Category: Humanitarian Aid and Relief

North Korea spent $600m on luxury items in 2012 while North Korean citizens starved to death

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According to a UN report, North Korea’s spending on luxury goods has more than doubled from an average of $300 million a year to $646 million in 2012, when Kim Jong-un assumed control following his father’s death, Kim Jong-il. The 372-page report said the country continues to allocate a “significant amount of state resources for the purchase and important of luxury goods” while hunger and malnutrition take a heavy toll on the population.

These items violate UN sanctions imposed on North Korea prohibiting “the provision of luxury goods” adopted in 2007. The report did not examine how the items were imported into the country.

North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un reportedly treated himself to a dozen luxury cars, top quality pianos and a private theatre for his closest allies and top aides.

A former North Korean official who managed to escape the country said Kim funded his lavish lifestyle by trafficking ivory from Africa to China and selling alcohol to Islamic countries. The money was transferred into parallel funds outside of the state budget to cover “personal expenses of the Supreme leader, his family and other elites”.

[The Independent]

China holds the key concerning UN North Korea Report

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The report released by the UN Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in North Korea constitutes a clarion call to action. According to many analysts, it will also amount to little, unless China, one of North Korea’s few allies, gives its consent.

“So what is likely to happen? Nothing,” write the editors of New York Post. They argue that while the report exposes a slew of North Korean atrocities, it may be more eye-opening to see the extent of the UN’s failure to do anything about it.

The international community must hold China accountable for the role it played in facilitating North Korea’s abuses, writes Kenneth Roth of Foreign Policy: “No country has more influence over North Korea than China, which has long provided a lifeline of economic aid and political cover to the Kim dynasty of Kim Il Sung, Kim Jong Il, and, since Dec. 2011, Kim Jong Un, while refusing to do anything about the horrendous cruelty being committed next door. If it wanted to, Beijing could use its considerable influence to press Pyongyang to curb its atrocities.”

If response from China is any indication, Beijing seems uninterested in pursuing the avenue opened up by the UN report. “China maintains that differences in human rights should be handled through constructive dialogue and cooperation on the basis of equality and mutual respect,” foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said on Monday, according to Beijing-based Global Times. “To bring human rights issues to the International Criminal Court does not help improve a country’s human rights conditions.”

Human rights lawyer Jared Genser thinks there are ways to pressure China to allow the Human Rights Council to act. “That said, the way forward will be exceptionally difficult,” he writes in The Diplomat. “Changing the conduct of the North Korea regime, let alone holding its members to account for the commission of crimes against humanity, will require a Herculean effort.”

Bloomberg View’s editors suggest that China may be ready to back away from Kim Jong-un. “China’s interests lie in a transition to minimally acceptable standards of behavior in Pyongyang, not in supporting the insupportable pending the outright collapse of Kim’s regime,” they write.

Even if the Chinese Security Council roadblock is overcome, however, that doesn’t mean that Kim Jong-un will ever face judgment. The editors of the Ottawa Citizen write that the Security Council has a bad record of actually catching those they refer to the ICC.

[BBC]

Australian missionary taken into custody in North Korea

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A 75-year-old Australian missionary who traveled to North Korea as part of a tour group has been detained there, his wife said. John Short had with him some Gospel tracts in Korean “which seem to be at the core of the detention,” his wife said in a statement Wednesday.

“It is alleged he is being asked questions such as, ‘Who sent you?’, ‘To what organization do you belong?’, ‘Who translated this material into Korean?'” his wife, Karen Short, said.

Short, who lives in Hong Kong, went to Pyongyang on Saturday. The next night, police questioned him at his hotel and took him into custody, according to the statement.

Short has been arrested multiple times while doing evangelical work in China “for speaking out about brutality against Chinese Christians,” according to a biography on a religious website named Gospel Attract. In the 1990s, he became “persona non grata” with Chinese authorities for almost two years and was unable to visit mainland China, the biography said.

North Korea “considers the spread of Christianity a particularly serious threat, since it challenges ideologically the official personality cult and provides a platform for social and political organization and interaction outside the realm of the state,” a United Nations panel said in a report released this week.

“People caught practicing Christianity are subject to severe punishments in violation of the right to freedom of religion and the prohibition of religious discrimination,” the report by the United Nations Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in North Korea said.

[CNN]   

Drawings reveal horrific scenes inside North Korean prison

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Kim Kwang-il, 48, spent more than two years at a prison in North Korea where he was tortured, starved and witnessed the deaths of fellow inmates. Kim is one of the North Koreans who gave evidence in public hearings for the United Nations Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in North Korea.

The UN on Tuesday released a damning report on North Korea’s inhumane treatment of prisoners, likening it to Nazi-era atrocities. It includes the testimony from more than 300 North Koreans, many of whom gave their evidence in secret.

Mr Kim was arrested by North Korean police in mid-2004 and charged with illegally crossing the border and smuggling. He had crossed the border to sell pine nuts. For this he was sentenced to six years in prison.

He defected to South Korea in February 2009 where he published a book about his time in detention. The book contained drawings made by professional artists based on his recollections of the torture he was subjected to and some of the horrific scenes he witnessed. One such drawing and description follows.

north korean prison tortureDescription of illustration: “This position itself is the torture. And additionally you are beaten up as well. If you did not give the right statement during the preliminary hearing, you get this kind of torture. You are beaten up, which leads to vomiting because you feel very uncomfortable inside. Sometimes you would vomit blood. … I was told to be in that position until my sweat would fill that one glass, that glass in front of me. You will never imagine what that’s like. … We are bound to stay in that position until the jailer feels that you have been tortured enough. …This is the pigeon torture. Your hands are bound back and if they tie you like this, your chest comes out forward and in this position you are tortured.”

You can read the testimony of Kim Kwang-il in full, along with the report itself on the UN website.

[The Age]

North Korean mother forced to drown her baby

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A North Korean prison camp survivor told of a pregnant woman in a condition of near-starvation who gave birth to a baby — a new life born against all odds in a grim camp. A security agent heard the baby’s cries and beat the mother as a punishment.

She begged him to let her keep the baby, but he kept beating her.

With shaking hands, the mother was forced to pick up her newborn and put the baby face down in water until the cries stopped and a water bubble formed from the newborn’s mouth.

It’s just one example of the kind of testimony heard during an 11-month inquiry into alleged violations of human rights in North Korea, and documented in a report released by the United Nations Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights on Monday.

‘Abundant evidence’ of crimes against humanity in North Korea

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A stunning catalog of torture and the widespread abuse of even the weakest of North Koreans reveal a portrait of a brutal state “that does not have any parallel in the contemporary world,” a United Nations panel reported Monday.

North Korean leaders employ murder, torture, slavery, sexual violence, mass starvation and other abuses as tools to prop up the state and terrorize “the population into submission,” the United Nations Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in North Korea said in its report.

“The suffering and tears of the people of North Korea demand action,” commission Chairman Michael Kirby told reporters.

[Read CNN article] 

Park Sun-young calls for continued focus in North Korean defectors

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Park Sun youngThe image of a petite, frail-looking woman, sitting for days inside a makeshift tent across the Chinese Embassy in protest against China’s forceful repatriation of North Korean defectors, is still vivid, even after nearly two years.

Park Sun-young recalled how she started a hunger strike almost on impulse. As a legislator, she had been receiving many desperate calls, day and night, asking her to help stop the repatriation of North Korean defectors caught in China, after which they would surely be sent to a gulag, if not killed, for trying to escape.

“I did it out of a sense of urgency. I had never felt so powerless, unable to help North Korean defectors,” she said of the decision she made on Feb. 20, 2012. “I thought about how embarrassing it would be if I could not last three days,” she said. Her hunger strike ended on March 2 when she collapsed and was taken to a hospital. By then she had become a face for the efforts to save North Korean defectors ― a godmother for North Korean defectors.

“I started without expectations. I was hearing their clamor, I wanted to console them. I just wanted to show I was hurting too,” she said.

Then, later that month, something quite remarkable happened. The United Nations Human Rights Council adopted a resolution condemning human violations in North Korea. Park traveled to Geneva in a wheelchair, still weak from the hunger strike, her hair now completely silver. She noticed how China did not raise objections, oppose it, or walk out. In fact, the resolution was passed by consensus without a vote. “I was grateful for China’s change (of stance). It meant China had begun to feel embarrassed. Everybody had said China wouldn’t change, but it did,” Park recalled.

When her term at the National Assembly expired later that year, she returned to teaching Constitutional law at Dongguk University. Park continues to work on the North Korean human rights issue: She is the chairperson of Dream Makers for North Korea, also known as Mulmangcho Association, an NGO that advocates North Korean human rights and runs programs for North Korean defectors to help them settle in South Korea, including an alternative school for young defectors in Yeoju, Gyeonggi Province.

Working with North Korean defectors stems naturally from Park’s work as a Constitutional law scholar. “Article 3 of the Constitution defines nationality,” she said. The article reads: “The territory of the Republic of Korea shall consist of the Korean Peninsula and its adjacent islands.” By extension, the South Korean government has the duty to protect the human rights of North Koreans, just as it does the rights of South Koreans.

[Korea Herald]

Min Hee

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Min Hee had not been able to find work that paid a fair amount in North Korea, and her father had told her that she could find a job with fair pay in China. So she escaped into China looking forward to working a regular job and earning a decent wage. But that never happened.

Sold as a bride to a Chinese man after months of resisting and being held against her will, Min Hee faced many difficulties because of the language barrier.

She was not treated well by her husband and was not even allowed to leave the house for the first 2-3 months. She eventually convinced her husband to let her out periodically to meet fellow North Korean women whom she had met in the area. Min Hee contemplated returning to North Korea and turning herself in so that she could be reunited with her parents, knowing that she’d first have to spend months in a labor camp. But at the meetings with her North Korean friends, she learned about a person who could help her leave China. After much deliberation, she finally decided to set out for South Korea.

Although the journey out of China was a dangerous one, Min Hee is happy to be free and looks forward to a better life in South Korea where she can work and earn money.

[Read more stories like this at LiNK]

Word from Kenneth Bae as North Korea cancels US envoy visit

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A State Department official said Sunday that North Korea had rescinded its invitation to the envoy, Ambassador Robert King, without giving a reason.

Hours later, the North’s state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported that former U.S. Ambassador to South Korea Donald Gregg had arrived in Pyongyang. The brief KCNA report Monday didn’t state the purpose of the visit by Gregg, the chairman of the Pacific Century Institute, a U.S. nonprofit group that aims to promote education, dialogue and research in the Pacific region.

State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki on Sunday expressed disappointment that Ambassador Robert King’s visit was called off and noted North Korea had said it wouldn’t use Kenneth Bae as a “political bargaining trip.” It is the second time North Korea has canceled a planned visit by King.

Bae says he is concerned that if his situation isn’t resolved soon, it could “drag on” for months longer. He notes that annual U.S.-South Korean military drills due to start later this month may deepen tensions in the region, as they did last year.

Bae also says he is worried about his health after authorities moved him back into a labor camp following a stay in a hospital. “I know if I continue for the next several months here, I will probably be sent back to the hospital again,” Bae says in a video of a conversation with a Swedish diplomat recorded Friday.

During the conversation, Bae discusses details of his health problems, as well as the minutiae of life in the labor camp.

He says he is suffering from back pain and neck pain, making the eight hours of manual labor he does each day “very difficult. I’ve been working with my hands a lot,” Bae tells the diplomat. “My hands all got numb and sore I have some cuts.”

But he says that he remains “strong mentally and spiritually, and I am trying to stay strong emotionally as well.” Bae tells the diplomat that he has access to books and television at the camp and that the staff there treat him “very fairly.”

The TV antenna stopped working for a couple of weeks recently, he says, allowing him to spend “more time with the Lord, with the Bible. That was actually a pretty good time for me,” Bae says.

[CNN]

U.S. Human Rights Envoy to Visit North Korea for Bae’s Release

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Yonhap News reports that the U.S. special envoy on North Korean human rights issues plans to visit North Korea to try to secure the release of jailed American Kenneth Bae.

Robert King plans to visit Pyongyang on Monday or later this month at the latest to consult with North Korean officials on the release of Kenneth Bae, according to the Choson Sinbo, a pro-North Korean newspaper in Japan.

The U.S. government, however, maintained its characteristically cautious approach toward the issue. Asked about the report at a press briefing, State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said she has no new information.

“What I can provide to all of you has not changed, which is that we have long offered to send Ambassador King to North Korea,” she said. “That hasn‘t changed. Our focus here is on securing the release of Kenneth Bae. Because of that, we’re not going to outline every element of communication, every effort that’s underway.”

Bae told Choson Sinbo, a pro-North Korean newspaper in Japan, that he heard about King’s planned trip to Pyongyang from a Swedish diplomat.

The Swedish Embassy in Pyongyang serves as a protecting power for Americans in the communist nation. The United States has had no diplomatic relations with North Korea following the 1950-53 Korean War, which ended in a cease-fire, not a peace treaty.

The report came a week after North Korea’s ambassador to Britain, Hyun Hak-bong, said in a video interview that Bae would be freed when he finishes his prison term. “When he finishes his term according to the law, there is no reason not to release him,” Hyun said in the interview with Sky News, a 24-hour news channel in Britain.