Tag: North Korea

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

The North Koreans have been using near slave labor for decades now in places like the Kaesong Industrial Complex or Siberian logging sites. So this latest news is nothing new:

Thousands of migrant labourers from North Korea are toiling for years on construction sites in Qatar for virtually no pay – including on the vast new metropolis that is the centrepiece of the World Cup – in what may amount to “state-sponsored slavery”.

According to testimonies from workers and defectors, labourers from the reclusive state said they receive almost no salaries in person while in the Gulf emirate during the three years they typically spend there.

They work in the expectation they will collect their earnings when they return to North Korea, but according to a series of testimonies from defectors and experts, workers receive as little as 10% of their salaries when they go home, and some may receive nothing. One North Korean worker at a construction site in central Doha told the Guardian: “We are here to earn foreign currency for our nation.” (The Guardian)

You can read more at the link.

Former North Korean prison camp escapee and now human rights activist Shin Dong-hyuk recently had an editorial published on the CNN website that provides this idea in regards to holding North Korea accountable for reported human rights violations:

The North Korean dictatorial regime should not just emptily deny that these political prison camps exist. If they are truly honorable and fair they should immediately allow an international inspection delegation, comprised of myself and organizations such as Amnesty International or Human Rights Watch, or the United Nations, to be able to conduct on-the-ground visitations to the political prison camps. These delegations must include political prison survivors like myself and other defectors.

READ: Defectors describe horror, heartbreak of labor camps

Only recently did they concede that “labor detention centers” exist, but solely for the incarcerated to have their lives improved “through their mentality and to look on their wrongdoings.”  [CNN]

You can read more at the link, but the concern I have about Shin’s idea is that the North Koreans would empty these camps through executions before allowing anyone to inspect them.  So this idea is not viable.  However, Shin also offers the idea of the international community preventing the free travel of Kim regime family members.  This actually seems more viable though many countries like China and Russia will likely not enforce it.  Does anyone else have any ideas on how to address North Korean human rights violations?

The New York Times has a long article published about the release of the two American detainees in North Korea this weekend:

North Korea released two Americans who had been accused of trying to subvert the secretive state, after the director of national intelligence for the United States flew to the country on a secret mission and left on Saturday with the men aboard his aircraft.

The plane carrying the Americans — Kenneth Bae and Matthew Todd Miller — and the national intelligence director, James R. Clapper Jr., landed at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, near Tacoma, Wash., about 9:15 p.m. Pacific time on Saturday.

Mr. Bae walked off the plane and into the embrace of relatives on the tarmac. Mr. Miller, his head shaved, sprinted down the steps into the arms of his parents, who were waiting for him at the bottom.

Securing the releases was an unusual role for Mr. Clapper, the nation’s most senior intelligence official, whose job is to coordinate policy and operations among the nation’s 16 spy agencies. Gruff, blunt-speaking and seen by many in the Obama administration as a throwback to the Cold War, the retired general is an unlikely diplomat but, in the words of one American official, “perfect for the North Koreans.” [New York Times]

You can read more at the link, but the release of all the American detainees in North Korea has got me wondering what was the backroom agreement for their release?  Could the Obama administration be trying to copy the Bush administration by trying to manufacture a foreign policy success with North Korea at the end of their Presidency?  The Agreed Framework 2.0 deal that the Bush administration agreed to with North Korea was predictably a failure and I do not see any change in the nature of the North Korean regime that would indicate any future deal would be any different.  Anyone else have any thoughts on this?

Via One Free Korea comes news of just how stupid former North Korea detainee Jeffrey Fowle is:

An American who is back home after being detained in North Korea says he left a Bible in a nightclub hoping it would get into the hands of the underground Christian church.

Jeffrey Fowle said Friday that he left the Bible under a trash bin at a nightclub in the northern port city of Chongjinin in an effort “to spread the Gospel out to the remote corners.”

Fowle arrived in North Korea on April 29. He was detained after North Korean officials found the Bible.

Fowle said he had left his name in the Bible and hoped a Christian would find it.

Fowle was detained for nearly six months. He returned to his home in Ohio last week after negotiations involving retired diplomat and former Ohio Congressman Tony Hall. [Associated Press]

You can read more at the link and according to this interview he did he is not sorry for his action as at all.

I think One Free Korea sums up quite well at his site Fowle’s stupidity.

The balloon activists have appeared to have given into not North Korean threats, but rather South Korean governmental pressure for the vague hope that North Korea will agree to Inter-Korean talks:

South Korean activists pledged Monday to continue their anti-North Korea leaflet campaign in a low-key manner for the time being, despite a growing inter-Korean feud over the sensitive issue.

A number of activist groups, including the key player Fighters for a Free North Korea (FFNK), have often launched balloons carrying propaganda leaflets across the border to spread anti-Pyongyang messages targeting the North Korean leader and the country’s dictatorship.

The propaganda campaign, often preannounced and widely covered by local and overseas media, has recently been at the center of the inter-Korean row, with North Korea threatening not to hold dialogue with the South unless it is stopped.

“In the future, the spreading of anti-North leaflets by defector groups will be conducted behind the scenes, taking into consideration more effective methods (of campaigns) as well as the safety of residents (at the border area) and direction of the wind,” the activist groups said in a statement.  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link.

It is probably not a good business model for an open ski resort to have more employees than guests, but then again this is North Korea where such logic does not apply:

When a photographer took a trip to one of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s pet projects – built to bring in thousands of foreign tourists to the country – he discovered a sparkling clean ski resort… with barely another person or drop of snow in sight.

The communist enclave’s one and only ski destination, on top of Taehwa Peak, boasts a hotel with wood cabin style rooms, complimentary toiletries, and spa facilities and 110 kilometres (70 miles) of multi-level slopes.

However, photographer Aram Pan, from Singapore, who took the photos while on his fourth trip to North Korea from 16-20 October, did not find any other tourists to mingle with.

‘I saw one western tourist on a “private tour” at the Ski resort. I’m not sure who he was. I didn’t ask,’ Mr Pan told Daily Mail Australia.  [Daily Mail]