North Korea Tries to Crush Dissent Along Its Borders

Chosun Ilbo correspondent Kang Chol-Hwan has a disturbing new report on a North Korean crackdown on dissent and efforts to destroy evidence of the regime’s atrocities. Kang himself is a survivor of North Korea’s Yodok labor camp district, a complex of camps that covers a vast, remote area of northeaster North Korea. Kang was sent to Yodok while still in elementary school because of a political transgression by his grandfather. You can read the full story in his autobiography.

The world recently saw its first evidence of dissent inside North Korea, a video taken in secret from inside North Korea. Although the video appeared to have been edited, North Korean defectors who study English with a regular reader of this blog confirmed that parts of the tape were indeed made in Hoeryong, North Korea. The tape shows defaced posters of Kim Il Sung and the recitation of an anti-government speech. Had the makers of any part of that tape been caught, it would undoubtedly have ended with them standing before a firing squad.

Perhaps it has.

North Korea has conducted a brutal crackdown including public executions of human traffickers and cellphone owners in the Sino-Korean border town of Hoeryeong, North Hamgyeong Province, witnesses said. There are rumors that clandestine footage of the executions has been smuggled out of the country. Hoeryeong is one of the major defection routes out of North Korea and the site of a recently dismantled concentration camp.

The report implies the existence of anti-government resistance in the area:

A North Korean administrative official who recently defected to the South said there were three rounds of arrests aimed at “anti-socialist groups” in the Hoeryeong area between January and February this year by squads made up of agents of the State Safety and Security Agency, the Ministry of Public Security and police. The defector said the roundup targeting anti-socialist elements linked to China happened at the direct orders of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il. Three individuals were executed for human trafficking and trying to sell U.S. military dog tags on Feb. 28 and March 1.

Two intriguing points there–first, the suggestion that Kim Jong Il remains in power; and second, the sale of U.S. military dog tags, which suggests more intriguing questions. In Viet Nam, fake U.S. dog tags and engraved Zippo lighters were on sale seemingly everywhere. Why would old dog tags be so valuable to the regime? We know that North Korea held onto some ROK POWs long after it agreed to repatriate all of them; could the same be true of some of the American prisoners?

Once again, a grim reminder that in North Korea, punishment is ruthless, and is often imposed on entire families:

The defector said a judge on Feb. 28 read the sentence aloud. “In times made difficult by the vile anti-DPRK schemes of the U.S. and their South Korean puppets, anti-party counterrevolutionaries who damaged the authority of the party and Fatherland will be executed,” he quoted the judge as saying. Nine women implicated in human trafficking were given prison sentences.

Other defectors said 63 households — about 300 people — were sent into forced exile in remote mountainous regions in South Hamgyeong Province such as Jangjin and Bujeon counties. One said that secretly filmed footage of the Feb. 28 executions was smuggled abroad.

If the tape emerges, of course, you can expect a link at this blog. North Korea is apparently trying to cover up the evidence of its worst human rights violations:

Meanwhile, a North Korean official who visited China earlier this year said work on dismantling the notorious Political Prison Camp No. 22 was completed late last year. Work on dismantling the camp began in 2003. The official said the camp was taken down because a large-scale riot broke out there in October 2003 and because satellite photos of the camp had drawn the interest of the international community.

Lee Myeong-cheol (not his real name), a defector from Hoeryeong, said it seemed the political prisoners kept at the Heoryeong camp were moved to a prison in Yodeok. The Hoeryeong camp was North Korea’s largest, with about 50,000 inmates. About rumors that the camp had been dismantled, a South Korean National Intelligence Service official said Thursday there was information along those lines, but it needed to be confirmed.

Camp 22 is also the location where North Korea reportedly killed entire families in gas chambers to test the effects of different chemical weapons. The Simon Wiesenthal Center had called for an international tribunal to investigate these reports. This report, if true, certainly suggests that North Korea has something to hide.

A more chilling question–what happened to the people who lived in the camp? Did North Korea “dispose of” them, too?