Return to *North Korean Studies*
By JAMES BROOKE, The New York Times, 3 March 2003
SEOUL, South Korea - As the Pentagon studies moving tons of military
hardware within striking range of
North Korea, some say the weapon most
feared by the Stalinist government there may be a disposable radio
the size
of a cigarette pack.
"Little throwaway radios, you listen, you throw away - the smaller the
better, the more disposable, the better,"
said Pastor Douglas E. Shin, a
Korean-American human rights activist who advocates smuggling thousands of
tiny radios capable of receiving foreign broadcasts into the North.
The radio smuggling is part of a growing public and private effort,
including foreign radio broadcasts, to crack an information monopoly in the
North that has helped keep the Kim family in power for nearly 60 years. So
tight is the information blackout that defectors report that they believed
that their country - one of the world's poorest - was wealthier than South
Korea and that the United States donated rice as a form of tribute to the
powerful Communist state.
In January, in a bid to emulate the experience of East Europeans in the cold war, Radio Free Asia and Voice of America doubled their hours of Korean-language broadcasting into North Korea. In February, Radio Free Asia joined Voice of America in broadcasting into North Korea on medium wave, a bandwidth accessible with cheap AM radios.
But the first challenge, skeptics note, is that few people in the North have the radios - or the courage - to listen to foreign broadcasts, something that advocates of the tiny disposable radio say they are determined to change. Under threat of severe penalties, the vast majority of North Korea's 22 million people are not allowed any contact with the outside world - letters, telephone calls, travel, radio or television programs...
The Asahi Shinbun reported that US congressional leaders on Tuesday offered support to visiting family members of abductees making the rounds here to seek help with the DPRK abduction issue. Richard Lugar, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told the family members he will talk to US President George W. Bush about the abductions, according to supporters of the families. Shigeru and Sakie Yokota, whose daughter Megumi was abducted by DPRK agents in 1977, and other members of abductees' families are visiting Washington from Monday through Friday to lobby for US assistance.
The group also met with Republican Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, who told them he was infuriated at the inhumane abductions, the sources said. Earlier in the day, the family members were interviewed by NBC-TV, The Washington Post and other media organizations. An NBC producer said the interview, when aired, would make the audience wonder what they would do if their loved ones were abducted. The producer also said Americans are generally not familiar with the abduction issue but are very concerned with Pyongyang's nuclear development program. ("ABDUCTEE FAMILIES VISIT US POLITICIANS," Washington, 03/06/03)
BBC News reported that not many people can claim to have spent much time with the DPRK leader, Kim Jong-il. But ROK film director Shin Sang-ok and his wife, Choe Eun-hui, have that dubious distinction. They not only knew him well but spent several years living in his summerhouse.
Choe Eun-hui, an actress now in her late 60s, was the first to arrive after being kidnapped in Hong Kong by Kim Jong-il's secret agents in 1978. "I was really terrified. It was so frightening," she said. "I was in such a worried state I couldn't eat or drink anything for ages. Finally I fainted and later learnt that they had injected me with some sort of sedative." She was taken to Hong Kong's docks, bundled aboard and taken on an eight-day trip to Pyongyang.
Her husband immediately flew from Seoul to Hong Kong to look for his wife, and was himself kidnapped soon after. "Someone suddenly pulled a sack over my head and I couldn't see anything or breathe properly," he said. It was not long before the reason for their kidnapping was made clear. "Kim Jong-il later confessed to me that the reason he kidnapped my wife first was because he wanted me to come and make films for him," Shin Sang-ok said.
Kim Jong-il is film mad. Soon after the couple arrived in Pyongyang he took them for a private tour of his film library, which holds more than 15,000 movies. Keen to add to them, he placed $2.5m into an Austrian bank account and told Shin that the money would be available for him to make "good" films. Initially the director was not sure what the DPRK leader meant by a "good" film, until he took note of what he watched most often. Top of the list was Rambo, followed by Friday the Thirteenth and all the James Bond movies.
Over the next two years Shin made more than 20 films, many of them propaganda tales commissioned by the man himself. In 1986, the couple were given permission to travel abroad together for the first time since their arrival in the DPRK eight years earlier. They went to a film festival in Vienna heavily chaperoned by a team of DPRK minders, but managed to persuade their guards to travel in a taxi behind as they headed for the festival hall. "We got to a crossroads where we were supposed to turn left for the festival. Our minders' car was following us about 30 metres behind, but several other cars had got in between them and us. So we told our driver to turn right instead, towards the US Embassy," said Choe Eun-ui.
Seconds later the car behind realised that something was wrong and radioed the taxi that the Shins were in and asked their driver to tell them which way he had gone. The couple quickly handed him a sizeable tip and lied that they had gone in the opposite direction. Soon they arrived at the US embassy but could not find anywhere to stop outside, and the couple had to get out down the road. "We tried to run as fast as we could, but it felt like we were in some sort of slow motion movie," Shin said. "Finally we burst through the embassy's doors and asked for asylum." On hearing the news, Kim Jong-il became convinced that the couple had been kidnapped by the US, and sent them a message offering to help them get them back to Pyongyang. (Mike Thomson, "KIDNAPPED BY NORTH KOREA," 3/05/03)
The Associated Press reported that relatives and supporters of Japanese abducted by the DPRK left for Washington on Monday to try to persuade senior US officials to help them deal with the reclusive communist state. The four family members, accompanied by three lawmakers, two support group members and a government official, plan to meet with senior US government officials during their five-day visit in Washington, group spokesman Tsutomu Nishioka said. The visit comes less than a week after the group met US Ambassador Howard Baker.
The group is concerned their cause may be eclipsed by the standoff over the DPRK's suspected nuclear weapons program. DPRK leader Kim Jong Il admitted last September his military had kidnapped about a dozen Japanese citizens in the 1970s and 1980s to train spies in Japanese language and culture. The DPRK said eight of them had since died, but allowed the five survivors to return to Japan in October. Japan is trying to pressure the DPRK to allow the families of the five to join them in Japan. Japan is also pressing the DPRK for more information on the eight the DPRK says died and on dozens more Japan believes were abducted. ("JAPAN ABDUCTEES' FAMILIES EYE US HELP," Tokyo, 3/03/03)
The Associated Press reported that Japanese prosecutors will soon decide whether they have enough evidence to prosecute a North Korean man who allegedly used Japan as a base to spy on South Korea for decades, an official said Friday. Police have sent prosecutors a report on the 73-year old suspect, who is a member of the DPRK Workers' Party and a former ranking member of a DPRK resident organization in Japan, said a Tokyo Metropolitan Police spokesman on condition of anonymity. Police refused to disclose the suspect's name. Kyodo news service identified him as Kim Sang Gyu and said he had already confessed to police that he had spied for the DPRK. Police raided his Tokyo home in December and allegedly found evidence that he gave instructions to agents in the ROK. ("POLICE FILE PROSECUTION PAPERS FOR ALLEGED NORTH KOREAN SPY AGENT IN JAPAN," Tokyo, 2/28/03)
The Associated Press reported that in a new twist on DPRK asylum seeking in the PRC, four people who fled the DPRK entered a Japanese school in Beijing on Tuesday to apparently ask Japan for political protection, the Japanese government said. The PRC has barricaded foreign embassies and consulates with barbed wire after a rash of DPRK asylum seekers ran through lightly guarded embassy entrances last year. Tuesday's asylum seekers sidestepped the tightly guarded diplomatic quarters and focused on the Japanese School, which is run by Japan's Education Ministry for Japanese nationals in Beijing.
Japanese Embassy officials then picked the people up in an embassy car and drove them back to the Japanese Embassy for interviewing, said Foreign Ministry Assistant Press Secretary Jiro Okuyama. It was still unclear whether they were Japanese nationals who had moved to the DPRK, former Korean residents of Japan or DPRK citizens, Okuyama said. It was also uncertain whether they were seeking refugee status or asylum, he added. (Hans Greimel, "DUCKING EMBASSIES, NORTH KOREA ASYLUM SEEKERS ENTER FOREIGN SCHOOL IN CHINA," Tokyo, 02/18/03)
The Japan Times reported that Japan will consult with PRC authorities in an effort to allow four asylum seekers from the DPRK who entered a Japanese school in Beijing to be moved to a third country, government sources said Wednesday. The government also launched consultations with the ROK, 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 PRC Foreign Ministry spokeswoman said the PRC 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. ("THIRD-COUNTRY PLAN EYED IN ASYLUM PROBE," 02/19/03)
By DAISY NGUYEN, Associated Press
LOS ANGELES A snack shop owner who has lived in the United States for over 20 years was a spy paid by the North Korean government to recruit other agents, federal authorities said.
A criminal complaint unsealed Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles accused John Joungwoong Yai, 59, who is a naturalized U.S. citizen, of failing to register as a North Korean agent as required by U.S. law and making false statements to U.S. Customs officials.
He faces a maximum 20-year sentence in federal prison, if convicted.
