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December 17, 2013

Open Sources, Special Purge Edition

Today’s big news from North Korea is that Kim Jong Un didn’t kill his wife after all. Dark rumors had been swirling in the South Korean press — the kind of apocryphal rumor that’s more significant for the very fact of its circulation than anything else — that Kim Jong Un had purged Jang Song-Thaek over an affair with Ri “when she was a singer for the Unhasu Orchestra.” Ri has since appeared at a ceremony marking the second anniversary...
Categories Kim Jong Un/Kremlinology
December 16, 2013

North Korea’s overseas money men, called home, go to ground instead

After the news broke that Jang Song Thaek has been purged, The Daily NK reported that the regime was summoning party cadres from other parts of North Korea to Pyongyang. Now, new reports tell us that North Koreans in China are also being called back, possibly to be purged themselves. The Joongang Ilbo carries a fascinating interview with Lee Keum-Ryong, a defector and Free North Korea Radio correspondent, and obviously a very brave man. Lee defied the risk of abduction,...
Categories Kim Jong Un/Kremlinology/NK Economics
December 12, 2013

KCNA: Jang Song Thaek executed for plotting coup against Kim Jong Un (Update: Also, vaporized)

KCNA has just announced that Jang Song Thaek was executed shortly after this party meeting, after confessing to “attempting to overthrow the state by all sorts of intrigues and despicable methods.” It also released this picture of him, possibly the last of his life. Such a nice, clean suit, too. [via Yonhap] As they say around these parts, sic semper tyrannis. As I noted this morning, Jang had many victims of his own in the camps. Most of them left no grave, no physical remains, and no name....
Categories Kim Jong Un/Kremlinology
December 9, 2013

China not sounding so happy about N. Korean purge (Update: Park warns of “reign of terror,” unstable relations)

[If you haven’t read yesterday’s post on the purge in Pyongyang, start there.] China has summoned Kim Jong Un to Beijing “as soon as possible” to kowtow and offer tribute discuss what Yonhap describes as “the North’s long-term stability and bilateral relations.” China seems displeased with Jang’s ouster, and in case that message was too subtle, China also staged a 5,000-man night landing exercise on the Yellow Sea coast near North Korea (ht: Adam Cathcart). Kim Jong Un now faces a...
Categories Kim Jong Un/Kremlinology
December 8, 2013

Breaking: N. Korea announces purge of Jang Song Thaek for “anti-party, counter-revolutionary factional acts” (Updates below)

KCNA has just published a lengthy denunciation of Jang Song Thaek after an unusual, hastily scheduled meeting of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea. In this connection, the Political Bureau of the C.C., the WPK convened its enlarged meeting and discussed the issue related to the anti-party, counter-revolutionary factional acts committed by Jang Song Thaek.  [….] The Jang Song Thaek group, however, committed such anti-party, counter-revolutionary factional acts as gnawing at the unity...
Categories Anju Links/Kim Jong Un/Kremlinology
September 25, 2013

N. Korea threatens S. Korean media over Ri Sol Ju sex tape report

As Kim Jong Un’s reign approaches its second anniversary, it’s becoming more difficult to draw the line between truth and parody. Radio Australia offers some tantalizing details about that dubious-sounding, thinly sourced report that a North Korea executed a group of entertainers for making sex tapes: Asahi said the rare execution of state performers, including a singer rumoured to be Kim’s ex-girlfriend, had been ordered to squash rumours of Ri’s decadent lifestyle while she was an entertainer. It said police had secretly recorded conversations...
Categories Kim Jong Un/Terrorism (NK)
September 24, 2013

Cartmanland, the Country: Kim Jong Un inspects Pyongyang’s new 3-D cinema

The expression was “bread and circuses,” not “bread or circuses”: Marshal Kim Jong Un, first secretary of the Workers’ Party of Korea, first chairman of the National Defence Commission of the DPRK and supreme commander of the Korean People’s Army, visited … Wait! Let me guess. A steel mill? An artillery battery? A model collective farm that raises alpaca wool for export? A troupe of precious toddlers who were taken from their mothers at birth and trained to somersault through...
Categories Famine & Food Aid/Kim Jong Un
September 20, 2013

Let them drink beer: Kim Jong Un’s North Korea, where Orwell meets South Park

This week, the U.N. gave the North Korean government another million dollars for flood disaster aid to North Korea. Last month, the U.N. World Food Program appealed for $98 million to feed hungry North Koreans. Earlier this year, European NGOs blamed international sanctions for their difficulties paying for their operations in North Korea. And yet somehow, Kim Jong Un has found plenty of grain for brewing beer: North Korea completed construction of a brand new brewery in Haeju city that has up-to-date production facilities, the communist...
Categories Kim Jong Un/NK Economics
September 10, 2013

