Quotes of the Day:
“Never start moving your own lips and teeth before the subordinates do. The longer I keep quiet, the sooner others move their lips and teeth. As they move their lips and teeth, I can thereby understand their real intentions. . . . If the sovereign is not mysterious, the ministers will find opportunity to take and take."
—Han Fei-tzu
“When opponents are unwilling to fight with you, it is because they think it is contrary to their interests, or because you have misled them into thinking so."
—Sun Tzu
"When I get home and people ask me,'Hey, Hoot, why do you do it, man? What are you? Some kind of war junkie? I won't say a goddamn word. Why? They won't understand. They won't understand why we do it. They won't understand that it's about the men next to you. And that's it. That's all it is."
-–"Hoot" in Blackhawk Down playing Norm Hooten
1. Defense Intelligence Agency releases report: North Korea Military Power
2. Pentagon Spies Say Kim Jong Un Is Still Pursuing Nuclear Arms
3. Six Takeaways From North Korea’s “Hypersonic Missile” Announcement
4. N. Korea may be considering engaging with S. Korea, U.S.: Biegun
5. In Times Of Food Scarcity In North Korea, Food-Deprived Political Prisoners Should Be A Priority For The International Community
6. U.S. experts sound the alarm about dangerous end-of-war declaration - OKN
7. Netflix hit show 'Squid Game' spurs interest in learning Korean
8. State Department Cable Sees Echoes of Korean Politics in Netflix’s ‘Squid Game’
9. What Squid Game Is Really About
10. One Korea Network (OKN) and KCPAC (Korean Conservative Political Action Conference) Release Full Color Advertisement in Newspapers in Major Markets in Continuing Campaign to Raise Awareness and Counter the Fake Peace H.R. 3446 Bill - OKN
11. [Column] Why we should be wary of China’s renewed interest in the Korean War
12. The United Nations and North Korea: Denuclearization and Human Security
1. Defense Intelligence Agency releases report: North Korea Military Power
The long awaited DIA report. Along with a couple of other Korea Watchers, I participated in the review of earlier drafts of this report more than 2 years ago. This has been very difficult to get through the bureaucracy.
This is very useful in that it provides a common unclassified assessment of north Korea that informs planners and policymakers as well as the press and the public.
It is worth perusing for all those who have an interest in understanding the threat from north Korea.
There are many excerpts worth highlighting but i will provide this one on north Korean Security Strategy:
North Korea’s national security strategy has two main objectives: ensure the Kim regime’s long-term security, which the leadership defines as North Korea remaining a sovereign, independent country ruled by the Kim family, and retaining the capability to exercise dominant influence over the Korean Peninsula. Since the mid-2000s, the North’s strategy to achieve these goals has been to prioritize the development of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles to deliver nuclear weapons to increasingly distant ranges while maintaining a conventional military capable of inflicting enormous damage on South Korea. Kim Jong Un expanded the nuclear and missile programs in an effort to develop a survivable nuclear weapon delivery capability that the regime could use, in theory, to respond to any external attack. Pyongyang’s goal is to maintain a credible nuclear capability, which it believes will deter any external attack. It also seeks to use its nuclear and conventional military capabilities to compel South Korea and the United States into policy decisions that are beneficial to North Korea. As part of his strategy, Kim Jong Un has publicly emphasized the ability of North Korean nuclear-armed ballistic missiles to strike the United States and regional U.S. allies in an attempt to intimidate international audiences.
The North also has traditionally used periodic, limited-scope military actions to pressure South Korea and to underscore the fragility of the armistice, which it seeks to replace with a peace treaty on its terms. During the 1960s and 1970s, these actions took the form of aggressive skirmishes along the DMZ and overt attempts to assassinate South Korean leaders, including the South Korean president, with special forces raids and terrorist tactics.34 In recent years the North has confined aggression against the South to targeted engagements in the disputed Northwest Islands area. Confrontations between patrol craft and other incidents along the Northern Limit Line have claimed more than 50 South Korean lives since 1999.35 In 2010, North Korea attacked and sank a South Korean corvette, the Cheonan, killing 46 sailors, and bombarded a South Korean Marine Corps installation on Yeonpyeong Island, resulting in 2 military and 2 civilian deaths.36,37
No comparable attack on the South has yet occurred under Kim Jong Un’s rule, but North Korea’s willingness to strike South Korea with lethal force endures. In August 2015 a landmine detonated in the DMZ and wounded two South Korean soldiers, kicking off a monthlong confrontation with the South that ultimately led to artillery fire along the border. Escalation to a wider conflict was possible although averted in this instance.38
There is a lot of important information and insights in the three paragraphs above. But synthesizing them leads me to asks these two questions (yes, these are not new!):
Do we believe that Kim Jong-un has abandoned the seven decades old strategy of subversion, coercion-extortion (blackmail diplomacy), and use of force to achieve unification dominated by the Guerrilla Dynasty and Gulag State in order to ensure the survival of the mafia like crime family cult known as Kim family regime?
In support of that strategy do we believe that Kim Jong-un has abandoned the objective to split the ROK/US Alliance and get US forces off the peninsula? Has KJU given up his divide to conquer strategy - divide the alliance to conquer the ROK?
Defense Intelligence Agency releases report: North Korea Military Power
Joint Base Anacostia-Bolling – The Defense Intelligence Agency released today “North Korea Military Power,” an unclassified intelligence product that examines the core capabilities of North Korea's military.
This volume in DIA's series of military power reports provides details on North Korea's defensive and military goals, strategy, plans and intentions. It examines the organization, structure and capability of the military supporting those goals, as well as the enabling infrastructure and industrial base.
“North Korea is one of the most militarized countries in the world and remains a critical security challenge for the United States, our Northeast Asian allies and the international community,” said DIA Director Lt. Gen. Scott Berrier.
The military power series of unclassified, foundational overviews is designed to help the public achieve a deeper understanding of key challenges and threats to U.S. national security, and focus on near-peer competitors and challengers such as Russia, China, Iran and North Korea.
"This report is a baseline examination of North Korea and its core military capabilities, and is intended to help us better understand the current threat Pyongyang poses to the United States and its allies," Berrier added.
DIA has a long history of producing comprehensive and authoritative defense intelligence overviews. In 1981, DIA published the first unclassified “Soviet Military Power” report, which was translated into eight languages and distributed around the world. Similar reports were published on North Korean military strength in 1991 and 1995.
DIA’s mission is to provide intelligence on foreign militaries to prevent and decisively win wars.
DIA officers are united in a common vision — to be the indispensable source of defense intelligence expertise for the Nation. For 60 years, DIA has met the full range of security challenges faced by the United States. DIA intelligence officers operate around the world, supporting customers from forward-deployed warfighters to national policymakers.
2. Pentagon Spies Say Kim Jong Un Is Still Pursuing Nuclear Arms
It will be interesting to see how long the press focuses on the DIA north Korea MIlitary Power report and what they emphasize.
Pentagon Spies Say Kim Jong Un Is Still Pursuing Nuclear Arms
October 15, 2021, 4:21 PM EDT
The U.S. continues to observe activity at North Korean nuclear sites that is “inconsistent with full denuclearization,” the Defense Intelligence Agency said in a report issued Friday.
The conclusion, based on observations at the Yongbyon nuclear site and elsewhere, echoes assessments delivered to former President Donald Trump by U.S. intelligence agencies, despite Trump’s efforts to engage in direct summit diplomacy with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
Although North Korea hasn’t conducted nuclear tests since 2017, it has “reversibly” dismantled parts of its weapons of mass destruction infrastructure, the Pentagon’s intelligence arm found.
The latest in global politics
Get insight from reporters around the world in the Balance of Power newsletter.
Sign up to this newsletter
In recent years, “Kim has placed a priority on the development and demonstration of weapons that provide North Korea the means to strike distant adversaries -- including the United States -- with nuclear weapons,” according to the DIA. It said these goals reflect a strategy focused on “deterrence and coercion” that will see North Korea develop and enhance capabilities ranging from land-based and submarine-launched ballistic missiles to nuclear weapons, unmanned aerial vehicles and cyberspace capabilities.
The report noted that the closed nature of the North Korean regime makes data collection difficult. It assessed that North Korea’s economy had probably contracted in 2020 as a result of Covid-19-related trade disruptions.
About 20% to 30% of North Korea’s economy is allocated to the military, the report said, adding that Kim has prioritized modernization of both nuclear and conventional forces. North Korea now possesses electronic warfare and counterspace capabilities such as GPS and satellite jammers. In addition, its ballistic missiles could theoretically disrupt orbiting satellites, the report said.
These high-tech capabilities are juxtaposed against long-standing weaknesses, especially in terms of the logistics required for “sustained combat operations.” Although underground roads and military facilities would help the regime survive in a conflict, North Korea may have sufficient supplies for only two to three months of “defensive combat operations,” the defense agency said.
The report described Kim as the “linchpin” of North Korea’s military, adding that his public statements suggest that he has “sole release authority” for the country’s nuclear weapons.
3. Six Takeaways From North Korea’s “Hypersonic Missile” Announcement
Excerpts:
Takeaway One: Much Remains Unknown or Unconfirmed
Takeaway Two: An HGV Would Be a Niche Contributor, and Take Time to Develop
Takeaway Three: “Missile Fuel Ampoules” Are Not Such a Big Deal
Takeaway Four: Liquid Missiles Are Here to Stay
Takeaway Five: More New Developments Are to Come
Takeaway Six: Much of What We Are Hearing and Seeing Is Politically Motivated
Given the high level of “hype” surrounding hypersonic missiles totally unrelated to North Korea, it is not surprising that North Korea decided to use HGVs at least in part for such purposes. And Kim’s speech at “The Defense Development Exhibition Self-Defense 2021” and the exhibition itself—showing not just the Hwasong-8, but all of the missiles North Korea has unveiled over the past five years—underscore the degree and importance of the political motivations behind the “hypersonic missile.”
Six Takeaways From North Korea’s “Hypersonic Missile” Announcement | 38 North: Informed Analysis of North Korea
(Source: KCNA)
Many pertinent aspects of the launch currently are unknown, including the success of the test and the accuracy and intended payload of the HGV. An HGV would only make a niche contribution to the North’s existing large ballistic missile force, however, primarily in providing another option to evade missile defenses. If the North intends to deploy credible HGVs, at least a few successful and longer-range tests will be needed, probably taking at least a few years.
The “Hwasong-8” was reported to use a “missile fuel ampoule,” the meaning of which is unclear but probably refers to loading the missile with propellants at the factory. Many have pointed to this as a signal of improvement in the survivability and operational utility of North Korean liquid-propellant missiles. In fact, those benefits come instead from the use of storable liquid propellants (that can remain in missiles for long periods of time without damaging them, unlike previous propellants), although “ampoulization” could provide easier and safer missile handling. More significant, the North foreshadowed “turning all missile fuel systems into ampoules,” suggesting it intends to continue to retain and improve its liquid-propellant ballistic missile force for the long term rather than shift to an all-solid force.
The launch also makes good on Kim Jong Un’s inclusion of hypersonic missile development in his speech to the Eighth Party Congress in January 2021, making it likely that other technologies he mentioned (such as solid-propellant intercontinental ballistic missiles) will be rolled out in the future.
Finally, we should not ignore the substantial political objectives North Korea had in making this announcement, seeking to bolster deterrence, trumpet its technological prowess, generate prestige and legitimacy, and underscore the foresight and accomplishments of the regime.
Takeaway One: Much Remains Unknown or Unconfirmed
No information is publically available thus far to confirm North Korea’s claims that the September 28 launch successfully demonstrated an HGV. (That said, the US government should be able to obtain substantial insight into the launch from infrared satellites.) Information from South Korea, presumably based on radar data, confirms the fact, time and location of a launch, and that a rocket booster was used. That information also noted the missile flew “shorter than 200 kilometers” at an altitude of around 60 km, (another source reports around 30 km) and showed “different flight features from the missiles the North previously tested”—a performance consistent with either unsuccessful separation of an HGV from the booster or with the HGV having flown beneath South Korean radar coverage. Interestingly, and unlike most other recent missile launches, North Korea did not report the range of the September 28 launch.
We do not know if the “Hwasong-8” booster will only be used for HGV testing and/or deployment, or if it will also be used with a traditional reentry vehicle as a medium-range ballistic missile (MRBM). The October 12 photos provide further indication that a road-mobile launcher was used, consistent with the use of such a launcher in the 2017 launch from the same location of the Hwasong-14 intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) that has a similar-appearing propulsion system.
As is usual with North Korean missiles, there is no information on the guidance system or accuracy of the HGV to corroborate Pyongyang’s claim that the “the guiding maneuverability and the gliding flight characteristics” of the HGV were “confirmed.” There was also no mention in North Korean reports whether the missile system is intended to use a nuclear or conventional payload (or to be dual-capable), although many commentators inferred a nuclear mission from the North’s characterization of the missile as a “strategic weapon” whose development and deployment is of “strategic importance.”
Takeaway Two: An HGV Would Be a Niche Contributor, and Take Time to Develop
Pyongyang no doubt relished some Western commentary that the HGV “could change the military equation in East Asia” and that the North was “joining a race headed by major military powers to deploy the advanced weapons system.” In fact, most of North Korea’s existing large and diverse ballistic missile force reenters at hypersonic speeds, and is as capable as HGVs of performing most missions. The one area where an HGV could make a meaningful addition is by using its greater maneuverability to provide another option—in addition to saturation attacks, early-release submunitions, penetration aids, maneuvering reentry vehicles, and possible future multiple reentry vehicles—to avoid and attack missile defense systems. Given the relatively limited number of radars and other key nodes of adversary missile defense systems, the substantially higher production and deployment costs of HGVs compared to traditional reentry vehicles, and the availability of other means of avoiding missile defenses, North Korea is likely to devote only a small portion of its missile force to HGVs if it sees them through to deployment.
It is unclear how long it would take North Korea to develop a reliable system. HGVs are very technically demanding due to the heating they experience during flight, the consequent need for advanced materials to manage that heat and the challenges of maintaining accuracy (especially for conventionally armed systems). Russia, which apparently deployed HGVs on liquid-propellant ICBMs in December 2019, had been working on HGVs since the mid-1980s (with a hiatus in the first several years of the 1990s), and conducted some 14 flight tests. China deployed an HGV strongly resembling that of the “Hwasong-8” on the DF-17 solid-propellant MRBM around 2019-2020, conducting at least nine flight tests between 2014 and 2017.
We do not know how much technology relevant to HGVs the North may have acquired from entities in Russia and China, and it has a long history of deploying ballistic missiles with much less flight testing than China, Russia/the USSR, or the US. That said, the technical demands of HGVs, and the likely need for fuller-range tests rather than the shorter trajectories North Korea often employs to avoid overflying Japan, suggest at least a few successful and longer-range tests would need to occur if the North intends to deploy a military meaningful HGV.
Given the oversized role political rather than technical factors seem to play in the timing of North Korean missile tests, and the potential political blowback from long-range missile tests, it would be reasonable to assume that deployment of a capable HGV (assuming that is what the North intends) is at least a few years away.
