While some people enjoy collecting model trains and building tiny stations along scaled down tracks, North Korean leader Kim Jong-il appears to have taken this passion to a new level. According to a report in South Korea’s largest daily newspaper, the Chosun Ilbo, Kim has six private trains and 20 stations around the country built just for him.

Kim’s train is armored and also contains conference rooms, an audience chamber and bedrooms. Satellite phone connections and flat screen TVs have been installed so that the North Korean leader can be briefed and issue orders, the paper said quoting intelligence sources.

Security obsessed Kim has 90 carriages in his collection and uses three trains when he travels, according to the paper. The advance train carries security personnel who check the tracks and look for bombs along the way. The train in the middle carries Kim and his entourage, while the trailing train is also for security.

Lee Yong-guk, who served in the closest circle of bodyguards for Kim in the 1980s before defecting to the South, told Reuters that North Korean security had mastered the art of camouflage to such a level that a train going north may in fact mean a ship carrying Kim is heading south.

Kim also travels the rails with a few young women who share food, drinks and perhaps a few other things with the man known at home as the “Dear Leader”, Lee said.

The reclusive Kim is thought to be afraid of flying and typically uses his private rail cars for his few trips abroad. He also likes to ride the rails for his internal inspection visits to military bases, factories and farms called “field guidance” by the North’s state media.

U.S. and South Korean aerial reconnaissance of North Korea have been keeping track of Kim’s trains for years, causing him to send out decoys.

There was speculation that Kim may have been the target of an assassination attempt in 2004 when there was a massive explosion in the area where his train was thought to have been travelling.

Kim could soon be taking one of his rare trips aboard. His state media reported in late October that Chinese President Hu Jintao had invited Kim for a visit. If Kim does take the journey to China, which would be his first since a trip there in January 2006, the North will probably be true to its form and not announce the visit until it is over and Kim is safely back in Pyongyang.

(PHOTO: North Korean leader Kim Jong-il visits the newly built Kumjinggang Guchang Juvenile power plant in North Korea during one of his field guidance visits in an undated photo provided by the North’s KCNA news agency on Nov. 8, 2009)

Once a year, North Korea’s often vitriolic rhetoric machine fires up with special intensity to attack those who attack its human rights record. The exchanges usually come toward the end of the year when the U.N. General Assembly approves what has become an annual measure criticising North Korea for having one of the worst rights records in the world.

Reclusive North Korea is a member of only a few international organisations so the annual rebuke at the United Nations stings particularly hard for the state that bills itself as a workers’ paradise, or as it said in a state media report on Tuesday: “the best socialist state in the world as it is centred on the popular masses”.

North Korea comes under special scrutiny this year because it will be subject to official international questioning of its human rights record at the United Nations in December, which could provide even more embarrassment for the North’s thinned-skinned leaders as the prickly state is put on the defensive.
North Korea has prepared for this event by changing its Constitution earlier this year and adding clauses about human rights protections.

But many of the rights of North Korean citizens spelled out in the document are not carried out. For example, it guarantees freedom of assembly, but Pyongyang can send to political prison anyone who gathers without permission of authorities. The regime guarantees freedom of religion, but jails those who try to exercise the right. Privacy is a right, but the government’s large internal spy network keeps tabs on almost all citizens.

According to human rights groups, the United States and other leading democracies, North Korea maintains a vast political prison system to stamp out dissent. It intimidates the masses through public executions and by guilt by association where it can jail family members of those it accuses of crimes.

North Korea’s official media usually unleashes some of its harshest rhetoric during this human rights season, saying this is all part of a plot by a hostile United States to topple its leaders. Already this week, the North slammed “the ceaseless mean ‘human rights rackets’ kicked up by the U.S. and its followers.”

“This is nothing but a despicable plot to attain their sinister purposes by putting political pressure upon the DPRK (North Korea),” its KCNA news agency said.

The points to watch this year when North Korea is raked over the coals for its record are whether Pyongyang will use the criticism as a means to back away from international nuclear disarmament talks – as it has done previously – or if it will finally grant the request of Vitit Muntarbhorn, the U.N. special rapporteur for human rights in North Korea, to see for himself what is going on in one of the world’s most isolated states.

