John Fitzpatrick. About New China, the Koreas, Myanmar, Thailand, and also about Japanese and Chinese writers and poets. The main emphasis is on North Asia and the political tectonics of this very important, powerful, and many-peopled area.
China Dalian(Lvshun) Int'l Cherry Blossom Festival to open
The 6th China Dalian(Lvshun) International Cherry Blossom Festival will raise its curtain at Lvshun in Dalian, a port city of Northeastern China's Liaoning Province, April 26, 2014.
The festival with the theme of "Romantic cherry blossoms, Beautiful Lvshun" will run through May 15 this year, promoting the green ecological tourism products and displaying the image of a livable city and a cultural tourism and leisure resort to visitors.
The festival will also include a series of activities such as cherry blossoms tour, real estate promotion for a livable city, low-carbon bicycle riding event, hot spring tour, calligraphy and painting show, rural tour as well as photography contest.
Lvshun is the first city to plant the most cherry trees in China. Now it has more than 30,000 cherry trees, attracting a huge number of tourists from home and abroad.
People Smugglers Tie N.Korean Defectors into Crippling Debt
North Korean defector Kim Young-mi crossed the frozen Duman River early last year with her husband and daughter. But waiting on this side of the border were tens of millions of won in debt owed to the brokers who smuggled them out.
After the mandatory adjustment program at the Unification Ministry's Hanawon resettlement center, Kim and her family were given a lump sum of W18 million (US$1=W1,110) -- W6 million per person -- to help them settle in the South.
But every last won went to paying the brokers and she still owes them W10 million.
"I thought my life here would be like a TV soap where everyone lives happily ever after," Kim said. "But the minute we stepped out of Hanawon, I found myself already chin-deep in debt with no idea how to repay it."
When she left Hanawon in October, Kim thought she would find a job and make a decent living, but the reality was profoundly different.
Kim promised to repay the broker W1 million a month starting in April, but none of her family have found a job here so far.
They still get W1.07 million a month in government support, but half goes on rent and bills and the reminder is simply not enough.
Back in the North, Kim's husband worked for a state agency that sends workers abroad, which did not make them rich but ensured a reasonably comfortable life. Here in the South, they are heavily in debt and constantly racing against time.
"I need to find work as a laborer or do odd jobs in a restaurant, but I'm seen as too old so it's not easy," Kim said. "To be honest, the thought that it’ll soon be April again fills me with dread."
They are not alone. A clear majority of North Korean defectors end up saddled with debt to people smugglers and slide into poverty fast. Many jump from one temporary job to another in the struggle to repay their debts, which creates vicious cycle of casual labor and dwindling prospects.
Nam Young-hwa at the Women's Association for the Future of Korean Peninsula said, "For defectors the top priority is to arrive safely in South Korea, so they'll pay brokers whatever it costs without thinking of the consequences. It's only when they arrive here that the reality hits them, and since repaying the debt can take up all the time there is, it often triggers physical and emotional suffering."
A few years ago the North Korean leader regime stepped up crackdowns on defectors, which made little dent in the numbers who are fleeing but sent brokers’ fees through the roof.
According to civic groups that help North Koreans, brokers used to charge W2-W4 million for the passage to South Korea via China and Southeast Asia, and they met the defectors across the border in China.
But since Kim took power, brokers have to guide defectors all the way across the border, often risking imprisonment. As a result, brokers now charge up to W10 million.
It is almost impossible for a North Korean defector to make it to the South without the aid of brokers, who have networks of informants, couriers and messengers across North Korea and China. Brokers have to be aggressive about getting their money back, since they have to advance the money for transportation, lodging and food bills for defectors and to grease the palms of government workers or border guards in the process.
One North Korean defector who fled the North in 2011 got in bigger trouble after going on the run without paying the trafficker back. He slept in saunas to evade his broker and changed his mobile phone number several times. That made it difficult finding a job, so he had to spend all the W4 million from the government on living expenses. Without money in his pocket, he may now have to give up the flat the government provided so that he can use the deposit to buy food.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un on Thursday proposed the “highest-level” talks with South Korea, opening the way to a historic summit as his communist country battles to fend off UN prosecution over its human rights record.
