North Korea takes foreign military attaches from Cuba, Egypt, to a lube factory (via @KCNAWatch) pic.twitter.com/znOLHZ6PVK
— James Pearson (@pearswick) October 15, 2014
So much for all the “coup” talk, Kim Jong-un has reappeared. He was seen walking with a cane which confirms he likely was recovering from a surgery of some kind possibly to his ankles or knees:
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has made his first public appearance in more than a month, giving a “field guidance” at a newly built housing complex, according to Pyongyang’s state media.
The visit to the Wisong Scientists Residential District marked the first time Kim has appeared in public since he attended a musical concert on Sept. 3.
“Watching the exterior of the apartment houses and public buildings nicely decorated with diverse color tiles, he was very pleased to see them. He said they looked very attractive, presenting fantastic scenery,” the North’s Korean Central News Agency said.
Kim’s prolonged absence from public view, including his failure to show up at important national events, has spurred speculation and rumors ranging from health problems to a military coup, though the U.S. has dimissed rumors of a coup as “false.” [Yonhap]
I wonder if the next time Kim Jong-un drops out of view for a while the same people will be publishing sensational articles again of a coup? Unfortunately when it comes to North Korea it seems a lot of people’s wishful thinking is mistaken as analysis.
Yongbyon centrifuge enrichment plant expands while 5 MWe reactor possibly shut down http://t.co/5UqtdDQB8l
— Nautilus Institute (@Nautilus_Inst) October 14, 2014
The ROK military is reporting that the North Koreans have their nuclear reactor up and operating again:
The South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) believes that North Korea’s five-megawatt nuclear reactor in Yongbyon is in operations.
Cho Bo-keun, chief of the JCS’ national defense intelligence department, presented the assessment Monday in response to lawmakers’ questions during a parliamentary audit of the JCS. [KBS World]
You can read more at the link, but it is pretty clear that the North Koreans are eager for some kind of pay day to once again shutdown their nuclear reactor. The problem the North Koreans have is that no one wants to fall for this trick again and pay them to shutdown their reactor to only have them turn it back on again when they need more money.
Kim Kyong-hui (inside the red circle), the aunt of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, is shown on state television on Oct. 12, 2014, reinforcing views that she hasn’t been removed from the country’s power elite despite the execution of her once powerful husband, Jang Song-thaek. (Yonhap)
This would be great news if it does in fact happen not because I expect anyone in the North Korean leadership to ever stand trial at the ICC, but because of the further international pressure it puts on the regime to improve its human rights situation:
A draft U.N. resolution on North Korea’s human rights problem calls for referring the totalitarian nation’s leader, Kim Jong-un, to the International Criminal Court (ICC), a diplomatic source said Wednesday.
The draft resolution, written by the European Union, was circulated behind closed doors at the U.N. on Wednesday, the source told Yonhap News Agency on condition of anonymity because he was not allowed to speak about the proposed resolution until it is adopted.
“It marks the first time that a U.N. resolution on North Korea human rights includes a plan to bring the North Korean leadership to an international court over anti-human rights charges although this is a draft now,” the source said. [Yonhap]
You can read more at the link, but this may explain why the North Koreans recently have been trying to explain away their gulags as “reform through labor camps” instead.
N. Korean leader fails to show on key national celebration http://t.co/pF8bPfhqTs
— Yonhap News Agency (@YonhapNews) October 10, 2014
Here is another example of tit-for-tat occurring on the DMZ:
The two Koreas exchanged machine gun fire Friday, Seoul’s military said, after the North launched shots toward balloons carrying anti-Pyongyang propaganda leaflets floated by South Korean civic activists across the tense border.
South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said some of the North Korean shots landed south of the border, prompting the South’s military to fire back in response.
No further details were available, including whether there were any casualties on either side.
Seoul’s military officials corrected earlier reports that artillery had been used in the clash, saying that it’s wrong.
They said shots could be heard from north of the border at around 3:55 p.m., about two hours after a group of South Korean activists flew 200,000 anti-North Korean leaflets in balloons in a border village of Paju.
The officials added that shots apparently fired by anti-aircraft machine guns were discovered south of the border around 4:50 p.m. There were no reports of South Korean casualties, they said.
