Kang Chol-Hwan on the Dangers of Nuke-centric Policy

From The Chosun Ilbo:

The strongest prop of the North Korean regime is concentration camps. These are less like Stalin's Siberian gulags or Mao Zedong's Laogai concentration camps than Hitler's Auschwitz. After World War II, humanity promised never again to permit such camps on earth, and the world community intervenes in crimes against humanity across borders. The collective insanity of the Hitler regime was intricately linked with the concentration camps, which crushed all dissent. 



By running the concentration camps, the North Korean regime has been able to maintain power even after starving 3 million people to death in peacetime. These camps house some 200,000 to 300,000 political prisoners and their families, who are systematically slaughtered. Even party officials are afraid of being sent there. Hwang Jang-yop, a former secretary of the Workers' Party who defected to the South, said, "Even senior party members can't talk freely at homes for fear of being wiretapped, so they always have important conversations outside." 



The silence of the international community on the barbaric massacres in the concentration camps committed by Kim Jong-il borders on the criminal. Some 17,000 North Korean defectors in the South are complaining about the atrocity, but no country pays any attention. Even the South Korean government and people do not realize how serious the problem is.

Full story here.

North Korea Has Two Ways to Make Bomb

From yesterday's NYT, a bit more context on the DPRK's nuclear ambitions.

SEOUL — North Korea’s announcement on Friday that its experiment in enriching uranium is at “completion stage” marks the strongest signal yet from Pyongyang that it is racing to develop a second method of making nuclear bombs.

North Korea also said it was building additional nuclear bombs with plutonium it had recently gleaned from its reactor in Yongbyon. It said it had completed reprocessing the latest batch of spent fuel unloaded from the reactor, repeating the procedure believed to have given the North enough plutonium for six to eight bombs.

For years, officials in Washington and elsewhere have debated whether North Korea was pursuing a clandestine uranium-enrichment program. After years of denial, North Korea announced in April that it intended to enrich uranium.

In June, it said its enrichment program was in an “experimental stage.”

Full story here.

Pyongyang's "Hotel of Doom" - Now With Less Gloom!

Here's an odd piece from Reuters:

SEOUL (Reuters) - A towering North Korean hotel which Esquire magazine once dubbed "the worst building in the history of mankind" has come back to life with a facade of shiny glass windows affixed to one side of the concrete monolith.

But few expect the North will ever finish construction of its 105-storey Ryugyong Hotel, started in 1987 and halted for 16 years because it could have bankrupted the destitute state.

"The hotel doesn't look as shoddy as it once did, probably because of the reflective glass," said a member of a civic group in South Korea that recently returned from a visit to the North.

The 330-meter (1,083 ft) tall hotel dominating the Pyongyang skyline consists of three wings rising at 75 degree angles capped by several floors arranged in rings supposed to hold five revolving restaurants and an observation deck.

(Photo: Reuters)

Full story here.

DPRK In Final Stage of Enrichment?

From CNN:

(CNN) — North Korea’s state-run news agency said Thursday that the country has sent a letter to the United Nations announcing that “reprocessing of spent fuel rods is at its final phase and extracted plutonium is being weaponized.”

North Korea can also now enter the final stage of uranium enrichment, it said in the letter to the president of the U.N. Security Council, according to state-run KCNA.

Despite stating in the letter that they “totally reject” a Security Council resolution in June that demanded that the country no longer pursue nuclear weapons, the North Koreans said they are “prepared for both dialogue and sanctions,” KCNA reported.

The government also warned, “If some permanent members of the UNSC wish to put sanctions first before dialogue, we would respond with bolstering our nuclear deterrence first before we meet them in a dialogue,” according to KCNA.

The news comes on the heels of the Obama administration’s latest attempt to restart stalled nuclear negotiations with the reclusive state. In the coming days, U.S. envoy Stephen Bosworth and the director of the State Department’s Office of Korean Affairs, Sung Kim, will meet with officials representing China, Japan, South Korea and Russia — all countries partnering with the United States in talks aimed at ending North Korea’s nuclear program.

Hmmm.

Lee and Ling Speak Out

I'm playing catch-up after some vacation time, but Lee and Ling wrote this piece in the LATimes Tuesday detailing their capture and imprisonment.

They concede they entered North Korea briefly, but, sure enough, they were snatched on the Chinese side of the border.

Feeling nervous about where we were, we quickly turned back toward China. Midway across the ice, we heard yelling. We looked back and saw two North Korean soldiers with rifles running toward us. Instinctively, we ran.

We were firmly back inside China when the soldiers apprehended us. Producer Mitch Koss and our guide were both able to outrun the border guards. We were not. We tried with all our might to cling to bushes, ground, anything that would keep us on Chinese soil, but we were no match for the determined soldiers. They violently dragged us back across the ice to North Korea and marched us to a nearby army base, where we were detained.

