North Korean Defector Park Sang Hak now in Seoul

Park Sang Hak, the son of a North Korean spy, grew up a believer. From nursery school on, he learned that the country's founder, Kim Sung Il was greater than his parents. On birthdays of Kim and his son Kim Jong Il, the teachers handed out clothes and snacks, said to be gifts from their leaders.

"For North Koreans, Kim Sung Il is greater than God," said Park, 37, chairman of the Democracy Network against North Korea Gulag. He was bundled up in two jackets inside the chilly, Spartan offices.

In school, they learned that the United States was a "wolf, the worst enemy in the world." As teenagers, they began receiving military training. For target practice, they fired at a picture of a Caucasian, emblazoned with "USA."

His family had a spacious apartment with a Western style toilet -- maybe 1 in 1,000 North Koreans had such a place, he said. His father, a high-ranking official, drove a Mercedes-Benz, and Park had a Honda motorbike, another rarity.

Park studied information technology in college -- but not the Internet. "The Internet is for democratic countries," he said. Like other students, Park also worked on rice farms in the spring, where people seemed to be starving and doing hard labor. It didn't seem right, but Park feared speaking out and risking his elite status.

After graduating, thanks to family connections, Park landed a job in the government's coveted propaganda office in Pyongyang, where he worked on school textbooks and patriotic songs. Every Sunday, small groups in the community would gather for self-judgment. "I was one of the leaders, so I believed," Park said.

But after a purge of leaders at North Korea's intelligence agency in the late 1990s, Park's father feared he would be killed if he returned from Hong Kong, where he was posing as a businessman.

From there, he sent a message to his family through a broker, ordering them to flee to China. The family agonized for a month about what they should do. Park left behind his fiancee, whom he promised to send for if the family was succeeded in making it across the river into China. "At that moment, it's heartbreak or nothing. If I die, nothing can happen with her. First life, then love."

He never saw her again. continued

[Excerpt of a San Francisco Chronicle article]

North Korean Defector Park Sang Hak

On a March night, he and his brother swam across the river, while his mother and sister floated on an inner tube into China. Park bribed the North Korean guards with approximately $250 in cash.

His father arranged for a car to pick them up and the family flew together to South Korea with fake passports. As soon as they arrived, they turned themselves in to the authorities.

South Korea's tall buildings, paved clean roads, and all the cars amazed him. But it was difficult to adjust.

At the government education center, Park and other refugees learned about manners and how to greet people. "I felt humiliated. Why am I learning this?" Park said. "I was high status in North Korea. When I arrived, I had very low status."

He struggled in university classes in Seoul, because North Korea's schools had focused on ideology rather than on academics. And he missed the people from his hometown. "The people are good. People in developing countries are innocent. When the economy develops, they become cold," he said, describing how people seemed more formal and distant in the south.

Eventually, Park married another defector and they had a son. His sister works in the sales department, and his brother has a delivery job for a company that makes bags and wallets. His mother is a housewife, and his father works as defector activist in Japan.

"I knew the economy was much better, but I also realized I have freedom of the mind, and democracy was developed," he said. "It was the same people after the Korean War, but they have gone totally different ways. This one became rich and liberal. The other one, people are brainwashed and suffer from starvation."

[Excerpt of an article by Vanessa Hua, San Francisco Chronicle]

Everyone on the inside knows something is wrong

Song, 40, stands less than 5 feet, even in her black, high-heeled boots. She has wide-set eyes, highlighted with green shadow. She arrived in Seoul last year in June 2005 -- hoping to get a job as a waitress.

Song had to settle for dishwashing because she could not understand what her customers were ordering. After more than 50 years of a divided peninsula, the common language has diverged. South Korea uses many more foreign words, and slang.

To supplement her income, Song also works part-time at a travel agency in Seoul, which among other things pitches special tours led by defectors. The office, in the swanky Lotte Hotel in downtown Seoul, was plastered with photos of the demilitarized zone, watch towers and soldiers.
In North Korea, Song was a television news presenter, a job she landed thanks to her father, an official in government broadcasting. She would read stories about the admirable qualities of North Korea and its leaders, and how the country had to grow its military to fight against the United States and Japan, which was seeking to isolate the north.

"Everyone on the inside knows something is wrong," she said. "They know the government is wrong, but they can't say anything."

[Excerpt of an article by Vanessa Hua, San Francisco Chronicle]

LiNK wants to establish settlement facility for North Korean defectors

An American activist group for North Korean human rights plans to build a settlement facility for North Korean defectors to the United States, a revamped version of one in South Korea.

"'Hanawon' is not exactly the best resettlement program out there. So...we're going to set up a version of that here in the United States to help facilitate these North Koreans to resettle here in the U.S.," Adrian Hong, head of LiNK (Liberty in North Korea), said in an interview with Washington-based Radio Free Asia.

Hanawon, a facility set up near Seoul by the South Korean government in 1995, accommodates up to 100 North Korean refugees and provides housing and three months of training to help defectors adjust to life in capitalist South Korea.

Hong also revealed his group's plan to increase the number of underground shelters his organization is running for North Korean defectors in China, North Korea's neighboring country.

"We have 30 shelters in China...for North Korean refugees," he said. "(We) decided to increase the size of the network by 50 percent, which means we are going to go up a lot." LiNK has been supplying the shelters with clothes, food and medical aid since December 2004, according to its officials.

[Yonhap]

Fast for North Korea

On March 14, 2007, thousands will be participating in a new Liberty in North Korea (LiNK) initiative - Fast for North Korea.

On that day, in solidarity with the North Korean people, and to raise awareness of the human rights and humanitarian crisis in that country, LiNK asks that you skip your normal meals, and donate the amount you would have normally spent on food (suggested donation, $25).

Imagine the impact of thousands on every continent sacrificing a day's meals, talking about the issue, and raising funds for the cause! LiNK has enlisted several US congressmen, celebrities, and many prominent individuals.

UPDATE: Fast for NK - NEW DATE: April 11, 2007

North Korea Suddenly Opens to American Travelers

San Francisco-based Geographic Expeditions, responding to a sudden decision by North Korea to grant visas to Americans for its famed Mass Games in April, has announced an April 22nd - May 1st departure to the DPRK.

Because the North Koreans have set a late March deadline for visa applications, travelers will have to take advantage of a tiny window of opportunity to become some of the first Americans -- other than a sprinkling of journalists -- to visit the DPRK in more than 50 years.

