Obama Says North Korea’s Regime to Collapse Over Time / Sputnik International http://t.co/x8ITw1w0iA #NorthKorea #DPRK
— NorthKoreaRealTime (@BuckTurgidson79) January 23, 2015
After reading this article it struck me that North Koreans are doing what many small business owners in South Korea are already doing by setting up small shops in front of their homes in various neighborhoods:
More residents are enjoying the convenience of using home-run stalls selling simple items, compared to conventional marketplaces that come with restrictions in operating hours, Daily NK has learned.
“You can sell and buy goods from these residential stalls as long as you have an established level of trust with the owner,” a source based in South Pyongan Province told the Daily NK on Thursday. “More people are converting rooms in their homes and selling goods day and night.”
This foundation of trust is bolstered by three chief pillars: the customer has evidence of a steady source of revenue, and is neither an undercover official looking to crackdown on the operations, or a swindler hoping to cut and run with the goods. Passing muster can take time and requires a number of others within the right circles for validation.
According to the source, these home-operated stalls started popping up in the 1990s, mostly around schools to sell snacks to students. Starting a few years ago, more people have been converting or extending parts of their homes and selling electronics–namely televisions, refrigerators, and washing machines–and food in bulk. [Daily NK]
You can read more at the link.
There is no place in the classroom for teaching pro-North Korean propaganda and hopefully this teachers were all fired from their jobs:
Four teachers received suspended jail terms Friday after a Seoul court found them guilty of engaging in pro-North Korea activities.
The four, who are part of a progressive teachers’ union, were indicted in February 2013 on charges of holding two lectures endorsing North Korean ideals from January 2008 to May 2009. The lectures, prosecutors said, took place in front of prospective teachers and fellow members of the Korean Teachers and Education Workers Union, the country’s second-largest teachers’ union.
The four were also charged with the possession of original North Korean texts and the distribution of excerpts from a memoir by North Korean leader Kim Il-sung in violation of the National Security Law.
The law bans any activities meant to praise, promote or propagandize North Korean ideals.
The Seoul Central District Court found them guilty of these charges and gave them 18-month sentences with a two-year stay of execution.
“The court finds them guilty of possessing documents that praise North Korea’s ‘songun’ and ‘juche’ ideologies,” Judge Cho Yong-hyeon said in a ruling, referring to the North’s military-first and self-reliance philosophies. “It is inappropriate for South Korean citizens, let alone teachers, to have such documents in their possession.” [Yonhap]
You can read more at the link, but for those that don’t know the Korea Teachers’ Union has been filled with North Korean propagandists and sympathizers for years.
Activist Park Sang-hak is at it again, but he has decided to not send copies of the movie “The Interview” to North Korea if they decide to agree to talks with South Korea:
A group of local and foreign activists has sent balloons carrying anti-Pyongyang leaflets across the inter-Korean border, but DVDs of the controversial film “The Interview” have been excluded, the group’s head said Tuesday.
“As previously announced in November, (we) scattered 100,000 anti-North Korean leaflets near (the border town) of Paju last night,” Park Sang-hak, the head of the Fighters for a Free North Korea, told Yonhap News Agency. “The DVDs of ‘The Interview’ were not included on purpose.”
About 20 American activists, including some from the U.S.-based Human Rights Foundation, also joined the border campaign, according to officials.
Claiming the exclusion of the DVDs as a warning to North Korea, Park said the group will spread a massive amount of “The Interview” DVDs if the North is not cooperative with South Korea’s dialogue offer and its proposal for a reunion of separated families. [Yonhap]
You can read more at the link.
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.
