Tag: human rights

Yeonmi Park Publishes Book About Growing Up In North Korea

| September 27, 2015

Yeonmi Park who is a well known North Korean human rights activist has recently just published a book about her experiences growing up in North Korea titled In Order to Live: A North Korean Girl’s Journey to Freedom.  A good portion of the book is highlighted in this Telegraph article which has little nuggets like this about growing up in North Korea:

One of the main problems in North Korea was a fertiliser shortage. When the economy collapsed in the 1990s the Soviet Union stopped sending fertiliser to us, and our own factories stopped producing it. This led to crop failures that made the famine even worse.

So the government came up with a campaign to fill the fertiliser gap with a local and renewable source: human and animal waste. Every worker and schoolchild had a quota to fill. You can imagine what kind of problems this created for our families. Every member of the household had a daily assignment, so when we got up in the morning, it was like a war.

My aunts were the most competitive. ‘Remember not to poop in school,’ my aunt in Kowon told me every day. ‘Wait to do it here.’ Whenever my aunt in Songnam-ri travelled away from home and had to poop somewhere else, she loudly complained that she didn’t have a plastic bag with her to save it.

‘Next time I’ll remember,’ she would say. Some people would lock up their outhouses to keep the poop thieves away. At school the teachers would send us out into the streets to find dog mess and carry it back to class. This is not something you see every day in the West.  [The Telegraph]

The whole article is worth a read.

South Korea Struggles with Free Speech and Responding to North Korean Threats

| January 9, 2015

It appears that some in the Korean government want to pull a Sony and give in to North Korean threats at the expense of free speech for their citizens:

north korea balloon image

A South Korean parliamentary committee adopted a resolution Thursday calling on the government to take necessary steps to protect its citizens from any harm caused by civic activists’ flying of anti-Pyongyang leaflets across the inter-Korean border.

The resolution, adopted by the National Assembly’s foreign affairs and unification committee, also urges the two Koreas to abide by their earlier agreements to stop all slander against each other, noting it is key to building trust.

“(We) urge the government to take necessary steps so as to ensure the spread of anti-North Korea leaflets does not damage the improvement of South-North ties and jeopardize the safety of our citizens,” the resolution said.

The leaflet campaign, often led by North Korean defectors in the South, has long been a source of tension between the two Koreas as it aims to stir up dissent against the regime of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.

Seoul has long dismissed Pyongyang’s demands to ban the campaign, citing freedom of speech.

Speaking during the committee meeting, Unification Minister Ryoo Kihl-jae stressed that the government’s position remains unchanged. The government also believes it should take steps if they are needed for the people’s safety, he said.

The minister, however, ruled out a direct link between the leaflet scattering and any improvement in bilateral ties.

The government’s stance has been closely watched after the district court in Uijeongbu, just north of Seoul, ruled Tuesday that it is legal for authorities to restrain the campaign if it puts the lives of South Koreans at risk.  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link.

South Korean Left Wing Politicians Try to End Subsidies to North Korean Defector Groups

| November 25, 2014

The leftists in the South Korean government are trying to legislate away a subsidy the North Korean defector groups receive to help their balloon launch campaign:

north korea balloon image

Government subsidies for anti-North Korea activists have emerged as a bone of contention at the National Assembly as rival parties are competing to get their respective human rights bills related to North Korea passed.

The subsidies allegedly have been used to fund the campaign of releasing balloons containing leaflets criticizing the Pyongyang leadership that are blown across the border.

The ruling Saenuri Party said Monday it favored keeping the subsidies for civic groups as a tool against North Korea, while the main opposition New Politics Alliance for Democracy (NPAD) argued that it will only anger the North.

The two parties failed to reach a compromise so the competing bills are now being deliberated at the National Assembly Foreign Affairs and Unification Committee.  [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link, but ending the subsidies will not end the balloon launches.  The defector groups will just have to raise more money privately to fund the launches.

UN Passes Resolution to Refer North Korea to International Criminal Court

| November 20, 2014

This resolution is highly symbolic since China and Russia would likely veto it at the UN Security Council, but it is still a very high embarrassing resolution for the ruling Kim regime:

un logo

A U.N. General Assembly committee on Tuesday passed a highly symbolic resolution calling for referring North Korea to the International Criminal Court (ICC) for human rights violations in a move sure to spark angry protests from the communist nation.

The Third Committee approved the resolution in a 111-19 vote. Fifty-five countries abstained.

The resolution’s overwhelming passage through the committee almost guaranteed its formal adoption at the U.N. General Assembly. It also represented a victory for the West in an intense diplomatic battle at the U.N. against North Korea and other authoritarian regimes sympathetic to Pyongyang.

Earlier Tuesday, the committee rejected a Cuban proposal to remove the call for the North’s referral to the ICC from the resolution.

“The General Assembly decides … to take appropriate action to ensure accountability, including through consideration of referral of the situation in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea to the International Criminal Court and consideration of the scope for effective targeted sanctions against those who appear to be most responsible,” the resolution said.  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link.