111963656430388633

Posted by Joshua Stanton on June 24, 2001 at 7:02 pm · Filed under Uncategorized

Repositioning and trimming our troops in South Korea is a signal that we are preparing seriously to deal with the danger posed by North Korean tyrant Kim Jong Il.

____________________

The current government in Seoul is the most anti-American in the short history of the Republic of Korea. It is a left-wing administration that has fanned public sentiment against U.S. troops. Yet suddenly this government issued statements making it clear it wanted to keep the U.S. garrison in place more than the Americans themselves did.

____________________

Moving U.S. troops away from the DMZ tripwire, and out of the reach of North Korea’s artillery and tactical missiles, is a sensible move if hostilities might be on the way.

____________________

In the carrots-and-sticks approach we have taken toward North Korea, the sticks are strategic bombers, such as the ones the Pentagon moved to Guam in the weeks before the Iraq war in spring 2003. . . . By contrast, our nearly 37,000 soldiers in South Korea—and the alliance that keeps them there—are purely defensive. . . . Yet the presence of these U.S. Army brigades allows the North to hold us hostage, because the North would likely respond to any U.S. air strikes by firing thousands of missiles at our bases in the South. Simply put, therefore, our troop presence in South Korea no longer deters the North. It deters us. (emphasis in original).

____________________

Besides, the South Koreans are now grown-ups fully capable of taking care of themselves. . . . Today, the situation is completely different [than it was during the Cold War]. [South Korea] has the industrial, technological, and demographic basis to field a military that would rip North Korea’s million-man paper tiger to shreds. It’s time we let the South Koreans defend themselves.

Author Daniel Kennelly is managing editor of The American Interest.

Excepts from Gordon Cucullu:
A Stiff Test for America

It would be entirely in keeping with North Korea’s character to sell weapons of mass destruction to non-governmental terror organizations. Hard cash, not morality or legitimacy, carries the day in Pyongyang.

_______________

With this new development, why focus on just another stop-gap measure against North Korean scheming? Could the United States join with its regional partners to get rid of an atrocious dictator and his nuclear threats once and for all? Lifting the pall of a nuclear war, while liberating the oppressed North Korean people and reuniting the Korean peninsula under a democratic government and a free-market economy is a worthy goal. But is it realistic?

Because of the Souh’s craven politics, Kim Jong Il in the North has been under little pressure to reform or abide by his nuclear weapons agreements. . . . South Korean politicians have moved toward a bizarre neutral stance that presumes to mediate between Pyongyang and Washington, declaring both sides must make “concessions.” The North Koreans have thus made progress toward their longstanding objective of splitting South Korea from the U.S. To their shame, many South Koreans have responded positively to blatant North Korean appeals to “Han” ethnic chauvinism. The South Korean public needs to be made aware of the consequences of their surrender.

____________________

What may end up convincing China is the possibility of a nuclear Japan.

____________________

By far the gravest risk to China of a miscalculation in North Korea is the specter of millions . . . of North Koreans fleeing across their border to escape a collapsing Kim Jong Il regime. . . . There is a model we can learn from. Thailand went through a similar but smaller crisis following the fall of Vietnam and the takeover by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. . . . The solution that worked in Thailand was a string of tightly supervised and controlled U.N. camps. Establishment of a similar safety zone where abused North Koreans could revover their mental and physical health, and participate in education and job training programs to bring them into the twenty-first century, would allow the dictatorship of Kim Jong Il to collapse without creating a humanitarian and political crisis.

____________________

Is China up for this level of responsibilty? Many observers say no. This could be a test of China’s new strength and maturity as an international power.

Gordon Cucullu is the author of Separated at Birth, which I reviewed here, if you’re interested. In his book, he discusses the refugee camp idea is much greater detail, along with his decades of experience with Korea during his time in the Special Forces and in the corporate world. Gordon is also a fellow made member of the North Korean Freedom Coalition, complete with diamond pinkie ring.

Excerpts from Victor Davis Hanson: No Easy Choices

More likely the ascendant Chinese are amused by the sheer blood sport of seeing their crazed vassal tie an exasperated America in knots. Is North Korea really out of control, and thus a threat to the breakneck development of China, or is it a useful surrogate to remind the Japanese and South Koreans who really holds the leash of this rabid dog?

____________________

South Korea suffers increasingly the postmodern maladies of the affluent—and cynical—West. Its citizens want pan-Korean solidarity, but not to the point of losing the one-sided benefits of their American alliance. University students demonstrate for Americans to get out of Seoul. But they don’t really want us to leave the Demilitarized Zone. We are supposed to say on the DMZ and endure the increasingly cheap and bothersome anti-Americanism of the “friends” we protect. We could leave in a huff, but we might then watch a successful democracy be blackmailed or shelled, sacrificing a half-century of achievement that cost billions of dollars and thousands of American lives.

____________________

There are no good choices now—just the hard lesson not to allow a maniacal regime to acquire nuclear weapons in the first place.

Author and historian Victor Davis Hanson is a regular contributor to The National Review and blogs here.

Update:

Read Norbert Vollertsen’s article, “A Depraved Society We Can’t Ignore,” here.

Ambassador Lilley begins with a discussion of China’s long history of involvement in and influence over Korean affairs, leading up to China’s decision to send a team to the 1988 Seoul Olympics, establish diplomatic relations with the South in 1992, and “deftly manage” the entry of both Koreas into the United Nations.

China now seeks to increase its influence on the Korean peninsula and gradually reduce the U.S. military presence there. But North Korea’s adventurism with weapons of mass destruction adds a volatile element. China depends on America as an important commercial partner, while also facing the U.S. as a strategic competitor over issues like Taiwan. China sees North Korea as a buffer, and as a useful distraction that keeps U.S. military power preoccupied.

______________________

The South Koreans understand that a strong U.S. military presence in their region is necessary as a credible deterrent. They also welcome the economic stability created by the American umbrella. They share the U.S. objective of North Korean reform, but they care less than we do about monitoring it.

Both the Chinese and the South Koreans want to manage North Korea their way, not ours. Our expectations for their help in any collective talks aimed at influencing North Korea, therefore, must remain modest.

Not exactly incendiary stuff—and that’s actually as extreme as it gets—but when I ran into Ambassador Lilley two days ago, he told me that the South Koreans were not happy, to put it mildly. The most provocative language in the entire piece is its title.

James Lilley served at United States Ambassador to both South Korea and China.

If South Korea was not happy with Ambassador Lilley, “royally pissed” might be a better way to describe their reaction to Nicholas Eberstadt’s piece. It may not have helped that the Chosun Ilbo misquoted him. First, some of Eberstadt’s key grafs:

The North Korean government did not join the world’s nuclear club suddenly, on a whim. This was the predictable culmination of decades of steady, deliberate effort in a multifaceted program of for building weapons of mass destruction—not only nuclear weapons but also chemical and biological munitions and ballistic missiles.

_________________

Yet after more than four years in office, the Bush administration still seems to lack an effective strategy for dealing with North Korea. Thus far, it has merely confronted Pyongyang with an attitude. And the problem continues to grow worse. . . . How have the U.S. and its allies responded? With six-party talks that merely resulted in calls for further rounds of talk. This reactive American approach may be leading Pyongyang to conclude that it can deter and manipulate the U.S. with nuclear threats. . . . To date, the United States, its Asian allies, and the rest of the world community have demonstrated to Kim Jong Il that he need fear no appreciable penalties for creating an atomic arsenal of his own.

Eberstadt goes on to list a long history of North Korean provocations that incurred no significant punitive response, noting Seoul’s “timid mutterings” and stating that “Beijing and Moscow paid Pyongyang to merely show up.”

Until last year, many Western observers and policymakers seemed to feel that international trafficking in nuclear materials was the one red line North Korea would not dare violate. Now it appears that that line has also been crossed. The U.S. government has announced that North Korea provided Pakistan and perhaps even Libya with processed uranium after 9/11—possibly as recently as 2003.

_________________

Far from deferring or mitigating the peril of conflict, such Western fecklessness toward North Korea [as Colin’s Powell’s statement that ‘we don’t have any red lines’] only magnifies the scale of the expected disaster. For more than a decade, a combination of talk and bribery has been tried to no effect. We all know how the Clinton administration’s mid-1990s attempts to buy cooperation turned out: Pyongyang took the money and plowed it into new covert nuclear programs. The Bush administration’s passive-aggressive approach has hardly generated better results.

Among Eberstadt’s specific recommendations:

Define “success” and “failure” for North Korea negotiations. . . . The administration must not be shy about declaring the process a failure if in fact it is. Rewarding Pyongyang for merely showing up at the talks should not count as a good result.

________________

Work around the pro-appeasement crowd in the South Korean government. . . . The core of this new [Roh/Uri] government has proven implacably anti-American and reflexively in favor of appeasing Pyongyang.

Eberstadt calls its base “a coterie of leftist academics and activists.” Nothing libellous there. He also calls for greater pressure on China, recommending that we convey some pointed threats, but not specifying what they should be. Finally, Eberstadt says that the United States must be ready for what he calls “extra-diplomatic action,” including “hard-line sanctions and military options.”

Political economist Nicholas Eberstadt is author of “The End of North Korea” and is an AEI fellow. I read it, and I recommend it notwithstanding the fact that things haven’t exactly worked out that way yet. Read a review here.

In the wake of this issue, the Korea Foundation, which the Chosun Ilbo calls “a body under the Foreign Ministry,” cut off all funds to that (clench teeth now) neocon think-tank called The American Enterprise Institute.

Ruling party officials dislike the direction of AEI activity. They seem particular [sic] allergic to senior fellow Nicholas Eberstadt, who told the Seoul Shinmun in November that Cheong Wa Dae and the Korean National Security Council viewed U.S. President Bush’s reelection as an emergency, adding he could name those who were praying for Bush’s defeat.

Cheong Wa Dae expressed displeasure at the time saying the statement was groundless, and the ruling party demanded an end to funding of the AEI.

In the recent edition of American Enterprise, Eberstadt said the core of the Korean government had demonstrated it was unforgivably anti-American and called Seoul a “runaway” U.S. ally. On June 6, he attacked President Roh Moo-hyun and his predecessor Kim Dae-jung, saying Korea’s last two presidents, two self-proclaimed fighters for human rights, ignored the plight of North Korean refugees.

Sorry, but this is flatly false. Eberstadt never used the words “runaway” or “unforgiveably.” It would be fair, however, to quote Eberstadt as accusing Roh and Kim of ignoring the plight of North Korean refugees, however, because Roh and Kim have ignored the plight of North Korean refugees (one Anti-Unification Ministry official infamously compared human rights for the North Korean people to “pearls for a pig.”). It’s also fair to say that the TAE issue’s authors have a “hostile policy” toward the current South Korean government, which is itself a substantial obstruction to forcing North Korea to improve human rights conditions and relent on its nuclear ambitions.

