NKinUSA is doing its best to let the world know more about the human rights of people in North Korea.
NKinUSA testies that many North Korean refugees are suffering from mental and physical pains while they successfully escape
The following is the announcment that President Jinhye Jo made at the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health, Global Human Rights, and International Organizations.
Today I stand here to speak of North Korea and China—two countries that have not changed their ways.
I can state without hesitation that the situation facing North Korean refugees in China is more dangerous today than ever before. It is the Chinese government’s failure to abide by international law that directly leads to the trafficking of North Korean refugees, especially women.
As is well known to the international community, three million North Koreans have starved to death, powerless in the face of a brutal dictatorship.
Furthermore, those who were caught trying to escape the country were deprived of their rights.
Suffocating under the yoke of oppression, they died unjust deaths in mobile labor brigades and political prison camps.
Kim Jong-il, a dictator who atrociously murdered his own people, died before he could be brought to justice. Kim Jong-un, the third leader of this dynastic regime, continues to murder countless ordinary North Koreans through terror and starvation.
During Kim Jong-il’s rule, the North Korean regime was brought to shame before the international community as videos of North Korean children dying on the streets spread on the Internet. In response, the regime mobilized groups of discharged soldiers into arresting kotchebi, or orphaned street children, who were then imprisoned in cold, dark detention centers and put into forced labor.
Many children died slow, painful deaths from malnutrition, barely surviving on lumps of corn and potato.
The children whose parents went to search for food and did not return, the countless souls of those who perished behind bars—they all cry out in pain to this day, asking to be granted the freedom of peace, free from the pain of hunger.
We did our best to raise the funds necessary to rescue these women, but we were unable to help everyone who reached out to us, desperate for freedom. One of them was Ms. Kim, who suffered frostbite on her feet after the Chinese government forcibly repatriated her. When it was discovered that she had attempted to escape to South Korea, she was beaten so severely by agents of the State Security Department that she fainted. We were told that she was then “taken somewhere else.” This can only mean that she is dead.
The Chinese government is fully aware of this reality.
It is clear that those who have escaped North Korea must be recognized as refugees under the Convention relating to the Status of Refugees. Regardless, the People’s Republic of China continues to violate the Refugee Convention, assisting Kim Jong-un by forcibly repatriating North Korean refugees.
Moreover, the Chinese border security unit in Tumen County, Yanji, Liaoning Province treats North Korean refugees in the same way that the North Korean regime does. The guards torture and abuse the refugees after locking them up behind bars.
My family was also arrested for the supposed “crime” of helping North Koreans escape and imprisoned for one year and three months.
In particular, the women had to endure the suffering and humiliation of using pieces of dirty blankets as sanitary pads. For this, the guards beat us mercilessly. After making all the female prisoners in a cell stand in a line, they kicked and beat all of us, one at a time.
Kim Jong-un and the North Korean regime, which clings to its hopeless and absurd policies, cannot be allowed to exist any longer. If the Chinese government continues to cooperate with the North Korean regime, it will only become the object of scorn to the entire world.
As stated in international law, our fellow North Korean brothers and sisters are refugees. I respectfully call upon the Chinese government to respect and abide by its obligations under international law.
I would like to thank God for granting me the freedom to speak my mind. I would like to ask all of you to not ignore our suffering.
North Korean defectors, including myself, will continue to speak out until the day Kim Jong-un is brought to justice in an international court for his atrocious crimes. I would like to ask the United States Congress and the entire world to listen to our voices and to help us in every way that you can.
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