In February 2009, Nodutol posted a favorable profile on its website of Al-Awda-NY, a pro-Palestinian group, which contends that Palestinians “were exiled by Zionist Terror Gangs in the early 1900’s” and “the formation of the Zionist Israeli State in 1948”. According to Nodutol, Al-Awda-NY advocates “to ensure that the right of Palestinians to return to their homes would not be negotiated or liquidated by unrepresentative parties, the US and the Israeli state.”
Nodutol’s anti-Israel advocacy is consistent with the official policies of the North Korean government. North Korea does not recognize Israel as a state, instead recognizing the Palestinian National Authority, and Israeli citizens who are Jewish are barred from visiting North Korea.
In a January 2009 announcement on its website, Nodutol encouraged its members to sign a petition against Israel’s military action in Gaza, exclaiming, “Act now before it’s too late! Protest against the Israel genocide against Palestinians! Stop U.S. Support to Israel!”
Showing posts with label North Korea. Show all posts
Showing posts with label North Korea. Show all posts
Thursday, July 23, 2009
Korean-American Youth Reports On Her Nodutdol-Sponsored Trip to North Korea: "I Finally Have a Homeland"
The following excerpt is typical of the glowing journal entries about North Korea posted on Nodutdol's website by young Korean-Americans John Choe's organization Nodutdol sponsors to visit North Korea:
“Coming to North Korea, I feel 100% accepted for the first time in my life, regardless of my ignorance of Korean language, history, and culture. I have learned to be proud to be Korean and that is a gift I will always cherish. You have inspired me to learn more about my heritage and to teach my family about what I learn. I finally have a homeland and I look forward to the day when my mother can return ‘home’ to one united Korea, her heart swelling with pride.”
To read the rest of Kei Fischer's account in the January 2009 issue of Nodutdol's e-News, click here. (The photo was taken by Kei Fischer.)
"Visiting North Korea is a bureaucratic nightmare, and your every move will be monitored by your guides. There are those who have called for a boycott on tourism to North Korea, due to human rights abuses in the country or how tourism may help finance the government. There is no official free enterprise activity in North Korea, and all tourist facilities are state-owned so the money goes directly to the government of North Korea. Others cite the possible benefits of Westerners engaging with North Korean citizens, particularly in a positive, friendly manner (i.e., contrary to the stereotypes of Westerners presented by internal propaganda) — although your guides will generally do their best to stop you from actually meeting any ordinary citizens. Ordinary North Koreans are forbidden to interact with you without authorization from the government...
In addition, there have been reports of difficulties regarding Israeli, American, British and Japanese nationals. Americans, in particular, are not normally allowed to visit North Korea, with the exception of during the Arirang Mass Games. Israelis are permitted inside, they however have to not be Jewish, which is rare since Israel is a Jewish state. Jews of all nationalities are usually forbidden inside the country due to the anti-Semtic nature of the state ideology Juche. Citizens of all other countries will need a visa, which will only be issued after your tour has been booked, approved by the North Korean authorities and paid for. Journalists (or those suspected of being journalists) require special permission, which is quite difficult to obtain."
The young people who write about their trips to North Korea for Nodutdol never mention any of the universally-accepted human rights abuses perpetrated by the North Korean dictatorship against its people. According to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights:
"Torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, public executions, extra judicial and arbitrary detention, the absence of due process and the rule of law, imposition of the death penalty for political reasons, the existence of a large number of prison camps and the extensive use of forced labour;
Sanctions on citizens of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea who have been repatriated from abroad, such as treating their departure as treason leading to punishments of internment, torture, inhuman or degrading treatment or the death penalty;
All-pervasive and severe restrictions on the freedoms of thought, conscience, religion, opinion and expression, peaceful assembly and association and on access of everyone to information, and limitations imposed on every person who wishes to move freely within the country and travel abroad;
Continued violation of the human rights and fundamental freedoms of women, in particular the trafficking of women for prostitution or forced marriage, ethnically motivated forced abortions, including by labour inducing injection or natural delivery, as well as infanticide of children of repatriated mothers, including in police detention centres and labour training camps."
Choe's Nodutdol "Brainwashes" Youths To Be Pro-North Korea Says President of Korean Group; Nodutol Coordinator: "I Like Marx"
"Kim's Nukes Ignite Korean War At Home"
by Niall Stanage
From The New York Observer, November 26, 2006
The dapper middle-aged man in suit and tie lifted his hands from the table, locked them together and then, very loudly, imitated the sound of gunfire.
“ Tuh-tuh-tuh-tuh-tuh!” shouted Byung Sun Soh, startling the children at nearby tables in a Burger King in Flushing, Queens, on a quiet Sunday morning. Mr. Soh, a 66-year-old with a kindly face, was recounting his family’s experiences at the hands of North Korean soldiers during the Korean War. His family only just escaped death. He said he has long feared that “the Korean community would be drenched by communism.” And, today, in his eyes, there are communists everywhere.
Mr. Soh has plunged into a local fight that is roiling the Korean-American community. The conflict pits those like him, who are virulently anti-communist and give no quarter in their hatred of North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il, against other, usually younger members of the Korean-American community, who are fierce critics of U.S. policy in East Asia and who sometimes sound like de facto supporters of Mr. Kim. “I don’t think there is a decisive majority either way,” explained Taehyo Park, executive director for Korean American League for Civic Action. “Among the first generation of Korean-Americans, there is a deep emotional hatred of communism. The younger generation doesn’t have experience of the [Korean] War, and they would tend to argue, ‘Harsh treatment—what good does that do?’”
The rhetorical struggle between the two sides has reached new levels of vitriol since Oct. 9, when North Korea stunned the international community with the announcement that it had tested its first nuclear weapon. The arguments currently taking place in New York and elsewhere are among the most extreme manifestations of a fundamental split in the two-million-strong Korean-American community. (About 100,000 Korean-Americans live in New York.) Mr. Park defines that split as between those of the “war generation,” who often insist that only the harshest action will bring North Korea to heel, and other, generally younger people who believe in a “long, patient engagement” with Pyongyang. “The consensus is that there should be a peaceful resolution,” he said. “How to achieve that is where people differ.”
