Correspondence with the Supreme Leader of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea and First Secretary of the Workers' Party of Korea, Kim Jong-un

I thought this might be of interest for those who did not want to wade through the whole report at this link: http://www.ohchr.org/EN/HRBodies/HRC/CoIDPRK/Pages/ReportoftheCommissionofInquiryDPRK.aspx

I would have the Korean language version of this letter sent to the north Korea people (and all military leaders into who hands this could be put)  by every available method if I were in charge of the influence campaign and PSYOP.  North Korea is one of the most important PSYOP target in the world.

But I bet no one in the Kim Family Regime ever received a letter like this. And I would be wary if Kim took Mr. Kirby up on his offcer for the commission to travel to Pyongyang.  

Correspondence with the Supreme Leader of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and First Secretary of the Workers’ Party of Korea, Kim Jong-un    

-- 

10 Brutal North Korean Secrets

Good reminder on the brutality of the Kim Family Regime.

V/R

Dave

10 Brutal North Korean Secrets

ANDREW HANDLEY AUGUST 26, 2013

HTTP://LISTVERSE.COM/2013/08/26/10-BRUTAL-NORTH-KOREAN-SECRETS/

If the Kim family had their way, the entire world would think North Korea was a beautiful paradise and that every one of its leaders was a blessing sent straight from heaven. Needless to say, North Korea’s media has a slight penchant for bias, and thanks to their strict tourism policy (anyone can visit as long as they’re already in the country), it’s difficult to get a firm grasp on what actually goes on inside the borders of this closed, totalitarian state. But thanks to a few daring undercover journalists who snuck in, along with gruesome reports from defected North Koreans who snuck out, we’re getting a better picture of how the cogs turn behind the veil of this great propaganda machine. And it’s not pretty.

10Labor Camps

North Korea currently operates about 16 labor camps—massive compounds scattered across the mountainous terrain and enclosed by electrified barbed wire fences. It’s estimated that somewhere around 200,000 prisoners are held in these camps at any given time.

The prison cities are often compared to the Gulag camps of Soviet Russia—forced labor camps in which prisoners are held in brutal working conditions and executed for crimes as petty as stealing a few kernels of corn. Prisoners are usually a mix of defectors, traitors, and ex-politicians who ran afoul of the government—a fairly easy thing to do.

9Three Generations Of Punishment

North Korean law dictates a “three generations of punishment” policy: If you commit a crime, your children and grandchildren will carry the stains of your sin and be punished accordingly. That means that if your grandfather committed a crime, you get to bear the full brunt of his punishment. As mentioned above, this usually leads to entire lives spent inside prison camps. One of the worst offenses that a North Korean can commit is attempting to leave North Korea, which can justify either immediate execution or an extended sentence in one of their labor camps.

Criticizing the government, no matter how slightly, is also considered a treasonous offense. Simply learning about other cultures warrants a death sentence. Recent smuggling between the border of North Korea and China has allowed some people to get DVDs of Western movies—which are illegal. The North Korean National Security Agency has begun raiding villages in the north of the country by shutting off the electricity to a whole village then storming into houses and checking which DVDs are stuck in the DVD player.

8Insurance Fraud

The North Korean economy is, in all measurable aspects, completely failing. Exports are virtually nonexistent due to their reluctance to interact with foreign markets, as well as the fact that they struggle to feed everyone living within their own borders. The current population of North Korea is about 25 million, and the average GDP per person is about $500 (for comparison, in the US it hovers around $50,000).

To supplement their ailing economy and bring in more money, North Korea has been known to turn to international crime. One of these crimes is global insurance fraud: They’ve conned Western insurance companies out ofhundreds of millions of dollars. Brought to light in 2009, it turns out that the North Korean government had been taking out huge insurance policies on property and equipment, then claiming that it had been destroyed.

In 2005, several of the world’s largest insurance companies, including Lloyd’s of London, took North Korea to court over an alleged helicopter crash with a $58 million insurance policy. When North Korea’s state-run courts “reviewed” the case, they announced that it was a legitimate claim. The insurance companies settled because their contract was subject to North Korean law, which is a bit like playing “I win” with a toddler.

7Arms Dealing

Insurance fraud aside, the United Nations has also accused North Korea of selling illegal weapons and nuclear technology to the highest bidder, which usually means countries in Africa and the Middle East. For example, in 2012, the UN seized a North Korean shipment heading to Syria which contained nearly 450 graphite cylinders meant for use in ballistic missiles. In 2009, shipments to both Iran and the Republic of Congo were caught in transit—one had 35 tons of missile components, and the other contained Soviet-era tanks.

According to UN sanctions, North Korea has been banned from trading or selling missile technology, but North Korea came right back out and said that it’s actually the sanctions that are illegal, and they can do whatever they want. It’s hardly a surprise then that North Korea’s arms trade isn’t slowing down at all. Like the insurance fraud, it’s a much needed source of revenue for the government—although according to Blaine Harden at the Washington Post, the majority of that money goes into Kim Jong Un’s personal stash rather than toward food for his people.

(Continued at the link below)

HTTP://LISTVERSE.COM/2013/08/26/10-BRUTAL-NORTH-KOREAN-SECRETS/

Continuity of Denial: Kim Jong-un’s Succession and North Korean Human Rights by Robert Collins

This short piece provides more insight into the north Korean regime, the system and nL human rights that you can find in any essay from a think tank or academic institution.  I am of course biased because the author is one of my mentors, particularly on north Korea.

