Category: Humanitarian Aid and Relief

North Korea’s largest recent defector group arrives in South Korea

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In one of the largest known group defections of North Koreans in recent years, 13 restaurant workers have arrived together in South Korea. The group of one male manager and 12 female employees were based at a restaurant in an undisclosed country outside North Korea and reached South Korea on Thursday, a spokesman for South Korea’s Unification Ministry said.

The defection is unusual because of the size of the group and because North Koreans who are allowed to work abroad are regarded among the most loyal to the Pyongyang regime. Group defections by North Koreans are also usually by families or those with very close ties because of a culture of individuals informing on each other to the authorities.

International efforts to crack down on North Korea’s sources of funding for its nuclear weapons program may have increased demands on restaurant workers to send remittances. North Korea operates some 130 restaurants in 12 countries, a source of around $10 million annually for Pyongyang, according to the ministry.

The South Korean government spokesman also cited the defectors’ exposure to TV shows, movies and the Internet as a likely contributing factor for their decision to come to South Korea. Access to foreign information and media is highly restricted inside North Korea.

The official said it was the first group defection from a North Korean restaurant. The largest single group of North Koreans to seek South Korean residency in recent years was a group of nine people in 2011, according to the official.

The overall number of annual defectors from North Korea has fallen sharply since Kim Jong Un took power at the end of 2011 and tightened the nation’s borders. Last year, 1,276 North Koreans defected to South Korea, down from a recent peak of almost 3,000 in 2009.

[Wall Street Journal]

China restricts trade with North Korea over nuclear tests

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China on Tuesday banned most imports of North Korean coal and iron ore, the country’s main exports, in a significant increase in pressure on the North under U.N. sanctions against its nuclear and missile tests. China buys an estimated two-thirds of impoverished North Korea’s exports, making Beijing’s cooperation essential for trade penalties approved by the U.N. Security Council last month to succeed.

In a sign of growing frustration with its ally, China signed onto Security Council sanctions last month that include mandatory inspections of cargo bound to and from North Korea. The council called on all countries to “redouble their efforts” to enforce the sanctions.

The latest Chinese restrictions ban most imports of North Korean coal, iron ore, gold, titanium, vanadium and rare earths — a key revenue source for the mineral-rich North. The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency estimated North Korea’s 2013 exports at $4.4 billion, with 65 percent of that going to China and the bulk of it made up of mineral sales.

The announcement also banned sales of jet fuel to North Korea but said aircraft would be allowed to refuel during flights to China.

Chinese leaders are reluctant to lean too hard on North Korea for fear the collapse of Kim’s government could set off a flood of refugees and possibly lead to U.S. and South Korean troops being stationed in the North near China’s border.

 [AP]

Another American held by North Korea ‘confesses’

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An American detained in North Korea said he had spied against the country and asked for forgiveness at a media presentation Friday, nine days after an American student Otto Warmbier was sentenced to 15 years in prison with hard labor for subversion.

Kim Tong Chol told a press conference in Pyongyang that he had collaborated with and spied for South Korean intelligence authorities in a plot to bring down the North’s leadership and tried to spread religious ideas among North Koreans. Describing his acts as “shameful and ineffaceable,” Kim said he feels sorry for his crime and appealed to North Korean authorities to show him mercy by forgiving him.

Kim Tong Chol was born in South Korea and became a naturalized U.S. citizen. In an interview with CNN in January, Kim said he lived in Fairfax, Virginia, before moving in 2011 to Yangji, a city near the Chinese-North Korean border. He said he commuted daily to Rason, a special economic zone in North Korea, where he was president of a trade and hotel services company.

South Korea’s National Intelligence Service, the country’s main spy agency, said Kim’s case wasn’t related to the organization in any way and offered no further comment.

North Korea is currently holding three South Koreans and a Canadian pastor for what it calls espionage and attempts to establish churches and use religion to destroy the North’s system.

[AP]

North Korea’s record on human trafficking top focus of House hearing

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The soon-to-be-released U.S. State Department’s 2016 trafficking report will be the topic of a hearing planned by U.S. Rep. Chris Smith, Chairman of the House congressional panel that oversees global human rights issues. Smith is the author of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act, a law which mandates the State Department’s annual Trafficking in Persons (TIP) Report.

“Get It Right This Time: A Victims-Centered Trafficking in Persons Report,” is the title of the hearing to be held before the House Foreign Affairs Committee subcommittee on global human rights.

[Christian Newswire] 

North Korea: Flash drives for freedom

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Smuggling 20,000 USB sticks loaded with the latest Hollywood films might seem like an unlikely way to try to overthrow the North Korean regime – but that’s exactly what Flashdrives for Freedom has in mind.

Launched by the New York-based Human Rights Foundation and Silicon Valley non-profit Forum280, organizers ask Americans to donate their unwanted USB sticks, which will then be loaded with a selection of films and TV shows and smuggled across the DPRK’s sealed borders.

Although it’s not the first project to smuggle in information, campaigners say the need to support and engage citizens has grown in recent months. Tong Kim, who has worked in US-Korea diplomatic relations for more than 25 years, says this is partly because international sanctions often isolate North Koreans even more.

Sharon Stratton, programme officer at the North Korea Strategy Centre which is helping to distribute the drives, says popular culture from elsewhere is a powerful way to reach out to ordinary citizens.

[The Guardian]

After more than twenty years of sanctions against North Korea

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The economy and people of Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) has suffered through decades of international sanctions.

The health system of DPRK has been one of the most impacted sectors. International aid organizations and aid workers who are active in DPRK have been quite straightforward and linked the collapse of the vital public services to the international sanctions. Surgery anesthetics, common antibiotics, obstetric medicines, spare parts of medical devices and laboratory supplies cannot be imported or are significantly delayed to enter the country if some of their parts or substances are listed as prohibited goods.

Even a product which is almost entirely made in a third country but it has a component or a spare part made by a US based company, cannot be imported to North Korea without the permit of the US authorities. Those restrictions apply to everything, from the import of much needed technology to modernize public services, to spare parts of agricultural machinery, fertilizers and pesticides.

Even the donation of soccer balls is considered a breach of the international sanctions because the 1874 resolution of the UNSC includes all sports goods in its list of luxury items. Accordingly, in the autumn of 2013 the cargo of an American Charity was confiscated; it contained 1000 soccer balls to be donated to two North Korean orphanages.

The years of 2013 and 2014 were probably the worst for aid organizations working in DPRK. The sanctions against the Bank of Foreign Commerce of North Korea had frozen all financial transactions and the aid groups were unable to pay salaries to their staff, rent and utilities bills. Even the World Food Program (WFP) had to suspend production in five out of its seven factories producing fortified biscuits for malnourished children. More than half a million children were dependent on the WFP ratio for their daily nutritional needs.

But as far as the country’s elite, even with the sanctions they have never really suffered. Chanel goods, Italian wines, foreign cigarettes, Swiss watches were still largely available in Pyongyang and the major cities and the nuclear program continued to develop.

The question is: Is there any justification for the international sanctions besides their political significance?

[Read full CounterPunch article by Fragkiska Megaloudi]

Harrowing reality of North Korean labor camps

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Korean citizens who have survived the ordeal of North Korean political prison camps and escaped the regime emerge with harrowing tales of the compatriots and family members who didn’t make it – most killed off by the cruel combination of prolonged near-starvation and slavish forced labor.

“Conditions are horrific. People are worked for 14, 15 or 16 hours every day with just a handful of corn to live on and they are intentionally starved and worked to death,” said Suzanne Scholte, chairman of the North Korea freedom coalition, a group of organizations based in Washington DC assisting defectors and campaigning for improved human rights. “Torture is common, there is no medical aid and the sanitation is horrible. They wear the torn uniforms of old prisoners and sleep crammed together in a room.”

North Korea denies the existence of vast political prison camps, but according to a 2014 UN special commission report, a combination of satellite imagery and extensive human testimony proves they are still in operation and are used to perpetrate “unspeakable atrocities” on hapless citizens, who simply disappear with no word to their families even if they subsequently die in detention.

The UN reported systematic starvation, torture, rape and many executions at such camps, which hold an estimated total of 80,000 to 120,000 prisoners in the most wretched conditions.  “The commission estimates that hundreds of thousands of political prisoners have perished in these camps over the past five decades,” the report said.

A 2009 legal report from South Korea cited prisoners being fed starvation rations of a few ounces of rotten corn and some kind of thin “salt soup”. “They lose their teeth, their gums turn black, their bones weaken and, as they age, they hunch over at the waist … they live and die in rags, without soap, socks or underwear,” the Washington Post reported at the time.

Former prisoners sentenced to just 18 months hard labor recalled fellow inmates not surviving amid the constant beatings and malnutrition. They often work in the fields, logging in forests, down mines with no safety measures or crude factories where injuries are rampant, Scholte said.

And in another account, a man who was arrested as a teenager trying to sneak out of North Korea, Hyuk Kim, recalled subsisting at a lower-level labor camp by catching rats, drying them out and eating the flesh raw. “If you tried to cook the rats, the guards would smell the meat or fire, catch you and beat you mercilessly,” the 33-year-old defector later said.

 [The Guardian]

US State Dept responds to American student being sentenced by North Korea to 15 years hard labor

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After North Korea sentenced an American student, Otto Frederick Warmbier, to 15 years of hard labor for removing a political banner from a hotel, the U.S. State Department fired back Wednesday, saying the punishment doesn’t fit the alleged crime.

Greg Scarlatoui, executive director for the Committee for Humans Rights in North Korea said Warmbier may be forced to work in agriculture, which happened with other American prisoners.  “He may spend his day planting apple trees. It will be fairly grueling forced labor,” Scarlatoui said.

The sentence of 15 years of hard labor against University of Virginia student Otto Frederick Warmbier is “unduly harsh,” State Department spokesman Mark Toner said, calling for his release. The United States urges North Korea “to pardon him and to grant him special amnesty and immediate release on humanitarian grounds,” Toner said.

The State Department spokesman accused North Korea of politicizing the arrests of U.S. citizens, saying, “It’s increasingly clear from its very public treatment of these cases.”

Former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson told The New York Times he met with two North Korean diplomats on Tuesday to lobby for American student Otto Warmbier’s release. Richardson is a longtime diplomat and a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

Ohio Gov. John Kasich has also been pushing behind the scenes for Warmbier’s release, an aid to the governor told CNN.

Analysts say it’s possible Warmbier will be released at some point, but very likely Kim Jong Un’s regime could use the student as leverage — and will want a VIP from the United States to travel to North Korea to get him.

[CNN]

American student Otto Warmbier receives harsh sentence in North Korea

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North Korea’s highest court sentenced an American tourist to 15 years in prison with hard labor on Wednesday for subversion.

Otto Warmbier, a University of Virginia undergraduate, was convicted and sentenced in a one-hour trial in North Korea’s Supreme Court. He was charged with subversion under Article 60 of North Korea’s criminal code. The court held that he had committed a crime “pursuant to the U.S. government’s hostile policy toward (the North), in a bid to impair the unity of its people after entering it as a tourist.”

The 21-year-old from Wyoming, Ohio, said he had tried to steal a propaganda banner as a trophy.

Trials for foreigners facing similar charges in North Korea are generally short and punishments severe. Warmbier was arrested as he tried to leave the country in early January. He was in North Korea with a New Year’s tour group.

Warmbier had been staying at the Yanggakdo International Hotel. It is common for sections of tourist hotels to be reserved for North Korean staff and off-limits to foreigners.

[CBS]

UN rights envoy urges prosecution of Kim Jong Un

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The United Nations human rights investigator for North Korea called Monday for leader Kim Jong Un and senior officials in the country to be prosecuted for committing crimes against humanity.

Marzuki Darusman told the U.N. Human Rights Council that North Korea is devoting huge resources to developing nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction while many of its citizens lack sufficient food and others work in “slave-like conditions”.

The delegation of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) boycotted the session. The European Union, United States and Japan supported Darusman’s call for accountability, although they did not refer to Kim by name.

Ambassador Robert King, U.S. envoy on North Korea, denounced the “egregious human rights violations committed by the DPRK” and said that the United States would work with other countries to “seek ways to advance accountability for those most responsible”.

China, Pyongyang’s ally, took a more conciliatory tone, saying human rights issues should not be politicized and calling for a comprehensive approach to dealing with North Korea.

Darusman, referring to a report he issued last month, said: “I would like to reiterate my appeal to the international community to move forward to ensure accountability of the senior leadership of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, including that of Mr. Kim Jong Un.”

This could be via the International Criminal Court (ICC) but failing consensus among major powers, North Korea’s leadership could be prosecuted in a third country, he said.

[Reuters]