Breaking the Blockade
[Update: Andrei Lankov has a must-read piece on radio broadcasting in the Asia Times Online.]
Meanwhile, and notwithstanding the authorizations in the North Korean Human Rights Act, the U.S. government still hasn’t expanded its broadcasts to the North. You have to think that there will be an audience for those broadcasts when over half of those North Korean refugees in Thailand (the number has now jumped to 276, plus six more who were just caught) are now saying they would rather go to the United States than South Korea — despite the language and cultural barriers that go with that choice.
“They should be given full information on advantages and disadvantages they would have when choosing South Korea or the U.S. as their final destination, and full autonomy in making a final decision,” Yoo said.
The pastor, who is active in the U.S., claimed that he had confirmed from ranking U.S. officials that their government is ready to accept North Korean defectors according to the North Korean Human Rights Act whatever their numbers are.
You may also recall this group interview in which a group of North Korean refugee-students turned out to be Bolton-loving neocons.
None of the papers bothers to tell us why the refugees would rather go to America. My own feelings on their preference would depend on those reasons. If they fear censorship or persecution in the South, then we have a system for sorting out the veracity of those claims. If the reasons are mainly economic, then we should take only those the South Koreans won’t take. Our goal is a free and united Korea, and psychology — not economics, and probably not even Kim Jong-Il — will prove to be the greatest long-term barrier to reunification. This is how the process of South and North getting to know each other again needs to start.
Meanwhile, the Marmot points another lapse of content-neutrality by South Korea (though it falls short of the actual or vicarious forms of censorship, including press censorship, we’ve seen in the past).
North Korea has complained about fliers distributed by activist groups here that criticize its regime since August last year, and when we asked for evidence it sent us the fliers via liaison officers on Aug. 10,” said Hwang Ha-soo, assistant minister in the [UniFiction] ministry’s office for inter-Korean dialogue. They were distributed in the North by the Democracy Network Against a North Korean Gulag and the North Korea Christian Association and “primarily contained criticism of the North Korean regime and its leader, he said. “Such behavior by a handful of civic groups goes against an inter-Korean agreement and we are deeply sorry about it,” he added. “Domestic law does not ban such activities, but we urge them to stop immediately because they may strain the inter-Korean relationship.
I think whether the South Korean government has any legitimate basis to object to this depends on how the leaflets are being delivered. If the method creates a danger of accidental hostilities, there’s a legit basis. But that’s not what the South Koreans are saying. They’re asking private organizations not to engage in unmonitored speech with individuals in a neighboring country because the content of their speech threatens another government’s claim of an absolute monopoly on thought. I can’t recall the last time any reasonable person recognized the legitimacy of such a claim.
To learn about, or contribute to, the Democracy Network Against the North Korean Gulag, click here.
Photo cred: From here. It claims to depict grafitti filmed in N. Hamgyeong province in 2001: “Kim Jong Il is driving our country into catastrophe. People! Awaken and fight!”