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*North Korean Studies*
Associated Press, By Sonya Ross, February 25, 2003
WASHINGTON -- As the United States pledged to send up to 100,000 metric tons of food to North Korea, U.S. officials on Tuesday accused Kim Jong Il's government of playing political games with hunger.
Secretary of State Colin Powell, closing out an Asian visit, said the United States will donate 40,000 metric tons of food to North Korea and intends to give another 60,000 metric tons later this year, in response to an emergency request from the U.N. World Food Program.
At a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on world hunger, lawmakers blamed the North Korean government for leaving its people unfed while ramping up nuclear development. They called for a system to keep donated food from getting diverted to the North Korean army or Communist leaders.
"The North Korean government makes judgments on who among the elderly, children and pregnant women will receive food," said committee Chairman Richard Lugar, R-Ind. "It is clear that hunger issues stand in significance alongside nuclear issues on the Korean peninsula."
"We need a quid pro quo," said Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla. "It's kind of hard for us, as Americans, to say we're going to use food as a bargaining chip, because that's not in our makeup. Yet at the end of the day, we have to get North Korea to stand down with nuclear weapons."
Andrew Natsios, administrator of the Agency for International Development, said U.S. officials, during talks, intend to tell North Korea that it must comply with certain standards when it comes to distributing food.
"We don't want to feed any militaries anywhere," Natsios said. "We will not use food as a weapon. But we want to make sure they don't use it as a weapon either."
The donation announced Tuesday will bring total U.S. food contributions to North Korea to $650 million since 1995, said State Department spokesman Richard Boucher.
In response to a question at a news conference, Powell sharply criticized the Pyongyang leadership for not meeting the needs of the North Korean people. Kim's government, Powell said, "takes what limited resources it has and invests it into an army that hangs over the 38th parallel in great strength, a leadership that spends its limited resources on developing nuclear weapons, resources that should be going to the people."
The United States normally pledges food aid to North Korea based on assessments from the World Food Program. The agency has appealed for $201 million in food aid for North Korea for 2003. The State Department did not provide a dollar estimate for the U.S. contribution.
James Morris, executive director of the food program, told the committee his agency has no clear idea of exactly how many North Koreans have died of hunger -- estimates range from several hundred thousand to 2 million -- and may never be able to get a full grasp on the problem without better cooperation from North Korean officials.
"The U.S. is willing to provide the food. We just expect North Korea to behave like every other of the places we work," Morris said. "Nothing we have interest in has anything to do with their national security, other than keeping their people alive."
The WFP and the U.N. Children's Fund said last Thursday that malnutrition rates among children in North Korea have lessened considerably in recent years, but they could rise again without more international aid. Korea - 40,000 tonnes of agricultural products will be given to the impoverished country this year.
Baltimore Sun, By Gady A. Epstein, February 24, 2003
Their plight grows worse as China seeks to tighten restrictions at the border
TUMEN, China - The snow-specked mountains that rise on both sides of the frozen Tumen River, marking the border with North Korea, mask a harsh reality here in the cold, far reaches of northeastern China.
For North Koreans, this has become treacherous territory, the site of a cold last stand for uncounted would-be refugees, some of them succumbing to below-zero temperatures, others caught by Chinese or North Korean border troops.
Refugees who manage to make it into China may still end up back here, inside a pink concrete building with matching turrets that sits like a quaint castle on a Chinese hillside. It is the Yanbian Border Defense Military Detention and Inspection Center, where China detains North Korean refugees before busing them back across the river, to almost certain imprisonment.
While the United States searches for ways to restrain North Korea's nuclear ambitions, China is working with North Korea to stem a flow of refugees trying to escape starvation and the repression of the regime.
Those who reach China and stay face a difficult existence - a life spent in hiding and in constant fear of apprehension by Chinese authorities or North Korean agents. The tension is also felt by individuals working underground to help refugees, an informal aid community that has become more cautious and fearful of detection.
"It's too sensitive," said a native South Korean who is active in the Korean Christian community in Yanbian Prefecture, a region in China's Jilin Province that is home to about 900,000 ethnic Koreans. "Two years ago, you could meet with [refugees] officially even. Now, that's impossible."
"Only one-to-one meetings, underground, are possible. But only underground, to meet, to find out, 'What are your conditions? How are you doing?'"
The Yanbian prefecture, which includes about 325 miles of the 870-mile Chinese-North Korean border, has been a favored first destination for North Koreans since the North began suffering a devastating famine in the mid-1990s. The Tumen River is narrow and shallow here, making it easy to cross, especially in winter. Korean is widely spoken, and many ethnic Koreans feel a strong bond with their neighbors in the North.
But conditions for the refugees are much more difficult now, as the government has tightened its restrictions in recent years. Two years ago, as many as 200,000 North Koreans lived illegally in northern China, aid workers estimate. Today the number who remain may be as low as 20,000.
International human rights groups condemn China's actions, arguing that the North Koreans are escaping political repression and merit protection under international covenants.
Not owed protection
Chinese authorities counter that the North Koreans being repatriated are illegal immigrants crossing for economic purposes, not because of political prosecution, and are not owed special protection. Chinese and western scholars say China's main concern is preserving the stability of the North Korean regime, lest its collapse produce chaos and a flood of refugees.
In recent years, about 130 North Koreans have managed to enter foreign embassies and diplomatic compounds in Beijing and other Chinese cities to seek asylum, and almost all have been granted safe passage out of the country. This increasingly publicized tactic embarrassed and angered the Chinese government and, activists here said, may have sparked a crackdown that began last spring.
Last month, Chinese police arrested at least 48 North Koreans trying to flee by boat from the Chinese port of Yantai to South Korea and Japan - as well as three other persons accused of collaborating to help the refugees escape, according to human rights groups.
Some activists in Yanbian, more than 600 miles from Beijing, said undercover North Korean agents are posing as refugees, coming to churches and to the campus of a private university in the city of Yanji that is supported by Korean and American Christian funds. One man who recently approached a Korean Christian church raised suspicions, an activist said, by his well-nourished appearance.
Making matters worse for refugees is that local ethnic Koreans have become less accommodating, because the North Koreans have developed a reputation for theft and violent crime.
"We are all the same family, so in the beginning when they asked for help, we were very welcoming," said one 27-year-old church member in Yanji, the prefecture capital, and who, like most people working with the refugees, asked not to be named. "Now people are more concerned about their safety."
All of this has pushed refugees further underground, to homes in more remote, poorer locations. Along the narrow, unpaved paths of densely packed urban Korean neighborhoods, refugees used to be a relatively common sight, and they would ask residents for a little money, food, clothes or a place to stay. Such encounters have become rare.
That is also true in the churches, already closely scrutinized by a government with limited tolerance for organized religion.
"I hear that they are told, when they come over here, look for the cross, and they may be able to get help," said a 44-year-old man who belongs to a Yanbian church. "The people in North Korea, they are victims of the North Korean regime, so if I can find a way to help them, I want to do that."
The typical refugee who finds help might receive a few dollars and a meal of traditional Korean kimchi, vegetables and rice. Some go directly back to help feed their families in the North; others search for a way to other parts of China or undertake the arduous trek to China's remote southern borders in hopes of finding a way to South Korea.
Those who stay may find a place for a night or, if they're lucky, a few weeks or months, with little hope of establishing a normal way of life.
"North Koreans, they have pride," the native South Korean said. "If you ask them their conditions, they always say, 'My conditions are good. I have enough. But if you have anything, please give it to me.'"
Some activists here hope that international attention might ease the crackdown, but others worry that published accounts will only lead to increased pressure from Chinese authorities.
And the plight of refugees could worsen: "Some people will die, some people will be sent out of China, some will be sent back to North Korea to very difficult lives," said the South Korean.
An unknown number of those who are sent back are first brought to the hillside border detention building. The facility overlooks An Shan, a grain-farming village of about 400 people who live in small brick-and-concrete farmhouses along a two-lane road traveled by the occasional man or ox pulling loads of kindling and coal.
Death in the mountains
Wang Gui Tang, a 72-year-old father of seven, paused on the road one afternoon after his pull-cart, overflowing with kindling, had a flat tire. Wang saves about $200 to $250 a year from farming and never lacks for food, including meat and tofu.
Wang considers it a modest life, but it is one that would be a fantasy for those on the other side of the border.
The North Korean government supplies a ration of up to 300 grams of grain a day per person - less than half of a survival ration, according to Gerald Bourke, a spokesman in Beijing for the United Nations World Food Program. Other reports say that estimate exaggerates the allotments.
Worse, the WFP is running out of food to supplement those rations. Donors have reduced or withheld their contributions because of uncertainty about whether the people most in need receive the donated grains and because of the North Korean nuclear crisis.
This month, Bourke said, nearly 3 million of the 4.2 million North Koreans targeted by the WFP are not receiving WFP food aid.
Small private farmers' markets with fruits and vegetables now operate in some areas, but they often are not well-stocked and prices are beyond reach for most, according to activists.
"A woman from Qingjin [a North Korean port city] said that the women's fate is the most miserable," Zhou Weiping, professor at the Center for Northeast Asia Studies in Jilin province, reported in an academic paper on North Koreans fleeing for China. "In order to feed their husband and children, they often have to walk several miles to the countryside to exchange for grain. Because of hunger and exhaustion, many die on the road."
Wang has seen firsthand how grim things can get in the North Korean winter. Two years ago, a wire-thin North Korean woman of about 60 managed to cross the border only to die in the freezing cold, in the mountains by his village. At the request of local police, Wang and another villager stood watch in four-hour shifts for two nights, until the authorities could collect the body and send it back to North Korea.
The woman had gone through the mountains wearing only a ripped white skirt and long underwear, and a small, thin black jacket. So the local police bought her a new wardrobe, including a blue thick cotton jacket. "Some of my friends were saying," Wang recalled, "that she went back in better circumstances than she came."
BrookesNews.Com, By Staff Writer, February 24, 2003
Watching leftwing organised demonstrators parading their moral idiocy on the television by calling President Bush an Adolf Hitler and the US a terrorist state immediately brought to mind North Korea's real live Hitler, the one whose atrocities western demonstrators and their leftwing string pullers never protest against. I mean, of course, the North's "Dear Leader" the maniacal Kim Jong-Ill who rigorously adheres to his late father's inhuman policies.
In the barren mountain regions of North Korea Pyongyang has built a network of death camps This Asian Gulag holds within its barbwire fences over 100,000 men, women and children These victims of the last true bastion of Stalinism are daily subjected to a system of degradation so vicious in character that it defies the imagination of any decent human being Their only crime (if such it can be called) was to have infringed party rules.
The North's concentration camp system is rigorously controlled, coordinated and stocked by the ominously sounding Ministry of National Political Security The Ministry also acts as the communist party's main internal security agency
In 1958 Kim I1-sung launched the Intensive Guidance Project with the aim of closely examining and recording the ideological background of each of his subjects Every citizen had his personal history, network of friends and family connections subjected to the closest scrutiny Those considered as hostile elements were either tortured and then murdered or shipped to a camp.
However, Kim I1-sung became dissatisfied with the efforts of his grand inquisition To compensate for its past 'failures and to more effectively root out counter revolutionaries (alleged dissidents) he implemented in 1964 the Citizens Reregistration Project This divided the population into three classes and 51 categories; each category represents a particular type of background and behaviour
Thus each North Korean has been classified according to party suspicions, family background, personal activities and attitude: Nothing, if possible, is left out citizens are then rewarded or punished depending on which category they have been assigned This classification system has greatly facilitated the communist regime's control over the population by providing the secret police with detailed information on ideological criminals.
The actual machinery of control is exercised through the Ministry of National Political Security which operates a massive internal spy system The ministry trains what it euphemistically calls assistant guidance workers, ie spies Each of these spies is usually assigned to five families It is his or her duty to monitor as closely as possible the behaviour of each family No action is too small to go unobserved, no comment too trivial to be ignored Every family member is under enormous psychological pressure to mind every word and every action, for the guidance worker has been taught that it is his solemn duty to "ferret out ideological enemies" whoever they are and
whatever the cost
This is +1984 with a vengeance As soon as a witch-hunting guidance worker detects a "hostile element", the unfortunate victim is hauled away by police from the Orwellian sounding Ministry of Social Safety which then determines guilt in a manner not even the Gestapo would have been allowed to use Once guilt is 'established' the victim, along with his immediate family, is shipped off in the early hours of the morning, usually between midnight and l am He is only permitted the clothes on his back: all other personal effects are forbidden ?not even a toothbrush is allowed.
