U.S. Urges North Korea to Fulfill Deal

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/31/world/asia/31korea.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
By Reuters
December 31, 2007

WASHINGTON (Reuters) — North Korea has not met its commitment to account fully for its nuclear activities by the end of 2007 under a disarmament agreement, the United States said Sunday, urging North Korea to comply with its obligations.

North Korea, which tested a nuclear device in 2006, is facing a deadline at 11 a.m., Eastern time, on Dec. 31 to disclose details of its nuclear program under a disarmament-for-aid deal it reached with the United States, China, Russia, Japan and South Korea.

“It is unfortunate that North Korea has not yet met its commitments by providing a complete and correct declaration of its nuclear programs and slowing down the process of disablement,” a State Department spokesman, Tom Casey, said in a statement.

“We urge North Korea to deliver a complete and correct declaration of all its nuclear weapons programs and nuclear weapons and proliferation activities and complete the agreed disablement.”

American and South Korean officials have called on North Korea to say how much plutonium it has produced — about 110 pounds by the United States’ estimates — and respond to American suspicions about a secret program to enrich uranium for weapons.

Protesters Worldwide to Rally against China's 'Flagrant' Human Rights Violations

http://christianpost.com/article/20071129/30278_Protesters_Worldwide_to_Rally_against_China%27s_%27Flagrant%27_Human_Rights_Violations.htm
By Ruby Hwang
November 29, 2007

Demonstrations, petition drives, and prayer vigils will mark the “International Protest Against China’s Violent Treatment of North Korea Refugees” on Friday and Saturday at Chinese consulates and embassies in major cities around the world, including those in Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Holland, Japan, Norway, Spain, South Korea, the United Kingdom and the United States.

“The demonstrations are a way of pressuring the Chinese government to comply with their obligations under the U.N. Convention on Status of Refugees and its 1967 Protocol,” says Lindsay Vessey, the advocacy coordinator for Open Doors USA, which is a member of the North Korea Freedom Coalition. “Under this convention, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHRC) should have access to the North Koreans refugees hiding in China – estimated at 100,000 to 300,000 – and be able to protect and help them find asylum in other countries like the U.S. and South Korea. Yet, China is deporting refugees back to North Korea where they face terrible punishment.”

It is said that at least 500,000 North Koreans have crossed the border over to China in the past 10 years. Although the U.N. Special Rapporteur on North Korea considers the North Koreans who flee to China “refugees” deserving of protection, China has signed an agreement with its communist ally to return refugees back to North Korea where they face imprisonment, torture, and sometimes execution for leaving the country – a state crime.

China, in defense of its actions, has claimed North Koreans entering its country are “economic migrants” and not refugees and thus it has the right to return them.

“For several years both the Chinese and North Korean authorities have implemented measures to close the border,” notes Suzanne Scholte, chairman of the North Korean Freedom Coalition. “Currently the Chinese authorities are working more aggressively with North Korean agents to hunt down and repatriate the North Korean refugees. We have heard several reports that North Korean agents are posing as refugees to draw out both humanitarian workers and true refugees as part of this escalating crackdown. Even refugees in jail are being used as 'bait' to draw out potential rescuers, so that Chinese authorities can arrest them.

“The Chinese government needs to know that Christians around the world are aware and care about the government’s flagrant human rights violations and that we are committed to praying and assisting these refugees,” she adds. Scholte is urging people from around the world join those who are protesting against the injustice and praying for the refugees, many of whom are Christians.

“We need everyone to join and support these events as the situation in China is worse than ever for North Korean refugees,” she says. “Some cities will deliver petitions; some will stage protests and demonstrations. Wherever you are in the world, please take part in this effort. Please remember the suffering of the North Korean refugees and take a stand for them so that together we can help end the most avoidable human rights tragedy occurring in the world today.”

U.S. human rights activists have urged people not to travel to Beijing to attend the 2008 Olympics unless China grants the United Nation’s refugee agency, UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees), access to North Koreans hiding in its territory.

North Korea is currently one of the most repressive regimes in the world and is ranked by the ministry Open Doors as the world’s worst persecutor of Christians. Citizens of the communist state are forced to adhere to a personality cult that revolves around worshipping current dictator Kim Jong Il and his deceased father, Kim Il Sung.

For more information on a specific event this weekend, contact the North Korea Freedom Coalition at sueyoonlogan@gmail.com or visit nkfreedom.org.

Christian Post reporter Michelle Vu in Washington contributed to this report.

Pastor Honored for Risking Life for Hundreds of North Korean Refugees

http://ny.christianpost.com/article/missions/112/section/pastor.honored.for.risking.life.for.hundreds.of.north.korean.refugees/1.htm
By Katherine T. Phan
October 17, 2007

NEW YORK — A pastor who has helped rescue North Koreans fleeing the country through an “underground railroad” was honored Tuesday night with the Civil Courage Prize.

