Defectors detail North Korea Leader’s slush fund

Posted on by
1

Choi Kun-chol says he didn’t know he had spent several years helping to fill Kim Jong Il’s private slush fund until he left North Korea. Like the thousands of others working under the North Korean government division known as Office 39, Mr. Choi was told by superiors that he was generating money to build a strong socialist economy.

In fact, according to details that Mr. Choi gave about his work it was a shadowy network of businesses that contribute to a private fund believed to be worth billions of dollars for the use of the ruling Kim family.

Defectors say Office 39 was created during the 1970s by Kim Jong Il, the father of current leader Kim Jong Un, to buy influence in his own rise to power. Office 39 has been accused by the U.S. and others of running an array of illicit money-making operations such as currency counterfeiting, narcotics and arms sales. Some experts estimate the total annual income of Office 39 to be up to a couple of billion dollars a year.

High-level defectors, security officials and analysts say the fund still enables current ruler Kim Jong Un to underwrite comfortable lifestyles for the upper tier of North Korean society to ensure their support. Analysts and security officials say the execution of Kim Jong Un’s uncle, Jang Song Thaek, late last year may have been because Mr. Jang had interrupted the flow of funds to Office 39.

Office 39 also runs legal businesses under a state-owned shell corporation known as the Daesong Group, according to Mr. Choi and other defectors.

[read full Wall Street Journal article] 

Free NK newspaper based in London’s Little North Korea

Posted on by

About 20,000 Korean immigrants live in New Malden, a suburb of southwest London. Approximately 600 of these immigrants are from North Korea, which is among the highest concentrations of North Korean refugees anywhere in the world. Certainly in Europe, New Malden is the closest thing to a “Little Pyongyang.”

In New Malden you may meet Joo-il Kim, a North Korean defector and editor of the Free NK newspaper. The Free NK newspaper was established to bring news from the rest of the world to North Korean citizens, as well as raising awareness of what really goes on in North Korea to the international community.

“We see this as the first stage, where we distribute the newspaper to the international community—mainly to the European communities—in order to raise awareness of what really goes on in North Korea,” said Joo-il. “Some articles are provided by correspondents in North Korea, and some are provided by other news companies that we have contracts with.”

Joo-il explains: “On first defecting, you’re hurt by the fact that a country you gave your life to—a country I trusted—actually deceived me and failed to protect its own people. My initial reaction was to swear to myself to never be deceived again, and I wanted to give up any sort of principles, ideologies, and any goals. I just wanted to protect myself and my brothers and sisters; I didn’t think about doing anything for the greater good or for other people.”

Now he says: “It is my duty to change things for future generations in North Korea.”

For Joo-il, the eventual goal is reunification of the North and South, and he sees the current community in New Malden as a good model for this—a place where North, South, and Chinese-Koreans all live together without incident.

[Vice.com]

American Matthew Miller given 6 years of hard labor in North Korea

Posted on by
1

North Korea’s Supreme Court on Sunday convicted a 24-year-old American man of entering the country illegally to commit espionage and sentenced him to six years of hard labor.

At a trial that lasted about 90 minutes, the court said Matthew Miller, of Bakersfield, California, tore up his tourist visa at Pyongyang’s airport upon arrival on April 10 and admitted to having the “wild ambition” of experiencing prison life so that he could secretly investigate North Korea’s human rights situation.

Showing no emotion throughout the proceedings, Miller waived the right to a lawyer and was handcuffed before being led from the courtroom after his sentencing. The court, comprising a chief judge flanked by two “people’s assessors,” ruled it would not hear any appeals to its decision.

Earlier, it had been believed that Miller had sought asylum when he entered North Korea. During the trial, however, the prosecution argued that was a ruse and that Miller also falsely claimed to have secret information about the U.S. military in South Korea on his iPad and iPod.

Miller was charged under Article 64 of the North Korean criminal code, which is for espionage and can carry a sentence of five to 10 years, though harsher punishments can be given for more serious cases.

The Associated Press was allowed to attend the trial.

A trial is expected soon for one of the other Americans being held, Jeffrey Fowle, who entered the North as a tourist and was arrested in May for leaving a Bible at a sailor’s club in the city of Chongjin. The third American, Korean-American missionary Kenneth Bae, is serving out a 15-year sentence for alleged “hostile acts.”

