NORTH KOREA

Mass defection of North Korean refugees to the
Spanish embassy in Beijing (4)

On 14 March 2002, 25 North Korean defectors entered the Spanish Embassy in Beijing in search of asylum "in the largest known mass defection from the Stalinist state since the Korean War". A day later, the asylum seekers left Beijing bound for Manila and from there they went to South Korea.

The risks undertaken by defectors throw a spotlight on the plight of thousands of North Koreans who perish in China with little hope of survival. They live in hiding and in constant fear of deportation back to North Korea. In 2001, China is estimated to have repatriated 3,000 to 4,000 North Korean defectors to their home country.

Through its correspondents in Beijing, Human Rights Without Frontiers has obtained the testimonies of the asylum seekers. This issue of the Press Service brings to your attention the testimonies of Yu Dong-hyok, Shin-Hyong-yong and Lee ll who are on the list of defectors we distributed in our press service of 14 March.

Some of the defectors have decided to disclose their identity. Others use an alias and have changed the names of places, dates and other information as necessary to protect their relatives in North Korea.

19 March 2002

North Korea is a Gigantic Prison Without Bars

International human rights volunteers working for Human Rights Without Frontiers interviewed the following witness at his hiding place on Saturday, 23 February, 2002.

HRWF (19.03.2002)/ Website http://www.hrwf.net - Email: info@hrwf.net - A young girl was a chief ticket officer at the Musan railway station and went to South Korea with her boy friend in 2000. The North Korean authorities found out about it and her father hung himself. This true story explains why I had to use an alias and conceal my identity for this interview. However, my account about North Korean atrocities is true and correct to the best of my knowledge.

My name is Yu Dong-hyok and I am 45 years old (I was born in September 1958). I am from the Musan district. My father was a factory worker and I am a dentist. I got married when I was 29 years old. I have a 15-year-old girl and a 13-year-old boy.

While I was in Musan city, I heard about a lot of dead people, tied up between planks and wrapped up with straw mats, being carried on a cow cart out of town for burial. I saw it myself on one occasion. There were five corpses on the cart at that time. Many citizens believe that the SSA is stealing fresh corpses from tombs at night. Most people do not know why but some believe that the stolen corpses are used for special anatomy purposes, while others think it is for human biological tests of some kind.

I defected to China in December 1996 for food and freedom. My wife joined me after 20 days with our daughter. My son came to China about 18 months later.

I was arrested by the Chinese police on April 18, 2001 with my family and deported to North Korea on April 27. On my arrival in North Korea, we were sent to the Onsong district State Security Agency (SSA) for preliminary interrogation. On arrival at the SSA, we were stripped of our clothing and forced to jump up and down many times while being beaten and kicked. The rule here is torture. The punishment was also very severe even for slight violations of the rules, such as moving hands or legs while sitting on the cell floor. For example, prisoners are told to stand up and turn around and around until they fall to the ground out of dizziness.

The prisoners there whispered to us that, shortly before our arrival, a guard was drunk and had sexual intercourse with a young girl. The girl was naked on the bottom and was close to the iron bars and the guard was outside the bars. Some prisoners thought it was not rape and that the girl may have offered herself in return for favors. The guard was from a very good family. A few days later, he was sent away to a salt farm.

We stayed there for 9 days. We were treated like beasts and without any human dignity at all. There was a young woman in the camp who was 8 months pregnant. One day, she fell because she was laboring in great pain. She was taken to the hospital for an abortion. Two days later she came back without her baby. I saw a young man, about 23 or 24 years, who died of under-nourishment. The farm work was so severe that I wished I were dead. We were not human beings here. We were less than beasts. Then, we were sent to the Musan city police. Over a six-day stay there, we had only two meals. No meals were provided in the police station and prisoners totally relied on food supplied by their families. My wifes brother was in the city but he was only able to bring us food twice. We were released six days later but we were very hungry.

