North Korea (Superthread)

[Soldier1stTradesman2nd]

Maybe NK is running out of food, The Dear Leader playing brinkmanship not only with the region but his own people. Push till he can't push no mo'

 

[Edward Campbell]

The Chinese will feed the North Koreans. Simple humanity will not allow the Chinese to stand idly by while famine strikes. But the Chinese will not extract any public quid pro quo; there is nothing for China in helping America to solve its North Korean problem.

But one characteristic of Chinese policy is that the biggest, most momentous events are deadly dull, barely commented upon and accomplished with minimum fanfare. The Chinese are not like Americans. One needs to look behind the hoopla to see what is really happening.

 

[CougarKing]

Yikes! 

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/afp/091008/world/china_nkorea_military_accident

TOKYO (AFP) - China has detected deadly nerve gas at its border with North Korea and suspects an accidental release inside the secretive state, a Japanese news report said Friday.

The Chinese military is strengthening its surveillance activities after detecting the highly virulent sarin gas in November last year and in February in Liaoning province, the Asahi Shimbun newspaper reported, citing anonymous sources from the Chinese military.


Sarin gas, which was developed in Germany before World War I, was used in the deadly 1995 nerve gas attack on the Tokyo subway by a doomsday cult.


The Chinese special operations forces found 0.015-0.03 microgrammes of the gas per cubic metre when they were conducting regular surveys while there were winds from the direction of North Korea, the report said.


China suspects that there were some experiments or accidents in its neighbouring country, it said.

 

[CougarKing]

Again? This is getting old and tiresome.

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/reuters/091012/world/international_us_korea_north_missile

North Korea fires missiles and declares "no sail" zone


2 hours, 52 minutes ago


SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea has fired five short-range missiles off its east coast and declared a "no sail" zone in the area from October 10-20, South Korea's Yonhap news agency quoted a government source as saying on Monday.
South Korean government officials were not immediately available for comment.


The latest launches, the first in about three months, come as Pyongyang has said it is ready to return to international talks on its nuclear weapons programme, though it has insisted it holds talks first with the United States.


It was not clear whether these were routine military exercises.


But they coincided with local media reports that the United States is planning to send its aircraft carrier USS George Washington to the South Korean port of Busan on Tuesday.


The reclusive North has hundreds of short-range range missiles, with the ability to strike the South Korean capital Seoul and its sprawling urban surroundings which are home to around 25 million people.


A nuclear test in May and a spate of missile tests around the same time triggered a tightening of sanctions against the North, whose desperate economic straits some analysts have said are partly behind its recent attempts to get on better terms with the outside world.


A U.N. resolution bans North Korea from launching ballistic missiles, but there are no international agreements that bar it from test-launching short-range missiles.


(Reporting by Jack Kim and Yoo Choonsik, writing by Jonathan Thatcher; Editing by Jeremy Laurence)

 

[vonGarvin]

Maybe the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate can do something about this?

:rofl:

(I almost said that with a straight face) ;D

 

[CougarKing]

We'll see if anything worthwhile comes out of this summit.

South Korea: Summit should help resolve nuclear dispute
(philstar.com) Updated October 25, 2009 06:00 AM 


SEOUL (AP) – A summit between the two Koreas should help resolve the dispute over North Korea's nuclear programs, a South Korea official said yesterday, as a negotiator for the North arrived in the US in likely pursuit of bilateral talks with Washington.

North Korea's No. 2 nuclear negotiator, Ri Gun, met on yesterday in New York with the chief US nuclear negotiator Sung Kim, a State Department spokesman said.

"Ambassador Ri Gun has traveled to the US on the invitation of US private organizations," State Department spokesman Noel Clay said in a statement. "During his visit, Ambassador Sung Kim took the opportunity to meet with him in New York on October 24 to convey our position on denuclearization and the six-party talks."

The US says it is willing to have direct talks with the North if it leads to resumption of six-party talks aimed at halting North Korea's nuclear weapons programs that also include South Korea, China, Russia and Japan.

North Korea and the United States do not have diplomatic relations. Ri was given permission to visit the US for unofficial meetings that include the Northeast Asia Cooperation Dialogue, a forum sponsored by the University of California-San Diego.

Clay said that Kim and principal deputy assistant secretary of defense, Derek J. Mitchell, would participate in the San Diego forum which begins on Sunday. The sessions will also include government officials and scholars from China, Russia, Japan and South Korea.

