Pepsi is giving away millions of dollars in grants each month to fund great ideas and there is a Korean related idea.  Currently there are over 700 ideas in the running for Pepsi’s money and we’re hoping you’ll vote for LiNK. Voting ends on February 28th!

LiNK’s work focuses on awareness through mobilizing the grassroots and telling stories of hope. We advocate for the North Koreans, while working with refugees through shelters in China and Southeast Asia-protecting, educating and assisting them to eventually find freedom and live new lives.

Goals of LiNK are…

• Provide job training, and career counseling for refugees.
• Provide medical and psychological services for North Korean refugees.
• Provide food for North Korean refugees once resettled in the U.S.
• Facilitate language acquisition and cultural orientation for refugees.
• Provide housing for North Korean refugees once resettled in the U.S.

Go to Pepsi Refresh and VOTE!

Not sure if this is a bummer because people have very mixed feelings about the Korea’s marching together at the opening ceremonies of the Winter Olympic Games.  On one hand, it’s very symbolic and hopeful that the Korea’s could someday be united.  However, do you want to deal with one of the worst dictators in the world and play nice?  Quite the dilemma.

Previous to this year, Korean athletes had marched together at the 2006 Winter Games in Turin, extending a tradition that started at the 2000 Summer Games in Sydney and continued at the 2004 Athens Olympics.  However, the two teams did not march together in Beijing in 2008.

South Korea has 46 athletes entered for the Vancouver Games.  North Korea has two: one each in figure skating and speed skating.

Source: NBC Olympics

Korean-American missionary, Robert Park, has returned to the U.S. after having been held in captivity in North Korea for 43 days.  He crossed a frozen river between the Chinese and North Korean border to deliver a message of regime change.

Robert Park, of Tucson, Ariz., crossed the frozen Tumen River from China into North Korea on Dec. 25, carrying letters calling on leaderKim Jong Il to close the country’s notoriously brutal prison camps and step down from power. Those acts could have risked execution in the hardline communist country.

It was either brave or stupid for Robert Park to attempt what he did but we can all agree that North Korea does need a regime change.  It is an “Axis of Evil” that starves its people and holds the world hostage with its nuclear intentions.  It is one of the harshest regimes on the planet and sadly, it appears that the young Robert Park was under great distress while in North Korea as his views apparently changed over the course of 43 days in captivity.

The family didn’t have time during their brief airport reunion to ask whether he had been mistreated by North Korean officials, Paul Park said. They also didn’t get a chance to ask him about a statement that North Korea attributed to him on Friday, he said.

North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency quoted Park as saying he was ashamed of the “biased” view he once held of the country.

Robert Park said he was now convinced “there’s complete religious freedom for all people everywhere” in North Korea, citing the return of the Bible he carried as he entered the country and a service he attended at Pongsu Church in Pyongyang, KCNA said.

“I would not have committed such crime if I had known that the (North) respects the rights of all the people and guarantees their freedom and they enjoy a happy and stable life,” it quoted him as saying.

Read more at Yahoo! News

Cable network ESPN has been showcasing the American military through a video series entitled “American Heroes” to honor the veterans and our military.  Shelley Smith and the ESPN crew visited the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), the most heavily guarded border in the world that separates North and South Korea.  If you didn’t know, the Korean War is technically not over.

Though at any moment, Kim Jong-Il could flip and start a nuclear war, the American military fight through the mundane life that exists within the DMZ through sports.  They play golf at the DMZ with their sparsely constructed golf course that’s built with sand traps and AstroTurf.  What’s rather scary is that a wayward struck golf ball could land on the wrong side of the road where land mines (3 million of them) litter the ground.

One of the most interesting things that reporter Shelley Smith reveals is that North Korea hand picks taller and bigger soldiers to stand guard on their side of the border to intimidate the American and South Korean soldiers.  That Kim Jong-Il!  What will he think of next?!

Watch the short video below for the full story by Shelley Smith.

What are you going to watch when you go home for Thanksgiving?  It better be Ninja Assassin and it’s heavy Korean cast with Rain in the lead role.  Someone at the studio must think it’s going to be a big hit because they spent a pretty penny on commercials during the baseball playoffs and now a big billboard went up in Times Square.

Naked Play in Korea is all the buzz
It’s gotten pretty progressive in South Korea. The buzz across the Pacific is a play that bares it all during the bedroom scenes.  Is it pornography – a naked Korean Woman in a play?  It’s called 교수와 여제자 and it looks like a lot of middle-aged men are the ones buzzing.  For the rest of the pics, go to Chosun.com.

