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A North Korean officer fled across the heavily armed border with the South, the first officer to defect to the capitalist neighbor in about 10 years, a South Korean military official said on Monday. A Joint Chiefs of Staff official said the defection took place on Sunday. Yonhap news agency quoted a government official as saying it was near the Panmunjom truce village set up in the Demilitarised Zone (DMZ) that has divided the peninsula for more than 50 years. "We cannot comment on the rank or route the person used, because the officer is still under interrogation," the official...

SEOUL, South Korea — One can spot the North Koreans by their stunted stature, the result of growing up on inadequate diets. They often seem befuddled in banks and restaurants, and they speak Korean with a noticeable accent. They risked their lives to get here, but even when they're assimilated they earn half of what their South Korean brethren do — for drudge work. There are 11,000 of them in South Korea, trickling in at the rate of only 2,000 a year, but increasingly they're the unwanted relatives at the doorstep. The South Korean government, which fears that any crisis...

SEOUL, South Korea - North Korea has started building a fence along parts of its border with China in an apparent move to prevent people from fleeing the impoverished communist country, a news report said Sunday The North has put posts on a six-mile stretch along a narrow tributary of the Yalu River, which marks the border between North Korea and China. It has also built a road to guard the area, Yonhap news agency reported. The North has yet to string barbed wire fencing between the posts, the report said. The Chinese Foreign Ministry had no immediate comment on...

North Korean defects ― three times July 07, 2007 Cigarettes, a used bicycle and cash. Those were some of the things a North Korean defector used to bribe border guards as he went back and forth three times between his homeland and South Korea, the National Intelligence Service said yesterday. The last time, the man brought North Korean neighbors with him. They couldn’t keep their story straight, and that led to him getting caught, the agency said. The 30-year-old North Korean defector, who was not identified, was arrested yesterday on charges of having the secret visits, which violated the National...

N. Korean defectors testify before British opposition party leader By Sohn Suk-joo SEOUL, June 20 (Yonhap) -- Two North Korean defectors Tuesday testified before the British parliament about the life in North Korean gulags, Christian group officials said Wednesday. Having spoken at a meeting of the All-Party British-North Korea Parliamentary Group in the Moses Room of the Houses of Parliament in London, Ahn Myeong-Cheol and Shin Dong-Hyok, both now settled in South Korea, also met with David Cameron, leader of Britain's opposition Conservative Party, they said. The meeting came after Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW), the organizer of the event, issued...

North Korea has increased its public executions against cell phone users and those who circulate outside information in the communist country, a South Korean government think tank said Thursday. The phenomenon of executions of those who "circulate South Korean leaflets and sell videos and use cell phones are on the rise," the South's government-affiliated Korea Institute for National Unification think tank said in a white paper on the North's human rights conditions. No exact figures were given. North Koreans are officially banned from communicating with the outside world but some of them listen to foreign news and use cell phones...

BANGKOK, Aug. 23 (Yonhap) -- Thai police raided a church home and rounded up 175 North Korean defectors being sheltered there while seeking asylum in another country, sources here said Wednesday. Officials indicated that they would charged but allowed to leave Thailand. The defectors, mostly women, have been turned over to immigration authorities. They also include pregnant women, handicapped persons and those suffering heart ailments needing urgent medical care, according to the sources. At least 16 of them had travel documents issued by the U.N. High Commission on Refugees (UNHCR) and were planning to board a night flight Tuesday to...

First Group of N.Korean Refugees ‘Headed for U.S.’ Some five or six North Korean defectors are reportedly preparing to enter the U.S. under the protection of its embassy in a Southeast Asian country as Washington prepares to make good on a pledge to grant asylum to more refugees from the Stalinist country. Sources in the U.S. government and Congress said Thursday as soon as procedural matters with the Asian country are resolved, the North Koreans will make their way to the U.S. Another official said the defectors are staying at a safe house in the U.S. legation in a Southeast...

