In and Around North Korea: 5 - 12 December 2008

• 6PT negotiators failed to achieve their goal of documenting ways to verify North Korea's nuclear programs after four days of talks in Beijing, with envoys saying there were still significant gaps to be bridged. No date was set for the next meeting of the two Koreas, the United States, China, Japan and Russia, though a chairman's statement was issued saying that the multilateral negotiations will be held ''at an early date.'' ''Unfortunately, we were not able to complete some of the things we wanted to do,'' top U.S. nuclear negotiator Christopher Hill told reporters at Beijing's international airport shortly before his departure. ''Ultimately, we were not able to get an agreed verification protocol,'' he said.

• Envoys from the U.S. and its allies failed to coax North Korea into agreeing on sampling and other scientific measures necessary to inspect its nuclear facilities, darkening prospects for any new deal. This week's six-nation talks, which started on 08 Dec, are one of the last opportunities for the Bush administration to save a troubled aid-for-denuclearization deal it signed in 2007, despite strong opposition from hard-liners in Washington. "We didn't make any progress today," top U.S. nuclear negotiator Christopher Hill told reporters after the third-day marathon session focused on a Chinese-presented draft of a verification protocol. "We've had considerable discussions about the issues, and I can't say there were any breakthroughs."

• The six-party talks hit a major hurdle on 10 Dec with North Korea saying it has no plans to allow inspectors to take samples from its nuclear facilities as a means of verifying its nuclear information. North Korea said it could not accept sampling as it would infringe upon its sovereignty under the current situation when there is no trust between North Korea and the United States. The comments came as delegations from North and South Korea, the United States, China, Japan and Russia met for the third day in Beijing in a bid to document verification methods as part of North Korea's denuclearization, South Korea's top nuclear envoy Kim Sook said. He quoted North Korea as saying in the meeting that it will allow only field visits, checking of documents and interviews with technicians as methods of verification.

• North Korea won't link the current aggravation of its relations with South Korea with the denuclearization of the peninsula at the meeting of the heads of delegations of six nations opening on 08 Dec, a North Korean diplomatic source has told Interfax. "These are two absolutely different unconnected problems and their solution does not depend on each other," the source said. "At the upcoming meeting of the heads of delegations the North Korean side does not intend to discuss bilateral relations with Seoul or the question of abducted Japanese with the delegation Japan because they are unrelated to the main subject of the talks on denuclearizing the peninsula," the diplomat said.

• The United States said it will support Japan raising the issue of North Korean abductions in the multilateral forum on ending Pyongyang's nuclear ambitions. "The issue of abductions needs to be dealt with," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said. "We will continue to work with them -- the six-party framework to -- with the Japanese to find some answers to the questions that they have and try to help bring some closure for those families that have been waiting years, if not decades, for answers." The remarks come as Christopher Hill, assistant secretary of state, attends a fresh round of the six-party talks in Beijing in a last-minute effort to conclude an accord on the disablement of the North's nuclear facilities in the Bush administration's waning weeks.

• Korean Central News Agency reported on a 10 Dec Rodong Sinmun signed commentary: “In order to implement its Asia-Pacific strategy for aggression, the U.S. seeks to bind countries in the region to its military alliance and knock into shape a new NATO type military bloc of Asian version and make the best use of it. To this end, the U.S. is stepping up the arms buildup in the Asia-Pacific region and hastening the formation of the military alliance with the countries in the region. The DPRK is made the main target of its preemptive attack and herein lies the purpose of its military steps. The U.S. warlike forces would be well advised to face up to the trend of the times and give up the military hysteria disturbing dialogue and peace.”

• Minju Joson reported, “A report forecasting the world situation up to 2025 recently released by the National Intelligence Council [NIC] of the United States is drawing people's attention. Based on forecasts of various challenging natural, political, economic, and military problems to be faced by humankind in the future, the report pronounced the bankruptcy of the United States' hegemonic policy and predicted that the world would advance toward the direction of multi-polarization in the future. It is as clear as day that the financial basis of the United States blasted by the world will crumble and how the "leading status" of the United States, which is failing to play any role in the challenges faced by humankind, will end up in the near future. The "declaration" of the incumbent leaders to "display before the world the strength and authority" of the United States is shaking aimlessly like a fallen leaf before the wind in the last stage of their rule. The reality shows once again that it is a natural law-governed process of the development of history to advance toward a multi-polarized world, not a world controlled by a specific country.”