Takeaway Three: “Missile Fuel Ampoules” Are Not Such a Big Deal
A number of commentators have pointed out the significance of the North Korean statement’s reference to the “missile fuel ampoule” used “for the first time” in the September 28 launch. As is often the case with such statements, it is unclear what the North means by a “missile fuel ampoule.” Most likely, it refers to the Soviet/Russian practice of preloading the SS-N-6 and later liquid-propellant submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) with propellants at the factory, and maintaining the fueled missile as a sealed unit for loading into the submarine launch tube.
Many commentators have seen “ampoulization” as permitting liquid-propellant ballistic missiles to remain fueled on a day-to-day basis. This would avoid the need to fuel missiles just prior to launch, which would add to response time, be potentially detectable by adversaries, add to pre-launch vulnerability, and provide an opportunity for preemptive attacks against the missiles during fueling before they could be launched. It should be noted, though, that North Korea has not made such claims to date.
Furthermore, North Korea may already have deployed one or more of the Musudan/BM-25, Hwasong-12, -14 and -15. If so, based on the precedents of the above Soviet and US systems the missiles may be deployed fueled on a day-to-day basis—predating the “ampoulization” that North Korea said was only first introduced with the September 28 Hwasong-8 launch. North Korean missiles using Scud-type propellants would likely also avoid most of the operational problems attributed to unfueled liquids if they were fueled during a crisis period and dispersed to the field in a fueled state prior to war.
“Ampoulization” still could provide worthwhile benefits, especially for land-mobile missiles. Transporting and handling “ampoulized” missiles would be easier and safer, especially in the field, and particularly within an enclosed launch railcar. (Rail mobility would be particularly suitable for liquid-propellant ICBMs.)
Takeaway Four: Liquid Missiles Are Here to Stay
The most significant part of the North Korean statement on “ampoulization” was its noting “the military significance of turning all missile fuel systems into ampoules.” Since “missile fuel ampoules” are probably not germane to solids, this statement suggests that North Korea intends to retain and improve its liquid-propellant ballistic missile force for the long term rather than shift to an all-solid force.
All other things being equal, solid-propellant missiles generally provide worthwhile operational advantages over liquids, including: faster reaction time, easier and safer handling in the field, a smaller logistics train (and thus less vulnerable field deployments for mobile missile systems), and no need to engage in possibly vulnerable pre-launch fueling operations. But all things are not necessarily equal with solids, especially for North Korea, which is likely to see a number of important reasons to continue developing liquid-propellant missiles while also continuing to pursue solids:
-
Pound for pound, liquid propellants are more energetic than solids, allowing a given-size liquid missile to have more range/payload capability than a solid of the same size, or for a smaller liquid missile to be used for a given range/payload level. North Korea, therefore, could find liquids especially attractive for applications calling for larger payloads—such as an HGV, multiple reentry vehicles, the post-boost vehicle plus multiple warheads of a multiple independently-targeted reentry vehicle (MIRV) payload, or multi-megaton single warheads.
-
As solid-propellant rocket motors get larger, production becomes more challenging. Although North Korea is almost certainly pursuing larger-diameter solid motors for future IRBMs and ICBMs (and may also pursue large solid SLBMs of equivalent range), for now, all of its known IRBMs and ICBMs are liquids. Even if it does develop solid missiles of these sizes, it is highly likely to continue to pursue liquids as well, just as China and Russia continue to do.
- North Korea has some 35 years of experience developing, producing, deploying and operating liquids, and has substantial supporting infrastructure in place. It almost certainly has developed a substantial level of comfort in coping with and mitigating the operational downsides of land-mobile liquid missiles.
Takeaway Five: More New Developments Are to Come
Commentators have rightfully pointed out that the September 28 test makes good on Kim Jong Un’s report to the Eighth Party Congress, which included a “task” to “develop and introduce hypersonic gliding flight warheads in a short period.”[5] Likewise, the North’s September 2021 tests of a long-range cruise missile made good on another passage in that same report. We can clearly expect other as-yet-unveiled capabilities mentioned in that report to be rolled out at some point in the future, including solid-propellant ICBMs, long-range SLBMs, and “multi-warhead rockets.”[6]
Takeaway Six: Much of What We Are Hearing and Seeing Is Politically Motivated
Finally, it is important not to lose sight of the fact that North Korea’s hypersonic missile announcement, like so many of its unveilings of new missile and nuclear technologies, includes a substantial political motivation. It remains to be seen whether the North wants to and is able to make capable and reliable deployed weapons systems out of the HGV and other new military technologies, or how long it will take. We do not yet know how many HGVs or other systems will actually be deployed, or how effective they will end up being. Until then, and certainly from now through at least the near term, Pyongyang is likely seeking domestic and international political benefits through these announcements: bolstering deterrence, trumpeting its technological prowess (including over South Korea), generating prestige and legitimacy, and underscoring the foresight and accomplishments of the regime.
Given the high level of “hype” surrounding hypersonic missiles totally unrelated to North Korea, it is not surprising that North Korea decided to use HGVs at least in part for such purposes. And Kim’s speech at “The Defense Development Exhibition Self-Defense 2021” and the exhibition itself—showing not just the Hwasong-8, but all of the missiles North Korea has unveiled over the past five years—underscore the degree and importance of the political motivations behind the “hypersonic missile.”
- [1]
“Hypersonic Missile Newly Developed by Academy of Defense Science Test-fired,” Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), September 29, 2021.
“Kim Jong Un Makes Commemorative Speech at Defense Development Exhibition,” Rodong Sinmun, October 12, 2021.
- [3]
These storable propellants are nitrogen tetroxide (N2O4) oxidizers and unsymmetrical dimethylhydrazine (UMDH) fuel. Analysts typically note that these propellants are more energetic than the kerosene and IRFNA (inhibited red fuming nitric acid) propellants used in Scud- and Nodong-class liquid-propellant missiles, giving N2O4/UDMH-based missiles greater range/payload capability. The operational value of storable liquids compared to Scud-type propellants is often overlooked.
- [4]
See: Pavel Podvig, Twitter post, September 29, 2021, 5:08 a.m., https://twitter.com/russianforces/status/1443140596772839424. The SS-11 and later Soviet liquid ICBMs were packaged in a canister at the factory, with the entire canisterized missile being loaded into the launch silo prior to fueling. Canisterization also has been suggested as a meaning of the North Korean use of “ampoule” (see Dr. Jeffrey Lewis, Twitter post, September 28, 2021, 6L51 p.m., https://twitter.com/ArmsControlWonk/status/1442985298757963780?s=20). The North’s statement that the September 28 launch introduced “ampoules” for the first time would not seem to be consistent with “ampoules” being “canisters,” however, given the previous use of canisters with the KN-24 and KN-25 solid-propellant short-range ballistic missiles. (See Michael Elleman, “Preliminary Assessment of the KN-24 Missile Launches,” 38 North, March 25, 2020, https://www.38north.org/2020/03/melleman032520; and “KN-25,” Military Today, accessed on October 13, 2021, http://www.military-today.com/artillery/kn_25.htm.) In any case, canisterization would not be required to achieve the operational benefits commentators have identified for “ampoulization,” although it would ease missile environmental control (beneficial for N2O4/UDMH propellants), handling, and transport.
- [5]
“On Report Made by Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un at Eighth Party Congress of WPK,” KCNA, January 9, 2021.
-
[1] It also released a photograph showing a liquid-propellant rocket resembling a shortened version of the Hwasong-12 intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM) in the early stages of flight. Atop the rocket was an arrowhead-shaped vehicle with stubby wings resembling a hypersonic glide vehicle (HGV), the reentry portion of a ballistic missile-based “hypersonic missile.” On October 12, the North released photos from Kim Jong Un’s attendance the previous day at the opening of “The Defense Development Exhibition Self-Defense 2021,” showing the “Hwasong-8” on a road-mobile launcher with a booster smaller than the Hwasong-12 and an HGV payload strongly resembling that used on the Chinese DF-17 missile.[2]
-
[3] which can stay loaded and ready-to-go for extremely long periods of time without damaging their propulsion systems, unlike the Scud-type propellants that can only be tolerated for a relatively short time. The Musudan/BM-25 (based on the Soviet SS-N-6 SLBM) and Hwasong-12 intermediate-range ballistic missiles (IRBMs), the Hwasong-14 and -15 ICBMs, and the “Hwasong-8” launched on September 28 (the booster of which appears to be a shortened Hwasong-12) all use storable liquids.
-
Soviet SS-7, US Atlas F and Titan-II ICBMs, using storable liquid propellants, apparently remained fueled and on alert for long periods without any form of “ampoulization.” Moreover, the SS-11 and probably later Soviet liquid-propellant ICBMs using storable propellants were not “ampoulized” in the same way as SLBMs. They were not fueled in the factory, but were emplaced in their silos empty and then fueled, where they stood on alert for years at a time. Instead, they apparently were “ampoulized” by using membranes to separate the engines and fuel plumbing from the propellant tanks.[4] (It is unclear what practices China has followed with its ballistic missiles using storable liquid propellants.)
-
[5] Likewise, the North’s September 2021 tests of a long-range cruise missile made good on another passage in that same report. We can clearly expect other as-yet-unveiled capabilities mentioned in that report to be rolled out at some point in the future, including solid-propellant ICBMs, long-range SLBMs, and “multi-warhead rockets.”[6]
4. N. Korea may be considering engaging with S. Korea, U.S.: Biegun
Excerpts:
"But I will say that there's a school of thought and I'm inclined to believe it that ... the fact that North Korea is beginning to send external messaging suggests to me that North Korea is at least contemplating the terms under which it will reengage with the rest of the world," added Biegun, who also served as U.S. special representative for North Korea.
...
"It's very likely that just as the North Korean government was fixated on the U.S. presidential election from mid-2019 until November 3 of 2020, it seems likely that the North Korean regime is also now fixated on the South Korean elections coming up in the spring of next year, which could lead to a change in government from the progressives to the conservative politicians," said Biegun, referring to South Korea's presidential election slated for March 9, 2022.
"From my point of view, the most important thing is, in fact, a communications link. So I very much welcome the fact that South Korea and North Korea are directly speaking again. And I hope the case will be soon, if it's not already, that the United States will be able to find a way to open and then sustain communications with North Korea for its part," he added.
N. Korea may be considering engaging with S. Korea, U.S.: Biegun | Yonhap News Agency
By Byun Duk-kun
WASHINGTON, Oct. 15 (Yonhap) -- North Korea may be considering engaging with South Korea and the rest of the world, former Deputy Secretary of State Stephen Biegun said Friday.
Biegun noted the North may be trying to influence the outcome of South Korea's upcoming presidential election, but insisted having a direct communication channel with the reclusive state was more important to South Korea, as well as the United States, than having such consequences.
"We've seen a sequence of events that many analysts have interpreted as increasingly provocative behavior by North Korea," the former deputy secretary said during a webinar cohosted by George Washington University's Institute for Korean Studies and the Korea Development Institute School of Public Policy and Management, a state-run institute based in Sejong, South Korea.
"But I will say that there's a school of thought and I'm inclined to believe it that ... the fact that North Korea is beginning to send external messaging suggests to me that North Korea is at least contemplating the terms under which it will reengage with the rest of the world," added Biegun, who also served as U.S. special representative for North Korea.
North Korea reopened direct communication channels with South Korea earlier this month, after a 55-day suspension during which it conducted at least four missile tests, including the test launch of what it claims to be a new hypersonic missile.
"It's very likely that just as the North Korean government was fixated on the U.S. presidential election from mid-2019 until November 3 of 2020, it seems likely that the North Korean regime is also now fixated on the South Korean elections coming up in the spring of next year, which could lead to a change in government from the progressives to the conservative politicians," said Biegun, referring to South Korea's presidential election slated for March 9, 2022.
"From my point of view, the most important thing is, in fact, a communications link. So I very much welcome the fact that South Korea and North Korea are directly speaking again. And I hope the case will be soon, if it's not already, that the United States will be able to find a way to open and then sustain communications with North Korea for its part," he added.
Pyongyang has ignored repeated overtures from the Joe Biden administration that it is willing to meet with North Korea "anytime, anywhere without preconditions."
Biegun, who played a key role in setting up the second U.S.-North Korea summit between former President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in Hanoi in February 2019, said the North hated such "open-ended" proposals.
"My experience is the North Koreans hate that kind of open-ended suggestion," he said. "What we need to do is quietly work through a series of steps that both sides could take, including, potentially, an end of war declaration. That could be part of a package, but in isolation, I don't think it does the trick."
The former deputy secretary of state noted that declaring a formal end to the Korean War could serve as an opening for dialogue as suggested by South Korean President Moon Jae-in at the U.N. General Assembly in New York last month, but not while the North remains in isolation.
"The end of war declaration shouldn't be exaggerated," he said, pointing to concerns that it may weaken the U.S.-South Korea alliance. "It's not legally binding. It's a political statement. But were it part of a sequence of steps or combination of actions that each side could take to begin to build momentum, I think would play a very important role."
"But I do want to caveat that where I am worried a little bit...that my view is that the North Koreans will not be enticed or induced to coming to the table, simply by throwing concessions," added Biegun.
When asked if North Korea would actually give up its nuclear capability, the former U.S. diplomat said the goal of U.S. diplomacy toward the North was to change what was once inconceivable into what is conceivable over time.
"If we could eliminate the hostility that exists on the Korean peninsula, if we began to incentivize an economic relationship with North Korea, if we could begin to broaden the aperture of North Korea's engagement with the rest of the world, our hope was that we could also begin to make progress on things that today seemed inconceivable such as complete denuclearization," he said.
bdk@yna.co.kr
(END)
5. In Times Of Food Scarcity In North Korea, Food-Deprived Political Prisoners Should Be A Priority For The International Community
Few know as much about the suffering in the prison camps as Roberta Cohen.
One of the reasons why we need a human rights upfront approach is that north Korea desires normalization with the US. However, before normalization can occur the regime must address its human rights abuses. We cannot shy away from this. The regime may argue that the US has normal and diplomatic relations with many countries that have human rights abuses. However, what they do not acknowledge is that north Korea has been shown to be the worst human rights abuser and is committing crimes against humanity on a scale not seen since World War II. We cannot allow the regime to apply human rights "whataboutism" in negotiations with the US.
By Roberta Cohen
Edited by Raymond Ha, HRNK Director of Operations & Research
NOTE FROM HRNK: This essay draws attention to the risks facing political prisoners as the food situation in North Korea worsens. Restrictions imposed by North Korea in response to Covid-19 have resulted in the withdrawal of most, if not all, international humanitarian staff from the country. As humanitarian aid to North Korea resumes, special attention should be paid to reaching the most vulnerable group in that country—those who are detained in political prison camps. Now is the time to plan steps that could be taken to better protect vulnerable populations in North Korea, who face serious risks due to lack of access to adequate food and medical care. This essay is based on an affidavit prepared by the author for the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea and International Bar Association’s forthcoming Inquiry on Crimes Against Humanity in North Korean Detention Centers.
