Life in North Korea: lies, potatoes and cable TV

(NORTH, THEIR, PEOPLE, STATE, REFUGEES, GENERAL)

By Jack Kim
SEOUL (Reuters) - North Koreans who recently arrived in the South live in a world of contradictions where their upbringing instills them with reverence for Kim Jong-il but their daily struggle leads them to believe he is a brutal despot.
By all accounts, they say North Korea is gradually spiralling out of control, its economy dysfunctional while people are suspicious of one another because of a network of informants.
They also speak of a sense of normalcy in the North. Most left for the chance of a better life in the South but they are uncertain if they can find their way in the competitive capitalist state.
The following is a snapshot of life in North Korea, compiled from accounts given by refugees who recently arrived in the South. Their identities are not disclosed because they fear persecution for family and relatives back home.
"SAD TO SEE THE DEAR GENERAL SO FEEBLE"
It is a political crime to talk about the family of leader Kim Jong-il but many recently arrived refugees said the average North Korean is probably aware of foreign media reports that Kim`s youngest son Jong-un may likely take over. Most North Koreans have no idea that Kim, 67 and thought to have suffered a stroke a year ago, has three sons.
"In Pyongyang, you take it for granted that leadership will be inherited," one refugee Park said, adding she knew Kim Jong-il had two daughters and a son and his name was Jong-nam. That is the portly and oldest of Kim`s three known sons, believed to have fallen from his father`s favor years ago after being arrested for trying to enter Japan on a forged passport.
"I don`t want to say Kim Jong-il is bad," another refugee Choi said. "It`s the people who report to him who are not doing their job right. They make false reports." Choi said she knew from experience that crop production is something that gets most often falsified "so as not to make the General worry."
Most refugees still call Kim Jong-il the "General" as has been taught to them by state propaganda and have bought into, at least partially, his carefully crafted cult of personality.
Park said she knows Kim often stays up at night worried about the lives of the people. "It is true that he has sacrificed so much for the people," she said. "The general has aged a lot," she said of her impression of seeing recent pictures of Kim looking frail and perhaps debilitated by the stroke.
"SOLDIERS FOR FIGHTING? NOT HERE"
North Korea is the world`s most militarized state compared to its population with a standing army of more than 1.1 million. Service is mandatory and can be as long as 10 years. The might of the army is "invincible," according to state media but the refugees are rather cynical about the ill equipped force.
"When I look at them, the army that I`ve seen will be busy running away from a war," another refugee Kim said. "Maybe they have the real army for war kept away at some other place."
Low morale and corruption in the military are so widespread that it is the norm rather than the exception for soldiers to be extorting bribes from merchants crossing the Chinese border.
"We say something is wrong with you if you did not save enough in 10 years of service at the border to go home, get married and start a family," Kim said.  Continued...
Original article

Indonesia`s regional leaders attract investors

(INDONESIA, OTHER, LEADERS, THEIR, WIDODO, ELECTION)

By Sunanda Creagh
SOLO, Indonesia (Reuters) - A quiet revolution is under way in Solo, Central Java, and in other parts of Indonesia where local leaders are learning that one way to get re-elected is to take voters and their needs seriously.
Joko Widodo, a former furniture salesman, was elected mayor of this royal city four years ago. Like a handful of other local leaders, he has made a name for himself by taking on bureaucracy, graft and infrastructure in Solo, a microcosm of the problems that afflict Southeast Asia`s biggest economy.
He and some of his peers, typically men in their forties or fifties with a background in business, are already regarded as potential candidates for much bigger jobs on the national stage, the governors and ministers of the future, because their "can-do" approach helps to attract investment.
"I am not a genius. I just ask the people what they want. You want, I give," said Widodo, 48, in an interview with Reuters.
"In other cities, they have the top-down approach. I don`t want this. I want bottom up. It`s better for me if there is participatory planning."
Across Indonesia, which embraced democracy after autocratic president Suharto was forced to quit in 1998 and holds its second direct election for president next week, voters are punishing leaders who don`t listen, regardless of party affiliation or campaign budgets, says election observer Kevin Evans.
"This is definitely a pattern," Evans said.
"In the legislative elections (in April), we saw incumbent candidates with lots of money being chucked out and some minor parties get a massive burst of votes in areas where they have a good candidate."
INVESTOR-FRIENDLY
Following decentralization, provinces and districts are now being ranked on the basis of their investor-friendliness. Widodo, who sold locally-produced furniture overseas before he became mayor, has already attracted "rave reviews" said Kevin O`Rourke, Jakarta-based political risk analyst.
"He`s up and coming and could be governor of Central Java one day," said O`Rourke. In Solo, he has been tipped as a future tourism minister after establishing cultural fairs, building a new airport and launching plans for an inter-city highway.
Indonesia`s Tempo Magazine late last year named him one of 10 leaders to watch.
"They created innovations and breakthroughs," said Tempo, adding that among these "few good men" were "a number of promising future leaders."
Some built parks and clean open spaces to improve the quality of life, or encouraged breakthrough agricultural practices. Others cut the stifling bureaucracy and corruption that accompanies some of the most basic public services in Indonesia.
Untung Wiyono, regent of Sragen near Solo, connected all his villages to the internet, while Andi Hatta Marakarma, regent of Luwu Timur, South Sulawesi, built new villages and roads, helping to cut the cost of transporting rice by over two-thirds.  Continued...
Original article

