Diplomatic Briefing
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Newsline: Chinese embassy working on detention of fishermen in North Korea
The Chinese Embassy in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) is working on the detention by the DPRK of Chinese fishermen with their vessels, asking Pyongyang to ensure the legitimate rights and interests of the fishermen, a Chinese counsellor to the DPRK said. Counsellor Jiang Yaxian told Xinhua that Ambassador Liu Hongcai and other Chinese diplomats have been working actively on the detention of the Chinese fishermen along with their vessels “through negotiation and close contact”, to fully ensure the Chinese crew’s personal safety and their legitimate rights and interests. According to the DPRK side, the detained Chinese fishing crew are now in “sound health condition with sufficient food and healthcare”, and that “part of the detained vessels and crew have already been back to China.” Jiang said that the Chinese Embassy in the DPRK will continue its efforts to ensure that the issue will be properly addressed as soon as possible. China demands the DPRK ensure the safety and legitimate rights and interests of the Chinese fishermen. It was reported that three Chinese fishing boats and their crews were held in custody by the DPRK on May 8.
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2012-05/19/content_15336382.htm
Newsline: Canadian Embassy to Teach English to N.Korean Defectors
The Canadian Embassy in Seoul will offer English conversation classes to North Korean defectors after Ambassador David Chatterson signed a contract with Yoon Hyun, head of the Citizens’ Alliance for North Korean Human Rights. The program is being sponsored by a foundation affiliated with the Unification Ministry that supports defectors from the reclusive state. Classes will be offered by native-English-speaking volunteer teachers from Canada to students 18 years or older who are either preparing for their university entrance exams, or who are already attending college. The free 12-week course will be held twice a week and will begin on Feb. 22, with 13 students already selected to attend. “The purpose of the program is not only to help them improve their English conversation skills, but also to teach them about the values and cultures of the free world,” said a spokesperson for the embassy.
http://english.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2012/02/16/2012021601104.html
Newsline: Kim Jong-un assassination rumours sparked by Beijing embassy birthday party
Kim Jong-il’s 70th birthday is cause for celebration at the North Korean embassy in Beijing, so much so that building is now abuzz with activity for the multi-day festivities. Now, along with the planned events, embassy staff can now mark worldwide social-media fueled assassination rumours down as one of the many tributes for the late Dear Leader. Rumours that Kim Jong-un, North Korea’s newly anointed supreme leader, had been assassinated originated on Chinese microblogging service Weibo Friday, and spread swiftly on Twitter. It all seems to trace back to a message from Weibo user Hucaihe, who quipped that there was an ever-growing number of cars at the North Korean embassy. “It’s the first time I’ve seen this situation, did something happen in Korea?“ That message has since been forwarded more than 12,000 times, which is only the tip of the iceberg. Despite the dubious nature of the rumour, the reports continued to gather steam, especially when a couple of American news outlets reported on the claims. This isn’t the first time that rumours of an assassination have swirled around the North Korean family. Kim Jong-un was thrust into power in the communist nation after the death of his father Kim Jong-il. Believed to be in his 20s, his inexperience has sparked concern in the international community over whether he is capable of ruling North Korea.
http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/02/10/kim-jong-un-assassination-rumours/
Newsline: Top US diplomat in China for N. Korea talks
Senior US diplomat Kurt Campbell arrived in Beijing to discuss North Korea after the death of Kim Jong-Il, a US embassy spokesman said. Campbell, the assistant secretary for East Asian and Pacific affairs, is the first US diplomat to visit North Korea’s closest ally since the leader of the Stalinist state died from a heart attack on December 17. Kim’s death has sparked concerns over the stability of the isolated, nuclear-armed nation, where famine killed hundreds of thousands in the 1990s and where severe food shortages persist. A spokesman for the US embassy in Beijing told AFP Campbell had arrived on Tuesday evening. He said Campbell would meet senior officials on Wednesday “to discuss a range of important bilateral, regional, and global issues, including the latest developments related to North Korea and Burma.” China is a key ally of Burma, which has made tentative steps at reform by opening talks with the opposition and ethnic minorities. But the future of North Korea is likely to dominate Campbell’s trip, which will also take him to South Korea and Japan before he returns to Washington on Saturday. In the hours after the announcement of Kim’s death on December 19, China’s Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi held phone talks with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on the importance of ensuring security on the Korean peninsula.