Yai was being detained pending a bail hearing scheduled for Friday. He appeared in federal court Wednesday dressed in a sweat suit and sandals, and told a federal court magistrate through an interpreter that he planned to hire a lawyer. The interpreter earlier had spent several hours translating the criminal complaint from English to Korean to Yai.
In the 76-page affidavit, FBI agent James G. Chang wrote that between December 1997 and April 2000, Yai was a North Korean agent living in the United States. The North Korean government paid him to identify and recruit other agents to meet with North Korean officials abroad, authorities alleged.
Federal investigators had no evidence that Yai obtained classified government documents, said Thom Mrozek, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's Office in Los Angeles.
Chang wrote that Yai was the subject of surveillance under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act from December 1996 until June 2000. During this period, investigators bugged Yai's downtown office and intercepted faxes, e-mail and telephone calls between Yai and his North Korean handlers. The communications were often filled with code words, the FBI said.
In one intercepted fax sent on May 28, 1998, from Yai's office to a number believed to be inside the North Korean Embassy in Beijing, China, Yai presented information about a potential recruit who had connections in Washington D.C.
"He is an ideal candidate for recruitment who comes with good computer skills that is vital for today's living and has credentials of a reporter a big plus," he wrote...
February 7, 2003
LOS ANGELES -- A federal judge on Friday denied bail for a snack shop owner the government claims tried to recruit spies for North Korea.
John Joungwoong Yai, 59, of Santa Monica, was ordered held without bond. He has been jailed since Tuesday, when he was arrested on a criminal complaint after years of government surveillance.
A preliminary hearing was set for Feb. 24 and an arraignment date for March 3, when Yai was expected to enter a plea to the charges.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Victor B. Kenton rejected a defense request that Yai be freed on bail and perhaps held under house arrest or be required to wear an electronic monitoring device. "This court is not convinced" that the proposed restrictions would "mitigate flight risk or dangers to the community," the judge said. He noted that Yai is charged with "extremely serious conduct."
Yai, a slender, bespectacled man, appeared at the hearing with his feet shackled. He sat listening to an interpreter through headphones.
Yai is accused of failing to register as an agent for North Korea. Federal law mandates that anyone representing a foreign government who is not a diplomat or involved in a legal commercial enterprise must register with the U.S. Department of Justice.
He also is charged with making a false statement to U.S. Customs agents. Federal prosecutors claim that after returning from an overseas trip in 2000 he and his wife declared they were carrying not more than $10,000 in cash when they actually had $18,179 that allegedly came from a North Korean official. He also is charged with conspiring with his wife to make the false statement...
...In the affidavit, FBI Agent James G. Chang wrote that between December 1997 and April 2000, Yai was a North Korean agent living in the United States. The North Korean government paid him to identify and recruit other agents to meet with North Korean officials overseas, the affidavit said. Yai made repeated trips to Beijing, where the FBI believed he then traveled to North Korea.
Chang took the witness stand Friday afternoon and said that Yai admitted in an interview that he traveled to North Korea five or six times, U.S. attorney's spokesman Thom Mrozek said. Chang said Yai also admitted receiving $20,000 from North Korean officials during an April 2000 trip to the Czech Republic and Vienna, and that on five or six other occasions he had received payments from $2,000 to $5,000 from unidentified North Korean officials.
뉴스 센터에서 하성욱입니다 (in Korean)
(뉴스 센터)
어제 연방수사국
FBI에 전격 체포된
한인 예정웅씨는
북한의 지시을 받아 미국내에서
활동을 해 왔다고
연방 수사국이 밝혔습니다.
연방수사국은
보도 자료를 통해
지난
97년부터
3년동안 예정웅씨는
북한의 공작원으로서 활동했고
이에 대한 자금도 북한으로부터 건네 받았다고 밝혔습니다.
연방 수사국은 또
예씨는 북한 공작원의 지시에 따라
미국내 비밀 정보 수집 활동을 벌였고또 다른 공작원을 포섭하기 위해 해외에서
북한 공작원을 만나기도 했다고 밝혔습니다.
FBI는
예씨는 이를 위해
팩스나 이-메일 그리고
해외에서 북한 공작원을 직접 만나는 방법으로
통신을 해 왔다고 덧붙였습니다.
연방수사국은
북한 공작원과의 접선 사실을 숨기기 위해
예씨는
비밀 코드를 사용하기도 했다고 강조했습니다.
연방 수사국은 그동안의 수사결과
예씨는 지난
2000년
체코 공화국과 비엔나를 여행한 뒤 돌아오면서
LA
공항 세관 당국에
미화 만
8천 여달러의 밀반입 사실을 숨기기까지 했다고 밝혔습니다.
연방 수사국은 예씨가
북한 정부를 위해 활동했을 경우
미국법에 따라
미 정부에 보고해야 하는 의무를 위반한 혐의를 받고 있다고 밝혔습니다
이같은 혐의가 인정될 경우
예씨는
최고
20년형에 처해질 수 있습니다.
이와 함께
예정웅씨의 부인 예영자씨도
허위 진술을 공모한 혐의로 입건됐습니다.
연방 수사국은
예씨의 혐의가
국가 안보에 어떤 위해를 끼쳤는지에 대한 수사를 계속할 방침입니다.
한편,
오늘 오후
2시
20분
연방 지방 법원
341호 법정에서 열린 인정신문에서
재판부는 예씨 변호인측의 요청을 받아 들여
인정신문을
7일 오전
10시
30분으로 연기했습니다.
오늘 인정 신문이 벌어진 법정에
잠바를 입고 나온 예씨는
긴장되고 초체한 모습이었습니다.
The Associated Press reported that a former DPRK spy said Wednesday that about 100,000 Japan-born Koreans and Japanese nationals living in the DPRK want to flee their "hell," and urged Japan to welcome those who make the dangerous journey. Disguised in a wig, sunglasses and a gauze mask, Kenki Aoyama said those who left Japan for the DPRK under a repatriation program organized by Pyongyang decades ago are living in near-starvation conditions in the DPRK. "I would say 100 percent of them want to come to Japan. Why? North Korea is hell," Aoyama, who goes by a pseudonym, told a news conference in Tokyo.
Aoyama, a Japan-born Korean, was 21 when he left Japan for the DPRK in 1960. Under the DPRK's repatriation campaign, about 93,000 Koreans, most of them originally from the ROK, and their 6,700 Japanese spouses went to the DPRK to escape the discrimination they faced in Japan. The survivors and their kin currently number about 100,000, Aoyama said. Aoyama, who said he developed missile technology for the DPRK and later stole secrets in the PRC as a spy, told the news conference that he and about 50 others who fled the DPRK don't feel safe in Japan and can't receive aid because Tokyo doesn't consider them refugees. They can't find jobs because they can't use their real names for fear of reprisals against relatives they left behind, he said. "We have no legal status here," he said. "We are both asylum seekers and refugees ... We want Tokyo to recognize us as refugees and guarantee our human rights." ("FORMER NORTH KOREAN SPY SAYS 100,000 JAPAN-BORN KOREANS, KIN IN NORTH KOREA WANT TO ESCAPE THEIR 'HELL,'" Tokyo, 02/05/03)
USA Today reported that the PRC is in the midst of a harsh crackdown on DPRK refugees. Over the past two
months, more than 3,200 DPRK asylum seekers have been seized inside the PRC along the wintry border with the DPRK and forcibly repatriated, according to the humanitarian group Doctors Without Borders. An additional 1,300 are awaiting their forced return in two PRC detention camps, including one near here that has its walls painted an incongruous pink. "Almost every day, they're arresting North Koreans and sending them back to brutal persecution," says Kim Sang Hun, a refugee activist in Seoul. "On the Korean issue, China is a status-quo power," says Chu Shulong of Tsinghua University in Beijing. "China does not want to see a hostile or chaotic North Korea." (David J. Lynch, "CHINA TRIES TO STAUNCH INFLUX OF NORTH KOREANS," TUMEN," China, 01/31/03)The Associated Press reported that a Japanese woman who fled the DPRK after living
there for more than 40 years returned to Japan on Wednesday under government protection, the Foreign Ministry said. The ministry declined to give details about the case, citing privacy and safety concerns. But public TV broadcaster NHK said the 64-year-old woman had lived in the DPRK since the 1950s, when she moved there with her husband, a former DPRK resident of Japan. Ten years after arriving in the DPRK, her husband was arrested for political crimes, the TV report said. In November, the woman reportedly fled to the PRC because of economic hardship. A Foreign Ministry spokeswoman confirmed the woman arrived from the PRC in a deal brokered by the PRC and Japan. In a statement released through the Foreign Ministry, the woman said, "I appreciate the handling of my case by both Japanese and Chinese governments." A senior Japanese official acknowledged that the Foreign Ministry has secretly offered help and protection to dozens of Japanese fleeing the DPRK over the years. This was the first case confirmed publicly. ("JAPAN HELPS WOMAN WHO ESCAPED FROM KOREA," Tokyo, 01/30/03)The Associated Press reported
