False Gods
The United Nations (UN) is often regarded as a completely useless organisation, a talking shop which is incapable of action on the big issues because of the way that cynical geo-politics comes into play as soon as the interests of a major country, or bloc of countries, is challenged.
So I was encouraged by this story which appeared in The Sunday Times as it appears the UN is about to put North Korea in the dock over its appalling attitude on human rights.
Because it is only 75 years since Japan was the cause of a terrible war in the Far East and at that time the Japanese Emperor, Hirohito, was also venerated as a living 'God'.
So whoever is behind this latest initiative at the UN should be applauded because while the news may never get back to many of North Korea's citizens it will at least make the officials and diplomats consider their positions.
North Korea in panic as UN attacks its ‘god’
Michael Sheridan - The Sunday Times
Kim Jong-un, seen aboard a submarine, holds absolute power (Rodong Sinmun/EPA)
HE IS treated as a god in North Korea, where his family has ruled for three generations. But Kim Jong-un’s divine status will be seriously damaged this week if the United Nations votes to refer the dictator to the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity.
A prominent defector has told The Sunday Times that high-ranking Korean officials are “in a panic” over the vote on a draft resolution, fearing that if their leader is labelled a criminal then they, too, will be suspects.
The vote follows a UN report, published earlier this year, accusing the Pyongyang regime of systematic torture, killing and starvation. It named Kim, along with senior officials, as a potential defendant.
“The North Koreans are in a panic because his name was mentioned in the report,” said Ahn Myeong-chol, who was a prison guard before defecting two decades ago.
“The Kim family have inherited power through three generations and they are treated as gods.
“So if the North Korean people learn he is being labelled as a criminal it will be a shock to the whole of North Korean society. His followers will fear that they could be criminal suspects as well.”
North Korea has staged a frantic diplomatic campaign to stop the resolution at the UN general assembly.
Ahn, who was speaking from Spain, is one of many defectors who gave harrowing testimony to the inquiry. He said gruesome abuses continued in North Korea, including a series of public executions of people found watching South Korean television soap operas.
Ahn will lobby for the resolution at the UN in Geneva this week backed by UN Watch, a human rights group.
Last week Marzuki Darusman, a UN investigator, said there was enough evidence to hold Kim, 31, accountable for human rights abuses that the inquiry likened to atrocities committed in the Nazi era.
On Friday Darusman rejected an offer for him to visit the hermetic country in exchange for dropping the referral to the ICC. The resolution is sponsored by the European Union and has gained supportfrom 50 other nations.
Only the UN security council can formally send the case to the International Criminal Court and Russia and China are expected to use their veto powers on the council to stop it.
If the resolution is passed then it will create a legal precedent and cause political embarrassment for Kim and his protectors.
Korea's Dynasty (13 April 2013)
Here's an interesting article from the Telegraph newspaper which tells the unlikely tale of a retired Australian judge doing his bit to hold President Kim Jon-un and his Stalinist monarchy in North Korea to account.
I wish Mike Kirby well and his assessment of the North Korean regime is spot on - just a pity that there are countries around the world, notably China and Russia, who are willing to turn a blind eye to Kim Jong-un's excesses.
North Korea atrocities: Sometimes a polite letter can be a pistol shot
It has taken a retired Australian judge to show us how to deal with Kim Jong-un over the country's crimes against humanity
By Colin Freeman
How do you deal with someone you suspect of being one of the most evil leaders ever to have stalked the earth? Do you brand them a tyrant and then order in the tanks? Do you post them a pack of exploding cigars?
Or do you send them a polite letter, respectfully reminding them of their responsibilities as head of state, and pointing out that at some future date, they could be rendering themselves liable to prosecution?
That appears to have been the approach of Michael Kirby, the retired Australian judge who has just delivered a detailed report on the appalling human rights abuses committed in Kim Jong-un’s North Korea. It reveals how, during the 66 miserable years of the Democratic People’s Republic, hundreds of thousands of people have died as a result of “unspeakable atrocities” – a record that Mr Kirby compares to that of Nazi Germany.
Testimonies gathered from defectors included an account of a woman forced to drown her own babies, and of Gulag inmates deliberately starved to death. Their fellow prisoners were then forced to burn their bodies and use the ashes as fertiliser.
Well aware of the practical difficulties of ever getting Kim Jong-un into any international criminal court, Mr Kirby did, none the less, decide to drop the Supreme Leader a line to set out his concerns.
The tone of his letter is pretty gentle, given that Kirby is accusing Kim of crimes against humanity. He starts off by reminding North Korea’s Supreme Leader that even if he isn’t committing them in person, anyone with that title may later find it hard to claim that they weren’t high in the chain of command. He then politely warns that a prosecution could “render accountable all those, including possibly yourself, who may be responsible for crimes against humanity”.
Given its slightly bureaucratic language, you might think that Mr Kirby was taking Kim to task over a minor violation of planning law, rather than the wholesale slaughter and torture of his own people.
As such, his missive attracted a few sarcastic jokes yesterday, which pointed out that, as long as North Korea has nuclear weapons and Chinese support, a “strongly worded letter of complaint” was not going to change much.
But by the UN’s standards, this is pretty good stuff. Too often, the organisation’s envoys waste time on ill-disguised political attacks, as did Raquel Rolnik, the UN special rapporteur on housing, whose recent report calling for the suspension of Britain’s so-called bedroom tax was described as a “misleading Marxist diatribe” by the Government. At other times, they come across as simply hamstrung, avoiding direct criticism for fear of upsetting China or Russia.
But Mr Kirby has at least gone for a bit of Aussie plain speaking, and in the process reminded everyone that Kim’s disgusting gangster state – a “shock to the conscience of humanity” – should be a matter of concern to us all.
Too often, North Korea’s hereditary tyrants have been seen as just cartoon crackpots, people too mad to be taken seriously. Instead, we focus on Kim Jong-un’s mistresses and his dreadful haircut, on his dad’s fondness for fortune tellers and funding North Korean Godzilla-type films, rather than the cold-blooded killing they have both ordered.
This is, after all, a regime that keeps 120,000 political prisoners in its Gulags. This is the land where a man was thrown in jail for wiping up a spilt drink with an old newspaper featuring Kim Jong-il. This is a country where, during the famine of the Nineties, hundreds of thousands of families were starved to death to ensure that the army, police and trusted cadres could fill their stomachs. Those children who didn’t starve outright suffered serious malnutrition, creating entire generations of developmentally stunted people.
This is also the land of Jee Heon-a, a woman whose testimony to the UN panel could have come from Buchenwald or Auschwitz. Ms Jee told how, in one camp where she was held, a fellow female inmate who had been repatriated after escaping to neighbouring China was told that she could not keep her baby because there was a chance it had been conceived with a Chinese father. That would contravene North Korea’s strict racial purity laws, and so it was that she was ordered by a prison guard to drown the new-born child herself in a bucket of water.
Mr Kirby may not be able to stop North Korea’s atrocities. But he has done the world a favour in reminding us that when we talk about Kim Jong-un, the best comparisons are Hitler and Stalin, not someThunderbirds villain whose eccentricities belie the snuff movie he is starring in.
HE IS treated as a god in North Korea, where his family has ruled for three generations. But Kim Jong-un’s divine status will be seriously damaged this week if the United Nations votes to refer the dictator to the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity.
A prominent defector has told The Sunday Times that high-ranking Korean officials are “in a panic” over the vote on a draft resolution, fearing that if their leader is labelled a criminal then they, too, will be suspects.
The vote follows a UN report, published earlier this year, accusing the Pyongyang regime of systematic torture, killing and starvation. It named Kim, along with senior officials, as a potential defendant.
“The North Koreans are in a panic because his name was mentioned in the report,” said Ahn Myeong-chol, who was a prison guard before defecting two decades ago.
“The Kim family have inherited power through three generations and they are treated as gods.
“So if the North Korean people learn he is being labelled as a criminal it will be a shock to the whole of North Korean society. His followers will fear that they could be criminal suspects as well.”
North Korea has staged a frantic diplomatic campaign to stop the resolution at the UN general assembly.
Ahn, who was speaking from Spain, is one of many defectors who gave harrowing testimony to the inquiry. He said gruesome abuses continued in North Korea, including a series of public executions of people found watching South Korean television soap operas.
Ahn will lobby for the resolution at the UN in Geneva this week backed by UN Watch, a human rights group.
Last week Marzuki Darusman, a UN investigator, said there was enough evidence to hold Kim, 31, accountable for human rights abuses that the inquiry likened to atrocities committed in the Nazi era.
On Friday Darusman rejected an offer for him to visit the hermetic country in exchange for dropping the referral to the ICC. The resolution is sponsored by the European Union and has gained supportfrom 50 other nations.
Only the UN security council can formally send the case to the International Criminal Court and Russia and China are expected to use their veto powers on the council to stop it.
If the resolution is passed then it will create a legal precedent and cause political embarrassment for Kim and his protectors.
Korea's Dynasty (13 April 2013)
I came across this excellent article about North Korea on the BBC's web site.
Now I never knew that the Kim Dynasty and cult of the personality that dominate the country to this day were the product of the 1950s - the deliberate creation of Soviet advisers.
Although it is easy to recognise the same misplaced devotion of the North Korean population to its leader - who operates as an all-powerful monarch in similar fashion to the pre-World War II emperors in Japan.
North Korea - a country never at peace
By Dhruti Shah
BBC History
The state of North Korea was born out of the Cold War conflict between communism and capitalism, a history from which it has never been able to escape.
At the end of WWII, Korea was liberated from decades of Japanese occupation and looked set to regain its independence, with the wartime allies - the US, China, Britain and the Soviet Union all supporting that goal.
Soviet and US forces occupied the two ends of the country in what was seen as a transition period ahead of democratic elections. The US remained in the South, while the Soviet Union occupied the North.
North Korea's Fragile Peace
But as the wartime co-operation between the Soviet Union and the US deteriorated, two very different states emerged - the US-backed Republic of Korea in the south and the Communist Democratic People's Republic of Korea in the north with a leader, Kim Il-Sung who had been trained by the Red Army.
North Korea was "born a monster", believes John Everard, the UK's former ambassador to North Korea. "It was created by Soviet Army officers who seemed to have had little idea of state creation."
"[They] built Kim Il-sung into a leader, but when they found that he commanded insufficient public respect, they built up around him a Stalinist cult of personality so that the country ended up being ruled by a god king - rather like the late kings of Korea [before the Japanese occupation]."
In 1950, South Korea declared independence. North Korea, supported by the Soviet Union and China, quickly invaded the south, sparking the three-year Korean War.
Civilian casualties in the Korean War are estimated at over one million The United States intervened fearing a communist takeover of Korea could have wider implications, says Robert Kelly, of Pusan National University in South Korea. "If the US gave up the fight in South Korea, Washington worried about falling dominos (to communism) elsewhere in Asia. This was something they couldn't risk."
After fighting reached a stalemate, US presidents Harry S. Truman and then Dwight D. Eisenhower used the nuclear threat publicly as a means to try to end the war.
But it was also clear Truman did not want the conflict to spread or trigger another world war. In 1951 when General Douglas MacArthur - commander of US forces in the Far East - had publicly called for North Korea's backer China to be attacked - he was sacked for insubordination.
In 1953, The Korean Armistice Agreement was signed. It was supposed to be a temporary measure, setting up a demilitarised zone (DMZ) established along the 38th parallel. But a permanent peace was never signed. And tensions across the border have lasted ever since.
In its early years, North Korea prospered, supported by both China and the Soviet Union.
But the cross-border tensions increased with South Korea's rapid industrialisation and economic growth.
South Korea became really wealthy in the 1970s, while North Korea remained a typical example of Stalinist policy. The country did well for a while but then began to falter.
As the 1980s ended with the fall of the Soviet Union, the loss of Soviet aid was a major blow. When China recognised South Korea in 1992, North Korea felt betrayed and increasingly isolated.
Its economy has been in freefall since the collapse of the Soviet bloc," said author and North Korea expert Paul French.
"The economy failed, industry shuddered to a halt. Eastern bloc export markets fell away."
"North Korean agriculture collapsed and the country descended into a famine in the mid-1990s."
The country's nuclear programme, probably begun in the 1960s according to former ambassador John Everard, became increasingly important. "As the international environment turned against North Korea, its leaders came to regard the nuclear programme as the guarantee of its existence as an independent state."
North Korea Key Clashes
But North Korea's nuclear programme also became the main source of tension with the West. Relations with the US and South Korea have approached breaking point a number of times.
In 1994 US President Clinton's administration was on the brink of war with North Korea because the latter kept violating international agreements over checks on its nuclear plans.
In 2002, tensions flared again as North Korea expelled international nuclear inspectors amid concerns, later confirmed, that it was secretly developing nuclear weapons.
"The Korean War has still not finally ended. The old enmities remain, at least in Pyongyang's eyes" says Paul French.
"Seoul has forged ahead economically and become a thriving democracy."
"The North has remained as if in aspic since the mid 1950s, positioning its historical narrative in terms of victimhood, only now with a nuclear capability that means everyone must pay attention."
Although it is easy to recognise the same misplaced devotion of the North Korean population to its leader - who operates as an all-powerful monarch in similar fashion to the pre-World War II emperors in Japan.
North Korea - a country never at peace
By Dhruti Shah
BBC History
The state of North Korea was born out of the Cold War conflict between communism and capitalism, a history from which it has never been able to escape.
- Korea was occupied by the Allies after WWII ending decades of rule by Japan
- Soviets occupied the north and the US the south, but as allies became Cold War rivals, unification talks failed and separate regimes evolved
- In 1950, the Korean War saw Mao's China back communist North Korea, while the US helped South Korea, fearing Asia would turn communist
- A 1953 armistice created a fragile peace, and border tensions have lasted ever since
- In 1976 two US Army officers were attacked in the border area while pruning a tree - reportedly planted by Kim Il-sung. They were killed with their own axes by North Korean officers. There was no apology but a North Korean message of regret stated: "Our side will never provoke first, but take self-defensive measures only when provocation occurs. This is our consistent stand."
