Category: North Korean refugee

Japan making plans to accept North Korean refugees

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Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said that Japan’s government is drawing up contingency plans in case a crisis on the Korean Peninsula sends an influx of refugees to Japan.

Abe told a parliamentary session that the government is formulating measures including protecting foreigners, landing procedures, building and operating shelters, and screening asylum seekers.

The government has been also working on evacuation plans for about 60,000 Japanese from South Korea in case of a crisis.

Last week, National Security Council members discussed how to deal with a possibility that armed North Korean soldiers pretending to be refugees may try to enter Japan, Kyodo News reported.

According to one scenario, a US military action sends a massive number of North Korean refugees to the Japanese coast in boats, but some armed soldiers hiding among them could plot terrorist activities after landing, Kyodo said.

[TVNZ]

Human Rights Watch urges China to release North Korean refugees

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China should immediately reveal the whereabouts of eight North Koreans it detained last month, Human Rights Watch said Monday, adding they risk severe torture if they were returned to North Korea.

“By now, there are plenty of survivor accounts that reveal Kim Jong-Un’s administration is routinely persecuting those who are forced back to North Korea,” said Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director for Human Rights Watch.

China regularly labels North Koreans as illegal “economic migrants” and repatriates them based on a border protocol adopted in 1986.

The group it highlighted — which includes at least four women — was detained by Chinese officials in mid-March after they were stopped for a random check in Shenyang, in northeastern China. Human Rights Watch said that on the basis of information from sources it considers usually reliable, the group was still believed to be jailed in China. But it feared they may soon be returned to the North since “most repatriations happen two months after detention”.

“There is no way to sugar coat this: if this group is forced back to North Korea, their lives and safety will be at risk,” Robertson said.

Seoul’s foreign ministry did not confirm the HRW account, saying its protocol was not to publicly comment on individual refugee cases for their own safety and to protect diplomatic relations. “But we closely coordinate with a nation involved when a problem involving North Korean refugees arises,” it said in a statement, and was in general “doing our best to ensure the safety and safe transfer of those who wish to come to the South”.

More than 40 North Koreans, including children and pregnant women, have been held by China over the past nine months, Human Rights Watch said, and at least nine forcibly returned to the North.

[AFP]

Life under Kim Il-sung better than under Kim Jong-il and Kim Jong-un

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Over the rabble of tourists at Dora Observatory, a lookout in the Demilitarized Zone between North and South Korea, the sound of a rousing opera can be heard. Propaganda and music is broadcast by the north from across the border; slightly further west, the south plays their reply: Celine Dion and Kpop.

Kim Hwa (not her real name) is looking back at the country she fled in 2009. Hwa feels duty-bound to educate the public about North Korea, and volunteers part-time to take day trips to the DMZ with tourists, answering their questions on life in the north and her escape from the regime.

The daughter of a schoolteacher and military officer, she and her two brothers grew up well fed, in the “happiest household”. In North Korea there’s a lot of desert, she says, and “it’s difficult to farm so we import food”: “When the imports stop we starve, but army officers’ families were still given white rice so when I took lunch to school, others were eating rice mixed with corn and vegetables but I was eating white rice … Even though I didn’t grow up eating meat soup [regarded as somewhat of a delicacy in North Korea] I wasn’t starving … looking back it’s sad, but at the time I felt happy.”

She has fond memories of the Kim Il-sung era, when she says there was no economic difficulty, free medical service, free education and the food supply was consistent. The shift begins, for her, in the second era, that of Kim Jong-il, when she saw the nation’s budget move towards nuclear development and military spending, and away from food distribution and energy supply.

The crumbling of the Soviet Union as well as environmental factors led to a massive famine in North Korea from 1994-1998, in which about 3 million people lost their lives. At the time Kim Hwa was a lieutenant-colonel in the navy, with 700 soldiers under her.

She lost 50 troops to the famine and was denied help by the government. This was the first time she thought the government would crumble, and the first time she “started having doubts about North Korea”.

To feed her troops, she decided to sell a car on the black market to buy proper food such as goats and rabbits. One of her colleagues reported her and she was discharged in 1999. Spending 20 years in the military meant she had been somewhat sheltered from general society and thought the worst of famine was confined to the armed forces. She was greatly surprised when she returned home.

“When I got home to the station … I saw all the beggars and dead bodies [and] I realized the country had regressed since the last time I came home on a holiday. … There were two- and three-year-olds begging. I teared up. I thought, ‘Why do we live like this? … I felt bad for them, but the people in the village said it was something they see all the time. They said, ‘You go inside the train station and there are dead bodies everywhere underneath the benches’. At that time I felt a sense of resistance.”

On her return [home] she found her father was absent on a work trip, according to her mother. Hwa pressed the matter with her mother and was told he had actually died nine months previously. Falsely accused by a colleague, he had committed suicide rather than face labor camps, imprisonment or potential execution. “When I heard that I felt hostility grow… towards the party [Workers Party of Korea].”      Read more

[AFR Weekend]

“Tremendous enthusiasm” for defection from North Korea

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After being discharged from the North Korean navy as a lieutenant-colonel, North Korean defector Kim Hwa (not her real name) was given a visa that enabled travel to and from China.

At the time, North Korea was always low on medicine, so for medical purposes everyone had to buy illegal drugs in village markets. Prescription drugs and opium as well as marijuana were readily available on the black market, smuggled from China.

“There is nobody who works in trade with China that doesn’t trade drugs,” Kim says. It is so commonplace that she did not even consider the risks, and she and a friend began doing it.

One evening, she received a call from the son of her friend saying his mom had been caught. “I thought I would get caught [too], so that night I thought I had to escape to China.”

She took her savings from dealing drugs, $US3000, bribed the North Korean border guard with $US30 to cross and was walked through minefields and into China. She estimates that only two in 10 people successfully make a border crossing. Those who don’t are either killed where they stand or captured and simply disappear. She was lucky. (Since Kim Hwa defected, Kim Jong-un has increased border security on northern and southern borders, planting millions of landmines that make escapes much less possible.)

In late 2009, Kim Hwa’s partner along with other drug dealers were lined up and executed by shotgun. Kim could never return to her homeland. She traveled through Laos and Cambodia before seeking asylum at the South Korean embassy in Thailand, arriving in Seoul in December 2011. She was safe from the regime, at the cost of leaving her mother and two younger brothers behind.

“When I first got to South Korea I cried all day. I missed my mother. I joined the army when I was 16 years old, so I hardly spent any time with her.”

As a former high-ranking military officer, Hwa faced a lot of suspicion from South Korean authorities before she was allowed into the country. Defectors typically face a week-long investigation but she was questioned for three months, and was locked up throughout the process. [Finally] she was cleared and flown into Incheon airport.

Just last week, Kim Hwa attended a North Korean defectors meeting in the South and heard that about 100 defectors are arriving each month. It’s only a third of what it used to be a few years ago, but she finds it staggering considering the strengthening of border defense, increased land mines, higher broker fees for smugglers and heightened dangers associated with defection.

For her the message is clear – enthusiasm for defection is tremendous.

[AFR Weekend]

North Korea restricts access to Tumen River at border

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North Korea is restricting access to the border with China and banning its citizens from using their mobile phones in places where they can still receive signals.

A source in North Hamgyong Province told Radio Free Asia the “vetting” of ordinary North Koreans has “made it difficult to even go outside.” The source said, “We must report to the head of the local cooperative every time we look for firewood or farm the fields.”

North Koreans in North Hamgyong Province “who go to the mountains” are searched at sentry posts because people “can use their [international] mobile phones undetected” in more remote areas, according to the source. North Koreans with relatives on the outside frequently use mobile phones that can access Chinese networks at the border.

