'Jaw dropping' secret audio tapes smuggled out of North Korea reveal Kim Jong-il criticising his own people - Independent

'Jaw dropping' secret audio tapes smuggled out of North Korea reveal Kim Jong-il criticising his own people

'People here are so closed-minded,' says former dictator

May Bulman @maybulman Wednesday 2 November 2016

The audio tapes of Kim Jong-il have been described as 'jaw-dropping' by a US official Getty

Secret recordings smuggled out of North Korea have revealed how the former leader and father of Kim Jong-un lambasted his own people - as well as making fun out of himself - while he was in office.

A new documentary has unmasked audio clips in which Kim Jong-il, who ruled the country from 1994 to 2011, can be heard openly criticising the “closed-mindedness” of his people and joking about his "small" stature.

According to the documentary, titled 'The Lovers and the Despot', the audio clips were secretly recorded by a South Korean actress and her film director husband, who were kidnapped by the North Korean regime in 1978 and forced to make films for eight years. At the time, the secretive republic was ruled by Kim Il-sung, while his son and heir apparent, Kim Jong-il was in charge of the ministry for culture and propaganda.

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The couple are said to have secretly taped some of their meetings with the future dictator with a hidden audio recorder, and later smuggled the tapes to the US state department in 1985.

In the recordings, Mr Jong-il complains about North Korean movies, saying: “Why are there so many crying scenes? All of our scenes have crying scenes. This isn’t a funeral, is it?”

He can also be heard stating his country’s films lack originality and claiming they don't match the quality of South Korean films. He says: “Why do all of our films have the same ideological plots? There is nothing new about them […] People here are so closed-minded”

“We don’t have any films that get into film festivals. In South Korea they have better technology. They are like college students and we are just in nursery schools.”

Mr Jong-il also reportedly makes fun of his small stature in one of the clips, saying: “Look at me. Aren't I small”, before making a crude self-deprecating comparison.

David Straub, who was an official at the State Department when the tapes arrived there, told CNN the recordings would be an “intelligence windfall” for the American government.

Mr Straub said: ”My jaw dropped. Hours and hours of recordings of Kim Jong Il speaking relatively freely would be an intelligence windfall for the American government, since we'd never heard him speak before, much less privately.“

Greg Scarlatoiu, of the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, said the tapes reveal he shared traits with Mr Jong-il's son and current North Korean leader, Mr Jong-un, in their "complex of inferiority".

He said that the tapes suggested Kim was insecure about everything including the thing he loved most — movies — and this trait was likely shared by his youngest son Kim Jong-un.

Mr Scarlatoiu said: ”Just like his father before, this leader of North Korea must suffer from a complex of inferiority as well. The insecurity was surely something that Kim Jong-un inherited."

* Update: This article originally stated that Kim Jong-il ruled North Korea until 1994. In fact, that is when his leadership of the country began, following the death of his father Kim Il-sung, and he ruled until his own death in 2011. 15/11/16

North Korea crisis: US in 'direct contact' with Pyongyang, says Rex Tillerson - Independent

North Korea crisis: US in 'direct contact' with Pyongyang, says Rex Tillerson

'We have lines of communications to Pyongyang — we’re not in a dark situation, a blackout.' says Secretary of State

Fiona Keating

US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson (L) meets with Chinese President Xi Jinping (R) at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing Reuters

America's top diplomat has said his country is now in direct communication with North Korea amid an unprecdented deterioration in relations between Washington and Pyongyang.

US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson made the revelation during a visit to China, where he is discussing the crisis on the Korean peninsula with President Xi Jinping and other leaders.

“We have lines of communication to Pyongyang,” Mr Tillerson said. “We’re not in a dark situation.”

He said the Trump administration was “probing” the potential for talks with North Korea, adding: “So stay tuned.”

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When asked about how he would approach Kim Jong-un, Mr Tillerson replied: “We ask, ‘Would you like to talk?’ We have lines of communications to Pyongyang — we’re not in a dark situation, a blackout. We have a couple, three channels open to Pyongyang.”

