Kim Jong Un orders North Koreans caught watching foreign films to be EXECUTED
Repression in North Korea has largely worsened over the last decade, with the state increasingly cracking down on citizens trying to access foreign media with harsh punishments, including public executions, a major new U.N. report has found.
The review, covering developments in the country since 2014, found North Korea has tightened its grip on imports of foreign media in recent years, orchestrating public executions to 'instil fear' in the public.
Since 2015, the government has introduced laws criminalising accessing and sharing information from 'hostile' nations and the use of 'linguistic expressions' not in line with prescribed socialist ideology and culture.
Watching foreign films, listening to music or sharing TV dramas from overseas may warrant harsh penalties, including the death penalty, under new laws established over the last decade.
Crackdowns against foreign information in particular were said to have intensified from 2018 and became harsher still from 2020, resulting in several public executions, the report says.
'Enjoyment of freedom of expression and access to information have significantly regressed' in recent years, the report assessed. It said a government task force had increasingly been employed to raid houses in search of 'anti-socialist' materials.
During the Covid-19 pandemic and associated restrictions, some North Koreans found they could bribe authorities to avoid punishments for consuming banned media. Defectors who escaped before the pandemic reported that people arrested for consuming foreign media were released after receiving 'revolutionary' education.
But a renewed focus on controlling imports has seen the state organise public trials and public executions 'to instil fear in the population', it said.
Reports suggest that the population continues to consume prohibited information despite the risks.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un arriving to attend a national flag-raising and oath-taking ceremony at the Mansudae Assembly Hall to mark the 77th anniversary of the country's founding in Pyongyang, North Korea
The sweeping U.N. review comes over a decade after a landmark U.N. report found that North Korea had committed crimes against humanity.
The new report, covering developments since 2014, is based on interviews with more than 300 witnesses and victims who fled the country and reported a further erosion of freedoms.
Surveillance has grown more pervasive with the help of new technologies, the report found as part of a wider trend curbing freedom of expression.
Every person is required to participate in weekly self-criticism sessions, primarily aimed at collective surveillance and indoctrination,' the report says.
'Under laws, policies and practices introduced since 2015, citizens have been subjected to increased surveillance and control in all parts of life.
'No other population is under such restrictions in today's world.'
North Korea's Geneva diplomatic mission and its London embassy did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
People pay their respects before the statues of late North Korean leaders Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il at Mansu Hill. Forced to worship the demonic beasts.
People visiting the bronze statues of Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il on Mansudae Hill in Pyongyang
The hermit kingdom remains more closed than at almost any other time in its history, the U.N. said.
'The human rights landscape cannot be divorced from the broader isolation that the State is currently pursuing.'
From the interviews, the authors concluded that North Korea was increasingly using forced labour in many forms, including so-called 'shock brigades' often deployed to take on physically demanding and dangerous sectors like mining and construction.
These workers often come from poorer families. The government has used thousands of orphans and street children to work long hours in coal mines and other hazardous sites, the report concluded.
'They're often children from the lower level of society, because they're the ones who can't bribe their way out of it, and these shock brigades are engaged in often very hazardous and dangerous work,' said James Heenan, head of the U.N. human rights office for North Korea.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un shakes hands with Russian President Vladimir Putin
Axis of Evil: North Korean leader Kim Jong Un shakes hands with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing
Defectors were said to have held hope for the country when Kim Jong Un became Head of State in December 2011. The Supreme Leader said citizens would not have to 'tighten their belts' and set out a plan for economic revival.
By mid-2013, the report establishes, purges in the government and military began, reportedly resulting in executions, among other punishments. By the time of the Coronavirus pandemic, state control extended across 'all aspects' of citizens' lives.
North Korea has also become increasingly isolated, pressed by the imposition of international sanctions. The most recent were adopted in 2017. A reinforced border with China also curbed the number of defectors fleeing the country at great peril towards the end of the decade.
