[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 159 (Wednesday, November 5, 2003)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E2238-E2239]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                            UNWELCOME TRUTHS

                                 ______
                                 

                           HON. FRANK R. WOLF

                              of virginia

                    in the house of representatives

                      Wednesday, November 5, 2003

  Mr. WOLF. Mr. Speaker, I am very concerned about the current human 
rights situation in North Korea and that nation's pursuit of a nuclear 
weapons program. The leadership of the North Korean government has 
proven to be volatile and unpredictable with a tight rein on a very 
closed, repressed society.
  Thousands of American soldiers are stationed in South Korea to ease 
the tensions between North and South Korea.
  The North Korean government is one of the worst abusers of human 
rights in the world, and 1.5 million North Koreans have already died of 
starvation. The international community must pressure North Korea to 
reach an agreement to end its quest for nuclear weapons. A country that 
suppresses its people and poses a threat to its neighbors cannot be 
allowed to possess nuclear weapons.
  I submit for the Record a recent Wall Street Journal article 
detailing a proposal from Hwang Jang Yop, North Korea's highest-ranking 
defector. Hwang's proposal for peace and security focuses on regime 
change and a larger international focus on the human rights situation.

             [From the Wall Street Journal, Oct. 28, 2003]

                            Unwelcome Truths

                        (By Melanie Kirkpatrick)

       Seoul--North Korea's highest-ranking defector arrived 
     safely in Washington yesterday despite North Korea's threat 
     to ``shoot his plane out of the sky'' if he dared to visit 
     the U.S.
       This is the first trip to the U.S. for Hwang Jang Yop, the 
     former head of North Korea's Workers Party and president of 
     Kim Il Sung University who defected to the South in 1997. He 
     brings with him a two-prong proposal for what he calls the 
     peaceful reunification of the Korean Peninsula: regime change 
     and greater international focus on the human-rights abuses of 
     the North. In an interview here on the eve of his departure, 
     Mr. Hwang said: ``I want to emphasize the importance of 
     eliminating the Kim Jong Il regime.'' How to do that? ``The 
     U.S. should put the issue of human rights at the top of its 
     agenda in its dialogue'' with North Korea.
       Mr. Hwang is an unlikely champion of human rights in North 
     Korea. Now 80 years old, he spent his career in the service 
     of the brutal regime he now denounces. He was the North's 
     ideologue-in-chief--founder and leading proponent of the 
     ``juche'' ideology of self-reliance that Kim Il Sung, father 
     of current leader Kim Jong Il, used to justify his 
     totalitarian rule. The old Stalinist now says both Kims 
     distorted his philosophy, which is really about 
     ``democracy.''
       One would think that the one place in the world where the 
     campaign to free the North Korean people would be taken most 
     seriously would be South Korea, where Mr. Hwang lived under 
     virtual house arrest until recently. Think again.
       Most Koreans are well informed about the brutal realities 
     of life in the North but prefer to look the other way. It's 
     much pleasanter to contemplate reunification fantasies such 
     as the one portrayed in a recent hit movie about a cross-
     border romance between a South Korean woman and a North 
     Korean soldier. Last week's chilling report on the North 
     Korean gulags made it into some South Korean papers but 
     wasn't front-page news. Students demonstrated against Mr. 
     Hwang's U.S. visit last week, protesting his anti-North Korea 
     message.
       If the South Korean people seem indifferent to the plight 
     of their brothers and sisters in the North, it's in large 
     part because their political leaders remain silent. 
     President Roh Moo Hyun was a human-rights lawyer before 
     taking office earlier this year but human rights north of 
     the DMZ is way down on his priority list. To his credit, 
     Mr. Roh is allowing Mr. Hwang to visit the U.S.--something 
     his predecessor, Kim Dae Jung (another human-rights 
     activist who lost his voice when it came to the human-
     rights horrors in the North) refused to permit for fear of 
     angering Kim Jong Il.
       The official refusal to speak out about the human-rights 
     abuses of Kim Jong Il's regime was on full display last week 
     during an interview with the South's minister of unification, 
     whom I met on the day the gulag report was released. For 
     North Koreans, Minister Jeong Se Hyun said, ``political 
     freedom is a luxury, like pearls for a pig. The improvement 
     of economic conditions for the North Korean people is the 
     most important issue right now.''
       ``Once the economic situation is improved,'' he said, then 
     North Korea can focus on human rights. As for linking any 
     deal with the North to progress on human rights: ``I don't 
     think it would be wise or effective if we try to negotiate 
     the human rights condition or to pursue our policies with 
     human rights as a condition,'' Mr. Jeong said. In other 
     words: Whatever you do, don't annoy Kim Jong Il.
       South Korea's constitution requires it to welcome any North 
     Korean who wants to come to the South. Yet in the 50 years 
     since the end of the Korean War, the South has accepted fewer 
     than 3,000 refugees. Most have come in the past two years, 
     thanks in large part to the efforts of several private groups 
     dedicated to helping North Koreans find refuge in the South.
       The rescuers, many of whom are Christian, differ among 
     themselves over how best to help. One faction prefers to work 
     out of the public eye. Another faction pursues high-profile 
     tactics such as helping asylum-seekers flood embassies in 
     China. Its aim is to draw international attention to the 
     plight of the quarter-million or more North Korean refugees 
     hiding in China.
       There's another aspect too--money. ``I don't mean to sound 
     mercenary,'' says Tim Peters, an American missionary here. 
     ``But in some respects running into a consulate in China is 
     cost effective.'' Smuggling a refugee out through Mongolia or 
     Vietnam costs $1,000 to $3,000 per person, he says. Mr. 
     Peters adds that money also talks in North Korea's gulags. 
     ``It's easier to spring someone from a North Korean prison 
     than from a Chinese prison,'' he says.
       The high-profile tactics are taking their toll on rescuers' 
     ability to help the North Korean refugees in China. Police 
     security around embassies and consulates is tighter than 
     ever. In the past five or six months, the highly effective 
     Chinese intelligence service appears to have replaced 
     provincial police in tracking down refugees. This is one 
     reason, rescuers believe, for the failure of a plan earlier 
     this year to smuggle out two boatloads of refugees from a 
     northern Chinese port.
       It is also becoming more treacherous along China's border 
     with North Korea, where two million ethnic Koreans have long 
     helped feed, house and hide those fleeing North Korea. Last 
     month China sent 150,000 soldiers to replace the border 
     guards, a measure viewed in the rescuer community as a 
     crackdown on border crossings.
       The four or five South Koreans in jail in China for helping 
     refugees have received little help from their government. In 
     contrast, Japan aggressively sought--and got--the release of 
     two of its citizens arrested in China for helping refugees. 
     It's a powerful deterrent for South Koreans who want to help 
     to realize that their government won't come to their aid if 
     they are arrested.
       In Seoul, a few opposition politicians are finally 
     beginning to turn their attention to human rights in the 
     North. Park Jin, spokesman of the Grand National Party, which 
     holds a majority in the National Assembly, faults the Roh 
government for ``avoiding the issue.'' His party urges the government 
to do two things: press China to let the United Nations have access to 
the refugees and prepare South Korea for a possible flood of refugees. 
``We have an obligation to help,'' he says.