Clay said the US level of participation in the forum "is the same as previous years."

The North's reported push for a summit with the South and talks with Washington is part of a series of conciliatory moves by the regime in recent months after escalating tensions with nuclear and missile tests.

Analysts have said the moves show North Korea feels the pain of UN sanctions following its May nuclear test.

South Korea's largest television network KBS reported Thursday night that a senior South Korean official met with the North's spy chief, Kim Yang Gon, in Singapore last week and talked about a possible meeting between North Korean leader Kim Jong Il and South Korean President Lee Myung-bak.

North Korea first asked for the meeting, but the talks ended without agreement as the South demanded that the reclusive Kim visit the South, and the North balked at the demand citing security concerns, the report said. It cited an unidentified South Korean official.

Officials, including the South's Unification Minister Hyun In-taek, declined to confirm the reports. But Hyun said Friday that progress in international efforts to rid North Korea of its nuclear weapons programs is key to a summit with the North.

"Our government's position remains unchanged that we would not hold a meeting for meeting's sake," Lee Dong-kwan, senior presidential secretary for public relations, said yesterday in comments posted on South Korea's presidential Web site.

He said a summit "should be helpful to progress in the resolution of North Korea's nuclear issue," noting there won't be any behind-the-scenes negotiations or contract with North Korea over a summit.

North Korea's Kim has held summits with the South twice: the first in 2000 with the South's then-President Kim Dae-jung and the other in 2007 with then-President Roh Moo-hyun.

Relations between the two Koreas frayed badly after the more conservative Lee took office early last year. But Lee has said he is willing to meet with Kim Jong Il at any time, but that any such summit should tackle the North Korean nuclear issue.

North Korea pulled out of the six-party disarmament talks in April, but Kim Jong Il said earlier this month that the North could rejoin them depending on progress in its possible one-on-one negotiations with the US

 

[Edward Campbell]

Apropos of nothing very much, except North Korea's incredible military power:

North Korean Women practice their goose step.


I don't know how we plan to beat that!


Maybe we'll have to count on the Chinese who can counter step with this:

You may recall these soldiers from the recent 60th Anniversary parade.

 

[vonGarvin]

As those two commie states focus on "pretty women marching", as an officer in The RCR, it almost pains me to say that marching will not win wars.

I say that we adopt the method embodied in this photo:

Pretty is nice, but we mix it with lethal effect

;D

 

[vonGarvin]

Let us not forget the USMC:

 

[Edward Campbell]

Yes, but <drifting further off this serious topic> the female goose stepping is neat ...

... especially in 'scarlets' ...

... but, anyway, she looks tough enough:

 

[a_majoor]

(Drifts even farther away)

The ladies have some way to go to beat this:

 

[Edward Campbell]

<dragging this important topic to new lows>

That's fine, but given the interminably boring nature of UN duty, with whom would you rather spend endless nights in some remote OP: those two or these young Chinese friends?

 

[zipperhead_cop]

I guess China doesn't teach their soldiers "Finger off the trigger..." 

 

[CougarKing]

Another naval clash.

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/afp/091110/world/skorea_nkorea_military_clash

SEOUL (AFP) - North and South Korea were involved in a naval clash Tuesday off their west coast, a military official told AFP.

It was not known where the clash took place, but the disputed sea border in the Yellow Sea was the scene of deadly naval clashes in 1999 and 2002.


News agency Yonhap has stated that the North Korean boat involved in the clash has been badly damaged.


The North's navy last month accused South Korea of sending warships across the border to stir tensions, and said the "reckless military provocations" could trigger armed clashes.

 

[CougarKing]

Economic chaos in North Korea as it sharply revalues its currency:

http//www.news.com.au/business/breaking-news/north-korea-sharply-revalues-currency/story-e6frfkur-1225805753994

North Korea sharply revalues currency
From correspondents in Seoul From: AFP December 01, 2009 1:22PM
NORTH Korea has sharply revalued its currency for the first time in 17 years in an apparent attempt to curb inflation and clamp down on black-market trading, reports said today.

The communist state's government implemented the change yesterday morning, causing panic and confusion in the markets, Yonhap news agency and other South Korean media reported.
Yonhap, reporting from the north-eastern Chinese city of Shenyang, said the exchange rate for the new currency was 100 to 1, with old-denomination 1000 won notes being replaced by new 10 won notes.

