Tag Archive for North Korea

UK parliamentary debate on North Korea human rights

01/12/2012 Research No comments

Members of the British Parliament held a debate on January 11, 2012, regard­ing North Korea’s human rights and human­i­tar­ian cri­sis. The 90-minute debate, held in Westminster Hall in the House of Commons, was intro­duced by Fiona Bruce (Congleton, Conservative) who pre­sented a detailed descrip­tion of the dire con­di­tions in North Korea based on first­hand accounts of defec­tors and inter­na­tional experts. She high­lighted the story of a young man named Shin Dong-hyuk, describ­ing him as“the only per­son ever to have escaped from a North Korean prison camp.”

It was in meet­ings with the Conservative party human rights com­mis­sion, and at an event that I chaired on behalf of the Henry Jackson Society, that Shin Dong-hyuk told his life story. It is the per­sonal tes­ti­mony of some­one who was born into a North Korean prison camp, lived there for 23 years and then escaped. As my hon. Friend says, his story was author­i­ta­tive, valu­able and deeply moving.

Shin Dong-hyuk was born in camp 14 in 1982. Shin described the con­di­tions he endured for the first 23 years of his life. When he was 14 years old, his mother and brother were exe­cuted in front of him because they tried to escape. He was held for seven months in soli­tary con­fine­ment. The tor­ture he faced was unimag­in­ably inhu­mane. With extra­or­di­nary dig­nity and lack of bit­ter­ness, he described to us how he was hung upside down by his legs and hands from the ceil­ing, and on one occa­sion his body was burned over a fire. His tor­tur­ers pierced his groin with a steel hook; he lost consciousness.

On another occa­sion, Shin was assigned to work in a gar­ment fac­tory. Severe hard labour is a com­mon fea­ture of North Korea’s prison camps. He acci­den­tally dropped a sewing machine, and as a pun­ish­ment the prison guards chopped off his mid­dle fin­ger. According to Shin, cou­ples per­ceived by the author­i­ties to be good work­ers are arbi­trar­ily selected by prison guards and per­mit­ted, even forced, to get mar­ried, with a view to pro­duc­ing chil­dren who could, in turn, become model work­ers. Children born in the prison camp are, like Shin, treated as pris­on­ers from birth. As a child in the prison school, Shin recalled the teacher, who was also a prison guard, telling the chil­dren that they were ani­mals whose par­ents should have been killed. He told them that, by con­trast, he, the teacher, was a human, and that they should be grate­ful to be alive.

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Korea Focus: essays on humanitarianism and human rights

06/01/2011 FYI No comments

Two inter­est­ing essays in the lat­est issue of Korea Focus, a pub­li­ca­tion of the Korea Foundation.

South Korea’s Internal Division over Humanitarian Aid to North Korea and North Korean Human Rights

Jhe Seong-ho
Professor of Law at Chung-Ang University;
Former Human Rights Ambassador
Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade

The ques­tion of human­i­tar­ian aid to North Korea has become a major social and polit­i­cal issue in South Korea, pit­ting lib­er­als against con­ser­v­a­tives, and mod­er­ates against hard-liners. These groups have taken sharply dif­fer­ent posi­tions regard­ing the dis­tri­b­u­tion of aid to the North, sus­pected diver­sion of aid to the North’s mil­i­tary and link­ing mate­r­ial assis­tance to other mat­ters con­cern­ing inter-Korean rela­tions. These con­flicts derive from North Korea’s uncom­mon sta­tus as an entity that will even­tu­ally have to be reuni­fied with the South and as a threat to the South’s secu­rity. If assis­tance was intended for a coun­try stricken by nat­ural dis­as­ter, there would be no such discord.

A Critical Review on the Debate of Korean Development Model
Back Jong-gook
Professor of Political Science
Gyeongsang National University

The Korean devel­op­ment model is a the­o­ret­i­cally and prac­ti­cally impor­tant topic. It not only rep­re­sents the his­tory of the Korean com­mu­nity but also pro­vides lessons for the future of this com­mu­nity. Moreover, the Korean model is a valu­able ref­er­ence for Third World coun­tries that are try­ing to develop in sim­i­lar ways. […] This paper has two objec­tives. First, it intends to con­duct a crit­i­cal review of the the­o­ries sur­round­ing Korea‘s devel­op­ment that have been dis­cussed in Korean polit­i­cal sci­ence acad­e­mia, a group of approx­i­mately 1,700 polit­i­cal sci­en­tists and researchers. Among many, three the­o­ries are selected in con­sid­er­a­tion of their his­tor­i­cal con­text and will be intro­duced in this paper. The sec­ond objec­tive is to ana­lyze the com­mon char­ac­ter­is­tics of these theories.Sung kim

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Also, it looks like Sung Kim, Washington’s spe­cial envoy to the six-party nuclear talks, is likely to become the next ambas­sador to South Korea. If Kim is cho­sen, it would be the first time in the 129-year his­tory of US-Korea bilat­eral ties that an eth­nic Korean a Korean American has been appointed to the posi­tion.
http://​eng​lish​.chosun​.com/​s​i​t​e​/​d​a​t​a​/​h​t​m​l​_​d​i​r​/​2​0​1​1​/​0​5​/​2​0​/​2​0​1​1​0​5​2​0​0​0​5​0​6​.​h​tml

Beyond good intentions and evil regimes: North Koreans in Korean/American missionary custody

01/27/2011 Calendar No comments

I’ll be giv­ing a talk next week at the Centre for Women’s and Gender Studies at UBC. It’s an updated ver­sion of the talk I gave a cou­ple of months ago at NYU, Rutgers, and UW, deal­ing with notions of mis­sion­ary cus­tody. As usual, I promise uncon­ven­tional analy­sis, mov­ing sto­ries and even bet­ter visu­als. ;-)

Centre for Women’s and Gender Studies, UBC
Spring 2011 Lecture Series

Wednesday, February 2nd, 2011
12:00 – 1:00 pm

At the Centre for Women’s and Gender Studies
2080 West Mall (028) Jack Bell Building

Everyone wel­come!

