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March 27, 2008

You can check out any time you like, but they can never leave.

Hello?  Room service?  There’s a hissing sound coming from my chandelier! North Korea is converting part of its embassy in Berlin into a hostel to earn foreign currency for Kim Jong Il’s cash-strapped regime, Japan’s Sankei newspaper reported, citing diplomats it didn’t identify. The Cityhostel Berlin will initially have 37 rooms at a charge of 20 Euros ($31) per head a night, Sankei reported. A reception with a grand piano is being built and a Korean restaurant is due to...

Categories Europe/NK Economics
March 21, 2007

Freedom House to Hold Geneva Event on N. Korea Human Rights

If you plan on being in Geneva this weekend, click the thumbnail to see the full-size flyer.  Thanks to a reader for sending.  Adrian Hong of Liberty in North Korea and Elizabeth Batha of Christian Solidarity Worldwide will speak, in addition to David Hawk and Jared Genser of DLA Piper.  Although Europe has not led on this issue, I tend to agree that strong European condemnation matters — it would inspire a more responsible European approach to business and investment,...

Categories Activism/Europe
February 20, 2007

A Rumble at Kouvola

Fred Frey International brings us the story from this  remote Finnish border post, which  was recently the scene of two North Koreans going a bit overboard in protecting the diplomatic pouch they were carrying.  They weren’t carrying diplomatic passports, but the Finns were ultimately willing to overlook that.  None of this would have happened if the North Koreans had just shown their tickets. I wonder what was in the pouch…. Update:   See also Antti’s great blog with the unpronounceable...

Categories Diplomacy/Europe/WTF?
February 1, 2007

Czechs End N. Korea Slave Trade

Czech authorities have decided to end the practice of having North Koreans work in Czech factories under what one human rights organization has described as “slave” conditions. “We have decided not to offer new work visas to North Korean citizens and not to prolong the existing visas,” the Interior Ministry official responsible for asylum and migration policy, Tomas Haisman, said in an interview. The ministry announced the decision, citing October’s U.N. resolution condemning and imposing sanctions on Pyongyang because of...

Categories Europe/Human Rights/Human Trafficking
January 21, 2007

Somewhere in Hell, Josef Goebbels Is Smiling: Klaus Bender’s Big Lie

Update: In my visitors’ log today: Original Post: You may recall that a few weeks back, I noted that the Korean press had picked up a story from the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, one that many of its readers will no doubt be eager to believe. The story reported that North Korean supernotes are actually made by the CIA at an undisclosed location near Washington, D.C. Not being much of a German linguist, I made myself a reminder to find an...

Categories Anti-Americanism/Counterfeiting/Europe/Media Criticism
January 10, 2007

German Newspaper: Supernotes Are a CIA Plot!

Things sure have gotten strange over in the Soft Reich when a major German newspaper, the Frankfurter Allemaigne Zeitung, theorizes — in a complete evidentiary vacuum, too — that North Korean supernotes are actually a secret CIA plot run  from from a printing house in the DC area  (Korean link).  The sole basis for this novel theory, besides the unshakeable conviction that George W. Bush must be responsible for all evil on earth, is that counterfeiting is simply too complex...

Categories Anti-Americanism/Counterfeiting/Europe/WMD
December 4, 2006

EU Investigating Forced N. Korean Labor

Update:   More at the Daily NK.   You may recall my previous post (and R. Elgin’s) about the use of female North Korean slave laborers to stitch upholstery for German luxury sedans, which certainly brings back a few memories about the golden age of German business ethics.  It looks like that source of income will soon come to an end, as the European Parliament is now investigating the conditions under which North Koreans labor in the Czech Republic and...

Categories Europe/Human Rights/Human Trafficking
November 9, 2006

The Czech Republic’s ‘Peculiar Institution’

“If someone calls it slavery …, I’m not the person responsible for that.” The IHT looks at the conditions in which North Korean women labor in the Czech Republic.  Some will  say  — and I will agree —  that the women certainly look better fed and clothed than their counterparts at home.  One could say the same for workers at Kaesong, to  a lesser extent,  who probably also eat better than their peers.  Like those meeting the classical definition of...

