Category: Kim Jong Un

Images of Jang Song Thaek erased from North Korean footage

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South Korea’s spy agency told lawmakers last week that it believes Jang Song Thaek was likely sacked. Jang — who is married to Kim Jong Un’s aunt, Kim Kyong Hui, the younger sister of Kim Jong Il — has held a string of top jobs, including in the National Defense Commission, the government’s top ruling body. He was considered a major influence on the young leader as he consolidated power after Kim Jong Il’s December 2011 death.

Now, images of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s uncle have been removed from an official state TV documentary, a disappearing act that appears to lend credence to Seoul’s claim that Pyongyang’s second most powerful official may have been purged by his nephew.

On Saturday, North Korea’s state TV repeated a documentary on Kim Jong Un’s military inspection trips. Although Jang appeared throughout the version that aired on Oct. 28, images of him had vanished from the new version. North Korea has previously deleted the images of purged officials from state videos and publications, according to a South Korean government agency that tracks North Korean propaganda.

In one scene in the original version, the bespectacled Jang can be seen wearing a winter parka and standing behind Kim Jong Un as the leader shakes hands with a soldier. But Jang cannot be seen in Saturday’s version, which has the same title and narration.

Elsewhere in the older version, he is seen clapping his hands from a distance as a uniformed officer speaks to Kim. But the new version only shows what appear to be parts of Jang’s right arm, chest and abdomen.

An official at South Korea’s Unification Ministry said that 17 scenes showing Jang had been removed from the original documentary.

The removal of Jang’s images in the documentary serves as indirect confirmation of his dismissal, analyst Cheong Seong-chang at the private Sejong Institute in South Korea said in an email. “The fact that North Korea has erased Jang’s face from the documentary … indicates that efforts to completely root out his influence are spreading to every level.”

Jang’s position will likely be better understood, analysts say, if he appears at state-organized events on Dec. 17 to mark the second anniversary of Kim Jong Il’s death.

Pyongyang has said nothing about Jang’s fate or the new version of the documentary. Jang was last seen in state media about a month ago.

[Manchester Journal]

New North Korean leadership not following past patterns

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Former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, who is experienced in negotiations with North Korea, says that North Korea’s detention of Americans Merrill Newman and Kenneth Bae signals a change.

According to Richardson, the two American hostages are being used as pawns in a game with the United States — but the stakes remain unclear. “The North Koreans are up to something. … Hopefully, they’ll make a move soon and we’ll get these two Americans out,” Richardson said.

Richardson, author of the new book, “How to Sweet-Talk a Shark: Strategies and Stories from a Master Negotiator,” said the detentions show Kim Jong Un “getting himself firmly in control — and I don’t think we should underestimate him. … He’s young, but he’s purged a lot of the old military leaders that were loyal to his father. He’s bringing his own people in, consolidating power.”

“… This new leadership, they’re not following the patterns that they had before like when I was negotiating,” the former governor said.

Richardson said he had helped get several hostages out of North Korea in the past. “But there was always a pattern. The pattern was there’s a confession, they apprehend them, but then they negotiate with high-profile people and they leave,” he said.

“In this case, there are two American detainees and the North Koreans, they’re acting very strange.”

“I went to North Korea in February with the head of Google, with Eric Schmidt, but the North Korean leader wouldn’t see us. He saw [basketball bad boy] Dennis Rodman.”

[Newsmax] 

The revamping of the North Korean power structure

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Besides ousting his uncle and guardian Jang Song-taek, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un appears to be completing revamping the power structure of the regime, now having replaced about half of the top cadres in the Workers Party, government and military in the year and 10 months since he took power.

According to the South Korean Unification Ministry, Kim has replaced 97 of 218 party heads, government ministers and senior military officers since his father Kim Jong-il died in December 2001.

And some 44 percent of military commanders have also been ousted, replacing elderly officers from Kim Jong-il’s time to younger officers (in their 50s).

