Showing posts with label mulualem zeleke. Show all posts
Showing posts with label mulualem zeleke. Show all posts
Thursday, November 11, 2010
Wednesday, September 1, 2010
U.N. Lays Plans to Spend $290M on Aid to North Korea
by George Russell of FoxNews
As the xenophobic North Korean regime of Kim Jong Il appears to be inching toward a murky transition of power, the United Nations is laying plans to spend more than $290 million on a welter of programs in the communist state—including a scheme to produce an algae sold in the U.S. as tropical fish food--provided someone else comes up with much of the money.
The money is by no means a sure thing, especially if the unpredictable North Korean dictator rejects any of the stringent oversight conditions attached to money from some of the important donors the U.N. hopes will chip in.
The U.N. plans, however, demonstrate the determination of the world organization and its most influential backers—notably, the U.S. government, which is the biggest single financial supporter of most U.N. aid and development organizations-- to keep dangling carrots of assistance before the North Korean regime, even at its most provocative.
The U.N. plans persist despite such incidents as the March 26 sinking of a South Korean warship, the Cheonan, most likely by a North Korean submarine, and the regime’s continued nuclear saber-rattling, especially toward South Korea. Just last month, for example, North Korea threatened a “powerful nuclear deterrence” in response to a joint U.S.-South Korean antisubmarine exercise prompted by the Cheonan incident.
All those uncertainties fade, however, alongside a bigger one: rumors that the ailing and reclusive Kim, who returned on Sunday from his second trip to China in three months, hopes to install his youngest son, Kim Jong-Un, as his successor-- a process that could already be well under way.
Whatever the outcome of the succession process, at least a dozen U.N. agencies and offices clearly hope to be deeply involved over the next five years in North Korea’s national welfare, in areas ranging from health care and education to sanitation and civil service training, “strengthening knowledge networks” in agriculture, alternate energy development, and transportation, not to mention improving North Korean export trade.
A significant number of the efforts will also go to bolstering the capabilities of the North Korean government, which is not surprising, since they are prepared in close collaboration with various departments of the ruling apparatus. These efforts include a strong focus on health care delivery and education (already problematic in a totalitarian state burdened with a smothering cult of the personality).
But they also include more ambiguous activities in a brutal and thorough-going dictatorship such as North Korea. Among them: coordinating “national knowledge networks and practices,” “management and specialist training,” and—in a country that regularly threatens its neighbors with nuclear and conventional war—a “disaster preparedness and response strategy” spurred by North Korea’s famines and floods. All of these activities are depicted by the U.N. documents as being strictly humanitarian in nature.
The array of plans is laid out in schematic form in a 22-page “United Nations Strategic Framework Results Matrix” for North Korea, which is being presented to members of the supervisory Executive Board of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), the U.N.’s principal development coordinating agency, at a meeting in New York this week.
Click here for the matrix.
The framework is buttressed by UNDP’s own country program for North Korea, which is a $38.3 million portion of the larger total. Both documents cover the period from 2011 to 2015.
Click here for the UNDP Country Program.
The UNDP contribution is noteworthy, among other things, for the fact that most of the money--$34 million—can be counted on to exist. That amount is described in the annex to the country program as coming from “regular” UNDP resources, meaning its core budget. Only $4 million of UNDP’s spending in North Korea comes from other contributions.
A UNDP spokesman underlined—as does the country program—the extent to which UNDP claims to be adhering to newly strengthened safeguards in relation to its North Korean program.
UNDP activities in North Korea exploded into scandal in 2007, leading to suspension of its program until 2009. Among other things, an independent investigative panel subsequently determined that UNDP had wrongfully provided millions in hard currency to the North Korean regime, ignored U.N. Security Council sanctions in passing on dual-use equipment that could conceivably be used in the country's nuclear program, and allowed North Korean government employees to fill key positions.
In the current program, UNDP emphasizes that it has revamped its hiring and currency policies, but adds that “a proper monitoring and evaluation plan is necessary to ensure accountability and transparency in project implementation.” The careful wording indicates that at least some of that planning remains to be done.
While UNDP has actual cash to spend, however, nearly $119 million of some $128 million that UNICEF plans to spend in North Korea over the next four years—about 93 per cent—is expected to come from outside donors, according to UNICEF’s own country plan for North Korea. That is, as UNICEF delicately puts it, “subject to the availability of specific purpose contributions” from those willing to put up the money.
Click here for the UNICEF Country Program.
Much of that volunteer UNICEF money would go toward building up North Korea’s grievously neglected clinical health care facilities, bolstering maternal and early childhood care, early childhood education and large-scale vaccination and medication campaigns to fight AIDs, malaria and tuberculosis.
Most of the anti-disease money is supposed to come from the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (GFATM), a Geneva-based institution financed in part of Microsoft Found Bill Gates and his wife, Melinda. Nowadays, the U.S. government contributes 28 percent of the GFATM’s funds.
And so far, GFATM has only handed over $12.45 million to UNICEF, according to the U.N. agency’s spokesman, Chris de Bono, for its anti-malarial and TV campaign. (According to GFATM’s website, UNICEF has received $18.35 million, out of about $31.5 million approved so far.) According to de Bono, another $56 million is due to come from GFATM starting in 2013, provided a “number of conditions” laid down by the Global Fund are met.
Those conditions, according to Global Fund communications director Jon Liden, largely bear on whether the money is meaning the health goals set by the donors. Among them, for example, is a commitment to cut in half the North Korean death rate from malaria by 2013, using the death rate in 2007 as a baseline (0.31 per 1,000 people, vs. 0.62.).
Click here for Global Fund report on North Korea
Failure to meet the targets could result in reduced funding for the next three years, or a cutoff.
The additional “other” revenues required by UNICEF for 2011-2015 will be raised “as we get into our program,” according to spokesman De Bono, “as is our usual practice.”
The same apparently applies to the bulk of $101 million or so to be spent in North Korea by the World Health Organization (WHO). WHO activities include supporting UNICEF on the malaria and TB campaigns, but also building up North Korean health care, supplying equipment and drugs, and helping institute telemedicine.
But WHO’s own “country cooperation strategy” for North Korea extends only to 2013, meaning all of its fundraising plans for the 2011-2015 have not yet been written.
In the current strategy document, completed in 2009, WHO notes that it will need to use about $3 million of its regular budget and mobilize $20 million annually from voluntary contributions to meet North Koreas needs. This, the document says, “will be a challenging task.”
Just how challenging, perhaps, can be seen in the case of the struggling World Food Program (WFP), whose efforts are outlined in the U.N. Strategic Framework as trying to provide “fortified locally produced nutritious foods” to young children.
In fact, WFP has been running a dwindling operation to provide emergency food to many more of North Korea’s desperately hungry population. But donors stampeded away from the WFP fundraising effort, especially after the Kim regime detonated a nuclear device last year, and questions were raised about whether the government was profiting from the food effort.
Questioned Raised About Who Profits From Aid to North Korea
Currently, WFP has dialed back the goal of its emergency food aid operation from $500 million in 2008-2009 to $91 million.
In the 2011-2015 strategic framework, UNDP and the Rome-based Food and Agriculture Organization will be working on amplifying North Korea’s meager food supply, enhancing, among other things, areas where “double-cropping” is possible, and adding to fruit orchards and livestock herds. UNDP’s project documents say it will spend $13 million on “seed production in alternative cereals” –defined as wheat, barley, soybeans, potatoes—as well as “wild fruit processing and protein-rich production.”
Some of UNDP’s protein projects, however, seem decidedly outside the mainstream, or even bizarre. In its program document, for example, UNDP says it will “support pilot production of protein-rich plans, such as spirulina and pistia statiotes, which will supply nutrients.”
Spirulina is an algae that has gained a reputation in alternative food circles as a diet supplement. In the U.S., health food websites offer a powdered form for anywhere from $24 to $33 per pound—hardly a cheap source of protein for starving people. It is also sold in the U.S. as tropical fish food. But whether North Korea needs a “pilot project” to produce spirulina is debatable.
