[Congressional Record Volume 152, Number 52 (Thursday, May 4, 2006)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4002-S4005]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
NORTH KOREAN REFUGEES
Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. President, I will draw attention to two topics
today. I will address the comments made about stem cell research
because we have exciting things happening in that field that I will
report to my colleagues.
First though, there is breaking news, with Reuters, the Associated
Press, and several other outlets reporting that shortly we may have a
group of North Korean refugees formally accepted by the United States
for the first time since the Korean peninsula was divided by war over
half a century ago. This is being reported by a couple of news outlets.
I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record the news report
and a related article.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
[From the Associated Press, May 3, 2006]
Officials: U.S. Assists N. Korean Refugees
(By Foster Klug)
Washington.--The Bush administration is working to bring a
group of North Korean
[[Page S4003]]
refugees to the United States and could have them in the
country within two weeks, a State Department official said
Wednesday.
The group would be the first from North Korea given
official refugee status since passage of the North Korean
Human Rights Act in 2004, officials say.
The State Department official, who spoke on condition of
anonymity because of the issue's sensitivity, said the
refugees are in a Southeast Asian nation, and if bureaucratic
hurdles can be cleared, they could be in the United States
soon.
A separate U.S. government source said the six refugees
include several women who were sold into sexual slavery or
forced marriages. The source, who also spoke on condition of
anonymity, has been in contact with a person who helped
shepherd the refugees into the Southeast Asian nation and who
has had regular contact with them.
Both officials would not identify the nation, saying they
were worried the refugees or their families could be harmed
by North Korean agents. Officials also worry that publicity
could slow down or scuttle the painstaking bureaucratic
process that must be completed before the refugees can leave
the Southeast Asian nation for the United States.
The issue of North Korean human rights has gained attention
in Washington as international diplomatic efforts to rid the
North of its nuclear weapons programs have stalled.
Lawmakers and human rights activists have expressed
frustration at the State Department's slow pace in helping
North Korean refugees settle in the United States; part of
the North Korean Human Rights Act specifies that the
department make it easier for North Koreans to apply for
refugee status.
The U.S. special envoy on North Korean human rights, Jay
Lefkowitz, told a congressional hearing last week: ``We need
to do more--and we can and will do more--for the North Korean
refugees.''
``We will press to make it clear to our friends and allies
in the region that we are prepared to accept North Korean
refugees for resettlement here,'' he said.
President Bush appointed Lefkowitz last year.
North Korea long has been accused of torture, public
executions and other atrocities against its people. Between
150,000 and 200,000 people are believed to be held in prison
camps for political reasons, the State Department said in a
report last year.
Human rights activists have said that U.S. Embassy workers
in Asian countries have refused to help North Korean
refugees.
Last year, Timothy Peters, founder of Helping Hands Korea,
told lawmakers at a hearing that embassy officials in Beijing
rebuffed him when he tried to arrange help for a 17-year-old
North Korean refugee.
``I thought to myself, `Is this the State Department's
implementation of the North Korean Human Rights Act?' '' he
said.
____
North Korea: Policy Changes May Foster New Hunger
Seoul, May 4, 2006.--Recent decisions by the North Korean
government to suspend the operation of the World Food
Programme, ban the private sale of grain, and fully reinstate
the discredited Public Distribution System could lead to
renewed hunger for North Korea's already poor and destitute
people, Human Rights Watch said in a new report released
today.
The 34-page report, ``A Matter of Survival: The North
Korean Government's Control of Food and the Risk of Hunger,''
examines recent worrisome developments in North Korea's food
policies, its marginalization of the World Food Programme
(WFP), its refusal to allow adequate monitoring of food aid,
and the implications of the government's new policies. Human
Rights Watch noted that only a decade ago, similar policies
led to the famine that killed anywhere from 580,000 to more
than 3 million, according to independent researchers and
nongovernmental organizations (NGOs).
``While most international discussion of North Korea is
about nuclear weapons, hunger remains a serious problem,''
said Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch.
``Regressive policies from a government that doesn't allow
free expression or independent observers to monitor the
situation could someday lead to a repeat of the food crisis
of the 1990s.''
In October 2005, North Korea reversed some of its most
applauded economic reforms by banning the private buying and
selling of grain, the main source of nutrition for most North
Koreans. The government asked the WFP, which had been feeding
millions of the nation's most vulnerable people for a decade,
to end emergency food aid. The agency believes the request is
premature, and proposed a new, considerably smaller aid
package. The North Korean government had not formally
accepted the offer as of the end of April.
