Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-caDC-13-07147/USCOURTS-caDC-13-07147-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Democratic People's Republic of Korea
Appellee
John Does 1-10
Appellee
Human Rights First
Amicus Curiae for Appellant
Han Kim
Appellant
Yong Seok Kim
Appellant

Document Text:

United States Court of Appeals

FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT

Argued November 20, 2014 Decided December 23, 2014

No. 13-7147

HAN KIM AND YONG SEOK KIM,

APPELLANTS

v.

DEMOCRATIC PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF KOREA, ALSO KNOWN AS 

NORTH KOREA AND JOHN DOES 1-10,

APPELLEES

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the District of Columbia

(No. 1:09-cv-00648)

Asher Perlin argued the cause for appellants. With him on 

the brief was Robert J. Tolchin. Meir Katz entered an 

appearance.

Robert P. LoBue argued the cause for amicus curiae 

Human Rights First. With him on the brief was Gabor Rona.

Before: TATEL and WILKINS, Circuit Judges, and EDWARDS, 

Senior Circuit Judge.

Opinion for the Court filed by Circuit Judge TATEL.

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TATEL,Circuit Judge: Relying on the “terrorism exception” 

to the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, the family of 

Reverend Dong Shik Kim sued the North Korean government 

alleging that it abducted him, confined him to a kwan-li-so—a 

political penal-labor colony—tortured him, and, ultimately, 

killed him. When North Korea failed to appear, the Kims asked 

the district court for a default judgment pursuant to the provision 

of the Act that authorizes a court to enter judgment if the 

plaintiff “establishes his claim or right to relief by evidence that 

is satisfactory to the Court.” The district court denied that 

motion because the Kims had failed to produce “first-hand 

evidence” of what happened to the Reverend. We reverse. 

Admissible record evidence demonstrates that North Korea

abducted Reverend Kim, that it invariably tortures and kills 

political prisoners, and that through terror and intimidation it 

prevents any information about those crimes from escaping to 

the outside world. Requiring a plaintiff to produce direct, firsthand evidence of the victim’s torture and murder would thus 

thwart the purpose of the terrorism exception: holding state 

sponsors of terrorism accountable for torture and extrajudicial 

killing. In these circumstances, we find the Kims’ evidence 

sufficiently “satisfactory” to require a default judgment. 

I.

The Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA) generally 

immunizes foreign governments from suit in the United States. 

See 28 U.S.C. § 1604. Truly heinous acts, however, can negate 

that immunity. Under the statute’s “terrorism exception,” state 

sponsors of terrorism may be liable in federal court for torture 

and extrajudicial killing. See id. § 1605A(a). The FSIA defines 

those substantive offenses by reference to the Torture Victims 

Protection Act (TVPA). See id. § 1605A(h)(7) (citing id. § 1350 

note). That Act defines torture as “any act, directed against an 

individual in the offender’s custody or physical control, by 

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which severe pain or suffering . . . is intentionally inflicted on 

that individual for such purposes as obtaining from that 

individual or a third person information or a confession, 

punishing that individual . . . intimidating or coercing that 

individual or a third person, or for any reason based on 

discrimination of any kind.” TVPA, Pub. L. No. 102-256, 106 

Stat. 73, 73 (1992). An extrajudicial killing is “a deliberated 

killing not authorized by a previous judgment pronounced by a 

regularly constituted court affording all the judicial guarantees 

which are recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples.” Id.

The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK or 

“North Korea”), long a mainstay on the State Department’s list 

of terror sponsors—in fact, one of a small handful of bad actors 

that spurred Congress to adopt the terrorism exception in the 

first place, see H.R. Rep. No. 104-383, at 62 (1995)—has never 

shied away from torturing and killing its political enemies. See

generally U.N. Human Rights Council, Report of the Detailed 

Findings of the Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in the 

Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, U.N. Doc. 

A/HRC/25/CRP.1 (Feb. 7, 2014). That much is clear. Equally 

clear, the Reverend Dong Shik Kim, the alleged victim in this 

case, spent nearly a decade providing humanitarian and religious 

services to North Korean defectors and refugees who fled to

China seeking asylum. And there is no question that North 

Korean operatives abducted Reverend Kim in 2000 after the 

government found out about his activities. In fact, a South 

Korean court convicted a DPRK agent for that very kidnapping. 

See Han Kim v. Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, 950 F. 

Supp. 2d 29, 35 (D.D.C. 2013) (citing Decl. of J.D. Kim).

Beyond that, though, we have no direct evidence of the 

Reverend’s fate. After his family, invoking the terrorism 

exception, sued the North Korean government, they presented 

numerous witnesses, including several experts on the regime’s 

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brutal tactics, who claim to have heard second- or third-hand 

that the Reverend died as a result of torture soon after he 

disappeared. But no one—not the Kims, not the witnesses who 

submitted declarations on their behalf, and not the district 

court—knows for certain what happened.

Still, when the DPRK failed to show up to answer the 

charges, the Kims asked the district court for a default judgment 

holding the regime liable for torturing and killing the Reverend. 

The FSIA provides that “[n]o judgment by default shall be 

entered . . . unless the claimant establishes his claim or right to 

relief by evidence satisfactory to the court.” 28 U.S.C. § 1608(e). 

Precisely what that standard entails—that is, how much and 

what kind of evidence the default provision requires—is unclear.

That question is especially vexing where, as here, the 

defendant State prevents any evidence from leaving its borders. 

Recognizing as much, the district court observed that since 

North Korea “has not participated in the proceedings,” since 

“there has been no opportunity for discovery,” and since the

“widely feared . . . repression” in the country “obscures the 

precise details of Reverend Kim’s treatment,” the plaintiffs 

“cannot be expected to meet a typical standard for judgment as a 

matter of law.” Kim, 950 F. Supp. at 35, 42. Nonetheless, the 

district court concluded that the “evidence must be rigorous 

enough to support the facts necessary for jurisdiction.” Id. 

Relying on Price v. Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya,

294 F.3d 82 (D.C. Cir. 2002), in which this Court rejected an 

FSIA plaintiff’s allegations because he had not recounted the 

precise nature of his mistreatment, the district court determined

that the Kims had failed to carry their evidentiary burden.

Specifically, it observed that their witnesses could “not establish 

the severity of the treatment of Reverend Kim in particular, or 

that his treatment amounts to torture under the rigorous 

definition of that term adopted in the FSIA,” and instead 

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engaged only in “discussion about the abuses generally in [North 

Korean forced-labor] camps to show that” the DPRK “probably”

mistreated the Reverend. Kim, 950 F. Supp. 2d at 41–42.

The Kims appeal. We review the district court’s application 

of the law—in this case, its articulation of the FSIA’s

evidentiary requirements—de novo. See Brayton v. Office of the 

United States Trade Representative, 641 F.3d 521, 524 (D.C. 

Cir. 2011). 

II.

The Torture Victims Protection Act—and, by reference to 

that Act, the FSIA—describestorture and extrajudicial killing in 

some detail. An act is torture only if the perpetrator intends to 

and actually does inflict severe pain in order to punish or to 

extract information. A killing runs afoul of the statute only if it 

occurs outside the normal legal process. The statute thus 

imposes tight constraints on courts required to decide whether an

act satisfies the terrorism exception’s substantive elements. But

when the defendant State fails to appear and the plaintiff seeks a 

default judgment, the FSIA leaves it to the court to determine 

precisely how much and what kinds of evidence the plaintiff 

must provide, requiring only that it be “satisfactory to the court.” 

28 U.S.C. § 1608(e).

Our case law provides little help. Indeed, the single case on 

which the district court relied—Price—differs significantly from 

this one. In that case, we were considering Libya’s motion to 

dismiss under a “standard . . . similar to that of Rule 12(b)(6),”

and we granted that motion because the plaintiff’s allegations

were too general, observing that he “offer[ed] no useful details 

about the nature” or “purpose of the alleged torture.” Price, 294 

F.3d at 93–94. Absent more specific allegations, we explained, 

we were unable to distinguish between “actual torture” and 

“mere police brutality.” Id. at 93. Here, by contrast, the issue is 

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whether the Kims are entitled to a default judgment—a question

that turns on whether the evidence is “satisfactory to the court.” 

