CINA

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조선민주주의인민공화국

NORTH KOREA

THE "PARADISE OF THE

WORKING CLASS" (*)

Since long time I'm struggling with myself to write something more deepening about the "DPR"K, or better what I'm thinking about it.

I think that now I'm ready to begin..

The idea I got in the beginning of the year after i read following b.. sh.. by Kim In-shik, a Da-hamkke activist, later "Chief Policymaker" in DLP: "I believe that North Korea is fundamentally exactly the same sort of exploitative and repressive society as South Korea." (**)

OK, let's start just with some impressions by photographes (about the "DPR"K):

*    Aeh~ only according to the NK propaganda

**  Really, I can't believe that he(or Da-hamkke/DLP) mean this serious!! 

Da-hamkke/All together:

http://www.alltogether.or.kr

DLP:

http://www.kdlp.org

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Following f.. crazy story I found few days ago on (the notoriously) DailyNK:

Soccer Ball Rescue Mission

In North Korea, receiving gifts from Kim Il Sung or Kim Jong Il is the most honorable event...

Kim Jong Il often gives presents during field inspection or on holidays to the people. Each individual or organization that received a gift from Kim is supposed to be ‘very grateful’ and solemnly swears an oath of loyalty...

However, 18 years ago, four young soldiers died because of a soccer ball, a gift by Kim Jong Il.
 

It was a fine spring day in 1988, in a coastguard regiment under the Korean People’s Army’s Fourth Corps in South Hwanghae Province. As a Kim Il Sung’s birthday commemorative gift, Kim Jong Il sent various gifts to the troops stationed near DMZ (demilitarized zone). Soccer balls were included.
 

Several soldiers, relaxing after a coastal patrol mission, played soccer with the ball given to them by Kim Jong Il...
 
 
During the soccer game, somebody who could not control his power kicked the ball into the sea. There were angry waves smashing the coast.
 

Someone shouted “Save the ball.” A platoon leader dived into the sea. The lieutenant, however, failed to get the ball and was almost drowned.
 

Other platoon members jumped into the sea to save the lieutenant. 3 others and the platoon leader were swept away by the waves.
 

A rescue team from the company headquarters arrived, but it was too late. The part of sea was an estuary, where a river joined with the sea and created a powerful whirlpool. Four soldiers were swept too fast.

Dear leader Comrade Kim Jong Il’s present must be saved regardless of the situation.

The coastguards knew danger of diving into such waters. However, they sacrificed their lives to save a soccer ball because the ball was a Kim Jong Il’s gift. Dear leader Comrade Kim Jong Il’s present must be saved regardless of the situation.
 

After a few days, South Korean army notified the KPA through Panmunjom, a North-South Korean negotiation post along the DMZ, to accept four bodies of North Korean soldiers.

The bodies were buried in a mountain near the platoon they served in. It was reported to Kim Jong Il and Kim ordered to award the soldiers medals and other honors posthumously. The four were recorded as killed in action.
http://www.dailynk.com/english/read.php?cataId=nk00100&num=1151

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金剛山

Yesterday KCNA/조선통신 "reported" following:

Kim Jong Il's Field Guidance to Mt. Kumgang Resort

General Secretary Kim Jong Il provided field guidance to Mt. Kumgang resort on his way of inspection of the front. Mt. Kumgang covers a vast area of 530 square kilometers extending 60 km from south to north and 40 km from east to west including Kosong, Kumgang and Thongchon counties of Kangwon Province. It is known as a famous mountain of Korea and a world-famous mountain from old times as it presents a myriad of diverse, majestic and spectacular scenery.
 
    It is called a mountain of superb scenic beauty as everything there presents fantastic scenery. It is superb not only in the beauty of its peaks and ravines but in the scenery of the sea and its shore, lakes, kaleidoscopic changes seen around the peaks due to winds and clouds, thick forests rich in rare animals and plants and falls presenting ever-changing scenery.
 
    He climbed the Piro Peak, the main peak of the mountain, and commanded a bird's-eye view of the mountain presenting kaleidoscopic scenery.
    He said that Mt. Kumgang, which had long been a resort for the exploiting class only, turned into a splendid recreation ground for the people in the era of the Workers' Party
.
    Our country has many scenic spots wherever its people go, the objects of foreigners' envy, as its mountains are beautiful and its water is clear, he said, adding that our people are highly proud of fully enjoying a worthy life in the beautiful socialist country with brilliant culture and long history.
 
    Noting that one can display patriotism only when one knows well about the history, culture and scenic beauty of the country, he underscored the need to intensify the education through scenic spots.
 
