Day: February 19, 2024

Ilya Voskresensky is a travel blogger from St. Petersburg, Russia, who last week joined the first foreign tour group to visit North Korea in four years.

In January 2020, North Korea closed its border with Russia and China, and suspended all trade, fearful that the coronavirus would wreak havoc over the country.

Tourism and the foreign cash generated by the industry came to a screeching halt. 

The cash-strapped North Korean government has been itching to restart tourism and actively recruited the first foreign tour group that would visit the country since before the pandemic.

The 97 Russians arrived on Feb. 9 and spent four days and three nights in the capital Pyongyang and at the Masikryong ski-resort in the eastern province of Kangwon.

Following the visit, RFA Korean’s Jamin Anderson interviewed Voskresensky, who said that the North Korean authorities closely watched him and tried to limit his freedom to film from the moment he boarded the Pyongyang-bound Air Koryo plane in the Russian Far Eastern city of Vladivostok.

The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

RFA: How did you decide to take this trip? Were there any concerns about the dangers involved? Who did you travel with?

Voskresensky: I decided to go on a trip as soon as I heard that North Korea was opening and there would be a tour for Russian citizens there, and I like making films about my travels for my YouTube channel. 

So I realized that this was an ideal opportunity to shoot something interesting and unique, something that I had never seen or felt before in my life. I wanted to see this kind of closed country, and to have a look at how that isolation and [North Korea’s] conservative culture affects tourism, the people, and the country in general.

Of course, I had concerns because I read a lot of stories, watched films about the DPRK and understood that many different things could happen to me there. Furthermore, they really don’t like those who’re constantly filming, and I was going there just to film.

But we did it anyway. There were still concerns. I went there with a friend of mine. He’s my cameraman, and the two of us were there together.

RFA: Did you encounter any unique experiences or any kind of cultural shock during your trip?

Voskresensky: The whole trip was a complete shock and surprise. The fact that in Pyongyang, a large city where 3 million people live, there are very few people on the streets and there are practically no cars at peak hours – not at 17:30 in the evening nor at 7:30 in the morning. You go through the streets, and they are empty and it’s shocking.

It’s also shocking how the cult of personality has simply surpassed all levels. When you open a publication, like the flight magazine on the airplane, the first 13 pages had only the face of one person [Kim Jong Un] and this is also shocking.

I didn’t see anything culturally unusual, but I soon saw the oddities of the regime, the way it changes the country. The closedness of this country, which absolutely preserves its ideology. It was like being teleported to the past. 

Sometimes you look at pictures and there are people driving past or some kind of construction site and you have the feeling that this is all AI-generated around propaganda slogans, posters, and portraits of leaders, and it is simply astounding.

RFA: What freedoms and restrictions did you experience during the trip? When they imposed restrictions, what reasons were given?

Voskresensky: We encountered restrictions literally immediately on the plane. I took my camera to film how I entered the plane and I was immediately told off. 

When we took our seats a man was there sitting with us. He was just sitting doing something on his phone, taking pictures of the porthole. 

We hadn’t even left Russia yet. A member of the cabin crew came up, it was a North Korean airline, so the flight attendant just came, took the man’s phone and started looking through his photos.

He looked and deleted what he didn’t like. This was the first impression we got, and we hadn’t even left the country. We were still in Russia, but sitting in a DPRK airplane.

[Once we were in North Korea] we were banned from filming construction sites as well as shabby-looking buildings. [Our guide] said that these houses are being demolished and there would be new houses, but it was obvious that there were people still living in them. 

They only allowed us to shoot picturesque, beautiful scenes. For example, at the ski resort where we were, there were no restrictions on filming at all, and we filmed absolutely everything.

We were also banned from filming military sites, but that’s something I understand, and I didn’t even ask why it’s not allowed. 

There was a ban on walking around the city on your own, meaning you couldn’t leave the hotel and go for a walk around the city. I asked why. I wanted to go for a walk, but I was told, ‘You don’t know the Korean language and you will have problems.’ You couldn’t film construction sites, because they supposedly look ugly, and they want to show their country as a beautiful place.

It was impossible to film, as I already said, building compounds where people live. But when they brought us to certain city squares, on the contrary, they happily wanted us to take photographs. 

And as I said before, when we flew to the ski resort. There were no restrictions on filming at all. We photographed everything we wanted.

RFA: What were the North Koreans like? Were you able to talk with them? How did North Koreans see the Russian tourists?

Voskresensky: We did not have the opportunity to communicate with ordinary people in North Korea. We only communicated with our guides and had some little exchanges with the hotel staff such as the waitresses. And a hairdresser. I got my hair cut at the barbershop and that’s it.

Other people didn’t speak to us, and we didn’t have the opportunity, because we had to follow the tour program the whole time.

RFA: You must have seen many North Koreans during your trip. What, if anything, left an impression on you?

Voskresensky: What struck me the most was when we arrived in the different cities, you actually don’t see ordinary residents on the street so much, but sometimes you do see people and, astonishingly, they all looked the same. 

I don’t mean like ‘all Russians look alike or all Asians look alike,’ but what I mean is the clothes – they all wear the same color. Everyone’s clothes are in dark colors, they walk or they ride bicycles or electric bikes made in China, and they wear some kind of jackets but they all look the same, it’s just amazing.

RFA: Which places left the biggest impression?

Voskresensky: I was not at all impressed by the square where we were brought, where there were statues of leaders or some kind of monuments. This kind of thing didn’t impress me at all. I was most impressed when we all got on the buses at 7:00 in the morning and drove to the airport and I just peered into the streets. And this is what impressed me. It was such a gray morning, a little foggy, there were no cars at all on the roads and sometimes you could see only a few people passing by.

And this was exactly the feeling, as if you were in some kind of movie.

RFA: What about the food you ate on the tour? What kind of food was served?

Voskresensky: In general, I really love Korean cuisine. I was born in Uzbekistan and there were a large number of Koreans there during Soviet times. I tried and ate all kinds of Korean cuisine throughout my childhood.

But I didn’t see this Korean cuisine in North Korea. I get the feeling that due to many years of poverty they lost this culture because of their ‘communist equality.’ They also lost this culture itself, and it upset me, because I really love food, and we didn’t eat anything tasty there.

We had buffets, a buffet where everyone could just come and get food. And it was always something simple, some kind of spaghetti. Just chopped vegetables. Unfortunately I didn’t get to try anything particularly culturally traditional.

RFA: Did you buy any souvenirs?

Voskresensky: Yes, of course, I bought souvenirs. I bought gifts for my children. For my daughter I bought a little doll that holds a [North] Korean flag. 

For my son I bought [plastic building blocks that closely resemble] Legos. North Korean Legos! And they were military themed. 

There were only rocket tanks, and then there was another rocket that launched into space. I bought it, and also bought postcards with various propaganda posters, some against America, some about labor. I also bought a small brochure that talks about [North Korea’s] Juche ideology [of self-reliance].

RFA: Were there any differences between what you expected about North Korea and what you experienced when you actually visited?

Voskresensky: I’m probably one of those tourists who read too much about North Korea and in general my expectations coincided with what I wanted to see, what I saw, what I imagined before the trip, but I also saw that the country is still changing little by little. 

For example, we were allowed to carry all the equipment that we took. I had a camera. I had an iPhone, I had a MacBook, and no one checked them. Not during the flight or when leaving. 

And it struck me that no one checked what we were filming on cameras, and in fact, to some extent it pleased me. I hope that the country will change and I will still be able to return there, rent a car and travel around the country at will.

Translated by Jamin Anderson, Nga Pham, and Eugene Whong. Edited by Eugene Whong and Malcolm Foster.

An onslaught of airstrikes in northern Myanmar killed six civilians and injured 13 more, rescue workers told Radio Free Asia on Monday. 

Junta troops retaliated after joint resistance forces attacked a regime base in Kachin state on Friday. 

