Vision For North Korea-UNC

U.S. Weighs Intercepting North Korean Shipments

2009-06-08T17:44:00.000-07:00

Published: June 7, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/08/world/asia/08korea.html?_r=1&hp

[...]

"While Mr. Obama was in the Middle East and Europe last week, several senior officials said the president’s national security team had all but set aside the central assumption that guided American policy toward North Korea over the past 16 years and two presidencies: that the North would be willing to ultimately abandon its small arsenal of nuclear weapons in return for some combination of oil, nuclear power plants, money, food and guarantees that the United States would not topple its government, the world’s last Stalinesque regime. [...]

---

My opinion exactly since 2005. Finally. Just to add - Kim Dae Joong, the Sunshine Policy, and anything like it was an utter fail. Lucky for S. Korea, sunshine boy Chung wasn't elected to see a repeat of history, not only continuously of maintaining a holocaust regime, but of South Korea's liberal naivity. Obama and Hilary are surprisingly taking the harder line than the Texan dubber of the "axis of evil." I approve.
-JSH

The Tyrant Who Tweets

2009-05-26T07:15:00.000-07:00

Mark MacKinnon

Beijing — From Tuesday's Globe and Mail, Tuesday, May. 26, 2009 09:56AM EDT

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/technology/the-tyrant-who-tweets-following-the-hermit-king/article1152638/

A must read: Professor Kim's article on North Korea's mass games

2009-05-22T18:54:00.000-07:00

"The Bitter Tears Behind Pyongyang's Games"
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Korea/IK08Dg01.html

Watch: Mass Games backdrop warmup
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZhKU8dz4ah8&feature=related

The Juche Ideology

2009-05-22T16:51:00.000-07:00

-JSH

On February 18th and 19th, 2008, Dr. Kim Hyun-sik, who was a former professor at Pyongyang University and a tutor to the dictators' family, came to educate the UNC-Duke student body on North Korea -- an isolationist regime defined by the complete indoctrination of its citizens and the torture and execution of those who fail to obey the State. Particularly on the second night of his presentation, Professor Kim interestingly focused on the totalitarian nation's Juche Ideology and the effects of such an indoctrination on an entire populace. The ideology's inculcation of complete submission to the State, the credence of Kim Il Sung as the Father and Kim Jung Il as the Son, the government's ubiquitous propaganda, and nearly perfect isolationist efforts, put its citizens under a deep spell. To this day, North Koreans are illusioned about the outside world, and their hermit kingdom remains their only reality.

At the presentation, Professor Kim cited the Ten Principles of the Juche Ideology. They are the following:

1. We must give our all in the struggle to unify the entire society with the revolutionary ideology of the Great Leader Kim Il Sung.

2. We must honor the Great Leader comrade Kim Il Sung with all our loyalty.

3. We must make absolute the authority of the Great Leader comrade Kim Il Sung.

4. We must make the Great Leader comrade Kim Il Sung? revolutionary ideology our faith and make his instructions our creed.

5. We must adhere strictly to the principle of unconditional obedience in carrying out the Great Leader comrade Kim Il Sung's instructions.

6. We must strengthen the entire partys ideology and willpower and revolutionary unity, centering on the Great Leader comrade Kim Il Sung.

7. We must learn from the Great Leader comrade Kim Il Sung and adopt the communist look, revolutionary work methods and people-oriented work style.

8. We must value the political life we were given by the Great Leader comrade Kim Il Sung, and loyally repay his great political trust and thoughtfulness with heightened political awareness and skill.

9. We must establish strong organizational regulations so that the entire party, nation and military move as one under the one and only leadership of the Great Leader comrade Kim Il Sung.

10.We must pass down the great achievement of the revolution by the Great Leader comrade Kim Il Sung from generation to generation, inheriting and completing it to the end.

One of Professor Kim's most salient anecdotes from amongst a stream of startling experiences was one that underscored the bizarreness of the Juche Ideology -- bizarre at least to the rest of the world afar from North Korea's totalitarian paradigm. Where Professor Kim taught at Pyongyang University, student leaders were selected by the Worker's Party according to generational loyalties. The student chosen for Class President had a father extremely loyal to the State. Being awarded the occupation of fisherman (which is one of the country's most prestigious civilian occupations), the father had the Worker's Party's trust in frequenting outside of the country's borders yet not venturing to other lands, and also had fish to eat in an isolated land riddled with starvation.

On one unfortunate day, the class president was stripped of his title and subjected to much humiliation by the entire school. The reason: his father was reported to be missing, to have allegedly run away. This was just one example of the norms created by the Juche Ideology. The Juche Ideology creates a single-minded society, in which it is everyone's goal and purpose in life to serve the State and bring as much glory to Kim Jung Il as possible. Behind every action and motivation are the Juche principles. One's application of the Juche principles affects himself, his children, and grandchildren. Disloyalty is punishable for up to three generations.

This true story ends with the son of the fisherman reclaiming his position as class president. A dead body was washed ashore some time later and wrapped around his wrist was a ball of tape tightly wound. Cutting the ball of tape to its very center appeared a picture of Kim Il Sung. Though the body was decayed, the picture remained well-preserved. This dead man was found to be the student's father, and the boy was immediately exalted back to his position as class president. Professor Kim also recounted a similar story in which during a flood, the mother chose to save a painting of Kim Jung Il from the waters instead of her drowning child. The Juche Ideology embodies the deification of the dictators, and even the iconification of them. Taught from birth, it is their life, their drive, their sole purpose.

