09 Summer QUATERLY JOURNAL

Citizens’ Alliance for North Korean Human Rights (NKHR)

Vol. 52 / Summer / 2009

Life &
Human
Rights in
North Korea

Citizens’ Alliance for North Korean Human Rights (NKHR)

Life & Human Rights in North Korea

Editor’s Note: This summer’s <Life & Human Rights in North Korea>
is a special edition of the 9

International Conference on North Korean

Human Rights and Refugees. In addition to the welcome address and
keynote speech which were not included in the conference book, it
compiles media reports and participants’ comments on the conference.

| C

ONTENTS

PEECHES

Address to the 9

International Conference on North Korean

Human Rights and Refugees

Stephen Smith

· 4

The Struggle for Human Rights in North Korea: The Road Ahead

Carl Gershman

· 9

EDIA

EPORTS

Land of Hidden Horrors

Greg Sheridan / The Australian

· 13

World Can’t Ignore N Korea Rights: Smith

The Sydney Morning Herald

· 18

Voices of North Korean Defectors Heard From Down Under

Kavi Chongkittavorn / The Nation

· 19

Atlantic Eye: Branded for Life by North Korea

Marc S. Ellenbogen / UPI

· 23

Human Rights in North Korea

ABC Radio National

· 26

OMMENTS

What To Do About North Korea?

Michael Danby

· 33

Toward a Greater Multilateral Cooperation on North Korea

Nakagawa Masaharu

· 36

International Concerns over North Korean Human Rights

Un-Chul Yang

· 39

This quarterly is published in Korean and English.

All expenses were paid for with voluntary contributions

from Korean citizens.

Citizens’ Alliance for North Korean Human Rights (NKHR)

SPEECHES _ _ _ ____ __

Address to the 9th International Conference on

North Korean Human Rights and Refugees

Hon. Stephen Smith MP

Minister for Foreign Affairs, Australia

Thank you, Michael, for your introduction.

I congratulate you on your work as Chair of the Australian Committee for
Human Rights in North Korea.

I acknowledge the support of the Citizens Alliance for North Korean Human
Rights in organising this event and welcome our international participants to
Australia and to Melbourne.

The Australian Government is firmly committed to international efforts to
protect human rights.

The human rights situation above the 38th parallel is appalling. Famine,
torture, disappearances, arbitrary detention, repression and countless other
indignities have been visited on the people of North Korea by their own
leaders.

It is over 60 years now since the Universal Declaration on Human Rights. The
international structures and systems that have developed to support that
Declaration have faced and still face a severe test in dealing with North Korea.

Today I will outline the Australian Government’s action in support of the
international protection of human rights.

We seek to strengthen international action by working to bolster international
systems and promote international respect for human rights standards. We act
where we can to promote human rights in North Korea but, like many

This is the keynote speech of the 9

International Conference on North Korean

Human Rights and Refugees

Life & Human Rights in North Korea

members of the international community, we are under no illusion that our
actions alone will bring about change.

The Human Rights Situation in North Korea

There are many experts here today, from Korea and elsewhere, who will be
able to give you first hand information about human rights abuses in North
Korea.

I particularly welcome the participation of the UN Special Rapporteur on the
Situation of Human Rights in the DRPK, Professor Muntabhorn. He has
recently reported to the Human Rights Council and I am sure he will bring a
well-informed and current perspective to discussions later today. Professor
Muntabhorn’s report makes for troubling reading in its cataloguing of the
systematic violation of human rights in North Korea.

From denial of the simple right to food and basic necessities to State-
sanctioned torture and execution, millions of innocent people in North Korea
are suffering under a brutal regime. This situation is all the more galling given
the considerable expenditure of resources in North Korea on missile and
nuclear programs.

Much of the international community’s attention is understandably focused on
these programs and Australia has long held grave concerns over
them. Australia deplores provocative North Korean actions like its current
planned missile launch, and urges that this not proceed. Australia also strongly
supports Japan’s call for a full accounting of the fate of Japanese citizens
abducted by North Korea.

Pyongyang’s continuing unpredictable behaviour is a stark reminder of the
dangers of nuclear proliferation. We are using our strong non-proliferation
credentials to support international efforts towards denuclearisation of the
Korean Peninsula, including the Six Party Talks. The Australian Government
does not, however, believe that these efforts should impede parallel action to
address the grave humanitarian situation in North Korea.

That is why events like today’s Conference are so important. We need to
continue to raise awareness, exchange information and explore new
approaches to addressing the appalling violation of human rights in North
Korea. We must remember that behind the statistics there are thousands of
individual lives being lived and lost.

I was particularly struck by the recent story of Shin Dong-hyuk, the only
person living in South Korea known to have escaped from a North Korean
prison camp. Shin was born in the camp, sentenced with his family to a life of

Citizens’ Alliance for North Korean Human Rights (NKHR)

unimaginable horror and misery because of the supposed crimes of his
uncles. Shin was tortured by fire, had a finger amputated and witnessed the
shooting of his brother and the hanging of his mother before escaping to the
South. To read of these almost unfathomable cruelties is to glimpse State-
sanctioned behaviour that is anathema to our common human dignity. The
true magnitude of the situation comes with the realisation that Shin’s ordeal is
by no means an isolated case.

Australia’s response in an international context

How do we respond to the tragedy of a State’s blatant disregard for its own
people’s welfare?

Our priority must be to provide assistance in those areas where we can do so
with immediate effect. For Australia, this means providing humanitarian
assistance including food, water, sanitation and medicines and ensuring this
assistance is well-targeted and delivered effectively to those in need. Since
1994-95, Australia has contributed $75.7 million in humanitarian assistance to
the people of North Korea. Our commitments this financial year are A$6.75
million to date.

Australia also consistently registers our deep human rights concern bilaterally
with the North Korean Government. Our Ambassador to South Korea visited
Pyongyang earlier this month to express our position.

We are, however, keenly aware that effective pressure on human rights
standards in North Korea will best come from concerted international action.
North Korea may be isolated, insular, and indeed sometimes impervious to the
outside world but we continue to believe that action by the international
community can produce positive results. Australia is therefore active in
international fora in encouraging human rights institutions to take coordinated
action.

Australia co-sponsored a resolution on the human rights situation in North
Korea at the most recent UN General Assembly late last year. That resolution
expressed serious concern over reports of systematic violation of human rights,
including torture and inhuman conditions of detention as well as violations of
economic, social and cultural rights which have led to severe malnutrition and
health problems. We are looking to co-sponsor a similar resolution in the
Human Rights Council over coming days and are working in Geneva to
ensure a robust text.

Australia also supports the renewal of the mandate of the Special Rapporteur,
Professor Muntabhorn, to ensure that a human rights expert appointed by the

Life & Human Rights in North Korea

Human Rights Council continues to report specifically on the situation in
North Korea.

Supporting and strengthening multilateralism

Australia’s strong support for international action in response to the human
rights situation in North Korea reflects our longstanding commitment to
multilateralism and, in particular, the United Nations.

In fact one of my distinguished predecessors, Foreign Minister, H V Evatt,
who led Australia's delegation to the UN’s founding meeting in San Francisco,
was a powerful advocate for giving the new body a human rights mandate.
Evatt’s vision of an international body that would protect human rights, and
advance global economic and social development, was a significant formative
influence on the development of the United Nations. The member states'
pledge to pursue these goals within the UN became known in San Francisco
as “the Australian pledge”. It now forms article 56 of the United Nations
Charter. Evatt's vision is more important today than it has ever been. The need
for effective, global responses to the challenges such as the human rights
situation in North Korea is more urgent and necessary than ever before.

Australia is determined to play a constructive role in shaping those responses
and, in doing so, to consolidate our reputation as a good international citizen.
The assistance to North Korea I have mentioned is part of our commitment to
the realisation of the Millennium Development Goals. That commitment also
guided our pledge to increase our official development assistance from 0.3 to
0.5 per cent of gross national income (GNI) by 2015. We have also committed
$200 million over four years under the “UN Partnership for the MDGs”
budget measure. Through this initiative, Australia will work closely in
partnership with key UN agencies leading international efforts to achieve the goals.

Our commitment to strengthen Australia’s engagement with the international
human rights system is reflected in the action the Australian Government has
taken since coming to office in 2007. We have extended a standing invitation
to United Nations human rights experts to visit Australia. In July last year,
Australia became one of the first Western countries to ratify the Convention
on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. The Government has also
commenced the process towards becoming a party to the Convention's
Optional Protocol.

The Optional Protocol to the Convention on Elimination of all Forms of
Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) entered into force in Australia on
4 March 2009. Being a party to the Protocol enables Australian women to

Citizens’ Alliance for North Korean Human Rights (NKHR)

bring complaints under CEDAW to the United Nations where domestic
remedies have been exhausted.

The Government has also begun consultations with State and Territory
counterparts and NGOs on Australia becoming a party to the Optional
Protocol to the Convention Against Torture. The Optional Protocol establishes
a system of United Nations visits to places of detention and requires states to
establish a domestic mechanism to monitor detention.

In last year’s budget the Government announced an additional $200 million
over four years in dedicated funding to key United Nations agencies such as
UNICEF and the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian
Affairs.

This commitment enables Australia to contribute directly to work on issues as
diverse as increasing child literacy, improving maternal and child health and
the empowerment of women in countries beyond our own region.

Earlier this month, on International Women’s Day, Tanya Plibersek, Minister
for the Status of Women, and I committed over $17 million from this
additional funding to UNIFEM to address inequality between men and women.
This will support programs to reduce women’s poverty and exclusion, end
violence against women, reverse the spread of HIV and AIDS among women
and girls and support women’s leadership.

Conclusion

The strength of the Government’s engagement on human rights reflects our
conviction that only global responses will be effective in addressing human
rights challenges.

Australia regards the situation in North Korea as one of the most critical
challenges in this context. It is not a situation the international community can
afford to ignore.

Australia will continue to do all it can to maintain international focus on ways
in which we can assist the people of North Korea.

Events such as today’s Conference contribute to that focus and provide
important perspectives on a complex and appalling situation.

Thank you for your ongoing efforts.

Life & Human Rights in North Korea

The Struggle for Human Rights in North Korea:

The Road Ahead

Carl Gershman

President, National Endowment for Democracy, USA

It's a special pleasure to be in Australia for the 9

International Conference on

Human Rights in North Korea. Each of our previous conferences - and here I
want to pay tribute to our leader, the Rev. Benjamin Yoon -- has taken us a
step forward in the struggle to free the North Korean people -- from ending
the almost total silence that existed a decade ago about this dark, famished,
and inaccessible corner of the world; to creating and broadening an
international coalition of activists from Asia, Europe, and North America; to
engaging new countries in this struggle - first South Korea, of course, and
then Japan; and thereafter the Czech Republic, Poland, Norway and the
United Kingdom.

And now we are in Australia, a country whose Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd,
visited North Korea as an opposition backbencher a full decade ago, before
anyone was paying attention, and returned to speak about a situation that he
said was "as serious and as grave as anything that I have seen or previously
considered to be possible." He described what he called "a strange place," a
country with a political system so repressive as to be "the last vestige of
Stalinism to be seen anywhere in the world," a place where famine had
already taken the lives of up to three million people and had created what he
called "the largest humanitarian crisis we have seen in this region" since the
terrible famine of China's Great Leap Forward four decades earlier. And the
future Prime Minister did not just decry this horror. He also called upon the
government of the Liberal Party, not his own, to provide humanitarian relief
in North Korea, which it did, in a spirit that transcended party differences.

And so it is indeed a special pleasure to be in Australia and to have the
opportunity to thank Prime Minister Rudd for his commitment and his
concern. And it is also a special pleasure to be here in Melbourne, a city that
has sent to the federal parliament our host Michael Danby, who is not just

This is the welcome address of the 9

International Conference on North Korean

Human Rights and Refugees

Citizens’ Alliance for North Korean Human Rights (NKHR)

Australia's most outspoken advocate for international human rights, but who
is for Australia what the late Congressman Tom Lantos was for the United
States - an eloquent voice, a moral leader, a source of solidarity for those
around the world who live in darkness and oppression - from China and Tibet
to Darfur and Burma, and now to North Korea.

The fact that this meeting is being held in Melbourne and will be addressed by
Foreign Minister Stephen Smith is already a significant contribution by
Australia to the cause of human rights in North Korea. And there is more that
Australia can do, much more. In addition to providing humanitarian relief, as
it has done so generously, Australia could sponsor educational and cultural
exchanges with North Korea, sending teachers to give courses in North
Korean schools and universities and bringing young North Koreans to
Australia to see an entirely different kind of world. I know it will not be easy
to arrange such exchanges given North Korea's continuing belligerent
behavior, though Australia is better able to do it than, for example, the United
States, since it is a step removed from the negotiations over the nuclear and
other contentious issues.

There is also the concern, which I fully understand, that such exchanges might
seem to confer legitimacy on a government that oppresses its own people. But
offsetting this concern is the likelihood that such exchanges will help break
down the isolation that insulates and buttresses North Korean
totalitarianism. As Andrei Lankov has noted - referring to the experience of
his own country the Soviet Union -- a regime built upon lies is profoundly
vulnerable to anything that introduces truth into political and everyday
life. This is true of all totalitarianism regimes, but North Korea is especially
vulnerable since it has a successful Korean society right next door,
highlighting without any cultural or nationalist filters the Orwellian inversion
of the truth that Pyongyang tries to impose on its still isolated population.

That isolation is already breaking down. With some 15,000 North Korean
defectors now living in the South, and as the number of North Koreans who
have access to China has increased, many new channels of communication
have begun to develop. Let me mention four of them:

· First, there are now numerous independent radio stations

broadcasting into North Korea, many of them run by defectors, that
provide people inside North Korea with news about what is
happening in their own country and a window on the outside world.
Interviews have been conducted with some 200 North Korean
refugees and travelers in China confirming that North Koreans

Life & Human Rights in North Korea

regularly listen to these radios and that information is increasingly
being circulated among informal social networks.

· Second, there are now other sources of information, such as the

quarterly magazine Imjingang which is distributed throughout the
Korean peninsula and receives information from reporters its staff
has trained from within North Korea. The magazine contains
commentaries on daily life, news on major incidents, information on
popular trends in North Korean society, and even the opinions people
have of government policies.

· Third, groups of defectors from particular sectors - intellectuals, for

example, and former military officials - are beginning to reconnect
with their former colleagues still inside the country and provide them
with information and advice that can help them try to reform the
country in incremental but important ways.

· And fourth, informal channels and contacts are expanding, from

traders going back and forth to China, to defectors in South Korea
calling their family members in the North and describing their new
lives, to South Korean soap operas that are increasingly watched in
the North and show life in an open an affluent society.

These are some of the ways that the information blockade built by the North
Korean regime is beginning to break down.

One of the issues this conference will highlight is artistic expression, which is
one of the most important ways that people living under dictatorship
communicate their experience to the outside world and liberate their
consciousness from the strangle-hold of the state. One just has to think of the
Soviet writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn or the Ukrainian poet Vasyl
Stus. During the past year I saw three powerful films about North Korea, each
of which portrays life in North Korea in an unforgettable way. There's
"Crossing," the heart-breaking story of a family broken apart and destroyed by
the North Korean system; "Yodok Stories," which we shall see later today,
where we hear from the former prisoners in the North Korean Gulag whose
harrowing experiences were the basis for the famous stage play "Yodok
Story;" and "Kimjongilia," the documentary on North Korea that was
produced by our own Nancy Heikin, who participated in some of our earlier
conferences.

I also had the pleasure some months ago of welcoming the pianist Kim Cheol-
woong to New York and also to Washington, where he played at the State
Department and the Polish Embassy. One piece he played was "Amazing

Citizens’ Alliance for North Korean Human Rights (NKHR)

Grace," which he learned on a piano in a Korean-Chinese church when he was
a refugee in China following his escape from North Korea in 2001. "Amazing
Grace" was the anthem, along with "We Shall Overcome," of the American
civil right movement in the 1960s, as it had been a century before in the anti-
slavery movement in England and the United States. It conveyed the spirit of
those struggles, each of which ultimately triumphed. Cheol-woong, through
his music, conveys the spirit of the struggle today for the liberation of the
North Korean people. Judging by how far we have come since we first met
almost ten years ago, and by the changes that are only beginning to unfold
inside North Korea, I have no doubt that this struggle, too, shall ultimately
triumph. May our work today take us another step in that direction.

Life & Human Rights in North Korea

MEDIA REPORTS _ _ _ ____ __

Land of hidden horrors

Greg Sheridan, Foreign editor

The Australian

IF you ask Shin Dong-hyuk where he was born, he'll tell you: "I was born
in Political Prisoners' Camp No 14."

That's in Kaecheon City, South Pyeong-An province, North Korea. Shin is the
only man known to have escaped from North Korea's labour camp gulag,
which is said to house up to 200,000 people.

Shin was born there because his uncles were said to have given some
assistance to South Korea during the Korean War. So Shin's father inherited
his brothers' guilt. And Shin inherited his father's guilt.

Shin lives now in South Korea and was this week in Melbourne attending the
9th International Conference on North Korean Human Rights. This
conference was organised by Michael Danby, the Labor member for
Melbourne Ports and consistently the parliament's most fearless and important
advocate for human rights.

Not many people care about North Korean human rights. They should. Shin
escaped in 2005. Listen to his story: "In the prison camp there is a system of
rewards, by allowing marriage between workers. If you're a good prisoner and
meet all your work quotas the man is allowed to marry and live for five days
or so in the same room as his wife. Then the man goes back to the factory or
the mine and lives in a dormitory. If the man meets all his work quotas he's
allowed to get together with his wife for one day a month."

But don't think this glimmer of humanity reflected any normality in this North
Korean Stalinist labour camp. Says Shin: "In the political prisoner camp you

This article was published in the Australian on March 21, 2009.

Citizens’ Alliance for North Korean Human Rights (NKHR)

cannot fall in love. You cannot meet anyone and have a proper relationship.
The guards arrange the marriage as a reward for exemplary workers. And
really it's only one-night meetings after that."

Shin's father was an exemplary worker, and so young Shin saw him once
almost every month. But, he says: "I couldn't feel any affection between my
father and my mother. I also couldn't feel any affection from my father for
me." Shin was allowed to stay in the room with his mother until he was 11.
Schooling was rudimentary. There were separate schools for the inmates'
children and the guards' children. The inmates' children learned to read and
write, add and subtract. That was about all.

From the age of 12, children went to live in dormitories, with minimal
continued schooling and full-time work, 12 hours a day, one day off a month.
So dehumanised was their situation that the teachers did not even bother to
teach Shin and the others about North Korea's first leader, Kim Il-sung, or his
son, Kim Jong-il. In its way, this is the most bizarre twist of all. North Korean
society is organised around a cult of quasi-religious personality worship of the
two Kims, the deceased father and the ruling son. Yet Shin said he'd never
heard of Kim Jong-il in the camp.

That means that even in the debased currency of humanity in North Korea, the
40,000 prisoners in Camp 14 were less than human in the government's view.

In 1996, when he was all of 14, Shin was sent to a prison cell within the camp.
He was told that his family was plotting to escape and repeatedly interrogated
about this, although he says at that stage he knew of no such plans. After three
months of solitary confinement he was sent to another cell with another
prisoner. After seven months' incarceration altogether, Shin was brought to a
kind of public square within the camp: "I didn't know who it was, but I knew
someone was going to be executed. I thought it might be me. I found it was
my brother and my mother."

Right there, in front of Shin, his mother was hanged and his older brother was
shot.

I meet Shin for two long interviews. He is a small-framed man, slightly built,
wiry and seems both shy and nervous, hyper vigilant, his eyes darting here
and there, a look of apprehension never far away.

His hands sometimes tense and clench as he tells this story. He has told it
many times. But it is never easy in the telling.

Surely I ask him, there were some friendships in the camp, maybe when he
was a child. His reply is unfathomably bleak: "There's no system to build

Life & Human Rights in North Korea

friendship in that prison. We can't trust each other. Today we might be
working in a team, but tomorrow we might be enemies, informing on each
other or stealing each other's food." Yet, in the end, it was friendship that
saved Shin.

Along the way he experienced some bouts of what he describes as good
fortune. One day he dropped a sewing machine as he was carrying it upstairs.
The normal penalty for breaking equipment was death by shooting. But the
guards decided as punishment merely to chop the middle finger of his right
hand off at the top knuckle.

But when Shin was 23, in 2005, a new prisoner came into the camp, an older
man who had lived in Pyongyang. Shin was assigned to teach him how to
work on sewing machines. It meant that the two men spent a lot of time
together and actually had the chance to talk. They became friends, an epic
development in Shin's life. It was the first time Shin really learned anything
substantial about the world outside the prison camp.

Often they talked of food. Officially the prisoners were not allowed to eat
meat, although sometimes they caught a rat, or found a dead bird. But the new
prisoner had eaten real food in Pyongyang. They shared their meagre rations
and talked of feasts they might one day share.

They decided to escape together. Shin would get them through the electrified
barbed wire fence, his new friend would navigate their way out through China.
Shin's friend died in the escape attempt, but Shin got out.

Surviving on the outside was very tough: "It's shameful to admit, but I stole
food from houses." He traded some of that food and stolen cigarettes to bribe
border guards to let him through to China.

I've interviewed a number of North Korean defectors living in South Korea.
They are all grateful to have escaped, but I've never met one who feels their
life is happy. The past is an awesome burden to them. Says Shin: "The reason
I wanted to escape is that I was so hungry all the time. My only dream was not
to be hungry, so I suppose I achieved that.

"I don't know that I have a lot happiness or joy. I still have nightmares of
being there. And there are a lot of burdens about it. Maybe the thought of
Camp 14 haunts me, and the memory of it. I ask what can I do for the people
who are still there. Sometimes I feel I am representing all the people who live
in Camp 14. I would like to see my father again."

Citizens’ Alliance for North Korean Human Rights (NKHR)

For Kim Cheol Weoong, it was the French romantic composer, Richard
Clayderman, who got him into trouble. Kim is another defector in Melbourne
for the North Korean conference.

Kim's background and life in North Korea could not have been more different
from Shin's. Kim's father was a high official and his mother a professor. Kim
was a gifted pianist and allowed the rare privilege of studying for four years in
Russia, at the Tchaikovsky Academy. But he saw the madness of the society
he lived in. Once he was touring the provinces with the symphony orchestra
and at one railway station saw dead bodies, people who had apparently
starved to death and not been moved from where they had died.

On another occasion a brilliant young pianist had played superbly at a Chopin
festival. The supreme dictator, Kim Jong-il, had been impressed and told the
young pianist he should also play in the Tchaikovsky competition. The young
man answered modestly that he thought he would need more practice for that.
Insanely, this was construed as the grievous crime of disagreeing with the
"Dear Leader" and the young pianist was sent to work in a mine for 10 years.

For Kim, the moment of truth came in private. North Korean Stalinism
decrees that neither modern classical nor popular music can be played.
Privately, Kim was practising a Clayderman melody that he wanted to play to
his girlfriend. Someone heard it and reported him. He was summonsed to the
Security Bureau office and forced to write 10 self-criticisms apologising for
his action.

He later escaped across the Tumen River into China and was helped, as so
many defectors have been, by a Christian community there. But at one point
he was arrested in China and put on a train back to North Korea. It was a
death train. Kim was sure he would be shot as a traitor back in North Korea.
He managed to climb out of the train's bathroom window and cling on for dear
life to the roof of the train until it made a stop. Then he slipped away and
found more Christians, who helped him get to South Korea eventually.

The artist who goes only by the nom de guerre, Sun Mu, was annoyed as an
art student that he was not allowed to paint portraits of Kim Jong-il. This was
a privilege allowed only to a tiny handful of artists. He too escaped through
China and now paints parodies of North Korean propaganda.

It is astonishing that the stories of these defectors, and others like them, are so
little known. It is as if because of the security threat that North Korea poses
we cannot afford to spend time worrying about its unbelievable barbarity to its
own people.

Life & Human Rights in North Korea

Shin has written a book, Escape to the Outside World. It has sold only a few
hundred copies in South Korea and has not been translated into English. Yet
surely nowhere in the world today are there greater human rights abuses than
in North Korea.

Danby has done a good thing in holding this conference in Australia. There
are no votes in it for him. There are no North Koreans in Melbourne Ports.
But if there is nothing much practical that we can do for the people suffering
the logical consequences of communism in North Korea, at the very least we
can bear some witness to what is going on there.