According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, North Korea is facing a severe food shortfall—a gap of at least 860,000 tons of food, which corresponds to two months’ supply.[i] In ordinary times, more than 40 percent of North Korea’s population is food insecure, but conditions at present are said to be more dire. Damaging floods and the government’s Covid-19 restrictions have exacerbated the food shortage. International aid agencies have been prevented from operating and cross-border trading has been curtailed. State media openly speaks of a food crisis.
In such conditions, the most food-deprived persons in the country should be identified and prioritized. But in North Korea, the government has created a food-deprived group isolated from the rest of the population: political prisoners. They are undoubtedly the first to be denied food when commodities are scarce and the last to receive food when it is available. In July 2021, the UN Secretary-General warned the international community that “there are risks that the food situation for detainees has worsened, as the food situation has become more acute for the general population.”[ii]
The UN Commission of Inquiry (COI) on human rights in North Korea described the near starvation of prisoners in North Korea as a form of governmental “control and punishment” in its 2014 report.[iii] The most in danger during times of crisis are those held in political prison camps (kwan-li-so). A North Korean official told the former German Ambassador that “people are only being sent there to die.”[iv] However, those held in long-term re-education through labor camps (kyo-hwa-so) and short-term detention facilities are also at risk, especially now that Covid-19 restrictions prevent families and friends from bringing food packages.
A total of 80,000 to 120,000 political prisoners are reported to be incarcerated in North Korea, with some sources estimating upwards of 200,000. In most cases, they are charged with ‘offenses’ that are not considered criminal in other countries: trying to leave the country without permission; trying to join relatives in South Korea or having a family member who does; listening to foreign news broadcasts; watching foreign movies and copying foreign speech and clothing; questioning or complaining about government policies, or having a family member who did; being caught up on the wrong side of a factional political dispute; possessing a Bible or organizing a Christian service; and more. During the pandemic, North Koreans who question or fail to adhere to official quarantine measures are reported to be placed in labor camps for challenging Party policy.[v] In some cases, entire families of prisoners, including children, have been incarcerated on the basis of guilt-by-association (yeon-jwa-je).
Deaths in detention are known to be high. The UN COI estimated in 2014 that hundreds of thousands of prisoners perished over the past five decades from a combination of deliberate starvation, illnesses, forced labor, torture, and other brutality. It defined their deaths as “extermination,” which “can be carried out by imprisoning a large number of people and withholding the necessities of life so that mass deaths ensue.”[vi]
With few exceptions, it has long been accepted practice for donors and aid agencies to refrain from requesting access to political prisoners, because of the political sensitivity of the issue and the fear of jeopardizing access to other vulnerable populations. Political prisoners, however, are undoubtedly the most vulnerable group in North Korea.
ON THE DENIAL OF ADEQUATE FOOD TO POLITICAL PRISONERS
In the case of political prison camps (kwan-li-so) as well as long-term re-education through labor camps (kyo-hwa-so), the UN COI presented extensive evidence of the denial of adequate food to those detained. The COI also found evidence of limited access to food at short-term detention facilities.[vii] In recent years, additional corroborating information has emerged regarding these short-term facilities. This information, presented below, shows how adequate food has been consistently denied from the time of arrest through interrogation and then in early short-term detention. Typically, prisoners detained in such facilities are held up to two years, at which point they may be released or transferred to long-term detention facilities.
The following documentation attests to the inadequate food in short-term detention facilities:
-
Interviews in 2019 and 2020 by the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea (HRNK) with 25 former prisoners held in short-term facilities spanning a twenty-three year period (1996–2019) in the provinces of North Hamgyong, South Hamgyong, North Pyongan, South Pyongan, and Ryanggang.[viii] The short-term facilities include: a) police interrogation/detention centers (An-jeon-bu ku-ryu-jang or ku-ryu-so); b) police stations (An-jeon-bu bo-an-so and bun-ju-so); c) Ministry of State Security (hereafter MSS) interrogation/detention centers (Bo-wi-bu ku-ryu-jang); d) short-term labor detention facilities (jip-kyul-so); and e) mobile forced labor brigades (ro-dong-dan-ryeon-dae).
-
Reports authored by David Hawk, a leading expert on North Korea’s prison camps and detention facilities, including The Hidden Gulag[ix] and The Parallel Gulag,[x] published by HRNK in 2012 and 2017 respectively.
-
The 2020 report of the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), Human Rights Violations against Women Detained in the DPRK, based on 100 interviews of women detained between 2009 and 2019 (many in short-term detention facilities) after being forcibly repatriated from China.[xi]
-
The 2017 White Paper on North Korean Human Rights of the Database Center for North Korean Human Rights (NKDB), which compiled more than 500 cases of violations of the right to food in short-term detention facilities and found these violations to be “prevalent” throughout the country. [xii]
- Information obtained over the past decade by the author from meetings with former North Korean prisoners, prison guards, and government officials, as well as officials and experts from other Asian countries, North America, and Europe.
LACK OF SUFFICIENT FOOD IN SHORT-TERM DETENTION FACILITIES
Witness after witness described the below-subsistence food rations provided at the short-term detention facilities run by the Ministry of Social Security (the police),[xiii] the Ministry of State Security (responsible for political crimes), or both in collaboration. Indeed, the diet provided over a period of two decades across different facilities constitutes a dangerously small fraction of minimal dietary requirements for average adults.[xiv]
Of course, during the great famine of the mid-1990s and subsequent periods of food scarcity, the state had little to provide prisoners. But even during periods when food was available, the authorities distributed substandard amounts to persons in detention centers, especially to those being punished on political grounds.
The following quotes from the testimonies of former prisoners describe their daily diets in short-term facilities, spanning a nineteen-year period:
a) 2000: “small amounts of boiled mashed corn and salty radish leaf soup” (labor detention facility in Chongjin)[xv]
b) 2001: “corn soup made of whole grain unpeeled corn, amounting to three or four spoonfuls” (MSS facility in Onsong)[xvi]
c) 2002–3:“raw corn which had no nutritional value...not even peeled off or cleansed” (MSS facility in Onsong)[xvii]
d) 2005: “about 20 pieces [kernels] of corn” (labor detention facility in Chongjin)[xviii]
e) 2008: “only corn noodles about 2 kilograms for 200 people” (MSS facility in Hyesan)[xix]
f) 2009: “we really could only eat mice and corn pieces” (mobile labor brigade in Sinuiju)[xx]
g) 2010: “a small cup of boiled rice, about 150 grams per meal. Soup was made of dried cabbage and salt” (short-term detention facility in North Pyongan Province)[xxi]
h) 2011:“50 grains [of corn] at each meal...I counted the grains”(unnamed MSS short-term labor facility)[xxii]
i) 2012: “200 to 300 grains of corn three times a day” (unnamed MSS interrogation center)[xxiii]
j) 2012/13: primarily “corn that they couldn’t throw away that even the dogs did not want” (labor detention facility in Hyesan)[xxiv]
k) 2014: “five tiny rotten potatoes per meal” (unnamed police interrogation center)[xxv]
l) 2015: “five spoonfuls...boiled leftovers...three times a day” (MSS detention facility in North Hamgyong Province)[xxvi]
m) 2016: “a handful of corn per meal” three times a day (unnamed MSS detention center)[xxvii]
n) 2017: “50 grains of corn per meal” (unnamed police interrogation center)[xxviii]
o) 2019 (solitary confinement): “about 150 grams of food every day. I did not receive water” (held for one month and ten days at police facility in Onsong)[xxix]
p) 2019: 150 grams three times a day (MSS and police facilities in Onsong)[xxx]
“I think they willfully made people starve in detention,” said one former prisoner to HRNK about his time at a mobile labor brigade in Hoeryong, North Hamgyong Province in 2001.[xxxi] Others echoed the same sentiment: “I have...witnessed many people in the detention centers [Musan, Chongjin, Hyesan, Onsong, Pyeongsong] die of starvation even though the state has food that could be distributed”(2004–5).[xxxii] Another former prisoner said that insufficient food “led to cases of starvation among the detainees” at a mobile labor brigade in Hoeryong in 2011.[xxxiii] The UN OHCHR’S 2020 report described a “consistent pattern” of “grossly inadequate” food for women prisoners in both short-term and long-term facilities.[xxxiv]
Because constant and severe hunger was the daily predicament of many prisoners in these facilities, prisoners ate grass and other plants to survive, according to a former prisoner at a labor detention center in South Sinuiju in 2000.[xxxv] Prisoners caught and ate mice at other facilities, but in many short-term detention facilities, especially overcrowded buildings, prisoners lacked access to the outside and could not even forage for grass, insects, or rodents.[xxxvi]
Role of Families in Preventing Prisoner Starvation: One of the reasons prisoners incarcerated in long-term re-education through labor camps and short-term facilities have been able to survive is because their families and friends are able to bring food packages. (This is not the case in the political prison camps, which are operated by the MSS.) However, the Covid-19 lockdown in 2020 and 2021 has barred families and friends from visiting these facilities, and the food situation for prisoners has become even more precarious.
Prior to the pandemic, there were difficulties in providing food packages to prisoners. Families could remain uninformed for months about the whereabouts of their loved ones, especially while they were in interrogation. Once family members found out the location of the detention facility, they often had to bribe guards to ensure that the food package was safely delivered. Sometimes, the guards stole or ate part of the food or sold it in the market. Visits could also be denied on an arbitrary basis.[xxxvii] The UN OHCHR’s 2020 report points out that not all detainees received packages from their families, since not all were close by or had the capacity to do so. Prisoners who did not receive packages remained “vulnerable to malnutrition.”[xxxviii]
When families were allowed to bring food, former prisoners acknowledged that the health of detainees typically improved. “Most of us survived only because of families and friends bringing food for us and if not, prisoners died from severe malnutrition and ultimately starvation, combined with constant hard work,” according to a former prisoner at a mobile labor brigade in 2011.[xxxix] When family members were allowed to bring food “twice a week,” as was the case at a police detention facility in Onsong in 2019, conditions “got better,” said a former prisoner. However, from April 2019 until the prisoner’s escape in July, prison authorities stopped these visits without providing a reason, and prisoners began to become malnourished.[xl]
For those who were subject to hard labor for up to 10 or more hours a day, food was essential but not often provided. “Even when we were forced to do very hard labor,” the guards “barely provided food” (mobile labor brigade in Hoeryong, 2011).[xli] The combination of inadequate food with forced labor added to the likelihood that prisoners would fall ill. “I was hungry all the time,” said a former prisoner at an MSS facility in Hyesan, Ryanggang Province in 2012–13. “[W]e received only very limited food...[while] we were made to do hard labor, including working on cleaning the railroads.”[xlii]
Nor was clean water made regularly available. The UN OHCHR’s 2020 report recommended that North Korea make “drinking water available to every prisoner whenever she needs it.”[xliii]
THE USE OF FOOD TO SICKEN AND PUNISH PRISONERS
Many detainees testified that the food provided by the state sickened them. At one MSS interrogation facility in 2017, a former prisoner testified: “Meals were carried in a bucket and the bucket was never cleaned and smelled terrible...I was unable to eat it.”[xliv] At many other detention facilities and over many years, different detainees repeatedly called the food provided by the state “rotten,” “inedible,” and causing “bad side effects.” “The only food that we were given was essentially waste...animal feed,” which caused many prisoners to suffer from diarrhea and other sicknesses such as enteritis, an inflammation of the small intestine commonly caused by food or drink contaminated with microbes (e.g., Chongjin MSS facility in 2001, Hyesan MSS facility in 2008).[xlv]
At an MSS facility in Hyesan in 2008, a former prisoner spoke of “at least two people in my cell who died from diarrhea or enteritis...I witnessed their deaths, and the prison authorities did nothing to help them.”[xlvi] At an MSS facility in Onsong, “a number of the detainees suffered from enteritis and starved to death” (2002–3).[xlvii] This was also the case at multiple detention centers in North Hamgyong and Ryanggang provinces in 2004–5, where a former prisoner witnessed “many” detainees becoming ill. “I witnessed a large number of people die as a result.”[xlviii] Another former prisoner who suffered from an inflamed gall bladder received no medical help (police detention center in Hoeryong, 2009).[xlix]
Food was regularly used as a weapon of punishment and control. Some former detainees reported “having to drink dirty, contaminated water as collective punishment” (2004).[l] Others reported “not being allowed to receive the dinner meal” as a form of punishment (mobile labor brigade in Chongjin, 2008).[li] At a police interrogation/detention center in 2014, one former detainee stated, “I was starved on a few occasions...the MSS wanted to punish and pressure me, and therefore they did not allow me to get the meals [brought by family members].”[lii] During interrogation, especially for cases concerning political crimes, “starvation” was “deliberately imposed on suspects to increase the pressure on them to confess and to incriminate other persons.”[liii]
Sometimes, food was withheld from certain categories of prisoners as punishment. For example, pregnant women, especially those impregnated by Chinese ‘husbands,’ were reportedly denied food and water at a labor detention facility in Nongpo (Chongjin) in 1999.[liv] At a mobile labor brigade in Hoeryong, “some young male detainees” were singled out and “treated so badly when it [came] to food” (2001)[lv], while at an MSS facility in Chongjin, Christian prisoners “were treated very badly, with many beatings and little food” (2001).[lvi] The teenage daughter of Christian missionaries at a police station in Hyesan was “not given food for almost two weeks” during interrogation (2004).[lvii] According to another former prisoner, “The authorities aimed to hurt those who did not support the regime and/or belonged to the ‘wrong’ social class” (mobile labor brigade in Chongjin, 2003).[lviii] In 2010, female prisoners who had been forcibly repatriated from China were told by prison guards that they were “traitors who deserved to die,” so they received little food and did not have access to medical treatment (police detention facility in South Hamgyong Province).[lix]
Detainees who stole food to survive, especially while working on farms, were punished severely. Guards at an MSS facility in Onsong were reported to have executed “dozens” for eating oxen (beef) in 2000,[lx] while at a short-term labor detention facility in Chongjin in 2002, a former detainee said that “I have…seen individuals executed for stealing a pig.”[lxi] In 2010, at a short-term detention facility in Ryanggang Province, a prisoner secretly ate uncooked rice while doing farm work, and “they put pebbles in my mouth and sealed it with adhesive tape, and they made me work” without food.[lxii]
When prisoners became so sick that they were in need of hospitalization, the authorities sometimes sent prisoners home. In some cases, families had to bribe the authorities or doctors to allow the sick prisoner to return home.[lxiii] Clearly, prison authorities had neither the willingness nor the capacity to treat prisoners who became extremely sick, even though the insufficient food they provided—combined with the “lack of health care” and hard labor—had caused prisoners’ health to deteriorate.[lxiv] In many instances, the bodies of detainees who died from starvation (and other causes) were thrown into unmarked graves.
