June 17, 2006

Why He Took Those Pictures

The U.S. Ambassador to South Korea, Alexander Vershbow, has paid a very public visit to the Kaesong Industrial Park, and the initial signs are good. Vershbow, a man who seeks the public debate his predecessors so often avoided, has not shied from stating some rather blunt views about North Korea. Thus, the fact that the North Koreans allowed his visit to go forward at all is surprising. Best of all, Vershbow snooped around, took pictures, and even seems to have...

Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/Human Rights/NK Economics/Technology/U.S. & Korea/U.S. Law/Uncategorized/WMD
June 12, 2006

An Endorsement, of Sorts

As used in this chapter – (1) the term “international terrorism” means activities that … (B) appear to be intended … (i) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population; [or] (ii) to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion …. – Title 18, Section 2331, United States Code If North Korea’s latest were less laughable than a “threat” to cut off what must amount to billions in free money from South Korea, it might serve as one...

Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/Korean Politics
June 11, 2006

Laotian Gov’t Releases All 12 Prisoners; No Word Yet on Prisoners in Thailand

Thank you for your calls, letters, and e-mails to the Laotian Embassy; it looks like we’ve helped save ten people from a horrific fate. Thanks also to the other bloggers who linked my posts on this story. On behalf of all activists who persevered for almost two weeks during a rollercoaster drama that saw 10 North Korean refugees endure two separate imprisonments in Laos, a ransom standoff, the ever-present specter of repatriation to North Korea via China, I am most...

Categories Abductions/Human Rights/Refugees/Southeast Asia
June 10, 2006

Refugees Update

Twelve more North Korean refugees have been arrested in Thailand. Could this be a coincidence? Meanwhile, my contacts are giving me mixed reports on the status of the refugees held in a jail in Luang Prabang, Laos. Some say that media attention is helping the prognosis for release, another says that deportation back to North Korea may be imminent because the attention thus far has been limited. Please, take just a few seconds to contact the Lao Embassy to demand...

Categories "United" Nations/Appeasement/Human Rights/Refugees
June 10, 2006

Minister Lee, Call Your Lawyer!

I wonder if the UniFiction Ministry’s Kaesong brain trust — perhaps the same great minds that thought they could fill Wal-Mart shelves with Kaesong products — ever stumbled across these articles of the Republic of Korea Constitution: Article 32 (1) All citizens shall have the right to work. The State shall endeavor to promote the employment of workers and to guarantee optimum wages through social and economic means and shall enforce a minimum wage system under the conditions as prescribed...

Categories Appeasement/Human Rights/Human Trafficking/Korean Law/NK Economics/U.S. & Korea
June 8, 2006

More on the N. Korean Refugees Being Held in Laos

[Update: Human Rights Without Frontiers has launched an urgent appeal, which I reprint in full below, with Lao Embassy contacts in several nations. I called the Embassy today and thanks all who do so in advance.] Tim Peters has sent an update on the story The Korea Liberator broke here yesterday about the North Korean refugees jailed in Laos. You will recall that eight refugees and two South Korean activists were intercepted by the Lao police, who arrested and later...

Categories Appeasement/Refugees/Southeast Asia
June 8, 2006

He Needed Killing

I suppose every blogger and journalist has created a macro that says, “this doesn’t mean that the war is over,” a point that was made vividly to me when I saw a friend off to a seven-month deployment with the Marines in Fallujah this evening. Insurgencies don’t die with their leaders, they die slowly as the people find better things to do than brood and plot, and progress is almost always painfully gradual. In the larger war against Islamic terrorists,...

Categories Terrorism/Iraq/Uncategorized
June 8, 2006

Korea Diary, 8 Jun 06

Uri Death Watch: North Korea is preparing for life after conservatives return to power in South Korea. While it’s premature for anyone to presume, I suppose it’s prudent to prepare. What’s really disturbing, from the perspective of journalistic ethics, is how the Chosun Ilbo is engaging in its own private diplomacy with the North, which certainly implies more favorable coverage in exchange for something — such as access. Now, the American media have made the same faustian deals in both...

