Category: North Korean refugee

Why a senior defector believes North Korea’s days are numbered

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Thae Yong-ho, a former North Korean diplomat who held posts in Denmark, Sweden and the U.K. said that while the regime’s elusive leader, Kim Jong Un, may have no intention of undertaking reforms or giving up his nuclear weapons, change is inevitable. Thae, who lives under the protection of the South Korean government, and travels with an entourage of body guards, recently sat for an interview with TIME, amid news that U.S. President Donald Trump and Kim have been expressing interest in another summit.

Q: President Trump has pursued a strategy of cozying up to hostile leaders, including Kim Jong Un, in the hopes that it will pay off at the negotiating table. What do you think has been the effect of this?
A: I think President Trump is playing a very dangerous game with North Korea. President Trump met three times with Kim Jong-Un, [but] … has not taken any significant measures to stop the nuclearization of North Korea. Meanwhile Kim Jong Un has achieved quite a lot. First, he avoided a so-called military option, which President Trump had emphasized quite often in 2017. Second, he stopped President Trump from adding additional sanctions. Third, thanks to these meetings, Kim Jong Un actually strengthened his legitimacy and absolute rule over North Korea.

Q: President Trump has made it clear he wants the Nobel Prize for making peace with North Korea. What does Kim Jong Un want from these talks?
A: First, he wants nuclear status in this region. …Like what India and Pakistan did. Second, is that through this dialogue process with President Trump, Kim Jong Un, a man in his thirties, all of a sudden raised his rank to the same level as other important players in this region. And domestically, he proved to North Korean people that he is very capable, even though he is young.

Q: You’ve said that North Korean people, both regular citizens and the elite, don’t believe in the system. What gives you this impression?
A: The current regime can be termed a socialist skeleton. The bones have a socialist structure, but the flesh has already turned capitalist. The number of black markets and free markets are increasing every year. If you read Rodong Sinmun, North Korean media, they said North Korea will not collapse because of a military strike by imperialists, but it is possible if the young generations are not educated properly.

Q: What do they mean by ‘educated properly’? What’s different about the younger generation?
A: If you look at the millennial generation of North Korea, they are the only ones who have grown up with computers. When computers were introduced in late 1990s, all of a sudden there was a boom of English learning. If you want to use a computer, you have to know English, right? And they are not interested in watching communist or socialist cultural content. They are only interested in American or South Korean movies or dramas. I think that the young generations’ eyes are not on ideological things, but on material things. And even though the North Korean regime wants to stop it, they can’t stop this future.

[Excerpted from TIME interview]

Anguish over deaths Of North Korean defectors who starved in Seoul

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The death of 42-year-old North Korean defector Han Seong-ok and her 6-year-old son, Kim Dong-jin anguishes Kim Yong-hwa and made him doubt himself. Kim Yong-hwa is chairman of the North Korea Refugees Human Rights Association of Korea, a defectors group, which was responsible for helping Han get from China to South Korea. Han had been trafficked from North Korea as a bride to a man in China.

Kim recalls Han’s hard life was visible in her rough and calloused hands. “She looked at least 15 or 20 years older than her actual age,” he recalls. “She was growing corn and potatoes in a rural town in China. And unlike here, farming there is not mechanized.”

After Han died in Seoul, “I thought, ‘Why did I bring her here?’ ” he says. Of course, he says, he brought her here to help her find freedom — but what was the point, he wonders, if she just starved to death in a land of plenty.

A man sets up portraits of North Korean defector Han Seong-ok and her 6-year-old son, Kim Dong-jin , who are believed to have died from starvation, at a shrine in downtown Seoul.

A fellow defector surnamed Lee, who did not want NPR to use her full name for fear that her family would face discrimination, was one of the few people who knew Han Seong-ok. Both were from Hamhung, North Korea’s second-largest city. In 2009, they were in the same class at a government-funded training center, which all defectors to the South must attend.

“I was really glad and grateful to know that she’s from my hometown,” Lee remembers. “I liked her so much that we promised to remain friends and move to the same district together.”

