[Cankor] Report #207

[cankor at cankor.ca]

Dear subscriber,

Welcome to issue #207 of the CanKor Report.

For articles not original to CanKor, direct links are available in the
Contents section, should you wish to consult the originals on the internet.
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The CanKor team

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CANADA-KOREA ELECTRONIC INFORMATION SERVICE

CanKor # 207

Friday, 27 May 2005

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The DPRK officially denies that it has plans to test a nuclear bomb, while 
the Pentagon announces it is preparing for the possibility that the DPRK 
will abandon the six-party talks. Experts who argue the DPRK will not 
conduct a nuclear test say the mystery surrounding its nuclear capabilities 
is its greatest bargaining chip. Meanwhile, the UN World Food Programme 
warns that food is running out as new pledges of food aid fail to 
materialize.



In a KCNA editorial sent to CanKor by the DPRK Permanent Mission to the 
United Nations in New York, the USA is criticized for drawing up 
international black lists of "unstable states." The KCNA views these as hit 
lists for regime change. Countries included in these lists are either 
ideological opponents, or happen to be in regions of strategic interest to 
the goal of creating a unipolar world dominated by the USA.



The USA has withdrawn its search teams for service personnel lost in the 
Korean War, citing increasingly "intolerable" conditions imposed upon them 
by the DPRK.



For the first time in two decades, DPR Korean ships dock at ROK ports to 
pick up this year's first load of fertilizer aid. The rare voyage across the 
closed maritime border between the two Koreas indicates both an increased 
openness and a desperate need for outside help to address its food 
shortages.



The ROK has unveiled a plan for development aid to the DPRK by focusing 
efforts on two large cities and four smaller zones. These measures will help 
"prepare Koreans for the post-unification era," says Seong Kyoung-ryung, 
head of the Presidential Committee on Balanced National Development.



In one of the first efforts to come out of the US North Korea Human Rights 
Act, Freedom House, a US-based human rights think tank, will hold a 
conference in July to raise international awareness of human rights 
conditions in the DPRK.



More footage has appeared allegedly depicting DPR Korean dissent. Among 
North Korea watchers, there is some debate about whether the filmmakers were 
motivated mainly by their opposition to the government or by greed. Many of 
the videos have been sold to Japanese television stations, which have paid 
as much as $200,000 for choice footage, according to some accounts.

Amnesty International has released its annual report on human rights 
violations worldwide. It blames the DPRK for using access to food as a means 
of political control.

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Contents:

1.        DPRK DENIES PLAN FOR NUCLEAR BOMB TEST

http://www.iht.com/bin/print_ipub.php?file=/articles/2005/05/27/news/korea.php

2.        KCNA BLASTS US AMBITION FOR "UNIPOLAR WORLD"

DPRK Press Release, direct to CanKor

3.        US STOPS SEARCH FOR MIAs

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4581303.stm

4.        DPR Korean SHIPS ARRIVE IN ROK TO PICK UP FERTILIZER

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/22/international/asia/22cnd-korea.html?ex=1117598400&en=237bf8bbf4277bc4&ei=5070

5.        SEOUL UNVEILS PLAN fOr DPRK DEVELOPMENT AID

http://joongangdaily.joins.com/200505/25/200505252255052209900090209021.html

6.        US NGO PLANS JULY CONFERENCE ON DPRK HUMAN RIGHTS

http://joongangdaily.joins.com/200505/25/200505252329405579900090309031.html

7.        SECRET DPR KOREAN FOOTAGE SUGGESTS NASCENT DISSENT

http://joongangdaily.joins.com/200505/25/200505252255052209900090209021.html

8.        AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL REPORTS DENIAL OF RIGHT TO FOOD

http://english.yna.co.kr/Engnews/20050525/430100000020050525155459E2.html

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1.        DPRK DENIES PLAN FOR NUCLEAR BOMB TEST

by Choe Sang-Hun, International Herald Tribune, 28 May 2005



North Korea has denied it was getting ready for a nuclear test, while the 
Pentagon said it was preparing for the possibility that the Communist state 
had decided to abandon six-nation talks on ending its nuclear weapons 
development. In a commentary broadcast on Thursday night, Korean Central 
Television, the isolated North's only nationwide network, accused the United 
States of spreading "a fabrication that there are some kind of missile tests 
and signs of an underground nuclear test."