The centerpiece of GeoEx's 10-day trip is the famed Mass Games, scheduled this year to commemorate the birthday of North Korea's leader, Kim Jong-il. Huge extravaganzas one witness described as making "the Olympic opening ceremony look like a school play," the Mass Games are one of the world's most astounding human spectacles.

In a stadium holding 150,000 people (said to be the largest seating capacity in the world) 80,000 dancers and gymnasts emerge from months of grueling practice and perform against a massive backdrop of rapidly changing flash cards showing images of North Korean unity, strength, and agricultural bounty.

The group will also pay visits to the DPRK border cities of Kaesong and Panmunjom, on the edge of the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ).

North Korean Border-Crossers Harshly Punished on Return

In an ominous hardening of policy, North Korea appears to be punishing its citizens with longer sentences in abusive prisons if they are caught crossing the border to China or have been forcibly repatriated by Beijing, Human Rights Watch said in a new briefing paper.

According to recent escapees from North Korea interviewed by Human Rights Watch, Pyongyang announced that it would send people who crossed the border, including first-time “offenders” and those crossing only to find food, to prison for up to five years. Human Rights Watch recently interviewed 16 North Koreans who crossed the border to China between mid-July and early December 2006. They provided consistent testimonies on harsher punishments for those recently repatriated.

Between 2000 and 2004, many border-crossers had been either released after questioning, or served at most a few months at labor re-education facilities, unless they were found to have had contact with missionaries or South Koreans.

North Korean border-crossers who had been imprisoned described to Human Rights Watch the abuses they suffered, including strip searches, verbal abuse and threats, beatings, forced labor, little or no medical care, and severe shortages of food, often described as a “fistful of powdered cornstalk per meal.” As punishment for disobedience, former detainees said they were forced to hit their own heads against cell bars and to sit up and down repeatedly until they fainted. Such punishments were often inflicted for failing to sit still for hours on end, and collective punishments of entire groups of cellmates were common.

[Human Rights Watch]

Hunger May Have Helped Push Along North Korea Nuclear Deal

International aid organizations are hoping the recent diplomatic breakthrough over North Korea's nuclear weapons program will pave the way for increased food donations to the impoverished North.

Current shortages may also have increased Pyongyang's willingness to make concessions at the nuclear weapons bargaining table, experts say. Paul Risley, Asia spokesman for the United Nations World Food Program, says "There is a deficit of about one million tons of food cereals - that means rice, wheat, and corn - that are not available to the population in North Korea, and in fact have been in years past."

Risley says the most dangerous time of year for North Korea is just ahead - starting in late March. "When you get into April and May of this year that's what agronomists refer to as the lean season," Risley says.

Tim Peters, a Seoul-based activist with Helping Hands Korea who helps North Korean refugees gain passage to other countries, said earlier this year that the "lean season" would begin even sooner.

"Donor fatigue and donor utter disenchantment has set in to such a degree that North Korea will be facing another extremely severe lack of rations for its own people," Peters says.

[Excerpt of an article by Kurt Achin, VOA]

Is North Korea serious?

There was optimism on Wednesday that North Korea is serious this time about disabling its nuclear facilities under the Feb. 13 six-party agreement, but some experts warn it is too soon to break out the champagne. U.S. chief negotiator Christopher Hill reported “a sense of optimism on both sides that we will get through the 60-day period and achieve all our objectives set out in Beijing.”

"After the 60-day period" means once North Korea shuts down its nuclear facilities at Yongbyon and gets 50,000 tons of heavy oil from South Korea, and “the next step” under the agreement is “disabling” the nuclear facilities. That is a process of making the nuclear facilities useless, and thus goes much further than shutting them down.

Kim Keun-sik, a professor of North Korean studies at Kyungnam University, said Kim Jong-il is “highly likely” to make a positive decision if the U.S. recognizes his regime and offers security guarantees.

Yoon Duk-min of Seoul’s Institute for Foreign Affairs and National Security indicated it is jumping the gun to speculate about Kim Jong-il’s intentions, since Washington and Pyongyang don't have to focus on their differences for the moment. An academic with another state-run think tank in Seoul said, "… I don't think Kim Jong-il will so readily abandon his nuclear weapons."

Kim Kye-gwan looked pleased with the outcome. Kim hinted he suggested a meeting between U.S. President George W. Bush and Kim Jong-il. "The shortcut to the normalization of the (North) Korea-U.S. relations is a meeting between top officials in (North) Korea and the United States,” he said.

USA Today said some former U.S. diplomats and foreign policy experts Kim met in New York were “optimistic the U.S. and North Korea would agree to formal relations before President Bush leaves office in January 2009.”

[The Chosun Ilbo]

Hanawon facility too small

Excerpt of a column by Moon Gab-sik, an editorial writer of the Chosun Ilbo, writing about Hanawon, the South Korean resettlement facility:

Experts say that today's "Hanawon", built to suit the situation of 10 years ago, is too small to accommodate the increasing number of North Korean defectors. The facility has provided North Korean defectors with two means -- subsidies and job placements -- to help them into the local labor market. But these two means seem mostly ineffective. If things continue as usual, there will be no way to prevent North Korean refugees who make it to South Korea from becoming an impoverished class.

There are many more problems that cannot be solved by laws or systems: the suffering defectors will experience if they fail to succeed, their children's education, and South Koreans' dim attitudes towards Northerners. Even if it were in a position to do so, the current government would be hard pressed to sort out all the problems facing the 10,000 North Korean refugees here today.

The population of North Korea is some 20 million, or 2,000 times more than the 10,000 in the South. We can think of those 10,000 as students taking the SAT exam to prepare for the process of college admissions called the reunification of Korea.

In those terms, we South Koreans are like students too busy goofing off to prepare for the future. It's worrying to think what might happen if the truce line were to collapse tomorrow -- because we are totally unprepared.

CIA blunder 'prompted Korean nuclear race'

An excerpt of what Andrew Gumbel wrote in the Los Angeles Times:

The United States appears to have made a major intelligence blunder over North Korea's nuclear weapons program, one that may have exacerbated tensions with Pyongyang over the past four years and goaded Kim Jong-Il into pressing ahead with last October's live nuclear test, intelligence and Bush administration officials have said.

The blunder concerns the assessment, in a CIA report to Congress in November 2002, that North Korea was also pursuing a parallel uranium enrichment program capable of providing the raw material for two or more nuclear weapons a year, starting "mid-decade".

