Regime Change: Be Not Afraid (Must Read)
The final Washington-area event of North Korea Freedom Week was a prayer vigil at a Maryland church last Saturday evening. I should have attended, but instead took pity on my neglected family, who had become a blogger’s widow and orphans over the course of the previous week.
Dennis Halpin, who is a senior aide to Representative Henry Hyde, the retiring Chairman of the House International Relations Committee, spoke, and he was kind enough to send me the text of his remarks, which I have published in full here. If you read one of my postings, ever, make this the one. It could prove as prescient as Halpin’s remarks last year, which I blogged here, about the (rapidly declining) U.S.-Korea alliance proved to be. Yes, Halpin is careful to note that he is speaking only for himself, but policies are made by men and women with their own opinions, and Halpin is unquestionably one of those people. In that context, it’s significant, to say the least, that the title of his speech includes the words, “Regime Change: Be Not Afraid.” The speech may also portend what answers South Korea’s Pentium generation will some day demand of the 386’ers:
When South Korean soldiers enter the concentration camps of the North they will find victims of abuse as severely mistreated as those seen by my ninety-five year-old uncle when he participated in the liberation of the Nazi death camp at Buchenwald in the spring of 1945, exactly sixty years ago next month. And these South Korean soldiers will be accompanied by CNN and other media journalists who will instantly send images of the camp detainees to television sets around the world. This will be the hour that South Korea will lose its face before the international community.
A few words about Dennis Halpin’s deep connections to Korea: his experience with Korea dates back to 1971, when first arrived as a Peace Corps volunteer. Halpin has since occupied a long series of diplomatic in both South Korea and China before going to work for the Asia Subcommittee as a member of the professional staff. Mrs. Halpin is a native of Pusan. They have four children.