The Korean Christian community is bustling with plans to celebrate the 100th year of what is known as the Pyongyang Revival of 1907.
It is not easy for the contemporary non-religious to imagine _ especially in times like this, when the name Pyongyang immediately evokes images of nuclear bombs and missiles _ but Western missionaries who were active in Northeast Asia in the early 20th century once called the North Korean capital the Jerusalem of the East.
It started with a Bible study that took place in Changdaehyun Church in Pyongyang. During the night of Jan. 14, 1907, pastors and ordinary Christians participating in a Bible study started to pour out their guilt in public, at the same time zealously repenting with tears. The wave of repentance lasted until the next day, and the religious fervor soon spread. The event touched off a massive conversion to Christianity and established organized Christian groups across the nation.
The growth in the number of pastors caused by the Pyongyang Revival led Christians to play a leading role in Korea’s independence movements, including the March First Movement in 1919.
For the Korean Christian community, the events currently taking place to mark the anniversary of the Pyongyang Revival are not only about remembering history. They are about facing challenges and making changes necessary for a second revival.
Park Young-shin, an expert on the sociology of religion and professor emeritus at Yonsei University, said “Korean Protestant churches have been losing ground because they lost holiness and are siding with materialism and the economy.”
“I don’t think we should be looking back so much to the past revival, but God wants us to regroup, fulfilling his future vision for Korea and for the rest of the world,’’ said Peter Wagner, president of Global Harvest Ministries and honorary co-chairman of Transformation 2007, in the conference’s opening session.
In the meantime, several South Korean churches are trying to reach out to the North, where the Pyongyang Revival is unlikely to be celebrated under the Stalinist Kim Jong-il regime.
[The Korea Times]
Friday, January 19, 2007
Thursday, January 18, 2007
Kim Worship 2.0
Like a computer software firm updating program versions, the North is steadily updating its ideology to make it relevant. This practice of mass control by in-your-face ideology has been laughed off in much of the world, including China. But North Korea is increasing its ideological cult worship.
After the Oct. 9 nuclear test, for example, banners sprang up over North Korea stating "We are a country with a nuclear deterrent." Kim's test feeds a national pride that is part of the propaganda drilled into Koreans from birth: that Kim alone can fend off the US and Japanese enemies.
"The cult of personality campaign is more extensive today than in 1985," says former South Korean foreign minister Han Sung Joo, who visited Pyongyang this past October, and in 1985. "Unlike the Stalin and Mao personality cults, there is a deification and a religious emotional element in the North.
“The twinned photos of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il are everywhere. Every speech says Kim Il Sung is still alive. I think if I stayed another two weeks, I might even see Kim Il Sung. The country worships someone who is deceased, as if he is alive."
[Excerpt of an article by Robert Marquand, The Christian Science Monitor]
After the Oct. 9 nuclear test, for example, banners sprang up over North Korea stating "We are a country with a nuclear deterrent." Kim's test feeds a national pride that is part of the propaganda drilled into Koreans from birth: that Kim alone can fend off the US and Japanese enemies.
"The cult of personality campaign is more extensive today than in 1985," says former South Korean foreign minister Han Sung Joo, who visited Pyongyang this past October, and in 1985. "Unlike the Stalin and Mao personality cults, there is a deification and a religious emotional element in the North.
“The twinned photos of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il are everywhere. Every speech says Kim Il Sung is still alive. I think if I stayed another two weeks, I might even see Kim Il Sung. The country worships someone who is deceased, as if he is alive."
[Excerpt of an article by Robert Marquand, The Christian Science Monitor]
Wednesday, January 17, 2007
North Korea contributes to 'Doomsday Clock' moving forward
The world has nudged closer to a nuclear apocalypse and environmental disaster, a trans-Atlantic group of prominent scientists warned Wednesday, pushing the hand of its symbolic Doomsday Clock two minutes closer to midnight.
It was the fourth time since the end of the Cold War that the clock has ticked forward, this time from 11:53 to 11:55, amid fears over what the scientists are describing as "a second nuclear age" prompted largely by atomic standoffs with Iran and North Korea.
But the organization added that the "dangers posed by climate change are nearly as dire as those posed by nuclear weapons."
The Chicago-based Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, founded in 1945 as a newsletter distributed among nuclear physicists concerned by the possibility of nuclear war, has since grown into an organization focused more generally on manmade threats to the survival of human civilization. "As scientists, we understand the dangers of nuclear weapons and their devastating effects, and we are learning how human activities and technologies are affecting climate systems in ways that may forever change life on Earth," said Stephen Hawking, the renowned cosmologist and mathematician.
"As citizens of the world, we have a duty to alert the public to the unnecessary risks that we live with every day, and to the perils we foresee if governments and societies do not take action now to render nuclear weapons obsolete and to prevent further climate change."
The bulletin's clock, which for 60 years has followed the rise and fall of nuclear tensions, would now also measure climate change, the bulletin's editor Mark Strauss told The Associated Press.
It came closest to midnight -- just two minutes away -- in 1953, following the successful test of a hydrogen bomb by the United States. It has been as far away as 17 minutes, set there in 1991 following the demise of the Soviet Union.
[Associated Press]
Tuesday, January 16, 2007
More on Kim Worship 2.0
Kim Jong Il has upgraded his deification strategies to strengthen the family cult system. Western reports often detail Korea's unique "juche ideology" - a theology of Kim worship, repeated hourly and daily, reminding Koreans they are insolubly bound to the Kim family and must erase foreign influence from their minds.
Yet juche is a subcategory of a far more encompassing umbrella of deification known as woo sang hwa, or idol worship. In North Korea, woo sang hwa contains all the aspects of cult worship. [North Korean] socialism makes "family loyalty," with Kim at the head, the supreme good - a major deflection from communism.
Kim-worship in the North is a vivid - and inescapable - spectacle to behold, say visitors. Thousands of giant "towers of eternality" to Kim scatter the landscape. Special "Kimjongilia" crimson begonias are tended in family gardens. Kim's media calls him variously the "Guardian Deity of the Planet," and "Lodestar of the 21st Century."
In 2002, Korean mass dances known as Arirang, featured 100,000 flag wavers (and was described in state media as the "greatest event of humankind.") Many loyal Koreans bow twice daily to Kim pictures that sit alone on the most prominent wall of their homes.
Perhaps the most misunderstood aspect of the Korean cult project is its recent veering toward race and ethnic solidarity, say Kim watchers. His main appeal to his people today, a push that rarely gets attention outside the North, is to the racial superiority of a people whose isolation and stubborn xenophobia supposedly makes their bloodlines purer. Since the 1990s Kim has more fervently claimed lineage to the first ancient rulers of Korea, a move intended to place him in a position of historical, if not divine, destiny as leader of the peninsula.
[By Robert Marquand, The Christian Science Monitor]
Yet juche is a subcategory of a far more encompassing umbrella of deification known as woo sang hwa, or idol worship. In North Korea, woo sang hwa contains all the aspects of cult worship. [North Korean] socialism makes "family loyalty," with Kim at the head, the supreme good - a major deflection from communism.
Kim-worship in the North is a vivid - and inescapable - spectacle to behold, say visitors. Thousands of giant "towers of eternality" to Kim scatter the landscape. Special "Kimjongilia" crimson begonias are tended in family gardens. Kim's media calls him variously the "Guardian Deity of the Planet," and "Lodestar of the 21st Century."
In 2002, Korean mass dances known as Arirang, featured 100,000 flag wavers (and was described in state media as the "greatest event of humankind.") Many loyal Koreans bow twice daily to Kim pictures that sit alone on the most prominent wall of their homes.
Perhaps the most misunderstood aspect of the Korean cult project is its recent veering toward race and ethnic solidarity, say Kim watchers. His main appeal to his people today, a push that rarely gets attention outside the North, is to the racial superiority of a people whose isolation and stubborn xenophobia supposedly makes their bloodlines purer. Since the 1990s Kim has more fervently claimed lineage to the first ancient rulers of Korea, a move intended to place him in a position of historical, if not divine, destiny as leader of the peninsula.
[By Robert Marquand, The Christian Science Monitor]
Monday, January 15, 2007
Another North Korean Refugee’s Story
One young man, who asks that his name not be used for fear of retribution on family members still at home, spent time in the North Korean gulag, after being captured in China and repatriated. He was tortured, he says--rolling up his trousers at a recent press conference to display the scars on his legs.
One morning at roll call, he recounts, one of his cellmates, a man who had been badly beaten during the night, was too sick to get out of bed. The guards ordered the prisoners to carry the injured man into the woods and bury him. "I keep thinking, maybe he would still be alive if we hadn't buried him," the escapee says.
The name of the dead man was Kim Young Jin. The name of the prison is Chong Jin. Says the man who escaped: "I am very glad to be here, and tell the people how life in North Korea really is."
[Excerpt of an article by Melanie Kirkpatrick, The Wall Street Journal]
One morning at roll call, he recounts, one of his cellmates, a man who had been badly beaten during the night, was too sick to get out of bed. The guards ordered the prisoners to carry the injured man into the woods and bury him. "I keep thinking, maybe he would still be alive if we hadn't buried him," the escapee says.
The name of the dead man was Kim Young Jin. The name of the prison is Chong Jin. Says the man who escaped: "I am very glad to be here, and tell the people how life in North Korea really is."
[Excerpt of an article by Melanie Kirkpatrick, The Wall Street Journal]
Saturday, January 13, 2007
Monster bunnies to save North Korea from starving
Karl Szmolinsky from Eberswalde, in the east of Germany, has been given a contract by North Korea to supply giant rabbits to help to boost meat production in the reclusive Communist country, which is suffering severe food shortages. The only problem is that such huge rabbits consume vast quantities of food themselves as they grow.
