KEDO demands $1.9b from N. Korea for defunct reactor project

January 16th, 2007

Yonhap
1/16/2007

An international energy consortium has asked impoverished North Korea for nearly US$1.9 billion in compensation for its defunct project to build two nuclear power plants in the North under the 1994 nuclear agreement on the North’s freezing of its nuclear activities, diplomatic sources here said Tuesday.

North Korea, however, has yet to respond to the claim, the sources said, speaking on condition of anonymity. Analysts also said the North is unlikely to respond favorably, given its past record and current claims.

The North claims the 1994 agreement, known as the Agreed Framework, was breached by the United States long before it withdrew from the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in early 2003, and is demanding compensation for the unfinished reactors.

“Now that the construction of the light-water reactors came to a final stop, the DPRK is compelled to blame the U.S. for having overturned the Agreed Framework and demand it compensate (the North) for the political and economic losses it has caused to the former,” an unidentified spokesman for the North’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement carried by the country’s Korean Central News Agency Nov. 28, 2005. DPRK is short for the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, the North’s official name.

The diplomatic sources said the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization (KEDO) has asked for the amount in at least three letters sent to Pyongyang.

“(KEDO) has sent a letter (to North Korea) following every meeting of its executive board of directors since (last) May, demanding compensation for its assets at the construction site” in North Korea, one of the sources said.

“Letters were sent on five occasions, but the organization stated the specific amount in the three sent after September,” the source added.

The $4.6-billion project was officially scrapped early last year after years of suspension following the outbreak of an ongoing dispute over North Korea’s nuclear weapons program in late 2002. The communist state conducted its first nuclear weapons test on Oct. 9, 2006.

The sources said the amount includes expenses for KEDO’s executive office in New York.

A total of $1.56 billion had been spent on the nuclear reactor project before its official termination, of which, some $1.14 billion was shouldered by South Korea and $410 million by Japan. The European Union also pitched in $18 million for the joint project, which also includes the United States.

The countries blame the North for scrapping the project, which was part of a 1994 agreement between Washington and Pyongyang to settle a dispute over North Korea’s nuclear weapons program.

North Korea has attended international negotiations aimed at bringing a peaceful end to the dispute over its nuclear weapons program since its eruption in 2002, but no progress has been made since a 2005 round, during which the communist nation agreed in general to give up its nuclear ambitions in return for economic and diplomatic benefits.

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Paek the Opaque: Another Old North Korean Bites the Dust

January 16th, 2007

Aidan Foster-Carter
Nautilus Institute
1/16/2007

Everyone is famous for 15 minutes, at least according to the late American pop artist and cultural icon Andy Warhol.

For Paek Nam Sun, that was literally true. North Korea’s foreign minister since 1998, who has just died, hit the headlines just once in all his 77 years – and then only on the inside pages, mainly of the regional press in Asia.

Coffee with evil in Brunei

That was in August 2002, when for a quarter of an hour Paek sipped coffee with his rather better known US opposite number at the time, Colin Powell. The place was Brunei; the occasion, the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF).

Senior American and North Korean leaders rarely meet at the best of times, which this was not. Earlier that year, President George W Bush had famously labeled Kim Jong Il’s regime, along with Iran and Iraq, as part of an “axis of evil”. So for his Secretary of State to dally thus with the enemy, even briefly, raised eyebrows in some quarters.

We know now, as suspected at the time, that Powell was keen to engage North Korea. But vice-president Dick Cheney was dead against, and Cheney had Bush’s ear.

Any hopes of renewed dialogue were dashed later in 2002. Accused by Washington of a second, covert nuclear programme, North Korea restarted its first one precipitating a crisis that continues, climaxing (so far) in its testing a nuclear device on October 9.

Paek low in the pecking order

With the nuclear crisis ongoing, we might have expected to see more of Paek Nam Sun. But they do things differently in North Korea.

A senior diplomat (and sometime ambassador to Poland) who had also been active in early contacts with South Korea since the 1970s, as foreign minister the genial Paek was a largely ceremonial figure: trundled out for occasions like the ARF. As such he was in Kuala Lumpur last July, where he reportedly also had medical treatment.

