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Category: Deprogramming

December 15, 2008

Kaesong Worker Defects

So, I was wondering, just how popular is the Workers’ Paradise among its hand-picked proletariat, that is, those able to pass the best family history, background, and loyalty screening the government of North Korea can manage? Not very, evidently: A North Korean defector who escaped from an inter-Korean industrial complex in the border city of Kaesong where she was employed remains in a third country, a South Korean activist here said Wednesday. The 27-year-old woman, whose identity was withheld for...

Categories Deprogramming/NK Economics
December 7, 2008

Well, that’s just dumb

Activists have decided to suspend those propaganda balloon launches that were actually starting to have a tangible impact on the North Korean military right as they’re doing their winter training exercises. The balloon launches seem to have been pure P.R. brilliance. Instead of moderating their tactics, the activists ought to keep pressing on with more brazen ones. Imagine the effect a shower of these leaflets would have on Kim Jong Il’s birthday parade in February.

Categories Activism/Defectors/Deprogramming
December 4, 2008

Leaflets Balloons Prove Effective as Weapons of Economic, Political Warfare

It shows you the woeful condition of modern South Korea that some would show up to defend slavery and oppression from the non-violent propagation of truth to the oppressed. I can understand why, to a man whose life has been stolen from him by that oppression, that proved to me more than he could bear. This is the point at which things ceased to be non-violent: Here, encapsulated in one incident, is the ugly future of reunification. And the longer...

Categories Deprogramming/The Fifth Column
November 26, 2008

Activists to Resume Leaflet Balloon Campaign

A wave of free publicity, courtesy of the governments of North and South Korea, has made the leaflet balloon campaign has been a great success. Why quit now? Activists for human rights in North Korea on Tuesday vowed to keep sending propaganda leaflets to the North even though the government has asked them to desist. The announcement was made by Park Sang-hak, head of Fighters for Free North Korea and Choi Sung-yong, president of Family Assembly Abducted to North Korea....

Categories Activism/Appeasement/Deprogramming/NK Economics
November 22, 2008

The Power of Truth

Freedom rises over Korea, into the air over the most oppressed and darkened place on earth. The video clips that follow are from the BBC, Al Jazzeera, the Voice of America, and New Tang Dynasty Television. The people who are launching these balloons are, in large part, North Koreans who could not live — or stand living — in their homeland, and who can find no other means to connect with those they left behind. Others are South Koreans whose...

Categories Abductions/Activism/Defectors/Deprogramming/Human Rights/Human Trafficking
November 20, 2008

The Safety Dance

In my scrapbook from my Army days in Korea, I still have a leaflet, courtesy of “the protector of our race’s destiny,” declaring that “North and South shall bask together in the glow of General Kim Jong Il’s embrace.”  That leaflet was given to me by a sergeant in my unit, who found it outside Gate 7 of Yongsan Garrison in Seoul found one day after morning PT formation.  Where in the Armistice agreement does it say that only one...

Categories Activism/Censorship/Deprogramming
July 20, 2008

The End of Sunshine

Don Kirk has some straightforward observations about scholars in Washington, who, remarkably enough, are  still  debating how North might reform its economy, as though the  decade-long Sunshine experiment had never happened.  Kirk saves his most acerbic observation for one of the participants in a recent seminar: Probably no Washington think-tanker has been quite so divorced from reality of late, at least in public utterances, as Michael O’Hanlon of the Brookings Institution. In a recent commentary he held up Vietnam as...

Categories Appeasement/Deprogramming/NK Economics
April 5, 2008

Watching Porn in Pyongyang (Part 2)

Because man cannot live on diverted food aid and crystal meth alone: The demand for X-rated movies among North Korea’s high cadres is so great that a single VCD sells for 50 US dollars. The latest publication of Good Friends, a North Korea-related aid organization, tells the story of Mr. Park, a resident of Hyesan, Yangkang Province. Mr. Park was arrested for making copies of South Korean adult movies–called “colored movies” in North Korea–and selling them in Pyongyang. Despite the...

Categories Deprogramming/Inside NK/Korean Society
March 26, 2008

Radio and Reciprocity

SOMEONE IN CHINA IS RECORDING NORTH KOREAN RADIO broadcasts in English and posting the audio online. If you’re interested in keeping up with  who’s being idolized or purged, or whether songun is in or out, this should be interesting listening.  I listened long enough to hear the North Koreans call on all South Koreans to bow down before the Great General and Lodestar of the Nation, which is funny until you realize that 23 million people have to bear this...