One of the primary aims of North Korea’s propaganda machine is to show its founder Kim Il-sung and current leader Kim Jong-il as all-knowing, parent-like (and at times god-like) figures who devote themselves entirely to bettering the lives of every citizen of the state.

Kim Il-sung, known as the “Great Leader” is also the eternal president of the state formed at the start of the Cold War. His son Kim Jong-il, who took over when his father died in 1994, is known as the “Dear Leader.”

The reality of course is quite different. While the Kim family basks in riches, North Koreans are some of the poorest people in North Asia, who are threatened with famine due to a lack of food in a state that several have criticised for having one of the world’s worst human rights records.

North Korea’s state media from time to time runs stories about events that had taken place several years ago, even decades sometimes, to reinforce the message that its leaders have shown great concern for all the people.

Here is a story that came out this week about a visit state founder Kim Il-sung made to a cabbage patch nearly three decades ago.

    Pyongyang, October 12 (KCNA) — President Kim Il-sung gave field
guidance to the Oryu Co-op Farm, Sadong District, Pyongyang one day in June
Juche 63 (1974).
    He went to a cabbage field where the cabbage grew well.
    He stepped into the field regardless of muddy ground with a bright smile on his face. Suddenly he stooped himself to see a head of cabbage carefully. Those accompanying him turned their doubtful eyes to the cabbage.
    Its leaves had only fine luster.
     After a while the President asked a farm official whether the cabbage had been hit by hailstones.
     At that moment the official was very surprised.
     Actually the cabbages had suffered a slight damage from hail when young.
    However, the cabbages were unusually in good condition so that it was difficult to find the marks of damage.
     The President found out instantly the marks that even the peasants and experts could hardly do.
     The officials were deeply moved by his extraordinary observation.

(Photo: North Koreans offer flowers to a statue of state founder Kim Il-sung to commemorate the 61st anniversary of the founding of the state, in Pyongyang September 9, 2009, in this picture released by North Korea’s official news agency KCNA.)

Kim Jong-il may be at the forefront of a fashion trend that has just hit the streets of Pyongyang: Using oversized umbrellas as parasols.

The North Korean leader started travelling this year with a soldier whose job is to carry a large black umbrella to protect him from the sun.

Kim, called the “Dear Leader” by his state’s official media, has been trailed by his umbrella bearer on many occasions since he returned to the public scene earlier this year after suffering a suspected stroke a year ago.

The iconic traffic ladies of Pyongyang have been swept up in the trend inspired by Kim.

Visitors to the North Korean capital have a hard time forgetting the young women who stand at major intersections in uniforms and direct the few cars on the road with gestures that seem inspired by military drill sergeants and professional boxers. Pyongyang does not have traffic lights. One of the few state secrets that residents of the North Korean capital will share with foreign visitors is that these women are often selected for their looks.

It appears Kim, who is also greatly concerned about their access to make-up, was behind the umbrella proliferation:
“The traffic controllers are moved by the warm affection shown for them by General Secretary Kim Jong-il who saw to it that the platforms with umbrellas are being set up this time after raincoats, rain boots, sunglasses, gloves and cosmetics as well as seasonal uniforms were provided to them,” the North’s official KCNA news agency said on Thursday.

(PIcture at top: North Korean leader Kim Jong-il visits the Yeonsa district revolution battlefield at an undisclosed place in North Korea, in an undated photo released by North Korea’s official KCNA news agency May 24, 2009. The photo of the traffic policewoman was released on August 13, 2009.)

It turns out that it was North Korea which had suggested that former President Bill Clinton would be the best person to come and negotiate the release of two journalists who had been sentenced to 12 years of hard labor in the Stalinist state.
 
The U.S. government -- particularly Secretary of State Hillary Clinton -- had been working for months on trying to free the two journalists. The secretary of state reportedly proposed sending various people to Pyongyang, including Clinton's former vice president Al Gore, to lobby for the women's release.
 
