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Why it's sane for Kim Jong-il to be crazy Tue Oct 27, 2009 10:28am EDT By Andrew Marshall, Asia Political Risk Correspondent - Analysis SINGAPORE (Reuters) - For those who see North Korean leader Kim Jong-il as a dangerous lunatic prepared to risk the annihilation of his regime by launching a devastating attack on his neighbors, there is no shortage of supporting evidence. He uses platform shoes and bouffant hair to appear taller. His official media churns out hagiographic tales of his almost superhuman talents -- including the world's greatest round of golf, 38 under par with 5 holes in...

A fresh wave of cyber attacks that slowed U.S. and South Korean websites this week hit more targets on Thursday, a Web security firm said, while the South's spy agency has said the hacking may be linked to North Korea. The impact of the attacks, aimed so far at dozens of sites including the White House and the South's presidential office, was seen as negligible, experts said, but served as a reminder that Pyongyang has been planning for cyber warfare.

Kim Jong-il has formally named his third son, Kim Jong-un, as his successor as he prepares to stand down as North Korea's leader. Kim Jong-il, 67, who is known as North Korea's "Dear Leader", suffered a stroke at the end of last year and has been incapacitated ever since. South Korea's National Intelligence Service has now confirmed that the Korean People's Army, the Presidium of the Supreme People's Assembly and the ministerial cabinet have been asked to pledge their allegiance to Kim Jong-un, 25, the youngest member of the world's only Communist ruling dynasty. "I was notified by the South...

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korean leader Kim Jong Il promoted 35 generals Tuesday as the country marked one of its biggest national holidays, the birthday of his late father. Kim's father, Kim Il Sung, died in 1994 at age 82 but still holds the title of the country's "eternal president." The elder Kim's birthday is known as "Day of the Sun" and is celebrated along with the birthday of the country's current ruler. The younger Kim often promotes generals to mark holidays and boost the morale of the military, the backbone of his totalitarian rule. He has promoted...

THE world's only Communist dynasty may come to an abrupt end, with reports that North Korea is to set up a military junta once the current leader, Kim Jong-il, leaves office. Kim, who "inherited" the job from his father, Kim Il-sung, has previously tipped his eldest son, Jong-nam, 36, as heir apparent. But sources in China, which has the closest diplomatic links with the rogue state, said he had changed his mind a few years ago and was now preparing to introduce a "collective" military-based leadership. Kim, who recently turned 65, has yet to announce the change officially, but he...

North Korea has promised to wind down its nuclear programme in return for a package of international aid and the normalisation of relations with America.The secretive Stalinist state agreed to shut down its main nuclear reactor within 60 days, and eventually disable it irreversibly, in a momentous deal signed at the end of a six-country conference in Beijing. It will also allow international inspections of the site. In return the US will begin the process of removing North Korea from its list of state sponsors of terrorism, and move towards ending sanctions imposed after the country's underground nuclear test in...

/begin my translation Something’s Wrong with Kim Jong-il... in Power Struggle or Detained? [Newsis[ Quoting a reliable source in S. Korea, Jiji Press of Japan reported on Jan. 26 that there is an intelligence that something may be wrong with Kim Jong-il recently. In its dispatch from Seoul, it reported that Kim Jong-il is not in Pyongyang, and intense power struggle could be going on between factions inside his inner circle. Intelligence outfits of U.S. and S. Korea are now trying to verify this now, according to the report. The source suggests the possibility that something might have happened to...

/begin my translation of excerpt Interview with Mr. H and Mr. B (translator's note: both are residents in Ham-heung, N. Korea; the interview was conducted via telephone; Mr. B was out in China for a visit.) -- How do N. Korean people view Kim Jong-il? Oh, you mean 'that kid'(Kim Jong-il)? We don't care. Whenever we see 'that kid', we get mad. When 'Great Leader' (Kim Il-sung) was alive, we received some gifts, free school uniforms, and food rations. However, quite honestly, what has 'that kid' done for us? They always talk about achievements of 'that kid' on TV. It...