Women fleeing the country are still often vulnerable to trafficking for forced marriage, forced labour and sexual exploitation, the report found.
Those without legal status rarely seek help if abused out of fear of repatriation.
Officially, the government of North Korea has committed to protecting freedom of opinion and expression. But criticism of the state and behaviour not conforming to government ideology are 'considered political acts or threats to national security and result in serious repercussions'.
Laws introduced over the last decade provide for severe punishments for protected speech.
A soldier stands at a North Korean military guard post flying a national flag, seen from Paju, South Korea
A government task force has increasingly been employed to inspect computers, radios and televisions in house searches without prior notice or warrants. The raids are aimed at finding 'anti-socialist' materials, the government justifying its measures as necessary to curb 'anti-socialist' behaviour, the report says.
Today, between 50 and 80 per cent of the population owns a mobile phone. While the state controls what can be seen by authorising all apps available for download, it is believed some citizens still find ways to access proscribed media.
The report assessed that North Koreans can use their phones for communication, market activities, digital payments, weather reports and gaming. The Internet is almost entirely banned, however. Research institutions and officials may have access to a 'tightly controlled' national intranet.
North Korean media is controlled entirely by the state, and publishing any independent news or opinion writing contrary to the state's official position is a punishable offence.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15091923/north-korea-kim-jong-executions.html
North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un bans conversations about hamburgers, ice cream and Karaoke
Kim Jong Un has banned the word 'hamburger' for being too Western, as well as several other Anglicised words.
Tour guides in North Korea's new Wonsan beach-side resort have been advised to avoid using certain words that are popular in the West and its neighbouring South Korea when speaking to foreign visitors.
According to news outlet Daily NK, tour guides have received 'detailed instruction on handling and entertaining tourists, and must memorise slogans and phrases.
'The goal is to teach tourism professionals to consciously use North Korean vocabulary while avoiding South Korean expressions and foreign loanwords.'
The tour guides, who are enrolled in a rigorous state-run training programme, are being instructed to say dajin-gogi gyeopppang (double bread with ground beef) for hamburger and eseukimo (eskimo) for ice cream.
Meanwhile karaoke machines should be called 'on-screen accompaniment machines'.
Repression in North Korea has largely worsened over the last decade, with the state increasingly cracking down on citizens trying to access foreign media with harsh punishments, including public executions, a major new U.N. report has found.
The review, covering developments in the country since 2014, found North Korea has tightened its grip on imports of foreign media in recent years, orchestrating public executions to 'instil fear' in the public.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un
A night view of the the Wonsan-Kalma resort is seen in Wonsan, Kangwon Province, North Korea, which opened earlier this summer
Since 2015, the government has introduced laws criminalising accessing and sharing information from 'hostile' nations and the use of 'linguistic expressions' not in line with prescribed socialist ideology and culture.
Watching foreign films, listening to music or sharing TV dramas from overseas may warrant harsh penalties, including the death penalty, under new laws established over the last decade.
Crackdowns against foreign information in particular were said to have intensified from 2018 and became harsher still from 2020, resulting in several public executions, the report says.
'Enjoyment of freedom of expression and access to information have significantly regressed' in recent years, the report assessed.
It said a government task force had increasingly been employed to raid houses in search of 'anti-socialist' materials.
During the Covid-19 pandemic and associated restrictions, some North Koreans found they could bribe authorities to avoid punishments for consuming banned media.
Defectors who escaped before the pandemic reported that people arrested for consuming foreign media were released after receiving 'revolutionary' education.
But a renewed focus on controlling imports has seen the state organise public trials and public executions 'to instil fear in the population', it said.
