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Category: Human Rights

November 15, 2009

The Wall Street Journal on Obama, China, and Chongo-Ri (Bumped)

So, if you’re coming here from the Wall Street Journal editorial to see the satellite images of Chongo-ri, you’ll find them here. You might also want to read more about North Korea’s labor camp system and what happens to people who enter those camps. We’re about to find out whether President Obama is prepared to pay the debt that his Nobel Peace Prize represents. Thanks to DanB, a/k/a Dan Bielefeld for getting the word out. If you want to help...

Categories Human Rights/Refugees/The Camps
November 9, 2009

North Korea Faces Review by U.N. Human Rights Council

And here’s a sample of what the council will hear: In the course of beatings, the guards broke all his teeth, leaving him toothless for four years. To deprive him of sleep, the guards at the underground prison at Hoeryong city near the Chinese border used “pigeon torture”. Jung was handcuffed and tied by his arms to an object behind him so he could not stand or sit. He felt as though his bones were breaking through his chest while...

Categories "United" Nations/Human Rights
November 9, 2009

In the WSJ: What Obama Should Say to North Korea

On the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, Melanie Kirkpatrick sees an opportunity for Barack Obama’s “tear down this wall” moment: In September, as required under 2004 legislation, Mr. Obama named his special envoy for North Korea human rights, Robert King, a former Capitol Hill staffer. State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said, “We’re deeply concerned about the situation in North Korea, particularly the plight of North Korean refugees” in China. Human rights, he said, is a “big priority.”...

Categories Human Rights
November 8, 2009

Photos from Saturday’s March and Demonstration for NK Human Rights

I would love to write more, but at least for now, here are some photos from Saturday’s March from near City Hall (actually, just to the right of the Deoksu Palace) to Seoul Station, where we joined a somewhat larger collection of groups assembled to call for freedom for North Koreans and meant to coincide with the 20th anniversary of the opening of the Berlin Wall. The woman pictured speaking below is a North Korean survivor of sexual trafficking —...

Categories Activism/Human Rights/Refugees
November 3, 2009

Ban Ki Moon Is to Human Rights What Roman Polanski Is to Child Welfare

It was a horror that came from within, that consumed and devastated entire communities and families. It was a horror that left you as survivors of a trauma which to the world beyond your borders was unimaginable, even though we all now know it happened.We will not pretend to know how you must overcome the unimaginable. We can only offer, in humility, the hope and the prayer that you will overcome — and the pledge that we stand prepared to...

Categories "United" Nations/Human Rights
October 29, 2009

Survivor Confirms Location of Camp 12

As I have noted before, I recently began working closely with the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea (HRNK) on the identification of North Korea’s concentration and labor camps through satellite imagery. That work has now expanded beyond its beginnings on Google Earth to other sources of imagery, including Digital Globe. This has become a close collaboration and friendship with Chuck Downs, HRNK’s Executive Director, and researcher David Hawk, the author of The Hidden Gulag and a former Executive...

Categories Activism/Human Rights/The Camps
October 28, 2009

Antihuman Crime Investigation Committee Holds Seminar

A group I had not heard of, calling itself in English the Antihuman Crime Investigation Committee (반인도범죄조사위원회), held a seminar yesterday (Oct. 27th) at the Seoul Press Center in Gwanghwamun. I received word of the event last-minute, and was only able to attend part of it, but here are some highlights. After all the necessary introductions and congratulatory remarks (축사), Kim Tae-Jin, president of the Democracy Network against the North Korean Gulag (북한민주화운동본부) and himself originally from North Korea, gave...

Categories Human Rights
October 23, 2009

Organizational Profile: Justice for North Korea (JFNK)

Justice for North Korea (JFNK) is a small, activism-oriented group lead by South Korean pastor, Peter Chung. It has Christian and non-Christian members from both Koreas and a handful of other countries. At times they have been active in the Seoul portion of the multi-city demonstrations in front of Chinese embassies around the world that are coordinated by the NK Freedom Coalition. In May 2007, they started a 444-day campaign leading up to the Beijing Olympics in August 2008. Every...

Categories Activism/Human Rights
October 20, 2009

Nine Refugees Leave Danish Embassy in Hanoi for Seoul

“The nine North Koreans left the Danish embassy this morning and they are now at Noi Bai International Airport checking in before flying to Singapore and then Seoul,” the Vietnamese diplomatic source told AFP, asking not to be named. [….] The nine entered the Danish compound on September 24 hoping to reach South Korea, Kim Sang-Hun, an activist who said his group helped them reach the embassy, told AFP earlier. [AFP] That must be the same Kim Sang Hun whom...

