(comment added by TigerLikesRooster: German civilians under U.S. military escort are forced to see a wagon loaded with corpses in Buchenwald. Photo credit: National Archives, courtesy of USHMM Photo Archives )
Posted on 04/11/2005 5:57:52 AM PDT by TigerLikesRooster
It calls on Pyongyang to ratify the Convention Against Torture and guarantee that the UN special rapporteur on human rights in North Korea is allowed to operate freely. The special rapporteur was created by last year’s resolution.
You can read the Rapporteur’s full report here. It tells us plenty about the situation in North Korea that we already knew: its declining economy and mass starvation; diversion of food aid from the hungry; imprisonment without trial; pervasive political repression; hereditary class discrimination; public executions; concentration camps; torture; forced labor; repression and killing of repatriated defectors; infanticide; the imprisonment of entire families; the trafficking of women; and most recently, the cancellation of U.N. food aid programs while millions of North Koreans still depend on the food they provide (more on that here). For all of its U.N. gobbledygook, imprecise language, and straining to find “positive” aspects to the North Korean situation, the report calls North Korean refugees “refugees” for the first time. This directly confronts China’s assertion (and South Korea’s developing inclination) that they are in fact “economic migrants” undeserving of the protection of the 1951 U.N. Convention on Refugees.
One cannot say that this report dramatically alters the factual landscape of North Korea's deplorable human rights record. It merely puts an official imprimatur on a myriad of reports that exclude the possibility of South Korea's absolution in the eyes of history. For years, we have read published reports that the North Korean regime orders the murder of babies; the imprisonment of hundreds of thousands, including children; the gassing of whole families; and the starvation of millions. This has never affected South Korea's willingness to tolerate these horrors in culpably acquiescent silence.
While half of the Korean nation and a third of its population are enslaved in such a condition, South Korea chooses to focus its moral outrage on its friends. It has severed a 60-year alliance with the world's greatest power over a traffic accident and severed fingers and declared "diplomatic war" against Japan over two Godforsaken, guano-encrusted islands where no one even lives. Yet in spite of eight years of endlessly patient South Korean appeasement?some would say, because of it?North Korea has never been more ruthless toward its own people or intransigent toward the outside world.
But isn’t it unfair to say that the rights of the North Korean people are not important to the South Korean government? Not if you take former Unification Minister Jeong Se-Hyun at his word, as The Marmot reminds us:
The official refusal to speak out about the human-rights abuses of Kim Jong Il’s regime was on full display last week during an interview with the South’s minister of unification, whom I met on the day the gulag report was released. For North Koreans, Minister Jeong Se Hyun said, “political freedom is a luxury, like pearls for a pig. The improvement of economic conditions for the North Korean people is the most important issue right now.”
It's not Monty Python, but he's really saying, “Let's not bicker and argue over who killed who. . . .” Contrast this bit of accidental low burlesque with South Korea’s sense of moral indignation on an issue that South Korea does consider to be urgent business for the Human Rights Commission:
"If we don’t learn the lessons from the mistakes of history, we are doomed to repeat them."
What urgent matter is stirring South Korea’s righteous anger? Japanese history textbooks. I'm the first to agree that Japan needs to drop its ambivalence about its own culpability for its actions in the 1930’s and 40’s, but this isn't killing people now. Nor can one take seriously the idea that Japan represents a military threat to its neighbors. Indeed, Korea’s actions this week are a perfect illustration of how provincial grievances keep the U.N. from protecting human rights effectively, a failure that even Kofi Annan and some voices from the left are finally admitting.
* * * * *
The South Korean government is on full notice of the suffering of the North Korean people; yet for reasons that are almost certainly related to domestic politics, it chooses to focus its attention elsewhere. History will record this as a betrayal. The forgiveness of the North Korean people will be neither warranted nor forthcoming. Their anger at this refusal to acknowledge their suffering with so much as one intangible gesture will exacerbate the already formidable psychological barriers to reunification. Generations of Koreans will ask themselves how they elected men who could be so ruthlessly cowardly, but the question will not be asked while it is still possible to save some of those who will be dead by next spring.
They know. May shame be upon on them for a hundred generations.
first video shot
0:00 brief intro by anchors
0:50: video starts
3:25: verdict read
4:50: execution proceeds
second video shot - same general content
a narrator describes the scene in hushed voice
comment by anchors
brief interview with a man who involved in the operation.
more background information
verification of video
identifying landscape markers using a satellite photo
defectors identify landmarks.
more analysis of scene for authenticating the location
more comments and interview
......
a female N. Korean defector broke down, seeing the execution video.
near the end, territorial dispute between S. Korea and Japan over an island is reported.
Ping!
The South Koreans are still deluding themselves by thinking that Clinton was correct that if you be nice to Jung-Il, something good will come of it. It's shear insanity.
A video ping.
possibly the world's current most brutal regime ping
bump for later viewing
I, for one, don't need South Korea.
