Category: Prison Camps

UN urged to bring North Korea before International Criminal Court

Posted on by

A veteran investigator urged the United Nations to appoint an international legal expert to prepare judicial proceedings against North Korea’s leadership for documented crimes against humanity.

Marzuki Darusman, a former Indonesian attorney-general who served on the U.N. commission of inquiry on North Korea, said the U.N. Human Rights Council must pursue North Korean accountability during its current session. His call came amid an international furore over the murder of Kim Jong Nam, the estranged half-brother of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

A U.N. commission of inquiry, in a 2014 report issued after it conducted interviews and public hearings with defectors, recommended North Korea be brought before the International Criminal Court (ICC).The landmark 2014 report, rejected by Pyongyang, said North Korean leader Kim Jong Un might be personally responsible for crimes against humanity.

“If North Korea is able to do this to the older brother of Kim, to the uncle of Kim (Jang Song Thaek executed in 2013), and all the elite purging left and right, can you imagine what life might be like if you are a prisoner in a North Korean prison camp, with over 100,000 of them?” Lee Jung-Hoon, South Korean ambassador for North Korean human rights, said.

Evidence recorded over the past decade or more by U.N. investigators should be given to a new U.N. mechanism for prosecution, Darusman said, adding: “Let us prevail in the end-game.”

[Reuters]

North Korea defectors fear for their lives after Kim Jong Nam assassination

Posted on by

North Korea defectors who now live in South Korea are being warned against traveling overseas after the assassination of Kim Jong Nam, the older half-brother of ruler Kim Jong Un.

Kim Jong Nam may have been killed on the orders of the North Korean leadership, and many defectors believe they could be next.

That’s according to Ahn Chan-il, a North Korea defector and president of the World Institute for North Korea Studies, who fled the regime in 1979 – and became the first North Korea refugee to earn a doctorate in the South.

Kang Chol-hwan, another prominent defector-activist who grew up in a North Korea prison camp and later wrote a memoir of his experiences, was originally scheduled to speak at a conference in the Philippines. But in the wake of the deadly chemical attack against Kim Jong Nam in nearby Malaysia, The Aquariums of Pyongyang author was advised to stay in Seoul, Ahn said.

[UPI]

North Korean defectors defy Pyongyang through writing

Posted on by

About 30 North Korean defectors are working to shed light on the communist state’s human rights situation through literature, seeking to prove that the pen can indeed be mightier than the sword.

According to a report by South Korean news agency Yonhap, the group is known as the North Korean Writers in Exile PEN Center. It has been part of PEN International, an association of writers promoting literature and freedom of expression since 2012.

The center is led by North Korean defector Lee Gie Myung, who wrote plays in the republic for 20 years before escaping to South Korea in 2004. He began writing for the group in 2008, working with other “defector-writers” to tell the world about the difficulties faced by North Koreans under the three-generation rule of the Kim family.

Following calls for the UN Security Council to refer North Korea’s “crimes against humanity” to the International Criminal Court (ICC), the defector-writers tried to assist by compiling testimonies of 20 individuals who had defected over Pyongyang’s abuse of rights. They also backed the request for ICC to look into the crimes of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

“It is meaningful that defector-writers have begun to gain recognition,” Gie Myung told Yonhap. “They are the ones who can speak up against North Korea’s abject human rights situation in their own voices. … North Koreans will awaken and rise up if they get access to outside information.”

[Free Malaysia Today]

What can Trump actually do about North Korea?

Posted on by

Since becoming President, Donald Trump has, at times, looked like a wrecking ball to the international order. But when it comes to North Korea, he may be forced to operate within the narrow constraints of his predecessors.

Some members of the President’s Republican Party have previously argued for a more forceful response to North Korean aggression. Others have advocated the drawing of a red line, telling North Korea explicitly that any intercontinental ballistic missile would be blown up on the launch pad. Trump’s Twitter activity, prior to his inauguration, suggested that he was in agreement with this line of thinking.

But while taking such steps would be vigorous and decisive, it could possibly lead to a wider war.  Escalation can happen very quickly on the peninsula — as was the case in the summer of 1950, when a series of border clashes on the 38th parallel turned into an all-out invasion of South Korea. This context is important to remember when trying to understand the limits facing Trump in constraining North Korea.

The Obama administration pushed very hard for the inclusion of human rights and even International Criminal Court prosecution as a pressure point against North Korea, much to the anger of the regime.  The lack of criticism of North Korea’s many documented human rights violations from the State Department and new Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is surely music to Pyongyang’s ears.

