Friday, 3 December 2021
brief update
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North Korea to hold major meeting around Kim Jong Un’s 10-year anniversary
North Korea will hold a major party meeting called a plenum in “late December,” state media announced Thursday, falling around the official 10-year anniversary of Kim Jong Un coming to power.
The DPRK leader reportedly said at a Politburo meeting on Wednesday that the economy is currently being “stably managed,” according to the party-run Rodong Sinmun newspaper, and suggested that the upcoming plenum will review this year’s economic activity and set plans for 2022.
The plenum could last for several days as in recent years, and the party could announce further titles or celebrations for Kim to mark his first decade as ruler.
Kim took over as leader on Dec. 17, 2011 after his father, Kim Jong Il, died of a heart attack. The Politburo at the time officially made Kim Jong Un the Supreme Commander of the armed forces on Dec. 30.
The upcoming plenum may also serve as the forum for Kim to give a speech detailing domestic and foreign policy updates for the coming year, such as those pertaining to inter-Korean relations and stalled denuclearization talks with the U.S.
Kim traditionally delivered this in an informal “New Year Address” on Jan. 1 each year, but since 2020 he’s delivered it in formal party meetings in December or January.
The state media report on Wednesday’s Politburo meeting was relatively brief, but included some positive assessments from Kim on state affairs in 2021 despite what he called “difficulties that still stand in the way of the economic development of the country.”
“It is very inspiring that affirmative changes have been made in all fields of the state affairs including politics, the economy, culture and national defense,” he reportedly said, continuing that “great successes [were] achieved in agriculture and construction.”
“Next year is an important year when we should wage a struggle as great as this year” toward carrying out the second year of the current five-year plan, he added.
The upcoming plenum will be the fourth held this year since the January Party Congress. North Korea announced a “food crisis” at the third plenum, which lasted for four days in June.
However, the report on Wednesday’s “fifth” politburo meeting of this year revealed that another such meeting was recently held in secret. The third politburo meeting took place on Sept. 2, but the ruling party never disclosed information publicly about a fourth one in the intervening months.
Martin Weiser, an independent researcher focusing on North Korean politics, told NK News on Thursday that a possible occasion for the secret politburo meeting could have been held before the late-Sept. Supreme People’s Assembly session to approve new personnel appointments.
Kim’s appearance in state media on Thursday ends another extended break from public activities. The North Korean leader had made just one public appearance during the previous 50 days.
Edited by Bryan Betts. Updated on Dec. 3 at 12:46 KST to include images from state TV.
I'll be using the resources of NK News, Xinhua, CGTN, Family, DW (English), & Al Jazeera, mostly. I will give fair mention of the sources wherever possible.
Well, it only took a month longer than I thought to remove myself from Facebook, and I am happily preparing to gather lots of information, up to date, about North Asia, for this blog.
I'll be using the resources of NK News, Xinhua, CGTN, Family, DW (English), & Al Jazeera, mostly. I will give fair mention of the sources wherever possible.
I hope you enjoy the blog. I may be very slow in responding to any comments, maybe a week.
Thank you
John Fitzpatrick
Monday, 1 November 2021
Preparing a Christmas Gift Box for my step-daughter Tianshu, in Shanghai
So far,
I have three cans of Illy Italian Arabica ground coffee and a small simple double-walled plunger stainless steel coffee pot. I will add a nice cup and saucer. If she wishes to have a milk frother, well, this is best picked up in China, I think, where they are made.
The Illy brand coffee is very good indeed. It keeps me awake at work. It kept me awake at work this evening. It tastes very mild and yet it is not mild at all.
What else, well, about a half kilo, or big bag, of New Zealand Beef Jerky.
I will also try to put in some curious foods, like Tasmanian Leatherwood Honey, plus the potato chips she likes. Not a huge present, but a nice thing to get in the mail. As for packing around the gifts, I find it best, instead of using bubble-wrap or little bags of air, to use small packets of Japanese seaweed that not only protect the goods within, but also, well, you can eat the seaweed. A Great edible packaging solution, and cheap as wrapping paper.
