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Category: Human Rights

September 9, 2009

Seoul Train Screening, Weekly Demonstration, LiNK Gala Live Online

For those living in Seoul, a couple events of note.  Thursday, September 10th, 8-10 p.m., there is a screening of Seoul Train near Hapjeong Station (lines 2 & 6), take exit 5 to Yogiga Gallery.  After the documentary, a couple activists from the film will talk.  Translation will be provided, all are encouraged to attend.  (Disclosure – this is being organized by a member of Justice for North Korea, a group of which I am an active member.  We don’t...
Categories Activism/Books & Films/Human Rights
September 6, 2009

Revealed: The First Published Images of Camp 12, Chongo-Ri, North Korea

Recently, Chosun Ilbo reporter and North Korean gulag survivor Kang Chol Hwan published this story about a remote labor camp in North Korea, its recent expansion to support a crackdown on defectors, and the horrific conditions there: The Chongori reeducation center in North Hamgyong Province that went through the greatest change. The center has been reorganized as a concentration camp exclusively for arrested defectors. It has reportedly turned into a living hell, where labor is much heavier than at ordinary...
Categories Google Earth/Human Rights/Inside NK/The Camps
September 4, 2009

The Database Center for North Korean Human Rights Holds a Discussion of its Archives

On August 26, the Database Center for North Korean Human Rights (NKDB) held a discussion about its Archives of North Korean human rights violations. The three-hour event took place at the Korean Bar Association, located near the Seocho subway station in southern Seoul. NKDB has catalogued thousands of incidents from thousands of individuals, and is constantly interviewing recent defectors. In addition, they have a consultation and support program for North Koreans and also for South Koreans who spent time against...
Categories Human Rights/Korean History
September 2, 2009

Just What North Korea Needed: Another Death Camp

Just when I thought that North Korea couldn’t possibly find worse ways to spend its drug-and-gun money than nuclear weapons or the Ryugyong Hotel: Amid signs of mass defections as the international community began putting pressure on North Korea in the wake of its latest nuclear test, the regime in early May gave orders that no resident was to be allowed to flee the country, followed by a massive crackdown. The National Defense Commission gave village-to-village indoctrination lectures on a...
Categories Human Rights/The Camps
August 29, 2009

Wanted: Scholar, Writer, and Researcher

The Committee for Human Rights in North Korea is seeking a researcher and writer for an upcoming study of North Korea’s hereditary political caste system, known in Korean as “songbun.” The songbun system, though technically abolished years ago, continues to control each North Korean citizen’s access to employment, residence in the best-supplied areas, and by extension, food and medical care. What is not known is the degree to which the influence of songbun persists, or the extent to which the...
Categories Activism/Human Rights
August 16, 2009

Camps 14 & 18 Google Earth Page Published

It took months to do it, but I’ve finally published a Google Earth page for Camps 14 and 18. This page accumulates all of the newly available witness accounts, scholarly research, and satellite imagery of the camps, which share very little except geographical proximity. I owe my deepest thanks to a reader who forwarded me a copy of the Korean Bar Association’s 2008 human rights report, which proved to be an invaluable resource for this project, and for others to...
Categories Google Earth/Human Rights/The Camps
August 12, 2009

Mary Robinson Is Not Worthy

President Obama, for God-knows-what reason, has decided to award former U.N. bureaucrat Mary Robinson the Presidential Medal of Freedom, our nation’s highest civilian honor.  Years ago, I expressed my intense distaste for Mary Robinson: Mary Robinson was the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights from 1997 to 2001, during the height of the Great North Korean Famine, while China flagrantly violated the U.N. Convention on Refugees to keep the starving millions outside its borders. While millions more died in a...
Categories "United" Nations/Europe/Famine & Food Aid/Human Rights
August 7, 2009

In What Sense Is John Choe Morally Distinguishable from a Neo-Nazi?

