November 1, 2014

China arrests 11 more N. Korean refugees

Eleven North Korean defectors were arrested by Chinese police while seeking to cross the border with Myanmar, a source said Friday. Local police rounded up the defectors — 10 adults and a seven-year-old child — at around 3-4 a.m. on the day, shortly before they were to head towards the border in the southern region of Yunnan Province, according to the source. They were immediately put in custody in a police station there, added the source. A South Korean foreign...
Categories China & Korea/Refugees
October 31, 2014

Washington Post Editorial calls for International Criminal Court referral

The Editors of The Washington Post aren’t falling for North Korea’s so-called charm offensive, nor (thankfully) do they use that inapt cliché: [R]ecent maneuverings suggest that Pyongyang views the latest debate with alarm. North Korean diplomats have been attempting to head off any action that would lead to a referral to the ICC. The latest gambit was to invite Mr. Darusman to visit North Korea for the first time, a cynical gesture after the country refused to allow a visit by...
Categories "United" Nations/Human Rights
October 31, 2014

North Koreans buying solar panels to generate electricity.

This trends is being driven by the falling price of Chinese solar panels, and no doubt, by growing demand as well. Solar panels have become among the assets considered essential for life in North Korea by allowing households to connect them to rechargeable batteries which can power lights and household appliances, according to a local source. “Now, it doesn’t matter whether we get power from the state. With these solar panels, we can use electricity,” The South Pyongan Province-based source...
Categories Inside NK
October 30, 2014

Park Geun-Hye still pushing for reunification

President Park Geun-hye on Tuesday made another pitch for her signature reunification vision, emphasizing that it’s time to end the pain of a divided Korean Peninsula. “I think the time has come to fundamentally resolve the pain of a division on the peninsula, as next year marks the 70th anniversary of that,” she said in a video message for the inaugural World Conference on North Korean Studies. The two-day forum opened at Seoul’s Yonsei University, drawing more than 150 South...
Categories Reconstruction
October 30, 2014

What else is Kim Jong Un buying instead of food? A new airport.

The new airport, which is now in its final stages, is the latest of North Korea’s “speed campaigns,” mass mobilizations of labor shock brigades aimed at finishing top-priority projects in record time. Dressed in hard hats and brown or olive green uniforms, impressive swarms of workers toil under huge signs calling on them to carry out their tasks with “Korea Speed.” From some corners of the site, patriotic music blares from loudspeakers to provide further motivation. [….] But, in search...
Categories AP Watch/Famine & Food Aid
October 29, 2014

Kirby presses China to support ICC referral of North Korea

Western diplomats say China, North Korea’s principal protector on the UN Security Council, will likely use its veto power there to knock down any attempt to refer North Korea to the International Criminal Court (ICC). But Michael Kirby, a former Australian judge who led the independent UN inquiry into alleged human rights abuses in North Korea, told reporters at UN headquarters that it was by no means certain if Beijing would block an ICC referral. “I don’t think a veto...
Categories "United" Nations/China & Korea/Human Rights
October 29, 2014

Another North Korean money man vanishes

The head of a foreign currency-earning enterprise, which is said to be involved in managing Kim Jong Eun’s slush fund, has disappeared, raising questions as to why. The company, which is based in Yangkang Province, operates under the No.121 Department, a bureau that specializes in timber supplies. [Daily NK] Based on my reading of the reports, it doesn’t sound like the same person as that guy who was reported in August to have defected in Russia, but I’m not 100%...
Categories Money Laundering
October 28, 2014

On Europe, the U.N., luxury goods, and the ethical limits of engagement.

The latest rant from Professor Lee and me is published here, on CNN International, in the hope that it will catch the eyes of European audiences (and maybe even give Felix Abt a migraine). Mind you, I think the EU’s leadership of the U.N. response to the Commission of Inquiry report has been commendable, but Europe has to do a better job of enforcing U.N. sanctions, and curbing the actions of unethical profiteers who would sell Kim Jong Un cigarette-making...
Categories Europe/Luxury Goods
October 28, 2014

Sue Terry v. John Delury and Moon Chung-In, on reunification

Although Delury and Moon may not like the idea of North Korea’s collapse, that is a far more likely scenario than their fantasy of “the gradual merging of North and South.” South Korea has tried to make that dream come true before, through the so-called sunshine policy it pursued from 1998 to 2008, and the result was unambiguous failure. During those years, South Korea gave North Korea $8 billion in investment and assistance. In 2000, South Korean President Kim Dae-jung...
Categories North-South/Reconstruction/Regime Change
October 28, 2014

