The border between China and North Korea has all but disappeared, reports the Chosun Ilbo. Very disturbing stuff:
Torrential rains had been falling for a week when a Chosun Ilbo news team arrived in Dandong. It was Aug. 9, 2007, on a special tour program called “human safari.” The program provided a rare chance for the news team to take a close look at residents on Ujeok Islet, a North Korean island in the Apnok River. The boatman raised his thumb, saying, “It’ll be worth your money.”
The charge for a group of four was 800 yuan (approximately W114,000, US$1=W1,010). Passengers also had to buy some 800 yuan worth of food and other goods. “The more cigarettes, sausage and juice you bring, the more you can enjoy your sightseeing,” the boatman said. “This tour is most popular among Chinese tourists.” When the boat reached the midpoint of the river, we could see two North Korean naval vessels lying at anchor 50 m ahead of us. We clearly saw North Korean flags fluttering on them.
The boatman stopped only 2 m from Ujeok Islet and went round the boat to push the bow ashore. In other words, we had landed in North Korean territory. The guide threw sausages onto the shore. Suddenly, two men came out of the thicket and hastily tucked the sausages into their pockets. The cigarettes the boatman threw disappeared in a moment, too.
Read the rest on your own. Frankly, it’s sickening.
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25 Comments
Has anyone else noticed how many more negative North Korea-related stories are appearing in the Chosun Ilbo and other Korean news outlets now that Roh Moo Hyun is gone? Makes one wonder how many staff at the Roh Blue House were devoted to bullying and intimidating the press against upsetting their Dear Leader…
I don’t recall the Chosun Ilbo ever going easy on the North, even during the Roh administration.
Yeah the Chosun Ilbo has always maintained a hard line stance against the Norks, well at least in comparison against the other Korean newsrags. The rag that takes the cake though is the Hankyoreh. That paper reads as if it were penned in North Korea and telefaxed down to the South for printing and distribution.
Back to the topic at hand… A truly disturbing tale and it sickens me to no end to see the abuses taking place on both sides of the fence by the Chinese and the Norks.
“Makes one wonder how many staff at the Roh Blue House were devoted to bullying and intimidating the press against upsetting their Dear Leader…”
Same with friendlier stories about foreign residents. Makes me hope that the families of foreigners who die under suspicious circumstances will see justice.
Oh bullshit Carr. What a load of tripe.
I work for a major news outlet here in Seoul and the amount of fawning crap that reporters here are writing about LMB and his administration - without the slightest criticism of whether some (most?) of his campaign pledges that helped him get into office were hot air - has increased exponentially since he came to power. My point being, a change in media attitude doesn’t necessarily need to come from arm twisting at the top, it’s largely entirely voluntary ingratiating nonsense. Cowardly journalists are unwilling to incur the wrath of whatever admin. they’re under. And it doesn’t just happen here I can tell you…
…and so what would you write about if you were totally free to publish what you thought needed to be published?
According to OFK the Chosun Ilbo have been holding its North Korea articles that are now being released, until after the South Korean election.
http://freekorea.us/2008/03/05.....-refugees/
The build up of articles especially those related to their “On the Border” documentary is probably why there has been so many articles lately.
I can see how the Chosun might hold the story because they thought it would have more of an impact with the Lee administration. As for it worrying about influencing the election or Mr. Bang getting a late night visit from the hard men of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, me thinks the Chosun might be exaggerating a bit. Frankly, I’d worry much more about falling afoul of the Chosun Ilbo than I would of pissing off any government ministry.
That’s not what I was saying. I’m saying, Look how much more the drum beats. If the explanation is simply that Chosun Ilbo is clearing a backlog they held because of the election, so be it. But I’ll bet the tone from the Blue House has freed up writers to be more directly confrontational, like our friend nicecuppatea.
I think BC’s point was Roh was always taking aim at the media if they were hard on him and his administration.
