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May 25, 2015

Women Cross DMZ: A Q&A, and closing thoughts (updated)

In the end, nothing illustrated the absurdity of Women Cross DMZ, the march to end the Korean War, better than the fact that it began with homages to Kim Il-Sung, the man who started the Korean War. Its emotional apex was reduced to a bus ride and a wait in an immigration line. It ended with organizer Christine Ahn ducking reporters to avoid questions about her reported comments praising Kim Il Sung (here’s the original Korean article from Pyongyang’s Rodong Sinmun). It was left to Gloria Steinem and...
Categories Useful Idiocy
May 19, 2015

N. Korea calls S. Korea’s president a skirt-lifting, crotch-licking whore, just as Gloria Steinem arrives in Pyongyang

Gloria Steinem must have had her first reservations about “Women Cross DMZ” when the march’s organizer was outed as a North Korean apologist, and reporters began to ask her uncomfortable questions about North Korea’s war on women. Since then, Steinem has had to duck questions about the regime’s rape and murder of female prisoners, the endemic and unpunished rapes of North Korean women by its soldiers, and the infanticides and forced abortions this regime inflicts on North Korean refugee women and...
Categories Diplomacy/Human Rights/North-South/Useful Idiocy
May 1, 2015

The North Korean army’s rape problem, “Kangan” Province, and Gloria Steinem

It has been four whole days since I said I was done talking about Women Cross DMZ for a year. How foolish it was of me to write that. For one thing, I did not anticipate having this detailed history of Christine Ahn’s pro-North Korean views, which outdoes my own, to graf for you: In late April, WomenCrossDMZ held a press conference in New York City. Ahn was not in attendance to respond to our question of why the group omits...
Categories Human Rights/NK Military/Useful Idiocy
April 27, 2015

In The Weekly Standard: North Korea’s war on women

I believe, having written this, that I’ve gotten out of my system everything I’ve ever wanted to write about Christine Ahn and Women Cross DMZ. For this year. I just hope Gloria Steinem doesn’t leave her feminism at home when she goes to Pyongyang. Millions of North Korean women need her support, more desperately than she’s willing to see. On the same topic, see also this op-ed, in The Washington Post, by Rabbi Abraham Cooper and Greg Scarlatoiu.
Categories Human Rights/Useful Idiocy
April 10, 2015

Help! Help! I’m being repressed! (Part 2)

Christine Ahn’s pursuit of global fame is having unintended consequences, mostly for Gloria Steinem. At Hot Air, Noah Rothman writes, “If women’s rights are also human rights, then North Korea is no friend to either.” He accuses Ahn and Steinem (and other “progressives”) of turning “a blind eye toward real abuses in order to support the cause of totalitarian statism.” In The Daily Beast, Lizzie Crocker writes that Ahn “has long been uncritical of North Korea, a country that has some committed...
Categories Useful Idiocy
April 9, 2015

Would Christine Ahn please ask Pyongyang to stop deporting the nice aid workers? For the children?

North Korea has deported U.S. citizen Sandra Suh, a humanitarian aid worker and founder of the L.A.-based NGO Wheat Mission Ministries, who had been working in North Korea since 1998. Pyongyang accused Suh of “plot-breeding and propaganda” — specifically, by showing “propaganda abroad with photos and videos” that she “secretly produced and directed, out of inveterate repugnancy” toward the North, “under the pretense of ‘humanitarianism.’” The North Korean news agency said Suh had “admitted her acts … seriously insulted the absolute trust” North Koreans place in their...
Categories AP Watch/Famine & Food Aid/Useful Idiocy
April 7, 2015

Why people call Christine Ahn “pro-North Korean”

Last night, CNN became the first news organization to do its due diligence on Christine Ahn, the organizer of the “Women Cross DMZ” march, and to call Gloria Steinem on this questionable association (Steinem stands by Ahn). CNN aired interviews with Greg Scarlatoiu of the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, and Korea scholar and former CIA Analyst Sue Terry. CNN’s report is a case study on how quickly a little scrutiny turns fame into infamy. CNN deserves praise for...
Categories Useful Idiocy
February 27, 2015

So, what “appropriate measures” *did* the feds take against Dennis Rodman for violating N. Korea sanctions?

