Liberty Live Tour 2008 Comes to Berkeley

Start: Sunday, October 12, 2008 7:30 PM

Location: Julia Morgan Center for the Arts
2640 College Avenue
Berkeley, CA 94704

Directions to the Julia Morgan Center

Liberty in North Korea (LiNK) Outreach: Bay Area will be hosting Spiralnote Records and LiNK's Liberty Live Tour as it makes a stop from traveling across the States to grace us with the harmonious sounds of the Philly rock band Miss Vintage and LA rock-pop sensation Andy Grammer, playing music and raising awareness about the present humanitarian crisis in North Korea.

The third-to-last of their 22 stops will be right here in the East Bay at the Julia Morgan Center in Berkeley.

Our lives are not through just yet, so lets help turn this tour into the genesis of an exciting campaign to bring this issue to the attention of America at large and empower a movement that will one day allow for liberty in North Korea.

Tickets are $10 Pre-Sale! They are available now online at http://www.linkglobal.org/libertytickets.html
Tickets are also available at the door for $15.

UPDATE:
In an attempt to make this event more affordable for all, tickets are now
$8 dollars Pre-Sale and $10 at the door! All the more incentive to bring all your friends for a great show!

Inside North Korea Documentary Screening this Week

Our first event come Autumn 2008 will feature a National Geographic documentary, offering a very comprehensive look at the state of North Korea, this Wednesday. The film follows Lisa Ling as she poses as an undercover medical coordinator and is closely guarded/watched throughout her trip inside the dictatorship.

The film will be shown on the UC Berkeley campus in the Valley Life Sciences Building (VLSB). Details of the showing can be found above on the flier. So nice, we printed it thrice.

Born and Raised in a Concentration Camp: North Korean Defector Shin Dong-Hyuk Shares

Start: Monday, May 12, 2008 7:00 PM
End: Monday, May 12, 2008 8:15 PM

Location: Valley Life Science Building, Room 2040, UC Berkeley
2040 Valley Life Sciences Building, Berkeley, CA 94720

Directions to Berkeley

Liberty in North Korea (LiNK) will be hosting North Korean defector Shin Dong-hyuk on a speaking tour entitled, "Born and Raised in a Concentration Camp." He will recount his experiences as a North Korean who was born into slavery as a political prisoner in a North Korean concentration camp. Shin was born on Nov. 19, 1982 and called the camp home until 2005. While at the camp, he endured daily beatings, torture, starvation-level rations, saw forced abortions and even witnessed the public execution of his mother and brother in 1996. Shin described his life of total isolation from the world: "In South Korea, although there is disappointment and sadness, there is also so much joy, happiness and comfort. In Kaechon, I did not even know such emotions existed. The only emotion I ever knew was fear: fear of beatings, fear of starvation, fear of torture and fear of death." LiNK's Executive Director Adrian Hong will accompany Shin on the tour and will be speaking about the broader issue of human rights in North Korea, as well as the current refugee situation and LiNK's resettlement activities. Liberty in North Korea is an international non-governmental organization devoted to human rights in North Korea and the protection of North Korean refugees.

6:45 PM Registration
7:00 Speakers: Shin Dong-Hyuk, North Korean defector
Adrian Hong, LiNK
8:00 Q&A

Speaker Biographies:

Shin Dong-hyuk: Mr. Shin was born and raised in Political Prison Camp No. 14 until his escape in 2005. Based in South Korea, he has testified before Britain's House of Lords, and published a book in 2007 entitled "I Was a Political Prisoner at Birth in North Korea" published by the DataBase Center for North Korean Human Rights. Mr. Shin aspires to attend college and hopes to become a policeman.

Adrian Hong: Adrian Hong currently serves as Executive Director of Liberty in North Korea, or LiNK, an international NGO devoted to human rights in North Korea, and the protection of North Korean refugees all over the world. In December of 2006, Mr. Hong was arrested along with 2 LiNK field workers and 6 North Korean refugees in the People's Republic of China and imprisoned before being released and deported.

A Second "Arduous March"?

Dr. Andrei Lankov has an article up on Asia Times about the prospects of another major famine in North Korea.

Among the North Korean population there is widespread talk about a "second Arduous March" (the "Arouse [sic] March" being a somewhat pompous official name for the "Great Famine" which killed between 500,000 and 1 million people between 1996-1999). International experts seem to agree. Tony Banbury, the World Food Program (WFP) regional director for Asia, said in mid-April: "The food security situation in the DPRK [Democratic People's Republic of Korea] is clearly bad and getting worse. It is increasingly likely that external assistance will be urgently required to avert a serious tragedy."

This change of mood is dramatic. Merely a year ago, North Korean leaders were optimistic. The good harvest of 2005 persuaded them that food shortages were behind them, and that North Korean agriculture had begun to recover. The 2005 harvest was merely 4.6 million tons, well below the 5.2 million tons which are necessary to keep the entire population alive. Still, it was clearly an improvement.

