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Category: Abductions

September 3, 2007

In Lafayette Park Now: Reading the Names of 83,000 Abductees

[Update 3:   This demonstration came up in a State Department news briefing today.  From the comments of both the spokesman and Chris Hill, State is clearly backing away from calling these abductions acts of terrorism.  After unambiguously calling the abductions terrorists acts in 2006, State is now airbrushing this issue out of the record.  To a degree, you can understand this in the case of South Korea — tragic as that may be —  because in the end, it...
Categories Abductions/Activism
August 30, 2007

State Dept. Won’t Remove N. Korea from Terror List … Yet

The chief U.S. envoy at North Korean nuclear talks said Wednesday the United States will make sure close ally Japan is satisfied before lifting North Korea from a U.S. list of countries accused of sponsoring terrorists. Christopher Hill acknowledged the North has raised the terror-list removal repeatedly as a crucial part of a February nuclear disarmament accord. But, he said, the United States is “not going to cup our eyes and pretend a country is not a state sponsor of...
Categories Abductions/Diplomacy/Japan & Korea/Six-Party Talks/Terrorism/Iraq/U.S. Politics
July 24, 2007

Forgetting Someone?

The Korean War Abductees Research Institute (KWARI) will hold a press conference next  Thursday, July 26, 2007, at  2 p.m. in the Zenger Room of the National Press Club in Washington.  The subject will be  whether the return of abducted South Koreas should be a prerequisite to a North-South peace treaty.  It’s  a question you can hardly believe anyone would have to ask — isn’t the first prerequisite to peace  that  each nation ends its continuing  offenses against the other...
Categories Abductions/Activism
July 21, 2007

The Next Deadlock

The irony of North Korea calling another nation “fascist” can’t be appreciated by those who are missing that gene, confined  within North Korea, or both.  Maybe this is an f-bomb that could only be built  in a place where abductees are no more hostages than their captors.  It’s probable that the author’s irony  was completely unintentional —  that he was  oblivious to  what Earthlings would think when they read his words: The search [of Chongryon headquarters] was part of an...
Categories Abductions/Six-Party Talks/WMD
June 30, 2007

Abductions Update: Volunteer Translators Wanted; a Rumor that Kim Jong Il Will ‘Investigate’ the Issue

A group of family members of Japanese abductees is looking for native English speakers to edit their  translations of a book on Japanese who were abducted by the North Koreans.  If you’re interested in helping, all they ask is that you translate one chapter.  From the summary, some of the stories look pretty compelling: Chapter 1: The Yokota family — Their 13-year-old daughter, Megumi, disappeared on her way home from school.  Her family made every possible effort to find her,...
Categories Abductions
April 26, 2007

Anju Links for 26 April: Who’s Afraid of Victor Cha, and the Sexual Psychology of Military Parades

*   It has now been 13 days since April 13th, the day North Korea was supposed to have shut down the Yongbyon reactor, begun discussions on the full extent of its nuclear weapons and programs, invited in U.N. inspectors, and rejoined six-party talks (to include actually talking).  North Korea has (surprise!) broken every one of those agreements.  Victor Cha has since reportedly warned them that our patience is limited.  So in Pyongyang they ask …. *   Or Else,...
Categories Abductions/America/Japan & Korea/Refugees/Six-Party Talks/Southeast Asia/Terrorism (NK)/Terrorism/Iraq/WMD
April 25, 2007

North Korea’s Sponsorship of Terrorist Acts, 1996-2007

As I noted here, at the end of  Update  4/24 to my North Korea Freedom Week post, the State Department is now  rumored to be seriously considering removing North Korea from the list of state sponsors of terrorism.  This conflicts with signals  State had sent earlier, and as I noted here,  would probably trigger a rebellion by  conservatives  in Congress. With Japan’s Prime Minister set to visit Washington next week, unverified gossip holds that the Bush Administration will put pressure...
Categories Abductions/Appeasement/Japan & Korea/Six-Party Talks/Terrorism (NK)/U.S. Politics/WMD
April 15, 2007

Anju Links for 15 April 2007

*    We’ve Lost the True Meaning of Kim Il Sung’s Birthday.   It’s another OFK exclusive — I have the first video of North Korea’s Kim Il Sung Day parade.  In North Korea, where devotion comes from the barrel of a gun, the object of this  devotion  is now a side of preserved meat; thus,  I urge everyone to  pay their respects  with  a feast  appropriate for the occasion.  If only the people of North Korea were fortunate enough...
Categories Abductions/Anju Links/Appeasement/Korean War/Refugees
March 31, 2007

Chosen Soren Sues Japanse Government for Malicious Prosecution!

