S. Korea Urges Hungry North Korea to Accept Corn Aid

Current South Korean President Lee Myung-bak has adopted a far stiffer approach to aiding North Korea than his two predecessors - both of whom sent hundreds of thousands of tons of rice and fertilizer across the border every year, with no strings attached.

South Korea says it is willing to send 50,000 tons of immediate food aid to impoverished North Korea. The aid would fulfill a deal made during the previous South Korean administration, but may not ease a stalemate between Pyongyang and the South's current president.

North Korea angrily responded by labeling Mr. Lee a traitor and threatening to turn Seoul into ash. Pyongyang has suspended practically all diplomatic contacts with the Lee administration and has remained silent on the South's offer to provide aid without preconditions as long as the North makes a formal request.

Do Hee-youn, president of the Seoul-based Citizen's Coalition for Human Rights of Abductees and North Korean Refugees, says decades of hunger in North Korea are to be blamed on the North Korean government's own decisions. He says handing over food aid without changing Pyongyang's basic food policies would be like "pouring water into a broken jar."

[Excerpt of an article by Kurt Achin, Voice of America]

China moving to eliminate house churches

A report released two months ahead of the Beijing Olympic Games details the current Chinese government’s crackdown on unregistered Christians, including funding a campaign to eradicate house churches throughout China. The report, entitled “China: Persecution of Protestant Christians in the Approach to the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games,” by U.K.-based Christian Solidarity Worldwide and U.S.-based China Aid Association, provides information on different tactics used by the government to restrict the religious freedom of Christians.

“While Chinese house churches have long suffered persecution, this is believed to be the first time that the authorities have systematically cracked down on the ‘third wave churches,’” the report noted. “These are churches amongst the more educated and wealthy sections of society with greater awareness of their rights, which generally meet in urban areas and have been tolerated, even though operating under certain restrictions.”

Tactics used to crack down on unregistered Christians include: targeting well-established unregistered churches; sending landlords directives ordering them to not rent space to those engaging in religious activities; charging Christians in the Xinjiang region of separatism; expelling foreign Christians; targeting repression at the Chinese House Church Alliance; and carrying out the largest mass sentencing of house church leaders in 25 years.

The report also highlights the “disturbing news” that some house church Christians were arrested and fined for trying to help victims of the massive earthquake in Sichuan Province.

[Excerpted from Church Executive]

Abducted South Korean escapes from North Korea

A South Korean abducted more than 30 years ago has reportedly escaped from North Korea.

Sixty-five-year-old Yoon Jong-soo fled last month and is now under South Korean protection at a consulate in northeastern China. Yoon and 32 others ended up in the North when their fishing boat was seized off South Korea's east coast in 1975.

South Korean officials say Yoon's North Korean wife and their daughter have since been arrested.

Of those who were seized with Yoon, three have returned to South Korea in recent years. Yoon was among 480 South Korean civilian abductees, mostly fishermen, believed still alive in the North.

Focus on Non-Implementation of North Korean Human Rights Act of 2004

OneFreeKorea reports that a bill is working its way though the Senate, to reinforce the provisions of the North Korean Human Rights Act of 2004.

An excerpt from the Committee Report for H.R. 5834:

“Executive Branch implementation of the refugee provisions of the 2004 Act has been too slow and too weak. On February 21, 2006, a bipartisan group of 9 senior House Members and Senators …wrote the Secretary of State ‘to express our deep concern for the lack of progress in funding and implementing the key provisions of the North Korean Human Rights Act.’ Foremost among their concerns, they noted that, ‘despite the fact that the Act calls for the Department of State to facilitate the submission of North Korean refugee applications, not one North Korean has been offered asylum or refugee status in the 16 months since the unanimous passage of the legislation.’ The first North Korean refugees did not arrive in the United States until 3 months later, in May 2006.

“North Koreans who have requested resettlement in the United States as refugees have also faced extended delays, in some cases longer than 2 years, while residing in circumstances that are frequently unsafe, unhealthy, and insecure. Delays sometimes continue even after the refugees have passed U.S. assessment and security screening, due to foot-dragging in the issuance of exit visas by the governments of the countries where they are located. These delays have been the source of considerable discouragement, frustration, and anxiety among North Korean refugees. Just last month a group of North Koreans awaiting U.S. resettlement in Thailand reportedly conducted a hunger strike in an attempt to obtain information about the status of their cases.

“In the intervening 3 1/2 years since the 2004 Act became law, the United States has resettled fewer than 50 North Korean refugees.”

Read more

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A North Korean story of starvation, torture and living in caves

“Jia - A Novel of North Korea” by Hyejin Kim, tells the story of a woman’s relationship with North Korea’s authoritarian state. Jia begins her life in a community of outcasts who are forced to work in coal mines because her father refused to toe the state line. He was taken away and charged with political treason before she was born, never to be seen again.

She has a happy childhood despite her harsh conditions, including the loss of her mother in childbirth, but when her paternal grandparents, who are raising her, hatch a plan to send her to Pyongyang to be with her mother’s parents. At the age of 7, she lands in an orphanage.

