The report on North Korea by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has been presented. Only workers sent abroad to finance the regime are able to escape, and even United Nations agencies have difficulty entering the country. Meanwhile, Kim Jong-un receives Shoigu in Pyongyang, reiterating the ‘unwavering support’ of North Korean soldiers for the Russian war in Ukraine.
The 30th anniversary of the Committee set up by Card Stephen Kim, who celebrates a weekly Mass for peace and the reunification of the Korean peninsula, was celebrated in Myeongdong Cathedral. Archbishop Chung said: ‘It is disheartening to see that today hatred prevails over suspicion, over exclusion and hatred. Let us continue to walk together on the path of conversion of hearts’.
Pope Francis has approved the promulgation of the decree on the “offering of life” of Fr Emil Joseph Kapaun, a priest from Kansas who died in 1951 in a North Korean POW camp.
A report by the Environmental Justice Foundation denounces the extreme conditions inflicted on North Koreans working on Chinese ships. The research is based on interviews with workers of other nationalities, especially Indonesians and Filipinos. The boats involved are also accused of illegal fishing.
The Seoul authorities denounce the ‘inhuman’ destruction of a place with a strong symbolic value. A gesture that continues the policy of shelving any prospect of reunification between North and South. Over the years, the facility on Mount Kumgang had hosted reunions between relatives separated by the conflict for decades: the last meeting was in 2018.
Some North Korean families are paying up to US 0 to keep their boys from deployment in the Ukraine-Russia war. The certificate means a one-year deferral, but checks could be carried out every three months. Ukraine reports that some 4,000 North Korean soldiers have been killed or wounded in combat so far.
