300,000 North Koreans have fled to China risking their lives to flee the mass starvation and brutal oppression of the Stalinist North Korea Kim Jong regime.
Dozens of people died in North Korea in floods and landslides caused by a typhoon which hit the country earlier this month, state media has said. Nearly 9,000 buildings were destroyed and roads, railways and power lines were badly damaged, the report said. And some 65km (40 miles) of railway tracks were also washed away.
It has prompted speculation that a rare ruling party conference has been delayed to deal with the situation.
Good Friends, a South Korean humanitarian group with contacts in the North, said the meeting had been postponed as many delegates were unable to travel. Many analysts expect the meeting to give some indication of who will succeed Kim Jong-il.
South's first aid shipment to its neighbor since the Cheonan warship row in March is the latest sign cross-border tensions are easing.
The aid, enough for 100,000 people for 100 days, is expected to reach the country's hard-hit north-west within a month.
The $8.5m package, to be funded by the government, is the south's first aid shipment to North Korea since the sinking of a warship in March reduced bilateral relations to their lowest point for years. Seoul says its vessel was sunk by a North Korean torpedo, a claim Pyongyang still denies.
The thaw in inter-Korean ties came amid reports that the failing health of the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-il, had delayed the opening of a ruling party meeting in Pyongyang, where he was expected to name his youngest son, Kim Jong-un, as his successor.
The countries may resume reunions for families separated by the 1950-53 Korean war, which ended in an uneasy armistice but no peace treaty.
Hopes were also raised today for a resumption of multiparty talks on North Korea's nuclear weapons program.
Stephen Bosworth, Washington's special envoy to North Korea, said he was "optimistic" that Pyongyang could be persuaded to rejoin the talks. "I would stress we are not setting any timetables," said Bosworth, who is in the region attempting to revive the process.
With Pyongyang set for a Workers’ Party convention that could trumpet the country’s next leader — Kim Jong Il’s youngest son — defectors who speak regularly to North Koreans hear plenty of opinions reflecting what Kim Un Ho described as a broad sentiment against hereditary succession.
“Of 10 people I talk to,’’ he said, “all 10 have a problem with Kim Jong Un taking over.’’
Just as North Koreans know little about their potential future leader, the rest of the world knows almost nothing about North Korean opinions. Recent academic research, based on surveys with defectors, suggests that North Koreans are growing frustrated with a government that allowed widespread starvation in the early 1990s and orchestrated brutal currency reform in 2009 that was designed to wipe out the private markets that enable most residents to feed themselves.
The defectors are motivated to emphasize the worst-case scenario in their homeland. There are some who think that Kim Jong Un will take power and gradually lead North Korea to Soviet-style reforms. Some defectors say that even though the younger Kim is largely unknown, they hope he will allow for a free economy after his father dies.
Sohn Kwang Joo, chief editor of the Daily NK, a Seoul-based publication focusing on North Korea, receives frequent reports from stringers in four North Korean provinces. Those ground-level reporters, gathering information mostly from intellectuals, farmers, and laborers, suggest to Sohn that “8 or 9 out of every 10 people are critical of Kim Jong Un.’’
A recent report from PSCORE, a Seoul-based nongovernmental organization promoting harmony on the Korean Peninsula, suggested that two party officials were sent to a gulag last month for slandering the chosen heir.
Kim Young Il, a PSCORE director who was in China during Kim Jong Il’s recent trip, said, “Criticism of Kim Jong Un is very strong. . . . What you see now is face-level loyalty, but it’s not genuine.’’
Domestic farming groups in South Korea, sitting on stockpiles of surplus rice, turned hopeful on the news that North Korea was requesting rice aid from South Korea. The central and local governments also have to worry about running out of silos to store the swelling supplies of rice.
The ruling party has good reasons to suggest the resumption of rice aid to North Korea even though cross-border ties have been severed following the North’s attack on the South Korean naval ship Cheonan in March.
While South Korea battles with excess, our impoverished neighbors in the North face dire shortages of food. No matter how strong Kim Jong-il believes himself to be, he cannot leave his people to go on starving.
If Kim came up with the idea of seeking aid from South Korea after his recent visit to China, we may even anticipate a breakthrough in the frozen bilateral relations. Asahi Shimbun editor in chief Yoichi Funabashi, upon returning from China, believes Kim promised Beijing leaders that Pyongyang will act more flexibility toward South Korea and the United States.
It may be an overstatement to say that North Korea’s latest aid request for rice and heavy equipment suggests a turning point in the recalcitrant country’s policy toward South Korea. But it can be a start.
