Category: Humanitarian Aid and Relief

Suicide rates high amongst North Korean defectors

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Statistics gathered in South Korea indicate that a startling number of defectors from North Korea end up taking their own lives. This is the darker side to the stories of those who flee their homeland.

Over the past ten years, 6% to 7% of defectors who’ve died have been suicides.

But this year, there’s been a big rise. According to the ministry, 14% of deaths among defectors have been suicides.

There are a number of factors involved. One is that the home they’ve left is close but unreachable. Another is that their new economic reality can be very different from the glamorized life portrayed in the South Korean soap operas smuggled into the North.

Defectors get three months’ training when they arrive but critics of the system say that’s not enough to learn new skills. Some Christian groups provide vocational training and say that what works best is training in simple but useful skills like making coffee to serve in a cafe.

[BBC]

Kenneth Bae, detained 2 years in North Korea, releasing book

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Kenneth Bae, a U.S. citizen who was detained in North Korea for two years before his release last November, plans to tell his story in a book. “Not Forgotten: The True Story of My Imprisonment in North Korea” will be released next spring.

Bae, a Christian missionary and pastor from the Seattle area, moved to China in 2006. He began leading tours to North Korea in 2010. He was arrested in 2012 while leading a tour group to a special economic zone and sentenced to 15 years of hard labor for alleged anti-government activities.

Bae suffered medical issues in detention. He was freed along with one other American detainee after a mission to the reclusive Communist country by James Clapper, the top U.S. intelligence official.

[SFGate]

Charity sneaking spy equipment into North Korea endangers Christians worldwide

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Was a Christian non-governmental organization funded by the Pentagon, with Congress fully briefed on the plan, used to smuggle spy equipment into North Korea?

The story goes something like this: in 2004 the Pentagon, fired up by the need to “protect the country” post 9/11, was keen on muscling in on the CIA’s virtual monopoly on strategic intelligence collection, including on North Korea.

[Devised was] a scheme to smuggle electronic monitoring equipment and other spyware into top priority target North Korea. … A religious charity called Humanitarian International Services Group (HISG) was developed [to enable] the smuggling of monitoring equipment into North Korea under cover of shipments of used clothing.

The HISG charity was funded by the Pentagon to the tune of an estimated $15 million during the course of the operation. In a test run the HISG charity managed to successfully conceal a large number of Bibles in a hidden compartment at the bottom of a shipping container topped up with used winter clothing, a highly prized commodity for starving and freezing North Koreans.

It is reported that short wave radios and some electronic devices intended to monitor nuclear programs as well as interfere with North Korean military communications were indeed smuggled into the country by unwitting Christian missionaries, aid workers, and Chinese smugglers, but whether they provided any critical intelligence is unclear. The operation continued to run during the Obama administration, finally winding down in 2013. While it is certain that George W. Bush’s Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld knew of and approved the operation, it is not known if either the Bush or Obama White Houses had explicit knowledge of it.

The United States government does in fact impose a ban on recruiting certain categories of individuals as spies. Clergymen are off limits partly for ethical reasons but more because the exposure of such a relationship would be devastating both to the religious organization itself and to the United States government. Use of the U.S. taxpayer-funded Peace Corps is also banned because exploiting it would potentially turn its volunteers into targets for terrorists.

[Read full American Conservative article by Philip Giraldi, a former CIA officer]

Joint Letter to UN Security Council re North Korean human rights

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Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and a number of other co-signers * are urging the UN Security Council to hold another formal session, prior to the end of 2015, on the human rights situation in North Korea.

Excerpts of the letter:
As you know, the UN Human Rights Council-mandated Commission of Inquiry on the human rights situation in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) concluded that “the long-standing and ongoing patterns of systematic and widespread violations” of human rights in the DPRK “meet the high threshold for proof of crimes against humanity.” The commission found that the nature, scale, and gravity of these abuses “reveal a state that does not have any parallel in the contemporary world.”

The commission concluded that the DPRK’s ongoing “open defiance of the United Nations makes this a case where decisive, yet carefully targeted action should be taken by the Security Council in support of the ongoing efforts of the remainder of the United Nations system.”

The human rights situation in the DPRK remains dire. In his most recent report to the UN General Assembly, the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the DPRK concluded that “grave violations continue to be committed on a large scale and particularly affect the most vulnerable groups.” The Special Rapporteur further called on the international community to “step up efforts to protect the population” of the DPRK and “hold the government accountable for those gross violations.”

In our view, it is critical that the UN Security Council hold another formal session on the situation in the DPRK this year. International pressure remains a critical avenue to press the DPRK to change. It is no coincidence that last year’s unprecedented engagement by the DPRK at the UN Human Rights Council and at the UN General Assembly followed concerted international attention to its human rights record.

[Co-signors include Amnesty International, Christian Solidarity Worldwide, Citizens’ Alliance for North Korean Human Rights (NKHR), Committee for Human Rights in North Korea (HRNK), Freedom House, Human Rights Watch, International Coalition to Stop Crimes Against Humanity in North Korea (ICNK), International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), and Jacob Blaustein Institute for the Advancement of Human Rights]

November 1 International Day of Prayer for the Persecuted Church

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Last year was the worst year for persecuted Christians in contemporary history; beatings, rapes, kidnappings and killings all increased. To let persecuted Christians know they are not forgotten and to educate Americans about persecution, Open Doors USA is turning to technology to reach into homes and churches across the nation via the ministry’s second live webcast.

During the live webcast, Open Doors USA will provide expert commentary and give viewers the chance to ask questions of persecuted Christians from Iraq and Kenya through a live chat. There will also be a rare interview with a North Korean woman who spent several years in a prison camp because of her faith.

[Christian News Wire]

Former army officer defects from North Korea

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The man is polite, but clearly anxious. He has asked us not to show his face, and to conceal his identity.

After more than two decades serving in North Korea’s military, he escaped from the country last year. He had to leave his wife and his two daughters behind.

His defection was driven by desperation. His family was struggling for food, and the only way he could see to provide for them was to cross the border to China and earn money to send back. During his first attempt he was caught, but before it was clear he intended to cross the border. He says he was beaten for 15 days, his family rounded up and questioned, the friend he had been traveling with taken away.

He resolved to ‎try again, but this time he knew it would be his last chance. He told his family to deny all knowledge and blame everything on him. He set out in the dead of night, inching his way down a 150-metre cliff and wading a‎cross a river in the dark. “Where the water was deep, the surveillance wasn’t so strong. … I sat down and cried for an hour, thinking my wife and children would be in jail.”

Now, in his immaculately tidy flat in South Korea, he has one of everything: one mug, one bowl, one soup plate. Dinner time is the worst, he said, eating alone. He hasn’t been able to speak to his children since he left and has only occasional, brief phone contact with his wife.

In the corner is a piggy bank. On it he has written, “Thinking of my Kyung-Ae” ‎- his youngest daughter. He’s working long shifts and saving up to try to get his family out.

He knows they are alive, and has managed to get some money to them, but he ‎misses them terribly, and constantly re-lives how he said goodbye.

[Sky News]                                                                                      Read more

North Koran defector tells of the cult of fear

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Forced to witness public executions and beaten for 15 days after his first escape attempt, a former North Korean soldier who dramatically defected to the South talks exclusively to Sky News about the horrors of life under Kim Jong-Un – and how he dreams of one day being reunited with his family.

I asked this former army officer, now defected and living in Seoul, about the TV footage we see from Pyongyang – the vast celebrations last weekend, the resounding applause for the country’s leader.

“When people are clapping,” he says, “if you don’t clap, if you nod off, you’re marked as not following Kim Jong-Un’s doctrine. … You chant ‘Long Live’ and clap because you don’t want to die.”

For all of the very public displays of ‎devotion, he says the reality is a brutal dictatorship.‎ He describes public executions, and a regime that demands total loyalty. “In our unit, when I was a lieutenant, we saw one of our own soldiers executed by gunfire. … I have seen a lot of public executions.”

Under Mr Kim, he says, people are more afraid‎. “When Kim Jong-Un does something wrong, or if the people don’t live well, he points to someone else and says , ‘you have done it wrong.’ … Therefore, the people get punished, or executed.”

“In North Korea, if you watch South Korean dramas, they can take you away; in extreme cases you can be executed.”

[Sky News]

North Korean defector trafficked and raped hopes her story raises awareness

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A young North Korean defector who was trafficked and raped at the age of 13 after fleeing to China said on Friday that she hoped going public with her life story would shine a light on “the darkest place on earth”, her homeland.

In her memoir, Park tells how at age 13 she was sold, kidnapped and resold, ending up with a trafficker who made her an offer. If she became his mistress he would buy her mother who had been sold to a farmer but if she refused he would hand her to the police who would deport her to North Korea where defectors are sent to labor camps or even executed.

“For a long time I thought of it as a business transaction, not rape,” she writes. “Only now can I accept what happened in all its terrible dimensions.”

Park describes a hierarchy of gangsters who specialize in the trafficking of North Korean brides in China, which has a shortage of women as a result of its one child policy. Park said sometimes women asked to be sold into prostitution so they could make money to send home. She was told about brothels in Shanghai and Beijing where North Korean girls were injected with drugs so they couldn’t run away.

In her memoir, Park urges China to end its policy of repatriating North Koreans as it fuels trafficking and slavery. “I wish it had all never happened, and I never had to talk about it again. But I want everyone to know the shocking truth about human trafficking,” writes Park. “If the Chinese government would end its heartless policy of sending refugees back to North Korea, then the brokers would lose all their power to exploit and enslave these women.”

[Reuters]

North Korean defector Yeonmi Park on adjusting to a new life

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Yeonmi Park is smart. She speaks three languages (Korean, Mandarin, English) and is the co-author of a new book, In Order to Live, with Maryanne Vollers. Park has rubbed elbows with Hillary Clinton, addressed the United Nations, recently moved to New York and experienced culture shock of a Martian-fallen-to-Earth magnitude since escaping to China in 2007.

“I didn’t know how to order a coffee,” she says. “People would ask me about my hobbies and what I liked. I had never been asked those questions. …  I didn’t know what a hobby was.”

“My life was about surviving.” In North Korea, survival meant food. “In North Korea I thought a frozen potato was the fanciest food in the world.”

She isn’t sure how she feels about love. She dreams of meeting someone and having a baby, but trust is an issue. Park escaped to China with her mother at age 13 only to be betrayed by human smugglers. Her first memory of China is of witnessing her mother’s rape. Her mother was then sold for $65. Park fetched $265 because she was a virgin — and 13 — and was passed around from trafficker to trafficker until one made her an offer: if she became his mistress, he would reunite her with her family, who are now in South Korea.

“He was married,” she says. “His daughter was a year younger than me. I thought maybe if I sacrificed myself I could do something for my family. I was raped. But he kept his word. He brought my mother back to me.”

Park tries to stay emotionally detached when she speaks of the past. It helps her to tell her story, but because it is not a story, but her life, the traumas lurk just beneath her polished, attractive and articulate surface. Indeed. Park didn’t cry during our 50-minute interview. But she wept afterwards, heaving and sobbing, before apologizing for losing control.

“I feel guilty,” she says. “I love North Korea, but not the regime. It is my country, but it is far away, another universe.”

[National Post] 

Canadian ruling party offers asylum for North Korean refugees

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In response to a request from the Korean community, Canada’s Conservative Party is proposing a plan to help resettle stranded North Korean refugees.

Minister of Multiculturalism Jason Kenney said a re-elected Conservative government would develop specialized immigration measures for North Korean refugees stuck in countries in Southeast Asia.

“Our Conservative government’s openness to North Korean refugees is in keeping with Canada’s best humanitarian traditions,” Kenney said.

The Conservatives added that Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper has been clear in condemning North Korea for their “atrocious human rights record” and “belligerent actions at the United Nations.”