Tag: defectors

It appears that some in the Korean government want to pull a Sony and give in to North Korean threats at the expense of free speech for their citizens:

A South Korean parliamentary committee adopted a resolution Thursday calling on the government to take necessary steps to protect its citizens from any harm caused by civic activists’ flying of anti-Pyongyang leaflets across the inter-Korean border.

The resolution, adopted by the National Assembly’s foreign affairs and unification committee, also urges the two Koreas to abide by their earlier agreements to stop all slander against each other, noting it is key to building trust.

“(We) urge the government to take necessary steps so as to ensure the spread of anti-North Korea leaflets does not damage the improvement of South-North ties and jeopardize the safety of our citizens,” the resolution said.

The leaflet campaign, often led by North Korean defectors in the South, has long been a source of tension between the two Koreas as it aims to stir up dissent against the regime of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.

Seoul has long dismissed Pyongyang’s demands to ban the campaign, citing freedom of speech.

Speaking during the committee meeting, Unification Minister Ryoo Kihl-jae stressed that the government’s position remains unchanged. The government also believes it should take steps if they are needed for the people’s safety, he said.

The minister, however, ruled out a direct link between the leaflet scattering and any improvement in bilateral ties.

The government’s stance has been closely watched after the district court in Uijeongbu, just north of Seoul, ruled Tuesday that it is legal for authorities to restrain the campaign if it puts the lives of South Koreans at risk.  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link.

ROK Drop favorite Park Sang-hak is living up to his word and has decided to drop “The Interview” over North Korea via balloon:

A South Korean activist said Wednesday that he will launch balloons carrying DVDs of Sony’s “The Interview” toward North Korea to try to break down a personality cult built around dictator Kim Jong Un.

The comedy depicting an assassination attempt on Kim is at the center of tension between North Korea and the U.S., with Washington blaming Pyongyang for crippling hacking attacks on Sony Entertainment. Pyongyang denies that and has vowed to retaliate.

Activist Park Sang-hak said he will start dropping 100,000 DVDs and USBs with the movie by balloon in North Korea as early as late January. Park, a North Korean defector, said he’s partnering with the U.S.-based non-profit Human Rights Foundation, which is financing the making of the DVDs and USB memory sticks of the movie with Korean subtitles.

Park said foundation officials plan to visit South Korea around Jan. 20 to hand over the DVDs and USBs, and that he and the officials will then try to float the first batch of the balloons if weather conditions allow.  [Associated Press]

You can read more at the link, but I guess we will see if North Korea tries to send out their leftist allies in South Korea to try and stop this balloon launch later in the month.

It looks like the North Korean defector Yeonmi Park who has made international headlines about her defection from the country has been exaggerating some of the tales she has been telling:

You’d have to have been inhuman not to be moved. But – and you’re going to hear a lot of “buts” – was the story she told of her life in North Korea accurate? The more speeches and interviews I read, watch and hear Park give, the more I become aware of serious inconsistencies in her story that suggest it wasn’t. Whether this matters is up to the reader to decide, but my concern is if someone with such a high profile twists their story to fit the narrative we have come to expect from North Korean defectors, our perspective of the country could become dangerously skewed. We need to have a full and truthful picture of life in North Korea if we are to help those living under its abysmally cruel regime and those who try to flee.

“Celebrity Defector”

I met Yeonmi Park a few months ago when I spent two weeks filming a story about her and her family for Australia’s SBS Dateline. We called the story, “Celebrity Defector.”

Back in South Korea where she now lives, Park is one of the stars of a television program featuring a cast of North Korean women. It’s called “Now On My Way To Meet You” and it daringly satirizes the Kim Dynasty. The women tell personal anecdotes about their lives in North Korea and their journey to the south. A number of the women were introduced to us as having been homeless and starving – the reason they fled.

Buried in the shows archives are some snapshots of Park’s childhood in North Korea that explain why she’s known on the show as the Paris Hilton of North Korea. They’re in sharp contrast to the story she’s now telling her international audience.  [The Diplomat]

You can read the rest at the link, but it is a very convincing case that Park has exaggerated circumstances of her defection to possibly help raise awareness and funding for the North Korean human rights organizations she has been working with.

Here is Yeonmi Park’s response to this article:

I want to thank Mary Ann Jolley for caring so much about the terrible situation in North Korea that she would point out any inconsistencies in my quotes and how my story has been reported. Much of the time, there was miscommunication because of a language barrier. I have only learned English in the last year or so, and I’m trying hard to improve every day to be a better advocate for my people. I apologize for any misunderstandings. For example, I never said that I saw executions in Hyesan. My friends’ mother was executed in a small city in central North Korea where my mother still has relatives (which is why I don’t want to name it). And there are mountains you can even see on Google Earth – maybe you call them big hills in English – outside of Hyesan that we crossed to escape. There are many more examples like this.

But one very important thing to correct:  I do not have a foundation.  The website was a dummy site built by a friend, and it was not supposed to be live. There was no way it could accept money, and I haven’t taken any.  I am so sorry for the confusion. The site has been taken down.

