Largest ever military intimidation of North Korea continues

(Donald Kirk, The Christian Science Monitor, August 3, 2010) South Korea is sailing into naval exercises in the Yellow Sea on Thursday and Friday to the din of intimidating rhetoric from North Korea and rising fears about China’s response to military drills in waters so close to the Chinese mainland .

Pyongyang’s Korean Central News Agency on Tuesday quoted a military official warning of “powerful physical retaliation” if South Korean ships and planes go through with their latest attempt at enhancing their skills in antisubmarine warfare.

North Korea often issues strong threats without following through, but the latest warning comes from the regime’s western command, which a South Korean investigation blames for the March 26 sinking of its corvette, Cheonan. Experts from the US, Britain, Australia, and Sweden on the investigation team found that a North Korean midget submarine had fired the torpedo that split the vessel in two, sinking it in minutes and causing the deaths of 46 South Korean sailors. North Korea continues to deny having anything to do with the incident.

The statement said that forces in North Korea’s western sector had “made a decisive resolution to counter the reckless naval firing projected by the group of traitors.” The North’s western command coupled that vow with a warning for all shipping, notably the fishing boats that ply the area, to stay away for the duration of the South Korean exercises.

Despite the Cheonan sinking, however, analysts here see the rhetoric as similar to that with which North Korea greeted last week’s joint exercises in waters off South Korea’s east coast on the opposite side of the Korean peninsula, led by the US aircraft carrier George Washington.

Defence Professionals (August 3, 2010) …Begin on July 25, the South Korea-U.S. drill, code-named “Invincible Spirit,” was meant to punish North Korea for the sinking of the Cheonan and warn it against further attacks. KF-16 fighters under South Korean Air Force reveal their strength by neutralizing virtual targets by firing Mk-82 air-to-ground bombs during bombing exercise on the last day of South Korea-U.S. joint drill on July 28.

The drill was the largest ever for the two allies since the end of the Korean War(1950-53), and 20 warships, including the nuclear-powered U.S. aircraft carrier U.S.S. George Washington, 200 aircraft and 8,000 servicemen from two countries were mobilized. In particular, four F-22 Raptor stealth fighters, the most advanced jet fighters in the world, made their debut over Korean skies. The U.S. claims the aircraft can strike the North’s nuclear facility site at Yongbyon within 30 minutes after takeoff.

During the last day of the joint drill, South Korean 4,400-ton destroyers, including Choi Young, Ticonderoga-class Aegis cruiser USS Curtis Wilber and Logistic Support Ship Cheonji engaged in the joint exercise on East Sea. Also both South Korean and U.S. navies jointly took part in a logistics maneuver on waters which logistics support ship and destroyers sail in parallel for a refuel.

Like a day earlier, both navies perform joint anti-submarine exercise such as dropping depth charges and firing torpedoes against simulated targets in order to improve joint military capabilities to cope with possible enemy submarine’s insurgent. In addition, F-15K of South Korean Air Force and F/A-18A/C Hornet and F/A-18E/F Superhornet of U.S. Air Force took part in a joint air drill by performing actual firing and bombing toward exercise field in Gangwon and Gyeonggi provinces.

“It was a great opportunity for Seoul and Washington to develop joint anti-submarine as well as air combat skills during the four-day joint drill period,” said a defense official under the Joint Chiefs of Staff in Seoul. “We were able to reveal powerful South Korea-U.S. joint military strength and sent strong warning toward the North that we will not tolerate further attacks.”

Seoul and Washington are slated to assess the joint drill comprehensively and check faults so that they can reflect on the next joint exercises. As foreign and defense ministers from both countries agreed during their ‘2+2’ talks in Seoul on July 20, both allies are planning to conduct joint anti-submarine naval exercise on East and Yellow Sea for next several months. The South Korean government described Invincible Spirit as a success, saying it sent a clear warning to the North against any future provocations.

North Korea has shown no military reaction during the drill, despite its vow before the drill began to make a “sacred war.”

(Sunny Lee, The National August 04. 2010 ) After the massive joint naval drills last month in the eastern part of the Korean Peninsula with the US, South Korea begins a fresh round of its own war games near the North Korean border.

South Korea is staging this new manoeuvre “because the US did not go far enough with the joint naval exercises last month,” said Gordon Chang, the author of Nuclear Showdown: North Korea Takes On the World. South Korea initially had wanted to hold that exercise in the Yellow Sea, but China objected. The US-South Korea joint drills were then moved. “Beijing intimidated Washington with its warnings to stay out of the Yellow Sea. That, predictably, left Seoul steaming mad, at least in private,” Mr Chang said.

