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North Koreans visiting Baekdu Mountain Editors note: Human rights have all too often served less as a neutral vocabulary to describe North Korea’s conditions than as an instrument of power wielded by successive U.S. administrations to justify non-engagement, a policy intended to promote the isolation and eventual implosion of North Korea.  In a recent departure from this approach, however, President Obama evidently “reached out” to North Korea and got results.  The subsequent release of three U.S. citizens, Jeffrey Fowles, Kenneth Bae and Matthew Miller, who had been detained in North Korea, is the first positive interaction between the United States and that country in years and in this regard a milestone for the current administration. In U.S.- North Korea relations there remain many successes yet to be achieved, but each step toward engagement is a cause for celebration, and each is an opportunity for learning. As Betsy Yoon notes in her article below, the experiences at the end of both the Clinton and Bush administrations ­and now this current episode ­demonstrate that North Korea can and will engage in dialogue and negotiations.  The only way forward is to continue the efforts towards increased diplomacy. By Betsy Yoon* | November 3, 2014 [Originally published in Zoom In Korea, October 28, 2014] In her examination of King Phillip’s War, Jill Lepore identifies war as “a contest of injuries and interpretation.” Her analysis thus centers on how the narrative of the war both impacted the war as it was happening and then determined how the war would be remembered afterward. Before setting forth her historical analysis, she asks, “If war is, at least in part, a contest for meaning, can it ever be a fair fight when only one side has access to those perfect instruments of empire, pens, paper, and printing presses?” The 17th-century colonists produced letters, diaries, and chronicles of the war, while the American Indians left little of a written record behind—this imbalance shaped the subsequent understanding of the war as a struggle between savagery and civilization. Today, these perfect instruments of empire now include mass media, which, in the contest for meaning, has a reach that far exceeds that of the American colonists, and which has overwhelmingly determined the narrative of North Korea. What do we (think we) know about North Korea? There are many observations of North Korea that are taken as factual. Two of the most common are the belief that North Korea does not negotiate in good faith (so why bother), and that North Korea does not properly distribute food aid (again, why bother). The first of these is based on the belief that North Korea has conducted “an endless series of bad-faith negotiations,“ starting with the Agreed Framework in 1994. The basis of this assumption generally goes unquestioned in the dominant narrative–however, scholars of North Korea diverge somewhat from the narrative. For example, in examining past negotiations between the two countries, Leon Sigal wrote that “Pyongyang’s bargaining tactics led many to conclude that North Korea was engaged in blackmail in an attempt to extort economic aid without giving up anything in return. It was not. North Korea’s strategy was tit for tat, cooperating when the United States cooperated, retaliating when the United States reneged, in an effort to end enmity.” North Korea’s failure to follow through on certain commitments (often in response to the U.S. reneging on a commitment) is all that is remembered, while North Korea’s highly visible destruction of Yeonbyong tower–a gesture of good faith–is largely forgotten. The second assumption regarding the diversion of food aid not only reinforces the first assumption that North Korea is acting in bad faith, but also leads those to question whether it is humanitarian to even provide food aid in the first place. The rationale is that, if the food is just going to the elites, then food aid itself helps to strengthen the regime (what sometimes goes unspoken in this argument is the assumption that not providing food aid will hasten the collapse of the North Korean regime. This argument will be examined in later articles, but suffice it to say that Iraq has suffered considerably since its liberation). Those who make this argument tap into the dominant narrative on North Korea, and therefore do not have to provide facts–the statement itself is thought to be factual. However, this assumption does not match up with the experiences of those who have worked in providing food aid on the ground in North Korea. For example, Sanghyuk Shin and Ricky Choi wrote in an article for Critical Asian Studies that “[t]he claim that international aid is distributed based on social classification also runs counter to reports from humanitarian workers on the ground.” There are many official statements, but for those who are more curious about the human side of this debate, Erich Weingartner has written an excellent three-piece series of articles on his experience with monitoring food aid in North Korea for a unit of the UN World Food Program. These two assumption epitomize the sometimes shaky factual ground on which assumptions about North Korea are based, and the only conclusion to be reached by these assumptions is apparently that North Korea is not to be trusted, and that whatever is said by North Korea lacks any legitimacy. This is in part because of the belief–described by Christine Hong–that North Korea represents “an inhumanity and atrociousness so total and thoroughgoing, so totalitarian, that these attributes defy evidentiary analysis.” In other words, a lack of evidence is as damning as actual evidence. In such an environment, accusations directed at North Korea take on the mantle of truth, while North Korea, whether it denies or ignores such accusations, cannot be anything but guilty. Why the COI report cannot speak for North Korea However, even if we did live in a black-and-white world where North Korea is the villain par excellence (described by the United Nations Commission of Inquiry report as “a State that does not have any parallel in the contemporary world”), this perception should at least be based on factual evidence. With talk of invasion and regime collapse, there is a straight line between misuse of facts and widespread human loss. As I said earlier, we have seen this play out before, most recently and memorably with Iraq. And yet, despite the stakes involved, the UN Commision of Inquiry’s (COI) report on human rights in North Korea has been reported on as if it were a primary source document, rather than a report that identifies its own standard of proof as “lower than the standard required in criminal proceedings to sustain an indictment.” Indeed, the report itself makes no claims to infallibility, and in fact, Hazel Smith observed that “What is most striking about the UNHCR reporting on the DPRK is the almost complete absence of reference to relevant data from other UN agencies, donor governments, and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), to the extent that the UNHRC reporting seems unaware of the existence of reports on the DPRK from within the UN system itself.” She notes that instead, the investigators used only one report from a UN agency, and that the way it is used in the COI report “distorts the findings of the original report and misleads the reader.” In addition to not making full use of the available data on North Korea, the report incorporates news articles on conditions in North Korea as though these articles were themselves primary sources. This creates a feedback loop in which news coverage of North Korea’s malfeasance is cited by the report as factual statements, which are then cited by subsequent news articles. The narrative has become self-reinforcing. In one notable case, a New York Times op-ed was centered entirely on the COI’s assertion that Kim Jong-un has spent $645,800,000 on luxury goods. The op-ed makes concrete policy recommendations based on this finding. Because the New York Times was using a so-called official resource, and because the finding coheres nicely with the commonly shared view that North Korea wastes money on luxury items for the leadership while its people starve, this figure now has factual legitimacy. But, as demonstrated in the start of the article, commonly shared views are not proxies for the truth, and so this claim is worthy of further investigation. This report’s figure of $645,800,000 was not calculated by the investigators–the figure actually comes from an article in the Telegraph that cites “a report submitted to the South Korean parliament” as its source. Here we must now question the Telegraph for unquestioningly citing a figure from a report that we know nothing about from a country that remains at war with North Korea. A reporter with OhmyNews, an online news site that publishes “citizen reporting,” also thought it suspect that this fact originated from South Korea and decided to investigate further. He contacted Mr. Yoon Sang-Hyun’s office, the parliament member who submitted the report. It turns out that Yoon’s office was citing a Chinese customs report, which does not even have a category for luxury items. When the reporter pointed out that it was problematic to first identify these goods as luxury items and to then say that they were destined specifically for Kim Jong Un, Yoon’s representative replied, “You could see it that way, but it is a fact that North Korea imports a lot of luxury items.” In other words, because it is a given that North Korea imports luxury items, the verifiability of this particular data was not that important. In sum, not only did the COI not include relevant data, but the sources that were used were not necessarily vetted for accuracy. And in fact, news articles are not included in the list of sources that the commission considered as first-hand information. Given that the bulk of the reports findings are based on verbal testimony, one would think it important to treat verifiable information with some rigor. (Hazel Smith’s detailed analysis of the COI’s methodology can be found here.) This is another example of how the perception of North Korea can shape the narrative — despite the fact that there was, at least in this case, a way to fact-check cited information, it is often assumed that nothing about North Korea can be verified. In this type of environment, sources therefore take on a credibility they would not have in other cases. This particular exercise is put forth not as proof that the entire COI report is based on incorrect data and should therefore be thrown out, but rather as a reminder that the findings in the report cannot by themselves serve as a spur to action, and that journalists should use the report responsibly. North Korea Speaks It is in this context that Botswana, Australia, and Panama organized a UN session on North Korean human rights, held October 22. Benny Avni at Newsweek covers the session in an article titled “North Korean Diplomats Get an Earful at the U.N.” The question of North Korean human rights has become increasingly prominent, and these narratives serve to bolster common beliefs. In this sense, news articles about North Korea become less like journalism and more like the missives of the English colonists, who sought to characterize the Algonquins as a clearly defined Other. This is not to say that the English colonists or that Benny Avni attempt to draw these boundaries with conscious ill intent. Rather, just as the shift in settlers’ perceptions of the Algonquins from compassion to contempt was not a conscious project, but rather part of an emerging, collective narrative that began to shape the war itself, Avni is simply (and lazily) tapping into the current cultural consensus on North Korea. His article (and the wider assumptions on which it is based) is problematic in a number of ways. Setting aside the fact that the phrase “getting an earful” evokes the idea of an adult lecturing a misbehaving child (North Korea is often characterized as either overwhelmingly evil or overwhelmingly childish), the title itself does not accurately reflect the actual content of the article. The focus of the article quickly shifts from describing passive recipients of a moral lecture to examining the ways in which the diplomats did not simply sit back for their earful, which is what Avni seemed to find most interesting (or “unusual”). To make clear the extraordinary nature of this session, he first invokes the Orientalist phrase “hermit Kingdom” to describe North Korea, and then characterizes the delegates responses as “verbal attacks.” This identifies the delegates as representing a place of mystery and as exhibiting behavior that deviates from the norm. The strangeness has been established. But then the next sentence describes the North Korean response as “long” and “formal” and the North Korean delegates as “patient,” neither of which seem to fit the description of “verbal attacks.” There is a clear shift from when Avni relies on tired assumptions (verbal attacks) to actual descriptive reporting (long, formal). Then, with some note of surprise, he comments on the representatives’ “fluent, plain English,” which leads me to wonder whether fluent, plain English among foreign diplomats is so rare that it is worthy of note in a major news outlet. Or is it more because North Korea is assumed to be so different from every other nation that it is remarkable when diplomats–whose job it is to interact with foreign countries–can speak one of the six official UN languages? Avni then gets some face-to-face time with one of the diplomats, Cho Yong-Nam. He describes their conversation without much extraneous comment, but he cannot help but conclude this section with a comment on his affect, saying that Cho was “getting as animated as a man wearing a pin bearing the smiling face of his leader, Kim Jong-un, on a jacket lapel can.” In Avni’s mind, the pin symbolizes an ideological weight so oppressive and profound that the bearer cannot possibly make use of the full range of human emotions, if he even has them. If the North Koreans cannot be distinguished from the rest of the world through language, then it is necessary to find other ways in which the North Koreans can be defined as different from “us”, and is part of a general tendency to strip North Koreans of any humanity. Again, this is not to say that those who write about North Korea in this way intentionally seek to demonize and dehumanize with the explicit agenda of making military action more palatable to the general public. Instead, these impulses come from a subconscious need to identify difference, as well as the desire to satisfy the public’s fascination with the spectacle that is North Korea. The Ongoing Contest for Meaning Ultimately, it’s not clear whether Avni found their mere participation to be surprising and “extraordinary,” or whether he might have instead been thinking about his surprise that the North Koreans were patient and spoke fluently. Perhaps it is assumed that the diplomats memorize stock speeches and are actually incapable of holding a free-flowing conversation. At any rate, this has not been the DPRK’s only foray into the conversation on human rights. Prior to this, the DPRK published its own report on the history and current state of North Korean human rights on its website. North Korea also sought to be included in a ministerial meeting of the UN General Assembly on North Korean human rights, organized by John Kerry (their request was denied). This raises the question: Why does North Korea bother? Why did they want to be included in Kerry’s ministerial meeting, why did they bother publishing an official report on human rights, and why did they bother to attend and speak at this latest UN session? With the general narrative so firmly against them, and their statements treated as meaningless propaganda, North Korea cannot by itself change the narrative. I believe that North Korea continues to participate in the human rights discussion because North Korea understands Lepore’s assessment of war: “wounds and words–the injuries and their interpretation–cannot be separated.” How the story is told is part of how the war both unfolds and is later remembered. This report, and North Korea’s participation in the UN session, are only the latest in North Korea’s determination to not let the dominant narrative go unchallenged–not out of foolish and misguided pride, but rather out of human dignity and the desire to self-represent in this ongoing contest for meaning. Articles and assumptions such as the Newsweek article only hinder the development of genuine dialogue between North Korea and the world, which then hinders any actual progress toward improved human rights. Past experience (the end of the Clinton administration and the end of the Bush administration) has shown us that North Korea can and will engage in dialogue and negotiations. If we continue to propagate the belief that North Korea is no longer qualified to speak, then the only rational recourse becomes military force. Jill Lepore noted that the colonists saw the Algonquins as knowing only the language of violence–thus justifying the the colonists’ own use of brutal violence. North Korea can speak languages other than violence and is populated by human beings that are not as different from us as we might like to believe. Let’s not forget this as we discuss solutions to North Korean human rights. *Betsy Yoon holds an MA in International Relations from Columbia University. She is a regular contributor to Zoom in Korea – Critical News and Analysis of the Korean Peninsula, and member of Nodutdol for Korean Community Development. She co-organizes Nodutdol’s annual exposure and education program and has led two delegations of Korean Americans to North Korea. #humanrights #NorthKorea

Demonstrators outside the U.N. protesting the U.N. Human Rights Council Commission of Inquiry report as hypocritical. By Ronda Hauben* | November 4, 2014 [Originally published in taz.blogs, October 14, 2014] The briefing held at the United Nations by the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) on Tuesday, October 7 was an opportunity to hear the DPRK’s response to US and EU initiatives targeting the DPRK. The US and the EU have been using the UN to try to demonize the DPRK as a perpetrator of grave human rights violations and to rally the UN Security Council to refer the DPRK to the International Criminal Court (ICC) (1) In the past few month, the DPRK Mission to the UN has held several press conferences alerting journalists to threats to international peace and security taking place on the Korean Peninsula. This briefing, however, was not only open to the press covering the UN, but to UN member nations and also to NGO’s with access to UN Headquarters in NY. At the briefing, the DPRK presented the “Report of the DPRK Association for Human Rights Studies” (Report) that it had published on September 13 about human rights in the DPRK. DPRK’s Deputy Ambassador at the UN, Ri Tong Il, opened the briefing by introducing the Report. Also taking part in the presentation were Mr. Choe Myong Nam, Deputy Director-General of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, of the DPRK and Mr. Kim Song, Counselor at the DPRK Mission. Ambassador Ri explained that there has been an increasing tendency to carry on a human rights campaign against the DPRK. He referred in particular to a meeting organized by US Secretary of State John Kerry to discuss allegations of human rights abuse in the DPRK. The US sponsored meeting was held on September 23 at a hotel near the UN. The DPRK was not invited to the meeting, and it was denied the right to attend when it asked to participate. Ambassador Ri said that the purpose of this briefing being held by the DPRK was to focus on correcting the misinformation being spread about human rights in the DPRK and to provide a more accurate understanding of the situation of human rights in countries with differing social and political systems. He pointed out that the UN with 193 member states is made up of nations with different political systems, different values and different ideologies. Ambassador Ri listed the 5 chapters in the Report giving a brief introduction to each of the chapters. Then he welcomed questions or statements from those present. Diplomats from several missions at the UN, including the Cuban and Venezuelan Missions, responded, thanking the DPRK for the briefing. They referred to the criticism of some nations at the UN who sponsor country-specific human rights resolutions. Experience has demonstrated that such resolutions are most often politically motivated, and not geared toward improving conditions for people. Instead the purpose is an illegitimate political objective, such as regime change. The Human Rights Council had adopted the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) procedure, as an effort to counter such abuse and instead to treat all countries impartially. While many countries focus on the UPR procedure, a few nations continue to sponsor country-specific resolutions thus politically targeting other nations. An example of such political motivation was provided by Choe Myong Nam in response to a question. He described how in 1993 after a breakdown in negotiations with the US led the DPRK to pull out of the IAEA, the US pressured the EU to bring a resolution against the DPRK for human rights violations. A copy of the Report was distributed to those who attended the October 7 briefing. Chapter I of the Report explores the general nature of human rights so that each nation can determine what the application will be in their situation. For the DPRK this entails making a critique of how the US and certain other nations are trying to impose their view of what the standards should be for other nations. “Nobody in the international community empowered them to establish the international ‘human rights standards’,” the Report notes. (p. 12) Instead, the Report maintains that human rights standards in a country are the prerogative of the people of that country. “In every country,” the Report explains, “those who demand the human rights and campaign (for) them are the people….” (p. 12) The Report refers to the Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (COI) recently sponsored by the Human Rights Council. The content and framework of the Report provides background that is helpful toward grasping the underlying fallacy of the COI. The Report maintains that the ‘COI’ is an attempt “to bring down the DPRK by collecting prejudiced ‘data’ without any scientific accuracy and objectivity in the content….” (p. 12) All of Korea has experienced the kind of human rights claims of an occupying power, notes the Report. This was during the period of the Japanese occupation of Korea (1910-1945). “Each and every law manufactured by Japan in Korea in the past were…anti–human rights laws aimed at depriving Korean people of all political freedoms and rights, and forcing colonial slavery upon them.” (p. 13) The Report explains that these anti-Korean laws created by the Japanese colonial rule had to be abolished and a new foundations established legally and politically in order to provide protection and empowerment for the Korean people, thus demonstrating that the DPRK is concerned with the question of human rights. (See p. 14-15) The Report proposes that the protection of human rights in the DPRK requires putting the political development of the DPRK into its historical context. Throughout the Report historical background is provided to put current developments into such a perspective. The Report documents various forms of hostile actions by the US showing the effect such actions have had on the DPRK development after the end of WWII and the end of Japanese colonial rule over Korea. One such example that the Report provides is explaining that “sanctions were imposed on Korea after Korea was liberated from Japanese colonial rule.”(p. 93) Even before the Korean War, the US imposed sanctions against the socialist countries including the DPRK as part of its Cold War politics. (p. 93) The Report also documents recent hostile acts by the US against the DPRK. The DPRK puts the anti-human rights campaign by the “US and its followers” in the context of the effort to “defame the image of the DPRK in the international arena and dismantle the socialist system under the pretext of ‘protection of human rights’.” (p. 98) A question was raised during the briefing about what was the relationship between the fact the US is unwilling to negotiate a peace treaty with the DPRK to end the Korean War and the US led allegations of human rights abuse against the DPRK. This question is at the heart of the ability to understand the nature of the US campaign against the DPRK. A recent journal article by Professor Christine Hong offers a helpful analysis toward understanding this relationship. Her article, “The Mirror of North Korean Human Rights,” published in Critical Asian Studies, captures the intimate connection between the US government’s unending war against the DPRK, and the US claims of gross human rights violations in the DPRK.(2) The article explains that the US has been and is technically and in practice at war with the DPRK. There has been an unending set of economic, political and cultural sanctions imposed on the DPRK either by the US Congress or by the UN particularly the UNSC in the recent past. There have been massive military drills close to the DPRK by the US, Republic of Korea (ROK) and Japan, and more recently including France, the UK, Canada and other US allies. Over 28,000 US troops are permanently stationed in the ROK. In such a situation, the US claims of DPRK human rights violations provide a convenient and effective discourse to cloak the image of US war activities on the Korean Peninsula in a humanitarian sounding dress. Hong writes that the ‘axis of evil’ narrative introduced by the Bush administration against Iraq, Iran and the DPRK provided a means whereby “war politics proceeded under the mantle of rescue politics.” (Hong, p. 564) Hong maintains that the ‘Responsibility to Protect’ (R2P) narrative provides the means by which “would-be rescuers lay claim to a monopoly on the virtuous use of violence….” Similarly, a fallacious WMD narrative which was provided to the US government by defectors and politicized intelligence was used to camouflage the US regime change invasion of Iraq. A similar false narrative using unverifiable claims of defectors and politicized intelligence is once again being dusted off for use against the DPRK. Keeping in mind such recent examples as Iraq and Libya, Hong observes that the claims of noble goals provides a level of protection to the perpetrators of invasions using the mantle of R2P. Instead of being “viewed as human rights violations in themselves” when they engage in acts of war like aerial bombardment, military invasion, or an embargo on essential goods, they are provided with the appearance of acting as saviors. Taken in such a context one can understand the reluctance of nations like the DPRK to take the claims of those promoting R2P and human rights as exhibiting any but aggressive intentions. Hong goes on to point out that any legitimate US concerns over human rights violations regarding the people of the DPRK would have to begin by addressing the massive destruction against the civilian population and civilian infrastructure of the DPRK carried out by the US and its allies during the Korean War and since by its sanctions. The Report the DPRK has produced refers not only to the anti-human rights activities against the Korean people during the 35 years of Japanese occupation but also to the continuing saga of US hostile activities before and after the Korean War Armistice. The Report is also available as an official document of the UN General Assembly (A/69/383) and of the UN Security Council (S/2014/668).(3) The US should welcome such reports and the airing of all views on every question at the UN. Notes: (1)Such a strategy with Libya resulted in ICC cases against key Libyan officials weakening their fight against the NATO invasion that brought regime change and subsequently a state of serious instability to Libya. Discussing the Libyan example of regime change, Joseph S. Nye, Jr explained that it is not the facts that matter in “the information age”. Instead soft power, which includes how the narrative describing a situation is framed, is as important as, or even more important than military action, in gaining one’s objectives. As he says in an online article, “In a global information age, success is not determined just by who has the biggest army, but also by who has the best story.” See the article On Libya, Soft Power, and the Protection of Civilians as Pretext http://blogs.taz.de/netizenblog/2011/04/30/libya_and_protection_civilians_as_pretext/ (2) Christine Hong, “The Mirror of North Korean Human Rights,” Critical Asian Studies, 45:4, 561-592. (3) You can see the “Report of the DPRK Association for Human Rights Studies” as a UN document at:http://www.un.org/en/ga/search/view_doc.asp?symbol=S/2014/668 *Ronda Hauben covers the United Nations and UN related issues in her blog at taz.de, “Netizen Journalism and the New News”.  She co-authored with Michael Hauben the book “Netizens: On the History and Impact of the Usenet and the Internet,” and has written over 200 articles for OMNI and other publications. #humanrights #NorthKorea #UNCommissionofInquiry

Panmunjom, Site of Armistice Negotiations By John R. Eperjesi* | December 22, 2014 [Originally published in the Huffington Post, December 10, 2014] In Paul Yoon’s new novel Snow Hunters (2013), Yohan, the son of a poor farmer in North Korea, is captured during the Korean War and sent to an unnamed POW camp on the southern coast where he tends to patients in a field hospital. After the armistice, Yohan decides not to repatriate back to North Korea, but rather goes to Brazil where he becomes an apprentice to a Japanese tailor. In addressing the issue of repatriation, Yoon’s work joins Choi In-hun’s The Square (1960; newly translated by Kim Seong-kon) and Ha Jin’s War Trash (2004), Korean War novels in which protagonists struggle with the question of what to do after the ceasefire. As we move into the new year, an important though virtually unknown date commemorating the start of a war within the Korean War will pass. On January 2, 1952, the United States delivered a proposal for the voluntary repatriation of prisoners of war to the negotiators at Panmunjom. Communists opposed the proposal because it violated the 1949 Geneva Convention, a document signed by the United States, which called for the automatic repatriation of POWs. This proposal dragged out negotiations for an additional fifteen months during which time tens of thousands of soldiers perished as both sides engaged brutal trench warfare while U.S. warplanes carpet bombed North Korea. A lot of blood came attached to the American proposal. In Captive Minds: Race, War, and the Education of Korean POWs, Grace June Chae reveals that: This was an exceptional moment when POWs were no longer merely sources of enemy intelligence but an integral part of psychological warfare against the communist threat . . . The controversy over the American proposal for voluntary repatriation and the screening of repatriates from non-repatriates within the camps fueled tensions amongst the prisoners, as well as between negotiators at Panmunjom. It was a new moment of how the rights of foreign prisoners of war were to be negotiated during wartime, when the principles of human rights were just beginning to gain currency in a post-colonial world. (Dissertation, Department of History, University of Chicago, 2010: 4-5) In The Square, Myong-jun is an angst-ridden, sexually frustrated, and mildly misogynist philosophy student, in other words a typical philosophy student, who crosses the border into North Korea to find his father who defected from the south after liberation from Japan. During the war Myong-jun is captured and sent to the POW camp at Geoje (Koje) Island. Rather than be repatriated, Myong-jun decides to go to India where he plans to invent an ordinary life for himself as a theater-ticket seller in Calcutta. Yet as the ship carrying former soldiers moves through the East China Sea toward Hong Kong, tensions surface and Myong-jun begins to question his decision. Ha Jin’s fictional memoir War Trash documents the intensification of conflicts between warring groups of prisoners over the issue of repatriation as the Chinese protagonist Yu Yuan is beaten, tortured and almost killed. The process of screening prisoners by representatives of the Nationalists in Taiwan and Communists in China is verbally seductive and psychologically vicious and reveals that it was almost impossible to determine the true feelings of POWs as they tended to align with whatever side offered the most protection. As a souvenir of his time in Korea, the Nationalists tattoo “FUCK COMMUNISM” on Yu Yuan’s stomach. On the surface, The Square and Snow Hunters appear to represent victories for freedom and self-determination in the battle for men’s minds during the Cold War. Reading through these repatriation novels, it might seem like a large number of POWs opted not to return to their home country. But out of a total of 82,493 North Korean and South Korean prisoners of war, only 76 (74 from the North and 2 from the South) decided to go to a neutral country rather than go back. Those who decided not to repatriate first went to India with the Custodial Forces of India (CFI) in late 1953. In 1956, 50 of them moved to Brazil (see Walter G. Hermes, Truce Tent and Fighting Front, 1966). Rather than simply be read as celebrations of individual freedom, these novels ought to be understood as critiques of a divided Korea. Myong-jun can go to either side after the ceasefire, but he thinks that both Stalinist North Korea and Christian-Capitalist South Korea are corrupt and lifeless, so opts for a neutral third country. Throughout Snow Hunters, Yohan is depicted as a passive and pacifist observer of war; he does no killing and displays compassion toward the people he encounters as his troop moves south, so the idea of returning to a country still technically at war is unthinkable. After the signing of the Armistice Agreement, there is no home for these former soldiers to go back to, so they are forced to imagine a home elsewhere. This micro-genre of repatriation novels is part of a larger collection of transnational Korean War novels that includes recent works by Susan Choi, Hwang Sok-yong, Chang Rae Lee, Toni Morrison, and Gary Pak. From their scattered geographical perspectives and diverse political and poetic angles, these authors all address the Korean War as an event that spills outside the 1950-53 frame. Korean War novels can inspire intelligent, compassionate and historically engaged discussions of war, militarization, the perpetuation of division and the permanent state of crisis that those of us living on the peninsula and in the region have to deal with every day. Discussing a new generation of Korean literature, Chi-su Kim notes that: Korean literary works remind readers that the Korean War is not yet over, but still in a state of ceasefire, while expressing a hope that true peace will soon come about so that the deep wounds of the Korean people can finally be healed. Indeed, Koreans dream about a world without war. Next month, representatives of the United States and North Korea will hold a “Track 1.5 Meeting” in Singapore, a “half-official, half-non-official” effort to reopen much-needed dialogue between the countries. The Obama administration has the historic opportunity to end the Cold War in northeast Asia, to flip the tired, broken script of “strategic patience,” of waiting for North Korea to denuclearize, and meet directly with the North Koreans to begin the difficult process of drafting a peace accord. There is more than enough historical precedent to inspire President Obama to take such bold steps before he leaves office. As former South Korean President Kim Dae Jung reminded George W. Bush in 2002: President Reagan called the Soviet Union an “evil empire,” but he had dialogue with Mikhail Gorbachev and sought détente, which brought about change in the communist system and the end of the cold war. President Nixon denounced Chairman Mao as a “war criminal,” but he met with him and played a crucial role in normalizing relations with China and fostering its opening and reform. (Memoir, Vol.2, 466-67: Seoul Samin) In addition to the Korean War novels mentioned above, if there is one literary work I would recommend that President Obama read over the holidays, it would be Theodor Geisel’s classic Cold War allegory, The Butter Battle Book (1984). While the absurd, futile confrontation between the Yooks and the Zooks has ended in other parts of the world, tensions between Cold War adversaries continue to escalate on the Korean peninsula as North Korea threatens another test of its nuclear Big-Boy Boomeroo while the United States considers deploying a Jigger-Rock Snatchem or Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) battery in South Korea. In 2015, 70 years will have passed since the United States unilaterally divided the Korean peninsula at the Thirty-Eighth Parallel, 70 years of hot and cold war with North Korea, and yet rather than gradually being torn down, the wall separating North and South Korea keeps getting higher and the threat of a return to war greater. As Geisel, aka Dr. Seuss, wrote: And at that very instant we heard a klupp-klupp of feet on the Wall and old VanItch klupped up! The Boys in HIS Back Room had made him one too! In his fist was another Big-Boy Boomeroo! “I’ll blow you,” he yelled, “into pork and wee beans! I’ll butter-side-up you to small smithereens!” “Grandpa! I shouted. “Be careful! Oh, gee! Who’s going to drop it? Will you . . . ? Or will he . . . ? “Be patient,” said Grandpa. “We’ll see. We will see . . . ” George Orwell memorably described the Cold War as a “peace that is no peace.” At this point, the U.S. project of maintaining a volatile and unstable status quo on the Korean peninsula through “strategic patience,” or “we’ll see. . .we will see. . .” must be viewed as a policy that is no policy. This unending butter battle has gone on long enough, and it is time for it to end. For more information on the movement to end the Korean War, go to www.endthekoreanwar.org. See also the new documentary Memory of a Forgotten War. Thanks to Brother Anthony for providing me with information about Korean War non-repatriates, and to Grace June Chae, Academy of Korean Studies Research and Writing Fellow, for providing me with a copy of her important dissertation. * John R. Eperjesi is Associate Professor of English, Kyung Hee University in Seoul #KoreanWar #peacetreaty #DeMilitarizedZone #Armistice #NorthKorea

Sony Pictures pulled plans to release The Interview – which includes a fictional plot to kill Kim Jong-Un – after threats from hackers. (photo: AFP) KPI | December 22, 2014 Recently, KPI Board Member Christine Hong and KPI Advisory Board members Christine Ahn and Tim Shorrock spoke on the issues of the alleged North Korean cyber-attack on Sony Pictures and the film “The Interview.” On December 20th, 2014, Christine Hong spoke with RT television: Host: Pyongyang says it wants to team up with Washington and carry out a joint investigation into the cyber-attack. How do you expect the U.S. to react to this offer? Hong: I mean the obvious answer is that the United States will laugh it off. It has been this administration’s policy for the past several years to dismiss any overtures by Pyongyang just out of hand. But I think that we should recall the fact that this administration too just announced a major policy shift toward Cuba and stated that the U.S.’s policy of isolating Cuba hasn’t worked and that trying the same policy of non-engagement, sanctions, embargo and isolation for five decades desperately needed to be changed. The fact of the matter is that the United States has maintained a policy not just of regime change toward North Korea since the inception of the North Korean state but also, with this administration, a policy of “strategic patience” which basically translates into non-engagement. Host: The language is quite strong, isn’t it, the rhetoric, because North Korea has even threatened the U.S. with quote “grave consequences” if Washington refuses this joint probe and keeps blaming Pyongyang – is there any substance to this threat in your opinion ? Hong: Well, I think if you are going to locate the substance to the threat, you have to read it a little against the grain – and maybe even read it below its overt meaning. You know, the policy of the United States toward North Korea during the Obama administration has to be understood in the context of Washington’s Pivot policy toward Asia. All policy analysts understand this as a policy to contain the rival sort of threat and growing power of China. Yet within the region, Obama’s Pivot policy, which is intensely militarized, is not justified explicitly with the rationale of containing China. It’s actually justified against the North Korean bad guy – so whether in Hollywood or in Washington DC, a North Korean bad guy is enormously ideologically useful for U.S. designs within the larger region. Host: Let’s bring in another aspect here because the FBI has basically announced that North Korea is guilty, haven’t they? But we haven’t seen the evidence for starters, nor has there been an independent investigation, of course. How can we know if Pyongyang is really behind this attack or not? Hong: Not only can we not know, but we have to hold up any intelligence assessment by the FBI, the CIA, with the highest degree of suspicion. Let’s not forget that in recent history, Colin Powell, who was then Secretary of State, after 9/11, went to the U.N. Security Council claiming that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction and “intelligence” backed him up. The two forms of intelligence that he presented were defector intelligence and satellite imagery. Those are the two primary ways that the United States and the U.S. intelligence community knows Korea, North Korea. So I’d say that when the FBI says it knows something with certainty about North Korea, we should be suspicious. Host: Just finally Christine, Barack Obama has vowed to retaliate against North Korea, but North Korea is already living under these sanctions from the US for the past 50 years or so. Can life get much worse for worse for them? Hong: Well you know, it’s a really interesting question, because Barack Obama has tried everything but engagement. And so you know, right now, in the last years of his presidency which is usually when U.S. presidents get vision with regard to North Korea, they usually entertain the possibility of some sort of plan of engagement. And let’s not forget that North Korea, when Barack Obama was initially elected, Kim Jong Il (previous North Korean leader) in his New Year’s address, welcomed President Obama and actually reached out an olive branch. And even though in unconventional ways, Kim Jong Un, for example, through Dennis Rodman, has also offered an olive branch, the United States has never been willing to listen to that and I think that has less to do with North Korea per se than with U.S. designs within the region. Other links: Christine Ahn spoke with the Institute for Public Accuracy and Sam Husseini: “Despite the entire cyber security community discounting North Korea’s role in the Sony hack, Washington is spreading lies to justify its pivot to Asia. The connection between Sony and U.S. military and intelligence officials should make us all wary of how much the U.S. needs Hollywood to sell its greatest export: weapons. For those who understand the modern history of Korea, ‘The Interview’ is beyond offensive. The film’s plot of assassination of the North Korean leader — and with input from Obama administration officials — is so twisted — not just because of its CIA coups that forced anti-imperial guerrilla fighters such as Castro and Kim Il Sung to pursue closed non-democratic systems — but the tremendous destruction the U.S. wreaked on the northern half of Korea during the Korean War and continues to do through war games and sanctions. It’s beyond words for those of us who are offended by the film and then now see how Washington is exploiting the hack to further isolate North Korea. Christine Hong spoke with the Institute for Public Accuracy and Sam Husseini: “There’s almost a total dearth of knowledge about North Korea in the United States. It has been called a ‘black hole’ by U.S. intelligence, and it’s against this backdrop of near-total ignorance not only about North Korea but also the brutal legacy of U.S. involvement and intervention on the Korean peninsula that Hollywood churns out films that walk in lockstep with a U.S. policy of regime change. North Korea as a ‘bad guy’ is not only the stuff of U.S. fantasies, but also serves as the cornerstone of Obama’s ‘Pivot’ policy toward Asia, in which intensified U.S. militarism in the region that is actually aimed at containing China is overtly justified by an ‘armed and dangerous North Korea. The discussion of ‘freedom of expression’ when it comes to the film, ‘The Interview,’ is a total red herring. Culture when it comes to U.S. enemies has always been a terrain of manipulation and war. During the Korean War, which has never ended, 2.5 billion propaganda leaflets were dropped by the United States on North Korea, and the National Endowment for Democracy, which is completely Congressionally funded, sponsors defector narratives about North Korea as the truth about North Korea. For those who profess to be so concerned about democracy when it comes to the release of ‘The Interview’ as ‘freedom of expression,’ it’s important to consider the profoundly undemocratic implications of Obama’s militarized ‘Pivot” toward Asia and the Pacific. In this case, consider the collusion between Sony executives, the State Department, and Bruce Bennett, a North Korea watcher at the military-funded RAND corporation in the endorsement of The Interview as a regime-change narrative.” Also See: “Sony Emails Say State Department Blessed Kim Jong-Un Assassination in ‘The Interview’.” Christine Hong and Tim Shorrock (KPI Advisory Board member) spoke with Democracy Now on December 22, 2014, “The Interview” Belittles North Korea, But is Film’s Backstory and U.S. Policy the Real Farce? #ChristineAhn #TimShorrock #Cyberattack #AsiaPacificpivot #ChristineHong #NorthKorea #TheInterview

Kim, Hyun Joo; Kim, Jeong Sook; Jo, Soon Deok; Dae-Han Song; Stephanie Park [photo by Jeong Eun Hwang] Making History: Minkahyup (Association of Families of those Fighting for Democratization) By Dae-han Song and Stephanie Park | December 23, 2014 Interpretation by Jeong Eun Hwang On October 16th, Minkahyup had its thousandth Thursday protest against the National Security Law and for the release of all political prisoners. On October 22nd, Jeong-Eun Hwang, Stephanie Park, and Dae-Han Song of the International Strategy Center (ISC) visited Minkahyup to interview its current president Jo, Soon Deok; former president Kim, Jeong Sook; and Administrative Coordinator Kim, Hyun Joo. Minkahyup was established in 1985 by families of political prisoners in order to secure their release and to abolish the National Security Law. They held their first Thursday protest on September 23, 1994 at Topgol Park in protest of President Kim Yong Sam’s statement that “there are no political prisoners in Korea.” Since then, regardless of the bitter cold, scorching heat, and pounding rains, they have held weekly Thursday protests. On October 16th, they held their thousandth Thursday protest. [ISC] What was your reaction when you found out your sons were wanted by the police? [Jo, Soon Deok] Mothers usually think, ‘The work [fighting for democracy] needs to be done, but why does it have to be my child?’ I felt the same. A few months after becoming Student Council President, my son gave a five minute speech at a farmer’s rally in Yeoido Square and on the spot became a fugitive. When a son or daughter becomes a fugitive the whole family becomes one too. The Gwanak police, the school police – they harass you at home, at work. [ISC] I wonder what my mother’s reaction would be given a similar situation. You are both a little older than my mother. She is fairly conservative. Were the progressive politics always there or did they emerge from your work? [Kim, Jeong Sook] Your mother can’t be but conservative. She came from that time. Live as the government tells you to live; don’t do what they tell you not to do. Study hard; go work in a good company; make good money. Marry a good person; have children; live a good life. Those are the desires of a parent. You don’t start coming out to the protests because you understand your child. You come because you are the parent, the mother. But as you come, as you listen to the stories and thoughts of others, you realize, ‘My son did right. How can we just live for ourselves? He is better than his parents. He wants to create a better world for everyone.’ When mothers realize this, they start to get even more active. It begins to matter less whether they ate or got roughed up by police that day.” [ISC] Your sons have been incarcerated been on the run for a few years. Yet, Jo, Soon Deok, your Minkahyup activism spans nearly two decades and, Kim, Jeong Sook, your activism spans over two decades. What kept you both committed? [Kim, Jeong Sook] At first, people came out because their children were incarcerated. We came out knowing nothing. The only people that could understand us and could comfort and console us were the veteran mothers who had experienced this. There was no help for us. As we became the veteran mothers, we felt that same obligation towards mothers who were just starting. At first, it was just about getting your child out of prison as soon as possible. And that was important, but we started to realize it was also about building a better world, about abolishing the National Security Law, and releasing the prisoners. [ISC] What was the hardest thing about the work? How did you overcome it? [Kim Jeong Sook] Back then it was so repressive. While the military dictatorship had technically ended with direct elections in 1987, the split in the opposition party allowed Roh Tae Woo, a military leader during the dictatorship, to win the election. My son was a fugitive for just a year. During that time, he would show up at a press conference, make a statement, and then flee. So many cops were looking for him, that they used to say that if you didn’t have a picture of my son in your pocket, then you weren’t a cop. [Jo, Soon Deok] Her son[Kim Jeong Sook]’s was a high profile case. He is the current deputy mayor of Seoul. [Really? Yes. The current Mayor of Seoul comes from Civil Society.] [Kim, Jeong Sook] I did not know when or how my son would be caught. That was my greatest anxiety. Once he fled by getting on a bus. When the bus stopped and the police rushed in, he jumped out the bus window and broke his leg. He was arrested on December 19, 1989 after someone tipped the police of his whereabouts. At that time, they would torture the prisoners. We worried our children were being tortured. When we went to see them, they would always say they weren’t being tortured. I recall one mother was overjoyed when her son told her he had not been tortured. Later during the trial, that mother fainted at hearing his testimony of torture. He had been tortured by electrocution, water drowning, and whisky bottle. They would place the prisoner’s penis on the table and hit it with the whisky bottle yelling that he didn’t deserve to have children because he was a criminal. Then they would take turns drinking from the bottle. Now, he’s an Assembly member for the Democratic Party. I could spend days telling you all these stories. [is he the deputy mayor of seoul or an assemblyman, or both? She is talking not about her son, but about the son of another mother. That other son is now an assemblymember.] [ISC] I know that you (Kim, Jeong Sook)  have to leave soon. Do you have any last words for readers abroad? [Kim, Jeong Sook] I would like to tell them to not forget what has happened in Korea. All the prisoners of conscience and their families that lived such difficult lives, I hope that they will not forget them and help support us and remember us. (Kim Jeong Sook leaves) [ISC] What was the hardest part of your work and how did you overcome it? [Jo, Soon Deok] The hardest time was not my personal experience but that of witnessing the distress of countless others as they ran around protesting in front of police stations and the Agency for National Security Planning (now the National Intelligence Service). [ISC] Many of the speakers that day said that while it was said that the protests had to continue for so long, that their persistence were also a testament to the mothers who had persisted for so long. How do you feel about last week’s 1000th protest at Topgol Park? [Jo, Soon Deok] In the beginning, we never thought we would have 1000 protests. But because political prisoners and social problems persist, we keep going. It would not have been possible to do the Thursday protests for 21 years without those around us – organizations and individuals – supporting us. [ISC] What are Minkahyup’s current demands? [Kim Hyun Joo] Our demands are the release of all prisoners of conscience and the abolition of the National Security Law. Minkahyup also engages in various struggles around democracy, prison conditions, and peace in the Korean Peninsula. All the issues are part of a struggle to build a better world. [Kim Hyun Joo referring to an old photo presented by Jo Soon Deok] That’s a picture of our annual funeral for the National Security Law in December 1st, 1998. Every December 1st, social movements gather to call for the abolition of the National Security Law, thus celebrating not its birth but future demise. As you know the National Security Law has its origins in a Japanese Colonial law used to capture and oppress independence fighters. On December 1st, 1948, it became a Korean law under its current name. The use of the National Security Law peaked in 1996 with the Yonsei University Uprising. The Korean Confederation of Student Councils was labeled an enemy of the state, and many of its student activists became fugitives and were arrested under the NSL. When Kim Dae Jung came into office in 1998, the NSL persisted, but many of the accused were pardoned and the number of incarcerations under the NSL drastically dropped. Then in 2004, President Roh Moo Hyun stated he would put the NSL in a museum as it was outdated. This inspired massive mobilizations in civil society to abolish the NSL. A thousand people fasted for its abolishment in Yeoido Park (near the National Assembly). Yet, the growing protests and mobilizations sparked a backlash from conservative groups. The conservative groups argued, ‘If the NSL is abolished, how are you going to lock up a person that goes out to Yeoido Plaza waving the North Korean flag and yelling long live Kim Il Sung?’ My response is: ‘So what?’ When Obama comes to Korea, aren’t there people outside waving US flags and saying long live Obama? How is that any different?” Ultimately, the NSL was not abolished nor even reformed. Nonetheless, it was rarely used under Roh Moo Hyun. It was only after the conservatives came back into power with Lee Myung Bak’s election in 2008 that the NSL was again used to investigate, prosecute, and convict people. It continues to be so used under the conservative Park Geun Hye administration. The NSL discussion has taken a backburner since 2004 because there were so many other struggles; for example the Ssanyong Auto Workers Struggle[1], or the Yongsan Eviction Tragedy[2]. The NSL struggle never reached the peak it attained in 2004. Nevertheless, Minkahyup, Alliance to Abolish the National Security Law, Human Rights Groups, or the Korea Alliance of Progressive Movements – we keep holding protests every December 1st calling for the abolishment of the NSL. Conservative groups are now trying to introduce legislation that would confiscate property and mete out harsher punishment against those that join organizations deemed enemies of the state. While individuals can be arrested, the NSL cannot disband these groups. [Why not? These groups don’t have a particular legal status, so then the government has no way of disbanding them. They can arrest the members, but the organization would still remain. They are not like 501c3 organizations that are founded upon the law and thus can get their status revoked. That’s the answer Hyun Joo gave me.] So, other people can still join the organizations. So, the Saenuri Party [the New Frontier Party] introduced legislation whereby property would be confiscated or there would be harsher punishment if you joined such illegal organizations. We have managed so far to keep this legislation from being introduced in the National Assembly. [ISC] What would it take for the NSL to be abolished? [Kim, Hyun Joo] The NSL is linked to inter-Korean relations. When inter-Korean relations are better, when we view each other as partners in reunification and cooperation, then the National Security Law loses significance. Back when hundreds a day would visit Mount Geumgang – when exchange was very active – all of those were infractions of the NSL. Yet, so many people were doing it, that the NSL dissipated from the hearts of people. But now when inter-Korean relations are bad, and the government has a policy of pressuring North Korea. We start to think, ‘If I say anything nice about the North Korean government, will I be violating the National Security Law? And so we self-censor. Roh Moo Hyun’s statement about abolishing the NSL in 2004 had only been possible because there had been a policy of engagement and reunification established by Kim Dae Jung’s presidency, because the Mount Geumgang tours were happening, because North-South exchange was very active. So the struggles for improving inter-Korean relations and for abolishment of the NSL are interconnected. [Jo, Seong Deok] I hope that the NSL is abolished, that there will no longer be any political prisoners, and that we no longer have to have the Thursday protests. —————————————————————————————————————————————– Jeong Eun Hwang is the ISC Communications Coordinator,  Stephanie Park is an ISC intern and Dae-Han Song is the ISC Policy and Research Coordinator and a Korea Policy Institute Fellow. Jo, Soon Deok has been Minkahyup president since 2011. Previously, she served as president 2002-2005. She has been a member since 1996 when her son, a college student at the time, became a fugitive under the National Security Law. After two years as a fugitive, her son was pardoned when Kim, Dae Jung took office in 1998. Kim, Jeong Sook was Minkahyup president in 1992 and 1998. She has been a member since 1989 when her son, a college student at the time and now the deputy-Mayor of Seoul, became a fugitive under the National Security Law. Kim, Hyun Joo has been the Minkahyup administrative coordinator for 4 years. She joined the social movement as a university student upon witnessing students incarcerated for violating the National Security Law. [1] The Ssangyong Auto Workers struggle is an ongoing struggle by union workers against the company’s unjust layoffs that began in 2009 and continue today. [2] The Yongsan Tragedy took place in January 19, 2009 when five protestors (against eviction due to redevelopment) occupying a building in protest and a police SWAT team member died in a fire. #SouthKorea #NationalSecurityLaw #humanrights #PoliticalPrisoners #DaeHanSong

South Korean soldiers stand guard facing North Korea at the Joint Security Area in Panmunjom in the Demilitarized Zone between North and South Korea, June 25, 2014. (Photo: Woohae Cho / The New York Times) By Christine Ahn and Suzy Kim | December 24, 2014 Copyright, Truthout.org. Reprinted with permission The fact that the Korean War ended with a temporary cease-fire rather than a permanent peace treaty has given the North Korean government justification to invest heavily in the country’s militarization. Another 50 years failed policy that needs to change? On Christmas Day, most Americans will not have the opportunity to see the assassination of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un as portrayed in the Hollywood film, The Interview. Americans may have left theaters laughing at Kim and feeling morally justified that the overthrow of the dictator is just what the North Korean people want and need. What they may not have reflected on is that US-led efforts to topple regimes have not brought democracy to the world. Washington’s most recent forays into Iraq and Afghanistan make clear that US intervention, either through covert or overt military action, does not produce the peace that politicians promise us as they beat the drum for war. The Bush administration may have succeeded in toppling Saddam Hussein, but it has left Iraq in a sectarian bloodbath under the reign of warlords. Peace and democracy are similarly distant concepts for the majority of the people in Afghanistan, especially women and girls. Whether the filmmakers understood the consequences of their film on US-North Korea relations or not, the situation has rapidly escalated. Despite President Obama’s efforts to scale back accusations against Pyongyang – with no clear evidence – for committing “cyberwar” to “cybervandalism,” the pundits are at work calling for a “proportional response” against North Korea. The idea of a US military intervention, whether real or imaginary, to liberate North Koreans is dangerous in a country whose regime now possesses one or more nuclear weapons. Although it is difficult to fully know how North Koreans feel about the regime, what we do know is that the entire state is built upon their experience and memories of surviving US bombings during the Korean War. More bombs were dropped on Korea from 1950 to 1953 than on all of Asia and the Pacific islands during World War II, with the near possibility of the deployment of an atomic bomb. One year into the Korean War, US Major General Emmett O’Donnell Jr. testified before the Senate, “I would say that the entire, almost the entire Korean Peninsula is just a terrible mess. Everything is destroyed. There is nothing standing worthy of the name . . . There [are] no more targets in Korea.” Nearly 4 million people were killed in the three-year Korean War, which has come to be known by historians as the “forgotten war.” In 1953, North Korea, China and the United States, representing the United Nations Command, signed a temporary cease-fire agreement with a promise to sign a peace treaty. That promise was never upheld. Sixty years later, millions of Korean families are still separated by the world’s most militarized border – the two-mile wide demilitarized zone (DMZ) – and are still living in a state of war. The fact that the Korean War ended with a temporary cease-fire rather than a permanent peace treaty gives the North Korean government justification – whether we like it or not – to invest heavily in the country’s militarization. Pyongyang even acknowledged last year how the unended war has forced it “to divert large human and material resources to bolstering up the armed forces though they should have been directed to the economic development and improvement of people’s living standards.” North Korea’s response to the film can be understood, in part, as a response to aggressive US intervention abroad that has toppled governments that impeded US national interests. In his book on US Cold War architects John Foster and Allen Dulles, Stephen Kinzer discusses the case of democratically elected Guatemalan president Jacobo Arbenz who was overthrown by a CIA coup in 1954. Kinzer explains that Che Guevara and Fidel Castro concluded that if they were to succeed in taking over Cuba, they would have to establish a closed, dictatorial society to prevent a similar US intervention. It was Barack Obama’s realization of Washington’s failed past Cuban policy that led to the historic announcement last week that it would normalize relations with Cuba, ironically on the same day that his administration accused North Korea for the Sony hacking. Like Cubans, North Koreans would greatly benefit from normalized relations with the United States. Although the North Korean regime has survived the political isolation of being the most heavily sanctioned country in the world, ordinary North Koreans have suffered the most from US-led embargoes: one in four currently face extreme hunger. When Obama says of Cuba that “if you’ve done the same thing for 50 years and nothing has changed, you should try something different,” the same logic should be applied to North Korea. For two countries still formally in a state of war, further belligerence and military posturing will not create the conditions for peace. Engagement and a long-awaited peace treaty will. Christine Ahn is international coordinator of Women De-Militarize the Zone, and a Korea Policy Institute Advisory Board member.  Suzy Kim is assistant professor of Korean history at Rutgers University and a former Korea Policy Institute Fellow. #KoreanWar #peacetreaty #ChristineAhn #Armistice #NorthKorea #SuzyKim

Obama Vows to Respond to Cyberattack on Sony at December 19, 2014 Year-End Press Conference. (theepochtimes.com) By Christine Hong | December 28, 2014 Originally published in the Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus “And if it does start a war, hopefully people will say, ‘You know what? It was worth it. It was a good movie!’”                                                                                                                                     —Seth Rogen  “Wacky dictators sell newspapers, and magazines—for example, the 2003 Newsweek cover depicting Kim [Jong Il] in dark sunglasses over a cover line that read ‘Dr. Evil.’ …But demonization, and ridicule, can be dangerous. At its worst, dehumanizing the other side helps to lay the groundwork for war.”                                                                                                                        —Donald Macintyre Representations of North Korea as a buffoon, a menace, or both on the American big screen are at least as old and arguably as tired as the George W. Bush-era phrase, “the axis of evil.” Along with the figure of the Muslim “terrorist,” hackneyed Hollywood constructions of the “ronery” or diabolical Dr. Evil-like North Korean leader bent on world domination, the sinister race-bending North Korean spy, the robotic North Korean commando, and other post-Cold War Red/Yellow Peril bogeymen have functioned as go-to enemies for the commercial film industry’s geopolitical and racist fantasies. Explaining why the North Korean leader was the default choice for the villain in his 2014 regime-change comedy, The Interview, Seth Rogen has stated, “It’s not that controversial to label [North Korea] as bad. It’s as bad as it could be.”[i] Indeed, one-dimensional caricatures of North Korea flourish in the Western media in no small part because “[w]acky dictators sell.”[ii] Yet when it comes to Hollywood’s North Korean regime-change narratives, the line between fact and fiction, not to mention the distinction between freedom of expression and government propaganda, is revealingly thin. Whether in Hollywood or Washington, the only permissible narrative for North Korea is what Donald Macintyre, former Seoul bureau chief for Time magazine, has called “the demonization script.”[iii] Not only have the dream machines of the entertainment industry long played an instrumental role within American theaters of war, but also, U.S. officials and political commentators often marshal the language of entertainment—for example, the description of U.S.-South Korea combined military exercises as “war games” and the Obama administration’s references to the Pentagon’s “playbook” with regard to North Korea—when describing U.S. military maneuvers on and around the Korean peninsula. Beyond the American entertainment industry’s insatiable appetite for evildoers, how might we account for the anachronistic place of North Korea as a Cold War foe that outlasted the end of the Cold War within Hollywood’s post-9/11 rogues’ gallery? With the eyes of the world trained on various flashpoints in the Middle East, what mileage of any kind can be gotten from the North Korean “bad guy” in Hollywood? If American moviegoers might be depended on to possess a vague awareness of geopolitical context, perhaps even to have some sense of the history of U.S. “hot” involvement subtending Hollywood’s latest Islamophobic interventionist adventure, by contrast, North Korea, routinely depicted in the U.S. media as shrouded in mystery and beyond comprehension, can be counted on to draw a complete blank. Truth, we are often told, is wilder than our wildest imaginings in North Korea, therefore the rule-of-thumb when it comes to representing North Korea in Hollywood appears to be that anything goes—even films featuring Kim Jong Un’s head deconstructing and bursting into flames. Violent spectacle thus stands in for substantive treatment, leaving more complex truths about North Korea elusive. It is worth recalling that North Korea has been dubbed a “black hole” by former CIA director Robert Gates, “the longest-running intelligence failure in the history of espionage” according to ex-CIA Seoul station chief and former U.S. ambassador to South Korea Donald Gregg, and the “Heart of Darkness” in the words of congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen.[iv] It’s against this backdrop of near-total ignorance about North Korea, a place about which Americans possess great conviction but little knowledge, that North Korea serves as a malleable screen onto which the entertainment industry’s fantasies can be projected—fantasies that reflect less reality about North Korea than commentary about Hollywood’s own murky ideological substratum. Here, it merits considering two post-9/11, “axis of evil” films that move in opposite directions but intersect with U.S. policy in ways few critics have observed: Red Dawn 2, MGM’s 2012 reboot of the 1984 Cold War original, in which North Korean invaders vaingloriously attempt regime change on U.S. soil only to be outdone by a pack of suburban American teenagers who call themselves “the Wolverines,” and The Interview, Sony’s 2014 screwball comedy in which a fatuous American TV talk show host and his producer are enlisted by the CIA to “take out” Kim Jong Un as a sure-fire means of ensuring North Korean regime collapse.[v] If Red Dawn 2, described by Wired as “the dumbest movie ever,” inadvertently descended into farce by expecting that American viewers would “take North Korea seriously as an existential threat,” The Interview, catapulted to unlikely world-historical importance, has become the focus of serious controversy and incessant Western media commentary.[vi] North Korea furnishes the central villain in The Interview—though, in this case, a rube of a “dictator” who has crippling “self-esteem and ‘daddy issues,’” according to leaked Sony emails.[vii] Yet, in the media-storm around the Sony hacking, North Korea has transitioned beyond the screen into an easy fall guy. At a juncture in which the White House has turned a new page with Cuba, even going so far as to describe a half-century of ineffectual U.S. isolationist policy aimed at Cuban regime change as a failure, North Korea, also long the target of U.S. regime-change designs, risks resuming its old place on the State Department’s list of state sponsors of terrorism from which it had been removed, by George W. Bush no less, in 2008.[viii] In other words, at a moment when Cuba stands to step off the four-country list, which also includes Iran, Sudan, and Syria, North Korea, accused of hacking into Sony and issuing terrorist threats over the release of The Interview, faces the prospect of stepping back on.[ix] At this moment, we are thus witness to two radically different dynamics: the prospect of long-awaited rapprochement, normalization, and engagement with Cuba in stark contrast to a war of words, threats of retaliation, and escalation when it comes to North Korea. In reference to the hacking of Sony, which the FBI has insisted can be traced to North Korea—an assertion of culpability that The New York Times dutifully reported as fact despite proliferating assessments and overwhelming opinion to the contrary in the larger cyber-security community—U.S. State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf, on December 22, 2014, laid out an astonishing injury claim, on Sony’s behalf, against North Korea: “The government of North Korea has a long history of denying its destructive and provocative actions and if they want to help here they can admit their culpability and compensate Sony for the damage, damages that they caused.”[x] Yet missing in this lopsided discussion of reparations and national amnesia is any grappling, on the part of the United States, with the profound human costs of six decades of hostile U.S. intervention on the Korean peninsula, much less the fact that the official relationship between the United States and North Korea remains one of unfinished war. In the mid-twentieth century, the United States, which set the stage for bloodshed by cleaving the Korean peninsula in two with no Korean input in 1945, and by supporting separate elections in the South in 1948, then militarily intervened in 1950 on behalf of its South Korean ally Syngman Rhee (a ruthless dictator, no doubt, but “our guy,” in the parlance of the Cold War State Department) in a war of national reunification that followed. That war, the Korean War, remains tragically unresolved to this day. During the war’s battle-phase, the United States wielded near-total aerial superiority, an index of asymmetrical warfare, to devastating consequences, especially in the North. When the dust settled, an estimated four million Koreans has been killed, seventy percent of whom were civilians, millions more were transformed into refugees, and one in three Korean families was separated by a dividing line that had been hardened by war into an impassable, intensely fortified, militarized border, which U.S. presidents ever since have referred to as “Freedom’s Frontier.” As historian Bruce Cumings notes, memory plays out differently north of the DMZ: “What is indelible is the extraordinary destructiveness of the American air campaigns against North Korea, ranging from the widespread and continuous use of firebombing (mainly with napalm), to threats to use nuclear and chemical weapons, and finally to the destruction of huge North Korean dams in the final stages of the war.”[xi] This memory of ruin, so central to North Korea’s consolidation as a state, registers little, if at all, within the United States where the Korean War is tellingly referred to as “the Forgotten War.” Indeed, few in the United States realize that this war is not over, whereas no one in North Korea can forget it. Yet, whether they realize it or not, Americans view and naturalize North Korea through a lens that is clouded by the fog of an unfinished war. In what has unfurled as one of the strangest PR campaigns for a Hollywood Christmas release ever, the FBI’s assertions that North Korea was behind the cyberattack on Sony—an intelligence assessment presented without evidence yet framed as self-sufficient fact by the Obama administration—highlights the centrality of intelligence as the filter through which we are urged to perceive North Korea and other historic enemies of the United States. It is worth remarking that the two primary ways that Americans “know” North Korea are through forms of intelligence—defector and satellite, precisely the two types of supposedly airtight evidence that then-Secretary of State Colin Powell presented to the UN Security Council in early 2003 as incontrovertible “proof” that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. Then as now, information about a longstanding U.S. military target is not aimed at producing a truthful picture about that society or its leadership but rather at defeating the supposed enemy—in short, paving the way to regime change. It is precisely within this haze of disinformation about North Korea that Hollywood churns out films that walk in lockstep with a relentless U.S. policy of regime change. With Obama stepping into the role of booster-in-chief for The Interview, we might examine the blurred lines between what both the U.S. President and Seth Rogen have insisted is an issue of freedom of speech and artistic expression, on the one hand, and government propaganda, on the other. The collusion between Sony, the White House, and the military industrial complex, as revealed by leaked emails, merits a closer look. Not only did Obama, in his final 2014 press conference, manage to avoid any discussion of the CIA torture report, but also he gave outsized attention to a film that Sony had reportedly shelved, in effect giving an invaluable presidential thumbs-up for The Interview. With the spectacle of North Korea implausibly rearing its head in the president’s remarks as “the biggest topic today,” the pressing issue of U.S. accountability for torture, with even major media outlets calling for a criminal probe into the responsibility of former Vice President Dick Cheney, former CIA director George Tenet, legal architect John Yoo, among others, was deflected.[xii] Instead, North Korea was launched to front-page news and Sony’s temporary, arguably savvy PR decision to pull The Interview was framed, in accordance with Obama’s comments, as a capitulation to censorship by “some dictator someplace.”[xiii] We might ask: what political capital stands to be gained from maintaining a hard line on North Korea, at a moment of détente with Cuba? As hacked emails from the head of Sony Entertainment, Michael Lynton, disclose, Sony’s tête-à-tête with the Obama administration over The Interview must be dated back to the production stage. Having screened a rough cut of the film at the State Department, Sony appears to have queried officials, including Special Envoy for Human Rights in North Korea, Robert King, specifically about what it worried was the over-the-top violence of the head-exploding assassination scene of Kim Jong Un (played by Randall Park). Harboring no such qualms, the State Department gave the green light. Asked by The New York Times in a December 16, 2014 interview whether they were frightened by “the initial ambiguous threats that North Korea made,” lead actor James Franco stated, “They went after Obama as much as us,” adding in tongue-in-cheek fashion, “Because Obama actually produced the movie.” Seth Rogen, co-lead and, along with Evan Goldberg, co-director of The Interview, clarified, “They don’t have freedom of speech there, so they don’t get that people make stuff.”[xiv] Within the space of the same NYT interview, however, Rogen offered a less innocuous account of the production process: “Throughout this process, we made relationships with certain people who work in the government as consultants, who I’m convinced are in the C.I.A.” Indeed, in addition to State Department officials, Bruce Bennett, a North Korea watcher and regime-change advocate at the Rand Corporation, the U.S. military-funded think tank, and a consultant to the government on North Korea, also served as a consultant with Sony on this film. His primary, albeit hardly novel, thesis on North Korea is that the assassination of the North Korean leader is the surest way of guaranteeing regime collapse in North Korea. In a June 25, 2014 email to Sony Entertainment CEO, Lynton, who also sits on the Rand Board of Trustees—an indication of Sony’s cozy relationship with the military industrial complex—Bennett implied that a North Korean regime-change cultural narrative, by dint of its politicized reception within the Korean peninsula, might oil the machinery of actual regime collapse. As he put it, referring to his 2013 book, Preparing for the Possibility of a North Korean Collapse, “I have been clear that the assassination of Kim Jong-Un is the most likely path to a collapse of the North Korean government. Thus while toning down the ending [the assassination scene] may reduce the North Korean response, I believe that a story that talks about the removal of the Kim family regime and the creation of a new government by the North Korean people (well, at least the elites) will start some real thinking in South Korea and, I believe, in the North once the DVD leaks into the North (which it almost certainly will). So from a personal perspective, I would personally prefer to leave the ending alone.”[xv] In their defense of the film’s creative integrity (prior to the email leaks), both Rogen and Goldberg claimed that their decision to explicitly identify the North Korean leader of the film as “Kim Jong Un” was met with “some resistance” at Sony, yet as The Daily Beast subsequently reported, the leaked emails “strongly suggest that it was Sony’s idea to insert Kim Jong Un in The Interview as the film’s antagonist” following consultation with “a former cia [sic] agent and someone who used to work for Hilary [sic] Clinton.”[xvi] Perhaps none of this should come as a surprise. Hollywood, after all, has given us Black Hawk Down, Zero Dark Thirty, Argo, and other propaganda films. Yet it runs counter to a reading of The Interview as harmless entertainment, much less as a matter of freedom of speech or pure artistic expression. It might also remind us that culture, when it comes to U.S. enemies, has always been a terrain of manipulation and war. During the Korean War’s hot-fighting phase, the United States dropped a staggering 2.5 billion propaganda leaflets on North Korea as part of its psy-war “hearts and minds” operations. Throughout the Cold War, the CIA, as is well-known, funded American arts and letters in a kulturkampf with the socialist bloc, maneuvering behind the scenes to foster “democratic” cultural expressions that would, in turn, be held up as evidence of the superiority of the culture of American freedom. Today, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), a supposedly non-governmental agency established in the Reagan era to do what the CIA did covertly during the Cold War and funded almost entirely by Congress, sponsors and disseminates defector narratives, what the CIA calls “human intelligence,” as the truth about North Korea.[xvii] Central to NED’s objectives is the promotion of “second cultural” products about target or “priority” countries, for example, the “dissemination of books, films or television programs illuminating or advocating democracy,” as a means of delegitimizing and ultimately destabilizing the leadership of “closed societies.”[xviii] In its work on North Korea, NED supports defector organizations in South Korea and Japan, which it mobilizes as an exogenous alternative to North Korean civil society—a second culture whose propaganda can be infiltrated via radio broadcast, balloon drops, smuggled USB drives, and other underground distributional means into North Korea. Although leaked emails indicate that Sony’s South Korean division opted early on not to screen The Interview in South Korea, citing an aversion to its caricature of the leader of North Korea and spoof of a “North Korean” accent, South Korea’s centrality as a site for a more sinister distribution of the film might give us some pause.[xix] Much along the lines advocated by Bennett, organizations like the U.S.-based, right-wing Human Rights Foundation headed by the self-professed Venezuelan “freedom fighter” Thor Halvorssen Mendoza as well as South Korean defector groups asserted their readiness, even prior to Sony’s temporary pulling of the film, to conduct illegal balloon drops of DVD copies of The Interview from South Korea into North Korea. We might note that one of the Korean subheadings on Sony’s promotional poster for the film reads explicitly to a North Korean audience: “Don’t believe these ignorant American jackasses.” Of the film’s propagandistic value, Halvorssen, who describes comedies as “hands down the most effective of counterrevolutionary devices”—here, echoing Rogen’s cavalier assessment of the film’s supposedly subversive potential, “Maybe the tapes will make their way to North Korea and start a fucking revolution”—told Newsweek, “Parody and satire is powerful. Ideas are what are going to win in North Korea. Ideas will bring down that regime.”[xx] Revealingly, those who profess to be so concerned about democracy when it comes to the release of The Interview rarely, if ever, consider the profoundly undemocratic implications of Obama’s militarized “pivot” toward Asia and the Pacific. Here, Hollywood’s North Korean “bad guy” merits critical consideration against the context of U.S. policy, past and present, within a larger Asia-Pacific region in which the United States seeks to ensure its dominance. Although Barack Obama’s foreign policy is unavoidably identified with the Middle East where he has continued and intensified Bush’s interventionist policies, his foreign policy vision from the outset has been explicitly oriented toward the Pacific. As Obama’s Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton signaled the significance of Asia by making it her first overseas destination, bypassing Europe, the customary grand tour destination for her predecessors. Offering a blueprint of twenty-first-century U.S. power designs within the Asia-Pacific region, which he identified as America’s “future,” “the world’s fastest-growing region,” and “home to more than half the global economy,” Obama, in a November 2011 speech before the Australian Parliament, stated, “Our new focus on this region reflects a fundamental truth—the United States has been, and always will be, a Pacific nation.”[xxi] As both Obama and members of his administration have taken pains to convey, the United States must be globally understood to be “a Pacific power.”[xxii] Ripped from the script of Red Dawn 2, the bait-and-switch narrative Obama has adhered to with regard to Asia and the Pacific requires North Korea to fulfill a necessary devil-function. Here, it is worth recalling that in 2012, MGM, facing a barrage of criticism from news media in China—not coincidentally the second largest movie market in the world, one that brought Hollywood an estimated $1.4 billion dollars in the year of Red Dawn 2’s release—announced it had decided, at the eleventh hour, to replace the film’s Chinese bad guys with North Korean villains. North Korea, of little significance as an open consumer market in today’s global entertainment industry, could be pasted in as China’s proxy, with few financial consequences. Digitally altering PRC flags, military insignia, and propaganda posters to appear “North Korean” would cost the studio well over a million dollars in the post-production phase. Although Obama’s policy toward North Korea has officially been one his advisers dub “strategic patience,” or non-engagement, North Korea has served as a cornerstone in this administration’s interventionist approach toward the Asia-Pacific region. Although an expanded American military role in the region, including a “rebalancing” of U.S. naval forces to 60% (in contrast to 40% in the Atlantic), may be aimed at containing a rising China, the growing U.S. regional military presence, under Obama’s “pivot” policy, has been overtly justified by the specter of a nuclear-armed, volatile North Korea. Not merely the stuff of Hollywood fantasies, North Korea, inflated as an existential menace, has been indispensable, for example, to “the deployment of ballistic missile defenses closer to North Korea,” not to mention sales of surveillance drone technology to regional allies.[xxiii] Indeed, central to the staging of U.S. forward-deployed missile defense systems—Aegis, Patriot, and THAAD (Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense)—in and off the coast of Hawai‘i, Guam, Taiwan, Japan, Okinawa, and South Korea (including, eventually on Jeju Island) has been the purported dangers posed by an armed, dangerous, and totally unpredictable North Korea to both the western coast of the United States and regional allies in the Pacific. In recent years, this portrait of an unhinged, trigger-happy North Korea has justified the acceleration of the THAAD missile-defense system in Guam, a second U.S. missile defense radar deployed near Kyoto, Japan, the positioning of nuclear aircraft carriers throughout the Pacific, and lucrative sales of military weapons systems to U.S. client-states through the Asia-Pacific region. Albeit all key elements in U.S. first-strike attack planning, this amplified militarization of the “American Lake” is justified by the Pentagon as a “precautionary move to strengthen our regional defense posture against the North Korean regional ballistic missile threat.”[xxiv] As early as June 2009, then-Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, in announcing the deployment of both the THAAD and sea-based radar systems to Hawai‘i, explained, “I think we are in a good position, should it become necessary, to protect American territory” from a North Korean threat.[xxv] In early April 2013, in a press release announcing its missile defense deployment throughout the Asia-Pacific region, the Pentagon stated, “The United States remains vigilant in the face of North Korean provocations and stands ready to defend U.S. territory, our allies, and our national interests.”[xxvi] Advertised as safeguarding “the region against the North Korean threat,” the X-band radar system, which the United States sold to Japan “is not directed at China,” as U.S. officials were careful to state, but simply a defensive measure undertaken in response to the danger posed by Pyongyang.[xxvii] As critics have pointed out, “There is…nothing ‘defensive’” about any of this, least of all the “B-52 and B-2 nuclear strategic bombers,” which the Obama administration put into play in early 2013 on the Korean peninsula.[xxviii] Indeed, such “flights were designed to demonstrate, to North Korea in the first instance, the ability to conduct nuclear strikes at will anywhere in North East Asia.”[xxix] Yet, even as the North Koreans have had to hunker down, with “single-minded unity,” in preparation for the prospect of a David-and-Goliath showdown with the United States, the true audience of the U.S.-directed dramaturgy of war styled as the “pivot” policy unquestionably has always been China. Claiming to have done conducted “a lot” of research on North Korea, Seth Rogen has insisted that The Interview holds up a mirror to North Korea’s reality: “We didn’t make up anything. It’s all real.” His conclusion about North Korea after conducting exhaustive research? “It was f–king weird.”[xxx] Yet, even as the curtains go up in movie theaters across the United States for The Interview, the centrality of the North Korean demon to Obama’s pivot policy within Asia and the Pacific, itself a historic theater of U.S. war, may prove to be far stranger than fiction. Christine Hong is an assistant professor at UC Santa Cruz. She is on the executive board of the Korea Policy Institute, the coordinating committee of the National Campaign to End the Korean War, and part of the Working Group on Peace and Demilitarization in Asia and the Pacific. Notes: [i] Josh Rottenberg, “Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg Like that Kim Jong Un Doesn’t Get the Joke,” LA Times 3 December 2014 <http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/movies/la-ca-rogen-goldberg-20141207-story.html#page=1>. As Rogen’s comments in this interview with the LA Times reveal, the biographical particulars of the North Korean leader did not matter; indeed, one leader was interchangeable for another. Rogen and his fellow filmmaker Evan Goldberg initially envisioned Kim Jong Il as the arch-villain of the film but, with his death in December 2011, simply replaced him with Kim Jong Un. [ii] Donald Macintyre, “U.S. Media and the Korean Peninsula,” Korea Witness: 135 Years of War, Crisis and News in the Land of the Morning Calm, ed. Donald Kirk and Choe Sang Hun (Seoul: EunHaeng Namu, 2006), 404. [iii] Ibid., 407. [iv]As quoted in Don Oberdorfer, The Two Koreas: A Contemporary History (New York: Basic-Perseus Books, 2001) 60; “North Korea’s Heart of Darkness,” Dong-A Ilbo, 23 May 2012, available at foreignaffairs.house.gov/news/story/?2445. [v] Sandy Schaefer, “‘The Interview’ Red Band Trailer: Rogen and Franco Serve Their Comedy,” Screen Rant, September 2014 <http://screenrant.com/the-interview-red-band-trailer/>. [vi] David Axe, “North Korea Invades America in Dumbest Movie Ever,” Wired 4 August 2012, http://www.wired.com/2012/08/north-korea-invades-america/. [vii] Sam Biddle, “Leaked Emails: Sony Execs Scared of ‘Desperately Unfunny’ Interview,” Defamer, 15 December 2014 <http://defamer.gawker.com/leaked-emails-the-interview-sucked-for-sony-even-befor-1671234001>. [viii] As reported in The Daily Beast, Obama, in clarifying a new U.S. policy approach to Cuba, stated, “‘I do not believe we can continue doing the same thing for five decades and expect a different result,’ said Obama in a none-too-subtle allusion to a popular definition of insanity.” See Christopher Dickey, “Obama Realizes What 10 Presidents Didn’t: Isolating Cuba Doesn’t Work,” The Daily Beast, 18 December 2014 <http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/12/17/obama-ends-failed-policy-towards-cuba.html>. [ix] See Amy Chozick, “Obama Says He’ll Weigh Returning North Korea to Terror List,” The New York Times, 21 December 2014 <http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/22/us/politics/obama-cuba-north-korea-cyberattack.html>. [x] State Department, Daily Press Briefing, Washington, DC, 22 December 2014 <http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/dpb/2014/12/235472.htm>. Noting that a heavy regime of U.S. and international sanctions prevents direct financial dealings with North Korea, AP reporter Matt Lee asked Harf to clarify what she meant by “compensation”: “‘How could Sony legally accept compensation from North Korea? Is there an exception?’ Lee asked. ‘Because as far as I know, if you’re getting a payment, a direct payment, from the North Korean government, you’re breaking the law.’” See “Reporter Dismantles State Dept Suggestion that North Korea Pay Compensation to Sony,” Free Beacon, 22 December 2014 <http://freebeacon.com/national-security/reporter-dismantles-state-dept-suggestion-that-north-korea-pay-compensation-to-sony/>. On skepticism from cyber-security experts that North Korea was responsible for the hacking, see Elissa Shevinsky, “In Plain English: Five Reasons Why Security Experts Are Skeptical North Korea Masterminded the Sony Attack,” Business Insider, 22 December 2014 <http://www.businessinsider.com/why-security-experts-are-skeptical-that-north-korea-masterminded-the-sony-attack-2014-12> and Marc Rogers, “No, North Korea Didn’t Hack Sony,” The Daily Beast, 24 December 2014 <http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/12/24/no-north-korea-didn-t-hack-sony.html>. [xi] Bruce Cumings, “On the Strategy and Morality of American Nuclear Policy in Korea, 1950 to the Present,” Social Science Japan Journal 1:1 (1998): 57. [xii] “Remarks by the President in Year-End Press Conference,” The White House, 19 December 2014 <http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2014/12/19/remarks-president-year-end-press-conference>; The New York Times Editorial Board, “Prosecute Torturers and Their Bosses,” The New York Times, 21 December 2014 <http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/22/opinion/prosecute-torturers-and-their-bosses.html?_r=4>. [xiii] “Remarks by the President in Year-End Press Conference.” [xiv] Dave Itzkoff, “James Franco and Seth Rogen Talk about ‘The Interview,’” The New York Times, 16 December 2014 <http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/21/movies/james-franco-and-seth-rogen-talk-about-the-interview.html>. [xv] Although purportedly an expert on the Korean peninsula, Bennett offers an assessment of South Korean receptivity to The Interview that is contradicted by Sony’s own internal emails. Fearing controversy, Sony’s South Korean division passed on opening the film in South Korea. For an account of how another “axis of evil” film, the Bond thriller, Die Another Day (2002), incited widespread protests in South Korea, see Hye Seung Chung, “From Die Another Day to ‘Another Day’: The South Korean Anti-007 Movement and Regional Nationalism in Post-Cold War Asia,” Hybrid Media, Ambivalent Feelings, ed. Hyung-Sook Lee, special issue of Spectator 27:2 (2007): 64-78. [xvi] Rottenberg, “Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg Like That Kimg Jong Un Doesn’t Get the Joke”; William Boot, “”Exclusive: Sony Emails Say Studio Exec Picked Kim Jong-Un as the Villain of ‘The Interview,’” The Daily Beast, 18 December 2014 <http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/12/18/exclusive-sony-emails-say-studio-exec-picked-kim-jong-un-as-the-villain-of-the-interview.html>. [xvii] On this point, William Blum writes: “Allen Weinstein, who helped draft legislation establishing NED, was quite candid when he said in 1991: ‘A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA.’” See William Blum, Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower (Monroe, ME: Common Courage, 2000), 180. [xviii] NED, “Statement of Principles and Objectives: Strengthening Democracy Abroad: The Role of the National Endowment for Democracy,” NED <http://www.ned.org/publications/statement-of-principles-and-objectives>. [xix] See Biddle, “Leaked Emails.” [xx] Josh Eells, “Seth Rogen’s ‘Interview’: Inside the Film North Korea Really Doesn’t Want You to See,” Rolling Stone, 17 December 2014 <http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/features/seth-rogen-interview-north-korea-controversy-cover-story-20141217>; Paul Bond, “Sony Hack: Activists to Drop ‘Interview’ DVDs over North Korea via Balloon,” The Hollywood Reporter, 16 December 2014 <http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/sony-hack-activists-drop-interview-758529>; Katherine Phillips, “Activists to Send DVDs of ‘The Interview’ to North Korea by Balloon,” Newsweek, 17 December 2014 <http://www.newsweek.com/activists-send-interview-north-korea-balloon-292767>. [xxi] Barack Obama, “Remarks by President Obama to the Australian Parliament,” 17 November 2011 <http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2011/11/17/remarks-president-obama-australian-parliament>. [xxii] Hillary Clinton, “America’s Pacific Century,” Foreign Policy, 11 October 2014 http://foreignpolicy.com/2011/10/11/americas-pacific-century/. [xxiii] Barbara Starr and Tom Cohen, “U.S. Reducing Rhetoric That Feeds North Korea’s Belligerence,” CNN 13 April 2013 <http://www.cnn.com/2013/04/04/politics/koreas-u-s-/>. [xxiv] Department of Defense, News Release No. 208-13, 3 April 2013 <http://www.defense.gov/releases/release.aspx?releaseid=15909>. [xxv] John J. Kruzel, “U.S. Prepares Missile Defense, Continues Shipping Interdictions,” U.S. Department of Defense, 18 June 2009 <http://www.defense.gov/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=54833>. [xxvi] “Department of Defense Announces Missile Deployment,” Press Release, Department of Defense, 3 April 2014 <http://www.defense.gov/releases/release.aspx?releaseid=15909>. [xxvii] Lolita Baldor and Matthew Lee, “US and Japan Revamp Defense Alliance to Counter North Korean Threat,” Business Insider, 3 October 2013 <http://www.businessinsider.com/us-japan-revamp-defense-alliance-to-counter-n-korea-2013-10>. [xxviii] Peter Symonds, “Obama’s ‘Playbook’ and the Threat of Nuclear War in Asia,” World Socialist Web Site, 5 April 2013 <http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/04/05/pers-a05.html>. [xxix] Ibid. [xxx] Judy Kurtz, “FLASHBACK—Seth Rogen: No Regrets about Making ‘The Interview,’” the Hill, 17 December 2014 <http://thehill.com/blogs/in-the-know/in-the-know/227501-flashback-seth-rogen-no-regrets-about-making-the-interview>. [1] Josh Rottenberg, “Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg Like that Kim Jong Un Doesn’t Get the Joke,” LA Times 3 December 2014 <http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/movies/la-ca-rogen-goldberg-20141207-story.html#page=1>. As Rogen’s comments in this interview with the LA Times reveal, the biographical particulars of the North Korean leader did not matter; indeed, one leader was interchangeable for another. Rogen and his fellow filmmaker Evan Goldberg initially envisioned Kim Jong Il as the arch-villain of the film but, with his death in December 2011, simply replaced him with Kim Jong Un. [1] Donald Macintyre, “U.S. Media and the Korean Peninsula,” Korea Witness: 135 Years of War, Crisis and News in the Land of the Morning Calm, ed. Donald Kirk and Choe Sang Hun (Seoul: EunHaeng Namu, 2006), 404. [1] Ibid., 407. [1]As quoted in Don Oberdorfer, The Two Koreas: A Contemporary History (New York: Basic-Perseus Books, 2001) 60; “North Korea’s Heart of Darkness,” Dong-A Ilbo, 23 May 2012, available at foreignaffairs.house.gov/news/story/?2445. [1] Sandy Schaefer, “‘The Interview’ Red Band Trailer: Rogen and Franco Serve Their Comedy,” Screen Rant, September 2014 <http://screenrant.com/the-interview-red-band-trailer/>. [1] David Axe, “North Korea Invades America in Dumbest Movie Ever,” Wired 4 August 2012, http://www.wired.com/2012/08/north-korea-invades-america/. [1] Sam Biddle, “Leaked Emails: Sony Execs Scared of ‘Desperately Unfunny’ Interview,” Defamer, 15 December 2014 <http://defamer.gawker.com/leaked-emails-the-interview-sucked-for-sony-even-befor-1671234001>. [1] As reported in The Daily Beast, Obama, in clarifying a new U.S. policy approach to Cuba, stated, “‘I do not believe we can continue doing the same thing for five decades and expect a different result,’ said Obama in a none-too-subtle allusion to a popular definition of insanity.” See Christopher Dickey, “Obama Realizes What 10 Presidents Didn’t: Isolating Cuba Doesn’t Work,” The Daily Beast, 18 December 2014 <http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/12/17/obama-ends-failed-policy-towards-cuba.html>. [1] See Amy Chozick, “Obama Says He’ll Weigh Returning North Korea to Terror List,” The New York Times, 21 December 2014 <http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/22/us/politics/obama-cuba-north-korea-cyberattack.html>. [1] State Department, Daily Press Briefing, Washington, DC, 22 December 2014 <http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/dpb/2014/12/235472.htm>. Noting that a heavy regime of U.S. and international sanctions prevents direct financial dealings with North Korea, AP reporter Matt Lee asked Harf to clarify what she meant by “compensation”: “‘How could Sony legally accept compensation from North Korea? Is there an exception?’ Lee asked. ‘Because as far as I know, if you’re getting a payment, a direct payment, from the North Korean government, you’re breaking the law.’” See “Reporter Dismantles State Dept Suggestion that North Korea Pay Compensation to Sony,” Free Beacon, 22 December 2014 <http://freebeacon.com/national-security/reporter-dismantles-state-dept-suggestion-that-north-korea-pay-compensation-to-sony/>. On skepticism from cyber-security experts that North Korea was responsible for the hacking, see Elissa Shevinsky, “In Plain English: Five Reasons Why Security Experts Are Skeptical North Korea Masterminded the Sony Attack,” Business Insider, 22 December 2014 <http://www.businessinsider.com/why-security-experts-are-skeptical-that-north-korea-masterminded-the-sony-attack-2014-12> and Marc Rogers, “No, North Korea Didn’t Hack Sony,” The Daily Beast, 24 December 2014 <http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/12/24/no-north-korea-didn-t-hack-sony.html>. [1] Bruce Cumings, “On the Strategy and Morality of American Nuclear Policy in Korea, 1950 to the Present,” Social Science Japan Journal 1:1 (1998): 57. [1] “Remarks by the President in Year-End Press Conference,” The White House, 19 December 2014 <http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2014/12/19/remarks-president-year-end-press-conference>; The New York Times Editorial Board, “Prosecute Torturers and Their Bosses,” The New York Times, 21 December 2014 <http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/22/opinion/prosecute-torturers-and-their-bosses.html?_r=4>. [1] “Remarks by the President in Year-End Press Conference.” [1] Dave Itzkoff, “James Franco and Seth Rogen Talk about ‘The Interview,’” The New York Times, 16 December 2014 <http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/21/movies/james-franco-and-seth-rogen-talk-about-the-interview.html>. [1] Although purportedly an expert on the Korean peninsula, Bennett offers an assessment of South Korean receptivity to The Interview that is contradicted by Sony’s own internal emails. Fearing controversy, Sony’s South Korean division passed on opening the film in South Korea. For an account of how another “axis of evil” film, the Bond thriller, Die Another Day (2002), incited widespread protests in South Korea, see Hye Seung Chung, “From Die Another Day to ‘Another Day’: The South Korean Anti-007 Movement and Regional Nationalism in Post-Cold War Asia,” Hybrid Media, Ambivalent Feelings, ed. Hyung-Sook Lee, special issue of Spectator 27:2 (2007): 64-78. [1] Rottenberg, “Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg Like That Kimg Jong Un Doesn’t Get the Joke”; William Boot, “”Exclusive: Sony Emails Say Studio Exec Picked Kim Jong-Un as the Villain of ‘The Interview,’” The Daily Beast, 18 December 2014 <http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/12/18/exclusive-sony-emails-say-studio-exec-picked-kim-jong-un-as-the-villain-of-the-interview.html>. [1] On this point, William Blum writes: “Allen Weinstein, who helped draft legislation establishing NED, was quite candid when he said in 1991: ‘A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA.’” See William Blum, Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower (Monroe, ME: Common Courage, 2000), 180. [1] NED, “Statement of Principles and Objectives: Strengthening Democracy Abroad: The Role of the National Endowment for Democracy,” NED <http://www.ned.org/publications/statement-of-principles-and-objectives>. [1] See Biddle, “Leaked Emails.” [1] Josh Eells, “Seth Rogen’s ‘Interview’: Inside the Film North Korea Really Doesn’t Want You to See,” Rolling Stone, 17 December 2014 <http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/features/seth-rogen-interview-north-korea-controversy-cover-story-20141217>; Paul Bond, “Sony Hack: Activists to Drop ‘Interview’ DVDs over North Korea via Balloon,” The Hollywood Reporter, 16 December 2014 <http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/sony-hack-activists-drop-interview-758529>; Katherine Phillips, “Activists to Send DVDs of ‘The Interview’ to North Korea by Balloon,” Newsweek, 17 December 2014 <http://www.newsweek.com/activists-send-interview-north-korea-balloon-292767>. [1] Barack Obama, “Remarks by President Obama to the Australian Parliament,” 17 November 2011 <http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2011/11/17/remarks-president-obama-australian-parliament>. [1] Hillary Clinton, “America’s Pacific Century,” Foreign Policy, 11 October 2014 http://foreignpolicy.com/2011/10/11/americas-pacific-century/. [1] Barbara Starr and Tom Cohen, “U.S. Reducing Rhetoric That Feeds North Korea’s Belligerence,” CNN 13 April 2013 <http://www.cnn.com/2013/04/04/politics/koreas-u-s-/>. [1] Department of Defense, News Release No. 208-13, 3 April 2013 <http://www.defense.gov/releases/release.aspx?releaseid=15909>. [1] John J. Kruzel, “U.S. Prepares Missile Defense, Continues Shipping Interdictions,” U.S. Department of Defense, 18 June 2009 <http://www.defense.gov/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=54833>. [1] “Department of Defense Announces Missile Deployment,” Press Release, Department of Defense, 3 April 2014 <http://www.defense.gov/releases/release.aspx?releaseid=15909>. [1] Lolita Baldor and Matthew Lee, “US and Japan Revamp Defense Alliance to Counter North Korean Threat,” Business Insider, 3 October 2013 <http://www.businessinsider.com/us-japan-revamp-defense-alliance-to-counter-n-korea-2013-10>. [1] Peter Symonds, “Obama’s ‘Playbook’ and the Threat of Nuclear War in Asia,” World Socialist Web Site, 5 April 2013 <http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/04/05/pers-a05.html>. [1] Ibid. [1] Judy Kurtz, “FLASHBACK—Seth Rogen: No Regrets about Making ‘The Interview,’” the Hill, 17 December 2014 <http://thehill.com/blogs/in-the-know/in-the-know/227501-flashback-seth-rogen-no-regrets-about-making-the-interview>. #ChristineHong #KimJongUn #NorthKorea #TheInterview

