Tag Archives: Jong

World

Kim Jong Un has lost about 44 pounds, South Korean spies say

Leave a comment

While North Korea suffers a food shortage emergency, chubby despot Kim Jong Un has lost at least 44 pounds — but just from a health kick, according to South Korean spies.

The Hermit Kingdom’s 37-year-old leader’s dramatic weight loss has recently renewed speculation over his health, following high-level intelligence last year that he’d been on his death bed.

But South Korea’s National Intelligence Service detailed to lawmakers Thursday how Kim seemed healthy, with his plummeting weight seemingly the result of him trying to improve his appearance.

The spy agency detailed how they’d become high-tech weight watchers, using the likes of artificial intelligence techniques and computer analysis of super-resolution video of Kim to evaluate his health, according to lawmakers who were in the closed-door parliamentary briefing.

They estimated that the 5-foot-8 tall leader had previously ballooned to as much as 308 pounds — but is currently around 264 pounds.

Kim has shown no signs of ill health, and he has engaged in public activities for 70 days so far this year, a 45 percent increase from the same period last year, the lawmakers reported.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is rumored to be using an imposter for public appearances amid his weight struggles.
AP; AFP via Getty Images

Still, rumors have continued about Kim’s health, including ongoing rumors that an impostor has stood in for him at public appearances, rumors the NIS dismissed as groundless, lawmaker Kim Byung-kee said.

As well as vanity over his looks, Kim has also started making people use the term “Kimjongunism,” rather than the traditional “Kimjongilism” for the political ideology named after his late father, Kim Jong Il.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un wears a noticeably large suit during a media appearance in Pyongyang, North Korea on October 12, 2021.
via REUTERS

He has also removed photos of his late father and grandfather from a Workers’ Party conference room, the Seoul spies told lawmakers.

It comes as Kim appears to be going through the toughest stretch of his 10-year rule due to economic hardships worsened by the coronavirus pandemic.

It includes a food-shortage emergency that residents have been warned is likely to continue for another three years, recent reports said.

According to the NIS, North Korea’s annual trade with China, its main ally and economic lifeline, declined by two-thirds to $185 million through September this year compared to the previous year, Ha said.

North Korean officials are struggling to deal with soaring prices of goods and shortages of medicine and other essential supplies that have accelerated the spread of water-borne diseases such as typhoid fever.

The country has also been unable to import the paper and ink it uses to print banknotes, forcing North Korean officials to issue temporary currency, according to Ha’s account of the NIS briefing.

With Post wires

Read original article here

US

Kim Yo Jong: Sister of North Korean leader promoted to nation’s top ruling body

Leave a comment

The announcement — published in North Korea’s state-run news outlet KCNA — said Kim Yo Jong is now a member of the State Affairs Commission (SAC), the country’s ruling body headed by her brother.
Kim Yo Jong was already one of the country’s most important political figures and a key adviser to her brother, but a seat on the SAC is the highest official position she has held.

Seven others were promoted alongside her as part of a shake-up of the SAC, though Kim Yo Jong was the only woman. Nine members were retired or demoted, including 82-year-old Pak Pong Ju, Kim Jong Un’s economic policymaker for the past decade.

Ri Pyong Chol, the driver of North Korea’s weapons program and top military commander under Kim Jong Un, was demoted. His place was taken by military general Pak Jong Chon, who had been overseeing the development of new weapons for the country.
Earlier this week, Pak supervised a test of what the North claimed was its first hypersonic missile, which — if true — has the potential to be one of the world’s fastest and most accurate weapons, and could be fitted with a nuclear warhead, experts say.

Why is Kim Yo Jong’s promotion significant?

Kim Yo Jong’s elevation to the country’s core committee of decision makers appears to officially cement her role in North Korea’s leadership.
She is believed to be one of her brother’s most powerful and trusted confidantes. Last year, South Korea’s National Intelligence Service assessed her to be the country’s “de facto second in command” — but her official status has always been unclear.
As North Korea’s chief propagandist, Kim Yo Jong was the face of the country’s delegation at the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea where she met with South Korean President Moon Jae-In. She was credited with helping lay the groundwork for the first summit between Moon and her brother, for which she had a seat at the table, and was at Kim Jong Un’s side in Singapore when he met then-US President Donald Trump.