Serious negotiations, on the other hand, were and are the province of Paek’s nominal deputies: two above all. The better known is deputy foreign minister Kim Kye Gwan, who heads Pyongyang’s delegation to the on-off six party nuclear talks. A skilled and confident negotiator, Kim even gave an unscripted if brief press conference after the latest round of talks, held in Beijing last month, ended inconclusively.

But the real heavy hitter is first vice foreign minister Kang Sok Ju. He it was who negotiated the October 1994 US-DPRK Agreed Framework (AF); defusing an earlier North Korean nuclear crisis (plus ca change), back in the Bill Clinton era, which in mid-1994 had come perilously close to unleashing a second Korean War. If the six-party process ever gets anywhere, which is doubtful, Kang will be wheeled on again. For now, the more junior Kim Kye Gwan does the honours.

Puzzling pseudonymy

So Paek Nam Sun’s passing will hardly send a tremor through North Korea’s foreign policy. But it does shed light on the curious way they order matters in Pyongyang.

For one thing, what was his real name? The man who first showed up in the 1970s for Red Cross talks with South Korea was known as Paek Nam Jun. But after he became foreign minister, the J mysteriously morphed into an S.

Peculiar, but not unique. Ri Jong Hyok, Pyongyang’s current point man for ties with Seoul, was Ri Dong Hyok in the 1980s when he headed North Korea’s quasi-embassy in Paris. There are several other such cases. It’s hardly a disguise, so what gives?

(En passant, the French connection is intriguing. Nominally the last EU state to resist full recognition of the DPRK, in practice France has hosted a North Korean legation since the 1970s. And both Kang Sok Ju and Kim Kye Gwan majored in French: the traditional language of international diplomacy.)

Dying off

Another oddity: North Korean elites hardly ever retire. Like Paek, they mostly die in post, often at an advanced age. Communist regimes tend to gerontocracy: think China, at least until recently. But North Korea has taken this, like most things, to extremes.

Since Kim Jong Il succeeded his father Kim Il Sung as leader in 1994, the nominally ruling communist party, the Worker’s Party of Korea (WPK), seems to be frozen – at least at the top. No new appointments to the Politburo have been announced in over a decade. Instead its ranks have been thinned by the remorseless march of mortality.

Latest to go was Kye Ung Tae, who as KWP secretary for national security wielded far more power than Paek Nam Sun. Kye died of lung cancer on November 23, aged 81. That leaves just six full Politburo members. One anti-Japanese guerilla veteran and honorary vice president Pak Song Chol passed 93 last September. Three others are over 80. Titular head of state Kim Yong Nam turns 79 on February 4, just before the “dear leader” Kim Jong Il a mere lad by comparison reaches his 65th birthday.

That would be retiring age in most normal countries. But Kim Jong Il has yet to name a successor, among several competing sons and other contenders. His health is said to be not of the best although such rumors have proved premature in the past.

A nuclear North Korea is indeed a worry, but it is not the only one. The world, and even Pyongyang, will take the death of Paek Nam Sun (who?) in its stride. But Kim Jong Il could go just as suddenly. In that case all bets for North Korea would be off.

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Posted in ASEAN, Ministry of foreign Affairs, Nautilus Institute, Political economy, Worker's Party | Comments Closed

Yangkang Trains Stopped Due to Power Failure

January 16th, 2007

Daily NK
Kim Young Jin
1/16/2007

Though train operations terminated in some parts of North Korea due to the spread of scarlet fever has resumed, operations have not yet fully normalized due to power failure, an inside source alerted on the 14th.

The majority of North Korean people live off trade and hence if trains cannot be utilized to transport people and goods this has a significant impact on lives of North Korean people.

Kim Young Sook (pseudonym) who trades with Chinese businessmen and resides in Yangkang, Haesan disclosed “I am upset because I anticipated to bring some goods from Hamheung since I heard that the trains terminated due to scarlet fever had resumed, but it has been a week and the trains have not yet arrived.”

People who depended on sending sea produce such as octopus and pollack from the regions of the east coast to China as a daily living have been expressing concerns as the trains were put on hold, Kim said.

Kim said “Many times a day I go to the station to find out about the trains. One station worker says that the train had already passed Hamheung, another says that the trains only reach Gilju. I cannot know what the truth is.”

“A person I know who works at the station told me that the trains stopped midway due to a lack of electrical power. This is a major problem if it is true” she added.

