Roh to attend Arirang?

All appearances are that South Korean President Roh Moo Hyun will be attending the Arirang festival later this year when he visits North Korea.

Arirang is the largest gymnastics/propaganda show in the world, involving thousands of people in a massive tribute to Kim Il-Sung, Kim Jong-il, and the North Korean regime.

An account of the Arirang games can be found here. From this article:

Arirang, however, is part of a propaganda offensive on a scale that would make a big-spending Hollywood mogul envious. The stage is the 150,000-capacity May Day stadium in Pyongyang, and the cast is 100,000 strong. The performance is a technicolour mix of entertainment: a floorshow by 1,000 dancers; a military tattoo; a martial arts display; hordes of waving, smiling children; an aerial ballet by dancers on bungee ropes.

The most breathtaking element of Arirang is the backdrop - a giant human mosaic that forms elaborate panoramas of megacities, slogans and cartoons. More than 30,000 children form a flip-card unit working so quickly that some pictures appear to be animated.

It is an awesome product of political control and economic weakness. Starved of energy, and economically retarded, the only resource North Korea has in abundance is its people - and they are often employed in places where richer countries would use electricity. Just as policewomen direct Pyongyang's traffic rather than automated lights; in Arirang, tens of thousands of children are used to create a giant screen.

Even at the height of Soviet power, Moscow would have struggled to choreograph such a mass performance. The politics are surreal. The "prosperous fatherland" reads one giant banner above a mosaic of ploughing tractors - no matter that almost all farmwork is done by hand because vehicles and fuel are in such short supply. "Green revolution" reads another, over an image of bumper crops, despite the fact that the nation has not been able to feed a third of its people for a decade.

Youtube has several videos of the event. This one is of the children's performance. Remember that the background is not an electronic screen; it's a massive 30,000 person card stunt.

If President Roh does end up attending, he is in effect turning a blind eye to the ugly side of Arirang: the treatment of the child performers. Unification Minister Lee Jae-Joung seems to be doing preemptive damage control in this regard. From the Chosun Ilbo:

According to the testimony of North Korean defectors, one side of the May Day Stadium where the performance takes place often smells of urine. That’s because students are not allowed to leave their positions while practicing the flash card performance. So they simply urinate while sitting down in their seats. Many children are said to end up getting bladder infections. One wrong move and children are clubbed and punished in groups. Kim Hyun-sik, former professor at Kim Hyung Jik College of Education, said the Arirang performance was “soaked with the blood and tears of the North Korean people.”

Regarding questions as to whether the South Korean president should attend such a performance marred by allegations of child abuse, South Korean Unification Minister Lee Jae-joung retorted whether the lengthy training of South Korean children for a play or sports event could be viewed as abuse was uncertain. Regarding North Korea’s human rights violations, Lee pretended not to know, saying human rights issues should be interpreted according to the unique circumstances of a particular society. He added that there was no concrete evidence of human rights violations in the North.

China opening up?

It's not letting UNHCR in or admitting that North Korean "migrants" are actually refugees, but this, reported in the LA Times, gives reason to hope that China is moving in the right direction. First, a few quotes:

Unfortunately for Chinese censors, a more three-dimensional view of the news is increasingly just a click away. A few terms entered into one of China's Internet search engines quickly reveal reports on food inspection shortfalls, official complicity in mining accidents, questionable nuclear standards, even comments on the party's penchant for nearly identical happy-talk front pages.

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In recent weeks, however, some Chinese officials are starting to do a better job reassuring the public at home and abroad by following a few cardinal rules: Admit mistakes, accept responsibility, minimize cover-ups and outline a concrete response.

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But China also is working to reverse a tradition of secrecy, said Steven Dong, a professor of political communication and public relations at Tsinghua University, driven in part by its rising global stature and the reality of the Internet.

In the past, when the Propaganda Ministry didn't like something posted on a website, it would call the hosting service and get it pulled. Now, a story running on a major Chinese website is likely to be picked up by as many as 437 Chinese websites within five minutes, Dong said.