V/R

Dave

Sunday, August 11, 2013

Continuity of Denial: Kim Jong-un’s Succession and North Korean Human Rights

by Robert Collins

http://humanrightsnorthkorea.blogspot.kr/2013/08/continuity-of-denial-kim-jong-uns_6886.html

          Few countries base their self-sustainment on the concept of denying human rights to its populace. That is, if they are not authoritarian dictatorships, which historically see internal enemies in a far more immediate context than foreign ones.  History has seen plenty of these dictatorships in the 20^th Century and before.  But the 21^st Century has its fair share.  And perhaps there is no dictatorship more totalitarian than that of North Korea’s Kim Jong-un Regime. 

          North Korean society is characterized by the values of the collective over the individual, the priorities of a dictatorship, and the denial of human rights to any and all citizens.  Led by a regime that overwhelmingly employs pervasive tools of political terror, North Korean society is designed from the top to focus on collective support to the supreme leader through revolutionary thought and constant political indoctrination.  

Contrary to early predictions of economic reform, Kim Jong-un has sustained and promoted the policies of his father and grandfather.  The human rights plight of the North Korean citizen has worsened as those in Pyongyang continue to gain privileges and opportunity for financial success, so long as they work to promote all current regime policies, while those outside Pyongyang continue to work in a feudal system where daily survival is very difficult at best.  The gap between the haves and have-nots, more accurately described as the gap between the privileged and suppressed, continues to widen. 

          Inheriting a dictatorship is risky business, to be sure.  Threats abound and plenty of challengers would be ready to step into the leadership position if it were not for the political terror network so prevalent in dictatorships.  The inheritor of dictatorial power, whether he or she had reasonable morals in the first place, must put those morals aside to manage the volatile institutions, personnel and policies implementing human rights as they are until succession is secure.  That means a new dictator must grasp control of the current political structure as it is before considering how to institute any kind of reform—economic, human rights or otherwise.  So after securing the Kim Family Regime and after gaining confidence in his ability to control threats to his position as the North’s Supreme Leader, Kim Jong-un basically has three choices regarding the regime’s human rights policies: improve them, leave current human rights practices as they are, or increase denial and suppression of those rights. From the looks of it, Kim Jong-un has chosen the latter course of action.

          Certainly, denying human rights does not happen in a vacuum of security policy.  Indeed, there are many cornerstones to Kim Jong-un’s hold on power, just as there were for his father and grandfather:  political terror, ideological indoctrination of the populace, social classification of each citizen, resource control, border security, and personnel purges on the domestic front, as well as increasing military capabilities for both internal and external defense and to heighten peninsular and regional tensions on the international front.  All of these contribute in some way, directly or indirectly, to Kim Jong-un’s ability to deny human rights to every North Korean. 

            The greatest challenge Kim Jong-un faced in the succession process was securing control of the military.  The casual observer of North Korea would think that the North Korean dictator need not regard the control of the military as a component of change in the North’s human rights policy.  However, without control of the military, there is no guarantee of succession and no anticipation of human rights improvement. 

After Kim Jong-il suffered a stroke in August 2008, he began laying the foundation for Kim Jong-un’s succession to replace him.[1]  For Kim Jong-un’s transition to greater and greater authority, Kim Jong-il did not have the 30 years he was given by Kim Il-sung to secure power. As it turned out, he only had three years.

          After returning from his secondary education in Switzerland, Kim Jong-un attended a three-year artilleryman course at the Kim Il-sung Military Academy and then a two-year graduate course for regimental and division commanders at the same institution.  His first assignment was in General Political Bureau’s (GPB) division of the Korean Workers’ Party Organization and Guidance Department, a position that taught him how to gain control of the Korean People’s Army through the GPB political commissar system.[2] 

          From that point on, Kim Jong-un has used GPB personnel[3] as his means of controlling internal security agencies, the core institutions of human rights denial.  For example, Choi Yong-hae[4]was appointed the new GPB Director in April 2012[5] from one of North Korea’s premier families whose dedication to the Kim Family Regime is total.  After Lee Chin-su died in 1987 as the Director of the State Security Department (SSD), Kim Jong-il did not appoint a new director through the end of his life in 2011. Essentially, that meant Kim Jong-il himself was the SSD Director and lead implementer of human rights denial.  But within a short time after assuming power, Kim Jong-un appointed General Kim Won-hung to be the SSD Director, moving from the position of vice-director of the GPB.  Kim also promoted another GPB senior officer, Colonel General Cho Kyong-chol, to the position of Commander of the Military Security Command, the SSD’s military counterpart, and lead institution of human rights denial within the Korean People’s Army and defense industries.[6]  These actions followed the dismissal of two SSD Deputy Directors in 2011 (Ryu Kyong) and 2012 (U Dong-chuk).  Loyalty to Kim Jong-un is the supreme requirement of the regime’s lead human rights henchman.  There have been plenty of military personnel purges after Kim Jong-un’s assumption of power.  Vice Marshal Ri Yong-ho was purged from his position of Chief of the KPA General Staff; Admiral Kim Chol was purged from his position of Deputy Minister of People’s Armed Forces; and six of nine KPA corps commanders were replaced, the first time in North Korean history that has happened in such a short period of time.  Indeed, since Kim Jong-un was designated successor in 2010, a total of 32 elite personnel have been purged, a solid indicator of no changes in the North’s human rights policies.[7]  To reinforce this approach of loyalty first, Kim Jong-un gave a speech on October 29, 2012, at Kim Il-sung Military Academy where he stated, “We do not need people who are not devoted to the Party and Suryeong (supreme leader), no matter how militaristic their disposition or excellent their tactical ability.”[8]

