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North Korea threatens sacred war with the South

North Korea threatened “sacred war” against South Korea in a huge rally in its capital on Sunday, just days after the secretive state agreed with the United States to suspend its nuclear weapons tests and allow back international nuclear inspectors.

Tens of thousands of slogan-chanting North Koreans rallied in Pyongyang vowing to “wipe out” South Korean President Lee Myung-bak’s “traitors” whom they accused of defaming their new leader. About 150,000 protesters, including many soldiers and students, shouted “Destroy Lee Myung-bak” and “Let’s safeguard Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un”.

The rally, broadcast live by state TV, appeared to be the largest such event since the young Kim took power after the death of long-time dictator Kim Jong-il in December. Ri Yong-ho, an army general believed to be one of the fledgling leader Kim’s closest confidants in the army, recited a statement issued by the military on Friday, threatening again to wage a “sacred war” against the South. “The Supreme Command of the Korean People’s Army solemnly declares once again that it will indiscriminately stage its own-style sacred war to wipe out the group of traitors,” Ri read.

Many North Korea watchers say the sabre-rattling is aimed at consolidating Kim’s grip on power and attaining an advantage in the latest round of disarmament-for-aid talks with the United States.
In the latest sabre-rattling, state TV said on Saturday Kim Jong-un had visited Panmunjom, the village overseeing the armistice along the world’s most heavily-fortified border between the two Koreas. It was Kim’s first trip to the village since his father’s death.

Reuters 

Tell world leaders to stop China from sending North Korean refugees to their deaths

Two dozen North Korean refugees in China are in a terrifying limbo, as the Chinese government plans to deport them back to North Korea, where the new "Supreme Leader" Kim Jong-Un is cracking down by shooting defectors on sight and vowing to kill "three generations" of their families.

In December, Kim Jong-Un ordered border guards to shoot defectors on sight rather than sending them to reeducation camps and decreed defectors' families would also be killed. 

Moses (a pseudonym to protect the petition creator’s identity and safety) escaped the nightmare of surveillance, intimidation, human rights abuses and famine in North Korea -- he's a refugee now living in Seoul, South Korea. But a young woman he’s known since they were kids in North Korea is in the group currently being detained in China.

"We have cried our eyes out," Moses and his friends say, certain the young woman will be executed if she's returned to North Korea. Moses's only hope is that international pressure can save her -- he started a petition on Change.org calling on world leaders including U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the EU's Catherine Ashton to do everything they can to stop China from deporting his friend and others back to North Korea.

Already, more than 30,000 people have signed Moses's petition.

One deadline for the deportation of these refugees has already passed, signaling that China knows it will have blood on its hands if it follows through. China may be bending to international pressure, but needs to hear more from other global leaders to release the refugees to South Korea.

Click here to sign North Korean refugee Moses Bak's petition calling on Secretary Clinton and other world leaders to stop China from sending two dozen defectors back to North Korea, where they will face imprisonment and execution.

North Korea will shift to collective rule

North Korea will shift to collective rule from a strongman dictatorship after last week's death of Kim Jong-il, although his untested young son will be at the head of the ruling coterie, a source with close ties to Pyongyang and Beijing said.

The source added that the military, which is trying to develop a nuclear arsenal, has pledged allegiance to the untested Kim Jong-un, who takes over the family dynasty that has ruled North Korea since it was founded after World War Two.

The comments are the first signal that North Korea is following a course that many analysts have anticipated -- it will be governed by a group of people for the first time since it was founded in 1948.

The situation in North Korea appeared stable after the military gave its backing to Kim Jong-un, the source said. "It's very unlikely," the source said when asked about the possibility of a military coup. "The military has pledged allegiance to Kim Jong-un."

North Korea's collective leadership will include Kim Jong-un, his uncle and the military, the source said. Jang Song-thaek, 65, brother-in-law of Kim Jong-il and the younger Kim's uncle, is seen as the power behind the throne along with his wife Kim Kyong-hui, Kim Jong-il's sister. So too is Ri Yong-ho, the rising star of the North's military and currently its most senior general.

Reuters

Premature to predict a Pyongyang Spring

What does Kim's death mean for East Asia and for the United States?

This is a region that matters. East Asia is the world's major economic hub and a focal point of the Obama administration's global strategy. The 38th Parallel that divides North and South Korea is, moreover, a major geopolitical fault line. On one side is North Korea, backed by China. On the other is South Korea, bound by alliance to the United States. Nowhere, save Taiwan, is regional conflict more likely to embroil the world's sole superpower and its Chinese challenger.

The question is this: Does Kim's death make regional and world politics more or less stable? The future is unknowable, but some perspective may help us to gauge the stakes, especially insofar as American interests are concerned.