I should post it soon, so I best get about finding a few interesting things, and post it off this week!
I am also sending another box to my parents-in-law in Shenyang, in Laoning province of China. I'm not sure what to send yet, but I do need to also post it off this week or early next week. Maybe some leatherwood Honey from Tasmania, also, plus some local spirit alcohol, if okay to post (he calls overproof Bundaberg Rum a pleasant mild wine), some biscuits, and, my father in law likes the very raw taste of Australian black tea, so I will find some black North Queensland Nerada tea for him. Its black, its raw, its fresh. I'm not sure what to send my mother-in-law in particular as she is very traditional and i really have no idea what she would like. She's probably just like her daughter to live next door to her, but, well, we're not doing that for now.
China and Russia to eventually ease restrictions on North Korea
China and Russia submit proposal to ease UN sanctions on North Korea: sources
China and Russia submitted a draft proposal to U.N. Security Council nations on Friday calling for the relaxation of North Korea-related sanctions, citing the absence of nuclear and long-range missile testing by Pyongyang since 2017, multiple informed sources told NK News.
The draft proposal is the first one the two countries have put forward to weaken UNSC sanctions on the DPRK since Dec. 2019. The number of sanctions on North Korea snowballed significantly during its major nuclear and missile tests in 2017.
The proposal comes amid South Korea-led efforts to get the U.S. and other nations to sign off on a formal declaration to end the Korean War before the end of Moon Jae-in’s presidency next year.
The suggested sanctions relief largely mirror China and Russia’s Dec. 2019 proposals, which the two countries never officially submitted to the UNSC due to U.S. disinterest, sources said.
In particular, the package argues for the relief of sanctions targeting North Korea’s civilian sector, according to sources. These include rules forbidding the sale to North Korea of civilian sector commodities such as equipment for construction, heating, railroads, domestic appliances, tools and computers, an informed source said.
The draft proposal follows a long absence of North Korean long-range missile and nuclear weapons testing and includes language surrounding contemporary hot topics like the end-of-war declaration and inter-Korean relations. But another informed source said the other permanent members of the UNSC are unlikely to sign off on the joint China-Russia proposal.
North Korea’s recent missile firings, including submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) and train-launched ballistic missile tests, means the proposal is unlikely to get past Washington and Paris in particular, sources said. The tests contravene U.N. sanctions that call for the suspension of DPRK ballistic missile tests.
“The sectors on which the Chinese and Russians seem to be seeking an easing of sanctions look like the ones where sanctions would need to be relaxed in order to implement the ROK-DPRK Panmunjom and Pyongyang agreements of 2018,” said John Everard, the U.K.’s former ambassador to the DPRK.
“I wonder whether they are trying to split the ROK from the U.S.,” he said, adding that the timing of the PRC and Russian proposal suggests it could be “linked to the ROK election campaign.”
Everard agreed the proposal is unlikely to go far.
“True, the DPRK has not recently tested either an ICBM or a nuclear device, but it has tested several other weapons,” he said. “I don’t think there’s any appetite for easing sanctions.”
The proposal comes after China’s ambassador to the U.N. urged the UNSC to relax North Korean sanctions in October, after his U.S. counterpart called for more rigid enforcement of the existing sanctions regime.
“It has always been China’s view that we should also address the humanitarian dimension caused by the sanctions imposed by the Security Council. We [have] seen negative impact because of the sanctions,” Zhang Jun said in October.
Zhang indicated at the time that Beijing and Moscow had “tabled a draft of the resolution,” without specifying which resolution or when it was put together. Pyongyang’s SLBM test on Oct. 19 appears to have delayed the proposal’s submission.
Kim Heung-kyu, director of the U.S.-China Policy Institute at Ajou University, told NK News in October that Beijing was likely more interested in using the then-rumored proposal to signal support to Pyongyang than in addressing humanitarian concerns.
“It’s a fairly safe way for China to show its efforts to North Korea while implicitly expressing to them ‘you too should cooperate in our national interests,’” Kim said. “Both South Korea and the U.S. government already support the provision of humanitarian aid to North Korea.”