Category: North Korean refugee

Shaping North Korea’s new capitalists

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One defector living in South Korea, who escaped through China in the early 2000s, uses a clandestine funding channel to send hundreds of thousands of dollars to help dozens of North Koreans open small businesses, such as noodle shops and grocery stores.

Under Kim Jong Un, North Korea has allowed a growing number of semi-legal markets known as jangmadang, where individuals and wholesalers buy and sell goods they have produced themselves or imported from China. The markets have improved the quality of life for many but also makes them less reliant on the Soviet-style planned economy, undermining the power of the state.

“The North Korean business owners I am helping can be an alternative group to build sound capitalism,” said the defector, who is in his 40s and declined to be named fearing for his safety and that of his partners in the North.

He uses a clandestine money channel typically works with middlemen who wire money to banks in China, where it is collected by agents and carried across the border. He vets prospects through his relatives and acquaintances.His brokers on the ground send photographs to him of businesses the defector has funded, using cellphones connected to China’s mobile network.

The defector, who does not seek a profit, tells the North Koreans he helps “not to be greedy, help other poor North Koreans and gain respect,” he said. “This is [effective] because it directly supports livelihoods.”

[Reuters]

New report on treatment of Christians in North Korea

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Christian Solidarity Worldwide has issued a harrowing report of religious persecution inside North Korea, including allegations that authorities there ran over confessing Christians with a steamroller.

The report, Total Denial: Violations of Freedom of Religion or Belief in North Korea, was issued September 23, “Save North Koreans Day”,  and claims liberty with respect to religion – or any belief contrary to the state’s communist ideology – is “largely non-existent.”

“Documented incidents include Christians being hung on a cross over a fire, crushed under a steamroller, herded off bridges and trampled under-foot,” the report claims.

Christians, who are forced to practice their faith in secret, are often the targets of persecution. Those discovered are sent to concentration camps where they take part in forced labor. They are also subjected to sexual violence, torture and “extra-judicial” killings.

Earlier this year, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom also said in its report that Christians considered to have participated in acts of worship, of having studied the Bible or having possessed a church hymnal “are typically jailed, or worse.”

“In prison, Christians reportedly endure harsher treatment than other prisoners. It is estimated that tens of thousands of Christians in North Korea are currently in prison camps facing hard labor or execution,” the USCIRF report said.

The CSW report also documents China’s deportation of North Korean refugees who are able to escape the country. The country immediately returns the refuges in violation of its obligations under the United Nations Convention on Refugees Treaty of 1951.

[Christian Examiner]

24 Chinese Embassies face protests for repatriating North Korean defectors

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Human rights activists in 24 cities around the world protested outside Chinese embassies on Friday and delivered petitions calling on the Chinese government to stop killing North Korean defectors by repatriating them back to their home country.

It is an offense punishable by death or imprisonment for North Korean citizens to defect from the country and the oppressive Kim regime, and the Chinese government helps facilitate North Korea’s crimes against humanity by refusing to grant North Korean defectors refugee status. By sending thousands of them back to North Korea, China knows full well that they will be tortured, forced to do hard labor and even killed in political prison camps.

In 2014, a 400-page United Nations report extensively detailed the widespread torture and abuse that North Korea is responsible for and found that China is violating its responsibility under international human rights and refugee laws.

Organized by the North Korea Freedom Coalition, demonstrations and candlelight vigils to honor those defectors who have been killed or imprisoned were held outside Chinese embassies in two dozen cities around the world including Washington, D.C., Chicago, San Francisco, Toronto, Berlin, Paris, Seoul, London, Helsinki and others as a part of the annual Save North Koreans Day.

Activists urged China to “stop killing North Koreans, and accused China’s president, Xi Jinping, of standing “side by side” with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un in “genocide.” Along with the demonstrations, activists delivered petitions calling on the Chinese government to stand with the persecuted North Korean families.