John Choe, personifying the appellation “useful idiot” as pictured here, won’t shift U.S. foreign policy if he’s elected to represent a district in Queens in the New York City Council.  Technically, Choe is correct when he evades questions about his sympathies with North Korea’s regime and demurs, “I’m not running for secretary of state–I’m running to represent the 20th district in the City Council,” Choe said. That is true in the same sense that David Duke ran for governor of...
Categories Activism/Human Rights/The Fifth Column/U.S. Politics
August 3, 2009

The Damning of Kim Dae-Jung and Roh Moo-hyun

Video presentations from May’s Oslo Freedom Forum are now online with North Korea represented by Park San-Hak, a North Korean defector who currently works as a democracy activist. It takes a while for Park’s presentation to gain momentum, but it’s well worth watching in its entirety if you can get through the introduction because his talk eventually heats up. About midway through his presentation, Park embarks on a crusade of stinging criticism directed toward former South Korea presidents Kim Dae-jung...
Categories Activism/Defectors/Human Rights/North-South/Sunshine
August 1, 2009

What’s Still Missing from Obama’s North Korea Policy

Suddenly, editors at prominent liberal publications feel safe letting stories about North Korea’s atrocities see page one, and scholars at prominent liberal think tanks feel safe raising human rights.  The topic is no longer subsumed uncomfortably beneath the misbegotten hope that ignoring atrocities unequaled in these times would allow us to negotiate and verify the disarmament of a nation that remained blanketed in secrecy and terror. (Proponents of this premise, which crowned us with the glory of Agreed Frameworks I...
Categories Human Rights/Washington Views
July 25, 2009

Ex-N. Korean Special Forces Soldier Alleges Biowar Experiments on Handicapped Kids; North Korea’s Jihad Against Christians

The accuser, Im Chun-Yong, escaped from North Korea with several comrades in his unit a decade ago.  That alone should tell you something about the state of morale in North Korea’s most elite forces even then.  Im claims that he kept this story to himself until now: “If you are born mentally or physically deficient, says Im, the government says your best contribution to society”¦ is as a guinea pig for biological and chemical weapons testing.”  [….] The former military...
Categories Human Rights/Religion/The Camps
July 23, 2009

Wanted: Korea Bar Association Report on North Korean Concentration Camps (Update: Thank you)

Blaine Harden’s Washington Post article on Monday cited a report by the Korean Bar Association that contains an extensive collection of interviews of North Korean concentration camp survivors and witnesses.  If I had a copy of that report, I would undertake a detailed examination of those witness’s statements for consistency with each other, with previous reports, and with satellite imagery of the camps.  If possible, I would use that report to greatly expand my Google Earth posts about the camps. ...
Categories Human Rights
July 21, 2009

Absolute Must Read: Washington Post on North Korea’s Concentration Camps

At last.  The Washington Post has done a truly detailed, comprehensive, well-researched story on North Korea’s concentration camps.  It’s a story that the Post wouldn’t have done had Anthony Faiola or Glenn Kessler been doing the reporting; Blaine Harden deserves much credit for writing what deserves to become a major exhibit in the indictment of our State Department for its culpable complicity.  The satellite imagery of the camps features prominently in the story. (Disclosure:  I provided Mr. Harden and one...
Categories Human Rights/The Camps/U.S. Politics/Washington Views
July 14, 2009

Suzanne Scholte: A War Crimes Tribunal for North Korea

With the mounting evidence that Kim Jong Il won’t burden this world for long, the civilized world faces the prospect of inheriting jurisdiction over people who’ve done some pretty awful things: On a recent trip to Seoul, a North Korean mother told me she and her 14-year-old daughter fled North Korea but were separated in China. The mother waited in China to reunite with her daughter only to discover that Chinese security agents had forced the girl back to North...
Categories Human Rights/Reconstruction
July 5, 2009

Christian Group Threatened Over Faxes to North Korea

Remember when, several months ago, I published a long list of fax numbers for North Korean entities of various kinds, both inside and outside North Korea?  I wondered if any of those faxes would actually get though.  I guess we have our answer: North Korea has threatened a Christian ministry to stop sending Gospel messages to the country through fax, saying the consequence will be “very bad,” amid testing of seven missiles on U.S. Independence Day.  Voice of the Martyrs...
Categories Activism/Religion/Terrorism (NK)
July 1, 2009

Robert King to Be Next NK Human Rights Special Envoy? (Updated)

So says a reader I trust.  The little I know is that he was a staffer who worked for Rep. Tom Lantos, meaning he probably knows plenty about foreign policy and shares his former boss’s interest in human rights, but may not have much specific Asia expertise.  Here’s a photo of him. There are three things that I like about King without knowing anything else.  First, he’s not a State Department insider.  Second, he’s not the same person who will...
Categories Diplomacy/Human Rights/U.S. Politics/Washington Views