UMEN, China — The census takers move from house to house, asking pointed questions in Chinese, demanding responses, looking for signs of incomprehension on the faces of those they see lurking in the shadows.

"If you don't understand them, they will think you do not belong, and ask for identification," said a worker at a church that ministers to the Korean-Chinese community that dominates the population of this border town on the Tumen River facing North Korea. "They will arrest you and send you back to North Korea."

The Chinese government has opened what those working with refugees say is the most severe crackdown on North Korean refugees ever undertaken here. Viewing them purely as "economic migrants," China appears determined to convince as many as possible of the 300,000 North Koreans estimated to have fled across the frontier to northeastern China in recent years that they cannot stay.

The crackdown spreads fear among refugees, many of whom shift homes from night to night, flee to shelters in the countryside or try risky trips to Mongolia, en route to South Korea. "The Chinese police are performing a survey covering every house from June to the end of September," the church worker said. "Groups of police scatter around a designated area. They search everything. About 20 or 30 from my church alone have been arrested."

The campaign against the refugee presence began in March but has gained momentum since the episode in June in which seven North Korean family members obtained asylum in Beijing at the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. The Chinese government permitted them to leave on a flight to Singapore, en route to South Korea, avoiding adverse publicity before the International Olympic Committee, meeting in Moscow, selected Beijing as the site for the 2008 Olympics. For many other refugees, the conditions of life as an illegal economic migrant have worsened since Beijing was chosen for the Olympics.

Moreover, many refugees believe, the publicity surrounding the family that escaped through the United Nations High Commissioner's office gave Chinese police and security agents fresh information on how refugees are able to get out of China. The incident "revealed all routes to escape," said a missionary at the Cho Yang Church, a small parish in Yanji, the city about 30 miles west of here that is the heart of the Korean- Chinese community in this region. "Now all channels are blocked."

Refugees hardly dare to appear on the streets of this border town and other communities for fear that the Chinese police, or North Korean security agents working with them, will talk to them, discern where they are from by how they respond and hustle them back to uncertain fates in North Korea. "I try to get some money by begging," said Pang Jin Chul, 20, lingering near a church that he hoped would provide food, a small cash handout and possibly a place to stay. "Now things are getting tough. I am really afraid."

As fast as the Chinese send North Koreans back home, they leave again, many of them within days after again bribing North Korean guards to look the other way. The standard payment is the equivalent in Chinese currency of between $25 and $30. Children darting among the South Korean tourists who flock to the border crossing here for a glimpse across the Tumen River at North Korea are likely to lose everything in their pockets to North Korean guards once they are returned. Many of them are beaten as well, first by the Chinese police, then by the North Koreans, the children said.

"There is no food at home," said Kim Kun, hiding with two other boys on the fringes of a parking lot by the river in hopes of handouts from visiting South Koreans. "We have to come back every time or we will starve to death." The crackdown, however, meant that Kim Kun and his friends, who gave their ages as 17 even though they all looked about 12, often went hungry on this side, too. "We haven't eaten in two days," said Kim as he and his friends began slurping up some flavored ice on a stick given them by South Koreans. The boys stared at uniformed Chinese police on the river bank, then quickly fled when a Chinese security guard, not wearing a uniform, shouted at them.

"If the refugee says he just came looking for food, North Korean authorities will probably let him go after a few days or a month or so," said a missionary at a small church near here. "If he says he got help from a church, he's likely to go to prison and never been seen again." And if the refugee is discovered to have been on his way to South Korea, through Mongolia or via another route, he faces the real possibility of execution as a traitor.

It was that realization that panicked the parents of two young men who believed that they had escaped China when they got to a telephone booth in the narrow buffer zone between the Chinese and Mongolian borders. "We got here safely," the mother quoted her older son as saying triumphantly. The Chinese police, she said, must have arrested her sons right after the call. "They were already in Mongolia," she said. Now she and her husband, who fled North Korea three years ago, are trying to raise enough money, several hundred dollars, to buy their sons out of jail.

While the crackdown lasts, refugees are learning to trust no one. The Chinese have offered rewards to businessmen willing to reveal the names of North Koreans working for them illegally. One businessman sent a busload of North Koreans into a police station after telling them they were on the way to a boat that would take them to South Korea. Ultimately, however, the North's economic problems are so huge that the refugees are likely to have no choice but to keep coming across the Tumen River frontier.

"Conditions are getting much worse in North Korea," says a Korean-Chinese working with refugees in Chang Chun, a large Chinese city north of here. "The number of refugees may go down slightly in the crackdown, but there's no other way out for North Koreans. They have to keep coming, or they will die."

Group Executions and Brutal Prisons

The Chosun Ilbo,22 July 2001.[Editor's Note: A former North Korean People's Army instructor Cho Young Chol, 33, who fled the North in August 1998 and came to the South in December the following year, has recently given an eyewitness account of the gruesome reality of a North Korean prison operated by the State Security Agency, and a secondhand account of a group execution of people charged with aiding fellow citizens to escape to the South. It's rare that the executed have all been identified.] 

On July 1, 1998, six people, among them my elder brother Cho Soung Chol, were executed in public under the Namsan Bridge in Onsong County, North Hamgyong Province. It was dubbed the (South Korean) "National Intelligence Service-instigated Espionage Team Case." Public executions are generally confined to economic criminals, with those of political offenders carried out in secret. It was quite rare that the State Security Agency itself performed the public executions of the six offenders. Though I too was arrested in the same case, I dramatically avoided being executed. 

Being the "wicked gang leader," my elder brother was shot at so many times indiscriminately that his upper body was all but unrecognizable. Executed with him in public were his friends Rim Chun Sam, 43, Chon In Sok, 33, Yun Chang Man, 35, and Kim Yong Su, 33, as well as Chang Chong Kwang, 33, who attempted in vain to escape to the South with his own family. They were convicted on charges of "having smuggled escapees into the South and imported goods through illegal channels in collaboration with the South Korean National Intelligence Service." 

