Category: North Korean refugee

Kim Jong Il’s bodyguard now a human rights advocate

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Lee Young Guk’s time as bodyguard came to an end in 1988. He had to leave – not because he didn’t do a good job, but because his cousin got the job of Kim Jong Il’s personal driver. It was prohibited for two members of the same family to work directly for the Kims.

For the first time in over a decade, Lee left Pyongyang, and was shocked by the poverty in the rest of North Korea. “I saw that basically nothing had changed in the outside world while I was gone,” Lee said. “People were still doing as badly as they were before: They were still going hungry or even starving.”

That’s when Lee first started doubting the regime. He used his professional past to get out of the country.. In 1994 Lee got a visa to China, from where he intended to flee to South Korea. His plan did not work, as he was sold out by a man who had promised to help him. He was returned to North Korea and sent to the Yodok camp: the infamous penal labor colony No. 15.

“Prisoners were treated like animals,” Lee said. “No – worse than animals.” Lee said he ate mice and snakes to survive; there was hardly any other food. “Every two weeks, many prisoners were selected and executed,” Lee said. “The rest of us had to watch, from maybe 10 meters away.”

Lee spent four years and seven months at the camp before he was released. When security forces tried to arrest him again, he managed to get away and flee across the river that marks the border with China.

[Deutsche Welle]

As tensions grow on North Korean border, US to fund defector groups

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UPI is reporting that a number of representatives of North Korean defector groups operating out of South Korea believe they will soon receive financial support from the State Department.

While UPI does not identify the individual organizations, it claims that representatives of these groups met with State Department officials in January and were told the White House was willing to “commit significant funds to defector organizations that can work toward internal regime change in the North.”

Among the programs that may be funded are airdrop operations using balloons, which provide information on the outside world to North Korea, as well as groups within the country that try to identify potential dissident leaders.

Pro-democracy groups have been working near the North Korean border for years, attempting to break the information wall set up by the Kim regime to block out the reality of the outside world.

[Read full article at Breitbart]

How North Korea relies on China to funnel cash into the country

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To inject life into an economy made moribund by the fall of the Iron Curtain, failed centralized policies and sanctions, Kim Jong Un needs foreign currency to pay for equipment from abroad, such as the recent purchase of Russian jets to upgrade the national airline.

For decades North Korea has built networks of front companies and foreign intermediaries to channel currency in and out, circumventing attempts to isolate it over its nuclear-weapons program. Court documents and interviews with investigators, banks and prosecutors show the cornerstone of those networks is China. “China is a very important piece in making sure that blockages work,” said William Newcomb, a former member of a panel of experts assisting the United Nations’ North Korea sanctions committee.

North Korea relies on China, its biggest trading partner, for food, arms and energy. The countries describe their ties as “friendship forged by blood” during the 1950-1953 Korean War where the U.S. was a common foe. China has criticized North Korea for provocative actions but historically opposed harsh sanctions that might precipitate a regime collapse and a flood of refugees across its 870-mile (1,400 kilometer) shared border.

About 70 percent to 80 percent of North Korea’s foreign earnings have in the past come via China, said Kim Kwang Jin, who ran the Singapore branch of North Korea’s North East Asia Bank before defecting in 2003. “That huge trade volume means there are more people in China who are willing to cooperate with the regime,” Kim said by phone from Seoul.

But China is no longer turning a blind eye to illicit North Korean activities, according to Richard Nephew, a former principal deputy coordinator for sanctions policy at the State Department until last year. “In the last 10-15 years, they actually really do care about trying to prevent some of these bad acts.”

David Asher, a former George W. Bush administration official who was involved in freezing North Korean assets at Banco Delta Asia, said sanctions can only be effective when China is coerced into cooperating. “The only way to cut off North Korea’s illicit cash flow is by interdicting these intermediaries,” said Asher, now an adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security. “That requires the cooperation of China, the biggest domicile for this type of integrated, clandestine, business-to-business relationship with North Korea.”

[Bloomberg]

Former North Korean Army officer tells of his dramatic escape – Part 1

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Forced to witness public executions and beaten for 15 days after his first escape attempt, a former North Korean soldier speaks to Sky News about the horrors of life under Kim Jong-Un. After more than two decades serving in North Korea’s military, he escaped from the country last year.

I asked him about the TV pictures we see from Pyongyang – the vast celebrations, the resounding applause for the country’s leader. “When people are clapping,” he says, “if you don’t clap, if you nod off, you’re marked as not following Kim Jong-Un’s doctrine. …You chant ‘Long Live’ and clap because you don’t want to die.”

For all of the very public displays of ‎devotion, he says the reality is a brutal dictatorship.‎ He describes public executions, and a regime that demands total loyalty. “In our unit, when I was a lieutenant, we saw one of our own soldiers executed by gunfire. Public executions … I have seen a lot of public executions.”

Under Mr Kim, he says, people are more afraid‎. “In North Korea, if you watch South Korean dramas, then they can take you away, in extreme cases you can be executed. They watch it themselves first, and if it’s ‎fun, they keep it.”   Read more

Former North Korean Army officer tells of his dramatic escape – Part 2

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His defection last year was driven by desperation. His family was struggling for food, and the only way he could see to provide for them was to cross the border to China and earn money to send back. During his first attempt he was caught, but before it was clear he intended to cross the border. He says he was beaten for 15 days, his family rounded up and questioned, the friend he had been traveling with taken away.

He resolved to ‎try again, but this time he knew it would be his last chance. He told his family to deny all knowledge and blame everything on him.

He set out in the dead of night, inching his way down a 150-metre cliff and wading a‎cross a river in the dark. “The waters were this high,” he said, gesturing above his head. “Where the water was deep, the surveillance wasn’t so strong.”

He’s now working long shifts in Seoul and saving up to try to get his family out. He knows they are alive, and has managed to get some money to them, but he ‎misses them terribly, and constantly re-lives how he said goodbye.

[Sky News – Read full article]

The night I helped my mother escape North Korea

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Extracts from “The Girl with Seven Names: A North Korean Defector’s Story” by Hyeonseo Lee:

I set my phone to silent, dressed myself entirely in black and walked calmly and purposefully through the hotel lobby in Changbai. Outside I hailed a cab and directed the driver to take me to the point where the town ended, about 200 yards from the river. I crouched down behind an old garden wall and waited. The place was cold and damp and smelled of molding leaves and animal droppings. I peeped over the wall and saw North Korean border patrols passing on the opposite bank of the river.

[My brother] Min-ho had told me he would lead our mother waist-high through the water and help her up one of the ladders on the Chinese bank. The water must be freezing.

After over an hour’s wait, my phone was buzzing. Min-ho’s voice was fast and tense: “We’ve had a problem.” Quickly Min-ho explained that just as he and my mother had been about to cross they had walked straight into a border guard. Luckily he was someone Min-ho did business with.

Min-ho said he and my mother would try again to cross just before dawn. I returned to the hotel and tried to doze for a while in my clothes. I must have drifted off, because the next thing I knew the phone was buzzing next to my face. “We’ll be there at six,” Min-ho said. I jumped off the bed. Minutes later, as I was in the taxi, he called again. “We’re across. We’re hiding in the derelict house.”

I was elated. I had not seen my dear mother in 11 years, nine months and nine days. Now I was minutes away from her. … In the half-light I saw a strained, old face and a body moving very stiffly. Min-ho was behind her, protective and guiding with his arm around her. I ran to meet them, but there was no time for a reunion. “We have to go,” I said.

I pulled out the clothes I had brought for them to help them blend in on the Chinese side. “Put these on. Over what you’re wearing. Quick.” Once they were dressed I led them towards the taxi. “Act normal, but don’t speak. He’ll think you’re locals.”

My heart went into overdrive. I didn’t remember there being so many guards. They were just 50 yards away from me

We sat in silence for the 10-minute ride. [Once inside my hotel room] for a moment we looked at each other. Half a lifetime had passed since the three of us had been together. No one could speak. Then my mother broke down, weeping uncontrollably. Over her shoulder, Min-ho’s face looked immensely sad. He’d shared her pain all these years. And soon he would say goodbye to her and probably never see her again. Read more

North Korean defectors now South Korean TV stars

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North Korea is a mysterious place — even to South Koreans. Curiosity about life in the north has sparked a slew of new South Korean TV shows.

  • There is the Amazing Race-type program, in which North Korean women are paired up with South Korean men to take on various challenges.
  • There are the talk shows, featuring panels of North Korean defectors talking about their dangerous escapes and difficult lives.
  • And then there are the dating shows, in which North Korean women are matched up with eligible South Korean bachelors.

Sokeel Park, research director for Liberty in North Korea, an international nonprofit that helps North Korean refugees resettle, says the shows are, “for the first time, exposing South Korean audiences at a mass scale” to North Koreans who aren’t their infamous political leaders. Park says the programs are helping South Koreans get a better sense of the North Korean experience.

