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US Slaps Sanctions On North Korea After Sony Cyberattack
wiredmikey writes: The United States imposed financial sanctions Friday on North Korea and several senior government officials in retaliation for a cyber attack on Sony Pictures. President Obama said he ordered the sanctions because of "the provocative, destabilizing, and repressive actions and policies (PDF) of the Government of North Korea, including its destructive, coercive cyber-related actions during November and December 2014." The activities "constitute a continuing threat to the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States," he added, in a letter to inform congressional leaders of his executive order. The new measures allow the Treasury Department "to apply sanctions against officials of the Government of North Korea and the Workers' Party of Korea, and persons determined to be owned or controlled by, or acting for or on behalf of" these bodies.
"Slavery" is not just in South Korea. For example, a recent report on the problem here in Britain from the right-wing Daily Telegraph on 29.November.2014. (I mention that it is right wing to avoid any impression that this is an issue raised only by bleeding heart liberals.) Theresa May is the British Home Secretary (political head of the Home Office, the department responsible for law and order, security and immigration) and is a member of the UK Conservative Party, again on the right of British Politics.
Theresa May says tens of thousands held as modern slaves in Britain "As many as 13,000 people in Britain are being held in conditions of slavery, four times the number previously thought, it has been revealed. In what is said to be the first scientific estimate of the scale of modern slavery in the UK, the Home Office has said the number of victims last year was between 10,000 and 13,000. They include women forced into prostitution, domestic staff and workers in fields, factories and fishing boats. ... outlining the strategy for government departments, its agencies and partners, Home Secretary Theresa May said legislation was 'only part of the answer'. The 'grim reality' is that slavery still exists in towns, cities and the countryside across the world, including the UK, she said. ..."
If you're suggesting that the slavery problem in South Korea is in any way comparable to what's happened recently in North Korea, some information:
A 17-minute BBC TV Newsnight report from 2008 Risking lives to escape N Korea Hundred of thousands of North Koreans are fleeing their country illegally, crossing north into China. A camera team from South Korea's Chosun Ilbo newspaper spent the past 10 months filming activity at the border. The BBC's Olenka Frenkiel was given exclusive access to their material.
"Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea" - a book by Barbara Demick
A 2011 lecture by the British politician David Alton North Korea – A Different Approach – Cambridge University Lecture which has useful background on the history of Korea (the Japanese occupation, the Korean war), and has two sections on "4. Human Rights" and "5. Humanitarian Situation".
For example, from "4. Human Rights": ... My own interest in North Korea began through an encounter with an escapee, Yoo Sang-joon. A North Korean Christian who had escaped from the country and came to see me at Westminster. His story was harrowing and disturbing. He told me how he had seen his wife, and all bar one of his children shot dead by Kim Jong-Il's militia. He subsequently escaped across the border to China with his one remaining son. The boy died en route. He encouraged me to read the prison memoirs of Soon Ok Lee. In them she describes in detail the brutality and barbarism of the system in North Korea. 'Eyes of the Tailless Animals' is Soon Ok Lee's account of the sham judicial system, the show trials, the starvation, the forced labour, the degradation, humiliation and rape of prisoners. Through her eyes we get a glimpse of this corrupt, paranoid and tyrannical regime.
... Professor Vitit Muntarbhorn, the previous United Nations Special Rapporteur on North Korea, told me that he estimates that 400,000 people have died in North Korea's prison camps in the last 30 years. Vitit Muntarbhorn ... has described North Korea's human rights record as "abysmal" due to "the repressive nature of the power base: at once cloistered, controlled and callous." The exploitation of