http://m.bangkokpost.com/news/273613
Newsline: China’s Hu Jintao visits North Korean embassy to offer support
Chinese President Hu Jintao visited the North Korean embassy in Beijing on Tuesday to “express condolences” for the death of Kim Jong-il, in a sign of Beijing’s determination to protect its ties with Pyongyang as it enters an uncertain transition. Hu’s visit, reported by the official Xinhua news agency, followed a message from China’s central leadership on Monday that gave Beijing’s support for isolated North Korea and expressed confidence in Kim Jong-un — Kim Jong-il’s young and little-known successor. The brief Xinhua report did not say what Hu said during his embassy visit. But his gesture — unusual for China’s highest ranked leader — was enough to highlight Beijing’s effort to shore up support for Pyongyang under the younger Kim. “We feel incomparably anguished, and offer our deepest condolences to the entire North Korean people,” China’s top leaders said in a collective statement read out on state television’s main evening news on Monday. “We are sure that the North Korean people will abide by Comrade Kim Jong-il’s will and unify around the Korean Workers’ Party, and under the leadership of Comrade Kim Jong-un turn their anguish into strength,” it added. Over the 18 months before his death, Kim visited China four times, although in the past he rarely travelled abroad.
http://m.timesofindia.com/PDATOI/articleshow/11176561.cms
Newsline: Diplomat describes North Korea’s late leader Kim Jong Il “smart and ruthless”
Many analysts conclude that Kim Jong Il has played a poor hand of cards skillfully. “I tend to disregard rumors that he’s irrational, a man that nobody can do business with,” said Alexander Mansourov, a longtime Korea scholar and a former Russian diplomat who was posted in Pyongyang in the late 1980s. “I believe that he is smart. He’s pragmatic. And I think he can be ruthless. He’s a man who will not loosen his grip in any way on the people around him.” Analysts say it is easy for outsiders to demonize Kim Jong Il, a dictator who spent an estimated 25% or more of his country’s gross national product on the military while many in his country went hungry. But in North Korea, closed off from outside influences, fearful of threats from its neighbors, and subjected to decades of political socialization on top of a long tradition of a strict hierarchical system, Kim Jong Il is viewed positively by most people, said Han Park of the Center for Study of Global Issues. “The level of reverence for Kim Jong Il in North Korea is quite underestimated by the outside,” Park said. “He is regarded by many as not only a superior leader but a decent person, a man of high morality. Whether that’s accurate is not important if you want to deal with North Korea. You have to understand their belief system. Perception is reality.” But to the outside world, Kim Jong Il will be remembered as one of the worst despots in history, according to Andre Lankov, an author on Korea’s history. “He will be remembered as a person who was responsible for awful things: for the existence of one of the worst dictatorships in not only Korean history but the world history at least in the 20th and 21st centuries,” Lankov said. “Yet he did not create this dictatorship — it was his father’s but he took responsibility, and he made sure it continued for many more years.”
http://www.localwireless.com/wap/news/text.jsp?carrier=google&sid=6&nid=1248799650&cid=22&scid=-1&title=Top+Stories&ith=0
Newsline: France mulls opening office inNorth Korea
France is about to open an office in North Korea to develop cultural ties and to represent French aid groups working in the totalitarian state, the foreign ministry said. The office is to be headed by a French diplomat with Asian expertise, Olivier Vaysset, “given the needs that have been identified in the cultural and humanitarian domains,” ministry spokesman Bernard Valero said. Vaysset’s mission does not representFrancereopening diplomatic ties with North Korea. With Estonia, Franceis one of only two European Union powers to have no formal links with Pyongyang. The French envoy will be the only expatriate staff member at the mission, which will be an office in a building currently used by British, German and Swedish officials. There are no plans to open a full embassy. Most EU countries recognisedNorth Koreain 2000 or 2001 at a moment of relative warmth in relations between the isolated regime and the international community following a summit between North and South Korea. France did not follow suit, and North Korea’s relations with the outside world have worsened dramatically since, in particular after Pyongyang withdrew from the nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty in 2003. Paris argues that North Koreamust improve its human rights record and address international concerns over the regime’s nuclear weapons programme before full diplomatic ties are agreed. “If there were substantial changes on the peninsula in terms of weapons non-proliferation, inter-Korean dialogue and human rights, we might adapt our position, but we’re not there today,” a French diplomat said.France’s former special envoy to Pyongyang, ex-culture minister Jack Lang, visited the North in November 2009. He said afterwards that France had offered to forge cultural links but not full diplomatic ties.