Among the North Koreans they helped escape to the South were the family of Chang In Suk, 60, who took part in the designing of the Juche (self-reliance) Tower in Pyongyang. Our arrests came when Chang's second son, Chong Kwan, was caught by security agents while attempting to escape to the South with his family. Chong Kwan's detention came at the tip of his wife, who he tried in vain to persuade into going to the South with him. At that time a distant relative of ours, residing in northeastern China, Cho Won Chol, who smuggled goods with us, was abducted by North Korean security agents in Tuman, to the North. Whether he is still alive or where he is are unknown. 

Arrested by security agents at our home in the Namyang laborers' district in Onsong County, we were taken to the State Security Agency prison in Onsong County. It was around 9:00pm on September 30, 1997. The State Security Agency facility had 10-odd cells and interrogation rooms. The preliminary questioning room had a chair on which a suspect is fastened, square bars, iron hooks, leather whips, metal chains and buckets. The room with blood-stained walls was terrifying. 

My brother and I were tortured indiscriminately from the very night we were taken to the prison. My brother, treated as a ring leader, got more brutish torture. Reputed for his guts and reticence, my brother adamantly denied charges brought against him. In the ensuing cruel torture, he had his arm and limb joints dislocated and all his teeth broken when struck by a butt plate. His face was disfigured beyond recognition. I was also subjected to brutish torture. I was laid down on a table naked. They tortured me with electric shocks with both the arms and legs fastened tightly. I fell unconscious many a time. They poured cold water over me to wake me out of unconsciousness. Without being allowed to sleep for a week, I was beaten with square bars. I was beaten while being hung from the ceiling upside down. 

They tortured me day after day, demanding to know how much money I had received from the South Korea National Intelligence Service and what espionage missions I had been ordered to fulfil. My denials invited even more and severer tortures. Toward the end I was even made to stick my nose into dung in a toilet stool overnight, and I was brought to near death. 

They made us see other inmates being tortured. I saw one killed instantly when struck on the head with an iron hook, and interrogators dislocating inmates' arms and limb joints. The bodies of those who died from torture were taken away and buried somewhere on the day they met their fate. I remember tens of inmates who were killed in the course of torture. 

The six inmates excluding me were taken out of the prison. That was the last time I saw my elder brother alive. His mouth and lips were all covered with wounds. With his teeth all broken, his spine injured and arms and limbs dangling, he was carried out by two security guards. "At least, you must stay alive and look after our parents," were the last words he had for me. My brother assumed all the charges brought against me. Then he was executed publicly along with his colleagues. 

I was subsequently transferred to the No. 12 Chonggori Reformatory in North Hamgyong province. I heard that a tentative approval had been given to my execution by shooting. I too was mentally ready to be shot to death. The 10-month torture at the State Security Agency prison and hard labor at the reformatory, however, nearly halved my weight to 46kg from 87kg. My flesh was all swollen and I was declared at the threshold of death by the reformatory. My parents came with a stretcher to fetch me. Unable to move, I was carried home aboard a cart. I lay in bed for three months, with my urine and excrements taken care of by others. A strong willpower to survive helped me regain my health enough to stand up and walk. I had to cross the Tumen River to avert being caught by the security authorities who were chasing me tipped off by the remarks I had made to a friend of mine that I would blow up the State Security Agency prison in retaliation for my brother's execution. I encountered them four times in Yanji and elsewhere in northeastern China, but managed to disengage myself on the strength of marshal arts I learned while serving as a commando. I came to South Korea via China and Southeast Asian countries. 

Recalling the heinous torture and slaughter perpetrated in the State Security Agency prison and interrogation room, I am infuriated and when I think of my elder brother and his friends who met a horrible death in front of a crowd, I cannot fall asleep even these days.

Tough Times North Korea Escapees in China

The Guardian, 23 July 2001. Jonathan Watts in Tokyo.

Aid workers who have been secretly helping starving North Korean refugees have broken their silence to protest against a crackdown by China which threatens the lives of tens of thousands sheltering along the border between the two countries. In the past six years many North Koreans have fled a famine estimated to have killed more than 1m people. China, which maintains friendly relations with the Pyongyang regime, treats them as illegal immigrants. This has forced church groups, Sino-Korean families and international aid agencies to work under cover to provide food, clothing, medicine and shelter. These covert relief operations have come under intense pressure since June when China launched a "Strike Hard" campaign which has involved a sharp increase in the number of aid workers arrested and fined and refugees repatriated, many to face death or imprisonment. with the situation deteriorating every day the aid agency Médecins sans Frontières has broken cover to voice its "grave concern" at the attitude of the Chinese authorities.

"What we've seen and heard is that there is a new policy that is putting large numbers of people in jeopardy and making it almost impossible to carry out even the silent kind of support local networks have been giving," an MSF volunteer who has just visited the border said. In the city of Tumen "Strike Hard" posters exhort residents to report criminal activities and to expect house-to-house searches. It adds: "Then criminals of all kinds will be sinking into the sea of the people's battle, becoming like rats running away along the streets while everyone is shouting to beat them." 

Although the campaign is a national one and not restricted to illegal immigrants, aid workers say it is being applied with particular force in border areas. The maximum fine for individuals caught sheltering illegal immigrants has been increase from 3,000rmb to 10,000rmb (£860), and more people are being arrested. 
Four members of the Good Friends organisation, which has been at the forefront of the effort to help the starving North Koreans, were recently jailed for 50 days and questioned under torture about their alleged spying activities. 

In the biggest raid yet, local aid workers say, 4,000 illegal immigrants were arrested in Yanji on the night of June 27. Residents in Tumen - one of the four main border crossing points - say that repatriations have jumped from 20 a week to more than 150. Those sent back can be charged with treason. The maximum penalty for third-time offenders, women who have become pregnant while out of the country, and people who associated with South Korean or Christian groups is death. Amnesty International says repatriated refugees often become the victim of "serious human rights violations, including imprisonment in harsh conditions, torture and the death penalty". 

