Tag: North Korea

The leftists in the South Korean government are trying to legislate away a subsidy the North Korean defector groups receive to help their balloon launch campaign:

Government subsidies for anti-North Korea activists have emerged as a bone of contention at the National Assembly as rival parties are competing to get their respective human rights bills related to North Korea passed.

The subsidies allegedly have been used to fund the campaign of releasing balloons containing leaflets criticizing the Pyongyang leadership that are blown across the border.

The ruling Saenuri Party said Monday it favored keeping the subsidies for civic groups as a tool against North Korea, while the main opposition New Politics Alliance for Democracy (NPAD) argued that it will only anger the North.

The two parties failed to reach a compromise so the competing bills are now being deliberated at the National Assembly Foreign Affairs and Unification Committee.  [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link, but ending the subsidies will not end the balloon launches.  The defector groups will just have to raise more money privately to fund the launches.

It makes it much harder for the United States to criticize China for violating UN sanctions in support of North Korea when the ROK is so easily able to set up projects like this with North Korea that makes the Kim regime money:

As the two Koreas and Russia speed up a groundbreaking joint logistics project, a government official here said Friday that a key question is whether it can be operated with stability.

Inter-Korean economic cooperation has often been hamstrung by military tensions on the peninsula, noted the unification ministry official.

He confirmed the government’s view that the Rajin-Khasan project is not in breach of bilateral and U.N. sanctions on the North.

Under the envisioned program, South Korea’s top steelmaker POSCO will bring in Russian coal via the North Korean port of Rajin. Two other South Korean firms — Hyundai Merchant Marine Co. and Korail Corp. — are joining the project.

“Since it is a normal international commercial trade, it’s my understanding that there is no problem with the U.N. sanctions,” the official told reporters on background.  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link.

Choe Ryong-hae (L), the Workers’ Party of (North) Korea secretary, departs Sunan International Airport in Pyongyang on Nov. 17, 2014. North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency reported that Choe flew to Moscow as the special envoy of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. (Yonhap)

RT @BuckTurgidson79: North Korean defectors speaking up about human rights abuses http://t.co/gzhUUYn6t9

— Liberty in NK (@LibertyinNK) November 19, 2014

It looks like the North Koreans are still up to their old ways by kidnapping people in foreign countries:

A North Korean college student in Paris has been missing for more than two weeks, sources here said Wednesday, amid speculation that agents from the North are attempting to forcibly take him back to the communist nation.

The student, only identified by his surname Han, is a son of an aide to Jang Song-thaek, the once powerful uncle of the North’s leader Kim Jong-un. Jang was executed in December last year on treason charges.

Han’s father is known to have been purged recently as part of the Kim regime’s continued work to clear the remnants of the Jang era.

A senior official at Han’s school told Yonhap News Agency that, “I asked other students and faculty members about Han’s whereabouts but nobody has seen him at least for the past 15 days.”

Local police came to the school last week in search of Han, added the official.

A source said Han had been picked up by North Korean agents dispatched to Paris.

He dramatically escaped while being taken to an airport and he is now staying at a certain location, the source said.

If confirmed true, the case could cause a diplomatic rift between North Korea and France.  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link, but I really hope the French government takes a harsh stance against this type of activity in their country by foreign agents.

This resolution is highly symbolic since China and Russia would likely veto it at the UN Security Council, but it is still a very high embarrassing resolution for the ruling Kim regime:

A U.N. General Assembly committee on Tuesday passed a highly symbolic resolution calling for referring North Korea to the International Criminal Court (ICC) for human rights violations in a move sure to spark angry protests from the communist nation.

The Third Committee approved the resolution in a 111-19 vote. Fifty-five countries abstained.

The resolution’s overwhelming passage through the committee almost guaranteed its formal adoption at the U.N. General Assembly. It also represented a victory for the West in an intense diplomatic battle at the U.N. against North Korea and other authoritarian regimes sympathetic to Pyongyang.

Earlier Tuesday, the committee rejected a Cuban proposal to remove the call for the North’s referral to the ICC from the resolution.

“The General Assembly decides … to take appropriate action to ensure accountability, including through consideration of referral of the situation in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea to the International Criminal Court and consideration of the scope for effective targeted sanctions against those who appear to be most responsible,” the resolution said.  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link.