South Korea’s defence ministry said the exercise would involve three submarines, a destroyer, 30 other vessels and 50 aircraft. Some 4,500 troops will be deployed and marines will conduct live-fire exercises. “The drills will be conducted just like they were real,” a South Korean military official told Seoul’s Yonhap news agency. The South’s Navy Rear Admiral Kim Kyung-sik countered the North by saying that if North Korea makes good on its threat to open fire, South Korea “will stage an immediate counter-attack”.

Kim Heung-kyu, an analyst at a state-run think tank in Seoul, said South Korea should be wary. “North Korea has been making efforts to display to the international community that it doesn’t make empty threats,” he said. Analysts see the rationale of South Korea’s current move. “After all, it was an attack on a South Korean warship. So, some measures are necessary,” said Andrei Lankov, an analyst who teaches at Kookmin University in Seoul.

Mr Kim said North Korea’s strategists likely believe that elevated tension benefits the regime. “Raising tensions on the Korean Peninsula will pit the US and China, the two powerful stakeholders in the region, against each other,” he said. South Korea’s liberal media outlets speculated that the US and South Korea’s harsh stance against the North may be an “all-around” pressure tactic to provoke the collapse of North Korea.

“The North Korean situation is very dire now,” said Zhao Huji, a political scientist at the Central Party School in Beijing. Mr Zhao said North Korea is under tremendous difficulty. “It’s true that there are dissenting voices at the senior cadre level in North Korea since the failure of the botched currency reforms last year,” he said. “But adding too much pressure on the whole North Korea at this time without a breather is not going to work. The North leadership will use the outside pressure to consolidate its internal unity.” 

Analysts also see what was originally a conflict between the two Koreas as a power game between the US and China. Beijing sees the military drills Washington carried out with South Korea near China’s waters as a convenient ploy for the US to reclaim its power in the region. China on Tuesday began a five-day live-fire exercise in the coastal provinces near the Yellow Sea. Zhao Zongqi, the commander of the drill, told the official China Daily that the exercise is “to make effective preparations for military combat”.

 —

N.Korea secures World Cup broadcast deal

North Korea: Broadcast Union Says Soccer Coverage Is a Gift (AP, June 15, 2010) Asia’s broadcasting union said Tuesday that it was providing North Korea with free live coverage of World Cup matches so that its citizens could enjoy the sport and get a feel for life outside their isolated nation. John Barton, the sport director of the Asia-Pacific Broadcasting Union, which is based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, said he signed a contract with the World Cup organizer, FIFA, on Friday to broadcast the matches live into North Korea. Mr. Barton dismissed as “rubbish” reports accusing North Korea of broadcasting pirated recordings of several matches.

—

KUALA LUMPUR (AFP, 15 June 2010) — North Korea has secured legal rights to air World Cup matches live, Asia’s broadcasting union said Tuesday, denying the reclusive state had pirated a recording of the opening fixture.

According to South Korean broadcaster SBS, the North’s Korean Central Broadcast Service (KBS) aired Friday’s opening 1-1 draw between hosts South Africa and Mexico without permission. But the Asia-Pacific Broadcasting Union said North Korea — whose team is competing at the World Cup for the first time in 44 years — had used legal footage “right from the start” following a deal between the union and FIFA.

KBS is a member of the TV union, which has agreed with football’s world governing body to air the tournament live in six other impoverished countries — East Timor, Laos, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. “We have signed a contract with FIFA on June 11, just before the opening game started, to broadcast the matches live in North Korea,” a spokeswoman at the Kuala Lumpur-based broadcasting union told AFP. “It’s not true to say they have broadcast a pirate recording for the opening match. Right from the start, North Korea has been using the feeds from FIFA legally,” she said, while declining to detail the terms of the agreement.

South Korea are also competing in South Africa, and SBS says it holds the broadcast rights for the entire Korean peninsula. North Korea, whose national side open their campaign later Tuesday against five-time champions Brazil, wanted the South to provide free footage, as it had done for the 2006 tournament in Germany. But SBS said last week that negotiations with North Korea over a fee had broken down. It said the talks had been coloured by tensions between Seoul and Pyongyang over the sinking of a South Korean warship in March…

…Four years ago, South Korea’s then-liberal government spent 150 million won (132,600 dollars) subsidising World Cup broadcasts to North Korea.
—

N.Korea Shows Pirate Broadcasts of World Cup

(Chosun Ilbo, 14 June 2010) North Korea’s Central TV illegally aired the opener of the 2010 World Cup in South Africa on Saturday evening despite having failed to buy the broadcasting rights. The broadcast showed about an hour and 20 minutes of footage of Friday’s opener between South Africa and Mexico.

