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Plenary Sessions

PANEL DISCUSSION
Promoting Democracy in Closed Societies

Presentation by Young Howard (Taekeung Ha)
NKNet
(Note: These remarks were edited slightly for readability.)
What is the Current Situation Inside North Korea?

1) Food Situation:
Since the mid-1990s, at least two million people, about 10% of the whole population, have started to death in North Korea. This year, it is expected that average North Koreans will be in short of about one third of their annual food supplies, six million tons. Even after considering food aides from World Food Program and neighboring countries, North Koreans will be still in need of one-sixth of their food supplies. Despite serious lack of food, Kim Jungil, the head of NK government, is still obsessed with building up nuclear weapons and other types of weapons of mass destruction. It proves that North Korea's leadership is totally hostile to its own people, not to mention the rest of the world.

After the mass starvation of mid-1990s, North Koreans have experienced dramatic social changes. Before the so-called arduous marches, the freedom of traveling throughout the country was completely controlled by the food distribution system. They are not allowed to freely move to different places other than they stay at that time. When people realized that they had no other choice but to starve to death if they solely depend on food rations by the nation, they began traveling to other regions of the country and to Chine to look for food. While struggling to survive the famine, people learned how to trade and how to make money. Currently, people are practically allowed to move around the country though it is illegal. The de-facto freedom of mobility entails the circulation of various types of information, whether they are appeasing to the government or not.

2) NK Refugees in China:
The mass starvation since the mid-1990s caused a great number of NK people to escape from their hunger zoo mainly to China. The exodus of NK people has not come to an end yet. It is speculated that about 200,000 - 300,000 people are seeking refuge in China, haunted by fear of arrest both Chinese police and North Korean secret police. NK escapees in China are roughly composed of 3 groups. One is trying to defect to countries of liberal democracy including South Korea, USA, and Japan. The second group wants to stay and make livings in China. Among them, some are married to Chinese people. The third group is traders, who frequently cross the border to China to support their family in North Korea financially. This particular group of people contributed a lot to the public's changes in ways of thinking. The traders conveyed what they have seen and heard to their friends and families in their hometowns of North Korea. To their eyes, China, in comparison with North Korea, is a paradise full of food and freedom.

Defectors often say that in China, dogs eat better than what they have eaten in North Korea. In China, people can freely criticize top leaders of their government and communist party, which is unimaginable to North Koreans. Due to the continuous influence of traders who frequently cross the border, recently North Korean people finally dare to stand up against government officials including policemen and to criticize against their top leader, Kim Jungil. However, weak such opposition might be, this is a sign that a flower of democracy is about to bloom in the dark land of isolation and oppression.

3) Concentration Camps - Prisons:
Political transgressors and those who escaped to China and contacted Koreans or Americans are detained in concentration camps or political penal-labor colonies. North Korea's political penal-labor colonies consist of a series of sprawling encampments measuring kilometers long and wide. They are located, mostly, in the valleys between high mountains, in the northern provinces of North Korea. There are between 5,000 and 50,000 prisoners per colony, amounting to some 150,000 to 200,000 prisoners throughout the country. Those detained are perceived as wrongdoers and political prisoners, and family members reaching three generations are also detained in camps due to guilt by association without any judicial process or legal resources whatsoever. They spend lilfetime mining, timber-cutting or farming under brutal living conditions worse than wild animals. (Hidden Gulag, p24)

4) WMD, Fake Dollars, Opium:

Table 1)NK Arsenal of WMD (Source: www.koreascope.org)
NuclearChemicalBiological
More than 2 bombs4 research institutes, 8 factories, 6 deposit facilities, 15.2 tons a day20 kinds, cholera, pest, etc.

North Korea's gross national product fell from $22.3 billion in 1995 to $15.7 billion in 2001, mainly because of mismanagement of the economy and natural disasters such as flood and severe drought. In 2001, exports from legitimate businesses totaled just $650 million, while income from illegal drugs ran between $500 million and $1 billion according to the Wall Street Journal. In addition, Pyongyang earned more than $560 million from missile sales and circulated more than $100 millino in counterfeit US currency in the global economy. According to a February 1999 American Congressional Research Service report, "conservative estimates" indicate that North Korean criminal activity "generated about $86 million in 1997 - $71 million from drugs and $15 million from counterfeiting.

