Search Results for: "Daily NK"

March 28, 2016

Daily NK: China not taking North Korean coal shipments

Last week, I posted about the conflicting reports about China’s compliance with the new sanctions on North Korea. Just after I posted that, I noticed that the Daily NK had also added a report of its own, suggesting that amid a regime mobilization to expand coal production, coal exports were being refused by Chinese ports. “Recently, we’ve seen a full ban on our [North Korean] ships at the Port of Yingkou in Liaoning Province, where coal trade had been most...

Categories China & Korea/Sanctions
July 1, 2015

Daily NK: Massive brawl in Musan market after traders resist confiscations

This may be the most significant known incident of anti-regime resistance by North Korean civilians since the Ajumma Rebellion that followed the 2009 currency confiscation: A massive brawl between Ministry of People’s Security [MPS] agents and vendors at a marketplace in Musan County last Friday has led to an urgent dispatch of county security and safety agents along with the complete shuttering of the market. The clash occurred after angry vendors tried to resist the confiscation of their goods by market...

Categories Capitalism/Resistance
October 27, 2014

Daily NK: Fire destroys Kim Jong Il’s fake birthplace (updated)

Update, September 2015: Subsequent reporting by NK News calls the Daily NK‘s report into question. ~   ~   ~ This report has been circulating in Korean-language sources for a few days, and the Donga Ilbo has reported that a large fire was burning (and had been extinguished) in that area, but this is the first time I’ve seen it reported in English. A raging wildfire that broke out on October 21st in North Korea’s Samjiyon County, Yangkang Province is...

Categories History/Kim Jong Il
September 19, 2014

The Daily NK looks back on the Il Shim Hue scandal, the investigation of which …

stopped suddenly when it reached the door of Roh Moo Hyun’s Blue House. See also my post from the time of the conviction, and follow the links if you care to read more. I heard somewhere that Michael Jang, the group’s convicted ringleader and a former USFK soldier, has completed his sentence and is now a “unification” activist in L.A. Can anyone confirm that?

Categories The Fifth Column
December 20, 2013

Open Sources: L.A. Times confirms defection; Daily NK reports mass arrests in Pyongyang

~  1  ~ L.A. TIMES CONFIRMS HIGH-LEVEL DEFECTION: Several days ago, I posted about reports in the South Korean press that a senior North Korean official with extensive knowledge of North Korea’s offshore finances had defected, and was in the care of South Korean officials in an undisclosed location in China. South Korea later denied the reports, but today, The L.A. Times is reporting that, denial notwithstanding, the reports were true. The individual is a military officer, was a “confidant” of Jang...

Categories Anju Links
August 12, 2013

The Daily NK: Keeping the promises that the Sunshine Policy couldn’t

In a land of scarcity, North Korea’s scarcest commodity is truth, and it is truth that is transforming North Korea.  In the last ten years, North Korea’s death-grip on the flow of food, consumer goods, and information across its borders was fractured, and probably for good.  This change is enormously consequential to how we ought to approach North Korea.  Even as inter-governmental “Sunshine” and engagement failed decisively–and probably exacerbated North Korea’s brutality–market-based engagement and information flows have been profoundly transformative....

Categories Activism/Media Criticism
August 4, 2013

Giving Back to the Daily NK: Amplify the North Korea Info Flow

The Daily NK has provided us North Korea watchers for the last 8.5 years with big scoops like the currency “reform” of late 2009 and lots of smaller stories that further our understanding of everyday life in North Korea. Last month they launched their outreach campaign to the international community with a Nightout and a Meetup in Seoul, and this month they’re doing their first crowdsourcing campaign (click image above). Traditionally, charitable giving was not practiced in Korean society. As...

Categories Media Criticism
July 3, 2013

#NIGHTOUT with Daily NK: Support Free Media in North Korea

Joshua’s still away, but this is a first attempt at getting back to posting at least occasionally here. — Dan Bielefeld Even infrequent readers of One Free Korea will recognize the important role the Daily NK plays in deepening and broadening our understanding of North Korea. For those of you in Seoul, I hope you can come out Friday night in Itaewon for their first “Nightout.” For everyone else, why not send them a few bucks with an online donation....

