Day: November 16, 2021

Netflix’s popular Korean-language TV hit “Squid Game” has made it to reclusive North Korea, as smuggled copies of the violent drama are spreading despite the best efforts of authorities to keep out foreign media, sources in the country told RFA.

The show’s dystopian world — in which marginalized people are pitted against one another in traditional children’s games for huge cash prizes and losing players are put to death. — resonates with North Koreans in risky occupations and insecure positions, the sources said.

“Squid Game has been able to enter the country on memory storage devices such as USB flash drives and SD cards, which are smuggled in by ship, and then make their way inland,” a resident of the city of Pyongsong, north of the capital Pyongyang, told RFA’s Korean Service.

The premise of the show has resonated with the rich people of Pyongyang, the source said.

“They say that the content is similar to the lives of Pyongyang officials who fight in the foreign currency market as if it is a fight for life and death,” the said the man, who had watched the show at his money-changer brother’s house in Pyongyang.

“They think the show’s plot kind of parallels their own reality, where they know they could be executed at any time if the government decides to make an example out of them for making too much money, but they all continue to make as much money as possible,” said the source.

“It not only resonates with the rich people, but also with Pyongyang’s youth, because they are drawn to the unusually violent scenes.  Also, one of the characters is a North Korean escapee and they can relate to her,” the source said.

“They secretly watch the show under their blankets at night on their portable media players.”

A resident of North Pyongan province, bordering China, told RFA that the show has caught on with the smugglers who move goods in from China at great risk in the face of the draconian border closures and restrictions on movement that North Korea has imposed to curb the spread of coronavirus.

“Smugglers in particular are immersed in the show because they feel as though they are in a similar situation. They risk their lives to smuggle things in from China despite enhanced border security during the COVID-19 pandemic,” said the second source, who requested anonymity for security reasons.

North Korea made its normally porous border with China hard to cross, adding up troops, declaring a one km kill zone along the border, and laying landmines to prevent its people from escaping, all under the premise of stopping the spread of COVID-19.

Smuggling has, however, continued, and the government has publicly executed smugglers and their accomplices during the pandemic.

Watching Squid Game may be a deadly risk in itself. The government last year passed a new law on the “Elimination of Reactionary Thought and Culture,” which carries a maximum penalty of death for watching, keeping, or distributing capitalist media, especially from South Korea and the U.S.

“Law enforcement is not playing around with the new law, and they are fiercely trying to root out every instance of capitalist culture,” the second source said.

“But times are tough due to the pandemic, so even the police are struggling to make ends meet. Putting a few bucks in their pocket will make them go away if you get caught watching South Korean media. So that means more and more people here will watch Squid Game moving forward.”

North Korean authorities have gone to great lengths to cut off South Korean influence and punish those who consume South Korean culture.

RFA reported in May 2020 that authorities were checking students’ text messages for South Korean spellings and slang.

In June of that year, authorities began punishing people caught using a specific sarcastic phrase that appeared in a South Korean drama because it was seen as disrespectful to the country’s leader Kim Jong Un.

In February 2021, RFA reported that police were cracking down on vehicle window tinting, which North Koreans were using to hide their surreptitious viewing of South Korean videos, labeling the practice as part of the “yellow wind of capitalism.”

An August 2019 Washington Post report documented how certain aspects of South Korean media are considered dangerous by North Korean authorities because they encourage people to escape. K-pop and American pop music has had an instrumental role in undermining North Korean propaganda, it said.

It also cited a survey of 200 North Korean escapees living in South Korea, in which 90 percent said they consumed foreign media while living in the North, with 75 percent saying they knew of someone who was punished for it.

More than 70 percent said they believed that accessing foreign media became more dangerous since Kim Jong Un took power in 2011, said the survey by South Korea’s Unification Media Group.

Squid Game is Netflix’s most watched show ever, ranked first in 94 countries and viewed in 142 million homes worldwide after only a month, according to the company’s third quarter earnings report.

The show is even more popular than those figures indicate.

RFA reported in mid-October that Squid Game was pirated on around 60 streaming sites in China, according to South Korea’s ambassador to China, who asked Beijing to take action over illegal viewing.

Translated by Dukin Han for RFA’s Korean Service. Written in English by Eugene Whong.

Indonesia repatriated 166 Vietnamese fishermen to their home country this week after detaining them and confiscating their boats on suspicion of illegal fishing in Indonesian waters, government officials said Tuesday.

The fishermen departed for Vietnam on a flight from Batam Island on Monday, said an official with the Ministry of Marine Affairs and Fisheries.

“Repatriation of those who are not facing justice will continue to be carried out in stages,” Adm. Adin Nurawaluddin, the ministry’s director general of marine and fishery resources monitoring, said in a statement.

The flight follows a similar one in late September when 200 fishermen left Batam for Vietnam on a chartered flight arranged by the government in Hanoi. Adin said the Indonesian government had been working with the Vietnamese embassy in Jakarta to arrange repatriations.

Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020, about 500 Vietnamese fishermen had been stranded in Indonesia, some spending more than a year in shelters and detention centers run by the fisheries ministry and immigration authorities across the archipelago.

Indonesia is holding another 132 Vietnamese fishermen in separate locations, according to Teuku Elvitrasyah, another senior official at the fisheries ministry. He said he hoped they would be sent home as soon as possible.

“We will coordinate with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Law and Human Rights to push the Vietnamese embassy, so that the remaining crew members can be immediately repatriated,” Elvitrasyah said.

Indonesian officials have said that pandemic-induced lockdowns had prevented the fishermen from being sent home more quickly, and that the Vietnamese government had made no attempt to arrange a repatriation flight.

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, Hanoi would repatriate fishermen detained in Indonesian waters within two months, a government official had said.

After the September flight, Mohammad Abdi Suhufan, the coordinator of Destructive Fishing Watch Indonesia, an NGO, welcomed the repatriation of the Vietnamese fishermen.

“They should have been sent home a long time ago, but it seems like Vietnam neglected them, and this has created a burden for Indonesia,” he told BenarNews, an RFA-affiliated online news service, at the time.

Nearly 50 ships detained this year

Beginning in January through the end of October, Indonesian authorities detained 48 foreign fishing boats for alleged poaching, including 25 from Vietnam.

The two nations have conducted 13 rounds of negotiations to establish their exclusive economic zones (EEZ) in the South China Sea, but no agreement has been reached.

Abdul Halim, executive director at the Center for Maritime Studies for Humanity, said unclear boundaries have led to Vietnamese fishermen straying into Indonesia’s EEZ.

“Vietnam is currently experiencing a shortage of fish and this has driven their fishing vessels to encroach on Indonesia’s EEZ,” Halim told BenarNews.

He said about 2,000 Vietnamese ships, often escorted by the nation’s coast guard vessels, had been spotted fishing in Indonesia’s EEZ.

Halim urged the Indonesian government to speed up border talks and improve coordination among institutions in charge of maritime security.

An Indonesian fisherman, Wandarman, said he often encountered Vietnamese in the North Natuna Sea, the Indonesian name for territory it claims in the South China Sea.

“During a week at sea, I wound up running into five Vietnamese ships measuring 30 to 50 GT [gross tons]. They are still entering our waters as we speak,” Wandarman told BenarNews

Meanwhile, Vietnamese fishermen who have been stranded in Indonesia have complained about poor living conditions in detention centers. Among their complaints, they said they were not getting enough food or being given food they could not eat.

Indonesia’s government dismissed the complaints.

“We feed them and there are quite a lot of them. No one is hungry. They can eat three to four times a day,” Pung Nugroho Saksono, a director at the fisheries ministry, told BenarNews in May.

Previously, detainees at Tanjung Pinang, the capital of Riau Islands province, sent videos of themselves to Radio Free Asia, a sister entity of BenarNews, in December 2020 to highlight their living conditions.

In May, a fisherman who asked to be identified as Mr. Bien told RFA that Vietnamese officials had visited the detention center in early February to collect information after the videos had been published.

Reported by BenarNews, an RFA-affiliated online news service.

Tibetan villagers and Chinese officials clashed this month over the failure of authorities to pay compensation for land taken for a construction project, with at least one scuffle breaking out at the worksite, local sources said.

