Search Results for: Lefkowitz

December 15, 2005

Lefkowitz Joins Bush League

U.S. President George W. Bush had his first meeting with Jay Lefkowitz since the special envoy for human rights in North Korea was appointed in August, the White House said Wednesday. White House spokesman Scott McClellan said ahead of the meeting it would provide an opportunity for the president to talk about human rights in the North, one of Bush’s “priority policies. [Link.] Meanwhile, the White House named undocumented Ethiopian cab driver Teklemikal Haile Georgistu as the head of the...

Categories Uncategorized
December 9, 2005

Seoul Summit: Vershbow, Lefkowitz and post-conference fireworks

(by guest blogger Andy Jackson) This a part of a series of posts on the Seoul Summit: Promoting Human Rights in North Korea and related events. The opening session of the Seoul Summit started about about 9:40 with about 400 people in the room. Within an hour, that numbe had grown to about 700. The early part of the session had a very American feel to it, with speeches by US Ambassador Alexander Vershbow and special envoy for North Korean...

Categories Uncategorized
September 16, 2005

Kang Cheol-Hwan Meets U.S. Special Envoy Jay Lefkowitz

Daily NK has : Kang : Now that the special envoy is appointed, I think concrete actions for North Korean human rights improvement must start. I believe much must focus on the rescue of the defectors, assistance to Free North Korea Broadcasting, sending radio into North Korea so we can bring substantial changes inside North Korea. Lef[k]owitz: I will try to use the budget as effectively as possible once the Congress sets the budget. Although it may be different for...

Categories Uncategorized
September 7, 2005

Rice: Lefkowitz to ‘Raise the Profile’ of NK Rights Issues

The U.S. government is also talking about this issue publicly, but for reasons that are probably beyond anyone’s control, it’s not having the desired effect here. Given the scale of what’s happening along the Gulf Coast, you can’t really blame either the State Department or the media for not paying more attention to this. Give Secretary Rice credit for making her first sincere effort to make a public issue of human rights. First, the : SECRETARY RICE: Good morning. I...

Categories Uncategorized
August 21, 2005

White House Appoints Lefkowitz as Human Rights Rapporteur

The other big news is that the White House, as expected, waited for a “decent interval” between negotiating sessions with North Korea to appoint Jay Lefkowitz as its Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in North Korea. The Washington Post printed a Reuters piece, which benefits from actually taking the trouble to contact the people who were behind the NKHRA in the first place: But U.S. officials said the appointment, announced by the White House, had been in the works for...

Categories Uncategorized
August 30, 2017

Speaking out for the North Korean people is more than a full-time part-time job

For months, I’ve heard rumors that the Trump administration isn’t fond of special envoys, and quietly, some of us fretted that the administration was planning to eliminate the job of Special Envoy for Human Rights in North Korea. As it turns out, Tillerson isn’t doing exactly that: The functions and staff of the special envoy for North Korean human rights issues would now fall under the office of the under secretary for civilian security, democracy and human rights, who will...

Categories Diplomacy/Human Rights
December 15, 2016

What’s that? You want the Sunshine Policy back? Good luck with that.

If Nate Silver is feeling humble these days, just let him try to predict who wins the next election in South Korea. In the 12 months between now and the time South Korea elects its next president, the ruling Saenuri party will probably break up. God willing, new candidates will emerge to supplant the dismal fare it has served until now. Divisions between the pro- and anti-Park Geun-hye factions may or may not heal. Ban Ki-moon may or may not...

Categories Kaesong/Korean Politics/Sunshine/U.S. & Korea
July 27, 2015

House, Senate will both hold hearings on North Korea policy this week* (updated)

If you ask senior Obama Administration officials about the policy of “strategic patience” with North Korea today, they will bristle and recast it as something else, but this wasn’t the case in 2010, when former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton explained her policy in a visit to Seoul: “What we’re focused on is changing North Korean behavior,” one senior U.S. official said. “We are not focused on getting back to the table.” “We recognize that diplomacy, some form of diplomacy with North Korea, is inevitable...

Categories U.S. Politics/Washington Views
October 3, 2014

Australia-Korea FTA causes Kaesong backlash

I couldn’t have said it any better than this, and Jay Lefkowitz may be the last person who did: “We can’t see how the Australian government in good conscience could bring such goods into the country,” he said. “It’s absolutely appalling, it basically would make the Australian government and Australian consumers complicit in the exploitation of North Korean workers by their government, and would ensure that Australian dollars are going directly into the pockets of the North Korean regime. Let’s...

