Muddling Toward Maturity Blog

TRUMP'S MEETING WITH KIM JONG-UN: A TURNING POINT OR A DEBACLE?

Time will tell.  Ben Shapiro devoted 30 minutes of his daily podcast to analyzing the meeting.   Like everyone, he hopes for the best but itemizes his disappointments and reservations.  Here Shapiro appeared on Fox & Friends (6/12/18) and expressed his concerns:

-- The editors at  National Review offer a sober, judicious commentary with which I am in total agreement.

-- Jonah Goldberg is skeptical and offers the quote of the day: " . . . There’s good reason to believe that if Kim were sincere about getting rid of his nukes, his own regime would kill him. The nuclear program is a unifying tool of state propaganda, celebrated and mythologized in grade schools and everywhere else in Korean society. Expecting them to get rid of them is like expecting the Hell’s Angels to forswear motorcycles in favor of minivans.

-- The Family Research Council rightly focuses on the issue of religious freedom -  President Trump: “We . . . brought it up very strongly.” This issue “did come up, and things will be happening,” the president continued, recognizing that Franklin Graham has focused on this issue and has “got it very close to his heart.” 

-- See the article "North Korea's Chamber of Horrors: Oppression, Slavery and Starvation."

A huge volume of prayer has been going up around the world regarding North Korea.  Let us continue praying.

NORTH KOREAN DICTATOR KIM JONG UN THE SAME HEIGHT AS PRESIDENT TRUMP?

The strange photo below was posted on Breitbart.  It strikes me as laughably distorted.  Kim Jong Un has been made to look as tall as President Trump.  See the video below for a true perspective of their relative heights.

 

 

 

KRAUTHAMMER - U.S. URGENTLY NEEDS TO DEAL WITH NORTH KOREA NOW!

With North Korea on the verge of developing ICBMs capable of carrying nuclear bombs to the United States and elsewhere, the day of reckoning is now upon us.  We can no longer continue dithering.  As Charles Krauthammer says,  

You can kick the can down the road, but when Kim Jong Un announces, as he did last Sunday, that "we have reached the final stage in preparations to test-launch an intercontinental ballistic rocket," you are reaching the end of that road. 

Since the early 1990s, we have offered every kind of inducement to get North Korea to give up its nuclear program. All failed miserably. Pyongyang managed to extort money, food, oil and commercial nuclear reactors in exchange. But it was all a swindle. North Korea was never going to give up its nukes because it sees them as the ultimate guarantee of regime survival.

Krauthammer rightly notes,

"If they can miniaturize their weapons to fit on top of the rocket and control re-entry, they'll be able to push a button in Pyongyang and wipe out an American city."

So "What to do? he asks.  

"The options are stark: 

QUICK TAKES

  - The Impending Collapse of the Global Warming Scare

  - Netanyahu Pays Visit to Strategically Positioned Azerbaijan: Iranians now fretting the Israeli military option is back on the table.

  - Child chain gangs of North Korea exposed, as kids as young as five forced to repair railways (Video and photos)

  - Identity Politics are Anti-American (David Horowitz)

American Jailed in N. Korea Feels 'Abandoned' by US

 

From CBN News 8/1/14 - 

An American Christian held in North Korea says he feels 'abandoned' by the United States government.

Kenneth Bae, a former tour guide, has been imprisoned in the communist country for nearly two years.

In an interview with a pro-North Korea newspaper based in Japan, Bae said nothing seems to be happening in his case.

He also said he's afraid of being sent back to a labor camp.

Bae's sister said it's the first they've heard of him since April and she called on the White House to do more to secure his release.

Bae is one of three Americans held in North Korea.

Rare Video of North Korean Underground Christians

From CBN reporter Gary Lane's blog:

Just about anyone who follows North Korea's underground church can tell you how rare it is to see actual video of North Korea Christians worshipping in their homes in North Korea. Now we have a glimpse of these bold believers doing what they do regularly under threat of discovery and imprisonment.

The Colorado-based ministry that serves North Korean Christians--Seoul USA--recently obtained an exclusive video and has agreed to share it with CBN News.

Each year, North Korea tops the Open Doors Watchlist of the world's worst persecuting countries. That's because the Kim regime--though friendly to former NBA star Dennis Rodman--is unfriendly to North Koreans who practice any faith other than Juche, the state religion.

Seoul USA believes at least 30,000 Christians are currently imprisoned in North Korea.

Watch the rare video included in my Skype interview with Seoul USA CEO Rev. Eric Foley. Foley discusses the video and provides some insights on the North Korean underground church. The identities--faces and bodies of the North Korean Christians--are blurred to protect them from harm.

Also, pray this Thanksgiving season and thank God for the bold example of devout faith demonstrated by our North Korean brothers and sisters in Christ. With His help, they are honoring Jesus and keeping the faith alive in the most restricted nation on Earth. May we be more like them!

 

EVAN RAMSTAD - "DEFECTORS CAST NEW LIGHT ON KOREAN CAMPS"

This noteworthy Wall Street Journal article appeared a few weeks ago. 

SEOUL—North Korea's system of prison camps has turned more brutal in recent years but also more difficult to hide, according to new research based on defector testimonies and satellite imagery.

Two recent reports, by researchers in the U.S. and South Korea, portray an acute desperation and horror inside North Korea's notorious prison camps—a closed and secretive system inside one of the world's most closed and secretive states. More than 200,000 people are sentenced to live and work in grueling conditions there, many until they die, according to the accounts as well as private and governmental estimates. . . .

. . . a consistent portrait emerges of North Korea's six giant kwan-li-so, or "total control camps," where people are sent, often without trial, for offenses including defacing a picture of one of North Korea's leaders, attending a church service or leaving the country without permission. Nearly all are in remote, mountainous regions. Some cover more ground than major cities in the U.S. and Europe.

Hunger and fear are constant. Failure to obey rules and guards' orders can lead to torture and even death. Most prisoners perform difficult labor, sometimes in mines and factories, during the day and spend nights in barracks or smaller quarters without heating and plumbing. Sexual abuse of women is common. 

INTERNATIONAL PRAYER ALERT: PRAY FOR 30 NORTH KOREAN REFUGEES IN DANGER OF EXECUTION -- URGENT

The following is of upmost importance.  I am sorry to be a few days late but I just learned of the crisis.  It was posted by China Aid, a reputable organization both for news and for rendering aid to those suffering persecution.

**

International Prayer Connect  February 23, 2012

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

For the last two weeks, China has been threatening to repatriate 30 North Korean refugees. These are people who escaped the brutal oppression and starvation of their land, hoping to get a better life, and to go to South Korea eventually. They and three generations of their families (men, women and children too), potentially hundreds of people, will be sentenced to execution as an example by the Pyongyang government or at least to slave labor in one of the Nazi-style death camps in North Korea if China repatriates them as it says it will do.

The South Korean government has appealed to China to no avail so far and is now pressing the United Nations Human Rights Council. Yesterday, the New York Times reported that "South Korean diplomats are expected to call for the safety and humane treatment of North Korean refugees living in hiding in China." (See the whole article at www.nytimes.com/2012/02/23/world/asia/seoul-urges-china-to-not-return-north-korean-refugees.html)

With this important issue finally before the world in such glaring manner, this could be a kairos time to see China's inhumane policy on refugees changed so that those suffering in the hell-hole of North Korea can freely escape. Please pray for the following and let's trust God together for this mountain to be moved (Matthew 17:20):

1. That the North Korean refugees and their families still inside North Korea will be protected from harm.
2. That China's government will be embarrassed and ashamed of their policies regarding North Korean refugees and allow refugees to come across the border to find asylum there or to go on to South Korea to live.
3. That China which supplies 80% of the resources to prop up the evil regime in Pyonyang will be moved to cut off those resources unless North Korea respects human rights and shuts down the Nazi-style prison camps in which hundreds of thousands of men, women and children are incarcerated. (In those camps, they are worked to death with little or no food and in terrible conditions or used for the testing of biological and chemical weapons.)
4. That the United Nations will take up this issue aggressively and that the international community will strongly pressure China and North Korea to respect the rights of the North Korean people and reform their policies concerning them.

