The ‘child mother’ caring for North Korea’s parentless

Posted on by

The Chollima district of Nampo City is a decidedly working class area. The blocks of flats are basic, while the roads are bumpy. Every spare patch of ground seems to have been turned into a vegetable garden. But it is clean and orderly.

At the tender age of 20, Jang Jong Hwa adopted seven orphans and cares for them as their mother. [When we visit,] Jang is at home, as are three of her children. We’re told the others are out playing as it is a Sunday. She excuses her wet hands, she’s just been doing her substantial laundry, and invites us into the living room.

The flat is quite a reasonable size. Four rooms and a bathroom. It’s basic but comfortable. There did not appear to be any electricity during the time of our visit, though there is a flat-screen TV and a DVD player. With very little furniture, we sit on the floor to talk, which is quite usual here.

Jang Jong Hwa is herself an orphan. She was born into troubled times, at the height of the great famine that raged through North Korea in the 1990s — years of bad harvests, coupled with economic catastrophe following the collapse of the socialist block elsewhere in the world, led to famine throughout the land. It’s estimated hundreds of thousands died. Among them Jong Hwa’s birth parents.

She was lucky enough to be adopted and still lives with her adoptive mother. When she was visiting her mother’s workplace a few years ago she came across the three children, all siblings, and now in the room with us. Their parents had both worked at the Nampo Iron and Steel Works but had both died of unspecified illnesses. They were being cared for by different workers in turn. Jong Hwa felt she had to give them a home.

Every morning she gets up to cook breakfast and get them ready for school, before heading off to her own full-time job at the local catering service, before rushing back to prepare lunch. With evening meals to prepare, clothes to wash, homework to supervise, she reckons she’s getting by on only five hours sleep a night.

She gets help from her own mother, and friends and neighbors. Everyone pitches in, she tells us. The state provides free housing, as it does to all its citizens, as well as free schooling and free school uniforms all hanging neatly on the wall of the room where the children sleep and do their homework.

Jong Hwa’s selfless spirit has not gone unnoticed. She was even awarded the title of “model youth” at the National Congress of Good Virtues held in Pyongyang in May this year. The group photo hangs on the wall in their living room and she points herself out, standing just a few places away from DPRK’s supreme leader, Kim Jong Un. He shook her hand and called her “child mother,” she proudly tells us.

“Our country is one huge family,” she says. “We are a socialist collectivist society. We all try to help each other.”

[CNN]

North Korean diplomats disrupt Human Rights seminar in Indonesia

Posted on by
1

North Korean diplomats stormed into a seminar on North Korean human rights in Jakarta, which was being held by South Korean and Indonesian activists.

Officials from the North Korean Embassy in Jakarta drove up to the seminar and harangued staff of the Institute for Policy Research and Advocacy (ELSAM), an Indonesian policy advocacy organization.  And when South Korean activists tried to show a video exposing the North’s human rights abuses, the North Koreans demanded they stop the presentation and show a North Korean publicity video.

Kim Song-hak, the political attaché of the embassy, told participants that the rights abuse claims are “100-percent incorrect” and pointed out that the North provides free medical services and education.  “There can be no human rights problems in North Korea,” Kim said.

Two North Korean diplomats also attempted to enter another seminar on Thursday attended by ASEAN officials, but were held back by organizers.

South Korean activists from the Citizens’ Alliance for North Korean Human Rights are holding seminars, exhibitions and performance for North Korean Human Rights Week this week throughout Indonesia.

[Chosun Ilbo]

Grim fate for women repatriated to North Korea after forays into China

Posted on by

North Korea has been detaining an increasing number of women in the past few years for crossing the border into China in search of food and opportunities to work for their families’ survival, according to a human rights report on the country’s gulag-style penal system issued Friday.

Authorities have been forcibly repatriating the women and jailing them in a network of political gulags, or kwan-li-so (labor camps) and kyo-hwa-so (political prisoner camps), according to the report issued by the nonprofit Committee for Human Rights in North Korea (HRNK). Once repatriated, women are subject to extreme privation and repression while in detention, the report said.

The report, titled “Hidden Gulag IV: Gender Repression & Hidden Disappearances,” is the fourth in a series of reports on arbitrary detentions and forced labor in North Korea issued by HRNK since 2003.

It cites the post-2007 expansion of the women’s section at labor camp No. 12 in Jongo-ri, North Hamgyong province, in the northernmost part of the country, to hold a large number of forcibly repatriated women from the province. Inside labor camp No. 12, young women detainees were forced to work as wig and eyelash makers, while older women performed heavy labor such as agricultural production, animal husbandry, tree felling and log cutting. Former prisoners said the facility housed more than 1,000 people.

Women who have been forcibly repatriated have been subject to systematic torture and beatings during interrogations, severe food deprivation, and naked strip searches and compulsory exercises to dislodge money or valuables hidden in inside their bodies, the report said. Those who were pregnant when they were repatriated have been forced to undergo abortions if authorities thought they were carrying babies fathered by Chinese men, it said.

