2012.06.25 DPRK Daily


N. Korea executed 4 defectors sent back from China: activist
June 25

North Korea has publicly executed four citizens who were recently repatriated from China after being caught by the Chinese authorities, a North Korean defector in South Korea claimed Monday.  The four were among a group of 44 North Koreans who fled to China to avoid political oppression and chronic food shortages in the North, according to Kim Heung-kwang, the head of NK Intellectuals Solidarity, a Seoul-based defectors' group.  Kim said the 40 others were sent to political prison camps after being repatriated from China.

China views North Korean defectors as "economic migrants," and not refugees, and typically sends them back to their communist homeland where they can face harsh punishment.

 The latest claim of the North's public executions could not be independently verified as the isolated country strictly restricts outside access.

Seoul marches to save the 33 North Koreans who fled to China
02/21/2012   by Joseph Yun Li-sun

A demonstration outside the Chinese Embassy in South Korea calls on Beijing not to repatriate a group of North Korean refugees who face death if they return home. For the first time, even actors choose to manifest.

Seoul (AsiaNews) - MPs, students, religious leaders and for the first time, some actors are marching in Seoul to ask the Chinese authorities not to repatriate 33 North Koreans fleeing the regime of Kim Jong-un, and currently held in prison in Changchun. The protest is being held in front of the Beijing embassy in South Korea: China must decide the refugees' fate by tomorrow.

Among those asking for clemency for the group are Cha In-pyo and Lee Seong-mi, both well known South Korean actors.

China has repatriated North Korean defectors, South Korean official says
March 09, 2012|  By Paula Hancocks, CNN

Ignoring international protests, China may have repatriated around 30 North Korean defectors who had been caught while trying to escape their homeland, a South Korean official said Friday.

"Captured defectors face a slow death," he said. "There is a place called 'flower garden' where about 2,000 defectors are buried like dogs. The flowers are so red there because of their blood."

China Halts Repatriation of N.Korean Defectors
June 26



Yonhap News Agency. 6/25/12

The latest rhetoric came after North Korea's flag was fired upon during a South Korea-U.S. joint live-fire drill near the border with the North on Friday.

"It is an extremely grave military action and politically-motivated provocation to fire live bullets and shells at the flag of a sovereign state without a declaration of war," the North's Foreign Ministry spokesman said in an English-language statement carried by the country's official Korean Central News Agency.



Prominent South Korean Activist to Testify Before UNHCR
June 26,

Oh Kil-nam, a prominent South Korean activist whose wife and daughters were detained in North Korea, will testify before the UN High Commissioner for Refugees this week about the abuse his family suffered, a diplomatic source said.

The Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees apparently decided to hear Oh’s testimony after the UNHCR found last month that his wife and daughters were unlawfully detained by North Korea. It is rare for a member of a family abducted by North Korea to get a chance to testify before the UNHCR.

Oh and his wife, Shin Suk-ja were lured to North Korea from Germany in 1985. Oh later escaped alone.

In November last year, the International Coalition to Stop Crimes Against Humanity in North Korea submitted a petition to the UN seeking the rescue of Shin and her daughters. Pressed by the UN for a response, North Korea sent a curt letter this month claiming Shin had died of hepatitis and her daughters disowned Oh.



Scale of yearly Chinese unconditional aid to N.Korea unveiled
June 24

China has provided North Korea with 100,000 tons of food, half a million tons of oil, and goods worth 20 million U.S. dollars as requested by the North yearly, informed sources in China said Sunday.

This is regular assistance separate from relief supplies that China sends in the event of disaster in the North or free aid given when a Chinese leader visits Pyongyang.

That China sends regular shipments of free aid to the North is well known, but the scale and content of the assistance had never been made public before.

That is, the volume of China`s free aid to the North has been slightly adjusted yearly, with Beijing providing 90,000 tons of food and half a million tons of oil last year.

An informed source on North Korean affairs said, “Regular assistance is pure aid that doesn`t entail conditions such as long-term loans or barter of goods and materials.”

This year, however, the Chinese government shipped through mid-June just 10,000 of the 100,000 tons of food aid among items of regular assistance given to Pyongyang. The North depends on China to overcome a significant portion of its food shortage.

