Beatings, killings, gulags: North Korea rights abuses likely to be ignored at summit
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Lee Cheol cannot remember how many times he was forced to gather with his fellow soldiers at an airfield outside Pyongyang in North Korea and watch as firing squads executed enemies of the state. But one thing he does remember is that these public displays of violence increased under Kim Jong-un.
“I was very traumatised, I couldn’t eat or sleep for days,” Lee says, recalling the first time he was made to watch teams of soldiers unload their AK-47s into the condemned. “I remember the sound of a person being hit by a bullet, it’s very different from the sound of a target, but after seeing it so many times I became numb.”
Lee spent nearly eight years in the North Korean army, starting when he was 16. It was his only chance at a better life, and of going to university. But his military career was marked with intense violence that included public executions and regular beatings doled out on his unit as a form of collective punishment.
It is estimated that between 80,000 and 120,000 political prisoners are detained in four large political prison camps in North Korea, according to a landmark United Nations inquiry that compiled evidence of a raft of crimes against humanity.
The UN commission of inquiry found the regime’s crimes included “extermination, murder, enslavement, torture, imprisonment, rape, forced abortions and other sexual violence, persecution on political, religious, racial and gender grounds, the forcible transfer of populations, the enforced disappearance of persons and the inhumane act of knowingly causing prolonged starvation”. The targets included people the regime considered a threat to the political system and leadership of North Korea.
Human Rights Watch says North Korea remains one of the world’s most repressive states despite recent diplomatic openings with South Korea, the United States, and other countries.
Despite this, North Korea’s plethora of human rights abuses are unlikely to be discussed in depth at a landmark summit between Donald Trump and Kim on 12 June in Singapore, with officials singularly focused on convincing the North to relinquish its nuclear weapons program.
Luxury for some, starvation for others
Lee worked in a construction brigade, toiling on government buildings and apartments for the country’s elite. His faith in the regime began to deteriorate when he was assigned to one of Kim’s vacation homes.
“We were told everyone in North Korea was going through hardship together, but they were living in luxury,” he says. “I felt betrayed, like my whole life was a lie.”
A set of blueprints for one of those holiday retreats in the resort town of Wonsan went missing, and Lee was blamed. He escaped to his home town and was told by senior officials he would be executed if caught. He bribed his way out of North Korea last year, but still fears for his family and asked to use a pseudonym out of concern they may face reprisals.
Michael Kirby, the former Australian judge who chaired the UN inquiry, says the “gulag-like” camps are a “a very large aggregate of human suffering” and the world has a responsibility to address the regime’s “many crimes against humanity”.
Kirby hopes Trump will raise human rights with Kim when they meet and worries that if the topic is not brought up now, it might be hard to return to it down the track.
“If there’s no progress on human rights, you’re never going to have peace and security on the Korean peninsula,” he says. “You’re then putting all of your eggs in the basket of hoping that economic progress which may be offered to North Korea will bring with it human rights developments. That sometimes happens, but it doesn’t always happen.”
Trump did not mention the issue when he hosted Kim Yong-chol, a senior regime official, for talks at the White House last Friday, but the president has kept open the possibility of discussing human rights at the forthcoming summit with the North Korean leader. “I think we probably will, and maybe in great detail,” Trump told reporters after his meeting with the regime’s former spy chief.
North Korea has previously bristled at diplomatic efforts to raise the topic. The regime, which rejected offers to cooperate with the UN commission of inquiry, later claimed its findings were “concocted by the US and other hostile forces”. Just last month, North Korea’s foreign ministry said the US should not “deliberately provoke” the country by raising human rights issues and deploying strategic military assets in South Korea.
Increasing brutality
Kim, the third ruler in the dynasty, has been accused of ordering acts of extreme brutality as he moved to tighten his own grip on power. Lee observed a rise in executions of military officers after Kim came to power, and described increasingly brutal methods, including the use of explosive rounds that tore bodies apart as families were forced to watch.
