Search Results for “border crackdown”

Camp 12, Chongo-ri, North Korea

Recently, Chosun Ilbo reporter and North Korean gulag survivor Kang Chol Hwan published this story about a remote labor camp in North Korea, its recent expansion to support a crackdown on defectors, and the horrific conditions there: The Chongori reeducation center in North Hamgyong Province that went through the greatest change. The center has been reorganized as a concentration camp exclusively for arrested defectors. It has reportedly turned into a living hell, where labor is much heavier than at ordinary...

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January 7, 2010

North Korea Descending Into Economic Chaos

I’ve long believed that functionally, there were two North Korean economies — a mostly capitalist (and to the U.N., illicit) “palace” economy that funds Kim Jong Il’s regime, and an increasingly capitalist (and to Kim Jong Il, illicit) “peoples’ economy” that rose from the ashes of the failed Public Distribution System. Some say that international food aid ended the Great Famine, a famine that may have killed millions of North Koreans. There is some truth in this, but international food...

NK Economics/Uncategorized

November 3, 2009

Ban Ki Moon Is to Human Rights What Roman Polanski Is to Child Welfare

It was a horror that came from within, that consumed and devastated entire communities and families. It was a horror that left you as survivors of a trauma which to the world beyond your borders was unimaginable, even though we all now know it happened.We will not pretend to know how you must overcome the unimaginable. We can only offer, in humility, the hope and the prayer that you will overcome — and the pledge that we stand prepared to...

"United" Nations/Human Rights

September 6, 2009

Revealed: The First Published Images of Camp 12, Chongo-Ri, North Korea

Recently, Chosun Ilbo reporter and North Korean gulag survivor Kang Chol Hwan published this story about a remote labor camp in North Korea, its recent expansion to support a crackdown on defectors, and the horrific conditions there: The Chongori reeducation center in North Hamgyong Province that went through the greatest change. The center has been reorganized as a concentration camp exclusively for arrested defectors. It has reportedly turned into a living hell, where labor is much heavier than at ordinary...

Google Earth/Human Rights/Inside NK/The Camps

September 2, 2009

Just What North Korea Needed: Another Death Camp

Just when I thought that North Korea couldn’t possibly find worse ways to spend its drug-and-gun money than nuclear weapons or the Ryugyong Hotel: Amid signs of mass defections as the international community began putting pressure on North Korea in the wake of its latest nuclear test, the regime in early May gave orders that no resident was to be allowed to flee the country, followed by a massive crackdown. The National Defense Commission gave village-to-village indoctrination lectures on a...

Human Rights/The Camps

August 24, 2009

Lisa Ling’s Husband Expresses Concern for Refugees; Mitch Koss, Laura Ling, and Euna Lee Remain Silent

The Wall Street Journal has published its own report on the scandal that is becoming a serious threat to (among other things) Laura Ling and Euna Lee’s public image as newsworthy victims. The Journal’s story adds fuel to suspicions that Ling, Lee, and producer Mitch Koss recklessly endangered the lives of refugees and activists by carrying video of them into North Korean territory, or otherwise failed to take measures to prevent that video from falling into Chinese and North Korean...

China & Korea/Ling/Lee Incident/Media Criticism

August 13, 2009

China Finally Enforcing N. Korea Sanctions, Kinda?

To say the very least, I remain deeply skeptical that China’s effort will be sustained, complete, or in good faith, but here are two stories that suggest to some degree, China is restricting trade with North Korea. The first (as the reader who sent the link notes) comes directly from the ChiCom state media, so take it with a tablespoon of salt. Shan, who has run the corporation for 16 years, said he has forged close relations with officials in...

"United" Nations/China & Korea/Kremlinology/Sanctions

July 7, 2009

North Korea’s Great Leap Backward

It’s not just on this blog where the ill-informed and the self-deluded continue to defy years of bitter experience and advocate “engagement” with the North Korean regime as a way to encourage economic reform. You can still hear academics in Washington cite the potential for economic reform in North Korea as a reason not to impose sanctions after North Korea’s nuke and missile tests. Some day, we must make a point of tabulating the amount of money spent on this...

China & Korea/Famine & Food Aid/NK Economics

June 20, 2009

Iran on the Brink

It has started: Witnesses said police fired tear gas and water cannons at thousands of protesters who rallied in Tehran Saturday in open defiance of Iran‘s clerical government, sharply escalating the most serious internal conflict since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Eyewitnesses described fierce clashes near Revolution Square in central Tehran after some 3,000 protesters chanted “Death to the dictator!” and “Death to dictatorship!” Police responded with tear gas and water cannons, the witnesses said. English-language state TV said a blast...