As if mindful of accusations of piracy, the channel erased inscriptions at the top and bottom of the screen showing the source of the program. An announcer and a commentator voiced over the original broadcasters after muting the original noise soundtrack, with the result that stadium noise was almost completely lost.

SBS TV in Seoul, which holds the exclusive rights for the Korean Peninsula, says this was an “act of piracy.” “The North’s broadcast of the World Cup matches was illegal because our negotiations with North Koreans were suspended,” an SBS spokesman said. “We’ll decide how to respond once we find out where the North got the footage.”

In the 2006 World Cup, the North was given broadcasting rights for free by the Asia-Pacific Broadcasting Union. In 2002, it also broadcast matches illegally.

On Sunday, the North only broadcast edited games between Uruguay and France and between Argentina and Nigeria and skipped the South Korea-Greece match altogether.
—

North Korea Moves Quietly Onto the Internet

(By Martyn Williams, CIO.com, June 10, 2010) IDG News Service — North Korea, one of the world’s few remaining information black holes, has taken the first step toward a fully fledged connection to the Internet. But a connection, if it comes, is unlikely to mean freedom of information for North Korea’s citizens.

In the past few months, a block of 1,024 Internet addresses, reserved for many years for North Korea but never touched, has been registered to a company with links to the government in Pyongyang. The numeric IP addresses lie at the heart of communication on the Internet. Every computer connected to the network needs its own address so that data can be sent and received by the correct servers and computers. Without them, communication would fall apart.

It is unclear how the country’s secretive leadership plans to make use of the addresses. It seems likely they will be assigned for military or government use, but experts say it is impossible to know for sure. North Korea’s move toward the Internet comes as it finds itself increasingly isolated on the world stage. The recent sinking of a South Korean warship has been blamed on the insular country. As a result, there are calls for tougher sanctions that would isolate North Korea further.

“There is no place for the Internet in contemporary DPRK,” said Leonid A. Petrov, a lecturer in Korean studies at The University of Sydney, referring to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. “If the people of North Korea were to have open access to the World Wide Web, they would start learning the truth that has been concealed from them for the last six decades. Unless Kim Jong-Il or his successors feel suicidal, the Internet, like any other free media, will never be allowed in North Korea,” he said.

The North Korean addresses were recently put under the control of Star Joint Venture, a Pyongyang-based company that is partly controlled by Thailand’s Loxley Pacific. The Thai company has experience working with North Korea on high-tech projects, having built North Korea’s first cellular telephone network, Sunnet, in 2002. Loxley acknowledged that it is working on a project with Pyongyang, but Sahayod Chiradejsakulwong, a manager at the company, wouldn’t elaborate on plans for the addresses. “This is a part of our business that we do no want to provide information about at the moment,” he said.

A connection to the Internet would represent a significant upgrade of the North’s place in cyberspace, but it’s starting from a very low base. At present the country relies on servers in other countries to disseminate information. The Web site of the Korea Central News Agency, the North’s official mouthpiece, runs on a server in Japan, while Uriminzokkiri, the closest thing the country has to an official Web site, runs from a server in China.

North Korean citizens have access to a nationwide intranet system called Kwangmyong, which was established around 2000 by the Pyongyang-based Korea Computer Center. It connects universities, libraries, cybercafes and other institutions with Web sites and e-mail, but offers no links to the outside world. Connections to the actual Internet are severely limited to the most elite members of society. Estimates suggest no more than a few thousand North Koreans have access to the Internet, via a cross-border hook-up to China Netcom. A second connection exists, via satellite to Germany, and is used by diplomats and companies.

For normal citizens of North Korea, the idea of an Internet hook-up is unimaginable, Petrov said. Kim Jong-Il, the de-facto leader of the country, appears all too aware of the destructive power that freedom of information would have to his regime. While boasting of his own prowess online at an inter-Korean summit meeting in 2007, he reportedly rejected an Internet connection to the Kaesong Industrial Park, the jointly run complex that sits just north of the border, and said that “many problems would arise if the Internet at the Kaesong Park is connected to other parts of North Korea.”

Kim himself has made no secret of the Internet access that he enjoys, and famously asked then-U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright for her e-mail address during a meeting in 2000. The government’s total control over information extends even as far as requiring radios be fixed on domestic stations so foreign voices cannot be heard. The policy shows no signs of changing, so any expansion of the Internet into North Korea would likely be used by the government, military or major corporations.