that the only ferry that travels between Japan and the DPRK has been used for spying purposes, according to Japanese police and intelligence sources. The captain of the DPRK ferry relayed espionage orders to a 72-year-old DPRK who was living in Japan, Japanese intelligence said. Japanese police said they were preparing to launch a prosecution case against the man on charges of using a false identity. The man was in charge of a spy network which gathered intelligence on the ROK and recruited collaborators, police said. "We have found out that the man in question was engaged in espionage activities in one form or another for at least eight years after 1993 with directives carried on the North Korean ferry," one intelligence source reported. The source said there were several hundred people spying for the DPRK in Japan, and at least 70 DPRK agents had been arrested since the 1950-53 Korean War.Written instructions were reportedly handed over to the DPRK and the ship - the Mangyongbong-92 - returned with his reports. The 72-year-old was a former senior official of the pro-Pyongyang General Association of Korean Residents in Japan, or Chongryon, Kyodo said. Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi told reporters on Tuesday: "We must watch (the vessel) closely lest it be used for crime." Lifeline Mangyongbong-92 makes about 20-30 trips a year between Niigata in Japan and Wonsan in the DPRK. The vessel, which carries both aid for DPRK and Korean residents in Japan on visits to the DPRK, was built in 1992 with funds from Chongryon. (Kozo Mizoguchi, "JAPAN PROBES NORTH KOREA FERRY FOR SPYING," Tokyo, 01/29/03) and BBC News ("NORTH KOREA'S JAPAN FERRY 'SPYING,'" 01/29/03)
The Associated Press reported that Japanese police said Tuesday they were investigating an alleged DPRK agent who reportedly used Japan as a base to spy on the ROK for decades. The 72-year old man, whose name was not disclosed, is a member of the DPRK Workers' Party and a former ranking member of a DPRK resident organization in Japan, said a Tokyo Metropolitan Police spokesman, speaking on condition of anonymity. Police raided his home in Tokyo last month on suspicion he illegally obtained an alien registration card from the Japanese government in 1999 but have yet to decide whether to press charges, the spokesman said. During the raid, the police confiscated evidence showing the man allegedly gave instructions to agents in the RO, the spokesman said. Japanese media, including public broadcaster NHK, reported that the man entered Japan illegally from the ROK in 1949 - before the 1950-53 Korean War - and had often received instructions from the skipper of the Mangyongbong-92, a DPRK cruise ship connecting the northern Japanese port of Niigata and the DPRK. ("ALLEGED NORTH KOREAN SPY AGENT OPERATED FOR YEARS IN JAPAN," Tokyo, 01/28/03)
The Associated Press reported that two ROK citizens detained this month with a group of DPRK asylum seekers in eastern PRC are suspected of illegally organizing a migrant-smuggling attempt, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said Tuesday. Refugee activists say the ROK citizens - one a photographer whose wife says he was working as a journalist - were accompanying DPRK asylum-seekers who were trying to reach Japan and the ROK. The ROK citizens are "suspected of organizing the smuggling case," said Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Zhang Qiyue. She didn't say whether they had been formally charged or what penalties they might face. Zhang said 30 people had been arrested, including citizens of the DPRK, ROK and PRC. Activists in the ROK say 58 DPRK refugees were taken in by PRC police who pretended to offer them help. Most are said to have been detained in the eastern port of Yantai, and others in the PRC's northeast. Zhang, speaking at a regular news briefing, said she had few details and didn't identify either ROK detainee by name. The PRC police have refused to release other information. (Joe McDonald, "CHINA SAYS TWO DETAINED SOUTH KOREANS SUSPECTED OF MIGRANT SMUGGLING," Beijing, 01/28/03)
Joongang Ilbo reported that the Foreign Ministry spokesman, Zhang Qiyue, said Thursday that a group of North Korean defectors who tried to flee PRC by boat would be handled according to international and domestic law and humanitarian principles. In the past, a reference to "humanitarian principles" has meant that PRC planned to allow defectors to travel to ROK via a third country. Civic groups in ROK and Japan had raised concerns that the group, captured as they tried to depart for ROK and Japan in boats, would be sent back to DPRK. The spokesman said two South Koreans were among those arrested and that authorities are investigating them on charges of aiding the North Koreans. ROK has asked PRC for clemency for the group. ("CHINA HINTS AT FREEDOM FOR NORTH BOAT PEOPLE," Beijing, 01/24/03)
The Associated Press reported that the ROK urged the PRC on Wednesday not to
repatriate dozens of DPRK refugees arrested last week, and offered to accept them if they are sent to the ROK, officials said. Shin Jung-seung, director of Asia-Pacific affairs at the ROK Foreign Ministry, made the offer when he met the PRC charge d'affaires Gwan Huabing in Seoul, said Kim Hyon-ju, a ministry spokesman. PRC police arrested 48 DPRK in mid-January, shortly before they were to be secretly ferried out of PRC and taken to ROK and Japan, said international aid workers in Seoul and Tokyo. The spokesman said Shin told the PRC diplomat that ROK hoped the case would be "dealt with humanely." ("SOUTH KOREA URGES CHINA ON ASYLUM SEEKERS," Seoul, 01/22/03)The Asahi Shinbun reported that a secluded beach fringed by craggy cliffs in Noto, Ishikawa Prefecture, has become the focus of a police investigation into the abduction of the 15 Japanese by DPRK agents. Ushitsu beach on the east side of the Noto peninsula was a key entry and exit point for agents from DPRK illegally slipping into the country during the 1970s, Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department sources say. Yutaka Kume, one of the 15 Japanese listed as abductees by the government, was taken to DPRK from the Ushitsu beach in 1977. Agent Kim Se Ho ordered an ethnic Korean resident in Japan to lure Kume, then 52, to DPRK with an offer of work in a trading firm there, according to investigations. The pair reached Ushitsu beach at midnight on Sept. 19, 1977. Kume was handed to co-conspirators and spirited away by boat from an inlet on the beach screened by cliffs on three sides, police sources say. The area was perfect for hiding vessels and attracted few visitors, the sources explained. ("POINT OF NO RETURN BEACH KEY ENTRY POINT FOR N.KOREAN AGENTS," 01/20/03)
Joongang Ilbo reported that forty-eight DPRK defectors and two
ROK citizens helping them were arrested by the PRC authorities Saturday as they prepared to leave the Shandong province port of Yantai, a Seoul-based organization helping DPRK fugitives said Monday. Those arrested were among more than 80 people who assembled from several parts of PRC, hoping to leave the country in two boats with the aid of international organizations, the Seoul group, Durihana Mission, said. The arrests followed four days of raids. The defectors began to gather in Yantai Jan. 11 to board the boats, one of which was to head for a ROK port and the other for Japan. Twelve persons escaped arrest, and about 20 remain unaccounted-for but are believed to have escaped, the group said. A local guide in PRC said that those arrested were taken to Jilin province, north of the border with DPRK, before being deported. The attempt had been planned by international groups since December, the group said. (Kim Young-sae, "50 KOREANS ARRESTED IN ESCAPTE BID IN CHINA," Seoul, 01/21/03)Â Êèòàå àðåñòîâàíû 48 áåæåíöåâ èç Ñåâåðíîé Êîðåè. Îá ýòîì ñîîáùèëè ïðåäñòàâèòåëè
îðãàíèçàöèè «Âðà÷è áåç ãðàíèö». Áåæåíöû áûëè àðåñòîâàíû â ñóááîòó íà ñåâåðî-âîñòîêå Êèòàÿ â ãîðîäå Þíòàé, êîãäà îíè ïûòàëèñü óïëûòü èç ñòðàíû íà ëîäêå, ïðåäïîëîæèòåëüíî â ßïîíèþ èëè Þæíóþ Êîðåþ. Ïðåäñòàâèòåëè ïîëèöèè è ñïåöñëóæá Êèòàÿ îòêàçàëèñü êîììåíòèðîâàòü äàííûé èíöèäåíò. //Reuters (Gazeta.Ru, 20 January 2003, 8:40am in Russian)By Robert Windrem, NBC NEWS, Jan. 15
In the far north of North Korea, in remote locations not far from the borders with China and Russia, a gulag not unlike the worst labor camps built by Mao and Stalin in the last century holds some 200,000 men, women and children accused of political crimes. A month-long investigation by NBC News, including interviews with former prisoners, guards and U.S. and South Korean officials, 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.
“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.”
Satellite photos provided by DigitalGlobe, which first appeared in the Far Eastern Economic Review, confirm the existence of the camps, and interviews with those who have been there and with U.S. officials who study the North suggest Brownback’s assessment may be conservative.
Efforts by MSNBC.com to reach North Korean officials were unsuccessful. Messages left at the office of North Korea’s permanent representative to the United Nations went unanswered. Eung Soo Han, a press officer at South Korea’s U.N. consulate, said: “It is a very unfortunate situation, and our hearts go out to those who suffer. We hope North Korea will open up its country, and become more actively involved with the international community in order for the North Korean people to be lifted out of their difficult situation”...
