FX’s Shōgun made history recently by winning 25 Emmy nominations. The historical drama, which is an adaptation of James Clavell’s 1975 bestselling novel, has been compared to HBO’s Succession — i.e., the three-time winner of the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Drama Series. As Shōgun’s creators Justin Marks and Rachel Kondo have announced the eventual release of two new seasons, some are anticipating a similar kind of success from the FX series. Shōgun takes place in Japan during the feudal Sengoku period in the early 1600s, when Portuguese Catholic missionaries of the Jesuit order — along with traders — had established a prominent presence in the region. The plot is centered around the story of a shipwrecked English navigator who is forced to immerse himself in Japanese politics and adopts the title of Anjin; Lady Mariko, a married woman with a dishonorable family history and a mysterious past who serves as the Anjin’s translator; and Lord Toranaga, a cunning daimyo struggling for political power and the unification of Japan. The series’ popularity and positive reception may be due, at least in part, to the accuracy and quality of its historical portrayals. For instance, Lady Mariko’s walking has drawn the attention of viewers for its accurate representation of the way Japanese women walked at the time. Many other such customs and traditions are likewise captured. Most notably, the practice of seppuku is depicted in a contextualized setting that allows viewers to further understand the significance of honor in Japanese society. Additionally, a great portion of the dialogue is in Japanese, which allows the audience to identify more deeply with John Blackthorne, the Anjin, who is navigating his new life as an outsider and foreigner. The costume design has also received much praise, particularly for its authenticity, being described as an “ode to Japan’s Sengoku period.” Perhaps most importantly, Shōgun accomplished what few other historical dramas have in recent years — it succeeded in providing a non-revisionist representation of history. Specifically, in its portrayal of European and Japanese interactions, the series does not adopt the typical oppressor–oppressed narrative. Rather, it highlights the complexities and nuances of feudalism, exploration, trade, and religion. For example, there is an emphasis on the animosity between the English and the Portuguese, especially as it pertains to matters of religion and political influence in Japan. Furthermore, the role of religion permeates the entire series. As a Japanese Catholic convert, Lady Mariko exemplifies the blend of Christianity and Japanese custom. She prays the rosary regularly and takes Communion when possible, but she also adheres, quite strictly, to the norms and traditions of her society. At times, her duties as a Catholic are in tension with her role as an honorable lady in Sengoku Japan. This is especially evident in the last two episodes, when she struggles to reconcile her decision to commit seppuku with her desire (ignited by her faith) to avoid damnation. Lady Mariko also harbors a deep sense of loyalty toward the Portuguese, especially her priest, Father Martin Alvito, who is both her mentor and teacher. It was through him that she learned how to speak Portuguese, and thereby serve as a translator for John. Paradoxically, however, her partiality toward the Portuguese, and to Catholicism more broadly, is a cause of tension between herself and John throughout the series. John, whose status as a Protestant and therefore a “heretic” carries with it a series of disadvantages in Japan, is deeply distrustful of Father Alvito, and of Portuguese Jesuits generally. These conflicts are what make the series dynamic, nuanced, and, of course, historically accurate. Compelling stories are seldom defined by the oppressor–oppressed dichotomy, perhaps because history itself can rarely be understood (accurately, at least) through such a dull and shallow lens. Put simply, Shōgun’s success is truly warranted, and we should celebrate it. One can only hope that, without Clavell’s novel to guide them, the series’ creators remain rooted in the original story as they work on the next two seasons. The post <i>Shōgun</i> is a Great Historical Drama appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

On the morning of April 17, pro-Hamas protesters seized Columbia University. The incident, featuring harassment of Jewish students and a Vietnam-style encampment, culminated in the violent occupation of a campus building and remained at the forefront of American political discourse for nearly three weeks. Months later, three campus administrators were suspended for sending anti-Semitic messages in a group chat, leaving Jewish Americans across the country both perplexed and disturbed. Why was an allegedly open-minded Ivy League university suddenly so hostile to its Jewish population? As a two-time Columbia alum, I have been personally devastated by the faculty, student, and administrative response to Israel, yet I am not the least bit surprised. Anti-Semitism has been brewing in the academic mind since long before Oct. 7, yet Columbia’s responsibility for the rise of anti-Semitism across American college campuses is seldom discussed. As an English major at Columbia, I experienced anti-Semitism firsthand in my department. Most notably, I cut ties with my undergraduate thesis adviser, Professor Bruce Robbins, for his radical views on