As far back as October, 2003, a North Korean news agency declared that the Kim government’s botanical institute had, “after years of researches [sic] completed the method of artificially cultivating spirulina at low cost.” The agency added, “It can be cultivated easily in greenhouses too.” Indeed, spirulina is currently listed as a marketable product on a North Korean export website. And on Aug. 6, a Chinese news agency announced that North Korean researchers had created a new spirulina vaccination “which prevents and treats domestic animals' diseases and increases their weight.” Whether there was any independent verification of that claim was not mentioned in the news article.
As for pistia statiotes, also known as water lettuce, according to the website of the Center for Aquatic and Invasive Plants at the University of Florida, the floating plant is a fast-growing weed, which can block waterways, deplete oxygen supplies in water, and threaten fish populations. It is described as an obnoxious invader in West Africa and Australia. While pistia can survive in temperate climates, it abhors cold and thrives mainly in tropical and semi-tropical environments—not exactly what North Korea is known for.
One of the few places where it is cultivated for its nutritional value is apparently southern China, where it is sometimes used as a supplemental carp food.
In a country full of starving or semi-starving people, of course, almost anything may be viewed as edible. But in the U.N.’s renewed desire to pour money into North Korea, the value of at least some of the projects it is pushing for approval may be hard to swallow.
George Russell is executive editor of Fox News.
As the xenophobic North Korean regime of Kim Jong Il appears to be inching toward a murky transition of power, the United Nations is laying plans to spend more than $290 million on a welter of programs in the communist state—including a scheme to produce an algae sold in the U.S. as tropical fish food--provided someone else comes up with much of the money.
The money is by no means a sure thing, especially if the unpredictable North Korean dictator rejects any of the stringent oversight conditions attached to money from some of the important donors the U.N. hopes will chip in.
The U.N. plans, however, demonstrate the determination of the world organization and its most influential backers—notably, the U.S. government, which is the biggest single financial supporter of most U.N. aid and development organizations-- to keep dangling carrots of assistance before the North Korean regime, even at its most provocative.
The U.N. plans persist despite such incidents as the March 26 sinking of a South Korean warship, the Cheonan, most likely by a North Korean submarine, and the regime’s continued nuclear saber-rattling, especially toward South Korea. Just last month, for example, North Korea threatened a “powerful nuclear deterrence” in response to a joint U.S.-South Korean antisubmarine exercise prompted by the Cheonan incident.
All those uncertainties fade, however, alongside a bigger one: rumors that the ailing and reclusive Kim, who returned on Sunday from his second trip to China in three months, hopes to install his youngest son, Kim Jong-Un, as his successor-- a process that could already be well under way.
Whatever the outcome of the succession process, at least a dozen U.N. agencies and offices clearly hope to be deeply involved over the next five years in North Korea’s national welfare, in areas ranging from health care and education to sanitation and civil service training, “strengthening knowledge networks” in agriculture, alternate energy development, and transportation, not to mention improving North Korean export trade.
A significant number of the efforts will also go to bolstering the capabilities of the North Korean government, which is not surprising, since they are prepared in close collaboration with various departments of the ruling apparatus. These efforts include a strong focus on health care delivery and education (already problematic in a totalitarian state burdened with a smothering cult of the personality).
But they also include more ambiguous activities in a brutal and thorough-going dictatorship such as North Korea. Among them: coordinating “national knowledge networks and practices,” “management and specialist training,” and—in a country that regularly threatens its neighbors with nuclear and conventional war—a “disaster preparedness and response strategy” spurred by North Korea’s famines and floods. All of these activities are depicted by the U.N. documents as being strictly humanitarian in nature.
The array of plans is laid out in schematic form in a 22-page “United Nations Strategic Framework Results Matrix” for North Korea, which is being presented to members of the supervisory Executive Board of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), the U.N.’s principal development coordinating agency, at a meeting in New York this week.
Click here for the matrix.
The framework is buttressed by UNDP’s own country program for North Korea, which is a $38.3 million portion of the larger total. Both documents cover the period from 2011 to 2015.
Click here for the UNDP Country Program.
The UNDP contribution is noteworthy, among other things, for the fact that most of the money--$34 million—can be counted on to exist. That amount is described in the annex to the country program as coming from “regular” UNDP resources, meaning its core budget. Only $4 million of UNDP’s spending in North Korea comes from other contributions.
A UNDP spokesman underlined—as does the country program—the extent to which UNDP claims to be adhering to newly strengthened safeguards in relation to its North Korean program.
UNDP activities in North Korea exploded into scandal in 2007, leading to suspension of its program until 2009. Among other things, an independent investigative panel subsequently determined that UNDP had wrongfully provided millions in hard currency to the North Korean regime, ignored U.N. Security Council sanctions in passing on dual-use equipment that could conceivably be used in the country's nuclear program, and allowed North Korean government employees to fill key positions.
In the current program, UNDP emphasizes that it has revamped its hiring and currency policies, but adds that “a proper monitoring and evaluation plan is necessary to ensure accountability and transparency in project implementation.” The careful wording indicates that at least some of that planning remains to be done.
While UNDP has actual cash to spend, however, nearly $119 million of some $128 million that UNICEF plans to spend in North Korea over the next four years—about 93 per cent—is expected to come from outside donors, according to UNICEF’s own country plan for North Korea. That is, as UNICEF delicately puts it, “subject to the availability of specific purpose contributions” from those willing to put up the money.
Click here for the UNICEF Country Program.
Much of that volunteer UNICEF money would go toward building up North Korea’s grievously neglected clinical health care facilities, bolstering maternal and early childhood care, early childhood education and large-scale vaccination and medication campaigns to fight AIDs, malaria and tuberculosis.
Most of the anti-disease money is supposed to come from the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (GFATM), a Geneva-based institution financed in part of Microsoft Found Bill Gates and his wife, Melinda. Nowadays, the U.S. government contributes 28 percent of the GFATM’s funds.
And so far, GFATM has only handed over $12.45 million to UNICEF, according to the U.N. agency’s spokesman, Chris de Bono, for its anti-malarial and TV campaign. (According to GFATM’s website, UNICEF has received $18.35 million, out of about $31.5 million approved so far.) According to de Bono, another $56 million is due to come from GFATM starting in 2013, provided a “number of conditions” laid down by the Global Fund are met.
Those conditions, according to Global Fund communications director Jon Liden, largely bear on whether the money is meaning the health goals set by the donors. Among them, for example, is a commitment to cut in half the North Korean death rate from malaria by 2013, using the death rate in 2007 as a baseline (0.31 per 1,000 people, vs. 0.62.).
Click here for Global Fund report on North Korea
Failure to meet the targets could result in reduced funding for the next three years, or a cutoff.
The additional “other” revenues required by UNICEF for 2011-2015 will be raised “as we get into our program,” according to spokesman De Bono, “as is our usual practice.”
The same apparently applies to the bulk of $101 million or so to be spent in North Korea by the World Health Organization (WHO). WHO activities include supporting UNICEF on the malaria and TB campaigns, but also building up North Korean health care, supplying equipment and drugs, and helping institute telemedicine.
But WHO’s own “country cooperation strategy” for North Korea extends only to 2013, meaning all of its fundraising plans for the 2011-2015 have not yet been written.
In the current strategy document, completed in 2009, WHO notes that it will need to use about $3 million of its regular budget and mobilize $20 million annually from voluntary contributions to meet North Koreas needs. This, the document says, “will be a challenging task.”
Just how challenging, perhaps, can be seen in the case of the struggling World Food Program (WFP), whose efforts are outlined in the U.N. Strategic Framework as trying to provide “fortified locally produced nutritious foods” to young children.
In fact, WFP has been running a dwindling operation to provide emergency food to many more of North Korea’s desperately hungry population. But donors stampeded away from the WFP fundraising effort, especially after the Kim regime detonated a nuclear device last year, and questions were raised about whether the government was profiting from the food effort.
Questioned Raised About Who Profits From Aid to North Korea
Currently, WFP has dialed back the goal of its emergency food aid operation from $500 million in 2008-2009 to $91 million.
