#DPRK foreign ministry warns #EU not to adopt an anti-N. Korean human rights resolution or it will face "unpredictable consequences."
— Steve Herman (@W7VOA) October 30, 2014
The fact that watching South Korean dramas was added to the charges of these officials likely had nothing to do with their purge, it was just something throw in as a point of emphasis to everyone else not to watch these dramas that the Kim regime views as subversive media:
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is seeking to erase the remaining influence of his dead uncle, executing about 10 senior Workers’ Party officials on charges from graft to watching South Korean soap operas, according to an aide to a South Korean lawmaker.
The deaths by shooting are part of Kim’s latest round of purges, said Lim Dae Sung, a secretary to ruling Saenuri Party lawmaker Lee Cheol Woo who attended a briefing at the National Intelligence Service yesterday in Seoul. Kim had Jang Song Thaek, his uncle and de facto deputy, killed in December last year. Lee didn’t say when the executions took place, or who the officials were. [Bloomberg]
You can read more at the link.
The South Korean intelligence is probably pretty accurate on this:
South Korea’s spy agency said Tuesday it has solved the mystery of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s 6-week public absence, which set off a frenzy of wild speculation around the world.
The National Intelligence Service told legislators that a foreign doctor operated on Kim in September or October to remove a cyst from his right ankle, according to Park Byeong-seok, an aide for opposition lawmaker Shin Kyung-min. The aide said the spy agency also told lawmakers in a closed-door briefing that the cyst could recur because of Kim’s obesity, smoking and heavy public schedule. [Associated Press]
So I wonder if we will see a number of retractions from all the people claiming a coup happened or other theories that were floated around with no evidence to support them?
Some in the Korean government are concerned that a secret deal for the release of Jeffrey Fowle was reached with cutting USFK as one of the bargaining chips:
There is speculation about secret talks between Washington and Pyongyang, especially given the abrupt release of Jeffrey Fowle, one of three Americans detained in the North.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Roh Kwang-il here struggled to downplay the issue. Roh said Kerry “made the remarks to urge the North to implement denuclearization in a substantive way. As far as I know there is no discussion at present about whether to cut the size of the USFK or maintain its current size.”
He added that the two countries agreed in 2008 to maintain the size of the USFK at the current level of 28,500 troops. “And this has been reaffirmed continuously through the annual Seoul-Washington Security Consultative Meeting.”
Roh ventured that Kerry “may have meant that this is an issue that can be discussed when the North is denuclearized.”
On a visit to Washington, Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se tried a similar line. “The reduction of the USFK will be discussed in the distant future when the denuclearization is realized,” he said.
“Despite Pyongyang’s release of Fowle, it’s too soon to conclude that there’s been a sea change in the attitude of the North. And U.S. officials also maintain that there’s no change in the U.S. policy,” he claimed. [Chosun Ilbo]
You can read more at the link, but everyone knows North Korea is not going to denuclearize and any promises of reducing USFK to get Fowle released was probably a demand from North Korea to try and create a rift between the two allies. It seems like having to answer questions about a rift between the two allies was a small price to pay to get Fowle released if that is what happened.
Now can we please take efforts to keep these idiot tourists out of North Korea to prevent having to deal with these detainee negotiations in the first place?
Some farmers are upset with the activists sending the balloons into North Korea:
Lee Jae Wook raised the scoop of his mud-spattered tractor as he braced for a scuffle with activists trying to fly balloons carrying leaflets calling for a revolt against Kim Jong Un across the border to North Korea.
“I won’t let them provoke Kim Jong Un into firing shells at my town,” the 68-year-old South Korean farmer said Oct. 25 at the Imjingak tourist park, near the demilitarized zone that separates the nations. “I can’t afford to lose the peace I need in this busy harvest season.”
The tussles over the weekend pitched a handful of leafleting activists against border residents like Lee and hundreds of others who support a policy of engagement with North Korea. Dozens of police officers were deployed to keep them apart. One leaflet shows Saddam Hussein with a noose around his neck and the corpse of Muammar Qaddafi and urges North Koreans to “topple evil Kim Jong Un and shoot him to death!”
A series of shooting exchanges this month has escalated concerns among residents that North Korea may fire at civilian areas in South Korea should the flying of leaflets continue to be permitted. [Bloomberg]
I guess we are supposed to feel bad for these farmers. However, it isn’t until the end of the article that we find out who these people really are:
“These balloons will only come back to us in the form of bombs,” An So Hee, a United Progressive Party member of Paju City Council, said at Imjingak. “It’s the border residents who’ll have to bear the consequences of these leaflets.”