    He specified tasks to be undertaken to permanently preserve the superb scenery of Mt. Kumgang and ways to do so, underlining the need to spruce up the beauty spots in a peculiar manner and prevent the damage by natural phenomena.
 
    He was accompanied by Korean People's Army Generals Ri Myong Su, Hyon Chol Hae and Pak Jae Gyong.

*****

First of all KCNA and the people who are publishing this stuff in the internet must think that everyone who is reading it must be a complete ignorant pro-DPRK idiot or some one who have absolutely no idea about the reality on the Kor. Peninsula.

Secondly: Nearly the entire area of Geumgang-san is occupied by the S.K. capitalists. So, of course, no(ordinary) N.K. citizen is allowed to enter this area.

Thirdly: The N.K. people have complete other interests as to climb on mountains! They just want to get something to eat, warm clothes and heating material for the coming winter(aeh~ so they also have to climb mountains, but not for fun..).

And so on, and so on..

Anyway, thanks to KCNA and everybody who is republishing this f.. sh..!!

The Dear Leader in Geumgang-san..

*****

PS: When Kim Jong-il visited Geumgang-san Resort he had to pay entrance fee? S.K. Won? US$? Or what..?

For more about the Geumgang-san Resort please check out this:

"Hyundai's Holiday Gulag"

North Korean wouldn't normally spring to mind as a choice holiday destination. But hundreds of thousands of tourists are flowing into the secretive realm of.. Kim Jong Il as part of vacations organized by the South Korean conglomerate Hyundai..

Please read more here(Der Spiegel, 06.03.13. - just for example):

http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/spiegel/0,1518,406426,00.html

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NEXT WEEK: JAPAN WILL DECLARE WAR TO THE D.P.R.K.(*)

S.K. Yonhap news agency reported today:

Japan considers financial sanctions against N. Korea

Japan has reportedly decided to impose financial sanctions against North Korea amid concerns that the communist state may be preparing to launch additional missiles or test a nuclear bomb.

Japanese news outlets reported that the country may take action as early as next week.

"Japan is considering releasing specifics of financial sanctions on North Korea in line with a U.N. Security Council resolution as early as Tuesday and has begun final consultations on the matter with the United States," Kyodo News reported, quoting unidentified sources.

The U.N. Security Council unanimously passed a resolution on July 15 condemning North Korea's test-firing of seven ballistic missiles earlier that month and to prohibit any transfer to or from the communist state of material, technology and financial resources that are related to the North's weapons program.

North Korea immediately rejected the resolution, calling it a "gangster-like" act by Washington and its allies to isolate and stifle its communist regime. Japan and the United States have been calling for additional sanctions against the North amid Pyongyang's boycott of international negotiations over its nuclear weapons program.

The move, if taken, is expected to deal a severe blow to the North as its firms in Japan and pro-Pyongyang Koreans in the country have been one of the largest sources of hard currency for the communist state.

Japan's prime minister, Junichiro Koizumi, told reporters Thursday that the plan has yet to become final, saying his country would "have to consult on the matter with the United States and South Korea."
But his Deputy Chief Secretary of Cabinet Jinen Nagase said the country was moving toward that end.

"At the moment, relevant government ministries and agencies are making preparations as to whom the sanctions will target and when the sanctions will be implemented," Nagase was quoted as saying Thursday.

News reports here said the envisioned sanctions were likely to target 12 North Korean or pro-Pyongyang businesses and organizations that have been outlined by the United States for having suspected links to the North's communist regime and one person suspected of similar links.

Tokyo banned a North Korean passenger ferry in July from its ports for six months as part of a nine-point resolution, imposing economic and diplomatic sanctions against the North.

The total amount of North Korea's exports to Japan dropped to 440 million yen (US$3.75 million) in July, a 44.2 percent decrease from that of June, Japan's Finance Ministry said late last month.

The amount also represented a 42.2 percent decrease from the same month in 2005, according to the ministry.

Japan is part of the multilateral negotiations aimed at persuading North Korea to abandon its nuclear ambitions. But the talks, also attended by South Korea, China, Russia and the United States, have been stalled since November due to a North Korean boycott.

http://english.yna.co.kr/Engnews/20060915/610000000020060915091104E8.html

DailyNK(no comment please!!) wrote this today:

“Japan, Imposing Financial Sanctions Against North Korea”

Mainichi “Freezing assets of enterprises suspected to be involved with WMD”  
 
A Japanese newspaper, the Mainichi reported that on the 14th the Japanese government confirmed its policy to implement financial sanctions against North Korea this month and freeze assets of individuals or corporations speculated to be involved with weapons of mass destruction.

