Most Wanted Souvenirs from North Korea

For the average American citizen, buying special, foreign goods from the DPRK can be quite difficult... and not just because you have to order from halfway around the world. Because of US sanctions, you actually have to ask the government for permission to buy an item from the DPRK. Whether it be clothing, jewelry, beverages, or other amneties, transactions such as this must be done at special request.

While the US doesn't technically have any formal diplomatic relations with North Korea, trying to do business with the isolated state can be a flaky and dangerous affair. In order to actually buy a product from North Korea, you have to submit a letter to the US Treasury department, describing what you plan on buying and how you will do the transaction. NPR recently submitted a Freedom Of Information Act request to the treasury, asking to see some of the different kinds of things people have asked for. You can see those documents right here.

To the left is a picture of North Korean wine, one of the rare exports some wine enthusiasts and people interested in North Korean culture are intrigued about getting their hands on. There is something oddly special and mystifying about owning a bottled drink that comes from such an odd, far-away, isolated land.

In a short piece from All Things Considered on NPR, they explain why some people are interested in collecting some of these rare items.

So why do people try to collect things that are so hard to acquire? The biggest reason is because, well, those things are hard to acquire. The harder something is to get, the more valuable and interesting it becomes. For other people, it's about family-history related memorabilia. In the NPR article, a man ordered a pair of North Korean jeans for his wife because her father managed to escape North Korea during the war.

For many of these transactions, another nation has to act as a middle-man between North Korea and the US. In the jean example above, a Sweden company acquired a shipment of pants in bulk from the DPRK, which where then distributed to people in the US who wanted them (for a pretty penny). It makes sense though. Considering North Korea very seldomly would ever want to do business with the US, chances are you're not going to be able to contact them directly. It's a niche hobby, but the fascination in owning items from the last remaining truly communist state on earth is very compelling.

North Korean government criticizes NSA surveillance in the US

Uriminzokkiri is the name of an online North Korea new and propaganda outlet, operated from North Korea's central news agency. They publish information through various social media platforms such as Facebook, Youtube, and Twitter, and most of their content is hosted on a server in China. Their news tends to be targeted toward people in South Korea and others who speak Korean.

In a video that the North Korean propaganda agency released a few days ago, they criticize South Korea as being a subservient of the US, and rationalizing the idea that any national government can spy on their own citizens and collect private data for the good of the country.

The video is about three minutes long and can be viewed below. A full translation can be found here.

The North Korean narrator describes South Korea as having a "puppet government", making rash statements about how the South welcomes questionable activities such as war, murder, and wiretapping with "open arms". Ironically, they refer to South Korean citizens as slaves, with no freedom and no choice.

If the DPRK was technologically advanced enough, would they too spy on their citizens?

Will there be any more US-North Korea talks?

While the North Korean Rhetoric occurring regularly last spring has finally waned, strong, turbulent tensions between the United States and North Korea still exist in a big way. When the missile scares finally died down, Pyonyang publicly announced that it would resume production of nuclear weapons at one of the DPRK's nuclear plants, despite the cooling towers being demolished a few years ago under a commitment to the six-party talks.

The "six-party talks" were the consequence of North Korea withdrawing from the NPT (Non-Proliferation Treaty) in 2003. The idea was to find a non-violent, reasonable, peaceful resolution to the North Korean nuclear weapons program. North Korea, South Korea, China, Japan, Russia, and the US all took part in these talks.

Unfortunately it was all short lived. The six-party talks unofficially ended in 2009 when the DPRK launched a "satellite" (a suspected missile test) against the will of the UN. The satellite was an immediate failure as it tumbled into the Pacific Ocean.

The UN Security Council agreed to a Presidential Statement that condemned North Korea for the launch, and stated the Council's intention to expand sanctions on North Korea. North Korea responded angrily to the UN council resolution, saying “We will never again take part in such talks and will not be bound by any agreement reached at the talks.” (source)

Today, dialog between Washington and North Korea would not be expected to end the lingering threat of nuclear war - which will probably last for some time - rather, it may simply help defuse current tensions and prevent another escalation.

Perhaps China, who's usually apathetic to the unsettling tension between the US and the DPRK, could be persuaded by the US government to leverage North Korea into having bureaucratic talks once again. US Secretary of State, John Kerry, said "We will not be so stuck in the mud that an opportunity to actually get something done is flagrantly wasted." The future of more dialog between both nations is hopeful, but it is hard to see anything we can actually agree on. (source)

What is it like to travel to North Korea?

For the past several decades now, North Korea's improvement in the science and technology sector has been mostly stagnant. If you were to talk into the heart of the DPRK today, you would think that you've walked into a time machine and you've been brought to the 1960's. That's what happens to a nation that decides to close themselves off from the rest of the civilized world, and rely purely on the ideas and innovations of their own citizens.

Note: the idea of complete national self-reliance is called Juche in North Korea, where the term was first coined by Kim Il-Sung when the nation gained it's independence.

Among the DPRK's technological amneties, however, is a state-run commercial airline. So how good is it? In this article, a foreigner gets a chance to actually fly "Air Koryo", North Korea's flight company. The main vehicle of choice for North Korea's state airline is a Ilyushin IL-62, believe it or not. The IL-62 is a Soviet long-range jet that was released in the 1960's. It was commonly operated in some middle eastern and Eastern Bloc countries for a long time until newer, more robust, more efficient planes came along. There are still some nations that use the IL-62 and it's variants, but for the most part, it now stands as an antique throwback to mid 20th century engineering.

