Search Results for: border guards

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
December 1, 2009

North Korea Revalues Currency, Wipes Away Savings of Millions (Updated)

North Korea has shocked its entire population with a sudden announcement that it will replace its currency with new notes that drop two zeroes from the denominations. The new North Korean currency’s official exchange rates will increase by a hundredfold. The move is causing widespread outrage, panic, and a run on U.S. and Chinese currency. North Koreans throughout the country and at every socioeconomic level are reacting with shock, tears, and anger. According to some reports, people are literally weeping...

Categories NK Economics/Resistance
November 9, 2009

North Korea Faces Review by U.N. Human Rights Council

And here’s a sample of what the council will hear: In the course of beatings, the guards broke all his teeth, leaving him toothless for four years. To deprive him of sleep, the guards at the underground prison at Hoeryong city near the Chinese border used “pigeon torture”. Jung was handcuffed and tied by his arms to an object behind him so he could not stand or sit. He felt as though his bones were breaking through his chest while...

Categories "United" Nations/Human Rights
September 4, 2009

China: Ling and Lee Weren’t Seized on Our Territory

But they don’t say how the know, what they’re basing that conclusion on, or offer any further details to support that conclusion. The journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee said in an article in the Los Angeles Times (http:/link.reuters.com/cug44d) that they strayed into North Korean territory in March when visiting a frozen river that marked the border with China. They said they rushed back to the Chinese side but North Korean guards chased them and dragged them into North Korea....

Categories Ling/Lee Incident

Camps 14 and 18, North Korea: Satellite Imagery and Witness Accounts

In central North Korea, along the Taedong River far upstream from Pyongyang, lie two of North Korea’s five largest concentration camps: Camp 14 and Camp 18, which hold an approximate total of 50,000 political prisoners, their spouses, and their children. The camps lie on opposite sides of the river in an area rich in coal, where mines are worked by the mine’s prisoners. For context, here are the boundaries of both camps in relation to the other largest camps —...

Comments: 52
August 7, 2009

Almighty God, Please Spare Us the Retch-Inducing Stockholm Syndrome Speeches (Updated, Bumped)

[Updated below] Now that Laura Ling and Euna Lee are on their way home, I have a short list of things I do and do not want to hear from them, starting with any retch-inducing drivel about how well they were treated while they shouldn’t have been in captivity at all. Let’s make that the first thing on our list: 1.  Please spare us the Stockholm Syndrome at LAX.  Try to remember that you weren’t in North Korea to rob...

Categories Ling/Lee Incident
June 17, 2009

KCNA: Ling and Lee Filmed Themselves Entering North Korea (Updated, Bumped)

[Original post, 16 Jun 09] I’ll certainly reserve judgment until we see the videotape and until Ms. Ling and Ms. Lee can freely authenticate it, but if that’s true, it would be, well, stupid, even if it were done with the purpose of informing us about an important issue: “We’ve just entered a North Korean courtyard without permission,” the Korean translation of their narration on the videotape said, according to KCNA. One of them picked up and pocketed a stone...

Categories Ling/Lee Incident
June 12, 2009

U.N. Security Council Resolution 1874 (Updated with Analysis)

For better or for worse, they passed it. As with UNSCR 1695 and 1718 before it, this will be as effective as the implementation. Much has been said about how China undermined both of those resolutions, and that is true, but too little has been said about how much the U.S. State Department also did to undermine them for the sake of a failure called Agreed Framework II. The good news is that this time, there are some early and...

Categories "United" Nations/Sanctions
April 26, 2009

Deputy Chief of Mission at U.S. Embassy in Seoul Calls Laura Ling and Euna Lee “Stupid”

I wonder how many years of studying international relations it would take a guy like me to become a suave, smooth-talking ambassador of American values like this guy: A US diplomat in Seoul has shocked a group of visiting Congressional staff members by allegedly making highly insensitive comments about two journalists — Taiwanese ­-American Laura Ling and Korean-American Euna Lee — now facing serious criminal charges in North Korea. William Stanton, deputy chief of mission at the US embassy in...

Categories Abductions/Appeasement/Diplomacy
February 26, 2009

State Dept. Releases Annual Human Rights Report

The State Department has released its 2008 country reports on human rights. The North Korea report is here, and it reflects no improvements in the abysmal state of life, such as it is, in North Korea. It features this litany of arbitrary murders by the state’s agents: During the year the South Korean nongovernmental research organization North Korean Human Rights Infringement Record Center reported that North Korea carried out 901 public executions in 2007. North Korea also reportedly carried out...

