If you try to address controversial foreign policy issues these days — without chest-pounding belligerence — you can expect to be denounced by a well-funded cottage industry of “human rights activists” and “citizen journalists,” a phenomenon that Ann Wright confronted when crossing from South to North Korea.
By Ann Wright
When we began our project “Women Cross the DMZ,” we knew the landmines in the DMZ would be nothing compared to the explosions of anger, vitriol and hate from those who oppose any contact with North Korea.
Some U.S. and South Korean government officials, academics, media talking heads and paid bloggers would have their knives out for any group that dared challenge the dangerous status quo on the Korean peninsula. No surprise that the knives have been attempting to slice away at the remarkable worldwide publicity our trip to both North and South Korea created.
Women Cross DMZ walk in Pyongyang, North Korea, at the Monument of Reunification (Photo by Niana Liu)
The latest slice and dice article , “How North Korea’s Marchers for Peace Became Fellow Travelers,” by Thor Halvorssen and Alex Gladstein of the “Human Rights Foundation,” was published July 7 in Foreign Policy . Halvorssen and the “Human Rights Foundation” are reportedly associated with an Islamophobic and anti-LGBT agenda.
The authors’ goal seems to be to intimidate any group working for peace and reconciliation in Korea by using the issue of North Korean human rights violations to scare off groups from contact with North Korea. For these detractors, peace and reconciliation in various parts of the world might mean they will be out of issues and jobs as their livelihood quite possibly is made from undercutting attempts to resolve contentious and dangerous issues.
In the lengthy article, their fixation on virtually every word, written or spoken, made by members of the delegation, centered on two themes: the only possible result of visiting North Korea is to give legitimacy to the government, and if you don’t hammer the North Korean government on human rights issues on your first visit, you have lost all credibility.
It seems apparent that the authors…