The Chinese believe that the US, not China, holds key to Korean reunification

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Excerpts from an editorial in the China Daily:

“The US and Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) have been locked in a stalemate for some time: Pyongyang wants a peace treaty first and Washington demands that Pyongyang first abandon its nuclear weapons program. North Korea uses the US’ refusal to sign a peace treaty to conduct nuclear tests…. The US, in turn, uses the DPRK’s actions to beef up its missile defense system in Asia.

“By refusing to promise that it will not take any military action against the DPRK, the US has provoked it to build nuclear weapons and tried to drive a wedge between Beijing and Pyongyang. The US is playing the DPRK nuclear card also to create a rift between China and South Korea and keep the latter deeply entrenched in Washington’s camp, which could prove damaging for Beijing and Seoul.”

Kim Il Sung still casts a spell over North Koreans

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Kim Il Sung, the founder of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, was revered like a god in life — and after it. Two decades later, mythmaking is as important as ever for Kim’s grandson, dictator Kim Jong Un, who has just led the official memorial to the Great Leader.

North Korean propaganda casts the Kims as protectors of a country under siege. School children learn that Kim Il Sung was an exceptional warrior who, while camping at the base of Mount Paektu with his comrades, defeated a force of Japanese colonialists. He later repelled the imperialist Americans in the 1950–53 Korean War.

According to official history, his heir, Kim Jong Il, was born at the base of the same scared mountain, and the birth heralded by a rainbow. According to North Korean hagiography, Kim Jong Il grew up to become a master tactician, writer and filmmaker. Legend has it he shot 11 holes-in-one in his first ever round of golf.

Young Kim Jong Un prefers to bask in his grandfather’s, rather than his father’s, glow. South Korean analysts believe the young leader consciously emulates his grandfather’s look and public persona. Whereas his father avoided the public, Kim Jong Un, like his grandfather, is often photographed among, even touching, his subjects.

An actual conflict would almost certainly cost him his kingdom. But young Kim knows that for North Korea to survive he must convince his people that the enemy is at the gate — and that he, alone, can stop them. Grandad would have approved.

[TIME]

The North Korean component in the persecution of Christians

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The normally diplomatic Pope Francis recently asserted: “The persecution of Christians today is even greater than in the first centuries of the Church, and there are more Christian martyrs today than in that era.”

To those familiar with the history of early persecution — when Christians were habitually tortured to death, set on fire, fed to lions and dismembered to cheering audiences — his statement may seem exaggerated. But even today, as in the past, Christians are indeed being persecuted for their faith and even tortured and executed.

A January, 2014, Pew Research Center study on religious discrimination across the world found that harassment of Christians was reported in more countries (110) than any other faith.

Open Doors, a nondenominational Christian rights watchdog group, ranked the 50 most dangerous nations for Christians in its World Watch List. The No. 1 ranked nation is North Korea, followed by a host of Muslim countries. (Disturbing indeed is the fact that three of these countries — Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya — were “liberated” in part thanks to U.S. forces, while in the fourth, Syria, the U.S. is actively sponsoring the “rebels,” many of whom are responsible for attacks and kidnappings of Christians.)

North Korea, amongst other Communist countries, is intolerant of Christians; churches are banned or forced underground, and exposed Christians can be immediately executed.

Nothing integral to the fabric of these societies makes them intrinsically anti-Christian. Something as simple as overthrowing the North Korean regime could possibly end persecution there — just as the fall of Communist Soviet Union saw religious persecution come to a quick close in nations like Russia.

To influence these situations, Western nations must make foreign aid contingent on the rights and freedoms of minorities. After all, if we are willing to give billions in foreign aid, often on humanitarian grounds, surely the very least that recipient governments can do is provide humanitarian rights, including religious freedom.

[Read full CNN article] 

North Korean man defects to the South through tense sea border

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A North Korean man defected to South Korea on Thursday, using a small wooden boat in a rare and risky crossing of the heavily patrolled maritime border in the Yellow Sea, military officials said.

The man expressed his desire to defect after landing on the frontline South Korean island of Baengnyeong Island.  Yonhap news agency quoted an unnamed military officer as saying the ship was “half-submerged” by the time it reached the island.

“The man is under investigation by security authorities,” a spokesman for South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff told AFP.

Intentional defections by individuals in small boats are rare and dangerous given the tensions along the disputed maritime boundary which has seen bloody clashes in the past.

While hundreds of North Koreans flee their isolated homeland each year, most of them go to China and then to a third country, such as Thailand.

