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Category: Russia & Korea

June 30, 2016

How happy are Kim Jong-un’s slaves? It depends on which slave you ask.

There may be no story on earth where the answer to a question is so dependent on who you ask as North Korea. Take the case of this NK News story from February, by an anonymous correspondent who went to Vladivostok, wandered into a local North Korean cafe, and found some North Korean construction workers who were — surprisingly enough! — willing to speak “freely” to a foreign journalist. Ready for your first clue? He grins through a mouthful of gold teeth which, combined...

Categories Human Trafficking/Russia & Korea/Russian Far East
May 12, 2015

NIS: N. Korea executes No. 2 military officer

South Korea’s National Intelligence Service (NIS) is reporting that North Korean Army General Hyon Yong Chol, whose title was Minister of the People’s Armed Forces, has been executed for treason: Hyon Yong-chol, the chief of North Korea’s People’s Armed Forces, was executed by firing squad using an anti-aircraft gun at a military school in Pyongyang around April 30, the National Intelligence Service said. [Yonhap] An anti-aircraft gun? Hold that thought. (Update: CNN adds that the execution was carried out at...

Categories Kremlinology/Russia & Korea
March 12, 2015

Russia’s nuclear cooperation with N. Korea violates at least three UNSC resolutions

My final excerpt from the draft U.N. Panel of Experts report is a lengthy graf (below the fold) describing long-standing and continuing Russian assistance to, and cooperation with, some of the same scientists involved in North Korea’s nuclear weapons program. It’s hard for me to understand how this is not a violation of the UNSC sanctions. Despite the fact that key scientists in designated North Korean agencies (for example, its General Bureau of Atomic Energy) were invited to do research in...

Categories Proliferation/Russia & Korea/Sanctions/WMD
February 25, 2015

Kim Jong Un seeks friends and funds abroad as he isolates his people.

In the three years that he has been in power, His Porcine Majesty has found plenty of time for Dennis Rodman, but none for meetings with foreign leaders. Suddenly, in the last two months, he has flirted with (1) a summit with South Korean leader Park Geun-Hye, (2) inviting Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to Pyongyang, (3) and a visit to Vladimir Putin in Moscow in May. His central bank even “committed itself to implementing the action plan of ‘international...

Categories Capitalism/China & Korea/Class Warfare/Diplomacy/Russia & Korea/Sanctions
July 7, 2014

Continental drift: U.S. alliances erode despite “pivot” to Asia

Xi Jingping has departed from Seoul, where he couldn’t quite bring himself to agreeing to a joint statement with Park Geun Hye calling for North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons. But the statement stopped short of directly urging North Korea to give up its nuclear program, only vaguely calling for all members of the six-party nuclear talks to resolve the issue through dialogue and abide by their 2005 denuclearization-for-aid deal. [Yonhap] Some of the dire declarations I’ve seen that...

Categories Abductions/China & Korea/Diplomacy/Russia & Korea
March 21, 2010

Old KGB Habits Die Hard: Russians Arrest North Korean Logger

In the war between Kim Jong Il’s regime and the people of North Korea, Russia has taken the regime’s side: The North Korean’s note, scrawled in pen, was simple: “I want to go to South Korea. Why? To find freedom. Freedom of religion, freedom of life.” The ex-logger, on the run from North Korean authorities, handed the note over to a South Korean missionary in the Russian city of Vladivostok last week in hopes it would lead to political asylum....

Categories Russia & Korea/Russian Far East
March 11, 2010

Claudia Rosett on North Korean Loggers in Russia

The defection of those two loggers at the South Korean consulate in Vladivostok inspires further thought from Claudia Rosett: I’ve seen those North Korean lumberjacks–or at least their predecessors. In 1994 I was working as a reporter for The Wall Street Journal in Moscow when a story turned up in the Russian press, saying that North Korea was running lumber camps in remote areas of Russia. In Moscow, Russian officials confirmed to me that they had two big logging operations...

Categories Defectors/Russia/Russia & Korea
March 10, 2010

Newly Released Soviet Report Details Atrocities in North Korea

Something tells me the Putinjugend Nashi web site isn’t going to feature, by popular demand, this newly released 1945 report by a Soviet Lieutenant Colonel who drove through Hwanghae and North and South Pyongyan provinces just after the war’s end. The officer’s detailed, 13-page report on the behavior of Russian soldiers in North Korea makes drunk G.I.’s in Itaewon look like Mormon missionaries by comparison: The handwritten document in Russian was discovered by the Woodrow Wilson International Center, a U.S....

