Archive for February, 2006
Posted by joshua on February 28, 2006 at 8:31 pm · Filed under NK Economics, North Korea, Appeasement, Inside NK, Human Rights
This week, several new reports, chiefly those from the New York Times and the LA Times, describe a journalists’ group tour of the Kaesong Industrial Park, possibly the only place on earth where the spirits of P.T. Barnum(*) and Lavrenti Beria cohabitate.
A Paradise Within a (Worker’s) Paradise
In North Korea, a nation that is essentially one vast open-air prison, Kaesong is the new prison laundry — a relatively cushier, marginally less despotic part of the institution into which you can finagle your way for enough cigarettes (or worse). Your level of moral comfort with Kaesong’s particular form of capitalism probably depends on your perspective.
At Kaesong, the minimum wage for the 48-hour week is $57.50. But $7.50 is deducted for “social charges” paid to the North Korean government. The remaining $50 is paid to a North Korean government labor broker. None of the South Korean factory managers interviewed would guess how much of the $50 salary ends up in the pockets of workers.
“The exact amount is determined by North Korean authorities,” said Kim Dong Keun, a South Korean who chairs the Kaesong Industrial District Management Committee.
Under labor contracting arrangements in Russia and Eastern Europe, North Korea’s government often withholds half of their workers’ salaries.
Exact answers to the question were not immediately available, so James Brooke of the New York Times did something remarkable. He asked. (In the process, he did much to redeem his newspaper, and just after I castigated the bias and laziness of another of its reporters).
Attempts to interview seamstresses at the Shinwon factory elicited evasive responses and intervention by South Korean guides.
“No interviews with North Korean officials or employees are allowed,” Mira Sun, the foreign press aide to South Korea’s president, Roh Moo Hyun, lectured reporters by loudspeaker in one bus after reporters tried to interview seamstresses.
Barbara Demick of the L.A. Times was able to learn the answer anyway:
The monthly salaries of $57.50 for each North Korean worker — regardless of position — are paid directly to the North Korean government, which in turn gives the workers about $8, more than double the average monthly salary. South Korean companies have asked repeatedly to pay the workers directly and to give bonuses for better work, but have been refused.
Contrary to some of the other reporting - including Brooke’s otherwise excellent report - a worker at Kaesong will earn about 40 cents per day (not 23 cents an hour). Assuming 20 workdays per month and 8 hours per day, that’s 40 cents a day, or a nickel an hour. It’s hard to image how a family can live on that, even in North Korea, and even taking the state’s crumbling public distribution system into account. It says much that this is still an above-average wage in North Korea.
[Update 9/06: There’s another point I failed to note when I originally put this post up. The figure of $57.50 has since been advised upward to around $63 or so, to reflect the increased buying power of the South Korean won against the dollar. Anyone see a problem here? Well, unless the North Koreans are letting their workers collect their wages in South Korean won — chances of that are just south of nil — the $57 and $63 figures are meaningless, because the real wage that matters is paid in North Korean currency. These figures almost certainly come from converting North Korean won to South Korean won at the highly inflated official exchange rate, versus the actual market value of North Korean currency. How inflated? This calculator will tell you that 10,000 North Korean won are worth over four million South Korean won, or $4,544.77 American(!). At that rate, $63 is equal 138.62 won. However, the actual market value of North Korean currency is falling like a stone due to hyperinflation. Recently, the Daily NK reported that 1,200 won buys 1 kilogram of rice. Presuming that the North Koreans pay the workers that entire amount, which we already suspect they don’t, a person simply can’t live on 2.2 pounds of rice for nearly a year. So where does this leave us? With more questions than answers.]
There are other differences between Kaesong and “ordinary” sweatshops, where, say, underpaid Indonesian workers make sneakers for low wages. (For now, set aside the question of the mendacious idealism used to sell Kaesong.) Surabaya Johnny can at least theoretically choose other employment, and stands a realistic chance of doing so at better pay, thanks to rising real wages in the manufacturing sector. It’s not all rosy, to be sure, but there’s a tangible greater good for which you can argue. This isn’t an argument that Kaesong’s proponents can make.
And then there’s the question of collective bargaining. I mean, union label, anyone?
Not only are the wages the lowest in Northeast Asia, but independent labor unions are banned.
“Strikes?” Hwang replied dismissively in response to a reporter’s question. Raising crossed arms, he said with a slight smile: “Absolutely not.”
So much for “freedom of association and the effective recognition of the right to collective bargaining,” a principle of which South Korea clearly runs afoul with Kaesong, and which ought, in a just world, to get it summarily kicked out of the International Labor Organization. And it bears endless repetition that while South Korea’s manufacturing jobs are outsourced to this high-tech corporate plantation, South Korea’s normally ferocious and violent labor unions haven’t uttered a peep. You could guess why, but doing so would be unnecessarily strenuous.