After the Kachin Independence Army and Arakan Army, two allied ethnic armed organizations, fired on Mansi township’s “strategic hill,” the junta base turned its guns on nearby Si Hkam Gyi village.

Mansi township, which borders China, has been a site of previous conflict in late January. The Kachin Independence Army claimed the capture of 30 junta troops on Jan. 22 and 57 more soldiers escaped attacks by crossing the Chinese border. 

Regime soldiers bombarded the village by air in a two-day attack on Saturday and Sunday, when roughly 1,000 residents fled the area, locals said. 

On Saturday alone, troops dropped 20 bombs on four villages, they added.

A rescue worker with Myitta Shin Charity Group, who wished to remain anonymous for security reasons, said civilians and victims are being moved to safety.

“Hundreds of local people are trapped in the villages, including Si Hkam Gyi village. We plan to evacuate these people first and we are waiting to pick up the evacuees coming out of the villages today,” he told RFA on Monday. 

“The bodies haven’t been picked up yet because they died in the bomb shelters. We haven’t been able to get inside.”

The blasts killed two girls aged two and six. The airstrikes also killed four men in their 40s. The injured, mostly women, were sent to nearby Bhamo Hospital. 

Many of the displaced were sent to Man Thar village monastery and are being provided with medicine and food, he added.

A resident of nearby Si Kaw village who wished to remain anonymous for security reasons told RFA he was forced to flee in the middle of Saturday night, during the blasts.

“We left the village at 2 a.m. There was no difficulty on the way and I came with my own motorbike. I am staying in the hall next to Man Thar Monastery,” he said.

“The communities in Man Thar village provided food as soon as we arrived and the Myitta Shin Charity Group’s rescue team is picking up all the people who want to take refuge and helping them.”

Kachin Independence Army spokesperson Col. Naw Bu said on Sunday that people needed to live in a safe place and protect themselves from the junta airstrikes.

“There is fighting on the side of Si Hkam Gyi village. The military junta fires airstrikes all day long. The fighting continues there, like it did before,” he said.

“They mainly do not attack on the ground and depend on heavy artillery and airstrikes, so people must flee for their safety as much as possible.”

The junta’s Northern Region Military Command Infantry Battalions 121, 276, 123 and 15 are stationed just 48 kilometers (30 miles) away from Strategic Hill. Mansi township is one of the main supply routes to junta troops in nearby Bhamo city, which is why their attacks have been so fierce, said Col. Naw Bu.

RFA contacted Kachin state’s junta spokesperson Moe Min Thein on Sunday for comment on the accusations of indiscriminate firing and civilian deaths, but he did not answer at the time of publication. 

According to data compiled by RFA, junta airstrikes have killed 1,429 civilians and injured 2,641 more from the day of the coup on Feb. 1, 2021 to Jan. 31, 2024.

Over 2.6 million people had been displaced due to war by the end of 2023, according to a report from the United Nations Office of Humanitarian Affairs.

Translated by RFA Burmese. Edited by Mike Firn.

Both Taipei and Beijing have said they will “enforce the law” in the waters between Kinmen island and China’s mainland after last week’s incident that resulted in the deaths of two Chinese men.

Taiwan authorities said on Feb. 14, a Chinese speedboat “trespassed” within 1.1 nautical miles of the eastern coast of the island of Kinmen. The Taiwanese coast guard deployed vessels to expel the boat “in accordance with the law.” 

The Chinese crew “refused to be inspected” and their boat capsized, according to a press release from Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) – the agency in charge of cross-Strait issues. Four people on board fell into the sea, two of them died.

Kinmen is an outlying archipelago less than 10 kilometers (6.2 miles) from China’s Fujian province but more than 180 kilometers (112 miles) from Taiwan’s mainland. The island and Fujian’s city of Xiamen are separated by Xiamen Bay.

China Coast Guard spokesperson Gan Yu said on Sunday that China has launched regular law enforcement patrols in the area as part of efforts “to protect fishermen’s lives and property.”