But North Korea rejected Gore and other possible envoys like Senator John Kerry, Governor Bill Richardson and former ambassador to South Korea Donald Gregg. Pyongyang wanted President Clinton and passed that word along through the two detained journalists, Laura Ling and Euna Lee, who were making occasional phone calls to their families.
 
"In mid-July during one such phone call, Ms. Ling and Ms. Lee shared what the North Koreans had told them -- that they would be willing to grant them amnesty and release the two Americans if an envoy in the person of President Clinton would agree to come to Pyongyang and seek their release," a senior administration official said.

The families passed the request along to Gore, who co-founded the media group that employs the women. Gore then asked the Obama administration if the former president could make the trip.

Once the administration determined that North Korea would indeed release Ling and Lee if Clinton made the trip, the former president agreed to travel to Pyongyang on a "private, humanitarian mission."

Before leaving for North Korea, Clinton was briefed by Obama national security officials and he also spoke with Gore and the families of the two women. 
 
Once in Pyongyang, where he was greeted with the fanfare of a state visit as opposed to a private humanitarian trip, Clinton secured the women's release after about three hours and 15 minutes in meetings and over dinner with President Kim Jong-il. 

The U.S. government says it didn't offer any quid pro quo. But it remains to be  seen what, if anything, Clinton proposed in exchange for the  women's release.

The North Korean news agency called the Clinton-Kim talks "exhaustive" but maybe they were also exhausting? Especially if the North Korean supreme leader is as sick as reported. 

And in the end, who has enjoyed more coming in from the cold and being in the global spotlight? Kim Jong-il or Bill Clinton?

For more Reuters political news, please click here. 

Photo credits: Reuters/KCNA (Clinton sits with Kim in Pyongyang) ; Reuters/Danny Moloshok (Laura Ling (top) and Euna Lee disembark from plane in United States)

Photo:A compilation by Reuters of pool photographs and images provided by North Korea’s KCNA news agency showing North Korean leader Kim Jong-il from 2004 to 2009. The photograph in the lower right was released this week by KCNA

By Jon Herskovitz

The image the world once had of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, with a trademark paunch, platform shoes and a bouffant hair-do, is gone and may never come back. He has now become a gaunt figure with thinning hair who has trouble walking in normal shoes, let alone ones with heels 8-10 centimetres (3-4 inches) high like he used to wear.

A look at photographs the North’s official media has released of Kim over the past few months indicate he is not a healthy man. There has been an enormous amount of speculation about what is wrong with Kim, 67, including a report from South Korean TV network YTN this week that he has life-threatening pancreatic cancer.

Kim’s health is one of the most closely guarded secrets in the highly secretive North and his actual condition is likely known by a handful of people in his inner circle who risk death or prison camp for themselves and their families if they ever whisper a word about Kim’s problems.

It is a state crime in North Korea to make any comment that questions Kim’s god-like status in the communist dynasty he has ruled since 1994 when his father and state founder Kim Il-sung died.

The most likely way that the outside world will ever receive any reliable information about Kim’s health is if his hermit state invites in foreign doctors to treat him. This appears to have happened about a year ago when he was widely suspected of suffering a stroke. U.S. and South Korean intelligence sources were then able to leak to the media information about what was ailing Kim.

Intelligence sources Reuters spoke to in Seoul would not confirm the latest reports of pancreatic cancer. They did agree on one thing, Kim is still sick.

Kim’s declining health has led to questions in the outside world if the man known at home as the “Dear Leader” still has his iron grip on power over the state he and his father have run since its inception more than 60 years ago.

Within North Korea, images of a weary Kim can actually help him win support among the public.

The North’s state propaganda has built an image of Kim as a person who works tirelessly to better his struggling state. The North’s propaganda says Kim gets little sleep as he travels the country by day and forms its policies at night.

Kim rarely is seen in state media presiding over major state functions or greeting foreign dignitaries. That is mostly left to Kim Yong-nam, the North’s nominal number two leader and its head of state.

If Kim Jong-il looks weak and sickly, it arouses sympathy and support among the North Korean public who feel he has put his own well being at risk working for them.