It is also inaccurate to suggest that AEI is uniformly a neocon outfit: Ambassador Lilley is certainly no neocon, and it’s a small minority of conservatives of any variety who support bribing the North Koreans again without demanding some verifiable concessions, at least on nukes. The most “paleo” of conservatives, evangelical Christians, are a substantial–if not the largest–part of the human rights constituency; then again, this whole “paleo”/”neo” thing was always lost on me. Finally, a narrow majority of the Jewish supporters of the human rights constituency are liberals (Stephen Solarz, Tom Lantos, Joe Lieberman).

That said, I’m somewhat mystified that the South Korean government gave AEI money for this long. If they were expecting something in exchange for their money, they should be on the phone with Customer Service.

My reaction? As I said, I’m renewing my AEI membership. Join here if you’re similarly inclined. The magazine alone is worth the money.

(Back to OneFreeKorea)

• Interview with Freedom House’s North Korea program manager, Prof. Jae Ku about his life, his influences, and FH’s July 19th conference on North Korea.
• The L.A. Times exposes the desperation and misery of life in Chongjin, North Korea.
• Runaway inflation in North Korea has spurred a black market in dollars.
• Fisking Hillary Clinton’s plan for North Korea.
• Kang Chol-Hwan, the North Korean gulag survivor who met President Bush, is coming out with a new edition to his book. The new introduction is here.
• OneFreeKorea debates WSJ op-ed author Won Joon Choe over the future of the U.S.-Korea alliance and anti-Americanism, which is still in style in South Korea.
• How the “Nelson Report” exposes the bias of some journalists to avoid the topic of human rights in North Korea, and why its author may have violated federal law.
• Articles on refugees and human rights by Jasper Becker and Nicholas Eberstadt.
• The celibate life in the North Korean army.
• What is the ADVANCE Democracy Act, and why should you care?
• More troubling reports that North Korea is cooperating with Iran on nukes.
• Ordinary North Koreans find their voices as reporters, and maybe even as bloggers at this site.
• Please Join us for a demonstration for human rights for North Koreans, August 20th, at the Chinese Embassy in Washington.

Comments (1)

111963656430388633

Posted by joshua on June 24, 2001 at 2:02 pm · Filed under Uncategorized

Repositioning and trimming our troops in South Korea is a signal that we are preparing seriously to deal with the danger posed by North Korean tyrant Kim Jong Il.

____________________

The current government in Seoul is the most anti-American in the short history of the Republic of Korea. It is a left-wing administration that has fanned public sentiment against U.S. troops. Yet suddenly this government issued statements making it clear it wanted to keep the U.S. garrison in place more than the Americans themselves did.

____________________

Moving U.S. troops away from the DMZ tripwire, and out of the reach of North Korea’s artillery and tactical missiles, is a sensible move if hostilities might be on the way.

____________________

In the carrots-and-sticks approach we have taken toward North Korea, the sticks are strategic bombers, such as the ones the Pentagon moved to Guam in the weeks before the Iraq war in spring 2003. . . . By contrast, our nearly 37,000 soldiers in South Korea—and the alliance that keeps them there—are purely defensive. . . . Yet the presence of these U.S. Army brigades allows the North to hold us hostage, because the North would likely respond to any U.S. air strikes by firing thousands of missiles at our bases in the South. Simply put, therefore, our troop presence in South Korea no longer deters the North. It deters us. (emphasis in original).

____________________

Besides, the South Koreans are now grown-ups fully capable of taking care of themselves. . . . Today, the situation is completely different [than it was during the Cold War]. [South Korea] has the industrial, technological, and demographic basis to field a military that would rip North Korea’s million-man paper tiger to shreds. It’s time we let the South Koreans defend themselves.

Author Daniel Kennelly is managing editor of The American Interest.

Excepts from Gordon Cucullu:
A Stiff Test for America

It would be entirely in keeping with North Korea’s character to sell weapons of mass destruction to non-governmental terror organizations. Hard cash, not morality or legitimacy, carries the day in Pyongyang.

_______________

With this new development, why focus on just another stop-gap measure against North Korean scheming? Could the United States join with its regional partners to get rid of an atrocious dictator and his nuclear threats once and for all? Lifting the pall of a nuclear war, while liberating the oppressed North Korean people and reuniting the Korean peninsula under a democratic government and a free-market economy is a worthy goal. But is it realistic?

Because of the Souh’s craven politics, Kim Jong Il in the North has been under little pressure to reform or abide by his nuclear weapons agreements. . . . South Korean politicians have moved toward a bizarre neutral stance that presumes to mediate between Pyongyang and Washington, declaring both sides must make “concessions.” The North Koreans have thus made progress toward their longstanding objective of splitting South Korea from the U.S. To their shame, many South Koreans have responded positively to blatant North Korean appeals to “Han” ethnic chauvinism. The South Korean public needs to be made aware of the consequences of their surrender.

____________________

What may end up convincing China is the possibility of a nuclear Japan.

____________________

By far the gravest risk to China of a miscalculation in North Korea is the specter of millions . . . of North Koreans fleeing across their border to escape a collapsing Kim Jong Il regime. . . . There is a model we can learn from. Thailand went through a similar but smaller crisis following the fall of Vietnam and the takeover by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. . . . The solution that worked in Thailand was a string of tightly supervised and controlled U.N. camps. Establishment of a similar safety zone where abused North Koreans could revover their mental and physical health, and participate in education and job training programs to bring them into the twenty-first century, would allow the dictatorship of Kim Jong Il to collapse without creating a humanitarian and political crisis.

____________________

Is China up for this level of responsibilty? Many observers say no. This could be a test of China’s new strength and maturity as an international power.

Gordon Cucullu is the author of Separated at Birth, which I reviewed here, if you’re interested. In his book, he discusses the refugee camp idea is much greater detail, along with his decades of experience with Korea during his time in the Special Forces and in the corporate world. Gordon is also a fellow made member of the North Korean Freedom Coalition, complete with diamond pinkie ring.

Excerpts from Victor Davis Hanson: No Easy Choices

More likely the ascendant Chinese are amused by the sheer blood sport of seeing their crazed vassal tie an exasperated America in knots. Is North Korea really out of control, and thus a threat to the breakneck development of China, or is it a useful surrogate to remind the Japanese and South Koreans who really holds the leash of this rabid dog?

____________________

South Korea suffers increasingly the postmodern maladies of the affluent—and cynical—West. Its citizens want pan-Korean solidarity, but not to the point of losing the one-sided benefits of their American alliance. University students demonstrate for Americans to get out of Seoul. But they don’t really want us to leave the Demilitarized Zone. We are supposed to say on the DMZ and endure the increasingly cheap and bothersome anti-Americanism of the “friends” we protect. We could leave in a huff, but we might then watch a successful democracy be blackmailed or shelled, sacrificing a half-century of achievement that cost billions of dollars and thousands of American lives.

____________________

There are no good choices now—just the hard lesson not to allow a maniacal regime to acquire nuclear weapons in the first place.

Author and historian Victor Davis Hanson is a regular contributor to The National Review and blogs here.

Update:

Read Norbert Vollertsen’s article, “A Depraved Society We Can’t Ignore,” here.

Ambassador Lilley begins with a discussion of China’s long history of involvement in and influence over Korean affairs, leading up to China’s decision to send a team to the 1988 Seoul Olympics, establish diplomatic relations with the South in 1992, and “deftly manage” the entry of both Koreas into the United Nations.

China now seeks to increase its influence on the Korean peninsula and gradually reduce the U.S. military presence there. But North Korea’s adventurism with weapons of mass destruction adds a volatile element. China depends on America as an important commercial partner, while also facing the U.S. as a strategic competitor over issues like Taiwan. China sees North Korea as a buffer, and as a useful distraction that keeps U.S. military power preoccupied.

______________________

The South Koreans understand that a strong U.S. military presence in their region is necessary as a credible deterrent. They also welcome the economic stability created by the American umbrella. They share the U.S. objective of North Korean reform, but they care less than we do about monitoring it.

Both the Chinese and the South Koreans want to manage North Korea their way, not ours. Our expectations for their help in any collective talks aimed at influencing North Korea, therefore, must remain modest.

Not exactly incendiary stuff—and that’s actually as extreme as it gets—but when I ran into Ambassador Lilley two days ago, he told me that the South Koreans were not happy, to put it mildly. The most provocative language in the entire piece is its title.

James Lilley served at United States Ambassador to both South Korea and China.

If South Korea was not happy with Ambassador Lilley, “royally pissed” might be a better way to describe their reaction to Nicholas Eberstadt’s piece. It may not have helped that the Chosun Ilbo misquoted him. First, some of Eberstadt’s key grafs:

The North Korean government did not join the world’s nuclear club suddenly, on a whim. This was the predictable culmination of decades of steady, deliberate effort in a multifaceted program of for building weapons of mass destruction—not only nuclear weapons but also chemical and biological munitions and ballistic missiles.

_________________

Yet after more than four years in office, the Bush administration still seems to lack an effective strategy for dealing with North Korea. Thus far, it has merely confronted Pyongyang with an attitude. And the problem continues to grow worse. . . . How have the U.S. and its allies responded? With six-party talks that merely resulted in calls for further rounds of talk. This reactive American approach may be leading Pyongyang to conclude that it can deter and manipulate the U.S. with nuclear threats. . . . To date, the United States, its Asian allies, and the rest of the world community have demonstrated to Kim Jong Il that he need fear no appreciable penalties for creating an atomic arsenal of his own.

Eberstadt goes on to list a long history of North Korean provocations that incurred no significant punitive response, noting Seoul’s “timid mutterings” and stating that “Beijing and Moscow paid Pyongyang to merely show up.”

Until last year, many Western observers and policymakers seemed to feel that international trafficking in nuclear materials was the one red line North Korea would not dare violate. Now it appears that that line has also been crossed. The U.S. government has announced that North Korea provided Pakistan and perhaps even Libya with processed uranium after 9/11—possibly as recently as 2003.

_________________

Far from deferring or mitigating the peril of conflict, such Western fecklessness toward North Korea [as Colin’s Powell’s statement that ‘we don’t have any red lines’] only magnifies the scale of the expected disaster. For more than a decade, a combination of talk and bribery has been tried to no effect. We all know how the Clinton administration’s mid-1990s attempts to buy cooperation turned out: Pyongyang took the money and plowed it into new covert nuclear programs. The Bush administration’s passive-aggressive approach has hardly generated better results.

Among Eberstadt’s specific recommendations:

Define “success” and “failure” for North Korea negotiations. . . . The administration must not be shy about declaring the process a failure if in fact it is. Rewarding Pyongyang for merely showing up at the talks should not count as a good result.

________________

Work around the pro-appeasement crowd in the South Korean government. . . . The core of this new [Roh/Uri] government has proven implacably anti-American and reflexively in favor of appeasing Pyongyang.

Eberstadt calls its base “a coterie of leftist academics and activists.” Nothing libellous there. He also calls for greater pressure on China, recommending that we convey some pointed threats, but not specifying what they should be. Finally, Eberstadt says that the United States must be ready for what he calls “extra-diplomatic action,” including “hard-line sanctions and military options.”

Political economist Nicholas Eberstadt is author of “The End of North Korea” and is an AEI fellow. I read it, and I recommend it notwithstanding the fact that things haven’t exactly worked out that way yet. Read a review here.