the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Professor Robbins has claimed that calls for intifada on campus do not qualify as genocidal speech against Jewish students and has pushed extremist rhetoric in his classes on the backgrounds of literary criticism. He has praised Jean-Paul Sartre’s famous endorsement of political violence in his introduction to Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth and routinely assigns far-left theorists whose central claim to fame lies in their disdain for the West. Professor Robbins is no political outlier at Columbia. English professor Jack Halberstam, for instance, joined in on the Pro-Hamas encampment, lecturing students about the failings of their university president, and Middle Eastern Studies professor Joseph Massad infamously dubbed the Hamas attacks of Oct. 7 “awesome” in an opinion piece. At Columbia, students enrolled in the introductory “History of The Modern Middle East” course receive a biased overview of the region from pro-Palestinian professor Rashid Khalidi, who routinely peppers his assertions with a tinge of anti-Semitism. Columbia professors have been endorsing reductive pro-Palestinian viewpoints and alienating Jewish students since well before the attacks of Oct. 7, but why? One potential answer lies in the work of Columbia professor Edward Said, the father of the postcolonial school of literary theory, who perhaps single-handedly inaugurated the Pro-Palestinian movement among literary scholars and intellectual elites in the 1970s. Said’s postcolonial theory explains the world by borrowing a concept from postmodernism called binary opposition, which purports that members of “the West” have created an imaginary cultural concept of “the East,” which, in turn, allows the former to subjugate the latter. Said calls this Orientalism, and it is this dichotomy that has allowed the colonial Western man to oppress the Eastern “Other.” Most famously, he identifies a clear application of postcolonial theory to the Israel–Palestine conflict, arguing that the displacement of Palestinian Arabs in the Middle East was a direct result of the establishment of the Israeli state by colonialist powers and Western-style imperialism. The anti-Semitism I experienced as an English major is thus unsurprising: Columbia’s English department itself is the birthplace of the theory that Israel is an oppressive, colonialist power. Over the next 40 years, postcolonial theory would become mainstream in the American academy, espoused by professors following in Said’s footsteps who now control much of the intellectual discourse surrounding Palestine on campus. It is no wonder that Jewish professors have been targets of anti-Semitic vandalism since long before Oct. 7: the anti-Israel and anti-Semitic sentiment among supposedly liberal, free-thinking academics has permeated Columbia’s academic curriculum, influencing campus politics and discourse. When this sort of rhetoric is being fed to Columbia freshmen for breakfast, it is not shocking that now, 20 years after the death of professor Edward Said, Jewish students no longer feel safe on campus. Columbia might have a fraught history with anti-Semitism, yet we have the power to alter history. As a college counseling professional, I work with many Jewish clients who no longer wish to submit applications to Columbia, yet I see things differently. Without Jewish voices on campus, we only capitulate to the pro-Hamas mob and allow this behavior to continue. Anti-Semitism has always existed, and it will continue to exist unless we encourage more Jewish students to matriculate to elite colleges and fight back. As a Columbia alum, I have been disillusioned, yet I have also found a voice of hope for a better future through the Jewish community. The more Jewish students we have on American college campuses, the faster we can create a better tomorrow for the Jewish people. The post Columbia University’s Fraught Anti-Semitic History Explains Its Present Crisis appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

The Sisters of Charity of New York announced last year that it will not accept any new members. The announcement was more of a formality than anything else, as no one has joined the order in more than twenty years. Founded by St. Elizabeth Ann Seton in 1817 and recognized as the Sisters of Charity of New York in 1846, the order had more than 1,300 sisters in the 1960s. Today, only 154 sisters remain, and their median age is eighty-five years old.  The Sisters of Charity of New York isn’t the only Catholic religious order with an aging population and no new vocations. As of 2022, four out of five orders had no new vocations, according to a study conducted by Georgetown University’s Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA). Amid this decline, it’s easy to spot the orders that continue to receive new vocations, in part because they’re still wearing habits.  In an attempt to “modernize” Catholicism following Vatican II, many religious orders abandoned their traditional garb — the Sisters of Charity of New York among them. Nuns traded in their habits for modest blouses and skirts or slacks. But it appears that young people don’t want 1970s–style Catholicism. Ninety-three percent of women who entered religious life in 2022 chose an order that wears the habit, as did 65 percent of men. What’s more, eight in ten new entrants to religious life were “very much” influenced by their religious order’s practice of wearing a habit. This article is taken from The American Spectator’s latest print magazine. Subscribe to receive the entire magazine. Desire for traditional habits isn’t the only signifier that today’s young Catholics are hungry for something different. Each generation of Catholics is smaller than the one preceding it, but those who remain faithful are noticeably drawn toward more traditional, orthodox expressions of Catholicism.  