#6

The 100% scholarship I’d been hoping for didn’t come through. It’s amazing how a 4.2 GPA isn’t enough to secure it. The classmate with the closest GPA to mine that I know of who got the full scholarship got a 4.24 GPA. Seriously? 0.04 is what cost me a full scholarship? It really sucks paying cash for tuition for a program you aren’t fully satisfied in. The only upside is that I can pay cash (as opposed to school in the US) and when all is said and done, I’ll have a Master’s degree.

I’ve got another month of winter vacation before the spring semester starts up. I need to get to work on my thesis topic. Every time I pick a topic that my thesis advisor likes I can’t find enough information to churn out a 70 page thesis so I need to get to work on some research and start plowing through articles. My thesis advisor wants me to submit my paper to the Asia Pacific Conference on Reproductive and Sexual Health and Rights. If my paper is chosen I’d fly to Indonesia in October to present my paper. It’s intimidating but it would be a good experience so I’m giving in a shot. I really hate public speaking though…

#9

Seems I’ve gotten really bad at updating this. The interesting with the NGO is over. Let’s just say it was not the greatest experience of my life. Asides from a few great opportunities (i.e. meeting a North Korean defector and a couple refugees in South Korea) there wasn’t really much gained from the experience. Our campaign for the Rohingya didn’t accomplish much and the goal (of several people from the NGO going to Bangladesh to help the Rohingya refugees who’ve settled there) has still not been met. It’s disappointing that it wasn’t what I expected. It’s disappointing to see that they’re part of the group of NGOs that doesn’t really seem to be accomplishing much of anything. The lesson is learned though: I must be more discerning next time.

That said, I was presented with a great opportunity from one of my professors to apply for a conference. The conference deals with sexual health/sexual rights/reproduction, which is right up my alley. I’m going to start my thesis about 4 months early in order to submit my abstract in time for the deadline. If I’m selected then I’ll present my research (essentially my thesis) at this conference, which will be held in October, 2011 in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. I’m pretty excited about the opportunity but I need to put the final nail in my thesis topic. I’m having to make some adjustments since there’s a lack of journal articles out there.

I’ll try to update more but I think the focus will shift a bit without the internship to fuel me.

#8

www.womenforwomen.org

I’ve been reading this book called “Half the Sky”. Nicholas Kristoff (of the NYTimes) and his wife wrote it. It’s about creating opportunities for women worldwide, those who are oppressed and such. It has a lot of personal stories to keep you drawn into the book, as well. There was a section where they talked about sponsoring women through Women for Women International. Starting in October (after my tuition is paid for) I’m going to start sponsoring a woman.

Basically, there’s a $30 registration fee. They match you with a woman and then it’s $27/month for one year. $12 goes towards training for the woman (job skills, literacy, etc) and the remaining $15 goes to her pocket. Most women use this to pay for their kids’ education, food and getting their businesses started. You’re given updates on how your sponsored woman is doing with her training and new business. You and the woman also write letters to each other, keeping it personal.

I just wanted to share this in case anyone wanted a cheap way to make a huge difference in a woman’s life.

#7

I’ll start this with an intro to the Rohingya.

The Rohingya are an ethnic (and religious) minority in Burma (Myanmar… though for personal reasons I will not call it Myanmar even though that is the present-day name because I do no support the military junta government) located in the western part of Burma in the Rakhine State, bordering Bangladesh. The Rohingya are Muslim in a country that is officially Buddhist. The Burmese government declared that the Rohingya are not Burmese people and refuse to grant them citizenship, thus making them a stateless people. Many flee to Bangladesh, Thailand and Saudi Arabia; though most stories involving the Rohingya seem to originate from Bangladesh and Thailand. The military junta in Burma forces the Rohingya (and other ethnic minorities like the Karen and Chin) to do forced labor (as I mentioned in a previous post), people are murdered and women are raped. Because of this, among other things, they flee. However, despite there being aid groups trying to provide food for them in Bangladesh, as an example, the Bangladeshi government blocks aid groups from delivering aid. They also will not allow any food to be distributed to “unregistered” Rohingya refugees so people are starving to death. The sanitation in the refugee camps is appalling, with open sewage flowing. Children don’t have access to proper edcuation and even for register Rohingya, food is extremely scarce. The story that I can think of that some people may know about is from when the Thai military was pulling boats full of Rohingya refugees out to sea and leaving them to die last year. That garnered some attention from the international media (BBC, CNN).

