Category: Humanitarian Aid and Relief

American citizen faces trial in North Korea

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CNN reports North Korea plans to begin a trial against a U.S. citizen detained there last year, state media said Saturday, complicating tense relations between the two nations.

Pae Jun Ho entered North Korea as a tourist on November 3, according to the Korean Central News Agency. After his detention, evidence revealed he had committed an unspecified crime against the country, the news agency said. The agency said he confessed to the alleged offense, but did not say what it was.

“He will soon be taken to the Supreme Court of the DPRK to face judgment,” the news agency said.

Last year, consular officials from the Swedish embassy in Pyongyang, which looks after U.S. interests in North Korea, visited Pae.

Who is Pae Jun Ho?

 

Why Hyeonseo Lee fled and then returned to North Korea – Part 2

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Continued story of Hyeonseo Lee, who was born in North Korea and now lives in South Korea where she is an activist for North Korea refugees. 

I took a flight to China and headed toward the North Korean border. Since my family couldn’t speak Chinese, I had to guide them through more than 2,000 miles in China and then into Southeast Asia. The journey by bus took one week, and we were almost caught several times.

One time, our bus was stopped and boarded by a Chinese police officer. He took everyone’s ID cards and started asking questions. Since my family couldn’t understand Chinese, I thought we were going to be arrested. As the police officer approached my family, I quickly stood up and told him that these were deaf and dumb people that I was chaperoning. He looked at me suspiciously, but luckily, he believed me.

We made it all the way to the border of Laos, but I had to spend almost all of my money to bribe the border guards. Even after we got past the border, my family was arrested and jailed for illegal border crossing.

After I paid the bribe and fine, my family was released after one month. Soon after, they were arrested and jailed again in the capital of Laos. This was one of the lowest points in my life — my mind and body felt completely drained, and I felt like a failure. I did everything to help my family get to freedom — and we came so close. And now my family was thrown in jail just a short distance from the South Korean embassy.

I went back and forth between the police station and immigration office, desperately trying to get my family out … but I didn’t have enough money to pay the bribes. I lost all hope.

At that moment, I heard a man’s voice asking me: “What’s wrong?” I was so surprised that a total stranger cared enough to ask. He would only give me his first name. With my broken English and a dictionary, I explained the situation, and without hesitating, the man went to the ATM and paid the rest of the money for my family and two other North Koreans to get out of jail.

I thanked him with all my heart, and then I asked him, “Why are you helping me?” … “I’m not helping you,” he said. “I’m helping the North Korean people.”

I realized that this was a symbolic moment in my life. The kind stranger symbolized new hope for me and other North Koreans when we needed it the most. He showed me that the kindness of strangers and the support of the international community are truly the rays of hope that the North Korean people need.

Eventually, after our long journey, my family and I were reunited in South Korea.

 

China greatest potential leverage over North Korea

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So far Kim Jong Un has refused to listen to the international community, leaving many to wonder if anyone can appeal to the leader, and defuse the crisis.

All eyes are turned on China. Of all the regional powers, analysts say, China has the greatest potential leverage over its traditional ally.

Chinese troops fought side by side with the North Koreans during the Korean War that left the Korean peninsula divided. And over the years it has supplied the North with much of its fuel, food and other resources. China could stop doing this at any time but it has rarely done so.

“Chinese netizens say, ‘if we squeeze it for one week, what do you do the next week? You have to un-squeeze because we can’t let them die,'” explained Sunny Lee, a South Korean writer and scholar. “They think it’s an ineffective strategy from the start.”

China fears the specter of millions of starving refugees crossing into China along its 1,400-kilometer (880 mile) border with North Korea. It also fears a united Korea under the control of South Korea, a close U.S. ally.

To date, none of China’s current leadership has met with Kim Jong Un.

CNN

Asia’s odd couple China and North Korea

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In the U.N. negotiations over sanctions — this time as before — the Chinese have consistently played the role of watering down the degree of punishment imposed against Pyongyang. It remains to be seen whether Beijing intends to enforce the new measures.

The Chinese worry that coming down hard on Pyongyang, by cutting off their vital oil or food exports, could trigger a collapse of the North Korean government or other political instability on the peninsula. Beijing’s nightmares include a loose nukes problem and a humanitarian disaster.