In the 2011-2015 strategic framework, UNDP and the Rome-based Food and Agriculture Organization will be working on amplifying North Korea’s meager food supply, enhancing, among other things, areas where “double-cropping” is possible, and adding to fruit orchards and livestock herds. UNDP’s project documents say it will spend $13 million on “seed production in alternative cereals” –defined as wheat, barley, soybeans, potatoes—as well as “wild fruit processing and protein-rich production.”
Some of UNDP’s protein projects, however, seem decidedly outside the mainstream, or even bizarre. In its program document, for example, UNDP says it will “support pilot production of protein-rich plans, such as spirulina and pistia statiotes, which will supply nutrients.”
Spirulina is an algae that has gained a reputation in alternative food circles as a diet supplement. In the U.S., health food websites offer a powdered form for anywhere from $24 to $33 per pound—hardly a cheap source of protein for starving people. It is also sold in the U.S. as tropical fish food. But whether North Korea needs a “pilot project” to produce spirulina is debatable.
As far back as October, 2003, a North Korean news agency declared that the Kim government’s botanical institute had, “after years of researches [sic] completed the method of artificially cultivating spirulina at low cost.” The agency added, “It can be cultivated easily in greenhouses too.” Indeed, spirulina is currently listed as a marketable product on a North Korean export website. And on Aug. 6, a Chinese news agency announced that North Korean researchers had created a new spirulina vaccination “which prevents and treats domestic animals' diseases and increases their weight.” Whether there was any independent verification of that claim was not mentioned in the news article.
As for pistia statiotes, also known as water lettuce, according to the website of the Center for Aquatic and Invasive Plants at the University of Florida, the floating plant is a fast-growing weed, which can block waterways, deplete oxygen supplies in water, and threaten fish populations. It is described as an obnoxious invader in West Africa and Australia. While pistia can survive in temperate climates, it abhors cold and thrives mainly in tropical and semi-tropical environments—not exactly what North Korea is known for.
One of the few places where it is cultivated for its nutritional value is apparently southern China, where it is sometimes used as a supplemental carp food.
In a country full of starving or semi-starving people, of course, almost anything may be viewed as edible. But in the U.N.’s renewed desire to pour money into North Korea, the value of at least some of the projects it is pushing for approval may be hard to swallow.
George Russell is executive editor of Fox News.
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
Kim Jong-il’s dangerous choice
While we were celebrating two presidential summits, Kim Jong-il was plotting his switch to a hard-line track. The future - for both sides - is uncertain. April 20, 2010 |
| Whenever the North Korean regime prepares to announce a successor, it commits a provocative act of violence against the South. The 1976 Panmunjom ax murder incident (in which North Korean guards attacked and killed two American officers) was a prelude to the Kim Il Sung-Kim Jong-il succession. With the incident, North Korea tried to heighten the tension on the Korean Peninsula and reinforce support both within the regime and among the public through rumors of an attack from the South. At the time, it craftily manipulated the political dynamics of neighboring countries. With the nightmare of the Vietnam War over in April 1975, an antiwar atmosphere prevailed in the U.S. and China was devastated by the Tangshan earthquake, which took some 300,000 lives. Now North Korea is working on the succession from Kim Jong-il to Kim Jong-un. The unrest caused by the father’s failing health and the instability of the succession process has been aggravated by the disastrous failure of recent currency reforms. The U.S. does not want another war without finishing its wars in Afghanistan and Iraq first. China is fully immersed in its preparations for the Expo 2010 Shanghai. South Korea will fall into World Cup fever right after the regional elections are over in June. In addition, the G-20 Summit meeting will be held in Seoul in the fall. And North Korea may have fired a torpedo right into the middle of this mess. The Cheonan tragedy will go down in history as a major turning point in the history of the two Koreas. North Korea faces a crossroad in determining its fate. One path is the “soft track” - to return to the six-party talks, give up its nuclear weapons and reform and open its economy. The other is the “hard track” - to refuse the six-party talks, insist on keeping its nuclear program and continue with brinkmanship at least until 2012. That year, too, will be decisive in many ways. North Korea has said it will become a “superpower” by then. Kim Jong-il will celebrate his 70th birthday. Kim Jong-un will turn 30, and it will be the 100th anniversary of Kim Il Sung’s birth. There will also be elections or other forms of leadership shift in the U.S., China, Russia and South Korea. North Korea’s hard track will call for it to provoke South Korea and up the ante on its nuclear program until 2012, when negotiations begin with new leaders. By then, the subject of negotiation on the table will have changed from nuclear renunciation to nuclear disarmament. Witnessing the Cheonan incident, it seems that North Korea has ultimately chosen the hard track. The Sunshine Policy of the Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun administrations, which was implemented with the hope that Pyongyang would choose the soft track, seems to have failed. North Korea deceived South Korea and international society even during the summit meetings, when it continued to develop nuclear weapons. It turns out that the liberal administrations were naive in their calculations, and all their hopes for reform by the North have been dashed. All this time, North Korea had been grinding its knives while all of us, celebrating the two summit meetings, practiced our congratulatory speeches. What should South Korea do now? With Pyongyang on a hard track, South Korea and the U.S. should reshape their North Korea policies. All strategies, including those on civilian exchange, aid, nuclear weapons and reunification, should be reset. South Korea’s principle of reunification through the formation of an ethnic community was based on the premise that North Korea would accept a soft track. Now that North Korea’s intentions are clear, even this master plan will have to be reviewed. The sinking of the Cheonan is a tragedy for South Korea. However, we can use it as an opportunity to shape the future of the Korean Peninsula. If South Korea and the international community form a resolute, united front, North Korea will experience internal tremors. The hereditary rule of the Kim Il Sung dynasty has lasted for 62 years. It has reached the point where it may fail from fatigue. History shows that no tyranny can last forever. Most dictatorships end in the first generation, and often tragically. The dictatorship relay of the Castro brothers in Cuba might be considered long, but it won’t go past 60 years. The Duvalier regime of father and son in Haiti lasted just 29 years. Even with all its strangeness, North Korea is unlikely to witness the succession of a grandson in their dictatorship. By choosing the hard track, the Kim Jong-il regime has set sail for a sea of isolation and unknown dangers. We don’t know when and where the next North Korean weapon might be fired. But if and when it is, it will surely be much more powerful than the one that exploded in the waters near Baengnyeong Island. *The writer is an editorial writer of the JoongAng Ilbo. Translation by the JoongAng Daily staff. by Kim Jin |
Friday, April 16, 2010
Kim Jong Il's 'Cashbox'
04.15.10, 12:00 PM ET
Despite all the pomp and nuclear summitry, North Korea keeps sliding down President Barack Obama's to-do list. Yet something must be done. The threat here is not solely North Korea's own arsenal, or its role, despite U.S. and United Nations sanctions, as a 24/7 convenience store for rogue regimes interested in weapons of mass destruction plus delivery systems. The further problem is that North Korea provides perverse inspiration for other despotisms.
While Obama talks about a world without nuclear weapons, Kim Jong Il sets tyrants everywhere a swaggering example of how to build the bomb and get away with it. Indeed, if recluse weirdo Kim can have the bomb, how on earth could Iran's ayatollahs face themselves in the mirror every morning if they don't have one too?
In the new millennium, Pyongyang has been blazing a proliferation trail that includes illicit nuclear tests in 2006 and 2009; illicit tests of ballistic missiles; and such extravagant stuff as help for Syria in building a secret nuclear reactor (which might even now be cranking out plutonium for bombs, had the Israelis not destroyed it with an air strike in 2007). Coupled with such North Korean habits as vending missiles and munitions to the likes of Syria, Iran and Iran's Lebanon-based terrorist clients, Hezbollah, all this is a wildly dangerous mix.
So what to do about North Korea? Over the past 16 years, nuclear talks and freeze deals have repeatedly failed, under both presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton. Asked about North Korea in a press conference at the close of this week's nuclear summit in Washington, Obama gave the vague reply that he hoped economic pressure would lead to a resumption of the six-party talks. But he ducked the question of why sanctions have failed to halt North Korea's nuclear program, saying "I'm not going to give you a full dissertation on North Korean behavior."
