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Category: Activism

February 28, 2014

Please attend next Wednesday: House Foreign Affairs Committee to host event on U.N. Commission report

On March 5th at 3 p.m., the House Foreign Affairs Committee will hold an event with a panel discussion featuring leaders of prominent human rights NGOs, including Greg Scarlatoiu, Executive Director of the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, and Human Rights Watch. The Federation of Korean Associations in the U.S.A. will also participate — they’ve emerged as strong and highly effective advocates for the North Korea Sanctions Enforcement Act this year. Also present will be Suzanne Scholte, head...

Categories Activism/Human Rights/U.S. Politics
December 4, 2013

Upcoming Events: “The Defector” Screenings, and EAHR’s online round table

I’D PREVIOUSLY POSTED ABOUT two new documentaries about how the real North Korea — the one behind the facade — is changing. One of these, The Defector, will be screened this week at two separate events in Washington. If you’re in the area, I hope you can make it. I OWE AN APOLOGY to the European Alliance for Human Rights in North Korea, which asked me to post about their online seminar on advocating for human rights in North Korea,...

Categories Activism/Books & Films
October 25, 2013

Genius: HRNK’s Project ChocoPie

A Message from HRNK: Join Us for Project Choco Pie Dear Friends, Thank you for supporting HRNK’s mission to promote human rights in North Korea. For 65 years, North Korea has been theheart of darkness, under the three-generation rule of the Kim regime. In the 1990s, as millions starved, North Korea’s leadership spent billions on nukes and ballistic missiles. Despite the regime’s crackdown, small, but resilient markets have since developed, fending off another famine. The smuggled South Korean choco pie has become the symbol of North Korea’s...

Categories Activism
August 12, 2013

The Daily NK: Keeping the promises that the Sunshine Policy couldn’t

In a land of scarcity, North Korea’s scarcest commodity is truth, and it is truth that is transforming North Korea.  In the last ten years, North Korea’s death-grip on the flow of food, consumer goods, and information across its borders was fractured, and probably for good.  This change is enormously consequential to how we ought to approach North Korea.  Even as inter-governmental “Sunshine” and engagement failed decisively–and probably exacerbated North Korea’s brutality–market-based engagement and information flows have been profoundly transformative....

Categories Activism/Media Criticism
January 30, 2013

The Whole World Is Watching

Since I started this blog nearly ten years ago, I’ve had one primary objective — to do my small part to make it impossible for people with more influence than me to ignore North Korea’s crimes against humanity.  This week, for the first time, this quixotic campaign does not seem like such an exercise in futility.  Today, everyone on earth seems to be talking about Google maps and satellite imagery of concentration camps in North Korea, even posting fake “reviews”...

Categories Activism/Human Rights/The Camps
December 4, 2012

An Idealist’s Apology

It’s not easy for me to admit this, but I saw a lot of myself in Mike Deri Smith’s story: After I finished the book, I couldn’t stop thinking about the prisoners Shin left behind in the gulag. I’d be standing at the meat counter at the supermarket choosing between the highest quality lamb, steak, pork, and chicken, and I would remember the rat meat that helped keep children alive in the camp, and the undigested corn kernels they pulled...

Categories Activism
April 3, 2012

Rising attention on North Korea’s prison camps

A few years ago, I spent what felt like an hour or two on Skype with The Washington Post‘s Blaine Harden, sharing and explaining satellite imagery of North Korea’s prison camp system. No doubt, Harden talked to plenty of other people, too, and the result was an excellent report and interactive graphic about the camps. A few months later, Harden turned over the Post‘s North Korea coverage to Chico Harlan, and now we know why. Harden went on sabbatical to...

Categories Activism/Human Rights/The Camps
March 20, 2012

Demonstrations Today at the White House & Chinese Embassy

It’s probably too late to save 31 North Korean men, women, and children whom China is believed to have repatriated to North Korea this month, in flagrant violation of the U.N. Refugee Convention and its 1968 Protocol, both of which China signed. China committed this crime against humanity with malice aforethought and with characteristic arrogance, and despite a modest but rising protest movement in South Korea against the repatriations. We can only speculate as to the fate of these 31...

