North Korea News Podcast by NK News - UN condemns North Korean abuses, POWs in the DPRK and inter-Korean tourism

Episode Date: December 23, 2025

This week’s podcast starts by discussing the U.N. General Assembly’s adoption of a resolution condemning North Korea’s human rights abuses for the 21st consecutive year. NK News correspondent Jooheon Kim explains the implications of the resolution and Seoul’s support, before talking about messages to South Korean President Lee Jae Myung from the families of prisoners […]

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Each design is a conversation starter. Find yours at shop.m.nknews.org. Again, that's shop.m.knews.org. Hello listeners, and welcome to the weekly NK News podcast. I'm your host, Jacko's Wetsuit, and today it is Tuesday, the 23rd of December. That's Festivus, for those of you who celebrate and are fans of Seinfeld. So happy Festivus. I've got a lot of grievances with you, people, and you're going to hear about it.

them. But that's going to be later. We're going to talk, first of all, to my colleague Kim Juhon from NK News, who's on the show this week. Juhon, welcome on the show. Thanks for having me. You've got a few stories to talk about. Let's start with the UN General Assembly adopting a resolution about North Korean human rights. Yeah, so the UNGA has once again adopted a resolution condemning North Korea's human rights abuses for the 21st year in row. So, yeah. 21 years in a row. Oh, okay. Do you know if the North Koreans were there present when that resolution was adopted in the meeting? I don't think so. Okay. There were 61 countries, including South Korea, U.S., Japan. And they passed this by consensus, but, yeah, so I'm pretty sure

okay, I was. Yeah, generally North Korea does not like to be in the room when these things happen. What does this mean? What's the meaning of this? What's the effect of this? So, yeah, so it called on Pyongyang to immediately repatriate, abductees, detainees, and prisoners of war. Yeah, it's pretty much similar with the previous ones, but South Korea co-sponsored the resolution this time. Yeah. But, you know, there were a lot of speculation that I. Jamion might not co-sponsor since he didn't seem to be very interested in North Korean human rights issues. And there has been a pattern that progressive governments in South Korea tend not to be so actively involved in North Korea. human rights issues, whether at the UN as General Assembly or whether here domestically.

So it is interesting to see that E.J. Myeong did co-sponsor that resolution. Right. There are a lot of criticisms from human rights groups, defectors, they're not releasing these North Korean Human Rights reports. They've been publishing annually. You mean domestically here in Southland? Domestically. But I'm pretty sure if foreigners can also read that on the website. Okay. All right. And let's go on to. the next story then this is an interesting one about

Taekwondo Sure yeah so South Korea we kind of talked about this before at the time South Korea was not really interested in applying for Tequando to be jointly listed as UNESCO heritage

intangible cultural heritage with North Korea but now they are going for that so South Korea is interested in this because North Korea already registered last year and South Korea they just decided

to register this year. Right, okay. So for our listeners there, there are two competing factions or kinds of Tequandor. There's the ITF, the International Tequandor Federation based in Pyongyang,

and then there's the World Tequandor Federation based here in Seoul, and they have slightly different styles. The World Tequandor Federation, I think, is the one that's in the Olympics. Yes, correct. But the ITF is also in, you know, many countries around the world.

It's not just in North Korea. and both of the countries, both Koreas wanted to inscribe Taekwondo as a UNESCO cultural heritage. What does it mean, if North Korea already did it last year and South Korea does it now, what does joint inscription mean? So this happened for Siddhom as well, which is traditional Korean wrestling. For Siddhom as well, North Korea apply first, and then South Korea did a year or two later.

And then UNESCO, they listed the sport as the two Korea is sports. Ah, so it's UNESCO that makes the decision. Okay, we've got an application from this country and we've got an application from that country. We're going to take them both and jointly inscribe them. That's the UNESCO decision. Yes, since it's the same sport.

Okay, so this, correct me if I'm wrong, but then this would not require any communication or coordination between North Korea and South Korea. Is that right? I don't think so. Right, because we know that North Korea is not interested in talking to South Korea. right now about anything, let alone Tequandor.

So this is basically, the ball is in the court of UNESCO. Yeah, so this could be a bridge if it gets listed. Well, let's not get too hopeful. Okay. All right, thank you. Now, let's talk about the continuing aftermath of recently Chatter-Carrel asked President E.J. Mung a question in a press conference about the South Korean prisoners and abductees.

in North Korea, and you've reported on the families of those abductees? Yeah, so after the press conference, the families of South Korean, South Koreans abducted during the Korean War, yeah, they sent me a press release, and they're still trying to push back against the Legion of administration. So they're urging the government to make abductees and prisoners of war still held in North Korea a top priority for Turk Korean. issues. What are they hoping for in practice? They're trying to, they're basically asking the administration to establish an office, yeah, that specifically handles these issues for abductees. Yeah, I mean, I guess it probably is a good idea for there to be some kind of an office to be

institutionally responsible for this matter, since, you know, presidents come and go. And as we saw with Li Jiam Yong, some presidents may not know or may not remember, and so there should be some organization tasked with, you know, keeping this issue alive. How many abductees, because we're not just talking about the six or seven South Korean citizens who are currently in North Korean prison, but there's more of them. How many people are we talking about here? I think if you include Po's... Prisoners of War? Yeah. During the Korean War, it's going to be a lot, and we're not really sure how many of them passed away and many of them are still.

Well, yeah. Given the amount of time that's gone on and the difficult conditions in North Korea, there'd be a lot of those prisoners of war have died. Yeah. I know that the Japanese are also interested in keeping the abducted issues of abducted citizens alive with North Korea. Has North Korea made a statement on any of this? They're not really paying attention to this issue, I believe. There were no statement as well. Right. And what is the transitional justice working group said? Because you talk to them in your reporting. So one of the members that had, he says, United States and Japan made a lot of F-Force. I think he was referring to one beer. The American guy was tortured there and he later died while after coming back shortly after returning. Yeah. So they were able to bring back some of their

abductees, but he was very disappointed that South Korea is not doing the same. Right. It is interesting that, I mean, it's so tragic, isn't it, that we've got this divided nation where South Korea is right there next to North Korea, and yet it's somehow less successful than the United States and in some ways, perhaps also Japan, in getting this issue dealt with, and yeah, politics is definitely a part of that. What do you think is likely to happen, Jujan? How do you see it? I don't think it'll happen very soon, but if Taekwondo gets listed as the UNESCO heritage, probably that could be something, but yeah, I don't think it's very realistic. How do you connect the two, Taekwondo and abductions?

Well, it's really hard to relate them, but, I mean, Tequando is obviously the Korean sports, and if it gets listed, probably, you know, like sports-related officials. they could probably like meet again in in Austria or Europe but hopefully they could they can start from there but yeah I'm not sure yeah if there could be any like high level talks okay and now for our last story today you've got something about Hyundai Asan what's going on with Hyundai Han was if I remember correctly the the subsidiary of Hyundai Group formed in the late 1990s with the initial goal was to take South Korean tourists by ship, cruise ship, to Kumgang San, just over the border in North Korea. And then later on, around 2000 or maybe in 99, they started doing bus tours across the border from Sokhov up to Kumgansan and back again. All of this stopped in 2008 after the, well, the killing of, what was her name, was it, Pang Wanganza?

Park Wangsa. Park Wangsa. Wangsa, okay. Yes, she was a South Korean tourist visiting Kumang San. She was shot early one morning while taking a walk on the beach. The North Korean said that she crossed a line, went into an area that was military only. They say that a warning shot was fired.

She was shot in the back and killed right there on the beach. The Yemong Bak government said, let's do a joint investigation. The North Korean said, nothing doing. You're taking our explanation, and that's the end of it. And so there were no more tours. So here we are 17 years later, it's a long time. and Hyundai Arsan is thinking about doing something. What are they thinking of doing?

What's their plan? They're just exploring a plan to send a tourist ship to Wonsan. Why Wonsan? Since they established a resort there. Right. This is on the Kalma Peninsula, the Wansan Kalma Peninsula. We've talked about it earlier this year, that they've got dozens of buildings there and hotels and resorts

and, you know, five-star type facilities. That sounds very hopeful. but how realistic is that? Well, North Korea and the U.S. will have to hold talks, first of all, which I don't think it's very realistic. But it's just their hope. It could be their delusion, but they do have a lot of experience with Mount Kumgang and other tourism.

It's true. I remember, what was it, last year, that Kim Jong-un, or maybe two years ago, Kim Jong-un gave the order to go in there to Kumgang San and destroy all the South Korean facilities. he said it was trash, and he really dissed it and said, let's get rid of all of it. Right, right. And now Hyundai Asan would like to bring tourists into Wansan Kalma. Is there any sign that North Korea is interested in this?