All of his property: furniture, cutlery, clothing, even objects of sentimental value, is confiscated by the Party for allocation among its cadres On arrival at the camp the victim is issued a pick and shovel, simple cooking utensils and a used army blanket All contact with the outside world is eliminated: he is now a non-person; no questions will be asked about him by friends or relatives
A typical example of one of the North's concentration camps is Onsong, which is located in a remote and desolate mountain area in Hamyongpukdo province Actually the camp consists of five camps linked together by a road The camp site covers an area of about 250 square kilometres and has an estimated 25,000-30,000 prisoners The camp is enclosed by four to six parallel barbwire fences three to four metres high Minefields, electric fences and other killing devices have been added to points considered favourable to would-be escapees Seven metre watchtowers have built at intervals of two kilometres along the outer fence
Furthermore, the camp boundary is continuously patrolled by heavily armed troops and guard dogs Nevertheless, despite the formidable security some prisoners, driven by sheer desperation, try to escape The lucky ones are killed in the attempt Captured escapees are either torured to death or killed by commandos as part of their training.
For sheer brutality the camp regime even exceeds anything that existed in Stalin's Gulag Prisoners are denied food, clothing, medical attention and even the most elementary shelter The victims are literally left to fend for themselves They are thus forced by necessity to grow, in what little spare time they are allowed, their own food, mainly maize and potatoes However, the soil is so poor that it yields little in the way of quantity and even less in quality, thereby forcing prisoners to supplement their diet with roots, grass, bark from trees and what little else they can find Not surprisingly the prisoners are quickly reduced to walking skeletons.
The situation regarding shelter is no better. Many prisoners are forced to live in holes they have dug out of the hillside The suffering these people have to endure during the harsh Korean winter is unbelievable.
They are subjected to a savage work schedule: 12 hours a day, seven days a week they are made to labour There is no day of rest for an enemy of the people They are not even allowed to talk to one another, or even move in a group unless at work or attending 're-education classes' The work consists mainly of logging, mining and land reclamation No prisoner is excused work regardless of his condition The aged and the sick are forced to work until they drop, death is their only escape
But the greatest tragedy is the suffering of the children: Using what few tools they have, which is often only their bare hands, they are forced to labour along with their parents These children have been systematically robbed of their childhood, their future and their dignity They have been systematically degraded and dehumanised by this evil regime For them there is no playtime, no holidays, no birthdays, no presents, no future. There is no one to save them from their misery or even write their epitaph.
Once their arduous 12 hours has been worked, the children are allowed a one hour break before being herded, along with adult prisoners, into re-education classes where they sit from 8 pm to 11 pm listening to 'instructors' lecture them on the compassion and benevolence of their "Beloved and Radiant Kim Jong-il." This is the kind of garbage that would have made even Caligula blush with shame.
Nevertheless, despite camp savagery and brutal conditions, some prisoners still remain stubbornly resistant to indoctrination. (Only in the west do people willingly submit to leftwing indoctrination). The regime, however, has found a typically sadistic solution for 'problem cases': they are rounded up and transported to remote wooded areas where they are released and told to make their own way home.
In fact, they have been selected as human prey for commandos who, armed with garrotting cords, knives and clubs, then proceed to hunt and kill them The butchery continues until all the prisoners are accounted for These sadistic exercises in mass murder have not been devised to rid the regime of 'hostile elements' by providing amusement for its commissars and killing experience for its commandos. Its chief function is to dehumanise its elite units, to instil in them an utter contempt for the lives and suffering of others and to weed out, with fatal consequences, those who might retain any humanitarian sentiments.
The WWP (Workers World Party) was instrumental in organising and coordinating the so-called peace rallies. It also supports the North Korean regime and is an ardent admirer of Kim Jong-Il, who invites WWP leaders to Pyongyang for consultations. The WWP is also in bed with Saddam who accords them the same generous treatment as the North's "Dear Leader". Now you know why there are never any western demonstrators against these two psychopathic political gangsters.
Yomiuri Shimbun, By Staff Writer, February 23, 2003
The number of North Korean residents defecting from the country continues to increase, and nongovernmental organizations supporting North Korean refugees claim there are more Japanese women secretly waiting in China for an opportunity to return to Japan.
A mother and her daughter sought refuge at the Japanese Consulate General in Shenyang, China, on Friday.
The mother is believed to be a Japanese national who moved to North Korea with her Korean husband during the repatriation movement. They are expected to soon receive passage to Japan.
An NGO official said: "The number of North Korean defectors is expected to further increase, and they are likely to include Japanese women who moved there with their North Korean husbands. The Japanese government needs to set up a system to help them."
According to Lee Young Hwa, the head of the NGO Rescue the North Korean People! Urgent Action Network--which helped four North Korean refugees make safe passage to a Japanese school in Beijing on Tuesday--another NGO helped the mother and daughter seek refuge at the consulate. The two NGOs cooperated on the two cases, he said.
After the four defectors arrived at the Japanese school, the other NGO contacted the consulate by phone and asked them to safeguard the mother and daughter. Members of the NGO previously had confirmed the defectors' information, such as their Japanese citizenship records, Lee said.
Lee said more Japanese women have defected from North Korea and are currently hiding in China. Satellite television reported the safe passage of a 64-year-old Japanese wife of a North Korean husband to Japan late last month. The reports have led other women to believe that the time is ripe for them to act, he said.
"The movement has just begun," he said. "More groups to assist defectors seem to be emerging."
Hiroshi Kato, director of Life Funds for North Korean Refugees, received a phone call Friday night from supporters of the mother and daughter informing him that the consulate in Shenyang had been successful in protecting them.
Kato said that the Japanese government has improved its stance toward North Korean refugees since the so-called Shenyang incident that occurred in May, in which North Korean refugees were forcibly removed by Chinese police officers. The incident provoked public criticism over the consulate's handling of the North Koreans.
"We are starting to make some progress in the protection of North Korean refugees," he said.
In the repatriation program that started in 1959, about 93,000 ethnic Koreans living in Japan and their family members, including about 1,800 Japanese women who married Korean men, moved to North Korea.
Since the mid-1990s when food shortages in North Korea became severe, some of the Japanese women and North Koreans who formerly lived in Japan began attempting to return to their home country.
About 40 people are believed to have successfully returned to Japan after secretly receiving the necessary documents--such as a travel permits--from the Foreign Ministry.
Yomiuri Shimbun, By Staff Writer, February 23, 2003
North Korean defectors who entered a Japanese school in Beijing last week seeking political asylum have written of the harsh conditions in the country, saying its people "live and work like robots."
A Japanese nongovernmental group on Friday made public the letters requesting asylum in Japan and South Korea, which were referred to as "nations of freedom."
Chu Mi Yong, 41, her 13-year-old daughter and 10-year-old son, and a 19-year-old university student entered the school on Tuesday. Officials of the Japanese Embassy in Beijing are still questioning them.
Chu and the student wrote the letters and China-based supporters sent Japanese-language versions to a nongovernmental organization, Rescue the North Korean People! Urgent Action Network.
In her letter, Chu said she and her family crossed the Tumangang River along the border of North Korea to China in December 1997. She said that after food rationing finished in North Korea in 1994 "we lived one day at a time."
Together with her sister, she sold goods on the black market and became involved with smuggling operations led by Chinese dealers.
However, North Korean authorities discovered their illegal activities, and her sister was taken to be executed, she said. To avoid the same fate, Chu and her family fled the country. Her husband became ill and died in 1999.
Chu pleaded: "If we could gain refugee status, we could live without hiding from society. Nobody in North Korea can publically complain or express their opinions, even though people are starving to death. We never want to return to North Korea." In his letter, the student said he fled North Korea in July.
He wrote: "There were some students who received lower marks than they merited in examinations because they hadn't bribed their teacher beforehand. I was told that if I couldn't offer any money I had to work and I was forced to work on road construction sites and farms."
He said his family, which was heavily in debt, fell apart after the distribution of food rations was stopped. His parents divorced and sold the family house to pay some debt. He started a business with some relatives, but decided to leave North Korea when government authorities ordered the business closed.
The student further criticized the North Korean education system, writing that he was not allowed to read books or listen to music from foreign countries. In addition, students were only permitted to study government-authorized materials, most of which were dated.
The student went on to say that his feelings regarding Japanese and South Korean people had changed considerably during his time in China. In North Korea, he wrote, he was always taught that Japanese and South Koreans were bad people. But after learning about the two nations, he said he realized that people in Japan and South Korea were great humanitarians
The Japan Times, By Staff Writer, February 21, 2003
The incident in which four North Korean citizens who had fled from their country entered a Japanese school in Beijing and asked for asylum in Japan has posed a sobering question concerning Japan's refugee policy.
Acting on lessons from the incident at Japan's consulate general in Shenyang last May, the Japanese and Chinese governments this time have quickly taken measures to prevent the matter from developing into a diplomatic issue.
The problem is that the Japanese government does not have a policy for dealing with ordinary people who flee from the North and seek asylum in Japan. In the latest case, officials concerned reportedly favor granting the four persons asylum in South Korea. Because the number of such asylum seekers is expected to increase, however, the government should promptly establish policies for accepting such refugees, including procedures for recognizing refugees.
Since early last year, there have been several cases of asylum seekers rushing into foreign diplomatic establishments and foreign schools in China, but this is the first time that a Japanese school has been involved. The Japanese school in question is a quasi-diplomatic facility attached to the Japanese embassy.
Japan and China, however, have confirmed that the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, which recognizes diplomatic immunity and the extraterritorial status of government establishments, does not apply to the school. Immediately after the incident, therefore, the embassy moved the four persons to the embassy.
According to an explanation by an embassy official, the embassy had talked with the school about the possibility of asylum seekers entering the institution. The speedy response this time to prevent China's intervention stemmed from reflection on last year's incident and indicates that the lesson was properly learned.
Japan and China are discussing what to do with the four people, but so far China does not appear to have protested to Japan. Usually, China considers people who have fled from North Korea to be illegal entrants and forcibly deports them. In the case of successful dashes by asylum seekers into foreign diplomatic establishments, in the end it recognizes asylum in South Korea or elsewhere via a third country.
Japan and China have been continuing consular talks on asylum seekers since the Shenyang incident. The official return to Japan in January of a Japanese woman who had lived in North Korea for decades with her Korean husband suggests that the consultations on the smooth handling of such matters are making progress. The special feature of the latest case is that the four persons requested asylum in Japan from the very beginning. Immediately after they entered the school, a nongovernmental organization that supports the four persons sent a statement to the Japanese government calling for recognition of their refugee status. It has actually been speculated that the NGO had
them enter the Japanese school in order to press the Japanese government to revise its refugee policy. Japan ratified the refugee convention in 1981, but it remains negative toward the acceptance of refugees. According to the Ministry of Justice, 2,782 persons applied for recognition as refugees between 1982 and the end of last year, but only 305 persons received recognition.
Procedures under the Immigration Control and Refugee Recognition Law are complex, too. In order to request recognition of refugee status, a person has to enter Japan and appear at the Justice Ministry's Immigration Bureau. Applications cannot be made at overseas diplomatic establishments. There are just eight special refugee investigators. The number is expected to increase under the fiscal 2003 budget, but it still cannot keep pace with the increasing number of applicants. Moreover, if the person seeking refugee status does not have a valid passport, he or she might be deported as an illegal entrant before acquiring refugee recognition. The application period, at
present within 60 days of entering Japan, seems likely to be extended. So as to ensure speedy and fair screening and to improve the recognition system, however, it is a viable idea to let a third party play a role in studying such an improvement.
Although the government is studying the matter in a special committee set up in the Cabinet Secretariat, only minor improvements are being made. Because of the situation in North Korea, a flood of refugees to Japan could occur. Instead of just being satisfied ushering them on to a third country, it is necessary for the Japanese government to formulate a clear policy on refugee acceptance.
Reuters, By Staff Writer, February 21, 2003
LMENDORF AIR FORCE BASE, Alaska, Feb. 21 ?Secretary of State Colin L. Powell today revived the possibility that the United States could offer broad assistance to North Korea, but he said that North Korea must first end its nuclear weapons program.