US President George W. Bush (R) pats Han-Mi Kim of North Korea on the knee at the White House in Washington. Bush called North Korean leader Kim Jong Il's regime "heartless," after an emotional meeting with families of Japanese nationals kidnapped by North Korean agents(AFP/Mandel Ngan)

Today President Bush held a brief Press conference to speak about the economy in the Rose Garden of the White House, he also met with President Aliyev of Azerbaijan in the Oval Office at the White House, as well as, with North Korean Defectors and Family Members of Japanese Abducted by North Korea. Later in the day he met with Darfur Advocates in the Roosevelt Room

Defector lured by 'shockingly beautiful' Western music Friday, March 31, 2006 SEOUL — Pianist Kim Cheol-Weong said he decided to defect to South Korea after hearing decadent Western music in a coffee shop in Moscow. “I listened to Richard Clayderman’s music such as ‘A Comme Amour’ and ‘Love Story,’” he told an interviewer. Returning to North Korea, he said he was forced to write a 10-page apology when a security official heard him playing a Clayderman piece while alone. It was then, he said, that “I decided to defect to South Korea.” Kim, who teaches piano here, rebelled against the...

ince inaugurating the "Today in Despotism" series earlier this year, TNR Online has chronicled the activities of a number of strongmen. Some are old, some are young; some are religious, some are atheist; some are called "Guide of the First of September Great Revolution of the Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya"; others are called "Supreme Commander of the Korean People's Army, General Secretary of the Workers' Party of Korea, and Chairman of the National Defense Commission of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea." But while countries around the world may have differences, the hopes and dreams of their despotic rulers...

/begin my translationN. Korea: Nine N. Korean Defectors to U.S. Since '97 [Yonhap News 2005-10-07 23:48] (Seoul, Yonhap News) Kim Nam-kwon = It is now revealed that there are 9 N. Korean defectors in total, who escaped N. Korea and took political asylum in U.S..  Assemblyman Kwon Young-seh, a lawmaker of (opposition) Hannara Party, citing documents submitted to National Assembly by National Intelligence Service(NIS: S. Korean intelligence agency) during a closed-door session of (annual) congressional audit , disclosed, "From '97 up to this year, 27 N. Koreans applied for a political asylum, of whom 18 had their application rejected, and only...

Tens of thousands of fans of all ages gathered over the weekend for the annual three-day Rock the Desert Christian music festival screamed for hit bands like Mercy Me and Pillar and kicked Hacky Sacks by a creek renamed the Jordan River and a small pond called the Dead Sea. Between the Prayer Tent and an abstinence-promotion booth, however, worshipful revelers also stumbled into a more sobering pavilion, the North Korea Genocide Exhibit. Inside, Kang Chol Hwan, a North Korean defector recently summoned to meet President Bush, signed copies of his memoir of 10 years in a prison camp. Drawings...

By Anna Fifield in Seoul Published: July 20 2005 03:00 | Last updated: July 20 2005 03:00 A North Korean parliament-arian who defected to the South says Kim Jong-il's regime has made a one-tonne nuclear bomb and is working on lighter weapons that could be fired more reliably, according to a South Korean magazine. ADVERTISEMENT The defector, who was a deputy in the Supreme People's Assembly, claimed to have visited Taiwan to tout North Korean missiles. The report in the Monthly Chosun supports assumptions North Korea is not bluffing over its claim to be a nuclear state and is taking...

A North Korean couple who fled to China in search of a better life have told how they spent two years hiding in a burrow dug in snowbound mountains to avoid being captured and sent home. Sung Kyung-il and his wife, Chu Myung-hee, survived bitterly cold winters and the threat of starvation after digging a cave in the side of Dokgol Mountain, in the rugged terrain of northeast China. Like many other North Koreans, the couple escaped the dictatorial Stalinist regime and a near constant famine under the mistaken impression that China would offer a better standard of living and...

/begin my summary3 N. Koreans, presumed to be a family, defected at Baek-ryong island[Yonhap News, 2005/06/26] Around 9:55 am on June 26, 2.9 miles away to the North East of Baek-ryong Island, a N. Korean barge indicated the willingness to defect. It was towed to Yong-ki-po Harbor at Baek-ryong Island at 11:40 am, according to the (S. Korean) Joint Chief of Staffs. Inside the boat were Mr. Hong(male, age:42), Mr. Moon(female, age:39), a 15-year-old boy. They are presumed to be a family. They reportedly left Yong-hyun, Ku-mi-po District, N. Korea.around 5:30 am, June 25. The barge is an 1.7-ton boat...

