The UniFiction Church Choir

Progress at Last! The last seven years of the Sunshine policy have finally secured a legacy Roh can campaign on. Goodbye “sea of fire,” hello, “deluge of fire!” I’d like to see those neocon skeptics deny that “deluge” beats “sea” any day of the week! This from the lovable North Korean site “Within Our Race” (a rough translation).

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Who Stopped My Peace Train? My money is on this not being the last obstacle that bars the path of Kim Dae-Jung’s fling with his glory days.

Maybe he needs another 200 mil to grease those rails.

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This Can’t End Well: Two associations of Korean residents in Japan — the North Korean crime syndicate and its more legit South Korean counterpart — have locked tongues and made up. Another milestone for inter-Korean cooperation in Japan, or a financial rescue for the dying Chosen Soren, a/k/a Cheongryon?

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Bergen Conference: Isn’t this peachy?

In this meeting, no resolution or declaration criticizing North Korea was adopted or announced. However, all the participants shared the perception that it is necessary to have a common understanding and make a joint effort to resolve the North Korean human rights and refugee problems, which go beyond making criticisms and lodging complaints against North Korea.
. . . .

In our society, human rights in North Korea have become too politicized. Those who participate in the North Korean human rights movement are considered pro-American conservatives, and the liberals criticize them while keeping silent about human rights violations in the North.

“Politics” may have come by its connotations justly. Done right, it always results in one or more disappointed minorities. It might also mean someone actually tries to change an unjust policy, which is also “politicized.” If the author — whose heart I believe to be in the right place — is looking for more “practical ways to improve the human rights situation in the North,” I submit that piano concerts go only so far. Unless, of course, your strategy is to water things down.

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Backlash Update: When I saw this report that the red guards were wearing thin on Pyongtaek’s residents, I wondered whether the conservative press was puffing things. When I read this story, I believed:

The young man, a member of the Pan-National Committee to Deter the Expansion of U.S. Bases, damaged two cars owned by two local residents who still remain there and took documents from another, police and locals said Wednesday. The rear mirror of one car was broken and the windscreen of the other shattered.

The man was apprehended by residents and other activists. They quoted him as saying he saw the cars driving just behind a police car, and the drivers “did not cooperate” with what he called his “inspection. This convinced him they were police spies.

This is what happens when the government abdicates state power to losers who seek a social promotions to “petty despot” status. It’s no more Naver and lots of lithium for you, young man.

The red guards, whose activities are already widely loathed, are offering sheepish apologies and compensation. How ironic — an apology, coming from the peddlers of ineradicable grievance. Until now, I’d thought hate meant never having to say you’re sorry.

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There is an American in their midst, too, and since we at least agree on one thing — freeing Korea from the colonial yoke of those U.S. troops, of which I was one for four years — I tried to think of all the ways I could to be supportive. I toyed with sending her a few bucks to buy her own sharpened bamboo stick (and I had no idea those were used for farming, but hey …). In the end, I decided that the best way we could show our solidarity was to send this sample letter:

Dear Miss Whoeveryouare,

After reading your site, I was inspired to forego writing a letter to secure the release of Choi Yung Hun, who is rotting in a Chinese jail for helping North Korean counterrevolutionaries escape from concentration camps, gas chambers, and sexual slavery. Inspired by your example, I am instead expending my finite energy defending the Gaia-given right of fourth-year Peace Studies grad students to whack teenage conscripts with rocks and sticks, and to instruct wavering proleterians in the rooting out of spies and class enemies.

Enclosed please find one thousand won, which is my contribution to defray the cost of your bus ticket to Pyongyang. Your decision to use that ticket will send a powerful message about your sincerity in struggling for the truly oppressed people in the dorms at Kookmin U. Although you may not be able to afford a two-way ticket with this sum, I trust you will find the accomodations and warm solidarity there sufficient to relieve you of any feelings of urgency to return to man-exploits-man consumerism. Plus, with the employment that’s available locally, and assuming you eat sparingly and make no additional purchases during your stay, you should be able to buy a return ticket in just a few months. A very reliable source tells me that overtime is available, and apparently, no one has ever complained about it. I do feel compelled to note that restrictions on political activities there are more severe than those to which you’ve been accustomed recently.

Please use the enclosed stamped envelope to return your loathed Yankee passport.

In Solidarity,

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KTU Watch: The latest object of the Khmerrouge Korean Teachers’ Union is English education for the kids. I wonder what the obsessive Korean moms will think about that one.

Next against the wall: people with glasses.