The Rev. Phillip Jun Buck, originally from North Korea, accepted the $50,000 award at the Harold Pratt House where The Train Foundation recognized his “steadfast resistance to evil at great personal risk.”

Buck began his speech by thanking God and went on to describe the plight of North Korean refugees.

“I would like to receive this award on behalf of all North Korean refugees who have been killed or died because they have acted with an instinct to survive,” said Buck, whose daughter, Grace Yoon Yi, assisted with translation.

The 66-year-old pastor said he would use the prize money toward helping underground churches in North Korea, North Korean orphans in China, and North Korean refugee women who are victims to human trafficking.

The relationship between Buck and North Korea runs deep.

The North Korean native was separated from his family during the Korean War and spent his childhood in an orphanage in South Korea. He received an education and even a college degree through the support of an elderly Christian woman.

Buck later immigrated to the United States, where he pastored a Seattle church for 24 years until he was sent by his denomination as a missionary to Russia in the early 90s.

Eventually, the pastor expanded his ministry to China where through the course of ten years, he provided financial support, shelter, and food to over 1,000 North Korean refugees.

Most of the refugees had fled from the communist regime of North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il, whose rule has been marked by terror, famine, disease, and political oppression.

Melanie Kirkpatrick, Deputy Editorial Page Editor of The Wall Street Journal, who nominated Buck for the award, said that the deplorable situation continued even once the refugees reached China.

Men were sold into slavery and women were sold as brides or sexual slaves to Chinese men, described Kirkpatrick.

“Still, it was a better life than what they left behind in North Korea,” she added.

Furthermore, continued Kirkpatrick, instead of accepting the refugees, China even offered bounties for refugees and repatriated them back to North Korea, where they face imprisonment, torture, and sometimes execution for leaving the country – a state crime.

“North Korean citizens and refugees are human, each having a right to eat, a right to live, and a right to enjoy freedom,” proclaimed Buck.

In 1998, the Korean pastor said he made the decision to dedicate his life to helping refugees and “to live and to die with them.”

“My life calling is as a missionary,” said Buck. “I have always shared the word of God every time I gave money to these North Korean refugees. I did so to inspire and give faith in the future.”

In 2001, Buck began to move refugees to South Korea. To this day, he has guided over one hundred North Korean refugees out of China and ultimately to safety in South Korea.

But his efforts did not go unnoticed by Chinese authorities, who discovered his identity after obtaining his passport while raiding his apartment, where refugees were housed.

After escaping the arrest, Buck, then known as John Yoon, returned to the United States where he underwent the legal process to change his name.

“I did not see what I was doing as something wrong,” he said. “God has instructed us to help those who are in need, and I take that instruction very seriously.”

Buck returned to China in 2002 to continue his work but was arrested and imprisoned in May 2005. He was released August 2006.

“I have huge respect … for his courage and his cause,” said the Rt. Hon. Sir Geoffrey Howe, former Foreign Secretary of Britain, in his address speech.

Steve Kim, a furniture importer from Huntington , N.Y., who was recently released after serving time in the same prison as Buck, was also present at the award ceremony.

An Activist for North Koreans Wins Release

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1279419,00.html
By Bill Powell
August 2, 2006

For the last 15 months, Phillip Buck, 69, an evangelical pastor from Seattle, Washington sat in a jail cell in northeastern China his health deteriorating, not knowing when—or even if—he would get out and see his family in the U.S. again. The only thing he knew, he wrote in a letter from the jailhouse earlier this year, is that his cause was just.

Now he is free. Buck had been a key member of the so-called underground railroad that moves refugees from North Korea through China to safety in South Korea. On Monday, Aug. 21, the Chinese government released him, having convicted him of transiting people illegally out of the country. His sentence — following more than a year of jail time in the city of Yanjie— was deportation and a fine. "I was jailed with killers, robbers and other hardened criminals," Buck told TIME, "but I did nothing wrong. All I was doing was helping the [North Korean] refugees." Buck had devoted his ministry since 1997 to the cause of aiding North Koreans. Then, with North Korea in the midst of a famine that killed thousands, he set up and operated a small noodle factory there. But he soon decided "he wanted to help in a more direct way," his daughter Grace says, and by the late 90s became involved in the loose network of people—some affiliated with Christian churches in South Korea, Europe and the U.S.—who try to bring North Koreans out via China.

