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North Korea

KimJongUn

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Japanese woman abducted by North Korea died of overdose, report claims


PUBLISHED : Friday, 07 November, 2014, 10:40pm
UPDATED : Friday, 07 November, 2014, 10:40pm

Reuters in Seoul

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Megumi Yokota was abducted on a Japanese beach at 13. Photo: AP

Megumi Yokota, a Japanese national abducted by North Korean agents decades ago as a schoolgirl, died from drug overdose in a psychiatric hospital in 1994 and was buried in a pit with other corpses, a South Korean newspaper said yesterday.

Yokota, who has been a symbol of Japanese nationals abducted by the North and Tokyo's efforts to ascertain their fate, died of an overdose of sedatives and sleeping pills, the Dong-a Ilbo reported.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's administration eased sanctions on North Korea in July in return for Pyongyang's reopening of an investigation into the fate of Japanese citizens abducted in the 1970s and 1980s.

The Dong-a Ilbo said the finding was included in a report by Japanese officials who had interviewed North Korean witnesses on the staff of the hospital where Yokota died, and Abe's administration had been briefed about the fresh details.

Abe has made resolving the abductee issue a priority. Last week, he said North Korea had told Japan it intended to deepen its inquiries into their fate.

Pyongyang admitted in 2002 to kidnapping 13 Japanese citizens to help train spies, and five abductees and their families later returned to Japan.

Japan wants to know about the fate of the remaining eight, who Pyongyang has said have died, and others that Tokyo believes were also kidnapped.

Yokota was snatched off a beach in northern Japan on her way home from school in 1977 at the age of 13. Pyongyang has said she committed suicide after suffering from mental illness.

Japan has never accepted that explanation of Yokota's death, after bones North Korea said were hers were shown by DNA testing to be those of a man.

The Dong-a Ilbo said two people who were on the staff of the hospital testified that Yokota took or was given sedatives and sleeping pills that exceeded safe doses.

 

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North Korea freed American detainees Bae, Miller 'after secret US mission'


PUBLISHED : Sunday, 09 November, 2014, 10:27am
UPDATED : Sunday, 09 November, 2014, 8:57pm

Associated Press in Washington

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Kenneth Bae (left) and Matthew Miller were allowed to go home after months in North Korean prison. Photos: Kyodo, AFP

Two Americans released from lengthy prison sentences in North Korea arrived home Saturday, following a secret mission by US intelligence chief James Clapper to secure their freedom at Pyongyang’s initiative.

The plane carrying Kenneth Bae and Matthew Miller touched down at around 9pm at Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington State.

Bae, a Korean-American missionary who has served two years in prison, expressed thanks to those who had been “supporting me and lifting me up and not forgetting me.”

The men disembarked the US government jet with shaved heads and carrying their luggage, then embraced loved ones on the tarmac.

Bae and Miller were the last Americans held by North Korea.

Clapper was the highest-ranking American to visit Pyongyang in more than a decade.

It was the latest twist in the fitful relationship between the Obama administration and the young North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, whose approach to the United States has shifted back and forth from defiance to occasional conciliation. And it was an anomalous role for Clapper, an acerbic retired general who doesn’t typically do diplomacy.

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US citizen Kenneth Bae, accompanied by his sister Terri and his mother Myunghee, speaks to the media in a news conference after landing in Washington. Photo: Reuters

“It’s a wonderful day for them and their families,” President Barack Obama said at the White House. “Obviously we are very grateful for their safe return. And I appreciate Director Clapper doing a great job on what was obviously a challenging mission.”

US officials did not immediately provide details about the circumstances of the Americans’ release, including whether Clapper met with Kim or other senior North Korean officials. They said the timing was not related to Obama’s imminent trip to China, Myanmar and Australia.

A senior administration official said Clapper carried a brief message from Obama indicating that Clapper was his personal envoy to bring the two Americans home. The official spoke on a condition of anonymity without authorisation to speak on the record.