In the wake of this issue, the Korea Foundation, which the Chosun Ilbo calls “a body under the Foreign Ministry,” cut off all funds to that (clench teeth now) neocon think-tank called The American Enterprise Institute.

Ruling party officials dislike the direction of AEI activity. They seem particular [sic] allergic to senior fellow Nicholas Eberstadt, who told the Seoul Shinmun in November that Cheong Wa Dae and the Korean National Security Council viewed U.S. President Bush’s reelection as an emergency, adding he could name those who were praying for Bush’s defeat.

Cheong Wa Dae expressed displeasure at the time saying the statement was groundless, and the ruling party demanded an end to funding of the AEI.

In the recent edition of American Enterprise, Eberstadt said the core of the Korean government had demonstrated it was unforgivably anti-American and called Seoul a “runaway” U.S. ally. On June 6, he attacked President Roh Moo-hyun and his predecessor Kim Dae-jung, saying Korea’s last two presidents, two self-proclaimed fighters for human rights, ignored the plight of North Korean refugees.

Sorry, but this is flatly false. Eberstadt never used the words “runaway” or “unforgiveably.” It would be fair, however, to quote Eberstadt as accusing Roh and Kim of ignoring the plight of North Korean refugees, however, because Roh and Kim have ignored the plight of North Korean refugees (one Anti-Unification Ministry official infamously compared human rights for the North Korean people to “pearls for a pig.”). It’s also fair to say that the TAE issue’s authors have a “hostile policy” toward the current South Korean government, which is itself a substantial obstruction to forcing North Korea to improve human rights conditions and relent on its nuclear ambitions.

It is also inaccurate to suggest that AEI is uniformly a neocon outfit: Ambassador Lilley is certainly no neocon, and it’s a small minority of conservatives of any variety who support bribing the North Koreans again without demanding some verifiable concessions, at least on nukes. The most “paleo” of conservatives, evangelical Christians, are a substantial–if not the largest–part of the human rights constituency; then again, this whole “paleo”/”neo” thing was always lost on me. Finally, a narrow majority of the Jewish supporters of the human rights constituency are liberals (Stephen Solarz, Tom Lantos, Joe Lieberman).

That said, I’m somewhat mystified that the South Korean government gave AEI money for this long. If they were expecting something in exchange for their money, they should be on the phone with Customer Service.

My reaction? As I said, I’m renewing my AEI membership. Join here if you’re similarly inclined. The magazine alone is worth the money.

(Back to OneFreeKorea)

• Interview with Freedom House’s North Korea program manager, Prof. Jae Ku about his life, his influences, and FH’s July 19th conference on North Korea.
• The L.A. Times exposes the desperation and misery of life in Chongjin, North Korea.
• Runaway inflation in North Korea has spurred a black market in dollars.
• Fisking Hillary Clinton’s plan for North Korea.
• Kang Chol-Hwan, the North Korean gulag survivor who met President Bush, is coming out with a new edition to his book. The new introduction is here.
• OneFreeKorea debates WSJ op-ed author Won Joon Choe over the future of the U.S.-Korea alliance and anti-Americanism, which is still in style in South Korea.
• How the “Nelson Report” exposes the bias of some journalists to avoid the topic of human rights in North Korea, and why its author may have violated federal law.
• Articles on refugees and human rights by Jasper Becker and Nicholas Eberstadt.
• The celibate life in the North Korean army.
• What is the ADVANCE Democracy Act, and why should you care?
• More troubling reports that North Korea is cooperating with Iran on nukes.
• Ordinary North Koreans find their voices as reporters, and maybe even as bloggers at this site.
• Please Join us for a demonstration for human rights for North Koreans, August 20th, at the Chinese Embassy in Washington.

Comments

Freedom House North Korean Human Rights Conference

Posted by Joshua Stanton on June 23, 2001 at 9:36 pm · Filed under Uncategorized

Dear Friends and Colleagues:

Freedom House is pleased to announce our first international event in a year-long advocacy campaign on North Korean Human Rights, to be held on TUESDAY, JULY 19th, 2005 at The Renaissance Mayflower Hotel in downtown Washington, D.C.

This day-long conference will highlight the work of many dedicated individuals who have championed the cause of North Korean human rights. The event will feature distinguished speakers (including a bi-partisan Congressional delegation), exhibits, documentaries, panel discussions, breakout sessions, cultural and spiritual activities and a rally in support of North Korean human rights. Our aim is to raise awareness of the egregious human rights abuses happening each day in North Korea and to plan concrete actions for the future.

We sincerely hope that you will be a part of this momentous occasion. If you or your organization would like to set up an information table at the conference, please contact Ms. Jessica L. Barnes at (202) 296-2861 ext. 203 or Mr. Yonghwa “Peter” Lee at (202) 296-2861 ext. 206 at your earliest convenience.

This message serves as a Save the Date and a formal invitation with the conference schedule will follow. Please feel free to forward this email message to other interested parties.

As a point of interest, we would like to bring your attention to a powerful new film entitled, North Korea, a Day in the Life. This film will be shown on June 17, 2005 at the AFI/Discovery Channel Documentary Festival. Please see the announcement below for more detailed information.

Yours truly,

The North Korean Human Rights Team at Freedom House:

Tickets: www.SILVERDOCS.com or 1.866.SLVR DCS
Press Inquiries: Jody Arlington, PR Manager, SILVERDOCSPh: 301.495.6759, jarlington@AFI.com (more here)

Editorial note: I had to pass up an invite to a special screening of this film at the Dutch Embassy because of work duties, but a fellow member of the North Korea Freedom Coalition raved about it. I recall reading excellent reviews from a left-of-center source as well, which is odd. I hope to get a chance to see for myself.

(home)

Comments

Interview with Prof. Jae Ku, Freedom House’s New North Korea Director

Posted by Joshua Stanton on June 23, 2001 at 9:34 pm · Filed under Uncategorized

OFK: Please tell us about your background–where you grew up, and what people, ideas, and philosophies influenced the shaping of your character.

Jae Ku: I lived in Korea during my first eight years. I have two older brothers and a sister, so there were six of us. I grew up in Midwest, but mostly in Kansas. I spent most of my childhood in the town of Salina. I voted for the first time in 1988, for Mike Michael Dukakis. My upbringing lacked the East-coast cynicism and pessimism I’ve seen in other places I lived. In Salina, I lived at the end of a dead-end streaet, where you could see wheat fields for miles . . . to the ends of the earth, it seemed. There was a sense of peacefulness and optimism that came with that environment. The combination of my traditional Korean conservative upbringing and the “Little House on the Prairie” setting made me less suspicious toward power, and specifically, less hostile toward American power. I consider myself patriotic, in a typically immigrant way. Later, I became and academic. Still, I’d would sum up my outlook in these words: optimism, opportunity, determination, and a willingness to work hard.

OFK: Where did you go to college?

Jae Ku: [Laughs] At a little college by a bend in a river. They call it Harvard University.

OFK: When did you graduate?

Jae Ku: In 1993.

OFK: What was your major?

Jae Ku: I have a B.A. in Government.

OFK: Where did you go to grad school?

Jae Ku: To the London School of Economics for my master’s, and to the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies for my Ph.D.

OFK: When did you finish grad school?

Jae Ku: In 2003.

OFK: Have you ever been to North Korea? Do any of your family members come from there?

Jae Ku: No, but in college, I met some North Koreans in academic settings, and I actually aspired to be the first American to attend Kim Il Sung University.

OFK: You actually met North Koreans when you were in college?

Jae Ku: Yes, theyre were at a conference at Berkeley conference in the early 1990s. The North Koreans sent two academics there, but they were really diplomats. In Washington, the North Koreans would occasionally attend some Track Two meetings. Aside from that, none of my immediate family members are from there, but some extended family members or members of my wife’s family might be.

OFK: What are some of the jobs you did before coming to work for Freedom House?

Jae Ku: For the past three years until May, I was at Brown on a post-doctorate fellowship, teaching Korean politics to undergrads on a fellowship. I also spent two years at the Center for Strategic and International Studies as an analyst.

OFK: How did you find out about the opening at Freedom House, and what made you want to apply?

Jae Ku: I had been living in Providence, Rhode Island, which can seem as cold and irrelevant to the political world as Manitoba [laughs]. I hope no one in Providence reads this. I had been angling to come back to Washington. Providence isn’t actually very diverse, despite the amount of talk about diversity there. When the North Korean Human Rights Act passed, that’s when I heard about this position.

OFK: Prior to coming to work at FH, were you active on human rights issues?

Jae Ku: When I grew up, I was flaming liberal, politically speaking. That wasn’t always easy in Kansas. I actually started the first Amnesty International chapter at my high school. Some of the school authorities thought it was a communist-inspired organization, but I challenged them and eventually won. I headed the chapter for two years. In college, I worked at the North American Coalition for Human Rights in Korea, which was affiliated with the National Council of Churches and headed by Reverend Faris Harvey. They That group waswere mostly focused on South Korean human rights issues, during the time of the military dictatorship. By the 1990s, the rationale for the organization no longer existed, and I’m not sure if they still operate. After that, I left the Korean setting altogether and mostly focused on South Asia and Southeast Asia.

OFK: How is your Korean?

Jae Ku: It’s conversationally fluent, and I do use it every day in my job. It helps that my wife is from Korea. I occasionally run into difficulty with some Chinese words that come up in political conversations, but most native speakers think I’m Korean.

OFK: What to you consider to be your main goals during your tenure at FH?

Jae Ku: We need to finalize our strategy, but more generally, what I hope to accomplish is to improve human rights conditions for North Koreans in both North Korea and China. There are six central demands that will be the key to this: (1) pressure for immediate closure of the gulags; (2) allowing the ICRC [International Committee for the Red Cross] to inspect the camps; (3) an end to public executions; (4) an end to the torture and imprisonment of repatriated refugees; (5) increasing pressure China to end the repatriation of North Korean refugees; and (6) pressuring China to crack down on trafficking of refugees, especially of women. Within that general framework, we are developing an area-specific strategyies for different regions that can play a constructive roles, including the United States, Europe, China, and South Korea.

OFK: What do you consider to be the main target audience for FH’s activities?

Jae Ku: We want to increase awareness in Europe, to get European NGOs more excited about working on this issue, and to get them networked with South Korean and American NGOs. At the end of the day, however, the battlefront is really Korea. Given how opaque North Korea is, the more effective short-term strategy is to work on their South Korean brethren. They need to understand that we don’t oppose engagement, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t bring up the issue of human rights.

Jae Ku: At the end of the day, we all realizeknow that it’s the Koreans themselves who are going to have to resolve this. I want to change the structure of the debate in South Korea. As you know, there is this false dichotomy now, in which government officials and intellectuals believe that anything short of unconditional engagement will lead to war. They claim that anything less would make North Korea more isolated and belligerent, but that argument doesn’t exactly flow to that conclusion.

OFK: Explain why not.

Jae Ku: Since the beginning of the Sunshine Policy and all the time it’s had, after all the money that’s been exchanged, what results—what track record—can we point to? They [the Uri-ruled South Korean government] may think there’s a future payoff, but that depends on a lot of variables. The process is too complex for such a singular approach. And it’s just intellectually dishonest to suggest that war is only the other option. Some sectors of the government and intellectuals have used these arguments to frighten people.