That prompted the US to cut off oil supplies to Pyongyang, to which North Korea responded by throwing out international weapons inspectors and ratcheting up its plutonium bomb program.
But now many intelligence officials doubt whether the North Koreans have a viable uranium enrichment program, and administration officials have begun wondering if they could not have handled the North Korean crisis much more smartly if they had been in less of a hurry to get confrontational.

That may be linked to North Korea's agreement to readmit weapons inspectors. The Bush administration may prefer to sow doubts about its assessments now rather than face greater embarrassment later.

Sad story of American Consulate violating norms of human decency

If you haven't already seen it, check out One Free Korea and the sad story of how American Consulate officials in Shenyang, China, violated the norms of human decency in the case of the Shenyang Six, includng a personal account by Adrian Hong of LiNK.

Background on The Shenyang Six: The six North Korean refugees were captured just before Christmas along with two Americans who had been sheltering them in safe houses in another city. The 6 North Korean refugees tried, but failed, to obtain sanctuary in the U.S. Consulate in Shenyang, China. The six had been in jail, awaiting deportation under China's policy regarding the North Korean refugees it tracks down. (China's treatment of the North Koreans violates the International Convention Regarding the Status of Refugees, to which it is a party and which bars "refoulement," or the repatriation of refugees to places where their lives or freedom would be in jeopardy. North Koreans who are sent home by Beijing face execution or a term in one of Kim Jong Il's prison camps, which can amount to a death sentence.)

Excerpt from a Wall Street Journal editorial page, January 04, 2007: "As Adrian Hong, executive director of LiNK, was being escorted from jail, he he passed the cell where several of the North Koreans were being held. "There is nothing like looking in the eyes of someone who thinks they are going to die," he says. "They all had that look - like there was no hope."

North Korean Refugees and Hanawon

The Unification Ministry's Hanawon center wins high praise for helping North Korean escapees make the daunting leap from their Stalinist homeland to life in what has become Asia's third biggest economy and one of its most vibrant democracies.

"They (at Hanawon) are doing a marvelous job," said Douglas Shin, a pastor who works with defectors.

For those who do make it -- normally after a hazardous border crossing into China -- the center is their first home in the South and where they are taught basic skills to help them adapt.

Most, Lee said, were farmers or laborers who flee simply because there is not enough food at home.

[Excerpt of an article by Jonathan Thatcher , Reuters]

80 North Koreans to Seek U.S. Asylum

Eighty North Korean refugees are hiding in various Asian countries and preparing to seek asylum in the United States, a South Korean activist, Chun Ki-won, said Friday.

Chun Ki-won, director of the Seoul-based Durihana Mission group that arranged the defections earlier this week of 12 North Koreans to the U.S. _ the largest such group in recent times _ said similar preparations were under way in five southeast Asian countries to arrange refugees' travel to the U.S.

Chun also said his group was aware of about 420 other North Koreans who are hiding in the region and awaiting asylum in South Korea.

A small but growing number of North Koreans are seeking asylum in the U.S. after Washington passed the 2004 North Korea Human Rights Act, which mandates assistance to refugees fleeing the North. However, activist groups have criticized Washington for being slow to offer help to refugees.

The latest arrivals Wednesday of 12 defectors raises to 31 the number of North Koreans to have recently sought refuge in the United States.

On Thursday in Washington, the U.S. envoy on North Korean human rights, Jay Lefkowitz, said he expects the number of North Korean refugees coming to the U.S. to increase. 'We impose no quota or limit on the number we are willing to accept,' he said at a Congressional hearing.

It is not known how the latest defections could affect the nuclear agreement, although the North is highly sensitive to criticism of its human rights record and treats it as a thinly veiled attack on the regime.

[Excerpt of an AP article by Kwang-Tae Kim]

Crash Course for North Korean Defectors

On a sprawling campus hidden in farmland in South Korea, about 300 North Koreans are learning that, no, actually, it was not the South that started the Korean War.

And, yes, America is an ally, their re-education goes, before broaching the A B C's of capitalism, human rights and democracy. Field trips focus on how to apply for a job or use an automated teller machine. Women are shown the finer points of home decorating; men, the basic skills to fix the home boiler.

Soon after landing in South Korea, all North Korean defectors come here to the South Korean government's main resettlement center, called Hanawon, or to annex, for a three-month crash course on life south of the demilitarized zone.

To hear North Koreans tell it, South Korea is bewildering precisely because it is at once familiar and alien.

Very few defectors came to South Korea until the mid-1990's, when famine in the North sent many refugees into China. Since then, as a network of South Korean evangelical Christian missionaries and smugglers has established itself in China, the numbers have sharply risen.

Graduates of the three-month resettlement program receive a stipend and are provided with low-cost public housing. They are also entitled to welfare benefits in case of unemployment and cash incentives for job training.

Out in the real world, many defectors who have come here with unrealistically high expectations find out that they are prepared for only the most menial of jobs.

[Excerpt from New York Times]

The two Koreas

The two Koreas have little in common despite an ancient shared history and belonging to one of the world's most homogenous ethnic groups.

The personality cult for the North's leaders and a strictly regimented life for almost everyone else makes North Korean defectors ill-prepared for the bewildering barrage of demands of life in one of the world's most wired societies. Quite a few have adapted but the majority lose out. They are uprooted and transplanted in different soil.

A North Korean defector, asking not to be identified for fear of retribution against relatives still in the North, said it was an oppressive life, not hunger, that drove her away. "It wasn't because of poverty but the political oppression," she said. "I wanted to raise my daughter in better circumstances."

Kim Jong-il, creating the communist world's first dynasty by taking power when his father died in 1994, has presided over an economy that was once on a par with the South's and now ranks among the world's poorest.

The economic woes, and famines have not stopped the official media from repeatedly referring to their country as a people's paradise.

[Excerpt of an article by Jonathan Thatcher , Reuters]

Unification of Koreas compared to Germany

Excerpts of a commentary by Moon Gab-sik, an editorial writer of the Chosun Ilbo, comparing the unification of Germnay with the Koreas:

The number of North Korean defectors living in South Korea has exceeded 10,000. Fewer than 10 defectors came to the South every year until the mid-1990s, but since 1999 the number has increased exponentially at intervals of two to three years.

Some predictions say the number will double in five years. If the situation continues at this speed, South Korea will face a "German-style" re-unification. Germany was suddenly reunified after East German defectors to the West numbered some 3,000 a day.

