In and Around North Korea: 31 January - 06 February 2009

• US President Barack Obama on Tuesday (3 Feb) vowed to increase support for six-nation talks on ending North Korea's nuclear program, saying recent developments suggest the multilateral talks are the only way to denuclearize the communist nation, a spokesman for the South Korean presidential office said. The remarks came in a telephone conversation between the U.S. president and his South Korean counterpart Lee Myung-bak.

• North Korea and its five dialogue partners in ongoing denuclearization talks will convene the third meeting on the Northeast Asia peace and security mechanism from Feb. 19-20 in Moscow, officials said Monday (2 Feb). The meeting comes despite a stall in broader talks over the North's nuclear program and would mark the first high-profile gathering of the six nations since new U.S. President Barack Obama took office. Obama's policy on North Korea has not taken final shape as key appointments have yet to be made and with the two Koreas taking a wait-and-see attitude.

• North Korea vowed Monday (2 Feb) to hold onto its nuclear weapons until the United States removes "nuclear threats" against it, renewing its tough position after similar statements drew little action from the new U.S. administration. Pyongyang has continued unleashing acerbic statements to justify its nuclear drive since January, raising military tensions across the inter-Korean border. Seoul and Washington have reacted calmly.

• The North’s Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Fatherland declared that it would scrap the political and military agreements between the South and the North, along with the western sea border. North Korea’s Foreign Ministry said that Pyongyang would think about denuclearization after normalizing ties with Washington. Even then, denuclearization will be discussed not within the six-party framework but through talks among nuclear states, making it clear that it would continue to hold on to its nuclear weapons.

• On 1 Feb, Constituency No. 333, during a voters’ meeting held at the April 25 House of Culture, nominated Kim Jong-il as a candidate for deputy to the 12th Supreme People’s Assembly. Present were Jo Myong Rok, director of the General Political Bureau of the KPA, Kim Kyo'k-sik, chief of the General Staff of the KPA and others and leading officials of the Ministry of the People's Armed Forces and officers and men of the KPA.

• Kim Jong-il provided field guidance to the Ryesonggang Youth Power Station No. 1 and inspected a sub-unit of KPA Unit 131, its state media reported on Saturday (31 Jan). With regards to his inspection of the military unit, the North’s Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported that he “acquainted himself with the training of the sub-unit before watching its soldiers’ training,” and “after watching the training, he expressed satisfaction over the fact that all the service persons have grown to be stalwart fighters firmly prepared politically and ideologically and in military technique to shatter any surprise invasion of the enemy at a single blow and reliably defend the socialist homeland to set forth the tasks to be carried out to increase the sub-unit’s combat capability.

• North Korean leader Kim Jong Il told a Chinese official who recently visited Pyongyang that he is waiting to see the policies of the new U.S. administration, in what was believed to be an indication his country will not make major moves until they become clear, diplomatic sources said Wednesday (4 Feb). The comments, made to Wang Jiarui, head of the Chinese Communist Party's International Department, are the first known to have come from the leader about the U.S. administration since President Barack Obama took office in late January.

• A British parliamentary delegation arrived in Pyongyang Tuesday (3 Feb), the North's news agency said, in a visit coinciding with a rare trip by a U.S. team of former government officials and experts. KCNA made no mention of the expected arrival of the U.S. group, including former U.S. Ambassador to South Korea Stephen Bosworth, who is reportedly on a list of candidates for special envoy to Pyongyang. The visit is the first civilian exchange between the two countries since U.S. President Barack Obama took office last month. The KCNA said the British delegation, led by the House of Lords' David Alton, was greeted by Ri Jong-hyok, deputy to the North's Supreme People's Assembly, in Pyongyang's airport. It did not reveal the purpose of the trip.

• The series of events to celebrate the "Year of DPRK-China Friendship" in 2009 will help deepen the friendship between the two peoples and expand bilateral ties, the foreign minister of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) said Monday (2 Feb). The DPRK and China, the two close neighbors linked by common mountains and rivers, have enjoyed a long history of friendly cooperation, Foreign Minister Pak Ui Chun said in a written interview with Xinhua.