No injuries were reported in the brawl on Nov. 10 in Domda village in the Yushul (in Chinese, Yushu) Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture in Qinghai, historically a part of northeastern Tibet’s Amdo region, a Tibetan living in the area told RFA this week.

“No one was allowed to record any videos or take photos of the commotion, and no one was hurt,” RFA’s source said, speaking on condition of anonymity. “However, this land issue has become very critical now, and all construction work has been halted for the time being.”

To promote local development, Chinese officials earlier this year seized a large parcel of land from Domda residents, and though authorities promised to pay compensation to the villagers whose land was taken, no money has yet been paid, the source said.

“So some local Tibetans from the village went to the construction site last week to halt the work until they are compensated for their land,” the source said, adding that villagers were threatened when they pressed their claims, leading to the clash.

China has worked for years to move large numbers of nomadic herders and other Tibetans from their ancestral lands without their consent, said Zamlha Tenpa Gyaltsen, a researcher at the Tibet Policy Institute in the Dharamsala, India.

“The Chinese government tries to justify these policies as efforts to rapidly lift the living standards of rural Tibetans and protect the environment. However, these policies have raised a lot of suspicions,” Gyaltsen said.

Tensions have risen in the Domda area, a region known for its scenic beauty and good supplies of water and electricity, since work began four years ago to demolish nomad housing and replace it with housing built for Chinese migrants and tourists, sources told RFA in earlier reports.

In August, Chinese police stopped a group of Tibetans traveling on the road to Domda, pushing one who objected to a random search into a river, where he later died, and shooting another who attempted to intervene, sources said.

Formerly an independent nation, Tibet was invaded and incorporated into China by force 70 years ago.

Chinese authorities maintain a tight grip on the region, restricting Tibetans’ political activities and peaceful expression of cultural and religious identity and subjecting Tibetans to persecution, torture, imprisonment and extrajudicial killings.

Translated by Tenzin Dickyi for RFA’s Tibetan Service. Written in English by Richard Finney.

Police in the coastal Vietnamese city of Danang summoned a former activist who runs a beef noodle stall for questioning Tuesday after he posted a video on social media in which he imitated a celebrity chef who had hand fed gold-coated beef to the country’s public security chief in a video that went viral this month.

The police came knocking six days after noodle vendor Bui Tuan Lam posted a video clip of himself on Facebook gyrating and spreading salt like Turkish celebrity chef and social media star known as Salt Bae, who served a pricey cut of beef to Vietnam’s top cop To Lam in early November.

Salt Bae, whose real name is Nusret Gökçe, served a Golden Giant Tomahawk steak to To and his entourage in London, where they stopped after representing Vietnam at the United Nations climate change conference in Scotland.

A video of To’s party being fed the U.S. $1,975 piece of meat obtained by RFA’s Vietnamese Service went viral, prompting social media comments raising questions about the propriety of a Communist Party official on a monthly salary of roughly U.S. $660 eating such a luxury meal. Subsequent media reports noted the delegation had also visited the London grave of Karl Marx during the trip.

Bui, known as Peter Lam Bui among activists in Vietnam, used to be active in human rights and justice advocacy.

In his video clip, Bui calls himself “Onion Leaf Bae” after the signature move of the celebrity chef, who writhed dramatically as he sprinkled salt on To’s steak.

“This morning they came to my house — two officers from the city security agency, an officer in charge of my locality, and, of course, some plainclothes person doing filming outside,” Bui told RFA.

The reason for the summons was not clear and only said that it requested that Bui go to an office “to provide information about a criminal dealing for investigation work,” he said.

A video of the police visit recorded by Bui shows him asking officers for the reason for the summons, but he was not given one.

“I refused [to go] and said that if the reason was stated clearly in the order, I would work with them because in principle the order is related to a legal case, so it cannot be so general given that someone could be indicted based on what I said,” Bui said.

After listening to Bui’s explanation, the police officers threatened to forcefully escort him to their office, he said.

The video clip might not be primary reason for his most recent summons, Bui suggested, noting that he has received such notices in past months and ignored them.