According to statistical data on Chinese customs clearance obtained by The Dong-A Ilbo, the volume of food the North purchased significantly increased from 125,000 tons in 2008 to 356,000 tons last year.

 “This seems to be China’s act of retaliation for the North`s test-firing of a long-range missile in mid-April despite Beijing’s strong demand that Pyongyang reconsider,” one source said.

China has usually pressured the North through free regular aid and administrative procedures, including delays in customs clearance in the past. For example, in the wake of Pyongyang`s second nuclear crisis in 2002, when the North unveiled its highly enriched uranium program, China shut off its oil pipeline to the North for three days in 2003 citing facility repair.

Still another informed source on the North said, “In late February, North Korea and China agreed that Beijing would ship 220,000 tons of corn by April 14, the eve of the Day of the Sun (the birthday of North Korea founder Kim Il Sung), but the shipment was completed around April 20 due to delays.”

Beijing pledged its largest package of free aid to Pyongyang in late February after the former was heartened by the North`s move to return to the six-way nuclear talks early this year. But the Stalinist state angered China again by announcing that it would test-fire a long-range missile March 16 and conducting the launch April 13 despite Beijing’s strong objection.



S. Korean activist detained in Vietnam for helping N. Korean defectors

HANOI, June 25 (Yonhap) -- A South Korean activist has been detained in Vietnam in connection with his work related to North Korean defectors, Seoul officials here said Monday.

   The 51-year-old activist, who is only identified by his surname Yoo, was arrested by Vietnamese authorities last Wednesday at a hotel in Ho Chi Minh on suspicion of helping North Korean defectors, according to officials at the South Korean embassy in Hanoi.

   Yoo was arrested for allegedly helping arrange a way for some North Korean defectors to enter South Korea, but it was not immediately clear what exactly he was accused of doing, officials said.

   The South Korean embassy plans to ask the Vietnamese authorities for permission to interview Yoo on Monday.

   Yoo is also believed to have played a role in helping more than 400 North Korean defectors fly to Seoul from Thailand in 2004.

   Southeast Asian nations, such as Thailand, Vietnam and Laos, have been a preferred transit route for North Korean defectors, who escape through China with the hope of eventually settling in South Korea, home to more than 23,000 North Korean defectors.



China to Reconsider Economic Project on North Korea's Hwanggeumpyeong Island
June 25

China has told North Korea that it will reconsider the development project of North Korea's Hwanggeumpyeong island, which represents the economic cooperation between the two countries.

Hwanggeumpyeong, an island located on the border between China and North Korea, was designated as a special economic zone last June.

North Korea promised China to provide the island for 50 years, so that China can foster businesses such as information technology, tourism, light industry and modern agricultural industry.   In return for investments by China's Liaoning Province and Dandong city, North Korea allowed China to travel through its Najin port which leads to the East Sea.

However, the Chineses government told North Korea last month, that it will revise the project from the square one.   According to the government, Liaoning Province and Dandong City will no longer take part in the project, and the investment plans will be rebuilt by the central government.   In response, North Korea has done rice planting on the island earlier last month.

China's recent decision is mainly attributed to its judgement that Hwanggeumpyeong has little business value.  North Korea's rocket launch in April despite China's dissuasion, may also have provoked Chinese government.

With the delay in the Hwanggeumpyeong project, North Korea's 10-year economic development plan is likely to be disrupted.
North Korea may also be criticized for providing its Najin port to China without receiving anything in return.

Heo Seung-ha, Arirang News.



Chinese shipper may have ties to N. Korean arms dealer
By YOSHIHIRO MAKINO/ Staff Writer

A Chinese shipping company that exported to North Korea four large vehicles capable of transporting ballistic missiles last year is suspected of having links to a North Korean arms dealer, sources in the Japanese government said.

The Dalian Qingsong company, based in Dalian, operated several cargo vessels with similar features to the transport ship between China and North Korea, the sources said.

The Chinese shipper operates the Harmony Wish, a 1,999-ton cargo ship that transported the four vehicles to North Korea in August, and several other freight vessels that are similar in size and name.

In addition, the ships are registered with Cambodia, although the crew of each cargo carrier consisted of all Chinese except for a couple of Myanmarese crew members.

Each vessel made around 10 calls a year at ports in North Korea, including Wonsan, Chongjin and Nampo, over the past five years.