• Military-owned telecom firm Viettel plans to expand its network to North Korea, Cuba and Venezuela, a company official said. Tran Phuoc Minh, deputy director of the unlisted telecom service provider in Ho Chi Minh City, said the company is considering getting a foothold in these countries, which are in the early stages of telecom development. Viettel would hold negotiations with authorities there, Minh said without giving details. The country’s fastest growing telecom service provider already has a presence in Laos and Cambodia and is set to open a representative office in Myanmar.

• Koryolink, the North Korean 3G cellular network established in mid-December by Egypt's Orascom Telecom, has attracted several thousand subscribers in the first two weeks since it began accepting applications in January. "We didn't start sales until about two weeks ago," said Naguib Sawiris, chairman of Orascom Telecom in a telephone interview. "So far we have about 6,000 applications. The important point is that they are normal citizens, not the privileged or miliary generals or party higher-ups. For the first time they have been able to go to a shop and get a mobile phone." Orascom has a single shop in Pyongyang and is in the process of expanding its sales network, he said.

• North Korea's state media said Wednesday (4 Feb) that China has offered Pyongyang aid, a deal that was likely reached at a recent meeting between reclusive leader Kim Jong Il and a senior Chinese official. KCNA said in a brief dispatch that the aid will be "an encouragement" to North Koreans in their efforts to build "a great, prosperous, powerful nation." It did not say what kind or how much aid China had offered. The impoverished communist country has resorted to outside handouts to help feed its 23 million people since its centrally controlled economy collapsed in the mid-1990s due to natural disasters and mismanagement. With the public announcement, analysts say, North Korea is showing off the close relationship it has with its key socialist ally. Pyongyang is also sending a message to Seoul's Lee Myung-bak administration that it won't soften its stance on inter-Korean relations in its search for economic aid, they said. “North Korea is saying it will find a way out through China and won't be squeezed by the Lee government's hardline policy," Koh Yu-hwan, a North Korea studies professor at Dongguk University, said.

• South Korea is struggling to determine when it should send 3,000 tons of steel plates to North Korea, confronted with the communist neighbor's intensifying saber-rattling, government officials in Seoul said Wednesday (4 Feb). The South initially planned to send the shipment, equivalent to 11,000 tons of heavy fuel oil, sometime this month, as part of its promised contribution to an aid-for-denuclearization deal signed in 2007.

• North Korea's food-related trouble is likely to continue despite a relatively good harvest last year, a leading U.S. expert on the communist nation's economy said Thursday (5 Feb). "It is too early to break out the champagne," Marcus Noland, senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, said in an e-mail commentary, amid speculation here that Pyongyang's latest bellicose behavior might be spurred by confidence from an improving food situation there. “The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that North Korean grain production fell for three consecutive harvests, reaching 3.43 million metric tons in 2008-2009," he said. "The good harvests should be treated with caution. Overall grain balances in North Korea remain perilously close to the survival margin." His gloomy outlook came in spite of Washington's shipments of close to 5,000 tons of rice earlier this month to the North as part of its commitment of up to half a million tons of grain.

• According to a report entitled "Situation Report on the Rights of the Child in the DPRK (North Korea)"by the Seoul-based Citizen's Alliance for North Korean Human Rights and The Asia Center for Human Rights, North Korea forcibly mobilizes its children as cheap labor, diverts their food aid and throws minors into detention centers because their parents have run afoul of the law. The report further states that the North's failing school system has led to an increase in drop-outs and illiteracy in the impoverished state.

• The number of North Korean refugees arriving in Thailand via China has risen sharply since the Beijing Olympics, Yomiuri Shimbun reported Wednesday (4 Feb). Thailand is the main transit place for North Koreans before they move to South Korea. Thai police statistics quoted by the Japanese daily show a mere 140 North Koreans arrested there between January and August last year. But in the period from September to November after the Beijing Olympics, 250 North Koreans were arrested in 14 areas in northern and northeastern Thailand bordering Burma and Laos. The number of North Koreans arrested in December and January this year is not known yet, but the paper said a large number of North Koreans entered Thailand around the Lunar New Year's Day, on Jan. 26.

