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The Protest Babes of LiNK: Yesterday Beirut, today Seoul, tomorrow Pyongyang. It takes a person of courage and vision to stand up for a just but unpopular cause, but beauty and talent certainly help to popularize that cause. This week, I’m officially convinced–for the first time–that our side is winning the information war in South Korea. More than any other single group, LiNK is responsible for this. In case you didn’t take note, by the way, it’s freezing cold in...

(By guest blogger, Andy Jackson) This is the first in a four-part series on lectures concerning human rights in North Korea delivered at Sogang University in Seoul on November 26, 2005. The text in block quotes were taken from my notes of the translation of Kang’s lecture. Any inaccuracies in the text are strictly my own. ************************************************ Kang Chol-hwan is not one to pull his punches. He has seen and experienced too much to care for diplomatic language. His youthful,...

Too many interesting things in the news today to discuss in too little time– North Korea More Alarming News on the Food Situation, via the World Food Program: The North Korean government has been unable to meet its own food distribution target of 500 grams of cereals per person per day, the World Food Program said in a report issued on Friday.The United Nations agency’s weekly “Emergency Report” said that its workers in North Korea visited public food distribution centers...

This certainly sounds like a marriage made in hell: Iran reportedly offered North Korea natural gas and oil as compensation for help with Tehran’s nuclear missile program. Citing unidentified Western sources, the German weekly magazine Der Spiegel reported that a senior Iranian official in mid-October made the proposal during a visit to Pyongyang. The magazine said it was unclear how the North responded. It added North Korea was an important source of missile technology for Iran and its Shahab-3 missiles...

James J. Na, who somehow finds the time to run two excellent blogs–“Guns and Butter Blog,” gunsandbutter.blogspot.com, and “The Asianist,” www.asianist.blogspot.com–has a new guest column on the trafficking of North Korean women and the State Department’s foot-dragging on carrying out the directives of the North Korean Human Rights Act. Timothy Peters of Helping Hands Korea, a Christian relief project, complained that, despite the intent of the law to help North Korean defectors, the State Department has been “seriously out of...

Defining Genocide Down: For a moment, leave aside discussions of gas chambers, infanticides, and concentration camps. In terms of the numbers of dead, all probably pale in comparison to the death toll from North Korea’s famine in the 1990’s. While there is substantial evidence that the famine was a crime against humanity that killed millions, neither it nor any of the regime’s worst crimes meet the legal definition of “genocide.” We all have Stalin to thank for that, and his...

(By guest blogger, Andy Jackson) UPDATE: I have posted on the content of the four major presenters. The posts are listed as: Kang Chol-hwan’s lecture at Sogang University, How North Korea tried to subvert the ROK democracy movement, How could you not care? and North Korea is not a socialist state. ORIGINAL POST: In conjuction with events next month sponsored by Freedom House and several Korean organizations, Liberty in North Korea (LiNK) is sponsoring events supporting North Korean human rights...

In my recent post about the North Korean Freedom Coalition’s meeting with Ambassador John Bolton, I mentioned that one of my own contributions to the meeting was the creation of a plaque to commemorate the meeting and thank Amb. John Bolton for his work on behalf of the North Korean people. One of his key staffers, the one who wrote the now-famous “hellish nightmare” speech, no less, has dropped a comment at the bottom of the thread, one I’m just...

KCNA has responded to CNN’s “Undercover in the Secret State:” “The video tape is full of sheer lies negating the popular and class nature and the democratic principle of the DPRK’s laws and tarnishing its image from A to Z,” the North’s official KCNA news agency said in a commentary. . . . KCNA said people “who know about the DPRK even a bit claimed that the way of speaking and dressing of those who appeared on the screen and...

Andy Jackson, a/k/a The Flying Yangban, has graciously agreed to liveblog the events leading up to and including the Freedom House Seoul conference here, at this site, starting this very night. If you’re not familiar with his work at The Marmot’s Hole or his own site, Andy is an instructor at Ansan College in the Seoul burbs, where he is very actively involved with LiNK. On that note, I regret not having linked this post of his sooner; sounds like...

Speaking of enemy territory, Yonsei University has recently gained a reputation as being one of Seoul’s more violent protest venues. As a soldier, not knowing this, I walked all over the area in search of Ewha girls and never ran into any trouble, but then again, I wasn’t there to talk politics. U.S. Ambassador Alexander Vershbow was: Around a dozen students who said they were the student organization of the left-leaning Democratic Labor Party staged a protest outside the hall....

Our Message at Their Doors. Adrian Hong addresses a crowd of supporters in front of the Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade here–in Korean. The things I’ve heard from many sources tell me that the Freedom House Conference in Seoul could be a galvanizing event. As with FH’s conference in DC last summer (see sidebar links), I have no doubt that LiNK will play a major role. The political stars are also starting to line up our way. Early...

On this side of the Pacific, the news is less encouraging. What follows is another Washington leak to OFK, one which must remain without attribution. My source is extremely well-placed to comment on the matters of which he informs me. I wish I could say how well placed. Why, some of us want to know, has the North Korean Human Rights Act lodged in the State Department’s windpipe? Why, over a year after the bill was signed into law, does...

Again, I must note that this isn’t the ex-Prez, but a popular South Korea columnist with a similar-sounding name. The core of the Roh Moo-hyun administration consists of people who protested loudly at human rights abuses in the decades when South Korea was a desert in that regard. Many young men and women in those days were beaten during demonstrations, arrested while escaping, some tortured, and a few of them died. That earned the survivors the decoration they carry on...

‘Diplomacy, Korean Style.’ I can’t write a better headline than the Chosun Ilbo, which fills in some details on the Korean government’s Iraq announcement. At a summit with the Korean president in Gyeongju last Thursday, U.S. President George W. Bush thanked Korea for its dispatch to Iraq of over 3,000 troops, and described it as an expression of Korea-U.S. friendship. The very next day, however, the plan to curtail the unit by 1,000 troops was decided in a discussion between...

Newt: We’re Ready to Leave, Whenever You Ask. Perhaps not a related item, but only perhaps–I heard Newt Gingrich on Fox News yesterday, saying that we should withdraw from Iraq when and only when its democratic government says it is ready for us to leave. Then he quite gratuitously veered off-topic to say the same about South Korea. It’s hard to say how much influence Newt has over anything today, but who would have imagined this extent of conservative anger...

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 famine that was certainly preventable, but for the diversion of North Korea’s coffers to higher priorities. While North Korean concentration camps filled to the brim with families whose children had to the temerity to...

None of this is to say that the United States should be above criticism when it errs–as it surely has. What it does say is that the sincerity of one’s commitment to liberal values is fairly judged by the sincerity and efficacy of one’s own words, actions, and options offered in their defense. Photo: The U.N. “safe area” of Srebrenica, after U.N. troops threw down their weapons, and just moments before the killings began Even deeper than this lies the...