Human Rights – Page 22

July 24, 2007

Forgetting Someone?

The Korean War Abductees Research Institute (KWARI) will hold a press conference next Thursday, July 26, 2007, at 2 p.m. in the Zenger Room of the National Press Club in Washington. The subject will be whether the return of abducted South Koreas should be a prerequisite to a North-South peace treaty. It’s a question you can hardly believe anyone would have to ask — isn’t the first prerequisite to peace that each nation ends its continuing offenses against the other...

Abductions/Activism

July 16, 2007

Reminder: ‘Let My People Go’ Rally, Noon Tomorrow on the West Lawn of the Capitol

The Korean Church Coalition picks up an impressive and somewhat surprising endorsement in advance of tomorrow’s rally. As always, you need not be present to win. If you have an Internet connection or a phone, you can pester your Senators, your Representatives, and your pals at the Korean and ChiCom Embassies: chinaembassy_us@fmprc.gov.cn / Tel.: (202) 328-2500 (Why should you do this?) http://www.dynamic-korea.com/embassy/meet.php / (202) 939-5600 (Why should you do this?)

Activism/Human Rights/Religion

July 12, 2007

Korean Church Coalition Joins N. Korean Human Rights Movement, and an Appeal for a Condemned Man

[Update: Barack Obama endorses the rally and its cause with a nicely written letter. Read it here. Of course, it would be great to think that Obama will be as persistent and passionate on this issue as Sam Brownback, who introduced this resolution in the Senate. That’s two presidential candidates, one from each party. In a particularly bipartisan gesture, one prominent Republican staffer even sent me a copy of Obama’s letter(!). If the KCC turns out a good crowd...

Human Rights/Religion/Resistance

July 10, 2007

‘Before she was executed, my mother looked at me.’

I’ve been blogging about stories like this for three years, and I still can’t believe human beings are capable of some of the things that my rational minds knows they’re fully capable of: On Nov. 29, 1996, 14-year-old Shin Dong Hyok and his father were made to sit in the front row of a crowd assembled to watch executions. The two had already spent seven months in a North Korean prison camp’s torture compound, and Shin assumed they were among...

Human Rights/The Camps

June 25, 2007

House Moves to Cut Funds for UNDP, Human Rights Council

Each entity has recently brought particular discredit on itself, and in each case, there is a North Korea nexus. The UNDP recently failed a UN internal audit after U.S. diplomats outed the organization for allowing its Pyongyang operations to become, as a U.N. staffer put it, “an ATM machine” for the regime. It turns out that North Korea used some of the funds to buy overseas real estate and dual-use equipment, and that the U.N. even had a stock of...

"United" Nations/Famine & Food Aid/Human Rights/Korean Education

June 18, 2007

Lee Myung-Bak Proposes ‘Kaesong Archipelago’

Would you trust this man? If you were one of those hoping that the next South Korean election would be the end of our long international nightmare, you were mistaken: Former Seoul Mayor Lee Myung-bak, the front-running opposition presidential aspirant in December’s election, proposed Monday creating a “Manhattan-like” island near the border with North Korea and building an inter-Korean industrial park there to ease military tension. Dubbed “Na-deul,” which means a narrow waterway in Korean, the manmade island would be...

Human Rights/NK Economics/Proliferation/U.S. & Korea/U.S. Politics/WMD

June 12, 2007

Win the Battle, Lose the War: How South Korea’s Brilliant Negotiation Skills May Have Killed the FTA

[Update: The USTR will reportedly call for renegotiation of the entire deal, in part to make the draft FTA compliant with U.S. labor standards. More at the bottom of this post.] Absolutely stomach-turning. After all of the Bush Administration’s brave rhetoric about “forced labor” and “material support” for “atrocities,” it ended up signing a free-trade agreement that could very well have allowed slave-made, axis-of-evil Kaesong imports into the United States. Then, because there was no denying the staggering hypocrisy...

Anju Links/Human Rights/Human Trafficking/NK Economics/U.S. Politics

June 8, 2007

Freedom House Panel on N. Korean Gulags

If you couldn’t make it to the Freedom House panel on the North Korean gulags, “Concentrations of Inhumanity,” Freedom House was kind enough to send of some of the remarks, the bios of the panelists, and even a few pictures. One of the two most salient points I take from the discussion is human rights scholar David Hawk’s explanation of why operating these camps is a “crime against humanity,” as defined by the Rome Statute. The other is the general...

Activism/Human Rights/The Camps

June 1, 2007

‘[W]e believed the United Nations could save us.’

I wonder how many mass graves could be marked with those words. That quote — it would be funny, though epitaphs seldom are — comes from this testimonial of a Yodok survivor, via the International Herald Tribune. In 1999, a group of seven North Koreans fleeing their country was intercepted in Russia. The Russian authorities, rejecting appeals from the United Nations and human rights groups, sent them to China. China returned them to North Korea. In the ensuing uproar...