The newspaper reported that “The government will ban withdrawals and overseas remittances from accounts held in Japan by organizations and individuals suspected of being linked to North Korea’s development of weapons of mass destruction” and “may implement the sanctions before Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi resigns on September 26th.”

The newspaper relayed that “Top government officials deemed it indispensable to impose additional sanctions against the secluded state after North Korea refused to hold talks on its missile development plan and failed to express its readiness to return to the six-party talks even though two months have passed since the United Nations adopted the resolution.”

After the U.S urged members of the United Nations resolution to pass the North Korea financial sanctions, it appears that further cooperation will be advocated through the U.S.-Japan mutual support.

Although it is difficult to anticipate cooperation from China or Russia, it is expected that European countries, Canada, Australia and such will be provoked to cooperate.

The Japanese government plans to identify the individuals or organizations subject to the sanctions based on information from investigative authorities in various countries. Even if dozens of individuals and organizations receive sanctions though it would not have direct affect on North Korea, the Japanese government anticipates that these measures will portray a strong message of ‘pressure’ to each country.

After the missile launch on July 5th, the Japanese government implemented the nine-point sanctions prohibiting the North Korean vessel ‘The Mangyongbong’ and North Korean officials to enter Japan. In addition, the ruling Liberal Democratic Party is deliberating drafting a law to further impose sanctions against financial institutions suspected of being involved in money-laundering.

http://www.dailynk.com/english/read.php?cataId=nk00100&num=1101

* Several times the D.P.R.K.(KCNA/Rodong Shinmun..) said that any sanctions against it will be seen as a "declaration of war"!!(^^)

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..Paranoia and Provocation (Guardian, UK, 9.14)

North Korea's political paranoia spilled into the open this week when the isolated regime accused the Bush administration of plotting a nuclear strike. The state-run Rodong Sinmun newspaper said a "sub-critical" underground nuclear test in Nevada last month was part of Washington's efforts to develop new, offensive atomic weapons. "The US is perfecting a nuclear war plan after listing our and other countries as targets for its pre-emptive nuclear attack," it said.

An US assault is not remotely on the cards, but North Korea's clamour reflects more than its leadership's persecution complex. In Seoul the claim was read as possible evidence that the North is preparing to justify an imminent nuclear weapons test of its own. South Korean officials have warned that Pyongyang could conduct a test, or repeat July's destabilising Sea of Japan missile launches, at any time. Not coincidentally, President Roh Moo-hyun was in Washingtonon Thursday arguing for a more "flexible" US line.

Concern about North Korea's intentions is ratcheting up again across the region. Pyongyang escaped binding sanctions proposed by Japan after the July launches when China diluted a condemnatory UN resolution. But it failed in its apparent aim of scaring the US into relaxing financial sanctions or offering improved, Iran-style incentives for good behaviour. Now analysts suggest it may be about to try again.

The US says it would view a North Korean nuclear test as "very provocative" while the reaction in Japan, the only country to experience atom bomb attacks, could be explosive. But with the six-party nuclear talks deadlocked for almost a year, and differences in approach evident between the US, South Korea, Japan and China, foolproof mechanisms for avoiding another dangerous confrontation appear lacking.

"The key has got be some kind of bilateral deal between North Korea and the US that everyone else can buy into," said Christopher Hughes, a regional expert based at the University of Warwick. "An agreement with the US is what the North Koreans have always wanted. The US is searching for a way to reach them while stopping Japan over-playing its hand."

But Machiavellian manoeuvring by Pyongyang, diplomatic divergences and distrust continue to bedevil such efforts. When Christopher Hill, the US chief negotiator, proposed a one-on-one meeting with his North Korean counterpart last week, he was reportedly rebuffed. Kim Jong-il, North Korea's leader, is meanwhile rumoured to be on the point of visiting China for consultations.

Japanese officials play down the prospect of a crisis while admitting that "favourable signs" from North Korea are lacking. "We do not have any evidence of activities suggesting that something is going to happen soon, either concerning missiles or a nuclear test," a senior diplomat said. "But it is very difficult to predict, especially when it comes to underground testing."

The likely appointment this month of a hard-hitting conservative, Shinzo Abe, to replace Junichiro Koizumi as Japan's prime minister would not change Tokyo's approach, the diplomat said. "We will maintain our current policy of dialogue and pressure. We want talks to resume. We also want full implementation of UN resolution 1695 (that requires countries to halt WMD or missile-related technology transfers to North Korea)."

