North Korean defectors’ detention unlawful, say human rights lawyers

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The ongoing tussle between the two Koreas over 12 waitresses from North Korea who defected to the South spilled into a courtroom in Seoul on Tuesday, where human rights lawyers accused the authorities in the South of unlawfully detaining them.

The 12 women, together with their male manager, flew to Seoul, the South Korean capital, in April after leaving a North Korean government-run restaurant in the Chinese city of Ningbo. South Korea welcomed the women and described them as having defected of their own free will after growing fed up with their totalitarian government.

Colleagues and family members of the 12 North Korean waitresses who defected were presented to the news media in Pyongyang

North Korea immediately accused the South’s spy agency, the National Intelligence Service, of kidnapping the women. It has since arranged for their parents to give interviews with the Western news media, during which they have demanded that South Korea allow them to meet with their daughters to learn their true intentions. The South has dismissed the demands as propaganda.

The inter-Korean standoff took an unexpected turn recently, when a South Korean human rights group, Lawyers for a Democratic Society, asked a court in Seoul to release the women from a tightly guarded government facility south of the city where they have been kept since their arrival, so they could speak for themselves. The group accused the National Intelligence Service of blocking the women’s access to legal services and their right to speak freely.

The South Korean government has denied the lawyers access to the women, saying that the defectors do not want their services. It has also said that if the women appeared in court and testified that they abandoned North Korea of their own accord, that would prompt the North to persecute their relatives in retaliation.

By law, the National Intelligence Service can keep North Koreans who flee to the South at a secluded facility outside Seoul for as long as six months for debriefing and to ferret out spies.

[New York Times]

Kim Jong-un Swiss school days

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Kim Jong-un spent his early years in Berne, Switzerland, where as a “shy” student he learned German, French and English, and honed skills in skiing and playground dispute resolution.

“He was a shy and introverted young man who liked team sports. He used to really admire [US basketball player] Michael Jordan and [action film star] Jean-Claude Van Damme,” said former student Ron Schwartz from Canada.

He was humble and friendly with the children of American diplomats and often helped break up fights between classmates, explained a former school director. A car arrived every day after school to pick him up, the report said; classmates and school officials thought he was the driver’s son.

Kim studied at the International School of Berne in the 1990s, but left in 1998 at the age of 15 before taking his baccalaureate exam, the equivalent to a British A-level. The Swiss weekly news magazine L’Hebdo reported that he went by the pseudonym Pak Chol. The boarding school welcomes around 300 pupils from 40 different countries, half of which are the offspring of diplomats.

[swissinfo.ch]

Kim Jong Un fearful about his personal safety and image

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North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is so paranoid about his personal safety that he has developed insomnia, South Korea’s spy agency says.

The young leader lives in fear of assassination and spends his days gorging on food and drink, supposedly ballooning in weight from about 90 kilograms (198 lbs) when he took power in 2012 to around 130 kg (286 lbs) today, the National Intelligence Service reported to a committee of the national assembly on July 1.

Members of the Intelligence Committee said Kim, who in the past ordered his mentor uncle executed on grounds of treason, could well be suffering from lifestyle-related diseases as a result.

Recently, an aunt of Kim who lives in exile in the United States, granted an interview with The Washington Post and said of her nephew’s childhood: “He was short-tempered and had a lack of tolerance.”

Kim instructed North Korean ambassadors overseas to ensure that those details do not reach the masses in North Korea.

In North Korea, Kim Jong Un is portrayed as a boy genius who learned to drive a car at the age of three and excelled in sports and as an academic.

[Asahi Shimbun]

Programs to help North Korean defectors shed stigma

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Ken Eom, who was a soldier in the People’s Army, defected from the North Korea in 2010. He eventually arrived in Seoul after seeking asylum at the South Korean Embassy in Thailand.

But his problems were far from over. “Prejudice is most difficult to cope with. In South Korea news, there’s a stereotype of North Korea associated with violence or communist totalitarianism,” Eom said, describing how the media affects local perceptions of his birthplace.

Other problems persist because defectors new to the South lack knowledge of the basic workings of a capitalist society and struggle with English, which has been adapted to the South Korean vernacular. These and other setbacks result in a loss of confidence among defectors who become resigned to feelings of inferiority and try to hide their identity, Eom said.

But the former North Korean soldier said he resolved problems by stepping out of the fear zone and seeking help with everyday issues. “When I began telling people I’m from North Korea and opening up, people around me became a source of help,” Eom said.

A new program allows participants to speak out about North Korea and overcome the stigma of their identity. It’s not easy, though, for North Koreans to speak out after living under an authoritarian regime, that avoidance of the limelight continues in South Korea, where defectors don’t feel motivated to attract attention.

[UPI]

Satellite imagery suggests China is punishing North Korea

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Following North Korea’s nuclear test in January, trade over the China-North Korea border dropped dramatically, according to newly released satellite imagery. The revelation has led experts to conclude that Beijing has been quietly punishing Kim Jong Un by cutting off the flow of funds to his regime.

