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June 20, 2008

How Much More Don’t We Know?

There are two  unfolding enigmas  from that black hole of disappearing humanity known as North Korea this week.  The L.A. Times  catches us up on the rumors that North Korea may soon “discover” that, notwithstanding years of denials, it may have some more Japanese abductees after all.  I wonder how many Yen this will cost the Japanese  in ransom reparations.  Wouldn’t that make this, you know, terrorism? The second story involves an American who has been missing since the Korean...

Categories Abductions/China/Korean War/Uncategorized
June 12, 2008

Great Moments in Congressional Relations: ChiComs Caught Hacking into Congress’s Computers

A staffer  for Rep. Frank Wolf, a Virginia Republican and stalwart opponent of China’s human rights abuses (pictured here at a Darfur rally), e-mailed me the texts of  a statement, a speech to have been given yesterday,  and a resolution to be introduced in the House.  Here’s the gist of it: Madam Speaker, in August 2006, four of the computers in my personal office were compromised by an outside source.  In subsequent meetings with House Information Resources and officials from...

Categories China/U.S. Politics
May 31, 2008

MUST SEE: BBC / Chosun Ilbo Video on North Korean Refugees in China

In the brilliant sunlight of an icy February day, the camera takes us onto the frozen river.  A female figure lies, face down, hip raised in the classic pose of a reclining beauty, a North Korean woman – fully dressed – who fell while crossing. Like a sculpture cast in bronze, nameless, iconic, she is a monument to all the fallen who went unfilmed, their deaths unremarked. The Chinese guide who has brought the crew to see her has seen...

Categories China & Korea/Human Rights/Refugees
May 28, 2008

Chinese Foreign Ministry Calls US-ROK Alliance a “Historical Relic”

“[T]he Korean-U.S. alliance is a historical relic. The times have changed and Northeast Asian countries are going through many changes and transformations. We should not approach current security issues with military alliances left over from the past Cold War era.”   [Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesman, quoted in the Korea Times] … and there was much backpedalling. Not that I necessarily disagree with Comrade Spokesman; indeed,  permit me to  expand on his line of thought:  if matters left over from the...

Categories China/China & Korea
May 2, 2008

Pick Up ROK, Drop On Foot

[Scroll down for updates.] The Korean Church Coalition passes along this press release on Chinese efforts to stop a North Korean human rights demonstration in Seoul, how those efforts backfired, and how the Chinese response since then has exacerbated the reaction. kcc-press-release.pdf Officially, the best China can offer is something that’s not widely perceived as an apology by South Koreans (who can be fairly reluctant to interpret apologies as such once offended). Unofficially, Chinese “netizens” continue to propagate asinine denials...

Categories Activism/China & Korea/Human Rights/Refugees
April 30, 2008

Better Them Than Us: Korean Nationalism Turns on China

As I suspected, the China’s censorship-by-thug on the streets of  Seoul is not proving popular among Koreans.  The Chinese  government seems to be coming to grips with the P.R. disaster it has made for itself.  Its diplomats, though not quite in a full kowtow position, are offering either an apology or whatever it is that  Asian diplomats  offer when national pride prevents one:  South Korea’s Foreign Ministry expressed regret Monday to China’s ambassador to Seoul, Ning Fukui, over the incident,...

Categories Censorship/China & Korea/Democracy/Korean Law
April 27, 2008

Seoul Invaded by “The Ugly Chinese”

The most disastrous Olympic torch run in history  has ended with a new low: On Sunday, clashes broke out in Seoul near the relay start between a group of 500 Chinese supporters and about 50 demonstrators criticizing Beijing‘s policies, carrying a banner reading, “Free North Korean refugees in China.” The students threw stones and water bottles as some 2,500 police tried to keep the two sides apart.  [AP] And so we add another excellent reason, if any more were needed...

Categories Activism/China/China & Korea/Refugees
April 15, 2008

Keeping the Pressure on Beijing

South Korean and American  are pushing the issue of North Korean refugees as the Olympics approach, as as other issues focus intense pressure on China.  Here’s what’s happening in Seoul: Onlookers watch as a man tied up in ropes is led down a crowded pedestrian street by a woman holding a plastic assault rifle. Another man holding a megaphone explains that the re-enactment depicts a scene that has become an everyday occurrence in China. A multinational coalition of activists, calling...

Categories Activism/China & Korea/Human Rights/Refugees
April 10, 2008

Representatives Ask Rice About ‘Consular Emergencies’ During Beijing Olympics

Last month, three members of Congress — Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of  Florida, Ray Lahood of Illinois, and Darlene Hooley of Oregon —  anticipating just how ugly things could will get if  when U.S. citizens protest during this year’s Olympics in Beijing, wrote to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to ask what instructions  she had given to our  diplomats in China  about “consular emergencies” during the games.  The members also broached the sensitive subject of whether State should issue a travel advisory...

