The night I helped my mother escape North Korea

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Extracts from “The Girl with Seven Names: A North Korean Defector’s Story” by Hyeonseo Lee:

I set my phone to silent, dressed myself entirely in black and walked calmly and purposefully through the hotel lobby in Changbai. Outside I hailed a cab and directed the driver to take me to the point where the town ended, about 200 yards from the river. I crouched down behind an old garden wall and waited. The place was cold and damp and smelled of molding leaves and animal droppings. I peeped over the wall and saw North Korean border patrols passing on the opposite bank of the river.

[My brother] Min-ho had told me he would lead our mother waist-high through the water and help her up one of the ladders on the Chinese bank. The water must be freezing.

After over an hour’s wait, my phone was buzzing. Min-ho’s voice was fast and tense: “We’ve had a problem.” Quickly Min-ho explained that just as he and my mother had been about to cross they had walked straight into a border guard. Luckily he was someone Min-ho did business with.

Min-ho said he and my mother would try again to cross just before dawn. I returned to the hotel and tried to doze for a while in my clothes. I must have drifted off, because the next thing I knew the phone was buzzing next to my face. “We’ll be there at six,” Min-ho said. I jumped off the bed. Minutes later, as I was in the taxi, he called again. “We’re across. We’re hiding in the derelict house.”

I was elated. I had not seen my dear mother in 11 years, nine months and nine days. Now I was minutes away from her. … In the half-light I saw a strained, old face and a body moving very stiffly. Min-ho was behind her, protective and guiding with his arm around her. I ran to meet them, but there was no time for a reunion. “We have to go,” I said.

I pulled out the clothes I had brought for them to help them blend in on the Chinese side. “Put these on. Over what you’re wearing. Quick.” Once they were dressed I led them towards the taxi. “Act normal, but don’t speak. He’ll think you’re locals.”

My heart went into overdrive. I didn’t remember there being so many guards. They were just 50 yards away from me

We sat in silence for the 10-minute ride. [Once inside my hotel room] for a moment we looked at each other. Half a lifetime had passed since the three of us had been together. No one could speak. Then my mother broke down, weeping uncontrollably. Over her shoulder, Min-ho’s face looked immensely sad. He’d shared her pain all these years. And soon he would say goodbye to her and probably never see her again. Read more

Here we go again with North Korea

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Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. The North Koreans do something provocative (nuclear test, missile launch, etc.); the world rises as one to soundly and firmly condemn this grave violation of United Nations Security Council (UNSC) resolutions, a demonstration of solidarity that lasts perhaps, if we’re lucky, 24 hours; then the squabbling begins as to how severe the consequences will be. This results in a watered down UNSC resolution with some new (unlikely to be completely enforced) sanctions, an expression of outrage by Pyongyang and then another act of provocation.

The debate goes on at the UN over just how strong the sanctions will be, with Washington, Seoul, and Tokyo promising “painful” sanctions to demonstrate it is no longer “business as usual” and Beijing, not always but this time joined by Moscow, calling on “all sides” to refrain from destabilizing actions, as if “all sides” were at fault for the latest crisis.

Meanwhile, Pyongyang, convinced that such actions ultimately do more to divide than to unite the international community, sits back and dreams up new ways of threatening all-out war.   Read more

 [“Japan Times” Opinion piece by Ralph Cossa,  president of the Pacific Forum CSIS in Honolulu]

North Korean defectors now South Korean TV stars

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North Korea is a mysterious place — even to South Koreans. Curiosity about life in the north has sparked a slew of new South Korean TV shows.

  • There is the Amazing Race-type program, in which North Korean women are paired up with South Korean men to take on various challenges.
  • There are the talk shows, featuring panels of North Korean defectors talking about their dangerous escapes and difficult lives.
  • And then there are the dating shows, in which North Korean women are matched up with eligible South Korean bachelors.

Sokeel Park, research director for Liberty in North Korea, an international nonprofit that helps North Korean refugees resettle, says the shows are, “for the first time, exposing South Korean audiences at a mass scale” to North Koreans who aren’t their infamous political leaders. Park says the programs are helping South Koreans get a better sense of the North Korean experience.

“They’re talking about the growth of markets and new technologies in North Korea,” Park says. “So gradually, the South Korean audiences are getting exposed to new kinds of stories or new characters from North Korea that previously there was just widespread ignorance of.”        Read more

[NPR]

Should US engage rather than isolate North Korea?