• Rodong Sinmun reported, “There is a saying about a thief crying stop thief. This saying can be applied to the words and actions of the Lee Myung-bak gang that is letting loose all sort of spiteful words in order shift the responsibility for the breakdown of North-South relations to someone else. The traitorous gang's defense of its "policy toward the North" and the far-right, conservative organizations' act of scattering anti-Republic leaflets, too, cannot be overlooked. The crimes of the Lee Myung-bak ring can never be forgiven, and thus it will have to pay a hundred- and a thousand-fold price for the crimes.”

• The Secretariat of the Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Fatherland issued its information bulletin No. 944 on 06 Dec denouncing the conservative authorities, the Grand National Party and other ultra-right conservative forces of south Korea for resorting to base moves to evade their responsibility for having pushed the inter-Korean relations to a stalemate. The bulletin denounced the moves of the puppet authorities and conservative forces to shift the blame for the present situation onto the DPRK as another grave provocation against it as they are a premeditated intrigue to conceal the crimes committed by them as the arch criminal who deteriorated the inter-Korean relations and realize their ambition for achieving "unification through absorption" and their strategy for a war of aggression against it under the signboard of "dialogue". The Lee Myung-bak group has only advocated "closer alliance" with foreign forces, while categorically denying the agreement common to the nation. One can hardly expect the genuine development of the inter-Korean relations, to say nothing of the dialogue between the authorities, as long as such group of traitors is allowed to stay in power. The DPRK will continue to follow the future attitude of the Lee Myung-bak group.

• Korean Central News Agency reported on 11 Dec that Kim Jong Il, general secretary of the Workers' Party of Korea and chairman of the DPRK National Defense Commission, provided field guidance to the rebuilt Sariwon Chicken Farm and the Migok Cooperative Farm in Sariwon City. The agricultural front is the main front of weighty importance in solving the problems of clothes, food, and housing for the people, he said, stressing the need for the entire Party, the whole country and all the people to keep concentrating efforts on farming and thus bring about an epochal turn in agricultural production. He also visited Minsok (folklore) Street built in the city of Sariwon.

• North Korean leader Kim Jong-il’s special train has remained idle over three months, according to analysts who observe the reclusive communist nation through satellite photos, fueling speculation that Kim is still too ill to make long-distance trips. Pyongyang’s has made several apparent attempts to dismiss concerns by releasing Kim’s photos through state media to prove his good health. “Kim’s train never left Yongsong train station near Pyongyang since reports about the ailing leader spread outside world in late September,” a South Korean source said, hinting that Kim may have never left the North’s capital city.

• Regarding a report on the Chosun (North Korea) Central News Agency stating that Kim Jong Il recently visited Shinuiju, a source from Shinuiju informed the Daily NK, “A Number 1 Event (a welcoming event for Kim Jong Il “onsite inspections”) was held on November 24, but we are not sure whether or not the General (Kim Jong Il) appeared.” A North Korea tourist, who came out early in December through Shiuiju to China, explained that during Kim’s stay in the city, all public transportation, buses and trains, are stopped and all kinds of activities are banned. However, on the day that it was known that Kim stayed in Shinuiju, the tourist said “there was nothing special at that time.”

• Cheong Seong Chang, a North-South relations researcher at the Sejong Institute, asserted in his report, “Predictions for North Korean power structure change in the post-Kim Jong Il era,” that “There is a limit to Director of the Ministry of Administration of the Chosun (North Korea) Workers’ Party Jang Sung Taek’s domination over the North Korean military, although he is on the inside track to take power.” Cheong pointed out that, “Jang Sung Taek has a good reputation with the authorities and administrative power over the National Security Agency (NSA) and the People’s Safety Agency (PSA), so he is in a better position to grasp power in an emergency. However, he does not lead the military.” “For now, there is no one who holds real power over the Party, the military and the government, so whoever gets the power after Kim Jong Il’s death can’t hope to have concrete influence as Kim Jong Il currently does,” he said. He predicted that, “It is hard to imagine that the North will change its system into a collective leadership system just like the Chinese have. Therefore, in the post-Kim Jong Il era, the system may be relaxed a bit more than the current system, nevertheless concentrating power in the Party and the country in an individual dictatorship.”

