‘So many people died, they wrapped bodies in plastic sheets and buried them in a mountain.’
Human Rights Watch, one of the industry bigs that (until now) had been mostly absent from the discussion of human rights in North Korea, has made an important entry into that discussion, via this Washington Post op-ed by Kay Sok. Ms. Sok makes several important points here, and the first of these is how North Korea’s version of socialism is a recipe for selective deprivation as a weapon of class warfare:
Many of these North Koreans crossed the border because the state failed them. North Korea claims to have a socialist system under which all citizens receive free food, education, medical care and housing. But the reality is that only the country’s elite enjoy such privileges. The rest of the population is left to fend for itself. Undertaking the dangerous and difficult journey to China is a form of self-defense. The North Korean government fails to feed its people but then persecutes them for trying to survive.
The second point is what a bunch of sick, heartless fascist thugs the Chinese police are:
A 59-year-old North Korean woman told us about her deportation from China and punishment in North Korea. Her crime? She had left without state permission, which is considered an act of treason. “I went to China because I had no food at home. But I had to live in hiding there, so I tried to go to South Korea,” she said. “I was caught. The Chinese police took all the money I saved. They beat and kicked me.
Finally, Ms. Sok tells us that the North Korean regime has intensified the brutality of those whom China repatriates to the North:
When I was sent back to North Korea, things got even worse. They made me strip, and a doctor searched my vagina to see if I hid any money they could confiscate. They treated me like an animal, because they considered me a traitor.” After serving a prison sentence, she escaped to China again in September.
A 42-year-old woman from Haeju said she was deported from China in December 2003 and served 18 months in a North Korean labor camp. “Every day, I saw someone dying. We were given a fistful of powdered corn stalk, three times a day, and people had trouble digesting it. Many people died after having diarrhea for a week,” she said. “They left patients in the hallway outside toilets. So many people died, they wrapped bodies in plastic sheets and buried them in a mountain.”
Often in the past, North Korea had been relatively lenient to some of its nationals who were sent back: traders, those who had crossed just to get food, and those who had no contact with South Koreans, Westerners, Japanese, or missionaries (those who had contact with those latter groups were generally as good as dead, either quickly or slowly). That deplorable situation is changing for the worse as North Korea tries to restore control over the border, a matter of survival for Kim Jong Il’s rule.