The commentary said the "US war maniacs' rackets reflect their dark intent 
to find an excuse to launch a pre-emptive nuclear strike against our 
republic." It said it was only natural for North Korea "to further 
strengthen its nuclear deterrent force."

Confusion over whether North Korea would test a bomb, even among scientific 
and political experts, is a clear reflection of the regime's tactics on 
nuclear policy, these experts say. They summarize the North's approach as 
"strategic ambiguity" - that is, a policy of making concerned nations guess 
about the North's intent and become anxious enough to make concessions.

Experts who argue that North Korea would not test a bomb say that the shrewd 
regime that has flummoxed a succession of US administrations will never 
abandon its biggest bargaining chip: the mystery surrounding its nuclear 
capabilities. Other analysts say North Korea might be ready to abandon 
disarmament talks completely and prove itself as a nuclear power with a 
test, even though it would have to bear economic retaliations from 
Washington.

In Washington, Deputy Undersecretary of Defence Richard Lawless told a 
congressional hearing on Thursday that North Korea may have suspended 
participation in six-nation talks to gain additional rewards.

"At the same time, we are preparing ourselves for the possibility the DPRK 
has made a strategic decision to abandon the talks," he told lawmakers. DPRK 
is short for the North's official name, Democratic People's Republic of 
Korea.

The North Korean TV commentary Thursday caught attention, because all of the 
country's media are tightly controlled by the Stalinist regime and their 
contents dutifully follow the official lines. Outside monitors scrutinize 
them for early hints of an impending official pronouncement.

Earlier this month, US officials said North Korea might be preparing for an 
underground nuclear test and warned that such a move would scuttle 
six-nation efforts to end the nuclear crisis by diplomacy and lead to "other 
options," including UN sanctions. As signs of a possible test, they cited 
satellite images that showed North Koreans were digging tunnels and building 
an alleged reviewing stand.

Officials in Seoul and Beijing have rejected such interpretations. They say 
that digging tunnels is not unusual in North Korea, where all sensitive 
military facilities are kept underground. The North may also be setting up 
mock facilities to fool US spy satellites.

"We have said we don't have any intelligence that North Korea may be 
preparing for a nuclear test," Lee Kyu Hyung, South Korean Foreign Ministry 
spokesman, said Friday. "There is no change to that position."

Until now, North Korea had sidestepped addressing the reports of a possible 
test with enigmatic comments. On May 10, a North Korean newspaper accused 
Washington of making a "fuss based on its own opinion."

There were more mixed signals. On Thursday, North Korea said it would never 
"beg for dialogue or peace." On Friday, South Korea said the North had 
agreed to allow Western businessmen to visit the country to negotiate orders 
in the first inter-Korean joint industrial park in Kaesong, near the border 
with the South.

Speaking in Washington at the congressional hearing, Assistant Secretary of 
State Christopher Hill said that unproductive diplomacy could not go on 
indefinitely. He said: "We have to start achieving results soon. I don't 
want to put a deadline, but clearly this can't go on forever."

Two weeks ago, State Department officials met North Korea's UN diplomats 
with a message that Washington recognizes the North's sovereignty and had no 
plans to invade, and urged North Korea to return to the talks with the 
United States, South Korea, China, Japan and Russia. North Korea said it 
would respond when "an appropriate time comes."

A food shortage crisis in North Korea is growing more severe by the day and 
the Communist state is dispensing "starvation rations" to its population, a 
top UN official said on Friday, Reuters reported from Seoul. The crisis has 
grown dire as international aid is drying up and food stocks from last 
year's harvest grow short, Anthony Banbury, the regional director for Asia 
of the UN's World Food Program, told a news conference in Seoul.

"There is now a food crisis in North Korea and that crisis is getting worse 
by the week, and by the day," Banbury said.