Categories History/Korean History/Russia/Russia & Korea
March 6, 2010

Putinjugend Website Publishes North Korean Anti-American Propaganda Paintings

Several years ago, after observing the rise of the now-failed Orange Revolution in the Ukraine, the goombahs in the Kremlin decided that it would be a good thing to have some street muscle handy in the event any Russians got similar ideas. In the annals of accidental fame, the Kremlin is to irony what the Taliban are to sodomy; thus, it’s only natural that the group was called the “Democratic Anti-Fascist Youth Group.” The Russian acronym turns out to be...

Categories Russia/Russia & Korea
February 2, 2010

Is This Kim Jong Il’s Private Train?

A reader recently directed my attention to these images at RailPictures.net, taken by Danish tourist Asger Christiansen while visiting Vladivostok in 2002. Christiansen believes they show Kim Jong Il’s unmarked private train taking him to a meeting with Vladimir Putin. I contacted Mr. Christian, who graciously allowed me to post the images here. Click for full size. Apparently, the Russians insisted on using their own locomotives and operators inside Russia. Interesting, too, that Russian and North Korean trains share the...

Categories Kim Jong Il/Russia & Korea/Russian Far East
February 23, 2008

What’s the Russian Word for “Pueblo?”

A Russian cargo ship has been detained and boarded by armed coastguard agents in North Korean waters, Russian maritime officials say. The Lida Demesh, carrying a consignment of cars from Japan, was heading for the Russian port of Vladivostok when it was stopped by patrol near Cape Musudan. [BBC] Musudan-ri is absolutely the wrong section of North Korea’s coastline to approach. The area is infamous for such attractions as a missile test site, a nuclear test site, and a large...

Categories NK Military/Russia & Korea/Russian Far East
March 22, 2007

So Much for ‘Peace in Our Time’

[Sorry for the earlier comments glitch; please e-mail me if you have problems.]   OK, now the diplos have flown home.  Talks on halting North Korea’s nuclear program broke down abruptly on Thursday with the country’s chief nuclear envoy flying home after a dispute over money frozen in a Macau bank could not be resolved. Kim Kye Gwan flew out of Beijing after refusing to take part in six-party talks to push forward a February agreement calling for North Korea...

Categories "United" Nations/Counterfeiting/Diplomacy/Money Laundering/Russia & Korea/Six-Party Talks/WMD
November 7, 2006

Oil-for-Slaves

This was in my in-box from Human Rights Without Frontiers today: The North Korean government is paying for oil imported from Russia by dispatching forced labour at zero cost since it has no other way to pay in goods or services. This was confirmed by the investigations of independent journalists, a professor of the Far Eastern Research Centre of Vladivostok and members of the Russian government. According to statistics of the local administration of Primorsky city, Pyongyang’s oil imports increased...

Categories Human Rights/Russia/Russia & Korea
October 21, 2006

Condi Rice Saves Thirty Minutes of My Life

[Update:   Senior State Department official Victor Cha flat-out says it aint so.] … by raising serious doubts about the hearsay report that Kim Jong Il had apologized to a Chinese envoy for his recent nuclear test, or promised not to do it again. I don’t think apology and regret are components of the emotional vocabulary of a psychopath or a malignant narcissist, except as a means of manipulating others.  Kim Jong Il had his reasons.  I don’t know what...

Categories "United" Nations/Diplomacy/Russia/Russia & Korea/WMD
September 10, 2006

For My Next Act, I Shall Balance Four Whales on One Shrimp!

Roh Moo Hyun thinks his neighborhood needs a regional “multilateral security framework:” Roh […] emphasized that the European experience can be useful in coping with pending issues surrounding the Korean Peninsula. He said challenges confronting Northeast Asia include lingering Cold War-like tensions, concerns over the spread of weapons of mass destruction, terrorism and environmental protection. He also said there are uncertainties on the possible realignment of power among Northeast Asian actors. “The European system that laid the foundation for the...

Categories China & Korea/Geopolitics/Russia & Korea/U.S. & Korea/Unintended Humor
July 12, 2006

For the Bush Administration, the Moment of Truth

We learn today that China intends to veto a resolution that would impose binding sanctions on North Korea’s missile trade. Got that? No binding sanctions on a starving nation’s trade in … missile components. China and Russia introduced a resolution Wednesday deploring North Korea’s missile tests but dropping language from a rival proposal that could have led to military action against Pyongyang. Excuse me? Who said anything about “military action?” Unless they mean intercepting their nukes, missiles, and dope on...

Categories "United" Nations/An Alliance?/China/China & Korea/Russia/Russia & Korea/WMD