Finally, if things don’t work out for Surabaya Johnny at his current job, they probably won’t get this bad for him, or for his family.
Capitalism’s Worst-Kept Conspiracy
These uneasy questions go unanswered by the politicians and power elites of both Koreas, who have formed an alliance of convenience cemented by an ethical blindness not seen since Snuppy was whelped. As with the half-forgotten ruckus over Hwang Woo-Seok, Kaesong presents another complex relationship between “ends” and “means,” and how badly such relationships can end when their pretended premises unravel. Of the means, I’ve said about as much as we’ll be allowed to know. We can be reasonably certain that they won’t include attaching desperately needed human rights conditions to aid or investment in North Korea.
As for the ends, the theory behind Kaesong is that there is a higher social purpose for this Gulag of Tomorrow, where high tech meets low wage. The idea is that Kaesong’s seductive, corrupting power will be the harbinger of North Korea’s gradual reform toward prosperity, and perhaps even a relative degree of political liberalization. It’s a new variation on an old idea, although it was catchier in the original German:
I’ve previously compiled a lengthy parade of loss-making partnerships with the North Korean regime that have left neither the investors nor ordinary North Koreans any richer, and sometimes feeling trapped between two governments. Kaesong proves that for the South Koreans, sadder does not always mean wiser.
It’s probably also a safe bet that Kaesong won’t do much to advance the capitalist subversion of North Korea anytime soon, given the North’s extraordinary determination to keep out subversive ideas. Demick’s article for the L.A. Times notes the isolation of the area around Kaesong, the armed guards and fences around it, and the careful attention paid to preventing contact between ordinary North and South Koreans, including separate stores, cafeteria, and clinics exclusively for the visitors. To the extent that Arbeit Macht Frei goes beyond being a self-serving cover for capitalism at its worst, the North Koreans are on to it:
It is the imperialist’s old trick to carry out ideological and cultural infiltration prior to their launching of an aggression openly. Their bourgeois ideology and culture are reactionary toxins to paralyze people’s ideological consciousness. Through such infiltration, they try to paralyze the independent consciousness of other nations and make them spineless. At the same time, they work to create illusions about capitalism and promote lifestyles among them based on the law of the jungle, in an attempt to induce the collapse of socialist and progressive nations. The ideological and cultural infiltration is their silent, crafty and villainous method of aggression, intervention and domination. . . .
Through “economic exchange” and personnel interchange programs too, the imperialists are pushing their infiltration. . . . Exchange and cooperation activities in the economic and cultural fields have been on the rise since the beginning of the new century. The imperialists are making use of these activities as an important lever to push the infiltration of bourgeois ideology and culture. . . .
The North Koreans aren’t fools, after all. Kim Jong Il is reported to be personally obsessed with the fate of Romania’s Nicolae Ceaucescu (as in, avoiding), and even ordered his underlings to watch the videotaped executions of Ceaucescu and his wife, over and over again. In the context of Eastern Europe, Kim has lectured that “[t]oday, the imperialists and reactionaries are tenaciously scheming to blow the wind of bourgeois liberalism into us,” and predicts the end of his regime if North Korea opens itself to the outside world:
People will ideologically degenerate and weaken; cracks will develop in our socialist ideological position; and, in the end, our socialism will helplessly collapse. A case in point is the bitter lesson drawn from the miserable situations of the former Soviet Union and Eastern European countries.
True to the Dear Leader’s guidance, the North Koreans are enforcing the hermetic seal rigorously:
South Koreans have covertly tried to give medicine from their private clinic to ailing North Koreans.
One South Korean employee was accused of trying to bribe a North Korean soldier when he gave him two packages of instant ramen noodles, said a military source who requested anonymity.
In a more serious incident, a South Korean was caught trying to distribute Christian literature, which is strictly forbidden in the communist country, the source said.
If anything, it’s South Koreans who are subjected to the North Koreans’ ideology:
Mobile telephones, newspapers, books, videos, laptops, magazines, MP3 players and many other appurtenances of 21st century life have to be checked on the south side of the border.
Also best left behind are any wisecracks about the North Korean regime, in particular those involving its leader, Kim Jong Il. [I suppose there’s another story behind that!]
“You’ve got to watch what you say,” said Kim Yi Gyeom, a South Korean telecommunications worker standing in a long line of Monday morning commuters waiting to go north. “The spirit of openness has not come to North Korea yet.”
Another observation from Demick’s LA Times report:
North Korean patriotic music in praise of Kim blares over the loudspeakers of a futuristic warehouse where North Korean women in crisp blue uniforms stitch athletic shoes using brand-new sewing machines.
