Search Results for: border guards

March 16, 2010

North Korea, Human Rights, and Diplomacy: When Hell Freezes Over

A series of bleak new reports shows that after more than a decade of attempts by the United States and South Korea to liberalize North Korea though aid and engagement, life is as cheap as ever between the Yalu and the Imjin. The system is less closed than it once was, although this is mostly the result of the fraying of the regime’s control over its borders, economy, and the flow of information. Yet these changes have occurred in defiance...

Categories "United" Nations/Diplomacy/Human Rights
March 12, 2010

North Korea Sanctions Itself

Reuters, citing a study by the Korea Development Institute (KDI), reports that “North Korea’s international trade dropped last year for the first time in more than a decade.” The report suggests that this was mostly the consequence of sanctions, but a closer look at the evidence it was The Great Confiscation that really brought trade across the Chinese border to a standstill by paralyzing the economy, markets, and trade, and banning the use of foreign currency in the final months...

Categories Famine & Food Aid/NK Economics
February 18, 2010

North Korea Has a Meth Problem, Part 3

North Korea’s meth problem continues to worsen as meth gains cultural acceptance. According to interviews with residents of Heoryong and Musan, in North Hamkyung Province on February 5, North Koreans near the border area and Shin-ui-ju, Hamheung, and Pyongyang consume Crystal Meth like food. Especially near the border area, Meth is used by people of all ages, and even students aged 14-15 consume it. In these regions, Meth is served for guests, and the host invite guests to consume Meth...

Categories Drugs & N Korea/NK Military
January 26, 2010

Kim Jong-il Ordered Shooting of Defectors

In May of 2008, this site was the first to publish reports, attributed to the NGO Helping Hands Korea, that North Korea had issued orders to its border guards to shoot fleeing refugees, notwithstanding its failure to provide them with the basic necessities of life and its draconian treatment of those who try to provide for themselves. The Times of London later picked up those reports. Other reports suggest that the shoot-to-kill policy was hardly new. According to one previous...

Categories Human Rights/Refugees
December 25, 2009

Korean-American Activist Crosses Into North Korea (Updated)

Oh God, not again. Reuters is reporting that Robert Park, a 28 year-old American, has walked across the Tumen River from China to the North Korean town of Hoeryong, which is infamous for being both the birthplace of Kim Jong Il’s mother and the town nearest to Camp 22. Park’s apparent objectives were (1) to get himself arrested and (2) thereby raise global attention about North Korea’s brutal political prison camps. Rest assured that Park will accomplish Objective Number One....

Categories Activism/Human Rights/Robert Park/Useful Idiocy
December 21, 2009

South Korea Clears Mines from the DMZ (and Why I Think That’s a Shrewd Decision)

You say you want reunification? Fine, then. Dig up the mines along the DMZ and open the border. No, I’m not kidding: The South Korean military said Monday it has removed some 1,300 land mines this year from the country’s rural areas bordering North Korea, a reminder of the tense 1950-53 Korean War that ended in a truce. In the operations that lasted from April to November, the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) mobilized 3,300 personnel to remove mines from...

Categories NK Military/North-South/Refugees/ROK Military/Subversion
December 15, 2009

Chosun Ilbo: North Korea Executes 12 After Currency Riot in Hamhung

Now that many North Koreans have burned the savings that the regime suddenly declared worthless this month, the Chosun Ilbo reports that public outrage has forced Kim Jong Il to raise the exchange limit to 500,000 won. The decision coincides with the first report of a significant outbreak of anti-regime violence, followed by a brutal reaction: The announcements came after rioting by market traders in the Hamhung region was reported on Dec. 5-6 amid sympathy from ordinary people, sources said....

Categories Famine & Food Aid/Human Rights/NK Economics/Resistance
December 6, 2009

North Korea Completes Great Confiscation (Upated)

[Updated below.] By now, it is December 7th in Pyongyang, and the period for exchanging old currency for new has passed. By filling the streets with troops and police, the regime has, for the moment, managed to contain the “fury and frustration” of people who, robbed of their savings and deprived of food rations, no longer know how they’re going to make it through the winter. For now, only isolated outbreaks of dissent are reported. The people know that this...

Categories NK Economics/Resistance
November 17, 2009

NGO Claims North Korea Abducted 200 Chinese Who Aided Refugees

Pyongyang’s agents over the past decade abducted about 200 Chinese citizens as part of a campaign to stop people from fleeing North Korea, a news report said Tuesday. The Chinese of ethnic Korean descent had been helping refugees who had fled across the border, Chosun Ilbo newspaper said, adding they were abducted to North Korea and jailed there. [AFP] The English version of the Chosun Ilbo article isn’t out yet as I write this (but might be by the time...

