A group of 22 North Koreans who had been returned home after their boats drifted into South Korean waters were all immediately executed by North Korean authorities, a source here said Sunday.
Two fishing boats carrying the North Koreans -- 14 women and eight men including three teenagers -- drifted into the western waters off South Korea's Yeonpyeong Island on Feb. 8 and were sent back home after South Korean interrogators found they had no intention of defecting, the National Intelligence Service said in a press release on Saturday.
More details on The Marmot's Hole and One Free Korea.
Apparently nothing out of the ordinary for the Roh administration. Thankfully we were spared the presidency of Chung Dong-young, the former Unification Minister who was a great friend of North Korea, but not of North Koreans. An excerpt of an interview he gave with Ohmynews, via One Free Korea, remarking on his opposition to organized defections:
[T]he government clearly opposes organized defections. For the people in the North to live their lives in the North with their families is necessary both for individuals and for co-existence and co-prosperity. The policies of reconciliation and cooperation call for humanitarian aid to the North along with strengthening of economic cooperation, and continuous pursuit of North Korea’s participation in the international community. . . . With this in mind, it is not desirable for anyone to organize defections, intentionally bringing people out of North Korea. In particular, this runs counter to the government’s policy of co-existence and co-prosperity. . . . [Incidents like last summer’s mass airlift of defectors] have been unfortunate from the point of the total interests of the Korean people.
As I wrote earlier, it doesn't make me feel very comfortable knowing that Chung gained nearly 80% of the popular vote in Jeollanam-do.
This all comes a few days after the South Korean government acknowledged that it knew its aid to the North was going directly to its military.
I wonder how much attention this will receive down here. Will it trigger the massive outpouring of grief the destruction of
As a teacher, I feel ashamed to tell my children that our country is still experiencing a disaster that would occur in an underdeveloped country.
Will the murder of their "brothers and sisters" by . . . their "brothers and sisters" be awash in hyperbole like "Korea's 9/11" or "Korea's Katrina"? Or is this just an internal, 민족 affair, that requires no comment at all?
Man, all that wood.
2 comments:
While some of the comparisons about Namdaemum have been hyperbolic, I don't see anything wrong with mourning a beautiful, treasured monument that's very much a part of everyday life in Seoul.
What's indefensible is the general absence of compassion most South Koreans feel for North Koreans, no matter how much some of them pretend otherwise when it's politically convenient.
I think one shouldn't be so quick to judge!
Maybe the coldness about the North that you condemn is the way the people in the South had to go in order to survive?
In the US, most people do not really know about the bodies at ground zero at 9/11, or the bodies in New Orleans after Katrina -- we are traumatized by these amounts of loss.
Can you possibly know what the people in the South had to do emotionally when the country was divided in two and all communication and interaction was cut with their brothers and sisters to the North, when they lost half their country to other countries' politics.
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