More pictures from North Korea

From a courageous reporter for The Sun, who goes into some detail about the treatment he received after being caught taking the pictures.

SKorea to back UN resolution on NKorea

By KWANG-TAE KIM, Associated Press Writer

South Korea will vote in favor of a U.N. resolution on alleged human rights violations in North Korea, a senior Foreign Ministry official said Wednesday.

The resolution is expected to raise concerns about the rights situation in North Korea — which international advocacy groups say is among the world's worst abusers. Voting for it would make good on the new Seoul government's promise not to refrain from criticizing Pyongyang.

The official spoke Wednesday on condition of anonymity because he did not want to comment publicly before the vote, scheduled later this week at the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva.

The new government of conservative President Lee Myung-bak has promised a change from the reluctance of previous South Korean liberal governments to publicly criticize the North.

Since 2003, South Korea has only once voted for a U.N. resolution on human rights in its communist, impoverished and isolated neighbor — after the North's nuclear test in October 2006.

In other votes, the South either abstained or stayed away out of concerns that its criticism might hurt ties and efforts to resolve the international nuclear standoff with North Korea.

From: Yahoo!

Major food shortage in NK this year

From Yahoo!:

A dire food shortage across North Korea has become so acute it has started to affect the country's elite in the capital, Pyongyang, reports say.
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Aid agency Good Friends says food rations for some parts of the city have been cut by up to 60%, while others have seen their supplies cut off completely.

Only citizens who show absolute loyalty to leader Kim Jong Il and his regime are allowed to live in Pyongyang and are considered better off than their fellow countrymen.

But the food situation, which has mostly been felt in rural areas where rations have been suspended since November, has now spread to the city, according to the South Korean aid agency.

"Even ranking officials have run out of their (rationed) food supply, while a ban on (private) trade is strictly maintained," said an unidentified city official quoted by Good Friends.

"It is nothing but a death sentence."

The agency also said farm labourers were staying away from work because they were not getting any food. This was said to be affecting the planting of new crops.

The fact that this is affecting the elite in Pyongyang is unprecedented, and leads to a possible silver lining to this very dark cloud. From One Free Korea:

The regime has contained and survived mass-casualty famine and dissent in the countryside before. A severe downturn in Pyongyang, however, is a game-changer. If the regime can’t even feed its elite, it’s going to have to take some chairs away from the banquet table. That means commissars and apparatchiks will shiv each other for the remaining chairs as though their lives depend on it. A rumored phase-out of the “military first” policy introduces a whole new pool of potential coup plotters. This could be the beginning of the end. If the report is true – and if China doesn’t execute an Olympic-sized airlift to reverse those conditions fast – there’s a 70% chance of regime collapse within the next year.

Disarmament Talks, Cont.

Recently elected South Korean President Lee Myung-bak has taken a firm position towards North Korea. According to Reuters:

South Korean President Lee Myung-bak on Tuesday urged North Korea to start standing on its own feet, stop relying on handouts and get ready for unification. [...] The conservative leader has promised to help lift North Korea out of abject poverty on condition the reclusive communist neighbor abandons nuclear weapons and opens up its economy.

Thankfully, an international disarmament accord was signed in 2007. However, there is dispute over whether North Korea completely and accurately followed through with it. According to Associated Press:

The accord, signed among the two Koreas, the U.S., China, Russia and Japan, is at a stalemate due to a dispute over whether the North fully accounted for its nuclear programs by a Dec. 31, 2007 deadline. The North says it already provided the list in November, while the U.S. says it is still waiting for a complete, detailed declaration.

On the other hand, North Korea is asking the other members of the international accord to fulfill their agreements: to provide 1 million metric tons of fuel oil and normalized diplomatic ties (remove North Korea from the state sponsor of terrorism list) with the U.S. and Japan (Bloomberg).

That's why, at the suggestion of North Korea, chief U.S. nuclear negotiator Christopher Hill and his North Korean counterpart Vice Foreign Minister Kim Kye-gwan met in Geneva on March 14 to discuss these discrepancies (Chosun Ilbo). However, no progress was made.

In Visit, Cellist’s Quest for Lost Chord to His Youth

By DANIEL J. WAKIN for the New York Times
PYONGYANG, North Korea — For much of his 60 years, Valentin Hirsu has thought of those three Korean boys in his class.

It was at Music School No. 1 in Bucharest, Romania. The boys were North Korean orphans from the war that had torn up their country. One played piano, another clarinet, the third flute.

After about six years, they were taken home.

Mr. Hirsu never heard from them again. Now, in Pyongyang as a cellist with the visiting New York Philharmonic, he is asking about their fate.

"It’s a crime not to look for them if I’ll be there,” he said on the eve of the orchestra’s departure from Beijing. “I don’t know if they are alive or minister of culture. How am I supposed to know?” he said.

Mr. Hirsu kept a picture that includes the three Koreans among a clutch of students around a teacher, like a “mother hen,” he said.

He recalled the three boys as excellent students and good kids. “They were the best in drawing,” he said. “They were the best in geography, even Romanian, volleyball, everything.”

After graduating, Mr. Hirsu embarked on a successful career as a soloist in Romania. In 1975, he immigrated to Israel and a year later to the United States, where he almost immediately won an audition for the Philharmonic.

Mr. Hirsu gave the photograph to Fred Carriere, the executive director of the Korea Society, which helped the Philharmonic with logistics for the trip. Mr. Hirsu had a phonetic recollection of the names, but that did not prove to be much help. Mr. Carriere said Monday, after the orchestra arrived in Pyongyang, that he had had no success in locating the three.

A disappointed Mr. Hirsu said he would not give up, promising to ask every North Korean musician he encountered about them. “I can find them on my own,” he said.

U.S.'09 Budget for NK Shifts to Denuclearization

The U.S. budget for North Korea-related funds in fiscal year (FY) 2009 is spread out between the energy and state departments with a shift away from democratization assistance to nuclear disarmament.

The budget proposed earlier this month, and to start in October this year, includes the Energy Department's request for $ 140.5 million for Nonproliferation and International Security (NIS) which covers the Next Generation Safeguards Initiative. This program is specifically aimed at disabling, dismantling and verifying North Korea's nuclear program and at stopping spread of weapons of mass destruction.

``Another priority in FY 2009 is disablement, dismantlement, and verification of nuclear programs in North Korea,’’ the department's budget request says.

``In FY 2009, NIS will provide technical expertise required (for) dismantlement actions of the North Korean nuclear facilities, continue to verify the North Korean declaration of its nuclear program elements, support the six-party working groups, and undertake scientist engagement opportunities to support denuclearization and proliferation risk reduction.’’ (Yonhap)

From: The Korea Times

22 N. Koreans Executed for a Defection Attempt

Twenty-two North Koreans, sent back to the North by South Korean authorities earlier this month after their fishing boats drifted into South Korean waters, were reported to have been executed by a firing squad.

The North Koreans were shot dead last week by North Korean military authorities of South Hwanghae Province, which believed they had attempted to defect to the South, Yonhap News Agency reported Sunday, quoting an unidentified government source.

``The rumor (of the execution) has been spreading out among locals. Local people have been shocked that all of the 22 were executed by a firing squad without distinction of age or sex,'' the source said.

The 22 North Koreans included eight men, 14 women and three students.

North Korean fishermen often stray into southern waters because of bad weather or engine problems.

From The Korea Times