Kim Jon Un’s endgame to avoid becoming vulnerable to American pressure

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“When I was in Pyongyang, I was with some foreign ministry officials whose job it is, is to read Donald Trump’s Twitter feed, listen to his speeches, try to analyze the American government. And what they said was, ‘Frankly, we’re mystified,” said Evan Osnos, a New Yorker staff writer who traveled to North Korea on assignment for the magazine.

“We can’t figure out if he is, as they put it, irrational or whether he’s proceeding down a subtle strategy that’s leading them to an objective. So, when we send mixed messages, when we send confusing messages, they’re not quite sure what to make of it,” Osnos added.

Michael Morell, former acting and deputy director of the CIA, echoed the idea that mixed messages and threats without follow-through are damaging to any hopes of diplomacy. “You’ve lost a tremendous amount of credibility and I think that the language in that respect is dangerous,” Morell said.

North Korea and Kim Jon Un’s endgame, Osnos said, is to avoid becoming vulnerable to American pressure. “If you ask people in Pyongyang, really cut through what it is that they’re trying to achieve, the thing they return to over and over again, is they want to avoid being Saddam Hussein or Muammar Qaddafi,” Osnos said.

In addition to using nuclear capability as a way to secure themselves from attack, Morell added that there is a possibility they want to use them to become more dominant on the Korean Peninsula.  “Does he want these weapons to try to coerce the United States in South Korea? So in other words, once he has them, will he be more aggressive on the Korean Peninsula? The question is how do you deter that, and that’s more difficult,” Morell said.

[CBS]

South Korea criticized over treatment of North Korean defectors

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A United Nations independent expert on alleged North Korean human rights violations was put on the defensive in Seoul Thursday over South Korea’s opaque treatment of defectors.

Tomás Ojea Quintana, an Argentinean human rights lawyer who was appointed in 2016 as the U.N. Special Rapporteur on human rights in North Korea, held a press conference after wrapping up a four-day visit to South Korea this week. In his statement he mentioned the case of the 12 North Korean women restaurant workers who escaped from China to seek asylum in South Korea in 2016. North Korea has demanded the return of these defectors, charging that they were abducted by South Korean agents.

Quintana said he wanted to meet with meet with the women to independently verify that they had come to the South of their own accord, but was not able to do so. Asked if South Korea denied him access to the women, he was very careful in his response.

“The South Korean government, I would say, is not preventing me to interview them, but there are some limitations in terms of, I would say, organizing the encounter with these women,” said Quintana.

South Korea often will not release any information about defectors, purportedly to protect families of the defectors that are still in North Korea from any government retribution.

[VoA]

North Korean suicide bombers ready to be unleashed if war breaks out?

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Joo-il Kim, a North Korean defector who lives in London, said brainwashed fighters who will “live and die” for Kim Jong-un have their own “nuclear backpacks”.

Mr Kim told Express.co.uk that these bombers were assembled because Jong-un’s military is not strong enough to simply nuke their rivals. He said: ” They know they can’t win the war.”

But he insisted the brainwashed soldiers could “infiltrate” neighboring countries and unleash their suicide backpacks.

Mr Kim’s warning comes after Chinese officials warned the risk of a war against North Korea is higher than ever before.

[The Sun]

THAAD tensions impede China passage for North Korean defectors

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Strained relations between Beijing and Seoul over the deployment of a US missile defense system have made it “more difficult” for North Korean refugees or defectors to pass through China before reaching South Korea, a former US special envoy said.

Robert King, former US special envoy for North Korean human rights issues, told a US House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing that Beijing at times has allowed North Korean refugees to travel into the South via China when the Chinese capital has maintained good relations with Seoul. But after South Korea decided to install an American-made Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, or THAAD, system on the Korean Peninsula earlier this year, triggering a year-long diplomatic stand-off between Seoul and Beijing, North Korean refugees could hardly pass through China, King said.

King’s comments coincide with the beginning of South Korean President Moon Jae-in’s official visit to China and his third meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping. The two neighboring countries agreed to resume relations last month after tensions flared over THAAD.

“I am hopeful that the recent indications of better ties between Beijing and Seoul will lead to easier conditions for defectors to pass through China,” King said in his testimony to the foreign affairs panel. “Virtually all” North Korean refugees flee the North through China, the ex-special envoy said.

The number of refugees leaving the North annually has declined recently owing to tighter border control by Pyongyang, King said. After peaking at nearly 3,000 in 2011, the number fell to fewer than 1,500 in 2016. “Numbers thus far this year look to be even lower,” he said.

[South China Morning Post]

Tillerson’s new North Korea strategy undermined by Trump?

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US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson laid out a new US strategy toward North Korea on Tuesday that was met with cheers in Russia and China but may have been squashed by the White House on the same day.

“We’re ready to talk any time North Korea would like to talk, and we’re ready to have the first meeting without precondition,” Tillerson said at an event at the Atlantic Council.  His words appeared to signal a significant shift in US policy toward North Korea. Instead of the promise of verifiable denuclearization, Tillerson simply asked for a “period of quiet” in which North Korea pause testing nuclear devices and ballistic missiles.

Russia’s deputy foreign minister, Sergei Ryabkov, told Russian media he welcomed the decision. China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman, Lu Kang, told a press briefing the same.

But the White House, where Tillerson has reportedly fallen out of favor, seemed to push back. “The president’s views on North Korea have not changed,” the White House said in a vague statement, according to Reuters. “North Korea is acting in an unsafe way … North Korea’s actions are not good for anyone and certainly not good for North Korea.”