The provision of aid at this stage could indeed help ease tensions on the Korean Peninsula.
[ JoongAng Ilbo]
Some 200 members of the North Korean defectors' group, Fighters for Free North Korea, and conservative South Korean organizations, sent 100,000 pamphlets attached to 10 helium balloons into North Korea on Thursday, the 62nd anniversary of the establishment of North Korea.
The leaflets condemn North Korea's three generations of hereditary rule. "Was 62 years of dictatorship not enough to oppress the people of North Korea?" the pamphlets read in part, ahead of a North Korean party congress that is expected to anoint leader Kim Jong-il's son as his heir.
South Korea is in the process of providing the flood-ravaged North Korea with emergency aid, purportedly on humanitarian grounds.
Apparently in the hope of receiving those items, the North sent back a South Korean fishing boat and its crew on Tuesday, whom it had held in custody for a month for allegedly trespassing into its territorial waters. Reportedly, the South Korean government is favorably considering the North’s request.
Before making a final decision, Seoul will have to take into consideration the remarks President Lee Myung-bak made in May on North Korea’s March 26 torpedo attack on the South Korean warship Cheonan. He said aid would be limited to humanitarian purposes until after the North acknowledged the unprovoked act of hostility and offered an apology.
In recent days, North Korean schoolchildren have taken to the streets to sing “Footsteps”, a song many believe was written for Kim Jong-Il's third son, Kim Jong-un, who is tipped to become the third member of the dynasty to rule the communist state.
In addition, thousands of people waving plastic flowers spent the weekend rehearsing for a parade, according to China's Xinhua news agency.
The city is reportedly decked out in posters announcing the upcoming Korean Workers' party Congress. "Let's make this a festive event that will shine in the history of our country and people," read one seen in footage from AP Television News.
The Rodong Sinmun, the party's newspaper, said delegates from across the country were poised to approve key policies and personnel changes at the heart of the regime's leadership. The meeting appears to coincide with the 62nd anniversary, on 9 September, of North Korea's founding by Jong-un's grandfather, Kim Il-sung.
In a typically colorful commentary, the Rodong Sinmun said: "The people's hearts awaiting the revolutionary, festive occasion heat up due to their joy and happiness."
Speculation that Kim Jong-un will eventually succeed Kim Jong-il has intensified since his 68-year-old father suffered a stroke two years ago. The meeting is the first party congress since 1980, when Kim Jong-il was confirmed as Kim Il-sung's successor, although he did not become leader until his father's death in 1994.
Expectations are high that North Korean leader Kim Jong Il will use an upcoming meeting of party elites to introduce his heir apparent, initiating the Stalinist dictatorship's second hereditary power transfer.
Kim's youngest son, Kim Jong un, is widely expected to be given at least one high-level leadership position - the first step to claiming absolute power on a par with his father's. Experts differ on whether the younger Kim's rise will be publicly heralded.
Park Hyeong-jung, a researcher at the Korea Institute for National Unification adds, "The appointment of the officials can give us an idea about how North Korea will run the nation."
During Kim Jong Il’s trip to China last week, among the Korean officials who accompanied Kim was Song Taek, Kim Jong Il's brother-in-law, who is expected to act as a regent for the power transfer.
In recent days, North Korea has escalated its rhetoric about the "rising generation," though Pyongyang's official Korean Central News Agency has not mentioned Kim Jong un by name.
According to a transcript of Kim's speech in China, published by the KCNA, he said that given the "complicated" international situation, "it is our important historical mission to hand over to the rising generation the baton of the traditional friendship."
A subsequent 2,860-word account of the trip, also published by the KCNA, made three references to China-North Korea relations as one "generation is replaced by another."
A regular visitor to North Korea says North Korea is angling for foreign investment with a new government body set up to attract money into the isolated country.
Glyn Ford, a former member of the European Parliament who has been to North Korea more than 20 times and is now working for the EastWest Institute think-tank, said the country appeared keen to press forward with the move.
“All the messages I’ve been getting over the past six months or more are about bringing in inward investment,” he told the Foreign Correspondents’ Club in Beijing. “There’s certainly a jockeying in Pyongyang to actually be part of the membership and the staffing of that state investment committee,” he added.
“It’s not full-blooded economic reform -- the North Koreans want to edge forward,” Ford said. “The problem they’ve got is that if they want to follow either Vietnamese or Chinese-style reform they require inward investment.”
China is already heavily involved in the North’s economy, and Ford said he expected it would only really be Chinese companies that would take advantage of Pyongyang’s move. “I was told that 80% of what’s coming in North Korea at the moment is Chinese and I’m told there’s a lot of Chinese investors nosing around in North Korea,” he said.
