“Why Should we Care?” Lectures on human rights in North Korea
(By guest blogger, Andy Jackson)
UPDATE: I have posted on the content of the four major presenters. The posts are listed as: Kang Chol-hwan’s lecture at Sogang University, How North Korea tried to subvert the ROK democracy movement, How could you not care? and North Korea is not a socialist state.
ORIGINAL POST: In conjuction with events next month sponsored by Freedom House and several Korean organizations, Liberty in North Korea (LiNK) is sponsoring events supporting North Korean human rights on December 9 and 10 in Seoul.
As a build up to those events, the Seoul branch of LiNK co-sponsored several lectures this Saturday with Gyodubo and Students’ Alliance for North Korean Human Rights at Seoul’s Sogang University.
I have long believed that LiNK and groups like it would help pull Korean students’ heads out of the sand regarding North Korea. While it is difficult to quantify, it seems that their efforts are starting to pay off as alternatives to the leftists are emerging on campuses across Korea. It is a little early to tell how much support pro-North Korean human rights groups are gathering but I am encouraged by the work they are doing.
LiNK-Seoul has developed quit a bit in since it sponsored a symposium at Yonsei University last year. At that time it was just trying to get its foot in the door in Korea, which necessitated their being less ‘in-your-face’ than they are in the USA and Europe. As LiNK’s Executive Director, Adrian Hong explained last year:
[W]e are, for the time being, merely a facilitator. There was a lot more to LiNK’s trip to Seoul than was visible at Yonsei. We met with every major NGO and group, public or underground, working with NK human rights. Some groups we had worked with in the past, others we were being introduced to. Two major responses were evident. The first was that we were too young to be taken seriously, but great for photo ops. The second, was that we were too American to be taken seriously, and anything we said was automatically discounted and even cut-off in mid-sentence. Most of the meetings ended up being worth less than the free tea we were served- just opportunities for “human rights leaders” to lecture us on the lack of understanding we had of the “daily dangers” South Koreans faced from North Korea, and our “ignorance” of Korean history and politics.
You can imagine, then, why we were reluctant to be too forthright in our charges at the Yonsei event.
LiNK will work for a bit to shed the image in Korea of us as “outsiders” and “meddlers.” It will take some time, but it is anything but impossible, particularly because many of us are not only of Korean heritage, but also of Korean citizenship. We have found kindred spirits in Seoul and it’s universities already, and groups of people have approached us about starting chapters in Seoul.
What I saw this Saturday told me that LiNK has found its voice in Korea and chosen its allies in the struggle for human rights for those Koreans living north of the DMZ. The left-wing groups and Pyongyang apologists that they worked with in the interest of expediency last year are gone. In their place are kindred voices in the struggle.
However, they are still non-partisan, which as a practical matter means they have to keep some right-wing groups at arms-length and forgo some potentially useful assistance.
The event started at 1:20 with about 90 people in attendance. They were mostly Korean students with a few foreigners. Adrian Hong was there along with a representative of Freedom House.
The three main lecturers were Kang Chol-hwan, Tim Peters and Kim Young-hwan. I will go over the content of their presentations on Monday evening (Korean time).
BTW, I should note that there were no protesters there.