For now, there’s only this Korean language link. There isn’t much detail to add. The report didn’t go into detail, stating only that it was too horrible to describe in detail, which is just as well. The Free Robert Park blog, which has claimed to report first-hand information from Park in the past, contains this cryptic entry dated March 2nd:
The news article that was here has been removed at the request of Robert’s family because it was causing distress. Not because it was untrue. I hope that you dear reader will also be sensitive while you seek the truth, and that you will pray with love for Robert and his family. The torture did not stop when he left Pyongyang, and is now affecting all those close to him.
I must say that the sexual — and presumably, homosexual — torture of an American prisoner wouldn’t fit with my expectations of how North Koreans would have been instructed to treat anyone who might live to tell about it. Yes, it’s apparent that Mr. Park left Pyongyang in a state of emotional distress, but then again, Park didn’t show obvious signs of the severe beating the Chosun Ilbo reported he’d experienced. I really don’t know what to make of this, but if it’s true, Park ought to find the courage to tell the world about it.
‘
Norbert Vollertsen forwards a link to a blog called “Free Robert Park,” which makes the following claim:
Robert Park, as a result of suffering torture in the DPRK “North Korea” is currently being held against his will at Community hospital of Long Beach in California, United States.
He was drugged and taken by force into the mental hospital and has been classified Gravely Disabled, “unable to provide for your own food, clothing, and shelter.” He has been there since Feb 27, 2010.
A previous February 26th entry claimed to be a message from Park himself and stated, “I have been tormented and I apologize for my insane behaviour lately.” It also referred to “temptations to kill myself.” If so, I’m glad Park is somewhere that can watch over him and stop him from doing that. No one wants the experience of Evan Hunziker to be repeated.
Assuming this is true — I can’t vouch for this blog, and the latest entry even says “reader beware” — the question that follows is whether Park’s experiences in North Korea drove him to his current condition or whether his condition drove him to cross into North Korea. I incline more toward the latter view, though I don’t doubt that Park’s experiences in North Korea exacerbated matters greatly.
Either way, this is not a reason to pour scorn on Park; it’s a reason to offer him compassion and prayers for his recovery. I don’t agree with what Park did, but I’ve never believed that Park was fully mentally responsible for his acts on Christmas Day, either. I hope he can survive this and recover. There is much good he can still do.
Having seen this video, I’m convinced they broke him, but unlike the Chosun Ilbo, I’m not prepared to speculate as to how in a complete factual vacuum:
Before he was freed, Park (28) was paraded before the North Korean media, reciting a nonsensical apology that blamed the error of his ways on “false propaganda” in the West and accepted that North Korea “guarantees the freedom” of all its people.
What had happened? A former senior North Korean official who defected to the South said, “Ninety-nine percent of these so-called press conferences in the North are faked through torture and coercion.”
The State Security Department is in charge of such cases. Investigators from the psychological warfare office reportedly attempt to penetrate the inner world of detainees or suspects through an alternate series of torture and conciliatory persuasion. The investigators keep the detainees awake until they surrender. [Chosun Ilbo]
There are several unresolved possibilities, including that the North Koreans completely made it up or forced Park to sign it. If that were the case, however, you’d think we’d have heard Park’s repudiation of this “confession” by now. The fact that we haven’t suggest that the man is in a state of profound emotional trauma and incapable of explaining himself. Certainly that video of Park gives that theory some support.
The Chosun Ilbo, you will recall, initially reported that North Korean guards severely beat Park. I wouldn’t call this conclusively disproven, but Park’s face showed no signs of physical damage, and every sign of some fairly profound emotional damage.
[Update 4, 6 Feb 10, bumped again:Park has arrived at L.A.X. There’s also video of him perp walking through the Beijing Airport while being mobbed by the press, much of it South Korean.
