December 2, 2009

My, How Times Have Changed

During my last last visit to the DMZ, the interpretive displays were all about the 2000 Summit and Kaesong. Not anymore: According to the AP’s caption: A South Korean child watches a television program reporting North Korean prisoners at a unification observation post near the border village of Panmunjom, the demilitarized zone (DMZ) that separates the two Koreas since the Korean War, in Paju, South Korea, Friday, Nov. 20, 2009. A key U.N. committee expressed ‘very serious concern’ Thursday at...

Categories North-South/Propaganda/Sunshine
December 2, 2009

More on North Korea’s Great Confiscation

Rather than updating yesterday’s post again, I’ll just do a roundup of the reports and reactions today. So far, the reports point to widespread tension, disbelief, and shock, but little violence or unrest. It is as if the entire country has been paused, or as though a crowd that has just witnessed something horrifying is standing there, watching, too dumbstruck to take it in. For many, the means to live through this winter has been swept away in one casual,...

Categories NK Economics
December 1, 2009

Hiding North Korea’s Health Decline

According to a new report by the U.N. Population Fund, the socioeconomic gap between the two Koreas continues to widen: South Korea’s infant mortality rate ranked seventh in the world with four deaths out of 1,000 births while the North slid to 133rd place from last year’s ranking of 99 with 47 deaths per 1,000. The Stalinist state recorded a higher death rate of women from complications related to pregnancy and labor with an estimated 370 cases per 100,000 live...

Categories Famine & Food Aid/Useful Idiocy
December 1, 2009

North Korea Revalues Currency, Wipes Away Savings of Millions (Updated)

North Korea has shocked its entire population with a sudden announcement that it will replace its currency with new notes that drop two zeroes from the denominations. The new North Korean currency’s official exchange rates will increase by a hundredfold. The move is causing widespread outrage, panic, and a run on U.S. and Chinese currency. North Koreans throughout the country and at every socioeconomic level are reacting with shock, tears, and anger. According to some reports, people are literally weeping...

Categories NK Economics/Resistance
November 30, 2009

UNDP Returning to North Korea

The scandal-plagued U.N. Development Program, just shy of two years from a report that found massive irregularities in its finances and operations in North Korea, is planning to return to North Korea. You will recall that among other items, the U.N. found $3,500 in counterfeit currency in a safe in New York. The cash may have come from the North Korean state bank that the U.N.D.P. was required to use while operating out of Pyongyang.

Categories "United" Nations
November 30, 2009

Well, Something Has to Go Into Those Empty Coal Pits

Not content with enslaving its women, torturing its refugees, and vacuuming out North Korea’s natural resources, China is now turning North Korea into its industrial waste dumping ground (ht): North Korean organizations in charge of raising foreign currency are bringing in and burying industrial waste from China for money, a report released yesterday said. The report also said North Korean scientists who complained that their country is turning into China’s industrial waste site have been purged in North Korea. Daily...

Categories China & Korea
November 30, 2009

30 November 2009

AN INTERNATIONAL GROUP OF LAWMAKERS has called for better treatment for North Korean refugees: The lawmakers issued a joint statement calling on Pyongyang to end its gross human rights violations, including political detentions, torture, and public executions. The statement was signed by lawmakers from eight Asian nations: Afghanistan, Cambodia, Japan, Korea, Mongolia, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and Thailand. Also signing the statement were African lawmakers from Djibouti, Ivory Coast, and Senegal and one lawmaker from Croatia. They statement demanded China stop...

Categories Anju Links
November 26, 2009

Defector Describes Decline in N. Korean Military Morale

As if to affirm on cue what I’d written here, former North Korean battalion commander Kim Joo-Il explains why North Korea’s official military strength figures aren’t a very good indicator of its actual military strength: “Officially the North Korea armed forces number 1.2 million – these are the official numbers,” Mr Kim said. “But they do not include the secret military service, so I do not know the exact figure of military personnel. “About 100,000 people are conscripted annually and...

Categories NK Military
November 25, 2009

The LA Times on a Mission along SE Asia’s Underground Railroad

As an active member of Justice for North Korea, maybe I’m a bit biased, but I highly recommend this one. John Glionna of the Los Angeles Times has the story behind the 9 refugees who successfully received asylum in the Danish Embassy in Hanoi in late September and now are safely in South Korea.  There also is a bit of an update on the 5 refugees who were caught by the Chinese government at the border. Here’s the link:  Aiding...

Categories Activism/Human Rights/Refugees/Southeast Asia
November 25, 2009

Feed Me, Seymour

It’s a fine line between extortion and aggressive panhandling. Inexplicably, extortion and outright terrorism have failed to produce a financial harvest (until now, a perennial success) to make up for the agricultural kind (since 1993, a perennial failure). Suddenly, a slightly more obsequious North Korea is … begging for South Korea to resume those Kumgang Tours and for the U.N. to keep its commitments on the delivery of food aid. If there’s one word in the North Korean vocabulary more...

Categories Famine & Food Aid/NK Economics
November 25, 2009

Defector: Growing Corruption in North Korean Military

Corruption is now so entrenched in North Korea that military officers will even give away information on nuclear test sites, according to an elite defector. This, according to high-level defector Kim Su Jong (an alias), who is in Washington this week, speaking to congressional staff and reporters. Rampant corruption, collapse of the state-controlled ration distribution system, the opening of local markets, the breaking of laws to obtain food, and the under-funding of the military and local government units has led...

Categories NK Military
November 24, 2009

What Obama Accomplished in China

I suppose China’s behavior immediately after the president’s departure is all the evidence you really need. An activist who was investigating the role shoddy school construction played in the deaths of more than 5,000 children in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake was given a three-year prison sentence Monday on charges of possessing state secrets. Huang Qi, 46, a veteran activist and blogger, is the most prominent of more than a dozen people who were arrested for demanding investigations into construction standards...

Categories China/Diplomacy
November 23, 2009

U.N. General Assembly Condemns North Korea for “Systemic, Widespread, and Grave” of Human Rights Violations

South Korea voted for and was one of 53 co-sponsors. The vote was 96 for, 19 against, with 65 abstentions: The resolution goes on to list torture, the absence of due process in law, use of the death penalty, collective punishment, strict restrictions on freedom of movement, thought, conscience, religion, opinion and expression, peaceful assembly and association, the right to privacy and equal access to information, the treatment of returned refugees, violations of economic, social and cultural rights, human rights...

Categories "United" Nations/Human Rights
November 23, 2009

Rumor: Kim Ok Remarries

I noted Kim Ok‘s disturbing resemblance to Yonsama when reports first emerged back in 2006 that Kim Jong Il had married his long-time secretary. According to this report from the Joongang Ilbo, however, Ms. Kim has moved on in life and remarried: Sources told the JoongAng Ilbo that they have received tips that Kim Ok has married an official from the ruling Workers’ Party. “We’re analyzing intelligence that Kim Ok, who had been Kim Jong-il’s personal secretary, has tied the...

Categories Kim Jong Il/Kremlinology