If only 1,800V of electrical power is supplied on a North Korean train with an engine that officially requires 3300V and yet is still put into operation, then the turning motor decreases, the steam pipe overheats and breaks down simply resulting in greater damage. In North Korea, it is common that a train suddenly stops in the middle of nowhere while in operation.

In the mid-90’s, long distance train routes such as Shinuiju-Chongjin and Pyongyang-Onsung operated once a week, or once every 10 days due to a lack of power.

In addition to this, electrical goods obtained with much difficultly have merely become a worry and animosity due to the grave power failure, Good Friends recently reported in their newsletter.

The newsletter reported “People living in the district of Sapo, Hamheung argue what use are electrical goods when there is no electricity and are frustrated as they cannot receive any information as they cannot watch T.V.” and relayed the words of a woman participating in the People’s Units “If we are to listen to the principles of the authority, we need to listen to the T.V. or radio but since there is no electricity, how are we to know of the authority’s plan.”

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Electricity Production Goes Up

January 15th, 2007

KCNA
1/15/2007

Officials of the Ministry of Power Industry, with a sense of responsibility for a pilot in the building of an economic power, are working hard to make an epochal turn in the power production from the outset of the year. Pak Nam Chil, minister of the Power Industry, told KCNA:

The ministry is concentrating all the forces on operating the already repaired generating equipment at full capacity, while considerably raising the existing capacities of the thermal- and hydro-power stations across the country.

In particular, it is gearing up preparations for the general overhaul of facilities at the power stations with main emphasis on putting production of the Pukchang Thermal-power Complex and the Pyongyang Thermal-power Complex on normal track.

The workers of the hydropower stations are successfully carrying on the repair of hydraulic power structures, managing water well and operating them in a scientific and technical way. Great efforts are channeled to manufacturing highly efficient turbines so as to boost the turbine efficiency.

Along with this, they are taking various measures to make best use of the produced electricity. They are readjusting the power transmission system to reduce the line loss and distributing electricity in a rational way.

Officials, workers and technicians of power stations in different parts of the country including the Chongjin Thermal-power Plant have turned out in the increased production of electricity, solving the needed materials and equipment components with their own efforts.

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WFP reports slight rise in N.K. aid but still wide gap with target amount

January 15th, 2007

Yonhap
1/15/2007

International aid for North Korea has increased over the past few months, but is still far behind the amount needed to help the country in its recovery efforts, the U.N. World Food Program (WFP) said Monday.

A tally as of Sunday showed the relief agency received slightly more than US$16.25 million in assistance from donor nations, up from $12.7 million in November. But the total accounts for only 15.9 percent of the $102 million the WFP says it needs for its protracted relief and recovery operation (PRRO) in North Korea.

In November, the WFP received 12.43 percent of the target amount.

Russia remained the biggest nation donor with $5 million, putting up 4.9 percent of the desired aid.

Switzerland increased its offer to $2.57 million from $2.2 million in November, and Ireland to $640,000 from $319,000.

The collected assistance includes $2.3 million carried over from the previous operation.

Private donations stayed the same at $8,470, while multilateral donation increased from $1.2 million to $1.9 million.

The WFP has been the main organizer of food aid to North Korea who, for the last decade, have depended on international handouts to feed its people. Pyongyang asked the relief agency to leave at the end of 2005, so the WFP now maintains a low-scale presence and has switched its efforts from food to development and reconstruction projects.

South Korean civic organizations and informed sources say there is now a contagion of infectious diseases like scarlet fever and typhoid in North Korea.

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Posted in Agriculture statistics, Foreign aid statistics, International Aid, Russia, Switzerland, UN World Food Program | Comments Closed

Infectious diseases plague N. Korean city: source

January 15th, 2007

Yonhap
1/15/2007

Four infectious diseases have stricken a North Korean city on the east coast, affecting up to 4,000 people, a source claimed Monday.

“Chongjin is overrun by scarlet fever, typhoid, typhus and paratyphoid. About 3,000 to 4,000 are suffering from the diseases,” the source said, asking to remain anonymous.

The source reported the infected people are mostly under 40 years of age. North Korean health authorities have halted railway operations to prevent the spread of disease and have imposed travel bans.

“When scarlet fever erupted late last year, North Korean authorities also imposed travel bans across the country,” the source added.

