N. Korea responds to int`l criticism on human rights: report

By Kim Hyun
SEOUL, April 27 (Yonhap) -- North Korea has reduced public executions and
adjusted laws to better address human rights after years of international
criticism, but cases of abuse are still widespread, a state-run think tank in
Seoul said Monday.
Citing interviews with about 50 North Korean defectors who fled their homeland
between 2007 and 2008, the Korea Institute for National Unification said in a
report that North Korea appears to be mindful of criticism from the international
community about its human rights condition and has responded with limited
changes.
According to the report "White Paper on Human Rights in North Korea 2009," those
interviewed said they had witnessed fewer public executions than before. The
report also noted changes in the legal system in recent years in favor of human
rights, such as a 2003 law on the protection of the disabled and revisions to the
criminal law in 2004 and 2005 stiffening requirements for permission to
interrogate or arrest individuals.
"North Korea appears to be reacting sensitively to criticism from the
international community," Kim Soo-am, a research fellow at the think tank and
major author of the report, told reporters.
"Adjusting its legal system and reducing public executions, North Korea appears
to be trying to find a way to reduce international criticism in a way that will
not threaten the regime," he said.
Overall, however, the report says human rights violations, including public
executions and torture in prisons, continues to take place. Some defectors said
they witnessed the illegal detention of pregnant women.
One of the defectors, who said he was a doctor in the North, noted that the
hospital he worked for performed contraceptive surgery on dwarfs -- including
women with a height of less than 150 cm -- until the 1980s, after which the
practice is believed to have ceased, the report said.
North Korea has also sharpened punishment for crimes that threaten to rupture
domestic social order, such as the smuggling of natural resources or drugs by
those involved in trade with other countries, it said.
The energy-strapped North also failed to protect citizens' employment rights, as
the operation rate of factories nationwide fell below 30 percent, it said.
"Most North Korean workers are technically in a state of unemployment. They are
rarely assigned tasks at factories, are usually not paid in time and are forced
to live on individual businesses," the report said.
It also said the number of North Korean defectors staying in China has
significantly dropped since a government crackdown by Beijing ahead of the Summer
Olympic Games in August last year. An estimated 20,000 to 40,000 North Korean
defectors are believed to be residing in China, it said.
The report noted South Korean soldiers who were captured during the 1950-53
Korean War were mostly sent to coal mines in South and North Hamgyong Provinces
to fill a labor shortage and to be effectively monitored in the remote regions.
The think tank estimated 19,409 South Korean war prisoners were believed to have
been detained by North Korea after the war but acknowledged its data was drawn up
with no comparative data from China and North Korea.
A total of 76 war prisoners among those detained have returned to the South,
along with 161 family members, it said.
hkim@yna.co.kr
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