Mr Szmolinsky was contacted by the North Korean Embassy in Berlin in October. He said that an attaché at the embassy came to his home and asked to see his rabbits. The diplomat was so impressed that he placed an order for eight females and four males, which were shipped to North Korea a few weeks later at a price of € 80 each.
“They want to boost meat production. They’ve arranged for me to go to Pyongyang in April to advise them on setting up a breeding farm,” Mr Szmolinsky, who is 68 next month, told The Times.
[The Times]
Mr Szmolinsky was contacted by the North Korean Embassy in Berlin in October. He said that an attaché at the embassy came to his home and asked to see his rabbits. The diplomat was so impressed that he placed an order for eight females and four males, which were shipped to North Korea a few weeks later at a price of € 80 each.“They want to boost meat production. They’ve arranged for me to go to Pyongyang in April to advise them on setting up a breeding farm,” Mr Szmolinsky, who is 68 next month, told The Times.
[The Times]
Friday, January 12, 2007
Short Facts about North Korea's "Dear Leader" Kim Jong Il
Kim Jong Il
* Was born in Siberia in 1942 or 43.
* Is 5-foot, 3-inches tall and wears 12-centimeter (4.7 inch) high platform shoes.
* Has only been heard by North Koreans once, in 1992, in a national broadcast. He said: "Glory to the heroic soldiers of the People's Army."
* Has never appeared speaking live on TV in North Korea.
* Averages about 150 visits per year to schools, military bases, factories.
* Has the world's fifth-largest army.
* Gives his top generals loyalty tests.
[Excerpt of an article by Robert Marquand, The Christian Science Monitor]
* Was born in Siberia in 1942 or 43.
* Is 5-foot, 3-inches tall and wears 12-centimeter (4.7 inch) high platform shoes.
* Has only been heard by North Koreans once, in 1992, in a national broadcast. He said: "Glory to the heroic soldiers of the People's Army."
* Has never appeared speaking live on TV in North Korea.
* Averages about 150 visits per year to schools, military bases, factories.
* Has the world's fifth-largest army.
* Gives his top generals loyalty tests.
[Excerpt of an article by Robert Marquand, The Christian Science Monitor]
Thursday, January 11, 2007
North Korean Education: from 7 years old, “Become the Dictator’s Soldier”
The Daily NK examined a North Korean 1st grade elementary school language textbook published in 2005. The 1st grade elementary school language textbook is similar to textbooks in South Korea, focusing on reading skills, writing and acquisition of basic vocabulary.
However, … 80% of the content in North Korean textbooks focus on idolizing Kim Il Sung. Excluding three classic tales such as ‘The ant and the grasshopper’, the book uses [idolization of] Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il to improve reading skills.
Irrespective of being a textbook for 1st graders, warlike expressions such as ‘Let’s become [Kim Jong Il’s] heroic army’ and ‘Strike the Americans with kid tanks’ frequently appear in the books.
Only 7 years old! The truth is North Korean children are taught to become the leader’s gun and bombs from their first day of school throughout life.
[The Daily NK]
However, … 80% of the content in North Korean textbooks focus on idolizing Kim Il Sung. Excluding three classic tales such as ‘The ant and the grasshopper’, the book uses [idolization of] Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il to improve reading skills.
Irrespective of being a textbook for 1st graders, warlike expressions such as ‘Let’s become [Kim Jong Il’s] heroic army’ and ‘Strike the Americans with kid tanks’ frequently appear in the books.
Only 7 years old! The truth is North Korean children are taught to become the leader’s gun and bombs from their first day of school throughout life.
[The Daily NK]
Wednesday, January 10, 2007
North Korea escalates 'cult of Kim'
North Koreans are taught to worship Kim Jong Il as a god. In a manner unique among nations, the North exerts extraordinary control through deification - a cult ideology of complete subservience - that goes beyond the "Stalinist" label often used to describe the newly nuclear North.
In a time of famine and poverty, government spending on Kim-family deification - now nearly 40 percent of the visible budget - is the only category in the North's budget to increase, according to a new white paper by the Korea Institute for International Economic Policy in Seoul. The increase pays for ideology schools, some 30,000 Kim monuments, gymnastic festivals, films and books, billboards and murals, 40,000 "research institutes," historical sites, rock carvings, circus theaters, training programs, and other worship events.
In 1990, ideology was 19 percent of North Korea's budget; by 2004 it doubled to at least 38.5 percent of state spending, according to the white paper. This extra financing may come from recent budget offsets caused by the shutting down of older state funding categories, says Alexander Mansourov of the Asia Pacific Center for Security Studies in Honolulu.
[Excerpt of an article by Robert Marquand, The Christian Science Monitor]
In a time of famine and poverty, government spending on Kim-family deification - now nearly 40 percent of the visible budget - is the only category in the North's budget to increase, according to a new white paper by the Korea Institute for International Economic Policy in Seoul. The increase pays for ideology schools, some 30,000 Kim monuments, gymnastic festivals, films and books, billboards and murals, 40,000 "research institutes," historical sites, rock carvings, circus theaters, training programs, and other worship events.
In 1990, ideology was 19 percent of North Korea's budget; by 2004 it doubled to at least 38.5 percent of state spending, according to the white paper. This extra financing may come from recent budget offsets caused by the shutting down of older state funding categories, says Alexander Mansourov of the Asia Pacific Center for Security Studies in Honolulu.
[Excerpt of an article by Robert Marquand, The Christian Science Monitor]
Monday, January 08, 2007
How Kim Jong Il controls North Korea
Kim Jong Il has astutely nullified a dawning realization among his people that the world beyond North Korea's borders is a better place.
He's even created a new image for himself at home - not as a towering patriarch - but as a figure of sympathy, a beleaguered, America-taunted leader who eats soldier's gruel and deserves care by the masses. He's played a smart propaganda game in South Korea, where some elites admire him as a nationalist torchbearer for "true Korean-ness," and for outwitting the great powers.
Kim reportedly micromanages the entire country. North Korea has the world's fifth-largest army. His state is a hermetically sealed cult that allows no debate; even top generals and their extended families undergo loyalty tests. A half-dozen concentration camps hold 200,000 inmates, a dozen intelligence units spy on the people and each other.
One side of Kim only now emerging is how closely he stays in touch with the people. The Dear Leader is on the road, working the crowds, a great deal. Studies of Korean media show Kim averages about 150 local visits a year. He may not make live televised speeches, but he's at a school, a factory, a farm, a military base - every three days. (He shows up at a military unit once a week.) This suggests a populist streak.
"When someone you worship comes to your factory, it's a personal connection. We tend to overlook this simple fact," says Alexander Mansourov of the Asia Pacific Center for Security Studies in Honolulu. who has tracked Kim's appearances. "Kim knows the local leaders, the opinion makers, the local cadres. He's not in a fishbowl. He may be a dictator, but he's also a populist."
Kim also appears today to be intensifying his ethnic nationalist message: Korea is different, special, unique, pure - and must remain so.
[Excerpt of an article by Robert Marquand, The Christian Science Monitor]
He's even created a new image for himself at home - not as a towering patriarch - but as a figure of sympathy, a beleaguered, America-taunted leader who eats soldier's gruel and deserves care by the masses. He's played a smart propaganda game in South Korea, where some elites admire him as a nationalist torchbearer for "true Korean-ness," and for outwitting the great powers.
Kim reportedly micromanages the entire country. North Korea has the world's fifth-largest army. His state is a hermetically sealed cult that allows no debate; even top generals and their extended families undergo loyalty tests. A half-dozen concentration camps hold 200,000 inmates, a dozen intelligence units spy on the people and each other.
One side of Kim only now emerging is how closely he stays in touch with the people. The Dear Leader is on the road, working the crowds, a great deal. Studies of Korean media show Kim averages about 150 local visits a year. He may not make live televised speeches, but he's at a school, a factory, a farm, a military base - every three days. (He shows up at a military unit once a week.) This suggests a populist streak.
"When someone you worship comes to your factory, it's a personal connection. We tend to overlook this simple fact," says Alexander Mansourov of the Asia Pacific Center for Security Studies in Honolulu. who has tracked Kim's appearances. "Kim knows the local leaders, the opinion makers, the local cadres. He's not in a fishbowl. He may be a dictator, but he's also a populist."
Kim also appears today to be intensifying his ethnic nationalist message: Korea is different, special, unique, pure - and must remain so.
[Excerpt of an article by Robert Marquand, The Christian Science Monitor]
Sunday, January 07, 2007
The tactical skills of Kim Jong Il
As Kim Jong Il continues to elude efforts to constrain his nuclear program, a grudging regard for the North Korean leader's tactical skills is rising.
As a leader, Mr. Kim was once thought to be over his head. But 12 years after the death of his father, Kim Il Sung, the son is showing brilliance as a dictator. Some experts say that Kim, in his own way, may be shrewder than the father who built the nation.
"Kim was in many ways dealt a weaker hand than his father, but he has played it better," says Brian Myers, a North Korea specialist at Dongseo University in Busan, South Korea.
Certainly, Kim has become a skillful player on the world stage. He retains firm hold of the most totalitarian state on earth. His nation has survived an epic famine.
"Why shouldn't Kim be seen as extraordinary?" asks Alexander Mansourov of the Asia Pacific Center for Security Studies in Honolulu. "He's poked his finger in the eye of the US hegemon. He's tested missiles and nukes. At home he's more popular than ever."