South Korean Unification Minister Ryoo Kihl-jae told lawmakers rumors that Jang Song-taek’s closest confidants Ri Yong-ha and Jang Su-gil were publicly executed in late November for damaging the Workers Party have been confirmed.

Jang’s brother-in-law, the North Korean Ambassador to Cuba, Jon Yong-jin, is apparently set to return to Pyongyang on Thursday. A diplomatic source in Beijing said Jon appears to have been recalled. Jang’s nephew and Ambassador to Malaysia Jang Yong-chol has already been recalled.

The Unification Minister said no harm appears to have come to Jang himself, though his whereabouts are a mystery.

Meanwhile, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un is apparently away from Pyongyang, judging by a sighting of his personal train.

Kim Jong Un sacks powerful uncle Jang Song Thaek

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North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is believed to have dismissed a powerful uncle, a man key to his rise to power, from his posts, South Korean lawmakers said on Tuesday, a move that could help consolidate his power base with a younger guard of aides.

Jang Song Thaek was likely sacked as vice chairman of the powerful National Defense Commission and as a department head of the ruling Workers’ Party, lawmaker Jung Cheong-rae said, citing a senior South Korean official with the National Intelligence Service (NIS).

Analysts who watch the North’s power structure say Jang’s removal would not have been possible without the approval of the third Kim to rule in the family dynasty, Kim Jong Un.

There was no immediate mention of Jang’s fate on North Korea’s KCNA news agency. Two members of the South Korean parliament’s Intelligence Committee told separate news briefings that the NIS had confirmed the public execution of two close aides to Jang in the North’s ruling Workers’ Party for corruption.

The removal of Jang, a key figure in the power transition following the 2011 death of Kim’s father, Kim Jong Il, could tip the balance in the fiercely competitive group of confidants surrounding the current leader but was unlikely to impact on Kim Jong Un’s hold on power, experts said.

Koh Yu-hwan of Dongguk University in Seoul, a leading expert on the North’s leadership, said, “I think the young elite had Kim get rid of Jang, meaning that he will rule without a guardian.”

[Reuters]

The influence of songbun on North Korean society

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Associated Press journalist Tim Sullivan explains songbun, the caste system of North Korea, and the role it continues to play in North Korean society:

I find songbun really fascinating. Basically, every person has an ideological purity that is traced through their family, and there’s a deep belief in that your purity is linked to your father’s and to your grandfather’s. And what songbun did is basically turn hierarchy on its head with landowners and aristocrats at the very bottom and peasants at the very top.

Songbun has become an ingrained way for the Korean Workers’ Party to become entrenched because while these people’s grandfathers or great-grandfathers may have been peasants, their children became generals or admirals or top party bureaucrats and they simply handed that power down to their sons and grandsons.

At the same time, if you talk to exiles, people who have fled North Korea because of their miserable lives, many of their grandfathers and great-grandfathers were landowners or part of the educated class.

So songbun has become this way of keeping things from not really changing there.

But legally, songbun does not exist. North Koreans insist to me up and down it does not exist. However those outside the country who could speak openly, say it still exists.

And so in North Korea, when you apply for a job, you still list your songbun. You list your father’s job, your grandfather’s job and your great-grandfather’s job, which tells them exactly who you are.

In absolute irony, Ko Young-hee, the mother of present leader Kim Jong-un, was born in Osaka, Japan, which would make her part of songbun’s “hostile class” because of her Korean-Japanese heritage. Furthermore, her grandfather worked in a sewing factory for the Imperial Japanese Army.

There were three attempts made to idolize Ko. The building of a cult of personality around Ko encounters the problem of her bad songbun, as making her identity public would undermine the Kim dynasty’s pure bloodline. Ko’s real name or other personal details have not been publicly revealed (her origins could be figured out, as she worked with Mansudae Art Troupe in Pyongyang). The complications of Ko’s songbun were such that after Kim Jong-il’s death, her personal information, including name, became state secrets.