But he added that his imitation of Salt Bae may have irritated police enough for them to follow up.

“For me, the clip’s impact, if any, is just that they are upset by having to deliver the summons,” he said. “They have had it in mind for a long time to summons me.”

Gökçe, 38, has opened 17 steak restaurants around the world, and videos of his meat-salting performances have been seen and shared by millions. When his London eatery opened in September, it was slammed for U.S. $34 desserts and U.S. $135 hamburgers in the British press, which ran features on stratospheric Salt Bae dinner tabs.

Reported by RFA’s Vietnamese Service. Translated by An Nguyen. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.

A Cambodia court has ordered the confiscation and forced sale of property owned by the country’s former opposition leader Sam Rainsy to pay the plaintiffs in defamation judgements against him. A Phnom Penh court issued four orders in early November to sell off the former headquarters of the banned Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP), a building owned Sam Rainsy and his wife, Tioulong Somura. The order came on the eve of the fourth anniversary of the banning of the CNRP by the Supreme Court, viewed as beholden to autocratic Prime Minister Hun Sen.

Sam Rainsy, 72, has lived in exile in France since 2015. In March, he was sentenced in absentia to 25 years for what supporters say was a politically motivated charge of attempting to overthrow the government. The proceeds from the property sale will go to the government and to Hun Sen, House Speaker Heng Samrin, and Interior Minister Sar Kheng — all of whom won defamation cases against Sam Rainsy that the opposition and outside observers view as politicized rulings. Sam Rainsy spoke with reporter Huot Vuthy of RFA’s Khmer Service about the forced sale of the property. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

RFA: Do you and your wife Tioulong Saumura own the land and the building housing the CNRP’s headquarters?

Sam Rainsy: The land that CNRP headquarters was built on belongs to me and my wife.

RFA: Did you give or rent it to the CNRP?

Sam Rainsy: I rented it to the CNRP. The headquarters was built after I bought the land, and after the construction was completed, I rented it to the CNRP. I only asked for a symbolic charge, so it was almost free.

RFA: What was your reaction when you found out that the property was going to be confiscated because you owe millions of riels to plaintiffs who won cases against you?

Sam Rainsy: This is a revenge staged by Hun Sen. He is taking revenge against me for all sorts of things. He is persecuting me in all respects, including politics, justice, and finance. He is taking revenge against me.

RFA: You say it’s about revenge. How do you feel about that?

Sam Rainsy: I want to add that I am not interested in it. I am not materialistic. Money, assets, houses, and land are not important. I don’t want any strings attached because if I don’t have any strings attached, then I have freedom. If I have plenty of assets when they threaten to confiscate them, then I will lose my freedom. I am not afraid of losing the few assets I have in Cambodia. It is good in a way because I lose all strings attached. Now I only have emotional attachment to the people and my native country. My emotional attachment can’t be broken.

RFA: One pundit said that the court’s order to confiscate your property is tantamount to robbery. Will you file a counter lawsuit or fight it in another way?

Sam Rainsy: I am not interested in it. As I just stated, I am not materialistic. I won’t be pressured by that. This will not change my commitment to fight against a dictatorial regime which is being led by Hun Sen.

RFA: On the fourth anniversary of the banning of the CNRP, what will you do to revive the party?

Sam Rainsy: Hun Sen has been attacking me and the CNRP. He could only harm us from outside, but he couldn’t harm people’s souls. He killed the CNRP on paper, but the most important thing is that the CNRP is still alive and it remains in Cambodians’ hearts. This is a huge political gain that no one can destroy. One day when the situation changes, the CNRP will survive. The CNRP can be restarted at any time.

Translated by Samean Yun for RFA’s Khmer Service. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.

Chinese tennis star Peng Shuai is incommunicado since she accused a former ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader of pressuring her into a sexual relationship, raising concerns about her personal safety, Chinese feminist campaigners and international sports associations said.

“Peng Shuai has vanished from the public eye ever since she came forward and made her claims,” the Free Chinese Feminists Twitter account said. “#Metoo activists are deeply concerned about her safety.”

The tweet, which used the hashtag #WhereIsPengShuai, was accompanied by a photo of a slogan being projected onto an outside wall. “We demand Peng Shuai’s safe return,” the slogan said.