Believe it or not - Despite how difficult it may be to travel to North Korea, they are actually open to tourism, even for US citizens. You can't, however, fly there directly from the United States. You're technically required to fly to China first, and find a Chinese flight agency which will then book a trip for you to the DPRK.

Once you actually arrive in North Korea, the guidelines you have to adhere to are extremely stringent. You are not allowed to bring a cell phone. You are not allowed to bring a nice camera (anything more than a point 'n' shoot), and you are not allowed to record video. You are not allowed to go anywhere you want; you are to be in the presence of government minders at all times while you're in the country. Government minders are essentially your permanent tour-guides during your trips. They decide what you see, what you do not see, and they control where you go during your stay. If you take a photo of something they don't want you to, they may very well confiscate your belongings, or even worse.

The DPRK can be a strange and fascinating place to visit, if you can put up with all the strings attached.

North Korea's hidden labor camps: A new UN panel vows to hold North Korea's Kim regime to 'full accountability' for decades of mass crime and murder

Very little has been done to break down and get rid of North Korea's deadly prison camps. For decades now, the network of hidden camps has been scattered around rural parts of the Korean peninsula, and while we have satellite footage proving their existence, intervening with the DPRK to help improve their human rights situation is a very risky proposition.

After years of doing nothing, the UN has decided to step up and see if North Korea will budge. This past spring, the UN has created a new "Commission of Inquiry" committee to take a closer look at the blatant human rights violations occurring in the hermit kingdom. The committee consists of three judges and diplomats from Australia, Indonesia, and Serbia. (source) Their goal is to pressure the Security Council into referring North Korea to the ICC (International Crime Court), and to charge their leaders with massive human rights violations.

The ICC is a high-profile authority who's job is to prosecute people for war crimes and major crimes against humanity. The main court is based in The Netherlands, but their proceedings can take place almost anywhere. They are a relatively young organization - created in 2002, established by the Rome Statute treaty. The idea is that an inquiry from the ICC will lead to a shutdown of North Korea's entire network of gulags.

Defectors who've managed to escape from the camps have provided growing amounts of information regarding the kind of atrocities committed inside camp borders. There are an estimated 100,000 unnatural deaths that occur in the camps every year.

This may not turn out very well for Pyongyang. The entire regime (not just the prison  camps) will end up being investigated for multiple kinds of human rights violations.

The situation with Kenneth Bae, the American tour-operator imprisoned in the DPRK

Last week, North Korea publicly announced that an American tourist and tour-operator travelling in North Korea has now been sentenced to fifteen years of hard labor for attempting to "overthrow the government". While the DPRK government hasn't officially stated any further details, Kenneth Bae was supposedly in the communist state for humanitarian reasons: feeding malnourished children, taking pictures of them, and documenting the extremely poor living conditions to raise awareness for the rest of the world (something the North Korean government doesn't look highly upon) (source). Other sources explain that Bae is a devout christian missionary, visiting North Korea to proselytize and convert its citizens to Christianity (which is completely illegal in almost all communist countries) (source). Of course, humanitarian aid and religious work are not mutually-exclusive; for whichever reason, an American has been convicted of crime in North Korea, and he is still being kept in one of the country's labor camps at the time of this writing.

North Korea is infamous for having the one of the worst human rights records of the 21st century. Within its borders is an expansive, "secret" network of forced-labor camps all over the country, where citizens are wheeled away from their homes and into remote locations in the mountains, sentenced to doing hard labor in torturous conditions for many years - usually the rest of their lives. Citizens receive these sentences for political offenses, or for being denounced as politically unreliable by the state. All it takes is one minor mistake - a small slip of the tongue - to do or say something politically incorrect, and citizens may be captured by incredibly oppressive government officials who will ensure punishment. Kenneth Bae is presumably being kept in one of these camps.

During a press briefing last week in Washington, DC, spokesperson Patrick Ventrell briefly spoke about the situation:

I do have only one update from yesterday [...] and that’s to say that we – some of you had asked about our contact with Mr. Bae’s family. And I can confirm that we remain in close contact with Mr. Bae’s family. We last spoke to them yesterday, and so we’ve been in constant communication with them. But I don’t have an update in terms of Sweden’s access to Mr. Bae.

When asked if he had communicated directly with the North Korean government regarding Bae's captivity through any other channels (other than publicly stating want for Bae's amnesty and release), Mr. Ventrell responded:

I don’t have anything for you on that one way or another, other than to say that we continue to have channels and ways to communicate with the North Koreans. (source)

While the United States does not have any formal diplomatic relations with North Korea, Sweden functions as the protecting power of the United State's interests for cases such as this one. The Geneva Convention says that when any two sovereign states do not have diplomatic ties with each other, either country may appoint a 3rd party to act as a protecting power and represent its interests. Diplomats from Sweden provided counsel to Kenneth Bae last week and confirmed the reports of his sentencing.

Considering recent events involving North Korea making war-mongering threats and rhetoric toward the United States, and considering also that North Korea has extremely-soured relations with both the United States and South Korea, it was an unfortunate time for Kenneth Bae - an American tourist of South Korean descent - to be travelling in the North. Bae's sentencing may be seen as North Korea simply trying to antagonize the west by destroying the life of a US citizen. Otherwise, it may be a disguised call for help; North Korea has traded away foreign prisoners for food and supply aid in the past.

It's unlikely the UN will do much to resolve this, since interfering with such a complicated area as North Korea involves a lot of effort for only a single person. The best we can hope for is that the US will send over a high level politician to negotiate his release. Keep an eye out for any incoming news regarding his imprisonment and potential release.