NK newspaper runs rare
advertisements
The Korea Times.
10/10/12 By Kim Young-jin
A North Korean
newspaper has in recent weeks run
advertisements for clothes and other products in the latest sign of
the Stalinist state attempting to update its economy.
The ads in the
Pyongyang Sinmun include those for flowers and flowerpots; “hanbok” or
traditional Korean dress; and a water-heating device using solar power.
Analysts say new leader Kim Jong-un is tinkering with the economy after
pledging to improve living conditions.
Kim, who took power in
December, has commented on the need for the North’s economy to catch up with
“global trends.” During a visit to a hosiery factory in July, he underscored
the importance of trademarks in a rare reference to marketing.
That followed a call
by a North Korean economic quarterly for promoting exports abroad through
commercials. Such comments may have made room in the tightly-controlled state
for advertising.
“It is part of
economic testing,” said John Delury, an expert at Yonsei University. “It shows
there is continuing trial and error going on.”
Despite an uptick in
market activities in recent years, the North remains nearly void of ads, opting
instead for propaganda extolling the ruling Kim family. Billboards for
Pyeonghwa Motors, a joint venture between the North and the South Korea-based
Unification Church are among its rare forays into advertisements.
But an increasing
consumer culture has been taking root especially in Pyongyang
mostly through cash earned through increased cooperation with China.
Popularity is driven by a growing market culture approved by the regime.
Other changes have
been made to give the North a more modern feel.
Pyongyang has long
proclaimed 2012 as the year it would arrive as a “strong and prosperous” state and
concentrated efforts to renovate the capital city with new apartments as well
as shopping and recreation facilities. It has revamped its news broadcasts with
computerized backdrops. Kim is often accompanied in public by his young wife.
Pyongyang has flirted
with ads before. In 2009, the North's television aired commercials for the
homegrown Taedonggang beer which were followed by those for products such as
ginseng and quail. But amid rampant speculation that late leader Kim Jong-il
was moving to introduce capitalist themes, the advertisements soon ceased and
the regime’s point man on television was fired.
North Korea Says Its
Missiles Can Reach U.S. Mainland
New York Times.
10/10/12 By CHOE SANG-HUN
SEOUL, South Korea — North
Korea claimed Tuesday to have missiles that can reach the
American mainland, and it said that the recent agreement between the
United States and South Korea to extend the range of the South’s ballistic
missiles was increasing the risk of war on the Korean Peninsula.
North Korea has often
threatened to strike the “heart” of the United States, and a popular propaganda
poster there shows a North Korean missile hitting what looks unmistakably like
Capitol Hill. But the warning issued Tuesday was more detailed.
The North Koreans “do
not hide” that their armed forces, “including the strategic rocket forces, are
keeping within the scope of strike not only the bases of the puppet forces and
the U.S. imperialist aggression forces’ bases in the inviolable land of Korea
but also Japan, Guam and the U.S. mainland,” a spokesman at the North’s
National Defense Commission said in a statement. North Korea often refers to
the South Korean military as “puppet forces,” a reference to the South’s alliance
with the United States.
The North’s “strategic
rocket forces” are believed to be in charge of the country’s missiles. The
North’s leader, Kim Jong-un, visited the unit’s headquarters in March and
mentioned it by name during his first public speech in April.
Estimating the missile
capabilities of a country as secretive as North Korea is notoriously difficult. But
military experts and South Korean government officials have said that the North
has already deployed ballistic missiles capable of reaching targets as far
away as Guam, the American territory in the Pacific.
In addition, North
Korea has repeatedly conducted what it calls satellite launchings that
American and South Korean officials, as well as the United Nations Security
Council, have condemned as a cover for developing and testing intercontinental
ballistic missile technology.
In 1998, the North sent up a rocket called the Taepodong-1
that flew over Japan and crashed into the Pacific. In 2006, the Taepodong-2
exploded seconds after liftoff. The North
launched yet another long-range rocket, the Unha-2, in 2009, but
American and South Korean officials said the third stage never separated.
In April of this year, the Unha-3 rocket disintegrated in
midair shortly after liftoff, a failure that the new government in Pyongyang
publicly acknowledged.
But the North claimed
to have successfully placed satellites into orbit in 1998 and 2009. The country
has also conducted two nuclear tests, the first in 2006 and the
second in 2009, although it remains unclear whether it can make a
nuclear warhead small enough to fit atop a missile. Robert M. Gates said in
early 2011, while he was the American defense secretary, that North Korea was
within five years of being able to strike the continental United States with an
intercontinental ballistic missile.
“Even if they failed
to put the satellites into orbit, these rocket tests mean that the North
Koreans may have already acquired the missile range” they claimed on Tuesday,
said Jeung Young-tae, a military analyst at the government-run Korea Institute
for National Unification in Seoul.
In Washington, a State
Department spokeswoman, Victoria Nuland, said, “Rather than bragging
about its missile capability,” North Korea “ought to be feeding its
people.”
Mr. Jeung said the
North’s strident statement on Tuesday was driven in part by a domestic
political need to highlight the supposed threat from the United States and its
allies. On Sunday, South Korea announced a deal with Washington that would
allow it to nearly triple the range of its ballistic missiles to 800
kilometers, or 500 miles, to better cope with the North’s growing missile and
nuclear capabilities.
