Category: North Korean refugee

Over 75 percent of North Korean Christians do not survive persecution

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Human rights groups are reporting on new grim statistics from North Korea and its treatment of religious minorities, including Christians, revealing that more than 75 percent of those subjected to torture, imprisonment, and other punishments do not survive.

UPI reported on statistics from the Database Center for North Korean Human Rights, a South Korean nonprofit organization, which are based on the testimonies of defectors, identifying over 65,000 cases of religious persecution.

International Christian Concern, Open Doors USA, and Christian Solidarity Worldwide are some of the persecution watchdog groups that have documented the horrific treatment of minorities in North Korea.

CSW’s report released in September found close to 99 percent of 11,370 defectors in the study confirmed that there is no religious freedom under the government of Kim Jong-un. It also noted that the North Korean government tortures, mutilates, and kills Christians. The report added that some of the documented incidents against believers include “being hung on a cross over a fire, crushed under a steamroller, herded off bridges, and trampled underfoot.”

The interviews also reveal less than 23 percent of victims of religious persecution survive their punishment, according to defectors’ testimonies.

“A policy of guilt by association applies, meaning that the relatives of Christians are also detained regardless of whether they share the Christian belief. Even North Koreans who have escaped to China, and who are or become Christians, are often repatriated and subsequently imprisoned in a political prison camp,” CSW noted.

As the watchdog group also explained, religious belief is seen as a major threat to North Korea’s leadership, with Christians often accused of being imperialists seeking to undermine the rule of the ‘supreme leader,’ as Kim Jong-un is known.

[The Christian Post]

China building new military base near North Korea border

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China is building on its military presence at its border with North Korea, a source in North Korea tells Radio Free Asia. A large-scale military facility in the Chinese city of Longjing, in Jilin Province, has been under development. Local residents are being relocated because of the military, according to the RFA report.

A Korean-Chinese source in Longjing said the government’s measures are “unprecedented” in the area close to the border.

Beijing is also doing its part to keep out defectors, and is constructing more barbed-wire fences, according to the report.

“The Chinese leadership seems to preparing for the collapse of the North Korean regime,” the source said.

Barbed wire fencing along the border in Yanbian prefecture have been reinforced as well, another source in the area told RFA.

“Fencing that was washed away due to the flooding of the Tumen River and old rusted barbed wire have all been replaced with new barbed wire,” the source said.

The barrier not only keeps out refugees but would also cause trade to diminish.

[UPI]

North Korea wiretapping defectors’ families

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North Korea’s state security department is wiretapping the homes of people whose family members defected. Residents have also found hidden wires on their bicycles.

A source in North Hamgyong Province told South Korean news service Daily NK that state surveillance of defectors’ families is growing to be a source of distress for people in the area.

“Because they do not know who installed the device, the families of defectors are under tremendous stress,” the source said, adding that when a person who is not a relative stops by, families are saying they need to inspect their homes for hidden bugs afterwards.

Local residents are also wary of unexpected visits by security agents and are refraining from speaking out loud on topics that may lead to questioning.

A source in South Pyongan Province said the state is bolstering propaganda about the regime, and making claims “all would be forgiven” if defectors return to the North. “But locals are not being fooled. They know ‘forgiveness’ is lip service and [returnees] would be under surveillance until they die.”

[UPI]

Statistics and insights on North Korean women with Chinese children

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Female North Korean defectors have an estimated 20,000-30,000 children who were born in China, according to one source. These children are a result of marriages to rural Chinese men, a kind of indentured relationship that is little better than sex slavery, with Chinese men “buying” the women from border traffickers.

“I escaped to China trusting a broker, but ended up being sold for money and had to endure all kinds of abuse as I was dragged from one location to another,” one defector recalls. “Some women who are sold into sexual slavery are stripped naked and locked up so that they cannot escape.”

The children these women have with Chinese men are frequently unable to get legal protection or go to school in China because their mothers are considered illegal immigrants or their fathers refuse to register them as their own.

The problems continue even if these women make it to South Korea with their children. The children are not entitled to the same educational and financial support in South Korea as defectors. A woman surnamed Chung who arrived in South Korea in 2010, said, “I arrived in South Korea with two children I had in China, and they don’t get any assistance, which makes life difficult for us. And a major problem is that they can’t speak much Korean.”