It's looking more and more like a perfect storm of rising food prices, posturing against the new South Korean administration, and a poor harvest could lead to a very bad next few years in North Korea.

Read the whole article for more info. It's a little long, but well worth the read.

Day 2 of Fast for NK Week

We'll once again be out on Sproul today. Come and stop by our table if you haven't already!

In the meantime, please read up on your North Korea facts. Today, check out this link right here. It's a collection of articles on human trafficking in and around North Korea.

And if you have any questions for us, our email address is linkbayarea@gmail.com.

Fast for NK Week

Starting in a little less than 9 hours, LiNK Outreach: Bay Area (LOBA) will be bringing Fast for NK back to the UC Berkeley campus.

Fast for NK was started last year by LiNK Global as a way of bringing attention to the humanitarian crisis in and around North Korea. On April 11, 2007 thousands of people worldwide abstained from eating, in solidarity with starving North Koreans, and donated the money they would have spent on food toward LiNK's shelters.

This year, we'll be doing the fast again at Berkeley, on April 25th. Throughout the week, LOBA will be on Sproul, tabling, flyering, and sharing with our fellow students about the crisis. In addition, many of LOBA's staff are going above and beyond simply fasting on one day by eating only one cup of rice a day - about what an average North Korean gets in rations - for the first four days of the week.



Last year, 118 people on the Berkeley campus fasted, raising over $800 to support shelters and food aid for North Korean refugees. Will you join us this year?



If you're not in the area, you can still help out! Please use this opportunity to spread the word about the North Korean human rights crisis. If you want more information about LiNK, please visit LiNK Global's web site - and if you'd like to make a donation, you'll find a "donate" button on the left side of the screen. All money LiNK raises goes directly to helping North Korean refugees.

We'll be keeping this blog updated throughout the week with information about what's going on in North Korea. Stay tuned!

Olympics Activism on Behalf of NK Refugees

Controversy is mounting over the upcoming Summer Olympics in Beijing; here in the Bay Area, we've seen lots of protests over China's human rights record, particularly by advocates for Tibet and for Darfur. Less active, or at least less visible, have been advocates for North Koreans. In Seoul, however, a group is trying to bring attention to the issue.

Onlookers watch as a man tied up in ropes is led down a crowded pedestrian street by a woman holding a plastic assault rifle. Another man holding a megaphone explains that the re-enactment depicts a scene that has become an everyday occurrence in China. A multinational coalition of activists, calling themselves the 4-4-4 Campaign, holds this demonstration each weekend in downtown Seoul.

In Chinese culture, the number 4 symbolizes death. Protester Nam Hyang Soo says the activists chose their name because Beijing's refugee policy is killing North Koreans who try to escape their impoverished homeland.

[...]

For the past few weeks, attention has been focused on the Chinese crackdown on protesters in Tibet. The 4-4-4 Campaign wants the world to remember that Tibetans aren't the only people whose human rights are regularly violated by Beijing. They too are calling for an international boycott of the Olympic Games, and have threatened to disrupt the opening ceremonies in the Chinese capital in August.

More pictures from North Korea

From a courageous reporter for The Sun, who goes into some detail about the treatment he received after being caught taking the pictures.

SKorea to back UN resolution on NKorea

By KWANG-TAE KIM, Associated Press Writer

South Korea will vote in favor of a U.N. resolution on alleged human rights violations in North Korea, a senior Foreign Ministry official said Wednesday.

The resolution is expected to raise concerns about the rights situation in North Korea — which international advocacy groups say is among the world's worst abusers. Voting for it would make good on the new Seoul government's promise not to refrain from criticizing Pyongyang.

The official spoke Wednesday on condition of anonymity because he did not want to comment publicly before the vote, scheduled later this week at the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva.

The new government of conservative President Lee Myung-bak has promised a change from the reluctance of previous South Korean liberal governments to publicly criticize the North.

Since 2003, South Korea has only once voted for a U.N. resolution on human rights in its communist, impoverished and isolated neighbor — after the North's nuclear test in October 2006.

In other votes, the South either abstained or stayed away out of concerns that its criticism might hurt ties and efforts to resolve the international nuclear standoff with North Korea.

From: Yahoo!

Major food shortage in NK this year

From Yahoo!:

A dire food shortage across North Korea has become so acute it has started to affect the country's elite in the capital, Pyongyang, reports say.
(Advertisement)

Aid agency Good Friends says food rations for some parts of the city have been cut by up to 60%, while others have seen their supplies cut off completely.

Only citizens who show absolute loyalty to leader Kim Jong Il and his regime are allowed to live in Pyongyang and are considered better off than their fellow countrymen.

But the food situation, which has mostly been felt in rural areas where rations have been suspended since November, has now spread to the city, according to the South Korean aid agency.

"Even ranking officials have run out of their (rationed) food supply, while a ban on (private) trade is strictly maintained," said an unidentified city official quoted by Good Friends.

"It is nothing but a death sentence."

The agency also said farm labourers were staying away from work because they were not getting any food. This was said to be affecting the planting of new crops.

The fact that this is affecting the elite in Pyongyang is unprecedented, and leads to a possible silver lining to this very dark cloud. From One Free Korea:

The regime has contained and survived mass-casualty famine and dissent in the countryside before. A severe downturn in Pyongyang, however, is a game-changer. If the regime can’t even feed its elite, it’s going to have to take some chairs away from the banquet table. That means commissars and apparatchiks will shiv each other for the remaining chairs as though their lives depend on it. A rumored phase-out of the “military first” policy introduces a whole new pool of potential coup plotters. This could be the beginning of the end. If the report is true – and if China doesn’t execute an Olympic-sized airlift to reverse those conditions fast – there’s a 70% chance of regime collapse within the next year.

Disarmament Talks, Cont.

Recently elected South Korean President Lee Myung-bak has taken a firm position towards North Korea. According to Reuters:

South Korean President Lee Myung-bak on Tuesday urged North Korea to start standing on its own feet, stop relying on handouts and get ready for unification. [...] The conservative leader has promised to help lift North Korea out of abject poverty on condition the reclusive communist neighbor abandons nuclear weapons and opens up its economy.

Thankfully, an international disarmament accord was signed in 2007. However, there is dispute over whether North Korea completely and accurately followed through with it. According to Associated Press:

The accord, signed among the two Koreas, the U.S., China, Russia and Japan, is at a stalemate due to a dispute over whether the North fully accounted for its nuclear programs by a Dec. 31, 2007 deadline. The North says it already provided the list in November, while the U.S. says it is still waiting for a complete, detailed declaration.

On the other hand, North Korea is asking the other members of the international accord to fulfill their agreements: to provide 1 million metric tons of fuel oil and normalized diplomatic ties (remove North Korea from the state sponsor of terrorism list) with the U.S. and Japan (Bloomberg).

That's why, at the suggestion of North Korea, chief U.S. nuclear negotiator Christopher Hill and his North Korean counterpart Vice Foreign Minister Kim Kye-gwan met in Geneva on March 14 to discuss these discrepancies (Chosun Ilbo). However, no progress was made.

In Visit, Cellist’s Quest for Lost Chord to His Youth

By DANIEL J. WAKIN for the New York Times
PYONGYANG, North Korea — For much of his 60 years, Valentin Hirsu has thought of those three Korean boys in his class.

It was at Music School No. 1 in Bucharest, Romania. The boys were North Korean orphans from the war that had torn up their country. One played piano, another clarinet, the third flute.

After about six years, they were taken home.

Mr. Hirsu never heard from them again. Now, in Pyongyang as a cellist with the visiting New York Philharmonic, he is asking about their fate.

"It’s a crime not to look for them if I’ll be there,” he said on the eve of the orchestra’s departure from Beijing. “I don’t know if they are alive or minister of culture. How am I supposed to know?” he said.

Mr. Hirsu kept a picture that includes the three Koreans among a clutch of students around a teacher, like a “mother hen,” he said.

He recalled the three boys as excellent students and good kids. “They were the best in drawing,” he said. “They were the best in geography, even Romanian, volleyball, everything.”

After graduating, Mr. Hirsu embarked on a successful career as a soloist in Romania. In 1975, he immigrated to Israel and a year later to the United States, where he almost immediately won an audition for the Philharmonic.

Mr. Hirsu gave the photograph to Fred Carriere, the executive director of the Korea Society, which helped the Philharmonic with logistics for the trip. Mr. Hirsu had a phonetic recollection of the names, but that did not prove to be much help. Mr. Carriere said Monday, after the orchestra arrived in Pyongyang, that he had had no success in locating the three.

A disappointed Mr. Hirsu said he would not give up, promising to ask every North Korean musician he encountered about them. “I can find them on my own,” he said.

U.S.'09 Budget for NK Shifts to Denuclearization

The U.S. budget for North Korea-related funds in fiscal year (FY) 2009 is spread out between the energy and state departments with a shift away from democratization assistance to nuclear disarmament.

The budget proposed earlier this month, and to start in October this year, includes the Energy Department's request for $ 140.5 million for Nonproliferation and International Security (NIS) which covers the Next Generation Safeguards Initiative. This program is specifically aimed at disabling, dismantling and verifying North Korea's nuclear program and at stopping spread of weapons of mass destruction.

``Another priority in FY 2009 is disablement, dismantlement, and verification of nuclear programs in North Korea,’’ the department's budget request says.