The situation is not as dire as the mid 1990s when over an estimated one 
million North Koreans died of starvation, but the current situation could 
deteriorate and bring about widespread famine, he said. Banbury said North 
Korea bears a large measure of responsibility for the current food-shortage 
crisis.

North Korea has spent heavily to develop an atomic arsenal. It recently 
declared it has nuclear weapons, pulled out of talks on ending its nuclear 
ambitions and shut a nuclear reactor so that it could extract fissile 
material, which could be used to build plutonium bombs.

"This has not been conducive for helping the atmosphere for donations," 
Banbury said. "In my conversation with all our major donors, one consistent 
theme emerges, and that is great frustration with the policies of the North 
government."

The WFP has stepped up monitoring of who receives the food aid it dispenses 
in North Korea and believes its food aid does not go to feed the North's 
million-man army, Banbury said. The WFP aims to provide food assistance to 
about 6.5 million North Koreans in a population of about 22.5 million.

Those who are suffering the most these days are the urban poor, who have 
become more impoverished due to nascent economic reforms started in 2002 
that have eaten away at the their incomes, aid agencies have said.

The North Korean government provides about 250 grams, or about two bowls of 
rice, in food rations a day. Banbury said the ration was currently about 
half of what the World Health Organisation recommends as the minimum daily 
health requirement. Pyongyang may cut the ration to 200 grams a day as food 
supplies run short, he said.

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2.        KCNA BLASTS US AMBITION FOR "UNIPOLAR WORLD"

Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) editorial, Pyongyang, 25 May 2005



The US arbitrary practices to dominate the international arena are 
unlimited. Recently the US has drawn up a list of "unstable states" in 
secrecy. The list is said to include the DPRK and 24 other countries which 
the National Intelligence Committee selected as the "extremely dangerous or 
unstable countries" at the request of the US administration.

The point at issue is that the list was premised on the necessary US 
intervention under the pretext of "the settlement of dispute" and "peace." 
This is an open attempt to invent a pretext for meddling in the internal 
affairs of other countries.

The US has been busy working out "international black lists" under various 
names in recent years in a bid to attain its target of "world strategy." 
Involved in it are not only the US administration including the CIA but 
Congress and "think tanks" which influence state policy-making.

Put on the lists are countries situated in the regions of strategic 
importance and countries "systems and value" of which the US deems can be 
changed and used in countering their neighbouring potential powers. Namely 
those countries which disobey the US over political and economic issues and 
regional matters are on the lists. On those lists the US labelled those 
countries as part of an "axis of evil," "outposts of tyranny," "bankrupt 
states," "sponsors of terrorism," "violators of religious freedom," "major 
drug producers and purchasers," etc. It, at the same time, classified the 
countries into the category against which force would be used.

The US has become premeditated and persistent in its moves to build up 
public opinion in favour of "justifying" its monstrous crimes such as 
isolating and encircling those countries and applying sanctions against them 
and mounting even military attacks on them and overturning their 
governments. Its smear campaign against the DPRK is part of these moves.

The US is working hard to impair the DPRK's international image by creating 
the impression that it is a "challenger to the call of the international 
community" in a bid to bring about an atmosphere favourable for implementing 
its policy and totally stifle it politically and militarily in the end. This 
is the orientation of present US policy towards the DPRK.

The gravity of such moves of the US lies in that they are, in essence, 
prompted by its extreme ambition to overthrow and eliminate the countries 
contrary to the American view on value and anti-US independent countries one 
by one and thus convert the world into a "unipolar world" dominated by it. 
The US succeeded in seeking regime changes in Afghanistan, Iraq and some 
other countries and regions through military attacks and interference in 
others' internal affairs under the pretexts of "combating terrorism" and 
"spreading democracy." Having got extremely arrogant, the US is behaving 
like a world "emperor" wherever it goes in the world.

The US is seriously mistaken if it thinks its unilateralism can always work 
on the present times.

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3.        US STOPS SEARCH FOR MIAs

BBC, 25 May 2005



The United States has suspended its efforts to recover the remains of 
missing US servicemen in North Korea. A Pentagon spokesman said the 
restrictions placed on the US teams inside North Korea were too great to 
make recovery operations feasible. The decision comes amid mounting tension 
over North Korea's nuclear ambitions.

