ID :
78249
Fri, 09/04/2009 - 08:29
Auther :
Shortlink :
https://www.oananews.org//node/78249
The shortlink copeid
U.S. Welcomes Inter-Korean Dialogue for Family Reunions
WASHINGTON (Yonhap) -- The United States on Aug. 26 welcomed a new inter-Korean dialogue to resume reunions of families separated by the 1950-53 Korean War.
"We encourage and support efforts that are aimed at issues like family
reunification," State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said. "These are important
and obviously very emotional issues. We encourage these kinds of contacts between
North Korea and South Korea. And in more general terms, we encourage dialogue
between the two, between North Korea and South Korea."
Officials of the two Koreas began a three-day meeting at the North's scenic Mt.
Kumgang resort earlier in the day to discuss allowing hundreds of South Koreans
to visit the resort on Oct. 3 during the traditional holiday of Chuseok to
briefly meet with relatives living in the North.
Cross-border family reunions were suspended with the inauguration of the
conservative Lee Myung-bak government early last year. Tens of thousands of aging
South Koreans had taken advantage of the program that began after the first
inter-Korean summit in 2000.
Lee also suspended food aid and economic cooperation with North Korea, insisting
the North first promise to end its nuclear programs. By contrast, his two liberal
predecessors, Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun, provided more than 400,000 tons of
food and fertilizer to the North every year without pre-conditions.
------------------------
N. Korea Officials Visit Los Angeles to Discuss Food Aid
WASHINGTON (Yonhap) -- A group of North Korean officials visited Los Angeles in
mid-August to meet with U.S. relief organizations on the resumption of food aid
to the North, diplomatic sources here said on Aug. 27.
Humanitarian food aid was suspended in March, when the North Korean government
expelled officials of foreign nongovernmental organizations amid escalating
tensions over the country's long-range rocket launch.
"I understand that North Korean officials visited Los Angeles last week to meet
with officials of nongovernmental organizations which had provided food aid to
the North," a source said, adding the delegation consisted of officials from the
Korea-U.S. Private Exchange Society, which coordinates food and other relief
projects for the North by U.S. NGOs.
Another source said, "The North Korean delegation made no contacts with U.S.
government officials while staying in the U.S. for several days," adding that the
delegation toured Operation USA and other relief groups and food and medical
supply warehouses set aside for aid.
The visit comes during a thaw in North Korea's relations with the U.S. and South
Korea in recent weeks as Pyongyang has made a series of conciliatory moves,
including the release of two American journalists and a South Korean worker held
in the North for months. North Korea also allowed the resumption of cross border
tours and business projects, suspended since last year, and welcomed former U.S.
President Bill Clinton and the head of a major South Korean conglomerate heavily
invested in the North.
Just months ago, Pyongyang's relations with Seoul and Washington were at their
lowest level in decades after the country conducted nuclear and missile tests,
prompting tighter U.N. sanctions.
The World Food Program has said that North Korea will need more than 800,000 tons
of food aid from abroad to feed its 24 million people this year.
South Korea's conservative Lee Myung-bak government has provided no food aid to
North Korea, demanding as a quid pro quo that the North make progress in the
six-party talks on dismantling its nuclear weapons programs.
Over the past decade, Lee's liberal predecessors each year shipped about 400,000
tons of food and as much fertilizer to North Korea despite the regime's nuclear
ambitions.
The U.S., which had provided more than 2 million tons of food aid to the North in
the past decade, also suspended food aid in March when North Korea refused to
issue visas to Korean-speaking monitors, whose mission was to assure that the
food aid was not being funneled to the military and government elite.
The U.S. had delivered 169,000 tons of food to North Korea until March from May
last year, when Washington pledged to provide 500,000 tons of food to help
alleviate the North's chronic food shortage.
------------------------
UAE Seizes North Korean Weapons Bound for Iran: Sources
NEW YORK (Yonhap) -- The United Arab Emirates has seized a ship carrying North
Korean weapons to Iran in violation of a United Nations arms embargo imposed
after Pyongyang's nuclear test in May, diplomatic sources said on Aug. 28.
The seizure comes at a sensitive time as North Korea has begun a series of
conciliatory gestures to reach out to the outside world after months of
provocations, including nuclear and missile tests that prompted international
sanctions.
Despite the overtures, the U.S. has said that it will continue sanctioning the
North unless it returns to the six-party talks and take steps for its
denuclearization. Pyongyang wants bilateral talks rather than the multilateral
forum, which it said is dead.
