Please consider these action items this coming month for the promotion of North Korea human rights:

Write a Letter from America to North Koreans: We will be producing the fifth recording of Letters from America in mid-August and are always happy to receive letters from American citizens with messages to the North Korean people.  Please send your letters via email to skswm@aol.com, so that they can be recorded and broadcast into North Korea on Free North Korea Radio.

Support the Next Balloon Launches into North Korea: We are currently raising funds for the next balloon launches into North Korea which will include radios and North Korean currency.  If anyone is interested in financially supporting this project — we have raised 1/4 of the budget so far, please let me know and I can send more details including the budget.

Help Rescue North Korean women from being trafficked in China: 318 Partners, led by American hero and rescuer, Steve Kim is constantly rescuing refugees, especially trafficked victims, out of China and therefore is in constant need of support.  Furthermore, Civil Courage Prize winner and another American hero and rescuer, Philip Buck, is now trying to raise funds for a rescue of a family right now.  If you can help these noble efforts, please visit and consider a donation to 318 Partners: http://www.318partners.org/

Help Shut Down Funds for Kim Jong il’s Chosun Fund: Izumi Asano from Reach has gathered information about a fund based in Hong Kong http://www.chosunfund.com/pages/chosun/about.aspx that is calling for investment in the DPRK  in violation of the most recent Security Council resolution.  He is requesting individuals to contact chief executive and head of the Hong Kong government, Sir Donald Tsang (e-mail address: ceo@ceo.gov.hk), to stop the ChosunFund in Hong Kong.  Attached is information that Asano prepared and sample letter to send.

Mark Your Calendar to Participate in Events September 24: Next International Protest to Save North Korean Refugees:  The date of September 24, 2009 has been chosen as the date for the next International Protest to Save North Korean Refugees.  September 24 is the day in 1982 that China became a signatory to the 1951 Refugees Convention, the very agreement it is violating with its repatriation of North Korean refugees.  On that date around the world, people will be calling attention to China’s violation of this agreement.  It is becoming increasingly more known thanks to the testimony of the defectors and coverage by the news media of the horrors that the refugees are facing both in China and when they are repatriated to North Korea.

We are seeking country coordinators and city coordinators in the USA especially where there are PRC consulates (DC, NY, Chicago, LA, San Francisco and Houston).  We are already planning a day of activities in Washington DC and city and country coordinators can mark that day in the way they choose: demonstration, protests, prayer vigil, delivery of petitions at PRC embassies and consulates at noon.   Plus, we would ask everyone to also considering sponsoring a special screening that evening or an evening that week of Crossing, On the Border, Seoul Train or any film depicting the plight of refugees in which funds would be requested to help the rescue operations being conducted by rescuers like Steve Kim and Phillip Buck in USA, Kato Hiroshi in Japan, Tim Peters and the North Korea defector groups in South Korea, etc.

Please let me know if you would be willing to be a city or country coordinator for September 24 to focus attention on the North Korea refugees.

More on Calling or A Special Tribunal to Stop North Korea’s Atrocties:  I am pleased to include below another OPED which appeared in the Chosun Ilbo on Wednesday regarding the need for a special tribunal.

Acta Non Verba,
Suzanne Scholte

How Can We Stop Today’s Endless Atrocities Being Committed Against the Korean People?
Suzanne Scholte
Seoul Peace Prize Laureate 2008

This past week was the 50th anniversary of Captive Nation’s Week, which was first established in 1959, to recognize the nations whose people are held “captive” under communism. Communism is now responsible for the deaths of over 100 million people – and today in North Korea millions have perished just within the last decade and hundreds more will die this week in political prison camps, detentions centers, because of starvation and lack of medical care and through public executions – innocent men, women, and children.

How can the government of South Korea stop the rising death toll in North Korea?  South Korea needs to send a powerful signal to those committing crimes against the Korean people by convening a Tribunal of respected South Korean judges and legal experts to gather evidence and begin to prosecute those responsible.  Because North Koreans are citizens of the Republic of Korea under Article III of their constitution, North Koreans have standing in Korean courts.  Those committing these heinous acts on behalf of the Kim Jong-il regime must be put on notice that one day they will be held accountable and punished.  For example: the Musan detention center guard who beat and crippled Bang Mi Sun who had been sent there as punishment because she had fled to China to feed her starving children; the political prison camp guards at Camp No. 14 who tortured Shin Dong Hyok when he was just fourteen years old because he could not explain why his mother had tried to escape; and the North Korean border guards who beat to death the teenage daughter of Ko Mae Hwa and the North Korean security police who killed her father because she worked for Free North Korea Radio – all must be held accountable for their actions.

Furthermore, people like Kim Young Soon – a Yoduk survivor who lost her father, mother, son, and daughter –  may be able to have some peace in her life if she knows that her government will pursue those who destroyed her family when she was sent to Yoduk simply for knowing Kim Jong-il’s first wife.  Working with the group “Democracy Network Against the North Korean Gulag” and the survivors of these camps, the tribunal can collect the names and get sketches of the faces of the perpetrators in these camps who have caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Koreans.