North Korean executions fail to stem pop culture invasion
Seoul - North Korea is losing a battle to stem a flood of South Korean pop culture despite public executions of smugglers, a state research group said Thursday.
The report by the Korea Institute for National Unification was the second account in two days of crackdowns and executions in the hardline communist state.
South Korean aid agency Good Friends said Wednesday the campaign was ordered by the ruling Workers Party on June 4. "The prevalence of illegal VCDs is making our people ideologically decadent and corrupt," it quoted the order as saying.
The first and only inter-Korean summit in 2000 saw a major expansion in cross-border contacts. According to the Korea Institute for National Unification, it also led to a rise in executions.
"Since 2000, the number of people executed publicly for spreading South Korean propaganda materials or selling videotapes has increased in North Korea," it said.
The reclusive country had also stepped up a crackdown on the illegal use of mobile phones in an attempt to stem outside influences, the institute said.
But such efforts have largely failed. "Despite a tightened crackdown, (the trend of) watching (South Korean) video has been spreading," it said.
The institute said its report was based on investigations by rights groups and interviews with former North Korean prisoners who escaped or defected after their release.
Defectors say South Korean pop songs and movies are popular in the isolated country, despite a steady campaign to weed out what state media termed "decadent foreign culture and ideals."
Videotapes or CDs of South Korean films, music or TV soap operas enter mainly via neighbouring northeast China.
Good Friends said the ruling party's order prompted door-to-door searches by all law enforcement authorities, with officials warning that smugglers of South Korean VCDs would be executed publicly.
Top security officials visited the northeastern border city of Hoeryoeng on June 1 to supervise work on erecting barbed-wire fences and barriers along the border with China, it said.
North Koreans for decades had access only to state-run domestic media which extolled the virtues of "Great Leader" Kim Il-Sung and his son and successor Kim Jong-Il, known as the "Dear Leader."
Very few private homes had telephones and calls were connected through operators, while radios were sold with tuning knobs fixed to official stations.
But new technology is breaking down barriers, observers say. Mobile phones with pre-paid cards have been smuggled in from China.
And as households in northeast China upgraded to DVD machines starting early this decade, smugglers bought discarded VCR players cheaply and smuggled them across the border into North Korea.
This made VCRs affordable to a large number of North Korean households, according to analyst Andrei Lankov in an article this year.
"Young North Koreans enthusiastically imitate the fashions and parrot the idioms they see in South Korean movies. And this does not bode well for the regime's future," wrote Lankov, an associate professor at Seoul's Kookmin University.
The VCRs are also undermining North Korean propaganda claims that life in the South is far inferior, according to Lankov.
While viewers did not believe everything they saw in the films, some things could not be faked -- such as Seoul's affluent cityscape.
A survey of North Korean refugees in China by the US Committee for Human Rights in North Korea showed 82 per cent did not believe the official line that that the South's economy is in worse shape than the North's.
Agence France Presse
http://nationmultimedia.com/worldhotnews/r...newsid=30036855
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NKorea ups public executions against cell phone users: think tank
2007-06-14 12:11:00 -
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) - North Korea has increased its public executions against cell phone users and those who circulate outside information in the communist country, a South Korean government think tank said Thursday.
The phenomenon of executions of those who «circulate South Korean leaflets and sell videos and use cell phones are on the rise,» the South's government-affiliated Korea Institute for National Unification think tank said in a white paper on the North's human rights conditions. No exact figures were given.
North Koreans are officially banned from communicating with the outside world but some of them listen to foreign news and use cell phones through Chinese communication networks, according to North Korean defectors in South Korea. The use of cell phones in North Korea is banned though some are smuggled into the North by Chinese who have links with South Koreans.
The North has been struggling to prevent outside information from seeping into the country and believes the influx of information could possibly lead to the overthrow of the reclusive regime.
«The North carries out public executions regularly to maintain social order by creating an atmosphere of fear,» said the institute.
Despite the unspecified increase in executions of certain people, North Korea has reduced the frequency of public executions from every month to each quarter due to harsh international criticism, the institute said.
The communist country insists it does not violate human rights, but it has long been accused of imposing the death penalty for political reasons, holding thousands in prison camps, torturing border-crossers and severely restricting freedom of expression and religion.
The institute also said the North has kept intact a system of family guilt by association for political prisoners in an attempt to keep in check any challenges and resistance to North Korean leader Kim Jong Il.
