North Korea News Podcast by NK News - Kim Jong Un’s message to troops, Yoon’s arrest and Kim Yo Jong’s statement

Episode Date: January 21, 2025

In this episode, NK News Deputy Managing Editor Alannah Hill dives into the latest evidence of North Korea’s military involvement in the war in Ukraine, focusing on recently recovered handwritten notes detailing Kim Jong Un’s message to North Korean soldiers fighting alongside Russian forces. She also talks about how Kyiv’s decision to reveal the identities […]

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That's the reality that we've all woken up to on this day. And I welcome back Alana Hill on the podcast. Alana, welcome back. Thank you so much for having me, Jacko. Happy Trump Day to you. And what do you want to talk about? It's actually not Trump. He didn't say anything about North Korea or I think even South Korea during the inauguration. So I'm skipping Trump for today. Okay. We're sure he'll come back in weeks to come. Yeah, I can imagine he will.

Yeah. So actually we're going to talk about South Korea's president today and who was arrested last week yes and so we had the first reports coming out of North Korea about his arrest. Oh okay where was this published? So it was published in I believe that yeah the Rodong Shinmun so Yoon was arrested on the 15th and then two days later the Rodong Shinmun ran a story about his arrest. Which I think is faster than their initial reaction to the martial law declaration. Yeah, the martial law was a couple of weeks, I think I have it written down here somewhere. At least a week. Yes, but not as fast as Poconais back in 2017 when she was arrested, I think it was a same day report.

Yeah, they took about two days to report on Yoon's arrest. Now interestingly they cited global news coverage to kind of cover the story and I suppose in a way to frame it as you know the global like shock dissatisfaction with what's happening in South Korea. I think they described it as deepening chaos. I think I saw similar words in the Financial Times or somewhere. The longer it goes on, the more it feels like deepening chaos. Exactly. Yes. But what they didn't mention once again and what they haven't mentioned even in their martial law coverage was when Yoon mentioned these pro-North Korean forces to justify his declaration of martial law.

So, yeah, interestingly, nothing on that yet from North Korea. forces and to justify his declaration of martial law so yeah interestingly nothing on that yet from North Korea. Did they, I'm gonna put you on the spot here, did they mention large-scale demonstrations or? Another interesting one so initially when martial law was declared prior to that North Korea had been reporting on these anti-youn protests I think almost weekly and then when martial law was declared, they stopped. And then they covered martial law and now they covered the arrest. And I think they have talked about dissatisfaction in South Korea,

but mainly through the lens of these global outlets reporting on what's happening in South Korea and the international condemnation of you. Of you. Yeah. Yeah. It's a theme that we've brought up on this podcast a few times over the years that when you're when you are the government of an authoritarian autocratic regime that you have to be careful about talking about demonstrations and overthrows of governments and presidents being elsewhere in the world because these are dangerous ideas. Exactly, exactly. What is it showing your people, you know, that leaders can be overthrown or changed or public backlash works, you know? That's right. And I think I asked recently to Chad O'Carroll when he was last on the podcast was what must North Koreans, diplomats and other workers who are in Syria when Assad fell, they may be going home with dangerous ideas. Exactly, or maybe not going home. I know this is totally off topic but we discussed that before about the North Koreans going to Russia so yeah it'll be interesting to see what comes of that as well. Certainly will, yeah gosh. Okay what shall we talk about next? I have another state media story and this

time it's a statement from Kim Jong-un's sister Kim Yo-jong. So we actually hadn't heard from her in a while. I believe her last statement was back in November. So about two months ago. Yeah. Yeah. And it was about the trash balloons. Okay. Not sorry, not trash balloons, balloons coming from South Korea, which are not trash, but yeah, still balloons. Right. And yes, that was the last we'd heard from her until yesterday. So basically what had happened was Tass reported on this story from the Belarusian president.

That's the Russian news outlet. Yeah. And he had said Alexander Lukashenko had said that there was five countries interested in having these high-level meetings, discuss cooperation, and one of those countries included North Korea. Okay, so Tass had written this report. Now that task report has since disappeared. We can't find it's gone offline. Yeah. And a screenshot of it before I don't think we did. But someone definitely read it. Yeah, Kim Yo Jong apparently read it. But Anton couldn't find it. And if Anton can't find it, it means it's gone. Right. And so we're not sure if it was

retracted. We're not sure. But anyways, this is gone. And if Anton can't find it, it means it's gone. So we're not sure if it was retracted. We're not sure. But anyways, this is gone. And but we did, you know, the statement was on the Belarusian web fighting foreign ministry website and or his presidential website. Sorry to say that, yeah, he had had talks about having meetings with these countries. And Kim Jong came out and said, Absolutely not. She said, as far as I know, there's no such thing. OK, and kind of toned down for Kim Yo-jong.