``In FY 2009, NIS will provide technical expertise required (for) dismantlement actions of the North Korean nuclear facilities, continue to verify the North Korean declaration of its nuclear program elements, support the six-party working groups, and undertake scientist engagement opportunities to support denuclearization and proliferation risk reduction.’’ (Yonhap)

From: The Korea Times

22 N. Koreans Executed for a Defection Attempt

Twenty-two North Koreans, sent back to the North by South Korean authorities earlier this month after their fishing boats drifted into South Korean waters, were reported to have been executed by a firing squad.

The North Koreans were shot dead last week by North Korean military authorities of South Hwanghae Province, which believed they had attempted to defect to the South, Yonhap News Agency reported Sunday, quoting an unidentified government source.

``The rumor (of the execution) has been spreading out among locals. Local people have been shocked that all of the 22 were executed by a firing squad without distinction of age or sex,'' the source said.

The 22 North Koreans included eight men, 14 women and three students.

North Korean fishermen often stray into southern waters because of bad weather or engine problems.

From The Korea Times

NK Intensifies Press Oppression

"North Korea executed a state-run company's director last year for having made phone calls abroad without government permission, an international journalist group said in its annual report released Sunday.

The case reflects a marked increase in executions for the offense of communication with people outside the totalitarian country, Reporters Without Borders said.
``North Korea is the world's most isolated country and the security forces are responsible for keeping it that way at all costs,’’ it said in the report.

`` North Korean leader Kim Jong-il is visiting media newsrooms, giving orders to reporters and correcting the editorials.’’

The group campaigning for freedom of speech also introduced burgeoning efforts to break the isolation. About a dozen North Korean reporters, who received secret training in China, launched the country's first magazine immune to censorship in November.

``Working closely with a Japanese news agency, Rimjingang has promised unprecedented news about the situation within the country,’’ it said. ``The first edition carried interviews with North Koreans and an analysis of the country's economic situation.’’ (Yonhap) "

From: The Korea Times

North Korea Diverts Food Aid to Military

The Korea Times, among others, reports that South Korea's food aid may actually be serving to feed the North Korean military, rather than the North Korean population as a whole:

Some of the rice given to North Korea by South Korea for humanitarian purposes has been funneled into the North Korean military units on the front lines, according to a military source Thursday. But Seoul has never raised the issue with Pyongyang.

``Since late 2006, we have noticed bags of rice clearly marked with South Korea's Red Cross logo being unloaded from trucks in North Korean military camps and some of them were left in a stacked there,'' an official said on condition of anonymity.

The bags, which contained rice, were also used for North Korea's military encampment. So far some 400 rice bags reportedly ended up in the North Korean military bases.

North Korean defectors have often said rice provided to the North by the South leaked to the military. Some even said the good quality rice goes to the military first.

It's an odd cycle, with South Korea feeding the very military that threatens to invade it. There are, however, more sinister implications regarding the regime's motivations. Must read analysis at the blog One Free Korea, which posits, among other things, the possibility that the North Korean regime, when given food aid, cuts back on importing food so as to free up more money to spend on other things while its people sit on the brink of starvation.

More on China's Pre-Olympic Crackdown

From the International Herald Tribune:

When state security agents burst into his apartment on Dec. 27, Hu Jia was chatting on Skype, the Internet-based telephone system. Hu's computer was his most potent tool. He disseminated information about human rights cases, peasant protests and other politically touchy topics even though he often lived under de facto house arrest.

Hu, 34, and his wife, Zeng Jinyan, are human rights advocates who spent much of 2006 restricted to their apartment in a complex with the unlikely name of Bo Bo Freedom City. She blogged about life under detention, while he videotaped a documentary titled "Prisoner in Freedom City." Their surreal existence seemed to reflect an official uncertainty about how, and whether, to shut them up.

That ended on Dec. 27. Hu was dragged away on charges of subverting state power while Zeng was bathing their newborn daughter, Qianci. Telephone and Internet connections to the apartment were severed. Mother and daughter are now under house arrest. Qianci, barely 2 months old, is probably the youngest political prisoner in China.

For human rights advocates and Chinese dissidents, Hu's detention is the most telling example of what they describe as a broadening crackdown on dissent as Beijing prepares to stage the Olympic Games in August. In recent months, several dissidents have been jailed, including a former factory worker in northeastern China who collected 10,000 signatures after posting an online petition titled "We Want Human Rights, Not the Olympics."

"This is a coordinated cleansing campaign," said Teng Biao, a legal expert who has known Hu since 2006. "All the troublemakers — including potential troublemakers — are being silenced before the Olympic Games."

Both refugees and NGO workers are likely to fall into the "troublemakers" category, which bodes ill for them and for the cause of North Korean freedom.