Talk:Lee Soon-ok

message: "Ms. Lee has been partially disabled due to the physical torture she claims she was subjected" , with edit summary "if a terrorist said they were tortured by the US, it would not state it factually ". Well, she was in fact disabled, and yes, as a result of torture (according to doctors).Biophys (talk) 22:20, 17 October 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: A comment

message: I removed a recently-added section called "Criticism," which may be viewed here:
This section/edit doesn't meet Wikipedia's standards on Wikipedia: Biographies of Living Persons. In a nutshell, that emphasizes being careful and cautious in publishing claims, even positive ones, about living people. In this case, accusations are being published about someone with no substantial evidence offered in proof of them. Nothing is offered but the say-so of the article's author and someone who is claimed to be a former director of a North Korean Defectors Association.  
What's published here in this article published in turn on the Guardian's site doesn't meet BLP standards. And actually, from what appears, it shouldn't have met the Guardian's standards, either, but that isn't the responsibility of Wikipedia.
Some things wrong with this article:
First and foremost, with respect to Soon Ok Lee, it makes accusations against her without evidence, and even without contacting her for comment on the accusations. So it's not an accusation against Lee that Wikipedia can simply repeat here.
It makes other accusations and assertions as well on similarly scant evidence, especially verifiable evidence. It is written by one person who says he has interviewed North Koreans and the article is based on his view/opinion/experience. No different or countering views are included, or even supporting statements from others with some expert authority who might confirm the author's assertions. The author simply treats as fact his own claim that "North Korean defectors' stories often fall apart," and that the reason for this is money paid for interviews with them. No sufficient proof is ever actually offered for these conclusions, though. 
It also presents a few quotes from a few people which fit the author's "conclusions." But almost no information is available on these people and their claims. 
The suspect quality of this article is further apparent in its use of a supposed quote by former prison guard Ahn Myung-chol. The article leaves the impression that he's saying North Korean defectors, including himself, are simply making up the stories of atrocities to provide people with the shocking stories they want and expect, but there is no evidence that he has retracted his own story. I found a news story from a month before this one, in which he publicly spoke out against North Korea and referred to his life as a prison camp guard. He is also interviewed in a news story last month but I can find no record that he has retracted any part of his story.
The material in this one article, which doesn't seem to be have been written in a balanced, well-researched, and ethically and legally responsible manner, also has to be weighed against all the evidence thus far for the truth of North Korean defectors' stories, including Lee's. To begin with, North Korea is a country that's admitted kidnapping Japanese citizens, and which has denied having any prison camps, among many other documented human rights' abuses. And while not every claim made by a defector can be verified, that doesn't make them untrue, and a great many are consistent and have evidence to back them up. The accumulated mountain of evidence has convinced many people in the West of the truth of the defectors' claims of atrocious human rights abuses, and a single, poorly-written article with no real evidence appearing in the Guardian is nowhere near sufficient evidence of some pattern of inaccurate claims made by North Korean defectors. At this point, this article's claims are a fringe theory, if even that. 
I will say this. There is dispute over the very definition of political prisoner, as Wikipedia talks about. Soon Ok Lee fits some definitions of one, but not others. To make her situation more clear, I think a little information should be added on her story of how she became imprisoned. That is an oversight in the article. I was going to add some information on it the other day but couldn't quickly find a source. I'll look soon. Psalm84 (talk) 02:44, 10 January 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: See this: Wikipedia:Verifiability#Exceptional claims require exceptional sources. Psalm84 (talk) 03:52, 10 January 2016 (UTC)
replies: text:  I think this is just an attempt to remove any criticism (and starting an edit war). --Babel fish (talk) 11:25, 10 January 2016 (UTC)
replies: text:  Did you take the time to read the Wikipedia:Biography of Living Persons and Wikipedia:Verifiability#Exceptional claims require exceptional sources? Something is not substantiated just because it appears in the Guardian. This isn't a rumor sheet. And don't just accuse me of things, either. Respond on this matter by talking about how this information meets Wikipedia standards, including on Biography of Living Persons, and Verifiability:Exceptional Claims, which includes this: "Any exceptional claim requires multiple high-quality sources.  Red flags that should prompt extra caution include: surprising or apparently important claims not covered by multiple mainstream sources..." At this point, your whole proposed section on "criticism" is composed of a single Guardian article that is not well-sourced or rigorously backed up with evidence.Psalm84 (talk) 19:33, 10 January 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  On claim published in the Guardian, 10/15, that Lee made up her story. 