Kim, who wields absolute power in the communist state, tolerates no dissent and demands unquestioning allegiance from its people.
http://www.pr-inside.com/nkorea-ups-public...ell-r153164.htm
http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ned=...;ncl=1117258719
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*Influence of popular culture may change things in North Korea more than any political pressure. In the end, artist may play a pivotal role in bring about a real change in the North.
Full Version: North Korean News
Whites are such a horrible race of people. Especially white Americans. Read above to see why.
Frozen funds en route to N. Korea
U.S. awaits word on the transfer. The return of $25 million is key to efforts to curb Kim Jong Il's nuclear program.
By Bob Drogin, Times Staff Writer
June 15, 2007
WASHINGTON — Bush administration officials awaited confirmation Thursday of the long-delayed return to North Korea of about $25 million in allegedly tainted assets, a move that potentially clears the way for the communist nation to shut its chief nuclear weapons facility.
The expected financial transfer follows months of false starts and foul-ups as officials from the U.S. State and Treasury departments struggled to coordinate strategies aimed at persuading North Korean leader Kim Jong Il's regime to abandon nuclear weapons production.
Officials said the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank of New York would act as a conduit for the electronic transfer of almost $25 million from a small bank in Macao through Russia's central bank to a commercial bank in Russia's Far East, where North Korea apparently holds an account.
"Basically all of it has been transferred…. For Macao, this incident has come to a conclusion," the Chinese territory said in an official statement.
White House, State and Treasury officials said they were still seeking to confirm the transfer late Thursday and hoped to announce progress today.
The convoluted transaction caps a bizarre chapter in the effort to rein in the North Korean government's nuclear program.
President Bush announced Feb. 13 that the regime in Pyongyang had agreed in six-party talks to shut down its main nuclear reactor at Yongbyon within 60 days as the first step in a multiyear disarmament process. In exchange, Washington agreed to provide crucial fuel oil and to start the process of normalizing relations.
But the deal immediately ran aground on a provision of the Patriot Act aimed at curbing financial transactions that could assist terrorists. Congress passed the law after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
In this case, the Treasury Department blacklisted the Macao-based Banco Delta Asia in September 2005 for allegedly laundering proceeds from North Korean criminal enterprises, including counterfeiting and drug smuggling.
The move so angered Pyongyang that it refused to participate in nuclear arms talks for more than a year and raced ahead with its weapons program.
The regime tested a small nuclear device in October and is believed to possess enough weapons-grade plutonium for eight to 10 warheads.
In January, State Department negotiators agreed to approve the return of the frozen North Korean funds to help persuade the regime to stop producing plutonium.
But in March, the Treasury Department moved to enforce its earlier ruling by barring U.S. financial institutions from dealing with the Macao bank. At that point, North Korea walked away from talks aimed at implementing the February accord.
The result was an impasse. North Korea made it clear that it wanted the money returned through normal banking channels. But the blacklisting caused financial institutions in Asia and Europe to sever ties with North Korea, and private commercial banks refused to handle the tainted funds for fear they would violate U.S. law and lose their access to the global financial system.
While Bush administration officials sought to untangle the morass, North Korea was free to continue operations at Yongbyon, though U.S. nuclear experts say it was out of commission at times for maintenance.
The decision to use the Federal Reserve Bank to return the money to the original account holders came after government lawyers concluded that the Federal Reserve was not subject to the same legal provisions as the commercial banks. U.S. officials said the Russian government also played a key role.
Christopher R. Hill, the State Department envoy who negotiated the disarmament accord, departed Wednesday for meetings in Beijing, Seoul and Tokyo aimed at reviving the six-party talks, which involve China, Japan, South Korea and Russia, as well as the United States and North Korea.
Sean McCormack, the State Department spokesman, said Thursday that "we all look forward" to getting the Macao bank case "behind us so we can get back to the real business of the six-party talks."
North Korean officials have said "both in public and in private" that they intend to honor the Feb. 13 agreement, he added.
Asked whether the agreement was back on track, he replied, "Well, let's see. We'll see what the coming days bring."
This week, six Republican lawmakers asked the Government Accountability Office to investigate whether the transfer of the $25 million violated U.S. law.
