sanctions

Posted on by

Former High Court justice Michael Kirby, the head of a special UN inquiry into North Korea, told an informal meeting of the UN Security Council convened by Australia, France and the US that should slap targeted sanctions on North Korean officials responsible for grave human rights abuses.

Kirby also wanted the reclusive regime hauled before the International Criminal Court for prosecution. ”More monitoring and engagement alone cannot suffice in the face of crimes that shock the conscience of humanity,” he said. ”Perpetrators must be held accountable.”

North Korea did not send a representative and the meeting was snubbed by China and Russia.

[The Age]