 Welcome to Think Tech on Spectrum OC-16, Hawaii's weekly newscast on things that matter to tech and to Hawaii. I'm Elise Anderson. And I'm Yukari Kunisue. In our show this time, we'll take you to the 41st annual Paul Chung Memorial Lecture, presented at the Waikiki Prince Hotel by PAMI, the Pacific Asian Management Institute at the Scheidler College of Business. The event features remarks by Professor Tae-woong Baik on International Human Rights Law and enforced disappearances with a focus on Asia, Korea, and the UN Human Rights Council. Dr. Tae-woong Baik was born in South Korea and graduated from Seoul National University College of Law. He earned his master's in Doctorate of Law in International Human Rights Law from Notre Dame Law School. He was admitted to the bar in New York and worked for Human Rights Watch as a research intern and consultant with a focus on human rights problems in North and South Korea. In 2003, he served as a legal advisor to the South Korean delegation to the UN Subcommission of the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights. Since 2015, he has been serving as a member of the UN Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances. Dr. Baik joined the William S. Richardson School of Law at UH in 2011 and teaches International Human Rights, International Criminal Law, Comparative Law, and Korean Law. He conducted research on human rights issues as a visiting scholar at the East Asian Legal Studies Program at Harvard Law School from 2002 to 2003 and is currently on sabbatical as a visiting scholar at Seoul National University Law Research Institute. Professor Baik was engaged in the democracy movement against the military dictatorship in 1980s and 1990s in South Korea. This book, Emerging Regional Human Rights Systems in Asia, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2012. The translated and updated version of this book was published in Korea last year under the title Seeking the Human Rights Community in Asia. Here are some excerpts from his remarks at the recent Paul Chung Memorial Lecture. Today, I think we have the honor to hear from someone who has truly demonstrated the courage of their convictions at a very great personal cost. He continues to battle for human rights around the globe and I'm sure you're going to find his remarks moving, inspiring, and thought-provoking not only for their international implications but also in the context of recent events in the U.S. political landscape. My secret is already divulged. I thought I should start, however, talking, confessing about my personal story. Yes, I have criminal records, actually, too. So I have two stars, in fact, according to convicts words. And however, I'm not too much ashamed of that because it was part of the democratization process in South Korea in 1980s and 90s. Two of the former presidents were imprisoned during this democratization period. And I was also part of the great democratization movement, and I'm proud of that. My first imprisonment was in 1984 when I was the president of a student association of Seoul National University. I was a college law senior student and I was imprisoned because I tried to change the election system of student association from indirect voting to direct voting. In 2009, finally, the government recognized my activities as an act to restore constitutional order and contributing to promote freedom and rights in Korea. I'm feeling honored for that. In 2015, I was also invited and appointed to be the independent expert of UN Human Rights Council that deals with enforced disappearance. And the working group, actually, is one of the prominent international human rights law institution in UN system. And so I'm frequently traveling, dealing with international human rights issues, including enforced disappearances. You, as a UN expert, I also see a lot of tragedies that are still going on in this world. So I would like to share my views, how the world is functional and all dysfunctional and what should be done, what we can do together. I want to use this as a definition of human rights. So I focused on two elements. On the one hand, norms and values adopted by international community is considered as international human rights law body, but it is supported by the belief of the conviction that human being has a special entitlement based upon human dignity. I'm trying to convey the basic idea of human rights. First of all, what we call human rights law are generally related to international human rights treaties or customary international law or other soft law that are developing into international law. So universal declaration of human rights, I'm sure you have heard of this. This is a declaration on human rights, which means that it is not treaty. However, most of these provisions, including right to life and right to not to be subject to torture, these are all now considered as a customary international law. Additionally, international convention on civil and political rights and economic social cultural rights and other key human rights treaties are actually the body of human rights law. Right to laser, for example, is a human rights because it is written in economic social cultural rights. Women's rights, children's rights, not to subject to torture, not to be subject to enforced disappearances or rights of migrant workers, disability-related rights. We have already said international human rights. And UN member states are under the obligation of all of UN-related human rights projects. Additionally, those states who ratified these human rights treaties are under special treaty obligation to be subject to treaty. As you know, there are six principle organs, like Security Council, General Assembly, International Court of Justice, and Secretary General's Office. And there is no principle organ of human rights council in that chart. But in 2005 and 2006, eventually, the world agreed to establish human rights council under the General Assembly branch because if they want to make human rights council as a principle organ, the charter of UN should be amended. The definition of enforced disappearance is very, very restrictive and very important. As you see from the method of work, we have a definition of enforced disappearances. Enforced disappearances occur when persons are arrested, detained, or abducted against their will or otherwise deprived of their liberty by officials of different branches or levels of government or by organized groups or private individuals acting on behalf of or with the support, direct or indirect consent or acquiescence of the government, followed by a refusal to disclose the fate or whereabouts of the person's consent or refusal to acknowledge the deprivation of their liberty. It consists of three elements. On the one hand, it should be done by officials of different branches, and there should be a support, direct or indirect consent or acquiescence of the government. So this is a very, very technically challenging concept, especially if a disappearance is done by ISIS, which is not a governmental entity. Different disappearances are done by gangsta groups being supported by Mexican governments. If it is done by so-called self-proclaimed people's republic of Donetsk or Lugansk in Ukraine, are they enforced disappearances if any disappearances are conducted? Secondly, another element of definition is arrest detention or abduction, which amounts to deprivation of liberty. And the third part is a refusal to disclose the fate or whereabouts. So these are actually the topic and the issue that we are struggling all the time of trying to wrestle to determine whether a case that has been recently reported are enforced disappearances or not, and whether a state is under the obligation to report back the results of their investigation to us. The theoretical issues also come up, which as a law professor, I enjoy tremendously, but it's not easy. For example, we had recently discussed whether we have a jurisdiction to deal with the massacres in the 1920s that has happened in the Armenian massacres context. Can we go back to the 30s or 40s before the UN was established? Or is it legally possible, but is it political decisions? Many of the migrant workers or trafficking victims encounter problems, including enforced disappearances. And in the United States, for example, if a border crossing from Mexico is expelled from US border guard to desert, but those traffickers are already left. They are not given any water or anything. They are actually put to death by that kind of situation. In this situation, who should be responsible? Should the United States be responsible for not giving proper protection to those migrants? Or should the Mexican government or individual actors who are smuggling people? So it's complicated issues. And how can we fill the protection gap in this kind of situation? And furthermore, many countries use their domestic legal system, like national security law, counterterrorism law, to justify so-called incommunicative detention without notifying their family members the whereabouts of people. They arrest people, detain people, interrogate. And they say that these are legal under their legal system. And international perspective does not acknowledge it as legal, but many countries are still using this practice. And how can we just allocate this practice? And that is one of the big topic that I am continuously thinking and working on. Sometimes security challenge of North Korea can be used as a justification not to focus on human rights issues. Sometimes to achieve normalization of a relationship, they decide not to mention human rights issues. These two different. And sometimes humanitarian cause are also disregarded. How can we handle this? At this time, President Trump met Kim Jong-un. And these are mainly focused on security issues. And South Korean president, North Korean chairman, Kim Jong-un, also met. And they are more focused on security issue and human rights issue are not properly covered. And how can we achieve this kind of goal to protect human rights while achieving security guarantees and achieving peace regimes in the countries? Interesting case recently developed in South Korea is the case of Ryugyeong restaurant. These are North Korean workers who are working for Ryugyeong restaurant in China. And they are seduced or some of them were persuaded without full consent to come to South Korea. They entered into South Korea under former presidency. And there is a strong allegation that South Korean security agency solicited them to use this as a momentum in their election process. And now North Korea demands the return of these people claiming that this is enforced disappearances. And South Korean Unification Ministry is still arguing that they came according to their will and there is no violation of international law. However, civil society is going against that statement at this time. And finally, National Human Rights Commission in South Korea decided to interview those people to learn what was their real reason to come or whether their own sense of consent and who had been involved in this process. With regard to North Korea, a lot of enforced disappearances cases had resisted. During Korean War, many South Korean people were abducted when Korean War were going on. Needless to say, it's important that we all keep current on human rights and enforced disappearance and the influence of American foreign policy on those issues, especially now. This talk was a valuable contribution to the public conversation on the subject and consistent with the long-standing mission of PAMI and the Shidler College of Business to raise global awareness in Hawaii. If you want to know more about Teyun Bike or the William S. Richardson School of Law, check out law.hawaii.edu. If you want to know more about the annual Paul Chung Memorial Lecture or the Shidler College of Business, check out PAMI.shidler.hawaii.edu. And now let's take a look at our think-text schedule of events going forward. Think-text Streams is talk shows live on the internet from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on weekdays. Then we stream our earlier shows all night long, and some people watch them all night long. If you missed a show or if you want to replay or share any of our shows, they're all archived on