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Category: China & Korea

March 10, 2007

Eight Questions Our Shenyang Consul General Won’t Answer

About a week ago,  I published  this post,  relaying Adrian Hong’s assertion that the U.S. Consulate in Shenyang,  in direct contravention  U.S. law,  stood by and refused entry to six North Korean refugees who where just feet from the  Consulate’s front gate.   Shortly thereafter, the refugees, Hong and other LiNK activists were arrested by the Chinese authorities.    After I published that post, a reader supplied me with the e-mail addresses of the Stephen Wickman, the U.S. Consul General in...

Categories Appeasement/China/China & Korea/Diplomacy/Refugees
March 8, 2007

The Death of An(other) Alliance?

Thank you, Vice Foreign Minister Obvious! North Korea’s Vice Foreign Minister Kim Kye-gwan reportedly told North Korea specialists in the United States that China is “only trying to use” North Korea. Kim was in the U.S. for talks on normalizing bilateral ties.  [Chosun Ilbo] I take it His Porcine Majesty did not enjoy the buffet at the Chinese Embassy.  Or, more likely, this is just disinformation: China has no great influence on North Korea, he was quoted as saying, adding...

Categories China & Korea/Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks/WMD
March 4, 2007

How a U.S. Consul Helped Send Six North Korean Refugees to Kim Jong Il’s Gulag

[Update: The Shenyang Six were freed from a Chinese jail in August 2007.] The Secretary of State shall undertake to facilitate the submission of applications [] by citizens of North Korea seeking protection as refugees …. (Title 22, United States Code, Section 7843) Back in January, I told you the story of the Shenyang Six, a group of six North Korean refugees who sought refuge from persecution and starvation in their homeland, and how the Chinese authorities, following their long-standing...

Categories China/China & Korea/Diplomacy/Human Rights/Refugees/Washington Views
February 28, 2007

RFA Interviews North Korean Comfort Women

Paek Sun-Joo was an 18-year-old street child when she was sold to a 38- year-old Chinese man more than two years ago. “[The traffickers] would gather people wearing rags, appearing to be compassionate and pity them, giving them something to eat and telling them that in China they would be able to feed and clothe themselves adequately,” Paek told RFA reporter Han Min. “It is easy to be tricked when you are starving, and somebody gives you some food, telling...

Categories China & Korea/Human Trafficking
February 12, 2007

N. Korea Still Hasn’t Caught Border Guards Who Deserted

You will recall that 20 of them dropped their weapons,  deserted,  and crossed over to China.  It looks like they’ve been successful in evading capture so far: A North Korean source from the district of Onsung said on the 8th “20 or so people who looked like secret agents formed a group at Sambong Customs. These people and a soldier which looked like their captain had received orders and were preparing to cross over to China. He said “It seems...

Categories China & Korea/Google Earth/NK Military
February 4, 2007

“Koryo Is Our Land!”

The original photo:  “Mount Paektu Is Our Land!” Photoshop Number One:  “Koryo Is  Chinese Land!” I don’t endorse the claim for an instant, but I can’t deny  some enjoyment at watching the  panicky retreat from Korean nationalists’ latest classless stunt.   Unlike the case with Tokdo, the Koreans have a great deal of their nationhood invested in Mount Paektu.  It would be unbecoming of them to  be as  cowardly in  any real dispute about  Paekdu as they’ve been furious over...

Categories China & Korea/Korean Society
February 3, 2007

Diverted N. Korean Food Aid Traced to Single Recipient

Update 2/5/07: The Joongang Ilbo thinks Kim Jong Nam is on the clock for his father after all: While staying abroad, Jong-nam has been reporting back to his father on the situation here and in the United States,” the source said. “What is important is that he has been allowed by his father to make contact with people from South Korea and the United States at will. This, from an unnamed source. It’s a terrific argument for keeping that $25...

Categories China & Korea/Kim Jong Il/Kremlinology
January 31, 2007

Hey! Clarify This!

South Korea expressed concern over “undiplomatic” remarks made by the top U.S. military officer here regarding possible delays in the relocation of U.S. military bases, a Foreign Ministry official said yesterday.  [link] Background here.  The Foreign Ministry would also like you to know that this is not an “official” warning; it’s really just the diplomatic equivalent of a fix-it ticket.  No fine, no court appearance.  Guess that “I support the alliance” bumper sticker paid off after all.  “The comment (made...

Categories An Alliance?/Anti-Americanism/China & Korea/Korean Society/U.S. & Korea/U.S. Military
January 29, 2007

Dastardly Chinese Try to Claim Paektusan!