"Many citizens in Pyongyang were taken aback and in confusion," it quoted a North Korean source engaged in trade with China as saying.

"Those who were worried about their hidden assets rushed to the black market to exchange them for (Chinese) yuan or US dollars. The yuan and the dollar jumped."

South Korea's Chosun Ilbo newspaper and the Daily NK, a Seoul-based internet newspaper, carried similar reports.

Yonhap said the revaluation was the first since 1992.

It said the main aim appeared to be curbing inflation because the value of the North Korean won had slumped since limited economic reforms were introduced in 2002.

The reforms, to make wages and prices more realistic and introduce limited market freedoms, were largely rolled back in 2005.

Yonhap said the North may also have wanted to draw out funds from the underground economy, including money from citizens working abroad.

The country is mounting a national campaign to rebuild its crumbling economy by 2012, the 100th anniversary of the birth of its founder Kim Il-Sung.

Daily NK, in a story datelined from Shenyang, said Monday's move caused alarm in markets.

"When the news spread in the jangmadang (markets), people panicked," it quoted a source in the north-eastern province of North Hamkyung as saying.

A source in the western city of Sinuiju, on the border with China, told the paper: "Traders gathered around currency dealers. Chaos ensued when currency dealers tried to avoid them."

Seoul's unification ministry could not immediately confirm the reports.

Chosun Ilbo said the revaluation was to curb severe inflation and tighten control on society before an eventual power transfer from leader Kim Jong-Il to his son Jong-Un.

"Prices have gone up too high since the economic reform measures taken on July 1, 2002," a source told Chosun.

"The North Korean currency has been devalued too much, apparently causing the currency change."

North Korea Economy Watch said the won was officially worth around 2.20 to a US dollar before the reforms of 2002. After that the official exchange rate jumped nearly 70 times to 153.50 to one US dollar.

However, the black market rate is around 3000 to one US dollar, the blog reported earlier this year.

 

[a_majoor]

The DPRK need more socialism:

http://drezner.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2009/12/09/yeah_north_koreas_problem_is_that_its_not_socialist_enough

Yeah, North Korea's problem is that it's not socialist enough
Wed, 12/09/2009 - 9:56am

As my boss U.S. envoy Stephen Bosworth arrives in Pyongyang, I think it's worth noting that the North Korean government has not been endearing itself to its citizenry.  Hmmm... let me rephrase that -- the DPRK government has been acting with even more disregard fo its citizens than usual. 

The nub of the problem has been a currency revaluation/reform in which North Korean citizens will be forced to trade in their old notes for new ones -- and each citizen is limited in the amount they can exchange.  This move was designed to do two things:  lopping off a few zeroes of the North Korean won, and flushing out private traders along the Chinese border who are sitting on currency notes that will soon be worthless. 

It appears, according to AFP, that the DPRK regime has finally come up with a move that actually roils their population: 

Amid reports that some frustrated residents have been torching old bills, South Korean aid group Good Friends said authorities have threatened severe punishment for such an action.

Many residents would burn worthless old bills rather than surrender them to authorities, in order to avoid arousing suspicions about how they made the money, Good Friends said.

The banknotes carry portraits of founding president Kim Il-Sung and his successor and son Kim Jong-Il. Defacing their images is treated as a felony.

With nascent private markets for food collapsing because of the currency reform, citizens are finding it difficult to obtain basic staples. The U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organization is already projecting another grain shortage for the country. 

Over at the U.S. Institute for Peace, John S. Park does a nice job of explaining the political economy effects of this currency move: 

As North Korean people in key market-active regions benefited from growing commercial interactions, low- to high-level DPRK officials figured out ways to get a cut of the money made. These officials used most of these bribes (viewed by traders as a "cost of doing business") to line their own pockets, but also used a portion of these for their respective organization's operating budget. With less to skim from the markets due to this revaluation, these officials will have funding gaps to fill. Given that these officials also enjoyed a higher standard of living, the discontent of the North Korean people will be aligned with these "skimming" officials. New groups of losers from this revaluation may be more advanced and better organized than protesters during previous periods of government-initiated economic and currency reforms....