“It is not becoming of a big country that China claims itself to be,” Jai Poong Ryu, a professor at Loyola University of Maryland and CEO of One Korea Foundation, said. “It’s odd that China is going against the United Nations resolution that it led others to sign. It’s violating its own principles instead,” Ryu added.

[Read full Christian Post article]

Treatment of North Korean women in Chinese detention center

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North Korean defector Jo Jin Hye, who was granted political asylum in the United States in 2008, looks back on the dark days of her incarceration in a detention center in the Chinese border city of Tumen:

A Chinese prison guard came in and said there was an inspection. He was a man in his 30s, and he had been sent to do body searches of women.

In the detention center, the staff refused to give us sanitary products, so we had nothing to use when our menstruation came around. We would use whatever we had to hand; bits of blanket, ripped off. Then, if they discovered it, they would force us to eat it. If we didn’t, they would hit us really hard, until our faces swelled up and we were spitting blood, and couldn’t walk.

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

There was a woman who was five months’ pregnant, and she was sitting down, leaning against a wall. A prison guard came in and started beating us all with a baton. He beat an old lady nearly half to death, and the pregnant woman as well. The pregnant woman bled for several days after that.

I was afraid she would lose the child, because she had been trying for a child for three years. I knew that child was very important to her. So I ran over there and grabbed the guard’s leg, saying “Don’t beat her. She’s five months pregnant and not in good health, and she bleeds all the time. If you carry on, she’ll lose the baby.”

He replied: “Who cares? It’s not mine, anyway.” That’s what he said.

[Radio Free Asia]

Defected North Korean artist turns propaganda on its head

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It was after he fled North Korea in 1990s that artist Sun Mu decided to turn the regime’s propaganda painting style on its head. After he settled in South Korea, his work became increasingly provocative, gaining attention for its ability to parody and imitate the North Korean regime’s social realist style.

jeus-of-chosun
Kim Jong-un or Jesus?

Like many defectors who grew up inside the secretive state, Sun Mu’s early life was dominated by the former leaders of North Korea. Sun Mu studied at an art college outside Pyongyang and was enlisted to draw propaganda posters during his time in military service. [Once in South Korea]  he slowly became accustomed to the greater political and artistic freedoms in Seoul, and began mixing North Korean painting styles with more overtly political imagery.

As a result the artist, now in his mid 40s, has stoked controversy and he has chosen to remain hidden from the public for fear of incriminating his family still in North Korea. Sun Mu is a nom de plume, a combination of two Korean words translating as “no borders”.

6-childrenIn one poignant work, Peace, six smiling children bear the flags of the countries taking part in the long-stalled six-party talks on North Korea’s nuclear programme. “Children can get along with each other – adults don’t,” Sun Mu replies when asked why smiling children feature so prominently in his work.

A new documentary, I am Sun Mu, was screened in the UK in March, and follows the artist as he prepares for the opening of a controversial solo exhibition in Beijing called Red, White, Blue, in which visitors can step on giant portraits of former North Korean leaders in Santa Claus hats.

[The Guardian]

North Koreans defectors describe different lives in South Korea

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Thirty college students, all defectors living in Seoul, sat in a classroom working on personal narratives, participants in a writing program run by the North Korea Strategy Center, a nonprofit that aims to increase awareness about them and what their experience is like.

Ga Eul, a peppy, English-speaking 23-year-old with dyed brown hair and purple glasses, began her essay this way: ” Until [I defected], my education consisted of learning how to worship Kim Il-Sung and Kim Jung-Il.” As a middle-schooler, Ga Eul dreamed of becoming a math teacher. But when Ga Eul’s extended relatives were caught trying to escape from North Korea, she wrote, “My dream of becoming a math teacher was not possible anymore. My family members were branded enemies of the state.” Ga Eul was told that she wouldn’t be able to join the military—a key step to getting good jobs in North Korea—and neither would her children.

