Open Sources, May 15, 2014

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LiNK WILL HOLD ITS ANNUAL SUMMIT from June 12th through 15th, at Pepperdine University, in Malibu, California. Here’s the agenda and list of speakers. You have just over two weeks to register.

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IF YOU’RE READING THIS FROM SEOUL, THE FREEDOM FACTORY, under the able leadership of Casey Lartigue, has a full schedule of events in your area for the next few months. On May 14th, it will screen, “North Korea: Life Inside the Secret State,” followed by a Q&A featuring Mr. Kim Dongram. On May 17th: Casey will lead a round table discussion, “Eyes on the Prize: 69th Anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education.” On June 29th: “A Change Is Gonna Come: North Korea today.” And finally, the Freedom Factory will be running an intensive summer study program to teach English to North Korean refugees. Apply here, and apply soon.

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“[T]he pair explained how they left their homeland so determined not to return, they equipped themselves with rat poison and opium to kill themselves with if they were captured…. Holding a small pill of poison, Mrs P revealed: “We keep it in the mouth like this. Yes, we hold it between our teeth.” [Huffington Post UK]

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PYONGYANG SPRING WATCH, Part 1:

North Korean authorities are threatening strict punishment for cross-border smugglers and remittance facilitators amid the recent discovery of their leading role in leaking sensitive information to external actors….

The situation arose after the security services in northerly Yangkang Province got wind of an information leak and made spot searches of a number of smugglers. They were discovered to be carrying sensitive military documents, including “political pamphlets.

Great. So now, both North and South Korea are cracking down on refugees’ remittances to their families inside the North. I can certainly understand why Pyongyang wouldn’t want to see the development of an underground economy that could encourage defections and challenge its control over the distribution of food and information — and even divide the loyalties of hungry soldiers who control more guns than food — but I can’t understand, for the life of me, why South Korea would oppose that. It should be licensing and supporting money transmitters who have the best record for reliability, and for keeping the money out of the regime’s hands.

Yes, I understand that this specific prosecution really just a vendetta by the National Intelligence Service, but it still sets a terrible, chilling precedent.

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PYONGYANG SPRING WATCH, Part 2: The Daily NK reports that ChocoPies and South Korean DVDs have disappeared from North Korean markets.

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RFA: “Workers Ditch Factories for Market Income.”

The workers are mainly from factories hit by power shortages or lack raw materials, reflecting production inefficiencies despite a push for economic reforms by North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and his late father Kim Jong Il, sources say. [….]

“The rural industrial factories and hourly wage enterprises don’t have enough electricity or raw materials [to produce what is required by the state], so they have mobilized workers to participate in the August 3rd Production Campaign,” the official said, referring to a policy introduced on Aug. 3, 1984 by late leader Kim Jong Il.

The Campaign allows some factory workers to engage in private commerce outside their workplace to support the factories with the money they have earned doing business at local markets. The employee families give around 80,000 won (U.S. $10) per month to the factory as a form of bribe so that they can embark on private commerce, the official said.

“With the money, the factory maintains its facilities and covers the manager’s living expenses,” meaning that they are living off of the money the employee earns, he added. [RFA]

This appears to be another case of the regime recognizing and profiting from a well-established trend. For years, workers have been bribing their way out of reporting to their idled factories. The factory managers know they can’t restart the factories, so the only way they can survive and profit is by is cutting the workers loose to earn some income, and taxing it.

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ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?

Switzerland has paid for North Korean army officers to attend peace and security training courses in Geneva since 2011, it has been revealed. But several parliamentarians have criticised the support worth CHF150,000 ($170,000).

I have to ask, Switzerland — do you really think your pupils learned anything, judging by recent events?

According to Swiss public radio (RTS), eight North Korean officers have attended courses at the Geneva Center for Security Policy over the past three years, funded by the Swiss defence ministry. Two are currently present.

There they have followed study programmes on global security issues such as weapons of mass destruction, terrorism and human rights. The Ukraine crisis and the Arab spring uprisings have also been studied from the armed forces and democratisation perspectives. [Swissinfo.ch]

I wonder if it occurred to anyone in the Swiss government that the North Korean army would find that sort of information interesting for all the wrong reasons. You’d think that the example of Kim Jong Un would have helped us dispense with the shallow and witless argument that Swiss oxygen has miraculous powers of liberation, especially when North Koreans associated with alleged reformer Jang Song-Thaek are being purged at home, along with their families.

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CLAUDIA ROSETT REVIEWS the evidence of North Korea’s recent sponsorship of terrorism, and makes a far stronger case than our State Department asinine assertion that North Korea has not sponsored any acts of terrorism since 1987. Tell that to the families of the human rights activists North Korea assassinated in the last five years.

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JOE BERMUDEZ REVIEWS the history of the Hamhung Youth Chemical Complex, suspicions of its involvement in chemical weapons production, and recent progress toward modernizing and expanding the facility. The expansion necessarily required a great deal of sanctions evasion, and Bermudez speculates that China was the source of most of the equipment. Also, buried in the footnotes, is this: “According to a 2003 report by the Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency the Chosun Namhung General Trading Corporation, located in Silli-dong, Tongdaewon-guyok, Pyongyang, is the import-export agent responsible for the DPRK’s chemical complexes including the Namhung Youth Chemical Complex.”

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SO APPARENTLY, South Korea hasn’t changed much in the last dozen years. Although I’m well past club-hopping age now, what things like this say about South Korean society prevent me from even considering living there, and I’m guessing that plenty of other people with greater wealth and talent than me have had similar thoughts.