"The UAE government has notified the U.N. Security Council sanctions committee of
its seizure of a North Korean ship heading to Iran in violation of a U.N.
resolution," a diplomat said.
U.N. Resolution 1874, adopted after North Korea's second nuclear test in May that
followed one in 2006, bans North Korea from conducting any nuclear and ballistic
missile tests while imposing an overall arms embargo, financial sanctions and
cargo interdiction on the high seas to prevent proliferation of North Korean
conventional weapons, as well as missiles and nuclear and other weapons of mass
destruction.
The sanctions committee will soon convene a meeting to discuss the issue, another
source said.
The seizure is the first of its kind that effectively intercepted a North Korean
arms shipment since the new U.N. resolution was imposed in June, although India
seized a North Korean ship off its coast earlier this month only to find no
weapons aboard.
In late June, a North Korean cargo ship, possibly on its way to Myanmar, returned
home after being closely pursued by U.S. Navy vessels.
------------------------
Signs of Fertilizer Shortage among N. Korean Rice Paddies
SEOUL (Yonhap) -- Rice paddies in North Korea were more yellow than green this
year, suggesting the country lacks fertilizer that could result in a poor crop
yield, agronomists who recently visited the North said on Aug. 31.
North Korea's own fertilizer output is estimated at less than 500,000 tons a
year, about a third of the 1.5 million tons the country needs for its grain
farming, according to Seoul's Unification Ministry. The shortage is now believed
to be greater as South Korea has suspended its fertilizer aid for a second year.
"When rice paddies get enough fertilizer, a plant's leaves are deep green. But in
the rice farms I saw, they were less green and more yellowish," Hahm Young-il, an
agronomist who visited North Korea from Aug. 1-8 with World Vision aid workers in
Seoul, said.
Rice plants that do not absorb enough nitrogen in summer produce low yields in
the harvest season. The quality of domestic North Korean fertilizer and manure is
also questionable, Hahm said.
"Their manure and fertilizer seemed to be of lower quality, maybe because the
land is not privately owned," Hahm said. He added his observations could be
anecdotal, having traveled in Pyongyang and the northern Ryanggang Province to
support potato seed farms there.
Hong Sang-young from Korean Sharing Movement, a Seoul-based group that provides
aid to North Korea, also said the fertilizer shortage was taking a toll on North
Korean rice farms.
"But we couldn't bring up the subject with the North Koreans, because fertilizer
is not what we can give," said Hong, who visited North Korea from Aug. 26-30 for
medical aid.
Since 1999, the South Korean government has provided an average 300,000 tons of
fertilizer worth 96 billion won (US$76.87 million) to the North every year to
help ease the country's chronic food shortages. But the aid was suspended after
conservative President Lee Myung-bak took office last year, linking inter-Korean
aid and exchanges to progress in North Korea's denuclearization.
------------------------
N. Korea Sets up 'Film Division' with Movie Director as Head
SEOUL (Yonhap) -- North Korea's ruling Workers' Party has created a "film
division" dedicated to making and distributing propaganda movies that strengthen
national unity, according to sources familiar with North Korean affairs on Sept.
1.
The party established the division in February on a special order from the
country's leader Kim Jong-il, multiple sources said, requesting anonymity.
Choe Ik-gyu, who was initially believed to have been named director of the
party's propaganda department earlier this year, was in fact named as head of the
film division, according to the sources.
Choe, a former film director and a close aide to Kim Jong-il, has previously
served as the party's director of culture.
Media reports out of Pyongyang had said that Kim was seeking to fuel a
"renaissance" in the country's propaganda film industry.
A group of filmmakers in North Korea, at Kim's guidance, gathered at the People's
Palace of Culture in Pyongyang in late July and agreed to make more films that
"show the greatness of the Workers' Party and leader Kim Jong-il, as well as the
superiority of North Korea's socialism," the Korean Central Broadcasting Station
and Radio Pyongyang reported on July 31.
The participants quoted Kim Jong-il, known to be a film buff, as having called
for a reinvigoration of the film industry that had peaked in the 1970s.
Kim called for the ignition of "the flames of a movie revolution in the Songun
(military-first) era," describing movies as "the most powerful tool for public
education," one participant said.
------------------------
U.S. Reporters Released from N.K. Captivity Recount How It All Began
SEOUL (Yonhap) -- Two U.S. journalists released after months of captivity in
North Korea said on Sept. 1 they were "firmly" out of the socialist country when
they were dragged back into it across an icy river by rifle-carrying soldiers.
"We didn't spend more than a minute on North Korean soil before turning back, but
it is a minute we deeply regret," Laura Ling and Euna Lee said in a statement on
the Web site of their San Francisco-based employer, Current TV.
