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Category: Activism

September 23, 2019

How South Korea’s “human rights lawyer” president waged a quiet war to silence North Korea human rights activists

The Chosun Ilbo has published a Korean-language interview with Lee Young-hwan, the head of the Transitional Justice Working Group, one of the most respected human rights groups researching Kim Jong-un’s crimes against humanity. Although TJWG is based in Seoul and headed by a Korean, it’s really an international NGO with both Korean and foreign staff. Lee has been an activist for human rights in the North since the late 1990s, and received a Democracy Award from the National Endowment for...
Categories Activism/Censorship/Human Rights
October 23, 2016

Dec. 8th: Inquiry on Crimes Against Humanity in N. Korean Political Prisons

As one who has played a small role in organizing this event, I’m pleased to announce it here at OFK: In my capacity as one of the co-organizers of the Inquiry on Crimes Against Humanity in North Korean Political Prisons, I write to invite you to a groundbreaking hearing that will feature live testimony from three North Korean defectors: a former prisoner, a former prison guard, and a former official from the Ministry of People’s Security, which oversees North Korea’s...
Categories Activism/Human Rights
April 21, 2016

The North Korean Army’s rape epidemic

A few days ago, the Korea Times carried a profile of Lee So-yeon, a native of Hoeryong in North Korea’s far northeast, who defected to the South in 2008, did menial jobs for a few years, later earned her bachelor’s degree in social welfare from Gukje Cyber University based in Suwon, and then founded an NGO called the North Korea Women’s Union. Founded in 2011, the group hosts talks at schools and other groups, and provides job training and psychological...
Categories Activism/Human Rights/Human Trafficking/NK Military
March 3, 2016

South Korean National Assembly passes human rights bill. Finally.

Last month, I leveled some bitter criticism at South Korea’s opposition Minju Party for blocking North Korean human rights legislation (ironically enough, “Minju” means “democracy”). This week, after an eleven-year battle, the opposition finally gave up its obstructionism, yielded to the tides of morality and history, and allowed the bill to pass the National Assembly. The final vote for 212 for and 24 abstentions (and none against?). Belated as it was, this victory gives us some reasons to rejoice. First, it’s a...
Categories Activism/Human Rights/Korean Law/Korean Politics/Korean Society
January 29, 2016

Rev. Tim Peters is feeding N. Korea’s hungry, and showing us how to re-think food aid

The Rev. Tim Peters, a man who embodies everything I admire about the word “Christian,” leads the group Helping Hands Korea, which has been helping North Koreans escape for more than a decade. Now, he’s putting into action what I call “guerrilla engagement,” reaching inside North Korea covertly and helping its oppressed and starved classes achieve material independence. He’s doing it by harnessing the private sotoji farms that operate on the edge of legality, and which may have saved North Korea...
Categories Activism/Capitalism/Famine & Food Aid
October 31, 2015

Video: N. Korea human rights conference at SAIS, with keynote by Hon. Michael Kirby

On Tuesday, I took a day off from the day job to attend an outstanding conference, organized by the International Bar Association, the Defense Forum Foundation, Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights, the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, the North Korean Freedom Coalition, and the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. Rather than describe it, I’ll just give you a little weekend viewing and post the whole thing. The first video starts with introductions by Jae Ku of SAIS,...
Categories "United" Nations/Activism/Human Rights
October 8, 2015

U.N. report demands that N. Korean leaders be held accountable through prosecution, sanctions

U.N. Special Rapporteur Marzuki Darusman has issued another report on human rights in North Korea (or more accurately, the lack thereof). The bad news is that the situation hasn’t improved, and North Korea and China are still stonewalling: Regrettably, the situation remains the same, despite the grave concerns reiterated by the international community in different forums. The Special Rapporteur also reflects on issues around accountability for those human rights violations, which should be addressed at an early stage, and on current efforts by the international community...
Categories "United" Nations/Activism/Anju Links/Human Rights/Sanctions
September 25, 2015

Twenty women Senators do what @GloriaSteinem and @WomenCrossDMZ won’t: Stand up for women in N. Korea’s gulag

With the possible exceptions of Mosul and Raqqa, there may be no worse place on earth to be a woman today than inside North Korea’s prison camps. There, according to a U.N. Commission of Inquiry, “the conditions of subjugation of inmates, coupled with the general climate of impunity, creates an environment, in which rape perpetrated by guards and prisoners in privileged positions is common.” The Commission found that “[w]ithout exception, pregnant victims are subject to abortion or their child is killed at birth.”...
Categories Activism/Human Rights/The Camps/Useful Idiocy
May 19, 2015

Need a round-trip ticket to Korea? Want to donate to a good cause? Look no further. (updated)

I’m posting this at the request of a friend in the North Korea Freedom Coalition: As you recall, Ambassador Jung-Hoon Lee, ROK Ambassador for Human Rights, offered contribute the following item to the silent auction on May 1: $1500 for the purchase of a voucher for a roundtrip fare from Washington, DC to Seoul. We did not find a buyer for this item on the night of the auction but Ambassador Lee has generously extended his offer. After speaking with...
Categories Activism
January 18, 2015

Forgive Shin Dong Hyok the man, but not Shin Dong Hyok the activist

What had always puzzled me the most about Shin Dong Hyok’s account of growing up in and escaping from Camp 14 was how someone raised in such isolation from the rules of North Korean society could have had the resources and survival skills to infiltrate all the way from the Taedong River to the Chinese border, and then successfully cross it. How did he replace his prisoner clothing? How did he find money to bribe railroad police and border guards?...
Categories Activism/The Camps
January 9, 2015

Dear President Bush: You had eight years.

The George W. Bush center has released a call for “a new approach” to improve human rights in North Korea, complete with a video of the former President, looking a little older than the man we once knew. It’s hard to disagree with anything in the Bush Center’s call. For example, it calls for raising global awareness of the situation, citing polls showing that just half of Americans have heard of North Korea’s political prison camps. (This polling, of course, was done before Seth Rogen...
Categories Activism/Human Rights
December 9, 2014

Help Change North Korean Society From the Ground Up By Breaking the Information Blockade

Kang Chol Hwan is best known for the Aquariums in Pyongyang, in which he tells how he was raised in a political prison camp for an unknown “crime” “committed” by his grandfather. Perhaps less well known is that Kang started the North Korea Strategy Center in Seoul several years ago, and for years they have been sending in DVDs, USBs, etc. loaded with movies, TV shows, and information about the outside world (eg, a copy of Wikipedia). The ways in...
Categories Activism/Subversion
November 13, 2014

Must read: RFK Center calls for a “rights up front” policy toward N. Korea

The report, by the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights, along with the Executive Director of the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea,* calls on the U.S. to defer its pursuit of Agreed Framework III, and instead confront the very reason why Pyongyang shouldn’t have nuclear weapons, and why diplomacy with it will continue to fail: Only when North Korea begins to develop a record of improvement on human rights can it engage with the U.S. on other issues, including security, the...
Categories Activism/Human Rights/U.S. Politics
October 20, 2014

Yeonmi Park appeals to the conscience of Europe

It is her first time in Ireland and, indeed, Europe. But at the age of just 21, this sweetly-confident, intelligent and tiny-framed young woman, who managed to flee the famine-torn country at the age of 13, is already a global spokesperson for her own people – a people terrorised into submission and silence while the wider world ignores what she describes as a “holocaust”. [Irish Independent] Miss Park’s life went from latent terror to a living hell when her parents...
Categories Activism/Europe/Refugees