Kim Jong-Il Sorry for Nuke Test, Molested as Child by Scott Ott (2006-10-21) — North Korean President Kim Jong-Il today reportedly told Chinese diplomats that he regrets his government’s recent detonation of a nuclear device, and he revealed that he had been molested as a child. “President Kim is sorry, and he takes full responsibility for the atomic bomb test,” said an unnamed Chinese source, “but in the spirit of transparency and vulnerability, he wants people to know about the childhood molestation incident.” The North Korean leader has reportedly checked himself into a rehab center to “heal his inner child...

BEIJING — North Korean leader Kim Jong-il told a visiting Chinese delegation that the communist nation didn't plan to conduct additional nuclear tests, a news report said Friday. Kim told Chinese envoy Tang Jiaxuan that "we have no plans for additional nuclear tests," Yonhap news agency reported, citing an unnamed diplomatic source in Beijing. Kim also expressed regret about his country's nuclear test to the delegation and said Pyongyang would return to nuclear talks if Washington backs off from its financial sanctions, a South Korean newspaper reported Friday.

SEOUL -- Mt. Paekdu towers 8,940 feet tall, the highest mountain in Korea. Since ancient times, Koreans have viewed it as a symbol of their nation, the birthplace of Tankun, mythical founder of their race. Today, it has added significance for the 20 million people of communist North Korea. It is "the holy place of the Korean revolution." It was there, schoolchildren learn, that President Kim Il Sung organized heroic guerrilla bands in the 1930s that were to rout the brutal Japanese colonial army. It was there, in a hidden forest encampment, that his son and heir Kim Chong Il...

STOCKHOLM, Sweden A tough-line stance against North Korea in wake of its nuclear weapons test could lead to an armed response from Pyongyang, former U.N. chief weapons inspector Hans Blix said Wednesday.In an interview with Swedish Radio, Blix said sanctions and threats of military attacks against North Korea was likely to lead to further escalation instead of a diplomatic solution. "If you look at North Korea's previous reactions when they have been exposed to threats, things have usually escalated," Blix said. "It is a dangerous situation." Blix also warned against pressuring China to stop and search North Korean ships for...

Published: Friday, October 13, 2006 Is it time to consider killing crazy Kim? By Austen Kassinger Since when did assassination of foreign leaders get taken off the table? After years of killing off third-world leaders that threatened American interests, international norms have shifted, Today, the idea of exploding cigars is considered quaint, if not outright passe. But with Pyongyang's announcement late Monday night of a nuclear arms test, perhaps it's time to reconsider. The notion that someone ought to just put a bullet through Kim Jong Il's head tends to elicit disapproving frowns. Apparently, it's too crass a tactic, a...

Surprise! North Korea Is Acting Up Againby James Lileks It's a strange, sick world where one dinky nuclear test can knock the Mark Foley scandal off the front page. Is it really big news? North Korea's nuclear capability has been tacitly assumed for a few years, and learning they actually set one off is a bit like hearing Paris Hilton appeared unsteady as she left a club. Still, an actual nuclear explosion does focus the mind, and makes you wonder what comes next. Let history be our guide: First we had the Clinton talks, in which North Korea promised to...

Four days after North Korea tried to set off its first nuclear bomb, U.S. intelligence agencies think the blast detected by seismic sensors was a plutonium-fueled device that did not fully explode. "The working assumption is that what happened, more likely than not, was an attempted nuclear test that fell far short of being successful," said one U.S. official familiar with the latest intelligence assessment. There is still no confirmation that North Korea succeeded in creating a nuclear explosion, and so far no radioactive particles that would confirm a successful nuclear test have been detected. The Washington Times first reported...

