Making it difficult for North Korea defectors to send funds

The Korean Herald reports North Korean defectors are strongly opposing a South Korean government plan to require them to gain approval before making remittances to relatives in the cash-strapped state.They say that the approval process could put them and their loved ones in the North in dangerous situations and make brokers demand more money for delivering funds. They also say that since their remittances are made through “complicated multi-layered” procedures, it would be difficult to detect those sending money without approval.

“We have been scrimping on food, clothes and others to send some of the hard-earned money ― at most 1 million won ($917) ― to help our family, not the North Korean regime. The approval system is wrong,” a 43-year-old North Korean defector, who has taken asylum here since 1997, told the Korea Herald, declining to be named.

He also pointed out that the planned system may not be effective. “All these have so far taken place secretly. Who would ever like to willingly tell the authorities about their remittances at the risk of revealing their identities and those of their relatives in the North? One out of 10 may be willing,” he said.

North Korean defectors usually send their money through ethnic Chinese people here, who ask their Chinese relatives or acquaintances inside the North or near the North Korea-China border to deliver the money. The brokers are known to take 30 percent of the total remittances.

According to a survey by a private Seoul-based group, which was released early this year, nearly half of North Korean defectors here have sent money to their families in the North.

US human rights envoy visiting North Korea

U.S. human rights envoy Robert King has begun a week-long visit to North Korea to assess the country's food shortage and a possible resumption of U.S. food aid.

King, the first U.S. official to visit North Korea in 17 months -- and the first by a human rights envoy since 2004 -- arrived to little fanfare. He has been highly critical of North Korea's record on human rights. In January last year, during his first trip to Seoul after being confirmed by the U.S. Senate in his post, King said the North was "one of the worst places in terms of the lack of human rights." He also said human rights issues will play a part in any agreement with the United States.

King is to remain in Pyongyang until at least the weekend, although some of the delegation may stay longer if they decide to travel to remote parts of the country.

"We will be making a decision on [resuming food aid] over the next few days," U.S. Envoy to South Korea Stephen Bosworth said.

Not apparent if Heir Apparent Kim Jong-un visiting China

South Koreans pay close attention to the movements of the leadership of North Korea, perhaps the world's most secretive regime.

Midst the conflicting accounts of whether Kim Jong-il's heir apparent son, Kim Jong-un, accompanied his father to China on Friday, The Korea Herald reports that a source in a Chinese border city confirmed the junior Kim Jong-un’s presence. The junior Kim appeared to be heading to Mudanjiang in northeast China after arriving in the Chinese border city of Tumen early Friday morning, the source in Tumen told Yonhap News Agency.

Open Radio for North Korea, a South Korean NGO partly staffed by defectors from the North, and who maintains a network of informants in North Korea, reports: "I checked through my sources, and one had heard from a military officer working at the border yesterday that there was some kind of 'emergency' along the border," said Ha Tae-kyung, the organization's president.

"According to that military officer, it was Kim Jong Il who is going -- not his son."

The term of Chinese President Hu Jintao's term is set to expire next year, prompting some to anticipate greater diplomatic interchange between Beijing and Pyongyang as Kim seeks to forge relations with the incoming leader.

"Kim Jong Il wants to get something from South Korea or the U.S. or China -- economic aid or security assurances -- but at the moment he is not getting anything and China is preventing North Korea from further provocations," said Choi Jin-wook of Seoul's Korea Institute of National Unification. "Kim wants to know what China is going to do for them."

North Korean cyber army increasingly sophisticated

South Korea’s intelligence agencies now believe that North Korea has the capability to "paralyze the U.S. Pacific Command and cause extensive damage to defense networks inside the United States,” Fox News reported Tuesday. According to Washington and Seoul, their abilities rival those of the CIA, it said.

Among the most frequent visitors to U.S. military websites, according to the U.S. Defense Department, are computers traced to North Korea, the report said.

The North Korean military has amassed as many as 30,000 electronic warfare specialists and they have become the elite core of the military, Fox News said, quoting defectors.

Defectors say that the regime now culls the brightest students from the nation’s universities and funnels them into special “secret” schools that concentrate on hacking and developing cyber warfare programs targeted at South Korea, the broadcaster said. At one secret school, security is so tight that only one outsider ― dictator Kim Jong-il ― is allowed to drive onto the campus.

According to Jang Se-yul, a defector who attended one of the schools and was an officer in the North Korean electronic warfare command, the heart of the effort is centered at Automation University, where “100 to 110 hackers a year” trained in advanced electronic espionage every year often, Fox News said.

“Modern war is electronic warfare. Victory or defeat in a modern war depends on how to carry out electronic warfare,” Kim told his military several years ago. Kim has since made cyber warfare a top, though secret, priority of his paranoid regime, it said.

Report highlights North Korean abductions

A new report detailing North Korea's decades-long policy of abducting foreign nationals has been published by a US-based human rights group. The Committee for Human Rights in North Korea says more than 180,000 people from 14 countries have been taken.

The vast majority of these cases are not typical abductions. They involve prisoners not returned after the 1950-53 Korean War and Japanese who settled in North Korea but were never allowed home. Other reports highlight North Korea's foreign operations - including a Japanese college student and his girlfriend snatched from a beach in Japan by North Korean agents.

The figure includes more than 3,000 South Korean fishermen forcibly towed into North Korean waters and students in European cities - including London, it says - lured to the secretive state with the promise of jobs and then denied permission to leave.

