Author Archives for Grant Montgomery

13 North Korean defectors healthy and want “to be forgotten”

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An attorney at the South Korean intelligence office said all of the North Koreans who defected after working at a restaurant in China are all healthy, dismissing North Korean government’s argument that they were abducted and protesting with hunger strikes.

Park Young-sik, who serves at the North Korean refugees protection center under the National Intelligence Service (NIS) as a human rights defender, discussed the individual interviews she carried out with the 12 female defectors over the weekend.

“I can say clearly that all of the 13 defectors are all healthy, don’t have any problem,” said Park. Park emphasized that the defectors hope “to be forgotten” by the public.

“What’s going to happen for a defector’s family if the defector’s motivation and process of defection is revealed?” Park told the Chosun Ilbo on the same day.

[NK News]

BBC correspondent offers glimpse into the heart of the North Korean state

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Excerpt from an article by Rupert Wingfield-Hayes, BBC correspondent detained in North Korea:

[After being stopped at the airport, while departing North Korea] I was told that my reporting had insulted the Korean people, and that I needed to admit my mistakes. They produced copies of three articles that had been published on the BBC website, as I reported on the visit of the Nobel laureates.

“Do you think Korean people are ugly?” the older man asked.
“No,” I answered.

“Do you think Korean people have voices like dogs?”
“No,” I answered again.

“Then why do you write these things?!” he shouted.

I was confused. What could they mean? One of the articles was presented to me, the offending passage circled in black marker pen:

“The grim-faced customs officer is wearing one of those slightly ridiculous oversized military caps that they were so fond of in the Soviet Union. It makes the slightly built North Korean in his baggy uniform comically top heavy. “Open,” he grunts, pointing at my mobile phone. I dutifully punch in the passcode. He grabs it back and goes immediately to photos. He scrolls through pictures of my children skiing, Japanese cherry blossom, the Hong Kong skyline. Apparently satisfied he turns to my suitcase. “Books?” he barks. No, no books. “Movies?” No, no movies. I am sent off to another desk where a much less gruff lady is already looking through my laptop.”

“Are they serious?” I thought. They had taken “grim-faced” to mean “ugly”, and the use of the word “barks” as an indication that I thought they sounded like dogs.

“I have studied English literature,” he said. “Do you think I do not understand what these expressions mean? … They began going through my articles word by word – finding offence in almost every one. But the words were not important; they were ammunition to throw at me, to force me to confess.

New North Korean Foreign Minister appointed

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North Korea has named a career diplomat and ex-nuclear envoy with broad experience in negotiating with rivals South Korea and the United States as its new foreign minister. Some South Korean analysts say former Vice Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho’s appointment could be part of a bid to revive long-stalled diplomacy and improve ties with the outside world.

Critics say that North Korea turns to empty diplomatic gestures only after ratcheting up animosity in an attempt to win concessions and aid. North Korean diplomats also reportedly take a back seat to the generals and their hard-line policies in tense times.

Ri has served as the North’s top envoy to stalled six-nation disarmament talks on his country’s nuclear weapons program and participated in talks with the United States in the 1990s. He also served as North Korea’s ambassador in London.

[Note: North Korea’s ruling elite includes another person called “Ri Yong Ho” in English, though his name in Korean is slightly different from the new foreign minister’s. This other Ri Yong Ho served as the country’s army chief before his abrupt dismissal in 2012, and has not appeared in the North’s media since.]

[AP]

And what of Canadian pastor Hyeon Soo Lim still in North Korean prison?

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Canadian citizen Hyeon Soo Lim was convicted in December of plotting to overthrow the North Korean government, and since then has languished in a hard labor camp. The 62-year-old senior pastor of the Toronto-area Light Korean Presbyterian Church has lost weight and is slower in his responses.

Ottawa says it is doing everything in its power to get Lim out of prison and in the interest of his case, it won’t divulge many details on its exact efforts to make that happen. Canadian consular officials have visited him twice in Pyongyang where he is serving a life sentence.

But frustration is growing among Canadians tracking the case who say Ottawa is “too silent,” and should take the initiative and engage and pressure North Korea more directly on setting Lim free. What’s necessary, said several people contacted by CBC News, is a well-tested U.S.-style intervention that combines contact and pressure.

“It’s clear as day what needs to be done,” said the Canadian source. “The prime minister has to write a letter to the chairman [North Korean leader Kim Jong-un] requesting release or pardon.” A higher-level emissary could also travel to Pyongyang to negotiate with the leadership there, said the source.

American missionary Kenneth Bae, who was convicted of subversion in North Korea, is also advising that Ottawa do more. He is in Toronto this week to raise the profile of Lim’s case. “[The North Koreans] want some sort of gesture from the Canadian government to save their face. They need an excuse to let him go.”

Lim appeared in an interview with CNN earlier this year. Bae says allowing the interview was a clear signal to Ottawa that they were willing to negotiate.

[CBC]

Kenneth Bae former prisoner in North Korea explains his “crime”

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Kenneth Bae, a Korean-American missionary imprisoned in North Korea, recounted last Wednesday how he had engaged in a kind of spiritual tourism to a little-known city in the northwestern corner of the country. Between 2011 and 2012, Bae brought more than 300 people on tours to North Korea [as part of his vision to evangelize North Koreans].

But on his 18th trip, he said, he made what he called a “very crucial mistake” — inadvertently bringing a computer hard drive along in a briefcase he meant to leave behind in China. The hard drive had files about his missionary work. It also contained a video of emaciated North Korean children scrounging in the dirt for food — footage Mr. Bae said a friend had sent him years earlier and that he not ever fully watched.

After the banned material was discovered, he was held in seclusion in a hotel in northeastern North Korea for a month while officials grilled him. He was given little to eat, generally a few bites of rice and some wilted vegetables, and was forced to watch government propaganda every evening. But he was not beaten or overtly physically abused by authorities.

He eventually confessed that one of the documents on his hard drive was a plan for what he described as “Operation Jericho” — an effort to bring tourists into North Korea to pray and spread the love of God. They would not have openly evangelized, but he had hoped that the “walls” isolating North Koreans from the rest of the world would come crumbling down, just as the walls of Jericho fell in the Bible story.

The book outlines how North Korean officials did not understand the plan’s metaphorical nature, and how Mr. Bae struggled to explain that he wasn’t trying to actually overthrow the government. The government sentenced him to 15 years in prison.

“I had to make a choice,” he said, adding that he began praying deeply as he pondered whether to fight his incarceration or somehow embrace it. He finally determined that it was “God’s will” that had put him there. “After that moment,” he said, “my perspective of life in prison changed because I was no longer there as a prisoner, but I was there as God’s ambassador — somebody who was sent from God to do God’s work.”

It was that belief that ultimately brought him through the ordeal, Mr. Bae said, adding that it has since made him realize that he had a new mission: to remind the world not to forget the ordinary people who are suffering in North Korea.

“We need to differentiate between the government and the people. The people are suffering without knowing what is coming next for them,” Mr. Bae said. “We as people outside need to continue to stand up for them and reach out to them and remember them through prayer support and any other blessing we can give.”

[Washington Times]

Horror of North Korea’s death camps – Part 1

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Kang Chol-hwan was just nine when he was sent to the Yodok concentration camp in North Korea with most of his family, including his father and grandmother. His grandad, who he would never see again, was accused of being a spy for the Japanese — and under North Korean rules, the whole family was guilty.

“At Yoduk, prisoners are executed in public to instill fear and obedience. Children, out of hunger and desperation, resort to scavenging for roots and rats. … There is one distinction that I would draw between the North Korean prison camps and Auschwitz,” Kang said. “While Auschwitz’s goal was rapid, industrial-style extermination, Yodok prolongs the suffering over three generations.

“The purpose of Yodok is to be but one facility that helps sustain the regime and cleanse the North Korean people of any freedom of thought.”

Kwon-Hyuk was once the commander of Haengyong Concentration Camp — the infamous Camp 22. Speaking about Haengyong to documentary filmmakers in 2004, he swore he had seen a family being gassed and said he had himself ordered the deaths of five families.

He recalled: “The parents were vomiting and dying, but till the very last moment they tried to save their kids by doing mouth to mouth breathing.”

A study by the Database Centre for North Korean Human Rights claims no prisoner has left Haengyong alive, while reports indicate the camp closed in 2012.     

Horror of North Korea’s death camps – Part 2

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Some of the cruelest treatment is saved for pregnant women, who are made to have abortions without anesthesia, or witness their babies murdered at birth. One grandmother was tasked with looking after pregnant women at Sinŭiju camp and said newborns were left to die in a box which was simply buried when full.

In his memoir — The Aquariums of Pyongyang — Mr Kang recounts how a guard made a pregnant woman disrobe, exposing her belly, and then he beat her. Another defector illustrated how a pregnant woman had a board placed across her bump, which other prisoners were then forced to seesaw on.Those dreaming of escape face high-voltage electric fences, moats bristling with spikes, armed patrols, guard dogs and minefields, though security varies by camp. Anyone caught escaping is executed by either firing squad, hanging or stoning, typically in front of the other prisoners, and with rocks stuffed in their mouths to stop them screaming.
But the biggest killer in the camps is malnutrition, with no more food available than a handful of corn, grain and cabbage, plus whatever bugs, snakes, rats, grasses and barks can be found. Sketches drawn by gulag survivors detail how people, in their desperation, delay reporting each others’ deaths so that they kept getting their rations, and even steal dog food.
[Daily Star]

Kenneth Bae: “735 days in North Korea was long enough”

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Kenneth Bae is the longest-held U.S. citizen detained in North Korea since the Korean War. He was sentenced to 15 years of hard labor for committing “hostile acts” in the country.

“I worked from 8 a.m. to 6 pm. at night, working on the field, carrying rock, shoveling coal,” Bae said on CNN’s “New Day.” Adding to the physical pain was the verbal abuse he received from North Korean officials, Bae said. He said one prosecutor repeatedly told him, “‘No one remembers you. You have been forgotten by people, your government. You’re not going home anytime soon. You’ll be here for 15 years. You’ll be 60 before you go home.’”

Still, Bae held out hope.  “I certainly hoped when I was in North Korea … that some day I’ll be able to come home and celebrate with the friends and family that have been praying, rooting for my release,” he said.

His wish came true in November 2014 after a top U.S. official–carrying a letter from President Barack Obama–arrived in North Korea. Shortly afterward, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un ordered Bae’s release.

It was Bae’s faith that helped him deal with the physical and verbal agony. “Along the way, I found my way adjusting to life in the North Korean prison, just depending on God,” he said.

Bae’s imprisonment gained widespread publicity after former basketball star Dennis Rodman–who once called the North Korean leader a friend and “very good guy”–lambasted Bae on CNN’s “New Day” in 2014. Rodman provoked outrage after suggesting that Bae may have done something to deserve his sentence of 15 years of hard labor. Rodman later apologized, saying he had been drinking.

But Bae thanked Rodman for his 2014 outburst, saying it drew attention to his ordeal in North Korea. “I thank Dennis Rodman for being a catalyst for my release,” Bae said Monday.

Bae’s  memoir, which will be published HarperCollins’ Christian-themed division, will likely have strong religious undertones. “One thing I want people to take away from reading the book is God’s faithfulness,” Bae said. “After I was released, I was reminded that God has not forgotten the people of North Korea.”

[CNN]

Former prisoner in North Korea explains naïve ignorance of North Koreans

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Kenneth Bae, the longest-held U.S. citizen detained in North Korea since the Korean War, spoke to reporters in Washington Wednesday about highlights from his two-year detainment.

Bae said one of most jarring aspects of his long stay in a North Korean prison was a conversation he had with a prison guard watching over him in the labor camp. The talk “really haunted me,” said the Korean-American Christian missionary who spent two years in North Korean custody prior to his sudden release in 2014.

The college-educated guard revealed that “he’d never in his life heard the name Jesus before,” recalled Bae, who recounted the experience during a presentation on Capitol Hill Wednesday.  “Where does Jesus live? In China or North Korea? That was his sincere question that he asked me,” said an exasperated Bae.

“This is the 21st century in prosperous East Asia,” he said, adding that one of the things he realized during his captivity is that the people of North Korea “really don’t know what it is to live outside.”

“I mentioned to some people, ‘Did you know that the South Korean economy is about 40 times larger than the North Korean economy is?’ And they had no idea,” he said.

“Some people I asked, ‘Do you know that the secretary-general of the U.N. is actually South Korean?’ And, the response that I got was, ‘No way, that is not possible.’”

But the fact that an educated government official guarding him had no idea of the existence of Jesus Christ was particularly “painful,” said Bae, because of his knowledge of Korean history. Prior to the late-1940s rise of a totalitarian dictatorship in North Korea, Pyongyang was actually known as the “Jerusalem of the Far East” for the large number of Christians who lived there, he said.

Mr. Bae has just published “Not Forgotten: The True Story of My Imprisonment in North Korea,” an intensely personal religious memoir peppered with biblical quotes bolstering his view that God’s hand was behind both his incarceration and release.

[Washington Times]

Is South Korea’s spying apparatus broken?

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When it comes to spying on North Korea, rival South Korea seems to be wrong almost as much as it’s right.

Seoul’s intelligence agents get battered in the press and by lawmakers for their gaffes, including one regarding Ri Yong Gil, the former head of North Korea’s military. Officials in Seoul’s National Intelligence Service (NIS), the country’s main spy agency, reportedly said Ri had been executed, but at this month’s ruling-party congress, he was seen not only alive but also in possession of several new titles.

While spying on perhaps the world’s most cloistered, suspicious, difficult-to-read country is no easy task, repeated blunders raise questions about whether South Korea’s multibillion-dollar spying apparatus is broken.

South Korean spies are thought to closely monitor Pyongyang’s media for details, to talk to defectors in Seoul, especially those who claim sources in North Korea, and to cultivate contacts in the North. The problem is that it’s unclear how reliable the sources are.

The NIS gives closed briefings to lawmakers, who then relay what they hear to South Korean press. Foreign media commonly cite those local reports, but by that point the information has passed through several hands. That makes it difficult to gauge the NIS’s level of certainty, understand how the information was obtained or determine how reliable its sources are.

When spies leak information directly to the local press, they usually demand that reporters refer to them only as “a source familiar with North Korea affairs.” This allows the NIS and other South Korean spy agencies to deny they were the source if the information is bad, which is what’s currently happening in the Ri case.

[AP]