NK NEWS BRIEF | April 17, 2013

Female NKorean soldiers in high heels patrol the Yalu River at Sinuiju, April 11, 2013 | Image: AFP

NK INTERNAL

• Daily NK: Authorities are stepping up crackdowns on the viewing foreign media, reportedly in response to an increase in the use of USB sticks to view dramas on Chinese-made DVD players. “Some households own multiple DVD players so that they can hide one from the authorities and present the other. Other houses are just waiting for the crackdown to loosen up so that they can carry on as before.”

• Daily NK: A mosaic wall idolizing KIS and KJI in the border city of Musan collapsed the day before the Day of the Sun (April 15), reportedly because corruption led to poor construction.

• Daily NK: Possibly due to current political tensions, the annual “April Spring Friendship Art Festival” featuring foreigner performances was not held on Kim Il-sung’s birthday this year, nor was there the usual military parade in PY. In addition, aside from cookies and snacks for children, no special rations were distributed this year. “There’s been nothing other than candies and snacks for kids. Our people’s unit head told us that ‘the country is having a hard time so it cannot provide holiday distribution.’ This is the first time I can recall there being nothing on the Day of the Sun.”

• NFI on the effects and role of prostitution and sexually transmitted diseases in the KPA. Defector: “Women have to make a living too, and the best they have to offer is their bodies. Their primary source of income is the soldiers. As their sexual desires must be suppressed during military service, the young men are very bold and open about using prostitutes. The women receive food or cash for sleeping with them.”

• Daily NK: The increase in wartime rhetoric and drills without actual signs of conflict is fomenting distrust with the state run news agencies. “No matter what the Party shouts about, the people just don’t believe a word of it… More and more people are listening to external radio and spreading word of its contents, and that kind of information is gaining currency.”

• Korea Herald: Defector comments on the current situation in NK: “People’s grievances against the regime are quite serious. Some, even, hope a war will break out to overthrow the regime, as they have no power at all to do that by themselves.”

ECONOMY & TECHNOLOGY

• Daily NK: NK authorities claim that the state will begin normalizing rations from September. Under the so-called ‘byungjin line’, budget previously used for conventional arms procurement is able to be invested in the wider ‘People’s Economy’. “Rations have been already been expanded to include some factories, but not everyone. Though now word is spreading, causing the price of rice to fall in the market.”

• Authorities and tour agencies in Yanbian and Dandong have clamped down on travel into NK amidst the tense situation.

• European aid groups operating in NK will face difficulties if the EU decides to sanction NK’s main foreign exchange bank.

• Experts say NK is seeking to diversify trade with other countries to decrease reliance on China.

• The SK Foreign Minister expressed a positive assessment of China’s enforcement of sanctions. Truck driver on the Chinese-NK border: “Before, things like chemical products and pipes and steel were very common. Now, very few of these things are going across and the main products going in are fertilizer, washing powder, cooking oil, daily things. It’s all civilian trade. If there are any forbidden things, they have to be smuggled.”

• Yonhap: NK received 600,265 USD of anti-tuberculosis drugs in humanitarian aid from a private SK charity group.

• A new Daily NK video shows the prevalence of foreign currency in the markets.

• European luxury hotel chain Kempinski abandoned plans to run the Ryugyong Hotel in PY.

• Yonhap: NK denies SK businessmen from entering the KIC.

• NFI: “During the worst years of famine, each appliance sold on the jangmadang increased one’s lifespan by weeks and months. The mantra of those times was, ‘one must sell to live.’ Even today, things are not much different; one must still, more or less, sell to live.”

• Arirang: Anonymous took control over five NK websites on Kim Il-sung’s birthday.

• RFA: N Korean hackers access banking networks in “hostile” countries and disable their security software to steal money from individual or corporate accounts. KJU recently brought hackers of the NK’s military’s special Unit No. 3 back from China, where they had been operating, posing as researchers and businessmen in major cities like Beijing, Dalian, Tianjin, and Shanghai.

HUMAN RIGHTS & REFUGEES

• The ROKG will allow NKorean defectors to be experienced civil servants, ‘if they have working experience in their home country or hold a degree as civil servants.’

• Christian activist: “Along the border between NK and China, there is much more security… In the past, you could bribe your way past the soldiers, but now, because of the security situation, they dare not allow anyone in or out.”

• The Independent’s interview with Joo-il Kim, a defector who now lives in Surrey, UK.

• IsraAID, an Israel-based international relief group, will partner with Yonsei University in Seoul to train local aid workers in techniques for treating PTSD among defectors.

