[Congressional Record Volume 154, Number 65 (Wednesday, April 23, 2008)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3332-S3335]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
NOMINATION OF KATHLEEN STEPHENS AS U.S. AMBASSADOR TO THE REPUBLIC OF
SOUTH KOREA
Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. President, I thank the majority leader for
recognizing me and allowing me to speak this evening before we close
down.
[[Page S3333]]
I want to put before the body a situation that is happening right now
in North Korea. I put a hold on our nominee to be the Ambassador to the
Republic of South Korea. I want to explain why I am doing that. I want
to show why I am doing that. Then I want to raise some issues on human
rights and why we need to be a lot more involved and pushy about what
is taking place in North Korea.
I was encouraged last week in a meeting I had with the new President
of South Korea, Mr. Lee Myung Bak, at a meeting hosted by the Senate
leadership. I was encouraged to hear his interest in dealing with the
human rights situation--or lack thereof, of human rights--in North
Korea. He is going to be more willing to work with us than the last
Korean administration in South Korea.
I was pleased to see his willingness to work with us and support us
on the nuclear negotiations in which the Korean Peninsula would be a
nuclear-free zone--although that is not the case. We have seen what
North Korea has done in their willingness to proliferate. I told the
President of South Korea--and he agreed--we must see real and verified
results with the North Korean regime, not only on nuclear activities
but also on the issue of human rights.
We are not seeing either. We are not seeing real and verifiable
results on what they are doing in the nuclear development category. We
are certainly not seeing it in the human rights category.
Without transparent improvement in human rights, and I believe the
same on the nuclear issues as well, I told him the establishment of
diplomatic relations would condone crimes against humanity on a massive
scale. Without transparent distribution of humanitarian aid from the
United States and outside world into North Korea, this aid would be
used as a weapon of oppression and diverted from those in greatest need
to those elites who get the most under the system.
These statements I made to him were well received, which is a change
from the prior administration which sought a different policy toward
North Korea, one they wanted to engage but certainly not address on
these human rights and nuclear issues.
I met with our nominee to be the Ambassador to South Korea. I met
with her twice. In two meetings with Ms. Stephens, the nominee, I gave
her every opportunity to explain to me why she should be our next
Ambassador to the Republic of South Korea and how she would address the
human rights issues. She is certainly a qualified individual, spending
her adult career in the State Department and international work. She is
a highly qualified individual. Yet on how we are going to and if we are
going to positively address the human rights concern and address it on
a high scale--to where it is one of the top issues we are dealing with,
not just one that, well, once we deal with these others we will talk
about human rights or we might bring it up--I did not get satisfactory
answers from her, nor did I get those even from Secretary Rice, for
whom I have great admiration, a week later, after my meetings with the
nominee.
I asked her in the Senate Foreign Operations Appropriations hearing
what specific ``asks'' we are making of North Korea on the human rights
agenda. She didn't say that we had particular items. Now maybe there
are ones she is willing to identify. One I asked her specifically about
is why don't we ask the North Koreans to shut down the gulags, the
political prisoner camps which I am going to showcase here. Why don't
we ask them to shut those down as an ``ask,'' putting those on the
table? I didn't get a response.
We are now approaching 4 years since the passage of the North Korean
Human Rights Act of 2004. I was willing to give the State Department
and other agencies time to implement the act. I was willing to give
those implementing the law, which included Ms. Stephens, our nominee to
be the Ambassador to South Korea, the benefit of the doubt. I was
willing to wait to see if the Department of State negotiators would be
willing to confront the North Koreans regarding their human rights
abuses. I wanted to see how much priority they would give to addressing
the trafficking along the border between North Korea and China.