...

In researching the story, we sought help from several activists and missionaries who operate in the region. Our main contact was the Seoul-based Rev. Chun Ki-won, a well-known figure in the world of North Korean defectors. Chun and his network have helped smuggle hundreds of North
Koreans out of China and into countries -- including the U.S. -- where they can start new lives. He introduced us to our guide and gave us a cellphone to use in China, telephone numbers to reach his associates and specific instructions on how to contact them. We carefully followed his directions so as to not endanger anyone in this underground world.

Because these defectors live in fear of being repatriated to North Korea, we took extreme caution to ensure that the people we interviewed and their locations were not identifiable. We met with defectors away from their actual places of work or residence. We avoided filming the faces of defectors so as not to reveal their identities. The exception was one woman who allowed us to film her profile.

Most of the North Koreans we spoke with said they were fleeing poverty and food shortages. One girl in her early 20s said she had been told she could find work in the computer industry in China. After being smuggled across the Tumen River, she found herself working with computers, but not in the way she had expected. She became one of a growing number of North Korean women who are being used as Internet sex workers, undressing for online clients on streaming video. Some defectors appeared more nervous about being interviewed than others. But they all agreed that their lives in China, while stark, were better than what they had left behind in North Korea.

Full story here.

Mobile Phones in the North?

Apparently so. From Daily NK:

Changchun, China -- The number of mobile phone users within Pyongyang has been increasing rapidly since the service was launched last December, with affluent citizens and even some students using them.

A source from Pyongyang said in an interview with Daily NK on the 17th, “Demand for mobile phones has been increasing. Almost 30 percent of Pyongyang citizens seem to be using them. Only cadres in the Central Committee of the Party and foreigners cannot.”

…

People may only use phones in their own name, and any impropriety is investigated by the National Security Agency. Additionally, one cannot use two phones simultaneously.

“The authorities seem to be listening in to the mobile phones as well,” the source said. “There was a case last month where a trader dealing with antiques using his mobile phone was uncovered by the NSA,” the source said.

…

The price of a mobile phone is around 120 dollars, but just 90 dollars when bought by a group. The charge for a phone is fixed at 3,000 North Korean won a month for eight hours of talk time. If that time is exceeded, 15 Euros is levied in extra charges.

“The usage of mobile phones is only currently for Pyongyang citizens, and although they can call Sariwon in North Hwanghae Province the call quality is not so good. Therefore, people use them only within Pyongyang.”

Full story here.

DPRK to Reopen Border with South

Looks like the North will allow some reunions of families separated by the border. They will also allow tour groups to visit certain parts of the DRPK. From NYT:

The conciliatory move, coming just after the high-profile releases of two American journalists and a South Korean worker detained by the North, seemed likely to ease the growing anxiety on the Korean peninsula.

...

But the North, in the announcement Monday by its official news agency, also warned the United States and South Korea about their joint military exercises, which the North said were “obviously maneuvers for a war of aggression.” It said an “annihilating” retaliation could be one consequence. Still, that kind of bellicose language is almost standard from the North and was eclipsed by its outreach about the border and tourism.

Analysts have said North Korea is eager to re-establish contacts with Washington and Seoul in hopes of undermining the United Nations’ sanctions over its nuclear program.

The North said it would allow reunions of Korean families separated by the 1950-53 Korean War, with visits taking place at Mount Kumgang, or Diamond Mountain, during the three-day Harvest Moon Festival, when Koreans traditionally visit their hometowns. This year the festival begins Oct. 3.

Regular visits to Mount Kumgang on North Korea’s eastern coast will start “as soon as possible,” the official North Korean news agency reported, as well as visits to the ancient border town of Kaesong.

Programs allowing tour groups — predominantly South Koreans — to visit the North were expanded in October 2007 but were stopped last year when a South Korean tourist at Kumgang who apparently entered a restricted zone was fatally shot by a North Korean guard.

Full story here.

DPRK Frees Auto Worker

The North has released a South Korean prisoner held since March. Friom the AP:

SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea freed a South Korean worker Thursday it had detained for months for allegedly denouncing its political system — an apparent goodwill gesture toward Seoul and Washington amid the standoff over the regime's nuclear weapons program.

Last week, the North released jailed American journalists Euna Lee and Laura Ling to former U.S. President Bill Clinton, helping ease months of tensions stoked by the country's recent atomic and long-range rocket tests.

On Thursday, Pyongyang deported Yoo Seong-jin, a 44-year-old technician who worked at a joint industrial park in the North, where about 110 South Korean-run factories employ about 40,000 North Korean workers.

