North Korea: Special Issue

The director of Human Rights Without Frontiers is now touring in two far eastern countries to collect testimonies of victims and eye-witnesses about the situation of North Korean refugees in China and about human rights violations in the D.R.N.K. About ten interviews have already been taken. We present you the first report below that has just reached us from Seoul.

15 February 2002

The calvary of a female defector saved by a freedom smuggler

On 13 February 2002, Human Rights Without Frontiers interviewed a 41 year-old female defector who arrived in South Korea fifteen months earlier.

She defected to China in May 1998. Alone and without any financial resources, she had no choice but to accept the protection of a Chinese farmer who was looking for a wife. She got pregnant from him. She was in her fifth month of pregnancy when she was arrested and deported to North Korea. She was detained at various camps for about 6 months. She was beaten on several occasions and tortured once. After being forcibly given an unidentified injection, she gave birth to a dead baby at one of the detention camps. She was released in mid-June 1999. About 4 weeks later, she defected again to China and arrived in Seoul in November 2000.

I was born in Chongjin in June 1960. I am 41 years old. My father was an inventory clerk. He died in 1988 of undernourishment. My mother died when I was still a baby. I cannot disclose identity because I still have relatives and friends in North Korea. My name is now Kim, Yong-ok (an alias).

When I was in North Korea, I studied until the age of 18. Then, I had several occupations. I was a party propaganda lecturer for three years, a district welfare officer for five years. I got three boys from my first marriage. One of them died in 1996. My husband had been missing for six months when he was found dead at a closed centre for homeless and beggars in 1995.

Bribing border guards and others

In May 1998, I decided to emigrate clandestinely to China with the hope that I could get help from my fathers relatives. My sister was living near the border and I thought I could arrange my defection with a local border guard. I contacted the chief of the village and he asked me 2,000 won (2-3 months salary) for a safe crossing. He would keep half of the amount and the border guard would get the other half to close his eyes. I crossed the border with another woman who paid the same price.

Life in China

As soon as we set foot in China, our first concern was to have other clothes and change our hairdo because we would very soon be identified as refugees. We also avoided the main roads and walked across the field. On our way inside China, we met a farmer and his son. He proposed both of us a "marriage" with himself or his 35-year old son in exchange of their protection. Farmers cannot easily find a wife in China because of the difficult and poor housing conditions in rural areas. I refused but the other woman accepted and stayed.

In China, I first worked as a servant at an old ladys. In July 1998, I got in a very awkward situation and I was forced to accept the protection of a man. I was proposed several and I chose a wealthy peasant. Six months later, I was arrested by the Chinese police. I was then in my fifth month of pregnancy. I was detained for 14 days and in late December 1998, I was deported to North Korea.

Back in North Korea

I was first detained at the State Security Agency (SSA) in Shinuiju city for about a week. There were some 80 prisoners, including 40 to 50 women.

On our arrival, we were submitted to a blood test. Then, the female prisoners were called into another room ten by ten. We were stripped naked and searched for hidden money I had hidden 4,000 Yuan (US$ 500) in one of the linings of my clothes and I managed to push my clothes to the heap of those that had already been inspected. We were then ordered to jump naked up and down over 50 times so that the money possibly concealed in our vaginas might fall down. A few hours later, I and my cell mate were called to the corridor. A guard threatened us with death if we did not give him the money we had hidden. Out of fear for my life, I confessed that I had Chinese money and he put it into his pocket.

Degrading and inhuman treatment

The guard then told us to lie on our belly on the cold floor and he started kicking us and beating us crazily with a stick. I was facing the floor and could not see what he was doing or planning to do. Then, suddenly I felt that my clothes and my back were burning. The pain was simply unbearable and the two of us shrieked with pain. The guard had taken a heated red iron pincer out of the fire, had put it on our backs and had twisted it 2 cm deep into our flesh. Our clothes were burning and he had to splash water on us to extinguish the flames. I still have two scars of the burn on my back (1).

From prison to prison

In Shinuiju, the cell was small and so crowded that we had to sit up for sleep at night. Sanitary conditions were so bad that we had to tear off our clothes to make napkins for our menstruations and for toilet. Starvation, punching, kicking and beating with a square bar were the standard practice. Prisoners were allowed to use toilet at a fixed time only.

After seven dreadful days spent in Shinuiju, I was sent to the provincial police detention camp where there were some 700 prisoners. My wounds were still fresh. Hygienic conditions were appalling. The cells were full of all kinds of insects such as bedbugs, lice, fleas, etc. Starvation, beating, kicking, yelling and hard work were the main features of this camp. During my three months of detention, I saw 12 people die of a contagious disease. No medical treatment was available.

There were two superintendents in this camp. One of them was fond of private interviews with young women at his office but none of them dared complain because they were afraid of informants among the prisoners.

If any prisoner failed to fulfill his or her work quota or commit any minor offense, the whole group was punished severely. For example, prisoners had to stand up and down 300 times. This was meant to fuel hatred and division among prisoners. Beating people with a shovel was very common.

In April 1999, we were escorted by the police to the provincial police detention camp of my hometown. It took some five days by train to arrive in Chongjin because the train had to stop several times for hours or days for some kind of mechanical troubles. We were extremely thirsty and starving. We were detained in my hometown for about 10 days. As before, beating, kicking and yelling were routine practice. The work here was very tough: weeding, sowing seeds, making bricks at a brickyard, moving and stacking them. Three male prisoners died during the ten days I was there.

Then, I was sent to a labor camp in the district of Onsong. The female prisoners were instructed to collect water from a well and to run with a water jar on their heads. If water spilled from the jolting jar, the prisoner had to run back to get the water to the full brim of the jar. The other types of work included kneading graphite powder with water and making small blocks with hands to make them burn in a small stove.

Delivery

In April 2000, I was almost in my ninth month of pregnancy and I was very sick. Although I had temperature, I had to go on working hard and carrying bricks on a stretcher.

One day, I was forcibly taken to the "hospital" of the camp to be given an injection. I tried to resist with all my poor forces but in vain. About thirty minutes later, I began to labor with great pain. A female doctor attended my delivery. I suffered for about twenty-four hours until I gave birth to a dead baby.

After three days, I had to resume my work although I was still bleeding. As I was carrying heavy bricks with a stretcher, I felt my sneakers wet with running blood and I could see blood stains on my footstep. At around three oclock in the afternoon, I finally fainted. When I woke up two hours later, I felt I needed to take off my wet trousers. I was so shocked to see so much blood on my trousers.

Release and new defection

In mid June, I was released and sent home. The appalling experience at so many detention camps had fuelled so much hatred in my heart against my country that I defected again to China about a month later. This time, I was successful. Thanks to a freedom smuggler (2), I arrived safely in South Korea in November 2000.

(1) Human Rights Without Frontiers took a picture of the scars

(2) Human Rights Without Frontiers calls freedom smugglers human rights activists that get North Korean refugees out of China, Mongolia or Russia into Japan and South Korea without charging the defectors for their work