Kim Jong-il is expected to convene a rare congress of the ruling Workers’ Party in coming days to pave the way for his son to succeed him, a feat of political engineering that would be a first in the Communist world: extending dynastic rule to a third generation.
The meeting, like all political events in the North, will be secret, and even the precise starting date has not been publicly confirmed. North Korea has said that the party’s “highest leading body” will be elected at the meeting; beyond that, the agenda is unknown, and it is unclear how the expected promotion of Mr. Kim’s third son, Kim Jong-un, will be presented.
Little is known about the son Kim Jong-un, believed to be in his late 20s. After his father’s stroke in 2008, however, his grooming as heir picked up speed. He has accompanied his father on visits to factories and military units and is getting policy briefings, according to South Korean intelligence officials who monitor developments in the North.
“This party meeting will be a coming-out party for Kim Jong-un,” said Peter Beck, a North Korea expert at Keio University in Japan.
“A new force will come in who will pave the way for the succession and support the young, inexperienced kid as leader,” said Chang Yong-seok, research director at the Institute for Peace Affairs in Seoul. “If a new generation of leaders comes in, this is not a bad thing. They could be less bound by ideology and more pragmatic about opening up.”
Jang Song-taek, Mr. Kim’s brother-in-law, and hard-line generals on Mr. Kim’s National Defense Commission, the country’s top ruling body, are expected to move into crucial party posts to ensure a smooth transition of power, analysts say. Less clear is whether Mr. Kim is confident enough to place his son in the Politburo and the party’s Central Military Commission.
Woo Seong-ji, a professor at Kyung Hee University in Seoul, said that he believed Mr. Kim might start his son in a rather modest post to “lessen the shock” and buy time to build his leadership credentials.
Mr. Beck of Keio University said: “He can’t be too prominent because he is not known to the North Korean public. They have to make the sale to the public. But they have to make the sale to some of the elite, too.”
“I think he is chosen exactly because he is young,” said Andrei Lankov, a North Korea expert at Kookmin University in Seoul. “In case of his father’s sudden death, Kim Jong-un — inexperienced, without power base, embarrassingly young — will have no choice but to obediently follow the instructions of the old guard. He will be a dictator, but merely a rubber-stamping dictator. This is what the people in the position of power want.”
During Kim Jong-il’s visit to China last week, Chinese President Hu Jintao told Kim in strong terms to reform the North's failed socialist economy and open up the country, a senior South Korean government official has said. Hu in his advice to Kim used such language as "enterprise," "market mechanism" and "external cooperation."
According to a Chinese official, Kim reportedly acknowledged Hu: "Since its launch of the reform and opening drive, China has achieved rapid development."
China's business media made upbeat observations about the North turning toward reform, quoting Kim as saying he was "deeply impressed" after touring major cities in China's northeastern region such as Changchun, Harbin and Jilin.
It is unclear whether Kim will listen. Kim has paid lip-service to the Chinese economic development model before. After returning from a trip in the early 2000s, he introduced some timid elements of the market economy but swiftly clamped down when markets became too brisk and a new class of successful businesspeople began to look like a threat to his regime.
The North Korean leadership is afraid of any reform that could weaken its stranglehold, and at the moment tight control is essential if the regime is to officially establish Kim Jong-il's son Jong-un as his father's heir.
Franklin Graham’s international Christian relief organization Samaritan’s Purse has chartered a Boeing 747 cargo jet to airlift some 90 tons of relief and medical supplies from the United States to North Korea in response to the massive flooding there.
Earlier this month, nearly 260,000 people in northeastern China and North Korea fled their homes as weeks of torrential rainfall caused the Yalu River to swell over its banks, according to reports by state news outlets. The massive flooding swamped farmland, houses and public buildings in North Korea’s northwestern city of Sinuiju and adjacent areas.
“Relations between the governments of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and the U.S. have been strained, but despite our political differences, the people of North Korea are suffering from torrential floods that have ruined crops, washed out bridges and destroyed homes,” said Samaritan’s Purse President Franklin Graham, referring to North Korea by its formal name.
“While much of the world’s attention is on Pakistan, and rightfully so, the suffering of the people in North Korea cannot be overlooked,” the evangelist added.
Graham, who has traveled three times to the country rarely visited by Americans, has a long history in the DPRK, going back as far as 1934 when his mother, Ruth Bell Graham, attended a mission school in Pyongyang. His father, renowned preacher Billy Graham, visited in 1992 and 1994, meeting with President Kim Il Sung.