Categories Abductions/China & Korea
September 11, 2009

Alleged Chinese Police Report Supports Allegations of 2003 Massacre of North Koreans

Writing in the Wall Street Journal in October 2006, Melanie Kirkpatrick first raised shocking claims about North Korean border guards’ massacre of a large group of people trying to flee from North Korea to China across the Yalu River. Her report was based on documents purporting to come from official Chinese documents, including a local police report from Badaogou Precinct, near Baishan City: “At 7 a.m. on Oct. 3, 2003,” Case Report No. 055 begins, “a report was received from...

Categories China & Korea/Refugees
September 2, 2009

Laura Ling and Euna Lee Speak

Here are the paragraphs that answer the biggest question — where were they captured? Jodi had heard they were in North Korea. I had heard that they were in China. I’d assumed that we couldn’t both be right, but as it turns out, we both were: When we set out, we had no intention of leaving China, but when our guide beckoned for us to follow him beyond the middle of the river, we did, eventually arriving at the riverbank...

Categories Ling/Lee Incident
August 20, 2009

The Blood of Children on Their Hands (Updated)

[Update: Someone I trust tells me that Laura Ling and Euna Lee are anguished by the blog posts and news stories going around about this aspect of their story. Obviously, we’d love to hear Ling and Lee’s side of it, but according to my friend, they’re under a great deal of pressure from Current TV (among others) not to talk. Expect Ling and Lee to say more in the next few days about the precautions they took to prevent incriminating...

Categories China & Korea/Human Trafficking/Media Criticism/Refugees
July 24, 2009

WTF? Michael Jackson Wanted to Ask Kim Jong Il to Free Laura Ling and Euna Lee?

If this doesn’t win “WTF of the Decade,” it’s an honorable mention: The last time I spoke to my friend Michael Jackson was about a month ago, 3 weeks before his shocking death. He had called me late one night to ask about another of my close friends who he had read about in the news. Laura Ling, a former colleague and friend, was detained originally by North Korean border guards along with her colleague Euna Lee on March 17th....

Categories Ling/Lee Incident/WTF?
July 14, 2009

Suzanne Scholte: A War Crimes Tribunal for North Korea

With the mounting evidence that Kim Jong Il won’t burden this world for long, the civilized world faces the prospect of inheriting jurisdiction over people who’ve done some pretty awful things: On a recent trip to Seoul, a North Korean mother told me she and her 14-year-old daughter fled North Korea but were separated in China. The mother waited in China to reunite with her daughter only to discover that Chinese security agents had forced the girl back to North...

Categories Human Rights/Reconstruction
July 1, 2009

Why Re-Designate North Korea as a State Sponsor of Terrorism?

I make my best case here, at the New Ledger: Almost a year to the day after Bush’s announcement, North Korea threatened to “wipe out the aggressors” — meaning America — “on the globe once and for all,” and to unleash a “fire shower of nuclear retaliation” on South Korea. The nation most recently stricken from the list of state sponsors of terrorism is also the world’s most accomplished at using its official state media as an instrument of terrorism. ...

Categories Terrorism (NK)
June 24, 2009

In the Absence of Facts, Rumor Overtakes the Injustice of Laura Ling and Euna Lee’s Captivity

I guess I wasn’t the only one who thought of Laura Ling and Euna Lee when I heard about the escape of David Rhode from the Taliban.  An unpleasant quirk of human nature occurred to me:  by virtue of his escape, Rohde had instantly transformed himself from “stupid” to intrepid.  I’m glad Rohde lived to bring the story home.  Oddly enough, the minute I heard the report on the radio, I remembered Rohde’s name, because being captured isn’t a new...

Categories Ling/Lee Incident
May 31, 2009

Unsung Misery

From the London Telegraph comes the story of Hyok Kang, a resident of Onsong, quite possibly the most miserable quarter of North Korea that isn’t a concentration camp, in its extreme northeast.             Kang speaks of a hellish everyday life in which people were publicly executed for stealing copper wire to sell: When the time came, the condemned man was displayed in the streets before being led to the place of execution, where he was...

Categories Google Earth/Human Rights/Refugees
March 30, 2009

One Man’s “Bargaining Chip” Is Another Man’s Hostage

Update: Uh oh: Two American journalists detained at North Korea’s border with China two weeks ago will be indicted and tried, “their suspected hostile acts” already confirmed, Pyongyang’s state-run news agency said Tuesday. The Korean Central News Agency report did not say when a trial might take place, but said preparations to indict the Americans were under way as the investigation continues. “The illegal entry of U.S. reporters into the DPRK and their suspected hostile acts have been confirmed by...

Categories Media Criticism/Refugees/Terrorism (NK)