Citizens’ Alliance for North Korean Human Rights (NKHR)

World can't ignore N Korea rights: Smith

The Sydney Morning Herald

North Korea's appalling human rights record cannot be ignored by the
international community, Foreign Minister Stephen Smith says.

Addressing an international conference on North Korean human rights and
refugees, Mr Smith said that those working to uphold human rights faced a
severe test in dealing with North Korea.

"The human rights situation above the 38th parallel is appalling," he told the
conference in Melbourne on Friday.

While Australia seeks to strengthen international action to promote respect in
North Korea, the challenges are enormous, he added.

"Like many members of the international community, unfortunately we are
under no illusions that our actions alone will bring about change," Mr Smith
said.

"From denial of the simple right to food and basic necessities, state sanctioned
torture and execution, millions of innocent people in North Korea are
suffering under a very brutal regime."

The precarious situation is compounded by the North Korean government's
commitment of resources to spending on missile and nuclear programs.

"North Korea's continuing unpredictable behaviour is a stark reminder of the
dangers of nuclear proliferation," the foreign minister warned.

Since 1994, Australian governments have given $75 million in humanitarian
assistance to the people of North Korea, with $7 million committed in the
2008-09 financial year.

This article was published in the Sydney Morning Herald on March 20, 2009.

Life & Human Rights in North Korea

Voices of North Korean defectors

heard from Down Under

Kavi Chongkittavorn

The Nation, Thailand

PAINTER Sun Mu appeared on the stage with a huge sticker of a North
Korean flag across his chest. Then, he slowly took it off, piece by piece,
until the flag with a star in the centre disappeared and the audience saw
his white T-shirt underneath. Then he declared, "I am free," before
joining Cheol-woong Kim and former members of the Pyongyang
Philharmonic Orchestra in a panel discussion.

After a few words of introduction about his life and how he crossed the
Turman River and escaped from North Korea, Kim walked towards a piano
and played two musical pieces he composed for human rights activists. One of
the songs was a newly arranged version of the popular "Arirang".

"Whenever you feel sad, please remember this song. It is for you," Kim said.

Listening attentively to his music was Dong-hyuk Shin, a survivor of Prison
Camp No. 6. He wrote about his life in the gulag where he was a political
prisoner from birth. He witnessed the execution of his mother in 1996 and
then his brother. "I hope I meet my father again because I escaped without
telling him first," he said.

Last weekend, Australian officials, activists and campaigners heard firsthand
accounts of the human rights situation inside the world's most reclusive
regime. The speakers included North Korean artists, musicians and writers
who had all defected. All of them have now settled in South Korea. More than
15,000 of their compatriots have defected from the Hermit Kingdom since the
end of the Korean War in 1953.

Now, with a sizeable North Korean community overseas, activists can, and
want to, do something useful for their country.

This article was published in the Nation on March 25, 2009.

Citizens’ Alliance for North Korean Human Rights (NKHR)

"They can serve as a bridge between North Korea and the outside world," said
Carl Gershman of the National Endowment for Democracy.

At last week's international conference in Melbourne on North Korean Human
Rights and Refugees, the audience was mesmerised by the stories of Mu, Kim
and Shin. They were told of the harsh prison system, the 51 classifications of
the country's 25 million people and other aberrations that have brought
extreme violations of human rights, severe food shortages and long-standing
political oppression.

They also were briefed by Professor Vitit Muntarbhorn, the UN's special
rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Democratic People's
Republic of Korea, who flew in from Geneva, where he earlier presented his
report on Pyongyang's human rights abuses.

"We have to use a people-first approach," he reiterated loudly and clearly.
This approach, he argued, will help improve the situation inside North Korea.
He pointed out that most of the money inside the country has been invested in
the defence industry, on weapons and ammunition, and not enough funding
has reached ordinary people.

The North Koreans, he added, must have food security beyond food aid,
which has recently been stopped due to Pyongyang's refusal to receive food
donations from the US.

"The situation now is not so good," he added.

Vitit was passionate and optimistic despite the dire situation detailed in his
latest report, his ninth since he was appointed in 2004 to investigate human
rights violations in North Korea.

"In times of despair, we must have hope," he said, referring to the situation in
the country which he must call by its full official name.

But he identified North Korea as non-democratic country in his report, much
to the chagrin of many participants, who thought he was too soft and generous
towards the world's worst totalitarian regime.

For his report, Vitit interviewed hundreds of North Korean refugees and all
UN-related agencies that have direct or indirect contact with the North Korean
government. Pyongyang has refused to grant him a visa but he hopes that, in
future, the UN Human Rights Council will be able to open an office in the
country.

Life & Human Rights in North Korea

Of late, Pyongyang has cooperated with international organisations, allowing
US-based non-governmental organisations to operate on the ground, and has
engaged in dialogue with the UN on children's rights.

Vitit also revealed that the first pizza restaurant was opened recently in
Pyongyang. "Who are these people who decided on this issue?" he asked,
wondering about the nature of decision-making. Earlier, he said, women were
prohibited to engage in businesses that would earn them extra income.

Thanks were due to Melbourne Labor MP, Michael Danby, who helped put
the conference together, to highlight human rights violations inside North
Korea. Danby said that Australia is serious about human rights abuses in
North Korea.

When Prime Minister Kevin Rudd was on the opposition bench, he visited the
country. He told Danby that what he saw there sent chills through his bones.
Since then, he has been working with non-governmental organisations helping
North Korean defectors living overseas and raising awareness of human rights
violations there. Australian Foreign Minister Stephen Smith also took time off
from his busy parliamentary schedule to give an opening speech.

Smith said that although Australia and North Korea have official diplomatic
relations, there is no contact, as Canberra has imposed sanctions against
Pyongyang.

What is sad from the Thai perspective is that one would hope to see at least
one enlightened Thai politician, like Danby, expressing concern over the
human rights situation in North Korea. After all, Thailand is one of the
world's largest transit points after China and Mongolia for North Korean
asylum seekers.

Strange but true, even Chinnicha Wongsawat, the opposition MP from
Sankampaeng in Chiang Mai, the birthplace of Anocha Panjoy, who was
allegedly abducted by North Korean secret agents in 1978 in Macau, does not
even care to speak out about the plight of the Panjoy family - this despite
extensive media reports since 2005 demanding information on her
whereabouts and providing evidence of where she might actually be in North
Korea. Citizens of at least ten other countries have been identified as kidnap
victims of the North Koreans.

We do have Vitit. In his case, he is the world's foremost human rights expert
on North Korea. Yet, very few Thais would even lend an ear to such an
important subject.

Citizens’ Alliance for North Korean Human Rights (NKHR)

Since 2004, thousands of North Koreans have arrived at the northern border of
Thailand. Through the assistance of the South Korean government and the UN
High Commissioner for Refugees, thousands of these asylum-seekers have
been resettled in South Korea.

Life & Human Rights in North Korea

Atlantic Eye: Branded for life by North Korea

Marc S. Ellenbogen

UPI

MELBOURNE, March 30 (UPI) -- He sits on stage -- gaunt, pale and
uncomfortable. With each question, he winces and curls his lip -- pained by
the intense memories. Born in North Korea's No. 14 Kaechon Political Prison
Camp, it was the only life Shin Dong-hyuk had known until his escape. At 24,
he was branded -- and already long abused -- by North Korea's despicable
political system.

The only known escapee of a system that has 170,000 involuntary internees,
Shin is quiet and unassuming. Every word he speaks is moving -- bringing
this columnist and many in the room to a tear. Pain is written in every move
he makes, every word he utters. His guilt could carry the world on its
shoulders.

"I got out in 2005, but my friend did not," Shin said. "My friend threw himself
on the electric fence so I could climb over him to freedom."

"He gave his life for me," Shin says in a voice of controlled pained rage. As a
teenager, Shin was forced to watch the execution of his mother and brother.
They had been accused of plotting to get out of the camp.

In late 2004, the young man who would give his life for Shin arrived from
Pyongyang, North Korea's capital. They became friends, shared rations and
sometimes ate dead birds or rats. Meat was not allowed in the camp. Shin had
never had a friend, never knew trust and never knew warmth. It didn't last
long at all. "There was a brief period when I believed and hoped. But it died
along with everything else," said Shin, who now lives in South Korea.