The figure of 180,000 is much larger than usually quoted because researchers have added together all the groups that may have been affected by North Korea's alleged practices.

Some abductions, they say, are apparently a bid to train its intelligence agents, but the report also cites more recent claims that North Korean agents are targeting those in China's border areas who are suspected of helping their people escape the closed state.

The allegations are almost impossible to verify.

BBC

Debate over food shortages in North Korea continues

The U.N. says hunger is driving some North Koreans to eat wild grass, and humanitarians are pressuring the U.S. and South Korea to send food. But South Koreans who study the North say the crisis has been overstated.

American televangelist Franklin Graham, who has warned of famine and joined calls for more food aid, arrived in the North Korean capital Tuesday to discuss possible contributions from a Christian charity.

After a visit there last month, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter blasted Washington and Seoul on the issue. "One of the most important human rights is to have food to eat, and for South Korea and the U.S. and others to deliberately withhold food aid to the North Korean people is really a human rights violation," Carter said.

The U.N. in March called for more than 430,000 metric tons (474,000 tons) of food aid to fend off disaster, and activists want the U.S. and South Korea to override any political reasons for not giving.

"It is an exaggeration to say there is a looming crisis," said Kwon Tae-jin, a South Korean expert on North Korean food and agriculture.

Figures for the North's food production are likely to undercount the total, said the Daily NK, a Seoul-based media outlet that specializes in the North and has sources inside the country. Many collective farms in the North underreport their food production to the central government so they can sell extra food to raise money for fertilizer and farm equipment, Daily NK said in a report posted online.

There also are suspicions Pyongyang is exaggerating shortages and seeking food donations in part so it can devote more resources to its campaign to build a prosperous society during the 2012 centennial of the birth of North Korea founder Kim Il Sung.

The U.N. report from March paints a stark picture: More than 6 million North Koreans, about a quarter of the population, need urgent international food aid. The World Food Program said last month it is launching an emergency operation to help feed 3.5 million hungry people in North Korea.

Activists say that if food is sent and if the North allows outsiders to properly monitor it, the aid generally gets to the intended recipients.

Only 101 North Korean refugees accepted by US over 5 years

The United States has received 101 North Korean refugees during the past few years under legislation to help improve human rights conditions in the reclusive communist state and accommodate North Korean refugees, statistics showed Saturday.


US Immigration admitted 73,293 people in total to the U.S. as refugees in 2010.

South Korea has received more than 20,000 North Korean defectors.

The US total breaks down to 9 for 2006, 22 for 2007, 37 for 2008, 25 for 2009 and 8 for 2010, according to figures released Saturday by the Office of Immigration Statistics at the Department of Homeland Security.

The North Korean refugees were admitted into the U.S. under the North Korean Human Rights Act of 2004, which calls for the provision of financial aid to help improve North Korea's human rights and accept North Korean defectors into the U.S.

In 2008, Congress approved the North Korean Human Rights Reauthorization Act for another four years, calling for "activities to support human rights and democracy and freedom of information in North Korea," as well as "assistance to North Koreans who are outside North Korea," and 12-hour daily broadcasting to North Korea.

Yonhap

50-fold increase of North Korean defectors to Thailand

The number of North Korean defectors to Thailand has jumped more than 50 times since 2004. Read more

American Christians challenged to emulate North Korean underground church

Rev. Eric Foley, co-founder of Voice of the Martyrs/Korea, has authored "The Whole Life Offering," a new manual designed to help American Christians grow by emulating discipleship practices of the North Korean underground church.

"The North Korean church is the most persecuted church in the world," says Foley. "They have had to learn ways of worship that do not depend on special buildings or paid pastors or freedoms granted by the government. 

“The early church was born in homes, with worship centered in families. The North Korean church still worships that way today, and they are stronger Christians than we are because of this. They treasure the word of God more than we do because it is so scarce for them. Their living rooms have become sanctuaries for God, not just places to watch television. They lack our worldly freedoms, but because of this they have become freer than we are in Christ."

“I am hopeful that [this book] can reawaken American Christians to true freedom in Christ, which leads to real maturity, not permanent Christian adolescence," says Foley.

Earned Media

North Korea crackdown on mobile phones

North Korea has started a drive to confiscate mobile phones in an attempt to suppress news from the outside world, a group of North Korean defectors said.

North Korea Intellectuals Solidarity said in its latest newsletter police in North Hamkyong and Yangkang provinces bordering Russia and China have started urging residents to voluntarily surrender mobile phones or face punishment. It cited sources in the border cities of Hyesan and Hoeryong.

The police warned that special devices to detect mobile phone use had been brought in to punish "those spreading capitalist ideas and eroding socialism", the group quoted one of the sources as saying.

Many residents in border areas that can receive mobile reception from China are known to use smuggled phones to talk to relatives and friends who escaped the impoverished state to settle in China or South Korea.

At present users restrict conversations to five minutes, the minimum time authorities need to trace a call, said the source.

Resettled North Korean defectors seek asylum in Britain

Police in Busan, South Korea, recently conducted a survey on 25 North Korean defectors in an effort to gain insight into North Koreans’ motivation to move overseas.

Among them, eight North Korean defectors are believed to be staying in Britain in an attempt to win asylum, after staying for years in South Korea, according to a police official handling defectors in Busan.

South Korea is home to more than 20,000 North Koreans who fled hunger and political oppression in their communist homeland, but many of them fail to get decent jobs, falling further down the social ladder in this highly competitive society. Such challenges apparently prompt some North Koreans with hopes of a higher quality of life to leave South Korea and seek asylum in foreign countries.