Mr. Soh, a Manhattan-based musician who has organized several benefit concerts to aid North Korean refugees in China, is adamant about the scale of the danger that he believes is festering in some quarters of Korean America. Left-leaning Korean-American groups, he claimed, are fronts for Mr. Kim’s regime: “They keep it secret when they talk to people …. They have support. There are a lot of communists.” One high-profile leftist group in New York is, he alleged, “on the communist side. They are captured by communism.”
The rhetoric seems to belong to another era, that of McCarthyism and Red-baiting. But the claims made by Mr. Soh seem less absurd when one witnesses some of the meetings at which the Korean-American far left makes its presence felt. A so-called Korea Crisis Forum was organized at the start of this month by two Korean-American groups, the Korea Truth Commission and Korean Americans Against War and Neoliberalism (KAWAN). The International Action Center, the U.S. activist group founded by former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark, was the other co-sponsor. The meeting was held in a characterless room at the United Nations Church Center opposite the world body’s headquarters. Posters blaming the U.S. for the problems of the Korean peninsula lined the walls: “North Korean hunger problems and food crises are due from the US economic sanctions,” one proclaimed.
About 70 people attended, with white Americans outnumbering those of Korean heritage. The gathering seemed to fulfill every cartoonish stereotype of the leftist fringe. A man with a luxuriant gray beard and a T-shirt bearing the legend “Cuba is Our Neighbor” wandered through the crowd. A woman handed out copies of Workers World, the newspaper of a U.S.-based socialist party. In the general hubbub of conversation before the meeting began, the name of Daniel Ortega, the Sandinista and one-time bête noire of the U.S. who would a few days later be elected president of Nicaragua, drifted up repeatedly. Mr. Clark himself was one of three speakers to address the meeting and—judging from the way the crowd thinned out after he’d finished—he seemed to be the main attraction. Mr Clark served as U.S. Attorney General during the Johnson administration, but since then has become better known for providing legal service to controversial figures, including Saddam Hussein. Now 78, his tall frame has become stooped. Never one to shy away from embracing unpopular causes, he informed the crowd that the North Koreans are “a beautiful and good people, and they are greatly endangered by the United States.”
Though silent on the subject of human-rights violations by the North Korean regime, Mr. Clark was positively gushing about his visit to the People’s Library in Pyongyang. “The whole structure oozes with the desire for knowledge,” he said happily. He received his loudest burst of applause when raising the specter of military action by the Bush administration against North Korea, insisting that “[we] should do everything in our power to prevent that happening.”
The two other speakers, Hwa Young Lee of the Korea Truth Commission and Kwan Ho Choi of the Congress for Korean Reunification, couldn’t match Mr. Clark’s rhetorical sparkle, but their views were cut from the same cloth. At no point during the speech, or in a Q&A session afterwards, was there any hint of criticism of the North Korean regime. Ms. Lee asserted that Kim Jong Il was “greatly admired and respected by his people.”
Asked specifically about human-rights abuses, she asked rhetorically, “Is the United States in a position to condemn human-rights abuses? I don’t think there is a real human-rights issue. I cannot say, because I have never lived there.” (Amnesty International’s most recent report on North Korea stated that “fundamental rights including freedom of expression, association and movement continued to be denied. There were reports of public executions, widespread political imprisonment, torture and ill-treatment.”)
In 2003, Mr. Choi’s group was accused by the South Korean Consulate General of being a front for Kim Jong Il’s regime. Approached by this reporter after the meeting, he declined to give an interview, saying he was in a hurry to leave. He also declined to give a phone number at which he could be contacted, instead offering an e-mail address. Two messages to that address went without reply.
The scene was much the same at an event hosted by a group called Nodutdol last Saturday at Hunter College. Nodutdol—the word has multiple meanings, including “stepping-stone”—has one of the highest profiles of all the left-leaning Korean-American groups, in part because it has previously clashed with older, more conservative organizations. Among other activities, it arranges trips to North Korea for young Korean-Americans. One of the purposes of Saturday evening’s event was to enable those who had traveled on (and paid for) the last trip, in August, to talk about their experiences. One woman, Maggie Kim, reminisced from the stage about how “no one I knew [in America] worked towards anything besides their own personal gain, whether it be wealth, fame, happiness, enlightenment. Yet here was an entire country devoted to their great and dear leaders.”
Given such sentiments, it’s no surprise that conservative Korean-Americans consider Nodutdol as wayward at best, and allege that its trips are little more than exercises in indoctrination. “The young people are only there for a few days, and they trust what they are told,” said John Park, president of the Korean American Empowerment Council. “They brainwash them.”
To Mr. Soh, the musician, Nodutdol is “insane” and the trips are simply “wrong.” “If someone has a good spirit, they cannot go there,” he said. Nodutdol’s Solidarity Committee coordinator, Cheehyung Kim, disagrees that his group is anti-American or a North Korean front: “We certainly do not support everything about North Korea, and we do not criticize everything about the U.S. either. We are like hundreds of other progressive groups—we criticize both countries,” he said. Mr. Kim, though, is upfront about his own political philosophy. Arguing about the damage caused by “the dominance of U.S. capital,” he adds, “I have read Marx and I like Marx. Capital is a work of genius.”
The arguments at both extremes of New York’s Korean-American community are strident and often bitter. But do they matter? Some observers believe that a moderate majority has remained largely silent, leaving the field open to more dogmatic voices. Professor Charles Armstrong, a Korea expert at Columbia University, said that, aside from the more extreme groups, “There really is not a lot of discussion about North Korea near the surface.” He added that, for many Korean-Americans, “I think there is a sense that there is not much they can do.”