Today I met with a number of refugees from North Korea. If a woman
crosses over that border looking for food in China, 100 percent are
trafficked--they are caught and sold. That is taking place on that
border today. I wanted to see if we would give priority to the
trafficking issues or gain accession to the gulags that dot the country
or ensure the food aid would be strictly monitored. I am still waiting,
as are many other individuals and groups working on North Korean
issues, but my wait is not significant, nor is their wait. The 23
million North Koreans who are waiting are the ones who are dying. Many
are desperately waiting in the gulags. I would like to show you these
pictures today.
These pictures are from Google Earth. Google has made a witness of
all of us, to no longer deny that these things exist and say they are
classified photographs. You can go on Google Earth and look these up.
The existence of these camps and the specific details have been
confirmed by North Korean defectors living in South Korea.
Some are guards, others former prisoners in some camps that they were
able to get out of. I would like to thank, in particular, Rev. Chun Ki
Won for his assistance.
We now have no excuse for ignoring the truth of what many believe is
a holocaust that is occurring in North Korea today. The U.S. Committee
for Human Rights in North Korea believes that 400,000 have already died
in these camps alone--400,000 have died in these camps alone according
to the U.S. Committee for Human Rights in North Korea.
If you listen to the defectors' stories, as I have done on several
occasions, the scale and depravity of the crimes that are committed in
these camps rival those done by Pol Pot in Cambodia and even by the
Nazis.
Too many of us refuse to confront this issue. Maybe we are afraid
that confronting the atrocities of these camps would also require us to
confront its urgent moral imperatives.
The first photo here is of Camp 22 where chemical experiments are
alleged to have occurred. Camp 22 is in this picture. It is a huge
concentration camp. It is over 400 square miles in size, a
concentration camp.
No known prisoner has ever left the camp. The information we have has
been from guards who have defected. No prisoner has been known to get
out of this camp alive. The guards we contacted were able to identify
its electric fences and moats. They were able to point out the huts
where its prisoners live, the coal mines where men are worked to death,
and the forests and fields where the dead are not buried, they are
discarded.
Former guard Kwon Hyuk claims the fences around Camp 22 are about 2.5
meters high and electrified with 3,300 volts of electricity. He also
says the camp is surrounded by land mines and spiked moats.
If you look carefully at the center of this next picture, of the
courtyard at the middle of the guard station, you will see what appears
to be a group of people coming in. This is the entry gate--a group of
people going in to whatever fate we do not know.
Outside the gates, life for North Koreans, such as it is, goes on.
This year is said to be an especially difficult one in this part of
North Korea, but the farmers outside the gate are still luckier than
those inside.
Farmers cannot pretend not to know what goes on beyond the fence. One
recent defector who lived just outside Camp 22 told his American
English teacher how the guards from his camp would come to his house
and search for scarce food and alcohol, and how drunken guards would
confess remorsefully to the cruelties they inflicted on the prisoners.
The teacher published his recollection in the Washington Post last
year, which I ask unanimous consent be made part of the Record and
printed at the end of my statement.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
(See exhibit 1).
Mr. BROWNBACK. This next picture is the Chungbong Coal Mine in Camp
22. I described Camp 22. It is over 400 square miles. Its main features
are coal and forest mining. Ahn Myong Chol, a former guard and driver
at Camp 22, described the working conditions in this mine. Prisoners
work two shifts a day on meager rations. They are organized
[[Page S3334]]
into five-person teams and are encouraged to earn rewards and
supplement the starvation rations by informing on each other. Prisoners
are beaten frequently, sometimes to death, and often for no reason at
all. This is according to a former guard in Camp 22.
They work in cramped, narrow shafts. Accidents and cave-ins kill many
prisoners. Those who are injured are sent to a hospital without
qualified staff or medical supplies, and they are essentially left to
die. Others die of exhaustion as they try to meet daily quotas. Those
who fail to meet the quotas are not fed.
Now, there are dozens of these camps all over North Korea. I want to
show you some locations of the various gulags that are known throughout
North Korea. We now have corroborated reports from multiple sources of
the kind of depravity that continues in these camps to this day.