—

Also, read the “The World’s Most Unusual Outsourcing Destination” by Martyn Williams here…
—

Watch the video footage “Radio wars between North and South Korea” by Martyn Williams here… 

—

Views Show How North Korea Policy Spread Misery

By SHARON LaFRANIERE (The New York Times, June 9, 2010)

…Those North Koreans who have never crossed the border have no way to make sense of their tribulations. There is no Internet. Television and radio receivers are soldered to government channels. Even the party official’s wife lacks a telephone and mourns her lack of contact with the outside world. Her first question to a foreigner was “Am I pretty?”

Slowly, however, information is seeping in. Traders return from China to report that people are richer and comparatively freer, and that South Koreans are supposedly even more so. Some of the traders have cellphones that are linked to the Chinese cellular network and can be surreptitiously borrowed for exorbitant fees.

Punishment for watching foreign films and television shows is stiff. The trader said a 35-year-old neighbor spent six months in a labor camp last year after he was caught watching “Twin Dragons,” a farcical Hong Kong action film starring Jackie Chan. Yet to the dismay of the former teacher, her 26-year-old son takes similar risks.

Her sister is married to a government official in the capital, Pyongyang, she said, but neither is a fan of Kim Jong-il. On her most recent visit, she said, her sister whispered to her, “ ‘People follow him because of fear, not because of love.’ ”

Since the currency devaluation, she and others say, people are noticeably bolder with such comments. “Now, if you go to the market, people will say anything,” the construction worker said. “They will say the government is a thief — even in broad daylight”…

 Read the full text of this article here…

—

CPRK Condemns South Korea for War Moves

Pyongyang, May 30 (KCNA) — “The group of conservatives in south Korea are rushing headlong toward the reckless military confrontation and war against the DPRK while persistently linking the case of the puppet navy’s warship sinking with it. The Secretariat of the Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of Korea (CPRK) on Sunday released its information bulletin No. 955 in denunciation of such moves.

According to the bulletin, the puppet military gangsters have staged bombardment and depth-bomb dropping exercises in the waters of the West Sea of Korea from May 27 with mobilization of 10 warships of different types, including destroyers and patrol craft, and antisubmarine patrol planes while crying out for “military demonstration” and “military counteraction” under the scenario of confrontation worked out by traitor Lee Myung Bak. And they are illegally infiltrating groups of warships into the territorial waters of the DPRK every day to get on the nerves of the DPRK.

The group of traitors is also planning to stage the largest-scale joint anti-submarine exercises in the waters of the West Sea of Korea by inviting the U.S. imperialist aggressor forces’ warships, including the nuclear aircraft carrier belonging to the 7th Fleet, a cruiser and nuclear submarine. And it is examining a plan to conduct with the U.S. forces arge-scale field mobile exercises, equivalent to the “Team Spirit” joint military exercises which had been suspended since 1994.

Meanwhile, the group is hell-bent on spying on the military objects of the DPRK by mobilizing U-2 and other strategic and tactical reconnaissance planes of various types after raising the anti-DPRK watch posture to the phase on the eve of war. It is also seeking to resume the anti-DPRK smear psychological warfare in the frontline areas through scattering of leaflets and by means of electronic displays and loudspeakers.

The group has planned to zealously join in the U.S.-led aggressive “PSI” and thus stage the extremely provocative “intercepting drill” aimed to put sea blockade against the DPRK and search at random its vessels on voyage in open seas. Such confrontation and war moves conducted by the Lee Myung Bak group of traitors in conspiracy with the U.S. are a downright military blackmail and an intolerable challenge to the DPRK.

At present the Korean Peninsula has been driven to the touch-and-go situation, in which a war may break out any moment, due to the case of the warship sinking the group of traitors fabricated to defile the DPRK’s dignity and do harm to and stifle the fellow countrymen. It is not hard to predict what consequences such military provocations and saber-rattling in the West Sea of Korea will entail since there were several skirmishes between the north and the south due to the south Korean puppet military warmongers’ provocation and the recent warship sinking case occurred in those waters.

Those fond of playing with fire are bound to perish in the flames kindled by themselves. It is the iron will and spirit of our army and people to react to “punishment” with merciless punishment and to “retaliation” with a dreadful annihilating strike. If the Lee Myung Bak group persists in reckless provocation, the DPRK will give more dreadful punishment to it. ”

—

Watch Pyongyang TV on-line here…

—

North Korea Appears to Tap Leader’s Son as Enigmatic Heir

By MARTIN FACKLER (The New York Times, April 24, 2010)

SUNGNAM, South Korea — The black-and-white photographs that were published last month in a North Korean newspaper appear no different from other propaganda coming from North Korea: they show the supreme leader, Kim Jong-il, touring a steel plant in a fur cap and his trademark sunglasses.

