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NK NEWS BRIEF | June 4, 2014
POSTED June 4, 2014
A girl takes aim at a drawing of Obama during the International Children’s Day celebration in Pyongyang | Photo: Kim Kwang Hyon/AP
Administrative notice: There will be no News Brief next week due to travel.
NK INTERNAL
- NK News: PY’s restaurant scene nowadays is large and varied with everything from Japanese and Chinese dishes to Western cuisine. A dinner in a regular upmarket restaurant would cost some $7-10 (excluding alcoholic beverages), but the most expensive places would charge a patron up to $30-40 (average monthly salary of a university professor now equals some 80 cents). Because success and affluence in NK are often advertised by a protruding and fat belly, obesity is a growing problem among the elite NKorean children and teenagers.
- NK News investigation on the PY apartment collapse: Together, the imagery and expert opinions suggest either the collapse in fact occurred well before May 13 and that authorities lied about the timeline. Or, that against all the odds, North Korean authorities successfully completed a major clean-up operation in under four days – a remarkable feat – though one which experts say would have had little to no regard for trapped survivors.
- Yonhap: KJU visited Taesongsan General Hospital in PY on international children’s day. Rodong Shinmun: “Our children have the world’s most loving and greatest father.” Rodong Shinmun further emphasized: “In the South, hundreds of children were buried at sea in a tragic incident (referring to the Sewol ferry sinking) but in our homeland, the sound of children laughing and singing resonates.” (K). Washington Post: NKorean children “performed and played games at an amusement park in PY” on International Children’s Day and some of the games that the children played included firing arrows at a picture of Obama.
ECONOMY & FOOD SECURITY
- RFA: WFP plans to increase the number of its Korean-speaking staff to raise the transparency of its NK aid project. Among the 15 international staff members at the Pyongyang office, five monitor food distribution, and of them only two speak Korean.
HUMAN RIGHTS
- Daily NK: The NK authorities have tightened up their efforts to stop external media from circulating in the early KJU era, and this has been relatively effective. Nevertheless, some more fortunate young people continue to evade the stricter regulations.
- Reuters: PY complained to the UN that SK and US are waging a smear campaign against NK to distract from their own records of human rights abuses and warned, “curses, like chickens, come home to roost.”
- Rodong Shinmun called the move to set up a UN office to monitor human rights in NK “an intolerable political provocation,” and claimed SK aims “to worsen confrontation between the brother countries and to achieve its ambition of the forcible reunification.”
REFUGEES
- Yonhap: ROKG repatriated one of the three NKorean fishermen whose boat drifted into SKorean waters three days ago, but said they would respect the wishes of the two others to stay in the South. ROKG rejected PY’s demand to “meet with them and check whether their desire to defect is true.”
INTERNATIONAL POLITICS & SECURITY.
- Kyodo: During the Stockholm talks, NK asked Japan to provide it with food and medical supplies, and Tokyo agreed as long as the assistance was provided through nongovernmental organizations or private-sector entities.
- AFP: Japanese FM Kishida: “We must think constantly what would be the most effective response and method in order to bring results… In doing so, we will consider (Abe’s) making a visit to NK.”
- Kyodo: Japan plans to send officials to NK to monitor PY’s investigation into abductions of Japanese citizens.
- WSJ: PGH: “North Korea would effectively be crossing the Rubicon if they were to conduct another nuclear test… “It would be difficult for us to prevent a nuclear domino from occurring in this area.”
- Yonhap: The defense chiefs of ROK, US and Japan “reaffirmed the importance of sharing intelligence about NK’s nuclear and missile threats” during trilateral talks in Singapore.
- Reuters: NK sentenced SKorean missionary Kim Jong-uk to life with hard labor. KCNA: “The accused admitted to all his crimes. He tried to infiltrate into Pyongyang after illegally trespassing on the border for the purpose of setting up underground church and gathering information about the internal affairs of the DPRK while luring its inhabitants into south Korea and spying on the DPRK.”
- WSJ: NKIS says PY, accusing SK’s NIS of hacking into its servers, is ramping up its cyber-security infrastructure. The defector organization said that 30,000+ hacking attempts on NKorean servers were made in March and April.
- Yonhap: Travel agency official: NK is set to open its portion of Mt. Baekdu to Chinese tourists this month. Officials say the two-day trip will cost 1,100 yuan (US$175.8) per person and the three-day trip will cost 1,350 yuan.
- Army.mil: During a lecture, defector Choi asked a question of the KATUSAs, “What is the standard North Korean rifle?” However, not a single KATUSA could answer correctly. “NKorean Soldiers are tested on the knowledge from Korean Military weapon to common senses of SK’s society annually,” Choi added.
ANALYSIS & OPINION
- Choson Exchange: “For a North Korea beginning to think more about economic development, Japanese aid and investment is critical. Rapprochement with Japan could also pressure South Korea to engage more with North Korea. In fact, North Korea’s significant state investment in tourism facilities in Kangwon province (think Wonsan beach resorts, Sinphyong, Masikryong ski resort…etc.) seem strategically positioned to attract Japanese and South Korean tourists in the event of rapprochement.”
- KINU director Choi: “Not economic reform per se, but [KJU’s] wish for (economic) revitalization seems clear. However, though he is interested in attracting foreign capital, he isn’t putting any effort into improving inter-Korean relations. This is a bad move, because relations between North and South are a major factor for any third country making the decision to invest in North Korea.”
- NFI on an internal decree that was reportedly revealed to cadres ranked departmental director and above in the central institutions: “The Chinese Communist Party, which is enjoying being in bed with the imperialists and dreaming dreams with them, is even openly critical of our nuclear self-defence capabilities… If only to persevere in our revolutionary principle of Juche (Self-Reliance), we must amplify the foundations of an independent economy.”
- NK News: Jiyoung Song, professor at Singapore Management University on human rights and migration, researched NKorean definitions of human rights and found interesting parallels to the Western conceptions of the subject in the post 9/11 landscape. Her book, Human Rights Discourse in North Korea, says NKorean literature promotes the right to security over individual freedom.
MISC.
- Monique Macias: “In NK, most of the information about what’s going on in the outside world does not come from the state media, but from rumours and conversations between ordinary citizens. As a student surrounded by other international students, I was privy to more secret information that most — particularly from the Chinese students. When the Tiananmen Square protests were taking place, there was a lot of excitement and hope among us that China might open up.”
- RFA: Six NKorean professors from KIS University or other universities will stay at the University of British Columbia for six months to take classes in subjects including business management and trade. They will attend a two-month English training program before enrolling in courses in September.
- This day in history, 20 years ago in the NYT: “Some American officials say the Administration was obliged to seek sanctions to maintain its credibility. But a comprehensive analysis prepared by American intelligence agencies last year said it was unlikely that sanctions would induce North Korea to abandon its nuclear program. … “The objective is to have North Korea reconsider its position and find it in its interest to move back to negotiations and settle this matter,” a senior Administration official said.”
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