"If history is any indication, I have little confidence that the North Korean regime will adhere to any agreement despite our good-faith efforts to honor our side of the bargain," said Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida, the ranking Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
Jon B. Wolfsthal, a nonproliferation expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said, "We're essentially helping the North Koreans launder money. But if that's what it takes to get them to freeze plutonium production, it's worth it."
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/wo...headlines-world
http://news.google.com/nwshp?hl=en&tab...;ncl=1117085446
U.S. awaits word on the transfer. The return of $25 million is key to efforts to curb Kim Jong Il's nuclear program.
By Bob Drogin, Times Staff Writer
June 15, 2007
WASHINGTON — Bush administration officials awaited confirmation Thursday of the long-delayed return to North Korea of about $25 million in allegedly tainted assets, a move that potentially clears the way for the communist nation to shut its chief nuclear weapons facility.
The expected financial transfer follows months of false starts and foul-ups as officials from the U.S. State and Treasury departments struggled to coordinate strategies aimed at persuading North Korean leader Kim Jong Il's regime to abandon nuclear weapons production.
Officials said the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank of New York would act as a conduit for the electronic transfer of almost $25 million from a small bank in Macao through Russia's central bank to a commercial bank in Russia's Far East, where North Korea apparently holds an account.
"Basically all of it has been transferred…. For Macao, this incident has come to a conclusion," the Chinese territory said in an official statement.
White House, State and Treasury officials said they were still seeking to confirm the transfer late Thursday and hoped to announce progress today.
The convoluted transaction caps a bizarre chapter in the effort to rein in the North Korean government's nuclear program.
President Bush announced Feb. 13 that the regime in Pyongyang had agreed in six-party talks to shut down its main nuclear reactor at Yongbyon within 60 days as the first step in a multiyear disarmament process. In exchange, Washington agreed to provide crucial fuel oil and to start the process of normalizing relations.
But the deal immediately ran aground on a provision of the Patriot Act aimed at curbing financial transactions that could assist terrorists. Congress passed the law after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
In this case, the Treasury Department blacklisted the Macao-based Banco Delta Asia in September 2005 for allegedly laundering proceeds from North Korean criminal enterprises, including counterfeiting and drug smuggling.
The move so angered Pyongyang that it refused to participate in nuclear arms talks for more than a year and raced ahead with its weapons program.
The regime tested a small nuclear device in October and is believed to possess enough weapons-grade plutonium for eight to 10 warheads.
In January, State Department negotiators agreed to approve the return of the frozen North Korean funds to help persuade the regime to stop producing plutonium.
But in March, the Treasury Department moved to enforce its earlier ruling by barring U.S. financial institutions from dealing with the Macao bank. At that point, North Korea walked away from talks aimed at implementing the February accord.
The result was an impasse. North Korea made it clear that it wanted the money returned through normal banking channels. But the blacklisting caused financial institutions in Asia and Europe to sever ties with North Korea, and private commercial banks refused to handle the tainted funds for fear they would violate U.S. law and lose their access to the global financial system.
While Bush administration officials sought to untangle the morass, North Korea was free to continue operations at Yongbyon, though U.S. nuclear experts say it was out of commission at times for maintenance.
The decision to use the Federal Reserve Bank to return the money to the original account holders came after government lawyers concluded that the Federal Reserve was not subject to the same legal provisions as the commercial banks. U.S. officials said the Russian government also played a key role.
Christopher R. Hill, the State Department envoy who negotiated the disarmament accord, departed Wednesday for meetings in Beijing, Seoul and Tokyo aimed at reviving the six-party talks, which involve China, Japan, South Korea and Russia, as well as the United States and North Korea.
Sean McCormack, the State Department spokesman, said Thursday that "we all look forward" to getting the Macao bank case "behind us so we can get back to the real business of the six-party talks."
North Korean officials have said "both in public and in private" that they intend to honor the Feb. 13 agreement, he added.
Asked whether the agreement was back on track, he replied, "Well, let's see. We'll see what the coming days bring."
This week, six Republican lawmakers asked the Government Accountability Office to investigate whether the transfer of the $25 million violated U.S. law.
"If history is any indication, I have little confidence that the North Korean regime will adhere to any agreement despite our good-faith efforts to honor our side of the bargain," said Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida, the ranking Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
Jon B. Wolfsthal, a nonproliferation expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said, "We're essentially helping the North Koreans launder money. But if that's what it takes to get them to freeze plutonium production, it's worth it."
