Tag: North Korea

The aunt of Kim Jong-un who defected nearly two decades ago to the United States has conducted an extensive interview with the Washington Post for the first time.  What I found most interesting was that she operates a dry cleaning business just like so many other Korean immigrants to the US do:

Wandering through Times Square, past the Naked Cowboy and the Elmos and the ticket touts, she could be any immigrant trying to live the American Dream.

A 60-year-old Korean woman with a soft perm and conservative clothes, she’s taking a weekend off from pressing shirts and hemming pants at the dry-cleaning business she runs with her husband.

But she’s not just any immigrant. She’s an aunt to Kim Jong Un, the young North Korean leader who has threatened to wipe out New York with a hydrogen bomb.

And for the past 18 years, since defecting from North Korea into the waiting arms of the CIA, she has been living an anonymous life here in the United States, with her husband and three children.

“My friends here tell me I’m so lucky, that I have everything,” Ko Yong Suk, as she was known when she was part of North Korea’s royal family, told The Washington Post on a recent weekend. “My kids went to great schools and they’re successful, and I have my husband, who can fix anything. There’s nothing we can envy.”

Her husband, previously known as Ri Gang, chimes in, laughing: “I think we have achieved the American Dream.”

This is the story of how one family went from the top of North Korea to middle America.

Breaking their silence in the United States, Ko and Ri spent almost 20 hours talking to two Washington Post reporters in New York City and then at their home several hours’ drive away. They were nervous about emerging from their anonymity; after all, there are Americans who analyze North Korea for a living and do not even know that the couple are here.  [Washington Post]

I highly recommend reading the whole thing at the link.  It is an interesting inside look at Kim Jong-un’s early years growing up considering that Ko Yong Suk helped to raise Kim Jong-il’s kids while they were attending school in Switzerland.  She says from an early age that Kim Jong-un had a fascination with finding out how things like boats and airplanes work.  He also had a short temper and if you can believe it he actually one time went on a hunger strike!  These personality traits are still evident today.

Amazingly they are speaking out now to stop rumors spread about them by the South Korean media.  Additionally her husband actually wants to travel to Pyongyang to meet with Kim Jong-un and act as an intermediary between the US and North Korea.  Good luck with that.

https://twitter.com/pearswick/status/735001440666550272

I am all for North Korea regime collapse planning, but does that mean that US forces need to be the ones entering North Korea?:

 Instability within North Korea will lead to its collapse “sooner than many of us think,” a former U.S. Forces Korea commander says.

Retired four-star Gen. Walter Sharp was among five panelists Tuesday who opened a three-day symposium, sponsored by the Association of the U.S. Army’s Institute of Land Warfare, on strengthening land forces across the Pacific.

North Korea garnered most of the panel’s attention, driven by the volatile nation’s uptick in missiles launches and its fourth nuclear test earlier this year.

Sharp, who headed USFK in 2008-11, said he recently guaranteed Gen. Vincent Brooks, the newly minted USFK commander, there would be major changes on the peninsula before his tenure ends.  [Stars & Stripes]

You can read more at the link, but I have longed believed that US soldiers should not step foot into North Korea despite recommendations previously made that 150,000 US troops would be needed to secure North Korea.  Considering the advantages in culture and language the ROK military has why can’t they be the ones to occupy North Korea?  North Koreans are programmed to believe that South Koreans are puppets of the Americans and if US forces are seen with ROK forces in North Korea this will just validate this belief.  Does the US military really want to occupy a country with a bitter population awash in weapons and explosives?  Plus the threat of 150,000 US troops entering North Korea is the reason why China keeps the Kim regime in power in the first place.  What would the US government think if 150,000 Chinese soldiers showed up on our border with Mexico?

I just do not see how 150,000 US soldiers showing up in a collapsed North Korean state benefits the ROK, North Korea and most importantly the United States?  Maybe I am missing something, but can anyone else make an argument why there needs to be a US military occupation of North Korea?

The details about why a BBC reporter, Rupert Winfield-Hayes was detained in North Korea have now been revealed.  It seems pretty clear that he was made an example of to warn other international media figures from reporting negatively about the country:

A group of officials in dark Mao suits walked in and sat opposite. The older one spoke first.

“Mr Rupert,” he said, “this meeting can be over quickly and simply, it will depend on your attitude.”

I was told that my reporting had insulted the Korean people, and that I needed to admit my mistakes. They produced copies of three articles that had been published on the BBC website, as I reported on the visit of the Nobel laureates.  (……….)

“Do you think Korean people are ugly?” the older man asked.

“No,” I answered.

“Do you think Korean people have voices like dogs?”

“No,” I answered again.

“Then why do you write these things?!” he shouted.

I was confused. What could they mean? One of the articles was presented to me, the offending passage circled in black marker pen:

“The grim-faced customs officer is wearing one of those slightly ridiculous oversized military caps that they were so fond of in the Soviet Union. It makes the slightly built North Korean in his baggy uniform comically top heavy. “Open,” he grunts, pointing at my mobile phone. I dutifully punch in the passcode. He grabs it back and goes immediately to photos. He scrolls through pictures of my children skiing, Japanese cherry blossom, the Hong Kong skyline. Apparently satisfied he turns to my suitcase. “Books?” he barks. No, no books. “Movies?” No, no movies. I am sent off to another desk where a much less gruff lady is already looking through my laptop.” 