If the DPRK government had improved and restored the inconsistent Public Distribution System and other public services on a national basis (a massive undertaking), a revaluation may have triggered greater state control by minimizing the benefits from the non-formal market system and making the North Korean people dependent on the state again. It does not appear that the DPRK government has improved these national systems. In an apparent effort to restore discipline through this revaluation, the DPRK government may have initiated a period of economic, social, and political destabilization by undermining a widely used coping mechanism for the people, as well as a growing number of officials.

[So a buckling DPRK regime is a good thing, right?--ed.]  From a nonproliferation perspective, not so much, no.   

Any domestic instability in North Korea is bad for Bosworth, the Six-Party Talks, and nonproliferation efforts in general.  The June uprisings in Iran have led the Iranian regime to adopt a more hardline position on the nuclear issue, both to bolster the conservative base and engage in "rally round the flag" efforts.  I see no reason why this logic would not apply to North Korea as well -- indeed, domestic instability is the likely explanation for Pyongyang's bellicose behavior earlier this year.

Developing.... in a very disturbing way.

 

[a_majoor]

The real open question is who the North Koreans believe will come to help them? Considering the Obama administration abandoned its Eastern European allies, voted "Present" for the Iranian democracy protestors and seems eager to accomodate authoratarian regimes, no helpwill be coming from there...

Wounded or dying regimes like the DPRK are especially irrational and dangerous as they destabilize; this might actually be the story to watch.

http://www.forbes.com/2009/12/09/north-korea-obama-climate-opinions-columnists-claudia-rosett_print.html

Give North Koreans A Chance
Claudia Rosett, 12.10.09, 12:10 AM ET

While climate delegates are quarreling in Copenhagen, and President Barack Obama is collecting his Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, an important story is unfolding in relative obscurity, in North Korea. Furious over a confiscatory currency "reform," citizens of the world's most repressive state have begun publicly criticizing their government.

It is hard to overstate just how bold a move that is. North Korea's military "is on alert for a possible civil uprising," according to a major South Korean newspaper, the Chosun Ilbo. Reports have been filtering out of North Korea that the country's markets have become arenas of protest, with traders--many of them women in their 40s and 50s--publicly cursing the North Korean authorities.

Most of these reports attribute the information to anonymous sources. That's no surprise, given that North Koreans can be condemned to starve and freeze to death in labor camps for such acts as singing a South Korean song or failing to pay fawning homage to the ubiquitous portraits of their tyrant, Kim Jong Il.

That is exactly why these signs of unrest are so important. Dissent in North Korea carries individual risks even worse than the horrors that street protesters have been braving in Iran. But the stories are credible, and they suggest that North Korea's regime is approaching a fragile moment. This comes on top of Kim's questionable health, following what is believed to have been a stroke in 2008.

President Barack Obama, and other leaders of the democratic world, have a choice. They can dismiss the rising murmurs of North Korea's stricken people, and stick with the sorry tradition of bailing out and propping up the North Korean regime via yet another round of nuclear talks and payoffs. Or they can leave Kim to struggle with this nightmare of his own making, and maybe even notch up the financial pressure to nudge North Korea's totalitarian regime toward its rightful place in history's unmarked graveyard of discarded lies.

The immediate cause of the anger sweeping North Korea is a currency "reform" that amounts to the government stealing from its own deprived population. With its priorities on bankrolling the military and the production of missiles and nuclear weapons, while its people endure repression, cold and hunger, North Korea's government has produced runaway inflation. On Dec. 1, North Korean authorities imposed a surprise plan to revalue the country's currency, the won. The plan has entailed issuing new banknotes, lopping off two zeroes, so 1,000 won becomes 10. People were given just one week to swap old money for new, after which the old notes would become worthless. A limit was placed on the amount that could be officially exchanged, effectively confiscating all individual savings worth more than about $40 at informal exchange rates.

This caused so much outrage that the government then eased up slightly, raising the limits on how much old currency people could trade for new. But even with the adjustment, many North Koreans have been left with outright state theft of their money.

North Korea's government has done this before, most recently in the early 1990s, without major ructions. But that was back in the days when money was far less important, because there were no markets.

This time is different. Back in the early-1990s, when the Soviet collapse put an end to the Russian dole, North Korea's state-run distribution system largely collapsed. The result was a famine in which an estimated 1 million or more North Koreans died. Struggling to survive, North Koreans began defying the state by doing business with each other--setting up small markets. Since then, at least some market activity has been incorporated into the system. That is what many North Koreans depend on simply to eat. That is how some have been able to salt away a little cash, and a glimmer of hope for some control over their own lives.

