The man who met the founder of North Korea - BBC News

 

The Kim family have ruled North Korea for over seven decades but how did the original "Great Leader" get the job?

Ryugyong Hotel: North Korea’s Hotel of Doom

The Kim dynasty | DW Documentary

What will happen at the Singapore summit between Kim Jong-un and Donald Trump on June 12? Will the dispute over nuclear weapons escalate? Our report shows the complexity of the situation that has been dominating headlines. Some attribute the recent chain of events to the long-term stability of North Korea's ruling dynasty. North Korea has consistently refused to give up the nuclear program that it has been pursuing since 1962. Washington has been equally consistent in changing its policies toward Pyongyang. And what will become of the US commitment to protect South Korea and Japan? Our report outlines the history of North Korea's nuclear program -- and also explains how the US has helped to enhance Pyongyang's strategic position. Every recent U.S. administration -- from Bill Clinton to Donald Trump -- has changed the country's policy toward North Korea. American presidents come and go, but the Kim dynasty remains in place.

An Inconvenient Border: Where China Meets North Korea | ABC News

The Kim-Il sung Birthday Missile Launch Failure

North Korea wanting to celebrate the birth of the country's founder Kim-Il sung launched a missile unfortunately it failed to do what missiles do and that is fly.  Perhaps they can look into Acme technology it always "works" for Wile E. Coyote

North Korea attempted to fire a missile from its eastern coast Friday, but the launch ended in failure, according to South Korean and U.S. officials.

South Korea's military did not specify what sort of missile was part of the test. The attempt involved an intermediate-range Musudan missile, according to South Korean media reports.

The launch effort came on the birthday of Kim Il Sung, the founder of North Korea, on the holiday known as "Day of the Sun."

"If the reports are true, and this mobile missile launch attempt did fail, it would be a major disappointment for the North Korean regime because it is happening on the most significant holiday of the year," said CNN's Will Ripley from Pyongyang.

North Korean defector flees to Finland 'with evidence of chemical testing on humans'

The researcher left the country in June and said he plans to present his information to the EU parliament

A North Korean biochemical weapons scientist has defected to Finland, taking with him gigabytes of information on human experiments that he plans to present to EU parliament.

The expert fled a research centre on the border of China on June 6 via the Philippines, a source from a North Korean human rights group told Yonhap news agency.

“His ostensible reason for defection is that he felt sceptical about his research,” they told Yonhap.

The 47-year-old told the human rights group that he took with him 15 gigabytes of information on human experiments being carried out at the laboratory he was working at.

He will present his information in front of the EU parliament later in July, Yonhap claimed.

Given North Korea's overall human rights record and that the United Nations has issued a report on the issue following a year long investigation it shouldn't surprise anyone if these claims are verified.

Malnutrition and kidnappings: broadcast that

North Korean statistics may not be reliable but tape measures, that show defectors to be between three and eight centimetres shorter than their South Korean couterparts, are.

The World Food Programme attributes this disturbing reality it on mass malnutrition, from one generation to another. Broadcast that.

Most of the scant information about North Korea comes from defectors and a tiny number of westerners who have been chewed up by the regime. The latest to write a book is Hyeonseo Lee. Broadcast that.

 Broadcast, too, the state’s history of kidnapping foreign nationals. In 1978 a Romanian artist, Doina Bumbea, was taken from Italy and forced to travel to North Korea. The best guess for the insane rash of kidnaps was to enhance the regime’s intelligence efforts. .

Once there, Doina was invited to marry James Dresnok, an American GI who had defected to the DPRK in the 1960s and the couple had two sons, Ted and James Jr. Blond-haired, blue-eyed young American-Romanians who speak English with a North Korean accent. Broadcast that.

Italian chef Ermanno Furlanis was flown to North Korea in 1997 at the height of the famine, which one estimate sayskilled between 600,000 and 2.5 million people, to cook for Kim Jong-il. He was given the finest ingredients flown in from the world’s most expensive shops, banquets of delight washed down with Barolo wine and Remy Martin. Broadcast that.

Decoding North Korea's fish and mushroom slogans

Magazine Monitor

North Korea has published 310 new patriotic slogans (see full list below) - so what do they say, what do they mean and what do they tell us about the leadership in Pyongyang, asks Alison Gee?

"Let this socialist country resound with Song of Big Fish Haul and be permeated with the fragrant smell of fish and other seafoods!

"Let us turn ours into a country of mushrooms by making mushroom cultivation scientific, intensive and industrialised!

"Make fruits cascade down and their sweet aroma fill the air on the sea of apple trees at the foot of Chol Pass!"

Apart from increasing food production, the slogans urge North Koreans to defend their way of life and not bow to the influence of foreign enemies, such as Washington and Seoul.

"Should the enemy dare to invade our country, annihilate them to the last man so that none of them will survive to sign the instrument of surrender!

"Let us build our country into the most powerful one in the world, into a people's fairyland, as wished by the great Comrades Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il!

"Let us raise a strong wind of studying the great Kimilsungism-Kimjongilism!"

For the full list of slogans, read on:

Let us all turn out in the general offensive to hasten final victory in the revolutionary spirit of Paektu!

Let us greet the 70th anniversaries of national liberation and Party founding with high political enthusiasm and brilliant labour feats!

Remember Kim-Il song wasn't born in the usual manner he came to life on a mountain after desending from a comet, or was that a weather ballon? Who knows. Kim Jong-il holds the record for the most  holes-in one.  Even if he did have a life long bad hair day and wear elevated shoes.  

