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Category: Regime Change

November 9, 2006

A Protest in North Korea?

That’s what the Daily NK is reporting: On Tuesday, a number of residents in Hoiryeong, North Hamkyong Province mass-protested in front of the Nammun (a south gate) market for “compensation of market refurbishment payment” and against the merger of Hoiryeong markets, according to a North Korean source. The inside source told the Daily NK through a telephone interview that evening ,”From this morning, more than a hundred shopkeepers, their families and the residents of Nammun district rushed to the market...

Categories Inside NK/Resistance
October 24, 2006

‘Whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it.’

Reports the Australian: An  underground resistance movement in North Korea, capable of smuggling out videos of executions and staging violent acts of defiance, has emerged as the Kim Jong-il regime faces international sanctions for testing a nuclear bomb. Let’s contain our exuberance long enough to ask ourselves if it’s irrational.  Break this down into its components.  I do believe that  organized networks of guerrilla cameras, missionaries, and people smugglers  are  operating; that  they’re increasing  their reach inside North Korea; and...

Categories Resistance
October 21, 2006

Another MUST-READ: NYT on the Erosion of the Information Blockade

Many thanks to a reader for forwarding. The Times is on an absolute roll with its recent Korea reporting. Here, we learn more of the underground network that can sow dissent, and that could eventually form the foundation of a resistance movement. The increasing ease with which people are able to buy their way out of North Korea suggests that, beneath the images of goose-stepping soldiers in Pyongyang, the capital, the government’s still considerable ability to control its citizens is...

Categories Refugees/Religion/Resistance
September 23, 2006

Waiting for the Ceausescu Moment

History has a strange habit of pivoting on the tempers and moods of ordinary people whom it swallows and forgets, and one of those people is the first angry man in a crowd of thousands in Bucharest, on December 20, 1989.  For some reason, he acted on his urge to shout  blasphemous words at  Europe’s most dreaded tryant.  There were others in that crowd whose anger overcame their fear, and those others also shouted out their discontent.  The tyrant failed...

Categories Democracy/NK Economics/Resistance
September 20, 2006

Another Public Execution Video

The guerrilla cameras of the North Korean resistance have brought out another video of a public execution. Like the most recent video releases, showing border guards hauling away South Korean food aid and the display of a dissident banner, it’s from South Hamgyeong Province. The Daily NK has stills and audio, although the images, for understandable reasons, are not clear. The headline says the video depicts a woman being executed for stealing corn from another woman’s home. Later on, however,...

Categories Famine & Food Aid/Inside NK/Resistance
September 12, 2006

Open Dissent in the North?

You may recall this post from a few days ago, in which a North Korean guerrilla cameraman filmed members of the military hauling away what was purported a year’s supply of South Korean food aid … after South Korean monitors certified that it had been distributed to hungry civilians. As it turned out, there was more to the film, reports the Daily NK. In the video, a bill is posted in a black market near Dancheon Station, which read “˜People...

Categories North Korea/Resistance
September 7, 2006

Kaplan Identifies the Problem. So How Do We Solve It?

[Updated; Updated again 9/6 regarding South Korea’s withdrawal from OPLAN 5029 planning last year.] First, I want to thank “a fellow blogger” for forwarding me this article. The Marmot has posted the entire text. Richardson and GI Korea have already preempted many of my comments on this piece. As with everything Kaplan writes, the article shows the author’s research; it’s approached with both depth and perspective. Inevitably for a piece that printed out to 12 pages, there were parts with...

Categories Reconstruction
September 5, 2006

Busted: S. Korean Monitoring of Food Aid Exposed as a Sham

[Updates: English version here, and a small correction below.] “At least since 2000 when we began providing assistance to the North, no one there has been starving to death.” ““ UniFiction Minister Lee Jong-Seok, May 2, 2006 You may recall that just over a year ago, Marcus Noland and Stephen Haggard provoked controversy when they published a report called “Hunger and Human Rights.” In that report, the authors concluded that up to half of food aid deliveries to North Korea...

Categories "United" Nations/Appeasement/Famine & Food Aid/Human Rights/Resistance
September 3, 2006

Breaking the Blockade

[Update: Andrei Lankov has a must-read piece on radio broadcasting in the Asia Times Online.] Where there is demand, there will be a supply, and the trickle of alternative information to North Korea, though small, shows signs of persistence and of having a receptive market. In addition to Radio Free NK and Open Radio for North Korea, there is now a Japan-based broadcaster, Shiokaze. The DailyNK interviews its director. Although their original focus is on sending messages to Japanese abductees,...

Categories Abductions/Activism/Appeasement/Censorship/Democracy/Japan & Korea/Reconstruction/Refugees/Resistance/Uncategorized
August 17, 2006

North Korea’s Marshall Plan

Thanks to a reader who forwarded this Wall Street Journal op-ed piece by Yale Professor Michael Auslin the other day. It ought to be one of the most-discussed articles about North Korea of the year, making it especially unfortunate that you can’t see it without a subscription, except for those excerpts I will publish here. It proposes developing a civil and financial plan for the reconstruction of North Korea, and then publicizing those plans to the North Korean people. The...

Categories North Korea/Reconstruction
April 28, 2006

N. Korea Freedom Week Updates

First, please join us on the West side of the U.S. Capitol today, starting at 11:30. The rally will last well into the afternoon, with plenty of opportunities to frighten powerful and cynical people throughout the day. Some of us may even make a special appearance at the South Korean Embassy later this afternoon. At 6 PM, Suzanne Scholte of the North Korean Freedom Coalition will lead a rally at the Chinese Embassy that will become an all-night prayer vigil....

Categories Abductions/Activism/Appeasement/China & Korea/Defectors/Democracy/Human Rights/Japan/Japan & Korea/Korean History/North Korea/Refugees/Resistance/U.S. & Korea/Uncategorized/Washington Views
February 21, 2006

Anti-Kim Jong Il Leaflets Reported at Onsong

Via the refugee-run DailyNK: Feb 10, Onsung-gun, North Hamkyung province, anti-Kim Jong Il flyers were found, reported North Korean internal source on Feb 17. The source said the flyers read, “Stand Kim Jong Il Upside Down” and tens of them were found near the Wangje Mt. Grand Monument and the Security Agency along with other government agencies. Read the rest here.

Categories Defectors/Inside NK/North Korea/Refugees/Resistance
February 15, 2006

U.S. Moves Toward Regime Change Policy in Iran

No, the State Department isn’t using those words, but it’s asking for $85M for broadcasts and for unnamed dissident groups: “We are going to begin a new effort to support the aspirations of the Iranian people,” Ms. Rice said at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. “We will use this money to develop support networks for Iranian reformers, political dissidents and human rights activists.” . . . . The American aid announced by Ms. Rice is to include $25 million to...

Categories Iran/Resistance/Uncategorized/WMD