"I used to think Kim was irrational and unrealistic," says Lee Jong Heon, who has just published a structural analysis of the North at Chung-Ang University in Seoul. "But when you study his moves, he has kept a grip on the people, and he now heads one of eight nuclear nations. He's been highly rational from his standpoint."
[Excerpt of an article by Robert Marquand, The Christian Science Monitor]
As a leader, Mr. Kim was once thought to be over his head. But 12 years after the death of his father, Kim Il Sung, the son is showing brilliance as a dictator. Some experts say that Kim, in his own way, may be shrewder than the father who built the nation.
"Kim was in many ways dealt a weaker hand than his father, but he has played it better," says Brian Myers, a North Korea specialist at Dongseo University in Busan, South Korea.
Certainly, Kim has become a skillful player on the world stage. He retains firm hold of the most totalitarian state on earth. His nation has survived an epic famine.
"Why shouldn't Kim be seen as extraordinary?" asks Alexander Mansourov of the Asia Pacific Center for Security Studies in Honolulu. "He's poked his finger in the eye of the US hegemon. He's tested missiles and nukes. At home he's more popular than ever."
"I used to think Kim was irrational and unrealistic," says Lee Jong Heon, who has just published a structural analysis of the North at Chung-Ang University in Seoul. "But when you study his moves, he has kept a grip on the people, and he now heads one of eight nuclear nations. He's been highly rational from his standpoint."
[Excerpt of an article by Robert Marquand, The Christian Science Monitor]
Saturday, January 06, 2007
North Korea says “No food crisis”
North Korea has no serious trouble feeding its people despite heavy floods and sanctions by "enemy states" Japan and the United States, a pro-Pyongyang newspaper said last week, quoting an agricultural official of the North. "It is not a satisfactory production level relative to our goal, but the problem of feeding the people is in no way at a serious level," Kim Kyong-il of the North's agricultural ministry was quoted in the Choson Sinbo newspaper as saying.
The paper is published by an association of North Korean residents in Japan with reports from Pyongyang, and is seen as carrying the official voice of the North.
Even in a good year North Korea does not produce enough grain to feed its people.
[Reuters]
The paper is published by an association of North Korean residents in Japan with reports from Pyongyang, and is seen as carrying the official voice of the North.
Even in a good year North Korea does not produce enough grain to feed its people.
[Reuters]
North Korean starvation made worse by flooding
United Nations aid agencies warned of an impending food crisis in North Korea where summer flooding destroyed crops and worsened a chronic shortage of grain.
"The situation is indeed critical," Simon Pluess, spokesman of the UN's World Food Programme (WFP), said. "About a third of the population never eats enough and half of the population goes for periods in the year when they have an insufficient food intake."
North Korea has still not recovered from famine in the 1990s that experts say killed about 2.5 million people, or 10 per cent of the population.
The reclusive country is estimated to be facing a cereal deficit of at least a million tonnes for 2007. The WFP is feeding only 700,000 of the 1.9 million North Koreans it has identified as needing aid.
"The situation is likely to translate into increased malnutrition rates," Mr Pluess said. Analysts believe North Korea cannot produce enough food for itself even in the best crop years, and much of the food is diverted to the military.
Michael Bociurkiw, a spokesman for the UN Children's Fund, or UNICEF, said severe flooding in four provinces had "decimated" food production in North Korea.
[The Scotsman]
"The situation is indeed critical," Simon Pluess, spokesman of the UN's World Food Programme (WFP), said. "About a third of the population never eats enough and half of the population goes for periods in the year when they have an insufficient food intake."
North Korea has still not recovered from famine in the 1990s that experts say killed about 2.5 million people, or 10 per cent of the population.
The reclusive country is estimated to be facing a cereal deficit of at least a million tonnes for 2007. The WFP is feeding only 700,000 of the 1.9 million North Koreans it has identified as needing aid.
"The situation is likely to translate into increased malnutrition rates," Mr Pluess said. Analysts believe North Korea cannot produce enough food for itself even in the best crop years, and much of the food is diverted to the military.
Michael Bociurkiw, a spokesman for the UN Children's Fund, or UNICEF, said severe flooding in four provinces had "decimated" food production in North Korea.
[The Scotsman]
Friday, January 05, 2007
With countrymen like this, who needs enemies?!
A fisherman abducted by North Korea 31 years ago is finally on his way home to South Korea on Friday. But Koreans flew into an uproar Thursday as they learned of the manner in which the South Korean consulate in Shenyang responded to his initial desperate pleas for help after he fled the Stalinist country.Hiding in a safe house in China, Choi Wook-il (67) and his wife from the South, Yang Jeong-ja (66), dialed the consulate to beg for help. "I am Choi Wook-il and I was a crew member of the trawler Cheonwangho abducted to the North from the East Sea in 1975. Since that time I have been living in the North but I resolved to return home and escaped. I am in China now. Can I talk to the consul?"
The response from a female employee: "We only deal with cases and accidents involving South Koreans in the three provinces in Northeast China, and we don't address any North Korean defector issues."
When the couple called again and asked for the person in charge of defector issues, the same woman got on the line. "You just called a moment ago," she scolded.
Only after Yang described their urgent situation did she gave them the mobile phone number of the proper official. But the official handling defectors proved equally unhelpful, demanding to know who gave them his phone number.
The Foreign Ministry posted an apology on its website late Thursday night after coming under fire thanks to the broadcast of a video clip of the consular employee's dealings with Choi. On Friday morning, a government official said Choi has been handed over to the South Korean side and is expected to arrive in Seoul soon.
[Chosun Ilbo]
Wednesday, January 03, 2007
15 North Korean refugees arrested in Thailand
Taipei Times reports that Thai police have arrested 15 North Koreans for illegally entering Thailand.
Police found the North Koreans in a bus in Chiang Rai, around 800km north of Bangkok, following a tip-off from someone on the bus, they said.The group had 10 women, three men and two young boys.
Serious food and energy shortages have made more and more North Koreans leave their country, and many of them have been going to northern Thailand after crossing through China and Laos.
The number of North Koreans arrested for illegal entry into Thailand last year jumped from 50 in 2005 to more than 400 in 2006.
[AFP]
Police found the North Koreans in a bus in Chiang Rai, around 800km north of Bangkok, following a tip-off from someone on the bus, they said.The group had 10 women, three men and two young boys.
Serious food and energy shortages have made more and more North Koreans leave their country, and many of them have been going to northern Thailand after crossing through China and Laos.
The number of North Koreans arrested for illegal entry into Thailand last year jumped from 50 in 2005 to more than 400 in 2006.
[AFP]
North Korea's Foreign Minister Dies
Paek Nam Sun, North Korea's foreign minister and the country's top diplomat for nearly 10 years, has died at the age of 78, official media reported Wednesday.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Il expressed his condolences, the North's Korean Central News Agency reported. The one-sentence dispatch did not elaborate on when or how Paek died.
Paek has been the North's premier diplomat since 1998. News reports have said he was suffering from an unknown illness. It was unclear who would succeed him.
Paek's death was not expected to change North Korea's foreign policy because the North's Foreign Ministry usually implements policies that have been crafted by the ruling Korean Workers' Party. Power is heavily concentrated in Kim's hands, and state officers stray from the official line at their peril.
Paek's career is the story of an elite loyalist who rose steadily through the government layers over the decades. He was born in 1929 in North Hamgyong, a province on the Chinese and Russian borders that is home to a coal mine notorious for forced labor as well as a key missile base.
[Associated Press]
North Korean leader Kim Jong Il expressed his condolences, the North's Korean Central News Agency reported. The one-sentence dispatch did not elaborate on when or how Paek died.
Paek has been the North's premier diplomat since 1998. News reports have said he was suffering from an unknown illness. It was unclear who would succeed him.
Paek's death was not expected to change North Korea's foreign policy because the North's Foreign Ministry usually implements policies that have been crafted by the ruling Korean Workers' Party. Power is heavily concentrated in Kim's hands, and state officers stray from the official line at their peril.
Paek's career is the story of an elite loyalist who rose steadily through the government layers over the decades. He was born in 1929 in North Hamgyong, a province on the Chinese and Russian borders that is home to a coal mine notorious for forced labor as well as a key missile base.
[Associated Press]
Monday, January 01, 2007
Gold is North Korean Loophole
North Korea plans to use the London gold market to get around financial sanctions imposed by the international community, it was reported.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Il has relisted North Korea's central bank with the London Bullion Market Association and plans to sell gold through London once the country gets a regular supply from its outdated mines, The Times of London reported.
Sunday, December 31, 2006
Helping Hands Korea logistical support to North Korean refugees in China
We contracted with one of our long-term, tried and proven Christian partners near the China-North Korean border to provide shelter for a total of 50 North Korean refugees for the three coldest months of the upcoming winter.
Rescue and shelter funds were also provided to another partner, who will guide refugees to the Mongolian border, and also re-supply refugees in mountain shelters.
Another faithful partner was entrusted with funds to put eight children, who are abandoned offspring of trafficked North Korean women refugees (and the Chinese men who purchase them).
When the North Korean women are caught by Chinese police and repatriated to North Korea, often the Chinese partners abandon the children and make no legal claim to them. Therefore, little ad hoc orphanages are springing up in NE China to care for these pitiful victims of a tragedy that is so entirely incomprehensible to them.
---Tim Peters, Helping Hands Korea
[The above is delayed news, necessary for the security of the above movements]
Rescue and shelter funds were also provided to another partner, who will guide refugees to the Mongolian border, and also re-supply refugees in mountain shelters.