Savvy women lie to South Korean investigators, saying their children were born in the North but only grew up in China, which explains why they do not speak the language. A government source said, “There’s no way to check their place of birth, so we often take their word for it.”

The Education Ministry on Sunday said 1,249 children of North Korean defectors who were born in China went to school in South Korea as of the end of last year, outnumbering the 1,226 students who were born in North Korea.

[Chosun Ilbo]

South Korean court dismisses defector petition to protect family in prison camp

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A South Korean court has dismissed an appeal by a group of defectors in South Korea and Japan, requesting humanitarian relief and protection for their family members imprisoned in North Korean detention camps. This marks the first time that a verdict regarding humanitarian relief for those in North Korean detention camps has been reached by a South Korean court.

Judge Jung Jae Woo announced that the claims of two North Korean defectors to provide humanitarian protection for four family members currently imprisoned at the Yodok political prison camp were dismissed. Such dismissals enable the court to end a trial without hearing if the claims are deemed as improper or unsuitable.

The North Korean Defectors’ Council for the Promotion of Freedom and Unification, which led the current lawsuit, had argued, “North Korea is technically a territory of the Republic of Korea according to the Constitution, therefore, North Korean residents have the same rights according to the law as South Korean citizens.”

The judge explained, “It is almost impossible for the litigators to predict or execute the outcomes of the trial even if the verdict of discharge is made, because there are no mechanisms to enforce it.”

Judge Jung also dismissed a human rights relief petition from Kawasaki Echo (aged 74), president of the defectors’ community ‘Korea of All’ in Japan, requesting the release of 93,340 people who boarded repatriation ships to the North between the years 1959-1984. The dismissal was based on the determination that president Kawasaki was unable to specify the names of the captives or their locations, thereby rendering the petition unsuitable for filing.

[Daily NK]

30000 North Korean defectors will have officially reached South Korea in November 2016

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The number of North Korean defectors who have arrived in South Korea over the years will reach the 30,000 mark this month, the unification ministry said Sunday.

“As of late October, there are 29,948 former North Koreans in the South so the 30,000 mark should be reached around Nov. 15-16,” an official from the ministry in charge of formulating North Korean policy said.

He said Seoul plans to mark the occasion with a new resettlement policy that will better help escapees integrate into South Korean society. The new plan aims to facilitate greater social participation of North Korea defectors, help them find jobs and concentrate on helping youngsters assimilate into schools and their studies.

There has been a 21 percent spike in defectors reaching the country this year compared to 2015. Official data showed that 2016 marked the first year since North Korean leader Kim Jong-un took power in late 2011 that the number of defectors increased noticeably. Initially, a drop in numbers was attributed to tighter border control along the North Korea-China frontier which is not generally heavily guarded.

Official sources attributed this year’s increase to the “reign of terror” perpetrated by Kim, and tighter international sanctions that is forcing North Korean workers living abroad to repatriate more money.

Those defectors who cited freedom and discontent over North Korean politics reached 87.8 percent in the 2014-16 period, from 33.3 percent before 2001, and 42.1 percent in the 2002-2005 period.

[Yonhap]

35 percent of North Korean defectors cite freedom as key motivation

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More than a third of North Korean asylum seekers settling in the South cited freedom as the key motivation for defecting, data has shown.

Hanawon, a facility in which defectors receive three months of resettlement education after making it to South Korea, said 35 percent of the defectors surveyed (2014) said they escaped their homeland to seek liberty, marking a sharp rise from 9.6 percent tallied in 2001.

17.5 percent said they escaped from the North due to the discontent against the communist system, compared with 6.2 percent posted earlier.

As to the makeup of the defectors, women make up 78 percent of the total North Korean refugees now in South Korea.

[Yonhap]

Film fest highlights North Korean defectors’ soul-searching

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According to director Lee Min-yong, this was a watershed year for the North Korean Human Rights International Film Festival, which was launched in 2011 to inform the world of the gross human rights violations occurring in North Korea.