It is the pudgy but stern-faced young man next to him, dressed in a snappy Western suit and dutifully scribbling in a notebook, who has spurred intense speculation. Could this unidentified man be just a plant manager? Or could this be the first public appearance of Kim Jong-un, the North Korean leader’s third son and heir apparent?

“There, see how his face is in focus and illuminated even more than Kim Jong-il himself?” said Cheong Seong-chang, a specialist on North Korean politics at the Sejong Institute. “There is a high possibility that this is Kim Jong-un.”

Little is known about the inner workings of the secretive North Korean government, not even the identity of the heir apparent. But if Mr. Cheong is right, the enigmatic photographs are the latest signs of the desperate push that the North Korean government is making to build a cult of personality around the son, who is believed to be 27, to prepare him to assume control as the current leader’s health declines.

The elder Mr. Kim, 68, appeared to suffer a stroke two years ago, and there have been recent reports that he is suffering from kidney disease. Analysts say that if Mr. Kim dies too soon, his son could be pushed aside in a scramble for power among political and military elites that would end the family’s dynastic rule and might even bring about the collapse of the impoverished totalitarian state.

While this internal struggle is going on, problems continue to mount. A ham-handed currency revaluation last fall, aimed at reasserting central control over the economy, is reported to have badly backfired, producing unrest and disaffection with the government. At the same time, the spread of cellphones and DVD players has broken the North’s self-imposed isolation, giving many of its citizens a sense for the first time of how poor and backward their country has become.

Recently, the government is said to have given mass promotions and luxury cars to officers in the nation’s powerful military, in a bid to cement their loyalty. Indeed, the sinking last month of a South Korean warship, which many South Koreans now suspect was the work of a North Korean torpedo, is widely seen in the South as a show of strength by the North aimed at winning the military’s support for the younger Mr. Kim.

Despite the breakdown of communications barriers, reliable information on the political system remains scant. Photographs like those that appeared in last month’s Rodong Sinmun, the ruling party’s newspaper, are among the limited evidence that analysts and intelligence experts must rely on as they try to understand the efforts to shore up the Kim dynasty for a third generation.

“This remains Kremlinology,” said Lee Ki-dong, a researcher on North Korea at the Institute for National Strategy, referring to the cold-war-era study of politics in the former Soviet Union. “We have to scrutinize the Rodong Sinmun as if we were looking for nuggets in a gold mine.”

Not much is known about the man who could become the next leader of the unpredictable, nuclear-armed country, even including what he looks like. The only firsthand account comes from a Japanese chef who once worked for the Kim family and knew Kim Jong-un only as a personable and precocious boy. The only known photograph of him was taken when he was 11 years old.

It is also unknown whether Kim Jong-un has any rivals. For a time, North Korea watchers regarded the leader’s eldest son, Kim Jong-nam, 39, as the most likely heir — until he was caught by Japanese authorities using a fake passport to visit Tokyo Disneyland. He now lives in Macao, giving occasional paid interviews to Japanese television.

Reports out of North Korea indicate that the government is trying to build a cult of personality around Kim Jong-un, just as it did during the last succession, when the current leader replaced his father, the North’s founder, Kim Il-sung. But while Kim Jong-il is believed to have had two decades as heir before assuming power after his father’s death in 1994, his son is being rolled out much faster.

Moreover, some experts say, the average North Korean is growing worldly and aware of life outside the country’s borders, making it increasingly unlikely that the government’s often bizarre propaganda efforts will succeed.

On Monday, the Daily NK, a Web site that specializes in information on North Korea, said it had obtained an internal propaganda document that called Kim Jong-un the Youth Captain and quoted his father (who has his own title, Dear Leader) praising his loyalty and good works. The documents also extolled the son for such achievements as managing a fireworks display last year in Pyongyang, the capital, and becoming a proficient driver of military vehicles, the Daily NK reported.

“He is a genius of geniuses,” the document says. “He has been endowed by nature with special abilities. There is nobody on the planet who can defeat him in terms of faith, will and courage.”

Mr. Cheong, the analyst, said that members of local North Korean work units and government employees had been taught a new song titled “Footsteps,” which lauds Kim Jong-un’s fitness to follow his father as leader.

Kim Jong-il has been rushing to prepare the ground for his son in other ways, analysts say. They said that wiretaps of North Korean phones by the South’s intelligence agency revealed that the younger Mr. Kim was appointed to a top post in the ruling party’s internal security apparatus last year and that he now worked in the same building as his father.

