Category: North Korean refugee

Cell phone proliferation and use in North Korea

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The number of mobile phone subscribers in North Korea doubled to more than two million last year. Koryolink, a joint venture between the state-ownedKorea Post and the Egyptian company Orascom, has passed two million subscribers in a country of about 24 million people.

North Korean defectors tell VOA that many go out of their way to purchase mobile phones, selling hard-earned crops or housewares. Cell phones have become status symbols, signs of prosperity, and one of the most noticeable examples of conspicuous consumption in North Korea. A man from Chongjin who defected in December 2012 said “cell [phones] have become so popular that a young man without a cell phone is not treated well and could not even find a girlfriend.”

In the reclusive state, mobile phones are primarily used for entertainment purposes. Think tablet computers – without the Internet.  Cell phone users use the handset to take pictures, watch videos and play games. North Koreans often use Chinese-made printers to print out photos taken with their mobile phones,

Defectors explained calls were usually reserved for emergencies, to avoid expensive top-up fees. A basic plan comes with just 200 minutes of calling and 20 text messages.

There are no signs that North Korea introduced cell phones as a means of reforming or opening up to the outside world. On the contrary, Pyongyang appears to be using the wide distribution of mobile phones to maintain and solidify its stability. One defector explained, “It is stupid to criticize the regime on the cell phone, which does more harm than good, when the call rate is exorbitant.”

It isn’t just the money factor, though, that is stopping cell phone users from actually using the handsets for communication. Authorities monitor all text messages, along with location data in real-time. Voice calls are recorded, transcribed, and stored for three years according to a former North Korean security agent. Also, there are no international calls allowed, and Internet access is banned for all but the ruling elite.

He told VOA that security guards often stop and question cell phone users on the street to search for any “politically inappropriate” content on their phones, especially South Korean soap dramas. An officer can confiscate a phone on the spot at his discretion.

Despite the North Korean government’s success at suppressing the flow of information through the mobile phone network, the network could potentially widen loopholes for information to flow to and from the reclusive state. For example, amateur reporters can record data on their cell phone memory card and transfer it to illegal Chinese cell phones to convey the information to foreign media outlets. Rimjin-gang, a Japan-based magazine featuring news and information from undercover North Korean reporters, says it has used this method to get hidden camera video out of the country.

[VoA]

A glimmer of financial hope in North Korea?

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A North Korean defector who now lives in South Korea has this to say about life in Hyesan, a North Korean city near the border with China: “Women are wearing clothes from Japan or South Korea that show off their figure if they have some money, and cosmetics from South Korea, too.” Since her 2012 defection, Ms Park remains in touch with family in Hyesan thanks to a mobile phone illicitly brought from China. “Seven out of 10 homes have color TV, and people can afford to make meat broth once a month . . . The quality of life has improved a lot.”

Though Kim Jong-Un has stressed a desire to strengthen the economy and “improve the people’s standard of living”, Hyesan’s growing middle class is more a reflection of the North Korean government’s surrender of control over much of the real economy than a result of improved policies. It is also a window into North Korea’s struggle to foster economic development while keeping a totalitarian political system alive.

After the starvation of up to 1m people in the famine demonstrated the state’s inability to feed its people, it was forced to turn a blind eye to the informal markets that sprang up. For residents of cities such as Hyesan, near the border with China, the opportunity to engage in illicit trade with Chinese merchants has been especially lucrative.

The capital has always offered higher living standards than the rest of North Korea, serving as a home for about 3m of those considered most dependable and loyal to the regime. Visitors to Pyongyang over the past two years also speak of growing prosperity. There are more cars on the formerly traffic-free streets – including BMWs, despite a UN ban on luxury goods imports. Children in the city’s parks use skates, department stores are increasingly well-stocked, and a growing number of once drab shops bear hoardings with eye-catching logos.

Chinese trade with North Korea hit a record $6.6bn last year, according to the Seoul-based Korea International Trade Association – the vast majority of Pyongyang’s trade and up ninefold since 2001. Says Andray Abrahamian, executive director of Choson Exchange, which provides business training to young North Koreans. “Increasingly, over the last decade, people see business as the way to get ahead rather than the traditional way, which would be getting ahead in the party or the military.”

The majority of North Koreans though still endure grinding poverty that contrasts sharply with the lifestyles of the smugglers of Hyesan, let alone the Pyongyang elite. A study last October by the World Food Programme estimated only 16 per cent of households had “acceptable food consumption”. In the northern province of Ryanggang, 40 per cent of children under five were stunted.

