1) The former President George W. Bush urged the six-party member nations to send a strong and clear message to North Korea to give up its nuclear program
2) Asia Times reported there is information suggesting that Kim Kye-gwan, North Korean vice foreign minister and its nuclear envoy, may have been purged as a scapegoat for misjudging the US stance toward North Korea
3) North Korea agreed to loosen border crossing regulations for the South Koreans crossing the border to visit the Kaesong Industrial Complex
and 4) and South Korea approved the World Vision's request to conduct a humanitarian visit to North Korea.
Strong Message Necessary to Resolve N. Korean Nuclear Issue: Bush (Yonhap)
SEOGWIPO, South Korea – Former U.S. President George W. Bush on Saturday urged member nations to the six-party disarmament talks to send a strong and clear message to North Korea to persuade it to give up its nuclear weapons program.
Bush made the remark at an economic forum organized by the Federation of Korean Industries (FKI) on the southern island of Jeju during his five-day visit to South Korea.
Unless North Korea clearly and transparently ends its nuclear weapons drive, the U.S., South Korea, China, Japan and Russia should let North Korea know that it will face economic and other consequences, Bush said.
North Korea has made a series of provocative actions since its leader, Kim Jong-il, reportedly fell ill in August 2008. Responding to a U.N. condemnation of its long-range rocket launch in April, Pyongyang withdrew from the multilateral denuclearization talks.
In July in South Korea, Kurt Campbell, the U.S. Secretary of States for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, said if North Korea takes "serious and irreversible steps" to end its nuclear program, Washington -- together with Seoul and other allies -- is ready to offer a "comprehensive package" of incentives.
Bush was scheduled to have dinner with South Korean President Lee Myung-bak on the same day in Jeju, according to the forum's organizers.
On Monday, Bush plans to visit the city of Andong, 268km south of Seoul, on Monday, as well as the nearby Hahoe Folk Village at the invitation of Poongsang Group Chairman Ryu Jin.
The village is known for traditional wooden structures, costumes, mask dances and exceptionally beautiful scenery.
Ties between the Bush family and the defense company Poongsan go back to November 2005, when former U.S. President George H.W. Bush visited the traditional Korean city.
Bush will also give a speech at an Andong high school, which was founded by Ryu, before returning home on Tuesday.
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Pyongyang purges for a new era (Asia Times)
By Donald Kirk
WASHINGTON – For the most skilled and toughest North Korean negotiator, the task of pushing the line while remaining on cordial terms with the man across the table carries inherent risks. A change in policy may be fatal. One mistake and you may never live to make another.
Take Kim Kye-gwan, the North Korean vice foreign minister with whom the United States' Christopher Hill spent years cozying up with Hill in venues from Berlin to Singapore to Beijing when Hill was US nuclear envoy and assistant secretary of state for Asia and the Pacific.
Kim seemed like a pretty tough guy, conning Hill into deals such as the six-party agreement of September 2005, under which North Korea vaguely agreed to do away with its nukes in return for multi-billions of god-knows-what.
And that wasn't all. Kim then got Hill to sign on to two deals in 2007 under which North Korea agreed in careful detail first to disable and then dismantle its entire nuclear program. All the US had to do was remove North Korea from its list of state sponsors of terrorism - something former president George W Bush was glad to do in his waning months in office.
So what is Kim's reward for all his success in bamboozling the Americans into thinking they had succeeded in getting North Korea to give up its nukes? He seems to have disappeared, and nobody has a clue as to whether he's dead or alive, working on a chicken farm or sent to a prison for re-education.
Analysts here believe Kim may have become a scapegoat for hardliners in the ascendancy in North Korea. In the quest for people to blame for North Korea's flirtation with reconciliation with the United States and South Korea, they say, Kim would rank high on the list of those now viewed as "enemies".
Speculation about Kim Kye-gwan's possible fate is circulating in the US, while the generals take center stage and North Korea toughens its policies in the final phases of the reign of Dear Leader Kim Jong-il, who rose to power in July 1994 after the death of his father, the long-ruling Kim Il-sung.
A purge of those perceived as soft toward the United States and South Korea is to be expected, according to this analysis, while North Korea's intelligence and security agencies crack down with increasing ferocity on the slightest signs of discontent, much less dissent. The crackdown is gaining urgency as reports of Kim Jong-il's health grow more pessimistic - first he was said to have suffered a stroke nearly one year ago, and now he's reportedly suffering from pancreatic cancer.
"The storm of control measures blowing over that country now was started by the power people in North Korea," a Japanese journalist, Jiro Ishimaru, has written. They "are doing everything they can to tighten social order because they see a crisis looming in the maintenance of the system".