The analysts have offered many predictions about what may happen when the current leader does die. One is that his brother-in-law, Jang Song-taek, 64, widely seen as the second most powerful member of the inner circle, could serve as a regent until the younger Mr. Kim is ready to rule — or simply hold onto power for himself.

“The signs are that the elite do not take Kim Jong-un seriously,” said Kim Yeon-su, a professor of North Korean studies at the National Defense University in Seoul. “This is the final stage of the Kim family dictatorship.”
—

“The photo is not of Kim Jong-un,” a Unification Ministry official said, speaking to reporters on the condition of anonymity. Another government official, who also asked not to be named, said the photo showed Kim Kwang-nam, chief engineer at the Kim Chaek Iron and Steel Complex in a northern province.

—

See more photos of suspected Kim Jong-un in News.Nate.com

—

Nimble Agencies Sneak News Out of North Korea

By CHOE SANG-HUN, The New York Times, (24 January 2010)

Daily NK is one of six news outlets that have emerged in recent years specializing in collecting information from North Korea. These Web sites or newsletters hire North Korean defectors and cultivate sources inside a country shrouded in a near-total news blackout.

While North Korea shutters itself from the outside — it blocks the Internet, jams foreign radio broadcasts and monitors international calls — it releases propaganda-filled dispatches through the government’s mouthpiece, the Korean Central News Agency.

But, thanks to Daily NK and the other services, it is also possible now for outsiders to read a dizzying array of “heard-in-North Korea” reports, many on topics off limits for public discussion in the North, like the health of the country’s leader, Kim Jong-il.

The reports are sketchy at best, covering small pockets of North Korea society. Many prove wrong, contradict each other or remain unconfirmed. But they have also produced important scoops, like the currency devaluation and a recent outbreak of swine flu in North Korea. The mainstream media in South Korea now regularly quote these cottage-industry news services.

“Technology made this possible,” said Sohn Kwang-joo, the chief editor of Daily NK. “We infiltrate the wall of North Korea with cellphones.”

[…] In the past year, the quality of the information these news services provide has improved as they have hired more North Korean intellectuals and former officials who defected to the South and still have friends in elite circles in the North, said Ha Tae-keung, a former student activist who runs Open Radio for North Korea and a Web site.

“These officials provide news because they feel uncertain about the future of their regime and want to have a link with the outside world, or because of their friendship with the defectors working for us, or because of money,” said Mr. Ha, who also goes by his English name, Young Howard.

All these news outlets pay their informants. Mr. Ha pays a bonus for significant scoops. Daily NK and Open Radio each have 15 staff members, some of them defectors, and receive U.S. congressional funding through the National Endowment for Democracy, as well as support from other public and private sources.

Recently, they have been receiving tips from North Koreans about corrupt officials.

“The fact that news comes out through civic groups like ours means that North Korean society is changing fast,” said Pomnyun Sumin, a Buddhist monk and chairman of Good Friends, a relief group based in Seoul whose newsletter broke the swine flu story last month.

Some informants have become so adept with technology that they send text-messages, audio files and photos to Seoul by cell phone, said Kim Heung-gwang, a former North Korean computer scientist who heads North Korea Intellectuals Solidarity, a group of defectors that runs a news Web site.

Bringing news out of North Korea is risky. Mr. Kim said that one of his informants was stopped last May while trying to smuggle out a video in a small camera hidden in a cosmetics bottle. She is believed to have killed herself in police detention, he said.

See the full text of the article here…

—

Leonid Petrov‘s answer to IDG News Service on 8 June 2010.

Q: What do you think an Internet (not Intranet) connection would mean for North Korea? The information hold of the government seems so tight that it seems unlikely.

LP: There is no place for Internet in contemporary DPRK. If the people of North Korea have open access to the world wide web they would start learning the truth which has been concealed from them for the last six decades. Internet will make people asking questions, comparing things, and drawing conclusions most of which will be unpalatable for the regime. Unless Kim Jong-il or his successors feel suicidal, Internet (like any other free media) will never be allowed in North Korea.

—

See the most recent report by Daily NK on the street fights in North Korea here… (Sensational!)

—

Voyage hors du temps en Corée du Nord

Par Arnaud de la Grange, envoyé spécial à Pyongyang, (Le Figaro 20/10/2009)

Parcourir la campagne nord-coréenne, c’est un peu se promener dans un tableau de Poussin, où la paysannerie du XVIIe siècle s’affaire paisiblement à récolter le blé ou le raisin. Sur le vert tendre des rizières ou le brun grillé des champs de maïs passent des silhouettes de femmes portant sur le dos des sortes de hottes formées d’un cadre de bois triangulaire, que, même à Pyongyang, l’on vous montre dans les musées. En 2009, dans ce bout d’Asie de l’Est communiste, on repique le riz à la main, la bête de travail est un luxe, le tracteur un rêve. Dans les provinces traversées lors de deux incursions vers l’Ouest et le Sud, toutefois, les champs sont bien entretenus et les villages en apparence guère plus misérables que dans bien des pays de la région.