Since 2000, more than half of newly ordained priests self-describe as theologically orthodox, and that number has grown with each year. A study by the Catholic Project found that more than 80 percent of priests ordained since 2020 are doctrinally orthodox, with less than 5 percent calling themselves “very progressive” in matters of Catholic theology. By comparison, at least 80 percent of priests ordained between 1960 and 1980 identified as theologically progressive or as “middle-of-the-road” on Catholic doctrine.  Subscribe to The American Spectator to receive our latest print magazine, which includes this article and others like it. And just as recently ordained priests are likely to be theologically orthodox, so too are recent entrants to religious life. Three in four entrants in 2022 said they were “very much attracted” by their order’s fidelity to the Church.  Changes in broader American culture explain the somewhat recent swing toward traditionalism. Monsignor James Patrick Shea provides a paradigm for understanding the relationship between personal faith and culture in his book From Christendom to Apostolic Mission. In Christendom, Christianity is deeply entangled with broader culture; but in an apostolic age, the prevailing culture is either hostile to or unfamiliar with Christianity.  In order to withstand the gravity of secular culture, Catholics must cling not only to the teachings of their faith, but also to their distinct culture. When surveying young adults who had been raised Catholic, sociologists Nicolette Manglos-Weber and Christian Smith found that the young adults who identified as Catholic and still practiced their faith were generally “more likely to have grown up with parents who were committed, vocal, and reasonably well educated about Catholicism.” That is, younger Catholics engaged with faith as an integrated way of life, not just as an intellectual assent or Sunday morning obligation.  During the era of Vatican II, numerous American Catholics dispensed with the trappings of Catholic culture and instead sought conformity with modern Christianity. Nuns traded their habits for lay clothing, church architecture imitated Protestant styles, and guitars and tambourines replaced Gregorian chant and the organ. Suddenly, after thousands of years of continuity, Catholics walked away from their distinctive culture. Today, many Catholics are reclaiming it.  A growing number of young people are gravitating toward more traditional expressions of their faith, whether through joining habited religious orders or simply seeking out a parish that incorporates traditional hymns into its Mass. For some, this choice is a deliberate rejection of modernity’s emptiness in favor of something passed down through the ages. Others are guided by an instinctive desire for tradition or an attraction to beauty. This rekindled interest in the Church’s age-old treasures is not without its opposition. To some Catholics, chapel veils and altar rails are signs of regression, not endurance. Some people genuinely prefer their 1970–style Catholicism and do not understand the resurgence of traditionalism. But, as one priest told the Catholic Project, most young priests today are theologically conservative because “the super-progressive wing didn’t really replicate themselves.” In terms of theological Darwinism, traditional Catholicism seems best equipped to survive — not least because traditional Catholicism has already endured for thousands of years. Much of the so-called “rise in orthodoxy” among young Catholics is more accurately understood as a recovery of the Catholic culture that was stripped away from the life of the Church during the era of Vatican II. In many instances, it is a return to the norms established by the Church during the actual council, which was often incorrectly interpreted as carte blanche for wide-ranging liturgical changes. Unbeknownst to most people, for example, Gregorian chant remains the Church’s preferred form of music within the Mass. Today’s young Catholics recognize the task ahead of them. Living the faith amidst the onslaught of secular culture — and raising a new generation of Catholics in that hostile environment — has led many to reclaim the traditions passed down through the Church for generations. These young traditionalists recognize that the continued practice of Catholicism demands more than intellectual assent to doctrine; it also requires a commitment to a shared culture and way of life, both in the pews and in the fabric of their daily lives. Maybe this new orthodoxy isn’t the folly of youth but rather the wisdom to identify that which endures. Subscribe to The American Spectator to receive our latest print magazine on the future of religion in America. The post Young Believers Are Fueling a Renaissance of Catholic Culture appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

