Visiting North Korea, The Hermit Kingdom
Huffington Post-Blog.
10/16/12 By Richard Bangs
It's been almost 60
years since the end of the Korean War, and for most of that time Americans had
been prohibited from visiting North Korea by its government. For many years, I
canvassed any contact I could ferret about securing visitation, but all for
naught.
Until this year.
I rendezvous with 23
friends in Beijing and the first indication that we are about to fall off the
map is when a plastic bag is circulated at the airport before we board the Air
Koryo flight. We deposit our cell phones and books about our destination, which
are not allowed in the DPRK. We are, however, permitted to bring cameras (with
lenses less than 200 mms), laptops, Kindles and iPads, as long as they don't
have activated GPS. Credit cards can't be used for internet access, or to buy
anything. Even with cash, there is no public internet access in-country. We are
abandoning ourselves to the journey.
On board the
Russian-built Tupolev Tu-204 instead of Muzak we are soothed by the national
anthem, the newspaper distributed is the Pyongyang Times (in English), and on
the video monitors are dramatic recreations of World War II, as well as a
tourist video that evokes Disney documentaries from the 1950s. Immigration and
customs are easy, faster than most first-world airports, and they do not stamp
our passports, so you just have to take my word that we were there.
We're greeted by
guides Mr. Lee and Miss Lee (no relation), who usher us onto a Chinese made
luxury bus called King Long, where we roll down spotless extra-wide streets by
willow trees and tall apartment buildings, past heroic posters and photos of
Kim Il-sung, the country's founding leader, and his son Kim Jong-il, who died
in December 2011, leaving his third son, 29-year-old Kim Jong-un in charge. We
drive through the Arch of Triumph (larger than the Paris version), and into
downtown Pyongyang, the capital. Along the way Mr. Lee, shares, in enunciation
occasionally untidy, some information...the country has 24 million people; 3
million in the capital. It is 80% covered by mountains. From 1905-1945 it was
brutally occupied by the Japanese. The Korean War (known as the Fatherland
Liberation War by the DPRK) lasted from 1950-53, and during that time there
were 400,000 people in Pyongyang, and the Americans dropped 400,000 bombs on
the city.
We cross a bridge to
an island in the Taedong River, and pull up to the 47-story Yanggakdo
International Hotel, with 1000 rooms, a revolving restaurant on top, a lobby
bar with Taedonggang, a very good beer, and room television with five channels
of North Korean programming, and one featuring the BBC.
As the day bleeds to
night we head to the Rŭngrado May First Stadium, largest
in the world by capacity. We park by a Niagara-sized dancing colored fountain
to which Steve Wynn could only aspire, walk past a line of Mercedes, BMWs, and Hummers, up the steps to
prime seats (where Madeleine Albright once sat) at the Arirang Mass Games. The
Games (there is no competition, just spectacle) are a jaw-dropping 90-minute
gymnastic extravaganza, with meticulously choreographed dancers, acrobats,
trapeze artists, giant puppets, and huge mosaic pictures created by more than
30,000 sharply disciplined school children holding up colored cards, as though
in bleachers at the world's biggest football game. The London Guardian calls
the Mass Games "the greatest, strangest, most awe-inspiring political
spectacle on earth."
The Guinness Book says
there is nothing like it in the universe. One hundred thousand performers in
every candy color of the spectrum cavort, whirl, leap and caper in perfectly
choreographed unison. A thousand Cirque du Soleils. Ten thousand Busby
Berkeleys. It all makes the opening ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics look
like the opening of the London Olympics. Finally, we pour from the stadium,
past the vendors selling posters, DVDs and memorabilia, exhausted and in
overstimulated wonderment.
As the sun finds us
the morning next we head back to the airport, during the world's quietest rush
hour. One estimate is there are fewer than 30,000 vehicles in the whole of the
country. We pass seven cars, several hundred single-gear bicycles, and perhaps
a thousand pedestrians, hunched forward as though carrying invisible sacks,
walking the edges of the streets. There are no fat people in this parade...all
look fit, clean and healthy.
There is no commercial
air service to where we are headed (and no Lonely Planet Guide), so we have
chartered an Antonov 24, during which the hostess levels her epicanthic eyes
and shares she wants to practice her English with us. Good thing, too, as I notice
the sign at the Emergency Exit: "In case of stepped out of cabin, attract
handle."
