Two  pieces of interesting news. First, there is now a way for people who are not in Seoul or Tongyeong to sign the petition to save Shin Suk Ja and her two daughters, and thus  maybe, just maybe, to close those dastardly prison camps that have been so comprehensively described right here in the past! Second, I have made the full text of ‘NK People Speak, 2011’ available on the Daily NK database for those of you who cannot wait...

The Grand National Party officially enters election mode with the old “Northern Wind” play: South Korea’s ruling party chief crossed the border into North Korea to tour a joint inter-Korean industrial complex on Friday, saying it is “a politician’s obligation” to break the deadlock in inter-Korean relations. [….] The one-day trip by Rep. Hong Joon-pyo, chairman of the ruling Grand National Party, comes after he called for Seoul to exercise flexibility on its policy toward Pyongyang to try to improve...

The North Korean Freedom Coalition is organizing a wave of international protests for September 22nd. The protests will occur in front of Chinese embassies and consulates in 12 different countries, including Washington, Seoul, and Tokyo, but also Sydney, Brussels, Prague, Tallinn, Helsinki, Mexico City, Warsaw, Busan, Bucharest, Kiev, London, Dublin, Chicago, Houston, New York, Chicago, L.A., and San Francisco. If your city isn’t listed there and happens to have a ChiCom consulate, it’s not too late to become an organizer....

On asylum for North Korean refugees, America leads from behind: Some 581 North Korean defectors have been given asylum in the United Kingdom, making them the largest group of all defectors in countries other than South Korea…. The U.K. was followed by Germany with 146, the Netherlands with 32, Australia and the U.S. with 25 each and Canada with 23. I suppose the State Department is worried that if we provoke Kim Jong Il, he might boycott disarmament talks, pursue...

Now here is a prom date you probably can’t turn down. __________________________________ Does anyone else find this sort of rhetoric eerily similar to what the Nazi press said about Britain and France in the 30’s? China’s humiliations at the hands of Western powers in the past centuries “left the Chinese people with the deep pain of having seas they could not defend, helplessly eating the bitter fruit of being beaten for being backward,” said a front-page editorial in the paper....

I can’t believe Kim Jong Il just got re-elected again! I don’t know a single person who voted for him! __________________________________ If current trends continue, however, and subversive information continues to pour across North Korea’s borders, Kim Jong Il’s approval rating could decline into the high nineties by the time of the next election. And in related news, North Korea’s borders are also a two-way street. Yonhap reports on how information is smuggled out of North Korea, and I don’t...

The Chosun Ilbo, citing an unnamed diplomatic source, says that China is holding two South Korean National Intelligence Service officers: According to a diplomatic source familiar with China, two senior NIS agents were arrested in August last year while operating in Shenyang, Liaoning Province after hiring local operatives to gather intelligence on North Korea. In accordance with diplomatic protocol, the government demanded their deportation, but China demurred and put them on trial. [….] A source familiar with North Korea said...

So I guess North Korea isn’t constitutionally incapable of importing food after all. The Daily NK pulled up some stats compiled by the South Korean government and Chinese customs (what, they publish those?) and broke it all down. In addition to importing $46 million worth of food last year, a whopping 4% of the total value of its imports, they bought a few other things: In comparison, around 10 million dollars were used to purchase high quality liquor, cigarettes and...