North Korea announces it has American in custody

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On the day that U.S. President Barack Obama visited South Korea — a trip that North Korea’s foreign ministry condemned as being “aimed to escalate confrontation and bring dark clouds of a nuclear arms race” — the reclusive country announced it is holding an American man who it claims arrived in the country this month to seek asylum.

KCNA identified the man as 24-year-old Miller Matthew Todd, who it says was taken into custody on April 10.

The man, according to KCNA, entered the country on a tourist visa. He tore his tourist visa and shouted that “he would seek asylum” and “came to the DPRK (North Korea) after choosing it as a shelter,” KCNA said.

The United States is aware of the report and has been in touch with Sweden — which represents American interests in North Korea — about it, State Department press secretary Jen Psaki said Friday.

[CNN]

Obama hints at new sanctions for North Korea

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In a display of unity against North Korea’s provocations, President Barack Obama and South Korean President Park Geun-hye warned Pyongyang on Friday that it could face tougher sanctions if it follows through with threats to launch a fourth nuclear test.

Striking an even harsher tone than Obama, Park also suggested any test would trigger an undesirable nuclear arms race in the region and render further nuclear negotiations pointless.

North Korea will get “nothing except further isolation” if it proceeds with its test, Obama said at a joint news conference in Seoul. But he also acknowledged there are limits to what effects additional penalties can have on the country.

“North Korea already is the most isolated country in the world, by far,” Obama said. “Its people suffer terribly because of the decisions its leaders have made. And we are not going to find a magic bullet that solves this problem overnight.”

Still, he said, it’s important to look at new ways to pressure North Korea, including applying sanctions that have “even more bite.”

In 2009, North Korea walked away from six-party talks with the U.S., South Korea, Japan, Russia and China that offered financial incentives in exchange for denuclearization.

The White House said it was keeping close tabs on activity at North Korea’s nuclear test site. The website 38 North, which closely monitors North Korea, said commercial satellite imagery from Wednesday showed increased movement of vehicles and materials near what are believed to be entrances to two completed tunnels at the Punggye-ri nuclear test site in what could be advanced preparations for an underground atomic explosion. But predicting such tests is notoriously difficult; the most crucial activity happens underground, out of aerial view.

[AP]

Childhood pictures of Kim Jong-un emerge amidst rumors of North Korean nuclear test

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Rare new photographs of Kim Jong-un as a young boy have emerged during a concert for the North Korean air force.

kim-jong-un as a boy

Pictures showing the 31-year-old North Korean leader as a chubby toddler, saluting while in uniform, were shown on KCTV, the country’s state broadcaster.

Young kim-jong un airplane cockpitOther photographs showed him as a teenager, at the controls of an airplane.

Until now, only a handful of pictures of Kim as a young boy have been seen.

kim-jong un teenOnly one photograph is known to exist from his days as a student, which shows him on what appears to be a school trip with fellow pupils at the International School of Berne, in Switzerland.

Meanwhile, South Korea warned that the North could be planning a fourth nuclear test to ramp up tensions during President Obama’s upcoming visit to Seoul. A spokesman for the Defense ministry said North Korea is now able to conduct a nuclear test “at any moment”.

However, a respected US think tank says chances of North Korea testing a nuclear warhead during President Barack Obama’s visit are slim. Satellite imagery analyzed by 38North, which is part of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, said that while there had been a pickup in activity, there were few signs of an imminent test.

 [The Telegraph; The South China Morning Post] 

Two North Korean activists flee their country

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Kim Seung-chul of North Korea Reform Radio told the Chosun Ilbo two North Korean activists made a telephone call to his station from China asking for help. The two are from Jagang Province and had been listening to the South Korean radio station for five years with a home-made receiver, which moved them to launch a pro-democracy group in North Korea.

Kim quoted one of the men as saying the broadcasts inspired him to think about how to improve North Korea. He said they printed anti-regime leaflets based on the broadcasts and scattered them in markets and streets.

But they decided to flee late last year because one of their members was arrested last November and state security dragnet was closing in.

Kim said he helped them escape through China, from where they made their way to Thailand and then on South Korea.

Powerful aunt of Kim Jong-un disappears from official footage

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The aunt of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has mysteriously disappeared from a re-run of a propaganda film, leading to speculation that she has been purged – or even executed.

Kim Kyong Hui

Chosun Ilbo newspaper reported that while the original screening featuring Ms Kim (as shown circled above), a re-run shown on Tuesday depicts a scene in which only Kim Jong-un, his wife, and male military officials are visible.

Kim Kyong-hui, 67, is the widow of Jang Song-taek who was recently executed. It was believed she would always remain ‘safe’ under her nephew’s brutal regime, leading analysts to say that her disappearance from the documentary is ominous. Ms Kim’s safety from purging or execution had always been assumed because she is the daughter of North Korean founder Kim Il-sun and the sister of the late leader, Kim Jong-il. Despite all this, Ms Kim is still associated with a husband who was publicly denounced as a traitor and executed in December.

Until January this year, Ms Kim was frequently seen at the side of her nephew and his wife at public events. In the footage in question, which aired in January, she was seen walking with the leader and his wife towards the Kumsusan Palace of the Sun in the capital, Pyongyang, to pay tribute to the embalmed bodies of former leaders Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il.

The apparent ‘disappearance’ of Kim Kyong-hui has led to speculation that her place in high positions in the Workers’ Party has been taken by Kim Jong-un’s younger sister, Yo-jong.

Call for North Korean sanctions

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Former High Court justice Michael Kirby, the head of a special UN inquiry into North Korea, told an informal meeting of the UN Security Council convened by Australia, France and the US that should slap targeted sanctions on North Korean officials responsible for grave human rights abuses.

Kirby also wanted the reclusive regime hauled before the International Criminal Court for prosecution. ”More monitoring and engagement alone cannot suffice in the face of crimes that shock the conscience of humanity,” he said. ”Perpetrators must be held accountable.”

North Korea did not send a representative and the meeting was snubbed by China and Russia.

[The Age]

Spotlight on North Korea’s Horrors

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Excerpts of an Opinion piece written by Marco Rubio, U.S. Senator representing Florida:

This week, Australian justice Michael Kirby, who led the U.N. Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in North Korea, is briefing members of the U.N. Security Council regarding the widespread atrocities being committed on a daily basis against innocent people by one of the world’s most repressive regimes.

Under the dictatorship of Kim Jong Un, the North Korean regime routinely engages in torture, arbitrary detentions, indiscriminate disappearances, starvation, and executions. North Koreans who pay insufficient homage to the country’s deceased founder, Kim Il Sung, can be sent to prison along with their families. Prisoners are often subjected to human experiments, denied food, and essentially worked to death in North Korea’s network of infamous prison camps.

The horrific, systematic violations of human rights in North Korea have been going on for many years. And for far too long, these abuses have taken a back seat to international concerns about North Korea’s nuclear-weapons program and other provocative behavior.

More information about the brutality of the Kim regime is emerging, as North Korean defectors courageously share their personal stories of deprivation and, ultimately, survival. I was honored to be able to meet with a number of North Korean defectors on a trip to South Korea earlier this year and to hear their stories firsthand. They told me that it is important to recognize that exposing the regime’s heinous crimes against humanity as often and as publicly as possible is one of our most powerful tools against the continued brutality of the North Korean regime.

I am under no illusion that this commission will profoundly alter the present-day horrific human-rights situation for the long-suffering North Korean people. But I do believe that the work of the Commission of Inquiry will raise — and, indeed, already has raised — public consciousness about the deplorable plight of the North Korean people.

When we look back at the Holocaust and the murders of millions of innocents in Europe during World War II, many ask why we didn’t do more to stop those atrocities until it was too late for so many who did not survive to see the day the camps were liberated. Some hide behind supposed lack of knowledge, but in this day and age, we have no excuse. Anyone with an Internet connection can use Google Earth to view the modern-day gulags in North Korea.

It is time for the United States and for all who cherish freedom to make it our common cause to pressure the regime to open these camps for international inspection and to make clear that those involved in these horrific crimes will one day be held accountable.

[National Review Online]

The lack of a North Korean sense of humor

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London barber poster Kim Jong Un haircutThe row between a London hairdresser and the state of North Korea looked set to escalate after the UK Foreign Office confirmed it had been contacted by embassy officials. Diplomats from North Korea had already complained to police and to the shop’s manager about what they describe as a “disrespectful” poster showing leader Kim Jong-un with the words “bad hair day?”.

The Foreign Office said today that it had received a letter from the embassy on Monday, as the promotional poster looked set to spark the unlikeliest of diplomatic rows. Mo Nabbach’s M&M Hair Academy in South Ealing was paid an unexpected visit by two men from the North Korean embassy who started taking pictures and making notes. Mr Nabbach said the men came back later and asked to speak to the manager before ordering him to take the poster down.