THE TOLL ON PRISONERS’ HEALTH
Inadequate food regularly jeopardized prisoners’ health, in many cases causing inflammation of body organs, as described above. The UN OHCHR also found that the “grossly inadequate quantity and poor quality of food,” fed to women prisoners “led to high levels of malnutrition…and the interruption of their menstrual cycles” (2009–19).[lxv] Both male and female detainees who were held in short-term detention facilities for months lost considerable weight, making them weak and vulnerable to malnutrition and disease, including enteritis and tuberculosis.[lxvi]
Some prisoners described themselves as being reduced to “skin and bones.” Whether at an MSS facility in Hyesan (2008), an MSS facility in Musan (2003), or a labor detention facility in Chongjin (2002), prisoners spoke of how the denial of adequate food reduced their bodies to skeletons. “I weighed only 32 kilograms [70.5 pounds],” recalled one former prisoner.[lxvii] Another individual, who “lost half his body weight” after three months in detention at an MSS facility in Sinuiju, collapsed from malnutrition and beatings and was sent home to die (2003).[lxviii]
Impact of Food Deprivation on Children: It is well known that detained children are subjected to acute suffering, in part because they “ha[ve] no funds with them” with which to secure additional food by bribing guards. For example, at a mobile labor brigade in Chongjin, there were “many deaths of children from malnutrition or starvation” (2003).[lxix] At an MSS facility in Musan in that same year, “almost all of the children were suffering from malnutrition, with a number of them dying from starvation.”[lxx]
In 2003–4, at a labor detention facility in Hyesan, “more than 10 children died of starvation.... Other children survived but were suffering from extreme hunger and malnutrition.”[lxxi] At an MSS facility in Sinuiju in 2008–9, “hunger and starvation were rampant, particularly for children. Many children and young people were emaciated.”[lxxii] Considering that one in five non-incarcerated North Korean children suffer from stunted growth, one can only imagine the impact on incarcerated children when deliberately denied food in detention facilities. Further, it is almost certain that this deprivation also causes lasting emotional harm and irreversible intellectual deficits, in addition to the long-term physical impact on these children.
DEATHS IN DETENTION
There is no question that inadequate food—either alone or in combination with forced labor, beatings, and lack of medicine and adequate healthcare—have resulted in deaths over the past twenty years. Thousands of North Korean detainees are estimated to die each year from the combination of starvation, beatings, labor exhaustion, lack of medicine, and disease.
The UN COI’s report found that in short-term detention facilities, “many die from starvation, disease or injuries sustained during beatings and work accidents.”[lxxiii] The UN OHCHR’s report on women prisoners (2009–19) found that “The deprivation of food was at times so severe that detainees reportedly starved to death.”[lxxiv]
Testimony regarding deaths in specific short-term facilities can be found in the following:
a) The UN COI’s report: for example, “After a month or two of imprisonment,” where prisoners were given starvation rations, “a lot of inmates died” (labor training facility in Hamheung).[lxxv]
b) Witness testimonies quoted in HRNK reports (2000–2009): [lxxvi]
- “I witnessed many deaths due to starvation and unlivable conditions, around 35 individuals died in the Bo-wi-bu [MSS] that I know of due to starvation” (MSS facility in Onsong, 2000).
- “There was at least one person dying every day from malnutrition - it was like an epidemic” (labor detention facility in Chongjin, 2003).
- “Approximately 2,000 die...each year...We were told to keep track of how many prisoners died.... Of the 2,000 deaths each year, I knew a number of these individuals.... Some of the inmates died of starvation or malnutrition” (former prisoner-turned-prison administrator at mobile labor brigade in Chungsan, 2003–5).
- “I saw a number of people die of starvation.... Starvation and extreme hunger were rampant in the facility” (mobile labor brigade in Pyeongsong, 2005).
- Detainees “often suffer from starvation. I witnessed many detainees die” (at detention centers in Onsong, Chongjin, and Orang, 2004–5).
- “I saw people die continuously. These deaths often resulted from malnutrition and untreated diseases” (mobile labor brigade in Musan, 1997, 2004, 2009).
Prisoners continued to suffer from health problems after being released. Many former prisoners who managed to escape to South Korea continued to suffer from worms, gastrointestinal problems, and other ailments. One individual who was provided little food during detention in 2009 said six years later, “I caught tuberculosis [then] and have to take medicine now” and “My daughter still has a problem in her heart” (North Pyongan Province police labor detention facility).[lxxvii] Not surprisingly, enduring psychological damage from trauma during detention also is common. “Since my release from the Kilju bo-an-so (police station) I have suffered from considerable mental and physical trauma which continues to this day” (2013).[lxxviii]
PLACING THE ISSUE OF STARVATION OF POLITICAL PRISONERS ON THE INTERNATIONAL AGENDA
In response to the increasing reports of starvation of North Korea’s prisoners, annual UN General Assembly resolutions have begun to list political prisoners in North Korea as a vulnerable group “suffering chronic and acute malnutrition”[lxxix] and have called for the entry of international humanitarian organizations to North Korea’s “detention facilities.”[lxxx]
North Korea itself informed the UN in 2019 that it accepted the recommendation put forward by the government of Ireland at the UN’s Universal Periodic Review (UPR) that the DPRK:
grant immediate free and unimpeded access to international humanitarian organizations to provide assistance to the most vulnerable groups, including prisoners [emphasis added].”[lxxxi]
Donors, UN agencies, and NGOs have nevertheless mostly refrained from requesting access to prisoners so as not to antagonize the North Korean government and possibly undermine aid going to other vulnerable groups. Human rights specialists, for their part, have cautioned that North Korea’s acceptance will doubtless not apply to prisoners in the political prison camps, whose existence the government denies,[lxxxii] and that a “Potemkin village”-type prison could be erected. However, the DPRK’s acceptance of the recommendation does offer an entry point for donors, UN agencies, and NGOs to request access to long-term re-education through labor camps and short-term detention facilities.
North Korea should realize that it is in its own interest to allow humanitarian groups to treat prisoners with tuberculosis and other diseases, because this could benefit the wider community.[lxxxiii] Gaining entry to and vaccinating prisoners against Covid-19 would also yield benefits for the broader population. In 2020, an NGO informed a U.S. Institute of Peace audience that the North Korean government had negotiated an MOU with an unnamed NGO to allow it access to prisoners with health problems.[lxxxiv] The MOU had been negotiated prior to the U.S.-DPRK summit in Singapore, according to the NGO representative, but the DPRK pulled back when diplomatic tensions increased again.
Surely it is time for donors, international agencies, and NGOs to develop a joint strategy that prioritizes the goal of reaching the most acute cases of hunger and disease in North Korea, which are found in its prison camps and detention facilities. Not only would this reinforce international humanitarian standards – e.g., reaching the most vulnerable and providing aid without discrimination, but a joint initiative would also help protect individual agencies from government retaliation. The UN COI, moreover, has warned that subjecting detainees to food denial on a systematic and widespread basis could constitute a crime against humanity, for which North Korea could be held accountable in an international criminal tribunal.[lxxxv] Aid agencies, particularly those whose operations are visibly close to detention facilities, may be seen as complicit if they knowingly turn their heads away.
Precedents exist in other countries for bringing assistance to prisoners, spearheaded by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), the World Food Programme (WFP), and the World Health Organization (WHO). These precedents should be studied and built upon, with the goal of applying them to the DPRK.
The UN’s Strategic Framework for the DPRK (2017–21), which governs the operations of UN agencies in the country, could be helpful. It affirms that the UN has a role in providing support to the DPRK in meeting its human rights commitments under the UPR. It therefore puts the UN in a position to offer its support to the North Korean government to help implement its acceptance of humanitarian entry to prisons, as noted above. The Strategic Framework also provides that the UN may offer support to North Korea in technical cooperation and training in international standards. With support from headquarters and donors, the UN Resident Coordinator in North Korea could feasibly bring onto the international humanitarian agenda the plight of incarcerated North Koreans who are badly in need of food and medical care.
An episode in the ICRC’s history may be instructive. In 1989, the widely acclaimed organization decided to look back some fifty years to understand why it had provided so little help to those incarcerated in Nazi concentration camps during the Second World War. What its evaluators found was that ICRC staff and officials at the time feared that such advocacy could jeopardize their assistance to other groups, in particular POWs for whom they had a specific responsibility, and possibly undermine their relationship with the government. Overall, they had failed to grasp the extraordinariness of the situation. Today, the ICRC views this oversight as “the worst defeat” in its history.[lxxxvi]
The international humanitarian and development community owes it to long-suffering prisoners in North Korea and also to the integrity of their own missions to bring closer the human rights and humanitarian goals that lie at the foundation of their work.
ENDNOTES
[ii] UN General Assembly, “Report of the Secretary-General: Situation of human rights in the DPRK,” A/76/242, 28 July 2021, para. 16.
[iii] UN Commission of Inquiry, Report of the detailed findings of the commission of inquiry on human rights in the DPRK, A/HRC/25/CRP.1, 7 February 2014, para. 681 [hereafter UN COI report].
[iv] Thomas Schaefer, From Kim Jong Il to Kim Jong Un: How the Hardliners Prevailed (2021), p. 68.
[v] Mun Dong-Hui, “Violators of North Korea’s quarantine protocols sent to ‘total control zones,’” NK News, August 12, 2021; and “North Korea to Impose Hard Labor Sentences for Covid-19 Gathering Violations,” Radio Free Asia, August 11, 2021.
[vi] UN COI report, para. 1041.
[vii] UN COI report, paras. 1068, 1170, 1171.
[viii] U.S. Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, fifty testimonies taken in 2019–20 [unpublished, hereafter HRNK 2020].
[ix] David Hawk, The Hidden Gulag (Washington, DC: U.S. Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, 2012) [hereafter Hawk, Hidden Gulag].
[x] David Hawk, The Parallel Gulag (Washington, DC: U.S. Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, 2017) [hereafter Hawk, Parallel Gulag, 2017].
[xii] Database Center for North Korean Human Rights (NKDB), 2017 White Paper on North Korean Human Rights [hereafter NKDB 2017], p. 353.
[xiv] Human Rights Watch, A Matter of Survival (2006), Appendix, p. 35; and UN COI report, paras. 539 and 804 (and note 1200).
[xv] Hawk, Hidden Gulag, p. 141.
[xxii] OHCHR 2020, Annex 2, VI.
[xxv] OHCHR 2020, Annex 2, VI.
[xxxv] Hawk, Hidden Gulag, p. 124.
[xxxvi] Hawk, Parallel Gulag, pp. 12–13.
[xliv] OHCHR 2020, Annex 2, VI.
[l] Hawk, Hidden Gulag, p. 135.
[lii] OHCHR 2020, Annex 2, VII.
[liii] UN Commission of Inquiry, Report of the commission of inquiry on human rights in the DPRK, A/HRC/25/63, 7 February 2014, para. 58.
[liv] Hawk, Hidden Gulag, p. 138.
[lix] NKDB 2017, pp. 356–7.
[lxiii] HRNK, 2020; and Hawk, Hidden Gulag.
[lxxv] UN COI report, para. 822.
[lxxix] See UN General Assembly Resolution on Situation of human rights in the DPRK, A/C.3/70/L.35, 30 October 2015, para. 4.
[lxxx] See UN General Assembly Resolution on Situation of human rights in the DPRK, A/C.3/73/L.40, 31 October 2018, paras. 2(vi), 5, 16 (m).
[lxxxi] UN Human Rights Council, Recommendation 126.58, Report of the Working Group on the UPR: DPRK, A/HRC/42/10, 25 June 2019.
[lxxxii] David Hawk, Human Rights in the DPRK: The Role of the United Nations (Washington, DC: U.S. Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, 2021), p. 93.
[lxxxv] UN COI report, paras. 1068, 1170, 1171.
6. U.S. experts sound the alarm about dangerous end-of-war declaration - OKN
Real peace must guarantee the security of the ROK. An end of war declaration does not remove the existential threat posed to the ROK by the 4th largest army in the world that is postured for offensive operations.
would emphasize the DIA report on north Korean military power and the persistent threat of the regime and the nKPA.
Dr. Young's tweet is instructive here:
Benjamin R. Young
@DubstepInDPRK
You have to be extremely naive if you think a Korean War peace treaty will genuinely change the structural issues at play here. Can’t just sign a piece of paper & magically think that NK will demilitarize, denuclearize, & become a normal member of the international community
My response to Dr. Young:
David Maxwell
@DavidMaxwell161
Thank you Dr. Young. I concur. Why are so few concerned with the security of the ROK? Why do so few consider the nature, objectives, and strategy of the Kim family regime?
U.S. experts sound the alarm about dangerous end-of-war declaration - OKN
What Seoul calls a minor move could destabilize alliance
North Korea and China would likely benefit from ending war
While the Moon Jae-in administration is aiming to declare an end to the Korean War before the upcoming presidential election in March, U.S. experts on North Korea are calling it premature. They are warning that it would endanger Seoul’s national security and provide justification for the dismantling of the United Nations Command, which North Korea and China would prefer.
One of the key reasons for concern among experts is because conditions have not been met yet. They also questioned the true purpose behind the South Korean government in downplaying the significance of the end-of-war declaration, which would only benefit the North under the current situation.
Cho Hyun, South Korean ambassador to the United Nations, told lawmakers from the South Korean National Assembly that “denuclearization [of North Korea] is a goal that we must achieve and I think that the end-of-war declaration could be a starting point for it” on October 11. South Korean National Security Advisor Seo Hoon met with his U.S. counterpart Jake Sullivan the following day in Washington and said they discussed this issue thoroughly. “Regarding the end-of-war declaration, we explained our thinking to the United States and we agreed on discussing this issue closely.” The White House’s National Security Council released a press statement on this meeting and said Sullivan and Seo urged North Korea to get involved in serious and continuous diplomacy to move toward the complete denuclearization of North Korea. However, the NSC’s statement did not mention the end-of-war declaration as the South Korean side emphasized.
This is not the first time that the Moon Jae-in administration has tried to persuade the U.S. government to declare an end to the war. This issue was mentioned at the first summit between Moon and North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un on April 27, 2018. In the so-called Panmunjom Declaration, Moon and Kim said they will work toward declaring an end to the war by the end of that year, which marks the 65th anniversary of the Armistice Agreement. North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong-ho made a speech at the UN in September 2018 where he said “the end-of-war declaration is nothing but a political statement but the United States has been opposing it.” At first, the Trump administration appeared to be open to discussing the issue, but it has not gained much attention since the collapse of the second summit between Trump and Kim at Hanoi, Vietnam, in 2019. Despite the slowdown, the Moon administration has been repeating North Korea’s statement that the declaration is just a “political statement” that would help in establishing a peace regime and eventually denuclearization.
Voice of America interviewed various U.S. experts on Korean Peninsula issues, including former commanders of U.S. Forces Korea. They expressed their concerns that declaring the end of the war at this point where no change has been made near the border militarily, would be premature. It is not just a piece of paper, or a political statement, as Seoul and Pyongyang continue to argue it as.
“An end of war declaration cannot be viewed as just a political statement, it must be viewed as a condition that requires changes to the positioning of the North Korean Army,” General (Ret.) Burwell Bell told the VOA. “We all know that over 70% of the ground force capability of North Korea is in relatively close proximity to the demilitarized zone [DMZ]. Further, the north’s forward deployment of cannon and missile artillery which threatens Seoul directly amounts to a serious daily provocation.”
