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Category: Human Rights

August 14, 2010

Toronto: 10th International Conference on North Korean Human Rights and Refugees; Seoul: Beautiful Dream Concert

On August 19-22 Citizens’ Alliance for North Korean Human Rights in Seoul is partnering with this year’s host HanVoice in Toronto for their 10th International Conference on North Korean Human Rights and Refugees.  This will be the first time the conference has been held in North America; to date the ICNKHRR has been in Seoul (3x), Tokyo, Prague, Warsaw, Bergen (Norway), London, and Melbourne. The main session this year is Saturday, August 21st, from 9 – 6.  Events open to...
Categories Books & Films/Defectors/Human Rights/Refugees
July 27, 2010

Dealing with Khmer and North Korean Killers

As the first sentence is finally handed out to a former member of the Khmer Rouge regime, it reminds us of a human rights catastrophe still in progress. Admittedly, I don’t know much about the history of Cambodia, including the nightmare under the Khmer Rouge, but this is a reminder that someday (may it be very soon), decisions made today will determine the fate of many now running the regime in North Korea. The details and issues addressed in South...
Categories History/Human Rights/Southeast Asia
July 14, 2010

Congratulations to Suzanne Scholte

Scholte, whom I’ve known since 2003, leads the North Korean Freedom Coalition, which (among its many good works) contributes to those leaflet balloon launches that have irritated the North Korean regime so much. In 2008, Scholte won the Seoul Peace Prize. This year, she receives a new honor: Suzanne Scholte, the president of the conservative Defense Forum Foundation of the U.S., has been named the winner of the Walter Judd Freedom Award. The prize will be presented by The Fund...
Categories Activism
July 8, 2010

Korean Church Coalition Events for Next Week in Washington

The Korean Church Coalition forwards this press release: KOREAN CHURCH COALITION for North Korean Freedom will be hosting a series of events in Washington D.C. on July 13, 2010 to July 14, 2010, to Speak on Behalf of the Voiceless. Irvine, CA ““Member pastors of the Korean Church Coalition (KCC) for North Korea Freedom will hold a series of events in Washington D.C. and its surrounding areas. The events are intended to bring awareness to the current plight of the...
Categories Activism
July 1, 2010

In Their Desperation to Meet With Ban Ki-Moon, N. Korean Gulag Survivors Try Borrowing a White Guy

North Korean gulag survivors are knocking on Ban Ki-Moon’s door, asking for a meeting to tell him what he’s known for a decade — that the North Korean prison camps they lived to tell about, no thanks to Ban, are the Mauthausens and Buchenwalds of our time. Odd thing is, it would be a lot easier for Ban to simply not answer if former Norwegian Prime Minister Kjell Magne Bondevik weren’t knocking with them: “The profound suffering of the North...
Categories "United" Nations/Activism/Human Rights/The Camps
June 1, 2010

Human Rights Updates

The former laughingstock called the National Human Rights Commission of Korea is planning to release a North Korea human rights “road map” this fall. On a related note, congratulations to Open News’s Young Howard, who now has the cred and the means to host a conference on human rights in North Korea. Open News also notes that Former Norwegian Prime Minister Kjell Magne Bondevik has emerged as a leading advocate of this issue to the still-worthless Ban Ki-Moon and a...
Categories "United" Nations/Activism/Human Rights/Uncategorized
May 10, 2010

Audio of UN Special Rapporteur Vitit Muntarbhorn’s Special Address to PSCORE

Updated below. As Joshua mentioned previously, UN Special Rapporteur on North Korean Human Rights, Vitit Muntarbhorn, spoke in Seoul to a PSCORE seminar April 30th during North Korea Freedom Week. His talk was entitled, “Human Rights in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea: Retrospect, Aspects and Prospects.” I used my camera to record the audio, but I didn’t get the first few minutes because I was busy taking photos. Listening to him talk, you very quickly get a sense of...
Categories Human Rights
May 3, 2010

Blogged With Love

I’ve been working on posting audio of Vitit Muntarbhorn’s address last Friday at PSCORE but have gotten bogged down in researching and learning some of the technology involved (long story – eg, Korea’s “real ID” online requirements are a hassle in addition to being just plain wrong). In the meantime, I want to pass along a link to a friend’s blog, which I’ve enjoyed reading since she started it last month. Lauren is a friend and fellow JFNK campaigner (she...
Categories Activism/Blogs & Blogging/Human Rights
April 29, 2010