Ninety minutes later
we land at Samjiyon, near the "sacred mountain of the revolution,"
Mt. Paektu. At 8898 feet, it is Korea's highest peak, and legend has it is
where Korea's first founder, the mythical Tangun, is said to have descended
5,000 years ago.
The drive from the
airstrip to the base of the mountain is an ecologist's dream, pre-industrial,
rice fields cultivated by hand, lush, green landscapes, clear streams, and
unlogged forests of white birches. As we rise in elevation, the trees shrink
into the soil, until we are in a moonscape, slopes of stones like discolored
bone, the flanks of the stirring volcano, Paektu (white topped mountain). This
is the sublime hill, the most celebrated in North Korea, and we chevron to the
summit in our Chinese bus. From the caldera rim we can look down to a beautiful
blue crater lake, a sapphire in the hands of the volcano, and across the lip...
to Manchuria. There we see Chinese tourists waving back at us. This is also the
spot where Kim Il-sung (Dear Leader) and his son Kim Jong-il (Great Leader)
stood, with backs to the caldera, looking commandingly at the camera, offering
up enlightenment and guidance. The image is recreated in vivid posters all over
the country, so it is a delight to be here, like visiting the setting of an
epic film.
There is a gondola
that carries visitors down to Lake Chonji, Heaven Lake, alongside a steep
stairway. It's five Euro each for the ride, but I'm tempted by the exercise,
and 40 minutes later meet the group by the frigid water. When Kim Jong-il died,
it is said the ice on the lake cracked "so loud, it seemed to shake the
Heavens and the Earth."
We take some photos,
walk the verge of the lake, and then ready for the gondola ride back the rim.
But the cables aren't moving. The power has gone off, and nothing moves, even
us. The prospect of climbing up is too grim for many in our group, including
one woman who has shrapnel in her leg from a recent visit to Syria. So, as
tempers and temperatures rise, and I consider what it would take to carry
someone on my back, the power lurches back on, and the gondolas open their
doors for the ride to heaven.
The afternoon presents
a personal surprise... we drive to The Secret Camp, where Kim Jong-il, our
guides tell us, was born in Japanese-occupied Korea on February 16, 1942. His
birth was foretold by a swallow, and heralded by the appearance of a double
rainbow across the sky over the mountain, and a new star in the heavens. The
simple log cabin (with roebuck deer hooves as door handles) of this auspicious
birth stands near a stream called Sobek, spilling from its eponymous mountain.
It turns out Sobek means "small mountain" (compared to Paektu).
Sobek is the name of
the adventure travel company I founded quite a few years ago, but it was
christened after the crocodile god of the Nile, not a waterway named for a
mini-me mountain. Nonetheless, our hosts are excited with the coincidence; I am
honored just the same. We take the night at the cavernous Baegaebong Hotel,
which could be the set for The Shinning, though we are the only guests. Nearby
are the wide and scenic Rimyongsu Falls, spouting gemlike from a basaltic
cliff, and there is a ski slope next door. But this is fall, so the assumption
is we are off season, or tourism hasn't lived up to expectations yet.
The next day is
triumphal, the morning enormous as the sky. We visit the Revolutionary Regional
Museum, fronted by ectype Siberian tigers, which still roam these mountains,
and are traditional symbols of a unified Korea. Inside, the displays celebrate
the North Korean victories over Japan and America, including a video of such
shown on Toshiba monitor using Windows XP.
Then off to the
Samjiyon Grand Monument, featuring a giant bronze statue of a young,
stiff-backed Kim Il-sung in military regimentals, flanked by squads of
oversized soldiers, back-dropped by Samji Lake, dotted like snowflakes with
egrets. Revolutionary music plays from discreetly placed speakers. I am urged
to buy a bouquet of flowers to lay at the base, and then we all line up, sans
hats, and make a respectful bow. Photos are allowed, but only of the entire
statue from the front, not parts or backsides.
After lunch (the food
is always hearty, plentiful, and includes meat of some sort, always kimchi,
soup, rice, potatoes and beer, but never dog, which is a summer dish), we make
a 40-minute charter flight to the Orang airport, not far from the border with
Russia, landing next to a line of MiG-21s. From there we drive three hours to
Mount Chilbo, "Seven Treasures," a national park, and applicant for
UNESCO World Heritage status. Along the way we pass tobacco and corn fields,
cabbage patches, trips of goats, and lines of oxcarts carrying goods somewhere.
We first stop beneath a 200-year-old chestnut tree at the Kaesimsa Buddhist
temple ("America bombed the churches and Buddhist temples," Mr. Lee
tells us, "but they missed this one."). It was built in 826, and
serves today as a repository for important Buddhist sculptures, paintings, and
scriptures. The monk has us gather in the temple, below images of flying
apsaras, where he taps a gourd and chants. He says he prays for our good health
and happiness, and that we will contribute to the peace of the world. Then he
suggests we contribute to the donation jar.
It's a short hike to
Inner Chilbo, an astonishing vista of wind and water sculpted turrets, buttes,
mesas, masts, cathedrals and temples, a stunning combination of Yosemite, Bryce
and Zion National Parks. Mr. Lee, in a North Face jacket and Prospect running
shoes, plucks some pine mushrooms off the path, and shares them with the group,
saying these are delicacies in Japan, sometimes selling for $100 a stem.
After a few short
hikes, we bus into a box canyon, and check into the closest thing North Korea
has to an eco-lodge, the Outer Chilbo Hotel. The accommodations are spartan
(plastic buckets filled with washing water outside the doors), but the
setting--high cliffs on three sides, wooded grounds, a clear singing creek --
is something apropos to an Aman Resort, and may yet someday be.
The day next, as the
light struggles into the canyons, we hike to the Sungson Pavilion, a high
platform that affords 360 degree views of Outer Chilbo, grand vistas of the
serrated mountains and sheer cliffs that encase the park. We can see our
eco-lodge from here, which has a miniature appearance, like something carved by
hand and set down out of scale at the base of the mountains. The vantage
collapses perspective, creating an illusion of both proximity and depth, as
though the hospitality below could be reached in a moment, or not at all.
And then we unwind the
highlands, and trundle to Sea Chilbo, a last sigh of igneous rock that decants
into the East Sea of Korea (Sea of Japan on most Western maps). The coastal
village through which we pass is dripping with squid, hanging like ornaments
form rooftops, clothes lines, and every exposed surface of houses that look as
though they grew out of the ground. The permeating perfume is eau de
cephalopod. Past the electronic fences (to keen potential invaders out), on a
wide beach, a long white table cloth is spread, and we settle down to a picnic
feast of fresh calamari, crab, yellow corvina, anchovies, seaweed, and beer,
just before a bruise of clouds fills the space between earth and sky, and the
rain sets in.
The dirt road to
Chongjin is lined with magnolias (in the north of North Korea we experience
almost no pavement), and a richness of no billboards or advertising of any sort.
We pass hundreds of soldiers, part of a million man army, in olive drab
striding the highway; tractors that look like Mater from the Cars movies; and
smoke-billowing trucks, which have furnaces on the flatbeds where wood is fed
for fuel. At dusk the countryside becomes subdued; shadows soften the
hillsides, and there is a blending of lines and folds. It's dark as we wheel
into the steel and shipbuilding town, generously lit with streaks of neon (Hong
Kong without the brands). We stop at the Fisherman's Club, which is playing a
video of launching rockets and enthusiastically clapping crowds as we order up
Lithuanian vodka and something called "Eternal Youth Liquor," which
has a viper curled up inside the bottle, like a monster tequila worm.
We stagger into the
Chongjin Hotel, past a pair of Kenwood speakers playing a stringed version of
"Age of Aquarius," stumble up the stairs beneath a poster of
"The Immortal Flower, Kimjongilia," a hybrid red begonia designed to
bloom every year on Kim Jong-il's birthday, and into rooms where the bathtubs
are considerately pre-filled with water to use to flush the non-flushing Toto
toilets.
Motivational marshal
music cracks the day. We can't leave the hotel compound (some power-walk the
driveway for exercise, looking like guests at the Hanoi Hilton), but several of
us gather at the gate and watch the beginnings of the day. The street is being
swept, folks are walking and biking to work in their shiny synthetic suits,
children are being hustled to school, and a woman in a balcony across the way
is videotaping us as we photograph her.