Shin was born in 1982 as Shin In Kun. (His current name is South Korean.)
His father, Shin Kyong-sop, was arrested sometime in 1965. The North
Korean secret police came before dawn, carted away all the furniture and
dumped the family in Camp No. 14. Shin's father was the 11th of 12 brothers.

This article was published in the United Press International (UPI) on March 30,

2009.

Citizens’ Alliance for North Korean Human Rights (NKHR)

"From the moment they were abducted and separated, they were treated as
beast," Shin said.

Shin is riddled with guilt. He does not feel he gave his father's name honor.
He knows his brother was born a few years before him, "but I almost do not
remember him." Shin saw his brother only three or four times before he was
executed. "I lived with my mother for 12 years. She was a farmer and started
work every day at 5 a.m. She returned home every night at 11 p.m. I have
little memory of any affection between us."

"My cousin was raped in the camp at 22. The guards began to fondle her. Her
mother, my aunt, protested. So the guards tied my aunt up to a tree and forced
her to watch the rape of her daughter in broad daylight."

Shin's aunt told everyone she could in the camp about the rape. Soon
afterward, his aunt disappeared. "Nobody knows what happened to her," he
said. "And that is what happens; one by one everyone disappears."

Shin fears his entire line will disappear: "One day, my family might all be
gone from this earth."

The tragic thing is that it is not only Shin's family's story. All the families in
these sick camps suffer a similar fate. All of the abused, unfairly abducted,
corralled "prisoners" mostly disappear.

In April 1996, Shin was taken by handcuff from his schoolhouse while
blindfolded. He found himself descending into a dark underground chamber.
He was brought to an empty room, plopped on a chair. He was shown a sheet
of paper. On it, appeared the names of his father's brothers, two of whom had
supported South Korea during the Korean War. "I wrote my name and placed
my fingerprint on the bottom of the document."

The next day, he was taken to a torture chamber; Shin was 14. All kinds of
torture instruments were around him. He was stripped, his legs were cuffed
and his hands were tied with a rope. "I was hung by my legs and hands from
the ceiling. Someone told me to confess the truth about an escape plan. I said I
knew nothing."

"I had no fear. Even today my lack of fear remains a mystery to me. A
charcoal fire was started and brought near to my back. I felt the intense heat
and shrieked. I struggled hard to avoid the flames. My torturers pierced me
with a steel hook near my groin. I blacked out. I don't know how long I was
unconscious. But I awoke -- rocked by my own feces and urine."

Life & Human Rights in North Korea

It is hard to listen to Shin Dong-hyuk's story. It is so wrenching, so intense; it
is hard to digest, never mind to write about with any objectivity.

My friend Michael Danby, a member of the Australian Parliament from
Melbourne, pushed to have the Ninth International Conference on North
Korean Human Rights and Refugees in Australia. He has helped many North
Koreans. The spiritual mentor of these sessions is the grand man Benjamin
Yoon of the Citizens' Alliance for North Korean Human Rights. He is an old
friend of former Czech President Vaclav Havel, and I had met him in Prague.
Next year's 10th session is in Toronto.

I sit with Shin as he gets off the stage. With him is Sun Mo, a modern artist
and escapee from North Korea. I hope to see them in Seoul in May.

As I look at Shin Dong-hyuk, I want to say something comforting. He looks at
me briefly but turns away.

He reminds me of a lost cat looking for comfort.

As he walks away from the table, he turns back -- a pained, tortured nod in my
direction.

Welcome to North Korea -- the Democratic People's Republic.

(UPI International Columnist Marc S. Ellenbogen is chairman of the Berlin,
Copenhagen and Sydney-based Global Panel Foundation and president of the
Prague Society. A founding trustee of the Democratic Expat Leadership
Council who has advised political personalities, he sits on the National
Advisory Board of the U.S. Democratic Party.

Citizens’ Alliance for North Korean Human Rights (NKHR)

Human Rights in North Korea

ABC Radio National

James Carleton: Well North Korea doesn't receive too much media attention
beyond the questions of its nuclear ambitions, or perhaps the health of its
supreme leader, Kim Jong-Il, and there is scant coverage of the almost
incomprehensible human rights abuses in that country, resembling in scope, if
not scale, the gulags of Stalin's Soviet Union. It's estimated 200,000 people
are currently held in North Korea's political prison camps, where torture and
executions are common practice.

Meanwhile, the country faces yet another food disaster, after consecutive
years of flooding and crop devastation. It is one of the most secretive societies,
as we know, and the full extent of the human rights violations is hidden by
this rigid isolation.

But a conference yesterday in Melbourne did shed some light on the situation.
One of the convenors, the federal Labor member for Melbourne Ports,
Michael Danby (he's the chairman of the Australian Committee for Human
Rights in North Korea). And also speaking at the conference, Jae-Chun Won,
professor of law at South Korea's Handong International Law School. He's
also practised law in the United States as an assistant New York district
attorney, and he's contributed to a major US Commission on Religious
Freedom Report into North Korea.

I'm very pleased to say both men are with me now from Melbourne. Jae-Chun,
Michael, good morning.

Both: Good morning.

James Carleton: Michael, may we start with you. This conference of yours,
it's had first-hand accounts of the situation in North Korea?

Michael Danby: Oh, some of them so dramatic I wish people had heard them.
People who've grown up in a political prison camp who only escaped when
they were 24. Who, together with a friend, jumped across electrified fences,

This is the transcript of the interview of Michael Danby and Jae-chun Won by ABC

Radio National on March 21, 2009.

Life & Human Rights in North Korea

and the friend was killed, and they had to make a decision to step over their
body. People who are brilliant jazz pianists who subsequently studied at the
Tchaikovsky School of Music in Moscow, imprisoned because of them
wanting to play something other than the rigid patterns set down by the North
Korean regime. Very dramatic testimony. And we decided to do it deliberately,
to try and give people an insight into how ordinary North Koreans suffer
under this terrible regime.

James Carleton: Jae-Chun Won, to you, we know there are many
authoritarian countries on earth, and yet somehow they seem to bear no
resemblance whatsoever to North Korea. What is it about the Kim dynasty
that has made it such a uniquely abusive place?

Jae-Chun Won: Hi James. There are two things that I want to emphasise.
One is the women and children, usually they're the weakest and they suffer
more in this kind of situation, and two, North Korea's own caste system. What
North Korea did is that they divided the entire population into three categories,
like loyal category, wavering categories, and hostile category. And then they
again divided the entire population into 51 sub-categories, and basically once
you are an enemy of the state, then forever you stay that way and you cannot
ever get access to education, and jobs, and other things.

For example, 'guilt by association'. What happened in a situation like a
concentration camp, is that if your father is allegedly becoming a political
prisoner, then the whole family, the mother and children, even children, will
be sent to the political prison camp.

OK, I could see why they do that, because they want to erase the bad blood,
just like what Cambodia did during the atrocities. But what we're finding
recently like honourable Danby said, there are people, they are born in this
concentration camp; they never saw outside. And imagine, you're born as a
prisoner, they do not have citizenship. What does that mean? They are not
recognised as a legal person. So if anybody, a prison guard, killed these
children, then they're not going to be penalised. Imagine, things like this still
going on today.

James Carleton: I mean, is there a rationale for such a policy to the extent
that one can conceive of one?

Jae-Chun Won: Well it's difficult to understand even from a South Korean
point of view, but my understanding is I guess that there is some point that
Kim Jong-il's father felt that there are some people, they are no good, and they
do not deserve a second chance, which all the western countries, and we
believe that after proper penalty we rehabilitate them. So what they do, they

Citizens’ Alliance for North Korean Human Rights (NKHR)

want to literally erase particular blood. Difficult to comprehend, but if North
Korea feels that way to certain people, like religious people or whatever, then
it's just—but that's the scary part of it, the Juche, how they're running as kind
of almost a mediaeval, feudal/religious cult. So it's difficult to understand, but
that's the current situation.

However, we have to also recognise that there are some openings in North
Korea. There's a growing of the street market of the local women, so that is
kind of giving conflicting messages, but is still happening; it is happening in
the reality of North Korea, kind of give us a challenge for West and South
Korea for the engagement with the nuclear issue, human rights issue,
economic issues, so we have to come up with a comprehensive way to work
with North Korea within the boundaries of the international community.