Another defector explains, “In North Korea, people tend to sleep early due to electricity shortages. In the evening, the whole town turns into a jet-black night without a single light.”

A female defector says that when she arrived in South Korea, she assumed that the heaps of rice and hard-boiled eggs that greeted her at the defector integration center were some sort of propagandistic joke.

Another student wrote about his first time on Seoul’s gleaming subway: “I didn’t know where to direct my eyes! There were girls in hot shorts seemingly no different than panties. My cheeks flushed red and my eyes lost focus.”

[Mother Jones]

North Korean defectors share their experiences with South Korean high school students

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Jae, a 23-year-old North Korean defector, stands nervously in front of the crowd of South Korean high schoolers. “Do North Korean students often date each other?” one student wants to know. Jae, a tall North Korean defector, grins. They do, he says, but secretly. Because students are reprimanded for showing affection, he explains, “if you like someone you often say, ‘Let’s become friends,’ which is basically the same thing as ‘Will you go out with me?'”

When asked about food shortages, Jae explains he became so hungry as a child that he had taken to eating tree bark.

Jae grew up in a North Korean town that bordered the DMZ separating the countries; once in a while, thick balloons from South Korea would drift through the sky and land on the ground. They were sent by human rights activists in the south and filled with USB drives and pamphlets condemning the dictatorial regime in Pyongyang. The police would snatch them up as soon as they reached the ground. But when Jae went into the mountains, away from people, he would see dozens of balloons snagged in bushes and trees.

The questions keep coming, among them, “Do you want to go back?” Jae responds to the question diplomatically. He wants to visit his extended family, but he probably wouldn’t want to live in North Korea again “because of the bad memories.”

Jae has found that many South Korean high schoolers remain fascinated by the prospect of meeting a defector from the north, but have no clue that 25,000 of them now live in their country.

[Mother Jones]

South Korean bias in hiring North Koreans

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Ms. Lee, who works as a dishwasher in South Korea, received a vocational college degree in public health and nutrition [while living in her native North Korea] and worked as a chef at a resort facility. However, South Korea generally does not recognize degrees that are earned in North Korea, because the content and standards of education are very different.

Ms. Lee had decided to leave her home town when her husband, recently discharged from the military, was unable to get a job because her younger brother had fled to China. Her husband and his side of the family bitterly complained that his wife’s brother had ruined them—which he probably had, thanks to the North Korean government policy of blacklisting the entire family when one member departs without permission for China. She decided to escape from her uncomfortable home life and go to China to look for her brother.

The biggest problem with this plan was that she had a six year old son, but on one snowy winter day she embarked on her uncertain journey to China. She managed to get to China and eventually reach South Korea, using her savings and selling her wedding ring. She was now diligently saving up the $5,000 it would cost to hire a broker to retrieve her son.

My first question to Ms. Lee was, “What is the most difficult thing to bear living in South Korea?” “Missing my son, surely. My job at this large Korean restaurant is dish washing, which is not difficult, but what I hate more than anything is that we throw away tons of food, including meat and rice that would be a delicacy in the North. Whenever I throw this food away, I cry thinking of my son, who rarely had a chance to eat meat and rice.”

A few days later, I happened to visit a coffee shop whose owner was a wealthy Korean who had studied in the United States and opened the café in order to meet interesting people. When the owner complained that it was difficult to find a reliable person to manage the café, I told the owner that I might be able to find her a good manager, describing Ms. Lee’s qualifications and the owner sounded interested. Then I added, “The only difference between this candidate and others is that she is a North Korean defector.”

The owner almost shouted at me, “You must be kidding. Look at our café. The place is filled with valuable porcelains and paintings and antique furniture, and I have a very sophisticated clientele. How can I trust a defector, who may steal things and alienate my customers?”

The next morning I received a call from the owner. “I apologize. I’ve been thinking about your candidate and our mutual friend has convinced me that I should interview her for the job.”

