Justice for Rev. Kim Dong Shik: Court orders N. Korea to pay $330M in damages

Asher Perlin, the lawyer who argued and won the case against North Korea at the Court of Appeals on behalf of Rev. Kim Dong Shik’s family, writes in to direct me to this news:

An Israeli NGO announced on Monday that a US federal court in Washington, DC has granted it a historic $330 million default award judgment against North Korea in a civil damages trial for wrongful death, torture and kidnapping.

The judgment, only announced Monday, but written on April 9, included $15 million dollars each to the son and brother of Reverend Dong Shik Kim, presumed dead, as well as $300 million in punitive damages. [Jerusalem Post]

In 2000, Rev. Kim was in China helping North Korean refugees who had escaped from their homeland. North Korean agents kidnapped Rev. Kim and dragged him across the border. He’s believed to have died of starvation at a North Korean military base near Pyongyang. In 2005, the South Koreans caught one of the kidnappers, charged him with Rev. Kim’s kidnapping, and convicted him of the crime.

In August 2013, a District Court found that the evidence was insufficient to prove that North Korea killed Rev. Kim after the North Koreans hustled him over the border (undoubtedly, under the noses of Chinese border guards) and dismissed the case. Kim’s family appealed, and last December, the Court of Appeals reversed the District Court.

Shurat Hadin Director Nitzana Darshan-Leitner said, “The district court was holding us to a standard that no family, who had a loved one kidnapped and murdered by an outlaw regime like North Korea could ever satisfy.”

“Virtually no one has ever returned from the camps and been able to testify about the fate of individual Korean prisoners. This is an important human rights decision that will be utilized in all political abduction cases going forward. We are proud that an Israeli NGO was able to assist this family of a Korean priest living in the US … during this holiday season.” 

The NGO also said that the US should re-add North Korea to the US State Department’s watch list, from which North Korea was removed in 2008 during a period of warming of relations.

Perlin said the court “sent a message that repressive regimes cannot exploit their repression to gain advantage in US courts.”

He added that “the fact that all witnesses were either murdered, imprisoned or are in grave fear of retaliation by the DPRK regime should not immunize North Korea from liability.”  [Jerusalem Post]

President Bush removed North Korea from the list of state sponsors of terrorism on October 11, 2008. The Obama Administration’s official view is that North Korea is “not known to have sponsored any terrorist acts since the bombing of a Korean Airlines flight in 1987.” Discuss among yourselves.

Rev. Kim’s kidnapping is just one example of North Korea’s sponsorship of terrorism, along with multiple assassination attempts directed at defectors and dissidents, several shipments of weapons to Hamas and Hezbollah, threats against American moviegoers, and an attempt by North Korean hackers to cause malfunctions in the reactors of South Korean nuclear power plants.

The $330 million judgment now sits alongside $378 million awarded to the victims of the 1972 Lod Airport massacre (and their children), and $69 million to survivors of the U.S.S. Pueblo. That’s a total, so far, of $777 million in compensatory and punitive damages, but it’s not a grand total.

Last July, U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth found North Korea provided training, technical assistance, and rocket components to Hezbollah, and held that the North Korean government was liable for the attacks. A Special Master is deciding and apportioning the damages North Korea owes to each plaintiff.

Now, the hunt begins for North Korean assets to levy to satisfy the judgment, which may be the more challenging part of the Kim family’s pursuit of justice. I wish Mr. Perlin good hunting.