In 2020, South Korea’s spy agency told lawmakers she had been put in charge of relations with the South and the United States.

More recently, as vice department director of the Central Committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea, she has made scathing public statements on inter-Korean relations, the new Biden administration, and defended North Korea’s missile launches.

Last week, Kim Yo Jong demanded the South make “the correct choice” if it genuinely wants reconciliation and development in inter-Korean relations, including another summit. She also warned the US and South Korea to stop their “hostile” policy against North Korea, before discussions can resume on a proposal by the South Korean President to declare an end to the war between the North and South.

But Kim Yo Jong’s rise to the top has not been smooth.

Earlier this year, she was removed as an alternate member from North Korea’s powerful politburo and demoted from “first vice department director” to “vice department director.”

Analysts at the time said her apparent demotion may have more to do with Kim Jong Un’s focus on reshuffling the politburo to include more economic experts. Others speculated she may have taken the heat for her handling of the inter-Korean relationship last summer, when she directed North Korea’s armed forces to blow up an $8 million joint liaison office in the city of Kaesong to express Pyongyang’s displeasure with Seoul.

CNN’s Joshua Berlinger contributed reporting.

Read original article here

World

Yes, the Queen Really Did Send Congrats Note to Kim Jong Un

Leave a comment

The North Korean state media triumphantly published a congratulatory message from the queen on Monday prompting knowledgeable insiders to speculate that Pyongyang must have made up the note from Buckingham Palace in a propaganda move to shore up the rogue state’s international standing.

A royal spokesman, however, has confirmed to The Daily Beast that Queen Elizabeth II did indeed send a cheery message to Kim Jong Un on the occasion of the 73rd anniversary of the founding of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

North Korea “regularly greets our queen on her birthday,” Korea expert Aidan Foster-Carter, senior research fellow at Leeds University in England, told The Daily Beast, “but I find no trace of any message from us/her to them—until now. So this is intriguing.”

The message, dated September 7, two days before North Korea’s founding day parade, was revealed Monday by Pyongyang’s Korean Central News Agency, which published it in its entirety among dozens of other messages from leaders of countries such as Algeria, the Seychelles, and Azerbaijan. The controversial King of Thailand was another well-wisher, but the heads of other major Western powers were notable by their absence.

The queen avoided any personal tribute to the Korean dictator despite hailing the anniversary of the establishment of the Kim dynasty.

“As the people of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea celebrate their National Day, I send my good wishes for the future,” she said.

A royal spokesperson confirmed the authenticity of the message to The Daily Beast, dispelling suspicions that it might have been an elaborate hoax. The palace would only say that the message had been sent to the head of state, although there is only one man to whom that could refer. Pyongyang’s KCNA confirmed it was sent to Kim Jong Un as “president of state affairs.”

“It was a message sent by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCDO) on behalf of Her Majesty to the people of North Korea on their national day,” said a spokesperson for the palace. Such messages are routinely sent in the queen’s name by and on the advice of the FCDO, she would not have crafted the message herself.

However, efforts to downplay the significance of the message will not appease critics who fear the regime is making use of the queen’s message to confer legitimacy on its autocratic system. North Korea’s nuclear aspirations were demonstrated again on Sunday with boasts of successful tests of a new long-range cruise missile.

DPRK leaders have been trying to engage with the queen for years, sending nice notes to the family and her citizens. In 2014, for instance, Kim Yong Nam, then North Korea’s titular head of state, sent birthday greetings to the queen in which he wished her and her subjects “health and happiness… well being and prosperity.”

The sense then, as now, was that North Korea was reaching out for friendship with the U.K. despite hostility dating to the Korean War when British troops played heroic roles under the aegis of the United Nations Command in battles along the line between the North and South.

Bruce Bennett, North Korea expert at the Rand Corporation, said the queen’s message could also be seen as pro-Western propaganda, designed to appeal to the people of North Korea rather than the ruling family.

