North Korea detains 85-year-old California man

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On October 26, an 85-year-old American man, Merrill Newman, on an organized tour of North Korea was pulled off a plane in Pyongyang just minutes before it was to depart, the man’s son told CNN on Wednesday.

The U.S. State Department is working to resolve the matter with North Korea’s top ally, China.

North Korea has not publicly acknowledged it detained Newman. But the family believes the elder Newman’s military service during the Korean War may be related to his detention, his son said.

Park Syung-je, chairman of the Seoul-based Asia Strategy Institute, says Newman may have been arrested on espionage charges. As a Korean War veteran, Newman might have told his minders he fought against North Korea. They may have reported it, and it resulted in his detention.

In 1999, a South Korean woman named Min Young-mee was detained for six days after apparently saying the wrong thing on a tour to North Korea’s Kumkang Mountains. “I hope the two Koreas reunite soon so we can visit each other,” Min said. “North Korean defectors are living well in the South.”

A North Korean minder for the tour group reported her remarks to North Korean authorities. She wasn’t allowed to return home with her tour group. After a written apology for violating North Korean laws, she safely returned to the South.

Newman is the second American being held in North Korean. Kenneth Bae, an American citizen, was arrested in November 2012 and sentenced in May to 15 years of hard labor.

[CNN] 

UN committee slap at North Korea for rights abuses

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A UN General Assembly committee on Tuesday expressed concern about human rights violations in North Korea and 3 other countries.

The North Korean draft resolution expressed “very serious concern at the persistence of continuing reports of systematic, widespread and grave violations of civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights.”

The draft resolutions were approved by the 193-nation assembly’s Third Committee, which focuses on human rights, and will be put to formal votes next month in the General Assembly. They are expected to pass with similar support.

The resolutions deepen international pressure and further isolate those states but have no legal consequences.

A North Korean U.N. delegate said that Pyongyang totally rejected the resolution and said “there are no human rights violations in my country as mentioned in this draft resolution. …Regrettably we have not seen a single instance called into question when serious human rights violations are committed by Western countries.”

[Reuters]

Mongolian president stuns North Korea with call for freedom

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Mongolian President Tsakhiagiin Elbegdorj stunned North Korean elite students at Kim Il-sung University when he visited Pyongyang last month by telling them, “No tyranny lasts forever.”

According to a transcript of the speech posted on the Mongolian presidential website on Friday, Elbegdorj told the students, “It is the desire of the people to live free that is the eternal power. … Freedom enables every human to discover and realize his or her opportunities and chances for development. This leads a human society to progress and prosperity.”

Elbegdorj told the students, “Mongolia holds dear the fundamental human rights — freedom of expression, right to assembly and the right to live by his or her own choice… Mongols say, ‘better to live by your own choice however bitter it is, than to live by other’s choice, however sweet.'”

He also hinted that the North Korean regime should abandon its nuclear ambitions. “Twenty-one years ago, Mongolia declared herself a nuclear-weapon-free zone,” he said.

He also pointed out that Mongolia scrapped capital punishment in 2009. North Korea still holds public executions.

The Mongolian presidential office said Elbegdorj offered to take questions after his speech but none were asked, although he received “lengthy applause.”

Elbegdorj is a former journalist who founded Mongolia’s top privately-owned newspaper, Ardchilal, in 1990. That same year he played a pivotal role in democratic protests ending communist rule in his country. He became a lawmaker and, in May 2009, Mongolia’s fifth president.

Contrary to expectations, Elbegdorj did not meet North Korean leader Kim Jong-un during his trip from Oct. 28 and 31, and the publication of the speech prompts speculation that his remarks sent Kim Jong-Un into a sulk.

[Chosun Ilbo]

North Korean refugees arrested in China

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At least 13 refugees from North Korea have been arrested in the southwestern Chinese city of Kunming while they were trying to reach South Korea, media reports said on Monday. Dong-A Ilbo newspaper which also reported the arrests put the number at 15.