Reports suggest that the population continues to consume prohibited information despite the risks.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15093929/North-Korea-dictator-Kim-Jong-bans-hamburgers-ice-cream-Karaoke.html
Kim and 12-year-old Daughter
Poised and demure, she followed directly behind North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un as he got off his green armoured train and was greeted by Chinese officials waiting on a red carpet. She was present, too, smiling serenely as Kim met China’s Xi Jinping and Russia’s Vladimir Putin. And well might she smile, for this girl is Kim Ju-ae, Kim’s daughter and his only confirmed offspring.
North Korea watchers say it was unprecedented for a supreme leader to bring one of his children on an official foreign trip, and especially to China, where – given the country’s critical role in keeping crippled North Korea going – intended successors are traditionally taken to get the approval of Beijing. For North Koreans have been brainwashed into believing that the Kims’ bloodline is sacred. And when they saw the pictures, the message would have been clear: that Ju-ae will become the fourth member of the Kim family to rule North Korea since it was founded by her great-grandfather, Kim Il-sung, in 1948.
Given the parlous state of her 41-year-old father’s health – he’s an obese, heavy-drinking chain-smoker who suffers from high blood pressure, diabetes and hypertension, and was reportedly almost killed by Covid-19 – it might not be long before this sweet-faced tween is at the helm of a nuclear-armed rogue state. Some Korea experts fear that outcome could have bloody consequences in the medieval world of the Kim family, whose members have shown no compunction about killing each other in the past. But, for the moment, it’s all sweetness and light as Ju-ae fills a valuable PR role: the devoted daughter who never stops smiling at her sour-faced, paranoid father.
One can only imagine the small talk between a girl who loves riding, swimming and Gucci sunglasses, and a father whose idea of fun is executing people with an anti-aircraft gun. Yet the pair seem inseparable. And, although she hasn’t uttered a word in public, North Korea’s tightly controlled state media now refers to her as a ‘great person of guidance’ as she follows her father around. Every appearance is carefully choreographed, and Korea experts say it’s clear she has already undergone intensive grooming. Everything, from what she wears to the way she claps her hands, has changed radically since Ju-ae was first introduced to the world in November 2022, holding her father’s hand in front of an intercontinental ballistic missile.
By the following February, she was attending banquets with Kim and featured alongside him on postage stamps. Ten months later, a senior North Korean general was seen kneeling so he could whisper in her ear at a military parade – an act of deference usually accorded only to Kim himself. By then, the white-padded jacket and red ballet pumps she wore for the missile test had been replaced by dark suits and fur-trimmed leather trench coats – as featured in her father’s wardrobe. Likewise, the state media stopped referring to her as Kim’s ‘beloved’ daughter, switching to his ‘respected’ one. And in late 2023, the media carried a photo featuring Ju-ae front and centre, with her father behind her – a symbolic decision that Kim would have personally authorised. It’s all been quite a culture shock for North Korea’s patriarchal society.
Some Korea analysts have argued that Ju-ae’s prominent role is simply a publicity stunt to soften the image of her father’s vile regime and that an alternative successor – possibly a secret sibling – will eventually step forward. But last week’s display seemed to offer proof that Ju-ae is indeed the chosen one. While some disagree, Korea expert Donald Southerton predicts other North Koreans – weaned on the Confucian principle of family succession – along with the military, will fall into line and accept her. ‘If you can show her at all these different events with her father, it helps the country realise there will eventually be a family succession – a direct succession – rather than a military takeover,’ Southerton told the Daily Mail. Yet such is Kim’s love of secrecy that until 2020 nothing had been seen or heard of Ju-ae since her existence was first, inadvertently, revealed by former basketball star Dennis Rodman.
In 2013, the eccentric American, who has struck up a bizarre friendship with the basketball-loving Kim, reported that he’d just met the girl as a baby during a visit to North Korea and had even been allowed to hold her. Today, the world knows so little about Ju-ae, who was born to Kim and his wife Ri Sol-ju, that even her exact age remains unclear. It’s also a mystery as to whether she has any siblings. (South Korea’s intelligence service believes there is at least one, possibly two siblings – a brother and another child, born in 2010 and 2017, respectively.) The Kims have no qualms about passing over offspring who aren’t judged tough enough for the top job, including Kim Jong Un’s two older brothers (one was considered too effeminate, while the other, who’d sneak off to visit Disneyland and Eric Clapton concerts, was written off as ‘tainted by foreign influence’).