demand on thinktecawaii.com and YouTube. For our audio stream, go to thinktecawaii.com slash audio. And we post all our programs as podcasts and iTunes. We also now have an app for your cell phone. You can download it on either your iPhone or your Android. Visit thinktecawaii.com for our weekly calendar and live stream and YouTube links. Or better yet, sign up on our email list and get our daily email advisories. Think-text has a high-tech green screen studio at Pioneer Plaza. If you want to see it or be part of our live audience or if you want to participate in our programs, contact shows at thinktecawaii.com. If you want to pose a question or make a comment during our shows, call 808-374-2014. Help us raise public awareness on think-tec. Go ahead, give us a thumbs up on YouTube or send us a tweet at think-tech.hi. We'd like to know how you feel about the issues and events that affect our lives together in these islands. We want to stay in touch with you. And we would like you to stay in touch with us. Let's think together. And now here's this week's Think-tec commentary. I'm very concerned about this. And I think this man has done incredible things to undermine our democracy in a relatively short period of time. So the question is, who can do what? That's the ultimate question. I suppose you and me, we use our brain cells. We do critical thinking. We write op-ed pieces. We have shows and opinions like this, editorials like this. And that may help, but there should be a lot more of it. Do you think, Tim, that the press in general has done a good job in responding? I mean, I admire the New York Times because no matter what he says about them, they keep on pledging ahead. They keep on reporting the lies. They keep in reporting it as they see it. And that's sort of an example of good journalism. Other newspapers are intimidated. Other newspapers don't like to cover it. Other media, frankly, they're not as courageous. I was gratified to see all those 350 editorials. That was a statement of togetherness. Some of the newspapers didn't want to publish that. They thought that they would be criticized as being part of a cabal, a press cabal. And therefore, they should not participate in what was a planned maneuver by large numbers of media. But in fact, I think the media has to respond to what he's been doing. He's the one who started this war. It's not a war with the press. It's a war on the press. And the press should respond. Otherwise, the confusion is perpetuated. Well, Jay, you keep using this word confusion and I think it's the appropriate exact word to use. We've had in history these points of confusion where the press ought to have done more to make them less confused. I'll talk about the go for and how those questions weren't being asked properly during the go for. I'll talk about the point of confusion and the clarification that came from Edwin R. Murrow when a Joseph McCarthy was basically casting everyone as a communist. Those were points of confusion and the press ultimately did their best. Well, we wanna see more happening about this. I hate to see him make these outrageous statements and say that the press is lying, except his friends at Fox News. I hate to see people confused. And I mean, I'm personally looking for a solution. And the solution is saying, all you guys get out there and read more or you guys get out there and think more or you guys have conversations with your friends and try to come to some kind of engagement on a small basis and then make that a larger engagement on a larger basis to media that reach more people. That may not be enough, especially in Hawaii. People are very respectful of authority. They do not wanna make A. They do not wanna go out in public and commit themselves. They don't wanna seem to be angry. So culturally, we don't do much of that. I like to see us do more of it, honestly. The problem is the media themselves. The media are our agents in this. The fact is the media represent us. They represent us in getting the information and in proliferating the information and in protecting us from lies. They have to go out there and do that somehow. It is not merely a matter of printing all the news that's fit to print, which is the New York Times motto. It's a matter of looking at the whole landscape and trying to figure out how these various statements and outrageous maneuvers are affecting our democracy and call us spade by spade. You know, we don't do that enough. There are a number of columnists. I won't mention them in the New York Times and the Washington Post that address this on a regular basis, and that's to their credit. We'll be right back to wrap up this week's edition of Think Tech. But first, we want to thank our underwriters. The Atherton Family Foundation. The Center for Microbial Oceanography Research and Education. Collateral Analytics. The Cook Foundation. The Hawaii Council of Associations of Apartment Owners. Hawaii Energy. The Hawaii Energy Policy Forum. The Hawaii Institute of Geophysics and Planetology. Hawaiian Electric Companies. The High Tech Development Corporation. Galen Ho of BAE Systems. Integrated Security Technologies. Kameha Meha Schools. Dwayne Kurisu. Calamon Lee and the Friends of Think Tech. MW Group Limited. The Schuyler Family Foundation. The Sydney Stern Memorial Trust. The Volo Foundation. Eureko J. Sugimura. OK, Yukari. That wraps up this week's edition of Think Tech. Remember, you can watch Think Tech on Spectrum OC16 several times every week. For additional times, check out oc16.tv. For lots more Think Tech videos and for underwriting and sponsorships opportunities on Think Tech, visit thinktechhawaii.com. Be a host or guest, a producer or an intern, and help us reach and have an impact on Hawaii. Thanks so much for being part of our Think Tech family and for supporting our open discussion of tech, energy, diversification and global awareness in Hawaii and of course, Hawaii's strategic position and vulnerability in the Asia-Pacific region. You can watch this show throughout the week and tune in next Sunday evening for our next important episode. I'm Elise Anderson. And I'm Yukari Kunisue. Aloha, everyone.