I am a big supporter of radio programming into North Korea because it is a proven way to challenge the Kim regime’s propaganda machine within the country. Many defectors have said that listening to illegal radio programs is how they learned about the outside world and inspired them to defect. The BBC is now going to join the Korean Broadcasting System, the Voice of America and Radio Free Asia as producers of North Korean radio programming:
The BBC World Service will launch a daily radio program aimed at North Korea as part of its biggest expansion since the 1940s.
The Korean service will be transmitted in short wave in a bid to evade the communist regime’s government censors, the Financial Times reported.
It’s one of 11 new language services announced Wednesday by the British Broadcasting Corp. as part of an expansion financed by a $360 million funding boost from the British government. [Stars & Stripes]
So Se Pyong, North Korea’s ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva, gestures during an interview with Reuters at the Permanent Mission of North Korea in Geneva, Switzerland, November 17, 2016. REUTERS/Denis Balibouse
If a U.S. administration of Donald Trump withdraws troops and equipment from South Korea and secures a peace treaty ending war on the peninsula, it could lead to normalizing relations with North Korea, a Pyongyang envoy told Reuters on Thursday.
But for now North Korea will pursue its policy of “simultaneous development” of both its nuclear program and the economy, So Se Pyong, North Korea’s Ambassador to the U.N. in Geneva said. “It will be continued.” [Reuters]
It appears that the North Koreans are taking a wait and see approach in regards to how they will respond to the election of Donald Trump:
North Korea has made its first indirect comment on the result of the US presidential election, one week after American voters went to the polls.
The first mention of Donald Trump’s victory appeared in a news report on a different matter entirely – and then only as a means to attack Pyongyang’s sworn enemy, South Korea.
Hidden deep down in a commentary calling for the resignation of embattled South Korean President Park Geun-hye, state news agency KCNA refers to her ruling Saenuri Party making use of a “Trump emergency system” to divert the public’s attention away from the current cronyism scandal threatening Ms Park’s leadership.
In the same report, headlined “South Korea leader ‘bound to get buried’ over scandal”, KCNA goes on to make its first mention of last week’s election, saying Ms Park and her followers were making a “bid to use even the US presidential election as an emergency measure” to escape impeachment.
Mr Trump is mentioned entirely without context, with no explanation to readers who or what “Trump” might be, and Korea-watchers will have to go back to June this year to find his last meaningful mention by Pyongyang. [BBC]
It is pretty ironic that North Korea is making this request at the same time they are promoting their obesity cure:
North Korea has made a state request to officials in China pleading for them to stop referring to ‘glorious leader’ Kim Jong-un as fat.
Ministers have reportedly asked their neighbours to refrain from referring to the chunky Swiss cheese fan as Jin San Pang or ‘Kim Fatty III’ in media or conversations.
Apparently ‘Kim Fatty III’ is a widely used nickname for Kim in China along with Jin Pang Pang (Kim Fat Fatty) or Jin San Fei (Kim Abundant III).
Now According to the Apple Daily in Hong Kong, terrified North Korean government officials have called on their old comrades to take action before heads roll. [FOX News]
North Korea’s researchers have obviously not tested their obesity cure on Kim Jong-un:
North Korean scientists have announced that they have invented a pill that cures obesity, in an article published by the country’s state media on Monday.
The article, entitled “Researchers in Metabolic Diseases,” outlines the ten-year research project which resulted in what’s described as “the Golden Pill Against Obesity.”
The new pill is supposedly superior to other treatments and allegedly works without lifestyle or diet changes.
“As it decreases the body-weight and the thickness of subcutaneous fat without applying any diet or exercise cure, the pill is believed to be superior to existing remedies of obesity or foreign pills or other means of treatment,” the article reads. [NK News]
Trump has done pretty well for himself by not listening to the experts. I guess we will see if he wants to the listen to the so called experts about North Korea and decide to cut a deal with the Kim regime:
“Engagement” will be the most viable option for the new U.S. government to make North Korea give up its nuclear and missile programs, three experts said Friday.
A forum in Seoul called on the Donald Trump administration that begins in January to seek dialogue-based engagement policies toward a nuclear-armed North Korea.
Ken E. Gause, director of the International Affairs Group at the Center for Naval Analyses, outlined possible policy options for the incoming Trump administration — pre-emption, intensified sanctions and engagement — as President Obama’s “strategic patience” approach is widely received as a failure.
He proposed the new government give priority to engagement involving both dialogue and pressure, citing the potentially catastrophic downsides of pre-emptive attacks and the ineffectiveness of stronger sanctions heavily reliant on China.
“It is an option, however, that will require many years, if not decades, to achieve,” Gause said.
“The (engagement) option is the least appealing to the U.S. and South Korean policymakers. It is tainted by the history of past policies of appeasement. It smacks of rewarding bad behavior and giving Pyongyang de facto recognition as a nuclear state, something the United States and South Korea have said they will never do,” Gause said. [Yonhap]
