Free Republic

N. Korean Defector Calls on U.S. to Stand ToughNorth Korean defector and Chosun Ilbo journalist Kang Chol-hwan called on U.S. leaders to reject any South Korean requests for aid to the Stalinist country. In an article for the Wall Street Journal titled "Give Us an 'Eclipse Policy,'" Kang said there were many signs that North Korea is faced with imminent regime collapse just as it was in 1998. Kang said the food crisis was affecting even North Korea's ruling class, with reports that food rationing has been curtailed even in Pyongyang, and this was probably the reason the North asked...

U.S. Campaign to Push for N. Korean Rights By BO-MI LIM, Associated Press Writer Sun Jun 26, 3:14 PM ET SEOUL, South Korea - Christian supporters from President Bush's Texas hometown, believed to have been instrumental in pressuring the White House to raise concerns over war-ravaged Sudan, are launching another international human rights campaign — this time against North Korea's hard-line regime. Members of the Midland Ministerial Alliance, a network of more than 200 churches in the city, are in Seoul this week seeking support for their latest push for improved human rights in the communist North. "North Korean human...

North Korea Complains About Bush MeetingBy BURT HERMAN, Associated Press Writer Thu Jun 23, 6:38 AM ET SEOUL, South Korea - North Korea condemned President Bush for meeting a prominent defector detained as a child in a prison camp, saying Thursday the move chilled the atmosphere for a return to nuclear disarmament talks. ADVERTISEMENT Meanwhile, a high-ranking North Korean delegation in Seoul held a rare meeting with South Korea's president as the two sides discussed family reunions and military contacts across their Cold War border. The talks between the divided Koreas are running alongside efforts to coax the North back...

A Voice From North Korea Echoes in the White HouseBy JAMES BROOKE TokyoAFTER years of lonely street demonstrations and little-noticed newspaper columns, Kang Chol Hwan, a North Korean defector, learned recently that his life had irrevocably changed. Seok Jae-hyun for the New York Times. "I was introduced as someone who wrote a book that was read by George Bush," Kang Chol Hwan said. "I was introduced as someone who wrote a book that was read by George Bush," he said in a recent interview at a museum cafe in Seoul, South Korea, only 150 miles south of the North Korean...

Bush Meets Privately With Noted N. Korean Defector By Peter Baker and Glenn Kessler Washington Post Staff Writers Tuesday, June 14, 2005; Page A04 President Bush met privately yesterday with a well-known North Korean defector who spent 10 years in a prison camp and has since become an outspoken critic of his homeland's government, a move that could provoke Pyongyang just as it was reviving stalled nuclear talks. Bush invited Kang Chol Hwan, a journalist and director of the Democracy Network Against North Korean Gulag, to visit with him in the Oval Office and recount his tale of suffering in...

SEOUL, May 9 (Yonhap) -- U.S. President George W. Bush is reading a North Korean defector's book revealing gruesome human rights abuses in the Stalinist country, according to a White House source contacted in Seoul over the weekend. "I am in the middle of reading 'the Aquariums of Pyongyang,'" the White House source quoted Bush as saying in a recent meeting with aides. The White House source, whose name is being withheld by the Yonhap News Agency for privacy, told a friend in Seoul that Bush "appeared to be very concerned" about the plight of the 23 million North...