Kyodo reported that
Japan has asked the UN to make abductions by foreign institutions illegal when international regulations on coercive disappearances are drawn up in the near future, Japanese officials said last Friday. The request was apparently filed to make it clear that the abductions of Japanese nationals by the DPRK between 1977 and 1983 were in violation of international law. Japan also called on the UN to include a clause in the new regulation that will ensure that abductees' children born in foreign countries return to their parents' home countries, the officials said. The planned international standard was originally designed to handle coercive disappearances in international disputes or by dictatorship governments. Japan aims to expand its scope, however, to cover the abductions by the DPRK by applying the new regulation retroactively. It is not yet clear whether the new regulation will be an independent international treaty or a document attached to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. ("JAPAN ASKS U.N. TO BAN ABDUCTIONS," Geneva, 01/12/03)The New York Times reported that in interviews, three recent defectors from
the DPRK drew on their experiences to give their own proposals for how to deal with the unpredictable government of their impoverished homeland. The proposals included closing the PRC's five border bridges and imposing an economic quarantine; undermining the leadership cult by smuggling in radios tuned to ROK stations; and, in the words of one woman, by "bombing the North with ladies' handbags." "My eyes were opened when, through a trader friend, I got hold of some South Korean clothing," recounted the woman, Lee Ji Young, 31. "I was surprised that they were very good clothes. I had to scissor off the labels, of course." "Before, I had believed what they told us about the food donations from South Korea and the United States: `Because we are so strong militarily and strong ideologically, they send us all this tribute,'" Lee said, smiling at the memory. (James Brooke, "DEFECTORS WANT TO PRY OPEN NORTH KOREA," Seoul, 01/09/03)The Asahi Shinbun
reported that the Metropolitan Police Department in Japan on Wednesday obtained an arrest warrant for a suspected DPRK agent in connection with the disappearance of Yutaka Kume, one of 15 Japanese listed by the government as having been abducted to DPRK. The warrant is for Kim Se Ho, 74, for ordering the abduction of Kume from a beach in Ishikawa Prefecture and stealing him away by ship on Sept. 19, 1977. Police also plan to ask Interpol to place Kim on its international wanted list, police officials said. It is the first time a warrant has been obtained for an alleged DPRK agent for the abduction of a Japanese. Kim is believed to have been a senior member of the intelligence arm of the DPRK Workers' Party. ("WARRANT OUT FOR AGENT OVER KUME'S ABDUCTION," 01/09/03)Associated Press reported that the five Japanese kidnapped
by DPRK decades ago said Thursday they want to stay in Japan. Since their return to Japan two months ago, the five have refrained from answering questions about their future plans. The DPRK has claimed they are being kept in Japan against their will. But Yasushi Chimura, who was abducted along with Fukie Hamamoto by the DPRK spies 24 years ago, said the abductees had agreed they would all remain in Japan. "We ask (the government) to be reunited with our families as soon as possible," he said, reading from a letter addressed to Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi.They also asked the government to continue negotiations with the DPRK. Kaoru Hasuike said he and the other abductees hadn't made up their minds about whether to resettle permanently, and that they remained worried about their children. "We will have to wait until our children come before making a final decision," he said. However, Hasuike added he was concerned that he might never be allowed to return to Japan if he were to go back to the DPRK now. Reflecting their decision, the returnees have removed their DPRK pins, Hasuike said. "But by removing our pins, we are not declaring that the North is our enemy," said Hasuike. (Mari Yamaguchi, "JAPANESE ABDUCTEES ANNOUNCE THEY WANT TO STAY IN JAPAN, ASK TOKYO TO BRING THEIR FAMILIES FROM NORTH KOREA," Nigita, 12/19/02) and Reuters, (Linda Sieg, "ABDUCTEES WANT THEIR CHILDREN TO JOIN THEM IN JAPAN," Tokyo, 12/19/02)
The Associated Press reported that for the first time since their homecoming in October, five Japanese abducted decades ago by DPRK agents met to discuss their future Wednesday on the first day of a three-day reunion. The five have not said whether they wish to stay in Japan or return to the DPRK apparently out of concern for children they left behind there. And it's not clear how much control they have over their own fate. On Wednesday, the five abductees arrived at a hotel in this city 255 kilometers (160 miles) northwest of Tokyo to discuss their plans in a government-organized meeting. Lounging on sofas, the five, all in their 40s, chatted over tea and cake about the hometowns they have been visiting for the first time since they were abducted in 1978.
All five wore lapel pins bearing the DPRK flag, which they also donned when they first returned to Japan. Reporters and photographers were briefly allowed in the room before the five were left alone. They later met with special Cabinet representative Kyoko Nakayama to discuss a government financial assistance program that would provide them with living expenses. The group was to meet Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Shinzo Abe on Thursday. Abe has said the government won't move ahead with talks on normalizing relations with the DPRK until the safety of the five abductees' children has been guaranteed. (Mari Yamaguchi, "JAPANESE ABDUCTION VICTIMS MEET TO DISCUSS THEIR FATE, NORTH KOREA," Niigata, 12/18/02)
Joongang Ilbo reported that twenty North Korean defectors arrived at Incheon International Airport Monday. The group arrived in Seoul after traveling from PRC to the Philippines. The DPRK defectors had sought asylum at several ROK diplomatic facilities and a German school in Beijing in separate asylum bids. Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo has allowed DPRK asylum-seekers to transit the country on a regular basis since the wave of defectors seeking asylum at diplomatic missions in PRC began. Although it violates a PRC treaty with DPRK, PRC has so far allowed 128 DPRK defectors to leave PRC for ROK via the Philippines. ("20 DEFECTORS IN SOUTH AFTER LEAVING CHINA," Seoul, 12/17/02)
Reuters reported that a court in northeastern PRC has put a US citizen on trial on charges of rape and helping DPRK asylum seekers sneak across the porous border, a Foreign Ministry spokesman said on Tuesday. The intermediate court in Jilin Province bordering impoverished North Korea held hearings on the case of John Daniel Choi on December 4, ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao told a news conference. Choi, also known as Joseph Choi, was "suspected of having committed the crimes of rape and organizing people to cross the border illegally," Liu said. "At the moment, the hearing of the case is still ongoing." The US embassy declined to comment. Choi, detained in May, is one of several foreigners who have been arrested for trying to help DPRK asylum seekers flee their staunchly Communist homeland via the PRC. Another, 46-year-old Chun Ki-won, was detained last December, found guilty in July of aiding at least 12 DPRK defectors trying to reach Mongolia and deported to ROK in August. ("CHINA TRIES US MAN FOR RAPE AND AIDING NKOREANS,") Beijing, 12/17/02)
The Associated Press reported that for the first time since their homecoming in October, five Japanese kidnapped by DPRK agents decades ago are gathering this week to talk freely about a future they can hardly decide on their own. The five meeting in the northern coastal city of Niigata from Wednesday have been getting reacquainted with long-lost relatives and friends since returning to their hometowns two months ago. But with their fate still undecided, they have been reluctant to share their thoughts. "The two-day meeting is mostly designed to give them a chance to talk alone. They had requested time to do so," said Kazuhiro Araki, an official at a private support group for the abduction victims. Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Shinzo Abe and special Cabinet representative Kyoko Nakayama are also scheduled to sit down with the five in Niigata - about 255 kilometers (160 miles) northwest of Tokyo - to discuss a financial assistance program for their families and the government's stance on stalled talks on normalizing relations with the DPRK, the Cabinet Office said. (Kenji Hall, "JAPANESE ABDUCTION VICTIMS MEET TO DISCUSS THEIR FATE, NORTH KOREA," Tokyo, 12/17/02)
The Associated Press reported that five Japanese abductees allowed to return home to Japan two months ago have caught up with old friends, obtained passports, learned how to drive again. Their futures, however, remain far from clear. Since their return in October, a seeming gesture of goodwill by DPRK leader Kim Jong Il, the five have become the focus of an angry battle of wills between the DPRK and Japan. "The two sides have exhausted nearly all options for reaching an agreement over the abductions. The DPRK is angry and not ready to compromise," said Masao Okonogi, professor of international politics at Keio University in Tokyo.
The standoff follows a surprisingly speedy crumbling of what seemed to be a major breakthrough in relations earlier this year. After a first-ever bilateral summit in September, officials began working toward normalizing relations. The early contacts were promising, with both countries reversing decades of intransigence over some of the most emotionally volatile issues. But the budding detente quickly died as outrage in Japan swelled over the abduction issue and the DPRK's later confession to a US official that it was secretly developing nuclear weapons. The abductees' families say they are willing to wait for the DPRK to back down. "We want Japan to stick to its demands. Japan should find out the truth without compromising," said Toru Hasuike, whose younger brother, Kaoru, and his wife, Yukiko Okudo, are back after they were kidnapped together in 1978. (Kenji Hall, "JAPAN ABDUCTEES' FUTURE STILL IN FLUX," Tokyo, 12/13/02)
By JAMES DAO, N.Y. Times
WASHINGTON, Dec. 10 - In 1989, Hungary snipped open its barbed-wire border with Austria, allowing thousands of East Germans vacationing in Hungary to escape Communism. The tide of refugees turned into a flood, hastening the collapse not only of East Germany, but of the Iron Curtain, historians say.