Categories Korean Politics/Media Criticism/NK Military/WMD
June 7, 2006

135 Years of Covering Korea

Don Kirk, the Christian Science Monitor’s Korea Correspondent, has joined up the Choe Sang-Hun for a journalistic perspective on Korea that stretches across more than a century. If I were going to be in Seoul, I would definitely not miss this, and I’m looking forward to seeing the published product. Thanks to Don Kirk for sending: Covering Korea: Then and Now KOREA WITNESS: 135 Years of War, Crisis and News in the Land of the Morning Calm Contacts: Publisher, EunHaeng...

Categories Korean History/Media Criticism
June 7, 2006

Yodok Story Coming to Washington

Confirmed by a reliable source: the U.S. debut for Yodok Story will be Wednesday, September 27th at the National Theater. There will be seven shows, through Sunday, and the plans (still not final) are to move to New York and the West Coast, probably L.A., after that. Freedom House and Sen. Sam Brownback both helped bring the production here. I had a chance to meet the director, very briefly, in April. My impression was that he’s physically very small, stylishly...

Categories Activism/Censorship/Human Rights/Korean Society
June 7, 2006

State Dep’t Applies the Term ‘Forced Labor’ to Kaesong

This new State Department report looks very bad for Kaesong products even getting into the United States, much less getting FTA status: The North Korean government may be pocketing most of the pay foreign employers pay North Korean workers, a U.S. report on human trafficking asserted. The report was released Monday by the State Department in Washington. …. Seoul wants, and Washington opposes, the designation of goods made there as domestic South Korean products. U.S. officials have criticized the labor...

Categories Human Rights/NK Economics/U.S. & Korea
June 6, 2006

Derailed on the Underground Railroad

[Update 7 Jun 06: A hopeful sign? Personally, I think we need to keep the pressure on. My heartfelt thanks to those of you — and I’m hearing from a number of you — who have sent letters, and to the journalists I contacted who have shown great interest in the story. That especially goes for the Yonhap correspondent.] Via the Christian activist Tim Peters, one of the founders of North Korean refugees’ underground railroad, and reader/teacher/activist Brendan Brown, eight...

Categories Activism/Refugees/Southeast Asia
June 5, 2006

Stolen from the Bellies of the Starving

“At least since 2000 when we began providing assistance to the North, no one there has been starving to death. ““ UniFiction Minister Lee Jong-Seok, May 2, 2006 News that North Koreans are again starving to death may cause you to wonder where all the money is going. The report said North Korea increased its submarine fleet from 70 in 2004 to 88 today. Those submarines have the capability to mine Korea’s major harbors, such as Busan or Pohang, in...

Categories Famine & Food Aid/NK Military
June 5, 2006

Hypocrisy Illustrated

If you want an ideal illustration of why I believe the political tide is turning in Korea, you couldn’t do better than this picture of this anti-free trade demonstration in Washington (Yonhap, via the Joongang Ilbo, now Korea’s best daily). It’s a real Where’s Waldo of illogic and double standards rooted in vitriol, and I’m compelled to warn you that if you stare at this picture too long, you will get a brain aneurism. Before we zoom in on this...

Categories An Alliance?/Anti-Americanism/NK Economics/U.S. & Korea/Uncategorized
June 5, 2006

The Death of an Alliance, Part 41

I don’t know how much deader you can get than this: In a seismic shift in an alliance that has held since the Korean War, the military plans to scrap Korea-U.S. Combined Forces Command by 2012, it emerged Sunday. Wartime operational control of Korean forces will also return to the country, probably by 2011, since it now rests with the commander of the U.S.-led CFC. According to a military source, plans to abolish the CFC are clearly stated in the...

Categories An Alliance?/Anti-Americanism/ROK Military/U.S. & Korea/U.S. Military