N.Korean Rulers Worried Over Devaluation Backlash; Military Put On Sub-War Level Alert (Breaking)

Chosun Ilbo News, Seoul, S. Korea (original in Japanese) ^ | 7 December 2009 Pearl Harbor Day | Anh Yon Hyon, Reporter

[AmericanInTokyo]

OK, this is confusing: but this is the LINK to the original Japanese language article from the conservative/trustworthy South Korean "Chonsun Ilbo" daily newspaper website in Korean which reported from a Russian news agency just a little while ago.

The headline is 北朝鮮デノミ：「住民騒乱を懸念、軍が戦闘準備」 ("North Korean Currency Devaluation: Worries Over Uprising By North Korean People; North Korean Army Goes on Sub-War Status")

[GOPsterinMA]

Good points you make! It's up the the North Korean People themselves.

Maybe a cache of generals, looking to save their own butts will perform a coup. What do they have to look forward to - another Jong taking over? Sooner or later, people want the opportunity for career advancement - this could be the real change agent, IMO.

[SevenofNine]

HEY MONK show this thread that photoshop you show me other day Obama as Emperor

Watch this AIT you going love this ROFL

[mkjessup]

Update!

Ignore all my comments, I've been terribly misinformed, HERE is what we all need to read over very carefully (from http://www.korea-dpr.com/ocn/ ) (har har)

"Chairman Kim Jong Il of the National Defense Commission of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is a broadminded statesman.

His politics mirrors his broadmindedness as it is. He administers the benevolent politics and all-embracing politics which make no discrimination among all members of society, irrespective of their origin, past career, political view and religious belief.

His politics rallied the popular masses from all walks of life including workers, peasants and intellectuals, into a socio-political force. Such wonderful reality as the single-minded unity of the whole society in the DPRK is wholly attributable to his all-embracing politics.

His broadmindedness is not confined only to the DPRK. Many Koreans in the south and abroad are admiring his generosity.

Chung Ju-young, former honorary chairman of Hyundai Business Group in south Korea, visited Pyongyang in October 1998. The Korean leader, busy as he was with his field guidance to the units of the country, was informed of the aged businessman’s visit and met with him for hours even it was at dead of night. He asked him about his health and business situation, and took every measure for his convenient stay. Noting that he would join hands at any time with anybody, if he or she wishes for the prosperity and well-being of the Korean nation, he gave ready consents to all problems suggested by Chung, including the issue of economic and cultural exchange and cooperation between the north and the south and the issue of tour to Mt. Geumgang and setting up of the Gaesong Industrial Zone.

Kim Jong Il sent a message of condolence and a wreath to his family when he passed away, and named an indoor stadium built on the banks of the Botong River in Pyongyang after him. When Chung Mong-hun, his son who was succeeding to him, died, he saw to it that a monument to his memory was set up in Geumgang resort.

He, who had already met with Hyun Chung-eun, chairperson of Hyundai Business Group who is the widow of the late Chung Mong-hun, and her daughter several times, met them again in August 2009. Remembering the predecessors of Hyundai Business Group with deep emotion, he solved all problems they presented to him with generosity—the issue of tour to Mts. Baektu and Geumgang and to Gaesong area and the issue of revitalizing the work in the GIZ with the love for the nation, even though the inter-Korean relations were driven into an unprecedented worst phase.

Thanks to Kim Jong Il, who attaches utmost priority to the demand and interests of the Korean nation irrespective of differences in ideology and social system, political view and religious belief, such an eye-opening event as the north-south summit which was held in June 2000 for the first time in the 55-years-long history of division of the Korean nation took place and the issue of national reunification was discussed there with an open mind. As a result, the June 15 North-South Joint Declaration, a milestone for Korea’s reunification, the basic idea of which is “by our nation itself,” was adopted. Another inter-Korean summit held in 2007 produced the October 4 Declaration, an action program of the June 15 Joint Declaration.

Kim Jong Il is also widely known to the world for his generosity.

In October 2000 he met with Madeleine Albright, the then State Secretary of the United States which has been hostile to the DPRK, and gave impromptu and clear-cut answers to all the matters of her concern, including the missile issue of the DPRK, a great concern of the US. She was moved to admiration for his magnanimity of handling an issue in a big way, his clear-cut analyzing ability and generosity of attentively listening to his counterpart to the end.

He even met with Japanese Prime Minister Koizumi two times and solved on the spot all problems he presented. The Korean people regard Japan as their sworn enemy as it invaded their country in the past and has not redressed its sinful past up to now, far from making reparation for it.

In August 2009, former US President Bill Clinton visited Pyongyang, which led to the release of two American women journalists who had intruded into the DPRK and committed hostile acts against it. Through the event the international community witnessed more clearly how broadminded Kim Jong Il is. He had an open-minded discussion with Clinton on some issues for relieving the acute relationship between the DPRK and the US and issued on the spot an order of granting a special pardon to the American journalists. They expressed their heartfelt gratitude to his magnanimous measure.

Kim Jong Il is, indeed, a broadminded statesman that moves all people. It is not fortuitous that many people around the world say the land of Korea is too small for his great personality.
October 20th, 2009 by admin | Comments Off

Oh my GAWD, how could we have been so WRONG?!?!?

[do I REAAAAALLLLY need a 'sarc off' tag?]

[blam]

A 'backlash in our future too?