When you hear the phrase “childless cat ladies,” you know exactly what I’m talking about. They’re the kind of women who were not only members of a sorority in college, but who also played up the drama and backbiting in the sorority game. Since they enjoy drama, they’re into politics now. They drink too much wine, laugh intensely and insincerely, and have a high-pitched nasally voice that grates the nerves. Oh, and they probably own a cat. If they own a dog, it has its strollers, bibs, outfits, and a pampered life. Cats don’t put up with that kind of nonsense. When JD Vance complained about the role these childless cat ladies play in our national government on a Fox News segment in 2021, few people really batted an eye. Vance wasn’t in the U.S. Senate yet, and it hadn’t even entered the imagination that he could be tapped as Donald Trump’s running mate. So, what did he say? He said the country was run by “a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made, and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable, too.” Three years later, these childless cat ladies let us know in childless-cat-lady style that they are not only offended but that they’ve also been holding on to this grudge for the last three years. Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska huffed that the statement was “offensive to many women.” She’s not the only one. Women wrote to the New York Times with their criticisms. One intentionally misunderstood the statement (she had three cats and struggled with infertility); another complained that Vance was saying women who choose not to have kids are not “legitimate members of society.” First, Vance was barely on the political stage when he made the comment. That doesn’t mean he didn’t mean what he said when he said it, but it does mean that we can forgive him for comments that aren’t exactly politically savvy. Second, Vance is right. But he’s not talking about the neighborhood grandmas who never met the right man, own three fluffy cats, and give every kid under the age of 50 chocolate chip cookies at every opportunity. He’s talking about the embittered women infected by feminism who have turned their intuitive gifts to vicious ends. Many of them do have children, and some of them don’t have cats, but they have wholeheartedly adopted an attitude that prefers cats to kids. Don’t believe me? The Washington Post ran a cartoon called “Ex-childless Cat Ladies.” It featured women with their screaming, ill-behaved children navigating a grocery store and complaining about how “cats were cheaper.” Sure, it was drawn by a man, but it encapsulates the way these feminists look at women and motherhood perfectly. It’s a problem Carrie Gress addressed in her book The Anti-Mary Exposed. You don’t have to have a Marian devotion to recognize that the denial of motherhood as fundamental to womanhood is harmful to women and to society. We’ve spent the last 60 or so years spaying women. We’ve told our daughters to put away their dolls and put on little pink suit jackets and carry around bejeweled briefcases. “It’s empowering,” we promised them. When they grow up and can’t figure out how to fill the massive hole in their chest, we give them antidepressants. These girls turn into Vance’s “childless cat ladies.” They whine about victimhood, and the scary thing is that they’re not wrong. They’re the victims of a society that told them to pursue a career without worrying about putting diapers on a child. One of those women writing to the New York Times asked Vance: “Are you saying I must be miserable because I chose not to have children?” The hard and unpleasant answer is yes — not because you chose not to have children, but because you chose not to be a mother. The post Vance Is Right. Our Society Is Plagued by Childless Cat Ladies. appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — In the old days of journalism, conservatives had a legitimate beef about the way that newspaper editors and broadcast outlets served as gatekeepers for the dissemination of news. I got my start in journalism in a city that had one newspaper that was delivered to the doorstep every morning, and it published only one right-leaning column a week. In the face of declining readership, it decided to open the pages to more conservative voices, and I eagerly jumped at the chance. In those days, we had too many gatekeepers, but the recent dissemination of a false story (reportedly started as an irreverent joke) about GOP vice presidential nominee JD Vance has reminded us that we now have too few gatekeepers. There’s no easy fix to create a sense of fairness, balance, and decency. I would never advocate the involvement of government or excessive online policing, but I’m not optimistic that we can significantly improve the current media environment. In those old days, that newspaper’s news pages weren’t any better balanced than its opinion pages. This was in the early 1990s. These days, I often hear Americans remember when TV news talking heads “impartially” reported on the day’s news events, forgetting that, at the time, we all complained about the liberal bias of the three virtually indistinguishable nightly news hosts. Conservatives were frustrated at how hard it was to get alternate viewpoints and important news stories onto the air. With the creation of social media, the attempt at balance has become something of a moot point. Americans now read whatever sources conform to their existing biases. Online influencers and personalities have built massive audiences catering to their particular niches that inflame those biases and passions. This isn’t entirely a bad thing. One could never have expected balance in