She didn't use any of the vitriol that she reserved for Mungi in, for example. Exactly. So what was interesting about this and the reason I bring up Tass is that she mentioned Tass in her report specifically and kind of laid the blame on tasks said, you know, be careful what you're reporting. This isn't true. But like you say, there was no attack on Belarusian president. So yeah, again, interesting framing.

And then she went on to say that, you know, the DPRK and Belarus has had a good relationship for two years and that they would welcome with joy the Belarusian side without any reason if it wants to continue develop relations. So yeah it was an interesting again framing laying the blame on more so Tass than on the Belarusian president. Belarus has an embassy here in Seoul, South Korea as well. I don't know how things are these days. I don't run into the Belarusian diplomats anymore at reception events. But a few years ago, before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine,

they were very keen on attracting South Korean investment in their, they have kind of a techno valley. Okay. A lot of cryptocurrency slash blockchain projects in this kind of sandboxed area in there. So now I guess they're perhaps turning their attention to North Korea. Now Tess, don't they have a journalist, a correspondent based in Pyongyang? I know they have in

the past. I don't know if they have one there now. I would have to refer to Chad's very comprehensive piece on who's gone back into North Korea. I can't remember exactly. They did. Yeah, they did have a correspondent there there. I'm not sure if they're back. So they reported on some kind of five nation high level talk about cooperation. And it makes me feel like this could be the group that some people call the crinks. Which is China, Russia, Iran, North Korea. I forget what the S is now. So the other two that you mentioned on the website is Pakistan and Indonesia.

Oh, hello. Yeah. So I don't know if they're two of the cranks. They're not in the cranks. Okay. Yeah. So an interesting group there. Yeah.

But yeah, again, just after two months, we hadn't heard anything from her. She'd marched a lot to talk about. She had his arrest, Yoon's arrest to talk about. And this is what she chose to speak out on. So interesting. Yeah. Yeah. I thought so too.

Okay. But she's still obviously, uh, acting in some kind of capacity as a, I don't know, a mouthpiece that doesn't sound like a great word, but anyway, let's go a speaker, a mouthpiece, a spokesperson for the North Korean government. Yeah. And she seems to speak mostly on foreign policy issues which is interesting too. Yeah all right time for one more at least maybe even two more. Okay well this one's interesting so it might take up a bit of our

time but the Washington Post recently had an excellent article they had received a lot of evidence from Ukrainian special forces about things that they were covering from bodies and live North Korean soldiers fighting for Russia against Ukraine. Right, things like ID papers, diaries, notebooks. So many different things, notes, weapons, lots and lots of different things that give us great insight into what's happening.

But one of the things that they found was this letter, a handwritten letter, and it was signed from Kim Jong-un. So. Oh, a letter to a soldier. If it was found on a soldier, it wasn't necessarily, it wasn't necessarily addressed to a specific soldier, but it was more for, you know,

all the troops fighting in Ukraine. It was relaying New Year's messages. It was saying, I miss you, I think was part of the message and offering support. And so when we saw this letter, you know, peaked our interest. And one of the things that I think some of our staff are really good at is kind of, you know, looking, taking a closer look at these things. Yes. And so that's what Trace did yesterday.

And one of the first things he did was look at some other handwriting we've seen from Kim Jong Un. And it doesn't now again, you know, we're not handwriting experts, but it doesn't appear to to match that. The other thing that really stood out to me was the piece of paper that it's on. Yeah. It's like doesn't look like a very nice piece of paper, you know, just low quality. It was written a blue pen.

I would imagine if I was the leader of a country, I'd be, you know, writing on much nicer paper with fancier. But also a leader can have time to write to 10,000 soldiers. Normally you'd think something like it would be photocopied or printed or photostatted or mimeographed, some sort of technique of duplication. Yeah. So one of the things actually was looked looked like it was written by hand, did it? Yeah, it's a handwritten letter for sure. Yeah. Maybe they have a room full of scribes out there.