[AFP]

Kim Jong-un’s siblings in top posts of North Korean government

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North Korea is more than ever a Kim family business, with leader Kim Jong-un’s older brother Jong-chol playing a key role in ensuring the regime’s longevity, while his younger sister Yeo-jong manages its coffers.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s older brother, Kim Jong-chol (left) and sister, Kim Yeo-jong (right)

Kim Jong-chol, who is rarely spotted in public, is rumored to be in charge of Kim Jong-un’s security. There are claims that he led the operation to arrest Ri Yong-ha and Jang Su-gil, two close confidants of executed eminence grise Jang Song-taek, in December last year. And there is speculation that Jong-chol played a key role in bringing about recent negotiations with Japanese government officials to mend ties amid growing international isolation.

Kim Yeo-jong is reportedly in charge of an agency known as Room 38 under the Workers Party which manages the regime’s coffers and businesses that earn foreign currency. The agency used to be overseen by Jang’s widow, Kim Kyong-hui, who is also Kim Jong-un’s aunt, but Yeo-jong gained control after Jang was executed.

One bureau in the agency exports herbal medicine, rare plants and high-quality lumber, while another oversees a glitzy new department store in Pyongyang as well as 124 other department stores across North Korea. Due to Kim Yeo-jong’s influential position, business is booming, and modern coffee shops in these stores are apparently packed with customers.

North Korea experts say Kim Jong-un, who used to depend heavily on his uncle and aunt, feels he is safer entrusting his siblings with influential jobs.

His half sister Sol-song also apparently holds a key post. Kim Sol-song is the eldest daughter of former leader Kim Jong-il’s second wife, Kim Yong-suk, and majored in economics and politics at Kim Il-sung University. She has served in the Politburo as well as other key posts including the propaganda department. Ken Gause of CNA Corporation said recently that Sol-song has taken charge of the Workers Party secretariat, which would put her at the apex of the organization that controls information flow.

Only Kim’s older half-brother Kim Jong-nam was sidelined in the power struggle early on and lives in lavish exile.

[Chosun Ilbo]

North Korea to try two American tourists

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North Korea said Monday it is preparing to try two Americans, Matthew Todd Miller and Jeffrey Edward Fowle, who entered the country as tourists for carrying out what it says were hostile acts against it.

KCNA said North Korea is making preparations to bring them before a court. It did not specify what the two did that was considered hostile or illegal, or what kind of punishment they might face. It also did not say when the trial would begin.

Fowle arrived in the county on April 29. Diplomatic sources said Fowle was detained for leaving a Bible in his hotel room. But a spokesman for Fowle’s family said the 56-year-old from Miamisburg, Ohio, was not on a mission for his church.

KCNA said Miller, 24, entered the country April 10 with a tourist visa, but tore it up at the airport and shouted that he wanted to seek asylum. A large number of Western tourists visited Pyongyang in April to run in the annual Pyongyang Marathon or attend related events. Miller came at that time, but tour organizers say he was not planning to join the marathon.

North Korea has also been separately holding Korean-American missionary Kenneth Bae since November 2012. He was convicted by a North Korean court and is serving 15 years of hard labor, also for what the North says were hostile acts against the state.

The latest arrests present a conundrum for Washington, which has no diplomatic ties with the North and no embassy in Pyongyang. Instead, the Swedish Embassy takes responsibility for U.S. consular affairs in the North. State Department officials say they cannot release details about the cases because they need a privacy waiver to do so.

[AP]

Swedish diplomats push for Americans’ release from North Korea

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Swedish diplomats acting for the U.S. have visited an American man detained by North Korea weeks ago. Sweden handles consular matters for Americans in North Korea because Washington and Pyongyang do not have diplomatic relations.

State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki says the Swedish Embassy had consular access Friday to Jeffrey Fowle.  Psaki urged North Korea to release Fowle and two other Americans it currently holds so they could return home to their families.

The detention of the 56-year old Fowle, who is from Ohio, was made public two weeks ago, when North Korean state-run media reported he was detained for acts inconsistent with a tourist visit. It hasn’t provided details about the accusations against him.

Activists push before Congress for awareness of North Korea human rights abuses

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In a hearing before members of Congress, victims of North Korea’s human rights abuses and experts on the dictatorship’s harsh practices asked for support in bringing an end to the country’s harsh treatment of political dissenters.