[Simon Mundy writing in Financial Times]

New South Korean film portrayal of Christian suffering in North Korea

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Christians in North Korea face beatings, torture, arbitrary shooting and execution. It is difficult, though, to comprehend the true nature of the terror of the victims, the extent of the persecution, and the bravery of their struggle.

A new film, “The Apostle: He Was Anointed by God,” presents a fictionalized account based on stories culled by South Korean director Kim Jin-moo.

The plot revolves around Chul-ho who wants to lead villagers across the river to China and from there to South Korea. He, his family and friends, face varying degrees of terrorism by North Korean soldiers, some of them glad to accept bribes, others promising to get tough against dissidents in their midst.

The film introduces, on a highly personal level, the types of conflicts among all these people that we can only imagine – the aging father who just wants to pay off the authorities whenever expedient, the pregnant woman who hides away but also gets killed, the Christian who praises Kim Jong-il in a sermon in one of those phony authorized churches in Pyongyang, the young soldier who himself is a Christian and attends underground services while in uniform.

One of the more interesting studies in “The Apostle” is that of the North Korean squad leader who warns Christians of the troubles they face under a new, ambitious officer and then obeys the officer when expedient, as when villagers are shot and killed as they try to flee across the snow into China. The differences among North Koreans are essential to the credibility of the film since they portray characters who suffer not only from ideological fanaticism but also from opportunism and the need to survive under a brutal regime that will kill anyone who shows any sign of insubordination.

For those who worry about the fate of unknown tens of thousands of secret Christians in North Korea, this is a powerful film with a believable story. Chul-ho dies as a martyr to his faith. Peter Jung, founder of Justice for North Korea, presenting the film, complete with English subtitles, said his organization will show it on March 17 in Geneva during debate at the UN Council for Human rights on the report on human rights in North Korea by a commission authorized by the council.

A book by Jung and activist Kim Hi-tae, “The Persecuted Catacomb Christians of North Korea,” is quoted in the report. Copies of the book, in both English and Korean, were handed out after the screening of the film. It provides an astonishing glimpse into the history of Christianity in Korea, the suffering that Christians have endured historically and the brutality that exists today in North Korea.

[Forbes]

Moral outrage and action needed on North Korea

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Twenty-five million people today live in the world’s largest concentration camp – the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea – entombed in a totalitarianism so complete that nary a whisper about their sufferings is shared in the warm daylight we on the outside take for granted.

We teach our children the heavy legacies of humanity’s grave past injustices: Auschwitz. The Killing Fields. Rwanda. Srebrenica. Darfur. Implicit in such education is the belief that had we been alive, or had we been in positions of influence while the great atrocities of the past century had been perpetrated, we would’ve acted decisively to stop them.

But the moral clarity with which we judge those who preceded us is elusive when we see our world today. Museums and memorials to the fallen victims of yesterday’s tyrants are meaningless if they do not translate to stands against the perpetrators of brutality today.

Over the past decade, the body of evidence detailing North Korea’s criminal treatment of its citizens and others has steadily grown – first dismissed in disbelief by many, now undeniable. Last month’s report by the United Nations Commission of Inquiry on human rights in North Korea declared, “The gravity, scale and nature of these violations reveal a State that does not have any parallel in the contemporary world.” The report documents forced abortions, infanticide, mass starvation, torture, public executions, and oppression on an unfathomable scale.

In an age of satellite imagery and eyewitness testimony from concentration camp survivors, we can no longer plead ignorance. Now we have the chance to get on the right side of history, and to speed the day when children might be born free in North Korea.

[Excerpts of Christian Science Monitor article by Adrian Hong] 

Life under the AntiChrist

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The Bible describes a dictator who will achieve world dominance, this autocratic despot popularly known in Christian circles as the AntiChrist. The term used by Jesus in the Gospels translates as “Pseudo Christ” (the Greek being pseudokhristos) or “false Messiah”. (In traditional Christian belief, Jesus Christ appears in his Second Coming to Earth to face the emergence of the Antichrist figure, a single figure of concentrated evil.)

Islamic eschatology relates to this same AntiChrist as Al-Masih ad-Dajjal (Arabic for “the false messiah”). He appears pretending to be Masih (i.e. the Messiah) at a time in the future and is directly comparable to the figure of the Antichrist, as does  Armilus in Jewish eschatology.

According to Biblical text: “He opposes and exalts himself above every so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, declaring himself to be God.’ [2 Thessalonians 2:1–4 NRSV]

Switching now to the subject of North Korea: Although I am certainly not indicating that the Kim dynasty is or will bring forth the AntiChrist, to some degree I would suggest that the decades-long North Korean dictatorship does allow a glimpse into what the forthcoming Antichrist regime might be like.