Kim clearly sees something in Ju-ae. But has she got the steel it will take to run a country so broken that analysts told the Daily Mail it would quickly fall apart if it weren’t run with an iron fist? Ju-ae’s limited public profile hardly screams sociopathic killer, but then neither did her father’s at the same age. That’s when he was at private school in Switzerland, whiling away his time watching James Bond films and drawing intricate pictures of his US basketball idols. According to a 2023 report by South Korea’s spy agency, the National Intelligence Service(NIS), Ju-ae has never been to school but taught at home in Pyongyang, the North Korean capital.
Horse riding is her particular passion, and she’s also keen on skiing (North Korea has one ‘luxury’ ski resort) and swimming. Although Ju-ae reportedly lives for much of the time in Pyongyang, the family can also escape to a private waterfront compound in the coastal city of Wonsan on the Sea of Japan. Rodman, who visited in 2013, described it as ‘like Hawaii or Ibiza, only he’s the only one who lives there’. The estate, which is protected by intensive security, has swimming pools with giant waterslides, tennis courts, nine large guest houses, a recreation centre, theatre, basketball court, private port, sports stadium and shooting range – all grouped around a vast villa that Kim Jong-un built when he came to power.
A nearby private airstrip was converted into a horse track in 2019 when Kim himself took up riding. Next to the track is the Leadership Railway Station, which houses the family’s luxuriously appointed 250-metre train. Guests have reported dining on fresh lobster and fine French wine, while the train can shuttle the Kims between the 15 mansions they own around the country. Twelve is certainly a young age to be thrust into the limelight as heir apparent, but Korea experts say Kim needs time to get the population used to the idea of a woman in charge.
But nothing is assured, especially if Kim dies when his daughter is still young, warned Aidan Foster-Carter, a North Korea expert at Leeds University. ‘If he dies tomorrow, God knows, it will be like any medieval history you care to read. The knives will be out,’ he told the Daily Mail. ‘When you have a blood succession, there will always be jealousies, there will always be rival claimants.’ Little was known about the factions within the Pyongyang regime, he said, but he didn’t doubt they existed. He believes many North Koreans will need convincing that young Ju-ae has powerful allies before they accept her as supreme leader. (Medieval history??? How about Ancient history, Carthage 2500 years ago, etc :)
Mr Foster-Carter described Kim’s choice of a woman as ‘rather brilliant’ because it at least offers up the possibility of change which, tragically for North Korea, hasn’t happened for decades. It remains to be seen if Ju-ae’s terrifying aunt thinks it’s ‘rather brilliant’. Kim’s formidable younger sister, Kim Yo-jong, 37, has also been tipped as his potential successor. Described as ‘the brains behind the operation’, Yo-jong is a ruthless and wily political operator, whom officials in Pyongyang have reportedly nicknamed ‘the devil woman’ and ‘the bloodthirsty demon’. In 2021, she ordered several executions of high-ranking government officials for merely ‘getting on her nerves’, according to a well-sourced 2023 biography. Yo-jong remains very much in favour with the leader, unlike some other members of the family, including an uncle executed by Kim, and a half-brother, Kim Jong-nam, assassinated in Kuala Lumpur airport with nerve agent in 2017. Yo-jong, too, was on the China trip, clutching a Lady Dior bag that fellow North Koreans could work a lifetime and still never afford. As for her niece, Ju-ae doesn’t look like she’d hurt a fly right now. But family history hardly bodes well for a girl who could soon become the most dangerous teenager in the world.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/galleries/article-15076109/Opinion-Kim-Jong-positions-daughter-prominent-role.html
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