Yong Il Shin, the U.N. correspondent of the Korea Times newspaper, cautions against overestimating the support that the far-left groups in particular receive: “These groups are virtually ostracized within the community, so they have almost no influence.” Political representatives of the Korean-American community who offer a nuanced view seem to be in short supply, however. In their absence, the enmity between right and left surges on unconstrained. Mr. Kim of Nodutdol insists that North Korea has the right to develop nuclear weapons “to gain political clout.” Mr. Soh, the musician, says of such activists: “We must destroy them.” “Nobody is afraid to speak out,” Mr. Park of KALCA said dryly of the two sides in this new, local Korean War. “They just don’t want to talk to each other.”
by Niall Stanage
From The New York Observer, November 26, 2006
The dapper middle-aged man in suit and tie lifted his hands from the table, locked them together and then, very loudly, imitated the sound of gunfire.
“ Tuh-tuh-tuh-tuh-tuh!” shouted Byung Sun Soh, startling the children at nearby tables in a Burger King in Flushing, Queens, on a quiet Sunday morning. Mr. Soh, a 66-year-old with a kindly face, was recounting his family’s experiences at the hands of North Korean soldiers during the Korean War. His family only just escaped death. He said he has long feared that “the Korean community would be drenched by communism.” And, today, in his eyes, there are communists everywhere.
Mr. Soh has plunged into a local fight that is roiling the Korean-American community. The conflict pits those like him, who are virulently anti-communist and give no quarter in their hatred of North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il, against other, usually younger members of the Korean-American community, who are fierce critics of U.S. policy in East Asia and who sometimes sound like de facto supporters of Mr. Kim. “I don’t think there is a decisive majority either way,” explained Taehyo Park, executive director for Korean American League for Civic Action. “Among the first generation of Korean-Americans, there is a deep emotional hatred of communism. The younger generation doesn’t have experience of the [Korean] War, and they would tend to argue, ‘Harsh treatment—what good does that do?’”
The rhetorical struggle between the two sides has reached new levels of vitriol since Oct. 9, when North Korea stunned the international community with the announcement that it had tested its first nuclear weapon. The arguments currently taking place in New York and elsewhere are among the most extreme manifestations of a fundamental split in the two-million-strong Korean-American community. (About 100,000 Korean-Americans live in New York.) Mr. Park defines that split as between those of the “war generation,” who often insist that only the harshest action will bring North Korea to heel, and other, generally younger people who believe in a “long, patient engagement” with Pyongyang. “The consensus is that there should be a peaceful resolution,” he said. “How to achieve that is where people differ.”
Mr. Soh, a Manhattan-based musician who has organized several benefit concerts to aid North Korean refugees in China, is adamant about the scale of the danger that he believes is festering in some quarters of Korean America. Left-leaning Korean-American groups, he claimed, are fronts for Mr. Kim’s regime: “They keep it secret when they talk to people …. They have support. There are a lot of communists.” One high-profile leftist group in New York is, he alleged, “on the communist side. They are captured by communism.”
The rhetoric seems to belong to another era, that of McCarthyism and Red-baiting. But the claims made by Mr. Soh seem less absurd when one witnesses some of the meetings at which the Korean-American far left makes its presence felt. A so-called Korea Crisis Forum was organized at the start of this month by two Korean-American groups, the Korea Truth Commission and Korean Americans Against War and Neoliberalism (KAWAN). The International Action Center, the U.S. activist group founded by former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark, was the other co-sponsor. The meeting was held in a characterless room at the United Nations Church Center opposite the world body’s headquarters. Posters blaming the U.S. for the problems of the Korean peninsula lined the walls: “North Korean hunger problems and food crises are due from the US economic sanctions,” one proclaimed.
About 70 people attended, with white Americans outnumbering those of Korean heritage. The gathering seemed to fulfill every cartoonish stereotype of the leftist fringe. A man with a luxuriant gray beard and a T-shirt bearing the legend “Cuba is Our Neighbor” wandered through the crowd. A woman handed out copies of Workers World, the newspaper of a U.S.-based socialist party. In the general hubbub of conversation before the meeting began, the name of Daniel Ortega, the Sandinista and one-time bête noire of the U.S. who would a few days later be elected president of Nicaragua, drifted up repeatedly. Mr. Clark himself was one of three speakers to address the meeting and—judging from the way the crowd thinned out after he’d finished—he seemed to be the main attraction. Mr Clark served as U.S. Attorney General during the Johnson administration, but since then has become better known for providing legal service to controversial figures, including Saddam Hussein. Now 78, his tall frame has become stooped. Never one to shy away from embracing unpopular causes, he informed the crowd that the North Koreans are “a beautiful and good people, and they are greatly endangered by the United States.”
Though silent on the subject of human-rights violations by the North Korean regime, Mr. Clark was positively gushing about his visit to the People’s Library in Pyongyang. “The whole structure oozes with the desire for knowledge,” he said happily. He received his loudest burst of applause when raising the specter of military action by the Bush administration against North Korea, insisting that “[we] should do everything in our power to prevent that happening.”
The two other speakers, Hwa Young Lee of the Korea Truth Commission and Kwan Ho Choi of the Congress for Korean Reunification, couldn’t match Mr. Clark’s rhetorical sparkle, but their views were cut from the same cloth. At no point during the speech, or in a Q&A session afterwards, was there any hint of criticism of the North Korean regime. Ms. Lee asserted that Kim Jong Il was “greatly admired and respected by his people.”
Asked specifically about human-rights abuses, she asked rhetorically, “Is the United States in a position to condemn human-rights abuses? I don’t think there is a real human-rights issue. I cannot say, because I have never lived there.” (Amnesty International’s most recent report on North Korea stated that “fundamental rights including freedom of expression, association and movement continued to be denied. There were reports of public executions, widespread political imprisonment, torture and ill-treatment.”)
In 2003, Mr. Choi’s group was accused by the South Korean Consulate General of being a front for Kim Jong Il’s regime. Approached by this reporter after the meeting, he declined to give an interview, saying he was in a hurry to leave. He also declined to give a phone number at which he could be contacted, instead offering an e-mail address. Two messages to that address went without reply.