When famine descends on North Korea in the mid-1990s, Jia’s problems with the authorities deepen. Jia decides the time is right to cross the border into China. Once in China, the North Korean regime takes a more distant if still threatening role, and Jia has to survive being sold into the sex trade, being picked up by the Chinese police who want to send her back to North Korea.

Kim tells a compelling story. In the forward, the author writes that Jia’s experiences and character are based on amalgam of people she spoke with when researching her book in China. That being said, characters who lose children to starvation, undergo torture after being caught defecting and live in caves in China breaks your heart and provides what seems like an authentic account of life in North Korea.

[Excerpt of an article by Christopher Carpenter, JoonAng Daily]

U.S. blasts China over treatment of North Korean refugees

The United States on Wednesday criticized China for rampant human trafficking and slave labor taking place within its borders, and deplored Beijing's treatment of North Koreans subjected to sexual exploitation.

In its annual Trafficking in Persons Report, the State Department said China lacks efforts to combat human trafficking, although it acknowledges that Beijing has made some progress.

[Kyodo News]

North Korean Regime Acknowledges Food Problems

Kim Jong Il's regime has acknowledged problems feeding its people, South Korea's Unification Minister Kim Ha Joong said as the government in Seoul tries to organize the delivery of 50,000 metric tons of food aid to North Korea. “They have said that, yes, they are experiencing some difficulties, but not to the level of large scale famine-related deaths,'' Kim told reporters in Seoul.

Aid agencies are warning that North Korea may experience a repeat of food shortages [as per] the mid 1990s. The United Nations warned in April of a "potential humanitarian crisis'' in North Korea and the World Food Programme last week asked the government in Seoul to provide food aid to the nation of 23 million people.

The regime is diverting more than 90 percent of international food aid to the military in order to maintain its grip on power, defectors told reporters in Seoul yesterday.

[Bloomberg.com]

North Korean Refugee Trail of Shame

As North Korea steps closer to a second great famine and North Koreans continue to endure the depredations of the repressive regime that rules over them, an exodus of refugees slips out of the country. The twin imperatives of food and freedom (much more of the former, at least initially) are driving them hundreds or thousands of kilometers from their homes.

While U.S. President George W. Bush has given speeches on the plight of the North Korean people, his concern for them has clearly taken a back seat to his desire to score a diplomatic success, however fleeting, in the ongoing nuclear talks with Pyongyang. Jay Lefkowitz, U.S. Special Envoy for Human Rights in North Korea … was sternly rebuked by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who told reporters ``[Lefkowitz is] … doesn't know what's going on in the six-party talks and he certainly has no say in the six-party talks.''

Lefkowitz ... and his portfolio have become ghettoized in the State Department.

The North Korean Human Rights Act of 2004 mandates that the United States accept North Korean refugees. Although there are up to 300,000 North Korean refugees in hiding, including hundreds in Southeast Asia, the U.S. has only admitted a few dozen. Of the estimated 150,000 refugees from around the world United States has resettled since 2004, fewer than 50 have come from North Korea.

[Excerpt of an editorial by Andy Jackson, The Korea Times]

Drama focuses on horror of North Korean re-education camps

Some of the most tragic experiences of a [North Korean refugee's] life have made it into a wrenching South Korean film, a father and son attempting to escape North Korea and the brutal re-education camps.

As a North Korean miner whose undernourished, pregnant wife contracts tuberculosis, [the lead character] with no medicine available in the impoverished nation, leaves his wife and 11-year-old son to travel to China to work, earn money and buy drugs. While away, his wife dies, and his son becomes a wandering orphan. The starving child attempts to escape to China, but is captured and placed in a re-education camp - where the film's most harrowing scenes take place. A bribe arranged by his father, now in South Korea, breaks him out of the camp. The film's jarring finale takes place in the Mongolian Desert.

Avoiding the melodrama of many South Korean films, "Crossing" is relentless in its detailed, docudrama approach. A cross-border trader and his family are seized by secret police in a midnight raid. Ragged orphans beg in destitute markets. Camp guards kick a pregnant woman in China in the stomach.

The life of Yoo Sang-jun, now a Seoul-based Christian activist, mirrors much of the plot of "Crossing."

After losing his wife and a son during the North Korean famine of the late 1990s, he escaped to China with his surviving son, Chul-min. Despairing of making a living, and in fear of deportation - Chinese authorities routinely send North Korean defectors home, where many face terrible punishment - Mr. Yoo put the boy into foster care while he attempted to escape to Seoul. He reached South Korea and worked as a laborer, earning money to pay smugglers to bring his son out of China. In 2002, Chul-min set off from China for Mongolia to reunite with his father. In the barren frontier between the countries, lost, weak and exhausted, his second child died from exposure. Yoo Chul-min is buried under a wooden cross in the Mongolian desert. He was 10 years old.

German human rights activist Norbert Vollertsen, who briefly knew Yoo Chul-min, has arranged for the film to be screened in July at the European Parliament. He said the film took him back to his time working as an aid doctor in rural North Korea.

"It would be pertinent if China's leadership watched this film," said Tim Peters, an American activist and friend of Mr. Yoo's who attended the screening. "With the stroke of a pen, they could stop thousands of tragedies."

[ Excerpt of an article by Andrew Salmon, The Washington Times]

`Shoot-on-sight' orders given to North Korean border patrols

Helping Hands Korea claimed it has been receiving reports of "shoot-on-sight'' orders given to North Korean border patrols regarding refugees. It reported eyewitness accounts of "snipers'' being posted at elevated border stations along the Tumen River.

Police officials in border regions, Helping Hands Korea said, are also being authorized to give "substantial bribes'' to local ethnic Korean-Chinese to make them disclose the whereabouts of North Koreans hiding in their neighborhoods. These bribes have reportedly been increasing in recent months.

Helping Hands said the border tightening has resulted in some reduction in successful crossings of North Koreans into China, with some 30 percent of refugees being caught and sent back to the North.

The group also said there have been widespread reports at border areas confirming that food shortages are now critical in the central part of North Korea. The group's observation is among one of many reports in recent weeks about food shortages in the North. The average North Korean's monthly salary is worth roughly three kilograms of rice, a couple of days supply for a family of four.

[Excerpt of an article by Michael Ha, The Korea Times]

North Korean "Crossing" film painful to watch

The man whose personal tragedy formed the basis of much of a wrenching film about the human rights abuses in North Korea remains so traumatised that he refuses to watch it.

Cha In-pyo, one of Asia's top actors, stars as a North Korean miner Yoo Sang-jun whose undernourished, pregnant wife contracts tuberculosis. With no medicine available in the impoverished nation, Cha's character leaves his wife and 11-year-old son to travel to China to earn money for medicine. While he is away his wife dies. His starving son attempts to escape to China but is captured and placed in a re-education camp, where the most harrowing scenes of the film take place.

“I don't want to think about my past,” Yoo Sang-jun told The Times. “I hope the film can help the world know about North Korea.”

Mr Yoo's wife and a son died in the North Korean famine of the late 1990s. In 1998 he escaped to China with his surviving son, Chul-min. In 2002 Chul-min set off from China for Mongolia to be reunited with his father. In the barren frontier between the countries, lost, weak and exhausted, he died from exposure. Chul-min is buried under a wooden cross in the Mongolian desert. He was 10.

Kim Tae-kyun, the director of the film, said that he felt a “deep sense of shame” as he researched the film, said that half of its proceeds would go to help fugitives from the North and urged South Koreans to take greater interest in the ongoing tragedy.

“It would be pertinent if China's leadership watched this film,” Tim Peters, an American activist and friend of Mr Yoo, said. “With the stroke of a pen, they could stop thousands of tragedies.”

[Excerpt of an article by Andrew Salmon, The Times]

"On The Border" documentary on North Korean refugees

U.S. State Department officials on Monday watched a segment of "On The Border", a documentary on North Korean refugees produced by the Chosun Ilbo as part of its global cross-media program. The segment they watched contained scenes of a North Korean woman sold to China across the Tumen River for [$47], a North Korean drug dealer crossing the river naked, and the suffering of North Korean women suffering hardships after being sold to Chinese men.

A U.S. diplomat said the scenes were “shocking” and asked how the crew managed to shoot the footage in the dangerous Chinese-North Korean border area. U.S. diplomats were reportedly curious to discover how China and North Korea treat the North Korean refugees who've crossed the border, and especially what happened to the North Koreans who appeared in the film.

The film, parts of which have been shown all over the world, appears to have helped raise awareness of the plight of North Korean refugees.

"On The Border", will run on the BBC. Both BBC World, the international cable news channel, and domestic channels BBC2 and BBC News24 will air five to six parts of "Korea: out of the North", the corporation’s version of the Chosun Ilbo documentary, starting May 30.

BBC World will air the first 50-minute part as part of its "Our World" program and will broadcast the documentary a total of six times for three days. In Korea, it can be watched on cable and BBC World (channel 528) on Sky TV.

In the U.K., BBC2's "Newsnight" will feature a 15-minute segment, while news channel BBC News24 will broadcast 30-minute parts of the documentary.

[Chosun Ilbo]

Movie "Crossing" about North Korean human rights

Coming soon, the movie "Crossing" -- North Koreans' daily life, poverty and starvation, concentration camps there and the dangerous escape through China, including storming western embassies in Beijing.

Based on the true story of a 10-year-old boy who died in the Mongolian desert on his way to freedom.

Foreign journalists' preview, with English subtitles, scheduled for Friday, May 30, 2 pm, Megabox, Coex, Seoul.

For the trailer and info

Christopher Hill Credited With U.S. Shift on North Korea

Although only a mid-level foreign service official, chief U.S. nuclear negotiator Christopher Hill "has become the public face of an extraordinary 180-degree policy shift on North Korea," the Washington Post reported on Monday. “The nuclear agreement that Hill has tirelessly pursued over the past three years has emerged as Bush's best hope for a lasting foreign policy success."

U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon last year hailed him as a "diplomat par excellence".

