Category: Kim Jong Un

Google executive and Governor Bill Richardson to visit North Korea

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Google’s executive chairman, Eric Schmidt, will be traveling to North Korea on a private, humanitarian mission led by former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson that could take place as early as this month, sources told The Associated Press.

The trip would be the first by a top executive from U.S.-based Google, the world’s largest Internet search provider, to a country considered to have the most restrictive Internet policies on the planet. To add to the mystery, last year a group of North Koreans paid a visit to Google headquarters in Mountain View, California.

North Korea is in the midst of what leader Kim Jong Un called a modern-day “industrial revolution” in a New Year’s Day speech to the nation. Kim Jong Un is pushing science and technology as a path to economic development for the impoverished country, aiming for computers in every school and digitized machinery in every factory.

However, giving citizens open access to the Internet has not been part of the regime’s strategy. While some North Koreans can access a domestic Intranet service, very few have clearance to freely surf the World Wide Web.

It was not immediately clear who Schmidt and Richardson expect to meet in North Korea.

The visit also follows North Korea’s announcement that an American citizen of Korean descent has been jailed in Pyongyang on suspicion of committing “hostile” acts against the state. Kenneth Bae, identified in North Korean state media by his Korean name, Pae Jun Ho, is the fifth American detained in North Korea in the past four years. The exact circumstances of his arrest were not clear.

Richardson, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations who often serves as an envoy to countries that do not have diplomatic relations with the United States, will try to meet with North Korean officials, and possibly Bae, to discuss the case, the sources said.

Rare New Years address by Kim Jong-un

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North Korean leader Kim Jong-un called for an end to confrontation between the two Koreas, in a surprise New Year’s broadcast on state media.

“An important issue in putting an end to the division of the country and achieving its reunification is to remove confrontation between the north and the south,” Kim said in an address that appeared to be pre-recorded. “Past records of inter-Korean relations show that confrontation between fellow countrymen leads to nothing but war,” he said, speaking from an undisclosed location.

The New Year’s address was the first in 19 years by a North Korean leader, and appeared to take the place of the policy-setting New Year’s editorial published annually in the past in leading state newspapers. Additionally, his father, Kim Jong-il, rarely spoke in public.

Conspicuously absent from Kim’s speech though was any mention of North Korea’s nuclear arms program.

Kim’s statement “apparently contains a message that he has an intention to dispel the current face-off (between the two Koreas), which could eventually be linked with the North’s call for aid” from the South, said Kim Tae-woo, a North Korea expert at the state-funded Korea Institute for National Unification. “But such a move does not necessarily mean any substantive change in the North Korean regime’s policy towards the South.”

North Korea has offered olive branches before and Kim’s speech does not necessarily signify a change in tack from a country which vilifies the United States and U.S. ally South Korea at every chance.

Kim Jong Un facing an authoritarian contradiction

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It’s a dilemma for Kim Jong Un who needs to find a way to modernize North Korea and its economy while holding onto absolute power.

In a clear sign of the North Korea’s border crackdowns, the number of North Korean refugees reaching South Korea in 2012 has dropped by almost half, to about 1,400, compared to last year.

Meanwhile, changing technologies, ambitious smugglers and well-funded critics of Pyongyang mean that everything from DVD melodramas to illegal Chinese cellphones to Korean-language radio news broadcasts funded by the U.S. government make their way into North Korea. And their presence exposes an ever-growing number of North Koreans to the outside world, which threatens the underpinnings of the Kim regime.

The hunger for the larger world resembles, in many ways, the appetites in China in the years after Mao Zedong’s 1976 death, when Beijing began opening the door for the world’s mass media.

“I felt sad about the state of my country when I watched the DVDs,” said a North Korean defector who now lives in Seoul and spoke on condition he not be named, fearing retribution against family still living in North Korea. “I could see Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea, the United States … these other places were so much better off.”

“There has definitely been a push to roll back the tide of the flow of information,” said Nat Kretchun, associate director of an international consulting group InterMedia, which released a report earlier this year about information flow into North Korea, based on surveys of hundreds of recent North Korean defectors.

North Korea attempts to keep out ideological and cultural infiltration

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The warning came from Kim Jong Un, the North Korean ruler who sees his isolated nation, just across the border from this busy Chinese trading town, as under siege. The attack, he said, must be stopped.

“We must extend the fight against the enemy’s ideological and cultural infiltration,” Kim said in an October speech, as he called upon his vast security network to “ruthlessly crush those hostile elements.”