Good Neighbors International, a South Korean civic organization which provides aid to North Korea, confirmed that the rapid spread of disease in the North has resulted in school closings and travel bans.

Another source also claimed that Chongjin has only one hospital equipped with 150 beds in each district, but about 600-700 patients are seeking treatment in one district.

Last Thursday, South Korea’s unification minister said the government will not provide any medical aid to North Korea to help stem the spread of scarlet fever in the communist country.

But a South Korean civic group already shipped 36 types of medicine such as penicillin and antibiotics, worth approximately US$5 million, to the impoverished North.

Last month, the Join Together Society, a humanitarian aid group in Seoul, shipped a total of 400,000 injectable doses of penicillin to the North.

Scarlet fever is not an intrinsically serious communicable disease, but if not treated properly it can become as serious as cholera or typhoid.

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Buddhism in North Korea

January 15th, 2007

Korea times
Andrei Lankov
1/15/2007

Some time in the late 1940s, a young Russian journalist made a tour of the Mt. Kumgang, accompanied by a local official. The numerous Buddhist temples scattered in the valleys attracted his attention, but the official assured the Soviet visitor: “Do not worry, we will take care of them. We will close most of them, and will find a good use for others _ like, say, resorts for the working masses.”

It is difficult to say what the journalist felt back then, but when he recalled this episode in the early 1980s in his memories, his disdain was palpable. But this is indeed what happened to many _ indeed, most _ Buddhist temples in North Korea.

For decades, the North Korean state was almost unique in its hostility to all forms of religion. Indeed, few if any Communist states ever came close to proclaiming and enforcing a complete ban on all kinds of religious activity _ aside from North Korea, such a ban existed only in Albania, another ultra-Stalinist state (Pol Pot introduced the same policy in his infamous “Democratic Kampuchea,” but he did not stay in power long enough).

In the late 1980s, a very limited amount of religious activity came to be tolerated, but for some 25 years, between 1960 and 1985, North Korea had neither temples nor officially recognized religious groups.

However, if all religions are bad for the North Korean authorities, not all of them are equally bad. Some of them are worse, while others were ranked as marginally more tolerable.

For the North Korean regime in its early years, it was the Christianity that was clearly seen as an embodiment of evil.

This attitude was prompted by the fact that Christianity was a recent introduction, with too, too strong connections to foreign powers, above all, to the United States. It was both “reactionary” (as every religion) and anti-national.

The most acceptable religion probably was Chondogyo, or the Teaching of the Celestial Way. Nowadays, this eclectic cult has somewhat waned and does not play a major role in either Korea, but for a century, from the 1860s to the 1940s, it was a important force in the spiritual life of the country.

Its leaders and activists were prominent in two major outbreaks of the nationalist movement _ the Tonghak Uprising of the 1890s and the March First Movement of 1919, and this tradition made the North Korean authorities somewhat more tolerant towards it.

Buddhism fell somewhere between. It could not boast the nationalist credentials of Chondogyo _ on the contrary, in the colonial era many Buddhists collaborated with the Japanese (as a matter of fact, some colonial administrators saw Buddhism as the “religion of empire” and actively promoted it). At the same time, it did not have Christianity’s close associations with “imperialist” powers.

The land reform of 1946, proclaimed by the North Korean authorities (but actually designed by the Soviet military) inflicted the first major strike on Buddhism, and all land holdings of religious institutions were confiscated. This left the monks without any means of existence and drove many of them from the monasteries.

To keep the Buddhists under control, the Korean Buddhist Union was created in late 1945 as an umbrella organization. It did not so much represent the believers as make them accountable to the emerging state bureaucracy. This was a standard device: Similar bodies were created for other religions as well.

While all Christian churches ceased to function immediately after the Korean War, services were held in some Buddhist temples until the early 1960s. It is even possible, even if not particularly likely, that some services continued through the dark age of North Korean religious history, the period between 1960 and 1980.

Of course, the former Buddhist monks were subjected to strict surveillance and numerous restrictions were placed on their social advancement. However, it seems that they fared better than former Christian activists and priests.