The mass starvation, brutal oppression and religious persecution of Kim Jong Il’s Stalinist North Korea regime, described as “worse than 1984”, could very well be a forerunner of what this AntiChrist will attempt to make life like for believers.

The North Korean constitution disallows belief in any higher power than its despot. Christianity or any other religion is suppressed.

To quote the State Department’s recent Human Rights report: “The personality cult of Kim Il-Sung and Kim Jong-Il remained a virtual civil religion that provided a spiritual underpinning for the regime. Refusal on religious or other grounds to accept the leader as the supreme authority exemplifying the state and society’s needs was regarded as opposition to the national interest and continued to result in severe punishment.”

Somewhere in the area of up to 300,000 North Koreans have fled their country to China to live illegally, risking their lives to flee the starvation and oppression of Kim Jong Un’s Stalinist North Korea regime. Thankfully, many of these refugees make their way to “safe houses” set up by Christian activists who run a modern day “underground railroad” to help these refugees escape to safer countries.

Read more on the North Korean Underground Railroad

Dogs ripped kids to pieces in North Korean prison camp

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Ahn Myong-Chol witnessed many horrors as a North Korean prison camp guard, but few haunt him like the image of guard dogs attacking school children and tearing them to pieces.

Ahn, who worked as a prison camp guard for eight years until he fled the country in 1994, recalls the day he saw three dogs get away from their handler and attack children coming back from the camp school. “There were three dogs and they killed five children,” the 45-year-old told AFP through a translator. “They killed three of the children right away. The two other children were barely breathing and the guards buried them alive,” he said, speaking on the sidelines of a Geneva conference for human rights activists.

The next day, instead of putting down the murderous dogs, the guards pet them and fed them special food “as some kind of award,” he added with disgust. “People in the camps are not treated as human beings… They are like flies that can be crushed,” said Ahn, his sad eyes framed by steel-rimmed glasses.

The former guard is one of many defectors who provided harrowing testimony to a UN-mandated enquiry that last week issued a searing, 400-page indictment of gross human rights abuses in North Korea. [Read summary of report]

After fleeing the country two decades ago, Ahn worked for years at a bank in South Korea but gradually got involved in work denouncing the expansive prison camp system in the isolated nation. Three years ago, he quit his bank job to dedicate all his time to his non-governmental organization, Free NK Gulag. “It’s my life’s mission to spread awareness about what is happening in the camps,” he said.

Ahn Myong-Chol knows all too well the brutal mentality of the camp guards. When he, as the son of a high-ranking official, was ushered onto the prestigious path of becoming a guard in 1987, he says he was heavily brainwashed to see all prisoners as “evil”. At his first posting at camp 14, north of Pyongyang, he was encouraged to practice his Tae Kwon Do skills on prisoners.

And he recalls how guards were urged to shoot any prisoner who might try to escape. “We were allowed to kill them, and if we brought back their body, they would award us by letting us go study at college,” he said. Some guards would send prisoners outside the camp and kill them as escapees to gain access to a college education, he added.

Although he witnessed numerous executions, starving children, and the effects of extreme torture, it was not until he was promoted to be a driver, transporting soldiers back and forth between camps, that he began to question the system. During his travels he sometimes struck up conversations with prisoners and was astonished to find that “more than 90 percent” of them said they had no idea why they were in the camp.

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

[ Agence France-Presse]

 

North Korean Prison Camp Locations

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North Korean prsion camp locationsThe report issued by UN Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in North Korea is staggering in its breadth and detail, including ample reference to North Korean prison camps. The adjacent map details locations of the prison system throughout the country. (Click on map to enlarge)

The Economist estimates between 80,000 and 120,000 people are imprisoned in these camps, and notes that they are usually members of one of three groups:

  • people trying to flee the country,
  • Christians and those promoting other “subversive” beliefs, or
  • political prisoners.

The UN report is written by a three-member UN panel headed by Michael Kirby, an Australian former judge, and it is extraordinary in the fierceness of its condemnation.  Mr. Kirby told journalists North Korea was comparable to “Nazi Germany,” and the report itself urges the UN to refer the situation to the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague for prosecution for war crimes. In a letter sent directly to Kim Jong Un, the North’s dictator, the commission warned that he could be held accountable for crimes against humanity.