          As for Kim Jong-un himself, his first military appointment was as the Deputy Chairman of the Party Central Military Committee on September 28, 2010.  Within days after his Kim Jong-il’s death in December 2011, and as an indicator of power priorities, Kim Jong-un was appointed the by Korean Workers’ Party (KWP) Politburo Supreme Commander of the Korean People’s Army on December 30, 2011. This was based on Kim Jong-il’s wishes dating from October 8, 2011.[9]  Kim Jong-un was then appointed at the 4^th Party Representatives Conference on April 11, 2012 as the Party’s First Secretary[10] and then appointed the Chairman of the National Defense Commission at a meeting of the Supreme People’s Assembly meeting on April 13, 2012.[11]

          Another connection between the military and human rights denial are North Korea’s asymmetric military capabilities development and its impact on resources.  The successful long-range missile test in December 2012[12] and its third nuclear test,[13] along with subsequent threats against President Obama, the United States, and South Korea, were effective in raising military tensions across Northeast Asia to the U.S. homeland.  But these capabilities were and are a major contributor to the denial of the right to food as described in the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights.[14] The December missile launch was estimated by the South Korean Government to cost US$1.3 Billion, enough to purchase 4.6 million tons of corn to feed its people.[15]  The failed missile test of the previous April cost the Kim Regime US$850 Million, enough to feed 80% of all North Koreans for a year.[16] These expenditures could have easily relieved food security problems in North Korea where, according to the latest quarterly report from the World Food Programme, 81% of all households are at the poor or borderline level in food consumption.[17]  Missiles and nukes before feeding the populace is obviously the priority of the Kim Jong-un Regime, as evidenced by a United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization report that the North only purchased 57% of the grain necessary to feed its population.[18]

(Continued at the link below)

http://humanrightsnorthkorea.blogspot.kr/2013/08/continuity-of-denial-kim-jong-uns_6886.html

C-Span Coverage of the Institute of Corean American Studies Spring Seminar on May 10, 2013

The 3 hour seminar is at this link.  The participants are listed below.

V/R
Dave

http://www.c-spanvideo.org/event/218593

THE KOREAN PENINSULA AND U.S. NATIONAL SECURITY

Institute for Corean-American Studies

The State Department Special Envoy for North Korea Human Rights Issues, Ambassador Robert King, addresses a panel discussion on threats from North Korea and their potential effects on security in the Korean Peninsula and internationally

C-SPAN Live Humanity, Liberty, Peace and Security The Korean Peninsula Issues* and US National Security May 10 2013 Friday 1:30 PM - 4:30 PM Rayburn Office Building Room B318 United States House of Representatives Capitol Hill Washington DC 20515
12:30 PM	Registration
Moderator:	Sang Joo Kim (ICAS Sr Fellow & Executive Vice President)
12:55 PM	Welcome & Opening Remarks Synja P Kim (ICAS Fellow, President and Chairman)
1:30 PM	Joseph Bosco (National security consultant; Senior Associate CSIS; former OSD official, Pentagon) China's Role in the Korean Peninsula Issues
2:30 pm	Steven Bucci (Director, Douglas & Sarah Allison Center for Foreign Policy Studies, Heritage Foundation; introduced by Il Hwan Kim,ICAS Director) The East Asian Security Environment and US Foreign Policy
3:30 PM	Robert R. King (Ambassador & Special Envoy for North Korea Human Rights Issues, US State Dept; introduced by Jack Kim, ICASSpecial Liaison) North Korea's Human Rights Issues Affairs
4:30 PM	Adjourn
Discussants
David Maxwell	(ICAS Fellow; Associate Director, Security Studies Program, Georgetown University)
Larry Niksch	(ICAS Fellow; Senior Associate, CSIS)

Activists set to mark North Korea Freedom Week

I hate to continue to beat the drum (but I will not stop):   we cannot forget that the Kim Family Regime is arguably (or maybe even without argument) the worst violator of human rights in history.

V/R
Dave

2013/04/27 04:50 KST

Activists set to mark North Korea Freedom Week

http://english.yonhapnews.co.kr/national/2013/04/27/26/0301000000AEN20130427000200315F.HTML

By Lee Chi-dong

WASHINGTON, April 26 (Yonhap) -- Activists working to improve North Korea's human rights situation will stage an intensive campaign worldwide next week to raise public awareness of the problem, a main organizer said Friday.

   They plan to hold various events in Washington, Seoul and other cities to mark the 10th annual North Korea Freedom Week from April 28 through May 5, according to Susan Sholte, head of the North Korea Freedom Coalition, based in Washington.

   Her group will work with other organizations and people supporting efforts to address the North Korean human rights issue.

   A special concert, titled "A Night of Hope," will kick off North Korea Freedom Week in Washington at 7 p.m. Sunday.

   This year, the coalition will focus on collecting online petitions demanding China's new president, Xi Jinping, stop repatriating North Korean defectors.

   It has designated May 2 as Worldwide Awareness Day for North Korean Refugees.

(Continued at the link below)

http://english.yonhapnews.co.kr/national/2013/04/27/26/0301000000AEN20130427000200315F.HTML

'Orphan': A Novel Imagines Life In North Korea

I strongly recommend reading or listening to the interview below.  I know I have recommended reading this Pulitzer Prize winning novel before (along with Robert  Collins' report on Songbun http://www.hrnk.org/uploads/pdfs/HRNK_Songbun_Web.pdf) but I think listening to this interview or reading it should make anyone who is interested in gaining some understanding of life in north Korea want to read the novel.

V/R

Dave

'Orphan': A Novel Imagines Life In North Korea

April 21, 2013 8:00 AM

http://www.npr.org/2013/04/21/178226254/orphan-a-novel-imagines-life-in-north-korea

Audio for this story from Weekend Edition Sunday will be available at approximately 12:00 p.m. ET.