To find out more about what it is like in North Korea, watch the National Geographic documentary Inside North Korea; it can be found on youtube. An international eye doctor is allowed inside North Korea for 10 days to perform cataract surgery on patients. Entering along with him is an American reporter (her sister is the journalist who is currently captured by the North Korean government; see previous blog entry for news article) who has hidden cameras in the doctor's equipment providing real footages of North Korea. Whether out of fear or genuineness, watch the people's unconditional praise and worship of Kim Jung Il as god.

North Korea Demands Higher Pay at Industrial Park

2009-05-22T16:47:00.000-07:00

By CHOE SANG-HUN

Published: May 15, 2009

[...]

"It remains unclear whether the North intends to force the shutdown of Kaesong through its demands, or whether the cloistered nation is merely seeking more money as the United Nations pursues tighter economic sanctions after the North’s April 5 rocket launching. North Korea’s leaders have also grown wary of capitalist influence spreading to the rest of their tightly controlled society from Kaesong. [...]

Earlier Friday, South Korea proposed talks for next week to discuss the fate of a South Korean worker detained in Kaesong on charges of denouncing the Communist government. During a brief discussion last month, North Korea refused to talk about the condition of the man, who has been held since March 30 without access to South Korean officials.

The North instead began demanding higher wages for 39,000 North Korean workers at Kaesong, who are now earning about $75 a month.

Seeking Officers for 2009-2010

2009-05-18T12:17:00.000-07:00

VNK is currently seeking officers for the 2009-2010 school-year. If you are interested, please contact Jea Sun Huh at jshuh@email.unc.edu.

Reflection: Liberty Live Tour 2008

2009-05-18T11:43:00.000-07:00

Fall semester of 2008, UNC and Duke's Vision for North Korea along with a host of other colleges and universities in the nation, took part in the Liberty Live Tour. LiNK along with an indie-rock band Miss Vintage and LA's independent songwriter Andy Grammer traveled from state to state to raise awareness for North Korean human rights. In UNC's jazzy cabaret, students enjoyed a coffee house and awesome music, and learned about North Korea through the presentation of LiNK's video 'LIfe in North Korea' (see below). Although short, it gave an encapsulated synopsis of the current situation in North Korea. Moved by the information presented them, students wrote politically-invoked messages on a piece of cardboard. Individual head-shot photos were taken with the message in order to let the policy makers see the faces of university students who care about North Korea and speak out against the military regime's inhumaness. On my cardboard, I wrote, "God loves people in North Korea."

Liberty Live Tour Promo Video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9w3WnfDPps

Life In North Korea
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rwwyzpEnK0M&feature=channel

Crossing Movie Screening

2009-05-18T11:17:00.001-07:00

Much thanks to LiNK and its representatives Jonathan, Becky, and Julie, for coming to UNC and Duke this past semester to screen the Korean-made film Crossing. Based on a true story, Crossing was an inspirational film that opened the eyes of many students to see the holocaust realities of North Korea.

If you were unable to watch the screening at UNC and Duke, we highly encourage you to view the movie; DVDs are out in select Asian marksts in the area.

Vision for North Korea, UNC and Duke, plan to hold informational events such as these, one at least every semester.

Crossing Movie Trailer
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=27CDW0F1Yas&feature=channel

North Korea to Try U.S. Journalists

2009-05-18T11:12:00.000-07:00

By CHOE SANG-HUN

Published: May 13, 2009

Two American journalists who have been detained in North Korea for two months on charges of illegal entry and “hostile acts” will be put on trial June 4, the Communist North announced on Thursday. [...]

Under North Korea’s criminal code, a person convicted of hostile acts against the state can face at least five years in labor camps. Illegal entry carries a sentence of up to three years in a labor camp.

[...]

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/14/world/asia/14korea.html?scp=2&sq=north%20korea&st=cse

North Korea Duels With Iran for Attention

2009-05-18T11:02:00.000-07:00

April 29, 2009, 12:46 pm
By Robert Mackey

[...]

In both cases, close allies of the United States feel threatened by the nuclear programs — Israel by Iran’s and South Korea and Japan by North Korea’s. So what explains the difference in the reaction of Americans to threats from the two countries? Could it be that the preoccupation of Americans, and Europeans, with the possibility of terrorist attacks by Islamic extremists makes the idea of nuclear weapons in Tehran seem more urgent than the idea of nuclear weapons in Pyongyang? Or is it that the theocratic leadership in Iran seems easier to talk to, and comprehend, than the Stalinist leadership in North Korea? [...]

http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/29/north-korea-duels-with-iran/?scp=4&sq=north%20korea&st=cse

North Korea Seeks Political Gain From Rocket Launch

2009-05-18T10:59:00.000-07:00

By CHOE SANG-HUN, HELENE COOPER and DAVID E. SANGER

Published: April 6, 2009

[...]

Although the debris of the North Korean rocket fell hundreds of kilometers short of where the North had said they would land in the Pacific, “the launch carries big political and military significance,” said Jeung Young-tai, an analyst at the Korea Institute for National Unification in Seoul.

“No country will be naive enough to believe that it was a peaceful space program,” Mr. Jeung said.

“North Korea is on the threshold of becoming an intercontinental ballistic missile country.”

Peter Hayes, director of the Nautilus Institute, a San Francisco-based think tank, said the main motivation behind the launch was “to demonstrate the strength and vitality of Kim Jong Il’s leadership to the military and the population, and for the scientific sector to declare its fealty to Kim Jong Il’s leadership.” [...]