OFK: What, if any, tangible effect do you expect those FH’s activities to have inside North Korea?

Jae Ku: It’s a big unknown, isn’t it? But we have a big event coming up on July 19th, and Radio Free Asia and the Voice of America’s Korean service will both be there all day doing live broadcasting. They’re even extending the normal amount of live broadcasting they usually do, just for our event. We will also webcast this event on the FH site, so people with Internet access will be able to tune in there, too.

OFK: But what makes you think that North Koreans will be able to hear you?

Jae Ku: I talked to some officials at VOA and RFA to get estimates on how many Northerners listen. RFA estimates that about 10% of North Koreans have heard them. VOA estimated, based on, I think, defector interviews, that 38% had heard their programs. I hope the message of hope gets through, and that it will give them a reason and the strength to endure. They must understand that history is on their side. Freedom and democracy is aare waves that will eventually reach their coast, too. When that historical tide moves in, I hope that we will have played a small part in that.

OFK: The World Food Program is reporting that North Korea is again on the verge of a worsening of famine conditions, along the lines of what we saw in the 1990s. The WFP is asking for $200M in donations, and yet the North’s military budget is reportedly over $5B per year. There have obviously been questions about the diversion of aid to the elites and the military. Do you personally support giving more food aid, and if so, under what conditions?

Jae Ku: This is a very tough issue, and such a morally and philosophically difficult one to answer. Personally, I think food aid programs have to be de-linked from political issues. Our government’s stated policy is that this is a strictly humanitarian issue. But that is not to say that this issue is an island unto itself, however, because the target for the food is average North Koreans, who need to be reached somehow. There has to be a better control of allocation of food aid. It has to be more transparent, and there has to be more of a political push from the donors to get North Korea to abide by the international community’s standards, as the NGOs have demanded. At times, the NGOs have been too flexible in providing food aid.

OFK: What do you mean?

Jae Ku: In the sense that they must demand that the food go to the right people, despite the fact that the Pyongyang regime controls the distribution system. Back in the late 1970s, Viet Nam experienced a man-made famine. At the time, the United States had just lost something like 57,000 lives. We had been defeated by them. Yet we provided food aid to our former enemies. I was in high school when I studied this issue. I couldn’t believe the generosity of this country. That’s the message we should send to the North Korean people–that we are a generous country.

OFK: Are you satisfied that the U.S. government is implementing the N.Korth Korean. Human Rights Act as Congress intended? What do you think of the suggestion by some that the NKHRA was an empty gesture?

Jae Ku: Certainly, I don’t think it’s an empty gesture. I found that a lot of very passionate individuals worked on this issue, and movements like that are always difficult to put together. Their good work has culminated in this human rights act. Many never thought this would get off the ground. Compared to other bills, this came out of Congress relatively quickly. That’s an indicator of the passion behind this. That passion is also shared by some very committed people in Congress, and the Administration is listening.

OFK: What do you make of Kang Chol-Hwan’s visit to the White House, coming as it did just days after South Korean President Roh Moo-Hyun’s visit?

Jae Ku: Fabulous. I’m ecstatic. What Kang Chol-Hwan does for the movement is to provide a face and voice for hundreds of thousands of faceless and voiceless North Koreans. He humanizes their mass suffering. When we say that 400,000 people could be in these [prison] camps, the numbers get lost. I’d also note that the visit was not really “a few days after,” as you suggested. This was the next consecutive working day—the Monday after the Friday [when Presidents Bush and Roh met]. Certainly, I think there’s a political message being sent here. And the things that are being said are true—Bush’s reading of Kang’s book has probably reinforced his existing views, and this is going to affect U.S. policy by giving it a strong human rights component.

OFK: Did FH have anything to do with that meeting?

Jae Ku: I would love to take some credit, but I can’t. But Kang is coming to our July 19th event.

OFK: Within a day of that visit, Ambassadors DiTrani and Hill told the Senate that the U.S. would offer North Korea security guarantees even without improvements in human rights and openness in the North. Do you think that this really undermines the tangible meaning of Kang’s visit?

Jae Ku: No. Secretary of State Rice has said similar things in interviews—which is that there won’t be a full normalization of relations without progress on human rights. So has [Ambassador] Christopher Hill.

OFK: North Korea has called broadcasts like those you are talking about attempts to subvert its regime. Do you think that “security guarantees” would also mean an end to broadcasts and other activities intended to promote democracy inside North Korea?

Jae Ku: I really doubt that–—especially with this President.

OFK: Privately, I’ve heard some say that the various groups promoting human rights in North Korea have lost focus and unity in the wake of the North Korean Human Rights Act’s passage. Where do you see this movement going, at least in the United States? Does it have a direction? Will it?

Jae Ku: I certainly want to have a hand in that direction. We need to do better at organize bettering the passionate individuals who make up this movement. We in the human rights community need to think outside of the box, too. And I think we could do a better job of marrying human rights work with capitalism. For example, some of us are getting Kang Chol-Hwan back here to do a book tour, and I’ve been in contact with his publisher.

OFK: Ultimately, this movement is about the people of North Korea, and putting the choices in their hands. Yet there are relatively few North Koreans participating in this movement at present. OFK: How can we do more to involve the North Koreans themselves in the process of opening their society?

Jae Ku: For now, it’s difficult. But on July 19th, at least 20 defectors, hopefully many more, will be here, representing at least two different coalition of defectors’ groups.

OFK: What can you do to advance thattheir participation?

Jae Ku: We have money for sub-grants, and plenty of groups have been asking for them. In some cases, what’s been requested is beyond what we can do. I don’t make the final decisions on the award of sub-grants, but I can tell you that my strong preference is to award them to organizations that are really at the forefront of human rights in North Korea. That means organizations in Korea that are doing this work now. And those groups also tend to need this kind of financial assistance.

OFK: Professor Ku, thank you very much for your time. Anything you want to add?

Jae Ku: Please tell everyone about our July 19th event.

Wish granted.

Some notes on how I did this interview:. I called Prof. Ku at his office and typed notes of what he said, making my best effort to type his exact words as he spoke them. In that, I failed. Since people tend to converse in sentence fragments more than they realize, I formed the fragments into complete grammatical sentences, but preserved the key words, phrases, and ideas as he said them. When I had cleaned up my notes, I forwarded them to Professor Ku and gave him the opportunity to review his statements and make corrections for accuracy, on the theory that these could be considered direct quotes by adoption. I suspect that real journalists probably do things similarly, but some of thema few skip that last part.

A few final editorial notes–an anonymous insider not affiliated with Freedom House wrote in to say that planning for FH’s human rights conference is going well. “Freedom House’s Jae Ku is doing a good job of learning on the job while trying to find middle ground between rather contentious agendas.” The conference should take place at the Mayflower Hotel; Jay Lefkowitz, the newly selected Special Envoy for Human Rights in North Korea, is expected to be one of the speakers. Some of the other groups that will participate include LiNK and Korean Churches for North Korea, headed by Rev. Seyku Chang.

Freedom House wants to prepare Koreans to take leadership roles, and Korean-Americans have set the trend by starting to take leadership roles in the United States. FH is also trying to keep the movement ideologically diverse, rather than a neocon echo chamber or another voice for unconditional engagement.

(home)

Comments (1)

Freedom House North Korean Human Rights Conference

Posted by joshua on June 23, 2001 at 4:36 pm · Filed under Uncategorized

Dear Friends and Colleagues:

Freedom House is pleased to announce our first international event in a year-long advocacy campaign on North Korean Human Rights, to be held on TUESDAY, JULY 19th, 2005 at The Renaissance Mayflower Hotel in downtown Washington, D.C.

This day-long conference will highlight the work of many dedicated individuals who have championed the cause of North Korean human rights. The event will feature distinguished speakers (including a bi-partisan Congressional delegation), exhibits, documentaries, panel discussions, breakout sessions, cultural and spiritual activities and a rally in support of North Korean human rights. Our aim is to raise awareness of the egregious human rights abuses happening each day in North Korea and to plan concrete actions for the future.

We sincerely hope that you will be a part of this momentous occasion. If you or your organization would like to set up an information table at the conference, please contact Ms. Jessica L. Barnes at (202) 296-2861 ext. 203 or Mr. Yonghwa “Peter” Lee at (202) 296-2861 ext. 206 at your earliest convenience.

This message serves as a Save the Date and a formal invitation with the conference schedule will follow. Please feel free to forward this email message to other interested parties.

As a point of interest, we would like to bring your attention to a powerful new film entitled, North Korea, a Day in the Life. This film will be shown on June 17, 2005 at the AFI/Discovery Channel Documentary Festival. Please see the announcement below for more detailed information.

Yours truly,

The North Korean Human Rights Team at Freedom House:

Tickets: www.SILVERDOCS.com or 1.866.SLVR DCS
Press Inquiries: Jody Arlington, PR Manager, SILVERDOCSPh: 301.495.6759, jarlington@AFI.com (more here)

Editorial note: I had to pass up an invite to a special screening of this film at the Dutch Embassy because of work duties, but a fellow member of the North Korea Freedom Coalition raved about it. I recall reading excellent reviews from a left-of-center source as well, which is odd. I hope to get a chance to see for myself.

(home)

Comments

Interview with Prof. Jae Ku, Freedom House’s New North Korea Director

Posted by joshua on June 23, 2001 at 4:34 pm · Filed under Uncategorized

OFK: Please tell us about your background–where you grew up, and what people, ideas, and philosophies influenced the shaping of your character.

Jae Ku: I lived in Korea during my first eight years. I have two older brothers and a sister, so there were six of us. I grew up in Midwest, but mostly in Kansas. I spent most of my childhood in the town of Salina. I voted for the first time in 1988, for Mike Michael Dukakis. My upbringing lacked the East-coast cynicism and pessimism I’ve seen in other places I lived. In Salina, I lived at the end of a dead-end streaet, where you could see wheat fields for miles . . . to the ends of the earth, it seemed. There was a sense of peacefulness and optimism that came with that environment. The combination of my traditional Korean conservative upbringing and the “Little House on the Prairie” setting made me less suspicious toward power, and specifically, less hostile toward American power. I consider myself patriotic, in a typically immigrant way. Later, I became and academic. Still, I’d would sum up my outlook in these words: optimism, opportunity, determination, and a willingness to work hard.

OFK: Where did you go to college?

Jae Ku: [Laughs] At a little college by a bend in a river. They call it Harvard University.

OFK: When did you graduate?

Jae Ku: In 1993.

OFK: What was your major?

Jae Ku: I have a B.A. in Government.

OFK: Where did you go to grad school?

Jae Ku: To the London School of Economics for my master’s, and to the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies for my Ph.D.

OFK: When did you finish grad school?

Jae Ku: In 2003.

OFK: Have you ever been to North Korea? Do any of your family members come from there?

Jae Ku: No, but in college, I met some North Koreans in academic settings, and I actually aspired to be the first American to attend Kim Il Sung University.

OFK: You actually met North Koreans when you were in college?