James Carleton: Did you, Michael Danby, get the sense that there were some
cracks, some openings here, at your conference, given you had some high
level meetings?

Michael Danby: There was some grainy footage shown of current life in
North Korea. And two experts said to me, there's some interesting reflections
on that film which I want to share with your listeners. One, just as Professor
Won said now, there were women sitting outside, very brave women, with
little hand-written signs telling of goods that they had in the shop behind them.
They're not allowed to display them publicly, and can you believe it, the law
prescribes that only women over 49 are allowed to sell in these back-alley
markets.

Then there was a confrontation between security police and an elderly woman
on her way to work. She wasn't allowed to wear pants, so the security police
were very angry with her, and started pushing her, and people in the audience
were responding. So what the expert said was, 'This is the first time people in
North Korea start to have the civic bravery to be able to resist security
authorities. Previously in the past, they would have been too scared, they
would have been shot or treated extremely violently.

Yes, that's extraordinary. I saw that from the South Korean point of view, how
North Korean women, they're responding, and protesting, resisting authority.
It's extraordinary, the things that we feel like there is a crack in North Korea,
and there's a possibility, even a possibility that there's some kind of civic
movement, if we work hard and bring more information in to North Korea,
and then take people out and train people and all that.

James Carleton: But the very fact that that mild act of civic resistance,
peaceful as it was, is such a remarkable thing, indicates how far there is to go.

Life & Human Rights in North Korea

Can we get the change that you're looking for under the Kim dynasty still
being intact?

Michael Danby: It's very difficult to conceive of it, because it is exactly as
you say, a much more Stalinist in the old sense regime, where everything is
controlled. But satellite telephones, this grainy footage, the fact that there are
people fleeing, because of hunger and famine, across the Chinese border and
making it via terrible journeys across China, where the opposition of the
Chinese security police to Laos and Thailand, all give you some hope. And
remember I think a lot of your listeners would probably have seen that great
film, Goodbye, Lenin, about how subversive ordinary things of life are to
authoritarian regimes.

One of the people told me that South Korean soap operas, which are seen in
North Korea, have a very disturbing effect on life there. So the real problem
as Professor Won says, it's what happens if we suddenly have a country of 23
million people that disintegrates and goes the way of East Germany? It is a
big problem; we should start thinking about this. It's a problem for just not
South Korea, but it's a problem for China and for the west.

James Carleton: And Professor Won, I expect the East Germans were far
better psychologically prepared for a new life, a new world, than the North
Koreans may have been?

Jae-Chun Won: You're right. That's what we are finding out. And we just
assume that we speak the same language, so we can communicate and we
have the same mentality. But what we found out even during the conference,
is that we have a situation Dong-Hyuk Shin. Incidentally, this gentleman, who
was born in concentration camp, he came and testified for us. He could not
communicate with his own North Korean defectors. Imagine how he can, or
other people can communicate with the south and the rest of the world, so oh
my goodness, there's so much work needs to be done.

James Carleton: Why did he have trouble communicating with the defectors?

Michael Danby: What happened was, because they are encased in such a
prison camp, gulag kind of world, he was not even aware of Kim Jong-Il's
name, they're just prisoners, they're just as described in Ivan Denisovich, by
the great Solzhenitsyn 'zecks'. They're people who don't even understand why
they're there. So while the rest of North Korean society knows the names of
the great leaders and that kind of stuff, these people, 200,000 of them who are
in prison camps in North Korea at the moment, they don't even understand the
outside world, even in North Korea, let alone the rest of the world.

Citizens’ Alliance for North Korean Human Rights (NKHR)

Jae-Chun Won: Just imagine that we have a great pianist, a North Korean
defector—he played the piano. So when I asked this gentleman from the
concentration camp, 'Well, have you ever seen a piano?' he said no, he's never
seen a piano in the concentration camp.

James Carleton: Until you're 24 years old, never heard or seen a piano.

Jae-Chun Won: As though it's an imaginary land of the island, within North
Korea, which even North Korean people, they're fearful, but they don't want
to know what's going on in North Korea. But imagine .

So another issue, if I may James, one of the serious issues, the women-
trafficking, refugee issues, within neighbouring countries such as China. Of
course China is such an economic power, but it's so difficult for us to speak
out. But many women are sold, and they've become victim of trafficking, and
most seriously, imagine North Korean women, who are forced to marry a
Chinese male for example, then they have children. And then these children
are stateless children. They cannot register and they cannot get any legal
benefit whatsoever, they cannot go to school, then their mother will be
repatriated forcibly, back to North Korea. So things like that , I don't think it is
a political issue, it's a humanitarian issue, but these are the people who are the
forgotten people, and we need to speak out, otherwise they will be suffering
and they will suffer most.

James Carleton: And Professor Won, in the first instance then, do we put
pressure on China, because they're much more likely to be responsive to
lobbying?

Jae-Chun Won: I'd like to give this question to Mr Danby.

Michael Danby: Well, it's a very difficult question James. You were talking
about Chinalco before and the Chinese economic power; it's very hard to get
the United Nations Commissioner for Refugees to look at the issue of the
500,000 North Koreans who are living across the border. The problem is that
China, although it's a member of the treaty that says these people should be
considered as refugees or the UNHCR should be allowed to come in, just
blanket says No. And we have a terrible situation, not just of human
trafficking of women, forced marriages; but you have people, children
stateless, you have North Koreans starving, coming across the border; you
have the horrible prospect of them being returned forcibly if they're caught,
and,you know, they go straight back into the gulag, straight back into the
North Korean concentration camp, prison camp, labour camp system. And
there are very few that make it with the help of some brave Chinese across
China to Kunming and then across the Mekong River, and we saw the footage

Life & Human Rights in North Korea

of how a single family did that, and again, it was—you just have to see things
to realise to realise how lucky we are in Australia, that we don't have to think
of even lives like this.

Jae-Chun Won: I think that as for China, we need to make a statement. For
example, South Korean's new president, Lee Myung-Bak, with his state talk
with the Chinese leader, did mention during the state talk, that 'Please do not
repatriate North Korean refugees back to North Korea.' Believe it or not South
Korean past administration hasn't done that for the last 10 years. So I think it's
only fair that the Australian government, yes, the economic trade and
cooperation is important, but I need to make the point that please do not send
at least women back to North Korea, or if you want to send them, please let's
have an interview, or let the international community interview them so that
we can see whether they're refugees or not. And at the same time, also let's not
send back the women if they have children to take care of. These are the
issues that I'm sure the Chinese will be able to respond and they will respond.
And unfortunately I don't think many countries actually raise the issues. Yes,
we need to provide aid, but we also need to talk about these issues, because
unless we talk about these people in concentration camps, persecution, then
they will be forgotten people, and the best way to save them is talk about them,
and also approach it comprehensively so that we can build a much better
security within our region.

You know, North Korea now has an intercontinental missile capacity with a
nuclear head that can hit the mainland United States, and imagine, that
distance, most of Asia is within the range. That is a scary thing if they think
like this.

James Carleton: Michael Danby, before I let you both go, gentlemen, could
you update us on the food situation in North Korea? Did the conference shed
any light on that?

Michael Danby: I think there isn't a famine there at the moment, because
there are good years, and bad years. There is a food shortage, and of course
your access to food depends on which of the 51 categories you're in, James. If
you're in the untrusted elements of the population, you're deprived of food.
Overwhelmingly, the international food that's delivered goes to people
associated with the army and their families. Very strangely, despite the
shortage of food, the six shipments that have come from the United States
have suddenly—the North Koreans say they don't want any more. I think it's
more related to the geopolitical situation than the shortage of food or famine
in North Korea, because they don't want the Americans or the Chinese, or
whoever is giving them food aid, to have any leverage. So I don't think it's

Citizens’ Alliance for North Korean Human Rights (NKHR)

related to how terrible the situation is in North Korea as far as access to food
by elements of the population.

Jae-Chun Won: Right. As far as food is concerned, yes, we need to give
unconditional aid to the women and children, but like Mr Danby said, that
food needs to go to the needy, so monitoring needs to be there. And I think
that on those issues, South Korea, and I think Australians and especially
Melbourne and the people who host us, appreciate that. I could see how
Australia and Koreans and Asia can work together on common issues and
speak with the same voice. So I believe that yes, we are going through the
kind of winter still, but I really appreciate sunny Australia and the spring will
come, and those relationships as well.

