North Korea News Podcast by NK News - Kim Yo Jong slams ROK border drills, Russian kids to visit North Korea

Episode Date: July 9, 2024

Kim Jong Un’s powerful sister condemned South Korea’s resumption of live-fire drills along the inter-Korean border as a tactic to distract the public from calls to impeach President Yoon Suk-yeol, which has garnered more than one million signatures. NK News’ Deputy Managing Editor Alannah Hill (@alannahmhill) discusses Kim Yo Jong’s statement, news that a youth […]

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Plus seize the chance to cultivate valuable connections within the vibrant North Korea watching community. Whether you're a scholar, a journalist or simply a curious soul, the North Korea from a Distance Tour is your gateway to understanding one of the most enigmatic countries on the globe. Spaces are limited for this unique educational journey. Don't miss your chance to be part of this exceptional experience. Visit NK News or contact Corio Tours to reserve your spot today. Hello listeners and welcome to the NK News podcast. I'm your host, Jaco Zwetslu. This episode is recorded on Tuesday, the 9th of July, 2024. And I'm joined here in the studio

by one of our managing editors, Alana Hill. Alana, welcome back on the show. Thank you. I feel like it's been ages. It might have been. Yeah, it's been a long time. Didn't we talk about... No, yeah, you're right. It was before I went on vacation show. Thank you. I feel like it's been ages. It might have been. Yeah, it's been a long time. Didn't we talk? No, yeah, you're right. It was before I went on vacation. It's true. Okay. So what do you got? What's new? What's the big story? It's been a little bit quiet after the Putin summit. But over the weekend, we'll start off with this statement we had from Kim Yo-jong, which is, you know, Ah, she's talking again. His North Korean leader's sister. Yeah. And she was basically slamming these drills that have resumed near the inter-Korean border.

So they had some new artillery drills near the land border for the first time in six years that started off at the beginning of this month. And basically she is saying that these drills are just an excuse to take the South Korean public's attention away from the fact that we all want you impeached. So, interestingly, these stories I always find interesting, it's where these statements are put out. So she put this statement out in KCNA, which is a Korean central news agency, which is externally facing, and then all to the Road Unction Moon, which is internally facing. So, yeah, she wanted everyone to hear her message, basically, but she was touching on, I don't know if you've heard about this petition that's

been filed in South Korea and garnered quite a lot of attention. I think it's got about, it's over a million signatures now basically calling for Yoon's impeachment. Yeah. And so she was citing that an example of how unpopular he is. Everybody wants him gone. These drills are just a way to take attention off that. And so yeah, that was her statement from over the weekend. So okay, we've got signatures from less than 1% of the South Korean people. And that's her basis for believing that everyone wants you to be impeached and that these drills

are an attempt to take people's attention off that fact. Now, of course, North Korea, which has gone through three decades of slow crawl famine and economic collapse, combined with lots of shouting about external threats and drills. I mean, North Korea, I hate to be uncharitable, but I think they are kind of the experts in drawing people's attention away to something else to avoid people looking at the failures of their government in Pyongyang. Absolutely yeah. And so actually Jung Min Kim, our colleague, she wrote a really interesting piece, I'll link it in the show notes, she actually wrote it for Korea Pro, but basically talking about, like you mentioned, how this petition is not really going to go

anywhere. Much much fuss about nothing really. I mean there are petitions on the the presidential office website all the time. Yes. Some of them gain more and some of them gain less signatures. Yes. Yeah. And this is all stemming you know as you know from this comprehensive military agreement it was I think it started off being partially suspended by South Korea after the satellite launch

fully suspended by North Korea then fully suspended by North Korea, then fully suspended by South Korea. And so since then things have just seemed to ramp up with drills. There was the inaugural, I believe it's Freedom Edge is the name of the drills, with Japan, the US, South Korea. You know, we've seen lots of statements from North Korea when we have trilateral drills like that, slamming those kind of things as threats to the peninsula and things. So yeah, it's not really unexpected to be honest.

These live fire exercises that you mentioned that are going on near the border, how long are they expected to go on for? I'm not sure actually the most recent ones, but from my understanding, they're all pretty standard. You know, it's nothing out of the ordinary from what I know. It's usually a few days or a week. Now, if you're trying to detract people's attention away from a possible impeachment and you're using all your resources on a three day, five day or even seven day drill, I mean, that doesn't seem like a very effective use of resource. I'm going to say that Kim Yo Jong is probably blowing smoke there.

Yeah, I think that's a fair assessment, Jacko. All right, what's the next story? So the next one is one Anton Saklin wrote, really interesting one. He actually found this in Russian media, I've been reporting on this youth, a delegation of youth organizations from Donbass, which is this region in Ukraine that's now Russian controlled. Basically they took a trip to Pyongyang last month to visit and to discuss cooperation with other youth organizations in North Korea, maybe exchanges, cooperation, maybe sending youth from Donbas to the summer camp in North Korea. Right, get away from a hot war zone to a frozen war zone.