Categories Inside NK/Media Criticism
July 21, 2011

Open Sources: Daily NK prints Kim Jong Il’s shopping list

So I guess North Korea isn’t constitutionally incapable of importing food after all. The Daily NK pulled up some stats compiled by the South Korean government and Chinese customs (what, they publish those?) and broke it all down. In addition to importing $46 million worth of food last year, a whopping 4% of the total value of its imports, they bought a few other things: In comparison, around 10 million dollars were used to purchase high quality liquor, cigarettes and...

Categories Anju Links
March 24, 2010

The Daily NK on OFK

As a member of the U.S. military almost ten years ago, he was surprised by what he saw as the obvious contradiction between the public reaction to the deaths of two young South Korean schoolgirls in an accident involving a U.S. military vehicle and what he calls “the nearly unanimous apathy about the millions of North Koreans being starved by Kim Jong Il, or the hundreds of thousands of dead and dying in his political prison camps. Thanks to the...

Categories Blogs & Blogging
February 2, 2010

Daily NK: Angry North Koreans Attacking, Killing Secret Police

The Daily NK is reporting on “an explosion in the number of casualties resulting from popular resentment” of the series of draconian economic diktats I call The Great Confiscation. These include the cancellation and reissue of the currency, which wiped out the savings of millions of people overnight; the ban on foreign currency; and the closure of markets — first in Pyongyang, and if rumors are accurate, in Chongjin and Hamhung this spring. Via Curtis, we have North Korean confirmation...

Categories Resistance
February 1, 2010

Must Read: Daily NK Interviews Heritage Foundation’s Bruce Klingner

Klingner, formerly a CIA analyst and a private consultant with the Eurasia Group, has been with Heritage since 2007. He’s also a daily reader of this site. Here’s a sample of his assessment of the current situation: Pyongyang is increasingly desperate to have the UN sanctions removed. Obama administration officials have commented that the Banco Delta Asia (BDA) sanctions of 2005-06 were very effective and it was a mistake for the Bush administration to have removed them. This is, of...

Categories Washington Views
December 17, 2009

Happy Birthday, Daily NK

Last night I had the good fortune of being invited to the 5th anniversary bash of the Daily NK.  The occasion also celebrated the 10th anniversary of its parent organization, the Network for North Korean Democracy and Human Rights, aka NKnet, aka 북한민주화네트워크, and last week’s recipient of the National Human Rights Award from the National Human Rights Commission of Korea. Speakers giving congratulatory remarks included the Minister of Unification and Hwang Jang Yop (see none other than the Daily...

Categories Miscellaneous
October 30, 2009

Daily NK: Rising Divorce Rates in North Korea

Iif there is any element of Korean society that I’d have thought indestructible even to Kim Jong Il, it’s the strength of Korean families. Korean society strongly encourages marriage, children, and family loyalty. Divorce and out-of-wedlock births are strongly discouraged. The single exception is its traditional tolerance for male promiscuity, whether by single or married men (who are nonetheless expected to keep their dalliances casual and remain with their wives and children). With that being said, South Korean society is...

Categories Korean Society/NK Military
August 30, 2009

Daily NK Reports Uprisings in Labor Camps, Factory

Recently, the North Korean regime decided that its emaciated slaves hadn’t worked hard enough and declared a “150-day battle,” sending more of them to labor in the countryside and in the factories. The “battle,” however, appears to have taken a turn the authorities didn’t anticipate, according to an exile organization called North Korean Intellectuals Solidarity: It reported, “In a provincial labor-training camp located in Dongheung-district, Hamheung, South Hamkyung Province, a camp inspector, who was also a manager in the Department...

Categories Resistance/The Camps
November 25, 2008

The Daily NK on Camp 18

As North Korean concentration camps go, Camp 18 has a reputation for being less terrible than most. The Daily NK helps to keep that in perspective by publishing an interview with a survivor. He says prisoners there were branded on their stomachs to better identify them. He also testified that at the political prison, “15~20 are publicly executed around this time of the year. Lim also noted, regarding life at the camp, “The teachers try to instill animosity towards parents...

Categories Human Rights/The Camps
December 14, 2007

Daily NK: Rising banditry in N. Korea

As respect for the law disappears and a regular market economy is not introduced in North Korea, the trend to earn money by any means ““ fair or foul – has dominated. For instance, even in the daytime soldiers or gangsters stop trucks and rob them of their freight. Such incidents are occurring frequently. [Daily NK, Yoon Il Geun] Amid a number of reports of this kind, you have to wonder about the broader implications of groups of armed men...

Categories Inside NK