In contrast to his animated pose with his North Korean captors — these obviously being the “good cops” — look at this video and tell me the man doesn’t look like one whose spirit has been completely broken. He looks thinner, with no obvious signs of physical torture, and every sign of being devastated, emotionally. I don’t know if it’s the statement he made or the decision to cross, but Park certainly regrets something. I feel terrible for him, though not as terrible as I do for the others he put in danger. He meant well. But he obviously knows by now that didn’t do well.
Cute of Xinhua, by the way, to refer to Park as a “trespasser,” making no reference to the reason Park walked up to the borders guards in broad daylight, petition in hand, while reporting his “confession” to the North Koreans as fact. But we’d expect no less from fascist China, would we?]
[Update 3:Via Yonhap, here’s photo of him arriving in Beijing.]
[Update 2, and bumped: The Chosun Ilbo publishes this photograph of Park. I don’t see any scars or bruises.]
North Korea said on Friday it will release U.S. religious activist Robert Park, arrested in December for illegally entering the country in a journey to raise awareness about Pyongyang’s human rights abuses. “The relevant organ of the DPRK (North Korea) decided to leniently forgive and release him, taking his admission and sincere repentance of his wrong doings into consideration,” the state KCNA news agency said.
KCNA said Park had confessed to illegally entering the state and that he had changed his mind about North Korea after receiving kind treatment there.
“What I have seen and heard in the DPRK convinced me that I misunderstood it. So I seriously repented of the wrong I committed, taken in by the West’s false propaganda,” KCNA quoted Park as saying. Defectors from the North say the state often uses torture to extract confessions. [Reuters]
It would be premature for me to assume that Robert Park (a) said those things, or (b) said them of his own free will, but if he did, I think it will vindicate my initialobservations about Park. On the other hand, it seems unlikely that this would be happening now if those reports that he was beaten were accurate.
Now, who else finds it oddly coincidental that this should happen just one day after President Obama says he won’t put North Korea back on the terror-sponsor list? Am I out of line to suspect that a deal of some kind was struck? [Update: In its daily press brief on February 5th, State denied that there was any deal. Believe that if you wish. I certainly don’t. The transcript will be here when it’s available.]
So aside from getting one North Korean defector arrested and possibly exposing others to the risk of capture, what exactly did Park’s foolish act accomplish for the people of North Korea? If my speculation above turns out to be right, Park was traded for a very significant ransom payment indeed. Which means that, as I predicted from the beginning, Park’s actions did Kim Jong Il far more good than harm.
Hat tip to a valued reader and friend.
Update:Here’s KCNA’s report. Below the fold, you can read KCNA’s complete “interview” of Park in which he denounces the “false propaganda” about “non-existent human rights abuses” and heaps praise on the benevolence of the Sun of the Nation, who guarantees religious freedom for all! It’s definitely not to be read by those who’ve eaten in the last hour or who have expensive carpeting. I suppose we should keep our minds open until he can explain himself (sigh), but if he really said this, we should only pity him more.
On a side note, I’m deeply disappointed not to have been singled out by name as a source of “false propaganda.” Read the rest of this entry »
A South Korean activist who has been the source of most information about the missionary said Thursday that he has no knowledge of the second American detainee. Jo Sung-rae of the Seoul-based group Pax Koreana said he and fellow activists sent about 150,000 leaflets by balloon across the border into North Korea on Wednesday as part of efforts to let North Koreans know about Park. Jo said the leaflets repeated Park’s demand that North Korean leader Kim Jong Il step down and dismantle camps for political prisoners.
There’s no word on whether it was all of the favorable media attention Robert Park has garnered, or some other reason, that motivated him to do cross over.
There’s no word that this person released a statement before crossing.
There’s no word on whether he brought along his own briefcase full of ransom money … you know, to save “Kim Jong Bill” Richardson the trouble.