Right. It's not exactly appealing. Really interesting story though about this cooperation and what some experts that he spoke to suggested was this might actually be a way for workers, potentially military personnel from North Korea to end up going to Donbass under the guise of, you know, a youth organization or youth exchanges. That was some of their thoughts behind this potential cooperation. So it's a summer work camp, but they accidentally missed their flight home and ended up staying there for two years to work a bit more.

Potentially. God loves them. Yeah. So, so basically, um, it was a delegation of these people that organize these, there was no kids have gone yet. So they went to Pyongyang, they met these different organizations, discussed what could potentially happen. They were talking about visits to this Songdoan International Summer Camp. That's one that's been reported on before. And Russians have been going there for decades.

And not only Russians, other Europeans. I think we have a story on NK News back in the archives from a youth from another country who went to Songdoan. Right. I'll have to look that up. Yeah. So Anton actually reported in May that there had been discussions between this region and the Russian far east. Primorsky Krai, Primorsky Krai, that's very close to Vladivostok. Butchering that. Yeah.

About sending children from that region to that summer camp. So they could be the first kind of kids to foreign kids to go back to that summer camp and maybe this summer. Now we haven't heard anything yet on that again. Running out of time. Yeah. Yeah. Summer's here. But you know, since the Putin Kim summit, all these things appear to be picking up and yeah, there's talk of, you know, maybe this being another way for Russia and North Korea to cooperate.

Now you may not know the answer to this, but what's the age range of young people that we're talking about? Is this like 13 to 24 or is... Yeah, so from my understanding, it's around that age group. Another expert that Anton spoke to was talking about how there's these revivals of kind of youth organizations in Russia and basically how they're used to instill patriotism within Russian kids, which is what we see in North Korea as well. And I think it's a similar age range within North Korea. They have to join these, these kids union is called. I'm not sure exactly what age that starts from, but I believe it's about that

kind of similar. There's two different organizations.. What it used to have a very, very long name, or maybe it actually changed to a very, very long name, the Kim Il-Songist, Kim Jong-Ilist, Socialist Democratic Youth, or something like that. There are two different organizations that when you age out of the first one, you automatically have to join the next one. The younger ones are the ones

that wear the red kerchiefs around. Yes, yeah, I've seen lots of pictures of those. Yeah, and those kids look like they range in ages from eight, nine pictures of those. Yeah. And those kids look like they rage range in ages from, you know, eight, nine to, you know, young teenagers. So, yeah, I think it's a broad, broad enough age range. Wow. Okay.

Well, that's interesting to see once again, another sign that visitors from Russia of almost any age and background are more welcome to North Korea than Western embassies or program aid groups. Anybody else? Yeah. Chinese tourists. We haven't seen anyone back from China yet. Oh really? Yeah, nobody. There's been some student exchanges, I believe, but on a very small scale.

So yeah, it's interesting. I wonder, you know, we're trying to figure out where this is going to go, but it appears that still tourism is, you know, looks like a long, long way off, I think. I don't know. Okay. One more thing. Actually, we may have time for two. Let's see how we go. Well, I'm going to finish up with this one because I think it's kind of a leaves a kind of an open question. It's actually a story that Yifang wrote, your fellow Dutchman. Yes. And it's about a South Korean man. He's an activist based in Busan and he's being charged with allegedly violating the National Security Act. Which has been in place since 1949. Yes, yeah that's right and so he's been charged with it. To me when you read these stories it sounds

quite almost silly I want to say. He had a conversation I believe it was with a lawmaker. It was reported that he said something like if North Korea were to incite a war and that war were to lead to peaceful reunification then we should back North Korea's want to incite that war. So I think I recall that happening earlier this year this was in reaction to Kim Jong-un saying he's no longer interested in talking to South Korea or peaceful unification with South Korea and there were a couple of people who wrote some things and this man I think he wrote that somewhere online or perhaps in a newspaper I forget where now but it was written down and it was

clear that he was saying yeah if if this leads to national unification I that's the priority goal for him then yeah we should welcome it whatever leads to unification that's the end. So the means must be a good thing. So that was one opinion that he expressed that he's gotten in trouble for. The second thing that he's getting in trouble for these, um, the stories in the news again, because the police have recommended prosecutors charge him with this violation. So that's the next step in this case.

