Category: North Korean refugee

Otto Warmbier experienced what thousands experience in North Korean concentration camps

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The abuse North Korea inflicted on Otto Warmbier, the American student who died this week after returning home to the U.S. following more than a year of imprisonment, is something up to 120,000 North Koreans regularly experience in the country’s concentration camps, according to defectors and analysts.

Jun Heo, who was just a teenager when he was sent to one of the country’s concentration camps, said to Fox News that being beaten black and blue and tortured within an inch of your life was routine.

There were about 20 people stuffed into each small cell, he said. Everyone over the age of 17 was forced to work hard labor in farms from 6:30 a.m. until at least 8 p.m. Cries and screams became the soundtrack of life, but it was after nightfall when the most excruciating howls could be heard, Heo said. Hapless prisoners, trying to sleep, would wail in pain as their bony bodies broke down from starvation, while at midnight the “secret police” came to take women to be raped.

Heo’s crime? He had fled to China for a chance at a better life. It was November 2005 and Heo — plus 12 other defectors — crossed into China and was staying in a “broker’s house” in Beijing. The broker ordered the North Koreans to not leave the house, citing safety reasons. But on Dec. 6, the day before he turned 14, a barrage of Chinese policemen — armed with guns and electric batons — knocked down the door and rounded up the terrified defectors.

“I was two days in a Chinese jail and then sent back to the Sinuiju concentration camp in North Korea,” Heo remembered

After several months, he was let go. But in 2008, at the age of 17, a determined Heo defected again – this time for good. Now a 26-year-old political science major at Seoul National University and studying English at the Teach North Korean Refugees center, he wakes up every day with a self-inflicted pinch.

“It is like heaven,” Heo said. “I don’t believe I live here.”

[Fox News]

Defectors from North Korea describe daily life

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For the vast majority of the 25 million North Koreans, food is scarce. The United Nations reports that 70 percent of the population — around 18 million — goes hungry, with the stunting of children’s growth a “rampant phenomenon” due to the lack of nutrition. Almost 9 million have no health care, and more than 5 million live in squalor because they lack clean running water.

While food may be scarce, distrust is not. From childhood, North Koreans are instructed to report anyone being even mildly nonconformist or speaking of their leadership without over-the-top praise, even in private conversation. Tom Fowdy, founder of the analysis group Young DPRK Watchers, noted that compulsory community meetings are held: singing songs about their leaders and goading each other into confessing minor crimes.

A caste system means North Koreans often remain in the social rank into which they were born, something determined by a family’s reputation. Sometimes a citizen can move up the ladder to a more privileged caste, depending on one’s perceived support of the leadership, or move down the ladder, depending on one’s links to criminals, defectors or South Koreans.

“Those with a poor songbun (caste ranking) will have poor prospects,” said Chad O’Carroll, managing director of Korea Risk Group, which produces analyses on North Korea. “But regardless of one’s background, most young North Koreans should never expect to leave their country, officially consume foreign-produced information unapproved by the government or show respect to anyone beyond a leader to the Kim family tree.”

A North Korean is required to hang in their homes portraits of Kim il Sung and Kim Jong-il, the grandfather and father, respectively, or the current leader. There are routine checks by authorities to ensure these are kept immaculately clean. It is mostly prohibited for one to communicate with others in the world outside. Pirated modern movies and music occasionally make their way into homes but, if caught, violators can be punished with death.

Soldiers have been known to enter homes and extract entire families, who are never heard from again.

[Fox News]

South Korea calls for the immediate release of Americans and S. Koreans held by Pyongyang

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On Tuesday, South Korea called for the immediate release of the Americans and South Koreans being held by Pyongyang.

Its president, Moon Jae-in, described North Korea’s human rights abuses as “deplorable”, adding that South Korea would make every effort to win the release of the remaining detainees, according to a spokesman.

South Korea has tried to find out more about its own citizens through European countries with a diplomatic presence in Pyongyang, but its requests have been met with silence.

Three of the South Koreans were detained while carrying out missionary work, while the other three are defectors who returned to the North, according to South Korean intelligence officials.

[The Guardian]

North Korean defector wants to go home but facing possible arrest

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A North Korean defector who has demanded repatriation to her homeland, claiming she was tricked by a defection broker and came to South Korea by mistake, is once again in danger of arrest.