But the Korean situation is different from the German case in one major respect. The more East German defectors there were, the more warmly the West Germans welcomed them. In our case, the greater the number of North Korean defectors, the greater our indifference.

Experts say that the "generation gap" between young and old in South Korea can also be found in North Korean defectors. While most defectors of the past came south because they were starving, experts say, nowadays many North Korean defectors are coming because they want to buy mobile phones and cars and get rich. According to statistics, 65 percent of North Korean refugees in South Korea are in their 20s and 30s.

So are the young defectors finding jobs and making money more quickly than their seniors? According to the experts, defectors taste much more failure than success.

"Hanawon" in Anseong, Gyeonggi Province is a "school" where North Korean defectors are taught about capitalism, 100 people at a time. After the vocational training, the refugees are divided into two groups -- employed and unemployed. As of last June, only 12 percent of 2,449 defectors who had used the Labor Ministry's Korea Work Information Center had found jobs.

About 28 percent remain jobless. Considering these circumstances, what would it be like if Korea was reunited and North Koreans rushed south? The labor market would likely be divided into a new Korean-style caste system, with regular workers at the top of the hierarchy, followed by non-regular workers, North Korean defectors, alien workers, and North Korean residents. It's important to note that Germany has yet to narrow the many gaps between the former East and West.

Thailand’s key role in aiding North Korean refugees

During the first two months of this year, the South Korean government admitted 140 North Korean asylum seekers arriving from Thailand. That represented the country's highest ever intake of refugees over a two-month period.

A total of 500 North Koreans were repatriated to Seoul from Bangkok last year. The Unification Ministry in Seoul was quite happy with the kind assistance Thailand has been providing but refused to elaborate. Officials here declined to discuss the matter in detail for fear that it would jeopardise the ongoing discreet arrangement.

China and Thailand topped the list of countries used as transit points for repatriation. Last year alone, 16 per cent of North Koreans who settled in South Korea came from Thailand. There were other countries used as transit points for refugees that authorities here did not want to reveal.

These freedom seekers have taken different routes, trekking thousands of kilometres from the North towards the Golden Triangle area where Thailand, Burma and Laos meet.

Once they arrive at border areas adjacent to Thailand, either from the Burmese or Laotian side, they know that their freedom will be guaranteed because the Thai government will not expel them. Of course, they are detained and subsequently fined, which is just a formality.

[Excerpt of an article by Kavi Chongkittavorn, The Nation ]

Life outside North Korea "paradise"

By the time North Korean defectors leave this rural retreat in South Korea, they should have a more winning smile.

"Most of them have bad teeth," says Choong-won Lee, showing visitors around a large and well-equipped dental surgery in the modern, comfortable center he heads that is briefly home to the growing number who flee impoverished North Korea.

Poor dentistry is just one of a host of problems defectors arrive with at this government-run center which feeds them up and prepares them for the next huge challenge -- life in South Korea.

"They have gone through a dramatic process of defection and they are exhausted, both physically and mentally" Lee told Reuters.

"Their health is not usually good. Their minds are not stable because of the stress (of escaping) and they lack nutrition."

[Excerpt of an article by Jonathan Thatcher , Reuters]

What will The Year of the Pig bring North Korea?

A couple Sundays back marked the start of the Chinese New Year and it's a lucky one for those starting out in life. But the rest of us are apparantly in for a rough ride. Expect epidemics, disasters and violence in much of the world.

'The Year of the Pig will not be very peaceful,' said Hong Kong feng shui master Raymond Lo. Feng shui is the ancient Chinese practice of trying to achieve health, harmony and prosperity by using specific dates, numbers, building design and the placement of objects.

The pig is one of 12 animals (or mythical animals in the case of the dragon) on the 12-year cycle of the Chinese zodiac, which follows the lunar calendar. Pig years can be turbulent because they are dominated by fire and water, conflicting elements that tend to cause havoc, Lo said.

Hong Kong soothsayer Alion Yeo is predicting North Korea will undergo a power struggle that will bring leadership changes around May. Last year, Yeo warned that the North Korean nuclear crisis would worsen.

[AP]

10 escaped North Korean guards caught

10 of the 20 border guards who defected to China last Feb 4th are known to have been arrested by groups led by North Korean authorities and are currently being held in custody waiting return to North Korea.

A North Korean inside source informed on the 20th, "10 of the border guards who defected have already been arrested and escorted back to North Korea" and "It seems that the punishment for these defectors has already been ruled."

He said "Of the arrested, it seems that a decision has been made to punish the guard in the highest position with open fire."

More recently, North Korean authorities dispatched a team of investigators from the National Safety Agency to China, in order to arrest the defected guards and have been conducting operations in collaboration with the Chinese National Security Bureau. The whereabouts of the remaining defected guards has yet to be known.

[Read article at The Daily NK]

North Korean Underground Railroad News

Under Helping Hands Korea’s sponsorship, in January seven more North Koreans made their way to safety under the guidance of one of our partners.

Three of the five are particularly unique, including a 65 year-old woman who had been given a 7-yr. prison sentence simply for being caught praying, obviously a crime inside North Korea!

Two of her family members are in the group rescued. We are thrilled to report that the three have made it out of China, but remain for now in a third country, still needing to make one final crossing to a safe haven in order to take them out of harm’s way.

Getting through six barbed wire fences, then crossing two roads controlled by the Chinese border patrol is a daunting task, but so many of the refugees look to the Lord’s power to sustain and light their pathway.

Another five refugees were provided resources to hide in a shelter in a remote area of China. They will be provided with six months’ lodging, food, clothing as well as the companionship and encouragement of an ethnic Korean-Chinese couple.

Additionally, Helping Hands Korea was given the privilege of sponsoring the leukemia treatment of a devoted Korean-Chinese teacher in an secret orphanage, where children of repatriated North Korean refugee women are harbored (the Chinese fathers having abandoned them.)

[--Excerpt from a communication from Tim Peters, Helping Hands Korea]

North Korea tests the fiber of South Korean commitment to democracy

As an active advocate of the plight of North Koreans, Tim Peters recently participated in a rally in front of the Chinese embassy in Seoul, protesting China’s continued repatriation of North Korean refugees.

He was interviewed by a reporter for Free North Korea Radio, a basic English translation being:

The founder of Helping Hands Korea, Tim Peters, has devoted his Christian NGO’s work to assisting North Koreans in crisis for the past 8-9 years. He joined others today in publicly condemning the Chinese forced repatriation of North Korean POW’s, including family members.