Over the past year, Kim has intensified a border crackdown that has attempted to seal the once-porous 1,420-kilometer (880-mile) frontier with China, smugglers and analysts say. Special security units have been formed to seek out any contraband information or technology that Pyongyang sees as a threat.

The assault that Kim Jong Un fears? It’s being waged with cheap televisions rigged to receive foreign broadcasts, and with smuggled mobile phones that – if you can get a Chinese signal along the border – can call the outside world. Very often, it arrives in the form of wildly popular South Korean soap operas smuggled in on DVDs or computer thumb drives.

Their presence exposes an ever-growing number of North Koreans to the outside world and threatens the underpinnings of the Kim regime. Kim’s crackdown has been largely aimed at the border with China, long the route for much of the outside information making its way into North Korea, as well as for refugees trying to get out.

In a country where one family has held absolute control for more than 60 years, a communist enclave that survived the downfall of the Soviet Union and a devastating 1990s famine, the notion of allowing knowledge of the larger world is deeply feared.

More purging of the Old Guard anticipated in North Korea

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As North Korean leader Kim Jong-un wraps up his first year in power, marked by the purging of several old guard elites, he may replace the country’s No. 2 leader, Kim Yong-nam, and some other top officials next year, according to a North Korea expert, Alexandre Mansourov, a specialist in Northeast Asian security, who works as a visiting scholar at the U.S.-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins University.

“Who replaces Kim Yong-nam may tell us about the future direction of the restructuring of the political system,” said.  (He added Kim Yong-nam will likely “honorably retire,” rather than being purged.)

Mansourov raised four possible scenarios for the replacement of Kim Yong-nam as ceremonial head of state:

  • Kim Jong-un could assume the position himself;
  • choose Jang Song-thaek, his uncle, who is apparently at the center of the governing group;
  • select another figure like Kang Sok-ju, a longtime confidant to late leader Kim Jong-il on foreign affairs,
  • or appoint some dark horse.

The first case would add to speculation that the young leader is in full control of the regime, Mansourov said.

“The appointment of Jang Song-thaek as the nominal head of state will be an indicator of Jang’s rising political and foreign policy influences and continued efforts to secure his grip on power beyond his wife, Kim Kyong-hui,” the sister of Kim Jong-il, he added.

Among the so-called “Gang of Seven,” who walked alongside the hearse carrying Kim Jong-il’s body a year ago, four have been dismissed, with two others also sidelined, he pointed out.

Jang Song-thaek is the only figure who remains in power.

“As for his uncle Jang, I believe the young marshal will use him for as long as he has to, but then he will surely cut him off, probably without much regret, just like his father purged his own uncle Kim Yong-ju when Kim Jong-il deemed him as a threat to his own power bid in the mid-1970s,” Mansourov said.

Yonhap News

No changes in China policy on North Korea

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Communist Party chief Xi Jinping has surprised many with his actions domestically but few are betting on any drastic changes from him in China’s policy on and support for its ally North Korea. Observers say Xi will opt for the status quo.

After North Korea’s rocket launch, which fired a weather satellite into space on December 12, China’s foreign ministry expressed “regret” at the development. Meanwhile China’s diplomats have opposed the UN’s attempts to punish its ally with more sanctions.

North Korea is the only country China has inked a security treaty with – in 1961 – which compels them to provide military aid if either party comes under attack.

Singapore-based analyst Li Mingjiang said Beijing wants to keep Pyongyang as one of its few true friends, especially after seeing its south-western neighbor Myanmar leaning further away from China with its democratic reforms since 2010.

Analyst Scott Harold of the US-based think-tank Rand Corporation cited a belief in Communist China that liberalization of another Communist country would “constitute a loss for Beijing”.

There is also a growing belief among some that Beijing is being held ransom – perhaps unwittingly – by Pyongyang.

Japan’s former defense minister Yuriko Koike said the North’s latest action showed its belief that “a more robust vision of national defense in Japan and South Korea would antagonize China, which, isolated in East Asia, will then be more likely to maintain its support for the Kim regime.

“Thus, the missile launch can be viewed as an indication of how threatened the Kim dynasty feels – the regime appears to believe that it must blackmail its closest ally in order to maintain its support,” wrote Koike in a Project Syndicate article last Friday.

