Category: North Korean refugee

UN warns Kim Jong Un about human rights crimes

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A U.N. panel warned North Korean leader Kim Jong Un that he may be held accountable for orchestrating widespread crimes against civilians in the secretive Asian nation, ranging from executing and torturing prisoners to systematic abductions and starving mass populations.

It is unusual for a U.N. report to directly implicate a nation’s leader. But in a letter accompanying a yearlong investigative report, the chairman of a three-member U.N. commission of inquiry, retired Australian judge Michael Kirby, directly warned Kim that that international prosecution is needed “to render accountable all those, including possibly yourself, who may be responsible for crimes against humanity.”

“Even without being directly involved in crimes against humanity, a military commander may be held responsible for crimes against humanity committed by forces under the commander’s effective command and control,” Kirby wrote.

The investigative commission’s 372-page report is a wide-ranging indictment of North Korea for policies including political prison camps, state-sponsored abductions of North Korean, Japanese and other nationals, and lifelong indoctrination.

Kirby also wrote to China’s U.N. ambassador in Geneva saying there’s evidence that Chinese officials have in some cases shared with North Korean officials “information about the contacts and conduct” of North Korean nationals subject to repatriation. The ambassador, Wu Haitao, replied to the panel and denied that repatriated North Korean citizens from China face torture in North Korea. He added that China “will continue to prudently and properly handle” North Korean citizens who enter China illegally.

[AP]

Drawings reveal horrific scenes inside North Korean prison

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Kim Kwang-il, 48, spent more than two years at a prison in North Korea where he was tortured, starved and witnessed the deaths of fellow inmates. Kim is one of the North Koreans who gave evidence in public hearings for the United Nations Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in North Korea.

The UN on Tuesday released a damning report on North Korea’s inhumane treatment of prisoners, likening it to Nazi-era atrocities. It includes the testimony from more than 300 North Koreans, many of whom gave their evidence in secret.

Mr Kim was arrested by North Korean police in mid-2004 and charged with illegally crossing the border and smuggling. He had crossed the border to sell pine nuts. For this he was sentenced to six years in prison.

He defected to South Korea in February 2009 where he published a book about his time in detention. The book contained drawings made by professional artists based on his recollections of the torture he was subjected to and some of the horrific scenes he witnessed. One such drawing and description follows.

north korean prison tortureDescription of illustration: “This position itself is the torture. And additionally you are beaten up as well. If you did not give the right statement during the preliminary hearing, you get this kind of torture. You are beaten up, which leads to vomiting because you feel very uncomfortable inside. Sometimes you would vomit blood. … I was told to be in that position until my sweat would fill that one glass, that glass in front of me. You will never imagine what that’s like. … We are bound to stay in that position until the jailer feels that you have been tortured enough. …This is the pigeon torture. Your hands are bound back and if they tie you like this, your chest comes out forward and in this position you are tortured.”

You can read the testimony of Kim Kwang-il in full, along with the report itself on the UN website.

[The Age]

‘Abundant evidence’ of crimes against humanity in North Korea

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A stunning catalog of torture and the widespread abuse of even the weakest of North Koreans reveal a portrait of a brutal state “that does not have any parallel in the contemporary world,” a United Nations panel reported Monday.

North Korean leaders employ murder, torture, slavery, sexual violence, mass starvation and other abuses as tools to prop up the state and terrorize “the population into submission,” the United Nations Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in North Korea said in its report.

“The suffering and tears of the people of North Korea demand action,” commission Chairman Michael Kirby told reporters.

[Read CNN article] 

Park Sun-young calls for continued focus in North Korean defectors

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Park Sun youngThe image of a petite, frail-looking woman, sitting for days inside a makeshift tent across the Chinese Embassy in protest against China’s forceful repatriation of North Korean defectors, is still vivid, even after nearly two years.

Park Sun-young recalled how she started a hunger strike almost on impulse. As a legislator, she had been receiving many desperate calls, day and night, asking her to help stop the repatriation of North Korean defectors caught in China, after which they would surely be sent to a gulag, if not killed, for trying to escape.

“I did it out of a sense of urgency. I had never felt so powerless, unable to help North Korean defectors,” she said of the decision she made on Feb. 20, 2012. “I thought about how embarrassing it would be if I could not last three days,” she said. Her hunger strike ended on March 2 when she collapsed and was taken to a hospital. By then she had become a face for the efforts to save North Korean defectors ― a godmother for North Korean defectors.

“I started without expectations. I was hearing their clamor, I wanted to console them. I just wanted to show I was hurting too,” she said.

Then, later that month, something quite remarkable happened. The United Nations Human Rights Council adopted a resolution condemning human violations in North Korea. Park traveled to Geneva in a wheelchair, still weak from the hunger strike, her hair now completely silver. She noticed how China did not raise objections, oppose it, or walk out. In fact, the resolution was passed by consensus without a vote. “I was grateful for China’s change (of stance). It meant China had begun to feel embarrassed. Everybody had said China wouldn’t change, but it did,” Park recalled.

When her term at the National Assembly expired later that year, she returned to teaching Constitutional law at Dongguk University. Park continues to work on the North Korean human rights issue: She is the chairperson of Dream Makers for North Korea, also known as Mulmangcho Association, an NGO that advocates North Korean human rights and runs programs for North Korean defectors to help them settle in South Korea, including an alternative school for young defectors in Yeoju, Gyeonggi Province.

Working with North Korean defectors stems naturally from Park’s work as a Constitutional law scholar. “Article 3 of the Constitution defines nationality,” she said. The article reads: “The territory of the Republic of Korea shall consist of the Korean Peninsula and its adjacent islands.” By extension, the South Korean government has the duty to protect the human rights of North Koreans, just as it does the rights of South Koreans.

[Korea Herald]

Charging North Korean leaders with crimes against humanity

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A new report from a United Nations panel, due to be released on Monday, found that crimes against humanity have certainly been committed in North Korea and recommends referring the situation for international action.

The report is the result of a year-long effort from a U.N. Commission of Inquiry towards the communist country’s human rights abuses, the first of its kind to take such a deep-dive into the subject. The resulting document provides “evidence of an array of such crimes, including ‘extermination,’ crimes against humanity against starving populations and a widespread campaign of abductions of individuals in South Korea and Japan,” the Associated Press reports.

Evidence gathered, the report will conclude, “create[s] reasonable grounds … to merit a criminal investigation by a competent national or international organ of justice.” Setting aside the unlikely event that a national court takes up the matter, the most likely venue for such an investigation would be the International Criminal Court, based in The Hague.

As North Korea is not a signatory of the Rome Statute, the ICC’s founding document, the Court doesn’t have the jurisdiction to act on the commission’s report. For that, the Prosecutor has to wait for a referral from the United Nations Security Council. While the Council has become more open towards such referrals than in the past, as in the case of Libya in 2011, the chances of North Korean leaders such as Kim Jong Un appearing at the Hague has one serious obstacle: China. Beijing is not only one of Pyongyang’s closest allies, they hold a veto on the Security Council on all substantive matters — including ICC referrals.

“The odds are close to zero,” David Bosco, an assistant professor at American University and author of a recently published book on the ICC, told ThinkProgress when asked about Beijing possibly allowing for such a referral.

Given Chinese — and likely Russian — disapproval, Bosco “[doesn’t] think there’s any chance” the ICC will be investigating the DPRK. “This is looking like one of those things that goes down the memory hole after a few months, unfortunately,” he concluded.

[ThinkProgress]

Min Hee

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Min Hee had not been able to find work that paid a fair amount in North Korea, and her father had told her that she could find a job with fair pay in China. So she escaped into China looking forward to working a regular job and earning a decent wage. But that never happened.

Sold as a bride to a Chinese man after months of resisting and being held against her will, Min Hee faced many difficulties because of the language barrier.

She was not treated well by her husband and was not even allowed to leave the house for the first 2-3 months. She eventually convinced her husband to let her out periodically to meet fellow North Korean women whom she had met in the area. Min Hee contemplated returning to North Korea and turning herself in so that she could be reunited with her parents, knowing that she’d first have to spend months in a labor camp. But at the meetings with her North Korean friends, she learned about a person who could help her leave China. After much deliberation, she finally decided to set out for South Korea.

Although the journey out of China was a dangerous one, Min Hee is happy to be free and looks forward to a better life in South Korea where she can work and earn money.

[Read more stories like this at LiNK]

North Korean defectors educate DMZ tourists

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Clara Park makes her living introducing her homeland to tourists from around the world. But instead of trumpeting its attractions like an ambassador, the wife of a former North Korean party cadre shares what it is like to live on food waste and work for no pay in the reclusive state.

The 48-year-old is one of four North Korean defectors now working for Panmunjom Travel Centre, the only agency that offers tourists a meeting with a North Korean defector on a visit to the Demilitarised Zone (DMZ). Tourists are seated on child-sized furniture in a mock classroom adorned with portraits of Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il, as a defector fields questions from the curious.

“Our defector staff have a sense of mission… They want to help bring about positive changes to their homeland,” says Kim Bong-ki, the agency’s owner. “That’s why they are sharing the reality in North Korea despite facing a certain level of danger.”

Park and her colleagues are part of a growing community of defectors who are increasingly vocal about the hunger and torture they experienced in North Korea.

Kim Ha-na, for instance, shared her odyssey while competing on the reality show Masterchef Korea. Lee Hyeon-seo made a mark at the global TED (Technology, Entertainment and Design) conference last year, sharing her struggle with identity issues.

“I see tourists as my messengers. I hope they will walk away with a better understanding of my pain, and tell the world on my behalf about the necessity of reunification,” Park says. “I strongly believe reunification is the only way to stop the North Korean tragedy.”

The cool-headed Park escaped from the North in 2011, after plotting her route for more than two years without her husband’s knowledge. “I could not bring this up with him … We think very differently,” Park said in response to a tourist’s question on why she had left without her husband. He has since been forced into early retirement, according to Park’s friends from the North.