This prospect has created an atmosphere of terror among the refugees. "People are scared. They are afraid to talk, afraid to meet," the MSF volunteer said. "The crackdown means they have to go into even deeper hiding - they cannot go out to work, they cannot even go out to beg. On top of that, the people who are supporting them are coming under pressure, so they are running out of options." Why China has chosen this moment to act is uncertain. One possible explanation is that it fears a surge of refugees across the 550-mile border as conditions deteriorate. Estimates of the number of North Korean refugees in China range from 10,000 to 500,000. MSF says it is probably about 200,000. 

China Steps Up Deportation of North Korean Refugees

The Chosun Ilbo, 23 July 2001. The Washington Post reported Monday that the number of North Korean refugees deported back to North Korea by China is sharply increasing as security forces have become more vigorous in hunting them down. The US daily cited a report released by 'Medicins Sans Frontiers (MSF or 'Doctors Without Borders), an independent international medical relief organization and winner of the 1999 Nobel Peace Prize.

The report showed that China has been in full gear in forcibly repatriating those who had fled from North Korea since the "Kil-su family" of seven, who sought asylum at the Beijing office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) last June, successfully escaped to Seoul. It cited interviews with residents from border regions, which revealed that around 50 people are forcibly repatriated to the North every other day, a drastic increase from 20 per week in the past. According to MSF, since the Beijing government shored up its effort to return North Korean refugees since last May, the number of the deportees is expected to reach thousands. 

The report also said that posters put up in the border regions encourages residents to report North Korean defectors and warns those who provide shelter to them will be liable to a heavy fine. In some areas of China, the police have set up checkpoints and examine the identity of passengers of minibuses and taxis. Furthermore, they are inspecting identification cards of workers at plants as well as all households by making personal visits. When violators are caught, an US$500 to US$4,000 fine is imposed on them.

HUMAN RIGHTS COMMITTEE STARTS EXAMINATION OF REPORT OF DEMOCRATIC PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF KOREA : 

Socialism Is People's Life and Soul, Delegation Says 
UN Human Rights Committee, 72nd session ,19 July 2001 

The Human Rights Committee this afternoon started its examination of a second periodic report of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea with a Government delegation saying that the people were firmly convinced that socialism as practised in the country was their life and soul. Introducing the report, Ri Chol, Permanent Representative of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea to the United Nations Office at Geneva, said the most heartbreaking obstacle to the Government's human rights work was the division of the nation which had been forced by external forces. He said that the acute political and military confrontation between the Democratic People's Republic of Korea and the Republic of Korea for more than half a century had inflicted an incalculable negative effect on the people's enjoyment of overall human rights and had caused unnecessary fratricidal confrontation in international fora. 

Mr. Chol further said that the people of the Democratic People's Repulic of Korea were masters of their own sovereignty and had chosen socialism as practised in their country. The people firmly believed in the socialist system as a result of their actual experience; there was neither exploitation nor oppression, and everyone led an equal life. Socialism was their life and soul. 

Over the course of their consideration of the report, Committee members queried the delegation of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea on such issues as the state of emergency; complaints mechanisms and the kind of complaints; the right to freedom of movement, particularly the right to travel abroad without permission; the level of gravity of crimes which could lead to death penalty; and the absence of human rights commissions as stipulated in the Paris Agreement, among other things. 

The delegation of the Democratic Republic of Korea was also made up of Sim Hyong Il, Director of the Legislation Department, Presidium of the Supreme People's Assembly; Kim Yong Chol, Counsellor at the Central Public Prosecutor's Office; Ri Gi Sun, Counsellor at the Central Court; Jong Song Il, Division Director, and Pak Dok Hun, Senior Researcher, Ministry of Foreign Affairs; O Chun Thaek, Official from the Cabinet Office; Jong Jong Duk, Interpreter; Kim Song Chol, Counsellor, and Kim Yong Ho, Second Secretary, Permanent Mission of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea in Geneva. 

The Democratic People's Republic of Korea is among the 148 States parties to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and as such it is obligated to prepare periodic reports on how it was implementing the provisions of the treaty. 

When the Committee reconvenes at 10 a.m. on Friday, 20 July, it will continue its consideration of the report of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. 

Summary of Report of Democratic People's Republic of Korea 

The second periodic report (document CCPR/C/PRK/2000/2) enumerates the administrative, legislative and judicial measures taken by the State to implement the Covenant on an article-by-article basis. It says that the sovereignty of the country resides in the workers, peasants, working intellectuals and all other working people. The State determines the political system and pursues economic, social and cultural development according to the wish and requirement of the people. It also makes an effective use of the national resources for the promotion of people's welfare. 

The report said that all citizens enjoy equal rights in all spheres of state and public activity; they are ensured all the rights recognized in the Covenant without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language. religion, political or other opinion. In addition, the Constitution guarantees the legal rights and interests of foreigners in its region; and human rights violations are relieved or compensated. 

The laws in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea guarantee equality of women with men in the economic, cultural, political and all other spheres of state and public life, the report notes; women enjoy the right to vote and to be elected on equal terms with men, the right to work and the right to inherit property and land and that such violation of the right of women as polygamy and the selling of women as a wife or a concubine was prohibited; and gender equality was also guaranteed by the country's Constitution. Women occupied 48.4 per cent of the total employment in the national economy. 

With regard to the death penalty, the report says that it is imposed only for exceptionally serious crimes in strict accordance with the law. The death penalty is confined to five grave kinds of crimes -- conspiracy against the state power, high treason, terrorism, anti-national treachery, and international murder. Sentences of death are declared only by the Central Court and may be executed only with the approval of the Presidium of the Supreme People's Assembly of the Republic. 