North Korea's got
talent. The highlight of the day is a visit to a primary school, where a troupe
of red lip-sticked, costumed children between ages 4 and 6 sing, dance and play
instruments as though maestros. They play guitars, drums, a Casio organ, and a
gayageum, the traditional Korean zither-like string instrument, with one
outstanding student plucking as though Ravi Shankar.
With the long tapers
of afternoon light we are back in Pyongyang, and on the way to the hotel pass
the first billboard we've seen, featuring The Peace Car, a handsome SUV the
result of a joint-venture between Pyonghwa Motors of Seoul, a company owned by
the late Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church, and a North Korean
government-owned corporation that also works on nuclear procurement. Several of
the slick vehicles are lined up in the hotel parking lot, alongside Mercedes,
BMWs and the occasional Volga.
In the sweet liquid
light of morning, after a breakfast of scrambled eggs, toast, potato chips and
instant coffee, noshed to the tune of "Those Were the Days, My
Friend," (it is originally a Russian song, called "Dorogoi
dlinnoyu") we set out to tour Pyongyang, a city that could be called
Edifice Rex, for its complex of outsized compensation monuments. We take the
lift (five Euros each) up the 560-foot tall Juche Tower, named for Kim
Il-sung's blended philosophy of self-reliance, nationalism, and
Marxism-Leninism. We wander the base of a 98-foot-high statue of the holy
trinity -- a man with a hammer, one with a sickle, and one with a writing brush
(a "working intellectual"). We parade through the city's largest
public space, Kim Il-sung Square, akin to Red Square or Tiananmen, featuring
giant portraits of President Kim Il-sung, as well as Marx and Lenin. We bow
again and place flowers at another giant bronze statue of the Great Leader,
president for life even in death. We pay homage to the Tower to Eternal Life,
with its stone inscription: "The Great Leader, Comrade Kim Il-sung, Will
Always Be With Us." We admire huge statues in front of the Art Museum of
Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il blazing some battlefield on horseback, and two
weddings taking place near the hooves. And we pass scores of impressive, oversized
buildings, from the library to museums to the notorious 105-story,
pyramid-shaped Ryugyong Hotel, the dominant skyline feature, unfinished more
than 20 years after construction began (it seems, from some angles, to list a
bit, like the Tower of Pisa).
The metro, deepest in
the world, seems designed to withstand a nuclear attack. If it were much deeper
it would come out in the South Atlantic Ocean near Argentina, its antipode. The
stations are named after themes and characteristics from the revolution, and we
take a five stop run from Glory Station (festooned with chandelier lights that
look like celebratory fireworks) to Triumph Station, lined with
socialist-realist mosaics and murals.
And we finish the day
with a step down to the Taedong River and onto the USS Pueblo, or as the North
Koreans say without variation, "the armed American spy ship, Pueblo."
It's a rusty bucket at this point, 43 years after the incident, and the guides,
in navy togs, show us the crypto room packed with teletypes and ancient communications
gear, the .50-caliber machine gun on the bow, the bullet holes from the North
Korean sub chaser, and the spot where a US sailor was hit and died. We watch a
short video featuring Lyndon Johnson alternatively threatening and claiming the
ship a fishing vessel (not true), and then his apology, which allowed the
release of the 82 crew members exactly 11 months after they were captured.
The final day of the
trip we head south, to the DMZ, the 2.5-mile-wide swath near the 38th parallel
that separates North and South Korea, a border so tense it could squeeze the
breath out of stones. The paved road is wide and flat, seeming to stretch the
length of the world. It is big enough to land an aircraft in an emergency. And
scattered every few miles are 'tank traps," concrete pillars that can be
pushed over to ensnare an armored vehicle heading north. We pass through
several military checkpoints along the way, but never with incident.
Once at the DMZ we are
ushered into Panmunjom, the Joint Security Area where the armistice was signed
July 27, 1953, ending a war in which almost 900,000 soldiers died (including
37,000 Americans) -- and more than two million civilians were killed or
wounded.