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/07/world/asia/07korea.html?scp=8&sq=north%20korea&st=cse

Op-Ed Contributor - North Korea's Stacked Deck

2008-07-21T09:28:00.000-07:00

By Art Brown
Published July 15, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/15/opinion/15brown.html?scp=2&sq=north%20korea&st=cse

...

"If this were high-stakes poker, the North Koreans would be biting their lips to hide their smiles at the cards in their hands.

"As it stands now, we have agreed to ship North Korea a million new tons of fuel oil, released Mr. Kim from the handcuffs of our Trading With the Enemy Act, and — within the legally mandated 45 days — will throw in other goodies that come with removing North Korea from the State Department’s state-sponsor-of-terrorism list. This comes on top of the American decision last year to allow the North Koreans to transfer their tainted money out of a bank in Macao.

"But the topper is that Kim Jong-il knows he still gets to keep his stockpile of plutonium and even hang on to his existing rack of nuclear weapons (minus the one he tested in October 2006 to set the tone of the game)."

...

Beyond the Border: North Korea

2008-07-21T09:08:00.000-07:00

McCain and Obama on North Korea

2008-07-14T14:17:00.000-07:00

http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/06/26/mccain-and-obama-on-north-korea/?scp=1-b&sq=north+korea&st=nyt

Full Text of McCain Statement:

“The announcement today that North Korea has provided information concerning elements of its nuclear program is a modest step forward, as will be the destruction of the disabled cooling tower of Yongbyon. But it is only a step covering one part of North Korea’s nuclear activities. It is important to remember our goal has been the full, permanent and verifiable denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. That must remain our goal. The Six Party agreement called for North Korea to make a full declaration of all its nuclear weapons and nuclear programs. Many questions remain about North Korea’s programs, including the disposition of plutonium at Yongbyon, the number and status of nuclear weapons, the nature of the highly-enriched uranium program, and the extent of proliferation activities in countries like Syria. I also want to make sure we fully account for the legitimate concerns of our South Korean and Japanese allies as we move forward. I understand certain sanctions were lifted today, some may be lifted in 45 days, and others remain in place.

“As we review this declaration and attempt to verify North Korean claims, we must keep diplomatic and economic pressure on North Korea to meet all of its obligations under the Six Party agreement, including denuclearization. If we are unable to fully verify the declaration submitted today and if I am not satisfied with the verification mechanisms developed, I would not support the easing of sanctions on North Korea.”

Full Text of Obama Statement:

“This is a step forward, and there will be many more steps to take in the days ahead. Critical questions remain unanswered. We still have not verified the accuracy of the North Korean declaration. We must confirm the full extent of North Korea’s past plutonium production. We must also confirm its uranium enrichment activities, and get answers to disturbing questions about its proliferation activities with other countries, including Syria.

“The declaration has not yet been made available, so Congress has not had a chance to review it. Before weighing in on North Korea’s removal from the list of state sponsors of terrorism, Congress must take the next 45 days to examine the adequacy of the North Korean declaration and verification procedures. Sanctions are a critical part of our leverage to pressure North Korea to act. They should only be lifted based on North Korean performance. If the North Koreans do not meet their obligations, we should move quickly to re-impose sanctions that have been waived, and consider new restrictions going forward.

“We should continue to pursue the kind of direct and aggressive diplomacy with North Korea that can yield results. The objective must be clear: the complete and verifiable elimination of North Korea’s nuclear weapons programs, which only expanded while we refused to talk. As we move forward, we must not cede our leverage in these negotiations unless it is clear that North Korea is living up to its obligations.

“As President, I will work from the very beginning of my term in office to secure the American people and our interests in this vital region. We must work with diligence and determination with our friends and allies to end this dangerous threat, and to secure a lasting peace on the Korean peninsula.”

NKorea blames Skorea for tourist death

2008-07-12T08:42:00.000-07:00

By Associated Press
July 12, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Koreas-Relations.html?_r=1&scp=8&sq=north+korea&st=nyt&oref=login

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) -- North Korea said South Korea was to blame for the shooting death of a South Korean tourist in the communist nation, demanding an apology Saturday and saying it would ban visits to a mountain resort where Seoul has already suspended tours since the killing.

The North also rejected a South Korean request for investigators to visit the scene of Friday's shooting, claiming it has already clarified what happened with the South Korean tour company that runs the trips to the mountain on the peninsula's eastern coast.

Pyongyang's stance was certain to exacerbate tensions between the Koreas, which have flared since South Korea's new conservative President Lee Myung-bak took office in February.

Earlier on Saturday, Lee denounced the killing of 53-year-old housewife Park Wang-ja and urged the North to cooperate in the investigation.

''What cannot and should not happen has happened,'' Lee told a security ministers' meeting, according to his office.

''I can't understand that they shot a civilian tourist'' at a time of the day when it is possible to discern she is a civilian, Lee said. He also urged Pyongyang to ''actively cooperate'' in an investigation.

But in the statement from a North Korean tourism bureau, Pyongyang said the tourist ''intruded deep into the area under the military control of the North side all alone at dawn,'' noting that even her ''shoes got wet.''

The North said its soldier spotted the tourist and ordered her to stop, but that she ran away. The soldier ''repeatedly shouted'' at her to stop and fired warning shots, but then ''could not but open fire'' at the woman, according to the statement from the Guidance Bureau for Comprehensive Development of Scenic Spots.

''The responsibility for the incident entirely rests with the South side,'' the bureau said in the statement carried by the official Korean Central News Agency.