The teams have been searching the reclusive state for the remains of Korean 
War casualties since 1996. They have recovered hundreds of sets of remains, 
and North Korea has been paid millions of dollars. But the North Koreans - 
who are sensitive to having foreigners on their soil for fear of espionage - 
have always strictly controlled the movements and communications of the 
American teams.

The US said on Wednesday that the conditions under which its recovery teams 
worked had become intolerable. A US government official said the final straw 
was the refusal by the North Korean authorities to allow any kind of 
communication system operating between teams in different areas. The 
official said this had become a safety issue for American personnel and the 
recovery operations had been suspended.

"North Korea has, over the last several weeks, created an atmosphere and an 
environment unconducive to the continued presence of American personnel in 
North Korea," said Lt Cmdr Jason Salata, a spokesman for US Pacific Command.

But a statement by the command said the co-operation would be resumed if an 
"appropriate environment" was created. BBC Pentagon correspondent Adam 
Brookes says that these operations are one of only a tiny handful of 
official contacts between the US and North Korea.

Their suspension reflects the near-impossibility of co-operation between the 
two countries on even the simplest of tasks, he says. The programme has been 
suspended once before. There are still about 8,000 US servicemen classed as 
missing in North Korea, and many of their remains are thought to be 
recoverable.

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4.        DPR KOREAN SHIPS ARRIVE IN ROK TO PICK UP FERTILIZER

by Choe Sang-hun, International Herald Tribune, 22 May 2005



North Korean cargo ships docked in South Korean ports today for the first 
time in two decades to take home fertilizer urgently needed for crops to 
ease chronic food shortages.

The rare voyages across the closed maritime border between the two Koreas 
indicated that North Korea might be opening up to the outside despite 
tensions over its nuclear weapons program. They also highlighted the 
Communist state's desperate need for outside help to address its food 
shortages.

Donations for North Korea from around the world have dwindled in the last 
two years, raising fears that United Nations relief organizations may not 
have enough this year to feed six million needy North Koreans, most of them 
children and elderly, according to the United Nation's World Food Program.

The State Department said Friday that Washington was weighing North Korea's 
needs against hunger in other countries. But its decision on aid for the 
North will not depend on whether the country decides to rejoin nuclear 
disarmament talks, according to the department spokesman, Richard Boucher. 
The United States donated 50,000 tons of food for North Korea last year.

Last week, when the two Koreas held their first high-level talks in 10 
months, South Korea agreed to give the North 200,000 tons of fertilizer. 
North Korea agreed to hold cabinet-level talks with the South in June but 
resisted a South Korean demand that it return to six-nation talks on ending 
its nuclear weapons programs.

South Korea began shipping the fertilizer on Saturday, when 50 trucks 
rumbled across the mine-infested land border to deliver 1,250 tons. The 
trucking will continue for a week. At the same time, three North Korean 
cargo ships sailed into South Korean waters early today. The first of them 
docked in Ulsan port on the southeastern coast of South Korea. Seven more 
North Korean freighters, and a fleet of South Korean vessels, will later 
join the shipping operation, which will continue into June, according to the 
South Korean Unification Ministry.

The last time North Korean ships entered a South Korean port was in 1984, 
when the ships were carrying North Korean rice and cement for typhoon 
victims in South Korea. But North Korea's farm industry was devastated by 
bad weather and mismanagement in the mid-1990's. The country has since 
relied on outside aid to help feed its 22 million people. Up to 2 million 
people have died of famine or hunger-related diseases in the isolated North, 
according to outside estimates. Thousands of North Koreans flee to China 
each year to seek food, work or political freedom.

The South Koreans, many of whom have relatives in the North, remain one of 
the biggest donors. From 1995 to 2004, they provided the North with $1.2 
billion in government and private aid. The latest fertilizer shipment is 
worth 90 billion won, or $89.6 million.

For almost a year, North Korea has been boycotting the six-nation talks that 
bring together the United States, the two Koreas, China, Japan and Russia to 
find a way of ending North Korea's nuclear weapons development. At the talks 
last week, North Korea asked for 500,000 tons of fertilizer and an 
unspecified amount of food aid. The South said it could discuss more aid 
once the two sides meet again in Seoul in June. It will use the June meeting 
to continue pressure on the North to return to the stalled six-nation 
meeting.