Update:   Yup — called it. The netizens’ charge of  the ChiCom lines was repulsed,  and the South  Korean government leads the  panicky flight … like 1951 all over again.  North Korea, whose physical boundaries are at the center of the dispute  (more), is no doubt preparing its latest draft North-South statement on Tokdo.  So what do the Chinese know that we don’t? ========================= It’s pretty thin gruel if you read the report, but on the other hand, China is in a...

Categories Censorship/China & Korea/History
January 26, 2007

Shenyang Six Update

LiNK sends: Hello Friends,     …. It feels strange to be back here in Washington at LiNK headquarters, typing away at a computer. For those of you who have been following the news, the past few weeks have not been calm and restful- they have been rather dramatic and urgent. On December 21, 2006, myself, two LiNK field workers and 6 North Korean refugees were caught and imprisoned by Chinese authorities. I was taken into custody in Beijing, and...

Categories Activism/China & Korea/Human Rights/Refugees
January 21, 2007

Opposition Legislator Responds to Shenyang-Gate with Refugee-Protection Bill

SEOUL, Jan. 21 (Yonhap) — South Korea’s main opposition party plans to introduce a law revision aimed at helping North Koreans and South Korean abductees fleeing the communist country, a senior party official said Sunday. Rep. Hwang Woo-yea, secretary-general of the Grand National Party (GNP), said the bill will help prevent the forced repatriation of defectors from North Korea and expedite Seoul’s diplomatic efforts to bring them to South Korea. “The National Assembly passed a similar GNP-initiated bill in 2004...

Categories Appeasement/China & Korea/Korean Law/Korean Politics/Refugees
January 19, 2007

One POW’s Repatriated Wife Already Reported Dead

She apparently was in ill health and froze to death in police custody, according to Yonhap. I’ll have a link and more details later.  [Update:   here:] One of the nine, who was the wife of a South Korean prisoner of war, apparently froze to death one month ago while she was being questioned by North Korean security authorities after they were deported to the North, a source familiar with North Korean affairs said. The woman, the source said he...

Categories Abductions/Appeasement/China & Korea/Human Rights/Korean War
January 17, 2007

Sorry ‘Bout That: How a South Korean Consulate Helped Doom Nine Family Members of Its POWs

[Scroll down for updates.]   Thirty-one years after the North Koreans kidnapped him from his fishing boat, 67 year-old Choi Uk Il is back in South Korea with the wife who never lost faith in him, and after his own government’s Shenyang consulate nearly turned him away.  You can’t help but admire the ferocious loyalty of his wife, who raised their children on a cleaning lady’s salary, kept faith with her husband, and then cowed the faithless Ministry of Foreign...

Categories "United" Nations/Appeasement/China/China & Korea/Defectors/Human Rights/Refugees
January 16, 2007

China Calls on North Korea to Return Abductees

Some interesting statements emerged from a trilateral summit in Cebu: The leaders of Japan, China and South Korea urged North Korea Sunday to scrap its nuclear weapons and to respond to international humanitarian concerns. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao and South Korean President Roh Moo-Hyun made the plea in a joint statement after the first summit between the three nations in two years. It is rare for China publicly to raise humanitarian concerns about North Korea....

Categories Abductions/China/China & Korea/Diplomacy/Human Rights/WMD
January 16, 2007

Eum, Yang, and Korean Diplomatic Courtesy

A few days ago, Occidentalism posted this absolutely priceless flowchart that is too telling by half about how some Koreans tend to scapegoat their way through real problems. I suppose the temptation to pin blame on others is human nature; that temptation is at its greatest when a solution to the underlying problem seems beyond reach. Witness the finger-pointing that followed last October’s nuke test (and the notable absence of constructive proposals accompanying it). I shouldn’t miss this opportunity to...

Categories Anti-Americanism/China & Korea/Diplomacy/History/Japan & Korea/Korean Politics/Korean Society/U.S. & Korea/U.S. Military
January 15, 2007

The China Veto

[Updated below]   For those who still doubt that the South Korean government would bow to another government’s sensitivities to cancel an artistic performance — witness the debate and denial over the censorship of “Yoduk Story” — I suppose we can now put those doubts to rest. On January 7, several major South Korean media published editorials that criticized the Korean government for kowtowing to the Chinese communist regime by canceling the New Tang Dynasty’s (NTDTV) New Year Spectacular in...

Categories Anti-Americanism/Censorship/China & Korea/Korean Law/Korean Society/U.S. & Korea
January 13, 2007

Shenyang Six Update

From LiNK: We know how agonizing it is to think of the possible fate of the Shenyang Six if things do not go well in negotiations with People’s Republic of China. Please rest assured that we are doing all that we can. The instant there is a role for us all in the grassroots to play, you will hear about it, and we will mobilize internationally for the six. At the moment, we are waiting on high-level discussions and working...

Categories Activism/China & Korea/Human Rights/Refugees