Speaking as he began a four-day trip to Japan, China and South Korea, Secretary Powell emphasized that the United States was seeking a multilateral push to persuade North Korea to abandon its nuclear ambitions despite its regional allies' preference that the United States try to resolve the issue in direct, bilateral talks with North Korea.
He said he was likely to announce on his trip that the United States would provide more food assistance to North Korea, emphasizing that the United States did not use such aid as a political tool and that the Bush administration had not offered any food assistance since December because it did not have budget authority from Congress.
Mr. Powell said the United States could revive what he called a "bold approach" of considering an array of assistance to North Korea, but the nuclear issue had to be settled first.
"It's not out of the realm of the possible and it's not out of consideration but we have to get these matters resolved and behind us with respect to their proliferating actions, with respect to their nuclear weapons development program and also with respect to the size of their military," Mr. Powell said.
The United States has sought without much visible success to persuade regional powers, notably China, to pressure North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons program.
North Korea wants a nonaggression pact with the United States and bilateral talks, something others in the region, particularly China and South Korea, favor but that the United States has resisted, pushing instead for a multilateral approach.
"We recognize that everybody in the region" is hoping for a direct dialogue between the United States and North Korea, Mr. Powell said.
"We have said we are looking for a multilateral forum in which to start a dialogue, and then lots of things can happen from there," he said. "If more nations in the region and the international community were involved, then the obligations on North Korea would be stronger and the consequences of failure to perform or abide by them would be greater."
American officials say they will not be blackmailed, pointing to the 1994 Agreed Framework accord, under which North Korea promised to freeze its nuclear weapons program in exchange for fuel oil and two Western-financed nuclear reactors, as an example of North Korea wresting concessions through "bad behavior."
The latest crisis began in October, when American officials said that North Korea had admitted to pursuing a covert nuclear weapons program in violation of its international commitments.
It has since grown more serious as North Korea expelled International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors, said it would pull out of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and threatened to resume missile testing and abandon the 1953 Korean War armistice.
Mr. Powell arrives in Tokyo on Saturday for meetings with the Japanese foreign minister, Yoriko Kawaguchi, and other top officials. In China, on Sunday, he is to meet President Jiang Zemin and his presumed successor, Hu Jintao, as well as Foreign Minister Tang Jiaxuan. Mr. Powell will wrap up his journey in Seoul to attend the inauguration of Roh Moo Hyun as president.
Asahi Shimbun, By Staff Writer, February 21, 2003.
Japan is negotiating with South Korea to accept four North Koreans who sought political asylum Tuesday in the Japanese school in Beijing, diplomatic sources say.
The four are staying at the Japanese Embassy in China's capital as officials consider their next move.
Sources said Japanese officials began talks Wednesday with their South Korean counterparts about accepting the asylum seekers.
Chinese authorities have assured Japan the four will be allowed to leave China if a suitable destination is found.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuo Fukuda suggested Thursday the four might have an easier time adjusting to life in South Korea than Japan.
``It shouldn't be a matter of simply having the four come to Japan,'' Fukuda said. ``The ultimate decision should be based on consideration of their future, such as whether they can lead a stable life and become accustomed to society.''
Fukuda said the government was still reviewing the case.
``Although they first said they wanted to come to Japan, after talking with Japanese officials, their destination of choice may have shifted,'' he said.
Foreign Ministry officials said Wednesday the four were willing to consider resettling in South Korea after talking with Japanese officials.
Japanese officials generally regard South Korea as a better fit because of the common language and a firmer framework in the South for accepting refugees from North Korea.
The Japan Times, By Staff Writer, February 20, 2003
Japan will consult with Chinese authorities in an effort to allow four asylum seekers from North Korea who entered a Japanese school in Beijing to be moved to a third country, government sources said Wednesday.
The government also launched consultations with South Korea, which may accept the four, who entered the school grounds Tuesday afternoon when the gates were open to let students leave.
It may still take a while until the actual deportation takes place, a Foreign Ministry official said, citing prior cases that took weeks or even months to resolve.
Meanwhile, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman said Beijing will decide what to do with the asylum seekers after verifying their identities.
"After China has received detailed information from Japan, it will check the identities of the four people and deal with them according to domestic and international laws and in a humanitarian spirit," Zhang Qiyue said in a written statement.
On Tuesday, Chu Mi Yong, 43; her daughter, Roh Yu Mi, 13; son, Roh Gwang Myoung, 10; and Kim Chol, 20, entered the school in a bid to seek asylum in Japan, according to Rescue The North Korean People (RENK), a group supporting North Korean asylum seekers.
They were later transferred to the Japanese Embassy's consular division and are still being questioned by embassy officials, the Foreign Ministry official said.
Tokyo will probably not grant the four asylum because they are not former residents of Japan or Japanese spouses of North Koreans.
Japan does not grant refugee status to asylum seekers from North Korea because it does not consider them to be fleeing persecution. Nevertheless the government has apparently decided to send the four to a third country on humanitarian grounds, according to the sources.
"We will consult with Chinese authorities on whether to deport (the four to another country)," Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuo Fukuda told a news conference Wednesday.
Fukuda further noted that Beijing's attitude on the issue of North Korean asylum seekers has become more humanitarian in light of the situation in North Korea and the increased attention such cases are drawing from the international community.
Japan's speedy reaction reflects its bitter experience from last May, when five North Koreans rushed into the Japanese Consulate General in Shenyang, China, only to be dragged out of the compound by Chinese police.
Tokyo was severely criticized for not preventing Chinese authorities from entering the consulate, allegedly without consent, an act that Japan later claimed was a violation of the Vienna Convention.
Another Foreign Ministry official said there is less concern over a diplomatic row with China this time because Japan has custody of the four.
"When the Shenyang incident took place, Japan had to criticize China and ask for its cooperation at the same time, as China had custody of the five," the official said. "But this time, we have custody."
Yonhap News, By Kwan-Hyun Moon, February 18, 2003
It is reported that the North Korean government has been preparing to replace the old Citizens’ Registration Card with a new one, in order to regulate the North Korean citizens who cross its border.
According to a North Korean defector who entered South Korea, December last year, North Korean government had distributed an official document announcing the issuing of the new Citizens’ Registration Card to be started from March this year.
Up to now, North Korean government has issued a pink colored Registration Card for the citizens who live in Pyongyang, and a blue colored Registration Card for the rest residences. In case of citizens of non-city provinces, the Registration Card included the information of an individual citizen’s name, ethnicity, date of birth, place of residence, marital status, date of issue, place of issue, bar code, and etc as well as a color picture are the upper right corner of the card.
North Korea has issued the card for the citizens of over 17 years old in regional basis. The new Citizens’ Registration Card would be bigger than the old one, and several categories such a s occupation and family relations are to be included in the card, so as to facilitate regulation of the movement of the citizens.
It has been known that North Korea had once replaced the Citizens’ Registration Card in 1999, when the food crisis hit the country and people fled from their own homeland. According to a South Korean official, “The new Citizens’ Registration Card would create higher possibility of threat to those North Korean citizens who are moving into China as well as those already in China.”
Yomiuri Shimbun, By Staff Writer, February 18, 2003
The government is considering either allowing into the country or deporting to a third country four North Korean refugees who entered a Japanese school in Beijing on Tuesday before being taken into custody by the Japanese Embassy, officials said.
The four people reportedly are seeking political asylum in Japan. It is not known whether they are former pro-Pyongyang Korean residents in Japan, Japanese nationals who moved to North Korea or North Korean citizens, according to the officials.
If the four refugees are determined to be North Korean citizens and not former Japanese nationals or residents in Japan, it would be the first publicly known case of North Koreans seeking entry to Japan.
However, a senior Foreign Ministry official warned, "If we readily accept them into the nation, more and more North Koreans may start seeking asylum here."
At the ministry, senior officials including Administrative Vice Minister Yukio Takeuchi and Mitoji Yabunaka, director of the Asian and Oceanian Affairs Bureau, gathered to discuss the incident Tuesday night.
"We want to handle the case from a humanitarian viewpoint after determining the wishes of the four people who entered the school," one of the officials who attended the meeting said.
At issue is whether the government allows their entry into the country before recognizing them as refugees, or whether it deports them to a third country.
The government normally applies the following conditions to a person seeking asylum in Japan as a refugee after taking refuge in a Japanese diplomatic post overseas:
-- The person is considered subject to persecution in his or her home country.
-- The person will be supported by a guardian or organization after their entry into Japan.
-- The country in which the person has taken refuge at a Japanese diplomatic post does not oppose his or her extradition.
However, the government currently does not accept applicants for political asylum, meaning that it does not issue travel documents for the purpose of traveling to Japan to apply for refugee status.
The officials said the government would decide whether to issue travel documents allowing the refugees to enter Japan after studying various factors, including the views of the refugees, humanitarian aspects and support systems available in the nation such as nongovernmental organizations.
A Foreign Ministry official said the Chinese government previously has permitted deportations of North Koreans who have entered foreign diplomatic establishments and schools in China.
But in this case, an NGO announced the four peoples' plight to the media, making the government concerned that China may be less likely to cooperate with Japan in the refugees' deportation.
Last May, Chinese police seized five North Korean asylum-seekers who had rushed into the compound of the Japanese Consulate General in Shenyang, China.
The police seizure was an apparent violation of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, which grants diplomatic missions extraterritorial status.
However, the Japanese school at issue is not subject to the convention as it is not a consular establishment, and the Chinese authorities did not interfere when the embassy took the four from the school.
As a result, the government believes there is no issue concerning the refugees as far as the convention is concerned, a ministry official said.
Associated Press, By Audra Ang, February 18‚ 2003
BEIJING (AP) - Four people, all of them apparently from North Korea, entered the Japanese School in China's capital on Tuesday carrying letters asking for Tokyo's help in seeking asylum, a Japanese Embassy official said.
It appeared the four - a man, a woman and two children - entered the school at about 4:30 p.m. through the main gate, said Atsushi Ueno, a counselor at the embassy. "They brought letters saying they were seeking asylum in Japan," Ueno said.
The group was spotted by officials at the school, which is run by Japan's Education Ministry for Japanese nationals in Beijing. They called the embassy after talking to the four and seeing the letters, Ueno said.
The four "appear to be North Koreans," Ueno said, adding that it was not immediately clear what would happen to them. The asylum-seekers were taken to the embassy's consulate section for the night, he said. "They are fine," Ueno said. "The embassy provided a dinner box, and they ate and seem to be OK."
The group left North Korea in 1997 and has been living in China since then, according to the Web site of the Japan-based human rights group RENK, which said it has helped the asylum-seekers in China.
RENK urged the Japanese government to grant them asylum, saying they face imprisonment or execution if they are returned home. Deep suspicion between Japan and North Korea dates back to before World War II, and any such decision by Tokyo would undoubtedly be politically sensitive.
The Web site identified the four as Chu Mi-yong, 43; her 13-year-old son, Roh Yu-mi; her 10-year-old daughter Roh Gwang-myong; and Kim Chol, 20.
Tens of thousands of North Koreans live in hiding in northeastern China, seeking refuge from famine and repression in their communist-ruled country.
Last May, five asylum-seeking North Koreans dashed into a Japanese consulate in the northeastern Chinese city of Shenyang and were forcibly removed by Chinese authorities.
Scores of North Korean asylum-seekers have sought refuge in foreign missions in China during the past year. They have been helped by South Korean missionary groups and foreign activists frustrated by Beijing's insistence that fleeing North Koreans are illegal immigrants, not political refugees.
As its biggest ally, China has a treaty with Pyongyang requiring it to send back any illegal escapees. But it hasn't always done so in cases that have become public for fear of international backlash, and many asylum-seekers have eventually made their way to South Korea via third countries.
United Press International, By Jong-Heon Lee, February 18, 2003
SEOUL, South Korea, Feb. 18 (UPI) -- Families and human-right activists demonstrated near the Chinese Embassy in Seoul Tuesday, calling for the release of South Koreans detained in China for helping North Korean refugee seekers.
Some 200 protesters also urged China to free all North Koreans caught in China after their failed attempts to seek asylum and stop forcible repatriation of detained North Koreans to their communist homeland. They chanted slogans, "Let North Koreans go!" "Stop repatriation of North Korean refugees!"
Chinese police posing as smugglers arrested 48 North Korean refugees last month shortly before they were to be secretly ferried out of China and taken to South Korea and Japan.
The Chinese government confirmed it had also detained two South Koreans suspected of helping the North Koreans find asylum. They included a freelance photographer working for The New York Times.
Beijing's Foreign Ministry said the two South Koreans were suspected of "smuggling or organizing smuggling and are now on criminal detention."
"My husband is neither a smuggler nor an human right activist, but a journalist," said tearful Kang Hae-won, the wife of the photographer, Seok Jae-hyun. "Please help me meet my husband."
The South Korean photographer was arrested while covering the North Korean refugee seekers who were trying to sneak out of China's Shandong province by boat and go to South Korea or Japan.
Hundreds of thousands of North Koreans are believed to be hiding in China after leaving their poverty-stricken homeland in search of food or to avoid political repression. More than 1,200 defected to South Korea last year.
Most North Korean asylum seekers travel to South Korea by way of China, which shares a long land border with North Korea, because the inter-Korean land border is the world's most heavily armed boundary.
Beijing, which views North Koreans fleeing to China as economic migrants and not refugees, has in the past sent back asylum seekers to the North, where it is feared they face persecution.
"Beijing should not ignore the plight of the North Korean refuge seekers stranded in China, because Beijing is a proud signatory of the U.N. Convention relating to the Status of Refugees of 1951," Tim Peters, director of Helping Hands Korean, said in an address. "We should make more efforts to meet the urgent needs of North Koreans in crisis."
Seoul-based activist Norbert Vollertsen, a German doctor who organized the January attempt for North Koreans to sneak into South Korea by boat, vowed to step up efforts to rescue North Korean refugee-seekers.
"We will travel soon to the border village of Panmunjom as part of efforts to highlight the plight of North Koreans," Vollertsen told United Press International.
Vollertsen and other human right activists also blamed the South Korean government for not doing enough to bring in North Korean refugee seekers in China.
Seoul's government has maintained a low profile about the stream of North Korean refugees for fear of possible friction with the Pyongyang regime.
"The (Seoul) government is urged to raise the refugee issue as a formal diplomatic agenda with China for a fundamental resolution to their plight," said Bae Jae-hyun, the head of the Citizens' Coalition for Human rights of Abductees and North Korean Refugees, which organized Tuesday's street demonstration.
The Japan Times, By Staff Writer, February 14, 2003
A Japanese nongovernmental organization helping North Koreans who have fled to China demanded Thursday that Beijing release at least 120 refugees and their supporters allegedly detained since October.
Hiroshi Kato, of Life Funds for North Korean Refugees, said his and other NGOs have so far been able to identify 113 North Korean escapees and seven NGO activists and supporters who have been detained by China.
At least three others have been sent back to North Korea against their will, he told a news conference in Tokyo.
Kato said China should treat the issue of North Korean escapees as an international human rights concern if it wants to be a qualified member of the international community.
"We wonder whether China is suitable for hosting the 2008 Beijing Olympics," Kato said. "We want it to restore human rights, to stop sending those who flee North Korea back to their country and to give them the status of refugee."
Kato, who was detained by Chinese authorities for close to a week late last year, said he has sent letters to all national Olympic committees and sports federations around the world, saying China is not an appropriate country for hosting the Games.
Kang Hae Won, the wife of South Korean photojournalist Seok Jae Hyun, who has been detained in China since January along with dozens of North Koreans when plans to send the refugees to Japan and South Korea on two boats from China failed, asked for help to set her husband free.
"I strongly request your active assistance by showing humane support for those detained in China," Kang said. "I urge you to find the best measures at your disposal to protect the human rights of my innocent husband and the North Korean refugees who are suffering oppressive conditions, both physically and mentally, at this very moment."
NewsMax.com, By Phil Brennan, February 13, 2003
Women undergo forced abortions, newborn babies are beaten to death, children are used for slave labor, and thousands every year are brutally murdered or worked to death.
The gulag is alive and well in North Korea, teeming with hundreds of thousands of brutalized human beings condemned to a blood-drenched existence so horrific it is almost impossible for civilized people to imagine.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the famed Russian author, described the Soviet Union’s “Gulag Archipelago,” a vast collection of slave labor camps in frozen Siberia where the prisoners were routinely tortured, starved and forced to work under the most inhuman of conditions. That gulag vanished when the Soviet Union collapsed.
Today, another gulag – one perhaps far more brutal than its Soviet counterpart – exists in North Korea, where an estimated 200,000 political prisoners pay the terrible price for having offended the communist dictatorship in even the most minor of ways.
In an extraordinary exercise of investigative journalism, NBC News exposed the horrors of these torture and slaughter pens, interviewing former prisoners, guards and U.S. and South Korean officials. The network revealed “the horrifying conditions these people must endure — conditions that shock even those North Koreans accustomed to the near-famine conditions of Kim Jong-il’s realm.”
'Depravity'
“It's one of the worst, if not the worst, situation — human rights abuse situation — in the world today,” said Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., who held hearings on the camps last year.
“There are very few places that could compete with the level of depravity, the harshness of this regime in North Korea toward its own people.”
According to NBC News:
At one camp, Camp 22 in Haengyong, 50,000 prisoners toil each day in conditions that U.S. officials and former prisoners say result in the death of 20 percent to 25 percent of the prison population every year.
Shockingly, products made by prison laborers may wind up on U.S. store shelves, having been “washed” first through Chinese companies that serve as intermediaries.
Entire families, including grandchildren, are incarcerated for even the most bland political statements.
Forced abortions are carried out on pregnant women so that another generation of political dissidents will be “eradicated.”
Inmates are used as human guinea pigs for testing biological and chemical agents, according to former prisoners and U.S. officials.
“All of North Korea is a gulag,” one senior U.S. official told NBC News, noting that as many as 2 million people have died of starvation while Kim has amassed the world’s largest collection of Daffy Duck cartoons.
“It’s just that these people [in the camps] are treated the worst. No one knows for sure how many people are in the camps, but 200,000 is consistent with our best guess. We don’t have a breakdown, but there are large numbers of both women and children.”
Screaming Newborn Kicked to Death
One former gulag inmate, Soon Ok Lee, spent seven years at a camp near Kaechon in Pyungbuk province. She told the network: “I was in prison from 1987 till January 1993. [The women] were forced to abort their children. They put salty water into the pregnant women’s womb with a large syringe, in order to kill the baby even when the woman was eight months or nine months pregnant.
“And then, from time to time there a living infant is delivered. And then if someone delivers a live infant, then the guards kick the bloody baby and kill it. And I saw an infant who was crying with pain. I have to express this in words, that I witnessed such an inhumane hell.”
Soon watched 50 fellow prisoners dying excruciatingly painful deaths when they were used as human guinea pigs in biological warfare research.
“I saw so many poor victims,” she recalled. “Hundreds of people became victims of biochemical testing. I was imprisoned in 1987 and during the years of 1988 through ’93, when I was released, I saw the research supervisors — they were enjoying the effect of biochemical weapons, effective beyond their expectations — they were saying they were successful.”
Horrifying Experiments
Soon told NBC News about one instance when about 50 prisoners were taken to an auditorium and given a piece of boiled cabbage to eat. Within a half hour, they began vomiting blood and quickly died. “I saw that in 20 or 30 minutes they died like this in that place. Looking at that scene, I lost my mind. Was this reality or a nightmare? And then I screamed and was sent out of the auditorium.”
Kang Chol-Hwan, a journalist with Chosun Ilbo, South Korea’s most important newspaper, and author of “The Aquariums of Pyongyang,” the first memoir of a North Korean political prisoner, spent almost 10 years in the gulag. He was imprisoned because his grandfather had made complimentary statements about Japanese capitalism.
He was just 9 years old when he arrived at the Yodok camp. His grandfather was never seen again, and prison conditions killed his father.
“When I was 10 years old,” Kang recalled, “we were put to work digging clay and constructing a building. And there were dozens of kids, and while digging the ground, it collapsed. And they died. And the bodies were crushed flat. And they buried the kids secretly, without showing their parents, even though the parents came.”
'Eyeballs Taken Out by Beating'
Ahn Myong Chol, a guard at the Haengyong camp from 1987 through 1994, told the network, “I heard many times that eyeballs were taken out by beating.”
“And I saw that by beating the person the muscle was damaged and the bone was exposed, outside, and they put salt on the wounded part. At the beginning I was frightened when I witnessed it, but it was repeated again and again, so my feelings were paralyzed.”
Beating and killing prisoners, Ahn said, was not only tolerated, it was encouraged and even rewarded.
“They trained me not to treat the prisoners as human beings. If someone is against socialism, if someone tries to escape from prison, then kill him. If there’s a record of killing any escapee, then the guard will be entitled to study in the college. Because of that, some guards kill innocent people.”
NBC’s investigation found that North Korea’s State Security Agency maintains a dozen political prisons and about 30 forced labor and labor education camps, mainly in remote areas in the north.
“The worst are in the country’s far northeast. Some of them are gargantuan: At least two of the camps, Haengyong and Huaong, are larger in area than the District of Columbia, with Huaong being three times the size of the U.S. capital district,” the network explained.
Lim Young Sun, a former North Korean army officer who fled the North 10 years ago, told NBC News, “The degree of punishment has become more severe.”
Lim, director of investigations for the Commission to Help North Korean Refugees, said: “Executions in public have decreased, but within labor camps it has increased. The situation especially within those camps is getting much worse.”
Evil Indeed
It was his knowledge of the gulag and its horrors that led President Bush to include North Korea in his “Axis of Evil” in his 2002 State of the Union address.
“I loathe Kim Jong-il,” Bush told Bob Woodward during an interview for the author’s book “Bush at War.”
“I’ve got a visceral reaction to this guy because he is starving his people. And I have seen intelligence of these prison camps — they’re huge — that he uses to break up families and to torture people.”
The Bush administration is finally curbing Bill Clinton's disastrous policy of pandering to and providing massive aid to Pyongyang. The regime's theft of tens of millions of dollars in food aid, intended for the starving populace but diverted to the military and the political elites, prompted the U.S. on Tuesday to delay further aid.
The U.S. is "going to be darn sure that if we tell you where the food is supposed to be and you give it to someone else, then we're going to wait, and we're going to be darn sure that our food is getting through to the right people," said Tony Hall, U.S. ambassador to U.N. food agencies.
The Japan Times, By Staff Writer, February 13, 2003
North Korea is creating a new headache for the Japanese government: the plight of North Korean residents and their Japanese spouses who have now returned secretly to Japan from that impoverished communist state via China. The problem came to the fore last month when a Japanese woman who had gone to the North with her Korean husband under a post-World War II repatriation program returned home openly under the media spotlight.
According to the Foreign Ministry, scores of North Korean residents who formerly lived in Japan have resettled here with their Japanese wives under covert arrangements. The number of such returnees is expected to rise given the deepening economic crisis in North Korea. The government should give them as much support as it can, particularly if they have Japanese nationality.
The case-by-case approach of the past will not suffice. Much remains to be done -- for example, setting transparent rules for the rescue and receiving of returnees and providing support for their living in Japan. To qualify for assistance, however, some of them may have to be recognized as refugees. The government should work out a comprehensive relief program in consultation with China, South Korea and international organizations.
The woman who returned in late January for the first time in 44 years was a former Tokyo resident. She sneaked into China last autumn with the help of an intermediary group. But her solo escape hit a snag when the group requested cash from the Japanese government in exchange for her handover. Things became more difficult when Chinese authorities detained the woman. That prompted Tokyo to disclose some of the facts about her.
Until then the government had maintained confidentiality about returnees, partly out of concern for the safety of their families left in North Korea and partly in deference to China, which regards escapees from North Korea as illegal entrants. However, Beijing has acquiesced in the transit entry of former Korean residents and their Japanese spouses, accommodating Tokyo's request for humanitarian consideration. Nongovernmental organizations are said to have been helpful in arranging their exits.
It is problematic, however, that China should treat all escapees as illegal entrants. Since it is a signatory to the Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, China is obligated to protect refugees seeking political asylum.
Last month Chinese authorities detained nearly 60 people seeking eventual asylum in Japan. The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees had proposed to interview them for refugee identification, but the Chinese Foreign Ministry rejected the offer, saying they were not refugees because they had entered China illegally for economic reasons.