A second source in North Hamgyong Province said “the center” has “completely banned residents from coming within 150 meters of the Tumen River.” (The “center” refers to the central leadership in Pyongyang.)

“People who used to do their laundry at the river, or use the water for everyday living are being inconvenienced,” the source said. The source also said water was supplied for about an hour morning and evening, but “recently even that source has been shut off. …We now depend on mountain valley water merchants for our livelihoods,” the source said.

Additionally, North Korea has increased border surveillance, and China has also stepped up crackdowns on North Korean refugees.

[UPI]

A North Korean defector on Kim Jong Un launching nuclear war

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Hyeonseo Lee, a North Korean defector who witnessed her first public execution at age seven, is convinced despot Kim Jong-Un would launch nuclear weapons against its enemies as a “last stand”. Hyeonseo says the despotic leader would certainly launch his deadly arsenal if he faced defeat at the hands of the US.

“Kim Jong Un would launch missiles at South Korea, Japan and America. He’s a dictator who’d have nowhere to go and there would be no way to stop him. …There’s a slogan in North Korea which goes: ‘America dies, we die, we all die together’.”

Hyeonseo, now 37, went on to reveal how most North Koreans are ‘brainwashed’ into believing the regime’s propaganda and how the thousands who are forced to attend military parades “pee their pants” because they are forbidden from leaving. This past weekend Kim Jong-un paraded new ballistic rockets, tanks and his never before seen Special Forces units through the streets of Pyongyang in a show of strength against President Trump, who has refused to rule out a preemptive strike should Kim reach for the nuclear button.

Hyeonseo says her former compatriots believe Kim commands the most powerful military force on earth. “Most people in the country didn’t – and might still not – know about how powerful the United States is. They think North Korean weapons are the best in the world and they’re very proud of them. They believe they can protect the country from anyone.”

At the same time, she revealed how the thousands who lined the streets and frantically waved flags at the annual Day Of The Sun parade are secretly “sick and tired” of being forced to attend such events. “The people in the crowd are sick of [taking part in the parade]. They are still proud of the army but they don’t want to take part in these events.”

[Daily Mail]

North Korean defector warns Kim Jong-un plans to kidnap Americans if US attacks

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North Korea has been secretly training special forces to kidnap Westerners in South Korea and hold them hostage in the event of a US attack, a defector has claimed.

Ung-gil Lee, who defected to South Korea in 2006, said Kim Jong-un had highly armed snatch squads designed to grab foreign diplomats and tourists from across the South Korean border. Mr Lee, who defected to South Korea after serving for six years in one of these clandestine units, said: “The best case [for his old unit] would be to round them up and take them north, but if not they will take the foreigners hostage in South Korea. But they will all be killed, come what may – this goes hand-in-hand with assassination.”

The 37-year-old, who now works as a financial adviser in Seoul, said Kim Jong Un’s rule was worse than all the prominent dictators in the Middle East and Africa combined, and warned that Mr Trump should only carry out an attack if he thinks he can remove Kim from power.

“[Kim Jong Un] is going to fight back and use all retaliatory measures. Unless Trump thinks he can get rid of him, he must not carry out an attack,” Mr Lee said.

Mr Lee was recruited to join North Korea’s infamous special forces and spent five years training as a communications officer. He said he was part of a 100-strong land and air group selected for raids on the South to destroy infrastructure, disrupt roads and ports, and kidnap foreigners. His group was also taught to memorize details about mobile phone systems, and were armed with nerve agents, with which they were in some cases required to carry out “suicide missions”.

[The Independent]

Forbidden book smuggled out of North Korea

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Written by a dissident writer still living inside the country, “The Accusation; Forbidden Stories from Inside North Korea” is a collection of short stories about the lives of regular people, who live without freedom and under constant scrutiny.

Officially fiction, the book is considered to be a reflection of life under North Korean rule. The author is known simply as “Bandi”, Korean for firefly, a pen name he apparently chose himself.

