According to the Financial Times:

Hungary has revealed that it was asked by North Korea to write-off more than 90 per cent of its outstanding debt in the latest indication of the secretive totalitarian regime’s financial distress.

Hungary’s economy ministry told the Financial Times that North Korean negotiators had tabled the request in November 2008 during a meeting in Pyongyang.

“They asked [us] to take good consideration of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea’s current economic difficulties and asked for cancellation of over 90 per cent of the total debt amount,” the ministry said.

The revelation follows a report in the FT last week that Pyongyang had asked the Czech Republic to write-off 95 per cent of its Kc186m ($10m) debt.

The cash-strapped totalitarian state offered to settle 5 per cent of the debt in ginseng, a root that is said to combat lethargy and impotence.

North Korea appears to be struggling to meet its financial obligations owing to the pressures of a moribund domestic economy and international trade sanctions imposed over its nuclear weapons programme.

Following the mysterious sinking of a South Korean warship in March, Washington vowed to further crack down on North Korea’s international financing, money laundering and narcotics operations.

Pyongyang’s outstanding debts are estimated at about $12bn, about two-thirds of which is owed to former communist states.

Its Hungarian debt emerged from a trade surplus between the two countries, mostly in the period before the fall of the Iron Curtain, an official said.

The total debt is 29.6m clearing roubles – an accounting unit used in the former Soviet Bloc.

Hungary said North Korea had agreed in principle to pay the debt in cash, with partial cancellation.

Details such as the clearing-rouble conversion rate and the size of the cancellation must still be settled, however.

Officials were unable to say when the negotiations would resume. Ginseng was not mentioned during previous talks.

Read the full sotry here:
Hungary reveals North Korean debt request
Financial Times
Chris Bryant
8/18/2010

(h/t CanKor)  According tot he Concern Worldwide web page, they are engaged in the following projects in the DPRK:

Sanitation
Concern has recently begun work on an EU-funded programme in Phyongan province.

This work is focusing on sanitation and waste disposal in Hoichang town. We’re building water systems and improving sewage treatment systems and latrines in the area.

Over 55,000 people will benefit from this work.

Nutrition
Another EU-funded Concern programme is focusing on nutrition. We are aiming to increase sustainable food production in Hoichang and Koksan, and in two neighbouring cooperative farms. 

To do this, we are establishing urban greenhouses, irrigation systems and goat milk processing facilities. We are also working with locals to increase their technical and management skills.

This programme will benefit over 43,000 people.

Water works
An important part of our work is focused on water, sanitation and hygiene promotion.

Between 2004 and 2009, Concern provided 252,500 people in the country with clean drinking water. We did this by renovating pump stations and providing household connections. Key innovations have included gravity-fed water systems and the use of solar powered water pumping systems.
 
In addition, 46,800 people have benefitted from improved sanitation facilities, especially in institutions such as schools, kindergartens, nurseries and the county hospital.

Forestry
In the rural communities where we work, our focus has been on halting deforestation and improving farming techniques.

We have provided 270,000 potted tree seedlings to three community-run nurseries. These potted seedlings grow quickly – in three to nine months – with undamaged root systems.

This is a major improvement on the more traditional bed-grown seedlings that were previously used. Traditional seedlings usually take one to three years to grow and often suffer from damaged roots.

As a result of the success of the potted seedlings, the Ministry of Lands and Environmental Protection is now keen to extend their use countrywide.

As part of our forestry work, we have also supplied nurseries with tools, pots and fuel.

Improving crops
With supervision from the Academy of Agricultural Research, we undertook a series of crop trials. We wanted to find out what types of crops could flourish on the lower slopes of hills and mountains.

The crops included new varieties of rice, sweet potato, sorghum, soya bean, millet, hybrid maize and ground nuts.

The trials were successful. There were positive results: the hybrid maize produced twice the normal yield; the millet produced standard yields using only half the normal amount of fertiliser. These crops are now being incorporated into the annual co-operative crop plans.