The S. Korean left's whole political agenda revolves around N/S Korea getting along as happy kids and stand "tall" against "bad" America. This loony one-track vision is their holy grail, and their dogma. If it dies, they are politically over. For now, they have virtual monopoly of media. They are pumping propaganda non-stop over air-waves and Internet.
It is a bad political "bubble." It will pop loudly, soon. These folks do not do orderly retreat. They and Kim Jong-il will go to the brink and fall into abyss.
Yeah, they are mentally adolescents. They make somebody mad but do not expect that they will be seriously burned. This is a real problem. We have bunch of folks in 30's and early 40's who have not grown since their college days. They think that it is some kind of enlightened thing to do. It is a raging fad now.
However, it will be like tornado. It comes suddenly and wreak havoc, only to disappear in a blink. S. Korea is such a mad storm. This is not a sustainable trend.
Yeah, but look at the damage it's doing. Tornadoes only pass through towns for a couple minutes, but destroy homes that lasted centuries.
I have to disagree -- I do not think this is a certain political class (386ers, netizens, or whatever) who have coopted the citizens. That was the mistaken assumption the GNP made before impeaching Roh in 2004. Roh asked for the April National Assembly election to be a referendum on his presidency -- his political party won by a landslide. Recently we see Roh's asinine comments on SK's "mediator" role in dealing with the sadistic North Korean Kim Family dictatorship -- Roh saying completely asinine stuff, of course, is nothing new and not unexpected, but reliable polls taken after this speech show about 80% of the ROK public agreeing with him. Parallel this to 2003 when several polls showed that the average ROK citizen considered the US a greater threat to their national security than North Korea.
As I've said, Roh is a symptom (if a very festering gangrenous one), not the problem. You can change a political regime quickly, but popular consciousness takes a long time and often a tragedy to change. North Korea will pounce on the ROK like wolves as soon as the US leaves. I do not why the ROKs are oblivious to this. It has been the father and son's stated goal for over 50 years now. It is the vitrolic which drives the state. The self-centered appeasement of the ROK, the ROK citizen's lack of concern for N Korean citizens, and the, in-general, wacky politics and consciousness of the ROK will go down in history as one of those sad, sad anomalies. Very soon, no one will give a damn about Korea as it gets sucked into Chinese vassaldom. Such is what we bring on ourselves by foolishness, arrogance, and a contempt for history.
You may underestimate the depth of herd mentality in S. Korea. People say whatever they think that the consensus are subscribing to. Usually, consensus comes from some lead group with media reach. Every society has herd mentality. However, it is a lot stronger in S. Korea. Thus, it is easy to manipulate mass via media monopoly.
Let me take an example. During the last World Cup, 7million poured into street for cheering S. Korean soccer team. This includes not only young guys. The crowd included women, who, in S. Korea, used to even hate soccer-talk by guys. Further, it even included a lot of old grannies, who never had interest in soccer at all for their whole life. Just because everybody else does it, they are obligated to do it too. Extreme level of group mentality. In a sense, current political situation rides the wave of mass hysteria which started during 2002 World Cup.
People are just following a raging trend. There are some hardcore lefties. However, a majority of self-claimed "leftie" are just herds. Their view is not deep-rooted. They follow all these ideas, because they are confident that it would not hurt them. Once they hit a brick wall, the herd would begin to disintegrate. In S. Korea, "Everybody does it" has a really powerful motive.
Of course, we are going to run into a tragedy, even a serious one. In S. Korea, things have to run their course all the way to the one end, before they swing back to the other.
Two things. First, things always have to go all the way to the end. Second, this process can happen in a surprisingly short time.
We are not in 70's where leftisms of various kind was at their peak. If S. Korea bucks the trend alone, the major disaster would befall on S. Korea. Especially coddling N. Koera is a monumentally backward move in history. The leftie in S. Korea is in a massive shock soon. N. Korea would go. Their economy will continue to stagnate, or even get worse. To the mindless herd, they would be painful doses of reality.
Just as Cultural Revolution did not last, this political frenzy in S. Korea does not, either.
Interesting -- I'll give that some thought. I can't see the current trend in SK much paralleling the Cultural Revolution though. The power in the PRC Cultural Revolution was a gun at the "center" of power (i.e. when Mao was ready to "let a hundred flowers wither" he simply pulled the plug."
South Korea is going headlong into a vortex with only weak idealism and suspect passions -- and, unlike in 60/70s PRC, there is an immediate enemy right at the gate; and another large enemy even a little further north, waiting to step in the void of the ROK/US alliance (if that still exists in anything but name). ;)
Interesting -- I'll give that some thought. I can't see the current trend in SK much paralleling the Cultural Revolution though. The power in the PRC Cultural Revolution was a gun at the "center" of power (i.e. when Mao was ready to "let a hundred flowers wither" he simply pulled the plug."
South Korea is going headlong into a vortex with only weak idealism and suspect passions -- and, unlike in 60/70s PRC, there is an immediate enemy right at the gate; and another large enemy even a little further north, waiting to step in the void of the ROK/US alliance (if that still exists in anything but name). ;)
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