Category: Humanitarian Aid and Relief

Naturalized US citizen arrested for spying in North Korea

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A man who claims he is a naturalized American citizen, and who apparently has been detained since October in North Korea on spying charges, has asked the South Korean or US government to rescue him.

Kim Dong Chul, believed to be in his 60s, and who lived in Fairfax, Virginia, said he spied on behalf of ‘South Korean conservative elements’ and was arrested in October. ‘I was tasked with taking photos of military secrets and scandalous scenes,’ Kim told CNN in an interview.

CNN reports that North Korean officials said Kim was a U.S. citizen arrested on espionage charges. (Kim’s US passport is shown below.)

There have been no recent reports either from Pyongyang or Washington of any American having been detained.

Another North American still being held in North Korea is 60-year-old Canadian pastor, jailed for life with hard labor. Hyeon Soo Lim spends eight hours a day, six days a week digging holes in an orchard in a prison camp where he is the sole inmate.

Lim, who came to Canada from South Korea in 1986, is a clergyman known for his caring and compassion. “I wasn’t originally a laborer, so the labor was hard at first”, Lim said in Korean during a Newsweek interview.

While charges against Lim had lacked specifics, the pastor said he believes they stemmed from his continued criticism of the North’s three generations of leaders. “I admit I’ve violated this government’s authority, system and order”, Lim said in the interview.  “I hope I can go home someday”, Lim said. “I miss my family.”

[CNN; Metro (UK)]

Statistics on South Koreans outliving North Koreans

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South Koreans on average outlive North Koreans by some 12 years, partly because North Korea’s high infant mortality rate is about seven times higher than the South’s, according to South Korean government data.

Data released by Statistics Korea placed life expectancy rate for South Koreans at 78.2 years for men and 85 years for women. In comparison, the rate for North Korean men was 66 years and 72.7 years for women.

The infant mortality rate, one of the biggest reasons behind the life expectancy disparity, was measured at 22.0 deaths of infants under age 1 per 1,000 live births in North Korea, a figure 7.6 times higher than in the South.

According to the Korea Foundation for International Healthcare’s 2013 data, less than 10 percent of North Korean obstetricians and gynecologists have been trained in newborn care. Family doctors in small regional clinics are not trained in emergency obstetric and newborn care, childbirth or gynecology.

Poor sterilization of medical equipment also leads to infection of patients in North Korean medical facilities, data showed. In the country, 15 percent of women who died due to complications from pregnancy or childbirth died from sepsis, a whole-body inflammation caused by an infection.

[Korea Herald]

The Korean Reunification guessing game

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Everyone has his or her own prediction for Korean reunification. Futurologist George Friedman thinks it will happen before 2030 while Ian Bremmer of the Eurasia Group believes that reunification may be just around the corner. The CIA predicted that reunification will take place in 10-15 years – but that was in its global survey published in 2000. Oops!

The two Koreas live on different planets. North Korea remains autocratic while South Korea has become democratic. Social life south of the DMZ is modern and open to the world while life in the north is relatively isolated and parochial. In the economic realm, meanwhile, the two countries have experienced perhaps the greatest divergence. The gross national income of South Korea is now 44 times that of North Korea. The trade volume of the south is 144 times that of the north.

So, because of these stark political, social, and economic differences, the question of when the two countries will reunify is largely irrelevant. Government representatives from Pyongyang and Seoul met in mid-December and couldn’t agree on anything, not even on whether to meet again. For the time being then, forget about any discussions on reunification.

North Korea specialist Andrei Lankov argues that North Korea’s collapse will come unexpectedly, and South Korea should prepare for this eventuality. “Maybe the best way to describe this situation is to compare North Korea’s geopolitical neighborhood to a large city where disastrous earthquakes are known to be possible,” he writes for NK News. “In such a city, all responsible authorities should remember that another quake is likely, so all necessary preparations have to be made and all necessary plans have to be drafted and systematically kept up to date.”

[CounterPunch]

10 bizarre things that may or may not be true about North Korea

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North Korea is the focus of many unproven facts, rumors and speculation, amongst them:

1. North Korea has the largest military in the world (including active, reserved and paramilitary) with 7.7 million servicemen and women. The US have an estimated 1.5 million active military personnel.
2. Marijuana in North Korea is not illegal and can be bought at markets
3. The world’s largest stadium is in North Korea’s capital, Pyongyang – it can seat 150,000.
4. North Korea bases its calendar on Kim Il Sung’s date of birth: 15 April 1912. So north of the 38th parallel, the year is 103, not 2015.
5. During the 1990s, all teachers were required to learn the accordion.
6. Due to a lack of fertilizer, North Korea was forced to use human feces as manure on crops.
7. According to his official biography, Kim Jong Il allegedly learned to walk aged 3 weeks.
8. North Korea has three television channels – two of which are only available on weekends, while the other can only be watched in the evening.
9. Elections take place every five years but there is only one option.
10. Blue denim jeans are illegal in North Korea as denim represents capitalist America.

 [The Independent]

North Korea prisoners forced to work at nuclear test sites?

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Detainees at North Korea’s largest political prison camp could be deployed at Punggye-ri nuclear test site, but more monitoring is needed, a U.S. analyst said.

North Korea defense expert Joseph Bermudez said in a report issued jointly by the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea in Washington, D.C., and AllSource Analysis, that closer scrutiny is needed to determine whether or not prisoners are being forced to work at North Korea’s nuclear test site.

The defense analyst said North Korea’s military capability has been diminishing, owing to “obsolescence of equipment, difficulty in training, and lowering of standards for soldiers following the overall decline in nutritional status of the population.”

[UPI]

News about imprisoned Canadian pastor Hyeon Soo Lim

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Canadian diplomats were allowed to meet a Canadian pastor soon after he was sentenced to life in prison in North Korea last week and found him in good spirits and health, a church spokeswoman said on Sunday.

Hyeon Soo Lim, held by North Korea since February, was sentenced to hard labor for life for subversion on Wednesday, a ruling Canada called “unduly harsh.”

Lim, a Canadian citizen, had been doing humanitarian work in North Korea since 1997 and had visited the isolated country more than 100 times, according to his Toronto church, the 3,000-member Light Korean Presbyterian Church.

He cried when Canadian diplomats relayed his son’s message that “we’re all proud of you,” church spokeswoman Lisa Pak said.

Pak said after an emotional prayer meeting for Lim, which drew more than 1,000 churchgoers, that two consular officials from Canada’s embassy in Seoul and a translator met Lim on Friday. She also confirmed he had received medication for an unspecified health condition.

The church began a petition at the prayer meeting asking U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who is arranging a potential visit to North Korea, to seek Lim’s release.

[Reuters]

UN says China’s repatriation of North Korean defectors must end

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The United Nations Committee Against Torture has called for an immediate end to the forced repatriation of North Korean defectors in China.

The U.N. body said it is most concerned China is classifying North Korean defectors as illegal economic migrants, because this then justifies repatriation to North Korea where persecution, torture, as well as long detentions await returnees.

“Defectors face torture, arbitrary detention, rape, forced labor,” said George Tugushi, the Committee’s vice chairman, adding North Korean women who are impregnated by Chinese men are forced to undergo abortions upon repatriation. The committee said more than 100 cases of systemic torture and ill treatment have been filed with the U.N., and added the repatriation of North Korean victims of human trafficking must end without delay.

In a separate statement, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees called for access to North Korean defectors in China, so as to determine their status as refugees. The U.N. Commission of Inquiry previously has said China has forcibly returned tens of thousands of North Korean nationals who were most likely subjected to punishment upon their return.

In November, 10 North Korean defectors were taken into Chinese custody after being sent back from Vietnam, where it is likely they were seeking asylum at a South Korean embassy.

China has not responded to past queries regarding its decision to repatriate defectors.

[UPI]

North Korea sentences Canadian pastor to life sentence

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North Korea’s Supreme Court sentenced a Canadian pastor to life in prison with hard labor for what it called crimes against the state. Hyeon Soo Lim, who pastors the Light Korean Presbyterian Church in Toronto, was given the sentence after a 90-minute trial. He had been in detention since February.

Lim entered and left the court in handcuffs flanked by two public security officers in uniform. The handcuffs were removed in court during the trial. He kept his head bowed most of the time and answered questions in a subdued tone.

The crimes he was charged with included harming the dignity of the supreme leadership, trying to use religion to destroy the North Korean system, disseminating negative propaganda about the North to the overseas Koreans, and helping U.S. and the South Korean authorities lure and abduct North Korean citizens, along with aiding their programs to assist defectors from the North.

State prosecutors sought the death penalty. Lim’s lawyer asked the court to take into account the fact that Lim is a fellow Korean and that he had frankly confessed to everything the prosecution had brought up. Lim pleaded to be given a chance and said if the court gave him a chance he would not do anything bad again.

Lim’s relatives and colleagues have said he traveled on Jan. 31 as part of a regular humanitarian mission to North Korea where he supports a nursing home, a nursery and an orphanage. Lim, who is in his early 60s, has made more than 100 trips to North Korea since 1997.

North Korea has very strict rules against any missionary or religious activities that it sees as threatening the supremacy of its ruling regime. Merely leaving a Bible in a public place can lead to arrest and possibly severe punishment.

Former Kim bodyguard tells of beatings and starvation in North Korean prison camp

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Dozens of purple scars crisscross Lee Young-guk’s lower legs, many the result of beatings endured while imprisoned in North Korea’s most notorious prison camp. Removing his dentures, Lee shows just five or six original teeth, wonky and cracked; the only ones has left after countless punches to the head. Being hit with the butt of a rifle, he says, left him blind in one eye.

Lee was the bodyguard to Kim Jong Il for more than 10 years, before the late North Korean leader assumed power in 1994. A once loyal servant of the regime, Lee says he left Kim’s employment without issues. He realized he was not a nice man, but only after he traveled out of North Korea, and saw how other parts of the world functioned, did it become clear to him that Kim was a dictator.

Lee tried to escape but was captured while trying to defect to South Korea and thrown into the infamously brutal Yodok political camp. “If you are a political prisoner, Yodok’s main goal is to kill you,” he says. He remembers when he first arrived seeing inmates who looked like walking skeletons.

“It was tough enough that they barely fed me,” he says. “What was worse was they kept on beating me, and they executed people once a week, which we were forced to watch. You have to be mentally strong, then the cycle repeats itself.”

In the five years between being arrested in China and his release for good behavior, Lee says he lost almost half his body weight. He says inmates were so weak from the lack of food, they were rarely able to life their heads unless ordered to do so by guards. If they were unable to complete their physical work for the day, Lee says they weren’t fed.

Lee speaks of the flower garden at Yodok, a euphemistic phrase used by defectors to describe mass graves at the camps. “Yodok’s flower garden has thousands, even tens of thousands of people in it. Lines and lines of dead bodies. I had to carry them, bodies with fluids still flowing out of them and bury them where the guards told us.”

Lee is adamant North Korean leaders must be held accountable from crimes committed against its own people.

[CNN]

China, Russia fail to derail UN meeting on North Korean dismal human rights

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China, Russia, Venezuela and Angola failed on Thursday to stop the United Nations Security Council from holding its second meeting on human rights in North Korea, which has been accused by a U.N. inquiry of abuses comparable to Nazi-era atrocities.

China called a vote to stop the meeting, but lost nine to four. Nine votes are needed to win a procedural vote and the five permanent members – China, Russia, the United States, Britain and France – cannot use their vetoes.

The 15-member council added the situation in North Korea – including human rights – to its agenda and held its first meeting on the issue a year ago, despite objections at the time by China, a firm ally of North Korea, and Russia. Previously, the council’s discussion of North Korea was limited to its nuclear weapons program.

The 193-member U.N. General Assembly has urged the U.N. Security Council to consider referring North Korea to the International Criminal Court after a U.N. Commission of Inquiry detailed wide-ranging abuses in the impoverished Asian state. China is likely to veto such a move, diplomats said.

[Reuters]