Category: North Korean refugee

North Korean Intellectuals Solidarity internet battlefield

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Newstapa, a South Korean internet news outlet, reports that North Korean (NK) Intellectuals Solidarity formed a secret group called ‘Battlefield’ some years back to campaign online against North Korea.

And while there has not been established proof, rumor has it that NK Intellectuals Solidarity is linked to the South Korean National Intelligence Service. In any case, members of the organization had been compensated monetarily for their online operations, although where the money came from was a secret.

To quote the Newstapa article:

“An organization of North Korean defectors received money for an online smear campaign. … Newstapa secured a testimony from many North Korean defectors [indicating] that members and their families of North Korea (NK) Intellectuals Solidarity had received money for having written online postings in Agora forums at Daum, an internet portal, from the end of 2009 to the end of 2010.”

North Korea withdraws permission for visit by U.S. special envoy

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North Korea withdrew permission for a visit by the U.S. special envoy on North Korean human rights issues. Robert King had been scheduled to visit Pyongyang to ask the government to grant amnesty to Kenneth Bae. Bae, a U.S. citizen of Korean descent, was arrested in North Korea last year while attempting a Christian mission and sentenced to 15 years hard labor in April.

“We have sought clarification from the DPRK (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea) about its decision and have made every effort so that Ambassador King’s trip could continue as planned or take place at a later date,” the US State Department said.

A day later, in an article published in Rodong Sinmun, an organ of the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea, North Korea stressed that ongoing inter-Korean talks should not be used as a bargaining chip.  The daily also called on countries to not blindly follow the hardline stance taken by the United States.

Washington has held firm to the stance that the North must show tangible signs that it will give up its nuclear program if it wants to hold talks to ease tensions.  Pyongyang so far has balked at such moves claiming its nuclear deterrence is critical for self-protection.

North Koreans treated as subhuman

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North Korea’s famine in the 1990s unleashed a Darwinian struggle for survival that swiftly eliminated many of the most vulnerable in an already sharply stratified society, a U.N. panel heard Thursday.

“People are treated without dignity in North Korea ― and in some cases like sub-humans,” said Ji Seong-ho, who was 14 when he lost his hand and left leg trying to steal coal from a moving train to sell for food during the famine years. Ji, now 31, was one of a number of North Korean defectors called to testify before a U.N. Commission of Inquiry into human rights in North Korea that is currently holding hearings in Seoul.

During the 1994-98 famine, which saw hundreds of thousands starve to death, ordinary North Koreans had to focus all their energies on scavenging to stay alive. Food was so scarce that there was little to share and those who could not fend for themselves ― the very young, the elderly, the disabled ― were at particular risk.

“We had disabled people in our town, but by the time the food situation had begun to improve slightly in the late 1990s, we didn’t see them anymore, meaning they must have died,” Ji said.

Unable to walk without crutches and with no job prospects, Ji managed to cross the border illegally into China in 2000 in an effort to find food for his family. Police caught him on his return, held him for a week and, Ji said, beat him severely. Ji finally escaped for good in 2006 and settled down in South Korea, where he now studies law and speaks publicly about life in the North.

[AFP]

Children on the margins of North Korean society

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Among the North Korean defectors testifying to the U.N. Commission of Inquiry into Human Rights in North Korea on Thursday was Kim Hyuk, 32, who at the age of seven after his mother’s death became a “ggotjebi” ― the North Korean term for street children, mostly orphans, who beg, scavenge and steal to survive.

As children began to die in the streets, Kim said special police units were set up to round up all the ggotjebi and send them to shelters and orphanages, where many still died of starvation. “There was no food at all,” Kim said of the orphanage where he spent three years. “Just powdered corn husk which left you constipated. I caught and ate lizards, snakes, rats and grass.”

Of the 75 children in the orphanage, 24 died. “The officials said it was due to disease, but it was malnourishment. They became too weak to walk. Their bodies were buried in the backyard,” Kim said.

Kim ran away but was then arrested for making smuggling runs across the border with China and served 20 months in a re-education camp where the conditions were as bad as the orphanage. “There were 24 of us who entered the camp on the same day. Only two survived,” he said.

Released from prison, Kim sneaked across the Tumen (or Apnok) River into China in December 2000 and arrived the following year in Seoul, where he now lectures on his experiences on behalf of the Unification Ministry.

[AFP]

Nine years in North Korean gulag because of a secret

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As a member of the North Korean elite in the 1970s, 77-year-old former dancer Kim Young-Soon had it all: well-connected, well-heeled and well-housed. Her privileged lifestyle was largely the result of having an older brother who was a general during the 1950-53 Korean War.

She also had many equally privileged friends — among them a pretty, married actress, Song Hae-Rim, who in 1969 became the lover of Kim Jong-Il, the as-yet unmarried son and heir of then-leader Kim Il-Sung.

“I knew I would never see her again,” Kim told the commission of the day Song visited her house to say she was going to move in to the junior Kim’s residence. Kim Jong-Il and Song never married and their relationship was kept secret for years in the deeply conservative North, even after Song gave birth to a son.

In her testimony on Wednesday, Kim Young-Soon said she was among a group “purged” to prevent the story of the relationship spreading. In 1970 she was summoned by the secret police, locked in a room and grilled for two months about her knowledge of “senior party officials”.

She told them nothing but was then taken — along with her four young children and both her parents — to Yodok, a newly-built prison camp in a remote mountainous region in the northeast. There was no trial, and no indication of her sentence.

“They didn’t even tell me what my offence was, and only said, ‘All of you are supposed to be dead, but are being allowed to live here at the greatest mercy of our leader’,” Kim recalled.

So began a nine-year ordeal in what Kim described as “the most hellish place in the world”. Inmates had to work from dawn to dusk — tending fields, cutting trees, building livestock sheds — followed by hours of ideology classes in the evening. Rations were a handful of salt and maize that was cut if inmates failed to meet their daily work target.

Kim said they supplemented their diet with anything they could catch, including snakes, salamanders and rats. “We ate anything that moved or sprouted from the soil,” she said

Inmates caught trying to escape or scavenging leftovers from the guards were executed in public. Anyone showing sympathy for them was either beaten, tortured or even executed themselves.

Kim’s said her father starved to death within a year and was soon followed by her mother. One of her sons drowned in a stream while one daughter was sent to live with a farmer family and never seen again.

Kim said many fallen members of the elite were in the camp, including a celebrated movie director, former generals and a prominent soccer star. “No one was free from the grips of the Kim dynasty,” she said.

Nine years later, a visiting military official who knew Kim Young-Soon’s brother managed to help arrange her release in 1979. After getting out, she found her husband had been sent to another prison camp which “no one can walk out alive from”. She never saw or heard from him again. Kim’s youngest son was caught trying to flee the North and executed in 1989 at the age of 23.

She was also under constant surveillance by neighbors and secret police, who warned her against spreading “ungrounded rumors” about the leadership.

The famine that decimated North Korea in the mid-1990s — coupled with the shock at her son’s execution — convinced Kim that it was finally time for her to escape. In 2001 she bribed her way across the border with China and eventually made it to Seoul in 2003, where she works as a dance teacher and lectures on life in North Korea. “Those who live in a free society will never truly understand what happens in those labor camps,” she said.

[xinmsn]

Former prisoners tell UN inquiry about life in North Korean prison camps

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Being forced to kill your own baby is a daily occurrence in North Korea’s prison camps, former inmates have told a United Nations inquiry held in Seoul. The inquiry, chaired by former Australian High Court Justice Michael Kirby, is the first to expertly examine North Korea’s human rights record, ABC News reports.

One ex-prisoner, 34-year-old Jee Heon-a, told the hearing about a mother who was forced to drown her own child.”It was the first time I had seen a newborn baby …. ” she said. “Suddenly there were footsteps and a security guard came in and told the mother to turn the baby upside down into a bowl of water. The mother begged the guard to spare her, but he kept beating her. So the mother, her hands shaking, put the baby face down in the water. The crying stopped and a bubble rose up as it died.”

Jee was incarcerated in 1999. Her fellow inmates were barely fed. “Everyone’s eyes were sunken. They all looked like animals, she said. “Frogs were hung from the buttons of their cloths, put in a plastic bag and their skins peeled off. They ate salted frogs and so did I.”

Another defector, Shin Dong-hyuk, was forced to watch the execution of his mother and brother. Shin, who was born in the prison camp, overheard his family members planning an escape attempt and turned them in.

In a separate incident, the North Korean guards chopped off Shin’s finger after he accidentally dropped a sewing machine. “I thought my whole hand was going to be cut off at the wrist, so I felt thankful and grateful that only my finger was cut off,” Shin said.

There are 150,000-200,000 people trapped in North Korean prison camps, Reuters reports.

Deteriorating Kenneth Bae moved to hospital

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Kenneth Bae, the American citizen sentenced to 15 years in a North Korean labor camp, has been moved to a hospital after a serious deterioration in his health, his sister said.

Detained in North Korea in November and sentenced in April for “hostile acts to bring down its government,” Bae is now suffering from severe back and leg pain and has lost more than 50 pounds, his sister Terri Chung told CNN late Sunday.

Chung said she received the information from the U.S. State Department, which told her the Swedish ambassador to North Korea had visited Bae in the hospital on Friday. Sweden represents U.S. interests in North Korea because the United States has no diplomatic presence in the secretive state.

Kenneth Baeimprisoned Kenneth BaeDetention in North Korea has taken a heavy toll on Bae, who has already been dealing with other health problems, including diabetes. In a video released early last month, Bae had stated, “Although my health is not good, I am being patient and coping well,” his head shaved and face noticeably thinner than in earlier photos. in that interview, he spoke of health problems including diabetes, high blood pressure, fatty liver and a back problem.

