North Korea’s top leader Kim Jong-un shakes hands with Jang Ryong-sik, chief conductor of the Samjiyon Orchestra which recently performed in the South, in this photo capture from the North’s Korean Central TV on Feb. 13, 2018. The North Korean art troupe had stage two performances during its visit to celebrate South Korea’s hosting of the PyeongChang Winter Olympics. (Yonhap)
South Korean TV sees some parallels in the way the Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un are sending family members to the Winter Olympics. pic.twitter.com/DfRBUcWC9L
It is pretty clear that the Kim regime is using the Winter Olympics to set a precedent for other countries to point to in order violate United Nations sanctions:
Both Kim Yo-jung and Choe Hwi are sanctioned by the United States for human rights abuses. Kim because she is “part of the agency in North Korea who’s responsible for propaganda, for censorship, controlling information so that the people of the country do not know about the rest of the world,” says the Treasury Department. Choe is subject to United Nations sanctions, as well, which actually bar him from leaving his country.
Choe is “First Vice Director of the Workers’ Party of Korea Propaganda and Agitation Department, which controls all Democratic People’s Republic of Korea media and is used by the government to control the public,” the United Nations says. The South Korean government is reportedly trying to get an exemption to the travel ban for the Olympics from the UN Security Council. [Weekly Standard]
I wonder if the North Korean delegation was even able to see this protest? I am willing to bet the ROK authorities kept the North Koreans out of view of this protest:
A conservative activist sets fire to a picture of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and the North’s flag in front of Seoul Station Monday in protest against the North’s participation in the PyeongChang Winter Olympics. / Korea Times photo by Shim Hyun-chul
Conservative protesters on Monday burned a picture of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and the North’s national flag, in a rally against its participation in next month’s PyeongChang Winter Olympics.
The activists, led by the far-right Korean Patriots Party, held a press conference in front of Seoul Station at around 11 a.m., when a group of North Korean officials arrived at the train station from the eastern city of Gangneung, on the second day of their two-day trip for inspection of performance venues.
“The PyeongChang Winter Olympics is turning into ‘Kim Jong-un’s Pyongyang Olympics’ that effectively recognizes its nuclear armaments and propagates the North Korean regime,” they said. [Korea Times]
The Daily Beast has an article published that looks back on the childhood of Kim Jong-un as he was attending school in Geneva, Switzerland:
“It’s one of the great mysteries why Kim Jong Nam studied in Geneva and learned French and the other kids who came later were sent to Bern where it’s German-speaking,” says Michael Madden, a North Korea expert affiliated with Johns Hopkins who runs North Korea Leadership Watch. “All I can think is that North Korea is always a little bit on the run. They like to change things up.”
The Kim family began building what Madden calls a “necessary network” in Paris in the 1970s and it maintains a home there to this day.
“You can’t send the kids of a dictator abroad without a network, people and institutions in place to help take care of them,” Madden said. “The Kims started all of this in Paris.”
Last year, Kim Jong Un’s aunt, Ko Yong Suk, toldThe Washington Post, that she and her husband took care of Kim and his two siblings in Switzerland. Kim Jong Chol arrived in 1992; Kim Jong Un came in 1996, when he was 12.
“We lived in a normal house and acted like a normal family. I acted like their mother,” Ko said about her time in Bern. “I encouraged [Kim Jong Un] to bring his friends home, because we wanted them to live a normal life. I made snacks for the kids. They ate cake and played with Legos.”
During school breaks, Ko and her husband took the kids skiing in the Swiss Alps, swimming on the French Riviera, and to Italy.
In Bern, Kim liked playing with machinery in addition to obsessing about basketball and Michael Jordan.
“He wasn’t a troublemaker, but he was short-tempered and had a lack of tolerance,” Ko recalled. “When his mother tried to tell him off for playing with these things too much and not studying enough, he wouldn’t talk back, but he would protest in other ways, like going on a hunger strike.”
He had begun showing signs of a complicated personality, and he reportedly was caught once with a BDSM porn magazine, it’s not clear how significant that is, if it is true at all.
A local education official confirmed to Reuters that a student known only as Pak Un who was registered as the child of a North Korean embassy worker attended the Steinhoelzli school from 1998 until late 2000. “Pak Un attended a class for non-German speaking pupils but then quickly moved to another class,” said Ueli Studer in a 2011 report. “He was described as well-integrated, diligent and ambitious. His hobby was basketball.” [The Daily Beast]
You can read more at the link, but it is clear his love for Dennis Rodman and his development of the ski industry in North Korea came at a young age while in school in Switzerland.
There has likely been some back channel communications with the Kim regime, but I would be very surprised if President Trump was in direct contact with Kim Jong-un like he appears to be suggesting:
President Donald Trump suggested in an interview Thursday that he has developed a positive relationship with the North Korean leader, but declined to say whether they have spoken.
No sitting U.S. president is known to have spoken with a North Korean leader. The two nations have remained in a state of war and without diplomatic relations since the Korean War ended in 1953 without a peace treaty.
“I probably have a very good relationship with Kim Jong Un,” Trump told The Wall Street Journal. “I have relationships with people. I think you people are surprised.”
Asked if he had spoken with Kim, Trump was evasive: “I’m not saying I have or haven’t. I just don’t want to comment.” [Associated Press]
Once again President Trump has the media all worked up by a Tweet:
If you were looking for a two-word slogan to describe Donald Trump’s life, that would be a fitting one. In everything — from the size of his buildings to the size of his genitals to the size of his nuclear arsenal, Trump is totally and completely obsessed with being the biggest and the best.
“North Korean Leader Kim Jong Un just stated that the ‘Nuclear Button is on his desk at all times.’ Will someone from his depleted and food starved regime please inform him that I too have a Nuclear Button, but it is a much bigger & more powerful one than his, and my Button works!”
“Much bigger & more powerful.” “My Button works.”
If you don’t see what Trump is going for there, then we need to have a side conversation about the birds and the bees. This is a measuring contest provoked by the President of the United States against an unstable dictator pursuing a nuclear capacity.
It’s absolutely stunning given the stakes: Nuclear war/annihilation. At the same time, it’s an entirely predictable tactic from Trump given what he we know about him. [CNN]
You can read more at the link, but the President actually does not have a nuclear button which the media seems to enjoy pointing out. However, only stupid people think the President actually has a big red button on his desk to launch nukes, so I understood he was trying to be funny mocking Kim Jong-un’s button claim while at the same time answering another threat from the Kim regime. All people need to take from the President’s latest Tweet is that any threat that the Kim regime makes President Trump is going to respond in kind in his own way.
North Korea’s top leader Kim Jong-un pays respect to his late father at a mausoleum in Pyongyang in this photo published in the Dec. 18, 2017, edition of the North’s ruling party newspaper Rodong Sinmun. The North’s media had been mum on the leader’s whereabouts on Dec. 17, when the entire country mourns the death of Kim Jong-il, raising curiosity among North Korea watchers. The photo on the right shows the basket of flowers Kim placed at the mausoleum. (Yonhap)
North Korea’s top leader Kim Jong-un is seen holding a cigarette in this photo capture from the North’s Korean Central TV on Dec. 13, 2017, as he attended the 8th Conference of Munitions Industry in Pyongyang a day earlier. North Korea launched a nationwide anti-smoking campaign last year, but outside watchers say the smoking rate is actually increasing, partly due to Kim’s smoking habit being frequently shown in public. (Yonhap)