On Tuesday, North
Korea called the agreement “a product of another conspiracy of the master and
the stooge to push the situation on the Korean Peninsula to the extreme pitch
of tension and ignite a war.”
“We should not forget
even a moment that wolf never subsists on grass as long as it breathes,” it
said, adding that the missile agreement disproved the United States’ insistence
that it had no intention to invade the North.
Larger missiles to be
deployed within five years
Korea Joongang Daily.
10/10/12 By Kim Hee-jin, Jeong Yong-soo
After the landmark
Korea-U.S. deal on increasing the maximum range of South Korea’s
ballistic missiles, the government is planning to deploy the new missiles by
2017, calling for a special state budget on the plan.
“Before the missile
pact was renewed, we had been preparing for a new missile program, because we
were sure that we would succeed in reaching an agreement with the United
States,” a South Korean government official told the JoongAng Ilbo.
“So we have already
asked the legislature to allocate 2.5 trillion won ($2.2 billion) of the budget
to develop new missiles for the next five years.”
The official said that
the South Korean military has already developed essential technology for the
new missile development, so it wouldn’t be difficult to realize the goal of
deploying them no later than 2017.
Shin Won-seok, an
official at the Ministry of National Defense, also said on Sunday at a briefing
that the previous 2001 missile pact didn’t restrict Korea to develop its own
missile technology. So the military has accumulated its own skills until now
and it won’t take much time for them to deploy new weapons.
Another government
source also told Yonhap News Agency yesterday that the military proposed a bill
to offer 500 billion won for next year’s missile development program to the
legislature, and it will decide whether to pass it soon.
Shin In-kyun, the
president of the Korea Defense Network, a private military think-tank, said the
800-kilometer (497-mile) missiles will be two-stage rockets. Shin told the
Korea JoongAng Daily the range of the ballistic rockets exceeds 600 kilometers,
taking it out of the earth’s atmosphere before falling to the ground.
“Technically, it would take only two years to manufacture them,” Shin said.
However, some experts
say that there are still unresolved matters in the missile agreement. Koo
Bon-hak, an international studies professor at the Hallym University of
Graduate Studies, told the Korea JoongAng Daily that the agreement still
hasn’t allowed Korea to develop a solid-fuel rocket, which could be
developed into an Inter-Continental Ballistic Missile (ICBM).
“Under the
international law, there’s no restriction for us to develop a solid-fuel
rocket, but we are not supposed to do that due to the Korea-U.S. missile
agreement,” Koo said. “Neighboring superpowers such as China and Japan already
have technology to develop it at the civilian level.”
Koo also said that the
weight limit of an 800-kilometer missile should have been increased, up to
1,000 kilograms (2,204 pounds). “A heavier warhead raises a missile’s target
accuracy,” Koo said. “So if we want to launch an 800-kilometer missile from a
base in the southern region, where it is relatively safer from North Korea’s
attack, the missile should be heavier than 500 kilograms to accurately bombard
the North.”
Competition, prejudice
drive North Korean defectors overseas
The Korea Herald.
10/10/12 By Song Sang-ho
Coming to South Korea
in 1995, Steve Kim dreamed of
a future free from the suppression and poverty he had long suffered in his
communist homeland.
Seven years later,
life was not as he had hoped. Facing unexpected challenges, the defector
decided to leave again for a third country where he could fulfill his
aspiration and find genuine peace of mind.
What hurt his heart
most was deep-rooted social prejudice. People looked at defectors
through the political and ideological lens rather than embracing them based on
ethnic homogeneity, he said.
“South Koreans do not
appear to be ready yet to embrace the defectors. I do have some difficulties
here in the U.S .”
Many of the refugees, who made it to the South, have
opted to “re-defect” to foreign
countries such as Britain, Germany and Canada as they found little hope for
a decent life amid intense competition with more affluent, better-educated
South Koreans.
Some land on foreign
soil on a travel visa and then discard their passports to disguise themselves as asylum seekers
coming directly from the
poverty-stricken state. Others take official steps to immigrate to
foreign states.
The exact number of
“re-defectors” is hard to obtain as each state does not divulge information on
refugee applicants to protect their privacy. But experts put it at more than
1,000. The number of official emigrants is 42, according to Seoul’s
Unification Ministry.
The reality is tougher
in the classroom, Kang said.
“Professors deliver
their lectures on the premise that we know the basics, which I never heard of
in the North. I have to study much more laboriously to catch up with others,”
he said.
Data on defectors,
whose number has topped 24,000, shed light on the level of their difficulties
in adapting to their new life in the South.
The survey conducted
on 8,299 defectors in January by the North Korean Refugees Foundation found
that more than 30 percent of them belong to the low income bracket with a
monthly salary of less than 1 million won ($897). Their unemployment rate
stands at 12.1 ― 3.3 times higher than the country’s rate of 3.7 percent.
The Unification
Ministry’s budget for defector-related programs is 123.9 billion won,
accounting for 58 percent of its total budget for this year. Together with
provincial governments’ budgets, the total public funds for defectors are much
greater.
But refugees do not
seem to feel that their life has been satisfactory.
As of August, the
total number of those who have defected since the 1950-53 Korean War
stands at 24,077.