Ms. Lee got the job, and a year later when I visited the café I couldn’t recognize her at all. She wore a smart new hairstyle and dressed in a stylish but conservative manner. The owner thanked me profusely. “Since she came here we have more customers and are making more money. Everybody loves her. She is a great asset.” When I talked with Ms. Lee, she was equally satisfied. “I love my job. People are very kind to me. I appreciate my new life in the South these days.”

[The Brookings Institution]

North Korean defectors the “small unification” of Koreas

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Over 18,000 defectors from North Korea now live in South Korea. Objectively, their living conditions are much improved over what they were in the North. They needn’t worry about finding food, adequate housing or transportation. They can go wherever they want and associate with whomever they wish.

Yet, they feel something is terribly wrong with life in their new society.  Especially in the first year, most defectors suffer from a combination of suspiciousness, anxiety, and depression—a reaction that is typical of new immigrants in any society. They badly miss the families they left behind, and feel guilty for having left them at the mercy of officials who will persecute them for having a family member who left the fatherland.

Defectors don’t feel they are fully accepted by their new society. Whenever the media report bad news from North Korea, defectors feel ashamed and guilty about their origins. On a personal level, they suffer from loneliness because it is difficult to make new friends and find romantic partners. Because they speak a different dialect of Korean in which traditional words are used instead of foreign-loan words, they are easily identified as North Koreans and usually looked down upon as country bumpkins. As one defector said, “I was a member of the elite cadre circle and now I’m a computer-illiterate senile old man.” And another, “I graduated from a good college but now I’m enrolled in a vocational computer school with youngsters.” And yet another, “I was a relatively wealthy foreign trader for the government but now I drive a pick-up truck and sell vegetables.”

Defectors bitterly joke that they left one class society in the North and now find that South Korea is equally class conscious, and the defectors are not members of a favored class.

Most South Koreans just don’t want to bother with defectors, although they favor their arrival in principle. They don’t understand the larger issues of cultural acclimation that prevent the defectors from becoming integrated into South Korean society.

Someday, perhaps years or decades in the future, the 23 million people in the North will join the 46 million citizens of the South under one government. However, unless the South Korean government and people learn how to deal with the several thousand defectors each year participating in what Assemblyman Park Jin has called “small unification,” national unification will be unimaginably difficult.

[The Brookings Institution]

Devastation from floods in North Korea

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North Koreans living along the Tumen River border with China described a hellish ordeal as the river rose swiftly, leaving many people scrambling for safety in a flood that has claimed at least 200 lives and devastated a wide swath of country’s poorest region.

“The floods came through with such force that the Tumen River, which borders China, swelled rapidly,” Dong Nam Kim, a North Korean defector and representative of the Free North Korea Global Network, told RFA’s Korean Service as he relayed descriptions of the disaster from inside the country.

The floods ripped through the area as Typhoon Lionrock lashed Northeast Asia from August 29 to September 2. The floods may have hit the provinces in the north harder after North Korean authorities opened up the floodgates in the hydroelectric facilities upstream. It’s unclear why the North Korean government decided to open up the floodgates, but the North Korean defector said that with the rain falling at nearly four inches per hour caused the authorities to fear that the dams would burst, causing even more damage.

At least 140,000 people are in urgent need of assistance, the OCHA said in a statement. It estimated 100,000 people have been displaced and water supplies to about 600,000 people have been cut.

Of the more than 35,500 houses that were damaged, nearly two-thirds were destroyed. A further 8,700 buildings, including schools and public buildings, were damaged, and 16,000 hectares (39,540 acres) of arable land inundated, the OCHA said.

The government of North Korea, which called the deadly natural disaster the “the strongest storm and heaviest downpour” the country has experienced in decades, issued an unusual appeal for international help.

North Korea’s appeal for help could not have come at a worse time, coming after the country conducted its second nuclear test in eight months on September 9, that was widely condemned and is expected to draw more economic sanctions from the international community.

[Radio Free Asia]