In the weeks and months ahead, there will likely be more speculation as to what is physically wrong with Kim. Some of the reports will be more reliable than others. But the actual state of Kim’s health will not likely be known until a time the foreign doctors visit again or those nearest Kim feel safe to reveal the secret.

Former U.S. defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s attempts to be philosophical about ‘known unknowns’ and ‘unknown unknowns’ gave him a reputation for slipperiness and cant. The phrases uttered in 2002 to explain the military’s failure to improve security in Afghanistan have passed into folklore, alongside such gems as ’stuff happens,’ which was his explanation for the looting that followed the toppling of Saddam Hussein in Iraq in 2003.

The ‘known unknown’ concept is a more useful tool in journalism than you would think from the derision heaped on Rumsfeld by reporters. As journalists we spend our time uncovering facts, reporting data, breaking news and offering insights into the meaning of events. We rarely stop to contemplate what we do not know, what we cannot know and what impact that ignorance has in shaping perceptions.

No place is more opaque, more secretive and more fiendishly difficult to intepret than North Korea. It is inaccessible, its leader does not give interviews and it rattles the nuclear sabre to a timetable and for a purpose we can only guess at. As we tremble with fear at the thought of Pyongyang developing an atomic arms capability, it is instructive to remind ourselves how thoroughly our interpretation of the North’s behaviour is overlaid with our own projections and assumptions. We build our framework of expectations on the shaky soil of past experience, historical parallels and a paucity of real, contemporary detail on how North Koreans think and how they live.

On a recent trip to north-east Asia it struck me how challenging it is to peer over the formidable wall that the North has erected around itself. Divining the real distribution of power around Kim Jong-il and extrapolating from it his next steps has been compared to Cold War Kremlinology,  the part-art, part-science process of guessing how the Soviet Union was being run. It is the nature of tightly-knit elites that they are hard to fathom. Nobody credible has been able to claim they spotted in advance that Mikhail Gorbachev would be the successor to Konstantin Chernenko in 1985.  So, add to Soviet-style secrecy North Korea’s clan system and dynastic tradition, and you have a recipe for inpenetrability.  Kim Jong-il’s third and youngest son, Kim Jong-un, is now ‘widely accepted’ as the heir presumptive to his ailing father. But might the flimsily-sourced stories on the succession have been solidified into ‘fact’ by self-reinforcing group-think?

Japanese media reported that the Swiss educated Jong-un, thought to be 25-years-old, visited China earlier in June to introduce himself to the leaders of North Korea’s only real ally. The Chinese haven’t corroborated that and I got a point blank refusal to confirm it from South Korea’s unification minister when I posed the question this week. (The FT had the most recent story on it, adding detail on itinerary and who was chaperoning the youngster, again sourced to unnamed officials.) It’s a sensitive issue, since electronic surveillance and espionage, too sensitive to admit to, might actually have confirmed to Seoul and Washington that Jong-un had made that journey. Perhaps that makes it an example of an unknown known.

So how do we get information about the North? Few journalists get visas and when they do their interactions with ordinary Koreans take place via handlers whose first loyalty is to their state, not the truth. A few diplomats report on the realities of life in the desperately poor North. A blurred picture emerges of a socialist state where the populace must fend for themselves; government food distribution has all but been abandoned and an informal structure of markets and suitcase trading of Chinese goods provides most of the nourishment and economic activity.  A few NGOs and tourists trickle through. South Korea monitors everything the North says about itself and meticulously reads between the lines to assess the ebbs and flows of power. Scholars parse the North’s internal propaganda to understand how the Kims sustain their leadership. A taste of its appeal to patriotism, disdain of outsiders, selective rendering of history and vilification of the South leaves non-partisans dizzy, but it has served for years to consolidate the ruling class’s grip on power.

How useful is the information given by what some call defectors but which others broadly consider economic migrants, fleeing the poverty of the North for the perils of Chinese human trafficking networks in the hope an aid group will lead them to the South via third countries? The South builds a picture by debriefing them, but the insights are not of those close to Pyongyang’s decision-making.

