Home  >  Abductions

Category: Abductions

December 31, 2009

What Would Be a Good Crank Call for the North Korean U.N. Mission?

ReACH, the Japanese abductee advocacy group, sends: Call North Korea at UN in New York, USA 1-212-972-3105 Call North Korea at UN in Geneva, Switzerland 41-22-735-4370 Send fax to North Korea at UN in New York, USA 1-212-972-3154 Send fax to North Korea at UN in Geneva, Switzerland 41-22-786-0662 Don’t forget to copy and paste Kim Jong-Il’ s photo, (example) and write “Important Message to Chairman Kim Jong-Il”, so that they cannot throw it away and have to report it...
Categories Abductions/Humor/Satire
November 19, 2009

Somali Pirates Hijack North Korean-Crewed Ship (Updated Below)

North Korea’s notoriously rickety freighters must be as enticing to Somali pirates as my 1979 Impala with the red clear tape over the left taillight lens was to Rapid City, South Dakota’s finest. As recently as May, the South Korean Navy thwarted a pirate attack on a North Korean ship. The pirates, now said to be under the charismatic leadership of a fat white kid, are trying to rebound from more aggressive international enforcement efforts with a spate of new...
Categories Abductions
November 17, 2009

NGO Claims North Korea Abducted 200 Chinese Who Aided Refugees

Pyongyang’s agents over the past decade abducted about 200 Chinese citizens as part of a campaign to stop people from fleeing North Korea, a news report said Tuesday. The Chinese of ethnic Korean descent had been helping refugees who had fled across the border, Chosun Ilbo newspaper said, adding they were abducted to North Korea and jailed there. [AFP] The English version of the Chosun Ilbo article isn’t out yet as I write this (but might be by the time...
Categories Abductions/China & Korea
October 13, 2009

How North Korea Selects Family “Reunion” Recipients

The criteria for selection are political value and propaganda potential. South Korean prisoners of war and citizens who were abducted by the North are picked for their political value. North Korea believes that South Korean demands for the release of all POWs and abductees can be appeased if such people are included. [….] Once selected, North Koreans go through between one and three months of ideological education at the Unification Bureau. In the early days of the family reunions, the...
Categories Abductions/North-South
August 4, 2009

The Bag Man: Bill Clinton in Pyongyang

[Update:  More here, at The New Ledger.  I suspect we’ve come to a fork in the road.  One way brings us to Agreed Framework III, and the other clears a major obstacle toward intensifying sanctions, and an adult response to a crisis that talks without clear benchmarks and objectives have only exacerbated.  Place your own bets.] Former President Clinton is in Pyongyang to ask for the freedom of Laura Ling and Euna Lee. As I’ve said before, it hardly matters...
Categories Abductions/Diplomacy/Ling/Lee Incident/Terrorism (NK)
June 4, 2009

Korean Church Coalition to Hold Nationwide Prayer Vigil Tomorrow; News media embargo the T-word

Laura Ling and Euna Lee are having their sham trial as we speak, so if you believe that prayer helps, this would be the time to pray for them: korean-church-coalition-press-release-for-june-5-2009-event.pdf I’m one who tends to think that tracking down and freezing all of their bank accounts would help much more, and Executive Order 13,224 would be a way to do that that doesn’t mix this case up with other sanctions under contemplation for nuke and missile tests.  The Administration is...
Categories Abductions/Activism/Media Criticism/Terrorism (NK)
May 29, 2009

Lisa Ling to Go Public, Demand the Release of Her Sister

This just in from the Facebook page for Laura Ling and Euna Lee, the two U.S. journalists whom North Korea seized along its border with China back in March, shortly before its long-range missile test: Subject: Going public Hi everyone, it’s Lisa Ling.  Firstly, our families are deeply grateful for your support and efforts to try to secure the release of Laura and Euna.  To say that this has been stressful would be to grossly understate how hard this has...
Categories Abductions/Terrorism (NK)
May 21, 2009

Smart, Tough Diplomacy: Hillary Clinton Asks Bloggers to Free U.S. Journalists from North Korea

Because if there’s one thing Kim Jong Il simply cannot withstand, it’s that lethal instrument of soft power known as “snark:” US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Monday urged women students to use the Internet to campaign for the release of two American women journalists held in North Korea. Clinton urged graduates of Barnard College, a women’s university in New York City, to show their opposition to Pyongyang’s detention of the two journalists who are due to go on...
Categories Abductions/Activism/Diplomacy/Unintended Humor/WTF?
May 17, 2009

Victor Cha: Let’s Reward Terrorism!

