Andy Jackson, a/k/a The Flying Yangban, has graciously agreed to liveblog the events leading up to and including the Freedom House Seoul conference here, at this site, starting this very night.

If you’re not familiar with his work at The Marmot’s Hole or his own site, Andy is an instructor at Ansan College in the Seoul burbs, where he is very actively involved with LiNK. On that note, I regret not having linked this post of his sooner; sounds like they are really taking the battle into “enemy” territory. Given the violent tendencies of South Korea’s extreme left, which has a strong presence on college campuses, that takes no small amount of physical courage.

I consider it a major “get” to have Andy guest-blogging here; he’s the closest thing you can get to an “OFK East.” Welcome! We’re looking forward reading to your posts. Now all we need is a volunteer for Brussels next year. . . .

Speaking of enemy territory, Yonsei University has recently gained a reputation as being one of Seoul’s more violent protest venues. As a soldier, not knowing this, I walked all over the area in search of Ewha girls and never ran into any trouble, but then again, I wasn’t there to talk politics. U.S. Ambassador Alexander Vershbow was:

Around a dozen students who said they were the student organization of the left-leaning Democratic Labor Party staged a protest outside the hall. One held a placard that read, “Alexander, do you dare say we are ‘friends’?”

Vershbow, who has no working experience in Korea, said some people warned him in advance of radical Korean students. But he said once he met them, he found they respect diversity and are capable of making up their own mind. He added he was aware of how movements led by Korean students contributed to the country’s democratization.

Kudos to Vershbow for having the vision and guts to do this. The man is going to turn me into a fan, particularly if he keeps talking like this:

Vershbow reiterated several times that North Korea’s human rights problem must be addressed alongside the nuclear dispute. The envoy said “many efforts” were being made to include Korean in a visa waiver program, which was brought up at the Korea-U.S. summit on Nov.17, but this would take time.

It would have been nice of the Chosun Ilbo to give us more specifics about what he really said, but what’s encouraging is that someone is taking on the Fronks, right on their home turf. I wonder if the riot police broke with tradition and actually entered the campus grounds. Either way, I bet the place had more than its usual armed camp look.

Vershbow also had some interesting comments on Seoul’s Iraq announcement, which you can read for yourself.

Our Message at Their Doors. Adrian Hong addresses a crowd of supporters in front of the Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade here–in Korean.

The things I’ve heard from many sources tell me that the Freedom House Conference in Seoul could be a galvanizing event. As with FH’s conference in DC last summer (see sidebar links), I have no doubt that LiNK will play a major role. The political stars are also starting to line up our way. Early indications suggest that the GNP–despite, or perhaps because of, its opportunistic leadership–is picking up on the potential of this message.

Even the Democratic Labor Party is starting to search its soul (via Antti Leppänen’s superb but unpronounceable blog, which I should have blogrolled months ago).

The party (DLP) needs to have a discussion and formulate an opinion on the questions of the return of kidnapped fishermen, human rights of North Korean refugees, workers’ rights, democracy, and the DPRK political system. These are issues which no more shall be avoided on the pretext of causing discomfort to DPRK.

Imagine that. It’s almost a better ideological fit with the Kim Moon-Soo wing of the GNP than the paleocons it’s offering up for the next election.

Expect strange things to happen in Korean politics in 2006.

On this side of the Pacific, the news is less encouraging. What follows is another Washington leak to OFK, one which must remain without attribution. My source is extremely well-placed to comment on the matters of which he informs me. I wish I could say how well placed.

Why, some of us want to know, has the North Korean Human Rights Act lodged in the State Department’s windpipe? Why, over a year after the bill was signed into law, does an executive agency that’s nominally answerable to the President of the United States fail to accept North Korean refugees who knock at the embassy gates? I specifically cite Section 303 of the North Korean Human Rights Act of 2004, which is now binding law:

The Secretary of State shall undertake to facilitate the submission of applications under section 207 of the Immigration and Nationality Act [meaning, asylum applications] (8 U.S.C. 1157) by citizens of North Korea seeking protection as refugees (as defined in section 101(a)(42) of such Act (8 U.S.C. 1101(a)(42)).

