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/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....

SEOUL, May 9 (Yonhap) -- U.S. President George W. Bush is reading a North Korean defector's book revealing gruesome human rights abuses in the Stalinist country, according to a White House source contacted in Seoul over the weekend. "I am in the middle of reading 'the Aquariums of Pyongyang,'" the White House source quoted Bush as saying in a recent meeting with aides. The White House source, whose name is being withheld by the Yonhap News Agency for privacy, told a friend in Seoul that Bush "appeared to be very concerned" about the plight of the 23 million North...

http://www.dailynk.com/korean/read.php?cataId=nk01300&num=4957/begin my translation   Three Reasons for Kim Jong-il's Obsession with Nukes: Defector's Take Regime Survival, Extorting Economic Aids, Keeping People under Control [ 2005-05-01 19:44 ] Kim Jong-il touring a command center  at the Eastern  Front  We as N. Korean defectors had many times heard in N. Korea , 'N. Korea has nukes.'  We find it really 'silly' when people in the South are engaged in heated debate over the existence of (N. Korean) nukes. Even today in the South, about N. Korean nukes, some say, "Because the Cold War between U.S. and Soviet Union had ended, N. Korea has nobody to...

Two survivors of the North Korean prison camps spoke at the UN Commission on Human Rights, the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office and at the EU, a UK-based a Christian human rights charity reported Monday. The two survivors, both Christians, were imprisoned at the Yodok Political Prison Camp and suffered “appalling abuses,” according to Christian Solidarity Worldwide. “In a political prison camp in North Korea, one must forget that he or she is a human being,” said 49-year-old Tae Jin Kim, initially defected to China in 1986 to escape North Korea. “I had to do many things to survive. I...

WASHINGTON (AP) - Some North Koreans who defect or seek political asylum abroad can face execution if they are forced back to their homeland, according to a State Department report. North Koreans sent home after leaving without authorization are subject to at least five years of "labor correction," the report said. In serious cases, they can receive "an indefinite term of imprisonment and forced labor, confiscation of property, or death," it said. The report said U.S. officials have been told that the harshest treatment is reserved for those who have had extensive contact with Christian missionaries and other activists in...

A North Korean defector testified to have witnessed forced abortions and infanticide at a detention camp in North Korea. "I heard the cries of both mother and child through the curtain (at a hospital). And through the partially open curtain, I witnessed the nurse covering the infant's face with a wet towel on a table, suffocating it," a 28-year-old identified as Park Sun-ja told an international conference on North Korean human rights abuses Tuesday. "The baby stopped crying about ten minutes later," added Park, whose real name was not provided to protect her. Seven other North Korean defectors appeared at...

Fifteen presumed North Korean defectors who had settled in South Korea were arrested for trying to sneak into the U.S. The Los Angeles-based Association of People From Five Northern Provinces said on Sunday it learned that 15 North Koreans were arrested by U.S. Border Patrol as they tried to smuggle themselves into the U.S. from Tijuana, Mexico. But the association¡¯s president Kim Ho-jeong added it remained to be confirmed whether the 15 really were defectors. The 15, who are being held at an immigration detention center in San Diego, California, said they intended to seek political asylum in the U.S....

15 N. Koreans Nabbed Crossing U.S.-Mexico Border Fifteen presumed North Korean defectors who had settled in South Korea were arrested for trying to sneak into the U.S. The Los Angeles-based Association of People From Five Northern Provinces said on Sunday it learned that 15 North Koreans were arrested by U.S. Border Patrol as they tried to smuggle themselves into the U.S. from Tijuana, Mexico. But the association’s president Kim Ho-jeong added it remained to be confirmed whether the 15 really were defectors. The 15, who are being held at an immigration detention center in San Diego, California, said they intended...

http://www.kcna.co.jp/index-e.htm is the link to the first article.Compare these two articles. From a communist NK source:" U.S. Urged to Rebuild Groundwork of Six-party Talks Pyongyang, December 14 (KCNA) -- The United States is these days misleading public opinion to shift the blame for the delayed resumption of the six-party talks on to the DPRK, far from rebuilding the groundwork of the talks which it destroyed itself. Commenting on this, a Rodong Sinmun analyst Tuesday says: -snip-Second Article: Top general's son defected to U.S. base in Japan, then disappeared Special to World Tribune.com EAST-ASIA-INTEL.COM Wednesday, December 15, 2004SEOUL — The only...

North Korea, Firing Machine Guns at Defectors AUGUST 27, 2004 21:55 Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post reported on August 27 that North Korea allegedly has fired machine guns at the country’s defectors. The newspaper quoted Tim Peters, who founded “Helping Hands,” as saying, “A foreigner who is very much knowledgeable of the plight of the North Korean defectors said he heard gun shots in the border area,” and added, “The North Korean government is thought to have issued an order to shoot people.” He also said, “I heard that someone saw at least two or three dead bodies floating...

Activist says North seized defector on honeymoon A North Korean defector on her honeymoon in China has been kidnapped and returned to her former homeland, a human rights activist group in Seoul has claimed. South Korea's Foreign Ministry said yesterday it has asked Chinese authorities to investigate the report. Jin Gyeong-suk, 24-year-old woman, and her husband were attacked on Aug. 8 near China's border with North Korea by a group of men speaking Northern dialects, said Doh Hee-yoon, secretary-general of the civic group, Coalition for Human Rights of Abductees and North Korean Refugees. According to Mr. Doh, the couple went...

More than 200 North Koreans arrived in Seoul on Tuesday, part of the Hermit Kingdom's biggest mass defection to date. A day later, a South Korean news agency reported the arrival of 227 more. Let's hope this exodus signals cracks in Kim Jong Il's regime that will lead to its eventual demise. The defections coincide with fresh tales of the Kim regime's depredations against its own people. A North Korean scientist known only as "Dr. Kim" told the BBC that he used experimental chemical weapons on political prisoners, taking notes as they died in agony. Such experiments were apparently used...

Seoul — Pyongyang accused Seoul of kidnapping more than 450 North Koreans and said South Korea would pay dearly for the biggest mass defection from the Stalinist state since the Korean War. Accusing South Korea of "luring and abducting those northerners like alley cats," a powerful North Korean state body said the action would plunge inter-Korean relations to the point of "acute confrontation". North Korea would extract a high price from South Korea and others who helped stage the "premeditated allurement, abduction and terrorism," Pyongyang's Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Fatherland said. (Wire Reports)

Shooting Death of N. Korean Defector No Accident: NGO The Durihana Missionary Foundation held a press conference Tuesday to release recorded testimonies of an incident in which a 19-year-old defector named Jeong Choel-hoon was shot to death by a Chinese soldier (reported on April 14) while he was attempting to cross the Sino-Mongolian border along with 23 other defectors. The testimonies revealed that the incident was not accidental, but the result of indiscriminate shooting. At the time, the Foreign Ministry said, “The Chinese government informed us that some North Korean defectors attempted to seize the weapons of the Chinese troops...

As a new round of multilateral talks over the North Korean nuclear program gets underway in Beijing, a high-ranking North Korean defector says Pyongyang already had nuclear weapons before it signed a 1994 nuclear accord with the United States. The chief U.S. negotiator at the time says if Washington had known, it would not have "stood by and let North Korea build nuclear weapons." The early 1990's were a particularly tense time in U.S.-North Korean relations. Washington knew North Korea had a plutonium-based nuclear weapons program, and wanted Pyongyang to completely stop it. But how far along exactly was North...

N Korean defector 'held by China' A North Korean man who fled with evidence that prisoners are used to test chemical weapons has been detained by China, a human rights worker said. Kang Byong-sop, 58, was stopped last month in Yunnan province while trying to cross into Laos, Kim Sang-hun said. Mr Kim called on the UK to stop China handing Mr Kang to North Korea, where he faced possible torture or death. Pyongyang has described claims it used political prisoners to test gases for chemical weapons as "US propaganda". Mr Kang was the source of a North Korean document,...

Chinese agents seize N Korean defector By Robin Gedye (Filed: 12/02/2004) China has hunted down and arrested a North Korean defector who revealed the first documentary evidence of Pyongyang's chemical and biological experiments on political prisoners, said his supporters yesterday. Kang Byong-sop, 59, was seized on the Chinese-Laotian border with his wife and youngest son, aged 25, last month after escaping from North Korea with proof that the Stalinist regime is killing political prisoners by experimenting on them with biological and chemical weapons. Seong-kuk: injured during a kidnap attempt Mr Kang's eldest son, Seong-kuk, who defected several years ago and...

Defector: N. Korea Has Uranium Program 2 hours, 2 minutes ago TOKYO - A top-ranking North Korean defector said the North launched a uranium-based nuclear weapons program in 1996 with the help of Pakistan, a Japanese newspaper reported Sunday. Hwang Jang Yop, a former mentor to North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, told the Tokyo Shimbun in an interview that a top military official told him eight years ago about an agreement with Pakistan to develop an enriched uranium weapons program. Since 2002, the United States has contended that North Korea (news - web sites) has been developing uranium-based...

CHINA WATCHPrisoner cuts out Bible letters to write to familyMan held for helping defectors prohibited from using writing tool Posted: February 4, 20041:00 a.m. Eastern © 2004 WorldNetDaily.com Apparently prohibited from using a pen or pencil, a South Korean man held in a Chinese jail has used tiny letters cut from a Bible to paste together a letter that was somehow smuggled to his family. Radio Free Asia reports Young-hoon Choi is serving a five-year sentence for helping defectors from North Korea in the northern Chinese port city of Yantai across from the Korean Peninsula. "Someone mailed me a letter from my...

School For NK Defectors, Privately Run, Offers Oasis of Warmth (Korea Times) Photo by Kim Hyun-tae Defectors aren’t completely alone when they arrive in South Korea. Cho Myong-suk runs a school to help ease the transition into a capitalist society, despite not receiving any government support. Life in South Made a Little Easier With Help of Friends by Kim Tae-jong The issue of how best to deal with North Korean defectors after their arrival and how to ensure they become productive members of society is definitely complex. Fortunately there are people out there trying to do just that. ``Our ultimate...