The statement called for Seoul to apologize and take measures to prevent it from happening again.

Yonhap news agency cited a tourist who returned from the resort Friday as saying he saw a middle-aged woman dressed in black walking along the beach before hearing two gunshots and a scream about 10 minutes later.

''When I looked at the direction where the gunshots were heard, there was one person collapsed and three soldiers ran out of a forest and touched the person with their feet as if trying to see if that person is alive,'' Yonhap quoted 23-year-old Lee In-bok, a college student, as saying.

Lee told Yonhap that he and five others witnessed the incident while at the beach to watch the sunrise and that they were about 300 meters away.

Park's husband, Bang Young-min, 53, said he hopes for the truth of what happened.

''I hope all suspicions would be resolved ... so that the souls of the deceased can rest in peace,'' he said at a hospital in Seoul where Park's body was kept for a funeral.

------

Associated Press writer Burt Herman contributed to this report.

North Korea Destroys Tower at Nuclear Site

2008-06-30T09:50:00.000-07:00

By Choe Sang-Hun
June 28, 2008

SEOUL, South Korea — In a gesture demonstrating its commitment to halt its nuclear weapons program, North Korea blew up the most prominent symbol of its plutonium production Friday.

The 60-foot cooling tower at the North’s main nuclear power plant collapsed in a heap of shattered concrete and twisted steel, filmed by international and regional television broadcasters invited to witness the event.

The tower is a technically insignificant structure, relatively easy to rebuild. North Korea also has been disabling — but not destroying — more sensitive parts of the nuclear complex, such as the 5-megawatt reactor, a plant that makes its fuel and a laboratory that extracts plutonium from its spent fuel.

Nonetheless, the destruction of the tower, the most visible element of the nuclear complex at Yongbyon, 60 miles north of Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, affirmed the incremental progress that has been made in American-led multilateral efforts to end North Korea’s nuclear weapons programs.

“As you all saw, the cooling tower is no longer there,” Sung Kim, a senior State Department official who witnessed the blast from a hill, told South Korean television. “It’s a very significant disablement step.”

But some experts in South Korea said the demolition, although dramatic, did not answer key questions, such as how many weapons North Korea has built or whether it has exported its nuclear technology to countries like Syria.

“It’s symbolic. But in real terms, whether demolishing or not a cooling tower that has already been disabled doesn’t make much difference,” said Lee Ji-sue, a North Korea expert at Seoul’s Myongji University.

The demolition also shows that North Korea has concluded that the Yongbyon complex, in service for several decades, has served its purpose after producing an unknown number of nuclear weapons, Mr. Lee said.

United States officials have accused North Korea of hiding an uranium-enrichment program, a charge that the North’s declaration on Thursday failed to address.

On Thursday, North Korea submitted its first significant — although partial — account of its arms programs. Almost simultaneously, President Bush announced that Washington was removing North Korea from the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism, and issued a proclamation lifting some sanctions under the Trading with the Enemy Act.

“We appraise this as a positive step,” a spokesman for the North Korean Foreign Ministry told the North’s state-run news agency on Friday night. But if Washington wants to see further progress in ending the North’s nuclear programs, he said, it must “completely and comprehensively abolish its hostile policy.”

The spokesman added that South Korea should also be inspected and monitored to guarantee the “denuclearization of the whole Korean Peninsula.”

North Korea regularly accuses the United States of deploying nuclear weapons in the South.

The Yongbyon complex, built around a Soviet-era nuclear reactor, is the North’s only known source of plutonium. North Korea had started disabling the reactor and other parts of the complex last year under an agreement with the United States, South Korea, Japan, Russia and China.

Under the deal, North Korea has been receiving fuel aid from the five nations. But it was not obliged to destroy any of its nuclear facilities until further talks determine what rewards it will get in return.

South Korean and American officials welcomed the early demolition of the cooling tower as an encouraging sign of North Korea’s commitment to a broader deal under which Washington hopes to eradicate all the North’s nuclear assets.

“By demolishing the tower, North Korea appears to demonstrate that it would not produce any more plutonium,” said Kim Yeon-chul, a North Korea expert at the Asiatic Research Center at Korea University in Seoul.

The cooling tower carries waste heat from the reactor. While the Communist government kept its nuclear activities shrouded in secrecy, steam curling from the tower into the atmosphere was captured in spy satellite photographs, providing outside observers with the most visible sign of operations at Yongbyon.

The photographs reminded the rest of the world of the operation’s dangers. North Korea shocked the world in October 2006 by detonating a nuclear bomb in an underground test. It is also suspected by U.S. officials of providing nuclear technology to countries like Syria.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/28/world/asia/28korea.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=north%20korea%20destroys%20nuclear%20tower&st=cse&oref=slogin

Officer Positions

2008-06-26T06:24:00.000-07:00

If you are interested in an officer position for the 2008-2009 school year, please email me, Jeasun Huh, at jshuh@email.unc.edu; you will receive an application at the beginning of the fall semester. Thanks!

Also, check for updates about our new joint event coming-up on September 25.

U.S. to Take North Korea Off Terror List

2008-06-26T06:20:00.000-07:00

By Norimitsu Onishi and Edward Wong
June 27, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/27/world/asia/27nuke.html?hp

TOKYO — North Korea took a major step on Thursday toward re-integration into the world community and rapprochement with the United States by submitting for outside inspection a long-delayed declaration of its nuclear program.