Categories Activism/Human Rights/Refugees
February 21, 2012

Entertainers Join Effort to “Save My Friend,” South Korean Lawmaker Launches Hunger Strike

Across the street from the Chinese Embassy in Seoul today was a busy place.  At 2 p.m. South Korean National Assemblywoman Park Sun Young of the Liberty Forward Party launched a hunger strike (I took the photo above around 5:40 p.m.). In a statement on Tuesday, Park said she plans to launch an “indefinite” hunger strike in front of the Chinese embassy in Seoul to protest the forced repatriation of North Korean defectors by China. “At this very moment, China...

Categories Activism/China/Human Rights/Refugees
February 19, 2012

North Korean Refugees in China in Grave Danger of Repatriation

Update 2 (2/20): In addition to the letter to the Chinese government in the original post below that you can email, fax, or mail, there’s an online petition to the UNHCR and the UN Special Rapporteur that you can sign that’s rapidly collected almost 25,000 signatures. I also just read a related email sent on behalf of several groups saying that a) they’re on Twitter @savemyfriend (in Korean and English) and Facebook and b) are gathering across from the Chinese...

Categories Activism/China/Human Rights/Refugees
December 7, 2011

December 10, 2011 – Citizens’ Rally and Walk on Behalf of the Daughter of Tongyeong

From NKnet: On Saturday, December 10* in Seoul join South Korean citizens who have been walking 680km to rescue the Daughter of Tongyeong and her two daughters from imprisonment in North Korea for over 20 years. Performances “¢ Elec-Cookie “¢ Traditional Martial Arts Performance “¢ Modern Dance Performance “¢ NB Crew (B-Boy group) “¢ A Song for Abductees ““ sung by singer Lee Kwang Pil “¢ Answer (North Korean Song Troupe) “¢ Ha-Ha-Ho-Ho (Brass Ensemble) Ongoing during the day “¢...

Categories Activism/Human Rights/The Camps
December 4, 2011

December 9th, 2011 – Worldwide Demonstration Protesting Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity in North Korea

Seoul-based Korean-American activist Kang Hun-Sok, who was introduced to me online by a trusted friend, asks for my assistance in getting the word out about a coordinated series of demonstrations next week. I’m glad to do so, and hope that other bloggers out there will do the same. Mr. Kang’s press release follows: ===================================== This is an international call to protest on December 9th, 2011, 63rd anniversary of the United Nations Genocide Convention which North Korea is violating in every...

Categories Activism/Human Rights
May 25, 2011

Defectors Accuse North Korea of Killing Handicapped Kids

I have no way of knowing whether reports like this can be true, but one thing I can say with confidence is that the U.N. High Commission for Human Rights, Mary Robinson, and Jimmy Carter will not demand an independent investigation to find out: Free North Korea Radio, run by North Korean defectors, reported last Tuesday on the murderous acts toward disabled children by the country’s own government. Disabled children who are born in the city of Pyongyang are taken...

Categories Activism/Human Rights/The Camps
May 10, 2011

Committee for Human Rights in N. Korea to Release Report on Abductions

I’ll simply post the press release and let it speak for itself: Committee for Human Rights in North Korea 1725 Eye (I) Street, NW “¢ Suite 300 “¢ Washington, DC 20006 “¢ (202) 349-3830 www.hrnk.org PRESS RELEASE ****For Immediate Release**** On Thursday, the Washington-based bipartisan Committee for Human Rights in North Korea will release an extraordinary report, “TAKEN! North Korea’s Criminal Abduction of Citizens of Other Countries. The report, three years in the making, is based on numerous sources never...

Categories Abductions/Activism/Anju Links/Human Rights
May 7, 2011

Too Little, Too Late, But Better than Nothing: Amnesty International on North Korea’s Political Prison Camps

Six years after it breathlessly declared Guantanamo Bay “the gulag of our time,” Amnesty International has gotten around to concluding that North Korea “can no longer deny the undeniable:” “These are places out of sight of the rest of the world, where almost the entire range of human rights protections that international law has tried to set up for last 60 years are ignored. “As North Korea seems to be moving towards a new leader in Kim Jong-un and a...

Categories Activism/Human Rights/The Camps
May 3, 2011

Learn about North Korean Human Rights Crisis at JFNK Volunteer Orientation

For those of you in Korea, if you don’t know much about the human rights crisis that is North Korea (and spilling into China and South Korea) and/or if you want to learn how to get involved, there’s a great opportunity for you this Saturday in English or next Saturday in Korean (please encourage your Korean friends. coworkers, students to attend!). I volunteer with Justice for North Korea, and we’re holding our third round of informational orientation sessions for volunteers...

Categories Activism/Defectors/Human Rights/Refugees