Who knows if this is true or not, but I would not be surprised at all if China is claiming one thing to the international media about enforcing sanctions and then in reality continuing to let banned items into North Korea to sustain the Kim regime’s military:

Although inspections at border customs offices have officially intensified as China takes measures to abide by international sanctions targeting North Korea (UNSCR 2270), it is being been reported that Chinese companies and their North Korean counterparts have been disguising military supplies as everyday merchandise in order to smuggle them through customs checkpoints.

“There is a lot of talk about how the new sanctions are harsher than those adopted in years past, but illegal smuggling through border customs is continuing relatively unimpeded,” a source in North Hamgyong Province told Daily NK on April 1.

This is because the North Korean Ministry of People’s Armed Forces operates a number of entities acting under the pretense of ordinary trading companies, trading entities and mobilization offices that are tasked with bringing banned items into North Korea.

“In particular, the Kumunsan Trade Company and a munitions branch called ‘Sung Kang Office,’ are using bribery and illicit methods to smuggle supplies despite the sanctions. These items include tires, stainless steel, machine components, acetone, industrial lubricant, and raw materials needed for gunpowder production. The items are labeled as normal goods in order to get them past the customs guards,” the source added.        [The Daily NK]

You can read more at the link.

Is anyone shocked that yet another business venture in South Korea is facing financial difficulties?:

The founder of a unique university in North Korea is under scrutiny after the university suffered a series of financial difficulties, according to a source in the country.

Kim Chin-kyung, a U.S. citizen, founded Pyongyang University of Science and Technology with the cooperation of North and South Korean institutions, South Korean news service CBS No Cut News reported.

But the North Korean government is looking to replace Kim.

The source said dwindling funds from South Korea and the United States have contributed to the financial shortfall at the university.

PUST used to operate on a $100,000 monthly budget but that number was down to $50,000, the source said.

A loan Kim secured to build facilities on campus in late 2000 has yet to be paid, and an agreement to replace a 60,000-volt transformer at the school by Oct. 10, 2015, the anniversary to commemorate the founding of the Workers’ Party of Korea, was never fulfilled, according to the source.  [UPI]

You can read more at the link.

On "the prospect that Russia is becoming a 'raw-material appendage' of China" https://t.co/jOvlNrvsTY @TonyVRinna @Sino_NK

— Adam Cathcart (@adamcathcart) April 6, 2016

Unionists and civic group members rally in downtown Seoul on April 6, 2016, demanding that the minimum wage be raised to 10,000 won (US$8.66) to guarantee basic livelihood. The rally took place a day ahead of the first meeting this year of a panel that reviews minimum wage. The minimum pay was set at 6,030 won for 2016, and the usual increase rate is 7 to 8 percent. (Yonhap)

That is what the popular Air Force blog JQ Public believes:

Last year, commanders at Osan Air Base in Korea decided to install high-definition, 24/7 surveillance cameras in the common areas of dormitories housing some 3,000 airmen. The rationale stated at the time was, generically, the safety of those airmen. Not litigated at the time was whether the cost of the new capability would be offset by the marginal gain in safety, but such debates are rarely entertained in such an authoritarian system. Ideas are presumed valid, good, and lawful the instant they gain command sponsorship.

Fast forward a year and the system has predictably loosed from its “safety” moorings and morphed into a tool for the control and criminalization of the base’s junior airmen. Over the past few weeks, we’ve received several reports that commanders are not using video footage merely to aid in criminal investigations after a report of wrongdoing, but are proactively reviewing all footage to scan for unreported wrongdoing.

For many, the new policy feels like pre-emptive criminalization — demonstrating that the chain of command is not genuinely concerned about safety or well-being so much as it cares about nailing airmen for innocuous or minor transgressions that would normally fall well below the threshold of official notice.  [JQ Public Blog]

You can read much more at the link and it is an interesting debate.  However, overall I like the cameras in regards to being a tool that can be used to collect evidence if a crime in the dorms was to occur.  However, I don’t think the cameras should be used as a substitute for leadership presence in the dorms.  Instead reviewing hours of video tape leaders should instead be walking in the dorms and communicating with their troops instead.

