A generous donation, a big LiNK event, more on this month’s newsletter

September 2007

Liberty in North Korea | LiNK Newsletter
Updates from LiNK Worldwide
Greetings!
Read on for the latest news from LiNK, and the worldwide movement for North Korean human rights!

Message from the Director

Dear Friends,

As difficult and hopeless this cause sometimes seems, when circumstances appear to be at their worst, something always happens to inspire us and remind us that change is not only possible, it is inevitable.

Two weeks ago, a very generous donor donated $150,000; and pledged an additional $150,000 for early next year; enabling us to cover all overhead fees for the next full year. This means that for the first time, LiNK will not have to worry about paying utilities or office rent. This also means that for the first time, LiNK will be able to pay its staff members modest salaries for their work!

This development also means that all of your contributions this year will go 100% toward our advocacy programs, awareness initiatives and field operations! This also means that instead of planning project to project, month to month, we can stabilize our organization and delve into longer term planning and strategies, with the knowledge that we will be able to provide resources to run our programs as we continue to move forward. I’d like to express our most deepest gratitude to the special donor for their critical contribution. It has truly provided our organization the fuel to rise to a higher level, and we could not be more appreciative.

Next month, LiNK will be holding its Inaugural Benefit Gala, entitled, “Light of Liberty.” We will be honoring champions of our cause, as well as highlighting some of our successful past programs and exciting new initiatives. If you are in the Washington, D.C. area on October 24th, 2007, please join us! We will be sending more information in coming weeks.

Friends, our organization is nothing without your support. We are not LiNK. We are merely facilitators and deliverers of the resources you empower us with. You are LiNK. Thank you for being with us in this fight as we reach new heights.

Onwards and Upwards!
Adrian Hong
Executive Director

Light of Liberty Inaugural Benefit Gala
More information to come!

Awardee: U.S. Representative Ed Royce (R-CA)

U.S. Representative Ed Royce (R-CA) is serving his eighth term in Congress representing Southern California’s 40th District, based in Orange County. In 2001, Rep. Royce introduced H.Con.Res. 213, which called on the Chinese government to provide asylum to North Korean refugees and Beijing to cooperate with the U.N.H.C.R. to resettle these refugees in third countries. Two years later, he introduced H. Res. 109, which urged the U.N.C.H.R. to pass a resolution addressing North Korean human rights. As a cosponsor of the North Korean Human Rights Act of 2004 [H.R. 4011], Rep. Royce stated at the North Korea Freedom Day Rally that “The human rights situation in North Korea is abysmal. It is important that we stand up and speak out, especially when human rights are being so wantonly disregarded as they are in North Korea. For the 110th Congress, Rep. Royce also serves as a senior member of the House Foreign Affairs and Financial Services Committees.

Awardee: Kang Cheol Hwan

When President George W. Bush sought to understand the grim realities of human rights abuses in the D.P.R.K., he and his closest advisors turned to Kang Cheol Hwan’s harrowing memoir of growing up in a North Korean concentration camp. When he was nine years old, the author – along with members of his family – was sent to the notorious labor camp Yodok, where for ten years he observed frequent public executions and endured forced labor and near-starvation rations. He eventually escaped to South Korea and now, working as a journalist, gives testimony to the atrocities endured by an estimated two hundred thousand North Korean citizens who are still detained in the gulags. Part horror story, part memoir, part political tract, this story of one man’s extraordinary personal suffering offers eyewitness proof of the shocking and ongoing abuses perpetrated by the North Korean regime.

Special Remarks: Lisa Ling

Lisa Ling is the host of National Geographic’s Explorer, the flagship weekly television series of National Geographic. Her role on the Emmy Award-winning series has taken her to Colombia where she investigated the increasingly deadly drug war, China where she examined the complex issues surrounding the country’s one-child policy and the D.P.R.K., where she explored the restrictions on freedom, violation of human rights and lack of medical care. As a special correspondent for The Oprah Winfrey Show, she has also covered the Lord’s Resistance Army and the crisis of AIDS orphans in Uganda, bride burning in India and gang-rape in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Ling was a co-host of ABC Daytime’s morning talk and entertainment program, The View, which won its first daytime Emmy during her time at the show.

Master of Ceremonies: Sonya Crawford

Sonya Crawford served as a special-events anchor and correspondent for ABC News based in Washington, D.C. She contributed reports to the network’s overnight and early-morning news programs World News Now and World News This Morning, as well as Good Morning America and other ABC News broadcasts and platforms. The former anchor covered the 2004 Republican National Convention, President Reagan’s funeral and the war in Iraq from D.C. and Pope John Paul II’s funeral and the conclave that chose his successor from Rome. Prior to joining ABC News, Crawford worked as a reporter and substitute anchor for KNBC-TV in Los Angeles and an associate producer at Dateline NBC in Los Angeles, where she won an Emmy Award for producing a story on the O.J. Simpson trial. She began her career as a features reporter for KBS-TV in Seoul, Korea, where she was born and raised and is an active member and past national board member of the Asian American Journalists Association.

Special Presenter: Yul Kwon

Yul Kwon, winner of Survivor: Cook Islands, was born in Queens, New York to parents who emigrated from South Korea. The family moved to the West Coast when he was six years old. Kwon has enjoyed a diverse career in both the private and public sectors in law, business and technology and served as a judicial clerk to a federal judge on the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals. He also worked as a legislative aide to Senator Joseph Lieberman in Washington, D.C., where he helped draft sections of the Homeland Security Bill. Several years ago, Kwon switched careers and became a management consultant at McKinsey. From there, he joined Google’s business strategy group and most recently went back into consulting. Kwon is a member of the Washington, D.C. and California State Bar Associations and currently resides in San Mateo, California.

Special Presenter: Becky Lee

Born to South Korean immigrants in Flushing, New York, Rebekah “Becky” Lee, second runner-up of Survivor: Cook Islands, was raised in the suburbs of Pittsburgh. Interested in the prevention of domestic violence, she has been working on issues concerning domestic violence survivors over the last eight years as a policy associate and attorney. She is also passionate about creating awareness of the specific needs of battered immigrant women, such as language access and cultural competency. She has previously worked as a kickboxing instructor, policy associate and legal intern. She is a member of the Pennsylvania Bar Association and currently resides in Washington, D.C.

Help Raise $10k for LiNK by September 15th!

To sign up: [ link ]

LiNK has joined a $10,000 competition with up and coming online network Razoo! Please join Razoo [ here ] before September 15th in order to be eligible to vote for which group will receive $10,000 for their cause. Once the September 15th deadline has passed, Razoo! will announce to community members which groups are eligible for the prize, and how community members can vote for the group they want to win.

Based in Washington, D.C. and self-proclaimed as “the platform for social good,” the online networking group Razoo! seeks to network individuals for and amongst various causes, and help those causes reach their intended goals. The site, currently in development, can be found [ here ].

For inquiries about LiNK’s participation in the Razoo! $10k competition, contact: ally (at) linkglobal.org. For now, please sign up with Razoo and search for and join our group “Liberty in North Korea”; and when the time comes, please vote for our group to win!

Upcoming Events

KAC National Convention

Friday, September 21, 2007 @ 1:00 pm
Georgia Tech Convention Center and Hotel

LiNK’s Executive Director Adrian Hong will be giving a special presentation on the North Korean human rights crisis at the 5th Annual Korean American Coalition National Convention in Atlanta, Georgia. For more information, see http://www.kacatl.org/convention/index.html

Donate to LiNK!
Put Your Money Where Your Heart Is

Don’t forget – you can make recurring, monthly donations to LiNK and the worldwide movement for North Korean human rights! With a few clicks, you can set a monthly contribution from your credit card – funds that will go toward LiNK’s growing network of underground shelters in China, rescue missions, humanitarian aid projects inside North Korea, and international advocacy for these vulnerable and voiceless people.

All contributions are, of course, tax-deductible!

Click below to donate today!

Contact Information
email: info@linkglobal.org
phone: 202.714.LiNK
web: http://www.linkglobal.org

(Via. OneFreeKorea) Never lose hope.

Upcoming events post-reorganization

May 2007
Liberty in North Korea | LiNK Newsletter
Updates from LiNK Worldwide

Greetings!
Read on for the latest news from LiNK, and the worldwide movement for North Korean human rights!

Message from the Director

Dear Friends,

Things have been moving very quickly here at LiNK Headquarters. We are working to expand our underground railroad to many new nations around the globe, evaluating new routes and methods, while increasing our underground shelter presence in locations where we are already established. In the realm of advocacy, our staffers have been highly-effective in bringing in new players and broadening the chorus of voices worldwide calling for human rights improvements in the DPRK, and for the protection of refugees wherever they may be.

We are also launching many innovative new projects and initiatives, details of which will be released in forthcoming newsletters. LiNK will also be pushing our new Public Health and Legal Committees. The former is dedicated to researching the state of public health in the DPRK, identifying holes and problems and working to create solutions to save lives in a field that is generally overlooked. It will launch officially later this summer with a special, unprecedented conference.

The Legal Committee is working on legal research and strategies to ensure that states live up to their obligations internationally, both under existing treaties and conventions, and also in the realm of cutting-edge legal arguments of the past few years, making the case for the obligation of state and international actors to defend the rights of citizens worldwide, wherever they may be.

Next month, we will also be sponsoring the launch of an important new report by David Hawk, Concentrations of Inhumanity, with Freedom House, here in Washington. The report makes a powerful case for calling the tremendous human rights violations in the DPRK crimes against humanity. It is our belief that the violations in North Korea constitute crimes severe, widespread and deliberate enough to warrant action by the international community, and we will be acting to push this perspective in coming months in major platforms.

None of our work would be possible without your support. Whether you are new to LiNK or have been with us from the beginning- you are crucial to our work and this movement. On behalf of North Koreans worldwide, and our colleagues in this movement- thank you for your commitment and dedication to this cause!

Onwards and Upwards!
Adrian Hong
Executive Director

Fast for NK A Success!

A huge thank you to everyone who participated in our first international fast for North Korea! Individuals from all over the world, including parliamentarians, academics and athletes, participated in the one day event. A number of colleges and universities formed teams to fast together.

In addition, a number of Foreign Ministry officials of the Republic of Korea (South Korea) also participated anonymously. [South Korea’s government has been averse to publicity about the North Korean human rights and refugee crises].

Yul Kwon and Becky Lee, first place and third place winners of this past season’s Survivor: Cook Islands TV show, also joined the international campaign.

“How can I sit back and do nothing while my brothers and sisters are suffering in North Korea?” Becky Lee said. “It is time for all of us to step up and do what we can, with what we have, for the North Korean people.”

Funds raised from the effort will go towards raising awareness of this crisis, pursuing advocacy to help the North Korean people, and sustaining humanitarian field projects in the DPRK, and in China for North Korean refugees in hiding.

“At first when I thought of the fast and I decided to do it with you, I thought it would remind me of the past and make me sad- but doing it with everyone, it wasn’t like that at all. I am very thankful and proud of everyone who did it. In Chosun [North Korea] people starve because there is no food and it’s such a sad situation, but here we fasted for a different reason- and because it was a good reason and we did it all together, it didn’t give me feelings of sadness, but hope.” – A recently arrived North Korean defector.

Stay tuned for updates on other exciting international events, and another upcoming fast!

San Francisco Summit Wrap-up

LiNK’s final summit, held from April 19-21 in San Francisco, California, featured several days packed with workshops, seminars, lectures and intense discussion and debate about the North Korean human rights movement at large, and future directions of the movement. Special presentations on LiNK’s history, underground activities, policy directions and developments and refugee resettlement efforts worldwide, were punctuated with guest lectures by leading scholars Stephan Haggard and David Hawk, on the relationship between food aid and human rights, and the legal argument classifying human rights violations in the DPRK as crimes against humanity, respectively.

The weekend also gave time for delegates to flesh out and debate important controversies, ranging from the priorities of human rights over security and vice versa, the role of the US and the UN in pressing for human rights improvements in the DPRK, and the legitimacy of claims to sovereignty by nations who do not protect rights of their own citizens. LiNK Directors also spoke in depth about LiNK’s international advocacy strategy.

Nearly 100 international delegates participated in the weekend, including several North Korean defectors who had been sheltered, protected and escorted to freedom by LiNK.

Stay tuned for more updates on LiNK’s global advocacy strategy, and ways you can get involved!