Iran

May 12, 2009

Hunger and Anger in North Korea

It’s not news to readers of this site, but North Koreans’ views about their overlords are a bit more complex than the invincible one-hearted unity of Arirang pixels: Public discontent is simmering in North Korea after the hardline communist regime imposed tighter restrictions on market trading in an attempt to reassert its control over the state, observers say. [….] The latest crackdown began after elections on March 8 for a new parliament, according to Good Friends, a Seoul-based research group...

Famine & Food Aid

February 4, 2009

New Reports Accuse N. Korea of Starving and Exploiting Kids

Barring a few privileged exceptions, the lives of children are dirt cheap north of the DMZ. Last year, UNICEF and the World Food Program reported that 40% of North Korea’s children are chronically malnourished. The children in this video are mostly orphans; they’re homless kids known as “kotjaebi.” They began to appear on the streets of North Korean cities after the Great Famine killed or displaced many of their parents. They live by begging, stealing, foraging on trash, or getting...

Uncategorized

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...

Defectors/NK Military/Refugees

June 4, 2008

In Food Aid Talks, North Korea Reverts to Old Ways; Regime Thins Population of P’yang

A reliable source who asks not to be named e-mailed me yesterday to pass along a fly-on-the-wall description of an “expert’s meeting” in Beijing. The purpose of the meeting between U.S. and North Korean officials had been to agree on the technical details of the U.S. food aid program — exactly how the North Korean regime will and will not allow us to feed its population. The meeting was described as “fairly downbeat” and “contentious,” with the North Korean negotiators...

Famine & Food Aid/Regime Change

April 30, 2008

Better Them Than Us: Korean Nationalism Turns on China

As I suspected, the China’s censorship-by-thug on the streets of Seoul is not proving popular among Koreans. The Chinese government seems to be coming to grips with the P.R. disaster it has made for itself. Its diplomats, though not quite in a full kowtow position, are offering either an apology or whatever it is that Asian diplomats offer when national pride prevents one: South Korea’s Foreign Ministry expressed regret Monday to China’s ambassador to Seoul, Ning Fukui, over the incident,...

Censorship/China & Korea/Democracy/Korean Law

April 22, 2008

House Foreign Affairs Committee Leaders Co-Sponsor Bi-Partisan N.K. Human Rights Bill

[Updated and bumped 4/22: The GPO has published the full text; it’s here: hr-5834.pdf It mainly reauthorizes the existing Act, tightens State’s reporting requirements, and adds more power and prestige to the post of Special Envoy. It also demands quick action from State on increasing radio broadcasting and “facilitating the submission of applications” for asylum at our consular facilities in Asia.] I don’t have a link to the bill or this press release yet, but it’s from a...

Human Rights/Refugees/U.S. Politics

April 4, 2008

N. Korea Food Situation Continues to Worsen: Protests Continue in Chongjin; Food Prices Skyrocket; Kim Jong Il Asks China for ‘Massive’ Food Aid

[Update: A reader — one you and I both respect — writes to warn that we shouldn’t rely too heavily on the reports of Good Friends. Well, yes, the obvious caveats apply here: this being North Korea, we tend to treat third-hand rumors and hearsay, possibly further garbled by translation, as news. What I try to do here that news sites don’t do is to put each report in the context of other facts reported by other sources, either previously...

Famine & Food Aid/Regime Change/Resistance

March 21, 2008

Tibet Updates

WORDS I NEVER THOUGHT I’D SAY: Hooray for France. A DARFUR ACTIVIST GROUP will hold an illegal protest in Beijing during the Olympics. Not even the Chinese can get away with brutalizing foreign, non-Asian liberals, or jailing them for years like they did Steve Kim. CHINA’S BRAND IMAGE is suffering in the region, too. Most of the press coverage has focused on a possible effect at the Beijing Olympics, but Asian nations that had seemed alarmingly deferential to the Motherland...

China

March 20, 2008

MUST READ: WaPo Predicts Food Situation Will Pressure Kim Jong Il (Updated and bumped)

The Washington Post is the latest news source to note the deterioration of North Korea’s food situation. The Post suggests that this time could be different from the Great Famine, when millions died quietly. A grim rite of spring in Northeast Asia is the calculation of how many North Koreans could starve before the fall harvest — and what the neighbors are willing to do about it. This year, though, the famine bailout season is more urgent, more complicated and...