Categories Human Rights/Refugees/Southeast Asia
October 19, 2009

North Korean official media denies that the camps exist and claims that all of its people lead “the most dignified and happy life.”

Yoon Sang-Hyun, from the ruling Grand National Party, said the North had 10 camps holding about 200,000 prisoners until the late 1990s when it closed down four of them amid mounting international criticism. “Currently, it holds 154,000 prisoners in six places,” he was quoted as saying by Yonhap news agency. [AFP] I don’t know what a South Korean lawmaker is going on when he suggests that North Korea’s gulag inmate population might actually have fallen to 154,000, but when I...

Categories Human Rights/The Camps
October 14, 2009

Interview with Kim Young-il, Executive Director of PSCORE

People for Successful COrean REunification (PSCORE; 성공ì ì¸ 통일을 만들어가는 사람들, aka 성통만사) is a small NGO that works on “democratization, human rights and social issues. [They] hope to bridge the gap between South Korea, North Korea and the international community.” They mostly aim their programs, such as essay contests, a one-on-one tutoring program, a summer English camp, and cultural outings, at students, but they’ve held at least one seminar for the public at large (last Spring). Mark your calendars...

Categories Defectors/Democracy/Human Rights/Reconstruction
October 10, 2009

The Database Center for North Korean Human Rights (and How You Can Help)

I’m very glad I took Dan B’s advice and attended the presentation on the North Korean Database Center (NKDB) for Human Rights. The event was held at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, last Thursday. NKDB founders Kim Sang Hun and Yoon Yeo Sang gave the presentation. The NKDB has created an extensive database of alleged human rights abuses in North Korea, one that is both comprehensive and subject to detailed statistical analysis for journalists, policymakers, and perhaps...

Categories Activism/Human Rights
October 8, 2009

Your Money or Your Life: WaPo on North Korea’s Gulag Shake Down

The Washington Post’s terrific Blaine Harden has written a must-read story, based in large part on the research of Marcus Noland and Stephan Haggard, about an ugly new turn of events in North Korea’s gulag system. North Korea’s infamous penal system, which for decades has silenced political dissent with slave labor camps, has evolved into a mechanism for extorting money from citizens trading in private markets, according to surveys of more than 1,600 North Korean refugees. Reacting to an explosive...

Categories Human Rights/The Camps
October 7, 2009

NKDB Event at SAIS Tomorrow

I apologize for the last-minute notice, but the Database Center for North Korean Human Rights (NKDB) will be holding an event at the US-Korea Institute at SAIS in Washington, D.C., from 12 to 2 p.m. tomorrow (Oct. 8th). The topic will be the Center’s 2009 White Paper on North Korean Human Rights; NED is also a sponsor of the event. It looks like they want you to RSVP, but lunch is provided. And for anyone looking to “get involved,” I...

Categories Human Rights
September 29, 2009

Obama Administration Says First Words About Human Rights in North Korea

Eight months, a missile test, and a nuclear test after President Obama’s inauguration, he has finally gotten around to nominating Bob King to be Special Envoy for Human Rights in North Korea, a move mandated by the North Korean Human Rights Act of 2004 and the North Korean Human Rights Reauthorization Act of 2008. The United States said Friday it was “very concerned” about human rights violations in North Korea, as President Barack Obama named an envoy to focus on...

Categories Activism/Diplomacy/Human Rights/U.S. Politics
September 29, 2009

Kang Chol Hwan on the Concentration Camps

Kang makes a compelling argument for understanding the “root cause” of all of our problems with North Korea: The silence of the international community on the barbaric massacres in the concentration camps committed by Kim Jong-il borders on the criminal. Some 17,000 North Korean defectors in the South are complaining about the atrocity, but no country pays any attention. Even the South Korean government and people do not realize how serious the problem is. As a surgeon may kill a...

Categories Human Rights/The Camps
September 24, 2009

Demonstrations Around the World Today Against PRC’s Repatriation of NK Refugees

A little before 1 p.m. today across the street from the Chinese embassy in Seoul 40+ people gathered to remind the Chinese government of a commitment it made 27 years ago today.  On September 24, 1982, the PRC signed the 1951 U.N. Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and the 1967 Protocol, the major international agreements which lay out how signatory governments say they will handle refugees. Today’s demonstration in Seoul was one of approximately a dozen scheduled for...

Categories Activism/China/Human Rights/Refugees