SEOUL (Reuters) - A North Korean civilian couple crossed into South Korea and expressed wish to defect, the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said on Saturday. The couple, identified by the husband's surname "Choi," was spotted sailing in a boat near the border between the two Koreas in the Yellow Sea early on Friday, the JCS said in a statement. Choi had been determined to leave the communist state since his mother and younger brother were executed in 2004 for experiments on human bodies, the Inchon Metropolitan Police Agency said in a separate statement. The JCS also said that a...

/begin my translation Bush's  Recommended Reading for his  Associates-- a N. Korean Defector's MemoirYonhap News from Tokyo05/28/05U.S. President George W. Bush has read a memoir of a N. Korean defector, and was deeply disturbed by the atrocious human right situation in N. Korea. He also recommended it to his associates, according to May 28th issue of Yomiuri Shimbun(a major Japanese daily.)  What Bush read is 'The Aquariums of Pyongyang: Ten Years In The North Korean Gulag' written by Kang Chol-hwan, a N. Korean defector and currently a reporter of Chosun Ilbo(a biggest S. Korean daily), and Pierre Rigoulot, a French journalist and a historian....

SEOUL, May 9 (Yonhap) -- U.S. President George W. Bush is reading a North Korean defector's book revealing gruesome human rights abuses in the Stalinist country, according to a White House source contacted in Seoul over the weekend. "I am in the middle of reading 'the Aquariums of Pyongyang,'" the White House source quoted Bush as saying in a recent meeting with aides. The White House source, whose name is being withheld by the Yonhap News Agency for privacy, told a friend in Seoul that Bush "appeared to be very concerned" about the plight of the 23 million North...

http://www.dailynk.com/korean/read.php?cataId=nk01300&num=4957/begin my translation   Three Reasons for Kim Jong-il's Obsession with Nukes: Defector's Take Regime Survival, Extorting Economic Aids, Keeping People under Control [ 2005-05-01 19:44 ] Kim Jong-il touring a command center  at the Eastern  Front  We as N. Korean defectors had many times heard in N. Korea , 'N. Korea has nukes.'  We find it really 'silly' when people in the South are engaged in heated debate over the existence of (N. Korean) nukes. Even today in the South, about N. Korean nukes, some say, "Because the Cold War between U.S. and Soviet Union had ended, N. Korea has nobody to...

Two survivors of the North Korean prison camps spoke at the UN Commission on Human Rights, the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office and at the EU, a UK-based a Christian human rights charity reported Monday. The two survivors, both Christians, were imprisoned at the Yodok Political Prison Camp and suffered “appalling abuses,” according to Christian Solidarity Worldwide. “In a political prison camp in North Korea, one must forget that he or she is a human being,” said 49-year-old Tae Jin Kim, initially defected to China in 1986 to escape North Korea. “I had to do many things to survive. I...

WASHINGTON (AP) - Some North Koreans who defect or seek political asylum abroad can face execution if they are forced back to their homeland, according to a State Department report. North Koreans sent home after leaving without authorization are subject to at least five years of "labor correction," the report said. In serious cases, they can receive "an indefinite term of imprisonment and forced labor, confiscation of property, or death," it said. The report said U.S. officials have been told that the harshest treatment is reserved for those who have had extensive contact with Christian missionaries and other activists in...

A North Korean defector testified to have witnessed forced abortions and infanticide at a detention camp in North Korea. "I heard the cries of both mother and child through the curtain (at a hospital). And through the partially open curtain, I witnessed the nurse covering the infant's face with a wet towel on a table, suffocating it," a 28-year-old identified as Park Sun-ja told an international conference on North Korean human rights abuses Tuesday. "The baby stopped crying about ten minutes later," added Park, whose real name was not provided to protect her. Seven other North Korean defectors appeared at...

Fifteen presumed North Korean defectors who had settled in South Korea were arrested for trying to sneak into the U.S. The Los Angeles-based Association of People From Five Northern Provinces said on Sunday it learned that 15 North Koreans were arrested by U.S. Border Patrol as they tried to smuggle themselves into the U.S. from Tijuana, Mexico. But the association¡¯s president Kim Ho-jeong added it remained to be confirmed whether the 15 really were defectors. The 15, who are being held at an immigration detention center in San Diego, California, said they intended to seek political asylum in the U.S....

15 N. Koreans Nabbed Crossing U.S.-Mexico Border Fifteen presumed North Korean defectors who had settled in South Korea were arrested for trying to sneak into the U.S. The Los Angeles-based Association of People From Five Northern Provinces said on Sunday it learned that 15 North Koreans were arrested by U.S. Border Patrol as they tried to smuggle themselves into the U.S. from Tijuana, Mexico. But the association’s president Kim Ho-jeong added it remained to be confirmed whether the 15 really were defectors. The 15, who are being held at an immigration detention center in San Diego, California, said they intended...

http://www.kcna.co.jp/index-e.htm is the link to the first article.Compare these two articles. From a communist NK source:" U.S. Urged to Rebuild Groundwork of Six-party Talks Pyongyang, December 14 (KCNA) -- The United States is these days misleading public opinion to shift the blame for the delayed resumption of the six-party talks on to the DPRK, far from rebuilding the groundwork of the talks which it destroyed itself. Commenting on this, a Rodong Sinmun analyst Tuesday says: -snip-Second Article: Top general's son defected to U.S. base in Japan, then disappeared Special to World Tribune.com EAST-ASIA-INTEL.COM Wednesday, December 15, 2004SEOUL — The only...

North Korea, Firing Machine Guns at Defectors AUGUST 27, 2004 21:55 Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post reported on August 27 that North Korea allegedly has fired machine guns at the country’s defectors. The newspaper quoted Tim Peters, who founded “Helping Hands,” as saying, “A foreigner who is very much knowledgeable of the plight of the North Korean defectors said he heard gun shots in the border area,” and added, “The North Korean government is thought to have issued an order to shoot people.” He also said, “I heard that someone saw at least two or three dead bodies floating...

Activist says North seized defector on honeymoon A North Korean defector on her honeymoon in China has been kidnapped and returned to her former homeland, a human rights activist group in Seoul has claimed. South Korea's Foreign Ministry said yesterday it has asked Chinese authorities to investigate the report. Jin Gyeong-suk, 24-year-old woman, and her husband were attacked on Aug. 8 near China's border with North Korea by a group of men speaking Northern dialects, said Doh Hee-yoon, secretary-general of the civic group, Coalition for Human Rights of Abductees and North Korean Refugees. According to Mr. Doh, the couple went...

More than 200 North Koreans arrived in Seoul on Tuesday, part of the Hermit Kingdom's biggest mass defection to date. A day later, a South Korean news agency reported the arrival of 227 more. Let's hope this exodus signals cracks in Kim Jong Il's regime that will lead to its eventual demise. The defections coincide with fresh tales of the Kim regime's depredations against its own people. A North Korean scientist known only as "Dr. Kim" told the BBC that he used experimental chemical weapons on political prisoners, taking notes as they died in agony. Such experiments were apparently used...

Seoul — Pyongyang accused Seoul of kidnapping more than 450 North Koreans and said South Korea would pay dearly for the biggest mass defection from the Stalinist state since the Korean War. Accusing South Korea of "luring and abducting those northerners like alley cats," a powerful North Korean state body said the action would plunge inter-Korean relations to the point of "acute confrontation". North Korea would extract a high price from South Korea and others who helped stage the "premeditated allurement, abduction and terrorism," Pyongyang's Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Fatherland said. (Wire Reports)

Shooting Death of N. Korean Defector No Accident: NGO The Durihana Missionary Foundation held a press conference Tuesday to release recorded testimonies of an incident in which a 19-year-old defector named Jeong Choel-hoon was shot to death by a Chinese soldier (reported on April 14) while he was attempting to cross the Sino-Mongolian border along with 23 other defectors. The testimonies revealed that the incident was not accidental, but the result of indiscriminate shooting. At the time, the Foreign Ministry said, “The Chinese government informed us that some North Korean defectors attempted to seize the weapons of the Chinese troops...

