I didn't say anything about him advancing anything. I said he went there to raise awareness and try to shut down a prison camp, which he rose awareness for.
QUOTE said:
Remember the whole fiasco where two
journalists were "abducted" by North Korea?
Key word there: JOURNALISTS, not christians.
QUOTE said:
I wonder why these Christian missionaries always prey on "poor" and "less educated" communities
There was no mention of it being a poor or less educated community, you have no evidence of this.
All you've made yourself look like in this thread is biased against Christians. You don't have any proof taxpayers' dollars were spent on a commercial flight from China, this guy went there to RAISE AWARENESS about a brutal prison camp which in turn this article and news coverage did. You tried to pin some form of blame on Christians earlier in the thread by implying we constantly spend tax dollars bailing them out of international jails for preaching their message. Instead of citing a story where someone from the U.S. was jailed on basis of religion causing us to spend taxpayer dollars on their bail, you bring up a story about journalists imprisoned in Korea on non-religious grounds. You tried to use the articles you linked to as evidence of your "international Bailout" theory which clearly state the victim did not want taxpayer dollars spent on his bail, and upon further reading state Korea releases him, free of charge. This case is over and done with. Moderators, may we have your verdict?
I'll let this blog post do the talking for me:
QUOTE
What could a free man hope to accomplish by crossing without permission into North Korea, to ask its rulers to repent, close the prison camps and free the people? Robert Park, a young American of Korean descent made exactly that crossing on Christmas day, walking from China into North Korea across the frozen Tumen River. There are reports that as he crossed, he called out, “I came here to proclaim God’s love.”
A manifesto attributed to Park, leader of a Christian group advocating human rights for North Koreans, includes the statement: “All we are asking is for all North Koreans to be free, safe and have life.”
Chances are nil that North Korea’s regime will receive Park in that spirit. North Korea-watcher Joshua Stanton, who includes the full text of the above manifesto on his well-informed One Free Korea blog, worries with good reason that Park will become yet another pawn in the endless extortion rackets and depravities of North Korean “diplomacy.” Park reportedly said before he went in to North Korea that he did not want to be ransomed by the U.S. government. But based on dismal experience — recall Bill Clinton’s Pyongyang trip in August to pick up the detained Laura Ling and Euna Lee – Stanton fears that already “junior and has-been diplomats all along the Eastern Seaboard are imagining themselves escorting Robert Park up the steps of a charter flight at Sunan Airport, having left behind enough ransom aid to run a small concentration camp for years.”
That sounds sadly accurate. And yet… there are powerful reasons why a man who cares deeply about human rights for North Koreans might feel impelled to set out across that frozen river. For years, the monstrous miseries inside North Korea have been known, detailed, attested to before congressional committees, documented by carefully cross-correlated reports, deplored by human rights groups and chronicled by defectors. For a sample, you can browse the atrocities documented by the Washington-based U.S. Committee for Human Rights in North Korea — and if you want to look further, you can amass a large collection of books, movies, news reports and graphic findings about the brutalities North Korea’s government systematically inflicts on its people.
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Psionic Roshambo:
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Xdqwerty:
