Category: Uncategorized

How far can Kim Yo Jong rise through the ranks?

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Kim Yo Jong was still in her 20s in 2011 when her father, Kim Jong Il, died and her brother Kim Jong Un took power. Her debut on the international stage came in 2018, when she acted as a special envoy at the Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea, and met with the country’s president, Moon Jae-in.

Kim Yo Jong became the first vice director of the Central Committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea. Her political star has risen steadily since her brother took power, leading to speculation that she could one day become the country’s first female ruler. But while there are plausible reasons for her recent elevation, analysts say, the traditional patriarchal nature of North Korean society will likely prevent her from advancing higher up the ranks.

But the younger sister’s rise to what many now see as the de facto No. 2 position in the Kim regime has historical precedent and political logic behind it.

“There is nothing unusual about, say, a sibling of the current leader to be his second in command. It’s actually a very well-established tradition of the Kim family,” says professor Andrei Lankov, a North Korea expert at Kookmin University in Seoul. He notes that Kim Jong Il, the current leader’s father, was assisted by his sister during his rule in the 1990s.

Kim Yo Jong’s new role was necessitated by her brother’s disappearance this spring, Lankov says, apparently because of an unknown illness. (By one estimate, Kim Jong Un has made only seven public appearances from April through June, compared with 46 in the same period last year.)

“This makes it more necessary for him to have a trusted deputy,” Lankov says. “And this person has to come from, if you like, the royal family, and in the ruling clan, they have now a shortage of adults.”

[NPR]

Seoul revokes permits for North Korean defector groups over leaflets

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The South Korean government revoked the operation permits of two defector groups on Friday for sending anti-North Korea leaflets across the border, officials said, after Pyongyang furiously denounced their activities.

The move is likely to trigger debate over potential infringements on freedom of expression in the democratic South. The leaflets — usually attached to hot air balloons or floated in bottles — criticize North Korean leader Kim Jong Un over human rights abuses and his nuclear ambitions.

But by sending them, the two groups “severely hindered” the government’s “efforts for unification”, Seoul’s unification ministry said in a statement. They also raised tensions on the Korean peninsula, and “put the safety and lives” of Koreans living in border towns “in danger”, it added.

Revoking the groups’ operational permits does not render them illegal, but will make it harder for them to raise money and deny them access to benefits for registered organizations.

Inter-Korean relations have been in deep freeze following the collapse of a summit between Kim and US President Donald Trump early last year over what the nuclear-armed North would be willing to give up in exchange for a loosening of sanctions.

[Agence France Press]

How North Korean defectors communicate with family back home

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North Korean phones are screened by the Ministry of State Security first to prevent them from being used in any non-permitted ways, so cannot be used to communicate with those in other countries.

Because of this, North Koreans use Chinese-made phones that have been purchased from smugglers, and contact relatives through an app WeChat, allowing voice calls, text messages, and video calls.

WeChat is also used to send money to loved ones in North Korea so they can maintain a living and eat their next meal. The transfer process involves the money passing through several countries before reaching the recipient in North Korea. After initial links are established through these networks in both North and South Korea, money is sent to the account of a Chinese middle-man, who takes a cut for themselves.

There are many shops in the China-North Korea border regions that are jointly run by people from both countries. At such places, at a pre-arranged time and date, the money originally sent by the defector is given over to the North Korean broker. The transfer is conducted not in South or North Korean won but in Chinese yuan.

The North Korean broker then takes their cut before taking the money and delivering it to the other side of the border.

After all is said and done, around seventy percent of the original amount makes its way into the hands of the recipient. Some unscrupulous brokers, however, take more, leaving only around half of the original sum.

[NK News]

US ready to talk to North Korea, with rebuke for Pyongyang counterpart

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Deputy Secretary of State Stephen Biegun, the top U.S. official on U.S.-North Korean affairs, on Wednesday said that Washington is willing to resume talks with Pyongyang but disputed reports that he was seeking to meet with North Korean officials during a visit to South Korea.