6 minutes ago UNITED NATIONS - The United States on Thursday introduced a new draft resolution in the Security Council to punish North Korea for its reported nuclear test and said it wants a vote on Friday. Russia urged the United States not to rush the vote, saying Moscow still had differences and the U.S. should wait for the results of a flurry of high-level diplomacy. China backed Russia's call, saying Beijing would welcome more talks so the Security Council can send a united and forceful message to Pyongyang condemning the test. After formally introducing the resolution in the Security...

The abbreviation for North Korea used by American military officers says it all: KFR, the Kim Family Regime. It is a regime whose demonization by the American media and policy makers has obscured some vital facts. North Korea’s founder, Kim Il Sung, was not merely a dreary Stalinist tyrant. As defectors from his country will tell you, he was also a popular anti-Japanese guerrilla leader in the mold of Enver Hoxha, the Stalinist tyrant of Albania who led his countrymen in a successful insurgency against the Nazis. Nor is his son Kim Jong Il anything like the childish psychopath parodied...

Democrats have begun a desperate-yet-predictable effort to blame North Korea's nuclear aspirations on President George W. Bush's strident rhetoric. Despite their leftist cant, they seem remarkably uninterested in the "root causes" of Pyongyang's current nuclear brinksmanship: Bill Clinton's eight years of appeasement and the gullible cordiality of the South Korean government. Threats of a nuclear winter did not mix well with Clinton's sunny disposition. Clinton, who saw the domestic front thronged with "crises," refused to disturb his illusion of a post-Cold War world at complete peace under his watch. He had two private conversations with CIA Director James Woolsey in...

PANMUNJOM -- Spitting across the demarcation line that separates the two armies. Making throat-slashing hand gestures. Flashing their middle fingers. Trying to talk to the South Korean troops. North Korean troops in the Demilitarized Zone dividing the two Koreas have been more boldly trying to provoke guards on the other side since the North claimed to have detonated a nuclear bomb Monday, a U.S. military spokesman said. "They're walking a little taller," Army Major Jose DeVarona of Fayetteville, N.C., told reporters during a tour of the zone Wednesday. "They're more confident about making contact." Still, he said the overall situation...

The French Defence Minister has cast doubts over the success of North Korea’s claimed nuclear test, saying that it produced an explosion so small that if indeed it was nuclear, it had been a failure.Michele Alliot-Marie said that although experts had not yet determined the precise cause of the explosion, French, American and other scientists had detected that it was of "relatively limited size." "In any case, if this was a nuclear explosion, it would be a case of a failed explosion," she said. Mme Alliot-Marie’s comments were the strongest yet from a senior Western policy-makers to suggest that the...

The original Chinese document on this facility The picture of Lee Chun-Sun and the N. Korean missile Comment: The following is the English translation and shortened version of a korean article on the uranium enrichment facility of N. Korea in operation since '89. N. Korean Uranium Enrichment Facility (since '89) Revealed It is now revealed that N. Korean uranium enrichment facility is deep under the Chon-Ma Peak, 1,119m high from the sea level. The official name of this facility is Mt. Chon-Ma Powerplant to hide its real function. Two power generators from Kum-Chang Ri Powerplant were installed at this...

TOKYO (Reuters) - North Korea appears to have conducted another nuclear test, Japanese national broadcaster NHK said on Wednesday.

MOSCOW, Oct. 10 (UPI) -- Russian military experts said Tuesday that North Korea has carried out a test of a nuclear weapon. "Defense Ministry technical means registered the nuclear explosion and a mistake here is impossible," Maj. Gen. Vladimir Dvorkin, who formerly headed a Russian military researcher center, told Interfax News Agency. "A nuclear explosion can be accurately distinguished from a conventional explosion, say the explosion of 100 tons of conventional explosives." While Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov also said that North Korea has become a nuclear power and called it "a serious blow" to non-proliferation, Russian President Vladimir Putin said...