Table 2) NK Illicit Money in 2001 (in US$) (Source: "Curtailing North Korea's Illict Activities" Balbina, Hwang, 2003)
 GNP ExportIllegal Drug Missile Sale Fake Currency
Amount 15.7 billion 650 million 0.5 - 1 billion Over 560 million Over 100 million

What are the Ways of Promoting Democracy and Human Rights in North Korea?

First of all, we have been providing democracy education for NK refugees (especially those who commute through North Korea border) through face-to-face contacts and the Internet.

We help them to realize what democracy and human rights mean, how to achieve them in North Korea, how bad and hostile Kim Jungil has been to the public and how to create and preserve people's power under harsh situations of North Korea.

Second of all, we have been working to infuse outside information into North Korea with the use of radio and written materials.

Until now, we have sent small books and flyers into North Korea. It was a bit primitive way of conveying outside information into the closed nation. We feel the need to secure the flow of a greater volume and wider-range of information into North Korea by radios. Radio is the most suitable means of transmitting news and ideas to North Korea because the society is completely blocked of from all other mass media including the Internet and TV.

Finally, we have been publicizing atrocities of North Koreans including situations inside political concentration camps and human rights abuse in other parts of the nation to the outside world.

Kim Jungil is sensitive to global public opinions. Throughout the late 1980s up to early 1990s, about five out of ten concentration camps in the country were shut down because human rights organization such as Amnesty International pressured North Korean government to allow inspections by global human rights organ for some of the camps exposed to the outside world. The regime backed down to the congregated efforts of the international human rights groups. In addition, the degree of severe punishment against North Korean refugees repatriated to the country has subdued thanks to widespread international attention to their living conditions.

Therefore, it has been proven that such an international outcry for miserable human rights conditions of North Koreans can make a difference even though all of us are aware that we still have a lot to accomplish. Any little change, I believe, can contribute to accelerating the changes already taking place in North Korea. And, I assure you that such efforts will eventually result in improving human rights conditions and solidifying grounds for sprouting democracy in North Korea. Continued attention from the international community will also help nurture more young activists devoting themselves for North Korean democracy and human rights.

What can the International Community Do to Help Promote Democracy in North Korea?

First, in dealing with North Korea's WMD, the international community should make sure that they understand the differences between a handful of people benefiting from the dictatorial regime and the rest of the public suffering in horrific living conditions.

North Korean WMD, including nuclear, biological and chemical weapons, not only threaten international community but also endanger innocent lives in North Korea. We have already witness atrocities when Saddam Hussein gassed about 5,000 people to death in 1988 at the city of Halabja and when the Nazis and Japanese imperialists carries out chemical and biological experiments on human beings. No one can deny the possibility that Kim Jungil may use his WMD against his people especially if the fate of the regime is at stake. We already have a few accounts from defectors that the regime has exercised secret biological experiments against those who had been detained inside prisons and concentration camps. Therefore, the international community needs to stress that North Korea's WMD not only harms other countries but also its own people. That kind of psychological warfare will contribute to promoting democracy and human rights as well as weakening the support base of Kim's dictatorship.

Moreover, as I mentioned earlier, Kim Jungil, instead of taking care of his people, is obsessed with building up nuclear weapons and other types of weapons of mass destruction. As a result, more than 2 million people starved to death and still are starving.

More importantly, Kim Jungil himself is weapons of mass destruction. He starved more than 2 million people to death and detains about 200,000 people in secret camps, treating them like animals.

He will not give up his nuclear, chemical and biological arsenal because he evidently knows that nothing supports his regime other than those weapons. So the international community should have in mind that, without the removal of Kim Jungil and the promotion of democracy, the fundamental removal of the threat from the Kim Jungil regime is impossible. For that purpose, we are going to set up a radio broadcasting station mainly operated by North Korean democracy activists and defectors in exile. A radio broadcasting station set up and operated by them will greatly influence North Korean people. To them, it will be regarded as the center of North Korean democracy and human rights and alternative power for new democratic North Korea. Therefore, I strongly hope that the international community will be interested in our project (and help us secure radio frequency, which is indispensable for broadcasting). If we succeed in establishing refugee camps either in China, Russia or Mongolia, it will be a decisive moment for North Korean democracy and human rights. The camps, in which we plan to provide education on democracy to defectors, will play crucial role as fundamental base for rooting democracy in North Korea. And, the international community's hope for saving the rest of North Korea moaning under Kim Jungil dictatorship will lie upon them.


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