General (Ret.) James Thurman described an end-of-war declaration as a political statement that is different from a peace agreement, which is an unrealistic approach.
“Clearly, there needs to be a negotiated peace treaty that has sufficient details to get out of Armistice conditions. I think a simple political statement is not sufficient. The devil is in the details on this.”
General Bell also added that “I tie together any end of war declaration together with the negotiation of a peace treaty — they cannot be separated as long as North Korean military forces directly threaten the Republic of Korea with a no-notice general offensive attack capability.”
“Just as with a peace treaty, any end of war declaration must be accompanied with a significant demonstration of good faith by the North Koreans in moving their forward deployed military away from the DMZ to positions that no longer threaten the Republic of Korea with a surprise attack. This principle should not be compromised in any way.”
Professor Bruce Bechtol at Angelo State University, who worked as an intelligence officer at the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), told the VOA that President Moon Jae-in’s previous attempts to rekindle relations with North have all failed and he is trying his best to achieve one last goal of a peace regime, which seems the most plausible goal at this point. “This is the reason why the South Korean government is pushing the United States to agree to talks on ending the armistice with North Korea,” said Bechtol. “If this occurred, it would mean that Moon Jae-in might actually have a ‘success’ to point to in his inter-Korean dealings as part of his legacy. And thus, this is the real ‘urgency’ that is behind this suddenly being pushed so hard.”
Bruce Klingner, a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation who served in the Central Intelligence Agency and the DIA, told the VOA, that the South Korean government is trying to downplay the significance of the end-of-war declaration to convince the United States to sign it. “They [South Korea] say it is a political document, it would have no impact on security in the Korean peninsula,” Klingner said. “And my response is ‘well, if it would have no impact what’s the utility of it? What’s the purpose?’ and they can’t respond to that.”
Klingner added that a peace declaration would have no impact on actually reducing the North Korean threat, especially its conventional threat. However, it could create a false sense of peace that would lead to misperceptions. “The danger is that it could lead to misperceptions that if the war is over, why do we have a defense treaty [between the U.S.-ROK],” he said. “Why do we have U.S. forces [in South Korea], why do we have an extended deterrence guarantee and others.”
7. Netflix hit show 'Squid Game' spurs interest in learning Korean
These tweets from John Lee are useful. Everyone can learn the Korean alphabet (Hangul) in a single day. It is such a logical alphabet and very efficient and scientific (thank you King Sejong). But the language is one of the most complicated, beginning with the some 26 different honorifics (I think that is the right number) among many other subtle complexities.
But maybe the focus on learning the Korean language will produce some future "Korea Hands" in the government and the military who will be very important if there is conflict and war or instability and regime collapse on the peninsula.
John Lee
@koreanforeigner
Come for the easy-to-learn alphabet system - Hangeul! Stay to gnash your teeth and beat your breast in anguish as the rest of the language tortures you for the rest of your natural life!
John Lee
@koreanforeigner
Replying to
@koreanforeigner
I'm Korean, I've lived in Korea for more than 10 years, and my Korean has improved and is continuing to improve. But let's just say that there is a reason 99.99% of my tweets are written in English.
John Lee
@koreanforeigner
The "easy" written language.
ㅐㅔ, ㅒㅖ, ㅚ ㅙ
앗 앋 앝 앛 앚
Those of you who know, you know what I mean. These things still make me cry.
Netflix hit show 'Squid Game' spurs interest in learning Korean
SEOUL, Oct 11 (Reuters) - Interest in learning Korean has spiked since the launch of hit Netflix (NFLX.O) show "Squid Game", tutoring services reported, underscoring a growing global obsession with South Korean culture from entertainment to beauty products.
Language learning app Duolingo Inc (DUOL.O) said the nine-part thriller, in which cash-strapped contestants play deadly childhood games in a bid to win 45.6 billion won ($38.19 million), had spurred both beginners and existing students hoping to improve their skills.
Duolingo reported a 76% rise in new users signing up to learn Korean in Britain and 40% in the United States over the two weeks following the show's premiere.
South Korea, Asia’s fourth-largest economy, has established itself as a global entertainment hub with its vibrant pop-culture, including the seven-member boy band BTS and movies such as Oscar winners "Parasite," a black comedy about deepening inequality, and "Minari," about a Korean immigrant family in the United States. read more
Just this week, the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) added 26 new words of Korean origin to its latest edition, including "hallyu", or Korean wave, the term widely used to describe the global success of South Korean music, film, TV, fashion and food.
President Moon Jae-in this week welcomed the additions, calling "Hangeul", the Korean alphabet, the country's "soft power."
"Language and culture are intrinsically connected and what happens in pop culture and media often influences trends in language and language learning," Duolingo spokesman Sam Dalsimer said in an email.
"The rising global popularity of Korean music, film and television is increasing demand for learning Korean."
There are around 77 million Korean speakers worldwide, according to the Korea Foundation for International Cultural Exchange.
1/2
Participants from overseas take part in a Korean speech contest held by Sejong Institute Foundation in Seoul, South Korea, October 8, 2021. REUTERS/Dogyun Kim
Pittsburgh-based Duolingo said it has more than 7.9 million active users learning Korean, its second fastest growing language after Hindi.
The King Sejong Institute, which is run by South Korea's culture ministry, had around 76,000 students in 82 countries last year, a rapid expansion from just 740 students in three countries in 2007.
Milica Martinovic, a Sejong Institute student in Russia, said she wanted to master the language so she could watch K-dramas without subtitles and listen to K-pop without needing translated lyrics.
Catarina Costa, a 24-year-old from Portugal living in Toronto, Canada, said the language had become more popular since she began learning it two years ago, when most of her friends did not understand why.
"People are fascinated when I say that I am learning Korean," said Costa, who is using studying via the e-learning platform TalkToMeInKorean.
The program has 1.2 million members studying across 190 nations, learning words including those added to the OED, such as kimbap, a cooked rice dish wrapped in seaweed; mukbang, a video, often livestreamed, showing someone eating a large quantity of food, and; manhwa, a Korean genre of cartoons and comic books.
"There were thousands of people who wished to learn Korean even before Squid Game or the BTS craze, yet they were often studying in solitude," said Sun Hyun-woo, founder of Talk To Me In Korean, a local e-learning platform with 1.2 million members studying Korean across 190 nations.
"Now they are part of a 'global phenomenon'; learning Korean has turned into a much cooler pastime," he said.
($1 = 1,194.0000 won)
Reporting by Sangmi Cha; Additional reporting by Yeni Seo, Dogyun Kim and Heejung Jung; editing by Jane Wardell
8. State Department Cable Sees Echoes of Korean Politics in Netflix’s ‘Squid Game’
Why are State "cables"being released to the public? It does not appear that they were released officially.
Excerpts:
Diplomatic cables, which haven’t been sent by actual cable since the 1970s, are used by diplomats overseas to analyze trends within a country, report back on important meetings, and make policy recommendations. Junior diplomats have been known to write their dispatches, which often read like news reports, with flair, using them to get the attention from those in Washington. The most well-known example is late diplomat George Kennan’s “long telegram,” an 8,000-word analysis sent from Moscow that laid the groundwork for the U.S. policy of “containment” during the Cold War.
The cable notes it is part of a series of audience analysis reporting “undertaken to reshape future public diplomacy engagement for Mission Korea.”
Squid Game is the latest in a series of Korean films and television shows to resonate for its depiction of class conditions both domestically and around the world. The 2019 dark comedy Parasite took home the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival and the top prize at the Academy Awards for its depiction of a poor family that schemes to find jobs in a wealthy household. The State Department said its review of local media sources and critics attributed the show’s appeal “to its portrayal of the ‘winner-take-all society’ and ‘class inequality’ in South Korea.”
Although Netflix is not available in North Korea, a state-run website in the Hermit Kingdom used the show to strike at the “beastly” reality of South Korea’s capitalist system, describing the country as one where “human beings are driven into extreme competition and their humanity is being wiped out.”
State Department Cable Sees Echoes of Korean Politics in Netflix’s ‘Squid Game’
Foreign Policy · by Robbie Gramer, Jack Detsch, Amy Mackinnon · October 15, 2021
The dystopian series reflects a “winner-take-all” mentality and South Koreans’ economic frustrations ahead of presidential elections.
NEW FOR SUBSCRIBERS: Click + to receive email alerts for new stories written by Jack Detsch, Robbie Gramer, Amy Mackinnon
A scene from Squid Game. Netflix
Dystopian South Korean show Squid Game debuted on Netflix last month, causing a global sensation and quickly becoming the streaming service’s most popular series ever. It’s even become a topic of water cooler conversation at the State Department.
A diplomatic cable obtained by Foreign Policy describes the violent survival drama as reflective of frustration in Korean society about grim economic conditions ahead of next year’s elections. In the cable, officials indicated that the popular series, which depicts a fictional contest where Korean debtors compete against one another in deadly renditions of children’s games, has resonated in the highly stratified country, especially as politicians from South Korea’s two main parties find themselves caught in scandals ahead of the 2022 race to replace President Moon Jae-in.
“At the heart of the show’s dark story is the frustration felt by the average Korean, and particularly Korean youth, who struggle to find employment, marriage, or upward mobility—proving that grim economic prospects are indeed at the center of Korean society’s woes,” the State Department reported. “As presidential contenders of the two major parties campaign on creating a ‘fair’ and ‘just’ society, their campaign statements are contributing to already growing political cynicism among youth.”
Dystopian South Korean show Squid Game debuted on Netflix last month, causing a global sensation and quickly becoming the streaming service’s most popular series ever. It’s even become a topic of water cooler conversation at the State Department.
A diplomatic cable obtained by Foreign Policy describes the violent survival drama as reflective of frustration in Korean society about grim economic conditions ahead of next year’s elections. In the cable, officials indicated that the popular series, which depicts a fictional contest where Korean debtors compete against one another in deadly renditions of children’s games, has resonated in the highly stratified country, especially as politicians from South Korea’s two main parties find themselves caught in scandals ahead of the 2022 race to replace President Moon Jae-in.
“At the heart of the show’s dark story is the frustration felt by the average Korean, and particularly Korean youth, who struggle to find employment, marriage, or upward mobility—proving that grim economic prospects are indeed at the center of Korean society’s woes,” the State Department reported. “As presidential contenders of the two major parties campaign on creating a ‘fair’ and ‘just’ society, their campaign statements are contributing to already growing political cynicism among youth.”
The cable notes that South Korea has consistently had the highest suicide rate among Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development nations since 2003, and in 2020, it became the leading cause of death for Koreans ages 19 to 29 as young people are increasingly pessimistic about their prospects for upward mobility.
The State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the cable.
U.S. diplomats believe Squid Game has captured the political zeitgeist of a presidential campaign that has become marred by allegations of corruption in both leading parties. Lee Jae-myung, governor of the Gyeonggi region and Moon’s successor as the Democratic Party’s presidential contender, is suspected of giving preferential treatment in a previous position to a real estate firm plagued by scandal.
But rumors of malfeasance go both ways in Korean politics: Yoon Seok-youl, the leading opposition candidate, has been accused by family members of financial wrongdoing, and the son of Kwak Sang-do, a close political ally, was revealed to have received a multimillion-dollar severance payment—reports that have prompted a flurry of Squid Game memes and political cartoons. Memes equating Kwak’s son’s severance to the cash prize provided to winners on the fictional Netflix show have sprung up on internet bulletin boards and social media as well as in top Korean universities.
Diplomatic cables, which haven’t been sent by actual cable since the 1970s, are used by diplomats overseas to analyze trends within a country, report back on important meetings, and make policy recommendations. Junior diplomats have been known to write their dispatches, which often read like news reports, with flair, using them to get the attention from those in Washington. The most well-known example is late diplomat George Kennan’s “long telegram,” an 8,000-word analysis sent from Moscow that laid the groundwork for the U.S. policy of “containment” during the Cold War.
The cable notes it is part of a series of audience analysis reporting “undertaken to reshape future public diplomacy engagement for Mission Korea.”
Squid Game is the latest in a series of Korean films and television shows to resonate for its depiction of class conditions both domestically and around the world. The 2019 dark comedy Parasite took home the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival and the top prize at the Academy Awards for its depiction of a poor family that schemes to find jobs in a wealthy household. The State Department said its review of local media sources and critics attributed the show’s appeal “to its portrayal of the ‘winner-take-all society’ and ‘class inequality’ in South Korea.”
Although Netflix is not available in North Korea, a state-run website in the Hermit Kingdom used the show to strike at the “beastly” reality of South Korea’s capitalist system, describing the country as one where “human beings are driven into extreme competition and their humanity is being wiped out.”
Robbie Gramer is a diplomacy and national security reporter at Foreign Policy. Twitter: @RobbieGramer
Jack Detsch is Foreign Policy’s Pentagon and national security reporter. Twitter: @JackDetsch
Amy Mackinnon is a national security and intelligence reporter at Foreign Policy. Twitter: @ak_mack
9. What Squid Game Is Really About
What Squid Game Is Really About - The American Scholar
A still from the first episode of Squid Game (Park Youngkyu/ ©Netflix/ Everett Collection)
Squid Game on Netflix has become a global phenomenon, breaking viewership records to become the streaming service’s most popular release ever. As someone who regularly grew up with the question, “Are you Chinese or Japanese?” I am still somewhat baffled that South Korea has become an international pop culture powerhouse, and random non-Asian people I know spout the virtues of once-insular stars like Gong Yoo. Even the fact that everyone is saying the quirky, ultra-Korean title Squid Game (even quirkier in the original Korean, with the onomatopoeic word for squid, ojingeo, reminiscent to me of the sound of chewing on savory dried strips of it as a kid) gives me an internal chuckle. The show’s success raises the question: why is South Korea so good at nailing capitalist critiques in its art lately? What’s in the water—or rather soju—there?
The fictional thriller series consists of nine episodes set in modern-day Seoul, where protagonist Seong Gi-Hun is a ne’er-do-well gambler who owes debts to various loan sharks, straining his relationship with his mother and young daughter. A charming, mysterious recruiter at a subway station lures Gi-Hun into a game of ddakji, setting odd but simple rules: if Gi-Hun wins a round, he gets a cash prize; if he loses, he doesn’t owe the recruiter money—he just gets slapped. After playing, the recruiter then offers Gi-Hun a phone number to join “the real game,” which promises far bigger prizes. Financially desperate, Gi-Hun calls the number and ends up kidnapped, unconscious, and brought to a secret location along with 455 other equally desperate contestants, all wearing green tracksuits, identical but for their individual numbers. They are told they will be competing for a grand prize worth roughly $40 million…whose winner, they realize after a shocking first round, will be the last person standing, as once harmless children’s games like “Red Light, Green Light” and tug-o’-war are redefined as unforgiving rungs to hell.
