Apparently, China isn’t the only country that repatriates defectors. Canada does it, too!
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This isn’t cool
This entry was written by Robert Koehler, posted on February 5, 2004 at 11:45 pm, filed under North Korea. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.
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9 Comments
It’s really regrettable that they don’t mention that a requirement of being in the NK diplomatic corps is having a family of available hostages for convenient execution if the diplomat defects.
It’s a little known bit of trivia that the Pleasure Team girls are married off to the adult children of high party officials when they turn 25, (’to keep the secret’) so this hostage function becomes their use to Kim Jong Il in retirement.
the UN, during the clinton presidency, forcibly repatriated a Laotian hill tribe called the Hmong that had fled to thailand after the vietnam war. i’m going to do a post about it later. the bush administration is currently letting the Hmong apply for asylum in america.
i wonder what south korea would be doing if america was doing this?
This is one of the stupidest decisions the IRB could make. I can’t even think what justification they could give for sending the him back. Of course, being mostly political appointees, the IRB has no common sense and doesn’t live in reality like the rest of us. Too bad they aren’t elected, then they’d actually have to justify and live with their decisions. Makes me ashamed to be Canadian - especially living in South Korea.
There is at least some merit in the Canadian ruling’s recognition of the totality of the evil of North Korea and the role of even minor functionaries in maintaining it. At the same time, when it comes to contemplating a post-DPRK end-game, it is worth recalling the mistakes of the U.S. de-Baathification in Iraq: Cutting loose the entire army and creating a huge pool of jobless and disaffected men that are now blowing up Americans and Iraqis. If the threat of punishment for North Korea’s vast crimes is universal, more people will have a stake in keeping the system intact — not to mention the fact that the outside world will need some senior North Koreans to show us where all the bodies are buried.
Should culpability stop at the DMZ? Shouldn’t Hanchongryun, the Hankyoreh, the ChaPyongtong and other apologists for the DPRK bear at least moral responsibility for “Uri Auschwitz”?
‘..bear at least moral responsibilty for ‘uri aushwitz’?’ slim
does america bear moral responsibilty for the jewish aushwitz?
does america bear moral responsibility for rwanda?
tell me something, slim, i never see folks like you ever say what is you want from the south koreans. won’t you spell it out? what do you want from them? I really would like to know.
and leave it to you to somehow blame south korea for a decision canada made.
Shin, buddy, you really have to READ MORE CAREFULLY before writing ANYTHING back to ANYONE. I’ve never seen a post of yours that is remotely pertinent to the post that came before it.
1. I don’t criticise the decision Canada made, let alone blame South Korea for it. I simply comment with a degree of understanding on what appears to be the logic behind Ottowa’s move.
2. Since when do the Hankyoreh and Hanchongryun equal South Korea? I asked rhetorically whether blatant APOLOGISTS for North Korea like those outfits bear moral responsibility for ignoring/defending/denying what goes on up there.
Please state for me IN WRITING that you understand, upon careful reading — and rereading if necessary — that you UNDERSTAND why your comments above are 100% off-base. If you can’t do that, simply ignore what I write. Your heroic attempts to defend Korea are laudable, but they backfire when they betray a poor grasp of basic reading comprehension and elementary logic.
Does anybody see the absolute double standard here? It is quite likely that Canada has scores of university professors that have materially contributed to communism and its manifold butchers camps than has this low level trade official. I can see qualifying his admission to make amends for his participation but sending him to certain death? No.
According to Yonhap, the SK gov’t says Canada is mistaken, he’s not the guy they think he is but someone much younger, a lower-level guy (being Korean, a coincidental same name is not far-fetched). Don’t know if this qualifies him for a free pass, though.
What was he supposed to do, grab an AK and go Rambo on North Korea? Can he even be said to really have had much of a choice in what he did? And to my knowledge, he hasn’t even been accused of anything specific, only that “he had to know what was going on”. Just what exactly was he supposed to do?
PING:
TITLE: Gradations of Evil
BLOG NAME: Flit(tm)
Song Dae Ri has been judged an accomplice to the evil North Korean regime and is being denied asylum. Mr. Ri, a low level trade official, will be executed if deported. This brings up a fairly difficult moral question. The…