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North Korea’s irreconcilable relationship with Christianity

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It is not widely known, but a significant part of the first generation of Korean communist leaders – people born between 1900 and 1920 – came from devote Christian families.

Kim Il Sung himself (grandfather of present leader Kim Jong Un) was no exception: Both his parents came from families of early converts to Christianity.

Until the Korean War, Pyongyang was a major stronghold of Korean Christianity. In the colonial days, it was not known as the “Jerusalem of the East” for nothing: in the 1930s Christians constituted some 30 percent of the population of the city (at the same time, only 1 percent of all Koreans were Christians).

However, communist ideologues were very hostile to religion, which they saw as the “opium of the masses.” In the Soviet Union under Stalin, the church was not officially outlawed, but it was subjected to systematic harassment. In the late 1940s the North Korean government co-opted the small number of church ministers willing to collaborate – these people were called “progressive churchmen.” Kang Ryang Uk, a Protestant missionary and distant relative of Kim Il Sung, was the most prominent of these collaborators. The vast majority of believers, however, were subjected to discrimination. The result was a massive exodus of Christians to South Korea.

From around 1956-57, North Korean authorities began to close down all the few surviving churches and religious associations in the country. From then on, the North Korean media claimed that North Korea was the only country free of “religious superstition.”

Christianity became the object of near constant and virulent attacks in the North Korean media. While all communist states sponsored anti-religious activities and propaganda, in few countries of the Communist Bloc was this propaganda as vicious as in North Korea.

In propaganda publications churchmen were not merely reactionary, but national traitors. As every reader of North Korean magazines and books knew well, churches were all controlled by foreign missionaries, who were mercenary spies of the foreign imperialists, or sometimes sadistic killers who fantasized about butchering the Korean nation. One recurrent topic of North Korean propaganda was missionary involvement in “organ snatching.” Missionary doctors were alleged to steal kidneys, eyes and bone marrow (among other things) from those innocent Koreans who were stupid enough to come to a missionary hospital. Alternatively, naive Korean patients were subject to diabolical experiments, conducted by the same missionary doctors.

[NKNews.org]         Read more

Net worth of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un

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According to Celebrity Net Worth, Kim Jong-un is currently valued at $5 billion. Earlier last month, a joint investigation conducted by the South Korean and American governments revealed that the North Korean dictator and his family controlled these assets, distributed throughout more than 200 foreign bank accounts in multiple countries.

Kim Jong-un’s late father Kim Jong-il, reportedly lived a ridiculously wealthy lifestyle. Some examples:

  • In a 2001 train trip Kim Jong-il took to Russia, he had a 16-car private train that was stocked with crates of French wine and live lobsters.
  • Kim Jong-il’s former private Japanese sushi chef revealed Mr. Kim had a wine cellar stocked with 10,000 bottles, and indulged in pricey shark fin soup on a weekly basis.

A recent U.N. report found that Kim Jong-un also isn’t afraid to spend generously. According to the report, Kim Jong-un tried to import luxury Mercedes-Benz vehicles, dozens of pianos, and high-end musical equipment. He’s also a fan of fine liquor, specifically cognac.

The report estimates that state spending on luxury goods increased from an average of $300 million a year under Kim Jong-il to $645 million in 2012.

Meanwhile, the current Gross Domestic Product per capita for North Korean residents is at about $1,800, according to a 2011 estimate from the CIA. Compare that to the $32,400 for its neighbors in South Korea, $49,800 in the United States, and $9,100 in China.

[MyBankTracker] 

North Korean anti-South-Korea propaganda falling on unbelieving ears

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North Korean textbooks describe South Korea as a “fascist, military dictatorship” filled with “poverty and starvation,” but fewer and fewer North Koreans are buying the propaganda.

North Korean textbooks teach that South Korea is dominated by “foreign powers” that trample on the Korean people and “taint” its history, language and way of life. The North also teaches students that the U.S. must be driven out and South Korea liberated. Textbooks say U.S. soldiers stationed in South Korea “fire guns in broad daylight, plunder homes and rape women.” There are also rumors that North Korean defectors have their “eyes gouged out and limbs severed” if they go to South Korea.

But North Koreans from all walks of life prize South Korean-made products. One North Korean trader who crossed over the border into China said South Korean products are traded illicitly in open-air markets and can be sold at high prices if the removed labels are shown to customers.

Another North Korean said, “North Koreans know people in the South are better off, because they watch South Korean TV shows and movies. High-ranking officials and fairly well-off families all have South Korean products at home.”

Around 12 million North Koreans are believed to have access to South Korean TV shows. A government source said South Korean TV can be accessed from areas south of Sinuiju in North Pyongan Province and Wonsan in Kangwon Province.