Army overthrows Honduras president

By Mica Rosenberg
TEGUCIGALPA (Reuters) - The Honduran army ousted and exiled leftist President Manuel Zelaya on Sunday in Central America`s first military coup since the Cold War, triggered by his bid to make it legal to seek another term in office.
U.S. President Barack Obama and the European Union expressed deep concern after troops came for Zelaya, an ally of socialist Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, around dawn and took him away from his residence. He was whisked away to Costa Rica.
Zelaya, who took office in 2006 and is limited by the constitution to a four-year term that ends in early 2010, had angered the army, courts and Congress by pushing for an unofficial public vote on Sunday to gauge support for his plan to hold a November referendum on allowing presidential re-election.
Speaking on Venezuelan state television, Chavez -- who has long championed the left in Latin America -- said he had put his troops on alert over the Honduran coup and would do everything necessary to abort the coup against his close ally.
He said that if the Venezuela ambassador was killed, or troops entered the Venezuela embassy, "that military junta would be entering a defacto state of war, we would have to act militarily." He said, "I have put the armed forces of Venezuela on alert."
Chavez, who has in the past threatened military action in the region but never followed through, said that if a new government is sworn in after the coup it would be defeated.
A military plane flew Zelaya to Costa Rica and CNN`s Spanish-language channel said he had asked for asylum there.
Some 2,000 pro-government protesters, some armed with shovels and metal poles, burned tires in front of the presidential palace in the capital, Tegucigalpa, and two fighter jets screamed through the sky over the city.
Democracy has taken root in Central America in recent decades after years of dictatorships and war, but crime, corruption and poverty are still major problems. Zelaya said the coup smacked of an earlier era.
"If holding a poll provokes a coup, the abduction of the president and expulsion from his country, then what kind of democracy are we living in?" Zelaya said in Costa Rica.
Honduras, an impoverished coffee, textile and banana exporter with a population of 7 million, had been politically stable since the end of military rule in the early 1980s. But Zelaya has moved the country further left since taking power. His push to change the constitution drove a rift between his office and the nation`s other institutions.
A former businessman who sports a cowboy hat and thick mustache, Zelaya fired military chief Gen. Romeo Vasquez last week for refusing to help him run Sunday`s unofficial survey on extending the four-year term limit on Honduran presidents.
Zelaya, 56, told Venezuela-based Telesur television station that he was "kidnapped" by soldiers and called on Hondurans to peacefully resist the coup.
OBAMA CALLS FOR CALM
The EU condemned the coup and Obama called for calm.  Continued...
Original article

Life after U.S. pullout brings worries for Iraqis

By Daniel Wallis
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Sitting in his small room in northern Baghdad, a pistol nearby and assault rifles stacked under the bed, Khalil Ibrahim is worried over Iraq`s future.
Six years after the U.S. invasion, Iraqis are contemplating the reality of life after a major milestone -- Tuesday`s withdrawal of U.S. combat troops from urban centres.
Glancing at his seven-year-old son playing a war game on a computer in the corner, Ibrahim, a chain-smoking former military intelligence officer, said he has two main worries.
"Iran has good relations with our political parties. They run militias. If the U.S. troops complete their withdrawal, Iran will do whatever it wants in Iraq," he said, scowling.
Shi`ite-ruled Iran is often accused of arming and funding Shi`ite militias who have killed Sunnis, a charge Tehran denies.
"Also, if the Americans pull out, al Qaeda will return," Ibrahim said. He knows the Islamist militants better than most.
As leader of a U.S.-backed Sunni Arab guard unit made up of many former insurgents, some of his men fought with the rebels against the U.S. military, before switching sides and helping drive al Qaeda fighters out of much of Iraq.
But as U.S. forces increasingly hand control to Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki`s Shi`ite Muslim-led government under a security pact that requires them to withdraw completely by 2012, tensions are rising.
Violence has dropped sharply across Iraq, but militants still launch devastating bombings. They are usually blamed on Sunni Arab insurgents like al Qaeda, and seem aimed at undermining Maliki`s administration and tipping the nation back into the sectarian slaughter of 2006/07.
WAVE OF BOMBINGS
The last few days have seen two of the worst attacks in more than a year. A suicide truck bomb killed at least 73 worshippers leaving a Shi`ite mosque near northern Kirkuk city on June 20. Four days later another blast tore through a market in Baghdad`s Sadr City, a Shi`ite slum, killing 72 people.
The government has warned that bloodshed is likely to intensify ahead of an even more important milestone for Iraq than this week`s -- a parliamentary election due in January.
With the U.S. withdrawal from cities, many Iraqis from Shi`ite and Sunni sects say they feel exposed to what they say is corruption and incompetence afflicting Iraqi security forces.
"We`re afraid of what will happen in the next few days," 40-year-old Shi`ite civil servant Salah Abd told Reuters by the wreckage of the Sadr City blast. "We could lose a lot of lives."
Others are more optimistic about the U.S. withdrawal, which will see almost all U.S. troops pull back to rural bases.  Continued...
Original article