Anju Links for 26 August 2008
MEETING WITH HU JINTAO IN BEIJING, “[South Korean President] Lee [Myung Bak] requested Hu’s cooperation to ensure ‘North Korean defectors won’t be forcefully sent back to the North against their will,’ Lee’s spokesman Lee Dong-kwan told reporters.” [IHT]
WORTHY OF ITS NAME: South Korea’s National Human Rights Commission is calling on the Unification Ministry to come up with some answers about those 22 North Korean boat people who arrived in South Korea earlier this year, only to be returned to a North Korean firing squad:
The National Intelligence Service and the Unification Ministry at the time said the 22 crossed the border and drifted into the South Korean waters. In individual interview with each person, the authorities said all 22 had expressed their wish to return to the North, so they were repatriated to the North through Panmunjeom truce village. The government tried to bury the incident, but it was made public by the Chosun Ilbo in February.” [Chosun Ilbo]
YOU CAN FOOL SOME OF THE PEOPLE ALL OF THE TIME ….
Police said some 250 protesters, most of them members of Agora web forum on portal Daum, rallied from 6 p.m. on Saturday until 6 a.m. the following morning, disobeying police order to disperse and shouting slogans such as “Down with Lee Myung-bak!”
Separately, another group of about 200 protesters staged guerrilla-style rallies by swiftly moving from one location to another in the Gangnam Subway Station area and Apgujeong-dong from around 7:10 p.m. on Saturday until 2 a.m. on Sunday. [Chosun Ilbo]
No matter how discredited the facts on which their conspiracy theories are based, they refuse to let go. Not that this is a uniquely Korean phenomenon.
YOU CAN’T FOOL ALL OF THE PEOPLE ALL OF THE TIME:
Several sources from North Korea report that “Irrespective of rank, the trend of listening to foreign radio broadcasts is expanding among officials of the Party, the administration or the National Security Agency, even the rank-and-file servants. A source from South Pyungan said that “Everybody knows that those who listen to foreign radio broadcasts the most are the cadres. They have been listening to foreign radio because they were wondering in which situation Chosun (North Korea) is placed in international society.
“Although the cadres can purchase radios easily, because there are many confiscated radios from the residents in the National Security Agency and the People’s Safety Agency, many high officials are increasingly asking workers involved in foreign currency earning enterprises to get better radios. [Daily NK]