Here are some links for more information:
Arakan Rohingya National Organization (this site has some background information and a lot of current news stories)
Rohingya Info Center

We had our street campaign for Rohingya refugees today. It was brutal. I mean, I expect that not everyone wants to listen to people talking about refugees, human rights abuses and the like but it was worse than I expected. We set up in an area frequented by foreign tourists and Koreans alike… probably the best area asides from the downtown-City Hall area. There were many people there… Koreans, Japanese, Chinese, Americans, Canadians, Brits, French, Turks, etc.

I’ll preface this by saying the weather was miserable today. An incredibly sticky, humid 35 degrees (Celsius) and it rained off and on all day.

We had these amazing posters made up with photos of some refugees with quotes of their testimonies and an introduction to the Rohingya (all in Korean and English). We had games set up to attract more people to give us a chance to talk to more people as well. I would say 95-98% of the people walked past and ignored us. Many wouldn’t even look at the posters… they saw the “sad” pictures and quickly looked away. It feels frustrating, makes you feel like you’re wasting your time and also makes you feel hopeless.

#6

The trip to UNHCR was very interesting. The woman we met with spent 15 years working in refugee camps in Africa. Her perspective was great to hear. However, discussing just a few problems we face these days regarding human rights, refugees and the like I posed a question to her. “Having seen the worst of the worst and spending so much time working in refugee camps and not seeing significant amounts of progress, do you still have hope that things will improve significantly within your lifetime?” It’s my fear that after dedicating my studies to human protection, development and human rights and then starting a career in this field that I will become disillusioned by the bureaucracy and red tape that prevents aid organizations from doing what want and need to get things accomplished. So her answer surprised me. She said when looking at a place like Africa she thinks there has been progress since she started working there 20 years ago. Compared to some places the progress may not be as big but it’s there and the progress is still happening. Her biggest complaint was people thinking that throwing money and aid at the situation is the number one way to solve the problems when, in fact, that isn’t what is needed most.

It’s nice to see someone who has been working in the field since the ’70s still remaining optimistic.

#5

Migrant workers are exploited all over the world, the US included. Because they go to other countries in search of better opportunities their employers often take advantage of them, forcing them to do hard, manual labor for very, very low wages and forcing them to work overtime with no pay. This issue is finally gaining a little attention here in South Korea but it’s going to take more to fix the problem. It’s finally coming to light in Japan as well.

What can we do, as ordinary citizens, to help protect those who need the protection?

#4

The Democratic Republic of Congo (mentioned in another post) is a country full of minerals. These minerals have been one of the sources for fighting in the Congo amongst rebel forces with innocent people dying. It’s nice to see the US government is trying to enact a bill to stop US companies from buying minerals from the Congo in making their products. Cutting the funding to these rebel forces is a start.

My internship organized a meeting for us interns with UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees) for this coming Tuesday. I’m so excited but am not sure what questions I should prepare.

#3

The internship I’m at has it’s ups and downs. Downs: disorganized. Ups: amazing opportunities.

We arrived this morning to find out a North Korean defector was coming to talk to us about her experience. It’s very rare for defectors from the North to talk to groups about their situation because a) there’s no trust and b) if their name gets out, there could be repercussions (from the North). By repercussions, I mean, if the NK government finds out that someone has defected, their families will be put into prison camps and possibly (likely) murdered. So… yeah.

