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Category: Human Rights

February 28, 2006

Korea’s ‘Arbeit Macht Frei’ Bubble

This week, several new reports, chiefly those from the New York Times and the LA Times, describe a journalists’ group tour of the Kaesong Industrial Park, possibly the only place on earth where the spirits of P.T. Barnum(*) and Lavrenti Beria cohabitate. A Paradise Within a (Worker’s) Paradise In North Korea, a nation that is essentially one vast open-air prison, Kaesong is the new prison laundry — a relatively cushier, marginally less despotic part of the institution into which you...

Categories Appeasement/Human Rights/Inside NK/NK Economics/North Korea
February 26, 2006

The NYT: Coming to a Supermarket Checkout Near You

If you’d like a case-in-point in media bias, look no further than this NYT piece on Christian human rights activists for North Korea by Norimitsu Onishi. There is plenty of good North Korea coverage at the Times, most of it written by James Brooke and David Sanger, but seldom by Onishi, who tends to write puff pieces about social trends and other more superficial matters. Part of Onishi’s problem is that he may be somewhat out of his league, but...

Categories Abductions/Activism/Defectors/Human Rights/Media Criticism/North Korea/Refugees
February 26, 2006

What Ban Would Bring to the U.N., and to His Party

The U.N.: No Values Necessary What could say more about what’s wrong with the United Nations when a candidate for its top post – an experienced diplomat – would say this publicly? “I don’t think a specific issue like North Korean human rights has a direct connection to the bid for the UN secretary-general’s seat,” Ban told reporters. Asked by a CBS reporter whether the way the South Korean government handles human rights conditions in North Korea could hurt his...

Categories An Alliance?/Appeasement/Asia/China/China & Korea/Diplomacy/Human Rights/Korean Politics/Uncategorized
February 25, 2006

True to Form, World Food Program Caves in to NK Demands

When she’s not exposing the U.N.’s corruption, Claudia Rosett is exposing its general fecklessness and worthlessness on matters of substance. Ms. Rosett’s favorite case-in-point is North Korea, where she nails – dead-on – what’s wrong with the World Food Program’s approach to feeding the hungry. North Korea, unrestrained by any regard for the lives of its less-privileged citizens, pushes for more control over the food and less U.N. monitoring. The U.N. bureaucrats lack the testicular fortitude to push back, go...

Categories Appeasement/Defectors/Diplomacy/Famine & Food Aid/Human Rights/NK Economics/North Korea/Uncategorized
February 22, 2006

Congress Criticizes State Dep’t on NK Refugees

[Updated; scroll down] Thanks to a dedicated group of Congressional staffers who forwarded me a scanned copy, which is signed by members of both parties and both houses. I’m going through WordPress hell trying to publish the entire text, but in the meantime, here’s a scanned copy on the Committee’s site.The executive summary is that Congress believes that State is turning away refugees, thus flouting its unanimous will and throwing away America’s credibility on this issue. Update: OK, full scanned...

Categories Activism/Appeasement/China/China & Korea/Defectors/Diplomacy/Human Rights/Refugees/Southeast Asia/Uncategorized/Washington Views
February 22, 2006

LiNK Benefit March 1st; Win Cool Stuff!

Update and Correction:   I’m officially a bonehead.   I originally and  incorrectly gave today as the date for the event below; in fact, tonight’s event was at  LiNK’s new office.  The event  described below will take place March 1st.  My deepest, most sincere apologies and a cup of coffee on me to anyone who went to the wrong place!   To make matters worse, I dashed this post off before a day of meetings without  Internet access,  so I had...

Categories Activism/China/Defectors/Human Rights/Refugees
February 21, 2006

House Staffer: Congress to Demand Progress on NKHRA Implementation

If historians were both omniscient and judicious, they would record that Doug Anderson was a great friend of the North Korean people. Anderson, a thin, quiet, and precise young lawyer and staffer for Rep. James Leach, never misses a House hearing on North Korea policy. He is also a key behind-the-scenes advocate of more humane treatment for the people North Korea (meaning I’m not sure he’d want this kind of recognition, warranted though it may be). I’ve never heard an...

Categories Human Rights/North Korea/Refugees/Uncategorized/Washington Views
February 21, 2006

A Modest Drumbeat

The Chosun Ilbo and the  Donga Ilbo are looking at their calendars and seeing a slew of events that will further publicize human rights conditions in North Korea.  Will this be the year our nascent movement finally demonstrates some media sophistication? March:  The State Department  will publish its new human rights report (although I don’t have any reason to suspect anything earth-shaking to come of it).  March 23rd:  European Parliament hearings on North Korea; Freedom House conference in Brussels (we’re...

Categories Activism/Appeasement/Europe/Human Rights/Korean Politics/North Korea/Uncategorized/Washington Views
February 19, 2006

Europe Takes Up N.K. Human Rights Mantle

The EU’s human rights dialogue with North Korea’s regime may be predictably “moribund,” but  a new report shows that Europe is outperforming the United States in accepting refugees: Seven European nations have granted asylum to 280 North Korean defectors since the mid-1990s, Radio Free Asia reported on Saturday. RFA said Germany, Britain, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden and Norway gave asylum to 280 out of 700 North Korean refugees who applied there. Germany topped the list, accepting 232 out of...