Why not, in our Six Party negotiations and talks that we have going
on today, that one of our primary ``asks,'' along with dealing with the
nuclear issue, be to shut the gulag system down? It is a very clear, a
very specific ``ask.'' We have evidence from Google Earth. I believe we
have much better satellite photographs that go into this in even more
detail.
There are hundreds of North Koreans who have fled now into South
Korea, a few into this country, with evidence, who are speaking about
this issue. So they know and can corroborate what we are seeing in the
pictures.
Why not confront the North Koreas with it on an equal par with the
nuclear negotiations? I think to do this advances our cause overall.
In the Soviet Union, when we were dealing with them on nuclear
disarmament, one of the key things we asked for is, well, with the
human rights agenda, put it up right there beside it. People are
saying: Do not do that. You are going to upset the balance. But when
you talk with the people who were in the prison system, and you hear
their statements about it, they were saying that what gave them heart
was they knew someone on the outside world was paying attention to
them.
It also delegitimized the Soviet Union because as long as you are
going at the nuclear issue, the Government in North Korea says, ``They
are just trying to disarm us.'' And ``They have got it, this is
something that we as North Koreans deserve.''
But when you say: What about the Chungbong Coal Mine and the people
dying there every day; what about Camp 22 where you are having people
going into this all of the time but nobody ever comes out; if you raise
that, it delegitimizes the regime, it makes them confront their own
people about what they are doing. And that is a more powerful tool. Why
would we not raise that? This was my question to our nominee. Why are
we not raising that?
It seems as if the desire to get something on the nuclear side is so
much greater than that on the human rights side, that this one is set:
OK, when we get the nuclear one dealt with, we will deal with this. But
in the meantime, people are dying, a lot of them. And this goes on. It
continues at a time when we would look at those things and say: My
goodness, this is 2008. This does not go on in the world today. You
have pictures. You can go on Google Earth and see it.
I think we have to raise this issue. I think it is important in our
negotiations for us to raise this issue. We have expressed our horror
at what has taken place in various places around the world and said,
``never again.'' We have said it about concentration camps. Yet it is
going on here and we have a negotiation and we are not even making it a
major issue. So I believe we need to step up and we need to push this
issue.
The final point I would like to make about this is that the Chinese
are complicit in this as well. They are the ones who could put the most
pressure of any country in the world outside of Korea on the North
Koreans. They are the ones who have the economic relations. They are
the ones who are the protector of North Korea. When people escape out
of one of these camps or try looking for food in China, they are caught
by the Chinese and repatriated to an uncertain fate, likely death,
often imprisonment, and they are sent back against the Chinese
requirements of what they had signed in the U.N. Human Rights
Commission Agreement in 1951, an agreement that China is a signatory of
that says they will not send people back into a death camp situation or
where their health would be challenged or would be likely harmed or
that they would be killed.
Clearly, that is taking place over there, and China continues to do
it. So on top of what they are doing in Tibet and what they are doing
in North Korea, on top of what they are doing in Sudan, enabling the
Sudanese Government to continue this in Darfur and buying oil out of
Sudan and backing reform in the United Nations, on top of that and
pursuing resources out of the Congo, regardless of what sorts of abuses
are taking place by the groups or the militias stealing the resources
to take them out through China, regardless of what is taking place in
Burma where the Chinese are blocking and supporting the Burmese and
then they are pushing people out, the Korean people are being pushed
into Thailand, but they are not citizens of Thailand so they are being
trafficked from that point. The Chinese are the ones who are complicit
in all of this. They are the great enabler of human rights abuses
around the world today, in their own country and externally. They bear
a huge responsibility for what is taking place today in North Korea.