Interesting interview in the Wall Street Journal from US intelligence chief James Clapper in regards to his trip to North Korea to get the two detained Americans released:

At 3 p.m. last Saturday, a North Korean official went to the State Guesthouse in Pyongyang to instruct U.S. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and his small team to pack their bags. On a secret mission to secure the freedom of two Americans imprisoned by the regime, Mr. Clapper thought at that moment that he might be sent home empty-handed.

Instead, he emerged from the trip with the Americans in his custody. He also got a glimpse into a closed country the U.S. has for years struggled to understand. He is the only U.S. intelligence official ever invited to North Korea.

Mr. Clapper revealed details of the trip in an interview with The Wall Street Journal. The North Koreans seemed disappointed when he arrived without a broader peace overture in hand, he said. At the same time, they didn’t ask for anything specific in return for the prisoners’ release.

U.S. officials say the mission, which few officials within the Obama administration knew about until Mr. Clapper was returning, wasn’t meant to signal any change in the U.S.’s approach to the reclusive North.

Mr. Clapper’s earlier conversations with older North Korean officials on his one-day trip had been contentious. He heard what he called a far more “tempered” tone from a younger North Korean whom he described as an interlocutor and who accompanied him on the 40-minute drive back to the airport at the trip’s end. He said the interlocutor expressed regret that the North and South remained split and asked Mr. Clapper if he’d return to Pyongyang. (Wall Street Journal)

You can read more at the link, but Clapper’s revelation about the younger North Korean in the article I am surprised by because it could get this person in trouble with his superiors if he was not supporting the regime narrative.

I also found of interest the fact that Clapper never spoke with Bae or Miller while flying back on the airplane. I bet he was probably disgusted with what they had done to put the U.S. Government in such a position to get them released.

The interview with North Korean defector Yeon-mi Park I featured here on ROK Drop last month.  Here testimony ended up getting a lot of international attention and now the North Koreans have brought out their biggest western apologists to claim she is a liar in regards to her testimony of seeing dead bodies in North Korean rivers:

I thought maybe that former North Korean detainee Matthew Miller had some mental issues to explain his odd detention in North Korea, but after reading this great NK News interview with him it turns out he is just an idiot:

It’s a story that begins with North Korea trying to refuse to imprison him, and ends with him going home on the personal airplane of America’s top spy.

It’s clearly more than an average vacation, yet this is exactly what 25-year-old Matthew Miller – the Bakersfield, California citizen who had his release from North Korea secured last Saturday by U.S. Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper – has just experienced.

Enduring 210 days held prisoner by Pyongyang, Miller’s tale – now revealed exclusively by NK News – shows more signs of being an extreme vacation causing a major headache for Washington than the “six years of hard labor” North Korean state media called it when he was sentenced in September.

Despite fears in Washington about Miller’s attempt to claim “political asylum” during a tourist trip to North Korea this April, an interview with NK News shows that, far from being arrested upon entry, it took considerable effort for the curious American to get entangled in the DPRK legal system.

During his nearly six months in custody, Matthew Miller said he wanted to find out what North Korea was like beyond the tourist trail, something it seems he was successful in discovering.

“This might sound strange, but I was prepared for the ‘torture’ but instead of that I was killed with kindness, and with that my mind folded and the plan fell apart,” Miller told NK News this week from California.

“I sincerely apologized to North Korea, it was not coerced at all,” Miller said of his court statement to DPRK legal authorities.

“Before going I did not think I would feel guilt for my actions toward North Korea. Over time that changed and I did feel guilt for the crime, so in that sense I consider what I did to be a mistake even though I did achieve (my) goals.”  [NK News]

I recommend reading the whole interview at the link, but even the North Koreans saw that this guy was an idiot and were eager to get rid of him. It just makes me wonder if idiots like this should be charged with a crime for basically wasting everyone’s time, even the North Koreans with his stupidity? Or charge him for the cost of using the airplane to fly him out of North Korea?

Yesterday's Reddit AMA with Kang Chol-hwan "The average North Korean knows the situation in North Korea is not good" http://t.co/rjbVnQPOjo

— HanVoice (@HanVoice) November 15, 2014