Category: Humanitarian Aid and Relief

Cannibalism in North Korea?

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In North Korea in the mid-1990s, as a great famine wiped out perhaps 10 percent of the population … it wasn’t unusual for people to disappear; they were dying by the thousands, maybe millions. But dark rumors were spreading, too horrifying to believe, too persistent to ignore.

“Don’t buy any meat if you don’t know where it comes from,” one Chongjin woman whispered to a friend, who later defected and recounted the conversation to reporter Barbara Demick.

Fear of cannibalism spread. People avoided the meat in street-side soup vendors and warned children not to be alone at night. At least one person in Chongjin was arrested and executed for eating human flesh.

The panic, Demick concludes, may have exceeded the actual threat. “It does not seem,” she writes, “that the practice was widespread.” But it does appear to have happened.

North Korea’s famine is over, but the stories of desperate men and women, driven so insane by starvation that they consume their own children, have resurfaced. Last week, Asia Press published a report alleging that thousands recently died of starvation in a North Korean province, a trend that is sometimes called a micro-famine. The story was sourced to Rimjingang, a collection of underground North Korean journalists whose work is generally considered reputable. According to Rimjingang’s sources, the famine, like others before it, had led to cannibalism. One man, they said, had been arrested and executed for killing and eating his children.

Is cannibalism still happening? The simple answer is that we don’t, and can’t, know for sure.

[Washington Post]

On relations between China and North Korea

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China took a step against longtime ally North Korea by voting in favor of a U.N. Security Council resolution condemning Pyongyang’s long-range rocket launch in December. Here are some questions and answers concerning China’s relationship with North Korea, as summarized in an AP article:

WHY DOES CHINA SUPPORT NORTH KOREA? – Beijing fears a collapse of the North Korean regime could send a massive flow of desperate, starving refugees into northeastern China and lead to a pro-U.S. government setting up across its border. Chinese firms could lose their leading position in North Korea, while South Korean investment in China would be diverted to help rebuild the devastated North’s economy.

WHAT ABOUT NORTH KOREA’S MISSILES AND NUCLEAR PROGRAM? – China wants a stable, peaceful Northeast Asia and doesn’t want the North to provoke retaliation from the South, Japan or the United States. China calls for denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, though Beijing’s leaders are seen as resigned to the North possessing some sort of atomic weapon.

WHAT APPROACH DOES BEIJING RECOMMEND? – China typically calls for dialogue instead of sanctions, and has hosted successive rounds of talks also involving the two Koreas, Japan, Russia, and the U.S. Pyongyang agreed at the six-nation talks to end its nuclear programs, but discussions broke down over how to verify that.

SO WHY DID CHINA VOTE FOR THE NEW U.N. RESOLUTION? – China wants to register its displeasure with Pyongyang’s missile launch and doesn’t wish to be seen as obstructing the U.N.’s work. At the same time, it has pushed for a watered-down response, agreeing to strengthen existing sanctions while opposing substantially new ones. Beijing also wants to appear cooperative with the second Obama administration.

HOW MUCH INFLUENCE DOES BEIJING HAVE WITH PYONGYANG? – Hard to say. Chinese scholars and officials say not as much as the outside world thinks, and that sanctions have little effect on Pyongyang. That’s despite China being the North’s most important political ally, as well as its biggest source of food and fuel aid to prevent total economic collapse. China’s overriding fear of the North becoming a failed state severely limits Beijing’s options.

WHAT’S THE HISTORY BETWEEN THESE TWO? – Chinese troops fought on behalf of the North Korean regime in the 1950-53 Korean War and relations between the communist neighbors were long described as being “as close as lips and teeth.”

In brief, Beijing is concerned that North Korea’s nuclear ambitions are destabilizing the region, but is willing to go only so far to punish its economically struggling neighbor.

Tens of thousands of North Korean mothers and children stranded in China

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Some statistics cited by Park Ki-choon, a lawmaker for South Korea’s opposition party, from a report by the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) based on interviews with 100 children born to defecting North Korean mothers in 14 regions in China’s Liaoning, Jilin, Heilongjiang and Shandong provinces last year:

  • 21% of the children lived with their North Korean birth mother,
  • 20% lived with their father only.
  • 39% were looked after by grandparents or relatives,
  • 20% lived in shelters run by evangelical missionaries.

The NHRC believes there are 20,000 to 30,000 children under 19 born in China to North Korean mothers, based on the estimates by Korean NGOs and researchers at Johns Hopkins University.

However, a missionary working with North Korean defectors in China said, “We estimate that there are 50,000 stateless orphans whose basic livelihood is not protected in northeast China, to say nothing of their education.”

In any case, if these figures are extrapolated, there are tens of thousands of innocent children and mothers sadly impacted by the main reason that these children are abandoned: Because of existing policy, China has deported the mothers back to North Korea.

[Source: Chosun Ilbo]

China arrests traffickers of North Korean women

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Chosun Ilbo reports Chinese police have busted a human trafficking ring that lured North Korean women into defecting and indentured labor or prostitution.

Chinese media reports said police in Yanji, Jilin Province, which is home to a large population of ethnic Koreans, arrested four foreigners and one Chinese. Police found 12 North Korean women who had been sold to Heilongjiang Province and other parts of China and sent them back to the North. North Korean sources said that would mean sending them to torture or death and accused Beijing of violating humanitarian principles.

One woman identified only by her surname Choe (25) was arrested along with a Chinese national also identified only by his family name Shi, reports said.

Choe said she crossed the border into China in 2007 at the age of 19 after finishing high school in order to make money for her family. But instead of finding a job in China, she was sold to a mentally disabled man in Heilongjiang Province. She realized she was a victim of human trafficking, but her inability to communicate in Chinese made it impossible for her to escape. A few months later, she was sold to another Chinese man and had his child.

Choe met Shi early last year after he was released from prison after serving time for human trafficking, and helped him recruit other North Koreans for their human trafficking ring, Chinese police said. They lured 20 North Korean women between in their 20s to 40s to China. The gang were paid 10,000-15,000 yuan per woman, and accomplices in North Korea 3,000-5,000 yuan.

A source in China said, “I think Chinese police announced the arrest because they want to back claims that North Korean defectors are not refugees but victims of crime, or illegal aliens.”

Stinging UN call for international inquiry into North Korean human rights

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The U.N.’s top human rights official said Monday that as many as 200,000 people are being held in North Korean political prison camps rife with torture, rape and slave labor, and that some of the abuses may amount to crimes against humanity.

For that reason, said Navi Pillay, the world body’s high commissioner for human rights, nations must mount an independent probe into North Korea’s human rights record.

She said the political prison camp system involves “rampant violations, including torture and other forms of cruel and inhumane treatment, summary executions, rape, slave labor, and forms of collective punishment that may amount to crimes against humanity.” Living conditions are reported to include scarce food, little to no medical care and inadequate clothing.

The U.N. Human Rights Council and the U.N. General Assembly, which includes all 193 member nations, have condemned North Korea’s human rights record, but Pillay said stronger action is needed, including such a probe – one authorized by the United Nations but performed by experts independent of the U.N. system.

The stinging criticism and call from the world body’s top human rights official for “a full-fledged international inquiry into serious crimes” in North Korea comes a year after Kim Jong Un became the new leader of the nuclear-armed Asian country upon the death of his father.

“There were some initial hopes that the advent of a new leader might bring about some positive change in the human rights situation,” Pillay said. “But a year after Kim Jong Un became the country’s new supreme leader we see almost no sign of improvement.”

Pillay’s statement was based on extensive research submitted by a special investigator for the 47-nation Human Rights Council based in Geneva and meetings that she held there in December with two survivors of the prison camps, said Pillay’s spokesman, Rupert Colville.

[AP]

UN called upon to examine human rights in North Korea

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Human Rights Watch (HRW) called Friday for a UN commission to examine human rights abuses in North Korea. The rights group stated that little has changed within the totalitarian government since Kim Jong-un succeeded his father Kim Jong-il in leading the country one year ago.

HRW stated the situation may be getting worse, noting a drop in the number of individuals escaping into China and reports by successful escapees of increasing crackdowns on escape attempts. The rights group also noted a recent UN report citing widespread malnutrition and hunger in the country.

HRW called on the UN to create a commission of inquiry to investigate human rights abuses in the country: “For more than 60 years, successive regimes have killed or starved millions, and the world has done little in response. No one should labor under the misperception that the regime can be influenced by negotiation, and reformed in some traditional sense. Only coordinated outside pressure has a chance to make an impact. Recording, exposing, condemning and calling for accountability for serious abuses may lead some in the regime to realize that there are potential costs to their behavior.”

HRW said a UN resolution will only pass with the support of the nations of the European Union, as well as South Korea, Japan and the US. The rights group called on those nations to voice support for a UN investigation of human rights in North Korea.

In November the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) Marzuki Darusman expressed concern over the lack of development in human rights in the nation, despite having called on new leader Kim Jong-un last January to improve the situation. In June the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea (HRNK) reported that North Korea’s caste system leads to abuses and human rights violations in the country.

No immediate outcomes from Richardson Schmidt North Korean visit

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Former New Mexico governor Bill Richardson and Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt failed to secure the release of a Korean-American held in North Korea during a controversial trip that ended on Thursday.