Listen To The Original Story

Author Interviews

'Orphan': A New Novel Imagines Life In North Korea

Last week, the The Orphan Master's Son was awarded the Pulitzer prize for fiction. Weekend Edition Sunday host Rachel Martin spoke with author Adam Johnson last year about his book. In that interview, Johnson explained that as part of his research he actually managed to finagle a visit to North Korea. He said his government minders maintained tight control over his itinerary, but they couldn't hide everything.

As the World Watches, North Korean Atrocities Unfold

There is some sad irony that the Kim Family Regime is causing the suffering of far more people than its nuclear weapons might ever effect.  While we focus on the dangers of its nuclear program we should not forget that the Kim Family Regime is arguably committing the worst human rights abuses in history and has been doing so for the past 60+ years.

V/R

Dave

As the World Watches, North Korean Atrocities Unfold

By LAMONT COLUCCI

http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/world-report/2013/04/19/north-koreas-forgotten-story

April 19, 2013 

Dr. Lamont Colucci is an associate professor of politics at Ripon College, recent Fulbright scholar to the Diplomatic Academy of Vienna, and author of The National Security Doctrines of the American Presidency: How they Shape our Present and Future, among other books. You can find out more at lamontcolucci.com.

A common mistake of the mainstream media is their penchant for tunnel vision. The bombings in Boston are a clear case where the news media give Americans the impression that the world has stopped on its axis, as focus centers on the terrorist attack in Massachusetts.

This is also the case with stories concerning international affairs. The world media are so wrapped up in the nuclear question concerning North Korea, and worse, the potential for a "deal" with the boy dictator that we forget the horror inside that country.

George Orwell wrote, "If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face – forever." The North Korean boot has been stamping on human faces since 1953, almost with impunity from the international community, craven for a deal, some deal, any deal, with the totalitarian leadership. The thinking among the establishment in the west is that any price is worth avoiding war, nuclear war in particular. The devil's bargain runs along the lines that as long as we can maintain an armistice (not peace) with the North Koreans, we can slowly work on human rights from afar.

[See a collection of political cartoons on North Korea.]

This "logic" has allowed a totalitarian nightmare to unfold that strikes at the very heart of western values, human rights, and human dignity.

The most heinous example of these abuses is the North Korean camp system. The North Korean red dynasty established a caste system referred to as songbun. This classification of people based on ideological trustworthiness determines a person's fate from the time they are born.

Those with lower songbun status are more likely to end up in the North Korean gulag system. It is estimated that at least 200,000 people languish in the death and labor camps of North Korea; their names, like Auschwitz, and Cabanatuan, should resonate with everyone, but do not. These camps, with names like Kaechon, Yodok, Pukchang, and Hoeryong, should inspire revulsion, disgust, and condemnation. These are places where torture, infanticide, starvation, and executions are daily occurrences.

In an effort to outdo his Maoist and Leninist forebears, the Kim dynasty created a camp system whereby the so-called offender is not the only one condemned, not even the immediate family, but often the generation above and below. It is therefore common for those labeled with that totalitarian catch-all favorite of the Soviets and the Chinese, "enemies of the state," to be small children and elderly grandparents. The existence of these camps is unacceptable to anyone whose faith in God, and whose belief in human rights and human liberty exist in any way, shape, or form.

(Continued at the link below)

http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/world-report/2013/04/19/north-koreas-forgotten-story

North Korea expanding gulags, satellite images show

No surprise but the international community does need to keep the pressure on.  And this is another indicator of the statement that Mr. McCreary made in NightWatch today:

 Those analysts who hoped that a younger, western educated Kim would be more modern and progressive have proven to be far too optimistic. Kim Jung Un's regime is more severe than that of Kim Chong-il.

V/R
Dave 

North Korea expanding gulags, satellite images show

North Korea is expanding its network of camps for political prisoners, apparently to meet demand for a growing gulag population, according to new satellite images.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/northkorea/9894275/North-Korea-expanding-gulags-satellite-images-show.html

By Julian Ryall, Tokyo

9:06AM GMT 26 Feb 2013

Analysis of images by the Committee for Human Rights in North Koreaindicates that the size of Camp No. 25 alone has increased 72 per cent and perimeter guard posts, which numbered 20 in 2003, had increased to 43 in 2010.

The camp is believed to house some 5,000 prisoners, in conditions that human rights groups have described as "deplorable."

The detailed pictures, provided by DigitalGlobe, a US-based commercial satellite image company, also show the perimeter fence has been extended by around 4,600 feet, agricultural plots have been rearranged and a new gateway has been constructed.

Related Articles

• Ex-Chicago Bulls star Dennis Rodman visits North Korea 26 Feb 2013
• Photographs show new activity at North Korea nuclear site 21 Feb 2013
• Obama burns in new North Korea video 19 Feb 2013
• North Korea envoy warns South of 'final destruction' 19 Feb 2013
• Analysis: North Korea's nuclear ambitions can only be stopped by China 16 Feb 2013
• N Koreans mark Kim's birthday with begonias 16 Feb 2013

Based on the images and information from defectors, the human rights group believes North Korea is being forced to expand its prison network for a number of reasons, one being the purges conducted by Kim Jong-un of senior members of his father's administration out of concern that they pose a threat to his power base.

As well as these individuals, their families and bureaucrats that supported their roles in the previous administration are being sent to prison camps.

In addition, patrols have been stepped up along North Korea's border with China to capture defectors, while Chinese authorities are also cooperating in returning North Koreans who make it over the border but are caught in China.

A third explanation that is being put forward is a consolidation of the regime's gulag system.

(Continued at the link below)

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/northkorea/9894275/North-Korea-expanding-gulags-satellite-images-show.html

North Korea Goes Nuclear—Now What?

:-)  This makes me chuckle.  Where has Mr. Evans been for the past two decades?  Not like anything he is proposing is really new.  But maybe he will be successful in getting people to pay attention to the problem.

