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Opinion

Columnists

A beautiful speech contest

By Casey Lartigue, Jr.Tell your stories. That was the advice I gave in 2003 when I was in the midst of an intense campaign to create a school voucher program for low-income children in Washington, D.C.I had been influenced from a young age by abolitionist Wendell Phillips recounting the Aesop fable “The Man and the Lion” (in a letter in the 1845 book by fugitive American slave Frederick Douglass.) In the fable, the lion complained that lions would be accurately represented “when the lions write history.” The lion says that instead of the statue of Hercules tearing apa...

2015-03-10 17:43

American slavery then, N. Korea today

Speaking on Feb. 14 in Washington, D.C., along with North Korean refugee Cherie Yang, I noted parallels between the “men stealers and women whippers” of American slavery yesteryear and North Korea today (the event was co-hosted by the Atlas Network and the Frederick Douglass Memorial and Historical Association).

2015-02-24 17:15

A magnet for freedom

I’m sure that some North Korean refugees try to motivate their loved ones still in North Korea to escape by sharing information about the outside world. I am humbled to learn that I have become part of that information. One of the refugees participating in the Teach North Korean Refugees project I co-founded with Lee Eun-koo recently told me that she has been trying to convince her sister to escape from North Korea. "Come to South Korea," she has been telling her. "You can even study English for free with as many teachers as you want. It is because of a nice American who wants to help North ...

2015-02-10 16:54

Advice for Kim Jong-un?

I was recently asked by an expert on North Korea what I would tell dictator Kim Jong-un if I had a chance to meet him. My response: “Nothing.”

2015-01-27 17:19

An expatriate encountering myself

When people ask me if I have read a certain book that I indeed have read, I often hesitate to confirm. Reading"To Kill a Mockingbird" or a book about dating is a different experience at age 16 compared to 36 or 56. I first read the late Paul Fussell's provocative collection of essays "Thank God for the Atom Bomb" as a graduate student. When I reread it a few years later, I noticed that I had completely skipped the chapter about traveling.

2015-01-13 17:08

Authoritarian mentality lives on

By Casey Lartigue, Jr.The next time Seoul Mayor Park Won-soon speaks about innovation and new ways of doing business being “deeply rooted” in city administration, I hope he will surround himself on stage with police officers and prosecutors.The authoritarian mentality is still alive in Korea, as Mark Clifford wrote in his 1994 book “Troubled Tiger.” Korea remains a “country of elite control” in which “the state oversees everything from wedding ceremonies to corporate investment.”Korea then had 500,000 local government officials, reaching into e...

2014-12-30 16:08

Rushing to judgment on a defector

Have you ever read an article that you knew was wrong or incomplete based on your inside knowledge? That was the case as I read a 3,000-word commentary by reporter Mary Ann Jolley challenging statements by North Korean refugee Park Yeon-mi.

2014-12-16 17:09

Both sides of Ferguson

Shortly before 11 p.m., on or about May 18, 1989, a white police officer stopped my younger brother Michael and I just minutes from our home. He flashed his lights, got out of his police car and asked where we had come from. I pointed to the trolley stopped at the light.

2014-12-02 17:00

Rejecting a dream job - and loving it

Dearest Casey, During your current trip to the USA to give a series of speeches in New York, D.C., Tennessee and California, you were delightfully blindsided by a job offer that would pay you more than three times as much as you are now making in South Korea. A few years ago, after a health scare, you began reflecting on your life and decided that you would only do the things that you wanted to do. People who try to pressure you to do things you don’t want to do have a 100% chance of failing. As you tell such people: ``I don’t have to eat everything put on my plate.”

2014-11-18 17:08

A meaningful experience

Congratulations! Your colleague Yeonmi Park has been named in the BBC’s Top 100 Women in the World 2014. This has meant she has given speeches around the world and been featured in major media such as the New York Times and Huffington Post. This all occurred in the last two weeks of October. Who would have believed she would become so well known internationally?

2014-11-04 17:13

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