They're not showing any signs. Yeah, right, right. Who is visiting Wonsan Kalma? I think it's a... I think some of the Russian officials is it. Right. And maybe some local North Koreans as a reward, but yeah, it doesn't... I wonder, this sounds like the sort of thing

that unification minister John Dong Yong would really get behind. Does he said anything about this? Yeah, he said during the policy briefing last week that he would send some overseas Koreans first. Ah, so Gyopo and Dongpo first from other countries, maybe America, maybe Australia, Canada, Japan, who knows. Right, right, right.

And then, yeah, he's very supportive for this business model. Yeah, okay. And from your story here, This is an interesting line. The three-mile resort, because it's really, it stretches along this, this sort of narrow, I don't know, is it a peninsula or an isthmus, but anyway, this three-mile resort includes over 50 hotels, water parks, a mini-golf course, and several shopping malls, according to photos of maps published by the Deepa case.

So it's obviously too large to, too large for the North Korean domestic tourism market, probably too large for a sustainable Russian inbound tourism market. And so eventually North Korea might be looking for someone to bring people in. Maybe it'll be Hyundai or maybe it'll be China. Sure. Yeah. Wow. Interesting.

You've been to Mount Kumgang before. I did. 2006, two years before the shooting, I went to Mount Kumgang. And I stayed at a hotel that I think was built by North Korea initially. I think it might have been something like the Kim Jong-sook dormitory facility or something like that. That was the old name and I think they renamed it. And I stayed there for one night. We went by bus.

Just across the road here in downtown Seoul, the bus took off in front of what is now the Four Seasons Hotel at 5 a.m. Oh, wow. Drove us across to Sokcho in Kangwon province. Yeah, I went there by a bus as well. It was 2005. Ah, the year before me. You must be very young.

Right. I was like 11 years a lot of the time. But I still have to bring my passport since it's a foreign country. And all the soldiers were doing inspection when we first arrived. So it was pretty impressive. Yeah, it's funny that when I go to the... the South Korean Immigration Office and get a document that shows all of my entries and exits over the last 29 years. It shows that I exited South Korea to go to Kong Kong, but it doesn't

show me returning. So there's actually something, there's an administrative error. And there is one, one of my entries is missing. And that was me coming back from Kumgangsan, funnily enough. Were they asking you any questions, the North Korean inspectors, were soldiers? No, we were a bus full of people and they were just trying to process. us quickly. So it was, you know, if there were questions, they were very perfunctory, you know, where you live or something like that. So they didn't, they weren't interested in us. But I do remember that, yeah, it was, it was June, it was hot. The soldier, the soldier, the North Korean soldier was wearing a short-sleeved uniform. And there was an arm tattoo, he had a tattoo on his arm that was

visible. A North Korean soldier? Yeah. Wow. And then when we came out of the, the passport inspection facility, they were playing that song, Pangasimnida, and there were, you know, people jumping and dancing but the interesting thing is most of the workers who I saw so yeah obviously there were North Korean soldiers at the passport facility and there were North Korean soldiers along the road that the must travel down but most of the people who you see there in Kumgangsan at the hotel at the resort most of them were not North Korean so all the employees at the hotel were Chosun Jok Korean Chinese the band was from the Philippines the only time you would actually see North Koreans were on the mountain hikes there was like a

North Korean women would set up a table selling tea and dried herbs and fruit and things like Omidja Chai, that sort of thing. And then there'd be a North Korean guy with sunglasses at the photo spot at the top, telling you where you could and couldn't take a photograph and telling you what to delete. And then at that restaurant there, I think it's, On Yuguan has a branch restaurant in Kumkang San. They were North Korean waitresses. But most of the people you see are not North Koreans. How did you find that out? Were they not speaking Korean at the time? I mean, I remember talking to the staff.

of the hotel. The manager of the hotel was South Korean, but the mid-level and low-level staff were all Chosanjok, and they had trouble understanding my poor Korean when I ordered a beer. So I said, where are they from now? They're from China, so yeah, they weren't North Korean staff. Anyway, that's

the end of our weekly podcast for the year. So thank you Juhon for coming on the show, and we'll see you again soon. Thanks for having me. Looking to stay informed about South Korea's fast-evolving political business and cultural landscape? Join us on Korea Pro, the go-to resource for in-depth analysis, expertly curated by top-tier professionals.

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To find the best fit for you, just head to signup.careapro.org and become a member 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, out all the extraneous noises, awkward silences, bodily functions, and fixes the audio levels. Thank you and listen again next time.