Category: North Korean refugee

North Korean families near China border relocated

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The North Korean government has resettled some 10,000 households to build a 270 km highway section along the Chinese border, reports Chosun Ilbo.

“The aim is to prevent people from fleeing the North,” a source said. Construction of the highway, which runs from Hyesan, Ryanggang Province to Musan, North Hamgyong Province, is nearly complete.

The regime reportedly forced the residents out because the border regions along the Apnok and Duman rivers are notoriously porous, and defections and smuggling are rife.

The source said the move has made it hard for people to flee via the established routes out of Hyesan as well as Musan and Hoeryong, North Hamgyong Province, no matter how much money they pay.

A so-called normal childhood in North Korea

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If such a thing as a normal childhood can be had in North Korea, Joseph Kim had it. He lived with his father, mother and older sister in Hoeryong. At the end of each day, the neighborhood children would gather around the television and gorge themselves on popcorn and candy.

When Kim was nearly 4-years-old, his father, a respected member of the Workers’ Party of Korea, was so successful that he was able to build a house for his young family. It was 1994.

As he writes in his new memoir, Under the Same Sky: From Starvation in North Korea to Salvation in America (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), Kim and his family believed that they wanted for nothing.

What Kim’s family did not know was that Hoeryong was, and remains, home to a maximum-security concentration camp, one of six the country is known to run.

Every North Korean was to have a framed picture of Kim Il-sung and his wife in their homes. “You could be sent to a prison camp for allowing dirt to gather on Kim Il-sung’s portrait, or for putting it behind cracked glass,” Kim writes.

The children learned about America, mainly through illustrations. Teachers showed their students drawings of American soldiers spearing pregnant North Korean women with bayonets and marching them into gas chambers.

“I held my breath,” Kim writes, “as the teachers explained that Americans had come to our country to massacre Koreans for no other reason than they liked to … the only people who stopped the Americans from coming to my country, our teachers said, were Kim Il-sung and the soldiers of North Korea.”

[News.com/au]

North Korean defector opens about being gay

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When North Korean defector Jang Yeong-jin arrived in South Korea in 1997, officials debriefed him for five months but still hesitated to release him. They had one crucial question unanswered: Why did Mr. Jang decide to risk crossing the heavily armed border between the two Koreas?

“I was too embarrassed to confess that I came here because I felt no sexual attraction to my wife,” Mr. Jang said. “I couldn’t explain what it was that bothered me so much, made my life so miserable in North Korea, because I didn’t know until after I arrived here that I was a gay, or even what homosexuality was.”

Mr. Jang, 55, is the only known openly gay defector from North Korea living in the South. In late April, Mr. Jang published an autobiographical novel, “A Mark of Red Honor.” In the book and during a recent interview, he described his experiences as a gay man growing up in the totalitarian North, where the government maintains that homosexuality does not exist because people there live with a “sound mentality and good morals.” His struggle continued even in the capitalist South, where he said he felt like a “double alien”: a North Korean refugee who was also gay.

“In North Korea, no ordinary people conceptually understand what homosexuality is,” said Joo Sung-ha, who attended the elite Kim Il-sung University in Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, in the 1990s and now works as a reporter for the mass-circulation South Korean daily Dong-A Ilbo. “In my university, only half the students may have heard of the word. Even then, it was always treated as some strange, vague mental illness afflicting subhumans, only found in the depraved West.”

While North Korea has no laws explicitly prohibiting same-sex relationships, it is not shy about expressing its homophobia. Last year, for example, it said that Michael D. Kirby, a former Australian judge who led a United Nations investigation of human rights abuses in the country, was “a disgusting old lecher with a 40-odd-year-long career of homosexuality.”

Mr. Jang said he never heard of homosexuality while growing up in Chongjin on the eastern coast of North Korea. “Most gay men in the North end up marrying whether they like it or not, because that’s the only way they know,” Mr. Jang said. “On the first night of my marriage, I thought of Seon-cheol and could not lay a finger on my wife.”

In the winter of 1996, he swam across an icy river into China. After looking in vain for 13 months for a passage to South Korea, he slipped back into the North and crawled cross the border into the South in 1997. He was one of only a handful of defectors to make it across the mine-strewn frontier. His defection made headlines.

[The New York Times]

Extricating North Korea from the Kim family cult

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Extricating North Korea from the personality cult of the Kim family would be a genuine challenge under any circumstances.

The country’s founder, Kim Il Sung, and his son and successor, Kim Jong Il, permeate every facet of daily life. Citizens wear Kim lapel pins everywhere they go. Portraits and statuary of the father and son are everywhere. In Pyongyang at midnight every night, a ghostly dirge commemorating the elder Kim blares from loudspeakers through the darkness.

