Tag: North Korea

The BBC has an article on North Korea’s slave labor system based on a report released recently by the Citizens’ Alliance for North Korea Human Rights:

Generations of South Korean prisoners of war are being used as slave labour in North Korean coal mines to generate money for the regime and its weapons programme, according to a report released by a human rights organisation. The BBC has taken a closer look at the allegations.

“When I see slaves shackled and dragged on TV, I see myself,” Choi Ki-sun told me. He was one of an estimated 50,000 prisoners seized by North Korea at the end of the Korean War in 1953.

“When we were dragged to labour camps, we were at gun point, lined up with armed guards around. What else could this be if not slave labour?”

Mr Choi (not his real name) said he continued to work in a mine in North Hamgyeong province alongside around 670 other prisoners of war (POWs) until his escape, 40 years later.

BBC News

You can read the rest at the link, but the article goes on to discuss the songbun system and how someone’s class can sentence them to slave labor as well. For those that have closely followed this issue the fate of Korean War POWs, the songbun system, and North Korea’s slave labor camps is nothing new.

Clearly the NKHR is trying to remind people of the regime’s brutality likely because there is an effort by the engagement crowd to once again appease the Kim regime for little to nothing in return. If the engagers want to give Kim Jong-un his dream deal, than the American public should clearly understand the brutality of the regime they want to prop up.

It looks like Kim Jong-un is trying to make himself look more legitimate to English readers:

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un is now using “president” as his official title in English, instead of “chairman” as he has used in the past, according to the North’s state media. 

The English service of the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) has been using president rather than chairman since Feb. 12 a report about Kim’s attendance at a Lunar New Year performance with leading members of the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea (WPK).

Since then, the KCNA has been referring to him as the “general secretary of the Workers’ Party of Korea and president of the State Affairs of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK).” The DPRK is North Korea’s official name. 

Korea Times

You can read more at the link.

It has been speculated that North Korea would likely test the Biden administration at some point with a provocation and this March may be when they do it:

While North Korea is expected to respond strongly to an envisaged combined military drill between South Korea and the United States, including a show of force, Seoul has few options to properly tame Pyongyang’s anger which will likely lead to heightening tensions on the Korean Peninsula, according to diplomatic observers, Monday.

However, they say it is a silver lining that the North’s possible provocation would not be enough to spoil the South Korean government’s peace initiative as the totalitarian state also remains cautious about its acts negatively affecting the new U.S. administration’s review of policy toward it.

The allies are now discussing holding the annual springtime drill, which will be proceeded under the form of computer-simulated command post training, in the second week of March, with them fine-tuning the details such as how to program it, according to military officials. 

However, given that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un warned against the “war game,” it is highly likely that the North Korean regime will stage a military provocation. The Kim regime denounced the joint exercise as a rehearsal for an invasion.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link.

It is ironic that the Korean left that used a dubious tablet PC to take down the last Presidential administration is claiming these reactor papers are all lies by the political opposition:

The ruling bloc is going all out to defend itself against escalating suspicions that the Moon Jae-in administration attempted to initiate the construction of a nuclear power plant in North Korea in 2018. 

Cheong Wa Dae and the ruling Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) are lashing out at the main opposition People Party of Korea (PPP) for raising the allegations ahead of the April 7 mayoral by-elections for Seoul and Busan, claiming it was re-engaging in the politics of “northern winds” often used by conservatives during election season.

President Moon called on the political circle to refrain from outdated political wrangling, in response to the rising calls from the opposition to clarify exactly whether there was any mention of a nuclear plant building project during his summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un at Panmunjeom in April 2018. 

“At a time when the people are already struggling (from the coronavirus pandemic), we should not instigate conflict and make politics regress through outdated tactics. I urge the political circle to find better ways to cooperate in improving the peoples’ lives,” Moon said during a meeting with senior aides at Cheong Wa Dae, Monday.

Korea Times

The Moon administration is even threatening to take legal action against people criticizing the administration because of the reactor papers. We know this administration has a long track record of jailing journalists and now they may even try and jail a politician:

The presidential office said it would consider taking legal action immediately after PPP interim leader Kim Chong-in remarked Jan. 29 that the ruling bloc’s actions were “benefiting the North” when he first raised the suspicion about the nuclear power plant project. “It is a reckless political offensive meant to delude the people,” a senior presidential aide said Monday.

You can read more at the link.

The Moon administration has kept this very quiet for two years until it has now been leaked to the media:

A North Korean diplomat has defected to South Korea while serving as the acting chief of mission at the country’s embassy in Kuwait, a source said Monday.

Ryu Hyun-woo, who had served as the embassy’s charge d’affaires since Ambassador So Chang-sik was expelled from Kuwait after a U.N. resolution was adopted in 2017, entered South Korea, along with his family, according to the source. 

Further details were not available, including the timing of the defection.

But a media report earlier said that Ryu appears to have defected to the South in September 2019, about two months after Jo Song-gil, the acting ambassador to the North’s embassy in Italy, entered the country after disappearing in late 2018.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but Ryu apparently defected to give his family a better life.

It looks like the

U.S. State Secretary nominee Antony Blinken hinted Tuesday (local time) that the Joe Biden administration may entirely rethink its policies toward North Korea, claiming that under Donald trump the situation with Pyongyang has deteriorated considerably.

Blinken did not specify what policies the United States will adopt in dealing with the totalitarian state during his confirmation hearing, however, as Biden and members of his foreign policy team have been critical of Trump’s handling of the Kim Jong-un regime, his comments are seen as heralding a big shift from their predecessor’s dealings with the North. 

“I think we have to review and we intend to review the entire approach and policy toward North Korea because this is a hard problem that has plagued administration after administration, and it’s a problem that has not gotten better,” Blinken said before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. 

“In fact, it’s gotten worse.”

Kim Yeoul-soo, chief of the Security Strategy Office at the Korea Institute for Military Affairs, said the remarks broadly meant a shift in foreign policy in accordance with the change of administration from Trump to Biden. 

“I think Blinken meant a shift from top-down diplomacy to a bottom-up approach and from bilateral negotiations to multilateral talks,” he said.

Kim also said that the nominee’s remarks at the hearing likely indicated the Biden team may pursue a nuclear deal similar to the one with Iran in 2015 when dealing with the North’s nuclear program as he wrote in an op-ed piece in the New York Times in 2018. 

Korea Times

You can read more at the link, but the Iran deal would pretty much give the Kim regime what they want, keep their nukes and get sanctioned drops for just playing nice for awhile. They can then reinvest all the money coming in from the dropping of sanctions into their military and strategic programs.

The real item of interest will be if the Biden administration will pursue a peace treaty. If so this will once again play into the Kim regime’s confederation strategy and signal the beginning of the end for USFK.