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Matthew Miller, center, who had been held in North Korea since April, 2014, is greeted after arriving. Photo: AP

But analysts who study North Korea said the decision to free Bae and Miller now from long prison terms probably was a bid by that country to ease pressure in connection with its human rights record. A recent United Nations report documented rape, torture, executions and forced labour in the North’s network of prison camps, accusing the government of “widespread, systematic and gross” human rights violations.

North Korea seems worried that Kim could be accused in the International Criminal Court in The Hague, said Sue Mi Terry, a former senior intelligence analyst now at Columbia University.

“The North Koreans seem to be obsessed over the human rights issue,” she said. “This human rights thing is showing itself to be an unexpected leverage for the US.”

Bruce Klingner, a former CIA analyst now at the Heritage Foundation, agreed that efforts to shine a spotlight on the country’s human rights record “startled the regime and led to frantic attempts to derail the process”.

“Their [Bae and Miller’s] release has been our focus every single day and we’ve been working all the angles available to bring them home,” Secretary of State John Kerry said from Oman on Saturday. “We’re pleased that this humanitarian gesture has taken place.”

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Director of National Intelligence James Clapper carried a brief message to Pyongyang from Obama indicating that Clapper was his personal envoy to bring the two Americans home. Photo: AP

Bae, a Korean-American missionary with health problems, was serving a 15-year sentence for alleged anti-government activities. He was detained in 2012 while leading a tour group to a North Korean economic zone.

Terri Chung, Bae’s sister, said she received word from the State Department on Saturday morning that Bae and Miller were on a plane that had left North Korean airspace.

“We have been waiting for and praying for this day for two years. This ordeal has been excruciating for the family, but we are filled with joy right now,” Chung said in an e-mailed statement.

Miller was serving a six-year jail term on charges of espionage after he allegedly ripped up his tourist visa at Pyongyang’s airport in April and demanded asylum. North Korea said Miller had wanted to experience prison life so that he could secretly investigate North Korea’s human rights situation.

Last month, North Korea released Jeffrey Fowle of Miamisburg, Ohio, who was held for nearly six months. He had left a Bible in a nightclub in the hope that it would reach North Korea’s underground Christian community.

Fowle said his fellow Americans’ release is “an answer to a prayer”.

He said he initially thought Bae and Miller had been released with him last month. “I didn’t realise they weren’t released with me until I got on the plane,” he said.

Joseph DeTrani, the former North Korea mission manager for the Director of National Intelligence, said the releases are a hopeful sign that North Korea “wants to come out of the penalty box”.

“The North Koreans want to come back to negotiations,” said DeTrani, who leads an intelligence contractor trade group. “They are going through a bad patch. The last two years have been a disaster. They are more and more of an isolated state. We’re seeing an outreach – the leadership in Pyongyang is saying, ‘We’ve got to change course, it’s not working.”‘

Bae and Miller had told The Associated Press that they believed their only chance of release was the intervention of a high-ranking government official or a senior US statesman. Previously, former Vice-President Al Gore and former President Jimmy Carter had gone to North Korea to take detainees home.

Victor Cha, a North Korea expert and former national security official in the George W Bush administration, said Clapper was the most senior US official to visit North Korea since then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright went in 2000 and met with Kim Jong-il, Kim Jong-un’s father.

In recent years, Syd Seiler, a former CIA officer who was recently designated as the US envoy on the North Korean nuclear issue, has made at least one secret trip to North Korea.

Cha said sending Clapper would have satisfied North Korea’s desire for a cabinet-level visitor, while avoiding some of the diplomatic baggage of dispatching a regular US government official. The US and North Korea do not have formal ties, a legacy of the 1950-53 Korean war that ended without a peace treaty.

The detainee releases do not herald a change in US posture regarding North Korea’s disputed nuclear programme, the main source of tension between Pyongyang and Washington, said a senior administration official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss national security matters.

International aid-for-disarmament talks have been stalled since 2008. The US wants the North to take concrete steps to show it’s committed to denuclearisation before the talks can resume.