This year, filmmakers started to focus on the lives of North Koreans in the South post-defection. “They looked into the defector community here, their torn sense of identity, and the hardship of trying to fit into a very modern and very different society.”

A record number of films offered diverse perspectives on the lives of both North Koreans and defectors.

For example, Kim Tae-woong’s short film “The Regular Hire” tells the story of a 24-year-old defector who has lived 16 years in Korea and struggles to be a normal office worker.

Two foreign films shot inside North Korea also gave the film fest a significant boost this year: David Kinsella’s “The Wall,” a computer graphic-infused story of a girl from Pyongyang who wants to be a poet, and Vitaly Mansky’s “Under the Sun,” a documentary which follows a North Korean family training to be ideal patriots.

[Korea Herald]

North Korean women and the decision to leave their Chinese babies behind

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Together with two women from a village in northeastern China, North Korean defector Suh determined to make it to South Korea. In doing so, she made the heart-wrenching decision to leave her 5-year-old daughter with her Chinese husband.

The women traveled by bus and car down through China to the border with Laos, which they crossed illegally in the black of night, Suh carrying her 18-month-old daughter, Ji-yeon, on her back.

While waiting to cross the Mekong River, the women talked about the difficult decisions they had had to make. Suh’s 5-year-old is listed on her Chinese father’s family register, which gives her legal status in China and enables her to go to school. But by the time Ji-yeon was born, the back channel for registration — involving bribes to willing officials — had closed. The baby doesn’t legally exist.

So when Suh decided to flee and realized she could only manage to take one child with her, she knew it had to be Ji-yeon.

“[My 5-year-old] thinks I’ve abandoned her,” Suh said, breaking down into another torrent of tears as she recalled telling her older daughter she would be back soon.

The women made it to Vientiane, the Laotian capital, where a Washington Post reporter spent two days with them as they paused on their journey to what they hoped would be a better life. The women talked for hours about their lives in North Korea and in China but, unlike some defectors who exaggerate their stories to make them more sensational, they appeared to play down their experiences, apparently out of shame.

The relief of being out of China had washed over the women, and the challenges ahead loomed. The women had begun to dwell on the handicaps that North Koreans face. “I have no passport, no papers, nothing,” Suh said. “Why are our lives so different, just because of where we are born?”

[The Washington Post]

North Korean refugee women speak out about leaving children behind in China

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Tongil Mom, a group comprised of North Korean refugee women working to be reunited with their children, spoke at the University in Charlottesville VA as coordinated by the human rights advocacy group Liberty in North Korea.

With the help of a North Korean translator, the women of Tongil Mom shared personal testimonies of how they defected from North Korea, their time in China as forced brides and how they eventually resettled in South Korea. Many North Korean women leave their country due to intense struggle and relocate to China, where they are often sold and forced to be brides for Chinese men. While these North Korean refugee women have children with these men, many are still forced by the Chinese government to go back to South Korea. This forced repatriation causes many women to never see their children again. Each woman who spoke at the event currently has a child in China from whom they are separated.

“I think that sometimes it’s easy to forget when all we see in American media is North Korean news about nuclear weapons and political issues. But the fact of the matter is that there are 24 million civilians that live in that country and they’re dealing with a lot of humanitarian issues so we should remember them and strive to support them,” Cameron Hicks, fourth-year College student and executive board member of Liberty in North Korea, said.

Tongil Mom has three main parts in its petition, which is directed to the governments of the People’s Republic of China and the Republic of Korea. These include calling for proper identification papers for children born to North Korean refugees in China, humanitarian measures for mothers who defected from North Korea to be able to exercise rights as birth mothers to their children and giving these children the right to choose with which parent they live.

“Obviously, the Chinese government is not going to stop its policy of repatriation overnight, but I believe if we approach the people in China, the people with a [conscience], the people who believe in human rights in China and if we approach this using social media then we can definitely try to make a change regarding the situation,” Tongil Mom Executive Director Kim Jeong Ah said.

“We want to set up a website for children in China to look up the whereabouts of their mothers,” Ah said. “We have all of these ideas to reunite a lot of mothers so they can hug their children again, but we need all the help we can get.”

[The Cavalier Daily]