Kim Jong-un calls for more powerful missiles

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North Korean leader Kim Jong-un on Friday called on scientists to develop more powerful rockets, the North’s KCNA news agency reported.

“You should develop and launch a variety of working satellites… and carrier rockets of bigger capacity,” Kim was quoted as saying at a banquet in Pyongyang honoring the scientists who built the rocket launched on Dec. 12.

Kim added that the successful launch of the rocket “was the biggest present we dedicated to our great leader Kim Jong-il and a product of painstaking efforts and heroic struggle of our people and Workers Party.”

But the new leader admitted failing to achieve his goal of turning North Korea into a “powerful and prosperous nation” this year, which marks the centenary of nation founder Kim Il-sung’s birth. “We will work even harder to fly the red flag of a powerful and prosperous nation atop the mountain of victory as soon as possible,” he said.

He urged the scientists to do their best to bring that day closer, evidently trying to associate progress in missile development with the “prosperity and happiness” of the people.

Afterwards Kim and his wife Ri Sol-ju personally saw off the scientists, technicians and workers of the missile development program as they returned to their quarters, KCNA reported.

North Korea displays Kim Jong Il a year after his death

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North Korea unveiled the embalmed body of Kim Jong Il, still in his trademark khaki jumpsuit, on the anniversary of his death as mourning mixed with pride over a recent satellite launch that was a long-held goal of the late authoritarian leader.

In the Kumsusan mausoleum, a cavernous former presidential palace, Kim Jong Il was presented lying beneath a red blanket, a spotlight shining on his face in a room suffused in red. Wails echoed through the chilly hall as a group of North Korean women sobbed into the sashes of their traditional Korean dresses as they bowed before his body.

North Korea also unveiled Kim’s yacht and his armored train carriage, where he is said to have died. Among the personal belongings featured in the mausoleum are the parka, sunglasses and pointy platform shoes he famously wore in the last decades of his life. A MacBook Pro lay open on his desk.

At a memorial service on Sunday, North Korea’s top leadership not only eulogized Kim Jong Il, but also praised his son. Kim Yong Nam, president of the Presidium of North Korea’s parliament, called the recent rocket launch a “shining victory” and an emblem of the promise that lies ahead with Kim Jong Un in power.

Recent high-profile appointments made by Kim Jong Un

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Last July, Kim Jong Un dismissed military chief Ri Yong Ho, who was seen as one of his key mentors, and named little-known vice marshal Hyon Yong Chol as his new General Staff chief.

In April, Kim reshuffled top Workers’ Party posts by taking on top party posts held by his father and giving other high-level posts to close associates. In recent months, North Korea has also reshuffled top Cabinet members such as the ministers of sports, electronics industry and agriculture, according to Pyongyang’s official Korean Central News Agency.

More recently, North Korea replaced its defense minister with a hard-line military commander believed responsible for deadly attacks on South Korea in 2010. Diplomats in Pyongyang told the Associated Press that they were informed that Kim Jong Gak had been replaced as armed forces minister by Kim Kyok Sik, commander of the battalions linked to two deadly attacks in 2010 blamed on North Korea.

That move came amid speculation that North Korea was preparing a long-range rocket launch, which it has since successfully launched. The appointment of a hawkish general could mean North Korea wanted to show a tough face to Washington and Seoul, said analyst Hong Hyun-ik at the private Sejong Institute in South Korea.

Baek Seung-joo, an analyst at the state-run Korea Institute for Defence Analyses in Seoul, adds that Kim Jong Un is trying to put his stamp on the military by building loyalty with troops and also by creating tension among generals through personnel changes.

 

A death knell for the North Korean regime?

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A New York Times excerpt on how a typical North Korean might react to a visit to a border city in China:

The lucky few North Koreans who make it to Dandong [a large Chinese, border city across the Yalu River from North Korea] are stunned by what they find: the car-choked streets, hot showers and the ability to speak out without fear.

But mostly, they are overwhelmed by the array and abundance of inexpensive food.

While her compatriots said they stuffed themselves with meat-filled dumplings and rice, Mrs. Kim ate only apples for the first five days. She said she had not eaten them since childhood.

“I thought our country lived well,” she said, “but I was mistaken.”

The more North Korea’s new leader Kim Jong-Un opens his country up to the outside, the more people will find that that they have been told for half a century now is a pathetic lie. What that means for the future of the regime only time will tell, but as we’ve seen elsewhere in the world openness to the outside is often the death knell for dictatorships.