A survey of 200 North Korean defectors last month by Media Research showed 70.5 percent of them had watched South Korean TV and other media content in the North.

[Chosun Ilbo]

Cell phone proliferation and use in North Korea

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The number of mobile phone subscribers in North Korea doubled to more than two million last year. Koryolink, a joint venture between the state-ownedKorea Post and the Egyptian company Orascom, has passed two million subscribers in a country of about 24 million people.

North Korean defectors tell VOA that many go out of their way to purchase mobile phones, selling hard-earned crops or housewares. Cell phones have become status symbols, signs of prosperity, and one of the most noticeable examples of conspicuous consumption in North Korea. A man from Chongjin who defected in December 2012 said “cell [phones] have become so popular that a young man without a cell phone is not treated well and could not even find a girlfriend.”

In the reclusive state, mobile phones are primarily used for entertainment purposes. Think tablet computers – without the Internet.  Cell phone users use the handset to take pictures, watch videos and play games. North Koreans often use Chinese-made printers to print out photos taken with their mobile phones,

Defectors explained calls were usually reserved for emergencies, to avoid expensive top-up fees. A basic plan comes with just 200 minutes of calling and 20 text messages.

There are no signs that North Korea introduced cell phones as a means of reforming or opening up to the outside world. On the contrary, Pyongyang appears to be using the wide distribution of mobile phones to maintain and solidify its stability. One defector explained, “It is stupid to criticize the regime on the cell phone, which does more harm than good, when the call rate is exorbitant.”

It isn’t just the money factor, though, that is stopping cell phone users from actually using the handsets for communication. Authorities monitor all text messages, along with location data in real-time. Voice calls are recorded, transcribed, and stored for three years according to a former North Korean security agent. Also, there are no international calls allowed, and Internet access is banned for all but the ruling elite.

He told VOA that security guards often stop and question cell phone users on the street to search for any “politically inappropriate” content on their phones, especially South Korean soap dramas. An officer can confiscate a phone on the spot at his discretion.

Despite the North Korean government’s success at suppressing the flow of information through the mobile phone network, the network could potentially widen loopholes for information to flow to and from the reclusive state. For example, amateur reporters can record data on their cell phone memory card and transfer it to illegal Chinese cell phones to convey the information to foreign media outlets. Rimjin-gang, a Japan-based magazine featuring news and information from undercover North Korean reporters, says it has used this method to get hidden camera video out of the country.

[VoA]

A glimmer of financial hope in North Korea?

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A North Korean defector who now lives in South Korea has this to say about life in Hyesan, a North Korean city near the border with China: “Women are wearing clothes from Japan or South Korea that show off their figure if they have some money, and cosmetics from South Korea, too.” Since her 2012 defection, Ms Park remains in touch with family in Hyesan thanks to a mobile phone illicitly brought from China. “Seven out of 10 homes have color TV, and people can afford to make meat broth once a month . . . The quality of life has improved a lot.”

Though Kim Jong-Un has stressed a desire to strengthen the economy and “improve the people’s standard of living”, Hyesan’s growing middle class is more a reflection of the North Korean government’s surrender of control over much of the real economy than a result of improved policies. It is also a window into North Korea’s struggle to foster economic development while keeping a totalitarian political system alive.

After the starvation of up to 1m people in the famine demonstrated the state’s inability to feed its people, it was forced to turn a blind eye to the informal markets that sprang up. For residents of cities such as Hyesan, near the border with China, the opportunity to engage in illicit trade with Chinese merchants has been especially lucrative.

The capital has always offered higher living standards than the rest of North Korea, serving as a home for about 3m of those considered most dependable and loyal to the regime. Visitors to Pyongyang over the past two years also speak of growing prosperity. There are more cars on the formerly traffic-free streets – including BMWs, despite a UN ban on luxury goods imports. Children in the city’s parks use skates, department stores are increasingly well-stocked, and a growing number of once drab shops bear hoardings with eye-catching logos.

Chinese trade with North Korea hit a record $6.6bn last year, according to the Seoul-based Korea International Trade Association – the vast majority of Pyongyang’s trade and up ninefold since 2001. Says Andray Abrahamian, executive director of Choson Exchange, which provides business training to young North Koreans. “Increasingly, over the last decade, people see business as the way to get ahead rather than the traditional way, which would be getting ahead in the party or the military.”

The majority of North Koreans though still endure grinding poverty that contrasts sharply with the lifestyles of the smugglers of Hyesan, let alone the Pyongyang elite. A study last October by the World Food Programme estimated only 16 per cent of households had “acceptable food consumption”. In the northern province of Ryanggang, 40 per cent of children under five were stunted.

