Just the fact that Pyongyang is allowing them to do this shows that they are useful idiots for the Kim regime:
Female activists from around the world will march from Pyongyang to Seoul in May to express their wish for inter-Korean peace, a global non-profit said Sunday.
The Peace Development Fund said around 30 female activists will be participating in the march, which will see them cross the heavily fortified Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) bisecting the Korean Peninsula, on May 24.
The activists include American feminist Gloria Steinem, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Mairead Maguire and Chung Hyun-kyung, a professor at Union Theological Seminary in New York, the organization said.
“Our wish is to cross the DMZ, which separates tens of millions of Korean families, on foot to express our hope for peace,” the group said in a statement.
Participants will also hold peace seminars in the two Korean capitals and discuss the role of women in reducing inter-Korean tension.
The two Koreas are technically at war since the Korean War in the 1950s ended in an armistice, not a peace treaty. [Yonhap]
I wonder what these activists leftists will do anything to criticize North Korean human rights or even the conscription of women for 5 years in the North Korean military?
Here we go again with yet another North Korea doesn’t have enough food story so lets give them free money:
SEOUL — As North Korea heads toward the “barley hump” – the lean season before the rice and corn harvest in the summer – aid agencies are warning that an unusually dry winter is compounding chronic food shortages in the impoverished country.
And while North Korea may no longer be in a state of famine, malnutrition remains such a widespread problem that even slight changes in weather can have an outsized impact on ordinary people’s food supply.
“We’re concerned about seed scarcity and the low level rain and snowfall,” John Aylieff, deputy Asia director at the U.N.’s World Food Program, said from Pyongyang. “All of these things are raising concerns about the winter harvest this year.”
Winter crops – including wheat and barley – should be growing now, but after an exceptionally dry year in 2014, rainfall around the country has been markedly lower than usual so far this year, particularly in the “cereal bowl” provinces of Pyongan in the west and Hwanghae in the south.
Although the winter harvest makes up only 5 percent of North Korea’s domestic food supply, it is a critical time because the crops see the country through the lean season known locally as the barley hump – the period between May and August before rice and corn crops are harvested. [Washington Post]
You can read more at the link, but for a country that supposedly can’t afford its own food they sure do find ways to pay to develop plenty of new missiles and submarines. Why should the world be forced to subsidize these military programs by buying food for the Kim regime?
North Korea has recently test-fired a new anti-ship rocket that will be deployed “before long” at its naval units, according to its state media on Feb. 7, 2015. The photo here shows North Korea leader Kim Jong-un watching the test-firing, though details on when and where it was conducted are not available. (Yonhap)
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un executed an army general last month in his latest purge of senior officials.
General Pyon In Son, head of operations in the Korean People’s Army, was killed for expressing an opinion different to that of Kim, a South Korean official told reporters in Seoul on Wednesday, speaking on condition of anonymity as per government policy. The official didn’t say what they disagreed on.
Kim still mistrusts the military, the official said, adding that senior officers are growing increasingly uneasy. The “Supreme Leader” also removed Ma Won Chun, a National Defense Commission official overseeing construction design, from office in November for alleged corruption and a failure to follow orders.
Kim has relied on purges to consolidate his grip on power since he took over a country with a nuclear arms program and 1.2 million troops in 2011. After killing his uncle and one-time deputy Jang Song Thaek in 2013, he executed about 50 officials last year on charges ranging from graft to watching South Korean soap operas.
“The purge of Pyon sends a message that helps to discipline the military,” said Kim Yong Hyun, a professor of North Korean studies at Dongguk University in Seoul. “The execution is a symbol that will help tighten loyalty.” [Bloomberg]
You can read more at the link, but it seems at some point if these purges continue the top brass in North Korea are not going to stand for it.
North Korea on Wednesday ruled out resuming dialogue with the “gangster-like” United States, and vowed to respond to any US aggression with nuclear strikes and cyber warfare.
The bellicose statement from the country’s top military body, the National Defence Commission (NDC), came after reported moves by Washington and Pyongyang to revive long-stalled six-nation talks on denuclearisation.
It also preceded the start in early March of annual joint US-South Korea military exercises that always presage a sharp spike in military tensions and rhetoric on the divided peninsula.
The NDC statement was an apparent reaction to remarks Barack Obama made regarding the eventual collapse of the regime in North Korea, which the US president called the “most cut-off nation on Earth”.
The NDC statement, which labelled the Obama administration a mud-slinging “cesspool,” said the president’s comments amounted to a threat to engineer the country’s downfall.
“Since the gangster-like US imperialists are blaring that they will ‘bring down’ the DPRK (North Korea)… the army and people of the DPRK cannot but officially notify the Obama administration… that the DPRK has neither need nor willingness to sit at negotiating table with the US any longer,” the NDC said. [AFP]
It is the cold winter months in North Korea, so how do all those millions of North Koreans living in poverty keep warm?:
You have to love this evil Yankee Imperialist snowman the North Korean kids are playing with in the snow..
South Korea may have just started to prepare for winter, but the North – sometimes referred to as the “frozen land” – is already a few months in.
Winds from Siberia can mean that temperatures can dip to -13C (8.5F) in the capital Pyongyang, which sees an average of 37 snowfall days a year.
North Koreans start gearing up for the winter months in early autumn, and a lack of sufficient heating facilities means the process keeps them busy, say defectors.
Outside of the centrally heated apartment complexes in Pyongyang, people must find, and stock, their own firewood and coal for the winter. But most of the mountains are bare, devoid of firewood, and recent tree-planting projects mean there are restrictions on cutting wood.
Coal is produced in the North but is exported to bring in foreign currency, hiking up domestic market prices: as the weather gets colder, prices climb. Defectors say that even if people are able to burn coal in their homes, poor ventilation can lead to fatalities.
The common testimony is that the state has failed to issue any counter-measures against cold weather, even when cold waves are expected, the authorities fail to issue orders informing and helping people to prepare.
Kim Yeong-mi , 47, who defected to South Korea in 2012, told Daily NK how people prepare:
What is the most important part of the winter preparations?
Without a doubt it’s getting enough fuel to burn. In the northern regions, people prepare firewood, and in the central areas, it’s more coal-focused. Even further south, I’ve heard some use straws from rice. I lived in the central regions, where there used to be rationed coal. Now there’s no such thing, you have to buy it. After August the market prices of coal start to creep up.
How do people heat their apartments?
Apartments in the countryside usually have fireplaces to burn coal. In Pyongyang they use hot water from thermoelectric power plants to heat apartments – using the traditional Korean floor heating system, ondol.
If power plants grind to a halt, you can’t get hot water. But if you don’t use the pipes they can freeze and burst, so people have no choice but to use cold water – which exacerbates the cold. [The Guardian]
You can read the rest at the link, but it sounds like North Korea is basically living like South Koreans did up to the 1970’s.
Due to the famine of the 1990’s North Korea is now requiring all females after finishing high school to serve 5 years in the military:
North Korea is making military service mandatory for young women in a bid to strengthen the nation’s armed forces, sources inside the secretive state have told DailyNK.
The measure is said to apply to women aged between 17 and 20, and has been handed down to mobilisation offices in each province, city, and county. Implementation is reported to be already underway.
“Late last year, we received orders for all women who have graduated from middle and high school to undergo mandatory military service,” a source based in North Hamkyung Province told Daily NK this week. [The Guardian]
You can read the rest at the link, but women have to serve 5 years and men still have to serve 10 years.