Categories Appeasement/Europe/Human Rights
October 30, 2006

Must-Read: NYT Op-Ed by Havel, Wiesel & Bondevik Calls on U.N. to ‘Turn North Korea Into a Human Rights Issue’

The authors,  Vaclav Havel, Elie Wiesel, and former Norwegian Prime Minister Kjell Magne Bondevik have co-authored a powerful argument  for confronting  Kim Jong Il’s atrocities against the North Korean people, which they call “one of the most egregious human-rights and humanitarian disasters in the world today.” They also call for a  “renewed international effort to ameliorate the crisis facing the country’s citizens:” For more than a decade, many in the international community have argued that to focus on the suffering of...

Categories "United" Nations/Europe/Human Rights/The Camps
September 7, 2006

European Parliament Passes Resolution on N. Korean Refugees in Thailand

Let no one dispute the effectiveness of groups like Freedom House and Human Rights Without Frontiers. Their influence in Europe is growing, and that influence may preempt a source of cash, trade, and diplomatic support that has proven so useful to Iran. I agree with Nick Eberstadt and Jae Ku that Europe’s support for the North Korean people could shame South Koreans into action. Maybe there’s hope for Europe yet. Full text follows: ======================================== The Resolution was tabled by Hubert...

Categories Europe/Human Rights/Refugees
August 22, 2006

NK Freedom Watch, No. 5

Courtesy of Freedom House (with a hat tip to the staff there), here. Portions of this issue read like an indictment, which mainly makes it painfully obvious how far away we are from seeing a real one. The same methods of execution are applied to political criminals and economic criminals. When the death warrant is issued for a criminal, he is immediately cut off from all food supplies and his arms and legs are broken at the joints so that...

Categories Activism/Europe/Human Rights/Washington Views
June 29, 2006

NK Freedom Watch, Issue 4

… courtesy of Freedom House. This issue discusses Europe’s increasing concern for the North Korean people, but focuses on human trafficking. Their definition of human trafficking doesn’t just involve the movement of enslaved people, but also involves the movement of things enslaved people are forced to make. I particularly recommend this issue to those interested in such issues as Kaesong and other exports from the North; this issue contains accounts of gulag inmates being made to produce products for export.

Categories Activism/Europe/Human Rights/Human Trafficking
June 20, 2006

The End of Sunshine?

[Update 6/20: As predicted, the North Koreans aren’t taking this well.] “We have the right to speak.” — North Korean government official, talking about South Korean politics Has international pressure has finally forced South Korea to abandon years of official apathy about the phobocracy that is North Korea? Finally, South Korea declares, it will ask the North to treat the lives of its people with a modicum of respect.

Categories Activism/Europe/Human Rights/Japan/Japan & Korea/Korean Politics/U.S. & Korea/U.S. Military/Uncategorized
June 17, 2006

The I.G. Farben Award

… is a prize for dumbfounding political ineptness guaranteed to drive away any sensible investor. The inaugural award goes to South Korean Prime Minister Han Myung-Sook, who has done her prospective partners no favors by publicly suggesting a match between German corporate management and forced labor from North Korea … you know, the country with the concentration camps, the racial purity complex, and the gas chambers. Here’s my prediction: German companies, with their sensitivity to their own history of using...

Categories Appeasement/Europe/Human Rights/NK Economics
May 17, 2006

The UniFiction Church Choir

Progress at Last! The last seven years of the Sunshine policy have finally secured a legacy Roh can campaign on. Goodbye “sea of fire,” hello, “deluge of fire!” I’d like to see those neocon skeptics deny that “deluge” beats “sea” any day of the week! This from the lovable North Korean site “Within Our Race” (a rough translation). ================ Who Stopped My Peace Train? My money is on this not being the last obstacle that bars the path of Kim...

Categories An Alliance?/Anti-Americanism/Appeasement/Blogs & Blogging/China/China & Korea/Diplomacy/Europe/Human Rights/Humor/Satire/Japan/Japan & Korea/Korean Education/Korean Law/Korean Politics/Korean Society/U.S. & Korea/U.S. Military/Unintended Humor/WTF?
May 16, 2006

Korea Diary, 17 May 06

If you need an even better illustration of the idiocy of the Tokdo distraction, read this moving story about the families of two hostages, one Japanese and one South Korean, who married during their captivity in North Korea. Yokota expressed gratitude that his son-in-law was a South Korean. “I am so lucky to have a South Korean son-in-law, not a North Korean. I am so happy that I can hope that our families may meet one another again. He said...

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