Obama, Harold & Kumar
We all know that President Obama is the first real U.S. President that represents diversity. Here’s a picture with Obama and some Asians, including one of his trusted aids – Eugene Kang in the far back. You may also recognize Kal Penn of Harold & Kumar fame on the right.

Video of the Day: Weird Wildlife at the DMZ
A South Korean MBC TV crew recently returned from an 18-month shoot that took them beyond the barbed wire and gun-turrets to record a documentary on the rare species that have made it an oasis from human interference.

“One of the things that makes it so special is that it has nearly all the eco-systems you’ll find in Korea,” Mark Strickson, a zoologist and producer of the documentary for NHNZ told CNN.

Lisa Ling will be representing Laura Ling and Euna Lee on Oprah and she’ll be sharing the story of their ordeal in North Korea.  Look up Oprah on your local listings to find out when you can watch the show.

For the first time since her sister was freed, Lisa Ling returns to The Oprah Show.  For more info, go to Oprah.com>

Euna Lee and Laura Ling have spoken up for the first time about their experiences at the North Korean and Chinese border and how they were captured.  They explain that they were in North Korea for less than a minute and were physically captured on Chinese soil when they fled from North Korean border guards.  They’re unsure if they were lured into that area by their guide.  They are sharing this story because they want to bring light to the tragedies that they were originally trying to investigate and that is the human trafficking and the horrors that North Korean defectors live once they’ve escaped.  See excerpt below from Current TV’s website.

When we set out, we had no intention of leaving China, but when our guide beckoned for us to follow him beyond the middle of the river, we did, eventually arriving at the riverbank on the North Korean side. He pointed out a small village in the distance where he told us that North Koreans waited in safe houses to be smuggled into China via a well-established network that has escorted tens of thousands across the porous border.

Feeling nervous about where we were, we quickly turned back toward China. Midway across the ice, we heard yelling. We looked back and saw two North Korean soldiers with rifles running toward us. Instinctively, we ran.

We were firmly back inside China when the soldiers apprehended us. Producer Mitch Koss and our guide were both able to outrun the border guards. We were not. We tried with all our might to cling to bushes, ground, anything that would keep us on Chinese soil, but we were no match for the determined soldiers. They violently dragged us back across the ice to North Korea and marched us to a nearby army base, where we were detained. Over the next 140 days, we were moved to Pyongyang, isolated from one another, repeatedly interrogated and eventually put on trial and sentenced to 12 years of hard labor.

We didn’t spend more than a minute on North Korean soil before turning back, but it is a minute we deeply regret. To this day, we still don’t know if we were lured into a trap. In retrospect, the guide behaved oddly, changing our starting point on the river at the last moment and donning a Chinese police overcoat for the crossing, measures we assumed were security precautions. But it was ultimately our decision to follow him, and we continue to pay for that decision today with dark memories of our captivity.

For the full explanation, go to Current TV>

A thank you message from Euna Lee and Laura Ling, the two Asian-American journalists who were held capture in North Korea for 140 days, and were pardoned last week by Kim Jong-Il because of Bill Clinton’s diplomatic outreach.

Messages from Laura Ling and Euna Lee

Dear Friends,

While in detention in North Korea, isolated and scared, one of the things that gave me strength and sustained my faith was hearing about the groundswell of support for Euna and me. You were a part of this incredible movement and for that I will be forever thankful.

Through the letters that I was able to receive, I learned about the many beautiful vigils, the LauraAndEuna.com website, the petition, the Facebook group, and all the other grassroots efforts to bring us home. I am deeply humbled.

In times of extreme darkness and depression, I thought of all of the people, united together, sending us messages of love and hope. I envisioned the light of the candles at the vigils and it brightened my soul.

I would not be here today, home and free, re-united with my family (my sister is actually asleep on the couch right by my side), if not for the support from so many extraordinary people. Thank you all from the bottom of my heart. Words cannot adequately express my profound gratitude.

While my experience was the most challenging time of my life, I do believe that something beautiful came out of it, and that is the way in which so many people united around a cause for hope and peace.

I’d like to share with you an entry from my journal that I kept during my time in captivity:

Thursday, June 11, 2009 Day 87, 3:00 PM

“I’ve been so overwhelmed and touched by the outpouring of support from so many people. Loved ones, friends, people I haven’t been in contact with in ages, and even total strangers. It makes you have faith in humanity. I hope that I would be as good of a friend or human to someone else in a similar situation.”