Another faithful partner was entrusted with funds to put eight children, who are abandoned offspring of trafficked North Korean women refugees (and the Chinese men who purchase them).
When the North Korean women are caught by Chinese police and repatriated to North Korea, often the Chinese partners abandon the children and make no legal claim to them. Therefore, little ad hoc orphanages are springing up in NE China to care for these pitiful victims of a tragedy that is so entirely incomprehensible to them.
---Tim Peters, Helping Hands Korea
[The above is delayed news, necessary for the security of the above movements]
Saturday, December 30, 2006
Food shortage in North Korea could deteriorate into widespread famine
North Korea’s chronic food shortage could deteriorate into widespread famine similar to the mid-1990s when an estimated 1 million North Koreans died from starvation, according to aid agencies.
Aid workers attribute the dire situation to cuts in the North’s government-provided ration, the inability of the urban poor to buy food at market prices, and the international community’s reluctance to give aid.
Tim Peters, founder of aid agency Helping Hands Korea, said that “enlarging pockets of areas” are again experiencing famine, and in the northeastern city of Cheongjin, the food shortage is worse than 10 years ago.
“It’s backpedaling to the situation of the 1990s,” Peters told The Korea Herald.
He said urban areas are the worst-affected. Farmers are able to cultivate a private patch whereas city dwellers cannot. Through a network of North Korean refugees in China, Peters learned that during the planting season in May, city government offices were emptied as workers were mobilized to work on farms.
With the average North Korean wage being 2,500 won a month, most can afford only 3 kilograms a month, putting rice out of reach for most North Koreans.
Peters met a woman last August who had crossed the border to seek medical attention for her daughter’s heart condition. She told him that her husband worked in a factory and earned 1,500 won ($1.20 at that time) a day and their family of four lived mostly of corn meal which cost 200 won per kilogram. As they lived in a semi-rural area, they did not receive any government distribution, but they kept two pigs, chickens and dogs which they would sell so that they could buy more corn. They were able to eat three times a day on a diet of corn meal, kimchi and doenjang (soy bean paste). In their community they were considered well-off.
“Usually I’m optimistic by nature, but the situation is very grim at the moment,” said Peters who has been working with North Korean refugees for 9 years.
His Seoul-based nongovernmental organization currently supports a bakery in China that produces high-nutrition buns which are distributed in North Korea, by North Koreans at the grass-roots level, to schoolchildren and orphans. This is more effective than handing out raw grain as cooking fuel is expensive he said.
“It’s indicative of what little grass-roots organizations and ‘mom-n-pop’ NGOs can do. We can make a difference,” Peters said.
[Excerpt of an article by Jane Cooper, Korea Herald]
Aid workers attribute the dire situation to cuts in the North’s government-provided ration, the inability of the urban poor to buy food at market prices, and the international community’s reluctance to give aid.
Tim Peters, founder of aid agency Helping Hands Korea, said that “enlarging pockets of areas” are again experiencing famine, and in the northeastern city of Cheongjin, the food shortage is worse than 10 years ago.
“It’s backpedaling to the situation of the 1990s,” Peters told The Korea Herald.
He said urban areas are the worst-affected. Farmers are able to cultivate a private patch whereas city dwellers cannot. Through a network of North Korean refugees in China, Peters learned that during the planting season in May, city government offices were emptied as workers were mobilized to work on farms.
With the average North Korean wage being 2,500 won a month, most can afford only 3 kilograms a month, putting rice out of reach for most North Koreans.
Peters met a woman last August who had crossed the border to seek medical attention for her daughter’s heart condition. She told him that her husband worked in a factory and earned 1,500 won ($1.20 at that time) a day and their family of four lived mostly of corn meal which cost 200 won per kilogram. As they lived in a semi-rural area, they did not receive any government distribution, but they kept two pigs, chickens and dogs which they would sell so that they could buy more corn. They were able to eat three times a day on a diet of corn meal, kimchi and doenjang (soy bean paste). In their community they were considered well-off.
“Usually I’m optimistic by nature, but the situation is very grim at the moment,” said Peters who has been working with North Korean refugees for 9 years.
His Seoul-based nongovernmental organization currently supports a bakery in China that produces high-nutrition buns which are distributed in North Korea, by North Koreans at the grass-roots level, to schoolchildren and orphans. This is more effective than handing out raw grain as cooking fuel is expensive he said.
“It’s indicative of what little grass-roots organizations and ‘mom-n-pop’ NGOs can do. We can make a difference,” Peters said.
[Excerpt of an article by Jane Cooper, Korea Herald]
Friday, December 29, 2006
North Korean Defector Gets Death Threats
South Korean police are investigating a threatening package sent to former North Korean Workers' Party official Hwang Jang-yup, who defected to the South in 1997.
Freedom North Korea Broadcast, which Hwang chairs, received a 20x40 cm package wrapped in yellow paper. It was addressed to Hwang, and a sender's name and phone number were written on it, but the number did not exist.
"When we opened it, we found Hwang's photo smeared with red paint and a 37 cm long hand ax,” the station's president Kim Sung-min said. An enclosed letter added, “Hwang should shut his dirty mouth” and “Traitors must pay the price.”
Hwang has been subject to such threats several times, usually after he made disparaging remarks about the North. In March 2003, Hwang received a package with a scroll-sized photo of Hwang stabbed through with a 30 cm knife and the written message “I will kill you.” That was right after Hwang visited Japan's parliament to testify about human rights conditions in the North.
"The threats keep coming, but Hwang just seems to accept them and says he could not do anything if he was scared by them,” Kim said.
[Chosun.com]
Freedom North Korea Broadcast, which Hwang chairs, received a 20x40 cm package wrapped in yellow paper. It was addressed to Hwang, and a sender's name and phone number were written on it, but the number did not exist.
"When we opened it, we found Hwang's photo smeared with red paint and a 37 cm long hand ax,” the station's president Kim Sung-min said. An enclosed letter added, “Hwang should shut his dirty mouth” and “Traitors must pay the price.”
Hwang has been subject to such threats several times, usually after he made disparaging remarks about the North. In March 2003, Hwang received a package with a scroll-sized photo of Hwang stabbed through with a 30 cm knife and the written message “I will kill you.” That was right after Hwang visited Japan's parliament to testify about human rights conditions in the North.
"The threats keep coming, but Hwang just seems to accept them and says he could not do anything if he was scared by them,” Kim said.
[Chosun.com]
Thursday, December 28, 2006
North Korean elites now a "skeptical class"
In the past decade many North Korean families have had their state-enforced high ideals shattered, according to refugees and nongovernmental and academic sources working with them. A recent high-level defector from Pyongyang confirms that many elites in the North are now a "skeptical class," according to sources in South Korea's national unification ministry.
North Korea today faces a paradox: While its material standard of living has been improving fro some, moving from awful to less awful - its morale and its collective beliefs continue to fray. The quality of patriotism, military discipline, and ideological purity - elements that have uniquely bound the North - are shaky, say many sources.
Local authority figures of respect have spent a decade foraging for cash and food, like everyone else.
A "feeling of positive emotion" is missing in the North, reports a Seoul-based researcher on the Chinese-North Korean border. "People have stopped seeing each other as people; everything is money.... It used to be that everyone looked up to public officials ... to the Army. Now they are on the take," says a Korean reporter for NKnet, a newsletter in Seoul headed by Han Ki-hong, a leftist who is critical of the North's human rights violations.
[Christian Science Monitor]
North Korea today faces a paradox: While its material standard of living has been improving fro some, moving from awful to less awful - its morale and its collective beliefs continue to fray. The quality of patriotism, military discipline, and ideological purity - elements that have uniquely bound the North - are shaky, say many sources.
Local authority figures of respect have spent a decade foraging for cash and food, like everyone else.
A "feeling of positive emotion" is missing in the North, reports a Seoul-based researcher on the Chinese-North Korean border. "People have stopped seeing each other as people; everything is money.... It used to be that everyone looked up to public officials ... to the Army. Now they are on the take," says a Korean reporter for NKnet, a newsletter in Seoul headed by Han Ki-hong, a leftist who is critical of the North's human rights violations.
[Christian Science Monitor]
Wednesday, December 27, 2006
North Korea in decline?
Information leaking out of North Korea suggests both the economy and internal political support for the Kim Jong-il regime are deteriorating. In recent weeks, South Korean media have cited intelligence and other sources claiming the financial restrictions imposed by the U.S. Treasury are having an effect.
For years the State Department and Pentagon tried without success to find ways to pressure North Korea. The Kim dynasty that has ruled the country since World War II emphasizes "juche," or self-reliance, refusing to make concessions to obtain foreign aid, even if it means allowing its people to starve.
But now the Treasury Department has found the North's Achilles heel -- the laundered money and luxury goods the leadership bestows on the military and other members of the elite to keep their support. In addition to blocking North Korean bank accounts, the Treasury convinced financial institutions worldwide, concerned about possible adverse effects on their dollar transactions, to stop doing business with North Korea. The drop in foreign exchange earnings reportedly is said to have forced Mr. Kim to suspend his custom of dispensing money and gifts to his top aides.
[The threat to Kim Jong-il’s] regime caused by unrest resulting from economic difficulties and food shortages. A South Korean aid official told the press the fuel shortage in the North is worse than he has ever seen it, and power outages are more frequent than at any time in the last 10 years.
South Korean intelligence reportedly claims the unrest has spread to the party, government, and military elites who keep Chairman Kim in power. ... Regime change is the only realistic long-term solution.
