Aug 19, 2010

A new hope in North Korea?

NED President Carl Gershman wrote this op-ed for the National Post that focuses on North Korean Human Rights and Refugees.

A milestone in the struggle for human rights in North Korea will take place this weekend in Toronto, when the 10th International Conference on North Korean Human Rights and Refugees meets for the first time in Canada, a country with a proud history of leadership in the field of human rights.

Organized by the Seoul-based Citizens' Alliance for North Korean Human Rights, which has partnered here in Canada with Han Voice, these meetings have been the incubator for what is now a broad international coalition dedicated to revealing and ending the human rights nightmare that is life inside North Korea. The annual conferences have provided a forum for activists to discuss strategic challenges, to hear from victims and witnesses, and to provide an occasion to identify new targets of opportunity where international support should be directed.

The greatest opportunity for progress in the cause of human rights for North Korea today resides in the growing community of defectors from the North, many of whom want to be catalysts for change in their homeland.

Just a decade ago there were virtually no defectors, but today, they number some 20,000. There are many reasons for this exodus -- the famine that has forced people to flee in search of food, the increasingly porous border with China, the slow erosion of the regime's instruments of totalitarian control and the breakdown of the information blockade. Taken together, they have increased the incentives to leave North Korea while reducing, albeit modestly, the impediments preventing such flight.

There is now in South Korea a substantial population of defectors who have the potential to open up and change North Korea in ways that are highly effective, if not yet well understood by South Korea and the international community. Already they have established NGOs of various kinds, among them radio broadcasting operations that target North Korean elites and average citizens; a magazine circulated in North Korea on culture and current events; and even an incipient think tank that is trying to encourage the development of a North Korean civil society. I experienced the commitment of this community first-hand when I visited Seoul last February and participated in a discussion with about 20 young defectors who are part of a network of university students. The network leader was a young man who is working on a degree in international relations. He said he had been able to overcome his anger against the North Korean regime only by channeling it into work for human rights. There were also two young women, one working on a degree in police administration so that she might help a new North Korea train police who would protect people and not oppress them, and another majoring in international relations so that she could learn more about democracy and human rights.

Developing new ways to support change in North Korea is just one of the vital roles that defectors can play. Of equal importance is their ability to function as a "bridge population" linking two profoundly different Korean societies. The defectors can offer authentic people-to-people contacts that can end the isolation of the North Korean people and help South Koreans understand their northern brothers and sisters. The defector community is an invaluable resource that can facilitate the eventual integration of the now destitute and closed society of the North into an open and united Korean peninsula. This is especially true of the so-called "1.5 generation" of young defectors. They are still open to new ideas. They want to learn how people in South Korea and other countries respect human rights and democracy, how political parties organize, how workers fight for their rights and entrepreneurs compete in the marketplace, how journalists report the news and NGOs educate and give voice to civil society. And they want the knowledge and professional skills they will need to become productive and participating citizens. They are a resource that needs to be developed by investing in their education and training. Having such a core of proficient professionals will be an indispensable asset when the time for the rebuilding of North Korea comes, as someday it surely will. The fact that such people could have emerged out of the nightmare of North Korea is a small miracle. It's also a significant opportunity for liberalizing and ultimately opening North Korea. Given the human and security interests that are at stake, we would be foolish not to seize it.