The Washington Post’s Anthony Faiola adds more:
South Koreans are not permitted beyond a bright green perimeter fence that is guarded by armed soldiers and separates the complex from a decaying North Korean village rife with communist slogans, including one telling all residents to “celebrate the greatness” of North Korea.
Nor does reform look likely in the future, even after nearly a a decade of South Korean appeasement. The hope to which advocates of tyranny-sustaining investment always clung was a series of very limited market reforms, initiated in 2001 (much more at the section entitled “Economic Reform?”). Late last year, however, even those reforms were reversed, a point even a South Korean diplomat had to concede when I questioned him on it recently. (Even Stalin ordered similar, modest reforms in the 1920’s, only to reverse them, clamp down again, and order more purges later.)
It’s harder than ever to see how Arbeit will macht Frei in North Korea. Stripped of its idealistic cladding, then, Kaesong looks like an especially pernicious new bastard of sweatshop and gulag.
The Strange Dance of the Isms
This makes for some fascinating reading, especially watching Kaesong’s fans on the far left go all glisteny-eyed over the promise of Kaesong, letting the schmaltzy corporate propaganda wash over them like so much 815 Cola, arousing them to heats of unificationista passion. Of course, I speak of Christine Ahn, writing in the International Herald Tribune:
At Incheon International Airport in South Korea, flat-screen televisions beam a Samsung cellphone commercial of a concert with South Korea’s pop icon, Lee Hyo Ri, and the North Korean dancer Jo Myung Ae. Korea’s most popular female stars, they sing a song about parted lovers with the lyrics, “Someday we will meet again, although no one knows where we’re going, someday we will meet again, in this very image of us separated.”As they hold hands, the blue “One Korea” flag rolls down behind them, and as they turn to watch the flag, Lee Hyo Ri says, “That day I was so nervous because the story wasn’t just about the two of us.”
Here was Samsung, one of Korea’s most powerful corporations, popularizing reunification. And the South Korean government was also sending a clear message to all foreigners landing on Korean soil: Reunification is happening, slowly, but surely.
Later, Ahn trumpets the growth of inter-Korean “economic exchanges.” Reading this, you might not immediately guess that Ahn is a ferocious anti-globalization / anti-free trade author-activist, a Dennis Kucinich groupie, and an advocate of state-managed food redistribution.
Nationalism, meet socialism.
Again.
It’s almost too logically and morally oblivious, too intellectually dishonest, to comprehend. If you hate globalism when it’s partially balanced by a free labor market, mostly-rising wages, and the right to strike, you can’t simultaneously love the Arbeit-Macht-Frei politics of Kaesong, a legally and morally unchecked union of factory bosses and concentration camp guards, where workers are silenced, unions are banned, and wages are a nickel an hour.
Even if a dour German Marxist playwright were sufficiently moved by the social injustices of Kaesong to write a storyline about class struggle there, the premise would be too unbelieveable to make good theater. A musical about a Kaesong Johnny would end, well, something like the reality that enclosed Brecht and Weill as they ranted on about the injustices of global capitalism.
How little times change.
In Closing, Always Follow the Cheerleaders
In the end, however, the cultural isolation of Kaesong’s hand-picked workers will fail. The workers will eventually take note of the health and prosperity of their southern counterparts, and they will talk about it. And when the regime’s security forces find out, they will do what they did after learning that some members of the nation’s cheerleading squad talked about what they saw in Busan. Kaesong itself will not be immune to that reaction. That means that predictions of explosive growth at Kaesong will prove premature, and that Kaesong will be fortunate to remain what it is now: a small, carefully sealed cash cow for Kim Jong Il’s regime.
———————–
Update: Edited, and re-edited. Also, don’t miss Don Kirk’s CSM story, which I received moments after putting up this post. I think Don’s last rental carn (a Kia) was made in Kaesong, based on its performance.
Another Update: South Korea is raiding the nation’s unemployment insurance fund to pay for job training at Kaesong. Hel-LO! Any UNIONS out there? Sheesh.
Yet Another Update: The Anti-Unification Ministry wants to relax the payment structure for non-performing loans for the Kumgang joint venture.
Posted by joshua on February 27, 2006 at 6:53 am · Filed under Uncategorized, NK Economics, China, China & Korea, Diplomacy, Defectors, Counterfeiting
Via the Chosun Ilbo:
The U.S. is preparing to seize more than US$2.67 million from three frozen bank accounts with Chiyu Banking, a subsidiary of Bank of China Hong Kong. The South China Morning Post reported the funds are believed to be the first known link between a Hong Kong bank and North Korea’s underground trade in “supernotes,” or high-quality fake US$100 bills. The accounts belong to an unemployed mainland Chinese woman named Kwok Hiu Ha.