They are not always successful. In 2002, Buck had a narrow escape. He had helped moved "a lot of people" of people out of China and into South Korea by then, his daughter says, and his organization had been infiltrated by an informant. Chinese authorities raided one of Buck' s safe houses and arrested a group of refugees en route to South Korea. Buck' s apartment in Yanji, in northeastern China, was searched, but he was out of the country at the time and escaped capture. His family pleaded with him not to return -- to no avail-- and in May of 2005 he was arrested in Yanji. "They [the Chinese authorities] had been after me ever since 2002," Buck says. His sentence includes a ban from ever going back to China, but Buck says he still has a network of people in the country helping run the underground railroad, and he will now figure out ways to help them from afar, in part by raising money to house and feed North Korean refugees in China. "Every day in prison--457 days—I thought about the refugees and prayed to God to help them. My work is nowhere near finished."

Regular Freight Rail Service Starts Between 2 Koreas

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/12/world/asia/12korea.html
By Choe Sang-Hun
December 12, 2007

DORASAN STATION, South Korea — For President Roh Moo-hyun, who steps down in February and is barred from running for another term, the journey on Tuesday of a 12-car South Korean freight train across the world’s most heavily fortified border on Tuesday was one of the last hurrahs of his reconciliation policy with the Communist North.

The opening of regular cargo rail service between the two Koreas for the first time in 56 years came a week before South Korea’s presidential election.

The man who appears almost certain to succeed Mr. Roh — the conservative front-runner, Lee Myung-bak — has vowed to review all the major joint economic projects Mr. Roh agreed to with the North during his final months in office.

“If elected, Mr. Lee will link economic cooperation with the North’s denuclearization,” said Nam Sung-wook, a professor at Korea University and a North Korea policy adviser to Mr. Lee.

“The Roh government equated engaging the North with embracing it,” Mr. Nam said. “But Mr. Lee believes that engagement should include sticks too. He will offer carrots if North Korea behaves well, but will use sticks if it doesn’t.”

In recent months, Mr. Roh and the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-il, have agreed on a series of economic projects estimated to be worth as much as $15 billion, with Mr. Roh hoping that the momentum toward reconciliation will be hard to break, no matter who becomes the next president in the South in the Dec. 19 election.

Mr. Roh has said that he sees no alternative to helping the North rebuild its economy. A stable North Korea will help South Korea attract foreign investors and reduce the cost of eventual reunification, he says.

On Tuesday, Lee Chul, the head of the South Korean national railway, saw the northbound train off from Dorasan, the last station on the South Korean side of the border. “This is a deeply emotional moment for Koreans,” he said.

“Today, we link our arteries,” he added.

The freight rail service inaugurated Tuesday is scheduled to operate five times a week on a track about 10 miles long.

Cross-border train service was cut in 1951, during the Korean War, which ended two years later in a cease-fire rather than with a peace treaty, leaving the two Koreas technically at war.

Although hundreds of motor vehicles already cross the border daily, resuming the inter-Korean rail line has been a top ambition of recent South Korean leaders, who hoped it would bolster trade between the Koreas and provide South Korea with a cheaper, faster way of carrying its exports to the Chinese, Russian and European markets.

But for now, the rail line links only the South Korean border town of Munsan with Kaesong, a North Korean frontier city where South Koreans run factories with inexpensive North Korean labor. On Tuesday, it carried curbstones for roads and raw materials for shoes. Hours later, it returned to the South with finished shoes, garments and hydraulic pumps, all made in Kaesong.

Next year, a North Korean train will take over the daily shuttle.

When Mr. Roh met with Mr. Kim in Pyongyang in October, South Korea agreed to help the North renovate its main rail line between Kaesong and Sinuiju, North Korea’s main entry point to China. The project could cost $150 million, according to officials in Seoul.

“I fear that the two governments struck many deals ahead of the election in the South, hoping that the next government in the South will have no choice but to honor them,” Mr. Lee, the presidential candidate for the opposition Grand National Party, said in a newspaper interview last week. “But I will scrutinize each of those agreements to see if they are justified, or if they should be considered only after North Korea dismantles its nuclear weapons programs.”

NKorea May Miss Deadline for Declaration

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Koreas-Nuclear.html
By the Associated Press
December 27, 2007

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) -- North Korea may miss a year-end deadline to declare all its nuclear programs, South Korea's foreign minister said Thursday, after the North warned it would also slow work to disable its atomic facilities due to delayed aid.

North Korea had promised earlier this year to disable its main nuclear complex and give a declaration of all its nuclear programs by the end of the year in return for international aid.

''The timing was initially the end of December but that may go past the target date,'' Foreign Minister Song Min-soon told reporters.

''When the declaration is made is important, but it should be made in a sincere manner. We are making efforts to achieve a sincere declaration,'' he said.

The North began disabling key facilities at its nuclear complex north of Pyongyang. However, diplomats have said the North is likely to miss a year-end deadline for the disablement measures, because a key step -- removing fuel rods from the reactor -- could take several months.

