Search Results for: censorship

April 15, 2012

Client Number Nine Leaves the Eighth Floor

Until last week, the Associated Press and the North Korean regime had co-sponsored a photo exhibition in New York to commemorate the lives and legacies of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il. The exhibition appears to have been one of North Korea’s demands of the AP, part of a deal in which the AP secured permission to open a bureau in Pyongyang. I had previously posted some samples of the exhibition here and here, confirming that the photos exhibited...

Categories AP Watch
July 14, 2011

Sohn Hak-Kyu’s Olympic Folly

Why did I shudder when I heard that South Korea had won the winter Olympics? Because I knew it was just a matter of time before some imbecile had an idea like this one: Rep. Sohn Hak-kyu, chairman of the opposition Democratic Party, said Monday the party would push for “some events at the 2018 Winter Olympics to be staged in North Korea. He said he would also bring up the issue of forming a unified team with the North...

Categories Korean Politics/Sports
June 15, 2011

State Department Funds Global Internet Revolution

I believe that history will eventually record this little-noticed policy decision as the game-changer in America’s half-century standoff with North Korea. No one can predict when we’ll see the result, but for all their imperfections of vision and execution, the Obama Administration and Secretary of State Clinton in particular deserve tremendous credit for this. The Obama administration is leading a global effort to deploy “shadow” Internet and mobile phone systems that dissidents can use to undermine repressive governments that seek...

Categories Subversion/Technology
January 21, 2011

Open Sources

“In the order, the party stressed that soldiers standing guard over the border are surviving on canned cornmeal porridge and threatened to assess the amount of donations by individual entity,” the RFA said, adding the North failed to attain its goal of securing 1.6 million tons in provisions for the military last year.” [Yonhap] Whoever can smuggle food into North Korea now can trade it for information, the use of a truck, weapons, or ammunition. Just use your imagination. __________________________________...

Categories Anju Links
January 11, 2011

Open Sources

China’s best efforts notwithstanding, North Korea’s total foreign trade fell by 10% between 2008 and 2009. It gives some cause for hope that China can’t completely undermine the effect of international and U.S. Treasury sanctions, although those only really came into force in 2009 and 2010, respectively. My best guess is that this drop can mostly be attributed to reduced trade with South Korea. Hat tip: James again. _____________________________ North Korean missiles a direct threat to the United States? Well,...

Categories Anju Links
December 27, 2010

Open Sources

Fighting Words, Part I: In an “only in North Korea” moment, soldiers go on TV to boast about shelling a village full of civilians: On Friday, North Korean soldiers appeared on a state TV program marking Kim’s appointment anniversary and bragged of participating in the artillery barrage. “Our eyes were full of fire right after we saw the enemy’s shells being fired into our sacred waters,” soldier Kim Moon Chol said, clinching his fists and standing shoulder-to-shoulder with three uniformed...

Categories Anju Links
November 20, 2010

Is Kim Jong Eun Already the Most Hated Man in North Korea?

More reports from Open News claim that the deification of Kim Jong-Eun is causing a backlash of discontent among the North Korean people: The source explained that “The punishment for attacking the government within North Korea is execution, so instead there have been outbreaks of criticism through graffiti across train stations, apartment walls, market places, and public buildings”¦according to others the graffiti expresses very strong discontent with Kim Jeong-Eun’s appointment as successor. The last time there were multiple reports of...

Categories Kim Jong Un
November 9, 2010

Interesting: The rapid ascent of Kim Jong Eun and the building of a new ruling cast in Pyongyang is causing ripples to be felt in North Korea’s foreign currency earning apparatus. In Beijing, it is clear that anyone considered a supporter of Kim Jong Nam or Oh Keuk Ryul faces a rough ride. [Daily NK] The purge of those linked to Kim Jong-Nam isn’t a surprise at all. Jong-Nam has publicly criticized North Korea’s dynastic succession and predicted the collapse...

Categories Anju Links
July 21, 2010

Will a North Korean Attack Win the Yellow Sea for China?

Is the Yellow Sea a Chinese lake? Under ordinary circumstances, I’d understand China’s complaints about a U.S. naval exercise in an inland sea near its shores. It’s not as if I’d want Chinese ships in the Gulf of Mexico, either, but these are not ordinary circumstances. This time, North Korea has sunk a South Korean warship, and China has both shielded North Korea from any consequences for that attack and continued to provide necessary financial support to the regime that...

Categories China/China & Korea
January 26, 2010

Who Is Still Free Not to Be Muslim?

