U.S. Senate passes bill on NK human rights By
Lee Chi-dong 2012/08/04
The U.S. Senate has passed a bill calling for bipartisan
efforts to address North Korea's human rights violations, sending it to
President Barack Obama for signature, according to congressional officials.
Shortly before
leaving Capitol Hill Thursday night for a five-week summer recess, senators
approved the legislation on extending until 2017 the authority of the North
Korean Human Rights Act of 2014. It is meant to put pressure on Pyongyang on
the issues of human rights, democracy, refugee protection and freedom of
information.
It is the legal ground
for the U.S. government's financial support for radio stations broadcasting to
North Korea and the appointment of a special envoy on the North's human rights
issues.
The House of
Representatives endorsed the legislation in May.
Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen
(R-FL), who leads the House Foreign Affairs Committee and who authored the
legislation, welcomed the Senate move and reiterated her criticism of
Pyongyang.
North Korea pushes bold agrarian reform program
4 August 2012 — Molly Reeder
To fend off starvation, North Korea will introduce bold
agrarian reforms that will allow farmers to dispose of part of their
harvests as they see fit. Under North Korea’s system of collective labor
in farming villages, harvests are collected by the state and redistributed to
households according to their size. The new system will allow farmers to do what
they want with their harvests after they have handed over statutory amounts to
the state. This means they can consume the produce or sell it in markets.
China introduced a similar “responsible production system”
under its reform and door-opening policy that started in the late 1970s,
whereupon yields increased rapidly.
Under the new agrarian system, basic units of collective
labor, called “punjo,” will be downsized nationwide to comprise only 6 to 10
persons. The measure is intended to reflect the individual efforts of farmers
in the yields.
The reform policy was decided in mid-June during a meeting of
senior leaders and has already been conveyed to provincial officials. However,
the steps have yet to be announced to the North Korean public, and no decision
has been made on when they will be implemented,
Pyongyang’s attempts at this have been frustrated more than
once in the past by the need to preserve the country’s unique socialist
ideology. In 1994, immediately prior to the death of Kim Il Sung, North Korea’s
founder and Kim Jong Un’s grandfather, Pyongyang granted cultivation rights to
farmers in areas close to the Chinese border and elsewhere.
When North Korea implemented economic reform measures in July
2002–considered to be the boldest in the country’s history–it tried to
eliminate chronic food shortages by sharply expanding the land areas that
individuals were allowed to cultivate. This led to an immediate increase in the
quantity of farm produce that farmers could dispose of as they liked. But the
North Korean leadership quickly got cold feet, and the reforms lasted only
slightly over three years.
Fewer N.Korean Defectors Come to S.Korea August 7, 2012
he number of North Korean defectors arriving in South Korea
in the first half of this year dropped to half that of the same period last
year. According to the Unification Ministry on Thursday, 751 defectors arrived
from January to June, down 45.4 percent from 1,375 on-year.
The number of defectors arriving here mostly rose every year
since 2001, when it first exceeded 1,000. The figure only dropped in 2005, by
27 percent, and in 2010, by 19 percent. But this is the first time that the
number has fallen so drastically
But now more than 80 percent who arrive here fled to China in
search of food first and then come to Seoul later, suggesting that the regime's
crackdown has crippled South Korean NGOs' organized assistance, and only those
who had already fled and lived in China manage to get to South Korea
N.Korea Threatens S.Korean Activists Aug. 7
North Korea on Tuesday threatened to hunt down defectors as
well as South Korean activist Kim Young-hwan, who was detained in China for 114
days for helping them.
The statement singled out Kim Sung-min of Radio Free North
Korea, Park Sang-hak of activist group Fighters for Free North Korea, Cho
Myong-chol, a defector who became a Saenuri Party lawmaker, and Kim.
Beijing Asked Seoul to Stop Help for N.Korean Defectors Aug. 7
China asked Seoul to make sure that South Koreans stop
engaging in "organized activities" there to help North Koreans escape
if South Korean activist Kim Young-hwan was to be released.
China attempted to make Kim's release contingent on South
Korea putting a stop to activists' help for North Korean defectors in the three
northeastern Chinese provinces.
Seoul has been seeking a consular agreement with Beijing to
increase protection of South Korean citizens for a decade, but progress has
been slow. According to the Foreign Ministry, talks kicked off in May 2002 and
were convened on three more occasions -- in January 2007, January 2010, and
December 2011 -- but the gap in opinions remains wide.
