Category: Kim Jong Un

UN warns Kim Jong Un about human rights crimes

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A U.N. panel warned North Korean leader Kim Jong Un that he may be held accountable for orchestrating widespread crimes against civilians in the secretive Asian nation, ranging from executing and torturing prisoners to systematic abductions and starving mass populations.

It is unusual for a U.N. report to directly implicate a nation’s leader. But in a letter accompanying a yearlong investigative report, the chairman of a three-member U.N. commission of inquiry, retired Australian judge Michael Kirby, directly warned Kim that that international prosecution is needed “to render accountable all those, including possibly yourself, who may be responsible for crimes against humanity.”

“Even without being directly involved in crimes against humanity, a military commander may be held responsible for crimes against humanity committed by forces under the commander’s effective command and control,” Kirby wrote.

The investigative commission’s 372-page report is a wide-ranging indictment of North Korea for policies including political prison camps, state-sponsored abductions of North Korean, Japanese and other nationals, and lifelong indoctrination.

Kirby also wrote to China’s U.N. ambassador in Geneva saying there’s evidence that Chinese officials have in some cases shared with North Korean officials “information about the contacts and conduct” of North Korean nationals subject to repatriation. The ambassador, Wu Haitao, replied to the panel and denied that repatriated North Korean citizens from China face torture in North Korea. He added that China “will continue to prudently and properly handle” North Korean citizens who enter China illegally.

[AP]

Charging North Korean leaders with crimes against humanity

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A new report from a United Nations panel, due to be released on Monday, found that crimes against humanity have certainly been committed in North Korea and recommends referring the situation for international action.

The report is the result of a year-long effort from a U.N. Commission of Inquiry towards the communist country’s human rights abuses, the first of its kind to take such a deep-dive into the subject. The resulting document provides “evidence of an array of such crimes, including ‘extermination,’ crimes against humanity against starving populations and a widespread campaign of abductions of individuals in South Korea and Japan,” the Associated Press reports.

Evidence gathered, the report will conclude, “create[s] reasonable grounds … to merit a criminal investigation by a competent national or international organ of justice.” Setting aside the unlikely event that a national court takes up the matter, the most likely venue for such an investigation would be the International Criminal Court, based in The Hague.

As North Korea is not a signatory of the Rome Statute, the ICC’s founding document, the Court doesn’t have the jurisdiction to act on the commission’s report. For that, the Prosecutor has to wait for a referral from the United Nations Security Council. While the Council has become more open towards such referrals than in the past, as in the case of Libya in 2011, the chances of North Korean leaders such as Kim Jong Un appearing at the Hague has one serious obstacle: China. Beijing is not only one of Pyongyang’s closest allies, they hold a veto on the Security Council on all substantive matters — including ICC referrals.

“The odds are close to zero,” David Bosco, an assistant professor at American University and author of a recently published book on the ICC, told ThinkProgress when asked about Beijing possibly allowing for such a referral.

Given Chinese — and likely Russian — disapproval, Bosco “[doesn’t] think there’s any chance” the ICC will be investigating the DPRK. “This is looking like one of those things that goes down the memory hole after a few months, unfortunately,” he concluded.

[ThinkProgress]

US Congressmen appeal to Kim Jong-Un for Kenneth Bae release

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The last surviving members of the U.S. Congress to have served in the Korean War have sent a letter to North Korean leader Kim Jong-un asking him to release imprisoned American missionary Kenneth Bae.

“You have done the right thing by releasing a fellow Korean War veteran, Merrill E. Newman, to return home, you would be making further progress on the humanitarian front by freeing Kenneth Bae to reunite with his family,” stated a copy of the letter obtained by Reuters.

The congressmen, Democrat Charles Rangel from New York, Democrat John Conyers Jr. from Michigan, Republican Sam Johnson from Texas and Republican Howard Coble from North Carolina, are members of the House of Representatives.

kenneth bae North Korea January 2014
Kenneth Bae January 2014

Bae, 45, has been held for more than a year after being sentenced to 15 years of hard labor. North Korean authorities said the Christian missionary was trying to overthrow the state. Rangel invited Bae’s family to sit with him at President Barack Obama’s state of the union speech last month.

The letter was dated Tuesday and came as North and South Korea agreed to allow some families separated by the 1950-53 Korean War to hold brief reunions, despite a campaign by Pyongyang demanding that Seoul cancel planned war games with the United States.

In their letter, the four members of Congress urged Kim Jong-un to extend the reunion effort to Korean-Americans. “Nothing is more tragic than the separation of families and loved ones,” the letter stated. “We encourage you to also create a pathway to allow some 100,000 Korean-Americans to meet with their divided families in the (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea) before too many pass away.”