As a new round of multilateral talks over the North Korean nuclear program gets underway in Beijing, a high-ranking North Korean defector says Pyongyang already had nuclear weapons before it signed a 1994 nuclear accord with the United States. The chief U.S. negotiator at the time says if Washington had known, it would not have "stood by and let North Korea build nuclear weapons." The early 1990's were a particularly tense time in U.S.-North Korean relations. Washington knew North Korea had a plutonium-based nuclear weapons program, and wanted Pyongyang to completely stop it. But how far along exactly was North...

N Korean defector 'held by China' A North Korean man who fled with evidence that prisoners are used to test chemical weapons has been detained by China, a human rights worker said. Kang Byong-sop, 58, was stopped last month in Yunnan province while trying to cross into Laos, Kim Sang-hun said. Mr Kim called on the UK to stop China handing Mr Kang to North Korea, where he faced possible torture or death. Pyongyang has described claims it used political prisoners to test gases for chemical weapons as "US propaganda". Mr Kang was the source of a North Korean document,...

Chinese agents seize N Korean defector By Robin Gedye (Filed: 12/02/2004) China has hunted down and arrested a North Korean defector who revealed the first documentary evidence of Pyongyang's chemical and biological experiments on political prisoners, said his supporters yesterday. Kang Byong-sop, 59, was seized on the Chinese-Laotian border with his wife and youngest son, aged 25, last month after escaping from North Korea with proof that the Stalinist regime is killing political prisoners by experimenting on them with biological and chemical weapons. Seong-kuk: injured during a kidnap attempt Mr Kang's eldest son, Seong-kuk, who defected several years ago and...

Defector: N. Korea Has Uranium Program 2 hours, 2 minutes ago TOKYO - A top-ranking North Korean defector said the North launched a uranium-based nuclear weapons program in 1996 with the help of Pakistan, a Japanese newspaper reported Sunday. Hwang Jang Yop, a former mentor to North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, told the Tokyo Shimbun in an interview that a top military official told him eight years ago about an agreement with Pakistan to develop an enriched uranium weapons program. Since 2002, the United States has contended that North Korea (news - web sites) has been developing uranium-based...

CHINA WATCHPrisoner cuts out Bible letters to write to familyMan held for helping defectors prohibited from using writing tool Posted: February 4, 20041:00 a.m. Eastern © 2004 WorldNetDaily.com Apparently prohibited from using a pen or pencil, a South Korean man held in a Chinese jail has used tiny letters cut from a Bible to paste together a letter that was somehow smuggled to his family. Radio Free Asia reports Young-hoon Choi is serving a five-year sentence for helping defectors from North Korea in the northern Chinese port city of Yantai across from the Korean Peninsula. "Someone mailed me a letter from my...

School For NK Defectors, Privately Run, Offers Oasis of Warmth (Korea Times) Photo by Kim Hyun-tae Defectors aren’t completely alone when they arrive in South Korea. Cho Myong-suk runs a school to help ease the transition into a capitalist society, despite not receiving any government support. Life in South Made a Little Easier With Help of Friends by Kim Tae-jong The issue of how best to deal with North Korean defectors after their arrival and how to ensure they become productive members of society is definitely complex. Fortunately there are people out there trying to do just that. ``Our ultimate...

A high-ranking North Korean official who defected to the South six years ago has told US congressmen that Pyongyang cannot be trusted to stick to a new nuclear weapons deal. Hwang Jang-yop, who was secretary of the North Korean Workers' Party, was speaking to the House of Representatives' Committee on Homeland Security during his first visit to Washington. Mr Hwang's comments came as Chinese and North Korean media reported that Pyongyang had agreed "in principle" to further talks on its controversial nuclear programme. He said no significance should be attached to any promise by the North Korean leader, Kim...

SEOUL, South Korea, -- North Korea's highest-ranking defector left for the United States on Monday in a trip that could strain relations with the communist state amid tension over its nuclear weapons development. Hwang Jang Yop, who defected to Seoul in 1997, has been invited several times to speak before a U.S. congressional hearing, but had not been allowed to travel outside South Korea until now. He has accused the South Korean government of restricting his movements. Hwang, 81, was once chief of North Korea's parliament and the mentor of North Korean leader Kim Jong Il. When he came to...