“I firmly believe that the ROK (South Korea, the Republic of Korea), the U.S. and other allies should be telling the people of North Korea that we do not hate them. Contrary to what the regime tells them, we are not their enemies, and that we really hope that they can have a better life.”

Bennett suggested that the U.S. should follow the queen’s example when it came to congratulating the North Koreans on anniversaries.

“I have always been puzzled with why the U.S. government doesn’t try to send such messages,” he said. While Kim Jong Un “appears to be paranoid about outside information, the U.S. and its allies should be regularly sending appropriate messages to the people of North Korea, messages that contradict the regime’s villainizing propaganda.”

“With Kim having so many internal problems right now, he needs scapegoats to blame,” said Bennett. “What better message to send that that we are not hurting North Korea—the regime is.”

Andrew Salmon, an author of ground-breaking books on the Brits in the Korean War, saw the leaders of the two countries in a symbiotic relationship. Those few words from the queen, he said, were “a message from one hereditary (constitutional) monarch to one hereditary (absolute) monarch.”

But there may be more to the message than mere words, in the view of Choi Jin-wook, who’s been analyzing North Korea issues for decades with the Korea Institute of National Unification and others.

“A wild guess!” he said, observing that the U.S. and U.K. “are in intimate communication” and may have collaborated on the message. “A country or a person like North Korea which is isolated and labeled a usual suspect needs to be treated nicely. Otherwise, it may make trouble,” he said.

Choi said the U.S. was in no position to “do anything,” but interestingly the top U.S. negotiator on the DPRK, Sung Kim, was in Tokyo conferring with South Korean and Japanese envoys even as KCNA was reporting the message. Sung Kim’s point was the U.S. wanted to get into a dialogue with the North “regardless of progress on denuclearization,” according to Yonhap, the South Korean news agency.

Indeed, Sung Kim talked up negotiations despite North Korea boasting of having successfully test-fired a new type of cruise missile over the weekend. Without referring to the cruise missile tests, he said the U.S. was “prepared to work cooperatively with the DPRK to address humanitarian concerns,” Yonhap reported.

Shim Jae-hoon, a long-time analyst of Korean issues, had a less charitable explanation for the royal gesture. “Think of her age (95),” he said. “She may just be getting on.”

Read original article here

World

Kim Jong Un berates North Korea’s top officials over ‘great crisis’ in COVID response

Leave a comment

North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un has berated his country’s top officials for creating a “great crisis” through failures in coronavirus prevention, according to state media.

The secretive state’s official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said Kim had used a Politburo meeting of the ruling Workers’ Party to criticize senior officials for supposed incompetence, irresponsibility and passiveness in planning and executing anti-covid measures.

According to the report, Kim said “senior officials in charge of important state affairs neglected the implementation of the important decisions of the party on taking organizational, institutional, material, scientific and technological measures as required by the prolonged state emergency epidemic prevention campaign.”

And this “caused a crucial case of creating a great crisis in ensuring the security of the state and safety of the people and entailed grave consequences”, KNCA added.

STATE TV: NORTH KOREANS HEARTBROKEN OVER KIM’S ‘EMACIATED LOOKS’

Kim is also said to have replaced several Politburo members and state officials at the meeting.

North Korea has not officially recorded any COVID-19 cases, although its claim to be virus-free has been widely questioned.

Last year, Kim imposed strict anti-virus measures including border closures and domestic travel curbs.

The measures are estimated to have had a devastating impact on North Korea’s already fragile economy.

In this file photo taken Tuesday, May 10, 2016, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un waves at parade participants at the Kim Il Sung Square in Pyongyang, North Korea. Under the Marxist model, dynastic succession isn’t supposed to happen. But Kim Il Sung, who ruled for 46 years until his death in 1994, jettisoned that thinking and groomed his son, Kim Jong Il, to lead. The hereditary dictatorship, now in its third generation under grandson Kim Jong Un, has proven resilient, lasting 70 years in direct conflict with the United States. The regime is possibly stronger than ever and is on the verge of having a viable nuclear weapon. (AP Photo/Wong Maye-E, File)
(Copyright 2018 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.)