South Korea provides defectors with three months of mandatory resettlement training and doles out 13 million won ($11,650) to each household as housing subsidy while offering vocational training to help them find jobs.

North Koreans fleeing their homeland can seek asylum in South Korea, but once they become South Korean citizens, they are not eligible to seek refuge in foreign countries, said Lee Jong-joo, a spokeswoman for the Unification Ministry handling inter-Korean affairs.

Former President Carter’s message departing from North Korea

Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter said Thursday that North Korean leader Kim Jong Il wants direct talks with South Korea's leader — an offer unlikely to be accepted until Pyongyang takes responsibility for violence that killed 50 South Koreans last year.

South Korean President Lee Myung-bak has also floated the possibility of one-on-one talks with Kim — but only if the North takes responsibility for the sinking of a South Korean warship blamed on Pyongyang and an artillery attack on a South Korean island.

Carter told reporters hours after he returned from the North that he and three former European leaders didn't have a hoped-for meeting with Kim during their three-day visit to North Korea. But he said that Kim sent them a written personal message as they were leaving, saying he's prepared for a summit meeting with the South Korean president at any time. 

Carter has sharply criticized the United States and South Korea for their refusal to send humanitarian aid to the impoverished North. Mr. Carter said their deliberate withholding of food aid amounted to ''a human rights violation''.

Robert Park on Genocide in North Korea

In the Opinion section of The Washington Post, activist missionary Robert Park writes:

“Holocaust” is the word used to describe the systematic extermination of millions of innocent European Jews during World War II. In the aftermath of this mammoth failure of humanity, many nations “repented” and declared that “never again” would such inhumanity and absolute disregard for human dignity and life be tolerated.

Yet on Jan. 1, the regime of Kim Jong Il warned that a “nuclear holocaust” would be inevitable if South Korea engaged the North in war. While the world watches peoples in the Middle East and North Africa rise up against tyranny, another people suffers on the Korean Peninsula. And that Pyongyang so irreverently invoked this term to describe its so-called necessary defense is a stark reminder of the genocidal and inhumane nature of Kim Jong Il’s regime and the atrocities it has committed against millions of innocents.

Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Authority in Jerusalem, called on the international community in 2004 to investigate “political genocide” in North Korea. In response to reports of “North Korea’s use of gas chambers to murder and perform medical experiments on political dissidents and their families” and the “chilling image of the murderers coolly watching their victims’ death agonies . . . all too reminiscent of Nazi barbarism,” the group’s chairman, Avner Shalev, wrote to then-U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan that “the issue is all the more severe due to North Korea’s status as a member of the U.N.”

In other words, the world’s foremost authorities on genocide appealed to the international community, one of the few rays of hope for the North Korean people, who are trapped in a living hell.

An estimated 1 million innocent men, women and children have been murdered in North Korean political concentration camps since 1972, academics believe.

Virtually nothing has been done to speed the closure of these camps since 2004, though the testimony of tens of thousands of refugees provides mounting evidence of crimes against humanity and genocide.

Outside observers and nongovernmental organizations estimate that 3.5 million North Koreans died of starvation between 1995 and 1997. They continue to die in huge numbers in a government-organized famine akin to the Holodomor famine-genocide in Ukraine (1932-33), which was orchestrated by Joseph Stalin. 

Billions in humanitarian aid have been shipped to North Korea, more than enough to feed the nation’s population, but government and academic studies have revealed that North Korea systematically diverted the aid, using it to bolster its military might while millions, for whom the aid was intended, starved to death.

Raphael Lemkin’s Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide included political murders in its first draft definition of genocide, but Stalin objected, the definition was amended and the Soviet Union was not held accountable for the tens of millions of innocents murdered without just cause by starvation and in the Gulag. Some have incorrectly concluded that mass murder and genocide in North Korea would also be exempt from prosecution under the convention. 

This is not the case. North Korea has been considered the world’s worst persecutor of Christians for many years by objective researchers of religious persecution such as Open Doors and Christian Solidarity Worldwide. Soon Ok Lee, one of the few survivors of the North Korean concentration camp system, has testified before Congress and later told MSNBC that “since the Korean War — in Korea they call it June 25 War — the No. 1 enemy is God. Kim II Sung hated God most.” 

It is common knowledge among refugees and people who follow North Korea that those discovered to have any kind of faith or religious belief — and their families, to three generations — are executed or sent to concentration camps for life. This constitutes genocide under Article 2 of the convention; consequently, the world has not only the moral duty but also the legal right and obligation, under Article 8, to intervene.

Actions that all of us in the free world can, and must, take immediately to save the North Korean people and stop the crimes against humanity include: 

An NGO strike. The nongovernmental organizations supporting the genocidal Pyongyang regime must withdraw all support from Kim Jong Il immediately and unambiguously declare their action a protest of the North’s concentration camps, systematic diversion of food aid and mass atrocities.

Use our resources effectively. The United States, South Korea, Japan and the rest of the international community must recognize that there is a way to effectively save those in desperate need. It is through the refugees, most of whom still have relatives and friends in the North with whom they are in secret communication. North Korean refugees and their ally organizations must be provided all possible resources.

Mass demonstrations. Never have more than 100,000 people gathered to protest the mass atrocities in North Korea. All who object to the genocide must organize, assemble and make their voices heard.

We should get to work immediately, realizing that we are already far too late.

