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Monthly Archive: December, 2007

December 6, 2007

Chris Hill Returns from Pyongyang; Bush Writes to Kim Jong Il

After returning from a weekend in bucolic North Korea, Chris Hill stopped to talk to reporters in the lobby of his hotel in Beijing. As before, I’ll post the full State Department transcript of the Q&A, but here are some highlights: Hill visited Yongbyon and pronounced himself satisfied with the progress of “disablement” activities there. Although Yongbyon was already at the end of its useful life, the work there now involves removing the fuel, cutting valves, and using heavy equipment...

Categories Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks
December 5, 2007

South Korean Campaign Speeches Broadcast into North Korea

You’re reading this now, which means that  South Korean politics probably interest you to at least some degree.  But imagine how much they interest North Koreans: A U.S.-funded radio broadcaster said Monday it will transmit speeches and debates of leading South Korean presidential candidates to North Korea beginning this week. The move, coming two weeks before the Dec. 19 election, could present an opportunity for North Koreans to learn about democratic elections, Open Radio for North Korea said in a...

Categories Deprogramming/Inside NK
December 4, 2007

A North Korean Refugee in Belgium

Human  Rights Without frontiers sends this refugee’s story, which I thought was interesting enough to pass along to you: HRWF Int’l  (26.11.2007) – Website: http://www.hrwf.net/ – Email: info@hrwf.net. Kim M. W., 31 years old,  arrived in Belgium this year.  He is one of the rare North Korean refugees to have requested asylum in Belgium, even though it is open to the repressed  people of North Korea.  Human Rights Without Frontiers met him in Brussels. HRWF:  What was your life like...

Categories Human Rights/Refugees
December 4, 2007

Liberation Through Litigation, Part 2

Way back in the very early days of this blog, I proposed that North Korean workers should be able to sue their government for coercive and abusive labor practices under the Alien Tort Statute of 1789.  In fact, the statute was recently used with success against Unocal Corporation for its use of forced labor in a pipeline project in Burma.  Just watch Kaesong empty out if that ever comes to pass. I had mentioned the idea once or twice since...

Categories Human Rights/U.S. Law
December 4, 2007

KCNA Announces Hill’s Arrival

Pyongyang, December 3 (KCNA) — Christopher Hill, assistant secretary of the U.S. Department of State, and his party arrived here today.  [link] That’s the entire story, not an excerpt.  Why so terse?  Maybe their friends in Seoul sent them this (ht: GI Korea): The U.S. government decided to impose three new conditions for removing North Korea from Washington`s list of state sponsors of terrorism, the Yomiuri Shimbun reported on Saturday. The new conditions are in addition to the current U.S...

Categories Diplomacy/Proliferation/U.S. Politics
December 3, 2007

North Korea Faces the End of the South Korean Gravy Train

[Update:   The field narrows further, but could Lee Hoi Chang be thinking of sticking it out through the election to lead an opposition group from the right?  It’s starting to look that way.  If Comrade Chung continues to remain way back in third place, that would allow Lee H.C. to continue to have a (from my perspective) positive influence on Lee Myung-Bak’s governance.  On the other hand,  by drawing conservatives out of the GNP, it could  solidify the GNP’s...

Categories Appeasement/Korean Politics
December 3, 2007

Camp 14: An Other-Than-Human Existence

[Update: I almost forgot this UPI link, and thanks to the friend who forwarded the link. Sometimes, I think it’s your blog, and I just assemble it. It’s certainly easier for me that way, and much more interesting.] If you have a subscription to the Wall Street Journal, Camp 14 survivor Shin Dong-Hyuk has an opinion piece published describing life inside a place that no other prisoner has ever escaped to describe. If you don’t, a number of other pieces...

Categories Human Rights/The Camps
December 1, 2007

Hill the Hawk? Not This Year.

A friend was kind enough to pass along five transcripts of Christopher Hill’s remarks to the press during his current trip to Japan and the Koreas. There’s too much interesting information in there to graf and the remarks aren’t long, so I’m just going to upload them in full and let you read for yourself. These are State’s own transcripts; I’ve appended the text to the bottom of this post. The key point is that North Korea is going to...

Categories Diplomacy/Proliferation/Six-Party Talks