The Bush administration almost immediately announced it would remove the country it once described as part of the “axis of evil” from the State Department’s list of state sponsors of terrorism.

The declaration from North Korea, one of the world’s most isolated and impoverished nations, was expected to describe in previously undisclosed detail its capabilities in nuclear power and nuclear weapons — meeting a major demand of the United States and other countries that consider the North a dangerous source of instability.

“This can be a moment of opportunity for North Korea,” said President Bush, announcing the declaration at the White House. “If it continues to make the right choices it can repair its relationship with the international community.”

Mr. Bush said in the principle of “action for action,” the United States would lift some restrictions on commercial dealings with North Korea and within 45 days end its designation of North Korea as a state sponsor of terrorism.

China, which has been the host of the six-nation talks on the North’s nuclear program, said Thursday afternoon that the North was submitting its declaration. The White House confirmed the exchange shortly afterward and said that it would remove North Korea from the terrorism list and thus make it eligible for aid and assistance, a goal long sought by the cash-starved country.

American officials expected that the declaration, which had been due at the end of last year, would provide important details about North Korea’s nuclear facilities and programs, including the amount of plutonium produced at its nuclear reactor in Yongbyon.

"I do think it’s important to note that if we can verifiably determine the amount of plutonium that has been made, we then have an upper hand in understanding what may have happened in terms of weaponisation," Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said after arriving in Kyoto, Japan, on Thursday for a meeting of the Group of Eight industrialized powers.

Ms. Rice added that the declaration was “a natural step on the way to dealing verifiably with the devices or weapons themselves."

Partly to deflect criticism from hard-line critics in Washington that the current deal was too soft on North Korea, American officials have emphasized the importance of the information on plutonium. The North is believed to have produced enough weapons-grade plutonium at its reactor in Yongbyon to make as many as half a dozen bombs.

But, significantly, the North’s declaration was not expected to reveal details on three critical points: the nuclear bombs the North has already produced; its alleged attempts to produce nuclear arms by secretly enriching uranium, which triggered the ongoing crisis in 2002; and accusations that the North helped Syria build a nuclear plant.

Some of the missing details, particularly on the North’s existing nuclear bombs, are expected to be revealed at the next stage of the step-by-step agreement when Pyongyang is bound to dismantle and abandon its weapons.

“This declaration completes this stage of the talks, as far as plutonium-related activities are involved,” said Yoon Duk-min, a senior analyst at the Institute for Foreign Affairs and National Security in Seoul. “But as far as negotiating on the other issues, that will have to be handled by the next administration in Washington. There’s realistically not enough time left for the Bush administration.”

“And North Korea, which got what it wanted by being removed from the list of state sponsors of terrorism, is probably waiting for the next administration,” Mr. Yoon said.

The North was scheduled to follow up on Friday by blowing up a cooling tower at its Yongbyon reactor, about 60 miles north of Pyongyang.

Norimitsu Onishi reported from Tokyo and Edward Wong reported from Beijing. Reporting was contributed by Helene Cooper in Washington and Graham Bowley in New York.

The Christian Worldview

2008-02-05T12:17:00.000-08:00

-JSH

On February 18 and 19, UNC and Duke are hosting a speaker presentation on North Korea that will largely be about human rights and politics. What’s troubling is that as a Christian, I know that there will never be a solution to social injustice as long as sin exists in the world. And because the world is fallen, North Korea is only one of the countless social injustices. Ecclesiastes 1:9 says, “What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.”

One of the main components of this event is aiding the North Korea people. But if God is not at the center of our mission, helping them is meaningless in the scheme of eternity. We may affect their current living condition, but we will not affect the eternal condition of the human soul. If someone is eternally separated from a holy God after death, it will not matter how much his standard of living had been improved on earth, nor how long he had lived on earth. It will not matter how painfully or comfortably one has lived nor how long because in the end, “…there is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God…” (Romans 6:22-23). Knowing this paradigm of eternity, we should realize that something more has to be done besides futilely trying to tear down social injustice and trying to extend people’s earthly lives.

Jesus Christ offers the only solution to all problems. With Jesus Christ, helping people’s pains and afflictions suddenly have unconditional meaning, and the pain and affliction themselves have eternal significance. We’re empowered to help people in the same way that Jesus helped people – he was filled with compassion (Mark 1:41) – and to make Himself known (Mark 2:10). Pain and suffering have meaning because Christ has also suffered: “Now if we are children, then we are heirs – heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory” (Romans 8:17).

North Korea is the worst persecutor of Christians, according to the Open Doors’ World Watch List. There is no religious freedom, and the entire country practices the Juche ideology, which deifies Kim Jong Il. I literally consider North Korea to be a part of the “ends of the earth” when Jesus says in Acts 1:8: “…and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” Thus, in the Christian worldview, apart from social justice, North Korea is a part of the Great Commission. Jesus called his disciples to be fishers of men; we are to be armored with the Sword of the Spirit (Ephesians 6:17) and put our physical swords away (John 18:11), “for our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms” (Ephesians 6:12).

Christians’ objectives are not to make political gains, but spiritual ones. Jesus came not as a political ruler, but as a Wonderful Counselor, a Mighty God, Everlasting Father, and the Prince of Peace” (Isaiah 9:6). “The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of the shadow of death a light has dawned… For as in the say of Midian’s defeat, you have shattered the yoke that burdens them, the bar across their shoulders, the rod of their oppressor… For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace” (Isaiah 9:2,4,6).