[Update:   OK, I can top this.  North Korea calls South Korea “fascist” for blocking  pro-North Web sites.]   This deserves at least a footnote in the Funk & Wagnalls  History of Chutzpah.  Chosen Soren, a/k/a Chongryon, is a North Korean-controlled organization of ethnic Koreans in Japan.   A decade ago, Chosen Soren was a powerful and politically connected organization that poured millions into Kim Jong Il’s accounts through remittances, pachinko parlors, and a network of costly private schools teaching juche...
Categories Abductions/Japan & Korea
March 24, 2007

Anju Links for 3/24: Another Stolen Life, More Measles in N. Korea, Cowardly Capital, and the Diplomacy of Blame

*   Doina Bumbea, artist, 1950-1997.    From this photo, it’s  almost as if she could foresee the tragedy of her own  life. The circumstantial proof seems strong, though  not conclusive, that the  North Koreans lured  Doina from  Bucharest  to Japan and kidnapped her for the use of U.S. Army deserter James Dresnok,  who by all accounts is an utterly comtemptible person.  But  Doina’s family, which didn’t know what happened to her for all these years, seems convinced.  And there’s...
Categories Abductions/Diplomacy/Famine & Food Aid/Money Laundering/Six-Party Talks/WMD
March 21, 2007

Anju Links for 3/21

*   It’s a pity both sides can’t  lose:  It’s Taliban v. Al-Qaeda in Pakistan, with high casualties on both sides (I’ll be praying for more).  it’s nice to see that the bad guys are just as capable of  self-destructive division as we are. * Larry “Bud” Melman has passed away.   He was 85. *   Fifth Column Update:   South Korea’s  far-left “civic groups” have seen a significant decline in membership.  This fits with other recent evidence that...
Categories Abductions/Appeasement/Korean Politics/Six-Party Talks/Terrorism/Iraq/The Fifth Column
March 17, 2007

‘Abduction’ Film Updates

This beautifully produced film, created by two National Geographic alumni, will air on BBC 4’s “Storyville” series  on March 22nd at 10:30 p.m.  I’d add that since absolutely nothing is open at that time in Britain, there’s no excuse not to watch. The film is also coming to DVD in May, with digitally remastered sound and subtitles in eight languages.  More at AbductionFilm.com.
Categories Abductions/Activism/Human Rights/Human Trafficking/Japan & Korea/Terrorism (NK)
March 14, 2007

State: No quick removal of N. Korea from the terror list

I can imagine that the pressure from Japan has been intense, particularly in light of North Korea’s increasingly  brazen claims  about just what  the U.S. had agreed to lift, and when.  The North Koreans forced us to correct the record: North Korea will not be easily removed from the U.S. list of states that sponskor terrorism. U.S. State Department spokesman Tom Casey said that taking North Korea off the terrorism blacklist is a process that will require a lot of...
Categories Abductions/Diplomacy/Japan & Korea/Six-Party Talks/Terrorism (NK)
March 8, 2007

Peace in Our Time! Abductions Edition

I forecast severe tire damage along the road to removing North Korea from the terrorism-sponsor list:  HANOI–Japan and North Korea opened talks here Wednesday morning on normalizing bilateral relations, but the North Korean side canceled the afternoon session apparently as a way of refusing the Japanese request to discuss the abduction issue further, the chief Japanese delegate said. However, the meeting is scheduled to resume Thursday morning at the North Korean Embassy to discuss the abduction and normalization issues, Koichi...
Categories Abductions/Appeasement/Diplomacy/Japan & Korea/Six-Party Talks/WMD
March 7, 2007

Hill: N. Korea Must Give Up Uranium Program

[Update:   This doesn’t  sound very “newly murky:”  “I have no doubt that North Korea has had a highly enriched uranium program,” U.S. Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte said during a visit to Seoul. …. “We would expect that when North Korea makes its declaration of nuclear facilities that that would be one of the issues addressed in North Korea’s declaration,” he told a news conference.  Good, if we really have no doubts.  Straightforward interpretation is all that can...
Categories Abductions/Appeasement/Diplomacy/Japan/Japan & Korea/WMD
February 28, 2007

I Wonder What They’ll Look Like on a SAM-2 Radar Screen

Plenty of armchair psyoppers, myself included,  have talked about ways to  fly leaflets and other items into North Korea, but here’s the most ambitious concept I’ve seen yet. A Japanese advocacy group said Tuesday it will use balloons to scatter flyers over North Korea, offering residents a US$10,000 cash reward for information on Japanese citizens kidnapped by the regime decades ago.  [Pravda] Yes, Pravda!   Not only does it still exist,  but now reports on capitalist conspiracies to  infitrate future...
Categories Abductions/Activism/Japan/Japan & Korea
January 26, 2007

If He’d Just Thrown His Medals Across the Fence, He’d Be a Senator Today

Sixty Minutes will broadast a long-anticipated interview with traitor  Joe  Dresnok this Sunday, and one thing’s apparent:  he’s eating well enough. From the CBS promo story: The last American defector still living in North Korea says a billion dollars in gold couldn’t entice him to leave the country he ran to 44 years ago.  In the first communication from Joe Dresnok since he defected in 1962, the former G.I. also says his fellow defector, Charles Jenkins, who was permitted to leave...
Categories Abductions/Defectors/U.S. Military
January 21, 2007

North Korea Seeks Those Who Aided Abductee’s Escape

It’s been a bad week for North Korea’s P.R. machine, with the embarassments of abducted South Korean fisherman Choi Uk-Il’s escape and the repatriation of nine family members of South Korean POW’s (one of whom is already dead).   Both incidents — and the small matter of North Korea’s latest threat to nuke Seoul — proved embarassing to North Korea’s friends in South Korea, who have problems enough already.  But  good neighbors take care of their friends, so  North Korea is...
Categories Abductions/Appeasement