While Democrats expend all of their firepower in trying to establish collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, a Virginia woman has been quietly performing the “duty” Democrats claim they organize for–giving voice to the repressed.
The duty in question concerns a Virginia woman’s efforts in finding defectors from Stalinist North Korea and giving them a microphone in which to expose the horror of living in the infamously repressive regime.
But for Suzanne Scholte, who heads the Defense Forum Foundation, the goal is not just to show the liberty-crushing methods of the North Korea regime; her mission is also to provide hope and inspiration to those who suffer under the blood-thirsty dictator, Kim Jung Un.
For over ten years, Scholte has helped finance a South Korean-based radio program headed by North Korean defectors designed to provide their former countrymen with the very news censored by the regime–the truth about the United States–and to provide much-needed hope to Un’s subjects.
The radio station stays afloat financially because of donations from the private sector.
For the last 14 years, Scholte has organized the North Korean Freedom Week to “prepare for the regime collapse and peaceful reunification of Korea.” One of the ceremonies involves defectors placing a wreath at the Korean War Memorial honoring United States’ soldiers who were killed trying to protect South Korea from the North during the 1950 conflict; the conflict pitted America against the Soviet and Chinese-backed North and its invasion of the South.
Scholte sees the public relations value in this emotionally “powerful” ceremony by showing the defectors who were “brainwashed to hate us” during and since the Korean War now realize “we were the good guys” back then.
Recently, Scholte has condemned the Trump administration for refusing to meet with the defectors. She and the defectors locate this rejection in the administration’s futile hopes that by not offending China, North Korea’s prime benefactor, China will reign in Un’s aggressive behavior toward the United States.
Defectors believe that China cannot be relied on to do the right thing, evidenced by the country standing against United Nations’ policies crafted only to condemn North Korea. China has opposed UN policies designed to block North Korean atomic bomb development as well.
For her work with North Korean defectors, Scholte was awarded the Seoul Peace Prize. Of the prize, Scholte said, “I feel ashamed but also I feel honored. It is a great honor to receive this great prize even when I just did what I should do.”
Her labors for the North Koreans are not her first attempt to champion civil liberties in Communist dictatorships. Before her humanitarian work for North Korean defectors, she also campaigned for human rights in the Soviet Union and Cuba.
Scholte’s work does not involve just publicizing North Korean dissidents and their reports of repression in their former country. In her leadership role at the Defense Forum Foundation, she tried to save 15 North Korean refugees whose escape only got them to China.
Although Scholte was unable to get them out of the country, she did get three of the refugee’s children into the United States where they were given asylum.
Since 2011, she has attempted to get the U.S. government to speed up policies of granting asylum to North Korea escapees.
