Category: North Korean refugee

North Korea is no joke

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In the past weeks, North Korean state media have called the female President of South Korea a “dirty political harlot” and an “old prostitute”; the gay chairman of the U.N. Commission of Inquiry on North Korea “a disgusting old lecher with 40-odd-year-long career of homosexuality”; and, in a loathsome screed, referred to U.S. President Barack Obama as a “monkeyish human monstrosity.”

Still, North Korea’s exceptionally vile words pale in comparison to its criminal actions. … In North Korea, racism isn’t just talk. That U.N. Commission of Inquiry’s report summarizes testimony from North Korean refugee women and former border guards who say that the regime forcibly aborts or murders the babies of refugee women sent back to North Korea by China, on the presumption that the babies’ fathers were Chinese, to maintain the myth of state-mandated “racial purity.”

We should stop infantilizing North Korea and dismissing it as ridiculous. The temptation is understandable. The North Korean regime’s very weirdness causes much of the world to dismiss its invective as the rant of a regime that is merely isolated, eccentric, and misunderstood.

But North Korea is not just a bizarre abstraction … it is a murderous regime that is approaching nuclear breakout, and whose human rights violations, according to the U.N. Commission of Inquiry, “have no parallel anywhere in the world.” North Korea’s words reflect the character of its political system.

[From CNN Opinion article by Joshua Stanton and Sung-Yoon Lee]

The Corpse Division of North Korea

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Jang Jin-sung’s new memoir, Dear Leader, is a remarkable story of struggle and survival, the tale of his desperate flight from North Korea in 2004. Jang Jin-sung, by the way, is a pen name. Given Jang’s unusual position of privilege, the book also presents a rare look inside the lives of the North Korean people and its leaders.

The average North Korean citizen received monthly, pre-measured food rations from the state until 1994, when the collapsed economy left people to fend for themselves. (Those in high levels of government and the military still received rations.)

Death from starvation grew so common that it led to the founding of the ominously but accurately named Corpse Division. Jang first saw them when, in a park, he noticed “a swarm of homeless people who looked to be either dead or dying. There were also men hovering over the bodies like flies, at times poking the inert figures with sticks.”

When he asked who they were, a friend replied, “They’re from the Corpse Division. They get rid of the corpses. All the other provinces [except Pyongyang] dispatch them to the main park near the station. All sorts of people move through the station, so they come here to beg, until they die.”

Jang saw the division in action. “The Corpse Division had a loaded rickshaw, on top of which some empty sacks were laid,” he writes. “Six bare and skeletal feet poked out from beneath these in oddly assorted directions. For the first split second, I did not understand what I was seeing, but as soon as I realized these empty sacks were human bodies, I grew nauseous.”

Water was scarce as well. The lower and middle classes “frequented the boiler rooms at foreign embassies, restaurants, or central state institutions. If you paid a bribe, the staff would allow you to have some of the hot water from the overflow pipe.”

Despite the desperation, woe to the North Korean who stole food. Executions, Jang learned, took place weekly. ….”Soldiers rushed in from all directions to surround the square, herding us into the center with the butts of their rifles,” writes Jang. The prisoner, who had stolen a bag of rice, was brought in wearing everyday clothes, which Jang took as a message to the townspeople that “any of them could be in this position.”

The man, “eyes full of terror” and “blood around his lips,” was brought into the center as “a military officer read out his judgment,” and a judge declared, “Death by firing squad!”

After this less-than-five-minute “trial,” a soldier shoved “a V-shaped spring” into the man’s mouth to “prevent him from speaking intelligibly,” so that he “could not utter rebellious sentiments” just before he was shot dead in front of the day’s shoppers.

[news.com.au]

After fleeing North Korea

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The academic work of Professor Clifton Emery, a lecturer at Seoul’s Yonsei University, focuses on the power that social groups and communities wield over the specter of child abuse, and as part of a wider study he is currently interviewing 200 North Korean defectors to examine the risks they face in terms of post-traumatic stress disorder and family violence.