OK, it's not Obama's job to deliver dissertations on North Korea. But he missed a fat opportunity to say something genuinely informed and useful. The president--and his entire foreign policy team--ought to be reading and talking (loudly) about the material contained in a highly readable 36-page monograph published just last month by the Strategic Studies Institute of the Army War College: "Criminal Sovereignty: Understanding North Korea's Illicit International Activities."
This study is co-authored by three men who share an unusually clear-eyed interest in exploring the nitty-gritty of North Korea's inner workings, Paul Rexton Kan, Bruce E. Bechtol Jr. and Robert Collins. Among them, going back more than three decades, they have more experience observing North Korea than some of the high-profile diplomats who have parleyed with Pyongyang in recent years from the five-star hotels of Beijing and Berlin. For this publication the three analysts draw on congressional testimony, press reports from around Asia and interviews with North Korean defectors (a resource too often ignored or underutilized by Washington officialdom).
"Criminal Sovereignty" focuses not on proliferation per se, but on a curious institution within North Korea's government, usually referred to as Bureau No, 39. And what, exactly, is Bureau No. 39?
Located in a heavily guarded concrete building in downtown Pyongyang, Bureau No. 39 is the nerve center of North Korea's state-run network of international crime. Its official name is Central Committee Bureau 39 of the Korean Workers' Party. The authors refer to it by what Bechtol says is the more accurately nuanced translation of "Office No. 39."
The mission of Office No. 39 is to generate torrents of cash for North Korean ruler Kim Jong Il, by way of illicit activities abroad. Favorite rackets include international trafficking of drugs produced under state supervision in North Korea, and state production and laundering into world markets of counterfeit U.S. currency, and cigarettes. Such activities are tied directly to the survival of Kim's regime. The authors report "the crimes organized by Office No. 39 are committed beyond the borders of North Korea by the regime itself, not solely for the personal enrichment of the leadership, but to prop up its armed forces and to fund its military programs."
What sets Office No. 39 apart from more pedestrian political corruption or organized crime is that this operation is not some wayward private gang or unauthorized appendage of government. It is an integral and institutionalized part of the North Korean regime. As such, it enjoys the perquisites and protective trappings of the modern nation-state, including the use of North Korean embassies and state-run businesses abroad, and the reluctance of other nations to intervene in the sovereign affairs of North Korea.
Office No. 39 is directly tied to Kim himself, who set it up way back in 1974, when his father, Kim Il Sung, was still in power. The authors explain: "This office was established for the explicit purpose of running illegal activities to generate currency for the North Korean government." Since the 1991 Soviet collapse, which ended subsidies from Moscow, Office No. 39 has become ever more important, and especially over the past 10 years, its activities have become more prolific.
Office No. 39 continues to report directly to Kim, who took charge of the regime when his father died in 1994. According to a North Korean defector interviewed by the authors, Kim Kwang-Jin, who has firsthand knowledge of North Korean financial practices, Office No. 39 is also known to North Korean insiders as "the keeper of Kim's cashbox." Organized into 10 departments, specializing in various illicit activities, Office No. 39 serves as a slush fund through which billions of dollars have flowed over the years. In a bizarre personal touch, these funds are collected and presented periodically to Kim in aggregate amounts, labeled "revolutionary funds," on such special occasions as his official birthday, Feb. 12, or the birthday of his late father, Kim Il Sung, April 15th.
This money is not spent on easing the miseries of millions of repressed and famished North Koreans. That effort--from which Kim also has a record of appropriating resources to sustain his regime--is left to the likes of international donors, contributing via outfits such as the United Nations. The authors explain that the profits of Bureau 39 help swell the offshore bank accounts of Kim's regime, used not only to pay for his luxurious lifestyle, but to buy the loyalties and materials that underpin his totalitarian, nuclear-entwined military state.
If Office No. 39 enjoys the amenities of operating as part of the North Korean state, it is by the same token an avenue of vulnerability leading straight to Kim Jong Il. That was evident back in 2005, when the U.S. Treasury caused clear pain for Kim by targeting a major hub of Office No. 39 financial activities in Macau--only to be only to be yanked off the case by a State Department desperate to coddle Kim into a nuclear freeze deal, which then flopped.
These days U.S. and U.N. efforts to corral North Korea seem focused narrowly on activities tied directly to nuclear proliferation. It's been a while since Washington complained loudly about the rest of Kim's rackets. Obama needs to think bigger, speak up and solicit the world's help in cracking down much harder on the all the networks of Office No. 39. Emptying Kim's cashbox could go farther toward ending the North Korean nuclear threat than any amount of six-party talks or summits.
Claudia Rosett, a journalist in residence with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, writes a weekly column on foreign affairs for Forbes.
Read more Forbes Opinions here.
Humanitarian violations in North Korea
What is the first thought that runs through your mind when you hear “North Korea?” Is it nuclear bombs? Or Communism? Or even their “dear leader,” Kim Jong-Il? Or maybe you were one of the few who thought about the human rights violations.
At the end of World War II, the Korean peninsula was divided into Soviet and American occupied zones. Because North Korea refused to participate in the United Nations supervised election in 1948, two separate Korean governments were created for the two occupation zones. The clash of Communism and Democracy led to the Korean War in 1950. A 1953 armistice ended the fighting, however the two countries are technically still at war with each other because a peace treaty was never signed. Currently, communist North Korea is a single-party state led by the Korean Workers’ Party, of which Kim Jong-Il is the head. They claim to have an arsenal of Weapons of Mass Destruction and to possess nuclear weapons. This is the North Korea that is commonly portrayed throughout the world. However, there is another side to this dark story.
Many people around the world are unaware of the human rights violations that exist in North Korea. Do you even know that they exist? Here are some basic facts about the human rights crisis from the organization Liberty in North Korea:
The North Korean government forbids freedom of speech, press, assembly, and association. They even control the press and barely allow any outside information into the country. North Korea consistently ranks first among the countries with the least amount of freedom of the press. Freedom of religion, physical movement, and workers’ rights are also severely restricted.
The mid-1990s famine killed over one million people in part due to the government’s neglect and mismanagement of relief efforts. During the past five years, the government has continued to let their people suffer from severe food shortages and a near-total breakdown in the public health system. This has led to devastating malnutrition in North Korea and an entire generation of children physically and mentally impaired.
Thirty-seven percent of children in North Korea have stunted grown due to malnutrition and 23 percent are underweight.
There are an estimated 200,000 North Koreans who were forced into political concentration camps. They are provided no explanation or reasoning as to why they are brought to such a place. Usually, all sentences are for life, and execution and torture are a common method of punishment. Recently, satellite images revealed gas chambers in these concentration camps.
Article Seven of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court defines 11 categories of acts that constitute crimes against humanity: murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation or forcible transfer of population, imprisonment, torture, rape, sexual slavery or enforced prostitution, persecution and enforced disappearance of persons, apartheid and other inhumane acts. North Korea is guilty of committing every single one of these acts on a systematic basis with the exception of apartheid.
North Korean laborers under labor contracts are forced to work under arrangements where they are denied the freedom of movement and a large portion of their salaries are deposited into government accounts.
About 10,000 to 15,000 laborers are subjected to harsh conditions in jobs involving construction and logging.
Estimates of 50,000 up to 400,000 refugees have fled to neighboring countries, risking torture and execution if captured.
Of these refugees, 70 percent of North Korean women and children who escape into China face exploitation and sex trafficking. In North Korea, children are routinely forced into child labor, and sexual servitude within the prison camps.
Monday, March 29, 2010
N. Korea in a state of emergency again?
Recently, the mass media has reported that a crisis situation in North Korea is looming again. The reports are based on unconfirmed information that North Korean leader Kim Jong-il may not live beyond 2013 and the United States, South Korea and China will soon meet to discuss the emergency situation likely to follow his death.
These reports are reminiscent of the aftermath of Kim Il-sung's sudden death in 1994 and the subsequent development of U.S.-North Korea nuclear negotiations and the conclusion of the Geneva Framework Agreement. Some speculated at that time that the U.S. made significant concessions to North Korea, believing that the North Korean regime would soon collapse, then the North Korean nuclear weapons facilities would be dismantled and the light-water reactors provided for the North could be taken over by South Korea.