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Under the Obama administration, U.S. policy toward North Korea largely has devolved into the president sitting in the Oval Office, closing his eyes, and hoping the nuclear monsters will go away. Alas, it hasn’t worked. Pyongyang has staged its 4th nuclear test and may well be working on the hydrogen bomb that it falsely claimed to have tested.

The administration’s frustration in dealing with the DPRK is understandable. Nothing seems to have worked. The latest member of the ruling Kim dynasty is unlikely to abandon his nation’s nuclear pretensions. In fact, the latest test came amid evidence of warming ties with the People’s Republic of China and reports of a possible invitation to Kim Jong-un to visit Beijing. Evidently Pyongyang cares no more about its ally’s than America’s opinion on the issue.

Washington is pressing the UN Security Council to approve additional sanctions; the House has passed legislation to impose additional unilateral economic penalties. But the Kims never have let their people’s suffering influence policy, the North’s economy remains largely isolated except for trade with China, and so far Beijing, though professing to support a “necessary response” by the UN, has refused to apply sufficient pressure to threaten the Kim regime’s survival.

If China did so the U.S., its allies South Korea and Japan, and China all might regret getting what they wished for. An abrupt and violent regime collapse could yield civil disorder, factional combat, loose nukes, and refugee tides. The consequences would overflow the DPRK’s boundaries. That could lead to Chinese military intervention to stabilize a new, pro-PRC government in Pyongyang. Then the Republic of Korea would face a renewed and likely permanent division of the peninsula.

The only other alternative? What Beijing has advocated all along: engagement with the North. Obviously, there’s no guarantee that this approach will work either. Nevertheless, it offers what the North most wants–direct contact with America. Talking to North Korea offers a better hope of success than ignoring it.

[Read full Huffington/World Post article]

North Korean refugee makes second application for temporary asylum in Russia

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A refugee who fled a labor camp in North Korea — and faces almost certain death if deported back — has applied for a second time for temporary asylum in Russia.

The 36-year-old, whose name is being withheld due to safety concerns, is unlikely to receive asylum but activists will continue to appeal until he receives some sort of status or can be moved to a third country, human rights campaigner Svetlana Gannushkina said.

He still faces the threat of being deported or kidnapped by North Korean intelligence, which has seized North Koreans in Russia before, she said. In total the refugee has so far had one request for temporary asylum and two requests for permanent asylum rejected.

Of 211 North Koreans who appealed to the Russian migration service between 2004 and 2014, only two received asylum, while 90 received temporary asylum for one year, according to Gannushkina’s Citizen Assistance group.

North Korea and Russia signed an agreement in November to deport each other’s undocumented citizens. Although Russia has said those at risk of persecution would not be returned under the treaty, the migration service has previously ruled that this man did not prove that his life would be under particular threat in North Korea.

A November decision to refuse him temporary asylum seen by RBC newspaper said a significant number of people face persecution there and his “fears of being shot are connected only with North Korea employing the same punishment against all defectors”.

A 2014 UN investigation found that forcibly repatriated North Koreans are commonly subjected to torture, detention, execution or sexual violence.

The man first fled North Korea during a famine in 1997 and spent 10 years in China before he was deported and sent to a labor camp. He managed to escape to China again and crossed into Russia in 2013, where he was arrested and only allowed to apply for asylum after a hunger strike.

[The Guardian]

China backs UN move to denounce North Korea over nuclear test

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Secretary of State John F. Kerry and China’s foreign minister agreed Wednesday to move ahead with a U.N. resolution condemning North Korea for its latest nuclear test, but they appeared as far apart as ever on how far to push Pyongyang.

The United States says any additional U.N. action against the North is likely to include greater sanctions.

Beijing, a critical ally for North Korea, was angered by the nuclear test earlier this month but had not indicated whether it would endorse further pressures. As a permanent U.N. Security Council member, China could use its veto power to block any measures.

While both agreed that more sanctions are warranted, they said the details would have to be resolved in talks at the U.N. Security Council in coming days.

[Washington Post]

The detention of Otto Warmbier in North Korea

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The detention of Otto Warmbier, a 21-year-old University of Virginia economics major who had chosen to spend his New Year’s vacation in North Korea, comes at a particularly difficult, or opportune, time, depending on how you choose to interpret it. Just days after he was arrested, North Korea conducted what it said was its first H-bomb test.