This work has put him in contact with the underground railroad, a network of smugglers and NGOs working to bring North Koreans to safety via a shadowy route that snakes from China to Southeast Asia and finally to Seoul. Many of these refugees are women, who willingly sell themselves as brides to rural Chinese men and then wait, often bearing several children to their husbands, until the opportunity for escape presents itself.

It has also brought Emery close to the aid workers – a handful of Israelis among them – who help the process along. One of his closest Jewish friends these days is Yotam Polizer, the Israeli serving as Asia Director for the NGO IsraAid, which offers trauma care training and workshops. IsraAid has offered training to the counselors and therapists who serve as refugees’ first contacts when they make it to South Korea and to the government-run Hanowan Resettlement Center that sits in the hills south of Seoul. There, the refugees learn the bare bones of democracy, free speech, and capitalism. They are taught that they can say whatever they wish about their government and practice any religion they choose. It’s a paradigm shift of massive proportions.

This evening two dozen aid workers and psychology students gather together in a lecture hall to discuss the intricacies of trauma and how they can identify, salve and treat the emotional wounds of shell-shocked North Korean defectors. Much of that work focuses on nonverbal treatment, be it through art, music, or movement, allowing survivors of the North Korean regime to express themselves without the burden of a written record.

Such a cross-section of humanitarians, Emery says, is typical. “The people doing the work and defectors themselves are all over the map politically,” he says. “You have fundamentalist Christians and you have very secular professional Western organizations and you have IsraAid. What we share in common is a sense of the absolute urgency of this crisis.”

It’s really a question, Emery says, of how much we believe in the term “never again.” He says, “I grew up hearing stories of the Holocaust and hoping that if I had been alive at that time I would have had the moral fortitude to do something. I simply cannot look myself in the mirror and not do something. It’s just a very simple response of the heart.”

[Times of Israel]

Disillusioned by meeting Kim Jong Il

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“Until the day I met Kim Jung Il,” North Korean defector Jang Jin-Sung says, “I truly considered him divine, as someone more holy, like a sage – someone to be revered, someone who was better than us, who was sacrificing his own life for the people.”

Jang, a poet, caught the dictator’s eye, and was invited for a private audience with him.

Unti then, so effective was the regime propaganda machine, Jang told CNN’s Christine Amanpour, that he did not even believe that Kim the elder used the toilet.  “The man I saw standing in front of me was a man, he was a human being. He was not a holy man; he was not a saint; he was not a god. He was a man just like me, who did use the toilet.”

In propaganda, Kim had used “perfectly composed, flowery language,” Jang said, and was deeply reverential of the people. “But when I met him, he just spoke in slang like in a kind of commanding colloquial, working-class slang, even to his most senior men. …. And that was shocking to me.”

From that highest perch of North Korean society, Jang could clearly see for the first time all the lies he had been told. The truth became even starker when he went back to visit his hometown of Sairwon, in the southwest of the country.  “That was when I really witnessed the devastating effects of the famine. That’s where I saw the corpses in the station area just piling up and being taken away.”

As many as 3.5 million people are estimated to have died during North Korea’s severe famine of the 1990s, according to the South Korean NGO Good Friends. (Official North Korean numbers estimate that 220,000 people died.)

Jang also witnessed a public execution [in his hometown]. “It’s considered a method of moral education … So that’s why these executions happen in public places, such as market squares, where people watch it. It becomes a theater.”

A decade ago Jang decided to flee the country. Not even his family knew he was planning to leave.

 [Read full CNN article] 

Shadowy organization in control of North Korea

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Who controls the Hermit Kingdom of North Korea? According to a North Korean defector, it is not the 31-year-old dictator Kim Jong Un.

“When Kim Jung Il died and Kim Jong Un succeeded him, people saw the transfer of power from father to son,” Jang Jin-Sung told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour in London. “What they did not see also was what happened to the apparatus of the totalitarian system that supported the rule of Kim Jung Il.”