For all its might, though, the Commission of Inquiry may not have much teeth. China, as a permanent member of the UN’s Security Council, can veto any referral to the ICC. And China certainly has no reason to call attention to human rights abuses. As The Economist noted, Beijing has blood on its hands, too:

“Equally striking is the [report’s] indictment directed by the COI at China. Chinese leaders refused to let the commission visit its border provinces with North Korea and have opposed the commission’s inquiry from the start. They too received a critical letter from the commission, suggesting that they are ‘aiding and abetting crimes against humanity’. Refugees are routinely rounded up inside China and returned to North Korea, often to face imprisonment, torture and even execution.”

A 36-page summary of the 400-page report can be found here.

North Korean defectors face unemployment in South Korea

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Today, there are some 25,000 North Korean defectors living in South Korea. While they have escaped extreme poverty and political repression, life in the South can also be hard. In fact, the suicide rate among North Korean defectors is six times that for South Koreans.

“Children over 15 have no incentive to study”, explains Park Sun-young, constitutional law professor at Dongguk University. “They had no education in North Korea and they just give up studying. They also need to earn money to bring the family members that remain in the North.”

Yet, in the long term, these youngsters cannot make money as they have little or no education and, after years of malnutrition, are not physically strong. “They are too small even for physical labor. They fall into despair and some commit suicide,” Park said. “This is a social problem, a time bomb, and we need to address this issue and prepare for unification.”

Park offered the case of East and West Germany before the unification, as an example of what should be done here. “Before unification, the unemployment rate among those who escaped the East was lower than that of West Germans. This was achieved through a year-long job training for the East German defectors.”

By comparison, 95 percent of North Korean defectors are unemployed after they leave Hana Center where they stay for three months familiarizing themselves with South Korea and its way of life, according to Park.

[Korean Herald]

China holds the key concerning UN North Korea Report

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The report released by the UN Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in North Korea constitutes a clarion call to action. According to many analysts, it will also amount to little, unless China, one of North Korea’s few allies, gives its consent.

“So what is likely to happen? Nothing,” write the editors of New York Post. They argue that while the report exposes a slew of North Korean atrocities, it may be more eye-opening to see the extent of the UN’s failure to do anything about it.

The international community must hold China accountable for the role it played in facilitating North Korea’s abuses, writes Kenneth Roth of Foreign Policy: “No country has more influence over North Korea than China, which has long provided a lifeline of economic aid and political cover to the Kim dynasty of Kim Il Sung, Kim Jong Il, and, since Dec. 2011, Kim Jong Un, while refusing to do anything about the horrendous cruelty being committed next door. If it wanted to, Beijing could use its considerable influence to press Pyongyang to curb its atrocities.”

If response from China is any indication, Beijing seems uninterested in pursuing the avenue opened up by the UN report. “China maintains that differences in human rights should be handled through constructive dialogue and cooperation on the basis of equality and mutual respect,” foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said on Monday, according to Beijing-based Global Times. “To bring human rights issues to the International Criminal Court does not help improve a country’s human rights conditions.”

Human rights lawyer Jared Genser thinks there are ways to pressure China to allow the Human Rights Council to act. “That said, the way forward will be exceptionally difficult,” he writes in The Diplomat. “Changing the conduct of the North Korea regime, let alone holding its members to account for the commission of crimes against humanity, will require a Herculean effort.”

Bloomberg View’s editors suggest that China may be ready to back away from Kim Jong-un. “China’s interests lie in a transition to minimally acceptable standards of behavior in Pyongyang, not in supporting the insupportable pending the outright collapse of Kim’s regime,” they write.

Even if the Chinese Security Council roadblock is overcome, however, that doesn’t mean that Kim Jong-un will ever face judgment. The editors of the Ottawa Citizen write that the Security Council has a bad record of actually catching those they refer to the ICC.

[BBC]

North Korean actions likened to Nazis and Khmer Rouge

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Last September, Michael Kirby, a retired Australian judge and leader of the UN Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in North Korea, briefed the U.N. Human Rights Council on what it had heard so far in its dozens of interviews with North Korean refugees and defectors.

“We heard from ordinary people who faced torture and imprisonment for doing nothing more than watching foreign soap operas or holding a religious belief,” Kirby said of his team’s work. “Women and men who exercised their human right to leave the DPRK [Democratic People’s Republic of Korea] and were forcibly repatriated spoke about their experiences of torture, sexual violence, inhumane treatment and arbitrary detention.”

“They had to live on rodents, grasshoppers, lizards and on grass and they were subject to cruelty,” Kirby told the BBC World TV in September, speaking about children interviewed during the panel’s investigation.

“All in all it is a very horrifying story, the like of which I don’t think I’ve seen or read of since the Khmer Rouge [in Cambodia] and the Nazi atrocities during the second world war,” Kirby continued.