''We are now in a critical juncture,'' Song said, adding that problems in meeting the deadline lie in both the disablement and disclosure.

On Wednesday, Hyun Hak Pong, a vice director-general at the North's Foreign Ministry, said economic compensation was ''being delayed'' and that meant the country had ''no option but to adjust the speed of the disablement process.''

The South Korean foreign minister, however, downplayed the remarks and said the disablement work was going well.

In Washington, U.S. State Department spokesman Gonzalo Gallegos said Wednesday he was not aware of any slowdown in aid and the U.S. expects ''further heavy fuel oil shipments and other energy assistance to move forward in the near future.''

A Japanese newspaper reported Thursday that the U.S. and North Korea disagree on the amount of plutonium -- a key ingredient for atomic bombs -- that the communist nation has produced, a figure expected to be included in the declaration.

The regional daily Tokyo Shimbun quoted unnamed U.S. and North Korean officials as saying the North has told the U.S. it has produced about 66 pounds of the nuclear material, considerably less than a U.S. estimates of more than 110 pounds.

Song declined Thursday to address which amount was correct, saying the issue would be dealt with after the North gave its declaration.

FYI

Event information has been updated. Check these posts frequently as they will continue to be updated until the event becomes finalized.

SKorea's President - Elect Urges NKorea

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-SKorea-Presidential-Election.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
By the Associated Press
December 20, 2007

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) -- President-elect Lee Myung-bak said Thursday he would not shy from criticizing North Korea's authoritarian regime, ending a taboo by a decade of liberal South Korean leaders who have aggressively sought closer ties with Pyongyang.

Lee, who won a landslide victory in Wednesday's vote, represents the conservative opposition Grand National Party that has been heavily critical of the South's engagement policy toward the North.

The new leader, a pragmatic former Hyundai CEO, is considered less hard-line, although he has called for stricter reciprocity from Pyongyang for Seoul's aid.

''I think unconditionally avoiding criticism of North Korea would not be appropriate,'' Lee told a news conference the day after the election. ''If we try to point out North Korea's shortcomings, with affection, I think that would make North Korean society healthier.''

Lee also urged North Korea to dismantle its nuclear weapons program and said Seoul would open normal trade only after Pyongyang disarms.

''The most important thing is for North Korea to get rid of its nuclear weapons,'' he said. ''Full-fledged economic exchanges can start after North Korea dismantles its nuclear weapons.''

The North this year began disabling its main nuclear facility under an international accord with the U.S. and other countries -- the first time Pyongyang has scaled back its development of atomic weapons. North Korea has promised to declare all its nuclear programs by the end of the year that will be eventually dismantled.

Lee won 48.7 percent of the Wednesday vote with the largest margin of victory ever in a South Korean presidential election -- besting his closest rival by more than 22 percent.

Under the past two liberal presidents, South Korea had failed to publicly raise human rights problems in North Korea out of concern its criticism may anger Pyongyang and complicate reconciliation between the countries that remain technically at war. The 1950-53 Korean War ended with a cease-fire that has never been replaced by a peace treaty.

The two Koreas embarked on unprecedented rapprochement after their leaders met for their first-ever summit in 2000, and the South is now North Korea's No. 2 trade partner after communist ally China.

The South also has been a main food donor for the impoverished North, but international monitors have raised questions about its ability to verify if aid gets to the needy and is not diverted to the military.

Later Thursday, Lee spoke by phone with President Bush, pledging to strengthen relations with Washington and work together to resolve the standoff over North Korea's nuclear programs, Lee's office said in a statement.

During the seven-minute conversation, Bush congratulated Lee on his election and stressed the importance of making the Korean peninsula free of nuclear threats and taking a stern attitude on Pyongyang to achieve that goal, the statement said.

Lee accepted an invitation from Bush to visit the U.S., the statement said.

Earlier, Lee told U.S. Ambassador Alexander Vershbow he thought ''Korea-U.S. relations lacked trust a bit for the past five years'' and that he hoped that would change.

Lee earned his victory on a wave of discontent for incumbent President Roh Moo-hyun, whom many believe bungled the economy and dragged down the Asian nation's rapid growth.

Voters also appeared willing to overlook accusations of ethical lapses that dogged Lee throughout his campaign. Just days before the vote, the parliament approved an independent counsel investigation into alleged stock manipulation by Lee that is to be completed before the Feb. 25 inauguration.

Lee has said he will step down if found at fault.

Kang Jae-sup, chairman of Lee's Grand National Party, asked Roh on Thursday in a radio interview to veto the independent counsel bill to allow for a smooth transition of power.

Presidential spokesman Cheon Ho-seon said the request has not yet been discussed. Another spokesman, Oh Young-jin, noted Roh had earlier expressed his intention to sign the bill.