That apparatus, Jang said, is the Organization and Guidance Department, or OGD, an “old-boy’s network” made into a massive surveillance organization. Kim Jong Un has had to rely on his father’s “old-boys network” to get anything done.

“After the execution of [Kim Jong Un’s uncle] Jang Song Thaek, [Kim Jong-un] has become an orphan – not just in terms of family connections, but in terms of politics.”

Because that group does not respect the younger Kim, who was educated in Switzerland, the way it did his father, Kim Jong Un has become nothing more than the symbolic head of North Korea.

[CNN] 

China denies planning for North Korean collapse

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China’s Foreign Ministry dismissed purportedly leaked plans for dealing with regime collapse in North Korea, while the plan’s authenticity itself has come under question:

John Delury, a professor of Chinese history at Yonsei University in Seoul told NK News that it is highly likely that China, along with other stakeholders such as the U.S. and South Korea, would have contingency plans for a North Korean regime collapse but that he is “deeply skeptical” of the validity of this report.

“I don’t doubt the existence of such plans. The Chinese have mentioned them to me and others, at least in think tank settings, if not publicly. Indeed, it would be pretty odd if the PLA and other agencies did not have such plans, but I’m not convinced Kyodo actually saw them,” said Delury.

This is a sentiment shared by Adam Cathcart, a lecturer in Chinese history at the University of Leeds. “Where are the documents? If they don’t actually exist or cannot be excerpted in Chinese or English, I would be skeptical, although Kyodo is a decent news agency.”

Genuine or not, the plans highlight China’s high stake in North Korean stability, with collapse likely to send both a humanitarian crisis and geopolitical chaos washing over its border.

The Wall Street Journal’s Andrew Browne notes that the intact Pyongyang regime presents a “more immediate nightmare” for Beijing: “Evidence North Korea is about to pull the trigger on its fourth nuclear test underline that the North is marching determinedly, one step at a time, toward the day when it can target any city in the Asian Pacific—and potentially large population centers in the U.S.—with nuclear attack.

“This is China’s nightmare: a nuclear arms race on its doorstep, and one that adds muscle to its rival Japan as the two wrangle over a set of islets in the East China Sea.

“Yet it would be a huge leap for Beijing to actually abandon one of its few real friends in the world. In the end, the demise of a socialist ally may be too unnerving a prospect for the Chinese Communist Party, which frets about its own mortality.”

[China Digital Times]

Diverse opinions on how the world should deal with North Korea

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North Korean defectors, now living in Seoul, were invited to share their thoughts on how the world can best help North Korea. Some excerpts:

Nayoung Koh, 25, defected North Korea in 2009, now attending university:
“The whole of the international community needs to simultaneously criticize the DPRK about its human record. In my experience – until early the early part of the last decade – capital punishment was commonly witnessed in North Korea and there were almost no criminal trials. However, some of these incidents and practices were photographed by cameras and satellites in the early 2000s and revealed to the world. When that happened, North Korea was severely criticized by the international community – and shortly afterwards there was a temporary halt to the practice of public capital punishment.”

Jinwoo Ham, mid-50s, had been a NK military officer for 22 years before he left:
“The international community needs to have heavy sanctions on the DPRK while it continues to violate the human rights of its own people and remains unwilling to give up nuclear weapons. That is the only way to make North Korea collapse. At the same time, the international community also needs to help North Koreans speak up and rebel against the current dictatorship. In order to achieve this, it is necessary to take advantage of all kinds of media including broadcasting, publications, and video to raise public awareness.”

Jimin Kang, 28, had been in the military before he defecting from Pyongyang in 2005:
“In my opinion, the greatest contribution the international community can make to North Korea will be in the form of economic aid and better quality education. You see, once North Korea opens up, the greatest priority will be in rebuilding the economy. … North Korea needs talented individuals to lead the country into the future. … Therefore what the people of North Korea really need is a transplant of the West’s educational environment into the DPRK.”