SPECIAL EDITION October 10, 2006 | Episode #34North Korea: What Comes Next?Global Crisis Watch convenes a roundtable discussion on North Korea and the next possible steps with Rohan Gunaratna, Institute of Defense and Strategic Studies, Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, counterterrorism consultant and author of "My Year Inside Radical Islam," and Josh Manchester, Marine Reserve Officer and author of TheAdventuresofChester.com.Link: http://www.GlobalCrisisWatch.com/gcw/gcw_061010.mp3 21 minutes | 9.8 Megs Global Crisis Watch is an independent and weekly 30-minute current affairs and news podcast focusing on the Global War on Terror, the War of Ideas, and indigenous pro-democracy efforts around the world. Hosted by Richard Lafayette in...

"...there is strong information that makes us suspicious but we lack conclusive evidence that the intended purpose of the underground site is nuclear related." --US Ambassador Charles Kartman, 21 November 1998 [1] What is Kumchang-ri? Kumchang-ri is an underground site located northwest of Yongbyon, North Korea's frozen nuclear complex. It has been speculated that the site housed, or was intended to house a nuclear reactor or reprocessing facility.[2] Construction of Kumchang-ri is estimated to be complete within two to six years, depending on the amount of foreign assistance received.[3] North Korea continues to deny reports that the site is nuclear-related...

3.58 in Richter Scale Time: 10:35Am, Oct. 9, 2006

The eccentric North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il has hired doubles to carry out his more mundane tasks, according to South Korean intelligence officials.While Kim himself attends major state occasions, two men stand in for him for more routine visits to tractor factories or farms. "They are the spitting image of Kim — the same age, same height and with the same bouffant hairstyle and pot belly," a South Korean news agency quoted an intelligence official as saying. "They are trained to behave like him and even had plastic surgery to enhance the resemblance." The official also said that assassination was...

Tokyo - A Japanese man was arrested after trying to steal a mannequin from a display window, claiming it was love at first sight, news reports said on Monday. Shoji Shibuzaki, 33, was arrested at 03:00 in the southern city of Maebara for allegedly trying to remove the mannequin from display at a community centre, a police official was quoted as saying in a report in the Asahi Shimbum newspaper. "It was love at first sight," he reportedly told police after his arrest last week. The unemployed man said he had spotted the mannequin, which was clad in a kimono,...

SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korean leader Kim Jong-il has taken his former secretary as his new wife, South Korea's Yonhap news agency reported on Sunday, citing sources familiar with the country. His wife Ko Yong-hi, the mother of two of Kim's three sons, died of breast cancer in August 2004, the agency said. "I heard Kim has been living together with a woman named Kim Ok, who was his secretary, since Ko Yong-hi died two years ago," Yonhap quoted a South Korean government source as saying.

North calls alert, U.S. and Korea plan 5-way talks July 19, 2006 ¤Ñ North Korea has ordered wartime mobilization preparation for its soldiers and citizens, a senior intelligence official said yesterday. The order was delivered to military and civilian leaders just after midnight Sunday, four hours before the United Nations Security Council adopted a resolution condemning the North's arms and missile programs. President Roh Moo-hyun convened a meeting of his security officials today to discuss that mobilization order and other issues stemming from the UN resolution. The order, which was not broadcast by radio or television, was the first in...

I don't understand, some people say that Islam is responsible for terrorism today, rather than those who manipulate and perversely interpret Islam to further their murderous aims. Islam is so similiar to Christianity that there isn't even a point to it, every quote showing "Judeao-Christian hatred" can be logically explained by anyone who has read the Quran. We have groups like Muslims for Bush (now Muslims for America) a primarily Republican group of American muslims supporting the War on Terror.

