NK NEWS BRIEF | July 4, 2014

An activist holds a South Korean and Chinese national flag during a rally welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit to South Korea. The banner reads ” Welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit for peace in northeast Asia.” | Photo: AP

NK INTERNAL

• Daily NK: SBS Drama ‘Dr. Stranger’ is popular with university students in NK. PY source: “Some parts, like the bit where surgery is performed on the Suryeong (KIS), are just not the reality we know, and we find them odd. But still, many people say it’s a fun show.” In 2012 and 2013, another SKorean drama, “The King Two Hearts,” which depicted the NKorean military, also attracted some NKorean viewers.
• Daily NK: A teenager, 18, killed his uncle and aunt with a knife over remittances from the teenager’s family in China. Source: “Punishments for taking remittances from defectors have been ramped up since the start of this year, so the young guy is likely to face serious flack too. He’s currently under investigation at Musan MPS.”
• NK News: Weighing 128 grams and measuring 4.3 inches long, the Arirang, a ‘half-smartphone’, is similar in size to the 2010 Samsung Wave and the Pantech Sirius. The phone costs around $300-400 and there is an Internet browser called “web reader,” but since data communication is impossible the Dong-A Daily News describes it as “useless.” Experts in SK have said that the advantages that come with this smartphone are “nonexistent.”
• Daily NK: The authorities’ efforts to stop external media from circulating has been relatively effective. Nevertheless, some more fortunate young people continue to evade the stricter regulations. Middle-aged source from South Hwanghae Province: “Kids of 15 and 16 have these things on memory sticks. They watch them, copy them, pass them on, and that is how South Korean media spreads among the young.” Another source: “It costs 10,000 won to get hold of a popular movie, and about 5,000 for ordinary films.”
• Daily NK: Sales of pregnancy testing kits are rising in border regions after people started to go abroad, brought them in and started selling them. Source: “Married women often seek to delay childbearing because, as they say, ‘Having children makes you late to the market.’ It puts you at a financial disadvantage, so they try to delay it until they have made enough money.”

ECONOMY & FOOD SECURITY

• RFA: Chinese traders with relatives in NK and who visit NK frequently will face higher costs under new rules introduced by PY. Source: They can stay with their NKorean relatives for only up to 15 days during one visit per year under recently introduced regulations that would compel them to reside in hotels or other paid accommodations, in a bid to boost foreign revenue for NK. Some officials have however accepted bribes to subvert and cash in on the new procedures.
• Daily NK: Until the end of last month, a kilo of potatoes cost 800 won in public markets, but prices have since fallen by half as a result of the first new potatoes of the season, harvested in the middle of June. Source: “A lot of people are relieved that potatoes are getting cheaper. This spring rice fell to 4,000 won per kilo but then rose again. This seems to have pushed people into stocking up on food.”
• Huffington Post: State media: NK is faced with the worst drought for over a decade. NK News: The drought report came as the WFP announced last week that a lack of resources meant it had been forced to significantly reduce food aid to NK.
• NK News: Money transfers from relatives in China to families in NK play an important role in the activities of NKorean businesses.
• NPR’s Planet Money: A Teenager’s Guide to Doing Business in North Korea.

HUMAN RIGHTS

• Telegraph: Analysis of satellite images of Camp 25 reveals details including that there are 75 acres of cultivated farmland, with fields for grain crops, orchards and greenhouses. The camp is believed to hold approx 5,000 prisoners.

REFUGEES

• Bloomberg: Park Sang Hak, former NKorean elite, defected after watching people starve to death. After his two uncles were executed for being “guilty by association,” Park dedicated himself to informing NKoreans about KJU’s regime with technology sent via giant balloons.
• KBS: HRNK put out a statement urging Xi Jinping to stop repatriating NKorean refugees.
• Yonhap: Earlier in the month China’s MFA rejected UN concerns over their policy of repatriating NKorean refugees: “With regard to the illegal border-crossers from North Korea, we are obliged to deal with the relevant issue in accordance with international laws, internal laws of China as well as humanitarian principles… In China, we have no such thing as political asylum.”
• Yonhap: A NKorean man defected to a SKorean western border island. JCS officer: “An unarmed NKorean man presumed to be a civilian expressed his will to defect to SK early this morning near Baengnyeong Island. He arrived on the shore of the island in a non-powered wooden boat, and told a Marine on guard duty there that he wanted to stay in the South.”

INTERNATIONAL POLITICS & SECURITY

• NK News: UK’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office updated its NK travel advice page amidst the recent detention of US citizen, Jeffrey Fowle, warning citizens to avoid bringing in any religious materials written in Korean to the country.
• Reuters: Travel agencies estimate as many as 6,000 Westerners visit the country/year, compared to 700 a decade ago. Travel agents say costs for a four-day visit range from $500 to $1,800, some of which goes to state-owned tourism companies in NK.
• Yonhap: NK airs taped broadcasts of World Cup matches more than a day after they took place with altered audio and the name of the SKorean broadcast company blurred out and replaced with a KCTV logo. Barton, former director of sports at the ABU, said they signed an agreement in 2010 to send signals free of charge, so that “the public of NK can watch them” and “see what life is on the other side of the curtain.”
• NYT: During a trip focused on economic ties, China’s Xi and SK’s PGH issued a joint statement stating that the “two countries reaffirm their firm opposition to the development of nuclear weapons on the Korean Peninsula,” phraseology that Beijing has always preferred because it does not specifically cite NK. With Xi beside her, Park said the two leaders had agreed that the “denuclearization of North Korea must be achieved at all costs,” with the emphasis on NK rather than the Korean Peninsula. It was Xi Jinping’s first visit to the Korean Peninsula as leader.
• Xinhua: China positively evaluated the proposal of a “Korean Peninsula trust-building process” raised by PGH and supported the improvement of relations between the two Koreas to realize reconciliation and cooperation and ultimately achieve independent peaceful reunification.
• WSJ: Polling data shows warming public sentiment in SK towards China, with SKoreans far more likely to view China as a cooperative partner (61%) rather than as a competitive rival (33%).
• Washington Post: Japanese PM Abe announced that he would lift some sanctions imposed against NK, in return for PY’s pledge to investigate the abductions of Japanese citizens in the 1970s and 1980s. Japanese officials: The eased sanctions will not give a significant economic boost to NK or weaken the impact of international efforts to punish and isolate the NK for its nuclear weapons development.
• Yonhap: SK turned down the NKorean NDC proposal to suspend all military hostilities, including joint ROK-U.S. military drills, and stop slandering each other. SK MOU: “PY should demonstrate its sincerity on resolving the nuclear issue — the fundamental threat to peace on the Korean Peninsula — if it truly wants peace.”

ANALYSIS & OPINION

• Global Times: “Both the Chinese government and the public attach high importance to South Korea. For the government and strategists, South Korea is one of the countries that best handles its relations with both the US and China. Although Seoul and Tokyo are both Washington allies, the US-Japan alliance is obviously aimed at China and Japan has been actively highlighting this. But South Korea is willing to act as a buffer between China and the US rather than avail itself of opportunities to deepen their frictions.”

• Telegraph: Review on North Korea: State of Paranoia by Paul French: This book is about the everyday life in PY and underlines the abject and pitiful contrast with the democratic, capitalist, southern part of the Korean peninsula.
• NY Times: KCNA condemned James Franco and Seth Rogen over their new film, “The Interview.”  
• WSJ: 58 year old monk, Muk-gai, has been one of the very few SKoreans who regularly visit the military cemetery with the remains of 769 NKorean soldiers, established by the Ministry of National Defense in 1996.

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