Book Watch: ESCAPING NORTH KOREA by Mike Kim

Mike Kim is a Korean-American who has spent several years on the Chinese-Korean border working with North Korean refugees. Escaping North Korea combines straight reporting, analysis, impressions and autobiography to give a vivid picture of refugee life.

The result is often harrowing -- stories of human trafficking and North Korean women being sold as wives or slaves to Chinese farmers are among the most frightening things I've ever read -- but also inspiring, even charming.

In one chapter, Kim describes helping four teenaged refugees force their way past a Chinese security guard to enter the British Consulate in Shanghai and request asylum. Its a suspenseful episode - if the guard manages to stop one or more of the kids, its almost certain they'll end up in a gulag back in the DPRK. Kim advises the youths to punch, kick, scratch and even bite their way free if the guard manages to grab them.

Yet despite the danger, Kim takes the time to describe the kids first encounter with McDonald's and Starbucks, and shows them teasing each other and having a laugh as normal teenagers would. It's a striking, hopeful moment, a vivid reminder of how little actually separates those of us outside the DPRK with those within.

Kim's organization is called Crossing Borders, and it's a Christian NGO with a multifaceted approach to aiding North Korean refugees (on the Chinese) that includes placing families in shelters, running orphanages for refugee children and even providing work to some, making small crosses to be sold in the US.

The website stresses that in no way does Crossing Borders require that refugees become Christian to receive their services, but the organization does provide "spiritual healing" and "spreads the message of the Gospel with all refugees."

The regime is clearly threatened by religion, and documents acquired by Open Doors International suggest that North Korea feels Christianity is responsible for the fall of communism in Europe.

Some estimates have put the number of North Korean Christians at over 100,000, Kim writes.

Yet I have doubts about how useful a tool Christianity can be against the regime because of the dangers the converted face if they choose to return to North Korea.

Kim describes meeting one North Korean Christian, whom he calls Mr. Lee, in China just before the man returned to the DPRK.

"Here in China," Lee says. "I've learned about God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit. I'm thankful that people here have taught me the Bible...When I go back to North Korea, it will be very hard. I will get beaten, and I might even die." Lee then breaks down in tears.

Kim also describes the dangers and difficulties of smuggling Bibles across the border.

The persecution of Christians in the DPRK is abominable. In prisons, they are not allowed even to look at the sky, and many develop hunchbacks or "90-degree curvature of the spine." Some have had their fingernails and toenails pulled out and had nails hammered into their skin.

Executions are also common, and repression in the DRPK is so pervasive, and the slightest infraction - or even suspicion - can get a three generations of a person's family put into a gulag.

Religion may provide hope and comfort to the oppressed, but I'm not yet convinced that returning to the DPRK and becoming a martyr has much practical value.

Information is the key to undermining the regime and bringing about change for the North Koreans, so why risk lives and efforts to teach them about the rewards awaiting them in the next life instead of focusing efforts on spreading the news, politics and history of the outside world that has been denied to them for generations?

Anyone out there have any thoughts?

Kim Jong-Il's Grandson Gets Jiggy At A Pop Concert

From AP via FoxNews.

Kim Jong Nam — the boy's father and the North Korean leader's eldest son — bought the tickets worth about $1,400 and allowed his son to invite his friends, the newspaper said.

North Korea's state-run media frequently warn that imperialists are trying to poison the country's culture and ideals. But South Korean pop culture still appears to be gaining popularity through smuggled TV dramas and movies, defectors say.

Full story here.

Selling Cars in DPRK

I'll be writing more about business in North Korea soon, particularly the markets (seen on Google Earth) that North Korean Economy Watch, among others, has been covering. But I wanted to share this Wall Street Journal article, largely because I'm not sure what, if anything, it signifies.

SEOUL -- A South Korean company that builds and sells cars in North Korea made money -- albeit a small amount -- for the first time last year, the company said Wednesday.

Pyeonghwa Motors Corp., closely linked to the Unification Church, earned about $700,000 on the sale of about 650 cars in North Korea, a company spokesman said. The company remitted $500,000 of the net profit to its headquarters in Seoul in a U.S. dollar-denominated transactions through Hong Kong, he said.

It's not clear who's buying the cars, but I would imagine its the government, especially since some models seem to look like the coveted Mercedes-Benz models long favored by DPRK officials.