The Fujian branch of the coast guard will “strengthen maritime law enforcement in the relevant waters,” Gan said in a statement.

Before that, a spokesperson for China’s Taiwan Affairs Office Zhu Fenglian condemned the incident which, she said, sparked widespread outrage on the mainland, and severely hurt the feelings of compatriots on both sides of the Taiwan Strait.

‘Both sides are nervous’

In response to Gan Yu’s announcement, Taipei’s MAC said on Sunday that law enforcement activities by the Taiwanese coast guard “will continue.”

“According to cross-Strait regulations, mainland ships are not allowed to enter Taiwan’s restricted and prohibited waters without permission,” it said in a statement, “In order to safeguard the rights and interests of fishermen, our competent authorities will expel or detain cross-border vessels in accordance with the law.”

The latest developments show that “both sides are nervous,” said a Kinmen resident, military historian Timothy Tsai.

“I’m not a fisherman, so I don’t worry much at the moment yet,” said Tsai, who heads a local military history group.

“But if the tension between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait is escalating further then it will definitely be a concern for everyone.” 

In recent months Kinmen has seen frequent flyovers by Chinese drones, and many believe it could be the first target of a Chinese invasion in the future.

However, some military experts like Su Tzu-yun, a senior analyst at the Institute for National Defense and Security Research in Taipei, said that an attack on outlying islands such as Kinmen would be “a political dilemma for Beijing.”

“Since it does not occupy Taiwan, it is meaningless to occupy the outer islands,” Su told RFA.

Edited by Mike Firn and Elaine Chan.

China has promised Palau economic benefits in exchange for the latter severing diplomatic ties with Taiwan, a letter the Palauan president wrote to an unnamed United States senator revealed. 

President Surangel Whipps Jr. wrote to the senator that China had offered “to fill every hotel room in our tourism-based private sector – and more if more were built, and pay US$20 million a year for a call center.” 

The letter asked for Congress’ approval for funds for economic assistance packages pledged to Palau, which alongside Micronesia and the Marshall Islands, come under the Compacts of Free Association with the U.S. 

COFA gives the U.S. military access to these allies’ vast maritime territory in the Pacific. The nations provide the U.S. strategic control of the sea and air between Hawaii and Asia, an area wider than continental United States, Whipps wrote.

The longer the delay to approving the amendment to the national security supplemental appropriations bill, Whipps warned, the more it “plays into the hands of the Chinese Communist Party” and business leaders in Palau who want to accept the economic benefits, “at the cost of shifting alliances, beginning with sacrificing Taiwan.”

Whipps’ letter was uploaded in a post on X Thursday by Cleo Paskal, a researcher at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, an American think tank. The letter ended by calling the legislation “critical for both of our democracies and a free and open Indo-Pacific.”

Experts pointed out that China’s monetary diplomacy strategy focuses on poaching Taiwan’s allies,while its diplomatic offensive against Palau aims to break the U.S.’s containment of China’s defense lines, allowing its fleet to cross the second island chain and reach the U.S.’s rear at any time.

Out of new tricks

In her response to the press on Friday, Rosalia Wu, secretary-general of the Democratic Progressive Party’s Legislative Yuan Caucus, said Palau and Taiwan have a firm friendship and China’s “money diplomacy” may not be effective.

“Of course this is commonplace, and it is nothing new. China can’t come up with any more attractive new tricks. But within China’s internal affairs and domestic economy, we see many Chinese people are suffering, while China continues to spend huge sums of money to buy diplomacy.”

Wu added that China may have offered favorable incentives to win diplomatic ties but there are many cases of Beijing being unable to realize these promises. Honduras which shifted towards establishing ties with China, is a case in point, Wu cited.

“Honduras has lost more than 10,000 job opportunities and nearly US$15 million in foreign exchange. China has bragged about procuring their white shrimps in bulk but that was a check that didn’t cash out.”