There are two obvious things Christians can do for our brothers and sisters in North Korea: one is to pray for them; and two is to financially support our missionaries (we will be giving to Pastor Buck). Although the event is disguised as a social justice event because it is sponsored by university organizations, I have been praying that God nevertheless uses the event for His glory because without God, this event is meaningless. There will be a room available after the UNC speaker presentation for people who want to get on their knees and pray together for our North Korean brothers and sisters. Ephesians 6:18 says to “pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the saints.” I have been praying that many Christian students and the church community attend so that they may learn about North Korea and be moved to pray for North Korea. And when we pray, we should mourn for our brothers and sisters who are being persecuted. But praise God – we can also be joyful in their affliction! Christians in places like North Korea and China are spiritually blessed in ways that we cannot imagine here in the United States (The Heavenly Man by Brother Yun). We know that God is a just God and “many who are first will be last, and many who are last will be first” (Matthew 19:30).

“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God. Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you” (Matthew 5:3-11). Though born lowly, North Korean Christians are in a place where they can truly demonstrate, live out, and experience the beatitudes of Christ, and they will be rewarded one day in heaven. In James it says, “Blessed is the man who perseveres under trial, because when he has stood the test, he will receive the crown of life that God has promised to those who love him” (1:12). Christ can be the only solution. Christ provides justice for his children.

As the event draws closer, I ask that you pray for God to be glorified through this event. I invite you to come fill a part of the audience and join us for the prayer meeting afterwards. If we are to glorify God even when we eat and drink, then surely we can glorify God through a university event.

About North Korea

2008-01-30T13:27:00.000-08:00

by JSH

Overview

The event Beyond the Border: North Korea seeks to educate Carolina and Duke students and the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill community about North Korea and its current political, religious, and social climate through the first-hand knowledge and experiences of a North Korean defector.

As a Carolina student, I’ve noticed that students have little knowledge of North Korea. Students only know—and vaguely—that North Korea is associated with political words that President Bush has frequently uttered: “nuclear weapons” and “axis of evil.” My peers naively ask me whether I am from North or South Korea without realizing that a reply “North” would mean that I am from a “hermit kingdom” of confinement, a Stalinist regime of oppression and starvation, and an Orwellian nation of illusion. More than just a political association, North Korea should be realized as a grave humanitarian situation, where people are brainwashed, stripped of their freedom, brutalized, and killed through a massive system of concentration camps.

The “Hermit Kingdom” of Confinement

North Korea’s citizens are not allowed to voluntarily leave the country. There is no such thing as leaving, only risking one’s life and escaping. Despite the perils of armed guards, exhaustion, starvation, dehydration, and harsh mountainous conditions, in the past 10 years a hundred thousand North Koreans have made it across border into China, North Korea’s northern neighbor. Sadly, one-hundred-thousand is minute compared to the 23.30 million still living under Kim Jung Il’s cruel iron fist. Likewise, a southward escape across the Korean peninsula’s DMZ line, the most militarily fortified border in the world, is another unyielding solution.

How many of those one-hundred-thousand survive after escape is hard to determine. The United Nations and humanitarian organizations worldwide advocate the safety of North Koreans as refugees in China. But China blatantly disregards the international promulgations, collaborating with its communist ally to actively search and seize these “criminals,” to impose brutal treatment upon them in Chinese prisons until their eventual repatriation to North Korea. Upon repatriation, they are punished for the felon crime of defection: executed or imprisoned in concentration camps—tortured and subjected to inhumane amounts of labor, often in dangerous working conditions with little to no food and water.

The Stalinist Regime of Oppression and Starvation

There is an estimated 200,000 prisoners in North Korea’s numerous concentration camps, most serving life-time sentences. Citizens are imprisoned even for the most trivial of crimes, such as stealing a piece of bread in order to survive. (In the mid-1990s a severe famine hit North Korea on top of its already chronic food shortage. An estimated three million people died). The government also imprisons citizens arbitrarily for “posing a threat” to the state and its Juche ideology that practices the worshipping of Kim Il Sung and his successor son Kim Jung Il as gods. Family members of political defectors are imprisoned for up to three generations. This is the government’s grotesque form of punishment for successful escapees and also serves to dissuade citizens from attempting escape.

In the mid-1990s, a famine devastated North Korea that forced its citizens to flee the country in search of food, despite being ignorant of the outside world. As more people continue to escape North Korea, more information leaks out of the “hermit kingdom” of confinement to evidence a Stalinist regime of oppression. The U.S. Committee for Human Rights in North Korea has published extensive research on North Korea’s human rights violations, one of which is The Hidden Gulag: Exposing North Korea’s Prison Camps. This publication is a compilation of testimonies from thirty in-depth debriefings conducted by the South Korean government of escapees and defectors who were either former prisoners or prison guards. It reveals the specific brutalities that one would experience in North Korea’s concentration camps. Not surprisingly, the exclusive testimonies coincide and also parallel in the level of brutality. Prison-guard sketches of the camp’s blueprint match satellite images. Both prisoners and prison guards can pinpoint exactly where they worked and stayed in their respective concentration camp.

The Orwellian Nation of Illusion

It is remarkable how much North Korea resembles George Orwell’s 1984 dystopian society. North Korea’s citizens are kept isolated from the rest of the world and only fed government propaganda. There is no political or religious freedom. Any sort of dissension is preemptively eliminated through the secret system of concentration camps—people just seem to “disappear”—and the entire country’s fervent worship of Kim Jung Il as a god is very real. Citizens believe they are a part of a “worker’s paradise,” despite the fact that the majority of the population is impoverished; the average North Korean is seven inches shorter than his South Korean counterpart because of malnutrition.