NORTH KOREA’S KIM SISTER DERIDES US OFFICIAL, DISMISSES CHANCES FOR TALKS

Hong Min, a senior analyst at the Korea Institute for National Unification, a think tank funded by South Korea’s government, said: “There is no possibility that North Korea will ever admit to an infection.

“Even if there were mass transmissions, the North will definitely not reveal such developments and will continue to push forward an anti-virus campaign it has claimed to be the greatest.

“But it’s also clear that something significant happened and it was big enough to warrant a reprimanding of senior officials.

“This could mean mass infections or some sort of situation where a lot of people were put at direct risk of infections.”

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

Earlier this year, North Korea was allocated nearly two million doses of coronavirus vaccines from a global vaccine-sharing programme.

However, the plans have been delayed due to global shortages.

Click here to read more of Sky News.

Read original article here

World

North Korea’s Kim Jong Un warns of ‘grave consequences’ after Covid-19 incident

Leave a comment

It is unclear who or exactly how many officials were responsible for the unspecified incident, which Kim called a “great crisis.” But it appears some members of the upper echelons of the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea were replaced, according to the state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).

An outbreak of Covid-19 could prove dire for North Korea. The country’s dilapidated health care infrastructure is unlikely to be up to the task of treating a large number of patients with a highly infectious disease.

North Korea has not publicly acknowledged any coronavirus cases, though experts claim that may be a product of Pyongyang’s limited testing capacity. Few believe that a country of around 25 million people has been spared by a virus that has infected more than 180 million people worldwide, especially after KCNA warned last summer that an incident involving a symptomatic defector from South Korea might lead to a “deadly and destructive disaster.”

No such disaster was reported after.

To date, North Korea has been able to prevent a major outbreak of Covid-19 cases thanks to a series of draconian public health measures. Kim reportedly had two people executed last year for Covid-19 related crimes, including a customs official who did not follow the rules while importing goods from China.
North Korea’s borders have been sealed since January 2020 to keep the virus at bay, despite the knock-on effects on trade with Beijing, an economic lifeline the impoverished country needs to keep its people from going hungry.
Pyongyang has reported a food crisis tied in part to both inclement weather and trade issues. The agriculture sector is still recovering from storm damage last year, and exports from China tanked by 90% in May from the previous month, according to official statistics from Beijing, though it’s unclear why.
Prices of some staple goods are reportedly skyrocketing in Pyongyang. Experts say rice and fuel prices remain relatively stable but imported staples such as sugar, soy bean oil and flour prices have gone up. Residents said non-staple items such as a small packet of black tea can sell for around $70, while a packet of coffee can cost more than $100.

Analysts say Kim and the North Korean regime have tacitly accepted the costs of such an extreme plan to keep Covid-19 at bay because the country’s leaders recognize how the virus could overwhelm the health care system.

North Korean defectors and aide workers who have volunteered in the country say its hospitals and medical facilities often lack proper equipment and medicine. North Koreans who fled overseas during the 1990s famine shared stories of amputations done without anesthesia or doctors selling medicine to buy food to survive.

North Korea has not yet received any coronavirus vaccines, though it has a longstanding relationship with Gavi, the global vaccine alliance, and is eligible for its Covid-19 vaccine program, Covax. However, countries with more severe outbreaks are likely being prioritized.
Officials from US President Joe Biden’s administration said last month the White House is open to sharing vaccines with Pyongyang, but it’s unclear how receptive Kim’s regime would be.

North Korea is, however, somewhat well placed to prevent the virus from penetrating deep within borders because people inside the country do not enjoy the freedom to move around as they please. Defectors say average North Koreans are not permitted to travel far from home without government approval, meaning there would be fewer opportunities for the virus to spread from city to city.

Read original article here

US

North Korea’s Kim Yo Jong breaks silence to warn US against ‘causing a stink’

Leave a comment

“We take this opportunity to warn the new US administration trying hard to give off powder smell in our land,” she said in a statement, according to the country’s state news agency.

