So unless someone wants to take over the blog, I’m shuttering it.

But that is not the end of the story.

For years, I’ve urged people to take action on one of the most pressing human rights issue in the world. Awareness is important, but it only really matters if it translates into action.

I’ve had this blog for over 3 years now, I’m one of the most aware persons. Why am I not doing anything?

So this morning on my way to work, I thought about what I can do. I don’t have a lot of money, nor do I have a lot of time. And I’m certain there many people in this country with the same situation. So what can I do make the most out of what I have?

I remembered an old post on microfinance pioneer Muhammad Yunus. And I also know the microfinance site, Kiva.

What if we find North Koreans hiding in China and finance their escape to safety, and recoup our loan long after they reach it?

Obviously, there are major risks involved. And it will no doubt be a tough sell. There is no guarantee that the North Koreans we fund will make it to safety, we can only maximize their chances of success. And the thought of poor North Koreans paying off rich westerns like me is unappealing.

But what are the alternatives? The current model of charity relies purely on faith that one’s contribution will make a difference. And with loans instead of gifts, we can maximize what meager resources in order to help others escape.

There are plenty questions that need to be asked. How much does it cost to get one North Korean out of the country? How can we finance children? When they do succeed, how do refugees, facing social isolation and meager employment, plan to pay off that loan?

They say freedom is priceless, but I plan to put one anyway and hope for both refugees and lenders, it is worth the price. I don’t consider it immoral, but others may disagree.

There is much research I have to do. I’ll have to find honest brokers. I’ll have to find ways to communicate with both refugees and lenders without comprising refugee’s safety. I’ll have to provide information to lender that their loans are worth it without giving too much information (like real names).

Hopefully, these questions will be answered and I will launch my new initiative and put my own money on the line to see if this is a sustainable model.

It’s my turn to act.

I just went to Starbuck and learned that the purchase of my Expresso Truffle sent $.05 to (red). I take no issue of corporations taking part of charitable courses. Having taken part in non-profit organizations, any help is appreciated. But I cannot help but notice that it is a ploy to steer people towards certain high-end products.

My expresso, like almost every Starbucks coffees, tasted like a combination of burning and sweetness. It also costs $3.65 for a Tall (small in Starbuckese).

Dell’s Product (RED) steers me towards their high end XPS desktops and their mid-range Studio 15 and Studio 17 Laptops (which has a 75 premium for some pretty cool designs). I’m pretty sure I won’t be getting a Product (RED) Mini9 anytime soon.

It’s like corporations are putting the onus on their customers to help, (RED)’s case, HIV victims in Africa. What if we don’t buy Product (RED)? Will they not send the money?

I reiterate. Whatever it takes to get money to worthy causes is okay in my book. But it would be nice for corporation to use cheaper high-volume products.

Now, I have no problem with protesting the Olympics and I most certainly enjoy watching Chinese officials going out of the way keep everyone under wraps and suck the fun out of the games.

My question is, “In the eyes of the Chinese people, why should they believe in your cause?”

While the concept of human rights seems obvious to Westerners, it’s different for the Chinese, since they are commonly the very people accused of being human rights violators.

The point is not whether the Chinese are complicit in human rights violations (they are), but whether protestors are making a case to the Chinese that what they are doing is wrong.

Based on the round-up… not really. The point of protest is to convince others of your position, not feel good about sticking it to the man.

I spend a lot of time criticizing the Chinese government and its people for its treatment of North Koreans. But given the chance to tell them in their face, I better be more engaging and less embarrassing.

So I hope we learn that as free individuals we must stand up to the many faces of evil, whether it that is Kim Jong-Il or Cho Seung-Hui. Take it from defectors that voluntarily return to North Korea whether to help feed their families or spread the faith. If we must die, we must die knowing that evil men do not rule over us unchallenged.

Please pray for the victims and the obviously very sick shooter.

Hanah is just 21. She described chronic stomach pain as a child when her family were reduced to eating dumplings made from tree-bark.

From the age of 15 she tried to escape seven times, her young age apparently saving her from severe punishment when she was caught and sent back.

During these escapes she was separated from her parents, who were also trying to flee.

21, that’s my age. While I’m typing in the comforts of a University computer lab, Hanah is in a Thai prison uncertain of her fate while a coup is going on in the rest of the country. While I spent my summer at home or at the beach, she is traversing across China and Laos, battling the elements and hiding in the shadows.

Worse, both countries are willing to send her back to North Korea to die without hesitation. All I could do was to get as many people to hear their story. Is that all I’m capable of doing?

There’s a lot of pent up rage from reading such stories. Frankly, writing on a blog does not alleviate that. My hope is that anyone reading this could do more for these refugees and thousands of others still hiding in China and Southeast Asia than I could. I hope one feels the same way as I do.

When evangelical pastor and best-selling author Rick Warren announced he would undertake a preaching mission to North Korea next year, it raised a number of eyebrows in the conservative religious community.

North Korea, after all, is a keystone in President Bush’s “axis of evil” and, according to the State Department and human rights organizations, a gross violator of human rights and religious freedom.

Warren, author of the hugely popular Purpose-Driven Life books, cancelled a preliminary July 17 trip to Pyongyang in the wake of heightened tensions between the reclusive regime and the West over North Korea’s July 5 test of seven missiles.

But while Warren’s trip was canceled, he insisted his preaching visit would go on next year despite criticism from other evangelicals and the Bush administration’s efforts to totally isolate the country. “Regardless of politics, I will go anywhere I am invited to preach the gospel,” Warren said.

Warren’s stance is just one of a number of indications that, at least on foreign policy issues, the president can no longer automatically count on the support—or at least quiet acquiescence—of conservative and moderate evangelicals as he did in the run-up to the war in Iraq.

Okay, evangelicals do not agree with the President. Who doesn’t? So what do they think the President should do?

On North Korea, evangelist Franklin Graham, head of the relief agency Samaritan’s Purse, has laid out evangelical differences with the administration most forcefully.

Graham, who has visited North Korea, recently told the PBS program Religion & Ethics Newsweekly that he wanted to encourage the administration and Congress to change the U.S. approach to the communist nation.

“We need to talk to the North Koreans face to face, period,” Graham told the program. “Eyeball to eyeball. And there is a lot that can be accomplished if we simply do that.”

“I think probably North Korea is the most dangerous place on the face of the Earth right now,” Graham said. “You’ve got a country that I feel is kind of backed up against a wall.”

North Korea has indicated it will not engage in talks with the United States until Washington ends its financial sanctions against the country. Graham took a dim view of the value of the sanctions.

“Whatever sanctions, what little we may be able to bring to bear on North Korea, it’s just going to end up hurting the people worse,” he told Religion & Ethics Newsweekly. “It’s not going to hurt the army, and I don’t think it’s going to hurt (North Korean leader) Kim Jong Il.”

Direct talks? About what? Persecution of Christians? Not a chance. If sanctions do not hurt Kim Jong-Il and the army, whose fault is that? It gets worse

Separately, two other leading conservative evangelicals—Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission and Richard Cizik of the National Association of Evangelicals—signed on to an effort pressing a joint humanitarian and human rights approach to North Korea rather than the administration’s single-minded focus on arms control.

The coalition includes such liberal groups as Americans for Democratic Action, the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism and the American Humanist Association.

“At the earliest practicable date, the United States should propose an unconditional humanitarian aid initiative to improve the health and lives of the people of North Korea, doing so in such form as will ensure that the benefits of the initiative will be provided on a needs basis,” according to the 18-point plan announced July 20.

Religious groups, of all things, ought to be social entrepreneurs and do things without the government. Why ask the government to do it for them?

Churches in South Korea—mostly associated with mainline Protestant denominations—are also pressing Bush to change U.S. policy toward North Korea. They, like Graham, want Washington to lift sanctions and move toward stabilizing diplomatic relations.

“It is generally understood (in South Korea) that the sanctions against North Korea since 1950 have been enforced by the USA in its own political interest,” the head of South Korea’s national Council of Churches told Bush in a July 7 letter.

“Experts indicate that the sanctions against North Korea have been one of the significant causes of the increasing suffering of the North Korean people,” Anglican Bishop Kyung Jo Park said in the letter.

Park urged the United States to look toward normalizing relations with North Korea.

“We believe that the (July 5) missile testing by North Korea contributes to the deterioration of relations between North Korea and the U.S., and between North Korea and Japan,” Park said.

“Therefore, we strongly assert that true peace in North-East Asia cannot be established without normalizing diplomatic relations between North Korea and the United States, and between North Korea and Japan,” the letter said.

In general, North Korea should have it all, regardless whether the average North Korean benefits or not. What is most disappointing is what isn’t in this article. Not one single person quoted addressed the issue of religious persecution in North Korea. Somehow, I got the sense that’s not as important as the need to normalize relations or direct talks. I think its a bunch of mixed up priorities. Obviously, this is not to say all Christian organizations are like that when I am a supporter of Tim Peter’s Helping Hand Korea. There are also many charitable foundations run by Christian groups and likely including the ones in this article that do good work. And I also do not deny they have good intentions. Now that that’s clear, here’s my problem.

One of the greatest fallacies I see today is the way people set standards on how regimes act. For western liberal societies, our standards are way high. That is not a problem until one see how people set standards for the North Korea’s and Hezbollah’s of the world, which is none at all. I think a lot of people have come to expect Kim Jong-Il’s regime as the scum of the earth. So it’s no longer appalling if the government were to starve its people again. But if the US is doing something about it, it stands accused of hurting North Koreans.

There are two things one can learn from this. One, if you want something changed, do it yourself. Second, if you want a place like North Korea to be a normal country with a stake in the world, you have to expect it to act like one. For instance, a normal country does not counterfeit other people’s currencies or export drugs. It’s internation relation’s version of “the bigotry of low expectations“. Ultimately, everyone is still human, so treat everyone as such.

To some people, it is one of the highest forms of protest, showing you are willing to suffer for a cause. That’s great, but will it acheive your goal? One person that springs into people’s minds is Mahatma Gandhi, but even he only fasts in certain conditions

LETTER TO GEORGE JOSEPH

4.30 a.m., Saturday, April 12, 1924

My dear Joseph,

I sent you a wire (sent on April 11, 1924, “Omit fasting but stand or squat in relays with quiet submission till arrested.”), in reply to yours. Fasting in satyagraha has well-defined limits. You cannot fast against tyrant, for it will be as a piece of violence done to him. You invite penalty from him for disobedience of his orders, but you cannot inflict on yourself penalties when he refuses to punish and renders it impossible for you to disobey his orders so as to compel infliction of penalty.

Fasting can only be resorted to against a lover, not to extort rights but to reform him, as when a son fasts for a parent who drinks.

My fast at Bombay, and then at Bardoli, was of that character. I fasted to reform those who loved me. But I will not fast to reform, say, General Dyer who not only does not love me, but who regards himself as my enemy. Am I quite clear?

…

So would the South Korean Foreign Ministry really care about a German doctor outside of its building? I don’t know, but it does say alot if the foreign ministry is hostile towards a foreigner. But here is something that might work. Imagine, dozens of North Korean defectors outside the Foreign Ministry doing the same thing as Dr. Vollertsen. All the sudden, the government is faced with this question, does it care about North Korean defectors? If so, will they change their ways? I am not encouraging anyone to starve themselves, but I just want to point out that tactics are used to acheive a goal rather than better oneself.

Wednesday, 11 a.m. While Korea is in the throes of World Cup and election day fever, some 40 people in their 20s dressed in black T-shirts gather in front of the Kyobo building in Gwangwhamun, Seoul. A few foreigners mixed in add a dash of blond hair to the bunch. A speech in English: “How many people have to die before you show interest? The starving children in North Korea don’t care about politics. Please, show some interest in the state of human rights in North Korea.” After chanting slogans, the young people lie down on the pavement like dead bodies. Only then does the performance designed to draw attention to the plight of North Koreans attract any interest from protest-weary passersby.

The people lying on the concrete in the heart of Seoul are members of the international group LiNK:Liberty in North Korea. Its head, the second-generation Korean American Adrian Hong (25), voices his frustration about how little South Koreans seem to care about human rights abuses in the North. Koreans always talk of being of the same blood and of unification, so their silence is puzzling, he says. Based in Washington DC, the group was founded at Yale University by mostly second-generation Korean Americans in March 2004. Now it has 73 chapters and about 8,000 active members.

LiNK stages events all over the world to denounce Pyongyang’s human rights record. Last year it also started investigating the conditions of North Korean refugees in China. Members arrived in Korea on May 15 and have since been carrying out the demonstrations all over Seoul. On Wednesday, they lay down on the tarmac, stood up again, lay down, stood up again, repeating the process without end; but while the suffering of North Koreans is a concern for Koreans born abroad and to foreigners without any relation to Korea, the streets of Seoul were indifferent.

I really want LiNK to be successful in Korea, but as soon as I see them do a “die-in” I become worried. What is a die-in? According to Wikipedia,

Die-ins are a form of protest where participants simulate being dead (with varying degree of realism). Possible motivations include:

* prevention of violent conflict, war
* raising awareness of an existing conflict
* expressing disapproval of technology which is perceived as deadly

In the simplest form of a die-in, protesters simply lay down on the ground and pretend being dead, sometimes covering themselves with signs or banners. Much of the effectiveness depends on the posture of the protesters, for when not properly executed, the protest might look more like a “sleep-in”. For added realism, simulated wounds are sometimes painted on the bodies, or (usually “bloody”) bandages are used.

Die-ins were a popular form of protest around the world against the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Cindy Sheehan was arrested for a die-in in Washington, DC.

From this definition, two things about die-in’s bother me. One, it is difficult to execute. Do you look like you are dead or just snoozing on the ground? From the pictures, I can’t really tell. But for a die-in to be an effective tactic, it has to executed flawlessly.

Second, guess where die-in originated? The anti-war movement. While that movement attracted alot of attention, it achieved, in my opinion, the opposite effect. I think South Koreans, like Americans, are more interested in content than style. So what was the content. Well, read the signs.