According to the U.N. commission’s findings and the testimony of many defectors, North Koreans who dare criticize the Kim family are punished severely and face horrific treatment in prison camps around the country.

North Korea says that isn’t true, and routinely accuses defectors of being “human scum” and criminals. In an interview with the AP in Pyongyang last October, two North Korean legal experts attempted to discredit the U.N. campaign and its findings “which they called an “anti-DPRK plot” and defended the prison system that has long been the core area of concern.

“In a word, the political camps do not exist in our country,” said Ri Kyong Chol, director of the international law department at Pyongyang’s Academy of Social Sciences. “The difference between the common and the anti-state criminals is that the anti-state criminals get more severe punishment than the common criminals.”

But Ri said common and anti-state inmates are not segregated. “I think every country has prisons to imprison those criminals who have committed crimes against the state,” he said. But in North Korea, “there are no different prisons for that.”

[AP]

The plight of North Korean women

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jihyun-park-north korea defectorThe following is written by Jihyun Park (pictured at left),  a North Korean defector who escaped from North Korea twice and spent time imprisoned in a North Korean gulag. 

In North Korea, women have no rights. There is no right to freedom, liberty, or the pursuit of happiness. Because of state-induced starvation and poverty, families have been ripped apart and relationships between mothers and children have been severed. A pervasive patriarchal culture governs North Korean society. Women not only fear abuse from the state, they fear abuse from patriarchal impunity.

Any discussions, however infrequent, on human rights inside North Korea are made for and by men. This situation is made worse because many women are ignorant of their universal human rights and cannot imagine recourse to justice or equality. For example, if a North Korean woman sought to escape North Korea, her only path is through the world of human trafficking and sexual exploitation in China. For many of us, human rights violations became a fact of day-to-day life.

My own experience of being trafficked from North Korea into China, being sold into marriage with a Chinese man for 5,000 yuan (approx. US $800), and being subjected to constant domestic servitude is something that will haunt me for the rest of my life. I gave birth to a son in China, but soon after I was repatriated to North Korea and my son was left in China. If my son had been born in North Korea to a Chinese father, he would have been killed for his mother’s betrayal of her Fatherland.

Pregnant women in North Korea prison camps work extremely hard until the death of their unborn children through miscarriage, or if she carries it to term, the newly born child is killed in front of mother. They cannot even cry out loud in front of the death of their un-born children — that would be a further act of treason — all they can do is quietly wipe away their tears with their sleeves.

Continued   

Defector says DMZ activists don’t understand plight of women in North Korea

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I do not know Christine Ahn, the woman who organized the “peace march” across the DMZ or her fellow travelers. Nor do I know much about Ahn’s activities, if she claims to be a true feminist, or how much she knows about the situation of women in North Korea.

But speaking as a North Korean woman myself, I do not see how Ahn’s crossing of the DMZ will improve the lives of the women of North Korea or bring peace to a country that is governed by a leadership who despise women.

Along with 200 of my former countrymen and countrywomen, I spoke as a witness to the United Nations Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in North Korea. Ahn would do well to read my testimony and those of the women whom she claims to be helping. In our testimonies, we spoke of unspeakable sexual violence, forced abortions and endemic rape. These facts about North Korea ― for that is what they are ― are available for the world to read. I truly hope that Ahn listens to the words of North Korean women before she enters our homeland.

I do not know Christine Ahn. They all tell us that they are feminists and seek peace on the Korean peninsula. Yet not one of these women, who have told us that they are good-intentioned, has any understanding of the plight of women in North Korea.

They say they are doing this for peace and that they will not be used. As they cross the DMZ into a propaganda festival for the North Korean government, I hope that my words cross their minds. I and many North Korean women campaign every single day for the rights of North Korean women ― and we do so without Ahn’s fanfare.

It is us, the North Korean women, who have suffered and we urge the world to listen to our voices.

[CNN Opinion by Jihyun Park, North Korean defector] 

North Korea gains foreign currency through human trafficking

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Scott Snyder, senior fellow for Korea studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, said increased trafficking of its citizens is one of North Korea’s ways of earning foreign exchange.

North Korea, frequently ranked as the world’s worst human rights abuser, has lured between 50,000 and 60,000 of its citizens to work in industries around the globe with the promise they would keep their wages, according to a paper from the Database Center for North Korean Human Rights presented on Tuesday. Instead, the wages are sent to the North Korean government, generating as much as $2.3 billion per year.

Industries employing the laborers range from logging and mining to restaurants, and workers who complain or escape risk reprisal against themselves and their families who remain in North Korea, said Robert King, special envoy for North Korea Human Rights Issues at the State Department, at the House hearing.

