Addressing North Korean clichés and half-truths: The Omniscient Criminal State

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Excerpts from “North Korea: Markets and Military Rule” by Hazel Smith, as printed in The Guardian:

North Korea is, allegedly, a criminal state for three reasons: firstly, because state representatives are alleged to systematically abuse diplomatic immunity to smuggle counterfeit currency, narcotics, counterfeit cigarettes, endangered species and other illicit goods across borders. Secondly, because state-owned companies manufacture counterfeit currency, cigarettes and narcotics for sale abroad.

Thirdly, this activity is apparently directed by the North Korean leadership for personal gain. These criminal acts, it is argued, should be understood as state-sponsored, and are managed by a shadowy party organization called Bureau 39. But the caricature of an omniscient state guided by a leader sitting in central Pyongyang planning day-to-day how to maneuver 24 million people to commit criminal activity for his sole benefit misses the point.

The US government and international media reports derive from a small number of US government publications that are in turn largely founded on allegations from defectors and unnamed US officials.

Such reports acknowledge the tentative nature of the evidence: “Data should be considered a ‘far cry’ from anything that might be remotely considered as evidence in a US court of law”, an official US report said on the DPRK’s alleged drug trafficking.

Perhaps surprisingly, given the vehemence in the west’s belief of North Korean state criminality, there have been only a few international court cases where North Korean nationals have been charged and found guilty of producing counterfeit goods or smuggling.

The cartoon picture of the country obscures important changes in North Korean society, and handicaps our understanding of their political consequences.

Creating the perfect North Korean leader

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Recent rumors about North Korea make us muse on just how weird North Korea is.

When it comes to lionized feats of North Korean leaders, there are two kinds of tales. The first are the “real’ legends, i.e. those actually propagated by North Korea, usually quite incredible, but not unbelievable. We’re told that the dynasty’s founder, Kim Il Sung, wrote patriotic slogans in beautiful calligraphy at age three and founded a proto-political party at age 13. Kim Jong Il was born on the sacred slopes of Mt Baekdu and as a middle school student repaired trucks while also organizing ideological study sessions. These kinds of stories are primarily meant for the domestic audience to convince them of the merits of their uniquely qualified leaders. Education on Kim Jong Un’s exploits will certainly be growing.

The second kind of myth exists almost exclusively in international media and often consist of truly unbelievable tales. The best example is, of course, the “Kim Jong Il got 18 holes-in-one the first time he golfed” story. Or Kim Jong Il scoring a perfect 300 the first time he bowled is another such tale. North Koreans have never, ever heard of these stories, unless they’ve been told them by a foreigner. They exist purely in a fantasy version of North Korea we too often indulge in. We let this version take hold for several reasons.

First, the bar is exceptionally low for journalism on North Korea. It is a difficult place to cover, no doubt, but to all too many journalists this seems to mean a free pass. There is no punishment for getting it wrong.

Second, South Korean journalism on North Korea is problematic — we should remember the two countries are locked in a 70-year propaganda war. South Korean journalistic culture allows for stories to be built around a single anonymous source. Meanwhile, many Western news outlets are quite happy to quote South Korean articles as authoritative.

Finally, they do have customs and rhetoric that are often extreme or do not conform to our standards. Kids in the DPRK do sing songs for “their father Kim Jong Un,” for example.

More broadly, there are over 24 million people in the DPRK. There are trusting people, cynical people, simple people and smart people. In what way they interact with the information environment they face very much depends on who they are as individuals. Generally, however, it is fair to say most people accept the stories of their leaders’ heroics as truth. But we should remember that the stories they hear are usually not as weird as the ones we hear.

[Read full Reuters blog post]

North Korean merchant shipping fleets mask North Korean weapons trade

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North Korea has developed sophisticated ways to circumvent United Nations sanctions, including the suspected use of its embassies to facilitate an illegal trade in weapons, according to an United Nations report.

North Korea has also gone to great lengths to mask the origin of its merchant shipping fleet by reflagging and renaming ships, the report said, particularly after the introduction of tightened U.N. sanctions in early 2013 that followed the country’s third nuclear test. Most of the registered owners of the ships are small companies that rarely own more than five vessels, meaning Pyongyang is able to keep its fleet running if a ship or shipping company is seized or has its assets frozen.

The report said North Korea was also making use of more complicated financial countermeasures and techniques “pioneered by drug-trafficking organizations” that made tracking the isolated state’s purchase of prohibited goods more difficult.

Under the myriad U.N. sanctions, North Korea is banned from shipping and receiving cargo related to its nuclear and missile programs. The importation of some luxury goods is also banned, along with the illicit transfer of bulk cash.

[Reuters]

Mexico holds North Korean freighter over UN weapons sanctions

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A 430-foot-long North Korean freighter Mu Du Bong was riding high in the water when the vessel slammed into a coral reef in Mexican waters in the Gulf of Mexico last July 14, thudding to a halt. Salvage vessels pulled the freighter off the reef 12 days later and brought it to port in Tuxpan, where it’s been idle for nine months, moored to a wharf on the Tuxpan River. North Korea has declined to repatriate the 33 crew members.

Arms-trafficking practices led the U.N. Security Council to impose sanctions on a North Korean concern, Ocean Maritime Management Co. Ltd., that counts the Mu Du Bong among its 14 oceangoing freighters. Another of the company’s vessels was intercepted in Panama nearly two years ago, its cargo holds piled high with sacks of Cuban sugar. When inspectors removed the sacks, they discovered two MiG-21 fighter jets, 15 jet engines and radar control systems for missile launches. Cuba claimed the war materiel was being sent to North Korea to be refurbished and was to be returned.

“Thus far, 13 of the 14 vessels controlled by OMM have been renamed, their ownership transferred to other single ship-owner companies . . . and vessel management transferred to two main companies,” said a preliminary U.N. report dated Feb. 23.

William J. Newcomb, a visiting scholar at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University who’s a former member of the U.N. Security Council’s panel of experts on North Korea sanctions, noted that the Mu Du Bong’s travels were similar to the activities of the Chong Chon Gang before it was caught carrying Cuban weapons. “It had all the earmarks of an arms transfer,” he said.

[McClatchy]

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]

10 months of North Korean torture and then transferred to prison camp

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Jung Gwang Il is sitting in a comfortable hotel room in Seoul, South Korea, recalling the hell he endured when he still lived in North Korea.

He describes something that resembles waterboarding and being shocked repeatedly with live wires. Worse, he says, was “pigeon torture,” where his hands were bound behind his back and fastened to a wall at a height that made squatting or standing impossible. He was forced to lean forward, twisting in agony for days, his chest puffed like a pigeon’s breast. “It was so awful because they could just leave me there for a week, and I’d be tortured without them having to do anything,” he says. “That’s how evil they are.”

Jung ended 10 months of torture by confessing to spying — a crime he hadn’t committed — and was sent to a prison camp where he slept in barracks with 600 other men. The slave labor and lack of food took a toll: He arrived weighing 167 pounds and left three years later at 79 pounds, his teeth bashed into stubs.

Now a defector living in South Korea — with a new set of teeth — Jung, 51, is determined to inflict maximum damage on the regime of supreme leader Kim Jong Un to the north. His primary weapon is not military arms but rather the Western media he smuggles into his former country, designed to embarrass the regime and expose the lies told by its propagandists and believed by its subjects. Educational material and entertainment both are popular within North Korea’s black market, but the latter is more effective because it is more difficult to demonize as propaganda.

[Hollywood Reporter]

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]

Christian missionaries accused of human trafficking by North Korea

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North Korea has accused Christian missionaries of human trafficking, according to the Christian Post.

“There are in the northeastern area of China so-called churches and priests exclusively engaged in hostile acts against the DPRK,” said So Se Pyong, North Korea’s ambassador to the U.N. “They indoctrinate the illegal border crossers with anti-DPRK ideology and send them back to the DPRK with assignments of subversion, destruction, human trafficking and even terrorist acts.”

Pyong’s remarks come on the heels of an official report released by Kim Jong Un’s government that called the U.S. a “living hell” where rights are ruthlessly violated.

“Such poor human right (sic) records in the U.S. are an inevitable product of the ruling quarters’ policy against humanity … Its chief executive, Obama, indulges himself in luxury almost every day, squandering hundred millions of dollars on his foreign trip in disregard of his people’s wretched life.”

North Korea is considered the worst persecutor of Christians by numerous human rights watchdog groups, notably Open Doors. “Forced to meet only in secret, they dare not share their faith even with their families, for fear of imprisonment in a labor camp. Anyone discovered engaging in secret religious activity may be subject to arrest, disappearance, torture, even public execution.”

[Worthy News]

North Korean propaganda chief makes way for Kim Jong Un sister?

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An octogenarian dinosaur in the North Korean regime seems to have finally retired and made way for leader Kim Jong-un’s sister.

Footage shows Kim Ki-nam (86), the one-time secretary of North Korea’s Workers Party, sitting in the third pew alongside vice-ministerial officials rather than on the leaders’ platform during the third session of the Supreme People’s Assembly in Pyongyang on April 9.

Kim Ki-nam was also not seen on the leaders platform at a rally marking the 103rd birthday of regime founder Kim Il-sung last Tuesday.

This suggests he has retired from his job and assumed an honorary post.

It is highly likely that Kim Jong-un’s sister Yeo-jong has replaced him.

“Kim Jong-un probably appointed his sister, whom he can trust, as party secretary for propaganda,” a source speculated. “Kim Ki-nam’s old age was a consideration for a post that is in charge of idolizing the young leader.”

[Chosun Ilbo]

US Court awards $330 Million to family of slain missionary in landmark judgment against North Korea

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A U.S. court has awarded $330 million to Shurat HaDin, on behalf of the U.S.-based family of Rev. Kim Dong-Shik, a Christian missionary and activist who was abducted by North Korean agents inside China and later killed in North Korea, the Christian Post reported.

“The United States District Court for the District of Columbia awarded the family $330 million — which includes $15 million dollars each to Kim’s son and brother, as well as $300 million in punitive damages — against the government of North Korea.

” ‘This is an important human rights decision that will be utilized in all political abduction cases going forward,’ Nitsana Darshan-Leitner the group’s director said.”