There’s no question that the China-North Korea relationship has been strained since Kim assumed power in 2011. Against Beijing’s wishes, the young leader has revved up North Korea’s pace of missile tests and detonated two nuclear devices, one in 2013 and then again this January. In 2013, Kim executed his uncle Jang Song Thaek, who had been China’s main contact in Pyongyang.

After the latest nuclear explosion, Secretary of State John F. Kerry publicly called on China to end “business as usual” with North Korea. Publicly, Beijing rejected being told by the United States how to handle its client state. Behind the scenes, it appears Beijing was doing just that.

Victor Cha, director for Asian affairs at the National Security Council during the George W. Bush administration, and now at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), led a team of researchers that procured and analyzed the new satellite imagery as part of their project, a website and database dedicated to demystifying what’s going on inside the world’s most secretive state.

“It shows that China pursues things in their own way when it comes to North Korea, not because the U.S. or the U.N. tells them to,” said Cha. “The good news is that they are squeezing them more than we were led to expect.”

CSIS worked with imagery analysts at the commercial satellite firm DigitalGlobe to collect and examine satellite photos of several key trade-related areas on both sides of the China-North Korea border. Satellite images showed a “substantive reduction of economic activity on the Sino-North Korean border” as evidenced by a huge drop in the number of rail cars at the stations, trucks in customs areas, trucks on the bridge and undocked boats in the Yalu River.

[Washington Post]

Kim Jong-un gets another new title

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North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has been named Chairman of an organ called the Commission on State Affairs, a new body established under a revised constitution adopted by the parliament and which replaces the powerful National Defense Commission. Pundits speculate that the aim of restoring this agency is a decisive move away from the military-first doctrine, as part of Kim junior’s ongoing attempts to bring the unruly military to heel and gain full control of the state.

The North Korean leader now has nine titles, most amounting to the same thing, including:

  • Chairman of the Central Committee of the Workers Party
  • Member of the standing committee of the Politburo
  • Workers Party chairman
  • Supreme Commander of the Korean People’s Army
  • Chairman of the military committee of the Workers Party
  • First Chairman of the National Defense Commission
  • Chairman of the Commission on State Affairs.

[Chosun Ilbo]

More North Korean workers defect from China

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Several North Korean women reportedly defected from their work site in the Chinese city of Dandong – a month after a group of waitresses fled a state-run restaurant in central China.

Kim Seong-min, a defector in South Korea who heads Free North Korea Radio, said seven or eight North Korean women escaped their place of work on Saturday.

In response, North Korea’s state security department dispatched agents to China to track down the women, with the cooperation of Chinese security, Kim said.

Kim told Yonhap the women were all in their 20s, and they were working at a Chinese-owned company, although he did not specify whether the site was a factory or another establishment.

[UPI]

Chinese tourism to North Korea

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“Every day we send dozens of people across to Sinuiju for one- or four-day trips,“ says local travel agent Li Qiang, referring to North Korea’s third largest city that sits opposite Dandong. “Anyone can go — except Americans, Japanese and South Koreans.” Boat tours weave between North Korean islands that sit in the middle of the waterway. For about an hour, passengers are completely surrounded by North Korean territory.

“I’m really curious and wanted to see the mysterious North Korea,” says Luan Shicai, a 42-year-old hairdresser from provincial capital Shenyang, standing by a Chinese government sign that warns visitors against throwing food to the North Koreans. “After seeing their life, it makes me feel good about my life here.”

“More and more foreigners are coming here to see North Korea,” says the captain called Mr. Kang, explaining that he makes 10 trips a day in peak season. A single-engine longboat approaches driven by a man in black flat-cap, utility waistcoat and cloth trousers rolled up to his knees. He begins hawking an assortment of wares — eggs, North Korean cigarettes, plastic tubs of kimchi pickled cabbage, “tiger bone” liquor. But he’s not a chancing smuggler — he’s an employee of the North Korean government, running probably the world’s smallest duty-free shop.

“He can collect 2,000-3,000 yuan [$300-500] a day,” says Mr. Kang, as he guns the engine away. “But he gives all that to the government. He only gets paid 50 yuan [$7.5] per month. That’s an extremely good wage in North Korea.”

[TIME]

China and Russia on North Korea’s nuclear missile strategy

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The leaders of Russia and China have agreed that they will not accept North Korea’s nuclear and missile strategy, but they reaffirmed their opposition to a possible deployment of an advanced U.S. missile defense system in South Korea, according to their joint statement Monday. The statement was issued after Russian President Vladimir Putin held a summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping last Saturday in Beijing.

Putin and Xi said they agreed that the long-stalled six-party talks are the best way to achieve the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. Separately, a North Korean nuclear envoy who visited Beijing last week said Pyongyang wouldn’t return to the negotiating table on the country’s nuclear weapons program.

Putin and Xi also agreed that they would fully implement U.N. sanctions against North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs.

Russia and China have long voiced opposition to the deployment of a THAAD battery to South Korea, claiming that the U.S. missile shield may undermine the strategic balance in the region. South Korea and the U.S. have dismissed the concerns, saying the THAAD system is defensive in nature and would only target North Korea.

[Yonhap]