Beijing also has fears about the effects of a North Korean collapse on the strategic balance in East Asia. If North Korea collapsed and the two Koreas unified, China might find astride its border a unified, U.S.-aligned Korea hosting American troops. Chinese analysts also commonly argue that North Korea serves as an important distraction for the U.S. military, which might otherwise train its focus on defending Taiwan.

Thus, despite the nuisance that North Korea regularly makes of itself, for all these reasons, it would be sorely missed by Beijing. But the days of “lips and teeth” (Mao Zedong’s’s famous statement about the closeness of Sino-North Korean relations) are clearly over. Chinese scholars and analysts increasingly express open frustration with Pyongyang’s behavior. In a meeting of an advisory group to the Chinese government — the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference — participants openly debated the question: whether to “keep or dump” North Korea?

China’s remarkable four decades of economic reform and growth have catapulted it to wealth and power — China is a global power, with global interests. China has a deep stake in maintaining stability in order to sustain its pathway to prosperity. China’s relationship with the United States can be tense [but] the two countries are vital trade partners that share a vast array of ties and often overlapping interests. Beijing also values its relationship with South Korea.

Because the specter of North Korea’s collapse could potentially destabilize the Korea peninsula, Beijing may continue to shield Pyongyang. But the two countries’ increasingly divergent interests suggest that China’s dissatisfaction with North Korea is only likely to grow.

[Excerpts of article by Jennifer Lind, associate professor of government at Dartmouth College]

Was a South Korean missionary murdered by North Korean agents?

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Kim Ha-young believes her husband was murdered for helping North Koreans defect.

It’s almost two years since she found her husband, Kim Chang-hwan, foaming at the mouth in the Chinese city of Dandong on the North Korean border. The 46-year-old father of two had been working as a missionary, helping North Korean defectors escape across the border. Kim Ha-young was living in the border city as well, helping her husband.

She had just spoken to her husband 15 minutes earlier. “He told me he was meeting a North Korean defector and would then come home. A short time later I got a call from one of his colleagues who said (my husband) collapsed on the street and he told me to rush to the hospital,” she said. “When I got there he was dead.”

Hospital officials said Kim Chang-hwan had committed suicide by swallowing pesticides. His wife believes he was killed by a North Korean agent.

Refusing to accept the hospital’s explanation for her husband’s death, Kim Ha-young demanded the Chinese government conduct an autopsy. The autopsy report came back saying there was no poison in his system. Fearful of a cover-up, she went to the morgue before his body was cremated and collected samples of his blood on a glove and gave them to South Korean authorities on her return to Seoul.

The South Korean government report on that blood sample, reviewed by CNN, revealed levels of poison high enough to kill a person instantly.

“My husband was aware of the risk. People around us were telling us that it is a dangerous job because the North Korean government will severely deal with people who helped North Koreans defect,” she said. “We thought maybe the risk was prison or being expelled from the country by Chinese government. We never thought that it would cost his life.”

Fellow missionary Seok Sa-hyun said his friend had received threats in the past but nothing could stop him from helping defectors or providing food to North Korea’s malnourished children.

UN human rights experts urge inquiry into North Korean political prison camps

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A group of United Nations independent human rights experts today urged an international inquiry into human rights abuses in North Korea (DPRK), where hundreds of thousands of prisoners and their families are believed to suffer in the country’s extensive political prison camp system.

“I call on the UN Member States to set up an inquiry into grave, systematic and widespread violations of human rights in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, and to recommend ways to ensure accountability for possible crimes against humanity,” the Special Rapporteur on human rights in the DPRK, Marzuki Darusman, said in a news release.

He and the other experts stressed that reports coming from the DPRK are “extremely serious and disturbing” and that the time has come to shine a light of truth on these allegations by appointing a robust independent international inquiry.

In December 2012, the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, met with two survivors of the country’s political prison camps – which are believed to be in operation since the 1950s and contain at least 150,000 people – urging the international community to launch an inquiry.

In today’s press release, the experts noted that prisoners do not have access to healthcare and very limited food rations resulting in near starvation. Prisoners are allegedly commonly forced to work seven days a week in laborious industries like mining and farming, and sometimes in dangerous conditions.

“Many prisoners have been declared guilty of political crimes such as expressing anti­socialist sentiments, having unsound ideology, or criticizing the Government,” said El-Hadji Malick Sow, who currently chairs the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention. “But all it takes to be sent to the camps is reading a foreign newspaper.”

According to the experts, up to three generations of family members of detainees are sent to the camps on the basis of guilt by association, or yeonjwa je.

