Category: North Korea

This wasn’t the typical way to premiere a film in a new country, but for North Korea this will have to do:

“The Interview” is headed to North Korea, but don’t expect it in Pyongyang theaters anytime soon.

CNN has reported that North Korean defector Lee Min-bok has been launching balloons filled with DVDs of the Hollywood comedy toward the Demilitarized Zone.

Lee described the movie as vulgar and not particularly funny. However, its cinematic quality isn’t the point, Lee told CNN.

“The regime hates this film because it shows Kim Jong-un as a man, not a god,” Lee said to CNN. “He cries and is afraid like us and then he’s assassinated.”

Lee launched the most recent batch of 80,000 DVDs, dollar bills and political leaflets – his fourth such launch – in the middle of the night Saturday near the Korean border, after checking wind speed and direction.  [Stars & Stripes]

You can read the rest at the link, but previously North Korea has made a number of threats against refugee activists to try and stop them from launching these balloons.

It looks like the North Koreans are trying to make these planes a little bit harder to spot:

North Korea has changed the camouflage colors for the AN-2 low-altitude infiltration aircraft. The belly is now sky blue, the same color as a drone that crashed on Baeknyeong Island last year, and the upper body a pattern of dark green, pale green and red, according to analysis of a South Korean military intelligence agency.

The North has about 300 of the planes.

“The North’s unveiling of the new AN-2 last Wednesday is an apparent threat to infiltrate the South with aircraft carrying special troops,” a military officer here said Sunday.  [Chosun Ilbo]

Who knows in regards to the accuracy of this report, but there is probably a grain of truth to the report:

North Korean authorities are apparently recruiting fresh members of the so-called “pleasure squad” of female entertainers for leader Kim Jong-un after disbanding the group that used to entertain his father.

One source said officials fired the women who used to work at Kim Jong-il’s summer villas. They are currently staying at the Koryo Hotel in Pyongyang undergoing security training.

The women were apparently made to sign a pledge of secrecy in return for money and gifts.

Women who worked as maids got US$2,000 and home appliances and entertainers double that amount.

Kim junior apparently shunned the summer villas before he came to power but developed a taste for them and the pliable maidens that come with them when he was being treated for gout last year.  [Chosun Ilbo]

It looks like the North Koreans are up to no good off the coast of Mexico:

North Korea on Wednesday said Mexico has “forcibly detained” one of its ships months after it ran aground off Mexico’s Gulf coast last year, and Pyongyang blames the United States for making sure the ship is not released.

 North Korea’s deputy permanent representative to the U.N. told reporters that his country will take unspecified “necessary measures to make the ship leave immediately.”

An Myong Hun said the Mu Du Bong is strictly a commercial ship and that more than 50 crew remain on board.

A U.N. panel, however, has reported that the ship is controlled by a company that has tried to evade U.N. sanctions imposed in response to North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs.

The panel’s recent report says the Pyongyang-based Ocean Maritime Management Co. has simply renamed most of its vessels to avoid detection. Nuclear-armed North Korea has a history of using front companies for that purpose.  [Associated Press]

You can read the rest at the link, but the article does not say what the ship was transporting.  The ship was coming from Cuba so it probably had sugar in it maybe hiding illicit cargo like the ship the Panamanians detained in 2013.  I have always believed that these ships that these sanctioned ships should be auctioned off instead of given back to the North Koreans.  That would actually significantly hit the Kim regime in the pocketbook.

You can read more at NK News that believes the intent of this ship was simply to test the UN sanctions put in place after what happened with the prior ship in 2013.

How North Koreans ads in western newspapers backfired.

That is what some people are wondering:

Today, North Korea faces the prospect of another significant food shortage and a purported loss of income from China, its largest trading partner and closest among precious few allies.

But are things so bad right now that Pyongyang will be willing to discuss its nuclear weapons program?

“North Korea says its nuclear program means its life,” said Kang Sung Kyu, professor of North Korea Studies at Korea University in Sejong-shi.

Kang is skeptical that North Korea is serious about negotiations, or that any agreements would stand — a valid concern, given how previous deals have fallen apart as Pyongyang repeatedly reneged on key points in the past.

It’s also unclear what role China might play in North Korea’s decision-making.  (……….)

Paik and Kang remain skeptical that talks at this point would accomplish much; Pyongyang agreed to abandon its nuclear program in 2007 after much negotiation, only to resume testing two years later.

However, it does appear that China and the other members of the “six-party talks,” a group of countries that negotiated several now-tattered accords in the 2000s, are ready to talk to North Korea once again.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry recently posted a photo of Russia’s deputy foreign minister and China’s representative for Korean affairs with the following caption: “The two sides exchanged views on the situation on the Korean Peninsula, and on the restarting of the six-party talks.”

China has not provided details on what those views entail.

South Korea, Japan, the U.S., China and Russia have reached “a certain degree of consensus” on how to restart the talks that fell apart in 2008, said Hwang Joon-kook, South Korea’s ambassador to the talks — again without providing details, according to Reuters.   [Stars & Stripes]

You can read the rest at the link, but supposedly the US government is having talks with North Korea right now in regards to holding talks.  As I have been saying for years now the North Koreans will never give up their nuclear program.  What the North Koreans want in any nuclear talks is to be recognized as a nuclear power like Pakistan has become and with it the dropping of sanctions.  What would the US get out of such a deal?  The North Koreans would probably gives some vague promises of not building more nukes, but the big thing is that they would keep quiet for a few years like they have after past deals so the usual suspects can declare peace in our time and the outgoing administration can leave office without problems from North Korea.  Then later when a new US President takes office the North Koreans will start the cycle of provocations and negotiations all over again and by then North Korea will have a stronger hand with better nukes and missiles to make threats with.

The Black Panther Party’s relations with North Korea.

Here are incredible photos of the military drill that’s freaking out North Korea.

Via One Free Korea comes the latest story of yet another group of rogue North Korean soldiers rampaging within China:

Two armed North Korean border patrol guards from Sinuiju in North Hamkyung Province reportedly escaped the country and crossed over into China’s Dandong on Tuesday, Daily NK has learned. Of the two, one was captured on Thursday by Chinese public security officials, while the other is still on the run, according to local sources.

Upon discovery of the incident, North Korea’s military authorities immediately alerted Chinese authorities in the border city of Dandong, leading to a large-scale manhunt on the same day and the plastering of posters featuring the soldiers’ images around heavily trafficked areas of Dandong. Going AWOL, particularly while armed, is considered an offense of great magnitude in both North Korea and China.

Three days into the search, one of the soldiers was arrested in a small rural village near Dandong. “A North Korean solider carrying a gun was apprehended in quiet village near Dandong Singu District,” a source based in the border city told Daily NK. “At the time, there were large numbers of public security officials and soldiers on the streets.”

He added, “The solider held a woman hostage shortly before he was captured, creating a standoff with security officials. But in the end he was subdued.”  [Daily NK]

You can read the rest at the link, but One Free Korea has much more on how this is a sign of how the crackdown on the border to prevent guards from accepting bribes from defectors could be leading to these crime sprees within China.

'No way North Korea' — DPRK refused entry to China-led AIIB http://t.co/eY0UBBNbo4

— Casper van der Veen (@caspervdveen) March 29, 2015