Investment Profit Vehicles For The Intensifying Financial And Economic Storm ("A Great Collapse")

[AmericanInTokyo]

I will see if Pyongyang Patty goes on national North Korean TV tonight (they will stream it only a day or two later on a Japanese website I know). If you see her in BDUs, and kevlar on, and with helmut at the ready in the studio, you will know something is up. Me? I'm waiting for the black, blank screen with funeral music.

[April Lexington]

One can envision a desperate people murdering their leaders with their bare hands... At some point, numbers matter.

Stay Safe...

[SevenofNine]

I want see classical music play like how they do during mean old Soviet Union days man the Russians know how to jam on the music part

[mkjessup]

Yes, sadly too. GWB also did no good for this cause of freedom in North Korea in the last 2 to 2.5 years of his Administration. It (with Chris Hill at State at the helm) became virtually indistinguishable from Madeline Albright and Bill Clinton. I am afraid, not a soul on FR can challenge us on this historic point, mkj. This is where history will not be kind to "W" IMHO. We wrote about it at so much length on the FR threads about North Korean from two, three years back, didn't we.

Indeed. Unfortunately the Bush-RINO sycophants put on their blinders, claimed that GWB 'knew what he was doing' and backed that Six Party Talk garbage as if it were the Holy Gospels. Time has proven the folly of those so-called 'talks', and it was totally avoidable: all George W. Bush had to do was to LISTEN to former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton, who is one of THE most knowledgable men when it comes to these rogue regimes.

To our everlasting disgrace, the advice and wise counsel of men like Bolton were ignored just as the British Parliament sought to ignore Churchill in the years leading up to World War II.

America and the world will once again learn the hard way.

[monkapotamus]

[SevenofNine]

MONK that the one YEAH BABY rack it ROFL

See AIT that one

[bert]

Are we required to give a damn about North Korea?

[mkjessup]

Thanks. And in a similar fashion let me congratulate AiT for his outstanding work.

**** BUMP!!! ****

Absolutely right Moe, in every instance when I have read AiT's news dispatches from the Far East, what he has posted has always been validated as accurate and reliable. I would go so far to say that he is MORE reliable (and certainly more trustworthy) than the wire services like AP and the lame alphabet networks who simply quote each other and then speculate on what they don't know.

AiT is an FR Treasure, no doubt about it.

Ait?

THANK YOU FRiend! (and as other posters have said, be careful over there!

oh, and MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!

[Ghost of Philip Marlowe]

AIT —

I’m assuming “sub-war” level is an escalation from a previous, lower-alert level?

Also, knowing that the Soviets and ChiComs were behind the Korean war and that it was largely a communist push into Korea after the Soviets were emboldened with their very early launch of a Soviet A-bomb...

what is the buzz over there for support from the ChiComs for NK?

I would assume that NK would not be a territory the ChiComs would want to retract, and I suspect they like playing good-cop/bad-cop with NK’s nuclear-bomb and missile tests.

What do you think?

[Ghost of Philip Marlowe]

It was a quiet buzz.

What no one is reporting is that it was a 100:1 devaluation.

If you had the equivalent of $100 (in NK currency), after the devaluation, you had $1.

If there remains any means of civil war in NK, this sort of emboldened, direct theft would encourage it.

But most of NK’s resources and even food go to the military, so I doubt there is much ability to overthrow the government/military.

[mkjessup]

Are we required to give a damn about North Korea?

No, nobody is required.

But it would be the decent thing to do, as it was due to America's allowing the damnable U.N. to put a 'cease fire' in place in 1953, legitimizing and validating the human suffering that has become an institution in the North in the years following.

But no, nobody is 'required' to give a damn at all.

[AmericanInTokyo]

Oh and don’t forget that when Dear Leader was born on the side of the mountain Mt. Paektu, there was a double rainbow, the birds all chirped, a flash of light appeared in the sky, and litle Yura (oops, excuse me) Kim Jong il came down to earth. / sarc of course

[Hamilcar_Barca]

As a Cristian, I've often wondered why North Korea has to suffer so much. I've read about the Pyongyang revival in the early 1900’s. So many other countries have done such horrible things but now live in relative prosperity. But North Korea had decades of Japanese oppression immediately followed by Communism for the past 60+ years. It's a country of abject poverty, despotism and famine with no end to the horror in site.

[AmericanInTokyo]

oops. south korea.

we need him on the new dprk notes for SURE!

[Ghost of Philip Marlowe]

The claim of the Left will be what it is with Cuba’s privations...it is the fault of greedy Capitalism.

If EVERYONE turn to socialism, all the world would be better off.

But as long as there is even ONE nation that supports free markets and/or capitalism, EVERYONE suffers.

Trust me. If the left won’t condemn Islamofascists for 9/11, they will defend ANYONE who is anti-America and anti-Capitalist.

[TigerLikesRooster]

In S. Korea, it was reported as "전투준비." That is, "Ready for Combat." I suppose it means they should be ready to deploy and engage targets(in this case, 'rebelling civilians') as soon as order comes down.

I came across an interesting development, which can only happen in N. Korea. There are sudden increase of people dying, especially increased suicides. The N. Korean securities are investigating to determine if it has 'anti-state motivation.' That is, if you are upset and decide to off yourself instead of taking on the state, they won't let you go off quietly. It is bad enough that one has to take his own life out of abject despair. Now the securities come in and see why you died. If you offed yourself for 'subversive reason,' it could affect your family left behind. The wrong suicide would posthumously earn you the label of anti-state criminal.

Any hint of resistance would not be tolerate, not even suicides. Only in N. Korea.