The government also announced in October that it was fully
reinstating the Public Distribution System (PDS), which
provided coupons for food and consumer goods to North Koreans
through their places of work or study. During the food crisis
of the 1990s, millions of people who depended on their PDS
rations died from starvation. Many more suffered severe
malnutrition and hunger as the system broke down. The crisis
ended by massive amounts of international food aid and the
tolerance of private markets, helped in recent years by
improved harvests.
``Forcing the World Food Programme to radically reduce its
food shipments and monitoring, and making it illegal for
ordinary North Koreans to buy and sell grain, is a recipe for
disaster,'' said Adams.
Recent news reports suggest that North Koreans in many
parts of the country were not receiving rations, six months
after the authorities announced they were fully reinstating
the PDS. A Chinese man of Korean descent who recently visited
his relatives in the northeastern part of North Korea told
Human Rights Watch that none of the five homes he visited had
received any rations since November 2005. ``They received
half a month's worth of corn for the months of October and
November, but that was it,'' he said. ``And that, I heard,
was only for working men, and nobody else in the families.''
The South Korean NGO Good Friends also reported in the
April edition of its monthly newsletter, North Korea Today,
that residents of Pyongyang received only 10 days of food
rations in April. Citing an unnamed official at Pyongyang's
food management administration, the report said that in May
there would be no rations at all.
North Korea has a long history of providing food on a
priority basis, feeding the preferred class, such as Workers'
Party members and high-ranking military, intelligence and
police officers, while discriminating against the so-called
hostile class. If past patterns hold true this year, the
government will first send food to ``war-preparation
storage'' and preferred citizens, and only then to the
general public through the PDS, leaving many North Koreans
hungry.
Until the famine in the 1990s, food rationing was perhaps
the single most important way of controlling the population
in North Korea. As people could receive rations only from
their place of work or study, the system largely kept the
population immobile and obedient, so that they wouldn't risk
losing their only source of food.
``The government is apparently trying to turn back the
clock to regain some of the control lost when it allowed
people greater freedom to move around and buy grain,'' said
Adams. ``The government should reverse its new policies,
which make it harder for hungry people to find the food they
need to survive and stay healthy.''
The government should prioritize assisting the vulnerable
population by providing aid to those who can't obtain food
through their work. North Korea should allow international
monitors unfettered access to beneficiaries. Major food
donors, including China and South Korea, should monitor
distribution of their aid in a way that meets international
standards as employed by the WFP.
Human Rights Watch urged the North Korean government to:
Allow international humanitarian agencies, including the
WFP, to resume necessary food supply operations and to
properly monitor aid according to normal international
protocols for transparency and accountability;
Ensure its distribution system is both fair and adequately
supplied, or permit citizens to obtain food in alternative
ways, through direct access to markets or humanitarian aid;
and
End discrimination in the distribution of food in favor of
high-ranking Workers' Party officials, military, intelligence
and police officers, and against the ``hostile'' class deemed
politically disloyal to the government and Party.
Human Rights Watch takes no position on whether countries
should have market or command economies. But it is clear from
the devastating famine and pervasive hunger of the past--well
documented by the United Nations and NGOs--that the PDS and
the country's official food industry have miserably failed
North Korean.
``Millions of North Koreans died painful deaths from
starvation while the rationing system was in place,'' said
Adams. ``There is little reason to believe the North Korean
government is now capable of providing enough food to all its
citizens.''
Mr. BROWNBACK. I certainly hope and pray the reports are true. I hope
that the six to eight refugees being referred to in the articles will
soon have a chance to be welcomed by thousands of Americans who have
worked hard for their freedom, especially those of Korean heritage in
this country.
I particularly recognize the Korean Church Coalition and a number of
people who risked their own lives to form an underground railroad of
sorts--reminiscent of what happened in my State and many other places
across this country years ago--along the Korean-Chinese border. We have
a fairly open border between Korea and China. You can get from North
Korea into China, but you cannot get out of China. The Chinese have, to
date, not been very cooperative in allowing North Korean refugees to
pass. They have even captured North Korean refugees and sent them back
to North Korea to an uncertain future and possible death, and in many
cases, as well as a lot of persecution and mistreatment in a North
Korean gulag, of which we have satellite photographs. I have held
hearings on gulags containing, we believe, around 200,000 North
Koreans. We also
[[Page S4004]]
believe, over the last 15 years, approximately 10 percent of the North
Korean population has died, primarily of starvation, although also from
the gulags and at political prisoner camps.