It appears to me that the Kim regime is using this likely manufactured story as a way to take shots at both the ROK and China as nations that cannot be trusted:

At least two suspects who attempted to assassinate North Korean leader Kim Jong Un were arrested, according to unconfirmed reports in the country.

The suspects had been reportedly arrested at the China border near the Tumen River as they were preparing a hit on Kim in the city of Hoeryong in North Hamgyong Province, Radio Free Asia reported Thursday.

A source in the North who spoke to Japanese news service Asia Press on the condition of anonymity said he had heard the “terrorists” had not yet crossed the Tumen, which separates North Korea from China, when North Korean border guards crossed the border to arrest them.

The source went on to say the suspects were transferred to the State Security Department, and that the border guards were given rewards – including a chance to become members of the Korean Workers’ Party.

One of the suspects is allegedly a North Korean defector from the South, but the other one or more were Chinese nationals.

Japanese journalist Jiro Ishimaru, founder of Asia Press, said it is likely a rumor that was manufactured by the state to bolster support for the party ahead of its Seventh Congress in May.  [UPI via reader tip]

You can read more at the link.

This is actually pretty amazing that an entire restaurant staff would defect because the selection process for the job is relatively stringent so it isn’t like the workers are coming from desperately poor families in North Korea.  It is also pretty impressive that the entire staff was able to coordinate with each other to do this without fear of one of them informing on them back to regime minders:

 Thirteen North Koreans working in a state-run restaurant outside the country have defected to South Korea, a government official in Seoul said Friday.

The South Korean government estimates that Pyongyang rakes in around $10 million every year from some 130 restaurants it operates — with mostly North Korean staff — in 12 countries, including neighbouring China.

Last month, while unveiling a series of unilateral sanctions on Pyongyang over its January nuclear test, Seoul had urged South Korean citizens overseas to boycott any such establishments, saying their profits funded the North’s nuclear weapons programme.

The defectors, one male manager and a dozen women, arrived in the South on Thursday, Unification Ministry spokesman Jeong Joon-Hee told reporters.

He declined to identify the country where the restaurant they had been working in was located.

There have been defections by individual restaurant workers in the past, but this is the first time so many staff from one restaurant have defected en masse.

Jeong quoted one of the defectors as saying that everyone had been “on the same page” about escaping to South Korea.  [AFP]

You can read more at the link.

Let's kiss and make up. North Korea says it seeks improved relations with South https://t.co/L9JFNl4FsQ

— Elizabeth Shim (@GlobalAsianista) April 6, 2016

A group of North Korean defectors prepares to release balloons containing leaflets critical of the North Korean regime in Paju, near the inter-Korean border, on April 6, 2016. The balloons were released despite a recent Supreme Court ruling that the government can keep activists from sending anti-Pyongyang leaflets across the border, citing the safety of residents there. (Yonhap)

Oh Young-jin the chief editorial writer at the Korea Times is at it again.  This time he wrote an editorial titled “Ugly Foreigners” that described three cases of road rage in Korea involving foreigners.  For those that don’t know the ROK recently implemented a new law that made road rage incidents like the one described illegal.  The article is actually good information for foreigners living in Korea to know.  However, there was no need to give the editorial that title so to me it seems that Mr. Oh published the title as click bait which has worked.  Now the Korea Times has been flooded with emails accusing Mr. Oh of racism.  Oh has actually had to publish not one, but two editorials defending himself against racism.  What I continue to love about Mr. Oh is not his penchant for click bait articles, but the fact that he continues to use the email address of foolsdie5@ktimes.com.  It seems that if Mr. Oh wants people to take him seriously he might want to start with using a professional email address.