In plain English, that means that our embassies violate federal law if they fail to “facilitate” asylum applications at our embassies abroad. Yet Tim Peters not only informs me that our embassies are refusing to take these refugees, he’s said the same to Congress under oath, and he has it on film, thanks to CNN. One overseas ambassador, so another source tells me, went so far as to seek legal advice from Foggy Bottom as to how to interpret the law. He was told in no uncertain terms not to ask again.

What do I conclude? State is doing its damnedest not to comply with the law. Who in this administration has the juice to make that happen? Somewhere, a Keyzer Soze must be at work.

My source tells me that Keyzer Soze is one Nicholas Burns, a career State Department official who held a prominent role–State Department spokesman–during the Clinton Administration. Burns, my source tells me, wants to get us to Agreed Framework II, which is the diplomatic equivalant of wanting to make Gigli II. Here is some info from Burns’s official bio:

Ambassador R. Nicholas Burns is the Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, the Department of State’s third ranking official. Appointed by President Bush, he was confirmed by the U.S. Senate on March 17, 2005 and was sworn into office by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. As Under Secretary, he oversees U.S. policy in each region of the world and serves in the senior career Foreign Service position at the Department.

Prior to his current assignment, Ambassador Burns was the United States Permanent Representative to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. As Ambassador to NATO, he headed the combined State-Defense Department U.S. Mission to NATO at a time when the Alliance committed to new missions in Iraq,
Afghanistan and the global war against terrorism, and accepted seven new members.

From 1997 to 2001, Ambassador Burns was U.S. Ambassador to Greece. During his tenure as Ambassador, the U.S. expanded its military and law enforcement cooperation with Greece, strengthened our partnership in the Balkans, increased trade and investment and people-to-people programs.

From 1995 to 1997, Ambassador Burns was Spokesman of the Department of State and Acting Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs for Secretary of State Warren Christopher and Secretary Madeleine Albright. In this position, he gave daily press conferences on U.S. foreign policy issues, accompanied both Secretaries of State on all their foreign trips and coordinated all of the Department’s public outreach programs.

Mr. Burns, a career Senior Foreign Service Officer, served for five years (1990-1995) on the National Security Council staff at the White House. He was Special Assistant to President Clinton and Senior Director for Russia, Ukraine, and Eurasia Affairs. He had lead responsibility in the White House for advising the President on all aspects of U.S. relations with the fifteen countries of the former Soviet Union.

Under President George H.W. Bush, he was Director for Soviet (and then Russian) Affairs. During this time, he attended all U.S. ““ Soviet summits and numerous other international meetings and specialized on economic assistance issues, U.S. ties with Russia and Ukraine, and relations with the Baltic countries. He was a member of the Department’s Transition Team in 1988, and served as Staff Officer in the Department’s Operations Center and Secretariat in 1987-1988.

My source says that Burns doesn’t want our State Department taking any actions that would unduly offend Kim Jong Il, such as taking in refugees, or letting any pesky part-time Special Envoy muck it all up with unpleasant remarks about investigating infanticides, concentration camps, or gas chambers. Hence, we hear relatively little from Lefkowitz, and shouldn’t expect to hear much more of consequence. Just to be sure–according to a different source–State has placed individuals sympathetic to the Burns world view in Lefkowitz’s office . . . to better keep him inside the range of his electronic ankle bracelet.

Congress is impatient about the progress of legislation it supported overwhelmingly. That overwhelming–make that unanimous–support certainly includes some strong proponents of “engagement,” whatever that means–Tom Lantos and Jim Leach, to name two. This should not be a political issue, but it has become one.

Whether Nick Burns is the Keyzer Soze of this plot is a matter beyond my personal knowledge, but my source harbored no doubts and volunteered the information. My own research adds nothing to either discredit or support what my source tells me, and frankly, given that Burns’s primary function in recent years has been to toe the official line, I’m unsurprised by that. You can’t be a very effective spokesman if your personal views are public knowledge.

