Category: Uncategorized

Where the majority of North Koreans access their news

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In North Korea the media is broadcast, printed and distributed under strict surveillance and censorship – the only information you’re allowed to access has been pre-approved.

North Korean media does cover international news, but there is a very limited amount of coverage and only information which has been approved by the government is shown. The North Korean media is not interested in reporting on Tibet or the ‘umbrella revolution’ in Hong Kong – any region demanding more autonomy from China is off-limits. But it does report news stories about anti-government demonstrations in South Korea, or demonstrations against human rights violations by the US government.

When it comes to domestic news there is Rodong Sinmun, KCNA, and Chosun Central TV – all relatively well-known, even to the outside world, plus a variety of other news outlets. Newspapers are the mouthpiece of the Korean Workers’ Party.

They are only interested in publishing stories that emphasize the superiority of the regime which means crimes or accidents are never reported. You’ll never see a news article about corruption and you’ll certainly never read about social injustice. Investigative journalism doesn’t exist.

Rodong Sinmun, regarded as the most influential newspaper, is at the forefront of “the battle of ideologies and politics” led by the government. The main business of disseminating news has been taken up by KCNA. It has access to most domestic and international information and is fast in reporting breaking news such as the arrival of VIPs.

In North Korea, there are two TV stations: Central Chosun TV and Mansudae TV. Chosun Central TV broadcasts news, but also soap operas, comedy shows, cooking shows, fashion programmes (complete with tips for viewers) and the weather. Mansudae TVis the cultural station.

There are also two radio stations: KCNA and Radio Pyongyang. Few people own TVs so radio is the main source of information.

[Kim Yoo-sung, who left Hamgyeongbuk–do province in 2005]

South Korean President says door open for talks with North Korea

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South Korean President Park Geun-hye said the door is open for talks with the North during the upcoming U.N. General Assembly. However, Park said that Pyongyang must show sincerity in seeking a constructive dialogue and “walk the talk” in taking up South Korea’s offers for engagement aimed at ending a deadlock after a decade of warming ties.

North Korea will send its foreign minister, Ri Su Yong, to the U.N. General Assembly meeting, the highest ranking official from the reclusive state to attend in 15 years.

Park, who will soon travel to New York where she will address the General Assembly, has unveiled an ambitious initiative to engage North Korea to eventually bring the rivals close enough to make unification feasible for most on both sides.

Park also called for a “courageous decision” by Tokyo to improve ties between Japan and North Korea.

[Reuters] 

Photos of rural life in North Korea

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North Korean kids working fields
Plumbing in rural home
A North Korean bathing outside
North Korean gathering grass as food
Farm family with their oxcart
Young children hauling water

A North Korean strike on the US electric grid?

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The electric grid in the United States remains largely unprotected, according to a longtime adviser to Congress on national security issues, Peter Vincent Pry.

Pry told VOA he believes North Korea is ready to attempt a strike on the U.S. electric grid using an Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP). Pry said North Korea practiced an EMP strike against the U.S. last year when it orbited a satellite at the optimal altitude and trajectory to carry out such an attack.

Pry was a member of the former Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse Attack (2001-2008). He also is executive director of the Task Force on National and Homeland Security, a congressional advisory board dedicated to achieving protection of the United States from electromagnetic pulse and other threats.

An electromagnetic pulse (or disturbance) is a short burst of electromagnetic energy that can be natural or man-made. EMP interference generated by lightning, for example, can damage electronic equipment. At very high energy levels, an EMP can damage physical objects such as trees, buildings and aircraft.

Pry said the North Korean test last year took place over the South Pole, which he called a strategic move. “We are blind from the south. We don’t have the Ballistic Missile Early Warning System or interceptors to protect us from the south,” said Pry.

The congressional analyst said this was done after North Korea’s third illegal nuclear test in February 2013 and after the country’s leader, Kim Jong Un, threatened to strike the United States and its allies with a nuclear missile.

