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For Immediate Release: Contact: Amber Moore 703-276-2772, ext. 17 Aid Alone Cannot Solve Food Crisis Basic Human, Civil and Economic Rights Required New Report Finds U.S. and International Food Aid Benefits Military, Elite and Markets 
Washington, DC - Ongoing food shortages in North Korea are directly linked to systematic human rights abuses and the complete absence of political and personal liberties. Despite the best intentions of the international community, North Korea has placed a variety of roadblocks in the way of assistance by both governments and nongovernmental organizations. Pyongyang's refusal to allow full monitoring of food delivery and need, and restrictions on the movement of aid workers continue to impede the aid effort and limit its ability to reach vulnerable groups, according to a new report being released on Thursday.
The report also shows that as international assistance increased, North Korea substituted international aid for its own commercial imports of food. The government is now paying for only about ten percent of the food coming into the country, allowing it to shift resources to other priorities, including military ones. Additionally, substantial international food aid is diverted to the elite, the military, other non-deserving groups, and increasingly to the market as well. Hunger and Human Rights: The Politics of Famine in North Korea, commissioned by the U.S. Committee for Human Rights in North Korea and written by Stephan Haggard and Marcus Noland, will be released at an Afternoon Newsmaker News Conference. DATE: Thursday, September, 1, 2005 TIME: 2:00pm to 3:30 pm ET LOCATION: National Press Club, Zenger Room October 21, 2003 NEW REPORT EXPOSES EXTENSIVE NETWORK OF GRIM FORCED-LABOR CAMPS FOR POLITICAL PRISONERS IN NORTH KOREA WASHINGTON– The U.S. Committee for Human Rights in North Korea released a report today documenting that the government of North Korea (DPRK) operates a vast and inhumane prison system for political prisoners. Satellite photography and testimony from escaped former prisoners reveal that North Korea has between 150,000 and 200,000 political prisoners working as slave laborers in prison colonies known as kwan-li-so. The kwan-li-so make up a considerable fraction of the North Korean gulag, according to the report, entitled The Hidden Gulag: Exposing North Korea’s Prison Camps. “The injustices and cruelty these prisoners suffer is almost unimaginable,” said David Hawk, a well-known human rights researcher and author of the report. “Beyond a starvation diet, torture, beatings and inhumane living and working conditions, this regime practices a form of collective punishment where three generations of family members are given life-terms along with the family member charged with political crimes.” Among the report’s key findings: Political Penal Labor Colonies kwan-li-so In political penal-labor colonies known as kwan-li-so, tens of thousands of political prisoners are banished and work as slaves in mining, logging and farming enterprises. Along with the political prisoners, up to three generations of their families also are banished without trial—usually for lifetime sentences. This practice can be explained by a 1972 statement by “Great Leader” Kim Il Sung, who said, “Factionalists or enemies of class, whoever they are, their seed must be eliminated through three generations.” The DPRK currently operates an estimated six kwan-li-so, each a sprawling encampment 20 or more miles long and ten miles wide. In these colonies, presumed political offenders are imprisoned in an area separate from their extended families and they are allowed no contact with them. Penitentiary-like Institutions kyo-hwa-so Many individuals found guilty of committing political offenses are sentenced through judicial proceedings to serve in penitentiaries where they are mixed in with prisoners who have committed felonies. While most of the prisoners assigned to kyo-hwa-so receive fixed terms, thousands die before their sentences end because working conditions are so repressive and their diet (even before the recent famine) is at starvation level. One of the former prisoners interviewed in the report, Ji Hae Nam, was sentenced to three years hard labor in Kyo-hwa-so No.1 for singing a South Korean pop song and teaching it to four friends. Each friend received an eight-month sentence. Detention Centers Near China Border for Repatriated North Koreans jip-kyul-so More than 200,000 North Koreans, most fleeing famine, have entered China in recent years, joining the 2 million ethnic Koreans who live there. The policy of the Chinese government is to capture these refugees when possible and send them back to the DPRK. Returning North Koreans are sent to the jip-kyul-so detention centers, police station jails and other facilities where they are interrogated and tortured to reveal information about contact with South Koreans, Christian missionaries, or exposure