Introduction of Report 

RI CHOL, Permanent Representative of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea to the United Nations Office at Geneva, said that not only had the Government legalized by law the human rights of all citizens, it had also enforced popular policies for the practical exercise and enjoyment of these rights. The laws did not allow social inequality, instability, exploitation of men by men and other sources of social evil. Every citizen enjoyed the benefit of free education, medical care and free supply of dwelling houses, and was ensured a job in conformity with his or her ability and aptitude. 

One could not find unemployment, illiteracy, homelessness, nor such social troubles as collective violence, prostitution, or drug abuse in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Mr. Chol said. The State was stable both politically and socially; however, the people had had a few difficulties and hardships in their enjoyment of their human rights during recent years. There had been a hostile manoeuvring by certain forces to isolate and suffocate the country; the unilateral political pressure, merciless economic sanctions and reckless military threats had greatly impeded the Democratic People's Republic of Korea's efforts to improve the situation of human rights. 

Mr. Chol said that the people of the Democratic People's Repulic of Korea were masters of their own sovereignty and had chosen socialism as practised in their country. The people were firmly believed in their socialist system as a result of their actual experience, there was neither exploitation nor oppression, and everyone led an equal life. Socialism was their life and soul. 

Mr. Chol continued to say that the Government of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea would continue with its efforts to promote and protect human rights in conformity with the aspiration of the people and the ever growing demand of the society. The most heartbreaking obstacle to the Government's human rights work was the division of the nation which had been forced by external forces. He said that the acute political and military confrontation between the Democratic People's Republic of Korea and the Republic of Korea for more than half a century had inflicted an incalculable negative effect on the people's enjoyment of overall human rights and had caused unnecessary fratricidal confrontation in international fora. 

The historical Pyongyang meeting and the 15 June North-South Joint Declaration issued last year had dissolved the mistrust and confrontation, and had opened the bright road to national reconciliation and reunification, the Permanent Representative said. Following the Declaration, dialogue, contacts, exchange and cooperation were being promoted in political, military, economic, cultural, humanitarian and other fields.

Mr. Chol said that the positive change showed that the Democratic People's Republic of Korea and the Republic of Korea could solve their problems and could bring about national reunification for themselves once they sat together from the standpoint of national independence and great national unity. The Democratic People's Republic of Korea respected the international human rights instruments and attached importance to the dialogue and cooperation with United Nations human rights bodies. It would discharge its obligations for the global respect of the rights and freedom of peoples under the ideal of independence, peace and friendship. 

Discussion of Report 

In response to the written questions prepared by Committee members beforehand, the delegation said that the International Covenant had been incorporated into domestic legislation and could be invoked before courts. However, there was no case in which the provisions of the Covenant were invoked in courts. 

The delegation said that every body in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea had the right to lodge complaints against any public servants with the highest body; the inquiry could be carried out once the petitions or complaints were received by the higher authorities; individuals were protected from any vengeful acts from the authors of violations of their rights; and those officials involved in such cases were either "criticised" or disciplinary measures were taken against them. 

The first step taken after power was taken by the people was the distribution of land under the motto of "land to the tiler", the delegation said. People's committees were established to strengthen the sovereignty of the people and to implement the measures to a socialist system. Since 1948, the people had continued to exercise their political and social power without anyone telling them what to do from outside. 

In order to solve the food problem, the Government had taken revolutionary measures in promoting the growth of various seeds and other vegetables, the delegation said. A number of animals were introduced to include as food and fishery activities were enlarged with more people employed in those activities. Small-scale industries were set up to produce food with the aim of reaching all the people in all places. 

With regard to alleged disappeared persons, the delegation said that newspapers were used to find persons in the event they were reported missing by relatives, the delegation said. In 1995, when people disappeared because of the flood, the people's committees were able to identify those missing with the help of parents. In addition, the Government was caring for orphans and elderly people. 

Acts of armed conspiracy against the State were among the serious crimes which were punished by capital punishment, the delegation said. In addition, high treason, terrorism, anti-national treachery and international murder were crimes also punishable by capital punishment. Between 1998 and 2000, there had been 15 death sentences handed down by courts, out of which 13 were carried out while two were commuted. No execution was carried out in public, except for one case in 1992, when, at the demand of the people, a person who committed a brutal crime against his grandparents was executed in public. 

The delegation said that cases of acts of torture were rarely reported and if found the perpetrators were punished severely. In 1999, there had been one case of torture and the author had been punished. Two other cases of torture had been reported in 2000 and the perpetrators were repressed legally. 

In the country, there were only reform institutions to hold law offenders, and the allegation that there were secret "prison camps" was sheer slander created by the enemies of the country, the delegation said. In 2000, there were 1,426 inmates in the reform institutions who were confined for acts of stealing State properties, smuggling and other crimes. The average period of confinement was three years. 

The delegation said that the allegation that compulsory labour was practised in the country was unfounded. There was no forced labour with regard to public work projects as alleged by some quarters. 
The principle of presumed innocent was respected against any suspect under pre-trial custody, the delegation said. The suspect was entitled legal counsel and relatives were informed about the person's detention. The Republic had no preventive detention system. 

The right to freedom of movement was guaranteed to all persons residing in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, the delegation said. The number of people leaving the country with visits had increased each year; in 1998, 17,440 Koreans were allowed to leave while 65 demands were dismissed because of the absence of consent from the countries of destination. In 1999, 29,875 were able to travel while 102 were refused entry to the countries of destination. In 2000, 30,650 Koreans travelled abroad. Permission for travel should be granted by citizens' committees. 

Following the response of the delegation, a number of Committee Experts raised a series of questions. An Expert said that the report was rudimentary and did not contain information which reflected the internal social situation; the society continued to be a closed vis-a-vis the outer world; and the Committee lacked information which might have been provided to it by a number of non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Another Expert also asked if NGOs organizations were working in the field of human rights promotion and protection. 