any particular article or publication. One can only find balance by reading a variety of pieces and journals — provided a reader actually seeks out balance. But it’s frustrating that in the new wild, open online world, there’s so little self-policing of content. You can now set up an account on X and can become a media celebrity. Nuanced views rarely draw legions of readers, so the system rewards the most outrageous personalities. It also rewards absurdity and rumor, even if they are rooted in parody. The Vance example serves as a reminder of the dangers of a world without editors — but also of the reality that many people just don’t care if the information they are enjoying is untrue. There are plenty of legitimate critiques of the Ohio senator. There are plenty of critiques that fairly center on his policy positions. And Democratic partisans have every right to target his past speeches. In the past, none of those videos (many of which are enlightening) would have surfaced. However, my X feed is inundated with jokes about Vance and, well, sofas. For those of you who missed this nonsense, some online writer apparently claimed that Vance’s book included a section where he admitted to having had a sexual encounter with a sofa. It was joke (a bad one), but it has spawned endless sofa memes. It became such a thing that the Associated Press reported on it and noted that the story was a total fabrication. Then AP took down its fact-checking story because it didn’t go through the publication’s standard editing process. That fiasco revealed the tough position mainstream media finds itself, as it feels compelled to respond to online rumors — even as it tries to uphold traditional journalism standards. As the New York Post reported, “The salacious hoax spread like wildfire on social media, reportedly sparked by an X user who tweeted out a description of the alleged lewd act complete with a bogus citation. Of course, no such passage exists in Vance’s bestseller, Hillbilly Elegy, but that didn’t stop the rumor from spreading — with many apparently believing it was true.” Whatever one’s views of Vance, he really shouldn’t be subject to salacious hoaxes — nor should anyone, no matter how much one might dislike their politics. I read myriad posts by online snarksters promoting that particular story and was flabbergasted that many of them clearly knew that it was a hoax and yet reposted it anyway. Say what you will about traditional media sources, but it’s still not acceptable in that medium to spread stories that aren’t true. Academics have engaged in voluminous research about the dangers of misinformation (false stuff) and disinformation (purposefully false stuff) — and proposing a variety of mostly pointless and censorious government “solutions.” I still believe the new media world is better than the old one, as a world with too few gatekeepers seems less dangerous to me than a world with too many of them. Nevertheless, I can’t come up with a good answer to this question: What do we do when news consumers aren’t particularly interested in the truth? Steven Greenhut is Western region director for the R Street Institute. Write to him at sgreenhut@rstreet.org. The post Online Readers Wallow in Misinformation appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

Ten years ago, the United Nations took an extraordinary step by denouncing North Korea for its awful human rights record. The situation has worsened, as the COVID pandemic caused Pyongyang to effectively seal its borders. Human Rights Watch recently reported that this crackdown “has effectively closed off North Korea from the rest of the world and stopped almost all cross-border movement of people, formal and informal commercial trade, and humanitarian aid.” The North has long topped the list of global human rights abusers, criticized even by other authoritarian states. For years, many of the worst governments joined the Human Rights Council and defended each other from criticism. However, Pyongyang found itself virtually friendless when the Human Rights Council created the Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea by the United Nation’s Human Rights Council. The commission faced a difficult task, reporting: “The most significant investigative challenge faced by the commission, aside from the inability to have access to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, was the fear of reprisals by witnesses. Most of the potential witnesses residing outside the State were afraid to testify, even on a confidential basis, because they feared for the safety of family members and assumed that their conduct was still being clandestinely monitored by the authorities.” Nevertheless, the commission proceeded, and its investigation revealed horrific levels of repression. For instance, the body stated, “Systematic, widespread and gross human rights violations have been and are being committed by the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. In many instances, the violations found entailed crimes against humanity based on State policies.” The commission further stated: “[A]mong the most striking features of the State has been its claim to an absolute monopoly over information and total control of organized social life. The commission finds that there is an almost complete denial of the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion, as well as of the rights to freedom of opinion, expression, information and association.” It is difficult for