"One of the biggest guessing games in diplomatic circles today is how long Hill can keep up his balancing act of pleasing his bosses, negotiating with North Korea and fending off conservatives eager to see him fail," the Post wrote.

[Chosun Ilbo]

Aid groups say North Korea is heading for major famine

North Korea’s food crisis is more severe than previously estimated due to last year’s poor harvest, Good Friends, a human rights group focused on North Korea, said yesterday.

The group said the current situation is a prelude to a recurrence of the massive famine of the 1990s. During the infamous food crisis of the 1990s, the North’s population fell by between 2.5 million and 3 million, a rare North Korean government survey showed.

“If this situation continues, we will starve to death in June,” a North Korean official was quoted as saying in the activist group’s report. “We don’t have a single grain of rice, and that is our reality,” said another.

The group said the food crisis is particularly severe for factory workers and other professionals outside Pyongyang, while government officials, soldiers and residents of the capital city are given priority rations.

Meanwhile, United Press International reported yesterday that North Korea and China have boosted border patrols to stop North Koreans trying to escape poverty and hunger. U.S. aid group Helping Hands Korea also said it has received reports of “°shoot-on-sight” orders given to North Korean border guards who encounter people trying to cross the border illegally.

[JoongAng Daily]

North Koreans Flee Amid Food Shortage

North Korea and China have boosted border patrols to stop North Koreans trying to escape poverty and hunger in their homeland, a U.S. aid group said.

Helping Hands Korea said border patrols on both sides of the Tumen and Yalu Rivers are being increased to stop illegal border crossers, The Korea Times reported.

For their part, Chinese police are making more house-to-house checks along border areas to crack down on refugees hiding out in ethnic Korean households living in China, the group said.

Helping Hands Korea also claimed it has received reports of "shoot-on-sight'' orders given to North Korean border guards who encounter people trying to cross the border illegally. Additionally, snipers have been posted at border stations along the Tumen River.

North Koreans have increasingly sought to escape amid poverty and worsening food shortages, the Times said. Upcoming international aid and the U.S. promise of 500,000 tons of provisions could fill much of the gap, the agency said.

[UPI]

Washington approves aid package for North Korea

[As predicted] The U.S. Senate has earmarked $15 million in economic aid for North Korea for fiscal 2008 and approved an additional $53 million to provide 1 million tons of fuel in exchange for progress in North Korea’s denuclearization efforts.

The latest moves came after North Korea broke a months-long deadlock in its three-step denuclearization process, brightening prospects for the next round of six-party talks. Seoul officials said the next round could be held in Beijing in early June.

North Korea turned over 18,000 pages of Yongbyon nuclear records dating back to 1992 to Washington earlier this month and is poised to submit a full nuclear inventory and list of programs to China, host of the six-party talks.

Once North Korea sends that information, Washington will respond by taking the country off the U.S. list of State Sponsors of Terrorism, South Korea’s chief nuclear envoy Kim Sook said.

[JoongAng Ilbo]

Movie coming based on "The Aquariums of Pyongyang"

A defector's book about his decade-long ordeal in a North Korean prison camp is to be made into a film. A South Korean film maker said it would co-produce "The Aquariums of Pyongyang" with its US partner.

"Shooting is expected to begin in October this year with preparations for casting underway," Bae Jin-Su, a Cinema and I executive, told AFP. "We aim to put it on the screen in July next year."

Kang Chol-Hwan told Daily NK, an Internet newspaper run by defectors, that the movie would be "a significant opportunity to unveil the true nature" of North Korean prison camps.

Kang and his family were sent to a camp for political prisoners at Yodok in South Hamkyung province in 1977. He and other defectors have testified that beatings, forced labor, torture and other gross human rights abuses were rampant in the camps.

[AFP]

North Korea to destroy nuke facilities as symbolic gesture

North Korea is expected to destroy part of its nuclear installations as a symbolic gesture around the time it submits a declaration on its nuclear programs, Yonhap news agency reported Wednesday, quoting a South Korean envoy in Washington.

[Kyodo]

North Korean papers in exchange for food?

Despite the volume of papers given to Sung Kim, a US State Department expert on Korea, analysts doubt if the documents address vital US questions. Still, analysts say, the hand-over marks a concrete step forward that could open the way to further progress, driven in part by North Korea's desperation over looming threats of famine and disease.

Analysts say the country's economic problems and food shortage are approaching the widespread famine and suffering of the 1990s. The US is reportedly prepared to send North Korea 500,000 tons of foodstuffs as US technicians monitor disablement of the Yongbyon complex amid reports that the North may blow up the reactor's cooling tower as symbolic evidence that it's making good on its promise to give up the entire program.

Kim Tae Woo suggest "the situation may push the US to move forward" on getting the congressional approval needed to remove North Korea from the list of nations sponsoring terrorism and to lift economic sanctions.

Those steps are crucial as North Korea faces renewed threats of famine and disease. Pyongyang's Korean Central News Agency, reminding readers of "Dear Leader" Kim Jong Il's call for an "agricultural revolution," has editorialized that the need "to drastically increase grain production" and "resolve the problem of eating" is the country's "most pressing and important issue."