Also, I apologize that there have been times when my childhood memories were not perfect, like how long my father was sentenced to prison. Now I am checking with my mom and others to correct everything. I am also writing a book about my life in North Korea, my escape through China and and my work to promote human rights.  It is where I will be able to tell my full story.

In the meantime, I thank you all for your patience and kindness to me.

I think most of the inconsistencies are pretty minor that could be explained by poor memory and English language skills other than the story of her mother being raped.  If that is not true then that is a flat out lie.  The organizations that promote defector testimony like this need to be very careful to not have defectors exaggerate or lie because this just plays into the hands of the Kim regime and its apologists.  The truth about North Korea is bad enough, there is no need to lie about it.

A ROK Drop favorite Park Sang-hak and his activist allies plan on dropping copies of the now cancelled Hollywood movie “The Interview” over North Korea if they can get a copy of the film:

Human Rights Foundation founder Thor Halvorssen says the group plans on buying copies of “The Interview” — which depicts the assassination of North Korea’s leader — and including them in upcoming balloon drops over North Korea. The group is waiting to hear whether Sony will release the movie in an alternate format since it canceled plans to release the film in theaters. (On Wednesday, Sony said it had no further plans for release.)

For the last two years, the Human Rights Foundation has been working with groups in South Korea to drop balloons into the North that are filled with banned items.

HRF has teamed up with Park Sang Hak, who worked for the North Korean government before defecting to South Korea. He is now the chairman of an activist group, Fighters for a Free North Korea, and has successfully led multiple balloon launches into North Korea.

Park told CNNMoney it’s a wider effort to help North Koreans gain access to different perspectives. And that perspective may soon include the controversial film that North Korea has condemned.  [CNN]

You can read more at the link, but this is another possible response to the Sony hack which would be to help fund defector groups to get subversive media into North Korea.

Defectors attack North Korea with helium balloons http://t.co/QYs6gea9sz pic.twitter.com/EzG74N5o8o

— The Telegraph (@Telegraph) December 16, 2014

The leftists in the South Korean government are trying to legislate away a subsidy the North Korean defector groups receive to help their balloon launch campaign:

Government subsidies for anti-North Korea activists have emerged as a bone of contention at the National Assembly as rival parties are competing to get their respective human rights bills related to North Korea passed.

The subsidies allegedly have been used to fund the campaign of releasing balloons containing leaflets criticizing the Pyongyang leadership that are blown across the border.

The ruling Saenuri Party said Monday it favored keeping the subsidies for civic groups as a tool against North Korea, while the main opposition New Politics Alliance for Democracy (NPAD) argued that it will only anger the North.

The two parties failed to reach a compromise so the competing bills are now being deliberated at the National Assembly Foreign Affairs and Unification Committee.  [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link, but ending the subsidies will not end the balloon launches.  The defector groups will just have to raise more money privately to fund the launches.

RT @BuckTurgidson79: North Korean defectors speaking up about human rights abuses http://t.co/gzhUUYn6t9

— Liberty in NK (@LibertyinNK) November 19, 2014

The interview with North Korean defector Yeon-mi Park I featured here on ROK Drop last month.  Here testimony ended up getting a lot of international attention and now the North Koreans have brought out their biggest western apologists to claim she is a liar in regards to her testimony of seeing dead bodies in North Korean rivers:

Via One Free Korea comes this interview with 21 year old North Korean defector Yeonmi Park that explains what life was like for her in the “Socialist Paradise”:

In an interview with the Irish Independent, Yeonmi told how her first memory is of being told by her mother at the age of four “not to even whisper because the birds and mice could hear you”.

“That’s what I learned from my mum and that was really early – so that’s the way she could protect me from that terror,” said Yeonmi.

People are not really “living” there, she says of life in that country. “They are surviving there, and surviving is not that easy actually.”

When she was nine, she was forced to watch her best friend’s mother being executed on the street before her eyes.

Her only crime had been she had watched a James Bond movie and shared the DVDs with neighbours.

Watching her body crumble to the ground was a seismic moment in how Yeonmi viewed the world.

“She was a very nice, gentle mother,” she said.

“Always I knew that in North Korea when they kill the people, they justify themselves by saying these are criminals trying to destroy our socialist paradise.

“But I knew that lady. She was not that bad. She was not going to destroy our country,” she said.

“She was just being killed because she watched the Hollywood movie, James Bond. And that’s why she got killed.”

That same year, Yeonmi’s life changed catastrophically when her father, a mid-ranking civil servant, was arrested and imprisoned for selling precious metals to China on the black market.

Her mother, too, was interrogated and thrown into jail. Yeonmi and her sister, Eunmi were left to fend for themselves, at the age of nine and 11, foraging on the mountainsides for grasses, plants, frogs and even dragonflies to avoid starving to death. “Everything I used to see, I ate them,” she said.  [Irish Independent]

You can read more plus watch a video interview with Yeonmi at the link. Make sure to read One Free Korea’s commentary as this link as well.

ALERT: North Korea test-fires 4 short-range rockets, says Yonhap http://t.co/KVGyDrPaev

— NK NEWS (@nknewsorg) July 30, 2014