N. Korean refugees describe human rights horrors at UN hearing

Posted on : 2013-08-21 12:05 KST Modified on : 2019-10-19 20:29 KST
At Yonsei University, Shin Dong-hyuk tells his story of being born in a North Korean prison camp
 special investigator Marzuki Darusman
special investigator Marzuki Darusman

By Park Byong-su, staff reporter

The UN Commission of Inquiry on North Korea, which was established by a resolution of the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) in March, held an open hearing for North Korean refugees on Aug. 20 at Yonsei University in Seoul.

At the hearing, which continues through Aug. 24, two North Korean refugees vividly described the horrible reality of human rights in North Korea. The refugees at the hearing were Shin Dong-hyuk, who was born in a North Korean camp for political prisoners, and Ji Heon-a, who was incarcerated at a North Korean prison.

Shin Dong-hyuk, who came to South Korea in 2006, provided testimony about the numerous human rights violations he suffered at the Kaecheon Internment Camp in South Pyongan Province for political prisoners (better known as “Camp 14”) from the time he was born there in Dec. 1982 until his escape in 2004. These violations, Shin said, included hunger, torture, beatings, and abuse.

Shin came to prominence with the publication of the book “Escape from Camp 14” by Blaine Harden, which recounts his experiences at the camp. Since then, he has given interviews and testimony about the atrocious human rights abuses at North Korea’s internment camps for political prisoners.

“When I was born, my mother and father were prisoners,” Shin said when asked how he came to be born in the internment camp. “I heard that my father had been sent to the camp because his family had gone to South Korea.”

“At the camp, they had something they called ‘marriage for good behavior,’” Shin explained. “If camp guards said the word, a man and woman would be paired up.” He said that his parents’ marriage was one such marriage for good behavior.

Shin also spoke about the food situation at the camp. “From the time I was 12, I lived apart from my mother. Each day, we were given food. If we made mistakes in our work, we got less food. If we got in trouble because we couldn’t memorize the rules of the camp at school, we got less food. Students ate 300-400 grams of corn mixed with rice, and they also ate grass that they gathered and food that they picked up off the ground,” he said.

“An hour after we ate, we were hungry again. There was not a single prisoner who walked around with their head raised. They did this so they could pick up any grain they saw on the ground. I was always hungry,” Shin said.

Shin testified that the regulations at the camp were so strict that even making a small mistake could result in someone losing their life.

He described the scene of a public execution. “Around the age of 5, I went with my mother somewhere, and there were soldiers tying people to the trunks of trees. I didn’t know what was happening. Later, I heard a gun being fired for the first time and was startled. I shook with fear.”

“At the age of seven or so, they frisked a girl and found that she had picked up five grains of wheat. A guard smashed her in the head with a wooden truncheon, and she fainted. She didn’t come to school the next day, and we were notified that she had died,” Shin recalled.

He said that they even had to ask the guards for permission to catch rats when they were hungry.

“Around 2003, when I dropped a heavy machine that I was carrying, they cut off part of my finger as a punishment for damaging property,” Shin said, showing that the top part of his middle finger was missing. “I pleaded with them that it had been a mistake but it was no use. I thought that they were going to cut off my whole hand. I felt grateful when they just cut off part of my finger.”

Shin said that, as he had been in the internment camp since he was born, he had thought that everybody lived the way he did. He also said that he did not feel any parental love from his mother and father.

“I didn’t understand the concept of family,” Shin said. “I called my parents ‘Mother’ and ‘Father,’ but since they were prisoners just like me there was nothing that they could do for their children.”

In 1996, when he was 14, Shin also told the guards that his mother and his only brother were plotting to escape from the prison camp.

“I thought that I had to report everything to the guards,” Shin said. “I thought that was the law. At the time, I was proud of having reported on them.”

Six months later, his mother and brother were publicly executed as Shin and his father watched.

Shin said that he started dreaming of escaping from the camp in 2004 when he learned about the outside world from someone who had been caught outside the camp. “The thing I was most interested in was food,” he said. “I wanted to escape because I had heard that people outside were free to eat what they wanted.”

“The two of us both tried crossing the barbed wire fence, but only I made it through,” Shin said. “I drifted through North Korea for a month after I escaped. As I made my way north, I learned about China, and I crossed the Tumen River in February 2005.”

Over the next year, Shin dodged the authorities and eventually made it to Shanghai. With the help of a South Korean journalist there, he went to the South Korean consulate in Shanghai in Feb. 2006 and arrived in South Korea six months later.

“There were around 20,000 to 30,000 people in the internment camp,” said Shin. “They didn’t teach us about Kim Il-sung, Kim Jong-il, the Workers’ Party, or Juche ideology there. Their only slogan was following the rules.”

Even at school, Shin said, they didn’t learn anything except for reading, writing, and math. “I think that they didn’t teach us about those other things because they didn’t view us as people. They treated us like beasts of burden that had to work until they died,” he said.

Shin also had something to say about the way North Korean refugees are perceived in South Korean society. While Shin said that there was nowhere else that North Korean refugees could enjoy the kind of support that the South Korean government provides, he also said, “In terms of public perception of North Korean refugees and the North Korean human rights record, I think that South Korea overall is far behind the West.”

“The first hearing was held in Geneva, Switzerland, and the second hearing was held in Seoul,” said Michael Kirby, chairman of the commission, explaining the work that had been done so far. Kirby is a former justice of the Australian High Court.

“We asked North Korea to participate in the commission’s activity, but North Korea refused,” Kirby said.

 

Please direct questions or comments to [english@hani.co.kr]

 

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