The ability to grow these crops on lower slopes will alleviate the pressure to produce crops on the higher steeper slopes.

Food production
Another EU-funded project aims at improving food production for people living on sloping land.

As part of this project, we are introducing conservation agriculture, which will increase yields, reduce soil erosion and reduce labour requirements to produce food.

We are also improving crop storage to reduce the post-harvest losses, and conducting crop trials for improved varieties of maize, winter wheat, soya bean, upland rice and potatoes.

According to the Korea Times:

The number of North Koreans with a state-approved cell phone topped 185,000 as of the end of June, operator Orascom Telecom said Thursday, as more citizens have mobile access after a recent government expansion of services.

Egypt’s Orascom, which operates the mobile operator Koryolink in partnership with the North Korean regime, said in a first-half report that services have expanded to several cities other than Pyongyang and that 184,531 subscribers had signed up as of June 30.

Sixty percent of citizens now technically have access to the services, the firm said. But the network reportedly excludes cities near the border with South Korea as authorities fear the proximity could allow cross-border communication.

The number of subscribers has increased by some 60,000 since March and almost quadrupled from the same month last year, the report said, making a significant contribution to Orascom’s first half customer base growth.

It also showed an increase in usage, with the average mobile phone user spending 16 more minutes on the phone per month in the second quarter of the year than the first.

According to the Egyptian firm, foreigners, middle-class citizens and young people are all taking advantage of the new services.

But Radio Free Asia said Wednesday that North Koreans have to pay a steep price to go mobile. Customers must pay up to the equivalent of $250 for a phone in addition to high-priced prepaid minutes, it reported, citing sources in the North.

Still, Orascom’s numbers suggest that legal cell phone use could be gaining its strongest foothold yet.

In late 2002, a limited mobile service was launched, but citizens were banned from using them again just eighteen months later.

But in a major industry surprise, Orascom was awarded a 3G license in 2008 and started commercial operations in 2009.

The firm is also completing the construction of a towering hotel in the North ahead of the 100th anniversary of the birth of the country’s late founder, Kim Il-sung, through its construction arm.

Read the full story here:
Cell phones become more popular in N. Korea
Korea Times
Kim Young-jin
8/13/2010

Last week I wrote about new satellite imagery on Google Earth which showed highway construction in Sinuiju.

The story is more interesting than I initially suspected, however.  It appears that the DPRK is building two highways between Tongrim and Sinuiju.  One highway will probably be for public, commercial, and international traffic.  The other road is likely reserved for “you-know-who” and other senior policy makers.  Below is a map of both these highways between Tongrim and Sinuiju.  The “elite road” is the road to the right that connects Tongrim to Kim Jong-il’s compound in Sinuiju and the Uiju Airforce Base.  You can see the map below:

It is not clear where these roads go south of Tongrim because the satellite imagery predates the highway construction.

There are several highways in the DPRK that are reserved for Kim Jong il and other senior policymakers.  Below is the highway that connects Pyongyang to leadership compounds in Hyangsan and Changsong (on the Chinese border).

UPDATE 6: Without a hint of irony the DPRK condemns South Korean efforts to block the Uriminzokkiri Twitter and YouTube pages.  According to Evan Ramstad in the Wall Street Journal:

North Korea doesn’t let its citizens have computers or access to the Internet. But that hasn’t stopped it from complaining about South Korea’s attempts to block North Korean propaganda videos on YouTube and messages on Facebook and Twitter.

Uriminzokkiri, a North Korea-affiliated Web site run from a bank in Shenyang, China, has garnered worldwide headlines over the past month as it began using prominent social networking tools to draw more attention to its content, which routinely praises the North’s authoritarian regime and lambastes the U.S., South Korea and Japan.

