S. Korean Goods and Shoot-to-Kill Policy for North Korean Defectors

The North Korean leadership believes that South Korean goods, or news about the South distributed by smugglers from China, are a direct threat to the regime, experts say. A defector from Chongjin said commandos crack down on any signs of a black market and conduct midnight raids on producers of illegal South Korean DVDs

Public executions are the most drastic scare tactic. They had more or less ceased since the first inter-Korean summit in 2000 started a thaw and the North became wary of international criticism, but in 2007 they started up again.

In May 2008, North Korean leader Kim Jong-il ordered officials to shoot defectors or imprison them for 10 years of hard labor if they were arrested, according to information obtained by South Korean and U.S. intelligence agencies. Previously only those caught attempting to escape directly to South Korea had been punished so severely.

But as of last year they had been declining again, as the North concentrated on strengthening its economy and marshaled all the available manpower into boosting production.

Chosun Ilbo

Infiltrating North Korea with cell phones to get the real news

The Daily NK, an Internet news service based in Seoul, has “underground stringers” in North Korea, and is reviled by Pyongyang.

Daily NK is one of six news outlets that have emerged in recent years specializing in collecting information from North Korea. These Web sites or newsletters hire North Korean defectors and cultivate sources inside a country shrouded in a near-total news blackout.

“Technology made this possible,” said Sohn Kwang-joo, the chief editor of Daily NK. “We infiltrate the wall of North Korea with cellphones.”

Over the past decade, the North’s border with China has grown more porous as famine drove many North Koreans out in search of food and an increasing traffic in goods — and information — developed. A new tribe of North Korean merchants negotiates smuggling deals with Chinese partners, using Chinese cellphones that pick up signals inside the North Korean border.

These phones have become a main tool of communication for many of the 17,000 North Korean defectors living in the South trying to re-establish contact with their families and friends in the North.

Some informants have become so adept with technology that they send text-messages, audio files and photos to Seoul by cell phone, said Kim Heung-gwang, a former North Korean computer scientist who heads North Korea Intellectuals Solidarity, a group of defectors that runs a news Web site.

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South Korean Human Rights body breaks silence on North Korean abuses

South Korea's government-funded human rights watchdog has finally issued its first report on widespread abuses in North Korea. The report reflects a significant shift in South Korea's approach to Pyongyang.

The National Human Rights Commission report says the number of North Korean political prison camps has declined, but the number of people being detained in them is still high. Kim Hyung-wan, a policy director with the commission, says the camps began operating in the late 1950s, and there were 13 of them in 1970. After 1980, Kim adds, the number dropped to six camps, which currently are believed to hold 200,000 prisoners.

Human rights organizations say the North routinely incarcerates entire families for minor political infractions by one member, such as damaging a photo of leader Kim Jong Il, or humming a South Korean pop song.

The camps also punish those caught trying to leave North Korea, or who have been forcibly returned from China. Kim says around 2000, the punishments differed based on the motivation for defecting. However, he says over the past three years, the punishment for attempting to defect has grown harsher.

This is the first time the South Korean commission has reported on abuses North Koreans face in their own country. Kay Seok, a researcher in Seoul for Human Rights Watch, says such a report has been long awaited. "It is certainly one step in the right direction, and a welcome change," Kay said.

South Koreans tend to avoid confronting the issue of North Korean defectors

Every year, poverty-stricken North Koreans risk their lives crossing the border into China to escape the repression and starvation plaguing their hermit homeland.

The price of failure is steep. Getting caught in the North can mean execution or forced labor in one of the nation's notorious gulags. A similar fate awaits those who make it across the Tumen and Yalu rivers into China. If discovered by authorities there, escapees are handed over to North Korea.

But while the plight of defectors has been reported in the media, public interest seems strangely subdued in neighboring South Korea.

"I've realized that people, especially us South Koreans, tend to avoid confronting the issue of North Korean defectors," "Crossing" filmmaker Kim Tae Kyun said during a recent interview in Tokyo. "The sheer magnitude of the problem forces our eyes away from it," he said.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki- moon calls on North Korea to release Robert Park

UN Secretary-general Ban Ki- moon called on North Korea on Thursday to release Robert Park a Korean-American who was arrested in December for illegal entry, according to the UN spokesperson's office.

Ban hopes the DPRK will release Park "on humanitarian considerations responding to the repeated calls by his family and the international community," said UN spokesperson Martin Nesirky.

"A U.S. citizen illegally entered the country across the North Korea-China border and has been detained. The person is currently undergoing questioning by a related agency," the official KCNA news agency had reported.

U.S. seeks access to Robert Park in North Korea

The U.S. government is pushing for access to an ethnic Korean evangelical activist who has been detained in North Korea since he walked across the border in a stunt to draw attention to human rights abuses there. The U.S. is hoping to make contact through the Swedish Embassy in Pyongyang, Radio Free Asia reported Tuesday.

A senior State Department official told RFA that Washington has "demanded the consular access through them [Swedish Embassy] but North Korea has not granted it yet." When two American journalists were arrested by North Korean soldiers on the North Korea-China border in March last year, Pyongyang granted the consular access within two weeks.

Meanwhile, an activist group calling itself Democracy Network Against North Korean Gulag at a press conference in Seoul on Wednesday demanded that the South Korean Unification Ministry take action to win Park's release. It said Park did not go to North Korea out of "selfish motives" but "to help save 23 million North Koreans." "The South Korean government is responsible for safeguarding the lives of our North Korean brethren and has a responsibility to get Robert Park released," it said.

But a Unification Ministry official said Park "is an American citizen and the incident is basically a North Korea-U.S. problem, not a matter for our government to be involved in."

Think Tank Predicts Kim Jong-il's Death in 2012

North Korean leader Kim Jong-il may not survive the year 2012 and massive unrest is likely to follow his death, the state-run Korea Institute for National Unification (KINU) speculates.

It is rare for a state-run South Korean think tank to go into such detail in forecasting changes in North Korea in a publicly issued report since such speculation is a red rag to Pyongyang.

On Friday, North Korea's powerful National Defense Commission vowed a "sacred battle" against South Korea over a contingency plan for the fall of the communist government. "It is possible that Kim Jong-il's days are numbered, considering his age (68), the fact that he suffered a debilitating stroke in August 2008 and that he has been afflicted by other chronic conditions, including heart disease and obesity," said a source familiar with North Korean affairs.

Cho Min, a KINU researcher involved in the report, said the predictions are "hypothetical." "The year 2012 is when North Korea has vowed to become a military and economic power, so it's a crucial year for the country if there is a leadership change," he said. "Kim's health is the biggest variable in forecasting the future of the North Korean regime."

But KINU has drawn criticism in South Korea for issuing the report at a time when North Korea is especially sensitive to any reference to the regime. The report "touched a raw nerve among North Koreans by addressing the regime," said Yang Mu-jin, a professor at Kyungnam University of North Korean Studies. He warned the North could "respond angrily" again.

One security expert at a private South Korean think tank said, "Rather than being a rational projection, the report appears to have been written based on wishful thinking." "Nobody can be sure exactly how much longer Kim Jong-il will live or whether the North Korean leadership will collapse," he added.

UN humanitarian arm allocates millions to respond to North Korean crisis

Of some $100 million the United Nations today allocated to boost the humanitarian response in 14 ongoing but underfunded emergencies, $8 million was allotted for the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea).