Author Archives: admin127

The following is a paper by Harry Sterling, a former diplomat and Ottawa-based commentator. Sterling writes: “It’s important for President Bush to face up to the fact that he too must be willing to be more pragmatic in dealing with North Korea if the nuclear controversy is to be resolved peacefully.”

The following is a paper by Ralph A Cossa, president of the Pacific Forum CSIS a Honolulu-based non-profit research institute affiliated with the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. Cossa writes: “North Korea’s attempt to blame Seoul for the lack of progress in the six-party process is disingenuous and insulting. It’s time to call Pyongyang’s bluff.”

The following is an excerpt from the annual report of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom dealing with religion in the DPRK. The report states “there is no evidence that religious freedom conditions have improved in the past year. The Commission continues to recommend that North Korea be designated a “country of particular concern,” or CPC, which the State Department has done since 2001.”

The following is an essay by Lutz Drescher. Drescher, lived as an ecumenical worker in the ROK from 1987 to 1995. Since 2001, he works for the Association of Churches and Missions in Southwest Germany (EMS) as liaison secretary for East Asia. He has participated in numerous meetings with representatives of the North Korean Christian Federation. He coordinated the first official Visit of an EKD (Evangelical Church Germany) delegation to the DPRK in May 2002. The essay states “there is thus freedom of religion, and yet it is a restricted freedom insofar as the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is not a democratic country with individual rights of liberty in the Western sense. One can say that the members of the church in North Korea live out their faith under particularly harsh conditions. For precisely this reason, they depend on our intercessions and visits.”