Bruce Bechtol, professor at the Marine Corps Command and Staff College in Quantico, Virginia, says the purges have accompanied a shift in the political winds. One example, he said, is that of Choe Sung-chol, who as vice chairman of the Asia-Pacific Peace Committee was responsible for dealing with South Korea. He was reportedly "languishing on a chicken farm" in January while undergoing "revolutionary training" - before he was reported executed.
Choe, a key figure in arranging the inter-Korean summit of October 2007 between Kim Jong-il and South Korea's president Roh Moo-hyun, committed the grave offense of making "wrong predictions" about the policy of Roh's conservative successor, Lee Myung-bak, elected president by a landslide two-and-a-half months after the summit.
Soon after his inauguration in February 2008, Lee cut off aid to North Korea while waiting to resolve the sticky question of verification of North Korea's claims to be doing away with its nukes. North Korea, reviling Lee as a "traitor", has since boasted of restarting its nuclear program, test-fired a long-range missile and exploded a nuclear device underground while repudiating the July 1953 Korean War armistice.
"Despite hardliners' objections, Choe had strongly pushed for progress in relations with the South," according to a source quoted by Yonhap, the South Korean news agency. "[B]ut inter-Korean relations deteriorated after the government change in the South and he was blamed for the 'misjudgments' and all other fallout".
The parallels between Choe's case and that of Kim Kye-gwan are all too clear, in the view of analysts. He, too, stands to face severe criticism, if not charges, for the same offences - except that his misdeeds were in talks with a far worse enemy than South Korea - the US.
Reported purges of Choe and other key officials are the most specific manifestation of a much more sweeping campaign to purify the society.
"Nobody circles the wagons like North Korea," said Bechtol in a paper presented at the Korea Economic Institute in Washington. "As North Korea always has done in times of possible internal instability or turmoil, it cracked down on the populace."
Among the first in the line of fire, beside negotiators all too visibly involved in dealings with the US and South Korea, have been those attempting to escape across the Yalu and Tumen river borders to China.
One experienced source for that perception is Tim Peters, director of Helping Hands Korea which has years of experience aiding escapees. "The penalties are getting stronger," Peters has been quoted as saying. The government is even refusing to issue passports to those who need to go to China and elsewhere on normal business.
"Since Kim's reported stroke, those fleeing the country have undergone stiffer punishment as a result of new measures that were apparently put into effect," said Bechtol, while "inquisition squads" roam the streets and "ideology sessions" are increasingly frequent.
The crackdown often focuses on the small community of secret Christians that has grown in North Korea in recent years, which is viewed by the regime as an immediate threat.
Activists in South Korea report that a 33-year-old woman was executed in June in a city near the Chinese border for distributing copies of the Bible. They say another woman, aged 30, was reportedly tortured and possibly killed along with her husband and their two children, all of whom have disappeared.
Although public executions in North Korea are commonplace, the ferocity of the current sweep of enemies accompanies the first basic shift in the power structure since the death of Kim Il-sung.
With the power of the elite surrounding the Dear Leader "under close scrutiny", said Bechtol, many analysts believe "that the party and the military have consolidated power in the wake of Kim Jong-il's health issues".
Mark Fitzpatrick, senior fellow for non-proliferation at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, sees whatever is happening in North Korea as "surely connected with the succession question that suddenly became more acute" after Kim's stroke.
"For all of North Korea's neighbors," he wrote in a newly published report, "the collapse of the Kim regime could be best way out of a downward cycle - and the sooner this happens, the better."
That's a view that is not likely to bring about redemption for Kim Kye-gwan, for whom it may in any case be too late as the regime defends itself against enemies, real and imagined, at home and abroad.
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North Korea Says Seized South Korean Boat Illegally Intruded Into Its Waters (Yonhap)
SEOUL – North Korea's state media said Saturday [1 August] it was investigating a South Korean boat that "illegally intruded deep into" its territory in the East Sea, two days after its seizure by a North Korean naval vessel.
North Korea's military sent a similar message to South Korea by fax a day earlier, and the only difference was that Saturday's media report used the word, "deep," Seoul's Unification Ministry spokeswoman Lee Jong-joo said.
"A patrol ship of the Navy of the Korean People's Amy captured one ship of South Korea on July 30 when it illegally intruded deep into the DPRK (North Korea) territorial waters in the East Sea of Korea," Pyongyang's official Korean Central News Agency said.
"A relevant institution is conducting a concrete investigation into it at present," the two-sentence report said.