[Reuters]

Clues on Pyongyang power shifts from next month’s election

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North Korea confirmed Tuesday that leader Kim Jong-un will be a candidate in next month’s parliamentary elections. The results are a foregone conclusion, with only one approved candidate standing for each of the 687 districts.

The election — held every five years – is to take place on March 9. It will be closely watched for clues on power shifts in Pyongyang.

It will be the first under the leadership of Kim Jong-un and comes as he seeks to cement his grip on power after purging his uncle Jang Song-Thaek.

Kim Jong-un was “unanimously” nominated to stand for the Mount Paektu constituency number 111. Mount Paektu has divine status where, according to the North’s propaganda, Kim Jong-il was born on its slopes.

[AFP]

Senior North Korean diplomat says Jang killed due to crimes against the country

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A senior North Korean diplomat has revealed new details about why Kim Jong-Un’s uncle was executed.

North Korea’s ambassador to the UK, Hyun Hak-Bong, said Jang Song Thaek “made anti-party, anti-government crimes, and as well he abused his power in hindering the national economy and hindering the efforts of the national economy and for improving people’s living standards.”

He claimed Jang had stolen more than 7.5 million dollars from the people in 2009 alone and been repeatedly pardoned by the party and Kim Jong-Un.

But he said that the party’s patience had run out with Jang, adding: “He made tremendous crimes against the government, against the people, against the country.”

[Daily Mail]

Stating the obvious: Kim Jong Un irrational, unpredictable

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No less than US Navy Adm. Samuel Locklear, the commander of U.S. Pacific Command, went on record stating that North Korea’s Kim Jong Un is at the top of the worst offenders list.

America’s top officer in the region expressed grave concerns Thursday about how the U.S. charts a path toward the untested and reclusive despot.

kim jong un“The young leader, for me…is unpredictable,” said Navy Adm. Samuel Locklear, the commander of U.S. Pacific Command. “His behavior, at least in the way it’s reported and the way we see it in sense, would make me wonder whether or not he is always in the rational decision-making mode or not. And this is a problem.”

North Korea’s continued nuclearization threatens the Korean peninsula, the region, and potentially the world, says Locklear.

“The way ahead with the new leader there is not clear to me,” he said at a Pentagon press briefing. “It is potentially a very dangerous place.”

[USNews & World Report]

The present economic situation in North Korea

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North Korea is facing severe energy constraints, and its economy has been stagnating since 1990, with annual per capita income, estimated at $1,800, amounting to slightly more than 5% of South Korea’s.

Meanwhile, a food shortage has left 24 million North Koreans suffering from starvation, and more than 25 of every 1,000 infants die each year, compared to four in South Korea. In order to survive, the world’s most centralized and closed economy will have to open up.

A more dynamic and prosperous North Korea – together with peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula – would serve the interests not only of North Korea itself, but also of neighboring countries and the broader international community. After all, North Korea’s sudden collapse or a military conflict on the peninsula would undermine regional security, while burdening neighboring countries with millions of refugees and hundreds of billions of dollars in reconstruction costs.

This should spur international institutions and North Korea’s neighbors to provide the food aid, technical assistance, and direct investment that the country needs to escape its current predicament and make the transition to a market economy. But there remain significant obstacles to such cooperation – not least the North’s obscure and often-unpredictable politics, exemplified by the recent execution of its leader Kim Jong-un’s once-powerful uncle, Jang Song-thaek.

The good news is that North Korea’s leadership seems to understand that its current troubles stem from its grossly inefficient economic system. In recent speeches, Kim has emphasized the need for economic reform and opening up to develop agriculture and labor-intensive manufacturing industries. [Read full Project Syndicate article]

Read more: Mineral riches a game-changer?

Fighting back inside the Secret State of North Korea

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Much of the world sees North Koreans as brainwashed and subservient, bowing down to Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un. The Frontline documentary “Secret State of North Korea” from public broadcaster PBS shows that for many people in North Korea, just the opposite is true.

“We teamed up with a Japanese journalist, Jiro Ishimaru, who has this incredible network of ordinary North Koreans across the country,” FRONTLINE director James Jones said. “They film secretly using hidden cameras, and then smuggle that footage out across the China border where Jiro waits for them.”

One of the most dramatic pieces of footage is of a woman, who has set up a private bus service using a pickup truck. “This soldier comes and tells her to stop running this private bus service, which is illegal,” Jones said. “And rather than, as you would expect, saying, ‘I’m so sorry,’ and apologizing, she stands up for it – I mean, literally chases him off down the street, smacking him on the back, calling him every name under the sun.”

