Author Archives for Grant Montgomery

North Korean defector: ‘Treated like animals’

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Scott Kim first escaped North Korea at the age of 17, and ended up in and out of China for six years. Paying a broker to make it to South Korea was far out of reach for Kim and his mother. Instead, they lived as undocumented immigrants and worked as farm laborers in China. But one year after escaping North Korea, Kim’s neighbor reported his status to the police, who brought him and his mother back to North Korea.

Kim was taken to a detention center, where authorities determine where to send defectors next. He was put in a cell with 20 other defectors. There was one toilet in the corner and no space to lie down. Day and night, the defectors sat on the ground. When he or other defectors were told to proceed down the corridor to the warden’s office, they were made to crawl on their hands and feet. Officers beat them with gloves and sticks as they went.  “We lost all our rights as human beings,” Kim said. “We were treated like animals, literally. We had to crawl on the floor to move from place to place.”

Despite the fact that one of North Korea’s biggest reeducation camps is in Chongori, near his hometown in Musan, Kim was sent to a center further south. Because no one knew him — and internet and phone service was nonexistent at the time — he was able to lie about his age, telling guards he was only 15 years old and had been in China looking for his mother. Rather than send him to one of the country’s brutal labor camps or political camps, he was sent to a center for orphaned children.

Shortly after arriving, he escaped and went back to China, where he got work as a farm laborer near Helong, a city in northeastern China. “Every day, I planted, farmed, logged on the mountain. Corn, beans, potatoes,” he said. “Life was better because I was not starving. I could eat and be full after meals.”

Kim was caught a second time, a neighbor again reporting him to the police. This second time he was sent back to North Korea, he wasn’t so lucky. He was sent to the concentration camp near his hometown. From there he was sent to a labor camp, where for months he chopped down trees on a mountain. He escaped one day when he realized that all his fellow laborers were at the top of the mountain chopping while he was at the bottom. He ran away as fast as he could until he found a train that he could take him north to cross the border with China again.

After some time in China, he was caught a third time and sent to a camp for political prisoners — the worst place to be sent, as imprisonment there is interminable. He escaped the camp by bribing the authorities through a broker, who helped him make it across the border with China a final time.

In China, he went back to work to pay off his debt to the broker. One day, he got a call from a North Korean woman who told him that his mother was dying of cancer. For the first time in many years, the two saw each other. “When I opened the door of my mother’s house, I froze, and couldn’t say anything, because my mother looked incredibly different,” he said. “There was no fat on her, and her whole body looked like a triangle, I just went outside and cried for a long time and came back again, and I embraced my mother and we cried together.”

Several days later, a friend of his mother offered his mother the opportunity to escape to South Korea via Laos and Cambodia. A broker was taking a group; they had an extra space. Unable to walk, Kim’s mother told Kim he had to go and become educated. Once he was settled, she said, he could bring her and help others in need. He decided to go. The night before Kim and the group of defectors were to cross the border into Laos, he received a call telling him that his mother had died.

In 2007, six years after he first escaped, Kim finally made it to South Korea.

[Business Insider]

Kim Jong Un is simply doing what he said he would

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Talks between the United States and North Korea have hit a rut. Now a new report from a respected Washington think tank that identified hidden North Korean missile bases has sparked fresh debate about Pyongyang’s trustworthiness.

At the beginning of this year, Kim Jong-un’s New Year’s Day speech hailed the supposed completion of its nuclear weapons development and said it was time for a new goal. “This year, we should focus on mass-producing nuclear warheads and ballistic missiles for operational deployment,” Kim said. “These weapons will be used only if our security is threatened.”

A number of experts were asked whether the continued work at North Korean missile sites, as well as other reports that North Korean is expanding its missile arsenal, would violate the agreement reached between Kim and Trump in Singapore. All of them agreed — often quite emphatically — that it did not. “Kim hasn’t broken any promises,” said Jeffrey Lewis, a nonproliferation expert at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey. “Instead, he’s making good on one of them — to mass-produce nuclear weapons.”

As such, it’s not surprising that North Korea would still be manning secret missile bases, or even producing new missiles or nuclear weapons. “Even though they’re violating all U.N. Security Council resolutions, North Korea didn’t break any promises with Trump because there’s no nuclear deal in place yet with Washington — there’s nothing that prevents them from expanding their nuclear arsenal,” Duyeon Kim said.

So if North Korea is doing what it said it would be doing, why are allegations of North Korean deception so worrying? Because they reveal how differently the United States and North Korea perceive what happened in Singapore, a gap that could sink any diplomatic progress.

“Trump seems not to understand that he did not negotiate a ‘deal’ in Singapore,” Frank Jannuzi, the president of the Mansfield Foundation and an Asia expert, wrote on Twitter. “He negotiated only an ‘intent to negotiate.’ The hard work has yet to commence.”

North Korea’s reputation for obtuseness and disregard for the truth is well-earned. But so far, North Korea has kept to the vague requirements agreed to in Singapore. And if there’s someone confused about what that summit meant, it doesn’t appear to be Kim.

[The Washington Post]

North Korean defector: “The South Korean government thinks that peace comes before the human rights of the North Korean people”

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Concerns that North Korea is deceptively surging ahead with its ballistic missile program, according to satellite imagery that appears to show 16 covert bases in development, comes as no surprise to a defector who sees only one real solution to the threat posed by the government of Kim Jong Un.

“North Korean regime are liars, and I do not think they are taking part in these relations in a truthful manner. Eventually, we will need a regime change,” said Ji Seong Ho, 36, who President Trump highlighted during the State of the Union address.

“There is a mood under this administration in Korea that talking about human rights in North Korea is not right, and the human rights issue for the Korean government is an uncomfortable subject. They are not negotiating – but it seems the Korean government thinks that peace comes before the human rights of the North Korean people,” Seong Ho said.

To Seong Ho, the absence of human rights talks is more than a slap in the face. He grew up in North Korea during the extreme famine of the 1990s. To survive, the young teen would often swipe coal from train cars in exchange for food – which was rarely more than rats and grass. Read more

Seong Ho’s story of escaping North Korea

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Seong Ho grew up in North Korea during the extreme famine of the 1990s. To survive, the young teen would often swipe coal from train cars in exchange for food – which was rarely more than rats and grass.

But tragedy struck one day in 1996. Malnourished, exhausted and slowly starving to death, Seong-ho – whose own grandmother died of starvation – fainted, fell onto the tracks and was struck by a train. In the bloody aftermath, nearby soldiers wrapped his fragile frame in old rags, and shuffled him to a barely functioning hospital in a cart. The wailing boy had to have his left hand and foot amputated – without anesthesia, without anything to dull the horrifying agony.

From there, life as a disabled child in an impoverished, closed society only became lonelier, as he was made fend for himself. Four years later, Seong Ho snuck into China to collect food scraps – but upon returning, was arrested and tortured by North Korean authorities.

That made up his mind: He couldn’t stay. Six years later, in 2006, Seong-ho finally fled – with just an old pair of wooden crutches – across the Tumen River into China. From there he went into Laos, then Thailand, finally ending up in South Korea.

Now living in Seoul, Seong Ho is studying law at Dongguk University.

 [Fox News]

Hidden North Korean missile bases suggest deception

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North Korea is moving ahead with its ballistic missile program at 16 hidden bases that have been identified in new commercial satellite images, a network long known to American intelligence agencies but left undiscussed as President Trump claims to have neutralized the North’s nuclear threat.

The satellite images suggest that the North has been engaged in a great deception: It has offered to dismantle a major launching site — a step it began, then halted — while continuing to make improvements at more than a dozen others that would bolster launches of conventional and nuclear warheads.

The secret ballistic missile bases were identified in a detailed study published Monday by the Beyond Parallel program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a major think tank in Washington.

The revelation of the bases comes as PresidentTrump’s signature piece of diplomacy, based on his meeting exactly five months ago with Kim Jong-un, appears in peril. Weapons experts, as well as Mr. Pompeo, add that North Korea, despite engaging in denuclearization talks, continues to produce the fissile material that fuels nuclear arms. The North is believed to have about 40 to 60 nuclear warheads.

And while most major nuclear powers tend to house their land-based missiles in underground silos, which can be vulnerable to pre-emptive attack, North Korea’s are designed so they can be repositioned with changing circumstances, giving the country a stronger hand in the game of nuclear diplomacy and brinkmanship.

[The New York Times]

North and South Korean military finish withdrawal from front-line guard posts

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The North and South Korean military completed withdrawing troops and firearms from 22 front-line guard posts on Saturday as they continue to implement a wide-ranging agreement reached in September to reduce tensions across the world’s most fortified border, a South Korean Defense Ministry official said.

South Korea says the military agreement is an important trust-building step that would help stabilize peace and advance reconciliation between the rivals. But critics say the South risks conceding some of its conventional military strength before North Korea takes any meaningful steps on denuclearization — an anxiety that’s growing as the larger nuclear negotiations between Washington and Pyongyang seemingly drift into a stalemate.

South Korea reportedly has about 60 guard posts — bunker-like concrete structures surrounded with layers of barbed-wire fences and manned by soldiers equipped with machine guns — stretched across the ironically named demilitarized zone, while the North is believed to have about 160 guard posts within the 155-mile border buffer DMZ.

The Koreas plan to destroy 20 of the structures by the end of November, while symbolically leaving one demilitarized guard post on each side. They plan to jointly verify the results in December. In the September deal, the Koreas also agreed to create buffer zones along their land and sea boundaries and a no-fly zone above the border, which took effect on Nov. 1.

The Koreas and the U.S.-led U.N. Command recently finished removing firearms and troops from a jointly controlled area at the border village of Panmunjom and eventually plan to allow tourists to freely move around there. The Koreas have also been clearing mines from front-line areas and plan to start in April their first-ever joint search for remains of soldiers killed during the Korean War.

[AP]

“Inside North Korea’s Dynasty” documentary by National Geographic

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“Inside North Korea’s Dynasty,” a four-segment series from National Geographic documentary films that’s airing this month.

The National Geographic series presents archival footage, including scenes of starvation, executions, unbridled power and repression, that are likely to dispel the illusions of even die-hard pro-Northers that Kim might really be a nice guy at heart—a congenial successor to his dictatorial father, the late Kim Jong Il, and the dynasty founder Kim Il Sung. Interspersed are commentaries by veteran journalists who have visited North Korea many times, notably Mike Chinoy, formerly of CNN, and Jean Lee, formerly Associated Press. Neither is exactly hard-line.

They and assorted experts, and historical figures from news clips and newsreels, plus hard-to-get footage of everyday cruelty and hardships dug up by producers Mark Raphael and David Glover, give an unvarnished picture that won’t please apologists for the current ruler or his forebears—or convince wishful thinkers that real peace is at hand.

This epic documentary, colorful, quoteful, insightful, should definitely rekindle interest among a TV-watching public that may have forgotten about North Korea amid ongoing massacres, sporadic violence and political yakking at home. The timing is most opportune.

[Daily Beast]

Charles, a North Korean defector now living in the US

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My name is Charles. I was born in North Korea on October 1st, 1994. My father left us when I was five years old and my mother passed away six years later from starvation. For years, I had to figure out how to live alone. I begged for food from strangers on the street, battling starvation and freezing weather.

One day my stepbrother came to find me and take me in. I lived with him for a while and when I was 14 years old he brought me to my father in China. Life was so much better in China and I remember thinking there would be no more starvation and no more begging for a place to sleep. Yet nine months later, the Chinese police came to our house and arrested my family.

We were kept in a Chinese jail for two weeks. At age 16 I was sent back to North Korea where I was detained. Each meal consisted of a single piece of corn. After eight months, I was finally released. I was just skin and bones – I had almost starved to death.

I began working in a coal mine which allowed me to buy rice to eat. Work in the coal mine was very risky — I saw people lose their arms and legs as they were smashed under the rocks. I was afraid and I couldn’t help thinking that I would soon lose an arm or a leg myself. After working in the mine for a year, I realized I couldn’t stay in North Korea any longer. My journey began when I boarded a train to take me closer to the border of China and North Korea. I was riding illegally and though I managed to hide during most of the ride I was at one point caught by the train security without my birth certificate. They locked me in a room with plans to kick me off at the next stop. As the train slowed, I realized that I might be able to escape through the window. I walked for hours, illegally boarded a second train, and then, finally, I was at the border of China and North Korea.

I knew I had to cross the Tumen River. I hid in tall grass for six hours, waiting for darkness. Finally, I took a deep breath and stepped into the water. Suddenly, I felt a light on my head. A border guard screamed, “Come back here or we’ll shoot you.” I was terrified, and I thought I would never make it because the current kept pulling me under, but I just kept swimming. At last, I made it to the river’s shore.

My journey did not end when I got to China. I traveled by foot, van, bus, motorcycle, and boat. My shoes fell apart and my feet bruised and bled. I went for days without food and water and there were times when I wanted to give up. I cried many days until I couldn’t cry anymore because I was too dehydrated. When I made it to my father’s house, I expected him to welcome me, but he beat me and asked me why I had come to him. I saw that he did not want me!

I escaped the eyes of many police officers and finally made it to Southeast Asia where I was safe. For months I stayed in a Korean Embassy refugee camp and then an international refugee camp where I was finally helped to come to the United States.

[LiNK blog]

US relations with North Korea strained

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US and foreign sources close to the North Korean talks paint a picture that’s starkly different from the image President Donald Trump sought to convey Wednesday, when he told reporters the administration is “very happy with how it’s going with North Korea. We think it’s going fine.”

South Korean Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha told lawmakers in Seoul that she was told the North Koreans asked the US to postpone the talks, citing their busy schedules. A senior US official told CNN the North Korean delegation did not offer a clear explanation. Another source familiar with the US-North Korea talks and familiar with North Korean thinking said Pyongyang canceled because it came to the conclusion that it wasn’t going to get anywhere with working level talks.

North Korea’s state media outlet KCNA said November 2: “We gave all things possible to the US, things it hardly deserves, by taking proactive and good-will measures, what remains to be done is the US corresponding reply. Unless there is any reply, the DPRK will not move even 1 mm, how costly it may be.”

US military officials, foreign diplomats and sources familiar with developments say the two sides are locked in a standoff over who will make concessions first, that North Korea is “really angry” about the US refusal to offer sanctions relief and that personal friction between US and North Korean negotiators may be slowing progress.

A former CIA deputy division chief for Korea, Bruce Klingner, now a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation, pointed to North Korea’s recent threat to restart “building up nuclear forces” if the US didn’t ease sanctions, the fact that Pyongyang has yet to meet Pompeo’s Special Representative for North Korea, Stephen Biegun, and that the two countries still haven’t agreed on the definition of basic terms such as “denuclearlization” — five months after Trump’s historic summit with Kim. “Clearly the two sides remain very far apart,” Klingner said. “It doesn’t bode well for the negotiations, which were already not proceeding well.”

Pyongyang’s threats over the weekend to restart its nuclear program have also increased tensions, according to the sources familiar with the exchanges between the US and North Korea. They also say that personal friction between negotiators has been a problem. The US side sees the North Korean general charged with leading negotiations, hardliner Kim Yong Chol, as “difficult and old-fashioned” in negotiations and would prefer‎ to work with someone else.

President Trump has said he would meet with Kim Jong-un “sometime next year, sometime early next year”.

[CNN]

Trump wants second meeting with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un in early 2019

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President Trump said today that he expects his second meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un will take place “sometime early next year.” Trump’s remarks came as his administration postponed a Thursday meeting between Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and a top North Korean official.

Pompeo’s meeting with Kim Yong Chol, the former head of North Korea’s spy agency who has been leading nuclear talks for North Korea, has been rescheduled and will now take place at an unspecified “later date,” State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said in a statement released late Wednesday.

North Korea is now seeking sanctions relief as a bargaining chip in giving up its nuclear weapons, but Pompeo over the weekend said that the United States would not lift sanctions until it could verify that the isolated nation had halted its missile and nuclear programs.

“We’re very happy how it’s going with North Korea. We think it’s going fine,” Trump told reporters at a post-election press conference. “The missiles have stopped, the rockets have stopped. …. I’d love to take the sanctions off, but they [North Korea] have to be responsive, too. It’s a two-way street. But we’re not in any rush at all. There’s no rush whatsoever,” Trump said.

[The Hill]