For all its reputation of being a crazed and irrational state, North Korea appears to be taking a rational approach to Trump and waiting to see what happens in Washington. North Korean state media is at present keeping its powder dry: it has not yet attacked Donald Trump by name or criticized him for anything.

It is doubtful that Trump will be able to change things. Short of sending Tillerson or traveling to North Korea himself, it seems unlikely that he will make a significant breakthrough.

[CNN]

North Korea purged and executed thousands after Jang Song Thaek was killed?

Posted on by

North Korea may have ordered a sweeping massacre of about 1,000 people after the execution of Jang Song Thaek, claims a defector activist in South Korea.

Kang Chol-hwan, president of the North Korea Strategy Center, said in addition to the mass slaughter a total of 20,000 people were purged under Kim Jong Un, South Korean newspaper Segye Ilbo reported.

“In connection to the case of Jang Song Thaek, 415 cadres in the Korean Workers’ Party, more than 300 people in affiliated organizations, and 200 officers in the state security department were shot to death,” Kang said.

There have been previous reports in South Korea media that Jang’s death sentence in 2013 triggered the executions of other senior officials. But Kang’s assertions on Friday mark the first time an analyst has said the state executed 1,000 people in the case of Jang, who was Kim Jong Un’s uncle-in-law. Relatives were reportedly purged or sent to prison camps because of Jang, the activist said.

Kang said his information was drawn from the testimonies of six North Koreans who recently escaped the country, including statements from former diplomat Thae Yong-ho.

The North Korea Strategy Center, a non-profit organization that seeks to aid defectors with development programs and international support networks, is planning to bring the Jang Song Thaek case before the International Criminal Court in The Hague, South Korean news service Newsis reported.

[UPI]

The hidden North Korean human rights issue

Posted on by

Excerpts of an interview with Suzanne Scholte, president of the Defense Forum Foundation:

 Q: We are constantly seeing news out of North Korea, that is—for lack of a better phrase—bizarre.

 Scholte: This regime is sadistic and cruel. Just talking about recent events, Chang Sŏng-t’aek, who was Kim Jong Un’s uncle, devoted his entire life to that regime and was successful in helping the regime and then all of a sudden he falls out of favor and is basically publicly humiliated and then brutally killed. It just shows the level of cruelty that this regime represents. I do not believe he was fed to dogs; that report came out of China. … Part of the problem with reporting about North Korea is that we cannot go and see the political prison camps. … So it’s difficult to try to corroborate some of the stories. … One interesting thing about the defectors is that there’s a self-policing among them. They know that they were doubted, and therefore their credibility is always on the line. So they’re very careful, the defectors that I work with, they’re very careful to make sure that if we have a witness that comes over, that they’ve been vetted, and they’re really telling their true story.

Q: Why do you think governments and Western journalists have put so much focus on the nuclear issue and not the human rights threat for the citizens of North Korea?

The policy of George W. Bush was the same as Bill Clinton’s: we have to reach a deal on the nuclear issue first, then, we can talk about human rights. That has been a horrible mistake. During all the talks whether Four Party talks or Six Party talks, millions of North Koreans have died. And, not talking about the human rights atrocities fed into the lie that the North Korean people tell their own citizens, which is we hate them. North Koreans are told by the regime that Americans are Yankee imperialist wolves that occupy South Korea, and they want to destroy them, and so we have to build these nuclear weapons, because the United States is ready to attack us. … We fed into that lie because we didn’t talk about these human rights issues.

The Obama Administration has been very careful to keep the focus on human rights and the nuclear issue and give them equal importance. During this period the North Korean defectors kept telling us, “They will never give up their nuclear weapons. They only use negotiation to extract aid.” Hwang Jang yop (highest ranking North Korean defector and author of juche ideology) said that in 1997 when he defected, “Human rights is their Achilles heel. Human rights is what you have to talk about. They’re killing their own people. They’re using you in these talks. …At least we’ve come to that point now where we realize that.

[Acton Institute]

North Korean defector in Russia facing repatriation and execution

Posted on by

A North Korean defector who has been on the run in Russia for nearly two decades is due to be repatriated this Friday, with human rights organizations claiming he faces certain execution.

Choe Myong-bok was working in a logging camp in Siberia in 1999, the Chosun Ilbo newspaper reported, but escaped guards and made his way to St Petersburg. He managed to hide in the city until his arrest by Russian authorities. A local court has now ruled that he should be repatriated to his own country.