Kyeong Seok Park (on the left) with fellow activists in the Gwanghwamun Occupation Site And Happiness for All: An Interview with Kyung-Seok Park By Dae-han Song* | January 4, 2015 Interpretation by Jeong Eun Hwang On October 3, 2014, Jeong Eun Hwang, Communications Coordinator, and Dae-Han Song , Policy and Research Coordinator, of the International Strategy Center interviewed Kyung-Seok Park, the president of Solidarity Against Disability Discrimination and principal of Nodeul Disabled People’s Night School on the movement for disabled peoples’ rights. [Song] Can you give us a brief history of the disabled people’s movement? [Park] Before 1980, the movement around disabled people revolved mostly around individuals signing petitions or providing welfare and services to disabled people. What could be termed the disabled people’s movement began in 1980. That year, disabled students who had passed the university entrance exam applied for admission to university but were rejected because they were disabled. That’s how the struggle against educational discrimination of disabled people started. Then in 1987-88, we organized around the 1988 Olympics and Paralympics. The disabled people’s movement expanded greatly through that period of organizing. In 1990, we had another round of organizing and expansion with the struggle to reform the Physical and Mental Disability Welfare Law (a law enacted under the Chun Du Hwan military dictatorship but not implemented) and we also succeeded in creating a law promoting employment for disabled persons. Then in 2001, after a disabled person died after falling off a wheel chair lift in Oido Station, the struggle was reframed as a human rights issue. This was a fight around mobility rights. During this struggle, we started to take to the streets. Our tactics became bolder and more radical like occupying buses and rail tracks. In addition, along with the struggle for mobility rights, we see the rise of the independent living movement. [Song] Why do we see a shift from welfare projects to a struggle for human rights? [Park] In 1980, the rejection of the disabled students was such a spark because you had students that had passed the test and who wanted to study. They were rejected simply because they were disabled. The wronged students organized press conferences and rallies. People could sympathize with the injustice. That was the beginning. In 2001 with the Oido Station accident, we realized that moderate actions couldn’t create the big changes that were necessary. While it hadn’t taken much money to just admit a few students, when we started talking about installing elevators in subway stations or providing low floor buses, that was a sizeable amount of money. People could sympathize with the idea, but they would balk when it actually came to implementing them. So we escalated our actions. We stopped buses and occupied rail tracks. These struggles brought public focus to the issue. As the number of people that became convinced that society should not continue in this direction increased, new laws were passed, buses were constructed, and elevators installed. [Song] Did people’s consciousness shift along with this shift in the movement? [Park]The way that others looked at us shifted from pity and charity to human rights and to respect for our struggles. As disabled people we rose up as protagonists of our own struggle and were able to recover our self-respect, and confidence through this movement. [Song] What were your most memorable struggles? [Park]It was the struggle around the Oido Station accident. The Oido Station death happened in January 22nd. In protest, we occupied the subway tracks of Seoul Station on February 26th. We occupied it for almost an hour demanding that they install a station elevator. About 100 of us were arrested and many had to pay stiff fines. Activists for mobility rights occupying subway tracks at Seoul Station for an hour (February 26, 2001) [Song] Can you talk about the current struggle? [Park] Our occupation of Gwanghwamun Subway Station, which started on August 21st, 2012, is currently on its 774th day in protest of the Disability Grading and the Family Support Obligation systems. The Disability Grading system was implemented in 1981. It ranks disabled people into six grades based on the severity of their disability. It later became the basis upon which the government provided disabled persons with assistants to help with their daily living. Established in 2007 this was the first direct support system for disabled people in Korea. Before, disabled people only received support indirectly in the form of free access to services or tax exemption. However, while those in need of this service numbered 350,000, the budget only allowed for services to be provided for 50,000. At first the government limited this service to the 1st grade [the most severely] disabled people. After protest, the service was expanded it to include 2nd grade disabled people. Currently, only 1st and 2nd grade disabled people can get this service. We are proposing that instead of basing a person’s eligibility on their disability grade, each person should be evaluated individually for the service they are applying for. Currently the grading system is just being used as a convenient way for the government to control and manage people. The second issue concerns income. If a person who is unable to earn an income has parents with a little bit of income or assets, then under the Family Support Obligation System, that person can’t receive any assistance payments from the government. Even if that person were in his or her 30s, 40s, or 50s, he or she would not be able to get a living income. We are fighting for its abolishment. If a person has no income, then they don’t have an income regardless of their parents’ income. They should receive a minimum living income. The reason why this is such a difficult struggle is because with the current welfare budget allocations, it’s impossible to meet our demands. [Song] Your organization is called Solidarity Against Disability Discrimination. What would a society free of discrimination against disabled people look like? [Park] That society should be one where not just the disabled, but all people can be happy. We need to ask ourselves: What kind of tools do we need to create this happiness? Right now we have a society of ruthless competition where only the successful survive. In this society, disabled people are treated as a special group to be helped. But the society that we are envisioning is one where everyone can be happy. While what makes each person happy may differ, it should at least provide the basic needs: food, shelter, health, a job. So to create such as society we first need to disseminate the value of living together. Then that value should be supported by the law and the budget. After the universal adoption of such value, then if disabled people have extra special physical or mental needs, they should be addressed. The needs of disabled people should be addressed as part of a much larger effort for everyone’s happiness. However if we take the approach of Capital or those who rule, and try to resolve the issue of disability rights without changing society’s structure and values; and view disability rights as an issue separate from society as a whole, then our issue can’t help but become distorted. *Dae-Han Song is Policy and Research Coordinator, of the International Strategy Center in Korea and a KPI Fellow. #DaeHanSong #humanrights #SouthKorea

By Gregory Elich* | January 5, 2015 [Originally Published in MRZINE, December 29, 2014] On December 19, the South Korean Constitutional Court delivered a devastating blow against the progressive movement when it disbanded the Unified Progressive Party (UPP) with immediate effect.  That act came as the culmination of a long campaign by South Korean President Park Geun-hye to shackle the labor movement and smash political opposition. The Constitutional Court case was initiated over a year ago when the Ministry of Justice filed a petition with the court to ban the UPP.  The pretext for the petition was the arrest of six prominent members of the UPP on the charge of plotting a rebellion to overthrow the government.  As evidence, the government offered a speech National Assembly representative Lee Seok-ki delivered to fellow UPP members, which was recorded by a turncoat acting as a spy for the National Intelligence Service (NIS).  The NIS released to the media a transcript of the speech that it had substantially altered, replacing ordinary words and phrases with inflammatory rhetoric.  By attributing words to Lee that he had never spoken, the NIS succeeded in whipping up hostility against the UPP. The trial of Lee Seok-ki and his five colleagues was notable for the prosecution’s distortions and fanciful testimony.  It was clear that the state’s star witness had concocted the entire scenario of rebellion from his imagination and unsupported supposition.  The lack of evidence to back the prosecution’s case was no impediment for the staunchly conservative judge, however, and he found all six defendants guilty of plotting rebellion.  The case was appealed to the High Court, which ruled that it could not conclude that the defendants had plotted a rebellion.  The defendants were nevertheless found guilty of “incitement” and for having violated the vaguely worded National Security Law, resulting in only a modest reduction of their prison terms.  The case is now before the Supreme Court, which is expected to issue a ruling within weeks. The timing of the initial accusation and publication of the fabricated transcript of Lee Seok-ki’s speech came at a decisive moment in the Korean political scene.  One revelation after another had been appearing in the press, showing that the National Intelligence Service had persistently and extensively interfered in the 2012 electoral campaign.  The NIS sought to sway the election by flooding the Internet with postings and tweets that defamed liberal and progressive candidates and praised conservatives, all done under the guise of originating from private citizens. With each passing week, mass demonstrations in downtown Seoul swelled ever larger in size, denouncing the NIS for its interference in the electoral process.  The Unified Progressive Party and its allies spearheaded these demonstrations, earning the undying enmity of the conservative ruling party. The demonstrations placed the ruling party in an embarrassing position.  It struck back by launching a campaign of lies against the UPP, which succeeded in driving a wedge between the progressive movement and liberals, and brought the demonstrations against the NIS to a halt.  Public attention was diverted from the record of NIS malfeasance. In its decision, the Constitutional Court ruled that the UPP had a “hidden objective of realizing North Korean-style socialism” and presented a “substantial threat to society.”  The court declared that the party “aims to accomplish progressive democracy through violence.”  UPP members, it added, are “followers of North Korea, and the progressive democracy they pursue is overall the same or very similar to the North’s revolutionary strategy against South Korea in almost all respects.” Those assertions were wholly unsupported by the evidence and reflected the conservative-dominated court’s antipathy towards the ideals espoused by the UPP.  Nothing in the party’s history or record backed the court’s claims. Like many other Koreans across a broad political spectrum, the Unified Progressive Party wished for “peace and reunification on the Korean Peninsula,” as the party program expresses it.  This widespread and non-controversial sentiment hardly makes the UPP “followers of North Korea.” The Unified Progressive Party aimed to create “a people-centered world by being on the ground with the working class.”  Its program called for “non-discrimination and labor rights” and a half tuition fee for students.  In support of farmers, it advocated implementation of a government purchasing policy on agricultural products.  On behalf of working people, the party called for “youth employment through a youth employment quota” and a halt to privatization of government entities.  Only during an era dominated by neoliberal hegemony could such goals be considered a threat to society. The forced disbanding of the UPP casts the party’s 100,000-some members and its many followers adrift, without political representation.  As UPP chairwoman Lee Jung-hee put it during her final testimony before the Constitutional Court: “The government’s attempt to dissolve the UPP is not just about determining the fate of the party or its representatives.  It’s about depriving workers, farmers, and the common people — who, by voting for the UPP, wanted to be equal owners of Korea — of their right to vote and freedom of political opinion.” “The government’s key argument is that the UPP — after achieving confederation-model unification — will opt for North Korean-style socialism,” Lee continued.  “This is baseless speculation.  North Korean socialism is a system designed for North Korea and cannot be a system for South Korea.  The government says that having an omnipotent supreme leader is at the heart of North Korean socialism.  There is no reason for the people of South Korea, who rejected the prolonged Yushin dictatorship of Park Chung-hee and the indirect election system of the Chun Doo-hwan regime, and waged the Kwangju People’s Uprising and the June Uprising to achieve direct elections and single-term presidency, to throw away these achievements and choose to follow an omnipotent supreme leader.  The majority of the UPP’s staff and members participated in and dedicated themselves to these democratic struggles, and the party’s platform clearly states that the UPP follows the tradition of these struggles.” As the Constitutional Court announced its verdict against the UPP, defense lawyer Kwon Young-guk stood up and exclaimed: “Today is the day democracy is murdered.  History will rule on this verdict.”  In what would prove symbolic of the government’s attitude as a whole towards progressives, security guards swarmed over Kwon, covering his mouth so that he could not speak, and dragged him out of court. With the decision banning the party in effect, the witch hunt against progressives is on.  The party was directed to relinquish its government subsidies, and all of its assets have been frozen.  All five party members who held seats in the National Assembly were removed from office.  The National Election Commission then stripped six UPP officials of their seats on local councils. A right-wing civic group filed a complaint against the UPP with the Seoul Central District Prosecutor’s Office, asking for the arrest of all 100,000-some members of the party for violating the National Security Law.  It reveals the malevolence of the government vendetta against the UPP that such an outrageous complaint was accepted and is being pursued.  The Public Security office has begun an investigation to determine if the UPP “aided the enemy,” and the Seoul Metropolitan Police Security Unit is handling the investigation of individuals.  Although it is not likely that the entire membership will be arrested, the investigation will probably sweep up a great many of the most active. Meanwhile, police raided the offices of the progressive organization Corea Alliance, as well as the homes of nine of its members.  Attorney Jang Kyung-wook, who successfully defended a client against the charge of violating the National Security Law, has come under police investigation.  Police searched the offices of his group, Lawyers for a Democratic Society.  Jang is under investigation for having spoken to a North Korean representative at a seminar in Germany.  “Am I not supposed to go to an international seminar I’ve been invited to if a North Korean also participates?” Jang wondered. Similarly, police struck at the home and church of a pastor who had had a conversation with the North Korean representative at the same seminar.  The police regarded his innocuous conversation as a violation of the National Security Law’s restriction against “meeting, correspondence, or coordination with the enemy.” Months before the dissolution of the UPP, the Ministry of Justice announced a plan to have legislation passed that would grant it authority to disband what it termed “anti-state” groups.  “The UPP is just the tip of the iceberg,” one Justice Ministry official disclosed, adding that there are many individuals and groups that the ministry wanted to go after.  The initial raids on the homes and offices of progressives mark only the beginning.  Attacks on progressives are sure to mount in the coming months. The government has already gone after the labor movement, banning the teachers’ union and refusing to recognize the government employees’ union.  One year ago, several hundred police stormed the headquarters of the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions, detaining around 130 people.  Six union officials were arrested on the charge of supporting a strike by railway workers. President Park Geun-hye is calling for “reform” of the labor market as “an urgent and important task.”  Finance Minister Choi Kyung-hwan reproached workers for being “overprotected.”  The solution, as the government sees it, is to bring “flexibility” to the entire labor force, allowing companies a freer hand in adjusting wages downward and setting schedules.  The Federation of Korean Trade Unions condemns the plan as a “gift set for capitalists” and pointed out that it would only “produce low-quality jobs.” The ruling Saenuri Party is taking steps to ensure that progressives can never again run for electoral office.  UPP members are already banned from creating another progressive party.  A conservative assemblyman has drawn up a bill that would prevent anyone having belonged to the UPP from running for office for the next ten years.  The Ministry of Justice is planning to draw up legislation that would prohibit the creation of a political party with a program similar to the UPP.  If that legislation passes, it will make it illegal for any political party to advocate a progressive program on behalf of working people. During the 2012 election, the Unified Progressive Party joined in an electoral alliance with the mainstream Democratic United Party (since renamed to the New Politics Alliance for Democracy – NPAD).  Such alliances should be a thing of the past, the ruling party warns.  Saenuri Party spokesperson Park Dae-chul rebuked the NPAD in a dark tone: “The party that formed an alliance with the UPP, and those central to the move, must reflect on their actions.”  Saenuri Party Chairman Kim Moo-sung demanded that NPAD “must declare the termination of its ties with the UPP.” If the ruling party believes it can crush the spirit of progressives and silence their voices, then it is seriously mistaken.  Korean activists braved police batons, bullets, imprisonment, and torture to oppose the Yushin dictatorship and bring down military rule.  Their battle to bring democracy to South Korea was an inspiration to fighters for justice throughout the world. In a heartfelt message to supporters following the Constitutional Court decision, UPP chairwoman Lee Jung-hee said, “The Park Geun-hye administration degraded this country to a dictatorship.  With a judgment that employed fictions and imagination, the court opened the door to totalitarianism.  Beginning today, the doctrines of independence, democracy, equality, peace and unification, and politics for the laborers, farmers, and the people, are banned.  Dark times, where freedom of expression and assembly is completely denied, lie ahead.” “The government in power dissolved the UPP today and will tie down our hands and feet,” Lee continued.  “But they cannot dissolve our dream for progressive politics, nurtured in our hearts.  The government banned the platform of self-reliance, democracy, and unification, but it cannot ban our love for the weary and our divided peninsula.  Because they cannot stamp out our dream and love . . . we will not abandon progressive politics.” The Korean progressive movement has a militant spirit second to none.  Do not look for the Western media to report on it, but the Park Geun-hye government can expect to face one hell of a fightback. *Gregory Elich is on the Board of Directors of the Jasenovac Research Institute and the Advisory Board of the Korea Policy Institute.  He is a member of the Committee to Defend Democracy in South Korea and a columnist for Voice of the People.  He is also one of the co-authors of Killing Democracy: CIA and Pentagon Operations in the Post-Soviet Period, published in the Russian language. #GregoryElich #LeeSeokki #parkgeunhye #SouthKorea

Reverend Syngman Rhee, March 25, 1931 – January 14, 2015 On the sad occasion of his passing this January, KPI is re-posting an interview with Reverend Syngman Rhee that was published in 2009.  The Korea Peace movement has lost a courageous leader and great humanitarian. By Haeyoung Kim | Originally published November 5, 2009 Born and raised in Pyongyang, Syngman Rhee went to South Korea in 1950 as a refugee during the Korean War. After 5 years of military service in South Korea’s Marine Corps, in 1956 he came as a student to the United States, ultimately receiving his Master of Sacred Theology from the Yale University Divinity School and his Doctorate of Religion from the Chicago Theological Seminary.Reverend Rhee has been active in the Presbyterian Church of the United States of America for five decades, serving as the Moderator of the Church in 2000-2001. In 2004, he was honored by the National Presbyterian Men’s Organization with the Church Man of the Year Award. As President of the National Council of Churches of the United States of America, Reverend Rhee headed delegations to South Korea, North Korea, the Peoples Republic of China, and the Vatican. Reverend Rhee was also was a delegate to the World Council of Churches and the Parliament of World Religions, and he served as a religious advisory member to the White House Initiative on Race under President Bill Clinton.Reverend Rhee is also co-chair of the National Committee for Peace in Korea. He has served in official capacities for various Korean American associations including the North America Coalition for Human Rights in Korea. In 2003, Reverend Rhee received the prestigious Korean American Immigration Centennial Award. He is currently a Director in Asian American Ministry and a distinguished visiting professor at the Union Theological Seminary and Presbyterian School of Christian Education in Richmond, VA. [Haeyoung Kim] You used to focus on work around anti-communism, and now are involved with the peace and reunification movement. What led to this shift? How has your background informed your choice to pursue work around peace and reunification of the two Koreas? [Reverend Syngman Rhee] I was caught up in the tragic drama of the Korean people, which included war, hostility, and the separation of families. I was born in North Korea. In December of 1950, however, when the troops began withdrawing to the original 38th parallel, my younger brother and I fled to South Korea. I was 19, my younger brother was 17, and we left our family — my mother and 4 sisters — behind. My father was imprisoned in North Korea for being a Christian minister and died in prison. Once in the South, I had no way of knowing about my family I left behind. Those were very difficult times for my family and I, and the memories are still very painful. When I was in South Korea, I served as a South Korean Marine after having lived through very difficult times in North Korea as a Christian. While in South Korea, as a member of the military, I was a very strong anti-communist, especially in light of the fate of my father and my family. Then, in 1956, I came to the US to study. When I first arrived to the US I said, “Forget it. I’m going to be a resident of the US and not deal with the complicated issues of division, hatred, and family separation.” However, after arriving to the US, I experienced the realities of racism and the fight for justice, which awakened me to new ways of looking at history and eventually led me to focus on reconciliation work between North and South Korea. The Civil Rights Movement of that time had increased the conversation around peace and prompted my shift from a place of hostility and enmity to a stance for peace and reconciliation. As a campus minister and teacher at the University of Louisville, Kentucky during that time, I became deeply involved in the activity around campus. Although I did not fully understand all the implications of racism and prejudice, I was convinced that racial discrimination was unjust and that it went against the teachings of the church and the will of God. That was enough conviction for me to take part in the Civil Rights Movement. Along with the black students on our campus, ministers, and