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

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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 Song-Thaek, and “was reportedly in charge of managing slush funds for Kim Jong Un and his late father.

According to 24-hour news channel YTN, the former aide to Jang Song Taek anticipated the purge of his boss and sought to defect at the end of September.

Though South Korea’s Foreign Ministry has denied the reports, analysts speculated that the South Korean government may be avoiding public comment on the situation to protect the would-be defector and secretly bring him to South Korea while minimizing diplomatic friction for China, North Korea’s neighbor and ally.

This man could be the Rosetta Stone who decodes North Korea’s financial lifelines, as reconstituted after the Banco Delta Asia fiasco. If properly pursued, the evidence he provides could be of incalculable value. Considered with reports that some of North Korea’s money-men in China are seeking to defect to escape the dragnet, the Jang purge promises a potential intelligence bonanza about North Korea’s finances, money laundering, illicit activities, proliferation, and sanctions evasion to U.S. and South Korean authorities.

Strategic leaks of this intelligence could also cause banks to cut their ties to North Korean deposits and depositors to protect their reputations, and their access to the global financial system.

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THE REAPER HAS COME for Jang’s relatives in Pyongyang:

“At around 10PM on the night of the 13th, the day after Jang was executed, armed men from the Ministry of State Security arrived unannounced in the Pyongchon area of Pyongyang where a lot of his relatives lived,” a source from the North Korean capital reported to Daily NK on the 20th. “They took away a few hundred people. As far as I know they were taken off to political prison camp.”

“It wasn’t just his close relatives who were taken away, but distant relatives too like the relatives of his father,” he added. “In these circumstances even his relatives outside Pyongyang aren’t safe.”

According to the source, people were already astonished by the news of Jang’s execution, but now they are even more fearful as local households have started disappeared overnight. Because the crimes that Jang is officially said to have committed are extremely serious felonies, some expect his family to be executed, while others presume they will be permanently incarcerated.

This report, like so many reports that have provided us our first notice of major events inside North Korea recently, comes from The Daily NK and its clandestine correspondents inside North Korea. (Here’s a link to donate. Just remember, the AP gets all the money it needs, and risks very little, to tell you almost nothing).

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RABBI ABRAHAM COOPER: The North Korea Dennis Rodman will never see.

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EARTH TO NORTH KOREA: “S.T.F.U.” An anti-North Korean political demonstration in Seoul, attended by a few hundred people, has become Pyongyang’s latest pretext to threaten to attack South Korea:

The North’s powerful National Defense Commission on Thursday sent a fax to South Korea’s National Security Council through the western coastal military hotline to threaten to strike the South “without notice,” the official said.

South Korea’s Unification Minister told the North to “take the attitude to resolve inter-Korean issues in a step by step manner through dialogue,” and even China called for calm and restraint.

North Korea was removed from the list of state sponsors of terrorism on October 11, 2008. Discuss among yourselves.

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REALLY? THE MOSSAD TWEETED ME? If you are the real Mossad — and I’m not sure if you are — can you expunge the record of my detention and interrogation at Lod Airport on the evening of August 13, 1990? Also, please extend my apologies to the people who did my body search for my smart-ass remarks. We South Dakotans are a simple, proud people. In our culture, a gentleman does not ask another gentleman to remove his boots.