[Congressional Record Volume 160, Number 100 (Wednesday, June 25, 2014)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1065-E1066]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




     HUMAN RIGHTS ABUSES AND CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY IN NORTH KOREA

                                 ______
                                 

                       HON. CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH

                             of new jersey

                    in the house of representatives

                        Wednesday, June 25, 2014

  Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, I recently held a hearing on an 
issue that deserves the world's attention: the systematic abuses of 
human rights in North Korea, which amount to crimes against humanity by 
perhaps the world's most repressive totalitarian regime--and 
totalitarian, not authoritarian, is the right word. As so very 
correctly stated in the United Nations Commission of Inquiry report on 
North Korea, such a regime is ``a state that does not content itself 
with ensuring the authoritarian rule of a small group of people, but 
seeks to dominate every aspect of its citizens' lives and terrorizes 
them from within.''
   For in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, we see a State 
that seeks to control all aspects of the lives of its citizens, not 
only their political lives, but also that innermost sanctuary we call 
conscience as well.
   The term ``hermit kingdom'' is applied to any nation that willfully 
cuts itself off from the rest of the world--either metaphorically or 
physically. This term was applied to Korea as long ago as the late 
nineteenth century, but it continues to be applicable to North Korea 
today. This is why the terrible human rights violations in North Korea 
are little noticed outside foreign policy circles. We must see that the 
crimes of

[[Page E1066]]

the North Korean regime are more widely known than they are now.
   The first step toward that is to listen to experts who have 
presented testimony on the horrific situation in North Korea, where 
political prisoners serve as virtual slaves, where starvation is used 
as a political weapon, and where religious believers--Christians in 
particular--are imprisoned, tortured and killed with such ferocity that 
some say it amounts to genocide.
   Unfortunately, however, today the world's attention is distracted by 
manifold crises which seem almost to overwhelm us. To enumerate just a 
few, there is the: breathtaking collapse-in-progress of the Maliki 
regime in Iraq, which we had supported at the cost of so much American 
blood and treasure; various humanitarian catastrophes in Africa, most 
notably in the Central African Republic and South Sudan, but also the 
presence of violent Islamist movements such as Boko Haram and al-
Shabaab in the major nations of Nigeria and Kenya; the ongoing tensions 
in Ukraine, as a restive Russia seeks to reassert its imperial hegemony 
over neighboring states; and clashes in the South China Sea as an 
increasingly-bellicose China makes a gambit to become a maritime power 
and fill a perceived vacuum.
   We have always lived in a wounded world, but today the tourniquets 
required to stop all the bleeding the world over would tax even the 
most compassionate of souls.
   Yet it is precisely this exhaustion of compassion that we must fight 
against, and we must summon the necessary conviction to address the 
sufferings of the people of North Korea.
   At last week's hearing, we had an eyewitness to the barbarity of 
North Korea's cruel regime--a defector from North Korea who was born in 
a ``total-control zone'' political prison camp in the North, and who 
gave us an unsettling first-hand account of what he experienced. The 
torture he endured--and not simply physical torture, as horrific as 
that was--was a psychological barbarity of such ruthlessness that once 
you have heard what he underwent, your imaginations will forever be 
affected.
   We heard stories of starvation by design--how the denial of food is 
used as an instrument of wide scale torture.
   We also heard about a North Korean nuclear program that goes beyond 
the headlines. Yes, we do know that North Korea, in its quest for 
nuclear weapons, threatens to destabilize the world, but what many of 
us did not know, is the extent to which the North Korean nuclear 
program is built upon the cadavers of its own people. The United 
Nations Commission of Inquiry report, as important as it was, never 
explored the full extent to which workers in uranium mines are exposed 
to high levels of radiation, and how even the most basic concern for 
the safety needs of workers are routinely ignored.
   Finally, I want to call attention to H.R. 1771, the North Korea 
Sanctions Enforcement Act. It is my hope that Congress--both the House 
and Senate--will take to heart the testimony that was presented, and, 
with a renewed focus on North Korea's human rights record, pass this 
important legislation, which takes a step toward holding this rouge 
regime accountable for the sins committed against its own people.

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