South Korea’s government, which for decades has controlled mail, phone and other communication with the North, extended its oversight to Uriminzokkiri’s new accounts on YouTube, Facebook and Twitter. That prompted the website to post a notice on Saturday criticizing Seoul for censorship, without mentioning that Pyongyang engages in much more far-reaching censorship.

“It is clear that the Lee Myung-bak administration is a group of traitors against unification, and does not want to improve inter-Korean relations or even wish for dialogue and cooperation,” Uriminzokkiri said, citing the name of South Korean President Lee Myung-bak.

Since nearly all of the content on the Web site is in the Korean language, officials in South Korea believe it is mainly targeted at South Koreans.

The Korea Communications Commission, which governs telecommunications in South Korea, says the Uriminzokkiri Web site has “content that praises, promotes and glorifies” the North and has “illegal information” as defined by the South’s National Security Law.

And according to the AFP:

Pyongyang opened a Twitter account on August 12 after its foray into popular video-sharing website YouTube, prompting a game of online cat-and-mouse with Seoul which has struggled to stop its citizens following The North’s official website, Uriminzokkiri.

South Korea has been “crazy to stop its people from gaining access to video and messages posted on our YouTube and Twitter,” said a statement seen on the North’s website.

“This proves the group of traitors is an anti-unification faction, which does not want (inter-Korean) dialogue and cooperation,” it said, adding the South’s “dirty” move will only aggravate confrontation on the peninsula.

The North has used its Twitter account, opened under the name @uriminzok, to link to stinging statements against Seoul and the US posted on its official website.

Seoul has warned South Korean web users they face punishment for seeking to reply to or retweet North Korean messages, but Pyongyang has quickly gathered more than 10,000 followers.

North Korea, one of the world’s most controlled states, is believed to have an elite unit of hackers, but few of its citizens have access to a computer, let alone the Internet.

The North also launched its Facebook page on August 19 to post video links, wallpostings and pictures of happy picnickers, grassy parks and colourful landmarks from across Pyongyang.

Facebook is more expansive than Twitter as it allows users to upload a wide variety of multimedia contents. But the North’s Facebook disappeared only four days after its launch.

UPDATE 5: North Korea has issued a statement that it is not directly managing the Twitter and Youtube accounts.  No one in the media seems to have heard of Chongryun or read my blog posts…

UPDATE 4: According to Yonhap, the DPRK has now opened a Facebook page. The profile apparently listed the manager of the site as a male interested in men.  Eventually the site was shut down by Facebook,  but was reopened under a different account name—and again closed.  A parody site has opened and as of 8/23 it is still up with thousands of “likes”.

UPDATE 3: DPRK organization changing IP addresses to get around South Korean censors.  According to Yonhap (8/19/2010):

North Korea is altering the online addresses of its statements denouncing South Korea and the United States in a new attempt to thwart Seoul’s bids to block access to them, an official said Thursday.

…

South Korea quickly blocked access by its nationals to the [Twitter account] , citing a law that requires them to gain government approval if they want to view such material.

An official at the Korea Communications Commission, however, said that North Korea continues to modify the Internet protocol (IP) addresses of its statements to fool the South Korean watchdog.

“We’re currently blocking new IP addresses as soon as we find them,” the official said, declining to be identified because he had yet to be allowed formally to give the information.

North Korea is currently running the Twitter account at https://twitter.com/uriminzok, which had nearly 8,700 subscribers, or “followers,” as of Thursday afternoon. It contained 20 messages, or “tweets,” most of them showing links to official statements uploaded on its Web site.

Some South Koreans said Wednesday and Thursday that they were able to read the North Korean statements via the links, sometimes even for hours, before they were blocked.

A warning that the uriminzokkiri site contains illegal material pops up if it is directly opened from South Korea. In 2004, the North tried changing the name of the site to “Wooriminzokkiri” to parry South Korean attempts to block access, the official said.

“It’s now the IP addresses that the North is altering,” he said. The Web addresses are only “domains” that make it easy for users to access the IP addresses where the statements are actually stored, he said.

