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Chinese experts warn about North Korean nuclear arsenal

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China’s top nuclear experts have increased their estimates of North Korea’s nuclear weapons production well beyond most previous U.S. figures, suggesting Pyongyang can make enough warheads to threaten regional security for the U.S. and its allies.

The latest Chinese estimates, relayed in a closed-door meeting with U.S. nuclear specialists, showed that North Korea may already have 20 warheads, as well as the capability of producing enough weapons-grade uranium to double its arsenal by next year, according to people briefed on the matter.

Adm. William Gortney, head of U.S. Northern Command, said this month that defense officials believe North Korea can now mount a nuclear warhead on an intercontinental ballistic missile called the KN-08. U.S. officials don’t believe the missile has been tested, but experts estimate it has a range of about 5,600 miles —within reach of the western edge of the continental U.S., including California.

The latest Chinese estimates of North Korea’s nuclear capability were shared during a February meeting at the China Institute of International Studies, the Chinese foreign ministry’s think tank. The estimate that North Korea may have had 20 warheads at the end of last year—and could build 20 more by 2016—was given during a presentation by one of China’s top uranium enrichment experts, according to people familiar with the meeting. They said it was the first time they had heard such a high Chinese estimate.

[The Wall Street Journal]

On North Korea’s growing economy

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The textile factories of Dandong China, just across the Yalu River from North Korea, producing “made in China” goods offer a glimpse into a hidden world that is helping North Korea’s economy to thrive. Operated by North Koreans, the factories produce clothes and other goods that are exported under foreign-company labels, making it impossible to tell that they have been made with North Korean hands and contribute to North Korean profits.

The thriving operations belie the perception in Washington that U.S. and international sanctions are working to strangle North Korea’s ability to make money. An estimate by South Korea’s Hyundai Research Institute forecasts that the North’s economy will grow this year by a whopping 7 percent.

A lot of that growth comes through Dandong, a hive of North Korean and Chinese managers and traders, with middlemen helping them all cover their tracks. One local Chinese businessman estimates that one-quarter of this city’s population of 800,000 is involved in doing business with North Korea in some way.

In a typical clothing factory, the women work 13 hours a day, 28 or 29 days a month, and are paid $300 each a month—one-third of which they keep. The rest goes back to the government in Pyongyang. North Korea is thought to have at least 50,000 workers outside the country earning money for the regime, with 13,000 of them working in Dandong.

North Korea’s economy is still a basket case, barely more than one-fiftieth the size of South Korea’s. But in talking about the changes underway, the businessmen described a North Korean economy that is increasingly run according to market principles, where people want to be in business, not the bureaucracy, and where money talks.

Reports from inside North Korea suggest that even state-run companies are increasingly operated according to market principles, with managers empowered to hire and fire workers—previously unimaginable in the communist nation—and conduct businesses the way they see best.

Nevertheless, there are frustrations in China. A huge development project is on ice, partly because of the demise of Jang Song Thaek, the businessman and uncle of Kim Jong Un who was executed at the end of 2013, because of his “decadent capitalist lifestyle.” Since then, Jang’s colleagues have been recalled to Pyongyang or have disappeared—sometimes with millions of dollars in Chinese money, according to businessmen in Dandong. Beijing is clearly none too happy about this.

[Washington Post]

No apology from North Korea for sinking of Cheonan 5 years ago

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North Korea has rejected South Korean calls for an apology over the sinking of a warship, calling it an “intolerable mockery”. The move comes as South Korea prepares to mark five years since the Cheonan went down on 26 March 2010 with the loss of 46 lives.

Seoul says Pyongyang torpedoed the ship, but North Korea rejects this. It described the theory that North Korea sank the ship as “fictitious”.

The warship went down off an island near the disputed inter-Korean western maritime border. An investigation into the disaster involving South Korean and international experts found that a North Korean torpedo sank the ship. Pyongyang does not accept this and offered at the time to conduct its own investigation, an offer that was turned down.

Since then, ties between the two nations – which remain technically at war – have remained icy. There has also been no movement since 2009 on six-nation talks aimed at ending North Korea’s nuclear ambitions.

Tensions are currently high on the peninsula because annual US-South Korea joint military drills are under way. The exercises always anger North Korea.

Pyongyang has also threatened to respond with “firepower” to South Korean activists who want to use balloons to fly propaganda leaflets and DVDs of The Interview – a film depicting a plot to assassinate North Korean leader Kim Jong-un – across the inter-Korean border.