Our worst fears for Robert Park and his mission are being realized:
Sources say Robert Park, an ethnic Korean, told them he is an American citizen and came to call for human rights improvements and to urge leader Kim Jong-il “to repent.” In response, the guards beat him to within an inch of his life. Even remaining silent while another person denounces the leader or the system is a punishable offence in North Korea, so the guards were unlikely to react with equanimity in such an uncompromising climate.
The guards then checked Park’s passport and reported the event to the provincial office of the State Safety and Security Agency, who relayed it to headquarters. Officers from headquarters arrived within three days and took Park to Pyongyang.
They merely rebuked the guards for being over-zealous in their beating of Park. “I heard from soldiers that he was beaten so severely that he will need several months to recover,” said a Hoeryong resident who recently fled to China. [Chosun Ilbo]
The brutality of the guards is shocking, even somewhat surprising, even for North Korea. Ordinarily, one might expect North Korean military personnel to be disciplined and well trained on how to deal with foreigners. If this report is true, it is just a small example of how this system inculcates its subjects to brutalize each other, and with contempt for the civilized world. It is also a sad illustration of why non-violence will not change North Korea. Courage is not enough to resist and abolish this evil. The people cannot resist it with their bare hands.
There is also confirmation that Park won’t suffer alone for his choices. From the moment Robert Park crossed the Tumen River on Christmas, I knew that however good Park’s intentions, his mission was doomed to do more harm to others than good. Now, we have evidence that that is in fact so:
A North Korean defector with South Korean citizenship identified only as Kim has been arrested in China for helping an evangelical activist cross into North Korea in an eye-catching stunt to call for human rights there.
“We’ve confirmed through various channels that Kim, who was staying at a hideout in Yanji, Jilin Province, was arrested by Chinese police last Friday,” Kim Sung-min, the head of defector-run station Free North Korea Radio, said Sunday,
Kim was reportedly arrested in possession of video footage of Robert Park’s Christmas Eve crossing of the frozen Duman (or Tumen) River, which marks China’s border with the North. [Chosun Ilbo]
Kim Sung-min, head of the Seoul-based Radio Free North Korea, told Yonhap News Agency that a person identified only by his family name of Kim was arrested Friday by Chinese police at his hiding place in the city of Yanji. [Yonhap]
I doubt we’ve seen the last of the ill effects of what Robert Park has done. One wonders what names and places this defector will now reveal to his Chinese or North Korean interrogators, or what safe houses will have to be abandoned for fear that they’ve been compromised. How many refugees could this man who was arrested have led to safety? How much food could he have helped smuggle in? We have not yet touched on the question of ransom. Park was sincere when he said that he didn’t want his government to ransom him out and help legitimize or perpetuate the very evils he wanted to protest. But when a citizen of the United States is held in unjust captivity in a foreign country, his government is obligated to help him. Park doesn’t have the power to waive that duty.
Like many of you here, my friend Claudia Rosett differs, respectfully, with my views when she writes:
It is now almost three weeks since Park vanished into the shadows of North Korea. As he expected, he was seized by North Korean authorities. Among advocates of human rights for North Korea, his extraordinary act has sparked a debate over whether he was brave, foolish or crazy, and whether there can be any good reason for a man to walk deliberately into the blood-stained grip of Kim Jong-il’s regime.
But Park made his aims and requests quite clear. Before he crossed that frozen river, he gave an interview to Reuters, asking that it be held until he was in North Korea. In that interview, which Reuters released shortly after he had crossed over, Park spelled out “I do not want to be released. I don’t want President Obama to come and pay to get me out.” What he wanted, he said, is for “the North Korean people to be free. Until the concentration camps are liberated, I do not want to come out. If I have to die with them, I will.”
