Category: North Korean refugee

Brainwashed to believe Kim Jong-il was a god

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Yeonmi Park was a teenager when she fled North Korea with her parents. Here’s her story:

I lived in North Korea for the first 15 years of my life, believing Kim Jong-il was a God.  I never doubted it because I didn’t know anything else.

I had to be careful of my thoughts because I believed Kim Jong-il could read my mind. Every couple of days someone would disappear. A classmate’s mother was punished in a public execution that I was made to attend. I had no choice – there were spies in the neighborhood.

My father worked for the government, so for a while things were relatively ok for me compared to some others in North Korea. But my father was accused of doing something wrong and jailed for three years. He being guilty made me guilty too, so whatever future I had in North Korea completely disappeared. I could no longer go to university, and my family was forced to move out of Pyongyang to the countryside on the border close to China.

After a few years, my father became very sick with cancer and he came out of jail for treatment. During this time, we decided to leave North Korea.North Korean refugees are not recognized in China so we had to be careful there. My parents brought a small amount of money with them, and my mother got a job washing dishes.

I did not know any Chinese and couldn’t say anything in Korean in case I was deported, so I had to pretend I could not speak. I hid in the apartment most of the time. If I saw a police man, I would run. I could not take a train because they would do certification checks. It was really miserable.

My father died of cancer in that first year and soon we had used all of our money. Around this time we met some South Korean missionaries. They said we could finally be free if we could make it to South Korea. We bought a compass and we walked across the border between China and Mongolia through the desert in winter. Once in Mongolia, we were protected and some soldiers contacted South Korea where we were accepted as refugees.

When we arrived in South Korea they took us to an Education Centre for several months. I learned that Kim Jong-il was a dictator, but I was still confused when I left – it wasn’t enough time to fully change my mind. After I came out of the centre, I met new people, started to study using the Internet, and read lots of books. I found out about socialism, communism and capitalism. I learned new things and finally saw the truth. … I realized that everything I thought was a lie.

My mother took longer than me. When Kim Jong-il died she couldn’t believe it. We were in South Korea by then and she said, “he can’t die because he’s not a human, he’s a God!”  It was very hard for us to comprehend that he was just a human!

I’m now studying at university, learning about International Relations and I feel like a different person. My older sister made it out recently and has just come out of the Education Centre. But all my other relatives are still in North Korea. They are too afraid to escape and I worry about them – not just because I’m from North Korea, but just as a human. I now know that humans have rights and I want to help them. That is my dream.

[As published in SBS Opinion]

U.S. envoy calls for break in North Korean information control

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Robert King, the special U.S. envoy on North Korean human rights, has called for more efforts to bring the people of North Korea in contact with the wider world by weakening the regime’s information blockade.

In a lecture at Ewha Womans University in Seoul, King said, “We must work to break down North Korea’s government monopoly on the control of information and work together to increase North Koreans’ exposure to ideas, conditions and reality of the world beyond the borders of North Korea.”

Only some 15,000 people are allowed access to the Internet and need to obtain permission to visit different websites.

King cited a survey among North Korean defectors in South Korea and abroad, which revealed that 34 percent of people in North Korea regularly listen to foreign radio broadcasts.

He said he heard that a busy and rowdy restaurant in Pyongyang suddenly went silent when news of the execution of Jang Song-thaek came. With so much fear instilled in their minds, North Koreans are very “cautious about rising up and doing something” about their human right situations, he added.

[Chosun Ilbo]

Former North Korean intelligence officer reveals coup and assassination attempts against Kim Jong-il

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A North Korean defector, a former intelligence officer now living in South Korea, has revealed details about assassination attempts on North Korea’s former leader and plots to overthrow him. Plots to kill Kim Jong-un’s father, Kim Jong-il, who ruled North Korea from 1994 to December 2011, have involved a lone gunman, a 20-tonne truck and even missile strikes, he said.

The defector said that in one assassination attempt a lone gunman plotted to murder Jong-il with machine gun fire, but he was arrested before he could carry out the attack.

Another attempt came a bit closer to succeeding. Jong-il’s motorcade was rammed by a 20-tonne lorry, but the driver was fooled by Jong-il’s tactic of deploying decoy cars and he struck the wrong limousine.

There were also two attempted coups, both plotted by members of the Korean People’s Army that had been trained at Moscow’s Frunze military academy and established strong links with Russia. Both plots were uncovered before they had a chance of being put into action.

While difficult to verify these revelations, two incidents do seem to back-up the defector’s claims. In 1994 officers that had studied in Russia were arrested in what was known as the ‘Frunze Affair’, and in 1997 a firefight erupted at the headquarters of the North Korean Army’s Sixth Corps when soldiers stormed it to make arrests.

[Daily Mail]

A revival of North Korean Christianity

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In 1988, North Korean authorities suddenly decided to build a Catholic and a Protestant church in Pyongyang. North Korean refugees say that many Pyongyangites were shocked one day when they saw a building in the neighborhood that looked remarkably like a church (from propaganda pictures), with a cross atop its spire. For decades, North Koreans had been told that such places could possibly be only dens of spies and sadistic butchers (their reaction was perhaps similar to the average D.C. resident if they found a big al-Qaeda recruiting center in their neighborhood, complete with a large neon sign).

