Open Sources, April 30, 2014

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SPEAKER SERIES IN SEOUL: The North Korea Strategy Center writes in, asking me to post links to two of its upcoming events, which I’m happy to do. On April 30th at 7 p.m., Joanna Hosaniak will present a talk entitled, “NKHR and the International Community,” and on May 7th at 7 p.m, Sokeel Park will present, “Accelerating Bottom-up Change in North Korea.”

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FOR EVERY ONE WHO MADE IT, A THOUSAND OTHERS DIDN’T: LiNK features some heartbreaking and hopeful profiles of North Korean refugees it has rescued.

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KAESONG UPDATE: I can’t think of a better time for the Unification Ministry to bring ethnic Korean and European businessmen to Kaesong for a tour than at the height of a nuke scare, just before a live-fire exercise, and just as President Obama is threatening to impose sore sanctions. No word on whether the participants wore flak jackets.

Oh, and I still haven’t heard from the Unification Ministry on my questions about slave labor, Kaesong’s financials, and U.N. sanctions. Which isn’t surprising.

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GREAT NEWS, EVERYBODY! Kim Jong Un doesn’t think his army is ready for war with the United States!

[A]fter watching a shelling drill by an artillery sub-unit on Friday, he upbraided soldiers for their lax approach, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said.

“Dear Supreme Commander Kim Jong-Un said nothing is more important than preparing for combat now, in the face of an impending conflict with the United States”, KCNA reported. [….]

“Watching the drill, he severely criticised the sub-unit for failing to make good combat preparation” citing the time it had taken to deploy, it said.

He blamed a lack of enthusiasm over training among the sub-unit’s commander and his superiors. “The minds of the commanding officers of this sub-unit and relevant unit seem to be away from the battlefield”, he said, KCNA reported. It is unusual for the agency to carry direct quotes from Kim.

“Of course, they might do sideline jobs for improving service personnel’s living conditions and do their bit in building a rich and powerful nation. “However, they should always give priority to combat preparations”, he said. [AFP]

One thing that distinguishes Kim Jong Un from his father and grandfather is his willingness to humiliate members of his own regime in the press.

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DENNIS HALPIN:  Welcome to North Korea’s Game of Thrones.

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THE REALIGNMENT CONTINUES: In the wake of the U.N. Commission of Inquiry report, South Korea’s left-wing opposition Democratic Party has proposed a North Korea human rights bill that actually has some human rights content.

It assigns the South Korean government with a duty to make diplomatic efforts to promote North Koreans’ human rights and protect North Korean defectors outside their country.

It also calls on Seoul to hold talks with Pyongyang on ways to ensure the civil liberties of North Korean citizens, defectors, political prisoners, and others living in the communist nation.

A human rights data center proposed in the bill is designed to keep records of the human rights situation in North Korea, not to keep track of human rights violators in the North, Kim said. [Yonhap]

The DP’s previous effort was effectively a proposal to give more “humanitarian” and other aid to North Korea, in spite of everything we know about that. In related news, South Korea is signaling that it will allow the U.N. to open a field office on its territory to continue investigating human rights violations in the North, although this is something it could hardly refuse.

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JESUS WEPT: And now, some before-and-after pictures of South Korean plastic surgery patients who were made so unrecognizable that they needed new IDs.