Newsline: North Korean embassy in Libya ordered ‘not to return’
Pyongyang, in a message sent to its embassy in Libya, told some 200 North Koreans not to return and to follow local authorities’ advice, Yonhap news agency said, citing a source familiar with North Korean affairs. “(The North) did so because it was afraid the news of Libya’s civil unrest would spread within North Korea,” said the source quoted by Yonhap. The impoverished communist state sent hundreds of workers including doctors, nurses and construction labourers to oil-rich nations including Libya, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait to earn much-needed foreign cash, Yonhap said. Countries have rushed to evacuate nationals from the North African country since deadly clashes broke out between rebels and forces loyal to leader Moamer Kadhafi in February. Pyongyang and Tripoli have maintained close diplomatic ties, with Kadhafi described in the North as a “revolutionary comrade” of leader Kim Jong-Il, according to defectors from the North.
Newsline: UN calls for Korean restraint
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon called for restraint by the two Koreas after condemning an artillery attack by the communist North on the rival South. No country has yet requested a meeting of the UN Security Council to discuss the attack however, diplomats said. ‘The secretary general condemns the attack and calls for immediate restraint,’ said a spokesman for the UN leader in a statement. Ban is ‘deeply concerned by the escalation of tension on the Korean Peninsula caused by artillery attack’ by the North. Ban has expressed his ‘utmost concern’ to the British presidency of the Security Council, but the British ambassador Mark Lyall Grant said that no country has yet requested a meeting of the council to discuss the attack. Diplomats said that no request was expected on Wednesday as the international powers would have to first decide what concrete steps the council could take in reaction. The Security Council took several days to take action over the sinking of a South Korean warship in March, which has been blamed on the North. US President Barack Obama has pledged the United States will defend South Korea after what the White House branded an outrageous attack by North Korea on its neighbour. ‘South Korea is our ally. It has been since the Korean War,’ Obama said in his first comments about the North Korean shelling of a South Korean island. ‘And we strongly affirm our commitment to defend South Korea as part of that alliance.’ Fears that the North Korean assault could turn into a full-blown showdown across the world’s last Cold War flashpoint depressed US markets, as stocks, already hit by fears over Ireland’s plight, slumped.
Book review: North Korean embassy in Vienna as European store cupboard
March 14, 2010 at 8:24 am · Filed under Austria, Commentaries, North Korea
Outside the presidential palace up to 3 million people were dying of starvation. Inside, dictators Kim Il-Sung and his son and heir Kim Jong-Il had their every desire met, no matter how obscene. Money was no object as they and their cronies lived a life of opulence while some countrymen resorted to cannibalism in a desperate effort merely to survive. Nobody was more grimly aware of the shocking difference in living standards than Kim Jong-Ryul. For he was the North Korean dictatorship’s personal shopper – whose job was to travel the globe and buy every luxury his country’s corrupt rulers demanded. Armed with shopping lists of anything from gold-plated guns to expensive cars, he easily found firms more than happy to break the international trade embargo on North Korea in return for a 30% fee. But the ex-colonel defected in disgust at the regime’s oppression of its people while living the high life. In doing so, he faked his death – knowing that if his defection was discovered his family and even his neighbours would face death. Now, aged 75, he has decided to come in from the cold for the first and last time and expose Kim Jong-Il’s tyranny in a remarkable book – In The Dictator’s Service – that lays bare the decadence and madness at the heart of the regime. He spent 20 years travelling on a diplomatic passport and a suitcase full of cash, using the code name Emil. The North Korean embassy in Vienna became his European store cupboard, to which he would return laden with spy technology, weapons and luxury goods. In the Austrian capital he could count on banking secrecy, easy trade rules and lax airport control. At the embassy, his shopping was repackaged and flown out with fake papers and the help of paid-off customs officers. He did deals with Swiss, German and French firms.
http://www.mirror.co.uk/celebs/news/2010/03/11/i-was-kim-jong-il-s-personal-shopper-115875-22101931/
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