"Now they would need to call 438 people," he said. "It would never happen."

So, what does this mean? First, it suggests that China may be becoming more image-conscious in light of the upcoming 2008 Olympics. This could be a good thing, if it forces China to deal with its problems, which of course include its abominable record toward North Korean refugees. On the other hand, if China feels that it can escape international reprobation by continuing to simply deny certain issues, then it may continue to do so, especially in light of how it has dealt with missionaries, another group that China does not want interfering with the Olympics.

All in all, this could be a step in the right direction if it shows a true change in China's coverup-prone attitude. However, if this is merely a step to deal with a populace made restless by natural disasters, the international community is going to have to put more pressure on China before things change.

Korean student groups working for NK human rights

Encouraging news today comes from the Daily NK, where we read that Korean students are pushing hard for human rights to be included as part of the imminent inter-Korean summit. (Background on the summit: Roh Moo Hyun hopes to improve inter-Korean relations before he leaves office at the end of this year; Kim Jong-il may be trying to appear cooperative in advance of the ROK presidential elections in December; neither leader has an incentive to address human rights.)

Mr. Yoon said, “This movement, with the confirmation of the Summit Talks agenda coming up on the 25th, was started because the government preparing for the talks has not shown an intent to discuss the North Korean human rights situation.” From the onset of the petition movement, a non-cooperative struggle is taking place.

They are planning to include the abductees’ issue in the upcoming petition movement.

The figure 100,000 represents the 12,000-some defectors who have entered South Korea, around 500 prisoners of war of the Korean armed forces, approximately 8,300 wartime abductees, and 480 abductees taken immediately after the war.

Mr. Yoon said, “A true peace and coexistence cannot begin until basic human rights are reached and expanded on North Korean soil. Talks where the human rights improvement of 20 million North Korean civilians is not discussed cannot ultimately contribute to the arrival of the flourishing of peace on the peninsula.”

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Mr. Yoon requested, “While looking at the distant future (reunification of the peninsula), do not think that the North Korean human rights issue is somebody else’s work. College students should take a greater interest and lend their ears to those who voice the right opinions.”

More Clamping Down

The DPRK continues its crackdown on foreign influences, arresting several North Korean citizens and one foreign national on charges of spying. Part of their crime was that they were apparently bringing in information about the outside world, or as the regime charmingly puts it, spreading "illusion about the free world."

The alleged spies were assigned to obtain the coordinates of a military installation using a global positioning device and to pass along state and military secrets, the ministry said, according to KCNA. They also tried to lure senior officials to leave their homeland by fomenting ``illusion about the free world,'' it said.

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North Korea's rare announcement ``demonstrated its will to control its people and safeguard its system,'' said Koh Yu-hwan, an expert on the country at South Korea's Dongguk University.

North Korea has struggled to keep outside information from seeping into the country out of concern that it could lead to the overthrow of its reclusive communist regime.

Despite an official ban, some North Koreans are communicating with the outside world, mostly by using cell phones on Chinese communication networks, according to North Korean defectors in South Korea.

The DPRK and Outside Influences

A couple of articles here that provide an interesting perspective on just how much outside culture/influence the North Korean regime is willing to tolerate.

The first, from Chosun Ilbo, discusses the North Korean Glossary of Economic Terms, published last year to help ruling elites with their economic literacy. If the DPRK's poor economy wasn't already enough of a sign that there was a problem in that department, the extremely basic nature of the dictionary clarifies that:

North Korea has published a dictionary of capitalist terminology to help its people grasp basic concepts like “principal”, “interest”, “insurance”, “income”, “labor force” and “rent.”

The second article, from Radio Free Asia, talks about how the so-called "Korean Wave" of South Korean pop culture has penetrated to North Korea, to the great chagrin of the regime, and, oftentimes, the great suffering of those who are caught partaking.

“There have been two or three reports of public executions of North Korean young people in major cities including Chungjin, as punishment for having illegally copied and distributed South Korean visual material,” said Kang Chul Hwan, vice-chairman of the Seoul-based Committee for the Democratization of North Korea.