Another interesting graph on the state of foreign trade in North Korea:

Pyeonghwa, like other companies that do business in North Korea, faced enormous difficulty moving its money out of the country. Many Chinese businesses resort to buying commodities in North Korea with their profits, then exporting them to China to be sold for Chinese currency.

Anyone out there got any thoughts?

Inside the Gulags

WaPo's Blaine Harden has a great piece about the prison camps in North Korea, with an interactive map. Check it out here.

The Heir, Apparently, Ctd.

WaPo has as good a profile on Kim Jong-Un as we're likely to get for a while. The reports we keep seeing are that he was a shy student, was known as "Pak Un" while in Switzerland, and was keen on Jackie Chan and basketball.

Some personality details:

A senior U.S. official says he appears to have "the same interests as most 26-year-olds," noting that these do not generally involve nuclear strategy.

...

During his first few months in Liebefeld, Pak Un attended a remedial language course for foreign students with poor German. A swift learner, he soon switched to a regular class, said Studer, the education official, who described the boy as "well-integrated, diligent and ambitious." Friends recalled that Pak Un spoke fluent, if sometimes ungrammatical, German but struggled with the Swiss dialect. He also knew English.

...

Though generally quiet in class and sometimes awkward, particularly around girls, Pak Un showed a different personality on the basketball court, former friends recalled. He fell in with a group of mostly immigrant kids who shared his love of the National Basketball Association.

Kovacevic, who shot hoops with the North Korean most days, said Pak Un was a fiercely competitive player. "He was very explosive. He could make things happen. He was the playmaker," said Kovacevic, who now works as a tech specialist in the Swiss army. "If I wasn't sure I could make a shot, I always knew he could."

Marco Imhof, another Swiss basketball buddy, said the Korean was tough and fast, good at both shooting and dribbling. "He hated to lose. Winning was very important," recalled Imhof. Pak Un also liked action films featuring hand-to-hand fighting, particularly those starring the Hong Kong kung fu star Jackie Chan, and played combat games on a Sony PlayStation.

This picture of a focused, competitive young man matches what until now has been the only firsthand account of Kim Jong Un. That was provided by a Japanese sushi chef who claims to have worked in Pyongyang as a cook for the Kim family. The chef, who wrote a book on his experiences in Japanese under the pseudonym Kenji Fujimoto, described the boy as strong-willed, proud and "boss-like."

During his time in Liebefeld, friends remembered, Pak Un showed scant interest in politics and never vented publicly against Americans. Instead, he worshiped American basketball stars. He spent hours doing meticulous pencil drawings of Chicago Bulls superstar Michael Jordan.

Full story here.

Kim Jong-Il May Have Pancreatic Cancer

A South Korean TV station is reporting that "dear leader" Kim Jong-Il has pancreatic cancer.

From Guardian:

The reports came days after images appeared of the 67-year-old looking gaunt in a rare public appearance, increasing speculation that his health was worsening after a reported stroke last year.

Seoul's YTN television channel reported that Kim had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, citing unidentified intelligence officials in South Korea and China as saying the illness was threatening his life.

South Korea's National Intelligence Service said it could not confirm the report, and a unification ministry spokesman, Chun Hae-sung, told reporters he knew nothing of the claims.

Full story here:

Kim Jong-Il, looking frail at a recent event (Photo: AP)

Clinton Appeals for Amnesty For Ling and Lee

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has called for amnesty for Laura Ling and Euna Lee, saying that the two women had expressed "great remorse for the incident." Clinton also said that "everyone is very sorry that it happened."

The BBC News article also has more on Han Park, the University of Georgia professor who recently returned from Pyongyang.

If Park's reports are accurate and North Korea is likely to respond to a formal apology, then this might be a very good sign.

North Korea NOT Behind Cyber-Attack?

From AP, via The Philadelphia Inquirier:

"Cyber experts familiar with the probe are divided on the extent of North Korean involvement, split between those who believe hackers may have simply used zombie computers in the region and those who think the communist nation has moved to the digital battlefield. "

Hmmm. Full story here, plus PC World's take here.

Detained Journalists Reportedly Being Held in Guest House

Hat tip: ROK Drop.