Of course, the Kims alleged plenty in their complaint, asserting, 

for example, that “[w]hen Reverend Kim refused to adopt the 

[official political] ideology [of North Korea,] he was punished 

by being deprived of all food” and that he “died as the result of 

[that] starvation and [] torture.” Compl., ¶¶ 24–25. If proven

with admissible evidence, that treatment would clearly constitute 

torture within the TVPA’s meaning. But while accepting the 

Kims’ allegations as true, the district court concluded that their

evidence was too weak to support their claims. Specifically, it 

emphasized repeatedly that the plaintiffs had failed to “provide 

any first-hand accounts of Reverend Kim’s treatment” that 

“address[ed] the nature or severity of any torture Reverend Kim 

suffered, or specif[ied] the frequency or duration of the acts of 

torture or the parts of the body at which they were aimed or any 

weapons used to carry them out.” Kim, 950 F. Supp. 2d at 37

(emphasis added). Properly understood, then, the question before

us is not whether the Kims’ allegations were specific enough to 

implicate the terrorism exception and withstand a motion to 

dismiss, but rather whether the amount and types of evidence 

they proffered were “satisfactory.” On that question, Price has 

nothing to say.

Another important distinction separates this case from 

Price. Having escaped their captors, the Price plaintiffs were 

alive, present, and capable of describing their treatment in more 

detail. In those circumstances, we could realistically expect more 

from them. By contrast, Reverend Kim is missing and presumed 

dead, so his family will almost certainly be unable to offer the 

court any more than they already have.

This second observation is key to the Kims’ case. Congress 

enacted the terrorism exception expressly to bring state sponsors 

of terrorism—including, at the time, the DPRK—to account for 

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their repressive practices. See H.R. Rep. No. 104-383, at 62. 

Concerned with victims’ inability to obtain redress in terrorism 

cases, Congress later amended the statute to make it easier to 

attach a foreign State’s property during litigation and to seize 

those assets to satisfy a judgment. See 28 U.S.C. §§ 1605A(g), 

1610. And the statute has always authorized the courts to enter 

default judgments against defendants who refuse to appear. Id. § 

1608(e). With these provisions, Congress aimed to prevent state 

sponsors of terrorism—entities particularly unlikely to submit to 

this country’s laws—from escaping liability for their sins. 

Here, North Korea seeks to do exactly that. The regime has 

made Reverend Kim unavailable to testify on his own behalf, 

refused to appear in court and subject itself to discovery, and is 

known to intimidate defectors and potential witnesses. Indeed, 

the district court concluded, the regime is so feared that “those 

individuals who may know details about Reverend Kim’s 

whereabouts and treatment . . . convey such information 

sparingly and anonymously,” if at all. Kim, 950 F. Supp. 2d at 

42; see also Decl. of Do Hee-Youn ¶ 2 (explaining that the 

identities of “individuals that have supplied . . . information 

concerning North Korean matters . . . are kept confidential to 

ensure their safety from potential retribution against them by the 

North Korean government”).

In these circumstances, requiring that the Kims prove 

exactly what happened to the Reverend and when would defeat

the Act’s very purpose: to “give American citizens an important 

economic and financial weapon,” H.R. Rep. No. 104-383, at 62,

to “compensat[e] the victims of terrorism, and in so doing to 

punish foreign states who have committed or sponsored such 

acts and deter them from doing so in the future.” Price, 294 F.3d 

at 88–89. This is especially true in cases of forced 

disappearance, like this one, where direct evidence of 

subsequent torture and execution will, by definition, almost 

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always be unavailable, even though indirect evidence may be 

overwhelming. Were we to demand more of plaintiffs like the 

Kims, few suits like this could ever proceed, and state sponsors

of terrorism could effectively immunize themselves by killing 

their victims, intimidating witnesses, and refusing to appear in 

court. 

Fortunately for the Kims and for Congress’s objective, the 

Supreme Court has “recognize[d] very realistically” that courts

have the authority—indeed, we think, the obligation—to “adjust 

[evidentiary requirements] to . . . differing situations.” Bundy v. 

Jackson, 641 F.2d 934, 951 (D.C. Cir. 1981) (citing McDonnell 

Douglas Corporation v. Green, 411 U.S. 792 (1973)). Consider, 

for instance, the long-established, common-law rule of res ipsa 

loquitur, or, literally, “the thing speaks for itself.” Under that 

doctrine, the courts have, without direct proof, inferred 

negligence from the very nature of events—say, from the fact 

that a surgery patient awoke from anesthesia to discover that a 

sponge had been left in her gut. That sort of inference is justified 

in part on the ground that “the court does not know, and cannot 

find out, what actually happened in the individual case,” often 

because the facts are known only to the defendant. 

