Democracy – Page 3

December 2, 2014

Sony Pictures should go after North Korean hackers’ Chinese enablers

Since the weekend, several of you have e-mailed me about “suspicions” – and really, I don’t think they went further than that – that and leaked unreleased movies to file sharers to punish it for “The Interview.” Those rumors were covered by many outlets, but frankly, the open-source evidence for North Korea’s complicity was little more than speculation, at least until I read this today: Hackers who knocked Sony Pictures Entertainment’s computer systems offline last week used tools very similar...

Books & Films/Censorship/China & Korea

November 25, 2014

N. Korea threatens to shell Blue House over U.N. vote (It’s not just about balloons)

At my comments section, also known as The Diplomat, two recent articles take opposing views on ideas I’ve written about at length here. The first piece, by Zach Przystup, entitled “Pyongyang’s Poverty Politics,” argues that the regime in Pyongyang deliberately keeps large segments of its population hungry. It’s a question I’ve struggled with for years, but the more I know, the more difficult it becomes to avoid that conclusion. Then, Steven Denney posts a “respectful riposte” to my criticism of...

Censorship/Terrorism (NK)

November 21, 2014

South Korea’s illiberal left: authoritarians in the service of totalitarians

Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers. [Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 19] In America, we have grown accustomed to a political polarity in which we associate “left” with “liberal.” Whatever the merits of that correlation here, it’s useless to any understanding of politics in South Korea, where very few people...

Censorship/Korean Politics/Refugees/Subversion/The Fifth Column

November 19, 2014

N. Korea perestroika watch: regime installs German-made cell phone trackers

If and when the Security Council takes up North Korea human rights sanctions, I hope they’ll start by ordering the public flogging of whomever sold these to Pyongyang: The North Korean authorities have installed a series of German-produced radio wave detectors along the border areas to monitor and block residents from making phone calls with people in other countries. The Daily NK has learned that by using the new devices near borders areas where phone reception can be detected, the authorities have been...

Border Control/Censorship/Subversion

November 10, 2014

In the NYT: N. Korea, extortion, freedom of speech, and freedom of information

Professor Lee and I are published in The New York Times today, expressing our disappointment at the South Korean government’s failure to stand up for freedom of speech for South Koreans and freedom of information for North Koreans, something the Universal Declaration of Human Rights speaks to quite clearly: Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and...

Censorship

October 11, 2014

Silencing Park Sang-Hak won’t end North Korea’s threats (updated)

For the first time since 2010, North Korea has fired across the border into South Korean territory, this time with 14.5-millimeter anti-aircraft guns. The North Koreans were shooting at the second of two launches of balloons carrying a total of 1.5 million leaflets, by North Korean refugee Park Sang-Hak and the Fighters for a Free North Korea. The North Koreans didn’t respond to the first launch of 10 balloons at noon, but at around 4:00 in the afternoon, they fired...

Activism/Censorship/Korean War II/North-South/Terrorism (NK)

September 29, 2014

Would it be slander if I called Rep. Sim Jae-kwon a fascist masquerading as a liberal?

A South Korean opposition lawmaker filed a resolution Thursday calling for the implementation of past inter-Korean agreements to stop slander between the two sides. The resolution, submitted by Rep. Sim Jae-kwon of the main opposition New Politics Alliance for Democracy (NPAD), calls on the two Koreas to recognize that mutual recognition and respect are the basis for trust-building. It also urges the two sides to honor such agreements as the joint statement of July 1972, which bans cross-border slander. [Yonhap]...

Activism/Censorship/Refugees

September 22, 2014

North Korea ranks 197th out of 197 countries for press freedom this year,

… according to Freedom House. Remember 2011, when Pyongyang’s deal with the Associated Press was supposed to usher in a new era of press freedom in North Korea? Wouldn’t it be great if one of the AP’s editors or correspondents would sit for an interview, review how that’s worked out, and answer hard questions about the North Korean regime’s restrictions on the access and coverage? I don’t mean softball interviews like this; I mean the kind of hard questions that make...

AP Watch/Censorship/Media Criticism

September 11, 2014

N. Korea perestroika watch: Regime bans all wireless internet use by foreigners.

Just lovely. Background here. If any of my regulars in Pyongyang who aren’t spies — and in a spirit of inclusiveness, also those who are spies — care to risk summary execution and pass along their anonymous observations, I’m listening. Assuming you have wired internet, that is.