Jae Ku: Yes, theyre were at a conference at Berkeley conference in the early 1990s. The North Koreans sent two academics there, but they were really diplomats. In Washington, the North Koreans would occasionally attend some Track Two meetings. Aside from that, none of my immediate family members are from there, but some extended family members or members of my wife’s family might be.

OFK: What are some of the jobs you did before coming to work for Freedom House?

Jae Ku: For the past three years until May, I was at Brown on a post-doctorate fellowship, teaching Korean politics to undergrads on a fellowship. I also spent two years at the Center for Strategic and International Studies as an analyst.

OFK: How did you find out about the opening at Freedom House, and what made you want to apply?

Jae Ku: I had been living in Providence, Rhode Island, which can seem as cold and irrelevant to the political world as Manitoba [laughs]. I hope no one in Providence reads this. I had been angling to come back to Washington. Providence isn’t actually very diverse, despite the amount of talk about diversity there. When the North Korean Human Rights Act passed, that’s when I heard about this position.

OFK: Prior to coming to work at FH, were you active on human rights issues?

Jae Ku: When I grew up, I was flaming liberal, politically speaking. That wasn’t always easy in Kansas. I actually started the first Amnesty International chapter at my high school. Some of the school authorities thought it was a communist-inspired organization, but I challenged them and eventually won. I headed the chapter for two years. In college, I worked at the North American Coalition for Human Rights in Korea, which was affiliated with the National Council of Churches and headed by Reverend Faris Harvey. They That group waswere mostly focused on South Korean human rights issues, during the time of the military dictatorship. By the 1990s, the rationale for the organization no longer existed, and I’m not sure if they still operate. After that, I left the Korean setting altogether and mostly focused on South Asia and Southeast Asia.

OFK: How is your Korean?

Jae Ku: It’s conversationally fluent, and I do use it every day in my job. It helps that my wife is from Korea. I occasionally run into difficulty with some Chinese words that come up in political conversations, but most native speakers think I’m Korean.

OFK: What to you consider to be your main goals during your tenure at FH?

Jae Ku: We need to finalize our strategy, but more generally, what I hope to accomplish is to improve human rights conditions for North Koreans in both North Korea and China. There are six central demands that will be the key to this: (1) pressure for immediate closure of the gulags; (2) allowing the ICRC [International Committee for the Red Cross] to inspect the camps; (3) an end to public executions; (4) an end to the torture and imprisonment of repatriated refugees; (5) increasing pressure China to end the repatriation of North Korean refugees; and (6) pressuring China to crack down on trafficking of refugees, especially of women. Within that general framework, we are developing an area-specific strategyies for different regions that can play a constructive roles, including the United States, Europe, China, and South Korea.

OFK: What do you consider to be the main target audience for FH’s activities?

Jae Ku: We want to increase awareness in Europe, to get European NGOs more excited about working on this issue, and to get them networked with South Korean and American NGOs. At the end of the day, however, the battlefront is really Korea. Given how opaque North Korea is, the more effective short-term strategy is to work on their South Korean brethren. They need to understand that we don’t oppose engagement, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t bring up the issue of human rights.

Jae Ku: At the end of the day, we all realizeknow that it’s the Koreans themselves who are going to have to resolve this. I want to change the structure of the debate in South Korea. As you know, there is this false dichotomy now, in which government officials and intellectuals believe that anything short of unconditional engagement will lead to war. They claim that anything less would make North Korea more isolated and belligerent, but that argument doesn’t exactly flow to that conclusion.

OFK: Explain why not.

Jae Ku: Since the beginning of the Sunshine Policy and all the time it’s had, after all the money that’s been exchanged, what results—what track record—can we point to? They [the Uri-ruled South Korean government] may think there’s a future payoff, but that depends on a lot of variables. The process is too complex for such a singular approach. And it’s just intellectually dishonest to suggest that war is only the other option. Some sectors of the government and intellectuals have used these arguments to frighten people.

OFK: What, if any, tangible effect do you expect those FH’s activities to have inside North Korea?

Jae Ku: It’s a big unknown, isn’t it? But we have a big event coming up on July 19th, and Radio Free Asia and the Voice of America’s Korean service will both be there all day doing live broadcasting. They’re even extending the normal amount of live broadcasting they usually do, just for our event. We will also webcast this event on the FH site, so people with Internet access will be able to tune in there, too.

OFK: But what makes you think that North Koreans will be able to hear you?

Jae Ku: I talked to some officials at VOA and RFA to get estimates on how many Northerners listen. RFA estimates that about 10% of North Koreans have heard them. VOA estimated, based on, I think, defector interviews, that 38% had heard their programs. I hope the message of hope gets through, and that it will give them a reason and the strength to endure. They must understand that history is on their side. Freedom and democracy is aare waves that will eventually reach their coast, too. When that historical tide moves in, I hope that we will have played a small part in that.

OFK: The World Food Program is reporting that North Korea is again on the verge of a worsening of famine conditions, along the lines of what we saw in the 1990s. The WFP is asking for $200M in donations, and yet the North’s military budget is reportedly over $5B per year. There have obviously been questions about the diversion of aid to the elites and the military. Do you personally support giving more food aid, and if so, under what conditions?

Jae Ku: This is a very tough issue, and such a morally and philosophically difficult one to answer. Personally, I think food aid programs have to be de-linked from political issues. Our government’s stated policy is that this is a strictly humanitarian issue. But that is not to say that this issue is an island unto itself, however, because the target for the food is average North Koreans, who need to be reached somehow. There has to be a better control of allocation of food aid. It has to be more transparent, and there has to be more of a political push from the donors to get North Korea to abide by the international community’s standards, as the NGOs have demanded. At times, the NGOs have been too flexible in providing food aid.

OFK: What do you mean?

Jae Ku: In the sense that they must demand that the food go to the right people, despite the fact that the Pyongyang regime controls the distribution system. Back in the late 1970s, Viet Nam experienced a man-made famine. At the time, the United States had just lost something like 57,000 lives. We had been defeated by them. Yet we provided food aid to our former enemies. I was in high school when I studied this issue. I couldn’t believe the generosity of this country. That’s the message we should send to the North Korean people–that we are a generous country.

OFK: Are you satisfied that the U.S. government is implementing the N.Korth Korean. Human Rights Act as Congress intended? What do you think of the suggestion by some that the NKHRA was an empty gesture?

Jae Ku: Certainly, I don’t think it’s an empty gesture. I found that a lot of very passionate individuals worked on this issue, and movements like that are always difficult to put together. Their good work has culminated in this human rights act. Many never thought this would get off the ground. Compared to other bills, this came out of Congress relatively quickly. That’s an indicator of the passion behind this. That passion is also shared by some very committed people in Congress, and the Administration is listening.

OFK: What do you make of Kang Chol-Hwan’s visit to the White House, coming as it did just days after South Korean President Roh Moo-Hyun’s visit?

Jae Ku: Fabulous. I’m ecstatic. What Kang Chol-Hwan does for the movement is to provide a face and voice for hundreds of thousands of faceless and voiceless North Koreans. He humanizes their mass suffering. When we say that 400,000 people could be in these [prison] camps, the numbers get lost. I’d also note that the visit was not really “a few days after,” as you suggested. This was the next consecutive working day—the Monday after the Friday [when Presidents Bush and Roh met]. Certainly, I think there’s a political message being sent here. And the things that are being said are true—Bush’s reading of Kang’s book has probably reinforced his existing views, and this is going to affect U.S. policy by giving it a strong human rights component.

OFK: Did FH have anything to do with that meeting?

Jae Ku: I would love to take some credit, but I can’t. But Kang is coming to our July 19th event.

OFK: Within a day of that visit, Ambassadors DiTrani and Hill told the Senate that the U.S. would offer North Korea security guarantees even without improvements in human rights and openness in the North. Do you think that this really undermines the tangible meaning of Kang’s visit?

Jae Ku: No. Secretary of State Rice has said similar things in interviews—which is that there won’t be a full normalization of relations without progress on human rights. So has [Ambassador] Christopher Hill.

OFK: North Korea has called broadcasts like those you are talking about attempts to subvert its regime. Do you think that “security guarantees” would also mean an end to broadcasts and other activities intended to promote democracy inside North Korea?

Jae Ku: I really doubt that–—especially with this President.

OFK: Privately, I’ve heard some say that the various groups promoting human rights in North Korea have lost focus and unity in the wake of the North Korean Human Rights Act’s passage. Where do you see this movement going, at least in the United States? Does it have a direction? Will it?

Jae Ku: I certainly want to have a hand in that direction. We need to do better at organize bettering the passionate individuals who make up this movement. We in the human rights community need to think outside of the box, too. And I think we could do a better job of marrying human rights work with capitalism. For example, some of us are getting Kang Chol-Hwan back here to do a book tour, and I’ve been in contact with his publisher.

OFK: Ultimately, this movement is about the people of North Korea, and putting the choices in their hands. Yet there are relatively few North Koreans participating in this movement at present. OFK: How can we do more to involve the North Koreans themselves in the process of opening their society?

Jae Ku: For now, it’s difficult. But on July 19th, at least 20 defectors, hopefully many more, will be here, representing at least two different coalition of defectors’ groups.

OFK: What can you do to advance thattheir participation?

Jae Ku: We have money for sub-grants, and plenty of groups have been asking for them. In some cases, what’s been requested is beyond what we can do. I don’t make the final decisions on the award of sub-grants, but I can tell you that my strong preference is to award them to organizations that are really at the forefront of human rights in North Korea. That means organizations in Korea that are doing this work now. And those groups also tend to need this kind of financial assistance.

OFK: Professor Ku, thank you very much for your time. Anything you want to add?

Jae Ku: Please tell everyone about our July 19th event.

Wish granted.

Some notes on how I did this interview:. I called Prof. Ku at his office and typed notes of what he said, making my best effort to type his exact words as he spoke them. In that, I failed. Since people tend to converse in sentence fragments more than they realize, I formed the fragments into complete grammatical sentences, but preserved the key words, phrases, and ideas as he said them. When I had cleaned up my notes, I forwarded them to Professor Ku and gave him the opportunity to review his statements and make corrections for accuracy, on the theory that these could be considered direct quotes by adoption. I suspect that real journalists probably do things similarly, but some of thema few skip that last part.

A few final editorial notes–an anonymous insider not affiliated with Freedom House wrote in to say that planning for FH’s human rights conference is going well. “Freedom House’s Jae Ku is doing a good job of learning on the job while trying to find middle ground between rather contentious agendas.” The conference should take place at the Mayflower Hotel; Jay Lefkowitz, the newly selected Special Envoy for Human Rights in North Korea, is expected to be one of the speakers. Some of the other groups that will participate include LiNK and Korean Churches for North Korea, headed by Rev. Seyku Chang.

Freedom House wants to prepare Koreans to take leadership roles, and Korean-Americans have set the trend by starting to take leadership roles in the United States. FH is also trying to keep the movement ideologically diverse, rather than a neocon echo chamber or another voice for unconditional engagement.