Korean American Jun Young-Su held in North Korean for missionary work

North Korea has said it would charge an American detained last November with crimes against the nation, amid reports he was engaged in missionary work in the hardline communist state.

A man identified as Jun Young-Su has been investigated "for committing a crime against the DPRK (North Korea) after entering it", the official news agency said without specifying the offense. "He admitted his crime in the course of investigation," it said, adding officials were preparing to bring charges.

A source in Seoul identified the man as a Korean-American businessman in his 60s who was detained for missionary work. The man, who attends a church in Orange County, California, travelled frequently to the North. The source told AFP, "It looks like the North had been watching the missionary for quite some time and arrested him for a political bargaining chip at what it thought was a suitable time to take advantage of him."

This is the third apparent case in less than a year of a US Christian activist being detained in the North. Missionary Robert Park was held on Christmas Day 2009, after walking across the border to make a one-man protest about human rights violations.On January 25, 2010, the North detained Aijalon Mahli Gomes for crossing the border illegally and sentenced him to eight years' hard labor.

Former President Jimmy Carter is due to visit North Korea again soon, reportedly late this month. Jo Sung-Rae of the Seoul-based Christian activist group Pax Koreana predicted the former US leader would also secure the release of the latest detainee.

Carter has said he would try to revive stalled six-party talks on the North's nuclear disarmament and address humanitarian woes during his visit.

[Yahoo News]

North Korean defectors highlighted in "The Journals of Musan"

A young man climbs a dusty, narrow staircase toward a job interview. A kindly police officer walking ahead of him looks back and says, "Don't tell him you're from North Korea, OK?"

The telling scene comes early in "The Journals of Musan," a dark and brooding South Korean movie that has won international acclaim for its portrayal of the struggles faced by refugees from North Korea in the capitalist - and, as depicted in the film, often heartless - South. The movie opened in Seoul last week.

Raised in an impoverished totalitarian state, many North Koreans lack the education, financial resources and personal connections to compete in South Korea, one of Asia's richest countries. In turn, they complain of discrimination in the job market.

Park Jung-bum, the 36-year-old director of "The Journals of Musan," is part of a young generation of filmmakers inspired by their plight. The movie is loosely based on the experience of his late friend, Chun Seung-chul, who came from the North in 2002 and died of stomach cancer a few years later. Park also incorporated stories about other North Koreans he knows into the main character.

"My big question was this: They came here to be happy, but if they have to stay in the bottom class in South Korea, was there any meaning for them to come all the way here?" he said in an interview.

Film critic Park Yoo-hee, a research professor at Korea University, described movies such as "The Journals of Musan" as a turning point in how filmmakers approach North Korea. The escapees are now seen as an internal South Korean issue, rather than fantasized characters from someplace far removed.

Korean-American detained in North Korea

An American man has been detained in North Korea, two State Department officials told CNN.Diplomatic sources speaking on condition of not being identified said the man is a Korean-American businessman. One of the sources said the businessman had a visa to enter North Korea.

The State Department is working with the Swedish Embassy in the North Korean capital, Pyongyang, the officials said.The Swedes have been granted consular access to the man and have visited him, the officials said.

North Korea has detained several Americans in recent years, increasing tension levels in what is already a rocky relationship between Pyongyang and Washington.

In 2010, former President Jimmy Carter helped secure the release of Aijalon Mahli Gomes, a U.S. citizen and Christian activist, who had been fined roughly $600,000 and sentenced to eight years of hard labor for crossing over the Chinese border into North Korea.

North Korea parliament watched for signs of Kim Jong-un succession

A  rare session of North Korea's parliament scheduled to begin today is being watched closely for signs of succession. Analysts of North Korea's opaque politics believe Kim Jong-un, the son of leader Kim Jong-il (69), could be appointed to the National Defense Commission.
 

This parliamentary session is the first major national meeting since Kim Jong-un made his political debut last September. His predicted appointment to the defense body would cement the succession process, and make him the country's second most powerful man and the next step in the path to formally naming him as successor.

Analysts expect the succession process to be formally completed by April 2012, the centenary of the birth of late President Kim Il-sung, father of the current leader.

Others question whether Kim Jong Un will ascend to a major National Defense Commission post only six months after being made a four-star general and assuming senior Workers' Party posts.

Separately, North Korea's First Vice Foreign Minister Kim Kye-gwan is reported to be in Beijing to meet with his Chinese counterpart, as part of efforts to re-start international talks. China and North Korea have expressed readiness to restart the six-nation talks on ending North Korea's nuclear programs "without preconditions".

Former President Carter to North Korea April 26-28

Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter will make a private trip to North Korea on April 26-28, Yonhap News Agency reported Monday, citing an unnamed source.

The visit comes after a North Korean economic delegation ended a 16-day U.S. tour, and a senior North Korean diplomat attended a seminar hosted by a U.S. think tank in Berlin last week.

Carter will travel to Pyongyang with members of a group comprised of former heads of state from around the world, the source added.

‘‘Carter’s coming visit will provide a chance to see if there is a change in North Korea’s behavior and also gauge the possibility of a breakthrough’’ in the diplomatic deadlock with the country, the source was quoted as saying.

Carter previously visited North Korea last August to bring back an American man detained for illegal entry.

After Libya, North Korea less likely to drop nuclear ambitions

A Christian Science Monitor writer speculates, “It's a pretty good bet that, as Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi sits in his fortified compound, Western airstrikes targeting his military, that Qaddafi rues the day he heeded US pressures and gave up his nuclear weapons program.”
 