The US Secretary of State declined to comment if the North Koreans had replied to requests to dialogue.

“We can talk to them,” he said, speaking at the residence of Terry Branstad, the US ambassador to Beijing. “We do talk to them."

He denied those lines of communication went via China, saying: “We have our own channels.”

Speaking an hour after meeting the Chinese President, Mr Tillerson said he was keen to tone down the bellicose rhetoric between Mr Trump and his North Korean counterpart.

Meanwhile, Mr Trump was called a “racist Orangutan” by North Korea's news service in response to the American leader's comments about the “poor leadership” of Yulin Cruz, the mayor of Puerto Rico's capital, San Juan.

“The whole situation is a bit overheated right now,” Mr Tillerson said in a New York Times report. “If North Korea would stop firing its missiles, that would calm things down a lot.”

The two countries have been in low-key discussions for months, according to the Associated Press, with “diplomatic contact… occurring regularly” between the US envoy for North Korea policy and a “senior North Korean diplomat at the country’s UN mission”.

Narushige Michishita, director of the Security and International Studies Program at the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies in Tokyo, said it was not unexpected that the two countries were in communication with one another, despite the increasingly hostile war of words.

“It was perfectly clear that both North Korea and the United States, and others, are in the renegotiation bargaining process,” he said.

Sweden could also play a key role as peacemaker if discussions falter between the US and North Korea. “Sweden has done so on numerous occasions before, especially in relation to imprisoned Americans,” Ulv Hanssen from the Swedish Institute of International Affairs told Reuters.

High Rollers Drive Macau Revenue Growth for 14th Straight Month - Bloomberg

High Rollers Drive Macau Revenue Growth for 14th Straight Month

By Daniela Wei and Blake Schmidt

October 1, 2017, 3:45 PM GMT+10

Gaming receipts increase 16.1% in September vs 20.4% in August

Revenue expansion last month exceeded analyst estimates

Macau’s casino revenue grew for the 14th consecutive month as high rollers lingered around the gambling tables in the world’s largest hub for players, following disruptions caused by typhoons in August.

Gross gaming receipts rose 16.1 percent to 21.4 billion patacas ($2.7 billion) in September, according to data released by Macau’s Gaming Inspection and Coordination Bureau on Sunday. That compares with the median estimate for a 14 percent increase in a Bloomberg survey of nine analysts. Gaming revenue climbed 20.4 percent in August from a year earlier.

Smaller junket operators, who provide credit to their big gamblers, have opened more gambling rooms in a move that’s expected to drive growth in high-stakes players, Morgan Stanley analysts led by Praveen Choudhary said in a report. The momentum is expected to continue as Golden Week, which started Sunday, has the potential to generate more revenue than last year.

Suncity Group, the largest junket operator in Macau, expects its October betting volume to surge between 30 percent and 35 percent from last year.

Read about the outlook for the Golden Week

The number of tourists this week is expected to increase by as much as 5 percent from about 1.2 million visitors last year, the Macau Tourism Office estimates. The bulk of those, about 970,000, were from China. The number of mainland Chinese visitors to Macau surpassed 2 million in both July and August, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

The territory is benefiting from economic expansion in China that’s outpacing the official 6.5 percent target, pent-up demand after the typhoons in August and the Chinese government’s decision not to restrict visas before the upcoming Communist Party leadership gathering in Beijing.

High-rollers from China have helped revive and sustain growth in Macau after President Xi Jinping’s campaign against corruption caused a two-year slump beginning in 2014, before bottoming out last year.

The typhoons disrupted operations in some casinos in the only Chinese territory where gambling is legal. MGM China Holdings Ltd. is delaying the opening of its MGM Cotai to January because of damage, it said Friday.

Kim Jong Un’s weapons milestones have shifted balance of power in east Asia - Financial Times

Trump-Kim barbs obscure new reality for South Korea

Kim Jong Un’s weapons milestones have shifted balance of power in east Asia.