Concentrations of Inhumanity Report Release

A new report by Freedom House, entitled Concentrations of Inhumanity and authored by David Hawk, will be released at a special event sponsored by LiNK and Freedom House on June 6, in Washington, DC. The report makes a clear distinction between “commonplace human rights violations” (such as miscarriages of justice), and “consistent patterns of gross violations of internationally recognized human rights” – or violations so terrible that they meet the criteria of being “crimes against humanity.”

In the report, Hawk calls for two immediate measures: first, for the international community to recognize the egregious human rights abuses in North Korea as crimes against humanity; and second, for the North Korean government to begin the measures necessary to bring the kwan-li-so labor camps into compliance with international norms, and amend the practices that run afoul of standards set forth by international law.

The report release will be held on Wednesday, June 6, 2007, from 1:30 pm to 3:30 pm, at the Holeman Lounge of the National Press Club in Washington, DC.

Speakers will include:
David Hawk, author of Concentrations of Inhumanity
David Scheffer, former US Ambassador-at-Large for War Crimes Issues
Jay Lefkowitz, US Special Envoy for Human Rights in North Korea
Thomas O. Melia, Deputy Executive Director, Freedom House

Space is limited and RSVP is required. Please RSVP to communications@freedomhouse.org.

UC Berkeley Passes NKHR Resolution

On behalf of 24,000 undergraduates at the University of California, Berkeley, the Associated Students of the University of California (ASUC) passed on April 18 a resolution recognizing the human rights crisis in North Korea, the plight of North Korean refugees, and LiNK’s work in the field. The resolution called for a letter to Speaker of the House and Bay Area Congressional Representative Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), pressing for diplomatic action against the DPRK for it’s human rights violations of it’s own people. Additionally, the ASUC called for “all countries of the world to hold human rights as a conditional factor in all negotiations with the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.”

The resolution, which passed unanimously, is an important signal to local Bay Area leaders about the sentiments of the UC Berkeley undergraduate community- the largest autonomous student body in the nation. It was a very successful pilot run of an effort that will be duplicated all around around the United States. Information on how your campus, city or state can participate is forthcoming!

Help Resettle NK Refugees!

As the number of North Korean refugees arriving in the U.S. for resettlement increases, we can also expect increasing numbers of unaccompanied refugee minors (children or teenagers), many of them orphaned entirely, and all who will be starting new lives in America.

We are seeking families to become foster families for these children that can help serve as a bridge between two very different cultures. Families with a Korean-American background or Korean-speaking ability are a plus. If you are interested, please email jimin (at) linkglobal.org, with the subject line “Resettlement Families”, as well as your location.

We are also seeking local mentors, translators, and general “buddies” to volunteer at resettlement centers across the U.S., to befriend and help to transition newly arrived North Koreans. If you are interested in volunteering in your local area to help resettle refugees, please send a resume and a cover letter to jimin (at) linkglobal.org, explaining your interest and experience; subject line “Resettlement Volunteer”.

Opportunities at LiNK!

Fall Interns

LiNK Headquarters is seeking a few passionate and qualified students to join us for our fall internship in our offices in the DC-Metro area. If you are a student or are interested and available this fall (September to December), please contact info (at) linkglobal.org to receive an application. Please write “Fall Intern” in the subject line.

Volunteer Grant Writers

Seeking a few dedicated and experienced grant writers to research, develop resources, submit proposals, and secure grants and other funding opportunities; looking for part/full-time and short/long-term volunteers located in the DC area. Please email a cover letter, resume and one relevant writing sample to info (at) linkglobal.org, and put “Volunteer Grant Writer” in the subject line.

Donate to LiNK!
Put Your Money Where Your Heart Is

Don’t forget- you can make recurring, monthly donations to LiNK and the worldwide movement for North Korean human rights! With a few clicks, you can set a monthly contribution from your credit card- funds that will go towards LiNK’s growing network of underground shelters in China, rescue missions, humanitarian aid projects inside North Korea, and international advocacy for these vulnerable and voiceless people.

All contributions are, of course, tax-deductible!

Click below to donate today!

Contact Information
email: info@linkglobal.org
phone: 202.714.LiNK
web: http://www.linkglobal.org