October 30, 2014

What else is Kim Jong Un buying instead of food? A new airport.

The new airport, which is now in its final stages, is the latest of North Korea’s “speed campaigns,” mass mobilizations of labor shock brigades aimed at finishing top-priority projects in record time. Dressed in hard hats and brown or olive green uniforms, impressive swarms of workers toil under huge signs calling on them to carry out their tasks with “Korea Speed.” From some corners of the site, patriotic music blares from loudspeakers to provide further motivation. [….] But, in search...

Categories AP Watch/Famine & Food Aid
October 29, 2014

Kirby presses China to support ICC referral of North Korea

Western diplomats say China, North Korea’s principal protector on the UN Security Council, will likely use its veto power there to knock down any attempt to refer North Korea to the International Criminal Court (ICC). But Michael Kirby, a former Australian judge who led the independent UN inquiry into alleged human rights abuses in North Korea, told reporters at UN headquarters that it was by no means certain if Beijing would block an ICC referral. “I don’t think a veto...

Categories "United" Nations/China & Korea/Human Rights
October 29, 2014

Another North Korean money man vanishes

The head of a foreign currency-earning enterprise, which is said to be involved in managing Kim Jong Eun’s slush fund, has disappeared, raising questions as to why. The company, which is based in Yangkang Province, operates under the No.121 Department, a bureau that specializes in timber supplies. [Daily NK] Based on my reading of the reports, it doesn’t sound like the same person as that guy who was reported in August to have defected in Russia, but I’m not 100%...

Categories Money Laundering
October 28, 2014

On Europe, the U.N., luxury goods, and the ethical limits of engagement.

The latest rant from Professor Lee and me is published here, on CNN International, in the hope that it will catch the eyes of European audiences (and maybe even give Felix Abt a migraine). Mind you, I think the EU’s leadership of the U.N. response to the Commission of Inquiry report has been commendable, but Europe has to do a better job of enforcing U.N. sanctions, and curbing the actions of unethical profiteers who would sell Kim Jong Un cigarette-making...

Categories Europe/Luxury Goods
October 28, 2014

Sue Terry v. John Delury and Moon Chung-In, on reunification

Although Delury and Moon may not like the idea of North Korea’s collapse, that is a far more likely scenario than their fantasy of “the gradual merging of North and South.” South Korea has tried to make that dream come true before, through the so-called sunshine policy it pursued from 1998 to 2008, and the result was unambiguous failure. During those years, South Korea gave North Korea $8 billion in investment and assistance. In 2000, South Korean President Kim Dae-jung...

Categories North-South/Reconstruction/Regime Change
October 28, 2014

NIS: Kim Jong Un recovering from ankle surgery

I don’t know if this is true, but it makes more sense than any other theory I’ve heard in the last month: North Korean leader Kim Jong-un is recovering following an operation to remove a cyst from his right ankle, though there is a chance that the condition could recur, lawmakers said Tuesday, citing South Korea’s spy agency. Kim received the operation between September and October by inviting a foreign doctor into the communist country, according to Lee Cheol-woo of the ruling...

Categories Kim Jong Un
October 28, 2014

Associated Press perestroika watch

The AP’s Pyongyang Bureau Chief, Eric Talmadge, has managed to coax the AP’s business partners at KCNA into letting him and photographer David Guttenfelder travel from Pyongyang to Mt. Paektu in the far north, by car. Having been duly warned not to got lost—or “you will be shot”—Talmadge and his minder stocked up on fuel coupons, Evian, and Skippy, and headed off toward Wonsan. Even on the loneliest of lonely highways, we would never be without a “minder,” whose job was...

Categories AP Watch
October 28, 2014

Charm offensive: N. Korea threatens to nuke U.S., hands out Halloween candy

As near as I can figure, Kim Jong Un’s stages of grief over his potential indictment for crimes against humanity have included denial, homophobia, mendacity, engagement, racism, and (again) terrorism, not necessarily in that order. The North Korean model differs from the Kübler-Ross model in its inclusion of several additional stages, and also, for its lack of an “acceptance” stage. In any case, North Korea, one of the world’s most isolated and opaque countries, seems to be taking the threat...

