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Category: Human Rights

December 9, 2014

Help Change North Korean Society From the Ground Up By Breaking the Information Blockade

Kang Chol Hwan is best known for the Aquariums in Pyongyang, in which he tells how he was raised in a political prison camp for an unknown “crime” “committed” by his grandfather. Perhaps less well known is that Kang started the North Korea Strategy Center in Seoul several years ago, and for years they have been sending in DVDs, USBs, etc. loaded with movies, TV shows, and information about the outside world (eg, a copy of Wikipedia). The ways in...

Categories Activism/Subversion
November 20, 2014

Kirby: “strategy of non-criticism” gained only “crumbs” for Japan, S. Korea

In an op-ed for CNN.com, Michael Kirby talks about North Korea’s crimes against humanity, the history of the U.N.’s attempts to “engage” Pyongyang on human rights, and the broader failure of strategies that sought to transform North Korea though scented candles, mood lighting, and Marvin Gaye music alone: The strategy of non-criticism, attempted friendliness and deference was singularly unsuccessful in securing either the goal of peace, national reunification or human rights compliance. For example, the meetings in Pyongyang in September 2002 with...

Categories "United" Nations/Anju Links/Appeasement/Human Rights
November 18, 2014

Today’s General Assembly vote is about the people of North Korea, and the relevance of the U.N. itself (Update: UNGA approves, 111-19-55)

Every man is guilty of all the good he did not do.  – Voltaire It now seems that the U.N. General Assembly’s vote on a North Korea human rights resolution is to take place this very day. Because of Justice Kirby’s report — and because of what so many survivors have told us, at the risk of their lives — no one can ever again say, “I did not know.” Unlike the bystanders of previous generations, we are free to speak, and to act. The draft resolution...

Categories "United" Nations/Human Rights
November 13, 2014

Must read: RFK Center calls for a “rights up front” policy toward N. Korea

The report, by the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights, along with the Executive Director of the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea,* calls on the U.S. to defer its pursuit of Agreed Framework III, and instead confront the very reason why Pyongyang shouldn’t have nuclear weapons, and why diplomacy with it will continue to fail: Only when North Korea begins to develop a record of improvement on human rights can it engage with the U.S. on other issues, including security, the...

Categories Activism/Human Rights/U.S. Politics
October 31, 2014

Washington Post Editorial calls for International Criminal Court referral

The Editors of The Washington Post aren’t falling for North Korea’s so-called charm offensive, nor (thankfully) do they use that inapt cliché: [R]ecent maneuverings suggest that Pyongyang views the latest debate with alarm. North Korean diplomats have been attempting to head off any action that would lead to a referral to the ICC. The latest gambit was to invite Mr. Darusman to visit North Korea for the first time, a cynical gesture after the country refused to allow a visit by...

Categories "United" Nations/Human Rights
October 29, 2014

Kirby presses China to support ICC referral of North Korea

Western diplomats say China, North Korea’s principal protector on the UN Security Council, will likely use its veto power there to knock down any attempt to refer North Korea to the International Criminal Court (ICC). But Michael Kirby, a former Australian judge who led the independent UN inquiry into alleged human rights abuses in North Korea, told reporters at UN headquarters that it was by no means certain if Beijing would block an ICC referral. “I don’t think a veto...

Categories "United" Nations/China & Korea/Human Rights
October 28, 2014

Charm offensive: N. Korea threatens to nuke U.S., hands out Halloween candy

As near as I can figure, Kim Jong Un’s stages of grief over his potential indictment for crimes against humanity have included denial, homophobia, mendacity, engagement, racism, and (again) terrorism, not necessarily in that order. The North Korean model differs from the Kübler-Ross model in its inclusion of several additional stages, and also, for its lack of an “acceptance” stage. In any case, North Korea, one of the world’s most isolated and opaque countries, seems to be taking the threat...

Categories "United" Nations/Human Rights/The Camps
October 25, 2014

Charm offensive! N. Korean “diplomats” call Botswana’s UN Ambassador a “black bastard,” laugh at testimony of gulag survivors

Discussion about North Korea’s crimes against humanity is accelerating so quickly that it’s becoming difficult to keep up with it all. Last week, among other events, diplomats from Australia, Panama, and Botswana–which severed diplomatic relations with North Korea after the Commission of Inquiry published its report–held a Panel Discussion on human rights in the North. Not surprisingly, Botswana’s U.N. Ambassador is the latest target of North Korea’s racism, according to Vice News: At one point, members of the North Korean...

