Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Captain Corea]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/7951982.stm

[riverboy]

Holy *beep*!

[Tjames426]

From what I read...

The two are "native born Koreans" but with US passports.

***

I find it interesting that most Koreans have a US passport for convenience. I mean seriously, I have yet to meet a Korean Nationalized US Citizen who calls themselves a Red, White, and Blue US loving citizen.

As an American citizen, I am tired of foreign nationals who have the privilege of US citizenship only to piss on it and never live in the USA.

Guess you are only "an American citizen" when you get your sorry butt in trouble,eh?

[MrRogers]

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/20/world/asia/20korea.html?hp
March 20, 2009
N. Korea Said to Detain U.S. Reporters
By CHOE SANG-HUN
SEOUL, South Korea � Two American journalists on a reporting trip to the border between China and North Korea have been detained by the North Korean military, a human rights activist and another source said Thursday.

Laura Ling, a Chinese-American, and Euna Lee, a Korean-American, were believed to have been detained by North Korean border guards Tuesday morning. Their Chinese guide, an ethnic Korean, was also detained. A third journalist, Mitch Koss, was believed to have remained in China.

Aaron Tarver, a spokesman at the U.S. Embassy in Seoul, could not immediately confirm the report.

The journalists went to China last week to report on North Korean refugees in northeastern China, according to Chun Ki-won, a Christian clergyman in Seoul who helped arrange their trip, and Lee Hark-joon, a reporter with the Chosun Ilbo, South Korea�s leading daily, who met them in Seoul last week.

North Korea condemns the presence of foreign journalists in the border area reporting on the plight of North Koreans who have recently fled the hunger and political repression at home and accuses them of acting as American spies.

The journalists� reported detention comes at a tense moment in American relations with Pyongyang. North Korea has announced that it will launch a communications satellite early next month and ordered American aid groups to leave the country.

On Thursday, Japan threatened to tighten sanctions on the North if it proceeds with the rocket launch, which is seen by Washington and Tokyo as a cover for testing ballistic missile technology.

�We will make a comprehensive decision, including the possibility of imposing tougher sanctions,� Prime Minister Taro Aso told a parliamentary committee.

Mr. Chun, who heads Durihana, a South Korean missionary group that assists North Korean refugees in China, said he learned of the journalists� detention from American officials.

Mr. Lee said journalists, from the cable channel Current TV, consulted him about reporting on North Korean refugees before heading to China. Current TV is an independent media company that was founded by former Vice President Al Gore and a businessman, Joel Hyatt.

Mr. Chun said he last talked with the journalists at 6 a.m. Tuesday, when their Chinese guide told him that they were moving from Yanji, a Chinese town near the northeastern end of the China-North Korean border, to Dandong, near the opposite end of the border.

The journalists had entered China on March 13 via Seoul, and during their reporting had interviewed North Korean refugees living in hiding, including orphans and women who worked for pornographic Internet chat sites in the hopes of earning enough money to travel to South Korea or the United States, Mr. Chun said.

It was not known at what point along the 300-mile border and under what circumstances they were detained.

�They told me that they completed what they went to China for, and that they completed their assignment,� Mr. Chun said. �I warned them against getting too close to the border. I suspect that they got too ambitious.�

Since the mid-1990s, famine has driven thousands of North Koreans to sneak across the Tumen and Yalu rivers, which form the border.

Arrests of Americans are rare. In 1999, the State Department said an American citizen visiting a North Korean economic zone near the Chinese border had been arrested. Karen Han, 58, a Korean-American businesswoman based in Beijing, was deported after being held for a month on unspecified charges.

In a more widely reported case, Bill Richardson, then a United States congressman, negotiated in 1996 the release of American citizen Evan Hunziker, who swam across the Yalu River, while drunk, on a what he called a mission to spread the gospel in the North. Mr. Hunziker was detained for three months on espionage charges.

Holding Japanese and South Korean citizens has long soured Pyongyang�s relations with its neighbors.

On Thursday, Foreign Minister Hirofumi Nakasone of Japan said his country faced �the most serious threat� from North Korea�s planned rocket launch and said it would rally the international community to impose additional sanctions against the North.

North Korea has informed international agencies that it will launch its rocket between April 4 and 8 along a trajectory that crosses Japan.

After Pyongyang detonated its first nuclear device in 2006, the United Nations Security Council adopted a resolution banning the North Korea from nuclear tests and all ballistic missile activities. Japan joined global sanctions banning arms and luxury goods trade with North Korea.

But international sanctions have little impact on the North Korean regime, which has survived decades of isolation as famine has killed thousands of its people.

The North demonstrated its imperviousness to outside influence this week when it told the United States it no longer wants to receive food aid and told five American aid groups to leave by the end of the month.

No international sanctions work effectively without the cooperation from China, the North�s main ally and biggest trade partner, but Beijing remains wary of American moves to increase economic pressure on North Korea and favors a policy of engagement.

On Thursday, China�s official People�s Daily newspaper said that Prime Minister Wen Jiabao told his North Korean counterpart, Kim Yong-il, during a meeting Wednesday in Beijing, that China wants to �actively push forward� deadlocked nuclear disarmament talks involving the two Koreas, China, the United States, Russia and Japan.

[soviet_man]

China and the DPRK share a border, a river, in some parts it is narrow enough to basically walk over.

A lot of tourists do unwise things there, like try and go to the other side to take pictures.

If they were actually in the border area and were doing something like filming without official permission, of course they will run into trouble.

They have only themselves to blame.

[Gopher]

"Two American journalists on a reporting trip to the border between China and North Korea" having to do with North-Korean refugees...?

Plausible. But not quite good enough. What exact chain of events provoked the North-Koreans to seize them?

[Kuros]

[Captain Corea]

Great (and shocking) information there Kuros.

Thanks.

Soviet Man, you do know that tourists from the DPRK film South Korea all the time, right?

[samcheokguy]

soviet_man is a freaking commie sympathizer.
As putin says "WHo ever doesn't miss the USSR has no heart. Who ever wants it back has no brain"

[soviet_man]

[catman]

[Gopher]

He is no troll. And but for his "rightly" judgement, I agree with his position here.

How else would you expect Pyongyang to respond to intelligence-gathering and/or a probable muckraking-style journalist "investigation" re: North-Korean refugees? So accustomed to denouncing America as a fascist dictatorship and police state that people here forget how actual dictatorships and police states function and seem to experience shock...

As I have said before, some people need to get out and look around in the world a bit more. And that is this story's primary value.

[CentralCali]

[catman]

[samcheokguy]

the real issue is WERE they in China? Or North Korea. If they were in DPRK they were stupid, and I think that is it.
-But if China allows DPRK forces to drag 3rd parties out of their territory then something is seriously wrong.