Her story was very emotional and left majority of us in the room in tears. I know quite a bit about the situation in the North but sometimes you aren’t prepared for what you may hear. To make sure I don’t write anything that may identify this woman, I will simply write about the situation in prison camps in North Korea. This woman has only been in South Korea for not even one year yet and she spent almost 30 years in a prison camp only to find out the reason for her family’s imprisonment after bribing government officials and being released (her grandfather had defected to the South in 1970).

She told stories of extreme starvation; families forced to live on rations for one person. People are forced to go to the mountains and forage for mountain vegetables which are not plentiful enough to fill bellies and do not have an enjoyable taste. You receive more rations if you do mining work so even though it’s dangerous men and women alike choose mining over farming. Children are educated for 4 years for elementary school and 5-6 years for middle school. Education is focused on the heroes of the Kim family (Kim IlSung, Kim JongIl and next will be Kim JongIl’s son, Kim JongEun, who will take his place when he dies), basic math and fine arts.

The starvation is so bad that 10 year olds are the size of 5 year olds in South Korea (height-wise) except they are also skeletal. Children, like adults, are forced to work and can also be arrested in they refuse. One story she told us was how prison guards will stop children on the street and tell them to open their mouths. The guards will then spit in the child’s mouth (not just spit, phlegm) and tell the child to swallow it. She said it happened to her several times and you can smell the phlegm for days.

Perhaps the saddest part of her story was her describing how her daughter would cook dinner for the family. She’d serve up the bowls so dinner was ready when everyone returned from work. One day, by mistake, she took her daughter’s bowl and only then realized that her daughter had been placing a small bowl upside down in the bottom of her bowl and putting food on top of it, creating the illusion that she was eating the same amount as everyone else when really she was giving extra food to everyone else. Her daughter later died in a flood and she said her biggest regret was that her daughter never was able to experience a full, satiated stomach before she died.

I think it’s hard to wrap your head around how dire the situation really is in North Korea. She said people have become so desperate that they have killed their own children and eaten their flesh. She personally knew two people who did this. Because the stories are so gruesome I will leave it out. Suffice to say it takes an extreme amount of desperation to murder and eat the flesh of another human being, especially when it’s your own child.

As is typical for most defectors, they escape into China and through hiring “brokers”, they will go down into Laos and into Thailand where they are able to get to the South Korean embassy. If caught in China, they may have hands, feet or fingers chopped off and they will be forcibly repatriated into North Korea, where they will undoubtedly be sent to a prison camp and possibly put to death (there are also many public executions and prisoners are forced to watch). If they are caught in Laos, they will be taken to the North Korean embassy. Human trafficking is also a problem among North Korean women who escape into China (remember: it’s impossible to escape directly to the South because of the DMZ). She recalled two women in her group who were in their 20s who were sold, either into forced prostitution or slavery. Women are also forced to marry Chinese men where they typically experience a lot of domestic abuse.

I wish I could share more of the story she shared with us. Instead I’m only able to speak mostly in generalizations about the typical on-goings in the prison camps there.  If you want to know more about defection there is a documentary called Crossing that has been uploaded to youtube (I believe it’s broken into 10 parts).

#2

Interning at a human rights NGO provides you with some interesting opportunities. There’s a special course this summer focusing on refugees in South Korea (what rights they’re entitled to and the like). Unfortunately, the course is taught in Korean and while my Korean isn’t bad I think my bureaucratic vocabulary skills are subpar… however, every other week, I believe, refugees who are in SK will come to the class to give a speech about the situation they escaped and how their life has been since arriving in SK and the struggles to get refugee status here. Because my NGO helps to organize this course, us interns are allowed to go so when there are special guests I will go. Tonight was my first time. (I won’t post names)

The first was a man from the Democratic Republic of Congo. (He will be publishing a book in November. I can’t wait to read it.)