Those were not words of madness, but of passion for good over evil. Park knew what he was walking into. [Claudia Rosett, Forbes]
Rosett’s criticism rings particularly true when she strikes at the complete failure of international institutions to address any of the evils going on in North Korea:
Where in global officialdom has there been serious will and a true campaign to end these horrors? American soldiers are willing to fight and die for freedom, but not since the halt of the Korean War in 1953 have America and its allies actually done battle to try to rid the Korean peninsula of the North’s totalitarian regime. Neither has any international bureaucracy found the methods or backbone to force the Pyongyang regime to open its prisons or free its people. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, for instance, runs a comfortable, well guarded office in Beijing, where in keeping with the wishes of China’s government, the UNHCR politely refrains from offering haven to desperate and hunted North Korean refugees. The International Committee of the Red Cross pays court to Kim, in order to have access to some parts of his domain. But if any ICRC delegates have visited Kim’s gulag, they have not managed to leak the memo.
Robert Park, “American citizen,” looked into that heart of darkness, and walked toward it, calling for life and freedom for the 23 million people of North Korea – a message filled with the passions that are the soul of America itself.
Indeed, it is long past time to treat the institute led by Ban Ki Moon as irrelevant. Extraordinary means will be necessary to address this. But Park’s methods aren’t the ones that are going to effect change. There is much in what Ms. Rosett says that I agree with. There may be much that you disagree with, though I ask that if you express that, please be nice. I’m invited to her house this week.
None of this changes the fact that Robert Park is guilty of no crime and was unjustly beaten and imprisoned by a regime so brutal and intolerant that it would do so for no greater “crime” than the peaceful submission of a petition to its tyrant. The regime’s brutality toward Robert Park is just one more injustice added to many. I had hoped that the North Koreans would simply turn Park around at the border, but that didn’t happen, and it worries me what Robert Park, a man who meant the best for others, is now enduring. And as much as I worry about Park, I worry even more about those endangered by his actions.
If you want to keep up with Park’s situation, this website is aggregating news links about him. He’s been in North Korea for almost a month now, and I’m that sure for him, it already feels like much longer than that.
Does anyone know anything about these people, and are they legit?
I know some of you think I’ve been tough on Robert Park, but when I compare what he did to what these people are doing, there’s simply no comparing the relative capacity of the two techniques to change lives and minds. Even to plenty of us non-believers, things like this are so admirable that they’ve persuaded me that Christianity will be Kim Jong Il’s undoing and North Korea’s rebirth. People very seldom take risks like this for strangers without the belief in a higher power and the selfless cohesion to a group that those beliefs can inspire. Good for them. I wonder how many lives they’ll save.
I’ve done a great deal of thinking and writing about the topic of smuggling over the last few days, especially food smuggling, but more on that later.
The North’s official Korean Central News Agency said in a brief dispatch Tuesday that the American was detained and under investigation after illegally entering through the North Korea-China border last Thursday. [AP]
I suppose this comes as no surprise. The North Koreans don’t identify Robert Park by name, but I think we can assume it’s him.
You don’t have to agree with Park’s methods to pity him now. There are two theories here: one, that North Korea will want to use Park as a bargaining chip and will keep him in what passes for a gilded cage in North Korea. That was the theory I’d inclined to when I gave this interview, but Tim Peters — Tim is one of those rare people I consider a hero — added a point that chills me:
Tim Peters, an activist in Seoul who knows Mr Park, tried to persuade him against the plan, which he characterised as “reckless”. “I found out about Robert’s plan three days before he left for China,” he said in an interview. “By that time, however, he already turned off his cellphone and was not responding to e-mails any longer.
“I completely acknowledge that Robert Park’s heart was very much in the right place, which I have to make very clear. But I personally disagree whether that will necessarily be an effective way.”
With Mr Park in custody, observers said, North Korean authorities will want to extract any information he may have about missionaries in China and others who work underground helping North Korean refugees. “He knows activists in China and throughout north-east Asia,” Mr Peters said.