Enfield Southgate Conservative MP David Burrowes, who also sits on the all-party parliamentary group on North Korea, criticized the embassy’s stance. “On the one hand their response is laughable,” he said. “But underlying is a more sinister undertone which is played out in North Korea with people being locked up, killed and denied freedoms.”

Mr Nabbach said the two men from the embassy had been “wearing suits and they were very serious”. “It was very threatening,” he added.

Barber Karim Nabbach, 26, yesterday said that staff at the salon did not realize the North Korean embassy was a 10-minute walk away when they put the poster up. He added, “We always put up little offers in the window, it’s harmless. We were just making light of a bad situation in North Korea.”

[The Independent]

Lack of UN oversight of WFP support to North Korea

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The United Nations’ World Food Program failed to carry out sufficient inspections of food distribution sites in North Korea to ensure that supplies went to the country’s suffering people rather than the dictatorial communist regime, according to the U.N. agency’s own internal watchdog.

The same audit says the WFP inflated the number of monitoring tours that it made, and could not provide documentation to back up the North Korean government’s rationale for sometimes blocking the inspection visits.

Further, North Korean government staffers seconded to WFP operations had a hand in operating U.N. computer networks and data-bases, a situation that the watchdog warned “may lead to errors, omissions and potentially, fraud not being detected and remedied on a timely basis.”

Moreover, even WFP’s knowledge of what aid supplies it has received from abroad are based on the say-so of a regime-run company that the watchdog says may be lying about the amount of work it does, overcharging the U.N. for the work—and in any case is doing it without a contract, which keeps the relationship legally invisible.

For its part, WFP maintains that the problems it faces are more the result of underfunding. In response to questions from Fox News, the agency declared that the lack of aid money “directly undermines our ability to fully staff our activities in country, including management and monitoring, according to plans approved in project documents”—not to mention the threat to “WFP’s ability to support the nutritional needs of young children and their mothers.”

[Fox]

Brainwashed to believe Kim Jong-il was a god

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Yeonmi Park was a teenager when she fled North Korea with her parents. Here’s her story:

I lived in North Korea for the first 15 years of my life, believing Kim Jong-il was a God.  I never doubted it because I didn’t know anything else.

I had to be careful of my thoughts because I believed Kim Jong-il could read my mind. Every couple of days someone would disappear. A classmate’s mother was punished in a public execution that I was made to attend. I had no choice – there were spies in the neighborhood.

My father worked for the government, so for a while things were relatively ok for me compared to some others in North Korea. But my father was accused of doing something wrong and jailed for three years. He being guilty made me guilty too, so whatever future I had in North Korea completely disappeared. I could no longer go to university, and my family was forced to move out of Pyongyang to the countryside on the border close to China.

After a few years, my father became very sick with cancer and he came out of jail for treatment. During this time, we decided to leave North Korea.North Korean refugees are not recognized in China so we had to be careful there. My parents brought a small amount of money with them, and my mother got a job washing dishes.

I did not know any Chinese and couldn’t say anything in Korean in case I was deported, so I had to pretend I could not speak. I hid in the apartment most of the time. If I saw a police man, I would run. I could not take a train because they would do certification checks. It was really miserable.

My father died of cancer in that first year and soon we had used all of our money. Around this time we met some South Korean missionaries. They said we could finally be free if we could make it to South Korea. We bought a compass and we walked across the border between China and Mongolia through the desert in winter. Once in Mongolia, we were protected and some soldiers contacted South Korea where we were accepted as refugees.

When we arrived in South Korea they took us to an Education Centre for several months. I learned that Kim Jong-il was a dictator, but I was still confused when I left – it wasn’t enough time to fully change my mind. After I came out of the centre, I met new people, started to study using the Internet, and read lots of books. I found out about socialism, communism and capitalism. I learned new things and finally saw the truth. … I realized that everything I thought was a lie.

My mother took longer than me. When Kim Jong-il died she couldn’t believe it. We were in South Korea by then and she said, “he can’t die because he’s not a human, he’s a God!”  It was very hard for us to comprehend that he was just a human!

I’m now studying at university, learning about International Relations and I feel like a different person. My older sister made it out recently and has just come out of the Education Centre. But all my other relatives are still in North Korea. They are too afraid to escape and I worry about them – not just because I’m from North Korea, but just as a human. I now know that humans have rights and I want to help them. That is my dream.

[As published in SBS Opinion]