Refugees and Human Trafficking

A good article from VOA via Han Voice. Key graphs:

Bang Mi Sun left North Korea and crossed illegally into China in 2002. Countless other North Korean women have done the same since the mid 1990s. Hunger and severe shortages of necessities such as medicine and heating fuel have driven them from home.

She says after she and her two children crossed the Tumen River, a Chinese family welcomed them. The son said Bang should earn money to feed her children. She says she thought he was offering her a job.

But instead of a job, the Chinese family arranged for human traffickers to separate Bang from her children and sell her into marriage to a Chinese farmer.

She says her Chinese husband was 15 years older, and had a crippled leg. From that point on, she says, she was his slave. If she did not obey his orders, he beat her, and often locked her in a storage shed for the full day.

Eventually, she made it to South Korea, but human rights activists say Bang's story is typical of tens of thousands of other North Korean women who flee poverty and repression at home.

...

Lee says most of the men who buy the women are either physically or mentally disabled, and incapable of earning a living.

"The rural family or rural husband actually falls into debt because they had to pay a lot of money to buy this woman. So they are again in the poverty trap, which they really wanted to get out of with North Korea," noted Lee.

Some of the women flee - but most of them, says Lee, make do with their new lives - knowing at least that they will not starve.

"But the thing is, these women are young - in their 20's, 30's - and they become pregnant pretty soon. And they kind of give up the idea of running away. Things change - and they try to accept their fate," said Lee.

There are, by some estimates, as many as 50,000 North Korean women in China. Those women are believed to have had up to 20,000 children.

Full story here.

North Koreans Not So Fond of Kim Jong-Un?

Some anecdotal evidence provided by Jiro Ishimaru via The Daily NK:

In mid-June, I visited Jilin in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture, where I met with two North Korean men and seven women who had crossed the border and were staying in China on a temporary basis.

...

In the beginning, just after it leaked out, the interviewees did not know about the succession, but later they heard the story from military acquaintances. It is just a matter of time before rumors spread beyond the military like this.

Once the rumor started circulating, there were some aggressive reactions from among the people. Some said, “The small one (a derogatory way of saying Kim Jong Il) is trying to make a novice in his 20s his successor,” while others say, “The General (Kim Jong Il) is almost dying, and if his son is the next general, we won’t be able to follow orders anymore.”

This is, the people respect Kim Jong Il because of his father’s achievements, but there is no reason to respect Jong Woon.

An interviewee from North Hamkyung Province was sure, “If a war begins, there is no one who would fight for Jong Woon.”

These North Korean people agreed with the idea that the fifteen years since Kim Il Sung’s death have been years of failure. This is because after going through the great famine of the 1990s, still the situation has not been reformed at all.

North Korean people generally believe that Kim Jong Woon’s succession means the period of failure will continue.

Full story here.

Kristof: North Korean Policy Needs Less Carrot, More Stick

In his column in today's NYT, Nicholas Kristof changes course. Key graphs:

There are new indications that North Korea may be transferring nuclear weapons technology to Myanmar, the dictatorship also known as Burma, and that it earlier supplied a reactor to Syria. For many years, based on five visits to North Korea and its border areas, I’ve argued for an “engagement” approach toward Pyongyang, but now I’ve reluctantly concluded that we need more sticks.

…

There are no good options here, and a grass-roots revolution is almost impossible. North Koreans, even those in China who despise the regime, overwhelmingly agree that most ordinary North Koreans swallow the propaganda. Indeed, Kim Jong-il’s approval rating in his country may well be higher than President Obama’s is in the United States.

Our best bet will be to continue to support negotiations, including a back channel that can focus on substance instead of protocol, as well as economic and cultural exchanges — but backed up by sticks. The Obama administration is now working with allies to reimpose economic and financial sanctions that a few years ago were very successful in squeezing the North Korean regime. China is surprisingly cooperative, even quietly intercepting several shipments of supplies useful for W.M.D. programs.

Where we have intelligence that North Korean ships are transferring nuclear materials or technology to a country like Myanmar or Iran, we should go further and board those vessels. That’s an extreme step, but the nightmare would be if Iran simply decided to save time and buy a nuclear weapon or two from North Korea. We can’t allow that to happen.

Full story here.

Bubba Got 'Em Out

Lee and Ling left North Korea with President Clinton. Full story here, and pretty much anywhere else you look for it.

Bill Clinton and Kim Jong-Il in North Korea Tuesday

(Photo: AFP/Getty Images)

DPRK rolls out Kim Jong-Un (Jong Woon) Propaganda

Looks like it's official: Kim Jong Un (Woon) will succeed Kim Jong-Il.

From The Daily NK:

Shenyang, China -- A source from North Korea reported on Monday that the authorities gave a public propaganda lecture on July 20 to passengers preparing to board the international train from Pyongyang to Beijing. The short lecture extolled the virtues of Kim Jong Woon and announced him as the successor to Kim Jong Il.

The source said, “Around 9:20 A.M. in the waiting room at Pyongyang Station, a female member of a propaganda unit came and announced that, in essence, Captain Kim Jong Woon is a youthful captain who will be able to lead the strong and prosperous state. He was given credit for the successful nuclear test, and it was emphasized that no imperial state can look down on Captain Kim Jong Woon.”

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According to the source, the propaganda slogan was “Let’s bring glory to the fatherland, which the Great Leader Kim Il Sung recovered, Dear Leader Kim Jong Il developed, and Youthful Captain Kim Jong Woon will lead to a bright future.”

