Category: Humanitarian Aid and Relief

North Korean Ambassador calls defectors animals and human scum

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North Korea’s ambassador to the UK, Hyun Hak-bong, has said that his country is ready “anytime” to launch nuclear missiles. Asked if they would be prepared to “press the button first” rather than wait until the US makes the first strike, he said: “We are peace-loving people. We do not want war. But we are not afraid of war. This is our policy of the government.”

Mr Hak-bong also called defectors who have escaped from North Korea “human scum” and “animals” while the United Nations Security Council launches another investigation into the country’s human rights record.

Hak-bong said: “Those allegations are based on fabricated stories by the defectors from the North. “Do you know the difference between human beings and animals? Human beings have a conscience and morality. If they do not have a conscience and a morality, they are like nothing. … They’re animals. That is why we call the defectors animals. They are no better than animals. They’re human scum.”

Around 70 per cent of defectors who have settled in South Korea since 1998 are women in their 30s. The majority leave due to economic difficulties and the want of freedom.

Men often cite life-threatening situations, dislike of the government and persecution by the state as reasons to escape the country, according to South Korea government data.

[Times of India]

Character assassination of defectors by North Korean regime

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Defector Park Sang-hak (see photo at left), who launches helium balloons laden with USB sticks and anti-regime leaflets into North Korean airspace, has been called “human scum” by the North Korean regime, who will “pay for his crimes in blood”.

Sometimes these North Korean government threats go beyond mere rhetoric: in 2011, a hitman with a poison-tipped needle was intercepted on his way to kill another North Korean activist, Yeon-mi Park, living in South Korea.

In 1997 the nephew of one of Kim Jong-il’s mistresses was gunned down outside Seoul; he had recently published an expose about the dictator’s family.

But the regime’s most common weapon against its critics is character assassination.

North Korea has tried – unsuccessfully – to discredit a hard-hitting UN reposrt because one of its well-known witnesses, Shin Dong-hyuk, later admitted to changing parts of his biography. “The fundamental building blocks of Shin’s story remain the same,” says Greg Scarlatoiu, executive director of the US Committee for Human Rights in North Korea. “He was still a political prisoner and still tortured.” But the controversy highlights a tragic catch-22: sometimes the traumatic firsthand experiences that make defectors such powerful witnesses also make them vulnerable to assaults on their credibility.

“One of the very few growing industries in North Korea is this operation of trying to compromise defectors and witnesses,” says Scarlatoiu. The smears and threats have ramped up in the wake of a UN report documenting crimes against humanity in North Korea and recommending that the case be referred to the International Criminal Court. The UN findings were based on the testimony of more than 300 defectors who painted a picture of institutionalized cruelty within the regime, including mass incarceration in forced labor camps.

 [The Guardian]

Yeon-mi Park the tiny woman facing the wrath of North Korea Part 1

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What does a nuclear power with the fifth largest army in the world have to fear from a pint-sized university student in a pink frock? A great deal, apparently.

On 31 January 2015, a North Korean government-run website posted an 18-minute video titled The Human Rights Propaganda Puppet, Yeon-mi Park, which denounced the charismatic 21-year-old North Korean defector. It was the latest attack in a smear campaign aimed at silencing Yeon-mi, a human rights activist and outspoken critic of the world’s most repressive and secretive regime.

Last fall, Yeon-mi took the podium at the One Young World Summit in Dublin, and became a YouTube sensation. Looking like a fragile porcelain doll dressed in a flowing pink hanbok (traditional Korean dress), Yeon-mi told a harrowing and heartbreaking story: “North Korea is an unimaginable country,” she began in halting English. … When she was nine years old she saw her friend’s mother publicly executed for a minor infraction.

When she was 13, she fled into China, only to see her mother raped by a human trafficker. Her father later died in China, where she buried his ashes in secret. “I couldn’t even cry,” she said. “I was afraid to be sent back to North Korea.”

Eventually Yeon-mi and her mother escaped into Mongolia by walking and crawling across the frozen Gobi desert.

By the time Yeon-mi had finished with a plea to “shed light on the darkest place in the world”, the whole audience was in tears and on its feet. Yeon-mi became the human face of North Korea’s oppressed.

Attacks on prominent North Korean defectors are nothing new. These individuals regularly endure charges that they lie and exaggerate. Occasionally there are death threats. But the regime’s most common weapon against its critics is character assassination.

Read more about Yeon-mi Park 

Yeon-mi Park the tiny woman facing the wrath of North Korea Part 2

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As Yeon-mi’s “collaborator” – a publishing term for a writer who helps an author find her voice and turn her story into a narrative – I was immediately taken with the power of Yeon-mi’s testimony, as well as the warmth of her personality and her playful sense of humor. It was hard to fathom how this vibrant young woman could have suffered such an ordeal.

As soon as we began working together, I noticed there were some minor discrepancies in the articles written about Yeon-mi, a jumbling of dates and places and some inconsistent details about her family’s escape. Most of these issues could be explained by a language barrier – Yeon-mi was giving interviews in English before she was fully fluent. But Yeon-mi was also protecting a secret, something she had tried to bury and forget from the moment she arrived in South Korea at age 15: like tens of thousands of other refugees, Yeon-mi had been trafficked in China. In South Korea – and many other societies – admitting to such a “shameful” past would destroy her prospects for marriage and any sort of normal life.

She had hoped that by changing a few details about her escape she could avoid revealing the full story. But after she decided to plunge into human rights activism, she realized that without the whole truth, the story of her life would have no real power or meaning. She has apologized for any discrepancies in her public record, and is determined that her book be scrupulously accurate.

With Yeon-mi’s cooperation, I have been able to verify her story through family members and fellow defectors who knew her in North Korea and China. Sometimes Yeon-mi had forgotten or blocked out graphic details from her childhood, only to have the memories return in all their horror as we reviewed her recollections with other witnesses. It seemed that she wasn’t just remembering these things, but actually reliving them.

Dr Judith Herman, clinical professor of psychiatry at Harvard tells me: “Traumatized people don’t give you a perfect, complete narrative on the first go-round. You see this all the time with refugees seeking asylum. That doesn’t mean their story isn’t credible, because the gist of their story is consistent.”

[Journalist Maryanne Vollers, writing in The Guardian]

UN expert demands international action on North Korea

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The U.N.’s independent expert on the rights situation in North Korea urged the global community to resolve the fate of 200,000 people allegedly abducted by Pyongyang, and refer perpetrators to the International Criminal Court.

Addressing the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva Monday, Marzuki Darusman presented his latest report on the human rights situation in the country, including a strategy aimed at keeping the issue of abductions in the international spotlight. Darusman urged fast and effective action on the matter, noting “the victims, those who have survived, and their families are, for the most part, well advanced in the years,” and stressing “an international approach to the issue is now required.”

North Korean representative Kim Yong-Ho attacked Darusman’s report as “politicized,” telling the council the former Indonesian attorney general himself was “under manipulation of… hostile forces” and represented “their ill-minded political objectives.” He also cited recent news reports that Darusman had called for “regime change” in North Korea, accusing him of misusing “human right issues as a means to dismantle or overthrow the country’s system.”

Representatives of the European Union and Japan, which are set to table a resolution on the human rights situation in the country, were among many to hail Darusman’s report. US representative Robert King meanwhile voiced deep concern at the “widespread and gross human rights violations committed by the [North Korean] government.”  Japan’s representative Kaji Misako urged the country to “take concrete actions towards the improvement of its human rights situation, including the resolution of the issue of abduction.”

An UN-mandated investigation issued a searing report in February 2014, describing a litany of rights abuses in North Korea, including the abductions of an estimated 200,000 foreign nationals from at least 12 countries. Most of them were South Koreans left stranded after the 1950-1953 Korean War, but hundreds of others from around the world have since been taken or disappeared while visiting the secretive Stalinist state. Among those are an estimated 100 citizens of Japan believed to have been taken to train North Korean spies in Japanese language and customs.

[AFP]

North Korean defectors to appear at UN Geneva Human Rights session

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To respond to attacks from North Korea’s Foreign Minister, who last week called defectors “scum,” a delegation is visiting Geneva to participate at the Human Rights Council on March 16-17.

The delegation is headed by well-known defector Mr. Ahn Myeong Cheol, a former prison guard in North Korean labor camps who witnessed first-hand the regime’s atrocities, who is now the executive director of the organization NK Watch. Ahn has testified to the UN Commission of Inquiry about his personal experiences relating to human rights violations in North Korea, and he will also respond to recent attacks against the report’s credibility.

Another issue that the defectors will raise is that of the North Korean overseas workers, whose situation is a form of modern-day slavery. A former overseas worker will also be present and present his testimony.

[UN Watch]

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Bios of North Korean defectors attending UN Human Rights session in Geneva

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Ahn Myeong Cheol was a prison guard in the North Korean regime’s brutal gulag, who escaped to South Korea and became a human rights activist. Born in North Hamgyong Province in North Korea, he was the only one chosen in his district, at age 18, to become a political prison camp guard. Throughout his service, Ahn was subjected to heavy brain-washing into believing that political prisoners were enemies of the state unworthy of sympathy. He worked for a total of eight years in four different camps. These camps were all designated as total control zones, which prohibit the release of prisoners under any circumstances. Since his escape, Ahn has become a North Korean human rights activist. He has provided testimony at the UN Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in the DPRK and is now the executive director of the organization NK Watch.

Gim Gyumin was born in Hwanghae Province in North Korea in 1974. In North Korea, he witnessed many human rights violations such as public executions, arbitrary detention, sexual violations, famine, etc. He fled North Korea in 1999 but was arrested in China and repatriated to North Korea. He escaped from North Korea again in 2000 and finally entered South Korea in 2001. In South Korea, he majored drama and film in Hanyang University and started his career as a film director. He directed many films about North Korean human rights. Since he is an eye-witness and victim of human rights violations in North Korea, he has integrated these real tragedies into his movies.

Mr. Kim was dispatched to Russia as a North Korean overseas worker in 2000. While he was working at the logging site in Russia, he received only $130 as a monthly salary since the North Korean government took almost 95% of his salary for the state fund to strengthen the dictatorship. He worked every day from 8am to 12am or even to 3am without having any breaks or rest. The only holiday he could have was the New Year’s Day. Since he could not endure this inhuman treatment by the North Korean authorities any more, he escaped the work site in 2002 and finally entered South Korea in 2013.

[UN Watch]

North Korean military, even Special Forces, suffering hunger

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On March 10, 2015, The Washington Free Beacon reported that a defecting career officer from the North Korean People’s Army divulged that not only are the people starving, but the nation’s armed forces, including the elite Storm Corps Special Forces, also face food shortages that have been described as “severe.”

With his identity kept secret, the defector was described only as a career military officer in his 40s. According to the defector, “Kim Jong-un repeatedly states that he will improve the livelihood of ordinary people but nothing has really changed. There have been no concrete actions to improve the livelihood of the people, so people no longer trust Kim Jong-un’s words and statements.”

Reportedly an officer in the much feared Storm Corps, the defector did state that officers in the military are usually much better off nutrition-wise than the general civilian population, as well as the lower ranks. The junior enlisted troops are reportedly “limited to meals of ‘corn rice’—ground corn fashioned into kernels of rice. … So some soldiers try to escape the military. Some steal food just to live.”

Painting an even bleaker picture, the officer added, “The food shortages are so severe soldiers cannot live on the rations provided by the military and must go outside of bases and steal food to survive.”

The lack of availability of food for the common people of the North is to such a degree that, according to South Korea’s JoongAng Daily, the growth of children in the North is stunted by decades worth of starvation. The Pyongyang government recently lowered the height requirement to be conscripted into the army to 4′ 7″ (142 centimeters). That’s the same height as the average American child at the age of 10 years, 3 months old, the average 4th Grader. Most North Korean teenage boys are less than 5 feet tall and weigh less than 100 pounds. In contrast, the average 17-year-old South Korean boy is 5-feet-8, only slightly shorter than an American boy of the same age.

[Examiner]

US, China, South Korea should prepare for North Korea’s collapse, American ex-envoy says

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Former U.S. Ambassador Christopher R. Hill said he doesn’t know when or how the demise of the regime of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un will come about, but he believes it is inevitable. When it happens, he said, “we need to make sure that China, [South Korea] and the U.S. all understand what we’re going to do.”

Mr. Hill spoke Wednesday at a regional security conference hosted by The Washington Times in Seoul, where officials from the South Korean government office for reunification say they are pursuing small steps and confidence-building measures with North Korea.

Relations between the two Koreas occur mainly through the joint Kaesong Industrial Complex, which is inside the demilitarized zone that has divided the two nations for more than 60 years. Lee Duk-haeng, a senior policy officer in the ministry, said, “Our view is that if we reconnect the ecosystem between the two Koreas, it will channel into peaceful exchanges.”

Kim Jong Un has made overtures in recent months suggesting an openness for diplomatic engagement with Seoul, but he has spent much of the past three years threatening the South militarily.

Mr. Hill said that Washington and Seoul should be finding ways to convince Beijing that its support of North Korea is a barrier to wider international integration. He also said efforts should be made to draw Japan into the conversation as well.

For some, the comments felt like a throwback to the late 2000s. As U.S. assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs at the time, Mr. Hill headed the Obama administration’s first effort to breathe life into stalled six-party talks aimed at steering North Korea away from developing nuclear weapons. The effort foundered in 2009 when Pyongyang carried out an underground nuclear test, defying warnings from the international community.

[Read more of this Washington Times article]

Canadian pastor detained in North Korea?

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A Canadian pastor is missing after going on a trip to North Korea in late January, says his family and church.

Reverend Hyeon Soo Lim, 60, went to North Korea on a humanitarian trip as he had done over a hundred times before, said Lisa Pak, a spokesperson for his church, based in Mississauga, Ontario.

On January 30, Lim traveled to North Korea from China with a companion from the church who last spoke with him the following day, on January 31.

Lim was scheduled to return on February 4 from what was described as a “routine” trip to Rajin, located northeast in the country, where his church supports a nursery, orphanage and nursing home, according to the Light Korean Presbyterian Church. However, so far he has failed to show.

The church has formally requested help in finding Lim from Canada’s Department of Foreign Affairs, and has contacted the Swedish embassy in Pyongyang, which provides consular help for citizens of the U.S., Canada and Australia, which do not have diplomatic ties with North Korea.

Lim immigrated to Canada in 1986 from South Korea with his wife and son. He speaks fluent Korean and leads a 3,000-member church. The church’s spokesman, Pak said she doesn’t believe Lim would have engaged in any type of proselytizing, which is prohibited in North Korea.

“He knows the language, he knows the nature of the government, so we don’t see that as a legitimate reason that he would be detained,” Pak said. “We don’t believe that’s the way he would have behaved. He’s very wise about that.”

[CNN]