[Associated Press]

The US strategy concerning its citizens held in North Korea

Posted on by

American defendants Matthew Miller, Jeffrey Fowle and Kenneth Bae held in North Korea say they have but one hope — for a senior U.S. statesman to come and get them out.

The U.S. has repeatedly offered to send its envoy for North Korean human rights issues, Robert King, to Pyongyang to seek the freedom of the detainees, but without success. Finding a suitable middleman is no easy task, with the Obama administration immersed in bigger global crises and doggedly pursuing a policy of “strategic patience” with North Korea, which essentially means not getting drawn into engagements that might be seen as bowing to North Korean pressure.

“North Korea’s strategy may have worked in the past, but its brinkmanship with the American hostages is occurring against the backdrop of so many other crises that North Korea cannot use this issue to elevate itself as Washington’s primary concern,” said Scott Snyder, director of the program on U.S.-Korea policy at the Washington D.C.-based Council on Foreign Relations think tank.

While having a senior U.S. statesman take detainees home has been used by the North to enhance the prestige of its leadership on the domestic stage, he said, “it causes headaches for sitting administrations, who do not want to risk losing control of the policy by having outsiders to their administration step into the picture.

The North has not officially demanded a senior representative visit to release the Americans, but it has made no secret of its growing frustration with Obama’s cold-shoulder treatment.

In the meantime, the three Americans caught in the middle say they are running out of hope.

[AP]

Canadian government stands up for its citizens

Posted on by

The Canadian government has threatened to have its prime minister back out of a high-profile meeting with Chinese leadership if Beijing does not release a Canadian couple, Kevin and Julia Garratt, seized by Chinese authorities near the border of China and North Korea in August.

This is despite the fact that applying heavy pressure on China is raising warnings that Canada could pay an economic price for angering a country that does not look kindly on foreign interference in its affairs. The stakes are “huge” if Canada picks a fight with China, said Victor Gao, a director at the China National Association of International Studies.

The Garratts are Christian evangelicals from British Columbia who ran a coffee shop in the Chinese city of Dandong on the North Korean border. The couple, who first came to China 30 years ago, were taken away Aug. 4 by agents of China’s Ministry of State Security. They have not been formally charged or arrested.

Ottawa has made clear that if the couple is not released, it will decline an invitation to a meeting between Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Chinese leadership in Beijing around the time of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) conference in early November.

Canadian government officials have let it be known they see the couple’s detention as a kind of reprisal for the arrest of Su Bin, a Chinese immigrant to Canada accused of masterminding efforts to steal U.S. military secrets.

[The Globe and Mail]

Many countries get their priorities wrong, not just North Korea

Posted on by

Excerpts of Guardian opinion by Dr J E Hoare, Britain’s first diplomatic representative in North Korea:

When I was working in North Korea in 2001-2002, the WFP programme was one of the largest in the world. It was never enough, however, and WFP always had to prioritize: Pregnant mothers, children and the old.

There were other benefits as well. It gave many North Korean officials the valuable experience of working with an international organization, useful exposure for those who had little experience of the outside world.

WFP has always had to fight off those who are opposed to giving any food to North Korea. Various reasons have been put forward for not supplying aid, including the charges that food was being diverted or that funds spent on the military should be spent on feeding the population. There be truth in such charges but … the vulnerable remain. We know from nutritional surveys that lack of good food in early years means that many will be permanently affected.

We also know that many countries get their priorities wrong; children go hungry even in the richest nations. To penalize those who are already suffering and who can do nothing to influence the government would be unjust. The WFP should be helped to continue its North Korean program.

 [The Guardian]

Hungry North Koreans should not be penalized

Posted on by

Excerpts of Guardian opinion by Roberta Cohen, non-resident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution:

To attract donors, North Korea will need to devote more of its own resources to agricultural reforms, incentives for food production, ending market restrictions, importing greater quantities of food and improving its deteriorating health structures. Even so, some donors might not be eager to help a country that regularly hurls distasteful epithets and threatens its neighbors and beyond.

The most critical question, however, is whether hungry people should be penalized for the policies of their government. The answer is no. The stunting of children (one out of four under the age of five), high maternal mortality rates and tuberculosis for lack of vitamins and iron should be de-linked from political issues.