RESTATEMENT (THIRD) TORTS: PHYSICAL AND EMOTIONAL 

HARM § 17 cmt. A, at 184 (2005). This approach allows the 

court to “encourag[e] the defendant to disclose relevant 

evidence,” id. at 193, and, if the defendant is unable to do so, to 

reach the common-sense conclusion “that it was probably the 

defendant’s negligence which caused the accident.” 2A STUART 

M. SPEISER, CHARLES F. KRAUSE, & ALFRED W. GANS, THE 

AMERICAN LAW OF TORTS 508 n.30 (2009).

Or take the well-known McDonnell Douglas formula for 

making out a Title VII claim. Because a plaintiff faces 

“difficulty . . . in proving the motives behind an employer’s 

actions” in a race-discrimination case, the Supreme Court has 

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held that, in order to make out a prima facie case, he need only 

show that he is a member of a protected class and that he was 

denied an open position for which he was qualified and that 

remains open. Bundy, 641 F.2d at 950 (citing McDonnell 

Douglas, 411 U.S. at 802). This inference makes sense, as 

“common experience tells us” that such facts are normally 

evidence of a “discriminatory motive.” Id. at 951.

Similarly, plaintiffs like the Kims will find it difficult to 

prove what happened behind the walls of a North Korean labor 

camp because the government has made all but certain that that 

evidence does not exist. But “common experience tells us” that

where a plaintiff has produced compelling, admissible evidence 

that the regime abducted the victim and that it routinely tortures 

and kills the people it abducts, the courts can assume that the 

defendant probably tortured and killed the victim. Given

Congress’s purpose—holding state sponsors of terrorism 

responsible for their crimes—such evidence is sufficient to 

“satisf[y] the court.”

International tribunals with experience in these kinds of 

cases have taken the same approach. For instance, the InterAmerican Court of Human Rights—the United States is a 

signatory to the Court’s underlying treaty, though not a state 

party—has recognized that circumstantial evidence is 

“especially important” in cases of forced disappearance, RadillaPacheco v. Mexico, Preliminary Objections, Merits, 

Reparations, and Costs, Judgment, Inter-Am. Ct. H.R. (ser. C) 

No. 209, ¶ 222 (Nov. 23, 2009), because “this type of repression 

is characterized by an attempt to suppress all information about 

the kidnapping or the whereabouts and fate of the victim.” 

Velásquez-Rodriguez v. Honduras, Merits, Judgment, Inter-Am. 

Ct. H.R. (ser. C) No. 4, ¶ 131 (July 29, 1988). So where “it has 

not been directly shown that [the victim] was physically 

tortured, his kidnapping and imprisonment by governmental 

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authorities, who have been shown to subject detainees to

indignities, cruelty and torture, [may] constitute” proof of that 

treatment. Id. ¶ 187.

III.

We thus turn to the question of whether the Kims have met

their burden of producing evidence “satisfactory to the court.”

Mindful that we must draw our “findings of fact and conclusions 

of law from admissible testimony in accordance with the Federal 

Rules of Evidence,” Daliberti v. Republic of Iraq, 146 F. Supp. 

2d 19, 21 n.1 (D.D.C. 2001), we begin with what we know for 

sure: that North Korean agents abducted Reverend Kim. A

South Korean court convicted a DPRK intelligence agent for 

planning and executing that kidnapping, see supra p. 3, and the 

district court took judicial notice of that decision under Rule 

201. See Kim, 950 F. Supp. 2d at 35. Two experts, moreover—

just the kind of experts whose testimony we have credited in 

FSIA default actions, see Kilburn v. Socialist People’s Libyan 

Arab Jamahiriya, 376 F.3d 1123, 1131–32 (D.C. Cir. 2004), and 

whose testimony is doubtless admissible, see Fed. R. Evid.

702—reported that victims of forced disappearance in North 

Korea usually suffer torture and that Reverend Kim’s political 

and religious activities made him an especially likely target. 

Recall that maltreatment is actionable under the FSIA only 

if purposeful and particularly harsh and that killings are 

prohibited only if they occur outside the limits of the normal 

legal process. The Kims’ experts make a compelling case that 

North Korea violated both provisions. 

