Kim Jong Un’s New Year message for 2014

This week Kim Jong Un praised the recent purge of his uncle and former protector, saying it brought greater unity within secretive, nuclear-armed North Korea. Kim’s speech Wednesday is the first time he has publicly commented on the purge.

“In the seething period of the effort for building a thriving country last year, we took the resolute measure of removing the factionalists lurking in the Party,” Kim said in a New Year’s address, referring to the North’s ruling Workers’ Party of Korea.

“As our Party detected and purged the anti-Party, counterrevolutionary factionalists at an opportune time and with a correct decision, the Party and revolutionary ranks were further consolidated and our single-hearted unity was solidified to the maximum,” Kim said, according to the text of the speech carried by North Korean state media.

North Korean state media attacked Jang’s character and detailed an extensive list of his alleged crimes, describing him as “despicable human scum.”

In his speech, Kim also warned that if war were to break out in the region, it would spiral into a nuclear confrontation.

“The U.S. and South Korean war maniacs have deployed legions of equipment for a nuclear war in and around the Korean Peninsula and are going frantic in their military exercises for a nuclear war against the North,” Kim said. “This precipitates a critical situation where any accidental military skirmish may lead to an all-out war.”

“Should another war break out on this land,” he said, “it will result in a deadly nuclear catastrophe and the United States will never be safe.”

But his words stopped well short of the alarmingly threatening language that peppered North Korean statements in early 2013 as tensions spiked over the regime’s nuclear test in February and the resulting U.N. sanctions.

[CNN]

The influence of Kim Kyong Hui, aunt of Kim Jong Un

Jang Song Thaek had been seen as a kind of regent to Kim Jong Un, the young successor to the Kim family dynasty, and was thought to be number two in the regime. But Jang owed his position to his wife, Kim Kyong Hui, the only sister of Kim Jong Il, Kim Jong Un’s deceased father. Jang’s tact, as well as his usefulness as an interlocutor with China, enabled him to keep his position, despite his long-term separation from his wife.

But in North Korea, blood is paramount: everything, including ideology and the national interest, is subservient to the maintenance of the Kim dynasty. I have long believed that the true holder of power since Kim Jong Il’s death has been his sister, Kim Kyong Hui, and no one else. Her blood tie to the Kim dynasty is the reason why, even after her husband was purged and executed (and the rest of his family rounded up), she maintained her political position.

It has even been suggested that she made the decision to purge her husband. Though it cannot be known whether she also proposed killing him, it is not surprising that she believed that, with her own health failing, she could not leave the family dynasty to her husband’s care.

On Dec. 17, the first major ceremony following the purge and execution of Jang Song Thaek,  Choe Ryong Hae, vice chairman of the Central Military Commission of the Korean Workers’ Party, was conspicuously present on stage at the commemoration of the second anniversary of “Dear Leader” Kim Jong Il’s death.

With Jang purged, responsibility for economic failure in North Korea has been shifted to Choe.  All officials and people related to him now live under the shadow of the executioner, for he is certain to bear the blame when the dynasty needs a scapegoat for its mounting problems.

The day is fast approaching when Kim Jong Un and his clan will have to take responsibility for the country’s dire condition, and it may come soon after Kim Kyong Hui dies. If so, the Kim dynasty’s last chapter may have begun with the current spasm of executions, though the ending — for the Korean Peninsula and East Asia alike — remains very much in doubt.

[Excerpts of a Japan Times opinion piece by Yuriko Koike, a former defense minister and national security adviser]

North Korean purge includes recall of UNESCO envoy

North Korea’s deputy ambassador to UNESCO returned home Monday after being recalled as part of a purge prompted by the execution of the once-powerful uncle of leader Kim Jong-Un, a report said.

Hong Yong, the North’s deputy permanent delegate to UNESCO, and his wife were spotted at Beijing airport Monday before taking the flight to Pyongyang, South Korea’s Yonhap news agency said. Hong, one of Jang Song-Thaek’s associates, took the post only six months ago, it said, quoting a diplomatic source in Beijing.

Yonhap said earlier this month that Jang’s nephew and the North’s ambassador to Malaysia, Jang Yong-Chol, had been recalled.

It said last week the North’s ambassador to Sweden, Pak Kwang-Chol, and his wife had also been summoned back to Pyongyang. Pak, who had taken the post in Sweden in late 2012, was seen at Beijing airport being escorted by North Korean officials before taking the flight to Pyongyang on Friday, Yonhap said.

