I think a lot of this growing trend has to do with the debt many of these people ran up to escape North Korea and then having a difficult time integrating into the hyper-competitive South Korean society:
A North Korean defector from North Hamgyong Province was given a prison sentence after getting caught smuggling drugs into South Korea from China last year.
The 38-year-old had looked in vain for a job and was desperate for money when she was approached by another defector who tempted her with the chance of some quick cash.
The defector told police she needed money to feed herself and felt rejected by South Korean society.
More defectors end up in prison here every year. In 2011 there were 51 defectors behind bars here, but that had risen to 97 in the first half of last year. Crimes range from drug possession, fraud and embezzlement to assault and murder.
A police officer said, “Defectors tend to be vulnerable to crime because they are often poor and face discrimination.” [Chosun Ilbo]
Considering that this analysis is coming from David Albright this should be taken with some skepticism:
North Korea is estimated to have up to nine nuclear weapons built with highly enriched uranium, and uranium bombs could account for up to 60 percent of the North’s nuclear arsenal feared to grow to up to 100 weapons in five years, an American expert said.
David Albright, a top nuclear expert who heads the Institute for Science and International Security think tank, spoke about the forecast in an interview with Yonhap News Agency, saying highly enriched uranium is easier to make than weapons-grade plutonium.
Last month, Albright and Joel Wit, a security expert who runs the website 38 North, rang the alarm about the North’s growing nuclear capabilities with a surprising assessment that Pyongyang could expand its nuclear stockpile from 10-16 nuclear weapons to up to 100 weapons by 2020.
In that case, “40 percent of the arsenal would contain plutonium and 60 percent would contain weapons-grade uranium,” Albright said in the interview at his office in Washington. “The weapons-grade uranium cannot be forgotten by any means.”
Some experts have questioned the 100 weapons, including Olli Heinonen, a former International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) official. Albright said in response to such skepticism: “North Korea is not a country just starting to make nuclear weapons. North Korea has been making nuclear weapons for up to two decades.”
The worst case scenario is based on an assumption that the North has two centrifuges, not only the one at the country’s main nuclear complex, but also a secret facility whose existence has been widely suspected but has not been confirmed, he said.
“I went from deeply skeptical to believing that it’s possible … that they have another major centrifuge plant. We have to do more work … to see if that’s true. But I take the U.S. assessment intelligence that there is this earlier centrifuge plant much more seriously now than I did maybe five, six years ago,” he said. [Yonhap]
Via One Free Korea comes this news that the BBC may begin radio broadcasting into North Korea:
This is just asking for a caption contest!
The BBC is planning a new North Korea service to give the totalitarian state’s 25 million people an alternative to Kim Jong-un’s propaganda.
In a move that could plunge the corporation into confrontation with the North Korean dictator, the World Serviceis examining how to set up a special news channel that will get around Pyongyang’s ban on foreign media broadcasts.
The plan has echoes of Western broadcasts into the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact countries during the Cold War, when the BBC, Radio Free Europe and Voice of America all broadcasted to listeners behind the Iron Curtain.
However, it is likely to spark fury from Pyongyang’s volatile leadership, and could lead to the British embassy in Pyongyang being targeted for protests or being shut down altogether.
It could also put Britain in the firing line for North Korean-led cyberattacks, such as the one that targeted Sony Pictures last year over its film “The Interview”, which lampooned Kim Jong-un. [BBC]
You can read the rest at the link, but I have been a supporter of radio broadcasts into North Korea for years. Hopefully the BBC follows through with this, but according to One Free Korea they may be having second thoughts. So is the BBC being scared off by cyberattack threats?
Shown is a file photo of North Korea’s SA-5 ground-to-air missile at a military parade in Pyongyang on April 15, 2012. South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said on March 13, 2015 that North Korea had test-fired seven ground-to-air missiles into the East Sea the previous day in an apparent saber-rattling against the South Korean-U.S. joint military exercises, Key Resolve, which Pyongyang denounces as a rehearsal for invasion. (Yonhap)
I feel bad for the families effected by this, but once again these people only have themselves to blame for being detained and governments should not feel compelled to get them released when their own stupidity by traveling to North Korea in first place is the cause for what happened:
Canada’s government has confirmed that a Canadian pastor has been detained in North Korea, the man’s family said Thursday.
Canadian officials told the family that North Korea’s government confirmed the detention of Reverend Hyeon Soo Lim, said Lisa Pak, a spokeswoman for the family and the Light Korean Presbyterian Church in Toronto. Pak said Lim is facing charges but could not say what they are.
Pak said Lim was supposed to return from a humanitarian trip to North Korea more than a month ago. He has not been heard from since he travelled to North Korea on Jan. 31 as part of a regular humanitarian mission where he supports a nursing home, a nursery and an orphanage, she said. [Associated Press]
North Korea’s slave labor network has been operating for decades, but South Korea has no right to complain about it considering the near slave labor they are using at the Kaesong Industrial Complex:
A construction site in Dubai. The United Arab Emirates is one of 40 countries where North Korean laborers are dispatched to work and earn cash for the North Korean regime. UPI Photo/Norbert Schiller
North Korea’s massive network of slave laborers is kept under strict surveillance and in case of injury or death are cheated of their compensation by the North Korean state, a South Korean NGO said Tuesday.
The report, based on interviews with 20 North Korean defectors in South Korea, highlighted severe human rights violations and wage exploitation that occurred at work sites in a total of 40 different Asian and African countries, The Korea Times reported.
Poland was the sole European nation that allowed North Koreans to work within its borders. Seoul’s foreign ministry estimates 50,000 North Korean nationals work at state-sanctioned sites.
One North Korean defector testified how the North Korean state cheated a family of its benefits after a construction worker fell to his death from a building in Kuwait. Of the $160,400 in compensation, the family of the victim received only $2,000.
Defectors who worked at sites in Russia said for every $100 earned, $90 would go to the state.
These workers were forced to work 15 hours a day. Even as temperatures reached below freezing, one defector said they were only given “one thin uniform” The Korea Times reported. [UPI]
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un (C) tours a nursing home for seniors in Pyongyang. North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency reported it on March 6, 2015, without elaborating on the timing of the visit. Circled is Yo-jong, Kim’s younger sister. (KCNA-Yonhap)
Interesting article in the Diplomat which discusses what should be the trigger for the ROK to launch a preemptive strike on North Korea’s nuclear program?:
As North Korea continues to develop both nuclear weapons and the missile technology to carry them, pressure on South Korea to take preemptive military action will gradually rise. At some point, North Korea may have so many missiles and warheads that South Korea considers that capability to be an existential threat to its security. This is the greatest long-term risk to security and stability in Korea, arguably more destabilizing than a North Korean collapse. If North Korea does not arrest its nuclear and missile programs at a reasonably small, defensively-minded deterrent, then Southern elites will increasingly see those weapons as threats to Southern survival, not just tools of defense or gangsterish blackmail. [The Diplomat]
You can read the whole thing at the link, but the author makes an argument that at some point the ROK cannot allow the North Koreans to manufacture a huge stockpile of nuclear arms. Right now they have it is believed 5-10 nukes which is good enough for regime survival purposes, however what happens if they begin developing over 100 nukes? This would change the military balance of power on the peninsula towards North Korea because the ROK does not have the missile defenses to survive an attack from that many nuclear weapons not to mention the conventional artillery strikes they would launch.
I think the wild card in this is if the Chinese want that many nuclear weapons right on their doorstep or the threat of a war caused by a preemptive strike to stop their nuclear program.
