South Korean activists vow to send more leaflets over border

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South Korean activists vowed to launch balloons next week carrying anti-Pyongyang leaflets across the border into North Korea, days after their campaign triggered gunfire between the rival Koreas.

North Korea considers leaflets an attack on its government and has long demanded that South Korea ban activists from sending them. South Korea refuses, saying the activists are exercising freedom of speech.

Last Friday, North Korea opened fire after propaganda balloons were floated from the South. South Korean soldiers returned fire, but there were no reports of casualties. North Korea has warned it would take unspecified stronger measures if leafleting continues.

South Korean activist Choi Woo-won said Thursday his group won’t yield to the North’s threats and plans to send about 50,000 leaflets on Oct. 25. “Our government and people must not be fazed even though North Korea, the criminal organization, is blackmailing us,” said Choi, a university professor.

He said his leaflets will urge a military rebellion against North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. “The leaflets will tell North Korean soldiers to level their guns at Kim Jong Un, launch strikes at him and kill him,” Choi said.

Another activist Lee Min-bok said he was also ready to fly millions of leaflets, which describe South Korea’s economic prosperity. “No one can block my rights” to send leaflets, said Lee, whose leafleting Friday from a South Korean border village was believed to have directly caused North Korea to start firing.

The leafleting was high on the agenda when military generals from the two Koreas met in a border village on Wednesday in the countries’ first military talks since early 2011.

[AP]

A rap music revolution coming to North Korea?

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Kang Chun-hyok says even though he cannot go back across the border to North Korea, he hopes his music will.

Among the more than 26,000 North Koreans who have fled their country for new lives in South Korea, one refugee is trying to start a career as a hip-hop artist with hopes his music will eventually make it back to his homeland.

Kang Chun-hyok, 28, is originally from North Hamgyong province in North Korea. He grew up there during the famine that is believed to have killed millions. Kang says it is that experience that influences his music.

He says he wants to criticize the North Korean government because people there have been starving to death and are desperate, but yet the system has not changed. In this rap, Kang reminds North Korea’s rulers that while they were drinking expensive, imported alcohol, people like him were eating tree bark and drinking from mud puddles.

Those are lyrics that would not go over well with the Pyongyang regime. But Kang says he hopes his music will resonate with many people back home. He says he is not so sure what people in North Korea will think about his songs, but maybe his lyrics could help start a revolution there.

There is nothing like rap in North Korea, he says, though South Korean pop music is broadcast into the North by defector run radio stations in Seoul.

[VoA]

Kim Jong Un’s public reappearance with a cane

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After vanishing from the public eye for nearly six weeks, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is back.

kim jong un walking with caneNow, a new, albeit smaller, mystery has emerged: Why the cane?

Kim, who was last seen publicly at a Sept. 3 concert, appeared in images released by state media Tuesday smiling broadly and supporting himself with a walking stick while touring the newly built Wisong Scientists Residential District and another new institute in Pyongyang.

A South Korean analyst, Cheong Seong-chang, said Kim probably broke his media silence to dispel outside speculation that he wasn’t in control and to win sympathy from a domestic audience by creating the image of a leader who works through pain.

It was the first time a North Korean leader allowed himself to be seen relying on a cane or crutch, South Korean officials said.

Archive footage from August showed him overweight and limping, prompting the South Korean media to speculate he had undergone surgery on his ankles.

Cheong said Kim appeared in the recently released images to have lost about 10 kilograms (22 pounds) compared to pictures from May. He speculated that since Kim was holding a cane on his left side he may have had surgery on his left ankle.

[AP]

North Korea media reports Kim Jong Un has reappeared

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Kim Jong Un has reportedly made his first public appearance in more than a month.

The North Korean leader gave “field guidance” to a newly built residential district and visited the Natural Energy Institute of the State Academy of Sciences, state news agency KCNA said early Tuesday.

While KCNA reported Kim had a photo session with scientists, it did not publish those photographs, nor any video of his visits. The news agency also did not report when the North Korean leader purportedly made those visits.

Before this absence, Kim’s longest disappearance from public view as Supreme Leader was 24 days between June 7 and July 1, 2012. His second longest absence was for 29 days between July 28 and August 27, 2011 — while his father was still alive, NK News said.

[CNN]

NSA indicates no transfer of power in North Korea

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The United States has not seen any definitive indication of a transfer of power in North Korea, where state media have not mentioned leader Kim Jong Un’s activities in weeks, a top U.S. official said in an interview broadcast on Sunday.

