Technically, Sarin Isn’t a Greenhouse Gas

The North Korean Human Rights Conference appears to have blown through Seoul with barely a whisper in the Korean press. Count the Korean faces in this picture:

The Korea Times printed this testimony from a former nurse at a North Korean gulag hospital:

“I heard the cries of both mother and child through the curtain (at a hospital). And through the partially open curtain, I witnessed the nurse covering the infant’s face with a wet towel on a table, suffocating it,” a 28-year-old identified as Park Sun-ja told an international conference on North Korean human rights abuses Tuesday. “The baby stopped crying about ten minutes later,” added Park, whose real name was not provided to protect her.

The lack of public interest, of course, doesn’t mean that the Conference wasn’t time well spent, particularly if it can change enough minds among members of the opposition party to start a national debate on North Korean human rights within South Korean society. With North Korea’s behavior reaching new heights of atrociousness, one can always hope that Korean voters over 35 will carry their frustrations with the failure of appeasement to the ballot box in next April’s parliamentary elections. And of course, it will make it that much harder to believe the meek protests of 386ers who will one day tell their grandchildren, “We didn’t know.”

So far, there’s no sign of that. Instead, we get more evidence of just how skewed South Koreans’ priorities really are. Case in point:

What prevented the throngs of angry young Koreans from joining the fight to save their brothers and sisters up North? More pressing matters, like bitching about (wait for it . . . ) America, specifically its refusal to sign Kyoto. As it turns out, Kyoto was a sweet deal for South Korea, which managed to negotiate a “newly developed nation” exemption from most of Kyoto’s requirements. So since you brought it up, how about getting your own government to actually ratify and comply with the same standards you expect of the people whose flags you use as sleeping bags?

And while many of us know what a challenge it can be to breathe South Korea’s filthy air, it doesn’t quite rise to this level, really.