Day: January 20, 2024

SEOUL, South Korea — Video footage released by an organization that works with North Korean defectors shows North Korean authorities publicly sentencing two teenagers to 12 years’ hard labor for watching K-pop.

The footage, which shows the two 16-year-olds in Pyongyang convicted of watching South Korean movies and music videos, was released by the South and North Development (SAND) Institute.

Reuters was unable to independently verify the footage, which was first reported by the BBC.

North Korea has for years imposed tough sentences on anyone caught enjoying South Korean entertainment or copying the way South Koreans speak in a war on outside influences since a sweeping new “anti-reactionary thought” law was imposed in 2020.

“Judging from the heavy punishment, it seems that this is to be shown to people across North Korea to warn them. If so, it appears this lifestyle of South Korean culture is prevalent in North Korean society,” said Choi Kyong-hui, president of SAND and Doctor of Political Science at Tokyo University, who defected from North Korea in 2001.

“I think this video was edited around 2022. … What is troublesome for (North Korean leader) Kim Jong Un is that Millennials and Gen Z young people have changed their way of thinking. I think he’s working on turning it back to the North Korean way.”

The video, made by North Korean authorities, shows a large public trial in which the two students in grey scrubs are handcuffed while watched by about 1,000 students in an amphitheater. All the students, including the two 16-year-olds, are wearing face masks, suggesting the footage was shot during the COVID pandemic.

The students were sentenced, according to the video, after being convicted of watching and spreading South Korean movies, music and music videos over three months.

“They were seduced by foreign culture … and ended up ruining their lives,” the narrator states, as the video cut away to young girls being handcuffed and Pyongyang women wearing South Korean fashion and hairstyles.

Reclusive North Korea and the rich, democratic South are technically still at war after their 1950-53 conflict ended in a truce, not a peace treaty, and are divided by a heavily fortified demilitarized zone (DMZ).  
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NEW YORK — New York prosecutors on Friday returned two pieces of art they say were stolen by Nazis from a Jewish performer and collector murdered in the Holocaust.

The artworks were surrendered by museums in Pittsburgh and Ohio, but prosecutors are still fighting in court to recover third artwork by the same artist, Austrian expressionist Egon Schiele, that was seized from a Chicago museum at the same time.

On Friday in Manhattan, the estate of Holocaust victim Fritz Grünbaum accepted Portrait of a Man, which was surrendered by the Carnegie Museum of Art and Girl with Black Hair, surrendered by the Allen Memorial Art Museum at Oberlin College. Prosecutors have collectively valued the two pieces at around $2.5 million.

Ten of Schiele’s works have now been returned to the family, but Russian War Prisoner remains at the Art Institute of Chicago, which maintains that it was legally acquired.

Grünbaum was the son of a Jewish art dealer and law school student who began performing in cabarets in Vienna in 1906. As the Nazis rose to power, he mocked them, once saying on a darkened stage, “I can’t see a thing, not a single thing; I must have stumbled into National Socialist culture.”

In 1938, he was captured by Nazi officials, who created a trail of paperwork. Manhattan prosecutors say they forced him to give power of attorney to his wife, and then forced her to sign away the art — including around 80 Schiele works — to Nazi officials. Some of the art was sold to fund the Nazi war effort, they say. Elizabeth and Fritz Grünbaum died in concentration camps.

Prosecutors say the works reappeared in 1956 in Switzerland, part of a shady art deal with members of the Nazi regime, that led to them being sold in New York galleries.

On Friday, one of Grünbaum’s heirs thanked leaders at Oberlin College and the Carnegie Institute, saying they “did the right thing.”

“This is a victory for justice, and the memory of a brave artist, art collector, and opponent of Fascism,” said Timothy Reif, Grünbaum’s great-grandnephew and a federal judge in New York City, in a statement released by the office of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg. “As the heirs of Fritz Grünbaum, we are gratified that this man who fought for what was right in his own time continues to make the world fairer.”

A New York judge ruled in 2018 that other two works by Schiele had to be turned over to Grünbaum’s heirs under the Holocaust Expropriated Recovery Act, passed by Congress.

In that case, art dealer Richard Nagy said he was the rightful owner of the works because Grünbaum’s sister-in-law had sold them after his death. But the judge in the case ruled that there was no evidence that Grünbaum had given them to her voluntarily, writing it was “a signature at gunpoint.”

The Art Institute of Chicago, however, disputes that. And it argues that Russian War Prisoner, a pencil and watercolor piece, was legally acquired.

“We have done extensive research on the provenance history of this work and are confident in our lawful ownership of the piece,” said Art Institute of Chicago spokesperson Megan Michienzi.

Michienzi pointed to a prior 2010 ruling from another federal judge that she said “explicitly ruled that the Grünbaum’s Schiele art collection was ‘not looted’ and ‘remained in the Grünbaum family’s possession’ and was sold by Fritz Grünbaum’s sister-in-law.”

