Category: North Korean refugee

North Korean diplomats get an earful at the UN

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North Korean official Choe Yong-nam flew in to New York from Pyongyang to protest attempts by “hostile” elements, including America and Australia, to defame his country, but he was also forced to hear an earful about his country’s human rights record Wednesday.

In an extraordinary session at the United Nations, Choe and the UN ambassador from the Democratic Republic of North Korea (DPRK), Ja Song-nam, sat through a long session where the horrific human rights conditions in the repressive country were painstakingly detailed.

The most engaging speaker at the Wednesday session was Michael Kirby, a retired Australian High Court Justice who has led a UN-commissioned investigation into North Korea’s labor camps, its kidnappings and torture of dissidents and the policies that led to mass starvation in the country.

Last year Kirby was so shocked after hearing hundreds of testimonies from victims of the North Korean regime, that he proposed referring Pyongyang’s leaders, through the Security Council, to the International Criminal Court, where they could be tried for crimes against humanity.

For now, Australia, Botswana and Panama merely tabled a condemnation resolution at the Third Committee, which deals with human rights. But the Australian ambassador to the UN, Gary Quinlan [said] the Security Council path is still being considered as well.

But the most unusual feature of Wednesday’s UN session was that Pyongyang, often described as the seat of a “hermit kingdom,” decided to fully engage with the proceedings, answering criticism with verbal attacks on the critics.

Ambassador Ja gave a long formal answer to Kirby’s allegations, the North distributed a compact disc of materials to support his answers, and Ja and Choe patiently answered reporters’ questions afterward, speaking freely in fluent, plain English.

Choe said that his country has sent a letter of protest to the UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon, who happened to also be a former foreign minister of South Korea, which is still officially at war with its northern neighbor.

[Newsweek]

North Korean defector disrupts Korean peace talks with balloons

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Lee Min-bok lives in a small hut near the Korean Demilitarized Zone and regularly sends satchels with thousands of anti-Kim Jong-un flyers to North Korea via cylindrical 7-metre-tall hot-air balloons.

balloons to north koreaSometimes the satchels contain more than just anti-North Korea leaflets, such as instant noodle packs, $1 bills and USB sticks containing South Korean soap operas.

To time his deliveries perfectly, he studies satellite weather data on his laptop. The 57-year-old defector has been launching roughly 50 million leaflets a year for the past decade and believes that his propaganda is the best way of achieving peace between the two nations, rather than official negotiations.

“My balloons are the way to achieve peace and unification and tell North Koreans the truth – not to hate the United States and South Korea,” he said.

The leaflet drops have long angered Pyongyang, which has frequently threatened to attack the continued deliveries. Yet it was only until last Friday that North Korea responded, firing machine guns at one of Lee’s balloons that had crossed the border. Some of the bullets landed in the South, forcing retaliatory fire.

On October 4, three senior officials from North Korea made a surprise visit to the South, with a follow-up round of talks set to take place in late October or early November. However, North Korea’s state KCNA news agency said such negotiations were being stymied by Lee’s propaganda, which it called “a premeditated and deliberate politically-motivated provocation perpetrated under the backstage wire-pulling of the U.S. and the South Korean authorities”.

“Why is the world allowing a holocaust to happen again?”

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North Korean  holocaust YeonmiAt the age of just 21, Yeonmi, this sweetly-confident, intelligent and tiny-framed young North Korean woman, who managed to flee the famine-torn country at the age of 13, is already a global spokesperson for her own people – a people terrorized into submission and silence while the wider world ignores what she describes as a “holocaust”.

In an interview, Yeonmi told how her first memory is of being told by her mother at the age of four “not to even whisper because the birds and mice could hear you”.

When she was nine, she was forced to watch her best friend’s mother being executed on the street before her eyes. Her only crime had been she had watched a James Bond movie and shared the DVDs with neighbors.

“Always I knew that in North Korea when they kill the people, they justify themselves by saying these are criminals trying to destroy our socialist paradise.  But I knew that lady. She was not that bad. She was not going to destroy our country,” she said.

That same year, Yeonmi’s life changed catastrophically when her father, a mid-ranking civil servant, was arrested and imprisoned for selling precious metals to China on the black market. Her mother, too, was interrogated and thrown into jail. Yeonmi and her sister, Eunmi were left to fend for themselves, at the age of nine and 11, foraging on the mountainsides for grasses, plants, frogs and even dragonflies to avoid starving to death. “Everything I used to see, I ate them,” she said.

Asked if any adults around knew the children were surviving alone, Yeonmi tries to explain. “People were dying there. They don’t care… most people are just hungry and that’s why they don’t have the spirit or time to take care of other people.”

Her bravery and willingness to speak out about conditions in her native land comes at a price. Police in Seoul – the South Korean capital where she now lives – have warned her she is on North Korea’s official list of public enemies. If she ever returns to her native country, she will instantly be executed.

Yeonmi is more than familiar with the method – she has witnessed it many times as a child, when her mother used to give her a piggyback ride to the big stadium to watch the public executions, considered a ‘celebration’ which everybody is under orders to attend. Along the route, victims are beaten with sticks and a rock placed in their mouths so that all their teeth are broken. Once they get there, they are shot three times – in the knee, the chest and the head. Nobody, not even the closest of family members, is permitted to show any sign of grief.

At the age of 13, Yeonmi’s sister fled across the border without telling the family and after four days, Yeonmi’s mother, terrified for Eunmi’s safety, decided they would follow her. Released just the previous day from hospital after an appendix operation and wearing shoes that were too large for her, Yeonmi could barely walk and her clothes were too flimsy for the freezing conditions in which they crossed three mountains and a frozen river.

When they finally reached the alleged ‘safety’ of China, they encountered a man who demanded to have sex with the 13-year-old girl who had “never even heard the word sex before”. Terrified, her mother offered herself in return and ordered her daughter to turn her back while she was raped.

Life in China was worse, if possible, even than it had been in North Korea. With no money and unable to speak the language, the family was on the brink of starvation. And though Yeonmi’s father managed to join them across the border, his health had been destroyed by prison life and torture. When he died shortly afterwards, the family were forced to bury him secretly for fear of being caught.

His death sparked the family’s second flight – this time across the Gobi desert to South Korea, where Yeonmi went to school and learned for the first time that everybody is born equal.

She explained the situation in North Korea as a “holocaust” the world is again choosing to ignore.

[Irish Independent]

China’s legal (and illegal) trade with North Korea

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With decades of breakneck growth, Communist China has become a testament to capitalism and urban living. North Korea, which also describes itself as a socialist state, is still sealed and secretive — almost.

China is North Korea’s largest trading partner by a long way, and despite Beijing’s official displeasure with the DPRK’s pursuit of nuclear weapons, this trade continues to grow. China has rebuffed any attempts to strengthen economic sanctions further against Pyongyang.

Dandong (China) is a thriving border town on the Yalu River within throwing distance of the Hermit Kingdom of North Korea. And Dandong is the lifeline, say critics, of the autocratic regime led by Kim Jong Un. Whole neighborhoods in the back streets of the city are lined with trading shops quietly run by North Korean officials.

Up to 70% of all China trade with North Korea runs through Dandong, according to South Korea’s Yonhap news agency, and it takes the form of both legal trade and illegal smuggling.

“Chen,” a smuggler who makes midnight runs across the Yalu several times a month to trade with North Korean soldiers, claims that Dandong is crawling with North Korean spies. “Don’t say anything sensitive around the North Korean waitresses,” he whispers to us. “They speak Korean and English.” And you can find them all across Dandong in North Korean themed restaurants, karaoke bars, and musical review shows.

If refugees are caught trying to escape from North Korea, they are shot, but in restaurants in the gaudy two-story tourist trap, North Koreans are allowed to work in China on special three-year permits. They are often the children of mid-level Korean Workers’ Party loyalists and their movements and earnings are tightly controlled.

And as the four-piece all-female North Korean band plays to the Chinese tourists drinking North Korean beer, I think how perfectly it sums up this city: extremely bizarre and perhaps a little tragic.

[Full CNN article

South Korean activists vow to send more leaflets over border

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South Korean activists vowed to launch balloons next week carrying anti-Pyongyang leaflets across the border into North Korea, days after their campaign triggered gunfire between the rival Koreas.

