Category: North Korean refugee

Rights Group builds legal case against Pyongyang abusers

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A human rights group is beginning to build the case for the eventual prosecution of Kim Jong Un and other North Korean leaders for crimes against humanity by detailing information about thousands of individuals who have been sent to political prison camps.

The Database Center for North Korean Human Rights (NKDB) has published a list of political prison detainees, staff and victims of enforced disappearance, including names, dates of incarceration, alleged crimes and the locations of camps still in operation.

“By providing specific information on individual perpetrators we can show them that they are responsible for their actions in the event of an opening up in North Korea,” said Kim In-sung, a researcher at NKDB.

The catalogue was based on surveys and interviews with more than 1,000 North Korean defectors. It is intended to provide further evidence to support the 2014 United Nations Commission of Inquiry investigative report documenting a network of political prison camps in the country and widespread atrocities, comparable to what the Nazis did before and during World War II.

[VoA]

Portrayal of defections reflect the state of relations between North and South Korea

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This year we have learned that a growing number of North Korean diplomats and other North Koreans working for the regime overseas are defecting from their posts.

Information about defections usually comes primarily, if not entirely, from South Korea, which means that country sets the tone for how important the case is.

Under the leadership of Kim Jong Un, who took power after his father died in 2012, around 1,400 North Koreans renounce their citizenship and wind up in South Korea each year.

North Korea watchers tend to focus less on these “general population” defections, and more on defections by key North Korean officials who work abroad.

Some analysts say the South Korean government plays up or plays down defections depending on the state of relations between the two countries. continued

[NPR]

The timing of key defections announced by South Korea during the past year

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This month the second-highest official in North Korea’s London embassy defected, to great fanfare.

Yang Moojin, a professor at Seoul’s University of North Korean Studies, says in the past, South Korea’s government has sometimes chosen not to announce even “higher-profile” defections if they came at a moment when South Korea was trying to avoid friction with the North.

But this year, relations are rockier and South Korea is trying to put pressure on the North for its rocket and nuclear tests. It also happens that South Korea has been emphasizing North Korean defections.

Back in April, South Korea shared news of the mass defection of more than a dozen North Korean restaurant workers from their post in China. The timing played into the narrative as a new round of sanctions, described by the U.S. as the “toughest in decades,” had just gone into effect.

Then came the announcement that a colonel from North Korea’s spy agency had defected in the fall of 2015. But there was no explanation as to why South Korea hadn’t announced the defection when it happened, which was months earlier. Instead, the South Korean announcement of the colonel’s defection came just days before a legislative election in which President Park Geun-hye’s ruling party faced possible losses.

And scattered throughout the South Korean news this year have been reports with unnamed government officials telling the media that “key” North Koreans abroad have disappeared and absconded with money.

Both things can be true at the same time: North Korean defections are taking place with some regularity, and the South is using the defections to promote their political aims.

[NPR]

Quite a number of North Korean diplomats have recently defected

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Something curious is happening to North Korean officials abroad. A growing number of diplomats and other North Koreans working for the regime overseas are defecting from their posts.

Thae Yong Ho is probably not the only one in North Korea’s broadly defined diplomatic orbit to disappear from his post this year. The South Korean newspaper Joongang Daily, citing anonymous sources in South Korean intelligence, puts the number of diplomatic defections at as high as seven. More conservative estimates say it’s probably more like three.

“There’s a diplomat that works in Africa. Another fellow in Asia, somewhere in Southeast Asia. And then there’s Thae Yong Ho,” says Michael Madden, a visiting scholar at the U.S.-Korea Institute who tracks changes in North Korean personnel at North Korea Leadership Watch. “Those are the three that I know have vacated their posts. The other two [besides Thae], it’s never been clear where they have gone.”

The South Korean government said Friday that it’s seen a “series” of senior defections.

Jeong Joon-hee, a Unification Ministry spokesman, told a press briefing that these defections are believed to be “the result of Kim moving to consolidate his power and growing internal insecurity.” Jeong added, “We’re concerned that North Korea could make more provocative acts as it takes steps to prevent further defections.”

[NPR]

After elite defections, Kim Jong Un orders executions

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Thae Yong Ho, the senior North Korean diplomat who defected from his embassy in London, was a member of North Korea’s hallowed elite.

Thae’s father was an anti-Japanese guerrilla who fought alongside North Korea founder Kim Il Sung, according to South Korean news service Edaily.

Thae’s older brother Thae Hyong Chol is a member of the Korean Workers’ Party Central Committee and president of the country’s prestigious Kim Il Sung University, according to the report.

