Anju Links for 8 July 2008

NOT-VERY-FAMOUS LAST WORDS: 

Most observers now rate the 100,000-man South Korean army as the best of its size in Asia. Its fast-moving columns have mopped up all but a few of the Communist guerrilla bands. And no one now believes that the Russian-trained North Korean army could pull off a quick, successful invasion of the South without heavy reinforcements. [Time, June 5, 1950]  

MAD SHEEP DISEASE UPDATES: In a fine example of the unrealized expectations of government-funded media, KBS draws a strained comparison between the Mad Cow protests, which are largely based on distortions, on pro-democracy protests in the 1980’s. I don’t agree with censoring irresponsible and inaccurate media outlets, but I just as strenuously disagree with subsidizing them. But of course, that’s only the beginning of the problem:

Other illogical propaganda slogans include the allegation that of about 5 million American patients with Alzheimer’s disease, 250,000-650,000, or 5-13 percent, are presumed to have been infected with variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, the human form of BSE. A spoof Korean movie title “Many Holes in Your Brain” has also been successful in linking Alzheimer’s disease with mad cow disease.

Sensitive children and students have responded to the slogan, “You can die if you eat 0.01g of American beef” — referring to the scrapie prion protein (PrPsc), the substance that causes BSE. Others say even vegetarians can die from cosmetics or instant noodle soup containing beef byproducts. Although these products have nothing to do with mad cow disease, the allegations are effective in exaggerating a vague sense of danger. [Chosun Ilbo]

So what do we do about the fact that distortions own the public debate and truth can’t get in a word edgewise? The answer: nothing. It’s called national Darwinism. A free, prosperous society that becomes anarchic and ungovernable upon contact with urban legends will not long remain so. The inevitable consequences of South Korea’s voluntary secession from reason do not implicate America’s vital interests unless we have troops there.

THE MORE THINGS CHANGE, PT 1: From then-ACLU Director Roger Baldwin after a 1947 visit to Korea, these prophetic words:

The small intellectual elite that runs Korean politics tends to be either Communist or reactionary. “In Korea,” said Baldwin, “the middle of the road is conspicuous by its absence. We were unable to find a democratic center.” One result is continuous political violence. Korean politicians are hardly safe in their homes. [Time]

THE MORE THINGS CHANGE, PT. 2: South Korean Communists “spread rumors that the U.S. authorities had confiscated all rice for shipment to Japan and the U.S.”

A VICIOUS ANTI-CHINESE POGROM in Korea in 1931 killed hundreds of Chinese.

A CHARITABLE VIEW OF THE RUSSIAN OCCUPATION of North Korea, circa October 1945: “Their attitude toward civilians is: ‘Give us what we want and keep the hell out of our way.’ They brought fine weapons but few supplies, and they are living off the country. That probably stimulates the impression of widespread looting.”

BUSH GOES TO THE G-8 and seeks to calm down our “upset” Japanese allies with words that now seem strikingly insincere:

As a condition for sending aid and improving relations with the impoverished North, Japan long has pushed for the resolution of the issue of the abductions.

Bush recalled a White House meeting a few years ago with Sakie Yokota, the mother of a 13-year-old Japanese girl kidnapped by North Koreans agents on her way home from school in 1977. “As a father of little girls, I can’t imagine what it would be like to have my daughter just disappear,” Bush said at the news conference. “So, Mr. Prime Minister, as I told you on the phone when I talked to you and in the past, the United States will not abandon you on this issue.” [AP]

HAS AL QAEDA BEEN DRIVEN from its last urban redoubt in Mosul? My gut tells me that this much-discussed report from the Times of London is a bit ahead of itself — “being driven from” would probably be more accurate, as many cadres have no doubt gone to ground. This doesn’t mean that the trends in the wars against both al Qaeda and Sadr aren’t highly positive; it just means that the best indicator to watch isn’t usually a short-term decline in attacks or casualties, it’s weapons cache seizures.

BELOW THE FOLD TODAY: Human Rights Without Frontiers passes along the story of a North Korean defector who recently went to the Hague to meet with Dutch parliamentarians.

My name is Hahn Tae-song, I was a miner from North Hamkyong Province in North Korea. I am now 23. Both my parents were also miners. In the winter of 1999 when I was only 14 years old, my family was so impoverished and I was so hungry that I went to China to find food. This was when I was in the 2nd year in the middle school in my hometown, on the North Korea/China border. I was able to cross the border several times until March 2006 when I finally defected to China. My frequent trips to China acquainted me with the Christian faith and I converted to Christianity. I am now determined to be a Christian missionary for North Koreans.

I arrived in South Korea via Mongolia in July 2006 and I became a citizen of South Korea in November 2006 after finishing the government’s orientation program.

Severe beating of prisoners was a standard practice at every point of my journey, from the arrests in China, repatriation to North Korea by the Chinese police, and interrogations in North Korea. At the end of the cycle, I was sent to my school where I was also beaten by my teacher for my defection. In China, they always called me “you North Korean son of a bitch. In North Korea, I was treated as a traitor who betrayed his fatherland.

On one occasion at the State Security Agency (SSA) in North Korea, an interrogator stripped me naked, smashed my thighs with boots and whipped me with his belt leaving snake marks on my body, blood dripping from the scars. The guards often smashed the heads of prisoners hard against the iron bars of the cells. We also saw them raping women at toilets. On one occasion, my friend had his hands tied to the cell bars for whispering to another prisoner; they set some vinyl bags on fire and dropped the burning bag onto the back of his hands. The horrible sound of him howling like an animal still rings in my ears.

We prisoners were often tied all over the body with ropes so that we would look like pigeons and were then beaten. You can still see the cigarette burns on my thighs. On one occasion, a guard hit my friend on the head with a square bar so hard that when my friend ducked it, the bar stripped off his ear. I was often hung by an iron bar to be beaten with an electric club which felt like thousands of needles poking my entire body; some people die from the shock. I was used to this and could take it but my wrists were swollen from the rope and my skin peeled off from hanging from the bar for hours. Once they tied me to a chair and beat me so hard that I fainted; they wanted to know the names of underground Christians.

On one occasion in my youth, I was with a number of young girls and women near the river separating China from North Korea when I saw a boat coming from the Chinese side. A group of Chinese human traffickers jumped off from the boat and raped them in our presence. We were then small children and we couldn’t do anything about it. The mere thought of this scene still drives me near to fainting.

I am now enrolled at a seminary in Seoul and I want to be a Christian missionary for North Koreans.