       Another eloquent voice is Kim Suk Woo, former vice minister 
     of unification and now in the powerful post of chief of staff 
     to the speaker of the National Assembly. ``As Koreans, we 
     have a duty to support the refugees. As human beings we have 
     a duty to support them,'' says Mr. Kim. ``This kind of exodus 
     could be a catalyst for the collapse of Kim Jong Il's 
     regime.''
       The Roh administration ``is careful not to provoke North 
     Korea,'' he says. He is particularly scornful of Seoul's 
     refusal last April to support a U.N. resolution condemning 
     the North's human-rights abuses. And he criticizes the 
     decision by the government of Kim Dae Jung--continued by the 
     Roh government--to halt the South's air drops of radios into 
     the North. All radios in North Korea must be registered with 
     the authorities and permanently tuned to government stations. 
     A South Korean radio is a listening post on freedom.
       There's a debate in Seoul over Mr. Hwang's motives in 
     calling attention to the North's

[[Page E2239]]

     human-rights abuses. Some believe him to be sincere; others 
     say he is looking for publicity. But still others suggest the 
     defector could be driven by guilt over what happened after he 
     left Pyongyang. Information doesn't readily make its way out 
     of North Korea. But when it's useful to his purposes, Kim 
     Jong Il makes sure certain news is delivered.
       And so the word has filtered back to Mr. Hwang in Seoul 
     about the fate of the family he had left behind. His wife 
     committed suicide. So too, the reports say, did one of his 
     daughters. She is said to have jumped off a bridge to her 
     death while being taken to a prison camp. Two other daughters 
     and a son are lost in the gulag.
       This is the reality of life in North Korea--and the truth 
     that Mr. Hwang will be telling in Washington this week.

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