The sudden move, made during Kim’s traditional New Year message, would clear the path for the first inter-Korean leaders’ meeting since a 2007 summit in Pyongyang.
“Depending on the mood and circumstances to be created, we have no reason not to hold the highest-level talks,” Kim said in the televised speech, calling for a thaw in icy relations between the two Koreas, which remain technically at war.
Seoul welcomed the overture as “meaningful”, coming after the North’s state media had previously used sexist and personal language in attacks on South Korea’s first female president, Park Geun-Hye.
Park has repeatedly said the door to dialogue with Pyongyang is open, but insists the North must first take tangible steps towards abandoning its nuclear weapons programme.
“Our government hopes South and North Korea will hold dialogue without further ado in the near future,” Ryoo Kihl-Jae, the South’s unification minister in charge of inter-Korean affairs, told a briefing.
Any talks should feature “practical and frank discussions on all issues of mutual concern”, he said.
South Korean president Park Geun-Hye. Photograph: LEE JIN-MAN/POOL/EPA
Kim also urged Washington to take a “bold shift” in its policy towards Pyongyang and denounced the United States for leading an international campaign over the North’s dismal human rights record.
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“The US and its followers are holding on to a nasty ‘human rights’ racket, as their schemes to destroy our self-defensive nuclear deterrent and stifle our republic by force become unrealisable,” he said.
He described nuclear weapons as the guardian of his country and vowed to sternly retaliate against “any provocations” threatening its dignity.
Pyongyang faces growing pressure over its rights record, with the UN stepping up a campaign to refer the North’s leaders to the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity.
The isolated nation, meanwhile, experienced an internet outage last month after Washington vowed retaliation over a crippling cyber attack blamed on North Korea against Sony, the studio behind a controversial film about a fictional plot to assassinate Kim.
A US State Department official said after Kim’s speech: “We support improved inter-Korean relations.”
Kim said in his message that Pyongyang “will make every effort to advance dialogue and negotiations”, adding that the “tragic” division of the Korean peninsula should not be tolerated.
The leader’s tone was generally conciliatory, but he made it clear that South Korea should end its periodic joint military exercises with the United States.
“Needless to say, faithful dialogue is not possible in such a brutal atmosphere that war exercises targeting the other side are going on,” Kim said.
The 2007 Pyongyang summit between Kim Jong-il of North Korea and South Korea’s then president, Roh Moo-hyun, was the meeting between the two states’ leaders. Photograph: POOL/REUTERS
The last round of high-level negotiations was held in February and resulted in the North hosting a rare union of relatives separated by the 1950-53 Korean War.
The two Koreas agreed to restart dialogue when a top-ranking North Korean delegation made a surprise visit to the Asian Games held in the South in October.
The trip raised hopes of a thaw in relations, but was followed by minor military clashes along the border that renewed tensions and talks never materialised.
Analysts said Kim was extending an olive branch after realising that Pyongyang could not end its isolation without first improving ties with Seoul.
“North Korea opted for a practical line after facing up to reality, because it is now difficult to improve ties with the United States and other countries,” Yoo Ho-Yeol, a Korea University professor, said.
Kim’s New Year message, which sets the direction of policy for the coming year, also focused on improving living standards in North Korea, which suffers chronic food shortages.
His father and late leader Kim Jong-Il, who died in December 2011, left a country in dire economic straits, the result of a “military first” policy that fed ambitious missile and nuclear programmes at the expense of a malnourished population.
Kim also used his message to urge North Koreans to work harder in strengthening the country’s military capabilities through the development of “powerful advanced” weapons.
Under the younger Kim’s leadership, North Korea has placed a satellite in orbit and conducted its third - and most powerful - nuclear test.
