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At UN, North Korea Charges Sex Slavery By Japan, Sarah Palin's Pass

Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press at the UN: News Analysis

UNITED NATIONS, September 27 -- Amid counter-charges of sexual slavery and abductions between Japan and North Korea, the week of UN General Debate came to an ugly end late on Saturday evening. The North Korean representative read out a speech urging "high vigilance" against human rights, denounced the United States, South Korea and Japan. A person seated with the South Korean delegation, seemingly an intern, incongruously clapped at the end of the North Korean diatribe. But neither the U.S. nor South Korea chose to exercise its right of reply.

  This was left to Japan, whose representative pitched in English for a permanent role for his country on the UN Security Council. "Since the end of World War Second," he said, Japan has served on the Council as a non-permanent member a total of nine times, or for 18 years. Meanwhile, he said, North Korea had yet to resolve the issue of Japanese citizens abducted and disappeared into North Korea. Abductee Ingrid Betancourt, recently freed from Colombia, spoke about this North Korean issue earlier in the month. North Korea sur-replied, saying that it had turned over some few remaining abductees, but Japan has failed to "repent of of heinous crimes."

   This time, a number was attached to the crimes: 7,784,839 Koreas were conscripted to serve the Japanese invaders, he said, along with 200,000 women and girls as "comfort women" or sexual slaves. Worst, the North Korean said, Japanese officials in 2007 had claimed there was "no evidence" of forced sexual services, and that the woman at issue were "only prostitutes sold by their parents." This was said with a bitterness not matched in the General Debate. When the Japanese represented, trying to sur-sur-reply, fell to a pause in his comments, new President of the General Assembly Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann said "doy la palabra," I give the floor, back to North Korea. Soon thereafter, he gaveled the session to a close.

Pak Gil Yon, once (and current?) rep of the DPRK, speaks of sexual slavery

   Hugo Chavez and the United States don't begin to compare to this rivalry. Perhaps, now, Georgia and Russia. During their conflict in August, Russia called Georgian president Saakashvili crazy, while he said that Russia hates all freedom and event destroys "swimming pools and music halls" that Georgia has build, to bring in "famous rock and roll musicians." Could this mean Bono, who also showed up at the UN this week?

  In other wacky news of the UN week, while vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin was never seen inside the UN building, she did make it onto locked-down First Avenue, to be filmed for television. Since to get east of Second Avenue a UN grounds pass was needed, the question arose: was Palin given a U.S. mission pass? Or was she temporarily deemed a journalist by those who interviewed her?  There were dark rumors of two Iranian journalists being hindered, one by the U.S. Secret Service, at the instructions of the Iranian mission.

  Elsewhere, journalists pleaded with security to be let walk the hallway toward the General Assembly, in one case to make an appointment with Rwandan president Paul Kagame. No, the reporter was told. Can you go and tell him that I will not be able to be there? No, again, the reporter was told to contact the Rwandan mission himself.

 As noted, there was the sad afternoon when Burkina Faso's foreign minister Yoda spoke into the black hole of a dead UN TV camera, his words going nowhere, not unlike in the General Debate. Click here for that story.

 Watch this site, and this Sept. 18 (UN) debate.

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These reports are usually also available through Google News and on Lexis-Nexis.

Click here for a Reuters AlertNet piece by this correspondent about Uganda's Lord's Resistance Army. Click here for an earlier Reuters AlertNet piece about the Somali National Reconciliation Congress, and the UN's $200,000 contribution from an undefined trust fund.  Video Analysis here

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