Reports yesterday suggested Japan may impose financial sanctions later this month, which North Korea says would be tantamount to a declaration of war. Sources said the US could also adopt additional punitive measures if no progress is made.

Describing Mr Abe as a "neo-nationalist, more hawkish than Mr Koizumi", Dr Hughes predicted a tougher Japanese line on nuclear weapons and on the long-running dispute over Japanese abducted by North Korea. "Abe portrays himself as a leading statesman. He believes in reviving the Japanese nation. He wants to rewrite the constitution and the post-war settlement." Speaking yesterday, Mr Abe called for a more "assertive" international role for Japan.

But after fierce Sino-Japanese frictions during the Koizumi era, Mr Abe would also face considerable pressure, not least from Washington, to improve relations with China, Dr Hughes said. So partly to maintain his credibility with the nationalist right "he will probably still be tempted to bash North Korea quite hard". And that could be seen as provocation by the paranoiacs of Pyongyang.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/korea/article/0,,1872341,00.html

PS:

Yesterday's DailyNK [well, I know, f.. reactionary.. But dont't forget: "If you want to fight your enemy you must study him/her"(Lenin)^^] wrote following stuff:

The U.S. Intensifies Sanction against NK through UN Resolution
'By deepening, rather than broadening, existing measures' 

The United States is expected to tighten its North Korean policy by strengthening financial sanction and containment through the UN resolution 1695, within the boundary of six-party talks.

Such expectation is materialized as the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill visits Northeast Asia, recently. Hill, during a press conference in Seoul, said that North Korea did not pursue fulfillment of the 9.19 communiqué, and added “every member state of the UN must follow the Security Council’s resolution and we will watch it.”
 

Hill is known as the leading advocate of negotiation with North Korea in the U.S. In his recent trip to East Asia, Hill might have met with Kim Kye Kwan, Vice Minister of NK Foreign Ministry. But Pyongyang did not respond to Hill’s call and the U.S. seemed to conclude that NK lacked will to follow the 9.19 communiqué, in which NK promised to give its nuclear program. The six-party talks have become a lame excuse of Pyongyang’s procrastination.
 

The U.S. Secretary of Treasury Henry Paulson’s plan to meet South Korea President Roh Moo Hyun, during Roh’s official visit to the U.S. this week, is also worthy of notice. Paulson is responsible to financial sanction against North Korea. The meeting’s main topic will not be anything but financial sanction.

However, it is not known yet whether Washington would ask for South Korea’s more vigorous participation in sanction, or Seoul will request appeasement policy to attract NK to return to the six-party talks. Nonetheless, since the gap between the two countries’ perspective, the summit will not have a more than symbolic meaning.

Therefore, it has become evermore probable that the U.S. would announce a wholesale sanction against NK after Hill’s East Asian tour and the U.S.-South Korean summit on Thursday. Given the perspective, the U.S. might hope to create another multi-lateral international structure to deal with security concerns of East Asia.
 

It might be problematic to press North Korea without participation of Seoul and Beijing. Moreover, U.S. is currently dealing with Iran’s nuclear program, too. So a joint solution that is applicable to nuclear development of both Iran and North Korea could be suggested.
 

Tom Casey, deputy spokesperson of the Department of State, announced on Tuesday that every necessary means will be exercised to terminate North Korea’s nuclear weapon or other WMD development program.
Professor Kim Tae Ho, a South Korean expert on NK, anticipated deepening rather than broadening of existing sanction policies against the North.

According to Professor Kim, it is possible to conduct intensive financial sanction world wide or inspection of North Korean ships on the sea through PSI, Proliferation Security Initiative. “South Korean government’s aid to North Korea,” Kim added, “would be in trouble as sanctions get intensified.”

An anonymous international politics professior commented that “there is no need for special measure to put pressure on North Korea right now, but if NK does not give up the nuclear program, coercion will get hardened.”

The professor supposed that Bush administration would not yield to North Korea’s persistence, since both countries’ fundamental interests are at stake.

http://www.dailynk.com/english/read.php?cataId=nk00100&num=1098

Wow, exactly 6 years ago(I already forgot it in the last years) I visited the first time the Korean Peninsula. At that time: Pyeongyang/DPRK, during the "Int'l Film Festival of Non-aligned and Other Developing Countries"^^!!

Harrharr, just now I found out that this night there will be a documentary about NK in the TV..

"P.Y. Robogirl"^^

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Some pages of the 1st grade elementary school textbook for "Korean language"(^^), published in the D.P.R.K., P.Y., 2005

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..WHAT A SURPRISE!!