"We were firmly back inside China when the soldiers apprehended us," they said in
the first account of the March 17 capture in their own words. "We tried with all
our might to cling to bushes, ground, anything that would keep us on Chinese
soil."
"But we were no match for the determined soldiers. They violently dragged us back
across the ice to North Korea and marched us to a nearby army base, where we were
detained," they said.
Ling and Lee said they were turning back on their way to a house that their guide
said was housing North Koreans preparing to be smuggled into China, when they
heard yelling from across the frozen river.
"We looked back and saw two North Korean soldiers with rifles running toward us.
Instinctively, we ran," they said. "Producer Mitch Koss and our guide were both
able to outrun the border guards. We were not."
The journalists, brought back home by former U.S. President Bill Clinton on Aug.
5, had been sentenced in June to 12 years in labor camp for "hostile acts"
against North Korea.
"What did we do that was hostile?" they said, arguing they were convicted "not
for trespassing but for our work as journalists."
"Totalitarian regimes the world over are terrified of exposure," they said,
adding that they traveled to the region to "document a grim story of human
trafficking."
They said they made contact with North Korean defectors, including women who
found work in on-line sex trade or were forced into arranged marriages.
Their guide, a Korean-Chinese man, brought them to the Tumen River that marks the
border between China and North Korea so they could "chronicle" smuggling
operations, they said.
"When our guide beckoned for us to follow him beyond the middle of the river, we
did, eventually arriving at the riverbank on the North Korean side,"
"To this day, we still don't know if we were lured into a trap. In retrospect,
the guide behaved oddly," they said. "But it was ultimately our decision to
follow him, and we continue to pay for that decision today."
Ling and Lee defended themselves against claims they might have endangered those
working to help North Koreans flee the country's repressive regime, saying they
destroyed their materials.
"We furtively destroyed evidence in our possession by swallowing notes and
damaging videotapes" during the early part of their detention, Ling, an ethnic
Chinese, and Lee, an ethnic Korean, said.
"People had put their lives at risk by sharing their stories, and we were
determined to do everything in our power to safeguard them," they said. "We took
extreme caution to ensure that the people we interviewed and their locations were
not identifiable.
"After arriving home, we were disoriented, overwhelmed and not ready to talk
about the experience," they said. "We can't adequately express the emotions
surrounding our release. One moment, we were preparing to be sent to a labor
camp, fearing that we would disappear and never be heard from again."
(END)
"We encourage and support efforts that are aimed at issues like family
reunification," State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said. "These are important
and obviously very emotional issues. We encourage these kinds of contacts between
North Korea and South Korea. And in more general terms, we encourage dialogue
between the two, between North Korea and South Korea."
Officials of the two Koreas began a three-day meeting at the North's scenic Mt.
Kumgang resort earlier in the day to discuss allowing hundreds of South Koreans
to visit the resort on Oct. 3 during the traditional holiday of Chuseok to
briefly meet with relatives living in the North.
Cross-border family reunions were suspended with the inauguration of the
conservative Lee Myung-bak government early last year. Tens of thousands of aging
South Koreans had taken advantage of the program that began after the first
inter-Korean summit in 2000.
Lee also suspended food aid and economic cooperation with North Korea, insisting
the North first promise to end its nuclear programs. By contrast, his two liberal
predecessors, Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun, provided more than 400,000 tons of
food and fertilizer to the North every year without pre-conditions.
------------------------
N. Korea Officials Visit Los Angeles to Discuss Food Aid
WASHINGTON (Yonhap) -- A group of North Korean officials visited Los Angeles in
mid-August to meet with U.S. relief organizations on the resumption of food aid
to the North, diplomatic sources here said on Aug. 27.
Humanitarian food aid was suspended in March, when the North Korean government
expelled officials of foreign nongovernmental organizations amid escalating
tensions over the country's long-range rocket launch.
"I understand that North Korean officials visited Los Angeles last week to meet
with officials of nongovernmental organizations which had provided food aid to
the North," a source said, adding the delegation consisted of officials from the
Korea-U.S. Private Exchange Society, which coordinates food and other relief
projects for the North by U.S. NGOs.
Another source said, "The North Korean delegation made no contacts with U.S.
government officials while staying in the U.S. for several days," adding that the
delegation toured Operation USA and other relief groups and food and medical
supply warehouses set aside for aid.
The visit comes during a thaw in North Korea's relations with the U.S. and South
Korea in recent weeks as Pyongyang has made a series of conciliatory moves,
including the release of two American journalists and a South Korean worker held
in the North for months. North Korea also allowed the resumption of cross border
tours and business projects, suspended since last year, and welcomed former U.S.
