Category: Humanitarian Aid and Relief

Despite international sanctions, North Korea keeps food and fuel prices stable

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The prices of food staples and fuel are reported to have remained steady in North Korea despite coming under international pressure over Kim Jong-un’s nuclear and missile programs.

A rare set of data from the country shows that so far the UN-mandated sanctions have not hurt its ordinary people as both the prices and currency have been stable. This is seen as a contrast to the economic situation under his father Kim Jong II’s leadership.

The stability is attributed to the younger Kim’s decision to introduce a booming system of jangmadang, which translates to North Korean markets that are semi-legal but regulated. The system permits wholesalers and retailers to buy and sell imported and privately-produced goods. The number of stalls in the jangmadang has reportedly grown by hundreds, according to defectors who work for Daily NK.

“Since Kim Jong-un came to power, there has been no control or crackdown on the jangmadang,” Reuters reported Kang Mi-jin, a North Korean defector as saying. “Keeping the markets open has had a positive effect on the people. He had no other option. He can’t feed the people, and he can’t completely shut the markets down.”

The prices of rice, corn, petrol and diesel largely remained steady over the last year. The market is said to be making up for the shortfall in sales made through the country’s centrally-planned rationing system, which reportedly has not recovered from the 1990s famine that struck the North. According to a recent World Food Programme report, the state has handed out only 360gms of rations per person per day, the lowest quantity in five years.

[International Business Times]

North Korea attempting to ban the crucifix?

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Britain’s Daily Express reports that North Korean government officials are confiscating items with crosses on labels and raiding shops for the markings. Clothing and hair clips are amongst items being inspected by Kim Jong-un’s regime which is opposed to organized religion.

It’s believed there are 300,000 Christians in North Korea. Many are forced to worship in secret and risk torture and death to do so. Under the country’s strict class system Christians are classed as “hostiles” receiving less food and harsher punishments.

A spokesman for Open Doors said: “Despite Christianity being strictly forbidden Open Doors estimates there are 200,000 – 400,000 Christians who worship in secret inside North Korea.

Kim Jong-un’s despotic regime is said to reserve its harshest punishments for Christians, with believers facing arrest, torture, imprisonment and death. It’s estimated 70,000 Christians are currently in prison or labor camps in North Korea because of their faith.

Defectors claim four church buildings in the capital of Pyongyang are used as showpieces by the authorities.

[Daily Express]

North Korea, slave state of the 21st Century

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The U.S. Republican Party adopted its new policy platform, calling North Korea a ‘slave state’, on July 18, the opening day of the party’s national convention. Indeed, the majority of the people in the communist country live like slaves owned by the Kim family without fundamental rights as human beings.

I experienced the life of a [North Korean] slave when I was working in Kuwait as a foreign worker, so I welcome the recent designation, albeit belated. … I worked on a residential construction site in Umm al Hayman, where an abandoned two-story school was used as lodging for North Korean workers. There were just about 20 shabby beds in each classroom and everything was in poor condition. The lodging was surrounded by a 2m-high barbed-wire fence, which was erected at the request of North Korean authorities to prevent any runaway.

We were forced to work 15 hours a day from 7 a.m. to midnight, excluding lunch and dinner breaks, under direct sunlight of the desert and with searchlight at light. What kept me going in the harsh work conditions, though, was beef soup offered with steamed rice two or three times a week. Bread was offered for lunch and noodles were offered for dinner, but the amount was not sufficient. Beef was a highly valuable food for ordinary people in North Korea, so we felt that we were privileged to eat beef soup.

We worked hard, expecting to earn $120 of the promised monthly pay and send it to family members at home. However, we could not receive any money even after a few months of labor. The manager responded to the angry workers by saying “The company is in financial trouble” or “There is no order from the party to give you a pay”. Upset, the workers criticized the ‘company’, but no one blamed the ‘Workers Party’ of Pyongyang. They did not and could not dispraise the party, because they knew that the party was equal to the supreme leader and they were also afraid of further trouble.

[Read Rim Il’s full OpEdNews article]

5 points of tension between North Korea and US

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Five points of tensions between North Korea and the U.S. as shared by Pyongyang’s top diplomat for U.S. affairs, in an AP interview on Thursday:

  • Kim Jong Un on a list of sanctioned individuals – Han Song Ryol, director-general of the U.S. affairs department at North Korea’s Foreign Ministry, emphasized the authoritarian country’s anger over Washington’s July 6 announcement putting leader Kim Jong Un on a list of sanctioned individuals in connection with alleged human rights abuses documented by the United Nations Human Rights Commission. Pyongyang denies the allegations. “The United States has crossed the red line in our showdown,” he said. “We regard this thrice-cursed crime as a declaration of war.”
  • War Games – Han warned against planned U.S.-South Korean war games next month. “By doing these kinds of vicious and hostile acts toward the DPRK, the U.S. has already declared war against the DPRK. So it is our self-defensive right and justifiable action to respond in a very hard way,” he said.
  • US Diplomat’s flight – Han castigated Mark Lippert, the U.S. ambassador to South Korea, for a July 12 flight on a U.S. Air Force F-16 based in South Korea. He called it an action “unfit for a diplomat.”
  • Differences in stance on nuclear weapons – North Korea has been hit with several rounds of international sanctions over its continued development of nuclear weapons and missiles, but Han contended the U.S. is to blame. “It is the United States that first developed nuclear weapons, who first deployed them and who first used them against humankind,” he said.
  • North Korea won’t give up nukes – As North Korea has many times before, Han dismissed calls for Pyongyang to defuse tensions by agreeing to abandon its nuclear program. “We … are very proud of the fact, that we have very strong nuclear deterrent forces not only to cope with the United States’ nuclear blackmail but also to neutralize the nuclear blackmail of the United States,” Han said.

[Associated Press]

A rough life as a North Korean refugee

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North Korean defectors who make it across the border to China find they have no rights and cannot legally find jobs in China, so they must scrape by on the margins of society — which is still less risky than trying to get out of China. Some estimates suggest that there are hundreds of thousands of North Koreans living this way in China.

Most defectors simply want to pass through China and start a new life in South Korea or another country that will provide them with legal protection.

For those defectors from North Korea who reach South Korea, they automatically become South Korean citizens after a mandatory three-month transition that is part debriefing, part re-education.

On the positive side, refugees received a few thousand dollars to start their new lives and learned skills most people take for granted: grocery shopping or using an ATM.

On the flip side, most North Korean defectors in the South stand out. They have distinct accents, and are often shorter and slighter with darker, sallow skin from years of malnutrition. It’s hard to avoid South Koreans’ prejudice and suspicions that North Koreans are spies.

North Korean refugees speak at Seoul University

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A conference hosted at the Seoul University of Foreign Studies will feature North Korean refugees who will share their stories at a panel event with scholars, activists and volunteers.

“We have three different aims: to raise awareness about North Korean issues, given an opportunity for refugees to practice their speech skills in front of a live audience, and inspire people to get involved,” Teach North Korean Refugees (TNKR} co-founder Casey Lartigue said. “We have been doing this for a little more than three years and we have matched 250 refugees with about 440 volunteers,” Lartigue said.

There are two aspects to the program. Track one focuses on teaching English and track two is for refugees who want to engage in public speaking.

[The Korea Herald]

South Korean law professor encouraging engagement with North Korea

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On April 29, 1992, South Korea’s top intelligence agency arrested dozens of activists for plotting to overthrow the government by building underground socialist organizations. One of those arrested was Baik Tae-ung, the then 29-year-old activist sentenced to life in prison, a sentence which was later reduced to 15 years. Baik was designated as a prisoner of conscience by Amnesty International and released in 1999 through a special pardon from former President Kim Dae-jung. He flew to the United States, where he earned a doctoral degree on international human rights law and passed the bar exam in the State of New York.

Now the activist-turned-professor has returned to South Korea with a new mission – to bring home people abducted by North Korea. In 2015, his activities won him the membership of the United Nations Human Rights Council’s Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances, representing Asia-Pacific states. The U.N. human rights expert said that his agency’s role is to act as a bridge between the families of the abductees and their government.  “The organization fosters communication between the victims and their state by constantly monitoring the case until final closure,” Baik said.

To date, North Korea has refused to discuss the disappearances issue since the U.N. Commission of Inquiry on Human Right reported back in 2014 that the regime was responsible for the disappearances of more than 200,000 people.

Baik suggests there are possibilities that the North may open up toward international organizations, indicating some changes that it made home and abroad amid international pressure on its human right condition. “I think North Korea is and has been making changes. Whether the changes are active or passive ones, they can no longer ignore the pressure from the international community. What we should do is to steer such changes in the right direction,” he said.

“I don’t think that the U.S. has a clear blueprint about how to improve the North’s human rights condition,” he said, noting that the sanction on the leader Kim is more of a security measure to curb nuclear development rather than a human rights approach.

[The Korea Herald]

North Korean defectors have never even heard of human rights

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After graduating from middle school in 1979, I entered the North Korean military and after training I served for 11 years, and later became a farmer. In the early 1990s, life in rural areas was much better for workers than in the city. They had access to food distribution from farms, small plots of land and vegetable gardens. By 1995 though the food shortage started to affect us.

From 1996, the amount of food being distributed halved. It decreased by another 30% by 1997, and many died of hunger in rural areas. The food shortage hit my family in 1997. My mother, my wife, and my son died of hunger that winter. Everyone but one son.

I decided to escape North Korea so that he could live. I set off for the Tumen River with my young son in April 1998. There were police officers everywhere, sentries checking every road, but I found a way to cross over to China.  Finding work was hard because I had a young child. I would work but only for food.

Despite the hardships, I tried to listen to South Korean broadcasts every night.  The presenters were knowledgeable about the reality of North Korea. This is when I realized South Korea was not what I thought it would be. I decided to try to get there. I felt that both of us would die if we got caught, so I decided to try and get to South Korea first and left my son in the hands of a Korean Chinese person. I said goodbye to my son in May 1999.

The winter journey through the Mongolian desert was so tough that it amazes me even now that I was able to cross it. I had to survive in order to see my son again. I was determined.

I settled in South Korea in 2000. The government gave me $9,300 as a settlement fee and I used it to look for my child. I found him in March 2001 and planned to bring him to South Korea.

A group of people traveled with my son, but the guide was caught by a Chinese officer and the group dispersed. My son got left by himself in the desert and died on my birthday. I always feel guilty for not giving him a better life.

[Excerpts of an article in The Guardian, by Ryu Ki-ho]

North Korean defectors file petition on behalf of imprisoned families

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North Korean defectors have filed a petition in a South Korean court, requesting protection for imprisoned family members in the North.

Choi Hyun-joon, a defector and founder of activist group Unification Future Solidarity, submitted a petition to Seoul’s Central District Court, filed on behalf of six defectors in the South who have 20 family members in North Korean prison camps.

According to the defectors, the South Korean constitution recognizes North Korea as part of South Korean territory, and North Koreans are recognized as South Korean citizens. And their human rights need to be protected, the activists say.

North Korea is sensitive to international criticism of its human rights record and has called statements on the country’s political prison camps, forced labor and summary executions “outright lies.”

[UPI]

More on North Korean defector who showed up in Japan

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A man claiming to be a North Korean citizen was found wandering around the Japanese port town of Senzaki this weekend, police told CNN.

According to a report by CNN affiliate NHK, the man traveled from North Korea across the Sea of Japan by boat, saying “the man was drenched (in water) when police took him into custody.” Officials from Yamaguchi Prefecture said the man was interviewed by police.

The man, believed to be in his twenties, told police that he left Chongjin, the capital of North Korea’s Hamgyong Province, on Friday night in a wooden boat, broadcaster NHK reported. He claimed to have jumped from the boat into the sea with a plastic container and drifted to Senzaki by Saturday morning.

The man said he was fleeing North Korea because he was being chased by police after he was caught watching South Korean videos, the Asahi Shimbun newspaper reported.

[CNN]