North Korean refugee: Why is the US, Spain punishing us?

The following is authored by a North Korean defector, and a member of the Free Joseon, who was part of the group who entered the North Korean Embassy in Madrid on February 22, 2019:

I am a North Korean refugee. After being orphaned as a child, I faced hunger daily and fled alone as a young teenager to China before getting captured, repatriated and sentenced to forced labor and starvation in an internment camp. I witnessed public executions, suicides, and mass starvation, the everyday atrocities in an evil totalitarian regime.

I am grateful to have experienced freedom and a full stomach. My friends and family and millions of my countrymen have not experienced such luxuries. The world has forgotten them.

When I learned of the existence of the North Korean dissident group  Provisional Government of Free Joseon, I was overwhelmed with joy and relief. Finally, I had discovered a group of people who felt a personal responsibility to stop the crimes against humanity in my homeland. …I found my purpose and my destiny: to use the privileges I had been given as an adult to help save those left behind. Those who still live in the hell I was freed from.

Fast forward to February 2019. I was at the North Korean embassy in Spain to help a North Korean diplomat defect. Stepping inside the embassy was like being transported back to North Korea. The walls were lined with propaganda singing praises to North Korea’s leaders. Each room had portraits of the leaders – watching your every move and thought, peering into your soul. … They were the faces of the leaders who had driven their people into poverty, oppression and starvation. Men who turned us into animals while growing fat off luxury goods and threatening the world with nuclear weapons.

I stepped on a chair, raised the portraits of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il, turned and smashed them on the ground. I cannot explain how that felt. It was as though I was striking a blow on behalf of millions upon millions of my people, dead, alive or yet unborn, against this evil injustice. The sound of the shattering glass felt as though the chains in my heart also shattered.

These men [Adrian Hong and Chris Ahn] are heroes. They and their families deserve better. Somehow, the United States is now hunting us on behalf of Pyongyang, via Spain. …I cannot fathom why Spain would take North Korean testimony at face value and issue arrest warrants. If the intent was simply to harm or steal, why not leave in minutes? Would a group seeking to attack or raid use their own passports, enter via the front gate in the middle of broad daylight with neighbors walking around, and stay for five hours?

I ask the Spanish courts to drop the charges against these men. I ask the United States to deny extradition.

[Read full article at Fox News Opinion]

This entry was posted in Humanitarian Aid and Relief, Kim Jong Un, North Korean refugee, Prison Camps by Grant Montgomery.