North Korea is on Twitter … unless you happen to be a North Korean, of course. ___________________________ The Washington Post looks at Jang Song Thaek’s emerging role as svengali to Kim Jong Eun. ___________________________ “I have a sneaking suspicion that Kim Jong-il’s son, who wants to take over, has to earn his stripes with the North Korean military,” Gates said at the U.S. Marines’ Memorial Club in San Francisco. “My worry is that that is behind the provocation like the...

Washington seems to believe that North Korea will return to the six party talks and stop its belligerent behavior if its sources of overseas funding are cut off. If that’s what “Washington” actually does believe, I think it’s wrong about that, but I do think that sanctions will do several other very useful things, like destabilize the power structure during the succession process, slow North Korea’s progress at proliferation, and break up the financial and logistical infrastructure of its proliferation...

The demographics of defection are shifting: since the currency reform, more middle-class North Koreans have been fleeing the North, a South Korean security official speculated. A North Korean source on Tuesday said the currency reform alienated many people from the regime, and the spread of South Korean pop culture through videos and CDs clandestinely circulated in the North has also encouraged some middle and higher-class North Koreans to flee. In recent days, many people who lost their savings due to...

North Korea has executed three leaders of a house church it raided in North Pyongan Province, and sent the remaining members to a labor camp. The report comes via North Korean Intellectuals’ Solidarity: According to the sources, the arrests and executions were carried out in mid-May. “At that time, right after the disastrous currency reform, police discovered 23 Christians in Kuwal-dong, Pyungsung County, in Pyongan Province, who met at an underground church. After their arrest, they were interrogated at length....

North Korea raised the stakes in its face-off with the United States and South Korea on Saturday, threatening to use nuclear weapons if Washington and Seoul go ahead with military exercises planned for regional waters this summer. [WaPo] President Bush removed North Korea from the list of state sponsors of terrorism on October 11, 2008 to reward it for giving up its nuclear weapons, and as of June 23, 2010, President Obama saw no particular reason to disturb that decision....