I hope this continues to be expressed and brought up--I plan to do
so--prior to the Olympics this year, which should be a celebration of
great athleticism. I believe it will be. But as China seeks to exploit
this as a presentation of their coming forward in the world, I hope the
world notices what else they are doing. They are hosting a grand
Olympics, but they are hosting a greater catastrophe of human rights
abuses in their country and around the world. Whether it is Tibetans or
people in the house church movement, Falun Gong members being arrested,
North Koreans, Burmese, Sudanese, Congolese, they lay at the doorstep
of the Chinese.
I think we need to confront this. I am hopeful the administration
will address this. I know the President personally cares very deeply
about human rights abuses in North Korea. He has met individually with
people who have come out of North Korea. I talked directly with him
about it. I don't think we are seeing the administration meet the
President's greatest desires on addressing this issue. That is why I
put a hold on Kathleen Stephens being Ambassador to the Republic of
Korea until we begin to address these issues.
I yield the floor.
Exhibit 1
[From the Washington Post, Apr. 1, 2007]
Escape From Dear Leader to My Classroom in Seoul
(By Samuel Songhoon Lee)
Seoul.-- At a small restaurant in late February, my student
and I ate spicy noodle soup and stared at a huge TV showing
the extravagant celebration of Kim Jong Il's 65th birthday in
Pyongyang. Thousands of smiling people paraded across the
North Korean capital and saluted their Dear Leader.
``I was once there,'' my student said. ``But even as I
danced and smiled, I knew of a better life outside.'' She
said this matter-of-factly and turned to stir her tea. Her
search for that better life had brought her here, at age 13,
to Seoul, and to my English class at a special school for
young North Korean defectors.
The school has more than two dozen students, members of a
growing contingent of North Koreans who have deserted that
communist country since famines in the mid-1990s killed more
than 2 million people. According to South Korea's Ministry of
Unification, 41 North Korean defectors arrived in South Korea
in 1995. The number increased to 312 in 2000, and to 1,383 in
2005, many of them young people.
It isn't easy for these young defectors to fit into South
Korean schools and fill the gaps in their education. Most
schools here don't offer transition courses on the
differences in language and culture. But catching up with
schoolwork is only one problem they face.
In South Korea, a country that withstood centuries of
invasions from its Chinese and Japanese neighbors, unity
defines survival. And without ethnic diversity or a history
of immigration, unity means conformity. When something
becomes fashionable here, it can have significant
consequences. For example, South Korea has the world's
highest ratio of cosmetic surgeons to citizens, catering to
the legions of girls who receive eyelid surgery as a present
for their 16th birthday. This culture of unity and conformity
is vastly different from the one I experienced growing up
Korean American in New York, Denver and Seattle. The lack of
diversity at school makes the young defectors instant
[[Page S3335]]
standouts--subject to 15 minutes of fame and adulation, then
an enduring period of isolation. When their peers ask about
their accent--noticeably different from what's common in
Seoul--most students say they're from Gangwon Province, in
the northeastern part of the country.
Facing ostracism from South Korean students, many young
North Korean defectors drop out of school. According to a
ministry report in 2005, 43 percent of young defectors were
attending school, and 29 percent had dropped out of middle
and high schools. Almost half of the 198 young defectors
still attending school said that they hid their background
from classmates, according to a survey by the National Human
Rights Commission.
``Don't expect them to be like us just because they look
Korean and speak Korean,'' the principal told me on the
orientation day for volunteer teachers at School 34, an
independent school for defectors. ``Treat them like
foreigners, but with respect.''
I was assigned to teach two English classes to students
ages 15 to 27. When I introduced myself, they were as puzzled
and curious about me as I was about them. An oversized Korean
American with big Sony headphones--was I really one of them?
Taking the principal's advice, I made it clear from the
start that I was not, and that I probably could not
understand the obstacles they had to overcome to reach the
free world. Many feel deeply betrayed by Kim and the
propaganda they were forced to learn. But they have achieved
a surprising distance from their painful past. They share
memories--which include watching public executions and
boiling grass to eat in times of famine--as if they were
reciting folk tales with a sense of wonder and humor.