Yoo has been held for allegedly denouncing the North's government and attempting to persuade a North Korean worker to defect.

"I'm happy that I returned safely," Yoo told reporters in a brief comment after arriving at a South Korean immigration control center near the border.

Hyundai Group Chairwoman Hyun Jung-eun has been in the North for the past few days, and she may have negotiated the release of Yoo, who is an employee for Hyundai's North Korean business arm, Hyundai Asan.

Full story here.

Kang Chol-Hwan Weighs In...

Kang Chol-Hwan is a North Korean refugee who has become a South Korean journalist. His chilling memoir of growing up in the Yodok prison camp, The Aquariums of Pyongyang, is one of the best books I've read on North Korea thus far.

Everything he writes is worth reading, including his new column in The Chosun Ilbo, in which he responds to Clinton's visit to Pyongyang to free Ling and Lee.

Former U.S. President Bill Clinton's surprise visit to North Korea to win the release of two American journalists went according to North Korean leader Kim Jong-il's script. The North used the capture of the two reporters to its utmost advantage, the hostages providing it with an ideal opportunity to lure an eminent American onto its soil just when it became subject to tighter sanctions over its nuclear tests and missile launches from the international community and the U.S. in particular. It was a lucky break of the first order.

...

In the past half century, the North has essentially consolidated itself by the sole expedient of anti-Americanism, defining the U.S. as a longstanding enemy. According to North Korean propaganda, America is the great imperial power, desperate to destroy the last bastion of socialism. North Korea alone holds out against it now that the Soviet Union has fallen and China has deserted the cause.



Few North Koreans believe the propaganda any longer. Many among the North Korean privileged classes are beginning to think it is not China but North Korea which has deserted socialism, and some of them question the wisdom of dealing with the U.S. alone over the nuclear issue when they feel it could better be resolved with China. Hwang Jang-yeop, a former Secretary of the North Korean Workers' Party who defected to the South, recalls, "I often heard Kim Jong-il slander the Chinese leadership, but never heard him criticize the United States."



...

A sort of farce is being played out whereby the Kim regime, whose survival depends on China, is desperate to win recognition from the U.S. Why does North Korea insist on direct negotiations with Washington while distancing itself from its ally China, which holds all the economic and military keys? The answer lies in the threat called reform and opening.


The essence of all North Korean problems including nuclear, missile and human rights issues, is the fixation on maintaining the current dictatorship. Expanding trade between South Korea and China as well as China's rapid economic development represent the biggest threats to Kim Jong-il, who, accordingly, believes that nuclear armament is the only way to defend himself. North Korea's groveling reception of Bill Clinton and the release of detained journalists even as a South Korean remains locked up incommunicado at the joint Kaesong Industrial Complex, can be seen not as a diplomatic victory but as the last desperate effort to maintain the regime through hostage taking.

Full story here.

Kissinger on North Korea

Henry Kissinger offers his thoughts on Clinton's visit and its ramifications. From Sunday's NYT (emphasis added):

Context matters. It is less than six months since Pyongyang conducted a nuclear test and resumed the production of weapons-grade plutonium in violation of an agreement signed at the six-power conference in Beijing in February 2007. North Korea refused a visit by the new U.S. envoy charged with discussing its proliferation efforts. Pyongyang has rejected various U.N. Security Council resolutions to desist from these activities and to return to the six-party talks. A visit by a former president, who is married to the secretary of state, will enable Kim Jong-il to convey to North Korea, and perhaps to other countries, that his country is being accepted into the international community — the precise opposite of what the U.S. secretary of state has defined as the goal of U.S. policy until Pyongyang abandons its nuclear weapons program.

...

The root cause of our decade-old controversy with Pyongyang is that there is no middle ground between North Korea being a nuclear weapons state and a non-nuclear weapons state. At the end of a negotiation, North Korea will either destroy its nuclear arsenal, or it will become a de facto nuclear state. So far, it has used the negotiating forums available to it in a skillful campaign of procrastination, alternating leaps in technological progress with negotiating phases to consolidate it.

We seem to be approaching such a consolidating phase now. North Korea may return to its well-established tactic of diverting us with the prospect of imminent breakthroughs. This is exactly what happened after the last Korean nuclear weapons test in 2006. Pyongyang undoubtedly will continue to seek to achieve de facto acceptance as a nuclear weapons state by endlessly protracted diplomacy. The benign atmosphere by which it culminated its latest blackmail must not tempt us or our partners into bypaths that confuse atmosphere with substance. Any outcome other than the elimination of the North Korean nuclear military capability in a fixed time period is a blow to non-proliferation prospects worldwide and to peace and stability globally.

Full story here.