Some North Korea specialists warn that even if such reports are correct and the South Korean and U.S. government authorities have been preparing for such an emergency, the mass media and both government authorities should not talk about the issue openly. In order to understand the nature of the crisis situation, the term crisis situation needs to be clearly defined. Otherwise, we won't be able to tell whether the North is faced with a crisis or formulate the right strategy.
The "crisis situation" can be defined broadly or narrowly. One scenario is that following the North Korean leader's death or incapacitation, a single person (his son, Kim Jong-eun, or somebody else) or a collective leadership (composed of both the party and military elites) takes over power. These two leaderships will preserve the Kim Jong-il system, a totalitarian autocracy.
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The second scenario is that after Kim's death, one person or a collective leadership (same as above) will take over power, and both leaderships will abandon the Kim jong-il regime to seek a more democratic one and conciliatory policy toward the West and South Korea.
The final scenario is that after Kim Jong-il's death, the North Korean regime collapses and the entire nation falls into chaos. The broad definition encompasses these three scenarios, while the narrow definition includes only the third. The mass media and U.S. government authorities seem to identify the crisis situation in North Korea with the third outcome. The most desirable scenario for South Korea and the U.S. is the second, while the worst is the third. In terms of feasibility, the first scenario is most likely. If the third scenario becomes a reality, the North Korean nuclear issue could become extremely problematic.
It is said that South Korea and the U.S. have a plan to deal with North Korea's weapons of mass destruction. However, some serious questions need to be addressed. Do they need the authorization of the U.N. for their intervention in the North Korean crisis? Can casus belli be invoked in this situation? Who should take care of North Korea's WMDs? - The U.S. alone? The U.S. and South Korea jointly? The U.S., South Korea and China together or the U.N. Command alone?
If the first scenario plays out, the status quo in the Korean peninsula is likely to continue, and the North Korean nuclear issue will remain unresolved. The reason why the first scenario is most feasible is that the Kim Jong-il system, which is the continuation of the Kim Il-sung system, is firmly established in North Korea and no organized opposition, military or civilian, is possible in such a totalitarian autocracy. In other words, the North Korean regime is similar to the Cuban regime, not the Ceausescu regime of Rumania.
Another point to be made in this connection is that state collapse, regime collapse, regime change and government change need to be distinguished. States rarely collapse; they die hard. The first scenario belongs to the category of government change (soft landing); the second, that of regime change; and the third, that of regime collapse (hard landing).
The North Korean nuclear issue can provide an opportunity to make the second scenario a reality. If North Korea and the U.S. swap the denuclearization of North Korea with the security guarantee of North Korea simultaneously, North Korea is likely to abandon its nuclear programs. As the former U.S. President Jimmy Carter said, there is no reason why the U.S. cannot give security guarantees to North Korea as the latter requests.
The word "simultaneously" does not mean "at the same time" in this usage. The dismantlement process and the verification process can hardly be implemented at the same time, just as the U.S. recognition of North Korea, lifting of all the U.S. and U.N. economic sanctions and the U.S.-North Korea peace treaty cannot be implemented at the same time. A carefully planned sequential implementation schedule should be drawn up and the wordings and expressions of the agreement should be clear and unmistakable. Both sides have often argued over the wordings and accused each other of using the ambiguity for the purpose of derailing the negotiation process or of gaining more concessions from the other side.
The North Korean regime has been able to preserve the Kim Jong-il system since the death of Kim Il-sung by carefully balancing the "rogue state" status and the "failed state" status because the North Korean leadership knows that if it tries to get out of one of them, it will risk its political system. Ironically, the U.S. efforts to transform North Korea into a normal state for the last 15 years have helped the North Korean regime survive.
Park Sang-seek is a professor at the Graduate Institute of Peace Studies, Kyung Hee University. - Ed.
Friday, March 26, 2010
North Korea seems to Lose Kim Jong II
Kim Jong II is a supreme leader of North Korea and it seems that it is going to lose the leader in coming days as his health is declining day by day. He was paralysed by a stroke in 2008 and now he is suffering from chronic Kidney failure and he is on dialysis every week. He is also suffering from High Blood pressure and Diabetes.
Kim is 68 years old and the doctors think it is hard to recover from thesemedical conditions at this age. And north Korean people are expecting their leader to recover and they are sure that he will be back in action soon.
His recent public appearance was on a public rally on 7th of March where he found slamming his palm on his unmoving left palm because of paralysis. Though his regime was appreciated by many people there are lot of people who opposed his strategies and rules also. But with this health condition it not more likely that he will be in the same position anymore…we just have to wait and watch.
North Korea fears 2012 disaster film will thwart rise as superpower
North Korea's government is scrambling to prevent pirated copies of the film 2012 from getting into the country because Pyongyang fears the disaster movie could jinx its lucky year, according to a report.
A scene from disaster film 2012: North Korea's government is scrambling to prevent pirated copies of the film 2012
The regime's reclusive leader, Kim Jong-il, has said 2012 will be the year that North Korea will “open the grand gates to becoming a rising superpower”.
April 15, 2012 will mark the centenary of the birth of Kim Il-sung, the founder of the nation who is still revered as The Great Leader - and remains the official head of state despite the fact that he died in 1994.
North Korea’s leaders do not want their people to watch a film in which the Earth is obliterated by a series of massive natural disasters, including earthquakes, tidal waves and volcanic eruptions, wiping out most of the planet, in the year they are due to rise in international stature.
Japan’s Asahi newspaper reported that “numerous” North Koreans caught watching copies of the film smuggled over the border from China have been arrested.
Authorities are prosecuting anyone caught in possession of the film with “a grave provocation against the development of the state,” a charge that carries a possible prison term of five years, the paper reported, citing anonymous sources.
Kim’s government has promised North Korea’s citizens that they will be living in a “strong and prosperous state” by 2012 and efforts are under way to spruce up the capital, Pyongyang. Among the promises from the regime is a vow to complete the 105-storey Ryugyong Hotel, which has sat unfinished since funds ran out in 1993.
Any improvements are likely to be cosmetic, however, after a series of economic and labour reforms earlier this year that ended in disaster and further ate into the impoverished nation’s funds.
U.N. slams rights abuses in North Korea
GENEVA
(Reuters) - The U.N. Human Rights Council on Thursday slammed widespread abuses in North Korea, among them torture and labor camps for political prisoners, and renewed the mandate of its investigator for the state for a year.
Adopting a resolution submitted by the European Union, the Council also called on Pyongyang to ensure that food aid is distributed on the basis of need to its hungry population.
The reclusive state is already under pressure from world powers to end its year long boycott of nuclear disarmament-for-aid talks.
South Korea, Japan and the United States were among 28 states voting in favor, while North Korea's major ally China and Russia were among five against. Thirteen abstained and one delegation was absent for the vote at the 47-member forum.
The Council deplored "the grave, widespread and systematic human rights abuses in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, in particular the use of torture and labor camps against political prisoners and repatriated citizens of DPRK." Choe Myong Nam, a North Korean diplomat in Geneva, rejected the resolution as "politically motivated" and "full of distortions and fabrications."
Vitit Muntarbhorn, U.N. special rapporteur on human rights in North Korea, said in a report this month that human rights violations were "harrowing and horrific" in the country.
These included public executions, a pervasive spying system, and a distorted food distribution favoring the elite.
The Thai jurist, who has held the independent post since 2004, is due to be replaced in June after the maximum 6 years.
He has never been allowed to visit the country but his reports are based on information from sources including rights groups, U.N. agencies and interviews with North Korean refugees.
The Council called on Pyongyang to ensure "full, rapid and unimpeded access of humanitarian assistance that is delivered on the basis of need."
Separately, Josette Sheeran, head of the U.N.'s World Food Programme (WFP), told a news briefing on Thursday that North Koreans suffered high levels of acute and serious malnutrition.
The agency says 6.2 million out of North Korea's population of 23 million need food aid, but it is only able to reach 1.5 million, mainly young children and women, due to lack of funds.
"It is a challenging environment," Sheeran said.