Kim’s absence from the public eye has fueled speculation over the state of his health and whether he may have been sidelined in a power struggle.

“Obviously we are watching very carefully what’s happening in North Korea,” national security adviser Susan Rice said in an interview broadcast on NBC’s Meet the Press. “We have not seen any indications of a transfer of power at this point in North Korea that we view as definitive but we’ll continue to watch it carefully.”

[Reuters]

Kim Jong-un is healthy declares North Korean Ambassador to UK

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North Korea’s ambassador to the UK, Hyon Hak Bong, has told the BBC that Kim Jong-un is healthy, adding that there is “no doubt about it”.

His words seem to contradict those of the state media, which reported in September that Kim was “suffering discomfort” in a voiceover for a pre-recorded documentary.

Reuters had previously been told that Kim had injured his ankle and would need “about 100 days” to recover, while experts believe the leader has been deposed in a military coup and removed from the capital.

Kim has not been seen in public since 3 September, where his weight appeared to have ballooned and he was walking with a limp.

Michael Madden, an expert on the North Korean leadership and a contributor to the North 38 website, said of Kim’s appearance on his last outing: “Based on his gait, it appears he has gout – something [due to] diet and genetic predisposition that has affected other members of the Kim family.”

[The Independent]

EU and Japan press for war crimes probes in North Korea

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The European Union and Japan are asking the United Nations to press for war crimes prosecutions in North Korea. The measure to be presented to the U.N. General Assembly in the coming weeks would ask the Security Council to consider targeted sanctions against North Korean leaders “who appear to be most responsible for crimes against humanity.” It added that these crimes were “pursuant to policies established at the highest level of the state for decades.”

The draft resolution, which was obtained by AFP, draws heavily from a U.N. rights inquiry released in February that revealed a vast network of prison camps and documented cases of torture, enslavement, rape and forced abortions among other violations.

“The draft resolution represents a clear shift towards recognizing that responsibility for the horrific abuses in North Korea lies squarely on the shoulders of the government,” said Param-Preet Singh from Human Rights Watch.

The draft calls on the Security Council to take stock of the report’s findings and take “appropriate action, including through consideration of referral of the situation in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea to the International Criminal Court.” It also calls for “concrete and positive results” in efforts to account for all Japanese nationals including victims of North Korean abductions during the Cold War.

A vote is expected at the 193-nation Assembly in late November.

North Korea’s ally China, which has a veto at the Security Council, was seen as likely to reject any referral of North Korean rights abuse cases to the International Criminal Court in the Hague.

[The China Post]

North Korean diplomats on the go in Kim’s absence

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North Korean leader Kim Jong Un may have disappeared from the public eye, but his diplomatic representatives sure haven’t.

There’s Ri Su Yong, who’s been everywhere from Burma and Indonesia to Ethiopia and Iran since he became foreign minister in April. Last month, he addressed the United Nations, the first North Korean to do so in 15 years, and on Friday, he wrapped up 10 days in Russia.

There’s Kang Sok Ju, the international affairs secretary of the Korean Workers’ Party, in Belgium, Switzerland, Germany, Italy, and then met the Mongolian president in Beijing on his way home.

And then there are the top officials — including the No. 2 (Hwang Pyong So) and No. 3 (Choe Ryong Hae) behind Kim — who showed up in South Korea last weekend, meeting with the prime minister and unification minister and promising to talk again soon.

Kim himself hasn’t been seen in five weeks, and on Friday, he failed to show up for the 69th anniversary of the founding of the Korean Workers’ Party. The state-run Korean Central News Agency notably left Kim’s name off a list of dignitaries who paid their respects to his father and grandfather, Kim Jong Il and Kim Il Sung, at the mausoleum where their bodies lie.

It has become a ritual for top leaders to go to the mausoleum — a huge, marble-lined palace on the outskirts of Pyongyang officially known as the Kumsusan Palace of the Sun — just after midnight as the anniversary begins. But the news agency reported only that a basket of flowers bearing the current leader’s name was placed before statues of the first two Kims. It was the first time since he succeeded his father almost three years ago that Kim Jong Un had missed the event.

Still, North Korea is embarking on the most intensive outreach since Kim took over, and most analysts agree that such frenzied activity abroad would be unlikely if there were real turmoil at home.

“This is the most active period of foreign diplomatic activity that we’ve seen out of Kim Jong Un for sure,” said Scott Snyder, a Korea expert at the Council on Foreign Relations. “They’re really reaching out, and the question is why. What’s motivating them? I don’t think anybody knows for sure.”

[Washington Post]