INTERNATIONAL POLITICS & SECURITY

• ROKG Official: “The ministry is not aware of any under-the-table contact [between NK and SK]. Now is not the right time for such a move.”

• NK regime denounced PGH’s attempts at dialogue as “a cunning ploy to hide the South’s policy of confrontation”. In response, the ROKG expressed “strong regret” over NK’s unwillingness to engage.

• NK Foreign Ministry: “The U.S. is sadly mistaken if it calculates the DPRK will pay slightest heed to such talk about dialogue as a robber’s calling for a negotiated solution while brandishing his gun… The DPRK is not opposed to dialogue but has no idea of sitting at the humiliating negotiating table with the party brandishing a nuclear stick.”

• NKorean ambo to the UK speech: “The western media… all are talking about tensions on the Korean peninsula. The problem is that they are describing it as if the DPRK is provoking. That is not true. We are being provoked by the US and South Korea and are only responding to that provocation and their military threats.”

• NK rejected an application from a delegation of SKorean companies to visit the KIC as a “humanitarian measure”. 205 SKoreans remain in the KIC.

• The Japanese ambassador to SK has stated that the Japanese government is willing to sign a military intelligence sharing pact “at any time”.

• A US military intelligence agency says that NK may have the ability to mount nuclear weapons on missiles. “DIA assesses with moderate confidence the North currently has nuclear weapons capable of delivery by ballistic missiles; however the reliability will be low.”

• On Kerry’s visit to Asia he expressed a desire to ease tensions, and an offer of dialogue to NK with an emphasis on denuclearization, stating that NK will not be recognized as a nuclear power: “We are prepared to reach out, but we need [the] appropriate moment, appropriate circumstance.”

• The Mongolian government pledged its contribution to solving the crisis on the Korean peninsula, promoting traditional friendship ties with the DPRK, and sharing its experiences in the area of economic reform.

• Talks to renew the SKorea-U.S. nuclear cooperation face complications over the US’s non-proliferation “gold standard”.

• The KCNA released a statement adamantly denying SKorean allegations that NK was behind the cyber attacks on SK banking institutions and news agencies a few weeks ago, and condemning attacks on NK’s state-run websites.  KCNA: “All the facts clearly show that the sinister, hostile force’s hacking maneuver against our Internet homepages this time was a fabrication of the gang of puppets.”

ANALYSIS & OPINION

• Lankov: “But the problem is that even if [KJU] somehow fixes the economic situation, there will be scant opportunity to maintain regime stability. With a reform and opening policy there will be some chance for the regime to survive, but the probability of collapse is still much higher. On the other hand, if the regime keeps the status quo and changes nothing, even [if] it lasts longer, it faces a nearly 100% collapse probability in the medium to long term.”

• Chinese netizens have been expressing greater levels of discontent with NK’s behavior: “Is the country that threatened to turn another country into a sea of flames worth our help and support?”

• NFI on the KIC: “In overall terms, there was a deficit of 1.7 billion won after an investment of 417 billion won. As a basic overview, the South Korean government invested around one trillion won and saw only deficits for seven years. If they had invested the same amount in China or somewhere else in South East Asia, the results would have certainly been better. Nevertheless, the KIC may more aptly be called a philanthropic endeavour than an investment in the traditional sense. What benefits did North Korea receive? After an appeal for 18,000 more workers, in addition to the 51,000 already employed in 2011, North Korea put the resulting 78 million dollars (an amount that rivals the sum capital of the 123 companies at KIC) not into the pockets of the workers, but into the coffers of the ruling Kim. In contrast, only 1.2 million dollars went to the workers – a meagre 1.53%.”

MISC.

• Adam Johnson’s “The Orphan Master’s Son” won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. “The novel is a surreal, feverish look at NK under Kim Jong Il. The protagonist Jun Do (a play on “John Doe”) grows up in an orphanage, and serves under Kim as a professional kidnapper before deciding to rebel against the state.”

• London School of Economics students have claimed they were not properly informed that they were traveling into NK with undercover BBC journalist John Sweeney filming a high documentary. Response from Pyongyang Project. The BBC aired the documentary anyway, stating it is strongly in the public interest.

• There are proposed plans to build a new VOA and RFA mediumwave transmitter in SK to boost radio signals broadcast into NK. The BBG asked for 2.15m USD to run RFA’s Korean service in the fiscal year, a drop of 2%. RFA will see budget cuts across the board in 2014, the Korean service being one of the least cut. VOA’s East Asia and Pacific division budget will remain unchanged.

• BBC World Have Your Say with two North Korean defectors.
• LiNK’s second documentary, Danny From North Korea, has been released online.

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