It spurred her to set off on a grueling five-month journey to South Korea via China and Thailand, taking with her only her teenage daughter and rat poison – in case they got caught. Their courage paid off. After surviving three months of grilling by South Korea’s intelligence officers – a procedure to weed out potential spies – they were inducted into their new capitalist home, and have been coping well.

[The Straits Times/ Asia News Network]

Methamphetamine in North Korea

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After the North Korean coal mine in Hoeryong, a hardscrabble mining town of 130,000 on the Chinese border, stopped paying salaries, Park Kyung Ok tried her hand hawking methamphetamine.

Park used to travel to another North Korean city, Chongjin, to buy meth, known as orum or ice, that she would carry back hidden in a candy box. She would sell it behind the counter at a bicycle parts store at the public market. Hidden among the spare parts were metal plates, burners and other drug paraphernalia.

She usually paid the equivalent of US$17 for a gram of high quality product, which she would then cut with cheaper meth and divide into 12 smaller portions to resell for a few dollars’ profit.

“It was just enough money that I could buy rice to eat and coal for heating,” said Park, who was interviewed recently in China and, like most North Korean defectors, used an assumed name.

North Koreans say there is little stigma attached to meth use. Some take it to treat colds or boost their energy; students take it to work late. The drug also helps curb appetites in a country where food is scarce. It is offered up as casually as a cup of tea, North Koreans say.

“If you go to somebody’s house it is a polite way to greet somebody by offering them a sniff,” said Lee Saera, 43, of Hoeryong, also interviewed in China. “It is like drinking coffee when you’re sleepy, but ice is so much better.”

Despite its draconian legal system, North Korea has long been easygoing about narcotics use.  With analgesics scarce, opium paste is commonly sold for pain relief. Marijuana (called “mouth tobacco”) is legal and frequently grown at home to be mixed in with rolling tobacco.

Through the 1990s, the North Korean government ran the production of opium, meth and other drugs for Office 39, a unit raising hard currency for late leader Kim Jong-il, according to narcotics investigators. But the North Korean government has largely gone out of the drug business, according to the US State Department’s 2013 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report.

North Koreans say meth then appeared on the streets around 2005 and that it came from Hamhung, the one-time center of the nation’s pharmaceutical and chemical industry, and thus a city filled with unemployed scientists and technicians. The industry then spread to Chongjin and the capital, Pyongyang.

North Korea using prisoners as lab rats

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Like its Nazi counterpart, the North Korean government sometimes uses prisoners as lab rats to test the potency of certain chemicals.

Shin Dong-hyuk [formerly interned in the North Korean Camp 14] remembers when guards gave 15 inmates chemical solutions to rub on themselves. Shortly thereafter, they developed boils on their skin. As [his biographer] wrote, “Shin saw a truck arrive at the factory and watched as the ailing prisoners were loaded into it. He never saw them again.”

According to The Guardian newspaper, prisoners and guards from Camp 22 in Hamgyong “described watching entire families being put in glass chambers and gassed.”

One official document smuggled out by a defector said that 39-year-old Lin Hun-Nwa was transferred from Camp 22 “for the purpose of human experimentation of liquid gas for chemical weapons.”

“I will never forget the anguish of a North Korean defector who years after the fact broke down describing how he supervised the slow killing of parents and their child in a glass-encased chamber,” writes Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, who also sits on the board of directors of the U.S. Committee for Human Rights in North Korea.

“Shocking details of how long the agony went on and the efforts of the doomed parents to breathe air into the lungs of their dying child were duly written down and forwarded for analysis to those in charge of the production and upgrade of North Korean poison gases.”

[Excerpts from Jewish Journal article authored by Jared Sichel]

After Shin Dong-hyuk’s escape from the North Korean gulag

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Shin Dong-hyuk lived his whole life in a North Korean prison camp. After his escape from Camp 14, Shin spent about a month making his way through North Korea, making friends with the homeless underworld and hopping on and off trains between cities. Eventually, he reached the Tumen River, bribed a border guard and crossed the river into China.

He spent more than a year laying low in China. Well-fed but working for measly pay in people’s homes, he was wary of attracting attention from the government, which typically repatriates North Korean defectors, claiming they are “economic migrants.” If the Chinese government were to recognize defectors like Shin as humanitarian refugees, it would be prohibited, under international law, from returning them to North Korea.

In February 2006, after moving around much of China, Shin ran into a Korean-born journalist in a restaurant in Shanghai. The journalist listened to — and believed — Shin’s story, then smuggled him past Chinese police and into the South Korean consulate, which provided Shin diplomatic immunity.

After six months living at the consulate, Shin was flown to Seoul; soon thereafter, he moved to a government-run resettlement center. He struggled to adapt to life in the free world. His self-described growth has been like the “slow growth of a fingernail.”

Shin said he knows of no silver bullet for the North Korean crisis. But what he does know, and what disappoints him, is the world’s ignorance of and seeming indifference to the 21st century’s gulag — the same kind of indifference that allowed Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot to carry out similar political persecutions and mass imprisonments.

[Excerpts from Jewish Journal article authored by Jared Sichel]