Response [NY TIMES] The Parasites Feeding on North Koreans > korea

본문 바로가기
영문뉴스 보기
2024년 3월 28일
남북공동선언 관철하여 조국통일 이룩하자!
사이트 내 전체검색
뉴스  

korea

Response [NY TIMES] The Parasites Feeding on North Koreans

페이지 정보

작성자 편집실 작성일17-12-01 10:04 조회16,377회 댓글0건

본문

This Op-Ed was published by the New York Times last week by Brian Hook, who is a senior policy advisor at the State Dept. The original piece can be read here. One of our readers was infuriated by it and decided to write a response, which we are now publishing here. [Response is in bold.]


{

Earlier this month at the National Assembly in Seoul, President Trump highlighted the tragic tale of the “two Koreas” — one free, just and peaceful, the other tyrannical, oppressive and dangerous. This contrast is at the root of America’s most urgent national security challenge.

}


Let’s keep in mind this is the same President Trump who can’t find bad things to say about the KKK but thinks professional athletes who protest tyranny and oppression in the United States should be quiet.


{

It is also now on vivid display in a South Korean hospital, where doctors are working to save a wounded and malnourished North Korean soldier who defected last week from Kim Jong-un’s slave state.

}


Kim Jong-un’s slave state? What does that mean? Considering the U.S. has the largest rate of incarceration in the world, in addition to having private prisons, in addition to using prison labor for private corporations, isn’t the US the actual slave state? I mean, the White House itself, where Donald Trump currently resides, was built by slaves, was it not? Wasn’t the country built by slaves and grown through genocide? Why does the NY Times leave this out and call the DPRK a “slave state”? Based on what?


Perhaps the US can once again “liberate” yet again another country, just as they helped “liberate” Libya in 2011, where it is literally a slave state, where black slaves are being sold at auction. Congratulations once again to the United States.


{

The defector, whose full name is still not publicly known, risked his life by speeding across the Demilitarized Zone in a jeep, then dashing across the heavily guarded border at Panmunjon. He knew that North Korean troops have shoot-to-kill orders against anyone trying to flee. By the time he made it across, some six bullets had pierced his arms and torso.

}


Wow, sounds like it’ll make a great movie. However, let’s not forget that in 2013 that South Korean troops shot dead a man who was trying to swim across a border river into the north. [Source: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-24105977 ]


Somehow, it seems that you are supposed to nitpick any behavior coming from the DPRK but give a pass to all transgressions of South Korea and of course, the United States.


{

South Korean guards rescued him 55 yards south of the border, and doctors soon discovered just how grave his condition was: Along with the bullet wounds, he also had hepatitis B, pneumonia and “an enormous number” of parasitic worms in his intestines, some up to 11 inches long. “I’ve never seen anything like this in my 20 years as a physician,” said his South Korean surgeon. The worms can burrow into fresh wounds, with potentially devastating effects.

}


What a wonderful doctor who acts unethically by releasing a patient’s private health information. Is he a doctor or is he seeking fame?


{

This defector’s plight is a window onto North Korean life. For all the regime’s spending on sophisticated weapons, monuments to the Kim family and bribes for elites in Pyongyang, even trusted soldiers suffer terrible malnourishment. A vast majority of other North Koreans endure still worse. Such is the cruelty of North Korea’s regime — and such is the responsibility of those foreign governments that enable it.

}


Wait, so we’ve been hearing for a while that only the soldiers and the “elite” are living well, and that everyone else is suffering. Now, apparently there’s a problem of malnutrition even among “trusted soldiers”? Such is the cruelty of the “regime”?


Wow, I don’t even know where to start on this one. No mention of any of the sanctions on the DPRK and how it affects the people, no mention of the US refusal to sign a peace treaty with the DPRK and its habit of regularly going and bombing other countries as being a possibly reason as to why the DPRK spends on weapons.


Of course, there is zero mention that the US military budget is larger than the next 8 or 9 countries combined, and this is while the majority of the population are poor, with no savings, no hope for the future, and all while the ruling class of billionaires become wealthier and wealthier. In the US, they say “support our troops”, but go through Skid Row in Downtown Los Angeles and you show me how many veterans are homeless and being “supported” while billionaires like Donald Trump fly around on private jets and grabs women by the p***y.



{

Every one of North Korea’s 23 million people is subject to the brutal state-imposed caste system known as songbun. The word “songbun” should be notorious around the world. From birth, every North Korean is marked by the government as a member of a loyal “core” caste, a “wavering” middle caste or a “hostile” caste, and this designation determines access to food, housing, education, jobs — everything. During the famine of the 1990s, when more than two million North Koreans perished, the songbun system often determined who ate and who starved.

}


Reminds me of those who are born in the US as black. They are marked from birth as being lower-class, even savages. At one point, they were legally considered in the United States as only 3/5 human. They suffer racial injustice from birth until death. In fact, their whole history in the Americas has been marked by oppression, and they are still oppressed to this day. It is this very oppression that when those who have a voice speak out against it, they are told to shut up, are threatened, and their careers are destroyed (like Colin Kaepernick). 


Black people, even unarmed, are regularly murdered by police officers. They are disproportionately imprisoned compared to whites for the same crimes and also given longer sentences. Whenever a leader emerges in the black community, they are also threatened by the government and somehow end up murdered (Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, Fred Hampton, and others).


{

North Korea once had relatively productive heavy industry, in addition to minerals and other natural resources. But while South Korea boomed after the Korean War and became one of the world’s great economies, the Communist North immiserated its people. Malnutrition makes children in North Korea significantly shorter and thinner than children in South Korea.

