[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 159 (2013), Part 8]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages 11660-11662]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




THE ADMINISTRATION MUST NOT SIDELINE HORRIFIC HUMAN RIGHTS SITUATION IN 
                              NORTH KOREA

                                 ______
                                 

                           HON. FRANK R. WOLF

                              of virginia

                    in the house of representatives

                        Wednesday, July 17, 2013

  Mr. WOLF. Mr. Speaker, today the House Republican Conference and 
House Foreign Affairs Committee welcomed roughly 400 Korean American 
community leaders from across the country to Capitol Hill for the 
first-ever Korean American Meetup. Participants had the opportunity to 
meet with key congressional leaders to discuss legislative and policy 
priorities for the community.
  Given my own interactions over the years with the vibrant Korean 
American community in my district, I think it is safe to say that the 
abysmal human rights situation in North Korea will feature prominently 
among these policy priorities.
  Sadly, given the amount of time and focus that the Obama 
Administration has dedicated to shining a bright light on this dark 
corner of the globe you would never know that up to 200,000 people 
languish in a sophisticated and horrific prison camp system in North 
Korea reminiscent of the most brutal regimes throughout history.
  On May 21 Christianity Today featured an interview with former 
Washington Post reporter Blaine Harden, author of ``Escape from Camp 
14.'' Harden's book features the story of Shin Dong-hyuk, the only 
known prisoner who was actually born in one of regime's notorious camps 
and escaped alive.
  Mr. Shin's personal story is remarkable. He grew up knowing nothing 
of life outside the camp. He turned in his mother and brother--which 
led to their eventual execution--based on the promise of a meal of 
rice. In fact it was the pursuit of food that led him to attempt a 
harrowing escape.
  Harden spoke of the camps as analogous to ``Stalin's Gulag.'' He 
continued, ``The camps were set up under Kim Il-sung, an acolyte of 
Stalin, as a mirror of the Soviet Gulag. What is different in the North 
Korean case is that they seem to be crueler and have lasted twice as 
long.''
  Indeed, the longevity of these camps is striking as is the fact that 
some South Korean POWs are still trapped in North Korea 60 years after 
the armistice. The Washington Post ran a story last weekend, which I 
submit for the Record, on this rarely discussed human rights tragedy.
  We have known for some time about the true nature of the cruel and 
inhuman system of labor camps maintained by the regime. In fact 
satellite images confirmed their existence more than a decade ago. And 
yet somehow, almost inexplicably, these horrific camps have

[[Page 11661]]

