Category: North Korean refugee

Diplomat defector: “Kim Jong-un’s days are numbered”

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The highest-ranking defector from North Korea in years said on Wednesday that the days of the country’s leadership were “numbered,” and that its attempts to control outside information were not working because of corruption and discontent.

“I am sure that more defections of my colleagues will take place, since North Korea is already on a slippery slope,” the defector, Thae Yong-ho, said during a news conference in Seoul. “The traditional structures of the North Korean system are crumbling.”

One sign of Mr. Kim’s weakening control, Mr. Thae said, is evident at the unofficial markets in North Korea where women trade goods, mostly smuggled from China. The vendors used to be called “grasshoppers” because they would pack and flee whenever they saw the police approaching. Now, they are called “ticks” because they refuse to budge, demanding a right to make a living, Mr. Thae said.

Such resistance, even if small in scale, is unprecedented. The spread of outside news and market activities could eventually doom Mr. Kim because his government “can be held in place and maintained only by idolizing Kim Jong-un like a god,” Mr. Thae said. “If he tries to introduce a market-oriented economy to North Korean society, then there will be no place for Kim Jong-un in North Korea, and he knows that.”

“Kim Jong-un’s days are numbered,” Mr. Thae said on Wednesday.

[New York Times]

The only way to change North Korea’s destiny is to change its leader

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The only way to change North Korea’s destiny is to change its leader, says Thae Yong Ho the most senior North Korean diplomat to defect in almost 20 years.

“As long as Kim Jong Un is in power, there’ll be no chance for the world to improve the human rights issue” or cancel “the nuclear program,” he says.

Thae’s initial hopes that Kim’s youth and overseas studies would make him a reformer were soon destroyed as he saw more and more of his fellow high-ranking officials being executed, almost, he says, on a whim.

“If Kim Jong Un decides to kill someone, if he thinks that he is a threat or he scared him, he just wants to get rid of him, that is the present reality of North Korea,” he says, adding that he knows more elites will defect.

A South Korean think-tank affiliated with the country’s intelligence agency (INSS) assesses at least 340 people have been ordered to be executed since Kim took power in December 2011.

[CNN]

North Korean defector Hyeonseo Lee and her organization Tongil

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Hyeonseo Lee grew up in the closed and regimented society of North Korea, and at 17 she escaped into China, living there illegally for a decade, always under the fear of being reported to the Chinese authorities and being sent back to North Korea. She wrote a book telling her story, and has now started an organization, Tongil, that primarily works towards preventing the rampant trafficking of female North Korean defectors living in China. Following is an excerpt from an interview:

Q: After escaping from North Korea, you lived in China for 10 years constantly under the fear of being discovered. What did that do to you?

A: The title of my book, The Girl With Seven Names, means that I had seven different lives. For a North Korean defector, life in China is difficult. If we are repatriated to North Korea, (we face) torture, imprisonment and sometimes, even public execution. … I did my best to hide by changing my name many times. But I was captured by the Chinese police. But because my Chinese was so good, they thought I was Chinese and released me.

As North Korean defectors, once we cross the border, we don’t know where to go, and we don’t know how to speak the language. Most women defectors are sold as sex slaves. In China the gender imbalance has driven up the demand for trafficked brides. …That is what I am fighting against.  Read more

More from North Korean defector Hyeonseo Lee

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Q: You recently helped your mother and younger brother escape North Korea. How is their experience of life in South Korea different from yours?

A: At least I experienced some form of capitalism in China for the 10 years I lived there. My family lived under communism their entire lives. When they arrived in South Korea, they didn’t even know how to use the bank system and ATM, or the subway, nothing. It was completely alien. In communism, we never had any freedom, of movement, of speech, of press. We didn’t even make our own decisions for our lives. We were human robots. After we come to South Korea, we have to make own decision about every single thing. For those not used to this society, they are completely lost.

Q: You lived 17 years in North Korea, then a decade in China and now you are in South Korea. What is home to you?

A: If you asked me that question last year, I would consider the world as my home, as vague as that sounds. But more and more, I am accepting South Korea as my home. I had a horrible experience last year in China. I had gone to China to give a public speech at a book fair. As a North Korean defector, the Chinese government will still not accept me as person who has received a South Korean passport. … I had to escape China because of the media attention.  The moment I arrived in South Korea, I realized this is my home, where I don’t have to worry about being repatriated to North Korea, I don’t have to worry about the police, or hide every day. I was completely free, the country was embracing me, accepting me.

Defected diplomat says international criticism of North Korean human rights undermines Kim Jong Un

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Thae Yong-ho, North Korea’s former deputy ambassador in London who defected to South Korea in July, says clashing with Pyongyang over its nuclear program has strengthened Kim Jong Un’s leadership, but continued human rights criticism and increased information from the outside world will over time lead to the downfall of the authoritarian and repressive regime.

Thae says the leadership in Pyongyang is unwilling to give up its nuclear program, and  its defiance in the face of U.S.-led pressure has helped solidify internal popular support and earned the leadership a degree of international respect. “Some countries are interested in following North Korea’s path to become nuclear powers themselves. Therefore, North Korean diplomats retain their dignity despite the criticisms of the international community,” Thae said.

He says, however, international criticism about human rights abuses in North Korea undermines Kim’s standing in the world and with his own people.