(Editing by Elizabeth Fullerton)
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
The Men Who Die for Kim Jong-il's Criminal Stupidity
Kang Chol-hwanNorth Korea's former deputy prime minister and National Planning Committee chairman, Kim Tal-hyon, who visited Seoul in 1992 leading an economic team, was a member of nation founder Kim Il-sung's family and an economics expert who enjoyed Kim's confidence. Returning home from Seoul, he realized that reform and market opening were the only way for the North to survive. He endeavored to revive the North Korean economy but committed suicide in 2000.
He fell out of favor with leader Kim Jong-il while attempting to turn around the Hungnam fertilizer plant which he saw as the key to resolving the North's food problem. The plant, built by the Japanese colonialists, was a sort of lifeline for the North's agriculture, producing over 1.6 million tons of fertilizer a year. But production plummeted due to obsolete equipment. Convinced that improved fertilizer production would help, Kim Tal-hyon staked his fate on building it up.
He reportedly urged Kim Jong-il to invest US$100 million in the latest equipment. A short while later, the Organization and Guidance Department of the Workers' Party held a rally of engineers and laborers at the People's Palace of Culture in Pyongyang. Kim went along and was dumbfounded to find himself denounced by participants. They reportedly shouted, "Kim Tal-hyon is a turncoat" and "betrayed the revolutionary classes." Relegated to nominally managing the February 8 Vinalon Complex in 1993, he committed suicide in August 2000 upon hearing a word that the State Security Agency were coming to arrest him. Workers at the Hungnam fertilizer plant reportedly wept when they heard the news.
Had the Hungnam fertilizer plant been renovated as planned, the North might have been able to reduce the scope of the mass starvation of tens of thousands of people in the 1990s. Kim Jong-il, while pouring $870 million into the construction of the bombastic Kumsusan Memorial Palace for Kim Il-sung, left the fertilizer plant to turn into a pile of scrap metal.
In 1997, another party leader was publicly executed in Pyongyang. So Kwan-hi, the then party secretary for agricultural affairs, had also been close to Kim Il-sung. Charged with minor graft, he was made a scapegoat by Kim Jong-il for the mass starvation. He was denounced as a spy for the U.S. imperialist and shot in front of tens of thousands of people. The State Security Agency claimed the starvation was all So Kwan-hi's fault, and North Koreans believed that, unable to credit that their "dear leader" himself could be to blame.
When the Lee Myung-bak government took office in 2008, Pyongyang started setting up another scapegoat. Choi Sung-chol, the former deputy director of the party's United Front Department, was thrown in a concentration camp because Kim Jong-il was angry about the unexpected election result in the South, where he had thought the Left would win.
Now reports say that Pak Nam-gi, the former director of the Planning and Finance Department, was executed by firing squad for the botched currency reform of late last year. Nobody thinks that Pak Nam-gi, who was in his late 70s, played the leading role in such an enormous task. The disastrous currency reform and its fallout are shaking the regime to its core, and North Koreans have to fear execution without having committed any serious crimes. The people know that they are dying in place of someone else.
By Kang Chol-hwan from the Chosun Ilbo's News Desk
Ominous Signs From N. Korea
By Sah Dong-seok
Deputy Managing Editor
Early in the morning every Saturday, KBS 1TV broadcasts ``North Korea Now,'' a 25-minute program that introduces propaganda clips produced by North Korea along with the latest news on the reclusive country. KBS says the program is intended to help the two Koreas expand sympathy for understanding and reconciliation, thus contributing to realizing national reunification.
Most of the propaganda clips deal with the North's bright side and shed light on ordinary North Koreans' ordinary lives. From what is seen in the program, viewers hardly feel anything special about North Korea these days.
Yet ``real'' news reports on the communist country that have come out in the last couple of months are highly ominous and precarious.
The bungled currency reform tops the list. In late November, North Korea redenominated its currency in what was believed to be efforts to tame inflation and tighten control over the country's budding market economy. The measure, however, reportedly worsened the North's economic problems. More than anything else, the country's food situation went from bad to worse as markets were forced to close and North Koreans faced the threat of being robbed of their hard-earned fortunes. After the measure took effect, North Koreans held on to scarce goods, prompting prices to soar. Rice prices, for instance, surged 30 to 40 times.
North Korea has reopened hundreds of markets after the botched reform sparked anger among North Koreans who had been enduring famine and poverty for decades. Experts say North Korea's relatively quick move reflects how serious the country's recent problems are.
A string of recent news regarding North Korea may be instrumental in understanding the country's dire situation of late.
What was most shocking was that Pak Nam-gi, a North Korean financier who orchestrated the country's currency reform, had been reportedly executed by a firing squad in Pyongyang. The report has not been confirmed yet but appears plausible, given he was accused of ruining the economy and hampering Kim Jong-il's plan to hand power over to his youngest son.
Pak is seen as a scapegoat for North Korea's failed currency reform to diffuse negative public sentiment toward the ailing leader but the fact that such sensitive news has been revealed so quickly shows that sudden changes could take place in North Korea at any time.
Assistant U.S. Secretary of State Kurt Campbell told a closed-door meeting in Seoul in early February that Kim Jong-il, 68, may die within three years, raising fears about a North Korea without the supreme leader. Campbell based his estimate on medical information but no further details were known. Kim disappeared from public view in August 2008 due to a stroke before showing up in early 2009. His health draws keen interest because of concerns that his sudden death could trigger instability and a power struggle in the North.
Korea Times columnist Andrei Lankov, who is well versed in North Korea affairs, has detected ``something strange'' that has begun to happen in Pyongyang. In his contribution to the online edition of Asia Times earlier this month, Lankov said the North Korean leadership has taken some actions that have clearly damaged the interests of the ruling clique in a major departure from its hitherto policies and cited the currency reform as the best example of such weird and self-defeating policy decisions.
He finds the nuclear-armed North not faring well in diplomacy, either. Formerly, North Korea used its blackmail tactics effectively to win concessions from the United States and South Korea but more recently, such tactics were handled poorly. ``At any rate, something unusual seems to be happening in Pyongyang and it's probably the time to think about the future a bit more seriously,'' he said in the article.
More ominously, the non-profit International Crisis Group has warned against the belated awareness of a crisis on the Korean Peninsula. Robert Templer, the group's Asia Program director, says, ``Instability, a coup or even a regime collapse would not be observable from the outside until well underway and any of these scenarios could create a humanitarian emergency that might require international intervention.''
Some hard-liners have gone a step further to raise the possibility of the North's imminent collapse, noting that Kim Jong-il could lose his grip on North Korea quickly as more North Koreans complain about the food situation. There is speculation that the North will suffer a shortage of at least 500,000 tons of grain in the spring food-shortage season between April and June.
Of course, North Korean instability has always been a familiar topic and may simply be a storm in a teacup as before. Nonetheless, it would not be too much to brace for the worst-case scenario.
The solution to the ``latest crisis'' may be found in Kim Jong-il's alleged visit to China either late this month or early next month. If Kim shows some flexibility to the six-way talks and nuclear weapons during his visit, the looming concern about North Korea's imminent crisis will fade away.
sahds@koreatimes.co.kr
Deputy Managing Editor
Early in the morning every Saturday, KBS 1TV broadcasts ``North Korea Now,'' a 25-minute program that introduces propaganda clips produced by North Korea along with the latest news on the reclusive country. KBS says the program is intended to help the two Koreas expand sympathy for understanding and reconciliation, thus contributing to realizing national reunification.
Most of the propaganda clips deal with the North's bright side and shed light on ordinary North Koreans' ordinary lives. From what is seen in the program, viewers hardly feel anything special about North Korea these days.
Yet ``real'' news reports on the communist country that have come out in the last couple of months are highly ominous and precarious.
The bungled currency reform tops the list. In late November, North Korea redenominated its currency in what was believed to be efforts to tame inflation and tighten control over the country's budding market economy. The measure, however, reportedly worsened the North's economic problems. More than anything else, the country's food situation went from bad to worse as markets were forced to close and North Koreans faced the threat of being robbed of their hard-earned fortunes. After the measure took effect, North Koreans held on to scarce goods, prompting prices to soar. Rice prices, for instance, surged 30 to 40 times.