The Buddhist Union was quietly disbanded in 1965 _ at least, for years nothing was heard about this body for nearly a decade, and in all probability it fell out of existence for some time. However, from around 1975 the representatives of the North Korean Buddhist Association were again seen at international gatherings where they scorned the U.S. imperialist warmongers and their South Korean puppets, all the while explaining how happy the masses in their country were to be led by the “Great Leader.”

The 1970s and 1980s witnessed a large-scale restoration of old Buddhist temples, and these days there are 63 officially recognized temples in North Korea. Some of them are allegedly used for religious services, but it is not clear when the services are real and when they are nothing but carefully staged performances for the sake of foreign visitors. It is known that nowadays there are some 300 monks in the North, all receiving their wages from the state and taking care of the temples.

Thus, by the standards of North Korean religious policy, the treatment of Buddhism was not particularly harsh. However, it seems that Buddhism is not positioned to experience a dramatic revival in future. It appears that the North will eventually go Christian, and this Christianity is likely to be of a radical, nearly fundamentalist, variety. At least this is what can be guessed from the study of the events of the recent decade.

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Posted in Civil society, Korean Buddhist Association, Mt. Kumgang Tourist Special Zone, Real estate, Religion, Sports, Tourism | Comments Closed

Military influence broadens in Kim Jong-il’s North

January 14th, 2007

Joon Ang Daily
Ser Myo-ja
1/4/2007

Since its founder Kim Il Sung’s death in 1994, North Korea’s political landscape has been transformed dramatically, and military officials have solidified their standing in the power elite of the communist country.

They have elbowed aside civilian politicians and bureaucrats, a new analysis shows, and the data confirm that the North’s “Military first” political slogan is much more than rhetoric.

In 1994, North Korea published a list of 273 people making up a committee to plan the founder’s funeral. That list also contained the seating order for those dignitaries at the funeral ― an accurate reflection of the pecking order in the North’s hierarchy at the time.

A JoongAng Ilbo special reporting team, its Unification Research Institute and Cyram, a research firm specializing in social network analyses, compared that 1994 rank order with data drawn from profiles of 324 North Korean figures provided by the Unification Ministry and the National Intelligence Service. The researchers ranked the top 50 North Korean figures after Kim Jong-il, the current leader and son of the late president, and compared that new list to the data from 12 years ago. The 2006 rankings took account of the officials’ titles and their roles, how often they have accompanied Mr. Kim on his frequent “site inspection” tours, seating charts and ranks announced by Pyongyang last year for several political events and evaluations by specialists in North Korean affairs.

“Kim Yong-nam is the official head of state in North Korea, but he acts as a subordinate to Kim Jong-il at public events,” said Chon Hyun-joon, a senior researcher at the Korea Institute for National Unification. “In order to find out who actually is capable of controlling people, money and policies in North Korea, we have to use a special approach.”

On the new list, Mr. Kim, whose official title is chairman of the National Defense Commission, sits atop the hierarchy. Jo Myong-rok, the first vice chairman of the defense commission, was ranked second and Kim Yong-nam, head of the Presidium of the Supreme People’s Assembly, was ranked third. The Supreme People’s Assembly is the North’s legislative body, but it normally delegates most of its power to the Presidium, a core group of elected members.

Jon Byong-ho, a Workers’ Party secretary, and Kim Il-chol, minister of the People’s Armed Forces, are ranked fourth and fifth. The Workers’ Party has been the only party in the North since 1948, except for a few parties that exist on paper as counterparts for foreign social democrats, for example. The Ministry of the People’s Armed Forces is responsible for the management and operational control of the North’s military. It is directly controlled by the National Defense Commission, which Kim Jong-il heads.

Kim Yong-chun, the Army chief of staff, was ranked seventh on the new list, followed by Pak Pong-ju, the premier.

Comparing the new rankings with the 1994 list, only two people ― Kim Jong-il and Kim Yong-nam ― kept their top-10 posts in 2006. Among the top 51, only 16 still remain in power.

The comparison showed a clear shift in the job titles represented in the elite. During the Kim Il Sung era, members of the politburo and Central Committee of the Workers’ Party, the cabinet, the military, the Supreme People’s Assembly and some other organizations were all represented in the power elite. With the party at the center, the officials were balanced, presumably in an effort to avoid concentrations of political power and possible threats to Kim Il Sung’s leadership.

But North Korea under his son is dominated by the “Dear Leader,” as North Koreans refer to him, and the National Defense Commission members.