Lee remembers that Han seemed bright, but says she often had a “shadow” or sad look on her face and often walked on the street with her face tilted down, obscured by the brim of her hat. She believes Han was distraught about a husband and child she left in China.

“Almost every female North Korean defector feels torn between the family they already have,” she says, “and the possibility of a new spouse and a new family in South Korea.”

Lee says that if Han had stayed in North Korea, she would not have died unknown there. In North Korea, “You even know how many spoons your neighbor has,” Lee says. “Even during the famine of the 1990s, we would know the morning after if someone had died overnight, so we could take out the body for burial right away.”

[NPR]

North Korean defectors who starved to death in a land of plenty

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“My hometown, where I once lived, is a mountain village with blossoming flowers.“

The lyrics to this folk song, which is sung in both Koreas, evoke nostalgia for a time and a place to which one can never return. It is playing at a makeshift shrine in downtown Seoul. There’s an altar with flowers, alongside photos of 42-year-old North Korean defector Han Seong-ok and her 6-year-old son, Kim Dong-jin.

In late July, the management staff for the apartment building where Han lived went looking for her, to see about months of unpaid utility bills. Smelling a foul odor from her apartment, they broke in and found both mother and son on the floor. They had been dead for two months. The bodies were so decomposed, authorities say they couldn’t determine the cause of death.

There was no food in the apartment except a bag of chili pepper flakes. Han’s bank account was empty. Police found no evidence of foul play, so many people assume Han and her child starved to death. The case has shocked South Koreans and refocused attention on the roughly 33,000 North Korean defectors living in the South.

Kim Yong-hwa, chairman of the North Korea Refugees Human Rights Association of Korea, a defectors group, says South Korea should either take better care of defectors or not take them in at all.

Kim met Han Seong-ok in China in 2009, after Han had been trafficked from North Korea as a bride to a man in China. It’s not clear when exactly she was sold to the man. Kim helped Han get from China to South Korea that year.

Han returned to China last year, divorced her husband, and returned to Seoul with her son. Kim says Han applied to the government for welfare benefits last winter, but was rejected because she didn’t have proof of her divorce. Kim tried to persuade government administrators to help her, but to no avail. “I think that’s when she gave up on seeking help,” he says.

According to a survey last year by the government-funded Korea Hana Foundation, which helps defectors, the unemployment rate for defectors is 6.9% — 2.9% higher than the national average. They are concentrated in manual labor and service industries, and on average, work 8.8 hours a week more than the national average but are paid about a third less than South Koreans. Kim says defectors’ poverty in South Korea and the accompanying sense of shame often contribute to their isolation.

[NPR]

Lawyers determine North Korean waitresses abducted to South Korea, not defected

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A group of North Korean waitresses who “defected” to Seoul in 2016 were actually abducted by South Korea, a fact-finding team of international lawyers has concluded after a visit to Pyongyang.

The case has long been controversial, with Pyongyang saying the 12 women were kidnapped from a North Korean state-run restaurant in China, while Seoul insists they defected of their own free will.

During their six-day stay in the North Korean capital, which ended September 5, the lawyers said they spoke to seven former waitresses who claimed they managed to escape, while their colleagues were tricked into coming to Seoul.

The seven North Korean women said they escaped – and eventually return to the North – after their team leader overheard a conversation between the restaurant’s manager and a representative of the South Korean intelligence service.

While the seven escaped, 12 other waitresses had already left without knowing they were being taken to South Korea, the joint fact-finding committee of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers said in a statement.

The 12 women were “taken away by deception … against their will, separated from their families and country”, it said after taking evidence from their seven colleagues. “This constitutes the criminal offense of abduction.”

In a bombshell revelation last year, the manager of the restaurant where the waitresses worked said he had lied to them about their final destination and blackmailed them into following him to the South. Heo Gang-il told the South’s JTBC television that he had been recruited by Seoul’s National Intelligence Service (NIS) in China in 2014.