North Korea has reopened hundreds of markets after the botched reform sparked anger among North Koreans who had been enduring famine and poverty for decades. Experts say North Korea's relatively quick move reflects how serious the country's recent problems are.
A string of recent news regarding North Korea may be instrumental in understanding the country's dire situation of late.
What was most shocking was that Pak Nam-gi, a North Korean financier who orchestrated the country's currency reform, had been reportedly executed by a firing squad in Pyongyang. The report has not been confirmed yet but appears plausible, given he was accused of ruining the economy and hampering Kim Jong-il's plan to hand power over to his youngest son.
Pak is seen as a scapegoat for North Korea's failed currency reform to diffuse negative public sentiment toward the ailing leader but the fact that such sensitive news has been revealed so quickly shows that sudden changes could take place in North Korea at any time.
Assistant U.S. Secretary of State Kurt Campbell told a closed-door meeting in Seoul in early February that Kim Jong-il, 68, may die within three years, raising fears about a North Korea without the supreme leader. Campbell based his estimate on medical information but no further details were known. Kim disappeared from public view in August 2008 due to a stroke before showing up in early 2009. His health draws keen interest because of concerns that his sudden death could trigger instability and a power struggle in the North.
Korea Times columnist Andrei Lankov, who is well versed in North Korea affairs, has detected ``something strange'' that has begun to happen in Pyongyang. In his contribution to the online edition of Asia Times earlier this month, Lankov said the North Korean leadership has taken some actions that have clearly damaged the interests of the ruling clique in a major departure from its hitherto policies and cited the currency reform as the best example of such weird and self-defeating policy decisions.
He finds the nuclear-armed North not faring well in diplomacy, either. Formerly, North Korea used its blackmail tactics effectively to win concessions from the United States and South Korea but more recently, such tactics were handled poorly. ``At any rate, something unusual seems to be happening in Pyongyang and it's probably the time to think about the future a bit more seriously,'' he said in the article.
More ominously, the non-profit International Crisis Group has warned against the belated awareness of a crisis on the Korean Peninsula. Robert Templer, the group's Asia Program director, says, ``Instability, a coup or even a regime collapse would not be observable from the outside until well underway and any of these scenarios could create a humanitarian emergency that might require international intervention.''
Some hard-liners have gone a step further to raise the possibility of the North's imminent collapse, noting that Kim Jong-il could lose his grip on North Korea quickly as more North Koreans complain about the food situation. There is speculation that the North will suffer a shortage of at least 500,000 tons of grain in the spring food-shortage season between April and June.
Of course, North Korean instability has always been a familiar topic and may simply be a storm in a teacup as before. Nonetheless, it would not be too much to brace for the worst-case scenario.
The solution to the ``latest crisis'' may be found in Kim Jong-il's alleged visit to China either late this month or early next month. If Kim shows some flexibility to the six-way talks and nuclear weapons during his visit, the looming concern about North Korea's imminent crisis will fade away.
sahds@koreatimes.co.kr
'Kim Jong-il Undergoing Dialysis Every 2 Weeks'
 N. Korean leader |
Staff Reporter
North Korean leader Kim Jong-il appears to be suffering from diabetes and high-blood pressure and has been undergoing dialysis every two weeks, the head of a state-run think thank said, Wednesday.
Kim, 68, is on a diet and has succeeded in losing more than 10 kilograms since 2009, according to Nam Sung-wook, director of the Institute for National Security Strategy (INSS), an affiliate of the National Intelligence Service, at a lecture in Seoul.
"He has been on a diet to prevent a second stroke and is now maintaining a weight of around 70 to 73 kilograms," Nam said.
He estimated that Kim, who is 5 feet 10 inches tall, weighed 86 kilograms before he allegedly had a stroke on Aug. 15, 2008.
He claimed that Kim became serious about his diet after he regained his health in January 2009 and lost a significant amount of weight in the following three months.
In 2008, the INSS said Kim had a high chance of having circulatory problems due to obesity.
Nam underlined that the abnormally white fingernails of the North Korean leader supports the growing speculation that he is suffering from chronic renal insufficiency.
Discoloration of the skin is a common symptom of the kidney disease, according to doctors.
The INSS chief noted that the advanced age of Kim is a critical factor that deters a full recovery.
"Given that he was born in 1942, it appears it won't be an easy task for him to regain full health," he said.
According to Nam, the North Korean leader's left hand hardly moved when clapping at a rally on March 7, one of the many signs indicating Kim's deteriorating health.
Kim might be hesitant to undergo a kidney transplant because he is too frail and such a major operation could lead to complications, said Choi Kyu-heon, a medical doctor of Yonsei University's Severance Hospital in Seoul, who treated the late former President Kim Dae-jung's kidney problems.
Observers here suspect that Kim might be against the idea of having major surgery, as this would create a power vacuum in the military-driven communist regime with fears of a revolt or mutiny, while he was hospitalized.
They point out Kim's unstable health will likely continue to raise speculation over a succession in North Korea's leadership.
Kim's third and youngest son, Jong-un, has been considered his heir apparent.
Last month, Kurt Campbell, U.S. Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, reportedly told Seoul's senior officials that Pyongyang's aging leader Kim appears to have only three more years to live in a closed-door meeting during his trip to Seoul.
leeth@koreatimes.co.kr
Monday, March 22, 2010
`2004 Explosion Was Attempt on Kim Jong Il`s Life`
| A 2004 explosion at a railway station in North Korea was an attempt to assassinate leader Kim Jong Il, China’s state-run Xinhua News Agency quoted an analysis as saying yesterday. “The train explosion at Ryongchon Station in North Pyongan Province on April 22 that year killed nearly 200 people, injured more than 1,500, and destroyed more than 8,000 homes. The explosion is believed to have been an attempt to assassinate Kim,” Xinhua said. Though Xinhua quoted an analysis, it is quite unusual for the news agency to say the explosion was an assassination attempt on Kim. Xinhua mentioned the incident while reporting on mobile phone use in North Korea. The report said the number of mobile phone users in North Korea surged to 20,000 a year after mobile telecom service was launched in November 2002. Pyongyang, however, banned the use of mobile phones following the explosion. Xinhua said the ban was imposed directly by the National Defense Commission, North Korea’s highest-ranking body, due to fears over the leak of news on the explosion outside of the communist country. In the early days of mobile phone use, only officials at the people’s committee of the ruling Workers’ Party and the ministries of public safety, national security and defense could use them. After the explosion, however, as many as 10,000 mobile handsets were seized by authorities. The cost of a mobile handset and registration was as high as 1,300 U.S. dollars when the greenback was traded at 1,200 to 1,300 North Korean won, equal to more than 600 months of monthly wages for the average North Korean worker (2.20 dollars). In the face of mounting complaints over the ban, North Korean authorities re-allowed the use of mobile phones in March last year. An estimated 120,000 North Koreans use mobile telecom service. Considering North Korea’s population of an estimated 24 million as of 2008, this translates into one handset per 200 people. Xinhua added that mobile phones have brought about many changes in the lives of North Koreans. |
Nation divided over possible N.K. collapse
최근 화폐 개혁과 김정일의 후계자와 관련된 북한의 급작스런 정세에 서울이 언제 어떻게 정권 붕괴 또는 다른 “갑작스런 변화”에 대응해야 되느냐를 놓고 의견이 엇갈리고 있다. 민주당 박지원 정책위의장은 22일 BBS라디오에 출연해 "박남기 전 노동당 계획재정부장의 총살설과 미국무성 캠벨 차관보의 김 위원장 남은 수명 3년에 대한 발언 모두 확인 안된 추측에 불과하다"고 일축했다. 박 정책위의장은 또 "북한이 붕괴되더라도 누군가는 북한을 이끌고 간다"면서 "이러한 논의들은 북한체제 응집력을 높여줄 뿐"이라고 주장했다.
North Korea's rapidly dwindling economic conditions - coupled with the ongoing challenges of a power transition from Kim Jong-il to his youngest son - have recently rekindled debate on how and when Seoul should prepare for a regime collapse or other "sudden changes" in the North.
