Free Republic

N.Korea's Currency Reform 'a Bid to Cement Power' The biggest motivation behind North Korea's sudden currency reform Tuesday appears to be Kim Jong-il's intention to throttle the emerging free market, which appears to hamper a smooth succession of power to his son Kim Jong-un, North Korea experts and South Korean government officials say. The North announced the won would be revalued at a rate of 100:1. But some experts say the aim is wealth redistribution, while others believe the reform is aimed at containing inflation, which has skyrocketed since North Korea introduced rudiments of a market economy in 2002. Kim,...

Ensign receives handwritten confirmation This doesn't happen often enough. Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.) received a handwritten note Thursday from Joint Committee on Taxation Chief of Staft Tom Barthold confirming the penalty for failing to pay the up to $1,900 fee for not buying health insurance. Violators could be charged with a misdemeanor and could face up to a year in jail or a $25,000 penalty, Barthold wrote on JCT letterhead. He signed it "Sincerely, Thomas A. Barthold." The note was a follow-up to Ensign's questioning at the markup.

Regardless of the outcome of ObamaCare, if past behavior signals the future, the Obama administration's next big push will be to mute its most successful critics. It will come as no surprise when ObamaCare proponents invoke the name of Ted Kennedy to promote passage of a healthcare reform bill when Congress reconvenes. "Let's win one for the Gipper" will become "Let's win one for ol' Teddy." But will that alone tip the balance in favor of healthcare reform as represented in the House's version? Not likely. Nor is it likely that the Obama administration will declare defeat and retreat from...

Hu Jintao Acknowledges Party Has Lost Control of the Internet, Launches Full-Scale Effort to Regain Control By chinafreepress.org (translation) Aug 6, 2009 - 12:21:24 PM Hu Jintao Acknowledges Party Has Lost Control of the Internet, Launches Full-Scale Effort to Regain Control Boxun reports that last week, Shanghai, Jiangsu, Hubei, Sichuan, Guangdong and other provinces and municipalities simultaneously convened provincial news work meetings. The meetings were personally chaired by provincial Communist Party secretaries, transmitted new instructions regarding media control by the Communist Party Central Committee. These were decided at a Central Committee meeting in Beijing that generated the most detailed and...

North Korea dragged back to the past By Andrei Lankov SEOUL - When people talk about North Korea these days, they tend to focus on the never-ending saga of the six-party talks and the country's supposed de-nuclearization. Domestic changes in the North, often ignored or overlooked, should attract more attention. These changes are considerable and should not encourage those optimists who spent years predicting that given favorable circumstances the North Korean regime would mend its ways and follow the beneficial development line of China and Vietnam. Alas, the recent trend is clear: the North Korean regime is maintaining its counter-offensive...

Energy Policy: Big Brother may soon be doing more than watching us. Regulators in the Golden State want to control the temperature inside your house. Now take your hands off that thermostat and back away slowly.The 1960s sci-fi series "Outer Limits" began with a "control voice" solemnly intoning: "There is nothing wrong with your television set. . . . Do not attempt to adjust the picture." Well, there's nothing wrong with our thermostats either. Yet the state of California proposes taking control of them to save energy and the Earth. The California Energy Commission has proposed requiring the use of...

The Sunday Times October 22, 2006 Kim tested by rise of armed resistance Michael Sheridan, Far East Correspondent AN underground resistance movement in North Korea, capable of smuggling out videos of executions and staging violent acts of defiance, has emerged as the Kim Jong-il dictatorship faces international sanctions for testing a nuclear bomb. The latest evidence of North Koreans willing to risk their lives to tell their story is a video showing the execution by firing squad of a woman convicted of murder committed in the course of stealing food last July. Captured by a bystander with a tiny camera,...

With Cash, Defectors Find North Korea’s Cracks Richard Humphries/Polaris, for The New York Times A MOTHER’S DETERMINATION Kim Myung-shim, above, fled North Korea in 2003 and then helped her three children escape. The last to flee, Lee Chun-hak, is now in an immigration detention center in Bangkok, where his mother visited him. She said she paid $3,600 to aid his escape from the North. By NORIMITSU ONISHI Published: October 19, 2006 BANGKOK — Last March, Lee Chun-hak, a 19-year-old North Korean, went to the Chinese border to meet with a North Korean money trafficker. Using the trafficker’s Chinese cellphone, Mr....

China is paranoid about letting media in: Murdoch AFP[ TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 20, 2005 12:28:29 AM] BEIJING: News Corp chairman Rupert Murdoch has accused authorities in Beijing of being ‘paranoid’ after admitting plans to develop his empire in China have “hit a brick wall”, the Financial Times reported. Mr Murdoch said Chinese authorities were no longer opening up their vast untapped market to international media companies, reversing their stance from a year ago. The newspaper said Mr Murdoch, who was speaking at a conference in New York organised by former US president Bill Clinton, said the Chinese authorities “were quite paranoid...

