Search Results for: soldier defect

The partially defector-run Daily NK takes note of the reported border attacks and interviews the person I was most interested in hearing from: Lim Chun-Young, the former NK Special Forces soldier of whose words I was reminded by Tuesday’s Donga Ilbo report. It also has this great graphic, but nothing to confirm that any attacks actually took place. The Daily NK, which has contacts and reporters in that area, found no one who could verify the attacks, or that any...

[Post moved up] OFK, Jan. 20, ’05: “Down with Kim Jong-il! Let’s all rise to drive out the dictatorial regime!” OFK, Dec. 12, ’05: The North Korean Revolution, Coming Soon to a Border Post Near You. Donga Ilbo, Feb. 7 ’06: North Korean Border Posts Attacked Did I just feel the earth twitch? Unidentified armed men carried out a series of attacks on North Korean border guards along the country’s border with China right before the lunar New Year, according...

I’ve been expecting to hear of the formation of armed anti-government resistance groups in North Korea for some time, so it doesn’t come as a great surprise to me that some of North Korea’s vaunted Special Forces troops are now threatening to turn their guns against their former masters: Nine former North Korean special forces soldiers who defected to the South vowed Wednesday to push for regime change in their communist homeland unless it abolishes political prison camps and improves...

Too many interesting things in the news today to discuss in too little time– North Korea More Alarming News on the Food Situation, via the World Food Program: The North Korean government has been unable to meet its own food distribution target of 500 grams of cereals per person per day, the World Food Program said in a report issued on Friday.The United Nations agency’s weekly “Emergency Report” said that its workers in North Korea visited public food distribution centers...

Chosun Ilbo on Hyde Letter. In case you’re interested in reading half as much information a week later. . . . And no, I don’t think that’s a garbled reference to this site. If you want to read the full text, just click. Update 11/15: Suddenly, I realize how much we are going to miss House International Relations Committee Chairman Henry Hyde when he retires, and how essential it is that the next chairman be of similar caliber (in other...

Next is Time’s Donald Macintyre of Time Asia, who writes perhaps the best piece to emerge from North Korea’s propaganda disaster known as Arirang. I still don’t have time to give this piece the justice it deserves, but will give you the best grafs and urge you to read the rest on your own. His impressions of the cross-border trade couldn’t be more different when approached from the direction of Pyongyang: Our group, Western journalists granted a rare visit to...

Of the three correspondents, Andrei Lankov, writing in the Korea Times, has the greatest depth of experience. Lankov focuses on the aspect of North Korea’s reforms–unstoppable if you believe Brooke and abortive if you believe Macintyre–that interests me most, the psychological impact on the North Korean people. Lankov finds that materially, things have changed not at all or gone backwards, but that psychologically, North Koreans are much more open than in the past. He begins near his alma mater, Kim...