The game’s Gothic underbelly certainly contributes to its success; the show itself is unquestionably brutal, even traumatizing at points—take episode six, in which players are asked to choose partners (whom they presumably trust or feel a connection with) for the upcoming game and are told only afterward that they are partnered to fight each other for elimination … by playing marbles. Heartbreaking betrayals ensue. It is hard not to see parallels to our own lives during the pandemic, when unforgiving life or death decisions have become all too familiar.
Squid Game captures a dangerous juxtaposition of entertainment and subconscious anger, of glossy consumption and the darkest id and zeitgeist of the times. It isn’t even particularly original: as many have noted, it mashes up Hunger Games with the Academy Awards’ 2019 Best Picture, Parasite, and other similar works of the genre. Yet it somehow manages to amplify, supersede even, those already popular works, instead of becoming a clichéd retread. Hwang Dong-Hyuk, the pensive director, intensifies some crucial factors, particularly the human characters and cost, and adds some ingenious twists: the dash of sinister pseudo-innocence in harkening back to childhood games, the vivid hyperreality of a colorful neo-video game landscape, the underground embedding in our present-day world, and, perhaps most harshly of all, the illusory specter of personal choice. When they are introduced to the game, the players are told they can leave via majority vote anytime. They even win one early vote, go back to their miserable, indigent lives, and then voluntarily call to return. In other words, the players in the game choose to stay, albeit under external duress of a corrupt society’s making.
As many have noted, stories like Squid Game and Parasite riff off of our growing societal discomfort with modern-day capitalism and the ever-widening gulf between the rich and the poor. South Korea has become particularly good at encapsulating these issues, perhaps, because of its own seemingly successful yet worrisome postwar story. After a devastating 20th century—in which the first half involved colonial occupation by Imperial Japan, punctuated cruelly in the middle by the Korean War, and then drifting through the second half during the Cold War as a divided nation featuring dictatorships on both sides, the North sponsored by the Soviet Union and the South by the United States—a glimmer of hope emerged when Seoul hosted the 1988 Summer Olympics. The event, combined with the advent of the computer age and other factors, sparked an economic awakening, and then a social one: South Korea became one of the countries with the highest number of Internet users per capita. In addition to the Internet, there was also ideological cross-pollination from a youth class newly educated overseas, mainly in the United States and Europe (sent by elite-education-obsessed parents). South Korea marched like a tiger into the 21st century, with its new business conglomerates (called Chaebols) and a more globally savvy populace, then turned its hungry eye to targeted pop culture diplomacy via K-pop and K-dramas. It rose from an impoverished country in ashes to a global economic and entertainment powerhouse in little more than 30 years.
Yet South Korea is also an ancient, 5,000-year-old culture with deeply embedded social roots based on Confucian (and patriarchal) hierarchy. The country was isolated from the Western world for many centuries and accordingly nicknamed the Hermit Kingdom. The sudden superimposition of contemporary influences on the old underbelly of Korean culture has led to the confusion and angst highlighted in many of their recent works of film and literature. Although South Korea’s economic success has led to some waves of incoming immigration (represented in part by the touching Squid Game character Ali), the nation largely remains one provincially monocultural family crowded within half a peninsula and living mainly in high-rise buildings. With the advent of a stunning megarich class and, in equal measure, an exploited and indebted working class, all living on top of one another, both human ambition and embittered resentment cannot help but build. South Korea does not have the geographical size of the United States, where the rich have the space to hide in cloistered luxury, and the masses can be more easily fooled or distracted with a steady diet of propaganda.
Squid Game cleverly highlights through its characters some of these conflicts: members of the cruelly subjugated migrant class, like Ali; the tragic confusion of North Korean refugees who leave one (still worse) version of hell for a different one, represented by the compelling character Sae-Byeok (which means Dawn); the financial shark social climbers like Sang-Woo, and more. There is also understandable modern ambivalence toward the Confucian deference to the elder class, the members of which can both anchor and destroy the social order, depending on their own underlying values; this conflict is captured in the complex character of Il-Nam, and to some extent in Sang-Woo and Gi-Hun’s kindly, self-sacrificing elderly mothers, who embody perhaps the unsung heroes of Korean society.
Squid Game has emerged alongside the savagely perspicacious vision of artists who have grown up during the chaotic change of the past half-century. Many are members of Generation X, as I am, and I sometimes muse at how I might have lived if my parents had not decided to emigrate to the United States in 1971. This whole generation has witnessed firsthand the almost cartoonish capitalist rise and felt both a sense of awe and cynical skepticism about it. The Oscar-winning film director Bong Joon-Ho is a recent breakout superstar auteur; in Parasite, he married his darkly fantastical sensibilities, reminiscent of Hans Christian Andersen-like fairy tales, with postmodern ultraviolence and Spielbergian cinematic verve, all laced with the bold Korean idiosyncrasy of his earlier movies like Snowpiercer and Okja.
Squid Game obviously owes a lot to Parasite. There is a similar sense of class claustrophobia and a liberal use of allegory to represent the different classes and their clashes. Both works rely heavily on a horror-based, bitterly dark satire, underscored by violence, yet somehow leavened by a saccharine overlay of dissociated innocence. The discordant mishmash of childish humor and horrific darkness in these works feels so Korean, and it has somehow become a globally beloved national stylistic hallmark. If it’s partly an artistic interpretation of Korea’s coping mechanism for what it went through in the 20th century, maybe it’s also simply the nation’s character after centuries of unsuccessful attempts by its neighbors to overrun it. Koreans are sometimes stereotyped as the Irish of the East, because of a tendency toward a more down-to-earth, clannish social order and corresponding readiness to poke fun at oppressive, pretentious elitism. That humor has a scatological streak, while underscored by a beloved devotion to the uninhibited joy of children.
But there is also a great sadness, captured by the cultural mnemonic han, which vaguely translates to a deep-seated internal angst and perpetual sense of doom. Culture-bound psychosomatic syndromes have been tied to han, such as hwabyeong, a condition characterized by stomach pain and anxiety due to a sense of internalized, unaddressed anger. Elevated rates of suicide, domestic violence, and child abuse are also side effects of this untreated PTSD after many Koreans witnessed the annihilation or perpetual exile of family members during the war, and much more.
North Korea remains another tragic backdrop to all of the above. Family members during the Korean War were maliciously separated, never to see or hear from each other again. The ruthless external economic sanctions that continue to punish North Korea only lead to more desperation and entrenched cult worship in its often starving and terrorized citizens. North Korea remains a glaring live grenade, an unhealed and festering wound in the eye of South Korea and the world. A perpetual reminder of the failure of humanity to reunite this needlessly broken family, it’s the ghost-like prisoner in the basement of Parasite, the survivalist dysphoria of Sae-Byeok in Squid Game. North Korea will always haunt everything about South Korea, and everyone in the latter knows it.
The push to succeed at all costs in South Korea has been another post-traumatic coping mechanism. Competitiveness and status-building have reached pathological levels, ranging from clothing brand names to college entrance exams. Some people view South Korea’s capitalist transformation as miraculous, but others see it as obsessive, overwork-based, emotionally neglectful, even manipulative and artificial. The truth is that it may be all of that, but the underlying problems, like the national debt and the wealth gap, are growing. The han is still there, lurking … and in Parasite, it is in your own home, or in Squid Game, it’s in your own neighborhood. Now the whole world sees it. The close-knit elements of human rage at capitalism are readily visible to the auteurs of South Korea, and given that much of global society is also largely beholden now to end-stage capitalism, everyone else sees the universal in the specific. Great art, South Korea proves, can resonate through the prism of one society to shine its toxically bright technicolor onto the world.
Jean Kim, a clinical assistant professor of psychiatry at George Washington University, received her M.A. in writing from Johns Hopkins. She is a blogger for Psychology Today and has written for The Washington Post, The Daily Beast, and other publications.
10. One Korea Network (OKN) and KCPAC (Korean Conservative Political Action Conference) Release Full Color Advertisement in Newspapers in Major Markets in Continuing Campaign to Raise Awareness and Counter the Fake Peace H.R. 3446 Bill - OKN
They are getting pretty aggressive in opposing this legislation that is not informed by reality.
My feelings on the legislation:
Recommendations
Going forward the resolution should not be adopted unless it is amended. Specifically, the findings should be revised to account for the nature, objectives, and strategy of the Kim family. There must be a clear-eyed recognition of how the regime operates and what it seeks to achieve. The ROK, the U.S., and the international community must deal with North Korea as it really is and not as they wish it to be.
Congress must recognize the single most important interest of the U.S. on the Korean peninsula is to deter war. In terms of the end of war declaration and peace agreement, Congress should amend the resolution to include demands that require a sufficient reduction in North Korean conventional military forces along the DMZ to reduce the threat to the ROK and the possibility of the North launching an attack. This resolution must not pass unless it includes requirements for security guarantees of the ROK.
The resolution should include a requirement for procedures to prevent regime financial exploitation and to ensure the safety of any American who travels to the north. Without such procedures in place no American should be authorized to travel to the North unless on official government business.
Conclusion
There is no evidence that Kim Jong-un has given up the regime strategy or its playbook to achieve peninsula domination. It is imperative that the ROK and the U.S. do not provide inadvertent support to that strategy. In fact, they must identify and expose it as the only way to prevent its success and as the only course that could bring Kim to the negotiating table. If he can be shown without a doubt that his strategy has failed he will have no other option but to negotiate. But even if he does agree to negotiate once again, negotiators can never lose sight of the regime’s political warfare strategy.
However, the sad truth is the only way there will likely be an end to the nuclear program and threats as well as the human rights abuses and crimes against humanity being committed against the Korean people living in the north by the mafia-like crime family cult known as the Kim family regime is through achievement of unification and the establishment of a United Republic of Korea. It must be secure and stable, non-nuclear, economically vibrant, and unified under a liberal constitutional form of government based on individual liberty, rule of law, and human rights as determined by the Korean people. In short, a United Republic of Korea (UROK).
That is the goal all Koreans and Americans should be striving to achieve.
One Korea Network (OKN) and KCPAC (Korean Conservative Political Action Conference) Release Full Color Advertisement in Newspapers in Major Markets in Continuing Campaign to Raise Awareness and Counter the Fake Peace H.R. 3446 Bill - OKN
(October 13, 2021, Washington, D.C., U.S.A.): One Korea Network (OKN) and KCPAC (Korean Conservative Political Action Conference) have released a full color advertisement in local newspapers in major cities throughout the United States, in its continuing campaign to counter the fake peace H.R. 3446 bill being pushed by leftists and pro-North Korea supporters in the United States and in South Korea.
The full page advertisement highlighting the dangers of H.R. 3446 and explaining the deadly outcomes that would arise should this bill pass, was carried in the:
– September 29th issue of the Korea Central Daily (Joong Ang Ilbo) in Los Angeles, Dallas, Chicago, New York, Atlanta, and Washington, D.C.;
– October 1st issue of the Korea Times (Hankook Ilbo) in Los Angeles, Dallas, Chicago, New York, Atlanta, and Washington, D.C.;
A half-page advertisement was carried in the September 23rd issue of the Honolulu Star-Advertiser, coinciding with ROK President Moon’s visit to Honolulu following his visit to the UN. This followed the earlier placement of a digital billboard ad in Times Square on September 21st. A full color half-page ad appeared in the Wall Street Journal on September 25-26.
“By placing the ads in Korean-language newspapers in areas with large Korean-American population, our aim is to reach even more Americans of Korean heritage to wake up to the realities of the fake peace H.R. 3446 bill,” said Arthur Lee, OKN’s Regional Director, Washington, D.C. “Our hope is that by directly engaging the community through these advertisements, the people will learn the truth of a bill like this, and get more people to participate in pushing for real peace on the Korean Peninsula,” Lee continued.
“The newspaper advertisements are just one part of our overall campaign to counter this fake peace H.R.3446 bill and push for support for real peace on the Korean Peninsula,” said Grant Newsham, President of KCPAC. “It is our desire that our multi-faceted campaign to counter the fake peace bill, which includes petition drives, educational events, social-media outreach, and in this case, traditional newspaper ads, we can go up against the supporters of this bill who are set on achieving peace at any cost, without any certainty the North Korean regime will change its inhumane and threatening behavior,” continued Newsham.
Citizens can voice their support for real peace by signing on to the petition at:
For media inquiries regarding the advertisement, please contact:
For more information on the Petition Campaign “Countering-H.Res. 3446”, please visit:
https://www.cpackorea.com/
###
11. [Column] Why we should be wary of China’s renewed interest in the Korean War
The key point: China reframing history.
Excerpts:
In his book “A Dialogue Between South Korean and Chinese History Textbooks,” Oh Byeong-su, a researcher at the Northeast Asian History Foundation, argues that under Xi Jinping, China has been reframing not only the Korean War but its entire historical narrative in an attempt to forge a new “state identity.”
“China in premodern times is presented as a ‘cultural empire,’ with emphasis placed on the integration of ethnic minorities under the state and China’s hierarchical relationship with its neighbors. In modern and contemporary history, the historical relationship between China, as a non-Western power, and its neighbors is reduced to a relationship between powerful and weak states. China is building an argument for legitimizing a great power’s intervention throughout the regional order in East Asia,” Oh writes.
We should be cautious when China starts talking about powerful and weak countries, or the Chinese suzerain and its old vassal states, rather than an equal relationship with its neighbors.
Is everyone in China so passionate about the canned patriotism of “The Battle at Lake Changjin”? The state-run press is full of glowing reviews, and photos are circulating online of viewers standing up and saluting the film.
But there are also plenty of dissenting viewpoints and critiques that are removed by censors. Former journalist Luo Changping was arrested and is being questioned for an acerbic post on social media in which he wrote, “Half a century later, few Chinese people have reflected on the justifiability of the war.”
We need to remember that there are many in China who question patriotism imposed from above.