Russia and North Korea signed an agreement in November 2014 under which nationals of either country “found to have illegally entered or been living in either country’s territory” are repatriated.

The Russian human rights group Memorial is attempting to have the court’s ruling overturned on the grounds that he faces execution. The organization has also appealed to the European Court of Human Rights to seek protection for Mr Choe.

An estimated 20,000 North Koreans are reportedly working in appalling conditions in Russia, with the Chosun Ilbo claiming that at least 40 defectors are living in shelters in different parts of the country.

[The Telegraph]

Kim Jong Un’s leverage in discouraging other diplomats from defecting

Posted on by

Thae Yong Ho was number two in the North Korean embassy in London before defecting with his family last July.

When asked about relatives back in North Korea, Thae’s voice drops. He admits they may be sent to prison camps as punishment for his defection, or may even be used by the regime against him.

He knows he was extremely lucky to have his wife and both children with him in London, and that it’s unlikely to happen to any other diplomat again.

He says North Korean diplomats will remain in place rather than defect because their children are back in Pyongyang. “The children are used by Kim Jong Un as kind of hostage,” he says.

When Thae finally revealed to his wife and sons of his intention to lead them all to safety, he says they were “very grateful.” He says he could not miss the opportunity to “cut off this slavery chain” for his sons, knowing they would never have forgiven him if, in the future, they knew he had not taken the chance for their freedom.

But still defection is bittersweet for Thae Yong Ho. “It made my life very miserable because I spent 50 years of my life on the wrong side.”

[CNN]

Time for regime change in North Korea?

Posted on by

From an Opinion piece by Lee Min-Yon,  a professor at Sookmyung Women’s University and the chief advisor of the Sookmyung Research Institute of Global Governance in Seoul, Korea:

There is a growing international consensus that the key to dealing with North Korea is regime change in the country.

The amount and degree of sanctions imposed on Pyongyang is regarded as the strongest ever. In 2016, the Third Committee of the General Assembly, which handles humanitarian affairs in the UN, unanimously adopted yet another resolution, calling for sending North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to the International Criminal Court (ICC) for human rights violations in North Korea.

The General Assembly acknowledged that North Korea is subject to most of the provisions regarding crimes against humanity stipulated in Article 7(1) of the Rome Statute of the ICC and added state-induced starvation of its citizens to the list of accusations. According to annual reports of the World Food Programme, North Korea is one of the four countries that suffer the worst chronic food shortages in the world. In 1990, about 5 million people suffered hunger in the country.

Now that five years have passed since Kim Jong Un took power, he is considered as even more tyrannical and vicious than the previous leaders. The acquired sins created by Kim himself are as follows: inhumane purges and tortures, including the killing of his uncle Jang Song Thaek and top military officers with anti-aircraft guns; and, aggressive and intensive threats and provocations, including the bombardment of Yeonpyeong Island of South Korea, nuclear tests and missile launches. While it took seven years for Pyongyang to conduct its third nuclear test, Kim carried out the fourth and fifth nuclear tests in 2016 following the third nuclear test in 2013. There have been 37 missile tests since Kim came to power, which is far more frequent than those during the reigns of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il.

Experts are having meaningless debates about when the country would cease to exist. Rather, the international community should talk about regime change in Pyongyang, as UN sanctions resolutions on North Korea have already provided the justification and rationalization.

 [Read full article]

North Korean abuse in prison camp system well documented

Posted on by

The US State Department’s report is one of several recent institutional investigations documenting North Korea’s human rights record and prison camp system.

Last November, the Washington-based Human Rights in North Korea (HRNK) released satellite images that show the reclusive nation’s prison camp system, where detainees are subjected to forced labor, torture, starvation, rape and death, may be expanding. The images are of Camp No. 25, a camp near Chongjin, on North Korea’s northeast coast.

According to the United Nations, up to 120,000 men, women and children are imprisoned in the gulags, known as “kwanliso” in Korean. A 2014 report from the international organization estimated that “hundreds of thousands of political prisoners” have died in the North Korean gulags over the past 50 years amid “unspeakable atrocities.”

“The inmate population has been gradually eliminated through deliberate starvation, forced labor, executions, torture, rape and the denial of reproductive rights,” the report said, drawing a parallel between the camps and those of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.

“These camps constitute the cornerstone of the country’s large infrastructure dedicated to political repression and social control that enables widespread and systematic human rights abuses,” rights group Amnesty International said in a statement.

[CNN]