The delegation was asked to elaborate on the conditions in which an arrest was made by police, and the period between the suspect's detention and his appearance before the judge. 

Other Committee members also put questions on such issues as the state of emergency; complaints mechanisms and the kind of complaints; the right to freedom of movement, particularly the right to travel abroad without permission; the level of gravity of crimes which could lead to the death penalty; and the absence of human rights commissions as stipulated in the Paris Agreement.

An Jung-Sook's Letter of Protest Sent to Geneva

The Chosun Ilbo 9, July 2001. Last year for the first time in 16 years, North Korea submitted a report describing the human rights situation in their country. On June 19th the international community in Geneva agreed to discuss the report. However, at nearly the same time the mother of Yu Tae-jun, An Jung-Sook, filed a letter of protest with the international society representing human rights concerning the reported execution of her son. The following articles include the contents of the letters of protest she and the Citizen's Alliance for Yu Tae-jun sent to the international community.

An appeal to the conscience of the world 

by Yu Taejun's mother 

My son, Yu Taejun, I and my grandson, Yoonho, are all North Korean defectors. In search for freedom, we came all the way to South Korea and became South Korean citizens. But last year my son was missing after leaving for China and this year I've heard that he died after severe torture. Ever since then, I have been living in tears and now all my tears are dried up. 

On June 12, North Korea aired on Pyongyang Broadcast what according to them was my son's voice stating that he was still alive. But that was not my son's voice. How could a mother not recognize her own child's voice? Why would I lie to you? Almost all the things that the voice talked about was a made up story. But our South Korean government has been saying repeatedly that the strange voice is my son's. They are not even trying to listen to what I have to say. 

I no longer have a place to appeal. My grandson is living in this strange land. He needs a father. Please help me. 

Whenever my son completes a sentence he does it with gentleness. But the voice of the broadcast sounded too ringy and strange. Since my son was born and raised in Pyongyang, he has a Pyongyang accent. The voice has a Hamhung accent which is completely different from the former. In his twenties, my son lived in Hamhung but he was always made fun of because he could not get rid of his Pyongyang accent. How is it possible that all of a sudden he could use a Hamhung accent? 

The voice claims that he was tricked by my brother, An Hyun-Gyo, to flee North Korea. But my brother died during the Korean War. How could my brother who died 50 years ago trick him? The voice also said that South Korean intelligence enticed him. But my son jumped into the sea from Tianjin Harbor and was smuggled into Pusan. 

My son has dreamed of fleeing North Korea ever since he was a boy and secretly listening to South Korean broadcasts. He even bought a compass and trained his body strictly by climbing mountains and walking. Where now is this man whose dream was to be a writer in South Korea? 

When he fled North Korea he wanted to go with his wife but she refused and he escaped with his three-year old son on his back. The North Korean government says that he came back on his own but there is no reason why he would go back to North Korea leaving behind his young son. The South Korean government has gotten rid of the house he used to live in as well as his citizenship. 

Please, do not forget my sad appeal. North Korea should tell the truth now. Until now countless people have been kidnapped by North Korea but almost no one escaped successfully. If my son is really alive, North Korea should reveal my son's face. Please help me to hold my son's hands and talk to him again. Because of their hardships, North Korea is listening to the voice of the international community. The fact that they submitted a report even if it might be full of lies to the Human Rights Commission after 16 years is proof. 

I ask you to protest to North Korea. If my son is really dead, North Korea should tell the truth. That is the way for my son to restore his honour. For the future of my grandson who will grow up in South Korea, I pray that you will protest against North Korea. 

Sincerely, 

The mother of Yu, Taejun, An Jung-sook 

An Appeal to the conscience of the world 

by Citizen's Alliance for Yu Taejun 

“Where is our missing son of Korea, Yu Taejun?" 

The case of Mr. Yu Taejun is important for a number of reasons. It shows just how far the cause for human rights in North Korea has come. It reveals what depths North Korea is willing to sink to in order to gain diplomatic legitimacy. It shows what concessions South Korea is willing to make to help North Korea gain this legitimacy. Finally, it demonstrates how in fact nothing has changed in North Korea. 

Yu, 31, and his family fled North Korea in 1998 and settled in South Korea for a year and a half. He then traveled back to the Chinese-Korean border in search of his wife who remained in North Korea. Despite the difficulties involved, Yu found his wife and planned on bringing her back with him to join their five year-old son being taken care of by his mother in South Korea. But things took a tragic turn for the worse when Yu was reportedly captured and brought back to the Stalinist country last year in June. South Korean officials soon after confirmed these reports to Yu’s grief-stricken mother. Ever since then his whereabouts have been unknown. But in March of this year, credible reports circulated back to South Korea that Yu had been tortured and publicly executed for the capital offense of having associated with South Koreans. 

At the time of Yu's capture, South Korea’s Kim Dae Jung was pressing forward his reconciliation policies toward the North culminating with the historic summit at Pyongyang in June 2000. The pleas of human rights groups advocating for more information on cases like Yu's fell on deaf ears in Seoul out of fear of upsetting the North’s dictator and hindering the momentum of peace on the peninsula. After the summit, Kim Jong Il himself launched a public relations campaign that sought to put behind his country’s well-deserved reputation as a pariah and terrorist country. The North’s leader was largely successful and established diplomatic relations with several EU nations. It also made significant headway into the possibility of joining ASEAN. Amidst all of these activities, the North’s most ardent supporter was Kim Dae Jung whose “sunshine policy”committed the South to unconditionally supporting the North’s efforts to revitalize its economy and obtain more foreign aid. 

When the pleas on behalf of Yu grew louder and gained more attention in the global media, the North Korean regime felt compelled to respond. In June 2001, North Korean radio broadcasted Yu's alleged voice claiming that he was alive and had voluntarily surrendered to the North after being deceived by the South. The Pyongyang broadcast was a significant coup for human rights activists. While there is little doubt, at least according to Yu’s own mother, that the voice in the broadcast is not of Yu, the fact that the North Korean regime went to such extremes as broadcasting a faked recording is remarkably revealing. It proves that Pyongyang is actually self-conscious of protests by human rights groups, especially when those protests are carried by the global media to potential donor nations. 

