I Want My NK TV
by Richardson ~ August 30th, 2007. Filed under: Economics, Engagement, Korean Politics.
Despite any sort of reciprocity from North Korean broadcasters, South Korean companies will be forced to fork over about $70,000 a year:
An SBS executive said South Korean TV stations have used TV pictures aired by KCBS for free, but in July, the Korean Foundation for South-North Economic and Cultural Cooperation, as a proxy of the North Korean TV station, concluded negotiations with three TV stations whereby SBS will pay about W20 million every year to KCBS through the foundation. MBC will pay slightly more than that, and KBS will pay about W30 million.
The foundation, chaired by United New Democratic Party member Im Jong-seok, was established in 2004. It held talks with the three terrestrial networks for a year and a half. In the talks, the three argued it was unreasonable for South Korean TV stations to pay for North Korean footage in programs that aim at promoting mutual understanding, and they generally rejected the idea of unilaterally paying North Korea when the North does not pay South Korean broadcasters for footage. (emphasis added)
August 30th, 2007 at 12:29 pm
Can I receive North Korean TV over satellite in Europe?
August 30th, 2007 at 1:14 pm
You should be able to, if still correct:
Looks like it’s on Thaicom 5 at 78.5°E, 3504 H tp 3G.
August 30th, 2007 at 5:36 pm
Yes! Now we can subscribe to all the great works of the Dear Leader.
“Kim Jong Il… dispenser of all wisdom. Kim Jong Il… can walk on water. Kim Jong Il… is watching over you. Welcome to paradise! Welcome to NKTV.”
August 30th, 2007 at 7:08 pm
If shown in U.S. prisons it probably would be considered cruel and unusual punishment.
I’m glad someone asked the question as I didn’t know before that KCNA broadcasts were available via satellite – seemingly everywhere but the U.S. I’d watch for footage and to listen to the accent.
August 30th, 2007 at 7:31 pm
Yeah, it makes sense the US does not carry the feed, but even if it was carried over the airwaves, the stuff is so outrageous, how can anybody buy what they say?
Oh wait, we have media like that. Never mind.
September 3rd, 2007 at 8:55 pm
[...] Ilbo (Hat Tip DPRK Studies) [...]
May 1st, 2008 at 5:50 pm
Happy May Day to workers all over the world.
June 26th, 2008 at 4:11 pm
WASHINGTON - President Bush on Thursday lifted trade sanctions against North Korea and moved to remove it from the U.S. terrorism blacklist, a remarkable turnaround in policy toward the communist regime he once branded as part of an “axis of evil.”
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The announcement at the White House came after North Korea handed over a long-awaited accounting of its nuclear work to Chinese officials on Thursday, fulfilling a key step in the denuclearization process.
Bush called the declaration a positive step along a long road to get the nation to give up its nuclear weapons. Yet, he remained wary of the regime, which has lied about its nuclear work before. And North Korea’s declaration, received six months late, falls short of what the administration once sought, leaving it open to criticism from those who want the U.S. to take an even tougher stance against the regime.
“We will trust you only to the extent you fulfill your promises,” Bush said in the Rose Garden. “I’m pleased with the progress. I’m under no illusions. This is the first step. This isn’t the end of the process. It is the beginning of the process.”
Conservative Republicans — once Bush’s closest allies in efforts to confront North Korea’s nuclear aspirations — came out strongly against his decision. But with only 45 days until the change takes effect, there appears to be little they can do. To block the North’s removal, opponents would have to push legislation through a Congress controlled by Democrats who have largely favored the administration’s efforts at engaging the North.
“It’s shameful,” John Bolton, Bush’s former U.S. ambassador at the United Nations, said of the president’s decision. “This represents the final collapse of Bush’s foreign policy.” “Profound disappointment” was the reaction of Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla.
Republican Rep. Ed Royce of California said the only thing likely to derail the North’s removal from the terror list in the next 45 days was a disclosure of additional “North Korean skullduggery.”
To demonstrate that it is serious about foregoing its nuclear weapons, North Korea is planning the televised destruction of a 65-foot-tall cooling tower at its main nuclear reactor at Yongbyon. The cooling tower is a key element of the reactor, but blowing it up — with the world watching — has little practical meaning because the reactor has already been nearly disabled.
Specifically, Bush erased trade sanctions imposed on North Korea under the Trading With the Enemy Act, and notified Congress that, in 45 days, it intends to take North Korea off the State Department list of nations that sponsor terrorism.
“If North Korea continues to make the right choices it can repair its relationship with the international community … If North Korea makes the wrong choices, the United States and its partners in the six-party talks will act accordingly,” Bush said.
The declaration, about 60 pages of documentation, is the result of long-running negotiations the United States, Japan, South Korea, China and Russia have been having with Pyongyang. In the next 45 days — the congressionally mandated waiting period for removing North Korea from the terrorism list — the six parties will agree on how best to verify what the regime has declared. The North Koreans have said they will provide access to their facilities, including the reactor core and waste sites.
“They will make available documents, records, operating manuals and the like,” said National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley. “They’ve already made available over 19,000 documents. And that the six parties will have access to personnel involved in their nuclear programs.”
U.S. officials said the declaration contains detailed data on the amount of plutonium North Korea produced during each of several rounds of production at a now-shuttered plutonium reactor. It is expected to total about 37 kilograms of plutonium — enough to make about a half-dozen bombs.
However, the declaration, which covers nuclear production dating back to 1986, does not contain detailed information about North Korea’s suspected program of developing weapons fueled by enriched uranium.