South Korea’s military fired back about 40 rounds from its K-6 machine gun 10 minutes after issuing an warning message at 5:30 p.m. [Yonhap]
This may have been another example of a DMZ tit-for-tat, but the threat to these balloons activists from the North Korean regime is very real. Park Sang-hak the North Korean defector who is the leader of this activist group is the one in the most danger. Park is the man who the Kim regime has repeatedly threatened, sent their South Korean leftist lackeys to assault him, and even tried to assassinate him a few years ago due to his balloon launch efforts. Despite all this Park continues to send his balloons into North Korea which must be having an effect considering the reaction of the Kim regime to these launches.
Via One Free Korea comes this article from the Guardian that is one of the few trying to tamp down the coup and regime collapse theories that are popular in the media currently:
But there is a less dramatic explanation. Based on the video evidence of his limp, it is widely accepted that Kim is now receiving medical treatment – possibly at one of the family’s well-appointed villas. The Seoul-based defector group, North Korea Intellectuals’ Solidarity, claims that Kim Yo-jong, his younger sister who acted as an aide to their father Kim Jong-il during his final years, is signing off on decisions in his absence.
Yet claims that Kim has been toppled are not supported by reports of internal North Korean lectures explaining the surprise visit to the Games. DailyNK, a South Korean media organisation staffed in part by defectors who have sources in the North, says civilians were gathered at workplaces and housing complexes on Saturday afternoon to hear the government’s explanation for the trip.
“Senior party and military cadres were dispatched all the way [to the Asian Games] for our athletes, who, without exception, honoured the Fatherland with their indomitable fighting spirit,” one lecturer explained. “With his great love and compassion, Marshal Kim Jong-un personally organised their dispatch, and provided them with a special plane,” she added.
The text for these lectures, a regular feature of life in North Korea, is produced centrally for dispatch throughout the land, and delivered without deviation. Not attending public lectures and teaching sessions is, officially at least, not an option – as mandated by the Ten Principles for the Establishment of the One-ideology System.
The result is that almost all North Koreans hear the same stories and lies, and remain on-message, however far they may be from the capital. In the absence of verifiable information on Kim’s status, they offer vital insight into what Pyongyang wants the country’s people to believe.
The suggestion that he is still at the helm, nominally at least, is supported by Choson Sinbo, an online publication run by the pro-North association of Korean residents in Japan, which reported that the visit to Incheon was “made possible by the resolve of Kim Jong-un”. [The Guardian]
You can read more at the link.
It is good to see something published in the media about North Korea that doesn’t involve wild coup and regime collapse theories with little to no evidence to support it:
“It is highly unlikely that either the prolonged public absence of Kim Jong Un or this weekend’s visit to Seoul by senior North Korean officials signal any kind of regime change in the North,” Asia analyst Sue Terry, with the think tank Eurasia Group, wrote in a research note.
Kim was notably absent from the closing ceremony of the Asian Games and the annual meeting of the rubber-stamp Supreme People’s Assembly in Pyongyang, but the disappearing act itself may not be very significant. “Kim Jong Il [his father] did periodically disappear from view, as has Kim Jong Un,” Mike Chinoy, senior fellow at the University of Southern California and author of “Meltdown: The Inside Story of the North Korean Nuclear Crisis,” told Foreign Policy magazine. Kim Jong Un has been absent from the public eye for prolonged stretches in three other cases since taking over in 2011. The longest gap was in June 2012, when he was not seen for 24 days.
North Korea just sent three top officials — Hwang Pyong So, the vice marshal of the Korean People’s Army and second in command to Kim Jong Un himself; Kim Yang Gon, who is in charge of communication with South Korea; and Choe Ryong Hae, the secretary of the Workers’ Party Central Committee — to Seoul, which also argues against the possibility of a coup.
According to Terry, three such high-ranking figures would not leave North Korea in the midst of a coup or if Kim’s health were seriously deteriorating. Instead, the surprise visit in the South from the delegation is likely a product of economic desperation, she said, as relations with the North’s longtime ally and supporter, China, begin to falter. [International Business Times]
You can read more at the link, but the North is always looking for free money to behave for a little for little to nothing in return. So the delegation could have traveled to Seoul for this reason. I also think it could be part of a charm offensive that they typically do before moving into a provocation cycle. We will see what happens the next few months, but all the coup and regime collapse theories need to stop until there is actual evidence to support any of them.