So Kim Jong Un has reportedly ordered the elimination — possibly by execution — of agents that fail to stop high-profile elite North Koreans from defecting. A source on North Korea told Yonhap the North Korean leader had ordered security agents to “immediately remove the causal factors for escaped and missing persons,” adding, “those not meeting their target will be promptly eliminated.”

[UPI]

North Korean math whiz defector now in South Korea

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The North Korean defector who sought refuge in Hong Kong last month left the city for South Korea about a week ago. A source told the South China Morning Post that the youth, identified as Jong Yol-ri, was accompanied by staff from the South Korean consulate and the Hong Kong government to the city’s airport where he boarded a flight for Seoul about a week ago. “It was a night flight,” the source said.

According to YTN, 18-year-old Jong – who defected while in Hong Kong to attend a math competition – intends to further his studies outside South Korea. The Post was told the student was likely to settle in the United States after a couple of months.

Jong, a two-time silver medalist who had just picked up a third at this year’s math contest, was staying at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, where the annual Olympiad was held, before he left his five teammates and fled.

The South Korean consulate, where Jong sought refuge after sneaking away from the 57th International Mathematical Olympiad on July 16, did not respond to the Post’s inquiries.

Jong is the first known North Korean to defect in Hong Kong since the city’s handover to China in 1997. Security around the South Korean Consulate was visibly stepped up after he sought refuge there. It was understood that uniformed and plainclothes officers from the counter-terrorism unit were deployed there.

Steve Chung Lok-wai, an ­expert in Korean affairs at Chinese University, said the defector’s departure was likely to have been ­endorsed by the Beijing ­government.

[South China Morning Post]

North Korean fishermen defect

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Three North Korean fishermen have defected to South Korea after going adrift in the West Sea in a wooden boat on August 7, the Unification Ministry said Tuesday.

The fisherman told investigators they had gone out to sea to fish but drifted south due to engine trouble. One was the captain of the boat and the two others are crew.

“Once the boat started drifting south they decided to defect,” a security official said. “Their life was getting more difficult because the North is selling fishing rights to Chinese trawlermen.”

The fishermen are now at a facility run by South Korea’s National Intelligence Service in Gyeonggi Province.

[Chosun Ilbo]

UN says North Korea planting mines near South Korean border

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The American-led U.N. Command in South Korea on Tuesday accused North Korea of planting land mines near a truce village inside the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) that divides the two Koreas.

Much of the border, one of the world’s most dangerous flashpoints, is strewn with land mines and laced with barbed wire. But South Korean media said no land mines had been planted in the area of the truce village of Panmunjom until North Korea placed an unspecified number there last week.

Under the Korean War armistice, the two sides are barred from carrying out any hostile acts within or across the 4-kilometer (2.5-mile) -wide DMZ.

More than a million mines are believed to be buried inside the DMZ. North Korean mines occasionally have washed down a swollen river into South Korea, killing or injuring civilians. In August 2015, land mine blasts maimed two South Korean soldiers and caused tensions between the two Koreas to flare.

An unidentified South Korean government official said the North planted the mines to prevent front-line North Korean soldiers from defecting to South Korea via Panmunjom.

[AP]

Possible North Korean reaction to recent diplomatic defection

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On Sunday, South Korea said its neighbor North Korea could resort to assassinations and kidnappings in revenge for recent defections.

An official from South Korea’s Unification Ministry said the defection of North Korea’s deputy ambassador in London was helping put the North in “a very difficult situation”.

“Considering [North Korean leader] Kim Jong-Un’s character, it is very dangerous,” said the unidentified official.

“It is highly likely that North Korea will make various attempts to prevent further defections and unrest among its people.”

[Sky News]

North Korea calls UK-based defector ‘human scum’

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Predictably, North Korea has branded their former UK-based diplomat who defected to South Korea as “human scum”.

Without listing his name, the North’s Korean Central News Agency said the envoy had been accused of leaking secrets, embezzlement and child rape. It said the UK had been told in June and had been asked for his return but instead handed him to South Korea.

In a commentary, the KCNA said “[the fugitive] should have received legal punishment for the crimes he committed, but he discarded the fatherland that raised him and even his own parents and brothers by fleeing, thinking nothing but just saving himself, showing himself to be human scum who lacks even an elementary level of loyalty and even tiny bits of conscience and morality that are required for human beings”.

In the past, Mr Thae had argued the British were brainwashed by their ruling class into believing “shocking, terrifying” lies about North Korea under its leader Kim Jong-un.

[BBC]