[Simon Mundy writing in Financial Times]

Only a crack of online freedom in North Korea

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North Korea knows it must enter the information age to survive in the global economy. And it opened that door just a crack recently for The Associated Press to reveal a self-contained, tightly controlled Intranet called Kwangmyong, or “Bright.”

Content? Restricted to the point that the use of Bright hardly even needs to be watched by officials.

Chats and email? Monitored.

How about the OS? It’s “Red Star,” now available in version 3.0, which looks a lot like the Microsoft operating system, but is used only in North Korea. There’s a Firefox-style search engine called “Our Country” that helps users navigate around an estimated 1,000 to 5,500 websites, mostly for universities, government offices, libraries and state-run corporations. Most North Koreans have no access to the Internet at all.

“The goal is to reap the benefits of information technology, while keeping out potentially corrosive foreign influences,” said Scott Bruce, a North Korea IT expert and analyst at the Arlington, Virginia-based nonprofit CRDF Global.

One of the first things an outside observer notices at Kim Il Sung University is that the students are actually studying. Not wasting time on Facebook or Reddit, no BuzzFeed. In fact, the sites they surf most likely aren’t even on the Internet, but on the North-Korea-only Bright.

“I haven’t had a time when I’ve been allowed to use the Intranet — since the point is that it is not open to foreigners,” said Will Scott, a computer sciences instructor at the Pyongyang University of Science and Technology who has worked about as closely with North Korea’s attempt to get wired as any other foreigner.

Through daily interactions with North Korean students at his university, however, Scott has been able to glean a general outline of what Bright is all about. “… This has a striking resemblance to the uses first made of the Internet in the U.S. when it was introduced in the ’80s.”

Technologically, he said, North Korea’s Intranet is a mini-Internet, with a combination of joint venture companies and vaguely government-affiliated labs that collectively maintain the core infrastructure that exists on the global Web. Graduate students and North Korean professors at the Pyongyang University of Science and Technology are allowed to access the real Internet from a dedicated computer lab, similar to the e-library at Kim Il Sung University. They receive the same speed and unfiltered access that foreign instructors do, although everyone’s access is monitored.

Students’ emails must be reviewed and approved by one of the vice presidents of the university before they can be sent, which, Scott said, means they rarely use email.

Some experts believe that as more North Koreans become familiar with the benefits of going online — a trend that would seem inevitable if North Korea is to keep afloat in the information age — it will become increasingly difficult for the ruling regime to keep the IT dam from bursting.

[AP]

Methamphetamine in North Korea

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After the North Korean coal mine in Hoeryong, a hardscrabble mining town of 130,000 on the Chinese border, stopped paying salaries, Park Kyung Ok tried her hand hawking methamphetamine.

Park used to travel to another North Korean city, Chongjin, to buy meth, known as orum or ice, that she would carry back hidden in a candy box. She would sell it behind the counter at a bicycle parts store at the public market. Hidden among the spare parts were metal plates, burners and other drug paraphernalia.

She usually paid the equivalent of US$17 for a gram of high quality product, which she would then cut with cheaper meth and divide into 12 smaller portions to resell for a few dollars’ profit.

“It was just enough money that I could buy rice to eat and coal for heating,” said Park, who was interviewed recently in China and, like most North Korean defectors, used an assumed name.

North Koreans say there is little stigma attached to meth use. Some take it to treat colds or boost their energy; students take it to work late. The drug also helps curb appetites in a country where food is scarce. It is offered up as casually as a cup of tea, North Koreans say.

“If you go to somebody’s house it is a polite way to greet somebody by offering them a sniff,” said Lee Saera, 43, of Hoeryong, also interviewed in China. “It is like drinking coffee when you’re sleepy, but ice is so much better.”

Despite its draconian legal system, North Korea has long been easygoing about narcotics use.  With analgesics scarce, opium paste is commonly sold for pain relief. Marijuana (called “mouth tobacco”) is legal and frequently grown at home to be mixed in with rolling tobacco.

Through the 1990s, the North Korean government ran the production of opium, meth and other drugs for Office 39, a unit raising hard currency for late leader Kim Jong-il, according to narcotics investigators. But the North Korean government has largely gone out of the drug business, according to the US State Department’s 2013 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report.

North Koreans say meth then appeared on the streets around 2005 and that it came from Hamhung, the one-time center of the nation’s pharmaceutical and chemical industry, and thus a city filled with unemployed scientists and technicians. The industry then spread to Chongjin and the capital, Pyongyang.

Kenneth Bae urges U.S. to help secure his release

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Kenneth Bae said in a statement Monday that he had committed a “serious crime” against North Korea, and that the nation does “not abuse human rights,” according to China’s state-run news agency Xinhua.