But here the case of North Korea presents a dilemma: reaching the needy has often been thwarted by a lack of access and transparency. While donors, UN agencies and NGOs have devised increasingly stringent monitoring conditions, including measuring children’s arms and providing corn soy blends so as not to be diverted to the military or elite, a widely disseminated United Nations report this year found that the government distributes food primarily to persons crucial to the regime, favors certain parts of the country, and avoids structural reforms of agriculture and health care out of fear of losing political control.

It therefore behooves the UN to press North Korea for strengthened monitoring and to link its aid to long term reforms designed to achieve sustainable results. And the UN must broaden its focus beyond traditional donors to China. As North Korea’s principal ally, recent estrangement notwithstanding, China should be urged to join in meeting shortfalls and in adopting international monitoring standards.

 [The Guardian]

Cut off food aid to North Korea entirely or double down?

Posted on by

Excerpts of Guardian opinion by Steven Weber, professor of political science at UC Berkeley:

Societies choose between spending to defend what they have, increasing current consumption, and building for the future. For decades now, the world has been subsidizing North Korea’s choice to invest massively in defense at the expense of both investment and current consumption.

Humanitarian fatigue may not be humanity’s most admirable trait, but it’s a real one and it’s not likely to be reversed unless the North Korean regime delivers something positive on security. And that’s less likely to happen if we keep the regime on slowly diminishing life support.

There are better choices: One would be to cut off aid entirely and force Pyongyang’s hand. The other would be to massively increase food aid so that the population actually receives sufficient calories to thrive.

Both strategies have obvious risks. Cut off aid and North Korea could strike out as a last ditch effort to force our hand in return. But Pyongyang might also be forced to spend more resources growing and buying food.

Double down on aid and North Korea might take advantage and happily divert yet more of its resources into the military. But it might also take the signal of peaceful intentions as an opportunity to go further in its ever-so-slight opening to the world.

[The Guardian]

Stop funding food aid to North Korea?

Posted on by

Excerpts of Guardian opinion by Jang Jin-sung, once one of Kim Jong-il’s favorite state poets until he defected in 2004:

North Korean exiles will tell you that the international community must stop funding food aid. We say this for pragmatic and humanitarian reasons.

Today, the fatal threat for the regime lies not in the outside world, but within the country itself. More specifically, this is the jangmadang – an underground economy arisen from the ashes of economic collapse in the 1990s, and which consist of market activities taking place beyond the remit of the regime’s control mechanisms.

This fundamental transformation from below, the notion that lives may be lived outside the domain of loyalty to the system, is the greatest imminent threat to the regime’s power – which is held in place by inculcating the cult of the Kim dynasty, surveillance controls and the coercive mobilization of its subjects.

In today’s North Korea there are two rival forces in battle: the forces of the regime and the forces of the market. The former’s interests are better served by the maintenance of existing party, military and surveillance mechanisms of control. The latter are equivalent to North Korea’s progressives, who believe in a future that is possible beyond the absolute, stifling and structurally inhumane confines of the regime.

An international community wishing to assist the North Korean people should recognize that funding food aid is a channel of limited efficiency. The majority of North Koreans depend not on the regime’s munificence but on market forces – they have already found this a more successful alternative, despite a disproportionate lack of international support or awareness. Even at times when the regime is calling for food aid, it does not mean that the jangmadang will not have food on offer, whether stolen from state cooperatives or smuggled in from China.

[The Guardian]

Feeding North Koreans an ethical conundrum

Posted on by

Excerpts of Guardian opinion by Marcus Noland, director of studies at the Peterson Institute for International Economics:

The most recent UNICEF survey suggests that 10% of the country’s two-year-olds are afflicted with severe stunting. Stunting of that degree at that age is irrecoverable and confers a lifetime of physical and mental challenges.

When the country finally admitted in 1995 that it was facing famine, the international community responded with considerable generosity, at one point feeding roughly a third of the population. But the North Korean government has never accepted the international norms in the provision of aid, impeding normal assessment, monitoring, and evaluation functions of the relief organizations.

Critically, with assistance ramping up, the government cut commercial grain imports – in essence using humanitarian aid as a form of balance of payments support, freeing up resources to finance the importation of advanced military weaponry.

The resources needed to close the hunger gap could be closed for something in the order of $8-19m — less than 0.2% of national income or one per cent of the military budget.

We evidently care more about hungry North Koreans than their government does. We should provide assistance. But we should be clear-eyed about the terms of that engagement and seek to provide aid in ways consistent with our values and our obligations under international law.