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Category: Human Rights

March 16, 2010

North Korea, Human Rights, and Diplomacy: When Hell Freezes Over

A series of bleak new reports shows that after more than a decade of attempts by the United States and South Korea to liberalize North Korea though aid and engagement, life is as cheap as ever between the Yalu and the Imjin. The system is less closed than it once was, although this is mostly the result of the fraying of the regime’s control over its borders, economy, and the flow of information. Yet these changes have occurred in defiance...

Categories "United" Nations/Diplomacy/Human Rights
March 8, 2010

The LiNK / Pepsi Contest Isn’t Over After All

I’m not sure of what the story is, or why Pepsi’s site used to say, “Voting ends on February 28th,” and now says, “Voting ends on March 31st,” but LiNK confirms they’re still in the running for $250K. I suppose that means I’ll have to fix that button and put it back in my sidebar. For now, vote here. They’ve dropped to number 7, so they definitely need your vote. And if anyone from LiNK can explain why the deadline...

Categories Activism/Refugees
March 4, 2010

North Korea Publicly Executes Clandestine Citizen Journalist

In a world in which the word “martyr” has been profaned by those who do not even value life, word comes today of the death of a martyr for freedom. His name was “Chong,” and he worked in a factory in the miserable coastal city of Hamheung. You may well have read some of his reporting at this very site. That is about all we know about him, except for the manner of his death: A North Korean firing squad...

Categories Human Rights/Inside NK
February 24, 2010

The History of North Korea’s Political Prison Camps

Open News has an interesting history of the camps that, among other interesting educated guesses, suggests that 50% of the largest camps’ (kwan-li-so) population is composed of people who are merely family members of those accused of disloyalty to the state: The North Korean regime, as it consolidated its power, killed religious leaders, the pro-Japanese, and landowners, while imprisoning their family members in the so called “forced labor camps. In 1947, there were 17 of these forced labor camps. Between...

Categories History/Human Rights/The Camps
February 24, 2010

Last Push to Help LiNK Win $250K

We’re coming up on the final days of the Pepsi’s “Refresh “Everything” campaign. Some of you, like me, have been voting for LiNK faithfully every day. Thank you. For the rest of you, I humbly ask you to join the effort in a last push. You can go here to vote. If LiNK can make it to second place, it wins the money. The problem is, it’s still stuck in 4th place. Now, I’m one of those people who doesn’t...

Categories Activism/Refugees
February 22, 2010

South Korean Leftists Should Take a Tip from Oh Kil-Nam

To Oh, a left-leaning South Korean economist, defecting to North Korea with his entire family seemed like a peachy idea at the time (1985). Today, Oh is one of a very few people who has a souvenir photograph of his family standing in the snow at Camp 15, the infamous Yodok Camp described by Kang Chol-Hwan in “The Aquariums of Pyongyang.” As it turns out, “the relevant organ” means the large intestine. His activism attracted the attention of North Korean...

Categories Defectors/Human Rights/Propaganda/The Camps
February 17, 2010

How Will Chung Dong Young Answer a Truth and Reconciliation Committee?

After years of unproductive debate, the South Korean National Assembly’s Unification and Foreign Affairs Committee finally approved a bill on improving human rights conditions in North Korea last week, on a vote divided along party lines: The National Human Rights Commission of Korea (NHRCK) said the overall budget for its activities in 12 categories was cut by 5.38 percent on-year to 4.63 billion won (US$4 million) for the 2010 fiscal year. Funding for research into North Korean defectors and human...

Categories Human Rights/Korean Law/Korean Politics/The Fifth Column
February 15, 2010

LiNK Update: Now in 4th Place!

LiNK’s campaign to win $250,000 from Pepsi for a refugee resettlement facility has now moved into 4th place, up two spots from yesterday. The momentum comes just one day after GI Korea and Kushibo join in, calling for their readers to vote for LiNK. Coincidence? Of course, there could always be other possibilities. Lisa Ling is also calling for people to vote for LiNK. Lisa Ling: Cast Your Pepsi Refresh Vote for LiNK from LiNK Global on Vimeo. Two more...

Categories Activism/Refugees
February 11, 2010

Help LiNK Win $250,000

[Update: Thanks to all of you who voted, to Sonagi for posting at The Marmot’s Hole, and to the Marmot readers who have now voted LiNK into 6th place. To vote, click the clever logo on the sidebar.] One of the worthiest organizations trying to help the people of North Korea is Liberty in North Korea, or LiNK, whose President Hannah Song, sends the following request: LiNK is currently up for a grant from Pepsi for $250,000! In a little...

Categories Activism/Refugees
February 8, 2010

North Korean Gulag Survivors Tell Their Survival Stories to Bored South Korean Soldiers

As it turns out, inviting a North Korean gulag survivor to speak to South Korean troops is a lot like inviting Elie Wiesel to speak at a Pat Buchanan rally: After speaking recently to a group of young South Korean soldiers about North Korea’s harsh labor camps, former prisoner Jung Gyoung Il — himself once a soldier in North Korea’s massive army — was stunned by the questions from the audience. One soldier asked how many days of leave North...

Categories Human Rights/Korean Society/ROK Military/The Camps
January 30, 2010

Eagerly Awaiting Eric Sirotkin’s Fact Check

A year after President Obama’s inauguration, North Koreans continue to step forward to slander the Workers’ Paradise and act as willing agents of neocon propaganda about North Korea’s political rehabilitation system: Life under the regime took its toll on Kim’s family. Her parents died of hunger at Yodok, she said. One son accidentally drowned there. Another was executed in 1989 while trying to escape from North Korea. Kim’s husband was taken to a separate camp, which she calls “a place...

Categories Human Rights/Useful Idiocy
January 26, 2010

Kim Jong-il Ordered Shooting of Defectors

In May of 2008, this site was the first to publish reports, attributed to the NGO Helping Hands Korea, that North Korea had issued orders to its border guards to shoot fleeing refugees, notwithstanding its failure to provide them with the basic necessities of life and its draconian treatment of those who try to provide for themselves. The Times of London later picked up those reports. Other reports suggest that the shoot-to-kill policy was hardly new. According to one previous...

Categories Human Rights/Refugees
January 25, 2010

New Reports Highlight Failure of U.N., Ban Ki Moon to Address North Korean, Chinese Atrocities

A series of new reports on (the absence of) human rights in North Korea will not, by itself, change much, but they signify that for now, South Korea has stopped ignoring the issue. They may also complicate the State Department’s preferred course of doing the same. On the 20th, Human Rights Watch released its 2010 “World Report,” which brings together a review of all the most important issues in the field of international human rights during 2009. As usual, North...

Categories "United" Nations/Human Rights/North-South
January 25, 2010

New Camp 25, Camp 12 Pages

Although I don’t claim that my preliminary identification of the site of Camp 25, Chongjin is yet confirmed by witnesses, two of the former Chongjin residents whose stories are told in Barbara Demick’s “Nothing to Envy” provide a degree of circumstantial corroboration. Judge the evidence for yourself here; however, I can’t say for certain that the site is a prison at all until a credible witness confirms it. I’ve also put up a new page on Camp 12, Chongo-ri. Most...

Categories Google Earth/Human Rights/The Camps
January 22, 2010

North Korea Liquidates Family for Trying to Escape

Via the Daily NK comes a terrible report about the fate of the Jeong family from the town of Hyesan, near the Chinese border. At some point, the Jeongs decided that they’d had enough stultifying propaganda and grass porridge for a lifetime, so they decided to make a break for it. Early in July last year Jeong escaped from North Korea to Changbai in China along with his mother, wife and three- and seven-year old daughters. However, in August the...

Categories Human Rights/Inside NK/Refugees
January 21, 2010

Benefit Concert for Stateless Orphans in China

Last Saturday night, January 16th, friend Lauren Walker put together an intimate evening of music at Yogiga Gallery in the Hongdae area of Seoul. Though by “intimate” I do not mean quiet. “A Night for North Koreans: Stateless Orphan Benefit Concert” raised over 700,000 won (~US$617) for an orphanage in China. Possibly 10,000 or more children of North Korean mothers and Chinese fathers are stateless, because they cannot be registered with the Chinese authorities, lest the mothers be caught and...

Categories Activism/China/Human Rights/Refugees