Lil Kim's Banker: Takes The Money And Runs

This here's a story about Yun Tae Hyong and Kim Hae won
Two young lovers with nothin' better to do
Than sit around Pyongyang, get high, and watch the tube
And here is what happened when they decided to cut loose

They headed down to, ooh, old Kim-Jong un's castle
That's where they ran into a great big hassle
Yun Tae Hying hit Kim while robbing his castle
  Kim Hae won took the money and run

Go on take the money and run
Go on take the money and run
Go on take the money and run
Go on take the money and run

 Lil Kim is a detective down in Texas
You know he knows just exactly what the facts is
He ain't gonna let those two escape justice
He makes his livin' off of the people's taxes

Kim Hae won, whoa, whoa, she slipped away
Yun Tae Hyong  caught up to her the very next day
They got the money, hey
You know they got away
They headed down south and they're still running today

 Take The Money and Run Music and Lyrics by Steve Miller

A banker who managed the money of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, has taken $5million (£3 million) and defected to Russia, a South Korean newspaper has reported.

Yun Tae Hyong, a senior official for the secretive nation’s Korea Daesong Bank, disappeared last week in Nakhodka, in Russia's far east, the JoongAng Ilbo newspaper reported.

He was reportedly now seeking asylum in a third country, according to an unidentified source.

North Korea has since asked Russian authorities for cooperation in efforts to capture Yun, according to the newspaper.

Why North Korea's Kim Jong Un Isn't as Powerful as Kim Jong Il

It's difficult to understand North Korea given its secrecy and the opaque face shown to the world through state propaganda, yet there is an outlier  unique to the hermit kingdom the hereditary transference power passed by a single dictatorial  family, the Kim's.   Beginning with Kim-Il song followed by his son Kim-Jong il and now the grandson Kim-Jong un power, while still held nominally by the Kim's it has become diluted as new centers of influence emerge  be it the military or government functionaries.  

The following is an interview with the former poet laureate and spy for North Korea.


    In the late 1990s, Jang Jin-sung was North Korea’s state poet laureate and a spy.

He reached the pinnacle of his charmed life in 1999 when he met the "Dear Leader," Kim Jong Il, at the age of just 28.

Below is the translation of an interview he gave NBC News’ Director of International News Adrienne Mong during a recent visit to London.

Q: What was your job?

In North Korea, I was a writer. But in North Korea there's no such thing as a writer the way the outside world understands it. It's not as an individual that you are a writer. It is as a bureaucrat, as a civil servant, as a revolutionary.

I was a part of the so-called United Front Department [the key division in the ruling Workers’ Party that was also responsible for inter-Korean espionage, policymaking and diplomacy]. My job title was counterintelligence officer with special oversight of psychological warfare against South Korea.

Q: So your position gave you a unique perspective on how the North Korean government functions?

When I was growing up, I didn't even think to question what we read and were taught. It was only when I became part of the system, writing over and over the story that I’d been taught as a child, that I realized it wasn't the truth. I realized it was policy that was forcing our history, our culture, and our identity to be written a certain way -- not because it actually happened this way.

Kim-IL sung and Kim-Jong il Wrote Childrens Books How Unfortunate For Us

I realise that its difficult for one to  phantom that with all those enemies of the state they had to imprison and execute that these two sociopaths found time to write books for children.  Of course these "childrens books" are exceedingly violent but hey, its North Korea.

   "At last the left cyst burst, emitting fierce flames and the captain fell down, dejectedly dropping his club. At that moment a loud battle cry was heard from outside. Villagers killed the rest of the bandits."

This is an extract from Boys Wipe Out Bandits by Kim Jong-il - North Korea's "Dear Leader" who died in 2011.

Kim Jong-il and his father, Kim Il-sung, recognised the power of books and they are both credited with writing children's stories.

This one is "an extraordinarily violent and exuberant tale," says Christopher Richardson, who is researching North Korean children's literature at Sydney University.

Illustration from Boys Wipe Out Bandits 

It is a story "of reactionaries and bandits and gluttons lurking in the hills of North Korea, predating on the pure-hearted and virtuous villagers who incarnate all of the traditional virtues of the North Korean revolution," he says.

The heroes are a group of brave youngsters who stand up to the bandits. Despite its political message, Richardson thinks it would be wrong to dismiss tales like this simply as propaganda.

"They can be quite fun to read and they're actually quite good yarns, and I imagine children aren't even that aware of the ideological content," he says.

"If you made a cartoon of Boys Wipe Out Bandits and showed it to a bunch of Western six-year-olds or eight-year-olds they'd go nuts for it. They'd love it because it's the same kind of silly violent nonsense that boys everywhere tend to like."


Most of these stories are anti American which I'm sure is just shocking, but back to the original premise how could these two ever found the time write childrens books when they had a country to ruin and population to suppress.

Everyone knows that the dictator business can be a difficult one as you must always watch your back.     

Watch: The Story Of An Incredible Escape From North Korea-TED Talk

A total stranger helped Hyeonseo Lee pay her mother and brother's way out of jail as they fled from North Korea. Now, four years later, Lee has been reunited with that stranger, getting the chance to thank him in person. In Lee's heart-wrenching TED2013 talk, "My escape from North Korea," she describes defecting from North Korea in the late '90s. But as she describes in the second half of her talk, after years of hiding she returned to China to help her family make their own escape. When her mother and brother were captured in Vientiane, Laos, and jailed for illegal border crossing, Lee describes how, out of money and desperate for a solution, she was approached by a foreigner. After hearing Lee's story, this stranger withdrew a large sum of cash -- £645 to be exact -- from an ATM. With the money to use as a bribe, Lee's family was able to escape.