And, more than a bet, it's now a matter of record that North Korean and Iranian leaders interpret Colonel Qaddafi's plight as a lesson in why not to compromise with the US and other international powers on nuclear development. Their assumption is that, were Qaddafi still in possession of his nuclear and other WMD programs, the West would have thought twice before it attacked.

The Obama administration has often said Iran and North Korea face that same choice that Qaddafi once did. But at this juncture in time why would North Korea be willing to compromise its nuclear programs?

North Korea was even more direct than Iran in addressing the "lessons" of Libya. Calling the deal the US extended to Qaddafi in 2003 "an invasion tactic to disarm the country," Pyongyang’s Foreign Ministry declared this week that Libya's nuclear dismantlement "turned out to be a mode of aggression whereby the [US] coaxed [Libya] with such sweet words as 'guarantee of security' and 'improvement of relations' to disarm, and then swallowed it up by force."

Pyongyang and Tehran have concluded that "the US and its allies had a plan for premeditated treachery [against Qaddafi] where none likely existed," writes Doug Bandow in Friday's online issue of The National Interest.

A listening ear for North Korean defectors

North Korean defectors, like many others living in South Korea, suffer from ailments, but, unlike most, they have difficulty conveying them to doctors.

Tucked inside the National Medical Center in Seoul, the North Korean Defector Medical Counseling Center has been host to over 4,000 patients since its opening in 2007. Run by The Organization for One Korea, a civic group in favor of unification, the center helps refugees communicate with hospital staff and understand the medical culture here.

The center also gives them a place free from judgment and prejudice. “There are a lot of people who come for consultations and while they are waiting they usually talk about their hometown and things they have been through without hesitation, developing a bond like relatives,” said Im Hyang, 38.

Im, a defector herself, said it doesn’t matter if they do not know one another because, for those 10 minutes of waiting, they are family. “It almost acts as a community center because people come in here and pour out their feelings that they could not do otherwise, which helps people here become more familiar with each other,” she said.

Many defectors are struck by depression and loneliness which become root problems for other ailments. According to Im, they defect into the South alone and have no one to lean on in tough times, often exacerbating illnesses and leading to excessive drinking.

North Korean refugees come from as far as Jeju Island and Busan to seek medical counseling in Seoul, simply for this companionship.

China boosts border security over fears of North Korean famine

China is reinforcing fences and has stepped up patrols along its border with North Korea as fears mount of a catastrophic famine in the secretive state.

Fences more than 13ft high, topped with barbed wire, are now being erected along an eight-mile stretch of the Yalu river around the Chinese city of Dandong. This is a popular entry point for North Korea refugees seeking food or better lives.

Previously the border was only marked by a 10ft fence which "anybody could cross if they really wanted", a resident added.

Fears for the stability of North Korea have increased in recent weeks with reports of a growing food crisis following the severest winter in 60 years and an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease that has affected the oxen that are still used to plough fields.

Foreign aid agencies based in Pyongyang issued a joint statement warning that six million North Koreans need urgent food aid because crops of potatoes, wheat and barley have all failed.

International aid agencies appeal for food donations for North Korea

Aid agencies working in North Korea have issued a rare joint appeal for increased food donations, warning that millions of vulnerable citizens are living on a knife edge, according to The Guardian..

The groups, which include Save the Children and the Swiss government's relief agency, say bad weather and livestock disease have hampered domestic production, while high global food and fuel prices are making it harder to import supplies. They fear that unless aid is increased now, it will be too late to support people who are already chronically malnourished through the lean season that begins in May.

Their warning comes days after a United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) assessment found the country was "highly vulnerable to a food crisis", with more than 6 million people in urgent need of international food aid. Today's joint statement highlighted the needs of children and mothers, the elderly, disabled and sick and pointed to a need for healthcare, water and sanitation as well as food.

Andy Featherstone, the region's director of strategy for Save the Children, said: "We would hope [donors] would review decisions they have taken and be more generous in meeting the appeal [following the WFP assessment]."

Ireland's Concern Worldwide, Belgium's Handicap International and France's Triangle Generation Humanitaire also signed the statement.

North Korea closely monitoring radiation from Japan

A North Korean scholar says Pyongyang is closely monitoring whether radiation from Japan's stricken nuclear plant will reach its territory.

Yoon Yong Geun made the comments Tuesday at the start of talks with South Korean experts about an active volcano touted in the North as leader Kim Jong Il's birthplace.

The talks took place at a South Korean border village. He said the North was "monitoring diligently if radioactive contamination could reach us."

South Korean officials say traces of radioactive material believed to be from the leaking Fukushima nuclear plant have been detected across South Korea but the amounts are far below anything that would cause health problems.

Pastor assists nine North Korean refugees to make it to South Korea

A Christian pastor said Friday that two years of planning helped him secure the defection of nine North Koreans to the South in a daring transfer at sea that could further inflame cross-border tensions.

Kim Sung-Eun, who leads a church mostly made up of defectors from the North, said he arranged to bring the defectors to the South for reunions with their relatives who had already entered the country.
The new arrivals left China's northeastern port of Dalian last Monday on a chartered Chinese fishing boat and were bundled on to a South Korean trawler in international waters in the Yellow Sea.

"It took me two years to pull it off as we have to be very careful about security," he told AFP by phone from his church in Cheonan City, 85 kilometres (53 miles) south of the capital Seoul.