Chinese police on Friday arrested the North Koreans who were trying to board a bus bound for an unidentified Southeast Asian nation, Yonhap news agency said. It cited South Korean activists promoting human rights for North Korean refugees.

“Most North Korean defectors travel in a group of five at most when crossing the Chinese border to a Southeast Asian nation,” said one activist quoted by Yonhap. “It appears that [the reason this group was larger than normal is] they were trying to save money for hiring brokers who could help them cross the border.”

Some 25,000 North Koreans have fled famine or repression at home to settle in the capitalist South over the past six decades. Almost all cross the North’s border into China. Many of them then secretly travel through China to a third nation – often in Southeast Asia – where they arrange to fly on to South Korea for resettlement.

China – the North’s sole major ally – considers the fugitives to be illegal economic migrants instead of refugees and repatriates those whom it catches. Rights groups strongly criticise Beijing’s policy. The fugitives can face severe punishment including a term in a prison camp once they are sent back to North Korea.

[AFP]

S. Korean aid to North Korea up 26 percent in 2013

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South Korea has sent 17.8 billion won ($16.7 million) in humanitarian aid to North Korea in 2013, a 26 percent increase from last year, despite the spike in cross-border tensions, the Seoul government said Sunday.

“Despite criticisms that Seoul has not done enough to help the disadvantaged in the North, the incumbent Park Geun-hye administration has sent more aid to Pyongyang than what was shipped last year when President Lee Myung-bak was in office,” a government official said.

Fifteen local charity groups including the Eugene Bell Foundation and Korea Sharing Net provided 4.3 billion won, or a little over 24.1 percent of all aid to the North, with the rest coming from the South Korean government.

Moving forward, the official said South Korea has no plans to provide direct food aid to the North but that it may consider offering matching funds to private charity organizations wanting to help the North.

[Yonhap News]

Preparing for a North Korean collapse

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A major crisis scenario that destabilizes the North Korean government and its mechanisms of control, no matter how unlikely, should prompt the international community to consider a multilateral framework for intervention.

The first step toward planning a credible response is to consider the absence of a totalitarian regime previously possessing rigid control over territory, weapons of mass destruction, and the civilian population. Working under the assumption that Chinese and South Korean border issues could be mitigated by their respective militaries, and WMD tracked and secured by American military forces working alongside integrated allies, the pre-eminent question becomes one of human security.

Specifically, how to deal with twenty million physically and psychologically scarred individuals as an operational challenge. Regardless of the ongoing struggle for power and stability, these individuals represent a major hurdle for any external force crossing the 38th parallel and constitute the bulk of human terrain. For many, their day-to-day lives reflect a permanent wartime experience, an existence on the edge that has defined families for more than three generations. Devout loyalty to the North Korean system is arguably so ingrained within many citizens, it is difficult to project how the majority of individuals would behave after the cataclysmic event of totalitarian collapse.

There would likely be a profound absence of the overarching stability that has come to define the norm within Pyongyang’s invasive culture of oppression. Beyond fundamental necessities of food, water, shelter and physical security, what unforeseen conditions might an external group encounter among the civilian population?

The disintegration, or even transformation, of this familiar norm would potentially compound dangerous social, economic and political inadequacies while pushing individuals past an already desperate state of existence. To paraphrase experts, exposure to an event involving potential death or serious injury to the self or others leads to intense states of fear, helplessness or horror. Under this scenario, an outside group would likely encounter upwards of twenty million individuals suffering from the effects of severe grief and incapacitating post-traumatic stress disorder.

These reactions might appear as abnormal reactions to normal stress, but inside the reality of North Korea, it would reflect a normal reaction to abnormal stress. Whether an intervening humanitarian force, or an individual state dealing with refugees fleeing across its border, responsible powers should not overlook such a traumatic moment for geopolitics.

[Read full opinion piece: The Nation] 

Christian group air-drops Bibles into North Korea

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A Colorado-based Christian group is air-dropping Bibles on North Korea. Over the past year, Pastor Eric Foley and his Christian mission group, Seoul USA, have released around 50,000 40-foot homemade, hydrogen-filled balloons outfitted with Bibles and personal testimonials over rural areas of the country, Fox News reports. Bibles are attached to the balloons in a box or a bag.