Lee's main campaign promise was labeled the ''747'' pledge -- promising to raise annual growth to 7 percent, double the country's per capita income to $40,000 and lift South Korea to among the world's top seven economies.

Lee said Thursday he would court foreign investment and ''foster an environment where companies can operate freely.''

''The atmosphere was anti-business and anti-corporate so that companies were reluctant to invest,'' he said of his liberal predecessors.

------

Associated Press writers Jae-soon Chang, Hyung-jin Kim and Kwang-tae Kim contributed to this report.

Philharmonic Agrees to Play in North Korea

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/10/arts/music/10phil.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1
By Daniel J. Wakin
December 10, 2007

Adding a cultural wrinkle to the diplomatic engagement between the United States and North Korea, the New York Philharmonic plans to visit Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, in February, taking the legacy of Beethoven, Bach and Bernstein to one of the world’s most isolated nations.

The trip, at the invitation of North Korea, will be the first significant cultural visit by Americans to that country, and it comes as the United States is offering the possibility of warmer ties with a country that President Bush once consigned to the “axis of evil.”

“We haven’t even had Ping-Pong diplomacy with these people,” said Ambassador Christopher R. Hill, the Bush administration’s main diplomat for negotiations with North Korea and the assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs.

Just last week Mr. Bush sent a letter to Kim Jong-il, North Korea’s leader, suggesting that ties would improve if North Korea fully disclosed all nuclear programs and got rid of its nuclear weapons. Conservatives have criticized the Bush administration for engaging with North Korea when it has violated nuclear promises, and in the face of recent intelligence indicating its possible assistance to Syria in beginning work on a reactor.

State Department officials said the orchestra’s invitation from North Korea and its acceptance represented a potential opening in that Communist nation’s relationship with the outside world, and a softening of its unrelenting anti-United States propaganda.

“It would signal that North Korea is beginning to come out of its shell, which everyone understands is a long-term process,” Mr. Hill said. “It does represent a shift in how they view us, and it’s the sort of shift that can be helpful as we go forward in nuclear weapons negotiations.” [...]

The concert is planned for Feb. 26 at the end of a previously planned tour in China. The orchestra is expected to stay in Pyongyang for two nights, with some teaching and a ceremonial dinner thrown in.

Some questions have been raised about the appropriateness of visiting a country run by one of the world’s most repressive governments. North Korea’s policies have been blamed in part for the famine-related starvation of perhaps two million people and it confines hundreds of thousands of people in labor camps.

If the orchestra goes to Pyongyang, “it will be doing little more than participating in a puppet show whose purpose is to lend legitimacy to a despicable regime,” Terry Teachout, an arts critic and blogger, wrote on the online opinion pages of The Wall Street Journal in late October.

Richard V. Allen, a national security adviser to President Ronald Reagan, and Chuck Downs — both board members of the United States Committee for Human Rights in North Korea — made a similar point on Oct. 28 on the Op-Ed page of The New York Times. “It would be a mistake to hand Kim Jong-il a propaganda coup,” they wrote.

Mr. Hill acknowledged that “in a very theoretical way” any kind of opening lends legitimacy to the North Korean government. “But not opening up has not had any positive effect in bringing North Korea out of its shell,” he said. [...]

Engaging North Korea: Kim Dae-jung’s Sunshine Policy

http://cns.miis.edu/research/korea/nuc/engage.htm

On this is site is a quick overview of the Sunshine Policiy. Please read this site, as a thorough understanding of the Sunshine Policy will aid in the discussions and debates next semester. Keep in mind that this site is only a recommendation to gain a minimal knowledge of the Sunshine Policiy and that also, it was last updated in September 2005. Other links will be provided for source dynamic at a later time.

South Korea's Lee Ahead in Exit Polls

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-SKorea-Presidential-Election.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
By the Associated Press
December 19, 2007

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) -- Former Hyundai CEO Lee Myung-bak claimed victory Wednesday in South Korea's presidential election, as voters overlooked fraud allegations in hopes he will revive the economy. [...]

Lee, a former Seoul mayor who turned 66 on election day, has led the race for months. His victory ends a decade of liberal rule in the South, during which the country embarked on unprecedented reconciliation with rival North Korea that has led to restored trade and travel across the heavily armed frontier dividing the peninsula. [...]

Candidate Lee Hoi-chang, who was trailing in third with 15.7 percent of the vote, congratulated Lee Myung-bak on his win.

''I hope he would uphold the people's yearning for a change in government and correct what the outgoing government has done wrong in the past,'' he told reporters.

The office of liberal President Roh Moo-hyun congratulated Lee.

''We respect the people's choice shown in this election,'' presidential spokesman Cheon Ho-seon said in a statement. [...]