As someone who follows the news and human rights issues frequently I knew about the ongoing situation in the Congo but it is always stronger to hear it from the horse’s mouth than to read it in a newspaper or on an NGO website. He gave some background about the situation (6 million people murdered between 1997-2003; continuing murders today). This man worked for the equivalent of the CIA in his country and when he and his co-workers uncovered what the government was doing, his life was put on the line and he was forced to flee. Because of his career he had a special government passport and was forced to get a fake passport and (long story short) flee to China (the only country he was able to get a visa to on short notice) and eventually settled in South Korea. He told us he didn’t even know there were two Koreas. Because of the DPRK (North Korea) army’s involvement in Congo (training, arms supplies, etc) he only knew of “Korea” and PyongYang. He only learned of the South when he arrived on boat and was corrected by the taxi driver.

Because I personally knew a refugee from Ghana, the tale of his time in Korea didn’t surprise me. For migrant workers and refugees, they are subjected to a life of hard labor (typically in factories), physical abuse at the hands of their managers, unstable employment, insufficient housing and very low wages. (My friend was constantly fired from his jobs due to government crackdowns on illegal migrant workers and despite having legit refugee status and a legal visa, his managers would just fire everyone to avoid being fined by the government.) As a refugee in Korea, before being granted legal refugee status, you are allowed to stay in the country but you can’t work, no housing is provided, no food is provided and you have no health insurance. Great… the government allows them to stay but won’t grant them the right to work thus many work illegally in factories leading to the aforementioned situation. It took this man 6 years to gain legal refugee status because Immigration didn’t believe his stories about the Congo.

The second speaker was a Chin refugee in Burma. This one was especially interesting as we just did presentations this week at the NGO regarding the Chin and Karen ethnic minorities in Burma. (The Chin are an ethnic minority located near India and Bangladesh in the northeast section of Burma. They are Christian in a Buddhist nation under a strict military regime and are thus specifically targeted). Her story was much like we had studied earlier this week. The Chin are not given access to proper education and have no healthcare facilities. There is little work and due to all of these circumstances, the Chin often run away into India to find work, crossing back over the border at times when they have saved some money. This woman told of the Burmese army coming into the Chin State and beating people, raping women and forcing people to work as porters (porters must carry heavy loads and do extremely hard labor for the military without pay and with very, very little food and water). If you refuse to be a porter, or express disdain for it, you will be severely punished by the military. Because of this many Chin hide in the jungles or flee to India for some freedom. Also, if soldiers rape Chin women they are given a raise because they’re Christian so it’s seen as a “bonus”.

40% of all Chin have fled Burma. In Burma you will usually only find elderly, female and children who are Chin because the men have run away to avoid the harsh treatment by the military. However, because the military junta government doesn’t care, they just target women anyway (pregnant, nursing, or not). The woman told us it is impossible for her to return to Burma as the Indian and Burmese armies were targeting her for opening a school for children near the border (she was teaching literacy and sanitation). However, compared to the man from the Congo, it only took one year for her to gain refugee status.

The previous lives of these two were very different. The man from the Congo was well educated with his Master’s degree and held a fairly high government position while this Chin woman was forced to eat whatever food she could find. Both have worked incredibly hard since arriving in Korea and are both doing what they can to help other refugees in Korea.

Sometimes hearing these things helps put your life in perspective. I may be struggling to put myself through grad school, dealing with illnesses in my family and trying to cope with my father and cousin going off to war soon while living thousands of miles away from the comforts of my family but my problems are miniscule in comparison to the hell these people have lived through. And while I can return home at anytime, they cannot. The man from the Congo has recently relocated his wife and three children to Korea after being separated for 6 years but the Chin woman from Burma hasn’t seen her family since leaving and it’s very unsure if she ever will.

#1

Blogs seem inherently “douchey” and for the self-absorbed but yet here I am, neither douchey nor self-absorbed. I’m not quite sure what I want this space to turn into.

Interning with a small human rights NGO here in South Korea has reinforced what I want to do after I finish my Master’s here but it’s also made me want to tell everyone I know about these human rights abuses I read about on a daily basis for my job. However, who wants someone preaching to them all the time?

So I’ll post interesting things I find and just write about life, in general, I suppose as an outsider in another country.