If its true, it suggests both that the North Koreans don't want Euna Lee and Laura Ling to be able to report conditions in a labor camp and that they are willing to discuss the journalists' release with the U.S.

From Huffington Post:

SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea has delayed sending two convicted U.S. journalists to a prison labor camp, in a possible attempt to seek talks with Washington on their release, a scholar who visited the North said in an interview published Friday.

Laura Ling and Euna lee, who work for former U.S. Vice President Al Gore's California-based Current TV media group, are being kept at guest house in the North Korean capital and have not yet been sent to a prison camp as called for in their sentences, University of Georgia political scientist Han Park said.

"I heard from North Korean officials that the American journalists were doing fine at a guest house in Pyongyang," Park told South Korea's JoongAng Ilbo newspaper. Park, originally from South Korea, arrived Thursday in Seoul following a trip to Pyongyang.

...

North Korea's move not to carry out the sentence suggests that it could release them through a dialogue with the United States and they could be set free at an early date, depending on the U.S. gesture," Park said.

Separately, Park told South Korea's Yonhap news agency that the issue of the journalists could be resolved if the U.S. government offers an official apology over their hostile acts and promises that such things won't happen again.

He also predicted that Washington and Pyongyang could hold a dialogue soon over the journalists' release and their return to the U.S., according to Yonhap. No timeframe for a possible meeting was given, and officials in Washington could not immediately be reached to comment on the likelihood of such discussions taking place.

Detained Journalist Talks to Sister - A Message from the DPRK?

From Reuters:

Lisa Ling told Sacramento NBC affiliate KCRA that her sister Laura told her by telephone on Tuesday that she and colleague Lee had violated North Korean law and needed help from the U.S. government to secure amnesty.

She quoted Laura Ling as saying: "We broke the law, we are sorry, and we need help. We need our government's help to try and get amnesty because that really is our only hope."

Soon afterward, U.S. State Department spokesman Ian Kelly called on North Korea to release them on grounds of "amnesty," implying for the first time that the U.S. government believes they committed an offense.

Previously, the State Department had called for their release on "humanitarian" grounds and had not acknowledged the possibility of any wrongdoing.

Lisa Ling goes on to say that this phone calls sounded different from the two previous conversations she'd had with her sister since Laura was detained in March; this time, her sister spoke very slowly and deliberately. Full story here.

Very possible, of course, that the entire call was staged or that the slow and deliberate speech was Ling reciting a prepared statement. If that's the case, and its the North telling her to ask the US government for help, does this mean they're willing to talk?

Euna Lee and Laura Ling (Photo: AP)

A DPRK Cyber-Attack on Seoul and Washington?

From The Times, Fox News and Korea Times.

Reports are coming in that North Korea is behind a series of attacks that affected South Korean known as a distributed denial of service. Essentially, a virus infects computers and makes them flood the targeted websites with traffic, causing them to overload and shut down.

The attack reportedly targeted 25 websites including the White House, the Blue House (the office of the South Korean president), the website of the Chosun Ilbo (a South Korean Newspaper), various foreign ministries, two banks and a joint US-South Korea military command.

An unnamed U.S. defense official told Fox News that the defense and state departments were also targeted.

The South Korean Defense Security Command reported last month that it detects an average of 95,000 attempts to penetrate the country's military computer networks per day.

A Yoduk Survivor Tells Her Story

Hat Tip: DPRK Forum:

Seven More Missiles Launched

Larger than the ones tested earlier this week, but still short-range. WaPo's report here.

Two New Launches from DPRK:

The first, as expected, was of four short-range missiles, fired into the Sea of Japan on Thursday. There are persistent media reports, apparently based on Japanese intelligence reports, that North Korea plans to launch a long-range ballistic missile towards Hawaii on July 4th.

More on Thursday's missile launch from NYT and The Korea Times.

The second launch was far more surprising: a beer commercial.

The DPRK has begun airing ads for the brew on state television. BBC reports that the Taedonggang beer company bought a brewery from the UK and had the entire plant shipped back to North Korea in 2002. Full article and commercial here.

More on signs of commercialization in the DPRK to follow in later posts.

The Heir, Apparently

From June 19: Japan's Yomiuri Shinbun reports on Kim Jong Un's schooling in Bern, Switzerland.