‘Quiet Diplomacy’ Update
Thailand and Laos have now decided to work together to stop North Korean refugees from entering their countries. I suppose you could call that someone’s “quiet diplomacy,” but not in a direction that favors North Korean refugees. Given anti-Unification Minister “Chicken” Chong Dong-Young’s fugitive slave exclusion policy, there isn’t much question about South Korea’s message to the people of North Korea: Rot in hell.
And now for the cover-up the Washington Post will never put on Page One. The South Korean government, still apparently seeking to avoid offending North Korea–while going out of its way to offend Japan and alienate the United States—has banned the North Korean execution video from television in South Korea, according to the Christian Science Monitor (thanks to Paul Webb for the link).
[D]ue to intense though indirect pressure by Seoul officials, the North Korean execution tapes, purportedly of “middlemen” who help refugees escape to China, are not yet available for viewing by Koreans in the South. The indirect censure adds to frustration among those documenting the gulags and torture in the North. They charge indifference in the South to evidence of manifold suffering by ethnic siblings across the demilitarized zone.
That would be the “North Korean execution / firing squad / refugee / dissident / escapee” video, or any other words any person in South Korea is likely to enter into a search engine. The effect of the ban may be somewhat muted, since Brendan, commenting at NKZone, reports that the video has already been shown on TV in Seoul. Still, it’s incomprehensibly frustrating to see the Korean government’s disingenuousness and hypocrisy laid bare:
“We have told of many public executions [in the North]. But officials in Seoul always ask us for material evidence,” says Pak Sang Huk, an escapee from the North. “Now that we have evidence, they don’t want to see it…. The people who brought this tape through China were speechless when they visited KBS [Korean Broadcast Service] studios, and were shunned.” Mr. Pak claims those who filmed the executions risked their lives to do so.
It gets much, much, much worse. Stop reading right now, pick up your wastebasket, make sure it has a fresh plastic bag inside, and clutch it to your chest. You may now read on:
Seoul’s effort to avoid broadcasts of negative images or facts about North Korea is part of a larger strategy dating to the Sunshine Policy and Korean summit of 2000. In this view, unification of North and South can’t be achieved if the South criticizes or acts in a manner that the North deems hostile. “Kim Jong Il holds public executions to show the Kim family is omnipotent,” says Jae Jin Suh of the Korea Institute for National Unification in Seoul. “It is naive to think that Pyongyang will respond to a push by Seoul to change and treat its people better. We need to focus on what is effective, not what we think we should say.”
So there you have it. The regime has a perfectly good reason for summarily shooting people in public: to maintain its reign of terror. Hey, who are we to judge? Morals, schmorals. Never in my entire life have I seen such a retch-inducing justification for murder for the sake of terror. Jae Jin Suh’s words should be tattooed onto his forehead, engraved on his tombstone, and recorded on his death certificate. And then he should be bound, gagged, and dragged across the Yalu to Hoeryong. South Korea has departed so far from any values it once shared with the civilized world that it’s become impossible to explain what drives its policies. Perhaps, just 32 days until that next bi-election, Uri thinks it can’t afford to let the voters be distracted from the real national priority–Operation Tokdo Freedom! ©
So, as a public service to the people and journalists of South Korea–who, unlike National Assembly members, can’t watch this video–here’s a link to it. And here’s another link showing a brief clip and offering the full movie on DVD(!). Just how do you suppose history will remember Chong Dong-Young? One defector suggests an answer:
Another refugee plaintively asked the group what South Koreans will say to North Koreans “once North Korea is liberated. “What will we say when they ask us, ‘What did you do to help?’ “
Those of you in South Korea, enjoy this site while you still can . . . forecasts call for a 50% chance of interruptions of service.