The International Crisis Group, an independent nongovernmental group, said 
last week that North Korea should not receive significant international 
development assistance until it strikes a deal to give up its nuclear 
weapons. But it called for some "preliminary steps," like training North 
Korean officials in financial and market economic skills

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5.        SEOUL UNVEILS PLAN fOr DPRK DEVELOPMENT AID

by Lee Chul-hee, Joong Ang Ilbo, 26 May 2005



The chief South Korean policymaker for the country's development said 
yesterday Seoul is planning to aid North Korea by focusing efforts on two 
large cities and four smaller zones.

Seong Kyoung-ryung, head of the Presidential Committee on Balanced National 
Development, unveiled the plan at a special lecture hosted by Grand National 
Party lawmakers. Mr. Seong said North Korea's abandonment of nuclear arms 
programs and peaceful relations between the two Koreas were preconditions 
for implementing the assistance plan.

Tentatively naming the support program as "two plus four," Mr. Seong said 
Pyongyang and Wonsan in the North had been targeted for development aid.
Kaesong, Sinuiju, Rajin-Sonbong and Mount Kumgang are also named as areas 
into which major assistance would flow.

"We should reshape the nation's structure from the current system of one 
focal point to a more dynamic system with multiple focal points," he said. 
"That will maximize the nation's power and prepare Koreans for the 
post-unification era."

The presidential committee said the plan will also allow the communist 
country to resolve problems from excessive concentration of development 
around the capital Pyongyang.

Unification Minister Chung Dong-young said in January South Korea will 
provide massive assistance to the North as soon as Pyongyang begins 
dismantling its nuclear programs. Up until yesterday, the Ministry of 
Unification had no notion of such a plan.

"Development projects in North Korea will require astronomical amounts of 
money," said Yim Tae-hee, deputy floor leader of the Grand National Party. 
"If carried out, it must be done with a consensus of the people of South 
Korea."

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6.        US NGO PLANS JULY CONFERENCE ON DPRK HUMAN RIGHTS

by Kang Chan-ho, Joong Ang Ilbo, 26 May 2005



In one of the first efforts to come out of the US North Korea Human Rights 
Act, Freedom House, a US-based human rights organization, will hold a 
large-scale conference in July to raise international awareness of abuses 
committed by the communist regime led by Kim Jong-il.

In an interview, Jae Ku, director of the North Korea program at Freedom 
House, said the organization will hold the conference on July 19 at the 
National Building Museum in Washington, D.C. The gathering will be first of 
three that are planned, Mr. Ku said.

The US State Department has provided $1.97 million to Freedom House this 
year from the $2 million budget earmarked for international conventions on 
North Korea.

Mr. Ku said US congressmen and prominent religious figures as well as South 
Korea's rights activists supporting North Korean defectors will participate 
in the event. He said the organization will urge South Korea to actively 
address the rights abuses in the North, although he understands Seoul's 
delicate position in not wanting to irritate the North Korean leadership. 
Freedom House plans to hold the second conference in Seoul toward the end of 
the year and the third in Europe next spring.

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7.        SECRET DPR KOREAN FOOTAGE SUGGESTS NASCENT DISSENT

by Barbara Demick, LA Times, 26 May 2005



With shaking hands, the North Korean climbed onto the shoulders of a buddy 
to reach the underside of the bridge. As another accomplice stood guard, he 
hung up a banner denouncing North Korean leader Kim Jong Il in bright red 
paint. Then he took out a video camera, disguised to look like a carton of 
cigarettes, and filmed his handiwork for posterity.

Today, the North Korean who says he shot the video on behalf of a group 
called the Freedom Youth League lives in hiding in Thailand under an assumed 
name. A small, wiry man in his 30s, he smoked L&M cigarettes nervously as he 
recalled his daring feat against the totalitarian government.

Everything had to be done with the utmost secrecy, he said, to the point 
that he and his associates communicated by means of notes passed in sacks of 
potatoes. He didn't dare tell even his wife.