The lecturer continued, “We will be under the guidance of Kim Jong Woon as we construct the strong and prosperous state,” indicating the strong likelihood that the succession may take place in advance of 2012, when the strong and prosperous state is due to come to fruition.

Full story here.

CNN: Clinton (Bill) to travel to DPRK

Former President Bill Clinton will travel to North Korea to negotiate the release of American journalists Euna Lee and Laura Ling. CNN has the tip from "a source with detailed knowledge of the former president's movements."

I'll have more on this as it plays out. Full story here.

UPDATE: Look's like he's already on his way. Here's the top of the NYT story.

WASHINGTON — Former President Bill Clinton was headed to North Korea to negotiate the release of two American television journalists who were sentenced to 12 years of hard labor for illegally entering North Korean territory, a news agency reported early Tuesday morning in South Korea.

Mr. Clinton was on his way to Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, according to the Yonhap news agency, citing an unidentified source familiar with the situation. The White House declined to comment on Monday night.

Book Watch: ESCAPING NORTH KOREA by Mike Kim

Mike Kim is a Korean-American who has spent several years on the Chinese-Korean border working with North Korean refugees. Escaping North Korea combines straight reporting, analysis, impressions and autobiography to give a vivid picture of refugee life.

The result is often harrowing -- stories of human trafficking and North Korean women being sold as wives or slaves to Chinese farmers are among the most frightening things I've ever read -- but also inspiring, even charming.

In one chapter, Kim describes helping four teenaged refugees force their way past a Chinese security guard to enter the British Consulate in Shanghai and request asylum. Its a suspenseful episode - if the guard manages to stop one or more of the kids, its almost certain they'll end up in a gulag back in the DPRK. Kim advises the youths to punch, kick, scratch and even bite their way free if the guard manages to grab them.

Yet despite the danger, Kim takes the time to describe the kids first encounter with McDonald's and Starbucks, and shows them teasing each other and having a laugh as normal teenagers would. It's a striking, hopeful moment, a vivid reminder of how little actually separates those of us outside the DPRK with those within.

Kim's organization is called Crossing Borders, and it's a Christian NGO with a multifaceted approach to aiding North Korean refugees (on the Chinese) that includes placing families in shelters, running orphanages for refugee children and even providing work to some, making small crosses to be sold in the US.

The website stresses that in no way does Crossing Borders require that refugees become Christian to receive their services, but the organization does provide "spiritual healing" and "spreads the message of the Gospel with all refugees."

The regime is clearly threatened by religion, and documents acquired by Open Doors International suggest that North Korea feels Christianity is responsible for the fall of communism in Europe.

Some estimates have put the number of North Korean Christians at over 100,000, Kim writes.

Yet I have doubts about how useful a tool Christianity can be against the regime because of the dangers the converted face if they choose to return to North Korea.

Kim describes meeting one North Korean Christian, whom he calls Mr. Lee, in China just before the man returned to the DPRK.

"Here in China," Lee says. "I've learned about God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit. I'm thankful that people here have taught me the Bible...When I go back to North Korea, it will be very hard. I will get beaten, and I might even die." Lee then breaks down in tears.

Kim also describes the dangers and difficulties of smuggling Bibles across the border.

The persecution of Christians in the DPRK is abominable. In prisons, they are not allowed even to look at the sky, and many develop hunchbacks or "90-degree curvature of the spine." Some have had their fingernails and toenails pulled out and had nails hammered into their skin.

Executions are also common, and repression in the DRPK is so pervasive, and the slightest infraction - or even suspicion - can get a three generations of a person's family put into a gulag.

Religion may provide hope and comfort to the oppressed, but I'm not yet convinced that returning to the DPRK and becoming a martyr has much practical value.

Information is the key to undermining the regime and bringing about change for the North Koreans, so why risk lives and efforts to teach them about the rewards awaiting them in the next life instead of focusing efforts on spreading the news, politics and history of the outside world that has been denied to them for generations?

Anyone out there have any thoughts?

Kim Jong-Il's Grandson Gets Jiggy At A Pop Concert

From AP via FoxNews.

Kim Jong Nam — the boy's father and the North Korean leader's eldest son — bought the tickets worth about $1,400 and allowed his son to invite his friends, the newspaper said.

North Korea's state-run media frequently warn that imperialists are trying to poison the country's culture and ideals. But South Korean pop culture still appears to be gaining popularity through smuggled TV dramas and movies, defectors say.

Full story here.

Selling Cars in DPRK

I'll be writing more about business in North Korea soon, particularly the markets (seen on Google Earth) that North Korean Economy Watch, among others, has been covering. But I wanted to share this Wall Street Journal article, largely because I'm not sure what, if anything, it signifies.

SEOUL -- A South Korean company that builds and sells cars in North Korea made money -- albeit a small amount -- for the first time last year, the company said Wednesday.

Pyeonghwa Motors Corp., closely linked to the Unification Church, earned about $700,000 on the sale of about 650 cars in North Korea, a company spokesman said. The company remitted $500,000 of the net profit to its headquarters in Seoul in a U.S. dollar-denominated transactions through Hong Kong, he said.

It's not clear who's buying the cars, but I would imagine its the government, especially since some models seem to look like the coveted Mercedes-Benz models long favored by DPRK officials.

Another interesting graph on the state of foreign trade in North Korea:

Pyeonghwa, like other companies that do business in North Korea, faced enormous difficulty moving its money out of the country. Many Chinese businesses resort to buying commodities in North Korea with their profits, then exporting them to China to be sold for Chinese currency.

Anyone out there got any thoughts?

Inside the Gulags

WaPo's Blaine Harden has a great piece about the prison camps in North Korea, with an interactive map. Check it out here.