The newest U.N. Panel of Experts report* on North Korea sanctions enforcement contains this buried treasure: The first question this raises is what those appropriate measures were. The use of passive voice conceals whether the feds took any measures at all. The second question is why there should be a “lack of information” from Rodman, when the Commerce and Treasury Departments have subpoena powers and an obligation to cooperate with U.N. authorities enforcing North Korea sanctions. The law applies to...
Categories Luxury Goods/Sanctions/Useful Idiocy
February 10, 2015

Ten questions Gloria Steinem should ask the N. Koreans about women’s rights (but probably won’t dare to)

This week, I read that North Korea has granted permission for a group of women, including Gloria Steinem, and led by outspoken North Korean regime sympathizer Christine Ahn, to do a “peace march” across the DMZ. The group also intends to “hold international peace symposiums in Pyongyang and Seoul,” where Ahn will probably repeat one of her favorite falsehoods, that “crippling sanctions against the government make it difficult for ordinary people to access the basics needed for survival.” It’s a statement that could...
Categories Anju Links/Human Rights/Useful Idiocy
February 9, 2015

Dear journos: If you’re going to cover Christine Ahn’s “peace” march, do some due diligence

A few outlets have picked up on the event itself, but only one has taken note of Ahn’s role in organizing the event, and not one so far has written anything about Ahn’s extensive history as a vocal North Korean sympathizer. In fact, Ahn is a die-hard opponent of North Korea human rights legislation whose writings make frequent use of words like “imperialism,” “struggle,” and “solidarity;” who actually believes that North Korea’s famine was caused by a combination of U.S. sanctions and 21...
Categories Useful Idiocy
December 29, 2014

Christine Hong has been curiously silent about North Korea’s racism

By now, most of you have probably read that North Korea’s Korean Central News Agency, referring to President Obama’s failure to censor “The Interview,” said that “Obama Reckless always in words and Deeds Goes like a Monkey in a Tropical Forest.” (KCNA.kp is unlinkable, but I’ve pasted the full article below the fold. The article in question is dated December 27, 2014.) This is the third racist attack on President Obama KCNA has printed, and the second it has printed under its...
Categories Racism/Useful Idiocy
December 1, 2014

KCNA cites debunked accusations to deny human rights violations

It all started with a piece of web journalism that printed the demonstrably untrue accusations of two men whose views were never newsworthy, and which would never have been published had they been researched. One is a notorious denier of North Korea’s crimes against humanity who claims to have traveled widely within North Korea, meaning he’s either too blind to read a cuckoo clock at high noon or prevaricating, probably to protect his business interests there. The other is a combustible man (as in, warning: contents under pressure) without...
Categories Anju Links/Propaganda/Refugees/Useful Idiocy
November 15, 2014

Embracing evil

Michael Bassett is an odd character of a kind that draws an increasingly selective audience–people who really, really hate other people who criticize North Korea about human rights. The most recent targets of Bassett’s rage are a friend of mine, Casey Lartigue, and this woman: In an article by John Power for The Diplomat, Bassett calls the woman, a North Korean refugee named Yeonmi Park, “a liar” and a “spinstress” for telling The Irish Independent, in her slightly broken English: “Every morning and every … like … some riverside like...
Categories Refugees/Useful Idiocy
November 14, 2014

Don Gregg: “I’ve long sensed that Kim Jong-un is going to change the nature of this country.”

“Kim Jong-un is a smart young man, and this was a very smart move,” Donald Gregg, who served terms as a C.I.A. station chief and the U.S. Ambassador in Seoul, said of the release of the detainees. “I’ve long sensed that Kim Jong-un is going to change the nature of this country.” Now retired, Gregg has worked in recent years to promote engagement between the United States and North Korea, including presiding over Ambassador Jang’s appearance at the Council on...
Categories Useful Idiocy
September 17, 2014

Adam Johnson: “Everyone who deals with them eventually gets burned.”

Somewhere, the world’s smallest violin is playing a Samuel Barber adagio for Walter Keats, who whines, not about the North Koreans who shut down his tour business after he spent years coddling and enriching them, but about Adam Johnson for writing a Pulitzer Prize winning novel: Between 2006 and 2012, Walter Keats led dozens of tours as president of Asia Pacific Travel. By 2012, after building trust with North Korean officials, Keats and his wife were permitted to lead groups year-round. Then, without explanation, Keats and his wife...
Categories Books & Films/Foreigners in N. Korea/Useful Idiocy
May 5, 2014

Dennis Rodman, back from rehab, recounts hallucinations from last visit to Pyongyang

So Dennis Rodman is out of rehab and talking to the media again. In this interview, he’s described as “a potential source of information about a country that is inaccessible to most of the world,” so let’s test that. Rodman’s first major revelation is that Jang Song Thaek wasn’t really executed several weeks before Rodman’s last trip to Pyongyang. In fact, Rodman says that on his last trip, Jang was “standing right behind me.” Also, Kim Jong Un is “doing...
Categories Kremlinology/Useful Idiocy
April 30, 2014

Eagerly awaiting Christine Ahn’s reaction to North Korea’s sexism and homophobia

Now that North Korea’s state media have called South Korea’s female president a “whore,” a “prostitute,” a “crazy bitch,” and a “comfort woman,” no one will ever have to invent sexism again to deflect criticism of North Korea’s crimes against humanity, and whoever does will, from this date forward, have to argue her away around real, vicious, state-sponsored misogyny. What Park did before Obama this time reminds one of an indiscreet girl who earnestly begs a gangster to beat someone or a capricious whore who asks her...
Categories Anju Links/North-South/Propaganda/Useful Idiocy/WTF?