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June 8, 2009

Brief Organization Profile: AIMS Korea

AIMS Korea, which stands for the “Agency for International Migrant Support,” is a small non-profit helping North Korean refugees in South Korea, the US, and elsewhere.  It was started a few years ago by a young South Korean who saw a need and organized a fundraiser for NK refugees in Bangkok at the time. I was introduced to AIMS’ founder, Sejin Seo, a month or two ago, and last week had an opportunity to have lunch with her and her...

Categories Refugees
June 6, 2009

Former North Korean Spy Becomes South Korean Filmmaker

Chae Myong-Min, who works for the L.A. Times’s Seoul bureau, is trying to engineer a third dramatic career change: “Choice” tells the tale of a North Korean government agent whose lover is caught trying to defect and is sent to prison. The agent finds himself at a crossroads: Should he rescue his lover and flee North Korea, or remain loyal to leader Kim Jong Il? Chae appears distracted when asked about his project. He says little about his role as...

Categories Defectors/Refugees
May 31, 2009

Unsung Misery

From the London Telegraph comes the story of Hyok Kang, a resident of Onsong, quite possibly the most miserable quarter of North Korea that isn’t a concentration camp, in its extreme northeast.             Kang speaks of a hellish everyday life in which people were publicly executed for stealing copper wire to sell: When the time came, the condemned man was displayed in the streets before being led to the place of execution, where he was...

Categories Google Earth/Human Rights/Refugees
May 25, 2009

Fifth Column Update: Pyongyang Orders a Hot Summer for Seoul

I certainly don’t believe for an instant that North Korea’s infiltration of the South was suspended during the DJ or Roh administrations; rather, I think stories about that infiltration were less likely to be leaked or reported under the former left-wing administrations unless they were just too newsworthy to suppress.  But if North Korea’s agents had ever gone to ground, they’ve come back up to prepare for the summer riot season: The North Korean regime recently ordered officials and organizations...

Categories Refugees/The Fifth Column
May 8, 2009

China’s “missing women phenomenon” fueling bride trafficking of North Korean refugees

I’ve been reading a few of the articles to come out of North Korea Freedom Week which was April 26-May 2 in Washington, D.C. and among them was particular story focusing on the bride trafficking industry in China. Not surprisingly, China’s history of favoring baby boys over girls, coupled with its one child policy, has resulted in a severe shortage of women for a generation of bachelors. This shortage is referred to as “the missing women phenomenon” by the World...

Categories Human Trafficking
April 8, 2009

PBS Wide Angle: “Field Trip to the DMZ”

Yesterday, I received the following e-mail from WNET-13 in New York about a documentary about North Korean refugees that will air this summer. The message I received describes it as well as I could: I’m writing from Wide Angle, the Emmy award-winning international current affairs documentary series on PBS. We recently launched a web-exclusive documentary shorts series called FOCAL POINT and I thought you might be interested in linking to the latest episode, “Field Trip to the DMZ. As North...

Categories Refugees
April 1, 2009

Reporters Without Borders Petitions for the Release of Laura Ling and Euna Lee

Fittingly, Reporters Without Borders has launched an online petition for the release of Laura Ling and Euna Lee, who are now facing a North Korean “trial” for allegedly crossing the border between China and North Korea. Regardless of which side of the border Ling and Lee were on, or your views about North Korea policy, every reasonable person should agree that holding Ling and Lee is unjustified; indeed, it’s clear that North Korea is holding them as “bargaining chips,” which...

Categories Activism/Human Rights/Media Criticism/Refugees
March 30, 2009

One Man’s “Bargaining Chip” Is Another Man’s Hostage

Update: Uh oh: Two American journalists detained at North Korea’s border with China two weeks ago will be indicted and tried, “their suspected hostile acts” already confirmed, Pyongyang’s state-run news agency said Tuesday. The Korean Central News Agency report did not say when a trial might take place, but said preparations to indict the Americans were under way as the investigation continues. “The illegal entry of U.S. reporters into the DPRK and their suspected hostile acts have been confirmed by...

Categories Media Criticism/Refugees/Terrorism (NK)
March 25, 2009

U.S. journalists under ‘intense interrogation’ in Pyongyang

This is the price a journalist pays for trying to report the truth about North Korea, away from the regime’s guided tours. The information about the whereabouts of Euna Lee and Laura Ling comes from South Korean “human intelligence” sources in the North, so don’t take this at face value: After being questioned at the security command, Lee and Ling were reportedly taken to Pyongyang last Wednesday. Each was put in a separate vehicle so that there would be no...