The social circumstances that made us defect the first time still prevailed and we had to flee to China for the second time on August 29, 2001, about 3 months after being released.

The day before this interview, I met a friend of mine from my hometown in North Korea who told me that they had received a 15-day rice and flour food ration on the occasion of the Leaders birthday about a week earlier. He said that defectors would now be treated as political prisoners. He further said that at Chonggori prison, near the Musan district, there are truckloads of dead people being carted out of the prison every day.

North Korea is a gigantic prison without bars.

I would rather die than to be deported to North Korea

International human rights volunteers working for Human Rights Without Frontiers interviewed the following witness at his hiding place in China

on Friday, February 23, 2002.

HRWF (19.03.2002)/ Website http://www.hrwf.net - Email: info@hrwf.net - My name is Shin Hyong yong and it is not an alias. I was a miner in North Korea and I am 33 years old (I was born on June 21, 1967). I hope that with my testimony I will be able to help the many North Koreans suffering at this very moment or facing execution.

My home address is 36, Kwankok Dong, Sonbong city, North Hamkyong province of North Korea. I finished my 10-year education in my hometown in May 1983. My father was a mechanic designer and died in 1987. I was in the military service for almost 10 years from May 1983 to September 1992. After my discharge in 1992, I became a coal miner for almost ten years until my defection to China in 1998. I got married in January 1994. My wife was a factory worker. My only child died of undernourishment in 1997 before he was one year old.

I defected from North Korea with my wife on July 26, 1998 because we were quite disillusioned by the North Korean society. We were both arrested in China on April 19, 2001 and deported to North Korea on May 10, 2001 after spending 14 days in the Chinese prisons and detention camps.

We - some 20 men, 20 women and 10 children - were detained in Namyang State Security Agency for 12 days. We were all stripped naked for SSA officers to search money. They kept beating and kicking us while searching for hidden money. Here, they beat prisoners with a soft plastic pipe so that no mark of the beating remains visible.

Then, we were sent to the Onsong district labor camp for punishment. During the eleven days we were there, we were forced to mould earthen bricks and we made walls around the camp to prevent prisoners from escaping. We also collected big rocks from the riverside on a cow-cart. The heavy cart was dragged by two men in the front and pushed by four women behind. It was clear that the camp was not for work but for punishing prisoners. Detainees were often forced to beat other prisoners collectively for minor offences. There was a woman, about 25 years old, in her 6th month in pregnancy. She was given the hardest work until the child was aborted. She had to continue to work while bleeding. Prisoners were often beaten with a shovel. We spent 11 days there.

When my wife arrived at the SSA in Onsong-kun, her cellmates told her what had happened to a woman the day before their arrival. At night, a young girl from Rajin district, about 26 years, was forced by a guard to come close to the iron bar and to take her pants off. She was raped between iron bars. A woman informed her interrogators about it the next day. She was badly beaten and punished for that. All the inmates were allowed to leave their cells but she had to stay behind as a punishment. Prisoners getting their bones broken is a common occurrence in detention places. During the interrogation sessions, prisoners often had to put their hands on the table and the interrogators beat them with an iron wire. I saw a prisoner whose bones on the back of his hands had broken like that. Some prisoners had their arms or legs broken at the SSA in Onsong-kun.

Then, we were sent to the Provincial Police Detention camp in Chongjin where we were detained for 13 days. There were some 100 women and 80 men, mostly North Koreans deported from China. Men had to repair the roof of a power transformer, about 15 minutes work from the camp. Some people were sent to factories. Women were mobilized for rice-planting, weeding amid punching and kicking for not moving fast enough.

Sanitation is non-existent. The well in the campground was so badly contaminated that anybody drinking the water was seriously sick. One morning, during morning formation, I saw my wife among the lines of women. Her lips were swollen and bleeding. I asked her if anybody had beaten her but she said that it happened after drinking the water from the well. Some prisoners were so hungry that whenever they spot any grass on the road while working outside, they were very quick to pick it up and put it into their mouths. There was no time to dust off the dirt because of the risk of punishment. When detected, they were merciless beaten on the street and this attracted crowds of course. Then, the policemen shouted at the passers-by and dispersed them quickly.