James Carleton: And Professor Jae-Chun Won, you've been a prosecutor in
the US. When that spring comes, will it involve you having a senior North
Korean official in the witness box before you, charged with crimes of
inhumanity; is that a dream?

Jae-Chun Won: Well that's a very point-blank question. I would just say that
if someone does something wrong, I think they need to pay for that. Of course
they could be forgiven, but there are other issues, other approaches like South
African issues has the Truth and Reconciliation. I think everything's open, we
need to talk about it, and let's take away the fear, and then let's bring more
certainty, but at the beginning, let's concentrate on women and children and
something we can do right now. But I thank you for your question. And then
North Korean leaders need to be aware right now that they need to be
informed that some of the things they're doing are violating the international
criminal law, and then like the Sudan case, that they cannot get away with it.
So let's encourage them, educate them, so that when they become a part of the
international community they will know how, and certainly they can come in
a more constructive way to better themselves, for their sake and regional
security.

James Carleton: Well Professor Jae-Chun Won from Handong International
Law School in South Korea, and Michael Danby the Member for Melbourne
Ports, and chair of the Australian Committee for Human Rights in North
Korea; gentlemen, both, thank you very much indeed.

Both: Thank you James, appreciate it.

James Carleton: Some grave news and yet some small reason there for hope,
as we've heard.

Life & Human Rights in North Korea

Guests

Michael Danby
Federal MP for the seat of Division of Melbourne Ports Chair, The Australian
Committee for Human Rights in North Korea

Jae-Chun Won
Professor of Law Handong International Law School South Korea

Presenter

James Carleton

Producer

Muditha Dias

Story Researcher and Producer

Julie Browning

Citizens’ Alliance for North Korean Human Rights (NKHR)

COMMENTS___________________________________________________

WHAT TO DO ABOUT NORTH KOREA?

Michael Danby

MP, Australia

Chair, the Australian Committee for Human Rights in North Korea

Thirty years after Deng Xiaoping’s economic reforms in China, which gave
the world’s largest Communist country at least a partly marketised economy
and lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty, and twenty years
after the first free elections in Poland, which marked the beginning of the end
of European communism, the world still confronts the dilemma of what to do
to help the 25 million people of North Korea, the last relic of the high Stalinist
era of the Cold War. Only in North Korea is the deadly combination of a
totally repressive political system and a totally unworkable communist
economic regime still in place.

Kim Jong-il, hereditary ruler of North Korea, extorts aid money from the west,
and then spends it on the world’s most bloated armed forces while his people
literally starve. His regime brands whole classes of its people as “objectively
hostile elements” and treats them and their children as enemies. It has broken
every commitment it has ever given to the international community, whether
on human rights or nuclear weapons.

On March 20 & 21 200 people gathered in Melbourne at the 9th International
Conference on North Korean Human Rights and Refugees. The conference
was held under the auspices of the National Endowment for Democracy in
Washington and a South Korean NGO, the Citizens Alliance for North
Korean Human Rights. Many guests came from South Korea, others from
Japan, the US, Canada and Europe. They included academics, human rights

This article was published in the Jakarta Post on April 11, 2009.

Life & Human Rights in North Korea

activists, Members of Parliament and government officials. The Korean
community in Australia was strongly represented.

The conference was marked, I’m sad to say, by pessimism and frustration.
North Korea continues to demand and receive large amounts of aid as its price
for good behaviour, but it never seems actually to improve its behaviour. We
heard strongly expressed disagreements among our Korean guests about
whether the conciliatory “sunshine policy” of former South Korean Presidents
Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun, or the tougher policy of the current
conservative President Lee Myung-bak, offered better prospects for advancing
human rights in the North.

We also heard shocking stories of the plight of North Koreans – starved,
regimented, deprived of the most basic rights, trapped in an Orwellian
nightmare of lies and propaganda, cut off from the outside world. At least
250,000 people languish in forced labour camps, where most of them will die.

We were privileged to hear from three defectors from North Korea – one a
talented pianist, one a painter. The third, Shin Dong-hyuk, is the only person
known to have escaped from a North Korean labour camp. While their stories
and their example inspired us, the fact remains that only a trickle of North
Koreans succeed in escaping over the Chinese border, where they face a
dangerous and uncertain future as unrecognised refugees in a country which
does not want them on its soil.

For years the US, Japan, Australia, the EU and other countries have tried to
persuade or bribe Kim Jong-il and his cronies to loosen their grip on power, to
no effect. In his speech to the conference, Australian Foreign Minister
Stephen Smith pledged to keep up Australia’s efforts to bring about an
improvement, but the truth is that no-one knows how or when this will be
brought about.

The UN’s special rapporteur on human rights in North Korea, Thai law
professor Vitit Muntabhorn had just delivered an official report to the UN in
Geneva. So far he is not yet been allowed even to set foot in North Korea.
Professor Vitit’s language to the Melbourne conference was diplomatic, but
his message was clear: there has been no improvement, and there is no
prospect of improvement anytime soon.

Ministers and diplomats are constrained in what they can say in public, but
some people at the conference had more freedom to speak their minds. Carl
Gershman, president of the National Endowment for Democracy, spoke of the
inevitable tendency of all totalitarian regimes to erode, and eventually to
collapse. Two outspoken academics who grew up in the Soviet Union said

Citizens’ Alliance for North Korean Human Rights (NKHR)

bluntly that no amount of persuasion or bribery would induce Kim Jong-il to
moderate his regime, because he and the army-police apparatus he depends on
care only about their own power and wealth, and have no intention of
following either the Soviet path to dissolution or the Chinese path to reform.

The continued existence of the Stalinist regime in North Korea confronts
people of goodwill with a terrible dilemma. If we cut the country off from all
aid, in the hope that this will bring about the downfall of the regime, this will
greatly increase the suffering of the people. If on the other hand the world
engages with North Korea and increases aid, it is likely that the regime will,
as it has done in the past, use that aid to bolster its grip on power, feeding the
party and military elite and starving the people.

I would like to suggest some practical steps. One is that there needs to be
increased pressure on China over its treatment of North Korean defectors.
China must stop repatriating these people to certain death in North Korea,
must recognise them as refugees, and should allow the UNHCR access to the
border region so that defectors/refugees can be helped to leave for third
countries. One speaker, Masaharu Nakagawa MP, a senior member of the
Japanese Democratic Party, suggested that members of western Parliaments
should press to be allowed to visit the border area, and this is something I will
certainly pursue.

Another step is to create every opportunity for North Koreans to engage with
the outside world and see that what their regime tells them about the
‘paradise’ they live in is false. Even controversial economic engagement such
as the Kasong industrial zone which admittedly economically props up the
regime is subversive of the deeply isolated, wolkenkuckkuckscheim (cloud
cuckoo land) that the half cult, half Stalinist regime forces North Koreans to
live in.

Whether they come as students, diplomats or entertainers, every North Korean
who is exposed to the outside world can become an agent of change when
they go home. We know that North Korea fears human rights activism – that’s
why our conference was denounced by an editorial in the North Korean party
daily Rodong Shinmun. We should do everything we can to increase that
pressure.

Michael Danby is a Labor Party member of the Australian House of R

epresentatives and is Chair of the Australian Parliament’s Sub-Committe

e on Foreign Affairs. As Chair of the Australian Committee for Human

Rights in North Korea, he was the host of the 9th International Confer

ence on North Korean Human Rights and Refugees.

Life & Human Rights in North Korea

Toward a Greater Multilateral Cooperation

on North Korea

Nakagawa Masaharu

Member of the House of Representatives

The Democratic Party of Japan

Senior Director of the Committee on Foreign Affairs

First Day

Keynote speakers H.E. Hideaki Ueda, Ambassador in charge of Human Rights
and Humanitarian Affairs, H.E. Seong Ho Jhe, Ambassador at Large for
Human Rights, and Vitit Muntarbhorn, United Nations Special Rapporteur on
the Situation of Human Rights in the DPRK each expounded on North Korean
human rights issues such as Japanese abductees, North Korean refugees,
separated familiesin North and South Korea, and concentration camps.

From Japan, Ambassador Ueda led off with an overview of the abduction
issue. Professor Teresa Morris-Suzuki of Australian National University
followed with a discussion of ethnic Koreans and their Japanese wives and
families who had returned to North Korea under the “repatriation project.”
Notably, Prof. Morris-Suzuki stressed the need for cooperation with South
Korea on those issues.

After remarks by experts and government officials, participants watched some
heartrending documentaries, including Chosun Ilbo’s "On the Border,” and
another documentary about the musical “Yoduk Story.”

In addition, several former North Korean refugees, through various mediums,
called for swift change in North Korea. A painter depicted Pyongyang’s “rule
by mass hypnosis”; a pianist touched the participants’ hearts with his brilliant
performance; and a young man who was born in a concentration camp gave a
testimony about his experience of witnessing the execution of his mother and
brother and subsequently fleeing from there. The Australian media showed a
keen interest in this conference, giving a prominent coverage of these North

This article was published in the Life Funds for North Korean Refugees, No.062 in

April 2009.

Citizens’ Alliance for North Korean Human Rights (NKHR)

Korean refugees’ activities.

Second Day

A roundtable discussion was held among government authorities, experts from
universities and think tanks, and representatives of NGOs. Government
authorities included Australian, South Korean, and Japanese lawmakers, a
former South Korean Vice-Minister of Unification, and ambassadors. In the
discussion, I requested the participants’ cooperation in the following areas.

First, by fine-tuning Japan’s North Korean Human Rights Act, Japan must
continue to fight against North Korea’s abduction and other human rights
abuses. In addition, Japan, like South Korea, must take seriously the
possibility of North Korea’s collapse and be prepared for contingencies.

Second, the current bilateral negotiations between and Japan and North Korea
regarding the abduction issue should be expanded to include South Korea and
other relevant countries. We must no longer sit idly by as the Japan-North
Korea working group within the Six-Party Talks makes little progress. Similar
issues exist between North and South Korea as well. Two Koreas have been
engaged in bilateral negotiations about separated families. As noted during
this conference, abduction and other human rights issues are very broad in
scope. More than 200,000 North Korean refugees are exposed to severe
human rights violations in Northeast China. The relevant neighboring nations
should join hands in confronting North Korea about these and other human
rights issues, such as missing persons from the Korean War and torture and
forced labor in political prison camps. The relevant countries should demand
that North Korea address Japanese abductee and other human rights issues in
a multilateral context.

Third, lawmakers from relevant countries should form a monitoring team to
inspect the local situation along the China-North Korea border. They should
be accompanied by officials from UNHCR’s Beijing office. I hope that
Australian lawmakers would participate as well.

Fourth, the International Parliamentarians' Coalition for the North Korean
Refugees and Human Rights (IPCNKR) plans to hold a general meeting in
Bangkok this year. Human rights are an important political issue for Thailand
for sevaral reasons. Anochie, a Thai citizen, has been kidnapped by North
Korea; Thailand serves as a transit point for North Korean refugees; and it
hosts a growing number of persecuted minorities from neighboring Myanmar.
I requested lawmakers from Australia and other neighboring countries to

Life & Human Rights in North Korea

participate in this year’s meeting.

Achievements and Tasks

Ambassador Ueda gave an overview of the abduction issue, and Prof. Morris-
Suzuki described the return of ethnic Koreans and their Japanese wives and
families to Japan. Prof. Morris-Suzuki’s discussion included a historical
account of the repatriation project of ethnic Koreans, Japanese wives, and
their families, which was implemented by the General Association of Koreans
in Japan (Chongryun) under the direction of the North Korean authorities.
Ambassador Ueda’s and Prof. Morris-Suzuki’s remarks were very effective in
helping the audience understand Japan’s position.

In standing against the North Korean military dictatorship of Kim Jong-il, the
participants reached a consensus that it is important for surrounding countries
to work together to protect the universal value of human rights and raise
international awareness, rather than trying to handle the issues in a series of
disparate bilateral negotiations.

There are two major achievements of this international conference on North
Korean refugees and human rights. First, the Chairman of the Joint
Parliamentary Committee for Foreign Affairs, Defense and Trade and several
other Australian lawmakers, as well as Australia’s human rights and North
Korea experts, have expressed a firm stance that Australia must get involved
in North Korea issues in one form or another. Second, the new network of
lawmakers will enable greater cooperation among various nations in the years
to come.

■

Translated by Young-Deok Choi and Yoon-Suk Choo

Citizens’ Alliance for North Korean Human Rights (NKHR)

International Concerns Over

North Korean Human Rights

Un-Chul Yang

Senior Research Fellow, Sejong Institute, Republic of Korea

The 9th International Conference on North Korean Human Rights & Refugees

Civilian efforts to improve North Korean human rights are ongoing. The 9

International Conference on North Korean Human Rights and Refugees was
held from March 20

to 21

in Melbourne, Australia. About three hundred

participants, including the Honorable Stephen Smith, Minister of Foreign
Affairs of Australia, Vitit Muntarbhorn, UN Special Rapporteur on the
Situation of Human Rights in the DPRK, and H.E. Hideaki Ueda, Ambassador
in charge of Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs, MOFA, Japan, attended
the conference. The meeting’s agenda included the current state of North
Korean human rights abuses and ways to improve the situation. In addition,
participants enjoyed performances by North Korean artists, heard testimonies
by political labor camp detainees and watched documentary films on North
Korea. In general, the conference objectively portrayed the economic plight
and political persecution experienced by North Korean people.

Stephen Smith, the Australian Minister of Foreign Affairs, drew attention to
the seriousness of the human rights violations in North Korea and stressed the
need for more assertive involvement by the international community. To this,
a member of the Australian Parliament and Ambassador Ueda added cautious
yet positive comments concerning returnee-refugees in Japan and the
possibility of future admittance of North Korean refugees. Ambassador Ueda
also presented accounts of the Japanese abductees in North Korea.
Furthermore, in explaining the purpose behind this annual international
conference Carl Gershman, President of the National Endowment for
Democracy (USA), emphasized the need for international cooperation in
liberalization of North Korea.

This article was published in the Current Issues and Policy of the Sejong Institute in

April 2009.

Life & Human Rights in North Korea

Vitit Muntarbhorn, UN Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights
in the DPRK, highlighted North Korea’s disgraceful record as the world’s
worst persecutor of Christians for the seventh consecutive year. He
emphasized that the priority of North Korea’s policy must shift from its
military to its people. Mr. Muntarbhorn also put forth the principle of 4Ps
(Prevention, Protection, Provision, and Participation) to deal with such
pressing issues as food and basic necessities, personal security, and asylum
and migration. In order to improve the human rights conditions in North
Korea, he proposed that the international community help North Korea secure
food, establish constructive aid policies, and take full advantage of the larger
UN system. Lastly, he expressed some optimism about improvement of
human rights in North Korea as a result of continued pressures from the
international community. The participants acknowledged the seriousness of
human rights violations in North Korea and agreed to actively seek ways to
bring further changes.

In order to improve the human rights conditions in North Korea, the United
Nations and the international community are pushing for effective distribution
of food and essential goods, assurance of ordinary citizens’ right to make ends
meet without the interference of the state, cessation of punishment of
repatriated North Korean refugees and abolition of public executions. Long-
term goals include the eradication of extreme forms of surveillance,
improvements in the legal system, preventive measures against North Korean
exodus, termination of human trafficking, protection from exploitation and
violence, and protection of the defenseless. As for the supervision of food aid,
the principle of ‘no access, no food’ is becoming a requirement.

■

Translated by So-Jin Kim and Yoon-Suk Choo

Wyszukiwarka

Podobne podstrony:
09 Spring QUATERLY JOURNAL
09 Fall QUATERLY JOURNAL
09 Fall QUATERLY JOURNAL
download Zarządzanie Produkcja Archiwum w 09 pomiar pracy [ www potrzebujegotowki pl ]
09 AIDSid 7746 ppt
09 Architektura systemow rozproszonychid 8084 ppt
Summerhill prezentacja
TOiZ 09
Wyklad 2 TM 07 03 09
09 Podstawy chirurgii onkologicznejid 7979 ppt
Wyklad 4 HP 2008 09
09 TERMOIZOLACJA SPOSOBY DOCIEPLEŃ
09 Nadciśnienie tętnicze
wyk1 09 materiał
Niewydolność krążenia 09
09 Tydzień zwykły, 09 środa
09 Choroba niedokrwienna sercaid 7754 ppt

więcej podobnych podstron