Now a growing number of Bush administration officials, policy experts and
lawmakers say they are hoping to set off a similar chain reaction inside
North Korea. They argue that the stream of refugees from the starved,
Stalinist nation into China could sharply increase, particularly if China
agreed not to send North Koreans back, and if South Korea and the United
States took in more escapees.
"If this regime were actually to collapse, it won't be through an elite
coup," said Victor D. Cha, associate
professor of government and a Korea
expert at Georgetown University. "Real regime change will come from the
bottom, from people who can't oppose the regime but who can vote with their
feet."
A senior administration official said: "When Hungary and Czechoslovakia
opened their borders to East
Germans, it helped speed the collapse of the
Berlin Wall. Supporting refugees from North Korea could stress their
system, too."
In Congress, Senator Sam Brownback, the conservative Republican from
Kansas, and Senator Edward Kennedy, the liberal Democrat from
Massachusetts, have sponsored legislation that would remove a provision
in
immigration law that makes it difficult for North Koreans to seek asylum in
the United States.
House Republicans have also called on the administration to share the costs
of resettling North Korean refugees with South Korea, China, Russia and
other Asian countries, much as it did with Vietnamese boat people in the
1970's.
"It looks like factors are lining up and history is clearly against the
North Korean regime," Mr. Brownback said in a recent interview. "It's a
failed state. It's starving its own people."
The administration and refugee advocates are also calling on Beijing to
give the United Nations High
Commissioner for Refugees access to the North
Korean border region, where it can screen potential refugees and assist
their safe movement to other nations. As the flow of refugees rose, China
expelled the United Nations from the border in 1999, arguing that most
North Koreans were merely trying to better their economic circumstances.
"I think the Chinese are beginning to understand it's a problem," a senior
State Department official said.
Another senior official said that once South Korea elected a new president
this month, Washington would press harder for Seoul to accept more
refugees. Although the Constitution states that all North Koreans can
become citizens of the South, Seoul has accepted only about 2,000 North
Korean refugees since 1954, experts said.
Almost no North Koreans can escape across the heavily mined and militarized
border with South Korea, which has also been ambivalent about the
difficulties of assimilating such refugees and concerned that some are
North Korean agents. "The South Koreans have not been famously sympathetic," said Nicholas
Eberstadt, at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington.
But if South Korea accepts more refugees, China may allow the United
Nations to shelter and feed them en route, and perhaps open a resettlement
office along the border. Doing that, in turn, could encourage more
northerners to flee, refugee advocates contend.
"China doesn't want to have to feed tens of thousands of refugees," the
senior administration official said. "But if they thought these people
would only stay a few weeks, it might change their mind."
President Bush has appeared to endorse a policy of helping the refugees,
telling The Washington Post in a recent interview that he loathed Kim Jong
Il and disagreed with those who say "we don't need to move too fast"
against North Korea because of the financial costs.
"Either you believe in freedom," Mr. Bush said, "and worry about the human
condition, or you don't."
But there are sharp differences within the administration over how hard to
push the refugee policy, with some officials arguing that the North Koreans
might just crack down harder on border crossers. "This is not the East
German regime," said one senior official. "It's much more brutal."
No one knows exactly how many tens of thousands of North Koreans are in the
neighboring region of China. But the number is thought to have risen with a
deepening famine in North Korea, which aid groups say has cost 2 million
lives. Over the summer, refugee groups organized daring attempts by North Koreans
to break into embassies in Beijing to seek asylum and to illustrate the
refugees' plight. The Chinese allowed some to travel to South Korea but it
arrested many others and returned them to the north. The Chinese have since
fortified security around the embassy compounds, and escape attempts have
declined sharply.
Reuters reported that the PRC has put seven people, including an ROK citizen, on trial and arrested 11 more accused of smuggling 70 DPRK aslyum-seekers across the border, state media and officials said on Friday. "Between August 2001 and April 2002, the seven suspects colluded with criminals in China and organized a number of illegal crossings along the border under instructions from overseas organizations and groups," the official Xinhua news agency said. Xinhua identified the two main suspects as Cui Fengyi from the ROK and Jin Jingri from DPRK. There was no immediate comment from the DPRK or ROK embassies about the two, whose names were likely to be spelt Choi Bong-il and Kim Kyong-lee in the Korean romanized script. The trial was underway at the Intermediate People's Court of Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture in the northeastern province of Jilin, which borders DPRK, court officials said. "The verdict will be made soon. Judges on the panel are working hard to beat the deadline." The police had arrested 11 other suspects, Xinhua said, giving no date of their trial. ("CHINA PUTS SEVEN ON TRIAL FOR SMUGGLING N KOREANS," Beijing, 12/06/02)
The Agence France-Presse reported that slave labor camps are still operating despite the DPRK's denials, according to a report in the Far Eastern Economic Review. The magazine said in its latest edition, which hit the streets Thursday, that it had obtained satellite images of one camp along the northeastern frontier with the PRC that imprisoned about 50,000 people. It said the satellite images, bought from a US-based commercial provider of satellite imagery called DigitalGlobe, were the first photos of a slave labor camp in the DPRK to ever be made public.
According to the magazine, the No. 22 Camp in Haengyong, which was captured in the images, is one of the biggest in the DPRK. "Inmates are crammed into clusters of huts, each houses around 30 people who provide slave labor for the (nearby) farms and factories," the magazine quoted a former prison guard at the camp, Ahn Myong Chol, as saying. "Some inmates are sent to the Chungbong coal mine, several kilometers away. Miners sqeeze into narrow shafts to fill their daily coal quota. "Many die of exhaustion, their energy sapped by pitifully small rations, or by vicious beatings from guards."
The Far Eastern Economic Review said the DPRK government had gone to extraordinary lengths to prevent the detection of the slave labor camps in a bid to avoid further international condemnation. It said the No. 22 Camp was made to look like an ordinary village for the satellite images. The magazine quoted ROK intelligence agency sources as saying about 210,000 people were imprisoned in 10 camps around the DPRK in 1999. It said five had been closed after news of their locations leaked out, but did not give number about the number of people now detained.
According to the magazine, most people were imprisoned for offending DPRK dictator Kim Jong-Il, or his father and the nation's founder, Kim Il-Sung. "The elder Kim decreed that three generations of a class enemy's family be wiped out to cleanse his socialist paradise. That directive still holds," the magazine said. "An offence can be as trifling as tearing up a newspaper photo of Kim Jong-Il. But it's nonetheless a life sentence in the truest sense of the word. Inmates transferred to, or born in, these camps will never leave." ("NORTH KOREA'S SLAVE CAMPS STILL OPERATING: MAGAZINE REPORT," 12/05/02)
Chosun Ilbo reported that Assistant Secretary of the State Department Lorne Craner, head of the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor announced Monday US will raise the North Korean defectors issue with PRC in two weeks during human rights talks. Attending a seminar on the crisis of defectors, hosted by Washington private research institute AEI, Secretary Craner said the US is demanding PRC not to repatriate DPRK refugees because they are subject to punishment in DPRK. Craner said PRC has to comply with the UN's 1967 Protocol relating to the Status of Refugees, urging Beijing to immediately stop oppressive measures against DPRK refugees. He also noted the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) should host a discussion in the matter of DPRK refugees with parties involved, and the US is also planning to discuss the matter in concert with PRC, ROK, Japan and international organizations. (Joo Yong-joon, "US TO ADDRESS NK REFUGEE PROGLEM IN CHINA," Washington, 12/04/02)
The Washington Post reported that activists involved in several highly
publicized attempts by DPRK refugees to storm into foreign diplomatic missions in the PRC for protection say a PRC police crackdown has forced them to largely abandon the tactic. Instead, they said they plan to step up pressure on the UN refugee agency to "start doing their job" by monitoring the Korean refugees in the PRC, despite government restrictions on its work. Officials of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) have acted like "naive schoolchildren" in the face of the problem, said Tarik Radwan, a Fairfax, Va., lawyer working on human rights."It's not just apathy; it's culpable negligence to the point of complicity." PRC authorities have insisted that UNHCR does not have jurisdiction over the thousands of DPRK citizens who have fled their impoverished country and are hiding in the PRC. "UNHCR has been pushing the Chinese government for access to that border region so we can access the situation and see for ourselves," said Ron Redmond, a spokesman for the agency at its headquarters in Geneva. "But to date, we don't have authority for regular visits," he said. "We need the cooperation of the national government to move around." The head of the UNHCR field office in Beijing declined to comment. (Doug Struck, "N KOREAN REFUGEE ADVOCATES TURN TO UN," Tokyo, 11/28/02)
The Associated Press reported that the US ambassador to Tokyo is planning to meet the Japanese wife of an alleged US Army deserter living in the DPRK, an official said Saturday - a meeting that is expected to be an emotional plea for the man's amnesty from US prosecutors. The status of the woman's husband, Charles Robert Jenkins, has become a politically charged issue because the Japanese government wants him to come to Japan without risking arrest by U.S. officials on desertion charges. The wife, Hitomi Soga, is one of five Japanese abducted decades ago to the DPRK who is now in Japan for a reunion with long-lost relatives. The couple has been separated since Soga returned to Japan with the other abductees October 15.