North Korea considers leaflets an attack on its government and has long demanded that South Korea ban activists from sending them. South Korea refuses, saying the activists are exercising freedom of speech.

Last Friday, North Korea opened fire after propaganda balloons were floated from the South. South Korean soldiers returned fire, but there were no reports of casualties. North Korea has warned it would take unspecified stronger measures if leafleting continues.

South Korean activist Choi Woo-won said Thursday his group won’t yield to the North’s threats and plans to send about 50,000 leaflets on Oct. 25. “Our government and people must not be fazed even though North Korea, the criminal organization, is blackmailing us,” said Choi, a university professor.

He said his leaflets will urge a military rebellion against North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. “The leaflets will tell North Korean soldiers to level their guns at Kim Jong Un, launch strikes at him and kill him,” Choi said.

Another activist Lee Min-bok said he was also ready to fly millions of leaflets, which describe South Korea’s economic prosperity. “No one can block my rights” to send leaflets, said Lee, whose leafleting Friday from a South Korean border village was believed to have directly caused North Korea to start firing.

The leafleting was high on the agenda when military generals from the two Koreas met in a border village on Wednesday in the countries’ first military talks since early 2011.

[AP]

A rap music revolution coming to North Korea?

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Kang Chun-hyok says even though he cannot go back across the border to North Korea, he hopes his music will.

Among the more than 26,000 North Koreans who have fled their country for new lives in South Korea, one refugee is trying to start a career as a hip-hop artist with hopes his music will eventually make it back to his homeland.

Kang Chun-hyok, 28, is originally from North Hamgyong province in North Korea. He grew up there during the famine that is believed to have killed millions. Kang says it is that experience that influences his music.

He says he wants to criticize the North Korean government because people there have been starving to death and are desperate, but yet the system has not changed. In this rap, Kang reminds North Korea’s rulers that while they were drinking expensive, imported alcohol, people like him were eating tree bark and drinking from mud puddles.

Those are lyrics that would not go over well with the Pyongyang regime. But Kang says he hopes his music will resonate with many people back home. He says he is not so sure what people in North Korea will think about his songs, but maybe his lyrics could help start a revolution there.

There is nothing like rap in North Korea, he says, though South Korean pop music is broadcast into the North by defector run radio stations in Seoul.

[VoA]

EU and Japan press for war crimes probes in North Korea

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The European Union and Japan are asking the United Nations to press for war crimes prosecutions in North Korea. The measure to be presented to the U.N. General Assembly in the coming weeks would ask the Security Council to consider targeted sanctions against North Korean leaders “who appear to be most responsible for crimes against humanity.” It added that these crimes were “pursuant to policies established at the highest level of the state for decades.”

The draft resolution, which was obtained by AFP, draws heavily from a U.N. rights inquiry released in February that revealed a vast network of prison camps and documented cases of torture, enslavement, rape and forced abortions among other violations.

“The draft resolution represents a clear shift towards recognizing that responsibility for the horrific abuses in North Korea lies squarely on the shoulders of the government,” said Param-Preet Singh from Human Rights Watch.

The draft calls on the Security Council to take stock of the report’s findings and take “appropriate action, including through consideration of referral of the situation in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea to the International Criminal Court.” It also calls for “concrete and positive results” in efforts to account for all Japanese nationals including victims of North Korean abductions during the Cold War.

A vote is expected at the 193-nation Assembly in late November.

North Korea’s ally China, which has a veto at the Security Council, was seen as likely to reject any referral of North Korean rights abuse cases to the International Criminal Court in the Hague.

[The China Post]

Rival Koreas trade fire over propaganda balloons

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North and South Korea traded machine-gun and rifle fire Friday after South Korean activists released anti-Pyongyang propaganda balloons across the border.

North Korea opened fire nearly two hours after the release of the balloons, Defense Ministry spokesman Kim Min-seok said, and several 14.55 mm machine gun bullets fell south of the border near a South Korean base and a residential area. Kim said South Korea then fired 40 rounds from K-6 machine guns. The North then opened fire with rifles, which South Korean soldiers responded to in kind, Kim said. There were no reports of damages or injuries. It wasn’t immediately clear if North Korea was firing at the balloons.

