NK NEWS BRIEF | April 10, 2013

A SKorean worker, left, arriving with electronic products from the KIC is helped by a SKorean woman who greeted him at customs in Paju, SK, April 8, 2013 | Photo: AP

NK INTERNAL

• Daily NK source: “On the 25th of last month a soldier shot and killed five company commanders with the Musan County Border Guards. The soldier fled but was arrested on the border and sent back.” The reported incident was apparently sparked over food theft.

• Daily NK video documenting penalties for traffic violations. “The fact that they issued the decree reflects how serious traffic accident-related issues are in North Korea. In particular, speeding, drink-driving and hit-and-run accidents are occurring more often nowadays, causing the decree to be posted across the country to try and stop it.”

• Daily NK: Since the Party Central Committee plenum, tensions within NK have eased considerably as the focus has gone away from military exercises to farming. “The reserves who had been mobilized for combat exercises over the past few months all returned their weapons to their local Ministry of People’s Safety (the police) office arms store on the 1st and went back to work. Having carried out public and enterprise rallies in accordance with decisions made at the Party Central Committee plenum last month, each province, county and city is now working on producing fertilizer.”

• Daily NK notes the impact that the KIC closure could have on the workers’ dependents; as many as 200,000 may be impacted. Workers were told, “Regarding yesterday’s stoppage and withdrawal of all North Korean workers, the authorities told the workers ‘to take a few days off to prepare for mobilization’… The authorities told workers that they had been ordered to stop operations, but there was no word on closing down the KIC completely… The workers expect that the zone will soon start again, and nobody is worried about losing their jobs.”

• Daily NK source: “I recently visited Pyongyang and met with a cadre from the Cabinet. He told me personally that there had been quite a large increase in the number of deaths from hunger in border regions like Hwanghae Province… Some cadres are worried that something like the ‘March of Tribulation’ could happen again,” the source went on. “There are reports that food production in Hwanghae Province is poor because last year we had a drought in spring and storms and typhoons in summer, leading to a few hundred deaths in each county in the region.”

• Telegraph: A defector’s claims of military incidents involving dissent over KJU’s leadership: “I killed a three-star company commander, the same rank as me… He was the head of the faction supporting Kim Jong-un. There were two fights. In the first fight, they surrounded us and arrested a lot of people… But I got away and gathered others from the barracks. We found them and I shot the commander. After that, I escaped.”

ECONOMY 

• Yonhap: The construction of a bridge connecting the Sinuiju and Dandong is going as planned despite threats of war.

• NK Econ Watch: There has been a closure of a market in Sinuiju, and opening of a new, larger market on the outskirts of the city.

• Daily NK: The recent increase in silver imports from China might be used in the construction of batteries for mini-submarines. Source: “The [North Korean] Navy has been producing submersibles at every shipyard on their east and west coasts ever since the attack on the Cheonan in 2010.”

• Blaming “military warmongers”, an NK official announced that the regime will “temporarily suspend the operations in the KIC and examine the issue of whether [to] allow its existence or close it.” As promised, the next day NKorean workers failed to report in. NKoreans who work in the complex have some of the best jobs in NK, earning around $62-$100 a month.

• Yonhap: Heads of the firms operating in the KIC hope to send a private delegation to NK concerning the closure.

• RFA: Greater volumes of NKorean made cigarettes are being smuggled into China, due to low production costs and few penalties for offenders. Legally imported NKorean cigarettes are purchased mainly by tourists and are expensive, but illegally smuggled ones are rebranded by Chinese companies and sold for a low price.

HUMAN RIGHTS & REFUGEES

• Daily NK: A NKorean defector who lived in SK for six years redefected across the NLL in a stolen fishing boat.

INTERNATIONAL POLITICS & SECURITY

• At the time of writing the Korean peninsula is still showing no signs of being at war.

• CNN: Despite the increase in tensions, SK experiences over a million tourists in the month of March, a record breaking month. This marks an 11.9% increase from the same month last year.

• NK warned the UK and Russian embassies in PY that they can not not guarantee their safety in the event of conflict after April 10th, however both countries and others have decided against doing evacuating.

• USG’s Admiral Locklear: “The continued advancement of the North’s nuclear and missile programs, its conventional force posture and its willingness to resort to asymmetric actions as a tool of coercive diplomacy creates an environment marked by the potential for miscalculation.”

• Reuters: Authorities in Dandong have told tour agencies to suspend overland trips into NK.

• Korea Times: NK rhetoric has taken a toll on the financial markets. Finance and Strategy official: “In the past, North Korea’s rhetoric had little impact on the financial market. But things are different now, and the impact could last for a longer period.”

• CNN: USG expects a new missile test at any time based on recent intelligence.

• Yonhap: NK advises foreigners living in Seoul to devise evacuation plans and find shelter.

• A ROKG source said that NK was responsible for cyber attacks on banks and news organizations on March 20.

• Chinese President Xi Jinping: “[No country] should be allowed to throw a region and even the whole world into chaos for selfish gains.”

• Foreign Policy: The USG’s Clifford Hart met with NK’s deputy ambassador to the UN in mid-March. Joel Wit: “Unfortunately, the New York channel, which in the past was an important communications link between Pyongyang and Washington, appears to have become a place where boilerplate talking points are exchanged.”

ANALYSIS & OPINION

• CNN poll: Over 4/10 Americans say that NK is an “immediate threat” to the US, up 13 percentage points in less than a month. Polling director: “”If North Korean leader Kim Jong Un wanted to get the attention of the American public, his strategy is starting to work.”

• Sokeel Park: “Although the North Korean regime tries to limit the contaminative effects of special economic zones, such enclaves do serve as a conduit for external information and ideas into North Korean society.” If the NK leadership permanently closes the KIC, NK will lose 54,000 jobs provided by SKorean companies. Scaled up to population, this is the equivalent of the U.S. losing 702,000 jobs.

• Haggard: “In the meetings that took place earlier this week, the North Korean leadership outlined a new strategic course: seek to develop nuclear weapons and space technology — a euphemism for a long-range missile program — while at the same time focusing on economic reconstruction. But North Korea is a small economy and reforms are unlikely to succeed unless they attract foreign capital, technology, and management.

• Lankov: “A closer look at North Korean history reveals what Pyongyang’s leaders really want their near-farcical belligerence to achieve — a reminder to the world that North Korea exists, and an impression abroad that its leaders are irrational and unpredictable. The scary impressions are important to North Korea because for the last two decades its policy has been, above all, a brilliant exercise in diplomatic blackmail. And blackmail usually works better when the practitioners are seen as irrational and unpredictable.”

• Melton and Haggard on the absence of Chinese oil exports to NK in February: “One possibility is that China is unable to provide oil in February due to poor weather or other reasons, but the slack is then picked up in March when shipments nearly double.  The second explanation, and the one we favor, is that February is the time of Chinese New Year celebrations and many offices close up shop for the holiday.  February shipments of oil might happen, but are only reported in March.  A third possibility is that Chinese New Year celebrations lead to a temporary stoppage of oil shipments in February. Whatever the reason, we cannot assume that Chinese pressure on North Korea is the answer.”

MISC.

• NK state news website Uriminzokkiri was hacked alongside multiple companion sites. A list of 9001 users was published, prompting SKorean authorities to investigate potential violations of its National Security Law. Uriminzokkiri’s Twitter and Flickr channels were also hacked.

• A Daily Show clip featuring Jon Stewart making fun of Kim Jong-un has gone viral on China’s Sina Weibo, perhaps showing the demand for criticism of the NKorean regime among Chinese netizens.

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