Long time ROK Heads may remember that the UPP is the South Korean political party filled with North Korean sympathizers and spies. These North Korean sympathizers have done these protests before on behalf of their North Korean handlers by assaulting the balloon activists. This time they are trying to conduct an information operation by making their protesters appear to be concerned farmers to try to create public pressure to stop the balloon launches. The efforts by the North Korean stooges to stop the balloon launches only convinces me even further how effective these balloon launches are that the Kim regime would put this much effort into stopping them.
I doubt the travel ban is actually for ebola, but that is what the North Koreans are claiming:
When word spreads in Max Brooks’s 2006 dystopian novel World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War that zombies are infesting the world, North Korea acts decisively, sealing its borders and hustling its people into mysterious bunkers. “No country was better prepared to repel the infestation than North Korea,” says Hyungchol Choi, the fictional deputy director of the Korean Central Intelligence Agency. “Rivers to the north, oceans to the east and west, and to the south … the most heavily fortified border on Earth.”
Now, as a far less apocalyptic virus completely unrelated to zombies spreads, North Korea is closing its borders. On Thursday, Oct. 23, North Korea notified foreign tour operators that visitors are now banned. “The reason given was Ebola, and I can’t think of any other reason, as they don’t arbitrarily close the border,” Simon Cockerell, managing director of the tour operator Koryo Tours, told USA Today. [Foreign Policy]
You can read the rest at the link.
Via One Free Korea comes the latest example of North Korea’s racist attitudes and lack of regard for human rights:
North Korean officials making a rare appearance at a United Nations human rights event on Wednesday laughed among themselves at the testimony of former labor camp detainees and referred to the ambassador of Botswana with derogatory racial language, according to Korean-speaking sources who overheard their conversations and spoke with VICE News.
The special session featured an awkward and testy exchange between Kim Ju Song, advisor for political affairs at the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea’s mission to the UN, and Michael Kirby, the retired Australian judge who headed a recent UN commission of inquiry into North Korean human rights abuses. The commission released a report in March that cited forced labor, starvation, persecution of religious believers, and a massive network of political prisons holding up to 120,000 people among various violations and crimes against humanity committed by North Korea’s government.
Speaking along with Kirby were the ambassadors of Australia, Panama and Botswana — whose delegations co-sponsored the hearing — as well as two former North Korean detainees whose experiences were featured in the commission’s report.
At one point, members of the North Korean delegation were heard referring to Botswana’s UN Ambassador Charles Ntwaagae in Korean as “that black bastard,” sources who were nearby told VICE News. They also chuckled at the testimony of Kirby and the two prison escapees, Jung Gwang-il and Kim Hye Sook. Those in the room with the North Korean delegation who later spoke with VICE News insisted on anonymity due to fear of reprisal. [VICE News]
You can read more at the link, but people shouldn’t be surprised by the racist attitudes if they have read B.R. Myers book the Cleanest Race.
KCNA similar dispatch says U.S. "incapable of protecting the human rights of black men though it has black president." #DPRK
— Steve Herman (@W7VOA) October 25, 2014
I wonder if this was a quid pro quo to get North Korea to return to talks or even release Jeffrey Fowle?:
A giant steel Christmas tree near the border with North Korea that served as a propaganda symbol for the South for 43 years has been pulled down.
It used to stand at Aegibong Peak in Gimpo, Gyeonggi Province and twinkle a message of progress, consumerism and born-again Christianity across the border, to the fury of the North Korean regime.
The local government now plans to build a peace park with the budget of W29.6 billion (US$1=W1,052) there.
Military authorities pulled it down on Oct. 15-16 citing safety reasons. The structure “was rated very dangerous in a safety inspection of military facilities and structures in November last year,” a Defense Ministry spokesman said. [Chosun Ilbo]
You can read more at the link, but few people seem fooled by the safety reasons cited when it has been there for 43 years.
Going by John Kerry’s statement it appears that US troops will remain in South Korea for decades to come because the North Koreans have no intention of ever denuclearizing. Why would they?:
Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se has played down U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry’s remarks about the possible downsizing of the U.S military in South Korea.
“Any discussion on reducing the number of U.S. troops in South Korea should be dealt in the future when the denuclearization of North Korea is realized,” he told reporters during a visit to Washington D.C., Wednesday (local time.). “I think he meant to urge North Korea to step forward promptly for denuclearization.”
Yun and Defense Minister Han Min-koo are in the U.S. to attend the-called “2+2 meeting” with their U.S. counterparts, Kerry and Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel in the U.S. capital, Thursday.
Kerry made his remarks before flying back to Washington from Berlin where he held a joint press conference with German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier.
“We’ve said from day one that if North Korea wants to rejoin the community of nations, it knows how to do it. It can come to the talks prepared to discuss denuclearization,” Kerry said, according to a transcript provided by the State Department. “And the U.S. is fully prepared ― if they do that and begin that process, we are prepared to begin the process of reducing the need for American forces and presence in the region because the threat itself would then be reduced.” [Korea Times]
You can read more at the link.