Trump has frequently talked up military and kinetic responses to North Korea’s missile testing, and he has often undermined Tillerson’s efforts at diplomacy, once calling them a waste of time. In the past month, Trump administration sources began leaking that Tillerson may be on his way out of the executive branch in favor of a Trump favorite, CIA Director Mike Pompeo.

[Reuters]

China prepares for North Korea crisis by building refugee camps on border

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China has started construction on a network of refugee camps along its 880-mile border with North Korea, quietly preparing for the mass exodus of refugees that the collapse of Kim Jong Un’s regime could potentially cause.

Detailed plans for the camps, intended to house thousands of migrants who might flee a crisis on the Korean Peninsula, emerged after internal documents from a state-run telecom giant went viral on the Chinese social media site Weibo. The telecom company appeared to be tasked with providing the camps with internet services, and the document stated that camps were planned in three villages in Changbai County and two cities in the northeastern province of Jilin, on the border, on state-owned land.

The document, which Newsweek could not independently verify, said: “Due to cross-border tensions…the [Communist] party committee and government of Changbai County has proposed setting up five refugee camps in the county.”

In addition, The New York Times reported that centers for refugees were also planned in the cities of Tumen and Hunchun, citing a local businessman, who remained anonymous.

The secret construction of the camps reflects growing concern in China about the potential for political instability—or even regime collapse—in North Korea.

[Newsweek]

Kim Jong Un is not crazy, just a cold calculator

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North Korea’s latest threat of nuclear war is another salvo of incendiary rhetoric from the rogue nation, but it’s also part of a calculated power move by leader Kim Jong Un.

Experts say Kim’s fiery talk and defiance of the international community masks a core fact: His pursuit of a nuclear program is designed to establish the legitimacy of his regime inside North Korea and to gain international stature.

CIA Director Mike Pompeo said last week that the consensus in the intelligence community is that Kim is “rational” — even though some comments from North Korea may not seem so.

Sheila Miyoshi Jager, a professor at Oberlin College and author of Brothers at War: The Unending Conflict in Korea concurs, “Kim certainly is acting rationally and predictably if his objective is to secure his hold on power.”

North Korea’s test last month established that the isolated nation had built a missile capable of reaching Washington, D.C., and other East Coast cities. Kim believes that the threat of a nuclear attack on the United States might force Washington to rethink its commitment to defend South Korea if attacked. North Korea’s ultimate goal is to reunify the peninsula.

Kim believes nuclear weapons serve as a deterrent and provide economic leverage for North Korea, Jager said. Kim fears he will go the way of Iraq’s Saddam Hussein and Libya’s Moammar Gadhafi — both gave up their nuclear weapons programs and were overthrown.

[USA Today]

North Korea is a nuclear state

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Analysts say North Korea is now a nuclear weapons power.

Every time North Korea does something provocative –which is often– Washington insists that Pyongyang must give up its nuclear weapons program.

Why would Kim Jong Un’s cash-strapped regime spend so much time and money on building these weapons only to give them up? And even if they were prepared to bargain them away eventually, why would they do so now, when Trump and his top aides are threatening military action?

“It’s a fantasy that they’re going to willingly give up their nuclear programs so long as Kim is in power. He saw the fate of Saddam and Gaddafi–why would he give up his nuclear weapons?” asked Vipin Narang, a nuclear nonproliferation specialist at MIT, referring to the former leaders of Iraq and Libya, both of whom are now deposed and dead.

[Washington Post]

Why the majority of North Korean defectors are women

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About 70% of the more than 31,000 defectors who have made it to South Korea since the end of the Korean War are women, according to the government’s Ministry of Unification. That figure has climbed in recent years, reaching about 80% from 2014-2016, and 85% this year.

Accurate information from North Korea is difficult to obtain to understand why women defect in higher numbers, but experts point to several factors:
-One key reason is a strong demand for North Korean women in neighboring China as arranged brides in a country where men outnumber women by more than 33 million, and for the sex industry.
-Sokeel Park, the Seoul-based director of research and strategy for Liberty in North Korea, an organization that helps rescue North Korean refugees hiding in China, said North Korean women also may have a better chance of staying under the radar and working informally in China in restaurants and factories.
-Women also have a significantly lower social status than men in North Korea, which allows them to remain further out of sight from authorities, said Heather Barr, a senior researcher in the women’s rights division of Human Rights Watch.
-Women are key movers of an informal market that sprang up after the near collapse of North Korea’s economy in the 1990s. Barr said this gives women greater access to the networks of brokers who can arrange passage to China.
-Also motivating some women to escape has been access to information about the world outside North Korea. Many popular South Korean programs that make their way into North Korea are known as K-dramas — glamorous soap operas targeted to female audiences.

[USA Today]

UN’s North Korea human rights expert schedules official visit to region

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The UN’s specialist on human rights in North Korea will visit South Korea and Japan from December 11-16, in the context of heightened tensions in North-East Asia.

“I will use this mission to gather information on the latest developments in the human rights situation in North Korea and identify issues of concern that should be brought to the attention of the Human Rights Council,” said Tomás Ojea Quintana, the Special Rapporteur on human rights in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK).

[North Korea] itself has not granted access to the Special Rapporteur since the mandate was created in 2004, but has recently opened up to dialogue with other UN mechanisms in areas such as the situation of women, children and people with disabilities.

Tensions in North-East Asia have increased after North Korea conducted numerous missile launches in 2017, and carried out what it said was a hydrogen bomb test in September. Resolutions by the UN General Assembly and Security Council strongly condemned these tests, and international sanctions against the DPRK were strengthened.

Mr. Quintana will spend 11-14 December in the Republic of Korea before moving on to Japan on 15-16 December. He will present his next report to the Human Rights Council in March 2018.

[UN Human Rights Council]