Greetings!

Thank you for finding this letter worth your time. I’m writing to you as the president of Korean Church Coalition (KCC) on behalf of suffering North Koreans in China. You may have already heard about the political and economic fiasco in North Korea that killed over 3 million people in the past 20 years. In North Korea, leaving to another country is punishable as treason, yet many risk their lives to escape to China in search of food. To their dismay, the Communist government in China does not consider them refugees. They are sent back to North Korea upon arrest, where they are imprisoned and tortured for betraying their Supreme Leader. There are over 300,000 North Korean refugees in China who face daily threats of repatriation, sex trafficking and distortion of wages. Sex trafficking is particularly rampant in China as decades of its One-Child policy resulted in a drastic shortage of women. Despite such hostility, North Koreans continue to cross the border to escape starvation. China is their only way out. There are countries willing to admit North Koreans as refugees, yet North Koreans cannot reach those countries if the Chinese government does not grant them safe passages.

Last July at West Lawn of U.S. Capitol, KCC held a rally for “Let My People Go” Banner and Resolution Campaign asking China to free North Korean refugees before 2008 Beijing Olympics. Since the rally, we have been asking the church and synagogue leaders and humanitarian organizations to display our banner and the bumper stickers. Would you please join us in this endeavor? Please lend us your heart and your wall spaces for the freedom of our brothers and sisters in North Korea. They are choosing life, however harsh it may be, over dying of hunger. And we want to be heard as the voice of the voiceless in restoring their basic human rights.

Sincerely,

Rev. Peter I. Sohn
President, Korean Church Coalition

Korean Church Coalition, 18700 Harvard Ave, Bldg.B Irvine, 92612
letmypeoplego@gmail.com (949) 854-4010

So, how will the authorities deal with it?

If the story about them banning the Bible from the Olympic village is true, then it would seem like the Chinese government is going to fool itself into believing it can control the foreigners and global media coming for the games like it does its own people —- that all it needs to do is tighten up and crack down…

Normally, I’d say that is a fool’s game – you can’t shut them up like that — but since Google, Yahoo, and other info tech groups have gone out of their way to please China over the past decade – helping the Chinese government stifle the flow of information to the Chinese people – I do have some doubts about whether the Chinese government going strong arm (if it goes strong arm) will create the usual backlash in the world community.

Another direction they could go would be to allow the protests and protest stunts to happen and react to them in an ethical somewhat ho-hum fashion —- take the high road — with an eye on cracking down on any internal influence such a temporary inflow of foriegners and foreign protest people might bring with them in the short term.

I haven’t been seeing much about China and the Olympics……so right now, my uninformed gut feeling is that the world community by and large will ignore China’s connection to any geopolitics.

As you noted, the Bush administration has decided the best policy is to play nice with North Korea and get what compliance with agreements it can. I can’t imagine it will decide to pick a fight with China on some other issue either…

Next year will also be a presidential election year in the US — and that will do much to dampen the media and world’s enthusiasm for championing the oppressed in China or bashing China over foreign policy: meaning – bashing China will be viewed as supporting the “neocons” in the US, and that is something even the American press will not want to do in 2008 – even if it means choosing to ignore any significant, negative items concerning China….

I tend to expect the global media will decide that “the Olympics are a non-political, time-honored tradition” and things like North Korean refugees or Tibet can be talked about at another time….(like once the election is over in the US)….