That is what has just come under blitz attack by the North Korean regime. And though North Korea's state secrecy allows no way to know just how many people have been hit by this state thievery, the number is clearly large. "It is serious," says a North Korean defector, Kim Kwang-Jin, an expert in North Korean finance, currently a visiting fellow at the Washington-based U.S. Committee for Human Rights in North Korea.

History suggests that while tyrannized people may endure astounding hardships before rising up, state plunder of their money is a particularly explosive gambit. In late-1987, Burma's repressive junta wiped out high denomination banknotes for Burma's currency, the kyat. That wholesale state larceny lit the fuse for the massive Burmese street protests of 1988.

China's government tried a variation on this sort of sweeping confiscation in the late 1980s, paying workers with state bonds that the state did not plan to honor anytime soon. That helped fuel the huge protest movement, which burst into public view in mid-1989 as the Tiananmen Square uprising.

Indonesia beggared millions of its emerging middle class with a currency devaluation in 1997, aggravated by a bungled bank cleanup, all of which turned into a route of the rupiah. In early-1998, stripped of their purchasing power, Indonesians rioted. That led to the resignation within months of longtime dictator Suharto.

None of these stories are pleasant. In China and Burma, the authorities regained control by gunning down protestors in the streets. Only in Indonesia, where Suharto ran a relatively benign autocracy compared with such places as China, Burma and especially North Korea, did the dictator go.

But if there is any likelihood of North Koreans rising up against their government, they deserve the chance to at least make a run for it. They live under the worst government on the planet--a racketeering, weapons-vending, nuclear extortionist regime that is a menace to the world and a horror to its own captive population. Kim keeps control by running a Stalinist gulag that has swallowed hundreds of thousands of North Koreans. Citizens caught trying to flee the country have been punished with everything from time in often-lethal labor camps, to execution--in some cases carried out in public, to deter others.

Officially, as consolation for the shock of having their money suddenly snatched away by the state, North Korea's people can turn to the usual programming of breathless affirmations of Kim Jong Il's glory. That runs to such stuff as this week's report by the state-run Korean Central News Agency that the People's Security Ministry has been giving art performances showing "the firm faith and will of the people's security men to share intention and destiny with Supreme Commander Kim Jong Il." The starring acts include a male guitar quintet performing such pieces as "Let's Defend Socialism."

Meanwhile, Obama's envoy, Stephen Bosworth, has just paid a visit to Pyongyang, trying to wheedle Kim Jong Il's regime back to the nuclear bargaining table. Both presidents Bill Clinton and George Bush trod this same slippery path, providing Kim with nuclear payoffs over the years that have amounted to massive handouts of food, fuel, hard cash and diplomatic concessions. North Korea, with an unbroken record of lying and cheating on such deals, has carried on with its weapons programs, plus such stunts as counterfeiting U.S. currency, and sending sanctions-busting arms shipments to Iran. This spring, Kim welcomed Obama's arrival in the White House by conducting North Korea's second nuclear test.

Real progress in coping with North Korea would begin with the refusal to do anything more to prop up Kim Jong Il's regime. That would mean an end to the haggling, concessions and handouts. In sheer humanitarian terms, anything leading to the end of Kim's regime would be an achievement on a par with liberating the concentration camps of Nazi Germany--as the world may one day understand, when the prison camps of North Korea are finally opened to public view and shut down forever. In terms of global security, it would send a healthy message to Iran's mullahs and other tyrannical nuclear wannabes, if North Korea were to provide a graphic demonstration that building the bomb is not, after all, the fast track to lifelong rule and out-sized leverage in world politics.

For North Koreans to curse their government in public requires not only anger, but astounding courage. Give these people a chance.

Claudia Rosett, a journalist-in-residence with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, writes a weekly column on foreign affairs for Forbes.

 

[sm1lodon]

So, the main wealth-generating activity in North Korea is saber-rattling? Kim Po Ssible throws his nuclear tantrums so we hand him money and goods? Sounds remotely akin to paying a ransom.

Here's to the day when North Koreans finally throw off their chains.

Hope it's soon, for their sakes.

