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NK NEWS BRIEF | July 25, 2014
POSTED July 25, 2014
“This is the living proof that North Koreans are strongly intent on learning about the outside world.” | Photo: NK News
NK INTERNAL
- Daily NK: Officials in border areas are taking 20% of the remittances that residents receive from family living abroad in exchange for keeping silent about illicit international phone calls. Source from North Hamkyung Province: “At the beginning of this year they installed radio wave detectors around here to pick up signals from illegal calls. Calling out from much of the Hoeryong region has become much more difficult. […] 20% leaves us with little, but at least you know you’re safe.”
- NK News: An article from PY Times revealed that the authorities announced an expansive development project for the east coast city of Wonsan that will include the construction of an underwater hotel.
- Daily NK: With word spreading that Choco Pies will no longer be coming into Kaesong, the prices have been creeping up from 1,000KPW in June to almost 1,500KPW. Defector: “Choco Pies circulated widely in the market, so people developed a subconscious yearning for SKorean culture. These Choco Pies were a symbol of SKorean economic development, one that led residents to pine for life below the 38th parallel. KJU has far too much pride to let that continue.”
- Daily NK on the popularity of the guitar in NK.
- Korea Times: According to human rights NGO Hands Off Cain, NK carried out at least 19 executions over the past 18 months.
- NK News: The government has erected new statues of KIS and KJI in Sinuiju City.
ECONOMY & FOOD SECURITY
- NK News: KCNA reported that NK has opened a Russian-funded transhipment terminal in the north eastern port of Rajin. The terminal cost over $250 million to construct and can facilitate the transfer of up to five million tonnes of freight/year.
- Yonhap: PY is willing to permit SKorean investment in their rail project with Russia in the Rason area.
- Yonhap: US NGO Americares has shipped 800,000 USD worth of medical aid to Pyongyang, Pyongan Province, and North Hwanghae Province.
- Daily NK: Food ration distribution to miners in the NE provinces has recently restarted after a lengthy hiatus.
REFUGEES
- Chosun Ilbo: On July 15-17, 29 defectors and six SKorean helpers were arrested in Qingdao and Kunming in China. ROK MOFA pledged to make all diplomatic efforts to prevent repatriation. Amongst the defectors are a couple in their 60s and a one-year-old baby girl.
- Daily NK: ROK Ministry of Education figures show that the dropout rate for defector-students has declined; from 10.8% in 2008, 6.1% in 2009, and 4.9% in 2010, 3.5% in 2013 and 2.5% this year. The Ministry of Education attributes the decline to mentoring programs tailored to needs of defector-students, increasing availability of supplementary teaching materials, and training for school faculty members aimed at managing problems specific to the defector community.
- JoongAng Daily: Jung Sung-san, defector turned director and best known for ‘Yoduk Story’, opened a new musical ‘Pyongyang Maria’, which tells a tale of a NKorean woman forced to work as a prostitute in China. “I thought I had a duty as a defector turned director to reveal the brutal life of North Koreans through the arts. I felt this responsibility strongly after hearing from the North Korean woman.”
- NK News: Kim Seung-chul of NK Reform Radio says people who live near China may buy Chinese radios but those who don’t “have to contact the local ‘underground radio-maker’.” Park, a defector who escaped NK last November: “My friends and I used to regularly listen to NKRR and other radio programs inside the underground hideout. Many told me to quit listening to those radio signals and start making money for myself, but with the help of this radio, I finally decided to escape the North.”
INTERNATIONAL POLITICS & SECURITY
- Yonhap: Following recent regional diplomacy and a UNSC condemnation of their missile tests, an NDC statement published through KCNA took a swipe at China: “Some backbone-lacking countries are blindly following the stinky bottom of the U.S., also struggling to embrace Park Geun-hye who came to a pathetic state of being.”
- Yonhap: Seoul offered PY talks on improving operations at the Kaesong Industrial Complex, including by establishing an internet connection.
- Yonhap: SK and the US will hold the UFG joint drill for about two weeks in August to “practice how to respond to North Korea in case of threats with nuclear weapons and weapons of mass destruction.”
- NK News: Martin Uden, former coordinator of the UN Panel of Experts, thinks NK is most likely still breaking UN sanctions but is becoming increasingly better at avoiding sanctions.
- Yonhap: China’s Vice FM Zhang told a group of SKorean lawmakers that the US must lower the bar for resuming long-stalled multilateral talks on ending NK’s nuclear weapons program. Zhang: “The US is demanding NK to show its willingness to give up its nuclear (weapons program), while maintaining a high threshold.” He also criticized the U.S. policy of trying to “achieve its target even before the talks resume.”
- Korea Times: A US court ruled NK and Iran liable for damage for providing Hezbollah with material support for a series of rocket and missile attack on Israel and resources including professional military and intelligence training in 2006.
- VOA: Swedish officials have been unable to visit Kenneth Bae for over 3 months.
ANALYSIS & OPINION
- Foreign Policy Blog: “Given warmer economic and political ties with SK and frostier ties with NK, Beijing should consider a relaxation of its deportation policy to remove some of the leverage Pyongyang holds over Beijing. […] Beijing should make a small humanitarian gesture now and display its soft power capabilities by releasing the 11 NKoreans.”
- Lankov on how China’s view of NK is changing.
MISC.
- Korea Times: Bang (86) and Lee (77), living in San Francisco, will be visiting NK on Oct 11 to meet family members that they have long been separated from.
- NK News: Defector insight on how law and order works in NK: “In North Korea, cops were always domineering, incessantly asking for bribes, and generally abusing their power in return for a reduction in a citizen’s sentence. For this reason, while the ruling ideology states that everyone is created equal in North Korea, the poor face disproportionate punishments for petty crimes, while the rich can quite literally get away with murder.”
- Daily NK: Georgeta Mirciouiu, a Romanian woman who married NKorean Jo Jung-ho in the 1950s, was forcedly separated from her husband for more than 50 years. More of her story is to be revealed in a new radio program by KBS.
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