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Events >> The Democracy Award >> 2003 Democracy Award
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On July 16, 2003, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) hosted a day-long conference titled: Gulag, Famine, and Refugees: The Urgent Human Rights Crisis in North Korea. The Conference was followed by a presentation of the NED’s Annual Democracy Award to four Koreans, three of whom escaped from North Korea and are survivors of its gulag, who are all working to focus world attention on the human rights crisis in North Korea, expose its abhorrent prison-labor system, and assist North Korean refugees who have fled persecution and starvation. The honorees were: An Hyuk, Kang Cheol-hwan, Soon Ok Lee and Benjamin Yoon. The Conference, organized in cooperation with the Defense Forum Foundation and the U.S. Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, was held in the Auditorium of the Dirksen Senate Building (SDG-50) from 9:30 a.m. – 5:30 p.m. The awards were presented by US Senator Sam Brownback at a reception in room 106 of the Dirksen Senate Building at 5:30 p.m. The Conference included three panels focusing on the refugee crisis and the gulag system in North Korea. David Hawk, a researcher for the U.S. Committee for Human Rights in North Korea reported on the Committee’s groundbreaking work to document the North Korean gulag using commercial satellite photos and the testimony of former prisoners and prison guards who have escaped North Korea. Testimony was also given by Benjamin Yoon, the director of the Citizens’ Alliance for North Korean Human Rights, a leading NGO in Korea focusing on human rights in the North, and by the three survivors of the gulag who were honored by NED (Kang Cheol-hwan, An Hyuk and Soon Ok Lee) [webcast]. Related Articles: |
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