“Recent news of South Korean abductees (who’d been held captive inside North Korea for 32 years) as well as the families of POW’s from the Korean War being given the cold shoulder by South Korean diplomatic compounds in China when they pled for assistance while in hiding in China, is almost inconceivable”, Peters said.

“To think that the POW’s had fought for South Korea 50 years ago, and now their spouses, children and even grandchildren are unable to get help from the South Korean consulate in Shenyang, China absolutely boggles the mind”, Peters commented.

In the NGO leader’s opinion, China is currently testing the fiber of South Korean commitment to its democratic principles to measure just how much especially young Koreans treasure these freedoms that their parents and grandparents died for.

“If today’s low turnout by young people for the rally is any indication, the future may be jeopardy for Koreans’ freedoms….”

The "axis of evil", five years later

In his 2002 State of the Union address, President Bush listed North Korea, Iraq, and Iran as the "axis of evil." Where stands the axis five years later?

North Korea: a deal, but no seal
North Korea can be counted as a tentative - very tentative - success for diplomacy. The North Koreans must shut down their main nuclear facilities at Yongbyon and allow inspectors from the United Nations International Atomic Energy Agency to confirm that. In return, North Korea will get some $400 million of aid, primarily for 50,000 tons of fuel oil and other humanitarian assistance. If North Korea keeps its side of the bargain, there will be further negotiations to discuss the elimination of the bomb, or bombs, it already has produced.

Iraq: a few rays of hope
Iraq has felt the full force of US military power and the outcome is still mixed. With the US public increasingly anxious about the war, Democrats and a few Republicans in Congress have been maneuvering to bring US troops home and supplant military action with peace through diplomacy in the region. The flaw in this is that without military power to buttress it, diplomacy in the wake of withdrawal would have little sway.

Iran: sanctions and military might
UN authorized sanctions against Iran appear to be having some effect. While the movement of two US carrier groups into the waters off Iran have inevitably raised the possibility of military action, the president and his secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, emphatically deny that the US plans war against Iran. While diplomacy is apparently favored as the current solution to US problems with Iran, the carriers are a quiet reminder that diplomacy is backed by military power.

Thus does the US interchange diplomacy and force of arms as it confronts the axis of evil.

[Excerpts of a Christian Science Monitor Opinion page by John Hughes, a professor of communications at Brigham Young University]

Underground Railroad to Save North Korea’s Refugees

Inexplicably, the Bush team continues to overlook a spectacular opportunity to deliver freedom to tens of thousands of North Koreans, to pressure the country from within for fundamental change and to lay the groundwork for a peaceful, reunified Korean Peninsula. By fostering an underground railroad to rescue North Korean refugees living in China, the United States could do all these things at once.

On humanitarian grounds alone, the case for action on behalf of the wretched North Koreans in hiding north of their country’s border along the Yalu River is compelling. While the exact numbers are unknown, this refugee emergency may be second only to Darfur: the International Crisis Group speaks of scores of thousands of refugees, and recently uncovered Chinese official documents indicate hundreds of thousands.

As illegal immigrants in China (Beijing insists North Korean border-crossers are economic migrants), they live in constant fear and at terrible risk. Women are forced into the sex trade or coerced marriages; men and children on the run have less obvious utility and thus, by some accounts, correspondingly higher mortality.

Yet the North Korean refugees who end up as victims of exploitation, violence or crime in China may be the lucky ones. A far worse fate awaits those whom China “refouls,” or deports to North Korea in violation of Beijing’s commitments under the United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees. North Korea regards fleeing Kim Jong-il’s paradise as an act of disloyalty close to treason. Captives forcibly returned to North Korea face prison, torture and death, attesting to the refugee status that official Chinese wordplay denies.

Despite a gradually hardening Chinese posture toward this humanitarian crisis (now entering its second decade), over the years a few private groups have been bravely spiriting refugees out of China and into third countries. Intrepid souls like Steve Kim of New York (jailed in China since 2003), Phillip Buck from Seattle (jailed for 15 months in 2005-2006), Adrian Hong (deported last December) and others from America, South Korea and elsewhere have rescued thousands of North Koreans from China, often by way of an arduous 6,000-mile overland journey into Southeast Asia, where North Korean refugees can seek resettlement in states that accept them. …And that trickle would grow if these North Koreans knew they could count on official protection along the way.

Some will worry loudly about international resettlement for tens (never mind hundreds) of thousands of North Korean refugees, but the logistical issues are basically solved in advance: as a matter of national law, South Korea is obliged to welcome them all. Under Articles 2 and 3 of the Republic of Korea’s Constitution, as reaffirmed by the country’s Supreme Court in 1996, every North Korean refugee has the right to resettle in South Korea.

The critical missing piece for getting this underground railroad up and running is safe passage through China. But because the South Korean government fears antagonizing the North and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees is too timid to face down Beijing, China’s opposition to this rescue mission has gone unchallenged. Only the United States is in a position to help overcome Beijing’s recalcitrance.

The Chinese government’s cost-benefit calculus regarding these refugees would change drastically if Washington weighed in as their advocate. If the United States (along with other governments) provided informal assurances that China is merely a way station for North Koreans — assuaging any official fears about a permanent foreign refugee population — it may well be possible to convince Beijing to cooperate in the relocation mission (or at least to look the other way as it takes place).

Should it do so, many of the problems that Beijing seems to fear will vanish of themselves: if those refugees can be quickly processed by the United Nations refugee commission or similar offices, for example, Beijing need no longer worry about the risks imposed by a large, illegal population along its border with North Korea.

Additionally, with United States leadership, Seoul and the United Nations lose their cover for ignoring the North Korean refugee crisis. The governments and organizations that have responded to the calamity in Darfur could also be rallied to the front lines for North Korean refugees. And, under the international spotlight, Seoul would be forced to observe its constitutional pledge of citizenship for all Koreans despite the current South Korean government’s obvious reluctance to displease Kim Jong-il on any issue.

A North Korean underground railroad is only a first step toward an entirely free Korean Peninsula, but a terribly important one.

Bringing North Korean refugees to freedom will redound only to America’s strategic advantage and will give tangible proof to the seriousness of this country’s freedom agenda. America — and any American president — could take pride in such a legacy.

[Excerpt of a New York Times article by Nicholas Eberstadt, on the board of the United States Committee for Human Rights in North Korea and Christopher Griffin, a research associate at the American Enterprise Institute.]