[Excerpt of commentary by James T. Hackett, The Washington Times]
For years the State Department and Pentagon tried without success to find ways to pressure North Korea. The Kim dynasty that has ruled the country since World War II emphasizes "juche," or self-reliance, refusing to make concessions to obtain foreign aid, even if it means allowing its people to starve.
But now the Treasury Department has found the North's Achilles heel -- the laundered money and luxury goods the leadership bestows on the military and other members of the elite to keep their support. In addition to blocking North Korean bank accounts, the Treasury convinced financial institutions worldwide, concerned about possible adverse effects on their dollar transactions, to stop doing business with North Korea. The drop in foreign exchange earnings reportedly is said to have forced Mr. Kim to suspend his custom of dispensing money and gifts to his top aides.
[The threat to Kim Jong-il’s] regime caused by unrest resulting from economic difficulties and food shortages. A South Korean aid official told the press the fuel shortage in the North is worse than he has ever seen it, and power outages are more frequent than at any time in the last 10 years.
South Korean intelligence reportedly claims the unrest has spread to the party, government, and military elites who keep Chairman Kim in power. ... Regime change is the only realistic long-term solution.
[Excerpt of commentary by James T. Hackett, The Washington Times]
Tuesday, December 26, 2006
US wrecked hopes of North Korean nuke deal
South Korean President Roh Moo-Hyun has accused the United States of wrecking last year's agreement to scrap North Korea's nuclear programmes by simultaneously imposing financial sanctions.
Roh, in strongly-worded comments reported in Friday's media, also suggested the US Treasury and State Departments are split in their approach to the sanctions, which were a key sticking point in this past week's nuclear negotiations.
"If you look at it in a bad light, you may say (the two US departments) were playing a prearranged game," he said, according to an official transcript of his speech delivered Thursday.
Roh noted that the US blacklisting of Macau's Banco Delta Asia (BDA) -- a move which led to the freezing of 24 million dollars in North Korean accounts -- came just a few days before the agreement on September 19, 2005. Six-nation nuclear negotiations which began in 2003 achieved an apparent breakthrough on that date when the North agreed in principle to scrap its nuclear programmes in return for economic and energy aid and security guarantees.
But North Korea boycotted the forum two months later in protest at the curbs on the BDA accounts, which sparked similar action elsewhere in Asia and effectively shut it out of much of the international banking system.
When talks resumed in Beijing this past week the communist state insisted that the issue be resolved before any further negotiations on denuclearisation. The talks ended Friday without apparent agreement and without setting a firm date to meet again.
[The Daily Star]
Roh, in strongly-worded comments reported in Friday's media, also suggested the US Treasury and State Departments are split in their approach to the sanctions, which were a key sticking point in this past week's nuclear negotiations.
"If you look at it in a bad light, you may say (the two US departments) were playing a prearranged game," he said, according to an official transcript of his speech delivered Thursday.
Roh noted that the US blacklisting of Macau's Banco Delta Asia (BDA) -- a move which led to the freezing of 24 million dollars in North Korean accounts -- came just a few days before the agreement on September 19, 2005. Six-nation nuclear negotiations which began in 2003 achieved an apparent breakthrough on that date when the North agreed in principle to scrap its nuclear programmes in return for economic and energy aid and security guarantees.
But North Korea boycotted the forum two months later in protest at the curbs on the BDA accounts, which sparked similar action elsewhere in Asia and effectively shut it out of much of the international banking system.
When talks resumed in Beijing this past week the communist state insisted that the issue be resolved before any further negotiations on denuclearisation. The talks ended Friday without apparent agreement and without setting a firm date to meet again.
[The Daily Star]
Monday, December 25, 2006
Korean aid worker Choi Yong-hun released
South Korean aid worker Choi Yong-hun has just been released after serving nearly four years in a Chinese jail for trying to help North Koreans defect.
There were emotional scenes at Seoul airport as Choi was reunited with his wife and two daughters, while Tim Peters of Helping Hands Korea looked on.
Choi's family had to wait 90 minutes before he finally came through the Arrivals gate at Seoul Airport because he was immediately detained by the South Korean authorities for questioning.
Tim Peters says: 'When he finally did come out, he was rejoicing in the Lord as he embraced his family and fellow activists. He told of torture at the hands of prison guards and fellow prisoners, mainly due to his Christian faith.'
Choi was arrested in 2003 for his part in the well publicised Yantai boat incident in which a group of 30 North Koreans tried to escape from China to South Korea by sea. One of his four fellow defendants, a North Korean called Park Yong-chol, was repatriated to his homeland after serving two years in a Chinese jail. Park's fate remains unknown.
China insists on dealing harshly with North Korean defectors and those who try to help them, often repatriating refugees to their homeland.
[Release International]
There were emotional scenes at Seoul airport as Choi was reunited with his wife and two daughters, while Tim Peters of Helping Hands Korea looked on.
Choi's family had to wait 90 minutes before he finally came through the Arrivals gate at Seoul Airport because he was immediately detained by the South Korean authorities for questioning.
Tim Peters says: 'When he finally did come out, he was rejoicing in the Lord as he embraced his family and fellow activists. He told of torture at the hands of prison guards and fellow prisoners, mainly due to his Christian faith.'
Choi was arrested in 2003 for his part in the well publicised Yantai boat incident in which a group of 30 North Koreans tried to escape from China to South Korea by sea. One of his four fellow defendants, a North Korean called Park Yong-chol, was repatriated to his homeland after serving two years in a Chinese jail. Park's fate remains unknown.
China insists on dealing harshly with North Korean defectors and those who try to help them, often repatriating refugees to their homeland.
[Release International]
Sunday, December 24, 2006
North Korea may face famine with aid cuts
North Korea may face famine because the international community halted aid to the impoverished communist country following Pyongyang's recent nuclear test, an American relief worker said.
"I think that it's very possible that North Korea will slide back to the famine condition of the 1990s," Tim Peters, a Seoul-based U.S. activist working [with Helping Hands Korea] to help North Korean refugees find asylum, said in a phone interview.
As many as 2 million North Koreans are believed to have died in the 1990s from food shortages caused by government mismanagement and the loss of aid from the Soviet Union after it collapsed.
Peters blamed the looming crisis on North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, whose regime's missile and nuclear tests in recent months have further alienated the North, leading many countries to cut assistance.
South Korea, one of major donors to the North, also halted its regular government humanitarian aid after the North's missile launches in July, and vowed to comply with U.N. sanctions imposed against Pyongyang after its Oct. 9 nuclear test.
The North has already faced food shortages as massive floods in mid-July wiped out crops along with homes and roads. The actual scale of the destruction remains unknown.
[The Associated Press]
"I think that it's very possible that North Korea will slide back to the famine condition of the 1990s," Tim Peters, a Seoul-based U.S. activist working [with Helping Hands Korea] to help North Korean refugees find asylum, said in a phone interview.
As many as 2 million North Koreans are believed to have died in the 1990s from food shortages caused by government mismanagement and the loss of aid from the Soviet Union after it collapsed.
Peters blamed the looming crisis on North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, whose regime's missile and nuclear tests in recent months have further alienated the North, leading many countries to cut assistance.
South Korea, one of major donors to the North, also halted its regular government humanitarian aid after the North's missile launches in July, and vowed to comply with U.N. sanctions imposed against Pyongyang after its Oct. 9 nuclear test.
The North has already faced food shortages as massive floods in mid-July wiped out crops along with homes and roads. The actual scale of the destruction remains unknown.
[The Associated Press]
Saturday, December 23, 2006
Background of Pastor Phillip Buck
Pastor Buck was born in North Korea in 1941 and fled with his brothers to the South during the Korean War. He emigrated to the U.S. in the '80s, becoming a citizen in 1992. When famine hit North Korea in the late '90s, and millions died, he raised relief funds in Korean churches in the U.S.
"I helped send 150 tons of flour and rice to the North," he says, "and 70 tons of fertilizer . . . This was a time when government rations had stopped and people were living off grass."
But on visits to the North, he soon realized that the government was stealing the food intended for starving citizens. "I changed my mind" about the efficacy of aid, he says, and in 1998 he joined the effort to help people escape. "If you see someone who is drowning in the river, wouldn't you reach out and help that person?" he asks. "That's what was in my heart."
Pastor Buck is nothing if not determined. In 2002, while in a Southeast Asian country with a group of refugees he had guided there, his apartment in Yanji city, in northeast China, was raided. Nineteen refugees were captured and a copy of his passport was confiscated. With his identity now compromised, Mr. Buck returned to the U.S. and underwent legal proceedings to change his name. John Yoon, the name he was born with, was dead; Phillip Buck was born.
The new Pastor Buck returned to China, where, on May 25, 2005, he was arrested and eventually convicted of the crime of helping illegal immigrants. Thanks to the intervention of the U.S. government, he was deported before he could be sentenced.
[Excerpt of an article by Melanie Kirkpatrick, The Wall Street Journal]
Footnote fromTim Peters of Helping Hands Korea – In our continued partnership with Phillip Buck, we were able to provide the funds for three of the North Korean refugees who were caught when Phillip was caught, who all three have now been transferred at last to a safe haven.
"I helped send 150 tons of flour and rice to the North," he says, "and 70 tons of fertilizer . . . This was a time when government rations had stopped and people were living off grass."
But on visits to the North, he soon realized that the government was stealing the food intended for starving citizens. "I changed my mind" about the efficacy of aid, he says, and in 1998 he joined the effort to help people escape. "If you see someone who is drowning in the river, wouldn't you reach out and help that person?" he asks. "That's what was in my heart."
Pastor Buck is nothing if not determined. In 2002, while in a Southeast Asian country with a group of refugees he had guided there, his apartment in Yanji city, in northeast China, was raided. Nineteen refugees were captured and a copy of his passport was confiscated. With his identity now compromised, Mr. Buck returned to the U.S. and underwent legal proceedings to change his name. John Yoon, the name he was born with, was dead; Phillip Buck was born.
The new Pastor Buck returned to China, where, on May 25, 2005, he was arrested and eventually convicted of the crime of helping illegal immigrants. Thanks to the intervention of the U.S. government, he was deported before he could be sentenced.
[Excerpt of an article by Melanie Kirkpatrick, The Wall Street Journal]
Footnote fromTim Peters of Helping Hands Korea – In our continued partnership with Phillip Buck, we were able to provide the funds for three of the North Korean refugees who were caught when Phillip was caught, who all three have now been transferred at last to a safe haven.
Friday, December 22, 2006
Pastor Buck Is a Rescuer . . .
This being The Wall Street Journal, we went straight to the bottom line. How much, we asked our visitor at a recent editorial board meeting, does it cost to free one North Korean refugee hiding in China?
The Rev. Phillip Buck pauses a moment before replying, apparently making the yuan-to-dollar conversions on the abacus in his mind. "If I do it myself," he says, "the cost is $800 per person. If I hire a broker to do it, it's $1,500."
Pastor Buck is a rescuer. It's a job title that applies to a courageous few--mostly Americans and South Koreans and predominantly Christians--who operate the underground railroad that ferries North Korean refugees out of China to South Korea, and now, thanks to 2004 legislation, to the U.S.
Mr. Buck, an American from Seattle, says he has rescued more than 100 refugees and helped support another 1,000 who are still on the run. For this "crime"--China's policy is to hunt down and repatriate North Koreans--he spent 15 months in a Chinese prison. He was released in August.
[Excerpt of an article by Melanie Kirkpatrick, The Wall Street Journal]
The Rev. Phillip Buck pauses a moment before replying, apparently making the yuan-to-dollar conversions on the abacus in his mind. "If I do it myself," he says, "the cost is $800 per person. If I hire a broker to do it, it's $1,500."
Pastor Buck is a rescuer. It's a job title that applies to a courageous few--mostly Americans and South Koreans and predominantly Christians--who operate the underground railroad that ferries North Korean refugees out of China to South Korea, and now, thanks to 2004 legislation, to the U.S.
Mr. Buck, an American from Seattle, says he has rescued more than 100 refugees and helped support another 1,000 who are still on the run. For this "crime"--China's policy is to hunt down and repatriate North Koreans--he spent 15 months in a Chinese prison. He was released in August.
[Excerpt of an article by Melanie Kirkpatrick, The Wall Street Journal]
Thursday, December 21, 2006
North Korea may be heading back to famine: aid worker
Reports from fleeing North Koreans of food shortages and the suspension of international aid after the country's nuclear test suggest the communist state may be slipping into famine, an aid worker said.
The comments by head of the charity Helping Hands Korea, Tim Peters, add to another recent report that North Korea could be heading back to the starvation it faced during the 1990s, triggering a mass exodus of refugees. "It's an extreme possibility we may see....(a return) to famine," Peters told reporters. "I hope it won't happen but the world needs to be aware it could take place."
Analysts say North Korea cannot produce enough food for itself even in the best crop years and that much of the food is diverted to the military. Summer storms are thought to have badly damaged crops in key grain areas.
Peters, a Seoul-based Christian pastor whose charity has wide contact with North Korean refugees, said increasingly sophisticated monitoring on the Chinese side of the border suggested Beijing was readying for a large-scale influx of North Koreans. Nearly all those who flee North Korea -- the numbers range from tens to hundreds of thousands -- do so to neighboring China. They either stay or seek refuge elsewhere in Asia.
Peters added there were indications China was slowing down its repatriations of refugees, but said it was unclear whether this was punishment for the nuclear test or a longer-term trend. The ICG report estimated China sends back between 150 and 300 North Koreans a week.
He quoted reports from refugees as saying that even in the capital Pyongyang rations had been reduced to just a third and in the north-east of the country -- near China and where many of the refugees come from -- the level was a third of that. "It seems like everybody is hungry and that includes the border patrol," he said.
[Washington Post, Reuters]
The comments by head of the charity Helping Hands Korea, Tim Peters, add to another recent report that North Korea could be heading back to the starvation it faced during the 1990s, triggering a mass exodus of refugees. "It's an extreme possibility we may see....(a return) to famine," Peters told reporters. "I hope it won't happen but the world needs to be aware it could take place."
Analysts say North Korea cannot produce enough food for itself even in the best crop years and that much of the food is diverted to the military. Summer storms are thought to have badly damaged crops in key grain areas.
Peters, a Seoul-based Christian pastor whose charity has wide contact with North Korean refugees, said increasingly sophisticated monitoring on the Chinese side of the border suggested Beijing was readying for a large-scale influx of North Koreans. Nearly all those who flee North Korea -- the numbers range from tens to hundreds of thousands -- do so to neighboring China. They either stay or seek refuge elsewhere in Asia.
Peters added there were indications China was slowing down its repatriations of refugees, but said it was unclear whether this was punishment for the nuclear test or a longer-term trend. The ICG report estimated China sends back between 150 and 300 North Koreans a week.
He quoted reports from refugees as saying that even in the capital Pyongyang rations had been reduced to just a third and in the north-east of the country -- near China and where many of the refugees come from -- the level was a third of that. "It seems like everybody is hungry and that includes the border patrol," he said.
[Washington Post, Reuters]
Wednesday, December 20, 2006
North Koreans in China seeking asylum
Conditions in North Korea have created a verifiable flood of refugees, who cross by the thousands into China, attempting to escape persecution and near-famine conditions caused by economic mismanagement.
Washington estimates there are between 20,000 and 30,000 North Koreans in China trying to make their way to asylum in a third country, mostly in South Korea. Private aid groups put the estimate much higher, at 100 to 150,000.
Tim Peters, a Christian activist here in Seoul, says the highest estimate may come from Beijing itself. "We have good reason to believe from Chinese government sources that the Chinese themselves put the number at 400,000," he said.
Peters, who heads the North Korean refugee assistance group Helping Hands Korea, has an extensive network of contacts with Christian activists in China and Southeast Asia. The informal network is widely referred to as the "Underground Railroad" - an analogy with activists who helped slaves escape in the 19th century United States.
Peters says the Chinese have taken steps indicating they expect the flow of North Korean refugees to increase. In addition to building barbed wire fences at key border crossing areas, he says China is investing in high-tech surveillance. "Not only cameras, state-of-the-art cameras, but now also motion sensors have been added to the cameras. There seems to be a centralized control for the cameras," he explained.
Under a treaty with Pyongyang, China is obliged to repatriate North Koreans, who often face harsh punishment for leaving without permission. However, Peters says there are signs Beijing may be sending fewer North Koreans home since the recent North Korean nuclear test. "Since the nuclear test there seems to be some indication that the Chinese have slowed down repatriation," noted Peters.
[Voice of America News]
Washington estimates there are between 20,000 and 30,000 North Koreans in China trying to make their way to asylum in a third country, mostly in South Korea. Private aid groups put the estimate much higher, at 100 to 150,000.
Tim Peters, a Christian activist here in Seoul, says the highest estimate may come from Beijing itself. "We have good reason to believe from Chinese government sources that the Chinese themselves put the number at 400,000," he said.
Peters, who heads the North Korean refugee assistance group Helping Hands Korea, has an extensive network of contacts with Christian activists in China and Southeast Asia. The informal network is widely referred to as the "Underground Railroad" - an analogy with activists who helped slaves escape in the 19th century United States.
Peters says the Chinese have taken steps indicating they expect the flow of North Korean refugees to increase. In addition to building barbed wire fences at key border crossing areas, he says China is investing in high-tech surveillance. "Not only cameras, state-of-the-art cameras, but now also motion sensors have been added to the cameras. There seems to be a centralized control for the cameras," he explained.
Under a treaty with Pyongyang, China is obliged to repatriate North Koreans, who often face harsh punishment for leaving without permission. However, Peters says there are signs Beijing may be sending fewer North Koreans home since the recent North Korean nuclear test. "Since the nuclear test there seems to be some indication that the Chinese have slowed down repatriation," noted Peters.
[Voice of America News]
Tuesday, December 19, 2006
North Korea and the Berlin Wall
It won't be on the agenda of the six-party talks, which are scheduled to restart this week in Beijing. The plight of the tens of thousands of North Korean refugees in China is a humanitarian crisis that has received scant world attention.
But the experience of Pastor Buck and other rescuers is worth noting as negotiators sit down with Kim Jong Il's emissaries. North Korea won't change, they believe, so long as Kim remains in power. Follow that logic, and regime change is the proper goal.
The refugees, Pastor Buck argues, are the key to regime change in North Korea and, by inference, the key to halting the North's nuclear and missile programs.
Help one man or woman escape, he says, and that person will get word to his family back home about the freedom that awaits them on the outside. Others will follow, and the regime will implode.
This is what happened in 1989, when Hungary refused to turn back East Germans fleeing to the West, thereby hastening the collapse of the Berlin Wall.
[Excerpt of an article by Melanie Kirkpatrick, The Wall Street Journal]
But the experience of Pastor Buck and other rescuers is worth noting as negotiators sit down with Kim Jong Il's emissaries. North Korea won't change, they believe, so long as Kim remains in power. Follow that logic, and regime change is the proper goal.
The refugees, Pastor Buck argues, are the key to regime change in North Korea and, by inference, the key to halting the North's nuclear and missile programs.
Help one man or woman escape, he says, and that person will get word to his family back home about the freedom that awaits them on the outside. Others will follow, and the regime will implode.
This is what happened in 1989, when Hungary refused to turn back East Germans fleeing to the West, thereby hastening the collapse of the Berlin Wall.
[Excerpt of an article by Melanie Kirkpatrick, The Wall Street Journal]
Monday, December 18, 2006
US Ready to Aid North Korea if it Ends Nuke Program
The United States has indicated it is ready to match good-faith North Korean actions in the six-party negotiations aimed at ending that country's nuclear program.
The New York Times earlier reported that US and North Korean diplomats discussed specifics of a disarmament accord in talks in China.
The newspaper said an agreement would hinge on North Korea agreeing to begin dismantling some equipment it has been using to expand its nuclear arsenal, including a plutonium reprocessing facility refining spent reactor fuel into weapons-grade material.
The New York Times earlier reported that US and North Korean diplomats discussed specifics of a disarmament accord in talks in China.
The newspaper said an agreement would hinge on North Korea agreeing to begin dismantling some equipment it has been using to expand its nuclear arsenal, including a plutonium reprocessing facility refining spent reactor fuel into weapons-grade material.
North Korean Nuclear Talks Begin
International talks on North Korea's nuclear program convened Monday for the first time in 13 months following a boycott by the communist nation during which it tested an atomic device for the first time.
Head delegates held preliminary meetings in Beijing on Monday morning before Chinese envoy Wu Dawei officially opened the talks at a Chinese state guesthouse, calling on envoys to discuss implementation of a September 2005 statement from the talks and outline initial steps to be taken by the sides.
In that agreement -- the only ever reached at the talks -- the North pledged to abandon its nuclear program in exchange for security guarantees and aid.
[AP]
Head delegates held preliminary meetings in Beijing on Monday morning before Chinese envoy Wu Dawei officially opened the talks at a Chinese state guesthouse, calling on envoys to discuss implementation of a September 2005 statement from the talks and outline initial steps to be taken by the sides.
In that agreement -- the only ever reached at the talks -- the North pledged to abandon its nuclear program in exchange for security guarantees and aid.
[AP]
Sunday, December 17, 2006
Park Kyong-ja, 70-year-old North Korean grandmother
Park Kyong-ja [a 70-year-old North Korean grandmother] said many pregnant prisoners lost their babies because guards kicked and beat them around the abdomen.
She gave a precise description of the prison and said she could identify its deputy director, a lieutenant-colonel of police aged about 60, who exercised day-to-day authority. Her explanation was the same as in other such accounts. The regime is obsessed by racial purity, and so it exterminates children feared to be of Chinese blood.
Death comes in many guises for the returnees, as an elegant woman of 50 from Pyongyang, who asked to be named as Kim Hae-soon, explained. She escaped to Seoul in 2003. “My brother led a group of 16 escapers who were caught on the border with Mongolia and sent back in 2004,” she said. “After torture they singled him out as a political offender. The others were sent to camps but he was kept for interrogation.”
The family had influence. Last summer Kim found out that a senior North Korean official they knew was visiting China. She flew to Beijing on her South Korean passport, met the man and handed over $10,000 (£5,050) with a plea for help.
“The only result was that a few weeks later I got a curt message notifying me that my brother died in custody on April 28 this year and warning me not to inquire any further.”
Her sister-in-law and two nieces fled after hearing the news. They have just made it across the Tumen River. Rescuers are now trying to find them somewhere in northeast China.
[Excerpt of an article by Michael Sheridan, Sunday Times]
She gave a precise description of the prison and said she could identify its deputy director, a lieutenant-colonel of police aged about 60, who exercised day-to-day authority. Her explanation was the same as in other such accounts. The regime is obsessed by racial purity, and so it exterminates children feared to be of Chinese blood.
Death comes in many guises for the returnees, as an elegant woman of 50 from Pyongyang, who asked to be named as Kim Hae-soon, explained. She escaped to Seoul in 2003. “My brother led a group of 16 escapers who were caught on the border with Mongolia and sent back in 2004,” she said. “After torture they singled him out as a political offender. The others were sent to camps but he was kept for interrogation.”
The family had influence. Last summer Kim found out that a senior North Korean official they knew was visiting China. She flew to Beijing on her South Korean passport, met the man and handed over $10,000 (£5,050) with a plea for help.
“The only result was that a few weeks later I got a curt message notifying me that my brother died in custody on April 28 this year and warning me not to inquire any further.”
Her sister-in-law and two nieces fled after hearing the news. They have just made it across the Tumen River. Rescuers are now trying to find them somewhere in northeast China.
[Excerpt of an article by Michael Sheridan, Sunday Times]
Saturday, December 16, 2006
70-year-old North Korean grandmother testifies
North Korea has been condemned as one of the world’s worst violators of human rights. Yet China denies its obligations under the 1951 refugee convention, calling the fugitives “illegal immigrants”. It refuses to allow the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees any access to these border areas. But it is possible to get at the truth by following the escapers to freedom.
The South Korean airliner could make the journey from Yanji to Seoul in 60 minutes but instead it flies a great loop around North Korean airspace to land after three hours in the air.
No refugee could hope to pass the Soviet-style security checks to get on the flight; on the divided Korean peninsula it seems that history has stood still since the end of the war here in 1953. Even in Seoul, I was to find, the survivors of Kim Jong-il’s utopia cannot escape his clammy grasp.
Take the 70-year-old grandmother who sat opposite me in a cellar cafe near the British embassy. She asked to be called Park Kyong-ja. She had eight children and some of her family were still in North Korea. But she had escaped, twice.
“We were caught the first time and sent back from China,” she said. “I was stripped naked. They made me squat in case I was hiding anything in my body. I was beaten, of course. Then I was kept for a year in a prison in the Naman district of Chongjin city, North Hamgyong province.
[Excerpt of an article by Michael Sheridan, Sunday Times]
The South Korean airliner could make the journey from Yanji to Seoul in 60 minutes but instead it flies a great loop around North Korean airspace to land after three hours in the air.
No refugee could hope to pass the Soviet-style security checks to get on the flight; on the divided Korean peninsula it seems that history has stood still since the end of the war here in 1953. Even in Seoul, I was to find, the survivors of Kim Jong-il’s utopia cannot escape his clammy grasp.
Take the 70-year-old grandmother who sat opposite me in a cellar cafe near the British embassy. She asked to be called Park Kyong-ja. She had eight children and some of her family were still in North Korea. But she had escaped, twice.
“We were caught the first time and sent back from China,” she said. “I was stripped naked. They made me squat in case I was hiding anything in my body. I was beaten, of course. Then I was kept for a year in a prison in the Naman district of Chongjin city, North Hamgyong province.
[Excerpt of an article by Michael Sheridan, Sunday Times]
Friday, December 15, 2006
More from 70-year-old North Korean grandmother
“My cellmate was pregnant. I am a simple person but she was an educated lady of 35, on the staff of the United Enterprise Company, from the Songpyong district of Kimchaek city. She had been sent back from China, like me.
“About 3am, she gave birth to a girl. Well, the guard came along and shouted at her that she knew she must kill the baby. He said he’d beat her if she didn’t.
“The baby lay crying. It was still attached to her by the umbilical cord. She tried to will herself to harm it but her hands were shaking so much she could not. The guard came back and screamed at her, ‘Why haven’t you killed it?’
“Well, we sat there for almost three hours like that. Then at six, the guard came back again and told her, look, either you kill the baby or we will, and then we’ll beat you up and you’ll never get out of here.
“So, while I watched, the mother leant down and bit through the umbilical cord. Deliberately, she did not tie the cord connected to the baby. A lot of blood flowed out. The infant died almost immediately.”
There was a silence around the table, where five of us sat. Nobody quite trusted themselves to speak. The grandmother’s homespun features crinkled up.
“What I’ve told you is what I saw with my own eyes,” she said.
[Excerpt of an article by Michael Sheridan, Sunday Times]
“About 3am, she gave birth to a girl. Well, the guard came along and shouted at her that she knew she must kill the baby. He said he’d beat her if she didn’t.
“The baby lay crying. It was still attached to her by the umbilical cord. She tried to will herself to harm it but her hands were shaking so much she could not. The guard came back and screamed at her, ‘Why haven’t you killed it?’
“Well, we sat there for almost three hours like that. Then at six, the guard came back again and told her, look, either you kill the baby or we will, and then we’ll beat you up and you’ll never get out of here.
“So, while I watched, the mother leant down and bit through the umbilical cord. Deliberately, she did not tie the cord connected to the baby. A lot of blood flowed out. The infant died almost immediately.”
There was a silence around the table, where five of us sat. Nobody quite trusted themselves to speak. The grandmother’s homespun features crinkled up.
“What I’ve told you is what I saw with my own eyes,” she said.
[Excerpt of an article by Michael Sheridan, Sunday Times]
Nuclear and Humanitarian Axis of Evil
The world imposed sanctions after North Korea tested a nuclear weapon on October 9. International food supplies to the regime have already been cut back.
In the suffering northern provinces of North Korea, the spectre of famine once again haunts the land. Recent clandestine videos show Kim Jon-il’s firing squads shooting people found guilty of organising escapes.