Military officials surged to the top over the 12 years. On the 2006 list, the top 50 North Koreans after Kim Jong-il include 12 military men, up from five in 1994. Ri Yong-mu, the vice chairman of the National Defense Commission, was ranked ninth in 2006, climbing from 55th on the 1994 list. Mr. Kim’s three favorite generals, Hyon Chol-hae, Pak Jae-gyong and Ri Myong-su, were added to the new top-50 list. They have appeared frequently at Mr. Kim’s side on his inspection tours throughout the past year. In addition to the 12 flag officers, five other men in the top 50 are also involved in military matters.

In 1994, 25 Workers’ Party members were ranked among the top 50 leaders; that number increased to 27 in 2006. People in charge of party organization and propaganda were prominent on the list. North Korea appeared to have put lesser value on bureaucrats and economists as the Kim Jong-il regime has progressed. Eighteen bureaucrats and economic officials were on the 1994 roster, but the number dropped to six in the new list. In 1998, the North revised its Constitution, dropping vice presidents and the prime minister’s staff. That change could be one of the reasons for the relative scarcity of administrative officials on the new list.

Some analysts had a different interpretation: The lack of bureaucratic power officials in the list, they suggested, reflected Kim Jong-il’s priority of defending his regime rather than rebuilding the nation’s shattered economy.

North Korea watchers also said Mr. Kim runs the communist country by directly controlling the military, the party and the cabinet by stacking those institutions with people personally loyal to him. “Since 1998, Mr. Kim has issued orders under the title of the National Defense Commission, but Pyongyang-watchers were unable to confirm that he was actually presiding at the commission meetings,” said Chon Hyun-joon of the Korea Institute for National Unification. “The North’s power is concentrated in Mr. Kim alone, and there is a limit on how much authority he can exercise directly. In recent times, Mr. Kim appears to have handed over some of his powers to his closest confidants.”

The research also showed that a complex network of blood, school and career ties weaves the top 50 leaders together. Of the 50, at least 30 are members of that network; no information was available on the family, schools and careers of 11 of the other 20; at least some are probably bound up in that web.

“During the Kim Il Sung era, the official ranking showed the strength of each individual’s power,” said Hyon Song-il, a former North Korean diplomat who is now a researcher at the National Security and Unification Policy Research Institute. “In the era of Kim Jong-il, becoming his confidant means power.”

The North’s top 50 people include six of Mr. Kim’s family members. School ties among Kim Il Sung University graduates were also visible; 22 are alumni of the North’s prestigious school.

The 35 vacancies on the list between 1994 and 2006 were all filled by Kim Jong-il loyalists. Among the absentees, 16 either died of natural causes or were executed. Oh Jin-wu, known as Kim Il Sung’s right arm, and Ri Jong-ok, the North’s vice president, died naturally; So Kwan-hi, the party’s agriculture secretary, was reportedly executed in 1997, along with other officials, to appease anger over the famine of the late 1990s.

Hwang Jang-yop, who was ranked 26th on the 1994 list, defected to South Korea. Kim Chol-su, the 22nd most influential person in the North in 1994, was later identified as Song Du-yul, a scholar who is now a German citizen, by intelligence authorities and prosecutors in Seoul.

There is little room for women in the North’s elite, both in 1994 and 2006. In 1994, two women were among the top 50 officials, but the number fell to one in 2006. Kim Kyong-hee, the light industry department head of the Workers’ Party, is Mr. Kim’s younger sister.

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North conducts emergency drill of top security

January 14th, 2007

Joong Ang Daily
Lee Young-jong
1/14/2007

Several security organs directly in charge of the safety of North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-il, conducted an emergency drill in Pyongyang on Friday, intelligence sources from South Korea and the United States said.

Military troops and tanks from the Pyongyang Defense Command were deployed rapidly while increased military communications were noted that day.

In addition, the Escort Bureau, in charge of protecting Mr. Kim, also had a busy day, the sources said.

The incident sparked a flurry of activity by the South’s intelligence community, as the increased military activity in the North’s capital did not fit the usual pattern of winter drills conducted by the North’s military.

The fact that security organs closely guarding the North’s leader’s safety were involved in the activities sparked momentary suspicion among some sources that a military coup might have occurred in the North.