The U.S.-based Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) said it was deeply concerned for Peng’s health and safety.

“The recent events in China concerning a WTA player, Peng Shuai, are of deep concern. As an organization dedicated to women, we remain committed to the principles we were founded on – equality, opportunity and respect,” WTA chairman Steve Simon said in a statement on the association’s website.

“Peng Shuai, and all women, deserve to be heard, not censored,” he said, calling for her allegations to be taken “with the utmost seriousness.”

“We expect this issue to be handled properly, meaning the allegations must be investigated fully, fairly, transparently and without censorship,” Simon said. “We are speaking out so justice can be done.”

The group has since reportedly received “assurances” that Peng is safe and well.

In a Nov. 2 post to Chinese social media, Peng said former vice premier Zhang Gaoli had pressured her into sex when she was 19, and later pursued her to restart the extramarital affair after he finished his 10-year stint serving on the CCP’s Politburo standing committee, the most powerful decision-making body in the Chinese government.

Peng said she had felt pressured into restarting the affair, before describing some positive feelings towards Zhang, and later detailing humiliation, mostly from Zhang’s wife, and a sense of social isolation caused by being made to keep the affair secret.

While screenshots of her lengthy post circulated internationally, Peng’s original post was soon deleted. Commentators said the fact that it referenced a former Politburo standing committee member would likely send shockwaves through the corridors of Zhongnanhai, the seat of the CCP regime.

The Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) also expressed concerns for Peng’s safety.

“We have been deeply concerned by the uncertainty surrounding the immediate safety and whereabouts of WTA player Peng Shuai,” chairman Andrea Gaudenzi said.

“We are encouraged by the recent assurances received by WTA that she is safe and accounted for and will continue to monitor the situation closely.”

The statement also called for a full, fair, and transparent investigation into “allegations of sexual assault carried out against Peng Shuai.”

Former women’s tennis No. 1 Chris Evert tweeted: “Yes, these accusations are very disturbing. I’ve known Peng since she was 14; we should all be concerned; this is serious; where is she? Is she safe? Any information would be appreciated.”

Chinese human rights defender and art curator Xiang Li said the concerns for Peng come amid growing international calls for a boycott of the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics in February.

“It’s kind of a landmark, for the WTA to speak out like that, out of solidarity for women and in support of victims,” Xiang told RFA. “At the very least, it sends the message to the international community that sports associations … can come to the aid of Chinese citizens.”

‘A kind of social death’

Xiang said Peng’s incommunicado status could only happen in a totalitarian country like China.

“If something like this happened in a democratic country, journalists, everyone would be looking for her, and yet Peng Shuai has disappeared,” she said. “It’s a very Chinese kind of social death.”

While Steve Simon later told the New York Times that he had been told by several sources that Peng is safe and in Beijing, nobody has yet managed to get in touch with  her.

Former People’s Daily sports editor Wang Dazhao said he hasn’t heard anyone in his social circle even discuss Peng.

“I haven’t heard anybody so much as talk about her from [the day she posted], and nobody is inquiring about her,” he said. 

Sports Illustrated called in an editorial for the WTA to consider withdrawing from China altogether.

“If the WTA has terms beyond the mercenary, it must demand transparency and action,” the article said. “And be prepared to get out, to stop doing business in a country so unaligned with its purported mission.”

China’s #MeToo movement made headlines in 2018, when Beihang University fired a professor, Chen Xiaowu, after he was publicly accused by his former PhD candidate Luo Xixi on social media of sexual harassment and assault.

Luo’s #MeToo whistleblowing was among the first to make headline news in China, and Chen’s dismissal represented an “initial victory” for Chinese women, she has said.

Southern Metropolis Daily founder Cheng Yizhong said Peng’s alleged affair with Zhang would have taken place in an atmosphere that worships power and money around the CCP elite.

Zhang, now 75, served as vice premier between 2013 and 2018 and was a member of the Politburo standing committee between 2012 and 2017.

Peng was the world No.1 doubles player in 2014 after taking doubles titles at Wimbledon in 2013 and the French Open in 2014.

Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.