No pants for North Korea

North Korea crackdown on pants wearers

Blogger's Note: this is a way to attack
Mrs Clinton's wardrobe -- (*^*)

(news.com.au) -NORTH Korean women face hard labour if they are caught wearing trousers rather than skirts, under the communist regime's latest crackdown on public morals, South Korean activists say.

Offenders can be punished with hours of forced labour or fines of 700 won, almost a week's salary for the average worker, human rights group Good Friends said, citing its own sources within the isolated nation.

The Stalinist leadership's campaign is angering women who see skirts as less practical than trousers, Good Friends director Lee Seung-Yong said.

"Women are told to wear skirts in public places and in the streets, sparking complaints among them as they often have to work in tough conditions," he said.

Disciplinary officials from students' bodies and women's organisations stand at street corners during the morning rush hour and lunch breaks, to keep watch for any women violating the pants ban, according to Good Friends.

Uriminzokkiri, an official North Korean website, noted on Monday that ruler Kim Jong-Il had issued a decree in 1986 urging women to wear traditional Korean attire.

"The Dear Leader has said national character shows up not only in language, etiquette and morals but in attire as well," the site says.

It quoted Kim as saying the country's traditional skirts and jackets are a "source of our (national) pride" and that women should be "actively encouraged" to wear them.

Agence France-Presse

Continue read No pants for North Korea...

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North Korea set to try US journalists for 'hostile acts'

Seoul (The Age)- TWO US women journalists were to go on trial in North Korea yesterday on charges that could send them to a labour camp, as supporters and a media freedom group campaigned on their behalf.

The hearing comes amid growing international tensions sparked by the communist state's nuclear test and its apparent plans to launch another long-range missile.

Euna Lee and Laura Ling were detained by North Korean border guards on March 17 while researching a story about refugees fleeing the hardline communist state.

The Pyongyang Government has said they will face trial for "hostile acts" and illegally entering the country, with the hearing to be held "on the basis of the confirmed crimes committed by them".

South Korean analysts say "hostile acts" are punishable by a minimum five years' detention and hard labour.

"We appeal to the North Korean judicial authorities to show the utmost clemency and we hope the trial will result in the acquittal and release of the two American journalists," Reporters Without Borders said in a statement.

"We urge the judges trying the case to follow the example set by their Iranian counterparts, who released US journalist Roxana Saberi last month."

The press freedom group said that even if the two TV reporters made a mistake by getting too close to the North Korean border, "they did so solely for journalistic purposes and not for political reasons or for the purposes of espionage".

Friends, family and colleagues of Ms Lee and Ms Ling held candlelight vigils in Washington and seven other US cities yesterday.

"I wish this were all a bad dream," Ms Ling's sister, Lisa Ling, said in a letter read out at the rally in Washington's Freedom Plaza.

"We have a golden opportunity for a fresh start between our two countries," she said.

"Instead of trying to get reacquainted with one another through missile launches, nuclear tests and terse rhetoric, why not get to know each other over these two amazing girls who just wanted to tell a story?"

The families of the pair broke their long silence this week to appeal for clemency and to urge the two governments not to link the case to the nuclear stand-off.

The reporters, who work for California-based Current TV, co-founded by former US vice-president Al Gore, were allowed to phone their families in the US a week ago.

"We had not heard their voices in over 2½ months," said Lisa Ling. "They are very scared — they're very, very scared."

Both detainees are married and Ms Lee has a four-year-old daughter.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has said the charges against them are "baseless".

Continue read North Korea set to try US journalists for 'hostile acts'...

Pawns in two show trials

(Bangkok Post) -In opposite corners of Asia this week, harsh and undemocratic regimes will be conducting show trials. The Burmese generals are close to wrapping up their case that charges Aung San Suu Kyi with responsibility for the failure of her jailers to guard her. North Korea is putting two US citizens in the dock on June 4, charged with committing "hostile acts", meaning they were photographing North Korean smugglers and refugees at the Chinese frontier. The two women apparently actually crossed the border, giving the North Koreans a reason to arrest and hold them in jail for the last three months.

The Burmese regime has again increased the physical and psychological pressure on Mrs Suu Kyi. She is held almost incommunicado in the notorious Insein prison on the outskirts of Rangoon. Her lawyers have not been allowed the normal access to the prisoner. As they prepared their closing arguments yesterday, they were denied access once again.

The prisoner is a frail, 63-year-old woman who won the Nobel Prize for Peace. Yet she has frightened members of a military junta so much that they seldom let her even see her defenders, except in a tightly guarded courtroom where the regime is likely to end the show trial on Friday.

The Burmese deputy defence minister showed the sort of contempt for rule of law one has come to expect from the junta. On an official trip to Singapore, Maj Gen Aye Myint told the media there was "no doubt" Mrs Suu Kyi was guilty as charged - of a cover-up, by failing to report a foreigner had got into her compound. This statement during an ongoing trial by a top junta official, demonstrated that the actual courtroom and judges are just a show in Burma.

It leaves the world to wonder why Maj Gen Aye Myint is not on trial for dereliction of duty. His soldiers were ordered to guard Mrs Suu Kyi from all intruders and failed.

Of course, there has been no media coverage allowed of Mrs Suu Kyi's court ordeal. The same will be true in Pyongyang tomorrow, when an equally pre-ordained trial is to get under way with, ironically, journalists in the dock - US citizens of Korean heritage, Laura Ling and Euna Lee.

The two women work for Current TV, a cable television station run by former US vice president Al Gore. They were arrested on March 17 by North Korean border guards while reporting on Korean women and children who had fled the Pyongyang regime to China.

The trial and verdict will be whatever the regime wants, but just what that might be is not yet clear. For about the same time as it has held the journalists, North Korea has taken a dangerous and belligerent course. It has fired long-range and medium-range missiles and tested the nuclear weapon designed to fit atop the rockets.

It is widely presumed that North Korea will use the journalists as pawns to put maximum pressure on US President Barack Obama. That, at least, is the latest advice from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. She also told the American public they should "get busy on the internet and let the North Koreans know that we find that absolutely unacceptable".

In both Burma and North Korea, the regimes will use their women prisoners as propaganda tools. They will hold harsh sentences over the heads of their prisoners.

Both countries deserve the harshest censure for such treatment of their helpless captives. Certainly, if either country wants international respect, they must stop such despicable show trials.

Continue read Pawns in two show trials...