Categories Deprogramming/Terrorism (NK)
March 10, 2008

Wall Street Journal Video on the N.Y. Phil Visit

The reporter, Evan Ramstad, covers Korea regularly and does a good, balanced report in his narration. Bonus points for anyone who can identify the background music. Update: Keep pedalling! Their plane hasn’t taken off yet! We were feted with multi-course dinners of salmon, crab gratin, lamb and pheasant. Our breakfast buffet was decorated with ice sculptures and included foods meant to cater to American palates. OK, some of it was a little weird, like the banana and tomato sandwich. But...

Categories Appeasement/Deprogramming
March 4, 2008

Nazis Loved Classical Music

OK, I lied.  But Sonagi’s post and the piece she links here inspire further thought. And of course, plenty of us who aren’t Nazis also love classical music.  So when Lorin Maazel says, “in the world of music, all men and women are brothers and sisters,” I wonder if he knew that Auschwitz had an orchestra, too, or why:  The orchestra played at the gate when the work gangs went out, and when they returned. During the final stages of...

Categories Appeasement/Deprogramming
March 1, 2008

May This Be the Last N.Y. Philharmonic Post

I am really, really tired of blogging about this, but I have two more links that I can’t pass up (thanks to the readers who forwarded them). Both have to do with the N.Y. Philharmonic’s financial backers, and both reflect very different ways of viewing the orchestra’s visit — with and without its moral context. The first story, from long-time Korea hand Don Kirk, is mildly inspiring: During one of the carefully scripted tours of the capital prior to Tuesday’s...

Categories Appeasement/Deprogramming/Korean Society
February 21, 2008

The Morally Retarded Lorin Maazel, Part 2

Lorin Maazel could really use a publicist who understands the concept of “stop digging.” Just when we thought we’d put this flame war behind us, he goes off again, in the Wall Street Journal’s opinion page. With time for further reflection and careful editing, here’s how he rephrases his central point: If we are to be effective in bringing succor to the oppressed, many languishing in foreign gulags, the U.S. must claim an authority based on an immaculate ethical record,...

Categories Anti-Americanism/Appeasement/Deprogramming/Human Rights/WTF?
December 5, 2007

South Korean Campaign Speeches Broadcast into North Korea

You’re reading this now, which means that  South Korean politics probably interest you to at least some degree.  But imagine how much they interest North Koreans: A U.S.-funded radio broadcaster said Monday it will transmit speeches and debates of leading South Korean presidential candidates to North Korea beginning this week. The move, coming two weeks before the Dec. 19 election, could present an opportunity for North Koreans to learn about democratic elections, Open Radio for North Korea said in a...

Categories Deprogramming/Inside NK
November 29, 2007

Clandestine North Korean Journalism: A Step Toward True Openness?

I have never believed that Kim Jong Il would actually permit openness, reform, or transparency to breach the blockade he has painstakingly placed around his people.   Fresh reports of the ghastly public execution of a factory manager for the “crime” of  making international phone calls (and the deadly stampede that followed)  make that point vividly enough.  Despite billions of dollars in South Korean aid — aid that is ultimately paid for by the American taxpayers who finance South Korea’s defense...

Categories Deprogramming/Inside NK
October 29, 2007

There Is Such a Thing as ‘Good’ Engagement

If you’re reading this, you’re bearing with me despite the light blogging of late.  Thank you.  I make a habit of not talking about my work here, but suffice to say that it carries significant responsibilities that sometimes leave no time and energy for other things.  At times like these, when there is very little time left over, I owe that time to my family.  Thank you again for your understanding,  for continuing to stop by, and for your e-mails. ...

Categories Deprogramming/Six-Party Talks
September 18, 2007

Q&A With Professor Andrei Lankov: On Changing North Korea

[OFK: This post is a follow-up Q&A to my review of Professor Andrei Lankov’s new book, “.” Prof. Lankov is a lecturer at the Australian National University, now on leave and teaching at Kookmin University. You can see more of Prof. Lankov’s books here, and you can find plenty more of his work linked on this blog. Two of his more notable recent articles include “The Natural Death of North Korean Stalinism” and “How to Topple Kim Jong Il.”] Q....

Categories Books & Films/Deprogramming