Search Results for: soldier defect

December 4, 2008

Leaflets Balloons Prove Effective as Weapons of Economic, Political Warfare

It shows you the woeful condition of modern South Korea that some would show up to defend slavery and oppression from the non-violent propagation of truth to the oppressed. I can understand why, to a man whose life has been stolen from him by that oppression, that proved to me more than he could bear. This is the point at which things ceased to be non-violent: Here, encapsulated in one incident, is the ugly future of reunification. And the longer...

Categories Deprogramming/The Fifth Column

Holocaust Now: Looking Down Into Hell at Camp 22

Those who have lived to tell us about Camp 22, located in the bleak northeastern tip of North Korea, can be counted on the fingers of one hand, and all of them are former guards or staff. Of all of North Korea’s numerous labor camps and detention facilities, large and small, Camp 22 is one of the largest, and almost certainly the most terrible, if only for the inhuman experiments witnesses say were done to the men, women, children, and...

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September 25, 2008

War on Prostitution Not Working So Well in North Korea, Either

As with their southern bretheren, the North Koreans are being reminded of the persistence of the oldest profession, largely because of the traditional confluence of state power and corruptable masculine hydraulics.  The Daily NK reports that some twenty North Korean officials in the city of Hamhung were removed from power — and several senior military officers were shot — over a whorehouse patronage scandal: The Network for North Korean Democracy and Human Rights (NKnet) reported in its journal “NK In...

Categories Kremlinology/NK Military
July 24, 2008

Anju Links for 24 July 2008

CONDI RICE WAS NOT AVAILABLE FOR COMMENT: A South Korean NGO reports that North Korea carried out 901 public executions last year. Don’t expect to see this in State’s human rights report next year.  Boy, talking to the North Koreans really is changing them, isn’t it? JUST KILL YOURSELF NOW  IF YOU ACTUALLY BELIEVE THIS: The protocol has to be one “that can give us confidence that we’re able to verify the accuracy of the North Korean declaration,” she said....

Categories Anju Links
April 18, 2008

Anju Links for 18 April 2008

THE LIFE IMPRISONMENT ZONE of Camp 14 is described in vivid detail by Shin Dong-Hyuk, who claims to be a survivor (by the way, hat tip to usinkorea for sending this).  Shin’s story of how  another prisoner helped him  survive interrogation in an underground dungeon is particularly touching.  The concern you always have with reports like this is that they come from a single source and can’t be independently confirmed.  Oddly enough, this  report comes by way of the Pattaya...

Categories Anju Links
April 13, 2008

Kim Won Ung: A Most Joyous Political Obituary

Imagine an America in which Cynthia McKinney chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and holds regular meetings with Osama Bin Laden, and you can be begin to grasp the national embarrassment of Kim Won Ung’s tenure as leader of the Korean National Assembly’s Unification, Foreign Affairs and Trade Committee. Perhaps this analogy will also illustrate the depth of my ambivalence at confirming that Kim has lost his bid for reelction. Kim Won Ung at Kim Il Sung’s Birthplace in North...

Categories An Alliance?/Anti-Americanism/Korean Politics
March 2, 2008

North Korea Has a Meth Problem

North Korea’s government has long been suspected of producing illicit drugs for export. In 2003, a high-level defector testified that the goverment is deeply involved in producing and exporting opiates, including heroin, and amphetamines. North Korea’s official ideology, really “crude, race-based nationalism” thinly veiled in socialism, would have had no problem justifying the poisoning of Japanese and Australian kids, but it was just a matter of time before North Korean drugs found their way into North Korean society. Until recently,...

Categories Drugs & N Korea/Inside NK/Regime Change
February 14, 2008

The Blue House Lied, People Died: How Appeasement Kills in North Korea

Today, the Chosun Ilbo helps us to peel away the myth of unmonitored “humanitarian” aid to North Korea. The aid wasn’t going to the people who needed it the most, and Roh’s government knew it all along. South Korean military authorities have known since 2003, when the Roh Moo-hyun administration was inaugurated, that North Korea has transported rice supplied by the South for humanitarian purposes to frontline units of the North Korean Army. The South Korean military has admitted it...

