Category: North Korea

If anyone knows about high quality food products it is Kim Jong-un:

Kim Jong Un provided field guidance at a food production plant on Saturday, Pyongyang time, marking his first public factory visit of 2016.

Pyongyang’s state-controlled media outlet KCNA reported Kim called on factory workers at Gold Cup Athletes Comprehensive Food Factory to produce more gustatory and nutritious food products for the state’s athletes.

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South Korean outlet Newsis reported it’s likely the plant was recently renovated and Kim was marking the new opening with an official visit.

Kim expressed satisfaction with the factory and said it had improved over the past year.

“Great improvements to the lives of the people will come, if everyone, like the factory’s cadres and employees here who make [North Korea] products that are the envy of the world, work with ambition and determination for the good of the [North Korean people],” Kim reportedly said.

The North Korean leader added cadres from other factories should learn from the plant’s example.

Pyongyang has previously stated the country’s top priority is to transform itself into an “economic powerhouse.”  [UPI]

You can read the rest at the link.

A couple of interesting Op-eds have been published recently.  The first op-ed published on CNN includes Joshua Stanton a ROK Drop favorite that blogs over at One Free Korea.  The op-ed emphasizes two key points

The only way to change this equation is to persuade Pyongyang that its regime preservation is dependent on reform and disarmament.

Washington may achieve this with a two-pronged strategy targeting Pyongyang’s systemic vulnerabilities: First, block the Kim Jong Un regime’s offshore hard currency reserves and income with financial sanctions, including secondary sanctions against its foreign enablers. This would significantly diminish, if not altogether deny, Kim the means to pay his military, security forces and elites that repress the North Korean public.

Second, delegitimize Kim’s rule in the eyes of his people and the world by engaging them through broadcasting and other information operations directed at the North Korean people, reinforced by a sustained diplomatic campaign to demand accountability for the regime’s crimes against humanity.  [CNN]

Here is probably the most important paragraph of the op-ed:

Through each of Pyongyang’s previous nuclear and long-range missile tests, U.S. policymakers have harbored the illusion that Beijing’s patience with Pyongyang must have finally run out.

But all Beijing has done so far is demonstrate a disingenuous pattern of diplomatic ambidexterity. China will not solve the North Korea problem for the United States until China sees the Kim regime as a financial liability, a threat to its own security or a threat to stability along its own border.

The Kim regime knows that they can survive any sanctions as long as the Chinese continue to believe that regime stability is in their strategic interests.  This is why they continue to conduct provocations like the latest nuclear test despite Chinese objections because they know they can get away with it.  China’s strategic interests in regards to North Korea much shift before any real change in North Korea can occur.

Inter-K signals don't come any brighter or clearer than replacing KYG with KYC. Except perhaps killing KYG first. https://t.co/LcQc98Ac6T

— Christopher Green (@Dest_Pyongyang) January 18, 2016

What is with this idiots traveling to North Korea?  I feel bad for the family that has to deal with their loved one being detained by the North Koreans, but I do not believe the US government has any obligation to try and get someone released that voluntarily went some where that is notorious for detaining Americans:

North Korea announced Friday the arrest of a U.S. university student for what it called a “hostile act” orchestrated by the American government to undermine the authoritarian nation.

In language that mirrors past North Korean claims of outside conspiracies, Pyongyang’s state media said the University of Virginia student entered the country under the guise of a tourist and plotted to destroy North Korean unity with “the tacit connivance of the U.S. government and under its manipulation.”

The North’s official Korean Central News Agency said in a short report that the student, whom it identified as Warmbier Otto Frederick, was “arrested while perpetrating a hostile act,” but didn’t say when he was detained or explain the nature of the act. North Korea has sometimes listed English-language surnames first, in the Korean style. The University of Virginia’s online student directory lists someone named Otto Frederick Warmbier as an undergraduate commerce student.

A China-based tour company specializing in travel to North Korea, Young Pioneer Tours, confirmed that one of its customers, identified only as “Otto,” had been detained in Pyongyang, the North’s capital, but provided no other details. Social media accounts for Warmbier show interests in finance, travel and rap music; he was on the University of Virginia’s dean’s list and attended high school in Wyoming City, a suburb of Cincinnati, Ohio.  [Associated Press]

You can read the rest at the link.

Seoul should pull the plug on Kaesong. It's failed in its objective to induce NK reform and behavior moderation https://t.co/UHdYaKIQdg

— Bruce Klingner (@BruceKlingner) January 18, 2016

N.Korean speakers broadcasting inward: S.Korean media https://t.co/aHBhs8u6k1

— Jieun Baek (@JieunBaek1) January 18, 2016

I bet this hangover free alcohol works as well as their supposed hydrogen bomb test:

North Korean scientists have invented a hangover-free alcohol, according to the Pyongyang Times.

The state newspaper says the “suave” liquor will spare you wincing when you wake, despite boasting 30%-40% alcohol.

The brew is reportedly made from a type of indigenous ginseng called insam and glutinous rice, and cultivated by an organic farming method.

North Korean media is known for making often outlandish claims about its domestic achievements.  [BBC]

You can read more at the link.

A week+ after NKorea's nuclear test, manure piled onto a frozen field by truck & shovel hailed as a big achievement. pic.twitter.com/LRUeJ5BVhb

— Adam Cathcart (@adamcathcart) January 18, 2016

This file photo shows North Korea’s Gen. Kim Yong-chol, whom some specialists in South Korea believe has been tapped as the country’s new point man for handling cross-border affairs. A report written by the Youido Institute, a think tank of the ruling party, said on Jan. 18, 2016, that Kim is likely to succeed Kim Yang-gon, who died in a car accident in December, as the secretary of the North’s Workers’ Party in charge of inter-Korean issues. The general, who leads the party’s intelligence operations bureau, is known as the man who masterminded major provocations against the South, including the sinking of a naval ship, shelling attack on a border island and the planting of land mines to hurt South Korean soldiers. (Yonhap)

Scott Snyder from the Council on Foreign Relations has an article published that advocates what many in the think tank establishment have been saying that banks and companies doing business with the Kim regime have to be targeted for sanctions to work.  Snyder also calls for a nuclear freeze strategy before negotiating for a denuclearization deal:

To show the North Koreans that nuclear development is indeed a dead-end option, the United States must work with its allies to expand sanctions to target businesses and banks that refuse to cease cooperation with North Korea. North Korea must bear a tangible cost for its defiance of repeated warnings from its neighbors to desist from further nuclear and missile tests. Such a course is a necessary self-defensive step short of regime change to contain North Korea’s continuing nuclear and missile development efforts and to impose a de facto freeze on its program.

China’s cooperation toward this end is an essential litmus test of Beijing’s willingness to work together on a clear and present common threat to regional and global security. Only if the international community can impose a freeze on North Korea’s nuclear and missile development will there be a prospect that Kim might move back to denuclearization.  [Washington Examiner]

You can read more at the link.