403개의 게시물을 찾았습니다.
Tomorrow's "Joint Action": No Naval Base on Jeju Island! - an initiative by Kim So-yeon(*)
* Kim So-yeon(more about her possibly tomorrow!) is the nominee for "Labor Presidency"...
Well, it seems that the Unified "Progressive" Party(UPP) is in the final stages...
A few days ago(9.07) DailyNK reported the following:
Kang Declares Death of UPP "Unavoidable"
Kang Ki-kab, the sitting president of the beleaguered United Progressive Party (UPP), has declared the break-up of the party to be unavoidable.
Kang, who went on hunger strike on the 3rd in a last bid to inspire reform and prevent the UPP’s complete disintegration, told a press conference at the National Assembly today, “I had hoped to create a miracle by giving up everything, even salt water, but the miracle didn’t happen and the time to extinguish my last hope has come.”
“I went from emergency reform committee chairman to party president, but I could not cleanse the UPP of its shameful mistakes, nor could I stop it from breaking up,” he went on, adding, “The breakup of the party is now inevitable.”
Lee Jeong-mi, a spokesperson for the UPP, told reporters, “Just now lawmaker Lee Sang-kyu, supreme council member Yoo Sun-hee and former policy head Lee Ui-yeop came to President Kang to discuss things, but they did not put forward a way to resolve the issue and simply apologized. The president has declared the breakup of the party, so the reformist group will proceed with that process.”
http://www.dailynk.com/english/read.php?cataId=nk00600&num=9768
Related articles - alas only - by the S. Korean bourgeois press:
☞ Kang calls it quits over UPP troubles (JoongAng Ilbo, 9.11)
☞ Leader of embattled progressive party steps down (Yonhap, 9.10)
☞ UPP expels four lawmakers (Korea Times, 9.07)
Now it's official: KCTU(*) gives the Unified "Progressive" Party(UPP) its quietus(reminder: UPP's main/leading faction is the former Democratic Labour Party/DLP and the DLP was founded 12 years ago in the effort to create a political wing for KCTU...^^)!!!
Today's Yonhap reported the following about the latest developments:
South Korea's progressive umbrella union on Tuesday announced it will withdraw support for the minor Unified Progressive Party (UPP), citing failure of the party to push forward meaningful reforms.
The decision by the Korea Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU) made in an 11 hour-long marathon discussion session, comes after the UPP failed last month to pass a motion expelling Reps. Lee Seok-ki and Kim Jae-yeon, who have been accused of unfairly winning proportional representative seats in the April 11 parliamentary elections.
Lee, a leader of the so-called pro-North Korea faction within the party, also sparked a nationwide uproar when he said South Korea does not have an official national anthem.
The failure to deal with the controversial pro-North Korea faction and its alleged election rigging has fueled a fierce feud within the left-leaning party with reformist members who make up the minority threatening to leave and create their own political entity.
There has also been a rise in the number of members leaving the party as well as a weakening of public support, but UPP loyalists claimed moves to set up a new political entity could break up the progressive camp ahead of the critical Dec. 19 presidential election.
The KCTU, meanwhile, said its decision to break up with the UPP was reached with 27 of the 39 representatives voting in support of the move during a closed-door central executive committee meeting.
The KCTU action is expected to impact the UPP, since the union is the single largest support base for the party and had consistently tried to push it to reform itself to meet the expectations of the general public. Of the UPP's 75,000 members with voting rights, 46 percent or nearly 35,000 are part of the large umbrella union.
Before the latest action, the labor union issued an ultimatum in May calling on the UPP to take all necessary steps to reform itself and deal with the election fraud issue. At the time, the trade union called for the wholesale resignation of proportional candidates who were elected, the party leadership and secretariat.
"The decision to withdraw support was based on an independent assessment of the situation by the union," the KCTU said in a press release.
Jung Ho-hee, a spokesperson for the union, said the latest measure does not automatically translate into the KCTU supporting the creation of another progressive party...
* Related stuff(^^):
☞ Union group holds anti-U.S., pro-North game show (JoongAng Ilbo, 8.14)
Everyone's made a joke they thought was funny only to see it fall flat, but Park Jung-geun's attempt at humor could see him jailed for up to seven years in South Korea.
Park, a photographer by profession, re-tweeted some messages from North Korea's official twitter feed, such as reports on the late leader Kim Jong Il's travels across the country and negative tweets about South Korea.
"I found the messages ludicrous because they are so harsh and the language is so out-dated. I found them funny, so I re-tweeted them," Park told CNN.
Park, 23, also took a photo of himself holding a whiskey bottle and edited in a North Korean flag as a background for a joke. His supporters then doctored a North Korean military poster, replacing a smiling soldier with a sad photo of Park and the image of the gun with another whiskey bottle.
But Park was imprisoned in January of this year, accused of "acts that benefit the enemy" and spreading North Korean propaganda. He was released on bail in February and has another court appearance in mid-July. He's still hoping the charges against him will be dropped.