South Korea has offered 10 billion won in emergency aid to North Korea to help with recovery from floods that ravaged the destitute state, a government official said. The offer was made through the South Korean Red Cross and includes emergency food, relief materials and first aid kits.
The offer, if accepted by Pyongyang, would be the first large scale aid from Seoul since the sinking of one of the South's navy ships, the Chenoan, in March that it blamed on a submarine attack by the North.
Seoul's offer came a few hours after Washington unveiled additional sanctions against the North.
Heavy rains in July and August hit the North's northern region bordering China and its eastern provinces, forcing thousands from their homes and putting farmland under water.
The United States expanded financial sanctions against the North amid signs that the isolated state, under intense economic pressure stemming from international condemnation for its provocations, is hoping for an early resumption of arms talks.
Since his release from North Korea, Robert Park has not spoken about his imprisonment—due in part, he said, to fears for the safety of his friend and counterpart Aijalon Mahli Gomes—and he declined to say anything publicly about North Korea until Gomes was safe.
It has not been an easy transition for Park, who said he was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and that he fell apart as a person and felt tormented.
"After leaving North Korea, I went through a lot of things—I have been in and out of psychiatric hospitals and it's been very difficult because I know more now than ever how evil the situation in North Korea is," Park told Christianity Today in an exclusive interview. "Once you're there [in North Korea], in that position where you are observing what is happening and you are witnessing evil, and you come to the Western world and everyone is celebrating you are back—it can be aggravating."
During a phone interview from a hospital in Tucson, Arizona, Park said he is "haunted thinking about the people" in North Korea.
Park, who became a Christian when he was 21 and was ordained as a missionary in Arizona in 2007, said he came to love the North Korean people he met through his missionary work.
"I was working in China with North Korean refugees, and many refugees wanted to go back because they were concerned about their families," Park said. "The North Korean people are very good people, but the regime has no sense of right or wrong."
Park said he wanted to raise awareness about North Korea, confront the regime, and see human rights groups come together and unite for a mass movement.
The Chinese press indicates that North Korean leader Kim Jong-il met with Chinese President Hu Jintao, and Kim likely asked Beijing to concur with North Korea's long-anticipated leadership change.
Beijing has long made it clear that it aims to keep the peace on the Korean Peninsula via a normal China-North Korea relationship, and that China will continue to encourage and help North Korea open up to the world. Many in China complain that the isolated North Korea brings too much trouble for China in international relations, and the two countries' relationship should not return to a "special" status.
The Global Times writes: “The other countries unrealistically expect China has a strong hand to teach its little brother a lesson when it gets naughty. Perhaps they do not know that North Korea has a strong mind to make its own decisions. Also, China's diplomatic principle is to not interfere with another country's internal affairs.
"A stable relationship with North Korea does not mean China has to be an enemy of Japan, South Korea or the US.”
Former President Jimmy Carter has long chosen to advance his own vision of global engagement, rather than that of the administration in power. His prickliness can offend Democrats and Republicans alike; not for him is the easy post-presidential bonhomie of the Bushes and Clintons.
But his dedication to his ideals is impressive. A month short of his 86th birthday, he journeyed to Pyongyang this week to help free Aijalon Gomes.
But more than just the family and friends of Aijalon Gomes should be appreciative of Carter’s efforts.
Even in a state of cold war, there is tremendous value in maintaining channels of communication, some hope for rational human connection. Carter’s small breach in the wall of silence between the United States and North Korea is useful for America, and for the cause of world peace.
Kim Jong Il’s treatment this week of former president Jimmy Carter, who traveled to Pyongyang to secure the release of Aijalon Mahli Gomes, has struck some observers of North Korea as especially mystifying. Kim, who usually goes out of his way to try to coax American officials to Pyongyang for highly publicized meetings, did not meet with Carter and instead left the country forChina.
That decision to forgo a valuable propaganda opportunity set off a flurry of speculation in Washington about the message he was trying to send.
Charles Jack Pritchard, who served as a special envoy for negotiations with North Korea under President George W. Bush, said that the fact the North Korean regime demanded a high-level US visit to secure Gomes’s release, and then snubbed it, was an attempt to humiliate the United States. “The intent was to exact a penalty from the United States and simply say, ‘You guys disrespect our laws and you want us to release him after he has been found guilty.’ ’’
John Park, director of the Korea working group at the Washington-based US Institute of Peace, said Kim’s trip underscored the fact that North Korea is placing a higher priority on strengthening its relations with China — already its most important ally — than courting the United States.
A senior congressional aide who closely follows North Korea said it could be a positive sign that Kim did not seek to use Gomes to his political advantage by showcasing himself with the former president.
