NK NEWS BRIEF | May 17, 2014

North Korean children sing for tourists | Photo: Eric Lafforgue via NK News

NK INTERNAL

• Daily NK: Amidst crackdowns, at least 100 PY citizens have been internally exiled to remote mountainous areas after searches revealed they had viewed or were in possession of SKorean video content or other recorded materials. PY source: “Those forcibly exiled from PY can no longer receive the benefits of living in the capital, like rations, electricity and water. If you are exiled to the countryside your freedom is instantly suppressed, so people are growing increasingly cautious. Traders who had been planning to secretly sell

  can no longer make any mention of ‘items from the neighborhood below [SK].’”

• Daily NK: The number of NKoreans being granted travel permits to visit relatives in China is declining as concern grows over sensitive information leaks. Typically, around 40-100 NKoreans/day entered China on travel permits in the weeks following April 15. This year, the average is only 10 people/day. Dandong source: “There has been a sudden drop in the number of visitors from NK crossing the Sino-Korean Friendship Bridge by bus. With the exception of hwagyo [Chinese-Koreans], almost no young people have crossed over, just elderly people in their 70s and 80s.”

• NK News: NKorean singer Hyon Song-wol, rumoured to have been executed last year, has appeared on NK state television.

• Daily NK: While SKoreans celebrate Teacher’s Day on May 15, NKoreans celebrate Education Day on Aug 5. Prior to the Arduous March students would be given a day off and teachers and students would engage in sports but after 2000, with Chinese smuggled goods, children would give rice cookers, recorder and other necessities as gifts. Parents of elementary school children would gather money together to buy teachers presents such as cloth materials. Some parents would even bribe teachers on this day so that their children would receive special treatment. (K)

• Daily NK: Chinese travel agent: “Someone from the Chosun [North Korea] side came directly to us and requested that we carry out inspections to ensure tourists are not carrying South Korean products. They also made it clear that high-quality video recording equipment should not be taken into Chosun.”

ECONOMY & FOOD SECURITY

• Daily NK: Rice prices remain stable despite the arrival of the spring hardship period. PY source: “The authorities have been continually distributing rations and there is sufficient rice in the markets. More people are buying meat including pork because some laborers had a wage increase. The rice price could drop even further.”

• Yonhap: Australia has donated 2.8m USD in food aid to NK through the WFP, to help feed children and pregnant women.

• Yonhap: The UN FAO expects NK to produce 1.9m tons of rice in 2014, the same amount as last year.

• Tehran Times: Iranian Deputy Oil Minister for International and Trade Affairs Ali Majedi ‘strongly denied’ reports of Iran exporting crude oil to NK.

• Joongang: Shin Je-yoon, chairman of the SK Financial Services Commission on financial policies for unification: “For now, we don’t encourage investment [into NK], because they don’t have basic legal structures yet. If they open the market to global markets, then we will help them induce foreign investment for development. If those kind of basic areas like legal services or consulting services by commercial entities like investment banks are prepared, we will encourage foreign investors to make investments. We are always ready to help.”

HUMAN RIGHTS

• Guardian: Ten highlights from Michael Kirby’s Reddit AMA.

REFUGEES

• Daily NK: In their latest tactic to discourage defection to SK, NK authorities are telling People’s Units that defectors sleep rough and spend their time “wandering the streets.” Yankang Province source: “Attendees at a recent People’s Unit meeting were told that, ‘Defectors who have gone to the South become kkotjebi and sleep in parks and train stations like Seoul Station. They use public benches as beds, and newspapers as blankets.” However, “Not one person believes this. In fact, distrust toward the authorities is only growing.”

• Chosun Ilbo: MOU figures reveal that 360 defectors arrived in SK in Q1 of this year.

INTERNATIONAL POLITICS & SECURITY

• Arirang: The N-S war of words continued as SK Defense Ministry spokesman, Kim Min-seok asked “Can NK even be regarded as a country? Is there human rights? Is there freedom? It continues to make false claims that are historically retrograde. It’s a country that cannot exist and should disappear soon.” NK News: In response, a “crucial report” by the NDC released by KCNA referred to Kim as “idiot-like” and insisted that such reckless remarks have never been made in the “distress-torn history” of national division. A day after his comment Kim backtracked, explaining that they were motivated by sadness caused by the suffering of the NKorean people and that the remarks were made in the hope of seeing the situation in the DPRK improve. Daily NK: The NDC report added: “All the service personnel and people of [North Korea]… are strongly calling for wiping the Park group out of this land.”

• Korea Times: NK called on the US not to side with SK over the finding of three drones purportedly from NK. KCNA: “If Washington pays heed only to what its stooges trumpet, it is bound to be accused of being a senile grandfather trying to stop a child from crying.”

• Joongang: Xi Jinping is expecting to make his first state visit to SK in June. It would be the first time in 19 years that a Chinese leader visited SK before going to NK. In 1995 Jiang Zemin visited Seoul ahead of PY at a time when Sino-NK ties were strained after SK and China established diplomatic relations in 1992.

• Yonhap: NK says as long as the US carries out its annual joint military exercises with SK, it will continue to expand its nuclear weapons program to boost its “self-defense deterrent” and fend off a nuclear threat from the US.

• Yonhap: Yang Xiyu, a senior research fellow at the China Institute of International Studies, voiced skepticism about PGH’s idea of following the German model for Korean unification. Global Times: German reunification was brought up with the intact West absorbing the faltering East through a spectrum of economic and political means including humanitarian aid. This represents a rare and special case in the post-WWII era and is not duplicable.

ANALYSIS & OPINION

• FT’s Mundy: “Despite the country’s well-documented human rights abuses, North Korea‘s state media has sought to promote a message of opposition to discrimination. Two weeks ago it published a report attacking racism and other problems in the US, which it described as “the world’s worst human rights abuser”. In March it gave extensive coverage to International Women’s Day, trumpeting the rights accorded North Korean women and highlighting complaints about sexism in South Korea. All this sits awkwardly with recent, repeated descriptions of US President Barack Obama as a “monkey” and of South Korean President Park Geun-hye as a “prostitute” – among other racist and sexist insults.”

• Jang Jin-sung: “Currently, there are two classes in North Korea locked in battle with each other. One I will call the loyal class. This is the class that is invested, that has a stake in this continuation of the status quo, of oppression and surveillance and control. The other class are the market classes. Their livelihoods are not sustained by the system, but actually oppressed by it.”

MISC.

• The Guardian reports on a new NK photography exhibition at the British Council in London.

• NK News: Lankov recounts his life in NK. Life for a foreign visitor in 1980s PY had its own pleasures and amusements.

• Vice News: Glorious Leader!, an in-development video game that allows players to play as KJU as he battles the US army. Miller, creator of the game, said he is trying to “carefully walk the line of satire without being an apologist for the regime,” and was surprised by the amount of SKoreans asking when it will be available in their country.

• Daily NK: KJU’s personal airplane was revealed in the Rodong Sinmun.

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