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November 29, 2010

Rinjingang Video Shows the Misery of the Real North Korea

When you see all of those missiles paraded down the square in Pyongyang, do you ever ask yourself who paid for those missiles? Here are the people who paid for them. As you watch this, remember that Rimjingang‘s brave guerrilla cameramen risked their lives to show you the truth. These are the expendable people of North Korea, the ones who don’t have a place in the propaganda parades, the ones who don’t get to eat the food aid that the...

Categories Inside NK/Resistance
November 6, 2010

Rimjingang Takes Covert Journalism to the Next Level

The first English language edition of Rimjingang is about to come out. It will be a dead-tree quarterly, and thus far, Rimjingang has very little presence on YouTube. These are strange things to observe in a publication whose survival depends — literally — on its technological sophistication at hiding memory cards and playing cat-and-mouse with the regime’s cell phone trackers: The quarterly Rimjingang has been available in Korean and Japanese since 2008. The English edition will be published about twice...

Categories Inside NK/Resistance
July 20, 2010

“[W]e traveled with poison, so that if we were caught, we’d take it and kill ourselves.”

Sue Lloyd-Roberts continues her look at North Korea by interviewing refugees in Seoul and asking them about the images her minders allowed her to film. At 13:00, Lloyd-Roberts interviews Young Howard, a/k/a Ha Tae Kyung, the founder of Open Radio. She even sits in as he interviews a source by telephone. She seems to presume (incorrectly) that Ha is North Korean, but in fact, he’s a South Korean and a former leftist political prisoner. It’s both unsurprising and striking how...

Categories Inside NK/Media Criticism/Refugees/Useful Idiocy
April 20, 2010

Open News: North Korea Increases Use of Public Executions

Open News reports that North Korea is increasing its use of public executions for relatively minor crimes as an instrument of domestic state terrorism, adopting the old Khmer Rouge method of using schoolyards as killing fields, and forcing kids to stand in the front row of the audience: Children suffer from psychological trauma and experience intense fear, because they see and realize what happened to those who resist the government and the Leader. Notwithstanding Open News’s optimistic belief that the...

Categories Human Rights/Inside NK
March 24, 2010

Radio Free North Korea Issues Satellite Phones to Its Correspondents

For a long time, I’d wondered if there was some way North Korea’s clandestine journalists could free themselves from the restrictions imposed by short-range Chinese cell phone networks. The only options I could think of were signal repeaters hidden on remote mountain tops, or satellite phones. I’d presumed the latter option to be too expensive, but I may have been wrong. Free North Korea Radio, which broadcasts to the North on shortwave as well as running an Internet service, said...

Categories Inside NK
March 11, 2010

Kang Chol Hwan on Hamhung

Kang Chol Hwan thinks that Kim Jong Il’s address to a mass rally in Hamhung — that is, if you’re convinced he really did address that rally –means that His Withering Majesty is determined to resist any reform of the system. That part of what Kang says is obvious enough and therefore less interesting than his description of Hamhung, which sounds post-apocalyptic: Hooligans clustering at the railroad station glared at the goods carried by pedestrians and provoked quarrels if they...

Categories Inside NK
March 5, 2010

U.N. Solves North Korean Pollution Problem (Not)

In the hierarchy of problems in North Korea — every last one of which the U.N. is failing, abysmally, to address — I’m not sure that pollution by toxic chemicals ranks at the top of the list. On the other hand, I agree that it’s going to be one of the biggest post-reunification challenges. Cue quote from some U.N. wonk: “The environment-related problems that exist in North Korea, I just have to say right now, I think they’re much more...

Categories "United" Nations/Inside NK
March 4, 2010

North Korea Publicly Executes Clandestine Citizen Journalist

In a world in which the word “martyr” has been profaned by those who do not even value life, word comes today of the death of a martyr for freedom. His name was “Chong,” and he worked in a factory in the miserable coastal city of Hamheung. You may well have read some of his reporting at this very site. That is about all we know about him, except for the manner of his death: A North Korean firing squad...