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/wo...headlines-world
http://news.google.com/nwshp?hl=en&tab...;ncl=1117085446
Kim Jong Il underwent a Percuteneous Transarterial Coronary Angioplasty (PTCA) performed by German doctors in mid-May.
An inside Japanese source well acquainted with North Korea reported by telephone on the 20th that Kim Jong Il received medical treatment from doctors of the Berlin Heart Center in mid-May and was back at work a day later.
This source said that North Korean authority asked the German doctors to closely examine Kim Jong Il’s health and perform surgery if necessary. The examination revealed a myocardial infarction, but no other serious heart condition.
According to the doctors, Kim’s health was not bad except for kidney hypertrophy and some symptoms of diabetes. After examination he received the relatively simple PTCA treatment instead of surgery.
PTCA expands a narrow artery by inflating a tiny balloon. The balloon is introduced into the artery through catheter. It is an effective treatment for coronary artery diseases without the use of thoracotomy, and results in high success rates and few complications. Patients need just a couple of days’ rest. Dr. Jung Yong Suk, a heart specialist at the Sunrin Hospital in Handong University, explained to the Daily NK that “PTCA is a medical treatment for coronary arteries supplying blood into the heart. If Kim Jong Il required the procedure, he may have some problem in his coronary arteries, but it is uncertain if it is a stricture of the heart or myocardial infarction.”
The Japanese source said that the “German doctors promised to keep Kim Jong Il’s procedure a secret and to coordinate a faked story with North Korea authority.” Therefore, the spokesperson of Berlin Heat Center revealed that 6 members of the center stayed in Pyongyang from May 11th to the 19th, treating only three laborers, a nurse, and a scientist.
A North Korea expert speculated that Kim Jong Il might be addressing health concerns prior to the year end South Korean Presidential Election and further nuclear negotiations. Many groundless reports have circulated regarding possible Kim Jong Il heart surgery. A Japanese magazine, Shukan Gendai, claimed that Kim Jong Il received coronary artery bypass surgery for myocardial infarction.
http://www.dailynk.com/english/read.php?ca...00&num=2255
http://www.dailynk.com/english/index.php
Blame Chinese?
Is the end near? Dear Leader does not look good?
http://news.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/...7070400759.html
http://www.snappedshot.com/archives/794-Daily-Dictator.html
http://news.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/...7070400759.html
http://www.snappedshot.com/archives/794-Daily-Dictator.html
Koreas' summit: Handshakes and handouts
By Donald Kirk
NEW YORK - North Korean leader Kim Jong-il will be able to put a high price tag on every move he makes to reduce the threat of his huge military establishment when he meets South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun at the second inter-Korean summit in Pyongyang this month.
The government of South Korea, thrilled to have been able to get Dear Leader Kim Jong-il to agree to the summit, plans to propose a vast new economic program far beyond the scope of the six-
nation agreement in February for North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons.
The program, under the rubric of South Korea's "Korean Peninsula vision", includes plans for an infusion of billions of US dollars' worth of aid to open up new economic zones in North Korea, expand tourism, and build up the North's decrepit infrastructure. In return, South Korean officials are hoping that Kim will not only fulfill the terms of the nuclear agreement but also scale down his armed forces and eventually pull troops and weapons from above the Demilitarized Zone that has divided the two Koreas since the Korean War ended in 1953.
more here...
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Korea/IH11Dg01.html
By Donald Kirk
NEW YORK - North Korean leader Kim Jong-il will be able to put a high price tag on every move he makes to reduce the threat of his huge military establishment when he meets South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun at the second inter-Korean summit in Pyongyang this month.
The government of South Korea, thrilled to have been able to get Dear Leader Kim Jong-il to agree to the summit, plans to propose a vast new economic program far beyond the scope of the six-
nation agreement in February for North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons.
The program, under the rubric of South Korea's "Korean Peninsula vision", includes plans for an infusion of billions of US dollars' worth of aid to open up new economic zones in North Korea, expand tourism, and build up the North's decrepit infrastructure. In return, South Korean officials are hoping that Kim will not only fulfill the terms of the nuclear agreement but also scale down his armed forces and eventually pull troops and weapons from above the Demilitarized Zone that has divided the two Koreas since the Korean War ended in 1953.
more here...
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Korea/IH11Dg01.html
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