[Column] Why we should be wary of China’s renewed interest in the Korean War
Posted on : Oct.15,2021 17:14 KST Modified on : Oct.15,2021 17:14 KST
By portraying the war as one between US and China, China fails to consider the position of Korea
A person passes by an advertisement for the film “The Battle at Lake Changjin” outside of a movie theater in Beijing, China, on Monday. (AFP/Yonhap News)
The Korean War is currently a hot commodity at the Chinese box office. “The Battle at Lake Changjin,” a film depicting a Korean War battle also known as the Battle of Chosin Reservoir, is on track to become China’s highest-grossing film of all time.Co-directed by Chen Kaike and Tsui Hark, “The Battle at Lake Changjin” cost a record 1.3 billion yuan (US$202 million) to produce. But just 11 days after opening, it had already pulled in more than 4 billion yuan (US$621.44 million) in ticket sales.Why was this film made in China right now? Films about the Korean War — which is officially known in China as “The War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea” — have been either endorsed or dismissed in China, depending on how the political winds are blowing. The 1950s and 1960s, at the height of the Cold War, saw the production of popular Korean War films such as “Battle on Shangganling Mountain” (1956) and “Heroic Sons and Daughters” (1964).But such films nearly vanished after the Sino-US detente in the 1970s. China made it taboo to talk about the Korean War, given its relationship with South Korea and the US, and many Chinese even argued that China’s intervention in the Korean War had been a bad decision that only harmed China.But that trend was reversed after Chinese President Xi Jinping came to power. Xi has emphasized the historical interpretation that China’s military intervention in the Korean War was just. That emphasis signifies two things. First, it means that the Chinese Communist Party was correct to intervene in the war and that no more criticism of China’s involvement will be tolerated. Political propaganda suggesting that China will fight and ultimately defeat the US has gained significance since the new Cold War between the US and China began in 2018.“The Battle at Lake Changjin” attributes the following line to Mao Zedong: “The Yankees may look down on us, but we’ll gain our dignity by fighting this war.”But such patriotic propaganda is also intended to control the grievances caused by rising unemployment and inequality. “The Battle at Lake Changjin” is one of several films about the Korean War to be released in recent years, including “My War” (2016) and “The Sacrifice” (2020), as well as “Sniper,” a film by Zhang Yimou that’s about to be released.But was the Battle at Lake Changjin actually a Chinese victory over the US as presented in the Chinese government’s propaganda? On Nov. 27, 1950, 30,000 American soldiers and 700 Korean soldiers were surrounded by 120,000 Chinese soldiers in a brutal winter that got down to 40 degrees below zero. The UN forces broke out of the Chinese entrapment after 17 days of fighting and managed to be evacuated from the Port of Hungnam. While 7,338 American soldiers were killed, the Chinese are also estimated to have lost between 40,000 and 80,000 soldiers.Rather than debate which side “won” the battle,” we might do well to treat it as a reminder of the horrors of war.What does China’s interpretation of the Korean War mean for Korea? By only considering the outcome of the battle for the two superpowers of the US and China, it fails to consider Koreans’ position, not to mention their sacrifice. Xi’s declaration that China fought a just war in which it resolutely defeated the “intruder” disregards the historical fact that the war was started when North Korea invaded with support from China and the Soviet Union.The issue of China’s participation in the Korean War came up when South Korea and China were negotiating the establishment of diplomatic relations in 1992. In his memoirs, then South Korean Foreign Minister Lee Sang-ok recalls that the South Koreans asked the Chinese for an explanation, “in light of the serious harm and sacrifices imposed on Korean citizens because of [China’s] participation in the war.” But China objected that “raising a historical issue from long ago” would only “provoke unnecessary debate.”But now China is bringing back up “a historical issue from long ago” and exploiting it with the political goal of bolstering patriotism.In his book “A Dialogue Between South Korean and Chinese History Textbooks,” Oh Byeong-su, a researcher at the Northeast Asian History Foundation, argues that under Xi Jinping, China has been reframing not only the Korean War but its entire historical narrative in an attempt to forge a new “state identity.”“China in premodern times is presented as a ‘cultural empire,’ with emphasis placed on the integration of ethnic minorities under the state and China’s hierarchical relationship with its neighbors. In modern and contemporary history, the historical relationship between China, as a non-Western power, and its neighbors is reduced to a relationship between powerful and weak states. China is building an argument for legitimizing a great power’s intervention throughout the regional order in East Asia,” Oh writes.We should be cautious when China starts talking about powerful and weak countries, or the Chinese suzerain and its old vassal states, rather than an equal relationship with its neighbors.Is everyone in China so passionate about the canned patriotism of “The Battle at Lake Changjin”? The state-run press is full of glowing reviews, and photos are circulating online of viewers standing up and saluting the film.But there are also plenty of dissenting viewpoints and critiques that are removed by censors. Former journalist Luo Changping was arrested and is being questioned for an acerbic post on social media in which he wrote, “Half a century later, few Chinese people have reflected on the justifiability of the war.”We need to remember that there are many in China who question patriotism imposed from above.Park Min-hee
12. The United Nations and North Korea: Denuclearization and Human Security
Would China and Russia really support UN Security Council Resolutions to do this?
And of course would north Korea? (I guess I am expressing defeatism here!)
Excerpts:
Conclusion
There are valid reasons to look at the UN’s role on North Korea with some defeatism, given the significant passage of time and the seeming lack of progress, especially on the nuclear security threat. However, breaking down the component areas of the UN’s work in North Korea and taking a step back to look at the multiple problem sets, shows how the UN can and is helping to build progress in important human security areas and contributing to stability on the Korean Peninsula, and it should be empowered and supported to do more.
The work of the UNSC is important and multilateral efforts to curb North Korea’s nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs must continue, but there are limits to what this kind of approach can achieve given the geopolitical realities. Equally important for the international community is not to lose sight of the other side of the security coin and to ensure we are adequately addressing human security needs. It should not be an “either-or” approach. The challenge of integrating these moving forward should not dissuade us from trying.
It is unlikely that there will be a single, comprehensive solution to all the challenges posed by North Korea or a satisfactory theory of change to guide addressing them. In absence of this, the UN Secretariat and its agencies are an important source of multitrack interface between the international community and North Korea and a key channel to learn how to leverage broader transformation of the country and buffer against instability.
The United Nations and North Korea: Denuclearization and Human Security • Stimson Center
The UN can contribute to human security and stability on the Korean Peninsula, and it should be empowered to do more
The breakdown of the latest iteration of U.S.-DPRK negotiations has shown the limits of a security and zero-sum-driven approach at the expense of an increasingly expansive agenda to shore up stability on the Korean Peninsula. The growing friction between the U.S. and China and the way “strategic competition” may shape the geopolitics of the region also engender a reassessment of coercive tools like sanctions. In the face of these challenges, the UN can and does play an important role. Although it is unlikely to broker a breakthrough on the Korean Peninsula, the UN can provide a forum for diplomatic engagement, raise accountability on human rights, provide humanitarian assistance, and build governance capacity in pursuit of peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula. This role for the UN becomes increasingly important as the world enters an ever more difficult situation and uneasy balance with North Korea.
If there were ever a well-suited institution to help address the multifaceted problems posed by the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK or North Korea), it would certainly be the United Nations (UN). Founded 75 years ago on the pillars of peace and security, human rights, rule of law, and development, the UN stands uniquely mandated to address the core issues that have made North Korea an international quandary: a confrontational nuclear weapons and ballistic missile program, widespread human rights violations, and chronic humanitarian issues. The overlapping history of the founding of the UN, the division of the Korean Peninsula, and the involvement of the UN in developing the international response to the Korean War also imbues a sense of responsibility for continued UN engagement and attention to the crisis on the Peninsula.
The reality on the ground is that nearly 70 years since the signing of the armistice agreement that has frozen but not ended the Korean War and 30 years since North Korea’s nuclear weapons program first sparked an international crisis, the path towards peace and security remains elusive. and the risks for conflict and instability are growing. The breakdown of the latest iteration of U.S.-DPRK negotiations has shown the limits of a security- and zero-sum-driven approach at the expense of an increasingly expansive agenda to shore up stability on the Peninsula. Analysts are now raising the hard question of how to ground North Korea policy in a more realistic set of assumptions, namely that immediate (and upfront) denuclearization is untenable. Note: See: Jenny Town, “After the parade, North Korea’s steady progress matters more than its big new missile,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 16 October 2020, https://thebulletin.org/2020/10/after-the-parade-north-koreas-steady-progress-matters-more-than-its-big-new-missile/; Frank Aum and George A. Lopez, “A Bold Peace Offensive to Engage North Korea,” War on the Rocks, 4 December 2020, https://warontherocks.com/2020/12/a-bold-peace-offensive-to-engage-north-korea/; Markus Garlauskas, “It’s Time to Get Real on North Korea,” United States Institute of Peace, 8 February 2021, https://www.usip.org/publications/2021/02/its-time-get-real-north-korea; Eric Brewer and Sue Mi Terry, “It’s Time for Realistic Bargain with North Korea,” Foreign Affairs, 25 March 2021, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/north-korea/2021-03-25/it-time-realistic-bargain-north-korea; Van Jackson, On The Brink, Cambridge University Press, 2019; Adam Mount and Andrea Berger, “Report of the International Study Group on North Korea Policy,” Federation of American Scientists, https://fas.org/wp-content/uploads/media/FAS-DPRK-SG.pdf. The growing friction between the U.S. and China and the way “strategic competition” may shape the geopolitics of the region also engender a reassessment of coercive tools like sanctions.
In the face of these challenges, the UN can and does play an important role. Although it is unlikely to broker a breakthrough on the Korean Peninsula, the UN can provide a forum for diplomatic engagement, raise accountability on human rights, provide humanitarian assistance, and build governance capacity in pursuit of peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula. This role for the UN becomes increasingly important as the world enters an ever more difficult situation and uneasy balance with North Korea.
Key to understanding the opportunities for the UN to contribute in this environment begins first with a delineation of what we mean by the UN and recognition that it is not a monolithic institution. In the context of North Korea, the tendency to think of the UN synonymously with the UN Security Council (UNSC) obfuscates the vast array of UN agencies and the Secretariat that can and have played a meaningful role on a host of issues facing North Korea. Separating the component parts of the UN suggests that an effective “United Nations” lies not with principal member state organs like the UNSC, a political forum where the entrenched interests of member states play out. Instead, the UN’s value comes from its ability to engage on multiple tracks through its independent and specialized agencies carrying out technical work like the UN Development Programme or the UN World Food Programme and the UN Secretariat and Secretary-General, who carry out the substantive and administrative work of the United Nations. This is not to say the activities of the latter are perfect, but to suggest reducing our evaluation of the UN’s role vis-à-vis North Korea to the UNSC’s ability to achieve North Korea’s denuclearization limits creative thinking on how to engage North Korea to address a range of linked challenges to stability on the Peninsula.
How Did We Get Here? The Role of the UNSC
The United Nations Security Council has driven a significant part of the UN’s approach on North Korea and so it bears value to reflect on its role, efficacy, and shaping of the international response. Tasked as the principal UN body for maintaining international peace and security, the UNSC has been a natural forum for this issue. North Korea’s first nuclear test in 2006—in defiance of the nonproliferation principles and against the backdrop of deteriorating multilateral talks—pushed the UNSC to respond by adopting its first sanctions resolution on North Korea, resolution 1718 under its Chapter 7, Article 41 authorities. This first round of UN sanctions included a ban on nonproliferation exports, an arms embargo, asset freezes, and ban on luxury goods, reflecting a shift towards targeted sanctions that started in the mid-1990s following the criticism of the unintended effects of comprehensive sanctions on civilian populations and the recent UNSC oil-for-food corruption scandal in Iraq. Note: “Special Research Report: UN Sanctions,” Security Council Report, https://www.securitycouncilreport.org/research-reports/un-sanctions.php; Robert McMahon, “The Impact of the UN Oil-for-Food Scandal,” Council on Foreign Relations, 11 May 2006, https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/impact-un-oil-food-scandal.
Ten UN Security Council sanctions resolutions later and after dead-end negotiations under U.S. presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump, what started as a narrow sanctions regime meant to target financing of and procurement for its nuclear weapons and ballistic weapons program has turned into a nearly comprehensive embargo. Expanded sanctions measures have included an increasingly long list of banned critical exports and imports, mandatory inspection and interdiction of illicit cargo, prohibition on the employment of North Korean labor, and the excision of North Korea from international financial systems.
Despite the significant breadth of the UN sanctions regime, it has not had the intended effect of “significantly imped[ing] North Korea’s ability to develop further its illicit nuclear and ballistic missile programs, as well as its proliferation activities,” in the words of former U.S. Ambassador to the UN, Susan Rice, who oversaw the adoption of several UNSC resolutions.
Year after year the Panel of Experts (PoE) reports the same basic findings that:
- “The nuclear and ballistic missile programmes of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea remain intact and the country continues to defy Security Council resolutions.” (2019);
- North Korea has developed “evasion techniques that are increasing in scale, scope and sophistication” (2017); and
- “The panel continues to observe Member States’ lack of implementation of the Security Council resolutions, noting that inaction and low reporting levels may be due to lack of will, technical capacity and/or issues within their domestic legal systems” (2016).
Despite the relative consensus that “North Korea’s nuclear and ballistic missile-related activities are a “clear threat to international peace and security,” there is little consensus on how to achieve denuclearization in practice. Entrenched and conflicting member-state interests and shifts in U.S. policy across administrations over time have made a unified UNSC approach impossible. In particular, significant disagreement between the United States and China over how hard to pressure North Korea with sanctions has meant that the adopted sanction resolutions represent significantly negotiated compromises. Moreover, China and Russia have stymied efforts within the 1718 Sanctions Committee to improve sanctions implementation, for example, by reluctantly engaging in new designations and hamstringing efforts to provide clear guidance through implementation assistance notices to member states. Note: Author’s firsthand experience on the 1718 Committee from 2013 to 2014. Stephanie Kleine-Ahlbrandt, a former member of the PoE, criticized the UNSC regime arguing, “Sanctions are ‘pick-and-shovel work,’ requiring constant support and tightening to sustain pressure, close loopholes, and address rapidly changing evasion practices. This necessitates both new resolutions and the implementation of a range of measures to continually prevent sanctions erosion.” Note: Stephanie Kleine-Ahlbrandt,” Maximum Pressure Against North Korea, RIP,” 38 North, 7 October 2019, https://www.38north.org/2019/10/skleineahlbrandt100719/. But the reluctance of a proactive sanctions approach stemming from this geopolitical dynamic has meant that timely sanctions resolutions or new designations are limited to when North Korea launches long-range missiles or engages in nuclear tests, which Kleine-Ahlbrandt argues gives North Korea time to enhance its evasion techniques and stockpile prohibited items. Note: Ibid.
The lack of enforcement measures to address weak implementation or violations further undermines the sanctions regime’s effectiveness. The limits of this are particularly acute in the case of China. As North Korea’s largest trading partner and tacit ally with an interest in reducing sources of instability at its borders, China has used its veto power and influence to manage the pressure valve and shield against its own record of weak implementation. A recent example of this is the delay in agreement on a conversion rate for petroleum exports nearly 4 years after the adoption of Resolution 2397. Note: Min Chao Choy, “China, Russia finally agree with UN on conversion rate for North Korean fuel cap,” NK News, 22 January 2021, https://www.nknews.org/pro/china-russia-finally-agree-with-un-on-conversion-rate-for-north-korean-fuel-cap/. As a result, the PoE report for 2020 included an assessment that North Korea has been able to import between three to eight times the legal fuel limit set out in the latest resolution. Note: UN Security Council, Note by the President of the Security Council – Final report of the Panel of Experts established pursuant to resolution 1874 (2009), 4 March 2021, https://undocs.org/S/2021/211; Chad O’Carroll, “North Korea imported up to eight ties its legal fuel limit in 2020: UN report,” NK News, 10 February 2021, https://www.nknews.org/pro/north-korea-imports-up-to-eight-times-fuel-limit-but-coal-hits-snag-un-report/?t=1622393739654. Despite these UNSC challenges, the tacit consensus that undergirds the sanctions regime provides an important marker for the international community’s strong opposition to North Korea’s nuclear weapons and a ballistic missile program. This multilateralization could also prove important to any future nuclear agreement with North Korea as shown by the durability of the Iran nuclear agreement following a shift in U.S. policy under the Trump administration and its subsequent withdrawal from the agreement. The endorsement of the deal through UNSC Resolution 2231 helped to stymie U.S. efforts to snap back UNSC sanctions that might have endangered the agreement. Note: Kelsey Davenport, “The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) at a Glance,” Arms Control Association, March 2021, https://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/JCPOA-at-a-glance.