The North Korean government is obviously morally depraved. People are worked and killed off like cattle whenever the government deems necessary. It controls people’s minds by propaganda, and anyone disillusioned is simply eliminated through the system of concentration camps. Thus, countrymen have continued worshipping their leader for decades, their very leader who sanctions violent crimes against them and brainwashes the entire country in order to maintain control.

I remember watching a documentary by British journalists who were allowed inside the capital Pyongyang, which serves as North Korea’s (eerie) showcase to the rest of the world, where they have erected buildings too lavish for the country’s poverty. The journalists were taken by the tour guide into Pyongyang’s museum and led into a room only laden with a few desks with pencils. There they were adamantly told that their “Great Leader” invented such things as desks and pencils that the country graciously uses today. Also in the capital, pictures of Kim Il Sung everywhere display his omnipotence like a god. People’s minds are literally encapsulated by the country’s ubiquitous propaganda.

Politics

Politically, government and religion are inseparable. Kim Jung Il, the son of Kim Il Sung, is the supreme godhead and leader. As dictator Kim Jung Il spends 30-50% of the nation’s GDP on military and has created the fourth largest standing army in the world comprised of two million soldiers—yet North Korea is one of the poorest countries. It is no wonder that its citizens are starving to death. Instead of the corrupt totalitarian government feeding its starving people, it has long been indicted of developing nuclear weapons, arming terrorist organizations in the Middle East, and passing nuclear intelligence on to enemy countries such as Syria.

In October of 2007, after 14 years of halted negotiations from breaching a 1994 non-proliferation agreement with the U.S., North Korea has finally agreed in six-party talks with the U.S., South Korea, Japan, China, and Russia, to submit an accurate report of all its nuclear facilities in exchange for one million metric tons of fuel oil or the economic equivalent thereof. The deadline for this report was by the end of 2007; it is now 2008 and North Korea has yet to comply with a full statement.

Vision for North Korea-UNC: Our Mission

Our purpose is to research North Korea's political, economic, social, and cultural climate and history; to increase interest and organize a study of its current affairs; to facilitate discussion and debate; and ultimately raise awareness of its human rights violations. In close collaboration with Duke's VNK, we actively work to raise funds and be an outspoken voice for public awareness on behalf of North Korean refugees. Anne Applebaum, the author of Gulag: A History writes:

“…as in Stalin’s time, North Korea’s leadership doesn’t want anyone to know any of these details [about concentration camps], since such revelations not only will damage their foreign reputation but also put their own regime at risk…

Certainly after absorbing such details, it will be more difficult for Americans or Europeans to sit down and negotiate, coldly, with their Korean counterparts and not mention human rights violations. South Koreans, when they know the details of life in the North, will also find it more difficult to argue in favor of appeasing the Northern regime. If these stories filter back to the North Korean police and administrators, those officials too will find it more difficult to justify their own behavior, or to claim that they don’t know what is really happening in the country’s concentration camps. And if the full truth about the camps becomes known to the wider population, then whatever support remains for the state constructed by Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il will begin, even more decisively, to ebb away.

This is not to say that words can make a dictatorship collapse overnight. But words certainly can make a dictatorship collapse over time, as experience during the last two decades has shown. Totalitarian regimes are built on lies and can be damaged, even destroyed, when those lies are exposed. The greater and more detailed evidence that can be provided, the more damage the truth can do.”

This is exactly what our organization seeks to do: spread the truth. We may only be one organization at one university, but we are one of many organizations at many different universities that spread the truth to our fellow students, who can then join us to exponentially spread the truth to the world around us. Our organization seeks to bring human rights to the forefront. We do not want North Korea to just be a political issue, but we want North Korea to be intricately tied with human rights.

We want people to realize that understanding a part of the world so unlike ours is like beholding an abstract work of art. Both are mentally hard to grasp. Although we may not completely understand, it does not mean we don’t try to. Rather, we are challenged to stretch our minds, to rally our creativity, to push beyond our normal limits of thinking—so that we may arrive at a closer understanding. Others’ sufferings are distant to us, and closing the gap of estrangement takes focus. But by doing this, unreality that arises from an idle mind becomes more and more our reality—reality that people who are not any different from us are suffering, that people who are very much like us desire the same basic rights—universal human rights. And ultimately, understanding can move us to action.

"Beyond the Border: North Korea" event

2008-01-30T13:24:00.000-08:00

Sunday, Feb. 17
Tae Guk Gi movie screening
UNC Murphey 116 @ 7PM
Korean snacks & drinks provided

Monday, Feb. 18
Part 1: Speaker presentation
UNC Great Hall @ 6PM
Korean dinner provided

Tuesday, Feb. 19
Part 2: Speaker presentation
Duke TBD @ 6PM
Korean dinner provided

Event details:

A North Korean defector Kim Hyun-sik is to speak at Carolina on Monday, February 18, and at Duke on Tuesday, February 19 for a Vision for North Korea two-night event. On Sunday, February 17, the Korean film Tae Guk Gi will be shown on UNC’s campus to jumpstart the whole joint event.