The Bank of China is a parastatal. That doesn’t necessarily mean that the Beijing authorities know everything that BoC is up to, but it does mean that sanctions against China’s largest bank could hit China’s economy very, very hard. Speculation: China’s cooperative attitude may explain why Treasury is still only naming BoC subsidiaries.
North Korea is apparently feeling the pain, too. After some initial bluster and yet another declaration that it would walk out of the six-nation facade, the North Koreans are sending reps to hear a U.S. briefing on the latter’s anti-counterfeiting measures. Since appeasement has achieved nothing, we may soon see if a firmer policy will have more success. Declarations of success still seem premature, as U.S. Ambassador Alexander Vershbow reminds us:
“There have been some signals in the last few weeks indirectly indicating that North Korea is beginning to acknowledge that there is a problem and they need to take steps to address the issues,” Mr. Vershbow told the JoongAng Ilbo and JoongAng Daily on Wednesday. The U.S. envoy to Seoul has been a strong critic of the North in his four months on the job here, and in turn has joined more senior U.S. officials in Pyongyang’s rogues’ gallery. Pyongyang media outlets took special exception to the label of “criminal regime” that the ambassador used recently in referring to the government there.
Mr. Vershbow declined to use the words again. “Looking back at that episode, my main concern is that it may have diverted attention from the real issue that I wanted to address ― illicit activities by the North Korean regime,” he said. Conceding that the substance of the issue may have been obscured by his rhetoric, he added, “Since that time, I have left it to academics and journalists to describe North Korea. I think that it is better understood by North Korea that the issues will not go away.”
That language represents a climbdown by Vershow in rhetoric, though not in substance. An emotional letdown perhaps, but the firmness of the policy position appears to be undiminished
Posted by joshua on February 26, 2006 at 2:53 pm · Filed under North Korea, Media Criticism, Human Rights, Refugees, Abductions, Defectors, Activism
If you’d like a case-in-point in media bias, look no further than this NYT piece on Christian human rights activists for North Korea by Norimitsu Onishi. There is plenty of good North Korea coverage at the Times, most of it written by James Brooke and David Sanger, but seldom by Onishi, who tends to write puff pieces about social trends and other more superficial matters. Part of Onishi’s problem is that he may be somewhat out of his league, but it doesn’t end there.
Don’t take it from me. At this point, I’ll hand the mike to a fellow member of Onishi’s profession, an experienced journalist who writes for a “mainstream” publication, one not generally known to have conservative bias. The journalist-TKL reader, who asks not to be named for understandable reasons, calls the article “one of the most subtly pernicious, misleading stories I’ve ever seen in a paper with the possible exception of the National Enquirer, World News, or other supermarket tabs.” Ouch. Specifics? I’ll let him start, and I’ll finish:
Onishi made not the slightest reference to the work of Christian missionaries in shielding NKorean refugees in China, to their efforts in getting them through China into Mongolia or Vietnam or Thailand or Hong Kong or into some foreign embassy…..He said nothing about the efforts of such Christian missionaries as Tim Peters, well known here, and Douglas Shin…..He deliberately overlooked historic Christian role as defenders of human rights going back to March 1, 1919, revolution, in which Christians played a major role against Japan. He “forgot” the point is not the shift of Christian thinking from leftist human rights campaigns in NKorea to conservative pressure for human rights in Japan — the point is that Christians have been at the forefront in all these struggles. Onishi is an intelligent person. He obviously overlooked all that in order to drive home his own point, his leftist sympathy with North Korea, his support for leftist policies of SKorean govt and his support for radical anti-American demonstrators.
. . . .
One other point that Onishi overlooked — what is now NKorea was focal point of missionary activity in pre-communist days. Pyongyang was known as “city of churches right through the period of Japanese colonialism. And Hungnam and Hangnum were also Christian centers. So it’s logical that Christianity shd be reapparing in highly risky underground settings, by no means all influenced by aid-givers. Many reflect proslytizing by escapees, Korean-Chinese across Tumen and Yalu rivers, etc.
There are two specific passages that cause Onishi to lose my respect, and both consist of uncritically relaying the anti-human rights view of North Korea (hey, let’s just call it what it’s occasionally admitted to be). First, this:
Against this political backdrop, it is an open secret that some North Korean defectors and their backers exaggerate their experiences in the North. “They exaggerate their stories for money and fame,” said the Reverend Joseph Park, the Christian Council of Korea’s mission director. “They say that they were political prisoners when they were ordinary prisoners, or that they saw something they only heard about.”
