Demonstrations Planned to Save North Korean Refugees
Protests Planned Worldwide
Suzanne Scholte of the North Korea Freedom Coalition writes:
Please remember the International Protest Against China’s Violent Treatment of North Korean Refugees will be occurring around the world at noon on November 30 and December 1 at Chinese consulates and embassies. We need everyone to join and support these events as the situation in China is worse than ever for North Korean refugees.
Human Trafficking Victim – Choi Chong-mi
Name: Choi Chong-mi
(Female, Name changed for safety)
Birth date: 1969
Hometown: Hamgyong Bukto
It is an unending nightmare. I don’t know how to begin telling everything that has happened to me. It will probably sound like fiction to you. When I was two years old, following the death of my father, I was taken in by four aunts and an uncle. My cousins were like my parents, sisters and brother.
Human Trafficking Victim – Lee Sun Ja
Name: Lee Sun Ja
(Female, Name changed for safety)
Date of Birth: 1981
Hometown: Hamgyong Bukto, North Korea
When I was three years old, my parents suddenly disappeared. Nobody knows if they died or if they were sent into a concentration camp for political prisoners. My step-parents treated me worse than a beast. I was hardly fed daily, so I grew up as a beggar. Since I remained a Kot-jebi (street child) until I escaped into China, I never had a chance to go to a school. In North Korea, while I was living the Kot-jebi life, I begged but I also broke into houses to steal from time to time.
Proposed Action Plan for 2007-2008
Life Funds for North Korean Refugees, NGO
Strained Relations
The crackdown on North Korean refugees by both the Chinese and North Korean governments has drastically cut the flow of North Koreans into China, reducing it to levels below those of the past decade. China’s official position is that North Korean refugees do not exist, a stance that blatantly ignores international law, including the Convention on the Status of Refugees, to which it is a signatory nation.
Report on LFNKR Activities in FY 2006
Annual Activities Report
It is now obvious that North Korean defectors are being widely recognized and accepted as a legitimate issue by the international community. According to the resolution unanimously passed by the UN General Assembly last December, the UN special rapporteur on human rights in North Korea has been urging the North Korean government to correct its serious infringement of human rights and to allow the rapporteur entry into the country to investigate human rights there.
Two Former NK Refugees Now Happily Wed
By Midori Yotsuya, LFNKR Member
It was Aug. 30, just after the 4th General Meeting in Seoul of IPCNKR (International Parliamentarians’ Coalition for North Korean Refugees and Human Rights). We headed to a small hotel to meet some of the foster children that LFNKR had formerly supported under our education sponsorship plan. They had all lived together like a family for several years at the same LFNKR shelter in China after fleeing from North Korea. Some of them are now young adults in their early twenties.
Escapee from North Korea Sold as Slave to a Sex Chat Site
First, Banished to the Middle of Nowhere for Watching a South Korean Movie
Hwang Miryon, 19
Former Chongjin University student
(Name changed to protect her safety)
My family was relatively well-off even in Chongjin, but in August 2005 we were suddenly struck by misfortune, something we could never have imagined. It all started when a family with whom we were friends was arrested on charges of watching a foreign film. An acquaintance of the wife was arrested by the “109 Brigade” and before we knew it they had come for us as well.
US Deputy Special Envoy Addresses Bangkok Conference
Christian Whiton Addresses
The Conference on North Korean Human Rights
It’s an honor to be here at the Bangkok International Conference on the North Korean Human Rights Situation. I would like to thank all of those who have made this conference possible. We are here to discuss and draw attention to an issue of great international and moral importance—the plight of the North Korean people, and steps that those of us in the free world can take to aid them, and in so doing, further the cause of peace and security in North East Asia.