“If it wants to sleep in peace for (the) coming four years, it had better refrain from causing a stink at its first step,” she said. The warning comes as the US and South Korea conduct scaled-down, simulated military exercises and US Secretary of State Tony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin have touched down in the region for meetings with their Japanese and South Korean counterparts.

Earlier Monday, White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters that the administration had reached out to North Korea, noting they have “a number of channels, as we always have had, that we can reach out through.”

“Diplomacy is always our goal. Our goal is to reduce the risk of escalation. But, to date, we have not received any response,” Psaki said, noting that the outreach “follows over a year without active dialogue with North Korea, despite multiple attempts by the US to engage.”

However, experts told CNN prior to Kim Yo Jong’s message that Pyongyang was likely to rebuff diplomatic efforts for the time-being for a number of reasons including the coronavirus pandemic, the Biden team’s ongoing North Korea policy review, the meetings in the region and the administration’s rhetoric.

The Biden administration is still conducting a review of the Trump administration’s North Korea policy, which could be announced “in the coming weeks,” according to a senior State Department official. While President Joe Biden isn’t likely to write “love letters” to Kim Jong Un like his predecessor did, Biden’s administration has yet to offer a clear break from the prior administration in its stated goals for its approach to the Hermit Kingdom. On multiple occasions, in testimony, statements or briefings, US officials have said they their goal is “the complete denuclearization of North Korea.”

“That’s just a non-starter for the North Koreans,” said Jeffrey Lewis of the Middlebury Institute of International Studies.

‘Denuclearization is a non-starter’

“Denuclearization is a non-starter,” said Vipin Narang, an associate professor of political science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who added that “every time we use that phrase it’s a five-yard penalty, because the North Koreans never agreed to it.”

North Koreans see several reasons why they should not denuclearize based on recent history, including situations in Iraq, Libya and more recently Iran. Leaders in Iraq and Libya were toppled after relinquishing their nuclear programs under US pressure, while Iran entered a deal with the US only to have the Trump administration withdraw, impose crippling economic sanctions and then assassinate the country’s leading general and nuclear scientist.

Frank Aum, the senior expert on North Korea at the US Institute of Peace, noted that “it’s fine to hold to the long term goal of denuclearization, complete denuclearization for North Korea, but I think the way you message that is going to be very important.”

“It has to be nuanced because you can’t just say, you know, we want to have talks, and the talks are going to be about North Korea’s complete denuclearization, because that sounds very one sided,” he told CNN. “It would have to be long term and not the Libya model of complete denuclearization upfront before we give them anything they want.”

In 2018, following a summit in Singapore between then-President Donald Trump and Kim, North Korea and the US agreed to work toward the “complete denuclearization of the Korean peninsula” — a phrase that the North Koreans have long interpreted to mean the US also has an obligation to remove any nuclear capable weaponry it has on Korean soil.

But after the summit, Trump administration officials, including former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, said the agreement pledged North Korea to the complete, verifiable and irreversible dismantlement of its nuclear program, despite the fact that it said nothing of the sort.

North Korea would go on to describe Pompeo as a “diehard toxin” whose “unilateral and robber-like denuclearization demands” contravened the spirit and letter of the Trump-Kim summit. An unnamed North Korean official told the state Korean Central News Agency in March 2020 that “listening to Pompeo’s ludicrous language made us give up on any hopes for dialogue.”

Narang said that the Biden officials’ insistence on adopting the same emphasis on North Korean denuclearization “likely isn’t helping, when you insist on something they’ve rejected flat out of hand.”

Former officials and experts also noted that Biden administration officials’ commitments not to lift tariffs on North Korea during confirmation hearings did not go unnoticed, which could be one factor driving Pyongyang’s decision not to engage directly with the US.

North Korea following meetings closely

Kim will also be keeping a close eye on meetings in Seoul and Tokyo between Blinken and Austin and their Japanese and South Korean counterparts this week and an Alaska meeting between Blinken, national security adviser Jake Sullivan and their Chinese counterparts. North Korea is expected to factor into those conversations, particularly with the South Koreans.