The name of the Chinese company is very similar to the Qingsong Group, a North Korean arms dealer, one of the targets of economic sanctions announced in May by the U.N. Security Council’s North Korea sanctions committee over Pyongyang's nuclear program.

Qingsong Group was established by 2008 to take over the business of North Korea’s Korea Mining Development Trading Corp., which deals in weapons and military equipment, after it was slapped with U.S. sanctions.

Qingsong Group, which is believed to be under the control of North Korea’s intelligence services, has branches in Italy, Australia, Malaysia and China.

No details about the Dalian Qingsong shipping company are available, and it has no website.

China refuses to accept any on-site inspection by a panel of experts under the U.N. Security Council sanctions committee.



Romney on North Korea
June 24

By Tong Kim

Despite U.S. concerns of proliferation and security threats, North Korea is not a critical issue that will affect the outcome of the American presidential election in November. The North is not likely to provoke military trouble serious enough to make a difference during the rest of this presidential election year for either the United States or South Korea.

Since Pyongyang’s failed satellite rocket launch in April that effectively cancelled a Feb. 29 agreement with Washington, the North has shown willingness to forego a third nuclear test and to reengage the United States. From its strategic calculation, the new North Korean leadership under Kim Jong-un seems to have decided to avoid further provocations.

However, it is also unlikely that there would be a breakthrough to the deadlock in inter-Korean relations or a new development that could help remove distrust and hostility between the United States and the DPRK, which has reached the worst level in the 60-year cycle of confrontation and engagement.

The Barack Obama administration knows that there is no satisfactory settlement of the North Korean issue achievable before the election. To protect his reelection chances, Obama would hope that the North does not stir up more trouble. The North appears to be cooperative for its own interests.

The North Koreans likely favor the reelection of Obama over the presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney, despite their disappointment and frustration with the minimal record of Obama’s North Korea policy.

From Romney’s statements on North Korea so far and in view of the known perspectives of his foreign policy team members, it is easy to understand why North Koreans would favor Obama. A Romney administration would resemble the hawkish George W. Bush administration preferring to rely on military force to resolve international disputes rather than diplomacy.

To appeal to voters, Romney speaks of “another American century,” “an American exception to stay as the sole superpower to lead,” and “a robust military presence in the Pacific.” He does not trust the sincerity of the North Koreans at the negotiating table. He does not talk about engagement or negotiation for non-proliferation but about implementation of verifiable inspections.

When Kim Jong-il died six months ago, Romney argued that the United States should push for regime change on the opportunity of the North Korean leader’s death, calling him “a tyrant who lived a life of luxury while the North Korean people starved,” and who developed dangerous weapons. To bring about regime change and to force North Korea to take a different path, Romney said, “America must show leadership.” In contrast, the Obama administration has called for stability and caution during Pyongyang’s transition.

On the launch of the North Korean rocket, Romney charged that Obama’s “efforts to appease the regime have emboldened Pyongyang.” He said Obama had “no effective response to North Korea’s weapons program and Obama supported “a food-aid deal,” ― a characterization of the Feb. 29 agreement ― “that proved to be as naive as it was short-lived.”

According to Romney’s official campaign website, he “will commit to eliminating North Korea’s nuclear weapons and its nuclear-weapons infrastructure. A key mistake in U.S. policy toward North Korea has been to grant it a series of carrots in return for only illusory cooperation. Each step the world has taken toward North Korea has been met with further provocations and the expansion of its nuclear program.”

“Romney will reverse that dynamic.” He will make it “unequivocally clear to Pyongyang that continued advancement of its nuclear program and any aggression will be punished instead of rewarded.” Romney will “institute harsher sanctions on North Korea, such as cracking down on financial institutions that service the North Korean regime.”

“He will also step up the Proliferation Security Initiative to constrain North Korean illicit exports by increasing the frequency of inspections of North Korean ships and discouraging foreign ports from permitting entry to North Korean ships.” His people believe “such measures would shut off routes by which the regime supplies its nuclear program.”

A Romney administration would clearly be tougher in rhetoric and attitude, but it does not offer new ideas that could disarm North Korea. Its policy represents a rehash of the hardline aspects of what the previous and present administrations have tried without much success. Romney has yet to offer more specifics on how he can accomplish denuclearization and secure peace and stability in Korea.

