Days after agreeing to shut down Yongbyon, North Korea launches an investigation into abducted Japanese citizens. What is going on?

BEIJING (Reuters) – North Korea will conduct a thorough investigation into the kidnapping of Japanese citizens, a departure from its stand that the divisive issue has been settled, a source with ties to Pyongyang said on Thursday.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has said Tokyo will refuse economic aid to Pyongyang unless it sees progress in a dispute over citizens kidnapped decades ago to help train North Korean spies in language and culture.

“Kim Jong-il has ordered a thorough investigation into the issue … North Korea intends to resolve this issue,” the source told Reuters, requesting anonymity.

The source has provided reliable information on the secretive state’s policy in the past.

Pyongyang has yet to inform Tokyo of its decision.

If Kim Jong-Il decides to examine its own human rights record, I will quit blogging. But until then, what is behind this new strategy?
Update: Are we witnessing a lack of message discipline? Take this threat to Japan.

I must be cruel, because I do not believe this sob story

BEIJING – A woman who fled North Korea after living there for 43 years returned to the communist country Tuesday following nearly four years in Japan, saying she missed her children and found Japanese society unwelcoming.

To Chu Ji arrived in Pyongyang and was greeted by her family, who brought her a bouquet of flowers and embraced her, weeping.

Before leaving, To spoke at a rare news conference at the North Korean Embassy in Beijing, saying she had been cheated by “bad people” into leaving North Korea in 2003.

She gave few details during the 20-minute session in which she kept her eyes on her hands. Reporters were not allowed to ask questions.

The motives behind the news conference were not clear, although it comes amid a dispute over North Korea’s alleged abduction of 13 Japanese citizens in the 1970s and ’80s that has blocked talks between Tokyo and Pyongyang on normalizing relations.

Further down the article, it said she began to sing. That is a sign that the circumstances are different from the one she is telling. I do not doubt that she may be homesick, but I cannot believe that her children were not being punished, as family members of defectors often are. Plus, what better way to deflect accusations of abduction better than making one yourself.

So for many reason, the lack of evidence most evident, I do not believe her.
Update: DailyNK has the back story. No, she was not abducted, but homesickness was part of the reason she left. And who knows how the North Koreans persuaded her to leave.

(Via. NK Econ. Watch) North Korea “vows” to use the returned $25 million for “humanitarian” purposes. That sounds great but if this report from the DailyNK is true, then chances are the people are going to lose that money as soon as they get it.

Recently, a portion of laborers in Hoiryeong, North Hamkyung province received six months of food provisions. The provisions were for laborers, railroad laborers, the aged, and farming laborers. However, if one sees into the situation, one can see the complex and uncertain reality of North Korea.

North Korea, from several years ago, tried to resolve the food shortage issue by allocating collective farm land to a factory enterprise in a region of North Hamkyung province, so that laborers could farm themselves.

Laborers earning farming rights submit 10~30% to the enterprise factory and after giving 10% to the country, can use the rest themselves.

In Hoiryeong recently, an event took place where laborers gave an allotment of their production materials to enterprises and to the nation, but the government made up “provision documents” regarding the remainder of the production, which was for private use, as “national provision.”

These were fake provisions, not actual food provisions to the laborers. If true, this is no different than the North Korean government embezzling the undeniable private property of laborers who are paying national taxes and have paid farming fees.

As if there were not enough taxes and fees to go around, the government makes up a couple extra more fees out of thin air in order to confiscate some more property. That’s feudalism disguised as communism at its best.