But the second thing that he got in trouble for was he contacted this, uh, pro DPRK group in Japan. The Jochongyeon or the Chosensoren? Yeah, it doesn't actually mention the exact group, which it is, but apparently it's one that's, you know, you're not allowed to contact, South Koreans are not allowed to contact without permission, without seeking authorization from, I believe it's the unification ministry first. And anyways, he emailed them and he shouldn't't have and he's in trouble for that also. And this is not the first time that we've heard of cases like this.

The reason I wanted to chat about it today and I find it interesting is in the context of all these balloon launches that we're seeing and the way that the union government is justifying not getting involved in a lot of these launches by activists, South Korean activists, is it's their freedom of expression, their right to, you know, launch balloons, launch anti-DPRK propaganda into North Korea, and they are not being prosecuted for any of that, which is, you know, they're prerogative, that's fine. So to me, it's an interesting kind of two sides of the story, maybe. Junglin also wrote a really fantastic article about how authorities in these border areas are dealing with these launches by these activists because they're because the government is not stepping in and technically they're not

doing anything illegal. Right. A lot of these, you know, a mayor, I believe, is one of the people that she spoke to in these one of these border, is finding that he's having to actually step in himself and try and dissuade, you know, physically stop launchers. I believe there was some like physical threats involved because he feels like the safety of the residents of the region that he's the mayor of is in jeopardy. So yeah, it's an interesting story.

It's an interesting thing to think about what jeopardizes the safety of South Koreans more. I don't know. Well, with a recent podcast interview guest, I've been talking about related topics with Eric Foley. I talked about just the, the nature of governments to who want to filter or control the way that people communicate with each other in North and South Korea. Now under the national security law in South Korea, strictly speaking, South Koreans aren't even allowed

to talk to North Koreans in any capacity without reporting to the government. And that includes the Chosun Soran group, the pro-North Korean group in Japan. But also, I mean, I think some people might go as far as saying that if a South Korean met a North Korean in a third country, they should come back and report that immediately too. So it's a very tightly controlled area, but this, as you point out, with the sending of the balloons, that's not controlled because there's no way for North Koreans to write back. Now, if these civic groups were involved in a,

let's email North Koreans in positions of government or let's write letters to North Koreans and engage in a correspondence with them. I think that's the point at which the South Korean NIS would step in and say, ah well now you've got communication going on, we need to be in there to monitor that and filter that and make sure that you're not acting against the interest of South Korea.

But as long as it's a completely one way channel with absolutely no chance of a response coming back, the South Korean authorities don't care because that doesn't constitute a breach of the national security law. I'm just trying to think in that frame of reference. Yeah, I suppose the way I was thinking of it was in terms of the freedom of expression.

So when it comes to this guy expressing that he feels like, you know, a war of unification is justifiable, is that just his opinion? The same way that these activists feel like they're helping by launching these balloons. And it's just, I say it. But the thing in the national security law is that if you praise the anti-state, an anti-state organization, i.e. the government of North Korea, then you've gone too far.

So that's the carve out for freedom of expression in under the Korean law. Right. As soon as you say, yeah, North Korea should come in and invade us. Okay. That's it. You've broken that law. Right. Yeah.

And it wraps up nicely because it comes back to Kim Yo-jong in a statement that she made, which she justified, you know, sarcastically justified the North Korean balloon launches as, and I'm doing air quotes here, her citizens freedom of expression. So kind of threw that back in the South Korean government. The balloons carrying the trash and the poop and all that stuff. She said, oh no that's not the government that's just our citizens freedom of expression. Now also I recently talked to Zainichi Korean Park Young Mi who explained to me that in Japan, they're now forbidden from talking to South Korean groups.

So I wonder if that man in Busan would have sent his email today, would he get a reply? Interesting. I didn't know that. Yeah. So under the new sort of 15-point laws or rules that have been circulating in the Chosun Soran group after Kim Jong-un announced his new policy on anti-unification. They're basically told stay away from South Korean groups. Individuals, they may make an exception, I'm not sure, but that would be interesting to see if you still get a reply.

Interesting. So we'll follow up on that case and we'll see what happens. Yes. Okay. And I also heard or read that after the recent plenary meeting that the new Kim Jong-un badges were not worn anymore. Not not well from what we've seen they're not as widespread as we not that we expected but yeah not everybody's wearing them basically. Right so for the special people at first. Right yeah that appears to be the way it's going so we'll see we'll see how much of a wider roll out there is in time.

We'll have to keep an eye on it. Excellent. All right. Well, thank you very much for joining me on the show today, Lana Hill. Thank you for having me. See you next time. In the intricate world of Korean affairs, tailored intelligence makes all the difference. Korea Risk Group's consulting services offer specialized, actionable intelligence designed to guide your career-related decisions. We provide bespoke consulting services that cater to your unique challenges and goals. From policy analysis to market entry strategies, we bring clarity to complexity. Transform uncertainty into opportunity and visit careerpro.com solutions today.

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.