“Let me absolutely be clear, we did not request a visit” with the North Koreans, Biegun told reporters after meeting with the lead South Korean nuclear negotiator. “This visit this week is to meet with our close friends and allies, the South Koreans.”

“We look forward to continuing our work for a peaceful outcome of the Korean peninsula, I believe this is very much possible,” he added.

Days earlier, Pyongyang’s chief negotiator Vice Foreign Minister Choe Sun Hui had said the nation would only resume talks if the U.S. ended its “hostile” policies and accused the U.S. of the “shallow tactic” of seeking to exploit Washington-Pyongyang relations for electoral advantages, according to state media.

Biegun responded to this Wednesday with a rare rebuke of a North Korean diplomat, comparing Choe to former White House national security adviser John Bolton. “Both are locked in an old way of thinking, focused on only the negatives and what is impossible, rather than thinking creatively about what is possible,” Biegun said.

Biegun also implied resuming talks would be a non-starter if it would mean continued negotiations with Choe. “When Chairman Kim [Jong Un] appoints a counterpart to me who is prepared and empowered to negotiate on these issues, they will find us ready at that very moment,” he said, according to the AP.

[The Hill]

Trump says he’d meet with Kim Jong Un again

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President Trump says he is open to another summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, even as Pyongyang signals it is uninterested in resuming stalled nuclear talks.

Trump made the comments Tuesday in an interview with Gray Television’s Greta Van Susteren*. “I understand they want to meet and we would certainly do that,” Trump said.

When Van Susteren, also a VOA contributor, asked if Trump thought such a meeting would be helpful, Trump replied: “Probably. I have a very good relationship with him, [so it] probably would be.”

North Korea has twice in the past week said it is not interested in more talks with the U.S., insisting another summit would only benefit Trump’s domestic political situation.

*The complete interview will air Sunday on Gray TV’s Full Court Press program, but VOA obtained a transcript of Trump’s North Korea comments ahead of time.  

[VoA]

Coronavirus in North Korea: Kim Jong-un claims ‘shining success’

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North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has hailed his country’s “shining success” in dealing with Covid-19, according to state news agency KCNA. Speaking at a politburo meeting, Kim said the country had “prevented the inroad of the malignant virus and maintained a stable situation”.

North Korea closed its borders and put thousands into isolation six months ago as the virus swept across the globe. It claims that it has no virus cases, though analysts say this is unlikely. Whatever the reality of the situation, Pyongyang wants to appear confident that it has crushed Covid-19.

Kim is said to have “analyzed in detail the six month-long national emergency anti-epidemic work” and said the success in handling the virus was “achieved by the far-sighted leadership of the Party Central Committee”.

But he stressed the importance of maintaining “maximum alert without… relaxation on the anti-epidemic front”, adding that the virus was still present in neighboring countries. “He repeatedly warned that hasty relief of anti-epidemic measures will result in unimaginable and irretrievable crisis,” said the KCNA report on Friday.

North Korea has now reopened schools, but has kept a ban on public gatherings and made it compulsory for people to wear masks in public places, said a Reuters report on 1 July quoting a World Health Organization official.

[BBC]

Is there declining South Korean public support for humanitarian aid to North Korea?

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Previous public opinion surveys have shown strong South Korean public support for humanitarian food aid to North Korea.

In March 2020, 38North implemented a web survey: South Korean respondents were randomly assigned one of following three versions about providing humanitarian aid to North Korea.

  • Version 1: Do you think South Korea should give more humanitarian aid to North Korea than they are giving now?
  • Version 2: South Korea has allocated approximately 680 billion won for humanitarian aid to North Korea for 2020. Do you think South Korea should give more humanitarian aid to North Korea than they are giving now?
  • Version 3: South Korea has allocated approximately 680 billion won for humanitarian aid to North Korea for 2020. This comprises less than one-tenth of one percent of the national budget. Do you think South Korea should give more humanitarian aid to North Korea than they are giving now?

They found that how aid is presented matters. When provided with no information about allocations, only around 36 percent support expanding aid. However, when the actual budget of 680 billion Korean won is provided in the question, public support for expanding aid further decreases by approximately 11 percent. Even when the budget is contextualized in terms of the national budget, support declines by about 8 percent.