"We were
victorious," the guide, who wears three stars on his shoulder, shares, and
adds: "We have very powerful weapons. Though you in America are very far
away, you are not safe... but don't be nervous."
Then he points out a
display case with an ax and photos of an incident in 1976 when two American
soldiers tried to cut down an obstructing tree on the wrong side of the line,
and were dispatched by the North Koreans.
We step single file
through several gates, and our guide points out a flagpole 52 stories high,
heaving a 600-pound red, white, and blue North Korean flag; beyond is the South
Korean version, not nearly as high. Birds and torn clouds and cigarette smoke
cross between the two, and little else.
At the white dividing
line, cutting through the center of three blue negotiation huts, we can look
across the barbed wire to our doppelgangers, tourists snapping pictures of us
snapping shots of them. We're not allowed to shout, but I make a small wave,
and my mirror image waves back.
On the way back we
stop at the Royal Tomb of King Kongmin, a 14th-century mausoleum with twin
burial mounds, looking like giant stone gumdrops, surrounded by statues of
grinning animals from the Chinese zodiac. Inside are the remains of Kongmin,
31st king of the Koryo Dynasty (918-1392), and his wife, the Mongolian princess
Queen Noguk.
Miss Lee, exquisite in
high heels and frilly blouse, dark eyes quiet as a pond, points to a mountain
across from the tomb, and says it is called "Oh My God." She then
tells the story about the place. When Kongmin's wife died, he hired geomancers
to find the perfect spot for her tomb. Upset when everyone failed, he ordered
that the next to try would be given anything desired with success; with
failure, he would be killed immediately. When one young geomancer told him to
review a spot in the mountains, Kongmin told advisors that if he waved his
handkerchief they should execute the geomancer.
Kongmin climbed up to
review the site. Upon reaching the top, exhausted and sweaty, he dabbed his
brow with his handkerchief, while pronouncing the place perfect. When he found
that the geomancer had been executed because of his mistaken handkerchief wave,
he exclaimed "Oh, my God!"
Before heading back to
Pyongyang our guides take us shopping at a souvenir stop in Kaesong, North
Korea's southernmost city, and the ancient capital of Koryo, the first unified
state on the Korean Peninsula.
Outside we're greeted
by young women in bright traditional tent-shaped dresses. The glass door sports
a "DHL Service Available" sign, and inside is a cornucopia of
temptations, from statuary to stamps, oil paintings to jade to silks to
pottery, to stacks of books by The Great Leader and Dear Leader, to ginseng to
cold Coca Cola. I can't resist a series of dinner placemats of North Koreans
bayonetting Americans with the saying "Let's kill the U.S.
Imperialists."
Our guides throughout
have been warm, welcoming, gracious, informative, funny and friendly.
On the last night,
sharing a beer at the lobby bar, when asked, they insist there is no
prostitution in North Korea, no use of illegal drugs, no homosexuality, no
homeless, no illiteracy, and no litter. Everything is clean. There is universal
health care and education. It's a perfect society, flawless as a new coin. And
it's the same jewel box presented when I visited the People's Republic of China
under Mao Tse-tung in 1976.
Human Rights Roundup:
The Special Rapporteur’s Report
by Stephan Haggard | April 10th, 2012
North Korea is one of ten
countries with a “country mandate” under the UN Human Rights Council’s “special
procedures.” As a result, it has a Special Rapporteur to monitor human
rights. (Several other countries have “independent experts”; the other
countries operating under these special procedures are Cambodia, Ivory Coast,
Haiti, Iran, Myanmar, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and the Palestinian occupied
territories.) The mandate of the Special Rapporteur was first established by
the Commission on Human Rights in 2004, under resolution 2004/13. Since
then, it has been extended annually and has just been extended again.
As Roberta Cohen notes
in a very useful overview at 38North, hope
about establishing a multilateral dialogue with North Korea springs eternal.
Don’t hold your breath.
In August 2010,
Marzuki Darusman, a former Indonesian attorney general, succeeded Vitit
Muntarbhorn of Thailand as Special Rapporteur. As Cohen notes, he was selected
in part because his government had friendly relations with North Korea and
there might have been hope for a breakthrough. None has been forthcoming.
