Search Results for: information crackdown

New Focus International is reporting that North Korea has distributed cell phones to its secret police, and that the secret police are using them to hunt down potential refugees: The distributions of cell-phones are being made as part of efforts to aid agents of the Ministry of State Security and Ministry of People’s Security in preventing people escaping the country. As part of the process of organising an escape, North Koreans intending to flee the country often make contact through...

~ 1 ~ Victor Cha has co-written a piece in Foreign Policy about the importance of keeping human rights on the negotiating agenda with North Korea, and points to this infographic on the gulags, co-sponsored by the George W. Bush Center. The Bush Center will also host an invitation-only event on human rights in North Korea again next week. Leave aside the mootness of arguing about the negotiating agenda with North Korea. One may as well argue about Eric Cantor’s...

~   1   ~ YONGBYON JUST KEEPS GETTING SCARIER: OFK readers will remember the day the North Koreans blew up the cooling tower of their 5-megawatt reactor at Yongbyon to feign compliance with George W. Bush’s Agreed Framework 2.0. This was the modest pinnacle of Chris Hill’s diplomatic career, and came even as North Korea was submitting false declarations about its nuclear programs, denying the existence of a (since revealed) uranium enrichment program, and submitting samples of aluminum tubing...

~  1  ~ I’M GLAD I WATCHED “SECRET STATE OF NORTH KOREA” last night. I might not have stayed up late to watch it had I known that the next morning, I could watch the entire program online (Hat Tip), but it was still well worth seeing. I can’t say I learned much new information, but I can say that many things I already knew became much more real, believable, and tangible to me. And plenty of people who had...

~ 1 ~ DON’T CRY FOR JANG. With all the talk about Jang Song Thaek being a “reformer,” I thought I should remind you that Jang was in charge of the Kuk-Ga Anjeon Bowi-Bu (roughly, National Security Protection Bureau), the secret police organization that runs the North’s prison camps and arrests people for political crimes. If Jang and others associated with this organization wind up before a firing squad, personally, I’d only regret that they didn’t face a more legitimate...

CALL ME OLD FASHIONED–it’s fine, really, I’m used to it–but I fail to see what’s so hard-line about the idea, most recently advanced by John McCain, that restarting six-party talks ought to be contingent on North Korea demonstrating its seriousness about disarming, such as by beginning to disarm. That’s pretty much the same view the Obama Administration had stated publicly, although it seems necessary to clarify it when North Korea has, more times than I could count, said it will never give up its nukes, when...

MYSTERY SOLVED? So, according to the world’s least credible TV news service — also, our most credible source here — the mystery woman standing next to Kim Jong Un is his wife, and her name is Ri Sol Ju. We know almost nothing else about her. Assuming the new report is true, contrary to previous reports sourced to South Korean officials, she is not married former entertainer Hyong Song-Wol. Or maybe, as the Daily NK reported, Hyong Song-Wol is actually...