By the end of the day, however, intelligence officials here concluded that the drill was to prepare for any unforeseen changes inside the power structure of Kim Jong-il’s inner circle.

A source familiar with the circumstances said, “We have confirmed that the activities pertained not to a real situation but were part of a drill to respond to a possible scenario.”

The source added that the situation did not require an emergency meeting by authorities in the South. Nevertheless, intelligence officials said that drills of this kind rarely happen in the North.

“This shows that the North sees the need to conduct emergency training as part of a broader effort to contain possible risks,” he said.

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N. Korea escalates ‘cult of Kim’ to counter West’s influence

January 13th, 2007

Christian Science Monitor
Robert Marquand
1/3/2007

North Koreans are taught to worship Kim Jong Il as a god. In a manner unique among nations, the North exerts extraordinary control through deification – a cult ideology of complete subservience – that goes beyond the “Stalinist” label often used to describe the newly nuclear North.

While outsiders can see film clips of huge festivals honoring Mr. Kim, the extraordinary degree of cult worship is not well known, nor that programs promoting the ideology of Kim are growing, according to refugees, diplomats, and others who have visited the Hermit Kingdom.

In fact, in a time of famine and poverty, government spending on Kim-family deification – now nearly 40 percent of the visible budget – is the only category in the North’s budget to increase, according to a new white paper by the Korea Institute for International Economic Policy in Seoul. It is rising even as defense, welfare, and bureaucracy spending have decreased. The increase pays for ideology schools, some 30,000 Kim monuments, gymnastic festivals, films and books, billboards and murals, 40,000 “research institutes,” historical sites, rock carvings, circus theaters, training programs, and other worship events.

In 1990, ideology was 19 percent of North Korea’s budget; by 2004 it doubled to at least 38.5 percent of state spending, according to the white paper. This extra financing may come from recent budget offsets caused by the shutting down of older state funding categories, says Alexander Mansourov of the Asia Pacific Center for Security Studies in Honolulu.

It has long been axiomatic that the main danger to the Kim regime is internal unrest. That is, Koreans will discover the freedoms, glitter, and diversity of the modern outside world, and stop believing the story of idolatry they are awash in. “It isn’t quite realized [in the West] how much a threat the penetration of ideas means. They [Kim’s regime] see it as a social problem that could bring down the state,” says Brian Myers, a North Korean expert at Dongseo University in Busan, South Korea.

Since the poverty and famine of the late 1990s, everything from CDs and videos, South Korean radio, and cellphone signals from China, new styles and products, and new commercial habits have seeped in, mostly across the Chinese border, in a way that might be called “soft globalization.” Such flows feed a new underground system of private business, information, bribery, and trade that exists outside the strict party-state discipline and rules.

Yet rather than accept such penetration as an inexorable threat, Kim is putting up a serious fight to slow and counter it – by increasing his program of cult-worship.

Kim Worship 2.0

Like a computer software firm updating program versions, the North is steadily updating its ideology to make it relevant. This practice of mass control by in-your-face ideology has been laughed off in much of the world, including China. But North Korea is increasing its ideological cult worship. The scope of the current project outdoes even the cult of personality during Mao’s Cultural Revolution, according to a 2005 doctoral dissertation by Lee Jong Heon at Chung-Ang University in Seoul. Mr. Lee visited North Korea several times for his research.

After the Oct. 9 nuclear test, for example, banners sprang up over North Korea stating “We are a country with a nuclear deterrent.” Kim’s test feeds a national pride that is part of the propaganda drilled into Koreans from birth: that Kim alone can fend off the US and Japanese enemies. A US diplomat in Asia says such pride may prohibit Kim from giving up his nuclear program in the current “six party talks” – and those talks stalled again in late December in Beijing.

“The cult of personality campaign is more extensive today than in 1985,” says former South Korean foreign minister Han Sung Joo, who visited Pyongyang this past October, and in 1985. “Unlike the Stalin and Mao personality cults, there is a deification and a religious emotional element in the North. The twinned photos of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il are everywhere. Every speech says Kim Il Sung is still alive. I think if I stayed another two weeks, I might even see Kim Il Sung. The country worships someone who is deceased, as if he is alive.”

