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.

Update: Yoo Freed, Others Repatriated

Good news on the Yoo Sang-Joon issue that was mentioned on this blog last post. Once again, head on over to One Free Korea to read about it.

Dissident Yoo arrested, facing trial and deportation

Please read the account of this over at One Free Korea. It's unlikely that China will respond to grassroots pressure on this issue - but it's still possible.

ROK Abstains on UN DPRK Human Rights Resolution

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With the arrival of the Thanksgiving holiday, we all have a chance to remember on the many things we have to be thankful for. As we do so, let's remember the people in North Korea and elsewhere who are not so fortunate. Burmese dissident Aung San Suu Kyi once urged the free world to "use your freedom to promote ours." As we reflect on what we do have, let us do so with an eye toward using our blessings - in whatever capacity - to bring help and hope to those who so desperately need it.
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From the International Herald Tribune:

A U.N. General Assembly committee adopted a draft resolution Tuesday expressing "very serious concern" at persistent reports of widespread human rights violations in North Korea including torture, inhumane conditions of detention and public executions.

The assembly's human rights committee approved the resolution by a vote of 97-23 with 60 abstentions, including South Korea. The draft now goes to the 192-member General Assembly for a final vote.

[...]

North Korea said it "categorically resents" the draft resolution which it said is "filled with fabrications" and "cannot be justified in any case" because it does not also condemn human rights violations committed by the countries co-sponsoring it.

The draft cites North Korea's "all-pervasive and severe restrictions on the freedoms of thought, conscience, religion, opinion and expression, peaceful assembly and association" by persecuting people exercising these rights and barring their freedom of movement and travel abroad.

It singles out "the persistence of continuing reports of systematic, widespread and grave violations of civil, political and economic, social and cultural rights in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea including torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, including inhuman conditions of detention, public executions, extrajudicial and arbitrary detention..."

This is not entirely unexpected; South Korea abstained from similar resolutions from 2003 to 2005. Although they did support a similar resolution in 2006, two things have changed since then: 1) North Korea has been behaving fairly well and 2) South Korean Ban Ki-moon is not running for Secretary-General.

Interestingly enough, editorial opinion in South Korea seems to be fairly unanimously critical of the move. Both Chosun Ilbo on the right and Hankyoreh on the left criticize it in the following editorials:

Chosun Ilbo: A Wrong View on Human Rights

Chosun Ilbo: Abstaining from UN Vote on N. Korea is Cowardly

Hankyoreh: S. Korea's abstention on human rights resolution

Some items of interest

Daily NK: The US House of Representatives has passed a bill encouraging China to abide by its obligations under international treaties.

JoongAng Daily: North Korea's state-run media appears to be changing its tune with regard to contact with the outside world, claiming, "[t]he republic has always maintained its position that it wants to have good relations, even with capitalist countries."

Daily NK: North Korean defector Lee Sang Hyuk has been caught, but not before he apparently got in contact with relatives in the South. This won't help his cause.