V/R
Dave

North Korea Goes Nuclear—Now What?

By EVAN MOORE

February 20, 2013 RSS Feed Print

Evan Moore is a senior policy Analyst at the Foreign Policy Initiative.

http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/world-report/2013/02/20/after-nuclear-test-obama-needs-a-new-north-korea-strategy

North Korea's nuclear test last week and its warnings of more tests dramatically illustrate that the past two decades of U.S. policy towards Pyongyang have failed. The Obama, Bush, and Clinton administrations all have used international diplomacy—and at times promises of food, fuel, and technological assistance—to persuade the Democratic People's Republic of Korea to abandon its nuclear program. However, with the brief exception of the 2007 freezing of Pyongyang's financial assets in Banco Delta Asia, Washington has not advanced truly serious forms of coercive pressure against the Hermit Kingdom. If the United States has any hope of reversing North Korea's expanding nuclear ambitions, this must change.

It's time for the Obama administration to craft a new North Korea strategy around a new objective. At the heart of this approach would be the recognition that the dynastic Kim dictatorship is not only the underlying cause of the ongoing nuclear crisis, but also unlikely to voluntarily denuclearize. Armed with this recognition, the United States would work with allies and partners to exert truly crippling diplomatic, financial, and moral pressure against Pyongyang, with the aim of fundamentally undermining the Kim regime.

[See a collection of political cartoons on North Korea.]

This new strategy would feature six main components:

• Aggressively target North Korea's financial assets and proliferation activities. The Democratic People's Republic's sale of conventional arms, ballistic missiles, and nuclear technology to rogue nations is a critical financial life-line. The United States should lead a coordinated multilateral campaign to stop these transfers, freeze the assets of North Korean elites in international banks, and strangle the the government's other illicit income generators so as to place a vise on the Kim regime's ability to support itself.

• Work to get refugees out and radios in.  North Korea's regime continues to exist, in part, because it has prevented its own people from learning about the outside world. Indeed, the free flow of information and people across the border is a direct threat to the Hermit Kingdom. It is therefore not surprising that the Kim regime recently instituted a crackdown on foreign-origin radios and cell phones within the country, and also reduced the flow of refugees escaping across the Chinese border by nearly half in 2012. The United States should make common cause with the suffering people of North Korea, and find ways to provide them with the means to receive foreign radio broadcasts, just as America did with the captive nations of the Soviet Union during the Cold War. In addition, it should bring greater world attention to dissidents who have escaped North Korea, like Shin Dong-hyuk.

(Continued at the link below)
http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/world-report/2013/02/20/after-nuclear-test-obama-needs-a-new-north-korea-strategy

Is There a New Gulag in North Korea?

Good to see the great work of Curtis Melvin recognized here. There is certainly no better open source imagery analyst than Curtis.

V/R

Dave

• January 21, 2013, 5:54 PM

Is There a New Gulag in North Korea?

http://blogs.wsj.com/korearealtime/2013/01/21/is-there-a-new-gulag-in-north-korea/

Search Korea Real Time

KOREA REAL TIME HOME PAGE »

By Evan Ramstad

NK Econ Watch.com/Google Earth

An image from Curtis Melvin’s Google Earth file shows the potentially new prison camp on the left (west) side of the far larger — and well-known — Camp 14.

Has North Korea built another gulag?

The possibility has been raised by the sharpest of the eagle-eyed students of satellite images and maps who look for changes in the closed-off country, Curtis Melvin, who detailed his findings this weekend on his blog.

First off, Mr. Melvin notes that his observation is completely speculative.

When Google Earth uploaded new images of North Korea on Friday, Mr. Melvin, who we first profiled in 2009, went through his normal practice of updating his file of places and sites.

The latest release of images on Google Earth included the prison camp that became internationally famous in the past year – Camp 14, which was the home of the only known defector to have been born in a prison camp, Shin Dong-hyuk. His story wasskillfully told by journalist Blaine Harden in the book “Escape From Camp 14” last year.

Next to one of the borders of Camp 14, Mr. Melvin found a new, uninterrupted line of fencing and traced it in a circle. It may be an addition to the existing camp, or a new camp, or a compound of a different nature that must somehow be closed off.

(Continued at the link below)

http://blogs.wsj.com/korearealtime/2013/01/21/is-there-a-new-gulag-in-north-korea/

Ignoring North Korea’s gulags

Interesting that the Washington Post chooses to print this Op-ed on inauguration day.  The final three paragraphs sum things up:

No one suggests military action makes sense in the case of North Korea. But as Pillay noted last week, “the spotlight is almost exclusively focused on [the] DPRK’s nuclear program and rocket launches . . . While these, of course, are issues of enormous importance, they should not be allowed to overshadow the deplorable human rights situation in DPRK, which in one way or another affects almost the entire population and has no parallel anywhere else in the world.” 

Both Democratic and Republican administrations have consistently declined to focus substantial diplomatic efforts on improving the human rights and humanitarian situation in North Korea, for fear that doing so would drive Pyongyang from talks about its weapons programs. Yet if the United States won’t act decisively to end the widespread abuses of the world’s most brutal regime, who will? 

When the North Korean regime collapses and its crimes are fully exposed, historians will surely conclude we had enough information to act sooner. Now is the critical moment for President Obama and the United States to take action — and give the North Korean people hope that the world has not forgotten them.

V/R

Dave

Ignoring North Korea’s gulags

By Jared Genser, Sunday, January 20, 7:16 PM

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/ignoring-north-koreas-gulags/2013/01/20/7c0c1958-6328-11e2-9e1b-07db1d2ccd5b_story.html

Jared Genser is an attorney and serves as pro bono counsel to the International Coalition to Stop Crimes Against Humanity in North Korea.