• Tokyo TBS Television in Japanese, during its regularly scheduled "Hodo Tokushu NEXT" program at 0912 GMT on 6 December, carried an approximately 30 minute-report on the DPRK succession issue. This report claims to have obtained a video of young Kim Jong Il, which it says was not made to public before. The program does not say how or when this "secret video" was obtained. In one segment, the program focused on the eldest son, Kim Cho'ng-nam, as a succession candidate. Another segment was about the second son, Kim Cho'ng-ch'o'l. The program says that some in the DPRK pushed Cho'ng-ch'o'l as the successor by deifying his mother, Ko Yo'ng-hu'i, but this move was temporary. The program repeats that Kim Jong Il was chosen as a result of propaganda that lasted over 20 years. Therefore, no news about the DPRK's preparations to support the successor shows there is no serious move for the succession at this point. The program notes that two months ago, Rodong Sinmun carried an article that said the third and fourth generations now bear responsibility for revolution. It went on to mention the fifth and sixth generation "for the first time," showing "the WPK's concerns over the instability of the regime," according to sources.

• Orascom Telecom, the largest Arab mobile operator by subscribers, said on 10 Dec it would start mobile services in North Korea next week. "For the first time citizens will have access to mobile service on Dec. 15," an Orascom spokeswoman told Reuters. "It will be open to everyone." Orascom said earlier this year it had successfully tested its network and would start mobile services before the end of 2008. Orascom had said it expected a couple of million subscribers for the unit, in which the North Korean government holds a 25 percent stake, in the first three or four years.

• North Korean authorities recently announced the intention to sell all industrial products in state-operated stores, soon after announcing the revised “10th-day famers markets,” which open only on the 1st, 11th and 21st of every month, starting from next year. According to an inside source in North Hamkyung Province, a new instruction on the sale of industrial products in state-operated stores was introduced during the latest cadres’ lectures. As rumors of the large-scale entry of Chinese goods onto the market due to Chinese loans circulate among people, there has been in a flutter in the market. He said, “Due to the jangmadang, the gap between the rich and the poor has widened. And, because money is not flowing within the regime, the authorities are getting rid of private sales to revive the banks so as to recover the regime economy... It seems the state-controlled economy will become better next year” he added. The source reported that there have been heated debates on this decision among North Koreans. The source in the end expressed concern because workers began “explicitly complaining about cadres who only fill themselves up. I personally think that there will begin a massive war within the markets starting from New Year’s Day”.

• International media have been reporting that the political situation in North Korea has become turbulent, yet residents of the city of Dandong on the China-North Korea border who are eyewitnesses say that border trade between the two countries has certainly not stopped, and that travel between the two countries goes on as normal. A manager surnamed Li at the Dandong office of China International Travel Service on Shiwei Road in Dandong said that as long ago as 5 October they received a notice from the North Korean Travel Service saying, "As of 11 October, North Korea will temporarily stop receiving Chinese tour groups. The date on which tours will resume has yet to be determined. The North Korean National Tourism Administration will send Dandong Travel Service a formal notice two days from now; that is, after the holiday period in China." But groups fly back and forth between Shenyang and Pyongyang as usual.

• Leonid A Petrov, PhD, a research associate at the Division of Pacific and Asian History Research School of the Pacific and Asian Studies, Australian National University, stated North Korea is heading for a major retreat, back to "military communism". Only those elements of a market economy which are necessary to keep the country afloat are being preserved. The economic policy of partial liberalization, which started in July 2002, waned in mid-2005 and is now history.