North Korea appears to be expanding its propaganda warfare as South Korea and the United States step up their pressure on Pyongyang to admit to its wrongdoing and open up for dialogue.

Last month, Pyongyang opened an account with the global video-sharing site YouTube and started uploading clips that ridicule senior officials in Seoul and Washington.

…

The North Korean Twitter Web page “is more amusing than anything else,” Michael Breen, author of “The Koreans” who runs a communications consulting firm in Seoul, said. “The government here needs to lighten up and give its own people access and stop being afraid of the North Korean propaganda.”

“Twitter is a symbol of information technology. The South should consider ways to open the North through channels like Twitter rather than block them,” Yang Moo-jin, a professor at the University of North Korean Studies, said.

South and North Korea remain technically at war after the 1950-53 Korean War ended in a truce rather than a peace treaty. Their relations are at one of the worst points in history following the deadly sinking of a South Korean warship in March blamed on Pyongyang. The North denies involvement.

UPDATE 2: Whereas the US welcomes the DPRK to the Internet, South Korea bans the DPRK’s twitter account.  Really. Lame.  According to the Korea Herald (8/19/2010):

The government has asked domestic Internet service providers to block citizens access to a North Korean Twitter account because it breaches the national security laws.

The decision was made Thursday by the Communications Standards Commission to stem the rapid increase of subscriptions by South Korean nationals.

A page that warns of illegal material popped up when an attempt to access http://twitter.com/uriminzok was made. A similar page shows up if one tries to enter Web pages showing North Korea‘s propaganda material.

The block is seen as a confirmation that Seoul considers the North Korean Twitter page as being related to Pyongyang. A call asking for comment from an Internet watchdog official was not immediately returned. Seoul has been reluctant to conclude that North Korea is behind the account that opened last week.

At least 8,700 subscribers were “following” the North Korean Twitter account when the page was last accessed earlier Thursday.

South Korea allows its nationals to view online propaganda material posted by North Korea if they gain government clearance.

South Korean authorities had been blocking Web pages that could be accessed through links posted on the North’s Twitter account.

Earlier in the day, an official at the Korea Communications Commission, a watchdog, said North Korea was altering the online addresses of the pages to bypass Seoul’s block.

North Korea appears to be expanding its propaganda warfare as South Korea and the United States step up their pressure on Pyongyang to admit to its wrongdoing and open up for dialogue.

Last month, Pyongyang opened an account with the global video-sharing site YouTube and started uploading clips that ridicule senior officials in Seoul and Washington.

On Wednesday, South Korea warned its citizens that it may be considered illegal to interact with the North Korean Twitter account, apparently calling on them to refrain from reposting, or “retweeting,” the messages.

UPDATE 1: The US State Department welcomes the DPRK to Twitter and Youtube.  According to Martyn Williams at PC World:

The U.S. government has welcomed North Korea’s jump onto Twitter and challenged the country to let its citizens see the recently created account.

“We use Twitter to connect, to inform, and to debate. We welcome North Korea to Twitter and the networked world,” wrote Philip Crowley, a state department spokesman on his Twitter account.

The message came days after Uriminzokkiri, the closest thing the insular country has to an official Web site, established a Twitter account. The account has to date posted messages only in Korean but that hasn’t stopped it becoming somewhat of a Twitter hit. Publicity from the launch has resulted in over 5,000 followers subscribing to the slow stream of government propaganda.

“The North Korean government has joined Twitter, but is it prepared to allow its citizens to be connected as well?,” asked Crowley on his Twitter account.

North Korea is one of the world’s most tightly controlled societies and Internet access is restricted to all but the most trusted members of government. Some people have access to a nationwide intranet, a closed network based on Internet technology that offers domestic Web sites and e-mail with no links to the outside world.