“Are they serious?” I thought. They had taken “grim-faced” to mean “ugly”, and the use of the word “barks” as an indication that I thought they sounded like dogs.

“It doesn’t mean what you think it means.” I protested.

The older man squinted.

“I have studied English literature,” he said. “Do you think I do not understand what these expressions mean?

For two hours they demanded I confess my mistakes. Finally the older man got up to leave.

“It is clear that your attitude is going to make this difficult,” he said. “We have no choice but to carry out a full investigation.”  [BBC]

You can read the rest at the link, but it makes you wonder why journalists even bother going to North Korea when it is pretty clear that what they publish has to be self censored to avoid detainment and future access to North Korea.

North Korea’s top leader Kim Jong-un (C), wearing a short-sleeved shirt, pours underground ultra-saline water onto a salt field during a visit to a saltern in the North’s South Pyongan Province in this photo released by the North’s state-run Rodong Sinmun newspaper on May 24, 2016. (For Use Only in the Republic of Korea. No Redistribution) (Yonhap)

This is the second group of overseas North Korean restaurant workers to defect to South Korea in the past two months.  I have to wonder if ROK intelligence is focusing hard on getting North Korean restaurant workers to defect in an effort to close the restaurants and dry up a source of foreign currency for the Kim regime?:

Up to three North Korean restaurant staff have recently escaped their workplace in China for possible defection to South Korea, a source familiar with inter-Korean affairs said Monday.

The North Koreans are currently staying in a third country in Southeast Asia after running away from a North Korea-run restaurant located at the northwestern Chinese city of Xian, according to the source.  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link.

It would seem to me that of all the provocations that the North Koreans do, the nuclear tests are probably the ones that most concern the Chinese considering how close they are occurring to their border.  It seems for now they may have been able to convince the Kim regime to delay their fifth nuclear test:

China reportedly speculates that an internal political assessment led to North Korea’s decision not to conduct a nuclear test around the time of its ruling party congress held early this month.

According to a senior South Korean government official stationed in China who spoke to reporters in Beijing on Thursday, China urged North Korea to refrain from carrying out its fifth nuclear test. The source quoted a senior Chinese official but added that it can’t be concluded that Pyongyang stopped short of a test just because of China’s request.

The official said that Beijing believes the North must have politically evaluated that a nuclear test will be a minus to the party congress.  [KBS World Radio]

You can read more at the link.

[Video Report] Nominal Farm Mobilization: People Feel Squeezed https://t.co/r0w60RECx8 pic.twitter.com/ju38wgHY5T

— RimjingangNK (@RimjingangNK) May 18, 2016

Some of you ROK Heads out there still have a chance of marrying Kim Jong-un’s sister if you are interested.  It also appears that the ubiquitous “car accident” continues to be a problem for regime figures in North Korea:

Kim Yo-jong, the younger sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and a central committee member of the Workers’ Party of Korea (WPK), is not married, a high-level North Korean official-turned-defector said.

The Voice of America (VOA) reported Thursday that the 29-year-old sister Kim has yet to tie the knot, citing its interview with the anonymous defector, whom it reported had defected to the South last year with his father, also a senior member of the North Korean government.

A Unification Ministry official said the government wouldn’t confirm the veracity of the report.

The VOA’s report on Kim Yo-jong’s single life came after many reports by South Korean media that she was married to the son of Choe Ryong-hae, who returned to the power circle during the recent seventh congress with his entry into the five-member presidium of the political bureau of the WPK’s central committee.

The defector, who reportedly had worked for the North’s coal export business with China, said Choe’s son had actually died in a car accident in January 2013.   [Joong Ang Ilbo]

You can read more at the link.

This is something the North Koreans have done before and will continue to do again in the future:

Residents in border areas in Gyeonggi saw an unexpected flood Monday night apparently because North Korea’s unannounced release of water from its border-area dam increased the inflow of water to the South from 97 tons per second at 6 p.m. to 428 tons per second by 9 p.m.

According to the Paju city government and Korea Water Resources Corporation, the inflow of water from across the border at the upper stream of Imjin River, where water levels are controlled by the Gunnam Dam. The inflow of water hit 515 tons per second by 4 a.m. Tuesday, from which point it began to gradually subdue.

Officials view the dramatic increase of water inflow as a direct result of the North’s unexpected release of water from its Hwanggang Dam, located about 30 kilometers (18.6 miles) north of the military demarcation line, as there had been no rainfall in recent days in the area.

Facing the sudden increase in water levels, the Gunnam Dam increased the amount of water it released to 427 tons per second at 1 a.m. from 116 tons per second at 7 p.m. The increased level of water was a problem for fishermen who make their living along the Imjin River, as their fishing nets were damaged or lost in the flood.   [Joong Ang Ilbo]

You can read more at the link.