Romney says he “will work to persuade China to commit to North Korea’s disarmament,” and “assure China it will not be alone in dealing with the humanitarian and security issues that will arise should North Korea disintegrate …and when the North Korean regime collapses…under the weight of its own economic and political contradictions”

The underlying assumption for this approach is not original. Under Obama’s policy of strategic patience, Washington and Seoul had erroneously anticipated an imminent fall of the Pyongyang regime or its surrender to international pressure to accept the conditions of engagement as dictated by them. The North neither fell nor surrendered.

Like Obama, Romney “will also pursue robust military and counter-proliferation cooperation with our allies and others in the Pacific region.” Similarly, he will also invigorate relationships with South Korea, Japan, and others to increase a collective military presence and cooperation,” to deal with the rising power of China.

The North is unlikely to collapse in the next five years. And, since neither Obama nor Romney seems to have any fresh ideas that will resolve the issue, perhaps, a solution should come from the next government of the South or the new leadership of the North. What’s your take?

The writer is a visiting research professor at Korea University and a visiting professor at the University of North Korean Studies. He is also an adjunct professor at Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. Reach him at tong.kim8@yahoo.com.



North Korea Tests the Patience of Its Closest Ally
JANE PERLEZ   June 24,

BEIJING — As Kim Jong-un, the young leader of North Korea, consolidates his grip on power, China is showing signs of increasing frustration at the bellicose behavior of its longtime ally.

Most surprising, though, is how Mr. Kim has thumbed his nose at China, whose economic largess keeps the government afloat. For example, shortly after Mr. Kim took over, a Chinese vice minister of foreign affairs, Fu Ying, visited Pyongyang, North Korea’s capital, and sternly warned him not to proceed with a ballistic missile test.  The new leader went ahead anyway.

 “We have made this absolutely clear to them; we are against any provocation,” Cui Tiankai, another Chinese vice minister of foreign affairs, said in a recent interview when asked about a possible third nuclear test by North Korea. “We have told them in a very direct way, time and again, we are against it.”

Asked why China did not punish North Korea for its actions, Mr. Cui replied: “It’s not a question of punishment. They are a sovereign state.”   China backed sanctions against North Korea at the United Nations Security Council after the first two nuclear tests, he said. “If they refuse to listen to us,” he added, “we can’t force them.”

Mr. Kim’s erratic behavior unfolded early on. In late February, his government signed an agreement with the United States to freeze its nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs, giving hope that he would turn out to be more open to change than his father. But six weeks later, Mr. Kim ripped up the accord and, without informing China, ordered the missile test that Washington viewed as a test run for launching a nuclear weapon.

The China News Service, a state-run agency, headlined an article last week: “Smooth transfer of power six months after Kim Jong-il’s death.  North Korea enters era of Kim Jong-un.” The top North Korean Army generals, some of them in their 80s, have joined ranks around Mr. Kim, presenting a unified command, said Daniel A. Pinkston of the International Crisis Group in Seoul, who has written a forthcoming report by the group on North Korea.

and the new leader has shown no interest in following the advice of China to open up the economy, even in a modest way.

Despite Mr. Kim’s obstinacy, China keeps the economy from collapsing. Right after Mr. Kim assumed power, for example, China gave North Korea 500,000 tons of food and 250,000 tons of crude oil, according to the International Crisis Group report. That helped overcome what a German aid official, Wolfgang Jamann, said in Beijing on Friday was the worst drought in 60 years. His organization, Global Food Aid, has run a food program in North Korea since 1997.

More than two dozen Chinese fishermen were held captive for two weeks by North Korea in May. After their release, one of the fishermen described how his boat was boarded by North Korean Navy men brandishing guns.  After “13 days in hell,” the fishermen were released, according to interviews in the Chinese news media. But not before the boats and men were stripped, the men to their underpants, the fisherman said.

Nonetheless, senior Chinese officials “dare not use China’s economic leverage” against North Korea, said Shi Yinhong, a professor of international relations at Renmin University in Beijing. That is because a collapse of the North Korean government could result in a united Korea allied with the United States, which would be a nightmare scenario for China, Mr. Shi said.

Indeed, as China becomes more concerned about what it sees as the United States’ stepped-up containment efforts against China — including the positioning of more warships in the Pacific — the less inclined it is to help the United States on North Korea, said Yun Sun, a China analyst in Washington.