We should beware appealing but misleading analogies. It would be premature to predict a "Pyongyang Spring." North Korea is a regime quite different from Hosni Mubarak's Egypt. A Stalinist relic of the Cold War, North Korea is authentically totalitarian -- not just authoritarian -- and far less vulnerable than was Egypt to the challenge of civil society.

The passing of a dictator who has ruled for three decades will be traumatic nonetheless. South Korea and the United States should be prepared for a phase of uncertainty, even testing, across the 38th Parallel.

The more interesting question, though, is where the regime's new masters will go over the medium to long term. The fact is that North Korea has backed itself into an unfavorable corner. It is poor, benighted and dependent on China, its mighty patron. The change in leadership may yet provide an opportunity to plot a new course. Here, the key issue will be how Kim Jong Un positions himself in relation to Beijing. China's rise has, after all, sent other East Asian countries scattering toward Washington. 

--Daniel Sargent, assistant professor of history at the University of California, Berkeley.

North Korea and China remain as close as lips and teeth

When Kim Jong Il last visited China to  introduce his heir apparent, Kim Jong Un, to the Chinese senior leadership , he also asked for continued economic and military aid and political support. China-North Korean ties are so close they are frequently described "as close as lips and teeth."

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Kim Jong Il dies

The leadership of North Korea appeared to pass to a third generation of the Kim family Monday after the weekend death of Kim Jong Il, who ruled the reclusive Stalinist state since 1994.

The man known as the "dear leader" died of a heart attack Saturday at age 69, state news outlets announced Monday. The ruling Worker's Party declared the youngest of his three sons, Kim Jong Un, the "great successor" to his father's mantle.

The news of his death spurred South Korea, which remains technically at war with the North more than five decades after their 1950-53 conflict, to put its military on high alert. But across one of the world's most heavily fortified borders, South Korean President Lee Myung-bak told his citizens "to go about their lives" in the meantime.

On North Korea's state television network, a tearful anchor broke the news Monday morning. The news was followed by scenes of similarly emotional residents of the capital Pyongyang.

The network said Kim died of "overwork" while "dedicating his life to the people." And the official news agency KCNA said Kim suffered "great mental and physical strain" while on a train.

KCNA acknowledged that Kim had been treated for "cardiac and cerebrovascular diseases for a long period." He suffered a heart attack on Saturday.

Know your Kim's

December 9 Worldwide Demonstration Protesting Crimes Against Humanity in North Korea

On December 9 -- the 63rd anniversary of the United Nations Genocide Convention -- a call has gone out to organize protests and hunger strikes in front of DPRK/PRC/UN offices worldwide. There are three main objectives of these international protests to take place on December 9:

1) To bring unprecedented pressure upon not both North Korea and the international community to meaningfully address the horrific crimes being perpetuated systematically by North Korea.
2) To influence and awaken global public opinion to the real, genocidal nature of the North Korean regime.
3) To create a watershed movement for the liberation of NK itself.

Protests confirmed this far include: 
New York City
12:00pm: Grand Army Plaza in Manhattan, silent march to DPRK Mission to the UN
1:00pm: Demonstration at DPRK Mission to the UN
Speech by North Korean Defector Activist Ji Seong Ho (President of NAUH)
ent Coordinator: cbk2004@gmail.com 

Seoul, Republic of Korea
3:00pm ~ 4:00pm: Demonstration at Seoul Station Plaza
4:00pm ~ 5:00pm: March to UNHCR (United Nations High Commission for Refugees)
7:30pm ~ 8:30pm: Candlelight rally in Seoul Plaza
Event Coordinator: pink2011info@gmail.com 

Berlin, Germany
3:00pm ~ 6:00pm: Demonstration at the Brandenburg Gate
Event Coordinator: kimsunderhiswing@googlemail.com 

Tokyo, Japan
12:00pm ~ 12:50pm Demonstration at Hachiko Square in Shibuya, Tokyo
1:30pm: Demonstration at Chongryon
Event Coordinator: kanandoj@yahoo.co.jp 

London, UK
1:00pm ~ 3:00pm Demonstration at North Korea Embassy
Event Coordinator: S.Yang10@lse.ac.uk

The nuclear lesson from North Korea and Libya

So the Libyan rebel forces, aided by the massive military power of the United States and NATO, have cast Muammar Qaddafi onto the rubble heap of history.
 
As pundits contemplate the lessons that other states may take away from this undertaking, it may surprise one to learn that perhaps the shrewdest of those pundits has been none other than the "volatile," "unpredictable," and "irrational" leader of North Korea, Kim Jong-Il.

Just days after NATO commenced its "enforcement" of a UN-authorized "no-fly zone" by launching cruise missiles directly at Mr. Qaddafi's house, an anonymous North Korean Foreign Ministry official stated that "The Libyan crisis is teaching the international community a grave lesson."-- Qaddafi should have held on to his nuclear weapons program.