The nine refugees comprised six people belonging to two families and three individuals, said Kim, who is married to a North Korean.Some of them had been in China in hiding for up to four years while others came directly from the North via China. South Korean Christian missionaries have come into conflict with Beijing for their attempts to spread Christianity among North Koreans hiding in China who are then helped to defect to the South.

The latest defection comes as Pyongyang remains angered over an incident involving 31 North Koreans whose boat drifted across the disputed Yellow Sea border in thick fog last month, and then four of the group asked to stay in the South.

North Korean defectors continue unhampered balloon propaganda

Seoul’s Unification Ministry said Thursday that it would not intervene in a plan by North Korean defectors here to fly anti-Pyongyang leaflets to the North, a day after the communist state renewed its threat to strike South Korea’s propaganda apparatus.

“We have no plan to call on them to refrain (from sending anti-North propaganda leaflets),” a ministry official told reporters, refusing to be named. “In the past, we had requested that the groups refrain from flying them, in light of the possible impact on inter-Korean ties. However, since March 26 when the Cheonan sank after an attack (by the North), we have not made any special request.”

In an interview with the official Korean Central News Agency, an unidentified North Korean commander warned “From a military perspective, psychological warfare is an act of war. If the South does not want to see the repeat of the artillery attack on Yeonpyeong Island, it should stop all psychological warfare activities immediately and behave discreetly.”

Some 20 groups of North Korean defectors plan to send some 200,000 leaflets and memory sticks that contain videos, designed to enlighten North Koreans living in the tightly-controlled society with little access to outside information. The leaflets include messages pinpointing North Korean leader Kim Jong-il as the culprit for the sinking that killed 46 sailors; criticizing the lavish lifestyle of his three sons; and comparing Kim with other autocratic rulers such as Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi and former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.

Park Sang-hak, chief of the Fighters for Free North Korea, which leads the upcoming leaflet-sending event, said that he and other North Korean defectors would not be intimidated. “We will carry out the plan to send the leaflets as scheduled. The threat from the North is just a bluff and we don’t need to be intimidated by that,” he told reporters.

South Korea ponders food aid to North Korea

South Korea on Wednesday stated it has no intention of resuming food aid to North Korea, and denied a news report saying that it has decided to follow United States's move to provide assistance to the impoverished nation, reports Yonhap news agency.

"We have to look at the WFP report first. I understand that the U.S. has not made any decision on that either," a South Korean official said on condition of anonymity.

Other sources in the government said Seoul plans to consider the possibility of providing limited humanitarian assistance to the North after taking a look at the upcoming WFP report, though large-scale aid carrying political meaning won't be possible.

Food aid to the North has been a focus after Pyongyang asked Washington to resume assistance earlier this year. Officials from the WFP and the Food and Agriculture Organization conducted an on-site inspection of the food situation in North Korea earlier this month. The team is expected to release a report on its findings as early as this weekend.

Is it right to give North Korea humanitarian aid?

Should countries that abhor North Korea’s system respond to appeals for food aid to keep its people from starving? 

First, donors are denied the ability to make sure the aid gets to needy civilians. Much of it in fact is siphoned off by officials who eat it themselves, supply it to the military or sell it to market traders. Second, the regime has the effrontery to use the aid, judo-style, as a political weapon. It boasts in its internal propaganda that enemy countries give not out of charity but because the brilliant “general,” dictator Kim Jong Il, by turning North Korean into a nuclear armed, ferociously war-ready country, has frightened them into paying tribute.

A reporter who had covered North Korea for years was asked whether foreigners should provide food aid, even though much of it would be diverted. Yes, he said — because every bit of aid increases the country’s overall food supply and tends to bring down the price that civilians must pay in the markets.

A young North Korean woman he had videotaped last year died later in the same year. “Kim filmed that footage in June, 2010. Kim had a chance to visit the same location in November and found out that she died of hunger there.” The woman was a victim of the regime’s North Korea’s disastrous currency redenomination of late 2009 “Business and distribution suddenly stopped. Her parents had to sell their house and the family became homeless. The parents had died of starvation before the daughter.”

The same reporter has recently spoken with an officer in Kim Jong Il’s elite bodyguard service, who said even he and his men were getting only 300 grams of grain each per day, less than half the former rationing standard of 800 grams for uniformed personnel. “It suggests that the government does not have enough foreign currency even to buy enough food for its soldiers,” he said. 

Reporters have said that “even in the capital, Pyongyang, the situation is deteriorating, as shown by worsening electricity shortages. Although food is available at public markets, it’s expensive. Fear is spreading among the people about what will happen come spring, the most difficult time of the year,” when much of the harvest will have been used up.

So there are valid reasons to consider charity.

Kim Jong Il's former bodyguard

For 10 years, until 1988, Lee Young-guk was a personal bodyguard for Kim Jong Il, working among the phalanx of trained killers who protect the North Korean dictator.

Lee oversaw the enigmatic strongman's younger years as a leader in training, observing a privileged life played out inside grim fortresses and hideaway villas. Eventually, Lee came to detest what he now sees as a farcical leader who enjoyed unparalleled luxury while his impoverished nation starved.

He watched high-ranking officials hide behind trees rather than face the mercurial "Dear Leader," who was so fearful of duplicity that he constantly switched limousines, so fussy that he demanded his favorite perfume sprayed throughout his villas. Displeasing Kim could mean imprisonment, as it did for the guard sent to a gulag for using one of Kim's favorite ashtrays.