someone living in the West to imagine such a life. One’s position in North Korea was once almost entirely determined by the songbun system, which assigned people to different political/social classes based on family status and regime loyalty. That system has weakened in recent years, as corruption and markets have empowered new actors. Nevertheless, observed the commission, “significant segments of the population who have neither the resources nor favorable songbun find themselves increasingly marginalized and subject to further patterns of discrimination, given that basic public services have collapsed or now effectively require payment.” North Koreans enjoy no freedom of movement. Food is used “as a means of control over the population. It has prioritized those whom the authorities believe to be crucial in maintaining the regime over those deemed expendable.” And the authorities ruthlessly maintain their power: “The police and security forces of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea systematically employ violence and punishments that amount to gross human rights violations in order to create a climate of fear that pre-empts any challenge to the current system of government and to the ideology underpinning it.” Unsurprisingly, the commission concluded that Pyongyang had committed crimes against humanity. The list was long and terrible: “extermination, murder, enslavement, torture, imprisonment, rape, forced abortions and other sexual violence, persecution on political, religious, racial and gender grounds, the forcible transfer of populations, the enforced disappearance of persons and the inhumane act of knowingly causing prolonged starvation.” Some observers held hope for change after Kim Jong Un succeeded his father in December 2011. He had spent some time in school in Switzerland, becoming a fan of the Chicago Bulls, and later dabbled in Western culture. For instance, Disney characters made an appearance at a 2012 concert attended by Kim. In 2018, he and his wife appeared at a Pyongyang event featuring 11 South Korean music acts. However, he has dramatically reversed course. Now the regime denounces foreign entertainment as a “vicious cancer” and imprisons or executes those caught listening, watching, or distributing South Korean music and videos or using South Korean lingo. Earlier this year, Human Rights Watch released a 161-page report detailing the further closing of the North Korean mind. The regime has largely ended trans-border traffic, the group has reported: Ostensibly to address the Covid-19 pandemic, North Korean authorities instituted strict border and regional lockdowns, issued a shoot-on-sight order to guards—still in effect in January 2024—for any person or wild animal approaching the northern border, fortified or built new border fences and security facilities, imposed strict limitations on foreign trade and domestic travel and distribution of food and essential products, strengthened implementation of rules and regulations, cracked down on critical informal trade, and implemented excessive and abusive restrictions on freedom of movement and quarantine measures. The DPRK crackdown has been unusually brutal, largely ending a trade once fueled by bribes to border guards. Moreover, “The government also further tightened already strict restrictions on communication with the outside world and access to information, while intensifying other ideological controls to prevent unrest.” Although the ostensible justification for sealing the border was to keep North Korea COVID-free, the regime had a far more malign agenda. Human Rights Watch explained that Pyongyang “sought to reimpose its control in areas in which its dominance had weakened over the past two and half decades: in particular, control over the border, market activity, unsanctioned travel, and access to information.” The North recently underwent its periodic Human Rights Council human rights review. It faced the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, which has detailed the DPRK’s extensive system of prison and labor camps. The Committee for Human Rights in North Korea focused on this issue when addressing the council: satellite imagery and escapees’ testimonies continue to prove the existence and expansion of such camps. HRNK has found the continued operation of political prison camps (kwan-li-so) and long-term prison labor facilities (kyo-hwa-so). Kwan-li-so are high-security political prison camps primarily used for detaining political prisoners, where individuals are deported without due process or legal proceeding. Here, most inmates are imprisoned for life together with their families up to three generations of family members. Prisoners detained in political prison camps are accused of having engaged in “political crimes”, including any form of behavior or conduct considered as a threat to the State. In Kyo-hwa-so facilities individuals are imprisoned for criminal and political offenses, including violent and economic crimes but also for exercising their basic human rights. The regime often sends individuals to these camps for re-education purposes or as a form of punishment for committing criminal offenses. Inside of kyo-hwa-so, detainees are subjected to forced labor and constant abuse, and guards have the legitimacy of beating, punishing, and torturing prisoners without facing any accountability. There is more, so much more, to the North’s odious human rights practices. The State Department’s 2023 