Additionally, findings suggest knowing a North Korean who has moved to South Korea generates broader sympathy for providing aid.

Overall, evidence suggests a public disconnect between support for peace and unification and a willingness to expand humanitarian aid that would support those efforts.

[Read full story at 38North]

North Korea’s hot and cold strategy

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Alternating between raising tensions and ​​extending an olive branch​ — all to confuse the enemy — has been part of North Korea’s dog-eared playbook. ​This geopolitical strategy has long been compared to dipping alternately in pools of scathingly hot and icy cold water in a public bathhouse.

​Just a week ago, Kim Yo-jong, the only sister and key aide of North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, threatened to ​kill the country’s agreement​s​ with South Korea that were intended to ease military tensions along the border. ​She called the South Korean president, Moon Jae-in, “disgusting” and “insane.” Then the North blew up the joint inter-Korean liaison office, the first of a series of actions that threatened to reverse a fragile détente on the Korean Peninsula.

On Wednesday, her brother Kim Jong-Un emerged as the good cop, overruling his military and suspending i​ts plans to ​deploy more troops​ and resume military exercises along the world’s most heavily armed border. Hours later, South Korean border guards confirmed that the North Korean military had dismantled loudspeakers installed on the border in recent days as part of its threat to revive propaganda broadcasts against the South.

If the flip-flop seemed disorienting, that was exactly the effect North Korea intended. Over the decades, ​alternating between raising tensions and ​​extending an olive branch​ has been part of the North’s dog-eared playbook​. ​Mr. Kim’s grandfather Kim Il-sung, North Korea’s founding president, proposed reconciliation with South Korea even as he prepared to invade the South to start the 1950-53 Korean War. His father and predecessor, Kim Jong-il, discussed co-hosting the 1988 Summer Olympics with South Korea before North Korean agents planted bombs on a Korean Air Boeing 707 in 1987. The plane exploded near Myanmar, killing all 115 on board.

When the move is toward peace, the change of tack is so dramatic that North Korea’s external enemies often take the shift itself as progress, even though there is no evidence that the country has decided to abandon its nuclear weapons.

[New York Times]

South Korea says Bolton’s memoir on Trump-Kim summit is distorted

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Former U.S. National Security Adviser John Bolton gives details in his new book, “The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir”, of conversations before and after three meetings between U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, including how their second summit in Vietnam fell apart.

Bolton writes that South Korean President Moon, who is keen to improve relations with North Korea, had raised unrealistic expectations with both Kim Jong-Un and Donald Trump for his own “unification” agenda.

“It does not reflect accurate facts and substantially distorts facts,” South Korea’s national security adviser, Chung Eui-yong, said in a statement referring to Bolton’s description of top-level consultations.

Trump and Kim met for the first time in Singapore in June 2018, raising hope for efforts to press North Korea to give up its nuclear programme in exchange for the lifting of sanctions. But their second summit, in Vietnam in early 2019, collapsed when Trump rejected an offer by Kim to give up North Korea’s main nuclear facility in return for lifting some sanctions.

Bolton reportedly cites Chung as relaying Moon’s response to the breakdown as, on the one hand, Trump was right to reject Kim’s proposal but on the other, Kim’s willingness to dismantle the Yongbyon facility was a “very meaningful first step” toward “irreversible” denuclearisation. Bolton refers to Moon’s position as “schizophrenic”.

[Reuters]

Despair among Chinese diplomats following Pyongyang’s explosive provocations

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There is private despair among Chinese diplomats following Pyongyang’s explosive provocations this week, including the destruction of the inter-liaison office with South Korea.

Pyongyang’s recalcitrance about economic and social reform has long baffled Chinese counterparts, who point to their own economic success as an example of what the country could achieve if it followed in China’s footsteps.

“I don’t know what they’re thinking,” one Chinese academic who has had frequent contact with North Korean diplomatic delegations said.

[Foreign Policy]