The Chinese position is based on a Beijing-Pyongyang agreement that says people entering China across the Chinese-Korean border without permission should be deported home. According to NGO officials, Korean residents who formerly resided in Japan and their Japanese wives face particularly tough crackdowns when they flee to China.
Many of those who went to North Korea under the repatriation program have since suffered great hardships, as dramatized by the suffering of the woman who returned in late January. From 1959 to 1984 a total of 93,340 people, including about 1,800 Japanese wives, chose to live in that country, which was portrayed at the time as a "paradise on Earth."
There is now talk that Japan should create special legislation to help these returnees -- legislation similar to the current measure for those who have rejoined their families here after being kidnapped by North Korean agents during the Cold War. A distinction must be made, however, between those who went to the North of their own accord and those who were taken there against their will. In other words, it is not reasonable to treat returning refugees in the same way as those abducted from Japan.
To begin with, the government should do what it can, including offering subsistence support and vocational training. Eligibility standards need to be applied flexibly. Former Korean residents with close ties to Japan should be able to receive almost the same treatment as Japanese nationals. For that, the rigid standards of refugee status need to be relaxed.
A bill now under consideration aims to extend the maximum period of refugee application to six months from the present 60 days. Grievance and review systems also need improving. The important thing is to tackle the refugee problem in the broader context of Japan's international contributions -- not only from the narrower standpoint of protecting Japanese nationals.
By Nicole Winfield, Associated Press, February 11, 2003
ROME (AP) -- The United States is delaying its 2003 food pledges for North Korea amid "credible'' reports that food is being diverted to the North's soldiers and political elite, a U.S. official said Tuesday.
Tony Hall, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N. food agencies, said he expected the United States would eventually deliver food to the U.N. World Food Program for distribution this year. But he said the United States was waiting for the agency to obtain further assurances it can get food to the people it is intended for.
"We are going to continue to be there because we don't use food as a weapon,'' Hall told reporters. "But we are going to be darn sure that if we tell you where the food is supposed to be and you give it to someone else, then we're going to wait, and we're going to be darn sure that our food is getting through to the right people.''
Washington has been the largest donor to the agency's North Korea projects, providing about $61 million worth of aid, or 172,700 tons, last year. The agency has appealed for $201 million for North Korea for 2003. Less than $15 million has been pledged -- from the European Union and Italy.
The United States has long maintained it keeps its political and food-aid relationships with North Korea separate. But the U.S. decision to delay its commitment for 2003 comes amid tensions over North Korea's nuclear program.
The Rome-based agency warned Monday that food shortfalls were affecting masses of hungry people in the eastern half of North Korea for the first time, and the prospect of more supplies in the near future remained bleak.
An agency spokesman in Beijing, Gerald Bourke, said the United States had no food aid scheduled for this year -- an assessment confirmed by Hall's office.
"This year, two months into 2003, we haven't pledged anything,'' a U.S. official in Rome said. "It's still just a question of timing. We will give, we just don't know when. My understanding is that those discussions are going on in Washington.''
Hall said negotiations were under way to reach agreement on better monitoring for food once it reaches North Korea.
The World Food Program monitors distribution of its food. For years there has been concern that food hasn't gotten to the people who need it most and that it has been diverted, but Hall said the latest reports of diversion were credible and new.
Hall said agency officials "try to follow the food but what we're hearing is they will take the food out, and they will actually see the food being given to the people. The food program leaves, and (government officials) grab the food and take it from them (the recipients).''
The diplomat said that "we're hearing reports that to me are starting to sound very credible that food is not getting to people as it should, and is being taken away from people and being diverted to the military and to the elite, which is something new.''
Hall, a Democrat, has traveled to North Korea six times. He was named ambassador to the Rome-based U.N. food agencies after serving for 24 years as an Ohio congressman.
By Michael A. Lev, Chicago Tribune, February 11, 2003
World Food Program has cut off much aid as many nations hesitate to deal with the hostile regime in Pyongyang
BEIJING - The World Food Program said Monday it has cut off aid to several million needy North Koreans because governments that normally donate food for distribution are now reluctant to deal with the hostile regime in Pyongyang.
The United Nations assistance agency said that since last year it has stopped feeding 2.2 million of its 4.2 million core beneficiaries in North Korea -- including children, pregnant women and the elderly.
It will cut off service to another 700,000 recipients by the end of February as donations of corn, rice, wheat, vegetable oil and milk have dried up.
The agency indicated it was facing the most serious disruption of its food delivery pipeline to North Korea since the country plummeted into famine in 1995, raising the specter of more suffering in a country where many people have been in desperate straits for years.
"The situation is basically unprecedented," said Gerald Bourke, a WFP spokesman who recently visited North Korea. "We are feeding fewer and fewer people, so the concern is that the humanitarian crisis that is already severe can only get worse, unless the food pipeline starts flowing in a more substantial way."
Many of the 700,000 people about to be cut this month from service are losing their benefits for the first time and are from the eastern part of the country, a region of derelict industrial cities with very little arable land on which to grow food.
Bourke said that the Rome-based WFP could not assess the full scope of the crisis because the North Korean government refuses to give aid workers unfettered access to the countryside.
This lack of cooperation also is a reason that international interest in helping North Korea has trailed off significantly, he said. Bourke said the government has barred access to 44 of its 206 counties and will not allow random monitoring anywhere.
WFP officials have to make requests days in advance to make spot checks, and when they arrive must negotiate with local officials over where to visit. Markets, which would represent one of the most important indicators of food supplies, are off-limits.
Still, Bourke said an overall picture of the situation was fairly clear: Although North Korea is not suffering through the same severity of famine that killed perhaps more than 1 million people in the 1990s, hunger and suffering are rampant and likely to intensify. "They are hungrier than they were six months ago, that's for sure, because a lot of aid has been cut out," he said.
During his recent visit, when the temperature was 4 degrees below zero, Bourke said he saw hospitals and nurseries with little or no heating where people were moderately malnourished. The overall picture from his drives through the country, he said, suggested an economic and social disaster.
"It's very, very cold, but you hardly see a smoking chimney," he described. "You are in a big city after dark and hardly see a light bulb. You are in a hospital ward and there is very little heating; the corridors are almost colder than outside."
The WFP said that amid such suffering, it has seen its food donations for North Korea fall by about half in the past year as the international community has grown more frustrated with Pyongyang.
Despite a general attitude that everyday North Koreans should not be punished for the actions of its government, donations dropped from 930,000 tons of food in 2001 to 430,000 last year.
Hoping to spur governments to react immediately, the WFP said it wants to collect 512,000 tons of food this year, but has received pledges for only 75,000 tons. South Korea -- which gave 100,000 tons last year -- has not made its commitment.
The biggest change has come from Japan and the U.S., which made substantial donations in the past but cut off deliveries entirely last year in reaction to North Korea's hardened political position and refusal to completely open its food distribution system to oversight.
North Koreans get food from different sources and there is no way to know how successful most families are in collecting enough to eat. The public distribution system last year provided about 10 ounces of food a day to each person. WFP supplements those sources with food, including thick, high-protein crackers, for its target population of children in kindergartens, hospitals and orphanages, as well as pregnant and nursing mothers and the elderly.
Koreans grow food and trade for food, as well as buy supplies from private markets, which the government has begun to encourage. However, reforms meant to spur privatization reportedly have led to rampant inflation, which could mean that some people can't afford what they need.
Bourke acknowledged that the WFP remained concerned about the monitoring of food supplies. One of the international community's persistent worries is whether Pyongyang was diverting food from the public to the military. Still, Bourke said, there are millions of hungry people who need to be fed. "When a child under age of 2 is not properly fed, the damage is permanent," he said
By Caroline Gluck, BBC, Februrary 11, 2003
The Sunday service at Doorae church in southern Seoul is like many others across the country - except that the congregation includes about 20 North Korean defectors. Many of them, like 28-year-old Kim Song Gun, turned to Christianity when they encountered missionaries helping North Koreans on the Chinese border.
Kim Song Gun left his home in the northern province of Chongjin six years ago, fearing he would die from starvation. "I think it's almost impossible to lead a normal Christian life in North Korea. I've heard rumours there are underground churches, but I haven't seen anyone who has been there," said Kim Song Gun. "Mentally, Christianity helps a lot. When you are going through a lot of hardships, religion is the only thing you can rely on," he said.
Other members of the congregation agree. During Sunday's service, North Korean mother Park Young Ae and her 14-year-old son went to the altar to sing a song that has become popular with North Korean defectors - telling the story of a sparrow's perilous journey. After four years apart, they were only reunited a few days earlier.
Park Young Ae said she had been on a business trip to China - but had been unable to return to the North and her family for reasons she said were too complicated to go into. "A lot of the time, I was trying to escape, and people were trying to capture me. At one point I was also jailed. I went through a lot of pain, but I finally made it to South Korea," she said. "When I received orientation in South Korea, I learnt about Christianity and spiritually I'm now very reliant on being a Christian. It gives me inner power."
After the service ends, Park Young Ae - who now runs a restaurant - is able to earn some extra money selling North Korean style sausages to members of the congregation. The Church can help people like her - not only financially but more importantly by providing them with a sense of community.
North Koreans are looked down upon and marginalised socially," said Douglas Shin, a Korean-American missionary and activist working with North Korean immigrants. "So when they need some kind of consolation, they turn to church," he said.
But for 24-year-old Kim Kun Il, the Church is about to become his vocation. Kim Kun Il, who left the North after his father died from hunger six years ago, is now studying to be a reverend at a missionary school. He said he goes to church for the mental help, not the material help, the church groups give. "Money and food has its limitations. Once you are back to a normal state, it doesn't really help," he said.
Douglas Shin agreed. "When you recover from malnutrition or absolute starvation, the human body adapts very quickly. So one or two meals in freedom will be enough to get you on your own feet," he said. "But it takes a long time and a lot of effort to be revived spiritually. They need some kind of comfort, mental and spiritual." "This is our role, the Christian role, to save the people from drowning. It's almost like Noah's Ark," he said.
By Staff Writer, Kyodo News, February 10, 2003
KASHIWAZAKI - Toru Hasuike, the elder brother of one of five Japanese repatriated last year after being abducted to North Korea in 1978, said Sunday that Japan must not provide aid to North Korea until the abduction issue is settled.
"We must not provide any assistance at all to North Korea until the abduction issue is resolved as that would be shelving the issue," Hasuike, 48, told a public gathering in Kashiwazaki, Niigata Prefecture, to discuss the abduction issue.
He said his brother, Kaoru, 45, revealed to him Saturday night that he was instructed by North Korean authorities to say in a video message to his family in Japan, recorded in Pyongyang prior to his homecoming, that he wanted his parents to visit him.
A Japanese government fact-finding mission took the videos of Kaoru and the four other abductees at a Pyongyang hotel when it visited the North Korean capital from late September to early October to find out more about the abduction cases.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Il admitted to Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi in mid-September that Pyongyang's agents had abducted 13 Japanese to the country in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
Kaoru Hasuike, 45, and his wife Yukiko, 46, who are both from Kashiwazaki, arrived in Tokyo on Oct 15 with three other Japanese abductees for their first visit to Japan since being taken forcibly to North Korea in three separate cases 24 years earlier.
The Hasuike brothers' parents, Hidekazu and Hatsui, as well as Yukiko's father Kazuo Okudo attended the gathering, which attracted some 1,400 people.
Shigeru and Sakie Yokota, the parents of Megumi, who was abducted from Niigata in 1977 at age 13 and is said to have died in North Korea, also took part.
By Staff Writer, The Observer, February 9, 2003
With millions of its people facing starvation, the world's most isolated nation has made a rare entreaty, writes Jonathan Watts from Pyongyang.
North Korea is appealing to the outside world for assistance as aid workers and diplomats in Pyongyang warn that this impoverished state is on the brink of a humanitarian catastrophe.
In a rare direct entreaty to international public opinion, the top government official responsible for disaster prevention urged donors not to cut support because of the country's ongoing nuclear stand-off with the US.
'Please let the world know of the needs of our country,' said Yun Su-chang, head of the Flood Damage Rehabilitation Committee. 'Some countries, such as the United States, are trying to link food with politics. That is a flagrant violation of humanitarian principles.
'Our people are trying to overcome their problems, but we face a shortage of food. I sincerely hope that international humanitarian assistance will continue.'
The appeal, made during an exclusive interview with The Observer, is remarkable for a proudly defiant country that would usually rather starve than try to elicit sympathy.
