Category: China

Canadian missionary couple detained by China near North Korean border

Posted on by
5

A Vancouver couple detained in China for the “theft of state secrets” may have triggered an investigation for something as innocuous as posting photos online of a view from their balcony overlooking a river bordering North Korea, according to experts.

Canadian missionaries Kevin and Julia Dawn GarrattBefore they were detained Monday night, Kevin Garratt, 54, and Julia Dawn Garratt, 53, uploaded images on Facebook and Instagram of their life in Dandong, including pictures taken from their apartment looking out onto the Yalu River and the Friendship Bridge, which brings trade between China and North Korea.

The Garratts have been living and working across China for the last 30 years, moving to Dandong in 2008 to open up Peter’s Coffee House: a popular hangout for expats and locals looking to improve their English, marketed as “the perfect stopoff while en route to or returning from the Hermit Kingdom.”

“They’ve been there for so long now,” Kevin’s father Ross said Tuesday afternoon from his home in Innisfil, Ont. “Originally they wanted to go there to help people; they were sponsored by different church groups who wanted somebody over there to help run orphanages.”

Their real passion became delivering aid to impoverished North Koreans on either side of the sensitive border through an evangelical Christian organization.

“We’re China-based, North Korea-focused, but we’re Jesus-centered,” Kevin said in a November 2013 guest sermon at Surrey’s Terra Nova Church. In a recording of the sermon — which has since been removed from the church’s website — he described running a house outside Dandong where North Koreans could “hang out.”

Kevin said he used an organization called North Star Aid, which serves the people of North Korea by providing humanitarian aid, according to its website.

A short statement on the China’s state-run Xinhua News Agency after the couple’s detention Monday night made no mention of their aid work but reported they “are under investigation for suspected theft of state secrets about China’s military and national defense research.”

[Read full Vancouver Sun article]

The politics of Beijing’s impatience with North Korea

Posted on by

Senior officials from China and South Korea will hold talks over the coming days to boost their cooperation on regional security, following a landmark visit to Seoul by President Xi Jinping. Xi’s visit indicated Beijing was shifting its attention from North Korea to the South as the Chinese president broke a tradition of his predecessors by not visiting Pyongyang first on an official visit to the Korean peninsula.

There have been no top-level visits between Beijing and Pyongyang since Kim Jong-un assumed power in 2012. Xi’s trip to Seoul is being interpreted as a sign of Beijing’s growing frustration with the volatile hardline state following a series of nuclear tests and missile launches.

An Asia-based diplomat who did not wish to be named said Beijing had been exerting pressure through diplomatic channels to stop Pyongyang launching a fourth nuclear test after it conducted its third in 2013.

Stalled six-nation nuclear talks have been dormant since late 2008. South Korea, the US and Japan demanded Pyongyang show its sincerity to seek denuclearisation before the talks could resume, but Pyongyang demanded there be no pre-conditions.

[Despite these recent actions] Cui Zhiying, a professor of Korean affairs at Tongji University in Shanghai, said China still believed that taking tough action against Pyongyang would create further uncertainties on the Korean peninsula. So Beijing would not go hand in hand with Seoul against Pyongyang, while Seoul still depends on its security alliance with Washington.

The US has urged Seoul and Tokyo to improve their relationship as their worsening ties could play into China’s hands, while Seoul is aware that its strategic value to Beijing will be lessened should Sino-US relations return to a more positive track, Lee Jung-nam, a professor at the Asiatic Research Institute at Korea University said.

“The development of ties between South Korea and China has implications for the relationship between South Korea, the US and Japan.”

[South China Morning Post]

The income gap in North Korea

Posted on by

Ordinary North Koreans are lucky to earn US$30 a month, but senior state officials easily make more than $100 a day from endemic corruption, a survey by the Chosun Ilbo and Center for Cultural Unification Studies shows, after interviewing 100 North Koreans living in the Chinese border areas of Dandong and Yanji earlier this year.

Ninety-eight of them said there is a huge gap between the rich and poor in North Korea. The North Koreans said the collapse of the state rationing system and growth of the black economy have enabled those in power and successful traders to amass fortunes, while ordinary people who have been unable to adjust to these changes often barely have enough to eat.

One woman from Pyongyang said “Ten percent of the public is rich, 10 percent are middle class and almost 80 percent are poor.”

The majority said that the gap is most apparent when it comes to the bare necessities. “Poor people can barely afford to buy new shoes no matter how hard they work and don’t have the money to buy pork, which costs W30,000 per kilogram,” a woman from North Pyongan Province said.

Food aid provided by the UN usually ends up in the hands of party and military officials. Forty-three of the North Koreans who took part in the survey said party officials wield the greatest power in the North, and 41 percent said party officials in charge of overseeing Pyongyang’s overseas businesses are the most powerful.

Meanwhile, North Korea’s Hwanghae Province on the impregnable border with South Korea is said to be at least half a century behind Sinuiju bordering China in the North. A man from Hwanghae Province described the difference between the two regions as “like night and day.” “After we supply crops to Pyongyang, we end up starving,” he added.

[Chosun Ilbo]

The Chinese believe that the US, not China, holds key to Korean reunification

Posted on by
1

Excerpts from an editorial in the China Daily:

“The US and Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) have been locked in a stalemate for some time: Pyongyang wants a peace treaty first and Washington demands that Pyongyang first abandon its nuclear weapons program. North Korea uses the US’ refusal to sign a peace treaty to conduct nuclear tests…. The US, in turn, uses the DPRK’s actions to beef up its missile defense system in Asia.

“By refusing to promise that it will not take any military action against the DPRK, the US has provoked it to build nuclear weapons and tried to drive a wedge between Beijing and Pyongyang. The US is playing the DPRK nuclear card also to create a rift between China and South Korea and keep the latter deeply entrenched in Washington’s camp, which could prove damaging for Beijing and Seoul.”

Activists push before Congress for awareness of North Korea human rights abuses

Posted on by

In a hearing before members of Congress, victims of North Korea’s human rights abuses and experts on the dictatorship’s harsh practices asked for support in bringing an end to the country’s harsh treatment of political dissenters.

Rep. Chris Smith, chairman of the House subcommittee on global human rights, explained in a June 18 hearing that “in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, we see a state that seeks to control all aspects of the lives of its citizens, not only their political lives, but also that innermost sanctuary we call conscience as well,” using starvation, torture, imprisonment and death against political and religious dissidents of the totalitarian, atheistic stance of the North Korean government. “Enough is enough. We need to do far more,” Smith urged.

The hearing, entitled “Human Rights Abuses and Crimes Against Humanity in North Korea”, featured testimony from Lee Jong-hoon, South Korea’s Ambassador-at-Large for Human Rights; Andrew Natsios, co-chair of the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea; Shin Chang-Hoon, director of the Center for Global Governance Asian Institute for Policy Studies; and Shin Dong-hyuk, a survivor of a North Korean prison camp.

Shin, who escaped from the North Korean prison camp he was born in, spoke of a life “not fit for human beings or even for animals”, where his first memories were of guards in uniform carrying guns, and being taught by those guards to distrust his parents, who were political prisoners.

“I was rewarded with terribly indescribable and cruel torture,” Shin said, and his mother and brother were publicly executed. The torture I bared, the scars I earned from that time, I still bear today.”

He said that specifically, the international human rights community should focus on increasing awareness about North Korea’s relationship with China. North Korea, Lee said, is “very dependent on China” for financial support, resources and food, and has the power to change the regime.

In addition, he noted, Chinese youth are starting to question their country’s support “of this state that’s an embarrassment to the world,” and the international community has a strong evidence to support saying that on the Korean Peninsula, a “peaceful and free unification is beneficial to China.”

Smith praised the accuracy of the United Nations Commission of Inquiry report on North Korea, adding, “We must summon the necessary conviction to address the sufferings of the people of North Korea.”

[Catholic News Agency]

UN monitor urges China to bring North Korea to heel

Posted on by

UN monitor Marzuki Darusman on Wednesday urged China to bring ally North Korea to heel over its record of systemic human rights abuse, likening Beijing’s clout to that of Washington with Israel.

He told reporters, “This is the kind of denial that the United States has, that it has no hold on Israel,” said Darusman, a former chief prosecutor of Indonesia.

Darusman was part of a UN-mandated inquiry team that earlier this year issued a damning 400-page report detailing endemic abuses by North Korea. It spotlighted rape, torture and enslavement, saying they could amount to crimes against humanity and comparing them to the actions of Nazi Germany.

The inquiry team has called for North Korea to be hauled before the International Criminal Court — potentially to prosecute dictator Kim Jong-un and other regime figures. But referral to the ICC requires approval by the UN Security Council, where China wields a veto.

Barred from North Korea by Pyongyang, the UN monitors have interviewed defectors in South Korea and other countries, and used satellite imagery to build an idea of North Korea’s network of concentration camps.

North Korea has dubbed the witnesses “human scum” and, in regular attacks at the UN Human Rights Council, charged that probes are part of a “vicious, hostile policy” piloted by Washington.

Darusman blasted that position. “It’s a convenient facade that the North Koreans are adopting, by continuing with their denials but at the same time seeming to engage by being present at the UN Human Rights Council sessions and responding to the findings by continuing with the theme that all the findings are fabricated,” he said.

[AFP]

The long route from North Korea to South Korea

Posted on by

Two days back, a combined force of Thai Navy, police and local Task force came across a group of 15 North Korean refugees during a routine patrol in northern Thailand, as the North Koreans were walking from a Mekong river bank.

North Koreans typically use the border area in Chiang Rai as a base for entering Thailand. More than 5,000 North Koreans have been arrested in Chiang Rai over the past five years and charged with illegal entry.

north korean defector route

These refugees escape North Korea and enter China where they may stay for a week to 6 months while they gather sufficient funds from various help organizations and then get onto the waiting list. It’s then about a ten day trip down through China and Laos. Then a short overnight 5 hour minivan ride through Laos and then smuggled across the Mekong and into Chiang Khong, where they cross the river.

If they are caught in either China of Laos they are deported back to North Korea. But once the North Koreans make it across the river they are usually eventually transported to the South Korean Embassy in Bangkok. Once into the South Korean Embassy in Bangkok, they may ultimately be provided air transportation to Seoul.

Missionary activity in North Korea

Posted on by

Missionaries have sought to evangelize in North Korea, as the totalitarian country forbids independent religious activities. Although North Korea contains a number of state-controlled churches, they are considered for show to international audiences, according to a report by the United Nations Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in North Korea.

Religion, especially Christianity, is viewed as a political threat because the state does not condone any belief system other than its official state ideology, according to the report.

Witnesses claim that underground churches function inside North Korea, according to the U.N. report. Also, missionaries and underground churches have secretly set up in China near the border to aid defectors.

North Korea is currently holding Kenneth Bae, a Korean-American, who was arrested in November 2012. Bae was sentenced in May 2013, accused of trying to topple the North Korean government and bringing religious activities into the country. He has remained in North Korean custody despite efforts by the U.S. and his family.

More recently, North Korea’s Supreme Court sentenced a South Korean man to life of hard labor for committing “hostile acts” against the country, according to its state-run news agency, KCNA. The South Korean, identified as Kim Jong Uk, averted the death sentence because he allegedly “repented of his crimes,” which included an attempt to set up an underground church inside the country.

Kim said he had worked as a missionary for several years on the Chinese side of the border with North Korea, running a church that sought North Korean converts.

[CNN]

North Korea sentences South Korean Christian to hard labor for life

Posted on by
1

North Korea said Saturday it has sentenced a South Korean Baptist missionary to hard labor for life for allegedly spying and trying to set up underground churches, the latest in a string of missionaries to run into trouble in the rigidly controlled North.

North Korean state media said the missionary was tried Friday and admitted to anti-North Korean religious acts and “malignantly hurting the dignity” of the country’s supreme leadership, a reference to the ruling Kim family. The rival Koreas have different English spelling styles for Korean names, so the North called the missionary Kim Jong Uk, but Seoul has previously referred to him as Kim Jung Wook.

North Korea’s official news agency KCNA said in its report on the trial, “The accused admitted to all his crimes: he committed anti-DPRK religious acts, malignantly hurting the dignity of the supreme leadership of the DPRK overseas and tried to infiltrate into Pyongyang … for the purpose of setting up an underground church and gathering information about the internal affairs of the DPRK while luring its inhabitants into South Korea and spying on the DPRK.”

Kim had been based largely in Dandong, in China, since 2007, from where he helped North Korean defectors get to South Korea via Thailand, Laos and other countries. Kim was born in 1964, Joo said, making him 49 or 50.

In August 2012, a group of 12 North Korean women were caught by Chinese authorities while they were at Kim’s shelter and sent back to North Korea.

Christian missionaries have been drawn over the years to totalitarian North Korea, which tolerates only strictly sanctioned religious services. North Korean defectors have said that the distribution of Bibles and secret prayer services can mean banishment to a labor camp or execution.

[AP and Agence France-Presse]

To move forward on North Korean human rights

Posted on by
1

[Excerpts of a CFR piece by Roberta Cohen, a non-resident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, specializing in human rights and humanitarian issues:]

For decades, the international community has largely sidestepped its responsibility to hold North Korea to account. To be sure, the challenges are formidable. Take the most publicized recommendation  from the report by UN Commission of Inquiry(COI) on Human Rights in the DPRK—that the situation be referred to the International Criminal Court (ICC). Although a logical step, it will be difficult to implement because North Korea has not ratified the ICC’s Rome Statute; consequently the court has no jurisdiction over the case. It will require a UN Security Council referral, but China’s veto could thwart its adoption. China’s veto could also prevent targeted sanctions from being applied to those most responsible for crimes against humanity, another COI recommendation.

The report recommends tapping the entire UN system, most notably humanitarian and development organizations, so that they also address human rights concerns in their work. But here too it will be difficult to bring everyone on board. Those working on the ground may be resistant because it could interfere with their access and cooperation with the government. Yet agencies dealing with food, health, children, and refugees can hardly afford to overlook the findings in this report—state policies leading to mass starvation, discrimination in food distribution and health care, and children mistreated in camps—and then claim they’re doing their jobs of reaching the most vulnerable.

One tangible result thus far is the approval by the UN of an office in Asia to continue monitoring and documenting the human rights situation in North Korea and reinforcing the UN’s efforts to hold accountable those responsible for crimes against humanity.  If properly funded, staffed, and given a broad mandate, the office should be able to maintain the momentum created by the COI report.

A strong UN voice will be needed as well. Regrettably, COI Chair Michael Kirby’s powerful voice has begun to recede now that the COI’s work is completed, while Navi Pillay, another leading voice, will no longer be High Commissioner for Human Rights after July.

Overall, a sustained and broad-based effort will be needed by governments, international organizations, NGOs, foundations, experts, and business enterprises to make sure that human rights concerns in North Korea remain firmly rooted on the international agenda.