Asia Roundtable begins

Greetings from Seoul, where the Asia Strategic Insight Roundtable is about to begin its opening Plenary Session.

The Roundtable meeting brings together decision-makers from around Asia to discuss the region's future in these uncertain times. The upcoming day and a half of meetings includes some closed-door off-the-record sessions, some open sessions, and several press conferences with regional leaders. This WEF weblog will bring you updates and summaries of the meeting's highlights. The WEF website will also have regular updates and supplementary information about issues discussed at the conference.

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Comments

[Tim Peters]

HUMAN RIGHTS VOICE FOR NORTH KOREANS MUZZLED AT WEF ASIA ROUNDTABLE

When an official Call for Papers was sent to me on January 20,2004 by the World Economic Forum, I felt both honored and encouraged that views from the community of activists on North Korean refugees and human rights were finally to have their desperately needed "day in the sun" among Asian decision-makers. In the ensuing months, I devoted a disproportionate amount of time distilling my experiences of the past 8 years working to help refugees and send food aid to North Korea into a paper designed for Forum participants. It was completed, edited several times and submitted in April,2004

Imagine my surprise and consternation, as the World Economic Forum event drew near, that none of the anticipated routine communications from the Forum staff were forthcoming regarding promised publication of the paper for Forum particpants nor any tentative schedule for its presentation, as outlined in the official invitation and Call for Papers of January.

Puzzlement gave way to suspicion when none of my emails or phone calls to the Korean advisor to the World Economic Forum were returned in the week before the event was to begin. It became abundantly clear that, despite being invited as an author for its official publication for its 2004 WEF event, that the decision had been made that not only would I not have an opportunity to present my paper, that I would most likely not even have access to the venue itself. It was both mind-boggling and insulting to the extreme.

The fact that no financial reward for writing the paper had been offered had never been an issue. Devoting scores of hours to outlining the plight of North Korean refugees and the egregious human rights violations inside North Korea together with framing recommendations for an end of this nightmare was done with excitement and anticipation. There was an inkling that our activist community's sense of being a 'voice in the wilderness' was to change as these issues came to center stage.

But, as the old saying goes: close only counts in horseshoes..... Only through the help of a friend was I able to wangle a temporary entry badge to the Roundtable discussion on North Korea. Yes, during the Q&A, I did ask very direct questions to former South Korean President Kim Dae Jung about the human rights abuses of North Korean refugees and the 200,000 prisoners in North Korea's gulag, and but this appeared to be but a momentary distraction for the panel and quickly ratonalized and dismissed.

Left unstated and undiscussed were the vital life-and-death issue of human rights of 22 million North Koreans. The title I had chosen for my World Economic Forum paper last January proved eerily prophetic: Korean Pathetique:A Symphony of Refugee Tears Unheeded

Although slightly amended from the World Economic Forum verions, the essence of this paper can be read as my Congressional testimony to the International Relations Committee on April 28,2004

http://wwwc.house.gov/international_relations/108/pet042804.htm

I'm very grateful to Rebecca MacKinnon of NK Zone for noting my testimony and my questions at the Asia Strategic Insight Roundtable to President Kim and Governor Richardson.