Most intriguing now is how the North’s story to its own people may have to change as the information cordon around the country frays. The disparity between reality and internal rhetoric cannot grow too far apart, it is suggested, because North Koreans are getting information via DVDs smuggled across their borders, visiting traders, informal networks and other unofficial sources. North Koreans will have heard from abroad the talk of who will rule them next. At home their media has made no mention of the Dear Leader ever being anything but a bachelor, never mind a father.  Can that gap persist without credibility vanishing? Will North Korea’s official media have to bring forward their launch campaign for the next Kim? How ironic if the unknowability of the North begins to be undone from the inside thanks to the unknowingness of outsiders.

Despite the seriousness with which the world takes North Korea’s missile and nuclear tests, the isolated country remains a rich source of humour for cartoonists, satirists and comedians around the world.

The diminutive, bouffant-haired leader, Kim Jong-il, has already been the star of a satirical full length cartoon, plaintively singing “I’m so ronery” in Team America, while plotting to blow up the world.

These days, it seems, every time North Korea rattles its sabres, the noise can be heard via the Internet.

Kim and North Korea are most frequently a subject of discussion on the various late night TV chat shows so popular in the United States.

“According to Kim Jong-Il’s biography, they say he has been constantly accused of dishonesty, drunkenness and sexual excess. So if he lived here, he could be in Congress,” Jay Leno said on his show.

“North Korea conducted a nuclear test and the blast was so small that many scientists are saying it was a dud. Apparently, the nuclear bomb didn’t work well because it was made in Korea,” jibed Conan O’Brien.

And with news wires buzzing that Kim, who succeeded his father, Kim Il-sung, may in turn be succeeded by a favourite son, David Letterman said: “”North Korean dictator Kim Jung Il may be stepping down. Experts in the State Department say he could be replaced by his son, Menta Li Ill.”

But it isn’t just professional comedians having fun at the expense of North Korean and its dear leader, the Internet is full of keen amateurs doing the same.

Facebook, for example, has over 350 profiles and groups dedicated to Kim, listing his hobbies (films, nuclear experiments, torture), friends (Saddam Hussein, Robert Mugabe, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad).

One group is set up to list achievements genuinely reported by the Korean Central News Agency, which frequently ascribes miraculous events to Kim, such as causing flowers to spontaneously bloom or even influencing the weather.

A not entirely more ridiculous Facebook group does the opposite, listing what he should be credited with: “There is no such thing as evolution, just a list of animals Kim Jong Il allowed to live”; “Kim Jong Il has two speeds: Walk and Kill”; “Kim Jong Il can slam a revolving door.”.

But perhaps the most popular resources of North Korean humour and satire on the Internet remains NK news, which has as a mission statement: This site aims its satirical lens solely at the regime of Kim Jong Il, and certainly not at the long-suffering people of North Korea, Korean culture, or Korea in general, North or South.

Its random insult generator draws on years of bellicose statements from the north. None of them are made up, apparently. The latest offering: “You sycophantic aggressor, your accusation against the DPRK is no more than barking at the moon!”

                                              By Jon Herskovitz

North Korea says somewhere up in the sky, a satellite it launched at the weekend is beaming to earth two revolutionary paeans: “Song of General Kim Il-sung” for the founder of the reclusive state and “Song of General Kim Jong-il,” for the son who succeeded him when he died.

U.S. and South Korean officials said the North Korean rockets did not send anything into space and all pieces of the rocket crashed into the sea, including the claimed satellite, which might have been North Korea’s oversized attempt to replicate an iPod.

The North Korean report was a a bit of a blast from the past because North Korea made a similar claim in 1998 that it had sent a satellite into orbit playing the exact same two songs.

There is far more to North Korea’s hit parade of songs than the two homilies it said were aboard its rocket. This is a country where soldiers sing, farmers sing, the hundreds of thousand gather in the centre of the capital Pyongyang to dance in special days and a refined teenage girl always has her accordion ready to play a tune.

