Return to *North Korean Studies*
Executions, prison camps and network of informants said to keep the hungry nation together
Pekka Mykkänen, Helsingin Sanomat
YANJI,
CHINA. Hungry and Stalinist North Korea keeps its' people under firm grip with
public executions and a wide network of informants and prison camps, people who
escaped from the country to China, human rights organizations and various news
publications say. According to the interviews with nine North Korean escapees,
the public executions have become routine in their country.
The North Koreans told in the Chinese city of Yanji, that the executed ones are
often first beaten up to a near-dead condition, their elbows, knees and ankles
are crushed, which after they are tied to a pole and shot before a firing squad.
"Their eyes, hands, middle bodies and feet are tied. Then they shoot them
in every place," tells a teenager girl, who says that altogether ten shots
are being fired. She estimates to have eye-witnessed 15 executions.
A 30-year-old man tells in another interview situation, that there are nine
shots. International Herald Tribune interviewed one year ago a man, who said
that for each person there are three soldiers, who all shoot three times - one
in the head, the other one in the chest and third one in the stomach. That
testimony is in line with the information gathered in Yanji.
All of the interviewed said they had seen several public executions.
"At least twenty", a middle-aged woman says. Also children are invited
to come and see the executions, the North Koreans say.
"For the first time, I saw the execution from far distance. I got
nightmares. But I was told, that if I look nearer, it won't come to my dreams.
So, next time I went very close and it helped. I don't see dreams about it any
more," explains a woman in her thirties.
North Korea has opened up enormously on the diplomatic front during the past one
year and now even the visit of US President seems possible. But US State
Secretary Madeleine Albright was heavily criticized last month, when she made no
clear mention about the alleged human rights violations during her visit to the
country.
Human Rights group Amnesty International said in its' report 1997, that the
group believed it had found evidence of at least 23 public executions between
1972-1992. The North Korean government has denied the public executions and
claims to use the death sentence only seldom.
Amnesty pressed, that none of the interviews was conducted in South Korea.
There
are no reliable estimates of the number of executions in North Korea. South
Korean authorities have spoken of hundreds. The number is believed to have grown
because of the rising crime due to the severe lack of food in North Korea.
According to different testimonies, the executions have been used as punishments
for minor crimes. One North Korean in Yanji tells, that he once saw a group of
three executed, because they had stolen a machine from factory.
The public executions are forbidden by international covenants. In North Korea,
hundreds and sometimes thousands of people go to see the executions, various
sources tell.
There are also a number of unconfirmed reports of cannibals being executed.
"In one of the houses in my neighborhood, the mother went crazy because of
hunger. She killed her children and invited everyone to come and eat. She was
captured and later executed", one North Korean says.
According to the testimonies, before the executions the propaganda machinery
goes around and invites people to see the executions, meant to be lessons, over
the megaphones.
A
South Korean Human Rights group called Citizens' Alliance to Help Political
Prisoners in North Korea has collected information on public executions from
about hundred defectors that it has interviewed.
"I believe they actually take place", the group's head, Rev. Benjamin
Yoon says in his e-mail.
One of the interviewees told, that she had seen an execution on September 26th
in Mushan city near the border of China. Altogether 13 people, six of them
women, had been shot. "Some of them were anti-revolutionary, some had
stolen copper wire and three old women had been selling younger ladies as wives
to China", she says.
According to some sources, the atheist North Korea has executed Christians with
made-up charges of various crimes. "We have received information that
within the past three months eleven Christians have been executed. We have their
names and we are investigating the claims. Thousands of Christians have been
imprisoned", an American-Korean aid-worker says in Yanji.
"The public executions aim to frighten the people into submission. By
making an example of one they warn all to obey," explains Benjamin Yoon.
According
to the satellite images and interviews collected by the US and South Korean
intelligence, there are twelve large prison camps for about 200 000 political
prisoners in North Korea. The country is also estimated to have some 200 smaller
camps for regular criminals.
According to some estimates, over 400 000 people have died in the North Korean
gulags since 1972.
One method for suppressing people, according to the North Koreans, is the wide
network of informants. "You can't trust anybody. Even though your best
friend is not an informant, he may one day turn you in, in order to gain a better
position for himself," one man says.
According to experts, many North Koreans are critical of their system, but
fearing the sentences, there is no real opposition threatening the system.
Criticism against the leader Kim Jong-il is a harsh crime that no one dares to
commit, the interviewees say.
"He is good. And even though he isn't, we would not say, that he is
not," one North Korean formulates.
THE MAIN STORY ENDS HERE
THIS IS SIDEBAR EXPLAINING THE INTERVIEWS:
Lively Stories About Death
Pekka Mykkänen
The nine North Koreans interviewed in Yanji, China, come from five different
families and they belong to two separate groups with no connection to each
other. In two interview situations, two different Korean language interpreters
were used.
Two of the North Koreans said that they had crossed the border one day before
the interview, one group had been in China for a week and one family had arrived
last year. While describing the executions, the North Koreans often got anxious,
they sometimes shouted over each other's voices and they used their hands
vividly when trying to show what happens in the executions.
It seems completely unrealistic, that the North Koreans had received
instructions, for instance from South Korean aid workers to fabricate the
stories about the executions. The South Korean government is often blamed for
brainwashing the North Korean defectors, which is why the South Korean
information about the situation in North Korea is often thought to be
unreliable.
All of the interviewees said that they had seen executions. None of them wanted
their names published, since some of them want to return to their homeland and
all of them face the risk of being deported by China.
SIDEBAR ENDS HERE
The following text will be attached to a Korean language notice (my paper run
the photocopy of the notice), which is said to be a invitation to a public
execution.
HEADLINE: Evidence of Public Execution?
The above picture, according to South Korean group Citizens' Alliance to Help
Political Prisoners in North Korea, is a photocopy of an announcement about
public execution in North Korean city of Hamhung 1992. The group says that it
received the notice from a defector who brought the document with him from North
Korea.
The text says:
NOTICE
Execution to be held for murderer as follows:
Culprit: Chu Sun-nam, male, 30
Site of Crime: Saphon area, Changhung-ri
Execution time: 15.11. 1992, 11 am
Execution site: Sapho, on the sandy bank under the Yongdae bridge
Security department of Hamhung Municipality
Because of different ways to transliterate Korean, the culprits' name is,
according to four different translators, either Chu Sun-nam, Joo Sun-nam, Ju
Soon-nam or Cho Soon-nam.