Conversations with North Koreans crossing the Tumen River border into China bear out the urgency of the food problem. "The situation is extremely dire," says Tim Peters, founder of Helping Hands Korea, which aids North Korean refugees. "The poor harvest and poor weather are the worst in 13 to 14 years."

Mr. Peters, reached by phone as he met North Koreans on the Chinese side of the Tumen River, gets the impression that persecution may have eased as the crisis deepens. "People are more vocal about their feelings," he says. "They seem less fearful about talking."

An influx of aid from the US and South Korea, on top of aid the North receives from China, "could be a big help," he adds, "but my question is, how far will it filter down to the little people?"

[Excerpt of an article by Donald Kirk, Christian Science Monitor]

Famine Looms in North Korea as Grain Prices Soar 250%

A growing number of critics say that skyrocketing grain prices in North Korean markets are a prelude to another potential mass starvation.

North Koreans heavily depend on grain consumption as a source of nutrition, a family of four needing at least 60 kilograms a month, or 720 kilograms a year. If the cost of fuel, side dishes, and other necessities are calculated, a family of four will need at least 400 to 500 dollars a year.

It is difficult to estimate North Korea’s national per capita income, but it is believed between 368 and 389 dollars for a family of four.

Other experts on North Korean affairs, such as Seo Jae-jin, a chief researcher at the state-run Korea Institute for National Unification, and Dong Yong-seung, head of the Economic Security Team at the Samsung Economic Research Institute, said that the possibility of mass starvation in the North is slim as the North now has markets, which are run under the principle of supply and demand.

“Mass starvation occurred in mid-1990s because the markets did not have the strength to stand on their own because the government’s ability to meet the demand was paralyzed. However, the situation is different now,” said Dong.

In a press conference held in Washington, Ven. Beopryun, head of Good Friends, an aid organization for North Korean refugees, argued that the international community should immediately send food aid to the Stalinist regime as some 200,000 to 300,000 North Koreans might die of starvation in May and June.

[Excerpt from Dong-A Ilbo]

Emergency food aid for North Korea

The head of the US State Department's Korea desk and four other US officials recently crossed the line from North to South Korea at the truce village of Panmunjom at the weekend lugging 18,000 documents the North Koreans gave them on their nuclear program.

Daily logs may provide clues on how much plutonium North Korean technicians have managed to reprocess at the nuclear complex at Yongbyon or nuclear warheads. Despite the volume of papers handed over to the Americans, however, no way do analysts believe North Korea is about to give up its deepest nuclear secrets.

North Korea needs to appear cooperative while writhing in mounting economic problems that approach the years of suffering during the late 1990s. It is not clear if the US team in Pyongyang came to terms on a deal for emergency food aid, but North Koreans crossing the Tumen River border into China testify to the urgency of the food crisis.

"The situation is extremely dire right now," said Tim Peters, founder of Helping Hands Korea, providing sustenance for North Korean refugees. "People are comparing it to 1994 and 1995. The poor harvest and poor weather are the worst in 13 to 14 years." An influx of aid from the US and South Korea, on top of aid the North receives from China, "could be a big help", Peters said, "but my question is, how far will it filter down to the little people?"

[Excerpt of an article by Donald Kirk, Asia Times]

Humanitarian food crisis looms in North Korea

The UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) has warned that time is running out to avert looming food shortages and a potential humanitarian crisis in North Korea (DPRK) following confirmation of a critically low national harvest stemming in part from last year’s heavy August floods.

Read more

North Koreans attempting to get asylum in foreign embassies

Conditions indicate this will be another very lean year for the poor innocents of North Korea.

View a montage of news footage of North Koreans attempting to get asylum in foreign embassies in China, as well as footage from inside North Korea.

Demonstration at Chinese Consulate in Toronto

After arriving in Toronto, Canada, for a speaking engagement at a Korean-Canadian NGO eager to advance the cause of North Korean human rights, Tim Peters of Helping Hands Korea organized a demonstration in front of the Chinese Consulate. The speaking event was attended by a Senator and several MP’s who came down from Ottawa to hear the presentation on the ‘underground railroad’ and the work of Helping Hands Korea.

US to soften Pyongyang nuke demands

The US for the first time said it would ease its demands on North Korea in a bid to break a stalemate on ending Pyongyang's nuclear arms drive.

The top Asia hand at the US National Security Council, Dennis Wilder, said North Korea was not "off the hook" on fully declaring its atomic programs, but that proliferation issues would be "handled in a different manner".

The concession came as South Korean President Lee Myung-bak proposed the creation of the first liaison offices in the capitals of the two Koreas, which are technically in a state of war.

On the weapons front, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, in an apparent concession to Pyongyang, indicated the entire overdue declaration might not be made public. She hinted US sanctions against North Korea could be removed even before the hardline communist state's nuclear programs or proliferations activities were verified independently.

North Korea has been pushing the US to remove it from the black list of state sponsors of terrorism. Dr Rice said the document incorporating North Korea's proliferation activities could be kept private, allowing Pyongyang to save face.

Washington is eager to see the denuclearisation drive completed before President George W. Bush leaves office in January next year. The North tested a nuclear bomb in October 2006.

[The Australian]

North Korea at risk of famine

North Korea may be on the brink of another famine as a result of last year's devastating floods, the worldwide increase in food prices, and a malnourished population, the United Nations warned today.

"North Korea ... faces a dire food shortage," U.N. World Food Program spokesman Paul Risley said at a Bangkok news conference. "Because of high global food prices it will be very difficult for the government of DPRK to purchase food on global markets to make up the difference."

The Democratic Republic of North Korea is still recovering from a famine in the 1990s that is believed to have killed about a million people and left many children permanently stunted, according to the New York-based Human Rights Watch.

Nearly 40 percent of North Korea's young children remain "chronically malnourished," according to a recent survey by the WFP and UNICEF. And this year, the isolated communist country is expected to see the largest harvest deficit since 2001, according to the U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organization.

The price of rice and other staple foods has doubled over the past year.

[CNN]

Bounty up 1600 percent for North Korean Defectors

China claims Tibetan protestors are being agitated by foreign religious elements, and so now is starting to suspect foreign connections behind any activities of which it disapproves.

Norbert Vollertsen tells us that LFNKR has received a report from staff in Jilin Province that any Christian church in Yanbien found to be involved with foreigners, including South Koreans, is being shut down. In addition, the punishment has been made more severe for extending help to North Korean defectors. Until recently, violators were fined, but they now face imprisonment.

The Yanbien Autonomous Korean Prefecture in Jilin Province is attempting to attract more informants to report North Korean defectors by raising the bounty by 1600 percent for each North Korean defector turned in.

LFNKR suggests that you send a letter of protest to the Chinese government. (To find the PRC embassy in your country.)

As the Beijing Olympics draw near

As the Beijing Olympics draw near, crackdowns on Chinese human-rights activists are increasing, as well as on North Korean refugees entering China. Read more

Confronting China

Tibet erupted in flames surprisingly just in time to tarnish China’s impressive 2008 Olympic preparations. Tibet can never emerge as an issue without the primary western support.

Washington is convinced that China’s economic rise is undermining its political and economic hegemony. The western rhetoric over Tibet is just a smokescreen that hides a disgustingly larger agenda that goes as far as stopping Chinese investments in African oilfields, where the Americans and the British are dazed at how the Chinese have outspent them on buying up oil concessions.

As soon as the riots erupted in Tibet, Ms. Pelosi, the first woman speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, dashed to New Delhi to meet the Dalai Lama. More nauseating was her self-righteous sermon on Tibet. “If freedom loving people throughout the world do no speak out,” she said, “we have lost all moral authority to speak on human rights anywhere in the world.” This coming from a country that stands culpable for the murder of 300,000 Iraqis in five years of brutal American occupation.

John McCain was quick to say in Paris that “mistreatment” in Tibet was an “unacceptable conduct for a world power.”

Britain’s former defense minister, Michael Portillo, a celebrated gay who bowed out after a scandal in the 1990s, openly asked western countries to blackmail China using Tibet. In a London newspaper, he came out with this headline, ‘Tibet: the West can use the Olympics as a weapon against Beijing.”

The western focus now is to push the Chinese government to make one wrong move so that Washington and other ‘allied’ governments could drag Beijing into a costly confrontation.

[Excerpt of an article by Ahmed Quraish, Global Politician]

Brussels-based NGO helps 12 North Koreans find freedom

Yesterdayday at 11.55 am (local time), two senior leaders of Human Rights Without Frontiers Int'l (HRWF Int'l) from Brussels and Paris forced their way inside the Embassy of South Korea in Vientiane, Laos, with 12 refugees from North Korea who had travelled through China before getting stranded in Laos.

Nine of them had arrived 2 months ago and three more on 26 March.

At 1.40 pm, HRWF Int'l received the news that the South Korean Embassy was processing their requests for political asylum in South Korea.

Helping Hands Korea meeting with UN Special Rapporteur on North Korean Human Rights

Helping Hands Korea, represented by founder Tim Peters, was one of several NGO’s invited to meet in Seoul with UN Special Rapporteur on North Korean Human Rights, Dr. Vitit Muntarbhorn.

The Special Rapporteur is preparing an important annual report on the North Korean refugee situation and solicited data from NGO’s to help him to make the report as comprehensive as possible.

Fact Sheet on North Korean Refugees

Below are excerpts of a fact sheet submitted by Tim Peters of Helping Hands Korea, to UN Special Rapporteur on North Korean Human Rights, Dr. Vitit Muntarbhorn. The following is based on Helping Hand Korea’s experience and assessment of the North Korean refugee situations in China and surrounding countries.

China

· Estimate of roughly 300,000 to 450,000 North Korean refugees living in fear and hiding throughout China.

· As the Beijing Olympics approach, there is stronger and stronger evidence of yet another crackdown by Chinese authorities, similar to the "Strike Hard" campaigns in earlier years of this decade.Proliferation of CN_NK border surveillance cameras, heat & motion sensors.