to television and radio programs, movies or music produced in South Korea – all deemed political offenses. While prisoners in jip-kyul-so generally have short sentences, usually not more than six months, they have extremely high death rates from inadequate food and excessively hard labor. Ethnic Infanticide and Forced Abortion Perhaps the report’s most shocking finding is that repatriated pregnant women imprisoned in the jip-kyul-so are subjected to forced abortion. In the cases of advanced pregnancy, babies were killed immediately after birth. The goal of the regime is to eliminate children that may have been fathered by Han Chinese men. Torture is Routine and Severe Prisoners in all facilities are routinely beaten and kicked, made to sit motionless for long periods and denied food. For extra punishment, inmates are placed in small cells where it is impossible to lie down or stand up. Former prisoners interviewed for this report were subjected to water torture, deprived of sleep, and compelled to perform stand-up and sit-down repetitive motions. The penalty for attempting to escape is generally death by hanging or firing squad. Rare Eye-Witness Accounts North Korea is the most closed society in the world. Its prison system cannot be easily monitored. The small number of former prisoners who have managed to leave the country are often afraid to speak publicly for fear of endangering relatives still under the regime’s control. Remarkably, David Hawk interviewed more than 30 former prisoners and guards for The Hidden Gulag: Exposing North Korea’s Prison Camps, the majority of whom agreed to let their names be used. One Former Prisoner’s Story -- Kim Yong Speaking at the National Press Club in Washington on Wednesday, Kim Yong, detailed his experiences as a prisoner in two kwan-li-so prison colonies and his escape from prison and his subsequent escape from North Korea. Kim was a lieutenant colonel at the time of his arrest and imprisonment. He had access to foreign currency and goods, a car and a chauffeur. Kim had been raised in an orphanage prior to rising in the ranks of the military. In the mid-90’s it was learned that Kim had been placed in the orphanage by his mother in 1957, when he was 7 years-old. That same year, Kim’s father had been executed as an American collaborator. His mother had changed his name and sent him to the orphanage for his own protection. In prison, Kim was accused of political crimes. His torture included being forced to kneel for long periods with a steel bar placed between his knees and calves, being suspended by his handcuffed wrists and being submerged in waist-deep cold water for extended periods. Kim was required to work as a slave laborer in a coal mine and in a shop that repaired coal trolleys. While imprisoned at kwan-li-so No. 18, he surprisingly met his mother, with whom he was later allowed to live. In 1998, at his mother’s insistence, he escaped by first hiding in a coal car and later crossing the Tumen River into China. One year later, he made his way to South Korea by way of Mongolia. Said Kim, “If I had committed a crime, I would have taken responsibility for my actions. The only thing I did wrong was to grow up in a society with no respect for individuals or their human rights.” Satellite Imagery of the North Korean Gulag The U.S. Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, working with satellite photography obtained from two high-tech satellite firms, DigitalGlobe and Space Imaging, was able to obtain high-resolution photos of prison camps and facilities inside the DPRK. These pictures of North Korean prison facilities were later shown to former prisoners who identified barracks, work sites, mass graves, fences and other prison facilities. Why this Information is Important “Currently, the United States, South Korea and other nations are involved in multifaceted negotiations with North Korea, revolving principally around security and humanitarian issues,” said Debra Liang-Fenton, executive director of the U.S. Committee for Human Rights in North Korea. “Human rights needs to be part of the equation.” The report makes a number of recommendations for the international community in general and for China and South Korea in particular. One suggestion is that China should cease repatriating North Koreans until it can be independently verified that abuse of returning Koreans has ceased. The report also calls for China to allow the office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees access to Korean refugees within its borders. “If we do nothing, if we close our eyes, the North Korean regime will be emboldened to imprison and enslave more people,” said U.S. Committee for Human Rights in North Korea Chairman Fred Ikle. “International pressure is essential for any effort to improve the horrible human rights situation in North Korea.” About the U.S. Committee for Human Rights in North Korea The Committee is a 501c3 nonprofit organization and was founded in 2001 to