On Thursday, an unnamed North Korean military official in charge of operations in the East Sea sent a fax message through an inter-Korean military communication line, saying the boat illegally intruded into North Korean waters and that a relevant body was investigating the case.
With four crewmen aboard, the 29-ton squid-fishing boat, named the Yeonanho 800, was hauled away by a North Korean patrol vessel to an eastern port in the communist country early Thursday morning after straying 13 km past the inter-Korean maritime border.
South Korean authorities suspect the boat either did not have a satellite navigation device or that it malfunctioned.
The ministry spokeswoman said North Korea customarily accuses stray fishing boats of territorial intrusion, and that this should not be viewed as some kind of warning.
"With the message, North Korea was explaining about the situation from its perspective," she said.
Seoul officials called North Korea's prompt response an encouraging sign. But they cautioned that the isolated state is often unpredictable.
"Now that there was a prompt response about the situation, I'm looking at it in a positive way," Unification Minister Hyun In-taek said on Thursday. "But I will keep an eye on the situation."
In a reply to the North Korean military, South Korea said the crossing occurred by navigational errors and requested the early release of the boat and its crew "on humanitarian grounds."
In previous incidences, fishing boats that have strayed into the North have been released after a week or two of inquiry. The latest case has caused greater concern as cross-border tensions are running high.
Some fear the fishermen could be detained for longer. A South Korean worker has been held in the North since March on accusations of insulting the North's political system at a joint industrial park.
Thursday's seizure was the first such case among South Korean fishermen since President Lee Myung-bak took office in Seoul last year.
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N.Korea agrees to streamline border crossing (Associated Press)
SEOUL – North Korea has agreed to streamline rules for South Korean visitors crossing the border to visit a Seoul-funded joint industrial site, officials here said Sunday.
The North's move stands in contrast to its stance since 2008, which has seen the communist regime toughening its control on South Koreans travelling to the Kaesong estate.
The South's Kaesong Industrial Complex Management Committee, which supervises the estate just north of the border, said Sunday visitors would no longer need to provide anything more than ID cards and travel permits.
Responding to complaints about inconvenience, the North agreed to allow the South's office to process some paperwork on behalf of individuals.
"The extra documents were redundant because they carried exactly the same information as ID cards and travel permits," the South's office spokesman told AFP, adding the new rules would take effect from Monday.
Despite the easing of border controls, the fate of Kaesong remains uncertain because of the North's demand for huge pay and rent increases, along with its holding of a Seoul worker.
Pyongyang detained the South Korean male worker on March 30 for allegedly criticising its political system and trying to incite a female North Korean worker to defect.
Kaesong, which opened in December 2004, is the last remaining large-scale reconciliation project between the communist North and the capitalist South.
Some 40,000 North Koreans work for South Korean firms in Kaesong.
Cross-border relations have deteriorated since Seoul's conservative president Lee Myung Bak took office in February 2008, instigating a tougher North Korea policy linking aid to Pyongyang's nuclear disarmament.
North Korea has been under ever-toughening UN Security Council sanctions since its long-range rocket launch in April and a second nuclear test in May.
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S. Korea Gives Nod For First Group Trip to North Since Nuke Test (Yonhap)
SEOUL – South Korea on Friday greenlighted a request by aid workers to visit North Korea, the first such approval since the communist state's nuclear test in May.
Seoul placed a blanket ban on non-governmental cross-border trips after the nuclear blast, effectively freezing humanitarian aid projects as well as social and cultural exchanges with the North. Its first approval in nearly two months was given to World Vision, a multinational aid organization.
"The decision was made based on the government's position that humanitarian assistance to North Korea should be continued," Unification Ministry spokesman Chun Hae-sung said in a briefing.
A group of seven World Vision staff and agricultural experts will begin an eight-day trip on Saturday, during which they plan to visit potato seedling farms the organization operates in Pyongyang and several provincial towns, said Kim Hye-young, a member of the team.
"We couldn't go in June and July, but it's better late than never," Kim said.
Seoul has recently shown signs of flexibility over humanitarian aid to North Korea. The ministry is currently reviewing funding requests from about 10 aid organizations, after suspending such financial support after North Korea's long-range rocket launch in April.
Ministry officials said, however, the current restriction on civic visits to North Korea is still effective and that the ministry will selectively approve other cases depending on the purpose of the visit and its urgency, as well as the state of inter-Korean relations.
Only business-related trips involving a joint industrial complex in the North Korean border town of Kaesong [Kaeso'ng] and a tourism resort in Mount Kumgang are exempt from the ban.
Earlier this week, a Seoul-based aid group, the Korean Sharing Movement, was forced to cancel its planned visit to the North as it failed to receive an official invitation from Pyongyang.
