In and Around North Korea: 01 - 09 January 2009

• Yonhap reported that Kurt Campbell, former U.S. deputy assistant secretary of defense, has been named to replace Christopher Hill as the assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs under the incoming Obama administration. State Department deputy spokesman, Gordon K. Duguid, said he could not officially confirm if Campbell has been named, just saying personnel affairs involving officials below the level of undersecretary will be made a bit clearer next week. Jeffrey Bader, a senior researcher at the Brookings Institution, will likely serve as senior director for Asian affairs at the National Security Council. Frank Januzzi, a key foreign policy adviser for the Obama's campaign, will either be Campbell's deputy or work for the office of Vice President-elect Joseph Biden, the sources said.

• During NHK’s regularly scheduled “Ohayo Nippon” program, aired on 05 Jan, there was a report on the Six-Party Talks and North Korea’s nuclear program that stated that there were grounds for Japan to be concerned about whether it can closely coordinate with the US on the stance towards North Korea. The reporter explained that Japan, South Korea, and the US compiled a secret document in Dec 08 on rules on verifying North Korea’s nuclear program. The reporter stated that that it has become clear that Assistant Secretary Hill showed the secret document to North Korea, and that Hill and Kim Kye-Kwan of North Korea has developed a very close relationship. The reporter said, “Hill’s behavior has made the Japanese side very distrustful.” That being the case, she said, the Japanese government is closely monitoring who the new US administration will pick to deal with the North Korean issue.

• U.S. Ambassador to Japan Thomas Schieffer indicated on 8 Jan that the U.S. will continue to address North Korea’s past abductions of Japanese nationals after the launch of the new administration under President-elect Barack Obama.

• KCNA reported that a Pyongyang mass rally took place at the Kim Il Sung Square Monday to respond to the letter of the employees of the Chollima Steel Complex and carry through the militant tasks laid down in the joint New Year editorial. Attending the rally were Kim Yong, Choe Thae Bok, Yang Hyong Sop, Kim Jung Rin, leading officials of ministries, national institutions and working people's organizations and others including over 100,000 citizens.

• KCNA referenced a signed article in the Rodong Sinmun on 8 Jan stating that all Korean at home and abroad should dynamically wage the nationwide struggle to frustrate the reckless moves stepped up by the bellicose forces at home and abroad to threaten the peace of the country and push the military tension on the Korean Peninsula to an extreme phase, obsessed with the wild ambition to invade the north. The article further states the Korean nation can achieve neither durable peace of the Korean Peninsula nor the independent reunification, peace and prosperity of the country unless an end is put to the U.S. military presence in south Korea.

• KCNA reported that Kim Jong Il inspected Unit 1489 under the Artillery Command of the KPA and watched the firing training of its artillery pieces. He was greeted on the spot by Col. General Ri Jong Bu, artillery commander of the KPA, and other general officers and commanding officers of the unit. He was accompanied by KPA General Kim Jong Gak, first vice-director of the General Political Department of the KPA, KPA Generals Hyon Chol Hae and Kim Myong Guk and other commanding officers of the KPA and leading officials of the society including those of the C.C., the WPK.

• Chosun Ilbo reported that North Korea has reshuffled two cabinet ministers and appointed a new man to a key post in the Workers' Party. North Korean state media reported that Kim Tae-bong was appointed new metal industry minister and Hur Tack new power industry minister. They replace Kim Sung-hyun and Pak Nam-chil. Kim Kyong-ok as newly-named first deputy director of the ruling party's Organization Guidance Department that controls the party, Army and administration and is headed by leader Kim Jong-il. According to the report, it is rare for reshuffles to be announced separately. The new economic appointments may be related to the emphasis on "economic recovery" in a New Year's statement released in the state media last week that is the closest the North has to an annual message from Kim Jong-il, a government official here speculated. Little is known about the newly appointed ministers.

• According to a KCNA report on 7 Jan, North Korea will hold parliamentary elections in March, a move that follows an economy-centered Cabinet shakeup and is likely to affect the military. The Presidium of Supreme People’s Assembly announced its decision on 6 Jan to hold the 12 representatives election on 8 Mar. North Korea was expected to hold the elections in 2008, when the assembly members’ five-year term expired; however, they did not take place as rumors circulated on Kim Jong-il’s health. According to a report by the Institute for National Security Strategy, a South Korean state-run think tank, economic pragmatism may emerge to lay the groundwork for the post-Kim Jong-il era and replace the military-first policy, and that North Korea may promote young economic elites in the coming election.

• n 7 Jan, DPRK central radio referred to Pak Yong-p’al as the “chairman of Kaesong Municipal People’s Committee,” suggesting that he has been promoted from his former position as the “chairman of So’hu’ng County People’s Committee.” Pak appears to have replaced Kim Il-Ku’n who held this position since June 2003. According to OSC, this appears to be North Korean media’s first mention of Pak in such a capacity.