· The Chinese leadership continue to ignore their nation's obligations as a signatory to the 1951 Convention on the Protection of Refugees by its policy of forceful repatriation of North Korean refugees by the thousands every year.

· Courageous NGO activists have suffered long prison sentences in China for sacrificially assisting NK refugees.Sadly, all too often South Korean diplomats in China have done very little to come to the aid of their citizens in prison, choosing rather to echo the accusations of the Chinese government, scolding activists for their refugee assistance on Chinese soil.

Mongolia

· Although the Mongolian government has been relatively cooperative to NK refugees by not sending them back to China when they cross the Sino-Mongolian border, still the harsh geographic and climatic conditions of the Gobi Desert have resulted in the needless deaths of many scores of NK refugees who risked their lives to flee repatriation in China.

Thailand

· There are currently approximately 600 NK refugees in Thailand. At present, there are approximately 400 NK refugees in the International Detention Center (IDC) near Bangkok. 300 of the internees are women and 100 are men.

· Conditions within the IDC have been deteriorating for many months, especially since the coup in September of 2006. Overcrowding, the extreme shortage of toilets and showers have made conditions extremely difficult for the NK refugees, even prompting hunger strikes.

· Up until early 2007, the South Korean embassy was processing a mere trickle 10 NK refugees per month for resettlement and transporting them to Seoul. During 2007,the pace of resettlement processing by the embassy increased to 40/wk. just after the presidential elections on Dec. 19, 2007.

Laos

· NK refugees consider Laos to be marginally better than conditions in China, but not nearly as safe as Mongolia or Thailand due to its communist government.

Vietnam

· Following the wrong-footed massive airlift of 469 NK refugees from Vietnam by the South Korean embassy in Hanoi in 2004, the Vietnamese government gave the embassy an ultimatum to stop processing NK refugees there.

Russia

· The Russian border patrol has history of sending NK refugees back to China if they enter Russian soil from that country.

Shifts underway in North Korea

South Korean daily Dong-a Ilbo reports that, fearing a military coup against him, Kim Jong-il is pulling back some power from his military, a major shift in North Korea’s military-first policy.

A North Korean government source says funds for the armed forces are being cut by 30 per cent to prevent the generals from taking over. Meanwhile the secret police apparatus is strengthened, the Ministry of People’s Security.

According to this anonymous government source, the shift indicates that Kim Jong-il is afraid of the power vacuum that his death might cause, and that he is convinced that his dynasty has the right to rule over the country. For this reason he does not want the military to dominate a power struggle.

Additionally, The Washington Post reminds us, “A grim rite of spring is the calculation of how many North Koreans could starve before the fall harvest -- and what the neighbors are willing to do about it.”

Severe crop failure in the North, surging global prices for food and tougher behavior by donors, particularly South Korea and China, are putting unaccustomed pressure on Kim Jong Il's dysfunctional communist state.

Please consider sending a letter to Chinese embassies and consulates in your area, using the letter below as a model if you wish. [To locate the embassy in your country]

His Excellency Hu Jintao
President, People’s Republic of China
c/o His Excellency Zhou Wenzhong
Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary
Embassy of the People’s Republic of China
2300 Connecticut Avenue
Washington, D.C. 20008

Dear Mr. President:

We are writing with an urgent request that your country not repatriate to North Korea the four North Korean refugees arrested on March 5, 2008, by the Chinese authorities and now being held in Shenyang Border Patrol Detention Center. The four include
three women and one man identified as follows: Hahn Chang Kuk (male, aged 30), Lee Jong-Sun (female), Lee Kung-Shin (female, 30) and Lee Jong-Shin (female, 33).

As you now, there have been several recent incidents reported by the media of public executions by the North Korean authorities for North Koreans that were sent back to North Korea by South Korea and China. We believe that these four refugees will
be executed if they are sent back to North Korea by the Chinese border patrol.

As we have stated in previous letters to you, we understand and respect China’s concerns about its borders with the influx of refugees from North Korea. We want to work with China to resolve this issue humanely working under international law and with respect for China and its border integrity.

We beg you to consider that these four refugees will be executed if returned by China to North Korea. They most certainly meet the conditions under the 1951 U.N. Convention on Refugees and its 1967 Protocol, which oblige China not to repatriate them.

We thank you in advance for considering our request and hope that you will protect these four individuals, whose lives are in your hands.

Sincerely,

Suzanne Scholte

North Korea Freedom Coalition

China feels pressure over North Koreans

As the Olympics approach, activists push Beijing to halt its crackdown on refugees from its impoverished neighbor and those who help them defect to South Korea.

North Koreans cross over the Tumen River in an attempt to defect to South Korea. High barbed-wire fences have been erected along the banks of the Tumen River, which runs along part of China's border with North Korea. Recently, the Chinese have started blocking routes leading out of China as well, installing ultrared heat and motion sensors in the desert terrain near the border with Mongolia. Mobile telephone calls and e-mails among activists are monitored, and informants pose as defectors to infiltrate safe houses where North Koreans are hiding. Those caught are repatriated to North Korea.

