North Korea proposes talks with South Korea

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North Korea has proposed talks with South Korea to be held on Nov. 26 at the truce village on their militarized border, North Korea’s official KCNA news agency said Friday.

The talks, if held, would be the first government-level meeting focused on easing tension since the two sides agreed to improve ties following an armed standoff in August.

An official at South Korea’s Unification Ministry, which handles ties with the North, confirmed receiving Pyongyang’s proposal and said it would soon make a decision on whether to accept it, possibly later Friday.

“Now we’re back on again, the game’s afoot,” John Delury, a North Korea expert at Yonsei University in Seoul, said, adding the proposal for working-level talks would ease the way for the two sides to get on with discussions. “Sometimes these talks break down before they even start over what level to send, so this sounds like a very pragmatic and straightforward approach,” he added

[Reuters]

Helping North Korean defectors enter the 21st century

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Joseph Park wants others who have escaped North Korea to buy in, literally and emotionally, to his venture. Ten dollars is all it takes to become a shareholder in the Yovel coffee shop in Seoul. It’s not about the money. It’s about the investment.

“There are a handful of coffee shops and restaurants in South Korea that employ North Koreans, but they don’t have any decision-making power . … They don’t get a chance to learn and take responsibility. No one lasts more than a year because they don’t have a stake in it,” he said. “That’s why, when I started this company, I wanted to give North Koreans power to make decisions.”

There are more than 28,000 Koreans who have escaped the North and now live in the South, and many struggle to make it in the frenetic South Korean society. When they arrive, most have never used a computer or owned a credit card. …Many struggle to hold down jobs in the capitalist South.

The South offers some job training to the North Koreans who make it. After three months in a reception center, they can choose to continue with vocational training, such as hairdressing, welding or car repair. But these classes are not popular, with most defectors eager to get out in the “real” South Korea. Only 174 have opted for such courses this year, according to the Unification Ministry.

[Washington Post]

China to send back 9 defectors to North Korea

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Nine defectors are in danger of being sent back to North Korea after being caught in Vietnam and handed over to China last month, an activist group said. Among the North Korean defectors are an army captain and a one-year-old boy.

After fleeing the North in early October, they traveled from Shenyang to the town of Nanning on the Chinese border with Vietnam, according to the Citizens’ Alliance for North Korean Human Rights.

They crossed the border on Oct. 22 but were caught by Vietnamese police during a random check on a bus bound for Laos in Móng Cái, Vietnam. They were handed over to Chinese police in Dongxing, Guangxi, where they were detained until recently.

On Monday they were taken to Shenyang by train and transferred to a garrison in the border town of Tumen and are now facing repatriation to the North.

China used to repatriate all defectors that were caught there, but since last year it has mostly stopped. Now there are worries that improving ties between the two allies mean defectors will be sent back again.

[Chosun Ilbo]

Why North Korean defections are down – Threatened North Korean border guards

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For the first time in 12 years, an average of less than 100 North Koreans now defect to South Korea each month.

A North Korean defector who was a chief border guard in Hoeryong, North Hamgyong Province until late 2013, said, “Since Kim Jong-un took power, border guards have been punished for taking bribes from defectors, even if this came to light after they’d already left the job. They became terrified. So bribes no longer worked.”

On the other hand, border guards who capture defectors are rewarded with promotion, Workers Party membership and recommendations to prestigious universities.

Apart from all this, the regime also installed CCTV on popular defection routes and fortified the border with barbed wire.    Read more

Why North Korean defections are down – More expensive trafficker fees

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As the risks rise, so do the fees of traffickers who assist North Koreans in their escape. These have doubled from five years ago.

A source said traffickers who used to charge $3400-4300 to cross the Yalu or Tumen rivers into China, now charge nearly $8600. In some areas along the Tumen River, the cost climbs to $14,000.

China has also boosted crackdowns on North Korean defectors because it fears a mass exodus.

Better living condition in North Korea also undoubtedly plays a part in less defectors. One researcher at a state-run think tank said since there are now some 400 markets in the North, and they have improved the lives of many who might earlier have risked their lives to flee destitution.

However, this same development has prompted more members of the elite to defect, often to escape the side effects of nascent capitalism.

“Capitalism has spawned corruption and business conflicts,” said Cho Dong-ho at Ewha Womens University. “It seems a lot of fat cats defect when they lose a battle over business interests or face corruption charges.”

[Chosun Ilbo]

UN Secretary-General to Pyongyang?

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Yonhap news agency reported that the South Korean secretary-general Ban Ki-moon would visit North Korea to help set the stage for addressing a set of North Korea issues including its nuclear program.

