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Quotes of the Day:
“If my body dies, let my body die, but do not let my country die.”
- Genghis Khan
“I have no choice of living or dying, you see, sir--but I do have a choice of how I do it. If I tell them not to fight, they will be sorry, but they will fight. If I tell them to fight, they will be glad, and I who am not a very brave man will have made them a little braver.”
- John Steinbeck, The Moon Is Down
"History is Philosophy teaching by examples."
-Thucydides
1. U.N. aviation organization adopts resolution condemning N. Korea's missile launches
2. China has responsibility to encourage N. Korea back to dialogue: State Dept.
3. U.S. Antimissile System in South Korea, a Source of Chinese Anger, Cleared for Full Deployment
4. US overtakes China as market for South Korean goods
5. North Korean Human Rights: The Path Ahead
6. A North Korean Dissident Defects to the American Right
7. [Herald Interview] Living witness recounts forging of US, South Korea's 'blood alliance'
8. Presidential official highlights S. Korea's pursuit of role for Indo-Pacific security
9. S. Korea, NATO ink arrangement to begin recognition process for military airworthiness certification
10. S. Korea vows $130m Ukraine aid this year
11. U.S. nuclear-powered submarine set to depart after combined drills with S. Korea
12. Yoon arrives in Vietnam for state visit
13. A Basement of Horrors in Seoul, Where Past and Present Collide
14. South Korea to Drop ‘Killer Questions’ From College Entrance Exam
15. The Bush Institute announces recipients of the 2023 Lindsay Lloyd North Korea Freedom Scholarship
1. U.N. aviation organization adopts resolution condemning N. Korea's missile launches
I should certainly hope so. I think we would be surprised if they didn't
U.N. aviation organization adopts resolution condemning N. Korea's missile launches | Yonhap News Agency
en.yna.co.kr · by Yi Wonju · June 22, 2023
SEOUL, June 22 (Yonhap) -- The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) has unanimously adopted a resolution denouncing North Korea's missile provocations, Seoul's foreign ministry said Thursday.
The U.N. agency's governing body also urgently called on Pyongyang to comply strictly with the provisions of the 1944 Chicago Convention, which outlines the key principles for global aviation, at a session in Montreal, Canada, earlier this week.
During the meeting, the ICAO voiced its concerns over the North's recent missile launches, saying they pose a "serious risk" to international civil aviation and represents a "complete disregard" of the relevant U.N. Security Council resolutions.
"The ICAO council's decision shows the firm commitment of the international community that it will not tolerate North Korea's violation of international norms that threaten the safety of civil aviation," the ministry said.
The resolution comes after Salvatore Sciacchitano, the president of the ICAO council, sent a letter to North Korean authorities last month calling for an end to Pyongyang's provocations, including the launch of a military spy satellite the recalcitrant country has vowed to put into orbit to monitor U.S. military activities.
This undated image, captured from the Facebook page of the International Civil Aviation Organization, shows the emblem of the agency. (PHOTO NOT FOR SALE) (Yonhap)
julesyi@yna.co.kr
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en.yna.co.kr · by Yi Wonju · June 22, 2023
2. China has responsibility to encourage N. Korea back to dialogue: State Dept.
Responsibility, yes. Will, no. When I meet with Chinese interlocutors (NOT government officials) they continue to hold the line that it is the US who must give up the hostile policy which of course supports the positions of the Kim family regime and echoes the words of the north's Propaganda and Agitation Department which ironically is the position of some pundits in the ROK and US who seem to default to blaming he US.
China has responsibility to encourage N. Korea back to dialogue: State Dept. | Yonhap News Agency
en.yna.co.kr · by Duk-Kun Byun · June 22, 2023
By Byun Duk-kun
WASHINGTON, June 21 (Yonhap) -- China has both the capacity and responsibility to help bring North Korea back to the negotiating table, a state department spokesperson reiterated Wednesday, echoing recent remarks by Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
The top U.S. diplomat said he had raised the issue while meeting with his Chinese counterparts in Beijing earlier this week.
"This is something that the secretary raised directly on his travels," state department deputy spokesperson Vedant Patel said when asked if the recent thaw between Washington and Beijing relations may help address the threat posed by Pyongyang.
Vedant Patel, deputy spokesperson for the Department of State, is seen answering questions during a daily press briefing at the department in Washington on June 21, 2023 in this captured image. (Yonhap)
"He (Blinken) made clear that ... the PRC writ large has the capability and responsibility to use its influence with the DPRK to encourage Pyongyang to return to the negotiating table and to cease its provocative acts," he added, referring to China and North Korea by their formal names, the People's Republic of China and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, respectively.
Blinken traveled to Beijing on a two-day visit this week, meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping and other top government officials there.
Wrapping up his visit on Monday, he said "all members of the international community have an interest in encourage the DPRK to act responsibly," adding he and his Chinese counterparts had discussions about "North Korea's increasingly reckless actions and rhetoric."
North Korea launched a space launch vehicle (SLV) carrying what it claimed to be its first military reconnaissance satellite in a botched attempt on May 31.
The U.S. and its key allies, including South Korea, have strongly condemned the North's failed space launch, noting SLVs use the same technology as ballistic missiles that North Korea is prohibited from developing or using under multiple United Nations Security Council resolutions.
Pyongyang has dismissed the allies' condemnation and vowed to continue launching space rockets until it succeeds, while calling Blinken's trip to China a "disgraceful trip" to beg for improved relations with Beijing.
bdk@yna.co.kr
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en.yna.co.kr · by Duk-Kun Byun · June 22, 2023
3. U.S. Antimissile System in South Korea, a Source of Chinese Anger, Cleared for Full Deployment
The question is, will China return to economic warfare against the ROK? And then will the ROK be able to better defend itself economically and will the US and other like minded deomcraccies come to the ROK's aid unlike in 2017?
U.S. Antimissile System in South Korea, a Source of Chinese Anger, Cleared for Full Deployment
Pursuit of full Thaad rollout comes as Seoul and Beijing clashed publicly over range of issues
By Timothy W. Martin
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June 21, 2023 6:00 am ET
https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-antimissile-system-in-south-korea-a-source-of-chinese-anger-cleared-for-full-deployment-8141b4dc?
SEOUL—A U.S. missile-defense system in South Korea that has enraged China got a clear path for a full deployment, as tensions flare up between the two countries.
A battery for the American antimissile system called Thaad—short for Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense—was installed more than six years ago in the heart of South Korea on the site of a former golf course. The deployment came during a rise in North Korean weapons provocations. China, North Korea and Russia loudly opposed Thaad as a security threat.
A complete Thaad rollout was stalled by a South Korean environmental review that was triggered by the fears of local residents living near the base. On Thursday, the review determined that the health risks posed by electromagnetic waves from the Thaad battery were insignificant, according to South Korea’s defense and environment ministries.
The Thaad system is designed to shoot down North Korean short- and medium-range missiles, even as they begin a downward trajectory. The system’s radar capabilities also have a wider range than prior missile defenses in South Korea, allowing them to reach into China and Russia.
A full Thaad deployment is expected to occur next year.
As the South Korean review unfolded, American military personnel didn’t have daily access to the Thaad base, among other logistical restrictions. The full deployment of Thaad also entails building permanent support facilities to house soldiers and hardware, according to Go Myong-Hyun, a senior fellow at the Asan Institute for Policy Studies, a think tank based in Seoul.
U.S. Forces Korea, which oversees the roughly 28,500 American military personnel in South Korea, declined to comment.
The environmental review began under the administration of left-leaning President Moon Jae-in, who took office weeks after Thaad was installed in May 2017. He immediately questioned whether his conservative predecessor had sought enough public feedback before agreeing to host the antimissile system.
At the time, Thaad provoked China’s ire. Beijing was widely believed to have orchestrated a campaign of economic retaliation against Seoul, much of which continues to this day. Anti-Thaad sentiment by Chinese consumers affected everything from South Korean-owned retailers and carmakers to K-pop concerts. Chinese tourism to South Korea plummeted.
South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol remains a relatively unknown quantity in Beijing. PHOTO: YONHAP/ZUMA PRESS
Moon eventually improved ties with China, in part due to an understanding that South Korea wouldn’t pursue further Thaad deployments.
Then, just over a year ago, conservative Yoon Suk Yeol succeeded Moon. Yoon centered his foreign policy around tighter collaboration with the U.S. and envisioned a relationship with China based on mutual respect.
The two countries, in many regards, need one another. China is South Korea’s biggest trading partner by a wide margin. At the same time, South Korea’s advanced-tech industries carry extra sway these days as the Biden administration imposes chip restrictions on China.
But China and South Korea in recent months have traded diplomatic barbs. Thaad has often been a central issue. In August, following a meeting in China between the countries’ top diplomats, Beijing’s Foreign Ministry said Seoul had agreed to pledges made by the prior Moon administration—including refraining from additional Thaad deployments.
Yoon’s office quickly shot down the claim. Thaad represents a “matter of security sovereignty that can never be subject to negotiation,” a South Korean official said at the time.
Tensions escalated earlier this month. The head of South Korea’s main opposition Democratic Party held an unusually public dinner meeting with Xing Haiming, China’s ambassador to Seoul. Xing gave a 15-minute speech—which aired live on the opposition party’s YouTube channel—where he bemoaned South Korea’s pivot toward the U.S. and placed the blame solely on the Yoon administration for fraying ties.