“China will not help the U.S. and South Korea solve the North Korea problem or speed up a China-unfriendly resolution, since China sees itself as ‘next-on-the-list,’ ” she wrote in an article last week for the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Hawaii, where Pacific Command, the arm of the American military overseeing the increased United States naval presence in the Pacific, is located.

And over all, there are unyielding historical reasons for China’s protectiveness toward North Korea, said an experienced American diplomat and expert on China.
Beijing disapproves of every aspect of North Korean policy,” J. Stapleton Roy, a former United States ambassador to China and now vice chairman of Kissinger Associates, wrote in an article this month, also for the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

But with long memories of both the Korean War and how Japan used the peninsula to launch its invasion and occupation of much of China from 1937 to 1945, “Beijing has an overriding security interest,” Mr. Roy wrote, “in maintaining influence in Pyongyang and in not permitting other powers to gain the upper hand there.”

Choe Sang-hun contributed reporting from Seoul, South Korea. Bree Feng contributed research.



FAR EAST FOCUS: Pyongyang exploits N. Korean loggers in Russia
By YOSHIHIRO MAKINO/ Staff Writer   June 25

KHABAROVSK, Russia--A North Korean defector toiled as a logger for about 10 years in a “labor camp” of sorts in Russia’s Far Eastern region under a state program to earn much-needed foreign currency for the repressive nation.

The 49-year-old former soldier appeared at a small hotel along the Trans-Siberian Railway in late May. The short man frequently glanced about, visibly nervous about North Korea’s secret police on the hunt for defectors like him.

North Korea is known for exploiting workers it sends abroad by taking away their wages and infringing on their human rights.

More than 100 North Korean defectors are now in Russia, with about 30 in Moscow, according to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

Each day, the former logger felled larch and other trees and transported them to stations from 8 a.m. to around 10 p.m. at the No. 13 office in Tygda in the Amur Oblast.

About 700 North Koreans worked as loggers at the office, with three to four dying in accidents every year.

Loggers made about $500 (40,000 yen) a month on average and $2,000 to $3,000 in a season, according to accounts of other former workers. But more than 70 percent of their pay was siphoned off by the government.

The man remembers he received a maximum of $160 a month in certificates, but supervisors said half of the payment had been sent to his family in North Korea. He was never told how much he made.

North Korean workers dispatched around the world send home several hundreds of millions of dollars a year. The workers, along with mineral resources, are a key source of hard foreign currency for the country, which suffered a trade deficit of $630 million last year.

North Korea’s Forestry Ministry operated its Russian representative office on the outskirts of Khabarovsk, with branches in Tygda and Chegdomyn in the Khabarovsk district, its two largest logging bases.

During the peak, up to 20,000 North Koreans worked as loggers in Russia, with half of them based in Tygda and Chegdomyn, according to sources.

The defector said he volunteered to go to Russia in September 1995 “to make a living.” At that time, rations were suspended in a food crisis, and people were starving to death in rural areas.

At the No. 13 office in Tygda, eight loggers formed a group. Two workers were each responsible for cutting, selecting, transporting and loading trees onto cargo trains.  With equipment in short supply, the monthly quota of 3,000 cubic meters was seldom met.

North Korea focused on logging in Russia’s Far Eastern region after it concluded a contract with the former Soviet Union in 1967. Under the agreement, North Korea would take about 35 percent of the trees felled.

North Korean workers are dispatched abroad only for three years. But the man managed to extend his stay, paying bribes to representatives at the No. 13 office, including those from the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea and the State Security Department, or the secret police.

The man won the trust of senior officials and started working outside the logging base on a part-time basis in around 2000. He would earn 2,000 rubles (4,800 yen, or $60) if he worked at a road construction site for one week.

The man left the office in January 2005, saying he would be back in a week, but never returned.

According to the defector, North Korean authorities went all out to control workers' thoughts.  In winter 1997, he saw a Russian TV news program at the office, which was reporting the defection of former ruling party secretary Hwang Jang Yop.  An enraged senior State Security Department official threatened to send him home if he watched TV again.

When a fire burned the portraits of North Korean founder Kim Il Sung and its then leader Kim Jong Il in a lodging for workers, the occupant of the room was sent home the following day.

