Tag: North Korea

All I can think about when I read about this plan is a train full of potential hostages whenever the Kim regime needs to use them:

The Park Geun-hye administration unveiled Monday a series of new proposals for inter-Korean projects, including an ambitious plan to operate trains from Seoul to cities in the North this summer by linking severed railway lines.

Four government offices including the unification, foreign and defense ministries briefed Park on their proposals for unification preparation and projects they would like to push this year. The briefing was arranged after the government stated that this year should be a turning point in the unification of the two Koreas.

This year marks the 70th anniversary of Korea’s liberation from Japanese colonial rule and the subsequent national division.

“President Park declared her intention to prepare for unification at the New Year’s press conference on Jan. 12, and the ministries also agreed that the time has come to look back on seven decades of national division and prepare for unification,” a senior government official said.  [Joong Ang Ilbo]

You can read more at the link.

Analysing the political and military cooperation between Iran and the DPRK: http://t.co/M3ZPUNCtFO

— NK NEWS (@nknewsorg) January 19, 2015

It always did seem a bit sensational that Shin Dong-hyuk was able to escape the way he did from the notorious Camp 14, but now that it has been revealed that he escaped from a far lesser security prison his ability to escape from North Korea seems more plausible:

A prominent North Korean defector who fled a prison camp and became the face of international efforts to hold the country accountable for widespread human rights abuses has changed important parts of his life story.

Author Blaine Harden said in a statement on his website that he has pressed Shin Dong-Hyuk to “explain why he had misled me” during interviews for Harden’s book on Shin, “Escape from Camp 14.”

North Korea tried to discredit Shin late last year as it fought a U.N. General Assembly resolution that backed the findings of a groundbreaking U.N. commission of inquiry into Pyongyang’s human rights abuses.

Human rights groups say the U.N. inquiry was based on interviews with scores of North Korean defectors. “Its findings are still valid,” said Brad Adams, Asia director for Human Rights Watch. The organization last year gave Shin an award for extraordinary activism and said he is “regarded as the single strongest voice on atrocities taking place in North Korea.”

Shin was traveling and could not be reached for comment. He was expected to arrive in Seoul from the U.S. on Monday afternoon, said Greg Scarlatoiu, executive director of the Washington-based Committee for Human Rights in North Korea.

“Every one of us have stories, or things we’d like to hide,” Shin said in an apology for the inaccuracies in recounting his past in his latest Facebook post, giving few details. He said he may or may not be able to continue his work of trying to eliminate North Korea’s political prison camps but urged others to keep fighting. “These will be my final words and this will likely be my final post.”

Shin’s story originally drew widespread attention because he said he had lived in a high-security political prison camp in North Korea from his birth until his escape through an electrified fence. He describes himself on Facebook as “The only known person born in a North Korean prison camp that escaped and survived to tell the tale.”

Harden’s statement said he passed along Shin’s new information to The Washington Post, his former employer. Its report over the weekend said Shin now says he was transferred around the age of 6 to a lighter-security prison camp with his mother and brother. It was there, not the harsher camp, where he informed authorities about an escape attempt by his mother and brother. For that, they were executed. He now says he was later transferred back to the harsher camp.

“The fundamental building blocks of his story have remained the same, although I am fully aware of the differences between (the two camps),” Scarlatoiu said Sunday. “Still, born and raised in a camp, he was subjected to forced labor, induced malnutrition and torture. He informed on his mother and brother, who were executed. He escaped from the camp, and lived to tell his story. None of that has changed.”  [Associated Press]

You can read the rest at the link, but I think One Free Korea does a good job of summing up why his new claims are more believable.  See also North Korea Economy Watch on how even the North Koreans have unintentionally confirmed Shin’s new story.  What he has also done is shed doubt on any current or future defector testimony critical of the Kim regime that only plays into the hands of the human rights violators in North Korea.

North Korea calls U.S.-South Korea exercises "open challenge" http://t.co/ULXoq9oCpx via @reuters #NorthKorea #SouthKorea #USA

— NorthKoreaRealTime (@BuckTurgidson79) January 15, 2015

The KFA's dubious "friendship tours" of North Korea: http://t.co/E45rTdO9Bz

— NK NEWS (@nknewsorg) January 15, 2015

It only took a decade, but it appears the US government is ready to implement the only US measure I have seen change Kim regime behavior:

The United States will continue to identify and impose sanctions on financial institutions doing business with North Korea so as to cut the communist nation off from the international financial system, a senior U.S. sanctions official said Tuesday.

Assistant Treasury Secretary for Terrorist Financing Daniel Glaser made the remark during a House committee briefing, saying the 2005 sanctions on the Banco Delta Asia (BDA), a bank in Macau, were so successful because it “created a chilling effect” throughout the international financial system.  [Yonhap]

It will be interesting to see how vigorous the financial sanctions will be enforced.

