An American Christian activist Robert Park , having been detained in North Korea since the last Christmas, has been released and arrived in Beijing today. He will later be taken to the U.S. embassy. s
s … according to comments attributed to Robert Park by Pyongyang’s Korean Central News Agency, the North Koreans have convinced him that he was wrong in his view of the North, whose “concentration camps,” Mr. Park said in an earlier interview with Reuters, were “of the same brutality as in Nazi Germany.”
In the same report in which the KCNA dispatch announced that Park would be freed, he was quoted as saying that “people have been incredibly kind and generous here to me, very concerned for my physical health as never before in my life.” He was, he was quoted as saying, “very thankful for their love.” [Christian Science Monitor] s
KCNA said Park had confessed to illegally entering the state and that he had changed his mind about North Korea after receiving kind treatment there.
“What I have seen and heard in the DPRK convinced me that I misunderstood it. So I seriously repented of the wrong I committed, taken in by the West’s false propaganda,” KCNA quoted Park as saying. [Reuters]s
Some may find this response from Park as somewhat unexpected, but the quotes that the North Korean agency claims to be Park’s are no way to be trusted as accurate until he reveals his experiences and the decision through his own sincere voice.
So what did Park accomplish? It may be not as intangible as it seems. Perhaps, thanks to his decision to make a life-risking entry into North Korea, the manifest human rights abuses and the misgovernment of Kim Jong-Il regime could take another rare chance to come under the world’s spotlight once more without the loss of anyone’s life.
Some raise doubt as to the importance of raising worldwide attention on substantially improving the actual living conditions of North Koreans. But in the long run, the greater public and media awareness is indispensable to a more powerful and united voice from the international community that may be effective enough to induce any internal changes in North Korea.
At times, South Korean policy on resuming the food aid to North Korea makes me doubt whether it is really aimed at saving lives.
The government has decided to resume food aid to North Korea, which was stopped in summer 2007, and is considering when to start and how much to give. [….]
Another government official said the government is considering giving “10,000 to 30,000 tons” of food. If Seoul were to resume food aid on the scale of previous administrations, which was between 300,000 and 400,000 tons, it “would need a strategic decision taking progress in the North Korean nuclear issue into consideration,” a senior government source said.
A security officer said, “The government isn’t going to give aid to the North blindly. We’ll watch if the North does more than apologize” for the death of six South Koreans as a result of its sudden discharge of water from a dam into the Imjin River, “and if it accepts our humanitarian aid suggestion at inter-Korean meetings such as Red Cross talks.” [Chosun Ilbo]
I have no objection to the fact that South Korea certainly does have the right to condition its aid to get the apologies from North Korea regarding the “sudden discharge of water” that killed six South Koreans. But the food aid to people who have nothing to do with setting North Korean policies must be given solely under the humanitarian, not political, principles.
If the South ends up giving only a small consignment of food aid, and if it’s only enough to feed a small number of North Koreans, it becomes obivious of whose stomachs it will end up in. As long as the elite are well-fed by the aid, North Korea would have almost no incentive to allow transparent aid distribution to everyone. That’s why small consignments of direct aid may turn out to be highly ineffective and perhaps even anti-humanitarian.
In august 1987, we arrived at Life Detention Settlement No, 13 as newly recruited guards. When we saw the prisoners’ villages for the first time, all of us were very surprised and said to each other, “Hey, look, they must be the South Korean beggar villages that we used to watch on North Korean TV! They are worse than cow barns or pig sties, aren’t they?” One of us asked the commanding officer, Lt. Shim, “What are those sheds for?” Lt. Shim replied, “They are for political prisoners. Don’t you see that the sheds are still too good for them? They should be grateful for the fact that they are still alive and that they are given a shelter. Aren’t we generous?”
The shelters were made of clay walls with a thatched roof and needed additional support from logs to prevent them from collapsing. The sheds were so miserable that it was difficult to distinguish the entrance from the windows. They were just like animal pens.
The prisoners’ sheds are called “harmonicas” because of their tiny rooms – one of each family – which resemble the cells in a harmonica. There is a small window on the chimney side. Each compartment is 3×4 meters wide including a separate space for cooking.
[part of testimony given by Ahn Myung Chul, who had been assigned to life detention settlements No. 11, 12, 22 and 26 between 1987 and 1994.
He defected from his duty post at the settlement No. 22 in September 1994 and crossed the Korea-China border. He arrived safely in South Korea on 13 October 1994. - Daily NK]
N.Korea’s Weapons Exports ‘Down 90%’ Since UN Sanctions, which included the banning of all arms exports from the country since last year. However, the institute said Iran may still be receiving weapons from North Korea as it has long been a key supplier of missile technology to the Middle Eastern country. s
Two Koreas hold talks days after exchanging gunfire: Despite the flare-up in tensions, officials from both Koreasd met at the North Korean border town of Kaesong to discuss how to further develop their joint factory park.
