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A Voice From North Korea Echoes in the White House
NYT ^ | 06/18/05 | JAMES BROOKE

Posted on 06/18/2005 6:50:29 AM PDT by TigerLikesRooster

A Voice From North Korea Echoes in the White House

By JAMES BROOKE

Tokyo

AFTER years of lonely street demonstrations and little-noticed newspaper columns, Kang Chol Hwan, a North Korean defector, learned recently that his life had irrevocably changed.

Seok Jae-hyun for the New York Times.
"I was introduced as someone who wrote a book that was read by George Bush," Kang Chol Hwan said.

"I was introduced as someone who wrote a book that was read by George Bush," he said in a recent interview at a museum cafe in Seoul, South Korea, only 150 miles south of the North Korean slave labor camp where he was imprisoned with his family in 1977. He was 9 years old.

Burning with memories of his family's 10-year imprisonment in the camp, which still functions hidden from outside eyes but not from satellite cameras, Mr. Kang teamed up with Pierre Rigoulot, a French journalist, to write a memoir, "The Aquariums of Pyongyang: Ten Years in the North Korean Gulag." Printed in five languages since 2000, including English, the book was well received just about everywhere but in South Korea, where it languished in obscurity, its harsh critique of the North out of step with South Korea's official policy of engagement.

Despite its considerable merits, the book seemed destined to fade from view, and Mr. Kang with it, until this spring when, at the urging of former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger, President Bush picked it up.....


(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...


TOPICS: Foreign Affairs; Front Page News; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: aquarium; bush; humanright; kangcholhwan; nkorea; pyongyang; whitehouse
It is clear how to win respect from G.W. Bush. Kim Jong-il and Roh Moo-hyun, go figure. Kim Jong-il, stop oppressing N. Korean people and give up your nukes. Roh Moo-hyun, stop kissing Kim's butts.
1 posted on 06/18/2005 6:50:30 AM PDT by TigerLikesRooster
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To: TigerLikesRooster; AmericanInTokyo; OahuBreeze; yonif; risk; Steel Wolf; nuconvert; MizSterious; ...

Ping!


2 posted on 06/18/2005 6:50:50 AM PDT by TigerLikesRooster
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To: TigerLikesRooster

>"The way to eat a salamander is to grab it by the tail and swallow it in one quick gulp before it can discharge a foul tasting liquid," he wrote. Stocks of salt-cured rat meat helped prison families get through the winter. Rat skins were used to patch the lone set of shoddy prison clothing issued each year.

________________________________________________________________

hardly comparable to the food at gitmo.

i wonder if senator durbin reads the nyt?


3 posted on 06/18/2005 6:54:27 AM PDT by ken21
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To: TigerLikesRooster

What's this? George Bush read a book and the NY Times acknowledged the fact?


4 posted on 06/18/2005 6:57:04 AM PDT by ClaireSolt (.)
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To: ClaireSolt
Re #4

Well, sometimes things fall through cracks.:-)

5 posted on 06/18/2005 7:02:57 AM PDT by TigerLikesRooster
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To: TigerLikesRooster

Thanks for the post. The situation in North Korea is horrible and it deserves all the exposure it can get -- I'm glad the president is putting a spotlight on this.


6 posted on 06/18/2005 8:55:07 AM PDT by 68skylark
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To: ClaireSolt
George Bush read a book and the NY Times acknowledged the fact?

They're really asleep at the switch today -- this article also implies that communism isn't the happy, sunny, free-healthcare paradise they usually try to portray.

7 posted on 06/18/2005 8:58:50 AM PDT by 68skylark
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To: TigerLikesRooster

That photo of him in a bookstore must be in Korea -- looking at the green exit sign in the background. Or maybe Japan.


8 posted on 06/18/2005 12:17:14 PM PDT by AmericanInTokyo (**AT THE END OF THE DAY, IT IS NOT SO MUCH "WHO" WE STAND FOR, BUT RATHER "WHAT" WE STAND FOR**)
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