failed to inspire collective outrage on the part of the West, and have 
been sidelined to the point of irrelevance in successive U.S. 
administrations' dealings with North Korea, including the Obama 
Administration.
  The U.S. Committee for Human Rights in North Korea published a report 
10 years ago called The Hidden Gulag: Exposing North Korea's Prison 
Camps. It contained a full description of the camps, the worst of which 
are called kwan-li-so, which is translated as ``political penal-labor 
colonies,'' and where, according to the Committee's report, scores of 
thousands of political prisoners--along with up to three generations of 
their family members--are banished without any judicial process and 
imprisoned, typically for lifetime sentences of slave labor.
  The report also contained prisoners' testimonies and satellite 
photographs of the camps, whose very existence continues to be denied 
by the North Korean government, which is why the committee described 
the gulags as ``hidden.''
  Defector testimony, like that of Mr. Shin, satellite images and in-
depth reporting have left no doubt about the camps' existence and the 
horrors of life there. What remains to be seen is how the U.S. will 
respond.
  What has this administration done about this abomination?
  What has this administration done about a regime that sustains and 
perpetuates this evil?
  In March, after sustained pressure from human rights organizations, 
the United Nations Human Rights Council agreed to set up a commission 
of inquiry to examine systematic ``crimes against humanity'' in North 
Korea. The commission is slated to begin its work this month and could 
represent a sliver of hope for the long suffering people of North 
Korea.
  However, it is striking that just one month after the decision to 
pursue a commission of inquiry, President Obama met with UN General 
Secretary Ban Ki-moon, and despite the fact that North Korea featured 
prominently on the agenda, their lengthy public remarks after meeting 
did not include a single mention of the human rights atrocities in 
North Korea instead focusing exclusively on the nuclear issue and 
diffusing tensions on the Korean Peninsula.
  Because North Korea possesses nuclear weapons and regularly threatens 
to use them as well as share nuclear weapons technology with other 
rogue states like Iran, the international community, the U.S. included, 
has tended to ignore or seriously downplay the horrendous human rights 
abuses in North Korea in the interest of trying to negotiate an end to 
its nuclear program.
  But next to nothing has been achieved by these negotiations over the 
years. In fact, recent months have been marked by a series of 
provocations by the North Korean government. Meanwhile, America--the 
world's leading democracy which has historically championed fundamental 
freedoms--has been shamefully silent about grave human rights abuses 
and atrocities.
  On a host of levels this approach is deeply flawed and I do not 
believe it will yield the desired results on either the nuclear front 
or the human rights front. The possession of nuclear weapons is simply 
too important to the North Korean regime, if only to deflect attention 
from its cruel and oppressive system of camps and the famine that it 
has brought upon its people at an estimated cost of anywhere from one 
to three million lives. Any future talks with the North Koreans, be it 
the six-party process, which stalled in 2008, or some other forum, must 
include human rights on the agenda. For years, nuclear talks alone have 
produced next to nothing.
  A new North Korea framework is long overdue. Ignoring or downplaying 
the human rights situation for one more day is unconscionable.
  Ronald Reagan negotiated with the Soviet Union to reduce nuclear 
weapons throughout the 1980s, but that did not stop him from speaking 
about human rights, calling upon the Soviets to tear down the Berlin 
Wall, and predicting that communism would end up on the ash heap of 
history. His outspoken support for human rights had an effect, 
accelerating the demise of communism and, in the process, making it 
easier to resolve nuclear and security issues, since the main cause of 
Soviet aggressiveness was the communist system it was intended to 
defend and extend. Further it reminded those living behind the Iron 
Curtain that America was a friend, not an enemy, despite Soviet 
propaganda to the contrary.
  We should be doing the same thing with North Korea today.
  My friend Carl Gershman, president of the National Endowment for 
Democracy, has pointed out that the North Korean totalitarian system is 
undergoing an inexorable process of erosion, marked by a sharply 
reduced ability to impose a complete information blockade on its 
population.
  He notes that what makes the North Korean system especially 
vulnerable is the existence just across the southern border of a free, 
successful and affluent South Korean society. For decades now the 
regime in Pyongyang has told its population that the people of South 
Korea live in hell while they live in a communist paradise. He's 
concluded that as the population learns that the truth is exactly the 
opposite, they will become increasingly restive, resentful, and 
rebellious.
  With these fissures in the information blockade comes an opportunity.
  In the words of the tireless North Korean human rights activist and 
champion Suzanne Scholte, ``There is so much that we can do to help the 
North Korean people. First, because they can hear us: our government 
must make our human rights concerns the most important policy regarding 
North Korea, so that North Koreans know the truth; that we are not the 
yankee imperialist wolves trying to destroy them, but the United States 
and other countries have spent billions of dollars trying to feed them 
and save them from starvation.''
  Additionally, the Obama Administration ought to be pursuing a policy 
which places a high priority on working with other countries in the 
region to champion the rights of North Korean refugees. China is among 
the biggest obstacles. Its current policy of repatriating North Korean 
refugees violates China's international treaty obligations. A grim fate 
awaits those who are returned to North Korea.
  According to Human Rights Watch, ``Beijing categorically labels North 
Koreans in China `illegal' economic migrants and routinely repatriates 
them, despite its obligation to offer protection to refugees under 
customary international law and the Refugee Convention of 1951 and its 
1967 protocol, to which China is a state party. Former North Korean 
security officials who have defected told Human Rights Watch that North 
Koreans handed back by China face interrogation, torture, and referral 
to political prisoner or forced labor camps. In a high profile case, 
China forced back at least 30 North Koreans in February and March 2012, 
defying a formal request from South Korean President Lee Myung-Bak to 
desist from doing so, and despite protests in front of the Chinese 
Embassy in Seoul.''
  When was the last time this issue was raised with the Chinese 
government?
  Did it even garner a cursory mention during the recent U.S.-China 
Economic and Strategic Dialogue?
  Is there any sense that China will have to pay a price for 
disregarding its international obligations?
  The human rights travesty in North Korea is perhaps most acute when 
we consider the vulnerable children of that nation. There are those 
living under the regime and those referred to as ``stateless orphans,'' 
having been born out of relationships between North Korean women 
defectors, many of whom are trafficked once they escape to China, and 
Chinese men. According to a September 2012 Radio Free Asia story, ``Aid 
workers estimate that there are some 2,000 `defector orphans' in China 
. . .''
  Last September, the House passed the North Korean Child Welfare Act 
of 2012, which I cosponsored. It was signed into law by the president 
in January. The legislation directs the State Department to ``advocate 
for the best interests'' of North Korean children and to when possible, 
facilitate immediate protection for those living outside North Korea 
through family reunification or, ``if appropriate and eligible in 
individual cases, domestic or international adoption.''
  This legislation enjoyed broad bipartisan support in the Congress. 
What steps has the State Department taken to fulfill its obligation in 
this regard?
  Ultimately, this administration needs to look forward. It needs 
vision, creativity and boldness.
  The North Korean regime will not be there forever to oppress its 
people.
  Writing in the Wall Street Journal on the eve of South Korean 
President Park Geun-hye's first summit with US President Barack Obama, 
Nicholas Eberstadt suggested that, ``A robust international human-
rights campaign in support of the world's most hideously abused subject 
population would restrict the regime's international freedom of 
maneuver, just as the anti-apartheid campaign did against South Africa 
in the 1980s. A serious public-communications effort--propaganda, if 
you like--aimed at encouraging any glimmers of decline in the cohesion 
of Pyongyang's elite could also constrain the leadership.''
  Such imagination has been utterly lacking in the Obama 
administration.
  Fortunately, we take some solace in knowing that just like the 
regimes in Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union that preceded it, this 
evil empire, too, will fall.

