Category: North Korea

Long time North Korea watcher Gordon Chang is wondering whether the North Korean regime has been toppled:

Out of sight for a month, young Kim is supposedly ill. But rumors are swirling he’s been deposed—and North Korea’s second most powerful man now feels confident enough to travel South.

Hwang Pyong So must be feeling pretty good about himself right now. At the latest Supreme People’s Assembly meeting, he was made vice chairman of the National Defense Commission. This was after his promotion to director of the General Political Bureau of the Korean People’s Army, making him the top political officer in the military. In a country where there is supposed to be no No. 2 official, he is called the second-most powerful figure.

Now he has crossed the border into South Korea on a one-day, short-notice trip, triggering hopes of reconciliation between the arch-rival republics—and heightening speculation about the fate of Kim Jong Un, North Korea’s young supremo, who has not been seen in public since September 3.

Hwang’s trip South on Saturday comes on the heels of a widely publicized report that Kim has been deposed. Jang Jin Sung, a former North Korean counterintelligence and propaganda official, is claiming that the Organization and Guidance Department of the Korean Workers’ Party, responsible for promotions within the regime, has taken over the country. Kim, according to Jang, is now merely a “puppet.” [The Daily Beast]

I have said this before that I do not believe that Kim Jong-un has the absolute power that many people believe him to have.  I believe that his grandfather Kim Il-sung had absolute power, but when his son Kim Jong-il took over that the absolute power was diluted between the ruling Kim inner circle, the Worker’s Party, and the North Korean military.  These three sectors competed for power with the military ultimately becoming the most powerful bureaucracy in North Korea under Kim Jong-il.  These sectors of power in North Korea though likely ruled by consensus and when consensus could not be reached Kim Jong-il was likely the deciding vote which was heavily influenced by his backing of the North Korean military.  After Kim Jong-il’s death these sectors of North Korean power likely competed for influence again after Kim Jong-un took over.  Kim Jong-un’s uncle Jang Song-taek appeared to be trying to challenge the status quo by increasing the power of the Worker’s Party.  With the power of the Worker’s Party increasing, the military may have felt like their power was decreasing too much and took action to get rid of Jang to put the status quo back to where it was.  However, the status quo likely means Kim Jong-un has less power than his father did after the execution of Jang and the following purge of Party officials loyal to him.

With that all said do I think a coup is going on in North Korea?  No I do not.  Kim Jong-un is likely out of sight because of some surgery to repair whatever was ailing his feet or legs in recent months not a coup.  Also if you read the rest of the article North Korean scholar Andrei Lankov says the visit of the regime’s #2 man Hwang Pyong-so to South Korea is likely part of the North’s charm offensive.  Remember that the North likes to do charm offensive before launching a provocation cycle.  It has been reported recently that the North Koreans completed the upgrades to their launch site which could be interpreted to mean the North Koreans are going to do another space launch in the coming months.  The North Koreans do a charm offensive before provocations because they use a predetermined reason to accuse the South of spoiling the talks and then it allows them to justify a provocation cycle in response.  The predetermined reason this time could be the balloon launch activists the North has repeatedly threatened.

The most interesting thing to me is the travel ban that has been put on North Korea to include Pyongyang.  This could mean that more purges may be going on within North Korea as the military may be trying to further cement its power in North Korea over its competitors.  Time will tell what is really going on.

I agree that there is definitely something going on in North Korea to have implemented this travel ban:

The North Korean capital has been placed under lockdown, according to sources with Pyongyang, raising new questions about the stability of Kim Jong-un’s regime.

Quoting sources within North Korea, the respected New Focus International news web site has reported that a ban on new travel passes to leave or enter Pyongyang was introduced on September 27.

And while the North Korean authorities have in the past limited access to the capital, the latest restrictions even apply to permanent residents of Pyongyang, who are by definition the elite of the regime.

“This sort of action suggests there has either been an attempted coup or that the authorities there have uncovered some sort of plot against the leadership,” Toshimitsu Shigemura, a professor at Tokyo’s Waseda University and an authority on North Korean affairs, told The Telegraph. (The Telegraph)

You can read more at the link but this news if true definitely makes the visit by North Korea’s 2nd most powerful leader this week to South Korea more interesting.

I would be surprised if much comes out of this unless there is more going on within North Korea that we do not know about since Kim Jong-un has dropped out of sight the last month:

North Korea’s presumptive No. 2 led members of Pyongyang’s inner circle in a rare trip Saturday to South Korea for the close of the Asian Games, with the rivals holding their highest level face-to-face talks in five years.

After months of tensions, including a steady stream of insults between the divided neighbors and an unusual number of North Korean missile and rocket test firings, expectations for any breakthrough weren’t high, but even the visit itself was significant, allowing valuable contact between confidants of North Korea’s authoritarian leader and Seoul’s senior official for North Korean affairs.

The North Korean delegation to the games in Incheon was led by Hwang Pyong So, the top political officer for the Korean People’s Army and considered by outside analysts to be the country’s second most important official after supreme leader Kim Jong Un. Hwang is also a vice chairman of the powerful National Defense Commission led by Kim and a vice marshal of the army.

The visit comes as rumors swirl in the South about the health of Kim, who has made no public appearances since Sept. 3 and skipped a high-profile recent event he usually attends. A recent official documentary showed footage from August of him limping and overweight and mentioned his ”discomfort.”  [Associated Press]

You can read more at the link.