The scene was much the same at an event hosted by a group called Nodutdol last Saturday at Hunter College. Nodutdol—the word has multiple meanings, including “stepping-stone”—has one of the highest profiles of all the left-leaning Korean-American groups, in part because it has previously clashed with older, more conservative organizations. Among other activities, it arranges trips to North Korea for young Korean-Americans. One of the purposes of Saturday evening’s event was to enable those who had traveled on (and paid for) the last trip, in August, to talk about their experiences. One woman, Maggie Kim, reminisced from the stage about how “no one I knew [in America] worked towards anything besides their own personal gain, whether it be wealth, fame, happiness, enlightenment. Yet here was an entire country devoted to their great and dear leaders.”
Given such sentiments, it’s no surprise that conservative Korean-Americans consider Nodutdol as wayward at best, and allege that its trips are little more than exercises in indoctrination. “The young people are only there for a few days, and they trust what they are told,” said John Park, president of the Korean American Empowerment Council. “They brainwash them.”
To Mr. Soh, the musician, Nodutdol is “insane” and the trips are simply “wrong.” “If someone has a good spirit, they cannot go there,” he said. Nodutdol’s Solidarity Committee coordinator, Cheehyung Kim, disagrees that his group is anti-American or a North Korean front: “We certainly do not support everything about North Korea, and we do not criticize everything about the U.S. either. We are like hundreds of other progressive groups—we criticize both countries,” he said. Mr. Kim, though, is upfront about his own political philosophy. Arguing about the damage caused by “the dominance of U.S. capital,” he adds, “I have read Marx and I like Marx. Capital is a work of genius.”
The arguments at both extremes of New York’s Korean-American community are strident and often bitter. But do they matter? Some observers believe that a moderate majority has remained largely silent, leaving the field open to more dogmatic voices. Professor Charles Armstrong, a Korea expert at Columbia University, said that, aside from the more extreme groups, “There really is not a lot of discussion about North Korea near the surface.” He added that, for many Korean-Americans, “I think there is a sense that there is not much they can do.”
Yong Il Shin, the U.N. correspondent of the Korea Times newspaper, cautions against overestimating the support that the far-left groups in particular receive: “These groups are virtually ostracized within the community, so they have almost no influence.” Political representatives of the Korean-American community who offer a nuanced view seem to be in short supply, however. In their absence, the enmity between right and left surges on unconstrained. Mr. Kim of Nodutdol insists that North Korea has the right to develop nuclear weapons “to gain political clout.” Mr. Soh, the musician, says of such activists: “We must destroy them.” “Nobody is afraid to speak out,” Mr. Park of KALCA said dryly of the two sides in this new, local Korean War. “They just don’t want to talk to each other.”
John Choe Slams U.S., Calls for Solidarity With Middle East By Comparing Korea and Palestine
By Deirdre Griswold
Excerpted from: Workers World Newspaper, February 28, 2002
"Another member of Nodutdol, John Choe, said the Korean community is reaching out to others who have suffered from U.S. policy.
'We had a community forum recently with two goals. One was to showcase the fact that many members of the Korean community in New York have been opposed to the use of military forces in Afghan. The second was to build solidarity with people in the Middle East, including Palestine, making comparisons with the way the U.S. has acted with its allies in Korea and Palestine, dividing and occupying these two countries.
We also spoke of the significance of the diaspora in both our struggles. The Korean community is here today because of what the U.S. and its allies did in Korea 50 years ago. We shouldn't feel we're just victims. This is an opportunity to critique U.S. policy around the world.'"
To read full article, click here.
Excerpted from: Workers World Newspaper, February 28, 2002
"Another member of Nodutdol, John Choe, said the Korean community is reaching out to others who have suffered from U.S. policy.
'We had a community forum recently with two goals. One was to showcase the fact that many members of the Korean community in New York have been opposed to the use of military forces in Afghan. The second was to build solidarity with people in the Middle East, including Palestine, making comparisons with the way the U.S. has acted with its allies in Korea and Palestine, dividing and occupying these two countries.
We also spoke of the significance of the diaspora in both our struggles. The Korean community is here today because of what the U.S. and its allies did in Korea 50 years ago. We shouldn't feel we're just victims. This is an opportunity to critique U.S. policy around the world.'"
To read full article, click here.
John Choe Says U.S., South Korea at Fault for Tension With North Korea
Excerpted from Workers World Newspaper, October 7, 2004
"[John] Choe said "the ever-intensifying U.S. hostile policy and the clandestine nuclear-related experiments recently revealed in South Korea are constituting big stumbling blocks" and make it impossible for North Korea to participate in the continuation of six-nation talks on its nuclear program."
To read the full article, click here.
"[John] Choe said "the ever-intensifying U.S. hostile policy and the clandestine nuclear-related experiments recently revealed in South Korea are constituting big stumbling blocks" and make it impossible for North Korea to participate in the continuation of six-nation talks on its nuclear program."
To read the full article, click here.
John Choe's Organization Nodutdol Protests U.S. Sanctions Against North Korea
"Activists Demand, 'Hands Off Korea!'"
By Larry Hales
From: Workers World, October 19, 2006
Protests were held on both U.S. coasts from Oct. 11-12 in support of the people of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and against sanctions being championed in the U.N. by the U.S.
A press conference was held on Oct. 12 at the federal building in downtown Los Angeles, initiated by Korean Americans for Peace, Korea Truth Commission (KTC), International Action Center (IAC) and Bayan USA.
Leaders from the Korean community plus a member of the FMLN of El Salvador who was tortured by U.S.-supported death squads and members of the Los Angeles IAC all spoke.
Each speaker affirmed the right of the DPRK to self-defense in the face of a history of aggression, constant threats of sanctions, military assault and the threat of a nuclear assault from the U.S.
Later in the day there was a spirited rally demanding “Hands Off Korea!” The protesters joined with others who mount a weekly protest denouncing the war in Iraq.
In New York, a demonstration organized by Nodutdol for Korean Community Development, KTC and the IAC was held near the United Nations building on Oct. 11.