Lee has pledged to take a more critical view of Seoul's engagement with North Korea and seek closer U.S. ties. Efforts to end North Korea's nuclear weapons ambitions stand at a critical juncture, with the communist country set to disclose all its programs for eventual dismantlement by a year-end deadline.

State Department spokesman Tom Casey congratulated Lee on his victory.

''We have a long history of cooperation and friendship with South Korea and fully expect that'll continue with this new government,'' he said. ''Certainly, we've got a number of important issues on our bilateral agenda including our mutual cooperation in the six-party talks.'' [...]

Nicknamed ''The Bulldozer'' for his can-do business acumen, Lee's support has been bolstered due to dissatisfaction over the five-year term of Roh, who was constitutionally barred from seeking re-election.

In 2002, Roh was elected after pledging not to ''kowtow'' to the U.S. while also continuing the rapprochement with the North fostered by his predecessor and fellow liberal Kim Dae-jung, who won a Nobel Peace Prize for his ''sunshine'' policy of engagement with Pyongyang.

Country profile: North Korea

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/country_profiles/1131421.stm
Author unknown
October 2, 2007

Overview

After the Korean War, Kim Il-sung introduced the personal philosophy of Juche, or self-reliance, which became a guiding light for North Korea's development. Kim Il-sung's son, Kim Jong-il, is now head of state, but the post of president has been assigned "eternally" to his late father.

Decades of this rigid state-controlled system have led to stagnation and a leadership dependent on the cult of personality.

AT-A-GLANCE Politics: Supreme leader Kim Jong-il heads a secretive, communist regime which tolerates no dissent Economy: North Korea's command economy is dilapidated, hit by natural disasters, poor planning and a failure to modernise International: With its nuclear ambitions, North Korea presents a serious challenge to those trying to rein it in; the two Koreas are still technically at war Timeline

Aid agencies have estimated that up to two million people have died since the mid-1990s because of acute food shortages caused by natural disasters and economic mismanagement. The country relies on foreign aid to feed millions of its people.

The totalitarian state also stands accused of systematic human rights abuses. Reports of torture, public executions, slave labour, and forced abortions and infanticides in prison camps have emerged. A US-based rights group has estimated that there are up to 200,000 political prisoners in North Korea.

Pyongyang has accused successive South Korean governments of being US "puppets", but South Korean President Kim Dae-jung's visit in 2000 signalled a thaw in relations. Seoul's "sunshine policy" towards the north aimed to encourage change through dialogue and aid.

But this tentative reaching-out to the world was dealt a blow in 2002 by Pyongyang's decision to reactivate a nuclear reactor and to expel international inspectors. The country is said to have a handful of nuclear weapons and a uranium enrichment programme. It has declared itself a nuclear power and has an active missile programme.

In October 2006 North Korea said it had successfully tested a nuclear weapon, spreading alarm around the region.

Diplomatic efforts have aimed to rein in North Korea's nuclear ambitions. After years of on-and-off talks, a deal was thrashed out in February 2007 under which Pyongyang agreed to shut down its main nuclear reactor in return for fuel and aid.

North Korea admitted International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors, who verified the shutdown of the Yongbyon reactor in July. This began what IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei called a "complicated process" that would eventually disable the reactor and other nuclear facilities in the country.

The February deal was delayed in June over the slow unfreezing of North Korean funds held in a Macau bank under US-instigated sanctions. Progress followed swiftly on their release, when South Korea resumed food aid and supplied fuel oil to the North.

North Korea maintains one of the world's largest standing armies and militarism pervades everyday life. But standards of training, discipline and equipment in the force are said to be low.

In 2002 US President George W Bush named the country as part of an "axis of evil".

Leaders

Eternal president: Kim Il-sung (deceased)

Chairman, National Defence Commission: Kim Jong-il

Beyond the elaborate personality cult through which he rules, little is known about Kim Jong-il's character.

"Dear Leader" Kim Jong-il

He is rarely photographed and is almost never heard in radio and TV broadcasts.

After the death of Kim Il-sung in 1994, Kim Jong-il did not immediately assume his father's titles; there were reports that Kim Il-sung's first choice as successor was the younger brother, Kim Yong-ju. Kim Jong-il eventually became head of the Korean Workers' Party in 1997.

He is credited with writing six operas in two years, and with personally designing the huge Juche tower in Pyongyang.

In recent years he has met several world leaders, including the South Korean president and the Japanese prime minister. He has attended summits in Moscow and Beijing.

Mr Kim is sometimes caricatured as a reclusive playboy with bouffant hair, platform shoes and a taste for cognac.

There has been speculation about his health. Mr Kim is said to have gastric problems arising from his love of spicy food. Other reports suggest that he has liver problems. North Korea watchers believe that one of Mr Kim's three sons will become the dictator's anointed heir.