At a briefing in Pyongyang, one of the lawyers, Niloufer Bhagwat, vice president of the Confederation of Lawyers of Asia and the Pacific, slammed the Seoul government for its handling of the case.

The team of lawyers said they had received “full cooperation” from the North but were not allowed to meet the 12 North Korean women who are currently in the South. “The young women … are still being monitored by the South Korean intelligence service and the national police agency,” she said.

[AFP]

North Korean defectors in Canada plead their case

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Rocky Kim knew the North Korean regime he was living under was seriously flawed and that he was determined to bring about change. That set in motion a series of events that saw him go from student activist to victim of torture to escapee on the run and, finally, a refugee in Canada.

Yet, now the Canadian government plans to deport him. And Kim is hoping Canadians will hear his story — and those of dozens of other North Korean defectors living there — and agree that they should be allowed to stay.

When Kim arrived in Canada, he took ESL classes, learned English and enrolled at George Brown College. He apprenticed in heating and air conditioning repair and now runs his own HVAC company. The well-dressed Kim proudly states that he pays his taxes and employs several workers. It sounds like the ultimate Canadian immigrant success story. But Kim is slated for deportation.

He’s currently in the process of a pre-removal risk assessment, which is a type of appeal those earmarked for deportation can make if they believe being sent back will put them in harm’s way. There are dozens of North Koreans living in the Greater Toronto Area who are now facing deportation.

But there’s a catch. They’re not being sent back to North Korea. They’re being ordered to get on a plane to Seoul, South Korea.

Many of the defectors in Canada lied on their refugee applications and said they came to Canada directly from North Korea. What Rocky Kim and others are at risk of deportation over is misrepresentation on their application, which is treated as a serious offense.

“The Canadian [government] needs to change its attitude to North Korean defectors,” says Jin Hak Choi, the former president of the National Unification Advisory Council in Toronto. “They have no country.”

It’s this argument — that North Korean defectors are really stateless people — that those up for deportation and their allies are hoping Canadians and the government will agree with.

[Toronto Sun]

Chinese pastor shared his faith with North Koreans then executed, defector claims

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A pastor on the China-North Korea border, Rev. Han Chung-Ryeol, shared his faith with at least 1,000 North Koreans in the Hermit Kingdom before he was assassinated in 2016, a defector claims. Rev. Han, a Chinese pastor of Korean descent, who ministered on the border town of Changbai since the early 1990s, was reportedly on Pyongyang’s most-wanted list as early as 2003 for his faith-based charitable work.

Rev. Han fed and sheltered thousands of North Koreans over the years — many of whom had fled the famine-stricken country in search of food and jobs. One of them, Sang-chul, shared his story in a short documentary from The Voice of the Martyrs: “In primary school, we were taught that all missionaries were terrorists,” Sang-chul shares in the video through a translator. “They told us that a missionary will be nice to you at first, but when they get you into their homes, then they will kill you and eat your liver.”

The North Korean said he didn’t have work or food in his village so he had snuck across the mountain border into China, picking mushrooms along the way in hopes of selling them in a market. He ran into Han, who offered to sell them and give him the money. Sang-chul knew something was different when the pastor didn’t cheat him out of any money, and wondered why a Chinese citizen would help him, knowing the danger.

“It is because I am a Christian,” Han reportedly said, causing the North Korean to be fearful of him.

And then one day Han told him: “God is real. There is hope for every person.” Sang-chul recalls, “I could not believe he would say that word, ‘God.’ Nobody says that word. … It is an act of treason…and can lead to soldiers coming in the night.”

Eventually, Sang-chul asked Rev. Han for a Bible, and then shared the gospel with his wife and best friend, who both found hope before he received the tragic news that Han was stabbed and axed to death by North Korean assassins. “Pastor Han gave his life, but he gave hope to me and to many other North Koreans,” Sang-chul said. “And despite the ever-present danger, many of us will continue to share the message that God is real.”