Among my students, one young man stood out because of his
motivation to learn English. His family is still in North
Korea, and he wants to earn the $15,000 in payoffs it would
take to get them to Seoul. Numerous underground railroads
established by brokers in China make rescuing family members
from North Korea possible, he told me--if one has the money.
``I can work hard for two years and make that money. But I
will lag behind in my study. Then what can I do even if my
family were to come here?'' he said.
In North Korea, he knew exactly what he wanted to do:
become an officer in the North Korean army. He dreamed of
killing as many Americans and South Koreans as he could. In
his childhood home, a framed photo of his grandfather and Kim
was prominently displayed on the living room wall. His family
was part of North Korea's small and reclusive elite society,
and he would have marched off as an army lieutenant if he
hadn't received a black-market Sony Walkman for his 15th
birthday and listened to forbidden South Korean radio
frequencies.
Late at night, muffling the scratchy signal so as not to
get caught, he tuned in to the news, learning that much of
what he was taught all day in school was a lie. ``We learned
that the Americans were constantly trying to invade us. But
from the South Korean news, I learned that it was the other
way around. But my classmates truly believed in what we were
learning. They were like robots.''
When he graduated from high school and was ordered to serve
13 years in the military, he decided to defect. His father
bribed the North Korean border patrolmen, who took him to
China. Because the Chinese government regularly repatriated
North Korean refugees, South Korean missionaries took him to
Myanmar, where Seoul's consulate prepared the papers for his
final journey to South Korea.
Soon after arriving in Seoul, he found School 34 and a
community of others like him. Most students were too poor to
have bribed their way out. Instead, they had braved often
frigid waters to swim across the Tumen River to China.
Another student, a good-humored young woman, lost her
parents to starvation before she turned 11. To survive, she
said, she crossed the Tumen many times to obtain food and
other goods in China that she could sell on North Korea's
widespread black market. When she defected, she went as
far as Xinyang, in China's southeastern Henan Province.
Discovered by Chinese agents, she was repatriated and
served six months in prison. She was 13 at the time. After
being released, she swam across the river again and this
time she stayed in China, begging for food. Eventually,
missionaries helped her get to Seoul.
One recent School 34 graduate is now studying at
Sungkyunkwan University, one of the nation's top colleges. He
grew up a few minutes away from one of North Korea's most
notorious political prisons, Prison 22 in Hyeryung, Ham-Kyung
Province, at the northern tip of North Korea. Because food
and alcohol are scarce in the countryside, the prison guards
went to his house for libations. ``They always drank
heavily,'' he told me. ``And when they got drunk, they would
mumble about how sorry they felt for what they did to
prisoners.''
Despite his rare glimpse of the prison guards and knowledge
of what they did, my student says he finds it difficult to
raise awareness about the little-known gulags of North Korea
among his classmates in Seoul. Most do not care, he says. Or
worse, they take a pro-North Korea stance. President Roh Moo
Hyun has been passionately calling for the ouster of the
37,000 U.S. troops in South Korea, and a wave of anti-
American sentiment is sweeping across college campuses. After
eight years of the dubious ``sunshine policy,'' which
advocated engagement with rather than containment of the
communist north, South Korean public sentiment favors
neglecting thousands of North Korean refugees in China and
pouring cash and aid into Pyongyang, even with Kim's apparent
nuclear ambitions.
``Back in North Korea, we learned to hate and fear
America,'' a 17-year-old student who attended middle school
in North Korea told me one recent afternoon over sodas at
McDonald's. His father was once responsible for importing and
distributing Soviet arms to the North Korean army. But he
defected to South Korea two years ago after his father was
purged. ``Now, I've realized that all I learned was a series
of lies,'' he said, taking a bite of his Big Mac. ``I wish my
friends back in North Korea could eat this one day.''
We left McDonald's shortly and went back to School 34 to
study English.
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