As Americans celebrate President Obama’s second inaugural and Martin Luther King Jr. Day — events that symbolize the power of human freedom and perseverance against oppression — for many others such freedom is a distant dream. Among the most repressive countries in the world, North Korea holds as many as 200,000 people in the vast gulag system known as the kwan-li-so. Under the guilt-by-association system established during the dictatorship of Kim Il Sung more than 50 years ago, real and imagined dissenters and as many as three generations of their relatives are punished to eliminate “the seeds” of bad families. Those imprisoned have almost no hope for release, and it is nearly impossible to escape the camps, meaning these people are almost guaranteed to die as prisoners. Over the past few decades, hundreds of thousands have perished, the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea estimates.

But for the first time in recent memory, there is reason to hope that the world might finally take notice. In a clarion call for action, the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, Navanethem Pillay, last week urged the establishment of an independent international inquiry into the mass-atrocity crimes taking place in North Korea.

In the gulag, prisoners are subjected to backbreaking labor, torture, sexual violence and severe malnutrition. Men, women and children are forced to labor in dangerous work environments for up to 16 hours per day. They are given meager rations of corn gruel for food and often eat rats or pick through animal waste for survival. Even though illnesses such as pneumonia and tuberculosis run rampant in the camps, no medical treatment is available. Instead, prisoners are forced to work while sick, and those who are no longer physically able to work are sent to sanatoriums to die. Those who do not abide by the stringent camp rules are tortured or executed. The gulag is a systematic and organized network of concentration camps whose ultimate purpose is to starve and work its prisoners to death. The world also has yet to know the fate of numerous Japanese, South Korean and other foreign nationals abducted by North Korea over the past several decades.

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/ignoring-north-koreas-gulags/2013/01/20/7c0c1958-6328-11e2-9e1b-07db1d2ccd5b_story.html

A New Focus on North Korean Human Rights: A concerted effort is needed to change the nature of the regime.

Crimes against humanity is not a strong enough charge against the Kim Family Regime.  Hitler and Pol Pot can hardly hold a candle to the atrocities and suffering that the regime has caused a population of 23 million people in the last 60 years.

Unfortunately the naïve sub-title is unattainable –  the nature of the regime cannot be changed, only when the regime itself has been eliminated can the human rights of the north Korean people be respected and protected.

V/R

Dave

• January 17, 2013, 12:48 p.m. ET

A New Focus on North Korean Human Rights

A concerted effort is needed to change the nature of the regime.

Navi Pillay finally spoke a truth that hid in plain sight for decades. On Monday, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights declared North Korea's abuse of its own citizens "deplorable" and "long overdue" for investigation on grounds of crimes against humanity.

This is important because the U.N., the U.S. and other nations have treated the ongoing atrocities in the North as mere distractions from stopping its nuclear weapons and missile programs. But those threats can't be resolved until the regime either changes fundamentally or falls. That's why the bribes paid by the international community to get the North to suspend its weapons programs have been ineffective, while propping up the Kim family and prolonging the agony of the North Korean people.

The U.N. appointed a special rapporteur on North Korea in 2004, and some useful information has been collected. However, the Human Rights Council and its predecessor, the Commission on Human Rights, have so far failed to take the next step, a commission of inquiry. That's because the U.N. bodies tasked with defending human rights have been dominated by the chief offenders, who naturally vote to protect each other.

The good news is that the UNHRC session opening next month in Geneva offers a window of opportunity. Countries can only serve on the council for two three-year terms before they must step down for at least a year, which means that China, Russia and Cuba, three of Pyongyang's defenders, don't have a vote.

The International Coalition to Stop Crimes Against Humanity in North Korea, made up of activist groups, has lobbied for a commission of inquiry for more than a year. They say that an investigation will give a voice to victims, particularly escapees from the system of concentration camps believed to house more than 200,000 political prisoners. Thousands of defectors have made their way to South Korea in recent years, enabling the U.N. to piece together the dismal reality of life in North Korea.

The most important impact of this process could be to change the behavior of humanitarian aid donors. The North has been expert at playing off well-meaning governments and agencies against each other, meaning that even when South Korea or the U.S. have stopped shipments because of Pyongyang's behavior, other sources of aid have filled the shortfall. It's no wonder that the North feels free to continue its domestic repression and external saber-rattling with impunity.

(Continued at the link below)

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323468604578245181914683950.html?KEYWORDS=Korea#printMode

North Korea a culture of warriors

An interesting perspective on north Korea as the Guerrilla Dynasty which is the name of the book by Adrian Buzo (and I am surprised the author did not cite jim since he is a fellow Australian).  

Since she did not cite Buzo I will add this quote that provides what I think is also an important insight into north Korea and the Kim Family Regime:

“In the course of this struggle against factional opponents, for the first time Kim began to emphasize nationalism as a means of rallying the population to the enormous sacrifices needed for post-war recovery.  This was a nationalism that first took shape in the environment of the anti-Japanese guerrilla movement and developed into a creed through the destruction of both the non-Communist nationalist forces and much of the leftist intellectual tradition of the domestic Communists.  Kim’s nationalism did not draw inspiration from Korean history, nor did it dwell on past cultural achievements, for the serious study of history and traditional culture soon effectively ceased in the DPRK.  Rather, DPRK nationalism drew inspiration from the Spartan outlook of the former Manchurian guerrillas.  It was a harsh nationalism that dwelt on past wrongs and promises of retribution for “national traitors” and their foreign backers.  DPRK nationalism stressed the “purity” of all things Korean against the “contamination” of foreign ideas, and inculcated in the population a sense of fear and animosity toward the outside world.  Above all, DPRK nationalism stressed that the guerrilla ethos was not only the supreme, but also the only legitimate basis on which to reconstitute a reunified Korea.” (p. 27) 

