Interview with Michael Young
By Chosun Journal
January 21, 2004
1. Please introduce yourself and explain your work.
My full-time job is the Dean of the George Washington University Law School but in this capacity I am Chairman of the U.S. Committee on International Religious Freedom, which was created by Congress in 1998 as a legislative and executive branch, and foreign policy advisory committee. We advise the President, the Secretary of State, the National Security Advisor and Congress on ways in which the issues of human rights, and in particular, freedom of religion, can be a more robust part of our foreign policy so we can advance those interests better around the world. We are bipartisan, very decidedly bipartisan, and have been in operation for the last five years.
2. How did you personally become involved in the human rights situation in North Korea?
In two or three different ways. I taught at Columbia University in New York City for many years and while I was there I had spent a number of years living in Japan. I created a center for Japanese legal studies and directed that for a number of years. We also had a lot of Korean students and Korean-American students who were looking for an equivalent study program for Korea. Though I don’t speak Korean I have been there a large number of times starting in the late 1970s so we created a center there that is still in operations. From that I did human rights work both while I was in the State Department during the first Bush Administration and when I went back to Columbia I directed some human rights programs where Korea and human rights came together very naturally.
3. What are the goals for the N. Korean human rights hearing at UCLA Law School?
There are two goals. One is to educate ourselves, to learn more about the situation, particularly with an eye on the question, “What can the United States do, if anything, about this?” That is very important. The second goal is to educate and engage others. There is a very large, powerful and savvy Korean-American community in Los Angeles that can be an enormous force for good on this issue. If we see together possible ways in which the United States could help the plight of the North Korean people, the Korean-American community in Los Angeles is a powerful voice for encouraging our government to do precisely that.
4. Do you think that Korean-Americans are not well informed, hence their general lack of protests against the North Korean government?
I don’t think that they are not well informed. You can’t really be a thinking person without knowing how horrific it is. What I think we are all struggling with is what we do about it. I think the hearing will be an occasion for us all to think together about possible solutions. The problem is clear, the solutions are less clear and in particular how the United States government can push towards those conclusions. So I think to some extent what we are really hoping for is that we can all think together about this issue.
5. Why should people who are agnostic, atheist or in any way non-religious care about the lack of religious freedom (among other freedoms) in North Korea?
For a large number of reasons. I may belong to one particular party in the United States, but I have to be passionate about protecting the rights of other people who belong to a different political party. The fact that I don’t share a particular set of beliefs only heightens my responsibility to protect the rights of others who have those beliefs.
Number two, for many people in the world, what you believe, even if you are agnostic, about the cosmos, about our relationship or non-relationship with a higher being, about why we are here on this Earth, is one of the most important, fundamental things that define a person. If you can’t believe what you want to you diminish people extraordinarily. You are taking away in many cases virtually the very reason for being.
Thirdly, as a very practical matter, freedom of religion is very, very important because it is a right that once you acknowledge it, it suggests that it is appropriate to have loyalties to something higher than the state. Therefore it says to the state, “There are certain limitations on your power. You can’t intrude in my life in this way.” Anybody who cares about people as human beings has to care about ways in which we live in our government - or live in any government - from intruding into the most private areas of a person’s life. Freedom of religion, if that right is protected, that is the starting point for saying the government has certain things that it can do and do well but there are certain areas of human existence it just simply can’t intrude into. It is an inalienable right. It is a right that we all share and all should share. So whatever your actual personal beliefs are you ought to be passionate about this particular right.