In recent years the country has taken steps to introduce modern communications technologies, but has typically done so cautiously. Residents of Pyongyang and several other cities can now subscribe to a mobile phone network, but direct dialling to overseas numbers isn’t available and calls between citizens and foreign residents are also restricted.

“The Hermit Kingdom will not change overnight, but technology once introduced can’t be shut down. Just ask Iran,” said Crowley in the final of three Twitter messages on the subject.

It’s likely that the experience of countries like Iran is causing North Korea to be cautious in the freedoms it allows citizens with technology. The Internet and mobile phones reportedly played an important part in the organization of anti-government rallies in Iran in 2009.

For its part, South Korea is signaling that it will not tolerate South Koreans utilizing DPRK internet options or pormoting DPRK internet content.  Again, according to Martyn Williams in PC world:

Crowley’s comments come in the same week a court in South Korea, the North’s democratic southern neighbor, sentenced a man for posting material online that was sympathetic to North Korea.

The man, who was only identified in news reports as Lee, received a two-year prison sentence, suspended for three years, on Monday for posting pro-North Korean material on a blog, reported South Korea’s Yonhap news agency.

Lee fell foul of the country’s National Security Law, which prohibits the distribution of materials that praise the North, by posting links to other sites that hosted the material, said The Korea Times.

South Korea is also sending warnings over the DPRK’s twitter/Youtube accounts.  According to Bloomberg:

South Koreans who post comments on a purported North Korean Twitter Inc. account may fall foul of national security laws that bar the country’s citizens from communicating with their Cold War foes.

“People would have to bear in mind that they could be violating the law” if it is confirmed to be North Korean, Unification Ministry spokeswoman Lee Jong Joo told reporters today in Seoul. The government is investigating the suspected accounts on Twitter and Google Inc.’s YouTube site, she said, without elaborating.

The warning underscores the government’s wariness about exposing its citizens to North Korean propaganda, even after the past two decades have delivered democracy and developed-world living standards in the South as the North became mired in aid- dependency and chronic shortages of food and goods. South Koreans are unable to access North Korean-linked websites, or call telephone numbers across the border.

“It’s almost inconceivable that South Koreans will actually buy into North Korea’s propaganda and start following their ideology,” said Kim Yong Hyun, a professor of North Korean studies at Dongguk University in Seoul. “Still, the government will feel the need to approach this issue in a conservative manner, given the existing laws.”

Under the law governing exchanges with North Korea, South Koreans need to notify the government when they come in contact with North Koreans and seek prior approval when traveling across the border. Another law on national security bans supporting “anti-state” groups, often interpreted to mean the regime of North Korean leader Kim Jong Il.

ORIGIANL POST: Following last week’s announcement that the folks at Uriminzikkiri had opened a YouTube account, the same group has now apparently set up a Twitter account.

According to Yonhap:

Less than one month after the communist state started broadcasting propaganda clips on the global video-sharing site YouTube, North Korea opened an account on Thursday with Twitter Inc., the U.S. provider of a highly popular microblogging service.

The opening, announced Saturday on North Korea’s official Web site Uriminzokkiri, comes as Pyongyang steps up its propaganda offensive to deny allegations that its Navy torpedoed a South Korean warship in March, killing 46 sailors.

The North’s twitter account, which opened under the name uriminzok, or “our nation” in Korean, contained nine messages as of Sunday morning. Most of them had links to statements or interviews that denounce South Korea and the United States.

Twitter allows users to send texts up to 140 characters long, known as “tweets.” Subscribers, or “followers,” can choose to receive feeds via mobile phones or personal computers. Eight people were following uriminzok as of Sunday morning.

The KFA still insists that it hosts the official DPRK webpage–but they are not doing as good a job as these North Koreans at keeping up with the capabilities of the Internet.

