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February 19, 2012

North Korean Refugees in China in Grave Danger of Repatriation

Update 2 (2/20): In addition to the letter to the Chinese government in the original post below that you can email, fax, or mail, there’s an online petition to the UNHCR and the UN Special Rapporteur that you can sign that’s rapidly collected almost 25,000 signatures. I also just read a related email sent on behalf of several groups saying that a) they’re on Twitter @savemyfriend (in Korean and English) and Facebook and b) are gathering across from the Chinese...
Categories Activism/China/Human Rights/Refugees
June 20, 2011

Chosun Ilbo: Laura Ling and Euna Lee Were Lured into N. Korea

Let’s start with the claim, that North Korean spymaster Ryu Kyong recruited the mysterious guide who led Laura Ling and Euna Lee to that remote place along the Tumen River, then across to North Korea where guards were waiting. Subsequent reports fill in the rest — that Ling and Lee heard a commotion, ran back across the river into Chinese territory, and that the North Koreans pursued them across the river and dragged them back across and into captivity in...
Categories Ling/Lee Incident/Refugees/Terrorism (NK)
May 25, 2011

On Behalf of Freedom and Human Rights for North Koreans

There are a handful of NKHR-related events going on the next few days in Seoul.  Of particular interest may be the last one on Saturday evening, at which two South Korean college students who happen to be former North Korean refugees will talk about their experiences and share their opinions.  There also is a concert at the National Assembly’s Memorial Hall on Thursday afternoon, a documentary screening Friday night (in Korean – alas, no subtitles), and a flea market fundraiser...
Categories Human Rights/Refugees
May 3, 2011

Learn about North Korean Human Rights Crisis at JFNK Volunteer Orientation

For those of you in Korea, if you don’t know much about the human rights crisis that is North Korea (and spilling into China and South Korea) and/or if you want to learn how to get involved, there’s a great opportunity for you this Saturday in English or next Saturday in Korean (please encourage your Korean friends. coworkers, students to attend!). I volunteer with Justice for North Korea, and we’re holding our third round of informational orientation sessions for volunteers...
Categories Activism/Defectors/Human Rights/Refugees
February 8, 2011

South Korea should close Kaesong and encourage remittances.

The Chosun Ilbo reports that as the North Korean diaspora swells, those who have escaped are forming stronger financial links with their hungry families in the homeland. And this has some people concerned: North Korean defectors settled in South Korea are sending some US$10 million a year to their families back home, it was reported on Sunday. The amount is expected to grow as there are more than 20,000 North Korean defectors in the South and the number is increasing,...
Categories Famine & Food Aid/NK Economics/Refugees/Regime Change/Subversion
February 7, 2011

31 North Koreans cross into S. Korean waters near Yeonpyeong

It’s not just the boat that smells fishy here: Thirty-one North Korean people crossed the tense Yellow Sea border by boat and arrived in South Korea two days ago, but they have not expressed any wishes to defect to the South, a military official said Monday. The North Koreans, consisting of 11 men and 20 women, arrived on Yeonpyeong Island by a wooden fishing boat in thick fog at around 11 a.m. Saturday and were towed away to the western...
Categories Defectors/Refugees
January 13, 2011

Or, Maybe It’s Just the Same Old “Reign of Terror”

The other day, Adam found fault with a Chosun Ilbo report that claimed that North Korea’s cross-border slaughter of five refugees represented an escalation of its shoot-to-kill policy. I found the criticism rather pedantic and pointless, although the evidence on the whole suggests that crossing borders and shooting escapees are part of a long-standing pattern of North Korean atrocities. It’s too bad Adam didn’t wait a few days, because the Chosun Ilbo has presented him with a much softer target...
Categories Human Rights/Refugees
January 10, 2011

North Korea Murders Five Refugees Inside Chinese Territory

My God: Five North Koreans were shot dead and two others wounded by North Korean border guards on the Chinese side of the border when they tried to flee the Stalinist country, a source said Sunday. The high-level source in Changbai in the Chinese province of Jilin said the seven had left Hyesan, Yanggang Province and walked across the frozen Apnok (or Yalu) River and reached the Chinese side on Dec. 14. But five of them died instantly under intensive...
Categories China & Korea/Refugees
December 15, 2010

