North Korea Gossip: Gulag Closes, Kim’s Aunt Sick?

This was the week North Korea watchers thought Kim Jong Eun would show that he’s up to more than just visiting amusement parks and military bases. Instead of a groundbreaking (or even mildly interesting) meeting of the Supreme People’s Assembly, a flurry of intriguing reports and rumors have emerged from Pyongyang this week, including the closure of one of its hideous gulags.

The most credible of these reports is about the progress of the renewed construction of Pyongyang’s biggest eyesore,  the 105-story Ryugyong Hotel. Pictures inside the building were taken on Sunday by staffers from Beijing-based Koryo Tours. See the slideshow.

The hotel was started in the 1980s with the idea that it would be finished for global festival North Korea hosted in 1989. But only the concrete shell was done and it sat for more than 20 years without much work done on it.

Then, in 2007, reportedly as part of a deal that allowed it to build a cellphone network in North Korea, Egypt’s Orascom conglomerate built a cement plant in Pyongyang and went to work finishing the hotel. Last year, workers finished enclosing the structure in glass.

In a newsletter to customers, Koryo Tours said it may be two or three more years before the hotel is opened.

A still slightly shaky report – but believable enough given the track record of the Web site – is that North Korea has closed one of its nefarious prison camps. Indeed, it is the biggest one in geographic size, Camp 22, in the far northeast near a city called Hoeryeong not far from the China border.

The site, Daily NK, says it’s been tracking down the rumor for months that the camp was shut down in June after the warden who ran it and another officer fled to China. A source told the defector-staffed news site said, “At the start of March they started transferring the sick and malnourished, and then in April they moved all the healthiest ones.” But the source said it’s unclear where the prisoners went.

Camp 22, at 31 miles long and 20 miles wide, was the largest of the six remaining giant gulags in North Korea. It is believed to have held up to 50,000 people, though its population went down in recent years.

And even shakier are the rumors that have been flying in South Korea for the past few days about the health of Kim Kyong Hui, the sister of Kim Jong Il who has played an important role in the transition of power in North Korea.

Ms. Kim, who is 66 years old, was not present at Tuesday’s meeting of the Supreme People’s Assembly. Some rumors have said she was taken to Singapore for some type of emergency treatment.

Ms. Kim has appeared in ill health in some photos over the past few years. But following her brother’s death, she has frequently been seen on public outings with her nephew, North Korea’s new dictator Kim Jong Eun. In July, she was visible in a picture of Mr. Kim riding a new rollercoaster.

Ms. Kim’s husband is Jang Song Thaek, who led a delegation of North Korean officials on a trip to China in August and serves on the powerful National Defense Commission with Mr. Kim. Both Ms. Kim and Mr. Jang were given military titles in 2010, the same time Kim Jong Eun was revealed to the North Korean public as his father’s likely successor.

Since the 1980s, Ms. Kim’s publicly-identified role was affiliated with the Light Industry Department of the ruling Workers’ Party, which included the regime’s tobacco, narcotics and currency counterfeiting operations.