North Korean Defectors' divorce a hot issue in Koreas

Song will soon be able to get a divorce. The question is, will his wife ever find out? Song is a 49-year-old defector from North Korea who left a wife and two children behind him, took up with a Russian mother of three and brought them to South Korea. But so impenetrable is the iron curtain between the two Koreas that there's no way of communicating. There are no phone, mail or Internet connections.

Petitioners would have to make their divorce suit known on the Internet, and that, defectors fear, would make it easier for North Korean intelligence to track them. Even now, living a humble life as a gas station attendant, Song is so wary of spies that he won't let his surname be published.

Divorce for defectors has become a hot issue in South Korea as a growing number of North Koreans flee south, usually via China, to escape poverty and political repression. More than have 9,600 entered the country since the 1950-53 Korean War, and have automatically become South Korean citizens.

Song says he lost touch with his family in 1998 after he went to work as a North Korean guest laborer at a Russian lumber mill. He says he fled the camp to avoid punishment for criticizing North Korea's communist government over unpaid salaries, and was sheltered by Nazezda Tsydenova, an ethnic Mongolian Russian.

He entered South Korea in 2003 with Tsydenova, who harbored him during his years as a fugitive in Russia. A divorcee, she had sold her house and two cows to pay their travel expenses. Settling in hasn't been easy. Tsydenova entered the country on a tourist visa and has worked illegally as a janitor to boost Song's monthly $960 wage.

[Excerpt of an AP article by Bo-Mi Lim]

North Korean Nuclear Agreement Clearing The Decks For Iran?

The deal reached between the US and North Korea has been variously described in the international media as a “landmark” and an “historic agreement”. Could it represent a temporary and tactical shift that conveniently sidelines a potentially explosive issue as the US prepares for war against Iran?

Superficially at least, the deal involves an about-face on the part of the US. After coming to office and tearing up the previous 1994 Agreed Framework with North Korea, the Bush administration had adamantly refused to hold bilateral talks with Pyongyang or “reward bad behavior”—that is, to provide incentives for North Korea to abandon its nuclear programs.

For the Bush administration, it is an agreement cheaply bought. The total aid concretely being offered to North Korea—a million tonnes of fuel oil—is worth about $400 million and is equivalent to just two years supply previously guaranteed under the Agreed Framework. South Korea, which along with Russia, China and Japan has a seat at the six-party talks, has agreed to fund most of the aid.

The contradiction between the Bush administration’s attitude to Iran and to North Korea is glaringly obvious. Unlike North Korea, which has tested a crude nuclear device, Iran is a party to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, has abided by its terms and insists that its nuclear programs are for peaceful purposes. Yet Washington has repeatedly refused to hold talks with Tehran, is engaged in an escalating propaganda war against Iran and is amassing a large naval armada in the Persian Gulf to menace her.

In the public debate, one voice has been so far notably absent—Vice President Dick Cheney, whose support for an aggressive policy against North Korea and for “regime change” in Pyongyang is well known. Cheney previously has vigorously opposed any watering down of the US stance on North Korea or any, even small, concession to Pyongyang.

If the most militarist elements of the Bush administration, led by Cheney, have not vetoed or sabotaged the latest agreement—as yet—it is not because they have had a change of heart. Rather it is because they have concluded that with the US military mired in an escalating war in Iraq, and preparations underway for new aggression against Iran, the US is in no position immediately to deal with a third crisis in North Korea.

North Korea forecast: keep nuclear weapons until merge with S. Korea

It’s increasingly likely North Korea will retain and even build its nuclear arsenal until it is reunified with the South, reports a high-powered US study group, including former top Bush administration foreign policy officials.

Reunification is likely to be happening by 2020, says the report, but it could be under unstable conditions that make securing Pyongyang's weapons difficult, and the burden of absorbing a disintegrating North might threaten South Korea's democracy and prosperity.

The report, titled "The US-Japan alliance, getting it right in Asia through 2020", paints an ominous backdrop to last week's six-party agreement. Written by Richard Armitage, deputy secretary of state in George W. Bush's first administration, and Joseph Nye, a Clinton-era senior defence official, the report clearly assumes that a disarmed North Korea is not a realistic objective. A contained rogue nuclear state is the best likely outcome.

In that case, the chief virtue of the deal US envoy Christopher Hill brought back from Beijing last week is that it starts reversing another huge strategic miscalculation by the Bush White House.

The agreement "is a good thing", Armitage said at the launch of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies report. "Whether it's a good deal or not, however, remains to be seen.

John Bolton, one of the last and toughest rearguarders until he was recently squeezed out of his UN ambassador's posting, protested, "it is the same thing the State Department was prepared to do six years ago. If we were going to cut this deal then, it's amazing we didn't cut it then".

[Excerpt of an article by Peter Alford, The Australian]

North Korea's Kim basks in birthday and nuclear glory

Singing soldiers and flower shows marked the birthday of the man dubbed North Korea's "invincible brilliant commander" by state media, as regional powers wondered whether he would abide by a nuclear deal.

North Korea reached a deal earlier this week to shut down its sole nuclear reactor in exchange for energy aid as well as other economic and diplomatic incentives if Kim decides to scrap his country's nuclear arms program.

"I find it difficult to believe that this is a strategic decision to dismantle its nukes. I see this as a tactical way of getting the heat off, getting concessions and keeping the Chinese happy," said Michael Breen, Seoul-based consultant and author of "Kim Jong-il: North Korea's Dear Leader".

With nuclear weapons, impoverished North Korea gets a seat at the table with global powers including the United States -- the nation it argues is trying to topple it and causes it to sacrifice so much to maintain its 1.2-million man military. Without nuclear arms, North Korea is just a poor country with failed economic policies, analysts said.

Kim's main priority is to stay in power and his media has credited him with forcing the United States to make concessions through the nuclear agreement. He is seen as a deity at home, where thousands danced in the streets of Pyongyang on Friday to mark his 65th birthday and the military hosted a gala, performing song and dance numbers for tunes such as "My Happiness is in the Bosom of the Respected General".

North Korea's official media has said flowers come into bloom when he appears and rainbows fill the sky on his birthday. "Your birth as a bright star over Mount Paektu was the greatest event as it promised the happiness and prosperity of the Korean nation," official media said.

[Reuters]

2007 International Year of Prayer for North Korea

On the centenary of the Pyongyang Great Revival, the South Korean Church proclaimed an international Year of Prayer for North Korea in 2007, the announcement made at the Seoul Olympic Gymnastic Stadium before an audience of 15,000.

