No subject

copied below. Go to the site for a photo of the monk.

Dan

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/28/world/asia/venerable-pomnyuns-earthly-miss
ion-is-to-aid-north-korea.html
or
http://tinyurl.com/7dgbbvd

A Monk's Earthly Mission: Easing North Koreans' Pain

South Korean Buddhist monk Venerable Pomnyun in his office at Peace
Foundation in Seoul, South Korea on April 4.
By CHOE SANG-HUN
Published: April 27, 2012

SEOUL, South Korea

IN August 1996, the Venerable Pomnyun, a Buddhist monk from South Korea, was
cruising down the Yalu River between China and North Korea when he saw a boy
squatting alone at the North Korean edge of the water. The boy was in rags,
his gaunt face covered in dirt.

Pomnyun shouted to him, but the boy did not respond. Pomnyun's Chinese
companion explained that North Korean children were instructed never to beg
from foreigners. And when Pomnyun asked if the boat could be steered closer
to the child to bring help, he was reminded that they could not enter North
Korean territory.

"Never before had I realized the meaning of a border so painfully until that
day," said Pomnyun, 59. "Never before had I felt so acutely that Korea is a
divided nation."

The encounter led him to establish one of the first relief campaigns for
North Korean refugees and to take on an unlikely role for a Buddhist monk. 
Today, rather than leading a secluded life of quiet contemplation, he is a
well-known commentator on North Korea, his online newsletter an important
source of information smuggled out of the isolated country.

Before his Yalu trip, Pomnyun had refused to believe his Chinese
acquaintances' stories about countless North Koreans dying of hunger as the
country's food rationing system collapsed in the midst of a famine. But once
he was confronted with the evidence, the monk, who was already running a
charity in India, sent volunteers to northeastern China, providing food and
shelter for the thousands of North Korean refugees who had begun straggling
over the river border.

When his organization, Good Friends, released photographs of the bodies of
North Koreans who had drowned in the river, too exhausted to complete the
last leg of their desperate journey for food, it provided some of the first
documentation of what was later recognized as one of the most horrific
famines of the late 20th century. As many as three million people out of a
population of 22 million died of hunger or hunger-related diseases.

WHAT shook Pomnyun was not only the tales that refugees told of families
trying to live on pine tree bark and wild roots, but also the outside
world's ignorance of their plight.

"World leaders and the media talked obsessively about Kim Jong-il and his
nuclear weapons and missiles," Pomnyun said. "But what about the North
Korean people?"

Pomnyun's group began to chronicle the disaster, interviewing more than
5,000 refugees as they arrived in China and publishing a series of reports
and books on their struggles. When Good Friends began publishing its
newsletter in 2004, it quickly became a must-read among South Korean policy
makers and journalists.

The first of its kind, the newsletter provided timely accounts of life in
North Korea from anonymous informers inside the country, some of whom had
returned home after being aided by the charity. They communicated via
smuggled cellphones and other means that Pomnyun refused to disclose.

When the newsletter, North Korea Today, also went online, it became a
prototype for other Web sites. Together, the sites have helped breach what
had been a near-total information blackout on North Korea for decades. They
monitor the price of food and carry running, though sometimes conflicting,
updates on floods and epidemics.

Pomnyun leads his own temple in a provincial town, as well as study programs
in meditation and Buddhist scripture across the country. Born to a rural
farming family, Pomnyun grew up with older brothers who were religiously and
politically active; one was sentenced to death under the military
dictatorship of the time for antigovernment activity, but was later
released.

The younger Pomnyun at first hoped to become a physicist or an astronomer. 
But when he was in high school, a chance meeting with a revered monk named
Domun persuaded him to become an activist, starting campaigns for
environmental protection, religious reform, aid for the hungry and
unification of the two Koreas. He was arrested and tortured by government
agents cracking down on dissidents during the military rule.

Today, Pomnyun pursues his mission very much amid the secular world. His
office in Seoul is in a back alley crammed with restaurants, bars and "love
hotels," where people meet for trysts. Government officials call to compare
notes on North Korea. He travels to the United States to give lectures
attended by academics and government analysts.

His writings and appearances - he gives an average of 12 lectures a week on
a range of topics, including how to be a good mother - have made him among
the country's best-known monks. "Pomnyun quotes" are widely shared online. A
recent one went: "Even if the North Koreans are said to be our enemy, they
are fellow Koreans. While we are turning our surplus rice into animal feed,
North Korean children are dying of hunger. What would our ancestors say of
this?"

His social activism has even drawn him into the tumult of South Korean
politics, especially after lectures that he organized for young audiences on
topics like how to fight for social justice provided a platform for Ahn
Cheol-soo, a software developer and a vocal critic of the governing New
Frontier Party. Mr. Ahn is now cited in opinion polls as a leading contender
in the presidential election in December, should he choose to run.

Allinkorea.net, a rightist news outlet, has made Pomnyun a favorite target,
calling him a "political demagogue wearing the mask of religion."

POMNYUN'S tireless appeals for more aid for North Koreans have not always
been popular in the South, where sentiment toward the North vacillates
between compassion and fear.

In 2006 and 2009, his group's reports on destructive floods and an outbreak
of swine flu in North Korea prompted the South Korean government to set
aside politics and send aid. But his appeals have gone largely unheeded
under President Lee Myung-bak's conservative administration, which has
accused Pomnyun of exaggerating the latest food crisis. Pomnyun has
countered that the government is playing politics with people's welfare. In
2008, he went on a 70-day hunger strike to highlight North Koreans' plight.

Good Friends' statistical methods in its early studies led even some relief
experts to accuse the group of exaggerating the famine, either unwittingly
or to promote its case for aid. But Rajiv Narayan, a researcher on North
Korea at Amnesty International, said the early work, even if flawed, "helped
us understand what was going on in North Korea." He added of Pomnyun,
"People in our circles listen to him."

Pomnyun says he takes the criticism in stride. "Progressives criticize me
for drawing attention to human rights violations in the North, and
conservatives attack me for calling for aid for the North," Pomnyun said,
adding that he had also, depending on the critic, been accused of working
for the C.I.A. or the North Korean government. "My aim is neither to support
nor to oppose North Korea. I am just drawing attention to the humanitarian
crisis."

For that reason, Pomnyun is deeply skeptical not only of his own country's
policies toward North Korea, but also of the United States' focus on the
threat the country poses.

"The problem," Pomnyun said, "is the more you squeeze the North Koreans, the
more desperate they become to develop nuclear weapons. The Americans keep
asking, 'Why do the North Koreans make nuclear weapons while their people
are starving?' That may be a good way of criticizing North Korea, but it's
not a good way of influencing a paranoid regime whose overriding priority is
self-preservation." 

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