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) -- Nearly 4,000 North Koreans have defected to South Korea since the 1950-53 Korean War, three quarters of them in the past five years, South Korea's Unification Ministry said in a report submitted Sunday. A total of 2,958 North Koreans, or 77 percent of the total 3,834 defectors, fled their country and arrived in South Korea after 1998, according to South Korea's Yonhap news agency. The ministry expects the number to rise as thousands of North Koreans are believed to be living in hiding in China, seeking a chance to come to South Korea. Most of...

N. Korea Weapons Expert Said Detained in China 1 hour, 27 minutes ago Add World - Reuters to My Yahoo! BEIJING (Reuters) - A North Korean biological weapons expert has been detained while trying to slip into the Australian consulate in China's southern city of Guangzhou to seek political asylum, an anti-Pyongyang activist said on Saturday. Reuters Slideshow: North Korea Norbert Vollertsen, a German doctor-turned-activist, said plainclothes security agents had detained Ri Chae Woo, who planned to testify in the United States against Pyongyang's chemical and biological weapons program. Vollersten, quoted on a human rights Web site, said Li had...

A rally held today in Seoul, South Korea, by strong friends of the USA and strong opponents of brutal North Korea/Kim Jong-il. Joining were: defectors from communist North Korea, S. Korean conservatives, a German doctor who had worked in North Korea, S. Korean veterans of the Vietnam War, and others friends. They fastidiously burned the communist North Korean flag and sang in support of President Bush and a strong policy against tyrany. Enjoy.

Seoul, Aug. 5 (Yonhap) -- An application for a passport by Hwang Jang-yop, the highest-ranking North Korean official ever to defect to South Korea, has been turned down, government officials said Tuesday. The National Intelligence Service refused to endorse Hwang's application, the third so far this year, for security reasons, said one official associated with the main government spy agency.

BANGKOK, Thailand (AP) - Ten Koreans, possibly from the communist North, sneaked into the Japanese Embassy in Bangkok on Thursday, diplomats said, apparently seeking political asylum. The group - consisting of four men, four women, a boy and a girl - entered the embassy compound through a gate when it opened to let a car in, said embassy spokesman Toshihisa Takata. They passed beside the car shouting "North Korea" in English. "They are safely in the building of the Japanese Embassy. We are now investigating their names and their wishes, those sorts of things," Takata told reporters. He said they...

Reprinted from NewsMax.com Attack North Korea Before It's Too Late, Key Defector WarnsCharles R. SmithThursday, July 10, 2003 WASHINGTON – A prominent defector is urging the U.S. to use military force against North Korea, and predicts that once the rogue regime acquires nuclear weapons, it will use them against U.S. allies. Park Gap Dong, former chief of the European Section for Propaganda, said that the U.S. should use "pre-emptive strikes against selected targets" to overthrow the brutal North Korean dictator, Kim Jong-il and destroy the nuclear weapons program. "We cannot expect to bring down the regime of Kim Jong-il by...

<p>U.S. and North Korea officials are to meet in Bangkok tomorrow to discuss access to American defectors living in North Korea &#8212; part of a seven-year effort to account for U.S. soldiers who never returned from the Korean War.</p> <p>Officials at both the Pentagon and the State Department insisted that the talks will be very "narrowly focused" on that subject and that the latest nuclear standoff with the North will not be discussed.</p>

N Korean defector's nuclear claim The most high-profile defector from North Korea has said he was told in 1996 that the secretive state had already developed nuclear weapons. Hwang Yang-jop, a former tutor to North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, also said that Pyongyang signed a contract with Pakistan the same year to receive help in enriching uranium for its nuclear arsenal. Mr Hwang's comments will add credence to United States intelligence reports that the North had developed a small number of nuclear weapons before it agreed to mothball its programme in 1994. The collapse of that agreement last year triggered...

World - AP Asia Defector: Kim Said N. Korea Has Nukes (Kim Jong-il said it in '96) 2 hours, 16 minutes ago By JAE-SUK YOO, Associated Press Writer SEOUL, South Korea - North Korean leader Kim Jong Il told aides in 1996 that his country had nuclear weapons, a prominent North Korean defector said Friday. Hwang Jang Yop, who defected to Seoul in 1997, made the remarks as the United States tries to muster international pressure on North Korea (news - web sites) to drop its suspected nuclear program. Washington believes North Korea already has one or two bombs. "I...