Human rights advocates are now pushing China for at least a truce in honor of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing in August. The treatment of North Koreans, along with concerns that China is not doing enough to stop the bloodshed in the Darfur region of ally Sudan, threatens to shadow the Games.

"These Olympics are just about the most important international event in Chinese history. If they want to brag to the world about what a safe and stable place China is, they have to do something for the refugees," said Do Hee-youn, who runs a fund for North Korean defectors in Seoul.

There are some indications that the Chinese are paying heed. In December, they unexpectedly released Yu Sang-jun, a defector who had become an activist. Caught guiding refugees to the border, he was held for less than four months, a short stay compared with the years-long sentences doled out to others who did the same. Christian activists in Seoul had lobbied hard for Yu's release and were delighted when he arrived safely home. But the activists were not counting on his release signaling a change of course by the Chinese.

"At best, they'll put on a public relations show for the Olympics," activist Tim Peters said. "But it won't be anything more than smoke and mirrors."

[Excerpt of an article by Barbara Demick, Los Angeles Times]

Millions earmarked for North Korean refugees tied up in US Congress

The North Korean Human Rights Act passed in 2004 authorized the use of US$24 million (€16.5 million) to improve human rights in North Korea and help refugees. But none of that money has been appropriated, or approved, yet by the U.S. Congress for release, Christian Whiton, deputy to the U.S. special envoy on human rights in North Korea, said.

Hundreds of North Koreans flee starvation, economic and political repression every year, hoping to find refuge in a third country. Many escape into China and take a long and risky land journey through the jungles of neighboring Laos and into Thailand, while others try to cross the Gobi desert into Mongolia.

China treats North Korean defectors as economic migrants and forcibly repatriates many of those it finds, to almost certain incarceration, torture and possible execution. Ahead of the Beijing Olympics, China's police are stepping up surveillance along the border with North Korea and cracking down on refugee shelters, said Tim Peters, founder of the private group Helping Hands North Korea.

"When you're putting on a huge festival like the Olympics, the last thing China wants is a public relations nightmare such as North Korean refugees showing up at inopportune times," Peters said at the lecture. He called for China to abide by its international obligations and treat North Koreans as refugees, not as illegal migrants.

Peters - whose organization escorts refugees across borders to find asylum in third countries - said the crackdown was forcing refugees to abandon urban safehouses for more rural ones, and that some of these were as basic as a simple hole in the ground where a North Korean may live for up to a year, waiting for the right moment to flee.

[Excerpt of an article by Cassie Biggs, Associated Press]

Worst Christian Persecution Expected in Saudi Arabia, North Korea

A UK-based Christian human rights group says that in 2008 some of the harshest persecution endured by Christians is likely to take place in states where Christianity is illegal - North Korea and Saudi Arabia.

“Imprisonment … continues to be a fact of life for secret Christians in North Korea,” says Tim Peters of Helping Hands Korea, which supports refugees escaping the repressive regime of Kim Jong-Il.

“Pressures include an absolute ban on owning a Bible, assembling to pray or to read the Scriptures, and evangelism - even of one’s own children. Being discovered as a member of the underground church inside North Korea can result in one’s entire family being sent to a prison camp.”

Emotional airport welcome for North Korean activist Yoo Sang-joon

Freed activist, Yoo Sang-joon (center) is welcomed at airport by fellow activists fighting for the cause of North Korean refugees. Yoo Sang-joon, a former North Korean refugee himself before becoming an activist, and just released from a Chinese prison, was clearly overwhelmed by the welcome/protest at the Incheon Airport.

From left to right, Norbert Vollertsen, Tim Peters, Yoo Sang-joon, Choi Young-hoon, and Mr. Lee from Save North Korea.

China frees North Korea’s ‘Pimpernel’

A North Korean dissident who risked being sent home from China to certain execution has been released one month after The Sunday Times revealed his plight. Yoo Sang-joon, 36, was the key activist in an underground Christian network that smuggles North Korean refugees across China to safety in other countries.

He landed in Seoul after the Chinese authorities bowed to diplomatic pressure and freed him after four months in secret detention.

His arrival was greeted with joy among the Christian community in South Korea, who had feared for his life. “It’s a wonderful Christmas gift,” said Tim Peters, a pastor who works with the refugees.

North Korean agents were demanding his return under a treaty between the two communist allies, even though he held a passport from South Korea. Yoo is one of the most wanted men in Kim Jong-il’s North Korea. “He would have been executed,” said Peters.

Yoo’s wife and daughter died in the North Korean famine of the 1990s and his surviving son died, aged 10, on a trek across the Gobi desert to seek safety in Mongolia.

It was the second time this year that international publicity had saved refugees from deportation back to North Korea.

Three orphaned children held in jail in Vientiane, the capital of Laos, were threatened with a forced return home. They were released and handed over to the South Korean embassy a few days after The Sunday Times published a photograph and letters from them pleading for help.

Refugees who are sent back to North Korea face some of the worst human rights abuses in the world. They have reported beatings, abuse and harsh conditions in camps and prisons. Some have been executed. Pregnant women have suffered forced abortions and the murder of their babies.

[Excerpt of Sunday Times article, by Michael Sheridan]