Lee Hyeon-seo Quotes

I don't think the current regime of South Korea will deal actively with the issue of North Korean defectors.

I hate the Chinese government. If you do not want to embrace North Korean defectors in your country, I understand. But we have a country where we can seek asylum. So please, let us freely pass through. Why are you doing your best to try and catch defectors?

North Korean defectors who speak out against the regime always feel nervous. We never know what the North Korean government is planning. It's really difficult for us to show our faces and speak out, but we feel obligated to do something to inform people about the ongoing tragedy inside North Korea.

I am one of the lucky North Koreans who made it out of China. North Korean defectors in the country are terrified of trying to leave because they are often caught at the borders as they attempt to cross into Mongolia or Laos.

I've been to Uganda and to North Korea and to Eritrea, countless horror spots around the world.

I feel very sorry for the one or two North Korean defectors who were caught by Chinese police while entering South Korean or foreign embassies in Beijing, but their arrest drew the whole attention of the world.

I would say issues around human rights - either you're going to take a hard stance, or you're not. You can't borrow money from China the way the U.S. has done and then turn around and say, 'But you've got a human-rights problem.' You can't be half pregnant.

If the president of the United States says that attacks on civilians, starvation, and denial of religious freedom in Sudan are important international issues, they become so.

With a foreign policy appropriately rooted in some sense of humanitarian decency, the Central African crisis will not be easily ignored by American policymakers. It screams for remedy.

The mercy caravans are through there the medicine refugees flowing out. It makes the United States look very bad here. And much more like an occupation force than it did before.

I wish we didn't have to own up to a policy deliberately designed to inflict suffering on people who have already been traumatised in the countries from which they've fled.

Americans are accustomed to welcoming, or at least receiving, refugees from other countries, not creating our own.

Defending human rights should be an important objective of foreign policy, and that, too, will sometimes be hard to reconcile with an economic agenda, especially when it comes to dealing with rich but repressive players like China and Russia.

Big global players like China need to do a better job of respecting human rights.

Throughout his amazing life, my father played important roles in shaping U.S. policy towards China.

As a result of the strategic patience policy, we now have North Korea testing four times an atomic weapon; they've violated numerous United Nations sanctions, U.S. sanctions by launching ballistic missile tests.

Countries often prioritise economic interests over human rights - hence all the kowtowing to China.

When many Chinese escaped to North Korea during the Cultural Revolution, we embraced them. People in China have forgotten about this.

Human rights in China should absolutely play a role in broader U.S. policy toward China. When we look the other way on fundamental issues of human rights, we are also responsible.

As a journalist, I have spent years reporting on often difficult and depressing conflicts, on poverty, and the inhuman way we sometimes treat each other.

The U.S.' refusal to acknowledge the plight of displaced Haitians and maintaining inhumane practices of neglect, disrespect, and violence amounts to a gross violation of human rights.

I will return when I feel safe there, when negotiations start, when political prisoners are released. Those will be the signs for me to come back safely.

Brussels' stance against Poland is not just... they should give more respect to the Poles.

My parents fled from North Korea during the Korean War because they despised the North Korean Communist regime. They fled to seek freedom and came to South Korea.

I myself hate the communist North Korean system. That doesn't mean I should let the people in the North suffer under an oppressive regime.