Search Results for: border guards

March 26, 2009

Chris Hill Lies to Entire Senate Foreign Relations Committee; Sam Brownback’s Finest Hour

[Updated below.] [A]s the current assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, [Christopher Hill] presided over negotiations with North Korea that deliberately minimized focus on the bleak human rights record of that country, ignored its nuclear proliferation, and had the practical effect of affirming its nuclear weapons capability. Hill also has a troubling hotdog tendency to play by his own rules, to the detriment of U.S. diplomacy…. Hill’s brand of cowboy diplomacy might be justified if it...

Categories Human Rights/Terrorism/Iraq/U.S. Politics
March 19, 2009

North Korea Detains Two (?) U.S. Journalists

As you see, the reports conflict as to how many incidents there were, how many journalists were detained, and on which side of the border: Embedded video from CNN Video The preponderance of reports thus far suggest that two American journalists with the network Current TV were arrested — and if this is confirmed, it would be fair to say “abducted” — from the Chinese side of the Yalu River while filming North Korea. Two American journalists on a reporting...

Categories Abductions/Media Criticism/Refugees
February 16, 2009

Rice Prices Fall in Remote N. Korean Provinces

That’s good news, because those are the areas the government generally disfavors in its food distribution planning. According to a source in North Korea, rice prices in Pyongyang, Pyonsung, Nampo, Sin-ui-ju, Hyesan, and Chunjin fell sharply in mid-January. The rice price in Pyongyang at the end of January was 1700~1800 Won per 1 kg (the price used to be 2000-2100 Won), the price in Pyonsung and Sincheon was 1700won (the price used to be 2100 Won), and the price in...

Categories Famine & Food Aid/NK Economics
February 5, 2009

Hyperinflation in North Korea?

Exchange rates for North Korean currency are collapsing, according to Open Radio. True, a collapse in exchange rates means only so much when your currency isn’t convertible, but North Korea’s irresistable bottom-up transition to a market economy — despite the regime’s best efforts — means this will hurt both the privileged and the underprivileged who are trading with China to get food. One of the costs of doing cross-border business is the price of bribing North Korean border guards. That...

Categories China & Korea/NK Economics
January 12, 2009

Defections from North Korea to South Rose in 2008

The Chosun Ilbo reports that defections from North Korea rose 10% in 2008 compared to 2007. This may or may not tell us anything about economic or political conditions in the North as opposed to last year. The number of new arrivals in South Korea is a small trickle from a vast reserve of North Koreans hiding in China — estimates vary from 50,000 to 300,000. Not all of the new arrivals in the South are necessarily recent escapees, given...

Categories Defectors/NK Military/Refugees
June 30, 2008

Times of London: N. Korean Snipers Shooting Refugees

You read it here first, but now it’s getting some big media coverage: North Korean guards, newly armed with Russian Dragunov sniper rifles, have shot dead refugees attempting to ford the river that divides their hungry homeland from China, according to human rights campaigners. On the Chinese shore alone, two bodies, marked by several bullet holes, were found by a local activist, said Tim Peters, an American pastor who runs a Christian group supporting the fugitives. The shootings indicate a...

Categories China/China & Korea/Human Rights/Refugees
April 18, 2008

Anju Links for 18 April 2008

THE LIFE IMPRISONMENT ZONE of Camp 14 is described in vivid detail by Shin Dong-Hyuk, who claims to be a survivor (by the way, hat tip to usinkorea for sending this).  Shin’s story of how  another prisoner helped him  survive interrogation in an underground dungeon is particularly touching.  The concern you always have with reports like this is that they come from a single source and can’t be independently confirmed.  Oddly enough, this  report comes by way of the Pattaya...

Categories Anju Links
March 20, 2008

The Beginning of the End: Food Shortages Reach Pyongyang (Updated)

[Update: Welcome to all of you who are coming in from Gateway Pundit and Best of the Web, and many thanks to James Hoft and James Taranto for linking.] Now that I’ve just spent five days writing this dissertation on North Korea’s worsening food situation, there’s dramatic new information that alters the entire analysis. This may be the single most significant event in North Korean history since the invention of blogs, because if it’s true, the regime is finished. North...

Categories Famine & Food Aid/Regime Change
March 7, 2008

Can Kim Jong Il Outlive “Military First?”