That it came through the media - rather than quietly behind the scenes through the UN - underlines the desperate concern of the North Korean government as international donations of food have dried up since the start of the nuclear crisis.
North Korea, the world's most isolated nation, is stuck in an Orwellian 1984. As far as the lives of the people in Pyongyang are concerned, the Cold War never ended and globalisation has passed them by completely. The country retains a political system built around utter devotion to the 'Great Leader' Kim Jong-il and a paranoid fear of the outside world, particularly the US.
But isolation has come at an appalling price. Formerly one of only two industrialised nations in Asia, North Korea has steadily regressed into an economic basket case as natural disasters, sanctions and calamitous policy decisions have steadily deprived the nation of energy, both calories and kilowatts.
Power has ebbed away faster in recent months because of the nuclear crisis. America - usually its biggest donor - has not offered a single grain of rice to Pyongyang in the four months since it confronted the regime with evidence of a uranium enrichment programme. Japan, an important provider in the past, has given nothing for more than a year.
In Europe, which is still supplying maize, it is becoming harder for governments to justify providing assistance to a country that withdrew two months ago from the global treaty to stop the spread of nuclear weapons.
The World Food Programme has been forced to axe support for three million people and reduce rations for 3.2 million of the most needy, including babies, orphans, lactating women and the elderly. Cuts in the government's food distribution system mean that school children must now get by on 300 grams a day, compared with 500 grams in the past.
'Since November, the situation has steadily deteriorated. It is now very dramatic, very depressing,' said Anahit Sadoyan of the World Food Programme, which has been forced to close a production line at a Pyongyang food processing factory because donations of maize ran out. 'It is hurting the children the most. They shouldn't suffer because of the political situation. It is not their fault.'
Poverty is apparent even in Pyongyang. Although there are few signs of malnutrition, electricity is in such short supply that the government has closed the Children's Palace - one of the centrepieces of national culture - because it cannot heat the building.
The deprivation gets worse the further you get from the capital. On the road to Shinchon, a town about an hour's drive south of Pyongyang, cars are scarce but an almost endless stream of farmers, soldiers and children walk along the paddyfields.
Only one tractor was visible even though this is one of the most important agricultural regions of North Korea. The biggest vehicles were open-backed trucks, overflowing with people. Some vehicles were powered by wood burners rather than petrol.
The worst-hit areas are in the north and east, where The Observer was denied access. 'The situation in the north-east is worse than the Horn of Africa or Chechnya,' said one aid worker. 'I have never seen children suffering so badly from malnutrition. The growth of children has been stunted to such a degree that 11-year-olds look like six-year-olds. Generations of North Koreans will be mentally retarded.'
Although last autumn's crop was good compared with previous years, it was still more than a million tonnes below the minimum needs of the population of 22 million. With the lean season beginning in April, the fear is that North Korea will plunge back into the dark days of the late Nineties when hundreds of thousands are believed to have died of starvation.
Since that time, more than one in four of the population have been fed by the World Food Programme - which has its biggest project in North Korea. A nationwide health study, due to be released within the week, is expected to show a 33 per cent improvement in nutrition rates. But even with the gains, two out of every five children remain malnourished.
The socialist economy is in a dire state, though no one knows quite how bad because figures are either unreliable or unreleased. In a sign of how desperate the situation has become, the government introduced market-oriented reforms last summer, but so far they appear only to have pushed up prices.
True to the principles of Orwellian Newspeak, the darker the situation becomes, the brighter the state-controlled media reports the news.
Despite the fact that millions have been shivering in flats with no heat and dim lights despite temperatures as low as minus 21C (minus 6F), the Pyongyang Times recently ran a report lauding the success of the power industry.
Unusually, though, government officials have admitted on record to me that the situation is bleak. Oh Yong-il, external director of the Economic Promotion Committee, said shortages of electricity meant machine-tool factories were only able to run at 60 to 70 per cent of capacity and the furnaces at steel and iron works were not functioning.
'It is hurting people in their daily lives,' he said. 'Shops and factories are not producing the things people need.' Blaming the US for isolating North Korea, he said the cutting of 500,000 tonnes of heavy oil a year was creating huge problems around the Unggi power plant where the fuel was used.
But in words that would have been sacrilegious a year ago, he said the incentive of profits - one of the aims of the recent reforms - was necessary.
'Contrary to before, people can earn profits,' he said. 'This will inspire people to produce more because it is in their self-interest.'
But this modernising chink in the country's socialist ideology has been overwhelmed by the nuclear crisis, which has taken the country back to the Orwellian mindset. Instead of the looming humanitarian crisis, the nation is fixated on the threat of a US attack. Even at the General Hospital of Koryo Medicine in Pyongyang the doctors are preparing to fight America, not malnutrition. 'If Kim Jong-il calls us, I'll leave the hospital and fight in the army,' said Hyon Chol, the deputy director. 'A lack of food and energy does not really have an effect on our people's health,' he insisted. 'We want help but we are not going to beg for peace.'
By Choi Won Gi (Translated by Kim Hyun Jung), Joong Ang Ilbo, February 9, 2003
Susan Pares (65), whose husband is a former British ambassador to North Korea, Jim Hore, sent a story of his sojourn to Pyongyang to the Joong Ang Ilbo. The two appropriate adjectives to describe North Korea would be “difficult”, and “reclusive”
What surprised me the most during my stay at Pyongyang is that Pyongyang people are much smaller than Seoul citizens. My husband and I have met many South Koreans in Seoul. They looked taller than average Asian people. For example, an adult man seemed to be taller than five feet six inches.
On the other hand, the average heights of men living at Pyongyang seemed to be five feet three inches at the most. While the Seoul citizens are large-built with a smile on their face, the Pyongyang people are haggard with a blank look.
Malnutrition was not the only problem. Pyongyang’s roads were empty and the offices were not equipped with heating. In addition, there were occasional blackouts due to a lack of electricity. This city was struggling against poverty.
North Korea is isolated. When we started to live in Pyongyang in July 2001, we first experienced a fear of isolation. There was nothing to connect us to outside of Pyongyang.
The communication network was not reliable due to wiretapping and newspapers published in England were delivered behind schedule.
Thus, we had to rely on a small radio for communication. For the first two months, we stayed at a hotel in Pyongyang, and could only listen to the BBC news by radio.
A noisy ‘Song for General Kim Il-Sung’ that was broadcast on the streets every morning often hindered our hearing. We felt like we were isolated from the outside world by an invisible veil.
The interruption of information from the outside world and ignorance of the international community has produced awful and negative results in this society. North Korean elites as well as the people were ignorant of international trends and norms.
They were not knowledgeable of technology. For instance, North Korean authorities concentrated on Information Technology because of Kim Jong Il’s personal interest.
The bigger problem is that although North Korean elites would like to engage themselves in the international community, they do not have any specific knowledge of it.
When our duty was completed in North Korea and we came back to England, we were frequently asked whether we had starved. Whenever asked like that, our answer was “no.” Foreigners living in Pyongyang were well provided with food.
We could get foods at stores and hotels in downtown with dollars. What we could buy were bread, vegetables, canned foods and some unknown brands of wine.
North Korean authorities intended to reconsider the country’s productivity and tighten the control of black markets by introducing “Measures to Improve Economic Management” in July.
The government gave managers authority over the rights of corporate management, which executive members of the Party had previously handled, and expanded discretionary power and incentives.
Moreover, they enlarged private cultivated land to what is called “a kitchen garden or private plot” and increased wages of executives of the Party and laborers, which led to some positive outcomes.
During our stay at Pyongyang, we confirmed that some people, who were engaged in trade between South Korea and Japan, earned money and we sometimes witnessed some rich North Korean men.
Some of them argue that North Korea should accept a capitalistic economy through the “Measures to Improve Economic Management.” However, North Korean economy seems to have a long way to go.
It is likely to be impossible to restore North Korean economy, unless the government implements full-scale reforms and allow more foreign capital and skills.
Despite severe economic difficulties, the Kim Jong Il regime is quite stable. While I stayed form 18 months in North Korea, I could not detect any sign of anti-government movements.
North Korean people did not attribute lack of foods and daily necessaries to their government. Instead, they seemed to exhibit a loyalty to their government.
It might be partly due to the government’s surveillance. Nevertheless, it would be caused by the fact that the government has succeeded in indoctrinating their people by decades of education and governmental controls.
We could see a peaceful landscape on Sundays ni Pyongyang. The people also brought some lunch baskets near Daedong river and the Moranbong Park, and enjoyed themselves. We could not see any specific complaints over the Kim, Jong-il’s regime. It does not seem that the regime will collapse.
New York Times, Editorial, February 8, 2003
More than 200,000 North Koreans have fled into northeastern China in recent years trying to save themselves and their families from famine. Now they are trapped there, hunted down by Chinese police and blocked from traveling to South Korea, which says it would willingly receive them. Though less threatening than nuclear weapons programs, this is a dimension of the Korean crisis Washington cannot afford to ignore.
Today's refugee emergency is a foretaste of what might happen if the North Korean regime collapsed. Fearing the consequences of such an implosion, China and South Korea have been reluctant to pressure Pyongyang over its nuclear moves.
No one can be sure exactly how many of North Korea's 22 million people have starved to death over the past decade, but some estimates are as high as one million. Even more would have died without the generous food provided by America, Japan and South Korea. Washington has been by far the largest donor. Even with these contributions, many North Koreans have gone hungry ?victims of economic mismanagement and the priority that North Korean rulers assign to military projects.
In recent months Beijing has begun deporting groups of North Koreans back home, where they face almost certain imprisonment. These deportations violate international refugee law. Beijing insists the North Koreans aren't genuine refugees, but refuses to allow United Nations representatives to interview them. In scenes reminiscent of Havana or Eastern Europe in the late 1980's, North Koreans in China have repeatedly tried to get to foreign embassies where they might be granted safe conduct to South Korea, but most have been forcibly repelled by Chinese police.
This year American food donations have plunged, reflecting deteriorating relations with North Korea. Pressuring the North's leaders and military programs is sound policy. But withholding food from starving people is shameful and likely to make the refugee problem still worse. China's behavior toward the North Koreans is inexcusable. A more humane and orderly approach to absorbing current and future refugees from North Korea must be found without delay.
By Nobert Vollertsen, The Wall Street Journal, February 5, 2003
SEOUL, South Korea--A human tragedy of hellish dimensions continues in North Korea. For nearly a decade, an unknown number of North Koreans, possibly as many as 300,000, have defected to China. These brave men, women and children risk their lives to flee the mass starvation and brutal oppression brought upon them by Kim Jong Il's Stalinist regime. Sadly, Beijing's official policy has been, and remains, to arrest the refugees and forcibly return them to North Korea, where they face imprisonment, torture and in some cases execution.
Until recently, these refugees' stories and China's practice of refoulement, or forced return, went largely untold. Mercifully, this is beginning to change. Now, action by human-rights campaigners from around the world--including my own small efforts--helps some of these refugees to seek asylum, and to publicize their brutal treatment at the hands of Chinese and North Korean officials.
President Bush is right to call the regime in Pyongyang "evil." I know, because I have seen the evil with my own eyes. From July 1999 to December 2000, I traveled with the German medical-aid group Cap Anamur and gained access to some of the country's most secretive regions. What I witnessed could best be described as unbelievable deprivation. As I wrote in April 2001: "In the hospitals one sees kids too small for their age, with hollow eyes and skin stretched tight across their faces. They wear blue-and-white striped pajamas, like the children in Hitler's Auschwitz."
While Western critics denounced President Bush's decision to include North Korea in the axis of evil, the long-suffering people of North Korea cheered it. I know; refugees have told me. They know how Ronald Reagan's description of the Soviet Union as an "evil empire" was an early and important step toward its collapse. Moreover, the axis-of-evil remark proved prescient after North Korea's confession that it had a large, covert nuclear-weapons program. More and more high-ranking defectors have told us that Kim Jong Il's government is in a desperate situation, much closer to collapse than the outside world knows. This, they say, is why he needs the fear of nuclear
annihilation to win concessions from the West, prop up his regime, and subjugate his own people.
One must remember that the famine in North Korea is not a natural disaster, but a man-made one. The North Korean dictator uses food as a weapon against his own people, keeping them weak and dependent on the state. From 1994 to 1998 (the most recent reliable data the outside world has), at least two million North Koreans perished from starvation and related diseases; nearly 50% of all North Korean children are malnourished to the point that it threatens their physical and mental health.
