Escaping the ‘cruel, sad, and dark’ world of North Korea

Grace Jo, a North Korean defector who now lives in Washington, D.C., shares her story:

“North Korea is very cruel, very sad, and very dark,” Grace said, recalling her days there. “It is a world completely without hope.”

Born in 1991 in Hamgyeong Province, Grace lived in the mountains with her mother, father, two older sisters, younger brother and grandmother. She lost more than half of her family before she left North Korea for good.

Her childhood was defined by a famine which killed hundreds of thousands, possibly millions, between 1994 and 1998. “We were always hungry and cold,” Grace explained, “My mother, father, and siblings were always out searching for food. … I went 10 days without any food. We could only drink cold water from the river,” she said. Had it not been for the generosity of a neighbor, Grace would not have survived.

To fight off starvation, Grace’s mother and father made several food runs to China. The first two times were successful, but everything went wrong during a third trip, when they were caught by border police. Her mother, who was pregnant at the time, was tortured in prison, an experience that crippled her permanently. Grace’s father died during his incarceration.

To care for the family, Grace’s oldest sister traveled to China to find food, but she disappeared. After recovering, Grace’s mother left Grace, her older sister Jinhye Jo, her younger brother and her new baby brother in the care of their grandmother and set out to look for her daughter in China.

“We did our best to take care of our new baby brother while our mother was gone, but we were unable to save him. He died after only two months,” Grace explained. Read more

Escaping the ‘cruel, sad, and dark’ world of North Korea – Part 3

After bring caught defecting and sent to a North Korean prison, Grace Jo was eventually set free. She made her way back to China, where she was reunited with her mother and sister. The family met Korean-American missionary Pastor Phillip Buck who helped take care of them.

But they were caught again in 2005, and Grace spent a year in a Chinese prison. In 2006, the Chinese turned her and her mother and sister over to the North Koreans. They were held in the National Security Agency, where they were interrogated and tortured.

The North Koreans found out that they were Christian and knew Christian missionaries — crimes punishable by death in North Korea. To spare them, Buck paid $10,000 to North Korean security officers. The family was charged with lesser crimes and set free on the condition that they remain in North Korea.

They immediately fled the country to China, where they quickly applied for United Nations’ refugee status.

While waiting for approval, Grace and her family stayed in an apartment with around 20 other defectors in Beijing. There was a constant lingering fear among the residents that they would be sent back. Grace explained, “We couldn’t leave the house. Even though we had a kind of protected status, there was always the possibility that the Chinese police would grab us and send us back to North Korea.”

After receiving refugee status, Grace, Jinhye, and their mother came to the U.S. in 2008. Grace became a U.S. citizen in 2013.

[Daily Caller]

New report on treatment of Christians in North Korea

Christian Solidarity Worldwide has issued a harrowing report of religious persecution inside North Korea, including allegations that authorities there ran over confessing Christians with a steamroller.

The report, Total Denial: Violations of Freedom of Religion or Belief in North Korea, was issued September 23, “Save North Koreans Day”,  and claims liberty with respect to religion – or any belief contrary to the state’s communist ideology – is “largely non-existent.”

“Documented incidents include Christians being hung on a cross over a fire, crushed under a steamroller, herded off bridges and trampled under-foot,” the report claims.

Christians, who are forced to practice their faith in secret, are often the targets of persecution. Those discovered are sent to concentration camps where they take part in forced labor. They are also subjected to sexual violence, torture and “extra-judicial” killings.

Earlier this year, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom also said in its report that Christians considered to have participated in acts of worship, of having studied the Bible or having possessed a church hymnal “are typically jailed, or worse.”

“In prison, Christians reportedly endure harsher treatment than other prisoners. It is estimated that tens of thousands of Christians in North Korea are currently in prison camps facing hard labor or execution,” the USCIRF report said.

The CSW report also documents China’s deportation of North Korean refugees who are able to escape the country. The country immediately returns the refuges in violation of its obligations under the United Nations Convention on Refugees Treaty of 1951.

[Christian Examiner]

24 Chinese Embassies face protests for repatriating North Korean defectors

Human rights activists in 24 cities around the world protested outside Chinese embassies on Friday and delivered petitions calling on the Chinese government to stop killing North Korean defectors by repatriating them back to their home country.

It is an offense punishable by death or imprisonment for North Korean citizens to defect from the country and the oppressive Kim regime, and the Chinese government helps facilitate North Korea’s crimes against humanity by refusing to grant North Korean defectors refugee status. By sending thousands of them back to North Korea, China knows full well that they will be tortured, forced to do hard labor and even killed in political prison camps.

In 2014, a 400-page United Nations report extensively detailed the widespread torture and abuse that North Korea is responsible for and found that China is violating its responsibility under international human rights and refugee laws.

Organized by the North Korea Freedom Coalition, demonstrations and candlelight vigils to honor those defectors who have been killed or imprisoned were held outside Chinese embassies in two dozen cities around the world including Washington, D.C., Chicago, San Francisco, Toronto, Berlin, Paris, Seoul, London, Helsinki and others as a part of the annual Save North Koreans Day.

Activists urged China to “stop killing North Koreans, and accused China’s president, Xi Jinping, of standing “side by side” with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un in “genocide.” Along with the demonstrations, activists delivered petitions calling on the Chinese government to stand with the persecuted North Korean families.

“It is not becoming of a big country that China claims itself to be,” Jai Poong Ryu, a professor at Loyola University of Maryland and CEO of One Korea Foundation, said. “It’s odd that China is going against the United Nations resolution that it led others to sign. It’s violating its own principles instead,” Ryu added.

[Read full Christian Post article]

Treatment of North Korean women in Chinese detention center

North Korean defector Jo Jin Hye, who was granted political asylum in the United States in 2008, looks back on the dark days of her incarceration in a detention center in the Chinese border city of Tumen:

A Chinese prison guard came in and said there was an inspection. He was a man in his 30s, and he had been sent to do body searches of women.

In the detention center, the staff refused to give us sanitary products, so we had nothing to use when our menstruation came around. We would use whatever we had to hand; bits of blanket, ripped off. Then, if they discovered it, they would force us to eat it. If we didn’t, they would hit us really hard, until our faces swelled up and we were spitting blood, and couldn’t walk.

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

There was a woman who was five months’ pregnant, and she was sitting down, leaning against a wall. A prison guard came in and started beating us all with a baton. He beat an old lady nearly half to death, and the pregnant woman as well. The pregnant woman bled for several days after that.

I was afraid she would lose the child, because she had been trying for a child for three years. I knew that child was very important to her. So I ran over there and grabbed the guard’s leg, saying “Don’t beat her. She’s five months pregnant and not in good health, and she bleeds all the time. If you carry on, she’ll lose the baby.”

He replied: “Who cares? It’s not mine, anyway.” That’s what he said.

[Radio Free Asia]

China has a new detention center for North Korean refugees

China appears to have built a new detention center near the North Korea border, according to an exclusive South Korea press report on Tuesday.

The camp, according to a China-based source who spoke to Newsis on the condition of anonymity, was built to keep arrested North Korean refugees in China. North Korean defectors are apparently kept at the facility until they are repatriated to the North, according to the source.

Photographs of the camp, located near the Chinese city of Tumen, Jilin Province, show a blue building with an arched roof. Facilities include the blue building, a management office and a watchtower next to the detention center.

The status of North Korean refugees in China remains uncertain. Beijing does not recognize the defectors as refugees, and have previously cooperated with Pyongyang in repatriating North Koreans who have fled their country.

[UPI]