Clearly Robert Park is a man with his heart in the right place, but who has lost possession of his mind. As indefensibly foolish as his move was, I’m not sure he’s in a state to bear full mental responsibility for it. I don’t think anyone can deny that these are the actions of a troubled person, and that a man of equal devotion and greater judgment would have simply gone to work for the underground railroad, or gone into the business of smuggling in food, radios, bibles, or even guns — for what North Korea needs more than anything else is the capacity to do what people must “when government becomes destructive of these ends.” I fear for Robert Park as I feared for Laura Ling and Euna Lee, but as then, my greater fear now is what he’ll tell his captors.
And as always, Claudia Rosett’s take is worth reading, especially her kind words for this site.
Update, 29 Dec 09:
My co-blogger Dan Bielefeld has a little more about Robert Park’s activism before he crossed into North Korea. Park seems to have been the driving force behind this group, which was one of the groups that participated on this march to Seoul Station and organized some of the events at the station thereafter. I’m not going to relate all of the details now; Dan is busy with other things now but I want to give him the chance to tell the whole story himself when he concludes that other business.
When I look at the pictures of those demonstrations, I’m struck by how few Korean faces there are in those crowds, but also by the obvious sincerity of all those in attendance of all nationalities. Robert Park might have done a lot more good if he’d stayed in Seoul and helped launch balloons, or recruited a few cells of people to expand smuggling routes across the Chicom-North Korean border.
Update 2, 29 Dec 09:
A reader forwards another purported statement by Park. I don’t have reason to doubt it, but can’t confirm it. Read the rest of this entry »
Reuters is reporting that Robert Park, a 28 year-old American, has walked across the Tumen River from China to the North Korean town of Hoeryong, which is infamous for being both the birthplace of Kim Jong Il’s mother and the town nearest to Camp 22. Park’s apparent objectives were (1) to get himself arrested and (2) thereby raise global attention about North Korea’s brutal political prison camps. Rest assured that Park will accomplish Objective Number One. The North Korean soldiers who arrested Laura Ling and Euna Lee in March are still being lauded as heroes.
The North Koreans have yet to confirm that they have Park in custody.
Park was known, but not well known, among American activists working to bring attention to North Korean human rights issues, help North Korean refugees, and pressure North Korea and the governments that sustain it with aid. Fellow activists who’ve e-mailed me in the last several hours describe Park as something of a fringe figure someone who orbited around them, but whose views were neither influential nor particularly well known to many of them. If Park was plugged into any activist organization, it must have been South Korean. Yet Park obviously wasn’t acting completely alone, and this stunt appears to have been premeditated:
Activists told Reuters that Robert Park, 28, had crossed into North Korea from China on Friday, while South Korea’s Yonhap news agency and the Kukmin Ilbo newspaper quoted activists who went with him to the border as saying he had crossed at a sparsely patrolled point near the northeast border city of Hoeryong.
Park was quoted by activists who went with the border as shouting when he went across: “I am an American citizen. I am bringing God’s love. God loves you.” The activists asked not to be named due to security concerns.
Park told to Reuters in Seoul earlier this week that he saw it as his duty as a Christian to make the journey and did not want the U.S. government to try to free him. “I don’t want President Obama to come and pay to get me out. But I want the North Korean people to be free,” Park said on Wednesday before departing for China.
“Until the concentration camps are liberated, I do not want to come out. If I have to die with them, I will. (For) these innocent men, women and children, as Christians, we need to take the cross for them. The cross means that we sacrifice our lives for the redemption of others,” he said. [Reuters, Jon Herskovitz]
You’re on your own making sense of that one. Obviously, Park willfully confronted a grave risk, and it’s entirely possible he won’t come back from North Korea for a very long time, if ever. He doesn’t want to be ransomed out, and I hope (but doubt) there will be general agreement that he shouldn’t be. Yet given the amount of criticism heaped on Laura Ling and Euna Lee, Park will probably draw much harsher criticism and evoke less sympathy. If Park’s goal was to strike a blow against the North Korean regime, it’s far more likely that he’ll end up being traded back to a tool like Bill Richardson for a ransom paid in the form of money, diplomatic concessions, and political legitimacy. The only winners will be North Korea’s most opportunistic apologists in America and Kim Jong Il, who will again show everyone how magnanimous he can be toward our foolish children … for the right price. Park’s stunt will assuredly set back the very cause he claims to want to advance.