North Korea Freedom Week: Brief Update

Just got back from the demonstration across from the Chinese Embassy in Seoul. For those who have been wondering, they said the balloon launch will be at 11 a.m. tomorrow (Saturday) at Freedom Bridge. Full schedule available here. I’m off to the PSCORE event from 1 to 5:30 p.m. (Friday) at the Press Center in Gwanghwamun. But first, here’s a flier for the screening of Crossing in the basement of the chapel building at Yonsei Unversity at 4 p.m. I...
Categories Activism/China/Human Rights
April 26, 2010

Statement from Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen on North Korea Freedom Week

Dear People of both South and North Korea, Members of the North Korea Freedom Coalition, Ms. Scholte of the Defense Forum Foundation, Members of the NGO Human Rights Community, Pastors, North Korean Defectors, Abductee Families, Members of the Korean-American Community and Friends of Korea: It is particularly fitting and proper that this year’s annual North Korea Freedom Week will be held for the first time on the Korean peninsula. This week of events also comes at a particularly critical time...
Categories Activism/Human Rights/U.S. Politics/Washington Views
April 25, 2010

North Korea Freedom Week, Day 1: NKHR Exhibit Opening Ceremony

North Korea Freedom Week 2010 is underway! At 3 p.m. Sunday the ribbon-cutting ceremony was held for an exhibit on North Korean Human Rights Exhibit that will run all week in two large rooms on the first floor of the Seoul Press Center. The first room primarily focuses on Gang Gil-su and his extended family, who lived in hiding in China for about three years from 1999-2001 after escaping North Korea. On display are dozens of crayon drawings depicting their...
Categories Human Rights/Refugees
April 21, 2010

North Korea Freedom Week Comes to Seoul: April 25 – May 1, 2010

I was very excited when I learned a few months ago that the NK Freedom Coalition’s annual North Korea Freedom Week would be held in Seoul this year. The event was first held as North Korean Freedom Day in 2004. I’ve offered to volunteer during the week, so I’m not sure how busy I’ll be or if I’ll be able to post much. But I hope at least to periodically upload photos from the various events. And there are many!!...
Categories Activism/Human Rights
April 20, 2010

Open News: North Korea Increases Use of Public Executions

Open News reports that North Korea is increasing its use of public executions for relatively minor crimes as an instrument of domestic state terrorism, adopting the old Khmer Rouge method of using schoolyards as killing fields, and forcing kids to stand in the front row of the audience: Children suffer from psychological trauma and experience intense fear, because they see and realize what happened to those who resist the government and the Leader. Notwithstanding Open News’s optimistic belief that the...
Categories Human Rights/Inside NK
April 19, 2010

Professor Alleges North Korean Plan to Destroy Gulags With Dams

Yonsei University Professor Hong Seong-Phil, quoted in The Korea Times, alleges that “dams are under construction near six gulags in North Korea to destroy evidence of possible genocide there.” I’ve heard this theory repeated for a number of years, but I don’t happen to believe it. Maybe there’s new imagery that Google Earth does has not yet published to support this theory, but I sure don’t see the evidence for it yet. Furthermore, the theory doesn’t sound plausible to me....
Categories Human Rights/The Camps
March 23, 2010

More on the Jeung-San Prison Camp

You may recall that at the end of this October 2009 post, I called for your assistance in locating an alleged North Korean political prison camp near the coast, due west of Pyongyang, known as Jeung-San. The tip was provided by Kim Sang-Hun, co-founder of the Database Center for North Korean Human Rights. North Korea’s worst concentration camp is a reeducation center where women who escaped to China are subjected to the most brutal treatment, NGO Good Friends said Monday....
Categories Human Rights/The Camps
March 16, 2010

North Korea, Human Rights, and Diplomacy: When Hell Freezes Over

A series of bleak new reports shows that after more than a decade of attempts by the United States and South Korea to liberalize North Korea though aid and engagement, life is as cheap as ever between the Yalu and the Imjin. The system is less closed than it once was, although this is mostly the result of the fraying of the regime’s control over its borders, economy, and the flow of information. Yet these changes have occurred in defiance...
Categories "United" Nations/Diplomacy/Human Rights