• Yonhap reported that the recent launch of North Korean mobile service by Egypt's Orascom Telecom -- the biggest foreign investor yet in the communist state -- came under the baton of Ri Chol, the North Korean ambassador to Switzerland, a source said Tuesday. Ri, who is also known as the manager of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il's secret funds abroad, played the middleman in Orascom's deal with Pyongyang in December to invest US$400 million over the next three years, the source well-versed in North Korean affairs said on condition of anonymity.

• According to the U.S. Department of State, the next shipment of food aid (totaling 21,000 metric tons) is expected to arrive in North Korea by the end of this week, with its delayed arrive due to recent rough seas. The shipment will be distributed by U.S. NGOs.
• A group of South Korean farmers will send 175 tons of rice to North Korean on 7 Jan amid damaged inter-Korean relations. The Korea Peasants League said they had arranged to have a ship collect rice from across the country at ports along the west coast and that the ship will likely arrive at the North Korean port of Nampo on 8 Jan.

• The ROK Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade [MOFAT] unified the variant versions of the terms used thus far for North Korean escapees to mean “refugee” in English, as in “North Korean Refugee.” MOFAT concluded that the term “refugee” was more appropriate than “defector” – a person who leaves for political reasons – or the more general, “asylum seeker,” as the term contains the inherent meaning that these people require protection from having left North Korea for political or economic reasons.

• A total of 2,809 North Koreans arrived in South Korea during the past year, bringing the cumulative number of North Korean defectors here to over 15,000 and reflecting a slowdown that was partly caused by tightened border controls in China, the Unification Ministry said 5 Jan. The 2008 figure is up 10 percent from a year earlier. The increase was 26 percent and 46 percent in 2007 and 2006, respectively, according to ministry data. A total of 15,057 North Korean defectors have arrived in the South since the end of the 1950-53 Korean War, a large number of which came starting in the late 1990s, according to ministry data.

• Noh Su-min, the biographer of the last surviving bomber of Korean Air flight 858, dismissed recently resurfaced claims that the incident was in fact a plot by South Korean agencies. Noh said Kim Hyun-hee was “definitely” a North Korean agent. It was the first comment on the matter by Noh, who had been avoiding the press since the issue made fresh headlines amid allegations that the previous administration encouraged a revisionist conspiracy theory of the 1987 incident.

• The ROK Unification Ministry urged Pyongyang on 5 Dec to stop making hostile and inflammatory comments against the South after North Korean authorities and their state-controlled media issued New Year’s commentaries that strongly rebuked the Lee Myung-bak administration. Unification Ministry Spokesman Kim Ho-nyun said that these inflammatory commentaries violate inter-Korean accords that call on governments not to interfere in each other’s internal matters.

• ROK President Lee Myung-bak requested through a telephone conversation on 3 Jan with U.N Secretary General Ban Ki-moon for the U.N to contribute its efforts to improve South-North ties.

• ROK activist groups will attach N. Korean currency to anti-Pyongyang leaflets sent into North Korea, replacing US$1 bills following rumors that citizens found with the notes are arrested.
• Over 300 South Korean leaders, ranging from the defense minister to Army, Air Force, and Navy brigadier generals, assembled at Gyeryongdae, about 150 km south of Seoul, and shared their views on ways to coordinate their combat specialties against North Korea. The discussion, the largest ever in scale, is a follow-up to a 2009 policy report presented by Defense Minister Lee Sang-hee to President Lee Myung-bak in Dec 2008 that called for improved operational readiness against North Korea and closer ties with the U.S.

• The Sentaku, a Japanese monthly journal covering political, economic, and foreign affairs, reported that according a military attaché source at the Chinese Embassy in Tokyo, “The Hu Jintao administration’s budget includes spending to construct bridges at five locations on the Yalu River.” China has already built a bridge over the Yalu River which connects Dandong City, Liaoning Province, and Sinuiju in response to North Korea’s project to build a large-scale distribution park in a special economic zone in Sinuiju. However, China is reportedly trying to build “military bridges” at five locations under the screen of the distribution park construction project amid Kim Jong-il’s health concerns. The report states that in the event a succession race intensifies and develops into a civil war, there is a possibility of refugees suddenly fleeing toward China and that the five bridges would facilitate an operation to get the Chinese military to rush into North Korea should such an event occur.

• Bush's national security adviser, Stephen Hadley, said the long-running, often acrimonious and currently stalled nuclear disarmament talks among the Koreas, the United States, Japan, China and Russia have allowed envoys to pressure the North to follow through on its 2007 agreement to give up its nuclear program in return for aid and concessions. But "North Korea will test the new administration by once again trying to split the six parties and renegotiate the deal, he said in a speech at the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank. “When its efforts to do so fail, North Korea will need to accept a verification agreement so we can verify the disablement and then dismantlement of that country's nuclear capabilities.”

• President Lee Myung-bak will hold a summit with Japan’s Prime Minister Taro Aso on 12 Jan to exchange views on a wide range of issues, such as ways to maintain and develop Korea-Japan relations and boost substantial cooperation in the economic sector. Other issues include the continued dispute over North Korea’s nuclear ambition and increasing the countries’ cooperation on international issues.