President Bill Clinton and the head of a major South Korean conglomerate heavily
invested in the North.
Just months ago, Pyongyang's relations with Seoul and Washington were at their
lowest level in decades after the country conducted nuclear and missile tests,
prompting tighter U.N. sanctions.
The World Food Program has said that North Korea will need more than 800,000 tons
of food aid from abroad to feed its 24 million people this year.
South Korea's conservative Lee Myung-bak government has provided no food aid to
North Korea, demanding as a quid pro quo that the North make progress in the
six-party talks on dismantling its nuclear weapons programs.
Over the past decade, Lee's liberal predecessors each year shipped about 400,000
tons of food and as much fertilizer to North Korea despite the regime's nuclear
ambitions.
The U.S., which had provided more than 2 million tons of food aid to the North in
the past decade, also suspended food aid in March when North Korea refused to
issue visas to Korean-speaking monitors, whose mission was to assure that the
food aid was not being funneled to the military and government elite.
The U.S. had delivered 169,000 tons of food to North Korea until March from May
last year, when Washington pledged to provide 500,000 tons of food to help
alleviate the North's chronic food shortage.
------------------------
UAE Seizes North Korean Weapons Bound for Iran: Sources
NEW YORK (Yonhap) -- The United Arab Emirates has seized a ship carrying North
Korean weapons to Iran in violation of a United Nations arms embargo imposed
after Pyongyang's nuclear test in May, diplomatic sources said on Aug. 28.
The seizure comes at a sensitive time as North Korea has begun a series of
conciliatory gestures to reach out to the outside world after months of
provocations, including nuclear and missile tests that prompted international
sanctions.
Despite the overtures, the U.S. has said that it will continue sanctioning the
North unless it returns to the six-party talks and take steps for its
denuclearization. Pyongyang wants bilateral talks rather than the multilateral
forum, which it said is dead.
"The UAE government has notified the U.N. Security Council sanctions committee of
its seizure of a North Korean ship heading to Iran in violation of a U.N.
resolution," a diplomat said.
U.N. Resolution 1874, adopted after North Korea's second nuclear test in May that
followed one in 2006, bans North Korea from conducting any nuclear and ballistic
missile tests while imposing an overall arms embargo, financial sanctions and
cargo interdiction on the high seas to prevent proliferation of North Korean
conventional weapons, as well as missiles and nuclear and other weapons of mass
destruction.
The sanctions committee will soon convene a meeting to discuss the issue, another
source said.
The seizure is the first of its kind that effectively intercepted a North Korean
arms shipment since the new U.N. resolution was imposed in June, although India
seized a North Korean ship off its coast earlier this month only to find no
weapons aboard.
In late June, a North Korean cargo ship, possibly on its way to Myanmar, returned
home after being closely pursued by U.S. Navy vessels.
------------------------
Signs of Fertilizer Shortage among N. Korean Rice Paddies
SEOUL (Yonhap) -- Rice paddies in North Korea were more yellow than green this
year, suggesting the country lacks fertilizer that could result in a poor crop
yield, agronomists who recently visited the North said on Aug. 31.
North Korea's own fertilizer output is estimated at less than 500,000 tons a
year, about a third of the 1.5 million tons the country needs for its grain
farming, according to Seoul's Unification Ministry. The shortage is now believed
to be greater as South Korea has suspended its fertilizer aid for a second year.
"When rice paddies get enough fertilizer, a plant's leaves are deep green. But in
the rice farms I saw, they were less green and more yellowish," Hahm Young-il, an
agronomist who visited North Korea from Aug. 1-8 with World Vision aid workers in
Seoul, said.
Rice plants that do not absorb enough nitrogen in summer produce low yields in
the harvest season. The quality of domestic North Korean fertilizer and manure is
also questionable, Hahm said.
"Their manure and fertilizer seemed to be of lower quality, maybe because the
land is not privately owned," Hahm said. He added his observations could be
anecdotal, having traveled in Pyongyang and the northern Ryanggang Province to
support potato seed farms there.
Hong Sang-young from Korean Sharing Movement, a Seoul-based group that provides
aid to North Korea, also said the fertilizer shortage was taking a toll on North
Korean rice farms.
"But we couldn't bring up the subject with the North Koreans, because fertilizer
is not what we can give," said Hong, who visited North Korea from Aug. 26-30 for
medical aid.