At present, there are four officially tolerated churches in Pyongyang (two Protestant, one Catholic and one Orthodox). Opinions are divided on how authentic these activities are. In any case, these political shows in Pyongyang should not distract us from the real revival of North Korean Christianity, which quietly began in the late 1990s in the Sino-North Korean borderlands. In the late 1990s, many North Koreans fled to China trying to escape a disastrous famine in their country. In 1998-99, the number of such refugees peaked at around 200,000.

Most of them established good contacts with ethnic Koreans in China. By that time, many Korean-Chinese had been converted to Christianity – which is increasingly seen worldwide as the major religion of the Korean diaspora. Thus, refugees came into contact with South Korean missionaries and/or their ethnic Korean converts, and many of them were converted. It helped that Korean churches in China were perhaps the only institutions that were ready to provide the refugees with assistance and a modicum of protection. Experienced refugees told novices that in the most desperate situation, when all else fails, they should look for a church.

Churches were also very involved with a kind of underground railway that helped North Korean refugees in China to move South. Inside South Korea, church communities are the major institution that provides otherwise generally neglected North Korean refugees with support and protection. One should not therefore be surprised that a significant number of North Korean refugees convert to Christianity soon after their arrival to the South.

Meanwhile in China, from around 2000, many missionaries began to train refugees to spread Christianity in North Korea proper. Many converts were indeed willing to take the risk and go back to their native villages and towns with Korean-language Bibles and other literature. Thus, North Korea’s catacomb church was born.

The North Korean government does not look upon such developments favorably. If a returning refugee is known to be in contact with missionaries he/she will face far more severe punishment. For the average non-religious border crosser, the punishment is likely to be a few months of imprisonment, but known religious activist is likely to spend 10 years in prison.

Nonetheless, the risks do not deter either missionaries or converts.

[NKNews.org]

North Korean anti-South-Korea propaganda falling on unbelieving ears

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North Korean textbooks describe South Korea as a “fascist, military dictatorship” filled with “poverty and starvation,” but fewer and fewer North Koreans are buying the propaganda.

North Korean textbooks teach that South Korea is dominated by “foreign powers” that trample on the Korean people and “taint” its history, language and way of life. The North also teaches students that the U.S. must be driven out and South Korea liberated. Textbooks say U.S. soldiers stationed in South Korea “fire guns in broad daylight, plunder homes and rape women.” There are also rumors that North Korean defectors have their “eyes gouged out and limbs severed” if they go to South Korea.

But North Koreans from all walks of life prize South Korean-made products. One North Korean trader who crossed over the border into China said South Korean products are traded illicitly in open-air markets and can be sold at high prices if the removed labels are shown to customers.

Another North Korean said, “North Koreans know people in the South are better off, because they watch South Korean TV shows and movies. High-ranking officials and fairly well-off families all have South Korean products at home.”

Around 12 million North Koreans are believed to have access to South Korean TV shows. A government source said South Korean TV can be accessed from areas south of Sinuiju in North Pyongan Province and Wonsan in Kangwon Province.

A survey of 200 North Korean defectors last month by Media Research showed 70.5 percent of them had watched South Korean TV and other media content in the North.

[Chosun Ilbo]

North Korea lays out ideology via children’s books

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Brainwashing the next generation is a big deal in North Korea. Research suggests that Kim Jong-il and his father Kim Il-sung could be the authors of some fiercely ideological children’s tales, according to an Australian academic, Christopher Richardson, who is researching North Korean children’s literature for his PhD at Sydney University.

Boys Wipe Out Bandits, first published in 1989, is “adapted from a story the Dear Leader ‘one day’ dreamed up as a child himself”, writes Richardson, in which “cultural impurities, capitalist degeneracy, and rampant individualism are defeated by the pure virtue of the collective”.

Although the story was published in his name, Richardson is skeptical about whether Kim Jong-il really wrote it. “Even the publishers in the DPRK maintain a degree of ambiguity about the authorship of these tales, attributing the stories to Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il, while acknowledging they were written down by someone else,” he told the Guardian.

Richardson also mentions another book: the anti-American fable The Butterfly and The Cock, apparently said to have first been told by Kim Il-sung and then written down. It tells the story of how a cockerel, intended to symbolize America, sets out to bully other animals, but a butterfly – representing North Korea – steps in.

A Winged Horse is another children’s story from Kim Il-sung, in which the country is under threat from Japanese invaders, but a child saves the day on a flying horse. Writes Richardson, “Whereas the invaders are grotesque and dysmorphic, the three boy heroes are beatific, round-faced, rose-cheeked and neatly groomed, especially the youngest. Almost feminine, he has wide liquid eyes, like a cherub. Their bodies incarnate Korean simplicity and virtue.”

He was also surprised to find the stories themselves were “quite enjoyable”. “I was astounded that children’s books (purportedly) written by Kim Jong-il and Kim Il-sung were vastly more readable than one would expect from any political leader in the democratic west, still less a severe authoritarian,” he said.