It also does not provide a complete accounting of how it allegedly helped Syria build what senior U.S. intelligence officials say was a secret nuclear reactor meant to make plutonium, which can be used to make high-yield nuclear weapons. Israeli jets bombed the structure in the remote eastern desert of Syria in September 2007.
Hadley said that North Korea has “acknowledged in writing” that the U.S. and its negotiating partners have raised concerns about its enrichment activities and their suspected involvement with Syria. “They have not been out publicly denying, discounting these concerns,” Hadley said, “so we’re in a situation of not quite admitting, not denying but opening the door for us to be able to try to get greater clarity.”
Hadley said U.S. action to ease sanctions was “relatively minor.” By taking North Korea off the Trading With Enemies Act, the U.S. is removing licensing requirements for Americans who want to import goods from North Korea; provisions that affect Americans involved in shipping goods from other countries into North Korea; and some prohibitions on financial transfers by the North Korean government.
The president, however, signed an executive order on Thursday to keep two other prohibitions in place. These involve the interaction of Americans with ships flying the North Korean flag; and the freezing of certain kinds of assets first placed on hold in 2000.
The president insisted the U.S. was not giving North Korea a free ride, saying the U.S. action would have little impact on North Korea’s financial and diplomatic isolation. “It will remain one of the most heavily sanctioned nations in the world,” Bush said. All U.N. sanctions, for example, will remain in place.
Bush said the United States would monitor North Korea closely and “if they don’t fulfill their promises, more restrictions will be placed on them.”
Bush said that to end its isolation, North Korea must, for instance, dismantle all of its nuclear facilities and resolve outstanding questions on its highly enriched uranium and proliferation activities “and end these activities in a way that we can fully verify.”
Bush thanked all members of the six-party talks, but singled out Japan. Tokyo has argued that the U.S. decision to remove North Korea from the list of terrorist nations should be linked to progress in solving North Korea’s abduction of Japanese nationals in the 1970s and 1980s.
“The United States will never forget the abduction of Japanese citizens by the North Koreans,” said Bush who called Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda on Wednesday to express U.S. concern about the issue. “We will continue to closely cooperate and coordinate with Japan and press North Korea to swiftly resolve the abduction issue.”
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Associated Press Writer Foster Klug and White House Correspondent Terence Hunt contributed to this story
June 27th, 2008 at 4:29 pm
SEOUL, South Korea - It took years of talks, coddling and concessions to prod North Korea to step back from its decades-long effort to make atomic weapons, leading to Friday’s dramatic destruction of its nuclear reactor cooling tower.
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That was the easy part.
Past experience suggests North Korea will seek more rewards before it moves further to disarm. If Pyongyang actually hands over the nuclear bombs believed to be in its arsenal — the country’s most valuable bargaining chips — the communist leadership would only do so after a long wish list of demands is granted.
The North has repeatedly shown a talent for brinksmanship, along with a mastery of playing countries against each other. And Pyongyang is just getting started.
Hints of the problems to come emerged just hours after the reactor tower tumbled to the ground in a cloud of dust and smoke.
While praising the U.S. for starting to remove sanctions, North Korea’s Foreign Ministry said it would closely watch whether the other sides from the arms talks meet their commitments.
“What is important in the days ahead is for the U.S. to fundamentally drop its hostile policy toward the (North), a policy that compelled (North Korea) to have access to a nuclear deterrent,” the ministry said in a statement carried by the official Korean Central News Agency.
So far, the United States and other countries have agreed to give the North the equivalent of 1 million tons of oil for disabling its main nuclear facility and providing a list of nuclear programs. The U.S. is also moving to eliminate some sanctions against the regime.
The North has 45 days to agree on procedures to verify its declaration, the date by when the U.S. plans to remove the country from a State Department list of state sponsors of terrorism.
The next and far more complicated phase of the disarmament process is for North Korea to abandon and dismantle its nuclear weapons programs. So far, the other countries have not said what they will give the North in exchange for doing so.
For dismantling its reactor, the energy-starved country is expected to demand a new reactor of a type it would use solely for generating electricity.
Under a 1994 disarmament deal with the U.S., the North was offered two reactors for power. But construction was abandoned long before they were completed amid the latest nuclear crisis that began in 2002, when the U.S. accused Pyongyang of pursuing a secret uranium enrichment program.
The North still wants the reactors, and won a concession in a September 2005 agreement that other countries would talk “at an appropriate time” about a new reactor.
To finally end the nuclear threat, the U.S. will want the North to hand over its bombs. But in exchange, North Korea will likely demand security guarantees from Washington and normal diplomatic relations between the two countries.
As early as Monday, the chief negotiators from the six nations involved in the nuclear talks — North and South Korea, the U.S., China, Japan and Russia — will meet in Beijing to begin discussions on the specifics of how North Korea’s declaration of its nuclear programs will be verified. The key element that requires verification is the amount of plutonium North Korea says it has produced. Officials say that may take several months to determine.
As early as July, even before the declaration is verified, the highest-level contact between the United States and North Korea since 2000 may take place at a meeting of the foreign ministers of the six nations involved in the talks. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice would attend this as-yet unscheduled meeting along with her North Korean counterpart.
The U.S. technically remains at war with the North. Some 28,500 American troops are stationed in South Korea as a legacy of the Korean War, where fighting stopped in an 1953 armistice but no peace treaty was ever signed.
The bombs from that war left the peninsula bitterly divided. The destruction of the reactor tower, which was not shown on North Korean television, is a landmark step showing how far the U.S. and North Korea have come since then, even as peace in northeast Asia remains elusive.
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Burt Herman is chief of bureau in Korea for The Associated Press.
June 27th, 2008 at 5:04 pm
Make a comment yourself, but stop posting articles. Thanks.