Opinion
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
4 — Friday, November 22, 2019

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Editorial Page Editors

Unsigned editorials reflect the official position of The Daily’s Editorial Board. 
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EDITORIAL BOARD MEMBERS

CHERYN HONG | COLUMN

North Koreans need our attention

T

he Democratic People’s 
Republic 
of 
Korea 
receives news coverage 
quite often due to infamous 
dictator Kim Jong Un and his 
run-ins with the United States 
in regard to nuclear weaponry. 
While 
this 
creates 
certain 
awareness of the country and 
sheds light on a notorious leader, 
much of the reporting on North 
Korea falls short and glosses over 
the actual experiences of the 
approximately 25 million citizens 
living in the northern part of the 
Korean Peninsula. Within that 25 
million may also exist the family 
my grandmother was separated 
from when the two Koreas split. 
The history between North 
and South Korea and its division 
at the 38th parallel is a recent 
product of the intervention of 
the Soviet Union and the United 
States during the Cold War. What 
most people don’t realize is that 
when the Korean War ended in 
1953, there were many families 
separated by the division, and 
it is unknown today how many 
relatives have been lost to either 
side of the heavily militarized 
borders. There have been some 
reunions for families, but North 
Korea commonly uses these 
reconciliations 
as 
bargaining 
tactics, and due to limitations, 
most South Koreans who have 
been separated pass away before 
they can reunite with lost family 
members. 
Due to news coverage, North 
Korea has become a constant 
talking piece of a poisonous, 
authoritarian regime. The Kim 
family is known internationally 
for their nuclear weapon threats 
and has become a joke for the 
absurdity of how much power 
they believe they hold. However, 
many news outlets overlook the 
North Korean defectors and 
people stuck under the hold of this 
authoritarian regime. Because 
of politics, the stories of Koreans 
have been underrepresented, and 
North Korean refugees have been 
grossly overlooked.
Because of North Korea’s strict 
regime and distrust of other 
countries, the information about 

what goes on inside the country 
is limited. But nonprofits such 
as Liberty in North Korea have 
helped us understand that North 
Koreans have many restrictions 
imposed by the government that 
include no freedom of movement, 
speech, information or religion. 
Furthermore, 
there 
are 
horrifying violations of human 
rights in North Korea like chronic 
food shortages, since most of the 
food grown in the country goes 
toward the military. 
North Koreans also suffer 
from political prison camps, 
public executions and collective 
punishment. According to the U.S. 
Department of State, between 
80,000 
and 
120,000 
North 
Koreans are in prison and brutal 
physical labor camps. Prisoners 
face 
torture 
and 
beatings, 
and 
women 
are 
especially 
predisposed to trafficking and 
coercion. Punishments are also 
intergenerational, as the 1972 
law of “three generations of 
punishment” states that if one 
person is convicted of a crime, 
their immediate family may also 
be convicted, along with their 
next two generations. 
The North Korean defectors 
who choose to escape have an 
arduous journey ahead, as they 
aren’t able to simply cross over 
the border to South Korea due 
to its heavy militarization. They 
often have to escape through 
China, where the government has 
an agreement with North Korea 
to bring back any defectors they 
discover. People who return to 
North Korea after escaping are 
at risk of forced labor, forced 
abortions 
and 
interrogation. 
There are currently programs and 
activists who help North Koreans 
at checkpoints — that have even 
built an underground railroad to 
bring them to freedom. 
In the first week of November, 
the University of Michigan’s 
chapter of Liberty in North Korea 
held an event where two North 
Korean 
defectors, 
Jeongyol 
Ri and Ilhyeok Kim, came to 
share their stories and spread 
awareness about North Korean 
people. They both want to use 

their 
first-hand 
experiences 
to educate the world about the 
people behind the authoritarian 
regime and how to properly 
rectify the country. 
“For 
the 
South 
Korean 
government, they have been 
talking about the ‘peace’ for the 
longest time, but nothing has 
been solved,” Kim told me in 
Korean. “Likewise, for the United 
States, they always talk about 
denuclearization, but there have 
been no improvements in the 
human rights violations that have 
occurred. Thus, I feel it is more 
efficient to focus on the North 
Korean people.” 
The 
United 
States 
often 
focuses on the politics with North 
Korea and denuclearization talks, 
but we need to listen to the stories 
of defectors who are able to give 
us knowledge about the lives of 
North Koreans. 
 “As always, the North Korean 
regime lies. The regime is really 
scared of showing the reality of 
North Korea. To show the world 
the reality, it’s important North 
Koreans share their stories,” Ri 
said to me in Korean. 
While 
the 
efforts 
in 
denuclearizing and attempting to 
negotiate with Kim Jong Un are 
important, the results have been 
stagnant. The main issue is that 
we are politicizing a country over 
the welfare of millions of people, 
who are suffering due to a lack of 
liberty. We take certain freedoms 
for granted, especially in the 
United States, and by turning 
our focus to people over politics, 
the results could be the proper 
form of peace we are constantly 
striving for with North Korea. 
With the resources and finite 
amount of information we have 
on the country, we need to utilize 
the scarce knowledge efficiently 
and for the correct purpose. 
If you would like to contribute 
to Liberty in North Korea, a 
non-profit with proceeds that go 
toward liberating North Korean 
defectors, 
please 
donate 
at 
libertyinnorthkorea.org.

Cheryn Hong can be reached at 

cherynh@umich.edu.

As one of the most powerful 
brands of our generation, Nike is 
more than just a sports apparel 
company: Its catchy “Just Do It” 
slogan has inspired generations of 
athletes to train with confidence 
and 
determination. 
Nike’s 
advertisements also depend on 
influencers 
and 
athletes 
who 
tout motivational messages that 
promote 
athletic 
excellence 
and social change. For example, 
professional 
tennis 
player 
Serena 
Williams’s 
“Dream 
Crazier” advertisement delivers a 
compelling narrative for women’s 
empowerment 
and 
showcases 
her 
“unconstrained 
grit 
and 
determination.”
When Williams announced her 
pregnancy, Nike benefitted from 
this unending grit through a series 
of ad campaigns that promoted her 
as a symbol of said grit and physical 
health. The story fits perfectly with 
Nike’s identity as a progressive and 
woman-empowering company. At 
the exact same time, however, the 
company continued to abandon 
support of other less well-known 
athletes also preparing to have a 
baby. Kara Goucher, an Olympian 
referenced in The New York Times 
op-ed, suffered from chronic hip 
injuries after running the Boston 
Marathon just seven months after 
having her son. Goucher also told 
The New York Times she suffered 
severe emotional trauma after 
trying to balance the needs of her 
severely-ill newborn with the 
need to continue running so she 
could earn money. These stressors 
— both physical and emotional 
— were born from Nike’s threat 
to revoke her financial security 
should she stop training. This 
covert 
exploitation 
contradicts 
Nike’s public narrative, revealing 
that campaigns such as Williams’s 

solely exist to boost sales rather 
than to truly support women. 
This is disgustingly ironic and 
represents a greater structural 
problem for maternal care in the 
sports apparel industry, which 
sidelines women to use them only 
as branding tools. 
Cutting pay for women in any 
profession because of pregnancy 
is a restrictive violation of bodily 
autonomy. In fact, the freedom 
“to found a family” is 16th on the 
United 
Nations’s 
Declaration 
of Human Rights, and Nike’s 
contracts are a clear strike against 
this right.
Aside from Nike’s exploitative 
marketing practices, the abuse 
of female athletes appears to be 
rooted in an extreme imbalance 
among the bureaucracies and staffs 
that are meant to support female 
athletes. This is fairly apparent in 
the company’s decision-making 
hierarchy: The four executives 
who negotiate contracts for track 
and field athletes — including paid 
leave for pregnant female athletes 
— are all men. This system 
means that no one with first-
hand experience of pregnancy or 
postpartum has the opportunity 
to fight for these women’s rights 
when it comes to Nike’s contract 
negotiation. 
In particular, runner Mary 
Cain’s powerful op-ed in The 
New York Times has cast light on 
the darker side of Nike’s Oregon 
Project. 
Cain 
described 
how 
her former coach Albert Salazar 
pushed her into a system of 
restrictive eating and unhealthy 
training, resulting in her missing 
her period for three years and 
serious injuries, such as broken 
bones. Both Goucher and former 
Oregon 
Project 
coach 
Steve 
Magness have corroborated Cain’s 

claim that Salazar also publicly 
berated female athletes for their 
weight for years. When Cain told 
her coaches she had begun to cut 
herself after being told her five-
pound weight gain worsened 
her athletic performance, they 
offered no help or support. Former 
Nike female athletes have also 
claimed their coaches did not 
include a nutritionist or a licensed 
sports psychologist to support 
the athletes’ demanding physical 
regimen. Given this evidence, we 
should be hesitant to accept Nike’s 
reversal of its policy on pregnant 
athletes as a resolution to the 
entire issue. Nike’s continual 
maltreatment of female athletes 
still facilitates emotional and 
physical abuse at the hands of a 
predominantly 
male 
coaching 
staff who have no ability to 
empathize with their trainees.
In an emailed response to The 
Times, Salazar said he “denied 
many of Mary’s claims and said 
he had supported her health and 
welfare.” This contradiction feels 
unrealistic given the plethora of 
female athletes and other coaches 
who have both corroborated 
Cain’s stories and included their 
own tales of maltreatment and 
abuse. 
Nike’s hypocritical exploitation 
of 
its 
female 
athletes 
is 
emblematic of the misogynistic 
culture surrounding women in 
sports. Despite coming under fire 
for its controversial practices, 
Nike has not yet come up with 
a better treatment for its female 
athletes. However, rather than 
investigating and compensating 
directly involved athletes, Nike 
should center its solution around 
the 
abhorrent 
culture 
that 
produced such unethical practices 
and abusive coaches like Salazar.

FROM THE DAILY

On Nike’s hypocritical misogyny
E

arlier this year, six-time USA outdoor running champion Alysia 
Montaño spoke out against Nike’s penalization of pregnant female 
athletes. The story launched what continues to be an ongoing 
discussion on Nike and its maltreatment of women athletes by reducing or 
even ceasing their pay during pregnancy and postpartum recovery. In early 
November, World Junior Champion Mary Cain appeared in a New York 
Times op-ed where she accused Nike’s Oregon Project and her former coach, 
Alberto Salazar, of carrying out physically and emotionally abusive training 
regimens, leading her to develop osteoporosis and intentions to self-harm. 

FROM THE OPINION DESK

Psi U, respect survivors of sexual assault
I

n 
anticipation 
of 
the 
Michigan-Michigan 
State 
football game this past 
Saturday, the Phi chapter of 
the Psi Upsilon fraternity at 
the 
University 
of 
Michigan 
hung a bed sheet from its 
house’s window bearing the 
phrase “You can’t touch us @
LarryNassar”, a reference to the 
former MSU physician currently 
serving multiple sentences in 
prison for first-degree sexual 
misconduct and possession of 
child pornography. Photos of the 
bed sheet quickly made rounds 
on 
social 
media, 
rightfully 
attracting 
negative 
attention 
from 
U-M 
and 
Michigan 
State students alike. This was 
seconded 
by 
those 
publicly 
affiliated with the Nassar case, 
including gymnast Simone Biles. 
As the Editorial Page Editors 
and Senior Editors of The 
Michigan Daily Opinion section, 
we condemn Psi U’s behavior on 
Saturday and urge the fraternity 
to publicly acknowledge this and 
apologize for its actions.

Larry Nassar was convicted 
of molesting at least 265 young 
women and girls, mostly athletes, 
from multiple schools and teams. 
There is no overstating the 
trauma that he caused. Poking fun 
at this situation and portraying 
the tragedy as MSU-specific 
shows a lack of compassion for 
survivors of sexual assault and 
a lack of understanding for the 
long-lasting 
and 
far-reaching 
consequences of Nassar’s crimes. 
The website for U-M’s chapter of 
Psi Upsilon states the fraternity 
“nurtures 
development 
of 
mature 
decision-making, 
individual 
responsibility 
and 
moral 
leadership,” 
and 
that 
its members are “guided by 
principles 
of 
responsibility, 
civility and courtesy.” Using 
sexual assault as a punchline is 
not a civil or mature decision. If 
Psi U really wants to champion 
itself as a pillar of maturity, 
responsibility 
and 
moral 
leadership, then it must publicly 
acknowledge its actions and 
work to rectify its faults.

Fraternity and Sorority Life 
staff have already contacted 
the fraternity and say that Psi U 
has plans to internally address 
the behavior, which is a step in 
the right direction. We also want 
to acknowledge the community 
members who took the time 
to file complaints against the 
fraternity for speaking up about 
the insensitive banner. However, 
there has been no public word 
from the chapter, including 
anything on their Facebook or 
website, that even mentions the 
Saturday controversy. Pursuing 
corrective action against those 
responsible is a start, but the 
rest of the University needs to 
know that jokes about sexual 
assault are not acceptable in our 
community, even when directed 
at our sports rivals.

