NK NEWS BRIEF | July 24, 2013

North Korean players rejoice after winning a football match against South Korea at the Women`s East Asian Cup tournament at Seoul World Cup Stadium on Sunday | Photo: Yonhap

NK INTERNAL

• Bavarian brewer Paulaner denied KJU’s request to open a beer garden with a brewery in NK.  

• Kim Kyung-hee, the younger sister of KJI, has not appeared in public for around 80 days, leading to rumors about her health.

• Daily NK: The due to summer heat, N Korean authorities have moved the summer vacation forward by fifteen days for elementary schoolers.  However because many children have been preoccupied with farming season for the past month, many parents are complaining that their children didn’t have enough time to study for their final exams, which have been pushed forward to accommodate the change.

• Defector: “When the people see the Kim Il-sung impersonating propaganda, like Kim Jong-eun inspecting a farm with a farmer’s hat on, they comment sarcastically that imitating his grandfather isn’t going to return us to the Kim Il-sung era.”

• Francis Markus (International Federation of the Red Cross) released news via Twitter on the 22nd asserting that 80% of Anju city in South Pyongan Province is now under water due to the monsoon.

• Defector: “As time passes, the loyalty of cadres wanes further and further… The NSA guys just say that ‘the Marshal [KJU] is targeting everyone, whereas we only exploit some people’. That’s how it is, and so people resign themselves to treating it as if it were a tax to the state.”  

• Daily NK: NK is seeing a growing number of violent crimes committed by young people, allegedly an imitation of Chinese media content depicting brutal acts. Source: “At the end of last month, an incident occurred where some drunk middle students killed a discharged soldier who was passing with a weapon. Many people say they’re scared to go out in the evening, and feel the number of attacks by young people is growing.”

• Guardian: NK began its Arirang mass game performances, celebrating its late leaders and the 60th anniversary of the end of the 1950-53 Korean war.

• NK invited thousands of foreign dignitaries to 60th anniversary of the armistice, but is apparently suffering from logistical difficulties due to a shortage of passenger planes. Air Koryo only has a total of three passenger planes capable of making international flights, and NK officials are apparently negotiating with China to use retired passenger jets.

ECONOMY & FOOD SECURITY

• Korea Herald: There has been progress in N-S talks on Monday to restart the KIC. Delegates exchanged new draft agreements but continued to haggle over SK’s demands for a framework to prevent a unilateral suspension of the complex. PGH: “This round of working-level talks puts emphasis on the park’s normalization, but you should keep in mind that it will make a critical basis for crafting principles and a framework for new inter-Korean relations.”

• The UN has decided to provide NK with 6 million USD in emergency aid by the end of this year.

• NK News: Li Delin, ethnic Korean Chinese businessman: “Kim Jong Un’s alright –– much better than his father. Kim Jong Il did not understand economics, but Kim Jong Un does; he understands what kind of Korea they’re living in, so there’s hope. “[North] Korea is definitely on the verge of opening; I can feel it when I’m there.”

HUMAN RIGHTS

• Survey statistics from a Citizen’s Alliance on NKHR report: Roughly 40 percent of the respondents (NKorean refugees) indicated that they believed that infants with disabilities were killed or abandoned and 43 percent believed that “there is an isolated area to relocate the disabled” which in the interviews was sometimes referred to as “an island.”  

REFUGEES

• The MOU reported that 320 defectors entered SK Q1 of 2013, marking a 10% decline from Q1 in 2012. However, 717 defectors entered SK in the entire first half of 2013, compared with 710 in 2012. An official who works with defectors suggested the increase in Q2 is due to, “the psychological effect on defectors in third countries of the forced expulsion of defectors by Laos, which had previously been relatively friendly to them.” Over 25,000 defectors have now arrived in SK in total.

• Daily NK: The attempted escape of re-defector Kim Kwang-ho has prompted the Defense Security Command to investigate the border guard NSA units and the smugglers who assist refugees.

• There is a push in SK to address the “re-defector” issue. SKorean Police Official: “As it stands, there is no basic policy to prevent re-defection. It would be impossible to restrict visits to China given the fundamental human rights of defectors. There is a need to find legally viable solutions, for example in-depth interviews with defectors who are on their way to China.”  

INTERNATIONAL POLITICS & SECURITY

• N Korea warned of a “catastrophe” if S Korea and the US push ahead with the “Ulchi Freedom Guardian” joint military drill next month.

• A UN team is due to arrive in Panama next month to inspect a N Korean ship that was seized carrying arms from Cuba. Officials have found two MIG-21s and two missile radar systems on board.

• Biden: “North Korea can have peace and prosperity like the rest of the region, but only without nuclear weapons. North Korea has a clear choice: It can choose a better path for its people, or continue down the road they’re on.”

• Satellite images show that NK has halted work at the Tonghae Satellite Launching Ground, a site believed to be dedicated to launching bigger and longer-range rockets.  

• The “Iran-North Korea Parliamentary Friendship Group” is scheduled to travel to PY for 60th anniversary of Korean War armistice.

• Former President Carter has been invited for a visit to NK, and is said to be consulting with Susan Rice and John Kerry. Carter visited NK for the first time in 1994 and again in 2010 and 2011.

• The ROKG and USG opened negotiations over cost sharing for the upkeep of US troops as Special Measures Agreement due to expire the end of this year. The USG is calling for an increase in ROKG’s share of spending, stressing escalating strategic threats from NK, SK’s rapid economic growth and the US’s economic difficulties. Under the deal last revised in 2008, SK paid 869.5 billion won (778.1 million USD) this year, about 42% of the total cost.

ANALYSIS AND OPINION

• Beauchamp-Mustafaga and Jun: “Nevertheless, the underlying factors driving China’s North Korea policy—namely fear of collapse, strategic value in US-China relations and bureaucratic politics—ultimately remain unchanged and thus China’s fundamental strategic calculus on North Korea will remain unchanged for the foreseeable future… In the end, China’s enforcement of sanctions will likely run to the middle ground that appeases the international community but remain short of full enforcement to avoid any consequences that would directly affect the stability of the Kim regime, and thus China’s interests in the region.

• Cathcart: “There’s definitely a revision going on within China, whereas North Korea has really stuck to their narrative. And they have really said Kim Il-sung is the main man, it’s really about his genius… And the Chinese think that’s ludicrous.”

• Draudt: “‘Spy hunting’ is not overt or in the least bit pervasive by South Korean citizens currently, but with the threat of NSA agents imminent—whether real, as in the case of Mr. Chae, or perceived but unsubstantiated, as in the case of the men in Ulsan—South Korean citizens and media are understandably alert to finding spies living among them. The issue is complicated with this particular story of a repentant spy. The line between mobilizing a watchful nation and quickly pointing fearful fingers is understandably but perhaps problematically ambiguous.”

MISC

• AP’s Jean Lee and David Guttenfelder posted the first Instagram videos from inside NK.

• Cao De Benos, the lone foreigner working for the NK regime: “Of course, it’s a project. We are not living in a paradise in North Korea, but we want to create such a social paradise. That’s our goal… On the way, we will have mistakes and we will correct them, and get better day by day.”

• NK defeated SK 2-1 in a soccer match in the Women’s East Asian Cup tournament. This was the first trip to SK by an NK women’s football team since the 2005 East Asian Cup.

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