The people are walking out of North Korea. They are walking into
China. We do not know how many, but the estimates have been as many as
100,000 to 300,000. They are now living off the land there in an
illegal status, in great difficulty, and in harm's way in China.
If we get these refugees coming into the United States, they will be
the first refugees coming into the United States. It is built on the
North Korean Human Rights Act, which this Senate and this Nation passed
a year and a half ago, allowing these refugees from North Korea to
enter into the United States.
The act basically builds on what took place toward the Soviet Union
before it had collapsed where we were in negotiations on nuclear talks,
we were not getting anywhere, and we raised human rights issues of what
took place regarding two Soviet dissidents in the Soviet Union.
We said it was not fair how they are treating their own people. The
same thing is happening in North Korea in how North Korea is treating
their own people, to the point this oppressive regime of Kim John is
trying to build weapons of mass destruction; they are a weapon of mass
destruction on their own people, killing, as I noted, we believe around
2 million North Koreans through starvation. This is abhorrent.
If the refugees do come to the United States, this is a moment of
celebration, even though it is only a few. It is a statement by this
country that we will not tolerate the mistreatment of people taking
place in North Korea. I applaud this effort.
I applaud the administration for working on this particular topic,
and particularly Jay Lefkowitz, the special envoy from the
administration on human rights in North Korea.
If reports this morning from Reuters and the Associated Press as well
as various other news outlets prove to be accurate, we may shortly have
a group of North Korean refugees formally accepted by the United States
for the first time since the Korean peninsula was divided by war over
half a century ago.
I hope and pray that these reports are true, and I hope that the six
to eight refugees referred to in the articles will soon have a chance
to be welcomed by the thousands of Americans who have worked so hard
for their freedom, especially by those of Korean heritage.
A year and a half ago, Congress passed and President Bush signed into
law the North Korean Human Rights Act. It was the first significant
piece of legislation dealing with that nation's dictatorial regime
since the cessation of hostilities in July 1953. The act called for a
U.S. policy on North Korea based on a commitment and respect for human
rights and human dignity, and fundamental freedoms, including the
freedom of thought, conscience religion or belief. By referring in the
act to core Helsinki principles adopted in 1975 that informed and
animated our dealings with then Soviet Union and its eventual
dissolution and the resulting freedom for millions without a single
shot being fired, the act similarly commits the United States to pursue
in North Korea the same devotion to human dignity and human rights.
Yet since the passage of the North Korean Human Rights Act, the
negotiating approach has been to subordinate the human rights and human
dignity of the North Korean people. Instead, what we have done is to
pin our hopes on the possibility of another framework agreement in
which the parties would be coerced yet again into tossing more
lifelines to a fragile but oppressive regime in Pyongyang in exchange
for the possible exchange of yet another promise not to use weapons of
mass destruction.
In none of these negotiations have we been able to engage in talks--
either in the multiparty context or even unofficial bilateral
discussions--on issues that promote and do justice to both American and
universal ideals. Rather than focusing the debate on the regime's
policies of persecution and starvation and to the massive failure of
its economic policies that in the mid-90s directly resulted in the
deaths of millions of North Koreans, the parties have done little to
strengthen democracy and promote human rights in North Korea.
I appreciate that there are strong political pressures especially
from our allies to negotiate over the North Korean regime's so-called
``peace for security'' demand. And in the interest of searching for a
diplomatic solution, the President and Secretary Rice have done
precisely that. In fact, the recent rounds of six party talks were the
most sustained effort by the United States.
But the President himself has also done much more, in both word and
deed. In the past 2 months, the President released two of the most
remarkable statements of his presidency. Last month, the President
called to attention China's treatment of a North Korean refugee named
Kim Chun Hee. Missing since December, when Miss Kim was arrested in
China and deported back to North Korea, it isn't known whether she is
dead or alive. As the President's envoy for North Korean Human Rights
Jay Lefkowitz said of Miss Chun in a Wall Street Journal editorial,
``Every movement needs heroes. . . . Either she will be a living figure
in a jail somewhere or, God forbid, she'll be a martyr.'' As far as I
know, we have no word from the Chinese Government and certainly not
from the North Koreans on the fate of Miss Chun.