True to form, Kim Dae Jung's government has prima facie accepted the North’s broadcast as being true. Accordingly, Seoul considers the matter closed. Such blind faith in a regime that has up till now given every reason not to be trusted is inexcusable. Médecins Sans Frontières and other reputable NGOs left North Korea for the sole reason that the government could not be trusted. Indeed why Kim Dae Jung has not followed up the radio broadcast with the simple request that Yu be shown to his mother belies his own confidence in the veracity of the North’s claims. Apparently then, the Nobel Prize winner not only fears upsetting Kim Jong Il, but he also fears proving the tyrant to be a liar. 

Yu's five year old son is still waiting for his father who told him that he would be coming back soon with a watermelon. His family who risked their lives escaping the prison-country and now live in a country seemingly more concerned about the feelings and reputation of a tyrant over the life of one of their own citizens are waiting for him anxiously. This family does not demand that Seoul recover Yu from the North so much as they demand the truth. 

Thus far the South Korean government has gone at great lengths in appeasing the North’s demands. With no questions asked, South Korea has donated significant amounts of money and food to the North’s military and Pyongyang elite. When one of South Korea’s citizens, which all North Korean defectors are by law, had been assassinated in Seoul by N. Korean agents in 1997, Kim Dae Jung’s regime made no official protest. In light of Kim Dae Jung’s record, it seems futile to demand that Seoul not make this one last concession to the North, that is, the truth. So we appeal to the world on behalf of a South Korean citizen denied the support of the South Korean government that the truth of Yu Taejun be known once and for all.

Escape From a Prison-State

Washington Post, 3 July 2001. LAST WEEKEND seven members of a North Korean family managed to achieve what tens of thousands of other refugees from their country's brutal dictatorship have been unjustly denied: protection provided by the United Nations and asylum in South Korea. Like up to 300,000 other North Koreans, the family of Jung Tae-jun fled the state-imposed starvation, police brutality and labor camps of the north for China, where they hid for two years among the ethnic Korean population. Unlike all the rest, they managed to contact the Beijing office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, which, after several days of standoff, overcame China's resistance to allowing their evacuation. This small victory for the UNHCR, which has done little to help one of the world's biggest communities of refugees, ought to raise a much larger question: Why should the thousands of other Korean refugees in China be denied similar assistance?

The first obstacle is the Chinese government, which has signed an international convention on protection of refugees but refuses to respect its terms. The Communist government, still friendly with the North Korean regime of Kim Jong Il, does not maintain tight security along its northeast border, so hundreds of thousands of desperate North Koreans can slip across. But it will not allow the UNHCR to operate in the area or screen the arrivals, instead ludicrously insisting that all are mere economic migrants not suffering from persecution by the world's strictest totalitarian government. As a result anywhere from 30,000 to 300,000 North Koreans live a precarious existence in northeast China; periodically Chinese authorities conduct roundups and deport the emigrants back across the border -- where they face prison camp or execution for the crime of fleeing. Some make desperate efforts to reach South Korea via Mongolia or Southeast Asia. But only a few hundred have made it in the past 10 years.

Earlier this year an extraordinary total of 11.8 million South Koreans signed a petition to the United Nations asking for better treatment for the refugees. But it's not clear their own government is entirely on board. South Korean officials have not pressed China to grant the refugees access to the UNHCR or freedom to travel to the South, instead preferring what they call "quiet diplomacy." The government of Kim Dae Jung may fear that China would react to serious pressure on the issue by sealing its border with North Korea, making the situation even worse.

But it may also be that some in South Korea and in the West fear success. If China were to allow more North Korean emigrants to be designated refugees and evacuated to the South, enormous numbers might head for the border. As all the parties well know, it was just such an outpouring of refugees that caused the collapse of East Germany's Communist regime in 1989. China no doubt prefers North Korea's dependent Communists to a united and democratic Korea. And though South Korea hopes for unification with the North some day, it fears a precipitous collapse of the Pyongyang regime that would swamp it with refugees.

Thanks to such concerns, North Korea's refugees have been hemmed into a miserable no-man's land, both diplomatically and literally. The bravery of the Jung Tae-jun family last week at last put their suffering on the international agenda. The United Nations and the Bush administration should act to keep it there -- by beginning a serious campaign to give the UNHCR access to the thousands of families left behind.

A Portrait of True Grit: How an escapee was caught, tortured and escaped again

Newsweek 2 July 2001, By Ron Moreau. 

Park Choong Il is lucky to be alive, but is prepared to die. He keeps a small plastic bag filled with rat poison in his pocket. “I would rather kill myself than be taken back to prison in North Korea,” says the 23-year-old former street urchin, who recently escaped from Kim Jong Il’s dictatorship for the second time in 18 months. “I don’t even like to remember what happened to me. It’s too painful to think about.”

PARK IS ONE OF THOUSANDS of desperate North Koreans who’ve escaped from that impoverished country in recent years. Nearly all flee into China, and many are quickly arrested by Chinese police and, like Park, forcibly returned to the communist regime, where they are punished by internment in Pyongyang’s brutal prison system. Frail and boyish-looking, Park is suffering from memory lapses as a result of the mistreatment he claims to have suffered during his eight-month ordeal. Thinking he was dying, North Korean officials released him from prison last August and allowed him to go to his uncle’s house. But Park recovered. Last April he fled his country for the second time, swimming across the Tumen River into China. There, he met volunteers for the Japan-based Life Fund for North Korean Refugees, a nongovernmental organization whose goal is to protect escapees and prevent their involuntary return to North Korea. Last week three Life Fund members sat with Park in a Southeast Asian hotel room as he told a grim story of his capture and escape from the North.