The exchange of fire comes as speculation grows about the condition of North Korea’s authoritarian leader, Kim Jong Un, who has been out of public view for more than a month. He missed a major anniversary event on Friday for the first time in three years.

South Korean activists and North Korean defectors frequently release balloons carrying leaflets into the North, but Friday’s action was especially provoking because it came on the founding anniversary of the North’s ruling Workers’ Party.

South Korean civic organizations mainly made up of North Korean defectors sent 10 balloons northward from the South Korean side of the border. They contained 20,000 anti-North Korea leaflets, 1,000 U.S. $1 bills, 400 propaganda DVDs and 300 propaganda thumb drives.

North Korea’s Secretariat of the Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of Korea released a statement Thursday criticizing the planned leaflet launch, calling it “little short of a declaration of a war.”

“If the South Korean authorities allow or connive at the projected leaflet-scattering operation, the north-south relations will again be pushed to an uncontrollable catastrophe and the provokers will be wholly accountable for it,” the statement said.

North Korea has issued similar warnings on the leaflets in the past but hasn’t acted on its threats.

[AP]

Smuggled phones help North Korean defectors send remittance money

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A cellphone smuggled into North Korea helped Lee Seo Yeon take on two missions: one emotional, one financial.

Once the 40-year-old defector Lee was certain she was talking to her sister, a broker took the phone on the North Korean end. Lee transferred 2 million won ($1,880) to a South Korean bank account belonging to a Korean-Chinese who was working with the broker, who confirmed the transfer and handed the phone back. The arrangement gave Lee’s sister 70 percent of the money, with a 30 percent cut for the go-betweens.

Smuggled phones, combined with a resourceful underground network of brokers inside and outside North Korea, are allowing defectors not only to connect with long-lost relatives, but to send them desperately needed cash. The process remains risky, both for people within the arm of North Korean law and defectors worried about getting cheated.

The Chinese phones are illegal in North Korea, but cheap and widely available. Since late in the last decade, they have become an increasingly common way for many of the roughly 25,000 defectors in South Korea, and others hiding in China, to talk to and help relatives who stayed behind.

One recent survey by a Seoul civic group of about 400 defectors suggested that one in every two defector families in the South send home money, mostly between 500,000 won ($470) and 3 million won ($2,820) per year.

They do this even though most defectors struggle to make a living in the highly competitive, well-educated South: Their average monthly wage is about 1.4 million won ($1,320), about half the pay of an average South Korean worker.

“Even though we have very small incomes here, we still eat rice at every meal,” Seoul-based defector Choi Jung-hoon said. “If we don’t buy new clothes, we can save some money to send to our family members in the North. That’s a lot of money for them.”

[AP]

John Kerry speaks out on North Korean ‘evil’ labor camps

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American Secretary of State, John Kerry, has told North Korea to shut down its prison camps – describing them as an evil system. He said the barbarity and inhumanity of the labor colonies brought shame on the country.

Mr Kerry was speaking at an event in New York on North Korean human rights abuses on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly meeting. “We simply cannot be blind to these egregious affronts to human nature… silence would be the greatest abuse of all,” said Mr Kerry at the meeting, which was also attended by the South Korean and Japanese foreign ministers.

North Korea has long rejected the charge that it maintains camps for up to a 120,000 prisoners – despite the presentation of detailed satellite pictures and testimony from former prisoners and guards. It likewise denies all charges of repression and brutality and regularly describes criticism of its record as an attempt to undermine its leadership.

US administrations were for long reluctant to challenge North Korea too forcefully on its human rights record, for fear of provoking tension in the region. Instead, they focused on North Korea’s development of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles, while attempting to draw the North Koreans into negotiations with offers of diplomatic and economic concessions.

The Obama administration, however, has increased sanctions on the North and gave its backing to a thorough human rights report commissioned by the UN Human Rights Council, which was published in February. That report concluded that the gravity and scale of abuses had no parallel in the contemporary world.

“The crimes against humanity entail extermination, murder, enslavement, torture, imprisonment, rape, forced abortions, persecution on political, religious and gender grounds… and the inhumane act of knowingly causing prolonged starvation,” concluded the report presented by a panel of international jurists.

[BBC]