[BBC]

North Korea warns against airdropping DVDs of ‘The Interview’

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North Korea’s military on Sunday threatened to blow up balloons that South Korean activists plan to send over the heavily-militarized border carrying 10,000 DVDs of the satirical Hollywood film “The Interview”.

Activists plan to launch copies of the film, as well as 500,000 propaganda leaflets, across the border on or around March 26. The activists remained tight-lipped about the exact location and time for the launch.

Pyongyang has long condemned such balloon launches and threatened retaliation, and local residents have complained the activists are putting their lives at risk by making them potential targets.

“All the firepower strike means of the frontline units of the (Korean People’s Army) will launch without prior warning… to blow up balloons,” the North’s frontline military units said in a notice to the South. It said the launch would constitute “the gravest politically-motivated provocation” against North Korea and “a de facto declaration of a war”, according to Pyongyang’s official Korean Central News Agency. The move is aimed at “deliberately escalating tension on the Korean peninsula where the situation has reached the brink of a war due to… joint war rehearsals” by South Korea and the United States, it said.

In October last year North Korean soldiers attempted to shoot down some balloons, triggering a brief exchange of heavy machine-gun fire across the border.

The launch will mark the five-year anniversary of the sinking of a South Korean warship in 2010, with the loss of 46 sailors.

[AFP]

Women in North Korean society

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The following is based on excerpts of responses to questions posed to a North Korean defector in China:

North Korea is highly patriarchal. … In the past, women faced criticism if their husbands were seen in the kitchen, though things might have gotten slightly better these days. Women, and not men, are expected to take care of everything that happens within the house.

No matter how hard it is to make a living, the only duty men are expected to perform at home is to ban family members from doing anything against the policies of the Workers’ Party of Korea (WPK).

Photos of North Korea

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In this June 20, 2014, photo, young North Korean schoolchildren help to fix pot holes in a rural road in North Korea’s North Hamgyong province. [Photo by David Guttenfelder/AP]
North Korean farmers herding cattle home in the evening rain.
Soccer on the street.

 

Cinema for Peace Foundation will drop DVDs of The Interview into North Korea

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At a press conference on Monday during the Berlin Film Festival, Jaka Bizilj, the founder and chairman of the Cinema for Peace Foundation, announced his organization will drop DVD copies of The Interview into North Korea by hydrogen balloons.

North Korean leaders moved to block the release of the comedy film, which chronicles an assassination of the country’s leader Kim Jong-Un, but now the film is heading to North Korea by air.

Bizilj told reporters, “We will start sending hydrogen balloons with DVDs of The Interview to North Korea so that the people there can watch the movie. They can copy the movie and have their own impression if it’s a good or bad movie, because for us, it’s not a question of whether it’s good or bad; no matter if you like something or not, you have to fight for freedom to exercise this art.”

He added the timing and exact location of the drop wouldn’t be revealed, as it could endanger locals: “The army will stop anyone even picking up a copy of the DVD.”

The film’s star, James Franco, was also present at the press conference, as were Pussy Riot stars Nadya Tolokonnikova and Masha Alyokhina, who performed their first English-language song at the festival on Monday night.

[ContactMusic.com]

The North Korean diet has changed little over 50 years

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A study of United Nations data shows the diet of North Koreans has changed little over the past 50 years.

National Geographic studied changes in diet from 1961 to 2011 in 22 countries, including North Korea. The study found that a North Korea adult consumed about 2,103 calories a day in 2011. That represents an increase from 1,878 calories in 1961. But it is much lower than the 2,500 calories a day suggested by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization.

The data also suggests the average North Korean has an unbalanced diet. National Geographic magazine also says the diet of North Koreans is more dependent on grain than any of the 22 countries studied.

North Koreans also eat very little meat.The amount of meat consumed dropped sharply during the country’s famine in the 1990s. But after the food shortages ended, the amount of meat consumed remains low. An average North Korean consumed 141 grams of meat a day in 1989. By 2011, after years of famines and food shortages, that number had dropped to 67 grams.

In 1961, North Koreans had a similar diet to South Koreans. But in the past 50 years, the South Korean diet has improved. The daily caloric intake has increased from 2,140 to 3,329 per person. The percentage of grains in the South Korean diet has dropped from 82 percent to 43 percent. In 1961, meat represented just two percent of the South Korean diet. By 2011, it was 12 percent.

[VOA]

The decades-long cinematic arms race between North and South Korea

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In recent years, North Korea has become the antagonist of choice in Hollywood action movies such as Olympus Has Fallen and the remake of Red Dawn. That trend is mostly a matter of convenience: studios don’t want to antagonize any more plausible military powers that also happen to be emerging movie markets, including China and Russia.

But using North Korea as a workaround became less convenient in December when The Interview, starring James Franco and Seth Rogen a pair of lackadaisical journalists who land an interview with Kim Jong-un (Randall Park) and are asked by the CIA to assassinate him, prompted saber-rattling from the North Korean regime and threats of violence against theatres that had the temerity to show the movie.

While North Korea’s reaction to the US might have been unnerving for Americans, who are still adjusting to the impact of international audiences on their movies and television, the incident shouldn’t have come as a surprise. With The Interview, the US blundered into a regional cultural arms race that’s been going on for decades.

In The Interview, the two journalists are invited because Kim Jong-un happens to love The Big Bang Theory. That’s no flight of fancy: The first major position of the present leader’s father, Kim Jong-il, in his father’s regime was overseeing the Bureau of Propaganda and Agitation, including North Korea’s movie operations. Kim Sr. reportedly loved Elizabeth Taylor, Sean Connery, James Bond movies, Friday the 13th and First Blood.

Paul Fischer’s book A Kim Jong-il Production is a highly illuminating look at the middle Kim’s cinematic obsessions and the cinematic arms race between the two Koreas. Some of that competition was driven by the recognition that movies could be powerful political tools. North and South Korean children saw propaganda films about the evils of the government and people on the other side of the border. A drama Sea of Blood, which Fischer identifies as a turning point in Kim Jong-il’s movie-making, established the standard elements of a North Korean movie. At the same time, South Korea was making its own investments in movies.

As the balance of cultural influence shifted, Kim Jong-il implemented a plan to revitalize North Korean cinema that makes the present regime’s threats over The Interview seem less ridiculous and more plausible. In 1978, Kim ordered the kidnapping of a South Korean actress, Choi Eun-hee, and her director husband, Shin Sang-ok. Kim put them both to work revitalizing North Korean cinema.

In the fight for both international prestige and peninsular influence, South Korea obviously seems to be winning. The New York Times recently reported on just how powerful a temptation South Korean soap operas can be to North Koreans, but this is hardly a new phenomenon. Pirated DVDs have long been available on the black market in cities like Chongjin, and the North Korean government has long been trying to deter people from buying or owning them by making such acts a “betrayal of the fatherland”.

Paradoxically, it may have been Kim Jong-il’s attempts to create a more sophisticated North Korean cinematic culture that helped stoke North Korean hunger for higher quality, which often meant imported, stories.

Fischer writes that a North Korean defector told him that before: “We just watched our films and documentaries and accepted them the way they were. We thought that’s how movies are. But after the Shin Sang-ok era, we had new eyes.”

P.S. –Director Shin and actress Choi collaborated on a number of North Korean projects, but ultimately, they managed to escape, leaving Kim without a captive auteur, or a long-term plan to develop North Korean culture.

[South China Morning Post]

Did you know one in 12 North Koreans have smartphones?

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What’s the point of a computer in a hermit country sealed off from the internet? What use can a smartphone be if the smartest uses are blocked? And why would anyone learn computer coding in a country closed off from the world-wide-web?

These are the conundrums at the core of the puzzle about technology in North Korea. If the South is the most teched-up nation in the world, the North ought to be the least — except it’s not.

At least one in 12 people in North Korea have smartphones. We know that North Korea has so many smartphones because its 3G network is run by Koryolink, a joint venture between an Egyptian company, Orascom Telecom, and the North Korean state. The Egyptian end publishes figures which add up to about two million North Korean subscribers.

Another question: How do North Koreans manage without the global internet? With difficulty, is the answer.

A few bright students are trained and do have access from controlled and monitored institutions while the mass of the citizenry have to make do with the internal North Korean intranet called the Kwangmyong.

There’s advice in English, Korean and Chinese on diet and age, the kind of health webpage which would generate clicks on any website anywhere. But this is some way short of the sum of all knowledge and delight provided by the worldwide web.

For the general populace this intranet has to suffice. The authorities are hyper-keen to close the slightest crack in the wall to the internet outside.

[BBC]