country report on the DPRK makes for equally depressing reading. The State Department pointed to “arbitrary or unlawful killings,” “enforced disappearance,” “torture,” “arbitrary arrest,” lack of judicial independence, “political prisoners,” “transnational repression,” privacy violations, “punishment of family members,” “serious restrictions on freedom of expression,” “internet freedom,” freedom of assembly and association, “religious freedom,” and “freedom of movement,” lack of political freedom, “serious government corruption,” restrictions on human rights organizations, “extensive gender-based violence,” human trafficking, restrictions on workers’ rights, and child labor. In short, the Kim dynasty has left few human rights unmolested. Unfortunately, it is easier to detail the North’s abuses than offer a means to end them. Indeed, Pyongyang’s ever-expanding nuclear program — the regime appears to be engaged in a major nuclear build-up while developing ICBMs capable of targeting the U.S. homeland — neutralizes military threats and will provide substantial diplomatic leverage when Kim decides to reengage Washington. Complicating the situation is Russia’s recent rapprochement with the DPRK, since in retaliation for U.S. aid to Ukraine Moscow could offer technical assistance to speed Kim’s efforts. In practice, denuclearization is a dead end. If there is any diplomatic deal to be had, it likely is some form of arms control. Still, the Kim dynasty looks shaky. The execution of children is a desperate measure. It might be able to terrorize North Koreans into submission, but for how long? Continuing economic privation provides an ongoing reminder to North Koreans that Kim’s promises of better times have gone a-glimmering. China, though not inclined to cooperate with the U.S., is uncomfortable with Vladimir Putin’s disconcerting embrace of Kim. The latter has been shifting the dynastic cult to himself from his father and grandfather, presumably to bolster his authority. Rumors of his ill health persist alongside claims that he is preparing his 11-year-old daughter to succeed him in a radically patriarchal society. The nomenklatura — political, economic, and military — may eventually tire of Korea’s version of Louis XVI. Which suggests an allied strategy that emphasizes peace, information, dialogue, and patience. The U.S. and its friends should avoid military confrontation. Weakness may make Pyongyang confrontational and trigger-happy. Nothing is more important than avoiding Korean War II. Promoting arms control and offering to trade some sanctions relief for some nuclear limits might ease tensions. However, the only sure answer to “the North Korea problem” is domestic political change. The regime appears superficially formidable but, like Romania before December 1989, likely is extremely brittle, dependent on endless repression to survive. North Koreans know they have been lied to and younger North Koreans are evidently looking beyond Kim for answers. Breaching the DPRK’s Iron Information Curtain could help promote future political change. Even a move to normal authoritarianism would be an improvement. Diplomatic engagement would give the North the international respect that it craves without sacrificing allied security. An offer of talks and/or recognition could include attention to all issues, including human rights. Individuals, NGOs, and international organizations could be invited to contribute to the dialogue, increasing pressure for change. Finally, Washington and its allies should play the long game. Pyongyang is an extreme, dysfunctional regime even by communist standards. Rather like Romania’s Ceausescus, the royal Kims are a totalitarian caricature. Imagine the crimes required for the United Nations to denounce a member! Friends of the Korean people should continue to publicly challenge and embarrass the Kim regime and its nominal allies and press for peaceful change. Were the human cost not so great, the DPRK could be preserved as a museum exhibiting man’s cruelty to man. Instead, people of goodwill everywhere should advocate for the liberation of those trapped in the world’s only absolute monarchy in communist camouflage. The decade-old judgment of the special UN panel investigating North Korea still reverberates: Systematic, widespread and gross human rights violations have been and are being committed by the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, its institutions and officials. In many instances, the violations of human rights found by the commission constitute crimes against humanity. These are not mere excesses of the State; they are essential components of a political system that has moved far from the ideals on which it claims to be founded. The gravity, scale and nature of these violations reveal a State that does not have any parallel in the contemporary world. That such a regime continues to exist should horrify us all. Doug Bandow is a Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute. A former Special Assistant to President Ronald Reagan, he is author of several books, including Tripwire: Korea and U.S. Foreign Policy in a Changed World and co-author of The Korean Conundrum: America’s Troubled Relations with North and South Korea. The post North Korea: The World’s Worst Human Rights Black Hole appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

Don’t Know Much About History

Democrats’ Pennsylvania Problem

Back in the U.S.S.A.

Kamala Harris and the 'Flashy Thing'