Richardson told a media briefing at Beijing’s airport he was unable to meet Korean-American Kenneth Bae, a 44-year-old tourist who was detained late last year and has been charged with unspecified crimes against the state.

Richardson said he was told that judicial proceedings against Bae would start soon, although he gave no details. North Korean authorities assured him of Bae’s good health, he said.

“That is encouraging,” Richardson said of Bae’s condition, adding he was also given permission to “proceed with a letter from his son, and that will happen shortly”.

It was unclear if Richardson had left such a letter with North Korean authorities or if it would be sent later. Bae is being held in a location far from Pyongyang, Richardson said.

Google Executive Eric Schmidt said his visit to Pyongyang was private and was to talk about a free and open Internet. “The technology in North Korea is very limited,” Schmidt said, with a 3G cellphone network for about a million phones run by Egypt’s Orascom Telecom Media and Technology Holding SAE that does not support the Internet.

Access to the Internet is available to the government, the military and to universities but not the general public and users are supervised, he said.

“The government has to do something. They have to make it possible for people to use the Internet”, he said. “They showed up and listened to us and asked us a lot of questions…. It’s their choice now, and time, in my view, for them to start or they will remain behind.”

Desperate North Korean women become breadwinners

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Anecdotal evidence collected in interviews by Kim Seok-hyang, a professor of North Korea studies at Ewha Women’s University in Seoul, indicates that women are the main breadwinners in 80 to 90 percent of North Korean households — and that is having social consequences within the family.

One North Korean woman says those social changes are playing out in her own family. “I don’t know if you can call it power, but … we can speak louder now,” she says. “In the past, we obeyed our husbands. But now they can’t make money. Women have to make money and feed them. Women have become the heads of the family. They make the money and buy the food. Men cannot say what they want.”

She admits her friends mockingly call their husbands “puppies” or “pets” because they have to be fed, yet they do nothing.

A typical woman may earns about 3,000 won a day at the markets that have sprung up — the equivalent of less than 50 cents — at black market rates. But that’s double what her husband would earn in an entire month, were he to get paid.

A male interviewee who has an office job in a state-run company complains, “I get paid 1,200 won (5 cents!) a month. It’s a joke. There’s nothing you can do with that salary. A kilo of rice is something between 5,000 to 7,000 won.”

North Korean men paying not to work

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Imagine going to work every day and rarely getting paid. Then, one day, you’re told there’s no work to do — and you must pay the company for the privilege of not working!

Welcome to the Orwellian world of work in North Korea, where men remain tied to the country’s moribund state-run institutions.

Mr. Kim’s job in a state-run steel factory requires him to build roads. He can’t remember the last time he received a monthly salary. When there are no roads to build, he has to pay his company around 20 times his paltry monthly salary.

“He had to pay not to work for about six months of last year,” Mrs. Kim told NPR, sighing. “You have to pay, even if you can’t afford to eat. It’s mandatory.”

“And if you don’t go to work, you go to prison,” another male interviewee tells NPR.

Who is Kenneth Bae and why is he being held by North Korea?

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Kenneth Bae, a Korean-American tour operator, was arrested by security authorities in North Korea in early November. A US official told CNN that Kenneth Bae, whose Korean name is Pae Jun Ho, is affiliated with a Protestant religious group.

Bae, 44, entered the northeastern port city of Rajin on November 3 along with five other tourists for a five-day trip. Rajin is a special economic zone across the border from the Chinese city of Yanji, where many Christian groups shelter North Korean refugees — something which angers the North Korean state considerably.

Bae was detained by North Korean authorities and questioned after a computer hard disk was found among the group of tourists, an unidentified source has said. The source added that the hard disk might have contained sensitive information about North Korea.

After his detention, Bae was transferred to Pyongyang for further investigation.

Last year, Eddie Yong Su Jun, a Korean-American missionary, was arrested and then released after facing indictment on charges of committing an unspecified crime against the regime.

In 2010, North Korea set free Robert Park, a Korean-American Christian activist who crossed into the country on Christmas Day 2009 to draw international attention to the North’s poor human rights record.

Also in 2010, former President Jimmy Carter helped secure the release of Aijalon Mahli Gomes, another U.S. citizen and Christian activist, who had been fined roughly $600,000 and sentenced to eight years of hard labor for crossing over the Chinese border into North Korea.

In 2009, former U.S. President Bill Clinton flew to Pyongyang to win the release of two American journalists caught during a reporting tour covering North Korean defectors.

Bae’s detention comes amid tensions over Pyongyang’s planned long-range rocket launch. Concerns have been raised that Pyongyang may try to use the case as a “bargaining chip” or a trump card in forcing the US into post-launch talks.