6 January 2010: The Peoples’ Army Descends on the People

Next time you read a KCNA report about G.I.’s behaving badly in Itaewon or Hongdae, ponder this:

According to the source, soldiers under Brigade #2 in PyungSan District, North HwangHae Province took away coals from the town residents. The soldiers commited the theft during daylight. These soldiers drove a Chinese 5-ton truck, Dong-Bang, and took away 8 tons of coals from three houses. They did not stop at stealing coals. Within the last month, soldiers stole radish from tens of households, and jars of kimchi from seven households. The residents are hesitating to report the incidents, however. Even after reporting, the safety agents do not go after the soldiers. The safety agents often criticize the reisidents for not protecting their property properly. [Open Radio]

=============Lee Myung Bak calls on Kim Jong Il to allow for the recovery of South Korea’s war dead. Wouldn’t it make more sense to rescue the living first? =============The Japanese will give visas to that North Korean football team after all. Like I said before — drive them through Shibuya at night, both to and from the airport. =============Ethnic Koreans in Japan, coaxed into emigrating to North Korea years ago, are trickling back to Japan:

In North Korea, he managed to graduate from university and land a stable job, but his life took a drastic turn when an informant told authorities his wife had secretly kept a videotape of “Tora-san” from the popular Japanese movie series. She was incarcerated for two months.

“Once you get marked, the whole family gets purged, and it is impossible to climb out,” the man said. In October 2008, the family traveled two days by train to a border town and slipped into China under the guidance of a broker. [Asahi Shimbun]

=============Just yesterday I ran into Peter Beck, and this morning I see him quoted in Yonhap. I often have respectful disagreements with Peter, but not this time:

“Human rights should be worked into the ongoing nuclear talks with the North, possibly through the Northeast Asia Peace and Security mechanism,” Peter Beck, Pantech research fellow at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, Stanford University, told a forum at the Brookings Institution. [Yonhap]

Some may point out that if we raise human rights, we’ll blow up the talks. And if the North Koreans’ approach to the talks doesn’t change fundamentally, I’m sure that’s true. But if it is true, there’s also no chance that North Korea will disarm, or allow us to verify that it has. If the North Koreans are serious about disarming, they’ll have to accept transparency, and they won’t accept transparency if they’re hiding crimes against humanity from the world.