Categories "United" Nations/Human Rights/Racism/WTF?
October 25, 2014

Video: Michael Kirby on human rights and religious freedom in North Korea

This was yet another event sponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, where Justice Michael Kirby (despite his admonition, I find it awkward to call him “Mister”) talks about North Korea’s frenetic reaction to proposals to indict Kim Jong Un, and other topics. Kirby also describes some extraordinary encounters with North Korean diplomats, the limitations of a potential ICC referral, and why he didn’t charge North Korea with genocide for the near-extermination of Christians (I still think a strong...

Categories "United" Nations/Human Rights
October 24, 2014

North Korea perestroika watch

The Daily NK reports that North Korean security forces in the bleak border province of North Hamgyeong are “shaking down” smugglers to make them rat out the identities of those who’ve escaped to South Korea. They’re identifying the smugglers by intercepting the cell phone signals of money-smugglers, who in turn are forced to rat out goods and people smugglers, who rat out the refugees, whose families are then vulnerable to shake-downs and collective punishment. For many of the stay-behinds, what...

Categories Border Control/Capitalism/Human Rights/Subversion
October 23, 2014

Incoherence of N. Korea’s human rights “engagement” betrays its insincerity

Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il could spend the duration of their reigns answering charges of atrocities with flat denials. That hasn’t worked since the U.N. Commission of Inquiry (COI) published its landmark report in February, or during the scrutiny that has followed. Today, Kim Jong Un must deepen his overdraft of diplomatic capital to fend off an indictment before the International Criminal Court. Ambassador Robert King, U.S. Special Envoy for Human Rights in North Korea, describes North Korea’s diplomats as “scrambling” and “fighting...

Categories "United" Nations/Diplomacy/Human Rights
October 22, 2014

Veto or not, a Security Council vote on N. Korean human rights is a victory

A draft U.N. General Assembly resolution, co-authored by EU and Japanese diplomats, may ask the Security Council “to refer North Korean leader Kim Jong-un to an international court” for his crimes against humanity, as documented extensively by a U.N. Commission of Inquiry. A draft leaked to the press on October 9th called for “effective targeted sanctions against those who appear to be most responsible for crimes against humanity,” possibly including Kim Jong Un himself. The draft also recommended “reporting the country’s...

Categories "United" Nations/Diplomacy/Human Rights
October 20, 2014

Yeonmi Park appeals to the conscience of Europe

It is her first time in Ireland and, indeed, Europe. But at the age of just 21, this sweetly-confident, intelligent and tiny-framed young woman, who managed to flee the famine-torn country at the age of 13, is already a global spokesperson for her own people – a people terrorised into submission and silence while the wider world ignores what she describes as a “holocaust”. [Irish Independent] Miss Park’s life went from latent terror to a living hell when her parents...

Categories Activism/Europe/Refugees
October 16, 2014

Christian Whiton: “[W]e need a policy of truth for North Korea.”

At CNN.com, Whiton registers the signs of Agreed Framework 3, and writes: There is another way to handle North Korea, which involves putting sustained pressure on the regime. China always says it is willing to take this step, but in fact never does — and never will as long as China itself is run by a cabal that is terrified of the will of its own people.  [….] Help North Koreans get the truth. Grasp the truth that China will...

Categories Diplomacy/Human Rights/Six-Party Talks
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...

Categories Activism/Censorship/Korean War II/North-South/Terrorism (NK)
October 9, 2014

North Korean official, asked about human rights problems, cites … lack of public baths.

And even this is really the fault of imperialist sanctions, which prohibit the import of “luxury goods” to North Korea: When the North Korean officials at the U.N. briefing were asked Tuesday to identify human rights problems in their country, Choe Myong Nam, a North Korean responded, “We need some facilities where people go and enjoy a bath… Right now, due to problems in the economic field — that is due to the external forces hindrance — we are running...

Categories Human Rights/North-South/WTF?