North Korea rules out six-way talks

North Korea said Thursday that it will not join any six-way talks with the United States, South Korea, China, Russia and Japan, unless Washington lifts its financial sanctions against Pyongyang.

Pyongyang's reiteration of its previous position came as its foreign minister, Paek Nam-sun, arrived in Kuala Lumpur to attend a regional security forum.

"There will be no incident (in which) we return to the six-way talks as long as the U.S. continues to impose its financial sanctions," Jung Sung-il, director-general of North Korean Foreign Ministry's international organization bureau, told reporters.

Jung made the comments on behalf of his boss Paek, who was whisked away by a sedan upon his arrival at the airport.(Yonhap, 7.27)

http://english.yna.co.kr/Engnews/20060727/610000000020060727180013E2.html

And it's just the beginning of the ASEAN summit in K.L. Our "beloved friends" from P.Y. may have some more f(unny) surprises for the coming two days!!??

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LONG LIVE THE EXPLOITATION

AND OPPRESSION OF DPRK's

WORKING CLASS..

..by the S.K. capitalist class and N.K. monarchy!!

When the S.K. capitalists and their gov't are watching, for instance last week's struggle in Pohang, they may dream about the perfect possibilities in the DPRK.. There no-one comes to the idea to go on strike, even he/she is getting paid only $50/50,000 Won(migrant workers in S.K., at least, are getting 500,000 W) per month(some people are calling it "salary"). And if the N.K. workers really would come to the(complete stupid - or better deadly) idea to fight for a normal payment... YODOK, or any other concentration camp, is waiting!! And I'm 100 percent sure that nobody in S.K., especially in the ruling class, would ask about him or her, unless the production/profit-making-machine will get in serious problems..

And not only the "real" ruling class profits from this situation: even, for example the so-called "alternative/left" media is trying to take a piece of the cake. Until some days ago Hankyoreh(the English section) had TWO advertisment clips for the Gaeseong Industrial Complex(GIC) - http://www.kidmac.com - on its main page. Today there is "just" one clip about GIC..

Last week(7.18) IHT/NYT published following article about GIZ:

North Korea's well-isolated capitalism

Just north of the demilitarized zone dividing the Korean Peninsula, in possibly the world's most heavily guarded special economic enclave, 500 managers from the South and 7,000 workers from the North are engaged in a capitalist experiment that is anathema to the United States.
 
The South Koreans recently gave a tour of the enclave, the Kaesong Industrial Park, to 200 foreign business executives, diplomats and journalists. The hosts expressed optimism that it would bring peace to the peninsula, then they led the visitors through factories churning out goods for markets in the South and elsewhere.
 
In one of the 15 factories, Taesung Hata, a cosmetics company, about 500 workers wearing dark blue uniforms and white hats operated machines that produced plastic cosmetic containers.
 
Next door, 1,500 workers sat in rows of desks with sewing machines, below ceiling fans and decorative red flowers, making orthopedic shoes called Stafild that were described as "Shoes for Unification."
 
To hear the South Korean hosts tell it, when the special economic zone is completed in 2012, it will house 2,000 companies and employ 700,000 North Koreans.
 
Yet Kaesong's significance is larger still, they say, because it will nudge the North toward embracing economic reforms and opening up to the world, the way Shenzhen did in China two decades ago, and open the path, as the shoes suggest, toward reunification.
 
(The hosts also said they had considered canceling the June 22 tour, which coincided with rising tensions over North Korean preparations for missile tests, but decided against it.)
 
Kaesong is South Korea's biggest project in what some call unification by "small steps," or "de facto" unification. The South does not want formal unification for a few more decades, but its strategy is to narrow the yawning gap of half a century of division through various projects, from manufacturing in Kaesong to uniting the two Koreas' different Braille characters for the blind and sign language for the deaf.
 
"It's de facto unification," said Ko Gyoung Bin, who oversees the 18- month-old Kaesong project at the Ministry of Unification in Seoul. "It's already under way. Unlike the German model, it won't happen suddenly."
 
The two Koreas agreed on building Kaesong when the former South Korean president, Kim Dae Jung, and the North's leader, Kim Jong Il, met in Pyongyang in June 2000.
 
Since then, the exchanges have become so routine that sports authorities on both sides are moving toward fielding a unified team for the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics.
 
With cultural, academic, business, political or military exchanges going on between the two Koreas nearly every week, 80,000 South Koreans visited the North last year.
 
That did not include South Korean visitors to Kumgang Mountain, a North Korean resort opened to foreigners eight years ago. Kumgang has been visited by 1.25 million South Koreans.
 
