Category: North Korean refugee

North Korean sailors rescued in 3 adrift ships

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Three North Korean ships, two of which were fishing boats, have been discovered in succession by South Korean military and police, while they were adrift within South Korea’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ) in the East Sea.

Seven to eight crew members from the three ships were rescued. Rescued crew members testified that a number of their fellow crew members died of hunger while their boats were adrift. All rescued sailors were found to have been in severe malnutrition. The ships are believed to have set sail around September or October. The ships either had their engines out of order or were not equipped with a motor.

The South Korean National Intelligence Service and the Defense Security Command are questioning the crew members whether they have intention to defect to the South.

One crew member strongly demanded that he be repatriated to the North, and the authorities plan to repatriate him via the inter-Korean truce village of Panmunjom soon. Whether the other crew members have intention to defect the North remains unknown.

Earlier, on Nov. 30, a wooden North Korean boat was discovered in waters near Kyoto, Japan, and eight completely decomposed bodies were found in the boat.

[Dong-a Ilbo]

How China will work with Trump

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Here’s the scenario: Washington suddenly makes an unusual move in Asia that China doesn’t like. Beijing’s public response is measured, but it works behind the scenes to undermine US-led diplomacy. After a few months, Beijing cools off and resumes its cooperation.

As a senior UN diplomat described it, his Chinese colleagues have been warming up to the idea of toughening Security Council sanctions on North Korea. After bouncing ideas around with their American counterparts, they suddenly clammed up. Any attempt to work on a sanctions resolution was met with cold silence. “The deployment of THAAD changed the equation for China,” the diplomat explained.

Yet last week, bingo: The UN Security Council unanimously — China included — agreed on what victorious US diplomats described as “the toughest sanctions resolution in history.” (OK, they always say that — but still . . . )

Why the Chinese zigzag? One reason Beijing props up the North Korean regime is fear: If Kim Jong Un’s oppressive regime collapses and the peninsula unites under Seoul’s rule, China will be surrounded by strong pro-American democracies.

True, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan don’t only undermine China’s authoritarian regime by their mere existence. But, in Beijing’s view, they may one day threaten China militarily. American THAADs near China’s borders, though defensive, are a scary step in that direction. Which explains why its diplomats refused, for months after the THAAD announcement, to even contemplate a UN sanctions resolution against North Korea.

On the other hand, Pyongyang’s crazed antics are beyond the pale even for Beijing’s leaders, as anti-American as they may be. So China’s UN hands returned to the negotiation table and, together with American diplomats, forged a sanctions resolution meant to put the fear of god in godless Kim.

[Excerpt of Opinion page in New York Post]

Perception of defectors in South Korea continues to improve

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There are now over 30,000 North Korean defectors residing in South Korea.

And according to the “2015 Reunification Awareness Study” conducted by Seoul National University’s Institute for Peace and Unification Studies, citizens who held a friendly (45.6%) view of defectors from North Korea were outnumbered by those who felt distant from them (54.4%). However, the number of citizens who view defectors in a positive light is increasing.

While in 2007 only 36.1% of people responded favorably to North Korean defectors, the proportion increased to 40% in 2015.

“If you compare this situation to 10 years ago, I believe that South Korean society has experienced positive changes in regards to its treatment of defectors. 20 years has now passed since defectors began officially entering South Korea, and there are greater settlement benefits, and perceptions of this have slowly changed,” said Shin Mi Nyo, president of the Organization for One Korea who has been involved in defector resettlement efforts for over 14 years.

However, social distance, referring to the relative degree of intimacy towards defectors on a person to person basis has remained unchanged. Those who answered the survey increasingly sought to distance themselves from defectors as these individuals were placed hypothetically closer in relation to them: from neighbor to co-worker to business and marriage partner.

[Daily NK]

Sex lives of North Koreans

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North Korea watcher Dr. Andrei Lankov explained that the nation inherited its traditional values from the former USSR under the reign of its former supreme leader Kim Il Sung who died in 1994. ‘Innocence’ among North Korean girls is still “seen as the natural and desirable state of mind” – with sex before marriage still frowned upon.

However some attitudes to sex are changing under the rule of their latest leader Kim Jong-un.