I worked in North Korea for 18 months until I was deported in late 2000, for publicly denouncing the regime for its human-rights abuses and failure to distribute the massive amounts of food aid to the people who needed it most. After leaving, I knew the only way I could help the people of North Korea was to tell the world what I had witnessed and work to free the 23 million people who remain prisoners in their own country.
In 2001, I interviewed several hundred North Korean defectors in Seoul, as well as near the Chinese-North Korean border, plus in several other locations where they are hiding. Many of them had spent years in concentration camps and spoke of mass executions, torture, rape, murder, baby-killing and other crimes against humanity. Most were imprisoned for "anti-state criminal acts."
During my interviews, I met many human-rights activists who had devoted their lives to helping the North Korean refugees. Hiroshi Kato, a Japanese journalist and organizer of Life Funds for North Korean Refugees, based in Tokyo; Sang Hun Kim, a South Korean former U.N. official and human rights volunteer; Chun Ki Won, a South Korean Christian missionary; and many others. We realized from our experience in the field in China that the North Korean defectors had risked their lives fleeing starvation and oppression.
In China, most of the refugees live in utterly primitive circumstances. They have little food and no medicine, and they lack proper shelter. Many live in the woods, sleep in makeshift huts, and cook in holes in the ground. Those in urban areas are sold like slaves to Chinese businessmen, and the young women are forced into prostitution.
My fellow activists and I have appealed to Beijing numerous times, asking them to change their policy toward the refugees; but to this day we have yet to receive a response. In late 2001, we agreed that helping North Korean defectors to enter a foreign embassy in Beijing would be an effective way to bring the issue to international attention. Encouraged by other international and South Korean aid workers, who were consulted in the weeks that followed, we arranged a plan of action and made several trips to China to go over the logistics.
Kim Hee Tae, a South Korean humanitarian aid worker operating in China, joined us on condition that the operation be carried out on humanitarian grounds. We agreed, and thus 25 North Korean defectors were interviewed and selected from a great many defectors, all anxious to leave China at any risk. On March 15, 2002, we launched our first operation, sending all 25 defectors into the Spanish Embassy in Beijing. Several similar operations followed.
Our plan was to conduct as many operations as possible, to keep the issue in the news and ratchet up international pressure on Beijing. Then, a plan to send a group of refugees into the Peruvian Embassy last September was aborted when the Chinese authorities arrested the chosen refugees and the activist Kim Hee Tae in late August. Things then went from bad to worse. In early November, Mr. Kato was detained by the Chinese police, very severely interrogated, even tortured, and finally released because of increasing international pressure, mainly from the Japanese media. Because the police confiscated his notebook, our whole network suffered a huge setback.
Another strategy of ours was to create a flood of North Korean "boat people." We made extensive plans for vessels to carry refugees across the Yellow Sea from China to South Korea. Once again many activists and even a freelance photographer for the New York Times got arrested. Beijing treats the North Korean refugees--and increasingly those who help them as well--like common criminals. China continues to prop up Kim Jong Il's evil regime even as thousands sneak over the border to escape it.
Even worse, the South Korean government has largely turned a blind eye to the plight of their "brothers" to the north, and in many cases has actually hindered their escape. Our plans to cross the Yellow Sea were foiled in part by South Korean authorities who used surveillance, interception and minders to disrupt our plans. Read this again, for I wish to stress the shame of it: South Korean authorities worked actively to foil our attempts to bring North Korean refugees to freedom. But under South Korean law, North Korean refugees cannot be turned away. It is time for Seoul to live up to this promise.
And it's not just the officials. South Korean students spend their time and energy denouncing the presence of U.S. troops, instead of denouncing the evils of Kim Jong Il. What many foreigners fail to understand is that the student movement in Seoul is heavily influenced by North Korean propaganda, and quite possibly given logistical and financial support through spies from the North.
This is similar to the espionage and propaganda that was so pervasive in Europe during the Cold War. As a German who witnessed the fall of the Berlin Wall, I understand the destabilizing impact an exodus of refugees can have on totalitarian regimes. Despite arrests and beatings, my friends and I will continue our efforts to create a steady flow of refugees through Western embassies in China, by boat across the Yellow Sea, and at the North Korean-Russian border.
As a German, I also know about Neville Chamberlain's appeasement policy towards Nazi Germany, how badly it failed, and how disastrous were its consequences. The only way to truly help the North Korean people and to end Pyongyang's nuclear blackmail is to hasten the collapse of Kim Jong Il's murderous regime. As President Bush said of Iraq in his State of the Union address, so too should it be said of North Korea: the real enemy of the North Korean people is not surrounding them but ruling them.
* Dr. Vollertsen, a physician from Germany, worked in hospitals in North Korea from July 1999 to December 2000. He is currently based in South Korea, from where he organizes rescue and asylum efforts for escaping North Koreans.
By Barbara Demick, Los Angeles Times, February 5, 2003
With annual price rises put at 600% or more, millions face starvation. That could help explain the regime's recklessness amid a nuclear standoff.
North Korea is extremely secretive about statistics, but economists estimate that inflation is galloping along at an annual rate of at least 600%. At the same time, many factories are running out of money to meet their payrolls.
The precarious economic situation puts millions of North Koreans at risk of starvation in the coming months and undermines the Communist regime. It could also partially explain North Korea's recklessness in the current standoff over nuclear weapons.
"They are in desperate shape, and that is one reason they behave so wildly," said Cho Myong Chol, a former economics professor at Kim Il Sung University in the North's capital, Pyongyang, who defected to South Korea in 1994.
Economists say hastily conceived price and wage reforms, instituted July 1 in an effort to introduce the rudiments of a market economy, triggered the inflation.
The hope was that the liberalization of prices would spur production in decrepit factories and boost stocks of badly needed commodities. Instead, tensions erupted in October over North Korea's nuclear program, and that was followed by the suspension of outside energy assistance and cuts in food donations.
"The government started the reforms in quiet times, and now they are in a state of crisis," said Cho, who maintains contacts with North Korea. He said the regime is trying to roll back some of the reforms and reassert control over prices. However, he added, "The prices keep going up steadily, and they can't get them under control."
In theory, prices were to increase to realistic levels -- more in line with the black market -- and wages were to be raised accordingly so that workers could afford the prices. But costs quickly lurched out of control.
“The prices went up more than wage hikes. But then, in a lot of places you can't even get wages. It is a double curse," said a 29-year-old North Korean defector who has been working in China near the North Korean border to help others who have escaped. Like many other defectors, he uses an assumed name, Lee Kwan Shik.
Upper-tier workers are supposed to receive wages of 2,500 won a month under the new system. But rice, which is the staple of the North Korean diet, costs about 140 won a pound, meaning that a well-paid worker would at best be able to provide a family with slightly more than half a pound of rice a day.
Lee said that more and more would-be defectors are trying to escape from North Korea in anticipation of another famine like the one in the mid-1990s, believed to have killed 2 million people, or 10% of the population.
"Everybody is suffering. I've been surprised to meet more and more soldiers who are escaping [into China] because it is too difficult to overcome the hunger," Lee said.
"We had been so full of expectations that once these measures were enacted, there wouldn't be any more shortages," said a North Korean homemaker, 38, who defected in August and asked that her name not be printed. "But we got just higher prices, nothing more."
The World Food Program, the largest U.N. agency operating in North Korea, is warning of a coming calamity. Although the agency is not permitted to visit farmers markets where food is sold or bartered, officials say they have heard complaints about soaring prices.
"The assessment is that there are significant price increases," said Richard Corsino, head of the agency's North Korea program, in a telephone interview from Pyongyang. "I think it is purely a question of supply and demand. There is simply not enough food."
The agency, which used to provide food assistance to 6.4 million North Koreans, recently cut its distribution list in half because of a lack of donations. According to Bourke, it has only 10,000 tons of food in the country, little more than one week's supply, and does not expect any new donations until late this month.
The United States delivered its last shipment of grain to North Korea in December, but the Bush administration insists that is not a pressure tactic in the nuclear struggle.
Among North Korea watchers, there is debate about the extent to which the nuclear tensions are compounding the food crisis. The North Korean media are replete with predictions that the country will be the next target of U.S. military action after Iraq, which could be prompting some people to hoard food.
"There is a strong sense that there is some stockpiling, that they are hunkering down," said an aid official who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Others say inflation was the inevitable consequence of embarking on radical reforms when foreign currency, fuel and food supplies were in short supply.
"These reforms unleashed forces that the North Koreans are not equipped to control," said Bradley Babson, a senior advisor to the World Bank who has worked with North Korea. "They need institutions to manage their economy, a banking system, a macroeconomic policy, all those things we take for granted. They were taking a shot in the dark."
By Hiroshi Matsubara, The Japan Times, February 5, 2003
On a rainy night in fall 1996, a Japan-born tractor driver in North Korea dived into the fast and muddy current of the Yalu River on the border with China in a last-ditch attempt to escape the hunger and poverty that had plagued his family for decades. A couple of months later, he returned to Japan for the first time in 36 years. Now, more than six years on, his desperate hope of helping his family remains unrealized.
"No public assistance is available for Japanese returnees from North Korea, and I can hardly make a living here," said the 55-year-old man, who works as a security guard in Tokyo.
In recent years, he has appeared in the media under the pseudonym Shunsuke Miyazaki, hiding his face and having his voice electronically altered to avoid possible persecution by North Korean authorities against the wife, three children and sisters he left behind.
"My initial goal of helping my family out of hunger has been thwarted, and I feel I have yet to swim across the muddy border stream to the other side," Miyazaki said in an interview with The Japan Times.
Last week, a 64-year-old Japanese woman who escaped North Korea in 2001 and was briefly held by Chinese authorities was thrust into the media spotlight as she made her first homecoming in 44 years.
But there are dozens of others who, like Miyazaki, have secretly returned to Japan from North Korea, disillusioned after moving decades ago to the secretive state in pursuit of a touted "paradise."
Miyazaki, a native of Kawasaki, was 13 when he, his Korean father, Japanese mother and three sisters moved to North Korea in 1960.
Despite opposition from his in-laws, Miyazaki's father decided to cross the Sea of Japan, heeding a call by Pyongyang and the General Association of Korean Residents in Japan (Chongryun) for Koreans in Japan to emigrate to North Korea.
Between 1959 and 1984, a total of 93,340 Korean residents in Japan, or the Japanese spouses and offspring of some, moved to North Korea as part of the relocation program, which was based on an accord between the Red Cross societies of the two countries. The Japanese Red Cross Society estimates that around 1,800 Japanese wives went with their Korean husbands.
Many Koreans, including those who had no ancestral connection with the northern part of the peninsula, were lured by a campaign that promised a paradise on Earth, free from the poverty and harsh discrimination plaguing Korean residents of Japan, according to Miyazaki.
But word of a promised land proved false, especially for those who had no kin in Japan affluent enough to send regular aid packages of money and goods, Miyazaki said.
Throughout the 36 years he spent in North Korea, Miyazaki's family suffered poverty and hunger. Japanese immigrants meanwhile found themselves living in harsh conditions and facing severe discrimination from North Korean authorities, who viewed them as an "enemy class," he said.
Miyazaki and his parents and siblings settled in a tiny village in Hamgyong-namdo Province near the Sea of Japan coast. They were unable to find decent jobs. His mother died in 1973, his father in 1984.
"The Japanese government, which viewed Korean residents as a potential source of social unrest and assisted Pyongyang's 'repatriation' campaign, is equally responsible for our plight," he said.
In the 1990s, natural disasters exacerbated North Korea's woes, creating a severe food shortage. Miyazaki and his family often had to survive on a diet of weeds, roots and tree bark -- a situation that ultimately pushed Miyazaki, who had driven tractors at several communal farms and worked at factories, to flee the country to find a way to help his family.
Exhausted by his swim for freedom, Miyazaki passed out on the Chinese shore of the Yalu River, where he was found by an ethnic Korean living in China who took him to the Japanese Consulate General in Shenyang, northeastern China.
Consular officials negotiated with Chinese authorities and secretly flew him to Narita airport aboard a plane specially chartered for him in October 1996.