Thanks for your persevering prayers of faith. The Lord will use them to shape history and bring His deliverance to North Korea!

Yours in Christ,

John Robb

Chairman, IPC

CHA SUN CHONG AND HER TEAM OF LITTLE VIRTUOSO GUITARISTS

These talented youngsters are from North Korea, the elite of the land.  While others starve, they thrive.  But I do not wish to take anything away from their amazing musicality!  Enjoy and be amazed, especially if you are a mediocre guitar player (at best) like myself.

 

 

INSIDE N. KOREA'S PRISONS: MOMS KILL CHILDREN TO SURVIVE

From today's 700 Club:

SEOUL- South Korea -- Meet a woman who has witnessed unspeakable evil and lived to tell about it.

For 28 years, Kim Hye Sook languished as a prisoner inside North Korea's oldest concentration camp. She saw daily executions, mass starvation, and mothers killing their children to survive. 

Kim granted CBN News the first American television news interview. We must warn you that the images and content of this report are not suitable for children. 

 

Languishing in Prison

Kim is perhaps the longest serving prisoner ever to escape from North Korea.

"I went to the prison camp when I was only 13 years old and I got out when I was 41," she said.

MICHAEL GERSON - "SPREADING NOTES OF FREEDOM AMONG NORTH KOREANS"

Whenever I read of what North Koreans suffer, I shudder.  I also wonder at the bravery and determination of those who escape, and those who help.  Michael Gerson, writing in the Washington Post, asks the question:

How does a mind -- born into comprehensive tyranny, conditioned for loyalty, fed on lies -- eventually change? What shifts or clicks or breaks?

"I cannot pinpoint one event," says Kim Seung-Min, a former North Korean army officer who defected in the 1990s. "I was very loyal to Kim Jong Il and to the party." His father was a well-known professor and writer; his mother a journalist. But he recalls the leaflet drops from across the border that showed pictures of South Korea. "One image stuck with me. People were wearing all sorts of different clothes. That was remarkable to me."

In such profound isolation, even the possibility of picking your clothes can spark a revolution of the mind.

Gerson goes on to tell of defectors, of Chinese cells on the border helping escapees, and technologies helping to crack the isolation of North Korea.

With strategic options relating to North Korea limited, an information assault on the regime assumes greater urgency. The irreplaceable National Endowment for Democracy supports Free North Korea Radio.  But neither South Korea nor the United States shows much creativity or commitment in applying new information technologies to help the spread of freedom.

News like this remind Christians like me to pray for Koreans and for those devoting themselves to helping.  These are the front-line heroes of our day.  Read the whole article.

ROBERT PARK VS. THE UNDERWEAR BOMBER

Claudia Rosett has written that all too rare column, a comparison between a genuine hero (Robert Park who walked into North Korea to plead freedom for its citizen-slaves) and a murderous killer in the service of Allah (the Underwear Bomber).  Somehow, in recent weeks, I had missed the story of Robert Park,  a 28-year-old missionary, about whom Rosett writes:

An American of Korean descent, Park offered himself up peacefully, on Christmas Day, for the cause of life and liberty for others. He went to northeast China, and from there walked across the frozen Tumen River into North Korea. Witnesses told reporters that as he went, he called out, in Korean, messages of God’s love, as well as “I am an American citizen.” He took with him a letter to North Korean tyrant Kim Jong-il, asking Kim to open his country and shut down his prison camps.

