Report: N.Korea orders soldiers to shoot defectors

Posted: Dec 5, 2009 01:03 AM PST

Updated: Dec 5, 2009 06:03 PM PST

By KWANG-TAE KIM
Associated Press Writer
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) – North Korea has ordered its border guards to open fire on anyone who crosses its border without permission, in what could be an attempt to thwart defections by people disgruntled over its recent currency reform, a news report said Saturday.

The National Defense Commission – the top government body headed by North Korean leader Kim Jong Il – recently instructed soldiers to kill unauthorized border crossers on the spot, South Korea’s mass-circulation Chosun Ilbo newspaper said, citing unidentified sources inside the North.

It said the order could be an attempt by the communist government to stop members of North Korea’s middle class who are angry over suddenly being deprived of their money from leaving the country.

Officials at South Korea’s spy agency were not immediately available for comment Saturday.

Thousands of North Koreans have defected to South Korea in recent years, most of them via China. Last year, about 2,800 North Koreans arrived in the South, up from about 2,500 in 2007.

The reported move came amid signs of growing anger among North Korean citizens left with hoards of worthless bills.

Angry citizens burned piles of old bills at two separate locations in the eastern coastal city of Hamhung on Monday, the Daily NK, a Seoul-based online news outlet that focuses on North Korean affairs, reported Thursday, citing an unidentified North Korean resident.

This is what I predicted last year. The cult is becoming more compulsory (kill anyone immediately who tries to leave), more rigorous (150 day ‘battle’ followed by 100 day ‘battle’) and will produce a critical mass event (what I am calling the Ceaucescu moment) which may bring down Pyongyang. The missionaries are getting their message through and the word appears to be spreading. The missionary NGOs in the ROK are chomping at the bit to get across the 38th parallel as soon as the tiniest crack appears. Then the real war begins in earnest.

Angry citizens burned piles of old bills at two separate locations in the eastern coastal city of Hamhung on Monday, the Daily NK, a Seoul-based online news outlet that focuses on North Korean affairs, reported late Thursday, citing an unidentified North Korean resident.

It quoted the resident as saying he saw graffiti and leaflets criticizing North Korean leader Kim Jong Il in and around a college in Hamhung – a rare move in a country where the totalitarian government keeps tight control over its 24 million people.

Dictatorships rarely end well. I was there when this one did.

The collapse of Pyongyang will feature similarities to both Romania and Iraq but will in its own way be worse than both – it will be seen as the failure not only of a state, but of a religion. Adherents.com ranks Juche as the 10th largest religion in the world. May the stench of Juche’s burning corpse forever remind us of the misery spread through idolatry, materialism, statism and personality cults.

According to the Daily NK report linked in this post, people have taken to burning their worthless currency, which ought to be seen as a fairly daring act of protest.