Kim’s uncle, Jang Song-thaek, was executed in 2013 after being accused of plotting a coup and his estranged half-brother, Kim Jong-nam, died after assassins smeared a substance believed to be the banned chemical weapon VX in his face in Malaysia’s Kuala Lumpur airport in February last year. The two women accused of his murder, who say they were tricked into taking part, are facing the death penalty. The US placed Kim on its sanctions blacklist in mid-2016 for complicity in human rights abuses.
Paek Yosep has firsthand knowledge of the cruelty of the North Korean state. Paek, the son of an army political officer who was raised in relative comfort, fled the army when he was conscripted at 17. He was caught by Chinese police and sent back to North Korea where he was sent to a labor camp, which he described as “one of the lightest possible sentences”.
While he was there interrogators would strip him naked and beat him with a belt and wooden sticks, and the guards forced him to stay awake for days on end.
“Most prisoners lie because they are afraid of being punished, and the authorities use violence to make people tell the truth,” he says.
But Paek and Lee’s experiences are unlikely to register at a hastily arranged summit with designs on reshaping the regional political landscape.
“It’s a missed opportunity and unfortunate human rights are being sidelined in a rush to rapprochement and solving security problems,” says Sokeel Park, director of research and strategy at the rights group Liberty in North Korea.
“Everyone sees North Korea as a security problem, but it’s not, it’s a country and these problems are a symptom of its fundamental way of operating. Unless there are changes in the system, there won’t be any lasting breakthroughs,” he added. “You can’t have a normal security relationship with such an abnormal country.”
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This article was released before Trump's meeting with Kim. I'm only posting it because his moronic followers seem to be entirely unaware, or entirely unbothered by the reality of life in North Korea. There are a number of good books written by women who have survived escaping from North Korea. I imagine they won't bother to look into them either.
I think I know everything I need to know by looking at how thin the people of NK are and how stout Kim is.
But that will do little to nothing to alleviate abuse if what has happened in China is any indication.
I think the same could be said about all communist countries including China.
China is a step up from North Korea. It's where North Korean women go to escape execution and starvation, so that they may become a filthy old man's sex toy instead. China won't execute them, but they will gladly hand them back to North Korea for them to execute.
Which means what exactly in the context of human rights abuses? Being tortured/killed in China is preferable to being tortured/killed in Korea?
China kills more if its own people than any other county and they do not release the statistics to the public.
China is believed to have executed more people than the rest of the world combined in 2016
I'm not patting China on the back. I'm just sick to death of every single fucking issue about Trump being deflected into something about Hillary, or Obama, or Iran, or anything that any mouthbreather can come up with to force a random and meaningless comparison out of thin air. Attempts at discussion on this forum aren't even worth it anymore.
You're going to hurt Buzz's feelings.
Got it.
So regardless of anything that might be positive in any manner to the people of Korea or the US, it must be criticized as long as Trump is POTUS?
Discussion or conversion...or working through the 7 stages of grief because Clinton lost in 2008 and 2016?
This level of anger is not healthy for the person who has it and the people it is directed towards.
And there it is …. Hillary. Thanks for proving my point. Every day I see you getting a little cozier to Trump. Sad.
That's only because Russia, Syria and North Korea, all of Trumps new crew, don't admit or publish all the dissenters, political opponents and journalists they "disappear" annually. China actually publishes when it's planning to execute prisoners.
Written in the manner of a true Clinton supporter who can't get over it.
I did not vote for Trump or Clinton. I am in the majority of US citizens who do not trust either one of them.
In reference to you bringing her up in the first place.
However, she is always the elephant in the room wherever her supporters gather to "discuss" politics. LOL!
Sounds frustrating, but on the bright side at least you're not automatically deemed a racist simply for being critical of the current president.😁
I was a Bernie supporter, and only voted for Hillary because she wasn't the disaster that the EC decided should be President (the actual voters decided otherwise). The US is now the laughingstock of the world, but you are comfortable with that so long as a Clinton isn't in the White House. Trump's actions and anti-diplomacy will have lasting repercussions for your kids and grandkids, but hey, at least they won't have to read about President Hillary Clinton in their school books. Good deal.
Projection again. Again spoken like a Clinton supporter.
