Search Results for: Executed

(By guest blogger Andy Jackson) I was in Seoul on Tuesday to do some work for the Seoul Summit (I live outside Seoul). That gave me a chance to visit a meeting of Catacombs, a group led by Tim Peters. I walked in out of a cold Korean December night and saw about 25 people packed shoulder to shoulder in a very small art gallery. I sat on a small stool in front of the door because their wasn’t room...

Since I’ve been experiencing some of the busiest weeks in my professional life lately, I haven’t been able to sneak out of the office to attend hearings, but there are two interesting highlights to report. The first is the latest House hearing, which took place October 27th, covering the U.S. government’s implementation of the N.K. Human Rights Act. Here is a link to all of the testimony, which I freely admit I haven’t the time to review in full. Still,...

Nicholas Eberstadt is no fan of the “breakthrough” agreed statement with North Korea: Contrary to conventional wisdom, which holds the North Korean state to be an unremittingly hostile “negotiating partner,” history actually demonstrates that Pyongyang can be a highly obliging interlocutor under certain very specific conditions. All that is necessary to “get to yes” with the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) is to concede every important point demanded by the North Korean side while sacrificing vital interests of one’s...

Norbert Vollertsen sends: The leader of an underground church and his familymembers were arrested last July. The details are as follows: Place: Peeyeong Gun, North Pyongan Province Arrested: Moon, Seong Jeun(age 64), the leader of the church and some or all of his 8 brothers and sisters. Arresting Authority: Local branch of the State Security Agency. Charge: Attempt to overthrow the government. Moon was regarded as the “ringleader of their clandestine activities. Status: Interrogation was nearly completed as of early...

I absolutely despise the Chinese government, and yet I have trouble with the idea that even they would use the skin of executed prisoners to make cosmetics for export. Something doesn’t sound right about that, and the fact that it’s in The Guardian doesn’t help. And after all, the things we know to be true are already enough to turn your stomach. HT: The Kommentariat.

Who says Roh Moo-Hyun has no love for America? His war on prostitution has it positively cascading into the United States, in this case, the Los Angeles area: A federal grand jury handed down indictments today charging 24 persons for their role in a sophisticated human smuggling scheme that allegedly brought hundreds of South Korean women into the United States to work as prostitutes. Named in the two multi-count indictments issued today are 23 individuals originally charged in the investigation...

Welcome to the Carnival of the Revolutions edition for August 29th. Hosting next week’s edition (Sept. 5) will be Thinking-East; next up (Sept. 12) is Quid Nimis. Updates added, typos fixed. East Asia and the Pacific Rim Burma: Did the government’s army use chemical weapons against Karen rebels earlier this year? The Jubilee Campaign, a Christian human rights NGO, prints an editorial by Lord David Alton, a member of the British House of Lords. Publius reports on new rumors of...

This was a Q&A session moderated by Senator Sam Brownback, who can fairly be called North Korea’s most dangerous enemy in the U.S. Congress. Update: After watching this program on C-SPAN’s book TV, I caught a few errors and made corrections to that effect. Please do not mistake this for a verbatim transcript; it’s highly summarized . . . my best effort to be faithful to the ideas conveyed by the speakers. In the case of Mr. Sharansky, I cleaned...

Blogging will be light for the rest of the day while I’m at the Freedom House Conference. Meanwhile, LiNK has called a rally in front of the South Korean Embassy. Before you scroll down and read the full statement, check out this flyer, which is a much-improved version of my own prototype. Since I came up with that design, comparing South Korea’s policy to the old Fugitive Slave Act, Jasper Becker’s book has come out with a of a Chinese...

From the Joongang Ilbo: Citing interviews with North Korean defectors, a Seoul-based research institute said yesterday that the regime in Pyongyang is continuing an aggressive campaign to suppress underground churches in the country. The 2005 North Korea Human Rights White Paper published by the Korea Institute of National Unification reported a number of executions of religious figures operating underground Protestant churches in the North. In 2001, five people found guilty of conducting missionary work were executed by firing squad in...

Daily NK reports two items of interest today. The first is purportedly the text of the judgments against those executed and imprisoned by the North Korean authorities there. Although it accuses most of the condemned of trafficking in North Korean women, treat that characterization with extreme caution; putting a sexual taint on a dissenter is an old trick that China has used pretty shamelessly against Korean underground railroad activists. It could be true, too. But then, why add this language?...

Daily NK reports two items of interest today. The first is purportedly the text of the judgments against those executed and imprisoned by the North Korean authorities there. Although it accuses most of the condemned of trafficking in North Korean women, treat that characterization with extreme caution; putting a sexual taint on a dissenter is an old trick that China has used pretty shamelessly against Korean underground railroad activists. It could be true, too. But then, why add this language?...

Chosun Ilbo correspondent Kang Chol-Hwan has a disturbing new report on a North Korean crackdown on dissent and efforts to destroy evidence of the regime’s atrocities. Kang himself is a survivor of North Korea’s Yodok labor camp district, a complex of camps that covers a vast, remote area of northeaster North Korea. Kang was sent to Yodok while still in elementary school because of a political transgression by his grandfather. You can read the full story in his autobiography. The...