"To be honest, if you did this in North Korea, you would be severely punished," Park said. "But this is South Korea and I thought there wouldn't be a problem as I did it for fun. It certainly wasn't for propaganda purposes."
Park is the latest person to fall foul of South Korea's controversial National Security Law (NSL). Used widely used during the years of military dictatorship in the 1970s and 80s, the law was designed to protect the state against North Korean propaganda and to prosecute spies.
But human rights groups say it was also used to persecute political dissidents and stifle freedom of speech.
Amnesty International says the law is still being abused, especially against those critical of the government's policies on North Korea.
"The NSL has a chilling effect on freedom of expression in South Korea," said Sam Zarifi, Amnesty's Asia-Pacific director.
"It is used, not to address threats to national security, but instead to intimidate people and limit their rights to free speech. It should be reformed in line with human rights law and if the government cannot do this, it must be abolished," he said.
The United Nations has also called on Seoul to change or repeal the law.
President Lee Myung-bak's office declined to comment on the issue but the law has certainly been more widely used since the conservative president came to power in 2008. That year, just five people were prosecuted on charges of pro-North Korean online postings. Two years later that number had jumped to 82.
Some within the South Korean media are also criticizing the Lee administration for interfering in press freedom.
Journalists from four major networks went on strike earlier this year. Employees from two of those stations have since gone back to work after promises from employers their concerns would be heard, but close to one thousand journalists remain on strike.
"President Lee Myung-bak has appointed pro-government people as presidents of the media companies, what we call 'parachutes,'' said Kim Jong-wook, head of the YTN labor union which is still on strike.
"They are now trying to censor our voice and stop criticism of the government," he added.
The government denies interference but picketing journalists say they are worried they are seeing increased censorship reminiscent of the dark days of dictatorship.
http://edition.cnn.com/2012/07/03/world/asia/south-korea-north-joke/index.html
"A special committee of the Unified 'Progressive' Party announced Monday a set of reform measures the party should undertake, including a clear condemnation of North Korea's human rights situation, its nuclear weapons program and hereditary succession of power", Yonhap reported today.
And today's (bourgeois)Korea Times published the following piece:
Leftist party set to shift stance on NK
The leftist Unified Progressive Party (UPP), accused of having stayed silent on North Korea and the human rights of its citizens, showed signs of scrapping its decade-old stance on Pyongyang, Monday.
The shift comes as the UPP faces mounting criticism for allegedly having a pro-North Korea stance.
A task force within the party released a set of guidelines for policy directives on diverse issues, including North Korea. Among several issues, the minor party described the human rights situation there as “grave” according to universal standards.
Briefing on the key elements of the UPP tasks on behalf of the party, Rep. Park Won-suk said North Korea’s record on human rights cannot be justified at all, even when considering its dire economic situation.
“To improve the human rights condition there, inter-Korean peace and assistance to the residents are needed,” he said.
The lawmaker also said North Korea’s dynastic leadership succession over the three generations deserves criticism. But he remained skeptical about the hardline North Korea policy of the ruling Saenuri Party and the government. “The government needs to seek dialogue with the North to bring peace and unification. But what it does is attack it, which is not wise,” he said.
The task force also recommended the UPP tone down its radical ideology on North Korea. “Our party has maintained the posture that South Korea needs to end its alliance with the United States and the U.S. government should withdraw all its troops from the peninsula if North Korea achieves denuclearization,” Park said.
“Although the stance is not flawed as it addresses security concerns, our stance is often misconceived that we are calling for a termination of the Korea-U.S. alliance and for the U.S. government to pull back its forces. Because of the misinterpretation, we need to revisit our strategy.”
The UPP unveiled the shift in its policy after some of its members, including Rep. Lee Seok-ki, were accused of being North Korea sympathizers.
The party had remained silent over human rights in the North, failing to issue statements when China’s repatriation of refugees invited international criticism in February and March this year.
It didn’t comment on the dynastic leadership succession in the North either, after Kim Jong-un succeeded his late father Kim Jong-il who died of heart failure last December.
Conservative analysts allege that some UPP members are affiliated with the North’s Worker’s Party, which the party denies.
http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/nation/2012/06/116_113271.html
WHO CARES?
2012 General election proportional representation results (source: Central Election Management Commission):
Media Today ("미디어오늘", 3.13) reports that for the fourth year straight, S. Korea has made Reporters Without Borders’(RSF/Reporters sans frontières) list of "Enemies of the Internet" as a nation under surveillance...
Read the RSF report in its entirety here. Not that it will surprise you. Here’s just the conclusion:
The National Security Law in particular, which is now too outdated to deal with the extent to which South Korean has evolved since then and embraced democratic ideals, should be revised or abolished as soon as possible so that the most connected country in the world can stop engaging in outdated and ineffective censorship and allow its citizens to form their own opinions about the futility of North Korean propaganda and freely criticize their political leaders online.
Related article:
☞ 한국 4년 연속 ‘인터넷 감시국’ 불명예 (미디어오늘, 3.13)
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