David Sole, a Green Party candidate in Michigan for the U.S. Senate and a Workers World Party member, issued a statement demanding the U.S. respect North Korea’s sovereignty, stating, “The present crisis arises directly out of the implacable hostility of the U.S. imperialist government to the socialist government of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.” The full statement can be read at www.stopthewarslate.org.
By Larry Hales
From: Workers World, October 19, 2006
Protests were held on both U.S. coasts from Oct. 11-12 in support of the people of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and against sanctions being championed in the U.N. by the U.S.
A press conference was held on Oct. 12 at the federal building in downtown Los Angeles, initiated by Korean Americans for Peace, Korea Truth Commission (KTC), International Action Center (IAC) and Bayan USA.
Leaders from the Korean community plus a member of the FMLN of El Salvador who was tortured by U.S.-supported death squads and members of the Los Angeles IAC all spoke.
Each speaker affirmed the right of the DPRK to self-defense in the face of a history of aggression, constant threats of sanctions, military assault and the threat of a nuclear assault from the U.S.
Later in the day there was a spirited rally demanding “Hands Off Korea!” The protesters joined with others who mount a weekly protest denouncing the war in Iraq.
In New York, a demonstration organized by Nodutdol for Korean Community Development, KTC and the IAC was held near the United Nations building on Oct. 11.
David Sole, a Green Party candidate in Michigan for the U.S. Senate and a Workers World Party member, issued a statement demanding the U.S. respect North Korea’s sovereignty, stating, “The present crisis arises directly out of the implacable hostility of the U.S. imperialist government to the socialist government of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.” The full statement can be read at www.stopthewarslate.org.
Koreans in Flushing Call John Choe a "Communist Sympathizer"
"County Action, North Korean Politics and Ethnic Clashes Define Race For Liu Seat"
by Chris Bragg
From: City Hall, June 22nd, 2009
When John Choe entered the Council race to replace Council Member John Liu (D-Queens) a few weeks ago, there were two immediate opposite reactions.
The Queens Democratic Party jumped at the chance to endorse Liu’s longtime chief of staff, even though Choe had declared his candidacy only a day before the county’s endorsement meeting.
At the same time, a faction of the Korean-American population in the Flushing district strongly denounced him, even though Choe appears to have a good shot at becoming the first Korean-American elected to the Council.
The county support for Choe is easy to explain: he has the backing of the popular Liu, and Rep. Joseph Crowley (D-Queens/Bronx), the Queens County chair. Similarly, Choe said that the promise of county support was one of the main factors in his decision to finally go public with his candidacy.
The big controversy, though, is not over this political maneuvering, but over a foreign policy issue half a world away.
In 1999, Choe founded a group called Nodutdol, whose stated aim is the reunification of North and South Korea. Some in Flushing, however, have labeled Choe a Communist sympathizer, since the group has arranged numerous trips to North Korea for members, and because the group’s website has featured glowing accounts of North Korea and its communist dictator.
In a district where the Falun Gong has for years protested Liu at every turn for what they believe are the councilman’s own alleged Communist leanings, Choe said similar forces are now marshalling support against him among Korean-Americans.
John Hong, of the Korean American Association of Flushing, said Koreans are likely to instead support S.J. Jung, a community organizer, who has also received the backing of the Working Families Party and 32 BJ.
Hong said he did not know what to think about Choe.“I have heard the rumors about North Korea,” Hong said. “I don’t know if they are true. But I have heard them.”
Choe, however dismissed the whole controversy as irrelevant to his candidacy.
“I’m not running for secretary of state—I’m running to represent the 20th district in the City Council,” Choe said.
Some outsiders are also getting involved. Former Council Member Julia Harrison, who is white and preceded Liu on the Council, has been strongly expressing her concerns about Choe’s candidacy.
“I am very concerned about the perception in the community that the North Korean government has a spokesperson,” said Harrison.
To read the rest of the article, click here.
by Chris Bragg
From: City Hall, June 22nd, 2009
When John Choe entered the Council race to replace Council Member John Liu (D-Queens) a few weeks ago, there were two immediate opposite reactions.
The Queens Democratic Party jumped at the chance to endorse Liu’s longtime chief of staff, even though Choe had declared his candidacy only a day before the county’s endorsement meeting.
At the same time, a faction of the Korean-American population in the Flushing district strongly denounced him, even though Choe appears to have a good shot at becoming the first Korean-American elected to the Council.
The county support for Choe is easy to explain: he has the backing of the popular Liu, and Rep. Joseph Crowley (D-Queens/Bronx), the Queens County chair. Similarly, Choe said that the promise of county support was one of the main factors in his decision to finally go public with his candidacy.
The big controversy, though, is not over this political maneuvering, but over a foreign policy issue half a world away.
In 1999, Choe founded a group called Nodutdol, whose stated aim is the reunification of North and South Korea. Some in Flushing, however, have labeled Choe a Communist sympathizer, since the group has arranged numerous trips to North Korea for members, and because the group’s website has featured glowing accounts of North Korea and its communist dictator.
In a district where the Falun Gong has for years protested Liu at every turn for what they believe are the councilman’s own alleged Communist leanings, Choe said similar forces are now marshalling support against him among Korean-Americans.
John Hong, of the Korean American Association of Flushing, said Koreans are likely to instead support S.J. Jung, a community organizer, who has also received the backing of the Working Families Party and 32 BJ.
Hong said he did not know what to think about Choe.“I have heard the rumors about North Korea,” Hong said. “I don’t know if they are true. But I have heard them.”
Choe, however dismissed the whole controversy as irrelevant to his candidacy.
“I’m not running for secretary of state—I’m running to represent the 20th district in the City Council,” Choe said.
Some outsiders are also getting involved. Former Council Member Julia Harrison, who is white and preceded Liu on the Council, has been strongly expressing her concerns about Choe’s candidacy.
“I am very concerned about the perception in the community that the North Korean government has a spokesperson,” said Harrison.
To read the rest of the article, click here.