The proclamation concludes with the words: “We hereby call on denominations and ministries around the world to promote the '2007 Year of Prayer for North Korea'. We urge for intercession to be rallied for 2007 to be the year in which the walls of darkness fall in North Korea, crosses are restored in every corner of the land and a historical tide of repentance and revival breaks out and brings peace to Korea and beyond.”

Christian Solidarity Worldwide's International Advocate, Elizabeth Batha, spoke earlier at the Olympic Stadium Complex, highlighting the grave need for concerted worldwide prayer for North Korea: “The contrast between the spiritual climate in North Korea today and one hundred years ago could not be starker. That Pyongyang has moved from being a city known throughout the Christian world as 'the Jerusalem of the East' to now being the capital of probably the most brutal suppressor of Christianity is chilling.”

“The population is subject to enforced idolatry of the political leadership, there is a ruthless ban on the gospel and Christians are brutally persecuted, imprisoned and executed. All these reasons make it imperative that the worldwide Church recognizes North Korea as a top prayer priority and stands in the gap to intercede for these most beleaguered of people.”

A new website address was launched as a vehicle for prayer for North Korea.

[CSW]

'Dear Leader' Kim turns 65

North Korea marks the 65th birthday of leader Kim Jong Il on Friday amid progress in ending its nuclear programs and lingering speculation abroad over who will eventually succeed him. Kim hasn't yet publicly named a successor, prompting speculation abroad about who might eventually take the reclusive country's helm and whether Kim will designate one of his sons as the North's next leader -- continuing the world's only communist dynasty.

Kim's birthday is one of North Korea's most important national holidays and one in which the personality cult inherited from his father, the country's founder Kim Il Sung, is arguably the most visible.

North Koreans usually receive benefits such as extra food, but it remains unclear whether the country can dole out such largesse this year, given chronic food shortages and U.N. sanctions imposed over its October 9 nuclear test.

"Holidays in North Korea mark occasions on which the leadership is obligated to show tangibly its ability to care for the people," said Scott Snyder, a senior associate at the Asia Foundation.
The North Korean "leadership will be able to perform at a higher level in this area" amid reduced tensions with the international community following this week's nuclear agreement, Snyder added.

"Psychologically, Kim Jong Il would not be in a somber mood," said Koh Yu-hwan, a North Korea expert at Seoul's Dongguk University, citing the nuclear deal and the prospect of winning economic aid.

Still, on the eve of Friday's birthday celebrations, North Korea escalated its anti-American rhetoric and urged its people to rally around Kim, known as the "dear leader." "We will mercilessly repel the aggressors and achieve reunification by mobilizing all potentials" in case of a U.S. attack, the North's No. 2 leader Kim Yong Nam said Thursday in a speech to thousands of party members and military officers in Pyongyang. The speech was monitored in South Korea.

In a separate speech, Choe Thae Bok, a member of the Central Committee of the North's ruling party, also accused the U.S. of escalating "appeasement, pressure and sanctions" on the country, warning that the North will never tolerate any moves to tarnish its authority and prestige.

Experts, however, dismissed the harsh language as being aimed at bolstering support at home.

[AP]

North Koreans in South Korea

Only a small fraction of those who cross into China get to South Korea, with either the help of Christian missionary groups or professional smugglers.

Still, the number has doubled each year since 1998, according to the South Korean government. The North Koreans get a subsidized apartment, social and vocational training, a lump-sum bonus and a monthly allowance. Even with that help, they are bewildered aliens from a tightly controlled nation frozen in the 1950s.

They arrive to a boisterous, competitive society. And despite the cliches in South Korea about brotherhood with those in the North, the defectors say they are greeted with discrimination that makes some wonder whether they made the right choice. For five years, they must regularly report their activities to authorities.

"It's not easy for us to live here," said Han, who fled when his radio was found. "South Koreans don't understand the hardships. They don't care, and they don't understand."

[Excerpt of an article by Doug Struck, Washington Post]

Renewal of Talks between North and South Korea

The two Koreas agreed to resume stalled high-level talks, in the first concrete sign of easing tensions on the divided peninsula after the North signed a breakthrough disarmament agreement.

The Cabinet-level talks -- the highest dialogue channel between the two Koreas -- will be held in the North Korean capital, Pyongyang, from February 27 through to March 2, according to a joint statement adopted at a lower-level meeting in the North Korean border city of Kaesong.

South and North Korea have held 19 high-level meetings since 2000, but they have been suspended for seven months amid chilled relations following North Korea's missile launches in July and nuclear test in October. The two Koreas remain technically at war since the 1950-53 Korean War ended in a cease-fire, but their relations have warmed significantly since the one-and-only summit between their leaders in 2000.

Cabinet-level talks -- which usually serve as a forum for discussion on Seoul's aid to the impoverished North -- could lead to a resumption of the regular delivery of rice and fertilizer to the communist nation. South Korea suspended its aid after the July missile tests.

[AP]

North Koreans face adjustment problems in South Korea

North Koreans who flee their impoverished communist country often face severe problems adjusting to life in the world's 11th largest capitalist economy, with South Korea's per capita gross domestic product almost 20 times that of the North.

Most defectors are unskilled or semi-skilled workers or farmers and face problems finding jobs that they are able to do. Some say they face discrimination by South Korean employers, who view people from the socialist system as lazy.

A 2004 survey showed that 38 per cent of North Koreans living in the South were jobless, compared to the national average of around 3 per cent. Many defectors are believed to be living below the poverty line.

To help defectors from North Korea assimilate, the South Korean government runs a training center where they attend classes in cultural studies and skills-related training. They are also taught basic skills such as how to ride the subway, use a mobile phone and buy goods in a supermarket.

The United States Committee for Human Rights in North Korea said in a report last December that South Korea had been adopting an increasingly unwelcoming attitude to the refugees. It described Seoul's policies as 'shamefully' ambivalent. The government, which pursues a 'sunshine' engagement policy with the North, 'increasingly perceives these newcomers as a source of trouble and unnecessary expenditure', the report said.

[Agence France Press]

South Korea policy changes re: North Korean refugees

South Korea announced a new grants policy that rewards refugees from North Korea who find jobs, and at the same time reduces settlement aid to new arrivals.