“They’re talking about the growth of markets and new technologies in North Korea,” Park says. “So gradually, the South Korean audiences are getting exposed to new kinds of stories or new characters from North Korea that previously there was just widespread ignorance of.”        Read more

[NPR]

North Korean refugee makes second application for temporary asylum in Russia

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A refugee who fled a labor camp in North Korea — and faces almost certain death if deported back — has applied for a second time for temporary asylum in Russia.

The 36-year-old, whose name is being withheld due to safety concerns, is unlikely to receive asylum but activists will continue to appeal until he receives some sort of status or can be moved to a third country, human rights campaigner Svetlana Gannushkina said.

He still faces the threat of being deported or kidnapped by North Korean intelligence, which has seized North Koreans in Russia before, she said. In total the refugee has so far had one request for temporary asylum and two requests for permanent asylum rejected.

Of 211 North Koreans who appealed to the Russian migration service between 2004 and 2014, only two received asylum, while 90 received temporary asylum for one year, according to Gannushkina’s Citizen Assistance group.

North Korea and Russia signed an agreement in November to deport each other’s undocumented citizens. Although Russia has said those at risk of persecution would not be returned under the treaty, the migration service has previously ruled that this man did not prove that his life would be under particular threat in North Korea.

A November decision to refuse him temporary asylum seen by RBC newspaper said a significant number of people face persecution there and his “fears of being shot are connected only with North Korea employing the same punishment against all defectors”.

A 2014 UN investigation found that forcibly repatriated North Koreans are commonly subjected to torture, detention, execution or sexual violence.

The man first fled North Korea during a famine in 1997 and spent 10 years in China before he was deported and sent to a labor camp. He managed to escape to China again and crossed into Russia in 2013, where he was arrested and only allowed to apply for asylum after a hunger strike.

[The Guardian]

UN says China’s repatriation of North Korean defectors must end

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The United Nations Committee Against Torture has called for an immediate end to the forced repatriation of North Korean defectors in China.

The U.N. body said it is most concerned China is classifying North Korean defectors as illegal economic migrants, because this then justifies repatriation to North Korea where persecution, torture, as well as long detentions await returnees.

“Defectors face torture, arbitrary detention, rape, forced labor,” said George Tugushi, the Committee’s vice chairman, adding North Korean women who are impregnated by Chinese men are forced to undergo abortions upon repatriation. The committee said more than 100 cases of systemic torture and ill treatment have been filed with the U.N., and added the repatriation of North Korean victims of human trafficking must end without delay.

In a separate statement, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees called for access to North Korean defectors in China, so as to determine their status as refugees. The U.N. Commission of Inquiry previously has said China has forcibly returned tens of thousands of North Korean nationals who were most likely subjected to punishment upon their return.

In November, 10 North Korean defectors were taken into Chinese custody after being sent back from Vietnam, where it is likely they were seeking asylum at a South Korean embassy.

China has not responded to past queries regarding its decision to repatriate defectors.

[UPI]

North Korea sentences Canadian pastor to life sentence

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North Korea’s Supreme Court sentenced a Canadian pastor to life in prison with hard labor for what it called crimes against the state. Hyeon Soo Lim, who pastors the Light Korean Presbyterian Church in Toronto, was given the sentence after a 90-minute trial. He had been in detention since February.

Lim entered and left the court in handcuffs flanked by two public security officers in uniform. The handcuffs were removed in court during the trial. He kept his head bowed most of the time and answered questions in a subdued tone.

The crimes he was charged with included harming the dignity of the supreme leadership, trying to use religion to destroy the North Korean system, disseminating negative propaganda about the North to the overseas Koreans, and helping U.S. and the South Korean authorities lure and abduct North Korean citizens, along with aiding their programs to assist defectors from the North.

State prosecutors sought the death penalty. Lim’s lawyer asked the court to take into account the fact that Lim is a fellow Korean and that he had frankly confessed to everything the prosecution had brought up. Lim pleaded to be given a chance and said if the court gave him a chance he would not do anything bad again.

Lim’s relatives and colleagues have said he traveled on Jan. 31 as part of a regular humanitarian mission to North Korea where he supports a nursing home, a nursery and an orphanage. Lim, who is in his early 60s, has made more than 100 trips to North Korea since 1997.

North Korea has very strict rules against any missionary or religious activities that it sees as threatening the supremacy of its ruling regime. Merely leaving a Bible in a public place can lead to arrest and possibly severe punishment.