Writing in NKNews.org Lankov claimed: “In the days of Kim Il Sung’s ‘national Stalinism’, the elite did womanize (like a great many powerful males have done since time immemorial), but discretion was expected.

“Now elite males are quite willing to showcase their young mistresses, and among the top business elite a man is almost required to keep a mistress. Foreign diplomats in Pyongyang have noticed recently that some officials have begun to appear in public places with young beauties.”

Dr. Lankov also explained that divorce is still stigmatized in North Korea. Several women are known to have fled across the border rather than divorce their husband.

A 2014 study revealed 29.8% of all refugee women had participated in extramarital sex while in North Korea – a level which might be even higher than in the United States, Dr Lankov explained.

[The Mirror]

Ex-prisoners of North Korea speak out in Baltimore

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Former prisoners took part in a mock trial before judges, arranged by human rights groups to raise awareness of inhumane conditions in North Korea’s prisons. At the event, hosted by John Hopkins University in Baltimore, former prisoners described the human rights abuses they were forced to endure.

One of the speakers was Kang Chol-hwan, a defector who escaped from North Korea in 1992, after spending ten years in the Yodok concentration camp, where he was incarcerated as a child with his family. The ex-prisoner-turned-activist spoke out about the terrible conditions inside the camp, where it is believed thousands of people are still being kept captive and worked to death.

Chol-hwan described how he and his family were forced to survive on vermin and were made to carry out slave labor. Recalling his time in a North Korean camp, Chol-hwan said: “Daily life in the work camps is very mundane. We wake up at 5 am and are forced to work until sunset. We are given lessons on Kim il-sung and Juche. We are forced to watch public executions.

He added: “We are physically abused – hit and tortured. I think of it as another form of Auschwitz. These work camps are like products of Nazism, an abusive government needs elements such as Nazi concentration camps. They just have different ways of killing people.”

Chol-hwan said escapees of the camp usually got out with the help of the South Korean government or missionaries. He said: “Missionaries came and prayed for us. The heavens helped me and I was [eventually able to get from] from China to South Korea.”

[Daily Express]

MicroSD cards the key to smuggling info into North Korea

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Tiny memory cards and fluffy teddy bears are among the most popular items for North Koreans shopping in Dandong, China’s gateway city to its impoverished and isolated neighbor.

North Korean traders are the big buyers for the memory cards – and that could get them into trouble back home.

“We help them copy whatever they want onto microSD cards,” said Yao, who would only give his surname, in his tiny store primarily selling cameras. “They usually want South Korean TV dramas,” he said, sliding open a display cabinet to reveal a stack of the tiny memory cards, each the size of a fingernail, that slot directly into DVD players and computers.

The flow of information in and out of North Korea is tightly controlled by authorities. Most North Koreans cannot access the internet or foreign media and share content secretly on USB sticks. But tiny microSD cards are increasingly popular now because North Korea has been cracking down on USBs, Yao said. “It’s getting harder to bring USBs across the border, customs will check what’s on them. But microSD cards are smaller, easier to slip through,” he said.

Apart from their small size – the cards can be woven into clothes or hidden between the pages of a book – MicroSD cards can often be directly inserted into a “Notel“, a device popular in North Korea which can be powered by a car battery and plays DVDs and media from USB sticks and memory cards.

“MicroSD cards make it easier and safer for North Koreans to smuggle foreign digital media in from China,” said Sokeel Park of Liberty in North Korea (LiNK), an organization which works with defectors. “Once inside, it gets copied onto multiple USB sticks and memory cards, making it difficult for the authorities to effectively block out foreign information that undermines their propaganda and ideologies,” Park said.

[Reuters]

9 of 10 North Korea defectors say life worsened under Kim Jong Un

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Nearly 90 percent of North Korean defectors who participated in a recent South Korean survey said living conditions have deteriorated under Kim Jong Un.

The South Korea-based defector organization North Korea Intellectuals Solidarity presented its findings Monday. According to the survey, 89 percent of defectors said the situation “has not improved” under Kim, who fully assumed power in 2012.

Conversely, 11 percent said living standards have “improved” under Kim, while 2.8 percent of that group said the improvements were “significant.”

