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| China-Japan-Koreas |
| Why there are no physically disabled North Koreans |
| 2006-03-23 |
| North Korea has no people with physical disabilities because they are killed almost as soon as they are born, a physician who defected from the communist state said on Wednesday. Ri Kwang-chol, who fled to the South last year, told a forum of rights activists that the practice of killing newborns was widespread but denied he himself took part in it. "There are no people with physical defects in North Korea," Ri told members of the New Right Union, which groups local activists and North Korean refugees. He said babies born with physical disabilities were killed in infancy in hospitals or in homes and were quickly The group urged the South Korean government to change course away from "silent diplomacy" and immediately begin taking action to pressure the North to improve its human rights record. The South Korean government has refused to join international condemnation of human rights abuses in the North out of concern that such a move could rattle ties with Pyongyang, which considers any criticism of its human rights as deeply offensive. "The government should stop trying to avoid upsetting Kim Jong-il," said another defector, Kim Young-sun, 67, referring to the North Korean leader. "It should try to upset Kim Jong-il," she said, adding it would be the best way to change the North. Kim Young-sun is a survivor of the North's Yodok prison camp, notorious for its forced labor and life-sentences for people charged with conspiring against the Kim Jong-il leadership. Mun Hyon-ok said women from her hometown in the northern region of North Korea bordering China were taken by a ring of human traffickers and probably ended up in China. "And there are women who are selling themselves for a handful of rice," she told the forum. North Korea has called itself a people's paradise and said criticism of its human rights was motivated by a goal of toppling the leadership of Kim Jong-il. South Korea has come under fire from human rights groups and some countries for abstaining in votes on U.N. measures to condemn the North's human rights record. Seoul has also avoided the subject in bilateral talks with the North. South Korean officials have said the best way to improve the situation is through quiet diplomacy and encouraging the North to improve its food situation and open up to the international community. |
| Posted by:Jackal |
| #9 Some day, when the walls of this country-sized concentration camp are torn down, and everyone who survives can go into horrific detail about what is going on, (and has been going on for 50 years) there are people whose political careers are going to be over, because they will be shown to have had an interest in letting it all continue. And even more people will be looking on with shame in their hearts, because they can say "I didn't know"--- but they should have extrapolated from the stories like this that leak out. What the world will find, when North Korea finally implodes will make what the Allies found in Germany and Poland at the end of WWII look like child's play. The best of us will be horrified and regretful and sorry that it didn't happen sooner...and the worst of us will take careful notes. |
| Posted by: Sgt. Mom 2006-03-23 19:12 |
| #8 North Korea has no people with physical disabilities because they are killed almost as soon as they are born There is the Groninger Protocol of the Netherlands. Is it better? |
| Posted by: eLarson 2006-03-23 11:35 |
| #7 Long pig veal. |
| Posted by: Zenster 2006-03-23 11:28 |
| #6 I believe they call this "efficacious"... |
| Posted by: tu3031 2006-03-23 09:42 |
| #5 I wonder how many South Korean politicians are getting cuts of the NorK drug money. |
| Posted by: Robert Crawford 2006-03-23 07:34 |
| #4 South Korean officials have said the best way to improve the situation is through quiet diplomacy and encouraging the North to improve its food situation and open up to the international community. How....EU of them. I mean, that approach is working so well with Iran. |
| Posted by: Desert Blondie 2006-03-23 06:35 |
| #3 Do not mock the Juche or you will end up vewy ronery. |
| Posted by: Kim Chee 2006-03-23 05:08 |
| #2 I've heard of testmony that if a woman who is pregnant is returned from China (after escaping) they would either abort the child or (get this!) induce labor and kill the newborn right in front of the mother. The policy of Kimmie-boy-the-baby-killer at work. |
| Posted by: CrazyFool 2006-03-23 00:21 |
| #1 Yet another Failed Commie state fighting for its god-given Stalinist right to have a global economy smaller than its land mass or one of its major cities!? |
| Posted by: JosephMendiola 2006-03-23 00:19 |