But the article is important in describing some of the propaganda and illustrating the severe indoctrination of the north Korean people.  This is why in a post-conflict or post-regime collapse scenario I make these assumptions (and one imperative) when I think about planning on the Peninsula:

1.The threats will be irregular, dangerous and complex2.The ROK and its allies will not be welcomed with open arms by everyone in north Korea  – By some, perhaps many, but not by All – therein lies the threat3.US focus on Irregular Warfare does not take north Korean threats into account4.China will intervene to protect its interests5. While some planning has taken place, there has been insufficient preparation for collapse•Imperative:  ROK must lead unification –critical for long term legitimacy

V/R
Dave

North Korea a culture of warriors By Tatiana Gabroussenko  http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Korea/NL22Dg02.html " ... Young guerrilla girl Kumsuni delivers letters to comrades, and one day is caught by the police. When the policemen demand the girl disclose information about the guerillas, she spits into the faces of her interrogators. As the policemen drag Kumsuni to her execution, the heroic girl cries out 'Long Live General Kim Il Sung!'" ...Pre-teen boy Ri Kwang-ch'un is a member of a secret anti-Japanese children's organization. Along with others, he helps the "Red Guard uncles". However, one day policemen apprehend the boy. When the "bastards" torture the young patriot, Ri cuts off his own tongue in defiance. His last words are "Long Live the Korean Revolution!" Even if one supports patriotic education of the younger generation, one is still likely to find such notions of slicing off one's own tongue, torture or execution to be much too disturbing and complicated to present to children. Yet the plots cited above are from comics published in Kkotpongori (Flower bud), a North Korean monthly magazine for kindergarden-aged children. The designated audience of the publication may be deduced by the types of logic puzzles included in each issue, such as: "Look at the pictures of a pig, a tractor and a bike. Which one moves faster?"  Welcome to the world of North Korean childhood. In this world, cartoons such as "Pencil artillery shells", by Cha Kye-ok, call on children to study well. Unlike in South Korea, where the same imperative is justified by intellectual fun and social success of the students, the North Korean educational paradigm suggests another lucrative objective: good students are better prepared for the defence of their country against invaders.  In the constantly emphasized potential war, North Korean children are summoned to prepare for the worst. Verses of their songs widely employ idioms such as kyolsaongwi (desperate readiness to die [for the leader, the country, the party]) orch' ongp' at 'anadulttal, (sons and daughters of guns and bombs/living guns and bombs). See, for example, a typical children's poem by Kim Ch'angmu, They Envy Us, They Are Afraid of Us: The whole world envies us The whole world is afraid of us We are the nation of the sun The nation which shines under the slogan of juche [self-reliance] We are the sons and daughters of guns and bombs. (Continued at the link below) http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Korea/NL22Dg02.html

More Real Than Unicorns: The ‘Inextricable Link’ between Human Rights and Security in North Korea

Since the author references Escape from Camp 14 just as a reminder I will add this excerpt from Blaine Harden's book about the life of  Shin Dong-hyuk because it is a stark reminder of what human rights are like in north Korea.

It was not meaningful to him that North Korea in the dead of winter is ugly, dirty, and dark, or that it is poorer than Sudan, or that, taken as a hole it is viewed by human rights groups as the world’s largest prison.

His context had been 23 years in an open-air cage run by men who hanged his mother, shot his brother, crippled his father, murdered pregnant women, beat children to death, taught him to betray his family, and tortured him over a fire.

V/R

Dave

More Real Than Unicorns: The ‘Inextricable Link’ between Human Rights and Security in North Korea

December 17, 2012

http://www.freedomhouse.org/blog/more-real-unicorns-%E2%80%98inextricable-link%E2%80%99-between-human-rights-and-security-north-korea

Catherine A. Fitzpatrick

Guest Blogger

Last month, North Korea claimed preposterously to have discovered a “unicorn lair” in an ancient burial site. This month, there are deadly-serious reports of a successful missile launch. And so the world lurches again from laughing at North Korea’s curious totalitarian theme park and wacky dictator, to wondering with concern whether this leader, like the capricious child with superhuman powers in the science-fiction story “It’s a Good Life,” will destroy the world.

There’s seldom any middle ground, nor is there serious reflection about how to move past these disjointed extremes and reassert the comprehensive policy approach that has proven so effective in other settings. When speaking this month about the nearly 40-year-old Helsinki Accords process in Eurasia, for example, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton invoked “an inextricable link between the security of states and the security of citizens.” The idea was first championed by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Andrei Sakharov and his wife, Elena Bonner, along with their colleagues in the citizens’ Helsinki movement. Without civil society’s control over the government, they argued, disarmament is not possible. It is now a staple of U.S. foreign policy that efforts to reduce nuclear weapons stockpiles can and should proceed simultaneously with criticism of ongoing human rights problems in Russia. Yet while the human rights situation in North Korea is far more deplorable, the linkage between rights and peace is never made, and never becomes part of the public discourse.

Last April, the U.S. Committee for Human Rights in North Korea and the Jacob Blaustein Institute for the Advancement of Human Rights convened a conference in Washington with an ambitious title—Hidden Gulag: Exposing North Korea’s Political Camp System and Calling for Its Complete, Verifiable, and Irreversible Dismantlement. North Korea was hardly expected to heed this audacious call, although those who opposed the Nazis or worked to dismantle the Soviet GULAG could provide helpful precedents. The conference featured a devastating report on North Korea’s prison complex, Hidden Gulag by David Hawk. Activists pressed the U.S. State Department to raise the release of the system’s inmates and demand the closure of the abusive facilities.

