Fleeing the Hermit Kingdom
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A few years ago in the bustling city of Yanji, China, Chun Ki-Won sat down to dinner with twelve guests. The buzz of excited chatter filtered past a decorated Christmas tree standing warmly in the corner. This was no ordinary holiday dinner, however. Chun Ki-Won is a South Korean human rights activist directing his twelve guests, all North Korean refugees, through an underground railroad system to asylum in a safer country. Chun’s guests had already spent several months hidden in a Chinese safe house just to reach the point where they looked healthy enough to be mistaken for South Korean tourists. The group atmosphere was wrought with melancholy tension: although the refugees were excited at the prospect of reaching a country where they could live without fear of persecution, they knew that if they were caught, they would most likely face imprisonment, torture, and death at the hands of the North Korean government, known by some as “The Hermit Kingdom” for its chosen isolation from the rest of the world.
Mr. Chun risks his own freedom every time he interacts with a group of North Korean refugees. As someone who has helped more than 400 refugees out of China since he first turned his efforts to the issue in 1997, Chun accepts this risk unwaveringly. Until December 2001, Chun was the leader of the “Mongolian route” of the Chinese Underground Railroad, and was widely regarded by fellow activists as the most successful of the railroad aids in China. Unfortunately, the twelve refugees described above were captured by Chinese officials as they crossed the last several kilometers of the Gobi Desert on foot to reach the Mongolian border (the Chinese government offers monetary awards to citizens for any information about “illegal” refugees or those who help them). The refugees revealed Mr. Chun’s name in their subsequent interrogation, leading to his arrest and detainment for 220 days in a Chinese prison. Although he was deported to South Korea and forbidden to return to China, Mr. Chun immediately began rebuilding his railroad network and again aiding North Korean refugees in their escape.
Why does Chun Ki-Won sacrifice so much for a largely thankless job? In his own words, “We do the work which the UNHCR (UN High Commissioner for Refugees) staff in Beijing should do and for which they are paid.” This is the story of how the North Korea situation deteriorated into a human rights tragedy; and what people like Chun Ki-Won are doing to help.
The North Korean regime is universally recognized as the last Stalinist regime. Human Rights Watch captures the reality of that label with this statement: “Often described as the world’s largest prison camp, no country is more deserving of international condemnation on human rights than North Korea.”
Since 1995, famine has killed more than 2 million North Koreans. Though triggered by climactic factors, the government’s Stalinist economic policies have severely prolonged and worsened the famine. The international community has donated more than $2 billion in food aid over the last ten years, with little noticeable effect. The government diverts the food to party loyalists or reroutes it into the market, using the profits to amp up its already bloated military budget. NGOs are allowed very little freedom when visiting the country. In most cases, they never see the food aid delivered to the final recipients. Defected North Koreans tell stories of being forced by government officials to move piles of food from a government warehouse to a kindergarten for a visit by an international delegation, only to move the food back again after the delegation left. By 2001, at least five major international NGOs withdrew from North Korea in protest against these inadequacies (including Action Against Hunger, Oxfam, Médicins Sans Frontiéres, and CARE). One recent World Food Program report estimated that 55% of all North Koreans are malnourished. This malnourishment is so severe, that, by the age of 7, North Korean children are on average 6 inches shorter than their South Korean counterparts. In the most heavily affected northeastern regions (near the Chinese border), citizens have been found scrounging through garbage dumps and attempting to eat grass and tree bark.
The core of the regime’s human rights abuses, however, lies in its political repression. Religion is forbidden in North Korea. Instead, children are taught to worship Kim Jong Il, and Kim Il Sung (who, although dead since 1994, has been permanently installed as “president”). Criminal offenses include: contact with South Koreans or Christian missionaries; or exposure to TV and radio programs, movies, or music produced in South Korea. Defection is punishable by death. An estimated 200,000 North Koreans are held in prison camps for such offenses. Sentences range from a few years’ hard labor to life, but even short sentences often mean death under oppressive gulag conditions. Public executions, torture, and forced abortions and infanticide are common in these prisons (for more information, read David Hawk’s report, The Hidden Gulag, which contains interviews with more than thirty former prison inmates). Government policy is to imprison up to three generations of a political prisoner’s family along with him to isolate “bad blood” susceptible to “criminal” behavior.
North Korea ’s regime is so repressive that opposition forces hold no hope of organizing an effective internal resistance movement. Chun Ki-Won’s efforts on the underground railroad seem the best way to help the North Korean people, by aiding the escape of as many as possible, shining a stronger light on the atrocities of the Kim Jong Il regime.
