Something to watch during NK Freedom Week

On Monday afternoon, a film depicting the misery and challenges faced by North Korean refugees was screened for an audience at the Library of Congress in Washington D.C. “Crossing” was shown as part of North Korea Freedom Week, a series of events organized by the North Korea Freedom Coalition (NKFC), a union of American groups concerned with human rights in North Korea.

About 100 people attended the screening, including congressional staffers such as House International Relations Committee specialists Dennis Halpin and Doug Anderson; Peter Beck, executive director of the U.S. Committee for Human Rights in North Korea; Kim Sung-min, a former North Korean refugee and head of Free North Korea Radio; Shimada Yoichi, a representative of an association for Japanese victims of North Korean abductions and a professor of international relations at Fukui Prefectural University; and officials from the Japanese Embassy in Washington.

While documentaries and news reports are just fine the way they are, in order to appeal to people’s emotions, film is the preferred medium.

In the article, someone makes a comparison between Crossing and the Diary of Anne Frank. Since Anne Frank’s diary was discovered after the fact, it is not the ideal comparison.

I’ll be sure to find the DVD.

I guess they didn’t need anyone protecting the torch

SEOUL, South Korea — A North Korean military officer defected to South Korea across its heavily armed border, the first Communist officer to do so in a decade, a South Korean military spokesman said on Monday.

The soldier crossed the western sector of the 2.5-mile wide Demilitarized Zone separating the two Koreas at around 4:50 p.m. Sunday, said the spokesman at the South Korean Defense Ministry who spoke on condition of anonymity, citing the sensitivity of the matter.

“We are investigating the motive of his defection,” he said.

The Yonhap news agency identified the soldier as a 28-year-old second lieutenant, and gave his family name as Ri. But the South Korean military spokesman declined to reveal the defector’s name and rank and other information such as whether he was armed when he crossed the border.

Although more than 10,000 North Koreans have fled to the South through China in the past decade, few have dared cross the border btween the two Koreas, which is guarded by barbed wired fences, mine fields and nearly two million troops on both sides.

One man with courage makes a majority.