Why do I criticize our State Department over accepting North Korean refugees? This figure

More than 1,400 North Koreans became citizens of European Union member states from 2002 to 2006.

Eurostat, the EU’s statistical office, says most of them are assumed to be former North Korean refugees.

The EU says a large number of Chinese people of Korean descent posing as North Korean defectors in search of freedom could be included in the figure.

Germany was the most accepting country with over 500 North Koreans becoming citizens during the period, followed by France and Spain.

Even excluding those who claim to be North Korean refugees, that figure is a lot more than the number the US admitted, around 50. Hopefully, like in South Korea, a change in administration would bring in more refugees in the future.

Human right as we know it turned 60 today. Human Rights in practice? Not good at all

It should be said that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is a remarkable statement: an attempt to achieve a moral consensus about the demands of human dignity following a world war that obliterated the hopes and lives of millions. The Universal Declaration has been a midwife to dozens of international treaties and covenants. It is cited by scores of domestic constitutions. Human rights organizations around the world look to the document as their Magna Carta.

Nevertheless, the fact remains that Mrs. Roosevelt’s fear about the perversion of human rights is on full display
in the international community. More than half of the 47 members of the Human Rights Council, the principal U.N. body charged with promoting human rights, fail to uphold basic democratic freedoms in their own countries. Using the canards of anti-colonialism and anti-Americanism, they block resolutions that might embarrass them on the world stage. Thus, some of the most egregious offenders of human rights–including China, Cuba, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and Zimbabwe–typically evade censure. Last week, for example, the Human Rights Council approved a resolution praising the Kinshasa government of the Democratic Republic of Congo, whose military stands accused of mass rape and murder.

In other words, in order for the international system to exist and to accommodate gross human rights violators, the principals the Universal Declaration of Human Rights were compromised.

Good to know that the biggest threat to Korea is a North Korean man and his balloons

PAJU, South Korea, Dec. 2 — Park Sang Hak, a North Korean defector, launches balloons bound for his homeland. They carry leaflets accusing North Korean leader Kim Jong Il of being a drinker of pricey wine, a seducer of other men’s wives, a murderer, a slaveholder, a dictator and “the devil.”

The South Korean government says it wishes Park wouldn’t rain all this aggravation on a heavily armed neighbor, but it says it is powerless to stop him. So about the only thing that usually stops Park’s balloons is a wind that won’t blow north.

But on Tuesday morning here at Paju, near the demilitarized zone that separates the two Koreas, Park and his compatriots ran into a bunch of South Korean activists willing to fight to keep the balloons on the ground. Park’s anti-Kim leaflets, they shouted, were a threat to peace on the Korean Peninsula.

Be sure to watch the video of South Korean hippies so bravely ripping leaflets apart. Aren’t you glad America is defending their right to harass a North Korean defector?