(home)

Comments

Interview with Prof. Jae Ku, Freedom House’s New North Korea Director

Posted by joshua on June 23, 2001 at 4:34 pm · Filed under Uncategorized

OFK: Please tell us about your background–where you grew up, and what people, ideas, and philosophies influenced the shaping of your character.

Jae Ku: I lived in Korea during my first eight years. I have two older brothers and a sister, so there were six of us. I grew up in Midwest, but mostly in Kansas. I spent most of my childhood in the town of Salina. I voted for the first time in 1988, for Mike Michael Dukakis. My upbringing lacked the East-coast cynicism and pessimism I’ve seen in other places I lived. In Salina, I lived at the end of a dead-end streaet, where you could see wheat fields for miles . . . to the ends of the earth, it seemed. There was a sense of peacefulness and optimism that came with that environment. The combination of my traditional Korean conservative upbringing and the “Little House on the Prairie” setting made me less suspicious toward power, and specifically, less hostile toward American power. I consider myself patriotic, in a typically immigrant way. Later, I became and academic. Still, I’d would sum up my outlook in these words: optimism, opportunity, determination, and a willingness to work hard.

OFK: Where did you go to college?

Jae Ku: [Laughs] At a little college by a bend in a river. They call it Harvard University.

OFK: When did you graduate?

Jae Ku: In 1993.

OFK: What was your major?

Jae Ku: I have a B.A. in Government.

OFK: Where did you go to grad school?

Jae Ku: To the London School of Economics for my master’s, and to the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies for my Ph.D.

OFK: When did you finish grad school?

Jae Ku: In 2003.

OFK: Have you ever been to North Korea? Do any of your family members come from there?

Jae Ku: No, but in college, I met some North Koreans in academic settings, and I actually aspired to be the first American to attend Kim Il Sung University.

OFK: You actually met North Koreans when you were in college?

Jae Ku: Yes, theyre were at a conference at Berkeley conference in the early 1990s. The North Koreans sent two academics there, but they were really diplomats. In Washington, the North Koreans would occasionally attend some Track Two meetings. Aside from that, none of my immediate family members are from there, but some extended family members or members of my wife’s family might be.

OFK: What are some of the jobs you did before coming to work for Freedom House?

Jae Ku: For the past three years until May, I was at Brown on a post-doctorate fellowship, teaching Korean politics to undergrads on a fellowship. I also spent two years at the Center for Strategic and International Studies as an analyst.

OFK: How did you find out about the opening at Freedom House, and what made you want to apply?

Jae Ku: I had been living in Providence, Rhode Island, which can seem as cold and irrelevant to the political world as Manitoba [laughs]. I hope no one in Providence reads this. I had been angling to come back to Washington. Providence isn’t actually very diverse, despite the amount of talk about diversity there. When the North Korean Human Rights Act passed, that’s when I heard about this position.

OFK: Prior to coming to work at FH, were you active on human rights issues?

Jae Ku: When I grew up, I was flaming liberal, politically speaking. That wasn’t always easy in Kansas. I actually started the first Amnesty International chapter at my high school. Some of the school authorities thought it was a communist-inspired organization, but I challenged them and eventually won. I headed the chapter for two years. In college, I worked at the North American Coalition for Human Rights in Korea, which was affiliated with the National Council of Churches and headed by Reverend Faris Harvey. They That group waswere mostly focused on South Korean human rights issues, during the time of the military dictatorship. By the 1990s, the rationale for the organization no longer existed, and I’m not sure if they still operate. After that, I left the Korean setting altogether and mostly focused on South Asia and Southeast Asia.

OFK: How is your Korean?

Jae Ku: It’s conversationally fluent, and I do use it every day in my job. It helps that my wife is from Korea. I occasionally run into difficulty with some Chinese words that come up in political conversations, but most native speakers think I’m Korean.

OFK: What to you consider to be your main goals during your tenure at FH?

Jae Ku: We need to finalize our strategy, but more generally, what I hope to accomplish is to improve human rights conditions for North Koreans in both North Korea and China. There are six central demands that will be the key to this: (1) pressure for immediate closure of the gulags; (2) allowing the ICRC [International Committee for the Red Cross] to inspect the camps; (3) an end to public executions; (4) an end to the torture and imprisonment of repatriated refugees; (5) increasing pressure China to end the repatriation of North Korean refugees; and (6) pressuring China to crack down on trafficking of refugees, especially of women. Within that general framework, we are developing an area-specific strategyies for different regions that can play a constructive roles, including the United States, Europe, China, and South Korea.

OFK: What do you consider to be the main target audience for FH’s activities?

Jae Ku: We want to increase awareness in Europe, to get European NGOs more excited about working on this issue, and to get them networked with South Korean and American NGOs. At the end of the day, however, the battlefront is really Korea. Given how opaque North Korea is, the more effective short-term strategy is to work on their South Korean brethren. They need to understand that we don’t oppose engagement, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t bring up the issue of human rights.

Jae Ku: At the end of the day, we all realizeknow that it’s the Koreans themselves who are going to have to resolve this. I want to change the structure of the debate in South Korea. As you know, there is this false dichotomy now, in which government officials and intellectuals believe that anything short of unconditional engagement will lead to war. They claim that anything less would make North Korea more isolated and belligerent, but that argument doesn’t exactly flow to that conclusion.

OFK: Explain why not.

Jae Ku: Since the beginning of the Sunshine Policy and all the time it’s had, after all the money that’s been exchanged, what results—what track record—can we point to? They [the Uri-ruled South Korean government] may think there’s a future payoff, but that depends on a lot of variables. The process is too complex for such a singular approach. And it’s just intellectually dishonest to suggest that war is only the other option. Some sectors of the government and intellectuals have used these arguments to frighten people.

OFK: What, if any, tangible effect do you expect those FH’s activities to have inside North Korea?

Jae Ku: It’s a big unknown, isn’t it? But we have a big event coming up on July 19th, and Radio Free Asia and the Voice of America’s Korean service will both be there all day doing live broadcasting. They’re even extending the normal amount of live broadcasting they usually do, just for our event. We will also webcast this event on the FH site, so people with Internet access will be able to tune in there, too.

OFK: But what makes you think that North Koreans will be able to hear you?

Jae Ku: I talked to some officials at VOA and RFA to get estimates on how many Northerners listen. RFA estimates that about 10% of North Koreans have heard them. VOA estimated, based on, I think, defector interviews, that 38% had heard their programs. I hope the message of hope gets through, and that it will give them a reason and the strength to endure. They must understand that history is on their side. Freedom and democracy is aare waves that will eventually reach their coast, too. When that historical tide moves in, I hope that we will have played a small part in that.

OFK: The World Food Program is reporting that North Korea is again on the verge of a worsening of famine conditions, along the lines of what we saw in the 1990s. The WFP is asking for $200M in donations, and yet the North’s military budget is reportedly over $5B per year. There have obviously been questions about the diversion of aid to the elites and the military. Do you personally support giving more food aid, and if so, under what conditions?

Jae Ku: This is a very tough issue, and such a morally and philosophically difficult one to answer. Personally, I think food aid programs have to be de-linked from political issues. Our government’s stated policy is that this is a strictly humanitarian issue. But that is not to say that this issue is an island unto itself, however, because the target for the food is average North Koreans, who need to be reached somehow. There has to be a better control of allocation of food aid. It has to be more transparent, and there has to be more of a political push from the donors to get North Korea to abide by the international community’s standards, as the NGOs have demanded. At times, the NGOs have been too flexible in providing food aid.

OFK: What do you mean?

Jae Ku: In the sense that they must demand that the food go to the right people, despite the fact that the Pyongyang regime controls the distribution system. Back in the late 1970s, Viet Nam experienced a man-made famine. At the time, the United States had just lost something like 57,000 lives. We had been defeated by them. Yet we provided food aid to our former enemies. I was in high school when I studied this issue. I couldn’t believe the generosity of this country. That’s the message we should send to the North Korean people–that we are a generous country.

OFK: Are you satisfied that the U.S. government is implementing the N.Korth Korean. Human Rights Act as Congress intended? What do you think of the suggestion by some that the NKHRA was an empty gesture?

Jae Ku: Certainly, I don’t think it’s an empty gesture. I found that a lot of very passionate individuals worked on this issue, and movements like that are always difficult to put together. Their good work has culminated in this human rights act. Many never thought this would get off the ground. Compared to other bills, this came out of Congress relatively quickly. That’s an indicator of the passion behind this. That passion is also shared by some very committed people in Congress, and the Administration is listening.

OFK: What do you make of Kang Chol-Hwan’s visit to the White House, coming as it did just days after South Korean President Roh Moo-Hyun’s visit?

Jae Ku: Fabulous. I’m ecstatic. What Kang Chol-Hwan does for the movement is to provide a face and voice for hundreds of thousands of faceless and voiceless North Koreans. He humanizes their mass suffering. When we say that 400,000 people could be in these [prison] camps, the numbers get lost. I’d also note that the visit was not really “a few days after,” as you suggested. This was the next consecutive working day—the Monday after the Friday [when Presidents Bush and Roh met]. Certainly, I think there’s a political message being sent here. And the things that are being said are true—Bush’s reading of Kang’s book has probably reinforced his existing views, and this is going to affect U.S. policy by giving it a strong human rights component.

OFK: Did FH have anything to do with that meeting?

Jae Ku: I would love to take some credit, but I can’t. But Kang is coming to our July 19th event.

OFK: Within a day of that visit, Ambassadors DiTrani and Hill told the Senate that the U.S. would offer North Korea security guarantees even without improvements in human rights and openness in the North. Do you think that this really undermines the tangible meaning of Kang’s visit?

Jae Ku: No. Secretary of State Rice has said similar things in interviews—which is that there won’t be a full normalization of relations without progress on human rights. So has [Ambassador] Christopher Hill.

OFK: North Korea has called broadcasts like those you are talking about attempts to subvert its regime. Do you think that “security guarantees” would also mean an end to broadcasts and other activities intended to promote democracy inside North Korea?

Jae Ku: I really doubt that–—especially with this President.

OFK: Privately, I’ve heard some say that the various groups promoting human rights in North Korea have lost focus and unity in the wake of the North Korean Human Rights Act’s passage. Where do you see this movement going, at least in the United States? Does it have a direction? Will it?

Jae Ku: I certainly want to have a hand in that direction. We need to do better at organize bettering the passionate individuals who make up this movement. We in the human rights community need to think outside of the box, too. And I think we could do a better job of marrying human rights work with capitalism. For example, some of us are getting Kang Chol-Hwan back here to do a book tour, and I’ve been in contact with his publisher.

OFK: Ultimately, this movement is about the people of North Korea, and putting the choices in their hands. Yet there are relatively few North Koreans participating in this movement at present. OFK: How can we do more to involve the North Koreans themselves in the process of opening their society?

Jae Ku: For now, it’s difficult. But on July 19th, at least 20 defectors, hopefully many more, will be here, representing at least two different coalition of defectors’ groups.

OFK: What can you do to advance thattheir participation?