John Choe Reluctant To Admit North Korea Violates Human Rights: Queens Tribune
"Choe Speaks Frankly On His Korea Position"
By Vladic Ravich
From: The Queens Tribune, June 5th, 2009
John Choe would rather not talk about North Korea.
“This issue is of very little relevance to District 20,” said Choe, responding to claims made last week by District Leader Julia Harrison, who said her sources were wary of Choe’s alleged connections to North Korea.
“The main issues of working families in this district are good schools for their children, jobs, health care, police protection, the basics. […] This story is old news. It’s been covered since 2003, with accusation that somehow I am a spy or a representative of North Korea. I’ve been very clear in my answer; I have not taken sides, I don’t represent or speak on behalf of either the South or the North Korean government. I am Korean American and my focus is as a community organizer to make people’s lives better right here.”
Choe did agree to a lengthy interview to dispel the rumors and past allegations that his role in founding a group called Nodutdol (nodutdol.com) somehow branded him unpatriotic or worse. He made no secret of his advocacy for peace on the Korean peninsula and explained his positions on the issues that have gotten North Korea in headlines around the world.
Choe said he has taken several trips to South Korea and is very familiar with how the country works. He was particularly interested in “the way its health care, feminist movements, and very active workers movement” operate. He said he has “very limited information on the other half of the peninsula,” but he did take two trips there, once in 2000 and again in 2008.
“Yes, I did go there on my honeymoon,” said Choe. “We spent a few days in North Korea to learn about the society. We spent the other part of the honeymoon in Yosemite Park, enjoying the beauty of one of America’s greatest parks.”
Nodutdol sponsors trips by American Koreans to visit the country and the blog posts they write are overwhelmingly positive, describing the new found pride they feel in their heritage and the warm welcome they received. Nodutdol has been criticized for not presenting the negatives of North Korea, but Choe says that is not the purpose of the group. Instead, the group wants to foster cultural exchange and understanding, traits that Choe considers prerequisites for peace.
“I believe in productive and constructive criticism. There is also criticism that is meant to undermine a peaceful process. I believe if you’re gonna build a relationship you have to engage in constructive criticism.[…] You can’t be holier than thou, saying why aren’t you fixing this, or fixing that?[…] That part of U.S. policy is currently being reviewed by the Obama administration. The unilateralism that the U.S. has pushed around the world hasn’t been very productive,” said Choe.
When asked about the issue of missiles and nuclear weapons, Choe said “Frankly, I don’t support their test on nuclear weapons. My hope is for peaceful negotiations and the importance of non violence.” He said North Korea had the right to withdraw from the Nuclear Non-proliferation Act, just as any country can withdraw or not sign a treaty. He cited the example of the U.S. refusing the sign the international ban on land mines, which results in tremendous human suffering around the world.
Choe said North Korea, like every nation, is entitled to test rockets for civilian purposes. When asked if he believe the rockets recently tested are for satellites or weapons, he said is not aware of any evidence one way or the other.
In regards to human rights violations, Choe criticized the former military government of South Korea, especially their National Security Law, which he said led to the “restricted free speech and freedom of conscience, [and] allowed the authorities to detain, torture and sometimes kill their political opponents whether they were professors, poetry, labor activists.” “If a similar system is in place in North Korea, I would also oppose it,” said Choe.
To read reactions to this article from the readers of the Queens Crap blog, click here.
By Vladic Ravich
From: The Queens Tribune, June 5th, 2009
John Choe would rather not talk about North Korea.
“This issue is of very little relevance to District 20,” said Choe, responding to claims made last week by District Leader Julia Harrison, who said her sources were wary of Choe’s alleged connections to North Korea.
“The main issues of working families in this district are good schools for their children, jobs, health care, police protection, the basics. […] This story is old news. It’s been covered since 2003, with accusation that somehow I am a spy or a representative of North Korea. I’ve been very clear in my answer; I have not taken sides, I don’t represent or speak on behalf of either the South or the North Korean government. I am Korean American and my focus is as a community organizer to make people’s lives better right here.”
Choe did agree to a lengthy interview to dispel the rumors and past allegations that his role in founding a group called Nodutdol (nodutdol.com) somehow branded him unpatriotic or worse. He made no secret of his advocacy for peace on the Korean peninsula and explained his positions on the issues that have gotten North Korea in headlines around the world.
Choe said he has taken several trips to South Korea and is very familiar with how the country works. He was particularly interested in “the way its health care, feminist movements, and very active workers movement” operate. He said he has “very limited information on the other half of the peninsula,” but he did take two trips there, once in 2000 and again in 2008.
“Yes, I did go there on my honeymoon,” said Choe. “We spent a few days in North Korea to learn about the society. We spent the other part of the honeymoon in Yosemite Park, enjoying the beauty of one of America’s greatest parks.”
Nodutdol sponsors trips by American Koreans to visit the country and the blog posts they write are overwhelmingly positive, describing the new found pride they feel in their heritage and the warm welcome they received. Nodutdol has been criticized for not presenting the negatives of North Korea, but Choe says that is not the purpose of the group. Instead, the group wants to foster cultural exchange and understanding, traits that Choe considers prerequisites for peace.
“I believe in productive and constructive criticism. There is also criticism that is meant to undermine a peaceful process. I believe if you’re gonna build a relationship you have to engage in constructive criticism.[…] You can’t be holier than thou, saying why aren’t you fixing this, or fixing that?[…] That part of U.S. policy is currently being reviewed by the Obama administration. The unilateralism that the U.S. has pushed around the world hasn’t been very productive,” said Choe.
When asked about the issue of missiles and nuclear weapons, Choe said “Frankly, I don’t support their test on nuclear weapons. My hope is for peaceful negotiations and the importance of non violence.” He said North Korea had the right to withdraw from the Nuclear Non-proliferation Act, just as any country can withdraw or not sign a treaty. He cited the example of the U.S. refusing the sign the international ban on land mines, which results in tremendous human suffering around the world.