“How many people have to die before you show interest?” If you ask me that, I’d take action immediately, but I’m already doing that. It’s a rhetorical question, not something you’d like answered (1000? Maybe a million or so?). Nor does it attract people.

Tactics should advance both organizational goals and issue goals. LiNK can now tell prospective members that they went to South Korea to raise awareness. Cool. But did they succeed? Based on this article, not really, but success is relative. I’ll ask what metrics they use.

Personally, I prefer quality over quantity. I try to attract a type of person, rather than the masses. That may sound contrary, publishing in the World Wide Web, my main audience (all four of them) appears to be other bloggers. We all know we’re 100% quality. All kidding aside, I think it’s time to think small and beautiful instead of fat and ugly.

Note: LiNK’s other tactic (this one), probably derived from these folks. Not exactly coming from winners, but nonetheless I’ll be sending in my entry as soon I find something clever to write.

No one should bet that Sujiatun will penetrate the world’s consciousness. Governments everywhere are keen on smooth relations with the PRC; media, even in free countries, seem to want to help them. The reluctance of major newspapers and TV networks to report on atrocities in China is a sad subject.

And I recall what Robert Conquest, the great analyst of totalitarianism, once told me: The world has seldom wanted to believe witnesses. Ten, 20, or 30 years later, maybe, but rarely sooner.

Testimony out of the early Soviet Union was scoffed at; these were “rumors in Riga.” Tales of the Holocaust were Jewish whining. When escapees from Mao spilled into Hong Kong, they were “embittered warlords.” When Cubans landed in Florida, they were “Batista stooges.” And so on.

Does this sound familiar? Here is a case where the only evidence are two witness accounts. In most courts of law, that is not enough to implicate a party. In the case of North Korea, the evidence is much more solid. There are dozens of witness testimony, there are satellite imagery, and there is hidden camera footage. And yet, like the case of Sujiatun, there’s a tendency for people to believe there is not enough evidence. Frustrated human rights organizations would spend many more years producing more and more evidence until some threshold is reached. Those in LiNK know that time is not on our side. They are burdened by the fact that when nothing changes, everyday there is North Korean going to be repatriated, be tortured, or starve to death. Meanwhile, governments like South Korea and China think they have all the time in world to solve the issue with economic plans and policies that will take decades to cause any change. I ask, “how much evidence does one need to take action?” For us, it probably took a single picture, a single documentary, or a single testimony. But for the elected (and unelected) policymakers around the world, I ask them how many bodies do we have to produce to get them to start doing the right thing immediately? Based on the pace of progress in places like Darfur and North Korea, I fear it will not happen within our lifetimes.

A stir has been expected since Assemblyman Choi Jae Chun of Uri Party said in a hearing on inauguration of Han Myung Sook, an unofficially decided Prime Minister, that ‘Songs in Prisons(English title: Aquariums of Pyongyang)’ of Kang Chul Hwan, North Koran defector, was written by the National Intelligence Service in South Korea, therefore the book could not be a criterion to judge the reality of North Korean human rights.

Assemblyman Choi Jae Chun said that, “(I also) read the book of Kang Chul Hwan. The book I have was written by the National Intelligence Service which heard from Kang Chul Hwan and summed up the story,” adding “It is stiffening us and a musical ‘Yoduk Story’ which resulted from it is raising up the confusion by being considered as a standard to evaluate North Korean human rights. This is wrong and the story can not be the estimating criterion.”

Assemblyman Choi Jae Chun stated “(‘Songs in Prisons’) was published in France, because it was difficult to be done in South Korea”.

The Assemblyman most like have no evidence to back his claim. Even if the charge is true, it does not refute the truthfulness of Aquarium of Pyongyang. People have a reflexive assumption that because something is biased in favor of a government entity or a corporation it is false. The term propaganda has been misused over the years from something defined as biased to something that is biased and false, thanks to its main association with, ironically, the communist press. It is not wrong to be skeptical, but skepticism should be a consistant. If one is to be skeptical of something, one should be skeptical of everything. For instance, every pamphlet, video clip, and picture LiNK produces is by the dictionary definition, propaganda. Anyone reading this blog or watching Seoul can make the assumption that the writers and filmakers who made these have an interest in changing North Korea’s human rights policy. But can they make the assumption that just because we are biased, are we not being factual. Of course not, that requires a different analytical process. That means checking sources, verifying stats, and corroberate the evidence, not check who funds us (in my case, no one).

So when Assemblyman Choi alleges that the NIS summaried Kang Chol Hwan’s account, he is hoping that people will make the connection between something that is produced by the government and something that is false. Please note that a government funded press is nothing new even in liberal nations with a free press. In America there is PBS and NPR. In the UK there is the BBC. So if my reader are as intelligent as I believe they are, they should be asking Assemblyman Choi, “Gee Assemblyman, what are you insinuating?” Then one might find out his biases.