“What if the US and China come out of their meetings this week and make it clear that they are headed for escalating US-China tensions? If you are Kim Jong Un you would read that as meaning that it is less likely that China will put the squeeze on North Korea,” said Anthony Ruggiero, a former National Security Council official. “If that happens, maybe Kim now knows he can go to China to buy more pieces for its nuclear programs, or to go to China and sell more coal. That would be a bad sign for the future of any US-North Korea diplomacy.”

Aum also posited that the North Koreans may also be signaling “that they want to engage with the US at a higher level, because there’s been the precedent that was set with the leader-level summits between Trump and Kim.”

Efforts at working level talks between North Korean and Trump administration officials were largely rebuffed by Pyongyang, and the few meetings that did occur yielded no tangible results.

Despite Kim Yo Jong’s warning to the new administration, North Korea did not greet the arrival of the new US president with a test of their missiles or other weaponry, as is often the case.

Aum said that he doesn’t think they’d “want to do anything to provoke the US prior to some greater signal that the US is going to take a very hostile approach.”

However, in recent days there has been activity at North Korea’s nuclear facility, Yongbyon, according to analysis of new satellite images published by 38 North, a prominent North Korea monitoring group.

And the official travels in the region, the military exercises and Biden’s meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga in April could still push Pyongyang toward some sort of provocation.

Read original article here

World

Kim Jong Un’s wife Ri Sol Ju appears in public for first time in a year

Leave a comment

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s wife appeared in public for the first time in more than a year on Wednesday, at a concert marking one of the nation’s biggest holidays.

Ri Sol Ju and her hubby were seen in photos published by state media, sitting side by side and smiling at the Mansudae Art Theatre in the capital of Pyongyang.

The event commemorated the birthday of Kim’s late father and former leader Kim Jong Il.

While the Hermit Kingdom’s first lady has often accompanied Kim, 36, to major public events, she’s been out of the limelight since last January, when she attended an event for the Lunar New Year holiday.

Her absence from the public eye sparked speculation over her health and rumors that she may be pregnant.

South Korea’s National Intelligence Service (NIS) told lawmakers on Tuesday that Ri appeared to have held back from outside events to ward off the coronavirus.

Ri, who is believed to be in her mid-30s, has been spending her time “playing well” with the couple’s three children, the NIS said.

Nobody in the new images of the couple — released by the official ruling Worker’s Party newspaper Rodong Sinmun — were wearing masks or maintaining social distancing measures.

The newspaper also reported that Kim visited the Kumsusan Palace of the Sun, which houses the embalmed bodies of his father and grandfather, to lay wreaths for the holiday, called the Day of the Shining Star.

With Post wires

Read original article here

World

Kim Jong Un cannot denuclearize, former North Korean diplomat says

Leave a comment

In his first interview since defecting to the South more than a year ago, Ryu Hyeon-woo told CNN that “North Korea’s nuclear power is directly linked to the stability of the regime” — and Kim likely believes nuclear weapons are key to his survival.

Ryu also said previous US administrations had boxed themselves into a corner by demanding denuclearization up front in negotiations with the totalitarian state.

“The US can’t back down from denuclearization and Kim Jong Un cannot denuclearize,” he added.

The former diplomat, who adopted the name Ryu upon moving to the South, is one of several high-profile North Korean officials to defect in recent years. The country’s top diplomat in Italy fled to South Korea in 2019, and Thae Yong-ho, the former deputy ambassador to the United Kingdom, defected in 2016. Thae has since been elected to South Korea’s National Assembly.

Ryu and his family defected to South Korea in September 2019, but their actions were only made public last week. Determined to give their teenage daughter a better life, Ryu said he and his wife planned their escape for about a month while living in Kuwait.

Ryu said that if they had been caught, North Korean agents would have quickly taken them all back to Pyongyang for certain punishment, as defection is considered a major embarrassment to the Kim regime and is not taken lightly.

They finally told their daughter about the plan while pretending to drive her to school.

“Come with Mom and Dad to find freedom,” Ryu recalled telling his daughter. “She was shocked, then said, ‘Okay.’ That’s all she said.”