Expecting the U.S. to emerge victorious over China would be a wrong strategy, the Chinese ambassador warned.
“Those who bet on China’s loss will surely regret their decision in the future,” Xing said.
South Korea summoned Xing for a meeting. The next day, China followed suit, demanding time with South Korea’s ambassador in Beijing.
Yoon angered China in April when he said he opposed changing the status quo in Taiwan by force. China has pledged to take control of the self-ruled island, which it views as part of its territory, by force if necessary.
Any China reaction regarding a full deployment of Thaad will likely have to be measured, as putting forceful economic pressure on Seoul could push the Yoon administration even more toward the U.S., said Sukhee Han, president of the Institute for National Security Strategy, a South Korean government think tank in Seoul.
One wild card for China is Yoon, who was a political neophyte when he was elected and remains a relatively unknown quantity in Beijing. Among the unexpected moves was South Korea’s summoning of Xing, the Chinese ambassador, said Han, who couldn’t recall something like that happening before.
“This is a first-time experience for China,” said Han, a former South Korean consul general in Shanghai.
Dasl Yoon contributed to this article.
Write to Timothy W. Martin at Timothy.Martin@wsj.com
Copyright ©2023 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
Appeared in the June 22, 2023, print edition as 'South Korea to Deploy U.S. Missiles'.
4. US overtakes China as market for South Korean goods
Perhaps some potentially good news here. Will this help South Korea to defend itself against Chinese economic warfare over THAAD?
US overtakes China as market for South Korean goods
Financial Times · by Christian Davies · June 22, 2023
South Korea exported more goods to the US than to China last year for the first time in almost two decades, underlining shifting trade patterns as Washington draws more allies into its supply chains and Beijing boosts its manufacturing self-reliance.
Goods exports from South Korea to China fell almost 10 per cent to $122bn between 2021 and 2022, according to data released by the Bank of Korea this week. By contrast goods exports to the US increased by more than 22 per cent over the same period to $139bn.
It is the first time since 2004 that South Korea — the world’s tenth largest economy with companies such as Samsung that are a bellwether of global trade — has exported more goods to the US than to China.
The figures reflect a surge in US demand for Korean cars, while exports of Korean semiconductors to China have slumped amid a slowdown in the global memory chip market.
The US is the only one of South Korea’s top 10 export partners to which exports have grown over the past five years. Led by battery makers LG Energy Solution, SK On and Samsung SDI, and solar company Hanwha Q-Cells, South Korean companies have also been among the largest foreign investors in the US semiconductor and clean tech sectors.
By contrast China is waning in importance. A study published this month by the Korea International Trade Association showed that since 2021, the share of Korean exports going to China has declined in sectors including petroleum products, petrochemicals, steel, auto parts and displays.
In the first three months of 2023, Korean exports to China fell below 20 per cent of the total for the first time since 2005, according to the trade association.
Analysts at the Korea Center for International Finance have attributed the structural decline in Korean exports to China to Beijing’s “Made in China 2025” strategy to use subsidies to boost its manufacturing of machinery and precision tools.
“Many Chinese business are manufacturing intermediate goods, which we mainly export,” Rhee Chang-yong, the governor of the Bank of Korea, told lawmakers last month. “The decade-long support from the Chinese economic boom has disappeared.”
In an interview with the FT last year, South Korean trade minister Ahn Duk-geun cited Beijing’s policy to “arbitrarily interfere with businesses” as well as its “dual circulation” import substitution policies as the most important factors driving foreign companies to reduce their exposure to China.
He added that over the course of the next decade, the “structure of trade” between South Korea and China “will be changed”, moving down the value chain as the exchange of sensitive technologies is increasingly controlled.
Park Chong-hoon, head of Korea research at Standard Chartered, said: “There has been a structural change going on in Korean-Chinese economic relations over recent years as Chinese companies, with Beijing’s support, move up the technological value chain.
“But we should remember that the most important Korean export to China is high-end semiconductors, which are going through a downturn at the moment. As the global IT sector picks up again, so will Korean exports to China.”
Financial Times · by Christian Davies · June 22, 2023
5. North Korean Human Rights: The Path Ahead
If you do not read anything else about north Korea today or this week, please read this. While the emphasis is heavily on human rights (and rightly so), please note his comments about the importance of information as well as unification.
Please note that Dr. Kim is an escapee from north korea.
Key excerpts (but please read the entire essay):
The people of North Korea, who are citizens of the Republic of Korea (ROK) pursuant to the ROK Constitution, are dying away as slaves of the Kim family. No objective—be it unification, exchange, cooperation, or peace—can take precedence over the North Korean people's right to live or their human rights. In other words, any policy towards North Korea which ignores the suffering of the North Korean people is bound to be hypocritical.
If the North Korean people are neglected, any related act and even unification itself are bound to be hypocritical. This is because the ultimate purpose of North Korea policy or unification policy is not to maintain peace or secure power, but to firstly liberate the North Korean people from slavery. If that is not the goal, then there is no reason to deal with North Korea or seek unification. It would be enough to protect ourselves and ensure our own safety.
The experiences of the past half century and recent years have clearly shown that the Kim dynasty will never change its ways. Moreover, considering the Kim regime’s nature, history, and institutional structure, it is meaningless to seek reconciliation, negotiation, compromise, or coexistence with the Kim regime. It is also clear that the Kim dynasty remains the source of all evils that arise from the division of the Korean Peninsula, including nuclear and missile issues, human rights violations, threats to national security, and the “South-South divide” in South Korea.
...
To realize these objectives, we need a massive information campaign to send information into North Korea about what is happening in South Korea and the world; about freedom, human rights, and the superiority of democracies; and about reform and opening. This can be via radio broadcasts, print media, movies, music, and other means. It is important that the North Korean people, including soldiers, develop an accurate understanding of freedom and democracy.
By doing so, we can empower the North Korean people by enabling them to clearly recognize the repressive nature of the Kim Jong-un regime and become the driving force of opening and reform, which will lead to unification under a liberal democratic form of government. There is a surging demand for information among the North Korean people and North Korean soldiers.
https://www.hrnkinsider.org/2023/06/north-korean-human-rights-path-ahead.html
Posted by Committee for Human Rights in North Korea with No comments
By Dr. Kim Dong-su, Senior Advisor to the Institute for National Security Strategy
June 22, 2023
Dr. Kim Dong-su, Senior Advisor to the Institute for National Security Strategy, is a former North Korean diplomat who last served at North Korea’s mission to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in Rome before defecting in 1998. Since arriving in South Korea, he has written extensively on North Korea’s foreign policy and regime structure. He recently served as an advisor to the Yoon Suk-yeol Presidential Transition Committee and a visiting scholar at Waseda University. Dr. Kim has a B.A. in Political Science from Dar-es-Salaam National University and the Pyongyang University of Foreign Studies, and an M.A. and Ph.D. in Political Science from Kyungnam University.
The following text is adapted from remarks delivered at "North Korean Human Rights: Is There Still a Way Forward?," a conference hosted by HRNK, the Hoover Institution, and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) on May 18, 2023 at NED’s headquarters in Washington, D.C.
The Kim Jong-un regime presents a challenge of the utmost urgency to the international community. Without denuclearization and fundamental political change in North Korea, peace and prosperity on the Korean Peninsula will only be an illusion. Likewise, the values of freedom and human rights on the Korean Peninsula will not be truly realized either. To achieve denuclearization and internal political change, we first need to carefully assess the situation the Kim Jong-un regime is facing, as well as the steps that it may take.
The current situation in North Korea is defined by four characteristics: i) rapid nuclear advancement; ii) severe economic hardship; iii) deepening public discontent and widening social unrest; and iv) intensifying coercion, control, surveillance, and punishment against the population.
As most of the national budget is spent on developing weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear weapons and missiles, the North Korean people are facing an economic catastrophe. Moreover, in the past few years, North Korea has been battered on three fronts: sanctions, the COVID-19 pandemic, and natural disasters. This has exacerbated the shortage of goods and food supplies. Recently, there have been cases of starvation.
This has given rise to greater public discontent in North Korea. The regime is losing popular support, and the influence of South Korean popular culture is expanding across the country. Under these circumstances, the Kim Jong-un regime has intensified its reign of terror as it commits egregious human rights violations. It has enacted unjust laws such as the “Anti-Reactionary Thought and Culture Act” and the “Youth Education Act."
In this way, the Kim Jong-un regime's excessive obsession with nuclear weapons leads to a vicious cycle of severe economic difficulties, greater suffering among the people, deepening popular discontent, and harsher surveillance and repression.
The Future of North Korea’s Human Rights Diplomacy
Over the past decade, many international entities and countries, including the United Nations (UN) Commission of Inquiry (COI) on Human Rights in the DPRK , the North Korea Freedom Coalition (NKFC), the U.S. Committee for Human Rights in North Korea (HRNK), the UN, the European Union (EU), the United States, and Japan—together with many other NGOs in South Korea and elsewhere—have persistently advocated for and promoted North Korean human rights.
Through such efforts, the human rights situation in North Korea has been exposed to the world. This includes the situation in North Korea’s kwan-li-so (political prison camps), kyo-hwa-so (long-term prison labor facilities), and jip-kyul-so (short-term detention facilities), where detainees are publicly executed, and egregious human rights violations are committed. Violations of women’s rights and children’s rights have been brought to light, including the use of children for forced labor.
There have been more opportunities for North Korean escapees to testify on the international stage, resulting in greater international attention toward the issue. This has made it considerably more difficult for North Korea to address the issue through diplomacy.
Through the work of the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) Seoul office, which specializes in investigating North Korea’s human rights violations, there is now a greater capacity to document and collect evidence of human rights violations in North Korea. Meanwhile, the Kim Jong-un regime continues to purge and execute officials and take severe measures to block the inflow of outside information.
Following the release of the UN COI report in 2014, North Korea largely ignored human rights on the international stage. However, the international community has been more assertive toward North Korea on this issue. Specifically, the work of the UN COI and NGOs such as NKFC and HRNK in Seoul, London, Washington, D.C., and Tokyo helped to investigate and document the human rights situation in North Korea. The willingness of many North Korean escapees to provide testimony seemed to indicate that the Kim Jong-un regime’s days were numbered.
Going forward, North Korea’s diplomacy on human rights is likely to focus on preventing Kim Jong-un’s name from being directly tied to documentation and accountability initiatives. To do so, North Korea will firmly shut its doors. It will cease contact, exchange, and dialogue with international human rights institutions, human rights organizations, and human rights activists.
At the same time, however, North Korea will seek to counter international pressure on human rights by seeking help from its close allies on the international stage. Pyongyang will engage with individual states and do everything it can to prevent Kim Jong-un’s name from being included in UN human rights resolutions.
In particular, North Korea will frame criticisms of its human rights record as a scheme to subvert the regime, and thereby further justify the development of nuclear weapons as a means of protection. It will heighten political tensions and pressure South Korea to break away from international efforts to address North Korean human rights.
Over the past few years, efforts to address North Korean human rights on the international stage have been successful in several ways. The UN has taken a proactive role in comprehensively investigating human rights violations in North Korea. Specifically, the presence of the OHCHR’s Seoul office provides a lasting, institutional basis for systematically documenting North Korean human rights issues. It appears that North Korea is paying very close attention to these efforts by the international community to address the human rights issue.
Going forward, North Korea will react aggressively to the international community’s action on human rights, which it regards as part of a “peaceful transition strategy” to overthrow the regime. At the same time, North Korea will try to fundamentally block the West’s calls to improve human rights, emphasizing its "political autonomy" and "right to development." Moreover, to deflect criticisms of its human rights record, North Korea will persistently raise human rights issues in South Korea, the United States, and Japan.
How to Raise the Profile of North Korean Human Rights
From now on, we must develop and execute an intensive campaign of psychological warfare to blow the wind of freedom and truth into North Korea, which stands on a sand castle of the worst lies and fabrications in the world. Comprehensive psychological warfare against the highly closed North Korean regime will be more powerful than nuclear weapons.
We have the responsibility to raise awareness among the international community about the worst human rights situation in the world. At the same time, we must also seek ways to inform the North Korean people about freedom, democracy, and human rights, so that they can resist the tyrannical regime. For this purpose, the Yoon Suk-yeol government must place the protection of the North Korean people’s human rights, as well as the improvement of their economic rights, at the very center of its North Korea policy.
The people of North Korea, who are citizens of the Republic of Korea (ROK) pursuant to the ROK Constitution, are dying away as slaves of the Kim family. No objective—be it unification, exchange, cooperation, or peace—can take precedence over the North Korean people's right to live or their human rights. In other words, any policy towards North Korea which ignores the suffering of the North Korean people is bound to be hypocritical.
If the North Korean people are neglected, any related act and even unification itself are bound to be hypocritical. This is because the ultimate purpose of North Korea policy or unification policy is not to maintain peace or secure power, but to firstly liberate the North Korean people from slavery. If that is not the goal, then there is no reason to deal with North Korea or seek unification. It would be enough to protect ourselves and ensure our own safety.
The experiences of the past half century and recent years have clearly shown that the Kim dynasty will never change its ways. Moreover, considering the Kim regime’s nature, history, and institutional structure, it is meaningless to seek reconciliation, negotiation, compromise, or coexistence with the Kim regime. It is also clear that the Kim dynasty remains the source of all evils that arise from the division of the Korean Peninsula, including nuclear and missile issues, human rights violations, threats to national security, and the “South-South divide” in South Korea.
In this context, I believe it is necessary to set a basic direction for international efforts to promote human rights in North Korea. It is necessary to actively raise the issue of human rights through the UN and other related institutions which North Korea has joined. In addition, it would be productive to discuss North Korean human rights in the context of economic & security cooperation. Creating a new regional human rights body in the region would also provide a forum for discussing North Korean human rights.
It is especially important for the Yoon administration to work together with the rapidly growing network of domestic and international human rights NGOs to call for improvement of human rights in North Korea.
There are three priorities in this regard. First, it is necessary to raise North Korean human rights issues more proactively at the UN. Second, it is critical to discuss human rights in North Korea within the framework of economic or security cooperation. A new regional human rights body could be created for such discussions as well. Third, it is of paramount importance to institutionalize cooperation with human rights NGOs, and to actively support human rights NGOs led by North Korean escapees.
The North Korean human rights issue is critical because the action we take on this issue can catalyze changes in not only the consciousness and ideology of the North Korean people, but also the political system in North Korea. To facilitate political change in North Korea and address its serious human rights situation, it is imperative to develop a strategy aimed at specific segments of the population: the ruling elite; the middle class, who are forced to blindly obey the regime; and the lower class, which Kim Jong-un ignores.
To realize these objectives, we need a massive information campaign to send information into North Korea about what is happening in South Korea and the world; about freedom, human rights, and the superiority of democracies; and about reform and opening. This can be via radio broadcasts, print media, movies, music, and other means. It is important that the North Korean people, including soldiers, develop an accurate understanding of freedom and democracy.
By doing so, we can empower the North Korean people by enabling them to clearly recognize the repressive nature of the Kim Jong-un regime and become the driving force of opening and reform, which will lead to unification under a liberal democratic form of government. There is a surging demand for information among the North Korean people and North Korean soldiers.
To the key ruling elite of North Korea, we need to disseminate information about high-ranking North Korean officials, possible succession scenarios after Kim Jong-un, South Korea’s policy toward North Korea, and how this policy is being implemented.
To the leadership of the Korean People’s Army, we specifically need to send in information about the strength of the U.S.-ROK alliance, President Yoon’s recent state visit to Washington, the nature and objectives of the Kim regime, the capabilities of the ROK military, and the ROK’s military strategy.
To the North Korean population, including the youth, it would be valuable to disseminate Korean cultural content and American movies (such as action and martial arts movies), games, the Bible and other religious materials (including print materials), and documentaries on human rights.
Conclusion
In light of growing international interest in and action on North Korea’s human rights situation, it is becoming increasingly critical for the Yoon administration to pursue a North Korean human rights policy.
To raise the profile of North Korean human rights issues on the international stage and facilitate political change in North Korea, the Yoon administration must closely cooperate with NGOs led by North Korean escapees. This is an urgent priority, just as much as the nuclear issue.
Many escapee-led organizations have long dedicated themselves to bringing freedom to North Korea, with an emphasis on human rights. These organizations have the capacity to be a strategic asset for the Yoon administration, which has proclaimed a principled approach to North Korean policy.
The General Association of North Korean Human Rights Organizations, a coalition of 23 organizations based in South Korea, is carrying out a wide range of activities for the cause of human rights and democracy in North Korea.
Escapee-led organizations which many of you know well, including the Committee for the Democratization of North Korea, Free North Korea Radio, Free North Korea Movement Alliance, North Korea Strategy Center, and North Korea Intellectuals Solidarity, are preparing for a new leap forward after enduring a hostile political atmosphere under the previous administration.
Mr. Kim Seong-min, the founder of the General Association of North Korean Human Rights Organizations and the leader of Free North Korea Radio, stresses that “North Korean escapees have a responsibility to fight for the North Korean people’s right to know, which is crucial for North Korea’s democratization and the unification of the Korean Peninsula as a free and open country.”
Park Sang-hak, Heo Kwang-il, Kim Heung-kwang, and Jang Se-yool, who are part of the General Association of North Korean Human Rights Organizations, sent hundreds of thousands of leaflets and 5,000 USBs to the North via balloons on April 12. This was in direct opposition to the so-called “Anti-Leaflet Law,” an unjust law that was passed under the Moon Jae-in administration.
Kim Seong-min and other leaders in the escapee community have all said that Suzanne Scholte’s Defense Forum Foundation provided invaluable support when the Moon administration harshly suppressed the activities of North Korean escapees. They have also said that the sending of leaflet balloons these past few years would not have been possible without the support of Ms. Suzanne Scholte’s NKFC and individual American citizens who were driven by a sense of justice.
I would like to take this opportunity to express my sincere gratitude to Ms. Suzanne Scholte, whom many escapees regard as the godmother of the North Korean human rights movement.
I would also like to express my gratitude and respect for all American citizens who have lent their support to the work of North Korean escapees in our struggle for freedom and democracy in North Korea.
Thank you very much for your attention.
6. A North Korean Dissident Defects to the American Right
A friend who flagged this for me today made the very astute observation that if the United Front Department and Cultural Engagement Bureau were ever going to plant a defector in order to conduct subversion of the west (and the US) she would be a likely candidate. Of course there is no evidence of that. Then again, in a well run subversion campaign there would not be any such evidence.
A North Korean Dissident Defects to the American Right
The New York Times · by Charles Homans · June 22, 2023
“I think so many people in America think that somehow America is immune to tyranny,” Yeonmi Park told a Queens crowd recently.Credit...Jeenah Moon for The New York Times
The Great Read
Yeonmi Park’s account of the horrors of North Korea made her a human rights celebrity. Her new claims that America is on the same path have made her a right-wing media star.
“I think so many people in America think that somehow America is immune to tyranny,” Yeonmi Park told a Queens crowd recently.Credit...Jeenah Moon for The New York Times
By
“The first thing my mom taught me as a young girl living in North Korea was don’t even whisper, because birds and mice could hear me,” Yeonmi Park told the audience that had come to hear her speak in Queens.
“This is what dictators do: they plant a spike everywhere, a distrust between people, a distrust between family, even. The teachers tell their children,” she went on, “‘If your parents say one wrong thing, come to tell the teacher.’”
It was a story that Ms. Park has told often, on television sets and conference stages and in a best-selling memoir, over the decade she has spent as one of the world’s most famous defectors from the Kim family’s isolated totalitarian state.
But in recent years, she has added a new postscript.
“And now,” she told the crowd in Long Island City last weekend, “I see the same thing in America.”
Conservative pundits and politicians have long warned that liberal economics and cultural politics would set the United States on the road to leftist authoritarianism. But until two years ago, they had never had an ally quite like Ms. Park. A refugee from the world’s most infamous surviving Stalinist state, Ms. Park, 29, claims to back up those worst fears with firsthand experience: comparing calls to dismantle racism in math instruction, for instance, with lessons she received as a child in North Korean schools.
Describing her own recent experience as an undergraduate at Columbia University, Ms. Park told the Fox News host Mark Levin in an interview last month that the school’s pedagogy “is exactly what the North Korean regime used to brainwash people.” Left-wing indoctrination in American educational institutions, she said, “is, I think, the biggest threat that our nation, and our civilization is facing.”
She now denounces Hillary Clinton, with whom she once shared a conference stage, as an “absolute faker and liar,” and rails against transgender-oriented marketing campaigns: “Political correctness has erased women,” she wrote recently on Facebook.
Ms. Park has lived most of her adult life in the glare of media scrutiny. Years after fleeing North Korea at age 13, she appeared in a popular TV show in South Korea and then wrote a memoir, “In Order to Live.”
Underscoring it all is the warning that these complaints add up to something vastly more sinister than the sum of their Fox News chyrons. “I think so many people in America think that somehow America is immune to tyranny, and somehow a dictatorship begins like North Korea,” she said at the Queens event, hosted by the conservative organization Turning Point USA. “It didn’t begin there. It began with amazing promises of equity. They promised a socialist paradise to us.”
“And with that promise,” she added, “they took everything, one by one, from us.” The crowd gave her two standing ovations.
Ms. Park’s transformation from celebrity defector to loud critic of liberal identity politics is extraordinarily rare. Very few of the tens of thousands of people who have fled North Korea wade into domestic politics in the countries where they have taken refuge.
But in an American political climate that rewards hyperbole and alarm, Ms. Park, who became a U.S. citizen in 2021, has found a lucrative niche.
Her second book, “While Time Remains,” a self-described “warning for Americans” published in February, has already outpaced the hardcover sales of her best-selling 2015 memoir. She is a regular guest on popular right-leaning TV networks and podcasts, and speaker at conservative universities and think tanks.
This spring, she became a contributor to Turning Point USA, appearing at its conferences alongside figures like Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and James O’Keefe, the right-wing activist recently ousted from Project Veritas.
Her recent trajectory has drawn winces from some past allies and supporters, who worry about the toll that her dive into the American culture wars may take on her effectiveness as a human rights advocate. And some observers of her career, noting her history of reinvention and questions raised about the accuracy of her account, have lifted an eyebrow at her latest act.
“She’s an amazing entertainer,” said Jay Song, a professor of Korean studies at the Asia Institute of the University of Melbourne in Australia, who studies the experiences of North Korean defectors. “She’s very smart. She’s always picking up on keywords.”
A Celebrity Defector
In a recent interview, Ms. Park, who now lives in New York, described her own politics as less strident than they often appear in her media appearances. “I support gay marriage, I’m very socially liberal,” she said. “I never thought I was a conservative.” Asked whether she identifies as such now, she said no.
She likened the initial idea for her second book to Alexis de Tocqueville. “He comes from France to America — to American democracy,” she said. “So, like, what if a North Korean sees America and analyzes America?”
Ms. Park has lived most of her adult life in the glare of media scrutiny, in one form or another. Five years after escaping North Korea with her mother in 2007, at age 13, she was cast on “Now On My Way to Meet You,” a popular variety show on South Korean television starring young women who had defected.
Ms. Park in 2015. In South Korea, she was on a popular variety show starring young women who were defectors.
The program, which premiered in 2011, made North Koreans newly visible in South Korean popular culture. Ms. Park was one of its biggest stars, an effervescent personality who described her North Korean family as relatively affluent and was nicknamed “the Paris Hilton of North Korea.”
“I think a lot of South Koreans learned a lot from that show,” said Jean H. Lee, a journalist who reported from both North and South Korea for The Associated Press. “But it also created the celebrity defector culture.”
In 2014, Ms. Park was invited to speak at the One Young World conference in Dublin, where she revealed a far darker story of her life in North Korea and of her escape.
Amid sobs, she said her mother had been raped by the human trafficker who brought them across the border into China, and described a flight on foot across the Gobi Desert into Mongolia. Later, she would say that she herself had been sold as a teenager to a Chinese husband. She had to work in an adult online chat room, she said, before she and her mother escaped from China.
A video of her short speech — a horrific story delivered by a slight 21-year-old woman, wearing a traditional hanbok dress and trembling with emotion — went viral, making Ms. Park an international humanitarian celebrity. Within months she had a book deal with Penguin Random House for a memoir written with Maryanne Vollers, Hillary Clinton’s ghostwriter.
There were some noted inconsistencies among the stories Ms. Park had told to her South Korean audience and the ones she now told. Mary Ann Jolley, an Australian journalist, published a detailed account of conflicting and implausible details, from the government atrocities she described to the geographical details of her escape, her father’s death in China and her experience in detention in Mongolia.
Ms. Park has faced criticism over inconsistencies in her accounts of her life story. She blames language difficulties and the effects of trauma for some of the discrepancies. Credit...Jeenah Moon for The New York Times
Ms. Park has disputed some of Ms. Jolley’s criticisms but acknowledged others. Some were a result of language difficulties, she said, or the effects of trauma. She said others stemmed from liberties producers took with her identity on the show in South Korea.
“It was not a documentary,” she said. “It was an entertainment show.”
Ms. Park also said she resisted for years publicly divulging her full experience in China because of the stigma attached to it in conservative South Korea. “If I say I was a slave for two years as a kid, there’s no respected family that would take me as their daughter,” she said.
North Korea experts are quick to point out that Ms. Park’s inconsistencies, while prominent, were not wholly unique. Ms. Song, who has interviewed numerous North Korean defectors, noted that the country’s refugees are often unreliable narrators of their own experiences. Inside the country, she said, many learned to say whatever they needed to say to survive — “whatever works for them to find a safe haven,” she said.
But Ms. Lee said that the early questions surrounding Ms. Park’s account of her escape, as well as her history of self-promotion, limited her impact in North Korea policy circles.
“It’s a shame, because she has important things to say about what life is like in North Korea,” she said. “But I think it’s been clouded by a desire for attention or a platform.”
Disenchanted With the Gala Circuit
When she wrote her first book, Ms. Park and her publisher were mindful of the skepticism Ms. Jolley’s article generated, she said. Both she and Ms. Vollers have said they corroborated as much of the story as possible with interviews with family members and fellow defectors.
“In Order to Live” has sold more than 130,000 copies in hardcover and paperback combined, according to Circana BookScan. Ms. Park was showered with media attention, and she fielded invitations to private retreats hosted by Jeff Bezos and took selfies with Scarlett Johansson. She attended the Met Gala with Joe Gebbia, an Airbnb founder, and shared a speaking stage (at an event in partnership with The New York Times) with Mrs. Clinton, who looked her in the eye after her speech and “promised she would do everything in her power to help the women of North Korea,” Ms. Park later wrote. (A spokesman for Mrs. Clinton did not respond to a request for comment.)
Ms. Park onstage at the Turning Point USA event in Long Island City. She says the group pays her $6,600 a month for appearances.Credit...Jeenah Moon for The New York Times
In her new book, however, Ms. Park writes about being disenchanted by her brush with elites. They were more interested in emotional gratification than in action, she came to believe.
She began studying at Columbia University in 2016 and majored in human rights, in hopes of becoming a professional advocate. But some people who encountered her at the time recalled that she seemed to struggle with the transition from celebrity dissident to more policy-focused activism.
She tried to lend her star power to a group called Freedom for North Korea, which raised money for a sister organization in South Korea that rescued North Korean refugees from China — her personal passion. But Jin Park, a former human rights activist who worked with her in the group at the time, said Ms. Park was unsuccessful in the role and soon moved on.
“We thought that she could be a good fund-raiser because of her connections and networks,” he said. “I think she tried, but getting people’s money is not as easy as it sounds.” (Ms. Park says she quickly learned she was too busy for the role at the time.)
Peter Rosenblum, a professor of human rights law who taught Ms. Park in her senior seminar, recalled being unimpressed by her as a student. But he said he was sympathetic to her situation, as someone who seemed to be trapped by the persona that she had been cast in at a very young age.
“In the human rights world, you spend a career studying how people deploy victims’ stories, and the degrading effect of having to be a professional victim,” Mr. Rosenblum said. “I saw her very much as that person: the celebrity victim who was going to get her degree but hadn’t had the time and space to become a real student.”
By the end of her time at Columbia, Ms. Park says, she was disengaged from school and barely there, commuting to her classes from Chicago, where she was living with her then-husband — an American trading firm executive whom she has since divorced — and young son.
And at Columbia, she now says, she was quickly put off by a campus culture she describes as obsessed with safe spaces and pronouns.
“My classmates were almost like giant adult babies,” she said.
In her book, she writes that she was criticized for her enjoyment of Jane Austen novels and Western classical music. She describes the First Amendment as “a law Columbia teaches its students to hate” — though she does not mention that she studied at Columbia with Lee Bollinger, the university president and a prominent First Amendment scholar known for his expansive view of freedom of speech and for defending conservative and far-right speakers’ prerogative to appear on campus. Ms. Park declined to comment on the contents of the class. Columbia declined to comment.
Shortly after graduating in 2020, Ms. Park was assaulted and robbed of her wallet while out walking with her son in Chicago. As she used her cellphone to record her assailant, a Black woman, she said another woman shouted at her for doing so and called her a racist. (The assailant was later arrested and pleaded guilty to unlawful restraint, according to court records.)
The incident, she wrote, was a turning point in her own politics, “a sign of how far advanced the woke disease really was in America by that point, and how inhumane it was making otherwise normal people.” She began to seek out allies who felt similarly.
After reading a book by Jordan Peterson, the Canadian psychologist and popular conservative media personality, she sought out his daughter, Mikhaila, a podcaster and social-media lifestyle influencer, who invited her on her podcast. Hearing that Mr. Peterson was a collector of Soviet art, Ms. Park sent him a North Korean postcard she had saved.
Mr. Peterson invited her on his podcast, where she described her experience at Columbia. The interview led to a flurry of conservative media attention and, shortly thereafter, a $500,000 book deal with Threshold Editions, Simon & Schuster’s conservative imprint. Mr. Peterson wrote the book’s foreword.
‘It’s a Free Society’
Ms. Park maintains that her recent outspokenness has cost, not made, her money. The advance for “While Time Remains,” while significant, was well short of the $1.1 million she received for her previous book. Invitations for well-paying corporate speaking events that used to make up much of her income have slowed to a trickle, she said.
Ms. Park is also a regular on conservative podcasts and at events. Credit...Jeenah Moon for The New York Times
She now earns $6,600 a month from Turning Point USA, she said, and maintains a busy itinerary of talks before other conservative audiences who are more eager to hear her warnings about cancel culture and “woke” identity politics. After a recent talk in Brookfield, Wis., a suburb of Milwaukee, a local school board member, Sam Hughes, posted on Facebook about the power of Ms. Park’s presentation.
“The North Korean regime created schools not to teach children how to think, but what to believe,” Mr. Hughes wrote, warning about the dangers “groupthink and collectivism.” Considering his district’s equity programs, “North Korea’s example should come to mind,” he wrote.
Jihyun Park, a North Korean defector and a Conservative Party politician in Britain, who knows Ms. Park, said that Ms. Park’s trajectory rang true to her. North Koreans have particularly important insights into the perils of taking Western liberal democracy for granted, she said.
“The U.K. teaches me English and their culture, I’ve taught them freedom and democracy,” she said. In the United States, “Yeonmi also does this,” she said.
Ms. Song is more skeptical. She described Ms. Park as a perceptive reader, and reflector, of cultural and political expectations. “Her story in South Korea was a mirror of what South Korea was back then,” Ms. Song said. “Now,” she said, “it’s a mirror of the contemporary U.S. politics, U.S. society.”
Ms. Park, for her part, suggested that her latest turn might not be her last.
“I might write a completely different book in five years,” she said. “I might say everything that I wrote in the second book was dumb. But that’s O.K.”
She laughed. “It’s a free society,” she said.
Charles Homans covers politics for The Times and the Times Magazine. @chashomans
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The New York Times · by Charles Homans · June 22, 2023
7. [Herald Interview] Living witness recounts forging of US, South Korea's 'blood alliance'
Let us not forget. In three days we will remember the anniversary of the invasion of the South by the north on June 25, 1950
[Herald Interview] Living witness recounts forging of US, South Korea's 'blood alliance'
koreaherald.com · by Ji Da-gyum · June 22, 2023
Korean War veteran Lee In-bum recounts his experience of working with US Marine Aircraft Group 12 during an interview with The Korea Herald at the Ventral Hall of Patriots and Heroes in Seoul on Tuesday. (Lee Sang-sub/The Korea Herald)
At the age of 16, Lee In-bum made his way to Gangneung, Gangwon Province, in July 1951 amid the chaos of the Korean War, which had broken out the year before and torn the nation into pieces.
Although he was too young to enlist officially in the South Korean military, he was set on finding a way to help defend his homeland against the forces of North Korea and China. Through his service, the war veteran said he bore witness to the making of the "blood alliance" between South Korea and the United States.
"I clearly understand the true significance of the blood alliance. I toiled along with them," the now 88-year-old Lee told The Korea Herald on Tuesday at the Veterans Hall of Patriots and Heroes in Seoul. The Herald sat down with Lee in commemoration of June 25 – the day the three-year Korean War began in 1950, sparked by North Korea’s sudden attack on the South.
Driven by his genuine desire to make a meaningful contribution, Lee recalled how he approached the gates of the K-18 Gangneung Air Base, where the US Marine Aircraft Group 12 under the auspices of the 1st Marine Aircraft Wing was stationed. Standing shoulder to shoulder with the US Marine Corps in Gangwon Province, near the 38th parallel, Lee personally experienced the strength of the alliance.
Lee was able to communicate with US forces as he had learned English while in the port city of Busan. During his time there, he actively supported the US forces by organizing and categorizing food supplies intended for South Korea. He said he picked up English by memorizing the English names of approximately 300 food products.
Though he was merely a teenager, Lee earned the trust of the Marine Aircraft Group 12 and was entrusted with a crucial responsibility amid the workforce shortage during those challenging times.
Lee was in charge of aircraft armament maintenance. He assembled fuses and affixed them to aerial bombs, ensuring their proper functionality. Additionally, he personally undertook the task of loading 13-kilogram bombs onto the US' Corsair fighter jets, preparing them for their imminent takeoff from the airfield.
A restored photo of the F4U-4 Corsair fighter jet deployed during the Korean War. (Photo courtesy of Gerry Metzler's Flicker)
More than 70 years have passed, but his memories of the profound sacrifices made by US Marine aviators continue to stir the depths of Lee's heart.
"Although I was young at the time, I genuinely appreciated the immense efforts made by the US forces to come all the way to South Korea, thousands of miles away, and fight for our country."
Lee was unable to contain his emotions as tears streamed down his face during the interview. He recalled the Marine pilots who bravely returned, their bodies and aircraft bearing the scars of enemy anti-aircraft fire.
"The most heart-wrenching moment for me was when I saw fighter aircraft pilots, hit by enemy fire, return with scars. The emotions I experienced during those times are indescribable."
Corsairs returning from a combat mission over North Korea circle USS Boxer as they wait for planes in the next strike to launch, Sept. 4, 1951. (US Navy/ National Archives and Records Administration)
There were instances where the planes' wings were damaged, or the canopy had shattered due to anti-aircraft fire. In some cases, the aircraft returned with only the engine and the skeletal structure remaining, having endured hits from enemy anti-aircraft artillery.
In certain situations, when pilots were unable to release a malfunctioning bomb, they had no alternative but to land with the bomb still attached, putting their lives at risk. As the aircraft made contact with the ground, the bomb would sway back and forth, causing sparks upon collision with the runway.
"When I witnessed a fighter jet descending to land at the airfield with the bombs I had mounted, I was truly on pins and needles, fearful of the possibility of them exploding," Lee said.
"It felt as though my heart was being torn apart, engulfed in flames. With such sentiments, I dutifully carried out my responsibilities. So when I loaded the bombs and witnessed the combat pilots taking off, I always silently offered prayers for their safe return."
No matter how severe the damage, the US Marine pilots steadfastly towed the aircraft all the way to the runway partially to inform their fellow comrades about their status and to ensure that they would not be classified as missing in action.
"I remember fighter pilots still managing to land in the airfield despite being injured and shedding blood," Lee recounted. "However, I couldn't witness those who lost their lives in the same manner. When someone perishes in the air, it usually indicates that their aircraft either exploded midair or crashed into enemy territory."
A group photo of US Marine Air Group 12 during the Korean War. The photo is courtesy of J.R. Boyer and Thomas C. Courson, Marines who served at K-6 airfield south of Seoul during the war. (US Forces Korea)
Throughout the Korean War, the MAG-12 played a pivotal role in a multitude of operations, successfully executing over 80,000 combat sorties against enemy troops, installations, vehicles and crucial targets, as documented in a database provided by the US Marine Corps.
Lee said the primary mission of the MAG-12, stationed at the Ganggang Air Base, was to effectively impede the southward advancement of the Chinese People's Liberation Army, numbering in the hundreds of thousands, through airstrikes.
In a momentous occurrence, Lee and the US Marine forces valiantly assumed the defense of the Gangneung airbase during a harsh winter, coinciding with the Christmas season of 1951. Driven by vital intelligence, they became aware of an imminent peril: thousands of Chinese People's Liberation Army soldiers were mobilizing for a massive assault on Daegwallyeong Pass, located close to the airfield.
"The presence and dedication of US forces has prevented the spread of communism, enabled us to rebuild the country and thrive. Words cannot express the depth of gratitude I feel. I constantly hold them in grateful regard, even now," Lee said.
"I always think about how many brave US soldiers lost their lives on the Korean frontline. The number is in the tens of thousands. I am incredibly thankful for their sacrifices."
Marines of the First Marine Division pay their respects to fallen comrades during memorial services at the division's cemetery at Hamhung, North Korea, following the break-out from Chosin Reservoir in the winter of 1950. (US National Archives)
Inspired by the valor and commitment demonstrated by US pilots, Lee embarked on a new chapter by joining the South Korean Air Force in 1954, following the cessation of the Korean War. However, confronted with financial hardships and the challenges of sustaining himself on his military salary, he decided to get discharged from the military service in order to seek better opportunities and support himself more effectively in 1968.
Lee underscored the paramount importance of the unwavering alliance between South Korea and the US, highlighting its role as a pillar supporting the prosperity and development of liberal democracy in South Korea. The alliance holds even greater significance considering South Korea's geographical proximity to major powers such as China and Russia.
"How fortunate we are to live in a liberal democracy! But the abundance and comfort of our lives have led some to overlook the true value of these privileges," according to Lee.
Korean War veteran Lee In-bum poses for a photograph during an interview with The Korea Herald at the Ventral Hall of Patriots and Heroes in Seoul on Tuesday. (Lee Sang-sub/The Korea Herald)
As Lee nears his 90s, he openly shared his heartfelt desire to witness a unified Korean Peninsula, which served as his driving force during his participation in the Korean War.
Lee also expressed a profound longing to visit his hometown of Ryongchon County in North Korea’s North Pyongan Province before his death. In 1948, Lee and his older brother were compelled to defect from North Korea to escape the Soviet occupation of the North which began in 1945.
"Unification seems unattainable at present. But I hold the belief that communism is ultimately unsustainable due to challenges in maintaining livelihoods and limited freedom. How do people manage their lives in such a country?" Lee said.
"However, it is regrettable that the path toward unification is taking such a long time."
By Ji Da-gyum (dagyumji@heraldcorp.com)
koreaherald.com · by Ji Da-gyum · June 22, 2023
8. Presidential official highlights S. Korea's pursuit of role for Indo-Pacific security
The global pivotal state and a US partner in the INDOPACIFIC steps up as President Yoon said it would do in his campaign remarks in 2020.
Presidential official highlights S. Korea's pursuit of role for Indo-Pacific security | Yonhap News Agency
en.yna.co.kr · by Song Sang-ho · June 22, 2023
SEOUL, June 22 (Yonhap) -- South Korea intends to "actively" contribute to building deterrence in the Indo-Pacific, a presidential security official said Thursday, amid steady efforts by Seoul and Washington to broaden their security alliance beyond the Korean Peninsula.
Principal Deputy National Security Advisor Kim Tae-hyo made the remark, expressing confidence that following the allies' adoption of the Washington Declaration, South Korea will have a credible U.S. nuclear deterrence against growing North Korean military threats.
President Yoon Suk Yeol and his U.S. counterpart, Joe Biden, adopted the declaration at the White House summit in April, in order to strengthen the credibility of the U.S.' extended deterrence commitment to using the full range of its military capabilities, including nuclear, to defend its ally.
"The Republic of Korea, which will secure the most direct, strong, and responsible nuclear umbrella of the United States, intends to actively contribute to the establishment of extended deterrence in the Indo-Pacific region," Kim said in his pre-released speech for a security forum, referring to South Korea by its official name.
He did not elaborate on how Seoul will contribute to the deterrence efforts for regional security.
This file photo, taken June 13, 2023, shows Principal Deputy National Security Adviser Kim Tae-hyo speaking during a press briefing at the presidential office in Seoul. (Pool photo) (Yonhap)
Hosted by the Korea Institute for Military Affairs and the Korea Defense and Security Forum, the forum was held to discuss the meaning of the Washington Declaration and the U.S.' extended deterrence.
Kim cast the declaration as a "significant milestone."
"It is the first instance where the United States has adopted a separate document to establish a one-on-one extended deterrence framework with a specific ally," Kim said. "An integrated extended deterrence system has been established that allows South Korea and the United States to consult and decide at any time and take action together."
The official also stressed national defense as a "cornerstone of peace," saying security relies on "maintaining a strong military power and demonstrating unwavering determination to employ it when necessary."
"National security encompasses the imperative to protect the survival of the state," he said. "Prioritizing and upholding our national security is of utmost importance, as without it all other aspects of life, such as stability of the economy, investments and the well-being of households, are meaningless."
Also present at the forum was Vice Defense Minister Shin Beom-chul.
Shin underscored the Yoon administration's commitment to achieving "peace by overwhelming power" rather than a "false peace" dependent on the goodwill of the enemy.
"South Korea and the U.S. are working together to strengthen their joint efforts in maintaining overwhelming military power through the implementation of measures aimed at bolstering the extended deterrence promised in the (Washington) Declaration," he said.
sshluck@yna.co.kr
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en.yna.co.kr · by Song Sang-ho · June 22, 2023
9. S. Korea, NATO ink arrangement to begin recognition process for military airworthiness certification
The global pivotal state.
S. Korea, NATO ink arrangement to begin recognition process for military airworthiness certification | Yonhap News Agency
en.yna.co.kr · by Song Sang-ho · June 22, 2023
SEOUL, June 22 (Yonhap) -- South Korea and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) have signed an arrangement to launch the mutual recognition process for military airworthiness certification, Seoul's defense procurement agency said Thursday.
Representatives from Korea's Defense Acquisition Program Administration (DAPA) and the NATO Aviation Committee inked it at NATO headquarters in Brussels on Wednesday (local time), in a move to strengthen bilateral cooperation on air safety.
Airworthiness is a key measure of a plane's suitability for safe flight. If the bilateral recognition process is complete, it would mean NATO will recognize the Seoul government's airworthiness certification for a South Korean-made plane, according to DAPA.
South Korea is the first Asian country seeking a mutual recognition of airworthiness certification with NATO. It currently has mutual recognition agreements with the United States, Spain, France and Australia.
Kim Jheenong, director general of DAPA's Defense Industry Promotion Bureau, expressed his expectations that the South Korea-NATO mutual recognition, if realized, will help enhance the competitiveness of South Korea's aircraft exports.
Kim Jheenong (L), director general of the Defense Industry Promotion Bureau of South Korea's Defense Acquisition Program Administration (DAPA), and Giorgio Cioni, head of the NATO Aviation Committee pose for a photo as they meet to sign an arrangement to launch the mutual recognition process for military airworthiness certification at NATO headquarters in Brussels on June 21, 2023, in this photo released by the DAPA. (PHOTO NOT FOR SALE) (Yonhap)
sshluck@yna.co.kr
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en.yna.co.kr · by Song Sang-ho · June 22, 2023
10. S. Korea vows $130m Ukraine aid this year
South Korea is stepping up as a partner in the Arsenal of Democracy (directly and indirectly).
S. Korea vows $130m Ukraine aid this year
koreaherald.com · by Choi Si-young · June 22, 2023
Published : Jun 22, 2023 - 17:32 Updated : Jun 22, 2023 - 18:20
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy attends a news conference during his meeting with delegation of African leaders in Kyiv, Ukraine on June 16, 2023. (AP-Yonhap)
South Korea said Thursday it will provide an additional $130 million in aid to help Ukraine recover from Russia’s invasion, at a two-day annual conference that started a day ago in London for the second time.
At the Ukraine Recovery Conference, which brought together officials from 61 countries and 33 international organizations and at least 400 companies, Bang Moon-kyu, minister of the Office for Government Policy Coordination, said Seoul pledged a $30 million increase in its budgetary support for Kyiv this year compared to last year.
“We will be able to help Kyiv to restore not only key infrastructure but essential social services (needed for Ukrainians),” Bang said in a statement released by his office. The Cabinet-level official assisting the Korean prime minister with policy referred to reconstruction projects Seoul had successfully put together on its own following the 1950-53 Korean War.
Public and private sector decision makers should closely work together and take part in rebuilding the wart-torn country, Bang added.
At the conference, Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said he expected to secure almost $7 billion in aid, stressing what Kyiv is facing now is the largest reconstruction project in Europe since the World War II. Kyiv says it should not only recover but develop into a more modernized Western country.
By Choi Si-young (siyoungchoi@heraldcorp.com)
11. U.S. nuclear-powered submarine set to depart after combined drills with S. Korea
Kim Jong Un should keep in mind that once it leaves port he will never know where it is but that it will be able to strike Pyongyang at a moment's notice whenever he miscalculates and does something that requires bringing an end to the regime.
U.S. nuclear-powered submarine set to depart after combined drills with S. Korea | Yonhap News Agency
en.yna.co.kr · by Song Sang-ho · June 22, 2023
SEOUL, June 22 (Yonhap) -- A U.S. nuclear-powered guided missile submarine (SSGN) is set to leave South Korea on Thursday, an informed source said, following its combined special warfare drills with the Korean Navy.
The Ohio-class SSGN, USS Michigan, arrived Friday last week in an apparent show of America's naval might, a day after North Korea fired two short-range ballistic missiles toward the East Sea in apparent protest against the allies' massive live-fire drills.
Jeon Ha-kyu, the spokesperson of Seoul's defense ministry, told reporters that the submarine engaged in a combined special ops training with the South Korean Navy during its stay here but did not elaborate further.
It marked the first time the U.S. has sent an SSGN to South Korea since October 2017.
The SSGN deployment here came after the United States pledged to further enhance the "regular visibility" of its strategic assets on the Korean Peninsula through the Washington Declaration adopted by President Yoon Suk Yeol and U.S. President Joe Biden at their White House summit in April.
The Ohio-class nuclear-powered guided missile submarine USS Michigan arrives at a key naval base in Busan, 320 kilometers southeast of Seoul, on June 16, 2023. (Yonhap)
sshluck@yna.co.kr
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en.yna.co.kr · by Song Sang-ho · June 22, 2023
12. Yoon arrives in Vietnam for state visit
Yoon arrives in Vietnam for state visit | Yonhap News Agency
en.yna.co.kr · by Lee Haye-ah · June 22, 2023
By Lee Haye-ah
HANOI, June 22 (Yonhap) -- South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol arrived in Hanoi on Thursday for a three-day state visit focused on expanding economic cooperation with the Southeast Asian nation.
Yoon is scheduled to hold a summit with Vietnamese President Vo Van Thuong on Friday and discuss ways to deepen the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership established between the two countries last year.
South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol (L) and first lady Kim Keon Hee disembark Air Force One upon arriving at Noi Bai International Airport in Hanoi on June 22, 2023. (Yonhap)
He will hold separate talks with Nguyen Phu Trong, general secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam, Vietnamese Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh and Vuong Dinh Hue, chairman of Vietnam's National Assembly, and also attend a state dinner.
Yoon's office said the visit would focus on strengthening economic cooperation with South Korea's third-largest trading partner, with four different economic events planned, including a bilateral partnership fair, a luncheon with South Korean businesspeople in Vietnam and a business forum.
"Through this state visit, we plan to check various institutional bases to enable more active economic activities between the two countries and expand the horizon of bilateral cooperation to new areas, such as critical mineral supply chains, new and renewable energy, innovative science and technology, and smart cities," Principal Deputy National Security Adviser Kim Tae-hyo told reporters last week.
A 205-member business delegation is accompanying Yoon on the visit, the largest yet under the current administration, including Samsung Electronics Executive Chairman Lee Jae-yong, SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won and Hyundai Motor Group Executive Chair Euisun Chung.
This is Yoon's first bilateral visit to a member of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.
He is also scheduled to meet with Korean residents in Vietnam, visit a Korean language center and attend a cultural event.
First lady Kim Keon Hee is accompanying him on the visit, the second leg of a two-nation tour that earlier took the president and the first lady to France.
hague@yna.co.kr
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en.yna.co.kr · by Lee Haye-ah · June 22, 2023
13. A Basement of Horrors in Seoul, Where Past and Present Collide
All countries have a shameful past. Great countries admit and correct their mistakes.
A Basement of Horrors in Seoul, Where Past and Present Collide
The New York Times · by Lauretta Charlton · June 22, 2023
South Korea Dispatch
A building where South Korean dissidents were interrogated and tortured by a powerful government agency is now home to a popular youth hostel.
The Seoul Youth Hostel in Namsan used to be the headquarters of the Korean Central Intelligence Agency, where pro-democracy protesters were brought for interrogation during South Korea’s postwar authoritarian years.Credit...Chang W. Lee/The New York Times
By
Reporting from Seoul
June 22, 2023, 5:00 a.m. ET
The hostel in central Seoul has a lot to recommend it. The rooms are tidy and affordable enough for K-pop fanatics on a budget and families in need of lots of space on vacation. It’s perched at the base of Namsan, the scenic, leafy mountain peak in the heart of town. There’s even a rooftop with panoramic views of the city.
Just don’t try to go to the basement.
Namsan, with its winding trails and springtime cherry blossoms, has long been a top destination for tourists in Seoul. Not long ago, though, “going to Namsan” meant something different, something sinister.
The phrase was typically used during South Korea’s postwar authoritarian years as a euphemism for bringing pro-democracy protesters to the Korean Central Intelligence Agency headquarters and interrogating them. Torture was common, and one of the preferred venues was the basement of the Seoul Municipal Youth Hostel, which once housed the K.C.I.A.
The building now stands as a symbol of the country’s tangled relationship with the past and the present, though its shameful reputation hardly seemed to register with guests who milled about in the lobby on a recent afternoon, requesting bathroom towels from reception and taking cheery group photos.
The pleasant, shaded path toward the hostel is lined with subtle, easy-to-miss nods to Korean history. A small plaque on the ground is engraved with the words “Trail of National Humiliation,” a reference to the nearby location where the Japanese resident-general of Korea lived during Japan’s occupation of the Korean Peninsula, which ended in 1945.
A plaque near the hostel engraved with the words “Trail of National Humiliation.”Credit...Chang W. Lee/The New York Times
The Sixth Bureau Building, another K.C.I.A. torture site, is also in the vicinity. That building, with its distinctive red exterior, has a mock interrogation bunker that visitors can view as an audio track plays ominous voices overhead.
In Korean, the number six is pronounced yuk, which is another word for meat. “They say that people were taken to the Sixth Bureau to be butchered like meat,” said Yang Seung-phil, a former manager at the hostel.
During the Korean War, South Korea was virtually leveled, and like a dragon rising from a ditch — an old Korean saying — a new nation was born. Observing what remains and what has fallen to ruin or been destroyed — or revived — is an exercise in understanding the country’s national identity.
“History is not without words; it is only when it is not spoken of that it is silent,” reads a brochure for the Sixth Bureau Building memorial site.
The Sixth Bureau Building, near the hostel, was also a K.C.I.A. site. The building, with its distinctive red exterior, has a mock interrogation bunker that visitors can view as an audio track plays ominous voices overhead.Credit...Chang W. Lee/The New York Times
In Seoul, gleaming high-rise buildings tower over meticulously maintained ruins dating to the Joseon Dynasty, whose rulers governed Korea from the 14th century until the beginning of the 20th, when the country became a Japanese protectorate. The occupation lasted for more than three decades before Japan surrendered to the Allies at the end of World War II.
Korea was then rocked by a civil war between the communists in the North and the U.N.-backed forces in the South. The violence left the peninsula cleaved in half.
In the South, national monuments burned and strafed during the Korean War were rebuilt with precision and fidelity as symbols of national pride. But remnants of Japanese colonial rule were deliberately demolished in South Korea as recently as the 1990s.
The K.C.I.A. headquarters, however, where screams once echoed through hallways, has been allowed to stand. Some see it as a necessary reminder of the country’s flirtation with autocracy, others say it represents a bitter chapter that many would rather forget.
When Kang Yong-joo was a medical student in his early 20s, he was accused of distributing pro-communist material and tortured at Namsan in 1985. He said many survivors of the K.C.I.A. suffer from post-traumatic stress and repressed memories. It’s not uncommon for victims to “feel sick when they see Namsan,” said Mr. Kang, who has seldom revisited the mountain.
A sign next to a locked door explains that the basement of the former K.C.I.A. building has three levels and was sometimes called the “Underground Torture Chamber.”Credit...Chang W. Lee/The New York Times
The K.C.I.A. was once the most powerful institution in South Korea, established in 1961 with the help of the American government after a successful coup led by the South Korean dictator Park Chung-hee. A State Department official once described the agency as “a combination of the Gestapo and the Soviet K.G.B.” Its practices also included extortion, lobbying American lawmakers and intimidating Korean immigrants in the United States.
The headquarters on Namsan were built in 1973. That same year, Choe Jong-gil, a law professor at Seoul National University, was tortured to death during interrogation. Some historians believe he was the first victim to be killed at the site. The right-wing government maintained that he caused his own death by jumping from a window.
“In the case of Namsan, it’s really kind of promiscuous the way the past and the present interact,” said Bruce Cumings, a historian and the author of “Korea’s Place In the Sun.” “The largest Japanese Shinto shrine during the colonial period was on Namsan. It got destroyed immediately after liberation in 1945.”
In its place, the Korean government built a large statue of An Jung-geun, the Korean nationalist who assassinated Japanese prime minister Ito Hirobumi in 1909. “So you had a replacement of a Japanese symbol with one of the biggest symbols of Korean resistance to the Japanese,” Mr. Cumings said.
A statue of An Jung-geun, near the hostel. The Korean nationalist assassinated the prime minister of Japan, Ito Hirobumi, in 1909. Credit...Chang W. Lee/The New York Times
The K.C.I.A. underwent a series of changes after South Korea’s pro-democracy movement and is now called the National Intelligence Service.
At the hostel, staff members are quick to smile and greet guests, and the unfussy rooms with bare walls and bunk beds make it difficult to imagine the suffering that once took place in these same quarters. Most visitors are blissfully unaware of the history.
The local government, which owns and operates the hostel in collaboration with a nonprofit, took pains to make the building a welcoming place for young people, beginning in 2006. During the pandemic, the building was turned into a treatment center. More recently, renovations were made to modernize the rooms as tourists flocked back to Seoul.
The basement is now run by the Seoul Emergency Operations Center and is strictly off limits to civilians.
The hostel’s rooftop.Credit...Chang W. Lee/The New York Times
Han Hong-gu, a history professor at Sungkonghoe University in Seoul, said he wants the hostel to be turned into a museum dedicated to the democratization of South Korea. In 2009, when the Seoul City Government considered destroying the former K.C.I.A. buildings on Namsan, Mr. Han, 63, organized a campaign opposing the plan.
“Some buildings should be kept to teach the later generations lessons of history,” he said. “A site of dark history should be preserved.”
Near the entrance of the hostel, a nondescript mailbox invites visitors to write letters reflecting on human rights. Hwang Eui-sun, who used to work at the hostel as president of the nonprofit, said the mailbox didn’t have any real function these days, but was there as a “symbol of remembrance for the road to democracy.”
Cobwebs have gathered around it.
This mailbox, near the entrance to the hostel, invites visitors to write letters reflecting on issues of human rights.Credit...Chang W. Lee/The New York Times
Jin Yu Young and Choe Sang-Hun contributed reporting from Seoul.
Lauretta Charlton is an editor on the International desk in Seoul, where she oversees coverage of Southeast Asia and the Koreas. She was previously an editor on the National desk and the editor of the weekly Race/Related newsletter. @laurettaland
The New York Times · by Lauretta Charlton · June 22, 2023
14. South Korea to Drop ‘Killer Questions’ From College Entrance Exam
Testing is tough in South Korea.
South Korea to Drop ‘Killer Questions’ From College Entrance Exam
The New York Times · by Jin Yu Young · June 21, 2023
The exam is notorious for extremely difficult problems, some of which seem to have little to do with the test topic. Even the president has complained.
Students waiting for the start of the annual college entrance examination in Seoul last year. The test is known for its rigor and has been openly criticized by academics.Credit...Pool photo by Heo Ran
By
June 21, 2023
Although the standardized test topic was the Korean language, the students had to answer questions about equity capital and risk-weighted bank assets. Problems on the “society” portion of the exam challenged them to decipher three-dimensional hypothetical analyses of Piaget’s theory of cognitive development.
For years, high school seniors in South Korea taking the annual college entrance exam known as the College Scholastic Ability Test, or the CSAT, have faced what are commonly called “killer questions” — extremely difficult problems that are seemingly incongruous with the section titles they fall under and that are sometimes outside the scope of the public education system curriculum.
The test, notorious not just for its rigor, has also long kept the private education industry booming. So-called cram schools are typically filled with students until well past midnight, and the stakes that come with acing the CSAT have fueled an intense rat race among students to enter the nation’s best universities. Hundreds of thousands of students sit for the nine-hour exam, typically held every November.
But this week, after government officials complained about “killer questions,” the head of the organization that administers the exam stepped down.
“I decided to take responsibility and resign,” Lee Gue-min, the president of the Korea Institute for Curriculum and Evaluation, said in a statement on Monday. “We apologize for causing concern to the students and parents who have been having a hard time preparing for the exam.”
Mr. Lee, whose term was set to run through February 2025, stepped down just days after government officials had raised concerns over the test including material not covered by the public school curriculum. Last week, President Yoon Suk Yeol asked that material not covered in public school be removed from the exams.
On Wednesday, the Ministry of Education announced that it would drop the “killer questions” as a way to reduce families’ reliance on private schooling and the financial burden that comes with that. The changes are set to take effect with this year’s CSAT.
South Korea’s private education sector has flourished over the past few decades, thanks to cram schools. Last year, families spent a whopping 26 trillion won — around $20 billion — on private education, a 10 percent increase from the year before, according to government statistics.
The exam has also been openly criticized by academics, who echo the government’s concerns. “I was dumbfounded and angry,” Kim Kwang-doo, a professor of economics at Sogang University in Seoul, wrote on Facebook in response to a CSAT problem. “Is there a high school student who could solve problems that are this difficult without the help of top instructors at private academies?”
The government’s push to lighten the burden of private education costs might be a welcome move to some, but those in the private academy business say the effort might not make a difference.
Students attend private academies to prepare for test questions of all levels of complexity, not just the “killer” ones, said Kang Ho-nam, the executive vice president of a private math tutoring service based in Seoul that uses artificial intelligence.
“By changing the exam so close to the date, students will be even more anxious, leading to their continued enrollment in private academies,” he said, adding that the CSAT was a comprehensive exam.
By eliminating the most difficult questions that students might typically get wrong, test takers will be subject to bigger point penalties for making mistakes on easier questions, suggested Koo Yong-hyun, a former private tutor who has helped prepare more than 50 students over the past decade for the CSAT. “Killer questions ensure that the efforts of the top students don’t go to waste,” he said.
Jin Yu Young reports on South Korea and other countries in Asia from the Seoul newsroom. She joined The Times in 2021. @Jin_charli
A version of this article appears in print on , Section A, Page 8 of the New York edition with the headline: South Korea to Eliminate Hard Problems on Exam
The New York Times · by Jin Yu Young · June 21, 2023
15. The Bush Institute announces recipients of the 2023 Lindsay Lloyd North Korea Freedom Scholarship
What great news. I am so happy to see two of my very best friends from north Korea to be awarded scholarships. Thank you President Bush for all that you do to help escapees from the north. May we all be inspired by the work of the Bush Center and help escapees wherever we can.
The Bush Institute announces recipients of the 2023 Lindsay Lloyd North Korea Freedom Scholarship | George W. Bush Presidential Center
bushcenter.org
Press Release June 20, 2023
The Bush Institute announces recipients of the 2023 Lindsay Lloyd North Korea Freedom Scholarship
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$70,000 in funds awarded to 15 North Koreans to pursue higher education
Dallas, TX – Today, the George W. Bush Institute awarded a total of $70,000 to 15 students as part of the 2023 Lindsay Lloyd North Korea Freedom Scholarship. Established in 2017, the scholarship is designed to help North Korean escapees and their children pursue higher education and build productive, prosperous lives.
Administered by Communities Foundation of Texas, the scholarship program selects recipients based on merit and need. Scholarships are used for vocational school, community college, and university as recipients aspire to lead a variety of careers in fields ranging from science and sociology to education, political science, and more. To date, nearly $300,000 has been awarded in the form of 75 scholarships.
The 2023 Lindsay Lloyd North Korea Freedom Scholarship recipients include:
- S.K.A., who is studying global affairs at Syracuse University.
- Min Gyeong Choe, who is studying couple and family therapy at Adler University.
- K.S.J., who is studying architecture at Iowa State University.
- M.R.J., who is studying biology at UCLA.
- M.S.J., who is studying political science at UCLA.
- A.K., who is studying operations research and management science at UC Berkeley.
- H.H.K., who is studying sociology at the University of Southern California.
- R.J.K., who is studying psychology at Chatham University.
- Y.M.K., who is studying science at Orange Coast College.
- Hyunseung Lee, who is pursuing a master’s in global leadership at Columbia University.
- H.L., who is studying theology at Tindale International University.
- Seo Hyun Lee, who is studying international affairs at Columbia University.
- Seol Lim, who is studying sociology at UC Santa Barbara.
- Grace Noh, who is studying communications at George Mason University.
- S.O.O., who is studying acupuncture at Virginia University of Integrative Medicine.
Some of the recipients prefer not to reveal their backgrounds publicly to protect loved ones still living in North Korea.
The scholarship is part of the Bush Institute’s ongoing work to improve the human condition in North Korea, which aims to expose the suffering of the North Korean people and put their stories on the radar of policy makers and opinion leaders. According to the Refugee Processing Center, 224 North Korean escapees have been admitted to the United States between 2006 and April 2023.
“As a North Korean escapee and former scholarship recipient myself, I’m deeply inspired by the bravery and determination of this year’s awardees,” said Joseph Kim, Associate and Expert-in-Residence of Freedom and Democracy at the Bush Institute. “It’s an honor to support them as they work to receive an education and live freely in America.”
The Lindsay Lloyd North Korea Freedom Scholarship Committee reviewed the applications and recommended awards. The Selection Committee members included:
- Jieun Baek, Research Project Manager on Technology and Human Rights in North Korea at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy
- Sheena Greitens, Associate Professor, University of Texas at Austin
- Thomas Kim, Chief Financial Officer, Smoothie King
- Jensen Ko, Managing Partner, AriseN Partners LP
- Kenyatta Lovett, Managing Director of Higher Education, Educated Texas
- Chris Walsh, Director, Freedom and Democracy, George W. Bush Institute
- Anne Wicks, the Ann Kimball Johnson Director, Education and Opportunity, George W. Bush Institute
Next year’s scholarship application period will open in early 2024.
For more information about the scholarship and the Bush Institute’s efforts to support escapees and improve the human condition in North Korea, please visit bushcenter.org/northkorea. For more information about Communities Foundation of Texas, please visit www.cftexas.org.
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About the George W. Bush Institute
The George W. Bush Institute is a solution-oriented nonpartisan policy organization focused on ensuring opportunity for all, strengthening democracy, and advancing free societies. Housed within the George W. Bush Presidential Center, the Bush Institute is rooted in compassionate conservative values and committed to creating positive, meaningful, and lasting change at home and abroad. We utilize our unique platform and convening power to advance solutions to national and global issues of the day. Learn more at bushcenter.org.
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