Now that he’s out, that threat to the media, although not completely gone, is less of a concern to the media.
tragic story… but typical of the degradation of humans by the cults of personality we call “marxist”, “communist”, “socialist”, or “progressive”…
even the Victorian English had Charles Dickens to write about the oppressed masses… such stories are never allowed to come out of a “Worker’s Paradise” by the state-run media…
May it please God that the end of oppression in North Korea is coming soon.
#5, does the term ‘honeymoon period’ mean anything? The guy did receive sufficient scrutiny over the financial scandal during the election and came through it. He’s been in office for what, a month or two? I doubt the ‘fawning adoration’ will last much longer though with issues such as financial deregulation and the canal coming to the fore.
@JTB-in-texas
What in the hell does Dickens have to do with Kim Jong Il? I really hope you’re trolling.
#13
I believe JTB was comparing the role of the Chosun in documenting life in North Korea to Dickens’ accounts of the often difficult lives of the poor in Victorian England.
China is a sinful nation. Judgement day will come on the likes of Jing and the Han Chinese.
We have all seen in the decade of 2000. With our own eyes.
North Korea, Sudan, Myanmar, Tibet.
6.25 war in Korea.
US helped South Korea.
PRChina helped North Korea.
I can’t imagine, and I don’t have to imagine American tourists doing the above named safari on South Koreans.
Beijing is the sole reason why Kim Jong Il has not collapsed yet.
Not Seoul.
Beijing.
Is this what you fought for by entering the war in 1951, you dirty Chinese?
People I despise:
Mao Zedong, Kim Il Sung, Kim Jong Il, Communists, Socialists, Liberals. In that order.
Die, die, die !
To my knowledge, all nations which have welcomed PRChina influence are dictatorships, are poor as hell. And abuse human rights like a jail warden.
stop stealing US military secrets. There should be a death penalty for that.
How is throwing a few sausages and cigarettes on an island in the middle of a river a news worthy story?
I love getting free stuff when walking to work in morning or other times when O happen to come across a promo push or a radio/tv station promo.
The real news is when the bloke in the picture who admitted to trafficing women and drugs. Why not investigate that, rather than throwing food on a bank and waiting to see how long it takes for someone to pick it up?
I think that in #11 jtb-in-texas made a very-funny-but-subtle joke that seems to have slipped right by y’all, declaring that political “cults of personality” leading to “the degradation of humans” are somehow ‘leftist’, while using a photo of former Prez R. Reagan in a cowboy-hat as his Gravatar… If you paid attention to this winter’s US Republican nomination race, that’s LOL amusing…
Thanks for the chuckle, JTB!
Care to elaborate, or do you not really have anything?
Anyone seen the documentary, or know how to see it online?
The statement “the border between China and North Korea has all but disappeared” is quite off-the-mark in my opinion. The Chinese have been tightening up the border area near the Yalu for the last couple of years and even put up a big fence there two years ago. Five years ago you could literally walk into North Korea from China in that area and do what those Chosun reporters did without having to pay $100 a head and have to get into a boat (which only proves that the border has become much tighter). I even heard stories of summer-time “parties” in that area involving Chinese men and NK women just inside the NK border.
Seems to me the Chosun is dressing up an old story in the interests of supporting LMB’s hard-line approach to the North. A more interesting story would be what kind of “entertaining” those Chosun reporters did in their off hours in the KTV joints of Dandong. For $100 a head you can pretty much do whatever you want there and then some. Talk about a “human safari”!
Brendon Carr,
Yes, I absolutely have. Also, for the first time in years there are numerous stories showing the US military in a positive light.
I’m somewhat dissappointed by the misleading headline. When you mentioned Human safari, I thought it was going to be in the same vein as the Teutonic Reises carried out in the Baltics. As in actually hunting peasants for sport.
That sort of hunting happens from the North Korean side, and if you’re disappointed at not being able to witness the slaughter of civilians, Jing, feel free to relocate to NK yourself and watch all you want.
Well, Jing, you need not leave disappointed.