It is now almost three weeks since Park vanished into the shadows of North Korea. As he expected, he was seized by North Korean authorities. . .

Do read the rest of Rosett's column.  And remember to pray for Robert Park.  We may also ponder Rosett's closing words:

But Park, with his deliberate act of self-sacrifice, chose to embody a message that should be bracing for Americans to honor and remember: That it is not the place of free men to accommodate evil, but to call it what it is, and challenge it – not on its own terms, but on ours.

Update: Park’s final interview with Reuters is here. (HT: Wintery Knight Blog)

JOURNALISTS EUNA LEE AND LAURA LING TELL THEIR STORY OF IMPRISONMENT IN NORTH KOREA

The story is well worth reading. 

We had traveled to the area to document a grim story of human trafficking for Current TV. During the previous week, we had met and interviewed several North Korean defectors -- women who had fled poverty and repression in their homeland, only to find themselves living in a bleak limbo in China. Some had, out of desperation, found work in the online sex industry; others had been forced into arranged marriages.

Now our guide, a Korean Chinese man who often worked for foreign journalists, had brought us to the Tumen River to document a well-used trafficking route and chronicle how the smuggling operations worked.  . .    Feeling nervous about where we were, we quickly turned back toward China. Midway across the ice, we heard yelling. We looked back and saw two North Korean soldiers with rifles running toward us. Instinctively, we ran. . .   [MORE . . .]

NORTH KOREAN WOMAN EXECUTED FOR DISTRIBUTING BIBLE

Associated Press report here.

NORTH KOREA FREEDOM WEEK: APRIL 26 - MAY 2, 2009

Lots of events are planned in and around Washington, D.C.  See the North Korea Freedom Coalition website  (http://www.nkfreedom.org/), which has lots of information on North Korea and why we should be concerned.  Chuck Colson writes:

Many activities will take place in or near Washington, D.C.—and the list of events reveals the heartbreaking reality of life under Kim Jong-il. On Sunday, April 26, there’s a candlelight vigil in

ESCAPING NORTH KOREA

Melanie Kirkpatrick reviews Mike Kim's new book,  Escaping North Korea: Defiance and Hope in the World's Most Repressive Country:

JOHN BOLTON CASTIGATES BUSH FOR POLICY REVERSALS ON NORTH KOREA

Former Ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton, laments that President Bush personally declared North Korea no longer a state sponsor of terrorism or an enemy of the United States.

  Nothing can erase the ineffable sadness of an American presidency, like this one, in total intellectual collapse.

John Bolton Writes on "Bush's North Korea Capitulation"

Very sad and foolish indeed.  Read about it here.

North Korean Reveals Childhood Torture

Click here.

In a testimony to stunned journalists yesterday, Mr. Shin, the first North Korean defector to the South who was born in the North's notorious gulag, revealed a nightmarish world in which inmates and their children suffer lifetime incarceration, are kept ignorant of outside society and undergo forms of torture that are medieval in their barbarism.  [more]

What North Korea Is Like

See Michelle Malkin's post.  (Actually, it's John Noon substituting for Michelle Malkin).

NORTH KOREA ON THE VERGE OF COLLAPSE?

Mario Loyola, writing in National Review's Corner, cites an Atlantic Online article by Robert D. Kaplan, "When North Korea Falls"  and says,

But first, read  this excellent article by Andrei Lankov who shows how the regime's authority is already collapsing internally.   And Nicolas Eberstadt, an indispensable source on North Korea (and a dizzying array of other things) surveys North's political economy and the chances of an economic collapse. These three articles would be at the top of my list for anyone interested in becoming as well-informed about the Hermit Kingdom as most experts and decision-makers.

North Korea's potential for anarchy vastly exceeds that of Iraq's. Iraq is not going to suffer a general breakdown of its urban economy—sending millions into the surrounding country-side to live and die as hunter-gatherers. But North Korea has somehow survived at the edge of that nightmare scenario for nearly two decades. And it has nukes.