Categories Media Criticism/Refugees
March 19, 2009

North Korea Detains Two (?) U.S. Journalists

As you see, the reports conflict as to how many incidents there were, how many journalists were detained, and on which side of the border: Embedded video from CNN Video The preponderance of reports thus far suggest that two American journalists with the network Current TV were arrested — and if this is confirmed, it would be fair to say “abducted” — from the Chinese side of the Yalu River while filming North Korea. Two American journalists on a reporting...

Categories Abductions/Media Criticism/Refugees
February 17, 2009

Seoul to Open New Refugee Center by 2012

On its face, this announcement is both interesting, and perhaps, understated: The Ministry of Justice announced on Wednesday plans to build a retreat for refugees in Gyeonggi Province, aiming to open it in 2012. The ministry secured funds of W260 million in this year’s budget to design the facility, and is reportedly negotiating with the Ministry of Public Administration and Security for an appropriate site. [Chosun Ilbo] Nowhere in the article does it say that the new center will be...

Categories Refugees
February 16, 2009

20% of Arriving N. Korean Refugees Need Psychological Treatment

It’s because of statistics like these that no one should underestimate the difficulty of Korean reunification: The most common ailments among North Korean refugees are dental disease followed by tuberculosis, according to Hanawon, the government-run institution for North Korean refugees. [….] Some 20 percent of inmates also need psychological treatment after leaving the institution, Hanawon said. Many also still owe money to brokers who arranged their defection to the South and experience discrimination. Here’s this week’s “we are one” moment:...

Categories Reconstruction/Refugees
February 5, 2009

Rising Traffic on the Underground Railroad

NOW THAT THE OLYMPICS ARE OVER, the flow of North Korean defectors into Thailand is on the rise once again. Thai police statistics quoted by the Japanese daily show a mere 140 North Koreans arrested there between January and August last year. But in the period from September to November after the Beijing Olympics, 250 North Koreans were arrested in 14 areas in northern and northeastern Thailand bordering Burma and Laos. The number of North Koreans arrested in December and...

Categories Refugees/Southeast Asia
February 4, 2009

North Korean Johns in Need of More Effective Consumer Protection

As a worker at a state enterprise, at Chongjin city, North Hamkyung Province, he came to Pyungsung City on a business trip. As a beautiful woman approached him and said the motel had a warm cozy room as well as a “high-class waiting room” (rooms where prostitutes wait for travelers who want sexual intercourse), he went to a one-story house in Yangji-dong. [Open Radio for N. Korea] What could possibly go wrong with a story that begins like that? For...

Categories Human Trafficking/Korean Society
January 27, 2009

‘Kimjongilia,’ The Movie

A new documentary will play at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, and this is one that I’m going to be watching very carefully: “Kimjongilia.” The film is about North Korea and those who have escaped it, their tortuous flights, and their often equally tortuous deprogramming as they adapt to life on Earth. The film’s subject matter focus is on the concentration camps, and the astonishment of the Director, N.C. Heikin, that world opinion has not arisen in outrage against them....

Categories Activism/Books & Films/Human Rights/Refugees/The Camps
January 20, 2009

National Geographic, ‘Escaping North Korea’

National Geographic’s February 2009 issue is out, and it contains an article about North Korean refugees. It’s written in the form of a narrative about three refugees — “Black,” “Red,” and “White” — and their escape through China to South Korea. “White” and “Red” survived victimization by the cross-border sex trade. After her arrival in the South, White was also diagnosed with and survived cancer. For “Black,” the deprogramming process began with his first exposure to the truth about Kim...

Categories Refugees
January 14, 2009

The Rest of the Story

The Chosun Ilbo tells the story of Lee Ae-Ran, a North Korean refugee in the South, who just earned her Ph.D. in Nutritional Science and Food Management from the prestigious Ewha Women’s University. By doing so, claims the Chosun, Ms. Lee has become the first female North Korean defector to earn a Ph.D. from a South Korean university. Ms. Lee’s name sounded familiar to me — maybe because it sounds vaguely like the name of a girl I once dated...

Categories Defectors/Refugees
January 12, 2009

Defections from North Korea to South Rose in 2008

The Chosun Ilbo reports that defections from North Korea rose 10% in 2008 compared to 2007. This may or may not tell us anything about economic or political conditions in the North as opposed to last year. The number of new arrivals in South Korea is a small trickle from a vast reserve of North Koreans hiding in China — estimates vary from 50,000 to 300,000. Not all of the new arrivals in the South are necessarily recent escapees, given...

Categories Defectors/NK Military/Refugees