Kim Hyun-sik is currently a professor at George Mason University. He was a visiting professor at Yale University for three years, specializing in teaching North Korea. Before Kim defected, he assumed a prestigious role in North Korea as one of country’s top educators. He was a personal tutor to the former dictator, Kim Sung Il, and tutored his young nephew. In the late 1980s, Kim Hyun-sik was given authoritative leave to study in the former Soviet Union; he is fluent in Russian. This stage in his life coincides with history because this was during the Cold War, when there was great tension between the democratic and communist states of the world; it would have benefited North Korea much as a newly-emerged communist nation to have its intellectuals learn the Russian language, the Soviet Union being the communist superpower at the time. After stepping outside of North Korea, Kim realized the totalitarian nation’s bizarreness and eventually defected from the country, took refuge in South Korea, and immigrated to the United States. His story is not this simple, of course. Kim will tell us his in-depth life story at UNC and Duke, so we can closely examine North Korea from his unique position.

In order for audiences to hear the entire presentation, attendees will have to come to UNC on Monday night and to Duke on Tuesday night, thereby creating a very joint event between our schools. Kim will not tell his entire story at either school, but present half of his testimony at UNC and the concluding half at Duke. (A hired translator will translate from Korean to English). Time will be set aside at the end of each presentation to give audience members the opportunity to donate money to Pastor Buck’s cause to save Korean refugees in China. Our schools’ combined goal is to draw 400 audience members and raise a combined total of $5,000 for donation. We expect university students and staff, and people from the surrounding community to attend as we have already notified major humanitarian organizations in the Triangle.

The speaker presentation at UNC on Monday night will be held in the Great Hall in banquet style. We will have Korean dinner catered from Chosunok, a Korean restaurant in the area. We want this event to be just as enjoyable as it is educational and humanitarian. And we all know that food encourages attendance, which valuably means for us that the truth is spread to more people. A greater number of people will also help us to achieve the goal of $5,000. Duke will similarly provide a banquet setting for the second night of the presentation.

The connectedness and banquet style of the event is specifically designed to benefit both university students in terms of scholarship. We could have organized the event so students need only to attend the presentation of their respective school to hear the entire presentation. However, we made it a continued presentation in order to bring UNC students and Duke students together—providing the grounds for topical dialogue between students of differing university atmospheres, mindsets, and cultures. We hope the dinner banquet setting instead of the lecture hall setting will naturally foster interaction. For our organizations, an element of collaboration will be birthed to strengthen projects in the future with combined efforts.

One question that students may ask is—how could North and South Korea, countries that formed only several decades ago by people of the same ethnicity, be entirely different? That is why on Sunday night before the first night of the speaker presentation, UNC’s chapter will screen the Korean War film Tae Guk Gi. Students will learn of the country’s historical split into a North and South. Individually-wrapped Korean snacks will be provided to couple a cultural experience with the reception of historical knowledge. After the movie, students will have the opportunity to ask questions and learn facts that will aid their understanding of today’s North Korea. For example, there was no peace treaty made after the Korean War—only a ceasefire. To this day North and South Korea remain enemies and are technically at war, producing between them the most militarily fortified DMZ in the world. This explains why North Koreans have to escape through China, and we better understand the refugee situation. Every part of this event is crucial.

JSH

The Hidden Gulag: Exposing North Korea’s Prison Camps

2008-01-01T12:34:00.000-08:00

http://www.hrnk.org/hiddengulag/preface.html
By Anne Applebaum

From Preface:
"Painstakingly, David Hawk and the U.S. Committee for Human Rights in North Korea have compiled an enormous amount of information, including not just the numbers of prisoners and the locations of camps but also the details of camp life — the winter cold, the numb fingers, the workplace accidents — that make the stories more vivid. Those details are also what make this report so powerful.

"Some, of course, will avoid reading it, fully knowing that if they do read it, they will have to change their tactics, or at least think differently about the political problems posed by North Korea. Certainly after absorbing such details, it will be more difficult for Americans or Europeans to sit down and negotiate, coldly, with their Korean counterparts and not mention human rights violations. South Koreans, when they know the details of life in the North, will also find it more difficult to argue in favor of appeasing the Northern regime. If these stories filter back to the North Korean police and administrators, those officials too will find it more difficult to justify their own behavior, or to claim that they don’t know what is really happening in the country’s concentration camps. And if the full truth about the camps becomes known to the wider population, then whatever support remains for the state constructed by Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il will begin, even more decisively, to ebb away.

"This is not to say that words can make a dictatorship collapse overnight. But words certainly can make a dictatorship collapse over time, as experience during the last two decades has shown. Totalitarian regimes are built on lies and can be damaged, even destroyed, when those lies are exposed. The greater and more detailed evidence that can be provided, the more damage the truth can do."

This is exactly what our organization seeks to do. We may only be one organization, at one university, but we are one of many organizations, and many different universities, that spread the truth to our fellow students, who can then join us to exponentially spread the truth to the world around us.

U.S. Urges North Korea to Fulfill Deal

2007-12-31T09:39:00.000-08:00

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

2007-12-29T09:26:00.000-08:00

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

2007-12-28T10:33:00.000-08:00

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

2007-12-28T10:27:00.000-08:00

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

2007-12-27T19:01:00.000-08:00

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

2007-12-27T18:05:00.000-08:00

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

2007-12-21T19:52:00.001-08:00

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

2007-12-20T12:30:00.001-08:00

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

2007-12-19T18:43:00.000-08:00

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

2007-12-19T10:29:00.000-08:00

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

2007-12-19T04:48:00.000-08:00

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

2007-12-19T04:35:00.000-08:00

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

2007-12-18T16:03:00.000-08:00

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

2007-12-17T08:37:00.000-08:00

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

2007-12-17T08:14:00.000-08:00

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.