"As time went on, I saw the real evil," said Lee, who defected to South Korea in 2000 and wrote a tell-all book two years later about his experiences. "He's a man who is not qualified to be a world leader."

The former bodyguard senses that the years have only made the ailing 70-year-old leader even more dangerous.

Further promotion coming for Kim Jong Un?

North Korea will convene its parliament early next month in a session closely watched for further signs that leader Kim Jong Il is handing over power to his youngest son to succeed him as leader of the nation of 24 million people.

Kim Jong Un, who is in his late 20s, was unveiled to the public last year when he was made a four-star general and promoted to a key military leadership role in the ruling Workers' Party.

North Korea's parliament typically meets a few times a year to discuss and approve the year's budget. However, sessions also are scrutinized by the outside world for signs of key changes in policy and leadership. The 12th Supreme People's Assembly will meet in Pyongyang on April 7, the state-run Korean Central News Agency said Friday in a brief report monitored in Seoul. 

The next major step in the succession campaign would be a promotion for Kim Jong Un to the powerful National Defense Commission, where Kim Jong Il serves as chairman, analysts said.

[TIME]

Financial plight of North Korean defectors living in the South

Less than half of North Koreans who have defected to South Korea since 2000 are “economically active,” according to research conducted by a support foundation for North Korean defectors based in Seoul. The term “economically active” refers to people who furnish the labor for the production of economic goods and services, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

The North Korean Refugees Foundation surveyed 1,200 defectors last year and found that only 42.5 percent of them were economically active after defecting. By comparison, 61.1 percent of South Koreans are active, according to Statistics Korea. Hiring rates were found to be lower for the defectors, at 38.8 percent, compared to 59.1 for South Korean citizens. 

According to the report, 20.4 percent of defectors employed were engaged in simple labor, 19.6 percent in machinery operation or assembly and 18.7 percent in service occupations. Only 4.1 percent are self-employed and 0.9 percent are employers.

Other survey results dealt with the health conditions of the defectors, of which 44.3 percent said that they “did not feel they were healthy.” Nearly a third of the 1,200 were suffering from arthritis, lumbar and joint problems. 　

JoongAng Daily

North Korea ready to return to six-party talks?

BBC reports North Korea has told Russia's deputy foreign minister Alexei Borodavkin that it is ready to discuss its nuclear enrichment plans at six-party talks.

Separately, a South Korean envoy is on his way to Russia to pursue talks. The new flurry of diplomacy comes just over a month after talks between North and South Korea broke up in acrimony.

North Korea's state news agency, KCNA, reported comments from Pyongyang's foreign ministry after a four-day visit by Mr Borodavkin. "The DPRK (North Korea) is willing to come to the six-party talks unconditionally," Pyongyang's foreign ministry said. 

KCNA quoted a ministry spokesman as saying that the North did "not object to the issue of uranium enrichment program being discussed at the talks".

The six-party disarmament talks - involving North and South Korea, China, Japan, the United States and Russia - have been stalled for two years.

North Korean defectors taught farming in South Korea

South Korea has begun a class to help North Korean defectors become farmers and find similar jobs in the country's rural areas, Yonhap news agency reported.

The two-day course comes as many North Koreans are still struggling to find decent jobs and adjust to new lives in the capitalist South, though they undergo three months of mandatory resettlement training and receive some financial aid.

This past Tuesday, some 30 defectors attended the class at the Rural Development Administration in Suwon, south of Seoul, to learn about the agricultural industry and basic methods of cultivating crops, said Park Sun-yong of the administration. The two-day course was jointly organized by the Rural Development Administration and the Gyeonggi Provincial Police Agency. 

Instructors take the defectors to nearby farms and an agricultural equipment exhibition to give them opportunities of learning from local farmers, officials noted.

Vast numbers of North Korean orphans

Thousands of North Korean orphans are adrift in South Korea or overseas, separated from their parents during their escape or born to fathers in third countries like China and abandoned there.

Kim Yun-tae of activist group Network for North Korean Democracy, said, "Each organization produces different estimates because it's difficult to conduct an accurate census, but there are thought to be between 10,000 and 35,000 of such children in China and other foreign countries or living in South Korea." 

Those who were separated from their parents during their escape and escaped on their own to South Korea are in a slightly better situation. But "children born in third countries such as China ... can't get any support as defectors in South Korea because they cannot be seen as defectors in a strict sense," a Unification Ministry official said. 

Women account for 70 percent of all defectors, and they often fall prey to human traffickers. Civic groups estimate that up to 10,000 children were born and abandoned in China alone.

North Korea new tactic of using families to weaken resolve of defectors

Australian news reports a remarkable first for North Korea, the secretive communist state has posted online interviews with the families of four of its citizens who want to defect to the South. The four are part of a large group of North Koreans who accidentally drifted over the Yellow Sea maritime border on a boat last month.

North Korea has hit back, posting interviews with family members where they plead for their loved ones to return, warning that they will face brainwashing if they stay in South Korea.

As one distraught mother spoke to the camera, the teenage girl sat quietly holding her hand, but as soon as her mother finished the girl made an urgent appeal. "Father I miss you. Please come back now," she cried. The girl's father is Hong Yong-hak, a 44-year-old North Korean who is among the would-be defectors.

"They make the ridiculous claim that my daughter's defecting," said another woman, who says she is the mother of 22-year old Pak Myong-ok.

The mother of 21-year-old nurse Bong Un-ha says it is all a conspiracy. "How would Un-ha ever fall to brainwashing by the enemy?" she said.