The last concerted US effort to restart those negotiations collapsed in spring 2012. North Korea had agreed to freeze its nuclear and missile programs in exchange for food aid, but then launched a long-range rocket in breach of a UN ban on its use of ballistic missile technology.

The US notified allies of Clapper’s trip to North Korea and alerted members of the congressional leadership once his visit was under way, the official said.

 

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UN confronts North Korea over crimes against humanity


PUBLISHED : Sunday, 16 November, 2014, 10:54am
UPDATED : Sunday, 16 November, 2014, 10:56am

Agence France-Presse in United Nations

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Michael Kirby, Chairman of the Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in North Korea, shows a report on the human rights violations in North Korea during a press conference. Photo: EPA

The United Nations is preparing to confront North Korea over its dismal rights record with a key vote this week that could compel Pyongyang to answer to crimes against humanity.

A UN General Assembly committee will vote Tuesday on a resolution drafted by the European Union and Japan condemning human rights abuses in North Korea and calling for a war crimes probe.

While North Korea often features on the roster of resolutions targeting pariah states, the latest text has been the focus of intense diplomacy over provisions that could see the Pyongyang regime in the dock at the International Criminal Court (ICC).

The resolution draws heavily from a UN report released in February that detailed a vast network of prison camps and provided accounts of torture, summary executions and rape, mostly from testimony from North Korean exiles.

Responsibility for these crimes lies at the highest level of the state, according to the report by the UN inquiry, which concluded that the atrocities amounted to crimes against humanity.

The landmark report stirred alarm in Pyongyang, which launched a diplomatic offensive to ensure the key provisions urging the Security Council to refer Pyongyang to the Hague-based ICC were scrapped.

Defended by Cuba

Rushing to North Korea’s defence, Cuba last week presented an amendment -- that will also be put to a vote -- dropping all references to the ICC and instead encouraging cooperation through fact-finding visits and talks with the UN rights office.

Diplomats said the Cuba amendment could garner support in particular from African countries that have bristled at the ICC’s focus on African war crimes cases.

To counter the Cuban move, a new text was presented on Friday by the EU that included a provision welcoming cooperation on rights with North Korea, but maintaining the call for a probe of crimes against humanity.

Supporters of the EU-Japan text, co-sponsored by 48 countries including the United States, are hoping for a strong vote of support to push the Security Council into taking action against Pyongyang.

“This resolution is about victims and the importance of the world standing with victims,” said Param-Preet Singh from Human Rights Watch.

“We are talking about not just hundreds, or thousands, or tens of thousands but potentially millions of victims over the last sixty years and that is why accountability is so important.

“It sends a message that any regime that inflicts that kind of suffering on its own people: there will be a price to pay.”

North fears ‘US plot’

After the vote in the Third Committee, the resolution will go to the full Assembly next month.

But it would still remain an open question whether the Security Council will follow up on the resolution and refer North Korea to the ICC, with China and Russia widely expected to oppose such a move.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un is sending a special envoy to Russia for talks next week with President Vladimir Putin, whose country holds veto power in the 15-member Council.

Pyongyang has dismissed the resolution as confrontational and the product of a plot orchestrated by the United States to discredit the regime and help bring about its downfall.

But last month, North Korean officials held their first meeting in 10 years with the UN special rapporteur and extended an invitation for him to visit Pyongyang while offering to cooperate with the UN High Commissioner on Human Rights.

Pyongyang has made clear that cooperation on human rights is conditional on dropping the threat of ICC prosecution as outlined in the resolution.

Australian judge Michael Kirby, who led the UN inquiry, has called the vote a “moment of truth” for the United Nations and said the 193-member Assembly should not be duped by offers that he described as “crumbs being thrown to the international community.”


 

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South Korea puts cost of reunification with North Korea at US$500 billion

PUBLISHED : Wednesday, 19 November, 2014, 11:22pm
UPDATED : Wednesday, 19 November, 2014, 11:22pm

Agence France-Presse in Seoul

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Financial Services Commission (FSC) chairman Shin Je-yoon told a seminar in Seoul that the estimate covered a period of 20 years that would be needed to raise the North's per capita GDP from the current US$1,251 to US$10,000.