If Libya had possessed the capability, oh, to obliterate a major American military base in Italy, or to vaporize an entire American "carrier battle group" off the southern coast of France, it almost certainly would have dissuaded Washington (not to mention Rome and Paris) from military action. If the Libyan regime wanted to ensure its own survival, then, just like North Korea, it should have developed a nuclear deterrent – small, survivable, and just lethal enough to inflict unacceptable damage on any aggressor.

But instead, Qaddafi was seduced by the siren song of the West. Give up your weapons of mass destruction, they said, and we will welcome you into the international community.

No such fate awaits North’s Korea’s Kim. Volatile, irresponsible, and loathsome though his regime, he holds in his hands the royal flush of a nuclear deterrent.

-Tad Daley, author of “Apocalypse Never: Forging the Path to a Nuclear Weapon-Free World”

Kim Jong-un portrait to hang alongside his father and grandfather’s?

In one week, North Korea will celebrate the 85th anniversary of the founding of The Down-with-Imperialism Union by Kim Il-sung, the father of the country's current leader Kim Jong-il.

But the current focus in the Democratic People’s Republic is not on the current father, but on the son, Kim Jong-un -- the North Korean heir-apparent. "He is now performing the role of successor," Yoo Ho-yeol, a professor at Korea University in South Korea, told AP. "He has virtually cemented his status as the next leader."

Kim Jong-un burst onto the international spotlight last year when he was made a four-star general and the vice chairman of the Communist Party's military commission. Since then, Kim has been pushed into the public's consciousnesses in North Korea, where he is depicted as an intelligent, strong-willed future leader.

Kim Jong-un reportedy takes the helm of the country when Kim Jong-il is away on official state trips and he is also said to be in control of the military.

On Monday, Kim Jong-un was seen sitting next to his father during a Party Foundation Day military parade, the holiday celebrating the 65th anniversary of the founding of the Workers' Party of Korea.

There have also been poems and lyrical ballads composed to praise his Kim Jong-un's leadership abilities, and the government has printed 10 million official portraits of him, according to BBC. The images could soon very well hang beside those of his father and grandfather.

North Korean refugees flown to Seoul from Japan

Nine North Koreans who defected to Japan have been flown to South Korea for resettlement.

The group was put on a flight out of Japan on Tuesday. Japanese authorities said they had requested to be sent to South Korea, and Tokyo decided to honor that request for humanitarian reasons.

The nine said they departed North Korea on September 8. By the time they were spotted by Japan's Coast Guard about a week later, they had only a small amount of rice, some pickled vegetables and snacks, and had run out of drinking water.

North Korean defectors sail to Japan

Japanese Coast Guards found a eight-meter wooden boat Tuesday morning drifting off Japan's western coast with nine men, women and children on board claiming they are from North Korea, a Coast Guard spokesman said.

A fisherman saw the boat drifting about 25 km (15 miles) off the coast of Noto peninsula of Ishikawa prefecture, West Japan, and reported it to authorities.

It is rare for North Korean defectors to sail to Japan's coast. According to Coast Guard records there have been only two other cases. One was in 2006, when four North Korean men and women floated to northern Japan. The other was in 1987, when a family of 11 drifted to west Japan.

North Korea calls for fresh six-party talks

North Korea reiterated its call Monday for a resumption of six-party talks without preconditions, its state-run news agency reported from Pyongyang.

The call follows a rare visit to the United States by North Korean Vice Foreign Minister Kim Kae-Gwan, who met with senior U.S. officials last week. It was the first direct meeting between North Korean and U.S. officials since North Korea pulled out of six-party talks in 2008.

In addition to the United States and North Korea, the six-party talks involved China, Japan, Russia and South Korea. The goal was nuclear disarmament on the Korean peninsula.

North Korea has called for the resumption of six-party talks without preconditions before. The United States and South Korea, however, have insisted on some tangible demonstration that North Korea is serious about denuclearisation.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said recently, for example, that the United States hoped to determine in its meetings with the North Korean foreign minister whether North Korea is ready to "take concrete and irreversible steps toward denuclearisation."

On the Debate of Aid to North Korea

An opinion offered by Kim Yong-soon, research fellow at the Institute of East and West Studies, Yonsei University:

There have been many voices heard from both in and outside of the South Korean government advocating the resumption of aid to North Korea. The debate between the doves and the hawks has raged on ever since the peninsula was divided in 1945. 

The possibility of resuming aid to North Korea begs the question of “to whom are we sending our aid to?” Is the aid going to the North Korean regime or is it going to the North Koreans who are in dire need of such aid? Neither the South Korean government, nor anyone else, can verify, let alone designate, where the aid is going to.