Categories Human Rights
February 6, 2009

‘Chosun Gripped With Boundless Emotion and Joy’

You have to wonder what goes through the minds of the people who write this stuff today. It’s so over the top as to suggest a subversive intent. KCNA’s words, my links: Pyongyang, February 4 (KCNA) — Upon hearing the news that General Secretary Kim Jong Il was nominated as a candidate for deputy to the 12th Supreme People’s Assembly at Constituency No. 333, the entire army and people are full of great happiness and pride of having the peerlessly...

Categories Kim Jong Il/Unintended Humor/WTF?
July 28, 2008

Anju Links for 28 July 2008

WHAT’S MISSING HERE? “For the past seven years, we’ve spoken out against human rights abuses by tyrannical regimes like those in Iran, Sudan and Syria and Zimbabwe,” Bush said in a speech here titled “the Freedom Agenda Introduction.”  “We’ve spoken candidly about human rights with nations with whom we’ve got good relations, such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia and China,” he said.  [Yonhap]   Of course, it’s not as if Bush did  much to materially advance freedom in any of...

Categories Anju Links
July 8, 2008

Anju Links for 8 July 2008

NOT-VERY-FAMOUS LAST WORDS:  Most observers now rate the 100,000-man South Korean army as the best of its size in Asia. Its fast-moving columns have mopped up all but a few of the Communist guerrilla bands. And no one now believes that the Russian-trained North Korean army could pull off a quick, successful invasion of the South without heavy reinforcements. [Time, June 5, 1950]   MAD SHEEP DISEASE UPDATES: In a fine example of the unrealized expectations of government-funded media, KBS...

Categories Anju Links
June 26, 2008

Get Ready for Kim Jong Il’s Incomplete, Incorrect, and Expensive Nuclear Declaration (Updated and Bumped)

[Updated below: Today, President Bush embarks on the process of throwing away most of our diplomatic leverage against North Korea in exchange for a declaration that’s incomplete, incorrect, and unverified. Those who rightly criticized President Clinton for appeasing North Korea after the 1994 Agreed Framework should be honest enough to admit that Bush’s eleventh-hour grasp at a diplomatic legacy is probably even more dangerous.] [Original Post, 24 Jun 08] In a speech at the Heritage Foundation last week, Secretary of...

Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks
June 3, 2008

The Washington Times Reviews “Crossing”

Avoiding the melodrama of many South Korean films, “Crossing” is relentless in its detailed, docudrama approach. A cross-border trader and his family are seized by secret police in a midnight raid. Ragged orphans beg in destitute markets. Camp guards kick a pregnant woman in China in the stomach. Kim Tae-kyun, the film’s director, said he did not retain Mr. Yoo, a high-profile defector, as a consultant for fear of creating a political incident while filming in China. Last year, Mr....

Categories Appeasement/Korean Society/Refugees
April 28, 2008

North Korean Officer Defects Across the DMZ; Separate Report Suggests Rations for Field-Grade Officers, Security Forces Cut

The North Korean officer approached a South Korean guard post Sunday on the western part of the frontier, an official at the South’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said. The 28-year-old second lieutenant, identified only by his surname Ri, told South Korean guards he was seeking asylum in the South, Yonhap news agency reported, citing an unidentified South Korean military official. The Joint Chiefs of Staff official declined to confirm the news report, and spoke on condition of anonymity because the...

Categories Famine & Food Aid/NK Military
April 27, 2008

Seoul Invaded by “The Ugly Chinese”

The most disastrous Olympic torch run in history  has ended with a new low: On Sunday, clashes broke out in Seoul near the relay start between a group of 500 Chinese supporters and about 50 demonstrators criticizing Beijing‘s policies, carrying a banner reading, “Free North Korean refugees in China.” The students threw stones and water bottles as some 2,500 police tried to keep the two sides apart.  [AP] And so we add another excellent reason, if any more were needed...

Categories Activism/China/China & Korea/Refugees
April 4, 2008

N. Korea Food Situation Continues to Worsen: Protests Continue in Chongjin; Food Prices Skyrocket; Kim Jong Il Asks China for ‘Massive’ Food Aid

[Update: A reader — one you and I both respect — writes to warn that we shouldn’t rely too heavily on the reports of Good Friends. Well, yes, the obvious caveats apply here: this being North Korea, we tend to treat third-hand rumors and hearsay, possibly further garbled by translation, as news. What I try to do here that news sites don’t do is to put each report in the context of other facts reported by other sources, either previously...

Categories Famine & Food Aid/Regime Change/Resistance