South Korea's top financial regulator said developing North Korea's moribund economy after eventual reunification would cost around US$500 billion.

Financial Services Commission (FSC) chairman Shin Je-yoon told a seminar in Seoul yesterday that the estimate covered a period of 20 years that would be needed to raise the North's per capita GDP from the current US$1,251 to US$10,000.

The FSC stressed the figure of US$500 billion was open to revision and should not be taken as an official government position, but rather a starting point for discussion.

A survey released by the Unification Ministry earlier this year showed that while 70 per cent of South Koreans supported the idea of a unified peninsula, almost half had no interest in helping cover the massive financial cost.

The FSC estimate noted that the South's GDP was more than 40 times greater than the North's in 2013, compared to the near tenfold difference between West and East Germany at the time of their reunification in 1990.

Shin said half the needed funds could come from public finance institutions in the South such as the Korea Development Bank and Korea Exim Bank.

The other half could be financed by commercial banks, tax revenues from development projects in North Korea and international organisations such as the World Bank, he said.

Forecasting the cost of unification is an almost meaningless task, given the large number of possible scenarios under which a merger might occur. As a result, estimates vary wildly, with the only real consensus being it would be far from cheap.

Last year, South Korea's finance ministry put the cost at around 7 per cent of South Korea's annual GDP for a decade.

That would mean around US$83 billion a year for 10 years - and that is assuming a peaceful unification scenario.

President Park Geun-hye has said reunification would bring a "bonanza" through the marriage of the South's capital and technology with the North's human and natural resources. But the nuclear-armed North reacted angrily, accusing the South of dreaming "a pipedream" of reunification through absorption.


 

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North Korea reacts angrily after UN votes to probe ‘crimes against humanity’


PUBLISHED : Wednesday, 19 November, 2014, 12:02pm
UPDATED : Wednesday, 19 November, 2014, 7:01pm

Agence France-Presse at the United Nations

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The resolution makes no mention of North Korea’s supreme leader Kim Jong-un, but notes a UN inquiry finding that the “highest level of the state” holds responsibility for rights abuses. Photo: Xinhua

The United Nations on Tuesday adopted a landmark resolution condemning North Korean rights abuses and laying the groundwork for putting the Pyongyang regime in the dock for crimes against humanity.

A resolution asking the Security Council to refer North Korea to the International Criminal Court passed by a resounding vote of 111 to 19 with 55 abstentions in a General Assembly human rights committee.

North Korea reacted angrily to the vote and announced that it was breaking off talks on improving human rights with the European Union, which drafted the resolution with Japan.

The non-binding measure will go to the full General Assembly for a vote next month.

But it remains an open question whether the Security Council will follow up on the resolution and seek to refer North Korea to the ICC, with China – Pyongyang’s main ally – and Russia widely expected to oppose such a move.

Both China and Russia voted against the resolution on Tuesday along with Cuba, Iran, Syria, Belarus, Venezuela, Uzbekistan and Sudan, who complained that the measure unfairly targeted North Korea.

However, an amendment presented by Cuba to scrap the key provisions on asking the Security Council to consider referring North Korea to the Hague-based ICC, was defeated.

Co-sponsored by more than 60 countries, the resolution drew heavily on the work of a UN inquiry which concluded in a 400-page report released in February that North Korea was committing human rights abuses “without parallel in the contemporary world.”

The year-long inquiry heard testimony from North Korean exiles and documented a vast network of harsh prison camps holding up to 120,000 people along with cases of torture, summary executions and rape.

Responsibility for these violations lies at the highest level of the secretive state, according to the inquiry led by Australian judge Michael Kirby, who concluded that the atrocities amounted to crimes against humanity.

North Korea’s representative warned of far-reaching consequences over the vote, and in particular declared that it was now compelled “not to refrain any further from conducting nuclear tests.”