The 12 days that I spent in this place were much worse than all the sufferings of the past ten years put together. A young man from 33 Haetbit Dong, Hyesan district, Hamhung city was dying when I left the camp. He asked me to tell his family how he died there. When we were about to be sent back to our hometown police station for release, somebody informed them of my earlier contact with South Korean Christians while in China. Then, I was interrogated as a political prisoner and sent to the SSA in Rajin-Sonbong district where I was interrogated for two days. An SSA officer escorted me to the SSA in Wundok district for further investigation. Unable to find a train or any vehicles going in that direction, we had to walk. On the way to Wundok, about 4 kilometers from the city of Rajin-Sonbong, we stopped for lunch at my parents-in-laws house and my wife served him drinks until he was drunk. I then ran away with her and we defected to China on June 21 2001.

Prisoners are normally very cautious whispering for fear of informants among them. However, some kind of information did pass around. A prisoner next to me once attempted to cross the border to China. On the way, a woman followed him to the border but the border guards arrested him with her. Unfortunately, she was found with a secret document of some kind. This was obviously a serious political crime and they were both taken to the provincial SSA underground torture chamber. They realized very quickly I had nothing to do with her and they decided to release me. Before leaving, I was shown around the torture chamber for warning. I saw water drums. The prisoner was put into a drum full of water up to his nose and to be able to breathe, he had to stand on his toes all day long. There were several drums of different height for prisoners of different heights. There was a 2 meters wide and 4 meters long plank full of large nails sticking out. The prisoner was to be rolled on the plank. The nail board was full of blood spots and small pieces of human flesh.

My family and I are ready to risk our lives to go to South Korea

International human rights volunteers working for Human Rights Without Frontiers interviewed the following witness at his hiding place in China on Feb. 23, 2002. He and his family defected to China in 1998. His wife and their three children were arrested in April and deported to North Korea in May 2001. After the most torturous days at the detention camps in North Korea, they returned to China for family reunion. His wife, who actually experienced degrading treatment and has something to tell us, was not available at the time of this interview. Her testimony will be obtained as soon as possible.

HRWF (19.03.2002)/ Website http://www.hrwf.net - Email: info@hrwf.net - My name is Lee Il. I am 49 years old (I was born on November 27,1954) and I am from 52 Ban, Chongsong, Onsong district. My father was a factory clerk. I finished my 10-year education in North Korea in 1972 and was in military service from 1973 to 1979. I got married in 1983 and I have three children: two boys (19 and 16 years old) and a girl (14

years old). I had been a miner, a farmer and a worker when I defected to China with my wife in May 1998. The main reason was social discrimination on the basis of my family record: my grandfather had been a political prisoner and my fathers brother too. Additionally, there was no food and no hope in North Korea. My children joined us in China later.

The Chinese police arrested my wife and our three children on May 20, 2001. They were sent to the State Security Agency (SSA) in Onsong-kun where they were stripped to the skin to be searched for hidden money on arrival. My children were sent to the relief institute where they escaped from after 20 days and joined me back in China. My wife was released and came back to China on May 20, 2001. According to her report, the degrading conditions of detention camps in North Korea were shocking and appalling beyond imagination. The cells were so crowded that they had to sleep sitting. Prisoners were allowed to use toilet only at a fixed time and some prisoners urinated or evacuated the bowel in the cell because they could not wait until the next authorization. They had a basin that was used both for toilet and for food without thorough washing. She also reported to me about collective beating of a prisoner by other prisoners.

My family and I are ready to risk our lives to go to South Korea which is the other part of my fatherland and where we have the same culture and language. Please help us to be safe in South Korea.