The one-time settlement aid given to defectors from North Korea would be cut to six million won ($6,521) from 10 million won ($10,868), the Unification Ministry said. The grant had stood at 28 million won ($30,429) before it was cut to 10 million in 2005.

The ministry will increase cash incentives for refugees who have found jobs. It will pay each person a total of 15 million won ($16,302), up from the previous nine million won, over a three-year period once the worker has been registered on a payroll for one year.

"The past system can be paralleled to catching fish for North Korean defectors, while the new system is aimed at helping to teach them how to fish," Mr Kim Joong Tae, a ministry director, told journalists.

Another ministry official said that refugees engaged in 'self-help efforts' to settle down in South Korea would benefit the most from the new system. 'Many North Korean defectors do not bother to find regular jobs in order to benefit from the social security network,' he said on condition of anonymity.

"The government encourages them to seek jobs and provides them with job training. It also provides financial incentives to companies hiring them," he added.

[Agence France Press]

How a North Korean defector views the six-party talks

Jang Guk Cheol, a tour guide, left North Korea because he thought the country had no future. During the famine, he recalls his aging parents were forced to eat grass. In August 1999, he swam across the Tumen River into China, where he stayed for six months, working at a restaurant in exchange for food and shelter.

With the help of missionaries from Korea and from ethnic Koreans living in China, Jang made his way first to Vietnam, then to Cambodia, but he says the South Korean Embassy in neither country would help him. Finally, he went to Thailand and on to Seoul after the South Korean Embassy finally assisted him in August 2000, a year after he left.

He praised President Bush for describing North Korea as part of the "axis of evil" but has little regard for the six-party talks, involving the United States, China, Russia, Japan and the two Koreas. Each country has different interests, and North Korea demands too much, he said.

"I personally think this dialogue is kind of a formal show to maintain the international order," he said, adding that he thinks the United States has gone too soft -- a sentiment other defectors share.

Jang also criticized South Korea's policy of engagement -- financial aid and business projects with North Korea. "Maybe it looks humane, that we're helping people. But the assets go to the military," he said. "They should stop."

[Excerpt of an article by Vanessa Hua, San Francisco Chronicle]

Which came first, North Korea talks or Aesop's fables?

So have North Korea and the United States managed to agree on something in their tortuous talks on the state's nuclear weapons program? --Yes, Aesop's fable about counting chickens before they hatch.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice started the ball rolling on Thursday. "I am, as I said, cautiously optimistic but I don't count my chickens until they are hatched," she told lawmakers on the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Then U.S. negotiator Christopher Hill and North Korean delegate Kim Kye-gwan echoed Rice as they met the press after discussions in Beijing on Friday.

"There are still differences on a series of issues in the overall talks, so we will try to work them out," Kim said. "You should not try to count the chickens before they hatch, as somebody said."

North Korea has always played a long game in the negotiations over its nuclear ambitions, living up to another Aesop recommendation that "slow and steady wins the race."

The United States, for its part, has always been wary of the "wolf in sheep's clothing" but may conclude that "persuasion is often more effectual than force."

[Reuters]

Korean-American aid group to send more medical aid to North Korea

A Korean-American aid group based in the United States said it was sending its 17th shipment of medical relief goods, worth US$4.8 million, to North Korea.

The Institute for Strategy and Reconciliation (ISR), a think tank also active in international assistance, said the shipment this month will go to helping more than 20,000 North Korean children and the handicapped by providing antibiotics, wheelchairs and crutches. The aid will also include stethoscopes and various surgical and medical equipment, it said.

The group will also provide individually tailored artificial limbs while the staff is in the North, the first American relief group to do so.ISR began its North Korea program in 1998 with the approval of the U.S. Treasury. As of this month, the group has provided medical assistance valued at approximately $27.4 million.

The group is also recruiting volunteers through the end of this month to help post-surgery rehabilitation programs for children and the handicapped in North Korea.

[Yonhap News]

Crossing the Line, the story of Joe Dresnok

Crossing the Line, a new British documentary, narrated by Christian Slater, details the story of Joe Dresnok, the last living defector to North Korea.

60 minutes also did a segment on Dresnok, using footage directly from the documentary, plus interviews with the filmmakers and some footage of their earlier segment on Charlie Jenkins.

Dresnok had enlisted in the U.S. Army to make a life for himself, but after a dispute with his Commanding Officer over trying to get a pass, he forged a pass and the 19-year-old decided to cross the line and set off for North Korea. He was eventually found by some North Koreans and debriefed. While he had no real strategic information to offer the North Koreans he was a definite PR coup. They would use him and the other defectors to denounce western imperialism.

For the first ten years in North Korea these four American defectors underwent education, which consisted of reading in between card games and drinking. (At one point they tried to defect again to the Soviet Union, but were turned away). The four American would eventually marry women from Lebanon, Eastern Europe, Japan, and Korea. After their education period of ten years ended, they became famous in North Korea as actors in a series of anti-western films, playing the "evil Americans".

The film details the dynamics of the four defectors, Jenkins being the highest ranking and often at odds with Dresnok. Two of the defectors would die in their fifties and when Jenkins left North Korea during the filming, Dresnok was the last American defector living in Korea. His first wife died (with whom he had a son) and he would eventually marry a half African half Korean woman and have a son with her.

Ultimately Dresnok describes his experience in Korea as a good one. During the his time in Korea, even during the recent famine he said his rice ration was never lowered and he is shown on the street walking around or fishing off the pier with locals. The film ends showing Dresnok in poor health, and disregarding his physician’s advice to stop smoking.

Report: U.S., North Korea signed nuclear memo

The United States and North Korea signed a memorandum during talks last month by which Pyongyang would begin closing a nuclear reactor while the U.S. starts providing energy assistance, a major Japanese newspaper reported Thursday.

In the memorandum of understanding, North Korea agreed to shut down its Yongbyon nuclear reactor as a step toward denuclearization, the Asahi Shimbun newspaper, citing U.S. and North Korean officials which it did not further identify. In exchange, the United States would begin assisting the North with energy.

The paper said the memorandum, which apparently would require further agreement, also included a provision for the North to accept nuclear inspection by the International Atomic Energy Agency.

New round of negotiations on North Korea's nuclear disarmament is set to begin Thursday following a December meeting that ended in stalemate. But since then, signs have emerged a greater willingness to compromise.

North Korean negotiator Kim Kye GwanKim told visiting Americans last week that Pyongyang also is demanding normal relations with the United States and supplies of electricity or heavy fuel oil, said David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security in Washington.

[AP]