Ryu took his family to the South Korean embassy in Kuwait to claim asylum. They traveled to South Korea several days later.

Defection from North Korea comes at a monumental cost, with defectors having to instantly sever ties from all family left in their home nation.

The regime often punishes nuclear and extended families of defectors to deter people from leaving, Ryu said — especially diplomats. Those posted abroad are often forced to leave a child at home as a hostage, ensuring their parents do not defect.

“I think that North Korea having such feudal collective familial punishment in the 21st century is appalling,” Ryu said.

He is now worried about his three siblings and 83-year-old mother still in North Korea. “I just want to see them live long,” Ryu said. “Any thought of them being punished for what I’ve done just hurts my heart.”

He also worries for his wife’s elderly parents living in Pyongyang.

Ryu and his wife both came from North Korea’s ruling elite. His father-in-law ran Office 39, a branch of the North Korean government a former employee likened to a “slush fund” for the Kim family. Nominally, it is in charge of getting hard currency for the cash-strapped regime.

North Korea has long been accused of using its embassies as cash cows for the ruling Kim family. Ryu said that while he was a trained diplomat dealing with politics, there were also “economic trading workers” assigned to diplomatic posts. They were given a quota on the amount of money they must make for the state, Ryu added.

Kuwait was a particularly important revenue stream for Pyongyang, as the Persian Gulf nation used to employ about 10,000 North Korean laborers. Those workers were allegedly treated like modern-day slaves, and experts say almost all of their earnings were funneled back to the government, paying for Kim regime priorities such as the nuclear program.

Ryu said only China and Russia were bigger cash earners for the regime from North Korean laborers than the Gulf nations of Kuwait, Qatar and the UAE — at least until 2017, when the United Nations punished Pyongyang for its repeated missile and nuclear tests by barring nations from employing its workers.

“Due to the UN resolution, most laborers in the Gulf region left,” he said.

Ryu also was posted to Syria, a close ally of North Korea, from 2010 to 2013. While Ryu was charged with overseeing relations with Syrian politicians, his countrymen were selling conventional weapons to the Bashar al-Assad regime, including long-range multiple launcher artillery and anti-aircraft weapons systems. However, Ryu said the country’s bloody civil war forced Pyongyang to pull its personnel from the country. He said he had not heard of any new weapons deals with the Syrians since leaving the country.

Ryu’s experience in the Middle East gave him an up-close look at how the United States dealt with Iran’s nuclear program during former President Barack Obama’s administration. He believes that experience will come in handy for US President Joe Biden.

“Based on his experience resolving the Iranian nuclear issue, I have no doubt he’ll be able to handle North Korea’s nuclear issue wisely,” Ryu said.

Ryu said he believed North Korea may be willing to negotiate a reduction in its nuclear weapons, but is unlikely to ever give them up entirely. However, he said sanctions may have played a factor in pushing North Korea to the negotiating table in 2018, when Kim and former US President Donald Trump met for their historic summit in Singapore.

Many analysts believe Kim came to the negotiating table because he had already developed nuclear weapons and successfully tested a long-range missile that could reach United States territory.

“The current sanctions on North Korea are unprecedented and strong,” Ryu said. “I think sanctions against North Korea should continue.”

Ryu also said it is important not to abandon the issue of human rights, which was largely swept under the carpet during nuclear talks with the Trump administration.

Pyongyang claims to be a socialist paradise and denies allegations of gross human rights violations. North Korea, however, does not allow freedom of speech or assembly, and citizens cannot leave. Kim’s regime is accused of running a system of gulags and political prison camps that house more than 120,000 men, women and children.

“Human rights is a matter of morality, and in the North Korean regime, the human rights issue is a sensitive and serious one,” Ryu said.

Looking back over the past 16 months, Ryu says his only regret is what might happen to his remaining family members back in Pyongyang. He and his wife believe they did the right thing for their daughter, by taking her away from her home country.

Ryu told CNN he asked his daughter what she likes most about her new home. “I like the fact that I can use the internet as much as I want,” she replied.

Read original article here