Traveling for a cause – Liberty in North Korea

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Millersville junior Sean Ferry has been involved in the organization Liberty in North Korea (LINK) for the past two years.

Founded in 2004, LINK is an organization that was created to protect and aid North Korean refugees and help spread awareness of the ongoing crisis. By joining this organization, Ferry became a “nomad,” which means that he would travel the United States as well as British Columbia, with three or four other people and share a documentary that tells the story of North Korean survivors that have journeyed across the border into China. With LINK, Ferry trekked to various high schools, colleges, churches, and even coffee shops to tell the story of the North Korean refugees.

Ultimately, joining this organization has opened his eyes to the world and helped Ferry feel as though he has a purpose in life. “I like that I am doing what I think is a good thing. I like knowing that I am helping to save lives, and am directly impacting the North Korean people. Seeing others inspiration, is what inspires me,” he said.

Now that Ferry has returned to school, he continues to try to support the organization he cares so much about. There are different things that everyone is able to do that can support LINK, he says. By donating on the organization’s website, libertyinnorthkorea.org, you can help continue the mission of providing aid to refugees. A way to get involved in the organization is through creating a rescue team with which you can host events to raise funds, or by interning as a nomad or working in the office.

Experience a defector escape from North Korea

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The Defector: Escape from North Korea provides a haunting first-person glimpse of what it’s like for someone trying to escape North Korea.

A site serves as a companion to a feature-length documentary film of the same name, directed by Ann Shin. The online component launched in advance of the documentary, which premiered at the International Documentary Festival of Amsterdam.

The stories on the site are based on true accounts of six North Korean defectors that bring viewers through prisons, jungles and crowded streets as they try to escape. As a voiceover explains what’s happening, viewers are given the option to watch additional videos and view photos about what it’s like to defect before continuing through seven chapters of content.

The site uses actual images and hidden camera videos from within North Korea, not to mention interviews from defectors, to illustrate the dangers they experienced at every moment.

“It was challenging to make something like this into a web project because of the scarcity of visuals and assets,” said Shin. “We had dozens and dozens of interviews with defectors and footage smuggled out of North Korea to work with.”

[Media Post] 

North Korean nuclear test also meant for North Korean regime opponents

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Shin Dong-hyuk spent his first 23 years in North Korean prison camp 14, where he was tortured and subjected to forced labor. Another North Korean prison camp survivor, Chol-Hwan Kang, spent 10 years in Camp 15.

Kang suggests that Pyongyang’s recent nuclear test was meant not only as a message of strength to the outside world but also to potential opponents to the regime within the country. Both men say the international community must do more to help North Koreans, with Kang insisting the world should take advantage of growing feelings of opposition within the communist state.

Both Shin and Kang described life in their labor camps as defined by hunger and violence.
“Daily I saw torture, and every day in the camp I saw people dying of malnutrition and starvation. I saw lots of friends die and I almost died myself of malnutrition,” Kang recalled.

Shin still carries the scars of his experience on his body. Resting his right hand on the table in front of him, he revealed the missing tip of his middle finger, which was chopped off by a prison guard as punishment after he dropped a piece of machinery in a factory.

“I’m here outside the camp, but what I’m doing daily is talk about the situation in the camp,” Shin said. “I’m still in the camp in my head.”

After meeting Shin and hearing his harrowing account in December, UN right chief Navi Pillay called for an in-depth international inquiry into “one of the worst, but least understood and reported, human rights situations in the world.”

[News24]

The Republic of Pyongyang

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Any improvement in living standards in North Korea looks to be almost entirely focused on the capital, Pyongyang, home to the elite which keeps the Kim family in power.

Kim Jong Un, who took power in North Korea following the death of his father last December, appears to have reinforced policies to bolster the fortunes of the capital, which is home to more than 3 million people, or about 12% of the population.

“Pyongyang is a different planet,” said a 35 year-old Chinese trader who had lived in a small town in North Korea for more than 25 years and regularly visits there, most recently several months ago.

Pyongyang has been dubbed the “Republic of Pyongyang” by outsiders thanks to the lavish perks given to its residents in the form of theme parks, new apartments and renovations, in stark contrast to the rest of the country, where UN data shows a third of children are malnourished.

“In the past, people couldn’t feel the gap between the rich and the poor because of state control. But since that control is loosening up, the gap between those who have and don’t have is widening,” said a Chinese trader who sometimes sells clothes to North Koreans.

[Reuters]