IU to hold human rights conference

A conference examining the human rights crisis in North Korea will be held tonight at 7 p.m. in the Whittenberger Auditorium of the Indiana Memorial Union. Author Soon Ok Lee and her son, Daniel Choi, both survivors of North Korea's prison camp system, will be among speakers scheduled for the event.\n"We see this as a human, not a political issue," said senior Darrin Nix in a statement, "because we wanted to focus on the glaring human rights abuses in North Korea. The conference will include personal testimony of brutal torture, starvation, mass murder, gas chambers and medical experimentation in the infamous prison camps."\nThe event will be co-sponsored by the U.S. Committee for Human Rights in North Korea -- a Washington, D.C., based organization. Nix, who is also president of the Indiana University Mortar Board Senior Honor Society, said in a statement that co-sponsors will include the IU East Asian Studies Center, College Democrats, College Republicans, and the IU Korean Students Association.\n"The Committee hopes to raise awareness of the deplorable human rights situation in North Korea to generate new thinking about ways to alleviate the suffering of the North Korean people," said Debra Liang-Fenton in a statement, executive director of the USCHRNK.\nThe panel will be the first in a series of events at college campuses across the U.S. Other universities on the tour include Harvard University, Fordham University, Cornell University and the University of California at Berkeley.