Rep. Chris Smith, chairman of the House subcommittee on global human rights, explained in a June 18 hearing that “in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, we see a state that seeks to control all aspects of the lives of its citizens, not only their political lives, but also that innermost sanctuary we call conscience as well,” using starvation, torture, imprisonment and death against political and religious dissidents of the totalitarian, atheistic stance of the North Korean government. “Enough is enough. We need to do far more,” Smith urged.

The hearing, entitled “Human Rights Abuses and Crimes Against Humanity in North Korea”, featured testimony from Lee Jong-hoon, South Korea’s Ambassador-at-Large for Human Rights; Andrew Natsios, co-chair of the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea; Shin Chang-Hoon, director of the Center for Global Governance Asian Institute for Policy Studies; and Shin Dong-hyuk, a survivor of a North Korean prison camp.

Shin, who escaped from the North Korean prison camp he was born in, spoke of a life “not fit for human beings or even for animals”, where his first memories were of guards in uniform carrying guns, and being taught by those guards to distrust his parents, who were political prisoners.

“I was rewarded with terribly indescribable and cruel torture,” Shin said, and his mother and brother were publicly executed. The torture I bared, the scars I earned from that time, I still bear today.”

He said that specifically, the international human rights community should focus on increasing awareness about North Korea’s relationship with China. North Korea, Lee said, is “very dependent on China” for financial support, resources and food, and has the power to change the regime.

In addition, he noted, Chinese youth are starting to question their country’s support “of this state that’s an embarrassment to the world,” and the international community has a strong evidence to support saying that on the Korean Peninsula, a “peaceful and free unification is beneficial to China.”

Smith praised the accuracy of the United Nations Commission of Inquiry report on North Korea, adding, “We must summon the necessary conviction to address the sufferings of the people of North Korea.”

[Catholic News Agency]

North Korea holding fewer political prisoners?

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The number of political prisoners in North Korea is significantly lower than previously thought, according to South Korea’s latest white paper on the Stalinist country’s human rights situation.

The Korea Institute for National Unification (KINU), South Korea’s state-run research institute, estimates the number of political prisoners in the North to be somewhere between 80,000 and 120,000. That is a drastic drop from previous estimates of 150,000 to 200,000.

Based on in-depth interviews of some 240 North Korean defectors, the white paper noted that one of the six prison camps in the North, Camp 22 in North Hamgyeong Province, was shut down in May 2012. In addition, Camp 18 in South Pyongan Province downsized from holding some 190,000 prisoners to around 4,000 after being relocated to North Pyongan Province.

The institute indicated, however, that the shrinking number of prison camps and prisoners is due to rise in the death toll from forced labor and rules that ban childbirth inside the camps, not because of shift in Pyongyang’s stance.

The white paper said public executions of those charged with drug-related crimes increased in 2012 and the following year. The North Korean government reformed its criminal codes two years ago and stipulated those involved in drug trafficking and smuggling would face the death penalty.

The report comes as the special U.N. investigator for human rights in North Korea said Thursday that the world body must do more to hold Pyongyang accountable for abuses of its own citizens. Marzuki Darusman said the U.N. Security Council is the only body that can refer perpetrators to the International Criminal Court.

[VoA]

UN monitor urges China to bring North Korea to heel

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UN monitor Marzuki Darusman on Wednesday urged China to bring ally North Korea to heel over its record of systemic human rights abuse, likening Beijing’s clout to that of Washington with Israel.

He told reporters, “This is the kind of denial that the United States has, that it has no hold on Israel,” said Darusman, a former chief prosecutor of Indonesia.

Darusman was part of a UN-mandated inquiry team that earlier this year issued a damning 400-page report detailing endemic abuses by North Korea. It spotlighted rape, torture and enslavement, saying they could amount to crimes against humanity and comparing them to the actions of Nazi Germany.

The inquiry team has called for North Korea to be hauled before the International Criminal Court — potentially to prosecute dictator Kim Jong-un and other regime figures. But referral to the ICC requires approval by the UN Security Council, where China wields a veto.

Barred from North Korea by Pyongyang, the UN monitors have interviewed defectors in South Korea and other countries, and used satellite imagery to build an idea of North Korea’s network of concentration camps.

North Korea has dubbed the witnesses “human scum” and, in regular attacks at the UN Human Rights Council, charged that probes are part of a “vicious, hostile policy” piloted by Washington.

Darusman blasted that position. “It’s a convenient facade that the North Koreans are adopting, by continuing with their denials but at the same time seeming to engage by being present at the UN Human Rights Council sessions and responding to the findings by continuing with the theme that all the findings are fabricated,” he said.

[AFP]