Thae says North Korean diplomats have faced denunciations from allies and adversaries alike over Pyongyang’s human rights record, but the leadership is more concerned about how this kind of criticism could damage the carefully nurtured public image of Kim as a near-infallible leader.

“It is not easy for North Koreans to understand the concepts of the ICC or human rights. But they will be greatly interested if they hear that Kim Jong Un will be tried at the international court. It will be a direct sign that Kim Jong Un is a criminal and his regime has no future,” he said.

[VoA]

North Korean defectors have smuggled thousands of USB sticks

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North Korean defectors have successfully shipped in “several thousand” USB sticks containing banned content like South Korean soaps, Hollywood films, and global news. The goal is to spread information about the outside world to North Koreans, who have limited access to the open internet and telecommunications.

The project is the result of the “Flash Drives for Freedom” campaign by the Human Rights Foundation, a non-profit organization.  Chief strategy officer, Alex Gladstein, said the foundation has received more than 10,000 drives in the last 12 months, and is in the process of handing them to groups of North Korean defectors operating out of South Korea.

“Several thousand have been delivered into the DPRK [North Korea] so far,” Goldstein told Business Insider. “We’d like to send 50,000 this year.”

The groups decide what content to put on the sticks, which might hold up to 20GB, then smuggle them in by drone and by foot.  They are then picked up by dealers who copy the information onto smaller drives and sell those on to locals for a profit.

North Koreans can then watch the files on common, portable DVD players called Notels and cheap Chinese smartphones with USB ports. PC ownership is rare.

Gladstein  estimates it will take around one million USB sticks to educate a significant chunk of the North Korean population. There are around 25 million people living in the country, and Gladstein believes about 30% have any idea that the outside world is better off.

[Business Insider]

North Korean defectors becoming social media stars in South Korea

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There’s a new kind of social media star in South Korea: North Korean defectors, whose videos get tens of millions of views.

The South Korean capital city of Seoul lies only 30 miles from the North Korean border, but South Koreans, like everyone else, don’t know much about their neighbors to the north. Now, some defectors are becoming internet famous by shedding light on the most mysterious country in the world.

There is no internet in North Korea, but many young defectors learn to use social media within a few months.

“If I appeared in ordinary media outlets, I’d be edited,” said North Korean defector Eunhee Park, who wants to teach South Koreans about North Korea with the hope of reunifying the countries one day. “So what I needed was a platform that would allow me to talk freely.”

Watch VICE News video clip

 

Defector: “North Korea won’t change its repressive ways”

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In North Korea’s “utopian society”, the very words “human rights” do not need to exist — because it’s so perfect, the regime maintains!

The concept is not even taught. I had never even heard of the term “human rights” when I was in North Korea.

It also strongly denies the existence of the political prison camp system throughout the country.

It maintains this position even though I was born in the most infamous, political prison camp in North Korea: Camp 14.

Only recently did North Korea concede that “labor detention centers” exist, but solely for the incarcerated to have their lives improved.

North Korea also denies committing human rights violations, threatens and intimidates defector activists working to raise awareness of human rights issues, and attacking and criticizing those who have testified during the United Nations Commission of Inquiry’s investigation, calling these defectors “human scum.”

The dictatorship in North Korea has never been honest or truthful for more than six decades it has been in existence.

[Excerpt of CNN article by North Korean defector Shin Dong-hyuk]

North Korean diplomat says more diplomats poised to defect

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More high-level North Korean diplomats are waiting to defect to South Korea from their overseas posts in Europe, Pyongyang’s former deputy ambassador to London said on Tuesday, according to the Yonhap News Agency.

Thae Yong Ho defected to South Korea in August last year and since December 2016 has been speaking to local media and appearing on variety television shows to discuss his defection to Seoul and his life as a North Korean envoy.

“A significant number of North Korean diplomats came to South Korea recently,” Thae said, according to Yonhap. “I am not the only one from Europe. There are more waiting to come,” Thae said, speaking at an event held in South Korea’s parliamentary building.

Thae, 54, has said publicly that dissatisfaction with the rule of young leader Kim Jong Un had led him to flee his post, but he also had two university-age sons living with him and his wife in London who were due to return to isolated North Korea.

He is the highest-ranking official to have fled North Korea for the South since the 1997 defection of Hwang Jang Yop, the brains behind North Korea’s governing ideology, “Juche”, which combines Marxism with extreme nationalism.

“Of all the recent high-level defectors, I am the only one to have gone public,” said Thae.

[Reuters]

North Korean defections could swell as political elite look south

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More North Koreans are fleeing their country for political reasons, rather than economic reasons, and an increase in defections by Pyongyang’s elite will ultimately weaken Kim Jong Un’s regime, South Korea’s unification minister said in an interview.

Hong Yong-pyo, who heads the Ministry of Unification, expects to see more defectors like Thae Yong Ho, the North Korean deputy ambassador in London, whose defection to Seoul last year was the most high-profile in nearly two decades.

A crippling famine triggered the first major wave of defectors from North Korea about 20 years ago, but many now say that they are leaving the country “not just because they are starving, but for a better life, and for freedom and for their children’s education,” Mr. Hong said.

Mr. Thae, the North’s former deputy ambassador to the U.K., defected not for economic reasons, but “for his son’s education,” Mr. Hong said. The rising number of elite defectors, including more than a dozen workers at North Korea’s overseas restaurants who arrived in South Korea last year, “shows how unsettled the Kim Jong Un system is internally,” Mr. Hong said.

[Wall Street Journal]