Soga petitioned US Ambassador Howard Baker for an audience earlier this week so she could make a personal appeal to be reunited with Jenkins. The Japanese government had earlier requested that Jenkins be given special immunity, but has not yet received a reply. Embassy spokesman Patrick Linehan said Saturday that officials were trying to arrange a meeting for Monday or Tuesday. But he said the meeting was unlikely to generate any immediate change in Jenkins' status. "It's clear there are issues that have to be resolved," Linehan said. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has firmly opposed a pardon. But the Pentagon has said "a final decision is pending." (Hans Greimel, "US JAPAN ENVOY TO MEET MAN'S WIFE," 11/23/02)
Joongang Ilbo reported that seventeen DPRK defectors have been detained in PRC for eight days after they were caught trying to flee to Vietnam last week, a human rights group based in Seoul said Wednesday. The Commission to Help DPRK Refugees said it had asked the Foreign Ministry to intervene to ensure that the DPRK asylum seekersare not deported to their homeland. The defectors attempted to cross the Vietnamese border in PRC's southern Guangxi province. The group is reportedly being held in the provincial capital, Nanning; the organization said one defector succeeded in crossing the border. The Foreign Ministry said it has asked its embassy in PRC to verify the report. ("DEFECTORS FROM NORTH REPORTED HELD IN CHINA," Seoul, 11/21/02)
By Howard W. French
, New York Times, November 19, 2002
SEOUL.
The last time Kim Tae Ok saw her son, he was happily heading off with his best friend for a weekend of camping on an island off the southwestern coast famous for its camellia forests and exotic rock formations.
The two friends, both 18 at the time, vanished, never to be seen again in South Korea. Although a quarter century has already passed, Ms. Kim, the 70-year-old mother, now a widower, still fights back tears whenever she recalls her son's hurried farewell.
For years, the disappearances, in 1977, remained a puzzle with no clues. South Korean military intelligence officers would occasionally visit the young men's families and sternly urge them to report any sightings of their sons, but they refused to answer any questions. Then, 20 years later, a television network reported that the two young men had been kidnapped by North Korean agents, along with scores of other people around the same time.
Later, a North Korean spy whom she visited in prison here told Ms. Kim that her son had been his teacher at a secret school in North Korea for infiltrators and saboteurs. But it was not until the last few weeks, when North Korea surprised the world with the admission that it had kidnapped 13 Japanese, that Ms. Kim has finally begun to feel a measure of certainty about the mystery surrounding her son's fate...
By Staff Reporter, JoonAng Ilbo, November 19, 2002
All is not well for many North Korean defectors who managed to find new lives in South Korea, according to the findings of psychiatrist team at Yonsei University's Severance Hospital.
"Most of the newly settled people feel their quality of life has improved dramatically compared to back home but they are suffering sense of deprivation when they compare themselves to the society around them," the psychiatrist team led by professor Min Seong-gil said Tuesday, after conducting various psychological tests on 43 North Korean defectors in Seoul.
The defectors said things like convenient transportation, medical service, freedom of religion and the opportunity to rise in social status were some of the things that make their escape from the North worthwhile.
But when asked if they're satisfied with their own economic power, most answered they felt somewhat bitter and deprived compared to average South Koreans.
Their satisfaction with their jobs, personal relationships, sleep and leisure activities have decreased since settling in the South...
By Mike Jendrzejczyk, International Herald Tribune, November 19, 2002
WASHINGTON-The head of the United Nations food program was in Beijing last week, pleading for China's help to prevent more death and famine in North Korea. Facing a funding deficit, the world body has suspended humanitarian assistance to 3 million North Koreans in the western part of the country. More aid cuts may come. Emergency shipments of Chinese grain could ease the crisis. But to stabilize the situation on its border, China must also address the rights of thousands of North Koreans who have fled into China. In a new report to be released on Tuesday, Human Rights Watch has documented the refugee crisis and its human toll. A former detainee in a North Korean logging camp described how prisoners survived, catching rats using shoes as traps, then roasting and eating them secretly...
Mainichi Shimbun, November 14, 2002
North Korea has threatened to indefinitely postpone security talks with Japan unless Tokyo allows five surviving victims of abduction by North Korea to return to Pyongyang, the communist country's official news agency said Thursday.
"Japan has created a new obstacle to improving relations between (North) Korea and Japan in violation of an agreement," the news agency quoted a Foreign Ministry spokesman as saying.
"Japan should be reminded that its refusal to allow the five abduction victims to return to North Korea will result in serious consequences, including the indefinite postponement of security talks. Japan should allow the five to return to (North) Korea, as Tokyo promised, before their families go to Japan," the agency reported.
The five Japanese nationals, abducted by North Korean agents in late 1978, returned to Japan in mid-October to be reunited with their families.
Tokyo and Pyongyang had agreed in the previous round of normalization talks held in late October in Kuala Lumpur that director general-level security talks on North Korea's program of developing nuclear weapons and missiles would be held in November.
The Associated Press reported that since the DPRK's surprise confession two
months ago that its spies abducted 13 Japanese in the 1970s and '80s, Japanese police are re-examining dozens of missing persons cases and now believe the DPRK may have abducted as many as 80 more people than it admits. Morimoto's sister, police say, is probably among them. "I've spoken to several experts on North Korea about her case, and they say there is no doubt she was also abducted. More and more, it seems to me that was the case," Morimoto said. Other suspected victims include a 27-year-old agriculture engineer who disappeared while heading back to his dormitory after dinner, a 29-year-old noodle shop employee who vanished on a trip to Europe and a 51-year-old carpenter who had just gone to Tokyo to look for work. (Audrey McAvoy, "JAPAN PROBES OTHER POSSIBLE KIDNAPS," Niigata, 11/19/02)Pyongyang, November 15 (KCNA) - General Secretary Kim Jong Il received a certificate of honorary citizenship and a gift from the Canar provincial council of Ecuador. They were conveyed to vice-President of the Presidium of the Supreme People's Assembly Yang Hyong Sop by Diego Ormaza Andrade, prefect of the province, on a visit to the DPRK. Written on the certificate were letters reading that the Canar provincial council decided to present respected leader Kim Jong Il, General Secretary of the Workers' Party of Korea and Chairman of the National Defence Commission of the DPRK, with a certificate of honorary citizenship of Canar province in recognition of his exploits performed for the emancipation of the third world people and the cause of independence.
by Kang Cheol-hwan (Translated by Hae-young Lee), Chosun Ilbo, November 13, 2002
Recently, the Chinese border patrol and the police are making heavy inspection on the main roads of the border areas between China and North Korea in order to find out North Koreans. By the special order of the central government, the border patrol has strengthened its force and are combing the roads and surrounding areas leading to Hyeo-ryung, On-sung, and Mu-san in North Hamkyung Province and to Hye-san in Yangkang-Province in North Korea, in collaboration with the Chinese police. Especially, they are rummaging the belongings of people claim to be South Koreans, and examine their passports exceptionally carefully. When someone takes a picture or acts
something different, she/he is taken to the police station for an investigation.
The inspections in the past were rather loose and temporary. Now, the atmosphere is totally different. All cars entering Yanji from the outside are being stopped for inspection by the Chinese police working on the shift system running for 24 hours a day. An official in the Chinese police authorities said that “According to the notice from the central government to contain North Korean escapees in the border areas, on-going and thorough search for them will be carried out.” And he expressed the strong will to do so by saying that “Our efforts will continue until there is no more escapees.” According to him, this year already around 5,000 North Koreans were arrested and
repatriated back to North Korea throughout the area connecting Yanji, Rungjing, and Hwarung in China. Most of them crossed the border into China because of hunger, and about 7-8 people per year are being caught and sent back to North Korea with the request from the North Korean authorities, admitted the official.
Due to the stepped-up crackdown on North Korean people, most of them are simply enduring one day after another, bound in the secrete places in the border areas. One North Korean defector who escaped from North Korean in mid October and is hiding in his relative’s house, said he was in constant fear of being arrested by the Chinese police at any moment. He said there are dozens of North Korean people crossing the border without knowing the harsh conditions in China, and 90 percent of the people who have no connection in China end up being arrested.
One official in the autonomous region in Yanji, pointed out that “North Korea has become major headache for this region” and “the intensive control of North Korean defectors seems to be related to the issue of maintaining public security.”
Associated Press Writer,
November 07, 2002,
SEOUL, South Korea - Fifteen North Korean asylum-seekers who had sought refuge at a South Korean consulate in Beijing arrived in South Korea early Thursday.
The North Koreans flew to Incheon International Airport west of Seoul after transiting in the Philippines overnight. The 12 females and three males were taken away for debriefing by government officials.