Categories China/U.S. Politics
April 8, 2008

Do you suppose China is having second thoughts about that whole ‘Olympics’ idea?

[Update: A new Zogby poll finds that 70% of likely voters believe the IOC was wrong to award the Olympics to China, and 48% believe that “U.S. political officials should not attend the opening ceremony due to China’s poor human rights record.” Dissatisfaction with the IOC’s choice is strong across the political spectrum, with 70% of Democrats and Republicans, and 68% of political independents who said they disagree with the decision to have China host the summer games. A Zogby...

Categories Activism/China/Human Rights
April 7, 2008

China Steps Up Efforts to Undermine U.S. and U.N. Sanctions Against N. Korea

The single most important provision of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1718, for which China cast a disingenuous “yes” vote, is the provision that requires member states to “ensure” that funds flowing into North Korea are not used for its WMD programs. Similarly, Resolution 1695 requires states to “exercise vigilance” against efforts to fund U.N. sanctions. Now, in the wake of U.S. Treasury sanctions that have put the North Korean regime under unprecedented pressure to meet its disarmament obligations, China is...

Categories China/China & Korea/Money Laundering/NK Crime/NK Economics/Proliferation/WMD
March 22, 2008

China Arrests 40 More North Korean Refugees (Updated: Threatens UNHCR, Too; More Refugees Leave China and Thailand)

And the gold medal in brutality goes to … Chinese police have arrested some 40 North Koreans in a series of raids on a border area in Liaoning province, with others detained as they tried to cross the Tumen River into China, according to authoritative Korean sources.  [….] Plainclothes Chinese security agents conducted a large-scale raid March 17 on North Korean defectors in Shenyang, Liaoning province, arresting about 40 people, sources in China who spoke to RFA’s Korean service on...

Categories China/China & Korea/Refugees
March 21, 2008

Tibet Updates

WORDS I NEVER THOUGHT I’D SAY:  Hooray for France.  A DARFUR ACTIVIST  GROUP  will hold an illegal protest  in Beijing during the Olympics.   Not even the Chinese can get away with brutalizing foreign,  non-Asian  liberals, or jailing them for years like they did Steve Kim.  CHINA’S BRAND IMAGE is suffering in the region, too.  Most of the press coverage has focused on  a possible effect at the Beijing Olympics, but Asian nations that had seemed alarmingly deferential to the Motherland...

Categories China
March 19, 2008

Tibet Updates, and the Images China Doesn’t Want You to See

BARBARA DEMICK IS IN CHINA, filing reports about the spread of the protests beyond Lhasa and the Tibetan Autonomous Region. Tibetan activists said at least 15 more were killed near a remote mountain monastery in Sichuan province when paramilitary troops fired at a crowd of demonstrators who waved the Tibetan flag and chanted, “Free Tibet!” and “Bring back the Dalai Lama!” [L.A. Times] The surviving protestors then attacked a police station and government offices with Molotov cocktails. Guess which incident...

Categories China/Human Rights/Uncategorized
March 17, 2008

Bread, Peace, and Kalashnikovs for Tibet (Not Necessarily in that Order)

Those Tibet protests continue to spread, although more outside Tibet proper than inside. Lhasa looks like an armed camp: CNN reports on the spread of the protests to other regions: The Chinese are making the best traction they can by reporting on the excesses of Tibetan protestors, while effectively keeping their own excesses off the TV screens. One thing the Chicoms do with great efficiency is censorship. They’re blacking out CNN, too: And of course, the usual suspects — U.N.,...

Categories "United" Nations/China
March 16, 2008

Tibet Updates

Although protests against the Chinese colonization are spreading geographically, it looks as though a massive Chinese show of force has restored Chinese control to Lhasa, at a cost of about 80 dead. Here’s a good slideshow of news photos and some recent video news reports. The first is from Sky News: Another casualty of the protests has been democracy free speech in India, whose government is arresting Tibetan protestors. Here’s a report from Australia. I will warn you that these...

Categories China
March 16, 2008

Chinese Academic: Accept North Korea as a Nuclear Power

China has a habit of using academics and scholars to float foreign policy trial balloons. Dingli Shen, a Professor and Executive Dean of the Institute of International Studies at Fudan University, recently visited North Korea, something he would not have done unless he spoke for at least a part of the Chinese government. Shen, a physicist and a former Professor of “American Studies,” has also acted as a quasi-governmental mouthpiece on North Korea here and here. Here’s what now: The...

Categories China/China & Korea/Six-Party Talks