Kim Jong Il has upgraded his deification strategies to strengthen the family cult system. Western reports often detail Korea’s unique “juche ideology” – a theology of Kim worship, repeated hourly and daily, reminding Koreans they are insolubly bound to the Kim family and must erase foreign influence from their minds.

Yet juche is a subcategory of a far more encompassing umbrella of deification known as woo sang hwa, or idol worship. In North Korea, woo sang hwa contains all the aspects of cult worship. Kim broke away from orthodox communism, for example, in a program called “our style socialism.” While Marxism-Leninism demands fealty to “nation,” “party,” and “serving the people” – Kim’s “our style [Korean] socialism” does no such thing. It makes “family loyalty,” with Kim at the head, the supreme good – a major deflection from communism.

During the late 1990s famine, a “Red Banner” campaign for unconditional loyalty and harder toil began. Then came “Kangsong Taeguk” in the late 1990s – a project to push economic and military ideology. This project culminated in the 1998 Taepodong-1 rocket launches, which thrilled North Koreans, frightened Japan, and started a whole new military mindset in Tokyo.

The North uses “ideology rather than physical control,” Lee says, whenever possible. The current variation of the program is called “military first.” It is intended to bolster North Korea’s nuclear efforts. Military First started as a campaign to support juche, and as a slogan designed to remind Koreans that the nation is at war. It came packaged with a rallying cry called “dare to die,” say refugees and Kim experts. (There’s a dare-to-die pop song, and a dare-to-die movie. Recent internal memos brought by defectors indicate “dare to die” is urged on local officials due to a feeling in Pyongyang that young people aren’t showing enough zeal to make such a dare.)

A new military focus

Yet Military First may now be a tool for evolving a significant structural change – a new ruling elite in day-to-day affairs. For years, the North Korean state was ruled by the workers’ party. Under Kim Il Sung the party was the driving force in Korea – the main route to achievement and pay. Everyone wanted to join. (Party members in China and Vietnam are 5 percent of the population; a 1998 Korean Central report put Korea’s membership at 5 million, or 22 percent, though it may be lower.)

“The outcome of the Military First policy replaces the workers as a main force,” says Haiksoon Paik, a North Korean specialist at the Sejong Institute outside Seoul. “North Korea’s party has not been functioning as well as it is supposed to … several positions in the Politburo have not been reappointed. Kim is not depending on the party, but a smaller more streamlined military apparatus. This is due to his politics as a result of the nuclear crisis brought by the Americans.”

“Military First is not aimed at building up the military, which is already quite built up and strong,” says Lee, whose dissertation is titled, “A Political Economic Analysis of the North Korean Regime.” “It is about replacing the old party – First Rice – structure of senior Kim. If the party is unwieldy, the military will control the people on behalf of the leader.”

Tellingly, on New Year’s Day, Kim Jong Il visited the shrine where his father was interred. He has gone there only four times since he came to power in 1995. Each visit has taken place in a year following major accomplishments. According to South Korean media, for the first time, Kim visited the shrine without party or government officials. This time, only key military officials were in attendance. On Tuesday, North Korean papers heralded the visit, and the Oct. 9 nuclear tests as “an auspicious event in the national history.”

Kim-worship in the North is a vivid – and inescapable – spectacle to behold, say visitors. Thousands of giant “towers of eternality” to Kim scatter the landscape. Special “Kimjongilia” crimson begonias are tended in family gardens. Kim’s media calls him variously the “Guardian Deity of the Planet,” and “Lodestar of the 21st Century.” In 2002, Korean mass dances known as Arirang, featured 100,000 flag wavers (and was described in state media as the “greatest event of humankind.”) Many loyal Koreans bow twice daily to Kim pictures that sit alone on the most prominent wall of their homes.

Perhaps the most misunderstood aspect of the Korean cult project is its recent veering toward race and ethnic solidarity, say Kim watchers. His main appeal to his people today, a push that rarely gets attention outside the North, is to the racial superiority of a people whose isolation and stubborn xenophobia supposedly makes their bloodlines purer. Mr. Myers notes that festivals of 100,000 flag wavers is not a Stalinist exercise, but a celebration of “ethnic homogeneity.” Since the 1990s Kim has more fervently claimed lineage to the first ancient rulers of Korea, a move intended to place him in a position of historical, if not divine, destiny as leader of the peninsula.

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