[[Page 11662]]

  In the meantime we must champion the rights of the people who wither 
under its oppression.
  I'll close with the words of columnist and author, Anne Applebaum in 
the hope that they inspire the administration's approach to North Korea 
moving forward. She writes in the introduction of The Hidden Gulag, 
``This is not to say that words can make a dictatorship collapse 
overnight. But words can certainly make a dictatorship collapse over 
time, as experience during the last two decades has shown. Totalitarian 
regimes are built on lies and can be damaged, even destroyed, when 
those lies are exposed.''

               [From the Washington Post, July 13, 2013]

   Some South Korean POWs Still Trapped in the North, 60 Years After 
                               Armistice

                           (By Chico Har1an)

       Seoul.--Sixty years ago this month, a 21-year-old South 
     Korean soldier named Lee Jae-won wrote a letter to his 
     mother. He was somewhere in the middle of the peninsula, he 
     wrote, and bullets were coming down like ``raindrops.'' He 
     said he was scared.
       The next letter to arrive came days later from the South 
     Korean military. It described a firefight in Paju, near the 
     modern-day border between the North and South, and said Lee 
     had been killed there in battle. His body had not been 
     recovered.
       ``We never doubted his death,'' said Lee's younger brother, 
     Lee Jae-seong. ``It was the chaos of war, and you couldn't 
     expect to recover a body.''
       But Lee was not dead. Rather, he had been captured by 
     Chinese Communists and handed to the North Koreans, who 
     detained him as a lifetime prisoner, part of a secretive 
     program that continues 60 years after the end of the Korean 
     War, according to South Korean officials and escapees from 
     the North.
       Tens of thousands of South Korean POWs were held captive in 
     the North under the program, penned in remote areas and kept 
     incommunicado in one of the most scarring legacies of the 
     three-year war. South Korean officials say that about 500 of 
     those POWs--now in their 80s and 90s--might still be alive, 
     still waiting to return home. In part because they're so old, 
     South Korea says it's a government priority, though a 
     difficult one, to get them out.
       Almost nothing was known about the lives of these prisoners 
     until 20 years ago, when a few elderly soldiers escaped, 
     sneaking from the northern tip of North Korea into China and 
     making their way back to South Korea. A few dozen more 
     followed, and they described years of forced labor in coal 
     mines. They said they were encouraged to marry North Korean 
     wives, a means of assimilation. But under the North's family-
     run police state, they were designated as members of the 
     ``hostile'' social class--denied education and Workers' Party 
     membership, and sent to gulags for even minor slip-ups, such 
     as talking favorably about the quality of South Korean rice.
       When the war ended with a July 27, 1953, armistice 
     agreement that divided the peninsula along the 38th parallel, 
     about 80,000 South Korean soldiers were unaccounted for. A 
     few, like Lee Jae-won, were presumed dead. Most were thought 
     to be POWs. The two Koreas, as part of the armistice, agreed 
     to swap those prisoners, but the North returned only 8,300.
       The others became part of an intractable Cold War standoff, 
     and the few POWs who have escaped say both Koreas are to 
     blame. The South pressed the North about the POWs for several 
     years after the war, but the issue faded from public 
     consciousness--until the first successful escape of a POW, in 
     1994. The North, meanwhile, has said that anybody living in 
     the country is there voluntarily.
       South Korea took up the POW issue with greater force six 
     years ago, as it became clear that a lengthy charm 
     offensive--known as the Sunshine Policy--wasn't leading the 
     North to change its economic or humanitarian policies. During 
     a 2000 summit with Kim Jong Il, South Korean President Kim 
     Dae-jung didn't even bring up the issue. But by 2007, the 
     South was talking about the POWs in defense talks. And by 
     2008, under conservative President Lee Myung-bak, South Korea 
     offered aid to win the prisoners' release.
       But with relations between the two governments badly 
     frayed, the countries haven't discussed the issue since 
     military-to-military talks in February 2011.
       ``Time is chasing us,'' said Lee Sang-chul, a one-star 
     general at the South Korean Ministry of National Defense who 
     is in charge of the POW issue.
       But without North Korea's cooperation, Lee said, the South 
     has little recourse to retrieve its soldiers. Lee said that, 
     realistically, the POWs have only one way to return home: 
     They have to escape.


