As Eun Hong pinches Eun Ok, Eun Ok shouts, “Ow! What was that for?” Eun Hong answers with a grin on her face, “I just wanted to make sure we’re not dreaming.” The two North Korean girls, who have been friends from childhood, look at each other and smile. The two boys, Guang IL […]

“They initially wanted to go to the United States, but Washington rejected their demand, citing its position that it does not accept North Korean defectors.”
4 N. Koreans arrive in Seoul, Korea Times, July 9, 2003
“Give me your tired, your poor
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free”
Inscription on the Statue of Liberty
“Why should we expend […]

On July 4, 2003, four young N. Korean refugees gained their independence upon entering a foreign consulate in China. At one point, Chinese police tried dragging the four teenagers out of a building in order to arrest and deport them back to North Korea. The refugees cried, tearfully yelled out that the media were […]

Let us think outside the box for a moment. The United States should ally with Beijing to make North Korea a Chinese protectorate. Among the choices of war, the status quo, and the above option, the Chinese protectorate plan is the least worst of only bad choices for North Koreans.
It may be in the […]

It’s not easy being the curator of North Korea’s virtual holocaust museum in real-time.
For one thing, it’s a thankless job. Hardly anyone appreciates what The Chosun Journal stands for. A monument to free peoples’ apathy. A testimonial to South Korea’s unprecedented levels of narcissism. Holocaust museums are depressing enough. Having one in which its […]

“First they came for the Communists,
and I didn’t speak up, because I wasn’t a Communist.
Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn’t speak up, because I wasn’t a Jew.
Then they came for the Catholics,
and I didn’t speak up, because I was a Protestant.
Then they came for me,
and by that time
there was no one left […]

Tens of thousands of South Koreans recently protested at U.S. embassies in S. Korea for the “lenient” rulings against two American soldiers who accidentally ran over and killed two S. Korean teenagers. (Incidentally that same week, dozens of Americans protested at the Chinese embassy at Washington, D.C. for the Chinese crackdown on N. Korean […]

Those sympathetic with North Korean human rights must be the least susceptible to flinching every time Pyongyang pulls the war card. Of course a war on the peninsula would likely be devastating. Everyone acknowledges that, especially Pyongyang, which is the problem, at least from a human rights standpoint.
With avoiding war on the Korean […]

Today Kim Jong Il apologized to PM Junichiro Koizumi for his country’s kidnapping of Japanese citizens over the last few decades to train N. Korean spies infiltrating Japan.
Make no mistake. This remarkable concession by North Korea’s dictator, along with the expulsion of Red Army hijackers from Pyongyang a few months ago, was not the […]

It is not easy to say, but the current presence of 37,500 U.S. troops in South Korea is a great impediment to the establishment of North Korean human rights. It is not easy to say because half a century ago the blood of over 50,000 Americans valiantly watered the soil of democracy there which […]