Jihyun Park was beaten, tortured, used for sex and put in a North Korean labour camp – before escaping, and making a new life for herself here.
The harrowing personal story of Jihyun Park, followed by her selection as a Tory candidate in Bury, puts current political obsessions in perspective.
In my case, the contraband was books – taken into then communist Czechoslovakia through a network linked to the charity Aid to the Church in Need.
If you want societies that seek to impose virtue by force, leave the rest of us to muddled old Britain, and try Jonestown.
Arrested by the KGB for bringing in leaflets supporting multilateral disarmament, I was “banned for life” from returning.
Though micro-measures aimed at those responsible might work: travel bans, asset seizures, arrest warrants.
We deceived ourselves into thinking that as China grew richer, its political system would become more democratic.
Andrew Adonis’s new biography of “the first of a new breed of ‘common man’ who would manage the British state” and became one of the great Foreign Secretaries.
If the free world values freedom, then it must wake up to the imminent dangers – or the threat will spread.
As with Brexit, the fundamentals of the Tory position are much stronger than they may seem to be.
The ideas of that decade are still with us, staggering around like a zombie in a garish “Global Hypercolor” t-shirt.
Sitting in a park is selfish, but organising a mass demonstration in a park is wonderful, and schools should still stay closed. Seriously?
Given the salience of the topic, we are republishing the Chair of the Foreign Select Committee’s article above each day this week.
We must now change the status of these passports to allow Hong Kong BNOs a quicker path to full UK citizenship.
Economically and politically, Beijing takes advantage of asymmetric openness: we’re open to them, but they are not to us.