Workers have been sent through bilateral contracts to around 40 countries, primarily Russia, China, Mongolia and nations in Africa, central Europe and the Middle East, according to a State Department Trafficking in Persons Report from March.

One defector, Lim Il, told the Lantos commission that he had been a state employee in North Korea but went to Kuwait to work at a construction company, where he was required to put in 14-hour days under strict surveillance, with two days off per month. “I think we were slave laborers,” Il said.

After escaping to the South Korean embassy, he learned that his salary had all gone to the Office of the Worker’s Party that manages foreign currency. “The money obtained through the export of laborers overseas [is] used as a personal fund for Kim Jong-un,” the Database Center for North Korean Human Rights paper said.

[MarketWatch]

North Korean diplomats storm out of UN after spat with defectors

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North Korean diplomats stormed out of a U.S.-organized event on the country’s human rights at the United Nations Thursday after they insisted on reading a statement of protest, amid shouts from defectors.

The U.S. ambassador to the U.N., Samantha Power, tried to quiet the diplomats at the event that featured more than 20 North Korean defectors. Power called the country’s statements “totally self-discrediting.”

The North Korean diplomats did not comment as they stormed out of the chamber following Ri Song Choi’s statement in protest of the event, even as North Korean defectors stood and shouted in their faces. North Korea has previously referred to defectors who cooperated with the inquiry as “human scum.”

Defectors stood up and shouted in Korean as Power and others called for calm and a U.N. security team assembled. An observer who speaks Korean said the shouts included “Shut up!” ”Free North Korea!” ”Down with Kim Jong Un!” and “Even animals know to wait their turn.”

A North Korean diplomat read a statement that referred to “ungrounded allegations” and “hostile policy” toward his country. As soon as the North Korean diplomat stopped his speech and the next defector stepped up, the North Korean diplomats walked out.

“They’re so rude,” Jay Jo, a North Korean defector, said later, adding that she wished that the diplomats had stayed so she could have spoken with them. The U.S. said North Korea had been informed before the event that it would have a chance to speak.

The brief chaos came minutes after U.N. Assistant Secretary-General for Human Rights Ivan Simonovic told the audience that North Korea had shown “new signs of engagement” on human rights issues in recent months.

But after the uproar, South Korean Ambassador Oh Joon told the crowd that “we thought there was a glimmer of hope … but the delegation of the DPRK today disappointed us. I think it’s a pity.” He was referring to the country’s official name, the “Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.”

As the event came to a close, Power said the “true weapons of mass destruction” in North Korea was the tyranny of its government against its citizens. Power also called on countries in the region, particularly China, to stop sending North Koreans seeking asylum back into the country, which was one of the inquiry’s concerns.

[The Associated Press]

The jangmadang market system of North Korea

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An informative yet entertaining new book, “North Korea Confidential: Private Markets, Fashion Trends, Prison Camps, Dissenters and Defectors” by journalists Daniel Tudor and James Pearson is exactly what one would want from people who know a few of the country’s secrets. It reads like a CIA fact sheet mixed with juicy anecdotes—and the authors have reassured readers that everything in it has been verified by three sources.

“The main cause of North Korea’s recent social change is actually a tragic one: the famine of the mid 1990s,” the authors write. That famine, which they estimate caused at least 700,000 people to die from starvation, gutted the control Pyongyang and the government had on the country as a whole. The reason is that when the government could no longer feed its citizens, North Koreans turned to a “quasi-capitalist market economy” to feed themselves. This undermined not only the power of the state, which lost a major source of its power (the collection and redistribution of food), but simultaneously opened up the country to a form of capitalism reliant on the outside world.

In the aftermath of the famine, an illegal but countenanced market system called the jangmadang took root. Under jangmadang, members of a family, usually married women who are exempt from state-mandated work units, sell a variety of goods. These can be family possessions, DVD players, phones, foreign currency, and so on. Families rely on income from these markets, as the official and unofficial exchange rates with foreign currencies have imploded, and the government has left much of the country outside of Pyongyang to fend for itself. The markets are so ingrained in society, the authors claim, that families not known to engage are often suspect because it is assumed they are obtaining wealth from defector relatives. One side effect of these markets is that women are often bringing home more money than their husbands, which undermines the traditionally patriarchal society.

The new North Korea depicted by the authors is dominated by this semi-capitalist form of life, and while most would imagine that would be difficult given the dictatorship’s image as a suffocating leviathan, the country has a new king—cash. Throughout the book, the authors stress that nearly every crime, from political to petty, can be resolved with a bribe. Get caught trying to cross the border? Pay the guard a bribe. Caught with foreign DVDs? Pay the inspector a bribe. Need anything? Pay a bribe.

[The Daily Beast]       Read more