The State Department’s response on May 1 was limp: “The United States remains deeply concerned about the human rights situation in the DPRK, including forced labor camps. Promoting human rights is a key component of our policy toward North Korea, and how the DPRK addresses human rights will have a significant impact on the prospect for closer U.S.-DPRK ties.” But activists had hoped the plea would be made directly to the North Koreans in face-to-face talks. Sadly, human rights are not brought up explicitly, even quietly, as a matter of policy. Instead they are left to special envoy Robert King to raise in other settings.

There are a number of indications that Washington should be more forthright on the issue. More than 20,000 defectors have managed to escape North Korea, helping to raise awareness of the appalling conditions inside the country. And a new 

generation of South Korean human rights advocates—politicians, doctors, lawyers, teachers, and researchers—are tackling the looming issue of North Korea’s totalitarianism in a new way. They are reaching out to the global human rights community and attempting to internationalize the problem, avoiding the traps of North-South political dynamics and the Cold War categorizations that turn off the general public, particularly young people. In June, the Korea Institute for National Unification (KINU), a government-sponsored think tank founded to work toward a peaceful settlement, convened both international experts and South and North Koreans to raise internationally the issue of the estimated 200,000 political prisoners in the North’s prison camps and rampant, ongoing abuses against them including deprivation, torture, and rape.

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http://www.freedomhouse.org/blog/more-real-unicorns-%E2%80%98inextricable-link%E2%80%99-between-human-rights-and-security-north-korea

New face at the top but the same North Korea

Again, another good analysis of why Kim Jong-un is not changing or reforming north Korea and although he does not use the phrase, it is clear that Kim is executing "Image First Politics."

As noted Blaine Harden wrote a very important book chronicling the life of Shin Dong-hyuk who was the first north Korean who was born in a prison camp to have escaped.  Below is an except from that book that illustrates the horror of the Kim Family Regime.

Excerpt from page 120-121 describing his experience and feelings just after he escaped.

“In the months and years ahead, Shin would discover all things modern: streaming video, blogs, and international air travel.  Therapists and career counselors would advise him.  Preachers would show him how to pray to Jesus Christ.  Friends would teach him how to brush his teeth, use a debit card, and fool around with a smartphone.  From obsessive reading online, the politics, history, and geography of the two Koreas, China, Southeast Asia, and the United States would all become familiar.

None of this, though, did more to change his understanding of how the world works – and how human beings interact with each other – than his first few days outside the camp.

It shocked him to see North Koreans going about their daily lives without having to take orders from guards.  When they had the temerity to laugh together in the streets or wear brightly colored clothes or haggle over prices in an open-air market, he expected armed men to step in, knock heads, and stop the nonsense.

The word Shin uses again and again to describe those first days is “shock.”

It was not meaningful to him that North Korea in the dead of winter is ugly, dirty, and dark, or that it is poorer than Sudan, or that, taken as a hole it is viewed by human rights groups as the world’s largest prison.
 His context had been 23 years in an open-air cage run by men who hanged his mother, shot his brother, crippled his father, murdered pregnant women, beat children to death, taught him to betray his family, and tortured him over a fire.
He felt wonderfully fee – and, as best as he could determine, no one was looking for him.

V/R

Dave

New face at the top but the same North Korea

By Blaine Harden, Published: December 14

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/new-face-at-the-top-but-the-same-north-korea/2012/12/14/b083c40c-4545-11e2-9648-a2c323a991d6_print.html

Blaine Harden, a former Post reporter, is the author of “Escape From Camp 14.”

As a rule, nothing greases reform like the death of a dictator. After Stalin, the gulag faded away. After Mao, policies that starved millions were abandoned. So when North Korean leader Kim Jong Il died a year ago, there was reason to expect meaningful change.

Yet North Korea, the world’s longest-lived totalitarian state, never seems to follow the rules. When its founding dictator, Kim Il Sung, died in 1994, the state stumbled, but it did not collapse and it did not reform. For the first time in history, power in a communist state shifted from father to son, from Great Leader to Dear Leader. And Kim Jong Il was no reformer. He turned out to be even more repressive than his father was.

Now, the third generation of the Kim family dynasty, in the person of Kim Jong Eun, who is not yet 30, has cemented his absolute control by doing what daddy and granddaddy could not do: His engineers sent the payload of a three-stage rocket into orbit, defying U.N. Security Council resolutions and unnerving the world.

His government is believed to be trying to develop a nuclear warhead small enough to fit atop a missile capable of striking the United States. To that end, Kim Jong Eun’s government completed a new tunnel this year for the test detonation of what would be the North’s third plutonium device and possibly for a bomb made from highly enriched uranium, according to an August report in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

The young leader has also spent lavishly this year on the family cult, funding $40 million worth of statues and paintings of his father and grandfather, according to a recent South Korean government report. Notably, imports of liquor, luxury cars and foreign appliances have spiked since 2009, when it became clear Kim Jong Eun was his father’s favored son, according to a South Korean parliamentary report in October.

In the months after his father died of a heart attack, there were tantalizing hints that Kim Jong Eun might move in a more moderate direction. Unlike his father and grandfather, he had lived in the West. He reportedly spent a few teenage years in a private Swiss school, where he played basketball, wore expensive sneakers and admired Michael Jordan. He was untested and seemed callow to outsiders looking in, but after his father died, he proved with surprising speed that he was not a puppet of scheming relatives and headstrong generals. As surprising, he emerged in the first half of this year as a chubbily charismatic agent of change.

He sacked generals, sent bureaucrats to China to study capitalism and talked openly of using economic reform to improve the lives of ordinary North Koreans. His father had never talked this way. Indeed, his father had never delivered a speech in public.

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/new-face-at-the-top-but-the-same-north-korea/2012/12/14/b083c40c-4545-11e2-9648-a2c323a991d6_print.html