Park comes from a broken family in the North Hamgyong province of North Korea. His parents divorced, and his father was thrown into jail for “economic” crimes when he was a child. His mother, unable to support Park, sent him to live with an uncle. There was little food or room for him at his uncle’s house so, at the age of 14, Park ran away. For seven years he lived as a street beggar and petty thief, stealing food to survive. As the famine in North Korea worsened in the late 1990s, he began making quick trips to China to find food and money. During a November 1999 foray, Park ran into six other North Koreans in their 20s, including a woman, and together they decided to set off for South Korea via Russia, where they’d request political asylum.

From the Chinese city of Shenyang, the group traveled by bus to a small town named Milsan, near the Russian border. They rested there for three days, then at 2 o’clock one morning, began walking across the frontier. A Russian border patrol stumbled across the seven Koreans, robbed them and then hauled the group to a local prison. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees office in Moscow intervened with Russian authorities, but apparently without success. In late December 1999, the seven were driven to the border and handed over to Chinese forces. They, in turn, turned the group over to North Korean soldiers, who took them to the North Hamgyong Provincial State Security Building in Chongjin city, a four-hour drive from the Chinese border.

There began Park’s nightmare. Prison guards threw him into an underground, windowless cell with nine other political detainees. Park says the cell was full of rats, lice and fleas. There was a hole in the corner for a toilet. Three times a day, the inmates ate a handful of boiled corn and a thin, salty soup. They were forbidden to talk or even move; violators were severely beaten. Park says he was once forced to clean the toilet hole with his tongue for several hours.

Every night for the first month, he says, he was taken to an upstairs office for interrogation. On the first night, his questioner shouted “Death to a traitor,” and kicked him in the face, knocking out two teeth. “They wanted to make what I did—yearning for freedom and a decent life—a crime,” says Park, holding his head in his hands as if he was still in pain. His interrogators kept asking why he wanted to live with the enemy in South Korea. He was constantly beaten with clubs, burned with cigarettes on his arms and penis, and flailed with a thick wire across his stomach. Sitting on his hotel-room floor, he pointed to the scars on his hands, arms and chest.

Park confessed to whatever his interrogators wanted. But sometimes his responses were unsatisfactory, and he was sent to a large room. It echoed, said Park, with the anguished screams of torture victims. He saw men hanging upside down from chains. While he was in prison, he saw only one of his six traveling companions. He believes the others died.

Park eventually fell ill. He says he couldn’t eat and was too weak to rise from his hard bunk. The prison released him into his uncle’s care because Park’s family had a “patriotic” background. At his uncle’s, he says, he simply wanted to die. “The pain was so bad I decided to kill myself.” He swallowed bird poison but survived.

Nursed by his uncle’s family, he began regaining his health. By March he was well enough to make another break, before the prison guards came back for him. In early April he sneaked out of the house before dawn and swam once again across the Tumen River. The fund’s volunteers smuggled him out of China to Southeast Asia last month. They hope to deliver Park to South Korea, perhaps this week. The group says that North Koreans who flee to China should not be viewed as illegal immigrants, subject to deportation, but as bona fide refugees allowed to remain in China or resettled in a third country. Beijing claims that Pyongyang does not mistreat returned North Koreans. The fund and Park disagree. “By sending these people back to the North, Beijing is a party to crimes against humanity,” says a fund spokesman. Park wants to meet South Korean President Kim Dae Jung. “I’d tell him what Kim Jong Il is doing to the people of North Korea,” says Park, “and warn him not to be deceived.” 

UN Negotiates With China Over Koreans

Associated Press, 27 June 2001, By MARTIN FACKLER.

U.N. officials said they negotiated Wednesday with China over the fate of seven North Korean asylum-seekers who took refuge in a U.N. office in Beijing. The seven family members entered the Beijing office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees on Tuesday and asked for asylum in South Korea, UNHCR regional chief Colin Mitchell told reporters. The seven - a couple, their two teen-age children, two grandparents and a nephew - told the United Nations they faced persecution if they return to their homeland. The UNHCR has said the seven deserve asylum because a book by at least one family member published last year in South Korea was critical of the North Korean communist regime. 

The book contains drawings of the family's flight to China from famine in North Korea two years ago. China, which is bound by treaty with Pyongyang to return fleeing North Koreans, must decide what to do with the family. Their asylum request highlighted the plight of thousands of North Koreans who have fled their country's six-year famine and live in secret in China's northeastern border region with North Korea. Triggered by successive years of bad weather and economic collapse, the famine is estimated to have claimed as many as 2 million lives.

The family's request has also put Beijing in a bind. To placate longtime ally North Korea, it must ignore the UNHCR and risk international anger. South Korea has said it would accept the family. China's Foreign Ministry refused to comment on Wednesday. On Tuesday, a spokeswoman said China was investigating the family's case. China has said it views North Koreans crossing its border as economic migrants, not political refugees deserving asylum. The book, illustrated by at least one of the family's children, showed the devastation caused by the famine and depicted refugees eating rats and sneaking past armed North Korean soldiers. 

Five other family members in China have already been arrested and sent back to North Korea, said Rescue the North Korean People, a Japan-based Korean group. At least two were imprisoned for crimes against the state, the group said. The group also released a statement from the family blaming the North Korean government for ``destroying the lives of millions of innocent people.'' The statement said the family won't leave the UNHCR office in Beijing until their asylum request has been granted. The leading family member was Jang Gil Su, a 49-year-old North Korean peasant who brought his family to China two years ago, where they have been living secretly, according to Jiro Ishimaru, a Japanese journalist who accompanied the family into the U.N. office. Seven North Koreans who sought asylum in China were returned to North Korea last year. South Korean officials have said six of them were subsequently imprisoned. 