Of the 31, 27 North Koreans who want to come home were taken to the heavily fortified border by South Korean authorities last week. But officials from the North refused to take them back until the other four were returned as well.

Seoul says the two men and two women have chosen to stay of their own free will, but Pyongyang is not backing down.

North Korea jamming S. Korea GPS devices

North Korea used jamming equipment to block South Korean military communication devices last week, a report said Sunday, amid high tension over the joint drills between Seoul and Washington.

Yonhap news agency said strong jamming signals sent across the border on Friday had caused minor disruptions to phones and navigational devices using GPS (Global Positioning System) at military units near the capital Seoul.

The signals are believed to have been sent from the North's military facilities in Haeju and Kaesong close to the heavily-fortified border, it said, citing Seoul intelligence and military officials.

South Korea's former defence chief Kim Tae-Young said Pyongyang was thought to have been behind the intermittent failure of GPS receivers on naval and civilian craft along the west coast during the joint military exercise between the South and the US last August.

The North's GPS interrupter is believed to be effective in preventing US and South Korean guided bombs and missiles from hitting their target accurately.

South Korean government and financial websites under cyber attack

The websites of South Korea's key government agencies and financial institutions came under cyber attack for a second day Saturday, with few leads on who might be behind the attacks.

The sites of the U.S. forces in Korea and the department of unification, which handles relations with North Korea, were among those targeted by the "distributed denial-of-service" (DDoS) attacks.

On Friday sites including the presidential Blue House, the military Joint Chiefs of Staff, the ministries of foreign affairs and defense and the tax office, came under DDos attacks. The Korea and Communications Commission (KCC) said the attacks resumed Saturday morning against 29 websites including those of government agencies and banks.

In 2009, government websites in South Korea and the U.S. were paralyzed by a similar type of attack that South Korean officials blamed on North Korea. But U.S. officials have largely ruled out North Korea as the origin of these attacks, according to cyber security experts.

South Korean police have isolated 30 overseas servers that were ordering more than 34,000 "zombie computers" to carry out DDoS attacks. The servers had been traced to 18 countries and territories around the world, including the United States, Russia, Italy, Mexico, Israel and Hong Kong.

North and South Korea spar over four remaining defectors

South Korea has accused the North of blocking the return of 27 North Koreans who strayed across the border. The North has said Seoul is keeping hostage four North Koreans, from the boatload of 31 which drifted over the sea border in heavy fog on 5 February.

Both North and South have called for talks to ease tensions; the last effort ended without agreement last month.

For its part, North Korea has accused the South of "despicable unethical acts … This cannot be interpreted otherwise than a grave provocation to the DPRK (North Korea)," said a statement attributed to a spokesman for the North's Red Cross.

Of the large-scale military drills being carried out by US and South Korean forces,  the North says they are a rehearsal for invasion to topple its government.

Latest North Korean defectors

Four members of a group of 31 North Koreans who accidentally crossed over into South Korean waters on a fishing boat, have decided to defect to the South, despite Pyongyang's demands that they all be repatriated to the North, the South Korean Red Cross said.

The defection of the four North Koreans could spark tensions on the peninsula, where joint U.S.-South Korea military drills have kicked off this week. North Korea had threatened to engulf Seoul in a "sea of flames," a day before the opening of the exercise.

The South will return the remaining 27 members of the group through Panmunjom, a truce village on the ground border between the two sides, and send the fishing boat back through the waters in the West Sea on Friday, the Red Cross said.

US considers resuming food aid to North Korea

VoA reports that special envoy for North Korea Stephen Bosworth told the Senate Committee on Foreign relations that North Korea has asked for U.S. food aid and that Washington is considering the request.

The U.S. government suspended food handouts to the impoverished Asian country in 2009, after Pyongyang expelled its aid monitors who were there to make sure the food gets to the children, nursing mothers and the elderly, who most needed it. 

Five non-governmental U.S. charities, that recently visited the reclusive country say that harsh weather and floods in recent months have destroyed much of the crops, including grains and vegetables. They say the families worst hit by the shortages are those that depend on the public food distribution system.

There are concerns that resuming food aid to North Korea could be seen as rewarding its belligerent behavior, including a 2009 nuclear test and last year's attacks on South Korea.

The top U.S. diplomat for East Asia, Kurt Campbell, told lawmakers Tuesday that no decision has been made, but that sending food to starving people is a humanitarian, not a political issue.

Heir apparent Kim Jong-un apparently a father

North Korean leader Kim Jong-il’s two younger sons ― heir apparent Kim Jong-un and Kim Jong-chul, 29 ― both have children, Japanese TV Asahi has reported.

The news is the latest in the barrage of information or rumors about the third-generation in the isolated regime’s royal family. 

Jong-un’s child was born sometime between fall and winter last year, a TV Asahi report said. Jong-chul’s child was born last August.   

There was no mention of who the mothers were or whether the children were male or female. The speculation was that ailing Kim Jong-il was pushing for his children to create offspring as he looks to secure a power transfer to his heir and youngest son, Jong-un, 28.

Earlier this week, both South Korean and Japanese media released photos of Jong-chul at an Eric Clapton concert on Valentine’s Day. He was accompanied by a young woman who was speculated to be either his wife, or his younger sister, Yo-jong, 24.


Jong-chul, Jong-un and Yo-jong were born to Japanese born-dancer Ko Young-hee, the second wife to the North Korea leader.