Read the full story here:
N. Korea joins twitter fever to step up propaganda offensive
Yonhap
Sam Kim
8/15/2010

According to the Choson Ilbo:

Academics from North Korea and Japan have unearthed a large tumulus from the Koguryo period in Pyongyang, providing valuable material for studying the history of ancient East Asia, Japan’s Kyodo news agency said Saturday. About 4.5 km away from the downtown Pyongyang, the tomb was discovered during construction work in Tongsan-dong, the Lelang District of the Koguryo era and is presumed to have been created around the 5th century.

According to the news agency, the mural paintings in the tomb show a man in horn-shaped headgear on horseback, a procession of men holding flags on armored horses, and warriors with swords. The antechamber and main chamber at the back are connected with a narrow passage, while the bones of a man and two women have been found in the back chamber. The tomb has some unique features, including the antechamber’s arched ceilings with three layers of triangular props and the mound created by piling up alternate layers of lime, charcoal and red clay to cover the stone chambers beneath, the report said. The mound is 35 m in diameter and 8 m high.

Pyongyang plans to register the tomb with UNESCO as a World Heritage site. Japanese scholars said the tomb’s murals are comparable to those of Tokhung-ri Tomb in Nampo, South Pyongan Province, which is included in the Complex of Koguryo Tombs inscribed in the World Heritage List in 2004.

The team also found relics offering a glimpse of how sophisticated Koguryo culture was, such as gold and silver ornaments, tiger-shaped pottery, bronze coins and nails for coffins. The celadon candlestick is the first of its kind to be excavated in the North, the report added.

The team consists of researchers with the Archaeological Institute of the North’s Academy of Social Sciences and Japanese scholars sent by Kyoto news agency including Prof. Masahiro Saotome, an archaeologist at the University of Tokyo, and Shigeo Aoki, a Cyber University professor specializing in the preservation of historic remains. Saotome said the tomb “was unearthed in an area where experts believed there would be no Koguryo mural tombs.”

Ahn Hwi-joon, a Korean art historian and professor emeritus at Seoul National University, echoed him saying, “It is the first time that Koguryo tomb murals have been unearthed in the area once controlled by the Chinese Han Dynasty Commander of Lelang. They are especially valuable as they were executed in the late fourth to the fifth centuries, immediately after Koguryo incorporated Lelang.”

Read the full story here:
N.Korean-Japanese Team Finds Koguryo Tomb in Pyongyang
Choson Ilbo
8/16/2010

According to the Choson Ilbo:

North Korean leader Kim Jong-il seems to be putting the priority on his impoverished country’s economy as it groans under international sanctions and foreign currency supplies dry up, analysis of his so-called on-the-spot guidance tours reported in the North Korean media suggests.

Kim made a total of 77 of these trips in the first half of this year, the same as in the corresponding period last year, and 33 of them had to do with business, according to the Unification Ministry analysis. The number was 27 last year. He also made 21 trips to military installations, down from 27 last year.

The senior official who accompanied Kim Jong-il most was his sister Kim Kyong-hee, the head of the Workers Party’s light industry department, with 56 times. She was followed by her husband Jang Song-taek, vice chairman of the National Defense Commission (45 times); Kim Ki-nam, secretary of the party’s Central Committee (40 times); and party secretary Choe Thae-bok.

Kim Kyong-hee was not among the top 10 aides last year. A South Korea security official said her role “appears to have expanded as Kim Jong-il concentrates on the economy.”

The North Korean media report Stakhanovite success stories every day. Korean Central Broadcasting claimed power production during the first half of the year increased more than 1.2 times over the same period last year, while the official Korean Central News Agency said several factories are producing above target.

“North Korea’s frequent references to the economy paradoxically indicate its economic woes,” said Prof. Kim Young-soo of Chungang University. “But Kim Jong-il insists on self-reliance in dealing with them.”  A Unification Ministry official speculated a food shortage in the North due to cold weather and unrest in the aftermath of the botched currency reform last year seem to have prompted false propaganda in an attempt to mitigate public grievances.