The defectors also confirmed an earlier study that showed the Kim regime is increasingly the target of common complaints in the country. According to the poll, 32 percent of defectors said they strongly agree that most ordinary North Koreans privately criticize Kim, while another 41 percent said they somewhat agree with the statement. Only 2.8 percent of those surveyed disagreed with the statement.

A previous study conducted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C., found 35 of 36 North Koreans interviewed in the country complain or make jokes about the government in private although criticism of the state is a serious crime, punishable by imprisonment or even death in North Korea.

Nearly 80 percent of those surveyed said the defection of state officials could lead to collapse, and within that group 31 percent said the defection of senior people in government would have a “very large impact.”

[UPI]

UN renews effort to locate abductees in North Korea

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The United Nations has renewed pressure on North Korea to reveal details about hundreds of people abducted decades ago. Argentine lawyer Tomás Ojea Quintana, the special rapporteur on North Korea, made the comment in Tokyo Saturday, after completing a 10-day mission to South Korea and Japan. He also met with defectors and families of individuals abducted by North Korean agents. A final report is due to be released in March.

Ojea Quintana told lawmakers in Japan that he was committed to advancing the return of Japanese taken by North Korean agents in the 1970s and 1980s. Japan has officially listed 17 nationals as abductees, but it suspects Pyongyang’s involvement in many more.

The 2014 report issued by the U.N. Commission of Inquiry into the Human Rights of North Korea found that North Korea had “engaged in the systematic abduction, denial of repatriation, and subsequent enforced disappearance of persons from other countries.” While most abductees were taken from Japan and South Korea, others were taken from countries including Thailand, Romania, Lebanon, Malaysia, Singapore, France, Italy, the Netherlands and China.

Anocha Panjoy, a Thai woman, went missing in Macao in 1978 while working as a masseuse.

North Korean defector Kim Dong Nam said his son was abducted from China by North Korean agents almost a decade ago (2007). The boy had planned to travel to the United States, but agents learned of those plans through colleagues who’d been captured earlier. “They weren’t able to withstand the torture,” Kim said, noting the colleagues had been “sent back to North Korea and tortured and forced to work for hours – tremendous hours” in a camp.

[VoA]

Bounties for North Korean defectors instituted

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Approximately 30 North Korean defectors have been arrested by Chinese public security officials in the city of Shenyang and are facing repatriation. Three groups of defectors totaling approximately 30 individuals, including children under the age of five, were arrested while in transit from Shenyang (China) to Vietnam. They have been transported to the border city of Dandong, and are likely to be repatriated to North Korea soon, a source close to North Korean affairs in China reported to Daily NK.

“North Korea’s State Security Department [SSD] is exchanging gold produced at state-run mines in the border area to the Chinese authorities in return for the repatriation of defectors. … Leaflets and placards have been posted in Chinese cities advertising rewards for reporting defectors to the police. This has made it more difficult for defectors to hide,” the source added.

In addition, the North Korean authorities have recently announced a domestic ‘reward system’ in order to prevent defection attempts before they occur. Security agents have informed residents in North Hamgyong Province that the reward for reporting a planned defection is 5 million KPW (approximately 600 USD).

Due to this new policy, the number of residents attempting defection in North Korea has reportedly plummeted. “With the severe crackdowns, no one is bold enough to attempt defection. The brokers that normally aid defectors are saying, “It is hard to make a living because no one wants to defect anymore,” the source concluded.

[DailyNK]

South Korea to increase benefits for North Korean defectors

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The South Korean government will raise the subsidy given to North Korean defectors when they are first getting settled in the South. The Unification Ministry on Sunday said it will gradually raise both the resettlement payment and housing expenses for defectors, which currently is W7 million ($5947) and W13 million ($11,045) per person.

From 1998 and 2004, the government initially paid every defector W37 million ($31,435) towards getting settled, when the Roh Moo-hyun administration halved the subsidy.

Defector groups point out that it is difficult to settle in with the current payout given that they have often spent all their money on traffickers, plus incurred fines in third countries like Laos and Thailand.

The ministry also pledged to create public-sector jobs for defectors, to help them integrate, and encourage more private firms to hire them.

[Chosun Ilbo]