Well, one of the theories that the Washington Post put out and that we looked into too was perhaps that this was something that was related to commanders. They said it out loud. Soldiers took it down or something along those lines. And as part of his story, Shreyas actually spoke to David, who's a defector,

who often writes for Ask a North Korean column. And David did serve in the Korean People's Army. He said as well, the poor quality of the paper and handwriting makes it seem like it's definitely not from Kim Jong-un. And he said that it's more plausible that the content was distributed to the entire military and soldiers copied it down themselves. That would make sense. Yeah. Yeah. But you know really interesting again and nice to look at as well. Did it say anything in the letter about there you are fighting in a

foreign country but in a way you're helping the fatherland or something like that? Not that I can remember off the top of my head. It was more New Year's wishes, you know, yeah, I thought that I missed you stuff was strange but come back safely. Yeah, exactly. From that, that training ground over there in the fiery far west. Yeah, wow. Yeah, interesting. Gosh, people can, can find that story, of course, and all the other ones that you've mentioned online. I will link them all, yes. And I think another interesting aspect of that story is the more that Ukraine releases these this kind of evidence, you know what it's hoping for through the release of these kind of things, you know support from the international community, highlighting that North Korea

is fighting with Russia against Ukraine, which still neither Russia nor North Korea have admitted to. So yeah, this is a war that's it's in Europe, but it now involves European and Asian soldiers. So it's it's gone beyond the theater of Europe. And this is something that I think we've seen NATO say a lot in the last year or two that this you know, there's more going on than just in the European theater and this is I guess something that backs that up right exactly exactly it is bigger than that yeah now also on that note on the the releasing of information about North Korean prisoners of war now if I wrote a big story that was that yesterday that was published about the

the possible dangers of releasing film footage and and photographs of North Korean prisoners of war in which he talked about the Geneva Convention and what that says. Now tell us a little bit about that if you can. Yeah, so basically this story goes back to when Ukraine first announced that it had captured POWs. It had previously captured POWs, but unfortunately they passed away. So this comes from, this is the first testimony that was released from North Korean prisoners of war. And so there was a lot of conversation about whether their images should have been released. As part of the third Geneva Convention, it stipulates that any materials that enable prisoners to be identified must normally be regarded as subjecting them to public curiosity and therefore may not be transmitted published or broadcast. So yeah there was a lot of conversation

about where these soldiers rights being violated because Ukraine had released these unofficial channels you know it was Vladimir Zolensky's telegram I believe he released videos photos and continues to do so and now the treaty does make exceptions for two specific circumstances so when disclosure serves a compelling public interest or when it directly benefits the prisoners welfare and so you know it's a very nuanced conversation I believe there's a lot of gray area with this one because of the fact that North Korea has still refused to even acknowledge that these soldiers are being sent abroad. And Russia also refused. And Russia, yes, of course. They're given these fake Russian

identity cards as if they're ethnic Asians living in Russia from the Tuva. Yeah, purposely to disguise their ethnicity. So I'm sure that the Ukrainian government is saying there's a clear public interest here. We need to prove that there are foreign soldiers on this, in this war against us. Yes, but then, you know, Yifang's article raises these great points about possible repercussions that this could have for their families back in North Korea, which, you know, we have seen, I think in his article it mentions family members up to the third generation can be punished for crimes their family members commit in North Korea. So he wrote a really interesting story that I think lays out both sides to that and I will also link

that in the show notes. Yeah and the specific day, so the dangerous part that I think he pointed to was where one of the soldiers is heard to say that he'd like to stay living in Ukraine. Yeah that part.. You can imagine there'd be repercussions back home. Exactly. And again, that part was very, I watched that part of the video. You know, he's not this young, young guy, he's 19 years old. He's asked two questions. He's and he's asked, do you want to stay? And he's and he kind of says yes.

And he says, do you want to go back? And he also kind of said, yes. So, you know, this guy has just been in a battle. He's injured. He's, you know, and he's been lying there for 3, 4, 5 days surroundings but yeah those kind of statements could be very could be very dangerous for someone like him so. Well yeah God it's a nasty situation isn't there we do hope that it ends soon. Eliana thank you once again for coming on the show and walking us through those stories listeners youers, you can check all of them out.

The links will be in the show notes and keep checking out nknews.org for all the latest. Thanks, Jaco. Thank you. Score more for less with our NK News Shop discount campaign. Ready to upgrade your wardrobe with some unique flair? At the NK News Shop, podcast listeners buying any two items from our t-shirt or hoodie collections pain. and make the most of this limited time offer. That's shop.nknews.org. Ladies and gentlemen, that brings us to the end of our podcast episode for today. Our thanks go to Brian Betts and Alana Hill for facilitating this episode and to our post-recording

producer genius, Gabby Magnuson, who cuts out all the extraneous noises, awkward silences, bodily functions, and fixes the audio levels. Thank you and listen again next time.