Ansaman has been keeping a lil' strip on Kim Jong Il's latest fun shennanigans.... http://www.ansaman.com/kim/kimcomix.html

Kim Jong Il rules golf at the Dictator Classic By Neil Davis Contributing Writer Monday, January 24, 2005 last updated January 23, 2005 8:22 PM Author’s note: Foremost, this author would like to thank anonymous e-mailer, AtleeNelli43@aol.com, for his or her lively response to my Sidney Ponson article. AtleeNelli43 concluded the e-mail with this zinger: “You're a jealous idiot who wouldn't know the first thing about being politically correct or even nice! So here's to you, ***hole!” Smarting from Atlee’s well-composed piece of hate mail, I considered who might have written such a response. Since I can’t imagine anybody actually...

On July 4, while Americans across the country were getting their bottle rockets and Roman candles ready to celebrate our independence, a small, poor country half a world away was preparing its own "rockets' red glare." North Korea's Fourth of July missile test was several things: an infantile demonstration of aggression by an isolated nation and a seriously destabilizing act felt throughout the Pacific Rim. But most of all it was a failure - a failure of a missile technology and a failure of diplomacy. This test was a failure for North Korea because its outdated Taepodong 2 missile crashed...

<p>Between 3:30am and 7:30am(S. Korean time,) N. Korea fired 10 missile into the direction of East Sea(Sea of Japan,) according to a senior (S. Korean) government official.</p> <p>He added, "N. Korea's Taepodong-2 was fired at their third or fourth launch, but apparently failed." Another government official said, "N. Korea fired Scud, Nodong, and Taepodong missiles in sequence."</p>

Immortal Feats Performed by Kim Jong Il in Leadership over Party Pyongyang, June 19 (KCNA) -- General Secretary Kim Jong Il started his work at the Central Committee of the Workers' Party of Korea on the 19th of June 42 years ago. Epochal changes have been since effected in the work of the WPK and the revolutionary development and a new era of great creation and change has been ushered in. Kim Jong Il has given clear-cut answers to all the theoretical and practical issues arising in strengthening the WPK to be Kim Il Sung's Party for ever. The issues...

The world's most unlikely song and dance show opened in Seoul last night, a musical featuring goose-stepping soldiers and starving prisoners described as a concentration camp version of Les Miserables.Yoduk Story is set in one of North Korea's most infamous political labour camps, where tens of thousands of families who have fallen foul of the leadership are sent to live and, in many cases, die. Its director, Jung Sung-san, defected from North Korea in the 1990s and wrote the musical to make artistic sense of his father's death there - and to alert South Koreans to the fate of their...

NORTH Korean dictator Kim Jong-Il may launch a sneak attack on the world's pop charts - with the love-song I am a front-line soldier's wife. A moribund economy and several recent severe famines have had a terrible effect on the North Korean people, destroying morale and causing unrest. Kim Jong-Il's latest attempt to deal with this problem has been to authorise a swathe of new love songs to re-invigorate the population and ensure his control of North Korea. Many people in the communist state are singing songs glorifying the women revolutionaries helping to build the nation, official media has reported....

TOKYO: A Japanese news agency reported Saturday that North Korean leader Kim Jong Il believes that his government could collapse if the United States keeps imposing economic sanctions against his country. Citing an unidentified diplomatic source in New York close to the international talks over North Korea’s nuclear programme, Kyodo News reported that Kim made the remarks to Chinese President Hu Jintao during a secretive weeklong trip to China last month. Kim voiced his concerns when Hu asked him to drop the demand that Washington lift financial sanctions as a precondition for Pyongyang to return to the talks, Kyodo said....

THE drab compound that houses the Iranian embassy in Pyongyang is the focus of intense scrutiny by diplomats and intelligence services who believe that North Korea is negotiating to sell the Iranians plutonium from its newly enlarged stockpile — a sale that would hand Tehran a rapid route to the atomic bomb. It would confound the international campaign to curb Iran’s nuclear ambitions by restricting its ability to make bombs through the alternative method of enriching uranium. The risk is viewed with such gravity in Washington that the United States has launched a concerted diplomatic and covert effort to prevent...

North Korean leader Kim Jong Il has traveled to China on a rare trip outside his country, a South Korean military intelligence official said Tuesday. Click here for rest of story.

SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korean leader Kim Jong-il's relentless push to advance the communist movement in his state has turned him into a bit of an insomniac, according to the North's state media. Kim is rarely seen in public except for sporadic trips to unidentified military bases and industrial plants. The strain of keeping an eye on all parts of the country means many sleepless nights for the North's "Dear Leader", official Rodong Sinmun reported. "I spend days and months on field guidance, so I've never slept comfortably for one night," Kim was quoted as saying in the newspaper carried...

In their insightful and offbeat Freakonomics Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner tell the remarkable story of Stetson Kennedy’s important role in preventing a substantial national revival of the Ku Klux Klan following World War II. Kennedy first infiltrated the Klan on his own and learned its secret structure, terminology, and passwords and then, in a stroke of genius, provided these to . . . The Adventures of Superman radio show. The script writers made great sport of the Klan’s goofy terminology (“Exalted Cyclopses,” “Kleagles,” “Klaverns,” etc.) as Superman battled against them. Very soon all over the country children were playing...

Author: J. Nelson Kwango Country: Cameroon Position: member Subject: Terorists makng fun of DPRK and Dear Leader! Message: » Reply » Edit Comrades! I am terrored! A film has just arrived on the markets of Cameroon, this film the American Police Team or some name that is similar. My nephew, purchased this and asked me to watch because he said is had something to do with DPRK. The shock I see! The general, beloved general, Kim Jong Il is a puppet character in this film and speaking the most offending things! He swears in English, kills his interpreter, and turns...

A day after North Korea agreed in principle last week to destroy its nuclear weapons and stop building new ones in exchange for economic aid and security assurances from the United States, it tried to renege by demanding the United States provide it with two nuclear-power reactors immediately. The Stalinists seem to think they're dealing with Jimmy Carter again. And as much as their negotiating partners South Korea, China, Japan, Russia and the United States tried to dismiss the North's outrageous demand as bluster, this backtracking is the latest evidence the North can't bargain in good faith. No surprise there....

SEOUL -- North Korea said today that it would not dismantle its nuclear-weapons program until the United States first provides an atomic energy reactor, casting doubt on its commitment to a breakthrough agreement reached at international arms talks. The North's Foreign Ministry made the surprise demand a day after it had agreed at six-nation talks in Beijing to give up its arms efforts. The North insisted during arms talks that began last week in Beijing that it be given a light-water reactor, a type less easily diverted for weapons use, in exchange for abandoning nuclear weapons. The agreement reached at...

North Korea's government is producing high-quality counterfeit $100 bills and is working with criminal groups in China to sell the fake U.S. money internationally, U.S. officials say. Some details of the production of what federal officials call "supernotes" were disclosed after arrests last month in several U.S. cities of people linked to a major Asian crime ring trafficking in fake money, arms, drugs and cigarettes. A senior Bush administration official said one of the 10 indictments in the case contains the first disclosure of the North Korean government's role in the counterfeiting.

SEOUL, South Korea - North Korea demanded Tuesday that the United States give it a light water nuclear reactor before it rejoins the international Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and ends its weapons program. The North's Foreign Ministry made the demand a day after it agreed at six-nation talks in Beijing to give up its arms efforts, rejoin the treaty, and accept inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency. "We will return to the NPT and sign the safeguards agreement with the IAEA and comply with it immediately upon the U.S. provision of LWRs, a basis of confidence-building to us," the ministry...

SEOUL (Reuters) - South and North Korea agreed on Thursday to hold soccer matches in the South's capital next month to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the end of Japan's occupation of the peninsula. Negotiators from the two sides, divided at the end of the Japanese rule in 1945, agreed to hold a men's match in Seoul on Aug. 14 and a women's match two days later, Pyongyang's official KCNA news agency and Seoul's Yonhap news agency reported. The agreement came as senior diplomats from the two, the United States, Russia, China and Japan are in the Chinese capital of...