Since 1999, the South Korean government has provided an average 300,000 tons of
fertilizer worth 96 billion won (US$76.87 million) to the North every year to
help ease the country's chronic food shortages. But the aid was suspended after
conservative President Lee Myung-bak took office last year, linking inter-Korean
aid and exchanges to progress in North Korea's denuclearization.
------------------------
N. Korea Sets up 'Film Division' with Movie Director as Head
SEOUL (Yonhap) -- North Korea's ruling Workers' Party has created a "film
division" dedicated to making and distributing propaganda movies that strengthen
national unity, according to sources familiar with North Korean affairs on Sept.
1.
The party established the division in February on a special order from the
country's leader Kim Jong-il, multiple sources said, requesting anonymity.
Choe Ik-gyu, who was initially believed to have been named director of the
party's propaganda department earlier this year, was in fact named as head of the
film division, according to the sources.
Choe, a former film director and a close aide to Kim Jong-il, has previously
served as the party's director of culture.
Media reports out of Pyongyang had said that Kim was seeking to fuel a
"renaissance" in the country's propaganda film industry.
A group of filmmakers in North Korea, at Kim's guidance, gathered at the People's
Palace of Culture in Pyongyang in late July and agreed to make more films that
"show the greatness of the Workers' Party and leader Kim Jong-il, as well as the
superiority of North Korea's socialism," the Korean Central Broadcasting Station
and Radio Pyongyang reported on July 31.
The participants quoted Kim Jong-il, known to be a film buff, as having called
for a reinvigoration of the film industry that had peaked in the 1970s.
Kim called for the ignition of "the flames of a movie revolution in the Songun
(military-first) era," describing movies as "the most powerful tool for public
education," one participant said.
------------------------
U.S. Reporters Released from N.K. Captivity Recount How It All Began
SEOUL (Yonhap) -- Two U.S. journalists released after months of captivity in
North Korea said on Sept. 1 they were "firmly" out of the socialist country when
they were dragged back into it across an icy river by rifle-carrying soldiers.
"We didn't spend more than a minute on North Korean soil before turning back, but
it is a minute we deeply regret," Laura Ling and Euna Lee said in a statement on
the Web site of their San Francisco-based employer, Current TV.
"We were firmly back inside China when the soldiers apprehended us," they said in
the first account of the March 17 capture in their own words. "We tried with all
our might to cling to bushes, ground, anything that would keep us on Chinese
soil."
"But we were no match for the determined soldiers. They violently dragged us back
across the ice to North Korea and marched us to a nearby army base, where we were
detained," they said.
Ling and Lee said they were turning back on their way to a house that their guide
said was housing North Koreans preparing to be smuggled into China, when they
heard yelling from across the frozen river.
"We looked back and saw two North Korean soldiers with rifles running toward us.
Instinctively, we ran," they said. "Producer Mitch Koss and our guide were both
able to outrun the border guards. We were not."
The journalists, brought back home by former U.S. President Bill Clinton on Aug.
5, had been sentenced in June to 12 years in labor camp for "hostile acts"
against North Korea.
"What did we do that was hostile?" they said, arguing they were convicted "not
for trespassing but for our work as journalists."
"Totalitarian regimes the world over are terrified of exposure," they said,
adding that they traveled to the region to "document a grim story of human
trafficking."
They said they made contact with North Korean defectors, including women who
found work in on-line sex trade or were forced into arranged marriages.
Their guide, a Korean-Chinese man, brought them to the Tumen River that marks the
border between China and North Korea so they could "chronicle" smuggling
operations, they said.
"When our guide beckoned for us to follow him beyond the middle of the river, we
did, eventually arriving at the riverbank on the North Korean side,"
"To this day, we still don't know if we were lured into a trap. In retrospect,
the guide behaved oddly," they said. "But it was ultimately our decision to
follow him, and we continue to pay for that decision today."
Ling and Lee defended themselves against claims they might have endangered those
working to help North Koreans flee the country's repressive regime, saying they
destroyed their materials.
"We furtively destroyed evidence in our possession by swallowing notes and
damaging videotapes" during the early part of their detention, Ling, an ethnic
Chinese, and Lee, an ethnic Korean, said.
"People had put their lives at risk by sharing their stories, and we were
determined to do everything in our power to safeguard them," they said. "We took
extreme caution to ensure that the people we interviewed and their locations were
not identifiable.
"After arriving home, we were disoriented, overwhelmed and not ready to talk
about the experience," they said. "We can't adequately express the emotions
surrounding our release. One moment, we were preparing to be sent to a labor
camp, fearing that we would disappear and never be heard from again."
(END)