Professor David Hawk, an expert on human rights in North 

Korea who has interviewed dozens of former kwan-li-so

prisoners, reports that such prisoners regularly endure harsh 

treatment, including starvation, brutal beatings, rape, and forced 

abortion. Decl. of Professor David Hawk ¶¶ 14–19. Although

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acknowledging that he lacks “firsthand knowledge about 

Reverend Kim’s case specifically,” Professor Hawk believes it 

“likely that [Reverend Kim] would have been . . . transferred to 

a kwan-li-so” and that, once there, the Reverend—a “valuable 

target of the DPRK”—would have suffered “additional 

brutality” even beyond that typical of Korean labor camps. Id. ¶ 

20. That treatment, he reports, would probably mean twelve

hours of physical labor per day, seven days a week, and “longterm solitary confinement in punishment cells which do not have 

enough space for a person to completely lie down or stand up, 

causing inmates to experience a loss of circulation and atrophy 

of legs, and often leading to death within several weeks.” Id.¶

15. 

Ernest Downs, a former senior Defense Department official 

and member of the board of the U.S. Committee for Human 

Rights in North Korea, testifies with even more certainty: of the 

one thousand former prisoners with whose testimony he is 

familiar, he “do[es] not know of any case in which the former 

prisoner was not subjected to torture while in the prison camp.” 

Supplemental Decl. of Ernest C. Downs ¶ 10. That treatment

includes “kneeling motionless” for hours on end, “water 

torture,” “‘pigeon torture’ with . . . arms pinned behind [the] 

back and attached to cell bars in ways that made it impossible 

either to stand up or sit down,” and other typical torture that is, 

regrettably, too commonplace to require detailed description 

here. Id., Ex. 1, at 149. 

Of course, suffering alone is insufficient to establish a claim 

under the FSIA’s terrorism exception. To qualify as torture, the 

mistreatment must be purposeful—that is, the defendant must 

have targeted the victim, for instance, to punish him for his 

religious or political beliefs. Along these lines, Professor Hawk 

testifies that North Korea’s policy is to imprison “political 

prisoners and others deemed to be opponents of the DPRK 

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regime” to “deter dissent in the larger population.” Hawk Decl.

¶¶ 9–10. According to Professor Hawk, moreover, North Korea 

targeted Reverend Kim not only because of his “humanitarian 

activities,” but also because he was a Christian missionary who 

proselytized to defectors. Id. ¶ 21. For his part, Downs is 

“virtually certain” that Reverend Kim, “a foreigner abducted by 

the DPRK for political purposes,” would have been singled out 

for “exceptionally painful, brutal, and outrageous treatment” and 

is probably dead “as a result of his torture and malnutrition.” 

Decl. of Ernest C. Downs ¶ 34; Downs Suppl. Decl. ¶¶ 6(i), 7, 8. 

This expert testimony is more than sufficient to “satisf[y]” us

that North Korea purposefully tortured Reverend Kim.

With respect to extrajudicial killing, the Kims need 

demonstrate only that the DPRK killed the Reverend without 

due process. Professor Hawk “believe[s] that” the Reverend 

suffered an “untimely death” due to starvation. Hawk Decl. ¶ 20. 

Going even further, Downs believes that the Reverend’s “death 

resulted from torture and malnutrition” and was “deliberately 

caused by his North Korean captors.” Downs Suppl. Decl. ¶ 13. 

Given these uncontroverted expert statements, we have no 

trouble concluding that the Kims presented sufficient evidence 

to “satisf[y] the court” that the North Korean government killed 

Reverend Kim outside the formal legal process.

Finally, an observation about our decision’s reach. Our 

conclusion would no doubt differ if we lacked confirmed 

evidence that the DPRK was involved in Reverend Kim’s

disappearance. In that case, finding that the regime tortured and 

killed him would arguably require too many logical leaps. But 

that is not this case. Here, the Kims’ evidence that the regime

abducted the Reverend, that it invariably tortures and kills 

prisoners like him, and that it uses terror and intimidation to 

prevent witnesses from testifying allows us to reach the logical 

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conclusion that the regime tortured and killed the Reverend. In 

other words, the Kims’ evidence is “satisfactory to the court.”

For all of these reasons, we reverse and remand with 

instructions to the district court to enter a default judgment on 

the Kims’ behalf. If the DPRK is unhappy with that outcome and

has evidence that it has not tortured and killed Reverend Kim, it, 

like any defendant in default, may ask the district court to vacate 

that judgment under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 60(b). 

So ordered.

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