More than anything, detached from a sustained diplomatic process or negotiations, the UNSC sanctions become a purely punitive measure that may push the denuclearization horizon further away given how North Korea has shown a capacity to withstand and adapt under UN sanctions. So long as geopolitical deadlock among UNSC members remains, the Council will be limited in its ability to address North Korea’s nuclear and ballistic missile program.
Preventive Diplomacy and the UN Good Offices
When the Security Council adopted Resolution 1718 in 2006, the then North Korean Ambassador to the United Nations, Pak Gil Yon dramatically walked out of the UNSC chamber after announcing that it “totally rejects” the sanction resolution and describing the UNSC actions as “gangster-like.” Note: “UN Slaps sanctions on North Korea,” BBC News, 14 October 2006, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/6051704.stm; United Nations Security Council, 5551st Meeting, S/PV.5551, 14 October 2006, https://www.un.org/ga/search/view_doc.asp?symbol=S/PV.5551. The 2006 episode is a good illustration of the contentious relationship between the UNSC and North Korea and the limits of that body as a diplomatic channel. North Korea has regularly refused to participate in subsequent UNSC meetings, often calling the UNSC resolutions illegal. Note: Michelle Ye Hee Lee, “North Korea Lashes out over ‘vicious’ U.N. sanctions,” Washington Post, 12 September 2017, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/north-korea-lashes-out-over-vicious-un-sanctions/2017/09/12/88be9caa-97b9-11e7-af6a-6555caaeb8dc_story.html. However, just because North Korea compartmentalizes its engagement with the UN—like refusing to engage with the UNSC—it does not mean that the UN should likewise limit its engagement. In fact, it should compel the UN to redouble its engagement through other channels like the UN Secretariat and Secretary-General.
As a principally peace-making organization, the UN Secretariat and the Secretary-General have a stake in peace and security on the Korean Peninsula and the UN Charter outlines such responsibilities in Articles 98 and 99. Note: “The Secretary-General & Mediation,” United Nations, https://peacemaker.un.org/peacemaking-mandate/secretary-general. With such hostility towards the UNSC, the UN Secretary-General and Secretariat can use their good offices to serve as an independent bridge, open lines of communication, and promote a peaceful resolution during especially tense periods. Channels of communication are important means to relay messages, test proposals, and reduce misinterpretation—the underlying logic of many strategic dialogues between adversarial partners.
A December 2017 trip to North Korea by then UN Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs Jeffrey Feltman demonstrates the value of such good offices. Invited by DPRK Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho, Feltman and his visit offered a low-risk opportunity to defuse tensions, which at the time seemed on the precipice of leading to some kind of confrontation following North Korean nuclear testing and intercontinental ballistic missile launch and threatening verbal exchange between the U.S. and North Korea. However, the U.S. State Department expressed its strong opposition to the trip, arguing, “The first UN Secretariat political trip in nearly 8 years would legitimize Pyongyang’s nuclear and ballistic missile program… and reward bad behavior.” Note: “Evolving Roles of the United Nations in the Korean Peace Process,” National Committee on North Korea, 17 December 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ULQDu3raCjw. The trip only proceeded when it was brought directly to then-President Trump’s attention, who encouraged the trip, saying, “Jeff Feltman should go to Pyongyang and Jeff Feltman should tell the North Koreans I’m willing to sit down with Kim Jong-Un.” Note: “How Trump Offered Kim a ride on Air Force One,” BBC News, 20 February 2021, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-56118936.
It is hard to say with any definitive sense the impact Feltman’s trip made, as he himself admits, but it undoubtedly helped to corroborate the seriousness of U.S. diplomacy and perhaps set up a small test of North Korean seriousness. While in North Korea, Feltman encouraged Ri Yong Ho to engage the UNSC, and just a week later North Korea’s Ambassador to the UN Ja Song Nam made a rare appearance at a UNSC meeting. The trip was an important intervention by the UN Secretariat and Secretary-General to do what they could to open lines of communication, reduce the risk of miscalculation, and prevent conflict that seemed imminent. It helped to show the UN as a reliable and credible messenger and the role it could play in preparing the diplomatic environment. This channel of communication can be particularly useful for the United States since communication itself between the U.S. and North Korea has been highly political. Instead of discouraging this positive role, member states like the US should empower and support this role. As Feltman has said, it should not be controversial for UN officials to meet its UN member state representatives. Note: “Evolving Roles of the United Nations in the Korean Peace Process.”
The UN and Human Security in North Korea
North Korea has never been just a nuclear problem, and to treat it as such ignores the significant and equally important human security challenges in North Korea like human rights, humanitarian assistance, development, and other advancements in the welfare of the North Korean people. Engaging North Korea on these issues unconditionally and consistently will ultimately help to ensure greater stability on the Peninsula and to push the country towards transformation. Note: Adam Mount and Andrea Berger, “Report of the International Study Group on North Korea Policy,” Federation of American Scientists, https://fas.org/wp-content/uploads/media/FAS-DPRK-SG.pdf However, the burden of political capital, capacity, or will of any singular country to do this alone is insurmountable. That is in part why the United Nations exists, and the strength of the institution is its ability to engage the North on these multiple fronts simultaneously through its specialized agencies and the Secretariat. This kind of engagement can and should be an anchor of the international community’s interface with North Korea, as negotiations and progress on security issues wax and wane.
The current pandemic is helping to show some of the collective security and stability risks of not engaging and pushing progress on these human security issues. North Korea’s decision to shut down its borders is taking its economic and political isolation to an extreme and revealing the precariousness of the North Korean situation. An under-resourced public health system, widespread malnutrition, and limited access to clean water are compounding problems in North Korea that predate the pandemic, but they have made it especially vulnerable to highly infectious diseases like COVID-19. While it remains unclear at present what the status of infections might be in the country, it is clear that an outbreak could be devastating and hard to contain. In a worst-case scenario, an uncontrolled outbreak could act as a transmission vector to China and South Korea just when those countries have reduced their own infection rates. In an increasingly globalized world, transnational challenges and crises, such as pandemics but also climate change, are showing that we are only as strong as our weakest link. And while the external risks are important, the internal burdens are even greater. Tomás Ojea Quintana, the UN Special Rapporteur on human rights in North Korea, warned in March, “The further isolation of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea with the outside world during the COVID-19 pandemic appears to exacerbate entrenched human rights violations.” Note: Stephanie Nebehay, “North Korea measures to stem COVID-19 worsens abuses, hunger: U.N. expert,” Reuters, 3 March 2021, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-northkorea-rights/north-korea-measures-to-stem-covid-19-worsen-abuses-hunger-u-n-expert-idUSKBN2AV1B2. Moreover, the depressed state of trade for over a year does not bode well for the food security situation in the country and concerns loom large with the memory of the 1990s famine in the country.
The UN has a long track record of humanitarian assistance to the country with six resident UN entities (FAO, UNDP, UNFPA, UNICEF, WFP, and WHO Note: Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), UN Development Programme (UNDP), UN Population Fund (UNFPA), UN International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF), World Food Programme (WFP), and the World Health Organization (WHO). ) working to provide assistance to the country’s most vulnerable groups in areas of food security, nutrition, health, and water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH). Note: “The UN Strategic Framework 2017-2021,” United Nations DPR Korea, https://dprkorea.un.org/en/10156-un-strategic-framework-2017-2021. The latest annual report from the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), which outlines the humanitarian needs and priorities in North Korea, estimates that 10.4 million people, roughly 40% of the population, are in need of some form of life-saving assistance, with the UN agencies working to target half that population. However, chronic underfunding is a significant issue that has forced agencies to scale back programs, and OCHA warns that some partners may be forced to “close projects that serve as a lifeline for millions of people.” Note: “DPR Korea Needs and Priorities 2020,” UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, April 2020, https://reliefweb.int/report/democratic-peoples-republic-korea/dpr-korea-needs-and-priorities-2020-issued-april-2020. Over the last five years, the annual humanitarian appeals have only been 20% funded on average. Note: “DPR Korea Needs and Priorities 2020,” OCHA Financial Tracking Service, https://fts.unocha.org/appeals/935/summary. At a CSIS conference in 2018, UNICEF Deputy Executive Director Shallene Hall lamented that these funding challenges are rolling back hard-earned progress. She noted UNICEF has steadily gained more access to previously closed-off counties, like in the sensitive Jagang Province, but there is no aid to bring to the country or programs to monitor because of underfunding.
COVID-19 restrictions have made this work even more difficult, with the World Food Programme (WFP) warning that it may be forced to close programs if restrictions on food imports cannot be addressed. Note: Jeongmin Kim, “More than half of North Korea is hungry, and a UN food program may soon drop out,” NK News, 24 February 2021, https://www.nknews.org/2021/02/more-than-half-of-north-korea-is-hungry-and-a-un-food-program-may-soon-drop-out/. Related travel restrictions have forced all UN staff out of the country. Despite these challenges, this humanitarian bridge is critical to the UN’s work, and navigating the return of assistance as well as facilitation, monitoring, and distribution of COVID-19 vaccines to the country through the COVAX mechanism is the next priority and challenge for the UN humanitarian agencies.
Notwithstanding the pandemic and funding challenges, the UN and the international community should consider expanding this humanitarian agenda towards development. For the first time since the 2030 UN Sustainable Development Goals were adopted in 2015, North Korea submitted a voluntary report in June 2021 on its progress towards meeting the goals. Note: “Democratic People’s Republic of Korea Voluntary National Review on the Implementation of the 2030 Agenda,” UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, June 2021, https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/content/documents/282482021_VNR_Report_DPRK.pdf. While the self-reporting should be reviewed with some degree of healthy skepticism, the report can also be seen as a barometer of North Korean priorities, interests, and, therefore, areas potentially open for strategic engagement. Note: Won-Gi Jung, “DPRK says it’s pursuing sustainable development, but experts remain skeptical,” NK News, 14 July 2021, https://www.nknews.org/2021/07/dprk-says-its-pursuing-sustainable-development-but-experts-remain-skeptical/. For example, North Korea acknowledges slow progress in ensuring safe drinking water and clean sanitation and lack of capacity of health personnel, areas where the UN has been supporting and could help to expand international engagement—but where it remains limited by underfunding.
Human rights are also a significant area where the UN has contributed a valiant effort to obtain accountability in North Korea. International NGOs have worked tirelessly to document human rights violations in the country, and the landmark 2014 Commission of Inquiry Report on the human rights situation in North Korea was a significant achievement. The Report provided high-level attention to human rights in North Korea, consolidated an evidence-based record of abuses, and laid down a strong marker of the international community’s opposition to the widespread human rights violations in the country and possible crimes against humanity. The establishment of a UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) office in 2015 to provide continuous monitoring of the DPRK human rights situation is also a critical accountability mechanism of the UN. While North Korea has continued to deny access to UN human rights officials to investigate, in 2017 North Korea surprisingly invited Catalina Devandas Aguilar, the UN Special Rapporteur for Persons with Disabilities (appointed by the UN Human Rights Council), to visit. While a single visit alone does not reflect progress in human rights, it shows an opening where the UN can continue to push for engagement, change, and capacity building. Former Under-Secretary-General Feltman has also revealed that the DPRK participated for the first time in a human rights workshop convened by OHCHR in May 2019, sending four representatives from the Supreme People’s Assembly and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Note: “Evolving Roles of the United Nations in the Korean Peace Process.”
Disaster risk reduction, especially in light of climate change, is an area that seems particularly ripe for engagement and capacity building. In 2020, North Korea experienced an unprecedented season of typhoons, with some hitting in areas already reeling from previous damage. While North Korea has improved its early warning measures, as Benjamin Katzeff Silberstein has noted in his observation of state media sharing greater information about pending weather and risk, other gaps remain in its disaster risk management practices. Note: Benjamin Katzeff Silberstein, “North Korea’s Disaster Management: Getting Better, but a Long Way to Go,” 38 North, 14 September 2020, https://www.38north.org/2020/09/bkatzeffsilberstein091420/. North Korea continues to rebuild houses in flood zones, and, as Jay Song and Benjamin Habib note in The Diplomat, this “rush to re-build in vulnerable locations, without accompanying flood protection infrastructure, betrays an ideological approach that eschews real expertise in flood mitigation in official planning.” Note: Jay Song and Benjamin Habib, “Typhoons and Human Insecurity in North Korea,” The Diplomat, 21 October 2020, https://thediplomat.com/2020/10/typhoons-and-human-insecurity-in-north-korea/. With such weather activities only likely to increase in frequency and intensity due to climate change, greater capacity building through the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) and support to North Korea’s implementation of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction can be an opportunity and should be a priority.
Conclusion
There are valid reasons to look at the UN’s role on North Korea with some defeatism, given the significant passage of time and the seeming lack of progress, especially on the nuclear security threat. However, breaking down the component areas of the UN’s work in North Korea and taking a step back to look at the multiple problem sets, shows how the UN can and is helping to build progress in important human security areas and contributing to stability on the Korean Peninsula, and it should be empowered and supported to do more.
The work of the UNSC is important and multilateral efforts to curb North Korea’s nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs must continue, but there are limits to what this kind of approach can achieve given the geopolitical realities. Equally important for the international community is not to lose sight of the other side of the security coin and to ensure we are adequately addressing human security needs. It should not be an “either-or” approach. The challenge of integrating these moving forward should not dissuade us from trying.
It is unlikely that there will be a single, comprehensive solution to all the challenges posed by North Korea or a satisfactory theory of change to guide addressing them. In absence of this, the UN Secretariat and its agencies are an important source of multitrack interface between the international community and North Korea and a key channel to learn how to leverage broader transformation of the country and buffer against instability.
Esther S. Im works at the National Committee on North Korea, an NGO based in Washington, DC working to promote greater engagement and diplomacy between the United States and North Korea, including through humanitarian assistance, Track II dialogue, and other people-to-people exchange. Previously, she was a Junior Fulbright Researcher in South Korea (2015-16) and a Researcher at the Permanent Mission of the Republic of Korea to the United Nations, where she covered DPRK sanctions, nonproliferation, and disarmament issues during South Korea’s rotation on the Security Council (2013-15). Esther has a M.Sc. in Foreign Service from Georgetown University (MSFS) and a B.A. in International Relations-Political Science from Wellesley College.
This issue brief is part of a series on strategic stability, disarmament, and Northeast Asia. The views expressed do not necessarily represent those of the East Asia program, the Stimson Center, or the National Committee on North Korea.
V/R
David Maxwell
Senior Fellow
Foundation for Defense of Democracies
Phone: 202-573-8647
Twitter: @davidmaxwell161
FDD is a Washington-based nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.
