Wednesday, March 5, 2003

To: Prof. Tetszo Nakano (via: Prof. Ikkoh Fujii)

cc: Mr. Tsutomu Nishioka (cys01452@nifty.ne.jp), Prof. Kazuriho Araki (kumoha351@nifty.com), Ms. Woo-young Choi (rehome@rehome.or.kr) and See listings.

Dear Prof. Nakano:

Thank you in need for your letter of February 14, 2003, accompanied with eight references which I found very useful. You should have meanwhile received an e-mail from NYTimes. com (re: Rallies in Seoul Differ on U.S., Highlighting a Generation Gap), adding my personal message explaining the long journey of your letter that I received finally on March 3, 2003.

Your scholastic views are particularly appreciated. I am also grateful to you for having made available with the minutes of the House of Councilors, questioning Foreign Minister Kawaguchi by Mr. Naoki Minezaki during an interpellation session on January 30, 2003 regarding the issues of abduction. Although it was in your own language, I was able to grasp his points as I went through in Chinese characters (Kanji).

I gather from Ms. Mi-il Lee, President of KWAFU, yesterday that a copy of your letter to me and a set of enclosures in Japanese have been photocopied to Mr. Tsutomu Nishioka, National Association for Rescue of Japanese Kidnapped by North Korea (NARKN), who has recently visited Seoul. I was told that Mr. Nishioka had no acquaintance with you so that what KWAFU had copied him should have been found very useful to him in our effort to organize an international forum.

Mr. Nishoka also paid a call to other organization mentioned by Mr. Kitano of The Asahi Shimbun. The name of the organization is The Families of the Abducted and Detained in North Korea (FAD), headed by Ms. Woo-young Choi (e-mail: rehome@rehome.or.kr) to whom a copy of this is being forwarded.

FAD was founded on February 28, 2000 by 17 families of victims who were abducted to North Korea after the Korean War (www.rehome.or.kr). Their address is "2nd Floor, Dasan Building., 164-15 Nonhyon-dong, Kangnam-gu, Seoul 135-010. You are quite correct to say that it is very important to work together with FAD along with the counterparts in Japan if we are to achieve anything with the International Criminal Court (ICC).

Relatives and supporters of Japanese abducted by North Korea left for Washington on Monday, March 3, to try to persuade senior U.S. officials to help them deal with North Korea, according to A.P. yesterday.

The four family members, accompanied by three lawmakers, two support groups members and a government officials, plan to meet with senior U.S. government officials during their five-day visit in Washington, group spokesman Tsutomu Nishioka said, according to A.P.

I have made an arrangement yesterday under which you should have received an e-mail from The Choson Ilbo, sending an article titled: NK Human Rights Conference to Be Held in Prague, saying a letter follows. The conference was supported by The Chosun Ilbo and the United States Endowment for Democracy (NED), and sponsored by SK Telecom. We will have to work out similar arrangements as our budget is very tight as you may guess.

You will appreciate that organizing an international forum requires efforts and time at the same time. I would like to invite you to be at the forum for presentation and am even thinking about inviting other foreign speakers including but not necessarily limited to Mr. Geoffrey Robertson QC whose e-mail address that I have already surfed is g.robertson@doughtystreet.co.uk.

There will be an organization committee to be worked out with Mr Nishioka once the proposal has been found acceptable. By copy of this to Mr. Nishioka, I would kindly ask for his comments by return. Taking this opportunity, I would also like to invite Ms. Choi to work with us closely.

Regarding your concern on President Roh Moo-hyun, I have the same concern in him. Let me quote what I have read in NEWSWEEK of March 3, 2003 in page 13: "I have two points to make to President Bush, and they are related." he told NEWSWEEK.

"I want to stress that North Korea was opening up and that is already changing. If we give them what they desperately want - regime security, normal treatment and economic assistance - they will be willing to give up their nuclear ambitions. We should not, therefore, treat them as criminals but as counterparts for dialogue."

Irony is that we are talking about Kim Jong-il`s crime against humanity. Mr. Roh has never touched on the issues involving North Korean abduction during and after the Korean War in his various speeches and his election campaigns. Kim Dae-jung`s Sunshine Policy was found nothing but a mirage after his 5 years in the office. Roh has a reputation as a fireband human right attorney (LA Times in its issue of February 26, 2003 on Powell, S. Korea Leader Meet), but we are, however, wondering whether such background will do anything good for us.

Disappointing us was that Roh appointed Jeong Se-hyun once again as minister of unification in the new cabinet, who has failed to make any monumental achievement under Kim Dae-jung. There is a saying that wisdom doesn`t necessary go together with maturity. I will come back to you from time to time as may be required by way of e-mail through Prof. Fujii, who may be also interesting in joining us at the forum along with you.

Warmest regards,

C. Y. Lee

mrcylee@unitel.co.kr (primary) mrcylee@yahoo.com (secondary) bringthemhome1950@yahoo.co.kr (special use)

P.S.: Regarding your question on Prof. Song Sang-hyun, he graduated from Seoul National University College of Law (1959~1966), including his master`s degree followed by postgraduate studies both at Cambridge and Cornell, earning his PhD at the latter. Prof. Song`s resume runs almost four pages in A-4 including numerous papers, as well as authoring 10 books inclusive of "Introduction of the Law and Legal System of Korea, 1983 by Kyungmunsa, and "Korean Law in the Global Economy, 1996 by Pakyongsa. His English papers are 1) The Impact of Multilateral Trade Negotiations on Intellectual Property Laws in Korea, 13 UCLA Pacific Basin Law Journal No. 1, 1994, 2) Law and Policy of Securities Regulation in Korea, 4 Pacific Rim Law and Policy Journal No. 3, 1995), 3) Experimenting Legal Protection of Computer Software in Korea, International Conference on Software Protection, Stanford Law School, 1986, 4) Non-judicial Dispute Resolution Procedures in Korea with an Emphasis on Arbitration, AAA, IBA, ICSID, Conference on Dispute Resolution in the Asia-Pacific Region, San Francisco, 1986, etc. He comes from the same hight school I went through, i.e. Kyonggi High Shool, graduating it in 1959 while I graduated in 1953. I sent an e-mail to him for congratulating his election on February 5, 2003 followed by his reply in the following day. He was then busy traveling between U.S.A. and Europe.