• Around 40 percent of the population of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), an estimated 8.7 million people, mostly young children, pregnant and nursing women and the elderly, will urgently need food assistance because of an expected cereals deficit in the coming months, the UN’s Food and Agricultural organization (FAO) and World Food Program (WFP) said in a joint report on 008 Dec. Despite favorable climate conditions during the past growing season, the country's agricultural production will not meet basic food needs this year, according to the FAO/WFP Crop and Food Security Assessment Mission report. The joint mission visited the DPRK from 9-24 October 2008; it was the first such comprehensive field assessment mission since 2004.

• The State Department said on 09 Dec it plans to send a group of officials to North Korea to assure transparency in the distribution of food aid to North Korea as a prerequisite to implementing its pledge to funnel up to 500,000 tons of food. "So we're going to try to send some additional personnel to North Korea in an effort to make it work so that we can assure ourselves that we are fulfilling those dual responsibilities," spokesman Sean McCormack said. He was talking about the difficulty in both securing transparency in the food distribution and meeting the urgent humanitarian needs of the impoverished communist state. The U.S. wants the food to go to the truly needy rather than the power elite or black market.

• America's Radio Free Asia reported on 09 Dec that internet company Google and online video site YouTube promised to cooperate in promoting the human rights of North Koreans and democratization of the nation via internet broadcasting. An official at the U.S. State Department reportedly said, "It is important to use the Internet to promote North Korean's human rights."

• A North Korean woman trying to defect has been staying in a third country after escaping from an inter-Korean industrial complex in the border city of Kaesong where she used to work, a South Korean activist here said on 10 Dec. The 27-year-old woman, whose identity was withheld for her safety, fled Kaesong in late September and has since asked for help to travel to South Korea, according to Kim Yong-hwa, who leads a Seoul-based civic group advocating for the human rights of North Korea defectors. This is the first known defection of a North Korean worker at the Kaesong industrial complex, where about 36,000 North Koreans are employed by dozens of South Korean factories operating under the tight control of Pyongyang authorities.

• As the scattering of leaflets by defector organizations becomes a major issue, the possibility that pro-North Korea figures will send leaflets containing critical messages about defector organizations to the North has generated significant interest. "Pro-North Korean regime organizations also will disseminate leaflets. They ought to capture the reality of defector organizations that distribute leaflets and send them to the North. Like them, we will attach leaflets about defector organizations to hydrogen balloons and send them to the North." He then said, "We cannot disclose the specific time we will send them at this time. Even if legal issues result and our reputation is damaged due to the contents, we will do this for the future of the 70 million of our nation."

• Conservative activists in South Korea said on 05 Dec they will temporarily suspend sending anti-Pyongyang leaflets across the inter-Korean border, going along with Seoul's effort to temper friction with the communist neighbor. The spreading of the leaflets has become yet another bone of contention between the two divided countries, with North Korea sharply restricting passage across their shared border in retaliation. "Under the ruling party chairman's request, we have decided to stop sending flyers for the time being and observe changes in North Korea's attitude," said an alliance of civic groups, including the Fighters for Free North Korea, in a joint statement. "This decision has nothing to do with North Korea's threats or the pro-Pyongyang force in the South." Chairman Park Hee-tae of the ruling Grand National Party met with activist leaders earlier Friday, asking them to halt sending the anti-Pyongyang leaflets for "a bigger goal" of mending ties with the North. It was the conservative party's first official move regarding the issue.

• South Korea's foreign minister on 10 Dec reinforced U.S. officials' response to a recent defense report listing North Korea as one of five nuclear powers in Asia, saying it was "evidently in error." The report, released by the U.S. Joint Operation Command under the Defense Department last month, categorized Pyongyang as a nuclear state along with China, India, Pakistan and Russia, triggering concerns that Washington may be poised to acknowledge Pyongyang as a bona fide nuclear power. The foreign minister stressed that Seoul and Washington's position of not categorizing the North as a nuclear power remains unchanged.