Last December, the Foreign Ministry acknowledged publicly for the first time that in recent years it has helped dozens of Japanese and former Korean residents of Japan to return after escaping North Korea. Miyazaki said at least 20 people have returned to Japan in circumstances similar to his own.
"It was the most exciting moment in my life, and I am full of gratitude for my home country for taking such a diplomatic risk to help just one person," he said. Despite their father's ancestry, Miyazaki said, he and his sisters have always considered themselves Japanese. Miyazaki had hoped the Japanese government might do something to help his family, but such hopes were soon dashed.
The Foreign Ministry's assistance program consisted of arranging for Miyazaki to be temporarily accommodated at a facility for alcoholics and drug addicts in Shinagawa Ward, Tokyo. It refused to provide him with any welfare services or employment assistance, and told him to stay silent and out of sight for at least three years.
Miyazaki's limited Japanese-language skills made finding a job difficult, and he often depended on a diet of expired food donated by local convenience stores. Miyazaki has held down his job as a security guard for the past two years. He earns about 160,000 yen a month, but much of this is spent on living expenses and medical fees.
To date, Miyazaki has sent 300,000 yen to his family. The money, sent under another pseudonym, came from his savings and royalties from an autobiography he published in Japan in 2000. Relatives on his mother's side in Japan have refused to help him in any way.
"My mother's family virtually cut their kinship with us when she married my father, because of their prejudice against Koreans," he said. "I see the same sort of attitude from the Japanese government and general public toward those who emigrated to North Korea during Pyongyang's campaign."
In March, Miyazaki will be out of a job. He said his employer has informed him that his contract will not be renewed when it expires at the end of this month. Miyazaki said he will apply for public living assistance as a last resort. Helping his family in North Korea will become more difficult, he added.
Miyazaki urged the government to offer the same kind of assistance to returnees from North Korean as was offered to the Japanese who were left behind in China as children in the chaotic closing days of World War II and have come to Japan decades later.
The South Korean government has accepted more than 2,000 asylum seekers from North Korea and offers various welfare and employment assistance to such people, he said. Miyazaki said he will reveal his real name in a more detailed autobiography that he is currently working on.
Through the book, he hopes to raise money to help his wife, who was ill when he last saw her in 1996. She has written to him just once since his escape, even though he has transferred money to his family on several occasions, he said.
By Edith M. Lederer, Associated Press, February 4, 2003
UNITED NATIONS (AP) - Secretary-General Kofi Annan appealed for funds Monday to "avert a major humanitarian crisis" in North Korea and create better conditions to peacefully resolve the nuclear standoff.
Annan's urgent appeal followed talks with his personal envoy, Maurice Strong, who visited North Korea last month and told the secretary-general that desperately needed food and medicine will soon be unavailable.
After his visit, Strong warned that the pipeline of food and medicine that 6 to 8 million North Koreans depended on was drying up and there was "an urgent need to keep that pipeline flowing." North Korea has been relying on outside aid since the mid-1990s to help feed its 22 million people.
For the first quarter of the year, Strong said, the World Food Program urgently needs 97,000 tons of food aid. For the rest of the year, North Korea will need some $250 million in aid, but the world community has put forth just $10 million, he said.
U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard said Monday that a review by top U.N. experts confirmed Strong's assessment that exceptional action is needed because of the humanitarian situation facing the country.
"To prevent an impending tragedy, the secretary-general has decided to seek additional donor support to ensure, at least for the next several months, that the humanitarian pipeline ... does not dry up," Eckhard said.
"This would avert a major humanitarian crisis and would also create conditions more conducive to the peaceful resolution of the current political standoff," he said.
The United States has said it would consider food and other economic aid if North Korea dismantles its nuclear programs. North Korea has rejected the offer as a precondition for talks and has said the United States is insincere.
The standoff began in October, when U.S. officials said North Korea had admitted having a nuclear weapons program in violation of a 1994 agreement.
Washington and its allies suspended oil shipments to North Korea, which in turn expelled U.N. nuclear inspectors, withdrew from a global nuclear arms control treaty and said it would reactivate its main nuclear complex. That raised fears it will start to develop nuclear weapons.
North Korea accuses the United States of escalating the standoff as a pretext to invade the country. Washington insists it wants a peaceful solution to the crisis.
By Barbara Demick, Los Angeles Times, February 3, 2003
ONJUNG-RI, North Korea — When the sun drops low in the winter sky, the landscape fades to gray and the squat houses of monochromatic concrete are swallowed up by the night. Not even a dim light bulb nor an oil lamp flickering through a broken windowpane interrupts the darkness. It is as though this entire village of 3,000 people has disappeared, along with all other signs of human habitation.
This is a typical nighttime scene in rural North Korea, where electricity is in short supply. Even the lighthouse at nearby Kosung harbor doesn't shine. It doesn't matter much, as there's no fuel for boats.
Of all the difficulties facing North Korea, the energy shortage is perhaps the most critical. It underlies the crisis over nuclear development and is one of the main factors contributing to chronic famines and the country's overall dysfunction.
"It is a vicious downward cycle. Everything that North Korea has is decrepit, and they don't have the electricity to make spare parts to fix it," said Timothy Savage of the Nautilus Institute for Security and Sustainable Development, a Berkeley, Calif., organization that has conducted some of the most detailed studies of North Korea's energy problems.
"This is not like rural Africa," Savage said. "North Korea was completely electrified. It is not like they were never part of the modern world. They were kicked out of the modern world."
In its last detailed study of North Korea's energy situation, Nautilus estimated the nation's electricity-generating capacity in 2000 was one-third of what it had been a decade earlier. That is less electrical energy for this nation of 22 million people than is consumed by many medium-size U.S. cities.
Put another way, the amount of electricity used by the average North Korean — including in homes, industries, shops and government buildings — was less than 4 percent of that used by an American. "I'm sure it has not gotten better, and in all probability it has gotten worse," said David Von Hippel, an energy specialist and one of the report's authors.
Last week, the North Korean government acknowledged its energy problems, noting that power outages frequently disrupted factories and electric-train service. "If the United States did not kick up a 'nuclear row' ... the electricity problem would have already been solved fully in the country," the state Korean Central News Agency said.
North Korea claims it needs nuclear power to revitalize the economy. Its energy crisis is blamed on the United States; North Korea points to the virtual collapse of a 1994 pact, under which the North agreed to end its nuclear program in return for pledges of energy assistance from the United States and its allies.
The Bush administration says North Korea is responsible for the deal's failure because it cheated on its promises to suspend its nuclear effort. The problem is most pressing outside the capital, Pyongyang. Foreigners are seldom permitted to visit rural North Korea — in part, say diplomats, because the regime is embarrassed by the scarcities.
But one can get a glimpse in the southeastern enclave around Mount Kumgang, where guided tours are operated from South Korea. "This area is far from Pyongyang, and it is really suffering. There is less and less electricity every year," said Kim Young Hyun, a South Korean who manages tourist facilities on the outskirts of Onjung-ri for the Hyundai Asan Corp. The company has brought in generators and fuel for the tourists, but the village itself remains dark.
Onjung-ri has electricity between five and 10 days a month, and then only for an hour or two at a time. Firewood is piled high on apartment balconies to provide heat and cooking fuel. There appear to be no operating cars or trucks, just an occasional bicycle.
Although there is a large railroad station just outside the village, adorned with a banner praising North Korea's founder, Kim Il Sung, there hasn't been enough power to run the electrified trains in years.
Nearby, men and women appear to be building a bridge entirely with hand tools. There is no evidence of any heavy machinery.
Kosung, the port town of 50,000, is filled with construction cranes that appear to be rusted in place. The chockablock apartment buildings that form its skyline are dark at night. Residents say they are lucky if the power is on when they return from work in the evenings so that they can use the elevator.
"The electricity comes and goes," said Park Hyun Il, 28, a tour guide at Mount Kumgang. "I'm lucky. ... I live on the third floor so I don't have far to walk."
"Electricity is essential for the quality of life," said resident Kim In Joon, 60, who works at another tourist site. "Even our cultural life is suffering because we can't watch television."
North Koreans who have fled the country describe using their useless refrigerators to store shoes, and heating irons over wood-burning fires. They say many areas get electricity only on major holidays, such as Kim Il Sung's birthday.
"When the electricity comes on, you'll hear people shouting with joy like it's the World Cup," said Kim Sun Ae, 36, who defected from a village in North Hamgyong province near the Chinese border. "People complained about the electricity all the time."
The North presents a dramatic contrast to South Korea, where neon and light are in abundance. Satellite photographs of the peninsula show North Korea as a black hole at night, devoid of light except for a few pinpricks around Pyongyang.
North Korea specialists say the energy crisis results from both inept leadership and a few unlucky breaks. Before 1991, North Korea imported most of its oil and natural gas from the Soviet Union at bargain prices. The collapse of the Eastern Bloc cut off not only fuel but also spare parts for the Soviet-designed power plants.
That led to the breakdown of the energy-dependent agricultural industry, which used electrically operated irrigation systems and petroleum-based fertilizers.
"There is a direct causal link between the energy shortage and the food shortages," says Marcus Noland, a North Korea expert with the Institute for International Economics in Washington.
"North Korea was not very well-suited to growing food, and they developed an incredibly input-intensive style of agriculture."
As fuel grew short, tractors broke down when farmers tried to run them by burning corn husk instead of gasoline.
The coal-mining industry went into a tailspin because hungry miners had little stamina and coal could not be transported without fuel. Factories stopped working.
North Korea's hydroelectric plants, another important source of energy after coal, broke down for lack of spare parts. Desperate for bolts and other hardware, people began salvaging parts from electric towers.
"Their power plants are only operating at about 30 percent of capacity, and of what is generated, about 30 percent is lost because of deteriorating power lines and cables," said Hong Song Kuk, an infrastructure specialist with South Korea's Unification Ministry.
The dilapidated state of the power lines is around Onjung-ri. Loose wires dangle from rusted poles. As for insulation, few buildings appear to have complete sets of windows.
By a staff, The Japan Times, February 2, 2003
The government is not likely to enact a law to provide support for Japanese women who flee North Korea, Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Shinzo Abe said Saturday.
Abe was asked whether Japan will enact a law similar to the one supporting Japanese abduction victims who flee North Korea and leave their families behind. "It is difficult to make such a special response as a state since these people basically went (to North Korea) of their own will," Abe said.
Abe made the remarks on a television program aired Saturday morning. He added, however, that the government wants to make what he called a "humane" response to the matter.
Last week, the Foreign Ministry officially admitted that it had helped dozens of Japanese spouses of Koreans and former Korean residents of Japan who fled North Korea for China to return to Japan. It has done this secretly with Beijing's cooperation.
A 64-year-old Japanese woman was released from Chinese custody Wednesday following her escape from North Korea in November. She arrived in Japan the same day, returning home for the first time in 44 years.
About 93,000 people, including Japanese spouses and their children, went to North Korea under a repatriation program between 1959 and 1984.
In December, the government enacted a law to provide financial assistance and other types of support to 15 Japanese abducted by North Korea in the 1970s and 1980s, including the five who returned to Japan on Oct. 15, and their families.
Politicians' delay data
The minutes of testimony before a Diet committee by the head of a group supporting Japanese abducted by North Korea have been withheld for nearly two months due to opposition to their release from Diet members, lawmakers said Friday.
The release of the document has been delayed because the witness has refused to accept a demand from Diet members he criticized in the testimony that their names be deleted from the record.
Katsumi Sato, head of the National Association for the Rescue of Japanese Kidnapped by North Korea, testified before the House of Representatives Committee on National Security on Dec. 10.
During the session, he blamed Shin Kanemaru, the deceased vice president of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, and four other LDP heavyweights for delaying moves to resolve the abductions of Japanese by North Korea.
"These people have done various things like providing continuous rice aid at the request of North Korea and asking for the launch of bilateral negotiations by ignoring the abduction issue," Sato told the committee.
Some of the lawmakers referred to in his testimony demanded that their names be deleted from the minutes. Sato rejected a subsequent request from the LDP that the minutes be altered, according to lawmakers close to the matter.
On Dec. 13, the Democratic Party of Japan, the main opposition party, and other parties rejected a similar LDP request at a meeting of executive members of the national security committee.
One compromise plan now being discussed would enable the lawmakers in question to defend their positions during a question-and-answer session of the committee.
But because the committee only normally sits after progress is made at the Budget Committee, which is presently in session, the release of the minutes may be further delayed.