NIS: Kim Jong Un recovering from ankle surgery

I don’t know if this is true, but it makes more sense than any other theory I’ve heard in the last month: North Korean leader Kim Jong-un is recovering following an operation to remove a cyst from his right ankle, though there is a chance that the condition could recur, lawmakers said Tuesday, citing South Korea’s spy agency. Kim received the operation between September and October by inviting a foreign doctor into the communist country, according to Lee Cheol-woo of the ruling...
Categories Kim Jong Un
October 28, 2014

Associated Press perestroika watch

The AP’s Pyongyang Bureau Chief, Eric Talmadge, has managed to coax the AP’s business partners at KCNA into letting him and photographer David Guttenfelder travel from Pyongyang to Mt. Paektu in the far north, by car. Having been duly warned not to got lost—or “you will be shot”—Talmadge and his minder stocked up on fuel coupons, Evian, and Skippy, and headed off toward Wonsan. Even on the loneliest of lonely highways, we would never be without a “minder,” whose job was...
Categories AP Watch
October 28, 2014

Charm offensive: N. Korea threatens to nuke U.S., hands out Halloween candy

As near as I can figure, Kim Jong Un’s stages of grief over his potential indictment for crimes against humanity have included denial, homophobia, mendacity, engagement, racism, and (again) terrorism, not necessarily in that order. The North Korean model differs from the Kübler-Ross model in its inclusion of several additional stages, and also, for its lack of an “acceptance” stage. In any case, North Korea, one of the world’s most isolated and opaque countries, seems to be taking the threat of at least some action seriously....
Categories "United" Nations/Human Rights/The Camps
October 27, 2014

Joongang Ilbo: Several top N. Korean officials haven’t been seen since mid-August (updated)

Some new faces might be showing up on the back of milk cartons in Pyongyang — or would be, if Pyongyang had milk cartons (hey, at least they have milk). Among those missing since mid-August are Ma Won-Chun, a prominent architect and Director of the National Defense Commission’s Design Department; General Ri Pyong-Chol, the Commanding Officer of North Korean People’s Air Force; Ri Yong-gil, Chief of the General Staff of the North Korean People’s Army; and Sim Chol-Ho, the Telecommunications...
Categories Kremlinology
October 27, 2014

Daily NK: Fire destroys Kim Jong Il’s fake birthplace (updated)

Update, September 2015: Subsequent reporting by NK News calls the Daily NK‘s report into question. ~   ~   ~ This report has been circulating in Korean-language sources for a few days, and the Donga Ilbo has reported that a large fire was burning (and had been extinguished) in that area, but this is the first time I’ve seen it reported in English. A raging wildfire that broke out on October 21st in North Korea’s Samjiyon County, Yangkang Province is...
Categories History/Kim Jong Il
October 25, 2014

Charm offensive! N. Korean “diplomats” call Botswana’s UN Ambassador a “black bastard,” laugh at testimony of gulag survivors

Discussion about North Korea’s crimes against humanity is accelerating so quickly that it’s becoming difficult to keep up with it all. Last week, among other events, diplomats from Australia, Panama, and Botswana–which severed diplomatic relations with North Korea after the Commission of Inquiry published its report–held a Panel Discussion on human rights in the North. Not surprisingly, Botswana’s U.N. Ambassador is the latest target of North Korea’s racism, according to Vice News: At one point, members of the North Korean...
Categories "United" Nations/Human Rights/Racism/WTF?
October 25, 2014

Video: Michael Kirby on human rights and religious freedom in North Korea

This was yet another event sponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, where Justice Michael Kirby (despite his admonition, I find it awkward to call him “Mister”) talks about North Korea’s frenetic reaction to proposals to indict Kim Jong Un, and other topics. Kirby also describes some extraordinary encounters with North Korean diplomats, the limitations of a potential ICC referral, and why he didn’t charge North Korea with genocide for the near-extermination of Christians (I still think a strong...
Categories "United" Nations/Human Rights
October 25, 2014

Must listen: Suki Kim, on teaching undercover at PUST

Kurt Achin, who hosts a series of outstanding podcasts for NK News, interviews Suki Kim, who went undercover as a teacher at the experimental Pyongyang University of Science and Technology. PUST teaches an elite, hand-picked group of male students, ostensibly as a strategy to open North Korea to the world, but the regime’s restrictions on both Kim and her students were so severe that Kim calls PUST “a five-star prison.” Among other verboten topics, Kim wasn’t allowed to mention the internet. At a...
Categories Anju Links