Breaking: Baby Born in Pyongyang. Not Breaking: 600 Others Die in Wonsan

If I could ask Dennis Rodman one question, notwithstanding the fact that the answer would only be a string of obscenities and non-sequiturs anyway, it would be this:  Would you have played Sun City? I’ve already argued the comparison between North Korea and South Africa once, so I see no need to rewrite it. I went to work in South Africa for three months in 1990–after Mandela was released, and after the government had begun to repeal the apartheid laws. I’m...
Categories Kim Jong Un/Sports/Useful Idiocy
September 9, 2013

Cartmanland, The Country (Or, Kim Jong Un’s North Korea and the End of Juche)

Maybe I’ve learned something from Dennis Rodman’s visit to North Korea after all, which is that I was probably incorrect when I denied that Kim Jong Un had enough power to make decisions that affect North Korea’s national priorities. Unbelievable as I find it to be, he really does seem to be in charge of something, and quite probably, everything. What causes me to reverse my thinking on this important question? The fact that Rodman has made a ridiculous and...
Categories Kim Jong Un
March 18, 2013

You’re gonna need a bigger boat.

So the news today is that North Korea–which President Bush removed from the list of state sponsors of terrorism on October 11, 2008 for agreeing to give up its nuclear weapons programs–has warned the civilian populations of Baengnyeong-do, Yeonpyeong-do, and other islands in the Yellow Sea to evacuate now. The instrument this time is the quasi-official Uriminzokkiri, which is hosted in China, a nation that embraces the sacred principle that all speech, no matter how threatening or objectionable, has a...
Categories Kim Jong Un/Korean War II/Terrorism (NK)/Unfortunate photo ops
March 1, 2013

Say, do you think Kim Jong Un might just be a complete doofus who happens to have nuclear weapons?

SO THE FIRST WELL-KNOWN AMERICAN to meet with Kim Jong Un is not an AP interviewer, a tribute-bearing Bill Richardson, a ransom-bearing Jimmy Carter, or first choice Michael Jordan.  It is this man: Strain, if you must, to make this into some sort of soft power diplomatic coup; it really looks like a tragic sequel to “Being There.” The very weirdness of it all is evident in some priceless exchanges from yesterday’s State Department daily press briefing. Delectably, the AP’s part-time Pyongyang...
Categories AP Watch/Kim Jong Un/WTF?
August 10, 2012

Suddenly, Ri Sol Ju’s Fashion is the AP’s Blind Spot

What Blaine Harden calls North Korea’s extreme makeover has suffered a severe setback: North Korea’s young first lady has been pictured sporting what appears to be a Christian Dior handbag, in stark contrast to widespread shortages elsewhere in the impoverished nation. Ri Sol-Ju, the wife of leader Kim Jong-Un, was pictured accompanying him on a “field guidance trip” to an army unit. It was unclear whether the bag was genuine or an imitation. South Korea’s JoongAng Ilbo newspaper said Wednesday...
Categories AP Watch/Kim Jong Un
July 23, 2012

North Korea Increases Public Executions and Collective Punish…. Hey, Look! It’s Snoopy!

Writing in The Washington Post, Chico Harlan reports that as North Koreans try to flee its most recent avoidable food crisis, the repressive partnership of North Korea and China has been grimly effective in keeping North Koreans from escaping from their prison of a country: Last year, 2,706 North Koreans came to the South. During the first half of this year, there have been only 751 — a 42 percent decline compared with the same period a year earlier. The...
Categories AP Watch/Kim Jong Un/Refugees
July 19, 2012

A Mickey Mouse Monarchy: Thoughts on the Sacking of Ri Yong Ho (Update: A Gun Battle?)

North Korea watching is an inherently speculative hobby.  How could it be otherwise when our most reliable information comes from satellite images and reports from KCNA, the world’s least credible news organization?  The problem with having no solid facts to argue is that no one is really an expert, and anyone can pretend to be, present company included. Even “inside” sources are suspect; after all, much of their information is probably disinformation. That’s why you’ll see a lot divergent and...
Categories Kim Jong Un/Kremlinology
May 10, 2012

North Korea Imitates South Park

Yonhap reports: North Korean leader Kim Jong-un lashed out at officials of an amusement park for neglecting to take proper care of the facility’s grounds and rides, the North’s state media said Wednesday in an apparent move to highlight the leader’s concern for his people. North Korean media, including the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), said Kim inspected the Mangyongdae Funfair in Pyongyang and scolded officials there after discovering flaws throughout the park.  [….] According to the news reports,...
Categories Kim Jong Un/WTF?