If Victor Cha has ever persuaded me of anything, it’s  of the  paradox that some of the most  highly educated and  academically intelligent people  never learn.  Cha,  one of the  architects  of  the Bush Administration’s magnificently  unsuccessful opening to Kim Jong Il’s North Korea, draws on that disqualification to advise us who should bring Laura Ling and Euna Lee home, and how. Having participated in a mission to bring home the remains of American servicemen killed in the Korean War,...
Categories Abductions/Diplomacy/Terrorism (NK)
May 15, 2009

Clinton Welcomes North Korean “Trial” of U.S. Journalists

So North Korea is about to subject two American journalists to one of the world’s most opaque, arbitrary, and harsh judicial systems.  This would mark the first North Korean trial of an American in recent years, if ever.  And although our Secretary of State calls the charges “baseless,” she sounds just thrilled to pieces at the prospect of two of her country’s citizens facing a revolutionary tribunal: At a press appearance with Malaysia’s foreign minister, Clinton cast the announcement as,...
Categories Abductions/Diplomacy
April 26, 2009

Deputy Chief of Mission at U.S. Embassy in Seoul Calls Laura Ling and Euna Lee “Stupid”

I wonder how many years of studying international relations it would take a guy like me to become a suave, smooth-talking ambassador of American values like this guy: A US diplomat in Seoul has shocked a group of visiting Congressional staff members by allegedly making highly insensitive comments about two journalists — Taiwanese ­-American Laura Ling and Korean-American Euna Lee — now facing serious criminal charges in North Korea. William Stanton, deputy chief of mission at the US embassy in...
Categories Abductions/Appeasement/Diplomacy
March 19, 2009

North Korea Detains Two (?) U.S. Journalists

As you see, the reports conflict as to how many incidents there were, how many journalists were detained, and on which side of the border: Embedded video from CNN Video The preponderance of reports thus far suggest that two American journalists with the network Current TV were arrested — and if this is confirmed, it would be fair to say “abducted” — from the Chinese side of the Yalu River while filming North Korea. Two American journalists on a reporting...
Categories Abductions/Media Criticism/Refugees
February 26, 2009

Japanese Human Rights Group Launches Spam Fax Campaign Against N. Korea

The Japanese NGO ReACH, which advocates for the return of abducted Japanese citizens and for human rights in North Korea, has assembled a long list of known North Korean fax numbers, which I’ve published here for all the world to see, below the fold. REACH is calling on Japan’s massive community of netizens (and you, too!) to send spam faxes to these numbers, and offers some recommendations to maximize the subversive/disruptive effect if you decide to join the fun: –...
Categories Abductions/Activism/Japan & Korea
January 28, 2009

U.N. Special Rapporteur Soldiers On

He was seconded by a fallen government, gets no respect from the U.S. government, and works for the world’s most overrated entity, but Vitit Muntarbhorn, the U.N.’s Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in North Korea is making (in U.N. terms, at least) a creditable effort to do his job: An independent U.N. investigator on North Korea’s human rights situation Tuesday described the food shortage and rights violations in the country as ”very grim” and called on Japan to strengthen support...
Categories "United" Nations/Abductions/Human Rights
January 21, 2009

Megumi Yokota’s Mother’s New Book on Sale

Sakie Yokota’s meeting with President Bush in 2006 may have been one of my last optimistic moments about the GWB administration’s North Korea policy. Mrs. Yokota, whose daughter was kidnapped from the shores of her hometown at the age of 13, has just published an English language edition of her book. I’d be amazed if Mrs. Yokota didn’t express feelings of anger and betrayal toward the former president and his broken promises not to abandon her cause. All of this...
Categories Abductions/Activism
December 8, 2008

Seoul Mulls Ransom Payments to Bring POW’s Home

It sticks in the craw to even consider paying ransom to induce North Korea into doing what the 1953 Armistice requires it to do, and return at least 560 South Korean prisoners of war the North is still believed to hold. One can only imagine what ghastly uses the regime might find for the money. Still, when you consider that for years, South Korea had paid the North billions and received nothing in return, getting at least some quo for...
Categories Abductions/Korean War
November 22, 2008

The Power of Truth

Freedom rises over Korea, into the air over the most oppressed and darkened place on earth. The video clips that follow are from the BBC, Al Jazzeera, the Voice of America, and New Tang Dynasty Television. The people who are launching these balloons are, in large part, North Koreans who could not live — or stand living — in their homeland, and who can find no other means to connect with those they left behind. Others are South Koreans whose...
Categories Abductions/Activism/Defectors/Deprogramming/Human Rights/Human Trafficking