Demo Report

Turnout was almost exactly 100, including media, but not including five of the District’s finest. Most of those present were members of Korean churches in Virginia. The pastors contributed most of the speaking talent there, and some where indeed very talented speakers. Several congressmen contributed statements which were read by various activists in attendance. As with the April protest, I doubt that our efforts inspired a flurry of urgent cables to Comrade Hu. On the other hand, we outnumbered the Hanchongryon’s “Friday Follies” at Yongsan by several-fold, as we seldom fail to do. All we lack now is a concrete plan to tell our story to the American people. We’re not missing any of the ingredients–money, talent, ideas, or political influence–and I suspect we’re not far from figuring that out, either.

I read a brief statement from Rabbi Abraham Cooper of the Simon Wiesenthal Center. Graf:

As the international community grows more aware of the unending suffering of the people of North Korea, we add our prayers for those whose dare not openly pray; we commit to act for those who dare not publicly protest . . . to be the voice of the silent suffering millions.

We urge the six party talks to add a seventh chair for human rights at the next round of negotiations and remember the lessons the world learned from the tragedies and triumphs of the 20th Century.

We dare not sacrifice human dignity and freedom on the altar of political expediency. There can never be lasting peace without human rights and justice. There can be no real security without eliminating all weapons of mass destruction. There can be no true reconciliation without dismantling the walls of the last gulag and freeing the innocent.

It was nice, yummy red meat, although the delivery of political harangues is a role to which I’m not yet accustomed. That may have showed despite my sincerity in speaking this one, and despite the fact that being asked to do so was a genuine honor. I had the bright idea of translating the statement into Korean, which I’m glad I did despite my dread that I’d inadvertently question the paternity of the entire crowd. I saw no inappropriate mass giggling or head-scratching, so I suppose that was a relatively fiasco-free affair. Fortunately, speaking in Korean doesn’t require as much voice inflection as it does in an American courtroom. Later, I learned that Radio Free Asia had a reporter there, so my words may well end up being heard in North Korea. That would indeed be satisfying.

Media presence was good, including RFA, AP, Reuters, YTN, the Korea Times, the Joongang Ilbo, and something called New Tang Dynasty Television that you may be hearing more about–they broadcast directly into China from New York, and some (though not all) of their members practice Falun Gong. The good news is that we’ve improved our ability to get media there; the bad news is that judging from my googling and my wife’s, we didn’t attract sufficient numbers to generate much coverage afterward, but we shall see.

As with the LiNK protests, which attract protestors in the dozens in the majority of cases, we’ve divided ourselves into small enough groups so that perhaps we create more annoyance for our targets but less pressure on their governments. That’s too bad, given that so many of these events result in exchanges like this one, which deserved to be broadcast around the world.