Let’s begin by dispensing with the moot question of whether I agree with all that Geert Wilders has said. I don’t, and I specifically disagree with statements by Wilders, such as his call for the Koran to be banned, that are themselves incompatible with the freedom of speech Wilders now defends so articulately. But almost by definition, people who become the state’s first targets for censorship have inevitably expressed views that are controversial, even indefensible. Wilders is now facing prosecution...

Categories Censorship/Islam
January 15, 2010

North Korea Battles Rising Cell Phone Use

Cell phone use continues to grow in North Korea, despite the government’s best efforts to block it. Handsets are used to make appointments and payments and to trade goods. Even South Korean pastors are using cell phones to give sermons to people in North Korea. If cell phones connected to the North are linked to the South via the Internet, this provides valuable information unobtainable through traditional media. Competition for breaking news is expected among South Korean civic groups related...

Categories Inside NK/Subversion
January 13, 2010

13 January 2010: Sarah Palin Unwittingly Makes Case for Withdrawing Most of USFK (Update: Palin Denies)

SHE COULD HAVE BEEN TALKING ABOUT NORTH KOREA: One of the hallmarks of a regime in financial trouble is a complicated regime of “special” exchange rates aimed at getting around the problems caused by financial mismanagement. The devaluation that Venezuela announced last week may have been a good idea, given the country’s recession, and the problems of declining oil revenues. But the way Chavez has gone about the thing is typically ham-fisted. By Sunday, he was threatening to deploy the...

Categories Anju Links
December 10, 2009

More on Australia’s Denial of Visas to N. Korean Propaganda Artists

In Australia, five artists from the Mansudae Art Studio were invited to the Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art in Queensland state to talk about 15 pieces the organizers commissioned for the exhibition, which includes work from more than 100 artists from 25 countries. Foreign Minister Stephen Smith rejected the artists’ applications for an exception to a visa ban on North Korea, part of targeted sanctions imposed in 2006 in response to the country’s steps to develop atomic weapons. Organizers...

Categories "United" Nations/Censorship/Propaganda/Sanctions
June 17, 2009

KCNA: Ling and Lee Filmed Themselves Entering North Korea (Updated, Bumped)

[Original post, 16 Jun 09] I’ll certainly reserve judgment until we see the videotape and until Ms. Ling and Ms. Lee can freely authenticate it, but if that’s true, it would be, well, stupid, even if it were done with the purpose of informing us about an important issue: “We’ve just entered a North Korean courtyard without permission,” the Korean translation of their narration on the videotape said, according to KCNA. One of them picked up and pocketed a stone...

Categories Ling/Lee Incident
March 21, 2009

Iran Still Not Feeling the Whole ‘Hope and Change’ Thing

The idea of an outreach to the Iranian people would have made sense — up to a point — had Obama spoken through the despised mullahs rather than to them. Yet the great irony of Obama’s attempt to connect with Iranians is that it probably convinced them that he’s completely out of touch with their aspirations and reinforced popular notions of America as decadent, weak, and self-absorbed: Khamenei set the bar impossibly high — demanding an overhaul of U.S. foreign...

Categories Iran
February 7, 2009

Unifiction Ministry Reverts to Form

It’s official: the Unifiction Ministry should have been abolished after all: The Ministry of Unification announced Wednesday that it would ask police to investigate anti-Pyongyang activist leaders if they press ahead with their plan to launch propaganda leaflets and North Korean banknotes across the border to the North. A ministry official, along with a representative from police, met with organizers planning to launch the anti-North Korean leaflets, activists said. The two organizers who met the ministry official were Choi Sung-yong,...

Categories Activism/Appeasement/Deprogramming/Famine & Food Aid
October 30, 2008

N. Korea Marks Terror De-Listing By Threatening to Turn Seoul into ‘Debris.’

Never mind North Korea’s sponsorship of terrorism.  I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again:  any government that delivers messages like these should be listed as a specially designated terrorist group: “We clarify our stand that should the South Korean puppet authorities continue scattering leaflets and conducting a smear campaign with sheer fabrications, our army will take a resolute practical action as we have already warned,” the official KCNA news agency quoted the military spokesman as  saying. At a...

Categories Censorship/Democracy/Terrorism (NK)
August 11, 2008

The Freedom of the State’s Press to Deceive the People Shall Be Abridged

[Updated below] In the wake of a court’s decision ordering a retraction of a distorted, sloppy, and  false  MBC report that triggered massive anti-government protests, Lee Myung Bak is moving to clean house.   A principled approach would be to ask why Korea’s government (or for that matter, ours) is in the business of broadcasting the news anyway and just saw off this vestigial limb.  Instead, Lee is being Lee and conducting a purge. The shakeup culminated on Friday at national...

Categories Anti-Americanism/Censorship/Korean Society/Media Criticism/The Fifth Column