As a great champion of socialism — in its global, historical, not strictly contemporary Western European variety — on initial viewing, it would seem obvious he is not a champion of “Korean Unification” for both North and South — but unification of the South by the North. Every indication these b#$@#$% so frequently puke up is there — attacking American “imperialism”, attacking South Korea for its infringement of human rights, always coupled with defending the North from criticism of its gross violations of them.

The fact that chooses to live in the United States means little. Bill Ayers considered himself a true American even when he was openly calling himself a terrorist against its government and a leader in a group that envisioned the need to put tens of millions of his fellow Americans in “reeducation camps” once the great socialist revolution he was helping spearhead became successful. All societies have tools living within them…

At least Bill Ayers was acting back then in a time period significantly different from our own today.

Give the evolution social anthropology has been able to witness since the start of the 20th Century, especially the unavoidable recognitions since the end of the Cold War, — and specifically in Korea’s case – since the growth in technology in peering into the North and the collecting of stories from people who made it out of the North or who send information out of the North — people like this are beyond contemptible.

I’d really like to put them in a room together with North Korean refugees or gulag survivors and watch them tell that group they are wrongheaded and just too simple to understand the bigger picture and how Pyongyang is just trying to do what is best for all Koreans – North and South…

Then again, it’s New York, so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.

Nice lawn in that palace, though.

Most South Koreans and Korean-Americans would disagree with that view. They know too well how valuable the US is to South Korea.

I don’t think that John Choe is advocating that either, otherwise he would not be a US resident running for public office in America. He seems to be someone who is opposed to America taking military action against North Korea. That sentiment is shared by many Korean-Americans.

But I can understand your outrage.

I read the writings on the Nodutdol website, and they seem very leftist and anti-US military, but their views are not that different from many anti-war leftist groups in America.

I don’t think it’s right to characterize John Choe as a neo-Nazi, because he doesn’t seem to be a holocaust denier. His group, Nodutdol, seems to be mainly interested in a peaceful reunion between the two Koreas.

I personally know one guy pretty well who’s well connected with the nodutdol guys and came back from one of those DEEP trips enamoured with North Korea. However, I never got a sense (at least from him) that he was defending the regime for its well documented ills: for instance, he acknowledges the existence of the prison camps and also visited northeast China to get the “other side” of the story and has willingly participated and volunteered in many of our own awareness raising events, despite the fact that the North Korean regime is usually painted in shades of brown organic matter, which is due to the fact that we are an advocacy group on behalf of North Korean refugees and human rights.

Of course, there’s a far, far left bent to his thinking (heavily criticizing American and South Korean governments as well) but in the end, he’s what I’d term an “equal opportunity” critic. But then again, we Canadians are more open minded than you Yanks.

In his glowing description of the misunderstood North Korean utopia juxtaposed with the condemnation of South Korea’s past militarist regimes, I saw hints of Cumings’s irrational reputation-saver, Korea’s Place In the SUn, where alleged atrocities committed by US or ROK troops are laid out in painstaking detail — in a way that assumes the worst accusations must be true — while North Korea’s far more egregious atrocities are given short shrift.

I can understand someone wanting to un-mystify and de-demonize a people, such as the citizenry of North Korea, but that does not justify apologism for such a regime.