Onishi provides absolutely no examples or support of any kind for this. I could counter that in the bazaars of Damascus, it’s “well known” that Jews bake charicatures of Mohammad onto their Passover matzos, but it wouldn’t be any more true. What is also well known - but well documented - is that North Korea has resisted myriad demands to inspect its concentration camps to either confirm or refute those allegations (Onishi doesn’t mention that). Onishi provides no background on Park or his group’s agenda, although most politically literate readers can guess where the far-far-left National Council of Churches stands:
The Reverend Kim Tae Hyun, an official at the National Council of Churches in Korea, which supports the South Korean government’s low-key approach on human rights, criticizes missionaries who send North Koreans living in China back into the North to proselytize secretly.
“They are putting the defectors at great risk,” Kim said.
Low-key approach? That’s certainly putting it mildly. That policy, to the extent that it exists at all, lies somewhere between “pearls for a pig,” “die in place,” “it’s too small to actually see,” and “Arbeit Macht Frei.”
What’s more fundamentally off about Onishi’s piece is the distortion he serves to his readers - that all activism for human rights in North Korea is exclusively based on one monolithic, fanatical, soul-greedy religious view (something my presence in prominent NK-HR groups ought to at least partially refute). Onishi clearly expects Times readers to despise evangelical Christianity more than, say, juche. He can only do this by ignoring the religious and ideological diversity of this movement, and also by ingoring the very real personal risks Christians are taking to save North Koreans physically.
There is much Onishi should have done to research this story, but a good first step would have been to read about the fate of Reverend Kim Dong Shik.
Posted by joshua on February 26, 2006 at 12:58 pm · Filed under Uncategorized, An Alliance?, Korean Politics, China, Appeasement, Human Rights, Asia, China & Korea, Diplomacy
The U.N.: No Values Necessary
What could say more about what’s wrong with the United Nations when a candidate for its top post - an experienced diplomat - would say this publicly?
“I don’t think a specific issue like North Korean human rights has a direct connection to the bid for the UN secretary-general’s seat,” Ban told reporters. Asked by a CBS reporter whether the way the South Korean government handles human rights conditions in North Korea could hurt his bid for the UN job, Ban replied, “What the secretary general does is not directly related to a specific issue in a particular country.”
Why even provide our tax revenue to such an organization? Ban’s ascendancy would only emphasize, in the UN’s case, many of the same problems that undermine the justification for the U.S.-Korea alliance: both are expensive anachronisms that appear to do little to advance U.S. interests or values. What could be most telling of all will be China, which I fully expect will come out in favor of Ban for the General Secretary’s job.
One can only hope that the U.S. and Japan will manage to abort Mr. Ban’s ambitions. What good are ambitions without principles?
The Real Reason for Ban’s Candidacy?
Actually, I can think of one thing: Ban’s candidacy could be a win-win for the Uri Party. If Ban wins, it will be another “O Pilsung Korea” moment, which Uri can exploit for a nice bounce from its present approval rating, now at a rock-bottom-dismal 18.4%. If Ban loses, it can milk just as much support from the voters by heaping the usual blame on a secret U.S.-Japanese conspiracy, which I’d posit would have some basis in truth this time, if only because Ban’s own policies are such a dramatic departure from the interests all three nations once shared.
Posted by joshua on February 25, 2006 at 1:29 pm · Filed under Uncategorized, NK Economics, North Korea, Appeasement, Famine & Food Aid, Human Rights, Diplomacy, Defectors
When she’s not exposing the U.N.’s corruption, Claudia Rosett is exposing its general fecklessness and worthlessness on matters of substance. Ms. Rosett’s favorite case-in-point is North Korea, where she nails - dead-on - what’s wrong with the World Food Program’s approach to feeding the hungry. North Korea, unrestrained by any regard for the lives of its less-privileged citizens, pushes for more control over the food and less U.N. monitoring. The U.N. bureaucrats lack the testicular fortitude to push back, go public, and really embarrass the states that are giving North Korea its diplomatic cover. Instead, they’re now trying to further water down their already weak monitoring and control over aid, making it easier than ever for the regime to divert that aid to its own misuse (this was the point I tried to make to Amb. Bolton last November). The U.N.’s euphemism for this - borrowed from the North Koreans - is “development aid,” which we can suppose will consist of such dual-use items as fertilizer, fuel, tractor engines, pesticides, and cash.
The WFP’s policies are thus increasingly at odds with a code of conduct agreed on by multiple NGOs years ago. That code demands strict monitoring of aid to prevent discrimination and political misuse. The latest U.N. capitulation will be observed with great interest by warlords and tyrants everywhere. The United States, via Andrew Natsios, has already stated that it will have no part of such a “development aid” scheme. It’s difficult to imagine Congress funding such an aid program without very strict monitoring of how U.S. aid is used; Congress has even passed a nonbinding resolution to that effect (Sec. 202).