The North Korea songbook is diverse. It has the dance number “Let’s Dash Forward to Build a Great Prosperous and Powerful Nation”. It has a tune for choral groups called “May the Song of a Happy Soldier Reverberate Far and Wide,” and it has a children’s song called Generalissimo Kim Il-sung Danced With Us.” Here are the lyrics as translated into English by the North:
On the New Year’s,
We danced together hand in hand
We danced out of our wish for his pleasure
The Generalissimo danced with us
Out of his wish for our happy future.
His parental love for us
Moved us to tears.
Our respect and filial devotion are growing.
The Generalissimo danced with us.

I saw this song performed about a year ago at the Mangyongdae Schoolchildren’s Palace when I went to Pyongyang for the New York Philharmonic concert. The school is dedicated to the performing arts and the children, many still of primary school age, sang and danced their way through songs such as “Jingle Bells” and “We are Faithful Only to Kim Jong-il.”

When they grow older, the North Korean song book awaits them. Here is a top 10 list in no particular order of North Korea’s greatest hits:

* “Song of Defending Homeland”
* “The Ten-point Programme of the Association for the Restoration of the Fatherland”
* Let’s Dash Forward to Build a Great Prosperous and Powerful Nation”
* Let’s Hold Higher Rifle of Working Class”
* “Hopeful Is the Future of Us under the Care of the General”
* “May the Playing of My Accordion Resound Forth”
* “Song of the Coastal Artillery Women”
* “We Will Defend the Headquarters of Revolution with Our Lives”
* “Our General is Best”
* “We Have Planted Apple Trees on Mountains”

Perhaps, the next time North Korea attempts to launch a satellite, it might want to load a few of these tunes in order to expand its repertoire.

{Photos of Kim Jong-il with  with scientists and engineers involved in a rocket launch and a protest in Seoul against the launch]

                                                          By Jack Kim

A perk for being the leader of a country for as long as you want is you get to build a gift collection from other world leaders, business moguls and masters of the arts so large that you can’t keep them in your house.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-il celebrated his 67th birthday on Monday and was showered with even more gifts.

Kim and his father Kim Il-sung, the North’s state founder, have accumulated hundreds of thousands of gifts over the years and since there is no mantelpiece big enough to display them all, they have built a special museum that is carved into a mountain to house them all. I was part of a group of South Korean civic activists, academics and journalists taken to the museum during a trip to North Korea last November.

Covering a sprawling compound by the scenic Mount Myohang, about a two-hour drive north of the capital, Pyongyang, the  highlight of the International Friendship Exhibition is two imposing marble structures with ornate jade coloured file roofs that are dug deep into the hills.

Stored in the climate controlled buildings are gifts ranging from a stuffed crocodile standing  up holding a tray of cups to a globe encircled by doves sent from  U.S. evangelist Billy Graham. We were not allowed to take pictures during the trip, but you can see some of the gifts here

Kim has been seeing his collection expand further this week with gifts arriving from a Russian dance company, the Syrian defence minister and the head of the communist party of Britain.

Covering 46,000 square metres (495,000 sq ft), the massive  buildings feature hundreds of rooms linked by a labyrinth of halls, housing items that a guide told us would require 18 months to  view, even by taking a mere minute per item.

Other items on display include a clock sent from a Japanese women’s association made from 20 layers of wild boar skin, a  calendar of the Aztec civilisation sent by the Mexican labour party, and a vintage Hyundai sedan given by the late founder of the South Korean conglomerate.

Former U.S. Secretary of State Madeline Albright brought a basketball autographed by Michael Jordan when she visited the North in 2000, not housed at the museum and can be seen by special request.

Then there is a small collection of items that were definitely not welcome  because they came from three conservative  former  South Korean presidents but still put on display as a lesson on what not to do in gift giving.

“What you see here are items from people who have no idea about giving gifts,” a suddenly bereft guide told the visitors,  pointing to a small cabinet housing tea sets, chinaware and  calligraphy pens from the three South Korean leaders. 

[File photos of museum in North Korea where gifts are kept and a pavillion displaying pictures of Kim Jong-il]