Reif and his relatives had been fighting in a separate federal civil court case for the return of the work. The Art Institute of Chicago had the case thrown out in November on technical grounds, successfully arguing that, unlike the Nagy case, the family had missed a lawsuit deadline under the Holocaust Expropriated Recovery Act.

After that case was dismissed, Bragg’s office earlier this month asked a Manhattan court to authorize the return of the artwork.
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SANTA FE, NEW MEXICO — A grand jury indicted Alec Baldwin on Friday on an involuntary manslaughter charge in a 2021 fatal shooting during a rehearsal on a movie set in New Mexico, reviving a dormant case against the actor. 

Special prosecutors brought the case before a grand jury in the city of Santa Fe in New Mexico this week, months after receiving a new analysis of the gun that was used. They declined to answer questions after spending about a day and a half presenting their case to the grand jury. 

Defense attorneys for Baldwin indicated they’ll fight the charge. 

“We look forward to our day in court,” said Luke Nikas and Alex Spiro, defense attorneys for Baldwin, in an email. 

While the proceeding is shrouded in secrecy, two of the witnesses seen at the courthouse included crew members — one who was present when the fatal shot was fired and another who had walked off the set the day before due to safety concerns. 

Baldwin, the lead actor and a co-producer on the Western movie “Rust,” was pointing a gun at cinematographer Halyna Hutchins during a rehearsal on a movie set outside Santa Fe in October 2021 when the gun went off, killing her and wounding director Joel Souza. 

Baldwin has said he pulled back the hammer, but not the trigger, and the gun fired. 

The charge has again put Baldwin in legal trouble and created the possibility of prison time for an actor who has been a TV and movie mainstay for nearly 40 years, with roles in the early blockbuster “The Hunt for Red October,” Martin Scorsese’s “The Departed” and the sitcom “30 Rock.” 

The indictment provides prosecutors with two alternative standards for pursuing an involuntary manslaughter charge against Baldwin in the death of Hutchins. One would be based on negligent use of a firearm, and the other alleges felony misconduct “with the total disregard or indifference for the safety of others.” 

Judges recently agreed to put on hold several civil lawsuits seeking compensation from Baldwin and producers of “Rust” after prosecutors said they would present their case to a grand jury. Plaintiffs in those suits include members of the film crew. 

Los Angeles-based attorney Gloria Allred, who is representing the slain cinematographer’s parents and younger sister in a civil case, said Friday that her clients have been seeking the truth about what happened the day Hutchins was killed and will be looking forward to Baldwin’s trial. 

Neama Rahmani, a former federal prosecutor and president of the West Coast Trial Lawyers firm in Los Angeles, pointed to previous missteps by prosecutors, saying they will need to do more than present ballistics evidence to make a case that Baldwin had a broader responsibility and legal duty when it came to handling the gun on the set. 

Special prosecutors dismissed an involuntary manslaughter charge against Baldwin in April, saying they were informed the gun might have been modified before the shooting and malfunctioned. They later pivoted and began weighing whether to refile a charge against Baldwin after receiving a new analysis of the gun. 

The analysis from experts in ballistics and forensic testing relied on replacement parts to reassemble the gun fired by Baldwin, after parts of the pistol were broken during testing by the FBI. The report examined the gun and markings it left on a spent cartridge to conclude that the trigger had to have been pulled or depressed. 

The analysis led by Lucien Haag of Forensic Science Services in Arizona stated that although Baldwin repeatedly denied pulling the trigger, “given the tests, findings and observations reported here, the trigger had to be pulled or depressed sufficiently to release the fully cocked or retracted hammer of the evidence revolver.” 

The weapons supervisor on the movie set, Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, has pleaded not guilty to involuntary manslaughter and evidence tampering in the case. Her trial is scheduled to begin in February. 

“Rust” assistant director and safety coordinator David Halls pleaded no contest to unsafe handling of a firearm last March and received a suspended sentence of six months of probation. He agreed to cooperate in the investigation of the shooting. 

An earlier FBI report on the agency’s analysis of the gun found that, as is common with firearms of that design, it could go off without pulling the trigger if force was applied to an uncocked hammer, such as by dropping the weapon. 

The only way the testers could get it to fire was by striking the gun with a mallet while the hammer was down and resting on the cartridge, or by pulling the trigger while it was fully cocked. The gun eventually broke during testing. 

The 2021 shooting resulted in a series of civil lawsuits — including wrongful death claims filed by members of Hutchins’ family — centered on accusations that the defendants were lax with safety standards. Baldwin and other defendants have disputed those allegations. 

The Rust Movie Productions company has paid a $100,000 fine to state workplace safety regulators after a scathing narrative of failures in violation of standard industry protocols, including testimony that production managers took limited or no action to address two misfires on set before the fatal shooting. 

The filming of “Rust” resumed last year in Montana under an agreement with the cinematographer’s widower, Matthew Hutchins, that made him an executive producer. 
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