[VoA] 

The Catholic Church of Pyongyang

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North Korea is officially atheist and is accused of widespread religious persecution. The United States claims its few state-run churches exist simply to give the appearance of religious freedom.

Its Catholic Church is known as the “silent church.” It has no ties with the Vatican and there is not one single residing priest in the country. They were once referred to as the “Vatican’s spies.” There are strict controls over what is permitted — many religious processes such as confession are out of the question. A confidential one-on-one conversation between a South Korean — even if that person is a priest — and a North Korean is impossible and both could be accused of espionage.

In the 1970s, Pyongyang proudly insisted that the country was “free from religious superstitions,” according to South Korea’s Unification Ministry. Then for no apparent reason, the authorities in the North created a small number of churches and temples in the late 1980s, all of them under very strict government control.

Says Andrei Lankov, an associate professor in social sciences at Kookmin University in South Korea, “From [North Korea’s] point of view, [Christianity] is a very real threat. Right now, Christianity seems to be their most dangerous ideological challenge to the existing regime.”

Kenneth Bae, an American citizen who was sentenced to 15 years of hard labor in North Korea, was accused of bringing down the government through religious activities. And he is not the only missionary to be detained in the country.

[CNN]

North Korea’s no. 1 role in the persecution of Christians

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The normally diplomatic Pope Francis recently asserted: “The persecution of Christians today is even greater than in the first centuries of the Church, and there are more Christian martyrs today than in that era.”

To those familiar with the true history of early persecution — when Christians were habitually tortured to death, set on fire, fed to lions and dismembered to cheering audiences — his statement may seem exaggerated.

But even today, as in the past, Christians are being persecuted for their faith and even tortured and executed. A January, 2014, Pew Research Center study on religious discrimination across the world found that harassment of Christians was reported in more countries, 110, than any other faith.

Open Doors, a nondenominational Christian rights watchdog group, ranked the 50 most dangerous nations for Christians in its World Watch List. The No. 1 ranked nation is North Korea, followed by a host of Muslim countries. North Korea, amongst other Communist countries, is intolerant of Christians; churches are banned or forced underground, and in North Korea, exposed Christians can be immediately executed.

Nothing integral to the fabric of these societies makes them intrinsically anti-Christian. Something as simple as overthrowing the North Korean regime could possibly end persecution there — just as the fall of Communist Soviet Union saw religious persecution come to a quick close in nations like Russia, which if anything is experiencing a Christian Orthodox revival.

[CNN] 

Peace with Pyongyang to be on Pope’s agenda

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Pope Francis’ five-day visit to South Korea, which begins Thursday morning, will be the first time in a quarter-century that a pope has been on the divided Korean peninsula.

Francis plans to bring a message of peace and reconciliations to Koreans on both sides of the 38th parallel, while encouraging Catholics in the region to spread their faith.

One of the highlights of Francis’ trip is the August 16 beatification of 124 Korean martyrs, killed for their faith by the anti-Western rulers of the Joseon Dynasty in the 18th and 19th centuries. Unlike most countries where missionary priests brought Catholicism and spread it, South Korea’s church is uniquely homegrown: Members of Korea’s noble classes discovered the faith in the 18th century reading books by the Jesuit missionary Matteo Ricci that they brought back from China.

Some historians say as late as 1953, at the end of the Korean War, there were as many as 300,000 North Korean Christians. “Now they’re practically all dead, many killed by the so-called death marches, from poverty or violent successive persecutions,” writes historian Vincenzo Faccioli Pintozzi.

Currently, there are no Vatican-recognized church structures or priests operating in North Korea. Francis is, however, expected to issue a message of peace and reconciliation for all Koreans during the Mass.

[AP]

The North Korean dictatorship of the mind

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Excerpts of “Dear Leader” by Jang Jin-sun, a North Korean poet who caught the eye of Kim Jong Il, and was eventually invited for a private audience with him; then later defected.