“I would like to plead with the U.S. government, press and my family to stop worsening my situation by making vile rumors against North Korea and releasing materials related to me, which are not based on the facts,” he said before video cameras.

“I want to be pardoned by the North as soon as possible and return to my beloved family. For that, I ask the U.S. government, press and my family to make more active efforts and pay more attention.”

Any statement made by Bae in captivity would be sanctioned by the North Korean government, whose widespread human rights abuses are known to the world. The country has a long history of exacting false “confessions.”

Bae was arrested in November 2012 in Rason along North Korea’s northeastern coast. The devout Christian and father of three operated a China-based company specializing in tours of North Korea, according to his family and freekennow.com, a website friends set up to promote his release.

“Several years ago, Kenneth saw an opportunity that combined his entrepreneurial spirit with his personal convictions as a Christian,” the site said. “He believed in showing compassion to the North Korean people by contributing to their economy in the form of tourism.”

[CNN]

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North Korea press conference called by American missionary Kenneth Bae

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American missionary Kenneth Bae, who has been jailed in North Korea for more than a year, appeared before reporters Monday and appealed to the U.S. government to do its best to secure his release.

Wearing a gray cap and inmate’s uniform with the number 103 on his chest, Bae spoke in Korean during the brief appearance, which was attended by The Associated Press and a few other foreign media in Pyongyang. He made an apology and said he had committed anti-government acts.

Bae called the press conference held at his own request. He was under guard during the appearance. It is not unusual for prisoners in North Korea to say after their release that they spoke in similar situations under duress.

Bae, the longest-serving American detainee in North Korea in recent years, expressed hope that the U.S. government will do its best to win his release. He said he had not been treated badly in confinement. “I believe that my problem can be solved by close cooperation and agreement between the American government and the government of this country,” he said.

Bae was arrested in November 2012 while leading a tour group and accused of crimes against the state before being sentenced to 15 years of hard labor. He was moved to a hospital last summer in poor health.

Bae said a comment last month by U.S. Vice President Joe Biden had made his situation more difficult. “The vice president of United States said that I was detained here without any reason,” Bae said. “And even my younger sister recently told the press that I had not committed any crime and I know that the media reported it.

“I think these comments infuriated the people here enormously. And for this reason, I am in a difficult situation now. As a result, although I was in medical treatment in the hospital for five months until now, it seems I should return to prison. And moreover there is greater difficulty in discussions about my amnesty.”

North Korea freed an elderly American veteran of the Korean War, 85-year-old Merrill Newman, who had been held for weeks for alleged crimes during the 1950-53 conflict. North Korean state media said he was released because he apologized for his wrongdoing and that authorities also considered his age and medical condition.

“We shouldn’t take Kenneth Bae’s comments merely as his own,” said Kim Jin Moo, a North Korea expert at the South Korean state-run Korea Institute for Defense Analyses in Seoul. “The reason why North Korea had Kenneth Bae make this statement … is that they want Washington to reach out to them.”

[AP]

Ways North Koreans are beginning to defy their regime

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In Secret State of North Korea documentary, FRONTLINE follows several North Koreans who are working to fight back against the regime. Some work outside the country to subvert the state, while others defy authority from inside, even secretly filming what life in North Korea is really like. Some of these acts of resistance include:

1. An increasing willingness to confront authority – Over the past few years, footage smuggled out of the country shows North Koreans protesting rules they think are unfair, for example a ban on women wearing pants (which was recently lifted). People also appear to be pushing the limits of private enterprise: A woman running an illegal bus service confronts an army officer who is trying to stop her.

2. Secretly filming what the government doesn’t want people to see – A network of North Koreans inside the country, equipped with handheld cameras, have been quietly documenting untold stories, like department stores filled with goods no one can buy.

3. Watching foreign television shows and films – It’s strictly prohibited to distribute or watch foreign TV shows and movies in North Korea. Kim Jong-un has reportedly sent security forces house-to-house searching for illicit DVDs and flash drives. But North Koreans — from party officials to teenage girls — keep watching them anyway, curious about the outside world.

4. Appearing on a talk show of defectors – Part current affairs, part talent show and part beauty pageant, On My Way to Meet You is a South Korean television show featuring young North Korean defectors. While it’s illegal to watch in North Korea, many people tune in anyway to see family and friends now living in Seoul.

5. Sending balloons full of cash – Even though the North Korean government officially considers the U.S. to be an enemy, American dollars are still accepted as currency. To help their fellow citizens, defectors now living in South Korea float balloons full of dollars over the border. One dollar can buy two days’ worth of food for a struggling family.

[PBS]  >>> Click to watch the Frontline documentary “Secret State of North Korea” <<<