Categories Defectors/Europe/Human Rights/Korean Politics/North Korea/Refugees
February 19, 2006

When Power Comes from the Wire of a Modem

The Washington Post has a fascinating look at how the Internet forced the Chinese government to retreat – partially – in its censorship of the journal “Freezing Point” (previous posts here). Why didn’t Beijing simply follow Mao’s old “barrel of a gun” formula this time? Because the Chinese economy must sustain sufficiently high growth to absorb a flood of excess laborers from rural areas to preserve social stability, which places China between the Scylla of rising dissent and the Charibdis...

Categories Censorship/China/Geopolitics/Human Rights/NK Economics/WTF?
February 18, 2006

Sec. Rice: Lefkowitz Will Be More Vocal

It’s the latest suggestion that the Administration is less worried than ever about upsetting Kim Jong Il: The United States will have its North Korea human rights envoy become more active in coming days to get more international attention on the issue, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Thursday. “We are going to get him out more,” Rice said at a U.S. House of Representatives International Relations Committee hearing. “We need the rest of the international community to also...

Categories Activism/An Alliance?/Appeasement/Diplomacy/Human Rights/Korean Politics/Refugees/U.S. & Korea/Uncategorized/Washington Views
February 17, 2006

Will U.S. Finally Let in N.K. Refugees?

It’s long past time we did this.  The U.S. government plans to break with long-established policy and start giving asylum to refugees from North Korea. Wording in the 2004 North Korean Human Rights Act that allows it to admit defectors from the Stalinist country has not yet been put into practice due to failure to confirm identities and objections from countries where the refugees were staying. Prominent  activists for human rights in the North – Suzanne Scholte, Jae Ku, and...

Categories Activism/China/China & Korea/Defectors/Diplomacy/Human Rights/North Korea/Refugees/U.S. & Korea/U.S. Law/Uncategorized/Washington Views
February 16, 2006

Defector: NK Cheerleaders Sent to Gulag

Who recalls the days when South Korea’s faith in reunification bordered on an obession – a religion, perhaps?  Nothing was more telling of the North Korean regime’s success at self-popularization in the South than the public swooning over a  squad of North Korean cheerleaders,  despite all the procrustean, regimented eeriness surrounding them.  Let’s look back at that time: This bustling South Korean port bid an emotional farewell Tuesday to a North Korean cheering squad whose presence at the Asian Games,...

Categories Appeasement/Defectors/Human Rights/Inside NK/Korean Politics/Korean Society/North Korea
February 15, 2006

Stranger Than Fiction: The Pyongyang Charm School

Everyone is ashamed of something in his past.  High on my own list is the time my brother persuaded me to read “The Charm School,” a Nelson Demille spy novel.  The plot premise was that  Moscow took custody American MIA’s from North Viet Nam to create a “charm school,” an exact replica of an  American  neighborhood, complete with American residents.  The idea was to immerse Soviet sleeper agents into their next work assignments. Unlike some other aspects of life in...

Categories Abductions/Activism/Appeasement/Asia/China/China & Korea/Defectors/Japan/Japan & Korea/North Korea/Southeast Asia/WTF?
February 14, 2006

Ban Makes U.N. Candidacy Official

Ban Ki-Moon, South Korea’s Foreign Minister, chief promoter of appeasement of the North, and occasional provider of adult supervision to Roh Moo-Hyun’s government, is making official what has been known for months: he wants to be U.N. Secretary General. He would succeed Kofi Annan, who presided over the Oil-for-Food scandal, a procurement scandal, sexual abuse scandals, and several partially successful genocides without being driven out of office in shame (as if). Expect the Bush Administration to work quietly, behind the...

Categories An Alliance?/Appeasement/Asia/Geopolitics/Human Rights/Korean Politics/Uncategorized
February 12, 2006

Why ‘Liberator’?

One of our inspirations for the new site name is William Lloyd Garrison, an uncompromising abolitionist and editor of “The Liberator,” published from 1831 to 1865. Garrison published his final issue after the passage of the Fifteenth Amendment, eight months after the conclusion of the Civil War. Garrison was certainly not a man without flaws and rhetorical excesses (nor are we). He had a habit of publicly burning copies of the Constitution for its textual accomodations with slavery. In his...

Categories Activism/Appeasement/Blogs & Blogging/Uncategorized
February 11, 2006

Hines Ward’s Korean Mother: ‘People Spat at Us’

The great “who is Korean?” conversation goes on. If South Korea doesn’t change the rules, after all, it didn’t win the Superbowl. Today, the Chosun Ilbo interviews half-Korean Johnny Westover, who did not win the Superbowl, but who has been active in fighting for the rights of mixed-race Koreans: Active in a group of mixed-race Koreans, he told a meeting Friday he has never seen a half-Korean become a general in the army, or for that matter reach any position...

Categories Human Rights/Korean Society