Kim Jong-il was born in Siberia in 1941 during his father's period of exile in the former Soviet Union.

But official North Korean accounts say he was born in a log cabin at his father's guerrilla base on the country's highest mountain - an event marked by a double rainbow and a new star in the sky.

Premier: Kim Yong-il

Media

Radio and TV sets in North Korea are pre-tuned to government stations that pump out a steady stream of propaganda. The state has been dubbed the world's worst violator of press freedom by the media rights body Reporters Without Frontiers.

Press outlets and broadcasters - all of them under direct state control - serve up a menu of flattering reports about Kim Jong-il and his daily agenda. North Korea's economic hardships or famines are not reported.

However, after the historic Korean summit in Pyongyang in 2000, media outlets toned down their fierce denunciations of the Seoul government.

Ordinary North Koreans caught listening to foreign broadcasts risk harsh punishments, such as forced labour.

North Korea has a minimal presence on the internet. The web pages of North Korea's official news agency, KCNA, are hosted by the agency's bureau in Japan.

North Korean reveals childhood torture

http://www.washingtontimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071030/FOREIGN/110300055/1001
by Andrew Salmon
October 30, 2007

SEOUL — He says he was tortured as a teenager. He watched as his mother and brother were executed, and until he was 20 years old, North Korean Shin Dong-hyuk had heard of neither Kim Il-sung nor Kim Jong-il.

In a testimony to stunned journalists yesterday, Mr. Shin, the first North Korean defector to the South who was born in the North's notorious gulag, revealed a nightmarish world in which inmates and their children suffer lifetime incarceration, are kept ignorant of outside society and undergo forms of torture that are medieval in their barbarism.

"In my heart, I thought: 'Parents committed crimes, but why were innocent children punished?' " he said at a press conference introducing his autobiography "Escape to the Outside World."

"I want to tell the world of this."

Slight, and with a humble manner, he shook as he showed cameramen his extensive scars. His story has shocked even analysts who monitor Pyongyang's human rights abuses.

North Korea claims it is a "worker's paradise," and that it has no political prisoners.

But outside authorities have evidence it operates a vast gulag system thought to hold more than 200,000 political prisoners and their families.

"We didn't believe it," said Kim Sang-hun, head of Seoul's Database Center for North Korean Human Rights, of Mr. Shin's story.

"It took many months before we were convinced he was what he said he was," said Mr. Kim, who debriefed and now cares for Mr. Shin.

Mr. Shin's mother was imprisoned in "Total Control Camp No. 14" in central North Korea, for political crimes. As reward for good work, she was allowed to marry. The couple's "honeymoon" was five nights together before being separated again. Mr. Shin was born in 1982.

There was no maternal affection: The camp's 40,000 to 60,000 inmates were indoctrinated to spy on each other, including family members. His earliest memory is of following his mother to the camp farm to work; he has no recollection of being embraced.

Life consisted of work and criticism sessions. Remarkably, Kim Il-sung, the deceased founder of North Korea, and his son and present ruler, Kim Jong-il — deified elsewhere in North Korea — were unknown to those born in the camps and never mentioned by inmates imprisoned there.

When Mr. Shin was 13, his mother and brother attempted an escape, unsuccessfully. That day, a civilian car met Mr. Shin outside the camp school. He was driven to a secret, underground location.

There, guards demanded details of the plot. Mr. Shin was ignorant of it. He was suspended over a fire. When he screamed, a hook was hacked into his groin. Unconscious, he was slung into a cell with a skeletal old man.

The man cared for the child's festering injuries and gave him his own meager rations. It was the first time Mr. Shin had ever received affection from another human. "I will never forget him," Mr. Shin wrote. "I came to love him more than my parents."

After seven months, Mr. Shin was released to witness his mother's hanging and his brother's execution by shooting. Mr. Shin noticed his father in tears, but he had only one emotion: "I was furious with them; as a result of their crimes, I was subject to torture."

Life continued. His niece was raped and killed by guards. He dropped a sewing machine; guards chopped off a fingertip with a knife. Constantly hungry, he once found three corn kernels in a pile of cow manure, his "lucky day." Unaware of any world beyond the wire, his dreams were to excel at work, gain permission to marry or become a team leader.

Then in 2004, he befriended a new prisoner who had escaped to China, where he was apprehended, returned to North Korea and sent to the prison camp.

Secretly, the inmate told Mr. Shin of the outside world. That knowledge consumed him. For the first time, work became intolerable.

On Jan 2, 2005, while collecting firewood in the mountains, Mr. Shin escaped, lacerating his legs on electrified barbed wire.

He reached China and found asylum at South Korea's Shanghai consulate. There, traumatized by nightmares, he began writing about his life.

Now that his story is told, his life path is uncertain. "I have many choices, but have made no decisions," he said yesterday.

Asked what message he would like to send Kim Jong-il, Mr. Shin thought for a moment then said quietly, "I'd ask him to take one hour to think about the situation in the camps."

Korean War Film Festival: Tae Guk Gi

Program Title: Korean War Film Festival*: Tae Guk Gi
Program Date: February
Program Type: social, educational
Program location: Great Hall




Description:
On Sunday night, this event will show a screening of Tae Guk Gi: The Brotherhood of War, a movie about the Korean War. Individually-wrapped Korean snacks will be provided to couple a cultural experience with the reception of historical knowledge. Following the movie, there will be a Q&A session on the Korean War. Lastly, an announcement will be made inviting the audience to come out to a Duke-UNC, Vision for North Korea big event on the Monday and Tuesday night of the same week.

Goals:
The goal of this proposal is to create a social event, at which students can learn about the division and formation of North and South Korea. At the same time, since this social event precedes the two-night big event, it will serve as a precursor that sets the big event into motion. Through the movie, this social event is crucial in establishing the historical split of the country into a totalitarian North and a democratic South. With this knowledge, the audience can better understand the existence of today’s North Korea, which will be the focus of Monday and Tuesday night.

Over the span of the two nights, the speakers will tell various aspects of their life in North Korea. In order to receive the entire presentation, on Monday night Duke students will have to come to UNC, and on Tuesday night UNC students will have to go to Duke, thereby creating a very joint Duke-UNC event.

On top of being social and educational, the film festival is resourceful for the big event as an asset for advertising. The big event will have its own advertising, but because we will announce the big event at the film festival, winning people to the film festival will advertise for the big event as well. With that said, advertisement for the film festival will create two layers of publicity for the big event. We hope that this educational production really becomes a three-night discovery into the conflict and tensions of North Korea.

*A continuation of the Korean War film festival will proceed with the movie Silmido in a later month of the semester

North Korea

http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/northkorea/index.html



Abstract: North Korea is currently engaged in behavior that is even condemned by China, North Korea's longest supporter. On October 9th, 2007 North Korea set off a small nuclear device. The director of the CIA has said that the test was a "failure" and that the U.S. does not regard North Korea as a nuclear state. North Korea announced its intention to conduct a test on October 3, six days prior, and in doing so became the first nation to give warning of its first nuclear test. The US agreed to meet with North Korea for one-on-one talks concerning the financial crackdown.

Article posted in the New York Times

North Korea is the last Stalinist state on earth, and the latest country to join the nuclear club. Secretive, isolated, heavily militarized and desperately poor, it took steps in the 1990s toward thawing relations with South Korea, but has spent much of the last few years in a still unresolved set of negotiations with its neighbors and the United States over its nuclear program.

North Korea has taken a consistent anti-Washington line since its creation in 1948, denouncing both the United States and South Korea as a puppet of the U.S. Since the end of the Korean War in 1953 the North has not attacked its neighbor, but to this day keeps large concentrations of troops and artillery focused on Seoul, and has regularly engaged in provocations like kidnappings, submarine incursions and missile tests over the Sea of Japan.

The country's founder, the so-called Great Leader, Kim Il-sung, was succeeded at his death in 1994 by his son, the "Dear Leader," Kim Jong-il, an eccentric playboy invariably seen (in his few public appearances) in platform shoes and a khaki jumpsuit.

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In 1994, North Korea reached an agreement with the United States to shelve its nuclear program. In 2002, President Bush included Pyongyang in the "axis of evil," and American officials charged later that year that North Korea had violated the earlier agreement. Pyongyang declared the agreement void and expelled international nuclear inspectors. China joined with the United States, South Korea, Japan and Russia for what became known as the six-party talks. In 2005, an agreement was reached and then scuttled by North Korea, angered by an American-led crackdown on banks doing business with it.

On Oct. 9, 2006, North Korea set off a nuclear device - a small one, which apparently did not detonate completely, according to experts on seismic recordings. Governments around the world condemned the blast, including China, which has been Pyongyang's chief protector for decades. In a policy shift, American officials agreed to meet with North Korea for one-on-one talks concerning the financial crackdown.

In February 2007, an agreement was reached under which North Korea would shut down its plant at Yongbyon, at which it had manufactured nuclear bomb fuel, in return for shipments of fuel oil. Early deadlines for action under the agreement came and went, with North Korea charging that funds from frozen bank accounts had not been returned. But after the funds made their way back to Pyongyang after a complicated series of transactions, the government announced in June 2007 that it was allowing international inspectors to return. - Ford Burkhart, May 31, 2007

News about North Korea, including commentary and archival articles published in The New York Times.

Related: Times Topics: Kim Jong Il