 [AP]

North Korea’s extensive underground empire may include underground air bases

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North Korea, one of the most secretive countries in the world, is no stranger to building underground military facilities. Whether a tunnel dug under the demilitarized zone designed to pass thousands of troops an hour, or bunkers to accommodate the regime’s leadership, North Korea has built extensive underground facilities designed to give it an edge in wartime.

One of the earliest examples of North Korean underground engineering was the discovery of several tunnels leading from North Korea under the demilitarized zone to South Korea. The first tunnel located in 1974, extended one kilometer south of the DMZ, and was large enough to move up to two thousand troops per hour under the DMZ.

Thanks to a tip from a North Korean defector, an even larger tunnel was discovered in 1978, a mile long and nearly seven feet wide. Since then at least four tunnels have been discovered, with reinforced concrete slabs, electricity for lighting and fresh air generation, and narrow railway gauges.

It’s difficult to determine how many tunnels exist. One report says that Kim Il-sung, the founder of the North Korean state and Kim Jong-un’s grandfather, ordered each of the ten front-line combat divisions to dig two tunnels. If completed, that would theoretically mean another dozen or so tunnels remain undiscovered. A former South Korean general, Han Sung-chu, claims there are at least eighty-four tunnels—some reaching as far as downtown Seoul. (The South Korean government does not believe Han’s numbers—nor the claimed ability to reach Seoul—are credible.)

The North Korean People’s Liberation Army Air Force is also believed to have three different underground air bases at Wonsan, Jangjin and Onchun. The underground base at Wonsan reportedly includes a runway 5,900 feet long and ninety feet wide that passes through a mountain. According to a defector, during wartime aircraft would take off from conventional air bases but return to underground air bases.

Another underground development is a series of troop bunkers near the DMZ. A North Korean defector disclosed that, starting in 2004, North Korea began building bunkers capable of concealing between 1,500 and two thousand fully armed combat troops near the border. At least eight hundred bunkers were built, not including decoys, meant to conceal units such as light-infantry brigades and keep them rested until the start of an invasion.

Other underground facilities are believed to have been constructed to shelter the North’s leadership. According to a South Korean military journal, the United States believes there are between 6000-8000 such shelters scattered across the country. This information was reportedly gathered from defectors in order to hunt down regime members in the event of war or government collapse.

North Korea is believed to have hundreds of artillery-concealing caves just north of the DMZ. Known as Hardened Artillery Sites, or HARTS, these are usually tunneled into the sides of mountains. An artillery piece, such as a 170-millimeter Koksan gun or 240-millimeter multiple-launch rocket system, can fire from the mouth of the cave and then withdraw into the safety of the mountain to reload. As of 1986, and estimated 200-500 HARTS were thought to exist.

All these facilities are hard to spot via satellite, so gleaning information from defectors has been the best way to learn about them in peacetime. Pyongyang’s eventual defeat in any wartime scenario is a given, but its underground headquarters, fortifications and troop depots have the potential to not only enhance the Korean People’s Army’s ability to mount a surprise attack, but also to prolong the war, confounding the high-tech armed forces of its adversaries.

[Read full article at The National Interest]

North Korean defector Thae Yong-ho says defection is a gradual process

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Born into North Korea’s elite class, Thae Yong-ho, a former North Korean diplomat, was destined for great things. In the 1990s, he was posted to North Korea’s embassy in Denmark.

Only then, living in the West, did doubt about the system he was indoctrinated in begin to grow. “I learned that North Korea is not a socialist paradise, which I was taught,” Thae said in an interview. “So from that time on, the suspicion inside me is growing.”

It would take another two decades before Thae made a monumental decision that has made him both internationally famous and an assassination target for the regime he was once proud to serve.

Defection is a gradual process, he said, not a snap decision. He had been holding out hope that North Korea might embrace change. “[I hoped] that one day North Korea can become like Vietnam or China,” Thae explained. But his optimism was shattered when former leader Kim Jong-il announced he would be succeeded by his son, Kim Jong-un, who he knew would not be a reformer.