The most recent
Special Rapporteur report, released in February, does not pull any punches; it
can be found here. In general, it is a dreary recitation of the
country’s human rights problems but with several twists; in particular, the
report notes that the situation may have deteriorated because of the food
situation and new controls on the border.
A few highlights that
caught our eye:
- The Special Rapporteur is
blunt about the underlying sources of the country’s food problems. While
noting the obligation to provide humanitarian assistance, the report notes
“the importance of meeting the food shortfall by ensuring that an adequate
quantity of food of good quality is available through additional imports
by the Government…” The report also notes that “the primary obligation to
feed people lies with the State, which must take all measures necessary to
rectify existing flaws in the production and distribution system that have
contributed for the shortage of food” and “calls on the Government to
allocate more resources to agriculture rather than to its military
sector.”
- The report provides a good
overview of the deficiencies in judicial process, but also highlights a
development that we note in Witness to Transformation as
well: the 2007 “reform” of the criminal code. The report is worth quoting
at length:
- “On 19 December 2007, the
Democratic People’s Republic of Korea adopted a unique form of law,
referred to as an “addendum to the Criminal Code for ordinary crimes”,
which has gone largely unnoticed by the international community. The
addendum is a very significant legislative act, given that was formally
adopted by the Presidium of the Supreme People’s Assembly as a Government
directive….The addendum comprises a total of 23 articles, of which 16
stipulate the death penalty for a number of crimes, including smuggling
and dealing in narcotics, seizing State property, currency counterfeiting
and illicitly selling State resources. With the adoption of the addendum,
the total number of crimes that carry the death penalty in the country
stands at 22. Furthermore, the addendum contains a number of vague
expressions, such as “the gravest cases” or “extremely serious cases”,
which leave room for arbitrary decisions by the authorities. The addendum
permits the application of capital punishment for various crimes as long
as the authorities are able to establish that the crime in question was
“extremely serious” and falls under one of the 16 listed crimes.”
- The Special Rapporteur’s
report underlines concerns about the refoulement of asylum-seekers,
although not mentioning China by name. It notes reports that border
controls were tightened in 2011, making access to international protection
more difficult, as well as “shoot to kill” orders against those attempting
to flee the country.
The DPRK has been
completely uncooperative with the special procedures. While Darusman has made
official trips to South Korea and Japan to gather information, the North
Koreans continue to reject any dealings with the Special Rapporteur process
and no Special Rapporteur has visited the country. Nor has North Korea
cooperated with any of the “thematic mandates” dealing with particular issues,
such as treatment of prisoners.
The North Korean
response to the report contains its usually flowery language (“the ‘Special Rapporteur’…
is none other than a marionette running here and there, representing the
ill-minded purposes of string-pullers such as the United States, Japan and the
States members of the European Union”).
But the North Korean
response does contain one interesting detail. The North Koreans note that in
2001 they had entered into a bilateral dialogue with the European Union on
human rights that was progressing. They claim this process was derailed by
the turn to the UNCHR special procedures. Given the difficulties of the US,
Japan and the ROK being involved on this issue, and Chinese indifference, could
Europe have a future role in this regard?
We are skeptical it
would have much effect. As we noted in Witness to Transformation,
the North Koreans reject the UNHCR special procedures because they target North
Korea. The North Koreans have cooperated with the UN’s Universal Periodic
Review conducted under the aegis of the UN Human Rights Council because it is
universal. North Korea showed up for its first review in 2009-10. Member states
made 167 recommendations. About a third were rejected out of hand, but to our
knowledge the government has not addressed a single one of the others that it
offered to take under advisement.
The UN’s North Korean
Human Rights page—including all relevant documents—can be found here. The US has a special envoy for human rights in
North Korea, currently Ambassador Bob King. The last US special envoy report
came out in 2009 and can be found here. And
again, Roberta
Cohen’s overview provides more detail and is worth reading.
Sources: The Special
Rapporteur’s Report on Human Rights in North Korea
by Stephan Haggard | October 16th, 2012
North Korea is one of
a handful of autocracies that fall under a Special Rapporteur mandate with
respect to its human rights record. The mandate was adopted by the UN Human
Rights Commission in 2004, and has been extended annually since. Each
year, the Special Rapporteur submits two reports, one to the
Human Rights Council and one to the General Assembly.