If this is in fact true, what really astonishes me the most? That five years into this presidency, we still have a quasi-Clinton State Department, one so dedicated to the discredited policies of the previous administration that it’s willing to flout a federal statute to get us there.

Again, I must note that this isn’t the ex-Prez, but a popular South Korea columnist with a similar-sounding name.

The core of the Roh Moo-hyun administration consists of people who protested loudly at human rights abuses in the decades when South Korea was a desert in that regard. Many young men and women in those days were beaten during demonstrations, arrested while escaping, some tortured, and a few of them died.

That earned the survivors the decoration they carry on their chests today. The prime minister and other leaders of the administration brag about it now, as who should say, “Where were you when we languished in prison?” and, “Who are you to criticize, when you never said a word then?” What underpins their hold on power today is a national sense that they should be rewarded for the courage with which they protested against the suppression of human rights and fought against the dogmatism and undemocratic practices of the oppressor.

If they gained power, many citizens believed, they would display an unusual sense of mission to improve and safeguard human rights. The government is betraying that trust. It is blind, dumb and speechless to the human rights situation in North Korea.

I think you see where he’s going there.

The greatest moral crime of the abstention is that it crushes any nascent resistance forces in the North. The desperate efforts of the North Koreans to recover the minimum rights to subsistence and living free from the threat of incarceration in concentration camps and public execution have been dealt a terrible blow by Seoul’s abstention. It calls the very legitimacy of the Roh government into question.

True, except for the last sentence. Governments I don’t happen to have much use for–and Roh’s is surely one–don’t lack for legitimacy simply because they make bad decisions. The government was duly and fairly elected; ergo, it’s legitimate. The fact that it’s likely thoroughly infiltrated with Friends of North Korea (FRONKs) and ordinary idiots–and yes, I mean you, Chung Dong-Young–is an issue for the voters.

‘Diplomacy, Korean Style.’ I can’t write a better headline than the Chosun Ilbo, which fills in some details on the Korean government’s Iraq announcement.

At a summit with the Korean president in Gyeongju last Thursday, U.S. President George W. Bush thanked Korea for its dispatch to Iraq of over 3,000 troops, and described it as an expression of Korea-U.S. friendship. The very next day, however, the plan to curtail the unit by 1,000 troops was decided in a discussion between the ruling party and the Defense Ministry, and reported in the press.

“The announcement came a day after Bush met with South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun in the South Korean city of Gyeongju, where Bush thanked Roh for the Korean contribution, saying its goal was to “˜help democracy flourish,’” the Washington Post wrote.

Knowing those additional facts, if I had to guess–and I just have to–I’d say that someone in the ROK government deliberately leaked this with the intention of embarassing the POTUS.

Newt: We’re Ready to Leave, Whenever You Ask. Perhaps not a related item, but only perhaps–I heard Newt Gingrich on Fox News yesterday, saying that we should withdraw from Iraq when and only when its democratic government says it is ready for us to leave. Then he quite gratuitously veered off-topic to say the same about South Korea. It’s hard to say how much influence Newt has over anything today, but who would have imagined this extent of conservative anger at South Korea even five years ago?

The conservatives are the alliance’s base of political support. Without them, the alliance is politically unsustainable. To put it another way: would you stake the survival of your nation on the hawkish resolve of Nancy Pelosi?

One of my sillier ideas, but one that always seems to get a good reception from American listeners, is the idea of the United States unilaterally–without even telling the South Korean government in advance–publicly demanding that South Korea hold a national referendum on the alliance. The United States would promise to respect a “nay” vote, although we should never yield to a foreign nation the “right” to be protected by our armed forces.

Mary Robinson was the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights from 1997 to 2001, during the height of the Great North Korean Famine, while China flagrantly violated the U.N. Convention on Refugees to keep the starving millions outside its borders. While millions more died in a famine that was certainly preventable, but for the diversion of North Korea’s coffers to higher priorities. While North Korean concentration camps filled to the brim with families whose children had to the temerity to ask for another dollop of gruel, where was Mary?

