April 7, 2013 • 9:45 am 0
At one end of the public-profile scale, there is Aijalon Mahli Gomes. Since being freed from North Korea in the summer of 2010 by former U.S. President Jimmy Carter and returning to the Boston area, he has chosen to remain completely incognito. I tried at one point, through his mother, to obtain an interview. But as I was happy to of course respect, I never heard back and assume this is because she/he do not want his DPRK experiences revisited publicly.
Filed under: Activists
February 12, 2012 • 10:15 am 0
The youth organization is called Now Action & Unity for Human Rights, or NAUH for short. It is one of the many tentacles connected to former U.S. detainee Robert Park who, after an ill-conceived December 2009–February 2010 trip to North Korea, has been tirelessly fighting to make the voices of the oppressed heard.
Filed under: Activists, Human Rights
February 28, 2010 • 12:45 pm 3
Having just recently turned 52, German-born doctor Norbert Vollertsen continues – from his adopted homeland of Seoul – to fight the North Korea human rights good fight. Recently, that entailed the forwarding of an e-mail he claims to have received from Robert Park, the AZ activist who crossed over into the Hermit Kingdom on Christmas Day, 2009, only to be released February 5th.
Filed under: Activists
October 2, 2009 • 12:22 pm 3
In the past few weeks, nine North Korean refugees have sought asylum at the Danish Embassy in Hanoi, Vietnam, while another 11 hopped on a small barge and crossed over during the evening of October 1st into South Korean waters. Both of these cases hint at a key piece of the puzzle in keeping the struggle against the Hermit Kingdom‘s human rights violations on the front U.S. burner: the visually arresting soundbyte.
Filed under: Media
September 15, 2009 • 4:02 pm 0
A couple of developments today point to the idea that moving forward, North Korea‘s capital city of Pyongyang may become even more of a more privileged, isolated stronghold. That would be the dedication of the brand new, foreign-funded Pyongyang University of Science and Technology (PUST), the latest achievement in the remarkable life of Korean-American success story James Kim; and the announcement by New York and Bangkok-based travel company Remote Lands that they are now offering $1,000-a-day luxury tours of the Hermit Kingdom.
Filed under: Commentary
September 1, 2009 • 2:27 pm 0
Around this time last summer, China was basking in the afterglow of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, with many hoping that the overall experience would move the powerhouse nation to start doing something about its atrocious human rights record. But when it comes to the complicated flow of North Korean refugees over the border into the northeastern regions of the country, things have gotten worse.
Filed under: Human Rights
August 14, 2009 • 1:00 pm 2
Not too long ago, the Chairwoman of the North Korea Freedom Coalition, Suzanne Scholte, pointed out a key problem with activism on behalf of the dire North Korean human rights situation. Namely, that while Darfur has George Clooney and Mia Farrow, and Tibet counts on Richard Gere and the Dalai Lama, the problematic half of the Peninsula has no celebrity drawing much needed attention to it.
Filed under: Commentary
August 12, 2009 • 4:04 pm 1
For most, the logical starting point as far as reading about the horrors of North Korea’s labor camps is refugee Kang Chol-hwan’s harrowing 2001 memoir The Aquariums of Pyongyang. Though the prose itself is a little rough, there’s no denying the power of Kang’s survival of ten years of hard labor that began in Yodok in 1977, when he was just nine-years-old.
Filed under: Human Rights
August 11, 2009 • 1:22 pm 0
The Big Picture book ends of Laura Ling and Euna Lee’s misadventures in North Korea are the possible unintentional endangerment of refugees and refugee helpers through the seizing of materials at the border (vtideotapes, cell phone(s), notebook(s)), and the future role these journalists may play in the plight of the people they were covering. According to aid workers, no stream of female refugees has a higher rate of sex trafficking – 80% to 90% – than that of North Koreans fleeing their country.
Filed under: Media
Liberate North Korea 
July 13, 2013 • 10:23 am 0
Site Announcement: This Blog No Longer Active
Since I don’t have time to properly maintain two separate personal blogs about North Korea, I will no longer be posting here.
Thanks for all your support; you can find me on this topic moving forward via liberatelaura.wordpress.com.
Filed under: Commentary