UPDATE 2: See also Mingi and Richardson.
UPDATE 1: Joshua has a lot more about this over at One Free Korea, and deservedly rewarded with an Instalanche for his efforts.
ORIGINAL POST: South Korean officials are allegedly putting pressure on a musical depicting the horrific conditions of North Korea’s Yodok prison camp, reports the Chosun Ilbo (English / Korean):
A planned musical about human rights abuses in North Korea’s Yoduk concentration camp has run into massive obstacles, not least from officials fearful of upsetting the Stalinist country.
South Korean government agencies are demanding changes to the story, which they say dwells too heavily on the negative aspects of the camp, according to producers. Officials also allegedly invoked the National Security Law to warn producers against showing a portrait of former leader Kim Il-sung and the singing of North Korean songs in the show.
As a piece of friendly advise to the producers of the musical, I encourage them to pick up a copy of Bruce Cumings’ North Korea: Another Country so that they might glean some ideas as to how to present Yodok in a way more appropriate to the age of intra-Korean peace and reconciliation:
Penal colonies hold 100,000 to 150,000 people, over half of them political prisoners, Mr. Cumings reports. But he deems the gulag both smaller than usually asserted and survivable, partly because detainees’ families are incarcerated with them.
See, it ain’t that hard — “Yodok: A Game the Whole Family Can Enjoy.” And another piece of advice. If you’re going to sing North Korean songs, make sure you’re a government agency director first.
Now, having finished being a wise ass (because it’s what I do), I have no clue whether this report is factually accurate. In fact, given the nature of the report (i.e., things like Chung said. “I got a phone call, I don’t know if it was a government official, saying “It’s so easy to get you. You will be punished.’”) and the fact that this seems to be the Chosun‘s baby (see this report from the Daily Surprise (Korean) in November of last year), one might believe it’s a case of the paper in question doing a little advertising for the musical and, while it was at it, taking the opportunity to slander the government. Granted, the above statement could be read as a backhanded accusation of the unsubstantiated kind, but if the press (both conservative and progressive) can do it, I guess I can, too.
All this is not to say that the report in inaccurate. Perhaps the director really has received threats (first mentioned by the Chosun and Dong-A last November). Perhaps government officials really have leaned on the producers and their sponsors. But surely, the paper could have at least called up the government and given them a chance to explain or, at the very least, to deny the accusations. It could have quoted sponsors that pulled out reportedly under “official pressure” to document who threatened what. These measures weren’t taken, however, leaving one to wonder why.
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As per the observations of “One Free Korea”, it more than clear that the current president of Korean and many of his associates are hypocrites and less than honorable in using the very law they claimed should be over turned against the creator of this musical. I hope someone gives them the Kim Young Sam treatment and throws red paint on Roh and his friends.
You’re right, it’s basic journalism for the Chosun to ask for an official explanation/denial of the charges, yet in the Korean media all across the political spectrum you get innuendo replacing facts and names. The pattern for repressing criticism of N. Korea by the Roh gov’t is there in this case, still the Chosun would make a more convincing story if it had an official response.
It’s one think to call the Roh administration hypocrites for its North Korea policies, but another to say its “repressing criticism of N. Korea.” If the gov’t is “repressing criticism of N. Korea,” I want to see more concrete examples than the kinds of reports I’m used to seeing. Who doing the repressing? How are they doing it? Under whose orders? All I know if that the nation’s three largest newspapers regularly slam Roh and his government for their silence about North Korea. So does the GNP, the nation’s largest opposition party. As far as I know, the Chosun has never been “censored” for, say, reprinting Senkei Shimbun reports on North Korea (which it regularly does). Park Geun-hye has never been reprimended for calling for a more active approach to the North Korean human rights issue. Again, I’m not saying that I know for sure that the report was false. All I ask that if it is true, that a better report be written so the piece doesn’t end up looking more like an attempt to embarrass the Roh administration internationally than an honest attempt to uncover the truth.
Well, the “pattern” I had in mind was the Roh gov’t denying U.S. accusations of illegal nork activities and abstaining from voting on N. Korean human rights abuses in the U.N., not neccesarily domestic stuff, so I should have phrased it differently. Hey, it’s Monday, that my excuse…and I was also saying that there should be more conrete reports, it’s basic journalism.
Do you notice the lack of critical thinking in here if the Korean press article supports their views of stereotypes of Koreans? For example the Chosun’s front page article on Rain’s NY tour is lambasted with criticism which I might add is fair. Yet nothing about this article which is obviously very poorly written, and lack any kind of evidence. This is not the only example.
Well, I’m not sure who you are referring to exactly, cm, but in my personal defense, I think I made pretty clear my own feelings about the “report.”
Journalistic hygiene being what it is in the ROK, everything has to be taken with a grain of salt — and Robert knows the Chosun better than most of us.
Still, this isn’t the first instance of this kind of thing. Recall that defector/dissident radio station that was hounded out of its office and otherwise harassed and threatened.
How about the South Korean government trying to keep the #1 defector from North Korea under wraps? He said while he was under protection, they put limits on his contact with groups and ability to put his ideas out. And it seems to have gone beyond the need to protect him from assassination, because they used the same excuse to deny him the chance to go to the US for a long time even though he was being invited by government people who said they would provide the security.
And maybe another example is the funeral for the sailors killed in the 2002 west sea battle. They held the funeral in a location where the average public could not go.
Or, how about the numerous times the police and authorities have moved to grab flag burners when the flag is that of the North? Or, when the North Korean delegation came down last year and the authorities spirited away the couple of people who tried to protest in front of the motorcade?
This reminded me of when the N. Korean defectors’ Internet radio was being hounded out of existence…I don’t remember the Roh gov’t speaking up in their defense at the time, either.
http://marmot.blogs.com/korea/2004/06/friggin_fascist.html
How about the South Korean government trying to keep the #1 defector from North Korea under raps? He said while he was under protection, they put limits on his contact with groups and ability to put is ideas out. And it seems to have gone beyond the need to protect him from assassination, because they used the same excuse to deny him the chance to go to the US for a long time even though he was being invited by government people who said they would provide the security.
usinkorea, I agree with you completely about the sailors’ funerals and the flag-burning, but I remain divided on the issue of letting Hwang Jang-yop (????? run loose and say whatever he wanted. This is a person who just a short while ago was high up in the government of a country bent on destroying the ROK. How responsible would it be??hether he’s being critical or praising of ROK policy??o let the guy run around and shoot his mouth off?
Given that the guy had just been an ace of some kind in the North Korean card deck, why are people so willing to believe he suddenly has agenda-less warm and fuzzy feelings for the people of the ROK and their US allies?
When I was at the NK human rights summit, and he was speaking, someone turned to me and asked, rhetorically, “Why isn’t this man in jail?”
Seriously, would we allow Tariq Aziz to run around and shoot his mouth off, had he defected? He’d be on a tight leash. I sometimes wonder, why is this man, until recently a major factor in the NK death machine, suddenly a darling of the right?
Like I said, I’m divided on this, but if you’re going to ask why not let him rush off to Washington when he wants to, why not ask why the voluntary mass-manslaughterer has any personal freedom at all?
usinkorea–While most of the examples you cite represent craveness on the part of the South Korean government, the only ones that represent anything even close to cracking down on criticism of North Korea are the flag burnings and removing protestors from meeting venues. And even then, it’s a stretch to call them a concerted effort on the part of South Korean authorities to silence anti-North Korean activists, especially the latter, given how many governments don’t allow protestors anywhere near the venues of major international gatherings. Do I agree with that policy? Not particularly, especially if the protestors remain civil. But one would wonder if you call label, let’s say, the government spiriting away to another location Hanchongnyon protestors who planned a demonstration in front of a U.S. official motorcade a crackdown on anti-U.S. dissent.
At any rate, my point still stands. Had OhMyNews written a piece about USFK with as many unsupported claims as the Chosun piece above, people would be up in arms.
I’d like to see that, yeah…
Uh….It is clear there is a government wide concerted effort to prevent burning the North Korean flag. If I were charitable, I could say the government has put riot police and other authorities around small groups of anti-US activists just as it has anti-NK protests of small scale too. But, I think there is enough of a difference in what the anti-US groups get away with regularly and what the anti-NK groups are not.
On Hwang, it doesn’t count if you just silence those you don’t like and let those you do speak freely. One of the few things the ACLU has done that I agree with whole heartedly was defense of the right of the KKK to march in public. I hate the KKK and everything they stand for. They are an embarrassment to American society, but you can’t prevent people you do not like from enjoying freedoms you demand of groups you do.
As for Hwang and Tariq Aziz, if Aziz came out saying stuff that matched objective reality, then yes, I would hope people would give him an ear.
I am not up to date on all that Hwang has been saying since he came South, but I haven’t heard that he is saying things that have proven untrue or unverifiable. He his insights are matching what is known ———- if it seems like a pretty good guess he is telling the truth —- then he should be allowed to speak.
No…..that is putting it bassackward. Even if he is telling large amount of bullshit lies, he should have the freedom to speak them if people want to hear him.
And hopefully, and probably, what would happen is that he would discredit himself. He would provide ammunition to his attackers. He would drop off the guest list of respectable organizations. The thing with the KKK these days, for a long time, there are more anti-racist protesters than KKK members.
Whether or not Hwang should be in jail is a different matter, I think.
On that side, I can see the point, but people can change, and even if the change is not full or even terribly significant, governments have made deals with bad people it needed to in the past. It is a routine part of police and prosecution work. Intel and other agencies have to do it as well.
What is in Hwang’s heart and mind now? I don’t know. I do know that he should have a vast amount of information and insight about North Korea.
Hopefully, the people asking him questions an analysing his answers will have information and be smart enough to tell if he is jerking the publics chain.
Whatever the case, the South Korean effort to keep him under raps was done for North Korea’s benefit and it was a clear cut case of silencing his freedom of speech and movement. If they wanted to put him in jail for crimes against humanity or his previous acts in North Korea, that is a different matter and they could have done that to shut him up. They did not chose that route.
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