At best, the famine was mass murder by criminal negligence. At worst, it was political cleansing by famine, which is certainly what you might think after reading this statement by the NGO Refugees International:

Members of the “hostile class” and residents of areas deliberately cut off from international food assistance have an especially strong case to be considered refugees in the sense of fleeing targeted political persecution. . . . Not since Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge has a government succeeded in creating such an all-encompassing reality of oppression and restrictions on the basic rights of the majority of its citizens.

You can read more here, if you’re so inclined. If you’re a regular here, you’ve seen it all a hundred times. Conclusive evidence may have to wait for the trial. Mary Robinson will not be on the witness list. Prove me wrong. Nor will she sit in the dock for dereliction of duty; accountability isn’t a strong point of the United Nations. One day, future generations of North Koreans stunted by malnutrition and scarred by bereavement will ask: “Where was Mary?”

I actually looked. I searched for all of Mary Robinson’s statements about the horrors in North Korea, the worst human rights violations that occurred during her tenure, the worst of which took place on her watch. What I found could meet the space limitations for a classified ad for a used car. Here it is:

“It is most important that we recognize that if they are forced to return, their situation is extremely serious. . . .”

I don’t mean to sound completely unappreciative. They’re nice words, all two dozen or so of them. Especially the last two. Those really pack some wallop. Not quite “the gulag of our time,” but she certainly manages to convey how truly inconvenient it all must be (not mentioning, probably for the sake of politeness, the part about the cables, the electric cattle prods, the high-voltage fences, or the hunger strikes, or where those people ended up). Of the latter, of course, there are many things of which we can’t be sure, but one is that no one gains much weight there.

The parts about killing the racially impure babies and sticking whole families into gas chambers are unverified, of course. And to be fair, those revelations (like the Gitmo vitriol, and more on that in a moment) came after the end of Mary Robinson’s tenure. But of the famine and the camps, we knew. Not that Mary Robinson ever tried to sent in a delegation to inspect them . . . nor had anyone else at the U.N., until Vitit Muntarbhorn’s appointment. In 2004. I hear the one on Srebrenica is due out any day.

But better late than never. Except for those two million dead, of course. When North Korea’s millions were dying, where was Mary? Mary was doing other things, some noble, some not-so-noble. The least noble is the passion that consumes her to this day–the crusade to make Iraq safe for fascism. Which brings me to why I’m writing this post today:

Iraq war weakens US human rights clout: Robinson

The old hypocrimeter being finely tuned, gears whirred smoothly and spat out this:

Robinson Legacy Weakens Justification for U.N. High Commision for Human Rights

Mary Robinson, who said and did next to nothing for the people of North Korea while two million people were starved to death on her watch, who would prefer that Abu Ghraib was still a safe place to sever tongues, hands, and heads, now wants you to tremble before her moral authority. And she wields her mighty sword of justice on whose behalf? Refugees in Darfur? The displaced of Zimbabwe? Those whose votes were stolen from them in Egypt or Azerbaijan? Nope, nope, and nope.

She wields it for him. You were thinking, perhaps, the one on the right? Nope again. Says Mary:

Robinson . . . said she hoped that what followed would be analysis of how Congress acquiesced so easily to a war where “the poor, beleaguered people of Iraq are not better off.”

Not better off? Not better off than what? Than this, does she mean? Now, really–what exactly did Mary Robinson do for these people on her watch? When the four hundred thousands stood at the edge of Saddam’s mass graves, screaming out the last breath in their souls, where was Mary?

Mary was fighting her hardest to make sure it would all go on until the end of Uday’s natural life span.

That, dear readers, encapsulates what I despise about the United Nations. An institution that cannot even define evil certainly tends to attract a certain type of person. The type of person for whom objective values mean nothing, and dry, valueless, and deeply corrupt bureaucratic procedure means everything. No system of laws can succeed without orderly procedure, of course. In that regard, much can be said for the kind of accountability that the U.N. lacks. But procedure without a sense of justice is a formula no despot ever met and didn’t love.

