17 July 2003
Conference Focuses on North Korean Human Rights Abuses
National Endowment for Democracy looks at the DPRK gulag
By Jane A. Morse
Washington File Staff Writer
Washington -- A day-long conference hosted by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) sought to "shine a spotlight" on human rights abuses in North Korea.
Held July 16 in the U.S. Senate's Dirksen Building, the conference was entitled "Gulag, Famine, and Refugees: The Urgent Human Rights Crisis in North Korea." Conference speakers said it is estimated that some 300,000 North Koreans have fled to China to escape famine and political oppression, yet China regards them as "economic refugees," and its policy is to return them to North Korea where they face torture, imprisonment, or death for having committed the "treason" of leaving their homeland.
Andrew Natsios, administrator for the U.S. Agency for International Development, said he estimates that as many as 2.5 million North Koreans may have died of famine and other causes under North Korea's repressive regime.
Natsios, author of a book entitled "The Great North Korean Famine," said that although North Korea's distribution system for food aid requires more stringent monitoring, the United States remains the DPRK's most generous donor of food assistance. Since 1995, the United States has contributed a total of 2.0 million tons of food valued at $650 million.
Natsios urged the international community to focus on Pyongyang's abuses of its citizens more closely and demand improved monitoring of international aid programs operating inside North Korea.
David Hawk, a researcher for the U.S. Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, discussed his groundbreaking work to document the DPRK's gulag using commercial satellite photos and testimony of former prisoners and prison guards who have escaped North Korea.
Hawk estimates there are at least six prison camps in North Korea. A single prison camp can be 20 to 30 miles long and 10 to 15 miles wide. Each camp houses some 20,000 to 40,000 prisoners who live in smaller enclaves or "villages." Most political prisoners are imprisoned for life, and most die from starvation and overwork in mining, logging, and agricultural operations.
Three survivors of North Korea's prison camps spoke at the conference. An Hyuk, 35, was arrested after he voluntarily returned to North Korea from China. In 1986, he was accused of spying and detained in a secret detention center run by the State Security Protection Agency. For nearly two years he was imprisoned in the Yodok camp, but he was able to escape North Korea and enter South Korea in 1992. He has since written two books describing the inhumane conditions in Yodok and now assists in the rescue of North Korean refugees in China.
Kang Cheol-hwan, 35, was just nine years old when he was sent with his family to the Yodok prison because his grandfather, a high-level government bureaucrat, was accused of treason. He endured 10 years of torture, starvation, and hard labor before he was able to escape. He now lives in Seoul, where he writes for the daily newspaper "Chosun Ilbo." His experiences are documented in his memoir "Aquariums of Pyongyang."
Soon Ok Lee described herself as completely loyal to the regime when she worked as a supervisor of the North Korean state material distribution center. But she was arrested in 1986 on trumped up charges of embezzlement. She was subjected to six years of brutality in the gulag but was released in 1992. In 1995 she escaped with her son to South Korea. In 1996 she published "Eyes of the Tailless Animal: Prison Memoirs of a North Korean Woman." She now conducts a personal campaign to expose and end North Korea's terrible gulag system.
All three survivors received NED's annual Democracy Award, as did Benjamin Yoon, director of the Citizens Alliance for North Korean Human Rights, which he launched in 1996 to publicize the terrible human rights conditions in North Korea. The Alliance was the first such private group established in South Korea. He also created a school to help North Korean escapees adapt to South Korean society.
Yoon is the former head of Amnesty International in South Korea and was awarded the Civic Merit Medal by former President Kim Dae-jung.
The conference attracted a number of speakers from the U.S. Congress, including Senator Jon Kyl (Republican of Arizona), Representative Edward Royce (Republican of California), Representative Eliot Engel (Democrat of New York), Representative Joseph Pitts (Republican of Pennsylvania), Representative Curt Weldon (Republican of Pennsylvania), Senator Evan Bayh (Democrat of Indiana, and Senator Sam Brownback (Republican of Kansas).
Royce, in his presentation, noted that the secretive nature of the Pyongyang regime makes it difficult for the rest of the world to know what is happening inside the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK). He praised Radio Free Asia and Voice of America for doing a "fantastic job" in getting information to North Korea's extremely isolated society.
Pitts urged China to live up to its commitments as a signatory to United Nations conventions dealing with the treatment of refugees.
Weldon described his proposal for a peace plan, which would include a U.S. non-aggression pact with North Korea if the Pyongyang leadership agreed to permanently dismantle its nuclear weapons programs.
NED is a private, nonprofit organization created in 1983 to strengthen democratic institutions around the world through nongovernmental efforts. Governed by an independent, nonpartisan board of directors, NED, using its annual congressional appropriation, makes hundreds of grants each year to support pro-democracy groups in Africa, Asia, Central and Eastern Europe, Latin America, the Middle East, and the former Soviet Union.
(The Washington File is a product of the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
This page printed from: http://usinfo.state.gov/xarchives/display.html?p=washfile-english&y=2003&m=July&x=20030717165848esrom0.3940851&t=usinfo/wf-latest.html
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