North Korean infrastructure growth under Kim Jong Un

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North Korea’s Kim Jong Un has presided over a construction boom since he took office two years ago with the aid of funds from China, the North’s major backer, and Russia, a former Cold War ally.

A stronger focus on the economy is a major change in policy for the third Kim to rule North Korea. The “military first” policy of Kim Jong Il, the young leader’s father, plunged North Korea into famine in the 1990s. But thanks to years of this policy, which prioritized investment in the armed forces, the young Kim can now draw on a 1.2 million strong army to realize his goals. These “soldier-builders” are often seen constructing apartment blocks and laying roads. And much of the land belongs to the state, removing another major cost from projects.

Chinese money paid for a $300 million suspension bridge across a one kilometre-wide stretch of the Yalu River, according to Chinese media reports, linking China’s port city of Dandong and its North Korean equivalent, Sinuiju.

Russia in September reopened a 54-km (34-mile) railway track from its eastern border town of Khasan to the North’s port of Rajin. And satellite imagery shows work is under way on a 100-km (60-mile) highway along North Korea’s east coast linking Hamhung to a tourist zone planned for the port city of Wonsan.

“It appears one goal is to link all the provincial capitals to Pyongyang by paved highway (and) increase road transport integration with the Chinese economy,” said Curtis Melvin, a researcher at the U.S.-Korea Institute at the John Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, who spotted foundations for the Wonsan-Hamhung road using satellite imagery.

Improving roads will also underpin plans to turn North Korea into a tourist attraction – a move with potential economic gains in the short term that avoids restructuring ailing industrial plants that are starved of cash and electricity. One widely publicized public project is the Masik Ski Resort in the mountains to the west of Wonsan. North Korea aims to make $43.75 million in annual profit from the resort.

Kim Jong Un also made multiple trips to a new water park that opened on Oct. 15, which covers 110,000 square metres (27 acres) on the bank of the Taedong River that runs through the capital Pyongyang. His frequent appearances at fun parks and equestrian centres have been mocked in foreign media, but they tie into the other development projects by targeting Chinese tourists, for whom the North is a cheap destination.

[Reuters]

Perpetrators of North Korean human rights violations revealed

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Kim Ryeon-hee, who was pregnant when repatriated to North Korea after defecting from the communist country, was beaten for eating stolen corn, and had a miscarriage before dying. The suspected perpetrator in this case was Chae Myeong-il, then staff sergeant and guard at Songpyong Station of the People’s Public Security Bureau in North Hamkyong Province.

Won Myeong-hwa, who was detained at the Hoeryong City Jeongeori correction house in North Hamkyong Province, was severely beaten to death by a security guard in February 2011. The suspected perpetrator is Kim Chang-soo, a security guard in charge of the eighth chamber at Jeongeori correction house.

This information is part of a “case report on North Korean human rights,” recently released by the Database Center for North Korean Human Rights, and the first time that detailed profiles of suspects involved in human rights violations in North Korea have been specifically documented.

The disclosure of the profiles of perpetrators in North Korea is aimed at sending both those individuals and the Kim Jong Un regime a message: “Personal profiles of those responsible for human rights violations are being accumulated, and those who are responsible will be brought to justice without fail.”

These efforts are also linked with a campaign by the U.N. Commission of Inquiry, which in July began to gather specific data required to substantiate Kim Jong Un’s crimes, leaving open the possibility of bringing the North Korean leader to the International Criminal Court.

Data contained in “Reports on North Korean human rights cases” have been gathered through interviews with North Korean defectors, and then undergone a review process by the verification committee within the Database Center. Of the 300 North Korean defectors surveyed, who suffered torturous acts at detention facilities in the North, half (49 percent) are still suffering physical and mental aftereffects.

[Dong-a Ilbo]

North Korean defectors’ campaign to find a replacement for Kim Jong-un

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North Korean defectors have launched a tongue-in-cheek petition to get late North Korean leader Kim Jong-il’s eldest son, Jong-nam, to replace current leader Kim Jong-un.