In the last two months, I’ve come to believe that the decay of Kim Jong Il’s control of North Korea is accelerating. I’m not quite on board with Jane’s, which predicts imminent collapse, because regime collapse is not proceeding at equal rates in all areas of North Korea, and history tells us that there’s been plenty of dissent in North Korea that the regime was able to contain, localize, and suppress. There are, however, clear signs that chaos is taking...

Categories Kremlinology/Regime Change
March 2, 2008

North Korea Has a Meth Problem

North Korea’s government has long been suspected of producing illicit drugs for export. In 2003, a high-level defector testified that the goverment is deeply involved in producing and exporting opiates, including heroin, and amphetamines. North Korea’s official ideology, really “crude, race-based nationalism” thinly veiled in socialism, would have had no problem justifying the poisoning of Japanese and Australian kids, but it was just a matter of time before North Korean drugs found their way into North Korean society. Until recently,...

Categories Drugs & N Korea/Inside NK/Regime Change
January 22, 2008

Plan B: How to Disarm Kim Jong Il Without Bombing Him

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. — Albert Einstein Plan A, gentle diplomacy, has again failed to disarm Kim Jong Il. Whenever this happens (every time it’s tried) advocates of doing the same thing over and over again fall back on The False Choice, whether expressly or by implication: it’s their way or war. They know better, of course, which technically makes this a lie. And usually, this lie stands uncorrected: “People lambaste...

Categories Diplomacy/Money Laundering/NK Economics/Six-Party Talks
December 4, 2007

A North Korean Refugee in Belgium

Human  Rights Without frontiers sends this refugee’s story, which I thought was interesting enough to pass along to you: HRWF Int’l  (26.11.2007) – Website: http://www.hrwf.net/ – Email: info@hrwf.net. Kim M. W., 31 years old,  arrived in Belgium this year.  He is one of the rare North Korean refugees to have requested asylum in Belgium, even though it is open to the repressed  people of North Korea.  Human Rights Without Frontiers met him in Brussels. HRWF:  What was your life like...

Categories Human Rights/Refugees
June 26, 2007

Anju Links for 6/25

* There’s another report that a North Korean border guard has defected, only this time, he brought a few things with him: At the time of arrest, Kim was armed with an automatic AK rifle, 5 magazines, 30 cartridges and [a]sword. [Daily NK] Then, the Chinese caught him. They’ll send him back to North Korea, where he’s certain to face a firing squad at 19 [because Koreans calculate age from the time of conception, he’s just 17 or 18 in...

Categories Anju Links/NK Military/Resistance/Uncategorized
March 6, 2007

Can They Do It? A Brief History of Resistance to the North Korean Regime

[Updated March 2007; See new incidents and survey stats at the bottom of the post.]   According to the  image of the North Korean people that their rulers carefully cultivate, North Koreans are brainwashed automatons.  Regime minders, who closely follow foreign camera crews inside North Korea, seldom permit outsiders to see any alternative.  That image  is probably a combination of fear, stage management, brainwashing, and a degree of truth:  few North Koreans have ever known anything else, and extreme nationalism...

Categories Resistance
February 22, 2007

Two Jailbreaks Reported in Hoeryong

As North Korea tries to enforce a crackdown on cross-border smuggling of people and subversive items, it finds that control isn’t as easy to maintain as it once was. Both incidents involved suspected (cross-border?) smugglers: The source said that in the evening, around 10 PM, unknown arsonist set fire on armory that caused confusion. Amid fire, two smugglers broke the prison bars and escaped. Although the Manghyang district security guards declared state of emergency over Hoiryeong and tried to catch...

Categories Inside NK/Resistance
February 6, 2007

Mass Escape at N. Korean Concentration Camp; 120 Escape

[For images of North Korea’s nuclear sites, click here; for updates and commentary on North Korea’s latest nuclear test, click here; for images of other concentration camps, click here and here; for more Google Earth imagery of North Korea, click here.] [Update 11 Feb 07:   North Korea denies it] The Daily NK reports: Sources residing in the district of Chongjin, North Hamkyung informed on the 1st and 5th “On December 20th, a mass group of 120 prisoners from the...

Categories Google Earth/Human Rights/Inside NK/Resistance/The Camps