Blogger and friend James Na has a thoughtful piece on being Asian in America in the Seattle Times: So if I was an Asian once, who am I now? I am left with this: I am an American, because I choose to be one. I revel in its liberties, its excesses, its ideals, its flaws. That is the identity I constructed for myself. That’s funny. You can be a white guy from South Dakota and feel exactly the same way....

I’ve been expecting to hear of the formation of armed anti-government resistance groups in North Korea for some time, so it doesn’t come as a great surprise to me that some of North Korea’s vaunted Special Forces troops are now threatening to turn their guns against their former masters: Nine former North Korean special forces soldiers who defected to the South vowed Wednesday to push for regime change in their communist homeland unless it abolishes political prison camps and improves...

A number of papers are covering the story of an apparent massacre in a Chinese village. The New York Times is among them: SHANWEI, China, Dec. 10 — Four days after a lethal assault on protesters by paramilitary forces, a village in southern China remained under heavy police lockdown on Saturday. Residents of the village, Dongzhou, interviewed by telephone from this nearby city, said the police continued to make arrests and bar outsiders from their hamlet. The authorities have still...

Your comments on the new banner are welcomed. Those using MS IE, please let me know if the sidebar is back up where it belongs. Thanks to some html help from Rob at The Kommentariat, I’ve also added an atom feed button.

(by guest blogger Andy Jackson) This a part of a series of posts on the Seoul Summit: Promoting Human Rights in North Korea and related events. The portions in the blockquote were taken from my notes. I apologize for any inaccuracies. Chung Eui-young is the Chairman of the Our Open (Uri) party’s Foreign Relations committee. He is serving his first term as a proportional representative member of the National Assembly (which means that he doesn’t have any constituents). He is...

It is now settled law that nothing good escapes the mouth of Chung Dong-Young, South Korea’s most consistent appeaser of Kim Jong Il (described here as the North’s Minister for Southern Affairs). On Monday, December 5th, Chung addressed the question of North Korea’s counterfeiting of U.S. currency, and had this to say: Unification Minister Chung Dong-young said Monday, “Non-nuclear complaints by the United States against North Korea should be solved by bilateral talks between the two parties. As the six-party...

Then again, it seems unfair to blame Chung when his stupidity, however unintentionally, creates opportunities for the Bush Administration to move in a more decisive direction. The Washington Times thinks that the comments of Vershbow and Lefkowitz are a calculated series of comments that signal a tougher U.S. line. I’m not so sure of that, given the provocation of Chung’s comments, and those of North Korea, before Vershbow spoke up. Either way, Chung’s two cents didn’t buy much love. The...

Every person who genuinely cares about the suffering of others–for whom a passion for human rights is really about the victims themselves–should see Seoul Train: SEOUL TRAIN is a gripping documentary exposé into the life-and-death struggle faced by North Korean refugees as they flee their homeland through China, which does not recognize their legal status as refugees. Combining verité and hidden camera footage with personal stories and interviews, the film brings to light this humanitarian tragedy of a neglected people...

A Stunted Nation: That’s the funny thing about a famine–even the survival of it is only partial. Read more about how LiNK is helping the latest victims of Kim Jong-Il’s policies.

Many, many thanks to Andy Jackson for his fascinating posts while I was out of town for important work responsibilities that precluded any blogging.

Does this girl look familiar to you?

(by guest blogger Andy Jackson) This a part of a series of posts on the Seoul Summit: Promoting Human Rights in North Korea and related events. Yoo Se-hee, the president of Citizens United for a Better Society, gave an overview of the status and work of North Korean Human Rights NGOs in Korea. What follows is a summery of his report during the first session of the Seoul Summit on December 9, 2005: There are about 15,000 registered NGOs in...

(by guest blogger Andy Jackson) This a part of a series of posts on the Seoul Summit: Promoting Human Rights in North Korea and related events. The opening session of the Seoul Summit started about about 9:40 with about 400 people in the room. Within an hour, that numbe had grown to about 700. The early part of the session had a very American feel to it, with speeches by US Ambassador Alexander Vershbow and special envoy for North Korean...

(by guest blogger Andy Jackson) This a part of a series of posts on the Seoul Summit: Promoting Human Rights in North Korea and related events. This is the first in what probably be a dozen or so posts on the Seoul Summit and some other events. While I hope to have them done by the evening of Monday, December 12 (Korean time), family, work and other commitments might stretch the project out a day or two. While participants such...

(By guest blogger Andy Jackson) I was in Seoul on Tuesday to do some work for the Seoul Summit (I live outside Seoul). That gave me a chance to visit a meeting of Catacombs, a group led by Tim Peters. I walked in out of a cold Korean December night and saw about 25 people packed shoulder to shoulder in a very small art gallery. I sat on a small stool in front of the door because their wasn’t room...

(By guest blogger Andy Jackson) (This is just a boring documentation post. I’ll try to have something juicier in my next piece.) I did not get an invitation to the closed sessions at the Seoul Summit tomorrow, but I was able to get an invitation to the evening welcoming reception tomorrow night. I was able to get that much because I’m Executive Director of Republicans Abroad-Korea, one of many organizations supporting the summit. We and the Democrats cosponsored a reception...

(By guest blogger Andy Jackson) It happens with enough regularity that I hardly notice it anymore. Step One; Pyongyang throws a tantrum: North Korea said on Tuesday that it is ‘absolutely impossible’ for Pyongyang to return to the six-party denuclearization talks as the United States is ‘avoiding’ a bilateral meeting on Washington’s financial sanctions on the communist state. Step Two; Chung Dong-young says something stupid in an attempt to appease them: Unification Minister Chung Dong-young says issues other than the...

(By guest blogger, Andy Jackson) This is the last 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 notes of translation of the lecture and supplemented by an article written by Kim on the same topic. Any inaccuracies in the text are strictly my own. Apostates are often the most vehement of critics. Such is the case with Kim...