Categories Appeasement/Famine & Food Aid
October 11, 2007

Summit Perceptions

So what will be the enduring  effect of the meeting between Roh Moo Hyun and Kim Jong Il?  I could speculate, but others have already done that.  Simply read the divergent brands and ask yourself:  who is better informed and grounded in reality:  a semi-random sampling of ordinary  North Koreans, or a New York Times reporter?  (Big hint:  it’s Norimitsu Oniishi, who is almost always over his head when he strays beyond culture and fluff stories).   I’ll just observe that...

Categories Appeasement/Inside NK/Korean Politics
September 24, 2007

The Rangoon Autumn

Updates below: 9/21:   Original post, background of the protests.  9/22:  Monks  march to  Aung San Suu Syi’s home in record downpour; 10,000 protest in Mandalay. 9/23:  Protests hit 8 cities; Rangoon turnout at 20,000; World leaders speak out against use of force to quell protests, but the U.N. is silent. 9/24:  Rangoon protests draw 100,000; Their hold on power seriously threatened, junta generals threaten to use force; Bush  to announce new sanctions  before U.N. General Assembly; Burmese entertainers join the opposition....

Categories Democracy/Southeast Asia
September 18, 2007

Q&A With Professor Andrei Lankov: On Changing North Korea

[OFK: This post is a follow-up Q&A to my review of Professor Andrei Lankov’s new book, “.” Prof. Lankov is a lecturer at the Australian National University, now on leave and teaching at Kookmin University. You can see more of Prof. Lankov’s books here, and you can find plenty more of his work linked on this blog. Two of his more notable recent articles include “The Natural Death of North Korean Stalinism” and “How to Topple Kim Jong Il.”] Q....

Categories Books & Films/Deprogramming
April 1, 2007

A Souvenir from Kim Jong Il

My comparison yesterday between North Korean ideology, Nazism, and Stalinism led me to conclude that in terms of intrusive state control and deification of its political leaders, North Korea was the outlier. Speaking of deification, I nearly forgot this: (Click for full size) The protector of our race’s destiny, unification [gu-song, possibly N. Korean vernacular] North and South shall bask together in the glow of General Kim Jong Il’s embrace We should follow our great general Kim Jong Il eternally!...

Categories North Korea/The Fifth Column/U.S. Military
March 6, 2007

Can They Do It? A Brief History of Resistance to the North Korean Regime

[Updated March 2007; See new incidents and survey stats at the bottom of the post.]   According to the  image of the North Korean people that their rulers carefully cultivate, North Koreans are brainwashed automatons.  Regime minders, who closely follow foreign camera crews inside North Korea, seldom permit outsiders to see any alternative.  That image  is probably a combination of fear, stage management, brainwashing, and a degree of truth:  few North Koreans have ever known anything else, and extreme nationalism...

Categories Resistance
March 5, 2007

‘Inside North Korea’ Tonight: Don’t Miss This One

A reader reminds me:  National Geographic Explorer is airing a special tonight at 9 p.m., “Inside North Korea.”  This program, done by Lisa Ling while traveling undercover, is not going to be the standard guided tour we’ve come to expect from the networks.   Do yourself a favor and read NGEO’s teaser.  This one looks good. Update:   It is good.  Channel 109 on Comcast. Update 2:   This was definitely one of the best NK docus I’ve seen, if for...

Categories Deprogramming/Inside NK/Media Criticism
February 18, 2007

Holocaust Now: Looking Down Into Hell at Camp 22

Those who have lived to tell us about Camp 22, located in the bleak northeastern tip of North Korea, can be counted on the fingers of one hand, and all of them are former guards or staff. Of all of North Korea’s numerous labor camps and detention facilities, large and small, Camp 22 is one of the largest, and almost certainly the most terrible, if only for the inhuman experiments witnesses say were done to the men, women, children, and...

Categories Google Earth/Human Rights/The Camps
February 12, 2007

N. Korea Still Hasn’t Caught Border Guards Who Deserted

You will recall that 20 of them dropped their weapons,  deserted,  and crossed over to China.  It looks like they’ve been successful in evading capture so far: A North Korean source from the district of Onsung said on the 8th “20 or so people who looked like secret agents formed a group at Sambong Customs. These people and a soldier which looked like their captain had received orders and were preparing to cross over to China. He said “It seems...

Categories China & Korea/Google Earth/NK Military
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