 

[a_majoor]

More on Korean protests:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/26/AR2009122600761_pf.html

In N. Korea, a strong movement recoils at Kim Jong Il's attempt to limit wealth

By Blaine Harden
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, December 27, 2009; A16

SEOUL -- North Korean leader Kim Jong Il moved early this month to wipe out much of the wealth earned in the past decade in his country's private markets. As part of a surprise currency revaluation, the government sharply restricted the amount of old bills that could be traded for new and made it illegal for citizens to have more than $40 worth of local currency.

It was an unexplained decision -- the kind of command that for more than six decades has been obeyed without question in North Korea. But this time, in a highly unusual challenge to Kim's near-absolute authority, the markets and the people who depend on them pushed back.

Grass-roots anger and a reported riot in an eastern coastal city pressured the government to amend its confiscatory policy. Exchange limits have been eased, allowing individuals to possess more cash.

The currency episode reveals new constraints on Kim's power and may signal a fundamental change in the operation of what is often called the world's most repressive state. The change is driven by private markets that now feed and employ half the country's 23.5 million people, and appear to have grown too big and too important to be crushed, even by a leader who loathes them.

The currency episode seems far from over, and there have been indications that Kim still has the stomach for using deadly force.

There have been public executions and reinforcements have been dispatched to the Chinese border to stop possible mass defections, according to reports in Seoul-based newspapers and aid groups with informants in the North.

Still, analysts say there has also been evidence of unexpected shifts in the limits of Kim's authority.

"The private markets have created a new power elite," said Koh Yu-whan, a professor of North Korean studies at Dongguk University in Seoul. "They pay bribes to bureaucrats in Kim's government, and they are a threat that is not going away."
The third generation

The threat comes at a time of transition in North Korea. Kim Jong Il, 67, suffered a stroke last year. While he appears to have recovered, at least enough to maintain control, he has begun a murky process of handing power over to a third generation, in the person of his youngest son, Kim Jong Eun, 26.

The Kim family dynasty built and presides over a totalitarian state that has lasted more than six decades, far longer than its mentors, Stalin's Soviet Union and Mao's China. It is the only such state to have survived the death of the leader around whom a cult of personality had been built. Kim Jong Il assumed power in 1994, after the death of his father, Kim Il Sung, the state's founding dictator.

It was an exceedingly bumpy transition: Famine killed a million people, the state-run economy imploded and private markets began an inexorable spread across the country. Still, it was a transition that had been in the works for more than a decade and was elaborately rolled out to the North Korean people, unlike the current succession.

"It would seem to an outsider that much less care has been taken to ensure a smooth dynastic transition this time around," said Nicholas Eberstadt, author of several books on North Korea.

Analysts in South Korea and the United States say there is little evidence that Kim Jong Eun has been groomed for power -- or that he is equipped to deal with the regime-rotting challenge presented by the growth of private markets and the rise of a bribe-paying entrepreneurial class.

In the view of several outside experts, this month's currency revaluation was a preemptive strike against the markets by Kim Jong Il, an aging leader who is worried about succession and trying to buy time.

"This was one of the strongest measures he could take," said Cho Young-key, a professor of North Korea studies at Korea University in Seoul. "Kim is thinking that if he can't control the markets now, in the future it will get even harder, and then he will be handing power to the son."

Stripping wealth from merchants is consistent with Kim Jong Il's long-held abhorrence of capitalist reform. His government regards it as "honey-coated poison" that can lead to regime change and catastrophe, according to the Rodong Sinmun, the party newspaper in Pyongyang.

"It is important to decisively frustrate capitalist and non-socialist elements in their bud," said the newspaper.
Closing the marketplace

Kim's government in the past two years has closed some large markets, shifted Chinese-made goods to state-run shops and ordered that only middle-aged and older women can sell goods in open-air markets, to try to limit the number of North Koreans who abandon government jobs for the private sector.

But capitalism seems to have already taken root. U.N. officials estimate that half the calories consumed in North Korea come from food bought in private markets, and that nearly 80 percent of household income derives from buying and selling in the markets, according to a study last year in the Seoul Journal of Economics.

Private markets are flooding the country with electronics from China and elsewhere.

Cheap radios, televisions, MP3 devices, DVD players, video cameras and cellphones are seeping into a semi-feudal society, where a trusted elite lives in the capital Pyongyang. Surrounding the elite is a suspect peasantry that is poor, stunted by hunger and spied upon by layers of state security.