Read the whole thing.
Posted by joshua on February 23, 2006 at 6:39 am · Filed under Uncategorized, NK Economics, North Korea, Diplomacy, Japan, Counterfeiting
I wonder what Roh Moo-Hyun will say this time. Rogue diplomats?
North Korean diplomats were caught attempting to smuggle US$1 million and 200 million yen into Mongolia on Tuesday, the Mongolian press reported. Reports said the North Koreans told Mongolian authorities they were planning to put the money in a Mongolian bank account, according to Japan’s Yomiuri Shimbun.
The paper said that it was unclear whether the money was counterfeit or not, and what measures the Mongolian authorities will take. It said the incident revived concerns about North Korean involvement in money laundering.
North Korean diplomatic missions are widely believed to have been told to finance themselves by any means available. That said, I’d be astonished if all of that cash turns out to be authentic. The U.S. Embassy continues to assert that it showed the South Koreans fresh evidence of North Korea’s counterfeiting, despite South Korea’s claims that North Korea was not known to have engaged in counterfeiting since 2000:
It quoted an embassy spokesman as saying the U.S. government showed Korean officials “superior-quality counterfeit 2001 and 2003 series US$100 notes (supernotes) that our investigations have concluded were manufactured” in North Korea. The spokesman said U.S. investigators concluded that $140,000 uncovered by South Korean police last year were part of a batch made by Pyongyang in 2001.
The evidence was presented to South Korean officials by U.S. Treasury investigators who visited in January. An Embassy insider said there was nothing to add to the spokesman’s statement.
Opinions may vary, but facts are hard things to alter.
Posted by joshua on February 22, 2006 at 9:16 pm · Filed under Uncategorized, China, Appeasement, Human Rights, China & Korea, Refugees, Diplomacy, Defectors, Southeast Asia, Activism, Washington Views
[Updated; scroll down] Thanks to a dedicated group of Congressional staffers who forwarded me a scanned copy, which is signed by members of both parties and both houses. I’m going through WordPress hell trying to publish the entire text, but in the meantime, here’s a scanned copy on the Committee’s site.The executive summary is that Congress believes that State is turning away refugees, thus flouting its unanimous will and throwing away America’s credibility on this issue.
Update: OK, full scanned letter posted at “continue” link below.
Update 23 Feb: The Chosun Ilbo covers the story and quotes Doug Anderson, an aide to Asian-Pacific Affairs Subcommittee Chairman James Leach, as follows:
Meanwhile, an advisor to International Relations Committee, Doug Anderson, told a seminar hosted by the Institute for Corean-American Studies that Congress will consider a revision of the act if Washington continues to drag its feet in admitting North Korean refugees. It could designate refugees “Priority 2”, which would offer them group exile and make it easier for them to seek asylum. The status would eliminate the need for defectors to be given refugee status by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by joshua on February 22, 2006 at 6:42 am · Filed under China, Human Rights, Refugees, Defectors, Activism
Update and Correction: I’m officially a bonehead. I originally and incorrectly gave today as the date for the event below; in fact, tonight’s event was at LiNK’s new office. The event described below will take place March 1st. My deepest, most sincere apologies and a cup of coffee on me to anyone who went to the wrong place! To make matters worse, I dashed this post off before a day of meetings without Internet access, so I had no idea of the error until just now. Again, my apologies.
_________________
In the DC area? LiNK will hold a benefit tonight March 1st from 6 to 8:30 at Cafe Asia, 1550 Wilson Boulevard, Arlington, Virginia (map here). Near the Rosslyn Metro.
LiNK stands for Liberty in North Korea. LiNK is a 501 (c)(3) non-profit, non-partisan, non-ethnic and non-religious organization formed in defense of North Korean human rights. To this end, LiNK currently maintains 30 underground shelters in China for refugees in hiding, supports efforts to rescue sexually trafficked woman and abandoned orphans, and works with its 70 chapters worldwide, dedicated to educating the public and inspiring action on the issue of North Korean human rights. More information on LiNK can be found here.
- get a free bar drink w/ $10 Minimum Donation (21+ to drink)
- win a 30gb video iPod …
- gift certificates…
- other cool stuff….
- Raffle Tickets sold separately.
All proceeds go to LiNK; please pass the word and e-mail this post to your friends. If you have questions or would like to volunteer, please email LiNKdc@gmail.com. If you can’t attend, please consider making a donation (make check out to Liberty in North Korea, please put “March 1 DC Freedom Benefit” in the memo). Send your check to:
Attn: Finance Officer
2209 Massachusetts Ave., NW
Suite 100
Washington, DC 20008
Or donate via paypal here.