None of this is to say that the United States should be above criticism when it errs–as it surely has. What it does say is that the sincerity of one’s commitment to liberal values is fairly judged by the sincerity and efficacy of one’s own words, actions, and options offered in their defense.

Photo: The U.N. “safe area” of Srebrenica, after U.N. troops threw down their weapons, and just moments before the killings began

Even deeper than this lies the question of how one can at once denounce evil without possessing the capacity to recognize it and arrange it into a rational moral perspective. Lives and priorities are finite, after all. If one chooses to disregard greater evils in favor of emphasizing lesser ones, that person’s recognition is called into question. If one chooses to attack what was, in the Iraqi case, the only realistic means for ending a greater evil, then the speaker’s moral authority is called into question as well.

North Korea and Iraq are thus just two truths that prove the lie that the “global human rights community” is really motivated by a sincere concern about human rights. Their apathy over real modern-day outrages compels us to look further to find their true motivations. I would not begrudge Mary Robinson or her friends who denounce the “gulag of our time” from on high if it weren’t for the fact that real gulags are a moral blind spot for them.

Were it not so, I might even listen to them.

“It was not a legitimate war and I am glad that more and more people, including President Carter, are coming out to say so.”

Yes, Jimmy Carter–that great national spokesman, that EKG of the American political pulse. Jimmy Carter, that legend of American politics. Like Ramsey Clark, only with a foundation and without (one can only hope) the membership card from the National Lawyers’ Guild. Speaking of which, does anyone remember when the boys from the Guild came back from Pyongyang and said this?

We were struck by the design of the DPRK criminal justice system. We even found in a bookstore the Criminal Procedures Act of the DPRK in English. Several principles seem quite progressive and reflect more of restorative justice, than retributive justice. The prime objective of the criminal justice system is rehabilitation or setting an example, not punishment. There is an element of the latter, as there are jail terms for crimes, but this is not the major thrust of their system. In fact, they have codified a process by which those affected by the decision or the conduct of the accused have a real role in the process and those that contributed to the delinquent act or were involved in educating the person (i.e. a parent or friend) have to be available in the process to receive a “lecture” from the court. Penalties include submitting the accused to “social” or “public education. Those arrested are required to have their families notified within 48 hours. A defense counsel is to be provided to represent the rights of the accused.

You may remember that the debate reached NKZone, and it was a tough room over there that day, as it should have been. I was among those who didn’t particularly dig what they had to say.

‘Daddy never loved me; I sure hope he sees this.’ National Lawyers’ Guild’s Sirotkin meets North Korean comrade.

The Guild believes that reports of massive human rights violations in North Korea are “a grand deception” because it didn’t see any. I wonder if they consider this to be another of those striking examples of the DPRK criminal justice system. It’s difficult to think of a more profane misuse of the word “liberal” than to shill for a standard of jurisprudence that that compares unfavorably with the Salem witch trials. It’s difficult to imagine someone making a success of the profession I love with such imperviousness to facts.

Not to mention, such flawed logic. Saying that human rights concerns about North Korea are “grand deceptions” because gulag victims were kept out of the sight of the Lawyers’ Guild is a lot like saying that the crisp mountain air in Bechdesgaden disproves the reports of gassings at Belsen. Also, the Guild’s members, as seasoned trial lawyers, claim magic lie-spotting radar (which stubbornly defies me after 20-odd jury trials, dozens of ex-girlfriends, and two children; good lawyers catch liars through inconsistencies, which can only be developed over time). The same impeccable logic didn’t stop the Guild from calling Gitmo a “concentration camp,” because of all the things that absolutely must be going on there.

