Tag: North Korea

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.

[Video Report] Residents of central Pyongyang live on businesses in the market #NorthKorea https://t.co/B2Oh04hIyG pic.twitter.com/ehXwzA5uXP

— RimjingangNK (@RimjingangNK) May 16, 2016

Via a reader tip comes news that Kim Jong-un may have given up smoking.  Considering that this is based off of public pictures this could just be a propaganda campaign by North Korea where pictures of Kim Jong-un smoking are no longer allowed to be published:

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is not known for a clean, healthy lifestyle. This is a young man whose ballooning waistline and sudden removal from the public eye almost two years ago was widely (if dubiously) attributed to a powerful addiction to Swiss cheese. Now, however, there is widespread suspicion that the North Korean supreme leader may have finally kicked one of his nastiest habits: smoking.

According to reports in South Korean news outlets like Yonhap and Korea Herald, Kim hasn’t been pictured with a cigarette for at least two months. A quick look at recently released pictures appears to confirm this: The last hint of a cigarette was in mid-May, when Kim was shown sitting next to an ashtray.

There are plenty of reasons to be suspicious about the idea that the North Korean leader may have given up his beloved smokes, however. South Korean media reports on the North are often unreliable. Additionally, Kim’s relationship with cigarettes goes back a long time: He is thought to have begun smoking when he was 15 years old. Over the years, he has frequently been photographed chain-smoking at official functions, much like his father, the late Kim Jong Il, had been before him.  [Washington Post]

You can read more at the link.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un tours a tree nursery in Pyongyang with some officals in this combined image released on May 15, 2016, by the Rodong Sinmun, the organ of the North’s ruling Workers’ Party of Korea. It marks Kim’s second public outing since the closing of the party’s congress on Monday. (For Use Only in the Republic of Korea. No Redistribution) (Yonhap).

Trump says he’s open to direct talks with Kim. The US policy of deterrence is working very well @JohnDelury. https://t.co/0EAAVDZ7Ak

— Daniel A. Pinkston (康大植) (@dpinkston) May 18, 2016

Via a reader tip comes the below article about how a progressive legal team is trying to gain access to the 13 North Korean restaurant workers that defected to South Korea:

A progressive South Korean legal organization has been denied access to the 13 North Korean defectors who fled a state-run restaurant in China.

Lawyers for a Democratic Society had requested interviews with the North Korean waitresses and their manager, but after being rejected at the defector custody center is planning to take legal action, Yonhap reported.

During a press conference Monday, the lawyers said they were told by an intelligence official that access was not allowed because the “North Korean workers had entered South Korea out of their own free will.”

“If that is correct, the government must grant them their right to counsel,” the lawyers told reporters.  [UPI]

You can read the rest at the link, but it is likely that the ROK intelligence officers are concerned that the lawyers like some other progressive groups in South Korea are influenced by North Korean handlers.   The Kim regime has been launching a vigorous propaganda campaign against the defectors and I would not put it past them to use these lawyers to pass messages about how their family members are being threatened back in North Korea by their defection and to come back.

This just proves what I have always said, that action speak louder than words when it comes to Chinese government claims they are complying with sanctions on North Korea:

While the Chinese government claims in official trade figures that it no longer exports oil to North Korea, a JoongAng Ilbo reporter visited a pipeline facility located in the outskirts of the border city of Dandong and witnessed crude oil being loaded into the pipeline for transport across the border.

Located on the China-North Korea border along the Yalu River, this facility is where crude oil goes through a last inspection before being transported across the river.

When the reporter visited the pipeline facility, crude oil was being loaded into the pipeline from oil tankers. The crude oil, which comes from the Daqing Oil Field – the biggest oil field in China located in Heilongjiang Province – was transported there by train and would be piped to a storage facility in Baekma, North Pyongan Province, from which it will be distributed among state agencies, military bases and transport-related factories in the energy-hungry country.   [Joong Ang Ilbo]

You can read more at the link, but I have never believed that the Chinese government would fully comply with sanctions because even though the Kim regime is a foreign policy headache for them, a collapsed North Korean state would be even worse.