Seoul Summit: Line-up for the Thursday night reception
(By guest blogger Andy Jackson)
(This is just a boring documentation post. I’ll try to have something juicier in my next piece.)
I did not get an invitation to the closed sessions at the Seoul Summit tomorrow, but I was able to get an invitation to the evening welcoming reception tomorrow night. I was able to get that much because I’m Executive Director of Republicans Abroad-Korea, one of many organizations supporting the summit. We and the Democrats cosponsored a reception with Kang Chol-hwan in October.
I will give a quick review of reception late Thursday night but will not much time since I will be preparing for the Friday conference. To make up for that, here is some background on the people who will be on the platform.
Moderator
–Kahng Gyoo-hyoung is a professor at Myongji University and co-author of Ending the Cold War in Korea : Theoretical and Historical Perspectives. If you can read Korea, here is an article by Kahng or you can look at this Google translation (please note that ‘River Kyu Elder Brother’ is how Google translates Kahng’s name).
Guests
Former Prime Minister Lee Hong Gu is on board of directors of the Korea Peace Forum. Here is their mission statement:
Korea Peace Forum is a non-profit organization dedicated to the peaceful re-unification of Korea through the bi-partisan support of political parties and the input and involvement of citizens. It is also committed to the establishment of a network throughout North East Asia working for peace.
Bi-partisan indeed (or should I say ‘multi-partisan’). The KPF’s board of directors includes members of the Grand National, Our Open (Uri), Democratic and Democratic Labor parties. That kind of line-up makes me wander if they do anything other than get together and talk (I guess not).
Grand National Party Chairwoman Park Geun-hye (friendly profile) will be there. You may be wondering why a forum that is working very hard to be non-partisan would invite the leader of one of the major parties to its opening reception. A simple answer: She is the only major party leader who acts like she cares about human rights in North Korea.
I had the privilege of exchanging a few emails with Czech Republic Ambassador Tomas Smetanka before his participation in a reception with Kang Chol-hwan in October. He is a pretty down-to-earth guy. Still-fresh memories of repression in their own country may explain the Czechs’ leadership on human rights.
The agenda sent to me has Nakagawa Masaharu listed as being with Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party but he is actually with the main opposition Democratic Party (an easy mistake to make). Nakagawa is a leader on North Korean human rights in Japan and wants to expand the Japanese focus beyond their abductees:
As I mentioned before, most Japanese are focusing upon an abduction issue. Only abduction. I think it was our fault, in the fact that there was a lack of political leadership in Japan, which prevented us from making an international network for this issue. We should have broadened our perspectives to the point that the abduction issue is to be included in the universal agenda of the human rights movements. More than 100 missing Japanese are suffering. The 95,000 returnees are discriminated at the bottom of North Korean society. They should be seen as a common cause to be worked on by both North and South Korea. Japanese as a whole should feel sympathy for this movement and participate in efforts to return the 481 South Korean abductees and members of divided families to South Korea, as well as settling asylum for the over 50,000 North Korean freedom seekers suffering in China.
The Lee Soo Young attending the summit is not the singer but the pastor of Sae Mun Ahn Church. I have also seen his name attached to the Christian Council of Korea and a group called Save North Korea but was not able to confirm his associations.
The Vice Mayor of Seoul, Jung Tae Geun will give a welcoming address.