Category: Humanitarian Aid and Relief

Kim Jong Il’s bodyguard now a human rights advocate

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Lee Young Guk’s time as bodyguard came to an end in 1988. He had to leave – not because he didn’t do a good job, but because his cousin got the job of Kim Jong Il’s personal driver. It was prohibited for two members of the same family to work directly for the Kims.

For the first time in over a decade, Lee left Pyongyang, and was shocked by the poverty in the rest of North Korea. “I saw that basically nothing had changed in the outside world while I was gone,” Lee said. “People were still doing as badly as they were before: They were still going hungry or even starving.”

That’s when Lee first started doubting the regime. He used his professional past to get out of the country.. In 1994 Lee got a visa to China, from where he intended to flee to South Korea. His plan did not work, as he was sold out by a man who had promised to help him. He was returned to North Korea and sent to the Yodok camp: the infamous penal labor colony No. 15.

“Prisoners were treated like animals,” Lee said. “No – worse than animals.” Lee said he ate mice and snakes to survive; there was hardly any other food. “Every two weeks, many prisoners were selected and executed,” Lee said. “The rest of us had to watch, from maybe 10 meters away.”

Lee spent four years and seven months at the camp before he was released. When security forces tried to arrest him again, he managed to get away and flee across the river that marks the border with China.

[Deutsche Welle]

Draft agreement by US and China on UN Resolution on North Korea

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The U.S. and China reached an agreement over a new United Nations Security Council resolution that would punish North Korea for its recent rocket launch and nuclear test, according to diplomats from two Security Council member countries.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry met in Washington and said they were making “significant” progress on new sanctions, without giving details.

China’s participation is essential as it is North Korea’s biggest trading partner, providing most of the isolated country’s energy and food. Any draft resolution would have to be voted on in the Security Council, where the U.S., Russia, China, France and the U.K. wield veto power.

That vote could be taken this week, according to one of the diplomats, who asked not to be identified because he isn’t authorized to discuss the issue publicly.

Reuters cited unnamed diplomats as saying the U.S. is seeking Chinese support to curb North Korea’s access to international ports, and to tighten restrictions on North Korean bank routes to the international financial system.

[Bloomberg]

As tensions grow on North Korean border, US to fund defector groups

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UPI is reporting that a number of representatives of North Korean defector groups operating out of South Korea believe they will soon receive financial support from the State Department.

While UPI does not identify the individual organizations, it claims that representatives of these groups met with State Department officials in January and were told the White House was willing to “commit significant funds to defector organizations that can work toward internal regime change in the North.”

Among the programs that may be funded are airdrop operations using balloons, which provide information on the outside world to North Korea, as well as groups within the country that try to identify potential dissident leaders.

Pro-democracy groups have been working near the North Korean border for years, attempting to break the information wall set up by the Kim regime to block out the reality of the outside world.

[Read full article at Breitbart]

North Korean markets thrive

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Private markets began taking hold in North Korea following a devastating famine in the 1990s, when the state distribution system broke down.

Since 2004, the size of spaces used as markets has significantly expanded, as have bus depots supporting the delivery network, says Curtis Melvin, a researcher who studies publicly available satellite imagery of the country at the Johns Hopkins School for Advanced International Studies in Washington.

“This didn’t start under Kim Jong Un, but there’s been a lot of growth under him,” said Melvin, referring to North Korea’s young leader, who took power following the death in 2011 of his father, Kim Jong Il.

Using servi-cha, a rice vendor who needs to replenish supplies when none are locally available can phone a wholesaler in another city and place an order. The wholesaler delivers rice to the local depot, where a bus ships it to the buyer’s town.

To pay for the rice, the buyer visits a small money transfer business, which takes the payment and calls a partner business in the seller’s town – one in 10 North Koreans has a cellphone – who confirms the deal and hands cash to the seller.

By reliably accepting cash in advance, servi-cha have helped foster the concept of trust in business in North Korea, said another defector who stays in touch with family in the North and asked to be anonymous for the safety of her relatives still living there.

“Logistics with buses are like vessels which keep pumping blood around the country and stop people from starving to death,” says a defector. “This is something that the planned economy can’t do.”

[Reuters]

The night I helped my mother escape North Korea

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Extracts from “The Girl with Seven Names: A North Korean Defector’s Story” by Hyeonseo Lee:

I set my phone to silent, dressed myself entirely in black and walked calmly and purposefully through the hotel lobby in Changbai. Outside I hailed a cab and directed the driver to take me to the point where the town ended, about 200 yards from the river. I crouched down behind an old garden wall and waited. The place was cold and damp and smelled of molding leaves and animal droppings. I peeped over the wall and saw North Korean border patrols passing on the opposite bank of the river.

[My brother] Min-ho had told me he would lead our mother waist-high through the water and help her up one of the ladders on the Chinese bank. The water must be freezing.

After over an hour’s wait, my phone was buzzing. Min-ho’s voice was fast and tense: “We’ve had a problem.” Quickly Min-ho explained that just as he and my mother had been about to cross they had walked straight into a border guard. Luckily he was someone Min-ho did business with.

Min-ho said he and my mother would try again to cross just before dawn. I returned to the hotel and tried to doze for a while in my clothes. I must have drifted off, because the next thing I knew the phone was buzzing next to my face. “We’ll be there at six,” Min-ho said. I jumped off the bed. Minutes later, as I was in the taxi, he called again. “We’re across. We’re hiding in the derelict house.”

I was elated. I had not seen my dear mother in 11 years, nine months and nine days. Now I was minutes away from her. … In the half-light I saw a strained, old face and a body moving very stiffly. Min-ho was behind her, protective and guiding with his arm around her. I ran to meet them, but there was no time for a reunion. “We have to go,” I said.

I pulled out the clothes I had brought for them to help them blend in on the Chinese side. “Put these on. Over what you’re wearing. Quick.” Once they were dressed I led them towards the taxi. “Act normal, but don’t speak. He’ll think you’re locals.”

My heart went into overdrive. I didn’t remember there being so many guards. They were just 50 yards away from me

We sat in silence for the 10-minute ride. [Once inside my hotel room] for a moment we looked at each other. Half a lifetime had passed since the three of us had been together. No one could speak. Then my mother broke down, weeping uncontrollably. Over her shoulder, Min-ho’s face looked immensely sad. He’d shared her pain all these years. And soon he would say goodbye to her and probably never see her again. Read more

North Korean defectors now South Korean TV stars

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North Korea is a mysterious place — even to South Koreans. Curiosity about life in the north has sparked a slew of new South Korean TV shows.

  • There is the Amazing Race-type program, in which North Korean women are paired up with South Korean men to take on various challenges.
  • There are the talk shows, featuring panels of North Korean defectors talking about their dangerous escapes and difficult lives.
  • And then there are the dating shows, in which North Korean women are matched up with eligible South Korean bachelors.

Sokeel Park, research director for Liberty in North Korea, an international nonprofit that helps North Korean refugees resettle, says the shows are, “for the first time, exposing South Korean audiences at a mass scale” to North Koreans who aren’t their infamous political leaders. Park says the programs are helping South Koreans get a better sense of the North Korean experience.

“They’re talking about the growth of markets and new technologies in North Korea,” Park says. “So gradually, the South Korean audiences are getting exposed to new kinds of stories or new characters from North Korea that previously there was just widespread ignorance of.”        Read more

[NPR]

North Korean refugee makes second application for temporary asylum in Russia

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A refugee who fled a labor camp in North Korea — and faces almost certain death if deported back — has applied for a second time for temporary asylum in Russia.

The 36-year-old, whose name is being withheld due to safety concerns, is unlikely to receive asylum but activists will continue to appeal until he receives some sort of status or can be moved to a third country, human rights campaigner Svetlana Gannushkina said.

He still faces the threat of being deported or kidnapped by North Korean intelligence, which has seized North Koreans in Russia before, she said. In total the refugee has so far had one request for temporary asylum and two requests for permanent asylum rejected.

Of 211 North Koreans who appealed to the Russian migration service between 2004 and 2014, only two received asylum, while 90 received temporary asylum for one year, according to Gannushkina’s Citizen Assistance group.

North Korea and Russia signed an agreement in November to deport each other’s undocumented citizens. Although Russia has said those at risk of persecution would not be returned under the treaty, the migration service has previously ruled that this man did not prove that his life would be under particular threat in North Korea.

A November decision to refuse him temporary asylum seen by RBC newspaper said a significant number of people face persecution there and his “fears of being shot are connected only with North Korea employing the same punishment against all defectors”.

A 2014 UN investigation found that forcibly repatriated North Koreans are commonly subjected to torture, detention, execution or sexual violence.

The man first fled North Korea during a famine in 1997 and spent 10 years in China before he was deported and sent to a labor camp. He managed to escape to China again and crossed into Russia in 2013, where he was arrested and only allowed to apply for asylum after a hunger strike.

[The Guardian]

The detention of Otto Warmbier in North Korea

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The detention of Otto Warmbier, a 21-year-old University of Virginia economics major who had chosen to spend his New Year’s vacation in North Korea, comes at a particularly difficult, or opportune, time, depending on how you choose to interpret it. Just days after he was arrested, North Korea conducted what it said was its first H-bomb test.

According to Warmbier’s tour agent, Young Pioneer Tours, he was almost on his plane home when officials pulled him aside, took him into a special room at the Pyongyang airport and placed him under arrest for allegedly committing an as-yet-undisclosed hostile act against the state. North Korea says he is under investigation and acted with the “tacit connivance of the U.S. government and under its manipulation.”

Initial announcements by North Korea rarely say much about the actual crime, and linking it to the U.S. government in their first statement to the world through state-run media is highly uncommon. North Korea and the United States are still technically at war and have no diplomatic relations.

Warmbier is still under lock-and-key, possibly in the relative comfort of the Yanggakdo, a tourist hotel where his group had stayed that has previously been used to keep detainees until they are deported or more formal legal measures are taken.

Though not a tourist, one more American, missionary Kim Dong Chul, believed to be a naturalized citizen of Korean descent, is reportedly in North Korean custody along with a Canadian-Korean missionary who is serving a life sentence.

[AP]

American student in North Korean custody

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Otto Frederick Warmbier, a 21-year-old University of Virginia economics student, was reportedly seized at Pyongyang airport before his scheduled flight to China on January 2. The Korean-language state broadcaster KCNA said Warmbier “aimed to destroy the country’s unity” and was being “manipulated by the U.S. government.”

Unconfirmed reports from a passenger suggested the American was dragged away by armed guards. The witness also told the U.K.’s Independent daily that Warmbier’s tour group “were up until four or five in the morning drinking vodka and having fun.”

According to Adam Cathcart, a North Korea specialist at the University of Leeds, in England, while the post-detention treatment of individuals is always political and used for domestic and international propaganda, “the arrests themselves are usually triggered by behavior that the North Korean authorities can classify as illegal.”

Most recently these include Kenneth Bae, a Korean-American missionary sentenced to 15 years of hard labor for proselytizing, and Matthew Todd Miller, a 25-year-old American whom the North Koreans accused of espionage. Both were subsequently released.

[TIME]

China to join UN resolution for North Korea sanctions?

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South Korea has stepped up its efforts to enlist Beijing’s support for the adoption of stringent sanctions to punish North Korea’s recent nuclear test during talks.

“Beijing said that as North Korea’s nuclear test violated UNSC resolutions and the 2005 joint declaration (of the six party talks), China would participate in the UNSC resolution,” Yoon Soon-gu, director general of the international policy bureau at Seoul’s Defense Ministry, told reporters following his talks with his Chinese counterpart Guan Youfei.

“During the talks, Beijing also said that it has publicly stated that it is absolutely opposed to North Korea’s development of nuclear arms and its nuclear test, and that it delivered such a message when it called in Pyongyang’s ambassador to Beijing,” he added.

During the talks, the Chinese side said it would join a new U.N. Security Council sanctions resolution, which is in the making. China has so far been seen reluctant over the adoption of excessively harsh sanctions against its traditional ally. It has called on Seoul and other countries to exercise “restraint and caution” in responding to the North’s provocation.

China is viewed as the most crucial player for anti-Pyongyang sanctions, as it wields the greatest influence over the North that is heavily dependent on it for trade and various forms of aid including the supply of oil. The trade volume between China and the North accounts for more than 90 percent of Pyongyang’s overseas trade. The North is also known to secure 100 percent of its oil from China through a pipeline linking its border city of Sinuiju to Dandong in northeastern China.

[Korea Herald]