North Korean Beating Video: Is It Real? Are We Asking the Right Question?

The short answer is that I don’t know, and I probably never will know. What’s more, I haven’t seen the tape–Daily NK says it won’t be broadcast until mid-October–so I’m mostly going on what I’ve seen of the stills. I’ve had suspicions about the authenticity of the video (you can see a montage here), allegedly depicting the torture of a repatriated North Korean refugee woman, since it first emerged. I summarized these suspicions in an e-mail to Life Funds for North Korean Refugees, a Japanese NGO, that has worked tirelessly and effectively to help refugees and publicize their plight:

I have questions about the authenticity of the tape. To me, it seems improbable that anyone could have carried a hidden camera into such an interrogation. The position of the camera suggests that it wasn’t hidden. The clarity is suspiciously good. At one point, a guard’s arm band appears to switch positions. Is there anything you can tell me to vouch for the authenticity of this?

LFNKR responded the following day:

Thank you for your email. Today, Chosunilbo released the Japanese translation of the article telling how it was taken. According to the article, one of the officers in the footage videotaped it using a Japanese videocamera with a sneak shot feature. He escaped immediately after the footage was broadcast on 26th, and he is now hiding in China. The footage is 38 minutes long, and it clarifies several doubts, including the switched position of the arm band. We hope Chosunilbo will add the English translation of the article by tomorrow; if not, we’ll translate it and post it on our website as a followup. . . .

Since then, the Daily NK has added some additional information to support the authenticity of the tape. Their latest article explains that the tape was taken surreptitiously by a North Korean officer, who defected after it became known.

LFNKR had a consistent explanation–that a North Korean officer surreptitiously took this 38-minute video by hiding a camera inside his bag, and then defected. What would motivate someone to risk his life this way? Perhaps the substantial cash rewards that Japanese NGOs and media offers for such images, combined with the fact that Kim Jong Il has made North Korea such a perfect place not to live these days. What better way to begin a life as in exile than with a modest cash reward?

So this much makes sense to me. What’s more, the full video will apparently address my doubt that the camera was actually hidden. It doesn’t answer all of my questions, however. My own ex-military perspective? I can understand how overstretched, undisciplined armies let haircut standards slip, but soldiers don’t forget which side of the uniform a piece of insignia or an armband goes on. I also find it remarkable–but not really dispositive–that even the person who was daring enough to take these pictures would actually go and adjust the camera position right inside the police station, as the Daily NK report suggests he did.

It’s true, of course, that perfectly valid questions about this tape have distracted us from the greater issue, which is that in North Korea, much worse happens every day. As long as the regime successfully prevents the news media from carrying away authenticated images of the horrors there, the world’s news media will assuredly shift their gazes to relative trivialities that better suit their ideological and visual interest. So perhaps rather than presuming the authenticity of lack thereof of something that’s unknowable, let us focus on why the answer is unknowable:

The demand that should come of this tape is for a full investigation of whether the North Korean regime treats its people this way.