The current report to
the UNGA—issued last month and the first such report since the ascendance of
Kim Jong Un—focuses on freedom of opinion and expression; the Criminal
Procedure Code; the case of Oh Kil Nam and his family; the situation of asylum
seekers and trafficking of persons and the economic situation in the country.
A few highlights—or
low points—of the report:
- The Special Rapporteur
reports frequently drill down into features of the legal system
that grant extraordinary discretion to prosecutors and curtail due
process. Among those noted in this report are a number of measures that
are illegal, but not clearly defined:
- “For instance, the Criminal
Code prescribes punishments, mainly in the form of hard labor, for a
person who “plunders” the property of the State (see art. 90), occupies a
property of the State by “deception” (see art. 92), “defrauds” the State
or a social cooperative organization (see art. 92) or “hinders” the
normal management of the economy [...] of State property (see art. 136). However,
nowhere in the Criminal Code are terms such as plunder, deception,
defraud or hinders defined.”
- Officials and managers are
technically liable for outcomes that may be beyond their control. For
instance, article 143 calls for punishment by labor for up to two years
if an inspector fails to inspect or repair equipment that leads to damage
or stoppage of production of any goods.
- Article 233 of the Criminal
Code still permits up to five years of hard labour for anyone “illegally”
crossing a border of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, despite
the fact that the restraints on cross-border movement are in violation of
the fundamental right to leave any country, including one’s own.
- The report provides a good
overview of the strange case of Oh Kil Nam, a South Korean who was lured
to North Korea with promises of a stable job and medical care for his
wife Shin Sook Ja, but who were then pressed into service for the regime
to turn other South Koreans (both as a broadcaster on “the Voice of
National Salvation” aimed at the ROK and as a recruiter in Germany). When
Oh defected, his family was held hostage and purportedly interned in
Yodok. His wife was subsequently reported to have died and Mr. Oh was
informed that his children wanted nothing to do with him. In an example
of how the UN system can be fruitfully involved in spotlighting and
airing the abuses of guilt by association, the the UN Working Group on
Arbitrary Detention has sought information on the fate of Ms. Shin and
her children and protested their detention, which is contravention of the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on
Civil and Political Rights.
- The report highlights the
myriad ways in which the ongoing economic crisis in the country in and of
itself constitutes a violation of a number of basic human rights
conventions. These include the International Covenant on Economic, Social
and Cultural Rights, rights which have been used by dictators to justify
authoritarian rule.
- The Special Rapporteur
continues to emphasize the rights of asylum seekers, and makes several
points we have repeated ad nauseum:
- “The Special Rapporteur
acknowledges that while some persons flee the Democratic People’s
Republic of Korea due to persecution, others leave for
economic reasons. Whatever their motivation, it is pertinent
to provide all individuals with protection. The Convention
relating to the Status of Refugees of 1951, founded on the principle of
non-refoulement for refugees, defines a refugee as someone who is unable
or unwilling to return to his or her country of origin due to a
well-founded fear of persecution based on race, religion, political
opinion, nationality or membership in a social group. Persons leaving
a country for reasons of economic hardship may be entitled to refugee
status if they have been compelled to leave the country due to
discriminatory economic and political policies by the Government.”
- Moreover, the report makes
an argument which we think carries even greater force: that “individuals
who flee the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea due to
economic hardship may also be refugees sur place.
Refugees sur place may not fit the definition of persons who are
refugees when they leave their country, but become refugees
subsequently because of a valid fear of persecution upon their
return, due to their membership in one of the specified categories.
People from the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea who leave their
country for economic reasons can thus become refugees sur place if they
have valid fears of persecution upon return.”
For realists, these
efforts to remind North Korea and the international community of its legal
obligations may seem quaint. We disagree, and heartily endorse them.
Sovereignty claims are frequently the cloak of rogues; it is always worthwhile
to have an international ombudsman paid to make that point.
One odd thing about
the report are its citations–or lack thereof. Material from
the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea is used abundantly but never
acknowledged explicitly. Likewise my colleague Marcus Noland’s estimates
of North Korean inflation are reproduced, attributed to
“sources”–plural. I never knew Noland had multiple personality disorder.
