NORTH KOREA
North Korean woman defector arrested
BBC 4 Womans Hour Program on cases of infanticide
Missing persons between 1995-2001 number 2.5 million
17 September 2002

North Korean woman defector arrested

HRWF International Secretariat (17.09.2002) C email:info@hrwf.net - Website: www.hrwf.net - On Saturday, August 31, 2002, a North Korean woman defector was arrested in the Chinese border town of Erenhot while attempting to enter Mongolia. The woman, Yu Kum-shil, 32, was on her way to join her husband in South Korea, accompanied by Mr. Kang Yong-chol, 26, a South Korean citizen and her husband's friend, and a Chinese translator, Shin Yong-in, 29, from Jilin Province in China who were also arrested.

There is no doubt that she will face a severe punishment since the spot of her arrest reveals her attempt to go to South Korea, a most serious offense of defection from fatherland to enemy as described in Article 47 of the North Korean Criminal Code.

BBC 4 Womans Hour Program on cases of infanticide at North Koreas prison camps

• Testimony of Kye Pak
• Interview with Willy Fautr, Director of Human Rights Without Frontiers

BBC 4 (13.09.2002)/ HRWF International Secretariat (17.09.2002) C Email: info@hrwf.net - Website: www.hrwf.net - Earlier this year, EU delegates to the UN Commission on Human Rights raised concerns about the treatment of female defectors from North Korea who had been deported back to the totalitarian state.

Reports from those who escaped told horrific stories of pregnant women being forced to abort their unborn child in prison. Babies born alive were either left to die or the women were ordered to smother them.

North Koreas official news agency has dismissed the claims as propaganda but the stories persist.

In the late 1990s Kye Pak attempted to defect from North Korea but she was repatriated from China and imprisoned. She was pregnant. She no longer lives in North Korea and told her story, the details of which are distressing, to Kevin Kim.

Human Rights activist Willy Fautre joins Sheila to talk about why he feels the international community should act now.

Missing persons between 1995-2001 number 2.5 million

ChosunIlbo (11.09.2002)/ HRWF International Secretariat (17.09.2002) C email: info@hrwf.net - Website: www.hrwf.net The missing in North Korea including those who starved to death in the six years from 1995, when the food crisis peaked, to early 2001 reached up to 2.5 million, according to North Korean refugees who have managed to reach the South. Prior to the opening on April 5 last year of the fourth session of the 10th Supreme People's Assembly, Pyongyang conducted a two-month nationwide census in February and March. The outcome of the census showed missing persons including those who died from starvation in the six-year period as numbering 2 million to 2.5 million, disclosed North Korea watchers in the South who have interviewed North Koreans who have managed to flee from the North and come to the South recently.

North Korean authorities reportedly concluded that 90% of the missing had starved to death and 10% had escaped from the country. In January and February last year when the mercury hit record lows in the North, the population of Pyongyang aged 50 or above was halved from a year earlier due mainly from freezing to death, added the sources. "Thanks to their private patches of land, rural people can survive suspended rations. But many senior citizens residing in high-rise apartments in the capital froze to death on stairs when they returned to their homes, exhausted from hunting for food, and had to climb the stairs with no elevators operating due to power cut," North Korean escapees were quoted as saying, "No small numbers of elderly citizens froze to death in their unheated rooms."