Plight of North Koreans persists amid posturing
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As the recent abortive meeting between the two Koreas illustrated, the region's foreign policy often seems to be at the mercy of Pyongyang's irrational whims. Last week, North Korea was at it again, proposing high-level talks with Washington just a few mo
While diplomats debate ad infinitum, many of North Korea’s 25 million people live a nightmare. Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International estimate that up to 200,000 North Koreans, some of them children, are imprisoned in camps modelled after the Soviet gulags, where they are subjected to torture and forced labour. Millions waste away in hunger, without freedom of expression or religion. Arbitrary arrests and public executions maintain order by instilling fear. The UN Human Rights Council has condemned North Korea’s “systematic, widespread, and grave violations of human rights”.
The situation has not improved since young Kim Jong-un succeeded his father a year and a half ago. His regime denies the very existence of prison camps.
Many North Koreans are jailed after failed attempts to cross the Chinese border. Because the demilitarised zone dividing the Koreas is heavily fortified, North Koreans can only escape northward. After the new government gave a shoot-on-sight order to curb illegal crossings, the number of defectors was almost halved, to 1,500 last year.
For those fortunate enough to make it to China, the journey has only begun. In violation of international agreements, China routinely repatriates North Korean refugees. So defectors face a 3,700-kilometre clandestine journey to Southeast Asia to gain refugee status and entry to South Korea, where they are naturalised and given government stipends. While around 25,000 have settled there, more than 30,000 North Korean refugees live illegally in China.
Humanitarian organisations such as Liberty in North Korea (LiNK) and Helping Hands Korea facilitate their journeys. The Reverend Tim Peters, a North Korea activist, has compared the network to the Underground Railroad that once helped African-American slaves from the South reach the North. While these organisations make up a small bandage for the haemorrhaging, more relief may be achievable through diplomacy.
Although Pyongyang often appears impervious to international pressure, recent nudging from its sole ally, China, has served to moderate its bellicosity. During this month’s Sino-American summit, presidents Obama and Xi Jinping found common ground on the need to denuclearise North Korea. They should extend the discussion to the plight of North Korea’s people.
Even as President George W Bush denounced North Korea as part of the “axis of evil”, he separated politics from people by signing the 2004 North Korean Human Rights Act to help its refugees settle in America. Obama should follow Bush’s example by backing South Korean leaders’ persistent call for Beijing to stop repatriating defectors. With new leadership in the Koreas, Japan and China, the Obama administration has a rare window of opportunity to champion human rights in Northeast Asia.