Which brings us back to where we left off: Iraq, Gitmo, and the corpulent terrorists who live there. And the paradox of proclaiming liberalism while shielding illiberal killers who proclaim their refusal to coexist with you. Someone has to go, and in a contest between the North Koreans and the Lawyers’ Guild, or between Mary Robinson and Zarqawi, it almost pains me to say that I bet on the Lawyers’ Guild and Mary. Sure, I’d love the Celebrity Death Match. I’d spring for the Pay Per View and the Cheetohs, but it won’t happen. Not because of any resolution they will offer, but because guys like these still go off to war to protect them. I wonder where we find them, and whether we’re worthy of them.

Ladies and gentlemen, here are men who did more for human rights in their too-short lives than a a hundred Mary Robinsons and a thousand Mary Robinson resolutions.

Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.

Thank you, my friends. Thank you, more than I can ever express.

Allow me to persecute Mary Robinson just once more. Note her use of the word “was,” and is “this was not a legitimate war,” which gets me to where I’m going next– away from distractions and non-sequiturs like the significance of who we’re fighting there now, the potential for Iraq to be torn to pieces by Persian and Turkish jackals, or for it to host an Al-Qaeda enclave in its west, within striking range of the world’s oils supply and plotting range of the Capitol South Metro Station. Nor will I speak today of millions of Iraqi refugees held back by Kuwaiti border guards, or crowding the decks of the U.S.S. Blue Ridge as the choppers are rolled off the flight deck and into the Persian Gulf, making room for the next flight from the rooftop of the al-Rasheed. I can imagine all those things, but as I say, they’re mere distractions. The mere consideration of them distracts us from the pursuit of liberal values.

The most urgent debate revolves around what happened over the course of the decade-or-so preceding April 2003, most of which, by my calculation, was known as “the Clinton Administration.” Which suggests that the real objection here is not the truth of the fact asserted–the existence of a number of threats–but the fact that a U.S. president finally had the termity to act on those threats that were universally acknowledged and solemnly declared by our nation’s intelligence agencies. God help him if he had, you know, failed to prevent what anyone capable of reading “My Pet Goat” should have forecast. Retroactively speaking, that is.

Some lingering questions remain about those threats, by the way. The fact that I’m still waiting for Dick Cheney to talk about those supports my personal theory that Karl Rove is substantially less diabolically efficient than the Keyzer Soze figure some have made him out to be.

Of course, maybe all of this is being blown out of proportion by the media’s love for stories that portray the Iraq War’s negative aspects. Already, I can hear you saying it: There he goes again with the media bias. My bad.

So, on the lighter side, did you hear that Kurt Vonnegut is now officially the batty old has-been uncle of American letters?

Vonnegut, 83, has been a strong opponent of Mr Bush and the US-led war in Iraq, but until now has stopped short of defending terrorism.

But in discussing his views with The Weekend Australian, Vonnegut said it was “sweet and honourable” to die for what you believe in, and rejected the idea that terrorists were motivated by twisted religious beliefs.

Remember kids: dissent is ALWAYS patriotic. Got that? Otherwise, I can’t do better here than James Lileks, but hey, who ever can?

Anticipating murder for the glory of God must be an amazing high. Most people understand the emotional motivation that animates these people, but don’t spend much time on it, anymore than they wonder about the joy a child rapist feels when he has the kid in the woods. It’s one thing to consider it; it’s another to luxuriate in your considerations. An amazing high.

Dude. Don’t bogart the Semtex.

If these comments are reported accurately ““ if they didn’t remove the part where he says “nevertheless, they are horrid madmen who willingly slaughter children in the service of a depraved concept of God and human society” ““ then this ought to be a deal-breaker. This ought to be the point where the man is shunned, not feted, and held to account in every subsequent mention of his name and works. As in “Vonnegut, whose early works exposed the madness and nihilism of war, would later support the “˜sweet and honourable’ nature of men who set off nailbombs in public squares in the name of the organization that killed 3,000 Americans on 9/11. But this will be regarded as nothing more than a beloved old uncle letting off a fart at a wedding and grinning widely when people turn around.

So it goes. See you in hell, Kurt. Susan Sontag booked you a space.