He said that when he has shown his collection of North Korean children’s books to defectors, “their response has usually been to recall that while enjoying the more colorful and adventurous tales as children, they were not so interested in overtly militaristic and political stories”.

So far, Kim Jong-un has not – as far as Richardson can tell – written his own children’s book, but he anticipates it won’t be long until North Korea’s latest leader steps into the children’s literature arena.

[Read more in The Guardian] 

On referring North Korea to the International Criminal Court

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There are an estimated 80,000 to 120,000 political prisoners in North Korea, a nation of 24 million people.

After the release of the report by the United Nations Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in North Korea, many country representatives supported the call to refer North Korea to the International Criminal Court.

Hundreds of thousands of North Koreans are believed to have perished in the camps over the past half century, “gradually eliminated through deliberate starvation, forced labor, executions, torture,’’ the report said.

“The EU believes that it is imperative that there be no impunity for those responsible for human rights violations,’’ EU representative to the UN in Geneva, Mariangela Zappia, told the council. Along with Japan, the European Union is drafting a resolution on North Korea to be voted on by the council next week.

However, North Korea’s key ally China, which has a veto at the UN Security Council, reiterated on Monday that it rejects any referral of North Korean rights abuse cases to the ICC. The recent inclusion of China and Russia in the rotating membership of the Human Rights Council may even prevent the initial resolution needed to push the case to New York.

[News.com.au]

UN Human Rights Council in Geneva discusses North Korea

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Earlier today in its 25th session in Geneva, the UN Human Rights Council reviewed the human rights record of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) and heard from the UN Commission of Inquiry (COI) disturbing, detailed evidence of past and ongoing human rights abuses in North Korea.

During the session, COI chair Michael Kirby announced the Commission’s conclusion that a wide array of human rights abuses and violations, including some that amount to crimes against humanity, have been committed pursuant to “policies established at the highest level” and continue to take place in the DPRK.

As U.S. Special Envoy for North Korean Human Rights Issues Robert King stated at the UN Human Rights Council session, “the United States commends the Commission of Inquiry’s excellent and comprehensive report to the Council, which documents the ‘systematic, widespread, and gross human rights violations’ in the DPRK, and strongly supports the Commission’s calls for accountability.”

[From a release by Robert R. King, U.S. Special Envoy for North Korean Human Rights]

China rejects UN report on North Korean crimes

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As expected, China on Monday dismissed a UN report alleging North Korea has committed crimes against humanity, effectively confirming the fears of human rights advocates that Beijing will shield its ally from international prosecution.

Chen Chuandong, a counselor at China’s mission in Geneva, told the UN Human Rights Council that the independent commission of inquiry had made unfounded accusations and recommendations that were ”divorced from reality”.

”The inability of the commission to get support and co-operation from the country concerned makes it impossible for the commission to carry out its mandate in an impartial, objective and effective manner,” Mr Chen said.

Mr Chen said the report was based on information and interviews collected outside the country, without first-hand information. ”The question then arises: can such an inquiry be truly credible?”

China, as a member of the UN Security Council, would have the power to veto any move to refer North Korea to the Hague-based ICC. Diplomats had already warned China was likely to object to the report, which also criticized Beijing for its treatment of North Korean defectors.

But Michael Kirby, chief author of the report, said he was convinced North Korea’s leadership would eventually face the ICC for crimes documented in the commission’s archives, which hold the testimonies of hundreds of witnesses. ”I have lived long enough to see things that looked impossible come to full fruit,” he told a news conference. ”The independence of East Timor, the independence of the Baltic states and other steps following the fall of the Berlin Wall are all indications that things can happen that don’t look certain now. They won’t meet media deadlines but they will occur.”

Shin Dong Hyuk, a North Korean born in a political prison camp who escaped after his mother and brother were executed, told Reuters he had expected China to reject the report. But the ”big purpose” of establishing the inquiry was to get the report discussed at the UN Security Council, he said.

[Reuters]

United Nations: North Korean crimes as bad as the Nazis, Khmer Rouge

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The crimes of North Korea’s regime are as chilling as those of the Nazis, South Africa’s apartheid regime or Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge and must be stopped, the head of a UN inquiry said Monday.

Michael Kirby told the UN Human Rights Council, “It is now your solemn duty to address the scourge of human rights violations and crimes against humanity in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.”

His comments followed a searing 400-page report, released last month, that documented a range of gross human rights abuses in the country, including the extermination of people, enslavement and sexual violence.

“The gravity, scale, duration and nature of the unspeakable atrocities committed in the country reveal a totalitarian state that does not have any parallel in the contemporary world. The country is a dark abyss where the human rights, the dignity and the humanity of the people are controlled, denied and ultimately annihilated,” Mr Kirby said.

The report insisted North Korea’s leaders should answer for a litany of crimes against humanity before an international court.

“The world has ignored the evidence for too long,’’ Mr Kirby insisted, adding: “There is no excuse, because now we know.”

“If this report does not give rise to action, it is difficult to imagine what will,” Mr Kirby said.

[News.com.au]