South Korean regional and local governments, regardless of political leanings, have also undertaken projects with counterparts in the North. More than 60 private organizations now send South Koreans north to assist on agricultural, health and other projects.
 
"We go to North Korea, where we work with our counterparts to show them how to use certain agricultural machines or how to breed better cattle," said Kang Young Shik, director of the Korean Sharing Movement, a private group that has undertaken the Braille and sign-language projects. "They need help from us, though they also feel the need to compete with us."
 
Cho Yong Nam, a director general in the Unification Ministry, said South Korea had projects in 27 out of 206 cities and counties in the North. The common theme, he said, is to raise standards in the North so that, in a unified Korea, North Koreans would not constitute "a displaced, misfortunate minority group."
 
Companies that have come to Kaesong, which is managed by Hyundai Asan, a private company, have received tax breaks and other support from the South Korean government.
 
A new highway and railroad traverse the demilitarized zone before reaching Kaesong, about 65 kilometers, or 40 miles, northwest of Seoul. Soldiers stand watch on either side of the DMZ, with its barricades, barbed wire fences and land mines.
 
In working with North Koreans, South Koreans have said, they have encountered the sometimes unexpected effects of their division: North Korean construction workers, for example, were rated only one-third as efficient as their counterparts from the South. Many North Koreans, with little experience handling machines, have required extensive training.
 
Sometimes, South and North Koreans had trouble communicating because the language spoken on either side of the DMZ has changed significantly. (One project supported by the South is a unified dictionary with new words that have appeared since the division, or words whose meanings have changed.)
 
Last year, the activity here expanded trade between the two Koreas to more than $1 billion for the first time, though only a few of the companies here are believed to be profitable.
 
Kaesong has also become an obstacle in negotiations between South Korea and the United States over a free-trade agreement. The South wants products made here to be included in the agreement, arguing, so far in vain, that most of the materials derive from the South.
 
The Bush administration, which has tried to isolate the North instead of engaging it, recently criticized Kaesong after long withholding judgment. It accused the South of economically propping up the North, as the United States was financially squeezing the North elsewhere.
 
In a recent opinion article in The Wall Street Journal, Jay Lefkowitz, President George W. Bush's special envoy for human rights in North Korea, said projects like Kaesong strengthened Kim Jong Il by pumping "hundreds of millions of dollars into the North, with more to come."
 
Lefkowitz also said he had doubts about whether the North Korean workers actually got their wages.
 
Ko, of the Unification Ministry, rejected such accusations, saying the North Korean workers had to sign their names when they received their wages. The wages average $57 a month, nearly triple the average in the North, he said.
 
According to Hyundai Asan, employees work 48 hours a week. They were picked by North Korean officials, then approved by South Koreans. About 80 percent are high school graduates.
 
Visitors were allowed to speak to the North Korean workers, but supervisors and North Korean guides on the tour discouraged anything but innocuous answers.
 
Peter Beck, who is the Northeast Asia director for the International Crisis Group in Seoul and took part in the tour, said he was impressed by the facilities but that it was still unclear how much of the wages went to the workers.
 
At Shinwon, a garment manufacturer, 300 North Korean workers were cutting and sewing shirts, dresses and blouses in a large, brightly lighted, air-conditioned factory.
 
"I've seen factories of this type in Kenya, Bangladesh, India and Papua New Guinea, and the conditions here compare very favorably," said Frank Gamble, a retired banker and an official with the Australia-New Zealand Chamber of Commerce in Seoul, as he toured the Shinwon factory. "What South Korea is trying to do here in Kaesong, we've already seen in China and Vietnam and elsewhere. The United States was against investing in Vietnam, but now they're beating down doors to get there."
 
A North Korean official accompanying the visitors expressed anger at criticism from Americans.
 
"I think they're ignorant," he said, refusing to give his name. "They just criticize everybody, including China on human rights. They just want to impose their standards on the world."

http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/07/18/news/pyongyang.php 
 

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The S.K. bourgeois daily JoongAng Ilbo reports today following:

North calls alert..

North Korea has ordered wartime mobilization preparation for its soldiers and citizens, a senior intelligence official said yesterday. The order was delivered to military and civilian leaders just after midnight Sunday, four hours before the United Nations Security Council adopted a resolution condemning the North's arms and missile programs.
..
The order, which was not broadcast by radio or television, was the first in 13 years. In March 1993, readiness was increased as North Korea pulled out of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.
The intelligence official said he assessed the order, in Kim Jong-il's name, as an effort to rally the nation behind him. He said soldiers were recalled to barracks, camouflage was being rolled out and civilian travel had been restricted.

