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Category: Subversion

April 24, 2010

A DIY Cellular Network: Could This Work in North Korea?

[A]n open-source project called OpenBTS is proving that almost anyone can cheaply run a network with parts from a home- ­supply or auto-supply store. Cell-phone users within such a network can place calls to each other and–if the network is connected to the Internet–to people anywhere in the world. The project’s cofounder, David Burgess, hopes that OpenBTS will mean easier and cheaper access to cellular service in remote parts of the world, including hard-to-reach locations like oil rigs and poor...
Categories Subversion/Technology
April 14, 2010

Götterdämmerung Watch

The Wall Street Journal has two must-read op-eds on the decline of North Korea’s capacity to control the flow of food, money, and information within its territory. Marcus Noland, sounding very much like Kushibo, sees a “tipping point” after The Great Confiscation: Once broken, the economy may prove difficult to repair. Prices for goods such as rice, corn and the dollar rose 6,000% or more after the reform. And while prices have come down from their peak as the government...
Categories Famine & Food Aid/NK Economics/Subversion
April 5, 2010

Götterdämmerung Watch

Writing in Foreign Policy, Marcus Noland writes about discontent and dissent in North Korea, and the impact of The Great Confiscation as a catalyst for it. The surveys’ results suggest that the regime’s discomfort might be well founded. Countries such as North Korea, where people routinely hide their true opinions, are prone to sudden, explosive political mobilizations like the ones that swept Eastern and Central Europe in the late 1980s. Those mobilizations happen when nascent expressions of discontent cascade —...
Categories NK Economics/Propaganda/Regime Change/Subversion
April 1, 2010

Hwang Jang Yop Calls for Ideological Warfare Against Kim Jong Il

I was too busy to see Hwang Jang Yop speak in D.C. the other day, but a few news services picked up his remarks: North Korea’s highest-ranking defector said “ideological warfare,” not military action, would help topple the regime of Kim Jong Il. “We don’t need to resort to force,” Hwang Jang-yop told a small audience Wednesday at the Center for Strategic International Studies, a Washington-based think tank. “We need to use ideology and markets and diplomacy. We need to...
Categories Defectors/Propaganda/Subversion
January 30, 2010

North Korea Threatens Senders of Leaflet Balloons as Messages “Gain Trust” of North Koreans

Balloon-carried leaflets sent by South Korean civic groups to North Korea are unnerving the North Korean authorities as the anti-Pyongyang messages are gaining trust among North Korean citizens, a local daily said on Saturday. In the past, when the anti-North Korean leaflets were spread in Pyongyang, North Korean residents didn’t believe their contents. However, the situation is different now. According to the Chosun Ilbo, civic groups’ leaflets these days are much more effective than in the past as they are...
Categories Propaganda/Subversion/Terrorism (NK)
January 28, 2010

The Great Confiscation Backfires, Badly

How can we tell that North Korea is in a state of self-inflicted economic chaos? When the regime can’t even conceal it from the barbarians. AFP, quoting an unidentified Western diplomat via Yonhap, reports that “[a]t the Koryo Hotel where many foreigners stay, the [North Korean won exchange] rate swung from 51 won to 120 in the space of a few hours on January 22.” Another report says that currently, prices in North Korea are “anyone’s guess” and that in...
Categories Famine & Food Aid/NK Economics/Subversion
January 26, 2010

Breaking Kim Jong Il’s Blockade

A fascinating new New York Times story tells us how clandestine journalism inside North Korea is doing more than bravely telling us stories that went untold before. Services like the Daily NK and Open Radio are coming into their own and improving the quality of their reporting in the face of challenges that traditional journalists wouldn’t (and shouldn’t!) even attempt to overcome: The reports are sketchy at best, covering small pockets of North Korea society. Many prove wrong, contradict each...
Categories Subversion
January 15, 2010

North Korea Battles Rising Cell Phone Use

Cell phone use continues to grow in North Korea, despite the government’s best efforts to block it. Handsets are used to make appointments and payments and to trade goods. Even South Korean pastors are using cell phones to give sermons to people in North Korea. If cell phones connected to the North are linked to the South via the Internet, this provides valuable information unobtainable through traditional media. Competition for breaking news is expected among South Korean civic groups related...
Categories Inside NK/Subversion
January 14, 2010

“Chutzpah” in Korean = “막무가내”

North Korea, which is ironically quite fond of accusing South Korea of the “suppression” of its puppets in South Korea, is demanding that South Korea prosecute the activists who’ve resumed showering its countryside with anti-Kim Jong Il leaflets: The chief delegate to inter-Korean military talks was quoted as saying by the Korean Central News Agency that “South Korean organizations, swept by anti-communism, caused a disturbance by flying tens of thousands of leaflets from Paju, Gyeonggi Province on Jan. 1. “South...
Categories Censorship/Democracy/Propaganda/Subversion
December 21, 2009

South Korea Clears Mines from the DMZ (and Why I Think That’s a Shrewd Decision)

You say you want reunification? Fine, then. Dig up the mines along the DMZ and open the border. No, I’m not kidding: The South Korean military said Monday it has removed some 1,300 land mines this year from the country’s rural areas bordering North Korea, a reminder of the tense 1950-53 Korean War that ended in a truce. In the operations that lasted from April to November, the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) mobilized 3,300 personnel to remove mines from...
Categories NK Military/North-South/Refugees/ROK Military/Subversion
November 17, 2009

RSF Gives Large Grant to Defector Radio Stations

After years on shoestring budgets, broadcasting services by an for North Koreans have won a large new source of funding: An international organization of journalists will provide financial help to three anti-Pyongyang radio stations in South Korea, the Voice of America (VOA) reported Saturday. According to the VOA, Paris-based Reporters sans Frontiers (RSF) will provide US$380,000 to the three radio stations — Open Radio for North Korea, Free North Korea Radio and Radio Free Chosun — which produce and transmit...
Categories Propaganda/Subversion
October 27, 2009

Defector: Naver Infiltrated by NorkBots!

Hmmm. I wonder if we’ve seen some of those types around here? Writer Jang Shin-Jung (former employee of the United Front Department), a North Korean refugee, testified that North Korea’s United Front Department has adopted a new propaganda strategy against South Korea by operating a new internet commenting team to reflect South Korea’s change in media culture. [….] Jang conjectured that about 30 team members at contact station 101 were cultural experts of South Korea. He described their proficiency in...
Categories Propaganda/Subversion/The Fifth Column
October 14, 2009

Lankov in the NYT, on Changing North Korea

My friend Andrei begins by advocating “cultural exchanges” as a means to change North Korea, a topic we’ve often debated in the past. If only such exchanges had the potential he suggests they do. North Korea only permits them on an infinitesimal scale, with people whose loyalty is thoroughly vetted, and when it calculates that the regime-stabilizing financial benefits outweigh the risk that the participants will be corrupted. Look no further than the Kaesong experience, or that of the North...
Categories Deprogramming/Propaganda/Subversion/Sunshine
September 4, 2009

North Korea’s Uranium Enrichment: Raising the Stakes

Umm, about that North Korean uranium enrichment program the Bush Administration made up …. North Korea said Friday that it is in the final stages of enriching uranium, a process that could give the nation a second way to make nuclear bombs in addition to its known plutonium-based program. North Korea informed the U.N. Security Council it is forging ahead with its nuclear programs in spite of international calls to abandon its atomic ambitions, the official Korean Central News Agency...
Categories Proliferation/Propaganda/Subversion/WMD