The Daegu Metropolitan Police Agency’s security investigation team is currently investigating Kim Ryon-hui, 48. Kim is being charged with posting materials praising the North Korean regime on her Facebook page in April 2016, including a video commemorating the Day of the Sun (a holiday celebrating the birthday of North Korean founding leader Kim Il-sung) and a song cheering for Kim.

Police are also charging Kim in connection with statements she made in a 2015 interview with the Hankyoreh. Her Feb. 2016 visit to the Vietnamese embassy in South Korea to demand to be sent to North Korea is also being seen as a National Security Law violation.

“Kim’s remarks are something we are obliged to investigate according to domestic law,” a police source said. “We are considering an arrest warrant request because we have sent three summonses to Kim as of June 13 demanding that she appear, and she has refused all of them,” the source added.

In Apr. 2015, Kim received a two-year jail sentence suspended for three years for making a telephone call to a North Korean consulate in China, which is considered meeting or communicating with North Korea according to the National Security Law. Kim claims that at the time that she was trying to alert North Korea to her detention and request rescue were not accepted by the court.

Kim has demanded her own repatriation. The Ministry of Unification maintains that Kim’s repatriation is not allowed by domestic law.

[Hankyoreh]

North Korea views humanitarian aid as leverage

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So far North Korea has rejected South Korean President Moon Jae-in’s offers of unconditional humanitarian aid and cooperation. Since he took office in early May, the new liberal South Korean leader has tried to balance strong support for military deterrence and international sanctions against Pyongyang’s continued nuclear and ballistic missiles provocations with increased engagement to restart inter-Korean dialogue and cooperation.

The North Korean state-run newspaper Rodong Sinmun said in an editorial last week that, “Nobody can expect relations to improve just because they allow some humanitarian aid or civilian exchanges that the previous conservative clique halted.”

North Korea has also set a steep price for allowing future reunions of families that have been separated by the division of the Korean Peninsula at the end of World War II. When the South recently proposed trying to arrange a new reunion in August to mark the anniversary of the end of the Second World War, Pyongyang demanded Seoul first return a group of North Korean defectors, including 12 restaurant workers who sought asylum in the South last year. North Korea charges that these defectors were abducted while South Korea says they voluntarily fled.

Ahn Chan-il, a North Korean defector and analyst with the World Institute of North Korean studies, said the Kim Jong Un leadership is making seemingly impossible demands to improve inter-Korean ties because it expects relations to actually get worse in the short term.

The North Korea official news agency on Saturday indicated Pyongyang is close to testing an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) that could potentially reach the U.S. mainland.

“If North Korea does it, Kim Jong Un knows well that China will prepare sanctions such as blocking the oil pipeline (between the two countries,)” Ahn said.

[VoA]

The two latest defectors from North Korea

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A father and son saved from a small fishing boat were given permission to stay in South Korea – despite the chances of a fierce reaction from North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.

The pair were rescued along with two others on another boat on Friday and Saturday. The other two men requested to head back to North Korea.

Tensions are running high between the two nations – who have been at war since 1950 – after the tubby tyrant launched a missile test today. This morning’s test fire marks Kim’s fourth weapons launch in recent weeks.

The man in his 50s and son in his 20s will be allowed to stay in South Korea for “humanitarian” reasons. In a statement, the Ministry of Unification in South Korea said: “The government handled the issue on humanitarian grounds and respected their will as we do customarily.”

A South Korean official said: “We will provide education for them to settle in South Korea, for a certain period of time, as is usual for North Korean defectors.”

Unusually, North Korea has not spoken out about the rescue yet – Pyongyang has condemned the “kidnap” of its citizens rescued in this way before.

 [Daily Star]

How defectors send money to relatives in North Korea

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It is sometimes a challenge for North Korean defectors to find trustful middlemen to help them send money to relatives still in North Korea.

Brokers in South Korea wire money to middlemen in China, most of whom are smugglers or tradesmen with ties to North Korea. Then the middlemen call their contacts in the North to notify them of the amount of money to deliver out of the pockets of their North Korean counterparts while carrying out other trade deals of their own. The commission fee is between 20 percent and 30 percent in general.

