Singapore firm building major new commercial building in N. Korea
By Chad O'Carroll A Singaporean-linked company is building a major new commercial building in Pyongyang, which will incorporate a large department store and office space, sources in North Korea have told NK News.
The building, which recent photos show to be at least 24 floors high, is located near Tongil street – in the south of Pyongyang – and currently appears to be in the latter stages of construction. “The Southeast Asian development department store on Reunification Street is getting built pretty damn quickly,” a source familiar with the construction, who requested anonymity, told NK News. “Sparks are falling off the building at night time constantly.
“As far as I know it’s a Singaporean company that’s funding the entire thing … they will be opening their own stores there,” the source continued, adding that rumors in-country suggest it will house “Pyongyang’s largest department store.”
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Over the border: What Dandong means to N. Korea
By Dr. Andrei Lankov
At a cursory glance, the Chinese city of Dandong is quite unremarkable; just one of many medium-sized cities to be found in China. It has its fair share of slums dating to the first half of the last century, not to mention its share of skyscrapers that play host to a Chinese nouveau riche doing their best at imitating their Western middle class counterparts.
For the student of North Korea, however, this place is vital, and is potentially a veritable gold mine. This is, after all, the major channel for goods, money, intelligence and knowledge flowing in and out of North Korea.
Dandong, together with the North Korean city of Sinuiju on the opposite bank of the Yalu/Amnok river, serves as North Korea’s major entry port to China and, broader speaking, the entire outside world.
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Why some N. Korean defectors’ stories fall apart
By Jiyoung Song In its report released in February 2014, the United Nations Commission of Inquiry accused North Korean leader Kim Jong Un of committing crimes against humanity and called for the case to be referred to the International Criminal Court. For its report the COI, having been denied access to North Korea, instead carried out 240 confidential interviews with North Korean refugees living in South Korea, Japan, the UK and the U.S., including Shin Dong-hyuk.
In January 2015, however, the DPRK government released a video of Shin’s father, claiming Shin’s stories were fake. When questioned Shin confessed that parts of the stories in his book were not correct, including sections on his time in Camp 14 and the age he was tortured.
There are numerous other stories told by North Koreans that have later been found to be unreliable, even by North Korean standards.
Click here for the full article at NK News |
South Korea’s Dead Governors Society
By Fyodor Tertitskiy There are many disputed territories in the modern world. China claims ownership of Taiwan, Japan claims that South Kuril Islands should belong to it, Argentina claims the Falklands, Gabon claims the island of Corisco, etc. The complete list would be huge.
Usually the pretending country created formal territorial units on the soil it claims. For example, the PRC formally has the “Taiwan Province” and Japan created the counties of Kunashiri, Shikotan, Shibetoro, Shana and Etorofu, which lie on the islands Tokyo has no control of. In some cases a “government in exile” is created, which should wield symbolic power over the claimed land. For example, Georgia has the Government of the Autonomous Republic of Abkhazia, which, according to Tbilisi is the legitimate government of Abkhazia – despite the latter being a de-facto independent country since 1992.
A similar organization exists in South Korea as well. It is called the “Department for the Five Northern Provinces” and, as one may guess, it is considered the legitimate government of North Korea.
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Until they are home: The unit that scours for Korean War remains
By JH Ahn At the end of August the South Korean Ministry of National Defense Agency for KIA Recovery & Identification (MAKRI) announced that it will launch a new set of mass recovery missions at a site near Yanggu, in South Korea’s Gangwon Province. Lee Young-suk, a 16-year veteran of the organization, expects it to approach this new mission to retrieve remains from the Korean War in accordance with its principles.
“Our slogan is ‘First in, last out,’” said Lee, MAKRI’s current director of investigation. “Our recovery agents are always the first to show up at the recovery site and the last to leave until the very last remains of the fallen are recovered.”
Lee spoke to NK News over the phone as he was working on an island in the Yellow Sea, west of the Korean Peninsula, searching for the remains of an ROK Special Task Force team killed near the area battling North Koreans in the Korean War.
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