Remember when everyone in the media was highlighting Kim Jong-un’s offer of high level talks as some great thing?  Like I said then he was just playing the media to frame the US and the ROK as the bad guys when the North Koreans like they always do make demands to stop US-ROK military exercises:

North Korea called on South Korea Sunday to stop all military exercises, including joint drills with the United States, if it really wants to improve inter-Korean ties.

“If the South is truly determined to improve inter-Korean relations through dialogue and negotiations … it should stop all kinds of war schemes, including reckless military exercises carried out jointly with foreign forces,” Minju Joson, North Korea’s cabinet newspaper, said. “War rehearsals and dialogues cannot coexist.”

The North Korean newspaper also warned that if Seoul sticks to the joint war rehearsals against the North, inter-Korean relations will get much worse and the South Korean government will have to take all the responsibility for it.

The Sunday warning is the latest in the North’s recent desperate efforts to stop rounds of military exercises conducted annually between South Korea and the U.S.  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link.

The Korean-American woman who went on a speaking tour in South Korea praising North Korea has now been deported:

A Korean-American woman was expelled from South Korea Saturday for making a series of pro-North Korean remarks during her on-stage talks shows in South Korea, Justice Ministry officials said.

Shin Eun-mi was put on Korean Air Flight KE011 leaving Seoul at 7:50 p.m. for Los Angeles after undergoing two hours of questioning by immigration officials. The expulsion bars her from entering South Korea for the next five years.

On Thursday, the 54-year-old was suspended of indictment after being accused of making comments sympathetic to the North Korean regime at talk shows she hosted in Seoul and other provincial cities in the past several months in violation of South Korea’s National Security Law.

The law bans any activities meant to praise, promote or propagandize North Korean ideals in the country.

“I feel like I was betrayed by my lover. It’s just like an one-sided love,” she told reporters right after receiving the expulsion order. “I leave here today, but the government cannot drive my heart loving the country out of my fatherland. I will continue to wish for peace and reunification of Korea.”

Since being sued by local conservative civic groups for alleged pro-North Korean remarks, she has said she is not a North Korean follower and her comments were all for the peaceful coexistence of the two Koreas.  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link, but this case has drawn criticism that the National Security Law is being used to stop free speech in South Korea.  In regards to this case I disagree because foreign citizens by law are not supposed to be involved in political activity in South Korea.  So the next time she visits she should leave her politics back in California where it belongs.

It just makes you wonder despite the sanctions how North Korea keeps getting money to try and buy big ticket items like this:

North Korea made an attempt to purchase advanced fighter jets from Russia by sending a special envoy, a senior South Korean military official told the JoongAng Ilbo on Thursday.

“Choe Ryong-hae, who visited Moscow as a special envoy of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in November last year, asked Russian President Vladimir Putin to provide Sukhoi Su-35 fighter jets,” the military source said.

Little has been disclosed about the discussions between Choe and Putin. Choe, a member of the Presidium of the Political Bureau and secretary of the Central Committee of the Workers’ Party of North Korea, met with Putin on Nov. 18 and delivered a letter from Kim, the Russian presidential office has said, without providing further details. The Kremlin said the meeting was not open to the press, and no press conference was arranged afterward.

“The North produces many weapons systems domestically, but it appears to have sought Russia’s help because building fighter jets requires more complex technologies,” said the official. “But because of international sanctions imposed on the North, Russia won’t likely sell it readily.” [Joong Ang Ilbo]

You can read more at the link.

This isn’t the first or will be the last of the assassination threats that North Korea has made against balloon activist Park Sang-hak:

North Korea issued a death threat against a defector-turned-activist after he announced a plan to send copies of a satirical Hollywood film about a plot to kill Kim Jong-un into North Korea.

The South Korean government said Thursday it will take necessary measures to protect its citizens.

Last week, Park Sang-hak, who heads the Fighters for a Free North Korea, said he planned to send 100,000 DVDs and USB memory sticks containing the movie “The Interview” via balloons across the border into North Korea to destroy the personality cult build around Kim Jong-un.

He said the Sony Pictures’ movie will have Korean subtitles and he will start sending the balloons as early as late January.

According to the Ministry of Unification, the North aired an ultimatum against Park on Wednesday. Using extremely cruel language, the North’s Pyongyang Broadcasting Station said Park must “go to hell.”

It promised to “bleed him out and gut his intestines.”

“In order to end this tragic reality of national division forced upon our people and homeland by outside forces, we must ruthlessly eliminate those maniacs who encourage inter-Korean confrontations,” the broadcast said. “And the Korean people select Park as the first target.”  [Joong Ang Ilbo]

You can read more at the link, but hopefully Park Sang-hak has taken the appropriate security measures to protect himself from North Korean assassins.  Back in 2011 a North Korean assassin was arrested before he could carry out his plot to kill Park with poison needles.