..

http://joongangdaily.joins.com/200607/18/200607182133430879900090309031.html

Wow, what a great idea!!

DPRK's KCNA published yesterday - just a little belated - following:

DPRK Foreign Ministry Refutes "Resolution of UN Security Council"

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The HK based magazine Asia Times published following story 5.26..

North Korea's creepy-crawly capitalism
 

VLADIVOSTOK, Russia and BANGKOK, Thailand - North Korean capitalism is thriving - just not inside North Korea. Pyongyang has steadily established a string of legitimate and less legitimate front companies across East and Southeast Asia, aimed at earning the cash-strapped government badly needed hard currency. And, by all indications, business is booming.

Consider, for instance, Cafe Pyongyang, one of Vladivostok's most popular eateries. It is so popular, in fact, that there are plans to build a new restaurant in the shape of a North Korean peasant's hut, similar to the one where the late leader Kim Il-sung was born in 1912. Here, gracefully clothed North Korean women serve up traditional Korean fare, while patrons sing popular Korean tunes.

Similarly themed restaurants have popped up in Beijing and Shanghai in China, and Phnom Penh and Siem Reap in Cambodia. But this by no means represents a North Korean business diaspora similar to the ethnic-Chinese community that now controls a large swath of Southeast Asia's economy. Rather, the Pyongyang government owns and operates all of the eateries - and their regional interests reach far beyond restaurants.

North Koreans are becoming skilled capitalists outside their own strict centrally controlled country. For instance, they own a 15-story, 160-room hotel, complete with a nightclub and a sauna, in the northeastern Chinese city of Shenyang. There, government entrepreneurs also run a North Korean-owned computer software  company and an Internet service provider. Even more imaginatively, a company in Dandong, a Chinese city just across the Yalu River from North Korea, acquired the exclusive rights to sell North Korean medicines on the international market - including a brand called Cheongchun No 1, a home-made version of Viagra.

Angry enemies, profiting allies

While China is welcoming, North Korean companies have gotten a rise out of Japan and the United States, which contend that Pyongyang uses these concerns sometimes to procure raw materials and dual-use technologies clandestinely to support its missile and nuclear-weapons programs.

Until recently, North Korea was able to acquire sensitive industrial components and chemicals through companies in Japan, which were affiliated with the pro-Pyongyang General Association of Korean Residents, or Chosen Soren. But when the Japanese authorities began to crack down on this trade a few years ago, the North Koreans began buying more goods from Thailand.

In November 2002, a Tokyo-based, Chosen Soren-affiliated company called Meishin - or Myongshin in Korean - attempted to export three power-control devices to North Korea. But when the company informed customs of the planned shipment, Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry responded that Meishin required special permission under regulations governing the export of dual-purpose equipment that can be used in, or converted for use in, the production of weapons of mass destruction. The power-control devices could, for instance, be used to stabilize the heavy flow of electric current to uranium-enrichment centrifuges.

Meishin (Myongshin) failed to procure the appropriate documents, but on April 4, 2003, it shipped those same devices to a Thai telecommunications company, Loxley Pacific, which in turn planned to ship them to North Korea's Daesong General Trading Co. But customs in Hong Kong, where the ship stopped on its way to Bangkok, acted on a tip-off from the Japanese, seized the devices and returned them to Japan.

Loxley Pacific has major commercial interests in North Korea, including the operation of a mobile-telephone network, and was a perfect conduit for the stabilizers to North Korea. A Loxley spokesman at the time insisted that the devices were not destined for North Korea's nuclear program.

"The electricity situation is poor in North Korea ... They need stabilizers to avoid hurting their household appliances," he said in a press interview at the time. It is possible, though not altogether likely, that Loxley was unaware of what the dual-use stabilizers were actually intended for.

Thailand, which has cultivated close commercial ties with Pyongyang, recently replaced Japan as North Korea's third-largest trading partner. Two-way trade with Thailand was US$165 million in 2002, rose to $265 million in 2003, and jumped again to $332 million in 2004. In 2005, North Korea imported $207 million worth of goods from Thailand, and exports reached $134 million, or a total two-way trade of $341 million, according to statistics from the Thai Customs Department.

Thailand exports rice, fish, fuel oil, textiles, chemicals and pharmaceuticals to North Korea, while it imports fertilizer, optical equipment, and some iron and steel - at least according to official records. It may seem odd that Thailand, with a well-developed fertilizer industry and as a net fuel importer, would import fertilizer and export fuel oil.