I would not be surprised if there are undiscovered invasion tunnels South of the DMZ, but I find it hard to believe that the North Koreans could have dug a tunnel underneath the Imjim River that reached all the way to Seoul:

Gen. Hahn Sung-Chu never believed North Korea could dig a tunnel that reached Seoul — until now.

Standing inside a basement of an apartment block in the heart of the capital, the former two-star general in the South Korean military says, “This is a kind of invasion, North Korean soldiers working underneath us.”

Hahn says residents had complained of underground vibrations, but the subway does not run beneath them.

He says dowsers detected three tunnels, 13 to 16 feet (4 to 5 meters) wide at a depth of up to 39 feet (12 meters). His team drilled two bore holes to lower a camera, but before they could, they detected two underground explosions and their drill holes were blocked. Hahn is certain that North Korean soldiers were working beneath their feet, protecting the tunnel. [CNN]

You can read the rest at the link, but I don’t think the North Koreans need to dig a tunnel to Seoul to infiltrate a brigade in case of hostilities.  Isn’t that what the KCTU is for?

With the Asian Games soon to be over is this a sign that the North Koreans plan to begin another provocation cycle in the coming months based on a rocket launch at this upgraded launch facility?:

New satellite imagery suggests North Korea has completed the upgrade of a launch site in its northwest that will allow it to launch much bigger rockets than the long-range projectile it fired from the base two years ago.

In a report featuring satellite photos of North Korea’s Sohae launch site, about 50 miles northwest of Pyongyang, 38 North, the website of the U.S.-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins’ School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, said construction appeared to have ended after a yearlong revamp.

“Should a decision be made soon to do so in Pyongyang—and we have no evidence that one has—a rocket could be launched by the end of 2014,” the report said.

North Korea in December 2012 launched a long-range rocket called Unha-3 from the site that put a satellite into space. Other countries, including the U.S. and its Asian allies, viewed the launch as a test of long-range missile technology.  [Wall Street Journal]

You can read more at the link.

Just another example of what a fiasco the Asian Games being held in Incheon has become:

But while touting their own victories, North Korea’s coverage of the games has made virtually no mention of the other 44 countries participating, the fact that South Korea trails only China in medals won, and has far more than the North, or, more politically tricky, the setting of the games south of the Demilitarized Zone.

In sharp contrast, the South’s media, while duly reporting the results of each event and heralding their own team’s achievements, have been quick to find fault with the Incheon organizers, and to lament how the games have failed to generate much interest, let alone inspire their nation.

In particular, they have pointed out that empty seats — never a problem at major televised events in the North — have been visible in almost every games venue.

But they have also noted another reason why Pyongyang might want to dance with joy — South Korea’s taxpayers may well end up footing the bill for the North’s propaganda coup.

According to South Korea’s Yonhap news, Seoul is prepared to pay as much as 1 billion won ($940,000) to cover the North’s rental of satellite broadcast equipment, worth around 400 million won, and the cost of their delegation’s stay at the athletes’ village.  [Associated Press]

You can read the rest at the link.

Growth of NK tourism continues: New air routes delivering Chinese tourists to Pyongyang confirmed http://t.co/mWelrhFCeG

— NK NEWS (@nknewsorg) October 1, 2014

"Is it you comrade?" – North Korea issues a guide to mobile phone etiquette. #NewsFromElsewhere http://t.co/1pMuRaYpiz via @BBCMonitoring

— Groove Korea (@groovekorea) October 1, 2014

So does anyone expect anything to come of this?

North Korea says it is willing to cooperate with the U.N. and other international organizations on human rights, but is bristling at what it views as politicization of the issue by its arch enemy, the United States.

In February, a U.N. commission of inquiry concluded there was evidence of crimes against humanity by North Korea’s authoritarian government. Washington this week called on Pyongyang to shut its “evil system” of prison camps.

Foreign Minister Ri Su Yong did not directly address the findings of the commission, which Pyongyang has refused to cooperate with.

Ri accused the U.S. of “abusing” the human rights issue for political purposes.

He told the U.N. General Assembly on Saturday that North Korea is willing to cooperate on the issue with countries that aren’t hostile to it. (Associated Press)

North Korea has decided to play the delay game in regards to the report on abductions they promised to deliver to the Japanese:

North Korea will not announce the preliminary report on its probe into the fate of more than a dozen Japanese nationals it has admitted to kidnapping decades ago when it holds a new round of talks with Japan next week, an envoy from the communist country said Saturday.

Song Il-ho, the North Korean ambassador for normalization talks with Japan, made the remarks as he arrived in China’s northern city of Shenyang earlier in the day for talks with Junichi Ihara, head of the Japanese foreign ministry’s Asian and Oceanian Affairs Bureau.

The Monday talks between Song and Ihara come after North Korea failed to produce its first report on its probe into the abduction issue, causing Japan to complain about the slow pace of the investigation. In May, Pyongyang agreed to re-investigate the abductions and, in return, Tokyo lifted some of its sanctions imposed on the North over its missile and nuclear programs. [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link, but this is a classic North Korean negotiation tactic to make promises in exchange for something they want.  Once they get what they want which in this case was the easing of Japanese sanctions they then renege on the promise for some made up reason in hopes of receiving more of what they want for little to nothing in return.