Beyond good inten­tions and evil regimes: North Koreans in Korean/American mis­sion­ary custody

Since the early 1990s, tens of thou­sands of North Koreans have left their famine-stricken homes in search of food and liveli­hood. Living with­out legal sta­tus in north­east China, many of these undoc­u­mented North Koreans — major­ity women — expe­ri­ence dire con­di­tions includ­ing crim­i­nal­iza­tion and forcible repa­tri­a­tion, slave wage labor, forced mar­riages, and sex work. In this bleak sit­u­a­tion, South Korean and Korean American evan­gel­i­cal Christian mis­sion­ar­ies and reli­gious NGOs carry out sig­nif­i­cant human­i­tar­ian advo­cacy work in what has been described as an “under­ground rail­road,” man­ag­ing rela­tions with state author­i­ties and traf­fick­ing bro­kers, oper­at­ing safe houses, and facil­i­tat­ing travel for those seek­ing asy­lum. However, with no sys­tems for trans­parency or account­abil­ity in place, there is also grow­ing con­cern for how these under­ground mis­sion­ary net­works reg­u­late and dis­ci­pline the expec­ta­tions and expe­ri­ences of North Korean bor­der crossers in their cus­tody. Drawing on inter­views and ethno­graphic research of evan­gel­i­cal mis­sions, this talk will present ques­tions about inten­tion­al­ity and power, and dis­cuss the legal-ethical-spatial pol­i­tics of the safe house, touted as both tem­po­rary and necessary.

Korean Studies Colloquium, U of Washington on Nov 4

10/29/2010 Calendar No comments

I’m giv­ing a Korean stud­ies col­lo­quium talk at the Center for Korean Studies at the University of Washington in Seattle next week. My talk at NYU was announced over the Alliance of Scholars Concerned about Korea (ASCK) list, and I think that’s how the folks at the University of Washington heard about my work. Although it’s very last minute — and even though I’m work­ing on a dif­fer­ent talk at UBC on November 9 — this will be an oppor­tu­nity to improve my argu­ments on the “space of cus­tody,” incor­po­rat­ing the won­der­ful feed­back I received from all the smart crit­i­cal folks at Rutgers and NYU.

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Thursday, November 4, 2010, 3:30pm

Beyond Good Intentions and Evil Regimes: North Koreans in Korean/American Missionary Custody
The Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies, University of Washington
Denny Hall 314 (email uwcks@​uw.​edu for more information)

Since the early 1990s, tens of thou­sands of North Koreans have left their famine-stricken homes in search of food and liveli­hood. Living with­out legal sta­tus in north­east China, the major­ity of these undoc­u­mented North Koreans are women, many of whom are traf­ficked into sex work or forced mar­riages. In this bleak sit­u­a­tion, South Korean and Korean American evan­gel­i­cal Christian mis­sion­ar­ies and reli­gious NGOs carry out sig­nif­i­cant human­i­tar­ian advo­cacy work, deal­ing with state author­i­ties and traf­fick­ing bro­kers, oper­at­ing safe houses, and mak­ing travel arrange­ments for those seek­ing asy­lum. But with no sys­tems for trans­parency or account­abil­ity in place, there is also con­cern for how the mis­sion­ary net­works reg­u­late and dis­ci­pline the expec­ta­tions and expe­ri­ences of North Korean bor­der crossers in their cus­tody. Drawing on inter­views and ethno­graphic research on Korean/American evan­gel­i­cal mis­sions, Dr. Han I will dis­cuss how the mis­sion­ary net­works raise ques­tions about inten­tion, power, and the pol­i­tics of custody. 

Korean Studies Colloquium, NYU on October 25

10/15/2010 Calendar No comments

The New York trip has become a bit of a speak­ing tour. I’ve agreed to give another lec­ture while I’m there — a Korean Studies Colloquium talk at NYU on Monday night. It’s on the mis­sion­ary res­cue nar­ra­tive sur­round­ing undoc­u­mented North Korean migrants in China, the same topic as the shorter lec­ture I’m doing at Rutgers, but for a more knowl­edge­able audi­ence, so I’ll have to put more work into it. It should be of inter­est to stu­dents, aca­d­e­mics and activists inter­ested in reli­gion, human­i­tar­i­an­ism, and Korea/diaspora politics.

Monday, October 25 2010, 7pm

“Beyond good inten­tions and evil regimes: North Koreans in Korean/American mis­sion­ary cus­tody“
Silver Center, Room 208
62 Waverly Place, New York
Korean Studies Colloquium @ New York University

Since the early 1990s, tens of thou­sands of North Koreans have left their famine-stricken homes in search of food and liveli­hood. Living with­out legal sta­tus in north­east China, over 70% of these North Koreans are women, many of whom are traf­ficked into sex work or forced mar­riages. In this bleak sit­u­a­tion, South Korean and Korean American evan­gel­i­cal Christian mis­sion­ar­ies and reli­gious NGOs carry out sig­nif­i­cant human­i­tar­ian advo­cacy work. But with no sys­tems for trans­parency or account­abil­ity in place, there is also con­cern for how the mis­sion­ary net­works reg­u­late and dis­ci­pline the expec­ta­tions and expe­ri­ences of North Korean bor­der crossers in their cus­tody. Drawing on inter­views and ethno­graphic research on Korean/American evan­gel­i­cal mis­sions, Dr. Han will dis­cuss how the mis­sion­ary net­works raise ques­tions about inten­tion­al­ity and cus­tody.
 

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