address the pressing human rights situation in North Korea by conducting comprehensive research on three major areas of concern: the prison camp system, the unequal access to food problem, and refugees. Full Report and Satellite Images Available on the Internet The full report The Hidden Gulag: Exposing North Korea’s Prison Camps, is available on the Internet in PDF and HTML. October 9, 2001 A distinguished group of fifteen foreign policy and human rights specialists has launched a new committee to promote human rights in North Korea. The new U.S. Committee for Human Rights in North Korea approved a founding declaration that called for a number of measures to open the closed North Korean system and to ensure that famine relief is able to reach the people most in need. The declaration described the system of political prisons and labor camps in North Korea and charged that people considered disloyal by the regime have been the chief victims of the famine, which has claimed more than a million lives since 1995. The North Korean government is nonetheless desperately demanding economic and food aid while seeking to conceal its system of repression. Dr. Fred Ikle, the new committee's chairman and formerly Undersecretary of Defense for Policy in the Reagan Administration, stated that "in a situation so closed and hidden from view as that which prevails today in North Korea, the people there deserve a voice and a champion in free societies. The committee will help give them that voice, and it will also encourage the establishment of parallel committees in other democratic countries." Dr. Ikle also emphasized that the security and disarmament problems that have topped the U.S. agenda in dealing with North Korea "cannot be solved as long as North Korea remains such a tightly closed totalitarian state." Among those joining Dr. Ikle in launching the new committee are former Congressman Stephen Solarz; publisher and human rights advocate Robert Bernstein; former National Security Adviser Richard V. Allen; James Lilley, who served as U.S. Ambassador to South Korea and China; Carl Gershman, the President of the National Endowment for Democracy; Suzanne K. Scholte, the President of the Defense Forum Foundation; Morton Abramowitz, the former President of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace; and John Shattuck, the CEO of the Kennedy Library Foundation who served earlier as the Assistant Secretary for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor under President Clinton. The Committee also includes leading academic specialists and experts on North Korea, among them Marcus Noland, senior fellow at the Institute for International Economics; Nicholas Eberstadt, who holds the Henry Wendt Chair in Political Economy at the American Enterprise Institute; Professor John Kie-Chiang Oh, Banigan Professor of Politics Emeritus and former Provost of the Catholic University of America; and independent analyst and author Helen Louise Hunter. Debra Liang-Fenton, currently the program officer for the Human Rights Implementation Project at the United States Institute for Peace, will be the Committee's Executive Director. The committee's Vice-Chair is Jack Rendler, the executive director of the human-rights focused Aurora Foundation and a former campaign director at Amnesty International USA. Acknowledging the priority given to security issues in dealing with North Korea, Mr. Rendler emphasized that there also needs to be a place where human rights are the main priority. "In the ten years it takes for North Korea to develop the capacity to launch a missile anywhere near the United States, hundreds of thousands of Koreans will be imprisoned for their beliefs, tortured, and killed. We don't discount the importance of security concerns, but the security of the North Korean people is constantly and currently in jeopardy." The committee listed seven objectives that would guide its work:
Among the committee's initial activities will be three studies focusing on the system of political prisons and labor camps in North Korea, the denial of equal access to food and other basic necessities, and the plight of refugees fleeing to China. These studies will provide a foundation for other activities, which will include the development of an international network of human rights, humanitarian assistance, and policy organizations committed to the opening of the North Korean system. Groups based in South Korea, where two international conferences on human rights in North Korea have already been held, will form a core part of this network. Dr. Ikle said that focusing on the issue of internal liberalization in North Korea is also a way to address the concern, heightened by the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, over state-sponsored terrorism. "In the end," he said, "democracy and the rule of law, desirable in and of themselves, are also a guarantee of peace and security." |
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