LiNK Symposium Update

I promised you a run-down of coverage and reactions to the LiNK symposium in Seoul, and I’ll keep my word, but not tonight. Work was crushing today. Undone tasks missed me too much over the long weekend. I even worked for nearly two hours on the train and another hour at home while Judgment at Nuremberg played in the background. My rest? A couple of hours wolfing down leftover turkey and a few minutes lying on the living room floor with my cackling Jr. balanced on the botton of my foot, which made it all worth it.

For now, here’s the must-read story. Andrew Petty knocks another one out of the park at the often-dismal Korea Herald. He had interesting interviews with Ralph Peters, Tarik Radwan, and Adrian Hong. Radwan made the point that he’d rather not spend the rest of his life avoiding the eyes of people he didn’t help when he could. Adrian Hong also had an interesting comment on the millions in funding that will now become available to NGO’s under the NKHRA. He’s not taking:

NGOs will get a boost from the U.S. Congress since the act provides for $20 million annually to efforts related to North Korean defectors. But Hong fears competition for funding will hurt relationships between NGOs and new groups will form to try to get the money. LiNK will not apply for any funding as it fears it would be a gesture of partisanship. “Even if we could get the funding, we would refuse it. It could cost us our legitimacy,” said Hong. “The people who hate Bush would hate us.”

Well, I can’t say I agree. Many of the people who hate Bush will never be mollified; they hate everything he stands for by nothing more than association and often admire truly awful regimes for no better reason than the fact that Bush doesn’t. Money can empower you to do a lot of good. But it can also corrupt you, so I can’t say I disagree, either. What impresses most about the LiNK people is that on the one hand, they’re completely lacking in the creepy jihadi will to martyrdom so often seen among those who call themselves “activists.” At the same time, you sense that they’d walk into the jaws of hell and never expect anyone to reward them with a commemorative stamp or a taste of the screen rights. There is something exceptional enough to be worth preserving.