The Tumen River [dividing China from North Korea] will freeze solid. And then thousands more North Koreans will dare to trudge across in the dark.
North Korea is the world’s only hereditary communist dictatorship It controls food supply to 20m citizens. The hungry flee to China.
Refugees sent back face prison, torture and, in some cases, execution. Forced abortions and racially motivated baby killings in prison are well documented. Political prisoners are kept in gulags. Escapers tell of gas experiments on prisoners and forced labour on nuclear and chemical sites
[Excerpt of an article by Michael Sheridan, Sunday Times]
In the suffering northern provinces of North Korea, the spectre of famine once again haunts the land. Recent clandestine videos show Kim Jon-il’s firing squads shooting people found guilty of organising escapes.
The Tumen River [dividing China from North Korea] will freeze solid. And then thousands more North Koreans will dare to trudge across in the dark.
North Korea is the world’s only hereditary communist dictatorship It controls food supply to 20m citizens. The hungry flee to China.
Refugees sent back face prison, torture and, in some cases, execution. Forced abortions and racially motivated baby killings in prison are well documented. Political prisoners are kept in gulags. Escapers tell of gas experiments on prisoners and forced labour on nuclear and chemical sites
[Excerpt of an article by Michael Sheridan, Sunday Times]
Thursday, December 14, 2006
North Korean Defectors looking for work
Even back in North Korea, Hong Tae-myong wanted to be a driver, but simply getting a license after defecting to South Korea wasn't enough to get a job. He also had to lie about where he came from.
"That's how I got a job here so far. I learned this after dozens of rejections in job interviews," the 30-year-old said while filling out his resume at a government-sponsored job fair for defectors.
"When I identified myself as a North Korean defector, they would not hire me," he said.
Hong was among about 500 hopefuls at the fair, part of government efforts aimed at helping defectors overcome the widespread prejudice they face in their new home.
When the two Koreas were locked in intense Cold War rivalry, North Korean defectors received heroes' welcomes in the South and were given houses, jobs and other financial assistance. But with the number of defectors growing rapidly in recent years, the new arrivals are increasingly considered a social problem.
More than 9,000 North Koreans have defected to South Korea since the 1950 to 1953 Korean War, with about 7,000 of them coming to the South since 2002. The total number of defectors is expected to top the 10,000 mark early next year, according to the Unification Ministry.
Many defectors are believed to be living below the poverty line because they can't get decent jobs due mainly to a lack of education and widespread prejudice among South Koreans, who view those from the socialist system as lazy.
Hong complains that South Koreans look down on North Koreans. "Even if I have the same ability as a South Korean, I'm considered inferior,'' he said.
[Taipei Times]
"That's how I got a job here so far. I learned this after dozens of rejections in job interviews," the 30-year-old said while filling out his resume at a government-sponsored job fair for defectors.
"When I identified myself as a North Korean defector, they would not hire me," he said.
Hong was among about 500 hopefuls at the fair, part of government efforts aimed at helping defectors overcome the widespread prejudice they face in their new home.
When the two Koreas were locked in intense Cold War rivalry, North Korean defectors received heroes' welcomes in the South and were given houses, jobs and other financial assistance. But with the number of defectors growing rapidly in recent years, the new arrivals are increasingly considered a social problem.
More than 9,000 North Koreans have defected to South Korea since the 1950 to 1953 Korean War, with about 7,000 of them coming to the South since 2002. The total number of defectors is expected to top the 10,000 mark early next year, according to the Unification Ministry.
Many defectors are believed to be living below the poverty line because they can't get decent jobs due mainly to a lack of education and widespread prejudice among South Koreans, who view those from the socialist system as lazy.
Hong complains that South Koreans look down on North Koreans. "Even if I have the same ability as a South Korean, I'm considered inferior,'' he said.
[Taipei Times]
Tuesday, December 12, 2006
Phillip Buck, 68-year-old Korean-American pastor
To grasp the courage of those who dare to act [on behalf of North Korean refugees], we went to meet Phillip Buck, a frail Korean-American pastor of 68, who helped to smuggle more than 1,000 people out of China.
His luck ran out on May 6, 2005, when he was caught by six Chinese plainclothes men as he left a rendezvous with clergy from America at a restaurant in Yanji.
“They had three notebooks full of stuff on me, they’d traced all the cellphone numbers, they told me they’d been after me for five years,” he said. “I guess somebody had talked.”
He survived 457 days in a cell with murderers and drug dealers, enduring repeated interrogations until 4am, eating cornmeal and washing in cold water.
Only Buck’s American passport and 13 visits by diplomats from the US consulate in Shenyang saved him.
Eventually the Chinese abandoned a shambolic attempt to prosecute him for “people smuggling” and he was put on a plane to Los Angeles on August 21 this year.
[Excerpt of an article by Michael Sheridan, Sunday Times]
Reference to Pastor Buck in Congressional Testimony
His luck ran out on May 6, 2005, when he was caught by six Chinese plainclothes men as he left a rendezvous with clergy from America at a restaurant in Yanji.
“They had three notebooks full of stuff on me, they’d traced all the cellphone numbers, they told me they’d been after me for five years,” he said. “I guess somebody had talked.”
He survived 457 days in a cell with murderers and drug dealers, enduring repeated interrogations until 4am, eating cornmeal and washing in cold water.
Only Buck’s American passport and 13 visits by diplomats from the US consulate in Shenyang saved him.
Eventually the Chinese abandoned a shambolic attempt to prosecute him for “people smuggling” and he was put on a plane to Los Angeles on August 21 this year.
[Excerpt of an article by Michael Sheridan, Sunday Times]
Reference to Pastor Buck in Congressional Testimony
Monday, December 11, 2006
Operative Nam Hong-chul of the North Korean Underground Railroad
He came out of the darkening snow flurries to our rendezvous near a pagoda set in a frozen ornamental pond, a man who was both saviour and fugitive. Nam Hong-chul, as he called himself, had slipped in to the far northeast Chinese city of Yanji to rescue 11 refugees from North Korea.
Now he had to make a plan. Armed with money, documents, warm clothes and maps, he was trying to save others who, like him, had risked everything to escape starvation and violence under the regime of Kim Jong-il.
“Four of them are living with the pigs,” said Nam, as we made our way to a dingy hotel room to talk. “One of them is going insane. And they are not the worst off. There are others surviving in burrows dug in the ground. “They have crawled through the fields, then waded across the river or walked over the ice when it freezes,” Nam added. “They are desperate.”
Nam is a courier on the “underground railroad” that helps a lucky few North Koreans to sanctuary in Thailand or Mongolia, where they can seek asylum in South Korea.
He muffles his face and hides in the back of a car. Every Chinese checkpoint is a challenge. North Korean agents are out to kill him. Chinese-Korean gangsters hate him for rescuing women doomed to sexual slavery.
Nam made his own escape after his wife and younger son perished in a famine in 1998, only to lose his beloved first son, not yet in his teens, who died on the journey.
A simple man, he found that the Christian faith consoled him in his sorrow. It fired him with zeal to help others in memory of his own boy, who tried to reach freedom but never made it. “Helping other people makes it easier to deal with my grief for my son,” he explained. “I try to get the orphans out first. You will understand why.”
His group has established a secret orphanage, where they give food, shelter and a rudimentary education to a group of lost children.
[Excerpt of an article by Michael Sheridan, Sunday Times]
Now he had to make a plan. Armed with money, documents, warm clothes and maps, he was trying to save others who, like him, had risked everything to escape starvation and violence under the regime of Kim Jong-il.
“Four of them are living with the pigs,” said Nam, as we made our way to a dingy hotel room to talk. “One of them is going insane. And they are not the worst off. There are others surviving in burrows dug in the ground. “They have crawled through the fields, then waded across the river or walked over the ice when it freezes,” Nam added. “They are desperate.”
Nam is a courier on the “underground railroad” that helps a lucky few North Koreans to sanctuary in Thailand or Mongolia, where they can seek asylum in South Korea.
He muffles his face and hides in the back of a car. Every Chinese checkpoint is a challenge. North Korean agents are out to kill him. Chinese-Korean gangsters hate him for rescuing women doomed to sexual slavery.
Nam made his own escape after his wife and younger son perished in a famine in 1998, only to lose his beloved first son, not yet in his teens, who died on the journey.
A simple man, he found that the Christian faith consoled him in his sorrow. It fired him with zeal to help others in memory of his own boy, who tried to reach freedom but never made it. “Helping other people makes it easier to deal with my grief for my son,” he explained. “I try to get the orphans out first. You will understand why.”
His group has established a secret orphanage, where they give food, shelter and a rudimentary education to a group of lost children.
[Excerpt of an article by Michael Sheridan, Sunday Times]
Friday, December 08, 2006
US to aid North Korea if it ends nuke program?
The United States has indicated it is ready to match good-faith North Korean actions in the six-party negotiations aimed at ending that country's nuclear program.
The New York Times earlier reported that US and North Korean diplomats discussed specifics of a disarmament accord in talks in China last week.
The newspaper said an agreement would hinge on North Korea agreeing to begin dismantling some equipment it has been using to expand its nuclear arsenal, including a plutonium reprocessing facility refining spent reactor fuel into weapons-grade material.
The New York Times earlier reported that US and North Korean diplomats discussed specifics of a disarmament accord in talks in China last week.
The newspaper said an agreement would hinge on North Korea agreeing to begin dismantling some equipment it has been using to expand its nuclear arsenal, including a plutonium reprocessing facility refining spent reactor fuel into weapons-grade material.
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