My level of comfort in life has little to do with who is living in the White House in the United States since I know that the POTUS of the United States does not have unlimited power and is not invincible.
More than that of any other POTUS that has bombed and starved our economic "enemies" in other countries?
More than that of any other POTUS that has backed trade agreements that were detrimental US workers?
etc., etc., etc.,..........
Just watch what Trump will have to say about that in the future. He's already commented positively about China's decision to instill its leader for life, and Republicans are demonstrating a willingness to postpone Presidential elections here in the US. He's eliminated almost everyone who was hired to guide him on foreign and domestic policy, two areas he is completely ignorant on. He still refuses to release his tax returns, which likely show a financial allegiance to Russian powers. He's one millimeter away from doing anything possible to end an investigation into his corruption. A sizeable portion of his own party recognizes the danger he represents, but hey, Hillary isn't in the White House. That's all that matters to you.
Fearmongering? Paranoia? Hillary tried that tactic when she lost to Obama.
Trump is an old fat man who does not diet or exercise. He is not immortal or invincible. He is certainly not going to topple the US government with a handful of cronies and a handful of rednecks waving confederate flags.
Some of us are not as susceptible to political fearmongering BS as others because we realize that fear shuts down our capacity to problem solve and think rationally.
Oh, a comment about Hillary. How refreshing.
Lol - you think that China and North Korea are equals in human rights violations?! Tell that to any North Korean.
Not at all. But you aren't going to solve all the problems before lunch, ya know? It's the first meeting and it lasted what? 4 hours? What did you accomplish this morning?
Just wondering: Can we also look forward to a call from you to end our peaceful relations and trade with China? Because they are like the Super Bowl of human rights abuses and we do hundreds of billions of dollars in business with them every year. Are we to deduce from your silence that you are "entirely unbothered by the reality of life in" China?
It is a given that NK will not ever use a nuclear weapon on the US or its allies, what allies we have left anyways, because it would be assured suicide. Pretending that their nuclear threat is more important than widespread forced famine and massive human rights violations gives rational thinking people a clear view into the warped mind of a Trump supporter.
Lucky we have you Hal. Who could forget you spending 2009-2017 attacking the Obama administration for ignoring the human rights violations in NK. It's not like you suddenly developed an interest in the suffering of the people of NK as a cudgel to wield against Trump.
Obama did the right thing, as did his predecessors when it comes to North Korea. He ignored their disingenuous offers for discussions. I don't know what you think Obama should have done. Do you thing he should have just loaded up a container ship full of humanitarian aid and floated it into NK territory? Maybe include a note to please denuclearize? I'm sure you would have given him high praise for that! Trump has intentionally ignored everything important about the real crisis in North Korea, to focus his sycophantic followers on nuclear fear mongering. In the process, he has painted himself as Kim's little bitch.
Not sell arms to Saudi Arabia. Trump is continuing the sales, but would Hillary have done differently? Why is our country always promoting war? Is it because it is profitable?
Both Kim and Trump are liars, and neither can be trusted to keep their word. All that 'letter' represents is a laughable promise to try and fool the world of their good intentions toward the world and each other. If it was not so pathetic if would be funny.
But, as we all know, there is a fool born every minute, and there are always those who will believe it. And that is what they are counting on.
So you're expecting everything to be fixed in 4 hours? And how does this relate to the nuke issue? Are you saying that Kim can't or won't change his ways?
Step one is identify the real problem. He failed. All he is interested in is a photo op.
Has he, his dad or grandfather? No. They lie every single time. Remember that Iran deal you hated so much? What did Obama say? "This deal is not based on trust....". What did trump say? "I trust him..". Trump literally said he trusts a dictator that has had over 400 people executed, including some of his own family? Do you have any idea how fucking stupid that is? Trump trusts him? Holy shit...what a disaster.
When I saw Trump shake that assholes hand it did make me cringe a lot. But, I also understand that sometimes it must be done to hopefully move forward and help those that so desperately need it.
Nixon's visit to China was deemed horrendous at the time.
It appears that some resident liberals are wishing this peace initiative will fail.
Guess we should just do nothing....only thing that seems to make them happy.
Mostly yours though.