Choe said North Korea, like every nation, is entitled to test rockets for civilian purposes. When asked if he believe the rockets recently tested are for satellites or weapons, he said is not aware of any evidence one way or the other.
In regards to human rights violations, Choe criticized the former military government of South Korea, especially their National Security Law, which he said led to the “restricted free speech and freedom of conscience, [and] allowed the authorities to detain, torture and sometimes kill their political opponents whether they were professors, poetry, labor activists.” “If a similar system is in place in North Korea, I would also oppose it,” said Choe.
To read reactions to this article from the readers of the Queens Crap blog, click here.
New York Times: Korean-American Community Says John Choe's Pro-North Korea Agenda Makes Him "A Dangerous Man"
"Man's Bridge To North Korea Is Seen as Link To Espionage"
By ROBERT F. WORTH
From: New York Times, November 5th, 2003
A few months ago, John Choe says, his parents began receiving strange and frightening phone calls at their home on Staten Island. ''Why is your son being paid by the government of North Korea?'' one anonymous caller asked. ''Did you know the F.B.I. is doing surveillance of your son?'' asked another.
Mr. Choe, 33, a community organizer from Queens, says he is not a spy. But to some in the city's large Korean community, he is something just as bad: a ''sympathizer'' who helped found a group that arranges trips to North Korea and features on its Web site a glowingly positive account of that country and its communist dictator.
There have been whispered accusations of North Korean influence in Queens for years. They grew louder last winter when Pyongyang provoked a crisis after it announced its plan to build nuclear weapons. Early last month, Korean-language newspapers in New York dropped their own rhetorical bombs: the South Korean Consulate General, they reported, had announced that three New York organizations -- including one that Mr. Choe helped found -- were controlled by North Korea.
Mr. Choe dismisses the accusation as ludicrous. The group he helped found, Nodutdol for Korean Community Development, is not pro-North, he says. It advocates peaceful reunification of the Koreas, like the two other groups, the Korean American National Coordinating Council (whose president also denied the consulate general's accusations) and the Congress for Korean Unification (whose spokesman would not comment).
The South Korean Consulate also would not comment on the matter, and calls to North Korea's United Nations office were not returned.
Mr. Choe acknowledges that Nodutdol arranges educational trips to North Korea, but only because its 50 or so members want to see what is really happening there.
The controversy, he says, was manufactured by conservative Korean-Americans. ''It's a lot like what's going on in the Cuban community,'' he said. ''The younger generation is starting to challenge the old anticommunist way of thinking, and the older generation doesn't like it.''
New York City Council member John C. Liu, who represents Flushing and employed Mr. Choe as legislative director until the end of August, says his former aide has been unjustly maligned. ''There's a pretty mean streak of McCarthyism out there,'' Mr. Liu said. Mr. Choe left the position to take two yearlong fellowships, Mr. Liu added, not, as many Korean-Americans in Queens say, because of the controversy over Nodutdol.
But to some in the community, Mr. Choe is a dangerous man. ''If we don't speak up,'' said Ellen Kang, a postal worker from Woodside who orchestrated much of the campaign against Mr. Choe, ''these people will influence our children.''
Mrs. Kang was so outraged when she discovered in March that Mr. Choe worked for her own city councilman that she formed Korean American Defenders of Freedom and began organizing rallies to demand that Mr. Liu either fire Mr. Choe or force him to cut his ties to Nodutdol (the word means ''steppingstone'' in Korean).
Mrs. Kang knows that she has been labeled a wild-eyed conservative, and she deeply resents it. ''Some people are against war and love America, and that's O.K.,'' she said. ''These people are against the war and hate America.''
Others feel the same. In March, the Korean American Association of Greater New York was deluged with angry phone calls and letters, including one from the South Korean Consulate, after it offered to rent office space to Nodutdol for a meeting to protest the Iraq war. Finally, the group was forced to rescind its offer. Andrew Kim, who was the association's president at the time, said he would have preferred to allow the meeting in the name of free speech.
It is not hard to see the worries. Nodutdol's Web site, which is in English at www.nodutdol.com, includes a journal and photographs by Yul San Liem, 24, who presents North Korea as a harmonious place, full of happy people free of Western advertising. There is plenty of praise for the former dictator Kim Il Sung.
North Koreans, Ms. Liem writes, ''have built a nation from nothing when the Western Imperialists would have had them fall, have constructed a society in which people actually desire what is best of each other, rather than what is best for the individual self, who resist the clutches of global capitalism, who have survived such hardships and risen up alive, united and strong.''
The site doesn't mention that North Korean citizens can reportedly be sent to the gulag for watching television. There is only a passing reference to the famine that killed an estimated 2.5 million North Koreans in the mid-1990's, a result, many observers say, of the government's policies.
North Korea boosterism may sound bizarre to Americans who remember that President Bush included the country in his ''axis of evil.'' But the boosterism has been increasingly common in South Korea ever since it adopted its conciliatory ''sunshine policy'' toward the North several years ago, said Victor Cha, a professor of international relations at Georgetown University.
''There's a strange kind of infatuation with North Korea,'' Professor Cha said. ''They see it as, at worst, a decrepit regime, or a crazy uncle in the attic; either way, not very threatening. Many people would argue there is great naïeveté in that view.''
The two other groups accused of being controlled by North Korea, the Congress for Korean Unification and the Korean American National Coordinating Council, have Web sites that offer selections from the writings of the Great Leader, as Kim Il Sung is known, and his son, Kim Jong Il, the Dear Leader.
The Rev. Michael Hahm, president of the Korean American National Coordinating Council, says he is not happy with the site, which is run independently out of the group's Washington office. (A call to that office was not returned.)
''We are trying to be a bridge between North Korea and the Korean community,'' Mr. Hahm said. ''If we don't know anything about the other side, we are not going to have a good dialogue.''
Mr. Choe agrees. ''I think there's a deeply felt need to say, just looking at South Korea is half our heritage,'' he said. ''We can't just lie down and be silent when the U.S. is about to launch a war.''