For the past decade, Kim Hye-sook, a 42-year-old defector from North Korea, has successfully managed to send money to her elder sister and relatives who remain in the North. Kim was lucky enough to find someone in the transfer business who was a friend of a fellow defector. Although the commission fees are relatively high — around 30 percent of the amount entrusted — Kim’s money has always landed safely in the hands of her family.

“Looking at kids here, I cannot help but think of my nephews [in the North]. I wish they could live a decent life as they do here. I myself live on a tight budget with my husband, as I’m sick and can’t work. Nevertheless, I can’t stop sending money back home because I know exactly how they live in North Korea — it breaks my heart now just thinking of it,” Kim said during an interview.

[The Korea Herald]

North Korean defectors ripped off trying to send money to relatives

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A few months after fleeing her destitute homeland for a more decent life in South Korea, North Korean defector Park received a tempting offer: Someone who could transfer money to her family in the North for a commission fee.

Haunted by memories of her three starving children and old mother living in Hyesan in the country’s far north Ryanggang Province, the 44-year-old defector eagerly handed over 20 million won ($17,900) to a broker — only to find out a month later not a single penny had reached her family.

“It is just outrageous to think that other defectors like me could easily fall prey to this kind of fraud, getting their savings wiped out,” says Park.

According to a 2016 survey from the Seoul-based Database Center for North Korean Human Rights, around 58.5 percent of 400 surveyed defectors in South Korea have sent money home. Twenty-six percent said they did so last year, with the average remittance being about 2.35 million won ($2,100).

With a growing number of new arrivals falling prey to such scams, the Unification Ministry, which handles inter-Korean affairs and defector support, has expanded related education and set up a 24-hour hotline manned by officials at the Hanawon resettlement center. Most defectors are mandated to undertake a three-month training period there as soon as they admitted to South Korea.

Most defectors are not high-income earners, with their average monthly wages hovering around 1.5 million won ($1342/month).

[The Korea Herald]

The awakening of the North Korean people

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From an interview with Kang Chol-hwan, who was detained in a North Korean concentration camp for 10 years, along with his family, as political criminals simply due to the fact that they had lived in Japan:

What is it like inside a concentration camp? It is very similar to the Soviet and Nazi camps made by Stalin and Hitler in the way they systematically kill the people.Children, women and even elderly people were imprisoned as political criminals, and are made to do inhumane hard labor on minimal food supplies.

But North Korea also has unique systems: a transfer system where the children inherit their parents’ “crimes”, and a three-generation wipe-out system where they kill the parents, children and their children altogether.

What is necessary for the democratization of North Korea? First, we need to ask China to stop the forced deportation of North Korean defectors. If they stop doing this, more people in North Korea will begin to openly seek democracy, and join in activism.

Secondly, we need to expand operations to send information to the west side of North Korea. There was a case in Romania where a citizen who got hold of outside information was able to bring down the dictator Nicolae Ceausescu.

…North Koreans have begun to resist. For example, when the Tumen river flood killed many people last year, the people were furious that Kim Jong-un didn’t come to see the devastation that took so many lives. After seeing on world news that leaders visit disaster sites, the people changed their views.

This is why we continue to smuggle USBs that carry world news into North Korea. The awakening of the people is a weapon stronger than any other.

[The Liberty Web]

Christians in North Korea facing persecution on par with the Early Christians under Nero

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Human rights activists told Capitol Hill lawmakers that Christians in North Korea are facing persecution that is likely “on par” with the level of persecution that the Early Christian Church endured under Roman emperor Nero.

The activists, convened by International Christian Concern, told lawmakers about the human rights abuses that Christians face. They also asked lawmakers to support a resolution to reauthorize the North Korean Human Act of 2004.

“Our colleagues in South Korea have thoroughly documented cases of religious persecution,” said Greg Scarlatoui, the executive director of the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea.

“Organizations such as Database Center for North Korean Human Rights and the Korean Institution for National Unification [have] interviewed thousands of defectors who brought testimony of extremely severe religious persecution,” Scarlatoiu said. “Like other Communist leaders, as mentioned earlier, Kim Il-sung and the Kim regime has rejected religion as the ‘opium of the people.'”

“One can confidently say that it is the Kim family regime that has taken religious persecution, in particular the persecution of Christians, to a level, perhaps, on par with Nero’s Rome as well as the Assyrian, Greek and Armenian genocide of World War I or the Yazidi genocide today,” Scarlatoiu said.

[Pakistan Christian Post]