Fugitive Slave Law Update

The New York Times needs to dig James Brooke out of the Hamptons and drop him in front of a computer. The Times picked up this A.P. story on South Korea’s new plan to defer defections but accepted the South Korean government’s version so uncritically, it missed the whole point of the new policy.

First, the story fails to cover the real and admitted reason for the new policy–deterring everyone from defecting so that Kim Jong Il stays in power. Would it be so hard to read the Korean press when you’re doing your, umm, background research? It also fails to ask for any evidence for the charge that South Korean-based NGO’s have ever extorted anyone; nor does it ask whether NGO’s that haven’t extorted anyone will still be subject to the crackdown anyway.