La règle de ce voyage dans le pays le plus fermé de la planète – se fondre dans le paysage comme l’un des rares touristes le visitant – impose bien sûr une vision singulièrement tronquée d’une Corée du Nord où la propagande est érigée au rang de discipline artistique. On ne voit que ce que l’on vous montre, et ce que l’on peut glaner dans les interstices. Pyongyang, cette fois, donne plutôt l’impression d’un voyage à Sofia ou à Minsk dans les années 1950. Les bâtiments, le tramway, les boutiques en sous-sol des immeubles, tout sent les grandes heures de l’économie planifiée. Pour autant, ce n’est pas cette image caricaturale d’une ville où des hordes de citadins efflanqués et déprimés hantent de grises rues. Au contraire, il se dégage de la «ville des saules» une étonnante impression de calme, avec un air dont les rares voitures ne suffisent à altérer la pureté, de vastes avenues arborées et des rues où les seules agressions publicitaires sont les fresques à la gloire du régime. On y croise des cadres en costume, des femmes à la rassurante et universelle coquetterie, des couples qui flirtent dans les parcs ou le long des rives du fleuve Taedong. Bien sûr, Pyongyang est une vitrine, et les carreaux sont plus sales dans les bourgades de province, voire dans les rues excentrées de la capitale. Et il y a aussi ces longues files de citadins fatigués attendant des bus asthéniques, ces vieilles dames courbées sous le poids d’un sac de toile contenant tous leurs trésors…

…La Chine, avec qui se font plus des trois quarts du commerce, reste bien le poumon du pays. C’est pour cela qu’il y a dix jours, le «Cher Leader» est venu lui-même à l’aéroport accueillir le premier ministre chinois, Wen Jiabao, avant de tenir en sa présence des propos plus conciliants sur le nucléaire. Les Chinois avaient été passablement irrités des dernières frasques atomiques d’un protégé, qui risquaient de leur faire perdre la face. Sous peine de voir la perfusion chinoise s’étrangler, Kim Jong-il devait donner des gages. D’autant que l’hiver approche, avec de cruels besoins en pétrole ou nourriture. Régi depuis quinze ans par des cycles de tensions suivis de laborieuses tractations, le grand jeu diplomatique autour de la Corée du Nord est aussi une affaire de saisons.

See the full text of this article here…

See more photos by Arnaud De La Grange here…

—

The Paradox of North Korea

John Sudworth (BBC News, 7 October 2009)

…The BBC’s attempts to record sound and pictures in the streets of Pyongyang are met with a stiff response. Our camera and tapes were temporarily seized by government minders.

We do, however, catch glimpses of daily life, at least of that led by the privileged citizens of Pyongyang. On the face of it, given North Korea’s broken command economy and the added burden of international sanctions, the country’s capital looks in pretty good shape.

The Ryugyong Hotel, an unfinished 105-storey hulk that has long loomed large on the Pyongyang skyline as a symbol of failure, is finally beginning to resemble its original conception. The giant, creaking, pyramid structure is being made sound and then clad in glass.

Some of the city’s foreign residents suggest that there are more cars on the street lately, although the majority of citizens travel on foot or on bike, making their way to and from work in the autumn sunshine. A campaign to boost productivity is under way; repairs are being made and many more of the buildings are being given a lick of paint.

But the makeover masks a grim underlying reality. Just a few miles out of the capital the traffic almost disappears and the main highway south turns into what is, in effect, one of the world’s widest bicycle lanes. From time to time we pass a broken-down army Jeep, bonnet up, with soldiers peering into the engine. A collapsed bridge on the main highway forces our bus driver to make a detour through countryside, and into another century.

There is precious little mechanisation, the crops are being harvested by hand with the maize loaded on to waiting oxen carts, and the poverty is everywhere. This year the country is once again predicted to face big food shortfalls. North Korea prefers to show the few tourists, and the even fewer journalists given permission to come, an altogether different image…

…Back in Pyongyang we say goodbye to our minders — educated, friendly people (despite the odd run-in) but also, of course, members of the North Korean elite and strong supporters of the state. It is impossible to know what the average North Korean is really thinking at the moment. They would be unlikely to risk speaking their mind to a visiting BBC reporter, even if we were allowed to get close to them.