“I think the last three months in the labor camp have certainly been very trying on both his mental and physical health,” Chung said by phone from the Seattle area. The eight hours per day of farm labor, which Bae had never done before, appear to have worsened his symptoms, she said, adding that “he’s also under a tremendous amount of stress.” Other problems he’s suffering from include kidney stones, dizziness, blurred vision and loss of vision.

The family is “extremely concerned” about the situation and is pleading with the U.S. government to help Bae’s case, Chung said.

North Korea has so far showed no sign of budging on the case of Bae, who they call Pae Jun Ho, his Korean name.

 

North Korean defector meets Australian benefactor

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Hyeonseo Lee fled North Korea three years ago, making the treacherous journey through China to South East Asia. Her family crossed into Laos, but Hyeonseo’s mother and brother were detained at the border and put in prison.

Desperate, in tears and with no money she was spotted in a café by Australian backpacker Dick Stolp, who gave her £645 ($981) to pay prison officials to get her family released.

They went their separate ways, but Hyeonseo has always wanted to thank Mr. Stolp in person.

An Australian TV program looking at North Korean issues recently brought the pair back together in an emotional surprise reunion. The associate producer of SBS Television’s Insight program, Luan McKenna, explained, “It was worth it to see her face when she met Dick in the SBS foyer. … After all, not only did his money get Hyeonseo, her mother and her brother to safety – it was also an act of kindness that restored her faith in humanity.”

Hyeonseo now lives in Seoul where she helps other North Korean refugees, and gives lectures around the world about the difficulties facing the friends and family she left behind.

Stolp says he is happy to see her making a difference. “I’m meeting someone who is now doing good things, and inside I can’t help but feel ‘Hey! I helped this lady to go out and change her life’,” he said. “People have been touched (by the story) and hopefully they will go and do something.”

Sky News

The sensitive case of North Korean defector Kim Kwang-ho

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North Korean defector Kim Kwang-ho originally defected to South Korea in 2009 with his wife and had a daughter there, but for obscure reasons returned to North Korea and ended up paraded before the state media in January this year in an effort to denounce life in South Korea. He was later arrested for stating he ate better in South Korea.

North Korean defector Kim Kwang hoRecently, Kim fled North Korea again, this time with his sister- and brother-in-law. They went to China, where they were caught on July 14 and are being held.

The South Korean government will make the case that Kim remains a South Korean citizen and will ask China to send his in-laws to South Korea on humanitarian grounds.

“Although Kim and his wife returned to the North after settling in the South, they are clearly South Korean citizens,” said a government official on Monday. “We believe the Chinese government will consider this fact. If it sends a South Korean citizen to North Korea, the decision could turn into a major diplomatic problem.”

A spokesman for activist group NK Refugees Human Rights Association of Korea, who helped the family defect again, said Kim and his relatives are being held in China’s Yanbian Province. Other activists said Chinese security forces conducted a massive manhunt to capture them, and they were captured on Sunday in the mountains surrounding Yanji.

Activists believe North Korea must have sought China’s help to catch Kim and his family. When it was reported that Kim succeeded in fleeing North Korea again by bribing border guards, North Korea belatedly started tracking the Kims down and asked China to arrest them.

A government source in Seoul said Sunday, “It seems the Chinese government is trying to buy time in handling Kim Kwang-ho’s case. The reason they’re refusing the South Korean consul’s requests to interview Kim’s family is because it has not determined Kim’s nationality.”

If Beijing allows the South Korean consul to interview Kim and his family, it means it recognizes them as South Korean, and that puts China under pressure given that the case is sensitive for both Koreas.

[Chosun Ilbo]

North Korean refugees in Myanmar held by Burmese rebels

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South Korean NGOs face a dilemma over how to rescue 64 North Koreans held by Myanmar rebels and forced to work on a drug farm.

The North Koreans have been taken to a rebel camp northeast of Tachilek, a town along the border between Myanmar and Thailand, over the past nine years, Pastor Kim Hee-Tae told AFP. The refugees were caught while attempting to travel on their own through rebel-held territory to Thailand in order to defect to South Korea after fleeing their poverty-stricken homeland.

He said NGOs were unable to launch a campaign to raise the money, that is $5,000 ransom for each of the hostages, or to ask for Seoul to intervene as the hostage takers were extremely publicity shy.

“We need very quiet negotiations to pull it through”, he said.

About 80 percent of the North Koreans were women and were forced to work at alcohol manufacturing or drug processing plants. “Some of them are forced into prostitution”, he said. Male captives were used to grow poppies.

Myanmar is the world’s second largest producer of opium — the raw ingredient for heroin — after Afghanistan, accounting for 10 percent of global production, according to UN data.

[Sinchew]