Free Republic

A Voice From North Korea Echoes in the White HouseBy JAMES BROOKE TokyoAFTER 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...

/begin my translation Bush's  Recommended Reading for his  Associates-- a N. Korean Defector's MemoirYonhap News from Tokyo05/28/05U.S. President George W. Bush has read a memoir of a N. Korean defector, and was deeply disturbed by the atrocious human right situation in N. Korea. He also recommended it to his associates, according to May 28th issue of Yomiuri Shimbun(a major Japanese daily.)  What Bush read is 'The Aquariums of Pyongyang: Ten Years In The North Korean Gulag' written by Kang Chol-hwan, a N. Korean defector and currently a reporter of Chosun Ilbo(a biggest S. Korean daily), and Pierre Rigoulot, a French journalist and a historian....

Youths caught when they returned for second night, police say. LONG BEACH - Police captured three youths suspected of torturing and killing two docile sharks and a ray at the Aquarium of the Pacific after they returned with another boy to the scene of the crime to carry out more mayhem late Monday, an official said. Aquarium staff arrived at work before 9 a.m. Monday and found that someone had broken into the aquarium after it closed Sunday night and had brutalized the two sharks and a cow-nosed ray a relative of the sting ray and then left them for...

LONG BEACH, Calif. -- Four young teens have been arrested after the torture and killing of two sharks and a ray at a California aquarium. Vandals broke into the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach Sunday night. When aquarium staff arrived Monday, they found debris in the shark tank and the cow-nose ray on the concrete pool deck. A two-foot-long, striped bamboo shark was found dead in a bird exhibit and a three-foot-long nurse shark was found in the bushes. They had been stabbed or poked with plastic pipes. An aquarium spokeswoman says the staff was "all very sickened"...

Sep. 3 — Hundreds of holiday-makers are flocking to an "Ice Aquarium" in a northern Japan port where squid, tuna and dozens of other species of fish are preserved in ice, an official said Friday. "Swordfish, bonito, squid, sea bream, crabs ... 450 fish of 80 varieties are in ice," said Masayuki Ito, a spokesman for the company operating the aquarium in the city of Kesennuma, 250 miles (400 kilometers) north of Tokyo. The "aquarium," made up of 40 ice blocks, each weighing 220 pounds (100 kilograms), is backlit in blue, contrasting with the brilliant colors of the fish, which...