Nurseries in North Korea

The Chosun Ilbo, 24 June 2001. Working North Korean women, burdened with heavy workload, find it rather easy to raise their children. Upon the completion of a three-month childbirth leave, mothers place their babies under the care of day-care centers. If unemployed, they raise their babies at home, but workingwomen rarely ask their mothers or mothers-in-law to look after their babies. 

Since its foundation in 1948 North Korea has devoted itself to the successful operation of day nurseries, and have been established even in remote mountainous areas, let alone cities. Over 60,000 nurseries and kindergartens exist across the country, most of the former being affiliated with the latter. Medium-sized work places, not to mention large ones, have nursery schools. As medical doctors and nutritionists are assigned there, mothers don't have to care about vaccinating their kids or feeding them nutritious food. They are furnished rather well, typically of which are, Kang Ban Sok and Kim Jong Suk Nurseries in Pyongyang, which are often visited by foreigners. Under the slogan of "The Best Goods for Children," the North used to supply quality goods and food to day nurseries. 

Nursery schools have four levels: babies, toddlers, young children and pre-kindergarten children. To breast-feed babies, mothers come to nursery schools four times a day at a specified time. What's important for children at nursery schools is "to become just like others." It fits the principle of collectivism and the value of turning out "communist type people." The degree of uniformity is one of the important criteria for assessing day nurseries. Children are basically required to act on the same timetable and eat the same food. An important goal calls for having children sing and dance making identical facial expressions and movements. Hence nurses take great care through repetition to guide kids "to become more alike than others." 

"Nursemaids tell children the same thing again and again so that they act alike through repetition," reminisces Ri Ok Kum, 53, who directed a day-care center at Hamhung City Management Office in South Hamgyong Province before coming to the South. 

"Thank you, Grand Marshall Kim Il Sung!" was a must when something to eat was given. The addressee now may well have been changed into "Dear General Kim Jong Il." They recite the phrase whenever they are given something to eat in a form of reflex conditioning. 

Nursing young children is by no means an easy job, as a nurse has to look after 20 kids or more. Nonetheless, the job is not unpopular. To begin with, work at a day-care center requires a prescribed training course. And nursing jobs are described as "substantive," because mothers tend to ingratiate themselves with nursemaids. Parents tend to supply goods needed by nursery schools. 

In addition to day-care centers, some nurseries operate on a weekly, monthly or even seasonal basis. Many working mothers place their children under the care of nurseries operating on a weekly basis. They take them to nursery schools on Monday and bring them home on Saturday. As no visits are permitted during weekdays, both young children and their parents are said to anxiously look forward to the weekend. If mothers are too busy to collect them on Saturday, children stay at nurseries for another week. Fathers rarely visit nursery schools to collect their children on the weekend. Entertainers who travel abroad for performances make use of nurseries running on a monthly or seasonal basis. 

But gone are the days when parents could entrust their young children with nursing schools with complete ease of mind. Since 1993 milk was replaced by soymilk under the "Bean Milk of Love" campaign, and the state's all-out support has long ceased. It's a well-known fact that children are the harshest victims of the food shortages in the North and today’s reality of nursery schools, once the symbol of socialism in the North, appears to be going the way of the rest of the country. 

Social Status and Family Background Can Be Crucial 

The Chosun Ilbo, 25 June 2001. North Koreans in general live without being conscious of their social status or family background. Though it is said to consist of "three levels and 51 classifications," the North's social status is not institutionalized as the nobles and the commoners of the Yi Dynasty or the Indian caste system. But one's social status combined with his or her family background plays a crucial role, unwittingly, at important moments in one's life. 

The first test usually comes on entering a college or university. Should a person hail from a family of unfavorable background, he or she is blocked from being accepted by prestigious institutes of higher learning such as Kim Il Sung University, the University of People's Economics and Pyongyang University of Foreign Studies, a gate to becoming a ranking party member or one of the social elite such as diplomats. Many children of former Korean residents in Japan who have emigrated to the North are ill treated there and so train to become medical doctors, scientists or engineers, opting for natural sciences at the college. 

A poor family background sometimes cause stumbles in marriage. Party members, police officers and state security agents, without fail, have to ascertain the social status and family backgrounds of their prospective spouses. If a senior officer tells them, "If you marry her, you'll have to give up your post," it means there is a problem with her family background. 

When a person is accepted as a party member or gets promoted, a thorough investigation of their social status and family background is undertaken. To be qualified for promotion to general an officer cannot even have even a remote family member who is ideologically tainted. 

Social status changes, and although initially determined by family background, performance in work and social life can alter this. Classified worst in terms of family backgrounds are landlords, intellectuals, people whose family members have gone to the South and former Korean residents in Japan who have emigrated to the North. In reverse, topping the list are the poor, military servicemen, victims of United Nations troops during the 1950-53 Korean War, servicemen killed in action, anti-Japanese partisans, and family members of spies dispatched to the South. Laborers prior to the country's liberation from Japanese rule in 1945 enjoy uppermost social status, but this is not the case now. The reverse is the case with intellectuals. 

The State Security Agency administers written assessments on all citizens. These are life-long records of individuals' lives with their organization activities and others entered. If a friend commits a mistake, social or political, it affects his immediate peers. Pyongyang citizens who are not allowed to participate in "Number One Events" involving the North's paramount leader, Kim Jong Il, can readily perceive what their social status is. 

Social status is elevated when one has made an outstanding contribution to the state. A landlord's daughter was permitted to become a party member when she had married a spy dispatched to the South. Most of those who put up with 13 years of military service do so in the hope of earning party membership. Still many of them fail to achieve their aspiration in the face of poor social status. Those who have flopped gaining party memberships in the military are said to be liable to involve themselves in a shooting incident or flee to the South. 

Since money has started to wield influence, however, citizens pay less and less attention to their social status. A case in point is the fact that those who have relatives abroad, though subject to security monitoring, are desperately searching for relatives living overseas. Social status coupled with family background, incommensurate with the ideals of the "Republic," is losing its effect in controlling the population.