I’ve posted a copy of what’s purported to be Park’s statement below the fold.
Update: The description of Park’s bizarre behavior as he crossed the border further calls into question just what he hoped to accomplish, and whether that hope is remotely realistic.
A 29-year-old American Christian, claiming God showed him a vision of North Korea’s liberation and redemption, has entered the country to urge leader Kim Jong-Il to repent, activists said Saturday. Robert Park, a US citizen of Korean ancestry, crossed the frozen Tumen River from China and walked into the North without permission on Christmas Day, they said.
“While crossing the frozen river in a snowstorm, Park shouted loud, saying ‘I’m a US citizen, I came here to proclaim God’s love’,” a colleague of Park’s told AFP, quoting others who saw Park cross the border. “But all were silent on the other side of the river. We assume he was arrested by North Korean border guards there. But we don’t know about his fate,” he said on condition of anonymity.
Park, a self-proclaimed seer and activist, is a leader of an international campaign for North Korean human rights called “Freedom and Life For All North Koreans: 2009,” his colleague said. The group describes itself as a worldwide coalition of Christian ministries and activists working to promote human rights in the North.
Park reportedly carried a letter addressed to Kim and other leaders calling on them to repent. “I proclaim Christ’s love and forgiveness towards you today. God promises mercy and clemency for those who repent,” Park said in the letter, which was made public Saturday. “He loves you and wants to save you and all of North Korea today,” he said.
US embassy officials said they had no information on the reported incident. [AFP]
There are many brave Christian activists who risk lengthy terms in Chinese prisons to help guide North Korean refugees to safety, smuggle Bibles into North Korea, support its underground house churches, and propagate the blasphemy that there are gods greater than Kim Jong Il (a particularly worthy one is Helping Hands Korea). Those groups are doing much to help North Korea’s most vulnerable people and subvert its brutal system from the bottom up. One of those activists, Steve Kim, recently spent four years in a Chinese prison for sheltering North Korean refugees. Park, by contrast, seems to be one whose madness happened to find a vehicle in religion.
As easy as it is for us to reject the ridiculous notion that this quixotic act might cause Kim Jong Il to repent and experience a religious conversion, Park’s madness is only a few degrees removed from our foreign policy establishment’s faith that the right Special Envoy can inspire Kim Jong Il to repent and experience a diplomatic conversion. Scratch almost anyone in the State Department’s East Asia Bureau today and there’s a Robert Park who thinks that he’s The One who can do it. No doubt, as we speak, junior and has-been diplomats all along the Eastern Seaboard are imagining themselves escorting Robert Park up the steps of a charter flight at Sunan Airport, having left behind enough ransom aid to run a small concentration camp for years.
Late last night (the night of December 25th, Seoul-time) a couple Korean media outlets reported a Korean American, Robert Park, crossed from China into North Korea.
Twelve hours later I couldn’t find anything more on the story, and I wondered if maybe Park had not carried it out. But within the last hour Reuters also has the story, though no comment from the North Korean government as of yet.
SEOUL (Reuters) - A U.S. human rights activist trying to raise global attention about the suffering of the North Korean people has crossed into the reclusive state, other activists and South Korean media said on Saturday. [article]
Disclosure, I have met Robert Park or seen him on several occasions, though I’ve never talked to him at length and don’t really know him very well. I am posting this before running out the door, and may not have time to write more on it for some time. But when he gets the chance I imagine Joshua may have plenty of thoughts, analysis, and perhaps further developments that we all come to this site for.
Our worst fears for Robert Park and his mission are being realized: