(by Andy Jackson)
As previously posted, I am a big fan of Liberty in North Korea (LiNK). They picked up another blogger fan at a symposium last Saturday (see Kevin’s post for details of that event).
Over the next few days, LiNK will be conducting the last few events of a two-week campaign they have been conducting here in Seoul.
Hello. We are LiNK (Liberty in North Korea), a student group that works for North Korean Human Rights. As you have just read [Note: posted here], even the most basic human rights are being violated in North Korea. Throughout the following week, we will be hosting symposiums and screenings of the award-winning documentary, “Seoul Train.” So if you have any questions about what you have just read, please come out to discuss the issues. This Wednesday (5/31) at 11:30, we will be meeting in front of the Kyobo Building at Kwanghwa-moon, dressed in black clothing, for a protest for North Korean human rights. I hope to see many of you participate, and ask that you spread the word about our cause.
“Seoul Train,” an award-winning documentary, Screenings:
5/29 (Mon) 8:00 PM – Istanbul Restaurant, Noksapyung Station Exit #2 (Underpass by the corner)
5/30 (Tue) 12:00PM, 6:00 PM – Kyunghee University: Chungwoon Hall B1 – B117
*6/1 (Thu) 5:00 Pm – Dongguk University: Hyehwa Hall 202
To see what LiNK has been up to over the last few weeks, check out this, this, this, this and this. The first link includes video of a die-in. I did not know people still did those.
15 Comments
Wow, that’s at MY univ tomorrow, in the building right next to mine
at noon & 6… DO believe i’ll drop on by!
(the Blue-Cloud Hall
Thanks for the good tip, Robert!
Everybody who can, please drop by!
-A Project Sunshine member
well, south koreans do seem to care about north korea if there is money to be made…
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05.....korea.html
It was Andy this time. I guess I’ll have to stick the “guest blogger tag back up there for a least a few more posts.
Gracias para el shout-out. It truly was a great LiNK meeting.
Kevin
Should I watch this Seoul Train and offer my own rebutal?
So I take it this isn’t the “Seoul Train” starring Mimi Miyagi, then?
Here are my rebutals. If you are there, you can ask them some of the questions I raised.
4 minutes prior: footages should explalin the context. children could be victims of child abuse
4:10 “Yet the Chinese Government in defiance of international laws, hunts down North Koreans and sends them back.” Please quote which section of international law is violated.
4:46 A man I presume to be North Korean holds up a sign. At the top is in English “We want freedom.” Some kind of a doctored up PR stun or could the North Korean refugee really have wrote that himself?
7:33 Chun hands out fake Chinese IDs. Who’s breaking the law now?
Mr. Chun reminds me a lot of my cousin. My cousin is also risking his life and is working very hard in Indonesia trying to help smuggle
indonesian refugees into MahathirLand for freedom. He is different in that he collects money from them promising them of jobs in MahathirLand and helping them settle down upon arrival in Malaysia. He also tries to get them jobs, getting payments from both employers who wishes to employ these indonesians and he also gets payments from the indonesians. He has an eloborate network of people and connections to make the operation a success. He makes pretty good money, bought a BMW for his wife recently. Should we make a documentary called “Kuala Lumpur Train” about him?
13:11 We see dramatic footages of children picking up food from the ground. However, very close buy, you can see that there is abundance of food on the stalls. Note the top left corner. Something is not right. There is food but children are still eating from the ground. Why? Is it possible the man who filmed it instructed the child to act that way? There is clearly food on the stalls. Watch it.
41:22 The prof. raises a good point about not politicizing this issue.
44:00 This minute really showed the true villians in this issue. The naive North Koreans were told to hand a letter requesting refugee status to the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Nothing wrong here. But they are then instructed to open up a banner publicly displaying their request. Some of these banners had English words on them suggesting that outsiders have influenced them. Why? So that it could be filmed by the film crew? Do the film crew not know that such public display would have gotten the North Koreans arrested? Why still ask them to do such things that would have gotten them arrested? To show the rest of the world? They have just sacrificed these North Koreans pawns in their game. The right way to have handled this situation is to have them hand over their request and keeping the lowest profile as possible. Not hand over the letter, create a scene, and show the world how they get arrested. Very irresponsible of the film makers.
Whenever there are outside intervention it is always suspicious. You never know when these outside help starts. It could be that they even have an elobrate network of refugee recruiters. North Koreans who never thought of becoming refugees are recruited to sign up to become refugees. This would give the true refugee seekers a bad rep. That’s why I think the prof made a very good point and warning to those “outside helpers”. Don’t politicize this plight.
47:20 Err…China is the world’s largest democracy. Activists who have been arrested have all broken the law for attempting to overthrow the Communist government using illegal means. There is a legal means and it is through the ballot boxes. The next one in 2008.
47:36 I was once told that Dr. Mahathir meddled in Anwar’s sodomy court case. Now that Dr. Mahathir has retired and he has gone head to head conflict with the current Prime Minister, why hasn’t Dr. Mahathir been charged for meddling with the Anwar case? Why is Dr. Mahathir not in prison? Where are those people today who discredit him when he was in power? You are now free to put up all the evidence you once had on the internet about Dr. Mahathir and you can now put him in prison. Today, Dr. Mahathir has turned “anti” Malaysian government and you can get the Malaysian government support you to put him in prison if you have proof. The problem is this. Dr. Mahathir has his own propaganda machine. But those against Dr. Mahathir also have their propaganda machine. You can’t trust both.
It reminds me of another movie, called El Norte:
http://www.vh1.com/movies/movi.....main.jhtml
Your cousin is a profiteering trafficker. You are a whack-job.
“China is the world’s largest democracy.”
In terms of sheer population and system of government, that honor technically goes to India– a federal republic, if I’m not mistaken. China’s government is by no means democratic. If this isn’t obvious, there’s really nothing more I can say.
Kevin
Kevin,
China’s last election was in 2003: http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/e.....288018.htm
The Chinese government is right. If this Seoul Train is indeed a true refugee problem, why are the people who are escaping North Korea so isolated? Where are the thousands of families that should be making their way to the borders?
The people who wants to escape North Korea are poor, or hate living under Kim Jong Il. But being poor or living under a government that you despise does not qualify you refugee status. A lot of Malaysians were poor and didn’t like living under Dr. Mahathir’s rule. That doesn’t qualify them refugee status. They emigrated to countries like Australia. A lot of Americans are also poor and didn’t like living under George Bush. They can emigrate. North Koreans who wish to leave must figure out how to emigrate, not claim refugee status when it clearly isn’t.
You know, I think Joshua had the right idea.
Here’s another idea. Try to set up the comments section so that whenever someone uses the name mahathir_fan when submitting a comment, the color of the font matches the page background.
Alternatively, we could all give up our common interest in Korea, and instead discuss the politics of another country (say, China) from the perspective and experiences of yet another country (an example might be, say, Malaysia).
We could even choose new tags based on our affinity with non-Korean political figures. If we all do that, I’m probably going to go with ‘finnbogadóttir_fan’ - the Sino-Icelandic situation just begs to be discussed more fully here.
He has been given every opprtunity to correct his complete ignorance on all these issues. If a prohibition on trolls is to have any meaning at all, m_f has to go.
One Trackback
[...] If you are curious about someone who’s not impressed about Seoul Train, check out this in The Marmot’s comments section. And to get your blood flowing, the same person argues that North Korea refugees are indeed economic migrants. [...]