In recent weeks a nervous world has watched on as Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un trade recriminations and threats of annihilation.

But for many in Seoul, the brinkmanship from the US and North Korean leaders has obscured a more profound development: Pyongyang has already succeeded in changing the balance of power in the region.

The reclusive nation’s recent success in bolstering its military capability has not only made it a more formidable potential foe; it has also deepened tensions among the US and its allies by changing the facts on the ground and the strategic calculations based on them.

North Korea has achieved twin milestones this year, successfully testing long-range ballistic missiles and its most powerful nuclear weapon — a device the regime claims was a hydrogen bomb. Analysts and former officials in South Korea say the developments amount to “game-changers” that can fundamentally undermine Washington’s longstanding security commitment to north-east Asia and could spark a nuclear arms race in the region.

“North Korea’s intention is very aggressive. They want to rewrite the regional order to their liking,” says Kim Jae-chun, a professor at Sogang University and a former South Korean government adviser.

“The objective of North Korea is to dismantle the US-Republic of Korea partnership. In this regard, the intercontinental ballistic missile is a game-changer.”

Events this year have aided the goal of sowing dissension among the US and its allies and stoked worries about the escalation of a crisis in which South Korea could be first in the line of fire.

Fears of a rift between a dovish Seoul and a more aggressive Washington gained ground after the nuclear test at the start of September. Mr Trump used the occasion to accuse Moon Jae-in, South Korea’s president, of appeasement.

Seoul has also been unnerved by Mr Trump’s combative response to North Korea’s nuclear and missile tests — including his threat in a UN speech to “totally destroy” the country.

But at the same time South Korea and Japan are also highly aware of Mr Trump’s unpredictability — and the possibility that he might water down longstanding US guarantees to the region.

Analysts say North Korea’s technological advances mean it could now launch military action against South Korea or Japan, while holding US forces at bay with the threat of a nuclear attack on its mainland.

Since the most recent tests, a growing chorus of voices has asked the same question: in a future conflict, would the US be willing to risk one of its own cities to protect Seoul?

Pyongyang could also use dialogue — potentially proposing a freeze in testing in exchange for US withdrawal or reduction of its 30,000 US troops in South Korea — to weaken the alliance between Seoul and Washington.

“In this way Trump can announce victory, saying he has achieved peace on the peninsula, which for him is politically feasible, says Kim Byoung-joo, a professor of international relations at the KDI School of Public Policy. “But the problem is, a freeze now means nothing [since North Korea has increased its nuclear and missile capability so much]. It will be a win-lose game [for South Korea].”

Prof Kim adds that such an outcome would also be a “winning scenario” for China and Russia, “whose top priority is limiting the US presence in the region. They are winning the game of balancing against the US.”

Like most analysts on the peninsula, Bob Kelly, a professor at Busan National University, does not believe war is likely or that North Korea will attack the US — a move that would entail massive retaliation and the destruction of the Kim Jong Un regime.

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Instead, he argues, Pyongyang will use its nuclear weapons to “shake down” Seoul and Tokyo for concessions and aid: “Coercive nuclear bullying — not war — is the real threat.”

Prof Kelly also maintains that the crisis could spark a wider regional arms race — which many think is already happening. 

Both Tokyo and Seoul are attempting to boost their missile defences, with South Korea this year deploying an advanced US-operated missile shield. There are also growing calls in South Korea to redeploy US tactical nuclear weapons or even develop the country’s own.

“In order to avoid real danger, we have to arm ourselves with nuclear weapons. But it would be nuclear armament for the sake of nuclear disarmament. It would allow us talk evenly with Pyongyang,” says Prof Kim of KDI

Mr Moon has rejected such calls — but he in his turn has been attacked by South Korean hawks for limiting the country’s policy options and weakening its negotiating leverage.

“The only way to ensure survival is to have more power,” adds Prof Kim. the former South Korean government adviser. “This is a really critical time. Everything should be on the table, including South Korea developing its own nuclear weapons.”