DIPRA DEBNATH | COLUMN

The eerie fate of Voyager 2
I

n 
November 
2018, 
NASA’s Voyager 2 space 
probe became the second 
object launched from Earth to 
exit the outer boundary of the 
solar system — about 11 billion 
miles away — and enter the 
realm of interstellar space. 
Its twin craft, Voyager 1, was 
the first, crossing the barrier 
in 2012. Since their launches 
in 1977, the spacecrafts have 
taken beautiful fly-by images 
of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus 
and Neptune, along with their 
moons. New papers published 
in Nature Astronomy look 
into the differing properties 
of the environments inside 
and outside of our solar 
system. The findings confirm 
that our solar system has a 
clearly defined boundary — 
the heliopause. Beyond the 
heliopause there is a sharp 
drop in solar wind particles, 
and 
high-energy 
galactic 
cosmic rays, which originate 
from 
galactic 
systems 
in 
interstellar space, dominate.
Both Voyager crafts will 
eventually exhaust the power 
necessary for them to collect 
data and transmit it back 
to Earth, likely in the next 
decade. However, they will 
continue traveling through 
the cosmos, fueled by inertia. 
They 
will 
speed 
through 
space that we currently only 
know about through data from 
instrumentation 
on 
Earth, 
inhabiting the heavens that 
have stirred our imaginations 
for as long as we’ve looked up 
at the night sky. The Voyager 
probes are equally amazing 
and 
unsettling, 
expanding 
our understanding of outer 
space 
while 
presenting 
a 
unique perspective on life, 
death and fate. 
NASA 
initiated 
The 
Voyager 
Program 
project 
during the Space Race frenzy, 
an outgrowth of the Cold 
War that led to tremendous 
technological advances and 
an increased curiosity in the 
universe beyond our Earth. 
The Voyager probes are the 

perfect examples of humans’ 
insatiable quest for increased 
knowledge. With every new 
bit of daily information on 
the 
interstellar 
magnetic 
field, the boundaries of our 
human knowledge are pushed 
outward. The insights gleaned 
from the Voyager Program 
may not be closely relevant to 
the health and social issues 
that immediately affect our 
daily lives, but it is amazing 
to see humans using what 
we already know to create 
new ways to learn even more 
about this universe.

But there will be a time 
when Voyager 1 and Voyager 
2 no longer contribute to the 
expansion of our knowledge. 
Voyager 1 is already using 
backup thrusters to keep its 
antennae 
pointed 
toward 
Earth, and NASA predicts 
its instrumentation, and that 
of Voyager 2, will lose all 
instrument function by about 
2025. After that, they will face 
the same fate as the Pioneer 
probes. Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 
11 were launched in the early 
1970s 
and 
were 
the 
first 
spacecraft to encounter Jupiter 
and 
Saturn, 
respectively; 
they 
no 
longer 
have 
any 
communication with Earth. 
Pioneer 11 has already escaped 
the solar system, and Pioneer 
10 is predicted to follow suit.
I view the moment a probe 
stops 
functioning 
as 
the 
moment of “death” of the 
probe. What was once a silent 
explorer cutting through vast 

space will succumb to its 
entropy and serve no further 
purpose. Unlike the terrestrial 
death of a biological being or a 
technological work, however, 
there is no rest for the probes 
that die. NASA believes that 
Voyager 2 may continue to zip 
through the cosmos eternally, 
traveling billions upon billions 
of miles for as long as the 
existence of time itself.
The 
universe 
naturally 
creates countless objects that 
will forever remain flying 
through space. These objects 
were never given life to begin 
with and therefore will never 
die. Others, such as stars, 
eventually 
undergo 
end-of-
life processes that see them 
quietly fade away or become 
something 
different 
from 
what they originally were. The 
Voyager probes, in contrast, 
were created by humans from 
materials 
provided 
by 
the 
universe. 
They 
were 
built 
with missions and survived to 
fulfill them, but their deaths 
lack 
closure 
because 
they 
will continue to wander the 
darkness indefinitely, existing 
without 
purpose. 
What 
is 
defeating about the impending 
deaths 
of 
Voyager 
1 
and 
Voyager 2 is that we will know 
of their death the moment 
it occurs, but we will not be 
able to examine what failed 
mechanically, and we will not 
be able to celebrate and retire 
them.
This column is not a knock 
on the Voyager Program or to 
the aspirations of those who 
wish to explore the unknown. 
It is rather a musing on the 
fates of objects, including the 
Voyager 2 space probe, that 
may join some of the first 
human-made 
creations 
to 
have no limits on how far and 
how long they travel. When 
Voyager 2 completely ceases 
to function, it will indeed 
become nothing but a voyager 
– traveling, and nothing else.

Dipra Debnath can be reached at 

dipra@umich.edu.

These objects 
were never given 
life to begin with 
and therefore will 
never die

Author’s note: This piece reflects 

the opinions of the Editorial Page 

Editors and the Senior Opinion 

Editors of The Michigan Daily, 

not the Editorial Board.

