Category: Humanitarian Aid and Relief

North Korean abuse in prison camp system well documented

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The US State Department’s report is one of several recent institutional investigations documenting North Korea’s human rights record and prison camp system.

Last November, the Washington-based Human Rights in North Korea (HRNK) released satellite images that show the reclusive nation’s prison camp system, where detainees are subjected to forced labor, torture, starvation, rape and death, may be expanding. The images are of Camp No. 25, a camp near Chongjin, on North Korea’s northeast coast.

According to the United Nations, up to 120,000 men, women and children are imprisoned in the gulags, known as “kwanliso” in Korean. A 2014 report from the international organization estimated that “hundreds of thousands of political prisoners” have died in the North Korean gulags over the past 50 years amid “unspeakable atrocities.”

“The inmate population has been gradually eliminated through deliberate starvation, forced labor, executions, torture, rape and the denial of reproductive rights,” the report said, drawing a parallel between the camps and those of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.

“These camps constitute the cornerstone of the country’s large infrastructure dedicated to political repression and social control that enables widespread and systematic human rights abuses,” rights group Amnesty International said in a statement.

[CNN]

Little known on status of US student held in North Korea

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There’s been little public word about what has happened to an American college student detained in North Korea, which announced last Jan. 22 it had detained Otto Warmbier, a University of Virginia student from suburban Cincinnati, earlier that month for alleged anti-state crime.

Warmbier, 21, who had visited North Korea with a tour group, was sentenced in March to 15 years in prison at hard labor after a televised tearful public confession to trying to steal a propaganda banner.

Diplomats inquiring about Warmbier and a Korean-American also being held have been told they were being treated under “wartime law.” It’s not clear what that means, although it could imply tougher treatment. The United States doesn’t have diplomatic relations with North Korea.

Warmbier’s parents said after his public confession last February that they hadn’t been able to communicate with him, and his father, Fred, expressed hope his son’s “sincere apology” would persuade North Korea to allow him to come home. The statement was released through the University of Virginia.

Although there has been scant news on Warmbier since his sentencing, his situation could re-emerge as Donald Trump’s administration begins dealing with North Korea. He has said he will push China to exert its influence on North Korea to bring it into line, but Trump also said during his presidential campaign that he would be willing to meet with Kim Jong Un.

There’s little doubt North Korea would like to use Warmbier to get a U.S. president to travel to “kowtow and ask for him back,” said Boston University Professor Emeritus Walter Clemens, whose extensive writings on North Korea include two books. But there’s always the hope that such a meeting could open a way to improving current tensions, he said.

[AP]

North Korean defectors have smuggled thousands of USB sticks

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North Korean defectors have successfully shipped in “several thousand” USB sticks containing banned content like South Korean soaps, Hollywood films, and global news. The goal is to spread information about the outside world to North Koreans, who have limited access to the open internet and telecommunications.

The project is the result of the “Flash Drives for Freedom” campaign by the Human Rights Foundation, a non-profit organization.  Chief strategy officer, Alex Gladstein, said the foundation has received more than 10,000 drives in the last 12 months, and is in the process of handing them to groups of North Korean defectors operating out of South Korea.

“Several thousand have been delivered into the DPRK [North Korea] so far,” Goldstein told Business Insider. “We’d like to send 50,000 this year.”

The groups decide what content to put on the sticks, which might hold up to 20GB, then smuggle them in by drone and by foot.  They are then picked up by dealers who copy the information onto smaller drives and sell those on to locals for a profit.

North Koreans can then watch the files on common, portable DVD players called Notels and cheap Chinese smartphones with USB ports. PC ownership is rare.

Gladstein  estimates it will take around one million USB sticks to educate a significant chunk of the North Korean population. There are around 25 million people living in the country, and Gladstein believes about 30% have any idea that the outside world is better off.

[Business Insider]

Defector: “North Korea won’t change its repressive ways”

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In North Korea’s “utopian society”, the very words “human rights” do not need to exist — because it’s so perfect, the regime maintains!

The concept is not even taught. I had never even heard of the term “human rights” when I was in North Korea.

It also strongly denies the existence of the political prison camp system throughout the country.

It maintains this position even though I was born in the most infamous, political prison camp in North Korea: Camp 14.

Only recently did North Korea concede that “labor detention centers” exist, but solely for the incarcerated to have their lives improved.

North Korea also denies committing human rights violations, threatens and intimidates defector activists working to raise awareness of human rights issues, and attacking and criticizing those who have testified during the United Nations Commission of Inquiry’s investigation, calling these defectors “human scum.”

The dictatorship in North Korea has never been honest or truthful for more than six decades it has been in existence.

[Excerpt of CNN article by North Korean defector Shin Dong-hyuk]

North Korean defections could swell as political elite look south

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More North Koreans are fleeing their country for political reasons, rather than economic reasons, and an increase in defections by Pyongyang’s elite will ultimately weaken Kim Jong Un’s regime, South Korea’s unification minister said in an interview.

Hong Yong-pyo, who heads the Ministry of Unification, expects to see more defectors like Thae Yong Ho, the North Korean deputy ambassador in London, whose defection to Seoul last year was the most high-profile in nearly two decades.

A crippling famine triggered the first major wave of defectors from North Korea about 20 years ago, but many now say that they are leaving the country “not just because they are starving, but for a better life, and for freedom and for their children’s education,” Mr. Hong said.

Mr. Thae, the North’s former deputy ambassador to the U.K., defected not for economic reasons, but “for his son’s education,” Mr. Hong said. The rising number of elite defectors, including more than a dozen workers at North Korea’s overseas restaurants who arrived in South Korea last year, “shows how unsettled the Kim Jong Un system is internally,” Mr. Hong said.

[Wall Street Journal]

South Korea addressing North Korean defectors’ school problems

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The South Korea government has established a number of alternative schools as a new policy project to help North Korean teenagers who have difficulty in adapting to school.

The most well-known of these is the Hankyoreh High School, a high school specializing in helping North Korean adolescents, founded in 2006 by the Ministry of Education and Human Resources Development. The Hankyoreh School teaches the national common curriculum, but individual classes are conducted according to the level of each student.

One North Korean settler whom we spoke with is now in college in Seoul. He escaped from North Korea in his mid-teens, was caught by Chinese police and sent back to North Korea, lived in a detention camp, and escaped again in five years. It then took him about three years to make it to South Korea through China and Central Asia. When he arrived, it was difficult to start regular school.

He studied for two years at the GED Academy and later entered one of the well-known colleges in Korea and studies Political Science.

For North Korean refugee students, the GED route is sometimes a more efficient approach in preparation for college admission than public school.

[NK News]

Alternative schools help young North Korean defectors reach their dreams

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Kim Jung-hyang, a 20-year-old North Korean defector, had never attended school in the North. So she had to work extra hours to catch up with her South Korean high school classmates..

Her relentless efforts, coupled with benefits from special admission programs available for North Korean defectors, have paid off and now she is preparing to study at a prestigious college next year.

All of this, however, might not have been possible if she had not made a decision to move to an alternative school dedicated to educating students like her. Nestled on a hillside of Mount Nam in central Seoul, Yeomyung is an alternative school launched in 2004 to help young North Korean defectors find hope and dreams in the South through education. Around 30 students, including Kim, will graduate from the school early next year.

Yeomyung is one of nine such major alternative schools whose main objective is to provide “tailored” education for those with “unique” experience and needs. They do provide Korean, English, math, science, history and other major subjects needed for the college entrance exam, but it is done not in a “one-size-fits-all” manner as seen in many other ordinary Korean schools but in a way that fits the level of each group by capitalizing on a relatively small number of students.

Demand is now growing for alternative school programs as the number of North Korean defectors and their kids is on the steady rise. Though exact figures are not available, some estimates put the school-aged North Korean defectors at around 3,500.

[Yonhap]

Former diplomat Thae Yong Ho vows to fight to free North Koreans from “slavery”

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The former number two at North Korea’s embassy in London has said he fled because he was disillusioned with the “tyrannical reign of terror” in Pyongyang.

Thae Yong Ho told officials in South Korea he escaped with his family because he was disgusted with his homeland. Mr Thae, who has been guarded by South Korea’s National Intelligence Service since his defection in August, met South Korean officials on Monday, according to lawmaker Lee Cheol Woo.

Lee said Mr Thae learned about democracy by watching South Korean dramas and feature films. Thae said North Koreans are suffering “slavery” under Kim Jong-Un’s dictatorship and higher-level officials are subject to more intense state surveillance.

Mr Thae has said he will now work towards “freeing the North Korean people from repression and persecution,” Mr Lee told the Yonhap news agency. “I will engage in public activities even if it threatens my own safety,” he quoted Thae as saying.

South Korean media said that Mr Thae will be under a police protection program. He is the most senior North Korean diplomat to defect to South Korea. (In 1997, the North Korean ambassador to Egypt fled but he resettled in the United States.)

[Sky News]

Canadian officials meet pastor sentenced to life in prison in North Korea

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North Korea’s state media says Canadian officials have met with a detained Ontario pastor who has been sentenced to life in prison in the country. Hyeon Soo Lim, a pastor with the Light Korean Presbyterian Church of Mississauga, Ont., was sentenced last December by a North Korean court to life in prison with hard labor for what it called crimes against the state.

A Canadian government delegation led by Sarah Taylor, director general for North Asia and Oceania for Global Affairs Canada, arrived in North Korea for a three-day visit to discuss Lim’s case and other issues.

Pyongyang’s Korean Central News Agency said the Canadian officials met Lim, but provided no further details.

Lim’s relatives have said the pastor, who is in his 60s, traveled in January 2015 on a regular humanitarian mission to North Korea. They said Lim has made more than 100 trips to North Korea since 1997 and that his trips were about helping people and were not political.

[Canadian Press]

North Korean sailors rescued in 3 adrift ships

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Three North Korean ships, two of which were fishing boats, have been discovered in succession by South Korean military and police, while they were adrift within South Korea’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ) in the East Sea.

Seven to eight crew members from the three ships were rescued. Rescued crew members testified that a number of their fellow crew members died of hunger while their boats were adrift. All rescued sailors were found to have been in severe malnutrition. The ships are believed to have set sail around September or October. The ships either had their engines out of order or were not equipped with a motor.

The South Korean National Intelligence Service and the Defense Security Command are questioning the crew members whether they have intention to defect to the South.

One crew member strongly demanded that he be repatriated to the North, and the authorities plan to repatriate him via the inter-Korean truce village of Panmunjom soon. Whether the other crew members have intention to defect the North remains unknown.

Earlier, on Nov. 30, a wooden North Korean boat was discovered in waters near Kyoto, Japan, and eight completely decomposed bodies were found in the boat.

[Dong-a Ilbo]