A South Korean Awakening on Human Rights?
Never believe anything you desperately wish to believe.
I desperately wish to believe that South Koreans will eventually give the benefit of their compassion and outrage to the people of North Korea, even if their policy prescriptions might not necessarily match my own. Thus, I am suspicious of two tantalizing reports in today’s DailyNK, concerning the mobiblization of South Korean churches in this cause.
First is this report from the Myeongdong Cathedral, traditionally the sanctuary of dissent and protest in Seoul. In a meeting that appears (from the photographs) to have filled the church, Catholics and Protestants joined to hear Korean and American activists call for human rights and democracy in the North. The article claims that 2,500 attended.
The second will be of more interest to neocon bloggers who often reach premature ecstasy when they spot protest babes. Babes with causes (and the power to attract cameras) have begun to make their appearance at this very substantial demonstration by Protestant churches in Seoul (I mean, just compare). Police estimate the crowd at 35,000; organizers say 100,000. Either way, the number is substantial, and I can see reasons for the cops to underestimate the crowd, just as I see reasons for the organizers to overestimate it.
The participants who filled the traffic lane for one way from the University Road all the way to Jongro held placards saying “there is no conservative and progressive for opposing against the North Korean nuclear” and urged the nuclear dismantlement and suspension of the human rights violations by the Kim Jong Il regime.
The participants held a prayer about the North Korean nuclear problem, peace on the Korean peninsula, North Korean defectors and North Korean human rights improvement for about an hour prior to the rally officially took off.
Once the rally started, more and more participants joined and filled the four lane traffic lanes of Ehwa 4 Street to the direction of the University Road of about 200m and stimulated the day’s event.
Jung Keun Mo, the dean of Myungji University, the special lecturer for the day’s event, urged, “we can hold a prayer meeting for North Korean human rights because we have our freedom secured. Now let’s put our heart together and pray to make North Korea a land where there is no hunger and have their basic rights guaranteed just as we do.
In the mass gathering, letters to President Roh Moo Hyun, President Bush, and Kim Jong Il were recited. In the letter to Kim Jong Il, the Christian Council of Korea pleaded for the “recovery of North Korean human rights and return of Rev. Kim Dong Shik. People could also see an unprecedented scene of South Korean and North Korean university students (defectors) shouting slogans together.
Suh Young Suk, director of the Family Assembly of the POWs (a North Korean defector) and Lee Yoo Mi, team leader of the University Team (for North Korean human rights) as student representatives shouted together, “North Korea must stop the nuclear development and recover the human rights for our Northern brethren.
Harder to verify is this report of an underground church service inside North Korea. I don’t know enough to comment on whether three generations of Christian missionaries could survive inside North Korea, but I do agree that Christianity is a mortal threat–probably the greatest threat–to this regime. As an ideology to galvanize resistance, steel people for difficult sacrifices, and offer what must be an irresistable philosophy of kindness and compassion, it’s hard to think of a belief system (my own included) better suited than Christianity.