campus administrators, I became very strongly involved in demonstrations. We demonstrated every evening, particularly in the summer of 1963, even though we were often jeered by crowds that shouted racial terms. It was a common struggle, fighting for racial justice, and I will never forget that influential era. What resonates with me most from that era is the late Martin Luther King Jr.’s message about the oppressed and oppressors. He asserted that the Civil Rights Movement was not only for the liberation of the oppressed black people but also a movement to liberate the oppressors — the white people — who had a history of oppressing. By liberating both oppressed and oppressors together, it is possible to create a force that could establish a new society. He also stressed that the key to a new society was held by the oppressed. The oppressed had a choice: either seek revenge out of anger or forgive in an effort to create a new society. His vision — a very clear vision — impressed me and I became a follower and admirer of King. I reflected upon my identity as a Korean. I have always thought of myself and the Korean people as having been oppressed, for instance under Japanese rule, which was an oppression my family and I experienced first hand until Korea became liberated in 1945. Then, as a Christian trying to practice my religion under the communist regime in North Korea, I experienced the confrontation between Christians and the communist party. The Christians were severely oppressed and underwent significant suffering. There was also South Korea’s military regime, which then became the oppressive force. Martin Luther King Jr.’s teachings — that oppressed people have a responsibility to create new possibilities — made me realize that I too have some responsibility to shift social standards. Given the relations between the two Koreas, and the hostility between North and South even after half a century since the division of the peninsula, I felt like I had to take a stance and assume responsibility as an oppressed person by getting involved in reconciliation work. So, my experience and commitment to the Civil Rights Movement in the US transferred and connected directly to reconciliation work around Korea. [Haeyoung Kim] Based on your personal history, some may think that it makes more sense for you to be involved solely in reunification work rather than focusing on younger Korean Americans who were born in the US. Why have you chosen to focus on young Korean Americans and why do you feel young Korean Americans should care about reunification? [Reverend Syngman Rhee] After I finished college in the US, and after graduating from the seminary, I became a campus minister and teacher at the University of Louisville, Kentucky in 1960. As a university campus minister, I worked closely with university students and aimed to cultivate a sense of peacemaking. Second generation Korean Americans would justifiably ask why they should be involved in peace and reconciliation work. They often said that Korean Americans are far removed from the history of their homeland and the happenings on the ground in Korea. The Korean War, Japanese occupation and colonization of Korea, however, certainly have an impact on the Korean American narrative. Current events also directly affect and reflect upon Koreans in the US. While Korean Americans may not think so, saying they were born or have lived in the US for several years, the public sees Koreans as Koreans even though we may say we are Korean Americans. Also, a divided Korea inevitably affects who we are as a people and who we can become. But, it’s very hard to convince Korean Americans of that link and, further, difficult to establish commitment because the task of living in the US as an immigrant can be overwhelming, complete with its own concerns. Korean Americans in the US involved in the movement for peace and reconciliation some 20 years were undoubtedly connected to issues related to Korea because it is our home country. But, we also felt we had a responsibility as citizens and residents of the US to take part in the political system and ensure that US policy was peaceful in nature. There is also an inherited history. One of my former teachers in North Korea left the North around the same time my brothers and I left — December 1950. He left behind his family, including his wife and four children, and became a refugee in South Korea. While in the South, he lived alone while continually dedicated to and longing for his family, looking forward to the day he would be reunited with his wife and children. He left when he was 34 and died last month at 93. He died without having had another chance to see his family he left behind in North Korea. Although Korean Americans may not be directly connected to his story, or the hundreds and hundreds of other stories that mirror my former teacher’s [story], Koreans in the US are inheritors of this shared history. I hope more second generation Korean Americans become involved in work around peace and justice, which would shape the Korean American narrative in the future. [Haeyoung Kim] Why should progressives in the U.S. care about reunification of the Korean peninsula? [Reverend Syngman Rhee] Korea is in a unique situation since the country is still divided even though 64 years have passed since the 38th parallel — the line dividing the North and South — was drawn. Further, it is the only country divided not by internal causes, but because of external forces. The Korean War was not the Korean people’s war. Yes, Koreans fought in the war and the battle took place on Korean soil, but it was a war between two distinctive Cold War ideologies and political forces — the US and the Soviet Union. Eventually, the US and the former Soviet Union found ways to live with one another and cooperate. So, why should the Korean people still be divided as they are? Global citizens, I think, have a moral obligation to at least recognize the sad reality found in Korea’s division, which has led to the separation of families and hostility on the peninsula. Rather than ignoring, or inadvertently perpetuating, the long history and many years of propagandizing and demonizing, those that may not be directly related to Korea’s history ought to understand the humanitarian elements to the situation. The broader community will, I hope, look at the situation regarding the Korean peninsula and consider ways to not only bring peace in Korea, but to also contribute to world peace. Divided Korea is a Cold War relic that needs to evolve. [Haeyoung Kim] Were there any events or other movements that inspired or motivated you to become involved with the peace and reconciliation movement? [Reverend Syngman Rhee] North and South Korea used to both sponsor and host joint events that recognized a common history. The two Koreas would alternate in hosting these celebrations, such as the common celebration of Korea’s Independence Day on August 15th. There were several such events over the last ten years — during the Kim Dae-Jung and Noh Moo-Hyun administrations — and I have had the privilege of traveling to North Korea when they hosted them. There was a great deal of hope and inspiration in those events, and they played a role in my intention to continually lift up that spirit of peace and reconciliation. The current President Lee Myung-Bak has, unfortunately, put an end to those joint celebrations. My faith has also played a significant role in motivating my work regarding peace and reconciliation. Before being a political struggle, reconciliation work at its core has parallels with the message found in Christianity — God reconciling through Christ those that are divided and in conflict with one other. For me, that’s why reconciliation work is a faith based struggle. While a political solution may not be evidently clear, it’s necessary to be continually convicted that families and Korean people cannot be separated as they are. [Haeyoung Kim] As a Korean in the U.S., what was your strategy when working for peace and reunification? [Reverend Syngman Rhee] For now, I am not particularly interested in advocating for unification, because I know the unification of the North and South Korean people will not be possible without the reconciliation of hearts and minds first. Before the wall dividing the North and South at the 38th parallel can come down, we need to work towards tearing down the walls within our hearts and minds, and eliminating the hostility that is often harbored. As a religious leader, I have advocated for reconciliation, particularly focusing on the seemingly understandable and even justifiable enmity that so many people in North Korea, South Korea, and the US are still filled with. It’s vital that those involved in the work around reconciliation present a more open and honest picture, moving away from demonizing an enemy. Untrue or half-true images and messages about North Korea are often presented and continually reinforced by the media. For instance, North Korea is often demonized, portrayed as warmongers that are committed to bringing war against South Korea, Japan, or the US. That’s not true and only serves to drive a deeper wedge between the North and the US. From my experience and travels — my first trip back to North Korea since fleeing was in 1978 and I have now traveled there roughly 30 times — North Koreans are committed to bringing a peaceful restoration of relations with South Korea and with the US. In 1994, through the Agreed Framework, North Korea committed to cease nuclear activities in exchange for light water reactors and electricity production support from South Korea, Japan, and the US. Unfortunately, after the Bush administration, the agreement became obsolete. We do, however, need to continue pursuing those types of efforts and not give up hope for peace and reconciliation. I think it is also incredibly necessary to have unwavering conviction. When I first became involved in peace and reconciliation work, it was extremely dangerous and risky. Anyone that even mentioned reconciliation between the two Koreas was branded as being pro-communist, a North Korean sympathizer, or anti-South Korean. I have been labeled a bbalgangi moksa — a communist minister — despite the fact that I lost my father in a North Korean prison, that I myself have been imprisoned, and that I fought with South Korea for 5 years during the Korean War. Those of us involved in reconciliation work, however, have seen these opinions as a form of cross-bearing. [Haeyoung Kim] Former UN Ambassador John Bolton recently stated that former President Bill Clinton’s trip to North Korea to secure the release of the two detained American reporters was unwise, harming U.S. interests and encouraging bad behavior. What are your thoughts on former President Bill Clinton’s recent trip to North Korea? Particularly, what are your thoughts on the Obama administrations’ insistence that the diplomatic mission pursued by former President Clinton be kept separate from other political and security issues? [Reverend Syngman Rhee] Even within the Republican Party, John Bolton is far to the right and I don’t think the world would allow those kinds of comments and opinions to become the mainstream. That is my hope, at least. Former President Bill Clinton did not go with a political agenda or approval to discuss political issues, and nobody really knows what conspired as he met with Kim Jong-Il, talking for several hours. However, knowing how Clinton was when he was president, I suspect there was talk about something much deeper than just bringing the two journalists home. During Clinton’s presidency, he himself planned to go to North Korea, but sent then Secretary of State Madeline Albright in his stead. Clinton did have the interest in developing a relationship and pursuing the possibility of normalized relations. While that has been delayed, Clinton’s former interest, concern, and commitment leads me to believe that something will come out of his visit. I have seen the leader of North Korea many times on television and other media outlets, but I have never seen him look so satisfied — almost joyful — as he did when he met with Clinton. There are many signs suggesting that North Korea would be interested in discussing their desire to reengage and open themselves up to have relations with the rest of the world, particularly the United States. Overall, I think the Clinton trip has the potential to help initiate that kind of conversation between the US and North Korea and it will prove to open up opportunities for renewed relations. [Haeyoung Kim] While there has been a considerable amount of press coverage on Clinton’s recent trip, it is rarely noted that this is not the first time a former president traveled to the DPRK. Former President Jimmy Carter went in 1994, and his visit set the stage for a diplomatic relationship that nearly led to the end of the Korean War. Can you tell us about Carter’s trip? [Reverend Syngman Rhee] At the time of former President Carter’s trip, the US was very intent on pursing military action in response to the nuclear activities taking place in North Korea. Ambassador James Laney, the US ambassador to South Korea from 1993-1996, told me that a first strike was a serious possibility. Individuals like Laney and Carter, however, ultimately prevented military action and advocated for alternative forms of foreign policy. Carter had once said publicly that he presented several items of contention and concern, and offered conditions to President Kim Il-Sung who then agreed to accept the terms. Shortly thereafter, the Agreement Framework materialized which engendered a great deal of hope. Robert Gallucci, the chief US negotiator for the US, and the Vice Chair of the People’s Assembly signed the 1994 Agreed Framework, stipulating that North Korea would dismantle their nuclear activities in exchange for two light water reactors and, until those reactors were built, 500 tons of oil. Unfortunately, neither the oil nor the light water reactors were delivered, leading North Korea to say they cannot trust the US. Subsequent administrations have also done nothing to show good faith regarding the promises and terms of the agreement. North Korea now feels that the US must begin taking concrete steps towards regaining their trust. They hope the US will act to demonstrate a sincere intention and are eager to reciprocate. The US, however, has blindly said they are only willing to talk to Pyongyang under the precondition they agree to dismantle their nuclear program, which North Korea is not willing to do. The message that comes out of North Korea now is that they want to talk based on the understanding that they are a country with nuclear capabilities. North Korea has expressed all along — even to this day — that their nuclear capability is a deterrent force against the possibility of being attacked and not for the purpose of attacking. [Haeyoung Kim] As you mentioned, the U.S. was very close to a first strike when Carter went to North Korea. Although the circumstances were different, do you feel there are any similarities between Clinton and Carter’s trips? [Reverend Syngman Rhee] At the time of former President Carter’s trip to North Korea, there was much more government involvement because there was a crisis situation, making the purpose of the trips inherently different. The logistics were also different in that Carter met with Kim Il-Sung and Clinton met with Kim Jong-Il. Kim Il-Sung was much more powerful leader than his son, although Kim Jong-Il appears to have as much political control as his father had. Carter’s visit also intended to ease tension between Washington and Pyongyang and open up new possibilities, which led to concrete results. The Clinton trip was much murkier, particularly in regards to the impetus. It may, however, prove to be as significant as Carter’s visit. [Haeyoung Kim] Official U.S. history suggests that Koreans “owe” the US for defending it from North Korea. However, scholars, including Bruce Cumings, have argued that it is the U.S. that is primarily responsible for the countries division and protracted war. Academics and researchers have also shown that the U.S. backed the South Korean civilian and military dictatorships from 1948 to 1987. Given this evidence, what do you feel would be responsible action of the U.S. today? What should be the Obama administrations priorities? [Reverend Syngman Rhee] There needs to be a new starting point between North Korea and the US — one that is not influenced by past precedent. Ideally, I hope the current administration considers engaging in serious bilateral talks with North Korea, a sentiment President Obama has recently expressed. President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, however, have both taken the exact line the Bush administration had pushed, which proved to be unsuccessful. They have said that the US is not willing to talk with North Korea unless they completely abandon their nuclear activities. I was hoping for a change with the new administration, but it has not been forthcoming. One of the reasons may be that Obama felt the need to exhibit his own toughness and show that he could be strong on foreign policy issues. He has been severely criticized by persons like Bolton for being soft on Iran and North Korea. So, with North Korea’s test launching, Obama may have felt the need to demonstrate that he can be tough on foreign policy. Bush’s approach incited tension, whereas a policy of peaceful engagement pursued by the Clinton administration showed more promise. The new administration had mentioned their intention to talk with those that are willing to explore peaceful resolutions. This has the potential to improve relations between North Korea and the US, but I think the issue of denuclearization first should be tabled. Of course the US and UN are concerned about nuclear proliferation, but their nuclear ambitions are deterrent in nature. I believe North Korea’s recent testing and launching of missiles was to display to the international community what they had, putting to rest the question of whether North Korea has nuclear capabilities. By showing all of their cards, they may have been looking to be recognized as a nuclear nation like Pakistan, India, Israel, and the others. Now, I feel they are urging the international community to accept them as they are and will likely reject the US’ insistence to dismantle their nuclear program before entering into talks. It’s important for the current administration to understand that availability and capability does not mean they will use their weapons nor does it mean they are evil people. Nuclear arms, as North Korea has repeatedly said, are for deterrence purposes. North Korea is not interested in starting a war – the Korean War was nearly 60 years ago and was only made possible because the Soviet Union and China were behind North Korea, and the US was behind the South. No such conditions exist in the global environment today. While open dialogue with North Korea is needed, engagement with South Korea is also necessary to create a renewed framework. South Korea may be an easier nut to crack. Historically speaking, South Korea has aligned with the US more easily because they are so integrally tied and even dependent — politically, economically, and militarily — to Washington. But, when Lee Myung-Bak came to the US and spoke with Obama, the big news in South Korea when he returned was that South Koreans are now safe because of the US’ nuclear umbrella. The possibility of war is so far fetched and the supposed threat posed by the North is unfounded. I do hope South Korea is receptive to a new strategy initiated by Washington, and do hope the tension and enmity on the Korean peninsula and between the US and North Korea disappears for the sake of the Korean people. [Haeyoung Kim] It’s been 64 years since the US drew the line that divided Korea and 56 years since the shooting stopped. The peninsula is still divided, and many of your allies who were working for reunification have not lived to see their hopes and dreams realized. Do you believe that you will see reunification in your lifetime? [Reverend Syngman Rhee] I may not see Korea reunited as one nation in my lifetime, but I do hope to at least see North and South Korea become peaceful neighbors. I think that’s the wish and desire of those, like myself, who directly experienced the war and with family in North Korea. Several years ago, I saw the North Korea and South Korea Olympic teams walk together and carry one flag. Seeing that gave me great hope that peace and reconciliation was a possibility. Reconciliation has progressively become more of a possibility in spite of ups and downs. I think events have definitely been moving toward a more positive direction and I’m hopeful for the future. [Haeyoung Kim] What could the Korean American community do to get involved in peace and reunification efforts? What strategies will be effective in influencing U.S. policies on Korea? [Reverend Syngman Rhee] What’s needed is political influence to bring about the right US policies towards the Korean peninsula — policies that move towards reconciliation and not the continual perpetuation of conflict and division. Influence in politics hinges on two things – votes and money. Either you bring votes to the ballot box or give money for campaigns, which translates to organizing. Mobilizing people, both Korean Americans and others in the US interested in peace, and creating some political power in the US would be the best way to influence US policy. That’s why second generation Korean Americans are so crucial to the movement. First generation Korean Americans often still see themselves as sojourners – guests of the US – passing through, and not a part of America’s political process. Second generation Korean Americans better understand the importance of voting and recognize where change can come from. Ultimately, I hope more Korean Americans become engaged with issues regarding Korea and support efforts to rid of the residue left by the Korean War. The division of the Korean peninsula is a division of my identity — our shared identity. I am hopeful, however, for the future and have faith that there will eventually be peace in Korea. *Haeyoung Kim, KPI Board Member, was a KPI Fellow in 2009 and interviewed Reverend Rhee on August 16, 2009.

U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense Ashton B. Carter at a Turkish army base in 2013. (Glen Fawcett) By Gregory Elich* | February 25, 2015 [Originally published in Global Research, February 16, 2015] In recent years, the nature of the U.S.-South Korean military alliance has been undergoing a transformation. At the urging of the United States, the Alliance has adopted a more global perspective, in which South Korean armed forces provide support for U.S. military occupations. With the appointment of Ashton Carter as U.S. Secretary of Defense, South Korea can expect to be pressured into assuming a more active role in future U.S. invasions and bombing campaigns. When South Korea signed an Individual Partnership and Cooperation Program with NATO in September 2012, it committed itself to cooperation with NATO in a number of areas, including the euphemistically termed “multinational peace-support operations.” The text of the agreement has not been made publicly available, but it is probable that it is similar to the agreement signed between Australia and NATO. That document said the partnership “aims to support NATO’s strategic objectives,” including “enhancing support for NATO’s operations and missions.” Training and other joint activities would assist Australian military forces in Afghanistan “and any possible future NATO-led mission.” That language mirrors the text of NATO’s policy document on partnerships, which identifies increasing support for NATO-led operations and missions as a primary strategic objective. Ostensibly formed as a defensive alliance for Western Europe, NATO has never acted in self-defense. Instead, the alliance has been steadily expanding and encroaching on former Warsaw Pact territory, and it now stands on Russia’s doorstep, provocatively tightening the military noose around its designated adversary. In 1999, NATO engaged in its first war of aggression, bombing every city and town in Yugoslavia and inflicting widespread death and destruction. That was followed by NATO support for the U.S. occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq and a bombing campaign against Libya that succeeded in overthrowing the government and creating an anarchic free-for-all by Islamic militias. Prior to its agreement with NATO, South Korea had already sent small contingents to Iraq and Afghanistan in support of U.S. occupying forces. In 2011, South Korea pledged half a billion dollars over a five-year period for Afghan government forces and development programs. However, these support operations are not deemed sufficient by NATO. In November 2012, NATO official Dirk Brengelmann met with South Korean foreign ministry officials in Seoul, to “explore opportunities for expanding cooperation,” in the words of a NATO report. At the seventh Policy Consultation between South Korea and NATO in October 2014, the two sides agreed to “strengthen and upgrade” their partnership. Only a few days earlier, a South Korean delegation met with U.S. officials in Washington. There, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry announced, “We were very grateful to hear from both Foreign Minister Yun and Defense Minister Han that South Korea intends to continue cooperating closely with us in regard to these international efforts, and in fact wants to step up its efforts in a number of regards.” The joint statement issued after the meeting stated, “Both sides reaffirmed their commitment to further develop the Alliance into a global partnership.” Jeffrey Reynolds of the Strategic Engagement Team at NATO headquarters and Barry Pavel of the Atlantic Council co-authored an article in which they argue that NATO is already a Pacific power. The authors admit that NATO engagement in Asia “will create controversy.” As NATO pursues an Asia-Pacific strategy, “pushback from other nations in the region will be a natural response, but the alliance should be prepared for that outcome and nevertheless stride ahead.” In the view of Reynolds and Pavel, “A far riskier option for the alliance is to stay out of Asia. In doing so, it would lose the opportunity to play a constructive role in the security of the world’s emerging basin of consequence.” Considering NATO’s impact on Yugoslavia and Libya, a fair-minded person would have to substitute the word “destructive” for “constructive” in the previous sentence in order to properly characterize what NATO has to offer Asian nations. “America’s pivot is a significant opportunity for NATO,” Reynolds and Pavel continue. “NATO must be regional in character, global in stature and Pacific in direction.” The United States has been pushing its Asian allies for some time to establish a military alliance similar to NATO. “We must encourage our allies to move beyond bilateral alliances and towards an era of greater multilateral security cooperation,” asserts U.S. Joint Chiefs Chairman General Martin Dempsey. However, as one unnamed U.S. military official admitted, “No one expects this region to move to a NATO-type security architecture anytime in the near future.” While it may take years to extend NATO into Asia or to build a counterpart in Asia, more immediate plans call for NATO’s Asian partners to play a more active role in U.S. wars of aggression. U.S. Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter spelled out his vision back in 1999, as NATO was obliterating infrastructure in Yugoslavia. “NATO’s principal strategic and military purpose in the post-Cold War era should be to provide a mechanism for the rapid formation of militarily potent ‘coalitions of the willing’ that are able to project power beyond NATO territory.” Moreover, Carter argued, NATO’s partnership programs “should be enhanced beyond today’s emphasis on peacekeeping.” The objective “should be to prepare partners to operate alongside NATO members in ‘coalitions of the willing’ that cover the full range of NATO’s new power-projection missions.” Membership in a NATO partnership program “for non-NATO members” should be “as similar as possible to the experience of NATO membership.” In Carter’s view, for NATO partners to limit their involvement to post-invasion support operations is inadequate. They must send combat forces to fight alongside NATO as it attacks its next hapless victim. In the coming years, South Korea, as well as other Asian-Pacific nations such as Japan, Australia and New Zealand, can expect to face strong-arm tactics to adopt the type of role South Korea played in the U.S. invasion of Vietnam in years past. South Korea has nothing to gain from making itself a tool of imperialism, and it is to be hoped that it will resist pressure to do so.  It is time for the peoples of the world to say no to military madness. *Gregory Elich is on the Board of Directors of the Jasenovac Research Institute and the Advisory Board of the Korea Policy Institute. He is a columnist for Voice of the People and one of the co-authors of Killing Democracy: CIA and Pentagon Operations in the Post-Soviet Period, published in the Russian language. #USROKAlliance #GregoryElich #SouthKorea #NATO #AsiaPacificpivot

Seoul City Hall Lobby Occupation by Rainbow Action and Allies, 2014 An Interview with Chingusai General Secretary Lee Jeong Geol By Dae Han Song* | February 26, 2015 Dae-Han Song visited the offices of Chingusai (“Between Friends”) a gay human rights organization for LGBTQ minorities, to interview General Secretary Lee Jeong Geol about the Seoul City Hall occupation that took place December 6-12, 2014. The occupiers were protesting the city’s abandonment of the Seoul Charter of Human Rights and Mayor Park’s statement that he did not support homosexuality to a gathering of Presbyterian pastors. Founded in 1994, Chingusai is the longest running organization for gay men. It (along with the lesbian organization KiriKiri (Lesbian Counseling Center in Korea)) was born out of Chodong (abbreviation of a four-character Korean saying equivalent to “Birds of a feather flock together”) the first sexual minorities human rights organization created in December 1993. It organizes gay men in order to eliminate discrimination against sexual minorities and guarantee their human rights. Lee Jeong Geol began going to Chingusai as part of its gay chorus in 2003. He started working there in 2009. In 2011, he became general secretary. In the late 1990s, the sexual minorities movement focused on coming out and letting Korean society know about their existence. In 1997, it focused on reforming school textbooks to remove homophobic materials or misconceptions about homosexuality. It also struggled together in the creation of the National Human Rights Commission Law. Since 2000, the movement started the Queer Parade while also debunking misconceptions around AIDS. While the National Human Rights Commission Law failed to pass, in 2006, the LGBTQ movement struggled to implement the Transgender Gender Correction Law. A similar legislative struggle followed in 2007 when the movement worked to implement the Discrimination Prevention Law. Through that struggle, Rainbow Action was created. [Song] What was most striking about the Seoul City Hall occupation was its defiance and openness. I’ve heard that in the past, people marched in the Queer Parade with face masks. In the Seoul City Hall occupation, no one was wearing masks. What was the significance of this? [Lee] We were forced to express our outrage through the occupation. City Hall had given up on the Seoul Charter of Human Rights. In addition, on December 1st, Mayor Park told a gathering of Presbyterian pastors that, as mayor, he did not support homosexuality. It all happened within the same week. To express our outrage, we occupied City Hall. In the process, we had to reveal our identities. This wasn’t something that just happened overnight. Korea’s Queer parade started in 2000. In the beginning, people came wearing masks. The changes happened over a period of 14-15 years: The number of people coming out to the streets increased. The number of demonstrators who believed it part of their activism to reveal their identities also increased. That is why people started to take off their masks. This was the second time we did an occupation. The first occupation was at the City Council Chambers at the end of 2011 during deliberations on the Student Human Rights Ordinance. We heard that the sexual orientation component would be dropped. We came ready with a few masks because some individuals needed it given the likelihood of media presence. This time we prepared masks again, but no one asked us for them. We felt we needed to show a dignified face. Chingusai General Secretary, Lee Jeong Geol [Song] What do you think is the significance of this second occupation within the  sexual minorities movement? [Lee] Mayor Park is a human rights lawyer. That’s why people were outraged when he stated that he does not support homosexuality. We thought it was time to make a point clear. Homosexuality is not about being pro or con, it exists. We started the occupation because it was time to have the discussion around the human rights of sexual minorities. [Song] How did the occupation of Seoul City Hall start? Who called for it? What triggered it? [Lee] Despite the fact that the Seoul Charter of Human Rights, which included a provision around sexual orientation, passed on November 28th, the City announced on the 30th that it could not accept it due to disagreement within the Citizen Committee. They were effectively nullifying the Charter of Human Rights. That’s why on December 1st, sexual minority organizations and civil society groups held a press conference demanding its passage. The group that organized it and brought the occupation together was Rainbow Action, a coalition of sexual minority groups that holds ongoing discussions dealing with homophobia, systemic issues, and legislation. We discussed with civil society and human rights groups whether or not to take action. We discussed this again after a December 4th article on Mayor Park’s statements. After discussions until 1-2 AM on the night of December 5th, we decided to occupy City Hall. [Song] Why do you think Mayor Park Won Soon refused to include LGBTQ rights into the Seoul Declaration of Human Rights? [Lee] Since August until the 28th of November, after 6 rounds of talks, empowered by the City, 150 citizen and 30 expert commission members ratified the Human Rights Charter. It was mandated by the Human Rights Ordinance passed in 2012. Provision 12 states that: “The City of Seoul needs to make efforts to ratify a Human Rights Charter making Seoul into a Human Rights City.” The Human Rights Ordinance doesn’t actually specify human rights values or content, it simply puts someone in charge with Human Rights and establishes a Seoul Human Rights Watcher. There was nothing specific about how Seoul would become a human rights city. To accomplish that, they wanted to create the Human Rights Charter. Unlike the Ordinance, which had legal force, the Human Rights Charter is more like a mutual agreement between people without legal force. While the City only had ambitions for being a human rights city, they realized that the actual content needed to account for political considerations. It was from this point on that they were unwilling to take responsibility for the content. Upon discussion on how to best create this Human Rights Charter, the Seoul Human Rights Commission suggested that the City create it with citizens. The 150 citizen commission members were selected from applicants in each district based on gender and age. The expert commission was composed of activists in human rights organizations, or academics in human rights centers. These two commissions formed the Citizen Committee. However, the problem was that Christian hate groups applied and were accepted into this space. They made discussion impossible. Within this Citizen Committee process, there were two rounds of public discussions. In both rounds, these groups blocked discussion. On November 20th, there was a public hearing. They came and disturbed the public hearing with violent comments and acts. That’s why the public hearings failed. The City did not address this violence. It had felt the pressure. It had been plastered with phone complaints and negative online comments from these hate groups. About 200 members of anti-Queer groups shut-down the November 20 Public Hearing No city employees were present at the public hearing. Ultimately, they didn’t have the will to do something. When we went to the City and asked why they hadn’t done anything, they responded, “We did do something. We called the police, but they just didn’t show up.” [Song] What were you trying to include into the Human Rights Charter that was being opposed? [Lee] If we examine the Discrimination Prevention component of the National Human Rights Commission Law, it prevents discrimination based on migration status, medical history, race, skin color, gender, family status, criminal conviction, etc. This also includes sexual orientation. Hate groups ask, “Why do we have to enumerate the types of discrimination [in the Seoul Charter for Human Rights]? Wouldn’t it be better to just state that that all people in Seoul should not be discriminated against?” This was just the same as saying they wanted to exclude wording on sexual orientation and identity. Also, because the National human Rights Commission Law does not include discrimination based on sexual identity which would also include transgender people, we wanted to include that here [the Seoul Charter for Human Rights]. When discussing how to best overcome this difference, we decided to put it to a vote. So, we voted whether or not to enumerate the different types of discrimination. Out of the 77 people present, 60 people supported and 17 rejected it. Despite the overwhelming majority vote, the City stated the need for consensus. It was a manifestation of their lack of will in pushing for the inclusion of sexual orientation and identity. [Song] Who are the people opposing this? [Lee] At the core of these groups, that have been around since the 2007 struggle for the Discrimination Prevention Act, are conservative Christian groups, mostly Christian fundamentalists. These groups have been formed by U.S. fundamentalist groups. They have been actively opposing the inclusion of sexual orientation or identity in ordinances and legislation. In 2010, the weekend TV drama, “Life is Beautiful,” featured a gay couple. In response, these groups posted, “Will SBS take responsibility if my son becomes gay after watching ‘Life is Beautiful’?” They think that if television programs talk about gay people or support them that homosexuality will spread. [Song] Besides those groups that you mentioned, are there other groups that oppose sexual minorities? [Lee] Homophobia became severe more recently. However, because we are a Confucian society, there are clear principles about men and women and about the Ying and the Yang. However, people don’t directly express their homophobia, but they still harbor homophobia in their minds. When they are forced to take a stance or express their opinion, they come out against homosexuality. Also, conservative Christians realized that homosexuality could be a good rallying issue for Christians. In 2007, those that opposed homosexuality were doing it out of their convictions. Now, there are others that have joined. Not just Christian groups, but also conservative groups such as Alliance of Mothers or Alliance of Fathers. These conservative groups are joining the movement. There is a concept of “Pro-North Koreans – Gay.” [Song] Pro-North Koreans – Gay? [Lee] Yes, that view emphasizes that we need to focus on getting rid of those who are pro-North Korea and those who are queer. [Song] Some people say that the struggle to include LGBTQ rights on the Seoul Charter of Human Rights was a fight you couldn’t win because the Mayor has presidential aspirations or because conservative religious groups are staunchly against it. What is your reaction? [Lee] Through this process, we realized that we too could gather our forces, not just the human rights organizations but also civil society organizations. We started the occupation out of outrage. While it was important to show that we would fight back when stepped on, it was also important that we were able to affirm our own strength. Of course, it’d be hard to say that civil society actively supported us since they work with Mayor Park and many support him. However, we were able to make a stand based on human rights. The fight is just getting started. [Song] Do you think it was a victory? [Lee] There were four things that we were demanding: get a face-to-face meeting with him; get an apology for the statements he made to the pastors; pass the Seoul Charter of Human Rights; and come up with a way to address the hateful and violent actions as in the November 20th public hearing. While we were able to get the meeting with him and get an apology, the Seoul Charter of Human Rights didn’t happen, and while he wasn’t clear about what he would do around the hate speeches and actions, he did say he would try to figure out a way. He spoke with the person in charge of human rights. We will meet with that person in January. [Song] You were not able to achieve all your demands, yet you still ended the occupation. What was your reason? [Lee] That night we discussed whether or not to end the occupation. We realized the occupation depended on the leadership body. In our discussion, we concluded that while we did not receive a definitive apology, it was an apology. We asked ourselves if we would make any more progress with Mayor Park by continuing the occupation. We concluded that we needed to respond quickly in other ways. So, we are seeking out ways of cooperating together. [Song] What was the impact of the occupation on the movement as a whole? Did it make it stronger? [Lee] First of all we were able to check our own strength. It wasn’t the first time that we occupied City Hall, but it was the first time that we did it for 6 days. It was also the first time that those with influence came. Because this was able to show our power, we consider it very meaningful; people will remember it. What the people in the community desire is a space where they can demand their rights. We need more spaces like the Queer Parade. So, we are thinking of ways of creating such space again. [Song] Do you have any last words for people abroad? [Lee] While the Republic of Korea was able to achieve direct elections in 1987, create a constitution, and have a democracy in form, we still have not had much discussion on what kind of values we want, on the things we share, what our universal values are. While this can be considered a fight between progressive and conservatives, I also think it is a fight about the type of values we want in Korea. When we talk about the human rights of minorities or about universal rights, people respond, “What am I supposed to do about my rights?” When the rights of minorities are guaranteed, so are everyone else’s rights. People think that talking about human rights for minorities is something special. When we mention minorities that are being discriminated against, people respond, “Was I the one that discriminated against them? Then, why do you make me out like the person discriminating them?” If people thought more about those discriminated, they would understand those situations better and realize that it is something that can also happen to them later. But now, people are too focused on themselves. I would like our society to have a discussion with an open heart about those types of human rights. While there is a lot of education around human rights in schools, I don’t think people feel it in their skin yet. I think they think it is just an issue of vulnerable communities or of minorities. We need to realize that as we discuss the human rights of minorities all of our rights will grow. I hope there will be many more people that will grapple with and discuss human rights in Korea. *Dae-Han Song is Policy and Research Coordinator, of the International Strategy Center in Korea and a KPI Fellow #DaeHanSong #humanrights #LBGTQRights #SouthKorea