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Events >> The Democracy Award >> 2003 Democracy Award
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Remarks: Event Program: Opening Remarks ICPNKR Parliamentary Roundtable on the North Korean Refugee Crisis: Members of the International Parliamentarians’ Coalition for North Korean Human Rights and Refugees and Members of the U.S. Congress discuss policy recommendations for managing the refugee crisis. Remarks: Panel I: The North Korean Gulag: The Testimony of Three Survivors Panel II: Documenting the North Korean Gulag Reception and Presentation of the National Endowment for Democracy’s 2003 Democracy Award |
National Endowment for Democracy Conference on “Gulag, Famine, and Refugees: The Urgent Human Rights Crisis in North Korea” Remarks by U.S. Representative Ed Royce July 16, 2003 I would like to thank you all for being here today for this important roundtable. Today, we are joined by parliamentarians from around the world who share a passion for protecting human rights. As many of you know, I serve as the chair of the U.S.-ROK Interparliamentary Exchange in the United States Congress. This past April, I lead a delegation to Seoul, where we conducted a lively discussion with our counterparts in the National Assembly on a wide range of issues, including human rights conditions. I would like to note some of the things we are doing in the U.S. Congress regarding North Korea, and hopefully offer some insight as to what we - parliamentarians from around the world - can do to improve the situation in North Korea. During our trip to Seoul, our delegation toured the DMZ. It was an eerie feeling looking out from one of the observation posts into North Korea. The Stalinist state to the North has long threatened peace in Northeast Asia - now it is working to develop nuclear weapons. There is no question - we, the international community, face a complex security challenge on the Korean Peninsula. However, we also face a tremendous humanitarian challenge as well. This is one, I am afraid, that the international community has been far too relaxed in addressing. I mentioned our tour of the DMZ. We met some of the U.S. and ROK's best soldiers. When we looked across to the North Korean outpost, we noticed that their soldiers were much smaller. Why? After suffering from years of malnutrition, their growth has stunted. We should put this in perspective. A North Korean guard who is patrolling the DMZ will be the best trained and best fed of their military. We have to ask ourselves, where does that leave the average North Korean citizen? In a society where information is so tightly controlled, as it is under Kim Jong Il, we don't know everything that is happening in North Korea. In fact, we know very little. We do, however, have some firsthand accounts from Dr. Norbert Vollersten - a gentleman you all know quite well. As a German aid worker in Pyongyang, he won the faith of Kim Jong Il and consequently was one of the only Westerners to have seen parts of the North Korean countryside. He compares what he saw there to the conditions the Allies found in Nazi concentration camps after World War II ended. There remain numerous counties in North Korea that no Westerners have seen. I think we all fear what North Korean lives are like there. As we know, the North Korean regime apportions and withholds resources based on perceived citizen loyalty to the regime. From 1994 to 1998, at least two million North Koreans perished form starvation and related diseases, while nearly 50 percent of all North Korean children are malnourished to the point that it threatens their physical and mental health. This dire situation has forced many North Koreans to risk life and limb to flee into China. As many as 300,000 North Korean refuges are hiding in the Chinese countryside. Chinese authorities have launched an aggressive crackdown - actively hunting down North Korean refugees and forcibly repatriating them to North Korea. Once returned to North Korea, they face torture, imprisonment, and even execution. What has been the international community's response to this horrific situation? I am afraid that some have decided to gloss-over this problem. I am pleased to note that the United States Congress has focused on this issue. During a meeting of the US-ROK Interparliamentarian Exchange in July 2001, we discussed the grave situation of the North Korean refugees. Shortly after, I authored a resolution calling on the Chinese government to honor its obligation under the United Nations Convention relating to the Status of Refugees. I am pleased to report that this Resolution passed the House unanimously. Last year, the International Relations Subcommittee on Asia held a hearing on North Korea's human rights abuses. At that hearing, we heard testimony from North Korean defectors, Ms. Sun-ok Lee and Mr. Lee Young-Kook, as well as Dr. Vollersten. Ms. Lee, a former North Korean party official, described for us life in a North Korean gulag. She said, "A prisoner has no right to talk, laugh, sing or look in a mirror. Prisoners must kneel down on the ground and keep their heads down deeply whenever called by a guard. They can say nothing except to answer questions when asked. Prisoners have to work as slaves for up to 18 hours a day. Repeated failure to meet the work quotas means a week's time in a punishment cell. A prisoner must give up their human worth." She also told us, with the help of simple yet shocking illustrations, about a chemical weapons test she witnessed that was preformed on prisoners, and other atrocities. I am particularly pleased that this issue of North Korean refugees - that was brought to light through our Exchange - was able to receive critical attention before the Untied States Congress. I am also pleased to note that just the other week, the South Korean National Assembly passed a resolution urging the South Korean government to take a more proactive approach to the dire human rights conditions in North Korea. During our day long Exchange with our counterparts in the National Assembly, we encouraged them to bring greater attention to the many human rights abuses in North Korea. With the passage of this resolution they have done just that. But, this is only the beginning. It should be our goal to have as many parliaments, as many National Assemblies as possible, to hold hearings and pass resolutions. We need to bring as much pressure to bear as we can muster. I strongly believe that another tool we should employ is radio broadcasts. In order to ensure his survival, Kim Jong Il tries to keep an iron grip on all information in North Korea. Control of information is absolutely crucial - because the system is based on lies. Radio Free Asia does a fantastic job of bringing news and information to North Koreans. After our delegation returned, I was successful in including a provision in the State Department Authorization bill calling on Radio Free Asia's broadcasts to North Korea be increased to 24 hours each day. And because of the problem of access to suitable radios in North Korea, my amendment requests a report detailing the steps the U.S. government is taking, and needs to take - including the provision of radios - to maximize North Koreans access to foreign broadcasts like Radio Free Asia. This bill should pass the full House this morning. Unfortunately, we will face opposition as we try to put North Korea's human rights at the forefront of the international agenda. To be honest, I find this quite baffling. But, there will be those who will charge, we can do this through quiet diplomacy. Yet it was only after the pictures of a Chinese guard pulling a mother away from her crying child as she tried to breach the gates of a western embassy in Beijing that brought this situation to light, and generated an international outcry. Those pictures helped to advance the case of the refugees. There are those who will say, why point out human rights abuses, it is the nuclear issue that should be the priority. I am surprised when I hear leaders saying that bringing up the North's human rights abuses only gets in the way of disarming them of their weapons of mass destruction. The human rights situation in North Korea is reality. This is what is happening to thousands whose only crime is being born under Kim Jong Il. The existence of the gulags in North Korea is no secret. We often see satellite images of the North Korean nuclear facility at Yongbyon. Well, let's show the world the satellite images of the concentration camps in the North. If this is how the regime treats its own people, it brings into serious question how much faith we can place with the North Korean regime. Can a regime that abuses its people, as the North does, really be trusted to abide by any agreement without implementing an effective system of verification? Don't get me wrong; let's have a dialogue with North Korea. But let's have a dialogue based on a clear understanding of what we are dealing with: ignoring human rights gives us a false picture of whom we are confronting. To that end, I am convinced that a concerted, international focus on the North Korean regime's human rights violations is the way to bring us closer to peace and stability in Northeast Asia. It is also the moral policy given the horrendous human rights condition north of the border. Together, we can achieve that goal. Thank you. |
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