The President also issued a statement after a meeting that he himself
called one of the most moving of his presidency. He spoke of a grieving
mother and brother who yearned to be united with her daughter and his
sister, Megumi, who was only 13 when she was abducted by the North
Korean regime more than 30 years ago; he met with a young child of 6
named Han Mee Lee who with her family were at the center of an
international controversy created by vivid video footage of their
valiant struggle for freedom at the gates of an embassy in China; and
he met with a former North Korean soldier who defected to South Korea
in pursuit of what his conscience and his heart told him were his
inalienable and God-given right to liberty and freedom.
I ask unanimous consent at this time that this statement by the
President be printed in the Record.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
Statement on China's Treatment of Kim Chun-Hee by the Press Secretary
The United States is gravely concerned about China's
treatment of Kim Chun-Hee. Despite U.S., South Korean, and
UNHCR attempts to raise this case with the Chinese, Ms. Kim,
an asylum seeker in her thirties, was deported to North Korea
after being arrested in December for seeking refuge at two
Korean schools in China. We are deeply concerned about Ms.
Kim's well-being. The United States notes China's obligations
as a party to the U.N. Convention relating to the Status of
Refugees and its 1967 Protocol, and believes that China must
take those obligations seriously. We also call upon the
Government of China not to return North Korean asylum seekers
without allowing UNHCR access to these vulnerable
individuals.
Mr. BROWNBACK. Last July, the President also met with Kang Chol Hwan,
whose book the Aquariams of Pyongyang, chronicled Mr. Kang's life as a
9-year-old gulag inmate to his eventual freedom. Just as Natan
Scharansky was Reagan's symbol of what freedom from the Soviet
communist system meant to free people everywhere, Kang is Bush's symbol
of what freedom means to North Koreans.
History will record these acts by President Bush to unilaterally
broaden the narrow agenda of the Six-Party Talks as among the wisest
and humane--acts that trump and negate the false perception that the
President is indifferent to concerns about human rights in North Korea.
These bold and compassionate acts will figuratively place on the
bargaining table--if the Six Party Talks are to ever resume--the faces
and names of North Koreans who have suffered and continue to do so.
By so publicly raising human rights issues to the highest level, the
Oval Office of the President no less, President Bush is merely
following the examples set by President Reagan and Pope John Paul
during their struggles with a much larger and more threatening nuclear
power.
We may now have an opportunity--if the press reports are accurate--to
take an additional but necessary step to demonstrate not just by words
but by
[[Page S4005]]
action what human rights mean. We need to accept North Korean refugees
into the United States as provided by the North Korean Human Rights
Act.
That it appears to have taken more than a year and half for the
possibility of officially accepting North Korea refugees has been
troubling to Members of Congress on both sides of the aisle. In a
bipartisan letter to Secretary Rice, Congressman Frank Wolf and others
called on the administration to do more. And last year, both
Congressman Wolf and I wrote to Secretary General Kofi Annan to
pressure China into allowing UNHCR, the U.N. agency for refugees, into
Yanji Province near the North Korean border and other affected areas to
assess the situation with respect to the North Korean refugees.
I was disappointed to learn that the first report required under the
North Korean Human Rights Act was issued with the statement that no
progress had been made on accepting refugees. As the act makes clear,
admission would be conditioned upon a thorough vetting process by DHS
and other appropriate agencies. But without any action by us, it is
difficult for us to demand that the Chinese should also change its
policies, and it presents a problem for us in asking other countries to
do the right thing if we have not been able to do the same. If the U.S.
cannot admit what may be less than 10 refugees in total if the press
reports are correct, then the whole premise of the act itself is
unsustainable.
I am hopeful that this may be changing and I hope it is changing. The
hopes and prayers of thousands in the faith community and among Korean
American communities are vested in this possibility of the first
admission of North Korean refugees into the United States.
If and when these people come, it will offer hope to millions and put
American on the right side of history. Such an act is consistent with
the bold steps that Ronald Reagan took and Pope John Paul urged during
the years of the cold war, and in the process made the world a better
place.
If ever there were huddled masses yearning to be free, it's the North
Koreans, whether hiding out in the forests of China or working as
trafficked victims in brothels or as orphans prowling marketplaces for
crumbs.
If these refugees are granted refuge in the United States, it would
constitute one of the great acts of compassion by this nation.
And I hope we take this opportunity to lift our lamps and show a way
out of the darkness for the North Korean refugees.
____________________