Word: liang
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...good thing that most of the characters in Tsai Ming-liang's films seem to be compulsive smokers. The acclaimed Taiwan-based director is the master of the long, slow reveal that keeps camera movement to an absolute minimum. Just as frozen are his actors, who sit or stand or lie with that familiar art-house look of longing in their eyes, which often resembles nothing so much as a slight case of constipation. Were it not for the constant lighting of cigarettes and the smoke wreaths wafting through the frame, Tsai's scenes would be hard to distinguish from...
Could the BBC documentary be fallacious? Sure. The credibility of North Korean defectors and refugees is often questioned. Their stories are just too ghastly, too unreal. As Debra Liang-Fenton, executive director of the U.S. Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, tells me, the degree of repression is “not something that anyone can fathom.” But we now have an immense body of evidence revealing the regime’s systematic methods of abuse—in light of which the documentary seems wholly plausible...
While she doesn’t dispute the immediate strategic concerns, Liang-Fenton regrets that the six-party talks in Beijing—which reopen today—have heretofore focused exclusively on North Korea’s nuclear program, without regard for its appalling human rights violations. Consequently, she says, “Most people in the U.S. know about the nuke situation in North Korea, but not the humanitarian situation...
...Ideally, Liang-Fenton hopes that a “Helsinki-type agreement” might emerge from the talks—an agreement that would establish a multilateral forum in which to address North Korean brutality and bind the North to a comprehensive set of human rights principles. The human rights provisions of the 1975 Helsinki Final Act, which proved crucial to the long-term unraveling of the USSR, obliged the Soviets to respect values such as freedom of movement and exchange of ideas. They also created an international medium for critics of the regime...
South Korean caution is thus a major obstacle to squeezing Kim. Another is the relative dearth of a political consensus on North Korean human rights in the United States. According to Liang-Fenton, “It’s been largely an issue for the right-of-center groups.” Republicans have been at the forefront, she says, while the response of Democrats has been “disappointing...