Euna and I are two of the lucky ones whose story of captivity resulted in a happy ending. But there are so many journalists imprisoned around the world whose fate is still undecided. It is my sincere hope that the energy ignited around bringing us home will be harnessed into raising awareness around these fellow journalists and their struggle for freedom.

With all my love and gratitude,

Laura

*********

It’s been 5 days since I arrived home from my traumatic experience.

What have I done… hmm… let’s see. I made scrambled eggs with Hana, I walked around the neighborhood with Michael and Hana after dinner, I combed Hana’s hair and dressed her for school, I danced and jumped with Hana, I went to a cafe and had a very happy time with Michael listening to his life and shared mine, I went to church and was able to sing unto the Lord.

I am slowly fulfilling the wish list that I made in North Korea one item at a time.

Every moment when I realize it’s real, when I am home and I am with my family, I think of all the individuals who were there at the vigils, who wrote letters to us and to the government, who read and followed our news and were concerned about us and helped Laura and I to come home.

Knowing that you would not stop until we came home kept me going day by day in North Korea.

As soon as I got home, after I gave a long hug to my family, I wanted to thank the people who helped me. I wanted to let people know how grateful I was and am. I found myself surfing the Internet and reading different blogs and news articles about us. Then I realized that I felt separated again from my husband and daughter, just as I was for 141 days in North Korea.

I decided then not to go through all the emails and articles just yet. I have not checked the Facebook pages about Laura and I or the web site, LauraAndEuna.com. Because I know that once I started to read them I would get caught up in all the love and support everybody gave me and I will neglect my family.

Hana is still a bit nervous about mommy going to work again. She told me today “Mommy, when I ask you to leave (she meant ‘come home’), please come home to me.” She told Doorie (one of my cats) “Doorie, if you don’t listen, mommy will go to the airport.”

I will wait for the time when Hana truly believes that mommy’s always there for her, then I will be free to share my stories and experiences in North Korea and be able to express how thankful I am.

My husband mentioned the names of so many individuals who helped us and supported us through this tough time. I won’t list the individual names here to thank because I believe you already know that I am talking to you when I say “Thank You.”

Again, I am blessed to have such support from everybody who participated and I won’t forget your love and I just want to say, “I love you too.”

Love,
Euna

Apparently a professor from the University of Georgia – Han Park – worked behind the scenes in assisting with the pardon of Laura Ling and Euna Lee from North Korea, this according to KBS.

Since the two journalists were arrested by the North, Park is said to have visited Pyongyang in March and again on July fifth to discuss their release with North Korean officials.

In mid-July, he contacted former U.S. Vice President Al Gore, calling for the need to send a special envoy to the North.

Source: KBS World

It’s a great day to be an American!  There are so many winners in the release of Euna Lee and Laura Ling.  How big?  National networks stopped programming for a live feed into the arrival of Euna Lee, Laura Ling and ex-President Bill Clinton.  One of the journalists who was present at the airport hanger said it was even emotional for her as she watched the two journalists step off the plane.  Today may be a seminal moment for Asian-Americans because it said that all Asian-Americans are citizens of the U.S.; that you don’t have to be white to be identified as an American.  Take pause and think about what just happened here.  According to various news reports, there were a lot of behind the scenes negotiating that even involved the White House.  Perhaps a decade ago – because Euna Lee and Laura Ling weren’t white – the media and the rest of America may not have cared.  Fast forward to today and what we witnessed was a country, a government, and the higest of digniatries extending themselves to save two Asian-Americans from the clutches of Kim Jong-Il.  I wouldn’t doubt that Kim Jong-Il would’ve used these these two ladies as bargaining chips in the bigger issue of nuclear and missle arms disarment.  In the end, the White House actively engaged and brought a happy ending to the ordeal of these two young ladies.

Whatever you may want to say about Bill Clinton, he’s d’man!  Everyone has an opinion about the ex-president called “Slick Willy,” but let’s give him credit for going all the way to North Korea and returning Euna Lee and Laura Ling with him.  When he descended from the plane, there was a long hug and embrace between vice president Al Gore and president Bill Clinton.  As we stated up front, everyone is a winner.  If you’re Asian-American, you’re a winner because today says we really are citizens.  For Bill Clinton and his team, your legacy may be better than before.  And finally for President Obama and the White House – they could’ve ignored the two ladies during the escalating tensions between North Korea and the U.S., but they engaged and diplomatically brought home the two American journalists.  Bravo Bill!  Bravo to the White House!