- One of several failed assassination attempts on South Korean leaders took place in 1983 when President Chun Doo-hwan was visiting Burma. Twenty one people including three South Korean ministers were killed in the attack. China reprimanded North Korea and suspended contact for months.
North Korea (22 February 2014)
Here's an interesting article from the Telegraph newspaper which tells the unlikely tale of a retired Australian judge doing his bit to hold President Kim Jon-un and his Stalinist monarchy in North Korea to account.
I wish Mike Kirby well and his assessment of the North Korean regime is spot on - just a pity that there are countries around the world, notably China and Russia, who are willing to turn a blind eye to Kim Jong-un's excesses.
North Korea atrocities: Sometimes a polite letter can be a pistol shot
It has taken a retired Australian judge to show us how to deal with Kim Jong-un over the country's crimes against humanity
By Colin Freeman
How do you deal with someone you suspect of being one of the most evil leaders ever to have stalked the earth? Do you brand them a tyrant and then order in the tanks? Do you post them a pack of exploding cigars?
Or do you send them a polite letter, respectfully reminding them of their responsibilities as head of state, and pointing out that at some future date, they could be rendering themselves liable to prosecution?
That appears to have been the approach of Michael Kirby, the retired Australian judge who has just delivered a detailed report on the appalling human rights abuses committed in Kim Jong-un’s North Korea. It reveals how, during the 66 miserable years of the Democratic People’s Republic, hundreds of thousands of people have died as a result of “unspeakable atrocities” – a record that Mr Kirby compares to that of Nazi Germany.
Testimonies gathered from defectors included an account of a woman forced to drown her own babies, and of Gulag inmates deliberately starved to death. Their fellow prisoners were then forced to burn their bodies and use the ashes as fertiliser.
Well aware of the practical difficulties of ever getting Kim Jong-un into any international criminal court, Mr Kirby did, none the less, decide to drop the Supreme Leader a line to set out his concerns.
The tone of his letter is pretty gentle, given that Kirby is accusing Kim of crimes against humanity. He starts off by reminding North Korea’s Supreme Leader that even if he isn’t committing them in person, anyone with that title may later find it hard to claim that they weren’t high in the chain of command. He then politely warns that a prosecution could “render accountable all those, including possibly yourself, who may be responsible for crimes against humanity”.
Given its slightly bureaucratic language, you might think that Mr Kirby was taking Kim to task over a minor violation of planning law, rather than the wholesale slaughter and torture of his own people.
As such, his missive attracted a few sarcastic jokes yesterday, which pointed out that, as long as North Korea has nuclear weapons and Chinese support, a “strongly worded letter of complaint” was not going to change much.
But by the UN’s standards, this is pretty good stuff. Too often, the organisation’s envoys waste time on ill-disguised political attacks, as did Raquel Rolnik, the UN special rapporteur on housing, whose recent report calling for the suspension of Britain’s so-called bedroom tax was described as a “misleading Marxist diatribe” by the Government. At other times, they come across as simply hamstrung, avoiding direct criticism for fear of upsetting China or Russia.
But Mr Kirby has at least gone for a bit of Aussie plain speaking, and in the process reminded everyone that Kim’s disgusting gangster state – a “shock to the conscience of humanity” – should be a matter of concern to us all.
Too often, North Korea’s hereditary tyrants have been seen as just cartoon crackpots, people too mad to be taken seriously. Instead, we focus on Kim Jong-un’s mistresses and his dreadful haircut, on his dad’s fondness for fortune tellers and funding North Korean Godzilla-type films, rather than the cold-blooded killing they have both ordered.
This is, after all, a regime that keeps 120,000 political prisoners in its Gulags. This is the land where a man was thrown in jail for wiping up a spilt drink with an old newspaper featuring Kim Jong-il. This is a country where, during the famine of the Nineties, hundreds of thousands of families were starved to death to ensure that the army, police and trusted cadres could fill their stomachs. Those children who didn’t starve outright suffered serious malnutrition, creating entire generations of developmentally stunted people.
This is also the land of Jee Heon-a, a woman whose testimony to the UN panel could have come from Buchenwald or Auschwitz. Ms Jee told how, in one camp where she was held, a fellow female inmate who had been repatriated after escaping to neighbouring China was told that she could not keep her baby because there was a chance it had been conceived with a Chinese father. That would contravene North Korea’s strict racial purity laws, and so it was that she was ordered by a prison guard to drown the new-born child herself in a bucket of water.
Mr Kirby may not be able to stop North Korea’s atrocities. But he has done the world a favour in reminding us that when we talk about Kim Jong-un, the best comparisons are Hitler and Stalin, not someThunderbirds villain whose eccentricities belie the snuff movie he is starring in.