"We're glad," said a woman defector, identified only by her surname, Kim. "We thank all who helped us out."
The South Korean Embassy in Beijing had declined to comment on when and how they gained access to the consulate. South Korea's Yonhap news agency reported that they sought refuge at the consulate in August and September.
More than 100 North Koreans fleeing hunger and repression in their communist homeland have been permitted to travel to South Korea after seeking asylum in diplomatic compounds and foreign schools in the Chinese capital since March. Thousands of other North Koreans are believed to be in hiding in China, seeking a chance to come to South Korea.
China has a treaty with North Korea requiring it to send back North Koreans living illegally in China. But it has not done so in cases that become public, possibly for fear of international criticism. More than 750 North Koreans have defected to South Korea so far this year, up from 583 for all of 2001.
by Kim In-ku, Chosun Ilbo, November 7, 2002
A total of 15 North Korean defectors, who had sought refuge at the South Korean consulate in Beijing, arrived in the South early Thursday morning via a third the Philippines. The North Koreans transited in Manila, before landing at Incheon International Airport at around 4:50am local time aboard Korean Air flight KL-624. Having entered the consular office between August and September to seek safe passage to Seoul, the group is reportedly comprised of 12 females and 3 males including a 10-year-old boy.
In related news, an official at the Ministry of Unification reported that the number of defectors would exceed 1,000 for the first time this year. He added that the latest arrivals put the total number of North Korean asylum seekers in the South at 935 this year, and the grand total to 2,703. The official said that if this trend continues the figure would reach 1,100 by the end of the year and next year the number of North Korean defectors is expected to be about 1,300.
He noted that previously 1997-1998 recorded the most defectors, but recently the number was continuously rising. The government opened a second resettlement facility for women defectors within the Saemaul Training Institute at Seongnam-si in September, while construction at "Hanawon" a support facility for defectors is underway and by October next year the establishment will be able to accommodate 300 defectors, up from the current 100.
Mainichi Shimbun
, November 6, 2002, OSAKA -- A senior nongovernmental organization (NGO) member, who had been detained while extending relief to North Korean refugees in China, arrived home Wednesday after being deported by Chinese authorities. "Chinese law enforcers threatened to secretly hand me over to North Korea," Hiroshi Kato, 57, secretary-general of the Tokyo-based Life Funds for North Korean Refugees, told a news conference at Kansai International Airport.Kato emphasized that his role in the March 14 incident was to convey the asylum seekers' message to the world through the Japanese news media. Kato and Masahiro Mizuta, 30, a Japanese student who served as an interpreter for him, were detained in Dalian on Oct. 30 on suspicion of helping North Korean defectors illegally enter China and seek asylum at foreign diplomatic establishments.
Chinese law enforcers decided not to prosecute Kato on Tuesday and deported him from Shengyang on Wednesday. The authorities allowed Mizuta to stay in China as a student on the grounds that he simply works as an interpreter.
by Kang Chol-hwan ([email protected]), Chosun Ilbo, November 6, 2002
The North Korean regime is mounting a major crackdown on cellular telephones in the border area, according to a North Korean source, as people have been able to use China's mobile network. The use of mobile phones is basically prohibited in the North, however, since voice communication is possible on the Chinese network in some border areas, merchants, smugglers and some wealthy citizens use mobile phones clandestinely. The number of hand-phone users has sharply increased in recent months with state security officials joining the ranks. They purchase cellular telephones, accompanied by batteries, mainly from Chinese merchants, paying a user fee for a set period of time
in advance.
Under a central government order to uproot the use of hand-phones by the residents in the border area, the State Security Agency has recently alerted the entire border, said a North Korean, affiliated with the security agency, who frequently crosses the border. A special inspection team of the National Defense Committee was dispatched to the border area in North Hamgyong Province on November 1 to inspect public security institutions such as the Border Guard, the State Security Agency and the Ministry of People's Security. The North Korean attributed the crackdown to the judgment that the use of cellular phones is partially responsible for no decline in the number of
North Koreans fleeing to China despite reinforced crackdowns and in instances of corruption in the Border Guard.
The crackdown on cellular phones started a few months ago in some sectors of the border area, with state security operatives assigned to ambush duties at key positions. Some 40 hand-phones are said to have been confiscated in Musan, North Hamgyong Province, alone in October. Some Border Guard officers and state security officials were among those uncovered using hand-phones in the crackdown operation. They were caught because they were using cellular phones illegally, whereas security agents engaged in overseas affairs alone are permitted to use them.
"It has long been essential for boarder guards officers and state security agents to use cellular phones," said the North Korean. "The telephones they use are mostly those confiscated from merchants and smugglers." Few of them don't use cellular phones, according to the source, some purchasing them from merchants individually and others obtain them as bribes. The use of cellular phones is said to be spreading like a latest fashion among some citizens. Hand-phones are considered to be so essential that smugglers and merchants who lack them, in particular, can hardly claim themselves to be engaged in those businesses. More and more ordinary citizens are said to buy them,
paying lots of money.
By Christopher Bodeen, Associated Press, November 6, 2002
BEIJING - About a dozen people believed to be North Korean asylum-seekers walked out of the South Korean consulate in Beijing on Wednesday, apparently headed for Seoul via the Philippines.
The men and women climbed into a minibus parked just outside the heavily guarded consulate in Beijing's leafy embassy district just before 2 p.m. The bus then turned onto the highway in the direction of Beijing's Capital Airport.
Members of the group smiled as they left, dressed in new coats and carrying sports bags. One woman covered her face as if hiding her identity; some waved goodbye from the bus to South Korean consulate staff.
The South Korean Embassy in Beijing wouldn't comment on the group's departure or how they gained access to the consulate.
However, 15 North Korean asylum-seekers were to transit in the Philippines for a few hours later Wednesday before boarding a connecting flight to Seoul, according to a letter to the Philippine Department of Foreign Affairs from the South Korean Embassy in Seoul.
The letter, seen by The Associated Press, listed 12 females and three males in the group, the youngest a 10-year-old boy and the oldest a 65-year-old woman.
The letter said they would take a China Southern Airlines flight scheduled to arrive in Manila on Wednesday evening. The group was then to take a Korean Airlines flight to Seoul.
This year, more than 100 North Koreans who sought refuge in foreign diplomatic missions and schools in China have been allowed to leave for Seoul after traveling through a third point, usually Manila. Thousands of other North Koreans who fled hunger and repression in their hard-line communist homeland are believed to be in hiding in northeastern China, near the border with North Korea.
China has a treaty with North Korea, its ally, compelling it to send back North Koreans it apprehends in China. But it has not done so in cases that become public, possibly for fear of an international backlash.
New York Times, Associated Press, November 5, 2002. TOKYO (AP) -- One of five abducted Japanese at the center of a political tug-of-war between their homeland and North Korea said Tuesday he wants his children to be allowed to come to Japan as soon as possible, but was warned a solution may take time. Kaoru Hasuike, speaking after meeting senior Japanese officials, said he wants to be reunited in Japan with his two children, who were born and raised in North Korea. ``I want my children to come to Japan so that I can tell them the things I couldn't until now,'' he said, alluding to the fact that he hid his nationality from his children. ``I want them to meet their relatives, and then we will decide what to do,'' Hasuike said at the town hall in his hometown of Kashiwazaki, about 160 miles northwest of Tokyo.
Deputy Cabinet Secretary Shinzo Abe briefed Hasuike earlier in the day on the talks with North Korea last week in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. ``We told them a solution could take time,'' Abe said. Officials had reportedly been considering a reunion in a third country, but Hasuike's brother said the abductees and their relatives were opposed.
Hasuike and his wife, Yukiko Okudo, are among five Japanese abducted by North Korea in the 1970s who are visiting Japan. Hasuike and Okudo were captured while on a date at a beach.
Their return was made possible by North Korean leader Kim Jong Il's surprise confession at a summit with Japan's Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi on Sept. 17 that North Korean agents had kidnapped at least 13 Japanese in the 1970s and 1980s. But North Korea has accused Japan of breaking a promise to send the five survivors back after a week or two.
Tokyo now says it has no intention of sending them back, and is demanding that North Korea send the abductees' seven children and one's American husband.
By Ted Anthony, The Associated Press, November 5, 2002
BEIJING - A Japanese activist who helped establish an organization that assists North Korean refugees has been missing for five days in northeastern China, and the Chinese government said Monday it was looking for him. But the organization, Life Funds for North Korean Refugees, suggested China was responsible for Hiroshi Kato's disappearance and urged the government to respect international rules on detained foreigners. Kato, 57, went missing Wednesday after leaving the Tianfu Hotel in the northeastern Chinese city of Dalian on Wednesday, the Japan-based group said. It said Kato had been telephoning at least three times daily before that. "We have done our best to locate Mr. Kato, but we still cannot find him," said Kenkichi Nakadaira, a representative of Life Funds for North Korean Refugees. "This is a matter of grave concern."
