Behind North Korea’s Forced Labour System
“The harsh reality faced by North Korean workers and students is unpaid forced labor and exploitation. Those who refuse face being sent to forced labor camps where they must do hard labor, face physical abuse from guards, and are treated as less than human.” -Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch Recently, over [...]
My Day in North Korea
I’m often asked what sparked my interest in North Korea. Well, here we go… Back in June 2008, I was presented with an opportunity to travel to North Korea. It was only a day trip, a little bit more expensive than I could afford and a tough sell when I was in South Korea with [...]
East-West Ideologies, the Cold War and Now
At a grander scale of history, the Korean War and the North-South divide was inevitable and in no way was it avoidable. If you look at the historic period of the Cold War, both Western and Communist regime had no choice to protect its own interest and the territorial influence of its surrounding region was [...]
Join us at the 20th Annual Korean DANO Spring Festival!
Hey everyone! We wanted to let you know that we will be at the Korean DANO Spring festival this weekend, June 1st & 2nd. The festival is located in Korea Town at Christie Pitts Park. Admission is free and the festival will feature Korean food, traditional dance and music, Korean Pop, arts & crafts, Taekwondo demonstrations, [...]
Why and how do North Koreans defect?
A friend of mine last week asked me why and how do North Koreans defect. I answered him and thought that it was worth sharing with everyone else. Here’s what I wrote. How do North Korean defectors leave North Korea? Most of them cross one of two rivers (Tumen or Yalu Rivers) between North Korea [...]
Why North Korea?
Hi everyone! I suppose I should introduce myself here, as I had not in my previous post. My name is Michelle and I am the co-director of NKHRFF. I have decided to write this week’s blog post about how I became interested in North Korean human rights – because it is the question I get [...]
Awareness
Anyone who knows me knows that I talk a lot. I’m always talking. It can be really annoying sometimes, I’m sure. After I learned about the horrible history of North Korea, about the life there today, I continued talking – that didn’t change – but I felt compelled to talk about the situation there. I [...]
The Meaning Behind NKHRFF Campaign
So some of you may be wondering what the message is behind our campaign posters. The poster you see here can have a lot of different meanings and interpretations, but I will tell you what it means to me. The people of North Korea live in a country that is shut off from the rest [...]
Help Us Launch NKHRFF
Hi everyone, I can’t say this often enough but thank you so much to everyone who is supporting our film festival. Without you spreading the word about North Korea and our film festival as well as attending our events, we would be doing all of this for nothing. So to everyone — thank you! We [...]