Jae Ku: We have money for sub-grants, and plenty of groups have been asking for them. In some cases, what’s been requested is beyond what we can do. I don’t make the final decisions on the award of sub-grants, but I can tell you that my strong preference is to award them to organizations that are really at the forefront of human rights in North Korea. That means organizations in Korea that are doing this work now. And those groups also tend to need this kind of financial assistance.

OFK: Professor Ku, thank you very much for your time. Anything you want to add?

Jae Ku: Please tell everyone about our July 19th event.

Wish granted.

Some notes on how I did this interview:. I called Prof. Ku at his office and typed notes of what he said, making my best effort to type his exact words as he spoke them. In that, I failed. Since people tend to converse in sentence fragments more than they realize, I formed the fragments into complete grammatical sentences, but preserved the key words, phrases, and ideas as he said them. When I had cleaned up my notes, I forwarded them to Professor Ku and gave him the opportunity to review his statements and make corrections for accuracy, on the theory that these could be considered direct quotes by adoption. I suspect that real journalists probably do things similarly, but some of thema few skip that last part.

A few final editorial notes–an anonymous insider not affiliated with Freedom House wrote in to say that planning for FH’s human rights conference is going well. “Freedom House’s Jae Ku is doing a good job of learning on the job while trying to find middle ground between rather contentious agendas.” The conference should take place at the Mayflower Hotel; Jay Lefkowitz, the newly selected Special Envoy for Human Rights in North Korea, is expected to be one of the speakers. Some of the other groups that will participate include LiNK and Korean Churches for North Korea, headed by Rev. Seyku Chang.

Freedom House wants to prepare Koreans to take leadership roles, and Korean-Americans have set the trend by starting to take leadership roles in the United States. FH is also trying to keep the movement ideologically diverse, rather than a neocon echo chamber or another voice for unconditional engagement.

(home)

Comments (3)

A Quiet Man, Heard Across Oceans: Dr. Jae-Joong Nam, 1945-2005

Posted by Joshua Stanton on June 20, 2001 at 3:22 am · Filed under Uncategorized

One of the founders of the movement for human rights in North Korea, Dr. Jae Joong-Nam, passed away in his home from a heart attack on June 6, 2005, at the age of 60. He is survived by a wife and two sons.

Dr. Nam was born at Andong, in present-day South Korea, in 1945. He graduated from medical school at Korea University and studied for his medical board certification at Georgetown University.

After the successful completion of his certification in 1986, he entered private practice in Falls Church, Virginia, near Washington, D.C.

To Those Who Knew Him, A Gentle Influence

Dr. Nam’s son, Joon, recalls his father’s gentleness and modesty. Neither of Dr. Nam’s sons fully appreciated the importance of their father’s activism until some of Washington’s most powerful people came to his funeral. In fact, Dr. Nam was a small, soft-spoken man who was shy of personal publicity, even as he demonstrated an impressive capability to direct it toward North Korean refugees from behind the scenes.

In 1998, after visiting China and being moved by the plight of North Korean refugees fleeing their impoverished homeland, Dr. Nam founded the Aegis Foundation, an NGO dedicated to helping North Koreans and publicizing the conditions in which they live, and often die. He divided his time between actively assisting North Korean refugees, meeting with representatives of influential Washington think-tanks, and carrying the message of North Korea’s suffering to the news media.

Dr. Nam financed most of Aegis’s efforts from his own pocket and dramatically scaled back his medical practice to devote more of his time to helping the North Korean people.

A Key Co-Founder of a Movement

Dr. Norbert Vollertsen (news links) remembers Dr. Nam as a source of cheerful encouragement in the darkest times. “‘You are in big trouble,’ he always smiled when I was beaten up or staged some other protests.” It was his habit of appearing when most needed, and then quietly retreating into the background until needed again, that endeared Dr. Nam to those who worked alongside him. On some occasions, this included offering to pay for Vollertsen’s lodging, or his travel back to Korea to continue his activities.

In recent months, Vollertsen had noticed that the strain of the constant travel and activity was showing in Dr. Nam’s visibly deteriorating health. Vollertsen pleaded with him to cut back, but Dr. Nam refused.

Vollertsen credits Dr. Nam with introducing him to some of America’s most important activists for North Korea—Suzanne Scholte, Sin-U Nam, and Chuck Downs of the North Korean Freedom Coalition; and Michael Horowitz of the Hudson Institute. Dr. Nam worked tirelessly with these leading activists, dozens of others, and sympathetic government officials to bring Hwang Jang-Yop, North Korea’s highest-ranking defector, to Washington in November 2003. Hwang’s testimony before Congress was a milestone in the formation of Washington’s North Korean human rights lobby, a movement whose subsequent accomplishments include the North Korean Human Rights Act of 2004 and gulag survivor Kang Chol-Hwan’s recent visit to the White House.

Dr. Vollertsen added his energy, uncompromising dedication, and moral authority to the movement, along with his media contacts and his ability to attract needed publicity. In return, Dr. Vollertsen gained access to policymakers who could implement the policy changes he passionately urged. It was just one early example of Dr. Nam helping to form some of the movement’s most important interpersonal connections.

Capturing the World’s Attention

Another well-known activist, Rev. Douglas Shin (news links here, here, and here) (site), credits Dr. Nam with helping to bring the mass migration of starving North Koreans into China to the attention of The Washington Post in 1998.

Shin also attributes international media coverage for the reports of North Korea’s gas chambers to Dr. Nam’s efforts. The story resulted in a full-length BBC documentary, Access to Evil, which in turn resulted in prominent editorials in The Washington Post and The Boston Globe, among others, and which inspired Rabbi Abraham Cooper of the Simon Wiesenthal Center to add his considerable voice to the movement. The reports virtually assured the unanimous passage of the North Korean Human Rights Act.

Like Vollertsen, Shin recalls Dr. Nam for his kindness, his dedication, and his omnipresent smile.

Dr. Nam’s partner in the Aegis Foundation, Sei Park, credits Dr. Nam with bringing human rights conditions in North Korea to the attention of Representative Henry Hyde and Senator Sam Brownback, the two most important congressional boosters of the North Korean Human Rights Act.

Park described how Dr. Nam “published countless articles . . . , organized and participated [in] numerous conferences, worked with government agencies, NGOs, and individuals who run covert operations in China and other countries to help [North Korean] refugees.”

Working through the Aegis Foundation, Dr. Nam and Sei Park also secretly provided food, medicine, and shelter to refugees trying to reach South Korea through China. They also worked with other activists to help the refugees escape. Park described the danger of those operations and cited them as the primary reason the Aegis Foundation kept a low profile. In China, both the activists and the refugees were in constant danger of arrest.

One of the operations Aegis helped to fund, a secret orphanage and day care center for North Korean refugee children, was discovered by Chinese police. One activist was arrested and remains imprisoned in China.

How Dr. Nam Changed His World

It would not have mattered to Dr. Nam that in Aegis’s clandestine efforts, the secrets had to remain hidden while the tragedies were exposed to the world. It is for this reason that his efforts as an activist in Seoul and Washington will be those for which he is remembered.

The Reverend Tim Peters operates Helping Hands Korea, a charity that helps North Korean refugees as they make their desperate journeys through China. Peters also recalls Dr. Nam as a man who would arrive to marshal a well-cultivated network of friends and contacts when problems seemed insurmountable. Rev. Peters remembers a typical case in 2004 when Dr. Nam rescued a floundering, fund-starved project, receiving no recognition for his untiring efforts. “I don’t think that fazed him in the least,” Rev. Peters recalls, “[g]etting the message out and getting the job done: that’s what mattered to Dr. Nam. That will always be an enduring memory for me.”

For Joon Nam, part of his loss was not having fully appreciated his father’s impact. It was on describing this realization that he became emotional and had to pause before continuing the interview.

Dr. Nam himself died without knowing the full measure of his own impact. He passed away a little more than a week before Kang Chol-Hwan, one of the North Korean defectors whose plight he had worked tirelessly to publicize and ameliorate, spent 40 minutes with the President and Vice-President of the United States in the Oval Office. That was approximately the same amount of time President Bush had spent with South Korean President Roh Moo-Hyun just a few days before.

After the meeting, President Bush reportedly put Kang’s book, The Aquariums of Pyongyang: Ten Years in the North Korean Gulag, on the mandatory reading list for White House staff, a move that triggered unfavorable comparisons in South Korea. Dr. Nam’s efforts helped to lay the groundwork for that meeting, and probably played at least an indirect role in arranging it.

Dr. Nam believed that persuading other nations to abandon their support for the North Korean regime was essential to changing conditions inside North Korea itself. His efforts moved at least one of them, his adopted homeland in the United States, and it is likely that the North Korean people will eventually remember him for this. It is an idea that gives those of us who knew him some comfort, even knowing that Dr. Jae-Joong Nam did not live to see the hour of liberation he worked so tirelessly to bring about.

Comments

A Quiet Man, Heard Across Oceans: Dr. Jae-Joong Nam, 1945-2005

Posted by joshua on June 19, 2001 at 10:22 pm · Filed under Uncategorized

One of the founders of the movement for human rights in North Korea, Dr. Jae Joong-Nam, passed away in his home from a heart attack on June 6, 2005, at the age of 60. He is survived by a wife and two sons.

Dr. Nam was born at Andong, in present-day South Korea, in 1945. He graduated from medical school at Korea University and studied for his medical board certification at Georgetown University.

After the successful completion of his certification in 1986, he entered private practice in Falls Church, Virginia, near Washington, D.C.

To Those Who Knew Him, A Gentle Influence

Dr. Nam’s son, Joon, recalls his father’s gentleness and modesty. Neither of Dr. Nam’s sons fully appreciated the importance of their father’s activism until some of Washington’s most powerful people came to his funeral. In fact, Dr. Nam was a small, soft-spoken man who was shy of personal publicity, even as he demonstrated an impressive capability to direct it toward North Korean refugees from behind the scenes.

In 1998, after visiting China and being moved by the plight of North Korean refugees fleeing their impoverished homeland, Dr. Nam founded the Aegis Foundation, an NGO dedicated to helping North Koreans and publicizing the conditions in which they live, and often die. He divided his time between actively assisting North Korean refugees, meeting with representatives of influential Washington think-tanks, and carrying the message of North Korea’s suffering to the news media.

Dr. Nam financed most of Aegis’s efforts from his own pocket and dramatically scaled back his medical practice to devote more of his time to helping the North Korean people.

A Key Co-Founder of a Movement

Dr. Norbert Vollertsen (news links) remembers Dr. Nam as a source of cheerful encouragement in the darkest times. “‘You are in big trouble,’ he always smiled when I was beaten up or staged some other protests.” It was his habit of appearing when most needed, and then quietly retreating into the background until needed again, that endeared Dr. Nam to those who worked alongside him. On some occasions, this included offering to pay for Vollertsen’s lodging, or his travel back to Korea to continue his activities.

In recent months, Vollertsen had noticed that the strain of the constant travel and activity was showing in Dr. Nam’s visibly deteriorating health. Vollertsen pleaded with him to cut back, but Dr. Nam refused.

