National Security Online Resource Center

From the Korean Central News Agency, Communist North Korea’s state-run “news” service, which in layman’s terms is their propaganda machine:

According to the KCNA, former US President Jimmy Carter praised North Korean Eternal President Kim Il Sung in a 1994 interview aired on public television. According to the agency, “He remembered President of the DPRK (North Korea) Kim Il Sung as a very outstanding great leader who was well versed in everything.”

Despite his death in 1994, it is still a North Korean custom to praise Kim Il Sung as much as possible. So this “news” article editorializes: “Having a very profound knowledge, Kim Il Sung knew almost everything, for example when a certain building was constructed and for what it was, he recalled, adding that he had a successful conversation with the President as he was simple and humble in his personality.”

The article concludes that Carter “expressed hope that the present U.S. administration would have a direct dialogue with the DPRK.”

I found a transcript of Carter’s PBS interview. Carter does praise Kim Il Sung for his hospitality and for treating him with respect and deference. However, the KCNA article omits this statement by Carter: “I had despised Kim Il Sung for 50 years. I was in a submarine in the Pacific during the Korean War, and many of my fellow servicemen were killed in that war, which I thought was precipitated unnecessarily by him. And so I had very serious doubts about him.”

The KCNA also fails to mention that Carter was not invited to the White House for a debriefing, proably an effort by Clinton to distance himself from Carter’s trip.

I once read a number of theories that General Secretary Kim Jong Il of North Korea has been using doubles in public appearances to conceal his illness. In fact, one Japanese professor has even proposed that Kim Jong Il has been dead since 2003 and that actors have played him in public appearances.

Now, the Christian Science Monitor has run an article alleging that the Kim Jong Il that former President Clinton met last summer (when Clinton sought the release of imprisoned American journalists) was an actor, and that the real Kim was too ill to meet with Clinton. Some analysts have added that Kim has been using doubles for a number of public evemts such as trips to the “countryside, factories, cultural events, military units, and all sorts of other venues.” The expert to claims the appearances are actors even claims that meetings with Chinese officials were carried out by an impostor.

If Kim Jong-Il is indeed ill and using actors for public appearances, it will only be a matter of time before his death brings about a power struggle in the communist country. While Kim declared his son Kim Jong Un to be his successor, he is only 25 and a number of other officials may also be vying to take his place. Kim Jong-Il’s brother-in-law Jang Song-taek is one, and this article also mentions “two or three generals” who may be vying for control.

Foxnews.com reports that the communist Democratic People’s Republic of Korea tested five missiles off its east coast Monday. This report is according to an unnamed South Korean government official who confirmed that the five missiles fired today were the first missiles tested since the July tests that drew international scrutiny. Both the United States and South Korea stressed that they would still strive to continue talks to disarm North Korea, but the South Korean government appears to have taken a stronger stance on the issue.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton offered the following statement according to Fox: “Our goal remains the same..Our consultations with our partners and our allies continues unabated. It is unaffected by the behavior of North Korea.”

However, the South Korean government, whose leadership is supposedly taking a tougher stance toward North Korea’s nuclear ambitions, is not backing down from pressing North Korea to disarm. This pressure comes despite recent meetings between the two countries to discuss flooding, and another mmeeting to allow separated families in the North and South to reunite. The article also mentions that the two countries officially remain at war because a formal treaty to end the 1950s war has never been signed.

President Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize in part due to his work to promote nuclear disarmament. Now is a good time to put those skills to work and prevent a communist country from obtaining nuclear weapons. That will prove your doubters wrong, Mr. President…

South Korea released a statement stressing that North Korea is still seeking to build nuclear weapons despite a series of conciliatory gestures which it claims mean that U.N. sanctions are working.  After the sanctions, North Korea released two American journalists who had been sentenced to twelve years hard labor, and has permitted some family reunifications between the  North and the South.

Talks will resume between North Korea and the international community this month, and some believe that North Korean relations with Japan will improve when their new Prime Minister is formally elected. Hopefully North Korea and the international community will make progress with these talks.

The President recently approved tariffs on rubber products from China. The Chinese are expected to impose their own tariffs on Chicken and automotive products. However, the broader implications of U.S. – China trade fight are critical as China continues to rise in its influence and stature. China is part of the six party talks with Iran and North Korea and if the President is expecting the Chinese to pressure the two countries into giving up their rogue nuclear programs, he is going to have to do much to reconcile.

It is unfortunate that Obama is jeopardizing two key items on his foreign policy agenda so he can cater to a tiny special interest group. Furthermore, the President’s calls for keeping the global economy open are going to sound hypocritical as we approach the G-20 Summit in Pittsburg later this month.

The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is 61!  Be sure to send General Secretary Kim Jong-Il and his designated successor, Kim Jong-Un, a card congratulating their family on 61 years of communist tyranny.

The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea announced in a letter to the United Nations Security Council that its efforts to enrich uranium to be used in nuclear weapons have reached its final stages. North Korea outright rejects the Security Council’s June sanctions against it, and notes that while North Korea is not opposed to a denuclearized Korean peninsula, it believes the UN sanctions undermine the legitimacy of the state. The United States is sending an envoy to meet with South Korea, Japan, Russia, and China to discuss the issue.

The Korean Central News Agency has kindly released the letter in its entirety on its website. They do not mention the international response, of course.

The Wall Street Journal reports that the United Arab Emirates seized North Korean weapons bound for Iran last month.  The weapons include  “detonators and ammunition for rocket-propelled grenade launchers,” and ship crew members appear to have concealed the weapons by labeling them “oil-boring machines” on the ship’s manifest. Because the ship was Australian and the shipping company was Italian, the UN Security Council noted that multiple countries will investigate the incident, which is now illegal under new UN sanctions imposed against North Korea in May for testing a nuclear device.

The Korean Central News Agency’s history lesson of the day: Japanese robbing Korean tombs 100 years ago.

“Hirobumi Ito, the Japanese imperialists’ first “resident-general” in Korea, issued a directive to rob royal mausoleums without discrimination by mobilizing gendarmes, policemen and hooligans of all sorts under the pretext of “survey”, “collection” and “preservation” of the Korean cultural relics.”

“The Japanese imperialists’ crimes of destroying and plundering cultural assets of Korea must be redeemed.”

Perhaps the author should have placed this piece in the KCNA’s “opinion” section.

The New York Times ran an interesting article about South Korean fishermen who were captured by North Korea in an attempt to convince them to defect to the communist country. While some fishermen ultimately stayed in North Korea, those who returned to the South were frequently interrogated, arrested, tortured, and sent to prison for bogus charges such as espionage.

While this commission suggests that South Korea is coming to terms with its past human rights abuses related to the South/North tensions, North Korea still shows no signs of becoming any less totalitarian than it was under founder Kim Il-Sung. While such information would be difficult to obtain, I wonder how North Korea is spinning the commission’s existence. The Korean Central News Agency is not much help, but it does cite an unrelated report calling the South “fascist dictatorial rule.”