Kang Cheol-Hwan Meets British Foreign Secretary

Thanks to Freedom House’s Jae Ku, who accompanied Kang, for the tip. The picture, from the Foreign Ministry’s site, shows Kang with British Secretary Jack Straw, who made this statement:

‘It was an honour to meet Mr Kang Cheol Hwan, who has experienced at first hand the despicable human rights abuses committed by the North Korean regime. North Korea is rightly considered to have one of the worst human rights records in the world, with arbitrary detention, political executions, torture, labour camps and extreme religious persecution commonplace.

‘We discussed the current situation in North Korea. Mr Kang’s eyewitness account of forced labour, frequent public executions and near-starvation rations is invaluable evidence of the outrages committed by this most secretive of regimes. We share a common goal in attempting to raise the international awareness of the human rights abuses taking place there.

‘The British Government presses the North Korean authorities on human rights abuses at every opportunity, urging them in particular to cooperate with UN mechanisms and to allow international monitors to inspect prison camps.’

Kang has also been making the rounds in the British media, including an interview for BBC’s Today (yes, the same program, sorry, programme that infamously claimed that Tony Blair “sexed up” Iraq intelligence). An excerpt:

MT: What were conditions like at the camp?

KCH: If there is a hell on earth I believe that is a North Korean Gulag. A lot of people including myself suffered from severe malnutrition. I and my family and my friends we used to eat rats, snake and frogs. Without eating those raw meats we can not even survive there. As a just nine years old boy it was a very difficult situation for myself. I fainted several times but a lot of my friends they were not so lucky like me and lots of them they die. So many old people, children and pregnant women died out of starvation and malnutrition. I remember that. I dug the hole for more than a hundred people by myself for their graves.

MT: Is Yodok Camp still operating?

KCH: Yodok Political Prisoner’s Camp is still there and it is even enlarged since I was released.

MT: Earlier this summer you were granted an audience with President Bush and his National Security Advisor in Washington what did they have to say to you?

KCH: President Bush told me that in order to help North Korean peoples and their human rights it is very important to link those humanitarian assistance from the outer world with the improvement conditions of human rights in North Korea. President Bush told me that United States will continue the humanitarian assistance to the North Korean people.

Nicholas Eberstadt recently told me that the road to Seoul leads through Europe. He is evidently not alone in that belief.