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North Korean defectors on humanitarian aid and human rights

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Se-hyok Oh, mid-30s, left North Korea in 1999. Now a journalist for Daily NK:
“The international community needs to let North Koreans know that it has a continuous and long-lasting interest in them. One method of achieving this is through humanitarian aid – though only under certain conditions. The international community needs to impose sanctions while informing Pyongyang of the many positive effects and consequences that would result from the DPRK making changes.”

Mina Yoon, 28, had been in the military before defecting in 2010. Now an university student in Seoul:
“What frightens ordinary North Koreans the most is either starving or being beaten to death. …While human rights need to be enhanced, food supplies still need to be provided. We also need to ensure that food aid goes to ordinary North Koreans, not the government. And it is important that those receiving aid should be informed where it comes from.”

Soon-kyung Hong, mid 60s, had been a DPRK Trade Councillor before he defected in 2000:
“The most important thing the international community can do is to speak out for the human rights of ordinary North Koreans. Also, the international community should impose additional sanctions on the North Korean government.”

[Read Guardian article] 

Two North Korean activists flee their country

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Kim Seung-chul of North Korea Reform Radio told the Chosun Ilbo two North Korean activists made a telephone call to his station from China asking for help. The two are from Jagang Province and had been listening to the South Korean radio station for five years with a home-made receiver, which moved them to launch a pro-democracy group in North Korea.

Kim quoted one of the men as saying the broadcasts inspired him to think about how to improve North Korea. He said they printed anti-regime leaflets based on the broadcasts and scattered them in markets and streets.

But they decided to flee late last year because one of their members was arrested last November and state security dragnet was closing in.

Kim said he helped them escape through China, from where they made their way to Thailand and then on South Korea.

Spotlight on North Korea’s Horrors

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Excerpts of an Opinion piece written by Marco Rubio, U.S. Senator representing Florida:

This week, Australian justice Michael Kirby, who led the U.N. Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in North Korea, is briefing members of the U.N. Security Council regarding the widespread atrocities being committed on a daily basis against innocent people by one of the world’s most repressive regimes.

Under the dictatorship of Kim Jong Un, the North Korean regime routinely engages in torture, arbitrary detentions, indiscriminate disappearances, starvation, and executions. North Koreans who pay insufficient homage to the country’s deceased founder, Kim Il Sung, can be sent to prison along with their families. Prisoners are often subjected to human experiments, denied food, and essentially worked to death in North Korea’s network of infamous prison camps.

The horrific, systematic violations of human rights in North Korea have been going on for many years. And for far too long, these abuses have taken a back seat to international concerns about North Korea’s nuclear-weapons program and other provocative behavior.

More information about the brutality of the Kim regime is emerging, as North Korean defectors courageously share their personal stories of deprivation and, ultimately, survival. I was honored to be able to meet with a number of North Korean defectors on a trip to South Korea earlier this year and to hear their stories firsthand. They told me that it is important to recognize that exposing the regime’s heinous crimes against humanity as often and as publicly as possible is one of our most powerful tools against the continued brutality of the North Korean regime.

I am under no illusion that this commission will profoundly alter the present-day horrific human-rights situation for the long-suffering North Korean people. But I do believe that the work of the Commission of Inquiry will raise — and, indeed, already has raised — public consciousness about the deplorable plight of the North Korean people.

When we look back at the Holocaust and the murders of millions of innocents in Europe during World War II, many ask why we didn’t do more to stop those atrocities until it was too late for so many who did not survive to see the day the camps were liberated. Some hide behind supposed lack of knowledge, but in this day and age, we have no excuse. Anyone with an Internet connection can use Google Earth to view the modern-day gulags in North Korea.

It is time for the United States and for all who cherish freedom to make it our common cause to pressure the regime to open these camps for international inspection and to make clear that those involved in these horrific crimes will one day be held accountable.

[National Review Online]