Categories Human Rights/Inside NK
February 18, 2010

6.7 Earthquake Hits Tri-Border Area Near Rajin, N. Korea

No word on damage or injuries in the area yet, but 6.7 is a pretty big quake. In 1994, an earthquake of equal magnitude centered at Northridge, California, killed 72 people and injured 9,000 more. Though area residents said they did not feel the quake, office towers in Beijing — about 770 miles (1,240 kilometers) away from the epicenter — swayed slightly for about a minute. The quake occurred 335 miles (540 kilometers) below the earth’s surface. With earthquakes centered...

Categories Inside NK/Russian Far East
January 22, 2010

North Korea Liquidates Family for Trying to Escape

Via the Daily NK comes a terrible report about the fate of the Jeong family from the town of Hyesan, near the Chinese border. At some point, the Jeongs decided that they’d had enough stultifying propaganda and grass porridge for a lifetime, so they decided to make a break for it. Early in July last year Jeong escaped from North Korea to Changbai in China along with his mother, wife and three- and seven-year old daughters. However, in August the...

Categories Human Rights/Inside NK/Refugees
January 15, 2010

How Corrupt Is North Korea These Days?

Very, if this report from Good Friends is true: On November 28th, Hamheung City, South Hamgyong Province publicized the latest results of the drug crackdown. The City launched the campaign since last September. Party officials, including four officials belonging to the Provincial Party, three officials from the city party, two police officers from the Sungchun region, two prosecutors from the Province, and one party official from the Sapo region, who have accepted bribes from drug smugglers were the main targets...

Categories Drugs & N Korea/Inside NK
January 15, 2010

North Korea Battles Rising Cell Phone Use

Cell phone use continues to grow in North Korea, despite the government’s best efforts to block it. Handsets are used to make appointments and payments and to trade goods. Even South Korean pastors are using cell phones to give sermons to people in North Korea. If cell phones connected to the North are linked to the South via the Internet, this provides valuable information unobtainable through traditional media. Competition for breaking news is expected among South Korean civic groups related...

Categories Inside NK/Subversion
December 10, 2009

On the Grand Peoples’ Study House

I ask you — what site that has better readers than this blog? In response to Enzo’s question about the Grand Peoples’ Study House, a reader and friend sends this response: This so-called NK’s central library (“Inmin Dae Hakseup Dang”) opened in April 1982 to mark the Great Leader’s 70th B-Day. It is open to the NK public (adults) as well as foreigners. You can find several good photos of the building and its interior on the web, including a...

Categories Inside NK/Propaganda
December 7, 2009

Great Confiscation Updates

The Daily NK reports that the regime is trying to blame the need for the Great Confiscation on foreign enemies and domestic capitalists: It continued, “Our people have suffered from famine due to natural disaster and imperialist anti-republic maneuvers and irrational residents’ attempted activities to gain not social and national benefit, but private benefit. “This phenomenon has been generated temporarily during the completion of our socialist country, and the Party and the Fatherland have been getting through these difficulties on...

Categories Inside NK/NK Economics
December 4, 2009

Great Confiscation Updates

Via the Daily NK and the North Korean-affiliated Chosun Sinbo, we can now see the new North Korean currency that will replace the hard-earned savings of millions of desperate people. Guess whose face is on the bill. You’ll be amazed. More here. Personally, I think the coins look like Japanese Yen. The Daily NK reports that the situation in North Korea continues to be chaotic and relays fragmentary reports of murders, suicides, and isolated outbreaks of dissent. The circulation of...

Categories Inside NK/NK Economics
November 9, 2009

Brookings Event with Kongdan Oh and Ralph Hassig on Tuesday

11/11 Update:   The program audio for this event is now available for free (and FAST) download as an MP3 file.  Just click the event link and look for the “Multimedia Downloads” section. Original Post: Stumbled on this earlier, but was in the middle of something, finally posting it now. It would have been late notice then, but now, oy… Tuesday, November 10th, 10-11:30 a.m. at Brookings in DC there’s what looks to be a very interesting program about a...

Categories Books & Films/Inside NK