They are almost like a certain multi-national organization based in New York we all love (Via. The Marmot)

The National Human Rights Commission held a meeting on Monday of all 11 members and vetoed the idea of recommending that President Roh Moo-hyun includes North Korea’s human rights violations on the agenda of the summit with the communist country set for next month. The issue was included among the topics for discussion by the commission after one non-permanent member said it was now time to discuss it at the summit. But a majority of members said the topic was “inappropriate” for the summit.

The NHRC is an institution that designed to prod the government into putting the improvement of human rights conditions on the top of its agenda. From that perspective, the commission recommended that the Roh administration not only to scrap the National Security Law, as North Korea demands, but also to permit conscientious objection to South Korea’s mandatory military service, allow teachers and civil servants to engage in political activities and to let people get sex change operations on state medical insurance.

North Korean human rights, wouldn’t that be too obvious for these folks?

North Korean human rights organizations run by college students are planning to hold a “100,000 signatures movement” to urge President Roh to treat the abductees’ and human rights issues as a topic for the Summit Talks.

Ten student organizations including the Youth and Students Alliance for Human Rights in North Korea (the Students Alliance), North Korean Youth for North Korea Human Rights and Liberty Students Union are planning to instigate a “100,000 signatures movement” from the 10th for a week and hand in the petition to Blue House.

When was the last time someone was so moved by a list of signatures that he changed the course of history? I do not mean to disparage their plans, but I never found petitions to be an effective tool of social activism.

Speaking of DVD’s, here’s another capital crime, watching Korean soaps

SEOUL—Authorities in North Korea are intensifying a crackdown on imports of South Korean popular culture, especially television dramas, but the South’s “Korean Wave” may already have taken a strong hold in the isolated Stalinist state.

South Korean music, soap operas, and movies have already taken the rest of East Asia by storm, and, according to North Koreans now living in the South, the South’s arch-rival North Korea is no exception.

One of the smash-hit TV dramas to emerge from South Korea in recent years has been “Winter Sonata,” a delicate and emotional love story that has spawned its own fashions as people seek to imitate details from the story.

“I watched ‘Winter Sonata’ in North Korea and I even recall the name of the leading actor, Bae Young Joon,” said a defector to South Korea identified only by his surname, Kim.