North Korea has between 80,000 and 120,000 prisoners detained in political prison camps, or about one of every 200 citizens, according to a report issued in February 2014 by a United Nations Commission of Inquiry on human rights in North Korea, which documented the network of such prisons and the atrocities that occur inside them.

[Radio Free Asia]

Nuance to the North Korea narrative

Posted on by

Soon-Mi Yoo is tired of the conventional western narrative surrounding North Korea. She’s had it with the “satiric and, frankly, racist takes” that “use North Korea as kind of a cheap joke,” and the winking, “kind of dishonest,” news coverage. “Their brief exchange in North Korea confirms their idea that these people are brainwashed. …So I felt a little bit responsible.”

This sense of responsibility led to “Songs From The North”, the Cambridge, Mass.-based Korean filmmaker’s first feature length work. It is an unconventional and deeply personal essay film determined to bring insight and nuance to the narrative of North Korea and its people. In order to achieve this, Yoo recently traveled to North Korea three times to film, and the footage she shot there comprises a large portion of the movie.

“Initially, my first and second trips, I was invited, quote unquote, or brought in, by somebody who had a very good relationship with the regime,” she discloses. She found it difficult to shoot much beyond the designated tourist sites, though, because minders were watching her. “At the end of my third trip I realized that no matter how many times I go back, I would only accumulate a tiny bit of the material that I’d be actually satisfied with,” she says, also noting the air of oppression and paranoia that managed to surprise her when faced with it firsthand. Despite this, she managed to capture landscapes not approved by her minders and stolen moments with average North Koreans.

“In a way, North Korean fictions are like documentaries, and so-called North Korean documentaries are more like fiction,” she observes. Though she recognizes how well the regime manipulates the media, and the propagandistic nature of this art, she says she “found them to be, a lot of times, very moving” in their genuine emotion — especially the titular revolutionary songs. She cites, for instance, a striking scene in the film, where she observed people plodding along in the -26 degree cold while propagandist songs played over loudspeakers, and realized how this “entertainment” could almost function as a coping mechanism.

“At first I thought it was just terrible, you know this kind of propaganda, just — you cannot escape it, right? You know, you’re out in the open and there is this loudspeaker blaring about … ‘dear leaders,’ ” she recalls. “It would drive us crazy, you know? And it did drive me crazy. But then I realized, ‘Actually, maybe it’s better than having to just walk in the cold without anything,’ ” she concludes.

With “Songs From The North,” Yoo provides audiences with a rare opportunity to … better actually understand the people of North Korea.

[The Villager (New York)]

China attempts to mitigate North Korea’s nuclear move

Posted on by

China has called for denuclearization on the Korean Peninsula and the avoidance of any actions that could escalate tension in the region. The move follows Pyongyang’s decision to reopen nuclear facilities and its threats to launch long-range rockets.

Experts said Pyongyang’s tactics are aimed at spurring talks with the United States, but they have also struck a blow to relations with China.

China is planning an international seminar in Beijing on Friday with parties involved in the six-nation talks on ending North Korea’s nuclear programme, hoping to bring the issue back to the negotiating table. The six-nation talks have been stalled since early 2009.

Zhu Feng, director of the Institute of International Studies at Nanjing University, said Pyongyang’s decision to reopen its nuclear facilities will aggravate tensions on the Korean Peninsula and compel the UN to consider new sanctions against the country. “If so, China is very likely to support the sanctions,” he said.

Shi Yongming, an Asia-Pacific studies research fellow at the China Institute of International Relations, said, “China could offer a packaged denuclearisation plan, including measures to help economic development, as a solution to the problem.”

[China Daily]

Creating jobs for North Korean defectors in South Korea

Posted on by

The Korea Federation of SMEs and the Unification Ministry on Tuesday pledged to create job opportunities for North Korean defectors in preparation for reunification.

The federation’s chairman Park Sung-taek and Unification Minister Hong Yong-pyo are to sign a memorandum of understanding on Wednesday.

The two sides agreed to cooperate in offering job opportunities to defectors through the federation’s members and to conduct joint research on small and medium-sized enterprises in preparation for reunification.

They will also try to raise awareness among SMEs of issues related to possible reunification at a variety of events.

[Chosun Ilbo]

The strange case of North Korean defector Kim Ryen-hei

Posted on by
2

The tale of 45-year-old Kim Ryen-hei, a North Korean living in South Korea, is both extraordinary and strange. Kim told Al Jazeera that she came to South Korean against her will, and she desperately wants to go back to her home to reunite with her family in Pyongyang, a request refused by the South Korean authorities.

In 2011, Kim traveled from North Korea to China to get treatment for her worsening liver cirrhosis. However, she found out that her medical expenses were too high. Her brokers refused to give her North Korean passport back. She was told that she could make enough money to cover her medical expenses and go back to China if she worked in South Korea for two to three months.