Breaking U.S. blockade

Chen Li-fu, president of the Taiwan Association of University Professors, said in an interview with Radio Free Asia that China’s short-term goal is to break Taiwan’s ties with Palau. In the long term, it is to use these Pacific island countries as a springboard to break through the U.S.’s blockade against Beijing.

“Because the first island chain of the U.S. is Japan, Taiwan, and the Philippines; the second island chain is in Guam, and the third island chain is in Hawaii,” Chen said. 

“If it [China] goes to the South Pacific countries, it will directly cross Guam, which is equivalent to reaching the rear of the U.S. If the U.S. wants to encircle China on the first island chain, and the second island chain is the rear, the Chinese fleet can move to the rear of Guam in a legal way, through reconciliation or visit, which is effective.”

Taiwan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Jeff Liu said Taiwan empathizes with Palau’s plight of China’s economic coercion, and the island will continue to provide assistance.

Translated by RFA staff. Edited by Mike Firn and Taejun Kang.

North Korean workers in China who reportedly occupied a factory last month to protest over unpaid wages took a monitoring officer hostage and beat a management representative to death, according to Japan’s Yomiuri newspaper.

About 2,000 workers dispatched by a trading company affiliated with North Korea’s Ministry of Defense occupied a medical manufacturing and seafood processing plant in the city of Helong, in northeast China’s Jilin province, on Jan. 11, the Yomiuri reported Saturday, citing North Korean sources. 

The North Korean workers, many of whom are former female soldiers in their 20s, were angry about long-term wage arrears and took hostage the Chinese company’s management representatives and monitoring personnel from Pyongyang, vowing to go on strike until they were paid.

The North Korean authorities mobilized consuls and state security officers to try to restore order, but the workers prevented them from entering the factory, said Yomuiuri, adding that the riot continued until the 14th of the same month, when the hostage management representative was beaten to death by the workers.

“It was the first large-scale protest by North Korean workers in China, and it brought to the surface the anti-authoritarianism of North Korean youth who refuse to accept slavery,” reads the Yomiuri report in part. 

The riots came after news that fellow workers who returned to the North last year had not received their wages upon their return, according to the Yomiuri. 

North Korean workers in Jilin province earn a monthly wage ranging from 700 to 1,000 Chinese yuan (approximately US$97 to $140). The North Korean companies dispatching these workers to China collect between 2,500 to 2,800 Chinese yuan (around US$347 to $390) per worker each month from their Chinese counterparts, leaving 700 to 1,000 Chinese yuan of that amount to the workers themselves.

However, the North Korean trading company that sent the rioting laborers took the full amount in the name of “fund needed to prepare for war,” when the border between North Korea and China was closed as a COVID-19 measure.

The total amount is said to have been in the millions of dollars, paid to the North Korean leadership and embezzled by company executives. 

North Korean authorities appeased the workers by paying them back wages, but also identified about 200 workers who led the riots and repatriated about half of them to the North.

The incident was reported to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, according to the Yomiuri. 

A North Korean source told the Japanese paper that those who led the riots will be sent to a political prison camp and punished severely. 

The Yomiuri’s report came after Ko Young-hwan, a North Korean diplomat-turned-defector, who is currently serving as special aide to South Korea’s Unification Minister, said last month that thousands of North Korean workers in China’s Jilin province had staged a series of strikes and riots at several factories since Jan. 11, protesting unpaid wages by the North Korean authorities. 

At that time, Ko claimed that the strikes and riots subsided on the 15th but also warned that strikes and riots are likely to return as funds to pay back wage arrears have dried up, forcing company North Korean executives and diplomats based in China to raise the necessary funds.

South Korea’s National Intelligence Service has also reportedly identified a large-scale mass backlash of North Korean workers in Jilin province, but China has not confirmed the claims.

Sending North Korean workers abroad is a violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions, but with the closure of its borders due to COVID-19, some 90,000 North Korean workers have reportedly remained in China, Russia, the Middle East and Africa.

Edited by Mike Firn and Elaine Chan.