While living in Copenhagen, Stockholm and, lastly, London, Thae saw his two now-adult boys increasingly become at home with life in countries where democracy, a free media, open education, public health systems and plentiful food was normal.

Whenever Thae and his family had to return to North Korea, as diplomats do periodically, they had to conceal the lives they had been living in order to keep faith with the false messages transmitted to the people by the Kim regime. His boys could not talk about the internet or social media; they had to pretend living in the West was ugly.

Unless he acted, he knew he and his family would have to continue the unimaginable pretense of their double lives. Thae said his decision to become one of North Korea’s highest-ranking defectors ever was made out of love for his sons and their future children. “So as a father, I thought that it is my last mission to cut off this kind of slavery system, you know, for my sons,” he said.

In 2016, Thae and his family walked out of North Korea’s embassy in Ealing, West London, for the last time. Thae knew not only that his defection to South Korea would require high-level protection for his wife and sons; it would likely make life unbearable for his wider family back home. Knowing they could be working in forced labor camps or worse is a pain he cannot escape.

[Sydney Morning Herald]

New generation of North Korean defectors become YouTube stars

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North Korean defector Lee Pyung, 24, worked as a fashion model for an online shopping mall and appeared on a South Korean’s YouTube channel. Now he banks up to $15,000 a month, he says, having cultivated an online following of 45,000 on his channel by dishing about his tattoos and North Korean cigarettes.

Mr. Lee is also a role model for students at the Priming Leadership Academy, a school that helps young defectors enter college and find careers. In November, the school beefed up its curriculum, adding alongside math and English courses a new “one-person media” class taught by a 24-year-old South Korean YouTuber.

The phenomena of young North Korean defectors becoming YouTube star baffles some older North Korean defectors who have traditionally shunned the limelight. Few spoke up, and when they did, they focused on activism, like sharing their harrowing escapes to condemn the Kim regime.

The younger generation have milder views on North Korea, older defectors say, because few recall the country’s mass famine from the 1990s that killed an estimated two million to three million people. “I wish they would pay more attention to the important issues, but obviously I can’t force them,” says Seo Jae-pyong, 49, who fled nearly two decades ago and now heads a large defectors group.

This generational divide is seen with Kim Myung, 27, who carved out an online niche playing traditional Korean folk songs—including those from the North—with an ocarina, an ancient wind instrument. He had never touched a musical instrument before relocating to Seoul in 2006. His mother initially called the pursuit buffoonery. Mr. Kim’s YouTube channel gins up demand for paid, offline gigs—and he says his mother has now approved a career choice that wouldn’t be plausible in their former homeland.

The rationale for leaving North Korea is changing. Just seven years ago, the leading motive was still a lack of food and economic hardship, according to a survey funded by the South Korean government. Now the top-cited reason is searching for freedom.

[The Washington Post]

North Korean defectors decry autopsy for woman and her child

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North Korean defectors living in South Korea say the government is evading responsibility for the death of a North Korean woman and her infant son in their apartment in southern Seoul, following an autopsy result that did not confirm the cause of the deaths.

Defectors shocked by the deaths of members of their growing community say the result of the autopsy last Friday is a sign South Korean agencies do not want to be blamed for the neglect of the woman with the surname Han, and her young son, Yonhap reported.

Defectors with a group, Hongik Humanity for the World, are demanding a better response while a funeral for the deceased is being postponed, according to the report. The delayed funeral is a cause for concern, said Park Jin-hye of Hongik Humanity. Park said the postponed funeral prevents the dead from resting in peace, a reference to local spiritual beliefs.

“They were neglected for two months after their death [in their apartment], and are being prevented from leaving [this Earth] for 90 days,” Park said.

Han resettled in the South in 2009 and temporarily returned to China before coming back to the South with her second son. They was found dead on July 31, when her building’s technician noticed something odd with her water meter. The woman and her son may have died of starvation at least a month before local authorities entered their apartment to find their decomposing corpses.

Defectors have said South Koreans remain indifferent to their plight despite increased efforts in Seoul in the area of inter-Korea engagement.

[UPI]