Click Here For VideoComments for each segment of the video street kids in miserable condition kids at work kids giving oath an interview with N. Korean kids(probably in Pyongyang) -- kids say they study hard and work in organizations to please the leader. They want unification because they feel so bad about S. Korean kids who are miserably poor, scavenging trash dumps. a news clip on a triplet (Gosh! They do dig triplets!) a brief segment on a group session a boy recites the Kim Il-sung's episode associated with the picture(of a spring) a boy explains what the miniature mockup...

http://www.dailynk.com/korean/read.php?cataId=nk01300&num=4957/begin my translation   Three Reasons for Kim Jong-il's Obsession with Nukes: Defector's Take Regime Survival, Extorting Economic Aids, Keeping People under Control [ 2005-05-01 19:44 ] Kim Jong-il touring a command center  at the Eastern  Front  We as N. Korean defectors had many times heard in N. Korea , 'N. Korea has nukes.'  We find it really 'silly' when people in the South are engaged in heated debate over the existence of (N. Korean) nukes. Even today in the South, about N. Korean nukes, some say, "Because the Cold War between U.S. and Soviet Union had ended, N. Korea has nobody to...

/begin my translation The Coming Collapse of N. Korean Regime [Analysis by Kim Young-hwan, (the author of) 'On N. Korean Democratization'] Ideology and organization greatly weakened, 80% chance of collapse in 10 years[04/08/05 19:42] A scene from Romanian uprising in '89 The prediction of N. Korean collapse was made twice already. The first was in 1989, when communist regimes in Eastern Europe went down in a series, and the second, in 1994, when (N. Korean) president Kim Il-sung died. However, these two predictions had a serious flaw. At the time, N. Korea had few internal factors to cause a collapse....

How Electronics Are Penetrating North Korea's Isolation By JAMES BROOKE SEOUL, South Korea - Halfway through a video from North Korea, the camera pans on a propaganda portrait of Kim Jong Il, North Korea's leader, magnificent in his general's dress uniform with gold epaulets. Scribbled in black ink across his smooth face is a demand for "freedom and democracy." If genuine, the graffiti speaks of political opponents willing to risk execution to get their message out. If staged, the video means that a North Korean hustler was willing to deface a picture of the "Dear Leader" to earn a quick...

/begin my translation S. Korean Drama Craze in N. Korea(Japanese 'Shukan Bunshun(?)' reports) Why did the portraits of Kim Jong-il disappear in N. Korea? In the midst of flurry of speculations, Japanese new weekly, Shukan Bunshun, reported in its latest issue situations in N. Korea, based on diverse sources it was able to assemble. In particular, it shows an interesting analysis that S. Korean dramas are fueling the hostility toward Kim Jong-il regime. The following is the summary of the original Japanese article. Up until now, N. Korean state has been firmly maintained by suffocating surveillance and ideological control. However,...

http://chronicle.com/free/v51/i03/03b01101.htm CRITIC AT LARGE Violating 'Sovereignty': Questioning a Concept's Long ReignBy CARLIN ROMANO Everywhere the S-word wreaks havoc. Iraqi terrorists kill hundreds of Americans and Iraqis to protest infringement of sovereignty by the Great Satan. Africans massacre other Africans because European-imposed "sovereign" borders clash with tribal allegiances. Serbs and Albanians, Irish and British, Indians and Pakistanis, Armenians and Azerbaijanis, Russians and Chechens, Georgians and Abkhazians, French and Corsicans, Spanish and Basques, Mexicans and Zapatistas, Kurds and Turks (not to mention Kurds and Iraqis, or Kurds and Syrians), Chinese and Taiwanese (not to mention Chinese and Tibetans, Chinese and South Koreans,...

Politics first: the Kremlin tightens its control By Carola Hoyos and Arkady Ostrovsky Published: August 5 2004 04:00 | Last updated: August 5 2004 04:00 On July 22, the day that Yukos, the oil company, warned of its imminent bankruptcy and its main production subsidiary was seized by bailiffs, Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, held a meeting with James Mulva, the chief executive of ConocoPhillips, and Vagit Alekperov, the Soviet-era oil boss who now heads Lukoil, Russia's flagship oil company. The president had some good news for Mr Mulva: the government had just signed a decree to sell its 7.6...

<p>Among the greatest responsibilities we have as parents and citizens is to educate our children. A sound, basic education is an essential asset for one to have a realistic shot at the American Dream. In fact, I fear that failure to acquire an education in 21st-century America more likely than not will lead to second-class citizenship - an outcome anathema to the very word America.</p>

The sea to sea rally of Canada's Unregistered Firearms Owners Association (CUFOA) has been underway for about a month. It started on June 27 in Saskatoon, and has by now pretty much crossed the country from Victoria to St. John's. On July 29, the rally plans to convene on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, at which time some organizers will present affidavits that may result in their arrest. In essence, the affidavits (some have been made available on the Internet) will state that the affiants possess unlicensed firearms they have no intention of registering as required by law. "I will not...

<p>SACRAMENTO -- A plan by a California energy agency to redesign the state's power market proposes too many controls and "is a thinly veiled attempt to set prices," a group of electricity providers said Tuesday.</p> <p>The California Independent System Operator, which manages the state's power grid, last month presented federal regulators with the market-redesign plan. Last year, California had six days of blackouts and its two biggest utilities, units of PG&E Corp. and Edison International, became insolvent after buying power for more than state law allowed them to charge customers.</p>