"United" Nations/Human Rights/Refugees

May 31, 2007

Freedom House Will Host Discussion on N. Korean Concentration Camps

Their message: On May 21, 2007, Freedom House released a new report, Concentrations of Inhumanity. The report written by Hidden Gulag author, David Hawk, carefully details the criminal acts prohibited by Article 7 of the ( Rome ) Statute of the International Criminal Court which are being carried out in North Korea on a massive scale. You can download the full report at www.nkfreedomhouse.org. Freedom House and Liberty in North Korea (LiNK) cordially invite you to a panel discussion to...

Anju Links/Human Rights/The Camps

May 7, 2007

Soju for You = Hennessey for You-Know-Who

[Update: I’ve made indirect contact with a North Korean defector familiar with how Pyongyang Soju is made. Based on that information, the product is not manufactured in a forced labor camp. I hope to have more specific information about the materials and labor practices later.] The Chicago Tribune and the Hankook Ilbo are both reporting that North Korea is about to export of shipment of soju to the United States. US-North Korean trade is rare as Washington imposes...

Google Earth/Human Rights/Human Trafficking/NK Economics/U.S. Law/Uncategorized

April 26, 2007

North Korea Freedom Week 2007: Bringing Attention to an Unreported Genocide

[Updated below with a report on the Congressional briefing. There was some very chilling testimony today.] [Update, 4/26: Some great news about refugees in Thailand, and a video link to one of Tuesday’s events.] First, please digg this post, and please tell your friends to do the same. For those who don’t know why this issue needs more attention — including yours — please witness Camp 22 and its horrors, learn the grim fate of refugees sent back to North...

Activism/Human Rights

April 25, 2007

Anju Links for 25 April 2007: The Children of Arirang, Questions About Treasury’s WMD Sanctions, and More Blackmail Boasts from Pyongyang

* Arirang, Child Exploitation Tourism: Haven’t you ever wondered about how such young children are taught such precise choreography, and why those robotic smiles are frozen on their little faces? The reality of Arirang is different however, according to vivid testimony of the parents whose children participate in the performance. Their children’s eyes are tense after robust mechanical drilling by their director. The training period for the Arirang is over 6 months. Particularly delicate dancing or movement may require training...

"United" Nations/Human Rights/Human Trafficking/WMD

April 24, 2007

Anju Links for 24 April 2007: China and South Korea Claim Their Largesse Has Limits, Another Fresh-Faced Septuagenarian Rises in Pyongyang, and Why the Defunding Debate Should Focus on the U.N., Not Our Troops

* North Korea is now eleven days past the April 13th deadline by which it agreed to shut down and seal the Yongbyon reactor, make a meaningful showing at another session of six-party talks, begin discussions about the full extent of its nuclear programs, and invite U.N. inspectors back in. As of today, it has failed to fulfill any of those conditions. I just wanted to point that out in case Chris Hill is reading or Kim Jong Bill...

"United" Nations/Appeasement/China/China & Korea/Human Rights/Human Trafficking/Kremlinology/NK Economics

April 20, 2007

Rhetoric and the Record on North Korean Human Rights

[Update: video of the event and full text of the speech below] So I went to this yesterday, thanks to the kind invitation of the organizers, and left with the usual sense of guilt I feel every time I meet Jay Lefkowitz. Lefkowitz has acquired an understandable “Oh sh*t, not that guy again” expression whenever he sees me. If I were him, so would I. Even when I’ve been critical of him, I’ve said that Lefkowitz is sincere,...

Human Rights/Washington Views

April 18, 2007

‘So many people died, they wrapped bodies in plastic sheets and buried them in a mountain.’

Human Rights Watch, one of the industry bigs that (until now) had been mostly absent from the discussion of human rights in North Korea, has made an important entry into that discussion, via this Washington Post op-ed by Kay Sok. Ms. Sok makes several important points here, and the first of these is how North Korea’s version of socialism is a recipe for selective deprivation as a weapon of class warfare: Many of these North Koreans crossed the border because...

Human Rights/Refugees

April 16, 2007

Anju Links for 16 April 2007

* My latest K-blog discovery is “Six Happy Feet,” a superb photoblog with a great name. You’ll want to put this one on your blogrolls. It’s hard to read it without concluding that this is just a genuinely nice family. * A Nation’s Conscience. Some South Koreans are demanding freedom for those North Korean refugees in Laos — the ones the South Korean government refused to help. * Heal Thyself, Part 1. I can understand why...

Activism/Anti-Americanism/Appeasement/Blogs & Blogging/Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks/WMD

April 11, 2007

Anju Links for 11 April 2007

* Are You Effing Kidding Me? The Bush administration, reversing a six-year-old North Korea policy based on deep mistrust, said it will now rely on Pyongyang’s “good faith” to ensure that funds released yesterday from a Macao bank are not misused…. Mr. McCormack said the North Koreans had promised “to spend the money for the betterment of the North Korean people,” and not for the personal benefit of its officials. [Wash Times] Stupidity with malice aforethought is its...

Activism/Anju Links/Appeasement/Kremlinology/Terrorism/Iraq/U.S. Politics

Category: Human Rights