Politicians yesterday joined the debate. Park Jie-won, a key liberal lawmaker, strongly denounced speculation predicting a regime meltdown in Pyongyang.
"Speculation about North Korea is simply that - speculation," Park said on a radio program. He was referring to reports here saying that the North has eliminated a key financial official for the botched currency reform, and also claims that Kim Jong-il may have only several more years to live.
He stressed that excessive debate over North Korean emergency situations serve "only to add to North Korea's regime cohesiveness."
Deterioration in the North Korean economy in the aftermath of a bungled currency reform in November last year have been fueling concerns that Seoul needs to better prepare for dramatic changes in the North.
An upcoming meeting on sudden North Korean changes involving the United States, South Korea and China has added to the controversy, with some claiming that it signals that nations are fast preparing for unrest or other internal problems in the North.
Experts, however, were mostly in agreement that while Seoul, and any other country affected by the North Korean regime, should prepare, excessive concern or debate were unhealthy.
"Issues about how and when we should cope with North Korean unrest should be dealt with under the surface," said Yang Moo-jin, a professor at the University of North Korean Studies here. "We need to be prepared, but publicly debating over the issue in the North's face is not a smart policy since it's basically saying, we are waiting for you to collapse."
Possibly to head off these attempts, Beijing has recently stressed that even in case of a North Korean meltdown, Pyongyang's sovereign rights as a member of the United Nations must be acknowledged.
Cheong Seong-chang, a senior research fellow at Sejong Institute, said that, overall, reports on North Korea's economic hardships and the anger the people are feeling fail to accurately reflect the sentiment of the entire nation, not to mention how the leadership is dealing with the issues.
"We hear these reports from the few North Koreans who defect, or possibly unidentified intelligence reports. We would need much more to work on in order to presume that North Korea is on the verge of demise," he said.
Cheong added that despite constant speculation that North Korea would soon fall, it remains in place thanks to a leadership focused on keeping the regime afloat.
Song Young-sun, a right-wing politician, however, appeared to be reflecting concern from conservatives who believe the nation should be better prepared against a possible public uprising.
Notable deterioration in the North Korean economy has been fueling reportedly suffered severe blows in the aftermath of a bungled currency reform in November last year.
Many believe Kim Jong-il willingly sacrificed financial gains in order to renew his control over the state as he is poised to hand down his authority to his youngest son Jong-eun.
One expert, speaking anonymously, said there would be many scenarios to consider even if the transition falters.
"A collapse is not the only scenario," he said.
All the same, both government officials and observers were quick to note that the current North Korean situation - both political and economic - were different from when Kim Jong-il assumed power since he had already been in control of the state.
With Kim Jong-eun, it is a different matter, and that is the reason for such widespread concern or anticipation towards a possible North Korean demise, they said.
(jemmie@heraldm.com)
Saturday, March 20, 2010
N.Korean Finance Chief 'Executed Over Currency Fiasco'
Pak Nam-gi, the former director of the Planning and Finance Department of North Korean Workers' Party, was shot dead by a firing squad in Pyongyang over the North's disastrous currency reform, sources said.
A North Korean source said Pak was executed at a firing range in Sunan District early this month after the botched reform led to widespread protests with increasing public complaints and threatened the succession of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il's son Jong-un.
Radio Free North Korea said rumors starting in Pyongyang have circulated far and wide that Pak (76), who was in charge of the economy, took the fall for the disaster. But the Unification Ministry said the rumor have not been confirmed.
![North Korean leader Kim Jong-il (center), accompanied by senior officials including the Workers Partys Finance Director Pak Nam-gi (second from right), visits a new swimming pool at Kim Il-sung University in March last year. /[North] Korean Central News Agency-Yonhap](http://english.chosun.com/site/data/img_dir/2010/03/19/2010031900297_0.jpg)
North Korean leader Kim Jong-il (center), accompanied by senior officials including the Workers' Party's Finance Director Pak Nam-gi (second from right), visits a new swimming pool at Kim Il-sung University in March last year. /[North] Korean Central News Agency-YonhapAmid the famines of the 1990s, the regime in September 1997 tried to appease public sentiment by publicly executing So Kwan-hi, the then party secretary for agricultural affairs, branding him as a "spy of the U.S." So was charged with having deliberately aggravated food shortages in collusion with Washington.
Pak was according to sources accused of being a "bourgeois infiltrator" who deliberately ruined the national economy. He was earlier dismissed after intense criticism at a senior party meeting in mid-January.
But the sources said North Koreans seem unconvinced. Rice prices skyrocketed after the December currency reform replaced old won with new one at a rate of 100:1 in an apparent attempt to strangle the nascent market economy.
Pak had been in charge of the North's economy for more than 20 years, working as the party secretary for light industry since 1984 and as the chairman of the State Planning Commission since 1986.
He was replaced briefly in the early 2000s by then prime minister Pak Pong-chu, when the North introduced a modicum of market freedom. But when he was appointed as the director of the party's Planning and Finance Department in 2005, he vowed to put an end to the "capitalist fantasy."
North Korea spurns UN push to stop executions and torture
The North Korea ambassador to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva denounced its recommendations just as reports emerged that the North had executed the official responsible for a ruinous currency revaluation.
London —
North Korea is spurning United Nations demands to stop public executions, torture of prisoners, and other endemic violations of human rights in the aftermath of the reported execution of the senior official responsible for disastrous economic reforms.
Ri Chol, North Korea’s ambassador to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, on Thursday denounced the council’s recommendations as reflecting historic hostility toward the North’s long-ruling leadership. He issued his rejoinder in response to demands that also included calls to stop training children for military service and forcing citizens to perform hard labor against their will.
The verbal exchange came on the heels of the reported execution of Pak Nam-ki, the former chief of economic planning for the ruling Workers’ Party. A firing squad executed Mr. Pak last week in Pyongyang as punishment for harming the country's currency, according to Yonhap, the South Korean news agency. Mr. Pak vanished from public view after having been photographed with leader Kim Jong-il on a "field inspection" trip in early January.
Disastrous financial reforms
A long-time party faithful, the 77-year-old Pak had clearly had the confidence of Kim Jong-il when North Korea sought to deal with mounting economic woes by lopping off the last two zeroes from its vastly inflated currency and setting a deadline for exchanging stacks of banknotes for new ones. Protests mounted as the old banknotes became worthless, depriving a rising middle class of much of its income, forcing the closure of markets, and finally compelling the regime into an unprecedented apology.
The attempt at economic reform “was an unmitigated disaster,” says Mark Fitzpatrick, senior fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London. As for reports of Pak’s execution, “It’s like when an American sports team isn’t doing well, you fire the manager,” says Mr. Fitzpatrick. “Only in this case they fired at him.”
North Korea has persistently refused to admit the UN’s special human rights rapporteur into the country. Nonetheless, hopes had been high that the North might be willing to put on a show of understanding of concerns about its human rights record.
“Those who wanted to find some silver lining in the gray clouds of North Korea’s human rights record had pointed to North Korean participation in Geneva at least as evidence that North Korea wanted to put its side of the story,” says Mr. Fitzpatrick. Given the record, he adds, “it’s hard to think” that North Koreans “could persuade anyone of their bona fides.”
A scapegoat
Almost simultaneously as the council was convening in Geneva, according to the Yonhap report, the regime turned on the aging, long-serving Pak with a ferocity that analysts see as showing the urgent need to find at least one scapegoat. His crime, sources told Yonhap, was that he was found to be “a son of a bourgeois conspiring to infiltrate the ranks of revolutionaries to destroy the national economy.”
North Korea over the years has imprisoned and executed thousands for economic crimes – and for having been born of bourgeois landowning families before the rise of communism in the North after World War II.
In another high-profile execution, in 1997 the North put to death Seo Gwan-hee, director of the Agriculture Ministry, blamed for the famine of the 1990s in which 2 million people are estimated to have died of disease or starvation. In Mr. Seo’s case, there were reports at the time that he was “executed” twice – first out of public view and again, after his body was disinterred and tied to a post, in public.
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