Even after seven years of sending them up, though, Foley says, “I get choked up, every time, as I let go and watch it take off.”

In North Korea, citizens are forced to follow the state ideology known as “The Juche Idea.” Christians there “are the most persecuted believers on earth,” Foley told Fox. He estimates that there are around 100,000 Christians in the country. The network reports that 30,000 of those Christians “are believed to be locked inside concentration camps, where they are overworked, starved, tortured, and killed.”

In 2009, a 33-year-old woman was publicly executed in North Korea after being accused of distributing the Bible.

[Huffington Post]

 

North Korea “executes 80 people for watching foreign films”

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North Korea has publicly executed 80 people for watching foreign television programs, a South Korean newspaper claims. JoongAng Ilbo daily reported that the killings were carried out in seven separate cities on November 3, with an alleged 10,000 people forced to attend one group execution held in a sports stadium in the eastern port city Wonsan.

Citing a “single unidentified” individual as the source of the story, the newspaper said the majority of those executed had been charged with “watching illicit South Korean TV dramas and some with prostitution”.

The story gained credibility when Daily NK – an online media agency run by North Korean defectors – said it had also heard the reports of mass executions taking place.

During the front page report, the JoongAng Ilbo reporter cites another defector group as saying it had warned of a forthcoming wave of executions several months ago.

A spokesman for North Korea Intellectual Solidarity reportedly said “The regime is obviously afraid of potential changes in people’s mind-sets and is pre-emptively trying to scare people off”.

Watching films or television from capitalist countries – especially South Korea – is a serious offence in North Korea, but despite the risk of execution, shows like Desperate Housewives from the US have acquired a large following.

It is thought the majority of the programs are smuggled into the country on DVDs, MP3 players and Flash drives.

[The Independent]

EU and S. Korea call for ban on forced repatriation of North Korean refugees

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South Korean President Park Geun-hye held summits with Herman Van Rompuy, president of the European Council, and José Manuel Durão Barroso, president of the European Commission, on Friday and agreed to expand cooperation with the EU in the fields of small and medium businesses and science and technology.

During the summit with the EU leaders, an agreement was established that North Korea should abandon its program for nuclear and missile development “in a complete, verifiable and irreversible way.” They also expressed serious concerns over North Korea`s dire human rights situation. In particular, they shared the view that North Korean refugees` safety and happiness should be guaranteed and that the principle of no forced repatriation should be respected.

[Dong-A Ilbo]

American missionary marks one year in North Korean custody

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The U.S. State Department is renewing its call for North Korea to release a U.S. Christian missionary hospitalized in Pyongyang after being sentenced to 15 years at a hard labor camp.

Kenneth Bae, an American citizen, was arrested on Nov. 3, 2012, in the port city of Rajin and sentenced in May to 15 years of hard labor for committing “hostile acts” and “plotting to overthrow the government.”

Bae, who was sent to a special labor camp where he was the only prisoner, was hospitalized after three months when his health started to fail, his sister Terri Chung said, adding that her 45-year-old brother suffers from diabetes and an enlarged heart, among other medical conditions. Bae’s mother, Myunghee Bae, was recently granted a five-day visa to North Korea last month to visit her son for a total of six hours.

“We continue to work actively to secure Mr. Bae’s release, working in close consultation with the Swedish Embassy,” State Department Deputy Spokesperson Marie Harf said. “If the DPRK renews its invitation, Special Envoy for North Korean Human Rights Ambassador Robert King is prepared to travel to the DPRK on a humanitarian mission focused on securing the release of Mr. Bae.”

Bae, who has a wife and three children, is a Christian missionary who was based in China and working as a tour guide at the time of his arrest. He has been held longer by the North Korean regime than any other known U.S. citizen since the Korean War, according to International Christian Concern, a Washington, D.C.-based activist group that focuses on the human rights of Christians.

[Fox News]