According to Warmbier’s tour agent, Young Pioneer Tours, he was almost on his plane home when officials pulled him aside, took him into a special room at the Pyongyang airport and placed him under arrest for allegedly committing an as-yet-undisclosed hostile act against the state. North Korea says he is under investigation and acted with the “tacit connivance of the U.S. government and under its manipulation.”

Initial announcements by North Korea rarely say much about the actual crime, and linking it to the U.S. government in their first statement to the world through state-run media is highly uncommon. North Korea and the United States are still technically at war and have no diplomatic relations.

Warmbier is still under lock-and-key, possibly in the relative comfort of the Yanggakdo, a tourist hotel where his group had stayed that has previously been used to keep detainees until they are deported or more formal legal measures are taken.

Though not a tourist, one more American, missionary Kim Dong Chul, believed to be a naturalized citizen of Korean descent, is reportedly in North Korean custody along with a Canadian-Korean missionary who is serving a life sentence.

[AP]

Reform in Stalinist North Korea would come at a price

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North Korean founder Kim Il Sung (left) with son Kim Jong Il

A new book claims Kim il-Sung, the father of Kim Jong-il and grandfather of current North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un, ordered officials to shoot his successor if he ever tried to lead the country away from its Stalinist system.

Ra Jong-yil, the former head of South Korea’s national intelligence service, claims he was told about Kim il-Sung’s plan by a Pyongyang insider, who described how the inner circle were handed the guns and ordered to assassinate Kim Jong-il if he tried to change how the country is run.

Mr Ra told the Sunday Telegraph: ”Kim Il-sung had seen by the experiences of the Soviet Union what would happen if you start reforming or meddling with a dysfunctional system. The whole system inevitably collapses. He could not let that happen”.

Mr Ra’s new book, The Path Taken by Jang Song-thack: A Rebellous Outsider, also claims Kim Jong-il wanted to end the hereditary system of rule which made Kim Jong-un his successor. Instead, the book argues, he wanted the country to be ruled by a committee of 10, but because he died in 2011 before he could set the wheels in motion, his plans never came to fruition.

The book is named after Jang Song-thack, the uncle who helped Kim Jong-un through the first months of his dictatorship after the death of his father. Mr Jang was executed in December 2013 on charges including “gnawing at the unity and cohesion of the party” and “dreaming different dreams”.

[Daily Mail]

American student in North Korean custody

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Otto Frederick Warmbier, a 21-year-old University of Virginia economics student, was reportedly seized at Pyongyang airport before his scheduled flight to China on January 2. The Korean-language state broadcaster KCNA said Warmbier “aimed to destroy the country’s unity” and was being “manipulated by the U.S. government.”

Unconfirmed reports from a passenger suggested the American was dragged away by armed guards. The witness also told the U.K.’s Independent daily that Warmbier’s tour group “were up until four or five in the morning drinking vodka and having fun.”

According to Adam Cathcart, a North Korea specialist at the University of Leeds, in England, while the post-detention treatment of individuals is always political and used for domestic and international propaganda, “the arrests themselves are usually triggered by behavior that the North Korean authorities can classify as illegal.”

Most recently these include Kenneth Bae, a Korean-American missionary sentenced to 15 years of hard labor for proselytizing, and Matthew Todd Miller, a 25-year-old American whom the North Koreans accused of espionage. Both were subsequently released.

[TIME]

Will China rein in North Korea this time?

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North Korea tested a nuclear weapon this month, and China officially said it was “firmly opposed” to the test, which is considered harsh language in some quarters — as if North Korea’s patron was finally fed up with these dangerous antics and was going to bring the hammer down.

Well, not quite. China also expressed unhappiness when North Korea first tested a weapon in 2006, calling it “brazen.” [Seven years later] after Pyongyang’s 2013 test, Asian analysts noted that China’s patience was “wearing thin.”

China shares an 880-mile border with North Korea, a nation of 25 million people who mainly live in dire poverty. The global power also shares a communist ideology, though both nations have evolved beyond Karl Marx to meet their particular needs. While it uses North Korea as a bargaining chip in international relations, China also has legitimate concerns about keeping the nation from falling apart, a scenario often raised to argue against putting more sanctions on the Kim Jong Un regime.

Yet China cannot continue to indulge its unruly neighbor, like a permissive parent who winks at a teenager’s destructive antics. The current gyrations in China’s financial sector, reflecting deep-seated weaknesses in its economic model, should make it behave with more caution on the world stage.

[Pittsburgh Post-Gazette]