In the past year, the elites in Pyongyang have been granted authorized access to mobile phones -- the number is soon expected to reach 120,000. In the border regions with China, unauthorized mobile phone use has also increased among the trading classes. And unlike most of the mobile phones in Pyongyang, the illegal phones are set up to make international calls.

Chinese telecom companies have built relay towers near the border, providing strong mobile signals in many nearby North Korean towns, according to the Chosun Ilbo, a Seoul-based daily.

Those phones have become a new source of real-time reporting to the outside world on events inside North Korea, as networks of informants call in news to Web sites such as the Seoul-based Daily NK and the Buddhist aid group Good Friends.

Good Friends reported last week that security forces in the northeastern town city of Chongjin executed a citizen after he burned a large pile of old currency. He was apparently worried that police enforcing currency laws would investigate him to find out how he had gotten rich, the group said.

Affordable electronics are also cracking open the government's decades-old seal on incoming information. Imported radios -- and televisions in border areas -- are enabling a substantial proportion of the North Korean populations to tune in to Chinese and South Korean stations, as well as to Radio Free Asia and Voice of America, according to an unpublished survey of newly arrived defectors in South Korea. It found that two-thirds of them listened regularly to foreign broadcasts.

Special correspondent June Lee contributed to this report.

 

[CougarKing]

NKorea calls for peace talks, end to sanctions

BY HYUNG-JIN KIM, Associated Press Writer Hyung-jin Kim, Associated Press Writer – 2 hrs 41 mins ago

SEOUL, South Korea – North Korea proposed Monday that a peace treaty to formally end the Korean War be signed this year, saying a return to negotiations on its nuclear program depends on better relations with Washington and the lifting of sanctions.

The North has long demanded a peace treaty, but President Barack Obama's special envoy for human rights in North Korea said in Seoul on Monday that the communist regime must improve its "appalling" human rights record before any normalization of relations.

Washington and Pyongyang have never had diplomatic relations because the 1950-53 Korean War ended in a truce, not a peace treaty, thus leaving the peninsula technically at war. North Korea, the U.S.-led United Nations Command and China signed a cease-fire, but South Korea never did.

The United States has resisted signing a treaty with North while it possesses nuclear weapons. Washington has said, however, that the subject can be discussed within the framework of six-nation negotiations aimed at ridding Pyongyang of atomic weapons. Those talks have not been held for more than a year.

But the North indicated Monday it won't rejoin the nuclear forum until talks begin on a peace treaty. The communist country pulled out of the nuclear talks last year to protest international sanctions imposed for its launch of a long-range missile.

South Korea is also suspicious of the North's calls for a peace treaty, calls for which Seoul has said are a tactic to delay its denuclearization.

The North's Foreign Ministry said in a statement the absence of a peace treaty is a "root cause of the hostile relations" with the U.S. The ministry called for a peace treaty to be signed this year, which it emphasized marks the 60th anniversary of the outbreak of the Korean War.

"The conclusion of the peace treaty will help terminate the hostile relations between (North Korea) and the U.S. and positively promote the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula at a rapid tempo," the statement said.

The proposal comes after a landmark visit to North last month by Stephen Bosworth, Obama's special envoy for the country. Bosworth said after his trip that the North agreed on the necessity of returning to the talks, though the country has not said when it would rejoin them.

"This appears to be an overture by the North Koreans to try and, in their own way, break through the logjam that we have seen for more than a year now in the (six-party) talks," said Peter Beck, an expert on North Korea currently conducting research at Stanford University.

During the talks, North Korea had agreed to disarm in exchange for economic aid, security assurances and diplomatic recognition.

North Korea also suggested that the withdrawal of sanctions could lead to a speedy resumption of the talks.

"The removal of the barrier of such discrimination and distrust as sanctions may soon lead to the opening of the six-party talks," the North's statement said.

Robert King, Obama's special envoy for human rights in North Korea, harshly criticized the communist country Monday and said that the situation is preventing a normalization of relations.

"It's one of the worst places in terms of lack of human rights," King told reporters after meeting South Korea's foreign minister. "The situation is appalling."

He added, "Improved relations between the United States and North Korea will have to involve greater respect for human rights by North Korea."

North Korea holds some 154,000 political prisoners in six large camps across the country, according to South Korean government estimates. Pyongyang denies the existence of prison camps and often reacts strongly to foreign criticism regarding human rights.

From the Associated Press via Yahoo News-