• Sankei Shimbun first reported on 03 Feb that North Korea is preparing to launch the Taepodong-2. The article stated that satellites of the US and others have spotted trucks frequenting a missile facility newly under construction in Tongch'ang-ri, North P'yo'ngan Province, and that it is highly possible that preparations will be completed in one to two months. Subsequent Yonhap reporting referenced the US and ROK intelligence agencies and that an unnamed ROK official at the Ministry of National Defense stated “The intelligence report by Japan appears grounded on facts."

• The United States Tuesday (3 Feb) warned North Korea not to test fire a ballistic missile, saying any such launch would be in violation of a United Nations Security Council resolution. "I mean, obviously, the testing of missiles by North Korea would be in violation of the United Nations Security Council resolutions," Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell said in a daily news briefing. The spokesperson was responding to reports that North Korea is preparing to test launch a long-range missile capable of reaching the mainland U.S., in an apparent effort to attract the attention of the new U.S. administration.

• The top U.S. military officer has expressed concern about recent threats out of Pyongyang against South Korea timed with the launch of the Barack Obama administration in Washington. Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, acknowledged in a speech Monday (2 Feb) at a college in Grove City, Pennsylvania the "possibility of pretty severe instability" with North Korea's weapons. He said that listening to the rhetoric out of Pyongyang is a cause for "big concern," adding, "it's not going away real quick." Mullen was discussing Pyongyang's threats to cut ties with Seoul and its announcement that it was adopting "an all-out confrontational posture" against the South. U.S. and South Korean intelligence officials believe the North is preparing to test-launch a ballistic missile capable of reaching western parts of the mainland U.S.

• The top U.S. commander in South Korea urged North Korea on Wednesday (4 Feb) to stop raising tension on the divided peninsula, amid intelligence reports the communist state is gearing up to test-fire its most advanced missile. Seoul officials said earlier this week that U.S. and South Korean intelligence agencies have spotted a North Korean train carrying what is believed to be a ballistic missile capable of hitting U.S. territory, adding a launch could come after a month or two of preparation.

• South Korean defense officials said Wednesday (4 Feb) they last spotted what they believe to be North Korea's most advanced missile on the isolated state's east coast, dampening speculation a launch may take place at a brand-new site on the opposite side of the country. A train carrying the object in question "was last seen stationed at the Musudan-ri site" in the northeastern region, an official at the Ministry of National Defense said. North Korea has test-fired two of its longest-range missiles there since 1998. South Korean intelligence had briefly lost track of the train after it pulled out of a military factory site south of Pyongyang, a senior ministry official said late Tuesday, declining to be identified because the information was classified.

• Despite North Korea’s statement of an “all-out confrontational posture” towards South Korea made on the 17th of January, North Korea appears not to be preparing to spark a military conflict, since there has not been any change of military movements detected by intelligence. North Korea has been creating tension by declaring the abolition of the Northern Limit Line (NLL), threatening to wipe out the South Korean government, and denunciating all agreements made between the two Koreas to date. However, spokesperson from the Ministry of National Defense Won Tae Jae explained yesterday, “In the sea near the Military Demarcation Line (MDL), the North Korean Army has not threatened South Korea. No strange acts have been noted.” Military experts presume that the possibility of provoking a war in the short term is low because no movements required for a war, like increasing communications or supply movements, have been intercepted near the frontier.

• Hyundai Asan Corp, the South Korean company operating businesses in North Korea, said Wednesday (4 Feb) it will make major efforts to resume tours to the North's scenic mountain in April, despite worsening inter-Korean ties. The chance of resuming the tours to the North's Mount Kumgang, which have been suspended since July last year when a South Korean tourist was fatally shot by a North Korean soldier, appears remote however, as Pyongyang recently took a series of actions to potentially inflame tensions on the Korean Peninsula.

• South Korea's main opposition party on Wednesday (4 Feb) urged its government to earmark at least 5 percent of its annual budget for aid to North Korea and take other reconciliatory measures to improve inter-Korean relations. In a parliamentary address, Rep. Won Hye-young, floor leader of the Democratic Party, said that closer cross-border economic cooperation is the only path to revitalizing the South Korean economy.
• The South Korean government decided not to approve a project by a Seoul journalist organization to exchange news with North Korea, concerned that Pyongyang may use the medium for its own propaganda, officials were quoted as saying by Yonhap on Wednesday (4 Feb). The decision appeared to be in line with the conservative Lee Myung-bak government's hardline policy amid deeply frozen inter-Korean relations. The journalist association said it may take the case to court.

