Scores of former North Korean soldiers who defected to South Korea will this week form a group aimed at toppling the regime with the help of serving soldiers there, one of its leaders said yesterday. Some 200 ex-soldiers will launch the NK People’s Liberation Front on Thursday, said Jang Ce-yul, the group’s secretary-general.
“We still stay in touch with many of our former colleagues in the military, and many of them are fully aware they can’t survive long under Kim Jong-il’s regime,” said Jang, who defected two years ago. “We will provide aid to help them bring down the North’s regime at the hands of the North Korean people and military.”
He said the group would help smuggle publications, videos and other material into the tightly controlled country and circulate them among the North’s soldiers. Jang said Hwang Jang-yop, a former top official who defected to the South in 1997, would be an adviser.
The group plans several projects with current members of the North’s military and anti-regime groups to “weaken the military’s loyalty” to Kim, Jang said. He refused to give details, citing concerns about the security of former military colleagues still in the North. The group said on its Web site it would also release a recently recorded telephone conversation with a senior North Korean army officer on Thursday to demonstrate its links to the military there.
Its members at the inauguration ceremony on Thursday — the anniversary of the founding of North Korea — will also stage a performance simulating the assassination of Kim, the Web site said.
South Korea has numerous organizations representing refugees from the North or campaigning against the regime, but this will be the first to link former soldiers. About 19,000 North Koreans have fled the North for the South since the end of Korean War, the vast majority in recent years.
Meanwhile, the North staged a massive celebration rehearsal for its biggest political conference in 30 years, a news report said, amid predictions that Kim would use the meeting to give a key ruling party position to one of his sons.
Pyongyang has said it will hold a rare Workers’ Party conference early this month to elect new party leaders, sparking speculation that the event would be linked to Kim’s moves to groom his third and youngest son — Kim Jong-un — as his successor. No exact date for the meeting has been provided.
On Sunday, several thousand people carrying colorful plastic flowers gathered in Pyongyang’s main Kim Il-sung square to rehearse a celebration for the party meeting, Xinhua news agency reported from Pyongyang. Some children also rehearsed at a scenic spot at Pyongyang’s Taedong River, the report said.
One Xinhua photo showed a crowd of people packing a Pyongyang street and waving red and pink plastic flowers, while another photo showed people putting up umbrellas and heading home afterward.
The Workers’ Party meeting is its first major gathering since its landmark 1980 congress where Kim Jong-il was confirmed as North Korea’s next leader. He eventually took over power in 1994 when Kim Il-sung died of heart failure.
South Korea’s Chosun Ilbo newspaper reported yesterday that the meeting will start today or tomorrow, citing an unidentified source privy to North Korea affairs.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese