NORTH KOREA
Baby killings
Fact-finding mission by Human Rights Without Frontiers

28 February 2002

Baby killings
International instruments and fact-finding mission by Human Rights Without Frontiers

The Democratic People's Republic of Korea is signatory to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, whereby

"States Parties shall ensure to women appropriate services in connection with pregnancy, confinement and the post-natal period...." (Article 12.2)

Furthermore, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea is signatory to the Convention on the Rights of the Child, whereby

Article 2

1. States Parties shall respect and ensure the rights set forth in the present Convention to each child within their jurisdiction without discrimination of any kind, irrespective of the child's or his or her parent's or legal guardian's race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national, ethnic or social origin, property, disability, birth or other status.

2. States Parties shall take all appropriate measures to ensure that the child is protected against all forms of discrimination or punishment on the basis of the status, activities, expressed opinions, or beliefs of the child's parents, legal guardians, or family members.

Article 3

1. In all actions concerning children, whether undertaken by public or private social welfare institutions, courts of law, administrative authorities or legislative bodies, the best interests of the child shall be a primary consideration.

2. States Parties undertake to ensure the child such protection and care as is necessary for his or her well-being, taking into account the rights and duties of his or her parents, legal guardians, or other individuals legally responsible for him or her, and, to this end, shall take all appropriate legislative and administrative measures.

3. States Parties shall ensure that the institutions, services and facilities responsible for the care or protection of children shall conform with the standards established by competent authorities, particularly in the areas of safety, health, in the number and suitability of their staff, as well as competent supervision.

Testimonies collected during the Human Rights Without Frontiers fact-finding mission

Human Rights Without Frontiers has interviewed a number of North Korean refugees in South Korea and in China and has collected documented cases of recent baby killings that were committed in the following detention places: North Pyongan Provincial Police Detention Camp in Shinuiju, North Hamkyong Provincial Police Detention Camp in Chongjin, Musan District Labor Camp and Onsong District Labor Camp.

Case 1

Date and place of interview : 14 February 2002, in Seoul (South Korea)

Arrival in South Korea: July 2001

Interviewer: Willy Fautr, Human Rights Without Frontiers

Witness: Mr Kim Yong-chol, born in 1969. He was a student at the mechanic department of a local college in Wonsan. He defected to China in February 1998. He was arrested in Yentai in January 2000 together with ten other defectors. He left the country again in 2001.

Place and date of the baby killing: North Pyongan Provincial Police Detention Camp in Shinuiju, spring 2000

Testimony:

In the camp, pregnant women were forced to abort. If a baby was born alive, it was killed. During my detention here, three young women were detected to be pregnant and were sent to the police hospital outside the camp for abortion.

Case 2

Date and place of interview : 13 February 2002, in Iksan (South Korea)

Arrival in South Korea: December 2000

Interviewer: Willy Fautr, Human Rights Without Frontiers

Witness: Kang Seong Nam, born on 20 November 1973. He was a former border guard. He had been arrested because he had closed an eye while a whole family with a handicapped child was crossing the border. When arrested in China, they had confessed under torture that he had let them go through. He was detained at the state security labour camp in Kumkwang district (Kangwon Province) during the last seven months of 1998. He defected to China in March 1999. He married a defector in China in November 1999. They were both arrested on 21 April 2001 and deported to North Korea. On 15 September 2000, he defected again with his wife to China.

Place and date of the baby killing: North Hamkyong Provincial Police Detention Camp in Chongjin, early in May 2000

Testimony:

One morning, very early, six strong prisoners were called out. I was one of them. We were given shovels and led to the foot of a mountain nearby. We found freshly dug-up earth here and there. When we arrived at the site where we were to work, we saw a number of dogs running away and some pieces of torn clothes lying around. I first suspected that foxes had done that but we soon discovered dead bodies buried at a very low depth. I could count up to 43 fresh burial sites but there were more. There were several corpses in each pit. Obviously, the prisoners who had been ordered to bury the corpses were so weak that they had not been able to dig up deeply enough and the armys dogs had sniffed, dug holes, bitten clothes away and eaten parts of the corpses. I saw plastic sheets scattered around which were used to kill infants. I repeatedly heard prisoners whispering that just born infants are killed by covering their faces with wet plastic sheets. At that time, I did not know what happened to the dead infants. Now, I realized that they had been buried here. We covered the holes and tried to make the earth so hard that dogs could not unearth them any more. I was mobilized for the same work a month later.

Other prisoners told me they had done the same job at other times. I heard of several deaths of babies born from women prisoners in the camp.

Case 3

Date and place of interview : 13 February 2002, in Seoul (South Korea)

Arrival in South Korea: December 2000

Interviewer: Willy Fautr, Human Rights Without Frontiers

Witness: Kim Kyong-ok, born in December 1976. She was graduated from a three-year Economy College in Chongjin in March 1997. She was appointed district products inspection clerk until August 1998.. She defected to China in December 1998. She got married with the previous witness in November 1999. They were both arrested on 21 April 2001 and deported to North Korea. On 15 September 2000, she defected again with her husband to China.

Place and date of the baby killing: North Hamkyong Provincial Police Detention Camp, in May 2000

Testimony:

On the day of my arrival at the detention camp, there were seven pregnant girls, mostly between 21 and 23 years old. The cells were full of fleas, lice, bed bugs and all kinds of insects. During the next few days, they delivered their babies in the cell. A senior woman had to wrap up three babies and their cords in plastic sheets and to leave them outside upside down to die. She was so shocked by what she had done that she became seriously ill and was sent home to die there. Another woman was selected to do the dirty job but refused to do so. However, three other babies died the same way. The seventh baby survived three more days. He was finally suffocated to death.

Case 4

Date and place of interview : 13 February 2002, in Seoul

Arrival in South Korea: 2001

Interviewer: Willy Fautr, Human Rights Without Frontiers

Witness: Ham Kyu-chol, born in March 1972. He was graduated from a high school in September 1991. He was drafted in the North Korean peoples army in the same month and was discharged in 1995. His father, who was a dentist, had come from Japan to North Korea in the late sixties. He died from malnourishment in 1998. Hams wife defected to China on 6 February 1998. Ham joined her in China on 22 October 1998.

Place and date of the baby killing: North Pyongan Provincial Police Detention Camp in Shinuiju, in August 2000

Testimony:

While I was there, it was commonly known that pregnant women were taken to a hospital outside the camp for forced abortion and that babies born alive were killed there. One day when we came back from our work outside the camp, prisoners told us that a police doctor had inspected the female prisoners in the morning and had found out that two of them were pregnant: one in her 4th month of pregnancy and another in her six month. I knew one of them. Her name was Kim Son-hi from the Sambong district of Musan City of North Hamkyong Province. Both women were ordered to run around the camp yard with a heavily loaded stretcher. The first woman had miscarriage and collapsed. Then, two prisoners were ordered to kick the swollen belly of Kim Son-hi. She miscarried about one or two hours later.

Case 5

Date and place of interview : 23 June 2001, in China

Arrival in South Korea: October 2001

Interviewer: Correspondent of Human Rights Without Frontiers in China

Witness: Lee Hong-wa, born in June 1969 in the province of North Pyongan. Her parents divorced when she was only a baby. Her father, who was a police officer, disappeared as a political prisoner shortly after the divorce. Lee Hong-wa stayed with her mother. She graduated from school in 1996. She helped her mother with the household but was told that she could have a better life in China and she decided to leave the country in October 1997. She was sold for 10,000 yuan (Chinese currency: about 1,200 USD) to a Chinese farmer. She was arrested by the Chinese police on 14 March 2000 and sent back to North Korea a few weeks later.

Place and date of the baby killing: Onsong District Labor Camp, in mid-April 2000

Testimony:

At the camp, newcomers were subject to bodily search as was done at the State Security Agency. Everyone was stripped. The police guards were looking for concealed money. We were given all kinds of hard work. There was a 19-year old pregnant woman prisoner in the camp. She screamed with pain and said that she was in her eighth or ninth month of pregnancy. Her complaints were ignored at first and she was forced to line up with the other women for the days work. She kept groaning and cried out for help. It was obvious that she was laboring and, finally, she was exempted from work. When we returned to our barracks in the afternoon, she was still sick. Next morning around eight oclock, she gave birth to a baby with the help of an elderly woman prisoner from the Onsong district. The camp guard immediately ordered us to kill the just born infant. The eldest woman had to cover the infant with a blanket as instructed and to kill him.

Case 6

Date and place of interview : 5 February 2001, in Yanbian, North China

Arrival in South Korea: 2001

Interviewer: Correspondent of Human Rights Without Frontiers in China

Witness: Park Sun-hi, a woman in her fifties from Sambong area, Onsong district in North Hamkyong Province of North Korea. She defected to China in August 1999 and lived in Soyong district until the Chinese police arrested her in April 2000. She was imprisoned at Yanji police station for five days before being handed over to the State Security Agency in Musan district in North Korea in early May 2000.

Place and date of the baby killing: North Hamkyong Provincial Police Detention Camp of Chongjin, in May 2000

Testimony:

At the provincial detention camp everyone was stripped naked, inspected and interrogated again. Once again the focal points were money, contacts with South Korean intelligence services or missionaries. They asked female prisoners if they were married and pregnant. When the questioning was over I was sent to a large room which looked like a warehouse. There were three rooms for women and three for men. One of them was used for delivery and abortion. Some women in our group were pregnant.

When a baby was born, it was abandoned to die on the floor or suffocated with a wet plastic sheet put on its face. Seven or eight babies were delivered and killed in a month at the camp. Their bodies were thrown away. Security officers kicked bellies of pregnant women whose gestation was less than five months. " As the pregnant women were screaming out of pain, the officers ordered them to run around the campground to induce quick abortion. A woman from Hamhung city lost a four-month-old fetus and had to go back to work immediately. When a baby was really delivered, the mother would have three days rest to recover but she was only fed with grains of corn. On the fourth day she had to get out to work. How miserable it was. No women in the camp were provided with menstrual pads. There was no toilet paper in the rest room. First we used a patch from their underwear to clean. When nothing was available we used our own hands. We eat meal with the same hands. No wonder diseases would spread quickly.

A woman was screaming as she went into labor. Officers were laughing at her, saying that she had had a good time with a Chinese bastard. They threatened her to take her out for running if she didnt stop screaming. Because of malnutrition and weakened physical condition she did have not enough energy to "push" at the critical moment. So, a woman pressed down her belly while others were holding her arms and legs. When the baby was delivered after suffering a terrible ordeal, it was left on the floor to die. The mother wept and wailed to get her baby in her arms. Her eyes were swollen with grief but the guards hurled all sorts of invectives at her.

A woman lost her mind in this dire process. It was just too much to witness so many baby killings. During the month that I spent in detention here, two adults, one four-year-old child and seven newborn babies were killed.

Case 7

Date and place of interview : 2 May 2000, in China

Interviewer: Local correspondents of Human Rights Without Frontiers

Witness: Park Young-nan, an ordinary housewife from Pohang district, city of Chongjin, North Hamkyomg Province. She is in her forties and has children. She was a former factory worker in Chongji. She defected to China on 2 February 1999 with her husband and her two children. On 2 April 2000, she was arrested by the Chinese police at her hiding place and immediately sent back to North Korea. In early May 2000, she managed to escape from the police escort on her way to her home district and she defected again to China. A few weeks after the interview, her hiding place was raided by the Chinese but she managed to slip through the net.

Place and date of the baby killing: Hweryong SSA Detention Camp, April 2000

Testimony:

Case in point, there were two pregnant women, twenty something women locked up with us in our cell, and the guards were a lot meaner to them than they were to us in terms of physical abuse. For instance, the guards would constantly stab their bellies with ends of their clubs and say things like, `I see you got chink kids in there. Better drop'em before they come out, bitches'. Then again, what the guards said were not idle threats, as they would actually try things to end their pregnancies, like dragging them out and pouring cold water on them all of a sudden. The soon-to-be-mothers knew full well what the guards were trying to do, and maternal instinct would have it that they do all they can to protect their unborn children. Other women helped out by taking their clothes off to keep the expecting mothers a little bit warmer whenever they were wet, but wet, flimsy clothing plus cold weather basically meant they had to shudder for days at a time. If people trying to run away than to sit tight and starve to death was considered high treason that is one thing, but it was quite another to punish and torture innocent - and unborn - children. But considering that the system rounded up anyone even remotely related to people who were `accused' of something, tormenting even unborn children would not be considered going too far.

Anyhow, both of the women were expecting in April, and one of them went into labor on April 15th, and had a relatively smooth delivery thanks to the help of older women in the cell. People took pockets off their clothes and even bits of their underwear to piece together a blanket for the child, and taking their clothes off to give them extra cover. People breathed a sigh of relief and were glad both the mother and child were doing well, and congratulated them both in silence, in the corner of a cold and dark room.

The young mother then began to weep as she looked at her still-wet and newborn child, holding it tight against her breast. She was probably lamenting that she had to give birth at the kind of place and through the kind of horrendous treatment, and was not in the mood to celebrate the fact that she had brought a new life into this world. And sadly enough, she would not have the chance, because the guards rushed into our cell the moment they heard that she had given birth. He took the child from the mother's arms, put it on the floor, and threw us a piece of wet vinyl. The guard threatened us as he slammed the door shut, saying that we would get a taste of his merciless club if we were unwilling to do away with the baby. Needless to say, we were to suffocate the child with the wet vinyl, just like five other children before this one, according to a woman who had been in prison the longest. And that was how the baby's short and unhappy life came to an end, before it even had the chance to suckle from its mother's breast. The mother was dumbfounded and dazed at first, then cried and wailed until she finally passed out, and it didn't seem like she would wake up any time soon.

The guard seemed unfazed by all that was going on, and instead glared at us to dump the dead child into the sheep stable. The oldest woman of our group very reluctantly got up to take the child's body to where the guard told her, and she was frightened out of her mind when she saw another body, of a middle-aged man, inside the stable as well. The man had died from typhoid fever that was going around, and died a horrible death without receiving so much as a pill for his illness, much less decent treatment. I later found out that four men died from the disease during the month I was there.

But just when we thought it was over, the other woman who was expecting gave birth to a child, and again with help from older women of our group. Since it was going to be her first childbirth, the young woman was in great pain, but got through the process with some toughness and lots of assistance. Yet knowing that this child would probably suffer the same fate as the last, there was nothing that people could do except sigh and hold their breath while waiting for whatever was going to happen next. And lo and behold, a guard from the young woman's home county arrived and ordered her out. It must have been difficult for her to part with her baby, and she hesitated and tried to hold her child. The guard screamed at her to go out quickly, and when she kept hesitating, the guards took her by the arm and dragged her away. The sound of her wailing rang through the corridor as she was taken away screaming without her baby.

I believe that a mother's love for her child is the most precious feeling there is. There is nothing more heartbreaking and tragic for a mother than being separated from her child without even a chance to show that love, and to have her child killed before it gets to see the light of day. It does not matter if its mother had been accused of a heinous offense, no child should be made to bear the consequences of whatever its mother did, and the word `heartbreaking' could not even begin to describe how the mother would feel.

Yet the sadistic guards actually had the gall to come back to our cell after the prison transports were gone, and yelling at us to kill what he called a `chink brat', which made everyone retreat into the corner and tremble in fear. In the end, the old woman who carried the other infant out to the stable turned her head away from the baby, placed her hand around its throat, and choked the infant to death.

The poor, innocent baby was only a few hours old when they met their terrible fate, but for what? What did they do that was so terrible that they have to forsake life after just a few hours after coming into this world? I am simply exasperated and shudder at the fact that human rights and dignity could be so ruthlessly trampled on by murderous maniacs who have no more respect for human life than a damned bug's. I am most positive and certain that such barbaric and inhumane actions perpetrated by these sadistic butchers is an act of criminal affront to human civilization, and that they will be made accountable.

Human Rights Without Frontiers recommends to:

• The United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, entrusted with the monitoring of the implementation of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, to send an investigation commission to North Pyongan Provincial Police Detention Camp, Provincial Detention Camp in Chongjin, Musan Labor Camp, Provincial Detention camp of Shinuij and Onsong District Labor Camp. Its objective would be to check the allegations of maltreatment of pregnant women recorded during the aforementioned interviews taken by Human Rights Without Frontiers.
• The United Nations Committeee on the Rights of the Child, entrusted with the monitoring of the implementation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, to send an investigation commission to North Pyongan Provincial Police Detention Camp, Provincial Detention Camp in Chongjin, Musan Labor Camp, Provincial Detention camp of Shinuij and Onsong District Labor Camp. Its objective would be to check the allegations of baby killings recorded during the aforementioned interviews taken by Human Rights Without Frontiers.