But it seems to indicate off-balance-sheet barter deals, which are famously favored by the North Koreans. In exchange for oil, they give fertilizer to their Thai partners, who, in turn, repackage it using locally produced chemicals of questionable quality, or fertilizers received as aid from South Korea, and sell it at a favorable price to countries such as Laos, Cambodia or Myanmar.

Opaque trade flows

It's exactly that lack of transparency that has North Korea's critics in Washington and Tokyo fuming. North Korea's embassy in Bangkok is its biggest in Southeast Asia, and it operates in conjunction with two locally registered companies, both of which have North Korean citizens listed as directors and allegedly deal in electronics components, ceramics and consumer goods.

The first, Kosun Import Export, was set up in 1991 and operates out of a small apartment block not far from the North Korean Embassy. The other was set up in 1995 and was first called Kotha Supply Import Export, but is now registered as Star Bravo. The company is reported to be a subsidiary of the Daesong Group, which is North Korea's main state-owned trading corporation and the overt arm of Bureau 39, the clandestine foreign-exchange-earning branch of the ruling Korean Workers' Party.

Daesong operates openly under that name in Hong Kong, but no longer in Singapore, where in 2001 it changed its registered name to the more innocuous-sounding Laurich International. In Macau, Daesong was known as Zokwang Trading. But the North Koreans fled the former Portuguese territory last September after the US Treasury Department identified a local bank, Banco Delta Asia, as a "financial institution of primary money-laundering concern". The bank, the US authorities asserted, "has provided services for over 20 years to North Korean government agencies and associated front companies".

The Treasury Department accused "North Korean entities" of being engaged in criminal activities, including the counterfeiting of US currency. The naming of Delta Asia in particular caused depositors to rush the bank and withdraw their holdings. The Macau government had to step in to prevent the bank from collapsing, and Delta Asia finally agreed to dissolve its North Korean links. Subsequently, Zokwang - the first North Korean trading company in the region and active in Macau since the mid-1970s - evacuated its office in the territory and moved its operations to the Zhuhai Special Economic Zone just across the border in mainland China.

The Delta Asia affair has had a snowball effect on everyone doing business with Pyongyang, veritably criminalizing dealing with the regime. Nigel Cowie, the British general manager of the Pyongyang-based Daedong Credit Bank, stated in a speech at an informal meeting hosted by the European Business Association of Pyongyang in the US on May 4: "The result of these actions against banks doing business with the DPRK [Democratic People's Republic of Korea] is that criminal activities go underground and are harder to trace, and legitimate businesses either give up or end up appearing suspicious by being forced to use clandestine methods."

Foreign customers conducting legitimate businesses in Pyongyang, he said, "have been told by their bankers overseas to stop receiving remittances from the DPRK, otherwise their accounts will be closed". Now, vast amounts of cash are being carried physically to banks overseas, which would indeed appear suspicious in the eyes of international law-enforcement agencies.

The US action raised important questions about the nature of North Korean capitalism, and underscored the dilemma the world faces from a cash-starved, nuclear-armed Pyongyang. Washington, no doubt, realizes that more international trade and economic development is essential for Pyongyang to move forward and evolve into a responsible regional player. Some North Korea-watchers contend that Washington's recent intervention in Macau will only discourage what was a slow but sure effort by Pyongyang to integrate with the global trading economy and promote an experimental measure of free enterprise, similar to what the Chinese communists did in the late 1970s before implementing their capitalist reforms.

South Korea, in particular, has long advocated economic engagement with North Korea, arguing that unless the North is urged and helped to develop and strengthen its economy, both the South and the North would likely collapse upon reunification. For this reason, Seoul has openly fallen out with its US ally on this score.

Others argue that the flow of more hard currency into Pyongyang's coffers only serves to delay the inevitable collapse of one of the world's most atavistic regimes, thus prolonging the extreme suffering of the North Korean people. There is little or nothing to suggest that the money that the North Korean front companies are earning in the region is being employed for social development at home or spent on basic necessities, such as putting food on the tables of the country's starving people.

Whatever the case, North Korea is likely to find new ways to continue its commercial drive across the region - albeit more cautiously. Perhaps that's where far-flung places like Vladivostok will come into play. At one of the tables at Cafe Pyongyang, two North Korean officials recently talked business with a Russian entrepreneur. They offered North Korean workers in exchange for timber from Siberia's vast forests, where North Koreans have for years toiled as lumberjacks.

The US may try to tighten the screws on North Korea's expanding global businesses, but there are always others - Russia, China and Thailand - who are more than willing to do business with an enterprising Pyongyang.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Korea/HE26Dg02.html