• North Korea will never be recognized as a nuclear state despite its continued ambitions, as the term only refers to nations who already possessed nuclear capabilities when an international non-proliferation treaty was adopted, South Korea's defense minister said on 11 Dec. The remarks come one day after a report by the U.S. Joint Forces Command categorized the communist North as one of five nuclear powers in Asia, along with China, Russia, India and Pakistan. The U.S. State Department has dismissed the categorization as a simple mistake, saying, "That is not our national policy. And the document they referenced does not represent the official views of the United States." Defense Minister Lee Sang-hee, however, noted Pyongyang may try use Washington's mistake to its advantage and promote itself as a nuclear power.

• North Korea is unlikely to shut down a landmark joint factory park with South Korea despite its anger over largely political issues, the chief executive of one of the firms operating there said on 05 Dec. "Closure of the Kaesong Industrial Complex: South Korean businessmen do not buy that story," Yoo Chang-guen, president of SJ Tech Co. and vice chairman of an association of companies operating at the special zone in North Korea, told reporters. Starting this month, however, North Korea has cut the number of South Koreans allowed access, ended a largely symbolic cargo train service, tightened border crossings by vehicles and suspended tours run by a South Korean company to the city of Kaesong. Lee Im-dong, an official with the business association, said North Korea has taken steps to consider the needs of the South Korean businesses, such as ensuring that goods can still cross the border by truck. He said the recent North Korean restrictions have still hurt the firms because customers have grown skittish about ordering products made at the complex.

• South Korean President Lee Myung-bak on 05 Dec renewed his call on North Korea to restart inter-Korean governmental dialogue to pave the way for "genuine reconciliation," according to his spokesman. Meeting with key members of the National Unification Advisory Council, Lee also said his government will always stand ready to extend humanitarian assistance to North Korea's beleaguered people. "South and North Korea have to meet again for dialogue. The North will eventually realize our genuine attitude through dialogue," Lee was quoted by presidential spokesman Lee Dong-kwan as saying at the meeting. "I don't have any intention to politically utilize inter-Korean relations. My government will do its best to pave the way for true reconciliation and co-prosperity between the two Koreas."

• South Korean companies at North Korea's Kaesong Industrial Complex will demand that their government compensate them for lost revenue if inter-Korean relations continue to deteriorate. About 130 South Korean firms with factories in the cross-border business zone say sales dropped by 60 percent last month due to escalating tension between the two Koreas. A committee representing manufacturers in Kaesong estimates they have incurred a total of W110 billion (US$1=W1,478) in business losses from September through November.

• A local expert in inter-Korean relations said on 11 Dec a social contract is necessary to solve conflict regarding North Korea policies among South Koreans. As the communist state severed ties with South Korea in retaliation to Seoul's tougher stance, discord over solutions have deepened among South Koreans. “It is important to proceed with a North Korea policy based on public consensus,'' said Cho Han-bum, a director at the Korea Institute for National Unification in Seoul. ``To achieve public consensus, the government has to consider adopting a social contract on unification.'' The suggestion was made during a seminar hosted by the Korean Council for Reconciliation and Cooperation, a civic group in which more than 200 political parties, religious groups and civic groups participate to help facilitate South-North unification.

• Former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger recently turned down an invitation from North Korea to visit Pyongyang, a senior South Korean lawmaker said. Ri Gun, director general of the North American Affairs bureau at North Korea's foreign ministry, extended the invitation in early November at a seminar in New York, Rep. Cho'ng Mong-chun [Chung Mong-joon] of the ruling Grand National Party told South Korean correspondents here. Kissinger in essence rejected the proposal by conditioning it on a pledge from North Korea to dismantle its nuclear weapons and to allow him to travel as an official presidential envoy, said Chung.

• South Korean Foreign Minister Yu Myung-hwan has canceled his visit to Washington next week for "strategic dialogue" with his American counterpart Condoleezza Rice, a ministry official said on 05 Dec. Yu and Rice had planned to meet on Dec. 8 to coordinate the allies' policy on the North Korean nuclear crisis and other global issues. "The South Korean side asked for the meeting to be indefinitely postponed due to Minister Yu's busy schedule here. For example, next year's budget plan has yet to be passed through the National Assembly," a ministry official told Yonhap News Agency on condition of anonymity.