Some similar information was recently published by IFES.

Read the full story here:
Kim Jong-il Turns Attention to Economy
Choson Ilbo
8/16/2010

According to the Daily NK:

Trade between North Korea and China for the first half of 2010 was $1.29 billion, a 16.8% increase over the corresponding period of last year.

Using Chinese customs statistics, the South Korean embassy in China revealed the details of Sino-North Korean trade on Monday. According to the statistics, North Korean exports to China fell by 1.1% in the same period to $350 million, while imports from China increased by 25.2% to $940 million.

As a result, North Korea’s trade deficit with China was $590 million, a 48.5% increase over the previous year.

According to the statistics, North Korea imported 140,000 tons of food, 300,000 tons of oil and 100,000 tons of fertilizer during the period. Notably, flour imports rose by 383%.

Reduced inter-Korean trade and other economic exchanges following the Cheonan sinking and reduced international humanitarian aid due to UN sanctions were two of the most significant causes of the burgeoning reliance upon China.

Read the full story here:
Sino-North Korean Trade Deficit Rises
Daily NK
8/16/2010

World War II: Konan / Hungnam POW camp.

This camp was located in present-day Hungnam (South Hamgyong Province).  Run by the Japanese, it housed approximately 350 British and Australian prisoners who were captured during the fall of Singapore. According to one web page, an American B-29 crew was interned there for 16 days.  The camp opened on September 14, 1943. The soldiers were repatriated (released) in mid-September 1945, approximately a month after Japan surrendered.

The above photo of the camp and other great shots can be found on this flickr page. Below is a picture of the camp location as it exists today (39°51’10.83″N, 127°35’29.08″E).

Just to the west of the camp was the Motomiya Chemical Plant where POWs worked to produce carbide.  This factory was destroyed in the Korean War and is now the Hungnam Thermal Power Plant and/or the 2.8 Vinalon Complex:

Korean War:
Pyoktong Camp 5

Based on this image I located what I believe is the camp’s location ( 40°36’29.04″N, 125°18’17.90″E).  If any historians know differently, please let me know.

There is not much information on this camp  on the internet, but according to this site:

This lovely close-up is of a POW camp at Pyok Tong North Korea. The not so lovely part is that over 2000 UN prisoners are buried behind the camp.

Many UK prisoners from the Imjim battles ended up in that camp. Most of the Glosters were marched for 6 weeks to that place, then the officers and NCOs were separated from the men in case they influenced them.

A separate web page does not describe it so well:

According to a former POW, Dr. Sid Essensten, American POWs were dying at the rate more than a dozen per day in January and February of 1951 due to exposure, malnutrition, and dysentery. At that time, the camp was run by the North Koreans. Conditions improved slightly when the Chinese forces assumed control of the camp and milder weather arrived in April of 1951. Conditions improved significantly in July of 1951 once peace talks began with the UN.

Several authors have written about Camp Five, which was one of the most notorious POW camps in North Korea. Albert Biderman’s March to Calumny and Raymond Lech’s Broken Soldiers are two of the best documented accounts of Camp Five. Clay Blair’s The Forgotten War discusses the 24th Infantry Division in detail, to include the Battle at Anju.

Here are some alleged pictures taken in the camp.

According to the Korean War Project, the Kangdong Camp 8 is located at 39° 7’10.38″N, 126° 6’5.26″E and Pak’s Place was located at 39° 7’10.01″N, 125°53’46.43″E.  I cannot find much information on either of these camps—but I am not a historian.

If you are aware of the locations of other POW camps in North Korea from either WWII or the Korean War, please let me know.

Russian blogger Ctigmata has posted some interesting historical pictures of the Kim family.

The photo below features Kim Jong-suk, Kim Jong-il, Kim Il-sung, Kim “Shura” (Jong-il’s deceased full-brother), and  “nurse” Ken Hui (медсестра Кен Хи) hoding an unknown child.