Categories Kaesong
June 12, 2014

Open Sources, June 12, 2014

~ 1 ~ Victor Cha has co-written a piece in Foreign Policy about the importance of keeping human rights on the negotiating agenda with North Korea, and points to this infographic on the gulags, co-sponsored by the George W. Bush Center. The Bush Center will also host an invitation-only event on human rights in North Korea again next week. Leave aside the mootness of arguing about the negotiating agenda with North Korea. One may as well argue about Eric Cantor’s...

Categories Anju Links
May 8, 2012

Nobel Prize Winning President Ignores World’s Worst Human Rights Violations

Most of the people reading this blog probably have no idea who Robert King is, and that is a sad comment in itself.  King’s title is Special Envoy for Human Rights in North Korea, a position that was created back in 2004, under a mostly forgotten and disregarded law called the North Korean Human Rights Act. In the Bush Administration, the office was initially filled by Jay Lefkowitz, a well-meaning man who initially came to Bush’s attention for his opposition...

Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/Human Rights
May 26, 2010

North Korea Saves Lee Myung Bak the Trouble of Closing Kaesong

[Update: So did they mean it or not? Damn Kim Jong Il never keeps a promise ….] President Lee can heave a mighty sigh of relief. Not only will the Kaesong Industrial Park be closed after all, but also, Chung Dong-Young, the Hankyoreh, and the usual suspects among Korea’s nationalist left can’t possibly criticize him for it without abandoning all pretense of logic. Oh, wait …. In any event, this is all proceeding very much like I’ve been predicting for...

Categories Appeasement/NK Economics
January 13, 2010

State Department Spokesman on Human Rights Policy

Because of time constraints, all I can give you for now is some quotes from yesterday’s press briefing, below the fold. Thanks to a reader for forwarding. Money quote: “We’ve made clear, going back several months, we’re not going to pay North Korea for coming back to the Six-Party process.” On the role of human rights in the six-party talks, however, the answers were vague to the point of being non-responsive.

Categories Six-Party Talks/Washington Views
January 8, 2010

Where Is Robert King?

The short answer is that King, President Obama’s Special Envoy for Human Rights in North Korea, is headed for South Korea and Japan. Here’s the entire State Department news release: Ambassador Robert King, Special Envoy for North Korean Human Rights Issues, will visit South Korea from January 11-14 and Japan on January 15. This will be Ambassador King’s first visit to the region since being confirmed by the Senate in November 2009. Ambassador King will meet with South Korean and...

Categories Uncategorized
November 23, 2009

Senate Confirms Robert King as N. Korea Human Rights Envoy

The Senate confirmed King on a voice vote: Speaking at a Senate confirmation hearing earlier this month, he defined North Korea as “one of the worst abusers of human rights in the world.” He pledged to protect the human rights of the North Koreans, pay attention to South Korean prisoners of war in the North and Japanese abducted to the North, and address China’s deportation of North Korean defectors. [Chosun Ilbo] More here. It’s good that King will be a...

Categories Human Rights
September 29, 2009

Obama Administration Says First Words About Human Rights in North Korea

Eight months, a missile test, and a nuclear test after President Obama’s inauguration, he has finally gotten around to nominating Bob King to be Special Envoy for Human Rights in North Korea, a move mandated by the North Korean Human Rights Act of 2004 and the North Korean Human Rights Reauthorization Act of 2008. The United States said Friday it was “very concerned” about human rights violations in North Korea, as President Barack Obama named an envoy to focus on...

Categories Activism/Diplomacy/Human Rights/U.S. Politics
September 12, 2009

Lisa Ling to Appear at LiNK Benefit Gala Tonight

[Liveblogging below. Paul Song is speaking, and Laura Ling will appear at the gala.] Wonderful. And you can watch it all here, live at 6 p.m. Eastern. For all the understandable criticism of Laura Ling, Euna Lee, and Mitch Koss for crossing into North Korea, a sentiment I’ve never understood has been the hostility by some toward Lisa Ling, whom to my eyes is guilty of nothing whatsoever here. Some have even appeared to criticize her for using her access...

Categories Activism/Human Rights/Ling/Lee Incident/Media Criticism
August 1, 2009

What’s Still Missing from Obama’s North Korea Policy

Suddenly, editors at prominent liberal publications feel safe letting stories about North Korea’s atrocities see page one, and scholars at prominent liberal think tanks feel safe raising human rights. The topic is no longer subsumed uncomfortably beneath the misbegotten hope that ignoring atrocities unequaled in these times would allow us to negotiate and verify the disarmament of a nation that remained blanketed in secrecy and terror. (Proponents of this premise, which crowned us with the glory of Agreed Frameworks I...

Categories Human Rights/Washington Views