It is conventional wisdom that the aid is in fact going to the areas and people that the North Korean regime will designate, leaving the donors powerless to attach any means to enforce measures that ensure that the aid goes to the people that are in need. 

Thus, the aid originating from South Korea has not served its twin goals of relieving the dire situation of the North Korean people and obtaining the ability to influence North Korea in any positive way, and has remained symbolic at best. 

The only goal that the aid has served is the self-satisfaction gained by those that have advocated continuous aid to the North with vague hopes of reaching out to the ordinary North Koreans.

EU sends food aid to North Korea

The European Commission announced that it would provide 10 million euros ($14.50 million) of food aid to North Korea despite South Korean opposition and US doubts as to the veracity of Pyongyang's calls for help.  

The European Commission said it was convinced that the North's pleas for help were genuine after a team of experts reported seeing in June severely malnourished children in hospitals and nurseries where no treatment was available.

"The purpose of this aid package is to save the lives of at least 650,000 people who could otherwise die from lack of food," European Union Humanitarian Aid Commissioner Kristalina Georgieva said.

The EU's decision comes as Washington also weighs resuming food aid to the North, after suspending its shipments in 2008 in a monitoring row.

Analysts said any resumption of US aid would annoy Seoul, which stands firmly against sending food to its neighbor.

On North Korea being named to chair UN's Conference on Disarmament

The naming of North Korea's Ambassador So Se Pyong as chair of the UN's Conference on Disarmament drew sharp criticism from Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird. 

"North Korea is simply not a credible chair of a disarmament body," he said of the bellicose nuclear-armed state, which faced UN accusations as recently as May of trading missile know-how with Iran. Baird said the appointment was "unacceptable" given North Korea's "efforts in the opposite direction." 

Meanwhile, another veteran Canadian diplomat, Marius Grinius, used his farewell address to the conference to congratulate the North Koreans! Grinius went on to recall his memories of visiting Pyongyang, capital of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

The fact the UN reports that other ambassadors — including Britain's — also welcomed the appointment of the North Korean illustrates the make-believe world that defines the UN, where diplomats of even the most heinous regimes are routinely treated as respected equals. It implies that a disconnect exists between the internationally based members of the bureaucracy, and the government.

Five North Korean students enroute to US

Five North Korean defectors, now  students in college, will soon experience the American way of life. This is thanks to the concerted efforts by the U.S. Embassy, the Ministry of Unification, and the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology.

The five North Korean defectors presently in South Korean universities have qualified to participate in the W.E.S.T. (Work, English Study, and Travel) program. The five are scheduled to leave in July, according to the ministry officials. 

Generally, students would have five months of English language education, 12 months of internship, and one last month of traveling. The five will go through a modified program on a trial basis, staying for five months of English lessons and an additional month of work.

Anti-Government Graffiti in North Korean capital

Anti-Kim Jong Il graffiti was found on the wall of a college in Pyongyang. And then the government locked down the entire capital to hunt for the culprit.

The graffiti, found June 24th on a wall at Pyongyang Railroad College reportedly called Kim Jong Il "a dictator who starved people to death." Not exactly Banksy, but it gets the point across.

NK Daily talked to a Chinese trader about the investigation: According to the trader, the authorities launched the search for the person responsible via a joint investigation team including the National Security Agency and People's Safety Ministry, specifically targeting students and people from other provinces. They established road blocks on the roads linking Pyongyang Station and West Pyongyang Station, Pyongyang-Pyongsung, Pyongyang-Wonsan and Pyongyang-Kanri, then began questioning all passers' by.

North Korean defectors offered internships in Seoul

Dozens of North Korean defectors will be offered internships at several major companies in an effort to help them find jobs and adapt to life in the South, the Unification Ministry said yesterday.   

Under the program, about 20 North Korean college students and graduates living in the South will work as interns at banks, including HSBC and SC First Bank, and several big European firms. 

A further 20 North Koreans will work at South Korean small and medium-sized companies, it said, adding the interns could receive $740 or more every month. 

In May, the British embassy in Seoul launched a program to provide English-language skills and work experience to North Korean defectors.

South Korea building new refugee center for North Koreans

South Korea is building a new facility to house North Korean defectors arriving in the country.

Most defectors - who include economic migrants and political refugees - spend their first three months in a government center known as Hanawon. They are taught the skills they need in a capitalist country - such as how to work cash machines, or get a job.

The government has already extended the time that new arrivals must spend in the facility from two months to three. The current facility has already been expanded, and now holds 1,000 people. The new centre will have room for 500 more.

Seoul says almost 3,000 North Koreans arrive each year and the current center is danger of becoming overcrowded.

According to the Unification Ministry, it will offer retraining programs for new arrivals, to help North Koreans compete for jobs. Fewer than half of all North Koreans find work in the South - and many who do end up in menial low-paid jobs.