Knowledge at Work

Secret Victims- Where has democracy gone now?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFvO2BKhWqg&feature=related

Secret Victims is a documentary based on the knowledge issue of the unethical yet undisclosed kidnappings of the South Koreans. Although centred around this idea this idea, the documentary also manages to point out the situation between North and South Korea and their current relationship, the divide in the South Korean people and the difficulties the family of the victims have to face. All this combine in the end to ask a really powerful question on whether democracy is what the idealists claim?
Democracy means freedom of speech and rights, yet where are the rights of these people? Is it ethical for them to suffer just because their government is too scared of the North Koreans? The facts are clear that nearly 500 South Korean fishermen have been abducted and taken to the communist Korea for torture and brainwash. Maybe this fact may have the figure taken for granted, maybe some of those 500 people were spies as the South Korean government fears but the abductees are mostly common fishermen. Even if they were spies, what would they be able to tell the North Korean government? Also perhaps not all these victims may have been kidnapped, there can be a possibility that there was an accident in the sea and the family is assuming that the loved one was kidnapped. These are possibilities but since the number of victims is so high, it really does not make a difference. The Japanese government put pressure on North Korea for 15 Japanese people captured by the communist Korea and they got 5 back. If Japan can do this, why cannot South Korea.
The documentary is biased for the victims and their families and really does not show the side of the South Korean government who may be having its own concerns for picking this issue up with Kim Jong-II. North Korea has been an excessively aggressive in its foreign policy and South Korea has mostly been on its receiving end. In the years where one is hoping for peace and focusing on making the economy recover, why should the South Korean government aggravate their relationship with the DPRK? Although they are working for peace, they are doing so at the cost of their own people.
The fact that this is happening in the world is horrific and unethical. How can a government turn its back on people who have supported it? How can they be put forth as the criminals when they have not done anything wrong? People should care because procrastinating on such issues and appeasing the criminal will only exacerbate the future with the creation of another Hitler. What we are witnessing now is similar to the policy of appeasement followed in the early years of 1930. That only made Hitler confident enough to invade Poland. Additionally these kidnappings also defy basic human rights and are unethical to the core! Thus we should not only care but also show that we are for the South Korean Victims.