As I progressed through school, … I had no choice but to immerse myself, like everyone else, in the Supreme Leader. … Even when I turned to novels or poetry, whatever book I opened, it was the same: the Korean language served to tell the story of two protagonists alone, Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il.

In North Korea, gaining access to any foreign culture is a crime of “revisionism”, but there is a “hundred copy collection” (each book limited to a hundred copies) available to the elite, so that they might receive a cultural grounding to help them carry out their jobs as leaders, diplomats and propagandists. … In the strict apartheid of North Korea, the use of language is tightly controlled across different classes of people. Above all, the language used for reference to the Supreme Leader is set apart in its grammar and vocabulary. Kim Il-sung is always “great”, and “greatness” must always belong to the Supreme Leader alone; but Byron taught me that the word could be used to describe any one of us, and that every one of us could dare to partake in such qualities.

I know that no dictatorship can be successful merely by force. A dictator may use a form of religious cult to demand an unquestioning and heartfelt obedience from each individual, or a myth of racial superiority to bind the loyalty of many to one selfish cause. North Korea is no exception in the modern history of totalitarianism. There are the brutal political camps that physically shut away the lives of North Korean people; but there is also a dictatorship of the mind, the political prison where thought and expression are stifled. North Korea’s dictatorship of force over its people – its police-state system, the inescapable surveillance, the party’s invocation of the “Supreme Leader’s will”, overruling even the national constitution – cannot end while the dictatorship of the mind prevails.

The only power that will undermine the dictatorship of the mind is the realization that it is possible not only for the regime to lie to its people, but that it has done so, deliberately and constantly. My people cannot be free until each of us acknowledges that the Revolutionary History of the Leader is not the true reality of North Korea.

[New Statesman] 

North Korea-Japan deals serves both ends

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Both Japan and North Korea have their own reasons for engaging with each other, separate agendas that led to this week’s landmark agreement on the abduction issue between the two countries.

Tokyo wants tangible progress on the long-standing issue, as abductees’ family members are growing old. North Korea, meanwhile, has become increasingly isolated in the international community, prompting it to turn to Japan for help.

During talks between senior government officials of the two countries in Stockholm this week, North Korea agreed to fully investigate the fate of Japanese nationals abducted by its agents and suspected abductees, while Japan pledged to lift some of its sanctions against North Korea.

North Korea has agreed that the probe will cover not only the 12 people recognized by the Japanese government as abduction victims, including Megumi Yokota, but also about 470 “specially designated missing persons” who are believed to have been abducted by Pyongyang.

Despite the much-heralded agreement, however, it is still open to question whether Pyongyang will follow through.

[The Yomiuri Shimbun]

China strengthens resolve against North Korea nuclear test

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South Korea says China has agreed to cooperate in opposing North Korea’s threat to test a fourth nuclear device. The agreement was reached during a meeting with China’s visiting top diplomat in anticipation of a state visit by President Xi Jinping. China has been reluctant to publicly and explicitly warn its neighbor and historic ally against the tests.

A statement issued said the two sides would strengthen cooperation against North Korea’s nuclear tests and urge meaningful dialogue for Pyongyang to give up its nuclear programs. The statement said they agreed not to accept North Korea as a nuclear power.

The two Ministers also discussed an expected visit to South Korea by China’s President Xi Jinping that could come as early as June. South Korea’s Joongang Daily newspaper reports it would be the first visit by a Chinese president to Seoul before visiting Pyongyang in nearly two decades. That would send a signal to North Korea that while China is increasingly uneasy with its old ally it is becoming closer to its historic enemy.

Meanwhile, North Korea’s top nuclear negotiator met with former U.S. officials in Mongolia last week to discuss the issue.  Although unofficial, the talks were seen as a positive step to possibly reviving negotiations.

The China-hosted denuclearization talks with the two Koreas, Japan, Russia, and the United States were last held in 2008.  Since then, North Korea tested a second and third nuclear explosive and numerous rockets before declaring its intention to talk.

[VoA]