Should he go to Pyongyang, it would be the first visit by an incumbent U.N. leader in 22 years. Boutros Boutros-Ghali, who headed the U.N. from 1992-96, visited Pyongyang in 1993, while Kurt Waldheim, who led the U.N. from 1972-81, visited the North in 1979.

Ban planned to visit the inter-Korean industrial complex in the North’s border city of Gaeseong in May. But Pyongyang abruptly canceled his visit without elaborating on the reasons for the rejection. Observers say Ban’s remarks against Pyongyang’s potential launch of a rocket might have angered the North.

Analysts said that if Pyongyang has accepted Ban’s visit, it might want to use the U.N. to ease international pressure over its woeful human rights record, and nuclear and missile programs.

[Korea Herald]

South Korea police raid Christian group for North Korea spying

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Seoul’s spy agency raided the offices of a Christian organization last Friday on charges of violating South Korea’s anti-Pyongyang National Security Law, after the group helped a North Korean defector, who wanted to return home, hold a press conference.

Law enforcement entered the offices of the group known as Christian Peace Action Shepherds and also served search warrants at the residences of Pastors Choe Jae-bong and Kim Seong-yun.

Police also issued an arrest warrant for Kim. A law enforcement source said Choe was out of the country, but once he returns from China, and after the seized documents from the raid are analyzed, police would determine whether to issue a subpoena, the source said.

Police said they have evidence the two pastors had been in contact with North Korean agents, and that Kim had met with spies affiliated with the Pyongyang’s Workers’ Party, during a trip to the Chinese city of Dalian in April 2011.

Christian Peace Action Shepherds received public attention in August after staging a press conference for the North Korean defector who said she wished to return to the North. Kim Ryon-hui had said she was tricked into defecting by South Korean agents in China.

The group immediately held a press conference outside the building on Friday where the raid had occurred and condemned the police and Seoul’s spy agency for “devising a sinister plot” to engage in “religious persecution,” Yonhap reported.

[UPI]

Defections from North Korea fall below 100 a month

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For the first time in 12 years, fewer than 100 North Koreans are defecting to South Korea each month, that is less than 1200 per year.  Last year’s figure was 1,400, with the highest being 2,914 in 2009.

North Korea watchers point to tougher crackdowns along the border with China since Kim Jong-un took power but also to rising living standards thanks to burgeoning open-air markets in the socialist state.

Lee Soo-seok of the Institute for National Security Strategy said, “The spread of open-air markets has reduced the number of North Koreans who live on the edge of starvation, and tightened security along the Chinese border has made it more difficult to defect.”

As of the end of October of this year, 28,497 North Korean defectors had settled in South Korea.

[Chosun Ilbo]

US official recommends pressure on North Korea human rights violations

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Speaking at the Seoul Human Rights conference, ambassador Robert King, U.S. special envoy for North Korean human rights, said, “What we’ve got to do in terms of dealing with the problems of human rights in North Korea is to look at this as a long, tough fight. I think we need continued pressure.”

King said the United States and others have pressured North Korea in various ways, and so far, the strategy has been working. Yonhap reported the U.S. official said Pyongyang is feeling the heat from the international community and a vote is to take place at the United Nations General Assembly in December on a North Korea human rights resolution.

Placing pressure on North Korea to change, however, is just one of many tasks for concerned governments, King said. Humanitarian aid should be provided in a way that can be monitored by outside observers, and in a way that assistance is properly channeled to the most vulnerable segment of the North Korean population.

King’s remarks come at a time when the U.N. General Assembly’s Third Committee is expected to address the North Korea human rights resolution.

[UPI]

German expert speculates North Korea could announce major reforms next year

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North Korean leader Kim Jong-un could announce a dramatic policy change, comparable to economic reforms that China and Vietnam embraced in the 1980s, when he convenes a rare meeting of the ruling Workers’ Party in May 2016, a German expert said Wednesday.

The last Congress of the Workers’ Party was held in 1980, when Kim’s grandfather and national founder Kim Il-sung was in power. Thus the announcement of a Congress spurred speculation as to why Kim decided to convene such a rare meeting.

Ruediger Frank, a North Korea expert at the University of Vienna, said Kim could use the meeting for a “declaration of his victory in the domestic struggle for power” after massive purges in the past years or to announce a major policy change marking the departure down a path of true reform.

“Kim Jong-un might … play it safe and, after having spent the last years cleaning the ranks of the party, military and government, will use the 7th Party Congress for a triumphant declaration of his victory in the domestic struggle for power. The country would return to a new normal and continue to muddle through,” Frank said.

“We should also remember that all major reforms of state socialism — be it in China under Deng Xiaoping, the Soviet Union under Gorbachev, or Vietnam — have been announced at such regular party congresses or related events,” he said in an article contributed to 38 North.     Read more