Ryoo Kihl-Jae, South Korea’s unification minister in charge of cross-border affairs, told a parliamentary committee on Monday that the North has been purging officials close to the executed uncle. “We are seeing signs that those who were deeply involved with Jang are being recalled and purged,” he said.

The purge however appears to be targeting a relatively small circle of officials, Ryoo said, rejecting speculation of a sweeping clear-out of party and military ranks.

[AFP]

North Korean history repeating itself

On December 16, a large assembly of the Korean People’s Army (KPA), as well as the Navy, the Air Force, and the Anti-Air Force of the KPA gathered outdoors at the plaza of the Kumsusan Palace of the Sun in Pyongyang for the purpose of pledging their loyalty to Kim Jong Un.

Vice Marshal Choe Ryong Hae, the Chief of the General Political Department, led the pledge for the military with some chilling remarks:  “We will find, to the end, any one of those who walk a different path without upholding the supreme commander comrade’s idea and intent and those who attempt to castigate the supreme commander comrade’s leadership, wherever they are in hiding, and burn them up even without leaving their ashes.”

He also said that “we will intensely wage the ideological battle to crush the heterogeneous and decadent bourgeois idea and culture” with the strength of the military-first culture in order to “make only the blood of juch’e, the military-first-type blood, flows in the entire army.”

Commentary: The Chief of the General Political Department — the top Party commissar — is new, and pledging the military’s backing in conducting more purges.The present-day scenario is not unlike the consolidation of power of Kim Jong Un’s father:

Within two months of the death of Kim Jong Un’s grandfather (Kim Il-sung), Kim Jong-il was nearly assassinated. There were many subsequent uprisings against him, but the most sensational was that by the VI Army Corps in North Hamgyong Province in northeastern North Korea. The entire leadership of that corps rebelled against “The Great Leader” in April 1995. The coup was thwarted and forty officers were killed and 300 men severely punished. Many senior officers fled to China.

The effect of that coup attempt was to make Kim Jong-il entirely dependent on the army. He abandoned any pretense of pursuing economic openness and replaced it with the “military first” doctrine still in use.

Similarly, Kim Jong Un’s dependence on the army seems to have been consolidated by a failed coup attempt.

[Townhall]

UN experts call for death penalty moratorium in North Korea

The recent execution of a senior official in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) “is just one among multiple executions” reported in the country since August, carried out with total disregard of due process and other international human rights standards, United Nations independent experts said today, calling on the Government to immediately halt the practice.

“The arrest, trial by a special military tribunal and execution of Jang Song Thaek, uncle of the country’s leader Kim Jong Un, all reportedly took place within five days,” said the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the DPRK, Marzuki Darusman.

Mr. Darusman also expressed particular concern about the practice of “guilt by association” in the country. When a person is punished for a political or ideological crime, associates and members of his or her family also risk punishment by either being sent to prison camps or being executed immediately.

His condemnation was echoed by UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, Christof Heyns, as well as the Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, Juan E. Méndez, who has endorsed the concerns.

[Read full article]

Dennis Rodman visiting North Korea despite political purge underway

Former NBA star Dennis Rodman arrived in North Korea on Thursday to meet leader Kim Jong Un and put the finishing touches on plans to bring 12 ex-NBA players to Pyongyang for a Jan. 8 exhibition game marking the leader’s birthday.

Rodman said the game is on track despite the recent execution of Kim’s uncle in a dramatic political purge.

Rodman’s visit comes less than a week after North Korea announced the execution of Jang Song Thaek, an unprecedented fall from grace for one of the most powerful figures in the country.

But officials in Pyongyang say Jang’s removal has not caused any instability. Rodman’s visit – should it proceed uneventfully – could be a sign that Kim is firmly in charge.

Rodman told The Associated Press in a brief interview at his Pyongyang hotel that he was undaunted by the recent political events.

“I can’t control what they do with their government, I can’t control what they say or how they do things here,” he said. “I’m just trying to come here as a sports figure and try to hope I can open the door for a lot of people in the country.”

Rodman has mostly avoided politics in his dealings with the North. He’s mainly focused on using basketball as a means of boosting understanding and communication and studiously avoided commenting on the North’s human rights record or its continued detainment of an American, Kenneth Bae, for allegedly committing anti-state crimes.

“North Korea has given me the opportunity to bring these players and their families over here, so people can actually see, so these players can actually see, that this country is actually not as bad as people project it to be in the media,” he said.

[AP]