Victor Cha, who as the former Director of Asian Affairs for the U.S. National Security Council is an expert on North Korea, said that it is often women like her who are starting to open up North Korea. “I love that; that was one of my favorite parts of the documentary,” he told CNN. “The irony is that those markets didn’t grow out of economic reform. They grew out of the failure of the North Korean economy to provide for its people.”

 >>> Click to watch the full documentary “Secret State of North Korea” <<<

The documentary also shows cracks in the regime’s information barrier, depicting a complicated and daring system whereby DVDs, laptops, and thumb drives are sneaked into the country across the border with China.

A young woman, who grew up in North Korea but defected to South Korea, says that her exposure to free media was critical. “The more I’ve listened to the radio, the more I’ve thought, ‘What we’ve learned isn’t true,’ I’ve been fooled. It has made me want to become free.”

It breaks the “spell of the regime’s propaganda,” Jones said.

“They’re just cracks right now, just small ones,” Cha said. “But like a dam, once you start getting one crack they start to filter out and you start seeing many, many more.”

 [CNN] 

Another American in North Korea

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Besides Dennis Rodman and his basketball buddies, Will Scott is another of the few Americans who can actually say that he’s been to North Korea. A former Google employee and current graduate student at the University of Washington, Will spent last fall teaching courses on Databases and Operating Systems at the Pyongyang University of Science and Technology. Some insightful highlights from an interview Will did:

Business Insider: Could you talk about the “Supreme Leader” with anyone? Is their stereotypical love for him as displayed in the western media real? 

Scott: The leader is certainly loved and revered. People live normal lives for the most part, maybe 5-10% is the stereotype. Like, before meals the students would march to the cafeteria while singing patriotic songs. That’s the stereotype that you’ll see in the media, but then they eat meals and chat normally, and play basketball, and go to class.

Was it possible to discuss politics or other sensitive topics?

Scott: Military stuff did get talked about some, as did some other topics. In the spring the understanding was that they were at war with the US, there were cars driving around with netting to prevent detection from satellites, and the media reported that there was a US intrusion into the country that the army repelled. The students would ask the professors why they were still there when their countries were actively at war.

You mention that bringing up the fact that you’re American was a good way to end a conversation. How often were people able to pick up on that fact before you told them?

Scott: Very rarely. If you were just on the street people would smile and wave at you.

Did you have ‘handlers’ like visitors on organized trips? 

Scott: We called them ‘guides’, but yeah, the campus had a pool of representatives from the ministry of education. Foreigners in our group had to be accompanied by one of those guides when we were off campus.

Could you elaborate on what that news was like in North Korea compared to the US? 

Scott: There are 3 TV stations, newspaper, and radio as primary means of media distribution. Newspapers got delivered to the campus every morning, and were at the reception desk, and the students when they were free would stop by and you would see huddles of them reading the news. Radio didn’t get used much on campus as far as I could tell, but seemed more used elsewhere in the country. You’d hear it sometimes in the car, or in shops.

Sunday evenings there’s a foreign section on TV, where individual segments taken from other countries news media are played. They learn about foreign affairs largely from this – the selection ranges from almost immediate on items that are good news, to up to a 6 month delay on things that are neutral or negative. Things like the economic issues in Greece took a long time to hit the news here (only this fall), while the satellite reaching the edge of the solar system got reported the same week. The rest ends up being a combination of rebroadcasts of sports games, some Chinese dramas, and local news segments.

Did you accidentally say “Just Google it,” and then realise that it wasn’t available to your students?

Scott: Yeah! A lot of CS education really breaks down without access to the Internet.

Continuing trend of less North Koreans fleeing their country

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More than 1 500 North Koreans fled to South Korea last year, maintaining a recent fall in the number of escapees that coincided with a clampdown by new leader Kim Jong-Un.

Five years ago the annual number of escapees was close to 3 000, but the number dropped sharply after Kim came to power in December 2011, following the death of his father Kim Jong-Il.

The number of North Koreans fleeing to the South, most of them via China slumped to 1 502 in 2012, while last year the figure was slightly higher at 1 516, Seoul’s unification ministry said.

Under Kim Jong-Un, the isolated state tightened border security and stepped up diplomatic campaigns to have refugees hiding in China repatriated.

The majority of refugees secretly cross the border to China before travelling to a neighboring Southeast Asian country, where they arrange to fly on to Seoul for resettlement.

China, the North’s sole major ally typically considers them illegal economic migrants and repatriates them despite criticisms from human rights groups. Many face severe punishment including, rights monitors say, torture and a term in a prison camp once they are sent back to the North.

[AFP]