Posted by joshua on February 21, 2006 at 11:15 pm · Filed under North Korea, Inside NK, Refugees, Defectors, Resistance
Via the refugee-run DailyNK:
Feb 10, Onsung-gun, North Hamkyung province, anti-Kim Jong Il flyers were found, reported North Korean internal source on Feb 17.
The source said the flyers read, “Stand Kim Jong Il Upside Down” and tens of them were found near the Wangje Mt. Grand Monument and the Security Agency along with other government agencies.
Read the rest here.
Posted by joshua on February 21, 2006 at 10:54 pm · Filed under Uncategorized, North Korea, Human Rights, Refugees, Washington Views
If historians were both omniscient and judicious, they would record that Doug Anderson was a great friend of the North Korean people. Anderson, a thin, quiet, and precise young lawyer and staffer for Rep. James Leach, never misses a House hearing on North Korea policy. He is also a key behind-the-scenes advocate of more humane treatment for the people North Korea (meaning I’m not sure he’d want this kind of recognition, warranted though it may be). I’ve never heard an ill word spoken of him. Now that I’ve introduced Doug, here is a comment he sent me by e-mail and left on The Korea Liberator today:
Based on continuing requests, I have assembled a one-stop shop for all of the official documents related to the North Korean Human Rights Act (P.L. 108-333). It includes links to the law itself, to the House hearings on the subject, to the Executive Branch reports filed pursuant to the Act, and to the legislative history of the Act. I’ll try to keep it relatively current, and have reason to believe that it will be updated in the next day or two to include a letter from some key Congressional Members encouraging the Administration to begin implementing Title III of the bill (relating to refugees). [emphasis mine]
Here. Thanks, Doug. We’ll be watching that page carefully. It means, as predicted here before, that Congress’s patience with the State Department’s dithering on NKHRA implementation is about exhausted. Here is an excerpt of Rep. Leach’s statements at last October’s hearings:
The response to our questions at that hearing indicated that the United States had not yet undertaken the high level diplomatic efforts with third countries necessary to allow us to proceed with the quiet process of saving even some limited number of intending refugees.
This was underscored last week when the Department of State reported to Congress, and I quote, ‘’that there were no applications for refugee admission to the United States filed by North Koreans during the past year.'’
Well, this is a true statement, it is just not describing the underlying facts. We are aware of cases where North Korean refugees hiding in third countries have approached United States diplomatic posts, unsuccessfully seeking assistance for relocating to the U.S. as refugees.
Furthermore, the report demonstrates an adequate disregard for the requirements of current law. Section 303 of the act imposes an affirmative obligation on the Department of State to, and I quote, ‘’facilitate the submission of refugee applications'’ by North Koreans. Thus, an annual total of zero applications and zero admissions is clearly unacceptable.
After taking a dig at the administration for delaying the appointment of Special Envoy Jay Lefkowitz, Leach closed this way:
In closing, it must be understood that the Congress did not intend the North Korean Human Rights Act as a rhetorical exercise. The law was enacted to promote respect for human rights, transparency in the delivery of humanitarian aid, and protection for North Korean refugees. It granted considerable discretion to Executive Branch agencies in pursuing those ends.
In a government of laws, the Executive clearly has obligations it is yet to meet. This is disconcerting to say the least.
A reminder about Leach: he’s no neocon fanatic by any stretch. Leach, who is widely respected for his disciplined, even-tempered moderation, actually opposes talk of regime change (which, of course, is exactly what this site’s authors explicitly advocate).
So now we know why the State Department is suddenly promising to move forward on NKHRA implentation. In a town of few secrets, word had undoubtedly reached State that Congress was about to speak up. We’ve explained that much, but explain this: Why is the administration of a president who “loathes” Kim Jong Il being dragged into compliance with this law by its ear?
Posted by joshua on February 21, 2006 at 6:56 am · Filed under Uncategorized, North Korea, Korean Politics, Appeasement, Human Rights, Europe, Activism, Washington Views
The Chosun Ilbo and the Donga Ilbo are looking at their calendars and seeing a slew of events that will further publicize human rights conditions in North Korea. Will this be the year our nascent movement finally demonstrates some media sophistication?
- March: The State Department will publish its new human rights report (although I don’t have any reason to suspect anything earth-shaking to come of it).
- March 23rd: European Parliament hearings on North Korea; Freedom House conference in Brussels (we’re still seeking a guest-blogger; FH Web page here; interview with Program Manager Jae Ku here). Jay Lefkowitz, the U.S. Special Envoy for Human Rights in North Korea, will attend.
- April: U.N. Special Rapporteur Vitit Muntarbhorn presents his report on North Korea to the European Commission on Human Rights.
- April 22-30: North Korea Freedom Week (to participate).
