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Media round-up

Hugo Chavez’s latest assault on Venezuela’s independent media and propaganda and intimidation in the run-up to Sri Lanka’s presidential election feature in the latest media round-up from the Center for International Media Assistance.
CIMA, an initiative of the National Endowment for Democracy, also highlights stories detailing how nimble agencies (including NED grantees) smuggle news from North [read full story]

North Korea: openings in closed society?

“Tibetans have the Dalai Lama and Richard Gere, Burmese have Aung San Suu Kyi, Darfurians have Mia Farrow and George Clooney,” notes human rights activist Suzanne Scholte. “North Koreans have no one like that.”
The torments of life in North Korea’s gulag are documented in this must-read article in The Washington Post:  
Before guards shoot prisoners [read full story]

North Korea shows limits of ‘realism’

Kim Jong-Il combines Stalinist dictatorship with narcissistic personality

North Korea’s nuclear test and missile launchings have been widely condemned throughout the international community. Even by the regime’s friends in China.
But Greg Sheridan makes the case that Beijing was only going through the motions. He notes that no Chinese diplomat joined US, Japanese and South Korean [read full story]

North Korea’s belligerence reflects internal tensions?

North Korea’s belligerence reflects internal tensions?

North Korea’s decision to restart its nuclear program and the launch of a ballistic missile capable of reaching the United States have been widely interpreted as sending a signal to the Obama administration. But other observers suggest that the regime’s actions are more likely to reflect internal tensions rather than international grandstanding.
North Korea “has historically [read full story]

North Korea: defectors and new communications may foster incremental change

North Korea: defectors and new communications may foster incremental change

Shin Dong-hyuk was born in North Korea’s gulag and spent his first 23 years in Political Prisoners’ Camp No 14. It was his misfortune to assume at birth his family’s collective guilt for aiding South Korea during the peninsula’s civil war over half a century ago.
“Shin is the only man known to have escaped from [read full story]

Escaping North Korea’s gulag

The Washington Post carries today’s must-read article, recounting the ordeal of former North Korean political prisoner Shin Dong-hyuk. The only known prisoner to escape from the Stalinist regime’s gulag, Shin was the victim of the most perverse form of guilt-by-association:  
An unforgettable — almost unfathomable — chapter of that story is about the execution of his [read full story]

Concert and report highlight ‘failure to protect’ North Korean human rights

Dissident North Korean pianist Cheol Woong Kim played at the U.S. State Department this week at a recital designed to highlight North Korean human rights abuses without embarrassing Pyongyang and undermining fragile nuclear negotiations.
Kim escaped to China twice, only to be forcibly repatriated before finally escaping to South Korea in 2003. “The regime’s human rights [read full story]

A stroke of luck for North Korea’s people?

Kim Jong-il’s absence from celebrations of the 60th anniversary of the country’s founding have triggered speculation about the North Korean leader’s health – South Korean intelligence sources suggest he had a heart stroke – and the implications of his succession.  
“The possibility of Kim Jong Il moving from the scene is a very positive development,” said [read full story]

North Korea: comment is superfluous

Sometimes a regime’s propaganda says more about its venal and paranoid state than a thousand words of analysis.

‘Militarized stagnation’ – North Korea’s survival formula

Economic engagement with the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea should be a “bottom-up” process, says human rights activist David Hawk, engaging the Korean diaspora, exploiting remittances and developing “rights-based” forms of economic development.
North Korea has the least marketized and least monetized economy in recent history, save for Pol Pot’s Cambodia, notes Hawk, a Reagan-Fascell Democracy [read full story]

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