U.S. Citizen and Durihana Activist Missing in Burma

Has South Korea’s new fugitive slave law cost its first life?

The Reverend Jeffrey Park is a U.S. citizen and Durihana activist (English language article on them here). A few weeks ago, he was trying to help a group of North Korean refugees get from Jilin, China to South Korea via Burma. The ROK embassy in Rangoon refused to help, so Reverend Park found himself wandering back to China through the dangerous mountains of Laos in the middle of the Golden Triangle. He’s been missing ever since. Today, South Korea is finally raising a peep about his whereabouts.

The inquiry does not end here, because Jeffrey Park is an American. Just where the hell is his government–my government–in trying to help this man? Where is his home town? Who represents him in Congress? Can we motivate those representatives to act on his behalf? Would it be unreasonable to ask the South Korean Foreign Ministry to explain itself to Rev. Park’s country, the one that stations 32,000 soldiers on its soil?

I have no words to express my respect for Durihana,and men like Rev. Park and Rev. Chun Ki-Won who risk and sacrifice much to help the North Korean people. Their example inspired me to start my first Web site, OneFreeKorea.net, the predecessor of this blog. I wrote my first furious rant (rant alert! avert eyes now!) about North Korea and Durihana’s activities months before I blogged my first word (It contained this gem: “The liberalization of North Korea will never happen until the glorious day Kim Jong Il kicks away his vile little existence at the end of a hangman’s rope.”).

Because I was still on active duty, and because a number of officers who (for good reasons) hated controversy and could have crushed me against the tarmac still read the Korean papers, I tossed out that particular hissing frag under a pseudonym, something I still regret doing. The Chosun Ilbo published it, and it later showed up on Devclue, Free Republic, and The Marmot’s Hole, causing the latter a nice fat Instalanche and getting a very fat quotation in this Instapundit entry. BTW, don’t miss Glenn’s observation from having met Kim Dae Jung: he thinks DJ is “goofy.” I’d be awfully proud of myself, but for my pre-blogging-days use of a false name, and again, I’m very sorry about that, ok? I would add that I had absolutely no idea that anyone but the Chosun had published it until just a few months ago, when I discovered the quotations completely by accident. Anyway, here’s what I said then, and I’d add that I believe this even more strongly today:

The salvation of North Korea will be the peasant leaders and missionaries who will stop waiting for South Korea to awake from its self-delusion; they will seize freedom with brave hearts and bare hands. When the next Righteous Army liberates a camp arsenal at Yodok, barricades the mountain roads near the Chongjin Reservoir, or seizes a food warehouse in Wonsan, the North Korean people will thaw their frozen souls on the sparks that will ignite freedom in North Korea like a lake of gasoline. Then, when the smoke clears and KBS crews arrive at the concentration camps, the South Koreans will begin many generations of explaining why they let all this slaughter go on without raising a whimper of protest. Thankfully, Durihana and a few others will be remembered for fighting oppression, apathy and appeasement. Ten years from now, how many South Koreans will earnestly wish they had been a part of Durihana and its genuine liberation struggle back in 2003? To all those with courage and conscience, stand up now.

. . . ok, I admit that “lake of gasoline” stuff was silly; maybe something about a funeral pyre of dry tinder would have been better? The idea, however, is that the North Koreans themselves are the ones who should carry out regime change–with our help, if necessary–and if you read his words carefully, you might even think that G.W. Bush has pretty much the same idea. As do some North Koreans, apparently.

So what can all of us do to help Jeffrey Park? At times, I’m at a loss for what more we can do.