Search Results for “Kim Won Hong”

January 6, 2014

Christine Hong really should tell us what she thinks about Kim Jong Un’s sweet new ski resort.

Kim Jong Un’s reign must be a dark time for North Korea’s apologists on the far left. Those who elevate equality above all other values (or say they do) must be hard pressed to find solidarity with a regime that has imposed the world’s most obscene case of economic and social injustice. Under Kim Jong Il, North Korea was no paragon of socialist equality. Since his dynastic succession, Kim Jong Un has added the arch-heresies of gaudy consumerism and an...

Fiskings/Sanctions/Sports/Useful Idiocy

November 24, 2013

Was Kim Jong Un behind the plot to smuggle meth into New York?

Last week, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York released an indictment of five men for conspiring to smuggle North Korean methamphetamine to New York. The meth was of exceptionally high quality — between 96% and 99% pure, depending on the source — and in large amounts. An initial “dry run” transaction consisted of 30 kilograms, later seized by Thai and Filipino authorities. The next shipment would have weighed in at 100 kilograms, for which the dealers...

Anju Links/Drugs & N Korea

December 29, 2009

Don Kirk’s Korea Betrayed is changing the way I think about Kim Dae Jung

And unless you already believe that DJ was a closet commie, Korea Betrayed might change the way you think, too. Kirk, whose research of his subject is extensive, describes in detail how in his early life, DJ flirted with a number of leftist political organizations and unions, some of which were also linked to North Korea, but none of those associations necessarily linked DJ to the North Koreans. After all, North Korean troops almost shot DJ in 1950, and only...

Books & Films/Korean History/Uncategorized

September 5, 2009

Kim Jong Il Death Watch

The Daily Mail has republished photos, released yesterday by KCNA, showing Kim Jong Il visiting what’s described elsewhere as the Kim Jong Suk Sanitarium. The report doesn’t specify what city it’s in, but Kim Jong Suk is Kim Jong Il’s mother and a native of Hoeryong in North Hamgyeong Province. Many of the sites in Hoeryong are named after her. You’d think that a country that’s trying to show the vigor of its geriatric oligarch wouldn’t dress him in funereal...

Kim Jong Il

October 26, 2008

Once Again, Kim Jong Il Starves the People; Once Again, World Doesn’t Know How to Respond

Recently, I was arguing with an influential supporter of a soft-line approach to North Korea about food aid. Generally, we both supported the provision of food aid, and both of us acknowledged that the regime would use every means at its disposal to divert that aid to loyalists, high-ranking cadres, and the military. We agreed that Kim Jong Il doesn’t see the lives of all North Koreans as having equal value. We diverged when it came to what U.S. policy...

Famine & Food Aid

April 13, 2008

Kim Won Ung: A Most Joyous Political Obituary

Imagine an America in which Cynthia McKinney chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and holds regular meetings with Osama Bin Laden, and you can be begin to grasp the national embarrassment of Kim Won Ung’s tenure as leader of the Korean National Assembly’s Unification, Foreign Affairs and Trade Committee. Perhaps this analogy will also illustrate the depth of my ambivalence at confirming that Kim has lost his bid for reelction. Kim Won Ung at Kim Il Sung’s Birthplace in North...

An Alliance?/Anti-Americanism/Korean Politics

April 4, 2008

N. Korea Food Situation Continues to Worsen: Protests Continue in Chongjin; Food Prices Skyrocket; Kim Jong Il Asks China for ‘Massive’ Food Aid

[Update: A reader — one you and I both respect — writes to warn that we shouldn’t rely too heavily on the reports of Good Friends. Well, yes, the obvious caveats apply here: this being North Korea, we tend to treat third-hand rumors and hearsay, possibly further garbled by translation, as news. What I try to do here that news sites don’t do is to put each report in the context of other facts reported by other sources, either previously...

Famine & Food Aid/Regime Change/Resistance

March 7, 2008

Can Kim Jong Il Outlive “Military First?”

In the last two months, I’ve come to believe that the decay of Kim Jong Il’s control of North Korea is accelerating. I’m not quite on board with Jane’s, which predicts imminent collapse, because regime collapse is not proceeding at equal rates in all areas of North Korea, and history tells us that there’s been plenty of dissent in North Korea that the regime was able to contain, localize, and suppress. There are, however, clear signs that chaos is taking...

Kremlinology/Regime Change

June 19, 2007

The End of Chongryon?

I’d previously mentioned that Chongryon, North Korea’s fifth column organization in Japan, was forced to “sell” its de facto embassy in Tokyo. As it turns out, the sale was a fraudulent scheme assisted by Japanese sympathizers, without consideration, to evade seizure by the authorities. Japanese authorities have since voided the transaction, and, according to Yonhap, approved the seizure of the building. We also know more about why Chongryon is dying. I was aware that some adverse tax judgments by the...