Kim Jong Il, Unplugged Again

First, I’ll just say that I have nothing to say about Eric Clapton that I didn’t say more than two years ago. We’ve already heard Eric Clapton unplugged. The economic unplugging of Kim Jong Il is a more consequential thing, one that I see as closely related to domestic discontent inside North Korea. My suspicion, though it is not yet supported by much direct evidence, is that these recent developments have reduced him to new lows of extortionate desperation. When...
Categories Defectors/NK Economics/Sanctions
December 12, 2010

Vote for Justice for North Korea

For the last three years I’ve been an active volunteer with a small group called Justice for North Korea in Seoul.  JFNK currently is one of a dozen and a half NGOs in Korea competing for gift certificates valued at several thousand dollars to be raffled or auctioned off at a fundraising event. The online voting at 10 Magazine went up late last week and ends Tuesday, December 14th at 11:59 p.m., Korea time (that’s 9:59 a.m. EST on Tuesday)....
Categories Activism/Refugees
October 15, 2010

Lack of Money Is the Root of All Evil

While most of the media are fixed on the movement of stage props on reviewing stands in Pyongyang, mine remains in North Korea’s outer provinces, markets, and ratlines across the Yalu. These, after all, are the things that will drive real change in North Korea. A new report from the Korea Times suggests that increasingly, money smuggling has become an engine of regeneration for North Korea’s free markets: It is common for North Korean defectors here to send money to...
Categories NK Economics/Refugees/Subversion
October 11, 2010

Hwang Jang Yop Dies at 87

Hwang Jang Yop survived multiple purges and power struggles, a defection, at least one assassination attempt, and 87 years in some especially cruel places and times. I was ambivalent about Hwang, who became Kim Jong Il’s strongest critic, but who still defended the juche ideology as misunderstood and misinterpreted by its more recent oracles. We can appreciate what Hwang did to expose the system’s ruthlessness, even as we must recognize that he probably stepped on plenty of skulls to ascend...
Categories Defectors
October 10, 2010

Of Conferences and Reports … and Reports from Conferences

10-10-10 has been another busy day for North Korea watchers, what with the military parade being broadcast live from Pyongyang and the passing of Hwang Jang-yop. But I want to mention several things I’ve spotted over the last weeks and months and the upcoming NKnet conference in Washington, D.C., on October 21st.  This will be in no particular order. _______________________________ In the beginning of September Tim Peters chaired a panel and other OFK favorites (e.g., Chuck Downs) spoke at a...
Categories Activism/Defectors/Human Rights/Refugees
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
August 13, 2010

Repatriated South Korean POW Sent to Yodok

An octogenarian South Korean POW has been sent to a North Korean prison camp after he was caught attempting to escape the country and return to his homeland more than 55 years after being captured during the Korean War. [Open News] According to the report, the “peace forest” that will be Jung’s final destination is the infamous Yodok, or Camp 15. Follow me in a slightly cynical thought. If we’re going to start using the I.C.C. as a means to...
Categories Korean War/North-South/Refugees/The Camps
July 28, 2010

Why There Is a Cold War in Asia

When someone escapes from North Korea and makes contact with South Koreans, and when China then repatriates that person to North Korea, the North Korean authorities typically execute that person, or send him to die in a prison camp. China has known this for years. That’s why the Chinese government is an accessory to murder when it does things like this: China has repatriated an 81-year-old former South Korean prisoner of war who had fled North Korea decades after being...
Categories China/China & Korea/Korean War/Refugees
July 20, 2010

“[W]e traveled with poison, so that if we were caught, we’d take it and kill ourselves.”

Sue Lloyd-Roberts continues her look at North Korea by interviewing refugees in Seoul and asking them about the images her minders allowed her to film. At 13:00, Lloyd-Roberts interviews Young Howard, a/k/a Ha Tae Kyung, the founder of Open Radio. She even sits in as he interviews a source by telephone. She seems to presume (incorrectly) that Ha is North Korean, but in fact, he’s a South Korean and a former leftist political prisoner. It’s both unsurprising and striking how...
Categories Inside NK/Media Criticism/Refugees/Useful Idiocy
July 10, 2010

If there was ever any cognizable justice in holding Gomes in a prison cell for peacefully presenting a petition to North Korean border guards, it ended months ago. North Korea says an American man being held for illegally crossing its border has tried to kill himself. A statement issued by the regime’s official Korean Central News Agency says Aijalon Mahli Gomes’ suicide attempt was “driven by his strong guilty conscience,” plus disappointment and despair that the U.S. government “has not...
Categories Aijalon Gomes/Anju Links/Deprogramming/Kim Jong Il/Kremlinology/NK Military/Propaganda/Reconstruction/Refugees