Censorship/Foreigners in N. Korea/Subversion

September 5, 2014

North Korea tries to censor a British TV series

In the case of “The Interview,” North Korea used its Japanese hostages to get to Sony pictures. Now, it’s using its diplomatic relations with Britain to get to “Opposite Number.” Those who “engage” Pyongyang always say they will change it, but Pyongyang always changes them instead.

Appeasement/Censorship

August 29, 2014

A victory for free speech in South Korea

”The nation’s top court on Thursday upheld the acquittal of a 26-year-old man accused of retweeting posts sympathizing with North Korea’s communist regime.” [link] I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: The National Security Law is overbroad and unconstitutional (see Article 21). Clarification: It’s overbroad and unconstitutional when it’s used to censor political speech, but not when it’s used to prosecute people who act as agents of foreign governments or who conspire to commit violence.

Censorship

August 19, 2014

How terrorism works: N. Korea uses Japanese hostages to censor “The Interview”

Last week, I wrote that the North Koreans who had unwittingly lavished free publicity on “The Interview” by threatening its makers still had a thing or two to learn from the mobs of angry Muslim extremists who extorted President Obama into asking YouTube to “consider” removing “The Innocence of Muslims.” My judgment may have been premature. Film industry trade journals are now reporting that Sony Pictures Japan has demanded changes to the script of “The Interview” to minimize the offense...

Abductions/Censorship/Japan/Terrorism (NK)

August 13, 2014

First as tragedy, then as farce

The story I linked Monday about Michael Kirby’s comments spurring the U.N. to action in North Korea eventually grew into two posts, because in the same story, Kirby also warned against trivializing what’s happening in North Korea. The Commission of Inquiry, which reported to the UN in March, detailed horrific abuses of human rights in North Korea, including starving political prisoners reduced to eating grass and rodents in secret gulags, schoolchildren made to watch firing squad executions, and women forced...

"United" Nations/Activism/Books & Films/Censorship

August 5, 2014

Wanted: Information about North Korea’s cell phone tracking gear

THE DAILY NK REPORTS that North Korean border guards are shaking down and extorting border-area residents suspected of making illegal cross-border phone calls: Secret agents in border areas of North Korea are extorting payoffs from residents in exchange for keeping silent about illicit international phone calls, an inside source has reported to Daily NK. The source in North Hamkyung Province told Daily NK on July 22nd, “At the beginning of this year they installed radio wave detectors around here to...

Censorship/Human Rights

May 12, 2014

N. Korea bans celebrated photographer Eric Lafforgue

North Korea has banned the French photographer Eric Lafforgue, who in recent years had captured some of the most remarkably unfiltered images of North Korea not taken from outer space. At Business Insider, Lafforgue explains how a group of North Korean sympathizers from Spain ratted him out over a careless comment about their Kim Jong-Il t-shirts (really!), which shows you how freely some citizens of liberal societies imbibe the local quisling culture in the name of solidarity. As with so much...

Censorship/Foreigners in N. Korea

April 3, 2014

AP outraged about free speech in Cuba

Is the AP a cabal of closet Marxist-Leninists or just the supine courtesan of every tyrant who lets it open a bureau in his kingdom? Either way, I really don’t understand what drives its corporate conscience. On one hand, it recently criticized the Obama Administration for “propaganda” photos. On the other hand, it did this not long after putting on an exhibition of actual propaganda photos of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il. Now, the AP has released a breathless...

AP Watch/Censorship/Subversion

February 6, 2014

In South Korea, a political realignment

When President Park speaks of reunification as a “jackpot,” she is seizing an issue that the left had “owned” for at least a dozen years. Ten years ago, the left could draw crowds of candle-carrying thirty-somethings to swoon about reunification, at least in the abstract. The dream was qualified, complicated, and hopelessly unrealistic, but it intoxicated them. The DMZ would have become a “peace park,”* the disputed waters of the Yellow Sea would have become a “peace zone,” and both...

Censorship/Korean Politics/Korean Society/The Fifth Column

September 21, 2013

Democracies don’t shoot their own people for trying to leave

The ROK Army has given its explanation for why its soldiers shot a would-be South-to-North defector, and that explanation is completely unsatisfactory: Asked if the soldiers’ response was excessive, Brigadier General Cho Jong-sul at the briefing said: “It was legitimate. In a combat area like this, anyone who ignores our soldiers’ repeated warnings and tries to run away to North Korea will get shot.” The ministry said Mr. Nam was carrying a South Korean passport, which showed that he had...

Democracy/ROK Military

Category: Democracy