Japan/Japan & Korea/Korean Education/The Fifth Column

March 4, 2007

How a U.S. Consul Helped Send Six North Korean Refugees to Kim Jong Il’s Gulag

[Update: The Shenyang Six were freed from a Chinese jail in August 2007.] The Secretary of State shall undertake to facilitate the submission of applications [] by citizens of North Korea seeking protection as refugees …. (Title 22, United States Code, Section 7843) Back in January, I told you the story of the Shenyang Six, a group of six North Korean refugees who sought refuge from persecution and starvation in their homeland, and how the Chinese authorities, following their long-standing...

China/China & Korea/Diplomacy/Human Rights/Refugees/Washington Views

January 16, 2007

Pandemic Strikes Chongjin, North Korea’s Fourth-Largest City

Previous posts on the spreading pandemic here, beginning last October. Yonhap, quoting unnamed sources and the NGO Good Friends, tells us that things have gotten worse, and that the largest city in North Korea’s northeast faces outbreaks of several deadly diseases: Four infectious diseases have stricken a North Korean city on the east coast, affecting up to 4,000 people, a source claimed Monday. “Chongjin is overrun by scarlet fever, typhoid, typhus and paratyphoid. About 3,000 to 4,000 are suffering from...

Famine & Food Aid/Inside NK

November 30, 2006

Cindy Sheehan, Kim Jong Il, and Me

Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity. — Martin Luther King, Jr. I will restrain the expression of views on Cindy Sheehan herself. I’m one who makes allowances for the fact that she’s traumatized by her son’s death, an event that quite obviously and understandably blew a few of her circuits. And while I’m sure that Casey Sheehan wouldn’t appreciate his mother’s hard work to render his sacrifice meaningless, I’m just as sure...

An Alliance?/Anti-Americanism/The Fifth Column

August 13, 2005

Kim Moon-Soo: The Making and Re-Making of a Radical Thinker, Part I

Kim Moon-Soo is the man who may yet break the drought that has fallen on the bleak political landscape of South Korea, one that for too long seemed to have been divided between opportunistic appeasers and opportunistic reactionaries, each with its own dubious connections to Korean dictatorships that the nation’s history will not view kindly. Charismatic, fiery, and proficient in the use of new media, Kim has emerged as the standard-bearer of the New Right, a new political grouping largely...

Uncategorized

March 21, 2017

North Korean security forces now asking politely for protection money

Yet more reports are validating that, since the recent ouster of State Security Minister Kim Won-hong for “human rights violations” and other reasons, something has changed (at least for now) in the way North Korea’s internal security forces are operating: Following orders from Kim Jong Un for the Ministry of State Security (MSS) to refrain from violating human rights, its personnel have begun to shy away from their characteristic extortionist behavior during their interactions with residents. This appears to be...

Class Warfare/Human Rights

October 19, 2016

North Korea needs more minders for its minders, to stop them from defecting

In yesterday’s post, I wrote about only the second group defection of North Korean overseas workers of which I’m aware — of a group of North Korean construction workers in St. Petersburg, Russia. I also took note of the defection of a young translator from the North Korean embassy in Beijing, who had been detailed to the State Security Department, translating for the minders who do inspections of the North Korean workers elsewhere in China. It’s one thing when workers defect;...

Defectors/Resistance

April 16, 2015

N. Korea perestroika watch: “Gunfire must be made to resound”

New Focus International has published an “exclusive” report that “North Korea’s Ministry of State Security (MSS) and Ministry of People’s Security (MPS)” have begun what amounts to an internal terror campaign against the people, personally ratified by Kim Jong Un in September 2013, and aimed at “the sweeping out of impure and hostile elements.” The campaign consists of a series of crackdowns, collectively known as the “9.8 measures.” According to the report, Kim Jong Un has taken personal oversight* (read: personal responsibility...

Border Control

April 30, 2023

British American Tobacco, North Korea, & the Bomb: Setting a New Low for How Evil a Tobacco Company Can Be

Last Tuesday, British American Tobacco, the world’s second-largest tobacco company, along with its Singaporean subsidiary, pled guilty to bank fraud and conspiracy charges and agreed to pay a combined $635 million in criminal and civil fines, penalties, and forfeitures to the Treasury and Justice Departments. The charges arise from an secret joint venture, going all the way back to 2001, in which BAT sold the North Korean government tobacco, other materials, machinery, and technical help to manufacture cigarettes, despite having said...

Money Laundering/NK Crime/U.S. Law

August 22, 2022

No, North Korea did not “manage” COVID. It piled famine on plague.

The editors of 38 North are smart, well-informed people, and so I’m puzzled by their decision to publish this submission by Heeje Lee and Samuel S. Han, a dentist and a research assistant, declaring Kim Jong-un’s victory over COVID. Unlike the usual suspects, Lee and Han don’t avoid all criticism of the North Korean system, its leaders, or its policies. They acknowledge “the weak state of the country’s health care system,” concede its widespread malnutrition, and lack of a COVID...

Famine & Food Aid/Fiskings/Health & Disease

Search Results for: Kim Won Hong