The man and four former loggers he has made friends with are making a living by occasionally doing farming work for Russians. But the five live separately, for fear of being rounded up by the secret police.

The man said he cannot save money to flee to safer parts due to a difficult life.

“I want to go to South Korea, but I do not have money to travel,” he said. “Only death awaits me if I return home.”

In December, the man watched a news report at his home about the death of Kim Jong Il.

“Many people died because of the dictator,” he said, with a look of despair on his wrinkled face.

North Korea has closed many logging bases in Russia. Tygda and Chegdomyn have only several hundred workers between them, according to sources.

But there are still 15,000 to 20,000 North Korean workers in Russia, according to South Korean human rights groups and other sources.

A little less than 5,000 work in Vladivostok, and plans are under way to have several thousand North Koreans engage in farming or construction in the Amur Oblast.

North Korea has also sent workers to other parts of the world. About 19,000 entered China on a work visa between January and March, a 40-percent increase from the same period the previous year.

Kim Tae San, a former employee of North Korea’s Light Industry Ministry, was responsible for running a joint venture shoe sewing factory in the Czech Republic for three years from 2000.

The 60-year-old said workers could save only less than 10 percent of what they made because the remainder was confiscated by the government.

Female workers at the plant each made $150 a month, but $75 to $80 was unconditionally remitted to North Korea. In addition, the factory collected $40 for lodging expenses, $1 for subscriptions for airlifted Rodong Sinmun, the official newspaper of North Korea's ruling party, and $2 for flowers. On a memorial day, a basket of flowers was presented before the Kim Il Sung statue in Pyongyang on behalf of all workers overseas.

With whatever money was left, the workers would eat cheap macaroni seasoned with salt for meals, according to Kim.

Despite the harsh conditions, numbers of North Koreans have volunteered to work overseas, according to sources.

A former logger said some overseas workers, including loggers, can expect to save $1,000 in three years if they bribe senior officials and do side jobs.

North Koreans can buy a home in rural areas with $2,000, according to the source.

North Korean workers, described as cheap, diligent and free from labor disputes, have contributed to economic development in Russia’s Far Eastern region.

They are not necessarily welcome in Russia, however.

North Korea has effectively exercised extraterritorial rights in logging bases and ignored Russian requests to improve human rights conditions for workers.

The State Security Department searches for defectors without consulting Russian authorities.

The secret police whisk away defectors in public after affixing a board to one of their legs under their trousers so that they cannot flee, according to sources.

Russia has taken a conciliatory approach both to Pyongyang and Seoul. It has not aggressively taken action against defectors, while asking the South Korean government not to contact defectors directly.

South Korean human rights groups have called on Russia not to issue work visas for North Korean workers.

Russia has proposed three projects--a railway, a natural gas pipeline and a power transmission network--to Pyongyang and Seoul as a way of cooperation since the breakup of the Soviet Union.

Oleg Renzin, deputy director of the Economic Research Institute of the Far Eastern Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, said North Korea would gain more from a passage fee for the pipeline, estimated at $100 million a year, than from logging operations in Russia.

While overseas workers and mineral resources only bring foreign currency to North Korea, the three projects would strengthen the country's industrial bases.

North Korea had been wary because the projects would all pass through its territory on the way to South Korea. But Pyongyang, suffering from economic difficulties, has dropped its opposition since last year.

At a summit meeting in August, North Korea and Russia agreed to cooperate on the pipeline project. In addition, cargo trains would run between Khasan, a Russian city on the border with North Korea, and Rajin Port in North Korea from October.

Many North Korean delegations are also expected to visit Russia’s Far Eastern region, such as the Khabarovsk district and the Amur Oblast.

However, Renzin said Russia cannot help economic development in North Korea if inter-Korea relations remain stalled. It is because Russia relies on South Korea for much of the funding for development of its Far Eastern region.

“Russia has kept its distance (from North Korea) in terms of security if it is willing to cooperate in the economy,” a Japanese observer said, noting that North Korea’s political situation is unstable following the death of Kim Jong Il and the failed launch of a long-range ballistic missile.

According to a source close to North Korea, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, before he turned 20 and before he took power, said North Korea is located in a strategic geopolitical position to dominate major powers. But that strategy will not work unless North Korea improves its relations with other countries.