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North Korea's official in charge of UN affairs and human rights, Cho Myong-nam, speaks during a meeting of the UN General Assembly human rights committee on Tuesday. Photo: AP

“The sponsors and supporters of the draft resolution should be held responsible for all the consequences as they are the ones who have destroyed the opportunity and conditions for human rights cooperation,” said Sin So Ho.

North Korea had launched a diplomatic offensive in recent months to prevent the resolution from moving forward, meeting for the first time with the UN rights rapporteur and extending an invitation for him to visit.

In the final days of intense diplomacy over the text, the European Union introduced a minor amendment welcoming Pyongyang’s offer to allow the fact-finding mission and talks with the UN rights office.

In an apparent move to prevent the measure from going any further, North Korea dispatched a senior official, Choe Ryong-hae, to Moscow for talks with President Vladimir Putin, whose country holds veto power in the Security Council.

Human rights groups welcomed the outcome of the vote. Many said it put pressure on the 15-member council to follow up with action on accountability from the North Korean regime.

“Today’s General Assembly resolution affirms the need for a tribunal to address the North Korean government’s unspeakable crimes,” said Human Rights Watch director Kenneth Roth.

“The Security Council should follow up by referring North Korea to the International Criminal Court to investigate the long list of crimes against humanity.”

“Finally, the UN has sent the message today that North Korean rulers who starve and enslave their own people must be held accountable,” said Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch, a Geneva-based organisation.

“This is a powerful boost to millions of victims suffering in what is arguably the worst situation of human rights abuse on the planet,” he said.

UN Watch quoted North Korean defector Ahn Myeong-cheol who said the resolution will have an impact in his country “as the people there will learn that their leader is a criminal.”

The resolution makes no mention of North Korea’s supreme leader Kim Jong-un, but notes the UN inquiry finding that the “highest level of the state” holds responsibility for the rights abuses.

 

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North Korea organises mass protest against UN - in pictures

Photographs released of Tuesday’s state-organised rally objecting to resolution that could see charges brought against Kim Jong-un

North Koreans protests against UN resolution

Wednesday 26 November 2014 14.58 GMT


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The mass protest took place at the Kim Il-sung square in Pyongyang Photograph: KCNA/EPA


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Thousands carried banners praising their leaders and condemning the United States. The central banner reads:
‘Let’s defend with our lives the Central Committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea headed by supreme leader Kim Jong Un’ Photograph: Jon Chol Jin/AP


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North Korea has denounced the UN resolution, which could see Kim Jong-un charged by international prosecutors Photograph: Lu Rui/Xinhua Press/Corbis


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The secretary of the central committee of the workers’ party of Korea, Kim Ki-nam, addresses the demonstration Photograph: Xinhua/Landov/Barcroft Media


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Mass rallies are usually organised by the government to help express its official line Photograph: Xinhua /Landov/Barcroft Media


 

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Sony Pictures Entertainment looks to North Korea for cyber attack source


PUBLISHED : Sunday, 30 November, 2014, 5:36am
UPDATED : Sunday, 30 November, 2014, 5:36am

Reuters in Washington

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Sony Pictures' computer system went down on Monday.

Sony Pictures Entertainment is looking into whether hackers working on behalf of North Korea might be responsible for a cyber attack that knocked out the studio's computer network last week, the technology news site Re/code reported.

Sony and security consultants were investigating the possibility that Chinese hackers carried out the actual attack.

The attack occurred a month before Sony Pictures, a unit of Sony Corp, is to release The Interview. The movie is a comedy about two journalists who are recruited by the CIA to assassinate North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. The Pyongyang government denounced the film as "undisguised sponsoring of terrorism, as well as an act of war" in a letter to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in June.

Representatives of the North Korean mission to the United Nations could not immediately be reached for comment yesterday.

Sony Pictures' computer system went down on Monday. Before screens went dark, they displayed a red skull and the phrase "Hacked By #GOP", which reportedly stands for Guardians of Peace, the Los Angeles Times said. The hackers also warned they would release "secrets" stolen from the Sony servers, the Times said.



 
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