Vollertsen credits Dr. Nam with introducing him to some of America’s most important activists for North Korea—Suzanne Scholte, Sin-U Nam, and Chuck Downs of the North Korean Freedom Coalition; and Michael Horowitz of the Hudson Institute. Dr. Nam worked tirelessly with these leading activists, dozens of others, and sympathetic government officials to bring Hwang Jang-Yop, North Korea’s highest-ranking defector, to Washington in November 2003. Hwang’s testimony before Congress was a milestone in the formation of Washington’s North Korean human rights lobby, a movement whose subsequent accomplishments include the North Korean Human Rights Act of 2004 and gulag survivor Kang Chol-Hwan’s recent visit to the White House.

Dr. Vollertsen added his energy, uncompromising dedication, and moral authority to the movement, along with his media contacts and his ability to attract needed publicity. In return, Dr. Vollertsen gained access to policymakers who could implement the policy changes he passionately urged. It was just one early example of Dr. Nam helping to form some of the movement’s most important interpersonal connections.

Capturing the World’s Attention

Another well-known activist, Rev. Douglas Shin (news links here, here, and here) (site), credits Dr. Nam with helping to bring the mass migration of starving North Koreans into China to the attention of The Washington Post in 1998.

Shin also attributes international media coverage for the reports of North Korea’s gas chambers to Dr. Nam’s efforts. The story resulted in a full-length BBC documentary, Access to Evil, which in turn resulted in prominent editorials in The Washington Post and The Boston Globe, among others, and which inspired Rabbi Abraham Cooper of the Simon Wiesenthal Center to add his considerable voice to the movement. The reports virtually assured the unanimous passage of the North Korean Human Rights Act.

Like Vollertsen, Shin recalls Dr. Nam for his kindness, his dedication, and his omnipresent smile.

Dr. Nam’s partner in the Aegis Foundation, Sei Park, credits Dr. Nam with bringing human rights conditions in North Korea to the attention of Representative Henry Hyde and Senator Sam Brownback, the two most important congressional boosters of the North Korean Human Rights Act.

Park described how Dr. Nam “published countless articles . . . , organized and participated [in] numerous conferences, worked with government agencies, NGOs, and individuals who run covert operations in China and other countries to help [North Korean] refugees.”

Working through the Aegis Foundation, Dr. Nam and Sei Park also secretly provided food, medicine, and shelter to refugees trying to reach South Korea through China. They also worked with other activists to help the refugees escape. Park described the danger of those operations and cited them as the primary reason the Aegis Foundation kept a low profile. In China, both the activists and the refugees were in constant danger of arrest.

One of the operations Aegis helped to fund, a secret orphanage and day care center for North Korean refugee children, was discovered by Chinese police. One activist was arrested and remains imprisoned in China.

How Dr. Nam Changed His World

It would not have mattered to Dr. Nam that in Aegis’s clandestine efforts, the secrets had to remain hidden while the tragedies were exposed to the world. It is for this reason that his efforts as an activist in Seoul and Washington will be those for which he is remembered.

The Reverend Tim Peters operates Helping Hands Korea, a charity that helps North Korean refugees as they make their desperate journeys through China. Peters also recalls Dr. Nam as a man who would arrive to marshal a well-cultivated network of friends and contacts when problems seemed insurmountable. Rev. Peters remembers a typical case in 2004 when Dr. Nam rescued a floundering, fund-starved project, receiving no recognition for his untiring efforts. “I don’t think that fazed him in the least,” Rev. Peters recalls, “[g]etting the message out and getting the job done: that’s what mattered to Dr. Nam. That will always be an enduring memory for me.”

For Joon Nam, part of his loss was not having fully appreciated his father’s impact. It was on describing this realization that he became emotional and had to pause before continuing the interview.

Dr. Nam himself died without knowing the full measure of his own impact. He passed away a little more than a week before Kang Chol-Hwan, one of the North Korean defectors whose plight he had worked tirelessly to publicize and ameliorate, spent 40 minutes with the President and Vice-President of the United States in the Oval Office. That was approximately the same amount of time President Bush had spent with South Korean President Roh Moo-Hyun just a few days before.

After the meeting, President Bush reportedly put Kang’s book, The Aquariums of Pyongyang: Ten Years in the North Korean Gulag, on the mandatory reading list for White House staff, a move that triggered unfavorable comparisons in South Korea. Dr. Nam’s efforts helped to lay the groundwork for that meeting, and probably played at least an indirect role in arranging it.

Dr. Nam believed that persuading other nations to abandon their support for the North Korean regime was essential to changing conditions inside North Korea itself. His efforts moved at least one of them, his adopted homeland in the United States, and it is likely that the North Korean people will eventually remember him for this. It is an idea that gives those of us who knew him some comfort, even knowing that Dr. Jae-Joong Nam did not live to see the hour of liberation he worked so tirelessly to bring about.

Comments

House Concurrent Resolution 168, Condemning North Korean Abductions

Posted by Joshua Stanton on June 9, 2001 at 11:01 pm · Filed under Uncategorized

Comments (4)

House Concurrent Resolution 168, Condemning North Korean Abductions

Posted by joshua on June 9, 2001 at 6:01 pm · Filed under Uncategorized

Comments (1)

South Korea Expels Norbert Vollertsen

Posted by Joshua Stanton on June 3, 2001 at 12:27 pm · Filed under Uncategorized

Here is the full text of Norbert’s e-mail:
__________________________________________________________

I finally got my exit order to leave South Korea before June 4. I will head to Tokyo in order to continue my activities regarding North Korean Human right abuses speaking to journalists, politicians, human rights activists and the family members of the abductees there - what I was no longer allowed to do in North Korea and now also in South Korea.

After several speeches here in South Korea about human rights in North Korea I was barred from reentering South Korea at Busan Port in November 2004. I complained about this and did not want to get sent back to Shimonoseki in Japan where I cam from by ferry. Afterwards I was detained in the immigration office there at Pusan harbour for around 10 hours without being allowed to call the German embassy, my family, some friends or, of course journalists.

The officials there - sometimes up to 10 people discussed the whole matter endlessly with their senior colleagues and afterwards confronted me with some written documents where I should confess that I violated the immigration law with my political activities. Most important they wanted me to sign a document - like back in Pyongyang. . . . And like back in Pyongyang I refused to do so. . . .

By chance - when none of the more and more upset officials was in the room I managed to figure out how to make an outside phone-call and contactet Donald Macintyre from “Time”. He arranged to get a “Chosun Ilbo”- journalist to the immigration office in Pusan and only when this happened I was allowed to enter the country without signing any document but with a written “notice” that I am not allowed to engage in any political activities as a foreigner.

In December 2004 and Jan. 2005 I kept a rather low profile mainly because of the holiday season and then because of a sudden shift of my attention to the medical emergency crisis in the Indian Ocean because of the Tsunami. I joined the KMA in order to give medical assistance in Band Aceh/ Indonesia and when I returned to South Korea I got the same “notice” again but was allowed to reenter the country at Incheon-airport mainly because we were followed by foreign journalists and our trip was widely covered.

On March 1, March 19 and March 20 I engaged again in “political activities” regarding North Korean human rights. Being a German I thought it was still my duty to continue to speak out against any crimes against humanity after the Holocaust-shame in my grandparents generation.

When my visa expired on April 15 I refused to get out again to Japan for a “visa-trip” because I was afraid that I might get barred on the way back and that this time there might be no new chance for some “journalists emergency call”.

On May 20, 2005 I was summoned to the Immigration office for violating the immigration law. When I turned up there at 1:00 PM I was again held by nearly six hours, questioned and pressured to sign a document which mentioned the three incidents that I violated the immigration law with politcal speeches on March 1,19, and 20. Again I refused to sign any document but told them that I was documenting the whole discussion and everything what was discussed should be in the newspapers of tomorrow . . . at around 6:30 I was released without signing anything but with an “exit notice” that I have to leave the country latest on June 4, 2005 and that I have to pay 200,000 Won as a penalty for overstaying.

The official finally told me that of course I am allowed to reenter South Korea but not with a tourist visa because of my activities but rather when I ask to apply for some “political visa” but of course foreigners are not allowed to engage in any political activities in South Korea, of course . . . .

Norbert Vollertsen
Seoul
June 3, 2005

Comments

South Korea Expels Norbert Vollertsen

Posted by joshua on June 3, 2001 at 7:27 am · Filed under Uncategorized

Here is the full text of Norbert’s e-mail:
__________________________________________________________

I finally got my exit order to leave South Korea before June 4. I will head to Tokyo in order to continue my activities regarding North Korean Human right abuses speaking to journalists, politicians, human rights activists and the family members of the abductees there - what I was no longer allowed to do in North Korea and now also in South Korea.

After several speeches here in South Korea about human rights in North Korea I was barred from reentering South Korea at Busan Port in November 2004. I complained about this and did not want to get sent back to Shimonoseki in Japan where I cam from by ferry. Afterwards I was detained in the immigration office there at Pusan harbour for around 10 hours without being allowed to call the German embassy, my family, some friends or, of course journalists.

The officials there - sometimes up to 10 people discussed the whole matter endlessly with their senior colleagues and afterwards confronted me with some written documents where I should confess that I violated the immigration law with my political activities. Most important they wanted me to sign a document - like back in Pyongyang. . . . And like back in Pyongyang I refused to do so. . . .

By chance - when none of the more and more upset officials was in the room I managed to figure out how to make an outside phone-call and contactet Donald Macintyre from “Time”. He arranged to get a “Chosun Ilbo”- journalist to the immigration office in Pusan and only when this happened I was allowed to enter the country without signing any document but with a written “notice” that I am not allowed to engage in any political activities as a foreigner.

In December 2004 and Jan. 2005 I kept a rather low profile mainly because of the holiday season and then because of a sudden shift of my attention to the medical emergency crisis in the Indian Ocean because of the Tsunami. I joined the KMA in order to give medical assistance in Band Aceh/ Indonesia and when I returned to South Korea I got the same “notice” again but was allowed to reenter the country at Incheon-airport mainly because we were followed by foreign journalists and our trip was widely covered.

On March 1, March 19 and March 20 I engaged again in “political activities” regarding North Korean human rights. Being a German I thought it was still my duty to continue to speak out against any crimes against humanity after the Holocaust-shame in my grandparents generation.

When my visa expired on April 15 I refused to get out again to Japan for a “visa-trip” because I was afraid that I might get barred on the way back and that this time there might be no new chance for some “journalists emergency call”.

On May 20, 2005 I was summoned to the Immigration office for violating the immigration law. When I turned up there at 1:00 PM I was again held by nearly six hours, questioned and pressured to sign a document which mentioned the three incidents that I violated the immigration law with politcal speeches on March 1,19, and 20. Again I refused to sign any document but told them that I was documenting the whole discussion and everything what was discussed should be in the newspapers of tomorrow . . . at around 6:30 I was released without signing anything but with an “exit notice” that I have to leave the country latest on June 4, 2005 and that I have to pay 200,000 Won as a penalty for overstaying.

The official finally told me that of course I am allowed to reenter South Korea but not with a tourist visa because of my activities but rather when I ask to apply for some “political visa” but of course foreigners are not allowed to engage in any political activities in South Korea, of course . . . .

Norbert Vollertsen
Seoul
June 3, 2005

Comments