                          hopes that withered

       So far, about 80 have.
       They gather for annual dinners in the South, and some meet 
     for regular card games. They've been given overdue medals and 
     overdue apologies. They've testified about the POWs they know 
     who are still in the North. They've shaken hands with the 
     president. They've received major compensation payments--
     about $10,000 per month, over five years.
       The returnees have encountered all varieties of surprise, 
     both bitter and grand, as a half-dozen of them described in 
     recent interviews. One escapee, Lee Won-sam, was married just 
     before the war and reunited with his wife 55 years later. But 
     many left families in the North only to find alienation in 
     the South. The POWs, like others in the North, were told for 
     decades that the South was impoverished and decrepit--and 
     their arrival in the South revealed the extent of that 
     deception while also dropping them into incomprehensible 
     prosperity. A handful lost money in frauds, South Korean 
     officials say.
       ``I thought South Korea had lots of beggars under the 
     bridge and everybody lived in shacks,'' said Lee Gyu-il, 80, 
     who escaped in 2008.
       Many escapees say that after the war, they were initially 
     hopeful that the South would secure their return. That hope 
     withered in 1956, when the North assembled the prisoners and 
     told them about Cabinet Order 143, which turned them into 
     North Korean citizens--albeit those of the lowest rank. They 
     were told to be thankful that they had been welcomed into a 
     virtuous society.
       ``Sadly, there was no real change in our daily lives,'' Yoo 
     Young-bok, who escaped in 2000, wrote in his memoir, which 
     has been translated into English. ``We went right on 
     toiling'' in the mines.


                        `He lived a false life'

       Those who have escaped acknowledge their luck. It wasn't 
     easy for them to flee. Some had to travel for days through 
     the North and then dart across a river forming the border 
     with China--at an age when some had trouble running. Brokers 
     helped guide them but also charged them more than the going 
     rate for defectors, knowing that the escapees would receive 
     large payments after settling in the South.
       They know a few who are still stranded in the North. Most 
     of the former prisoners have died from mining accidents, 
     disease, execution, famine and old age.
       In Lee Jae-won's case, it was liver cancer. It was 1994, 
     and he was 63. After being captured by the Chinese and handed 
     to the North, he had worked for four decades in a mine at the 
     northernmost point of the peninsula, near the Russian border. 
     He'd married a woman with one eye--a fellow member of the 
     hostile class--and had four children, all of whom were 
     ridiculed by teachers and classmates for their family 
     background.
       But only as Lee's health deteriorated in his final months 
     did he tell his children, for the first time, the details of 
     his earlier life. He gave one son, Lee Ju-won, the names of 
     family members in the South, as well as an address: the home 
     in which he was raised.
       ``So after I buried him, I decided to go there,'' Lee Ju-
     won said.
       It took him 15 years to defect. Two days after Lee Ju-won 
     was given his South Korean citizenship, he traveled to his 
     family's home town, Boeun. His relatives still owned the 
     original property, though the home had been demolished and 
     rebuilt.
       During that visit, Lee Ju-won learned that his family had 
     celebrated his father's birthday every year and always set 
     aside a rice ball for him at the New Year's feast. He also 
     discovered his father's letter from Paju, written weeks 
     before the armistice, which a relative had saved.
       Lee Ju-won learned that his father, before the war, had 
     been rebellious and talkative--characteristics he stifled in 
     the North, though he passed them on to his son.
       ``It turns out my dad was a lot like me, though he didn't 
     show it,'' Lee Ju-won said. ``He was admired in North Korea, 
     because he worked hard and didn't do anything wrong. But he 
     lived a false life. He knew one slip of the tongue could harm 
     our whole family. So he never talked about South Korea.''
       Yoonjung Seo contributed to this report.

                          ____________________