ID :
208422
Wed, 09/21/2011 - 01:52
Auther :

Defectors ask Congress to address N. Korean human rights abuses

   WASHINGTON, Sept. 20 (Yonhap) -- Two female North Korean defectors, claiming to have been incarcerated in North Korea's notorious political prison camps, on Tuesday appealed to the U.S. Congress to help end human rights abuses in the secretive communist nation.
   "There was a time when I saw the bodies of people who were killed by firing squad who were rolled up in straw mats and carried away in carts, and said to myself, 'Even dogs will not die so pitifully,'" Kim Hye-sook said during a hearing at the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health and Human Rights.
   The hearing was apparently aimed at reminding lawmakers here of human rights abuses in North Korea as Washington is seeking to cut state budget spending. Under the 2004 North Korean Human Rights Act, the U.S. government has been offering financial support for refugees leaving the nation as well as human rights groups, including radio broadcasters.
   "Please end the existence of such a society and make it into a place where humans can live as people," Kim said. She said she was incarcerated for 28 years in political prison camp No. 18 in Bukchang-gun, South Pyongyang Province.
   She said she was taken to the hellish site at the age of 13 along with her parents because her grandfather had defected to South Korea during the 1950-53 Korean War.
   "We had to work 16 to 18 hours every day without rest or holidays, and for food, our family of seven was provided only around 10 pounds of corn per month," she said.
  


   Another defector, Kim Young-soon, described political prison camps in the North as places "where the political prisoners will eat anything that flies, crawls, grows in the field."
   Kim, who said she is now over 70 years old, claims that she was taken to the Yoduk political prison camp in 1970, just because she came to know the relationship between leader Kim Jong-il and Sung Hae-rim, Kim's mistress at that time.
   She said she was a friend of Sung Hae-rim.
   "Please save the 23 million people in North Korea who are living a life of misery not unlike what I suffered," she said in an emotional tone.
   Rep. Donald M. Payne (D-NJ) said the defectors' testimony, based on their first-hand experience, is important as little is known among ordinary American people about the situation in the North.
   When he expressed concern about the lack of proper channels to address the North's human rights violations, Suzanne Scholte, president of the Defense Forum Foundation, emphasized that the U.S. should keep supporting radio broadcasting for North Koreans and other campaigns by human rights groups.
   Scholte, attending the hearing, pointed out that Washington has failed to address the main issue of human rights because it has focused instead on the nuclear issue.
   She said the human rights issue should become "central to all negotiations with or about North Korea."
   Scholte, however, said there is "great hope" that a growing number of North Koreans are gaining access to some form of information beyond the regime's propaganda.
   Some listen to radio broadcasts from the outside world or watch DVDs and VCDs from the South, she said.

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