Mr. Choe seems almost amused by the controversy that has risen up around him. He volunteers the fact that he spent his honeymoon in North Korea three years ago and does not doubt that his government minders in the North showed him only what they wanted him to see. But he also says North Korea has been unjustly vilified in the Western media.
In the end, he said with a wry smile, all the bad publicity may have helped his cause. ''Ironically,'' he said, ''our higher profile has helped us recruit people.''
By ROBERT F. WORTH
From: New York Times, November 5th, 2003
A few months ago, John Choe says, his parents began receiving strange and frightening phone calls at their home on Staten Island. ''Why is your son being paid by the government of North Korea?'' one anonymous caller asked. ''Did you know the F.B.I. is doing surveillance of your son?'' asked another.
Mr. Choe, 33, a community organizer from Queens, says he is not a spy. But to some in the city's large Korean community, he is something just as bad: a ''sympathizer'' who helped found a group that arranges trips to North Korea and features on its Web site a glowingly positive account of that country and its communist dictator.
There have been whispered accusations of North Korean influence in Queens for years. They grew louder last winter when Pyongyang provoked a crisis after it announced its plan to build nuclear weapons. Early last month, Korean-language newspapers in New York dropped their own rhetorical bombs: the South Korean Consulate General, they reported, had announced that three New York organizations -- including one that Mr. Choe helped found -- were controlled by North Korea.
Mr. Choe dismisses the accusation as ludicrous. The group he helped found, Nodutdol for Korean Community Development, is not pro-North, he says. It advocates peaceful reunification of the Koreas, like the two other groups, the Korean American National Coordinating Council (whose president also denied the consulate general's accusations) and the Congress for Korean Unification (whose spokesman would not comment).
The South Korean Consulate also would not comment on the matter, and calls to North Korea's United Nations office were not returned.
Mr. Choe acknowledges that Nodutdol arranges educational trips to North Korea, but only because its 50 or so members want to see what is really happening there.
The controversy, he says, was manufactured by conservative Korean-Americans. ''It's a lot like what's going on in the Cuban community,'' he said. ''The younger generation is starting to challenge the old anticommunist way of thinking, and the older generation doesn't like it.''
New York City Council member John C. Liu, who represents Flushing and employed Mr. Choe as legislative director until the end of August, says his former aide has been unjustly maligned. ''There's a pretty mean streak of McCarthyism out there,'' Mr. Liu said. Mr. Choe left the position to take two yearlong fellowships, Mr. Liu added, not, as many Korean-Americans in Queens say, because of the controversy over Nodutdol.
But to some in the community, Mr. Choe is a dangerous man. ''If we don't speak up,'' said Ellen Kang, a postal worker from Woodside who orchestrated much of the campaign against Mr. Choe, ''these people will influence our children.''
Mrs. Kang was so outraged when she discovered in March that Mr. Choe worked for her own city councilman that she formed Korean American Defenders of Freedom and began organizing rallies to demand that Mr. Liu either fire Mr. Choe or force him to cut his ties to Nodutdol (the word means ''steppingstone'' in Korean).
Mrs. Kang knows that she has been labeled a wild-eyed conservative, and she deeply resents it. ''Some people are against war and love America, and that's O.K.,'' she said. ''These people are against the war and hate America.''
Others feel the same. In March, the Korean American Association of Greater New York was deluged with angry phone calls and letters, including one from the South Korean Consulate, after it offered to rent office space to Nodutdol for a meeting to protest the Iraq war. Finally, the group was forced to rescind its offer. Andrew Kim, who was the association's president at the time, said he would have preferred to allow the meeting in the name of free speech.
It is not hard to see the worries. Nodutdol's Web site, which is in English at www.nodutdol.com, includes a journal and photographs by Yul San Liem, 24, who presents North Korea as a harmonious place, full of happy people free of Western advertising. There is plenty of praise for the former dictator Kim Il Sung.
North Koreans, Ms. Liem writes, ''have built a nation from nothing when the Western Imperialists would have had them fall, have constructed a society in which people actually desire what is best of each other, rather than what is best for the individual self, who resist the clutches of global capitalism, who have survived such hardships and risen up alive, united and strong.''
The site doesn't mention that North Korean citizens can reportedly be sent to the gulag for watching television. There is only a passing reference to the famine that killed an estimated 2.5 million North Koreans in the mid-1990's, a result, many observers say, of the government's policies.
North Korea boosterism may sound bizarre to Americans who remember that President Bush included the country in his ''axis of evil.'' But the boosterism has been increasingly common in South Korea ever since it adopted its conciliatory ''sunshine policy'' toward the North several years ago, said Victor Cha, a professor of international relations at Georgetown University.
''There's a strange kind of infatuation with North Korea,'' Professor Cha said. ''They see it as, at worst, a decrepit regime, or a crazy uncle in the attic; either way, not very threatening. Many people would argue there is great naïeveté in that view.''
The two other groups accused of being controlled by North Korea, the Congress for Korean Unification and the Korean American National Coordinating Council, have Web sites that offer selections from the writings of the Great Leader, as Kim Il Sung is known, and his son, Kim Jong Il, the Dear Leader.
The Rev. Michael Hahm, president of the Korean American National Coordinating Council, says he is not happy with the site, which is run independently out of the group's Washington office. (A call to that office was not returned.)
''We are trying to be a bridge between North Korea and the Korean community,'' Mr. Hahm said. ''If we don't know anything about the other side, we are not going to have a good dialogue.''
Mr. Choe agrees. ''I think there's a deeply felt need to say, just looking at South Korea is half our heritage,'' he said. ''We can't just lie down and be silent when the U.S. is about to launch a war.''
Mr. Choe seems almost amused by the controversy that has risen up around him. He volunteers the fact that he spent his honeymoon in North Korea three years ago and does not doubt that his government minders in the North showed him only what they wanted him to see. But he also says North Korea has been unjustly vilified in the Western media.
In the end, he said with a wry smile, all the bad publicity may have helped his cause. ''Ironically,'' he said, ''our higher profile has helped us recruit people.''
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