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*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20071012053528/http://asialink.org.uk/magazine/Interview_Soon_Ok_Lee.html to http://www.asialink.org.uk/magazine/Interview_Soon_Ok_Lee.html
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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: * Support inclusion, because these doubts are noteworthy, relevant, and well-documented. (WP:PUBLICFIGURE: "If an allegation or incident is noteworthy, relevant, and well documented, it belongs in the article—even if it is negative and the subject dislikes all mention of it".) Lee Soon-ok's notability comes from her accounts of experiences in North Korean prison camps, so it is noteworthy and relevant if there are well-documented and well-sourced records of doubts about some of her accounts. And indeed we have records of doubts by significant individuals (scholars and North Korean defectors prominent in the community) which are well-documented in many quality RS as listed below (three English language academic sources and four mainstream South Korean press sources; the English-language sources are sufficient for sourcing, but the Korean-language ones are listed to give a more complete picture of sources).
*Published academic RS sources (peer-reviewed journal/book published by well-known academic press, English language)
** "Manufacturing Contempt: State-Linked Populism in South Korea," published in Global Society (journal) (2019),  doi:10.1007/s12115-019-00404-2.
**:
** "Celebrity Defectors Representations of North Korea in Euro-American and South Korean Intimate Publics", p. 537, Chapter 16 in Decoding the Sino-North Korean Borderlands published by Amsterdam University Press (2021), https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv1g13jn6
**:
**Politics in North and South Korea, Chapter 9, "North Korean human rights" published by Routledge (2018)
**:
* Mainstream news articles (Korean-language)
** Report from Maeil Business Newspaper (16 September 2004), South Korea's main daily business newspaper (machine translation from https://papago.naver.com/, more details/quotes not included here)
**:
** Report from Hankook Ilbo (7 February 2015), a Korean-language daily newspaper in Seoul, South Korea (machine translation from https://papago.naver.com/) Note: possible inaccuracy on Camp number where Lee was.
**:
** Report from Korea Economic Daily (2 April 2006), the second largest business newspaper in South Korea (machine translation from https://papago.naver.com/)
**: 
** Report from The Chosun Ilbo (16 September 2004), a leading daily newspaper in South Korea and the oldest daily newspaper in the country (machine translation from https://papago.naver.com/, more details/quotes not included here) Note: from Yonhap News Agency, possibly also the source for the Maeil Business Newspaper report
**: 
:To describe the context of discussion before this RfC, this topic has been discussed at length on this Talk page and in a section at the BLP Noticeboard. In the latter discussion Morbidthoughts suggested an RfC be made here. These discussions originally arose out of the edits , in which Psalm84, saying the material was poorly sourced, removed content I had previously added on doubts about some of Lee's accounts of North Korean camps. In the first edit I had used the first scholarly source listed above along with a (syndicated?) piece by a Korean studies scholar published in The Guardian, and in the second edit I had further added the first South Korean press source listed above. Fiwec81618 (talk) 06:39, 4 April 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: @Fiwec81618 What source(s) does the Routledge article cite for its claims about Lee? Psalm84 (talk) 06:01, 8 April 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: Of the three sentences related to Lee that I quoted above (starting with "For example, Lee..."), the first two are followed by some additional details of her accounts that I didn't include above (eg. beatings, torture, "pouring molten iron"), in the middle of which there are three inline footnotes to an NBC News piece about Lee, Lee's 2002 U.S. Senate testimony, and a 2004 U.S. State Department report on North Korea. If anyone is interested I can add in these details above. For the third sentence (starting with "Later, some defectors...") I don't see an inline footnote. Fiwec81618 (talk) 03:13, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

text: Please move all discussion to the appropriate section. I created the discussion header so that this back and forth did not clutter the survey.  Psalm84, you do not have to respond to every vote per WP:BLUDGEON and Fiwec81618 you do not have to respond to every comment.  Morbidthoughts (talk) 17:54, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

text: A weasel word, or anonymous authority, is an informal term for words and phrases aimed at creating an impression that something specific and meaningful has been said, when in fact only a vague or ambiguous claim has been communicated. Examples include the phrases "some people say", "most people think", and "researchers believe." Psalm84 (talk) 00:59, 5 April 2022 (UTC)
thread_title: Survey (doubts)

message: Lee Soon Ok, não é uma desertora, mas uma SOBREVIVENTE DO REGIME DITATORIAL DA CORÉIA DO NORTE.SUA HISTÓRIA É UMA ENTRE MILHARES DE SOBREVIVENTES 2804:14C:482:8D77:CDC4:337E:70B7:D645 (talk) 23:10, 4 June 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Uma correção