}


Remember that time on 60 Minutes when former US Secretary of State Madeline Albright was asked about whether US sanctions on Iraq that led to the deaths of 500,000+ Iraqi children was “worth it”? Her response was that it was.


Now, times have changed and we make no mention of sanctions. The US will sanction a country to hell, causing its people to suffer, and make their lives harder. Then, they will turn around and blame that country’s leaders for making life harder. Does that make sense?


{

Some 30,000 North Koreans have defected, mostly in the past two decades, and mostly by traveling a highly dangerous route through China and eventually to South Korea. Part of the danger comes from the North Korean border guards who shoot to kill. Part of the danger comes from vicious human traffickers who lure defectors into forced labor or prostitution. And part of the danger comes from Chinese authorities who send defectors back to North Korea, where they face imprisonment and execution. Such repatriations violate China’s clear legal obligations under the International Refugee Convention.

}


Which border guards do not shoot to kill? How many Mexicans are being shot at the US-Mexico border as they try to come into the US? If danger comes from Chinese authorities who send “defectors” back to North Korea, then is there danger coming from US authorities who send Latino “defectors” back to their countries? 



{

North Korea also goes after those defectors who manage to make it to freedom. The Trump administration this week designated North Korea as a state sponsor of terrorism, partly because of assassinations of North Korean defectors and dissidents abroad, including Kim Jong-un’s half brother, killed recently with VX nerve agent in Malaysia. The United States will not sit idly by as a rogue regime lawlessly pursues those who have made the life-or-death choice to run to freedom.

}


Wow, the US has designated the DPRK as a state sponsor of terrorism, based on allegations of assassinations of defectors, dissidents, and Kim Jong Un’s half-brother. Wow, so how many of these are proven? Are we still going to blame the DPRK for Kim Jong Nam’s murder? With what evidence? At least in 2003 when Colin Powell presented “evidence” of WMD, it was at least forged. Now, no evidence is even provided.


And the US is talking about “rogue regimes”? Which is the country that has hundreds of military bases around the world and has killed tens of millions of people across the globe since WW2?  Who actually supported Osama bin Laden in the 1980s? Who actually supported Al Qaeda in Syria? Who is really sponsoring terrorism? The DPRK, whose military is only within its own borders and does not attack anyone? Or, the US, which has a history of terror, murder, genocide, slavery, oppression, destruction, etc.?


{

Kim Jong-un also sends North Koreans overseas to earn money for his regime through slave labor at mines, logging camps, construction sites and the like, especially in China. Russia also uses North Korean forced laborers, some of whom are believed to have worked on soccer stadiums for the 2018 World Cup. United Nations officials estimated that Pyongyang earns some $230 million a year this way. The Trump administration has called on China, Russia and all other countries exploiting North Korean forced labor to cease immediately.

}


What exactly is a “forced laborer”? Does that mean anyone who doesn’t want to work but has to work is a “forced laborer”? Well, then, count just about everyone as a forced laborer then! I mean, it’s hard for me to imagine anyone engaging in difficult work is doing it because they are passionate about it, but we all need to work in order to survive, do we not? So if a job is like any other job in that you do your work and you get paid, what makes it “forced labor”? Is it like the cheap labor that prisoners in the US provide for corporations like P&G, Verizon, and Walmart?



{

It is important to detail North Korea’s human rights horrors because they lend insight into the nuclear menace we face, and into those other countries still willing to trade with and cover for the Pyongyang regime. The North is as threatening to peace in Asia as it is cruel to its own people. It is past time for all civilized nations — and certainly for all nations seeking greater respect on the international stage — to work together fully for North Korean denuclearization, belatedly but finally.

}


The nuclear menace “we” face? Who is “we”? The United States faces a “menace” in the DPRK? Holy crap, imagine if in the Bible the big huge arrogant Goliath went around telling everyone that the much smaller David was a “menace” to everyone else. Who would buy that kind of nonsense? 


{

As for last week’s defector, when he woke up from surgery this week, he is reported to have asked to listen to South Korean songs and watch American movies — a small taste of freedom long denied. As Americans take time this week to be thankful, may we all regard our freedom as so precious.

}


South Korean songs and American movies are tastes of freedom? Oh Lord, how ridiculous. South Korean pop groups and their “slave contracts” are well known, and the young girls who join these groups are starved and sexually abused and not allowed to date. As for American movies, I think the last few months have been pretty revealing in how much disgusting rape behavior goes on in Hollywood. So it’s not a taste of freedom at all, it’s oppression packaged up all shiny as marketed to others as “freedom”, when it is anything but.


As for Americans taking time this week to be thankful - give me a break again. Let’s take a moment of silence for the millions of Native Americans slaughtered by the white invaders who now claim this land as their own, while continuing to invade and threaten others, all while ignoring its current and past crimes and actually portraying itself as greatness and talking about being “thankful”.


Give me a break, there is too much shit poisoning the minds of Americans, and as long as mainstream media outlets like the New York Times allows bullshit like this to be published, the American people will forever remain in the dark and end up supporting every policy that works to their own detriment.

 



RESPONSE BY: KIM DUK CHANG

  • 페이스북으로 보내기
  • 트위터로 보내기
  • 구글플러스로 보내기

댓글목록

등록된 댓글이 없습니다.


회원로그인

[부고]노길남 박사
노길남 박사 추모관
조선문학예술
조선중앙TV
추천홈페이지
우리민족끼리
자주시보
사람일보
재미동포전국연합회
한겨레
경향신문
재도이췰란드동포협력회
재카나다동포연합
오마이뉴스
재중조선인총련합회
재오스트랄리아동포전국연합회
통일부


Copyright (c)1999-2024 MinJok-TongShin / E-mail : minjoktongshin@outlook.com