The South Korean activist who helped smuggle it out, Do Hee-youn, tells CNN: “It doesn’t deal with political prison camps, or public executions, human rights issues. It shows normal life of North Korea citizens and it is very frightening. This book shows that they live like slaves.”

The book was published last month in the United States and United Kingdom, and is now available in 19 languages.

Do said he first heard about the manuscript completely by chance. “We heard about a North Korean defector,” Do told CNN, “A woman who had been arrested by Chinese border troops… We have been helping such cases in the past so we were helping her and we learned about Bandi and the manuscript.”

The woman told them Bandi was a relative and Do sent a trusted contact into North Korea to make discreet contact with the author. The hand-written manuscript was then smuggled out in between propaganda books on former leaders Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il.

Do says the author Babdi is now retired and still living in North Korea but gives little else away, fearful the regime will discover his identity.  Do has little doubt Bandi is still writing and at some point in the future will attempt to share with the world his views of life under the current leader Kim Jong Un.

[CNN]

Why the sudden collapse of North Korea could be overwhelming

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On the surface, the downfall of Kim Jong Un would seem like an unquestionable good thing. However, just a quick walkthrough of what could happen in an uncontrolled collapse sends shivers down the spine of anyone who has studied the subject in detail.

For our purposes, let us assume an internal event has caused the Kim family dynasty to come to a quick death. There is no central government and allied forces comprised of South Korea and the United States are moving across the 38th parallel to ensure order. What could be so bad?

Well, for starters, there would be immediate concern over who has control over not only of Pyongyang’s nuclear and atomic materials, but its perhaps much larger chemical and biological weapons stockpiles as well. North Korea’s chemical and biological weapons might be a much a bigger threat than its nuclear program. U.S. and allied forces would surely need to mount an unprecedented intelligence effort to not only locate almost all of these materials but protect themselves from chemical or biological weapon attacks by forces who could be still vying for power. Allied forces would also need to ensure that no weapons of mass destruction left the country–a non-proliferation nightmare of the worst kind.

There is an even more basic problem–that of a shattered society. How does one put back together a people broken by almost seven decades of being ruled as if they were slaves? How will the average North Korean, who only knows the Kim family, react to the end of the regime? Would some take up arms against those who would be there to ensure order? Is civil war a possibility? One thing is quite clear: It could take decades, but more likely generations, to wipe away the scars of psychological, emotional, and surely spiritual torture that was suffered.

Then there is China. Beijing’s greatest international worry is the collapse of the North Korean state. They fear a united Korea would become a major player in Northeast Asia, allied with America and armed with Washington’s best weapons and troops. And if millions of refugees started coming across the border into China, President Xi Jinping might send his own forces into North Korea–where a superpower showdown between Washington and Beijing could be in the offing.

And last, the sheer cost of rebuilding and reintegrating the North back into a united Korea would likely be in the trillions of dollars.

[The Week]

North Korean defector floats leaflets with Kim Jong Nam news

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A North Korean defector is packing balloons with information about Kim Jong Nam’s death and floating them north from South Korea.

Park Sang-hak, who says he defected in 1993 after picking up a leaflet sent from South Korea, told CNN he wants to show ordinary North Koreans the true nature of the country’s leader Kim Jong Un.

Kim Jong Nam was the eldest half-brother of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. Malaysian authorities allege North Korean agents killed Kim Jong Nam by wiping the highly toxic VX nerve agent on his face at an airport in Kuala Lumpur on February 13.

“Even South Koreans were shocked to hear the news of Kim Jong Nam’s assassination,” Park said. “Can you imagine how North Koreans will react?”

News of the killing has likely gone unreported in North Korea, where the press is tightly controlled by the government.

Park hopes the leaflets, SD cards and USB drives will offer people inside North Korea a glimpse of the outside world, including Kim Jong Nam’s death.

Pyongyang considers it a hostile act and tells its citizens the leaflets are South Korean propaganda, defectors say.

[CNN]