N.KOREA: Nuclear Issue is One Thing, But What About Human Rights?

By Suvendrini Kakuchi Reprint | | Print |

Suvendrini Kakuchi

TOKYO, Oct 11 1995 (IPS) - The international community’s anxiety over North Korea’s nuclear weapons-making potential may has swept another pressing issue under the carpet — that of human rights, particularly as it relates to political prisoners, say activists.

“Human rights in North Korea has taken a back seat to the nuclear weapons issue. But it is imperative the world takes concrete steps to save thousands of prisoners of conscience who suffer enormously,” says Kim Min Ju, head of Help Returnees to North Korea, a grassroots campaign group in Japan.

Kim, who fought on the North Korean side in the Korean War in the early 1950s after which he moved to Japan, claims his younger brother was summarily executed by the hard-line communist Pyongyang regime in 1978.

“My two brothers moved to North Korea from Japan when they were school children. In 1986 after several years of losing all contact with them, I learnt through several of my sources that one of them was executed after being charged for espionage,” he said.

His other brother, he said, is living alone in the countryside “after being forced to divorce his wife and has no job or family”.

Help Returnees to North Korea has been lending assistance to an estimated 100,000 Koreans who have returned to North Korea since the 1970s.

According to Professor Haruhisa Ogawa, another Help Returnees to North Korea member, many of these returnees suffer constant harassment.

He says the group intends to take up the matter with the Geneva- based United Nations Human Rights Commission (UNHRC).

“The world body must understand that an investigation into the conditions political prisoners face in North Korea is the only way we can help thousands of people — imprisoned because they dared question a crazy regime — who have almost given up hope,” said Ogawa.

Ogawa, who teaches East Asian studies at the prestigious Tokyo University, points out that the United States has made respect for human rights a condition in the nuclear accord it signed with North Korea last October.

“But the issue is not pursued as it should be. Our group is totally against opinions such as the one supported by Japanese government that argues human rights follow the more important object of stemming nuclear weapons development in North Korea,” he said.

Pyongyang stiffly denies the charges of horror stories told by North Koreans fleeing to South Korea, but human rights activists say the numerous and graphic reports carried by the Japanese and South Korean Press cannot be ignored.

Chl-hwan Kang, who said he was held in a detention camp for nine years on charges of espionage, in July delivered a letter to the UNHRC urging the international orgnanisation to put a stop to the “atrocious violation against humanity” .

“I was sent when I was 18 years old to detention camp… I was forced to work from 5.30 am to 11 pm daily and was on a near- starvation diet of corn which was our only form of nourishment.” he claimed.

Myong Chi An, a North Korean prison guard until he defected to South Korea in 1994, corroborated such reports in another letter to the UNHRC. He also gave his story to the monthly “Gendai Korea”.

Political prisoners do not get fair trials, are beaten regularly, starved, and are exploited as cheap labour, he wrote, adding that many die in the process.

Independent analysts estimate that as much as 40 per cent of North Korea’s entire production of corn, grains and coal is produced by the labour of the prisoners at these detention camps.

In the ‘Gendai Korea’ interview, Myong told of how some detention camps are situated in an ‘Absolute Control Zone’ which is off limits to ordinary guards. According to Myong, there are 12 detention camps in North Korea situated in remote mountains.

Those prisoners in the ‘Absolute Control Zone’ camps have very little chance of ever escaping, he said. “Secret executions are carried out and I have seen many prisoners without limbs as a result of torture and neglect,” he charged.

Most of the estimated 200,000 prisoners are not detained on criminal charges but on the grounds that they pose security threats to the iron-fisted North Korean regime.

“This is why,” explained Kim Min Ju, “so many Japanese- Korean residents are taken prisoner. These people speak out because they realise once they arrive in North Korea they have been duped by the authorities who promised them a better future.”

Besides its appeal to the UNHRC, Kim’s group is seeking the support of the Japanese government which has given a positive response to Pyongyang’s cry for help in the wake of flood rains that have devastated North Korea’s rice crop.

For a start, he said Tokyo should put conditions on any aid package it sends to Pyongyang.

“For instance we want the Japanese government to make sure that rice sent from here is also extended to the prisoners and their families as well as poor people before we send the aid package,” said Ogawa.

Furthermore, Help Returnees to North Korea is pressing the Japanese government to attach conditions such as improving the welfare of political prisoners as an important part of its diplomatic dialogue with North Korea.