Kim Jong-nam has lived in sumptuously-funded exile in China, Macau and Singapore for years since he fell from favor.

The tongue-in-cheek petition appears on a website with the same name as the North Korean propaganda site Uriminzokkiri. The website, which has one more “k” than the North Korean version in its URL, created a corner gathering signatures to support a takeover by Kim Jong-nam. It hails him as the “eldest son and true heir of the Baekdu blood” — a reference to nation founder Kim Il-sung’s alleged birthplace.

The website also praises Kim Jong-nam’s courage for criticizing the hereditary transfer of power from Kim Jong-il to his third son Jong-un, which he described as “a joke to the outside world.”

The website’s creator, who gave his name as Chung, said the petition is slightly mischievous. “Our purpose is to deal a blow to the Kim Jong-un regime by stressing the need for reforms, rather than actually getting Kim Jong-nam to become the new leader.” Chung added he wants to use humor to inform more young South Koreans what is actually happening in the North.

[Chosun Ilbo]

Kim Jong Un removes many key figures to cement his leadership

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North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un has replaced officials holding almost half of the nation’s key posts in an attempt to strengthen his control over the country, a South Korean government report reported Tuesday.

Kim Jong Un has changed the officials filling 97 out of 218 military, party and government posts since he took over the communist dynasty in December 2011, the South’s Unification Ministry said in a report.

Kim has often used a “demotion and reinstatement” process in reshuffling military posts in an attempt to tighten control over the military, the ministry said.

“This means Kim has completed the dynastic succession of power successfully and faster than expected,” Yang Moo-Jin, a professor at Seoul’s University of North Korean Studies, told AFP.

He said Kim had replaced old appointees dating from his father’s era with relatively young figures loyal to himself.

The South’s spy agency said in a separate report to parliament that Kim had stepped up a campaign to build up a personality cult around himself.

[Agence France-Presse]                              Related post

 

The Dastardly North Korean Dynasty

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In The Last Days of Kim Jong-il, Bruce Bechtol outlines the progress North Korea has made in weaponizing uranium … At the heart of Bechtol’s analysis is an explanation of why these weapons, whether filled with plutonium or uranium cores, are so dangerous in the hands of the Kim family regime.

As he tells us, the ruling group is unstable, headed by a young leader constantly struggling with willful individuals, some of whom are scheming relatives and all of whom are rivals. And in the never-ending contest for power in Pyongyang, Bechtol explains, losers often come to a bad end. Beginning in 2010, senior North Korean officials started dying “under mysterious circumstances.” Some were killed in suspicious traffic accidents; others were simply executed. The deaths appear to have been arranged by Kim Jong-il, then the North’s leader, to assure the eventual succession of his youngest son, Jong-un, to ultimate power. As Bechtol points out, these “forcible removals” looked as if they were staged to open up vacancies in the regime; in fact, the number of executions tripled in 2010 over 2009, with at least 60 performed in public.

To be sure, peace did not come with the ascension of Kim Jong-un in December 2011, after his father’s fatal heart attack. And the new dictator—perhaps 27 at the time—was ruthless, even ordering the assistant chief of staff of the Ministry of the People’s Armed Forces to be obliterated with a mortar round, “to leave no trace of him behind down to his hair.” The purges continued in less dramatic fashion into the fall of 2012.

Kim Jong-il spent about two years preparing his son [beginning] the process after he recovered from his 2008 stroke. Bechtol pegs the beginning of Kim Jong-un’s succession training to sometime early in the following year. The ailing Kim Jong-il speeded up the transition by eliminating officials who stood in his way, and the resulting turbulence eroded support for Jong-un in North Korea’s “cadre society.” Bechtol writes: “Sections of the elite have felt increasingly betrayed because of the large number of purges and executions that have occurred, presumably because of succession issues.” Young Kim may not be able to count on the support of the various factions that make up the regime. Continued