Categories "United" Nations/Human Rights/The Camps
October 27, 2014

Joongang Ilbo: Several top N. Korean officials haven’t been seen since mid-August (updated)

Some new faces might be showing up on the back of milk cartons in Pyongyang — or would be, if Pyongyang had milk cartons (hey, at least they have milk). Among those missing since mid-August are Ma Won-Chun, a prominent architect and Director of the National Defense Commission’s Design Department; General Ri Pyong-Chol, the Commanding Officer of North Korean People’s Air Force; Ri Yong-gil, Chief of the General Staff of the North Korean People’s Army; and Sim Chol-Ho, the Telecommunications...

Categories Kremlinology
October 27, 2014

Daily NK: Fire destroys Kim Jong Il’s fake birthplace (updated)

Update, September 2015: Subsequent reporting by NK News calls the Daily NK‘s report into question. ~   ~   ~ This report has been circulating in Korean-language sources for a few days, and the Donga Ilbo has reported that a large fire was burning (and had been extinguished) in that area, but this is the first time I’ve seen it reported in English. A raging wildfire that broke out on October 21st in North Korea’s Samjiyon County, Yangkang Province is...

Categories History/Kim Jong Il
October 25, 2014

Charm offensive! N. Korean “diplomats” call Botswana’s UN Ambassador a “black bastard,” laugh at testimony of gulag survivors

Discussion about North Korea’s crimes against humanity is accelerating so quickly that it’s becoming difficult to keep up with it all. Last week, among other events, diplomats from Australia, Panama, and Botswana–which severed diplomatic relations with North Korea after the Commission of Inquiry published its report–held a Panel Discussion on human rights in the North. Not surprisingly, Botswana’s U.N. Ambassador is the latest target of North Korea’s racism, according to Vice News: At one point, members of the North Korean...

Categories "United" Nations/Human Rights/Racism/WTF?
October 25, 2014

Video: Michael Kirby on human rights and religious freedom in North Korea

This was yet another event sponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, where Justice Michael Kirby (despite his admonition, I find it awkward to call him “Mister”) talks about North Korea’s frenetic reaction to proposals to indict Kim Jong Un, and other topics. Kirby also describes some extraordinary encounters with North Korean diplomats, the limitations of a potential ICC referral, and why he didn’t charge North Korea with genocide for the near-extermination of Christians (I still think a strong...

Categories "United" Nations/Human Rights
October 25, 2014

Must listen: Suki Kim, on teaching undercover at PUST

Kurt Achin, who hosts a series of outstanding podcasts for NK News, interviews Suki Kim, who went undercover as a teacher at the experimental Pyongyang University of Science and Technology. PUST teaches an elite, hand-picked group of male students, ostensibly as a strategy to open North Korea to the world, but the regime’s restrictions on both Kim and her students were so severe that Kim calls PUST “a five-star prison.” Among other verboten topics, Kim wasn’t allowed to mention the internet. At a...

Categories Anju Links
October 24, 2014

North Korea perestroika watch

The Daily NK reports that North Korean security forces in the bleak border province of North Hamgyeong are “shaking down” smugglers to make them rat out the identities of those who’ve escaped to South Korea. They’re identifying the smugglers by intercepting the cell phone signals of money-smugglers, who in turn are forced to rat out goods and people smugglers, who rat out the refugees, whose families are then vulnerable to shake-downs and collective punishment. For many of the stay-behinds, what...

Categories Border Control/Capitalism/Human Rights/Subversion
October 24, 2014

N. Korea threatens war over leaflets

North Korea warned Thursday of further military measures against the cross-border scattering of propaganda leaflets by South Korean activists, saying their campaign risked putting inter-Korean ties into an “unrecoverable” state. In a statement, the Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Fatherland sharply criticized the South’s government for doing little to block the leaflets. “As shown in a recent incident, leaflet scattering is an extremely dangerous act that could bring about a war as well as the failure of north-south...

Categories Terrorism (NK)
October 24, 2014

The emperor is the elephant in the room

“Our Marshal must be at least 100 kilograms,” people have said about Kim Jong Eun’s physique, according to the source. “It’s very rare to see anyone who has body type like the leader in this country [North Korea],” the source said. This has caused people to say in public that “our leader has a fine presence,” but in private they say, “what is it that he eats alone to make his body like that.” [Daily NK]

Categories Kim Jong Un