Category: Humanitarian Aid and Relief

Canadian pastor still held in North Korea

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A Canadian pastor of South Korean descent is still being interrogated in North Korea, where he has been held for almost a year, his fellow pastor has told VOA.

Rev. Hyeon-soo Lim, who leads the Light Presbyterian Church in Toronto, Canada, has been detained by the North Korean government and has not been in contact with family or friends since January 31.

His fellow pastor, Lisa Pak, said Canadian officials have visited Pyongyang and met with North Korean authorities twice since Lim’s detention, but have not made any meaningful progress.

Back in July, Lim made his first public appearance at a news conference in Pyongyang. Reading from a statement, he confessed to activities aimed at toppling the North Korean government and to violating the country’s Ebola quarantine policy.

His fellow Christians believe that to be a forced confession by the North.

Lim traveled into North Korea from China on January 30, to aid projects established by his church in the northeastern city of Rajin. The projects include aiding an orphanage, a nursery and a nursing home. Lim had previously visited the North more than 100 times.

Poor harvest could spell hard winter for rural North Koreans

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North Koreans are hunkering down for a harsh winter that some fear could be made worse by a poor harvest following summer floods.

In rural areas, people are out each day on snow-covered roads pulling cartloads of firewood and cabbage and stockpiling whatever else they can for the months ahead. Most have just finished preparing their kimchi, the pickled and spiced cabbage that is a staple of the Korean diet.

To get through the winter, many rural North Koreans will use charcoal braziers or burn wood or corn husks for heat, which can lead to asphyxiation if homes shut tight against the subzero temperatures are not ventilated properly.

They will also need to stretch out their supply of kimchi, government rations and whatever they can grow in their “kitchen gardens” — small plots of land that families are allowed to maintain to grow food for their own needs. If they are lucky enough to have a chicken, they may have an egg or two. In some regions, they might have access to a very small amount of meat and fish.

The combination of the limited variety of foods that are available and the stresses on the body from the frigid weather creates major hardship for most North Koreans. Read more

[Japan Times]

North Korean lean season from March to August

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Winter is generally not the toughest time of year as far as the North Korean food supply goes. North Korea’s “lean season” is from March to August, when supplies are depleted and the next harvest is still growing.

If the main crops of rice, potatoes and corn are thin and the winter crop — mainly wheat — is poor, that could make the coming lean season even leaner in a country where an estimated 80 percent of people still do not have an adequately varied and nutritious diet. According to the U.N.’s World Food Programme, North Koreans consume 25 percent less protein and 30 percent less fat than the amount required for a healthy life.

Darlene Tymo, the WFP’s country director in North Korea, said that although official statistics from the North Korean government are not out yet, the main harvest is believed to have been worse than last year’s. Especially remote and impoverished areas — particularly the mountainous provinces of Chagang and Ryanggang along the border with China — therefore could be looking at a hard winter ahead. “All indications are that it will be down from last year and the question is what percentage down,” Tymo said in an interview at the WFP’s office in Pyongyang.

“The big problem that remains — and I think it’s particularly difficult in the winter — is the lack of diversity in the diet. Outside of the capital, it is a population that very seriously lacks in proteins and fats, and certainly in vitamins and minerals,” Tymo said.

[Japan Times]

US and 8 other countries call for new UN meeting on North Korea human rights

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The United States and eight allies on the United Nations Security Council called for reviving discussions on human rights in North Korea, which has been accused by a U.N. inquiry of abuses comparable to Nazi-era atrocities.

“Chile, France, Jordan, Lithuania, Malaysia, New Zealand, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States have requested another meeting of the Security Council to examine conditions in DPRK (North Korea) and their effects on international peace and security,” Hagar Chemali, spokeswoman for the U.S. mission to the United Nations, said in a statement.

Chemali said the United States, which holds the council’s rotating presidency this month, would work quickly to schedule the meeting.

Last month China’s U.N. ambassador, Liu Jieyi, said it would be a “bad idea” for the 15-nation Security Council to hold such a meeting, adding that the council “is not about human rights.” China is likely to veto any Security Council bid to refer North Korea to the ICC, diplomats said.

A year ago this month the 193-member U.N. General Assembly 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 hermit Asian state.

[Reuters]

Lack of opportunities source of discontent for North Korean defectors

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According to one survey, 50% of North Korean defectors described their status in the North Korea as “upper” or “middle” class, but only 26% said they fell into this category when living in South Korea.

The vast majority – 73% – described their new status as lower class.

Andrei Lankov, a historian at Kookmin University in Seoul who has also studied in Pyongyang, says the problem is that skills acquired in the North are insufficient for the modern South Korean economy. For example, doctors who defect often fail to get jobs in South Korean medicine.

In his opinion, this has implications for unification whenever (and if ever) it happens. “Can a graduate of a North Korean medical school hope to get a license in post-unification Korea if all his (or, more likely, her) medical knowledge is taken from poorly translated Soviet textbooks that are a few decades old?” he asks in a story for the NK News website.

[BBC]                                             

An unsettling mystery washing up on Japan’s shores

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Over the past two months, at least 12 wooden boats have been found adrift or on the coast, carrying chilling cargo — the decaying bodies of 22 people, police and Japan’s coast guard said. The first boat was found in October, then a series of boats were found in November.

Their best guess so far is that the ships are from North Korea. One clue pointing that direction is Korean lettering on the hull of a boat containing 10 decomposing bodies, one of three boats that were found adrift off the city of Wajima on the west coast of Japan on November 20.

“There’s no doubt that these boats are North Korean,” John Nilsson-Wright, head of the Asia program at the Chatham House policy institute, told CNN after looking at pictures of the boats. Wright said the lettering on the boats he looked at is Korean — or Hangul — text and the “primitive” boats and reference to the Korean People’s Army makes it “very logical” to assume the boats are from North Korea.

Yoshihiko Yamada, a maritime expert, told NHK the vessels bear a “striking resemblance” to those used by defectors from North Korea.

Wright believes it is people trying to flee the regime, although he said it’s impossible to be sure with the limited information available.

“What we do know is that for those people living outside of (North Korean capital) Pyongyang … life remains extraordinarily hard, and it may be an economic necessity as much as a desire for political freedom (that is) encouraging some people in the North to try and leave the country.”

He added that defectors could be taking the more dangerous route across the Sea of Japan — also known as the East Sea — because traditional routes, like crossing the border into China, are now policed and could be harder to use.

[CNN]

How South Korea screens North Korean refugees

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South Korea has spent decades screening refugees from its hostile northern neighbor but some enemy agents manage to get through, underlining the challenges Western nations face in dealing with a far larger influx of people escaping the war in Syria.

Seoul uses lie detectors, interrogation and a screening process that includes keeping people in solitary confinement to catch North Korean agents among genuine asylum seekers.

Still, between 2003 and 2013, of the 49 North Korean spies apprehended in the South, 21 entered the country posing as refugees, according to the country’s justice ministry.

“The question of spies slipping through is always a problem, and we need to make the process more meticulous and advanced,” said Shin Kyung-min, the ranking opposition member of the South Korean parliament’s intelligence committee. “But it’s not like we can stop taking in North Korean defectors because of that,” Shin told Reuters.

Around 1,000 North Koreans defect to the South every year and are held for up to 180 days while they are screened. If they clear that, the refugees are transferred to a resettlement complex, which they cannot leave, for another 12 weeks to help them adjust to life in the South.

New North Korean arrivals to the South, who typically enter via a third country, are brought to a facility in Siheung on the southern outskirts of Seoul. There, they are separated for questioning on their backgrounds and lives in the North, spending time in solitary but comfortable rooms.

No exception is made for families or children, who are taken from their parents and face similar questioning, according to a civic group.   Read more

[Reuters]

A North Korean refugee’s experience being interrogated by South Korea

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“It was like writing my autobiography,” said a 59-year-old female defector who spent three months at the South Korean interrogation center from 2012 and asked that she not be named because she is not supposed to talk about the process.

“I talked about my whole life in chronological order and got checked,” she told Reuters.

“I came here to change my life so there was nothing that I was afraid of.”

Lie detectors are used as a basic tool, as many defectors from the isolated and impoverished North are undocumented, a former National Intelligence Service official said.

A typical interrogation starts with the defector’s address, and the program has built a database with locations, names and other details to compare with their story. The program has succeeded in weeding out about 120 bogus defectors and 14 spies, local media reports last year said, citing intelligence officials. Fake defectors are believed mainly to consist of ethnic Korean citizens of mainland China. The numbers could not be independently verified.

Those found not to be North Korean defectors are deported, while those determined to be spies are prosecuted, according to South Korean authorities.    Read more

[Reuters]

Defector: North Korean education consisted of learning how to worship the Kims

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Ga Eul, a peppy, English-speaking 23-year-old starts out, “I was born in January of 1991. Until 2005, my education consisted of learning how to worship Kim Il-Sung and Kim Jung-Il.”

As a middle-schooler, Ga Eul dreamed of becoming a math teacher. She came from an upper-middle-class family—her father managed a clothing factory and her mother was a farmer—and her parents scrounged up the money to pay for a private tutor. But when Ga Eul’s extended relatives were caught trying to escape from North Korea, she wrote, “My dream of becoming a math teacher was not possible anymore. My family members were branded enemies of the state.” Ga Eul was told that she wouldn’t be able to join the military—a key step to getting good jobs in North Korea—and neither would her children.

Ga Eul and her mother successfully escaped North Korea after receiving this news, but her brother and father were caught en route, in China, which deports defectors back to North Korea. Ga Eul’s brother, who was a teenager at the time, only spent a month in jail, but her father was sent to a political prison camp. The family hasn’t heard from him since 2006.

Nowadays her brother, Ye Jun, a construction worker, has plenty to eat. Every month or so, Ga Eul speaks with Ye Jun on the phone; like many North Koreans living near China, he uses a smuggled phone and spotty Chinese phone service to call South Korea.

Between money from Ga Eul’s scholarship and her mother’s job at a Chinese restaurant, the two women send roughly $500 per month to North Korea, of which about $200 gets to Ye Jun—the rest is siphoned off by the brokers.

In addition to spending this money on clothing and gadgets from the market, Ye Jun is saving up for a bigger goal: This year, he will attempt once again to escape to South Korea. If he’s caught, the 25-year-old is likely to suffer the same fate as his father.

[Mother Jones]

Seven North Korean refugees apprehended in Thailand

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Seven North Korean defectors have been arrested on the Mekong River in Nong Khai for illegally entering Thailand, a senior immigration police officer said.

The four men and three women aged between 22 and 75 were apprehended on Tuesday night, said Pol Col Panlop Suriyakul na Ayutthaya, chief of Nong Khai immigration police, during a media briefing in the northeast province.

Kyodo News reported none were carrying passports and confirmed through a translator they were from North Korea. They were charged with illegal entry and later handed over to Ban Due police station.

Many North Koreans fleeing their country have entered Thailand illegally through its northeastern borders in recent years, but Thai authorities have not repatriated them to North Korea on humanitarian grounds.

[Read full Bangkok Post article]