• South Korea warned rights activists Wednesday (4 Feb) they will face a criminal investigation if they break new restrictions on the launch of propaganda leaflets into North Korea. The activists, who have staged several previous launches, plan to attach North Korean banknotes to some leaflets in future to encourage people on the other side of the heavily fortified border to pick them up. The Seoul government has urged groups to halt the launch of the giant gas-filled balloons carrying hundreds of thousands of flyers, saying they are further straining ties with the communist North. Seoul says it has no laws to ban the launches but attaching North Korean won would be illegal because government approval is required to bring the currency into the South.

• In his New Year’s press conference on 2 Feb, Democratic Party Chairman Chung Sye-kyun urged President Lee Myung-bak to send an envoy to North Korea to seek a breakthrough in the dire state of inter-Korean relations, linking heightened tensions on the Korean Peninsula to the stability of the nation’s economy. “Peace on the Korean Peninsula is not an issue of ideology, but one of economy,” Chung said, adding that tensions have reached a new peak after the North’s recent announcement that it will scrap all inter-Korean agreements. “The current confrontational situation is too serious to be regarded as a bluff [by the North],” Chung said. “If there is a military conflict, our economy will suffer a serious blow.”

• North Korean officials have expressed their willingness to normalize relations between their country and the United States, a U.S. scholar who last month met them in North Korea said Wednesday (4 Feb). Selig Harrison, Asia Program director at the Washington-based Center for International Policy, made the revelation in a speech about his visit to the reclusive nation. He quoted the North Korean officials, including Foreign Minister Pak Ui Chun and Ri Gun, director general of the Foreign Ministry's American Affairs Bureau, as saying that North Korea and the United States can become close friends once Washington alters its policy toward Pyongyang. They were also quoted as saying that when North Korea abandons its nuclear weapons capabilities depends on when the country can rest assured that it is no longer under U.S. nuclear threat.

• The U.S. State Department in the Federal Resister on Monday (2 Feb) confirmed sanctions banning three North Korean entities from trade with the U.S. for two years. The three are Korea Mining and Development Corp., Mokong Trading Corp. and Sino-Ki. The new U.S. administration has decided to maintain sanctions against the three firms, which the Bush administration accused of missile technology proliferation activities. The decision came nearly simultaneously with reports that North Korea is preparing to test-fire medium-range missiles, suggesting that the Obama administration still sees Pyongyang as a "rogue state" despite its removal from the list of states sponsoring terrorism.

• The top foreign policy secretary to South Korean President Lee Myung-bak will likely visit Washington next week for discussions on a possible summit between Lee and his new U.S. counterpart and other issues that will determine the shape of the alliance under the new U.S. administration, sources said Monday (2 Feb). Kim Sung-hwan, if he takes the trip, will be the highest-ranking South Korean official to visit the United States since new U.S. President Barack Obama was inaugurated last month. "The date has not been fixed, but it will likely be around the 12th" of February, a source said.

• A U.S expert on Korea Wednesday (4 Feb) urged the Obama administration to move quickly to engage North Korea and push ahead with denuclearization talks so the communist state does not feel abandoned. Scott Snyder, director of the center for U.S.-Korea policy at the Asia Foundation, said, "I think there is a need to communicate with the DPRK, to give some message to let them know they have not been forgotten. Otherwise we may miss another opportunity." Snyder took former U.S. President Bill Clinton as an example, saying "If the whole process had begun earlier then, maybe he might have gone (to Pyongyang)."

• U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will visit Japan, February 16 through 18; Indonesia, February 18 through 19; the Republic of Korea, February 19 through 20; and China, February 20 through 22. In all capitals, the Secretary will be discussing common approaches to the challenges facing the international community, including the financial markets’ turmoil, humanitarian issues, security, and climate change. According to Chosun Ilbo, Christopher Hill will reportedly accompany the Secretary of State on her East Asia tour.