"If we were caught, everybody would be dead," said the man, who goes by the 
name Park Dae Heung.

The 33-minute tape has created a sensation in Japan and South Korea, where 
it has aired repeatedly. South Korean human rights advocates say it is the 
first evidence of a nascent dissident movement inside North Korea.

Besides the banner hung on the bridge, the video shows an anti- government 
banner in a factory restroom and has one particularly eye-catching scene in 
which the camera pans over an official photograph of Kim Jong Il defaced 
with graffiti as a man denounces him off-camera.

The video is one of a series of samizdat videos that provide a rare glimpse 
of life in what may be the most secretive country in the world. Since the 
beginning of this year, videos have emerged from inside North Korea of a 
public execution, children begging at a train station and humanitarian aid 
from the United Nations being sold at a market.

Among North Korea watchers, there is some debate about whether the 
filmmakers were motivated mainly by their opposition to the government or by 
greed. Many of the videos have been sold to Japanese television stations, 
which have paid as much as $200,000 for choice footage, according to some 
accounts.

That people are able to make such videos challenges many of the assumptions 
about Kim's grip on power. The videos do not necessarily mean the government 
is on the verge of collapse * the majority opinion among analysts is that it 
is not - but their existence shows that social control is fraying at the 
edges.

"Nobody would have dared to do such a thing three or four years ago," said 
Hitoshi Takase, president of Japan Independent News Net, a Tokyo-based 
company that distributed footage in March of an apparent public execution in 
North Korea.

The footage of the anti-government banners was smuggled out of North Korea 
across the Chinese border by activists working with the Seoul-based Citizens 
Coalition for Human Rights of Abductees and North Korean Refugees. It has 
been widely shown on television and Internet sites, including 
http://www.dailynk.com/file/2005/01/19/DNKR00001267.wmv

Do Hee Yun, secretary-general of the group, says it is the first solid 
evidence of nascent dissident activity within North Korea.

"Of course, the filmmakers have made some money with these videos, but I 
don't think that is their primary motivation," said Do, who introduced a Los 
Angeles Times reporter to Park, the defector, for his first interview with 
the Western press. "They believe their society should change, and they want 
to bring the world's attention to the human rights situation."

Do said Japanese television paid his organization $15,000 for the video and 
that it tried to pass on all of the money to Park's group, but that after 
money brokers took their cut, only $3,000 made it into North Korea.

Park, who fled North Korea early this year, said he worked as a driver for a 
state-owned company in Hoeryong, a city near the Chinese border. About five 
years ago, he was approached by a well-connected trader from the capital, 
Pyongyang, with a business proposition. The trader asked him to use his car 
to distribute pirated DVDs and videos that were being smuggled in from 
China. Foreign films are banned by the government, which considers them 
cultural imperialism.

But then his Pyongyang contact asked Park to start shooting videos to send 
abroad. Park said he was eager to oblige. Even though he was a member of the 
ruling Korean Workers' Party, and relatively privileged, he said he was 
disenchanted. "I saw that everybody was starving, and the state wasn't doing 
anything but building mausoleums to Kim Il Sung" - the late founder of North 
Korea and father of Kim Jong Il - "and villas for Kim Jong Il."

Moreover, Park had watched many of the DVDs he was distributing, and from 
his glimpses of life abroad, at least as depicted by Hollywood, he knew that 
North Korea badly lagged.

Park started filming in 2003 with a small camera that was smuggled across 
the Chinese border. He concealed it in a shoulder bag or an empty cigarette 
carton, pointing the lens through a small hole. He recruited several other 
people he knew in Hoeryong to help.

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8.        AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL REPORTS DENIAL OF RIGHT TO FOOD

Yonhap News Service, 25 May 2005



The North Korean government continued to deny its people basic human rights, 
most seriously the right to food, and jailed and tortured defectors and 
political critics, Amnesty International said in its annual report released 
Wednesday.

"Chronic malnutrition among children and urban populations, especially in 
the northern provinces, was widespread," the London-based human rights 
watchdog said.

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End CanKor # 207



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