A fascinating fact is that these events are all taking place just before South Korea’s May 31st parliamentary elections. One overhyped non-event with which they won’t have to complete is a planned April visit by Kim Dae Jung to North Korea, which was such a transparent attempt at electoral manipulation that it drew howls of protest from the opposition and had to be postponed. Whether the visit takes place in April, June, October, or never, it could just as aptly illustrate how little of substance Sunshine and its successor policies have accomplished in the last six years. North Korea is still as belligerent as ever, and its ordinary people are just as isolated, repressed, and hungry. On the other hand, the alliance with the United States has never been in worse shape, despite Korea’s lack of readiness to do without its substantial benefits.
Posted by joshua on February 19, 2006 at 8:10 pm · Filed under WTF?, Japan & Korea
Three people actually claim to live on Tokdo. I don’t want to ask what they do there.
Posted by joshua on February 19, 2006 at 8:08 pm · Filed under North Korea, Korean Politics, Human Rights, Refugees, Defectors, Europe
The EU’s human rights dialogue with North Korea’s regime may be predictably “moribund,” but a new report shows that Europe is outperforming the United States in accepting refugees:
Seven European nations have granted asylum to 280 North Korean defectors since the mid-1990s, Radio Free Asia reported on Saturday. RFA said Germany, Britain, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden and Norway gave asylum to 280 out of 700 North Korean refugees who applied there.
Germany topped the list, accepting 232 out of 455 North Korean asylum seekers between 1995 to 2005, while the U.K. accepted 25, Denmark seven, the Netherlands and Belgium six, Sweden five and Norway two.
And as for this supposed breakthrough in America’s admission of refugees? VOA quotes an unnamed source as saying we’ll accept two hundred. Two hundred people? Are you kidding us? That represents 0.4% of the State Department’s lowball estimate of the number of North Koreans now hiding in China (50,000; other estimates run closer to 300,000).
The European Parliament will also hear testimony from North Korean refugees, who will describe what they went through in their homeland. All of this will coincide with Freedom House’s Brussels Conference this March. The European interest may be creating something of a moral crisis for Korea, including the Korean left. While reflexively anti-American leftists can easily dismiss American activism as part of a neocon conspiracy, quasi-socialist, Bush-hating Europe is harder for them to ignore. Even more significantly, the growing global disapproval of South Korea’s collaboration with the the oppression of half of Korea is an affront to its greatest vulnerability - its national pride.
In South Korea, left-wingers who once bristled when human rights in the North were brought up have started to catch up with the worldwide trend. The newly-appointed Democratic Labor Party chairman Moon Seong-hyun said in an interview with KBS on Sunday, “Human rights are a universal value and must be applied to all countries.” Even some on the New Left are having a change of heart, saying progressives, with their stress on rights and entitlement at home, can no longer ignore human rights abuses in the North.
While it’s unlikely that the left will split over human rights, it’s not beyond the realm of possibility, either. It’s more likely that the issue will diminish the enthusiasm of Uri voters in the upcoming parliamentary and presidential elections.
Which reminds me - is anyone out there planning on being there, who would care to liveblog the Brussels conference for us? Drop a comment telling us something of your experience with the NK human rights issue.
Posted by joshua on February 19, 2006 at 2:52 pm · Filed under WTF?, Terrorism/Iraq
Fleming Rose, Editor of the Jyllands-Posten, explains. Meanwhile, there is more fuel for my “paxil in the water” proposal:
- Attacking a U.S. embassy over Danish cartoons.
- “God Bless Hitler.” A German newspaper thinks the message this sends is unclear.
- Nigerian Muslim mobs burn churches, kill three kids and a priest. Fifteen dead, total. What’s most noticeable about all this isn’t the existence of extremism. It’s the lack of a moderate response.
- Tigerhawk is through with asymetic sensitivity. My own feeling is that our treatment of violence and thuggishness as legitimate - even to the point of capitulation to them - emboldens those reactions.
- The newest outrage: blasphemous Mohammed emoticons!
- Still no takers on my fatwa offering a hundred bucks to anyone who smears a violence-inciting Pakistani cleric in lard.
Posted by joshua on February 19, 2006 at 2:36 pm · Filed under NK Economics, Geopolitics, WTF?, China, Human Rights, Censorship
The Washington Post has a fascinating look at how the Internet forced the Chinese government to retreat - partially - in its censorship of the journal “Freezing Point” (previous posts here). Why didn’t Beijing simply follow Mao’s old “barrel of a gun” formula this time? Because the Chinese economy must sustain sufficiently high growth to absorb a flood of excess laborers from rural areas to preserve social stability, which places China between the Scylla of rising dissent and the Charibdis of economic recession. For Beijing, responding to dissent isn’t just more complex on a technological level; it must increasingly weigh the political costs, too.
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