If the Chinese government is involved, he said, "we strongly urge the Chinese authorities to immediately investigate this matter and locate Mr. Kato, and explain in detail why he has been detained." Life Funds did not say why Kato was in northeastern China except "to carry out activities for our NGO." The region, which borders North Korea, is brimming with refugees fleeing poverty and hunger under Kim Jong Il's repressive and insular Pyongyang regime. Chinese authorities said Monday they were searching for Kato. "The departments concerned in China are trying to find out the Japanese person's whereabouts," said a woman who answered the phone at the Chinese Foreign Ministry (news - web sites)'s press office and did not give her name. She said any matter involving a foreign national would be dealt with through international conventions. Life Funds said Kato's interpreter, whom it identified as Masahiro Mizuta, was also missing.
Nakadaira, in a news release, said Life Funds for North Korean Refugees initially suspected North Korean agents who patrol the border between their insular nation and China. But Nakadaira said the group has come to believe China was responsible. "It is extremely unnatural to believe that any other organization than the Chinese authorities are involved in this," Nakadaira said. "We can only think that the Chinese authorities are persecuting them for their humanitarian efforts and subverting their human rights." Kato had been scheduled to return to Tokyo on Thursday, his organization said. China, North Korea's major ally, views the refugee issue as particularly sensitive because it places the government in a bad position. If Beijing allows refugees to leave for third countries, it violates a treaty it has with Pyongyang; if it repatriates them, it angers the international community. In cases that became public, dozens of North Korean refugees have departed for South Korea via third countries since March after they fled into embassies and foreign compounds in Beijing and the northeastern city of Shenyang. A man who answered the telephone at the press office of the Japanese Embassy in Beijing said no one was available to answer questions because of Culture Day, a national holiday.
Chosun Ilbo's Editorial, November 4, 2002
During the Inter Korean Red Cross Talks, which ended without agreement yesterday, a North Korean delegate said, "You should not talk about abductees that don't exist." These must be the most ridiculous and thoughtless words to come from Pyongyang ever. How dare they talk like that considering the concerns of family members of the kidnapped? About a month ago when Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi visited North Korea, Pyongyang officially admitted its kidnapping of some Japanese citizens and expressed apologies for that. On same issue, they voluntarily bend their knees to Japan, while ignoring pains of the same ethnic groups. By this, Pyongyang surely has lost its right to use their favorite term, ethnic Korean.
We believe Pyongyang's totally different two faces originate from the mistakes of the Kim Dae-jung administration. So far, the current government has been saying abductees will be dealt with in the broader context of the separated families issue. As a matter of fact, the administration's notification is almost admitting Pyongyang's standpoint, which asserted abductees do not exist. It perfectly reflects this administration's low posture to North Korea, only depending on Pyongyang's mercy rather than punishing North Korea’s inhuman criminal activities. On the other hand, Tokyo dragged out an apology from Pyongyang, which had never admitted its kidnapping operations
before, by clearly stating the resolution of Japanese kidnapped was a prior condition for talks between Tokyo and Pyongyang. It finally led to the permanent return of abductees to Japan. Depending on different wills of two governments on the same issue, totally different results were achieved.
After listened to Pyongyang's thoughtless words, family members of the abuductees condemned not only North Korea, but also the current administration by saying, "We expected that result." Their strong indignation also took place from the administration’s low posture policy. If the current administration keeps away from resolving the abductees issue, it will be subject to censure from the Korean people.
By Donald Macintyre
, TIME ASIA, November 4, 2002/ Vol. 160 No. 17* With reporting by Kim Yeoshin/Seoul and Kim Yooseung/Yanji
North Korea is a monolithic black box to the rest of the world, but stress cracks can be seen in the aspiring nuclear power The teenager looks at least three years younger than his 17 years. His eyes dart around or lock on his shoe tops when he talks. But when you take him to a neighborhood restaurant and put a steaming plate of dumplings in front of him, he suddenly perks up and starts to look you in the eye. Walking for a day from his village in North Korea, he crossed the Tumen River into China in early October, hoping to earn some money to buy food for his parents. He doesn't want you to use his name or take his picture. If a copy of this magazine were to fall into the hands of North Korean authorities, "they'll really beat me up," he says. Jae Young — a pseudonym he agrees to — has heard about the economic reforms unveiled by his country's leaders in July. But all that's happened in his village, Jae Young says, is that the price of grain has gone up, leaving his family hungrier than before. He falls silent at the mention of North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il, the man all North Koreans are taught to revere as a demigod. Jae Young has nothing to say on that topic except "There is nothing to eat"...
Associated Press reported that a Japanese activist, deported from the PRC Wednesday for allegedly helping DPRK escape their homeland, claimed he was physically abused during his weeklong detention by PRC authorities. "They put handcuffs on my right hand. The other was shackled to my seat. I was told to sleep like this - unable to move at all," said Hiroshi Kato, co-founder of Tokyo-based aid group Life Funds for North Korean Refugees. He said the PRC authorities also beat him and threatened to quietly turn him over to the DPRK government if he didn't confess to their allegations. "It was outrageous that they tried to make it look like I had done things that I really hadn't," he said after arriving at Kansai International Airport in western Japan. The PRC government expelled Kato, 57, claiming he had helped DPRK refugees dash into foreign embassies in the PRCto seek asylum. Kato has denied the charges. (Koxo Mizoguchi, "DETAINED ACTIVIST RETURNS TO JAPAN, CLAIMS ABUSIVE TREATMENT BY CHINESE," Tokyo, 11/06/02)
The Associated Press reported that Japanese police were unable to identify the only set of human remains turned over by DPRK officials, who say the remains belong to one of eight Japanese who died after being abducted decades ago by DPRK spies. Experts' attempts to conduct DNA tests were frustrated because the remains appeared to have been "severely affected by heat," Cabinet spokesman Takashi Okada said Tuesday. He refused to comment on how the damage may have occurred. Local media had reported the remains were cremated twice, and had been dubious that the tests would yield a conclusive outcome. The graves of the seven other victims had been washed away in floods, the DPRK said. The test results cast further doubt on Pyongyang's reports to Japan on the fates of the eight allegedly dead abductees. Victims' families, faced with no verifiable evidence, have refused to believe the DPRK's accounts of the deaths. ("POLICE UNABLE TO IDENTIFY POSSIBLE REMAINS OF JAPANESE ABDUCTED BY NORTH KOREA," Tokyo, 11/05/02)
The Associated Press reported that the DPRK threatened Tuesday to resume missile test-launches unless Japan stops making the DPRK nuclear weapons program and the fate of five Japanese abductees central to normalizing relations. Quoting a Foreign Ministry official, the DPRK's official Korea Central News Agency said Japan's stance on the abductees and its demands that the North stop developing nuclear weapons "is now creating very serious issues as it is illogical." The date for the next round of talks has not been set. The five abductees are in Japan in their first homecoming, allowed by the DPRK but on the expectation it would last only a week or two. Japan now says it has no plans to return them to the North. The five are the only known survivors of 13 such kidnappings Kim confessed his country carried out in the 1970s and '80s. The DPRK Foreign Ministry official, who was not identified, said that if Japan is willing to break its promise on the abductees, the DPRK is not obliged to stick to the test-launch moratorium. "If any party ceases to implement its commitment, it is impossible for the other party to continue to fulfill its commitment," the official said. (Eric Talmadge, "N. KOREA, JAPAN TALKS BREAK DOWN," Tokyo, 11/05/02) and Reuters ("N. KOREA MAY RECONSIDER MISSILE TEST MORATORIUM," Tokyo, 11/05/02)
Joongang Ilbo reported that Red Cross talks between the ROK and the DPRK broke off Saturday after DPRK showed no enthusiasm for holding a temporary family reunion this winter and searching for South Koreans kidnapped to DPRK after the Korean War. The Red Cross talks began at Mount Kumgang on Thursday. The three-day talks at first went smoothly; the two sides discussed a plan to build a permanent meeting facility for separated families of the the ROK and the DPRK and visited Jopo, a small town that DPRK had proposed as a location for the meeting site. They reportedly reached an agreement to begin construction, possibly before the end of this year. But other issues scuttled the talks. ROK's delegates proposed holding another separated family reunion either in early December or next February, the sixth such gathering. DPRK, however, said that no more meetings could be held until the permanent facility was completed. ROK Red Cross officials also asked DPRK to confirm the whereabouts of ROK members missing since the Korean War; they also pressed DPRK to provide information about ROK citizens who were kidnapped to DPRK after the war. ("NORTH-SOUTH RED CROSS TALKS BREAK OFF," Seoul, 11/04/02)
Arirang TV, November 1, 2002
Seven North Korean asylum seekers made an attempt to enter the German Embassy School in the Chinese capital on Thursday afternoon. While two of the seven succeeded in their asylum bids the remaining five were arrested by Chinese police while they were trying to climb over the wall of the German government-run school.
The arrested five are said to be comprised of two families including a woman in her 40s and her teenage daughter as well as another woman in her 30s and her teenage son and daughter. Meanwhile the successful two a man and woman both in their 20s reportedly expressed their wishes for safe passage to South Korea.