Nonetheless, it is fair to say that while the outside world struggles to respond to Pyongyang’s nuclear ambitions, visitors are met with a striking paradox. This may be a deeply authoritarian and impoverished place, but at least some of its citizens appear genuinely proud and defiant. Upon whatever it is based, it is that strand of legitimacy, as much as the physical controls, that has helped make North Korea so resilient for so long.

See video footage and read the full text here…

—

North Korea’s Kim Jong Il Reasserts Control

by Louisa Lim, NPR, 8 October 2009

…Among the elite, the rumors swirl about another display of loyalty: a spectacular fireworks extravaganza held in April that is said to have been orchestrated by Kim Jong Il’s favored successor, his youngest son, 26-year-old Kim Jong Un.

His name is now widely known in North Korea compared with a year ago, but it’s not mentioned in public. During our five days in the country, only one person directly answered a question about the man known as the “Young General.” That was Kim Sun Hee, a state-sponsored artist who has spent six months painstakingly capturing the fireworks display on canvas.

“If the ‘Young General’ Kim Jong Un organized these fireworks, it [captured] all the minds of all the people,” she said, echoing an idea much repeated here — of “single-hearted unity,” melding the minds of the leader, the party and the masses.

These days, his father, Kim Jong Il, is firmly back in control, apparently recovered, though sleeker after his illness. Five days ago, he was seen bear-hugging Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao at a lavish welcoming ceremony at the airport. Some observers, such as Leonid Petrov, a North Korea expert at the University of Sydney, now believe his succession has been put on hold.

“Kim Jong Un has in the past months got great popularity among the younger representatives within the army, within the party, as opposed to the old guard,” says Petrov. “Here, we can see a sort of brewing conflict, which at the moment is not visible, but within the elite they probably detected some signs of interest in reform, change, experimentation. And I think Kim Jong Il decided simply to put it on hold. The family is not interested in any change.”

Moves toward economic liberalization, too, are being rolled back. This spring, North Korea aired its first television commercial ever, for Taedonggang beer. That ad was shown for a few weeks, but it is no longer running.

The authorities also have tightened controls on local markets. Their opening hours have been cut, and efforts are reportedly being made to restrict market trading to older women only, thereby forcing men and younger women to return to state-run work units instead of engaging in market activities.

Petrov says the regime is clamping down on private enterprise, driving it underground. “Back in 2003, Pyongyang looked like one big market. Now, we can see there’s no trade on the streets. Trade and market and commercial activity is deemed to be something ideologically contaminating, something alien to the very nature of socialist society,” he says…

Read the full text of this article and listen to the audio file here…

Read and listen to more stories by Louisa Lim about her recent trip to North Korea:

U.S. Is Main Foe In North Korea’s ‘History’ Lessons (NPR, 16 October 2009)

Facade Of Perfection Slips Occasionally In N. Korea (NPR, 12 October 2009)

—

Extravagant monuments cannot hide the grim reality of North Korea

by Richard Lloyd Parry (The Times, 06 October 2009)

As the last fortress of 20th-century totalitarianism, Pyongyang has seen many extravagant firework displays, but nothing as spectacular as the one that illuminated the heavens this spring.

“It was the most beautiful thing I have seen,” said Kim Sun Hee, an artist who has spent the past few months attempting to capture the moment. “The colours were wonderful — the fireworks on the bridge looked like waterfalls of fire.”

But nothing in the display was more remarkable than the identity of the man responsible — the youngest son of the “Dear Leader”. There was no formal announcement but among the Pyongyang elite word has spread that the display was the work of one referred whisperingly to as the “Young General”.

A year ago only a handful of North Koreans had heard of him; now his name is common knowledge: Kim Jong Un, 26, is apparently being groomed to succeed Kim Jong Il in the only hereditary communist dictatorship in history.

North Korea likes to present itself as an unchanging place, a socialist workers’ paradise where the conundrums of good governance have been solved by the supernatural brilliance of Mr Kim and his late father and founder of the country, the “Great Leader”, Kim Il Sung.

However, it is a place of tension and anticipation. Fed on propaganda and lies, North Koreans are usually the last to learn what is happening behind the scenes in their country — but these days, in Pyongyang at least, even they can sense that change is in the air.

Since the fireworks in April the debut of the young Mr Kim appears to have been put on hold after his father’s recovery from a suspected stroke last year.

Even if its leader has won a temporary reprieve, North Korea remains what it has been for 15 years — an anachronism, bankrupt economically, politically and intellectually that, according to conventional theories, should have collapsed years ago under the weight of its own contradictions…

See the full text of the article here…

See more photos by Paul Rogers here…

—