Hugh Hewitt and many others have been spending much time critiquing this article from the L.A. Times. Staff writer Barbara Demick uncritically brings us the ramblings of a North Korean 'businessman' giving us the Party line. While most commenters have been taking Demick to task for failing to do any meaningful analysis of the North Korean's statements, what jumped out at me were the fellow's own words.
He also said that U.S. criticism of North Korea's record on human rights was unfair and hypocritical. In its annual human rights report on Monday, the State Department characterized North Korea's behavior as "extremely poor." It said 150,000 to 200,000 people were being held in detention camps for political reasons and that there continued to be reports of extrajudicial killings."Is there any country where there is a 100% guarantee of human rights? Certainly not the United States," the businessman said. "There is a question of what is a political prisoner. Maybe these people are not political prisoners but social agitators."
While Westerners tend to stress the rights of the individual, he said, "we have chosen collective human rights as a nation…. We should have food, shelter, security rather than chaos and vandalism. The question of our survival as a nation is dangling."
Damning words as far as I'm concerned. There are no such things as collective human rights, and the disastrous results of ignoring individual rights are hard to hide, try as they might. The average North Korean has far less food, shelter and security than the average American. I bet those many thousands in prison camps would be happy for some chaos to replace the security they enjoy now.
As for the vandalism, we might have more here, but there it makes a bigger impression.
Posted by Walter at March 9, 2005 04:22 PM