Opinion
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
4 — Friday, November 22, 2019
Alanna Berger
Zack Blumberg
Emily Considine
Emma Chang
Joel Danilewitz
Emily Huhman
Krystal Hur
Ethan Kessler
Magdalena Mihaylova
Mary Rolfes
Michael Russo
Timothy Spurlin
Miles Stephenson
Joel Weiner
Erin White
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AND JOEL DANILEWITZ
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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.