She then decided to ask South Korea to send her back, but there is no mechanism or precedent in place for South Korea to send back North Korean “defectors” in such cases. After a long questioning process by the South Korean intelligence authorities, and rehabilitation training for new North Korea defectors, she finally applied for a South Korean passport, which was rejected and her name was added to a watch list by the intelligence authorities.

“I attempted to stowaway on a boat and managed to get a false passport. I even spent time in jail,” Kim said. In the hope of getting deported, she says she started to collect private information about North Korean defectors in the South, while reporting her “espionage” activities to the authorities, which got her convicted of violating the National Security Law.

Pastor Choi Jae-bong who is helping Kim told Al Jazeera: “This whole situation does not make sense. She is from North Korea and she got convicted for espionage. But, the South Korean government has been providing her with [the same] housing and living allowance for North Korean defectors.”

Now, her only hope is a proposed family reunion event this month. But getting onto the list is close to impossible. Of the 66,000 South Koreans on the waiting list, more than half of them are in their 80s and 90s, and only a few hundred will get a chance each time. Kim said she understands the reality, but she added: “I just want to be with my family.”

[Al Jazeera]

North Korea defector claims Kim Jong-un’s reign will be ‘shortest ever’

Posted on by

A North Korean defector has claimed the brutal dictatorship “will collapse within ten years”.

The man, who is not being identified to protect his safety and that of his family still inside the Hermit Kingdom, worked among North Korea’s elite until his escape just a year ago.

“It is Kim Jong-un’s regime that is the most unstable,” he claimed. The defector told CNN he believed Mr Kim’s reign would be “the shortest”.

Both his father and grandfather, Kim Jong-Il and Kim Il-sung, ruled North Korea for more than two decades, maintaining their control through brutal national and local party purges.

But the 2013 purge may have cost the 32-year-old dictator, according to the defector. The purge and allegedly public execution of his uncle, Jang Song Thaek, meant the population had lost trust in their leader “by witnessing him being willing to kill his own uncle.”

“I can tell you for sure, the North Korean regime will collapse within 10 years,” he claimed.

Between 2008 and 2013, between 2,400 and 2,900 people defected annually from North Korea. In 2014 the number dropped significantly (to 1,396) as results of a slightly improved economy and increased propaganda, analysts believe.

[CNN]

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un meets his first foreign leader

Posted on by
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and Cuban First Vice President Miguel Diaz-Canel Bermudez watch a performance in Pyongyang.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un held talks with Cuban First Vice President Miguel Diaz-Canel, marking Kim’s first meeting with a senior foreign leader in more than the two years. He has yet to travel overseas since taking power in late 2011.

Kim said the visit by a Cuban delegation headed by Diaz-Canel is of “weighty significance in instilling the history and tradition of the friendship” between the two countries “into the rising generation,” during the meeting in Pyongyang on Monday, according to the North’s official Korean Central News Agency.

Diaz-Canel is the highest ranked official from overseas that Kim has held talks with since he met with Chinese Vice President Li Yuanchao in July 2013 in Pyongyang.

This year marks the 55th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between North Korea and Cuba. The latest meeting shows North Korea’s continued close ties with Cuba, which restored full diplomatic relations with the United States in July after being severed for more than five decades.

Kim and his wife, Ri Sol-ju, also hosted for the delegation a concert by the Moranbong Band, a North Korean all-female music group, and the State Merited Chorus, according to KCNA.

[South China Morning Post]

A North Korean information revolution resulting in actual revolution?

Posted on by

How does North Korea get from an information revolution to an actual people-in-the-streets-and-toppled-statues revolution?

I pose that question to North Korean defector Kang Chol-hwan. He admits there’s not a simple answer, but he offers a few scenarios he considers plausible: The government, for instance, could sense the disconnect between its propaganda and the people’s foreign-media education and launch its own reforms, the kind of gradual opening that took place in Russia and China. Or a disillusioned populace could begin defecting en masse, forcing a border control crisis. Or some spark, like the self-immolation of Tunisian street vendor Mohammed Bouazizi, could coalesce disillusioned North Koreans into their own Arab Spring, a full-scale grassroots uprising.

But then Kang surprises me by admitting that all those scenarios are unlikely: The Kim regime is too blind and stubborn to initiate its own reforms, he says, and its totalitarian grip may be too tight for a bottom-up revolution. [Nevertheless] he predicts … North Korea’s dictatorship will end within a decade. “They’re already cracking,” he says. “In less than 10 years, I’ll be able to freely go in and out.”

That nakedly idealistic statement, beyond its tinge of wishful thinking, seems to reveal something new about how Kang sees his goal. In spite of all his childhood horrors, he wants to transform North Korea not simply into a nation that will let his countrymen go free, but one that will let him back in: He wants to go home again.

Kang spent his childhood in North Korean prison camps, where his sister may still be today. “This is the best way—the only way for me—to open North Korea,” Kang finally says. “Every day until then is a delay to seeing my family again.”

[Wired]